To see Dharavi as a self-renewing organism that is changing, upgrading its own structure of accommodation, is the great gift of the book.
After Slumdog Millionaire and Shantaram, now comes a book by students of the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Sweden. Architects, artists and writers made several trips to a place that had an existence only as distant storybook sociology; approaching Dharavi not as a disease to be set right, but a human condition, with family struggles, work routines and other forms of survival. The documentation took many forms: living conditions were mapped, streets and alleys drawn, people sketched, the structure of space and working habitat drafted. What became apparent was the extraordinary freedom in a culture where opportunity and space was shared like food and water. To see Dharavi as a self-renewing organism that is changing, upgrading its own structure of accommodation, is the great gift of the book. Its unfortunate relationship with a city obsessed with real estate, FDI and builder lobbies makes it a serious contender for an alternative approach to urban values. And the best reason to stop marketing land as a disposable commodity.