I plan on completing a long site report on my trip to Dharavi, Mumbai, India, in the coming month or so. For now, I will post some of the images I took while there with brief annotation that will be developed more in the site report.

I was in Mumbai attending a workshop organized by the amazing folks at Urban Typhoon. More about that in a later post as well.

Dharavi is a massive area in Mumbai made up of informal housing, businesses, and city management. Estimates of the number of people who live there have ranged between 500,000 and 1,000,000 people!

Note: click on an image to enlarge, then click again to get a full size image.

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Street scene near the Shivar Guest House, where I was staying, as were many from the Urban Typhoon workshop


Street scene in the Koliwada neighborhood of Dharavi


This street borders Dharavi and is constantly filled with market stalls, pedestrians, and all sorts of vehicles, carts, animals, and more.


This street market takes up two lanes of the road (depicted above) that runs along Dharavi. You can see that businesses and houses are built right up to the edge of the road leaving the road itself as the only space that can be used for markets such as these. There is an amazing abundance in these markets, like the vegetables you can see here.


Koliwada buildings and a rooftop


Dharavi is known to many who live outside it or who visit Mumbai by air, by the seemingly contiguous rooftops that are common in the area.


Remains of a smaller, self-built structure typical of Dharavi architecture, in front of a larger apartment building in the back. These larger buildings are made when owners of buildings, like the one in the front, decide to get together, and finance them as a replacement for the smaller, informal buildings... perhaps in anticipation of official, government "redevelopment" of the area


This image shows a settlement just outside of Dharavi. You can see several levels of building from the informal houses in the front, to the larger apartment buildings of increasing scale behind.


This is along the same street as the image above. You can see a small mosque built on top of one of the buildings.


Animals can be found tethered to poles, carts, or wandering around Dharavi, and greater Mumbai.


Goat on a car


Goats help to reduce the amount of solid, food waste that is generated every day in Dharavi.


Waste handling is a giant problem for Dharavi. Not only does it pile up, but it also affects the way people who don't go there, or who aren't sympathetic to the Dharaviwallas' situation. This was often the first thing people brought up when I asked them what they thought or knew about the area.


Human waste is handled in different ways throughout Dharavi. Here is an open trench that carries human waste, waste water, and garbage out of the area. The facades of these buildings are absolutely amazing!


Here is a relatively closed waste water trench. These are very common throughout the area.


Freshwater comes from wells dug beneath Dharavi, or from private sources that are tapped into and split an unbelievable number of times. Often, the freshwater pipes run just above, or through the waste water channels.


This image is confusing, but I wanted to put it in. It shows the waste water trenches opened up. Several men were cleaning the trenches out by hand. They were pulling roots, paper, plastic, human waste, and other unknown substances out and making piles like these. I saw this maintenance of the waste trenches happening all around Dharavi. This image is from Koliwada.


This is one way of managing excess water. Trenches are dug and filled with small stones.


Here you can see an open trench of waste water, fresh water pipes, and wires providing electricity to the local buildings.


There are no city services provided for Dharavi: no water service, no waste handling (both solid and liquid) and no electricity. Electricity is pirated and shared in truly stunning ways like this hub.


Electricity being shared between these two high rise apartment buildings in Dharavi


These boys bathed in public, then filled containers with water to take home. A lot of bathing takes place in public in Dharavi as there are not spaces in peoples' homes, nor are there many facilities for indoor bathing. People bathe with their clothes on.


There are very few public spaces in Dharavi. This one is in Koliwada and is used for cricket, holiday celebrations, and public gatherings.


This image, and the one that follows, shows the narrow paths between the buildings in Koliwada. This actually helps to keep the houses cool in Mumbai's sweltering, humid climate.




Mumbai is an intensely dense city. No space goes unused. Spaces near the train tracks are off limits to people building houses. This doesn't stop them from using that land for farming. This, and the next two images, is of an urban farm at the Sion train station. The vegetables and herbs raised here were being sold on the street market (depicted above) just less than 100m away.






People in Dharavi work extremely hard, from sun up to sun down, in ways that make those of us familiar with a western "Protestant work ethic" blush with a sense of laziness. There are many small districts in Dharavi. Here is an image from the pottery district. The stereotype of Dharaviwallas as lazy people who want to freeload is so completely false that you know it is not true the minute you step out of Mumbai and into the area.


Men bending metal in an outdoor factory.