Dharavi – slum for sale
Notes from screening at Harvard GSD
The key issue is employment, not housing. Need to retain micro-industry as well as housing.
Resident’s comment on high rise housing proposal (but no clear proposal for providing places of work): “Will the oxygen up there fill our stomachs?”
Industry generates 750 million dollars per annum. Dharavi therefore as an economic object. Much of the economy is informal.
Redevelopment as a step backwards because people can’t continue their previous trade and have to shift to new trades – “lift men and doorkeepers”
“Let people build for themselves – give them water not money.”
SPARC: Don’t leave it to the international developers.
The proposed redevelopment is not just professionally poor but morally poor because it raises expectations among the poor. The plan should instead be done by the municipality.
One objective should be to see Dharavi as a test case of dense, mixed use, low carbon community.
The lack of evidence seems important. Proposals being made in a vacuum of knowledge.
Bryan Bell – need to tap into social capital there rather than turn up in a Mercedes.
The power of the network 