COMMUNITY BUILDING THROUGH PARTICIPATORY DESIGN
Using the tools of research, design and participatory planning to engage with Rehabilitation and Resettlement policy and its physical manifestations in Public Housing.
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Public Housing in Mumbai
NATWAR PAREKH COMPOUND, GOVANDI, MUMBAI
Work at Natwar Parekh Compound, Govandi. A public housing colony built under the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme in 2008.
Works as a junior research associate at the Curry Stone Design Collaborative.
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The works are divided into Introduction, Research and Participatory Design
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INTRODUCTION
RESEARCH
PARTICIPATORY DESIGN
View from the entrance to Natwar Parekh Compound. This street is 9 m wide, the widest street in the whole colony, where most of the social and economic activity happens.
Natwar Parekh Compound, as seen from Google Earth. To its east is Shivajinagar, and to its north-east is Deonar dumping ground.
Natwar Parekh Compound is a Public housing colony built under the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme in 2008, occupied from 2010. Jointly owned by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) and the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) it houses people from different informal settlements across Mumbai, that no longer exist due to various development projects undertaken by the MCGM and MMRDA. The colony consists of 61 buildings spread over 5 hectares, and has the capacity to hold over 30,000 people. The tightly packed buildings, along with lack of adequate open space, lead to the residents facing severe health and mental well being risks. The infrastructure and amenities are also severely lacking, like the service lines, building conditions and social amenities. This leads to flooding every monsoon season.
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The Curry Stone Design Collaborative has been engaging closely with the residents here since 2016, and has led a slew of projects within the colony. The colony has allowed us to experiment with our participatory process in action, The residents themselves are equal stakeholders in this process, and the design interventions are based on suggestions given to us by the residents. The overall aim for the collaborative is to improve the built space within the colony, and to build capacity within the community to be able to tackle any problems by themselves in the future.
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Listed below are some of the sub - projects taken up within the colony by the Collaborative. My contribution as a junior research associate includes research and development, community engagement, preparing collateral's for community meetings, conducting surveys and project design, management and execution.
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Research
The foundation of CSDC's participatory process is research and mapping. Understanding the physicality of Natwar Parekh Compound is pertinent to understanding the social processes that happen within. This provides the residents of the colony with valuable information and allows us to sensitively intervene.
Site Mapping
The first stage of any project includes research about the site and its mapping. The mapping was done by quantitative data (through google earth and on ground surveys) and qualitative data (through interviews and narrative gathering). Initial conditions that were mapped include state of service infrastructure, amenities and social spaces.
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Allocated Open space in Natwar Parekh Compound, rendered useless due to the parking and vehicular access. Lack of trees and plants, important for retaining soil, causes this area to flood every year.
The state of Storm Water Drains in the colony.
Landuse and Density Analysis
Services Mapping
Social Infrastructure Mapping
Using this data, we aim to holistically understand the infrastructure acquiesces and collaborate with relevant agencies to suggest sensitive and context appropriate infrastructure upgrades to the development authority.
Policy Research
Research on the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme led to the preparation of an introductory report, examining the policy, its history, and its implications on the urban fabric. Natwar Parekh Compound is a perfect example of the shortcomings of the scheme, and this aspect is elaborated in the report. Proposed interventions within the colony are also listed.
GIS Mapping for Interactive Data Access
The aim of this project is to create a holistic database of all SRA Schemes and its environs to benefit all stakeholders. A list of all the SRA schemes (unbuilt and built) is present on the SRA Website. However, this data is not easily accessible and understandable by the layperson. Mapping all the SRA colonies on a GIS database will allow for an overall understanding of the use of the SRA policy for building public housing. The database is meant to be accessible mainly to the residents of public housing colonies, to give them knowledge about their colonies, to be able to affect change from the ground up. It is envisioned as being an open source platform, that anyone can add data to. The database can also be accessed by policy makers, bureaucrats and researchers alike. This brings all stakeholders to an equal footing, and forms a platform for further discourse.
Demographic Mapping for the People of NPC
Natwar Parekh Compound has been inhabited since 2010. In the last ten years, people from informal settlements all over Mumbai have been moved here, displaced by government projects. Jurisdiction is shared by MMRDA and MCGM, however there is no clarity on how many people live here in total.
We designed a demographic survey of the colony through a mobile application called Nestforms. This was done to avoid the formality of a pen and paper survey, which is inefficient and alienating. Teenagers from the buildings in the colony helped us with data collection, and we trained them in using the application. The data from the colony will be owned by the NPC federation, and the data will help them make more informed decisions about the running of the colony.
Lack of Data on the communities living in Natwar Parekh Compound
Nest forms mobile app allows teenagers from community to conduct easy surveys
Training the teenagers in the community to use the nestforms application
Sample data results from the nestforms demographic survey. Seen here: Employment data
Facilities Management
Natwar Parekh Compound is a Slum Rehabilitation Colony in Govandi, Mumbai. It consists of 61 buildings over a meager 5 hectares. With a capacity to house around 30,000 people, its population is comparable to a tier 3 city in India like Kota or Jodhpur. While those cities have a governance system, city services, transport and medical facilities, Natwar Parekh Compound however, is lacking in these.
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Each building is formed as Co-operative Housing Society, with a supposed standard charge for maintenance, water and other services. The reality however, is far from standard. There is severe disparity in the implementation of the CHS governance. The collection of the maintenance fee is different for each building, with fees changing from house owners and renters as well. Each building prioritizes facilities differently, with elevators working for a certain number of hours each day, as per the building representative’s discretion. This affects the common electricity bill each building pays, and there is little to no follow up on standardization of usage and hiring maintenance persons. As for water charges, there is a backlog water bill that each building has to pay, for usage from 2010, issued by the BMC. The details around the issuance and payment is unclear from both parties involved.
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Considering the above, there is a need for a facilities management system in the colony. The implementation of this will be taken on by the individual CHS entities, with supervision from the colony wide federation.
A standardized system operating on a colony wide level will help in improving the management of the building services in the most efficient way possible. The effects of this system will show on all levels. On the household level, it will ensure a standardized transparent collection fee. On a building level, it will ensure the efficiency of collection and implementation processes, with a predetermined set of service persons being paid a standard fee. It will also ensure transparency across buildings on a federation level, and savings from centralized collection will make allowances for usage in colony wide projects to upgrade the built environment and social space
The MMRDA and MCGM has shard jurisdiction over the colony since 2010. Recently the federation was formed, an elected body of residents that represent the concerns and interests of the entire colony
Participatory Design
CSDC uses the participatory design process to engage with the community, to tackle issues raised by the residents themselves, and to sensitively intervene in the built space.
Redesigning Vending Spaces
The entrance main street of NPC is a 9 m wide two way vehicular road that runs west to east through the site. A secondary road runs north-south on the west side. These are the primary vending space within the colony, and around 120 vendors sell their wares here. This makes it a vibrant social space, where residents run into each other to have a chat while buying groceries.
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The vendors arrange their carts on either side of the road, and most are residents of the colony. The vending spaces in are facing a threat of eviction from the MCGM, which claims that they are not vendors as they are stationary and that the road is deemed as a pubic road, in spite of it being within the boundary of the colony.
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There is a need to redesign the vending spaces in the colony because of the above mentioned issues.
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The MMRDA and MCGM has shard jurisdiction over the colony since 2010. Recently the federation was formed, an elected body of residents that represent the concerns and interests of the entire colony
Engaging with the community through weekly meetings.
Vendor's Workshop, conducted in collaboration with YUVA. We helped the vendors organize into a Street Vendors Association. This will provide a platform to raise issues with the government and access their rights as street vendors.
The street vendors trying to find their locations on the proposed designs that have been in collaboration with them.
Design Development drawings for redesigning the vending spaces
Visualization of Redesigned Vending Space
Waste Management and Cleanliness Drive
The minimum distance between each building in Natwar Parekh is less than 4 m wide. Too narrow to be used effectively, the lanes have become waste dumping areas, rendering the already negligible space as unusable. This is due to the lack of effective waste management in the colony.
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We organized a cleanliness drive in the buildings, by holding meetings with the residents, explaining the importance of proper hygiene and the various health risks due to the lack of it.
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We also encouraged the segregation of waste, and provided them with 1 large dustbin per floor, for throwing wet waste into. We did it during the month of Ramadan, when there is higher percentage of organic waste that is thrown into the alleys. We designed stencils for painting on to the dustbins and the wall around it. They were designed for easy use by children of the buildings, and it made for a fun activity while also creating awareness.
Once the waste segregation picked up and the space between the building cleared out, we designed a social space in between 2 buildings, as a prototype of what the spaces could look like when used effectively.
Spaces in between lanes are used a dumping ground. The space is often dirty wet due to the faulty drainage, grey water and organic waste
Meeting with building residents, explaining the segregation drive and the plan for painting the dustbins.
Inaugurating the dustbins
Once the space in between was clear of waste and greywater, we cleaned up the space and redesigned it.
The space after it has been redesigned. It was inaugurated on Christmas, and we organized a party for the kids to celebrate their new play area!
Designing a Site Office at Natwar Parekh Compound
CSDC was previously using Mahila Milan Office (a savings group run by women in Natwar Parekh Compound) for our community meetings. This however was disruptive to the work of Mahila Milan. There were space constraints as well, and we needed a space that could hold more people. To this end, we built a site office in one of the buildings, to be used for our community meetings. While we are not using the space, it doubles up as the administrative office for that buildings CHS.
All the labour and other resources we used were from the Colony itself.
Custom windows designed to allow maximum light and air penetration within the ground floor office.
We made a large map of the site and its environs, for easy reference during community meetings.
We repainted and added seating on the outside of the office. A great place for the kids to hang out!
Urban Forest for Public Housing
Natwar Parekh is located within a 1 km radius of the Deonar Dumping Ground, Mumbai's primary landfill. This, and its proximity to hazardous industries. This severely affects the air quality, and is a health risk for the people living around this area. Natwar Parekh Compound shares its boundary with a 1 hectare site to its west. This site is owned by the MCGM and its currently not used for any purpose.
Since M/E ward is the lowest in open space per person ratio in Mumbai, we proposed the growing of an urban forest on the adjacent site. The forest built using the Miyawaki method, has the potential for significantly improving the air quality in the area, and providing a much needed public space for the residents.
Presentation on the need for an urban forest in M Ward, Mumbai.
Fragmented Spaces
The Grammar and Politics of Urban Housing in India.
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Workshop organized by the Sambhaavna Institute, Palampur, Himachal Pradesh
The Sambhaavna Institute of Policy and Politics' mission is to nurture value-based leadership by encouraging individuals, especially the youth, to reflect, discuss and develop a critical perspective on the ideals and ideas that define a ‘just’ society.
The institute holds workshops on social issues that are targeted toward young practitioners, by bringing together mentors who are specializing in the field.
Fragmented Spaces, The policy and politics of urban housing in India was mentored by Amita Bhide and Lalita Kamath (TISS), Anant Maringanti (HUL), Karen Coelho (MIDS), Prasad Shetty (SEA) and Gautam Bahn (IIHS). The workshop explored the definitions and policy history around urban housing in India. Participants had to design a policy framework, which was peer reviewed as an exercise to conclude the 5 day workshop.
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View of the Sambhaavna Campus, designed and built by Didi Contractor is made from Adobe and Bamboo
Attending the 5 day workshop, with intensive sessions and insightful discussion. We had a special guest also wishing to attend!
