A jugaad vehicle—assembled entirely from spare parts, water pump engines, and wooden carts. The vehicle displays no registration plate,
runs on diesel, and pays no road tax.
soft demeanor revealed him as the mild-mannered, Yale-trained architect that he is.
“Within the multilayered urbanism there
are whole complex systems.” He described
these systems as urban morphologies.
In the name of progress, some of
these morphologies are being disman-
tled. Resettlement plans might demolish
a rat-infested shantytown like Mumbai’s
infamous Dharavi, where there is only
one toilet per few hundred people, but
when the replacement is concrete block
structures forty miles from the city cen-
ter, with no jobs and no transportation,
the “plan” in city planning disappears.
Agrawal described one of these relocation
developments — which had abundant elec-
tricity but zero water infrastructure—as
a “relentless grid without any idea about
how people live.” He also pointed out that
places like slums are sometimes the most
productive parts of a city, their scrappy citi-
zens the recyclers and producers of a vast
array of materials and products. “Mumbai
is made in Dharavi,” he said. “If you remove
it, there will be a huge economic vacuum.”
Is there a way to develop without de-
stroying? This is a question being asked
from Brooklyn to Bangalore. One alterna-
tive featured in the exhibition was a project
of SPARC, the Society for the Promotion of
Area Resource Centres. This Pune-based
organization called on Swedish architects
to create a building-by-building in situ
renovation plan that keeps the structure
of the slum—o;cially called an “infor-
mal settlement” — fundamentally intact
while making it safer and healthier for its
inhabitants with new buildings. Adapt-
able design allows for expanding families,
small businesses, and animal husbandry,
all critical elements of making a jugaad
lifestyle work. Homeowners contribute 10
percent of the cost, either through cash,
labor, or supplies, and the government
in turn provides a $6,500 subsidy. Of the
half-dozen projects featured in the “land”
portion of the exhibition, this is the one
that is turning into reality. The program
has so far provided new homes for four
thousand families in Pune while allowing
them to stay integrated in their existing
communities, where social networks can
remain unbroken.
pHo TogRApH l bEn cuRTIS / Ap
