2019_Ami Joshi — SEA Archives

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Transitional sociability: a study of the urban fishing villages of Mumbai

Enterprise
Ami Joshi, 2019

Urban villages have been undergoing transformations due to shifts in the economic activities of the villages. These shifts bring with them a demand for new configurations in the builtform of the village, changing the house form and its associated public spaces. This changes the sociability of the village.

In the context of urban fishing villages in Mumbai, these changes in the sociability fracture the relationships of the people within the community by disrupting the delicate relationship between the built form and open space. It does so by altering the hierarchy of the spaces within the settlement, allowing the new built form to take over the available common spaces. The common spaces in a fishing village not only facilitate its everyday activities, but also become spaces for their communal symbiotic relationship to flourish.

With the setting up of the co-operative, the ice factory and the cold storage in Versova village, the daily functioning of fishing and its allied activities have become mechanical, minimising the required time investment and presence of the community, reducing it further with migrant labour being available to work on the boats. This, along with the individuality of the emerging G+3 builtform typology, has disintegrated the sociability of the village, and hence, the community.

Through this thesis I aim to establish the importance of sociable spaces in urban villages. In order to do so, the study incorporates the comparison of two fishing villages at different stages of transformation- Versova Koliwada, largely transformed builtform; and Bhati Koliwada, a settlement functioning as per the older way of communal living. Through readings of ‘Social space and Structuralism’ by Herman Hertzberger, the study begins to establish patterns of sociability offered in these cases.

Through the study of living patterns in both the settlements, it was clear that the transformed house forms disrupt the everyday sociability of the people; the industrial logic of the ice factory and the working of the co-operative leaves little room for the people to actively partake in the everyday functioning,making their activities mechanical. The aim of the thesis is to argue for a change in the way these transformations occur, and to rethink the typology of the builtform to incorporate spaces of sociability at different scales in the neighbourhood, as was seen in the older contexts. It identifies the demand for a house form that recognises the needs and aspirations of the people for the transformations, considering the shifting economies, while laying importance to the series and hierarchy of open spaces and their relationship to the builtform.

Neighbourhoods as networks: work and living in Mumbai’s work-based neighbourhoods

Enterprise
Divya Agarwal, 2019

Emerging entrepreneurship and its spatiality

Enterprise
Foram Desai, 2019

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