2019_Vibhavari Sarang — SEA Archives

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Life resettled: work, life and leisure in the resettlement colonies alongside the edge of the Deonar dump
Skins and Thresholds
Vibhavari Sarang, 2019

Deonar lies on Mumbai’s north eastern edge and has housed one of Asia’s largest dump yards for almost century. Ironically, this also houses one of Mumbai’s largest, densest resettlement projects.Over the last 50 years starting with a bid to ‘clean up’ the city’s housing conundrum in the 1970s and later to help clear the path for new infrastructure projects in the early 2000s -a large population has been made to move en-masse, from various parts of the city, to be housed in these resettlement projects, which were planned and implemented by the government.Shivaji Nagar, which lies on the edge of the dump– has witnessed two waves of resettlement. The first wave was in the 1970s, which saw people move into plots of land allocated to them resulting in an informal development, while the second wave in the 2000s, resettled ‘homeless street dwelling families’ into densely packed apartment blocks.

The above two resettlement projects will be studied in this thesis because of the differences in their builtforms and the differences in relations and networks forged by the people inhabiting the two kinds of spaces. The first scheme allowed a certain relationship to be formed between its’ spatiality and the social structure of its’ inhabitants; while the second scheme, throws up a whole new set of opportunities and constraints, by allowing people to form social orders and relationships. The spatialities of the resettlement projects have enabled the inhabitants to settle in particular ways and this study hopes to detail out the specific aspects that bring about a sense of social coherence in both these schemes.

Therefore, this thesis aims to establish a juxtaposition of the older plotted resettlement scheme versus the recent, “standard” apartment type resettlement scheme, through specific aspects, questions, theoretical concepts and through the experiences- of the work, leisure, time taken to settle and make a home and therefore the lives - of the residents of both projects – with an aim to develop strategies that are relevant for resettling families and therefore easing the act of ‘settling’.

Read also under ‘Skins and Thresholds’:

Life resettled: work, life and leisure in the resettlement colonies alongside the edge of the Deonar dump

Spatial learnings from cellular phenomenon

Living in the forest: a study of settlements in and around the edge of the forest

Land-water interface: a narrative of the land-water edge along the Godavari River, Nasik

Stories of urban thresholds from Mahad

Of building skins

Spatiality of roughness/softness of streets

A routine of happiness: in-between realm and the spaces of respite