Abstract
Currently, there appears to be an unhealthy disjunction between grand expectations and acknowledged reality in the face of urban transformations underway throughout the world. Drawing on the “right to the city” discourses, adopting a Lefebvrian approach to the production of space, and a critical regionalist approach to housing and the built environment, the article explores the conceptual analytical neologism of contested urbanism, where the struggle for bottom-up, inclusive development processes push against political hand market pressures towards becoming a world-class city. Dharavi, at the heart of Mumbai, India, is at the frontline of oppositional practices confronting neoliberal, futuristic Dubai-style mega-projects focused on capital accumulation, elite consumption, slum clearance, and deregulated real-estate speculation. Building upon a three-week academic studio exercise in situ, the confrontational power dynamics that shape people's access to housing and redevelopment are depicted here as exemplar of a wider struggle over social justice, where Dharavi emerges as an eminent yet paradoxical example of a universal expression of contested spatial form in the Global South.
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