The BDD chawls are a government-constructed form of worker housing built in the 1920s and originally modeled on army barracks. Due to their location in what is now a very central and desirable part of the city, plans to redevelop the site and increase the amount of built area are underway. Units inside the...
Located on the periphery of the city near the Navi Mumbai bridge, the site has had several incremental infrastructural upgrades over the course of the last 30 years, some constructed by the state and some financed privately by residents. The neighborhood is very dense and hilly, surrounded by open spaces which...
The “transit camp” designation appears to be in name only, as this community has been in place for forty years. Unlike the surrounding Dharavi slum, the site is planned on a grid and basic infrastructures such as public toilets and water taps, sewer lines and trash collection were provided by the state, similar...
From the ground level the compound does not appear aesthetically different from other slum neighborhoods in Mumbai, but this government-planned “site and services” scheme actually follows a rigid grid layout. Small plots of land serviced by trunk infrastructures, such as shared water taps, public toilets and...
Residents were moved into new buildings directly from slum neighborhoods nine and a half years ago when their homes became the site of the nearby Eastern Freeway and bridge infrastructure project. Several different communities in the path of the project were relocated to this site. Unlike other “slum rehab”...
This large, dense complex of housing was built from 2000 to 2005 to replace slums on the same site. The development was initiated by the Mumbai Municipal Region Development Authority (MMRDA). Once residents were moved to a transit camp located fifteen minutes away by walking, the slum was demolished and the towers...
This chawl was originally privately constructed to house mill workers. When we arrived, a huge new skyscraper was under construction on the property. The tenants of the chawl had been moved and it was being used to house workers on the construction site. We were informed that the chawl was...
This colony was built 25-30 years ago as a transit camp and became permanent over time through the illegal practice of the developer renting units to new residents. The colony hosts people from many parts of the city: some come of their own accord to seek month-to-month rentals and others are relocated...
Nine years ago this slum community, which has existed since the 1960s, was approached by a developer promising new homes in 18 months for no cost to residents who could prove they had lived in their hut since 1995. The community agreed to the developer’s deal, and residents were moved to four transit camp...
In 2005 the slum community occupying this land agreed to a development scheme in which the developer would build a high-rise composed of half-hotel, half-residential units, and the residents would get new units in the building at no cost. First, the slum was cleared and residents were moved to a transit camp...
As part of the Istanbul research seminar excursion, funded by the Harvard Mellon Initiative and guided by the photographer Serkan Taycan, Harvard students as well as Professors Eve Blau, Erik Ghenoiu, Sibel Bozdogan, Murat Guvenc, Ozlem Genel, and Max Hirsh visited the ‘Second Bosporus’ project...
Our priority for this trip was collaborative, multidisciplinary research, with a presentation of initial findings at the trip’s end. As a group, our academic specializations are as varied as our personal connections to the city, but we found ourselves drawn to many of the same points of contrast: the...
Our day began at SALT, a not-for-profit cultural institution, research center and archive located in the former Imperial Ottoman Bank. There Edhem Eldem of Boğaziçi University gave a highly apropos lecture on the historical thoroughfare of Ottoman banking (the very street we overlooked), ...
We began our day with a former student of Professor Bozdogan, architect and artist Neyran Turan, who discussed her multimedia immersive art exhibition, Bogaz (“Strait”) – a sharply satirical commentary on development, conservation, and Istanbul’s urban fabric that included video and ...
We gathered near the historic Pera Palace Hotel, a short stroll from our residence, the equally storied Grande Londres Hotel. We crossed the Golden Horn and walked to Kadir Has University, which had graciously authorized its Istanbul Studies Center, directed by Murat Güvenç, to host our research...
