Yash Shah
Faculty Advisor: Shawn Protz
NC State School of Architecture, College of Design Campus box 7701, Raleigh, North Carolina, 27695-7701
Jugaadu Urbanism
Yash Shah
A Thesis submitted in satisfaction of a Master of Advanced Architectural Studies ©2023
Prof. Shawn Protz- Advisor
Dr. Burak Erdim - Theoretical Framework
Prof. Rahul Mehrotra - Theoretical Framework
Michael Bissinger - Graphic Design
Lira Gomes - Graphic Design
Harshavardhan Raju - Strucutral Systems/3D Modelling
Ian Price- Photo/Video Editting
Sunil-Vendor
Sanjay-Vendor
Pankaj-Vendor
“Matunga market as a way to interrogate relationships of the urban fabric constituting Mumbai and contemporary cities in general.
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This research peers through the lens of the Matunga market as a way to interrogate relationships of the urban fabric constituting Mumbai and contemporary cities in general. The market’s invisible and visible systems - impermanent settlements including tents, push carts, and temporary wood structuressuggest strategies for future decarbonized and equitable cities. In contrast to more traditional planning models, the market exemplifies a dynamic system driven by necessity that bridges multiple socio-economic groups. These settlements can be understood as an architectural ‘kit of parts’ reflecting the logic and flows of manufactured goods, food, waste, people, and the remnants of colonial planning and administration.
WHAT is Architecture?
WHAT is considered as Architecture?
WHAT is the basis of this Architecture?
WHAT defines the techonics of this Architecture?
WHAT are the Systems in place?
WHAT are the supply chain networks?
WHAT was the budget?
WHAT is the material?
WHAT is the program?
WHAT is the site?
WHAT is the local demographic?
WHAT are other case studies?
WHAT are the vendor locations?
WHAT demographics do the vendors serve?
WHAT kind of product do they serve?
WHAT is the locale? ( tourist area, high density, high income, low income?)
WHAT are the organizational systems in place?
WHAT are times during which these stalls function
WHAT what is the overall economic impact of this economic system?
WHAT laws do they abide by?
WHAT are the food laws meant to follow?
WHAT is the history of the street food culture?
WHAT is considered as a street food stall?
WHAT level of governing impacts vendor culture?
WHAT influences the menu offered by a vendor?
HOW is the land allocated?
HOW is the food transported?
HOW is the food stored?
HOW is the food cooked?
HOW much of the land is legally occupied?
HOW many of the sstructures are permanent?
HOW is the assembly of the structure decided?
HOW can we understand the social hierarchies between the venords?
HOW can we map this impermanent infrastructure?
HOW is the supply chain of raw materials affected by this industry?
HOW do the vendors price the product?
HOW do the vendors compete with large scale corporates and restaurants?
WHERE are most vendors from?
WHERE is most of the raw material coming from?
WHERE are most of the suppliers located?
WHERE are the raw ingredients stored?
WHERE is the food cooked?
WHERE is the food prepared?
WHERE is the water supplied from?
WHERE is the waste disposed to?
WHERE does the raw material get delivered?
WHERE do the vendors live in proximity to the stall?
WHERE is the stall stored if dissassembled?
WHERE does the vendor sleep and eat?
WHEN is the stall set up?
With its roots tied to colonial planning and sudden growth spurts, Mumbai is home to a microcosm of small-scale industries that form informal economies. Traditional bazaars and street markets have been a part of India for centuries. Now they employ an unprecedented number of migrants, vending vegetables, street food, and other goods as reliable sources of income - the basis of the informal economy. While the term informal has been widely debated, such economies tend to seamlessly coexist with the incoming tides of global capitalism. Vendor culture and markets, (particularly the Matunga Market,) are exemplary of an opportunistic urban system that represents an architecture of reoccupation. These settlements can be recognized as temporal architecture, one that reflects the logic and flows of manufactured goods, food, waste, people, colonial planning, and administration. The market’s invisible and visible systems –temporal architecture; tents, push carts, and wood structures – represent these moments of opportunism.
This research aims to decode and examine the conceptual underpinnings and socioeconomic and neoliberal forces impacting impermanent settlements in contrast to planned architectural and urban landscapes. The terms formal/informal and schema view from above/below (vertical/horizontal city) will be useful tools of analysis to counter narratives that frame Indian street markets as informal/unorganized/ or temporal architectures. This paper argues that when one shifts one’s view to the ground, one finds that the market is organized and runs on a complex and multi-layered logic of its own. It is critical to acknowledge the past and the future; there is the colonial city and the neoliberal city, and the markets exist as a continuum and reemergence of local, social, and economic hierarchical systems that operate in constant flux in relationship to global economies. Newer Profit-driven development effectuates harsher/hard thresholds within the contemporary urban fabric of Mumbai, which both creates the conditions for and then imperils the further prospects of vendors and other infor-
Site extents of matunga market. Lal Bahadur Shastri building where the main Matunga Market resides on the ground level.
Nestled in the heart of Dadar and Wadala lives Matunga market, [Figure .01] which is one of the many smaller-scale markets (Bazaar) serving the local communities with fresh produce. As one approaches the market on foot or by car, the experience can be overwhelming, especially for those unfamiliar with the area. Upon arrival, one is confronted with the chaotic urban landscape of illegally double-parked cars, incessant honking, haggling customers, and angry vegetable vendors. The idea of a market doesn’t just mean food and its by-products, but includes cloth merchants, plastic goods, and other services.
Beginning at 6 AM the vendors transform the streets of Matunga into a vibrant street market; windows, overhangs, and facades are repurposed as a canvas for signage. [Figure .02] While the market occupies the ground level, the building also serves as a residential complex with housing units on the floors above; the sense of separation is blurred between the two user groups. The market represents an adapted space, not a formal architectural object representative of any architectural period; its façade is overlayed with plastic boards and name plates from vendors.
Crates of fresh produce are stacked and scattered almost everywhere. These crates also make up the impermanent architecture that serves as aisles for the market. The crates are covered with plywood to become tabletops to organize produce. It is hard not to be enamored by the pyramids of fresh vegetables and fruits at the stalls. There is a sense of planning and logic, moreover, there is certainly a sense of order and hierarchy in the market; represented by the sectioned organization of stalls and vendor typologies.
[Figure .03] A variety of small-scale vendors make up the diverse composition of this marketplace.
In contrast, the noise, socialization, and perceived chaos are left behind as one ascends one of the newer high-rise developments. The view from one of the new skyscrapers truly dissociates itself from the life on Mumbai’s streets, with the picture-perfect panoramic view of the new Mumbai skyline. What one experiences as a pedestrian becomes merely a vague memory of what lies below. Viewing from the balcony of a high-rise, one sees the city in contrast, high-rise developments neighboring the thousands of impermanent settlements, the streets lined with cars and streetlamps, and the land dissipating into the Arabian Sea. [Figure .04] Not to mention this view eliminates the possibility of any social interaction with vendors or known individuals walking on the streets. The city’s intent to redevelop and reinvent its cultural and social identity as a Western metropolitan is evident when viewed from one of the new skyscrapers of Mumbai.
Vendors at Matunga Market setting their stalls on the street inside the ground level of the building.
The contrasting urban landscape of impermanentMumbai,settlements and permanent structures.
The colonial city of Mumbai was divided into two parts, the western and Indian halves, with separate operating networks and systems.
[Figure .05] With the increased influx of agricultural migrants from rural areas, hawking/vending started redefining the street edges, corners, and buildings of the planned parts of the city. With little control exercised in response by the state, the marketplace eventually became the connective tissue between the two halves of the city. As the city’s connection to global trade grew, the southern half (SouthBombay) of the city used by British colonizers continued a development trend. In turn, this left the remainder open to development with housing schemes and smaller-scale industries.
The sharp contrast between the two halves is evident in the housing typology level of impermanent settlements. Often, the higher-end design projects are proposed towards the southern half being the financial hub.
Perpetuation and growth of the informal sector have mainly been due to the unavailability of formal sector jobs, weak capacity of the formal sector to generate adequate employment and incomes, illiteracy, high labor force, population growth rates, and rural-urban migration among others.
Debdulal Saha’s scholarship describes street vending as a means of livelihood for a significant number of urban-rural dwellers in metropolitan cities. Informal economic activities like street vending are relatively free of regulations and state-based frameworks, making them more accessible to carry out. Additionally, it is crucial to acknowledge the romanticized notion of street vending as a defining aspect of the cultural identity of certain Indian metropolises. Furthermore, studies from other countries have reinforced the notion that street vending is a part of the economy sustained by rural migrants.
“Perpetuation and growth of the informal sector have mainly been due to the unavailability of formal sector jobs, weak capacity of the formal sector to generate adequate employment and incomes, illiteracy, high labor force, population growth rates, and rural-urban migration among others.”
Markets are often publicized as informal and unorganized, countering the logic of formal developed economies around the world. Class struggles and social tensions are exacerbated by the intervention of neoliberal forces, the capitalist agenda promises an urban utopia as it rapidly alters the current fabric of the city. While migration from rural parts of India due to a lack of opportunity is one of the many reasons individuals still choose to engage in hawking. [Figure .06] As Rahul Mehrotra describes these informal/temporal spaces of reoccupation become places of transactions social and financial. It is ironic that most such spaces are still utilized and serve almost every social group while being looked down upon. With the ever-increasing population crisis, the governing body of Mumbai presents itself as a liberator with a false set of promises of change and infrastructural development. While the rest of India still follows class and caste differences amongst individuals, even until recent times this denies deserving candidates’ jobs and admissions into schools. With such social discrepancies in place, vending and selling street food is seen as the job of the “lower class” - while everyone cherishes their labor.
“Perpetuation and growth of the informal sector have mainly been due to the unavailability of formal sector jobs, weak capacity of the formal sector to generate adequate employment and incomes, illiteracy, high labor force, population growth rates, and rural-urban migration among others.”
The top-down methodology of planning and urban design project the cityscape on a two-dimensional surface to work through issues of spatial planning. Most often such schemes require an urban overhaul or prescribe a perfectly crafted utopia, none of which acknowledge the sporadic nature of Mumbai’s development. This flawlessness of the proposed utopia ignores the concepts of the everyday and human nature, merely presenting itself as a neoliberal promise. At this juncture, David Harvey’s working definition of neoliberalism is crucial to decode the underlying influences affecting the promises of redeveloping the Urban landscape.
“Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.”
The neoliberal agenda justifies the vertical disconnect between the street and the view from above by publicizing the street as ‘chaotic’ or ‘disorganized’, the newer development being argued as an urban utopia to attain ‘peace’. With the promise of panoramic framed views of the city, a bourgeois lifestyle, and ‘peace’ [Figure .07] the Mumbai high-rise typology disconnects itself from the view of the ground. [Figure
.08] The high-rise becomes a token for profit-making developers pursuing a neoliberal agenda. This vertical disconnect also detaches itself from opportunistic moments of architecture and communities. Ignoring the romanticization and nostalgia of a place, markets play a role in sustaining local communities and economies. Capitalism plays a defining role in the functioning of these underground economies.
“It repeatedly produces the effects contrary to those at which it aims: the profit system generates a loss which in the multiple forms of wretchedness and poverty outside the system and of waste inside it, constantly turns production into expenditure.”
With the promise of modernization and capital growth as a financial hub, Mumbai has seen an exponential increase in unregulated development. Streets of Mumbai are now lined with 20-40 story skyscrapers that are unoccupied by the local public, 60% of whom reside in local slums or other inhabitable dwellings . The average rate of an apartment is 70,000-1,10,000 rupees a square foot, (roughly $1000-1600) only exaggerating the gap between the social classes . The Mumbai high-rise typology tries to emulate structures in the west, ignoring the climatic and socio-cultural state of the context they reside in, aesthetics and the promised amenities define the unique selling point. Gigantic glass structures now line the streets of Mumbai, for instance, Antilia, [Figure .09] a 27 stories high private residence to business tycoon Mukesh Ambani, an out of place structure that can be noticed from most parts of the city is just one of the many such neoliberal projects residing in the city. De Certeau describes the operations of a planned city as follows:
“ The production of its own space (un-Space propre): the rational organization must thus repress all the physical, mental, and political pollutions that would compress it.
T he substitution of a nowhen or of a synchronic system for the interminable and stubborn resistances offered by traditions; univocal scientific strategies made possible by flattening out all of the data in a plane projection must replace tactics of the users who take advantage of opportunities and who through these trap events, these lapses visibility reproduce the opacities of history everywhere.”
In its attempt to emulate the western Concept City , a dying ideology, Mumbai promises to create a utopia failing to acknowledge its life on the streets. A contemporary urban landscape in constant flux, one that is attempting to mediate between its millions of impermanent settlements [Figure .10] and permanent structures. While the life from above creates a picture-perfect framed view of the newly developed skyline, accessible to only a few. Life on the street dissociates itself from what lies above. A country with immense social disparities, the marketspace becomes a physical manifestation representative of the class and hierarchical structures between the social groups.
“Perspective vision and prospective vision constitute the twofold projection of an opaque past and an uncertain future onto a surface that can be dealt with. They inaugurate the transformation of the urban fact into the concept of a city long before the concept itself gives rise to a particular figure of history it assumes that this fact can be dealt with as a unity determined by an urbanistic ratio.”
The impermanence of such economies fails to coincide with the permanent structures while being interdependent systems. Rahul Mehrotra’s literature proposes understanding these spaces as ephemeral landscapes of transactions that resist the influx of globalization and international trade - while simultaneously engaging in them.
“The operation of walking, wandering, or “window shopping” that is the activity of passers-by is transformed into points that draw a totalizing and reversible line on the map. They allow us to grasp only a relic set in the nowhen of a surface of a projection. Itself visible, it has the effect of making invisible the operation that made it possible”
However, As one shift’s to the view from the ground and moves through the market as a pedestrian, one realizes that the market has a complex organization and order of its own that reflects the social and economic hierarchies of Mumbai. The act of walking as a method of exploration is critical to decoding an urban landscape over a two-dimensional projection on a surface that fails to see the view from below. The ideology of the ‘everyday space’ is an important notion to critique the top-down nature of planning that creates a carefully crafted set of ‘spaces. The formal nature of architecture categorizes nonaesthetic or non-formally orientated structures to be deemed as non-architecture, while the architecture of reoccupation represents a structure that is driven by necessity and found materials over aesthetic qualities. It is also driven by budget, site constraints (reoccupiable landscapes), and structural systems.
The brutalism of capital-oriented developments fails to acknowledge the temporal experience of this landscape seen as a pedestrian. Publicized as a disorganized landscape by mainstream media,
it is in fact a thriving metropolis of highly complex, layered, and interdependent systems formulated by cultural and social interactions between individuals and communities. The utopian promise is publicized to benefit all and not just the wealthy, it utilizes redevelopment as a scapegoat for the state and private entities to impose a sense of control. The fluid nature of the reoccupied spaces is what facilitates both these informal and formal economies to survive in a state of conjuncture.
If one observes carefully, at face value, as commonly critiqued it may seem this informal system has no formal organizational systems, but it does. After Interviews and observational walks through the market with local vendors offer insights into the otherwise invisible operations of the market. The Matunga market has been in operation for approximately 85 years, housing a total of 137 vendors, most of whom are licensed and permitted to occupy an area of 6’ x 6’ on the sidewalk of the building. [Figure .11] Products are often sourced from nearby markets such as Dadar Market or the larger APMC [Figure .12] (Agricultural Produce Marketing Committee) Market. A local union supports the vendors regarding policy change and facilitates the collection and distribution of the 150-rupee daily fee to local authority (BMC- Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation). The average vendor does a daily turnover of $100 USD, most of whom reside in local slums and other impermanent settlements.
Additionally, The Matunga market serves as a hub for banana distribution to the rest of Mumbai. On average 10-20 trucks of bananas arrive from the states of Uttar and Andhra Pradesh beginning at 4-6 AM. The valuation of these trucks is about 90,000 USD, all cash. [Figure .13] Fundamentally, the markets run on cash - the primary source of transactions over digital payment systems. The reoccupation of the street as a market space began with vendors when receiving stalls/sheds inside the pre-existing residential building (originally known as Lal Bahadur Shashtri Market) [Figure.14]. Eventually, some vendors began to move out onto the streets resulting in a chain reaction from others to receive higher foot traffic. This movement led to most of the food/fresh produce market moving to the street. The originally assigned sheds are now storage space and rentals to other forms of vendors.
This information is critical to debunking the myth perpetuated by mainstream media, which often portrays street vending as disorderly, unhygienic, or illegal. As mentioned earlier, most vendors obtain a license, pay a daily fee, and smaller-scale vendors often purchase only enough produce to sell throughout the day due to storage issues. Prominent vendors receive a place in the central market, while
smaller, impermanent stalls are located further from the market and receive less foot traffic. While Matunga serves only as a local market within India’s large-scale organized agricultural infrastructure, it comprises only maybe 0.1% of this opportunistic economy. Over 92% of India’s GDP is formulated through informal economies.
“The everyday has a certain strangeness that does not surface, or whose surface is only its upper limit, outlining itself against the visible”
The market system is such that it has the capacity to allow multiple levels of entry at different scales. Like every other formal sector economy, there are structures of hierarchy that may cause inclusionary and exclusionary practices to maintain the status quo. While these hierarchies exist, it is crucial to understand there is still opportunity for a certain level of entry and survival. It presents opposition towards exclusionary practices and brutalism of the capitalist system deeming smaller-scale economies as informal or purposeless with no formal economic contribution.
Vendors at Matunga Market setting their stalls on the street inside the ground level of the building.
A vendor cutting sugarcane.
“What spatial practices correspond, in the area where discipline is manipulated to these apparatuses that produce a disciplinary space? In the present conjuncture which is market by a contradiction between the collective mode of administration and an individual mode of reappropriation, this question is no less important if one admits that spatial practices in fact secretly structure the determining conditions of social life”
The architecture of reoccupation suggests future strategies for urbanism. The act of defacing, eroding, or appropriating the architecture at the ground level proposes a new relationship between the streetscape and the formality of the architecture at the ground level. [Figure .15] This temporal architectural system works in conjunction with the object nature of a given building by inserting, attaching, or reoccupying an unoccupied part of a building system. The architecture of reoccupation / opportunistic economies thrives on more accessible forms of urban landscapes. Vendors and hawkers reoccupy spaces, and urban landscapes in the most temporal forms of architecture, one that readapts to the conditions. [Figure .16] This reoccupation occurs at multiple different scales and not just the obviously larger scale markets with wholesale distribution practices. Top-down urban planning often uses the view from above as a method to organize and resolve planning issues. The 2D nature of the top-down view ignores the issues on the street level experienced by individuals in everyday life.
The neoliberal architecture agenda proposes an increased set of complexities and changes to the built fabric, this allows the newer architecture to be portrayed as progressive. The creation of infrastructure comes with responsibility. Recognizing the temporal nature of markets, and other disassemble architecture presents an opportunity to learn and recalibrate top-down urban planning. Architecture and planning can refocus by abandoning the notion of permanence as a critical point of departure toward a new collective norm. While the informal/opportunistic economy sustains the lives of millions, its power of adaption is tested in an articulated environment of neoliberal development patterns. Setting aside romanticized notions of public space, markets and similar spaces of free informal trade serve as a common ground for multiple socioeconomic groups to thrive. Matunga is just one such example of the thousands that exist in every locality. To ignore their power and importance in everybody’s daily routine would be irresponsible. The markets represent the reordering of the formal city based on its multiple social and political economies. Yet these exist not outside, not in opposition, but in relation to the formal city. In fact, they thrive simultaneously with the formal city. It could also be said that the formal city exists and relies on this other city for its existence and survival.
“As neoliberalism presents itself as a series of propositions in the pursuit of liberty, architecture presents itself as progressive.”
Temporality
Disassembly
Socioeconomics
Necessity Based Building
Impermanence
Reversibility
Displacement
“A far larger number of people are immigrating to cities, especially in the global south, and live in what are often mislabeled “informal settlements.” These urban migrants are displaced farm workers or young people without any work that find a place in which to squat and build shelters using materials that lie at hand...
It is a mistake to call their settlements “informal” in the sense that the places are temporary ; the huge number of people inhabiting them will remain often builsding larger more durable houses over the course of generations and attempting to replace improvised or absent infrastructure like sewers and electrivity lines with more durable facilities.
- Richard Sennett
“Capitalism no longer seeks raw materials for its industrial goods only. But cultural raw materials can be transformed into hard cash through conservation, restoration, and outright fabrication of indigenous landscapes and traditional cultural practices”
- Dell Upton