interesting quotations

"Rediscovering Dharavi" by Kalpana Sharma

pg. xxv
"Dharavi was a bustling, busy, chaotic settlement where nothing stood still."

pg. xxx
"The high-rises are still only eruptions on a low-rise unplanned landscape of scores of settlements with distinct names and personalities."

pg. xxxiv
"To remind us that a slum isn't a chaotic collection of structures; it's a dynamic collection of individuals who have figured out how to survive in the most adverse of circumstances."

"...nothing to celebrate about living in a cramped 150 square ft. with no natural light and ventilation, without running water or sanitation."

"No one should have to live in such conditions."


"Shadow Cities" by Robert Neuwirth

pg. 107
"We had to put up with everything - the bad smells, the mosquitoes, the flies. Everything."

pg. 109
"They scraped, they borrowed, and they improved."

pg. 111
"People have created elaborate custom-built hutches to hold their meager possessions. Essentially they created tiny built-in wooden shelving systems to organize every possession."

"These hutches keep a person's belongings off the street and out of the way of bacteria."

pg. 114
"squatters actually pay rent to the city... started with a ground rent of 3 rupees a month. Today, residents pay 100 rupees a month . Given that there are 1000 homes in Squatter Colony, the City of Mumbai receives $1.2 million rupees a year, or a bit more than $25,000, from these illegal residents."

"squatters improve their homes in a novel way..."

"They build as money becomes available. So each wall is turned from mud to concrete separately, over time. No interest costs. No overhead. No problems with storage and site security. No accounting headaches."

"On a small scale - and small, sometimes, can be beautiful - they are quite efficient."

pg. 129
"Mumbai's middle class and wealthy have always had a schizophrenic relationship with the squatters... Their conversation is full of references to the horrible crime and the amount of parental neglect in the squatter settlements. But many of them hire squatters as maids or cooks or drivers or watchmen, or even to care for their kids."

pg. 142
"slums in Indian parlance- had become a city within the city."

"Rather, the middle class and wealthy neighborhoods constitute the small, separatist enclave. The well-off are the city within the city. The squatters are the majority, so they are the city. When they fully understand that, politics and policies will change for the better."