A new documentary by Director Lutz Konermann portrays the story of the controversial redevelopment of Dharavi in Mumbai, India. Dharavi, the largest slum in India and possibly the largest in the world, is home to over one million people and millions of dollars of industry. US trained developer Mukesh Mehta’s Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP) seeks to demolition the slum and build high-rise buildings that will both rehouse the existing squatters and provide extra housing to be sold at market rates that will fund the rest of the project.
The documentary, Dharavi, Slum for Sale, will be showing next week in New York as part of the Center for Architectures Jugaad Urbanism Film Series. For a full review of the film read Polis the blog.
– Melissa
Encountering Urbanization 
Interesting National Geographic article from May 2007 discusses Mr. Mehta’s plans and various reactions to it from Dharavi residents. http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/05/dharavi-mumbai-slum/jacobson-text
It certainly opened my eyes to the two sides of the issue – I never would have imagined that a home in a slum could have 3,000 sq. ft. I wouldn’t want to move into a 225 sq. ft. highrise apt. either.
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