People: Community participation and social inclusion

The project adopts a community participation and bottom-up planning approach because of its potential to achieve sustainable outcomes. Different stakeholders such as the UDRI (Urban Design Research Institute of Mumbai), NGOs, and community members take part in it to generate trust and commitment regarding its implementation. Furthermore, the project understands sanitation is intrinsically linked to equity and social inclusion. Collective livelihoods – such as community kitchens, places to dock, and to sell fish – are part of the new transitional infrastructures. Also, the definition of an organizational structure of blocks in Mahim sets up a governing mechanism from which the settlement can grow, considering ongoing negotiations over land rights and demarcation.

Planet: Sanitation as ecology

The project moves towards a renewed and comprehensive approach to urban sanitation, understood as an ecology of interdependencies. Water, trash, and energy management within the community, together with livelihoods and fishing practices, create an integrated lifecycle that occurs in the proposed infrastructures. In the new business and circular economy model, all these work together in a closed-loop of material resources and management issues, including waste separation, composting, biogas, and renewable energy generation. An interface with the water protects the entire Mahim village from the flooding season and collects waste, by the reconstruction of the mangrove's ecosystem of the Mithi River.

Place: Hybrid infrastructures and local livelihoods

The proposed hybrid infrastructures allow fishing activities accompanied by local livelihoods to take place. Zone A proposed for docking and farming; Zone B for community space and fishing equipment provision; Zone for C for cleaning and drying fish together with workshops; and Zone D for a fishing market, community kitchens and internet café. The new multifunctional infrastructures are composed of two parts. Service point areas constructed in brick locate the main sanitation infrastructures. Exterior flexible and adaptable bamboo structures - a local material of shorter lifecycle-accommodate fishing activities but also new livelihood opportunities. They conform seasonal, adaptable, and resilient spaces that absorb the intensifying flux that the fishing villages experience.