Building Change: Inclusive Approaches to Urban Climate Challenges

Studio Co-ordinators: Sandhya Naidu and Shashank Mittal

Upanshu Shakhala

In our course on designing purpose-driven projects with the Natwar Parekh colony, we expected to learn about planning frameworks, stakeholder mapping, and the nuts and bolts of social impact infrastructure. What we didn’t anticipate was how deeply the course would challenge our assumptions about power, legitimacy, and who gets to shape the spaces they live in.

We read excerpts from 'Towards Hope as Practice' and 'Palaces for the People ', opening up the class for a discussion on safe spaces designed for and with marginalized communities.

One reading that stayed with us was about Jacarezinho, a large favela in Rio de Janeiro. In

2001, residents there took the bold step of installing gates and surveillance cameras. As

anthropologist João Costa Vargas describes it, this act was both protective and political, a

demand for safety, for recognition, and for “full citizenship.” But the effort was short-lived. The Brazilian media, steeped in racial and class bias, painted the initiative as a cover for criminal activity. Officials swiftly tore down the gates, and militarized police reclaimed control. Unlike wealthier, white enclaves elsewhere, Jacarezinho's poor, Black residents were denied the right to define and defend their space.

This case laid bare the tensions one must confront between grassroots action and institutional resistance. We were met with pivoting questions of 'What is my/our role in city building?' येशहे ेरकि सका है? And “ When does my role as an architect end in social impact work?”

It reframed how we think about infrastructure, not just as roads or water lines, but as a claim to dignity. The Jacarezinho community wasn’t just asking for services; they were asserting their right to exist safely and visibly in a city that often treats them as invisible.

As we began working with the People of Mumbai’s M/E Ward, this case stayed with us.

Parveen Shaikh, an influential member of the women's collective in Govandi, asked us to

augment our skills with her lived experience and knowledge of the stakes over the years. She

said, “These homes feel like they were designed for murda log… for dead people,” and urged us to always take into consideration the real living people who would occupy our designs.

 She has spent over twenty years fighting not just for homes, but for izzat, for insaniyat, for the right to live with dignity. She doesn’t shout. She speaks softly, but each word carries the weight of beiss saalon ka sangharsh.

“Yeh sirf ek makan ki ladai nahi thi, ek sangharsh tha Sarkar ke virudh,” she said, eyes filled

with memories. After years of living on the footpath, building lives out of nothing- she said

(footpath pe jindagi mushkil thi per mere sapne bhoot bade the), she led her people through protests, paperwork, and promises. When the houses were finally allotted, it felt like jeet. But what they found at Natwar Parekh housing colony was far from the dream—it was dhokha wrapped in concrete.

“Andar andhera, hawa nahi, sooraj ka ek kiran bhi nahi,” she recalled. The lifts rarely worked,

Mothers and old people climbed seven floors. Neighbours, once parivaar, were now scattered. Slowly, people stopped talking, stopped gathering. The galli ka sukoon, the raunak of the street, was gone. “We were given walls, but they forgot to give us life.”

With pain she carries in her bones, she now calls the building a “saat manzil ki jhoparpatti”—a vertical slum. And the words that haunt anyone who listens—“Yeh ghar murda logon ke liye banaye gaye hain.” Homes meant to bring dignity instead brought tanhaayi and ghutan.

Parveen Ji’s story is not just hers—it is the chehra of thousands who were promised ghar, but

received udasi. In trying to house the poor, the system forgot their insaniyaat. And as she

stands in that crumbling building of broken promises, her voice becomes an awaaz for

all, reminding us that a true home is not just bricks and cement. It is roshni, hawa, awaaz and

zindagi.