As part of Urban Age’s year-long focus on urbanisation in India, the Collective Research Initiatives Trust (CRIT) was commissioned to survey over 20 housing typologies that define the historic and suburban fringe of Mumbai. This study includes diagrams, data, photography and site analysis of a wide collection of homes, ranging from the mass houses executed by the State after Independence to the housing colonies of Mumbai’s western suburbs as well as the chawls built by Mumbai’s government agencies in the 19th century to accommodate massive overcrowding. Also featured are the rare – and ultra expensive – bungalows built by private families, the middle-class tenements built by private developers in the 70’s and 80’s which were subsequently taken over by cooperative housing societies, and the slums and pavement dwellers concentrating ethnic and work-based communities in Santacruz East.
