Public Sanitation in Mumbai (2018-2020)
This project, led by Rahul Mehrotra, is examining the issue of public sanitation in Mumbai, with a special focus on community toilets in the city’s slums/informal settlements. It consists of three parts. The first part is mapping of the larger community toilet networks and geographies within the city. This includes a study of the ‘Sulabh Shauchalaya Initiative’ (low cost and easy access to sanitation) and other private or Government funded public toilets, built in Mumbai. This is restricted to the island city of Mumbai, which is the densest portion within the Greater Metropolitan Region. The second part of the research explores the social, technical, and cultural concerns as well as challenges that surround the issue of community public toilets in Mumbai. Finally, the third part of the research defines the potential means by which a ‘prototype project’ to address these questions can be formulated and designed for implementation to address these issues of sanitation in Mumbai. The project has an underlining ambition to scale the project nationally in India.
GSD Course
In 2019 an option studio explored these issues:
Department of Urban Planning and Design
Option Studio
8 credits
Extreme Urbanism 6: Designing Sanitation Infrastructure
Instructor: Rahul Mehrotra
This studio examines the issue of sanitation infrastructure in Mumbai, with a special focus on community toilets in the city’s informal settlements. The site is an informal settlement with an organized community group that will serve as the constituency or client group for the studio. The studio will work towards evolving a broader strategy for upgrading the entire settlement in situ. Sanitation infrastructure will serve as the instrument that guides the reorganization of the urban fabric relating to water supply, sewage and sanitation, as well as its relationship and integration with community spaces more broadly.
The studio engages with modes of governance, as well as implementation and financial models, which have the potential to make sanitation infrastructure viable and sustainable, and enable transformative effects in the larger landscape of informal settlements in Mumbai. Students will develop prototype projects, which may be implemented in the future. To this end, the studio will work collaboratively with the Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) in Mumbai. The UDRI will host the students for the week in Mumbai and coordinate the research and investigations of the chosen site. The project is also supported by the Lakshmi Mittal South Asia Institute (LMSAI), who will facilitate inputs from experts in other disciplines across the University.
Faculty Research
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