Mumbai urban governance

Antilia, Mumbai

For some comparative research on intra-urban inequality, I started looking at Mumbai’s urban governance structure, and, wow, it’s complicated. While in Tokyo you had and have a fairly clear-cut division between central government, TMG and wards, the Indian megacity appears to have many more layers and parallel structures. Some notes to get my head around this below.

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Bangkok – Mumbai

For the lack of better photography, but in need of some color on this page, this tree from Bangkok photographed during a nightly stroll

I am trying to put together a comparative paper on slums in Mumbai and Bangkok, which draws some inspiration from my work on Tokyo. It is basically about comparing the spatial distribution of slum populations across the cities. Some thoughts following the jump. Continue reading

Benjamin Polk

During the research for our Yangon Architectural Guide, we came across this American architect. He built the Tripitaka Library (Pitaka Taik), also known as the Great Buddhist Library in Yangon. Some scribbles below the jump.

Tipitaka

Tripitaka Library, photo by Manuel Oka

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Chennai book store

Much time has passed without any update. I hope the blog will resume normal operations now that the move to Washington, D.C. is fully completed. In lieu of a proper travelogue from Chennai (where I spent time in August this year), I post this photo of a bookshop taken in the beautiful T Nagar neighborhood.

chennai01

Elusive Dharavi

Long overdue here are some notes from a walk we took through Dharavi last month. Dharavi is often referred to as Asia’s quintessential slum. What reminded me to put up this post was an article in the Architectural Review entitled “Enough Slum Porn: The Global North’s Fetishisation of Poverty Architecture Must End”.

dharavi02

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