[Urbanstudy] Shani Bazaar and K. Mehta's comments on Mapping

[Curt Gambetta]

Dear Aasim and Shweta,

I enjoyed your posting on the psychogeography of the
market, it's humor, anxieties, visual dynamism and
conflicts. Your posting brings me back to a
conversation I was having with Kaiwan Mehta in Bombay,
about mapping neighborhoods. I was standing in
Buleshwar with him, dehydrated and light headed from
chai, thinking about the questions Kaiwan was posing
to me about how one maps a neighborhood. It is no easy
task, I thought, looking up at the layers of
construction, signage, imagery, transaction, newness
and decay that dwarfed us.

He recently elaborated on his coming Sarai fellowship
on the reader list, and I would like to re-produce a
few snippets here. I think his work will be an
important project to follow, and might be of use to
your work.

These qoutations are drawn from:
http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/2005-January/004834.html

I think Kaiwan is right in pointing out some of the
limitations of what he calls "Architects' classical
tools of the plan and map." In this sense, I think we
can learn from the narrative Shweta and Aasim have
produced. He states, and this is of particular
relevance to those of us thinking about architecture:

"There is a need to create a mode of representation
that documents the living space and the relationships
that it accommodates, the community and the politics
that it generates, the form and the memories and
aspirations it provokes. In this context how does one
deal with mapping, documentation and archiving..."

I think what is most interesting, as an aside, is his
suggestion that mapping has a politics and a market:

"This will be viewed in light of the fact that
documentation and archiving are emerging strongly as a
form of architectural practice and urban studies.
These mappings result in generating urban histories
and also define policy and planning."

I think it would be useful to also situate this
'architectural market' in Bombay, as the kind of
heritage-oriented activities of mapping and
documentation that have taken place there have not
happened, say, where I am living, in Bangalore. I
wonder, however, what spaces there are in a city like
Bangalore, to enter into a politics of mapping and
documentation, as someone who is interested in urban
design, form, or the psychogeography of the street? It
is an open question. What maps ARE being produced in
Bangalore? By whom? For whom? Janaki Nair has written
recently in detail about the ideologies, uses and
abuses of the map (as well as the 'uses' of its
interstices, in relation to the urban poor)... In her
recently released book on Bangalore, one chapter is
aptly titled: "The Map is not the Territory..."

After reading Assim/Swetha's and Kaiwan's posting, I
wonder if, in regards to the project on Shani Bazaar,
it could be extended in the future (perhaps not in the
near future, if it is unfeasible), to a sort of broken
up documentation or sketching out of the kind of
structures that are used to house the Saturday
Market... anything from the hawker's cart (there are 
many different varieties), to the semi-pukka or pukka
shop. What would it mean to freeze the temporary,
moving structure in a drawing? What are the
implications of doing this? I am not sure. I think if
one were to document the 'architecture' of this sort
of bazaar, one would have to take in account why they
were doing so. Similarly, what sort of processes do
you pick up on, and why, in a place such as Shani
Bazaar. What others do you leave untouched, and why?
Why detail the make-up of a temporary structure? For
me, some of my desire to see these spaces (the cart,
the encroachment, the plastic tarpaulin over wooden
poles and rope, etc.), and the make up of their
architectures, documented, is a compulsion drawn from
the fact that they have not been documented in any
depth, or have been cast off as 'illegal' or
'informal' and thus unworthy of the professional
designer's eye. My position is currently reactionary,
but I do have a desire to map these structures. I
think it can only enrich the kind of narrative on
Shani Bazaar than has been posted.

In January, I was walking past a recently cleared
street of roadside shops in Nariman Point. The walls
contained broken plaster, metal hooks and other
remnants of the shops that had grown up against the
wall... they appeared like broken joints snapped off
of a body, a record of the violence that took place
there on the life of the street. I think the looming
threat of such removal or demolition motivates a
desire to map, though I do think the very compulsion
to document, as well as how one documents and on what
terms, should be self-critiqued. After all, as Kaiwan
has rightly pointed out, documentation has a market,
(even urban studies has a market, academic or
otherwise). That it has a market is not in and of
itself problematic, but the need to interrogate the
position from which you speak, as someone who is
re-producing the morphology or processes of the street
or neighborhood, remains a productive exercise. 

What does it mean to document or map the architectures
of such a bazaar, roadside stall or other temporary
structures? Why would one do so? Or, how?

Thanks for your posting, Assim and Shweta. I
particuarly enjoyed the visuality of your
narrative--perhaps it would be interesting to also
describe in detail some of the visual material
inscribed on the mobile and bounded structures in the
area.

Curt


		
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