ABSTRACT
This chapter applies the phrase ‘mess is more’, a wordplay on Mies van der Rohe's famous ‘less is more’, to understanding one of Asia's most charismatic as well as famously chaotic, excessive, and messy cities Mumbai. It approaches Mumbai's many contrary dimensions from a perspective of relativity that seeks to engage with, rather than dismiss, its apparent messiness. Mumbai challenges the idea of a planned urban order in fundamental ways. This chapter explores these fundamental ways mainly through employing the observations of urban commentators such as Patrick Geddes, Keith Hart, and Arjun Appadurai. They tended to understand the city as a collective artefact—an expression not of the design genius of a few masters but of historical, anthropological, artisanal, or even biological processes. The chapter draws upon the authors’ ongoing work in Dharavi, which is one of the densest neighbourhoods in Asia and is officially classified as a ‘slum’. However, people live, work, and create a community life there in diverse ways. The chapter contends that an understanding of the urbanism in Mumbai, as well as in many Indian and Asian urban settlements, needs to be established upon an acknowledgement of its complex history and its development in an incremental and homegrown way.
