Three apartment buildings in Kurar Village, Malad (East), Mumbai 

In 2010, Edward Soja drew attention to the concept of “Spatial Justice” (Soja 2010) by talking about justice that is brought upon and perpetuated through geography and the spatial configuration of a space. Now, to bring about spatial justice in a given space, one has to first focus upon the spatial injustices that currently exist there. The term “Spatial Injustice” refers to the injustices which are based on class structures and the production, accumulation and distribution of economics, cultural and social capital embodied in a given space (Israel and Frenkel 2017). 

To identify and study the occurrences of spatial injustices around us, we first started looking closely at our own neighbourhoods. 

The site of study here are three building apartments – namely, Om Shiv Shakti, Jai Shiv Shakti and Divya Apartment – located in Kurar Village, Malad (East), Mumbai. The former two buildings were built in 1989, while the latter in 2005. The first two buildings also share a common compound wall and are separated by the difference in the contour levels between them on one side.

In the drawing below, the places where the occurrences of injustices happen – in the form of segregation, lack of provision of resources and removing the means of interactions – are marked and numbered as one enters from the main gate. 

Upon walking up from the main gate, the first thing one will notice now is a huge security cabin. This change was recently made, after more than three decades of not providing sufficient space for the guard to sit in. The earlier was three times smaller, of around 1.2 x 1.2 x 2.3 metres. That space was barely enough for a grown man to even stand. It tells that the people who designed this building and the cabin 35 years back did not actually think of the ergonomic requirements of the people who’ll be guarding the place day-in and day-out. We can see that the space was built with the idea of the watchman, not as a person who moves and stretches, but only as eyes which were to look straight ahead, unmoving and undisturbed. The severe lack of space and the fact that the door and window were situated on two adjacent walls meant that there was almost no air flow within. Due to its lack of inhabitability, the watchmen would never sit in and instead preferred to occupy the stairs beside the cabin, where they also got the shopkeepers to converse with; while the cabin then was used as a storage cabin by various people who worked daily in the building.

The next question, which also leads to the second occurrence of spatial injustice here, is where are the toilets located for the watchmen and people coming to work in the building? 

The two buildings, Om Shiv Shakti and Jai Shiv Shakti, share a common public washroom now. A few years ago, the former did have a public toilet of its own, but due to its lack of maintenance and location, its state deteriorated and it ended up not being used. Since this toilet was placed in the back side of the building, farthest away from the security cabin, the watchmen preferred to use the one nearest to them in the neighbouring apartment. The problem now is that their access to the other toilet depends on the relations between the people of the two buildings. As long as the two groups are on good terms, they can use the facilities; but on days when they are not, the watchmen are forced to find one far away from his workplace, all because their bodily needs were not thought of when the workplace for their position was being designed. 

The cabin was shut down and later turned into a storage room after residents voiced their concerns over drunk men getting together in the cabin at night. 

The fourth case of injustice was brought about by the decision made to increase the compound wall height upto 2.5 separating the two buildings – Om Shiv Shakti and Divya Apartment. That act completely destroyed the relationship between the buildings and the environment outside of the later one. 

The compound wall was its lowest in the centre of the building, with a height of barely 0.5 metres, which made for a comfortable and actively used seating space. People, especially children, would jump over it to play or just to visit someone from the other building and even sometimes use it as a shortcut to visit the stores on the adjacent side. It made the two separate smaller common areas feel like one bigger one. There were more conversations, friendships and a general sense of goodwill between the residents of the two buildings. The compound wall then was not a segregating factor but rather as a binding one.

A sudden decision to increase the height of the wall was made by some people over concerns of children from the settlements around ‘trespassing’ into our building. Now, the easy movement between the two was cut off, the common meeting place vanished and the people who saw and talked to each other everyday over a small wall could not do so. Divya Apartment, which has a very narrow ground area, started feeling claustrophobic and closed-off. Very quickly, the interactions completely stopped and now there seems to be just indifference and even dislike for one another between the two buildings.

The increased wall height also affected the children from the settlement around too, which brings up the fifth case of spatial injustice. 

A part of Divya Apartment is used as a BMC medical centre a few times in the year. During the rest of the time, the area remains closed off. For these facilities, the ground area below is divided into two parts, part of which belongs to the BMC section. Children, teenagers specifically, used this area to play cricket by climbing up the compound wall, which was around 1.5 metres high. Sometimes, even the children from all the three buildings would play together in that vacant area.

When the height of the shared compound wall was increased, a subsequent choice to increase the height of all the ones surrounding Divya Apartment was made, which is now almost 3 metres high. The children from all the four sides were now not able to climb, thus leading to that area being completely abandoned, now posing even greater safety concerns. 

On a broader scale, we see three different ways in which injustices were brought upon the inhabitants of the buildings and those surrounding it. In the first two cases, the lack of facilities and space for the watchmen comes from how everyday workers were thought of thirty years from the perspective of a person in the position of power, in this case the architect. Fortunately in the newer building norms, basic necessities are provided to people working in the building, and not just those who’re residing there. The third case though brings out how the space required for those in need is perceived as. Often, the argument for this ends up with an “those who have less require less” when the questions of space are put forward, without giving a thought to what it means to actually live in such tight spaces. The fourth and fifth case carries the tone of people favouring the idea of privatisation and segregation of the shared space, when in reality the division of this common actually harms the rhythms and flows existing within the space. 

References

Israel, Emil, and Amnon Frenkel. 2017. “Social justice and spatial inequality: Toward a conceptual framework.” Progress in Human Geography 42(5) (647–665): 19.

King, Loren A. 2018. “Henri Lefebvre and the Right to the City.” Philosophy of the City Handbook (Routledge 2019), (October), 15. doi.org/10.4324/9781315681597.

Purcell, Mark. 2013. “Possible Worlds: Henri Lefebvre and the Right to the City.” Journal of Urban Affairs 36:141–154. 10.1111/juaf.12034.

Rauhut, Daniel. 2018. “A Rawls-Sen Approach to Spatial Injustice.” Social Science Spectrum 4, no. 3 (September): 109-122.

Soja, Edward W. 2010. Seeking Spatial Justice. MN: University of Minnesota Press.