2024-11-14T22:05:21-05:00 https://archinect.com/news/article/14893546/do-buildings-have-agency Nam Henderson 2011-07-27T23:38:09-04:00 >2011-07-27T23:45:10-04:00 <img src="https://archinect.gumlet.io/uploads/7m/7me4y8kxt12lgvj4.jpg?fit=crop&auto=compress%2Cformat&enlarge=true&w=1200" border="0" /><em><p>Galleries of Life boldly opens a space for more studies of the wide and porous continuum of housing practices in Mumbai, which include chawls, flats, wadis, slums, and coastal villages (see Housing Typo&shy;logies in Mumbai). If urban housing has subjectivity, then a genealogy of chawls has as much to tell us about social mobility and spatial practices.</p></em><br /><br /><p> So asks <a href="http://heptanesia.net/about/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Shekhar Krishnan</a>, in a recent review of <strong>The Chawls of Mumbai: Galleries of Life</strong>, edited by Neera Adarkar. While the book&nbsp;does practice what Krishnan calls a "&ldquo;<em>strategic essentialism</em>" it fundamentally, opens up new horizons in the study of urban housing in Mumbai and India.</p>