When reviewing existing bibliography about Dharavi, it is not unusual to find negative concepts like shanties, marginal settlements, and poor slums, oriented to disqualify it as habitat option. Dharavi is presented as an area without proper infrastructure to serve its residents. However, the concept of quality of life that could be used to strengthen these epithets is based on individual subjective perceptions; and in the case of Dharavi may not reflect the satisfaction of people to their way of life that allows them great capabilities. This feeling, strongly influenced by the environment, society, culture, and value systems, is presented with great force by Dharavi and its urban organization that supports the close relationship between the place of habitation and work.

A unique characteristic of Dharavi is its very close work-place relationship. Productive activity takes place in nearly every home. As a result, Dharavi’s economic activity is decentralized, human scale, home-based, low-tech and labor-intensive. This has created an organic and incrementally developing urban form that is pedestrianized, community-centric, and network-based, with mixed use, high density low-rise streetscapes. This is a model many planners have been trying to recreate in cities across the world. A simplistic re-zoning and segregating of these activities — common in the United States — would certainly hurt this very unique urban form”. (1) In fact, this home-work relationship has developed social and urban connections, that represent community-based successes, establishing desired parameters for all cities and therefore for their planners. The views expressed by Prakash M. Apte are important urban values that should be evaluated and preserved. An urbanism supported in the integration of functions and people, using urban elements not like puzzle pieces but as living parts of a distinct organism.