Dharavi, formerly a fisher village on one of the islands today forming Mumbai-India, is currently Asia’s biggest slum. However, the term slum does not apply to the zone, since it is a vibrant place of people with various backgrounds and ways of living. Residents of Dharavi also fulfil plentiful tasks, such as collecting rubbish, cleaning streets, or serving in households of the upper class people of Mumbai. Thus, Dharavi appears to be an urban mixite neighbourhood with small scaled workshops, small industries, but has also schools, temples, mosques, churches, community facilities and water tanks. This grass root neighbourhood is a tightly packed but highly efficient urban mixite where working and living are placed next to each other. This paper aims to highlight the dynamics behind the run down und “unaesthetic” façades of this unique area, and to achieve a deeper understanding of the dynamics and the hidden potentials of “urban mixite”.