Latin America and India share a common history of experimentations in slum-upgrading and incremental housing strategies. The ideas of F. C. Turner, who was informed by years of work in Lima, in particular, have inspired some of the most progressive schemes and projects in Mumbai and other parts of India. This essay reviews the history of social housing in Mumbai. It then describes the theory behind URBZ’s “Homegrown Cities” project and locates it within the larger context of Turner’s ideas and projects by Indian architects such as B.V. Doshi and Charles Correa.

James F.C. Turner, a British-born architect who worked in Lima in the 1960s, spent much of his professional life looking at the way people provided for their own housing needs, using their know-how and locally available resources. He wanted to find out how planners and architects could support these processes, rather than impose their own technocratic and context-insensitive “solutions” from the outside.