Abstract:
It is Important to Understand how people perceive the world in which we live and imagine.
In Indian Cities, organic slum settlement of Dharavi, Mumbai is a great example of
spatialities created by people’s need and demand. It has coherence of low rise-high built
densities, socio-economic & cultural diversities in shaping the physical setting. Successful
urban patterns facilitate cohesiveness in the communities. The impact of pandemic
(COVID19) has altered the cohesion at some level. Therefore, practicing social distancing
has remained a notional norm. It will be very important to understand how people have
adhered to social distancing norms in the organic settlements uplifting the community.
The paper is divided into four stages. A theoretical premise is nurtured to understand prerequisite
of space today which is the integration of threshold and cohesion. Threshold is
defined as "separation" while, cohesion is defined as "Connection", resulting into the
formation of Cohesive threshold spaces. Such spaces involve the interpersonal dynamics
and sense of connection among people. The idea is to decode cohesive threshold spaces,
their character, types and significance. It also intends to focus on types of spatial
delimiters pulsating from micro, mesa to macro level. The spatial delimiter is then
supported to understand the spatial context of spaces in detail. It also examines
neighborhood of Dharavi as communal anchoring node. Cognitive perception is a method
adopted possibly to record, map and analyze such spaces. The paper evaluates a case of
Kumbharwada model in Dharavi to understand impacts of pandemic.
It also highlights how community participation in Dharavi has emerged as a concrete
prototype for social distancing and contact tracing to curtail the impacts at a large scale.
Lastly, the magnitude of cohesive threshold spaces is understood by virtue of community
participation to combat such pandemic today and in future accelerating successful model.
