mapping

The exercise of \’mapping\’ is aimed at documenting the everyday production of gendered public space by men and women through their occupation of and movement through space onto drawings. The visual representation of the everyday practice of gendering in the simultaneous space of a drawing allows us to visualize the dynamics of gender-space in ways not possible through other mediums.The single-most challenging aspect of the mapping has been to identify a methodology of documentation that can record \’soft\’ data- an impression of the dynamic social production of space by people or its \’patterns of inhabitation\’- in addition to \’hard\’ data consisting of the material built environment.

We examined four locations that overlapped with our localities:

1) Central Avenue, Chembur: a suburban middle class residential neighbourhood

2) Zaveri Bazaar and Mumbadevi: commercial areas in the dense fabric of old Mumbai

3) Nariman Point: the commercial district of South Mumbai

4) Kalachowki: a working class residential neighbourhood in the former mill district of central Mumbai.