The Five Stages of Squatting

This scheme was used in a lecture by MIT professor Rahul Mehrota. It shows 'The Five Stages of Squatting', as he calls it; the five steps that a Mumbai street vender has to go through to become a more or less established part of the urban domain.

In the first stage the new street vender stalls out his food, goods, or whatever he is selling on some cardboard sheets or on a small carpet. He barely has any products on stock, so that he can easily run away if the police appears. A small number of people get interested in the goods he is selling. After a couple of weeks he obtains a hand full of costumers who regularly come back, causing him to move into stage two. Our friend needs to have more products on stock. If necessary he is able to invest his earnings in bribing the police, so that he can stay in place, and his costumers know where and when to find him. After a while he earns enough to bribe his way into stage three. Our street vender is less flexible, but he is able to bribe the police when necessary. In stage four he expands his business and by offering more products and appeal to a wider range of costumers. By now he is a well-known street vender, but he needs prepare himself for the rain since monsoon is approaching. Therefore, in the final stage our friend builds a small cover and is now an established part of the urban fabric.

Just a brief notion of Rahuls views on the development of Mumbai. Rahul speaks of Mumbai as being a 'Kinetic City', as opposed to a static city. The Kinetic City is full of energy and able to adjust itself to changes. According to Rahul there are no urbanists in Mumbai. How can you develop a city with approximately 18 million residents with no urbanists?

Thanks to Gregory Lee, who uploaded the image at his Flickr-site