Coping with Crowding in Mumbai, India

As a professional on track to work globally in the humanitarian and international development realm, I am increasingly intrigued to think about the interaction of humans with their environment; especially related to the concepts of environmental preference and stress. Yesterday’s lecture on stress as a failure of preference provided me some additional context for an experience on which I have been reflecting.

I interned over the summer with the nonprofit VIDYA in Mumbai, India working to provide integrated education for underserved communities. I should preface that I have had many privileged opportunities to travel, live, and work internationally including Peace Corps in Senegal, West Africa so I have a transferable mental model. Mumbai, however, was a starkly different experience for me as an intensely urban and densely populated city. It was a first hand experience with just how stressful a non-preferred environment can be. Mumbai is the most populous city in India and the 9th most populous in the world at 18.4 million with a density of over 20,000 people per square kilometer. I definitely felt the “overload” Kaplan described as a problem of overabundance (p. 197). Mumbai is diverse, vibrant, and overstimulating. Kaplan goes on to say: “the larger the number of people an individual comes into contact with, the less preferred the environment is likely to be and the more damage is likely to be done to the social fabric (p.197). This is extremely fascinating to reflect on within the context of my profession of community organizing and its application in crowded cities.

A social connectedness activity I facilitated
with the leadership team from VIDYA-Mumbai.

If densely populated cities are non-preferred environments resulting in disordered relationships (Cassel’s first principle), is the fundamental need then to engage social organization? I’ve never quite thought about the impetus for community organizing being the restoration to the social fabric from the damaging number of people. The nonprofit I worked for in Mumbai was located in the communities they served to increase accessibility and provide community spaces for education and engagement. Through the framework I am learning in this class, I can now see that these structures helped to not only provide an opportunity for social organization but also structure that could lead to increasing coherence in the overstimulating density and non-preferred environment of the city.

The slum communities my nonprofit worked with were experiencing acute and chronic stress, in addition to social disorganization and cultural dislocation. Reflecting on some of the projects my nonprofit sought to engage, I can see now they are fundamentally working to make the communities more preferred environments and reduce stress. Another way the organization is seeking to make the community a more preferred environment is by co-creating a green space in the neighborhood which would add complexity by increasing natural space. The organization is also attempting to reduce stress by mentoring women’s self-help groups that could increase income generation and financial security.

I’m interested in hearing from others about what considerations or strategies from the framework we are learning in class have you used or would considering using in working with people to cope with crowding.



Humanscape: Environments for People
Greenbie: Social Territory, Community Health, and Urban Planning