Threshold Spaces as Communal Anchoring Nodes in Super Diverse Communities Combating the Covid-19 Pandemic: The Case of Kumbharwada, India

It is Important to understand how people perceive the world in which we live and imagine. In the Indian Cities, the organic slum settlement of Dharavi, Mumbai is a great example of spatialities created by people’s needs and demands. It has coherence of low rise-high densities, and socio-economic & cultural diversities in shaping the physical setting. Successful urban patterns facilitate cohesiveness in the communities. However, the impact of COVID-19 has altered this cohesion. Therefore, practicing social distancing has remained a notional norm. It is important to understand how people have adhered to social distancing norms in the organic settlements uplifting the community. The paper is divided into four parts. A theoretical premise is nurtured to understand the pre-requisite of space today which is the integration of threshold and cohesion. Threshold is defined as a "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 focuses on the types of spatial delimiters pulsating from micro, mesa to macro levels. The spatial delimiter is then supported to understand the spatial context of spaces in detail. It also examines the neighbourhood of Dharavi as a communal anchoring node. Cognitive perception is a method adopted to record, map and analyse such spaces. The paper evaluates a case of Kumbharwada model in Dharavi to understand the impact of the pandemic. The paper highlights how community participation in Dharavi has emerged as a concrete prototype for social distancing and contact tracing to curtail the impact 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 a successful model.