Through urban design and place making exercises attempts can be made to build economic resilience for women of indigenous community affected by coastal degeneration.
By empowering women led initiatives in the fishing villages of Mumbai, India, would dilute the existing social bias and enable these women to become active income generating partners supporting their families. Traditionally these communities have fixed gender roles where the men go out fishing and the women sells the catch in the market thus making their income dependent on the working men. With depleting ecological system on urban coastline there has been a considerable reduction in the fishing activity causing loss of livelihood to the fishing community as a whole. Compromised lifestyle and joblessness has caused social degeneration with increasing gender frictions and extinction threats to century old cultural practices.
A people-public-private-partnership (PPPP) model for the community and especially their women will identify the strengths of the community and support them in transforming these strengths into alternative means of income generation. This model will empower the women to have an independent source of income keeping the age old cultural practices alive, help build economic resilience, become a role model for future generation and demonstrate their contributions in the difficult times when the fishermen are struggling to sustain their livelihoods.