Module 4.2: Informal Settlements Learn More Did you Know? According to the UN-Habitat (2003) Report The Challenge of Slums, Ethiopia and Chad have a whopping 99.4 percent of their urban populations living in slums, followed by Afghanistan and Nepal in Asia. And Mumbai is the city with the large population of slum-dwellers! (Davis 2006) Did you know? In Mumbai, the housing options for the poor includechawls,patrachawls (consisting mainly of semipermanent structures, which can be both authorized and unauthorized), zopadpattis (squatter housing), and pavement dwellings. Although pavement dwellings and chawls have poor slum-like conditions, these do not fall under the legal definition of slum. (Risbud 2002: 5). Points to Ponder Using official definitions, Manipur has declared that it has no cities or towns with slums. Similarly, only14.4% of all towns and cities in Jharkhandreport having any slums at all in the 2011 Census. Low counts are also reported in states such as Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Assam. Can these numbers be trusted as a guide to actual levels of urban poverty in Indian cities? 1
Weblink Should there be a right to housing, like the right to education? As a legal entitlement, will it be converted to a set of metrics? Or can it help advance the right to the city? Watch this debate and decide for yourself Interesting Facts Incremental housing, also known as Sites-and-Services, is a step-by-step urban development process for building housing communities. Its fundamental approach is that owners control the expansion of their housing based on their needs and resources. It is an affordable way to resettle households with minimum housing and services and provides flexibility in housing decisions. The approach fits the livelihood strategies and condition of the poor and given that housing can be upgraded incrementally as long as financing and tenure are available, it could be a panacea to unaffordable real estate housing for poor (Masum: 2014). Apart from flexibility, a defining feature of incremental housing is cost affordability. According to Wakely and Riley (2010), the basis of incremental housing was that the cost of housing could be reduced by recognizing that poor urban families already build and extend their own dwellings incrementally in response to their needs and the availability of resources. Thus the house is therefore perceived as a process and not a final product. 2
For Further Reading Bastra and Goranssen (2009).Incremental Housing in IndiaStrategy.Dezeen Magazine, 5 May. Retrieved February 2016: http://www.dezeen.com/2009/05/05/incremental-housing-strategy-by-filipe-balestra-andsara-goransson/ Baviskar, A. (2003). Between violence and desire: space, power, and identity in the making of metropolitan Delhi. International Social Science Journal, 55(175), 89-98. Bhan (2015).Halting the Demolition Derby.Kafila, February 20.Retrieved February 2016: http://kafila.org/2015/02/20/halting-the-demolition-derby/ Bhan, G (2009). This is no longer the city I once knew. Evictions, the urban poor and the right to the city in millennial Delhi.EPW.Environment and Urbanization, 21(1): 127-142. 48(18): 13 16. Bhan, G and Jana, A (2013). Of slums or poverty.economic and Political Weekly Bhan, G. (2013). Planned Illegalities: Housing and the Failure of Planning in Delhi: 1947-2010.Economic and Political Weekly, 48(24), 58-70. Bhide, A (2014). The Regularizing State.Economic and Political Weekly, 49(22), 58-70. Bhide, A., &Waingankar, S. (2015). Comparing Informalities: Slums, Gunthewaris and Other Informalities in Maharashtra.Environment and Urbanization Asia, 6(2), 125-138. Das (2014). RAY: Urban Housing & Poverty Alleviation. Retrieved February 2016: http://www.pkdas.com/maps/6-rajiv%20awaas%20yojna.pdf Davis, M. (2007).Planet of Slums. London: Verso. Garland, A (ed) (2013). Innovation in Urban Development: Incremental Housing, Big Data, and Gender. Washington, DC 3
Gidwani, V. K. (2006). Subaltern cosmopolitanism as politics.antipode, 38(1), 7-21. Kamath, L. (2012). New Policy Paradigms and Actual Practices in Slum Housing.Review of Urban Affairs, Economic and Political Weekly, 47(47). Weekly, 47(47). Kamath, L., 2014. Planning as Practice?.Review of Urban Affairs, Economic and Political King, Julia (2013). What is the Incremental City? Incremental Cities Blog, February 9. Retrieved February 2016: https://incrementalcity.wordpress.com/2013/02/09/what-is-theincremental-city/ Kundu (2012).Political Economy of Mmaking Indian Cities slum free. Presented at The 21st Century Indian City: Working Towards Being Slum Free? Conference, Univesity of California, Berkeley. Kundu, A. (2013). Making Indian cities slum-free: Vision and operationalisation.economic and Political Weekly, 48(17), 15-18. Kundu, A. (2014). The Challenge of Making Cities Slum Free.South Asia@LSE. October 24. http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/southasia/2012/10/24/the-challenges-of-making-indian-citiesslum-free-part-1/ Lemanski, C., &Tawa Lama Rewal, S. (2013). The missing middle : class and urban governance in Delhi s unauthorised colonies. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 38(1), 91-105. Mahadevia, D etal (2011). Handbook : Land for Slum Free Cities. Centre for Urban Equity, CEPT University, Ahmedabad. Retrieved February 2016: http://cept.ac.in/userfiles/file/cue/handbook/01_handbook%20%20land%20tenure%20 %20for%20Slum-free%20Cities_Resize.pdf Mahadevia, D. (2011). Branded and renewed? Policies, politics and processes of urban development in the reform era.economic and Political Weekly, 46(31), 56-64. 4
Masum, Fahria(2014) Challenges of Upgrading Housing in Informal Settlements: A Strategic Option of Incremental Housing, paper presented at FIG Congress 2014: Engaging the Challenges - Enhancing the Relevance, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 16 McFarlane, C. (2008) Sanitation in Mumbai's informal settlements : state, 'slum' and infrastructure. Environment and Planning A, 40 (1), pp. 88-107. New MOHUPA (2011). Slums in India: A Statistical Compendium. Government of India, Delhi.http://nbo.nic.in/Images/PDF/Slum_in_india_2011_english_book_23_May_12.pdf Nair, J., 2013. Is There an Indian Urbanism? In Rademacher, A.M. and Sivaramakrishnan, K (eds). Ecologies of urbanism in India: metropolitan civility and sustainability (Vol. 1). Hong Kong University Press. Neves, S. O., & Amado M. P. (2014). Incremental Housing as a method to the Sustainable Habitat. 30th International PLEA. Vol. II - 1-8., Bangalore, India: Centre for Advanced Research in Building Science and Energy (CARBSE), CEPT University. Saglio-Yatzimirsky, Marie-Caroline (2013) Dharavi, From Mega-Slum to Urban Paradigm, New Delhi & Abingdon: Routledge India. Sharma, K., 2000. Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia's largest slum.penguin Books New York. United Nations Task Team on Habitat III (2015): Informal Settlements. Habitat III Issue Paper, Weinstein, L., 2014. The durable slum: Dharavi and the right to stay put in globalizing Mumbai. University of Minnesota Press. 89. Zimmer, A. (2012). Enumerating the Semi-Visible. Economic and Political Weekly, 47(30), Naidu, R (2006): Dilapidaton and Slum Formation, in Patel, S. and Deb, K., 2006. Urban studies (Oxford in India readings in sociology and social anthropology). 5
Risbud, N., 2009. The poor and morphology of cities.india, Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (ed.) India: Urban Poverty Report, pp.177-198. Mukhija, V., 2001.Upgrading housing settlements in developing countries: The impact of existing physical conditions.cities, 18(4), pp.213-222. Wakely, P. and Riley, E., 2011.The case for incremental housing.cities Alliance. Satterthwaite, D., 2010. Upgrading Slums: With and For Slum-Dwellers. Economic and Political Weekly, pp.12-16. Patel, S. and Arputham, J., 2008. Plans for Dharavi: negotiating a reconciliation between a state-driven market redevelopment and residents' aspirations. Environment and Urbanization, 20(1), pp.243-253. Sheikh, Shahana, Subhadra Banda, Ben Mandelkern, and BijendraJha (2015).Limbo in SangamVihar: Delhi s Largest Agglomeration of Unauthorised Colonies. Centre for Policy Research, New Delhi. Risbud, N. (2002): The Case of Mumbai, India. Understanding Slums: Case Studies for the Global Report 2003.Development Planning Unit (DPU), University College London. Durand-Lasserve, A., 2006. Informal settlements and the Millennium Development Goals: global policy debates on property ownership and security of tenure. Global Urban Development, 2(1), pp.1-15. KPMG, 2014. Funding the Vision: Housing for all by 2022. KPMG and National Real Estate Development Council (NAREDCO) Banking Conclave. Murthy, K., 2011. Urban Transport and the Right to the City: Accessibility and Mobility. In Lama-Rewal, S.T., Zerah, M.H. and Dupont, V., (eds). Urban policies and the right to the city in India: rights, responsibilities and citizenship. Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi. Benjamin, Solomon and Bhuvaneswari Raman, 2011.Claiming Land: Rights, Contestations and the Urban Poor in Globalized Times. In Lama-Rewal, S.T., Zerah, M.H. and Dupont, V., (eds). Urban policies and the right to the city in India: rights, responsibilities and citizenship. Centre de Sciences Humaines, New Delhi. 6
Benjamin, S.J., 1996. Neighborhood as factory--the influence of land development and civic politics on an industrial cluster in Delhi, India (Doctoral dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology). Datta, A., 2012. The Illegal City. Space, Law and Gender in a Delhi Squatter Settlement. Datta, A., 2012. Mongrel city : Cosmopolitan neighbourliness in a Delhi squatter settlement. Antipode, 44(3), pp.745-763. Ghertner, D.A., 2008. Analysis of new legal discourse behind Delhi's slum demolitions. Economic and Political Weekly, pp.57-66. 7