Slum typologies, dwellers aspirations

and public housing in India

Presented by:
Dr. A. K. Vinodia
Associate Professor, SPA Bhopal
 What is slum
There is no universally accepted definition of slums. It varies from place
to place however, notion remained almost similar.
SLUM has been defined by many authors and organizations and gave us
insight into the different dimensions of the urban poor settlements.
National Slum Policy of India, 1998; According to UN habitat 2002 a
In general, all under-serviced contiguous settlement where the
settlements, be they unauthorized inhabitants are characterized as
occupation of land, congested having inadequate housing and basic
inner-city built-up areas, fringe services.
areas, unauthorized developments, Inadequate access to safe water;
villages within urban areas and in sanitary and other infrastructure,
the periphery, irrespective of (>50% hh do not have) Poorly built
tenure or ownership of land use, housing structures (subjected to
under the definition slum / hazardous site), infirm material,
informal settlement; Non-compliance with codes and
standards (Vulnerable), overcrowded
dwellings (<5 sq.m./p) and insecure
tenure.
 Slum typologies- Inner city slums
Urban structure of the major cities in India are dominated by various forms
of urban informality.
Informal areas are the places mostly
subjected to deficient infrastructure
such as, roads, water, sewer, drainage
and deficient garbage collection and
amenities, services like, education,
health, recreation, civic maintenance,
etc.
Inner-city informality
 Slum typologies- Slum estates
Urban structure of the major cities in India are dominated by various forms
of urban informality.
Slum Estates-Chawls and rental housing
Another common reason for the deterioration of relatively new public housing estates
has been their peripheral location on the edges of cities where land was available, but
access to work, markets, kin and social amenities was not.
Ironically, in many cities, much of the public housing built between the 1950s and 1970s to re-house
the residents of central city slums and squatter settlements, typically in four- to five-storey tenement
blocks with minimal, if any, community amenities, has itself now joined the stock of slums.
 Slum typologies- Informal development
Illegal settlements and subdivisions
The settlements are illegal owing to any combination of the following:
Low standard of services or infrastructure; breaches of land zoning;
Lack of planning, building permits; or the irregular nature of the land subdivision.
Unauthorized land developments
Illegal subdivisions
These settlements are usually better
than squatter settlements of the same
age because houses are built using
permanent material in confidence of
legal buyer of land.
 Slum typologies- Squatters
Slums and Squatter settlements
Squatters are people who occupy land or buildings
without the explicit permission of the owner. They
often differ from other informal settlements only in
this particular.
 Global response to slums and housing to poor
Increamentalism
Negligence (1960-75) Enabling policies
(18th -19th Universal Self-help housing, (1985-2000)
Century) declaration site and service World bank
Housing as Human funded housing,
Right 1948 capacity building

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Eviction
(1900-1950) Environmentalism
Park Movement (1975-85)
Mass Public Holistic approach
City beautiful movement Slum upgradation
Housing City without slums
Creation of Public spaces, and improvement,
(1950-60) (2001-onwards)
Infrastructure
USA, UK, CHINA, Public housing, Slum
provisions
JAPAN, upgradation and
Infrastructure
provisions
Public housing: Most popular tool to house the poor- USA & UK
Public housing: Most popular tool to house the poor- Russia, China, S.Korea, etc.
 Timeline of Major Slum Interventions in India
Urban Basic Services to
Pre-Independence Poor-1984
Basti improvement Indira Awas Yojana-1985
programme Slum clearance & Nehru Rojgar Yojana-1989
Poverty alleviation, Cities without Slum Initiatives
improvements. LIG Mass Public Housing
MIG Housing in UTs
JNNURM-2005 (BSUP, IHSDP)
EIUS-1972

(Pre-1947) (1960-1970) (1980-1990) (2000-2010)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

(1950-1960) (1970-1980) (1990-2000) (2010-onward)

Slum clearance
Housing for-Sweepers, SRD-1991
SRS-1995 Housing for all
Industrial, Mines & Slum upgrading
NSDP-1996 by 2022
Dock workers, ULCRA-1976
Slum Network-1997 Public housing- Rajiv
Site& service-1978 Awas Yojana (RAY)-2011
NHP-1998
IDSMT-1980 Pradhan Mantri Awas
VAMBAY-1999 Yojana (PMAY)-2014
PMGP-1980
PROVIDER FACILITATOR REGULATOR PARTNER
 Social housing dilemma
Post independence era, have experienced many paradigm shift of policies
and programmes for slums including slum clearance of early decades to
upgradation and public housing approaches of recent times.
In 2007 the National Urban Housing and Habitat Policy (NUHHP) claimed a
housing shortage of 24.7 million housing units in India, out of which 99 per
cent was in the EWS and LIG sector.
In 2012 a technical group on urban housing shortage for the 12th Five Year
Plan (2012-17) concluded that the urban housing shortage is nearly 18.78
million out of which 95.6 per cent is for EWS and LIG.
The reasons for the decrease could be due to construction of mass public
housing for poor initiated by MoHUPA under flagship project JNNURM.
A total of 10,17,252 housing units under the BSUP and 5,70,951 under IHSDP
were approved for construction in all the States, accounting for a total of
15,88,203 (1.58 Million) units through 1,517 projects.
Era of Mass Public housing
2005-2012- JNNURM (BSUP & IHSDP)
2013-2014- RAY & AHP
2014-2022- PMAY
In-situ Redevelopment & Relocation
Public housing for Poor in
projects India

BHOPAL
MUMBAI

VIJAYWADA

RAIPUR
Public housing for Poor
25 Sq. M.
Non-contextual designs

JNNURM
BSUP
IHSDP
 Public housing for Poor
in India
Is it planned vertical slums
For architects its a question
to arrange various spaces
within 25 Sq. M.
f
Mostly, resulted into aceless,
Aesthetic free cuboids.

Low budget leads to poor quality

of construction and compromised
services, amenities and facilities.

High density housing with lack of

public spaces
 Public housing for Poor
Affordable housing or
Poor housing for poor
Projects are ended up Could not succeeded to
with huge remove Social Stigma
dissatisfaction among
the beneficiaries. Why not housing for
anybody rather than
only for poor?

High rate of
Unoccupied built
housing
 Status of Public housing*
1.8
1.57
1.6
1.4
Nos in Million

1.2
1 0.91
0.81
0.8
0.54 0.52 0.58
0.6
0.38 0.00096
0.4 0.27
0.2
0.12 0.0034
0.2 0.0011 0 0.02
0
BSUP (2005-12) IHSDP (2005-12) RAY (2013-14) AHP (2013-14) TOTAL
Affordable Housing schemes
Sanctioned Constructed Occupied
Weak public funding and
Shortage- 24.6 million units in 2007 low public partnerships
Targeted- 1.57 million (6.3%) in 7 Years in affordable housing for
Constructed- 0.81 Million (50% of target) till 2014 poor
Occupied- 0.58 million (71% of constructed)
Source: MHUPA; BSUP = Basic Services for Urban Poor, IHSDP = Integrated Housing and Slum Development Programme.
BSUP and IHDSP were part of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). AHP (Affordable
Housing in Partnership) was being implemented under the Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAY) *Data as on 2014
 Public housing for Poor-Paradox
At one hand there is 19 Million housing shortage on other hand, in the real
estate markets more than 3 million constructed housing units lying unsold.
Since last 15 years, construction of mid-rise public housing has been most
preferred approach for housing urban poor.
Huge housing stock (3-0-50%) of BSUP & IHSDP was found unused &
unoccupied in many cities and town in India.
For example, 57% BSUP housing in Bangalore city and almost 90% in
Greater Hyderabad was left unoccupied.
In Madhya Pradesh, nearly 40% built units of BSUP and 75% built units of
IHSDP programmes were reported unoccupied as on February, 2016.
Recently, Urban administration has launched slum demolition drives in the
name of Road Widening so that vacant houses can be filled. Forced
allotments
Present government have also shown their indication to adopt One-fit-all
approach and aimed to provide housing for all by 2022 and accelerated
construction of public housing in India.
 Public housing for Poor- Major Challenges:
Growing urbanization and Huge demand of housing for poor
Slow rate of housing production
Quality, design, Cost of Unit and affordability
High rate of unoccupied housing
One fit all approaches
The multiplicity of physical and socioeconomic layers
of the city and varied dimensions of complexities within the
settlements does not allow a single or uniform strategy to
tackle the problems of the slums. (Makhija, V. 2001)
Mostly slums interventions have been relied upon
underlying principle of replicability. These One fit all
approaches have largely been refused by slum dwellers
many Projects are ending up with higher dissatisfaction among the
ARE SLUMS
beneficiaries even though, there is Temptation
a TYPICAL to
SETTLEMENTS ?
Cloning
GIS based Spatial Analysis of slums in Bhopal MP, India
 RAIL
TRACK
Lower cast
RAIL HH
FATAK
RAILWAYS
LIMIT

NAZUL
Lower cast
LAND
HH

BAIRAGARH

CRP COLONY (AMT-HL-HD) KHEJDA VILLAGE (NHNO-LL-LD)

MAIDA
MILL

NALAH

SWADESH
PRESS
SWADESH
PRESS
PATRA NALAH
PRESS
COMPLEX

VIJAY NAGAR KAPDA MILL CHAWL SWADESH NAGAR (HO-HL-LD)

(AMD-LL-HD)
 Study outcomes
In contrast to the conventional wisdom that seeks slums as typical
settlement, study has provided evidence that slums are atypical
settlement hence, interventions to an individual slums should be
context specific.
Parameters, such as, land tenability, location, ownerships, land values, land use,
density, size of dwelling units, site constraints, condition of roads, employment
& livelihood patterns, and dwellers aspiration have been found highly
inconsistent across the slums.
However, some of the parameters like, deficiency of infrastructure, household
size, dominance of particular ethnic groups, low income & low savings and high
poverty, etc. have been found consistent across the cases. Due to consistent
variations of parameters some sort of typicality may also prevails among the
atypical slums as well.
 Conclusions
Mass Public housing has been a good option to create
huge housing stock in less time but, one should avoid
cloning of units at national levels.
Infact, slum interventions should be contextual and
design should aim to cater the actual needs of people.
Efforts should be made to create public housing as
National asset in which any citizen can live whether
rich or poor.
Housing designs should aim to abolish Stigma in
upgraded slums through improved quality of life.
Public housing for poor should merged with the
existing urban fabric at par with the quality of non-slum
housing.