The rapid pace of urbanization in developing countries places increasing levels of stress on cities. As thousands of people move into urban areas each year, the availability of affordable housing emerges as a key challenge. In India, 412 million people live in urban areas. Depending on the source, anywhere between 33 and 47 percent of those (equivalent to 26-37 million households) live in informal housing, which often lacks access to basic services like roads, water, and sanitation. To make matters worse, most of those households do not have any formal property rights, thus jeopardizing their ability to live and invest in the land they currently occupy.
As architects, we often use “informality” to describe everything outside of the formal city. Informality is the gray area occupied by the slum, the favela, or the barrio. Our failure to segment informality into distinct categories results in design solutions that barely scratch the surface of urban complexity. Designing for informality requires an approach that takes into account the subtleties of context. While we may not always have the budget or time to deepen our understanding of the places we design for, resources beyond our discipline may help fill those gaps.
One example is “Informal Housing, Inadequate Property Rights”, recently released by FSG, social impact consultant. The report presents a rigorous study on the importance of property rights in catalyzing the development of informal settlements. Although not ends in and of themselves, property rights are a means towards receiving adequate public services and security of tenure. The study subdivides informal settlements into three segments--insecure, transitional, and secure housing--and provides data on the differences in terms of fear of eviction, provision of basic services, and construction materials, among others. Based on 40 reports, 56 experts, 200 qualitative and >500 quantitative interviews of informal housing dwellers across four cities (Delhi, Pune, Hyderabad, and Cuttack), “Informal Housing, Inadequate Property Rights” is a unique resource that architects can leverage to think about urban informality in a more nuanced way.
2 Comments
Urban Slum Dwellers /Poor in India are migrants from Rural areas, it is obvious that when they fight for property rights within the informal settlements which are unauthorised occupations they left the Rural land Unattended and inviting to be converted into non agricultural land due to some Development Plan Scheme. This is a toxic cycle of "loss of Land" as Property owned in Rural Premises are left untended and occupation of land in cities which they may not Own. Hence Reverse Migration, is a good option , if climate favors the Rural Migrants they keep their land , Live with dignity and leave the Open spaces in cities to be clutter / slum free.
Migration to city centers and the resultant urbanization(s) has been historically/economically/formally recognized in India since the beginning 20th century. The formula has been simple- no work in the exurban areas leads people to move to cities in search of work.
This has been exacerbated by industrialization and climate change which are making "traditional" agricultural practices increasingly difficult to maintain.
As stated in the linked report, the national government:
-admits there that housing supply is outpaced by demand, but
-the shift has been towards addressing the problem in situ rather than requiring mass migrations out of the city.
As stated above, "loss of land" through industrialization and development is indeed a problem, but it's not clear that it is a viable option to tell people to go back to where they came from and lift their chins up.
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