dharavi squatter settlements case study

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• 1.5 Settlements and service provision
• 1.6 Urban settlements
• 1.7 Urbanisation
• Urbanization
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• Squatter settlements

Squatter settlement case study: Dharavi, Mumbai, India

• Urbanization and the environment

BBC News - Life in a slum

SFGate - Slums separate Bombay from its future / Struggle over plans for redevelopment slows city's progress [12 October 2006]

• Where in the world is Dharavi?
• Describe the location of Dharavi.
• Briefly describe the history of Dharavi.
• What is the current population of Dharavi?
• Describe the industry and economic activities that can be found in Dharavi.
• Using actual quotes and examples – describe what it is like to live in Dharavi.
• Why do some people want to redevelop in Dharavi?
• Describe the planned redevelopment of Dharavi.
• What criticisms have there been of the planned redevelopment of Dharavi?
• What alternative projects have been suggested to improve Dharavi besides its complete destruction?
• Which proposed project – building a new town on the site or improving the current shanty town – do you think is the best and why?

• Give three pieces of map evidence which suggest that this area is part of a squatter settlement and not occupied by high-cost housing. [3 marks]
• Suggest why many people living in rural areas in developing countries make the decision to migrate to urban settlements such as Dhaka. [5 marks]
• Describe what has been done to improve the quality of life in squatter settlements in developing countries. You should refer to examples which you have studied to illustrate your answer. [7 marks]
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Redevelopment proposal for Mumbai’s largest informal settlement stirs controversy

Dharavi is known as the largest informal settlement in Asia, where 1 million people live in 1 square mile of Mumbai. For decades, it’s been slated for redevelopment. Plans are finally taking shape, but debates remain over where people will live and work. 

• By Raksha Kumar

In Dharavi, in Mumbai, India, more than 1 million people live on 1 square mile on land that is mostly government owned. 

At Abbas Zakaria Galwani’s clay-pot-making factory, a handful of men pack pots in boxes.

“We sell in cities across the country and even export to other countries,” Galwani said.

His factory in Dharavi, Asia’s largest informal settlement, in the middle of Mumbai, India’s financial capital , employs 22 people. It’s one of thousands of small industries in the settlement, where more than 1 million people live and work in 1 square mile on land that is mostly government owned.

Dharavi’s open drains, naked electricity wires and narrow pathways packed with hordes of people have been featured in films like “ Slumdog Millionaire .”

For 20 years, authorities have said they want to turn Dharavi into a modern township, complete with roads, schools, parks, hospitals and housing enclaves. Redevelopment plans continue to take shape, but many local residents like Galwani have resisted the proposals , fearing the impact of gentrification.

“We have no problems if you develop our land as long as the development benefits us as well,” he said, adding, “We fear they would displace us and redevelop the land to suit their needs.”

Galwani said that his family moved into Dharavi when it was nothing more than a swamp a hundred years ago.

“We feel a symbiotic relationship with this place. We gave it a shape, it gave us an identity,” he said.

Families like his cleared out the marsh, built their homes and started small businesses that now contribute to over $1 billion in revenue every year.

Informal markets pack every street of Dharavi. 

‘The largest con in history’

For real estate companies, Dharavi is a strategic location. The city’s two main train lines pass through Dharavi, and swanky neighborhoods surround it.

A huge government hospital that caters to millions of the city’s poor and middle-class populations sits in the middle of Dharavi.

One of India’s large conglomerates, the Adani Group, won an auction in January to work with the government to redevelop Dharavi. The $2.4-billion proposed plan to redevelop 260 hectares of the settlement would accommodate some people and businesses, but displace thousands — and the details are scarce, a CBC report says .

In January, Hindenburg Research, an investment firm, accused the Adani Group of pulling off “the largest con in corporate history.”

Hindenburg published a document that said that the Adani Group was engaged in “brazen stock manipulation,” “accounting fraud” and money laundering,” which the group denied.

Since then, Dharavi residents have protested against the Adani Group. Also, the group’s market value has lost more than $110 billion as investors have pulled out .

The Adani Group has not made any statements on the redevelopment project yet.

Complicated factors

By some estimates , Dharavi has about 20,000 mini factories contained inside it. But it is precisely these industries that the government says need relocating.

CEO of the Dharavi Redevelopment Board SCR Srinivas told local media in January that Dharavi needs to develop so it doesn’t continue to add to Mumbai’s pollution.

“Entire sewage [from Dharavi] is untreated [and] it is going into the Mithi river,” he said. “There are leather industries and textile industries there that are highly polluting.”

There is no drinking water and no sanitation. At the same time, Dharavi is bearing the burden of the city’s waste, not just its own.

According to Krishna Pujari, an entrepreneur who runs a travel company in Dharavi, 80% of the city’s waste is recycled in Dharavi.

“We are the reason waste has not piled up on the streets of Mumbai,” said Mohammad Irfan, who owns a recycling plant in Dharavi.

Smaller industries contribute to the pollution, too.

In the potters colony in Dharavi, kilns burn most of the time, adding smoke to narrow haphazardly built homes around it.  

‘Do not put us out of work’

Still, people depend on their businesses for their livelihoods.

Many residents wonder whether the redevelopment plans would interfere with their ability to continue running their businesses.

Architect Sandhya Naidu said the biggest challenge in redeveloping Dharavi is ensuring that its people get to live and work there. So, any redevelopment plan “will have to be heavily influenced by people who have the lived experience of having been in Dharavi in all their lives.”

Back in his factory, Galwani was practicing a speech to give at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology Bombay on pot making. He said that Dharavi gave him his identity.

“With time, there is bound to be change,” he said. “By all means, redevelop our informal settlement but do not put us out of work.”

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• You are here: Essays

Investigating the redevelopment of India’s most famous informal settlement, Dharavi

23 August 2010 By Rob Gregory Essays

1/9 Dharavi comprises informal and formal housing provision, seen here with SRA housing rising high above the blanket of informal colonies. This block was opened in 2002 and visited by Prince Charles in 2003

2/9 The streets of Dharavi are full of life and exchange, with homes and businesses co-existing

3/9 By contrast, despite the efforts of groups like SPARC, new SRA alternatives fail to inspire such rich use

4/9 There is an estimated one WC for every 300 people. This block is typical of facilities

5/9 A community centre

6/9 From garment manufacture to recycling, the wider city relies heavily on Dharavi’s population. This bakery is one such example of a hidden factory, sitting cheek by jowl with domestic accommodation

7/9 Many of the houses of Dharavi have a colourful charm, plus many are larger and more distinctive than the standard SRA provision. Can new purpose-built mass housing solutions ever replicate this sort of accommodation?

8/9 Produced by Design Cell of Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute for Architecture (KRVIA), this map shows the density and diversity of Dharavi - open space in sector 4

9/9 The Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) commissioned KRVIA to do a detailed study of the area to show how complex the existing forms and networks are, which would help advocate for a smaller-scale redevelopment plan that pays greater heed to existing boundaries, industries and infrastructure.

Following a visit to Mumbai’s largest informal settlement, the AR reports on the government’s plan to displace residents when it redevelops Dharavi

Three years before Danny Boyle’s 2008 film Slumdog Millionaire cast a spotlight on what is now Mumbai’s most famous informal settlement, American journalist and author of Shadow Cities (Routledge, 2004), Robert Neuwirth declared that places like Dharavi were ‘the cities of tomorrow’.

Giving a talk in Oxford in 2005 (available on www.ted.com ), he qualified this by explaining how, at the time, one billion people lived in squatter settlements - or one in six of the world’s population. By 2030 Neuwirth said this is set to double, with two billion - or one in four people - being urban squatters.

And his prediction was that this would rise again by 2050, when three billion squatters would equate to one third of the world’s population. ‘These are the cities of tomorrow,’ he reiterated, ‘and we have to engage with them.’ Since then popular interest in Dharavi has risen, with other commentators dipping their toes into the 210ha slum’s murky waters for television documentaries.

In 2008, former AR assistant editor Dan Cruickshank came to Dharavi on one of his BBC Adventures in Architecture. Taking a different view to Neuwirth, Cruickshank enthused that Dharavi represented the origins of a city, not its future. ‘[Despite being] built in the 20th century, Dharavi tells a much older story,’ he said, ‘giving us a sense of how most European cities were born.’

A year later, after spending two weeks filming Slumming It for Channel Four, Grand Designs’ Kevin McCloud concurred with Cruickshank, likening parts of the Mumbai slum with Florence and declaring that Dharavi’s squares and alleyways ‘possess all the components of a civilised life’.

What unified these commentaries was a consistent promotion of the social and economic stability of the settlement, and in particular how this apparently hopeless place manages to sustain the lives of between 600,000 and one million inhabitants, depending on whose statistics you believe. Next year these figures will be confirmed when a planned census takes place, yet it is easy to suspect that the numbers will continue to be debated, manipulated to the benefit of Dharavi’s many stakeholders, legitimate or otherwise.

Located between Mumbai’s corporate Bandra Kurla Complex and the city’s international and domestic airports, there is no disputing the fact that Dharavi is hot property. Until 1956 this place was a peripheral site, set beyond the city limits. But as Mumbai grew rapidly northwards, by the mid 1970s it was at the centre of the dense conurbation.

No typical brownfield site, it is a thriving community and the majority of the people who live here want to stay, benefiting from an 80 per cent employment rate that contributes to an annual turnover of over US$500 million (£319 million).

However, with state and developers wanting to capitalise on soaring land values, confusion and instability is taking hold as residents are now being offered new homes in high-density towers that will release 57 per cent of the land for redevelopment.

Engineer Shirish Patel, who practised in the city for 50 years before turning his attention to what he calls ‘urban affairs’, offered the AR his take on the situation, with an overview that seemed untainted by either sentiment for squalor or surprise at commercial opportunism. ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘the vision is how to make money out of it. The challenge is how to get the slum dwellers to agree to the redevelopment programme, which is really not in their best interests. To do it peacefully [the government] makes promises that will attract them, before grabbing the land for redevelopment.’

Residents are being promised free housing in 24-storey buildings and a key issue is that none of them have ever lived in a tall building before. ‘While for some it has the glamour of being suddenly middle class because you are in a high-rise building, where are these people expected to work?’ he asks. ‘When you visit Dharavi, it’s not just about people living there, they actually have their livelihoods there too. There are industries and shops. They live and they work there, in the same area, but the redevelopment scheme only provides them with re-housing. It doesn’t [accommodate] their shops or their industries.’

A walk through the high streets, paths and narrow alleyways that thread their way through Dharavi’s dense and chaotic grain is testament to Patel’s observations. Turn one way and you’ll stumble into a bakery. The other way leads through a small door into a studio producing high-end leather jackets and, along the way, schools, community halls and even an estate agent’s office all coexist with densely packed two and three-storey dwellings.

Colour and vibrancy prevail and it is all too easy to be seduced by the romance of basic human ingenuity and resilient creativity. Yet the fact remains, Dharavi is unsanitary and this has to be addressed.

In the 1970s the government briefly stepped in, building a handful of latrine blocks and communal taps but, as Patel explains, ‘they’ve been denied water supply, sanitation and garbage collection all these years.

They want it and some manage to get it illegally, but officially the city can’t give it to them because they are illegal occupants of the land.’ The state does not intervene with regards to the provision of infrastructure, as this would further legitimise the community’s claim on the land and make redevelopment less likely.

So when will the population be moved out? According to Patel, ‘the people have been kept in the dark. The government wants this to happen and they want to invite international tenders. It is imminent.’ Despite the fact that imminent on the Indian calendar could still mean years, the sense of unrest is rising.

The first major demonstration of this unrest occurred on 18 June 2007, when 15,000 residents went on strike from many of the essential services that Dharavi provides (such as baking, catering and recycling) and marched to the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority office. Bearing black flags, the demonstrators on Black Day served as a reminder to Mumbai’s broader residents how crucial the Dharavi residents were as a population. They were also making a public demonstration of their dissatisfaction with the government’s plan to offer them such small apartments.

Sheela Patel, director of Mumbai-based NGO The Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), says: ‘These people represent the informal sector that must be integrated into the city’s development process. The people of Dharavi do not want to stop development. They want to participate, but they question the right of the state to do it at their own cost. They question the right of the state to destroy their livelihoods, and the assumption that they will be happy with the basic 21m² tenement that a regular SRA development would provide.

They are deeply concerned about what is going to happen to all the businesses that are cheek by jowl with where they live. This is not a greenfield site waiting to be developed, it is the home and workplace of hundreds of thousands of people who want to remain an integral part of this city. It has to work first for them, and for the city, and then and only then for the profits of those who come to develop it. Doing it the other way round will simply not work.’ She concludes by saying: ‘this must be seen as a town, not a sea of slums.’

Thanks to Luca Farinelli of Columbia University and Avery Livengood of SPARC for their valuable assistance in producing this article. For detailed information of current Dharavi initiatives visit www.dharavi.org , www.sparcindia.org and www.urbz.net or watch SPARC videos on www.youtube.com by searching for sparcnsdfmm.

September 2010

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Rethinking Dharavi: An analysis of redevelopment programs for slums in Mumbai, India

Abigail ransmeier writes about the successes and shortcomings of slum redevelopment programs in mumbai..

July 16, 2001

Credit: [CC BY 2.0].

The Deborah J. Norden Fund, a program of The Architectural League of New York, was established in 1995 in memory of architect and arts administrator Deborah Norden. Each year, the competition awards up to $5,000 in travel grants to students and recent graduates in the fields of architecture, architectural history, and urban studies.

Abigail Ransmeier received a 2001 award.

Dharavi is Mumbai’s largest slum. There, nearly one million people inhabit low-lying structures erected haphazardly on four hundred acres of former swampland. For more than three centuries, this waterlogged district existed at the outskirts of the city, an undesirable stretch where only Mumbai’s poorest and newest residents made their homes. Over time, Dharavi’s relative location has shifted. Today, this unplanned, poorly-serviced tract sits strategically between the city’s two commuter lines and adjacent to the Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai’s new corporate hub. Land that was once deemed undesirable suddenly claims a valuable, even vital position, and parties that ignored Dharavi for over a century now show a determined interest in its rehabilitation.

In 1995, in an effort to reinvigorate key slum areas, The Maharashtra Housing and Urban Development Authority (MHADA) established the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) and enacted Mumbai’s current Slum Rehabilitation Scheme (SRS). The SRS makes innovative use of land as a resource, offering free land and financial incentives to private real estate developers who agree to rehabilitate existing slums. This free land subsidizes the development of fully-serviced Western-style apartment blocks comprised of 225 square foot self-contained housing units. The units are made available at no cost to slum dwellers who can prove that they have lived in Mumbai since before January 1, 1995.

But while the MHADA may have good intentions, the SRS falls short. By encouraging high-rise residential developments, the SRS creates a built environment that is incompatible with the lifestyles of Dharavi’s current inhabitants. To rehabilitate in a more sensitive way, planners ought to be more flexible and adopt an interdisciplinary approach that better negotiates Dharavi’s complex physical and economic condition.

Credit: Rajas Chitnis.

Dharavi’s landscape

After India’s independence in 1947, Mumbai’s squatter population soared. City officials now estimate that 63 percent of the city’s current population (measured just shy of sixteen million) live in slums, on pavements or along railway tracks. This population occupies only eight percent of the city’s total land, area creating densities of up to eighteen thousand persons per square kilometer.

Dharavi’s unplanned streets attract migrants from every region of India. Potters from Gujurat, Muslim tanners from Tamil Nadu and embroidery workers from Uttar Pradesh occupy closely-knit settlements jammed one beside the next. This ethnic diversity fosters Dharavi’s socioeconomic strength. In March 2004, the BBC reported that Dharavi’s markets generate roughly 1 billion dollars per year. Export-quality leather bags, chiki, embroidered shawls and jewelry pop out of illegal workshops and saturate Mumbai’s streets. Only 10 percent of the settlement’s population is unemployed – a small percentage for any Indian suburb, let alone for a slum.

Furthermore, despite their informal planning, Dharavi’s “kutcha” districts offer something that Mumbai’s more formal “pukka” neighborhoods lack. Unlike the residential developments that typify westernized Mumbai –  mega-structures standing on super-plots separated by overly-wide roads that foster little sense of community – Dharavi’s settlements operate like small, self-governed neighborhood units. Hutments are arranged along footpaths or in clusters that open onto shared spaces that easily adapt to the settlement’s daily activities. Shrines, workshops and markets are interspersed throughout. At dusk, men congregate to discuss local politics over rounds of chai, and women gather at communal water taps to gossip over piles of laundry and vegetables. The settlement’s maze-like configuration offers a sense of security to its inhabitants. Gateways are barely recognizable, and even the youngest children wander freely within the boundaries of their communities.

Credit: Jon Hurd.

Free housing – rehabilitation under the SRS

In 1995, a coalition of the Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janata Party assumed power in Mumbai, promising four million units of free housing to eligible slum dwellers. The government’s goal was two-fold: to mitigate Mumbai’s housing crisis and to improve the city’s infrastructure.

A few years later, MHADA asked the architect Mukesh Mehta to create a master plan for Dharavi’s rehabilitation, along the lines of SRS. At the time, Mehta proposed that Dharavi be organized into twelve residential sectors, based on the boundaries of existing slum settlements. He suggested sector-based, phased collaborations between private developers and existing communities, advising that each slum settlement receive an autonomous mixed-cooperative housing facility comprised of 225 square foot residential units complete with private kitchen, toilet and wash closet facilities.

His plan placed commercial units on ground floors with residential units above them, and included community workshops, health centers, day cares, and open space, to ensure a sense of community at all SRS facilities.

Since the fall of 2001, several densely packed slum societies have been collaborating with Mehta on housing complexes. While most slum dwellers are eager to relocate to new Western-style apartment complexes, others are concerned. Thus far, SRS buildings have provided only a limited number of ground floor commercial lots.   Slum dwellers wonder: can barbers and shoe repairmen, seamstresses and pan bidi stalls – small businesses that barely subsisted with ample foot traffic – survive if they relocate to the tenth story of a high-rise apartment complex?

Credit: Erin from Evanston [CC BY 2.0].

Kumbharwada is one slum community facing this conflict. Occupying twelve acres of prime real estate at the intersection of two of Dharavi’s most prominent roads, Kumbharwada is one of Dharavi’s poorest communities. The Kumbhars specialize in making pots, a craft they brought with them from their homeland in Kutch. Their traditional potting methods mandate specific spatial arrangements. Women tend to their homes and to their kilns, integrating their pottery activities with child-rearing and household chores. This unique way of life makes relocation to the proposed SRS buildings impractical. Moreover, the Kumbhar’s existing slum huts are larger than the 225 square-foot apartments that the SRS promises, yet they house twice as many people as smaller huts do in typical slums. Since the SRS allots free apartments based on the number of existing huts and not on the number of people who live in them, the Kumbhar’s free apartment quota does not accommodate the community’s most basic residential needs, let alone their kilns.

In November 2001, Bombay’s Principal Secretary of Urban Development, Mr. A. P. Sinha addressed local officials and non-governmental organizations in a talk entitled “Work Plan for Cities Without Slums.” In his address, he demanded a “cafeteria approach” to rehabilitating Dharavi. Sinha’s call for a variety of responses represents a constructive step forward. It recognizes that the SRS housing blocks offer logical solutions for some slum populations, but not for all. For example, a temporary site and services model might suit the transient needs of migrant workers.  Some Kumbhars say that they would share toilet and cooking facilities if it would free funds for improved kilns. Slum women have suggested that kitchen walls and counters should be removed from SRS units since women like to cook communally while seated on the floor. More affluent slum dwellers in Dharavi even say that they would like to pay extra for larger apartments with layouts more suited to their lifestyles.

It is clear that Dharavi is poised for change. Its unique geographic position and socioeconomic makeup demans new building typologies. While it is undeniably operative, Dharavi would offer more to Mumbai, as well as to its own inhabitants, if it better integrated its current residential and commercial requirements with its existing recreational and ceremonial functions. Mumbai’s challenge, therefore, is to employ a rehabilitative approach that reinvigorates Dharavi’s buildings and infrastructure, while respecting its industrious nature and communal social patterns.

Biographies

traveled to India in 2001. She returned eager to become an architect, and is currently in her third year at Yale School of Architecture, where she continues to combine interests in international development and architecture. She recently received a fellowship from the Yale Center for International and Area Studies to complete a schematic design for mixed-use, low-cost housing in Mumbai. In August 2006, she will begin work at Behnisch Architekten in Stuttgart , Germany.

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Abigail ransmeier, rahul mehrotra: working in mumbai.

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Arverne: Housing on the Edge

A 2001 exhibition considering four proposals for the Arverne Urban Renewal Area on the Rockaway peninsula in Queens.

A Parallel History

In an introduction to 1977 book Women in American Architecture, Susana Torre considers cultural assumptions about women as consumers, producers, critics, and creators of space.

• Case study: Urban growth in Dharavi: redevelopment for the future

Geographical skills: Reading Ordnance Survey maps for urban areas

Urban growth in dharavi, redevelopment for the future.

GCSE candidates are expected to understa nd someof the opportunities and challenges for residents living in informal settlements. How can urban planning strategies, such as redevelopment, improve the lives of the urban poor? This article explores how Dharavi (Asia’s largest area of informal housing) might be affected by a new redevelopment plan.

• Volume 35, 2023/ 2024
• Development
• Emerging megacity
• Human Geography
• Urbanisation

Kate Williamson

Since 2007, more than half the world’s population has been living in cities and this is expected to rise to 60% by 2030. This trend has been accelerated by rapid rural to urban migration and high rates of natural increase. Roughly one quarter of the world’s population lives in informal housing, sometimes known as squatter settlements. Due to rapid rates of urban growth in low-income countries (LICs) or developing countries, the number of people living in informal settlements is projected to increase even further.

One city affected by rapid urban growth is Mumbai, located on the west coast of India and the capital of Maharashtra state. Mumbai has experienced population growth from less than 16 million in 2002 to just over 21 million today. Mumbai is now one of the most densely populated cities in the world.

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Transformation of Slum and Squatter Settlements: A Way of Sustainable Living in Context of 21 st Century Cities

The Squatter settlements in many of 21 st century urban cities are inevitable phenomena. Living condition in these settlements suffer from overcrowding, inadequate accommodation, limited access to clean water and sanitation, lack of proper waste disposal system and deteriorating air quality. Squatter settlements are increasingly seen by public decision-makers as 'slums of hope' rather than 'slums of despair'. There is abundant evidence of innovative solutions developed by the poor to improve their own living environments. This paper will assess the question if ideas of contemporary architecture can be implemented in providing ecological living for squatter settlements, along with a discussion on probable suggestions in relation to their daily living pattern. The paper also presents several case studies of sustainable living in high-density urban areas and slum settlements in different context, finally concludes providing some strategies and policies that might be helpful to the policy makers in providing sustainable settlement for urban squatter dwellers.

Related Papers

American Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture

M. Arefeen Ibrahim

Sustainable Design Unit

The aim of this study is to contribute to the contemporary and holistic socio-urban strategy for addressing slum and squatter settlements in developing countries, and evaluates the overall impacts that on-site upgrading projects may have on a particular underserved community, and the city as a whole. Retrofitting within these settlement, attempts to address multiple conditions and needs; effecting larger group of people and offers the possibility for wide- scale community development. The paper first examines the socio-economic and spatial condition of people living in squatter settlements of Istanbul; as a representative of a city in a developing country that has been long characterized by the co-existence of two parallel worlds of formal and informal. By doing so, the important factors that need to be considered for any strategy and physical design proposal including the existing social and economic network, developed by residence and other aspects of these neighborhoods are determined. The strategy promotes the idea that public place can act as an urban connector between the formal and informal parts of a city. This interdependent system demonstrates that we could once again find one another and relate as equals.

maja baldea

The need for housing is a basic need, especially following the growth of population and the migration from rural villages towards large cities. The formation of slums around all large cities is a global phenomenon. Starting from the definition of slums, an attempt is made to study several phenomena linked with the formation of poverty satellite settlements, from social causes to specific architecture typologies and economic structures. Slum architecture follows a set of specific and similar patterns. For the future development of cities and architecture, understanding the mechanisms that make slums work is crucial.

rhythm cool

In Dhaka significantly the numbers of slums are increasing everyday due to heavy influx of migrants from rural areas. In these slum areas all sorts of services are inadequate and general environmental scenario is hazardous. Data has been collected from field survey, some secondary sources and focused group discussion. The study focuses on the status and practice regarding water, sanitation and hygiene. This paper has also explored that assessment of water resource availability and quality at source point of consumption; problems faced in getting safe drinking water; and knowledge of the features of hygienic latrine; awareness about health. The study is based on the health problems highlighting factors affecting the health of the population in slums for example due to general environmental condition, water supply system and the sanitation system. The study also focuses on other various reasons associated to poor living condition and their impact on health of the slum population. It is suggested that if conditions are to be improved then the problem of the poor living conditions and the health service needs to be addressed through the application of proper measures and planning by the different sectors of government and private sectors. Including all these problems Dhaka city is should slum housing problem immediately. A shelter can be solution of all problems. As they need permanent solution .i choose housing for shelter and container made house for housing solution. My motivation is to providing cheaper housing solution for devoted and migrated rural people in hearts of urban.

Cigdem Canbay Turkyilmaz

Ranjith Dayaratne

Many cities of the developing countries have for a long time been burdened with the sprawling squatter settlements constituted of insanitary spaces in ad-hoc structures, overcrowded and inappropriate to the contemporary standards of living. Occupied by the poor who have been trapped in the vicious circle of poverty, lack of access to education, unemployment and underemployment and therefore continued poverty, squatter settlements pose an insurmountable challenge to the city authorities and governments involved in the design and management of the built-environments in cities. While approaches to breaking this cycle has shifted from housing to poverty alleviation often dependant on government subsidies, the need for sustainable development demands that these settlements be transformed in a manner that they contribute positively to social progress, economic growth and environmental improvements by themselves. This chapter presents a case study of an approach to transforming a number of old squatter settlement in Colombo, by which the squatters have been persuaded and facilitated to voluntarily move from slums and shanties to modern, multi-storey condominium apartments built replacing the squalid housing estates. The program based on an exchange of the real estates occupied by the squatters for apartments with modern conveniences has released the valuable urban land for progressive developments while enabling the poor to get out of the poverty trap and live in decent housing. It discusses the Sustainable Township Program (STP), the government-owned development company that spearheaded the program; Real Estate Exchange Limited (REEL) and how residents of Vanathamulla; one of the most dense and derelict squatter settlements have been moved to the condominium high rise; Sahaspura. The chapter highlights the problems and potentials of this approach as a model for creating sustainable habitats in place of squatter settlements in cities.

Fatih Terzi

Throughout the twentieth century, different housing policies have been developed in different countries and they have changed in time in response to the changing housing problems. In industrialized countries after the 1980s, rental housing, rent allowances, owner occupation, mortgage tax exemptions, have been aimed to solve housing problems of low income people in these countries. In developing countries, squatter settlements have grown within the informal housing market. UN and World Bank gave some financial support to the slum upgrading and site and service projects, but these types of projects were not widespread. In Turkey, in 1984, each squatter was given permission to build 4 floors and many squatter areas rapidly transformed and turned into high density areas. More widespread method to upgrade squatter settlements was the Upgrading Plan which was brought into force after 1983 with the 775 act. This paper demonstrates the insufficiency of the regulations to upgrade squatter settlements to improve the building conditions and to provide solutions for affordable housing and sustainable residential areas. The data used in the assessment of this study were collected through research and case study. In this study, two types of analysis have been utilized. The first one is socio-economic analysis the data of which was obtained from the household survey having 10% sampling rate, and the results were evaluated in terms of housing demand and affordability. The second is a physical analysis of the natural environment, building conditions, density and tenure patterns. The results were used to evaluate the improvement of building conditions and the provision of sustainable residential areas after the transformation began in 1986. Firstly, the regulations to upgrade squatter settlements resulted in developments that are harmful for the natural environment due to legalization of the squatter settlements which have developed on lands in excess of 25% slope. This development and planning process also resulted in excessive utility costs and ineffective services and have not been able to provide sustainable development strategies. Secondly, the expectations of households for ownership, providing a house for their children and requesting for adding more storeys on their buildings resulted in high land use intensity. Besides, the upgrading plans have difficulty improving building conditions due to the lack of a financial support system. Lastly, provision of affordable housing has not been achieved, after the transformation of squatters with the upgrading plans.

Miray Özkan , Yurdanur Dulgeroglu,

Nicolas Reeves

The making of a place is an important theoretical issue in occidental architecture, especially when it addresses the creation of places meant for communities. Architects working in that field are confronted with a number of issues. They come from the existence of legal and administrative norms, and from the very status of the architect in the western world from his/her ambiguous position between state, power and society. These issues, explicitly or not, limit the field of his/her practice. Squatter settlements in the developing world are built in totally different circumstances. Created under illegal conditions, they provide us with an opportunity to observe the creation of new environments located outside of our legal and ideological spheres. Comparing the way they appear with the way places are created in our societies can allow us to locate and to explore the boundaries of our field of action, and to investigate unexpected ways of making new collective places. This thesis is an e...

Encyclopedia of the UN Sustainable Development Goals

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Transformation of Slum and Squatter Settlements: A Way of Sustainable Living in Context of 21 st...

Mania Tahsina Taher, Arefeen Ibrahim

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Transformation of Slum and Squatter Settlements: A Way of Sustainable Living in Context of 21 st Century Cities

1 Department of Architecture, American International University-Bangladesh, Dhaka, Bangladesh

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1. Introduction

3. measures already taken, 4. possible solutions, 5. concluding remarks.

The Squatter settlements in many of 21 st century urban cities are inevitable phenomena. Living condition in these settlements suffer from overcrowding, inadequate accommodation, limited access to clean water and sanitation, lack of proper waste disposal system and deteriorating air quality. Squatter settlements are increasingly seen by public decision-makers as ‘slums of hope’ rather than ‘slums of despair’. There is abundant evidence of innovative solutions developed by the poor to improve their own living environments. This paper will assess the question if ideas of contemporary architecture can be implemented in providing ecological living for squatter settlements, along with a discussion on probable suggestions in relation to their daily living pattern. The paper also presents several case studies of sustainable living in high-density urban areas and slum settlements in different context, finally concludes providing some strategies and policies that might be helpful to the policy makers in providing sustainable settlement for urban squatter dwellers.

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Keywords: urban squatter, sustainable, high-density, self-help, ecological living

American Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture , 2014 2 (2), pp 70-76. DOI: 10.12691/ajcea-2-2-3

Received December 30, 2013; Revised February 16, 2014; Accepted April 13, 2014

Cite this article:

• Chicago Style
• Taher, Mania Tahsina, and Arefeen Ibrahim. "Transformation of Slum and Squatter Settlements: A Way of Sustainable Living in Context of 21 st Century Cities." American Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture 2.2 (2014): 70-76.
• Taher, M. T. , & Ibrahim, A. (2014). Transformation of Slum and Squatter Settlements: A Way of Sustainable Living in Context of 21 st Century Cities. American Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture , 2 (2), 70-76.
• Taher, Mania Tahsina, and Arefeen Ibrahim. "Transformation of Slum and Squatter Settlements: A Way of Sustainable Living in Context of 21 st Century Cities." American Journal of Civil Engineering and Architecture 2, no. 2 (2014): 70-76.

A squatter settlement can generally be defined as a residential area in an urban locality inhabited by the very poor who have no access to tenured land of their own, and hence "squat" on vacant land, either private or public [ 1 ] . As these settlements are growing illegally on vacant lands, therefore, urban policies are not very active regarding the development of these areas. The simple shelters that the slum dwellers construct with the help of their rudimentary building skills can be erected and re-erected at short notice. Cities like Mumbai, Dhaka, Caracas; also Bogotá, Mexico City, Cairo, Lagos, Johannesburg are some of the examples where growth of squatters and slums are taking on such a fast pace that they are encroaching on a significant portion of the urban fabric. It is further projected that in the next 30 years, the global number of slum dwellers will increase by approximately 2 billion, if no decisive action is taken. National approaches to squatter settlements have generally shifted from negative policies (such as forced eviction, benign neglect and involuntary resettlement etc.) to more positive policies (such as, self-help and in situ upgrading, enabling and rights-based policies) [ 2 ] . In some cases, squatter settlements are not classified as urban settlements precisely because they lack services to qualify basic human needs. As a case study, ‘Dharavi’ located in Mumbai, India- is the largest slum in Asia. Slum dwellers make up around 60% of the population in Mumbai and while their land only takes up 6% of the city of Mumbai in Dharavi. The settlement is located in the heart of the city and therefore extremely valuable in terms of the current real estate boom. The slum spreads over an area of approximately 1175 acres, has a population density of 18,300 people per acre; this density is comparable only with Kibera, Nairobi’s second largest squatter settlements, and Mexican shantytowns. There are 86,000 housing structures: typically Cramped approximately 150 sq. ft. houses each, with no natural light or ventilation, without running water or sanitation. There is one toilet here for every 150 people, with water shortages. Dharavi also faces transportation, drinking water, drainage and sewerage problems [ 3 ] .

The characteristics associated with squatters and slums vary from place to place; slums are usually characterized by urban decay, high rates of poverty, and unemployment. They are commonly seen as "breeding grounds" for social problems such as crime, drug addiction, alcoholism, high rates of mental illness, and suicide. In many poor countries they exhibit high rates of disease due to unsanitary conditions, malnutrition, and lack of basic health care. In spite of all these issues, people choose to live in squatter settlements for many reasons.

The prime reason is the inability to afford any other type of accommodation and the freedom from rent and civic obligations. The initial structures in squatter settlement are small in size, made of low-quality materials like- polythene sheet, straws, used corrugated iron sheet etc. The simple buildings they erect accord with their rudimentary building skills can be erected, re-erected, and even expanded at short notice. "The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements 2003"—the largest study ever done by the United Nations Human Settlements Program (UN-Habitat)-found that urban slums were growing faster than expected. The number of people living out their days in the squalor of a slum is almost one billion; one out of every three city dwellers, a sixth of the world’s population. Without radical changes, it is believed that the number could double in 30 years. By 2050, according to the report, there may be 3.5 billion slum dwellers, out of a total urban population of about 6 billion. Squatter settlements in urban areas are inevitable phenomena as long as urban areas offer economies of different scales as means for improving quality of living and environment for millions of poor in developing areas of the world. Large cities will always continue to grow- attracting migrants from rural areas mainly, and also from underdeveloped urban areas. This trend of rural-to-urban migration has led to the result of more squatting in urban regions, particularly in the last three decades. Squatter and slum settlements have formed mainly because of the inability of city governments to plan and provide affordable housing for the low-income segments of the urban population [ 4 ] . Hence, squatter and slum housing is becoming the housing solution for this low-income urban population.

Many governments around the world have attempted to solve the problems of urban squatter settlements by clearing away old decrepit housing and replacing it with modern housing with much better sanitation. In these specific cases, slum clearance often took the form of eminent urban renewal projects, and often the former residents were prohibited in the renewed housing. According to many critics, forced slum clearances tend to ignore the social problems that cause the formation of slums.

National approaches to informal settlements in particular, have generally shifted from negative policies such as forced eviction or benign neglect recently. Approach that has been receiving considerable attention from various government and public authorities has been the "enabling" approach, where instead of taking a confrontationist attitude, governments have strived to create an enabling environment, under which people using and generating their own resources, could find unique local solutions for their housing and shelter problems.

These include more positive policies, such as ‘self-help’ and ‘in situ’ upgrading, enabling, rights-based policies etc. Squatter settlements are increasingly seen by public decision-makers as places of opportunity, as there is abundant evidence of innovative solutions developed by the poor to improve their own living environment. In a word, different strategies have been adopted ever since in order to improve squatter settlement conditions, like- micro credit, appropriate technology etc. As a case study, the implementation of slum and squatter improvement programs in the river basins of Yogyakarta, Indonesia– government launched different slum improvement programs at that flood-prone squatter areas, rather than eviction of the whole living there. The programs included social rehabilitation, where the objective was to improve the settlements and cleanliness of the environment, renovating poor housings through a self-help mechanism. Program for socio-economic enhancement resulted into increasing household’s income and harmonized social relationship among residents. Community venture projects resulted into improving housing quality, which also provided funds for Vocational training project aimed at increasing the youth skills, urban settlement improvement project resulted into improving physical facilities, such as-drainage, footsteps, garbage bins and public toilets within the locality. The main themes of these projects were that all these programs were strongly participated by the local residents of the squatters of Yogyakarta, which resulted into such success [ 5 ] .

Architects and designers, under different organizations that motivated and helped these poor people in building the settlements, were involved in construction of these self-help housings, where they guided more as trainers than designers. As case study, Habitat for Humanity, an international organization established in 1976, has built more than 300,000 houses, sheltering more than 1.5 million people in more than 3,000 communities worldwide, and they have motivated low-income people to build communities on self-help method [ 6 ] . Many architects and designers work under this organization, holding voluntary role in construction of self-help housing in different regions. Habitat for Humanity Ethiopia (HFHE) began construction in 1993 near the city capital Addis Ababa and has since expanded to build houses in 11 communities. Most houses are located in urban and semi-urban areas. Families participating in a mutual self-help project perform approximately sixty-five percent of the construction labor on each other's homes under supervision of architects. The houses built in Ethiopia are mostly traditional style ‘Chika’ house, 85% of these houses in Ethiopia are made of mud and stick or thatch walls, which collapse easily. Homes are often cramped, with dirt floors, leaking roofs and no windows or doors, leaving their occupants vulnerable to adverse weather conditions, insects and rodents. Poor ventilation for inside cooking fires is a common cause of respiratory problems. [ 7 ] Moreover, a staggering 90% of the population has no access to decent sanitation facilities, and 73% of the population does not have safe drinking water, causing disease to run rampant.

HFHE there constructed the settlements in ‘Chika’ style, from a number of different materials, including stabilized earth blocks, wood and fired bricks and all the necessity services and conditions were provided for living. Constructions of ‘Chika’ houses are affordable, quick and easy to build, and that was the reason to opt for this construction technique; some cost for construction was taken as loan from the organization, which is being paid in monthly affordable installations. These self-help housing programs are successful in sub-urban and rural housing areas, where people live in their own addresses. But providing self-help housing loans and construction help for urban squatter settlements, in many cases, has been a dilemma for squatters and the organizations, case studies show that.

Taking a case study from Bangladesh, The Grameen Bank is a co-operative non-governmental association that first began a loan program for the rural poor to help them initiate income generating schemes. Then, with the success of the program, they decided to extend the bank's credit support to house-building in 1984, to build flood and water resistant modest houses. The Grameen Bank low-cost loan housing program, provides each borrower loans of approximately US$ 350 at 5% interest for basic housing scheme. Besides the money as loan, the borrower receives four concrete columns, a prefabricated sanitary slab and 26 corrugated iron roofing sheets at a much lower price. The structural system is based on a standard module, the pre-cast building materials are mass-produced off site, and the families construct the houses themselves. This housing scheme has been proven very successful in rural areas, the program is continuing with building over 30,000 new homes each year. [ 8 ] The Grameen Bank Housing Project, along with its success story of winning ‘World Habitat Award’ in 1998, still has no scheme for urban poor. Reason behind is, urban poor living in squatter settlements has no permanent address, liability of issuing loan on their name then comes to a question for the organization. And, on the other hand, in case of improving squatter settlements by the residents, it was found on a survey that, residents were unlikely to invest time and capital for settlements that they don’t own. As an outcome in rural areas of Bangladesh, 95.4 per cent of the rural households with homes have ownership of the property compared to a figure of 71.5 per cent in urban areas, like Dhaka, in 2001.

Security of tenure is a critical factor contributing toward people's housing processes around the world. When communities of the urban poor do not have ownership rights to their settlement, the impulse toward improvement is decreased because there is no incentive to invest in something that they will eventually have no ownership right. Secure tenure to slum dwellers transforms their homes into a tangible asset. They can leverage their house to finance their work; they can rent out rooms for income support. Investment in community improvements and urban infrastructure build value into this tangible asset while improving the productivity of home-based enterprises. But even so, securing tenure is not without its complexities and often leads to indirect eviction. For instance, the value of the tenure after development is sometimes so high that the resident is forced by its own poverty to pass it on and instead find a new informal settlement for himself. In this case, simply giving property ownership to urban or rural poor has created an increase in poverty by placing slum dwellers at the mercy of a voracious property market. Developers, with an eye toward entrepreneurial development, tempt the owner to resell or rent the new property. As a result, the owner sells the tenure which they received as a ‘gift’, then go back to live in slum again. One of the main goals to improve living for urban squatters should be, to create tenure situations that work for communities without subjecting them to increased market forces. For instance, slum settlements in Sao paolo, Brazil are called ‘Favelas’, more than 50% of people living in these settlements are self-employed informal workers, who $500 on average per month. A housing development project named ‘Cingapura’ took place in some favelas during 1990’s, targeting these lower-income households. The concept was simple: rationalizing a favela by creating new-construction publicly funded housing, five or six-storey walkup flats, which are then sold to the residents who used to live there. After construction, a typical Cingapura property cost was considered affordable only for the upper-income households of favelas. Therefore, the intended beneficiaries were not helped by this housing program. The units were also considered as larger than families need, and poorly suited for self-employed informal workers living in the settlement. As a result, those who moved back to the new constructed housing project were often quite different from those that moved away [ 9 ] .

In our opinion, to address a solution for urban squatter settlements, firstly the squatters will have to work as a community, that can co-ordinate with their development plans along with Government and other organizations. Even by looking at the formation of this kind of settlements, they are the constructive results of collective efforts of a group or community. Development and maintenance of slums calls for on-going collective organization of land development, shelter-making, obtaining basic services and ensuring social security. But, in case of improving their conditions, they have to be more organized and expanded as a group. Moreover, urban poor have to be aware and educated of their rights and how they can work along with each other, take the lead role in improving their situations. For example, regarding the complex tenure situation in urban regions, the urban squatters, formed as an organization or as a group, can seek the help of government to allot unused, vacant lands on their organization/ group’s name, on the condition that, the property would be developed as housing used by the squatters themselves. Although cities often claim that, there is no land left for the poor, this is almost always untrue. When poor people learn about their own cities and educate themselves about development plans, they can challenge this fallacy.

The squatters can continue to play a central role in the design and construction of their homes and communities with the help of architects. Contemporary architectural practices and researches can set some design examples of low-cost ecological living settlements with basic living conditions provided (like-sanitation, water, electricity etc); these designs should be adapted to climates of different regions. The designs must fulfill the first condition of being affordable for urban squatters. Then, they should fulfill the criteria to be built in easy, traditional methods by the owners. Squatters have always been the architects, engineers and builders of their settlements, and here they can also play the role. The goal here is to use the knowledge and skills of the formal sector in complement to the skills of the informal sector- building quality houses without foreshadowing the participation of beneficiaries.

Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, located in South-East Asia, is one of the fastest growing mega-cities in the world, with slum populations seemingly outpacing the growth of other urban areas. In the city corporation areas, a study estimates that 35% of the population lives in slums, 43% of urban households live in poverty and 23% are considered to be extremely poor. Notwithstanding, the urban poor have been and continue to be largely excluded from national policies and urban planning processes and development plans. The vast majority of poor urban dwellers in Bangladesh cannot live without the fear of eviction; they have no social security either. But security of tenure, which means to ensure the right to have a secure home- a trigger point for helping communities develop. If households have improved security, they are willing to invest their own resources in improving their living environments, with the secondary health, social and economic benefits that follow. Land tenure security is therefore considered to be among the most important factors for reducing urban poverty in Dhaka. But due to complex land use regulation, it is almost impossible to rehabilitate slum dwellers before slum eviction. Moreover, Dhaka city requires between 55,000-83,000 housing units each year, whereas all public and private efforts together can only produce 25,000 housing units a year. Therefore, the low- income people do not have the scope to manage housing from private/public housing sector and they are compelled to live in slums.

Habitat for Humanity Bangladesh (HFHB), established in 1999, has served more than 6,000 poor families through building, renovating & retrofitting the houses, toilets, water sources and community facilities till now. In 2012, HFHB has initiated their first project for urban poor in Dhaka- a pilot project located at Talab Camp, Mirpur-12 area. The site had severe water logging and flooding issues, and this project directly addressed these issues by intervention of housing condition- raising the plinth height and converting mud floor into concrete floor. This improved the living condition of twenty-six poverty impacted families. The drainage system in the community was improved to avoid flooding- HFHB along with the user group cleaned 1,600 ft drain & repaired 900 ft drain with installation of slabs on the drain which is being using as walkway. They also replaced pipe drain for U-type RCC drain with slab and inspection chamber. For water supply, an underground water reservoir was constructed with tube well as a water collection point for the community. Water pipelines were replaced to ensure water flow in the reservoir. Locally available filtering devices were provided to 350 households for improving sanitation quality. One existing community toilet was renovated and overhead water reservoir with pump for running water facility was added. HFHB conducted ten appropriate training sessions for the existing 350 households people in Talab Camp where they taught about construction technology, waste management system and water drainage. Into all these activities, according to the ‘Habitat for Humanity’ motto, the user group took a strong role in building and improving their own settlement along with HFHB. Finally, together they were able to develop a Long Term Community Development Plan (CDP) for Talab Camp, which they named as “Building Resilience Urban Slum Settlement Project, Talab Camp, Mirpur-12”.

HFHB are planning for two more pilot projects within the urban Dhaka by 2015, where the motto aims to improve the living condition and facilities of the overall settlement rather than directly helping slum people to build their dwelling units on public lands.

In most of the efforts taken to improve conditions of urban squatter settlements by architects and designers- there has been the eviction of squatters, and re-settling them in vertical, high-rise buildings. In most of the designing of these buildings as replacement for squatters, their usual living pattern had been ignored- no open space for social activities and children had been provided. Moreover, dwellers were not involved to the process of the development. As a result, no ‘sense of belonging’ worked for those urban squatters on those settlements. For example, both Britain and France responded to housing shortages after the Second World War by constructing low quality, high-rise blocks. The consequence of this decision is that horizontal slums were replaced by "vertical ghettos". Even today, these high rise buildings constitute a serious problem to the people who live in them, because of increased insecurity and insularity, poor quality building materials, low standards and stigmatization of those areas. In a way, these vertical ghettos are often worse than the horizontal slums of previous decades as they lack a sense of community. One of the common characteristic in slums is that these are consisted of vibrant communities of people and incorporate a whole range of social and community spaces and facilities within their living. For example, every slum has a niche; small shrine or temple, mosque or church, based on their common faith, where they meet and have social gatherings. For most of these informal activities of social interacting; children playing, shopping, chatting etc they use from the most minimal space for social interaction at the door step, the circulation and open spaces, to the optimum community spaces for various social and cultural activities. Visiting in almost all of the squatter settlements, one can find the lack of basic human living needs in these settlements, like- sanitation, drinking water, ventilation in living units, crime etc. which couldn’t become a hindrance to the social living existing among them. As ‘Dharavi’ was mentioned earlier, in the development plan of the slum by internationally-renowned Architecture firm, Skidmore, Owings & Merrill (SOM), they plan to shift the slum by building blocks up to 14 storey high. On payment of a transfer fee, slum dwellers could become eligible for a 300-sq ft flat in Dharavi. According to Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA), they plan to use 4.5 lakh sq meters of built-up area from the total available 10.5 lakh sq meters for rehabilitation of slum dwellers; the remaining area will be used to build affordable houses for outsiders, and for the total construction. MHADA also plans to incorporate the development with high-end commercial activities for the city’s well-off inhabitants around the area. Designing an urban environment that equally and adequately addresses the vibrant Indian culture and commerce along with the unique social structure of slum dwellers is already a tremendous challenge for them. One of their design ideas is to recreate a similar sense of community that is present now; the new apartment blocks will have wide corridors and communal areas that mimic the current shantytown's streets and where children can play. However, this $750 million-budgeted project faces resistance from residents who have been in their shanties for generations and doubt that SOM can improve their lot. The implementation of this project has no publication where it shares the details, based on which we can have own judgment on their design. But the question should come, are these architects playing the ‘should-be’ role in their design process, which would support millions of squatter residents there?

In this point of designing high-rise settlements for urban poor, which the land value demands but contrary to their living attitudes, thoughts of Architect Laurie baker (1917-2007) could be mentioned. The architect was renowned for his initiatives in cost-effective energy-efficient architecture. In his writing, “What can we do with a slum?”, and he said in answer, “ A great deal. We can "recycle" it; that is to say, we can build at the same site low-cost structures that accommodate an equal number of persons, and provide plenty of open space and other facilities. ” He suggested simple-structured housing units in stepped tiers, up to four storey, incorporated with open spaces for recreational activities and Gardens at different levels [ 11 ] . During the timeline when the article was published, contemporary architecture’s practice of sustainable green buildings was not that much in vogue, but the idea of Laurie Baker holds the contemporary position from designer’s point of view. Question is, on the question of re-designing squatter settlements as healthy living units in the 21 st century cities, how the option of designing ‘high-rise, stepped building structures with dwelling units in combination with open spaces’ for squatters is being considered?

In contemporary architectural practice, pre-fabrication of structures is much discussed in question of replacing regular housing units. Though the structures need to be assembled with help of experts, but they can act as a platform in solving the urban squatter problems for their advantages of cost savings for mass production, quick assembly, re-assembling in different locations and erection. Pre-fabricated housing unit has been a great help as many post-disaster shelter alternatives, as a case study we can talk of South-Asian tsunami attacks in Sri-lanka on 2005. These structures can be built as higher storey, which can arrange less ground-cover for the settlements [ 6 ] .

From all these discussions, we can say that, squatter people always face insecurity regarding the ownership of the place where they live. But if they are provided assurance from Government organizations for actively participating into improving their settlements, the living condition into these squatters can improve rapidly. Looking at the characteristics and formation of squatter settlements all around the world, the living units in the slums are perhaps, the best examples of the most optimum utilization of living space. Moreover, the squatters use minimum building materials to create their living Space, which are easily available, like- old and used tin sheets, timber rafters, joists and posts, country tiles, plastic sheets and other recycled materials. [ 12 ] Use of traditional building materials in these settlements that are easily accessible from nature is also a character representing these dwellings. What these people mostly need in order to improve their living into sustainable settlements are- monetary help from Government, organized participation into constructing self-help housing along with local and recycling building materials, designer’s participation into making the spaces more comfortable for living within the constraint of structure and space. Solving all these issues together can definitely result into sustainable housing settlement for squatters and slums. Question that comes is- can this way of living not become a typology itself, when provided with all the necessities of a healthy living? These dwellings are using optimum space and resources from nature, which is the indication of living sustainable. How can architects and designers play in these parts, converting these squatter settlements to provide as healthy living pattern, while keeping these positive characteristics intact in the renewed solution? It has been observed that, from the history of improving squatter settlements in different regions, wherever appropriate upgrading policies and healthy living designs have been put in place, have become increasingly socially cohesive; offering opportunities for security of tenure, local economic development and improvement of conditions of their lives. In 21 st century living settlements around the world, when it is predicted, by 2050, two-thirds of humanity will be living in urban regions, and majority of them will be living in squatter settlements, then the question of providing adequate, healthy housing becomes a basic, emerging need for the increasing urban generations. This issue is not only about architect or designer’s role in providing proper housing; this is a complex issue addressing policies, economies and politics also. So, all these different dialogues have to be merged in transforming the squatter settlements as a way of healthy living in context of 21 st century. Lastly, the paper ends up with this question: Will the 21 st century be remembered as golden era of sustainable, socially conscious design, by providing an overall basic healthy living pattern for all?

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Case study: Dharavi

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6.4.1 Development of squatter settlements

6.4.3 problems and management.

Improvement schemes: Top-down approaches

• Top-down schemes are expensive large-scale plans, usually by the government, aimed to improving squatter settlements
• A $2 billion development project aims to rehouse slum dwellers in high-rise apartment blocks built next to the slum
• This is controversial as it will break the sense of community to the settlement

Improvement schemes: Bottom-up approaches

• Bottom-up schemes are cheaper and smaller plans usually by the community and NGOs to improve squatter settlements by helping the individual
• Self-help schemes give people the tools and training to improve their homes