Rethinking Slums

Slums are a major part of India, there’s simply no way around that. People residing in them make up a measurable part of the India population, they are visible around almost every city, and they are often used by other cultures as portrayals of life in India (see “Slumdog Millionaire”). But while in America there is a stigma around living in impoverished communities such as public housing, that same thing does not exist as much in India, and therefore that has changed the approach towards developing and improving the slums here, and resulted in some ideas and approaches that should be brought back to the US.

The two major things we have learned here regarding low cost affordable housing in India here have been 1) use architectural and design techniques to keep costs down and make buildings more environmentally friendly and 2) make sure you understand the needs of the people and consider them when designing the building and community. 

The first point is a good principal upon which to operate, but in practice what works in India is difficult to translate to the US on a point by point basis. The cultures, climates, materials, economies are so different that many of the things we have learned regarding this during the class simply won’t translate as well to the United States for one reason or another.

The second point however, is a very valid one, and in studying and touring the slum redevelopment project we were able to see how important this is. What this idea means is that just building new apartments for people living in the slums here isn’t enough to address their issues and improve their quality of life, because a nice building is not all they need. By listening to the people, the designers at Costford the group that we are partnering with for the course, were able to see how much community, transportation, job access, and a sense of ownership were important to the people to be helped by the redevelopment project.

Addressing these needs meant keeping the redeveloped slums in the same areas where people could still get to their jobs, and building communities where people could still have the same neighbors they have always had, and creating a system that lets them buy into the property and have a sense of ownership and pride about where they lived. It’s a new model, quite different from the one that has been emphasized in the United States for so long that merely seeks to provide fancy new buildings to our urban poor, often times located far away from centers of employment, and calling it a day after the residents have been moved in. 

Indians that live in the slums here, which really are makeshift housing encampments that have resulted due to India’s explosive urbanization and slow moving and bureaucratic housing and construction sector, don’t simply yearn to leave the slums because they look shabby and polluted. They are communities of people who want good jobs, access to education, and to maintain the community ties that they have developed, and who also want better services and a chance to move up in the world, but not by sacrificing everything they already have. 

I think we could learn a lot from this model of bottom up community development of affordable housing. If we really focus on listening and learning from those we are trying to help, we might just succeed more than we had originally be able to. And it’s not that what works in India, such as the specific examples given above, will work in the US, but that the idea of approaching it from a more responsive development perspective, and working to ensure that the needs of the community are met, will lay the groundwork for developments that are more successful in helping them achieve their goals.