In the mid-1990s, the state government of Maharashtra introduced an innovative strategy of slum redevelopment in its capital city, Mumbai (Bombay). Based on demolishing existing slums and rebuilding on the same sites at a higher density, it is very distinct from the two prevalent conventional strategies with respect to slums in developing countries - slum clearance and slum upgrading. So why did the slum redevelopment strategy originate in Mumbai, and how did it do so? What were the key issues in the implementation of such a project? This critical volume responds to these questions by closely examining one particular redevelopment project over a period of twelve years: the Markandeya Cooperative Housing Society (MCHS). It analyzes the problems faced and the solutions innovated; identifies non-traditional issues often overlooked in housing improvement strategies; reveals the complexities involved in housing production for low-income groups; and combines in-depth empirical research with historical, institutional, spatial and financial perspectives to improve our understanding of complex urban development processes.
Biography
Vinit Mukhija, Assistant Professor, Department of Urban Planning, School of Public Policy and Social Research, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
’This book weaves together in a masterful way spatial and social analyses of low-income housing delivery systems in developing countries. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in Mumbai, India, Professor Mukhija provides a unique insight into the institutional processes involving governments, nongovernmental organizations, market agents and community groups. Professor Mukhija's analysis goes far beyond the usual rhetoric of "private-public cooperation" and provides an astonishingly counter-intuitive description of institutional interaction which combines cooperation with conflict, state power with market forces, and community participation with community corruption. This is must reading for development planners.’ Professor Bishwapriya Sanyal, MIT, USA ’Just when we thought all of the arguments were in place for urban upgrading, self-help, and sites and services solutions to the world's low-cost housing problems, Vinit Mukhija presents a set of convincing arguments for slum redevelopment with impressive empirical evidence to back it up, from an ambitious housing project in Mumbai. Squatters as Developers? is "must" reading for those who analyze housing, urban politics, residential finance, urban planning, and social development, and particularly for those striving to find workable solutions to the challenge of housing low income populations, whether they live in the slums of U.S. cities or the barrios of Latin America.’ Professor Leland S. Burns, University of Cambridge, UK ’’
