For a slum-free India, we need a new category of urban zoning
Improving slums to become neighbourhoods is a realistic approach to improving social outcomes
the buildings aren’t set back from the street or from their neighbours; and the road width (ROW) is between 5 metres to 1 metre - narrower than any of the mainstream urban roads, which go from arterial (42-60 metres) to sub-arterial (30 - 42 metres), to collector (30 -18 metres) to local (9-18 metres) and the smallest, sub-local ( 6-9 metres).
So how could an ex-slum fit into the formal fabric of a city? Are the buildings that stand cheek-by-jowl, on 10x10 sites to be considered legal, illegal, or quasi-legal? Can a formal retail store such as a D-mart actually rent a space inside one of these ex-slums? The answer is that slums are in a regulatory limbo. They are the twilight zones of urban plans.
What we need is a new category of urban zoning, called High Density Low Income that allows for narrow lanes, buildings with no setbacks and higher FSI (floor space index, which defines the area that can built on a plot, across floors), mixed use to enable formal commercial space to coexist with residences, common (and possibly high-rise) parking so that residents can park their 2 (and sometimes even 4) wheelers, and walk to their neighbourhood homes.
With such a new zoning provision, we can conceive a three-pronged approach to slumfree cities: first, provision of clear, free title to the residents, so that they enjoy the same privileges that the middle-class and rich do, of using property as a tangible asset; second, to upgrade the infrastructure and services in the slum, providing water, power, and sewage connections to individual homes, the collection of solid waste, street lighting and neighbourhood security and police support; and third, the creation of high-density, low income zoning that allows individual property owners to upgrade their homes without risk, rent out their properties to formal commercial establishments, that then provide services to the neighbourhood, and offer local employment.
Earlier this month, an “Opportunity Atlas” report was released in America — a joint initiative by the US Census Bureau and Harvard and Brown Universities. Using hyper-local socio economic data, the study covers 20 million children, and finds a significant link between where children grow up and the outcomes of their lives in adulthood: across income, criminal conduct, teen pregnancies. The study concludes that growing up in better neighbourhoods, with better infrastructure, around people who have jobs, is more likely to help children of low-income families escape poverty and improve social mobility outcomes .
While there is no similar study for India’s slums, it is hard not to believe that this would be true here as well — that there is an inescapable link between our pin codes and our destiny. Improving slums to become neighbourhoods is a realistic approach to improving social and economic outcomes, and actually creating a slum-free India. The destiny of millions of slum dwellers depends upon our policy makers getting this right, and soon.