More habitable space for good quality of life
As Indian cities battle with Covid-19, some of the densest residential areas have emerged as hotspots. The pandemic highlights the failure of urban planning that has led to the creation of such dense habitation spaces. Take the example of Seelampur, a sub-district in North-east Delhi and home to migrants. In the absence of timely improvement of basic amenities and infrastructure, the housing stock has remained inexpensive. At 54,000 persons per sq km, its density is more than four times that of Delhi.
By comparison, L’hospitalet de Llobegrat, a neighbourhood in Barcelona considered the most densely populated square kilometre in Europe, has a density of 53,119 persons per sq km, marginally less than Seelampur. Yet, Llobegrat is a well-managed neighbourhood that provides its residents a fairly good quality of life. Despite similar densities, Llobegrat has almost twice the number of dwelling units compared to Seelampur, ensuring much higher per capita availability of habitable space i.e. the amount of living space available to each member of a given household. Llobegrat household size is only 2.6 persons. At 5.6 persons per household, Seelampur has the highest average household size of any sub-district in Delhi.
In our sketch, we show how a colony like Seelampur could be made more habitable. In its current form, a nine-metre wide road is the primary street, but it lacks pedestrian facilities, and it is often overrun with traffic and crowds. The narrow lanes (three to five-metre wide) between the buildings that abut the main street and those on the smaller plots behind, are unpleasant for residents. What’s more, the four to five-storey high buildings on these plots (which roughly measure 125 sqm) receive very little light and ventilation, and do not have any open space that can be used by the community. Even the dwellings are exceedingly small for the size of families that live there. Health care and educational facilities, too, are almost non-existent.
However, through a market-responsive urban renewal programme comprising plot redevelopment, plot amalgamation and street widening, the same density can be accommodated with better quality of life. Redeveloping the plots would mean an increase of the built-up area, which in turn guarantees greater habitable space per person. It would also mean wider streets with augmented infrastructure and planned retail and commercial outlets. Amalgamating plots would not only create larger dwellings, but also neighbourhood amenities and open spaces. The existing lanes and alleys should be retained for public access within these reconfigured plots. The main street can be given better pedestrian facilities, retrofitted with wider footways, landscape, and seating for the public, to create a vibrant environment.
Plots abutting 9m primary street lacks civic infrastructure, public space; In the re-imagined graphic below, we see more built-up area, wider streets
Small-scale plots, accessed by 5m and 3m lanes, get very limited light, have no open space; In the graphic, we see larger dwellings, shared spaces, amenities
Similar small scale plots, but more linear in their form; In the graphic below, we retain these plots to showcase the difference in development of habitable spaces