Mumbai

Innovations in incremental housing finance take hold despite an adverse policy environment

"Housing for All" in India focusing on the poor will remain a key electoral mandate for successive government irrespective of party affiliations. The only expectation with the upcoming national elections in India later this year 2014 is for a change in policy perspective to truly facilitate housing for the poor. There are workable and scalable housing solutions abound and the policy makers need only look at field practices to design policy that is flexible and accommodates these innovations rather than stifling them. Read more.

Submitted by Rakhi Mehra — Thu, 03/20/2014 - 08:22

Retooling 'Cities for Life': New approaches to urban infrastructure and service provision

To me, the more difficult part of this question may not be answering what a more equity-driven approach to city infrastructure would look like — but figuring out how we would get there from here. In Chennai, we have interacted with government servants from a number of agencies that regularly deal with the urban poor, such as officials from the Slum Clearance Board or the city department that builds and maintains public toilets. Especially in India, government officials are often portrayed as corrupt and lazy, barriers to better governance. However, what we have found is that many officials are actually sincere and hardworking, but that they themselves face barriers that prevent them from taking actions that benefit the poor and create a more equitable city Read more.

Submitted by Editor — Thu, 03/13/2014 - 15:43

Urban planning and design: laws, regulations, and the informal city

Like many emerging cities around the world, Mumbai faces complex challenges related to rapid urbanization. The land-starved peninsula city has grown chaotically over the last couple of decades. Economic liberalization in the early 1990s opened up new opportunities across the country, particularly in cities, attracting millions of rural migrants seeking a better life. With few plans in place to handle the mass influx, Mumbai has developed into a city of massive disparities: official figures say upwards of 50 percent of the city lives in notified slums, yet slum dwellers occupy just 8.75 percent of habitable land. The population density is among the highest in the world at 20,000 people per square kilometer — a statistic that has nearly doubled since the 1991 census. In Dharavi, long known as Asia's largest slum, that density spikes: a half-million people are packed into one square kilometer. Read more.

Submitted by Carlin Carr — Sat, 03/01/2014 - 10:43

Mumbai's mangroves are key to urban resiliency

Mumbai has 149 kilometers of coastline — an enormous asset but also one of the city's greatest vulnerabilities. After the 2004 tsunami that caused widespread devastation across Southeast Asia, coastal cities began to reevaluate their resiliency in the face of another major storm. Areas that weathered the tsunami best were those with thriving mangroves, a natural buffer between the land and sea. Mangroves protect the "assault of the sea on land," according to the Soonabai Pirojsha Godrej Marine Ecology Centre, which supported the protection of Mumbai's mangroves. The Centre describes these vibrantly diverse ecosystems as "more dynamic than the sea itself." Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Carlin Carr — Tue, 02/11/2014 - 16:18

Stopping violence against children starts in schools

In February 2010, 12-year-old Rouvanjit Rawla, a student at a prestigious school in Kolkata, committed suicide after being humiliated and caned by his principal. The Rawla incident set off a firestorm of controversy over widespread accounts of corporal punishment in India's schools - from the most elite institutions to those run by the government. The Ministry of Women and Child Development subsequently banned physical punishment of students, stating of the consequences, "The first violation of the ban will invite up to one year in jail, or a fine of Rs. 50,000 or both. For subsequent violations, imprisonment could be extended to three years with an additional fine of 25,000 rupees," says an article on the issue. Despite the measures, reports of students continuing to receive harsh physical and verbal abuses from their superiors continue to plague India's school system. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Carlin Carr — Mon, 02/03/2014 - 00:00

What 2013 taught India about including women in urban planning

This time last year, a horrific event took place in India. A young girl and her male friend took a late-night bus ride in Delhi after a movie; it ended up being the girl's last. In the bus, she was gang raped and so brutally assaulted that even an emergency medical flight to Singapore couldn't save her. The incident sparked national and international outrage; protestors poured into the streets of India's major cities to force more stringent laws to protect women against violence. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Carlin Carr — Mon, 12/23/2013 - 00:00

Exciting projects and new books from Mumbai for the holidays

In early November, the Duchess of York and Prince Charles visited Mumbai. The royal couple had many stops on their itinerary, but one of those was a very special project we featured for this issue last year, Mumbai Mobile Creches. For decades the organization has been quietly working in the most invisible parts of the city — the construction sites where families from poor villages around the country make their home temporarily to engage in this work for months or years on end. Mumbai Mobile Creches provides a school and daycare for the children of these families, and has expanded into working to help them receive proper medical care and check-ups. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Carlin Carr — Mon, 12/16/2013 - 00:00

Sanitation as a human right

At a recent sanitation roundtable discussion at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF), a public policy think tank in Mumbai, Chairman Sudheendra Kulkarni said that Mahatma Gandhi believed sanitation was more important than political independence. In 2010, the UN declared access to sanitation a human right. Despite the increased emphasis, says Dhaval Desai, a senior researcher at ORF, the two are rarely linked. "If one agrees that there is a connect between lack of access to clean and hygienic sanitation and global statistics on poverty, malnutrition, infant mortality, maternal health, diseases, education, and gender, then it is impossible to deny sanitation as an intrinsic human rights issue." Desai, who specializes in water and sanitation issues, discussed with us the importance of this human rights issue and some promising ways forward. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Carlin Carr — Mon, 12/09/2013 - 00:00

Is Walkability Only About Mobility?

Walkability and green spaces are not the same thing, but it feels as if they ought to be related somehow. This is because walkability in its most basic form is more than some version of "is possible to walk there", but also "is possible and pleasant to walk there." Or is it? One published definition of walkability, for example, is: "The extent to which the built environment is friendly to the presence of people living, shopping, visiting, enjoying or spending time in an area." (from Walkability Scoping Paper, 2005). All the action is in the word "friendly", and there's a lot of unpacking to do. Read more.

Submitted by David Maddox — Fri, 11/08/2013 - 12:17

Mumbai's children risk life and limb on their walk to school

Mumbai's streets are a scary battleground. Rickshaws nudge ahead of beastly city buses; cows wander aimlessly through jams of oversized cars; and pedestrians push across busy intersections in droves, hoping the power in numbers will help them reach the other side safely. Everyone is vulnerable in this situation, but no one more than the thousands of school children who walk to school, often in the streets, in the absence of school buses and navigable sidewalks. Read more or join the discussion.

Submitted by Carlin Carr — Mon, 11/04/2013 - 00:00

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