SLUM ?

from Architecture Thesis-Slum towards Inclusive & Sustainable development

SLUM TOWARDS INCLUSIVEAND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

(Source-https://leher.org/library/who-cares-about-one-missing-child-in-an-indian-slum-another-child/)

There are some problems that seems beyond solution ,because either there cause is unknown or they are not well understood.

But there are some problems as well that are so toxically intertwined among themselves that they cannot be addressed or identified easily.

And that what’s the Slums are!

But what Government and other organizing sectors think that just by putting these settlements into a high-rise building giving them the basic infrastructure and services will solve there problem.

Is it so?

See these figures 1a & 1b on to the left, These are the present on-site images of the nearby slum rehabilitation project of the site which I had took for my thesis

Does the problem resolved or getting even more worse from where they used to live before?

The image which you see here is of the slum which I have selected for my thesis. Isn't it more organised, better and nicer??

Think once…

Figure-3

Source- https://www.science.org/content/article/i-grew-slums-india-now-i-m-scientist

So can we now say,

Slums are-

•A place of experimenting innovative ways of saving resources and energy.

• In there own way labs for everyday urban life, and,

•Labs for the sustainable city.

You will be guessing

Innovation and slums?

Let me replace the word innovation with there local word “

” .

Will it be fine now?

While dealing with so many harsh conditions in there day to day life and going from wall to wall, moving from tins to bricks. They move in building from bamboo, tarpaulin sheets, plastic, to cardboard, to tin, to bricks and cement, just like the way one do while learning and experiencing each & everyday.

Just like reconstructing there spaces with available materials, they have the knowledge of fixing almost all different types of materials they came across.

1. Introduction to Design

•Slums occupy little space and are very densely concentrated. They illustrate what urban developers like to call “the city on the city”.

•Buildings are rarely more than one or two stories high, but they allow large households to live in limited spaces.

•Slums are resourcefulness labs. Everything is recycled and resold.

•What the rest of the city would see as waste is a resource. It can be used to build a new object that becomes (or goes back to being) goods.

•Frugality breeds constantly innovate and innovation takes hold faster where institutions and regulations are weak.

•Slums are the forced sites of frugal innovation, so often highlighted today.

•There is nothing as modular as slums, taken as urban forms. Metal sheets, tents and precarious developments evolve constantly.

• Quickly arranged and quickly moved, these buildings transform and adapt permanently.

•Where the road and the cars are rare, the preferred means of travel is on foot – also known as “soft mobility.”

Life is hard but mobility is easy.

•People move on foot, by bike, by rickshaw, or with collective taxis, usually colorful minibuses, which have become associated with these neighborhoods.

•In small spaces, commercial premises are intermingled with production and residential spaces.

•Nowhere else can such extreme proximity and blending of functions be found.

•One hut or cabin serves as home, the next as stall or workshop.

•Another is used as housing by night and a store by day. In functional terms, it would be difficult to blend things any further.

•From the small, informal and illegal shops to factories, high levels of production come alongside very low labor costs.

•It is useful to the world, because large slums, especially in Asia, are home to workshops that export globally.

•Where inhabitants are left to their own devices, they suffer crime, but they also demonstrate self-protection, self-construction, self-promotion and self-management skills.

•They participate in the organization of their daily lives, because when faced with an absence or lack of collective services, they are forced to invest themselves.

•Those who consume little (like most poor people) pollute little.

• Slums live with few resources and recycle as much as they can. In a sense, they are naturally better for the environment, all other things being equal.

•The digital revolution has a greater impact on the lives of slum dwellers than on other inhabitants of the city.

•From the cadaster to the reconstruction of plans, and even traffic lanes, the analysis of data collected from the telecommunication networks helps to build what slums have lacked since their creation: the first steps of urban planning.