12. Conclusions and Way Forward

Conclusions and Limitations

The studio created an interesting discussion around the phenomenon of urbanization and what exactly does it mean to urbanize in the 21st century. Urban villages are not the textbook example of rural becoming urban as each urban village is an unique entity in itself, strongly rooted in its historic and cultural origins. That is why the challenge of way forward for urban villages in general becomes two dimensional as each village is like an unique specimen requiring careful contextual study and precise intervention. The mechanism of land amalgamation and incentivization of FSI leads to more complex problems pertaining to execution and management of the project, which is one of the limitations of this project. The Pilot offsets a chain of events that further complicates the situation of the village. At the end of the day, the transformation arc projected in this report is speculative and can be imagined in a very different way. But the heart of the discussion is at the importance of these urban villages and the ramifications of a tabula rasa approach. A simplistic approach can erase the memory of this settlement and replace it with the standard housing typology. But the niche population it takes care of, especially low cost housing and intimate social and heritage values carried by it, will be lost permanently, and its a challenge worth taking for the cause of modern urban design and planning.

One of the limitations of the project could be the extent of transformation that was triggered under the pretext of land amalgamation, which ends up creating a new housing stock but at the same time can imply the onset of gentrification, which is an undesirable side effect of urban regeneration. However, the whole design process was a challenging exploration of modern urban planning and transformation mechanisms and the unique lessons that can be learned by looking at different environments and policies.

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