The City of Utopia: Amaurotum

Housing the poor: a study of Aranya, India.

Thomas Barker
Deakin University, Geelong, Australia

ABSTRACT: Due to a growing number of urban poor in the major cities of developing countries, there has been a large-scale international effort to implement an appropriate solution to housing the urban poor. Some of these systems have worked and some have not. This paper will consider Aranya low-cost housing in India as an example of an architecturally planned master scheme where slum dwellers have been displaced from their illegal dwellings. The paper will also consider what lessons can be learnt from its considered successes and its relevant failures to see whether or not this type of development is pertinent as a contemporary means of housing the poor. The research finds that four major areas are essential to making low income development plausible for the future: government investment; adequate service provision; appropriate construction techniques; and government regulations.

Keywords: Aranya, Housing, Slums


INTRODUCTION
Due to an inability to keep up with housing the massive increase in urban populations in developing countries during the latter half of the 20th century, there has been a significant increase in the growth of slum settlements. Since 1950 the proportion of people working in developing country agriculture has declined by 20 to 30 per cent. (Sustainable Urbanisation, 2007) and the immigrant urban poor have largely moved from the country side to the cities. They have done this voluntarily in order to exploit actual or perceived economic opportunities and this increasing urban informal sector is spectacularly visible in the many growing and large scale informal and squatter settlements in urban centres. (Sustainable Urbanisation, 2007) Various attempts to find a valid urban and architectural housing solution to the slum crisis have been initiated by a wide range of professionals. Following some general background information to the problem of slum housing, this paper defines the three main types of urban renewal that have been pursued to solve the problem. One of the solutions has been to relocate slum dwellers to new townships and to demolish the slums in which these dwellers have lived and this paper considers in detail the success of Aranya Township, India where the new build solution has been implemented. Aranya Township is a respected example of these new settlements but, despite the architectural brilliance of this township, it has failed to show itself as an effective way to house the poor. This paper will describe how and why Aranya Township has failed and determine if the lessons learnt support an alternative solution. Incorporating these lessons may help to make these types of development a viable option for the future.

1. SLUM CREATION
One third of the world’s population lives in slums, a slum being defined by UN Habitat as “a place of residence lacking one or more of five things: durable housing, sufficient living area, access to improved water, access to sanitation and secure tenure.” (BBC, 2006) Otiso agrees that the main contributing factors to the creation of slum areas are: (1) poor planning, (2) weak municipal governments, and (3) excessive rural to urban migration rates. (Otiso, 2003) Slum areas are generally formed by unprecedented rural to urban migration (Dündar, 2001) and the three conditions specified by Otiso are the characteristic issues in slums in developing countries. A further difficulty is that slums are often found along railway tracks, river banks, under flyovers and on pavements near work places; (Chatterji , 2007) Thus there is magnified cost implications of supplying these areas with basic services, and the difficulty in getting into the “chaotic jumble of ramshackle dwellings.”(Steele, 1998:115)

Various strategies have been used to attempt to redevelop slum areas by the state, voluntary and private sectors in housing. These groups have a variety of strengths and weaknesses with respect to housing service and delivery. (Otiso, 2003) And they have various ways they have used to redevelop slum areas. These include: non-displacement through “enabling” (Beard, 2004:366) development; displacement through demolition and regeneration; displacement through slum renovation and new townships. However, each of the solutions highlights one of the major issues with hutment redevelopment which is the problem that derives from moving people out of tight-knit community groups with the existing economic ‘security’.

2. TYPES OF RENEWAL
Traditionally there have been three kinds of slum renewal. These are: self help, where dwellers are supported by governments to reinvigorate their existing dwellings themselves; rebuild, where existing slum dwellings are demolished and new housing arrangements are emplaced onto the existing site and new-build where dwellers are moved into new housing in a new area. The following sections further explore what these different systems encompass.

2.1 Self Help
Self help is a system introduced in which governments simply increase infrastructure and services and allow dwellers to upgrade and maintain their dwellings themselves. This essentially requires governments to supply security of tenure so that dwellers are comfortable in upgrading their housing stock, as there is no fear that they will lose the land or the block. This is desirable on several levels and, in particular local commercial activity allows dwellers to maintain their existing economic structures and thus does not disturb these life-sustaining activities. (Mahmud, 2003) Also it does not take them from the central areas in which they have located themselves in order to have the best retail / commercial opportunities. One of the major complaints by slum dwellers in Turkish Gecekondus who were displaced was the loss of neighbourhood relations and mutual support because of the new complicated and intricate ownership structure, which was damaging the fabric of society. That resulted in these projects transferring the economic and social problems to other parts of the city.

Slum dwellers positioned within these ‘ramshackle’ communities create a culture of support and fellowship. If the dwellings on the land that they are currently occupying are renovated then there are possibilities for these community groups to be maintained and intensified. However, it is the style of renovation that is important here, as inconsiderate renovation can be detrimental.
Property rights are not strictly enforced, where land registration and cadastres are incomplete, where officially-sanctioned city plans are rarely taken seriously, where much land subdivision and construction proceeds without permits, where enforcement is intermittent and often corrupt, and where a large part of the citizenry cannot afford minimum standard shelter.(Angel, Civco, Sheppard, 2005)
Self help systems ‘enable’ squatters to own their own land in a secure way through government land de-regulation and depots that supply materials at cost for house renovations. Through the supply of better amenities such as education, medical and service provision as well as the improved housing, this system allows dwellers to stay where they are, whilst at the same time increases their living standard.

2.1 Rebuild
In rebuild development systems, existing slum sites are maintained but the buildings that are on them are rebuilt. This is different from self help in that municipalities briefly move dwellers off the land whilst they construct new tenements or buildings. This system is wrought with difficulties as due to the high land cost in the areas that the slums have previously occupied, residents cannot afford the better housing supplied to them. For example, in the Turkish Gecekondus the slum ‘client’ often couldn’t afford the rent of renovated or new build plots and thus the renewal had the affect of moving residents to (and placing greater strain on) other city slums and their already weak infrastructure.

It is not always appropriate to replace these areas with buildings. Le Corbusier, for example, in his Modernist Athens Charter, suggested in 1943:
An elementary knowledge of the principal notions of health and sanitation is sufficient to detect a slum building and to discriminate a clearly unsanitary city block. These blocks must be demolished, and this should be an opportunity to replace them with parks. (Le Corbusier, 1973:70)

This does not help the housing issue and is an idealistic view of what to do with slum developments; but this western modernist movement view inspired the rebuild method. Instead of simply demolishing slums, they were demolished and on the land newer more modern buildings were planted. Almost all developing countries have adopted zoning and land subdivision regulations, as well as building codes and standards, but these have often been copied unchanged from industrialized countries. (Angel, Civco, Sheppard, 2005) Thus the buildings that are constructed in the place of the old slum developments in those countries do not properly respond to many of the necessary factors that are needed for cultural and climatic particulars that are specific to those areas.

2.3 New Build
The term ‘new build’ refers to housing developments where governments commandeer plots of land predominantly on the outskirts of the city and housing stock is placed on them and inner city squatters moved there. This is done through a site and services scheme. There have been other examples of this where the new build developments are urban high rise apartment buildings. Integral to the techniques used for the development of slum areas and the supply of infrastructure and design of planning is that it is easier to develop new housing schemes than it is to redevelop old ones. Funds, if managed properly, can be directed to where they are needed most. In this system dwellers are relocated and can lose valuable economic placement, their goods no longer can be sold at convenient-to-reach locations and thus informal income is compromised. Often developments in the new areas have opportunities for work and new industry; however these may not be appropriate industries for residents, as they may need to learn new skill sets. As the UN Millennium Projects report suggests.
To facilitate the shift into the formal sector, local authorities should adjust their laws and regulations to lower the costs and increase the benefits for people to formalize their enterprises. They should also provide assistance to small enterprises to upgrade skills and increase access to productive resources and market opportunities. (UN Millennium Project Report, 2006)

In this style of development the original communities are ‘lost’ and new communities are contrived. Forming a harmonious community following this dislocation is a difficult and arduous task. In some new townships the design allows for existing communities and family groups to be retained but without such proper consideration ‘class’ may subvert the idea of ‘community’.

It is obvious that new townships receive better infrastructure than most dwellers have been used too. However, this does not mean that the new infrastructure is satisfactory, or that it allows for increased density. In particular, where infrastructure is to be shared, services can often fall into disrepair and become hazardous rather than helpful. The “large majority of urban authorities in developing countries do not engage in realistic minimal preparations… investing in the minimal infrastructure.”(Angel, Civco, Sheppard, 2005:101)

3. ARANYA LOW COST HOUSING, INDORE, 1983-89
Due to “unprecedented dimensions of rural to urban migration” (Dündar, 2001:391) during the middle of the 20th century, many of the developing nations saw a massive increase in city population densities and struggled to provide sufficient housing for these new developments. This happened in “India, resulting in urban areas where nearly 23% of the population of well over 800 million now live” (Steele, 1998:114) and “in India… many of the present environmental maladies have been attributed to the pressure resulting from high population density.”(Siddiqui, Pandey, 2003:600)

To counter the problem of illegal squatter settlements, (this “urban cancer” (Ward, 1976:331)), the Indian government sought to engage different architects and urban planners to consider and implement unique housing solutions. In the township of Aranya, in the Indore Valley, the Indore Development Authority commissioned Vastu-Shilpa Foundation (VSF) (led by Balkrishna V. Doshi) to perform work on a new housing development primarily designed for the Economically Weaker Sector (EWS).
The following is an appraisal of the solution for Aranya Nagar (Aranya low-cost housing) on which construction started in 1983. Indore, a commercial centre for the state of Madhya Pradesh, is typical of urban areas throughout India in that it suffers from acute housing shortages. The solution of the housing shortage was not only to upgrade slums but also to create a new ‘site and service’ scheme to provide for new housing (Steel, 1998:115). A policy such as this offers some hope of lessening the pressures of large-scale migration from subsistence agriculture directly into the biggest cities. It can also provide alternative settlement systems designed to achieve more balanced regional development. (Declaration of Vancouver Symposium, 1976)

Turner outlines much of the problem with slum settlements, where typically up to 45% of the population is below 15 years of age; fertility is high but so is infant mortality (particularly from gastro-enteric diseases); household size is six but there are about eight or nine people per house; unemployment is high among women and young people, unemployment is common among heads of household (usually men); education and skill standards are low; the majority of households own their house (but not the land) and a small portion are renters and only a very small proportion of houses have sanitary facilities or water supply. (Turner, 1980) Although men are considered the heads of household women are understood to play a key role in the economic security of dwellings without which the dwelling would perish. (Mahmud, 2003) These poor conditions that are found throughout many slum areas are also referred to by Abelson who found further that half of adults in slums are illiterate, few slum households have private tap water, only half the slums have public tap water, and less than one in five slum houses owns a toilet. (Abelson, 1996) These descriptions accurately depict the situation in Aranya and were the catalyst for the Indore Development Authority to commission Aranya which is described by VSF as “an holistic environment rooted in the socio-cultural and economic milieu of the urban poor.” (Doshi, 1988:28)

To counter these issues VSF set out four objectives in its design: (1) to create a township where a sense of continuity and fundamental values of security exist in a good living environment; (2) to achieve a community character by establishing harmony between the built environment and the people; (3) to create a balanced community of various socio-economic groups, encouraging co-operation, tolerance and self-help generated through a physical planning process; and (4) to evolve a framework through design, where incremental development can take place within legal, economic and organisational guidelines.(Mahmud, 2003) These objectives seem similar to a simple statement by Patrick Geddes almost 40 years before the inception of Aranya namely that “town planning is not mere place-planning nor even work-planning. If it is to be successful it must be folk-planning.”(Geddes, 1947:22) Four main issues have been responsible for the lack of success of the project. These are: government investment, Construction Standards, service provision and retention of dwellers. These issues are described in more detail below.

3.1 Government Investment
The total investment in housing in India declined from 34 percent in the First Five Year Plan in 1951 for national development to a mere 7.4 percent in the draft of the Sixth Five Year Plan. (Ekram, 1995) This was a drastic reduction in the amount of money that governmental bodies were willing to give to the development of housing and resulted in a massive growth of ramshackle hutments. The reduction also related to the monetary provision by government for the upgrading and constructing of housing at the time of implementation of Aranya low cost housing and Ekram later noted that the public sector contribution to Aranya was only 1.5 percent of the total. (Ekram, 1995)(Government of India Planning Commission, 2008) This was still a “Rs. 100 million” (Hill, 1998) (US $2,175,805 year 2000 rates) contribution by the government to the project.

This reduction in funding called for a partnership with the private sector. However, there is no evidence of any NGO activity concerned with community participation. (Khosla, 1995) The reason is outlined by Otiso who states that the problem of NGOs are that they lack in-depth knowledge of local communities and that included in this is that they fail to promote community participation themselves : “this sector cannot single handedly meet the needs of poor urban residents because it lacks the capacity to do so.” (Otiso, 2003:222) In lieu of this he suggests that there be trisector partnerships [that] foster success by utilizing mutual strengths and skills, promoting community participation, local capacity building, self help and empowerment, efficient resource mobilisation and diffusion of best practices. (Otiso, 2003:223)

During implementation there should be a joint venture between many bodies involved and that this should result in a reduced monopoly by any one body.(Sivam, 2003) Rather than NGOs the onus should be on Community Based Organisations (CBOs) to deliver the services and community support for development schemes as these are ‘grass-roots’ community organisations. The development and community participation in Aranya was assumed by the architect as an accepted cultural phenomenon, but this was not so. Due to the inability of the relevant bodies such as the Indore Municipality Council (IMC) to force dwellers to stay at their allotted site, the scheme was made ineffective.

3.2 Construction Standards
Due to the elimination of price controls the cost of living heavily increased in India during the Sixth Five Year Plan. What government housing stock was produced was usually still above the financial means of the urban poor, whose inability to obtain affordable housing and services thereby continued due this imposition of unattainable building and infrastructure standards. (Otiso, 2003) Concentration on poverty levels by government did not come into the fore of the Five Year Plans until the recent Tenth Five Year Plan 2002 – 2007.(Government of India Planning Commission, 2008) This all lead to slum dwellers finding it very difficult to afford or maintain new living conditions. Because of the intricate ownership structure, these projects also tended to exclude dwellers and thus shift the problems to the other areas of the city. (Dündar, 2001)

At the inception of Aranya there were only 80 display homes built in order to show the flexibility of housing and the kind of space that could be expected from the overall development once complete. VSF wanted to concentrate on a scheme that would allow for “flexibility and elasticity at all levels of planning [that] should ensure that the proposals put forward can respond dynamically to any feedback received.” (Doshi, 1996:28) After the initial display homes were constructed the rest of the project was left to be built by local residents without appropriate municipal support. Unfortunately, there is still a tree-less 81 ha building site (Khosla, 1995) almost 10 years after the inception of the project.

Aranya depends on ‘material banks’, financed by the higher income groups. However, there was no institution that was responsible for these material nodes. (Steel, 1998) The structures were constructed with load bearing brick walls, plastered and painted, and floors were cement concrete. The CRC roof was always constructed at a later stage as it was a high investment item. (Ekram, 1995) Formulated service and infrastructure designs were rigidly followed.

For the middle and higher income groups, normal market mechanisms ensured that houses were constructed for those able to afford them, and although provision was made for the lower income groups, the method of housing delivery left them in a disadvantageous situation. It is necessary for means to be made available for the poorest families to provide depots where at-cost building materials may be obtained, as well as financial assistance and technical advice. (Turner, 1980) Many strategies have failed due to reliance on inappropriate designs, construction technology, and conventional building materials. (Otiso, 2003) This is evidenced by the use of the complicated and expensive CRC roof that left dwellers unable to house roof themselves simply and rapidly. “This can be solved by decisions to involve the private sector in housing delivery” (Sivam, 2003) and allowing NGOs to provide technical, financial, and material assistance. (Otiso, 2003) Which alleviates the municipality from concerning itself with much of the fiscal burden and thus allows it to concentrate on the management of the site and provision for further infrastructure.


3.3 Service Provision
If governments do not allow for a relaxation in building regulations to allow for a more generic service provision of at least some adequacy, slum dwellers are left with an insurmountable health, welfare, and sanitary situation. In the case of Aranya, the idea that every house had a service core could have been detrimental over all rather than helpful. Thus it is imperative for governments to relax perceived standards in order to encourage minimal living conditions. Turner supports this relinquishing of many of the municipalities “inappropriate middle class values” (Ward, 1976:340) and states that
At the very lowest level, which is where the pressure is, the concept must be; a piece of land with security and very basic services, which may be no more than a common water point and pit latrines with unmade roads and footpaths.(Turner, 1980:80)
Although VSF supplied service cores all of the land plots, a local report in 1995 by Khosla claims that at Aranya water was only available half an hour a day. (Khosla, 1995) Is this truly a sufficient amount of supply for the 60,000 people originally proposed for this settlement?

EWS Service provision allowed for (i) site, plinth and service core (latrine and water tap); (ii) site, plinth and service core (latrine and bath); (iii) site plinth and service core (latrine and bath) and one room. (Ekram, 1995) Although this provision is an admirable sentiment by the architects, Turner, however, argues that this is inefficient and that its assumption is that dwellers can afford this service and is indicative of the question “do you want water on tap in each house?”(Turner, 1980:81) rather than “do you want water at a… common point for a group of houses at a cost much less per month?”(Turner, 1980:81) One must be careful however in the supply of service cores as Abelson, who disagrees with Turner, evaluated 170 slums in Visakhapatnam where government targets were for a public tap for every twenty households and a public toilet for each ten households. Abelson saw there was evidence of low maintenance of one third of the water supply and some public latrines were out of order within one year. (Abelson, 1996) At the time of the study, Abelson notes that the slums had weak institutional and financing methods for maintaining improvements and maintenance was left to dwellers, rather than being the domain of the municipality. He outlines that without proper organisation structures in place public service provision can be detrimental to the project rather than helpful. The other issue with public services is that as the area densities there is a greater strain on the public amenity and infrastructure and thus it soon is unable to cope with the necessities of the future.

3.4 Retention of Dwellers
The Aranya Low-Cost Housing Scheme won the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 1996 but despite constructing this award winning township one observer in a local report expressed alarm at the prevalence of brokering on the project site.” (Steel, 1998:121) This is not uncommon in slum redevelopment schemes. Dündar states one perceived problem was “illegal rent transfer to slum populations who have managed to obtain houses on land belonging to others” (Dündar, 2001:393) so that the population that the low cost housing development was built for earns money through selling or renting to other non-participants. Indeed it was envisaged that rooms would be rented out by dwellers, but not whole plots. This problem is again supported by Turner’s idea that unrealistic standards will inevitably result in the eventual occupation of the housing by a higher-income group than the intended families, who are unable to afford the rents to pay for the level of service provided. (Turner, 1980) In the case of Aranya, ‘only 15 to 20 percent of the original plot owners still held the plots originally allotted to them, with the resale price of plots averaging approximately ten times the original purchase price. (Steel, 1998)

Although the program in Aranya allowed for the dwellers to obtain security of tenure the Indore Development Authority quickly undermined the this by sending out ‘demand letters’ which outlined to the “beneficiaries the amount of unpaid instalments, the interest due on these, as well as the extent of the penalty for non-payment.”(Khosla, 1995:2) The effect was that dwellers were encouraged to sell up to avoid these consequences and thus spoiling the attempt by VSF to construct community involvement. This is in contrast to the method adopted by the Grameen Bank who loan money internationally their “loans are to communal groups, rather than individuals, making it harder to default. Loans are also only made to women since [they] are found to be more reliable than men in repayment.” (Steel, 1998:124) This system encourages the community aspect of the site and services scheme. In his slum evaluation, Abelson claims the Municipal Corporation of Visakhapatnam prevented households from selling pattas (‘good’ housing) when they are used for Housing Corporation loans or for the first five years of the grant. (Abelson, 1996) This encouraged those individuals who borrowed money or took government grants to be able to live in the new housing and to stay in the housing rather than earn money from it. Conversely the “VSF research at the grass roots suggests that the monthly incomes of the EWS groups are underestimated in the national statistics as they do not take into account the incomes from the informal sector and the practice of subletting to augment the incomes.” (Balkrishna, 1988:28)
In Aranya Township, Indore Valley, India, many residents sold their newly allotted land, Weak governance allowed the “prevalence of brokering on the project site.”(Steel, 1998:123) Also in Hassan Fathy’s New Gourna where a similar solution was imposed, “all of the architect's best intentions… were no match for the avariciousness of the Gournis themselves, who took every opportunity possible to sabotage their new village in order to stay where they were and to continue their own crude but lucrative version of amateur archaeology.” (Steele, 1989:17) These two brief examples show that when developing new townships for slum dwellers, a strong connection between the economic and community sectors (and to a lesser extent with infrastructure) must be developed. The goal is to supply better housing and infrastructure to these communities and thus it can be assumed that it is not just better service that is the reason for the failure of any slum redevelopment scheme, but a culmination of many factors.

CONCLUSION
New build developments can be prosperous developments that are successful and fully aid the community they have been aimed at to help. Architecturally most of the master planning has been successful in its understanding of the needs and requirements of the people it has aimed to help and of the culture that it has been built within. However without the guidance of governing bodies to make sure that the project is properly implemented and controlled there can easily be a failing in the overall scheme and thus a failing in the intentions of those involved in the construction of the development.

The severe lack of services and minimal sanitary environment is one of the major reasons to establish new communities for the urban poor. There must be caution in this area, as described in Aranya, where the service provision was perhaps too much and made the dwelling unaffordable for the general slum dweller. Also, the spread of so many individualised services put a strain on the available amount of the potable water that was available to the site, causing them to be ineffective for the delivery of the essential needs of the individual.

Construction techniques can be new to the community provided that there is a governed institution that will spread the information of how to easily construct with the new technology. Materials for the construction must be readily available to the dwellers and at a price that is affordable and inspires the dwellers to house themselves in a more appropriate manner. Complicated high cost building materials and techniques should be avoided as this can subvert the effort to place a roof over the heads of the ‘needy’.

There must be control in place over the use of land as it is necessary for the proposed recipient to actually be housed in the development otherwise the goal of the project is undermined, and thus the project becomes detrimental rather than helpful to the target community.

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