Deadly Housing

by Kalpana Sharma

From the Economic& Political Weekly, April 2013

The tremors caused by the collapse of a seven-storey building in the township of Mumbra, north of Mumbai, on 4 April are still being felt. The manner in which the structure collapsed within minutes was as shocking as the unacceptable loss of life – over 70 men, women and children killed and more than 60 injured. But the real scandal of that collapse was the fact that a building this size was constructed in a few months, without permission and reeking of illegality on every count. Preliminary investigations have already revealed the extent to which officials all along the line were bribed to look the other way while the builders callously lured desperate poor people to occupy the semi-constructed and dangerous structure.

Buried beneath the rubble of that Mumbra building lies the sordid tale of so-called “affordable” urban housing, not just in Mumbai but elsewhere in the country. For decades, the reality in all our cities is one that policymakers have chosen to studiously ignore – that there are millions of people who have work but nowhere to live. When these homeless people are forced to occupy vacant pieces of land, they are promptly condemned as “illegal”. Yet nothing is done to prevent this so-called illegality by ensuring that there is alternative housing available, until the land appreciates in price. Then demolition squads get to work even as those who had a roof over their heads are pushed off the land and rendered homeless. In Mumbai, such slum removals are not news any more. Hunger fasts, protests and resistance by slum-dwellers trying to protect their homes and their lives do not interest a media that is increasingly being funded by the one business flourishing in the city, the building industry.

Then there is the other kind of illegality, where in the name of building “affordable” housing for the poor, builders have been given huge incentives and deliberately permitted to cut corners. The Maharashtra government’s Slum Redevelopment Scheme has allowed private builders to reap a bounty as they selectively redevelop only those slums located on plots that guarantee handsome financial returns. Even here, builders are getting away with poor construction of the rehabilitation component of the project that entitles the displaced slum-dwellers free housing. They also routinely reduce the amount of space mandated for the rehab component of the project and think nothing of violating basic safety norms. For instance, even as the city was recovering from the Mumbra tragedy, a rehab building in a suburb was badly damaged, and one resident killed, when the water main running beneath it burst. How could the authorities permit a building to be constructed on a water main? The answer was not far to seek as news emerged that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has built a 12-storey trauma centre on a water main. Meanwhile, the senior-most municipal official in Mumbra has admitted that nine out of every ten structures in the township are illegal. It is evident that the regime of impunity when it comes to construction has reached such a zenith that even those who should be enforcing the law feel no compunction in acknowledging that the law is being blatantly broken under their watch.

The irony is that the poor in all our cities have actually created their own version of affordable housing without any help from the state. Wherever slums have been provided basic urban services like water, sanitation and electricity, people have invested in improving their own structures and neighbourhoods. Yet suggestions that the urban poor should be given security of tenure, that the state should provide the infrastructure, and the upgrading of individual houses should be left to the ability of people, have never been accepted. Clearly, “affordable” housing does not mean allowing poor people to live on high value land.

Even as the debate on how the virtually unbridgeable gap between supply and demand for affordable housing continues – an estimated 27 million units need to be built while hardly one million units have been built in a decade – there is a surplus of housing units that only a small minority can afford. Surveys last year in Mumbai revealed that there was a glut of 80,000 unsold flats averaging Rs 1.2 crore each in price. Another 50,000-1,00,000 flats were empty, locked but not available for sale. In other words, there is housing, but it is simply out of reach for those in desperate need of it. And it is this desperation for anything resembling secure housing that ends up in tragedies like the Mumbra collapse, where families are willing to put up with poor and even dangerous constructions so long as they have a roof over their heads and callous builders in collusion with the authorities are exploiting this demand. The only reason this market of illegality has flourished and continued to grow unchecked is because everyone is making a killing – while the unsuspecting consumers, like the unfortunate occupants of the Mumbra building get killed, literally.

Alien vs Predator; Hawker vs Pedestrian

“The battle between pedestrians and hawkers is not a fight for livelihood; it is a struggle for space”, writes lawyer Gautam Patel. A shorter version of this piece A shorter version of this article appeared in the Mumbai Mirror, Ahmedabad Mirror and Pune Mirror earlier this month

This is a familiar sight. A police wagon rolls up. The street bursts into frenetic activity — shouts, calls, men running, wooden racks and trays being gathered and squirreled away into the some recess between buildings. The oddest things are flung into the police truck: pots, pans, shirts, pedestals, baskets, cutlery. It takes the better part of an hour, sometimes less, sometimes more, and then there is an unusual quiet to the street, a strange sense of space. It doesn’t last, of course; they are all soon back, later that day or the next or the day after.

Not for the first time, the language we use defines our thinking rather than the other way around. City hawkers are a “menace”, a “problem” that needs to be “addressed”. This terminology and thinking demonstrates first an institutional lack of concern for a segment low on the financial ladder. Sitting in a plush air-conditioned office a man may perpetrate all manner of heinous crimes. But it is a far greater crime to vend wares on the street. Our streets do not belong to “them”, but only to “us”, and yes, that’s the same “us” that does not think twice about littering and spewing long jets of paan-thook on to public streets.

This constant cleansing our streets of hawkers is an epic failure to recognize the nature of our cities and the role of hawkers in them. We let all this talk of “world class” cities blind us to one reality: our cities are not those of the Occidental persuasion with their motorised communities and structures set well back from the road lines where city life is either indoor or in sequestered public spaces. Our cities are extensions of villages, and every city in India is just a village on concrete steroids. Every street is an impromptu bazaar. Hawkers exist in the interstices of these village-cities, providing many essential services and goods: food for breakfast, lunch, dinner and everything in between, daily vegetables, flowers for the morning prayer rituals, garlands for special festive occasions, cheap fabric and clothing, watch straps and mobile phone covers. There is a market for these goods, and neither buyer nor seller deserves to be called a “menace”.

There is talk about hawkers’ rights, and their right to livelihood, and this tussle has occupied courts for nearly 30 years. An early decision of 1985 partly approved a policy by the Mumbai Municipal Corporation, one that contemplated the allotment of 1-mtr square ‘pitches’ for hawkers, and a zoning provision. In a late 2003 decision, the Supreme Court reviewed a revised hawker zoning policy, going street by street to decide where hawking should be permitted and where it should not. It also imposed many conditions, including that hawkers should not “create any noise or play any instrument or music for attracting the public or the customers”, prohibiting the cooking of food and the selling of white goods (cameras, video tapes, etc), requiring hawkers licenses to be displayed, permitting hawking only in certain places and so on. It is one thing to impose such restrictions by judicial pronouncement; it is quite another to get someone to enforce them. A subsequent 2007 decision went into the question of how licenses should be allotted and to whom, noting that there were a very large number of unlicensed hawkers on the streets. The 2007 decision is interesting because it notes the 2004 National Policy on Urban Street Vendors, one that acknowledges their historical existence and their necessity.

Street vending as a profession has been in existence in India since time immemorial. However, their number has increased manifold in the recent years. According to one study Mumbai has the largest number of street vendors numbering around 250,000, while Delhi has around 200,000. Calcutta has more than 150,000 street vendors and Ahmedabad has around 100,000. Women constitute a large number of street vendors in almost every city. Some studies estimate that street vendors constitute approximately 2% of the population of a metropolis. The total number of street vendors in the country is estimated at around 1 crore. Urban vending is not only a source of employment but provide ‘affordable’ services to the majority of urban population. The role played by the hawkers in the economy as also in the society needs to be given due credit but they are considered as unlawful entities and are subjected to continuous harassment by Police and civic authorities. This is reported to be continuing even after the ruling of the Supreme Court that “if properly regulated according to the exigency of the circumstances, the small traders on the side walks can considerably add to the comfort and convenience of the general public, by making available ordinary articles of everyday use for a comparatively lesser price. An ordinary person, not very affluent, while hurrying towards his home after a day’s work can pick up these articles without going out of his way to find a regular market. The right to carry on trade or business mentioned in Article 19(1)(g) of the Constitution, on street pavements, if properly regulated cannot be denied on the ground that the streets are meant exclusively for passing or re-passing and no other use.”

That these matters should come to court, and that there should even be this contest between competing equities — the right to carry on a trade or business and the right to life — is an indicator of the ineffectiveness of our civic administration. Regulating street vending is a matter of town planning. Courts are not equipped to develop master plans and town planning strategies. At best, they tweak and adjust existing policies, and try to balance equities and this is why the courts have been at pains to emphasize that their orders are only interim measures, not final solutions. There is, as yet, no consistency in any city’s policy on street vending and the questions before us are not very different from those of 30 years ago.

So far, the battle has been lopsided. A critical failure of thinking about hawkers is to assume that all hawkers are made equal. The hawkers in the arcades along DN Road in Mumbai seem to be immune to police action. Their wares are superfluous: bootleg videos and DVDs, spurious perfumes and suspicious missile-sized sex toys that look like Defence Ministry rejects. What ‘rights’ should accrue to these hawkers, and why? They add nothing of value and take away much of substance: the occupied arcade makes foot passage impossible, and other — less illegitimate — hawkers are forced on to the sidewalk outside. Where does that leave the pedestrian?

The Street Vendors Livelihood and Protection Bill, introduced last month in Parliament attempts to recognize hawkers’ rights and control street vending in our cities. That is one-sided; an estimated additional 47,000 hawkers will be added to Mumbai. What is the suggestion? That only motorists have rights; only hawkers have rights; and pedestrians are only road-kill?

Mumbai has had a hawker policy of sorts since 2009. This strange document is a confusing web of conditions, restrictions and classifications designed for graft. The 2009 policy is flawed, and quite disconnected from the chaotic reality of Indian cities and the problems of urban planning. It does not attempt to assess the carrying capacity of any area or locality, or to determine how much sidewalk space can be shared between hawkers and pedestrians. Instead, it seems to proceed on the assumption one need only have a method of issuing licenses and specifying zones without any defined system of checking violations. One of the most wrong-headed provisions is to make licenses for “stationary” hawkers — those who are not itinerant — heritable and transferable, a provision that can only result in greater uncertainty. The policy speaks of creating food plazas and goes on to promise additional build-ability (FSI and Transferable Development Rights) without attempting to understand how this is supposed to work in already congested localities or the impact this will have. In a triumph of mindless ambition over common sense, the policy suggested walled enclosures for non-itinerant vendors in their designated hawking zone. This is the classic NIMBY syndrome: everybody needs them, but nobody wants them in their vicinity. This is exacerbated by the fascination with “zoning”, which suggests that should you need lunch or vegetables or flowers, you might have to trudge to some distant “zone” to get them. The upshot of all this is that arrangements must be made for hawkers. Pedestrians just have to manage.

This is not a fight for livelihood; this is a struggle for space, and there is no more damning indictment of our planning process than the elision from it of the pedestrian. When political muscle and vote banks substitute for planning the result is always skewed. Pedestrians constitute no constituency.

Nobody visits a street vendor in a car. You get there on foot. That means that while we should permit hawkers — because they service the city — the number of stationary hawkers in any area and across the city must be restricted, there must be some control on what is being sold where and how, enforcement mechanisms must be transparent and clear and, too, that pedestrian rights must receive recognition. But this demands softer hands and greater imagination, both in very short supply.

Hawk land

Sameera Khan on the large scale hawker evictions in the city

This article first appeared in the Time Out, Mumbai – http://www.timeoutmumbai.net/mumbai-local/features/hawk-land

I have a serious confession to make. I am middle class, I have a master’s degree, I live in a comfortable 3-BHK, and I regularly patronise hawkers. I frequently buy vegetables, fruits, books, chappals, dangling earrings, vada pav, balloons, kebabs, mogra gajras and other such essentials and frivolities of everyday life from them. These are people now only described as a “menace” and a “nuisance” but whose continued presence on the streets comforts me – especially late evening and night – in familiar and strange parts of the city.

I doubt we are the only middle class family dependent on hawkers in Mumbai – though the way the mainstream media in recent weeks has framed the story of large scale hawker evictions, it seems as if the only relationship between the urban middle-class and hawkers is one of antagonism and intolerance. There’s no mention of the Andheri man upset that his neighbourhood bhajiwala has been evicted, forcing him to buy vegetables from Food Bazaar at Infinity Mall. Or of the harried working woman who prefers the late evening convenience of the hawkers outside Santa Cruz station, reassured by the warm light of their petromax lamps.  And what of the old woman near Pali Hill grateful for the threedecade long presence of the same bhelpuriwala at the end of her lane? Why don’t we hear these middle-class voices supporting the people who provide daily essential services, access to cheap goods, whose existence they depend on and whose non-appearance causes them distress?

Instead, we hear the chorus of zealous “citizen” groups expressing great displeasure at hawkers. Some have put up large banners congratulating the police for their relentless anti-hawker drive. Others no doubt are waiting to download the new Hawker Tracking System, an android phone application planned by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation so that concerned citizens can report a hawker’s location for faster eviction.

So much easier to target the hawker as the villain – who messes up the city and stubbornly “encroaches” on its public spaces. So much more difficult to take on your own middle-class comrades who often have more than one car and park on the pavement or the shopkeepers/restaurant owners who unashamedly extend their shopfronts or the builders who deliberately encroach on open spaces.

These are also illegal acts but somehow only the hawkers get seen as “illegal” and of course, most are “illegal” as the BMC has not issued any new hawker licences in Mumbai since 1978; only about 15,500 of the 2.5 to three lakh hawkers in this city are licensed. Hawkers desire legal status – their illegality makes them vulnerable to extortion and harassment.

Unfortunately we see the hawker question as a beautifying pavements issue and not as an employment concern. Hawking provides our urban poor a legitimate livelihood. Since hawkers often sell goods of small-scale or home-based industries, the impact of street vending on employment is even larger. Research reveals that many vendors hawk due to a decline in formal low-skilled jobs such as those in the textile mills. A street vending study by Sharit Bhowmik of Tata Institute of Social Sciences in seven Indian cities showed that around 30 per cent of hawkers in Ahmedabad and Mumbai and 50 per cent in Kolkata were former workers in the formal sector.

Looks like the formal sector has come back to claim its pound of flesh. Just observe who stands to gain once the hawkers are unemployed – big retail malls and supermarket chains like Reliance Fresh, Hypercity, Foodland, and others are all gainers in the process. The losers are the poor: as marketers and also as consumers. Everyone doesn’t have the financial wherewithal to shop at a supermarket and maybe you can drink a R80 coffee at CCD but for your domestics and other poor workers, the chaiwala on the street is a necessity.

Eventually the hawker’s issue is about who has rights to the city – “from whom” are we protecting our public spaces and “for whom” are we protecting them? It exposes our general indifferent attitude towards the working poor. We need policy and regulation but it has to be based on tolerance and acceptance of the others’ right to be there. I too want a clear pavement to walk on but just as I want my rights as a pedestrian respected, I also want to acknowledge the rights of other citizens to public space.

 

From the Firstpost

An interesting article that explores the link between urban planning and women’s safety

http://www.firstpost.com/living/why-urban-planning-will-make-cities-safer-for-women-571176.html

Ground Verification Process – A Step by Step Guide

Click this link for the version in English:

http://udri.org/images/elu/1_Guide_English.pdf

For HIndi, go to:

http://udri.org/images/elu/2_Guide_Hindi.pdf

 

 

Regarding Existing Land Use plan

If anyone wishes to have a look at the Existing Land Use plan, you can visit the following link:

http://www.udri.org/images/new%20elu%20from%20mcgm.pdf

 

How street vendors and planners can work together

Examples of how an inclusive attitude towards street vendors has dramatically improved lives. This report by Sally Roever is taken from The Global Urbanist. To visit the site go to http://globalurbanist.com/2012/11/13/vendors-planners-work-together

Street trade is a significant source of livelihood for the urban working poor. Official statistics show that street vending represents as much as 15 per cent of total urban non-agricultural employment, and as much as 25 per cent of total urban informal employment, in countries worldwide. It is especially significant in many African and Asian cities, where 80 per cent or more of total employment in trade is informal.

Residents of low-income urban areas are critically dependent on street vendors as their only source of low-cost goods in small quantities — particularly fruits and vegetables, other fresh food and basic household goods. Where vendors come together to form street markets, they generate demand for additional services and thus jobs: market porters, night watchmen, and recyclers, to name a few. Contrary to conventional wisdom, street vendors in many cities also pay taxes to local governments in exchange for their use of public space.

PUBLIC POLICY CHALLENGES

Street vending has persisted for centuries all over the world, despite a multitude of efforts to curtail it. Its ease of entry offers an option for generating a subsistence income for many, but its potential as an engine of growth also attracts better-off entrepreneurs who can capitalise on the easy access to consumers that working in the streets provides.

But they don’t just work in any old streets, and there’s the rub: street vendors strategically locate their workplaces in urban areas with steady pedestrian flows, often in central business districts or near crowded transport junctions. In doing so, they rankle big businesses, real estate developers, and other elites who want access to the same space. Overcrowding of vendors in these areas can also exacerbate broader problems in urban governance, such as traffic congestion, solid waste management, and public health risks.

To address these problems, city governments need a way to define and enforce rules governing who gets access to what space at what times. But they won’t get anyone to follow those rules if they aren’t appropriate to the way the city’s retail economy works. And they won’t get buy-in from vendors unless vendors are collectively invited to the policy table, and can find a common voice. The challenge here, however, is that most street vendors are self-employed workers who bear all the risks of doing business individually, and often prioritise securing their own individual space over longer-term collective goals.

INNOVATIVE APPROACHES TO STREET TRADE AND CITY GOVERNANCE

There are ways to balance the competing demands of street vendors, formal enterprises, city officials and the general public. Two examples show how it can be done.

In September 2012, India’s Minister of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation introduced the Street Vendors (Protection of Livelihood and Regulation of Street Vending) Bill in the country’s lower house of Parliament. This historic bill is one of the only efforts in the world to protect street vendors’ rights at the level of national law. The bill follows on a National Policy on Urban Street Vendors, passed in 2004 and revised in 2009.

The national policy, and now the bill, came about after years of struggle on the part of the National Association of Street Vendors of India (NASVI) and the Self Employed Women’s Asssociation (SEWA), membership-based organisations who became involved in all stages of policy formulation. In contrast to efforts to manage street vending by making it go away, the bill recognises that street trade is here to stay.

Though it is too early to know how the bill will perform once it is made law, it addresses key points where conflicts between vendors and governments typically arise. The bill, modeled after the policy, defines a registration process for vendors, their rights and obligations to work in authorised vending zones, and a statutory bargaining forum called Town Vending Committees in which vendors are represented through their associations. Notably, the bill also allows for evictions, relocations, and confiscations of merchandise, but defines the conditions under which they may take place. Most significantly, the bill recognises street vending as a right and as an urban poverty alleviation measure, while acknowledging the need for local authorities to regulate it.

In South Africa, Durban’s Warwick Junction is the city’s primary transport junction, serving an estimated 460,000 people and 38,000 vehicles daily. The junction developed as a chaotic, poorly designed market with congestion and over-trading through the early 1990s. After 1997, city officials established a project designed to work with, rather than against, the thousands of informal traders in the area. This inclusive approach coincided with a movement toward stronger membership-based organisations of street traders who were able to serve as negotiating partners with city officials.

The project’s aim was to improve the quality of the urban environment at the junction, with a particular focus on the needs of the urban poor. Its fundamentals were to concentrate on a specific geographic area, to establish inter-departmental coordination within the city government, and to commit to participation and consultation with all stakeholders, including traders. Today, this project is internationally acclaimed as a best practice. Asiye Etafuleni, a local non-profit based at Warwick, continues to support traders in the area and to champion inclusive urban planning and design.

POSITIVE LESSONS FOR URBAN LIVELIHOODS

The National Policy in India, and the Warwick project in Durban, have had a considerable impact on urban livelihoods. In Bhubaneswar, India, where the city partnered with member-based organisations to implement the policy, 91 per cent of vendors reported an increase in their income. In Warwick, vendors reported that their incomes had increased by 20 to 200 per cent after the project, and that their legal and physical security had also improved.

The key innovation in both Durban and Bhubaneswar was to recognize that it makes sense to keep street vending in natural market areas of the city. That’s where vendors are going to go anyway. By working with vendors’ organisations to develop sensible rules, city officials can rely on vendors to help make those rules sustainable and end the need for costly punitive actions.

Taking Health Into Account

By systematically assessing the health risks of development decisions upfront, health impact assessments can prevent costly and harmful mistakes. By Aaron Wernham

An interesting perspective on how development affects health. To view the original text click on http://www.shelterforce.org/article/2758/taking_health_into_account/

During my medical residency, I once treated an asthmatic boy. It was his third hospital admission in two months. Despite specialty medical care and cutting-edge treatments, his condition worsened whenever he went home. His mom was worried that their run-down apartment, which had mold and ancient carpeting, was the problem. I remember asking the supervising physician if there was any way to write a prescription for a new apartment.

Similar cases come up in doctors’ offices and emergency rooms around the country every day. In some areas, more than 40 percent of asthma cases can be attributed to housing conditions, such as mold, pests, and carpeting. About 25 percent of American children still have unhealthy blood lead levels, primarily due to lead paint in older houses. And more than 10 million falls, burns, and other in-home injuries result in

emergency-room visits every year. The costs are staggering: More than $56 billion is spent to treat asthma and more than $200 billion is spent to treat in-home injuries every year. Families with limited financial means have few options for affordable housing so they may be unable to move, even if they know their current home is making them or their children sick.

The growing field of health impact assessments (HIAs) provides a way to factor health outcomes into decisions that affect both housing and neighborhoods, such as zoning, road-building, codes, or neighborhood revitalization.

HIAs can assist decision makers in identifying unintended risks, reducing preventable illnesses and disabilities, finding practical solutions, and leveraging spending from outside the health sector to improve a community’s well-being. HIAs also provide a powerful way for communities to bring their concerns to the policymaking process.

An HIA is commonly performed by health departments or community organizations, rather than the stakeholder in charge of making the final decision. An HIA on a land use decision that will be made by a planning agency, for example, may be performed by a health department or a community coalition.

Engaging Community

HIAs engage stakeholders to improve the quality and specificity of the analysis and to help ensure that community members have a stronger voice in decisions that affect them. HIAs take an even-handed, fact-based approach that looks at both the risks and benefits of a proposal, and the community engagement process has proven to be a good way to foster a productive dialogue among polarized stakeholders. Even HIAs with relatively small budgets and short timeframes can provide opportunities for stakeholders to offer substantive input.

Community input on an HIA’s scope, findings, and recommendations can ensure that the analysis is accurate within the local context. In response to a proposal for an urban greenway, with walking and biking trails, in the East Bay along the BART a light rail corridor, for example, many community members suggested that they would be unlikely to use it because of concerns about criminal activity. This led to recommendations for design that discourages crime and better policing along sections of the greenway.

Best practices in HIAs emphasize that stakeholder engagement should go beyond simply allowing community members to voice opinions. HIAs attempt to provide substantive opportunities for community stakeholders to shape the scope of issues addressed, vet the findings, and help develop the recommendations. Some HIAs are actually led by a community group or coalition.

HIAs and Housing

While HIAs are performed across sectors, housing is becoming a common focus. The Kresge Foundation recently funded two HIAs that specifically address health and housing under the Health Impact Project’s call for proposals, and the Health Impact Project has two additional housing-related projects in the works. HIAs are being applied to a range of housing decisions, such as design, siting, affordability, and safety:

• § A San Francisco Health Department HIA found that asthma patients fared better with solid flooring than with carpeting, and led to a policy that some of the new/redeveloped units in each of the city’s public housing complexes will feature hard floors.
• § The Ohio Housing Finance Agency is conducting an HIA on a proposal to streamline affordable housing inspections. Those inspections are important, identifying conditions such as water leaks, mold, pests, peeling paint, and structural hazards, that can contribute to health problems such as asthma, injuries, and stress. However, several federal and state programs require their own inspections, resulting in possible redundancy. The HIA is investigating the streamlining process itself, and will recommend ways to maintain or strengthen the aspects of the current inspection regimen that are most important while still allowing for wiser use of government resources.
• § Georgia State University is leading an HIA in Galveston, Texas, concerning the replacement of public housing destroyed by Hurricane Ike in 2008. The HIA will provide recommendations on both the location and design of the rebuilt units, and will take into account factors such as exposure to air pollution, crime rates, and access to amenities such as green space, grocery stores, and health care facilities.

Given the costs of illnesses related to housing, a small upfront investment in good planning has the potential to pay big dividends, both in terms of preventing illnesses and saving money. Caring for a single patient with poorly controlled asthma can cost $8,880 per year—similar to the amount it cost West Oakland Environmental Indicators project, the West Oakland Toxics Reduction Collaborative, and Human Impact Partners to complete a rapid HIA for the Jack London senior apartment complex in Oakland, Calif., near the port and several highways. Though the developer, East Bay Asian Local Development Corporation, was already sensitive to green and healthy building concerns, the HIA affected the building design, resulting in the introduction of a more comprehensive air filtration system and measures to reduce noise levels in the residences.

HIAs and Neighborhoods

HIAs have addressed not only decisions that affect housing units, but also that affect whole neighborhoods, such as new light rail lines and the accompanying development.

One HIA in Pittsburg, Calif., highlighted ways that development around a light rail stop could maximize opportunities for exercise and connect people to grocery stores, employment, and health services. It also found that the proposed development could drive up housing costs, making it difficult for residents to afford food, heat, medicines, or other necessities, and possibly displacing low-income families. Displaced people—and those left behind—may feel less engaged with their surroundings. Research shows that people who are more actively engaged in a community are more likely to walk and shop in the neighborhood, know their neighbors, and look out for one another. These benefits translate into better health outcomes. Taking this into account, the Pittsburg HIA recommended as health measures:

• § designation of at least 40 percent of new units as affordable, with 16 percent for low-income households, 15 percent for very low-income households, and 9 percent for extremely low-income households;
• § protection of current federally subsidized units from conversion to market rate;
• § unbundling parking from the sale of units to decrease the housing cost for families who do not own cars or do not want to own cars; and
• § a means-tested rental voucher program to allow more existing area residents to access the new housing.

By using the HIA, advocates were able to convince decision makers to keep an affordable housing site that had been facing opposition near the proposed station.

A Growing Tool

The use of HIAs is growing. If an upcoming decision in your community would benefit from an HIA, bring it up with policy makers, the health department, or local health advocates. Emphasize that HIAs are done within the timeline for the decision they seek to inform, and that they may be far less expensive than the consequences of failing to recognize and address potentially serious health risks.

Doctors still cannot write prescriptions to remove dusty carpeting or replace moldy drywall, but with HIAs, doctors and public health experts can work with communities to inform decisions in other fields that will help people lead healthier lives.

Less Plans on Paper, More Practical Thinking Needed for Mumbai

As the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai progresses its newest 20-year Development Plan for the city, Kristen Teutonico considers the barren legacy of past plans and argues that many small interventions might do more for the city than a grand plan that may ultimately be ignored entirely.

This article has been taken from The Global Urbanist – http://globalurbanist.com/2012/10/30/city-of-paper-urbanism

As Mumbai drafts its Development Plan for the next 20 years, it is apparent that not much has changed in the last forty. The Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) publishes plans on a 20-year cycle, and is in the midst of working on the latest edition for 2014-2034. While the MCGM oversees the production of the plan, the proposals are being detailed and executed by Groupe SCE India, a company that has been working with planning authorities and local urban bodies in India for over eight years.

The Development Plans always seem to hold the answers for a balanced and socioeconomically rational city. But while they go into great detail on paper, the city never quite follows through on the implementation with equal rigour.

A HISTORY OF WISHFUL THINKING

The planning of Mumbai is regulated by the Maharashtra Regional and Town Planning Act of 1966, which extends to the whole of the state of Maharashtra excluding the city of Nagpur, and which requires every local authority to prepare a development plan for the area within its jurisdiction allocating land for different uses — residential, commercial, agricultural, etc. — and reserve sites required for public purposes such as schools, playgrounds, hospitals, parks, roads and highways.

The first Development Plan for Greater Mumbai was prepared for 1964 to 1981, and revised for 1981 to 2001, though only sanctioned between 1991 and 1993, and even then with only 12 per cent of it being implemented. In 1981 as in 1964, the region suffered from haphazard sprawl, the overzoning of lands for industrial purposes especially in outlying villages like Kalyan (dairy) and Bhiwandi (textiles), inadequate infrastructure and housing, and general traffic and transportation problems. All of which, as of the end of 2012, are still alarmingly present.

The main problem is that development proceeds before government papers are signed but after money is exchanged. By the time the 2014-2034 plan is printed, the peripheral areas it must be concerned with will have already shifted from a rural landscape to an urban condition with all the problems of the existing city, recognised but not addressed thirty years ago.

Government and policy makers acknowledge that the city needs help but time and money — a classic partnership — ultimately determine what gets done and who it favours. Planning is expedient only for the wealthy, from billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s famous 27-storey home built in the absence of effective zoning or land ownership regulations, to the underused Bandra-Worli Sea Link connecting affluent western suburbs to the downtown area, which cost 16 billion Indian Rupees (186 million British Pounds) yet operates at only 15 per cent capacity due to its exclusionary toll of 55 rupees (64 pence).

Given its track record, how can Mumbai expect to maintain a grip on its planning while capitalist development pops up overnight? The MCGM needs to reinvent the way it approaches urbanisation to be able to engage with the city and its people at the heady pace they operate on.

LESS UTOPIA, MORE FINER PLANNING

Regardless of what is drawn, written, stamped or agreed upon, the appeal of instantaneous creation and economic gain will continue to be the drivers of Mumbai’s urban growth. Until corruption and elitism are more tightly constrained, problems will continue to plague the city and the majority of Mumbaikars who cannot afford to pay to do ‘as they please’.

In the meantime, rather than grand abstract plans every twenty years, what the city needs more of are practical and proactive thinking to pinpoint problems and solve them with articulated design solutions that have timelines, budgets and schemes that are easily attained. Such factors led to the new bus loops in downtown Mumbai which provide an efficient and clean service for tourists and walkers who inundate the sidewalks. The entire route cost 5 rupees and a bus swings past every five minutes. New bus routes such as these through congested areas of the city can alleviate traffic, reduce noise and pollution, and promote sustainable urban life.

The scheme was developed and executed by the Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI), an NGO tasked with improving the urban environment through research, information provision and public engagement in planning processes. In response to the ongoing preparation of the 2014-2034 Development Plan, UDRI is initiating a public participation programme in which stakeholder groups consisting of NGOs, researchers, former government officers and experts, working in sectors such as health, education and the environment, come together to study the needs of the city and make recommendations to the MCGM. The process not only allows citizens working in different portfolio areas to understand how planning affects their sector and to have a voice within it; it also puts pressure on the MCGM to see the wider public demanding solutions to real problems.

In the recent exhibition ‘Open Mumbai’, the architect P. K. Das proposed a constellation of new public spaces throughout the 24 wards of the city. The project was created to show the MCGM what Mumbai has the potential to be and how, in the architects’ terminology, ‘to create non-barricaded, non-exclusive, and non-elitist spaces.’ Embracing and enforcing these spaces would give the government plans and ideas already thoroughly researched and designed; the only task for government is to execute them.

Concretely implementing public participation in planning, building new public spaces, and establishing new bus routes are only three examples of small-scale initiatives that Mumbai can begin to embrace. New regulations regarding parking, noise (such as honking) and the amount of vehicles allowed in certain areas each day will also start to promote a more positive urban condition.

Problems such as sprawl, housing and transportation will continue to plague Mumbai as long as the government continues to pretend to put all its faith into a thoroughly planned city-wide manifesto that is ultimately tossed aside. Large answers are not always the way to deal with large problems, and the web of tangles in Mumbai is too complex to unravel in one grand sweep. In rethinking the grandiose nature of the Development Plan, perhaps the government can engage in smaller scale implementation ss and allow new regulations and ideas to take centre stage so that Mumbai can begin to envision its future and move beyond its paper urbanity.

 

Meeting regarding Development Plan 2014

We thank you for your commitment to participating in the development planning process for Mumbai.

The Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) has been in dialogue with the MCGM regarding the DP and has requested numerous rectifications to the Existing Land Use (ELU) Plan prepared by them both at a micro and macro level. We have also presented these to the Municipal Commissioner who has instructed the DP department to take these suggestions into consideration. However at this time we are unable to ascertain to what extent these suggested rectifications are being included in the ELU plan for Mumbai. Also at this time the MCGM’s DP consultants have not yet completed and released TASK 3 of the DP process which is to provide an analysis of the ELU plan.

We appreciate that many of you have done your own ground surveys to verify the ELU Plan and have written in to the MCGM with your comments and corrections. In order to provide a more cohesive thrust to all our work, the UDRI is organising a meeting of all the stakeholders who have shown an interest in participating in this development planning process. This details of this meeting are as follows:

Date: 21^st November 2012 (Wednesday)

Time: 4.00 pm

Venue: Urban Design Research Institute, No 43, Dr V B Gandhi Marg, Kalaghoda , Fort, Mumbai 400 023

At this meeting, we would like to share our findings and encourage you to bring with you any correspondence you may have already sent after your verification surveys. We would also use this gathering to consider the next steps that each of you would be able to engage in. I would like to clarify however, that the intent of the meeting is only to discuss development plan issues that affect ALL and not individual land issues that are personal in nature.

We look forward to seeing you at the UDRI.