Proposed housing at Vajpayee Nagar, Bhopal

Abstract

Slum rehabilitation/redevelopment programmes in India are in a state of failure, as the acceptability of houses provided through these programmes is only 40-60%, which causes the urban poor to choose slums over the multi-storey housing provided by government. These low satisfaction levels are because of various reasons, such as, unavailability of adequate floor area in the dwelling according to the family size, no provision for household occupations, poor quality of community spaces, safety and security issues, poor quality of construction, dissatisfaction with spaces in upper floors, etc. These aspects hamper the day-to-day life of urban poor who move into these housing, causing distress which, coupled with the poor socio-cultural environment of these housings lead to dissatisfaction with the slum rehabilitation/redevelopment programs. A solution is required which consists of assessing the existing built fabric and spaces that are associated with imageability of slums and translating this socio-cultural environment in the proposed slum redevelopment housing. Amalgamating this environment with requirements of the residents of slum will assist in developing a design which will help in improving the quality of life of residents, preserve their socio-cultural integrity and improve the acceptability of the redeveloped housing. Concept for the design was derived from study of the character of existing slum and identifying the requirements of residents of Vajpayee nagar slum. The proposal aims at providing residential spaces (which includes 655 dwelling units), flexible workshop spaces and hierarchy of community spaces, primarily to the existing residents of Vajpayee nagar slum along with other possible users of the housing. Existing features which provide an imageability to the slum, such as tree clusters, school buildings and primary pathways are preserved in the site planning of housing. The community spaces and residential block configurations are designed so as to improve the probability of interpersonal encounters and eventually increase the level of interaction which reinforces the community bonding and strength.