Abstract:
Enforced exclusions and relocation of the inmost shantytowns have turn out to be
a regular and unavoidable function of the advancement of the cities in the overall
South. Post liberalization, good governance strategy has become the protocol for
maximum of the urban expansion projects. In the phase from 1990, exhibited by
the beginning and liberalization of the Indian market to 2007, 218 slums (JJ
clusters) were wrecked and families displaced. 'Site and services' approach was
taken by the government providing only plots and the bare minimum services to
the displaced. One of the recent examples is the repositioning of squatter
communes to the city boundaries to make way for infrastructural up gradation
and cosmetic treatment. Savda Ghevra, as an ethnographically strategic site,
offers insights into the ‘system’ or set of interrelations in which it is situated, which
include the planner’s designs for the colony, households balancing residence
against livelihood opportunities, women residents working for NGOs etc.
The colony is currently in the middle of frenzied suburbanization with a huge
conjecture between the residents and state interventions. The existing building
typologies demonstrate the mixed economies of the locals. There's a complex
mix of incremental housing, govt. quarters and vacant land for future allocation
available on the site. The residents prefer to make use of the alleys and streets to
conduct their day to day activities rather than their own houses which are largely
inhabitable in nature. One can fathom the severity of this 'colonization of the
urban poor ' by the government leading to loss in a coherent urban structure and
absence of the much needed quality of life that each resident of a city is entitled
to.
This thesis is an attempt to provide essential ballast to a habitable society
through inclusive neighborhood design.
