Suchergebnisse

The informal proliferation or the growth of slums has always been treated by the planners as a threat to the planned development of any city. But what is often not recognised is that slums are of ubiquitous nature, but are treated as exceptions and dealt with accordingly. They are excluded uninterruptedly from planning. Bhubaneswar a planned Indian city is today facing severe challenges to control the informal growth which has 37 percent slum population living in 377 slums. Planning continues to have splendid visions but very little is translated into reality. Though theoretically the control of such growth has progressed from clearance to improvement to upgradation and redevelopment, slum-dwellers are still treated as unwanted by the elite city dwellers and the administrators. Thus today what we need is inclusive urban policies to include the urban population who are so far excluded from the planning. This paper scrutinizes the plan documents, census data, government reports and news reports for understanding how the slum growth in Bhubaneswar has been treated so far. Interviews of planners, bureaucrats, citizens' organizations like welfare societies, NGOs, slum dweller etc. also help in knowing how city is perceived by these stakeholders. It is found that policies relating to housing for the poor in Bhubaneswar have enabled the state and real estate developers to form a nexus and reduce the space under slums and use that space to serve their own interests. Bilateral and other international agencies are playing important role in shaping the urban space. In the planning of city, economic planning being dominant is perpetuating the exclusion of the urban poor further. The capital city is developing via an informal route. Thus the right to city of the poor is being manifested in negotiated route through creation of more slums.