Increased frequency of natural hazards and sea level rise are expected impacts of climate change in India. Marginalised urban settlements are often vulnerable to disaster due to their location in hazardous areas and the use of non-durable building materials.Their inhabitants are therefore strongly affected by climate change. But amidst strives to meet climate targets, the poor's needs are mostly overlooked.

In this context, there is an urgent need for paradigmatic shift in the education of graduate students in spatial planning and design as well as training of urban professionals from different backgrounds in order to confront upcoming challenges related to climate change impacts on urban informal settlements.

The BReUCom project intents to conceive and pilot 20 short terms post-graduate Professional Development Programs (PDPs) targeted at real world problems. It aims to produce Open Educational Resources by developing 10 comparative case studies and 10 descriptions of new courses for graduate students in existing programs, following MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW) model. It shall pilot new courses on urban resilience in existing curricula for graduate students.

The Professional Development Programs (PDPs) are designed to function as modules on urban resilience for urban professionals from different backgrounds and working experiences, pilot modules including internships with NGOs in India and Europe.

For more information: https://www.breucom.eu

Thursday 24 October 2019

BReUCom Case Study 06: Marginalised Communities and Climate Change




Introduction


Slums in Mumbai can be seen from various perspectives. Each perspective has its positive side and perhaps huge possibilities in cross learning for it to enable the urban inclusion in planning, policy and practice. The larger question is how new methodologies of research and formats of representation of informal settlements support their recognition in urban design, planning, political and policy-making processes. How could these processes in turn contribute to the sustenance of informal and formal aspects of the urban form.


The Site: Gazdhar Bandh

The formation of Gazdhar Bandh, a large pocket of self-built-sustain model of slums resulted from various parameters. Largely it owes its origin to the generic problem of state body (MHADA) for not being able to provide affordable housing at the city level along with the absence of policy not being able create housing stock for the urban poor. These two issues are coupled with large scale land speculation in the open market and market driven real estate resulting in unaffordable housing in Mumbai.



Preliminary Findings

  • Creation of community living (and land) within the land starved condition of the city displaces the development plan initiatives and state housing inability
  • The creation of Land comes in direct conflict with the fragile ecology at estuary condition.
  • The community has strong economic network with its surrounding and the city. The informality within the city has formal occupational engagement with the city.
  • The overall perspective of resilience requires the study of social- economic resilience and its understanding with ecological resilience and finds the balance.


This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This communication reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. 

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