The Government of India has launched the Rajiv Awas Yojana, a grand housing scheme for a 'slum-free India'. But can grand schemes work when planners and policymakers neither understand the reality of the urban poor nor connect to their aspirations?
Despite claims of lack of accountability and transparency on both sides, NGOs and governments need to learn to trust each other lest basic services for the urban poor continue to go undeveloped.
The Indian government agencies responsible for managing the country's urban slums talk of ICT and GIS technology to help them keep track of slum communities, yet they should also reach out to NGOs.
While Bangalore has a longer history of globalisation than Gurgaon, both are facing major inequality and infrastructure deficits, and both have the human capital to overcome these problems.
Transferring the national government to a new city is an escapism that won't solve Jakarta's problems.
Governments often assume that home ownership is the main tool for housing their urban poor, but this neglects the usefulness of renting, which is important at all income levels.
Our biggest learning during the project, though, was that our perceptions-that of the architect, urban designer, planner, policymaker-are so totally different from the reality of the slum dwellers, that they are almost irreconcilable.
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The Global Urbanist is an online magazine reviewing urban affairs and urban development issues in cities throughout the developed and developing world.
Its readers are drawn from the urban policy and international development sectors, and include urban planners, officers in local, national or international government agencies, civil society leaders, and researchers.
