Affordable Housing Programme at Sir JJ College of Architecture, Mumbai (2011-2012)

Curated by URBZ/Urbanology @ Sir JJ College of Architecture, Mumbai

Sponsored by Lafarge Studio+

Affordable housing is seen as both, a high social priority by the government and NGOs as well as an unprecedented financial opportunity by developers. The result is the large-scale production of low-cost housing blocks which quickly turn into vertical slums. In the meanwhile, local contractors and end-users are building far more numerous housing units of better quality at lower prices in Mumbai’s many unplanned settlements. Often dismissed as slums, locally developed neighbourhoods produce a powerful counter-narrative to the mass production of low-cost housing. This program brings together architects, engineers, contractors and end-users to explore this dynamic sector and innovate in the field of affordable housing.

Lafarge’s Studio Plus sponsored a four-month long programme on affordable housing that combined seminars, fieldwork, a workshop, a studio, a conference and an exhibition. This programme was held at Sir JJ College of Architecture in Mumbai and organized conjointly by URBZ/Urbanology and JJ Faculty members. About 60 fourth year architecture students participated in the programme from start to finish and made it a success. The programme was organized as follows:

Affordable Housing Seminar: Dec 5th, 2011 to Jan 22nd, 2012

Faculty and guest lecturers: Mustansir Dalvi, Yashwant Pitkar, Rahul Srivastava, Matias Echanove, Ayaz Rajgara, Ashley Fiahlo, Supriyo Bhattacharya, Jal Arya, Alexis de Ducla, Poonam Mulchandani and Sonia Faleiro.

The seminar was held twice a week over a 3 hours period for a period of six weeks. It involved guest lectures, discussions and fieldwork in various parts of the city. It aimed at giving a theoretical and practical introduction to the field of affordable housing from the point of view of incremental, local development. Students interacted with contractors in groups and studied the construction of small houses in locally developed neighbourhoods around the city. The houses they studied typically cost between INR 2 to 8 lakhs. Students used their architectural backgrounds to document and analyze everything that is related to house-building, including construction techniques, materials and finance, with a focus on processes rather than final products. In this phase of the program students were given lectures on the production of housing and habitats in unplanned neighbourhoods in Mumbai. They also engaged in fieldwork, spending as much time as they could with contractors in Dharavi, Shivaji Nagar (Govandi), Bhandup and Nerul.

urbz.net/JJAH/seminar

Contra-CT Workshop: Jan 23rd, 24th, 25th, 2012

Resource persons: Rajeev Kathpalia (Ahmedabad), Rakhi Mehra (Delhi), Marco Ferrario (Delhi), Sameep Padora (Mumbai), Poonam Mulchandani (Auroville), Alexis de Ducla (Chennai), Ritu Mohanty-Padora (Mumbai), Jean-Michel Laye (Chennai), Thomas Demschner (Lyon).

The workshop was held over 3 full days. It included practical work in small groups, collective brainstorming sessions and a mini-exhibition (internal to the school). It aimed at digging further into the conceptual, architectural, technical and creative aspects of local construction. It allowed students to express their own visions through the development of proposals. They had the opportunity to confront their learning from the field with the expertise of professionals in the field. At the end of the workshop, the students had a good foundation for their studio projects. The workshop happened between the phase of deconstruction; when students learned from the field, and before the reconstruction phase; when they were asked to imagine a larger affordable housing project based on their learning. Students presented the documentation they had produced in the first 6 weeks of the programme. Then they talked in greater detail with the guest resource people about all the aspects of housing development (finance, labor, materials and technical) and tried to imagine how they could optimize the construction process of a typical house, to the maximum extent possible. The students’ proposals were then presented to the contractors with whom they had worked during their fieldwork.

urbz.net/JJAH/workshop

Homegrown Cities Conference & Exhibition: March 29th, 30th, 2012

Speakers: Claudio Acioly (Nairobi), Michael Bell (New York), Bijal Bhatt (Ahmadabad), Amita Bhide (Mumbai), Mustansir Dalvi (Mumbai), B.V. Doshi (Ahmadabad), Alexis de Ducla (Chennai), Matias Echanove (Mumbai), Marco Ferrario (New Delhi), Pankaj Gupta (Mumbai), Rajeev Kathpalia (Ahmadabad), Rakhi Mehra (New Delhi), Marc Mimram (Paris), Rajiv Mishra (Mumbai), Sameep Padora (Mumbai), François Perrot (Paris), Yashwant Pitkar (Mumbai), Rahul Srivastava (Goa).

The exhibition gave the students an opportunity to showcase their work in the two phases of the programme. It not only features their documentation of local housing construction, but also the ideas they produced during the workshop and their proposals for a 100 unit affordable housing project. The conference brings together affordable housing experts from around the world and from various fields including architecture, industry, research, non-profit and international agencies. The aim of the conference is to look at the potential for creative collaborations between actors in the field, to support the local production of affordable housing and enhance its quality.

urbz.net/JJAH/conference

More photos here and here.

Last week, we followed the trail of incremental development as hard-wired into BV Doshi’s little publicized Aranya project, which was started in the early 1980s in the city of Indore (Madhya Pradesh, India). The Indore Development Authority had commissioned a low-cost housing initiative for economically weaker sections of the city. This “site and services” project was supported by the World Bank, which in those days believed that incremental development and users’ involvement was key to providing shelter to the economically weaker sections of society. Also involved in the study that lead to Doshi’s plan was the very interesting Minimal Cost Housing Group at McGill University. Doshi’s Vastu Shilpa Foundation has published studies that lead to the project along with Aranya’s master plans. These are very important documents for people in the field of affordable housing, as they show an alternative path to urban development.

On the left, one of the 60 model houses designed by Doshi in Aranya. On the right a plot in construction. Construction is ongoing in Aranya propelled as everywhere else in India by the housing market boom.

Locally known as sector 78, the Aranya project has yielded a rich harvest of affordable housing in habitats that continue to evolve and grow thirty years after its launch. Aranya features some really attractive parts shaped by individual footprints of homes that people invested with their savings and passion. These footprints are framed by the street layouts and boundaries originally conceived by Doshi. What families have done individually in them is quite impressive. A small 32 x 12 square foot base has evolved into an impressive 900 square feet house that reaches into the third floor. The economically poorer parts reveal layers of economic activities all along the narrow streets.

Small plot, big house. This house is owned by retired civil servant who finds that Aranya is one of the best place to live in Indore. He likes the calm and local scale of the neighbourhood.

Many of Doshi’s initial intentions and ingenious innovations have not survived the implementation of the project, yet Aranya has become a lively neighbourhood, providing an attractive environment to its residents, mixing housing with economic activities. The population initially targeted by the project was a rather tightly audited, flat and abstract notion of the poor and needy. They were in many ways already pushed aside by the government agencies coordinating the project from its very inception and they participated intensely in speculating on the plots. Subsequently, many plots ended-up in the hands of people different than those they were initially intended for, but still, the ease with which Aranya mixes typologies and demographics is striking.

Interestingly, the development was to be cross subsidized by the sale of larger plots, many of which were bought by investors who had no intention of building anything on them, seeing them instead as long-term speculative investments. The town’s center was also left undeveloped as money ran short. Keeping these spaces empty has dragged down the development of the entire neighbourhood. In contrast smaller plots have been very intensively built on. A part of the neighbourhood where Doshi has built model houses has largely been taken over by government servants, who have often entirely rebuilt the original houses. Other parts have developed slowly over time, at the pace at which their owners could save and reinvest. Today, the low income population of Aranya is a minority, partly because they have been short-changed in the earlier phase when the plots were being attributed and partly because many have sold out since they were allocated the plot through a lottery process.

Commercial streets and activities spontaneously emerged in parts of Aranya that were originally intended to be residential.

Aranya is in many ways an affirmation of the ideals of incremental growth in the area of urban development. It is an encouragement to all those involved in the business of affordable housing to work with the possibilities of self-development and infrastructural support rather than the conventions of state (or private sector provided) mass housing projects. We are now going to do a post-occupancy survey of Aranya together with the Vastu Shilpa Foundation. We hope that this will help us understand better the challenges and potential of incremental development schemes.

More photos here.

We spent most of last week in Ahmedabad, the dynamic capital of Gujarat, which is developing just as fast as any other major Indian city today. In spite of the wide availability of land, real estate prices are shooting up in most parts due to the speculative bubble that is currently affecting India and boosting its economy.

Alexis de Ducla, a 28 year old affordable housing enthusiast who currently heads a special research project at Lafarge, a large cement company invited us to meet Bijal Bhatt, who heads the Mahila Housing Trust (MHT) –the housing and planning wing of SEWA (Self-Employed Women’s Association). MHT wants to start producing affordable housing for its members. This is a first for the organization, which has been focusing mostly on slum upgrading and advocacy till now. They have asked us offer recommendations that could help them achieve their objectives.

We visited a few social entrepreneurs and developers in Ahmedabad, including the up and coming DBS (Affordable Housing Strategy), a start up that is currently developing a 1400 flat housing project in south-east Ahmedabad. Flats are 22 sq.m to 62 sq.m and sell from INR 3.29 lakhs to 8.25 lakhs ($7,400 to $18,400), which is well below the market rate. For this project they have collaborated with SAATH an non-profit organization who’s goal is to create inclusive cities.

We interacted with people involved in various parts of the affordable housing production chain, including end users. The buyers we met were all looking forward to moving to a new house and neighbourhood, which would give them with better social status. A few of them mentioned that they were doing it for the children who were growing up and needed a better environment.

Affordable housing construction site in south-east Ahmedabad.

Many said that trust in the developer was an important factor in their choice. They started paying for the apartment years before the completion of the project and based their choice on the plans and brochures they were shown. Most wanted a ground floor apartment so they could park their vehicle in front and also open a small shop.

The developers we talked to said that the demand is so strong that it was hard for them to keep a cap on profits. To reserve a flat, buyers first have to deposit money on a bank account and apply for a loan. Rather than the total price of the flat, many affordable housing buyers are looking for loans with smaller EMI (Equated Monthly Installments), of less than INR 10,000 a month, which they feel they can repay, even if that means paying for the flat a few times over.

While some affordable housing developers have a clear social agenda, it is not so easy to help the poorest entirely through market mechanisms. The cap on profits, even at 20% or 10% doesn’t guarantee the fulfillment of the social objective. In some cases it simply amounts to sharing the profit with the buyer. That’s seems like a good thing for the buyer, but it could also drag the market price down artificially, forcing other builders to lower construction cost (and compromise even more on quality) to retain their existing profit margins.

Moreover, buyers of affordable housing are not always those for whom the product is intended. A builder reported that Gujarati friends from Canada and the US wanted to buy 100 affordable flats as an investment. Even with a strict screening of the buyers and provisions forbidding them from selling for 5 to 10 years, many flats end up being sold anyways. A lot of the housing market in India is underground and unaudited. It is the biggest money making and money laundering system in the country.

If affordable housing is so fashionable these days, it is not so much because it serves the needs of millions of poor people. It is rather because the market for middle-class and upper-middle housing is quickly saturating and overheating. Tens of thousands of upper-end flats are going unsold in Ahmedabad and Mumbai. Tens, maybe hundreds of thousands more are empty, owned by distant investors who have no intention of renting it to anybody. Many investors prefer to buy (or better build) and sell fast, before their property deteriorates. Unused flats have a higher exchange value because they are more fluid on the market. Affordable housing is indeed often turning into affordable real estate investment.

The saddest part of the story is the construction of countless cheap buildings all over the country that are not built to last. They quickly deteriorate and become costly to maintain. The developer is out of the building as soon as all the flats are sold and the responsibility for maintenance and repairs falls on all flat owners.

Affordable housing builders are betting on two things: fast turnover and the scaling up of their operation. This is why they are ready to lower their profit margin. But even then we heard buyers complain that the price of the same flat was always changing in response to the demand. This produces a highly unstable and risky market that is disproportionately based on the exchange value of housing, rather than on its use value. The result is a housing stock of extremely poor quality, which cannot really be said to contribute to the betterment of society.

A possible way out of this dangerous dynamic is to re-conceptualize the house as a process, rather than as a product. We have observed in Dharavi and many other habitats that were not planned nor developed by professional real estate developers, that a house is never just a house. It is also a tool for revenue generation, whether it is through renting, production or commercial activity. Moreover a house is never quite finished. It is always improving and being adapted to new needs. This cannot happen in mass housing. A large building can never improve over time.

The economy of construction itself is important. When a resident of Dharavi needs to fix his water pipes, he goes to a local contractor who has knowledge of the water system. If he needs a new roof, he asks a mason from his community, whom he trusts. The money invested stays in the neighbourhood. The proximity with contractors allows the incremental development of entire neighbourhoods. Building an affordable house is a process that combines economic development and finance with construction in such a way that they cannot be dealt with in isolation of each other.

The pot of gold at the bottom of the pyramid certainly lies in a new understanding of how finance and architecture can be combined. This however, will not solve the real problem of so many social entrepreneurs. There will always be a hard line below which the market cannot reach, these are the most needy (and perhaps numerous) people all around the world. Rather than trying to push the market down to impossible levels to try and reach to the poorest while satisfying the social imperative of social entrepreneurship, it may be time to think about value generation from a totally different perspective. And this thinking can only emerge from the ground-up.

More photos of Ahmedabad here.

Trouble in paradise: Iron Ore Mine in Bicholim, North Goa

We have been busy looking at Goa’s complex urban system and networks together with a group of graduate landscape architecture students from Sweden. This studio, taking place from Feb 14th to 25th, is part of a year-long programme organized by Henrietta Palmer and Michael Dudley of the Royal Institute of Arts in Stockholm, and the Institute of Urbanology in Goa. The group was also joined by masters students of the Dr. Bhanuben Nanavati College of Architecture for Women (BNCA) based in Pune.

Goa, which is the smallest state in India, can be conceptualized as an urban system made of a network of villages and a few bigger towns of max 100,000 people. These are interspersed with fields and forests and each settlement is connected to the others through an intricate web of small roads. As is the case in many Indian cities, large infrastructure projects along with savage real estate speculation and corrupt politics are challenging the unique spatial organization of Goa.

Savoi Veren village near Ponda, which predates Portuguese colonization, is now surrounded by mines.

Historically, this spatial logic has been connected to the availability of water sources and river systems which traditionally Goan villages and hamlets were dependent on for their survival. The delicate balance of containing groundwater salinity by blocking rain water flows through intricate water management, of painstaking rain water conservation through dependency on its forests (now being ravaged by mines) and of dependence on wells for water supply are all factors that are miraculously still alive even as one part of Goa gets connected to piped water, roads and bridges.

If modern urban societies are concerned with environmental issues then a good look at Goa’s habitats and how they are embedded in its water system becomes something that everyone can learn a lot from. If the new vision that Goa is looking towards for its own growth and future need an anchoring for its regional development plans, then that vision needs to be anchored in its historical spatial logic, arranged through its water ways and systems.

Two students of the Royal Institute of Arts taking pictures of a barge transporting Iron ore on the Mandovi river.

Right now, Goa’s system of villages, towns, fields and forests are being super imposed by a planning logic connected to mainstream mechanisms of connectivity and mobility, of real estate development and aspirations. The people of Goa are struggling with the balancing out of all these factors and are looking for ways to organize Goa’s growth and future in a manner that does justice to its special cultural and historical distinctiveness that is  intimately tied to its physical, environmental and spatial logic. In a very small way, this group has tried to address some of these issues to the best of its ability.

After more than a week of travel, observations, meetings with experts and activists, the group will make a series of presentations that directly or indirectly connects with the idea of Goa’s complex water system as the base of its spatial logic and open the doors for more research in this broad area. Please come to the students’ presentation at Panjim Inn in Fontainhas, Goa, Friday February 25th at 5PM.

Students interacting with Dean D’Cruz, one of Goa’s most respected architect who is also working on the Goa regional plan.

Click here for more pictures of the studio in Goa.

Read more on Goa as an urban network on airoots.

URBZ members Rahul and Matias spent a week in Bangalore at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements and discussed the future of Indian cities along with 39 participants from all over the country and 21 faculty members. In addition to giving a lecture on “Citizenship and Activism”, we also facilitated two groups of participants through the “practica” exercise. In the “practica”, participants were asked to respond to a proposal that seemed both absurd and all too real: to use a central space in Bangalore to create a new financial centre for the city and the country. Most groups rejected the idea of a new financial centre in Bangalore altogether and proposed alternatives such as a transport hub or an incubator and research centre.

The broad theme of this week-long seminar/studio was “Re-Imagining the World Class City.” The many debates and questions that arose over the week left it unclear whether the World Class City should be re-imagined at all. Many argued that the concept should be dropped at once, as it has been used and abused by a small constituency of big players in urban and real estate development to promote their vested interests, with little considerations for the historical, cultural and social specificity of Indian cities and urban settlements. We discuss this theme in a new post on airoots.org.

This event was meant as a preamble to the start of IIHS which aims at becoming India’s premier urban planning institution. From June onwards, it will offer undergraduate, masters and doctoral courses with a strong emphasis on practice. Headed by Aromar Revi, the Institute has a strong faculty, which includes the likes of Smita Srinivas of Columbia University, Peter Head, director of the global planning unit at Arup, and Caren Levy, director of the Development Planning Unit (DPU) at UCL. We will also continue our collaboration with IIHS as academic consultants.

For more on IIHS, visit their website.