During UN Habitat’s Urban October, 50 researchers from SHLC’s international team came together for a partner meeting and fieldwork in Delhi, India, to visit the city’s diverse neighbourhoods, present new research findings and design the next stages of our urban research.
Neighbourhood Visits
The SHLC team had the chance to visit several very different kinds of neighbourhoods, including Madanpur Khadar resettlement colony and the Kidwai Nagar redevelopment project.
In Madanpur Khadar resettlement colony, which is home to 20,000 people who were moved from squatter settlements in the city centre in 2004. World Vision India, the NGO working in the area, accompanied the team on a ‘neighbourhood transect’ walking workshop to explore what daily life is like for people who live here. Professor Ivan Turok said:
“Overall, the settlement is a step up from the makeshift places that many residents occupied before. The most positive features are the street grid, the solid dwellings and security of tenure for residents, although space standards are low, investment in the physical and social infrastructure is lacking and the location is inferior, given the absence of public transport and poor road connections.”
The team also visited an altogether different neighbourhood – an impressive redevelopment project in Kidwai Nagar. This project, run by the National Buildings Construction Corporation, provides up-scale planned housing for government workers and is located less than 14km from Mandanpur Khadar. The differences are stark. Kidwai Nagar is a cutting-edge development focussing on environmental sustainability featuring open green space, airy lobbies and electric cars. The Chair of SHLC’s Centre Advisory Committee, Emeritus Professor Cliff Hague, said:
“The contrast with the state provided housing for those lucky enough to get a job in a public service body is stark. Putting into practice the language of green planning is fine, but that practice here in Delhi is also exclusionary."
Lodhi Colony provided the location for the team’s last neighbourhood visit. This long-established neighbourhood is also home to government workers but is serves as an open-air art gallery famous for colourful murals painted by local and global street artists. The murals, curated by the St+Art India Foundation and supported by Asian Paints, celebrate local traditions, such as informal street trading, but also draws attention to pressing urban challenges, like climate change and over obsession with social media.
Presenting Research
To kick-off the international partner meeting, the SHLC team were greeted by Director Mr. Hitesh Vaidya and colleagues from our partners and host – the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA). India’s Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, Mr. Shri Hardeep Singh Puri, warmly welcomed the SHLC team to Delhi and introduced the Indian government’s policies, such as the drive to end open-defecation and the impressive smart cities programme, and expressed his anticipation in learning from SHLC’s upcoming neighbourhood research.
At the meeting, our project partner Co-I Professor Debolina Kundu launched a Special Issue of the journal Environment and Urbanisation ASIA profiling cities of the Global South for sustainable development, including several SHLC case study cities; and the publication of the first stage report by the India team.
Each in-country team presented their initial research findings exploring urban expansion, internal social divisions and structural changes as well as neighbourhood classification, mapping and auditing across SHLC’s case study cities. Principle investigator Professor Ya Ping Wang said:
“It was really great to see members of the SHLC team together again and to hear the preliminary findings from the second year of research. Each team is using different innovative approaches to define and understand neighbourhoods, like geo-social-administrative divisions, machine learning and cluster analysis, so the meeting was an excellent opportunity for sharing ideas and exploring urban research challenges together. I would like to thank colleagues at NIUA who put a lot of hard work into organising a very well-run meeting.”
Participatory Research
Rounding off our visit to Delhi, the SHLC team were invited to Participatory Research in Asia (PRIA) to learn about participatory research techniques and the opportunity to influence policy . Professor Ivan Turok said: