community housing in india by B.V DOSHI

1. ARANYA HOUSING
FAROOQH PASHA.A
USN:1BQ15AT026
SEM:5A
BUILDING ECONOMICS
JOURNAL REPORT

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ARANYA HOUSING
ABSTRACT:
Since decades urbanization in India and many developing countries has generated one of the
horrifying pictures of poverty in the form of slum. It has been a very difficult task of dealing with
this settlement form which has been the part of many of the growing urban centers of the
country with almost 47% population of cities as slums.
Aranya project represents a new paradigm in urban planning, that attempts to resolve this
growing issue and discuss one of the critical aspect of urban design and town planning
approach with the economically weaker makes it special is-the approach of ‘planning and urban
design framework of the settlement where people build themselves”. The framework was
evolved through understanding the needs of the people. An attempt was made to address the
issue of identity and sense of community which is often missing in conventional projects. Due to
a growing number of urban poor in the major cities of developing countries, there has been a
large-scale international effort to implement an appropriate solution to housing the urban poor.
Some of these systems have worked and some have not. This paper will consider Aranya low-
cost housing in India as an example of an architecturally planned master scheme where slum
dwellers have been displaced from their illegal dwellings. The paper will also consider what
lessons can be learnt from its considered successes and its relevant failures to see whether or
not this type of development is pertinent as a contemporary means of housing the poor. The
research finds that four major areas are essential to making low income development plausible
for the future: government investment; adequate service provision; appropriate construction
techniques; and government regulations.
KEYWORDS:
Aranya, Housing, Slums
INTRODUCTION:
Due to an inability to keep up with housing the massive increase in urban populations in
developing countries during the latter half of the 20th century, there has been a significant
increase in the growth of slum settlements. Since 1950 the proportion of people working in
developing country agriculture has declined by 20 to 30 per cent. (Sustainable Urbanisation,
2007) and the immigrant urban poor have largely moved from the country side to the cities.
They have done this voluntarily in order to exploit actual or perceived economic opportunities
and this increasing urban informal sector is spectacularly visible in the many growing and large
scale informal and squatter settlements in urban centres. (Sustainable Urbanisation, 2007)
Various attempts to find a valid urban and architectural housing solution to the slum crisis have

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been initiated by a wide range of professionals. Following some general background
information to the problem of slum housing, this paper defines the three main types of urban
renewal that have been pursued to solve the problem. One of the solutions has been to relocate
slum dwellers to new townships and to demolish the slums in which these dwellers have lived
and this paper considers in detail the success of Aranya Township, India where the new build
solution has been implemented. Aranya Township is a respected example of these new
settlements but, despite the architectural brilliance of this township, it has failed to show itself as
an effective way to house the poor. This paper will describe how and why Aranya Township has
failed and determine if the lessons learnt support an alternative solution. Incorporating these
lessons may help to make these types of development a viable option for the future.

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OBJECTIVE
The two main government agencies catering to the city’s housing needs are the Indore
Development Authority (IDA) and the Madhya Pradesh housing Board (MPHB). According to
the 1991 census almost 3.5 Lacs, which form almost 35%of the city’s population are living in
the slums. This population is likely to be double in next 10 years. As per a survey in 1990, over
two-thirds of the slum families live below poverty line earning less than Rs. 1000 per month.
The existing housing stock was needed to be replaced. Almost 40% of households live in one
room tenements.
Slums in Indore are characterized by overcrowding, Kutcha or dilapidated structures,
unhygienic conditions, grossly inadequate basic amenities, unplanned layouts and poor
accessibility. These areas generally house economically weaker sections of the community who
are often engaged in casual service occupations.
THE ARANYA PROJECT’S AIM
This low-cost housing project is undertaken by IDA to meet the acute shortage of housing and
ancillary facilities, particularly for the economically weaker section (EWS) and to ensure a
balanced development. The funding agencies of this project, HUDCO and World Bank
stipulated that a minimum 65% of the plots be affordable by the EWS without any external
subsidies. So upper income plots were incorporated into the scheme to be sold at a profit in
order to raise surplus capital. This surplus is being used to cross subsidize the EWS pots and to
create a revolving fund to assist EWS construction, to set up material banks and to provide
funds for future developments of similar nature.
The planning and design was done by Vastu Shilpa Foundation to accommodate almost 7,000
housing units (a population of almost 40,000) in various income categories.
THE SITE AND ITS ENVIRONS
The Aranya Township is sited on the Delhi-Bombay highway; approximately 6 k.m. from the city
centre of Indore. The net area of the site is 88.6 hectares, squarish in plan and measures
almost 1k.m. X1k.m. The site is almost flat with no major physical features except a natural
rainwater channel, which runs diagonally across the southeast corner. The site slopes from east
to northwest at a gradient of 1in 110, which is used to reduce infrastructure costs. The other
natural factors which have been taken into consideration are the geology and climatic factors
(composite climate). A dense to moderately dense ,low-rise built form is adopted.

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RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:
LITERATURE REVIEW:
Due to “unprecedented dimensions of rural to urban migration” (Dündar, 2001:391) during the
middle of the 20th century, many of the developing nations saw a massive increase in city
population densities and struggled to provide sufficient housing for these new developments.
This happened in “India, resulting in urban areas where nearly 23% of the population of well
over 800 million now live” (Steele, 1998:114) and “in India… many of the present environmental
maladies have been attributed to the pressure resulting from high population density.”(Siddiqui,
Pandey, 2003:600)
To counter the problem of illegal squatter settlements, (this “urban cancer” (Ward, 1976:331)),
the Indian government sought to engage different architects and urban planners to consider
and implement unique housing solutions. In the township of Aranya, in the Indore Valley, the
Indore Development Authority commissioned Vastu-Shilpa Foundation (VSF) (led by Balkrishna
V. Doshi) to perform work on a new housing development primarily designed for the
Economically Weaker Sector (EWS).
The following is an appraisal of the solution for Aranya Nagar (Aranya low-cost housing) on
which construction started in 1983. Indore, a commercial centre for the state of Madhya
Pradesh, is typical of urban areas throughout India in that it suffers from acute housing
shortages. The solution of the housing shortage was not only to upgrade slums but also to
create a new ‘site and service’ scheme to provide for new housing (Steel, 1998:115). A policy
such as this offers some hope of lessening the pressures of large-scale migration from
subsistence agriculture directly into the biggest cities. It can also provide alternative settlement
systems designed to achieve more balanced regional development. (Declaration of Vancouver
Symposium, 1976)

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Turner outlines much of the problem with slum settlements, where typically up to 45% of the
population is below 15 years of age; fertility is high but so is infant mortality (particularly from
gastro-enteric diseases); household size is six but there are about eight or nine people per
house; unemployment is high among women and young people, unemployment is common
among heads of household (usually men); education and skill standards are low; the majority of
households own their house (but not the land) and a small portion are renters and only a very
small proportion of houses have sanitary facilities or water supply. (Turner, 1980) Although men
are considered the heads of household women are understood to play a key role in the
economic security of dwellings without which the dwelling would perish. (Mahmud, 2003) These
poor conditions that are found throughout many slum areas are also referred to by Abelson who
found further that half of adults in slums are illiterate, few slum households have private tap
water, only half the slums have public tap water, and less than one in five slum houses owns a
toilet. (Abelson, 1996) These descriptions accurately depict the situation in Aranya and were
the catalyst for the Indore Development Authority to commission Aranya which is described by
VSF as “an holistic environment rooted in the socio-cultural and economic milieu of the urban
poor

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PRIMARY REVIEW:
Name: Aranya housing
Description: Low cost housing development.
Architect: B.V.Doshi
Year: 1983-86
Location: Indore, India.
Income Level: Low.

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Shading Strategy: Various.
Climatic Issues: Tropical climate.
Ventilation Strategy: Correct solar orientation, shared external walls.
Rainwater dispersal: Flat roofs.
Technology Level: low.
Materials: Brick walls, pre-stressed concrete enclosure walls with a floor of cement and local
stone.
Cyclone resistance: Not relevant.
Relevance to Mauritius: High - Doshi’s approach looked to reorganise slum areas into districts
and active streets with shops and craftsmen. He wanted to allow the free of the individual
owners to be able to build and extend their own dwellings. Doshi abandoned grid formations
and organised the project into six sectors fed by an avenue.
CULTURAL AND SOCIAL CONTEXT :
Indore, India in the early 1980’s was facing a shortage of Housing. It had been estimated that
approximately 51,000 families were homeless or living in illegal settlements. The Indore
Development Authority initiated an affordable housing project for 60,000 people that would
tackle this issue and at the same time be affordable to the government and urban poor.
Previous efforts by the government to provide low-cost urban housing in India were aimed at
supplying ready-built units. However, it took too long to construct a complete house and it
became expensive for the low income group and also ate up too many resources.

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A rectilinear site of 86 hectares was designed to accommodate over 6500 dwellings, largely for
the Weaker Economic Section. This was an integrated approach for 'a sustainable society'
where the mix of different economic levels of society could stay together.
Aranya Township was designed as a site and services project spread laid out in six sectors that
converge on a central spine i.e., the Central Business District. One of the key elements of
Doshi’s design was a hierarchy of open spaces that included small courtyards to be shared by
three to four families, larger green spaces for each of the settlement’s six sectors, and a central
playing field to serve the entire development. Open spaces and pedestrian pathways intersect
and connect the clusters to the central spine. Each user has an array of options available from
one room shelters to more spacious houses, and emphasis is mad on a sense of family and
neighbourhood while striving to encourage adapatation and personalization according to
individual’s needs and resources.
CONCLUSION:
New build developments can be prosperous developments that are successful and fully aid the
community they have been aimed at to help. Architecturally most of the master planning has
been successful in its understanding of the needs and requirements of the people it has aimed
to help and of the culture that it has been built within. However without the guidance of
governing bodies to make sure that the project is properly implemented and controlled there
can easily be a failing in the overall scheme and thus a failing in the intentions of those involved
in the construction of the development.

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The severe lack of services and minimal sanitary environment is one of the major reasons to
establish new communities for the urban poor. There must be caution in this area, as described
in Aranya, where the service provision was perhaps too much and made the dwelling
unaffordable for the general slum dweller. Also, the spread of so many individualised services
put a strain on the available amount of the potable water that was available to the site, causing
them to be ineffective for the delivery of the essential needs of the individual.
Construction techniques can be new to the community provided that there is a governed
institution that will spread the information of how to easily construct with the new technology.
Materials for the construction must be readily available to the dwellers and at a price that is
affordable and inspires the dwellers to house themselves in a more appropriate manner.
Complicated high cost building materials and techniques should be avoided as this can subvert
the effort to place a roof over the heads of the ‘needy’.
There must be control in place over the use of land as it is necessary for the proposed recipient
to actually be housed in the development otherwise the goal of the project is undermined, and
thus the project becomes detrimental rather than helpful to the target community.
REFERENCE:
1.Doshi, B.V, 1988, ‘Aranya Township, Indore’ ‘Mimar: no.28, pp.24-29.
2.Aranya low cost housing, Indore (2008) Seven Hill Naturstien Ltd:
http://indiabuildnet.com/arch/sangath_17.htm
3.Indian Planning Commission Five Year Plans (1951-2008) Indian Government
http://planningcommission.nic.in
4.Sustainable Urbanisation: local action for urban poverty reduction, emphasis on finance and
planning (2007) 21st Session of the Governing Council UN Habitat
5.Doshi, B.V. 1996, ‘Balkrishna Doshi: the proof of yesterday’ n.44, pp.20-35.