PLANNING FOR URBAN RENEWAL IN KOLKATA CITY

Abstract

The growth of cities all over the world is rapid and beyond control. The demands for essential infrastructure and services in the urban areas have far out-stripped the existing supply. The land values and housing are far beyond the affordable limits of the urban poor. These conditions have left the urban poor with no choice but to seek informal housing solutions, with the result that slum and squatter settlements in most urban areas have mushroomed. The shelter problem of the urban poor has increased not only in scale but also in severity. In most of the Indian cities, the urban poor are building their own houses and going against the law in vogue to fulfill their own basic need �â� � "shelter". In this respect, Kolkata city, in India, is also not an exception. In Kolkata city there are more than five thousand slum pockets, which have 278,868 households having a population of 1,485,309. It has been observed that these slum pockets in the city have grown since the East India Company was set up. The slums in this city have seen lots of ups and downs (growth and decay) over a period of centuries. In this dissertation, an attempt is made to asses the physical, socio-economical, and environmental condition of the slum (system) along with the available infrastructural facilites in the system. Survey research methods have been employed to asses the existing conditions of the system. Plausible analytical techniques have been employed to analyze the data. The results are discussed thoroughly by employing interactive analytical methods. Systems theory has been employed to understand the theoretical functions of the system. Further, the demand and the supply of households are quantified for the year 2031 A.D. by iu employing optimal projection techniques. Theory of hierarchy of human needs is employed to understand the level of satisfaction in the system. Finally, the study concludes with evolving a set of recommendations, for the renewal of slum pockets in the system.