Abstract:
The world, today, is rapidly progressing through the process of globalization and integration of markets into a new reality �â� � as a "global village". In recent times, cities have emerged as an engine of growth. "Cities today support half of the global population, i.e., approximately 3 billion people. In the 21st century, cities of developing countries are witnessing housing shortage as the most pressing problem. More than one billion of the world's city residents live in inadequate housing, mostly in the sprawling slums and squatter settlements, especially in the developing countries" I, and India is no exception to it.
Almost all the Indian cities are struggling to cope up with the increasing demand of infrastructure services, the additional migrants further causing tension in using the existing scarce infrastructure services. In housing front, the Indian cities are facing acute shortage, and the in migrants further cause tension on it, which results with formation of slums or squatter settlements or increase in number of pavement dwellers in the urban system.
Slum plays an important role in the city, they provide essential services to the urban system and much needed labor force to fuel urban dynamism and they improve their chances of survival by whatever meager income they receive in return. Needless to say that slums and the rest of the city has symbiotic relationship. Recognizing this fact, slums are viewed as housing in improvement. It is indeed the issues of control, professional methods, attitudes, and responsibilities that are most hotly debated among housing theorists and practitioners, particularly in the case of complex social, economic and political networks of informal settlements.
Having known that there is a fundamental change of attitude that is - an acceptance of the informal settlement as an inevitable feature of the process of city building. The research work recognizes that, there is need, for fuller appreciation of the functions and inadequacies of informal settlements, and also for the implementation of specially - designed programs with built-in and feasible objectives of environmental improvement and planned social, physical and economic change.
