Shifting approaches to slums in Chennai: Political coalitions, policy discourses and practices

Abstract

Slums pose a persistent challenge for fast growing urban areas in the global South, despite several decades of policy intervention. While Chennai has adopted several strategies ranging from upgrading to reconstruction, the city has been unable to deliver its target of 'clearing' slum settlements. Through an analysis of four enumeration reports and a look at the evolving political contexts and subsequent practices, we illustrate the evolution of slum policy approaches in Chennai since the 1970s. The analysis shows slum practices in Chennai continue to be characterized by an underlying continuity, with relocation as the dominant mode of operation since the nineties. However, approaches to slums have also evolved from paternalistic socialism with in-situ development in the seventies, to approaches characterized by affordability and cost recovery in the eighties, to the aesthetics of global cities in the nineties, to the technology driven, to slum-free 'smart city' discourse currently in vogue.

The urban governance configuration: A conceptual framework for understanding complexity and enhancing transitions to greater sustainability in cities

“…Material processes, finances and institutions set limits and constraints. The city as a nexus of powerful networks is also constrained by actors’ mandates, which apply only within administrative boundaries, meaning that relations between cities and their surrounding areas are not easily integrated (Saharan et al., 2018).…”

Global Informal Settlements and Urban Slums in Cities and the Coverage

“…The SCS is supported by the World Bank's Madras Urban Development Project (MUDP) that covers the improvements of 434 slums [56,57]. In some cases, however, safer cities can be the result of slums' clearance like the Maspero Triangle informal area in downtown Cairo, Egypt (2018).…”

Understanding policy framework for slum governance in a developing country

“…While these studies contribute to knowledge and management of slums, a critical review of the extant literature reveals a lack of a clear policy framework for slum governance. The phenomenon is largely due to the absence of a strong policy agenda for slums (Marx et al , 2013), and divisions among institutions for the management of slums (Kusters et al , 2018; Malik et al , 2021; Saharan et al , 2018). While the above research has indicated pointers accounting for a void in slum governance, the issue of a policy framework for slum governance is missing, leaving a gap in the literature.…”