Slum rehabilitation in the context of urban sustainability: a case study of Mumbai, India

In the last two decades, migration from villages and small towns to metropolitan areas has increased tremendously in India. This leads to the degradation of urban environmental quality and sustainable development especially in the metropolitan cities. The problems faced by the people living in the urban areas of India have become major concerns for the government over the last two decades. Slums are considered to be the major issue within many urban areas; particularly problems related to transportation, population, health and safety. India is one of the fastest developing countries with many metropolitan cities (e.g. Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Delhi and Chennai). To explore the effect of rehabilitation of slums on urban sustainability, part of Mumbai was selected as a case study. Compared to the other metropolitan cities in India, Mumbai is one of the biggest metropolitan regions and capital of the state of Maharashtra with many slums varying in sizes. In addition, every year millions of rupees are being spent to resettle and rehabilitate slums to make Mumbai sustainable. It is reported that around 6 percent of the total land holds nearly 60 percent of the total Mumbai population (CBC, 2006). From 1980 onwards, the rate of migration and the sprawling nature of slums into the city has become an major issue, although many organisations are working towards development of Mumbai, the conditions are not conducive to achieving urban sustainable environment as most of the organisations are not working on a united front. Also, various researchers have reported that to maintain the pace of sustainable urbanisation, a holistic approach to sustainable development needs to be considered. Considering today’s poor urban environmental quality in Mumbai, there are many projects under development and execution to improve the poor conditions. Also, the World Bank has funded many projects with the primary aim of improving the city’s land transport, health and education which affect thousands of families. The majority of families affected by urban development projects are located in slum areas which are under consideration for resettlement and/ or rehabilitation. The aim of this research is to examine slum areas and their effects on sustainable urban development. To accomplish the above aim, a case study based approach, engaging a series of face‐to‐face interviews, was used. As a part of this research, an urban development project funded by the World Bank to achieve urban sustainability in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) was explored. Also, several visits to other slums and rehabilitated areas were conducted to identify the quality of life in slums and rehabilitated areas. The data collected during the face‐to‐face interviews, was used for descriptive analysis considering various aspects (i.e. social, educational) of urban sustainability. Through this research, the reasons for slums and problems related to slums were explored. During the research, it is revealed that some people still think that urbanisation is responsible for unsustainable development and they are not in favour of resettlement and rehabilitation. This suggests that to achieve successful urban sustainability, other issues such as employment, education and general awareness are also required along with low‐cost mass housing.