Slums and their dwellings don't have many supporters among architects and urban planners, but now they have received the royal seal of approval from Brit ain's Prince Charles who declared that Dharavi's use of local materials, its walkable neighbourhoods, and mix of employment and housing add up to "an underlying intuitive grammar of design that is totally absent from the faceless slab blocks that are still being built around the world to 'warehouse' the poor".
Viewers of Slumdog Millionaire will recall the scene where the boys return to Mumbai and overlook their old slum now swept away and replaced with high rise housing and the vibrant communal fabric is replaced with slabs of high rise buildings.
A number of reports are linking homelessness in developing cities with problems with overall urban planning strategy, a focus on western development styles and the replacement of local housing with often speculative projects funded by international investors building for property investors and the "burgeoning" middle class.
Prince Charles is more famous for his aesthetic architectural attitude and less for the often sensitive engagement with the community urban approach of Alice Coleman that places more emphasis on overall community structure and less on the discreet building architecture.
The redevelopment of Delhi and Mumbai has resulted in widespread destruction of pavement and slum dwellings without any concomitant commitment to build new communities.
Prince Charles strictures will strike a chord with many who would like to see an urban planning paradigm that seeks to integrate slum dwellings into the overall urban plan rather than simply seeing them as stopgap solutions until such time as they can be torn down."I strongly believe that the west has much to learn from societies and places which, while sometimes poorer in material terms are infinitely richer in the ways in which they live and organise themselves as communities, It may be the case that in a few years' time such communities will be perceived as best equipped to face the challenges that confront us because they have a built-in resilience and genuinely durable ways of living."
With 50% of the world's population living in cities and that percentage expected to rise to 70% within 40 years, it is clear that a new approach to planning is going to be required and there is an increasing recognition that big concrete masterplans that strip slum communities from the centre of cities and relocate them to "garden city" peripheries are neither successful or satisfactory.
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