Learning from Delhi

The inflexibility of modern urban planning, which seeks to determine the activities of urban inhabitants and standardise everyday city life, is challenged by the unstoppable organic growth of illegal settlements. In rapidly expanding cities, issues of continuity with local traditions, local conditions and local ways of working are juxtaposed with those of abrupt change due to emergency, reaction to modernity, environmental degradation, global market forces and global technological imperatives to make efforts to control by physical planning redundant as soon as they are enacted. In most third world cities there is little social welfare and almost no attempt at social housing. Contents: Preface; Forewords; Introduction; Part I Setting the Scene: Field research; Methods (and modernity). Part II Essays: Delhi 'slums': red lines and high walls; The waste pickers of Panchseel Vihar; Havelis and the conglomerate matrix; Urban nomads; Climate, density and construction; Place, space and services; The relevance for architectural education in the UK. Part III Catalogue of Selected Students' Schemes: Slums, sanitation, amenity and housing; Waste picking; Havelis; Urban nomads; Leisure and livelihoods; Live projects; Students and projects 2002-2010; Glossary; Bibliography; Index.