Author: Indira Dasgupta
AIT Library Call Number: AIT Thesis no. HS-84-13
Year: 1984
Academic Program: Human Settlement (HS)
Type: Thesis (M.Sc.) – Asian Institute of Technology, 1991
Examination Committee: Yap Kioe Sheng (Chairperson); A.T.M. Nurul Amin, Ira. M. Robinson (Examination Committee Members)
Abstract: Both the government and the urban poor living in various substandard areas are in search of ways and means to better the living conditions in the dwelling environments of the urban poor . Strategies are based on resources within their control. The government aspires to order the city structures through a process of resource control, viz . land, finance, materials, know-how (technology, information). The settlements are thus categorised in terms of land conditions and the individual projects are decided on the basis of the costs required for improvement. The squatter is a unique decision-maker who makes his decision through trade-offs at the household level . The resources in their control are those of household income, motivation, satisfaction, innovativeness, adaptability. The present study applied an innovative participatory method, known as the tradeoff game to determine the needs of the people in a squatter settlement located in Delhi. The game required that the participants assign values according to strength of their perceived need in a constrained-choice situation, giving up something to gain something else. The priorities of the people within a settlement were found to be heterogeneous as has been noted even in earlier research ” .. within a particular city the low-income population does not form a homogeneous group, but has a wide variety of housing needs and priorities … (Hardoy and Satterwaite, 1986 cit Yap,1989:27) The aspirations and actions that they make are on decisions made on the basis of categorisation but rather on the basis of integration of all the influencing factors. Thus it is realised that any scheme that the government proposes to address at the settlement level will not be comprehensive . It is imperative, therefore to understand the needs and aspirations of the people to develop an effective human settlements planning mechanism. We observed that the participatory method applied was effective and useful as that generated sufficient quantitative
Scholarship Donor(s): The Government of Norway
Note: A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of the Degree of Master of Science, School of Engineering and Technology
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