human environment Flashcards
Mumbai
(housing in mumbai)
what are squatter camps?
Squatter areas are places where people settle on land which they do not own or rent. This is the poorest accommodation in Mumbai. No one owns or rents them. They are makeshift shelter with no amenities and no services; this means there is a high level of disease. There are lots of immigrants and it is very unsafe.
(housing in mumbai)
what are shanty towns/ informal housing?
Shanty towns are large squatter camps with slightly better living conditions. The house structure and material is better (sometimes brick walls and tin roofs), they also have water supplies and sometime the local authority provides basic community toilets. The houses are
still very small and very overcrowded. There is also no organised rubbish collection so refuse is dumped anywhere.
(housing in mumbai)
what is low cost housing?
Half the people in Mumbai live in shanty towns and a lot of the others live in low cost housing. These are single room tenement blacks with electricity but only for a few hours a day. They also have running water but also for only a few hours a day. The problem with
these housing areas is parts have become ghettoes lived in by single religion groups for security reasons.
(housing in mumbai)
what is high cost housing?
Luxury accommodation is in high rise apartment blocks found in CBD and suburbs. Land is really expensive and gated to prevent crime. Many of the complexes have there own swimming pools, tennis courts, gyms, even shopping centres, schools and health centres.
Executives of companies, owners of factories and Bollywood stars all live in these areas. In a way this area because another kind of ghetto.
what are the solutions to housing problems?
The people have been evicted and houses bulldozed. This failed because the people just build elsewhere in the city
People have been relocated to safer areas with basic amenities supplied. But, the people often resist this move because they will be too far from their work
The authorities can improve the housing, by providing toilets, standpipes, schools,
reinforcing the walls and giving the people legal rights to the land. Some areas, however, are so overcrowded that it is difficult to improve them.
The residents form co-operative groups and organise improvements themselves.
what is bombay?
As Mumbai could not provide for its entire people so the city authority started to build a new town called New Bombay, as an extension to Mumbai. The hope was it would reduce overcrowding in Mumbai and have jobs and services for everyone. At present it does not and people still have to travel into Mumbai everyday, making congestion worse.
