Homegrown Cities

= p2p-inspired urbanism in the slums of Mumbia

Description

"URBZ has developed several projects in which we have developed partnerships with contractors in various neighbourhoods, from Shivaji Nagar in Deonar and Sai Vihar in Bhandup.

The Homegrown Cities project goes one step further. Working very closely with legal experts and professional urban practitioners, we are actually going to purchase a plot in Bhandup, to start a chain of locally induced and controlled development projects, house by house, with the eventual aim of developing a collectively owned, neighbourhood level, housing society that is controlled by the residents themselves, and consists of homes that have been co-designed with the URBZ/Homegrown Cities team.

Our long term objective is to bring attention to more community oriented policies such as the sites and services schemes or developing long term collective leaseholds for residents that once dominated the city’s urban policies. This will show how local, community owned and managed housing co-operatives, can be a vital step towards improving the neighbourhoods, bringing good quality civic infrastructure and making the city genuinely ’slum-free’.

In this process, working with local actors, from neighbourhood builders, to corporators who are sensitive to resident needs, becomes a crucial part of the process and can help break through the stronghold that the real estate development lobby has on the city as a whole and on the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme in particular.

The project is at an early stage today and is developing funding to facilitate the process of local investors coming ahead and kick starting the project. Lets hope we can make a small difference to the way the city thinks of most of its residents and their lives. " (http://urbz.net/the-homegrown-cities-project/)