Unearth Planning in the South — Community Land Reserve: Not a Sisyphean Dream
The COVID 2019 pandemic has shaken the paradigms of our capitalistic world view. Countries all over the world have been forced to revisit their basic infrastructural systems that proved grossly inadequate in such times of crisis. The scenes of migrant exodus from Indian cities on foot, walking hundreds of kilometers without necessities like food and shelter, will be etched in the public memory for long. What failed at such a time was the availability of affordable and secured shelter in the cities that could harbour these citizens. With loss of daily wages, most of the migrants were unable to meet the lofty rents that their cubby holes in informal settlements demanded and were forced to return to their villages.
However, capitalism is here to stay and free markets are at the heart of most capitalist societies. Market competition promotes innovation and efficiency in operations, leading to better products at lower costs. This applies to all commodities and even personal skills, but we argue that land is not a commodity like other commodities. It is in the best interests of society if land is managed differently from the free reign given to market forces as they apply to other commodities.[1] Cost of land is dependent on its location and its value is speculated based on the development of the entire neighbourhood. This automatically marginalises the workforce within the city in distinct precincts. The nurses, teachers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, vegetable sellers, cleaning staff and many others without whom the city would come to a screeching halt cannot afford to live in the heart of the city, close to their workplace. So, they choose to live at long commuting distances at the periphery of the city or in unhygienic, unsecured informal settlements that dot the mega cities. These settlements are interspersed in almost all Indian neighbourhoods and have emerged out of the necessity that was not met by the formal land markets. Today 42% of Mumbai’s population lives in slums and a much higher population lives in unhygienic, dense neighbourhoods. Delhi’s draft Master Plan 2041 states that 85% of the population requires affordable housing options. This mismatch has resulted in the proliferation of unauthorised colonies and slums, and densification of existing urban fabric.[2]
The last few years have also been instrumental in bringing forth possible system-changing master plans of world cities like London and Delhi. Central to these plans is an attempt at providing integrated affordable housing to the critical workforce of the city. Planning, like other services, is being deregulated and privatised. Government in most world cities have transferred the responsibility of affordable housing on private agencies with an exception of Hong Kong[3] in Asia.
In most cities, an incentive-based model exists to increase the stock of affordable housing in specific neighbourhoods. The private developer is given added building rights upon choosing to provide a certain number of small format housing. The affordability criterion in this case is limited to the area of the unit ranging from 25 to 60 sq m in Indian cities. Further, the distribution of these dwelling units is carried out by private agencies through a direct market sale. The cost of these units is rarely capped or subsidised and so, most times it fails to reach the intended demographics. In rare cases when these units do reach the intended demographics, they are put back into the market at a higher rate by the beneficiaries thus defeating the purpose of preserving or increasing the stock of affordable housing all together.
Development of a considerably larger land parcel in Indian cities comes with a mandate of providing small format housing integrated within the neighbourhood. This mandated inclusionary model is limited to 15%-20% of the new constructed units, whereas the demand is much higher. These units in some cases are handed over to the government agencies, which, in turn, distribute the dwelling units to the economically weaker section at a subsidy with a caveat that does not allow any kind of transaction of these units for the next 15 years. Thereafter, the occupants can sell out and realise the full market value of their property. In fact, in Mumbai, many beneficiaries have sold their properties, giving immediate possession together with a sale deed dated 15 years hence. This mandated inclusionary model too has failed to generate any long-term affordable housing.
In Mumbai, in order to redevelop its numerous slums, Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) came up with an incentive-based model whereby the slum land is handed over to a prospective private developer at a greatly subsidised rate. In return, the developer provides in-situ residential units of 25 square meters to all eligible slum dwellers free of cost on a part of the land. The other part of the land is used by the developer to build luxury housing to be sold in the market that offsets the cost of the free units. On paper this scheme works well with its intended aim of integrated housing but in reality, these informal colonies exist at densities that are more often unparalleled in the world. This particular model adds further densities on the same land parcel compromising the quality of life for the slum dwellers who are stacked up with inadequate light and ventilation on a smaller part of the land. Minimum land dedicated for rehabilitation is not regulated by the authorities. There is no provision of open space or social amenities for such dense neighbourhoods while the informal communities in their organic format successfully offered flexible spaces and usage patterns where livelihoods were integrated with residential and community spaces. These rehabilitated units that were provided free of cost were then put back on the market in no time by many beneficiaries, defeating the purpose once again.[4] No doubt, “conventional planning approaches to slums and slum dwellers are thoroughly paternalistic. The trouble with paternalistic is that they want to make impossibly profound changes, and they choose impossibly superficial means for doing so.” [5]
Initiatives in limited capacities have made affordable housing today a Sisyphean dream. Common to all the above-mentioned models is the lack of mechanism that keeps the housing stock affordable for perpetuity. In 2014 Mumbai’s Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) had floated an International Ideas Competition named Reinventing Dharavi inviting multi professional teams for around the world to provide innovative solutions to rehabilitate and redevelop one of the densest slums in the world. With a population ranging between 340,000 to 800,000 (the correct count was never obtained) in the center of Mumbai, Dharavi spreads over 525 acres of buildable land, The authors were a part of the winning team that proposed the idea of Dharavi Community Land Trust.
Dharavi Community Land Trust (DCLT) [6]
The fundamental idea behind a Community Land Trust (CLT) was inspired from Gandhiji’s idea of ‘trusteeship,’ which asserted that land and other assets that individuals possess beyond their needs should be shared with the larger community. Vinoba Bhave, later through his Bhoodan and Gramdan[7] movement, tried to bring this idea into implementation where the land was donated by land owners and consolidated under a village trust. The idea of CLT also resonates with John Stuart Mill’s idea of ‘Unearned Increment,’ which states that appreciating value of land is created by growth and development of the society and not by the labour and investment of individual landowners and hence this unearned increment should be enjoyed by the community as a whole.
The CLT model is not a new one and has many contextual appropriations in different parts of the world. The objective behind all is equality and inclusiveness. A person’s economic profile often becomes the deciding factor to establish right to the city in a capitalist country. This approach has created an unequal world with a rising count of marginalised population. A CLT on the other hand is a non-profit corporation, that develops and stewards affordable housing and other community assets on behalf of a community.
The most significant component of a CLT is the concept of Dual Ownership—of land separate from the building. Owners of buildings on land are provided with the exclusive use of their land. They own the buildings but not the land. The building’s buyer may be an individual homeowner, a cooperative housing corporation, a non-profit organization or for-profit entity. Land becomes a single separate entity collectively owned by a trust; in this case, by DCLT. Land will always be owned by DCLT and may never be transferred to the building owner. Therefore, no concept of freehold may exist. The land can be leased to any entity. The DCLT approach de-links ownership of land and houses, taking the land off the market and keeping housing affordable.
By splitting land and the structure, DCLT manages to fulfill the criteria of perpetual affordability and perpetual responsibility. DCLT is committed to preserving the affordability of housing (and other structures) – one owner after another, one generation after another, in perpetuity. DCLT retains the option to repurchase any residential (or commercial) structures located upon its land, whenever the owners of these buildings decide to sell. The resale price is set by a formula contained in the ground lease that is designed to give present homeowners a fair return on their investment, while giving future homebuyers fair access to housing at an affordable price. As the speculative element of the real estate is eliminated and the increment value of it is earned by the Trust, it remains perpetually affordable.
The organisation of DCLT balances the need of individuals to access land and community’s need to maintain security of tenure and affordability through tripartite governance format. DCLT is governed by board of trustees. It is made up of three equal parts with equal decision-making rights. The decisive majority is proposed at 75% to avoid exclusion of any one fraction. One-third of the board represents landowner’s interests (in Dharavi’s case, the landowner being the government), one-third represents community members in general, and one-third represents neighbourhood community through organisations and professionals. Representatives of each of these 3 parts would be elected directly by the voting members of the community.
The paradigm change is the adoption of a human-centered design which is focused on the needs of the people of Dharavi but in an environmentally and physically sustainable manner. This not only gives the people participatory powers but also allows them to have a say in the financial decisions of the trust. The finance model under DCLT will operate at three levels of seed funding, maintenance and operations fund and finally the support fund for long term sustainability. Seed fund to initiate DCLT will be generated by pooling various state and central government schemes on slum redevelopment and low-income housing. Tie-ups with corporates as a part of CSR activities and international funding could also be explored. Alternatively, after the transfer of land title to DCLT, some amount of land can be mortgaged to raise the seed funding.
An initial 5-year period is suggested as a ‘Cooling Off’ period when no resale or transfer is allowed. After this first phase, DCLT may earn money for maintenance and operations from land value increment during sale or re-sale of property, long term lease agreement with structure owners and from rental income of structures that DCLT would eventually build, own and operate.
Once DCLT has been established, it can, on behalf of the community members, apply for various national and international funding available for construction of housing for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) of the society. DCLT, with help of nationalised banks, can set up micro financing institutions and give small loans for construction and other start-up businesses.
CLTs thus create affordable housing while still allowing low-income residents to build equity as homeowners. Moreover, because the CLT retains ownership of the underlying land, this housing remains permanently affordable, even as the original beneficiaries of an affordable home price sell and move on. This long-term, continuing benefit makes CLTs an especially efficient use of affordable housing subsidies. By locking in permanent access to affordable housing, CLTs can play an important role in countering the market-driven displacement associated with gentrification.
Community Land Reserve (CLR)
The root cause of urban slumming seems to lie not in urban poverty, but in urban wealth.[8] The problem of affordable housing primarily lies in unaffordability of land. Taking land off the market is a usual practice in city planning when the land is dedicated for roads, public parks, schools, hospitals and other social amenities. The same is done with natural reserves like coastal zones, wildlife and forest reserves. Affordable housing more than anything has to be a land reserve. Community Land Reserve gives an implementable solution to this housing paradox whereby the city commits to a certain percentage of the land to be reserved for affordable housing at the outset of planning. The public land that is vacant or encroached upon could be well used for this purpose. In Indian cities, these land parcels are already appropriated by informal settlements and could provide easy transition from being unhygienic environments, lacking infrastructure to community land reserves earmarked for affordable housing and owned by the community in partnership with the government. The development of such CLRs could either be through a trust model similar to DCLT or a registered company where the community has equal say in the matters.
It's been almost 60 years since Patrick Geddes said “Slum, semi slum, super slum…..to this has come the evolution of cities”[9] and here we are still rolling the boulder of affordable housing up the Sisyphean hill.
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Oormi Kapadia is an Architect and Urban Designer, a graduate of the University of Mumbai (2000) and of the University of Texas at Austin (2004). She heads planning research, policy and projects as a partner in plural. She is a visiting faculty and teaches Urban Design, Architectural Theory and Design Dissertation in Academy of Architecture, Mumbai.
Jasmine Saluja is an Architect and Urban Designer based in Mumbai. She received her Masters’ degree in Urban Design from the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, India in 2003. She heads an urban research laboratory as a partner at plural. She is part of the National Council of iudi (Institute of Urban Designers–India) representing Mumbai.
Plural is a Planning Research firm which offers a collaborative approach to urban research and planning realm bringing together multidisciplinary professionals and government bodies to lead them into projects addressing inclusive planning, equality in shared public spaces and affordable housing. www.plural.org.in
[1]Patel, Shirish B, et al. “In the Draft Master Plan for DELHI 2041, a Chronicle of Chaos Foretold.” Scroll.in, Scroll.in, 6 Aug. 2021, scroll.in/article/1002059/in-the-draft-master-plan-for-delhi-2041-a-chronicle-of-chaos-foretold.
[2] As per Socio-Economic Survey of Delhi, GNCTD, 2018-19, DDA published Draft Master Plan Delhi 2041, 17.3.4, 50
[3] Housing Authority, Hong Kong. “Housing in Figures 2021.” Hong Kong Housing Authority, 2021, www.thb.gov.hk/eng/psp/publications/housing/HIF2021.pdf
[4] Restepo, Paula. Moving in – Selling Out, The outcomes of slum rehabilitation in Mumbai. International Conference on Applied Economics, 2010. Paper based on findings by Tata Institute of Social Sciences in field surveys of 2003 and 2008. http://www.shram.org/uploadFiles/20140507121915.pdf
[5]Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York : Vintage Books, 1992. Print.
[6] Dharavi Community Land Trust – the winning entry published by UDRI (2017) in “Reinventing Dharavi: An Ideas Compendium”, UDRI Publication, for detailed proposal access: http://www.udri.org/wp-content/uploads/UDRI%20Publications/Reinventing%20Dharavi/19%20A%20Participative%20Development%20Model%20-%20Dharavi%20Community%20Land%20Trust.pdf?utm_source=Organic&utm_medium=download&utm_campaign=Reinventing-Dharavi
[7] Bhoodan which literally means donation of land and Gramdan which means donation of entire village where private ownership ceases to exist. These movements took place in various parts of India in 1950s and 60s under the leadership of Vinoba Bhave. This was an attempt at non-violent land reform where land was voluntarily donated by wealthy landowners and distributed to the landless farmers.
[8] Verma, Gita Dewan. Slumming India: A Chronicle of Slums and Their Saviours. Penguin, 2002.
[9] Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: Its Origins, Transformations, and Its Prospects. Secker & Warburg, 1961.