Gautam Bhan: A bold plan to house 100 million people
Gautam Bhan: Un nuovo piano per dare un tetto a 100 milioni di persone
Gautam Bhan studies how cities produce and reproduce poverty and inequality. Full bio
Double-click the English transcript below to play the video.
Chennai or Kolkata,
one great thing in common,
smaller places arriving in search of work.
this warm welcome leads to consequences.
in these cities are born.
expert and researcher: Dr. Gautam Bhan,
to this increasing problem.
of urban India that he can see.
welcomes Dr. Gautam Bhan.
until a few years ago,
Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata.
nobody was from a city;
to a city for progress.
you were born in the city itself.
for an accommodation in the city,
short of at least 20 million homes.
that's 100 million people.
(bedroom hall kitchen).
10 to 15,000 rupees per month.
an affordable home in this budget?
what would you do?
or some sort of jewellery.
in a city to either buy or rent,
what most people end up doing.
are in settlements.
of an affordable home in India.
but not sturdy.
but not cheap.
of a new thought from here itself.
it is a solution.
of 20 million homes
25 square foot flats,
2.6 million homes.
to make 350,000 homes.
with complete sincerity,
in the next couple of lifetimes.
alcun risultato in passato,
in progress in the past,
the laborers who build and run the city
on illegally captured land,
in the dead of the night.
to the government or not,
there for over 10, 20, 30, even 40 years.
di terreno è,
illegally captured land is this,
is declared illegal?
15 to 60 percent of a city's population
della popolazione
or maximum ten percent of the land.
a right over this small bit of land?
è spesso misurato
by the cost of its land.
of a person living on a piece of land?
for shiny homes;
toilets and drainage.
promised there wouldn't be any eviction.
were provided to them.
a locality, a place, a world of its own.
even a single new home.
at national scale,
to live over that land.
but the right to live there,
ma di abitarlo,
that to move forward,
to make settlements secure and sturdy.
questo nuovo atteggiamento
need to look deep within
and apprehensions that we have.
here in front of you today.
there should be standing here.
you wouldn't have listened to him.
I am not from a settlement.
that needs to be changed.
Grazie, Dr. Gautam Bhan.
Thank you, Dr. Gautam Bhan.
an example of Thailand
alle persone per abitarci
to settle in, not to sell.
or program in our country too,
and those of people around you?
who are fighting for rights in the city.
announced the same scheme:
will have rights over that land.
shouldn't be called populism;
development strategy.
strategia di sviluppo economico.
happen from the top, but from the bottom.
and not slums, ever again. 100 percent.
wonderful things.
a dire cose meravigliose.
as I am a terrible singer.
because we are saying wonderful things.
sarà piena di amore e divertimento.
with love and fun times.
Thank you.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Gautam Bhan - UrbanistGautam Bhan studies how cities produce and reproduce poverty and inequality.
Why you should listen
Gautam Bhan's work is based in and emerges from particular cities that for a long time were thought to be "peripheral" -- Delhi, Mumbai, Cairo, Lagos, Jakarta and Johannesburg -- cities of what is sometimes today called the "global south." He feels passionate about producing knowledge not just about these cities but doing so from them. For too long, he says, "Southern cities have been places for others to come and fix, rather than places with their own ways of getting things done that work for us."
Bhan believes that urbanization in the global south is one of the most profound challenges of the 21st century. It's in these cities that many of the battles of sustainability and equity will either be won or lost. He found his way to these questions in his own city -- New Delhi -- through forced evictions, the brutal demolition of the homes of the city's poorest who lived in informal settlements that brought him to his work on housing and the right to the city. His research is informed by his own political engagement both as an anti-eviction activist as well as someone working with the government to prevent evictions from occurring in the first place.
Bhan teaches as the Indian Institute for Human Settlements in Bangalore, a new educational institution that shares his intent of bringing together teaching, research and practice on the city as well as producing knowledge from the south. In 2017, he authored In the Public’s Interest: Evictions, Citizenship and Inequality in Contemporary Delhi (Orient Blackswan/University of Georgia Press), as well as co-edited the Routledge Companion to Planning in the Global South (Routledge). He writes as much publicly as academically and is a frequent columnist in Indian newspapers, blogs and online. He is also the co-founder of New Text, and he's deeply involved in sexuality rights movements in India.
Gautam Bhan | Speaker | TED.com