Plotting, Squatting, Public Purpose and Politics
Plotting, Squatting, Public Purpose and Politics

Author: Robert Jan Baken

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-05-08

Total Pages: 422

ISBN-13: 1351770411

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This title was first published in 2003. Since independence in 1947, India has undergone a phase of rapid urbanization. New planning laws have been passed, new organizations established, public policy documents and discussion papers prepared and a host of land and housing schemes have been implemented. Still, however, the vast majority of urban expansion is an unplanned process that takes the form of squatting and illegal or semi-legal land subdivision. By looking in detail at two rapidly growing cities in Andhra Pradesh (Vijayawada and Viaskhapatnam) this book explores cultural, physical-spatial, political and economic determinants of the allocation of urban land and of urban growth in India in historical context. It focuses on the interplay between the government and the organizations in charge of their implementation, and the private sector on the other. Special attention is given to the conditions of the urban poor, with the changes in their socio-economic conditions.

Hong Kong Public and Squatter Housing
Hong Kong Public and Squatter Housing

Author: Alan Smart

Publisher: Hong Kong University Press

Published: 2023-05-09

Total Pages: 550

ISBN-13: 9888805649

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In Hong Kong Public and Squatter Housing: Geopolitics and Informality, 1963–1985, Alan Smart and Fung Chi Keung Charles trace two decades of development of squatting in Hong Kong. The authors reconstruct the government policy on squatting through both ethnographic and archival research. The book sheds new light on the consequences of various attempts to control encroachment on scarce urban space. It argues that intersecting policy agendas resulted in decisions that were often not desired, but which emerged as practical solutions from prior failures. The authors address the challenges of explaining confidential policy decisions and offer new approaches applicable in other contexts. Overall, Smart and Fung make an important contribution to the understanding of how public housing and squatting interacted in influential ways that have been poorly understood and offer new perspectives on the challenges of urban governance and housing problems. “The definitive history of how resettlement policies evolved as the squatter population swelled and as London and Beijing moved closer to signing the 1984 Sino-British Declaration. A masterful combination of theorizing and documentary sleuthing, a landmark in contemporary debates over the optimal responses to the formalization of informal property.” —Deborah Davis, Yale University “Smart and Fung offer a fresh and thought-provoking analysis of the changing state-society relations in the postwar decades by unravelling the complexities of Hong Kong’s urban landscape through their critical analysis of the question of informality and the issue of squatting.” —Lui Tai-Lok, Education University of Hong Kong “Employing ethnography and combing through archives, Smart and Fung uncover how the British formalized squatter housing. Highlighting questions of sociopolitical and historical change by analyzing bureaucratic and geopolitical forces—a fascinating project delving into the nature of colonial rule, immigrant resilience, and political economic structures. A major contribution to evidence-based settler colonial studies.” —Setha Low, City University of New York

Housing in the Aftermath of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe
Housing in the Aftermath of the Fast Track Land Reform Programme in Zimbabwe

Author: Lovemore Chipungu

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-12-11

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13: 1000290069

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This book delves into the Fast Track Land Reform Programme (FTLRP) in Zimbabwe to provide insight into how it facilitated the delivery of housing for low-income urban households. It highlights the politics of land reforms and the power of community engagement in housing development in urban areas. Prior to the FTLRP, the Zimbabwean governments had never embraced popular modes of housing production as key factors in urban development. In the area of low-income housing, informal housing schemes have always been treated with apathy and indifference. This left the conventional mode of housing production to be the only legitimate means to house low-income households despite its shortcomings. However, the onset of the FTLRP in 2000 resulted in homeless urban households grasping the opportunity to invade farms for housing development. Through the lenses of Marxism and Neoliberalism, this book analyses housing schemes that emerged and the overall impact of the FTLRP on housing and land delivery in Harare. This analysis is based on empirical evidence obtained from key informants and household surveys conducted in Harare. The authors argue that the FTLRP provided a platform for innovativeness by households, supported by the unpronounced national urban vision and prowess of the political leadership. Hence the success of these housing schemes can be measured by acquisition of land which guarantees households access to the city. However, some of these housing schemes pose challenges – key among them being lack of infrastructure. The book concludes by presenting a new model for effective delivery of land and housing for the urban poor. This is envisaged as a useful policy tool for urban planners, housing experts, land economists, urban and regional geographers, as well as sociologists, political scientists and social workers engaged in public administration of land and housing.

The Legal Right to Housing in India
The Legal Right to Housing in India

Author: Anindita Mukherjee

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2019-12-12

Total Pages: 251

ISBN-13: 1108720277

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Examines the benefits of seeking legal recognition for the right to housing, within the Indian legal context.

Political Campaigning in Digital India
Political Campaigning in Digital India

Author: Anil M. Varughese

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-06-28

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 1040086594

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This book provides a conceptual toolkit to understand the changing technologies and dynamics of political campaigning in India. Examining political campaigning and party strategies across many Indian states, with special attention to regional politics, histories, cultures, social and technological contexts, the book discusses the potential impacts of campaign strategies on electoral outcomes. Political campaigning reached a tipping point with millions of social media users engaging online with family and friends, political issues, parties and candidates in India’s 2019 parliamentary election. Although India’s political parties had been working with consultants and professional advertising agencies for decades, by 2019, millions of first-time voters as well as older voters were microtargeted with campaign messaging by parties and their affiliates, including frequent misinformation from unknown sources supporting one party or another. Filling a key gap in political communication research on election campaigns in digital India, the chapters in this book capture how political campaigning is important for the electoral fortunes of political parties in India’s diverse regions and states. This book will appeal to students, scholars, and practitioners in political communication, public administration, and political consulting, as well as anyone interested in data-driven political campaigning. It will also be an invaluable reading for those interested in South Asian studies. This book was originally published as a special issue of South Asian History and Culture.

Raised Field Technology
Raised Field Technology

Author: Arthur Stephen Morris

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 152

ISBN-13:

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During the Inca Empire and, indeed, in the previous centuries, the harsh climate and difficult physical environment of the Andean plateau around Lake Titicaca sustained a population many times larger than the one struggling to sustain itself in more recent times. Academics began studying this in the late 1960s and discovered that the Incas and their forefathers had used a complex system of raised fields and irrigation canals to obtain high yields from their crops. This technology seems to have been lost after the Spanish conquest. the Peruvian and Bolivian governments as well as international NGOs, which have set about reintroducing this system of farming, along with the traditional Andean wonder crops such as quinua, canilua and amaranth. This book presents a critical analysis of these raised field projects, setting them in context and taking into consideration factors such as agrarian reforms and counter-reforms, the psychology of aid dependency and the limited remit of the agencies. It shows that very few of the raised field projects have led to permanent cultivation and explains the failures in terms of a variety of standard factors. a more integrated approach, which recognizes the integrated nature of society and economy in the traditional communities and the existence of a rounded Andean technology, of which the raised fields comprise only one part.