Informality in Chennai - Settlement Patterns and Trends

Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

By Sarath Ramanan
informality, housing trends, social justice, development patterns

The project intends to explore and define the Urban Informality that exists within the cities of the Global South.

In October 2017, the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority made a proposal to redevelop the traditional parts of the city; which are officially identified as Continuously Built Areas (these areas primarily include the neighborhoods of George Town, Mylapore-Triplicane and Purasaiwalkam in the city of Chennai). I intended to analyze the impacts of such decisions on the existing city fabric in terms of housing stock and densities, and be critical of such massive urban renewal projects.

Also, the administrative boundaries of the city were recently expanded from 174 Sq. Km. to 426 Sq. Km. sometime after the 2011 census (the country collects its census only every ten years and the latest is from 2011). Thus, I was not able to use the newly established city boundaries and census tracts for analysis during my mapping project. The image below shows the various census tracts within the city.

Chennai Census Tracts: Newly Expanded Administrative Boundaries:

Upon spatializing the census data onto the census tracts using QGIS, there was a stark contrast between the maps showing the number of housing units (the map in blue) contained within the census tracts and the corresponding density of housing units (the map in orange). Also, the map showing the number of housing units displays a pattern in which the downtown of the city is becoming more expensive and thus all newer developments happen on the outskirts, showing a prominent pattern of Urban Sprawl. Also, people from the downtown move to the peripheries of the city to be able to afford a decent living standards for a relatively less expensive lifestyle. I will be adding a property values map in the future to argue towards my understanding of these settlement patterns in the city.

Number of Housing Units: Density of Housing Units:

Here, we can see that the densities in housing show a pattern where the informal (the part of the city that was in existence before surveys were made and property lines were drawn, they have now been mapped and are a part of the city’s tax base) parts of the city sustain the very functioning of the space in terms of commerce as well as the dwelling. A comparison between the map showing the Continuous Built Areas (as above) and the map showing densities (in Orange), happen to prove my argument here.

Also, I have manually located various Informal (slums in this case) settlements in the city, that have situated themselves in the parts of the city that are of very low value to an otherwise valuable land to the city’s tax inventory. These slums are usually located near the high tide lines along the coast, flood plains along rivers, close to toxic sites such as power plants and petrochemical storage as well as near/on solid waste dump yards and along railway lines or stations as can be seen from the map attached.

Locating Slum Settlements in Chennai:

As can be seen from this map, the threats to these settlements are not only pre-existent but are also being newly developed in the form of urban infrastructure which eventually results in rising land values and relocation of these settlements, or on a more radical note, evictions are mandated to allow for these infrastructures to be built.