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PRESENT DAY EFFORTS TO BUILD LOW COST URBAN HOUSING IN INDIA, ARE FREQUENTLY BASED ON A NUMBER OF KEY ASSUMPTIONS. WE BELIEVE THESE ASSUMPTIONS MAY BE IN ERROR, AND ARE IN PART RESPONSIBLE FOR THE FAILURE OF THE CURRENT PROCESSES.

The success of the process offered on this website depends on our ability to work in a somewhat different framework than that which often guides similar projects in India. Our process is intended to generate a community plan that is informal, relaxed, and in which human dignity and the subtleties of community and family life are given the highest respect. These subtleties show themselves in hundreds of tiny variations throughout the community plan—variations which together add up to a plan that has a living quality. In order to have these variations, each one based on a specific need expressed by a family designing their house, it is essential to incorporate the following assumptions into the planning process: CURRENT ASSUMPTION 1: LOT SIZE. The standard assumption of most urban projects is that lots are based on a grid, that lots are identical, and equal in size. We believe this assumption unnecessarily violates the natural emergence of human order from social associations and interactions. It must be possible for families to define lot sizes that are based on their own needs, and not be restricted to a particular size specified by the authorities. Some families are larger, others smaller; some have more money and some have less; some have businesses at home and some do not. These differences mean that lot sizes should be different. Families may buy land at the same price per square foot, but should not be required to buy the same amount of land. CURRENT ASSUMPTION 2: SEWERS AND WATER SUPPLY. Current assumption includes the idea that sewers and water lines should play the predominant role in subdivision layout. Further, recent innovations by engineers in India have established optimization programs which base the entire layout on cost optimization of the sewers and water lines. We believe the cost savings of the standard approach are greatly exaggerated, and that the use of a technical criterion of this kind as a determinant of social form is seriously misguided. In our approach the basic physical structure of the community will be defined by its social structure as it gradually emerges during the process. It will not be determined by algorithms concerning the total cost of sewers and water supply. Sewers and water supply will be fitted to the physical structure after it emerges from the process defined here. The process defined here results in an efficient plan from the point of view of total length of streets, and we will therefore be able to show that the cost differential is small, and that it will be justified by the increased social and economic well-being of the community and the families in it. CURRENT ASSUMPTION 3: STREET WIDTH AND UNIFORMITY. Current assumptions includes an assumption o street width no less than 20 feet, which is far t high to be useful, and merely damages social rlations and climate conditions in the community. The uniformatiy of streets, also a tacit assmption in engienered projects, is not useful for the creation of social community. In our approach, streets will have a different nature than modern engineered streets. They will be variable in width, and will take on their detailed shape and width from their position in the community, and through their relationships with the buildings that front on them. CURRENT ASSUMPTION 4: PLINTH AND PLUMBING CORE. Current assumptions, especially sites and services projects, assume that provision of water and toilet to every house is the first priority. We believe this poriority is somewhat exaggerated, and that families view saftey as more important, and would be comfortable with a program in which water and toilets are first provided communally, and may then be broguht to individual hosues as need arises, and cash-in-hand permits. . Our project recognizes the potential value of sites and services approaches to provide frameworks and locations for families to take responsibility for their own houses. However, our project incorporates a different hierarchy of priorities. Instead of putting the part of the sites-and-services money that is devoted to the house into a plumbing core, our project puts it into a house plinth. Included in the plinth will be a chase, made of specially prefabricated terracotta tiles, that will allow the family to pay for and install plumbing lines themselves, when they are ready to do so. This will have the effect of establishing the house site as a clearly defined and secure place, allowing even a kutcha house that a family might initially build to be protected against rising water during monsoons.

The dignity of the families is what matters most.