Issues, challenges & effectiveness for Economically Weaker Section (EWS) housing- Effect on socio-cultural practices, health, livelihood, and access to social spaces
Over centuries, people have evolved a culture and architecture that reveal the reasons and relations of their natural and communal world. These relationships are embodied in the physical form and refined over time. Shelter, a part of the physically built environment, has been one of the primary concerns of human beings. Their size, appearance, location, and form are governed not simply by physical factors like climate, material, or topography but by a society’s idea, its ever-changing economic and social organization, its distribution of resources, authorities, beliefs, and values, which prevails at any period. With the rapid urbanization, there has been a sharp influx of migration to urban areas for the betterment of life. That is commonly known as the “Housing Problem” has been the prime concern of the ever-growing cities and civilizations. To compensate for the demand for the shelter there has been a rush to pace up with the new construction of the shelter in a short time, which triggered the concept of the housing/settlements for mass. Contemporary migrant/EWS housing solutions in urban cities only cater to the shelter and exist only as individual residential towers/structures, isolated from the traditional way of urban patterns where residential and commercial activities were forming the complex layers of the mix-use urban fabric. Most economically weaker sections of housing redevelopment projects in urban cities fail for various reasons including the location of the rehabilitation sites at the urban outskirts away from the commercially active city centers. over a period of time where the inability to effectively deal with urban housing policies and especially Economically Weaker Section (EWS)housing issues, coupled with a massive shift in the demographic makeup of the Indian cities with an influx of migrants has resulted in a state of implosion.
