Hands Together: Nature-based Placemaking in an Urban Poor Resettlement Colony

Abstract

Urbanisation practices in the Global South typically push the urban poor to the margins, making way for built infrastructure. In India, this involves relocating informal settlements to Rehabilitation and Resettlement (R&R) colonies, which often suffer from poor design and unjust resettlement processes (Burte and Kamath, 2023). These ‘formal’ habitat solutions have paradoxically been shown to compromise liveability, and engender worsening physical and mental health, particularly amongst children and young people (Doctors For You, 2018; Parmar et al., 2022; YUVA, 2019). A notable example is the Lallubhai Compound in the M-East ward, Mumbai, an R&R colony where heat islands are experienced due to poor design and ventilation (YUVA, 2023).
In this context, public spaces are important for respite, coping and recovery. The designated public spaces within Lallubhai Compound were concretised; however, this led to waterlogging, with use ranging from informal waste disposal to addas (hindi slang for common gathering points) for drugs and alcohol. This paper discusses how a non-profit, Youth for Unity and Voluntary Action (YUVA), collaborated on reclaiming an abandoned public space in Lallubhai Compound through a climate justice lens. The approach adopted cut across existing power imbalances, and included the municipality, youth and children’s collectives, women’s groups, experts and donors, resulting in a nature-based solution that firmly intersects with community placemaking.
Children and young people worked with adults to spread awareness, co-design the public space and adopted scientific greening to successfully create a safe, green haven, enabling social cohesion amongst residents. The community-led initiative demonstrates a nature-based micro transformation toward climate-just adaptations in urban poor communities that can be upscaled. Amid growing scholarship on sustainable adaptations in informal settlements and with the urban poor, this paper frames possibilities for overcoming social and climate vulnerabilities (Garschagen et al., 2024) while offering pathways for systemic change toward climate-just cities.