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The focus on urban poverty in the Global South has centered on slum-centric discussions of urban marginality to explain the supposed crisis of Third World cities. Evidently, ideological and material eradication of slums is symptomatic of the erasure of urban poverty and is regarded as a developmental panacea to address all urban problems. Notwithstanding the political significance of this term to understand and respond to subaltern urbanism, the Eurocentric gaze of urban scholars and practitioners in using slum, as an analytical and developmental category, has impeded the recognition of varied forms of dwelling practices. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with footpath-dwelling communities in Mumbai, I argue that to understand the diversity of dwelling in the city, attention needs to be extended to what could be called non-slums, spaces that embody a set of practices and negotiations that are spatially distinct from those characterizing places officially labeled as slums and expand beyond density politics. Unlike residents of so-called slums, these groups are often dispersed and numerically weak. It is this spatial organization (or the lack of it) that shapes their everyday politics in making their place within the city. The exposed nature of their habitation makes their everyday living transient and sets forth a form of spatiality that is distinct from dense neighborhoods labeled slums. While slums are being peripheralized through various policy and state interventions, these groups continue to hold on to the urban core and in doing so produce new spatializations of poverty and varied subaltern subjectivities of dispossession and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over a billion people live in slums, with poor sanitation, education, property rights and working conditions having a direct impact on current residents and future generations. Slum mapping is one of the key problems concerning slums. Policymakers need to delineate slum settlements to make informed decisions about infrastructure development and allocation of aid. A wide variety of machine learning and deep learning methods have been applied to multispectral satellite images to map slums with outstanding performance. Since the physical and visual manifestation of slums significantly varies with geographical region and comprehensive slum maps are rare, it is important to quantify the uncertainty of predictions for reliable and confident application of models to downstream tasks. In this study, we train a U-Net model with Monte Carlo Dropout (MCD) on 13-band Sentinel-2 images, allowing us to calculate pixelwise uncertainty in the predictions. The obtained outcomes show that the proposed model outperforms the previous state-of-the-art model, having both higher AUPRC and lower uncertainty when tested on unseen geographical regions of Mumbai using the regional testing framework introduced in this study. We also use SHapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) values to investigate how the different features contribute to our model's predictions which indicate a certain shortwave infrared image band is a powerful feature for determining the locations of slums within images. With our results, we demonstrate the usefulness of including an uncertainty quantification approach in detecting slum area changes over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The level and relationship of child health, wealth, and basic amenities are changing fast in India. How strong are the relationships of state wealth, i.e., state GDP and basic household amenities like sanitation facilities with child health? Using recently published NFHS -2015 -16 at a macro level, the paper compares the change of stunting, underweight and under-five mortality over ten years (NFHS 2005-06 to 2015-16) and explores how far child health indices are associated with state GDP. Though wealth and child health are positively associated in India, the strength of the relationship is declining over time, indicating that wealth per se may not guarantee the betterment of child health. Undertaking a case study with 510 children in a low-income community of Mumbai, we further establish that the availability of basic facilities and recent infections play a stronger role in determining child nutrition status when household wealth is controlled. Higher-income (OR-0.405), more years of schooling (0.503), less crowding in a household (OR-1.564), covered drainage system (OR-0.653), the non-occurrence of Gastro intestine (OR-1.782), and infectious disease (OR-2.275) are significantly associated with better child nutrition status. Sincere attention to policy on improving basic facilities and living environment to address child health issues has become mandatory. National Health Mission (NHM) or health programs like Swachh Bharat Abhiyan are good initiatives to focus on improving basic facilities and living environment to address child health issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To explore influences on the diet and physical activity of adolescents living in Mumbai slums, from the perspectives of adolescents and their caregivers. Design: Three investigators from Mumbai conducted six focus group discussions. Setting: The study was conducted in suburban Mumbai slums. Participants: Thirty-six adolescents (aged 10–12 and 15–17 years) and twenty-three caregivers were recruited through convenience sampling. Results: The findings highlighted the complex negotiations between adolescent and caregivers surrounding adolescent junk food consumption and physical activity opportunities. Caregivers learned recipes to prepare popular junk foods to encourage adolescents to eat more home-cooked, and less 'outside', food, yet adolescents still preferred to eat outside. To adolescents, the social aspect of eating junk food with friends was an important and enjoyable experience. Caregivers felt that they had no control over adolescents' food choices, whereas adolescents felt their diets were dictated by their parents. Adolescents wanted to be physically active but were encouraged to focus on their academic studies instead. Gender was also a key driver of physical activity, with girls given less priority to use outside spaces due to cultural and religious factors, and parental fears for their safety. Conclusions: These findings show that adolescents and caregivers have different agendas regarding adolescent diet. Adolescent girls have less opportunity for healthy exercise, and are more sedentary, than boys. Adolescents and caregivers need to be involved in designing effective interventions such as making space available for girls to be active, and smartphone games to encourage healthy eating or physical activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sizable Indians suffer from hypertension, and this number is multiplying. There is, however, a shortage of information about lay perception of hypertension and its management—especially among the socio-economically disadvantaged urban population. This study using grounded theory approach explores the explanatory models held by the socio-economically disadvantaged urban communities on hypertension and its management. The results are based on six key informant interviews, three focus group discussions and 21 in-depth interviews from a slum in Mumbai, India. Consent was sought from each participant. ATLAS.ti software was used for analysis. The relationship among emerging themes, categories, and codes were studied using memos and network analysis through an iterative process. The study documents inadequate and varied understanding of hypertension (generally referred to as BP) and its risk factors. The commonly reported perceived risk factors for hypertension were improper food habits, alcohol use, family issues, financial problems, physical inactivity, and unplanned urbanization. Perceived understanding of the risk factors and consequences led to varied pathways of management of hypertension. Hypertension awareness programs and mass screening are pertinent to reduce disease burden and better health outcome of the urban socio-economically disadvantaged populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This article focuses on how a group of women involuntarily displaced from Mumbai’s slums managed the resulting sizeable disruptions to their livelihoods. One hundred and twenty women—relocated to a resettlement site chosen by a nongovernmental organization (NGO)—are the primary data source. The concept of sensemaking/sensegiving provides a framework for analyzing how these particular women reconstructed their livelihoods in new surroundings independent of directives from NGOs, government agencies, or private developers. The article identifies four strategies that the women utilized to make sense of changes in their livelihood—positive reappraisal, radical change, incremental steps, and restraint—depending on their age, marital status, length of time widowed, family-size, past employment experience, education, ethnicity, and/or religion. Once women had individually and retrospectively made sense of their new environment and circumstances, they attempted to influence others present to consider an alternate vision for livelihood generation. This article captures the micro-level dynamics operating in these early moments of livelihood envisioning, dynamics that might otherwise escape the attention of government, business, and civil society actors with a stake in the project’s future. Such early-stage envisioning by residents could serve as a valuable guide for all concerned stakeholders and must be factored in to strengthen national and international policy for urban resettlement and rehabilitation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a survey of 3000 households, covering both authorized and informal connections to electricity, the paper examines the key drivers of the demand for regulated electricity service in 4 slums of Mumbai. The methodology builds on the typical slum context, where informal connections are easily obtained and widespread. WTP for safe, authorized electricity provision is estimated through both "stated" preferences and "revealed" ones extrapolated from present electricity demand. WTP estimates are further validated using propensity score matching. The comparative analysis confirms that affordability (of both the initial investment and the increased consumption fees) is a primary barrier to regularization. Additionally, lack of house ownership status or address proof, precarious house construction and, possibly, pressure from local leaders all play an important role in choosing an electricity supplier. Policies to reduce the prevalence of informal connections should also address contextual issues like the intricacy of Mumbai's governance and social exclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'slum' is difficult to define, but if we see one, we know it. Definitions for slums are qualitative such as 'areas of people lacking, for example, durable housing or easy access to safe water'. This study aims at identifying characteristic physical features of the built environment that allows defining slum areas based on quantitative and measurable parameters. In general, spatial data on slums are generalized, outdated, or even nonexistent. The bird's eye view of remotely sensed data is capable to provide an independent, area-wide spatial overview, to capture the complex morphological pattern and at the same time capture the large-scale individual objects typical for slums. Using high-resolution optical satellite data, parameters such as building density, building heights, and sizes are used to differentiate between slums and formal settlements. From it, the physical features are used to analyze structural homogeneity and heterogeneities within and across slums and to suggest characteristic physical features for spatial slum delineation at three study sites in Mumbai, India. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the transformation of a Mumbai neighborhood from municipal housing colony into illegal slum has been facilitated by the politically mediated deterioration and criminalization of its water infrastructure in the context of liberalization-era policy shifts. These policy shifts hinge upon a conceptual binary that posits the unplanned, illegal and informal 'slum' as the self-evident conceptual counterpoint to a planned, formal, 'world-class' city. The story of Shivajinagar- Bainganwadi problematizes this assumption by evidencing the deeply political and highly unstable nature of this binary - and thus insists upon an account of the shifting political and economic stakes imbued in these categories. The case of Shivajinagar- Bainganwadi reveals that the neighborhood's emergence as an illegal slum has been mediated by the liberalization-era politics that have come to infuse the neighborhood's water pipes - dynamics that have produced the illegality/informality of the neighborhood as a discursive effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The communities who live in urban informal settlements are diverse, as are their environmental conditions. Characteristics include inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, poor quality of housing, overcrowding, and insecure residential status. Interventions to improve health should be equity-driven and target those at higher risk, but it is not clear how to prioritise informal settlements for health action. In implementing a maternal and child health programme in Mumbai, India, we had conducted a detailed vulnerability assessment which, though important, was time-consuming and may have included collection of redundant information. Subsequent data collection allowed us to examine three issues: whether community environmental characteristics were associated with maternal and newborn healthcare and outcomes; whether it was possible to develop a triage scorecard to rank the health vulnerability of informal settlements based on a few rapidly observable characteristics; and whether the scorecard might be useful for future prioritisation. The City Initiative for Newborn Health documented births in 48 urban slum areas over 2 years. Information was collected on maternal and newborn care and mortality, and also on household and community environment. We selected three outcomes-less than three antenatal care visits, home delivery, and neonatal mortality-and used logistic regression and classification and regression tree analysis to test their association with rapidly observable environmental characteristics. We developed a simple triage scorecard and tested its utility as a means of assessing maternal and newborn health risk. In analyses on a sample of 10,754 births, we found associations of health vulnerability with inadequate access to water, toilets, and electricity; non-durable housing; hazardous location; and rental tenancy. A simple scorecard based on these had limited sensitivity and positive predictive value, but relatively high specificity and negative predictive value. The scorecard needs further testing in a range of urban contexts, but we intend to use it to identify informal settlements in particular need of family health interventions in a subsequent program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to contribute to the recent slum tourism-debate. On the basis of an empirical field study conducted in Mumbai in 2009, this article investigates how Indian slums are observed by different actors within the communication context of this (emerging) form of tourism. Taking into consideration that slums are defined in public discourse nearly exclusively by poverty and sordidness, it is interesting to examine how the tour agency's objective of correcting the negative connotations of poverty is achieved. Accordingly, the study aims, by means of a second order observation, to observe how the tourists and the tour agency simultaneously perceive and charge poverty. Following the epistemological premise that reality is an observer-dependent construction, it seeks to outline which different images or realities of the investigated slum, Dharavi, are created by the different observations. The findings will then facilitate a discussion of the extent to which poverty can be defined as the dominant mode of observation of the slum tourism context as a whole. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The urban slum in the less developed world has an overwhelming significance of place for its dwellers: it determines who they are, what they do, where they go, and whom they know. Unlike most Western cities where the different realms of life (residential, work, religious, public, etc.) are spatially segregated, here they are all functionally and spatially integrated. A close examination of slum spaces in Dharavi, Mumbai, reveals such overlapping spatial patterns and raises some fundamental questions. Is there a proper definition of the slum? How should we conceive of the slum community and its spatial features? How useful or problematic are Western concepts of residential segregation, ghettos and enclaves? It is argued that the historical persistence of urban slums points to their indispensability, with the tacit (if inconsistent) approval of the state. Slums not only provide shelter to a large urban labour force but also a milieu that is conducive to intense social organisation and economic production. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Following a brief sketch of the shift within development geography from rural to urban themes, this paper examines Nijman's description and analysis of Mumbai's slums. This is characterised by a historical and geographical stratification, with an emphasis on the congruence of economic and social geography in Dharavi. His analysis is conducted primarily at the community level. In this commentary the reader's attention is drawn to the livelihood strategy approach, which originated from the rural context but is also relevant in the slum setting. Such an approach could be useful in documenting the dynamic of slums and of the households that inhabit them. But households are just one of the actors in this struggle for space. Also making an appearance are public authorities, NGOs and businesses, each with a claim to the same space. At the same time, the struggle is played out at several levels and is imbedded in the local situation, which makes comparative and longitudinal research an interesting way to define the place of slums and their inhabitants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary on Nijman's presentation at the 100th anniversary celebration of TESG underlines how his study of the Mumbai slum reconciles the multiple dualisms that lie at the core of the study of economic and social geography. The dualisms that are identified are located in the personal impressions of the urban landscape, the supposed homogeneity of the informal settlements, and the assumed barriers between the informal and the formal economy. The paper argues the importance of adding a personal reflection on doing research in a slum environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study presents results from an experimental investigation of the severity and sources of household air pollution across two low-income housing archetypes in Mumbai. Experimentation was carried out in Dharavi—one of the world's largest slums—and two nearby communities representing Mumbai's current slum resettlement scheme. Household surveys were conducted to understand aspects of occupant behavior that impact indoor air quality. Multi-pollutant logging sensors were installed inside units and in nearby outdoor locations to measure concentrations of particulate matter (PM 2.5) and CO 2. While rehabilitation architecture and gas cookstoves are often assumed to provide higher indoor air quality than in traditional slums, field monitoring and occupant behavior surveys demonstrated that indoor pollution levels were consistent across the two typologies even after infrastructure enhancements and ubiquitous gas cookstove usage. Indoor PM 2.5 measurements ranged between 150 and 300 μg/m3, substantially higher than World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines. PM 2.5 indoor/outdoor (I/O) ratios spiked during cooking periods but were otherwise less than 1.0 in over half of logged instances in rehabilitation units, highlighting the role of particle deposition phenomena and ambient-sourced PM 2.5 in indoor environments. To minimize the impact of both indoor and outdoor pollutant sources while respecting culturally-normative occupant behavior, this study points to the need for architectural design guidelines and enhanced indoor air quality interventions. • A data logging campaign showed degraded IAQ within low-income habitats of Mumbai. • Widespread clean cookstove use in Mumbai has not led to sufficient IAQ outcomes. • Interior design, occupant behavior and ambient pollution contribute to HAP. • Indoor pollution can be alleviated by optimizing architectural design parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]