Where
  • Angola, Uíge
  • Bangladesh, Dhaka
  • Chile, Iquique
  • Egypt, Luxor
  • Ethiopia, Addis Ababa
  • Ghana, Accra
  • Ghana, Tema
  • Ghana, Tema Manhean
  • Guinee, Fria
  • India, Ahmedabad
  • India, Chandigarh
  • India, Delhi
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  • India, Navi Mumbai
  • Iran, multiple
  • Iran, Shushtar
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  • Peru, Lima
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What
  • high-rise
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Who
  • Tanushree Aggarwal
  • Rafaela Ahsan
  • Deepanshu Arneja
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  • Fabio Buondonno
  • Ludovica Cassina
  • Daniele Ceragno
  • Jia Fang Chang
  • Henry S. Churchill
  • Bari Cobbina
  • Gioele Colombo
  • Charles Correa
  • Freya Crijn
  • Ype Cuperus
  • Javier de Alvear Criado
  • Jose de la Torre
  • Junta Nacional de la Vivienda
  • Margot de Man
  • Jeffrey Deng
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  • H.A. Derbishire
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Affordable Cities

Interview with Charles Correa

Author
Date
Keywords
incremental housing, income generation, open-to-sky-space, participation
Images
Mobility is energy!
Photo: © Rajesh Vora
Text

As a pioneer of low-cost housing and a former chairman of the National Commission on Urbanisation, Charles Correa has throughout his long career stressed the crucial relationship between affordable housing, public transport and job location. In the early 1960s, Correa, along with two other colleagues, actively championed this idea and proposed a radical restructuring of Mumbai (then known as Bombay) to deal with the city’s growing informal settlements. Their vision, now known as Navi Mumbai (New Bombay), was designed to accommodate 2 million people by developing land across the harbour that would change the pattern of growth in the city from a monocentric north-south one to a polycentric urban system around the bay. While Navi Mumbai remains one of the key large-scale urban planning projects of the last century, it is also the location for another important experiment of a smaller scale: Correa’s famous Belapur incremental housing project of 1983.

Files
Mobility is energy!
Photo: © Rajesh Vora
Sharing a cup of tea. Note the excellent location – flanked by public transport
Source: The Times of India
High occupancy per room!
Source: unknown
Belapur - Houses as they originally were . . .
Source: © Charles Correa Foundation
Today Belapur is a quiet, pedestrian, friendly neighbourhood
Photo: © Rohan Varma
Today Belapur is a quiet, pedestrian, friendly neighbourhood
Photo: © Rohan Varma
Most houses have grown and changed with the families needs
Source: © Charles Correa Foundation
In order to ensure that all the dwelling units are incremental, each is free-standing, placed on its own individual site. This facilitates cross-ventilation – so essential in the hot, humid climate of Bombay. It also allows each house to be extended unilaterally, and minimizes the collaboration – and quarrels! – involved when undertaking roof repairs, and so forth.
Source: © Charles Correa Foundation
In order to ensure that all the dwelling units are incremental, each is free-standing, placed on its own individual site. This facilitates cross-ventilation – so essential in the hot, humid climate of Bombay. It also allows each house to be extended unilaterally, and minimizes the collaboration – and quarrels! – involved when undertaking roof repairs, and so forth.
Source: © Charles Correa Foundation
Section across a basic module
Source: © Charles Correa Foundation
Although the range of income groups is large (a ratio of 1:10), the variation in plot sizes for these 7 units is quite small – from 45 to 70 m2.
Source: © Charles Correa Foundation
Three clusters are combined to form a bigger module of 21 houses, surrounding an open space of 12 x 12 m. And then three of these bigger modules interlock to define the next scale of community space – approximately 20 x 20 m. This spatial hierarchy continues until one reaches the largest neighbourhood spaces where primary schools and other similar facilities are located.
Source: © Charles Correa Foundation
The site of 6 ha at Belapur accommodates 600 families at a density of about 500 persons per hectare – including kindergartens and elementary schools, play fields, health clinics and other social services – in a pattern analogous to the traditional habitat found all over India in patterns that integrate family spaces and community spaces into one organic continuum.
Source: © Charles Correa Foundation
Documents
Rohan Varma, 'Affordable Cities', DASH - Global Housing: Affordable Dwellings for Growing Cities (Rotterdam: Nai010 publishers, 2015),88-101