Negotiating Resilience with Hard and Soft City

Binti Singh is an urban sociologist and holds a PhD (in urban studies) and an MPhil (in planning and development) from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Bombay), Mumbai, India. She is currently Dean (Research and Academic Development) at KRVIA, Mumbai, India. She is engaged in diverse international research programmes with universities like the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction, University of Cambridge, UK. She also supervises Masters’ and PhD students in various international universities including Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and University of Virginia, USA. On 12 January 2023, she received an award from the Governor of Maharashtra, India, for her contribution to academic research in cultural sustainability. Tania Berger is a trained architect and holds a PhD in construction and building sciences, incorporating a strong focus on social science. She heads the cluster Social sPACe based research in built Environment (SPACE) at the Department for Building and Environment at Danube University Krems, Austria, which works on issues of integration in housing on a national level and global urbanisation processes and precarious housing in an international context. She coordinates Erasmus projects in the field of “Capacity Building in Higher Education” with a focus on informal settlements in India and Ethiopia. Manoj Parmar is currently Director at KRVIA, Mumbai, India. He holds a bachelor’s in architecture from the L.S. Raheja School of Architecture, Mumbai, India, and an M.Arch from the University of Miami, Florida, USA. He has been teaching at KRVIA, Mumbai, since 1992. His academic interests include theoretical writings on architecture and urbanism. He has also been in private practice of architecture and urban design since 1992. In a career spanning more than 30 years, he has worked on numerous private and public housing/institutional commissions across India and has been actively involved in redevelopment projects across the city of Mumbai. He received an award from the Governor of Maharashtra, India, for his contribution to academic research in cultural sustainability on the 12th of January 2023.

List of figures

List of contributors

Foreword: Adapt or Die

Acknowledgements

1 Negotiating Resilience with Hard and Soft City

PART I: City and Its Vulnerabilities

2 Ethnically Diverse Neighborhoods and the New Meaning of “Community” in the Global North

3 Resilient Tactics and Everyday Lives in the Textile Mill Areas of Mumbai

4 Informal Housing of Migrants in Italy

5 Cities, Housing Exclusion, and Homelessness from a European Perspective

6 Just and Healthy Cities in Times of Global Threats: Perspectives from the Global North

The Case of Settling Deonar Dump Yard Site, Mumbai

Environmental Injustice: Air Pollution and Data Inequity in Kibera, Nairobi

PART II: Relocation, Resettlement, and Resilience

7 Resilience at the City Margins—Roma Settlements in Bulgaria

8 Tolerance to Heat as a Coping Strategy of Low-Income Households in India and Austria

9 Home-Based Income Generation in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

10 “Nothing Is to Be Gained by Involving Them”: Exploring Residents’ Lived Experiences of Resettlement in a Medium-Sized City in India

11 The Vertical versus Horizontal City: Why Vertical Resettlement (Mostly) Does Not Work for the Urban Poor

12 Conclusion: Towards Just Resilience