The curious case of Gated Communities

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CONSCIOUS URBANISM

Journal of Planning, Architecture and Design July–December 2021 Vol. 1(1), pp. 53–61 https://www.jpad.copalpublishing.com

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The Curious Case of Gated Communities

Adapting the new urban model to reinstate good urban design in cities Ruchi Saxena

Associate Professor, School of Architecture, Lingaya’s Vidyapeeth, Faridabad ARTICLE DETAILS Peer-Reviewed on May 29, 2021 Accepted on June 8, 2021 Published online on August 12, 2021 Key words: Gated communities, Housing, Privatisation, Solutions, Urban design Corresponding author email:

1.1

Abstract: Gated communities are not a new phenomenon. This article contributes to the ongoing discussion on the consequences of gated communities. It starts with examining the reasons for the advent of gated communities in Indian cities and their efficacy. While valuing the benefits of this new urban form, the article highlights the various issues that the gated community as an urban form has generated, ranging from impermeable territories to disconnected public realms, privatisation of the public space ‘by choice’, social conflicts and so on. The article emphasizes the urgency to address these issues. By citing examples from Indian states, both at a government-policy level and design innovation, the paper concludes with explorations for possible solutions. Acknowledging that the gated community model is here to stay, it seeks to adapt this new urban form to reinstate good urban design in cities.

Gated Community: Definitions and Perspectives

Blakely and Snyder (1997) explain the concept of gated communities as residential areas with restricted access in which normally public spaces are privatised, perimeters designated and entrances controlled. They included both new developments and older areas retrofitted with gates and fences in their definition of the gated community. In City of Walls, Caldeira (2000) talks about ‘closed condominium’ on similar lines; a development of mostly high-rise multiple residences, walled with security-controlled entrances, with large areas of landscaping, and including all sorts of amenities for collective use. In the context of Brazil, Caldeira stressed that these ‘socially homogeneous environments’ have become the preferred residence for the rich. Caldeira further notes that these closed condominiums are supposed to be self-contained worlds. Residents should be provided with almost everything they need to avoid public life in the city. While Caldeira’s analysis of the gated community brings in a new parameter of social exclusivity into picture, Atkinson and Blandy’s (2005) definition of gated communities highlight the presence of legal agreements which tie the residents to a common code of conduct and (usually) collective responsibility for management.

To sum up, a gated community is an urban settlement surrounded by walls with several entrances. The entry into the complex is guarded physically by security guards or virtually through video surveillance. Access is restricted to residents and their visitors only, who may have an access permission.

This automatically eliminates walled developments with open streets, where the streets are open for the public during the day and may be closed only at night.

Depending upon the price range and target audience of these settlements, they may be equipped with any or all of the following: shopping centres and malls, cinemas, recreational facilities like clubs, sporting facilities, gymnasiums, parks, swimming pools, artificial lakes, etc. The housing typology behind these walls may vary from multi-storied apartment buildings, builder flats, villas or plotted developments, or a mix thereof. These also have a private governing body that enforces internal rules concerning the conduct of residents, looks into the upkeep of the property and controls any unlawful construction within the premises.

Considering all the features mentioned by several authors, this article suggests the following working definition of gated communities: The gated community is an enclosed private collective territory that limits public access.

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Ruchi Saxena, Conscious Urbanism, Vol. 1, No. 1, July–December 2021

1.2

The rise of a new genre of modern urban habitat

The phenomenon of gating up is not new.

Medieval towns were walled and gated to protect them from attack. Entry into the towns was controlled and overseen. Spatial segregation and the use of walls were deeply entrenched in historic India as a means of upper-caste people protecting themselves from the lower-caste population.

Residential zones in British Colonial India have also known to have segregated themselves from the indigenous ‘brown’ population by gating up. For the past civilizations, gated communities were a means to differentiate the social strata and establish a hierarchy (Thampan, 2014).

Gated zones of residence also existed in independent India in the form of cantonment areas, residences for government officials like police colonies, etc. In fact, a large part of New Delhi, from Lutyen’s Bungalow Zone to RK Puram, is gated! How is then, these new gated communities any different?

The basic difference is in the way the public spaces, especially roads, of these gated-up residential developments were used. While access into these residential developments was through a gate, its only purpose was to offer some kind of security by closing at night. During the day, everyone was allowed in, vendors, hawkers, salespersons, stray dogs, cows, thorough traffic and even parking for spillover vehicles of adjacent markets. These were open public streets, unlike the private ones of our contemporary gated communities.

The maintenance of the streets and parks inside the gated enclaves, cleaning of streets, garbage collection, etc., was the responsibility of the local municipality. Additional amenities like clubs, gymnasiums and swimming pools, if any, were on a pay-and-use basis. In contrast, the modern-day gated community, as already defined earlier, is private ownership on large tracts of lands, thereby promoting exclusivity.

Privatization of the public space means that the responsibility of maintenance is on the developer, and the developer is accountable for the upkeep of the private property. The developer achieves this by taking a maintenance charge from each residence of the gated community. More facilities and amenities within, the higher the maintenance charge.

The concept of the gated community, as it exists now, began in the USA in the 1960s and 70s, primarily for leisure, but soon for security as well. While the initial ones were built to protect family estates and wealthy citizens, soon, planned retirement communities were built where middle-class Americans could wall themselves off. Gates then spread to resorts and country club developments. Political and economic transformations in the USA in the 1970s, furthered by increase of violent crimes in public areas of inner cities, led to the creation of middle class residential areas far from the city center. This flight influenced the formation of a fortress society at the periphery of cities (Harvey, 1989). Gated communities soon became a common feature of the urban landscape in the USA. 54

The concept proliferated in the 1980s, and soon travelled the whole world.

The emergence of the contemporary Gated Community may be attributed to various reasons, ranging from fear or privacy, exclusivity or a greener lifestyle to racism.

In Saudi Arabia, the purpose of these Gated Communities is to provide their inhabitants the opportunity to live the same way they did in their native country. Gated communities in the capital city of Riyadh, reserved to expatriates, allows the residents to follow a lifestyle of their own accordance, which may otherwise be inapt as per the local traditions or beliefs of the country. For example, women inside the gated community are not obliged to wear headscarves and may wear a swimming costume in public, activities deemed highly inappropriate in the Muslim dominated country.

With rapidly growing Indian cities, the visible lack of building supply was attributed to constrain in the availability of investment. Therefore, the Government of India has been encouraging private investment in infrastructure development and public services and housing. The economic liberalisation of 1991 has also led to a massive increase in foreign and domestic investment in the residential and commercial sectors. The rise of the information technology sector with its specific work patterns and the presence of world-class office spaces, which aim at increasing productivity through good architectural spaces and facilities, has left individuals desiring similar environmental standards at home. The inability of the government to provide the same (in terms of security, basic infrastructure like 24 hours water or electricity supply, etc.) has galvanised the gated community concept to India.

They offer a growing professional class a reasonably secure lifestyle in the face of social and fiscal poverty.

Blakely and Snyder (1997) identified three categories of communities living within gated estates: (1) lifestyle communities, (2) prestige communities and (3) security zones.

Broadly speaking, bigger cities in India, such as Gurugram and Bengaluru, may offer prestige and lifestyle communities, while secondary cities capitalise on the ‘security zone’ aspect of the gated community. Living in gated communities, particularly in cities like Faridabad or Ghaziabad, is not an example of Anglo-Saxon elitism, but rather quite literally, a manifestation of a better life for your family. This is an economic decision to gain safety and amenities, not a result of ill-will to the surrounding population (Ravindran, 2017). Also, we find that gated communities in India ‘form residential clusters in the fashion of industrial clusters where contiguity, functionality and utilitarian supply-chain related issues are the foremost identifiers rather than a deeper sense of community bonding’ (Bal, et al., 2017).

1.3

The Other Side of the Same Coin: Issues and Challenges

Commentators and literature on urban planning, urban sociology, environmental psychology, political sciences and geography have highlighted the negative aspects of

©Author 2021. This article is published with open access at https://jpad.copalpublishing.com Vol. 1, No. 1; July–December 2021

Ruchi Saxena, Conscious Urbanism, Vol. 1, No. 1, July–December 2021 gating. Critics describe gated enclaves as landscapes of fear and privilege (Blakely and Snyder, 1997; Low, 2003; WilsonDoenges, 2000); gating contravenes professional planning principles of openness, access, diversity and equity by creating exclusive, reactionary and socially isolating places (Blakely and Snyder, 1997; Hillier and McManus, 1994; Marcuse, 1997).

While having their own set of benefits, gated developments clearly disregard good city planning principles.

Some areas of concerns resulting from gating-up have been discussed here.

Issue 1: Impermeable territories; disconnected public realms

What is the impact of large privatised and, hence, secluded land chunks, not accessible by the population at large?

Gated communities are an obstruction in the continuity of the urban fabric. These fort-like complexes divide the city into impervious territories, giving rise to large secluded chunks of land right in the city. Since the streets within are private and do not connect to the larger urban network, the grain size of the urban fabric increases, resulting in impermeability and forces people and vehicles to traverse around them, putting an end to the possibility of going through them. Most of these gated communities are in the suburban or city extension areas, few of which are wellserved by a public transportation system. This, together with the creation of large isolated and impermeable tracts of land, promotes dependence on the ‘car’ as the primary source of movement, even for small daily activities.

The presence of various building typologies and land uses within a geographic area also does not ensure social and physical integration when “walls exist to separate”. Connected street networks of relatively small blocks and path systems, as propagated by urban planners and designers to be the best model for a connected city, are prevented and interrupted by these gated projects. They represent the final case in point of a disconnected street pattern. Their effectiveness as a model for creating new urban developments is, therefore, disputed.

Issue 2: Privatisation of the public space: The rise of the lifeless city

Another question arises: Do we have the right to privatize a public space? Gating up divorces individual localities from each other and from the city itself. They end up creating selfcontained single-use islands which lack the vitality of mixeduse and socially and economically diverse neighbourhoods.

What results is long stretches of high, blank walls along the collector streets, reducing the possibility of Jane Jacob’s ‘eyes on street’ and furthering the perception of being unsafe and crime-prone. These walled streets offer no view of life inside, limiting people’s experience of the city and subsequently in a greatly unequal society. Large parts of cities are therefore private and not for public viewing. The charm of walking down residential lanes, watching people go about their daily

chores, children playing in the parks, people on their evening walks, group of elderly sitting and getting nostalgic; all this is shielded by the great wall. For what reasons will then anyone want to visit these cities! These are lifeless, dead cities.

Issue 3: Decentralised activities; losing centralised structure of towns

This restructuring of the city which allows large inaccessible tracts of residential development also promotes decentralisation. Construction of large facilities like shopping malls, private clubs, recreational and sporting facilities within leads to further isolation and subsequently weakens the traditional centralized structure of towns. Though decentralisation is inevitable and preferred in an evergrowing city, decentralisation in the gated community context promotes seclusion. Reasons to explore the neighbourhood diminish when everything is available in one’s own world.

The side-effect is that the residents tend to become socioculturally segregated.

Issue 4: Rising social conflicts

The gated community as an urban model has been attributed to creating rising social conflicts. As Smets (2005) puts it, ‘They (gated community residents) miss the contact and interaction between those who are different, which is requisite for a sustainable cosmopolitan environment. An isolated identity will be formed, which may conflict with the other urban cosmopolitan identities. The world outside the gated enclave is perceived as alien, unpredictable and considered unsafe’.

This type of socio-spatial segregation becomes one of the main reasons for social conflicts and feelings of social jealousy. This social jealousy leads to social destruction and may well be the reason for increased crime and depression amongst the under-privileged. Paradoxically, this segregation seems a motivating reason for moving into a gated community (Hatem Touman, 2019).

Issue 5: The end of diverse communities

One of the key principles of planning is to achieve the notion of diverse and integrated communities. Cities should ideally be planned and designed to accommodate a range of people and possibilities. This is interpreted as the need to plan for a mix of uses and housing types within districts.

Gated developments fail to meet this criterion because they segregate by use, class, income groups and in some cases, by ethnicity.

Issue 6: Gated by choice!

Earlier in this article, it has been explored that one of the most compelling factors leading to the birth of the gated community model has been ‘The perception of fear’. This perception may be a reality or a national hysteria about urban crime facilitated by increased media coverage of daily murders, rapes, drive-by shootings, drug busts, and kidnapping (Flusty, 1997; Judd, 1995). The presence of

55 ©Author 2021. This article is published with open access at https://jpad.copalpublishing.com Vol. 1, No. 1; July–December 2021

Ruchi Saxena, Conscious Urbanism, Vol. 1, No. 1, July–December 2021 walls, gates, video cameras and guards reveals the growing insecurity of modern society (Blakely and Snyder, 1997).

Urban designers or planners may defend the idea of an open city, highlighting the need for mixing uses and people, connected street patterns and compact forms, but the real estate trend suggests otherwise.

1.4

Gated Communities Are Here to Stay

These new gated communities are perhaps, at a microlevel, good urban design examples in themselves. Most communities have a compact form with higher densities than their suburban counterparts. The built environment generates a sense of place with an identifiable character.

Good streetscaping, open space networks and trafficcalming measures create pedestrian- and children-friendly environments, green areas become havens for both active and passive recreation, and in some cases, wildlife habitat.

This is coupled with the promise of a better quality of life and a healthy habitat where community living is revived: gated communities offer buyers the values that consumers want in the residential environment.

Much like the garden city models of an earlier generation, these gated community models strive to generate residential areas safe from traffic and crime; and they have achieved so simply by gating themselves up. In the process, they have ended up contradicting the contemporary town planning principles that promote an integrated and connected urban realm. Impermeable territories, disconnected public realms and dead collector streets are all characteristic features of our new city extensions. Within themselves, they may seem to be in line with most traditional values of town planning: beauty, amenity, health and efficiency. What they fail to achieve though is equity.

For the developer and the final consumer, the benefits outshine the demerits; and in most cases, the demerits are not an iota of concern for the final consumer. For example, the consumer is happy with a high boundary wall because that helps him feel more secure and keeps unwanted things out; the developer is happy to oblige. The negative consequences of such an urban form do not directly affect either of them. It is, therefore, the domain of the government to look into the issue and provide solutions. The first step is to recognise that the physical and social features of gated communities have an impact on their adjacent areas, and collectively they affect the overall urban fabric of the city.

Much can be done if the problems arising out of the gated community concept are well researched and understood.

Planners should engage this issue head-on in order to frame a ‘professional opinion’ that can guide local practitioners facing increasing requests to approve gated developments.

Planners need policy and regulatory options to consider as they respond to local demands for enclosure (Grant, 2005).

Architectural design-based solutions, policies and urban design guidelines can respond to the local demands of enclosure while ensuring a vibrant city. There is a difference 56

between inserting westernized concepts of gated patterns in the Indian context and adapting these patterns to be compatible with the unique conditions and characteristics of Indian new towns.

1.5

The Way forward

This part of the article looks at possible solutions to the curious case of the gated community. What urban planning, urban design and management policies and interventions can be advanced regarding the issues generated by the gated communities?

In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs (1961) describes the four essential physical conditions for dynamic urban life to be: (a) multifunctional neighbourhoods, (b) short blocks and connected street systems, (c) varied age residential areas, and (d) a high concentration of people.

Jacobs idea of ‘eyes on the streets’, further strengthened

by CPTED, also highlights the importance of dense, streetoriented residential buildings mixed with small-scale local commercial shops, provide eyes on the street that keep the city safe.

Allan Jacobs (1993) also described the best streets as those having ‘about them a quality of transparency at their edges’ and suggested that the best streets are ‘replete with entryways, as little as 12 feet (about 4 metres) apart’. He further supported the concept of short blocks and advocated street intersections should ideally be at every 90 metres (or lesser), as has been observed in the most successful historic cities. Kevin Lynch (1981) in Dimensions of Performance from Good City Form suggested that ‘Settlement is good when enhances the continuity of culture and the survival of its people, increases a sense of connection in time and space, and permits or spurs individual growth; development, within continuity, via openness and connection’.

Issue 1 and 2: Impermeable territories; disconnected public realms and privatisation of the public space: The rise of the lifeless city

The lifeless, blank, windowless, walled streets leading to the loss of public life can be activated by opening up the gated communities along these edges. One way of doing so is opening up the commercial spaces of the gated communities onto the collector streets. This ensures an active edge and also increases the catchment area for the retail outlets. It also brings ‘eyes on the street’ and permeates the impermeable territory. A much vibrant and active collector street can be achieved when all such gated community developments push their commercial spaces along the collector streets.

Some architects and developers have explored this with much success (Figure 1.1–1.3). As of now, it remains an architectural design decision, but the same can also be implemented with the help of a simple urban design guideline for the zone.

While most gated communities choose to stay private, which is exhibited by their solid boundary walls, some have created a more ‘inviting’ boundary wall design by

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Ruchi Saxena, Conscious Urbanism, Vol. 1, No. 1, July–December 2021

Figure 1.1 (a) Puri Pratham, Sector 86 and (b) Puri Aanand Vilas, Sector 81, Faridabad. The commercial shopping facility, though strategically placed in the front, lies within the site boundary, respecting the mandatory setback as prescribed by the bye-laws of the area. Though visible from the road, it doesn’t effectively create an active urban edge. [Photo courtesy: Puri Constructions]

employing visually permeable boundaries, allowing the outsider to glimpse into the ‘private realm’ of the gated community (Figure 1.4). Though the need to do so is not any compulsory building regulation but is a choice the architects and developers have made. Creating visually permeable boundaries may help ‘connect’ the disconnected realms,

where the sharp binary between the private and the public gets diluted, and a kind of connectivity and exchange along transparent wall occurs. These transparent edges aim at mirroring the inside life to the outside world, while the norms and rules of each environment continue to be different. A shallow effort, they do nothing to counter the loss of public

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Ruchi Saxena, Conscious Urbanism, Vol. 1, No. 1, July–December 2021

Figure 1.2 RPS City, Sector 88, Faridabad. Commercial pushed along the road helps in creating a more vibrant and active urban edge. [Photo courtesy: RPS Group]

Figure 1.3 Prateek Walk of Prateek Wisteria (left), Elite Mart of Elite Homz and Civic Sampriti (right), Sector 77, Noida. These adjacent gated communities have opened up their commercial building to the public in general with a direct access from the abutting road. The creation of pedestrian-friendly plazas in front of these buildings has only increased their appeal.

life generated by the gated community syndrome, but are nevertheless better than the solid wall that creates the sharp contrast of the ‘in’ and the ‘out’; the ‘private’ and the ‘public’; the ‘us’ and ‘them’ and may significantly affect the perception of safety for a pedestrian walking on the road at odd hours.

Outside these gated communities and in between them is a whole world of the informal, unorganised sector. In most city extension examples, these are people from nearby villages who support the existence of these gated communities by selling groceries, vegetables, milk and milk products. The essential community helpers such as tailors, barbers, cobblers, dry cleaners, general store provisions, stationers, bakeries, 58

medical care, etc., come from the informal sector only. The gated communities have retail spaces for the same within, but in most cases, and especially in the developments at the periphery or city extension areas, these remain unoccupied or minimally occupied, owing to comparatively higher rents and restricted catchment areas.

These unorganised, informal sectors crop up near most gated communities and provide the much-needed ‘inexpensive’ facilities for the housekeeping and security staff of these gated communities, and in many cases, for the residents as well. The presence of informal shops and vendors between and around these gated communities has also

©Author 2021. This article is published with open access at https://jpad.copalpublishing.com Vol. 1, No. 1; July–December 2021

Ruchi Saxena, Conscious Urbanism, Vol. 1, No. 1, July–December 2021

Figure 1.4 Transparent edges of the gated communities. SPR residency, Sector 82, Faridabad [Photo courtesy: Author]

facilitated in imbibing some life in the otherwise ‘private’ city.

These are important also because they provide a relatively cheaper alternative to a service/product. Arranging for the inevitable unorganised/ informal sectors, and reserving and allocating space for them between these gated communities can be a great method of reviving street life and ensuring perceptions of safety (Figure 1.5). What finally comes to populate these spaces should be left to the forces of market demand and supply. Planning for the ‘unplanned’ can reduce the undesirable aspects of these informal sectors in terms of cleanliness, visual chaos, encroachment and related traffic issues, etc. Urban planning and design should open up to many such future spatial possibilities of spontaneity and selforganisation.

The ‘short-block concept’ should also be considered while cutting plots for residential developments (Figure 1.6). Large townships, almost mini-cities in themselves, automatically create larger expanses of dead walls along the collector streets. There should either be a ‘maximum’ limit to the plot size based on Jacobs work or compulsory opento-public roads be mandated in the bye-laws of the area.

The latter is likely to receive opposition as it is an anti-thesis

Figure 1.5 The The short block concept. (a) Potential pedestrian paths on large blocks vs. potential pedestrian paths on short blocks (Source: Jane Jacobs, 1961)

Figure 1.5 The informal sector has advantageously cropped up on the road separating three gated communities of Sector 82: BPTP Park Grandeura, SPR Residency and Puri Pranayam, Faridabad. Informal sectors usually crop around road junctions, nodes, entry-exits of gated communities, or along major traffic routes. Possibilities of appropriations are important factors in designing cities. (Photo courtesy: Author)

to the very concept of a gated community; hence, limiting the plot sizes for gated developments should be taken up by those preparing the zonal/local development plans for the area. Breaking down plot sizes also allows for more flexibility in terms of the type of project that may come up on the particular site, as it renders itself free from the current monopoly of large capital investments. In the end, a lived-in residential district should not appear as a ‘map of real estate company’s territory’, but rather cells connected by an allencompassing street network (Miao, 2003). This needs urgent implementation because once large plots are designated for group housing, very little can be done through architectural design or urban design guidelines to achieve a vibrant street life.

Mixed developments are also a great tool in creating a vibrant urban environment. This may include vertical mixing of compatible uses: for example, residential uses over

(b) Geoff Boeing’s Square-mile Street Network Visualization project clearly demonstrates the difficulties of the large block.

59 ©Author 2021. This article is published with open access at https://jpad.copalpublishing.com Vol. 1, No. 1; July–December 2021

Ruchi Saxena, Conscious Urbanism, Vol. 1, No. 1, July–December 2021 businesses, or combined live/work units, a characteristic feature of most medieval towns; or it could also be achieved by horizontal mixing of activities along a street block.

Issue 3: Decentralised activities; Losing centralised structure of towns

Though decentralisation is inevitable and in fact, preferred in the case of ever-growing Indian cities, the issue of seclusion enhanced due to decentralisation can be solved by ensuring a mix of land uses instead of delineating exclusively residential zones. Detailed local-level plans can ensure strategic placing of functions in such a way that some kind of a centre is achieved which invites or compels people to be a part of it more often. What functions need to be placed in such a ‘center’ would be context-specific and may vary from large-scale recreational or entertainment zones, town parks, sporting facilities, commercial centers or sociocultural centres. For example, while interviewing people for this article, it was found that despite living in a decent green and well-landscaped gated community, people did prefer to go to the nearby Town Park on weekends, especially during winters picnicking.

The possibility of sharing facilities may also be explored.

It has been observed that most gated communities provide their own playground for children, clubhouse and swimming pool, and this repeats itself for even gated residential developments placed side by side. So, one gated community has a tennis court, while the other provides a squash court, and yet another, a basketball court. The possibility of placing these amenities nearby, combining them to increase the variety of facilities for the members of these gated communities can also be a point of further study and investigation. It would raise obvious questions of governance and operations of these shared community facilities and will depend on the size of catchment and the scale of services and activities being provided. Its success would depend on a strong local alliance, municipal planning informed by community development principles and a partnership approach to community planning.

Issue 4 and 5: Rising social conflicts and the end of diverse communities

As the Charter of the New Urbanism (Congress for New Urbanism) emphasises, ‘within neighbourhoods, a broad range of housing types and price levels can bring people of diverse ages, races, and incomes into daily interaction strengthening the personal and civic bonds essential to an authentic community.’ The issue of ensuring a mix of people in a gated community is perhaps the most complex and difficult to achieve, especially if this mix is desired in terms of income levels.

A government-policy initiative makes it compulsory to build affordable housing for the economically weaker sections, more commonly known as the EWS housing, within these gated enclaves. To cite an example, the Department of 60

Town and Country Planning, Haryana, clearly reserves 15% of the total number of flats for EWS and 10% of the main dwelling units for service apartments, i.e. for domestic help.

The area requirement for EWS and service apartment has been defined at 200 sq. ft. and 140 sq. ft., respectively. In case of plotted development, the licensee shall reserve 20% of the total number of residential plots in residential plotted colony for allotment to economically weaker section or lower income group category. EWS plot size shall vary within 50 sq. m. to 125 sq. m. or as otherwise approved specifically in the layout plan approved by the Director. The allottees of such flats/ plots are not be allowed to further transfer the units to any other person within a period of 5 years after getting the possession. The breach of this condition attracts a penalty equivalent to 100% of selling price of the allotted unit to be paid by the purchaser. Moreover, no annual maintenance charges are recoverable from EWS plot/flat holders.

The efforts of the government to ensure the construction of affordable housing within gated communities have met success only to the extent that such mandatory EWS housing does get constructed within the gated community premises.

But the pertinent question is: Do the economically weaker sections get to buy and live in these flats?

The cost of EWS apartments is usually high from an ‘affordability of the poor’ perspective. Though the government has tried to keep a check on who buys the flat by making it mandatory for the scrutiny of the beneficiary applications received by the developer, there have been cases where people furnish false income certificates or buy a house in the name of their maids, etc., and sell it off after 5 years when it is in the open market (Eapen, 2018). Renting out these flats is also very common. In most cases, a visit to these colonies disclosed that several of these houses are illegally being used for commercial purposes: groceries, beauty salons and offices (Bhatia, 2014).

In Gurugram, the property ‘mafia’ is readily paying a 100 per cent penalty on resale of these flats to avoid any legal hurdle and thus legalising the illegitimate process. Even after paying the penalty, they make a decent profit out of the resale, since the original price of these EWS houses is kept low owing to government policies of ‘affordable housing for all’. Legal experts term it a way of exploiting loopholes to legalise an illegal practice (Kumar, 2018).

States like Rajasthan and Gujarat ensure that the reserved 15 per cent of a housing project for EWS and LIG is handed over to the nodal agency after completion, thus avoiding any scope for manipulation. The price of the flat or house is also pre-determined so as to avoid any ambiguity (Akshatha M, 2015). Affordable housing policy of Gujarat makes it obligatory for the careful examination of the beneficiary applications received by the developer by an implementing agency. It also does not permit the beneficiary to sell the house or sublet it for at least 7 years.

This, however, is much more complex in implementation than in theory and can form the basis for further research.

©Author 2021. This article is published with open access at https://jpad.copalpublishing.com Vol. 1, No. 1; July–December 2021

Ruchi Saxena, Conscious Urbanism, Vol. 1, No. 1, July–December 2021

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