Urban Poverty And Socio-Economic Development

Despite being considered as highly instrumental in globalization, development and growth, urban India faces acute

problem of poverty and socio-economic imbalance. For national socio-economic development, it is vitally important to

tackle urban poverty and attend to its spatial manifestations. It is important to understand that the urban poor comprise

not only an enormous challenge but also an opportunity for developing India: relieving the immense human suffering

experienced by the urban poor and supporting their significant contribution to the informal economy and labor markets

and helping them unleash their entrepreneurial drive. The speed of urbanization of developing India, the haphazard

development of urban areas, and the deteriorating

The plans for slums rarely fit in the context of broader plans for the urban region. There is minimal

coordination between the nongovernmental organizations that are majorly involved in slum improvement works with

these agencies. Community-based organizations are often weak and are not included in the decision making process.

Moreover, the government agencies, corporations and authorities generally fail to coordinate among themselves

consequently being unable to formulate specific strategies for slum improvement. The result is, thus, a largely

unplanned and haphazard urban growth.

Thus, it is time that we recognize that rehousing the poor in decent low- rent dwelling units cannot alone solve the other

equally pressing problems like unemployment, illiteracy, no social security, low income, family fragmentation and illness.

Providing public services and infrastructure, cannot all by itself, do away with crime, illegitimacy, delinquency and

deviant behavior. We as planners need to realize that following the typical physical planning approaches such as the

neighborhood concept, which themselves are often driven by physical concepts such as zoning, land use planning etc.,

cannot alone redeem the vast scale social issues associated with urban

In such an

arena, planner should perform the multiple roles of an activist, a manager, a mediator, a peace maker, a social worker

and a business person. It is these factors that make the role of a planner imperative in the contemporary context,

especially in a developing country like India.

Though spatial planning and development planning may both appear to be two, very different, meagerly related

branches, given that in many cases, even the professionals belonging to the two fields do not readily accept the how

closely related both these are when it comes to urban development, it is an unprecedented fact that that the two

cannot be separated from one another.

Development economics explores the economic challenges pertaining to the poorer countries of the world, like ours. It

investigates the factors that lead to such inequity and inequality, and analyzes the kinds of government and market

failure that may have resulted or contributed to this situation. It is described as the study as to how humans use their

limited resources to satisfy their unending material