Testing slum upgrading policies to foster sustainable development in cities: Exploring effects on Indian cities with an agent-based model

Managing our cities more sustainably and improving liveability of cities is a pressing concern not the least because global changes such as ongoing urbanisation lead to rapidly increasing numbers of people living in cities. The sustainable development goal 11 of improving the livability of cities is specifically important for millions of urban dwellers who live in slums around the world. Upgrading of slums aims at providing better living conditions for the urban poor. Upgrading includes in situ upgrading (improving infrastructure on the spot), verticalisation of slums with new high-rise buildings for urban poor and freed-up empty space for further development, resettlement of slum dwellers to other locations, and community-based upgrading. Since the evaluation of upgrading mostly focusses on the upgraded location, it remains unclear what the city-wide effects of urban upgrading measures are. This not only relates to potential effects on social segregation in the city, but also negative environmental effects through increased urban sprawl. In the presentation, we investigate the potential effects of the four different upgrading policies mentioned above for the context of Indian cities. We employ a stylized agent-based model (ABM) to explore systematically the potential effects of slum upgrading not only on infrastructure quality, but also on social segregation and urban sprawl. In the ABM, resident agents are heterogeneous with respect to their income and their tenure status. They react to upgrading policies in various ways, depending on their preferences and financial means, for instance, staying and contributing some of their savings to the upgrading project if required, leaving the district and moving elsewhere; or moving into a newly upgraded district. Preliminary results indicate that we face trade-offs among the social and environmental components of sustainable development for most of the upgrading policies. Verticalisation could be a promising upgrading policy, avoiding disadvantages of other upgrading policies assessed in the ABM.