Kids in India Are Sparking Urban Planning Changes by Mapping Slums

[nerd_stuff]

This book by James Scott has a very interesting perspective on the mapping of unmapped cities. The TL;DR is that an unmapped or unmappable city can't be managed from afar. In an unmapped city you must go there to manage it, in a mapped city you can sit at a desk a thousand miles away and know who's paid their taxes, etc. Paradoxically the act of mapping helps both outside help and outside exploitation.

http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-like-State-Certain-Condition/dp...

[iwwr]

This also engenders a "Sim City" kind of urban planning that keeps commercial spaces or jobs very far away from homes and makes it impractical to not own a car (simply necessary for survival).

[slayed0]

It looks like they're building legends on these maps. I wonder if the legends are standardized. It'd be cool if whoever is reviewing these, or someone involved in the process, could scan them in and make a public repository.

[filiwickers]

There is an effort to make this process a bit easier using OpenStreetMap & Field Papers (http://fieldpapers.org/).

[acpmasquerade]

Inspiring.

First the idea of mapping slums and making stakeholders aware (even though they are already) whenever they sit to plan. Secondly the idea of using children who will foresee the future they want to live into.

"The value of child-led mapping, however, is not restricted to dreaming of a modern cricket pitch or other public utilities (although that's evidently important)."

[js4win]

Proud of these kids. It would be great if a local representative could help with uploading some of the data. I believe there can be a lot of restoration aid provided from many of us in helping with this process.

[Shish2k]

Meanwhile, kids in Britain are sparking urban planning changes by slapping mums :(

(Not entirely joking; I wonder if it's media bias, or are kids in less-well-off countries like this really so much more motivated to create and improve, where ours slack off and vandalise?)

[icebraining]

It should be noted that the UK has 5% of the population of India, so by sheer size of the population alone, they should have 20x the number of motivated kids, all else being equal.

[sombremesa]

There is a very big difference not only economically, but also culturally. People tend to be a lot more close-knit in India in general (vs Western countries), and especially so in poorer areas.

[seesomesense]

1. Some are in slums because they have no other choice. A large proportion of the slum population in poor countries probably falls into this category.

2. Some are in slums because of their choices. The inhabitants of Blacktown or St Marys, slums in Australia probably fall into this category.

Group 1 tend to be motivated to improve their situation. The descendants of those in Group 2 will still be in slums in a hundred years.

[pjc50]

"Kids" is a huge group in both countries, among which you can find good and bad behaviour.

[pcr0]

Those are some really well organised maps, kudos to them.