In Mumbai, the $50000 Slum Shack
01.01.70
Her 200-square-foot shanty, in Rajiv Gandhi Nagar, in the Dharavi neighborhood of Mumbai, has faulty electrical lines, no water supply and a non existent sewage system. Still, Ms. Vaidya’s house is her most prized possession. “If I decide to sell it, it will fetch me more than Rs 10 lakh” rupees, or about $24,000, she estimates, based on the offers she has been getting.
Ms. Vaidya isn’t alone. Many of Mumbai’s slum dwellers, some 60 percent of the city’s 21 million people, are living in hovels that suddenly command high prices.
An aerial view of Mumbai, where wealth and extreme poverty have long been close neighbors, would show expensive high-rises poking through a mass of slums. In a city where commuting is a battle that millions face every day, slums are well-connected and are easily accessible to India’s finance and entertainment hubs. These neighborhoods are among the few spaces where builders and real estate investors can expand, as the city’s population has almost doubled in the past 20 years.
Source: New York Times (blog)
Point Austin: Buckle Up: Bumpy political ride ahead for southwest road proposal
01.01.70
Thanks to Hays County, our growth-centric neighbors to the south, the long-delayed State Highway 45 plan is back on the front burner – a slimmer, cheaper, but no less controversial version of its former self.
In late September, Hays County commissioners offered to lay $5 million on the table if Travis County kicked in the remaining $20 million or so to build and maintain a two- to three-lane road that would link FM 1626 in Hays County to an existing arm of SH 45 in southwest Travis County. The idea is that the road would reduce traffic congestion on Brodie Lane by providing Hays County commuters a direct path to MoPac South, which already has its own congestion woes. As proposed, SH 45 would be converted to a county road, thus avoiding years of haggling with the feds over environmental requirements given the proposed route's path across the recharge zone of the Edwards Aquifer and a number of caves, fractures, and sinkholes leading to the aquifer – still the sole source of drinking water for an estimated 60,000 residents.
Source: Austin Chronicle