Longitudinal insights on a sites and services resettlement project. The case of Ambedkar Nagar in Chennai, India

Abstract

Sites and Services (S&S) schemes were popular in resettlement in the Global South, especially between the 1970s and 1990s. Towards the end of the twentieth century they were considered unsuccessful and discontinued. The abandonment of S&S was based on premature evaluations and narrow indicators, with little understanding of the real timeframes of incremental development processes. Yet, literature on the long-term development of S&S is scarce. This article draws on a longitudinal study in a S&S resettlement project in Chennai which was implemented at the beginning of the 1990s. It examines both the physical and social development of the project. Although initially, due to the remote location of the site and related lack of employment opportunities, a substantial number of beneficiaries had left the area during the early years, the long-term insights show that the neighbourhood achieved a desirable physical development. The results also underscore how different types of homeowners and residents enabled the development of various tenure types, including rental space. The paper argues that these developments facilitated social mixing across economic, ethnic, and linguistic groups.