The famous slum where Slumdog was made is Dharavi.  Although only the third largest slum in Mumbai, it measures a mile square and is in the centre of the city.   From the air it looks like a dense creeping accretion of brownish-grey.  It is surrounded by horrendously expensive condominiums.  What surprises is that there are so few of them.

The worth of the land it sits on is $10 billion (2007 figure).  Half of Mumbai’s population sits on 6% of the land and they are spread horizontally, not in stacked high-rises.

Developers drool, of course, at the idea of so much pricey real estate.  But the Municipal Corporation of Mumbai has no effective way of moving a million people.  If apartments are built in the suburbs for them they almost overnight become vertical slums from lack of maintenance, and are far away from the businesses that generate $500 million annually in income for the Dheravi dwellers.

Essentially, the middle class has no place to live, unless they spend several hours daily commuting to work from the outskirts of the city.  So, some of the people who make more than average in the slum would, in the natural course of events, move to a home with a somewhat higher standard of living.  But such homes do not yet exist.

Mumbai has spent the last four or five years constructing its first metro.  Two or three lines should open within the next year or so, and many more lines are planned.   Given enough time, this should make a big difference … or maybe it won’t.  Initially the streets should be far less congested as people take the metro but, of course, GDP is growing at at least 10% a year (in Mumbai) and so the number of cars on the road again …

There are few tall condominiums, and they are all considered high-end.  Surely building more modest ones, and a lot of them, would be an answer?  But I’m scarcely an expert.