"THE URBAN WORLD: A CASE STUDY IN SLUM RELOCATION"---FILM GUIDE

THE URBAN WORLD: A CASE STUDY IN SLUM RELOCATION (40 minute documentary) A film by Warren Bass Howard Spodek, executive producer and subject specialist Illustrated Essay by Howard Spodek “The Urban World” documents the relocation of a family at the crossroads of two of the most important urban developments in India today: the revitalization of city centers, implemented by local and state governments, and the investment of massive amounts of capital and energy by the national government in constructing subsidized low income housing. We watch the family of Akbarbhai Saiyyed and his wife Akhtara Sultana Saiyyed respond to the government’s order to leave the riverside slum, where they have been living for seventeen years, in order to make room for redevelopment of the river bank. They organize their four children; pack all of their worldly belongings onto a government-provided truck; traverse some five miles of urban landscape; and unpack in the new Ajit Mill Complex Apartments, “Garib Nawaz” (“Residence of the Poor”). We sense their fear and their anticipation. We see the urban renewal project, which forces them out of their old, but familiar, slum housing and neighborhood, and the new government-built housing, which inducts them into the new. Six months later we revisit them to determine how they and their neighbors are managing. In addition to meeting families that are relocated, we interview the planner who designed the riverfront redevelopment, one of the boldest plans in urban India of the early 2000s, and the lawyer who went to court representing riverfront dwellers whose claims to a new apartment were questioned and sometimes denied. The film guide includes text materials and photographs covering the years following the film shoot in 2010-11