Slum Redevelopment Drives Real Estate Market In Mumbai

52% of the upcoming realty projects in Mumbai, spread over 8,600 acres, are slum redevelopment schemes, brokerage Anand Rathi Research said in a 4 October report. Another 18% will be factory and mill land projects, 4% will be redevelopment of old buildings, and 3%, urban slum renewal schemes. These figures are indicative of the tendency toward brownfield development in one the worlds largest cities.

It is hoped the schemes will rehabilitate families living in almost 300,000 hutments this year, and also open up substantial space for residential and commercial development.

According to the Anand Rathi report, Mumbai, India's densest city with 27,000 people per sq. km, would need an additional 324 million sq. ft of residential developments by 2021. But of the 468 sq. km in Mumbai, only 90 sq. km is actual developable land and the rest are non-revenue generating areas such as forest land, according to a survey by Pankaj Kapoor, chief executive of Mumbai-based real estate research firm Liases Foras and architect Hafeez Contractor.

"A huge amount of space can be freed through slum redevelopment but that needs to be incentivised by giving developers more construction rights," said Kapoor.