Yamuna Chilla Khadar

M.Des Social Design - Systems Studio

Brief: Mapping dynamic equilibrium in a flood-prone environment.

Summary

Yamuna Chilla Khadar is an illegal settlement built within the embanked area of the Yamuna river within Delhi. It floods every few years when Yamuna barrages are opened during heavy seasonal rainfall, causing evacuations and loss of property. The studio was geared to mapping the systems that maintain housing in Chilla Khadar, which involves balancing ecological, social and financial constraints. The field research connects housing systems to policy frameworks that impact the vulnerability of people living here.

The resultant policy briefs depicts the disparate impact of climate change, and suggestions to improve visibility of the issues faced by the people of Chilla Khadar.

Dynamic Equilibrium Mapping

Dynamic equilibrium is a concept used to understand systems thinking. It takes into account the active forces in a system that constitute, either by aiding or taking away, the routinely constructed stability of the system so that it can function normally. The graphical representation below is an exercise to spatially map the relationship between privacy, security and independence on a house plan. Here, the built environment is understood as the medium which dictates the tensions between the public-private spectrum.

Mapping relatiosnhips of privacy, security and independence on houseplans

Field Site

Satellite mapping showing the floodplains in brown. The blue metro line on the eastern bank of the river marks the embankment boundary, leaving Chilla Khadar partially to fully submerged every other year.

Construction debris from the nearby highway is used by the households living closer to the road to form flooring, outdoor stoves and paving for the pathways.

The materials used and the structure of the houses vary based on the the culture of those immigrating. Other factors such as the family's occupation, family size, financial constraints, and political affiliation can also impact the design of the house or a cluster of settlements.

Policy Mapping and Intervention

Objective

Stakeholders

To create a community-operated service platform through which residents of Chilla Khadar can share their indigenous knowledge of housing, climate resilience, and disaster adaptation with external collaborators—such as universities, researchers, and policymakers—while regaining ownership of their narratives and intellectual labour.

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Service Overview

Risks and Mitigation

Risk of exploitation or tokenism

Informed consent protocols and ccommunity ownership of data

Sustainability and volunteer fatigue

Incentive structures and rotating mentorship roles

Legal restrictions on unauthorised settlements

Operate through registered intermediaries (universities or NGOs)

Takeaways

Systems Thinking for Urban Contexts
- Using systems thinking framework to map interactions between ecological, social, political factors, and analyse urban ecologies as interdependent systems rather than static sites.
- Demonstrating that urban form and community well-being are co-produced by multiple layers of governance, climate, and culture.

Informality as Innovation
- Informal settlements can become case studies for adaptive design and inform affordable, resilient housing models.
- Studying informality in building structures and settlement patterns in different terrains, combined with local esoteric knowledge can hint towards specialized strategies for building temporary shelters in different contexts.

Co-design and Archiving
- Incorporating participatory design frameworks that foreground local agency can result in the design artefact being adopted, adapted and maintained by the community, for their benefit. This system can be translated into different urban typologies that can expand, contract or reconfigure in response to environmental stress.
- Considering knowledge-sharing networks to be a part of the urban fabric show how spatial design can institutionalise local intelligence within broader governance systems and provide communities with more agency.

Policy that Mirrors Adaptive Space
- Translating grassroots insights into policy recommendations or spatial guidelines as a socially sustainable design methodology.
- Design can be used as a negotiation tool between informal communities and formal institutions, while maintaining ethics of consent, reciprocity and data ownership.