Sheela was one of the speakers at the
Global Studio conference and she is the head of an NGO called SPARC which works
closely with the National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF) improving the slums of India. I had a good talk to
Sheela after her presentation. She believes that the planning system ignores
informality and is very top down rather than bottom up. She is particularly
keen to encourage the improvement of slums insitu rather than through
rebuilding. Sheela is not an architect and she says she "loves to hate
architects and planners" who she sees as being too concerned about design
issues. She
is also concerned about engineers who want
to line everything up in rows rather than allowing more informal and organic
layouts. Sheela is also critical of some of the National Government programs to
improve slums.
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