ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the development of low-income settlements in Amritsar, and highlights some of the most conspicuous tenure and security issues which confront poor households in shaping their respective communities. Settlement and consolidation of poor communities has been the subject of much discussion within the literature. Illegal occupation is the single most common form of settlement forming close to half of the total sample across the typology. In Delhi the process of regularising unauthorised colonies by the Delhi Development Authority has led to the further expansion of illegal settlement through subdivisions and an increasingly commercialising land market. The housing tenure patterns which have emerged from the survey show that the rental sector is small, but gradually growing due to the evolving nature of private self-help settlements and the development of state-assisted sites. Legalisation as a policy intended to include rather than exclude the poor living in squatter settlements has also shown to have effects upon mobility.
