Summary of Project Plan
Slum rehabilitation housing developments (SRHs) are transitional urban spaces designed to alleviate poverty and tackle the problem of urban slums.
These affordable housing developments designed for the low-income population are an expanding form of building stock in rapidly urbanising cities experiencing high-density rural-urban migration, such as Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Nairobi, Lahore, Jakarta and Addis Ababa. A persistent problem in the SRH is energy poverty. For example, a recent study has shown that SRH occupants in Mumbai pay up to 40% of their monthly income towards electricity. This project concerns energy justice and its distributive outcomes for those on low incomes.
Figure 1.
The policy implications of the intersection of energy, health and housing inequality have not been explored so this project aims to address this significant research gap with regard to distributive energy justice. The rise of energy poverty traps in the SRH represents an institutional inefficiency in these ‘affordable for all’ programs requiring interdisciplinary investigation. This research will investigate what causes electricity affordability challenges for people living in the SRH with reference to the economic incentives facing the housing developers. The methodology will include primary data collection on energy expenditure by households in the Mumbai SRH and its analysis using data fusion approaches combining econometric modelling with state-of-the-art data science techniques. It will enable a better understanding of the SRH model and how incentive systems, and mechanisms can be designed to prevent energy poverty traps emerging in future low-income housing developments.
In the media
COP must reverse rising pessimism over building sector decarbonisation, University of Cambridge Research News, 17 November 2022
