Stakeholder deliberation on developing affordable housing strategies: Towards inclusive and sustainable transit-oriented developments

Abstract

Transit-oriented developments (TODs) are commanding high land and rental values due to improved accessibility and economic opportunities. Owing to the increase in land and rental values, the highly desirable TODs are gradually becoming inaccessible to the poor, creating social exclusion and housing inequities within the TODs. To address this consequence, the study proposes a three-level stakeholder deliberation framework (inform, involve, and collaborate) towards developing inclusive housing strategies for equitable and sustainable TODs. The framework is applied to the context of the Yeshwanthpur industrial area, Bengaluru, India. The first level of deliberation, 'information', foregrounds the need for affordable housing strategies for stakeholders. In the second level of deliberation, the stakeholders involved identify the major challenges in incorporating affordable housing into TODs. In the third level of deliberation, stakeholders collaborate to contemplate strategies to combat each challenge. The results show that mandatory inclusionary zoning, special-purpose planning vehicles, land banking entities, innovative financing tools, and local area level plans in collaboration with the community, emerged as potentially feasible strategies to create inclusive housing outcomes in the TOD case study area.