Recent alumnus Harman Singh Dhodi (M.R.P. ’21) won the Global Planning Educators Interest Group (GPEIG) Case Study Prize for his exit project titled, Intra-Urban Split in Sanitation Provision: The untended plight of urban villages in Delhi, India.
Harmon’s exit project looked at the urban sanitation disparities of fecal waste management in Delhi, India. His data analysis was supplemented with field work in Munirka, an urban village in New Delhi. He described how urban villages have emerged as spaces where planned and unplanned infrastructure systems coexist simultaneously; where formality and informality blur into one another.
He discussed how households in the outer districts of Delhi are better provisioned with toilets within their premises when compared to households around the city center. His exit project observed a disproportionate increase in septic tanks in Delhi, with more than 60% of households relying on septic tanks in urban villages. The study found that onsite sanitation facilities, like septic tanks, are inadequate solutions for the dense urban environment of Delhi due to primitive tank design, limited services to empty the tank, and leakages when transporting the waste.
Additionally, Harmon pointed out that government efforts have focused on the construction of public toilets, which lack crucial accessibility requirements for the under-provisioned and disadvantaged population such as women, transgender people and the differently abled. His exit project highlighted the need for inclusive planning and extensive data collection to address socio-spatial disparities in urban infrastructure services.
“The GPEIG award has provided me with a platform to disseminate my exit project findings as a means to encourage planners to rethink how we provide equitable access to sanitation services in the context of rapidly urbanizing cities of the global South. It also helps share my research methodology and ideas to students and researchers who might be interested in similar topics of urban infrastructure.”
Harmon is currently working as an Analyst for HR&A Advisors, a regional planning and real estate consultancy firm, in New York City. He reminisces on great memories from the M.R.P. program which included traveling to Tonga for his International Planning workshop and designing AAP’s new Queer Spaces course with Matthew Reyes (M.R.P. ’21) and Associate Professor Jeffery Chusid.
Charl Folscher / Unsplash