LOCATIONAL AFFORDABILITY FOR HOUSING IN URBAN INDIA

Abstract

Affordable housing programmes in Indian cities have increased the supply of formal dwelling units, but the affordability of housing is not determined by unit cost alone. For low-income households, the location of housing in relation to work, public transport and everyday services affects the real cost of living. This thesis examines locational affordability for housing in Jaipur by assessing whether mapped housing projects are adequately connected to the city’s public transport network and by evaluating the travel burden experienced by surveyed households. The study uses a mixed-method approach. A GIS-based network analysis was carried out using the Jaipur Municipal Corporation boundary, mapped housing-project locations, JCTSL bus stops, Jaipur Metro Phase 1 stations and an OpenStreetMap-derived road network. Accessibility was assessed using a 500 m walking-network distance to bus stops and an 800 m walking-network distance to metro stations as planning thresholds informed by urban transport benchmarks and TOD policy. This was supported by a household survey of 150 anonymised respondents across BSUP, PMAY-U, CMJAY and RHB housing contexts, covering household profile, mode choice, travel time, transport cost, walking access and perceived transport burden. The findings reveal a severe housing-transport gap. In the full housing-project inventory, 31 of 35 mapped projects are outside both the 500 m bus-stop threshold and the 800 m operational metro-station threshold. Within this wider inventory, the affordable-flagged subset carries the equity implication: 12 of 16 affordable-flagged projects are outside both thresholds. No mapped housing project is within 800 m walking-network distance of an operational metro station. The updated household survey reinforces the spatial finding: 48.7% of respondents report transport cost as a serious burden, 41.3% use bus or metro as their primary mode, 66.0% spend more than Rs. 1,000 per month on transport and 75.3% report one-way travel time of 30 minutes or more. The thesis argues that housing approval should include a locational affordability check rather than treating housing delivery and mobility planning as separate concerns. It proposes a mobility screening tool for new housing projects, feeder transit improvements for existing gap clusters, targeted NMT upgrades to pedestrian access corridors,inclusionary TOD measures for future supply and an annual monitoring framework linking housing agencies with transport and urban local bodies.