This paper assesses the outcomes of 30 years of slum clearance efforts in Chennai. It employs a set of six criteria derived from the global literature on best practices in slum clearance to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the four principal approaches implemented in the city since the 1970s — in situ tenement construction, in situ slum upgrading, sites-and-services and resettlement tenements. The paper finds the overall record bleak: only one of the eight cases reveals a transformation into a durable mainstream urban neighborhood, while the rest have remained slum-like tenements or turned into ghettos.

The paper shows how lessons from history are ignored in contemporary state actions on slums. The approach of mass resettlement in peripheral tenements, despite its proven failure, has resurfaced as the favoured technology of slum clearance, driven by the exigencies of real estate urbanism. These findings bring into question the role of evidence based policy in state actions.

This paper assesses the outcomes of 30 years of slum clearance efforts in Chennai. It employs a set of six criteria derived from the global literature on best practices in slum clearance to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the four principal approaches implemented in the city since the 1970s — in situ tenement construction, in situ slum upgrading, sites-and-services and resettlement tenements. The paper finds the overall record bleak: only one of the eight cases reveals a transformation into a durable mainstream urban neighbourhood, while the rest have remained slum-like tenements or turned into ghettos. The paper shows how lessons from history are ignored in contemporary state actions on slums. The approach of mass resettlement in peripheral tenements, despite its proven failure, has resurfaced as the favoured technology of slum clearance, driven by the exigencies of real estate urbanism. These findings bring into question the role of evidence-based policy in state actions.