When I moved to Delhi in 2007, I started exploring the city and incidentally came across these pockets of hamlet within the city known as 'urban villages', I became interested in these urban villages that seemed to be in Delhi but also not. These were densely built spaces that was bursting at seams, most of them even lack basic civic amenities (Water supply, sewerage, fire services, municipal markets).

What were these 'urban villages'? Here is what I found out : As the new capital grew in size post independence in 1947, the city planners had to layout new housing societies and colonies for it's growing population, expanding to agricultural land and small villages around the city of Delhi. This meant that as the city grew in size and geography, it left out these small hamlets or bubbles out of urban planning, undisturbed. These over time became the so called 'Urban Villages' of Delhi. The political objective of having these urban villages was not to disturb the dwellings of the villagers and therefore keep it out of city planning norms, but over the years what have emerged out of it are rather little pockets of complete chaos.

The people living in these villages are usually marginalized;  they hardly have any access to drinking water, air, electricity, drainage systems or sometime even basic sunlight. Since building by-laws do not apply here, the built area are venerable to internal and external hazards. 

While I explored these spaces and spoke to people living here it became clear that the idea of such urban villages is unrealistic because they ignore broader social and economic realities. The ability to create self-contained villages within a huge metropolis city is questionable as employment and activity patterns continue to become more complex.