Development-Induced Displacement & Resettlement
As of 2022 data from the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC), there were 71.1 million internally displaced people across 110 countries, 62.5 million displaced by conflict and violence and 8.7 million displaced by disasters. These are shocking figures behind which lie a vast and numbing canvass of human misery and survival on the edge of the abyss. But the figures don’t tell us about an even larger number of people who are displaced by development, through projects, foreign investment including in land deals, mega events such as Olympics, urban renewal and redevelopment, and everyday market-based evictions. A conservative estimate by ESCR-Net, a global advocacy group, of those who are displaced by development during the last decade, stands at 15 million per year.
urban displacement
Chinatown displacement impact study
Boston has been identified as one of the most rapidly gentrifying cities in the nation and the city with the third highest rate of income inequality. As part of the graduate course “Responding to Displacement: Strategies, Methods, Tools, Outcomes” (11.S938) MIT DRAN engaged in an in-depth research project with the Boston based Chinese Progressive Organization (CPA) to bring critical attention to the displacement crisis facing the Chinatown neighborhood of Boston.
MIT Sustainable Cities practicum: urban villages in Kuala Lampur (malaysia)
As the city’s plans gathered momentum for redeveloping Kampung Bharu, many residents prepared for a long battle against the redevelopment that threatens to transform the very way of life of the Kampung. In 2016, the Malay Agricultural Settlement Board of Management (MAS) was planning to conduct a census of the Kampung’s residents that could generate vital data about the social and economic condition of the residents, including long-term renters who are excluded from the city’s plans for redevelopment. MIT students turned to this case study in sustainability and displacement as part of the Sustainable Cities Practicum.
MIT INDIA Displacement practicum: THE GEOGRAPHY OF POST-EVICTION RESETTLEMENT IN DELHI, INDIA
As part of a practicum course in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), seven graduate students studied the impacts of jhuggi jhopri cluster (JJ cluster) evictions and relocations in Delhi in 2014. During a month-long engagement in Delhi and Chennai, the team researched and created tools and maps/visualizations to support the work of organizations preventing and responding to evictions and displacement in Delhi. The work has integrated diverse sets of data and focused on an interpretation of the causes and consequences of large-scale displacement and resettlement in Delhi, the impact on the morphology of the city itself, as well as the key institutional and other barriers for making Delhi a more just city.
Safe and sound (cairo, egypt)
Safe and Sound was a MISTI funded research collaboration between researchers from DRAN and their counterparts within Cairo University and the American University in Cairo (AUC). The project explored the longstanding problem of informality, unsafe housing, and potential displacement in Cairo. The project allowed for faculty and students to come together with experienced Egyptian practitioners, academics and government officials to discuss various topics such as the ongoing efforts of slum eradication, visions of urban change in a post revolution Egypt, and the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on housing, informality, and internal displacement.
hydroelectric displacement
hydroelectric displacement in malaysia
Hydroelectric dam mega-projects often generate widespread displacement of the nearby communities from their homes and land. Displacement due to hydro projects encompasses not only the loss of land but also the disruption of social structure, self-determination, traditional livelihoods, and the loss of control over natural resources like forests and water bodies. This piece explores the impact of the Bakun Dam in Malaysia.