Inclusive urban planning requires comprehensive and sufficiently detailed information about urban areas. In the absence of such information, many informal settlements are left out in the city-wide planning process. In the metros as well as in many big cities in particular, large proportion of the urban population lives in slums in India. The urban projects undertaken in these cities tend to ignore significant slum improvement interventions. The development plans have really not addressed the issue of the marginalisation of the poor in the cities, often leading to their spatial exclusion. They are pushed out of the city, where services are poor and investments are low.
Slum Environmental Sanitation Initiative (SESI) of UN-HABITAT in the cities of Bhopal, Indore, Gwalior and Jabalpur in the State of Madhya Pradesh has resulted in significant improvements in the lives of slum communities through creating open defecation free slums, improving access to safe water, sanitation and hygiene practices and mobilising men and women for community action.
Poverty Pocket Situation Analysis (PPSA) has been used as an instrument to prioritise the slums for investments based on poverty and environmental infrastructure deficiency matrix. The process involved spatial mapping of infrastructural deficiencies in the slums. The outcome helped in the selection of the most vulnerable slums for water and sanitation intervention under SESI.