Housing
One of the things I noticed about Bangalore immediately was the juxtaposition of housing. There were families living in corrugated steel shacks across from
upper-middle class houses. Below left is a street-level view of a typical upper-middle class house in Vasantnagar, the neighborhood in Bangalore where we stayed.
Below right you can see a closer view (taken from our roof) of what is to the right of the house shown in the left picture, showing their garden with coconut trees and the "micro-slum" next door.
This is a collection of shacks made from scrap concrete and metal sheets. The shacks have no running water or electricity.
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A typical house in Vasantnagar, Bangalore -
A house in Vasantnagar, Bangalore with garden and a small slum next to it
There were people living under mere awnings adjacent to magnificent estate homes. No one seems to mind, and for the most part they consider people to be just people
regardless of their economic status.
I found this quite refreshing, as in most of North America we seem to be preoccupied with trying to keep our property values high by not letting anyone of lower economic
status move into our neighborhoods.
Construction
Housing construction involved a lot of concrete, which is mixed from raw materials on-site and carried from the mixer to be poured into forms by people carrying it in baskets on their heads.
We saw no power tools used, at least in this phase of construction. The cement mixer was powered through manual labor, and the rebar was cut with hand tools.
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Cement being mixed and carried for construction of a typical house in Vasantnagar, Bangalore -
Cement being carried and poured into forms for construction of a typical house in Vasantnagar, Bangalore
