Alishuba Philip

Slum Redevelopments and Evictions in a Developing Megacity [Paper]

Media coverage. Indian Express | VoxTalks Economics

Conference presentations. Urban Economics Association North American Meeting 2026 (Chicago Fed), EEA-ESEM 2026 (University College Dublin), NBER SI Real Estate and Urban Economics 2026, Urban Economics Association European Meeting 2026 (CREI Barcelona), 10th Urbanisation and Development Conference 2026 (World Bank and Johns Hopkins), PacDev 2026 (UC Davis), NEUDC 2025 (Tufts), Land Policy and Economic Development Workshop 2023 (Zurich)

Funded by Weiss Fund for Research in Development Economics, University Research Priority Program Equality of Opportunity, Swiss Re Fund for Development Economics and Zurich GSE Director's Grant

Land Policy and Economic Development Workshop, UZH

Abstract. Slum redevelopment policies are widely used to curb slum growth and regenerate urban neighbourhoods. I study the short- and medium-term effects of slum clearance and redevelopment on incumbent slum residents in Mumbai by assembling a novel residential mobility panel that tracks ~10 million residents of the city as they move across neighbourhoods over 15 years by digitising and matching electoral roll records. Exploiting variation in the timing of redevelopment approvals across slums, I use a staggered difference-in-differences design to estimate these effects. Slum residents who are entitled to in-situ compensation — ownership of an apartment in the redeveloped neighbourhood — are persistently displaced from the neighbourhood. Redevelopment approvals increase the probability of living in formal housing by 6 p.p., but the effect on the probability of living in other slums is four times as large, shifting slum residents across slum neighbourhoods more than out of slum living. Using digitised project records and high-resolution daytime satellite data, I document substantial non-completion after slum clearance and large lags between slum clearance and completion of units for slum residents. A key feature of the policy design is the timing mismatch between displacement and compensation: residents are cleared before receiving replacement housing, which is delivered only when units are built on the cleared site. Transitions out of slum living are 250% as large in completed projects and largest where completion occurs soon after clearance. For every individual housed in formal housing on site, an estimated 9.5 incumbent residents entitled to own an apartment in the redeveloped slum are displaced to slums elsewhere, undermining the broader goal of curbing slum growth in the city.

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