An investigation on location choice for housing in mining towns: Case study of Korba, India

Researchers are in a constant struggle to identify the relationship between housing location and users' preferences for the last few decades. Various attempts made by William Michaelson (1977), Guido Francescato (1979), Fried (1970), and Lawrence (1986) have succeeded to propose logical links between residential choice, mobility, lifestyle and housing location. When focused only on mining towns, attributes and criteria vary as these towns have issues distinctly different from other metropolitan areas. The present study is based in Korba, the power capital of Chhattisgarh, India, which has Asia's largest coalmine Gewra. Concentrating on the issues related to housing in Korba, the study identifies some generic issues related to location choice of housing in mining-towns. The study identified that the whole town's economy in Korba, revolves around the mining activity. Both forward and backward linkages related to mining, are the supporting functions here and activity at the tertiary sector, is marginal. A fact file was generated through an extensive field survey of the 58 wards in the administrative boundary of Korba. A total of 590 household surveys were conducted along with 160 commercial surveys. All the mines, falling fully or partially within the municipal boundary, were surveyed. Finally, through a critical analysis of the findings from the survey, 8 different parameters related to housing conditions of different income groups, were adopted. With the help of these parameters, a multi criteria decision analysis was done followed by the ranking of the parameters. The study will help planners and policymakers to comprehend the demand of housing in mining towns across different income brackets and orient the housing production and location according to their typology. This will also add to the knowledge of the housing-market trends and typology of housing suitable for different income groups in mining towns. © 2013 IAHS.