Slumdog Millionaire shanty town a model for urban planning, says Prince Charles

The Bombay shanty town featured in the film Slumdog Millionaire should be a model for urban planning, Prince Charles has said, as it represents a better way to house a booming population.

'I strongly believe that the west has much to learn from societies and places which, while sometimes poorer in material terms are infinitely richer in the ways in which they live and organise themselves as communities,' the Prince said.

In his latest attack on western urban architecture, the Prince referred favourably to Dharavi, a slum in which between 600,000 and one million people occupy 520 acres of ramshackle accomodation. Whilst not suggesting that the poor infrastructure, lack of water, cramped conditions and sanitation systems are models, he pointed to the district's use of locally-sourced materials, its balance of business and homes and its walkable neighbourhoods as evidence for its superiority.

Speaking to a conference at St James's Palace organised by his Foundation for the Built Environment, the Prince said Dharavi had 'an underlying intuitive grammar of design that is totally absent from the faceless slab blocks that are still being built around the world to 'warehouse' the poor'.

'It may be the case that in a few years' time such communities will be perceived as best equipped to face the challenges that confront us because they have a built-in resilience and genuinely durable ways of living.'