Our group has been focused on the layout and consistency of presenting the infrastructure projects. We value consistency in order to be able to compare and contrast the different interventions. Here’s a draft of where we are at now, and the direction we would like to take.
http://prezi.com/xbs0onprubnx/untitled-prezi/?kw=view-xbs0onprubnx&rc=ref-3326077
-Can, Sriram, Leandro
One of the re-occurring themes in the readings and discussions in our class has been the boundaries between what we now hesitate to call formal and informal cities. Urban Think Tank’s label for blurring the boundaries between the two kind of cities, which they called Urban Acupuncture, has fascinated me.
A topic which has come up in this week’s readings was the connection between slums themselves; not only blurring the existing boundary, but more importantly, creating a strong network. While slums may seem like random, unorganized organisms, they are actually “the consequence of distorted development.” (Franco) In fact, based on the natural drainage systems in place, one can see that a lot of slums are developed alongside these kinds of natural infrastructure. It is important to recognize that by emphasizing these kinds of infrastructures and creating connections between the slums, they can be transformed from seemingly scattered areas to actual functioning cities. The government is quickly changing it’s role to become a ‘facilitator’ rather than a ‘provider’. (Franco) That being said, it is also curial that the government includes the residents of the slums and creates an atmosphere where both parties contribute to the development. For example, in Indore, the government gave the land residents long term leases and making their stay on the land legal. The residents then went ahead and built their own toilets which connected to the sewage system implemented by the government. The outcome of such collaboration was one where both parties worked together in order to create a connection between the slums, improve infrastructure, and create a more city-like environment. Another aspect of the residents involvement in these projects is that by knowing how certain things work, they are able to pass down the knowledge, work on repairs, and ultimately be more invested in the improvements. According to Slum Networking Along the Indore River makes a really important statement that among the issues of slums, such as health, education, income generation and physical infrastructure, the implementation of physical structure is the most important and effective intervention, with the most direct results. (Franco)
Such infrastructural interventions also create a lot of different kinds of potentials for social interventions too. For example, in the Antonico Creek Urban Project, the government created a canal to better neighborhood sanitation, etc. Next to the canal, the government decided that they would be able to insert programs for pedestrians and cyclists. Immediately, the improved infrastructure allows for a better connection between slums, creates better living standards within each slum, and creates a social infrastructure. (Davidson)
Works Cited
Davidson, Cynthia. “Slum Networking Along the Indore River.” Architectural Design (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.
Franco, Fernando De M. “Filling the Void With Popular Imageries.” Architectural Design (n.d.): n. pag. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.
It’s really exciting to regularly see connections between the different readings that are done throughout this class. Particularly an overlap of ideas and thoughts regarding issues of informal and formal cities. One thing I have been particularly interested in since the beginning of our discussions has been what Urban Think Tank call, “Urban Acupuncture”. This term has come up a few times under this label, and has come up multiple times as a concept. It refers to the connection between the formal and the informal parts of the city. According to the Designing Inclusive Cities, the fact of the matter is that “We are not able to make services available as quickly as the growth.” (Smith 13) Informal cities exist. And they are often growing much faster than their formal counterparts. According to Cynthia Smith, Urban Think Tank, and many other thinkers, one of the best solutions is “hybrid solutions that bridge the formal and informal city.” (Smith 13) It’s often the case that entrepreneurship that has formed through the opportunities in the informal city become integrated with the formal city; showing that the two co-exist. A discussion that came up during class last week was how the architect contributes to the informal city – or if they do at all. At the end of this brief discussion, we began to realize that architects, of course, contribute to the formal city, which by it’s characteristics creates opportunities for the informal city to latch on. The motorbike taxis in Dakar are quintessential to the blurred line between the formal and the informal. These taxis are a form of cheap transport, and offer services to all types of people. Instead of getting rid of these ‘illegal’ services, the government decided to register them and provide signs to make them more distinguishable. This is the perfect example of the Urban Acupuncture, or the bridge between the formal and the informal.
According to Worlds Set Apart, Sao Paulo is a “city is made not only of opposed social and spatial worlds but also of clear distances between them.” (Caldeira 168) This creates an immediate donut-like diagram where the center is the ‘formal’ city made up of middle and upper class, and the surrounding area of the donut is the ‘informal’ city where the lower class are spreading to the periphery. A solution to this was often thought to be to expand the infrastructure of the city to the periphery and provide basic living necessities to the residents of the periphery. Such actions could have major impacts on the survival rate of new born children, lower crime rates, less drug use, less diseases, etc. Sao Paulo and the favelas is a great example of this. Jorge Mario Jaurequi is an architect who has had multiple Favela-Barrio projects which are designs to create a better sense of connection between the formal/informal and improve living standards. His projects, often simple interventions, are an example of what a big impact small scale changes can have. The connection between the formal and the informal is crucial, and it is almost a necessity that the two exist together. (Jaurequi 60) He values the importance of being able to recognize the ‘other’ – the 90% of the world’s population which is often ignored during design by design professionals. (Smith) Jaurequi encourages us to recognize the ‘other’ in order to insert more humanitarian designs into our lives.
Works Cited
Caldeira, Teresa. “Worlds Set Apart.” LSE Cities. N.p., n.d. Web. 03 Mar. 2013.
Jaurequi, Jorge M. “Articulating The Broken City and Society.” Architectural Design 81.3 (n.d.): 58-63. Print.
Smith, Cynthia E. Design with the Other 90%: Cities. New York: Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, 2011. Print.
Dharavi, one of the biggest slum settlements, is worth $2 billion. With the booming population of today’s world, and the lack of land to build on, there is clearly a lot of attention to such settlements. David Harvey’s, The Right to the City, talks about the “most precious yet most neglected” human right to build and rebuild the city. (Harvey 35) So, say the government took over the land and moved the people from this settlement, what would that mean for the displaced people? The Indian Constitution states that they have a responsibility to “protect the lives and well-being of the whole population, irrespective of caste or class” – as almost any such document will say. (Harvey 35) Do they even deserve to be there in the first place? The Supreme Court believes that to go by such a ‘responsibility’ would be “rewarding pick pockets”… Harsh comment, but does the Supreme Court have a point? The title of Harvey’s article, Right to the City, can, by nature, be interpreted in many different ways from many different opinions. Who owns this right?
When talking about New York City, Harvey hypothesizes that there is going to be a “Financial Katrina”, where many of the low income neighborhoods, drowning in debt, will be cleared out. Will this then act as a blank-slate-like environment where those parts of the city could be planned again? Will there be planned developments to these parts of the city for the real-estate companies to make millions over? Thinking towards the sense of identity that is discussed in the excerpt from S, M, L, XL, what would be appropriate for the identity of such a place? Take a look at Dubai; a city which grew in just a decade or two, essentially the quintessential blank slate for an architect’s pen and paper. But what comes from the hundreds of developments and thousands of new homes that are being erected at an unimaginable rate. Dubai is essentially the airport city, “not only multiracial, also multicultural.” (Koolhaas 1252) One can even argue that with the collage of all sorts of projects, it lacks identity.
Look back to Dharavi, and compare it to Dubai in terms of identity. As Koolhaas describes, “The stronger identity .. the more it resists expansion, interpretation, renewal, contradiction.” (Koolhaas 1248) So while certain parts of New York City may undergo a kind of “Financial Katrina”, and may be more open ended to be able to absorb a variety of developments, what would happen to a place like Dharavi if the government did take over? With clearly a strong sense of identity, how much would this $2 billion land being drooled over but certain professions actually allow to take place? When talking about possibility of even more developments in certain parts of the world, Harvey argues that there have been no “coherent opposition to these developments in the twenty-first century.” (Harvey 39) Yes, there have, in my opinion based on these readings. Dharavi keeps itself from becoming the generic city as described in S, M, L, XL. While the right to the city, whether it’s yours or mine, is certainly there, at times there is a sense of history that has written the course of the natural development of the city.
Works Cited
Harvey, David. “New Left Review – David Harvey: The Right to the City.” New Left Review – David Harvey: The Right to the City. N.p., n.d. Web. 24 Feb. 2013.
Koolhaas, Rem, and Bruce Mau. S M L XL: OMA. S.l.: S.n., 1993. Print.
Reading Design Like You Give a Damn was eye opening, yet at the same time, made me somewhat dubious about the role of an architect. The statement that, “Over time, the worlds of relief and development became divorced from the worlds of architecture and design” is, in my opinion, very worrisome. (Stohr 34) While architects do of course play a great role in housing, in many cases of disaster relief and development work, architects aren’t the first profession that comes to mind as a resolver of such issues. “Some employed architects but most depended on engineers to design and oversee the construction of projects.” (Stohr 40) These readings cover many global issues, however one detail that caught my attention was the repeated discussion of the role of the architect. Reading about these topics almost makes one wonder about the structure of our architectural education curriculum. In many cases, architecture students focus on the design of a single building, often taking into consideration the ‘site’, in what one could argue quite a superficial way. Hannes Meyer’s self definition of architecture sums it up quite well, “Architecture is a process of giving form and pattern to the social life of the community. Architecture is not an individual act performed by an artist-architect and charged with his emotions. Building is a collective action.” (Stohr 36)
And unlike the overall tone of Design Like You Give a Damn, architects are very much involved with the process of experimental housing. PRIVA-Lima, for example, is an international collaboration between architects in order to “test the concept of low-rise high-density housing.” (Garcia 27) The perfectly designed neighborhood. While PRIVA is a strong concept in many ways, I think one of the most important key factors is the way it’s designed with expansion in mind. This means that the family can expand their home based on their ever changing needs. PRIVA sees this issue with housing where there is no room for expansion and essentially results in a decrease in value of the site. However with this designed neighborhood, families would be able to adapt their homes based on their needs. This being said, the master plan is designed so that these expansions never causes over crowding as the layout resists a higher density. The article outlines that there are three main strategies; a pedestrian axis through the neighborhood, network of plazas and pedestrian passages, and traffic separation. (Garcia 28) While it’s usually easy to be negative about these kinds of ‘utopic’ ideas of neighborhoods and housing, I feel that this is actually a very strong design. For example, the design of this neighborhood also takes into consideration that each location is unique, and therefore offers a variety of opportunities that should not be limited by strict zoning plans on the part of the designers. The article talks about how these individual locations can create moments for entrepreneurship, which would increase the economy of the neighborhood. (Garcia 30) The fascinating thing about this is that while PRIVA ‘designs’ for these opportunities, they are instances that naturally develop in informal cities all across the world; as seen in Lagos, Mumbai, etc. So PRIVA is essentially, one could argue, a designed slum, without the ‘negative’ properties of a slum.
It’s almost as though the plan of the PRIVA could be copy and pasted all across the world, before slums actually develop, almost like a template for ‘slum’ development — which at that point would have to be called something else and not a ‘slum’. Of course, that would be in an ideal world, and we definitely don’t live in an ideal world. Foreseeing such needs is not always possible. As Slums and Urbanization describes it, the three elements in an urban complex are the railroad, the factory, and the slums. However, the reading talks about how “‘Free competition’ alone determined location, without thought of the possibility of functional planning.” (Mumford 17) There was no authority in the planning of the factory placements, accounting for noise and pollution from factories and making an effort to locate housing in different locations. In most cases, a lot of the issues came with the lack of consideration for the general public when designing the railroads (which were designed by engineers, not architects) where the “movement of trains was more important than the human objects”. (Mumford 19) It goes back to Hannes Meyer’s definition of architecture making a difference for the community. And while the education of the architect may seem to focused on the artist-architect charged with emotions, it is the architect who essentially tries to find a solution for housing that considers the residents. Because while aid workers consider these issues as planning and policy, architects see it as a design challenge. (Stohr 34)
Works Cited
Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: Its Origins, Its Transformations, and Its Prospects. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1961. Print.
Garcia-Huidobro, Fernando, Diego T. Torriti, and Nicolas Tugas. “The Experimental Housing Project (PREVI) Lima.” Architecture Design (2011): 26-31. Print.
Stohr, Kate. Design like You Give a Damn: Architectural Responses to Humanitarian Crises. New York, NY: Metropolis, 2006. Print.
Reading about the static and kinetic components of a city is a fascinating idea that creates a multitude of opportunities. The relationship between the two means for unique moments of interventions in the interstitial space between the two city identities. More opportunities come up when one considers the temporary characteristic of the kinetic city. It constantly modifies itself, and therefore is naturally created by materials with a temporary characteristic; as opposed to the more permanent, and common, building blocks of the static city. (Burdett 108) I find it particularly interesting when the reading begins to subtly label the kinetic city as having more of a ‘cultural memory’ as opposed to the static city which is, once again, subtly labeled as being more ‘object-centric (devoid of life)’. (Burdett 111) Furthermore, the issue of boundary, something that was also brought up last week when referring to the boundary of the formal and the informal market, an area Urban Think Thank referred to as Urban Acupuncture, is brought up again this week when discussing the boundary between the static and the kinetic city. An example given in the reading is the porch-like structure that is built by the PWD and attached to a building to protect the people from monsoons. What made me curious about this event was that the already-curious-boundary between the kinetic and static all of a sudden become even more blurred, in a symbolic sense, than they already are as the kinetic city clearly expands itself into the static, even if it’s momentarily. It raises quite a few questions, such as how the people living in the formal and static city respond to the informal and the formal city. While many of these readings are written from the point of view of the residents of the slums and their way of life, it might be interesting to see how the formal population sees it. How would they feel about a temporary structure that is attached to their building?
Looking at Rediscovering Dharavi, a small portion of the reading discusses a “a time when it was seriously argued that efforts should not be made to ease the lives of the urban poo by providing them basic urban services or house, because then many more of their kin would rush to the city.” (Sharma 37) Yes, argued that efforts should not be made. Recognizing that the government, or the people in charge of making such decisions, is part of the formal market and the static city, it is an interesting notion that such a train of thought actually existed at one point. Of course, by the 1980s, this kind of thought was scrapped and a more humane approach towards the topic was achieved. In fact, it is hard to label the government as being inhumane by thinking in that way because, “a place like Dharavi poses several difficult challenges for the government.” (Sharma 37) Part of the book discusses a what-if scenario: what if the government had anticipated the fast growth of Mumbai, and invested in low-cost, low-income housing for migrant workers? “Some of the present crisis that the city faces would have been averted.” (Sharma 35) While there exists a notion of nallah, or the diving line between settlements in Dharavi, one wonders the extent of the boundary between the static and the kinetic, the equivalent of the nallah, on a bigger scale. (Sharma 10) As mentioned earlier in this entry, this idea of the bigger scale nallah, the interstitial space, is what makes the urbanity of Mumbai so interesting.
One cannot deny that the “slum is not a chaotic collection of structures; it is a dynamic collection of individuals.” (Sharma 34) And these individuals, with years of trial and error, have figured out a way to live with each other, to tolerate each other. Not only is this true for the nallah boundary within the slums, but also the greater, more curious boundary between the static and the kinetic. Their coexistence with each other, their sense of being intertwined as a machine which works together, is made apparent with the concept of Dabbawalas. These “tiffin suppliers”, deliver food to thousands of workers across the city. (Percot 1) These informal employees visit the homes of dozens of employees, pick up the food that was prepared for them, and deliver it right to their workplaces. A job that is clearly in the informal sector, but very much thrives on the formal sector. In fact, it has become such a popular industry that it is “elevated to the status of model of Mumbai entrepreneurship.” (Percot 1) The idea of the Dabbawalas is very unique. While many will wonder why the worker won’t just bring his own food to the work place, it is apparent that the density of Mumbai makes it extremely difficult to carry one’s food to work at the peak of rush hour. The idea of the Dabbawala is pure entrepreneurship. Not only does it take a situation which might seem unfortunate for many and turn it into a job that satisfies both sides of the business, but it is a clear demonstration of the intertwined existing of the two economies, formal and informal, and the two cities, static and kinetic.
Works Cited
Burdett, Richard, and Deyan Sudjic. Living in the Endless City: The Urban Age Project by the London School of Economics and Deutsche Bank’s Alfred Herrhausen Society. London: Phaidon, 2011. Print.
Percot, Marie. “Dabbawalas, Tiffin Carriers of Mumbai: Answering a Need for Specific Catering.” (n.d.): 1-10. Web. <http://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/docs/00/03/54/97/PDF/DABBA.pdf>.
Sharma, Kalpana. Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories from Asia’s Largest Slum. New Delhi: Penguin, 2000. Print.
“I began to wonder about the morality of a world that denies people jobs in their home areas and denies them homes in the areas where they have gone to get jobs.” (Neuwirth 12) As Robert Neuwirth does so in Shadow Cities, it is easy to ‘wonder about the morality’ of dozens of situations that we see in today’s world. Unfortunately, as cliche as it may sound, the world is an unforgiving place. While it is easy to wonder about humanity, it is more important to do something about it. When reading about the ‘slums’ across the world, I couldn’t help but wonder why there wasn’t a greater resistance against the creation of areas like Sultanbeyli. Similar to the January 2005 movement in Mumbai, where about 300,000 people were pushed out of the city, without a care as to where the evicted people would go. The sense to resist against these kinds of settlements would be based on the definition and notions towards a slum as being “laden with emotional values: decay, dirt, and disease.” (Neuwirth 16) This would be one way of looking at things.
The fact of the matter is that we are way passed that point. As John Beardsley explains, the “mass country-to-city migrations of the mid 20th century” is one of the underlying reasons as to the growing populations of cities, the lack of preparation by the government, and thus the result of what we know today as the ‘slums’. (Beardsley 55) One can question the morality of the way of life in slums and feel a sense of inhumanity, or, on the other side of the scale, have a sense of repulsion toward these places. However, the infrastructure of such places have been under construction for decades, and are a seemingly permanent way of life. The reality is that it works. The ‘informal sector exists. And it exists with a very strong foundation. In “the 1980s crisis … informal sector employment grew two to five times faster than formal sector jobs … in majority of Third World cities.” (Davis 178) This, to me, is an incredible statistic. It is not only incredible in the sense that a naturally growing informal sector can be so ‘successful’, but it is also incredible in the sense that these ‘slums’ are there. They are very much there and they are staying. Reading that fact, and recognizing the entrepreneurial aspect of the informal sector, it all of a sudden seems shameful to refer to these settlements as slums.
With the realization that these ‘slums’ are here to stay, what begins to interest me at this early point of this topic is the idea of the connection between these formal and informal cities; what Urban Think Tank refers to as the Urban Acupuncture. (Neuwirth 58) I currently live in Istanbul, and on a personal and emotional level, I might have a completely different response towards the ‘slums’, or the gecekondu, and the consequences these kinds of communities and the people living in them might bring to the city. However, on a macro scale, and on an objective level, there is no way of doing what Mumbai did in 2005 and kicking thousands of people out. There needs to be a some sort of realization and stances toward the urban acupuncture; whether this is blurring the boundary between the formal and the informal, or taking the existing boundaries and making them even taller.
Bibliography
Neuwirth, Robert. Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters, a New Urban World. New York: Routledge, 2005. Print.
Beardsley, John. “A Billion Slum Dwellers and Counting.” Harvard Design Magazine Dec.-Jan. 2007/2008: 54-59. Print.
Davis, Mike. Planet of Slums. London: Verso, 2006. Print.