Our group focued on infrastructure in the global south. We began cataloging individual projects to create a collection of examples. We began to look more specifically at examples of cable car systems in the global south and made of collectoion of different projects that implement a cable car system. From our research a possible new type of cable car system was developed. This system attempts to create a customizable and programable car that can change its function to suite the immediate needs of the community. Further developing the idea created the possibility of elimnating the limitations of the cable car system due to the singlar path it must follow and instead creates an overhead gantry crane type system to enable a greater range for the programmed car to reach. This system would have interchangeable parts that can change the program of the car and allow it to fit various needs.

This is a prezi presentation of our work: http://prezi.com/97hu5fbckwx8/untitled-prezi/?kw=view-97hu5fbckwx8&rc=ref-3326077

This is a book that gives more detailed information: Infrastructure

The idea of mirco-fiance has been showen to be very successful and directly beneficial to those involved in the process. It has helped those who are trapped in a situation where they cannot help exit the cycle of debt and and lack of ability of to help themselves. The reason for this succes though is that this system works not on handouts or charity but on a system of self help.

Instead of simply giving those in need money the micro-fiance system gives those in need a small loan. This means that what ever money is given to the people is returned by the people. This has many benefits to it. This system does not need to rely on continued outside help. Initially this is the case but as loans get paid back the outside help is no longer needed. This allows the people in the people who initially needed assistance to become independent. This independence will have significantly greater benefits then blind charity.

In a more subliminal way the micro-fiancee system also refines the relationship between the helped and the one who is helping. Classically those who received charity are seen as victimized and helpless while those who help are often seen with an altruistic pride. This relationship limits the potential for those in need to have agency. It creates a relationship of dependence. Micro-fiance subverts this by maintaing that those loans are paid back. There is not more charity or one who gives and another who takes. It is now a far more sophisticated relationship.

The idea of self help has been something coming up multiple times. It is clear that blind charity is temporary and limited at best. Once the funds or assest that have been given dry up nothing is often left. Thus giving those in need the ability to help themselves create a system where outside intervention is only needed to begin the process before the individuals are able to to take act on their own and help themselves and their community.

Many of the reading in class and many of the case studies talk about solutions and succes that comes to slums and the informal.  Often outside intervention is used to help those who are negatively affected by their current conditions. But outside intervention does not always translate into a successful application. Understanding this succes is important to developing future projects of succes. The key trend to understand is that outside intervention has to be smart in its application. What this means is that outside intervention, when done ineffectively results in a wasted allocation of assets and funds. Even though the available capital is being distributed to those in need it often has little effect. The moments when outside intervention is successful is when the outside intervention is seen less as charity being distributed, creating the relationship of those who give and those who take, and instead is intervention creating an environment of self help and empowerment.

“Slum Networking” shows how this is true. What was given to the community was a sewage and drainage system. The drainage system was not a limited resource that would run out. It was not a service that would disappear as soon as the outside intervention exited. It instead gave the the people agency. They had the choice to use personal facilities as opposed to public facilities. Individuals had the agency to buy their own appliance and connect them to the city. The system was successful not because of handouts or charity but was successful because personal agency was delivered to the people of slums.

Agency has more potential then charity. Creating the give and take relationship is always temporary, limited and creates a needy group that will continue to need. Instead creating an open system that the individuals and community as a whole can take ownership of creates a much more successful system and one that can exist indefinitely. This system also gives the community members more of a sense of community and shows that the slums and informal may not need complete overhauls and replacement but would instead benefit from systems that promote self help and self worth.

Himanshu Parikh, “Slum Networking Along the Inodre River”

The favelas of Rio de Janiero have the reputation of being the informal. As Daniela Fabricius had stated in “Resisting Representation” the favelas are unmapped and ignored in city’s municipal surveys. The favelas though are redefining how they are informal. All the elements that make up the formal city exist in some form or another in the informal city. Electricity, television, public trasportion all exist in the informal city. They emulate and mimic their formal counter parts but differ to fit the informal context. The informal counterparts are cheaper but still as integral to their existence and operation.

The implications of this are that conflict inevitably occurs are the moments of overall and threshold of the formal and informal city. The vans that supply transportation to the informal city now illegally shadow the the formal buses that support the formal city. The informal city’s electricity comes from electricity stolen from the formal city. The same can be said for television cable. Interestingly though the municipal government admits that the informal infrastructure, especially transportation, is needed to keep the city from operating.

This becomes important for the city to understand. If the arteries of the city’s circulation and infrastructure need informal options to maintain’s the city operation then ignoring the favela may no longer be a viable option. If maps of Rio show the favelas as not existing because they are informal then the informal infrastructure need exists in a gray area of the  maniple government’s vision. The government either ignores their existence or acknowledges that they are practicing illegally. Yet the government admits that these system are needed for the city to operate.

This means that the informal city can no longer be ignored or unmapped. The municipal government has placed itself in a postion to ignore certain aspects of the informal city but still rely on certain aspects of the informal city. The municipal government has become hypocritical in its relationship with the informal city. But the municipal government’s need of certain aspects of the informal may be the way the informal becomes mapped. If the area of conflict where hypocricy exists where thought of a seeds to map the informal, potential exists to connect and thus legitimize the informal to the formal. This could be where illegal aspects of the informal gain legitimacy and integration. The key to helping the informal could exist in how the informal and formal meet and integrate.

Daniela Fabricius, Resisting Representation: The Informal Geographies of Rio de Janiero (Harvard Design Magazine, 2008).

Much is discussed about the agency of the people who inhabit a city. In “The Right to the City” David Harvey talks about how “we live in an era when ideals of human right have moved centre stage both politically and ethically…I here want to explore another type of human right, that of the right to the city.” (Harvey 23)

This brings up the question about who the city belongs to. Before talking about the who associated with that question it must first be established what ownership of a city means. This cannot be taken too literally or naively and simply be assumed that ownership is in the hands of the city government or police or politics. Although those figure may be an important part of the ownership the focus is still about the citizens, it still begs the question of what ownership is.

Harvey establishes that neo-liberal ideology has led to a circumstance where elites have taken ownership. Some could that elites backed by their money fueled power stole the city  from it’s rightful owner, the aggregate populace. This assumes that ownership is directly correlated to those with unchecked power.

If the idea of ownership is different though, then the elites have do not own the city. If ownership of a city is less a product of power and more a product of identity then the aggregate that develops, inherits, and creates the culture, reputation and identity of a city has ownership. The elites that are the “bridge and tunnel people” do not own a city in this case. (Koolhaus 1249) In this case the city and it’s urban nature are not owned by the elites but instead the city can be though to have adopt the elites.

In this case ownership of the city is not easy to establish because the question of what ownership is is the main concern. This complicates the issue because as power shifts and potentially becomes unbalanced the nature of the city changes to become a populace with a majority being the adopted instead of the who identify with the city.

If the second definition of ownership is followed a discrepancy can develop. A situation occurs where the owners of a city, those who identify with the reputation of a city, no longer become inhabitants of a city.

As power falls in the hands of the elite and those supported by a significant monetary backing the non elite get pushed out of the city. The original identity of cities and their neighborhoods needs to be moved out to accommodate the adopted wealth.

If this is the case, the question of weather or not ownership of a city can exists to non-inhabitants becomes an issue. Assuming this is the case, where does ownership default too? The easy answer become that ownership is left to the new wealthy and elite. But can the adopted populace ever really take ownership? Weather or not the “bridge and tunnel people” can take ownership of the city defines what gives a city its character. Is it those who establish the city and give it it’s uniqueness even though they have become marginalized the true owners or is it powerful who have created a commodification of the urban environment?

Koolhaas, Rem. “SMLXL”.

Harvey, David. “Right to the City”.

Housing the general populace is an important goal for successful communities and societies. History has shown numerous examples of architects, governments, non-government organizations and numerous other organizations attempting to provide housing for a general populace that does not have housing do to economic turmoil,  natural disaster, or war. Architects become part of this equations.

Architect have often proposed ideas and schemes to help house the public but often the architects fail because they have fallen into a trap of forgetting the human aspect of their solution. The architect approaches the issue in a far to literal sense and thus end up ignoring the more global aspect of their proposal.

What this means is that housing proposal are designed with specific needs. These criteria are of a certain square footage, a minimum number of amenities and the ability to cheaply house the masses that lack homes. What is forgotten is the people who occupy the spaces. Cost and speed of construction is prioritized over not simply aesthetic but over the way the space will impact and affect the occupants.

A perfect example of this is with the Pruitt-Igoe project in St. Louis. It was a large urban housing project designed by Minoru Yamasaki and initial was met with success but quickly became a run down haven for crime and violence which led to its eventual abandonment and demolition. In this case the design did not take into consideration who the people being housed were. The fact that young children and many single mothers would be living here was forgotten. The fact that the living breathing occupant were imperfect humans was forgotten. This design flaw would lead to the project’s demise. Yamasaki would go on to say “I never thought that people could be so destructive.”

This statement shows how the architect’s failure of design was how they thought about the people. The people were forgotten and thus the project could never succeed. Housing was failing because the architect was thinking about the structure of the house and not the occupants.

<http://rustwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Cohn01.jpg>

Hollenbeck, Charles. The Examiner. <http://www.examiner.com/article/what-it-looks-like-when-good-intentions-fail-pruitt-igoe>

Cities mimic the characteristics of a living organism but the intervention of forces beyond the population of the city will have an affect on how the city evolves and changes. The growing, and circulating population of a city would be the catalyst of its natural evolution. The connection of the city in a greater global context, the intervention of state powers and the effects of the economic influences at varying scales alters, expands, and minimizes the natural evolution a city would have because of its citizens alone.

Cities have the capacity to have a permanence to them that manifests itself in the population. That does not mean that the city can exists without the physical city. Instead this is saying that evolving city is really the evolving populace that inhibits and manifests the physics city. The physical city is still the most tactual presence of the city in that it supplies the common context for the populace to exist in. Just as Stehphen Johson states in “Pattern Match”, “Certain elements of urban life get passed on form generation to generation because they’re associated with a physical structure that has its own durability. (Johnson 105)

The physical city is such a strong force on the populace that it can stand on it’s own to incubate evolution. This evolution in many case is strong enough to create cities that can be self-sufficient. But cities none the less go through the cycles and patterns that Johnson refers too. In some cases cities die out in other cases cities thrive. The catalysts to these changes of pace of self-sufficient cities is going to be outside effects that are greater then the scale of the city. These outside effects disrupt the natural pace of the city. The natural change a city would go through is altered. This alteration is the breading ground for what Michael Hensel , Achim Menges and, Michael Weinstock refer to as “Emergence.”

The same way that the three propose that the intervention of a new high rise-tower in a city will alter the evolution of the city by impacting the individual, social, political and economic influence effect the city the same way the high rise effects the individual. (Hensel 7) The larger scaled force effects the evolution of the smaller scaled entity.

When a nation enter a period of economic turmoil the city is effected. Those that once maintain a certain lifestyle now have their lifestyle threatened. This changes the nature of the populace and the culture surrounding that populace. This push people into different soci-economic classes. Certain group shrink and others expand in a way that is beyond the normal progression. This can be fast and turbulent. It creates the environment for the emergence of methods and systems. “When very large numbers of people are centred in one place,the resource needed to maintain the environmental quality of the public and private spaces increase exponentially” (Hensel 9).

The significance of this evolution is that this is the way the ad-hoc nature of the informal and often destitute portions of a city develop.

Michael Hensel , Achim Menges , Michael Weinstock. “Emergence in Architecture”

Stephen Johnson “Pattern Match”