Tag Archives: Slums

Urban Acupuncture

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“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.

Survival Mindset

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The consensus from the published works on slums is that there must be something done to fix their current state and their future. When thinking about individuals in a slum, the attitude of survival is perhaps the factor that traps so many people in the life of poverty. When survival is the goal that must be met first, other goals of luxuries, recreation, comforts, and hobbies are put on the back burner. The economic benefits of money being spent on these other goals is something that can work to bring a community out of poverty, but clearly the requirements of earning enough to survive must be met first.

In John Beardsley’s article, “A Billion Slum Dwellers and Counting,” his concluding statement is that “…there may be no more pressing challenge to planetary health and security that the fate of slum dwellers. Helping to improve the quality of life in slums is not rocket science, yet every indication is that we are falling father and farther behind. The failures are probably more political than logistical or conceptual, and that might be the sorriest part of the whole story.” When thinking about overcoming the requirement of survival, it makes sense that necessities of life must be available and reliable. A link to the political failures mentioned in the article are the necessities such as clean water and sewage that now require either government involvement or massive private financial investment, both of which can be very politically bound.This contributes to the challenge facing planetary health as Beardsley notes, in that disease and pollution are the outcomes of the lack of necessities.

Because these necessities are not being met, the survival mentality continues, and is seen as a burden for the countries in which the slums are located. The challenge to global security, as Beardsley notes, can be a link to what Mike Davis calls “a realm of kickbacks, bribes, tribal loyalties, and ethnic exclusion” in his book Planet of Slums. Contributing to the survival mindset is that of pervasive threats, not just of disease or sickness, but of violence and aggression within the slums. Davis states that “Urban space is never free. A place on the pavement, the rental of a rickshaw, a day’s labor on a construction site, or a domestic’s reference to a new employer: all of these require patronage or membership in some closed network, often an ethnic militia or street gang.” The addition of a struggle to survive inside a violent network such as this is compounded with the struggle to survive with regards to life’s necessities, and further perpetuates the problem. Solutions involving breaking the survival mindset can certainly help in freeing the inhabitants of the slums to becoming more integrated with the formal society of their country.

 

http://offgridsurvival.com/survivalmindset/

Although geared more for wilderness survival, this link explains what your mind goes through in a survival mindset. The amount of stress and energy required to sustain this mindset for long periods of time can be what traps a person in their current state.