Week 7 Reading
- Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, Introduction + as much as you can read after that, focusing on chapters 2, 4, and 6
there is no xerox or PDF of this book, so please purchase it. There is only one copy in the Pratt library - if you check it out please email the rest of the class so that you might share it.
- Latife Tekin, Berji Kristin, Tales from the Garbage Hills. New York: Marion Boyars, 1993
xeroxes are on the desk outside the Dean's office. There are limited copies so please pass on your copy to someone else when you are done.
- Charles Correa, "Urban Housing in the Third World. The Role of the Architect" Architecture and Community Building in the Islamic World Today. New York: Aga Khan Award for Architecture, 1983. in packet
- Amartya Sen, "The Ends and Means of Development" in Development as Freedom in packet.
posted by Meredith at 10/08/2008 05:18:00 PM
35 Comments:
After reading “most” of the articles/chapters I began to question the slum “epidemic” as Mike Davis would like us to believe. Questioning not the reality of slums but what the slum populations represents. Let me clarify, when I refer to a slums population I don’t mean the working urban poor but instead the excess poor which the city is not able to support.
I’m currently reading Steven Johnson’s “Emergence”, an introduction into emergence theory and it has me left thinking of cities as living organisms. Specifically complex organisms whose existence depends on its ability to self regulate its chemistry in reaction to its environment. So if a city is an organism what role does the slum and its population play? More importantly what happens to the organism (city) if the slums continue to grow as in cities like Lagos, Mexico and Mumbai?
The answer can possibly be found if we study another organism, the human body. Although the human body can survive for certain amount of time with or without certain nutrients its ultimate survival depends on the bodies’ ability to obtain and process these nutrients. Take vitamin C for example, it plays a role in a variety of functions throughout the body, such as reducing the risk of certain chronic diseases, healing wounds, burns, broken bones and maintaining our immune system. If the body doesn’t absorb enough vitamin C, wounds and open sores develop on the skin. But if the human body is overloaded with vitamin C beyond recommended limits, the body reacts with stomachaches and headaches. The body begins to find a way to purge the excess antioxidant through urination, diarrhea or vomiting.
So I return to the question of what does the slum population represent. Are they like excess vitamin C which an organism needs to purge in order to survive? Do we think scientist should work on procedures so that the body can retain a higher lever of vitamin C than required? The city needs a certain level of urban poor for survival but if overloaded actually becomes a determent to the city? So the real question becomes are we actually escalating the slum “epidemic” because we are attempting to over-ride a cities natural tendency to balance itself?
Mike Davis and Charles Correa paint similarly dismal pictures of the Third World slum. In the Third World, the state is indifferent to its poor. Consequently, no money is put into the development of social housing or jobs. Since the value of urban land is so high, the state would rather allow for the construction of flashy luxury condominiums to please its middle and upper class citizens than to allow for low-income projects that would shelter the poor. Davis quotes Jeffrey Nedoroscik for saying that although Cairo does not suffer from a housing shortage per se, it is filled with buildings that are half-empty (86).
Since the poor populations if the Third World cannot afford housing within the city’s limits, they are pushed to the outskirts, this displacement increasing transportation costs to their place of work. Correa writes, “…we acknowledge that the poor are not coming into the cities for houses; they are coming to work. Thus to ask how to build is also to ask where to build” (45).
Correa lays out other obstacles to the architect building in the Third World. Firstly, the architect must understand the importance of open-air space in these countries whose climates have allowed (and prescribed) many essential functions of private urban living to take place outdoors. I am immediately reminded of the role of rooftops and courtyards in Algeria and Morocco. Increasing the density of people in housing projects, however, drastically reduces the amount of open air space. To resolve the issue by merely creating fewer but larger open air spaces does not solve the problem either since the open space is meant for private use by the family. Several French architects/colonialists in Algeria failed to understand this notion of open yet private space.
The text by Sen adds a more optimistic depiction of development in the Third World. Sen sees development as a process of expanding real freedoms people enjoy. He writes that freedom is not just an end to development but also a means. The freedoms he speaks of are political, economic and social and he demonstrates how they are all interconnected. I find his comparison of China and India most interesting. Although both countries sought to transform their economies into ones that were more open and market-oriented, China succeeded at a faster rate because it valued health care and basic education.
Sen concludes that Third World countries do not need to wait until they are wealthier before they embark on the massive expansion of basic education and health care since what he calls the “support-led process” allows for both a rapid decrease in mortality rates and the enhancement of living conditions without much economic growth.
The most important point he makes, however, appears in the very last paragraph where he describes the importance of the participation of the poor in their own future: “The people have to be seen, in this perspective, as being actively involved- given the opportunity- in shaping their own destiny, and not just as passive recipients of the fruits of cunning development programs” (53). I could not agree with Sen more. In fact, I wrote on a similar topic for DeLanda’s class. In my paper, I explored how dense social networks and a sense of responsibility allowed one particular slum in Bangkok called Chongdong to rebuild itself into a self-governing community (with infrastructure) with minimal aid from the government.
After reading the novella, Berji Kristen: Tales from the Garbage Hills, by Latife Tekin, I was highly intrigued by its composition and potential truth. Overall I found the tone was similar to one of Aesop’s Fables, including the proposition that lessons are to be learned through the struggle of humankind. Yet, is there really a moral to the end of this story or a lesson to learn? Throughout the duration of the book we were slowly granted closer access to the squatters of the Garbage Hills and honored through gaining selected settlers names and backgrounds. The reader was taken in carefully and only as much as could be trusted with the horrors of the ignored community. What truly struck me was the tribal-like qualities of the settlers; they were hardworking to the point of exhaustion, isolated from other ‘tribes’ or populations, warriors to each other and hunters of broken garbage. Overall they were portrayed as a very primitive people which I believe to not be entirely fair. It would seem to me that while they would be able to provide their own necessities in their communities, there would be some things that would grant them access to the immediate city and a general cultural understanding. Even though the people were portrayed as uninformed and primitive it did seem at they were at least able to read road signs which would lead me to believe that they had some level of education which would eradicate some of the novellas most barbaric moments. For example, through the many moments when these outcasts became sick with one disease or another could they truly not realize that it was because it was snowing in the summer? I found many of the accounts to be rather far fetched, but maybe I am too far removed from such situations and am truly not aware of the atrocities that are prevalent in Turkeys ‘gecekondus.’
Additionally, I do not read much fiction because I often question the reality of what is portrayed.
As for Planet of the Slums, by Mike Davis, well, I found this to be written in a very dull reporter tone where the facts did little to excite me. Given the chance to read both of these books I would imagine the reality of these squatter settlements and slums to be somewhere in the middle of both accounts.
For this week’s blog post I’m going to center around the Correa reading and tie the Sen, and Tekin in with it for support. Correa addresses the issue of equity in housing in regard to urban development in India. His position is in line with what Sen states about the definition of development in that there are certain prerequisites to be able to be free; in Correa’s case, equitable housing. Correa goes on to point out the logic in constructing large housing projects for India’s rapidly urbanizing areas specifically New Bombay. He argues that the cost to produce large high structures to house a dense population of urban poor or otherwise low income residents is grossly inefficient compared to comparable low rise buildings. This brings up the story from Tekin about the group of people forced to live in slum dwellings in the shadow of industrial pollution on the urban fringe. Because there was no available land for affordable and culturally sensitive housing group of people from the story had to find undesirable land and suffer the tragic consequences. To avert a situation such as this Correa would point out the ingenuity of the poor communities to construct their own housing units is actually an asset that could be incorporated into a successful scheme for urban development. Furthermore, Correa shows that in constructing a high rise structure requires expensive materials such as concrete and steel along with the engineers and architects to facilitate the design and construction. Low rise, specifically single storey structures can be made out of readily available and inexpensive materials thereby lowering the overall cost for the future owner/ tenet, which in the case of impoverished peoples make it possible to even have a dwelling. In this way, Correa would argue, benefits the overall functioning of the socio-economy because the cultural needs are met while at the same time furthering urban development. Going back to Sen’s argument, the term “development” is defined as the expansion of freedom through various constitutive and substantive freedoms which provide for the very necessities that Correa posits. Thus, the development of a free society, or a society which seeks to expand freedoms in the hopes of enriching human life, must diligently pursue solutions to providing for the basic necessities of life, such as food, health care and housing. Like Sed points out, having these basic provisions adds to the overall effectiveness of the economy and more specifically the life expectancy of individuals. It was interesting to see how, in Britain, the highest improvements in life expectancy occurred during the decades of the first and second world wars, not including the casualties from the war itself. It makes sense in terms of what has already been discussed; Britain had to increase the social services for individual citizens in the war years to safe guard resources and consequently provided the basic necessities to said individuals who were thereby able to life longer healthy lives.
I feel just as astonished and stunned after reading the Mike Davis as I was the first time I read the text a few years ago. To think that nearly, if not more, than a sixth of the world’s population is living in informal settlements, and more often than not in absolutely vile conditions is horrifying. The indifference of the government, or their valuation of real estate over human life is particularly disturbing. Davis points out the reluctance of governments to reveal their actual poverty populations reinforces their blatant disregard for the conditions that their citizens live in by acknowledging the facts needs to be concealed.
The most important point that was made by Correa in his article was that the greatest problem facing urban housing is the total cost to society in terms of land appropriation, and adjacencies. Projects like these require a sort of infrastructural support of more than just basic necessities. According to Correa, the realm of city conceptualizing and restructuring is where the architect should exist. The housing should be left to the people themselves. Correa concludes that housing projects would rid the Third World of the vernacular style and building materials, neither of which seem to be in short supply. I wonder though if better land appropriation would be catalyst enough for people to build better communities. What is to stop the creation of slums? Jobs do not completely alleviate poverty. So what are the homes that impoverished people might build look like? Would they be any different that something you might find in a slum? I think that there is still a role that the architect can and should play in these communities in order to ensure the prevention of slum-like housing conditions, but I do agree that the architect needs to be extremely culturally sensitive.
Matters of “leftover” populations, the landscapes, and the architectures created around them are of great interest to me. I spent a semester studying these topics in my undergraduate studies. The professor of the seminar, Wes Janz, is a good teacher, a great friend, and great resource for other matters related to these. He’s currently writing his own book on his global and local experiences relating to the multifaceted problem of housing the homeless. You can check out his website at http://www.onesmallproject.com/main.html
One more thing: I'd like to respond to Alfredo's comment because there is an important element to urban development that he brings up. I think it would have been important to bring together the ideas of emergence and organism that exists in the development of cities more clearly. Remembering DeLanda's discussion of the development of cities as a kind of emergent phenomena that acts as an aggregate of complex economies of scale which form an apparent whole, we could argue that low income classes, or poor individuals do emerge and function within the whole of the urban economy. However,it would be wiser to avoid the generality of the city as an organism that is innundated with excess vitamins, or poor classes that must be purged. That would lead to the very thing that we are trying to avoid as Mike Davis would point out. It is right to say that the city that has an over abundance of poverty could be considered "sick" and therefore in need of help. A shot in the arm of affordable housing might due the trick, followed by a dose of increased access to education and health care as Correa and Sed would point out. In either case, it's not really a natural and self regulating problem at all. That would imply that there is some kind of teleology to the socioeconomic state of cities. The truth is that there are steps that need to be taken in order to allow for healthier development so that a city of greater equity and freedom can emerge. En guard Iceman-
While reading Planet of slums by Mike Davis I began to think of the growth process of slums as a viral phenomenon. The terminology used by Davis hints toward the biological characteristics that are prevalent in the emergence of these Hypercities. Davis describes Mexico City as the amoeboid which consumes the pseudopods of Puebla, and Queretero reinforcing the notion that the urban growth is in fact a biological phenomenon. The cities develop on the path of the least resistance, consuming the natural resources of the surrounding smaller towns and rural areas, while relying on the mega cities for new capital and information all the while continuing to grow and consume without regard for cleanliness or infrastructure. They exist on the peripheries of metropolises in which the regulation of development is harder to maintain. As seen in the example given by Davis in Beijing, in which 200,000 floaters arrive each year, many of whom are eventually crowded into the illegal slums on the southern edge of the capital. This phenomenon is again pointed out by the Latin American urbanists as the pari-urban space; a space that exists on the outskirts of megacities that are the most responsible for the mass flux of labor and population growth of the 21st century. From this emerges the idea of the polycentric urban system emerges; a system in which a rural or urban boundary cannot be defined.
This blending of regions is in part due to the fact that globalization allows the spread of people, goods, services, etc.., and thereby the presence of traits normally designated to either the rural or the urban are blurred.
It is interesting to note the environmental impact that this rapid flux from the rural to the urban has on its environment. Davis only briefly touches on the facts of the Earth’s overall ability to sustain the exponential growth of not only the urban cities but of the human population as a whole. He gives examples of the unsanitary and unsustainable methods of construction of these slums ranging from plastic, cement block, and scrap wood instead of our idealized vision of the modern city as one of glass and steel. But then again construction waste is one of the largest producers of waste material. The rapidly developing regions in which these slums are emerging do not have the economic or structural stability to enforce the rules that would regulate their parasitic like growth such as the peri-urban spaces seen around Beijing and Sao Paulo. They emerge through the aggregation of villages, towns and small cities and eventually synthesize into larger slums that feed off the parent mega cities. The nature of this growth has dwarfed any in history and it is reshaping the idea of the future of cities as we know them.
Davis’ book on the dismal living condition the majority of the world’s population highlights issues directly related to our field. As future architects, it is imperative to think beyond the design of our buildings and begin to think about the role of architecture in light of the world’s increasing population size, decreasing inhabitable land, and rapidly growing poverty rates. Overpopulation and poverty are incredibly important issues in the world today and yet they continue to be overlooked in the world wide stage. Sure, there are a few famous NGOs (IMF, World Bank for example) that supposedly help address these issues, but these seem to make more headlines for scandal and corruption rather than for their work providing assistance and relief to “third world” countries trapped in the poverty cycle that plagues them… I think what makes this book so powerful, is the amount of data presented along with the text. The numbers he presents are astounding and practically make his argument for him. One cannot read this text and not feel incredibly pessimistic about the world’s future.
Davis’ argument is best summarized in this quote : "the demonizing rhetoric of the various international 'wars' on terrorism, drugs, and crime are so much semantic apartheid: they construct epistemological walls around gecekondus, favelas, and chawls that disable any honest debate about the daily violence of economic exclusion."
Planet of Slums documents and details the formations of slums in different nations, and argues that health, justice and social issues associated with slums are largely ignored in world politics. Poverty, lack of employment opportunity, and rapid population growth rates all are factors that lead so many to live in “informal” housing. I was particularly struck by the notion of urbanization and slums being interchangeable in some countries. This interpretation seems to apathetically accept the formations of slums as an inevitable and natural process, when in fact it is a very problematic situation that is in need of global attention.
This week I read from The Production of Houses by Christopher Alexander. In this book he talks about a housing project he helped to construct in Mexicali, Baja, California with students and families. He compares the system of housing production to biological systems and proceeds to layout seven Fundamental Principles of the Housing Production Process. He argues that the problems with housing can not be solved without changing the system of production. Housing can be made no more dignified via improved design. “We assert neither tract houses nor apt houses can be made more human by ‘improving their design’ so long as the underlying system of production which create them remain unchanged…”
Modern production of housing is too centralized and could benefit from mimicking biological systems, which are fine tuned at local levels. Alexander explains “a biological system is able to achieve its sensitive and complex adaptations because control over the shape of components is widely distributed at a great many levels throughout the organism.”
Essentially, Alexander is advocating for the return of master builder, what might now be known as the designer-builder. However, Alexander’s model is a very well rounded designer-builder: his model is not just an architect or a contractor, but is also concerned with building community and neighborhood on the building site and afterwards. One of Alexander’s tenet’s (number 4, to be exact) allows for direct client/family involvement in the design of their house, the “common land” and in the construction of both.
I think it is clear (especially after this week’s reading) that the global problem of poverty and slums is very complex and lacks a simple solution. Architectural intervention isn’t enough because it is not simply a housing problem, but an urban design problem, an economic problem, an environmental problem, a social problem, a political problem, etc. If a true solution is going to be found, it is going to be through the effort of multiple private and public organizations.
I found it surprising that some architects who have taken on this problem in the past have actually compounded the problem of poverty with their naïve design interventions. Charles Correa states, “...the scale of the demand dictates that most prime urban land has already been preempted for other uses, a circumstance forcing the vast majority of these self-help housing efforts onto unwanted land at the city’s edge. Situated far from the major transport arteries and other urban infrastructure, and without access to public transport, the poor have no mobility, no job choice, and often no job at all (43).” In this case, the architects (but probably more the government and planners) have provided housing, but have neglected these people’s need to earn a living! In an effort to solve a problem, they have actually made it worse than before because there is no point in having a roof over your head if you have nothing to eat! Mike Davis reports that, “For some people, including many pavement-dwellers, a location near a job – say, in a produce market or a train station – is even more important than a roof (27).” Correa also points out that the improper design of a housing solution can have negative consequences. Architects often assume that the more dwelling units you can fit into a given space, the better (since you are serving more people). This usually leads to the design of many-storied towers, which disconnect residents from the resources found outdoors. The change in housing requires an entire change in lifestyle. By failing to spend the time getting to know the people they are designing for and how they live and work, architects are only contributing to the problem, rather than the solution. A recent example of this neglect is William McDonough + Partner’s eco-village design in Huangbaiyu, China. I am normally a fan of McDonough’s work and applaud his efforts, but this project seems to have been a huge failure. If you’d like you can watch the Frontline documentary at: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/fellows/green_dreams/
The role of the Third World architect.
Since the only building method affordable to the poorer people is their own vernacular one, the architect’s role, according to Charles Correa, is to oversee and integrate this building style into an urban fabric. He is to conceptualize and assist with site layout, remembering that he is on the same side of the table as the people. He serves as a consultant and when it comes to the houses themselves, the architect should just stay out of the way.
The vernacular architecture works, it uses local skill and materials, a sustainable architecture that also reflects the community it exists in. This is obvious. Correa argues that the architect cannot, no matter how much he tries, come up with a solution that is as affordable as the vernacular one, not even close. All the architect can do in this situation is to use the old housing solution and link it with a new urban fabric.
This is an interesting proposal to maintain the sustainable, affordable, vernacular housing. Still, there remains the question, unless I missed something, where would this happen. And how would it work. Correa says that the poor would rather live on the cities pavement than in a poor ghetto on the city perimeter, hidden somewhere, away from service, public transport and work. So I find it difficult to imagine how an urban fabric of these vernacular buildings built for the poor would work any differently. Also where would this fabric be? Could it be weaved into an existing fabric of different properties, or should the vernacular solution be used for not only the poor but the wealthier as well? If it is kept as a separate element it will be a ghetto, or a small society within another, such as Christiania is to Copenhagen. Finding land in an existing urban setting which is not on the outskirts of a city will be almost impossible for a project of single storey housing for the poor. Developers and land owners want to maximize the occupancy of their land to get the most value for it. Single storey housing is not an option for them. So I ask again, where could this development take place, without it becoming a ghetto?
The role of architects in Third World country is of course different from architects in first world, is also different in second world. One of the major differences is driven by economic of the society. In first world, majority of us do not have to think about the necessities such as food, shelter, and heath. However, these are the exact necessities that majority of people in third world country struggle to meet everyday. Therefore, the definition of architecture is greatly different in all worlds. In third world, mainly seen as shelter.
My trip to India this past summer mirrored what the author states. The City center is extremely over populated. Within the crowded city exists different group of people, I divide this into three groups. First group is working group who are able to make enough to run their small stores or food carts to meet their necessary needs. Second, is working group making enough to pay for food, clothes and healthcare, but not necessary shelter. Third is street dweller with no shelter, food, or clothing. As author mentioned, as overly populated these city centers are, people do not live in city’s edge, due to lack of access to public transportation in these area, poor have no mobility and jobs. Transportation is mainly by foot or rickshaw (pulled by people or run by motor). Therefore, far distance travel is extremely exhausting. Poor are not coming to the cities for houses; they are coming for work so that they can fulfill their minimal need, food, clothing, and health care.
As the article goes on, the reason for presence of large amount of squatter is due to lack of housing in city center. Housing is lacking in city center because it is already preempted for other uses. In order to create more space, they have to create taller buildings. But this will encroach on the outdoor space, which play a huge role in daily life. So a real dilemma emerges, in order to provide more housing for people, size of outdoor space will decrease, due to increase in building height, and in order to preserve outdoor space, the building can not occupy many people due to decrease in building height.
In India, sense of interior and exterior space is very similar. Many activities we may think takes place indoors actually takes place outdoors in India. Outdoor activity may be cooking, washing clothes (in courtyards with well or in river), bathing. Indoor activities are family time and sleeping. They spend majority of their day outdoors. Therefore, preserving outdoor space is as important as providing enough space for people. Many courtyards exist between low-rise buildings. These courtyards create area for well where people gather to draw water for cooking and drinking, and to socialize. It also creates public space for worship where religious statue may reside.
As simple as their material possession are, architecture should reflect their life style. As mentioned in the article, builders in third world country use simplest materials, sand and earth, to construct a building. It is architects duty to use available material to create structural building, but not sacrifice aesthetics. It is architects responsibility to design a building and cities that fit the context and to create building that will satisfy the users needs.
Public housing’s original intention was to introduce people of low income (some of them living in slums) to socially diversify housing development inside the urban areas but they also thought about giving opportunities and better quality of life to those who live in “the projects”; but finally they ended up being nucleus of poverty and illiteracy inside the city (all produced by a vicious cycle and caused by taxes).
Talking about slums, in China, the government had exiled entire towns for creating a thing of “common good” by building the biggest dam in the world. The Chinese government has displaced people from slums and towns, leaving their original identity and place where they had lived their entire lives and inserting them into cities in the process of development. China’s Government has yet to know the future consequences of these acts. However, the immediate effect has been that people from these slums have created their environment inside this cities, sort of creating a modern slum; a micro-cosmos into the city. The government’s intention was giving people a better quality of life, but these people had their culture in those places. Little by little that culture is being lost. It is like the government trying to “erase” their culture and converting it into history. Over four years they have filled half the dam.
Museums have tried to assist with historical artifacts that have been saved from these towns, but they don’t have the space for all the items. Because of this, structures such as temples have been submerged; some saved by lifting or moving has rescued some of them. But there are lots of things that will be erased from history by water. This removal of slums has been created for the
Though I mostly agree with the opinions stated in this week’s readings, and obviously I cannot argue with the statistics presented by Mike Davis, what I’ve found most interesting, architecturally, is the explanation and subsequent solution to the problems of slum housing. According to Mr. Correa, the problems lie in the simple economics of population growth in urban areas. As people move to cities, more housing is required. That housing demands land, and that land must be purchased for a price. The law of supply and demand has taught us that as that demand grows and the supply wanes, the price increases. Thus causing the masses to either build shelter for themselves using local materials, or in many cases, to live without shelter at all. What I found interesting about Mr. Correa’s article is his solution to this problem. He emphasizes the construction of more low-rise housing made from local materials over multi-storied buildings built of brick and concrete. His solution, so he states, provides a boost to the local economy (the bazaar) as well as a more pleasing aesthetic that is also more humanistic. This type of housing is adaptable to the hierarchy of living spaces and promotes the interdependence of these spaces. Now while I wholeheartedly agree with this notion of providing vernacular urban housing that ideally would be of low cost to the user, thereby moving people off of the streets and into a protected environment, I find very little evidence of it in Mr. Correa’s own work. In fact, the only projects his website even advertises that resembles this type of housing is the Previ Housing Project in Lima, Peru in 1973, and the Incremental Housing in Mumbai over 20 years ago. As Mr. Davis has more than shown, the time for these strategies to be implemented in urban areas is now. I would like to see Mr. Correa practice what he preaches in this rapidly expanding urban world we are currently living in and develop more projects that put him in the role of the mistri, instead of the professional architect.
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I acknowledge that the majority of this week’s blog posts are concurrent in spotlighting Correa’s assessment of the “Third World architect”, but I as well found the text particularly pertinent and intriguing as an architectural student. Traditionally, when focusing on non-Western design and planning in the architecture history classes I took preceding this class, there was solely a focus on high-profile European architects attempting to create radical solutions for the insolvent Third World. For instance, we studied Le Corbusier and Louis Kahn in India, in a similar fashion to how we have interpreted the intentions and diminutive triumphs, but more importantly the failures in Casablanca, Algeria, Morocco in this class. It was most interesting to hear a native “Third-Worlder” intensely discuss what is imperative when considering to design for local inadequate communities.
The issue was raised more than a few times during the last two seminars of how it would be appealing to hear from a native architect/planner responding to the grave failures in colonized nations. It was also brought up that a seemingly good solution to the preceding failures would be the hiring of local (perhaps “no-name”) architects and design teams to sensitively address the long-term crisis’s that were and are present in these nations, namely the residences of the densely-packed poor. The Correa text certainly addressed both of the above inquires; Correa’s own design effort in India displayed a vigilant understanding and adaptation of Modernism to a Third World impoverished society. With a concentrated consideration of the local vernacular, he deployed this knowledge in a modern environment.
Correa’s responsive conventions of addressing a contemporary design for poor housing produced projects that were more successful than the strategies executed by “outsiders.” Two specific design components that were seemingly disregarded by all others were the inclusion and importance of open-air space and constructing low-rise housing. These integral factors were interchangeable in the results of which they produced. Not only was this a far more practical solution in responding to climate and other regional conditions, it was also more familiar and therefore advantageous for the occupants. By being low-rise, a vast array of local materials could be used; open courtyards would be unobstructed and far more useful. The open-air space is traditionally significant in the cultures of warm-climate communities, and from a design perspective, a great deal of the dweller’s chores and activities can be completed more successfully outdoors than indoors. These examples are a testimony to the importance of familiarity with regional culture that is typically lost through translation of an interloper architect.
Upon reading a small portion of Planet of Slums, I was alarmed and honestly felt dishearten by the facts he provided. In particular, he emphasized that approximately a sixth of the world’s population is living in absolute poverty and completely indifferent to the policies of the government. I also must present another feeling of disappointment, when I came upon written criticisms concerning the content of Davis’ book. Now, given that I haven’t read the entire book, I don’t exactly feel at liberty to criticize him, but I will point out some of these points, for others who have read the book in its whole, to ponder and possibly propose an optional opinion.
First, Davis’ argument; He suggests that the population of city dwellers is increasing consistently and that the world’s slums are multiplying in response. He distinguishes the way these third world poor citizens have become detached from developments, such as modernization. Cushioned by an extensive number of statistics and supported by his own futuristic analysis, Davis advocates that if the state doesn’t start putting forth more attention and positive enforcement, rather than spending money on the development of condominiums and shopping malls, then the situation is only going to get worse in decades to come. He points out “that the world’s urban labor force has more than doubled since 1980, and the present urban population – 3.2 billion – is larger than the total population of the world when John F. Kennedy was inaugurated.” The information that Davis provides is extremely overwhelming, as well as disturbing.
The question is ‘why is the urban population increasing so drastically?’ Davis provides specific reasons; Urban areas have expanded out towards rural areas, making them urban; People have to migrate to the urban center for work; People lack medical attention in rural areas, forcing them to seek it in cities; and simply, birth rate has increased for various reasons, such as a the need to produce more workers for farming, etc. Davis continues to provide more information and statistics to back up his argument, also foreseeing cities of the future, “rather than being made out of glass and steel as envisioned by earlier generations of urbanists, are instead largely constructed out of crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement blocks, and scrap wood.”
The criticism is that Davis doesn’t provide any firsthand observation. Once again to reiterate that I have not read the entire book, this information is gathered from a variety of sources that all state that he does not record any information provided by actually visiting these slums. (While I admit that a few of these critics come from the book evaluation page on Amazon.com, which I would also question, it still provoked my curiosity and I’m still researching other critics and do intend on reading the entire book in order to provide personal record.) These critics state two exceptions; one being a fictional character and the other referenced from another source. While I still am disturbed by the facts and the conclusions that he does provide, I also feel bothered by the fact that he hasn’t visited these slums. I believe for him to more appropriately reinforce his argument, there needs to be personal reference, otherwise I’m left to question the validity of his argument, specifically his reasons for urban population multiplicity. Perhaps it would also be to his benefit to bring this subtle detail to the reader’s attention in the opening of his book in order to not mislead his audience.
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Life in the slums is a reality and is exponentially increasing. As discussed in “Tales from the Garbage Hills” life in urban areas in not always pleasant. The availability of clean water is a global issue. Mike Davis is referring to Mumbai, India when he states that the city will not be able to maintain the population growth for long. The city will not be able to biologically or ecologically maintain these people (5). I have been thinking about this problem for years and how is can relate to architecture. I know that at some point the population of the earth will be unable to maintain itself, however, in the near future efficient design projects will be a driving force to maintain a global balance. There is a professor at Columbia doing a project on Urban farming. Towers are constructed with levels of farms where plants can be produced year round. In this regard, technology does have the ability to save the economically stable countries.
In the final paragraph of chapter one, Mike Davis states “ the cities of the future, rather than being made out of glass and steel as envisioned by earlier generations of urbanists, are instead largely constructed out of crude brick, straw, recycled plastic, cement blocks, and scrap wood. Instead of cities of light soaring toward heaven, much of the twenty-first-century urban world squats in squalor, surrounded by pollution, excrement, and decay”(19). This statement is a great abridged vision of the future of global architecture.
The green movement will be accepted by all economically stable nations in the decade to come. Those nations without the financial resources to built vast energy efficient buildings will also built “green” with the use of recycled content and passive energy systems.
These “slums” maybe be the only answer to a world with a constant population growth. The people in these slums live in despair, but they are the fuel for the global economy. As stated in “Tales from the Garbage Hills” all the men in the slums work in factories. These factories produce the necessary products for the first world nations to consume and progress technology for future generations. These slums, however, are a horrific place for anyone to live. Why would workers in the garbage hills not move? Is the concept of home so strong that even when pollution is raining down on you and sores have developed all over you body you won’t leave! I cannot Imagine this. It is a very sad situation and as an orientalist I am unable to comprehend the intensity of it. In the story it does not seem like any of the remedies put forth by Gullu Baba are productive, yet they keep on trying. I guess religion knows no bounds. Its power has the ability to persist.
The novel, entitled “Shantaram” by Gregory David Roberts, tells the story of a foreigner who moves to the slums in Mumbai in the 1970s. Despite the unsanitary conditions, and packs of savage dogs roaming the dark streets at night, the people who live in the slums have a large sense of pride for their home. The work hard at constructing their shelters. They have cultural events, raise children together and struggle for money together. Slums will always be a reality. With government planning architects and planners must have the foresight to design cities with slums that are not on garbage hills. Proper planning of cities can greatly improve the comfort of the residents.
In Urban Housing in the Third World, Charles Correa examines how the common proposal to housing for urban poor fails because the developments are often located on the edges of the city where access to transportation, and subsequently employment, is extremely limited. He explains that people will become "squatters" in order to maintain a connection to valuable resources: "More important than adequate shelter is direct access to the nerve centres of the city." Correa makes some good arguments regarding the typology of housing in the Third World, and convinces me what the "Role of the Architect" should be upon entering this particular situation. After reading the article, I couldn't help to think that Correa was missing something, or that he over-simplified the problem and solution. He says that "because of the scale of the demand, this effort is going to require a major restructuring of our cities."
I was going to write the blog before reading "The Ends and the Means of Development", but then I skimmed through it and found that some of the main points in this article were speaking to the issues that I was intending to write about. I read the Charles Correa article first, then the Planet of the Slums. From the first chapter of "the Planet of the Slums" I was a bit shocked by the sheer numbers describing the severity of the situation we are in today, and the projections for the future give you an idea of the real scope of the problems to which I thought the Correa article was lacking.
I often think that architecture, or architects and planners, seek to provide solutions to problems that are much greater than themselves. Following the first chapter of the Slums, I immediately wanted to write a response that talked about the need for government or some kind of state institution in getting involved with the problems of overpopulation of the slums, that are deeply-rooted in social problems... that architecture is not the solution to. it can be a form of relief, but we really have to examine the causes of this global epidemic and work from there towards restructuring these third world societies.
You don't have to look as far as a "third world" though, within the US and other first world countries, within the slums and areas plagued with poverty, on a smaller scale of course, but similar conditions exist where I think similar forms of restructuring social programs needs to happen, most importantly, access to decent health care and education. I think the "Ends and the Means of Development" was perfect in elaborating on my initial thoughts.
In "Tales from the Garbage Hills", the squatter community of Flower Hill evolves slowly from a ragtag settlement of migrants to a fully formed neighborhood, complete with coffee shops, politics, prostitutes, and crime. This was a revelation to my way of thinking about slums – they are usually portrayed by Western journalists and filmmakers as so transient and completely foreign. Latife Tekin does an incredible job of gradually humanizing the people in the novel, though. As it progresses, she introduces the reader to the personalities, so as the settlement grows, the plot and characters grow richer and we begin to see the town as not so different from our own. Perhaps it is this quality of familiarity that makes their sufferings even more poignant.
Reading the other texts through the filter of the novel put them in a different light for me. Mike Davis's statistics are appalling, and I agree that something needs to be done. I kept wondering, though - many current humanitarian efforts are focused on eradicating the slums, but that might not be the right solution. Suburban mass-produced dwellings have never worked very well, so it's silly to think that putting the slum dwellers in such an environment would produce good results, as Charles Correa points out. Since there is very little land left in the cities to devote to low-income housing, perhaps the cities could stop turning their backs on the slums, and focus instead on their improvement. It could be that I'm taking too much inspiration from the novel, but it seems as though if a community founded on a garbage dump can make its way to becoming a neighborhood (and it isn't entirely fiction, apparently these developments in Turkey are quite habitable), then with the help of the government mid-city slums might be made into more permanent dwellings. This is similar, but not exactly like Correa's argument for self-made housing. If the slums could be constructed by the residents with better materials, plumbing, and a plan from the city that excludes the slum-lords, it ceases to be a slum and becomes a neighborhood. I think we all can agree that this idea is better than the alternative of tearing down the slums, displacing thousands of residents, and building more high-rises.
His tears cure people?.... Ok I have to be honest here, reading Latife Tekin, Berji Kristin, Tales from the Garbage Hills I believe I got as much out it as I could the mid point of the story. Pending a War of the Worlds alien invasion or a Matrix-esque revelation… I believe it goes something like this. Ah hem.. People with little means and little resources trudge through a hard knocks existence… About right eh? Ok, more can be taken out of it then that. Even though I did feel I was reading the same story over and over again, one can begin to develop an understanding of the environment that these people live in. What I don’t understand, or am maybe to thick headed to see, is why they don’t make the connection between their illness and there surroundings, be the snow from the factories or the warm blue water poisoning them? It appears as though the have simply chosen to ignore the world around them. Im not saying that the happily choose to live on flower hill, but that they had to arrive from somewhere else (at least initially) and yet through all their hardships choose to stay there? I cannot accept that they would not have enough motivation to attempt to leave this environment. Yes some of them find jobs in the factory, which could be seen as a conscious effort to improve their lives, but they treat these jobs as a status symbol not a means; they parade themselves as though they are kings yet this parading is occurring on a mound of TRASH! Does this line of thinking make me a colonist for not being able to relate to people in this situation, or does my being able to understands my predispositions show a level of understanding…. Catch 22. None the less I find it a little bit more understanding when I think of this story in line with what is being said in Mike Davis’s “Planet of the Slums” and its sobering analysis of the world that is and the world to come. What I find most interesting about it is not the huge numbers of people moving to cities, and not even the exponential component of that growth that is slums but the fact that the movement from the countryside to the city, once seen as a means for upward class movement (at least in a western context) is diluting or at best reversing… or “…in other words, [overurbanization] is driven by the reproduction of poverty, not by the supply of jobs”.
His tears cure people?.... Ok I have to be honest here, reading Latife Tekin, Berji Kristin, Tales from the Garbage Hills I believe I got as much out it as I could the mid point of the story. Pending a War of the Worlds alien invasion or a Matrix-esque revelation… I believe it goes something like this. Ah hem.. People with little means and little resources trudge through a hard knocks existence… About right eh? Ok, more can be taken out of it then that. Even though I did feel I was reading the same story over and over again, one can begin to develop an understanding of the environment that these people live in. What I don’t understand, or am maybe to thick headed to see, is why they don’t make the connection between their illness and there surroundings, be the snow from the factories or the warm blue water poisoning them? It appears as though the have simply chosen to ignore the world around them. Im not saying that the happily choose to live on flower hill, but that they had to arrive from somewhere else (at least initially) and yet through all their hardships choose to stay there? I cannot accept that they would not have enough motivation to attempt to leave this environment. Yes some of them find jobs in the factory, which could be seen as a conscious effort to improve their lives, but they treat these jobs as a status symbol not a means; they parade themselves as though they are kings yet this parading is occurring on a mound of TRASH! Does this line of thinking make me a colonist for not being able to relate to people in this situation, or does my being able to understands my predispositions show a level of understanding…. Catch 22. None the less I find it a little bit more understanding when I think of this story in line with what is being said in Mike Davis’s “Planet of the Slums” and its sobering analysis of the world that is and the world to come. What I find most interesting about it is not the huge numbers of people moving to cities, and not even the exponential component of that growth that is slums but the fact that the movement from the countryside to the city, once seen as a means for upward class movement (at least in a western context) is diluting or at best reversing… or “…in other words, [overurbanization] is driven by the reproduction of poverty, not by the supply of jobs”.
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This week’s readings addressed problems that will continue to worsen with time. Population is exploding so fast that cities and countries cannot plan for the impact. In Planet of Slums, Mike Davis shows the severity of population mixed with poverty and lack of government intervention. He also shows the diversity of relationships that occur throughout the world. No one slum is like the next and the management of each slum varies greatly from place to place.
Population growth is the main problem causing extreme poverty and overcrowded cities. Solutions can be found to address the current situation, but as population continues to grow so will problem. How can we slow the growth of population? Until this question is answered we are just making temporary fixes to a growing crisis.
As an architectural student I want to have faith in the design of housing and urban planning to address the issues of low income and rapid urbanization, but this is only a solution to a fraction of the problem. How can we begin to address the overall issues? What measures of intervention are people willing to take? What intervention is ethically correct? I believe that the problems created from overpopulation are often overlooked by most people. Living in the United States shelters us from the realities of poverty and overcrowding. The readings this week gave statistics and stories, but none paint a true picture of the problem. How do we realize this and how do we address it?
I thought Charles Correa’s position on the role of the architect in the third world is interesting as he seems to re-position this role – shifting architects’ focus from a single building to the affected urban fabric. However, before he calls for such repositioning, Correa asks a crucial question, “Would modern architects be willing to participate in building in this manner…” That is, by allowing the traditional, vernacular constructive practices to be equal participants in the design process. I agree with Correa, as well as critical regionalists, that vernacular architecture in third world cases are informative opportunities. I don’t think that’s a reason to stop pushing the technological, material, and constructive advances that modern architecture is researching and pursuing. By coupling these advances with tested vernacular approaches, individual buildings can be improved all over the world – not just in the third world. Yet, what Correa really seems to argue for is the importance of the creation of a new urban fabric and framework. Correa convinced me in the beginning of his essay that low density, self-help housing is the wisest approach economically (when it’s on the perimeter), environmentally, and socially, but then doesn’t advise how to link these communities to the urban fabric.
If I had to guess I would think the literal linkages (transportation etc) are one way to achieve a new urban network, but I am curious as to how Correa plans to restructure our cities.
In contrast, Amartya Sen looks to human freedoms as instrumental in order to achieve third world development. I was particularly intrigued by some of the quantitative data she exhibits in her essay. Figure 2.1 shows the GNP per Capital and Life Expectancy at Birth in 1994. Here, Kerala’s life expectancy is almost 7 times its GNP per Capita which I find mind boggling. This makes me think that GNP is not capturing some sort of success and health in this society. Does our GNP adequately evaluate a country’s success? In this case, I would argue no. She states, “It is clearly better to have high income as well as high longevity (and other standard indicators of quality of life), rather than only the later” (48). I’m not sure I agree with this, unless these indicators are able to capture more micro level indicators of well-being. Just because a particular group does not contribute to their country’s GNP does not mean that they are not economically successful or savvy. Maybe they are more…
Figure 2.3 in the Sen article also intrigued me. It shows a completely inverse relationship between improvement in life expectancy in England and Wales and GDP growth per capita. Could the time lag caused by the effects of GDP on life expectancy be the only factor responsible? Either way, I think Sen’s examples and hypotheses are crucial for future economic development. I hope she has convinced international monetary agents as well.
Another quick comment and good modern case study. I came across this article this week regarding Dubai's current labor pool for anyone interested.
'We need slaves to build monuments'
It is already home to the world's glitziest buildings, man-made islands and mega-malls - now Dubai plans to build the tallest tower. But behind the dizzying construction boom is an army of migrant labourers lured into a life of squalor and exploitation. Ghaith Abdul-Ahad reports
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/08/middleeast.construction
The idea of an urban condition in which everyone lives freely and responsibly is a profound, yet simple, concept. In the article, Sen described freedom into two categories: constitutive and instrumental, each was clearly defined with concrete examples. The conclusion of the article, “People have to be seen as being actively involved-given the opportunity- in shaping their own destiny,” impressed me with a picture of an ideal community.
However, as I went into the other articles, it brought me back to the reality that the concept mentioned above was meant to be a universal rule. This universal rule overlooks each community’s traditional values. By this, I mean that different communities have certain sets of belief; spiritual, scientific, etc. that outsiders don’t always seem to be aware of. In the novel “Berji Kristin,” the Flower Hill community represents a group of uneducated people who share the same spiritual beliefs. Besides those beliefs, there is also a social organizational structure which ties them together. Gullu Baba, being the oldest member of the group, receives a lot of respect and faith by the community. Even when his magic doesn’t work on one case and it disappears, the members blame the girl that she has ceased Gulla Baba’s power and try to activate his power in a variety of ways. This conveys not only their spiritual beliefs but also the loyalty within the community.
It is true that Flower Hill may be different from other norms (compared to the societies in this country), but it doesn’t mean that their beliefs are wrong. This reminds me of the article by James Scott on villagization in Tanzania. The British were trying to prove to the local people that their modern technology was a better way to live. As my research on Japanese tea ceremony, in relation to the struggle after WWII to gain their national identity back, goes, it ensures me that the main reason of their success was because Japan stayed firm on their traditions regardless of the criticism from other countries.
Therefore, I think the traditions within each community are important enough that it is almost impossible to generalize a way to successfully govern all communities. The most obvious example that I see is the difference in ethnic groups within the States. Some groups tend to enjoy expressing their opinion, fighting for their rights, while some are more reserve. It is such a diverse community that, as much as I agree with the notion of giving everyone freedom and responsibility, keeps me wondering how is it possible to give every single community member an opportunity to be a part in creating the community. Thus, I think studying the human values is the very first step to go about resolving a social situation in each community.
By chance I volunteered to lead the discussion during week 7, it sounded like a lucky number, to my surprise the topic of this week correlates exactly with my research topic. I’ve always had a fascination with the exponentially growing third world urbanization epidemic that today challenges architects, planners, politicians, etc. If I had to pinpoint a moment where this interest of mine essentially began it would be during a sustainability conference that I attended in my sophomore year of architecture school, shortly after Katrina. The conference featured many designers that at the time were leading the research field dealing with solutions to this problem among others of the world. It was centered on the new release of Bruce Mau’s book Massive Change, a book which I will bring in. I remember feverishly taking notes during Bruce’s lecture and exclusive seminar that my class was able to attend and one quote has particularly stuck with me above others that works to sum up the books intent. “…To pose these challenges of the world as a design problem” This statement instills a sense of responsibility to all designers to do everything that they are capable.
That was off topic a bit, but, when I was reading I was excited that the topic this week has coincided exactly with my research. A little too closely I’m afraid, after reading Mike Davis’ book I feel that no matter how much research I do, he will always trump me. I mean, footnotes on every page, graphs, and an overall architecture overtone, I think I need to refine my abstract a bit or else I’ll just be regurgitating Planet of Slums for my paper. As far as a summary for this book for blog purposes, I had pretty much heard most of the facts brought up discussed through other sources. It was nice to hear them all in one place so-to-speak. Another lecture I have seen, this time online, deals with this exact issue of global urbanization. It is Robert Neuwrith’s Shadow Cities, also a book that I will bring in, his inspiring talk compares 5 squatter cities to dissect any differences or underlying organization. Ultimately he presents Turkey’s Gecekondu’s as a more advance squatter town both in terms of architecture and housing policy.
The Charles Correa reading was also fascinating in his attempts to analyze the urban structure behind these squatter towns into components of public and private. His conclusion is to design the public realm of the house/city in highly dense areas as a shared community space thus allowing for the necessary private space of housing to reduce in size. He hints also at the limits of construction of squatter housing both through economics and structure, more of an acknowledgment to the typology of the single story made from inexpensive materials. This aspect struck me as odd for him to be explaining because the project I was most familiar with of his in Bombay is a skyscraper, later I found the project he was explaining.
The Ends and Means of development article treated the problem of the squatter as a policy matter in the evolution of democracy. A successful democracy links the importance of education as a catalyst for lowering mortality rates and minimizing population in all forms of urbanization. His two case countries of China and India present contrasting forms of development that reinforce his hypothesis. He concludes that a government must provide certain rights and freedoms to its citizens in order to grow economically.
So here you have three articles dealing with the issue of a global urban population, one from a logistical standpoint (Planet of Slums), one from a planning standpoint (Correa), and one from a political standpoint (Development as Freedom). Or perhaps we have three articles dealing with the issue at different scales. Correa dissects the squatter at the street scale, analyzing housing and public space on the neighborhood level. The development article works at the nation scale searching for a solution/cause to the squatter problem for each country. The Davis Book dissects the squatter epidemic as a global issue, meaning he differentiates little between each instance of a slum and rather treats the epidemic as a general organism that happens to occur in more than one place.
While reading Latife Tekin’s Berji Kristin, Tales from the Garbage Hills, I continuously imagined the people of Flower Hill as a chorus or wave of something machine-like or animalistic. The communities’ response was always the result of hearsay that became the general opinion of the people for no other reason than it was the fastest rumor spread. Often violent and absurd acts were taken on account of these random rumors. This is why the townspeople seemed to be both inhumane and fictional, because their ignorance caused them to act without any intelligence or empathy. Tekin quotes many songs of the villagers which related the villagers to a chorus in a fictional play, a mass of people that sing and move in unison and represent a single opinion or tell a single story.
Lysistrata a Greek comedy written in 411 BC by Aristophanes, also uniquely deals with the role of women in a male dominated society, another issue that I struggled to interpret throughout Berji Kristin. In the play Lysistrata, the main female character, convinces women of her city to withhold sex from their husbands to end war. Like Tekin’s novel Lysistrata can be interpreted on the surface as a ridicule of women or a non western/ancient approach to demonstrate the importance of female participation in civic life.
Saliha Paker writes in her Introduction, “This is a man’s world, but women appear in it as strangely powerful figures, despite their subordination…womanhood is conceived as a secret society resisting and, at times, subverting oppressive forces. However like the majority of Turkish women writers, Tekin makes no claim to feminism in the Western sense, which is regarded as a separating and restricting factor for a fiction writer” (14). She explains that Tekin’s goals were instead “the desire for total social involvement and the need to address a wide readership” (14) Tekin’s goes on in the narratives to make women the deciding factors or instigators of rebellions, at one instance the women of the town were a powerful last hope in a dangerous strike. But more often wives were cast aside or beat violently without remorse or punishment. Tekin more than once ended passages with women beating their breast in anger or triumph. This is strange to me because I relate it to an act of animalistic and masculine power, taken I assume from the idea of a male gorilla beating his chest, but perhaps this is her way to show gender equality. Although Berji Kristin is not considered a comedy like Lysistrata the characters of the novel are colorfully introduced and humor is not absent from her descriptions of events that take place on Flower Hill.
The Reading of Mike Davis relates to the problems of a fast changing globalizied world faced in which a kind of two-society is created. On one hand the well educated and wealthy poeple and on the other the analphabetic and poor ones without hope and perspective.
Slums, Shanty Towns or Favelas however we call those areas of wild grown non developed urban planning, creating wild structures .
No governmental control or an urban planning can prevent the rapidly growth and the spread out of these high density structures on the outer border of the megapolis like Rio de Janerio or Mexico City.
Satelite Cities occur in a grade of high plurality, depending on region, local material and specific needs of the inhabitants.
The adaption to the geography and the urban surroundings are intresting to determine oout of an architectural perspective.
Accommodaition with fresh water, electricity and gas is mostly provided by a kind of parasit relationship between the slum and the city. It is not a positive relationship , the city try to avoid this self-help behavior.
But how can we improve the living conditions of millions of people living in slums?
Is there a way to face this problem of human population growth and the impovershment of large scale citys?
“Planet of Slums” and “Berji Kristin, Tales from the Garbage Hills” were interesting to be assigned together. One spits statistics and examples of fact while the other takes you on a fictional journey of living in a slum. I think the contrast is balanced and complimentary in describing the whole picture.
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When approaching the subject of slums, favelas, squatters, informal cities, ect. I was first intrigued by the birth of these microcosms. Where are they located? Why do they grow? How is chaos managed? Location: In southern China Guldin’s critique of the urban edge recognizes city growth “in many cases, [where] rural people no longer have to migrate to the city, it migrates to them” (pg9). [words that intrigued me in describing this collision: “diffuse urbanism”, “Zwischenstadt” or “in between city”, and “urban fringe”] Reasons for informal peri-urbanization: industrialization, de-industrialization, returned war victims and refugees.
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What interests me more so than the formation of these cities is how we can make them function to the advantage of the inhabitants… Basic needs for shelter and food, but also a deeper humanistic need for community and self-worth: running water, common space, waste management systems, ect. One example mentioned by Davis is a squatter city on the outskirts of Karachi, Pakistan was ‘self-help’ methods were advised and initiated by the community. Initiated by Akhtar Hameed Khan in the early 1980’s the Orangi Pilot Project (OPP) helped to organize the community. The unauthorized urban settlement of Orangi was not recognized by the government, meaning no financial or development support. With the help of Hemeed, who had previously organized rural development programs (Comilla Model), the occupants of Orangi were able to organize and develop a management system. This started with the financing and construction of a sanitation system. The success of this project led to others involving education, health, financing (microcredit), research and training.
“observe and investigate… only advise, not enforce” - Hemeed
Charles Correa
Urban Housing in the third world
I would just like to say how interesting and easy to read I found this article. Length aside, the article was clear, informative and brought up some really interesting points. The first interesting point I read was about the usability of the courtyard as is related to the heights of buildings. I thought it was fascinating to learn that because the climate of the area is extremely arid for 70 percent of the year a yard could be used as both a bedroom and a common area and a cooking area. However, when an extra floor is added to the previously one level home that courtyard can only be used as public space and a cooking area. The extra bedroom space is lost because of the lack of privacy. Progressively, the usability of the courtyard becomes less and less because of the increasing visibility of the courtyard. It becomes a semiprivate space discussed in earlier classes. But since it is not shared with the other members of a family, rather it is a new-fangled apartment complex with a shared outdoor space as public as if it were open to passersby. It is more effective to build one-story housing with smaller courtyards attached to them than massive housing complexes.
The second point I found fascinating in the article was the description of the third world architect’s role. Most of the time it was not an actual architect, rather a very experienced builder on site. How interesting that the architect is not really a designer but an expert of the building process and in using the local materials available. The architect knows what can be built in the space. He does not try to force his ideals and standards on a place. He uses only what is available to him—I think really he uses what s available with a slight adaptation to aspects of modern technological advances. This concept is so interesting because it completely negates the International Style’s use of the same materials and forms across the world in favor of local traditions and understandings of the society. It brings up and interesting dilemma between the compromise of new architecture in developing societies and keeping the architecture that has existed there for centuries while only modifying it enough to incorporate crucial structural and technological advances.
On Planet of Slums by Mike Davis, particularly relating to the phenomenon of urbanization without industrialization:
The following is an interesting assertion, which immediately took me back into the mindset of an economics undergraduate (back in 1997! … yes, I’m that old!):
“Some would argue that urbanization without industrialization is an expression of an inexorable trend: the inherent tendency of silicon capitalism to delink the growth of production from that of employment. But in Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and much of South Asia, urbanization without growth, as we shall see later, is more obviously the legacy of a global political conjuncture – the worldwide debt crisis of the late 1970s and the subsequent IMF-led restructuring of third world economies in the 1980s – than any iron law of advancing technology.”
IMF stands for International Monetary Fund – an institution which I remember studying in college in vague generality, meaning that is an organization which has moneys from member nations which are to be dispersed as loans to needy countries in order to alleviate, among other things, poverty, while promoting economic growth and employment. On paper, it sounds pretty wonderful – and I was somewhat skeptical of it being a fundamental cause of urbanization w/o industrialization and thereby slum urbanism. Then I took a closer look at what the IMF does to see the nitty gritty of how those laudable goals could, in implementation, cause harm – especially its “structural adjustment programs”, which is a nice name for the “stick” portion of the carrot and stick situation, e.g. : “Ok, [Impoverished African Regime], we’ll lend you this money if you make the following changes in your country’s economic institutions”.
Basically, as far as I can remember (or refresh my memory using wikipedia), the IMF requires that loan receiving countries stop artificially overvaluing or devaluating their currency in the world market – cause that’s generally considered pretty bad – even by those economists who aren’t that keen on pure free market globalism. Another thing that is required is that the debtor country must be more economically “liberal” … hence the term “neoliberalism”. Here are the wiki pages for neoliberalism, the IMF, and also an interview with the former head of the IMF who now thinks it needs reform for many of the reasons outlined in Planet of Slums.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Monetary_Fund
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1295/is_6_64/ai_62685319
Ok, I’m totally botching the part of my blog where I make a specific, well rounded, pithy point /observation/ hypothesis, so here’s my summary (especially aimed at those in class that are planning to write papers on third world architecture and housing for the poor):
The IMF, which gives out BIG MONEY as loans with “strings attached”, is most likely culpable in causing impoverished nations to scramble up their existing economic systems so as to cause more harm than good. This is a big deal.
I had start writing this blog maybe twenty times now and basically is very difficult for me to say or to see a worldwide reality with such a soft eyes (how we tend to do as architects) thinking that the problem can be solved with a couple of dwelling units and job opportunities and that this can change an entire city into a “global city”, but how said that leaving in a condo or in developed units with water and electricity is what makes a society fealty?; how about America, with thousands of people in welfare and housing programs and is from where the most “low, less educated, parasites” people comes from, so this tells me that sometimes trying to solve one problem is just the start of creating new ones because of the solution. This slums have in their ways an organization and an “urban grid” that is only read by those who really belong there, there are “roads” and an urban language that allows them to associate places with people, is a survivor scheme, is the language that “urbanism” cannot understand.
Seeing the pictures of Bombay and other cities in the world that share the same “language” that translate to me as poverty, my only concern as an architect will be the consequences that a natural event could cause to these weak infrastructure, but providing new housing and a new development in cities that more of the 75% of their urban density are slums tells me that the problem is on the level of education of the habitants and the most important one is in the corruption of those in power, leaving the people with no trust whatsoever in a system that has nothing left for their habitants except for the translation of their situation into business. I see slums as a representation of a different urbanization layout, is the result of a mass of people interested in finding “housing” and the development of itself creates a hall different system parallel to that one created by “urban society”. Reading the lecture of Correa and how he perceives the city and its development in order that the architect at some point needs to become the observer and learn from the locals and the ways they manage things because being locals give them the immense power of understanding their needs, so I’ll like to step back and see slums as a community that will develops as the society where their belong to advances, and their state is the consequence and face of chitty capitalism.
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