SCIBE. Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment. 2010-2013

SCIBE.

Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment | 2010 - 2013 | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World

www.scibe.eu

|

www.scarcity.is

ISBN 978-0-9541362-9-1. Published by The Bank of Ideas, London. Edited by Deljana Iossifova. Copyright © SCIBE and Authors, 2013. SCIBE is financially supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme which is co-funded by AHRC, AKA, DASTI, ETF, FNR, FWF, HAZU, IRCHSS, MHEST, NWO, RANNIS, RCN, VR and The European Community FP7 2007-2013, under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities programme.

THEMES OF SCARCITY Jon Goodbun, Jeremy Till and Deljana Iossifova, London Originally published in Architectural Design, Scarcity: Architecture in an age of depleting resources, 04|2012, p. 8-15

We are today, according to the UK government’s chief scientist John Beddington, facing a ‘perfect storm’ of social, political, economic and ecological dimensions.

The full extent and severity of our current conditions is yet to be determined, but one thing seems certain: our foreseeable futures will not be like our recent pasts.

Leading analysts of all the major resource domains – water, food, material resources and energy – tell us that our global industrial and financial models, based largely on the assumption of endless growth, are taking human societies to the brink of a series of chronic shortages and insecurities.1 Some of these are determined by real natural limits in terms of diminishing quantities of available mineral resources, ranging from metals (rare or otherwise) to oil: a condition often referred to as ‘peak everything’. Other scarcities are based upon the uneven management of naturally produced resources such as water, timber and food (both livestock and agriculture), often with a transfer of real metabolic value from the poor to the rich areas of the globe. Industrial economies are also externalising – in a generally catastrophic manner – all kinds of waste sinks, also typified by flows of waste from rich to poor regions.

Of all the mounting evidence, one of the most compelling is the Stockholm Resilience Centre’s notion of planetary boundaries.2 Of the nine the centre has identified, three have already been breached and three are close to the threshold. In all of these cases, existing systemic stresses are expected to transform and intensify in unpredictable ways as a result of climate disruption and ecosystem shifts.

Scarcity as a concept is a profoundly complex and indeed problematic term. We use it here cautiously, as a heuristic device, and as a means of grasping and collecting together a range of responses to the complex contradictions of our socio-ecological condition today, and the possible implications of these responses for architectural and urban design. Our intention is to address what urban geographer and political theorist David Harvey has described as ‘the environmental question’, defined as a problematic with simultaneously ecological, social, cultural and political dimensions. Harvey has noted that: ‘If you think that you can solve the environmental question, of global warming and all that kind of stuff, without actually confronting the whole question of who determines the value structure … then you have got to be kidding yourself.’3 He is calling for us not just to deal with surface effects, but the underlying causes. Scarcity is a term that bridges economic and ecological domains, and perhaps enables us to grasp something of this ‘value structure’.

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LIFE IN DEPRIVATION? LONDON’S OLYMPIC FRINGES

THE VIENNA MODEL OF HOUSING PROVISION IN TIMES OF AUSTERITY

Deljana Iossifova, London

The UK Government’s recent funding cuts are expected to hit some communities harder than others; in particular, deprived ‘communities’ are expected to suffer disproportionally. One such community is Bromley-by-Bow, once London’s most deprived ward. It is located on the Olympic Fringes, in-between central London, the Canary Wharf Estate and the site of the Olympic Games 2012.

The following sections tell of existing and emerging scarcities as they are experienced by residents and stakeholders in Bromley-by-Bow. The selected narratives portray transnational cultures of everyday life and how they are locally embedded in an area that is currently undergoing massive sociospatial transformation.

Andreas Rumpfhuber, Vienna Originally published in dérive, issue 46, January – March 2012, p. 4-5.

Dwelling – a basic need. Habitation – a human right. Social Housing – a struggle against misery and poverty since industrialization, bound to the socialist workers movement. Housing in general – a benchmark for wealth determining living standards in the welfare state. Advancements in the domestic sphere – desire production and its satisfaction in liberalized times.

Like her father, who was born in a house right next to the Widow’s Son, one of the few remaining pubs in the area, Ann was born in Bromley-by-Bow. Her parents’ home was demolished thirty years ago to make space for three towers of Council flats, and the Council assigned the family their current flat, a ground floor maisonette. Ann’s father spent his entire life working at Three Mills nearby. Ever since his death, Ann visits her bed-ridden mother on a daily basis. The rent for the 2BR maisonette she occupies is £490 per month. The kitchen has not been refurbished in thirty years - but otherwise, she says, the flat is in good order. »» There is no scarcity here. [...] The borough is not deprived; the people are. They live on benefits; ironically, they can afford more than I can.

Where Ann lives, a few blocks further south, Phoenix (Housing Association) has begun moving her old neighbours out and replacing them with new people: »» We’ve been together for 30 years; we’d celebrate Eid and Christmas together. Then, all my neighbours moved out because of the refurbishment. They offered them money and a house elsewhere. I was almost the only one in the building left for seven months, can you imagine! The new ‘affordable’ rents, at which they are offering the flats now, are not affordable for most. But people started moving in again. I can tell you, the newcomers do not care about where they live. They receive welcome packs – like in the development next door, they offer them a ‘buy four get five’ deal! It’s mostly Hong Kong investors that go for it. »» We used to have garages outside, sheds – they’ve gone. ‘Nick the bike and store it in the shed!’ – that’s what has been going on! They

Public & Social Housing in General Social and public housing once qualified as a means of intervening in society in order to achieve the equal distribution of ever expanding wealth in Europe.

Municipal housing, as well as state owned industry, restrictive regulations such as taxation on luxury and speculation and the stimulus of subsidies were the legitimate and broadly accepted tools by which to implement a social liberalist society.

Today, however, all these governmental tools and actions seem to be tired out and no longer accepted by a broader popular discourse. The labour class, which was at the core of the social democratic discourse on public housing, seems to have disappeared: dissolved into what are today called target groups: young families, senior citizens, single households, car-less collectives, etc.

In recent years, underpinned by the liberal discourse of Western industrial nations and in parallel with the advancements of the so-called financial capitalism1 that has led to the current financial crises, it has appeared that there is no acute housing shortage and no misery, and thus no need for public housing or subsidies any longer. With this development the individual subject was made to believe that they had sole responsibility for their good or bad ‘luck’. The state and municipalities could easily and without resistance outsource the housing question – that is to build affordable housing for all – and get rid of real estate in order to implement a lean administration and fill the supposedly empty city treasury.

In many European cities a traditional renters-market was and still is gradually being transformed into an exclusive owners-market. The pragmatic socialdemocratic attitude of reforming society towards a distributed wealth - which has, from the beginning, been strongly associated with the production of housing - has been replaced by a generally accepted impetus towards (reduced state intervention) less state and a wide-reaching austerity policy. Friedrich Engels’ position in his seminal text The Housing Question (1872)

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Ann, 60

Born in London, single, no children, university degree, employed part-time, annual income £10-15K.

A DESIGN BRIEF FOR THE REYKJAVIK CAPITAL AREA Arna Mathiesen and Giambattista Zaccariotto, Reykjavik

Contemporary global socio-economic conditions and climate change pose an uncertainty regarding future development of the built environment. Could good design protect inhabitants from economic crisis as well as the increasingly extreme climate?

An urgent shift towards different strategies for urban development, with an emphasis on retrofitting the existing inhabited landscape, to make it more resilient, is crucial. New spatial connections and programs at the level of the building, the block, the neighbourhood and the city can be identified, and alternative approaches can challenge the unfruitful processes of the past decade.

Reykjavik Capital Area RCA, consisting of seven municipalities, illustrates how the global economic climate in a boom can produce severe challenges for mobility, resource flows and habitation on the local level. The deadlock of rapid transformation (2000-2008), with the emergence of partly fragmented urban landscapes poses a burden for the environment and the local economy. The new (mostly residential) developments under construction in the 6 years before the crash represent ca. 25% of the footprint of the city. And they are located on the fringe where the city most clearly meets the elements.

Climate, soil and water represent potential and limitations for agriculture, build up, sea harvesting and forestry. Further knowledge about the local ecological potentials and their application in the built environment can provide insights into new opportunities: for closing the cycles of resource flows as near as possible to the bottom level and reducing the dependence of the RCA on external (from abroad or far away) resources.

To overcome the problems posed by the financial crisis and establish a green economy it is important to establish what exactly the potentials of the half-finished developments built with bountiful resources during the boom years are. From a broad perspective it would seem fair to argue that this should be done before new plans are proposed. Designers are specially trained to read and map opportunities and value increase where others might only see problems and garbage. Of all disciplines, urban design and architecture are equipped the tools to visualize alternative futures in the built environment.

We investigate challenges and opportunities in the Reykjavík Capital Area through the themes of dwelling, food, water and mobility.

FROM SCARCITY TO ABUNDANCE: SOCIAL HOUSING IN OSLO, 1945 – 1980 Barbara E. Ascher, Oslo

This paper explores how politics and product interact, using three case-studies of social housing provisions in the satellite towns of Lambertseter, Ammerud and Romsås on the outskirts of Oslo as built examples of housing policies within the Norwegian welfare state between 1945 – 1980.

Dwelling Co-living: On the level of the plot, the neighbourhood, the district. Flexible spaces, alternative forms of co-habiting and hybrid uses make dwelling more robust.

Social housing policies in post-war Norway Although Oslo was not as affected by the destruction of the Second World War as the northern parts of the country, where bombing and “scorched earth tactics” destroyed whole towns, the region faced a severe housing shortage.

The standstill of building activities during the war, a need for replacement of low quality housing, and a growing demand for homes brought about by the massive immigration into the Oslo region from rural areas resulted in a serious shortage of salubrious housing.

The shortage forced all political parties to actively address housing as one of their main policies, and encouraged the Norwegian government and municipalities to engage heavily in housing production. Housing, as a ‘social right for all’, thus became one of the key objectives of the emerging welfare state, and was promoted as a long-term solution for the nation’s security and prosperity.

Universalism, state benefits available for everyone, is a founding principle of social justice and social security of citizenship in Norway. Consequently resources that were invested by the welfare state after the war were not targeted only at the poor, but were meant to serve the needs of all people, independent of class. The notion of universalism was widespread throughout Scandinavia and is often referred to as the key characteristic of the Scandinavian Model, or social-democratic welfare state regime, gaining the reputation for providing wealth, equality, and democracy, described by Esping-Andersen in his seminal book The three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Esping-Andersen 1990).

Esping-Andersen emphasizes the strong relationship between the individual citizen and the state in a system of universal welfare provision. This became one of the guiding principles in the planning of new housing areas in the post-war period, which saw the introduction of collective facilities and public services as key elements that would ensure the creation of communities, which were not entirely based on family networks. This sociological objective supplemented the

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2 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

SCARCITY AND CREATIVITY IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT The SCIBE Collective Extracts from a research proposal, 2009

The aim of SCIBE is to explore the relationship between scarcity and creativity in the context of the built environment by investigating how conditions of scarcity might affect the creativity of the different actors involved in the production of architecture and urban design, and how a design-led innovation of the process could improve the built environment in the future.

We understand scarcity as a condition defined by insufficiency of resources (based on the etymological derivation escarceté, denoting an insufficiency of supply). Scarcity regulates action and behaviour, but not necessarily in a negative manner. We question the modern and Western understanding of the term ‘scarcity’ as the dialectic pair of ‘abundance’, implying that scarcity must be hidden or vanquished to achieve abundance – a position embodied in Sartre’s assertion that “the whole of human development, at least up to now, has been a bitter struggle against scarcity” (Xenos 1989, p35). As we have seen in recent times, an endless promise of growth and abundance will finally come up against the limits of capital and of the environment (Bookchin 2004, Jackson 2009), and so this project asks: what happens if we accept scarcity as a given condition to work with rather than a something to escape from?

The research starts with two premises: first that resources are necessarily limited, second that human well-being can still flourish within these limits. Scarcity is understood as a relative term that is regionally differentiated, so that insufficiency in one area might be seen as perfectly acceptable in another. Resources are understood to encompass cultural, social and economic conditions that affect the way we live in the world. Where human well-being in Western society is usually tied to notions of abundance and growth, our project, following recent work by economists such as Tim Jackson, posits that wellbeing might be achieved within conditions of limited resources, but that to do so one needs the intervention of a new forms of creativity.

The research is based on the analysis of housing projects and their urban settings in four different European contexts. Each case takes a particular view of scarcity, in order that we can investigate the various kinds of parameters that shape the construction of scarcity in different social, cultural, geographic, and temporal contexts. The built environment has been chosen as the context for the research because it expands the conventional aesthetic understanding of creativity to include wide ranging societal forces. All built environment professionals operate within limits, including local building regulations, site-specificity, material, ecological and economic constraints.

The aim of this project is to bring these limits, and the reasons for these limits, to the fore and frame them through the theme of scarcity. In so doing, we will examine when and whether scarcity overwhelms the operation of creativity by presenting a set of inescapable constraints, or whether those very limits stimulate creativity in different and potentially innovative ways. It is our objective to investigate not just the association of creativity with the objects that make up the built environment (buildings and the spaces around them) but also to investigate the processes that go into the production, materiality and occupation of those objects. By adopting a systems-led approach, we see creativity operating across the subjective, social and environmental registers of ecology (Guattari

1989). The project considers creativity in the context of scenario building and the design of innovative processes, and not simply in terms of the creation of innovative objects.

Research questions The project investigates the relation of creativity to scarcity by posing the question: How does creativity operate under conditions of scarcity?

In contrast to an understanding of scarcity as a threat to be avoided our hypothesis is that it is increasingly necessary to accept scarcity as condition to work within, and that this could be a potentially positive condition in which to re-evaluate the various roles and interactions of the client, designer, producer, and user of the built environment. We will start by investigating two possible responses to scarcity as an insufficiency of resources: (1) Reducing the use of resources.

Creativity is here centred on making more out of less, and of working with what one has. This is the traditional approach to scarcity. (2) Optimising existing resource cycles by working with what is there rather than by adding more. Creativity is here directed at intervening in the systems and networks that affect the production and use of resources. The significance of the research can be described in relation to a number of fields: Sustainability The received understanding of sustainability, while accepting the idea of limits, is still predicated on the idea of growth, economic norms and technical solutions. Thus the seminal UN report, Our Common Future, notes while “sustainable development does imply limits… technological and social organisation can be both managed and improved to make way for a new era of economic growth”, one that will make “development sustainable.” (Bruntland 1987, p8). The leading texts on sustainability in the built environment tend towards this technocratic view. In contrast SCIBE suggests that the response to limits is not merely technical or material, but places the production of the built environment in a much broader cultural context. As David Harvey notes where sustainability is often read as a means of supporting the status quo albeit with different tools and technical fixes, the acceptance of scarcity demands that we challenge the basic assumptions of availability, asking us “to change our views concerning the things to which we are accustomed” (Harvey 2001, p62).

The SCIBE project takes that challenge seriously and applies it to real conditions.

Scarcity The classic understanding of scarcity goes back to the foundations of liberal economic theory, in which scarcity is posited as a condition that must be overcome if growth is to be achieved, either through Malthusian control (Meadows 2004), the introduction of the threat of scarcity to fuel desire, or through the redistribution of resources. In all these guises, scarcity plays an ideological role which usually masks the real social construction of limits.

Within the process of design this role is often ignored or, worse, is perpetuated through the spectacle of ‘innovation’, so that the factors affecting the production of the built environment, under conditions of scarcity, are often obscured. In contrast, through the investigation of new and expanded forms of creativity, we seek to both discuss the ideology of scarcity and explain the reality of it.

Design Creativity is typically validated through formal and technical innovation. Through SCIBE we aim to expand this reified notion of innovation into one that, in the words of Ezio Manzini, “is more social than technological.” (Manzini 2008, pxii) Manzini argues that there are new roles for the designer as facilitator and empowerer of others, and that innovation finds expression in new social networks as much as in new products. SCIBE is original in developing this approach in relation to the production of the built environment.

Creativity Scarcity presents an original departure for the investigation of creativity for two reasons. First, creativity is often associated with originality and innovation, which in turn are seen as characteristics that denote progress; creativity can thus been seen as the handmaiden of progress. What becomes the role, therefore, of creativity when the notions of progress and growth are questioned?

Second, creativity has been historically associated with the unfettered muse, in which any constraint is seen as an imposition to creativity. More recent research into creativity suggests, however, that limits may actually spur creativity (Chua 2008). SCIBE develops this approach; the introduction of scarcity as a very specific set of limits will allow us to investigate creativity away from any views of it as a form of idealised or ‘free’ activity.

Relevance Our ambition is not just to research the theoretical and empirical dimensions of the research questions, but also to come up with clear pointers as to how practitioners and other actors in the production of the built environment might operate innovatively under conditions of scarcity.

The potential models of creative practice under conditions of scarcity are related to current preoccupations with sustainable urban development, and the way built environment professionals might engage with social and ethical issues through creative processes. In this, the proposal follows the suggestion in the call that studies of creativity should break out from a self-reflecting stance, and instead be more closely related to societal issues. Our approach moves beyond the more instrumental aspects of creativity (in terms of creating innovation as part of a system of economic value) and replaces it with ideas of resilience and optimization of existing networks; we do not presume to create new value solely in the neo-liberal sense, but seek to enhance existing values in terms of well-being and other less quantifiable benefits.

Because much of the research will be conducted on the ground in a bottom-up manner and against real parameters, it is expected that the findings will assume an immediate and practical relevance.

Our research concerns not just creative ‘experts’ but also a wider community of people involved in the production of the built environment, and therefore has been designed to have an impact beyond professional circles. The main outlet for these lessons will be the Scarcity Toolkit, which will be designed to be of direct use to designers and others by presenting solutions and suggestions, and illustrating them through the various case studies.

Working with a series of non-academic partners will give the conclusions a grounding which will make them relevant to wider audiences.

References Braungart, Michael, and William McDonough. Cradle to Cradle. NY North Point Press, 2002.

Bruntland, Gro. Our Common Future.

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987.

Chua, Roy, and Sheena Iyengar.

“Creativity as a matter of choice.” The Journal of Creative Behaviour 42, no. 3 (2008): 164-80.

Guattari, Felix, and Gary Genosko. The Three Ecologies. London: Athlone Press, 2000.

Harvey, David. Spaces of Capital.

Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 2001.

Jackson, Tim. “Prosperity without Growth.”

Sustainable Development Commission, 2009.

Manzini, Enzo, Stuart Walker, and Barry Wylant. Enabling Solutions for Sustainable Living. Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2008.

Meadows, Donella, et al. The Limits to Growth. New York: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2004.

Moll, Peter. From Scarcity to Sustainability.

New York: P. Lang, 1991.

Xenos, Nicholas. Scarcity and Modernity.

London: Routledge, 1989.

e

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3 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 1: Themes of Scarcity

as a chronic lack or shortage, scarcity is far from neutral or uncontested. Scarcity does more than describe an empirical account of natural and human resources; as soon as the term enters economic or political discourse, it takes on ideological forms – it naturalises and obscures the social and political aspects of resource allocation. Typical of this was Reverend Malthus’ attempt to argue it as an inevitable and natural condition, in which, in his case, projected population growth would outstrip resource development, leading to food shortages, hunger and social conflict. Carrying a strong appeal to ruling elites, Malthus’ ‘objective’ view singled out the poor as inferior and responsible for disproportionate population growth and prepared the ground for ‘scientific’ ideas and theories like Social Darwinism, eugenics and other deeply ideological programmes of population control.

Following Malthus, scarcity has been a central term of neoclassical economics,4 of attempts to theorise and describe what markets are and how they work. In this sense, it has been appropriated as a part of a form of knowledge that sees and reproduces the world in the terms of capitalist market economics and its priorities. For this reason alone the concept is rightly treated with much suspicion.

Interestingly, the term causes distress at both ends of the political spectrum.

Rightwing and libertarian thinkers hate the idea that limits can be placed upon development, and see the concept of scarcity as an attempt to introduce moralising attempts to restrict human freedom, specifically the freedom to do what we want with the non-human environment. Whatever one thinks of rightwing libertarianism in general, there is much substance to their claim (mirrored incidentally by many on the left) that any attempt to understand the order of things through the concept of scarcity always carries a hidden neoMalthusian content of limit and control.

The concept of scarcity also raises many different questions on the left, and not just because it is a key term in defining capitalist economics. The left has historically asserted that scarcity is produced by capitalism, and that the uneven distribution of resources is primarily a political question. But beyond that, some on the left have suggested that unlimited material abundance was the aim of their project: an overly simplistic position which often rejects any discussion of limits without a great deal of critical ecological reflection.

Scarcity most obviously throws up a challenge to received notions of growth.

If neo-Malthusian conceptions of limits defined by population growth have been thoroughly discredited, there remains nonetheless a resource-use question determined by economic growth: Can we really have continual growth on a fundamentally bounded planet? Capitalism is defined by growth, and cannot exist without it; we see around us today the hardship caused by low growth (not even no or negative growth). In order to understand the nature of this challenge, we need to comprehend the underlying forces at work.

Capitalist growth is driven by the inherent dynamics of an interlinked system.

Marx showed in detail how competition drives this process of growth, how competition necessarily means that an element of profit must always be reinvested as capital by companies in order to simply maintain their position in the market, in a process that necessarily ‘chases the capitalist over the face of the earth’. Others have emphasised the expansionary role of our particular form of money production. The global economy is dominated by a particular form of money: the debt that banks create in the form of interest-bearing loans. This form of money, as ecological economists such as Richard Douthwaite5 and the New Economics Foundation (NEF)6 have noted, feeds in important ways a dynamic that Marx identified in which more money must be constantly conjured into existence in order to pay back existing loans – a process that drives, in a thoroughly interdependent manner, both the spiralling quantities of global

debt and economic growth.

These issues concerning money and growth have entered the domain of sustainable design theory in recent years.

Work by think tanks such as the NEF has been widely promoted by design theorists such as Ezio Manzini (see pp 55-61) and elsewhere by John Thackara.7 Typically, these projects look at how grass-roots design might develop processes that generate new forms of money and exchange, such as time-sharing schemes and micro-financing. More broadly, urban and regional movements – notably the Transition Towns movement initiated

by Rob Hopkins (see pp 72-77) – have returned to explore the ways that developing new local currencies can facilitate the development of new ‘sustainable’ forms of economic activity. While many on the critical left scoff at such initiatives as just the latest wave of reformist confusion – and they are not completely wrong – there remains an important core to this particular strand of design research.

Indeed, the NEF’s Great Transition project remains one of the most provocative and far-reaching proposed reforms of the global banking system, seeing this project as thoroughly interconnected with the broader questions of resource scarcity contained herein. Some of these arguments are also developed in the economist Tim Jackson’s seminal work on achieving prosperity, both social and environmental, without growth.8 Most of the recent theoretical explorations of scarcity have pointed to its contested and constructed nature, arguing that it exceeds arguments of limits and situating it in a much broader political and economic framework. Thus the collection of essays ‘Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation’, edited by Lyla Mehta, concludes that: ‘As the contributors to the volume repeatedly demonstrate, there is plenty of food, water and energy on this planet to meet the requirements of a population that demographers project will peak at just below 9 million.’9 In this issue of AD, Tim Morton brilliantly argues that scarcity has to be seen as more than just a set of limits: ‘If we let go of limits, we also let go of the vague apeiron of infinity and embrace finitude: not as scarcity or as limit, but as coexistence in the disquieting flux of time’ (pp 78-81).

The main question that this issue addresses is what might be the effects of these constructions of scarcity on architecture and the production of the built environment. Does anything interesting happen when we ask about scarcity in the built environment? It can be argued that mainstream architecture, urbanism and design practices are complicit in, and indeed primary vectors for, the very forces that are causing conditions of scarcity; in the pursuit of growth and progress, resources are diminished, and in the entanglement with the market, architecture spatialises and materialises uneven development. This is shown most clearly in Arna Mathiesen’s article on Reykjavik (pp 94-99), in which she describes the extraordinary post-crash landscape in which scarcities bump up against the scars of rampant development. Edward Robbins, Christian Hermansen Cordua and Barbara E Ascher (pp 122-129) trace the links between social housing provision and economic growth in the example of Norway, and Andrea Rumpfhuber, Michael Klein and Georg Kolmayr (see pp 88-93) explore the role of scarcity in the case of housing provision in Vienna.

In recent years the dominant discourse for exploring problems and solutions to the question of limits has worked around the concept of ‘sustainability’. But, as has been increasing widely observed, this concept is deeply problematic: sustaining what? A modified form of existing consumer capitalism and the uneven and profoundly unjust power relations that it is built upon too often appear to be the real, if often unintended, agenda. Instead, we suggest that the challenges confronting us – if engaged with through the development of new ‘conceptual tools’ – have the capacity to completely reconfigure design practices in new, radically post-sustainable directions. Some of these tropes can be identified in the articles in this issue.

Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider call for a move away from the object and into issues of what they term ‘spatial agency’, and activist-inspired intervention into the processes of production (see pp 3843). Jody Boehnert argues that what she terms ‘ecological literacy’ is a necessary premise for understanding the complexity of the environmental conditions that face us (pp 34-37), and Steve Parnell asks us to learn from episodes in the 1960s and 1970s, when ideas of expendability came up against the realities of scarcity, in particular within the emerging ecological movement (pp 130-135).

Scarcity, in all its complexity, throws up new arenas for architects and designers to cope with that avoid the sometimes simplistic discourse of sustainability. Too often sustainability falls back on technical solutions in the belief that the technologies and industries that humans have already invented, let alone what might be developed in the future, are already more than capable of providing abundance for all. With architecture so often framed as a technocratic discipline, it is perhaps not surprising that responses to the perceived dangers of scarcity revolve around technical fixes. This is an approach that holds out the promise of escape while leaving the underlying conditions untouched.

But issues of scarcity, and in particular its ideological and very real construction, demand other forms of intervention.

Architectural, urban, planning and design research has – as we shall see in this issue – begun to suggest some new ways of operating: developing innovative forms of analysis of global flows and scarcities, new forms of ecological thinking that look at interrelationships, and design practices that are more socially activist in orientation.

Several authors in this edition – Kate Soper (pp 100-101), Alejandro Zaera-Polo (pp 101-113), and Daliana Suryawinata and Winy Maas of The Why Factory (pp 114-117) – raise the question of how we might socially redefine abundance. Of course this question has long been a topic within many traditions of the green movement, although often with a puritanical or nostalgic back-to-the-past aspect. Here, however, we find very contemporary questions that have also been addressed in other work by some of our contributors – notably perhaps in Ezio Manzini’s Sustainable Everyday research.10 Can we develop products and buildings that do not have a designed-in obsolescence? Can we develop local economies of repair rather than redundancy? Can we, in Theodore Adorno’s memorable phrase, imagine a society wherein objects ‘no longer suffer humiliation at the hands of men’11?

The global urban population now accounts for more than 50 per cent of humanity,12 and several of the pieces in this issue consider these questions at an urban scale. Michael Sorkin on New York (pp 102-109), Douglas Spencer in China (pp 82-87), Erik Swyngedouw and Maria Kaika in terms of urban metabolism (pp 22-27), Ulysses Sengupta and Deljana Iossifova on regional systems (pp 44-51), and Jon Goodbun reflecting upon Gregory Bateson’s advice to New York planners (pp 52-55).

A useful subset of urban dynamics are food systems, the intertwining of which with contemporary processes of globalisation and urban growth, has been well documented by Carolyn Steel in her seminal 2008 book Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives.13 The questions of food production and the problems associated have received a great deal of attention in recent years, and it is therefore no surprise that several authors in this issue are able to take on these questions as developed design research: Andre Viljoen and Katrin Bohn (pp 16-21) consider case studies from both Cuba and the US, and their own Continuous Productive Urban Landscapes (CPULs) initiatives, while the New York architect Michael Sorkin documents his radical new urban design research into the possibility of making New York a selfsufficient metabolism.

Such urban questions are so clearly at the nexus of so many problems that we face, and yet the tools at our disposal are so clearly inadequate to the task at

hand. As Einstein famously noted – and McDonough and Braungart begin to propose for design in their Cradle to Cradle manifesto14 – it is not a good idea to use the kind of thinking that caused a given problem to solve a given problem. This, then, is not an issue of AD that provides examples of solutions; deceiving ourselves about our real agency is a pathology that architecture needs to shake free of.

Focusing on asking questions through the term ‘scarcity’ does not provide any answers, but given the inadequacy of existing concepts active in thinking about the built environment, such as sustainability, it does allow some new ways of seeing what is wrong.

Our argument is that scarcity, whether conceived of as an actual limit on resources, or as a socially constructed condition of uneven social or global distribution of resources, has been largely absent as a critical concept in recent mainstream Western architectural and design discourse. This is perhaps not surprising: the architectural profession is set up to serve the needs of the global rich. Yet, the emerging conditions of scarcity are rich in possibilities for the design professions and design research. In 2003, the graphic designer Bruce Mau founded the Institute without Boundaries,15 based upon Richard Buckminster Fuller’s famous call for a new kind of designer, a ‘synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist, and evolutionary strategist’.16 Architects and designers face new challenges and opportunities, and in this issue we share something of Mau’s approach.

Architects as professionals often wait for commissions driven by others. In these situations we might expect them to be increasingly marginalised from decisions, or faced with design challenges regarding how to use materials more efficiently. But there are other possibilities.

At the very least, designers might solve problems using fewer resources. Better is to engage critically in the wider context of scarcity: articulating the existing uneven allocation of resources, finding a different kind of aesthetics, or using architectural and design techniques to raise a different discussion, one that cannot be articulated through dominant discourses of economics. Thinking through scarcity and design allows a reconsideration of how things are made, how they are distributed, how they are used, and what happens at the end of their use. We are compelled to design processes as much as objects, systems as much as brands.

Some papers, when read together, suggest a move beyond both scarcity and conventional notions of design and planning. Benedict Singleton (pp 66-71), Ezio Manzini, and Goodbun and Jaschke’s piece on new materialism (pp 28-33) and Goodbun’s piece on Gregory Bateson, all develop what might be broadly described as a new materialist approach, in that they emphasise the need to revisit the very possibility of design and planning.

Systems- and ecological-based analyses help us to identify the problems, but traditional forms of management that have emerged from these disciplines have often been vectors for the kind of centralised management models that seem so anachronistic today. There are other ways of approaching these questions, and Manzini and Goodbun both argue for a very different kind of approach, based in what Manzini describes as an errorfriendly design method, and Goodbun finds in Bateson’s critique of cybernetics.

We find ourselves, at the beginning of the 21st century, in a paradoxical world.

Our capacity to produce and meet all of our needs has never been greater, yet inequality and poverty abounds, and what we do produce all too often seems to diminish our long-term wealth. Thinking about scarcity in the built environment was an experiment, a test, an attempt to explore the different carrying capacities of existing concepts and their scope for grasping contemporary conditions. It is not at all clear that scarcity will ultimately prove any better a concept for trying to grasp the sheer extent of the problems and opportunities contained within the ‘environmental question’ broadly conceived than sustainability or any other recent

term. Indeed, our problem is precisely that we do not have a conceptual and critical language up to the job. The problem, certainly as far as the anthropologist and ecologist Gregory Bateson was concerned, is radically epistemological, in that ‘all of the world’s problems are the result of the difference between how nature works, and the way people think’.17 Given that, how best to proceed?

Ultimately this issue asks: If the homo economicus that is defined by capitalist conceptions of scarcity is defined as always wanting abundance, can post-sustainable and post-scarcity design imagine and project a different way of becoming human?

Notes 1. Of the many sources for this information on depletion, one of the most comprehensive is the ‘Ecological Footprint Atlas’, Global Footprint Network, 2010.

Available online at www.footprintnetwork.org

2. For more info on planetary boundaries, visit the Stockholm Resilience Centre: www.stockholmresilience.org

The three boundaries breached are: climate change, biodiversity loss, and nitrogen levels. The three close to the boundary are: ozone depletion, ocean acidification and land use.

3. David Harvey, Reading Marx’s Capital, Vol 1, Lesson 1. Video available online at www.davidharvey.org

4. For instance, Robbins’ famous definition that: ‘economics … is concerned with that aspect of behaviour which arises from the scarcity of means to achieve given ends.’ Lionel Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science, Macmillan & Co (London), 1932, p40.

5. Richard Douthwaite, The Growth Illusion, New Society Publishers (Gabriola Island, BC), 1992.

6. www.neweconomics.org 7. www.doorsofperception.com 8. Tim Jackson, Prosperity without Growth, Routledge (London), 2009 9. Lyla Mehta, The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation, Earthscan (London and Washington DC), 2010.

10. www.sustainable-everyday.net 11. Theodore Adorno, ‘Functionalism Today’, in Neil Leach (ed.), Rethinking Architecture, Routledge (London), 1997, p17.

12. Population Division of the Department of Economic and Social Affairs of the United Nations Secretariat, ‘World Population Prospects: The 2006 Revision’ and ‘World Urbanization Prospects: The 2007 Revision’: see http://esa.un.org/ unup

13. Carolyn Steel, Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives, Chatto & Windus (London), 2008.

14. William McDonough and Michael Braungart, Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way we Make Things, North Point Press (New York), 2002.

15. www.institutewithoutboundaries.com 16. R Buckminster Fuller, Ideas and Integrities, Prentice Hall (Engelwood Cliffs, NJ), 1963.

17. Quote from one of Bateson’s seminars, as cited in the film directed by his daughter Nora Bateson: An Ecology of Mind: A Daughter’s Portrait of Gregory Bateson, 2010.

Text © 2012 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

CONSTRUCTED SCARCITY Jeremy Till, London A Working Paper for SCIBE

In our original grant application we introduced scarcity as “a condition defined by insufficiency of resources (based on the etymological derivation escarceté, denoting an insufficiency of supply).” This immediately begs the questions as to what we mean “insufficiency” and what we mean by “resources”? This short essay will argue that because of the relational nature Continued on page 5 >>

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LONDON: PUTTING BROMLEYBY-BOW ON THE MAP Deljana Iossifova, London

Bromley-by-Bow, one of the most ‘deprived’ wards in London and in the UK, is located on the Olympic Fringes, in-between central London, the Canary Wharf Estate and the site of the Olympic Games. It is surrounded by highways and railway lines and is said to be characterised by high levels of unemployment, low income, poor health and overcrowded and substandard housing. Our work in the field focused on the experience and perception of scarcity among residents.

Work between 2010 and 2013 included photographic mapping, observation, (photo elicitation) interviewing and action research.

Groundwork We mapped Bromley-by-Bow before, during and after the Olympic Games to track the transformation of the area. Some of the created photographs served as the basis for photo elicitation interviews with residents and stakeholders during our interviewing stage. We also spent significant time observing selected sites, collecting field notes and drawings in order to capture and understand how public space is being used and which dynamic relationships between actors and between actors and the built environment seem particularly striking. We tested research approaches, techniques and instruments to find and improve appropriate strategies and tactics and established first links with community groups and organisations.

An informal round of derives (see the following articles by Claire Harper, Flora Bowden and Kate McGeevor) formed part of this initial approach to the site.

In a further step, we conducted qualitative interviews with participants selected for their first-hand knowledge about scarcity (and creativity) in Bromley-by-Bow, hoping to understand their perspectives, motivation and behaviour. In total, we approached 105 tenants and homeowners above 18 years of age in former council estates, estates undergoing redevelopment, private developments and individual, privately owned homes in Bromley-byBow. Findings from this initial study are summarised in “Bromley-by-Bow, 2012” on page 6 From this group of residents, we recruited 35 to take part in a participant photo study. This included asking them to photograph 10 conditions in their local area/home that they would like to see changed and 10 conditions which they would like to keep unchanged. We supplied them with SCIBE photo journals to help them keep track of their photographs. Some of the photographs, summaries of the stories and profiles of the people behind them can be found in “Life in Deprivation?

London’s Olympic Fringes” on page 1.

We organised two major events to help us develop our understanding of and approaches to scarcity in the built environment further: an architectural ‘competition’ (Scarce Times, Alternative Futures) and a Summer School for young plannnig professionals.

Scarce Times: Alternative Futures In collaboration with the Architectural Foundation, we developed a briefing document identifying some of the economic, cultural, social and environmental characteristics of Bromley-by-Bow and used this to launch an open Call for Collaboration in May 2012. This Call was aimed at individuals or teams, regardless of national, professional or disciplinary background, inviting them to develop creative responses to conditions of scarcity in Bromley-by-Bow. Four teams were selected in July 2012 for their aptness and originality (see Jeremy Till’s notes on page 14). Team Community Collabor-8 proposed to transform unused public space through a re-interpretation of scarcity; the team behind ‘BOOM Collaboration’, looking at the challenge from an urban metabolism perspective, assumed that Bromley-by-Bow will be in a coastal position by 2062 and proposed to transform it into a zero carbon transportation hub.

00:/alma-nac planned to reveal hidden resources in the ward and to strengthen the community by enhancing existing skills; and team ‘Bow-nanza’ proposed a platform to help residents in the area become self-employed entrepreneurs.

The teams were provided with the opportunity to draw on and contribute to the SCIBE research project and were invited to teach and coach young planning and design professionals during the third European Urban Summer School, hosted by the University of Westminster in September 2012.

European Urban Summer School The Third European Urban Summer School (Times of Scarcity: reclaiming the possibility of making) was organised in collaboration with AESOP, IFHP, ISOCARP and other European partners.

It saw around 80 young planning professionals and experienced practitioners and academics from across Europe and beyond come together in London in September 2012 to explore planning and architecture on the ground in Bromley-by-Bow and to propose appropriate responses – for the case study area in particular and for contemporary academic and professional practice in general.

TRACES OF SCARCITY Claire Harper, London

Taking the right-most path at the first junction, and then straight and then… a brick wall. The railway viaduct that delineates the western boundary of the ward was the first in a series of dead-ends.

Each blank-wall, locked gate and accessonly sign contributed to a feeling of the site as an island, physically separated and

accessed determinedly. The permeability anticipated in the free-moving pattern of the derive was not to be found. Thus, the right, straight- straight, left and left again pattern soon became a compromise, limited by restricted access and cul-de-sac moves.

1. Railway viaduct along western boundary of Bromley-by-Bow 2. ‘No Access’, ‘Residents Only’ signs on new apartments, outside of the site, but limiting access through the cemetery to the other side of the tracks.

The derive is organised for the purpose of beginning a conversation about the exposure of scarcity in the built environment. Scarcity of what, I wondered? It is not the custom of the derive to seek either particular spatial events, or symptoms of particular social causes, and even if I had tried, I would not have known what evidence to look for.

These findings therefore relate to the experience of the site as encountered on a very wet, 10th February 2011 and are framed as conditions of ‘scarcity’ where it acts to limit opportunity.

These scarcities are explored in relation to Michael Sorkin’s ‘Bill of Rights’; a covenant of twenty rights that he ascribes to residents of the hypothetical City. The rights establish a type of agency, describing freedoms that an individual should have.

The ‘scarcities’ that I have attempted to describe are a series of observed restrictions to these freedoms. Sorkin sets out twenty ‘rights’ in his Bill. My mapping refers to six of these; the right to privacy and non-participation including chosen anonymity, the right to free movement, freedom to live any chosen social arrangement with scope for individuation, the right to hygiene, and finally permanence.

The right to anonymity: Observing the communal garden area north of Devons Road the following encounters were observed and recorded. The maisonettes enclose a square which has a communal garden area. It is grassed, enclosed by a low-level hedge. It has benches and some trees. It prompted me to stop because for the first time I could hear voices. They were disturbing what became apparent as the absolute silence I had become used to.

Two men were talking over the fence, one had a dog. The silence was apparent because I could hear their conversation.

A few moments later a man arrived in a car. He went to ring the bell of the maisonettes, two other bells sounded, not quite in unison, but from the other end of the garden I could hear evidence of an encounter. The silence precludes the freedom of anonymity.

The Right to free movement: Physical barriers prohibit free movement. The barriers are all physical and robust, but their appearance is also a deterrent: Locked gate restricts access through the site to Devons Road station; barriers defend existing steel gate; gates to prevent unauthorised traffic.

The Right to live according to chosen social arrangement: Demarked territories suggest tensions over space, use of space and conflicting social and spatial practice: multi-lingual signs; the same building had four England flags displayed across the front; adjacent gardens - one very neatly maintained and fenced. The gravel bed on the left has garden lamps for uplighting the plants; neighbouring gardens completely disregarded.

The freedom to live according to chosen social arrangements might be limited by space. Overspill from dwellings is evident across the site, where balconies and private gardens are frequently used for storage. It may be a symptom of a shortage of space, over-occupation of the dwellings or inappropriate arrangement of space.

The right to individuation: Repetitive occurrence of the same gated panels, enclosing the communal stair wells signifies continuity (even monopoly) of ownership of the housing across Bromley-by-Bow. The screens are robust and utilitarian.

The buildings are ‘tagged’ – property of the Management Organisation.

Hygiene: The dumping of waste is unhygienic and prohibits other use of the space. No resident of Sorkin’s

hypothetical city should be confronted by the detritus of another.

The right to permanence: A large area of the site is shrouded in scaffold. Large signs declare that in 100 days, Bromleyby-Bow will be better because of these improvements. However, the upheaval is vast and the physical extent of the works is debilitating.

The works are a signal of change; they threaten residents’ right to permanence.

The experience is one of impermanence, transition and foreboding. The works are a consequence of, (amongst other factors), a transfer of ownership of the buildings. The tenancy of the residents does not supply agency sufficient to control or affect this period of change.

THOUGHTS ON A DÉRIVE Kate McGeevor

Scarcity in Bromley-by-Bow came in various forms: people, busyness, street life, noise (excluding construction), restaurants, places of entertainment or arts venues, shops and the variety of them.I arrive in Bromley-by-Bow the second time, by bus, which stops outside the Tesco superstore. A friend who works at the nearby Bromley-by-Bow Centre has recommended a visit to the Tesco, to see the community noticeboard inside.

While a supermarket might not seem the most obvious place to spot the ‘manifestations of scarcity’ with which I’m briefed, two examples appear immediately in the form of large empty noticeboards: there are no ‘Current employment opportunities’ nor ‘Healthy food tips’ on offer in Bromley-by-Bow Tesco it seems. What there is instead, on an adjacent board advertising items for sale, is an indication that all is not well in the local housing market; ‘We buy houses fast for cash.

Stop repossession now. Sale completed in 28 days. Completely confidential’ assures the handwritten sign. I wonder what price the houses sell for.

The community noticeboard that I’ve come to visit has more on offer, advertising local youth activities, bingo nights and – through the medium of photo montage - the ‘transformation’ of the Tesco Community Garden, from a rough grass verge on the side of the teeming A12 to a less rough grass verge labelled ‘work in progress’. Outside, I cross over the road to see the garden for myself. Mother nature has returned with her pitchfork and is reclaiming the space as her own.

What is striking as I walk towards Bromley-by-Bow is just how hard it is to get to. The A11’s slip roads knot with the Northern Approach to the Blackwall Tunnel, encircling the northern and eastern borders of Bromley and preventing all but the most determined of pedestrians from actually finding a route into the area.

Surrounded by the blur of traffic one can only imagine what it must be like to be the Church of St Mary’s (‘Bow Church’).

Despite finding itself surrounded on all sounds by automobility, the Church - founded in 1311 – still maintains an air of tranquillity in its small, well-kept graveyard. Further along the Bow road, a small grocers stands housed in the former Stratford Cooperative and Industrial Society. A beehive – a popular emblem of the co-operative movement – crowns the building. Further still, I pass the Bow Business Centre, whose website (revealed on returning to the office) boasts ‘secure private offices’ for small businesses. Not quite a hive of cooperating bees.

On the other side of the road, Bromley High Street opens out onto a desolate open space that looks no better in the winter’s sun than it does the rain. Built in the hope it would become a thriving centre of shops, the high street is resolutely a failure. A sign in one of the few shops that isn’t boarded up warns that police will be removing people from an area identified in the poster as a result of ‘numerous complaints about alcoholrelated antisocial behaviour’. The red outlined area which delineates this zone

matches almost exactly the pedestrianised area of Bromley High Street. Opposite the shop, four drinkers begin their day, cans in hands and dog in tow. A large Poplar Harca sign shows an artist’s impression of ‘Stroudley Walk as it could look from here’. No ‘will’, only ‘could’.

Heading south through the Devons Estate I remind myself again that my hunt is for scarcity and stop to consider the building site I have wondered into.

Signs apologies for any inconvenience caused. Looking around, it’s hard to see how any part of what is going on in the Estate could be convenient. The low drumming and high pitched screeches of saws, drills and hammers fill the air, builders swear into mobile phones or shout down from rooftops to workmates near the van, buckets full of cement, sand and tools block doorways and hallways, metal fences lie piled or propped, and green netting wraps buildings and drapes from scaffolds while skips occupy parking spaces. Inconvenience is definitely not scarce.

On my first visit, on a grey wet day, Bromley-by-Bow seemed lacking in colour but my second visit is brighter.

Blue boardings encircle spaces of redevelopment, pastels provide lowlights to new housing blocks (mint green or lilac wall panelling anyone?), and bright pink bins request recycling. High vis fluorescent jackets strut through the streets as yellow bin chutes snake from on high like the slides at the Rhyl Sun Centre. Yet for all this brightness, it is only in the grounds of the Bromley-by-Bow Centre and the neighbouring Kingsley Hall that I notice natural colour – purple and yellow crocuses peeping through the lawn. February is hardly a colourful month but there are few early signs of spring on show.

It is in the grounds of these centres that I really feel it is possible to connect with nature. (Tesco Community Garden doesn’t qualify). Green space, literally, is not lacking in Bromley-by-Bow but the manicured grass of the area’s few community gardens and parks, and the small tracts of tufty greenery that surround estates, give little sense of the truly natural. Houses seem to lack their own green spaces - front ‘gardens’ more often than not exist as brick drives, a patchwork of paving slabs or simply tarmac paths. Back gardens, when prevalent, remain hidden behind wooden fences, contributing little to the community’s natural beauty.

With the exception of the allotment gardens (off Devons Road), there are only a few signs of food being grown by residents. Walking along Grace Street, I spot a make shift lean-to supporting what look like vines, a small attempt to grow a food from a foreign clime perhaps. A woman passes as I take my photo.‘Mess init’, she says. »» Do you think so? What is it? I think they’re vines of some sort, aren’t they? »» Dunno, a right mess. Probably coriander or somet.

I recall my friend from the Bromleyby-Bow Centre telling me that the racial tensions in the area often emerge very subtly when talking to people, tensions that arise from a lack of social interaction between different groups.

At Rainhill Way, three blocks of flats tower over the area, like the before and after of a reality makeover show. It’s amazing what a bit of make-up and plastic surgery can do. I pass a ‘play area’, obviously created as part of the area’s regeneration.

A sign-writer (prone to erratic capitalisation) warns children not to bring ‘dogs, glass or Alcohol’ into the area, reminding ‘This is your play area, please help us keep it in good Condition’. It strikes me there are few areas for teenagers in Bromley-byBow, though the graffiti in one underpass I walk through does claim ‘drugs in here’.

Looking at the tarmacced play area, I can’t see why teenagers would hang out in here in the evenings. If they wanted a dark, concrete space, they’d be better off on Bromley High Street. At least that has a few sparse trees.

Continuing south along Violet Road, I pass swathes of new development that are a far cry from the Devons Estate. The vast new Caspion Wharf promises the ‘new height in luxury city living’, with a

5 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

collection of apartments and penthouses located in suitably exotic sounding blocks: ‘Adriatic Apartments’, ‘Aegean Court’, ‘Pacific Court’. I try to work out whether the residents of these new apartments will be able to look out over the estates of Bromley-by-Bow from their windows and decide they might not. On the bridge nearby, a plaque proclaims ‘This bridge was opened for the use of the public for ever by Walter Hunter Esq. on the 19th day of May 1890’. Looking up at the shell of Caspian Wharf, it’s hard to imagine a stonemason etching such a hopeful, long-term commitment to public utility nowadays.

While the literal definition of a dérive is a ‘drift’, drifting along anything other than the main roads and thoroughfares of Bromley-by-Bow is surprisingly difficult.

Both old and new developments maintain strong defenses; metal railings border houses and gardens, blocks of flats are guarded with gates and entryphones, while steps and walls separate streets and estates. Neighbourhoods are aggressively delineated rather than welcoming to newcomers and the lack of connection between neighbourhoods, the sense that even very small blocks of housing are private, cut-off spaces, is strong.

On the junction of Violet Road and Devons Road, a large red brick chimney watches over the Bow Enterprise Park, where a list on the entrance gates suggest much that is enterprising is afoot. I ask an elderly woman at a bus stop whether she knows what the chimney was used to be for. »» Thirty years I’ve been here, it’s always been here on its own. »» Do you know what it was for? »» No idea, they were going to pull it down. »» The chimney? »» Well the buildings over there behind it, pull them down, but I can’t believe it. They’ve only been there ten years. There [she points an empty-looking building opposite] used to be furniture… »» A furniture factory? »» Yeah, furniture. And down there [further down Violet Street] it was toffee, a toffee factory, and there, that’s where they gave them power, you know, Thatcher, to buy their homes. Half of them lost them in the end though. »» They lost their homes? [the bus arrives] »» That’s the story I’ve heard. There’s lots of good stories round here.

As an outsider, having spent less than a day walking round Bromley-by-Bow, it is difficult to comment on what is scarce, or how scarcity manifests itself, within the homes and lives of the people that live in the area. What I can do is to identify what my brief wonder left me feeling was missing, something that I can sum up in one word: connection.

Bromley-by-Bow is a fragmented place, lacking connections - or so it seems - of many sorts. A connection with nature, alluded to by existing public ‘greenspaces’ but amounting to little more than the opportunity to walk or play on a patch of grass, is scarce. A connection with neighbouring wards, cut off by planning decisions which have prioritised transport needs over the everyday needs of local communities, is also lacking. Strongest of all however, for me, was the lack of connection within the area itself. While racial differences and language barriers are no doubt at play, there is little about the built environment that encourages integration.

Gates, walls, railings, fences, steps, stairwells… At every turn it seemed that barriers marked where one building or block or estate began and another ended, with little to suggest that movement between them was encouraged or even welcome.

Opportunities for social connection, it seemed, are scarce.

THE BROMLEYBY-BOW DÉRIVE

By Flora Bowden, London

Scarcity in Bromley-by-Bow came in various forms: people, busyness, street life, noise (excluding construction),

restaurants, places of entertainment or arts venues, shops and the variety of them.

While abundance included: scaffolding, building renovations on some old housing stock, boarded-up windows on others, new ‘luxury’ flats, warehouse conversions overlooking the canal, HARCA signs (the housing association), satellite dishes, small, seemingly under-used green spaces, parked cars, train tracks and railway arches.

Another listing part of my derive process entailed logging the land use activities I encountered. Aside from housing, which was by far the dominant typology (usually blocks of flats, but rows of Victorian terraces too) the principle amenities I uncovered were betting shops, kebab shops and other fast food outlets, mechanics or car washes (often near or under the railways), a couple of cafes, newsagents, several churches, usually with community centres or nurseries attached, a few pubs and a few more that have been converted into flats. The dominant trend was towards very local, convenience shops and services. There was little sign of offices or places of work, (other of course, than Canary Wharf looming large nearby), and little evidence of attractions that might draw people into Bromley-byBow from beyond the ward limits.

The main exception to this is the St. Paul’s Way Trust School, possibly one of the last completed Building Schools for the Future projects, which surely attracts children from other areas of Tower Hamlets. Since its refurbishment last year the school has offered an art gallery and theatre, as well as football pitch and Internet café to its students and the wider community. The new bright white building stands in stark contrast to much of the surrounding residential architecture, and certainly promotes itself as a new community hub. The exact nature of its function as a community connector though, who uses it, when and how, remains unclear and requires a little more digging.

Similarly, a consensus among the London group seemed to emerge in the post-dérive discussion that we now knew much more about the material make-up of Bromley-by-Bow, but that we were still looking for further insights about the ways of life and activities of the inhabitants. Three broadly agreed group discoveries were: The scarcity of people Most of the group commented on a lack of noticeable activity and a quietness in the streets, an under-supply of posters for events or other signs of community life in the public realm. We know of course that Bromley-by-Bow is not at all under-populated: the borough of Tower Hamlets has one of the densest populations in London (642 domestic buildings and gardens per hectare). But to outsiders, newcomers to the area, there were few cluesabout that community life or where the residents were working, playing and gathering.

There is an excess of instructions on the public realm Rules and regulations seem to be nailed, stuck or painted on the many walls, fences and boundaries that demarcate private and public spaces.

Legislature about what is allowed and forbidden, what can be done here but not over there, maps out a topography of different activities and freedoms across the open spaces. While there are few posters to advertise local events, the walls feature often-permanent signs from the Council, Housing Association, private property owner or other individual with instructions or information about that space.

Most of the group returned with notes or photos of various such examples, ranging from the commonplace ‘No Parking’ or ‘Private Property’, to the more surprising ‘This is Art’ (on some objects not to be touched) and ‘Play Here’ instructing children to play and enjoy themselves in one area, but perhaps also suggesting not to do so in any surrounding area.

The strongest signs of life are often in the blurred boundaries of private and public space In and around the residential areas

– the stairwells or garages - there were suggestions of residents slightly spreading out and claiming small pockets of extra space for themselves. In the absence of seeing many people, evidence of them could often be found in the nooks and crannies around their homes, in the communal spaces or forecourts whose functions were not as clearly prescribed as the sign-ridden public realm. There was a trend within the group to take note of personal objects, such as a painting leaning against the outside of a house, or of evidence of care and craft, such as an ad-hoc vegetable patch cultivated in an apparent wasteland. These were the signs for the group of the communities that we were looking for; that we are hoping to work with and that we are would like to understand better.

How these points triangulate It seems that there could be a connection between the three findings and their relationship to different realms of urban space. The signs that instruct and forbid certain behaviours and activities clearly seek to limit the uses of the public realm.

Perhaps they do so so successfully that they have also removed or discouraged any other kinds of community activity to take place in Bromley-by-Bow’s public spaces.

The community life may have moved elsewhere, to within the homes, within the churches, the mosques, schools or pubs. And perhaps also, this strong imposition of legislature and regulation on the public realm has led people to domesticate, appropriate and manipulate the more ambiguous and less patrolled zones, to use their doorsteps, empty garages or communal gardens to make their mark on the city. Perhaps it is in these ways and in these spaces, with a little more room for manoeuvre, that we can witness the ways in which the population of Bromley-by-Bow are already creatively overcoming conditions of scarcity and adapting the built environment to meet their own needs.

How to continue We are now looking for ways to work with and understand more about the communities of Bromley-by-Bow. We already have some connections into the Bromley-by-Bow Centre, an innovative community organisation that is helping the local population address issues of health, wellbeing and employment, among others. And with the Council and Housing Association being responsible for 48% and 24.4% of the ward’s housing, respectively; work with these bodies will be vital.

But it will also be important to look for the informal social networks that exist, to understand the natural clusters and connections between people and how people currently feel and respond to their urban space. In the group discussion, the idea of impromptu drawing classes, or flashmob styled pavement drawing sessions were floated as a way of getting to know the local residents.

Two photographic projects sprang to mind throughout these discussions: Richard Wentworth’s Making Do and Getting By records the minor adaptations that people make to the city and hints of human life that have now moved on. As the Photographer’s Gallery wrote about his 2001 exhibition ‘It’s [the city’s] pavements are a “stage” for social activity, and its physical details, however fleeting, full of meaning about the nature of an urban society - and what the individuals within it, own, do, make and improvise.’

Artist Gillian Wearing’s photographic series Signs also investigates the cityscape, but focuses more directly on the individuals inhabiting it and quite literally draws out from them their thoughts and feelings to reveal them to the audience. The full title is in fact Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say, which maybe says enough. It is a way of finding out what citizens are really thinking and feeling, and perhaps in Bromley-by-Bow, could be a lesson for how to deeply engage with the community and their opinions of scarcity.

<< Continued from page 3: Constructed Scarcity

of these terms, we need to move from an assumption of the inevitability of insufficiency, and at the same see resources not as isolated commodities, with an inevitable slide towards their exhaustion) but as part of a complex network, or political ecology. As soon as scarcity is released from its classical attachment to stuff (and the exchange of stuff ), then the target of creativity is shifted from the object alone to the social and political networks within which that object exists.1 Relative Scarcity At the start of this research project, one of our team, the anthropologist Ed Robbins, told the story of Australian aborigines, who exist – nay, prosper - on what westerners would consider an insufficiency, but is for them an abundance.

Although their access to material, edible and instrumental resources is extraordinarily limited according to western expectations, it still allows them to open up to an astonishingly abundant set of mythical and human horizons. So, we immediately confront the issue that scarcity is not an absolute term. Scarcity only makes sense in relation to the context (physical, material or conceptual) in which it is found: it is a restless term that always resists being held within a fixed frame. This presents any project about scarcity with a problem.

If scarcity is a moving target, what is one aiming at? Or to put it more firmly within a well-known philosophical frame, if scarcity is relative, how does one avoid the charge of relativism? The charge, which comes most trenchantly from the camp of reason, is that if everything is relative, how does one make certain judgements? Thus, if scarcity is always relative, how does one make choices against it, or indeed if it worth making choices give that the context is so fluid? This presents a particular problem as a research project, because if scarcity is indeed relative to its temporal, spatial and cultural contexts, does this mean that research into it is necessarily flawed, because any analysis is simply contingent on a particular context and any wider lessons become impossible?

It is necessary to answer these questions if only to avoid the potential of endless deferment that might arise out of the “one man’s scarcity is another person’s abundance” argument. The first answer comes from a challenge to reason’s dismissal of relativism. It is in the nature of reason to set up its own self-fulfilling logic, and anything that stands outside this frame of reference is found wanting. The circle of reason cannot admit to anything else and so expels the relative.

“Anything goes, means nothing matters”, says the rationalist, “if you cannot accept reason, you must be irrational.” It is easy enough to undermine the circle of reason by pointing to its self-constituting nature.

“I must be right, because I have defined the terms of that rightness,” is not a sentiment that stands up to prolonged scrutiny.

However, the critique of reason does not get us to a firmer understanding of the relative, though it might move us on from the charge of relativism. As I try to argue in Architecture Depends, just because the world is contingent, this does not imply we must deal with it contingently – as if anything goes.2 Quite the opposite: the contingent world, in which scarcity is so clearly placed once it is not seen as absolute, needs to be addressed with intent; it demands that intentional choices be made, which is different from the socalled modern world, in which rational choices are presumed to be determined by the prowess of reason or technological progress. As the political theorist William Sewell notes, this recourse to the assumed authority of “rational choice” is a central plank of neo-classical economics, with its underlying claim “that all social relations are determined by choice under conditions of scarcity.”3 It does take more than a glance at the recent economic turmoil to understand that far from economic choices being made by the individual within a supposedly rational framework, they are in fact overseen by the invasive ideologies of the free market. This suggests that

under conditions of scarcity, rather than leaving choice to the runes of reason, we have to be intentional about the choice, but to do that we have first to be clearer about the underlying construction of scarcity.

The Paradox of Scarcity This apparently simple conclusion, that scarcity demands intentional choice, may begin to hint about how to deal with scarcity (of which more later) but does not really help us define what it is. The modernist solution is to define scarcity in terms of its other: typically scarcity is paired with abundance and as in any dialectical pairing, each term haunts the other. Abundance is the handmaiden of progress, whereas scarcity sets limits that upset all the hopes of growth that the project of modernity promised.

Scarcity, as the spectre of abundance must therefore be vanquished. But at the same time, scarcity is needed, exactly in its role as spectre, especially within the system of capital that modernity invoked. As Marx identifies, scarcities are produced by capitalism as stimulants to consumption. As Jon notes in one of our earlier discussions “those in the system who own and manage these (material) flows have a vested interest in maintaining scarcities.”4 Scarcity is necessary to capitalism in terms of establishing the basis of the market, whereas true abundance is a threat to the market in terms of overwhelming the market. This is the paradox of scarcity; one can’t do with it, one can’t do without it. So when I used the term “restlessness” above this was not in innocence but in homage to Marx’s identification of the restlessness of capital as it continually shifts to exploit new opportunities, and with this manipulates scarcities. Again, we are left without an absolute, even a firm platform, against which to ground scarcity. The dialectic with abundance is not so neat, but rather paradoxical in the extreme.

This paradox tends to confuse, purposely, the reality of scarcity with the ideology of scarcity. There are real scarcities, with real and profound human consequences, but the ideology of scarcity in its twinning with abundance holds out the eternal promise that there are endless ways escape those conditions, “promoting the false consciousness that we can extract as much as we want from the planet.” Even in conditions that appear to set specific limits against which scarcity can be measured, there are always connections to other systems that provide an escape from the limits. Take, for example, water scarcity.

The lack of water in sub-saharan Africa is a real condition: people die because of this scarcity. But there is always a counter position in the form of potential solutions (the provision of wells, of standpipes) that offer the promise of a resolution to this lack and just this promise alone allows others to diminish the consequences of what is a very real scarcity for those directly affected. So our first task must be to disentangle the reality of scarcity from the ideology of scarcity. In its latter guise it “naturalises (it makes obscure) the social component of the limits of these [resource] flows.” This means that any discussion of scarcity must be framed in terms of its social construction and the way that scarcity is “produced”, because only thus can one unmask it ideological constitution.5 The Scarcity of Stuff By situating scarcity in the context of its social construction, we avoid the trap of simply associating scarcity with stuff – a trap that I fell into with the mention of wells and standpipes. The scarcity of stuff is problematic for two reasons. First because stuff can be seen as neutral and thus removed from ideological or social attachments. Second lack of stuff can be dealt with the provision of more stuff, but this does not necessarily solve the underlying problem. So, for example, the solution to hunger – the lack of food – is not best provided by food aid. Indeed, as the authors of The Scarcity Fallacy note, the presentation of hunger in Malthusian terms of lack of foodstuff perpetuates as myth of scarcity that avoids dealing with Continued on page 7 >>

6 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

BROMLEY-BY-BOW, 2012 Deljana Iossifova, London

This report summarises results from interviews with 105 residents in Bromleyby-Bow, conducted in 2011/2012 to help us understand how they live and how they perceive their living environment.

Why do people move to Bromley-by-Bow? The most frequently mentioned reasons for people to live in the area were (in this order): »» Housing in the area was assigned by the Council. »» Good transport links. »» Bengali community. »» Close to work. »» Relatives live in the area. »» Close to mosques. »» The area is quiet. »» Close to schools. »» Friends live in the area. »» Born in the area.

Our Sample Gender: Two thirds of our interviewees were women (66.3%). Age: Most were between 21 and 33 years old, followed by those between 34 and 59 years old. (See Fig. 01)

Figure 01 Source: SCIBE

Figure 02 Source: SCIBE

Figure 03 Source: SCIBE

Figure 04 Source: SCIBE

Figure 05 Source: SCIBE

Figure 06 Source: SCIBE

Figure 07 Source: SCIBE

Figure 08 Source: SCIBE

Figure 09 Source: SCIBE

Place of Origin: Only about one quarter of our interviewees were born in the UK. The majority was born in Bangladesh (59.6%), with 38.5% of all participants originating from the Sylhet region in north-east Bangladesh. (See FIg. 02) Marital Status and Children: An overwhelming majority of our respondents were married (60.6%), followed by single people (29.8%). Only very few were living together with their partners without being married, were separated or widowed. Two thirds of all participants had children.

(See Fig. 03) Education: In contrast to expectations based on the Census 2001, about one third of the people we interviewed were college or university graduates. Another big proportion had attended secondary school and/or achieved their A levels or equivalent. About 11.5% had only attended primary school. Employment: The majority of those we spoke with were unemployed and not seeking work - it should be noted, however, that this group was constituted almost exclusively of female homemakers of Bangladeshi descent. Two fifths of our respondents were employed either full- or part-time, and another fifth consisted of students and pensioners. Only 7.7% were unemployed and seeking work. (See fig.

04) Benefits: About two thirds of our respondents received some benefits, and about 40% of all residents we spoke with received housing benefits. Income: Annual household income for a large majority of our respondents (46.3%) amounted to less than £10,000, followed by those on less than £20,000 (29.5%) and less than £30,000 (12.6%). (See Fig. 05) How do people live in Bromley-by-Bow? Safety: Fifty-nine per cent of our sample reported that they felt safe in Bromleyby-Bow and that they did not avoid any particular areas during the day or at night.

Of the others, many stated that they felt unsafe after dark (especially on Devons Road and Bromley High Street - places they said they avoided after dark because of gangs, drugs and drunks). A few felt insecure when they had to use (one of the many) underpasses; they felt that CCTV did not contribute much to safety in their neighbourhood.

Tenure: Three quarters of the people we interviewed lived in flats, followed by those who lived in terraced houses (21.2%). Almost all residents (85.4%) rented their homes – mostly from the

7 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 5: Constructed Scarcity

Figure 10 Source: SCIBE

Council or a Housing Association. Less than 15% owned or leased their homes.

On average, people in our sample had lived 8.5 years in their current accommodation. They spent between £0 and £1,650 per month on their rent or mortgage (£622 on average), and between £0 and £600 on a room per month (£192 on average). Those letting from the Council or Housing Association paid approximately £475 per month (often assisted by housing benefits) on average; those letting from the private market paid £1,040; and those who were paying back mortgages spent approximately £764. Per room, the respective numbers were approximately £145 (Council); £132 (Housing Association); £360 (private market); and £220 (mortgage).

Overcrowding: Fifteen per cent of our respondents shared accommodation with people they were not related to. Only 10.6% lived under overcrowded conditions. We calculated overcrowding using Shelter’s simplified people/room recommendations (1 room = 2 people; 2 rooms = 3 people; 3 rooms = 5 people; 4 rooms = 7.5 people; 5 or more rooms = 2 people per room), and did not take into account room sizes.

Transportation: Of the people we interviewed, little over 50% had access to private modes of transportation, such as a car (41.3%), a motorcycle (1.9%) or a bicycle (17.3%). More than four fifths of our respondents stated that they walked and used the bus frequently; almost three quarters used DLR and tube; and only 13.5% used a bicycle.

Bike-sharing and car-pooling were not at all popular, used by only 1% of our respondents, respectively.

Eating Habits: More than 91% of the people we spoke with ate outside of their homes, more or less frequently, and a little less than three quarters ate (mainly) fast food. About 21% ate out once per month; about one third ate out once a week; and almost 31% ate out two to six times per

week; almost 7% on a daily basis. Most often and in this order, they ate fast food, Indian and Bengali food, chicken and chips, Chinese food, pizza, in a ‘proper’ restaurant (only 7.7%), Italian food, and kebab. (See Fig. 06) Participation: More than half of the people we spoke to (almost 54%) stated that they never took part in community events. The majority of the others did so once a year (16.3%) or once a month (18.3%). (See Fig. 07) Decent Homes Standard?

Ideal Homes: Surprisingly, only about three quarters of the people we interviewed stated that every member of the household should have a room to her- or himself – or that every child should have their own room. On the other hand, a sitting room, to be used exclusively as a sitting room, was very important to almost all participants. More than 90% of people agreed that corridors, stairs and walkways should not be used for storage (and complained about the lack of sufficient storage space in their homes) and that kitchens are important and should be spacious.

Kitchen: Perceptions regarding the own housing differed across different tenancy types: for instance, only 17.4% of people renting from Housing Associations found that their kitchens were not reasonably modern - compared to 44.8% of those renting from the Council, and 35.3% of those renting from private landlords. (See Fig. 08) Noise Insulation: Across the sectors, almost half of the people we spoke to were not happy with their homes’ insulation against external noise. (See Fig. 09) Thermal Comfort: Almost one third of those renting from Housing Associations were not happy with the degree of thermal comfort (effi-cient heating and effective insulation) in their homes - compared to about one quarter of those owning their

homes, renting from private landlords, or from the Council.

Fuel Poverty?

Around 83% used gas as the main form of heating their homes. While ‘only’ around 40% of tenants who rented from the Council or Housing Association, or the private market stated that they sometimes use less energy than they need because of their energy bills, 73% of the homeowners we spoke to felt that they had to restrict their energy use because they were afraid they would not be able to afford it. In total, however, only less than half of all of our respondents were worried about their energy bills.

Perceptions of Availability of Neighbourhood Facilities Education: More than one third of the people we spoke with could not think of a secondary school in the area.

Public: Two thirds were not aware of a public library in walking distance, and almost half could not think of an adult education centre nearby. One quarter did not know of a nearby community centre.

Shopping: Whilst most did not miss a convenience store, speciality store or supermarket in walking distance (with a big Tesco and Chrisp Street Market just a short walk away), more than 60% stated that there were no community farming/ organic box schemes or a farmers’ market to buy fresh food in the neighbourhood.

Food: There seemed to be no demand for further cafes/coffee shops or fast food restaurants (fish and chips and chicken and chips, in particular, were there in abundance). However, ‘proper’ sit-down restaurants in walking distance were hardly present - and almost 90% of our respondents said that there was no street food available in Bromley-by-Bow. (See Fig. 10) Acknowledgements: Ms Farjana Islam (University of Edinburgh) has assisted with interviews and translations. Ms Sear Nee Ng (University of Westminster) has produced the graphs.

the real causes, namely inequitable distribution, poverty and other inequalities.6 Hunger is real; scarcity is not. Thirdly, by associating scarcity with stuff, it is always possible to suggest that the solution to the particular scarcity can be achieved by technological advances. A clear manifestation of this is the rhetoric, particularly of the technocratic right, is that the crisis of peak oil – if even accepted – can be addressed by as yet undiscovered technical fixes either in the form of new means of exploration or else alternative energy sources. The issue with all of these three is that they do not uncover the constitution of the very scarcity in the first instance.

In the field of the built environment scarcity is nearly always associated with stuff (including carbon) and the reaction is accordingly limited to material and technical fixes. Not enough oil: answer more insulation. Running out of copper piping: answer use plastic piping.

Creativity in dealing with scarcity is thus invested solely in the design of innovative form, techniques and materials. Even the more developed environmental theories, such as Cradle to Cradle, concentrate on material flows, and in their generally technocentric approach avoid a confrontation with the social (while being full of social worthiness) – hence their easy appropriation by the corporate sector where those material flows become things to be commodified.

The discussion of scarcity in the built environment is thus generally limited to issues of actual scarcity, which may be defined as the condition when demands exceeds supply on an ongoing basis, leading to ever-diminishing stocks. The actual moment when this condition is defined as ‘scarcity’ is not fixed, but as long as there is the prospect of an actual limit, the state of scarcity exists and must be dealt with. The most obvious example is peak oil and the diminishment of other forms of natural resources. Simple lack – say of rain in a desert – does not constitute an actual scarcity, because it is not set within the context of an eventual limit. It is clear that we have to address actual scarcity, but need to do so in a manner which avoids seeing each condition in isolation, because that turns limits into spectres – as David Harvey notes: “The invocation of ‘limits’ and ‘ecoscarcity’ should, therefore, make us as politically nervous as it makes us theoretically suspicious.”7 The typical response to actual scarcity is to reduce usage of materials and energy (this is the basis of much ‘green’ architecture), but this does little but to delay the fateful moment whilst still draining resources.

It is an attitude embedded in that terrible, and terribly accepted, Bruntland definition of sustainability, which effectively says let’s try to keep going as we are.8 So instead of seeing actual scarcities as everdiminishing buckets of stuff, they have to be seen in relation to other networks and resource flows, and one’s creative intervention is not in rearranging the contents of the bucket, but in designing new processes that divert and optimise the resource flows and changes values and modes of behaviour, thereby understanding stuff in its social context.

A good example of this was an intemperate exchange at my first presentation on scarcity, when a member of the audience basically dismissed our whole project at a sweep, along the lines: “you architects do not know what you are talking about, there are no scarcities in construction materials, it is the land of plenty out there.”

To which I replied: “Not in steel, where a massive diversion of resources to feed China’s urban boom has left a relative lack in the West with greatly increased prices, and the sudden draw on Brazil’s natural resources which has inflated prices there.

And not in cement, where the need to create an abundance of it has lead to its manufacture contributing 5% of all global greenhouse gases in any one year. And not in Indonesia, where the combination of the destruction of the rainforests and the continuing demand for hardwoods – legal and illegal – has meant the collapse of

vernacular building methods which were based on timber.”

“But those are just side effects; it doesn’t mean that there is a scarcity”… which in a way proved my point if he were to look outside the loop of scarcity simply defined in terms of resources, because it is the side effects that are exactly the signal of the relational nature of scarcity. Despite all the claims of the Neo-Malthusians, scarcity is not a natural or inevitable condition, but one can only reach this conclusion once the social and political production of scarcity has been unpicked.

Associating scarcity purely with stuff is thus going to be restrictive, and hence our original use of the word “resources” is not inclusive enough, suggestive as it is of a pot of something to be drawn upon.

Instead, stuff – the non-human – must always be situated in the context of the human in order to understand the scales of scarcity. If this sounds very Bruno Latourian, it is. The modernists say: “Let us not mix up heaven and earth, the global stage and the local scene, the human and the non-human.” Latour says “We have never been modern!”, and with this delves into the heady mix human and nonhuman. The task is to see stuff embedded in social networks, so that scarcity is never seen as part of an isolated condition of “insufficiency of resources.” To do this we have to return to its social construction.

The Construction of Scarcity William Sewell places scarcity as part of a triad made up of power, meaning and scarcity: “we must imagine a world in which every social relationship is simultaneously constituted by meaning, by scarcity, and by power.”9 As Sewell notes: “the discursive features of social relations are themselves always constitutively shaped by power relations and conditions of choice under scarcity…this constitutive shaping is reciprocal – just as meanings are always shaped by scarcity and power, so scarcity is always shaped by power and meaning and power is always shaped by meaning and scarcity.”10 This chimes with the sense of scarcities being constructed, a term that refers to scarcities that are very real to the people affected by them, but not real in terms of the underlying conditions; the previous mention of food scarcity is a good example. Scarcities here are constructed, either intentionally or through an imbalance of systems. Intentional construction of scarcity occurs most obviously through the free market where resource flows (of money, water, commodities, etc.) are manipulated to create scarcity contra abundance. Scarcity is also constructed through regulatory frameworks which attempt to limit - activities, expenditure, time, etc. - often with good particular reason, but without sight of the interconnectivity of limits which, when accumulated, tend to shut down opportunity.

Imbalances in systems also construct scarcity, though not necessarily intentionally, typically through uneven distribution of human and non-human resources.

Thus, for example, in any given city there is probably a surplus of available space, but the distribution of, and access to that space is locked up in systems of ownership. Constructed scarcities appear most clearly in supply chains and life cycles, where the prioritization of one set of flows leads to unnecessary scarcities elsewhere.

So, in the construction industry there is a scarcity of new materials but an abundance of recyclable materials – the latter largely diverted to landfill – but because of aesthetic niceties, supply chain mechanisms and constructional norms, the two flows are kept apart.

Dealing with Scarcity It seems to me that creative energy can be expended most productively within the context of constructed scarcities. This is for two reasons. First because these scarcities are not relative (in the sense of being open to multiple interpretations) but rather can be understood in terms of their construction. This gives one something to kick against, by intervening in these forces of scarcity construction. As Continued on page 9 >>

8 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is Left: Population density in Bromleyby-Bow: 5x the national average.

Source: DS9 Self Made Self Build, University of Westminster.

Student: Hanna Khorshidian.

Opposite, from top to bottom: The Widow’s Son is one of the few remaining pubs in the area. © Ann, SCIBE Existing open space is substituted with new construction. © Ann, SCIBE Homes for the future. Banner outside Claire’s home. © Deljana Iossifova.

After refurbishment: mould covered wall in Claire’s hallway. © Claire, SCIBE

9 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 1: Life in Deprivation?

discovered whole fortunes in those sheds… I guess they will put up a playground for the kids now.

Ann owns a car, which she frequently uses. She walks a lot and uses the DLR – her lifeline, as she calls it. She knows Bromley-by-Bow very well and regrets the lack of a public library in the area, for instance: »» This takes away community. Tower Hamlets have promised to keep their green spaces, but they have sold off their buildings.

They even moved out of one Town Hall buildings. The day care centre is moving… There are many examples.

Ann does not know of an adult education centre, farmers’ market, speciality store or proper sit-down restaurant in walking distance from her mother’s home. Canary Wharf, for her, seems like the only place to go and have a coffee. »» Sure, there’s the Fern Street Settlement.

They offer activities for the elderly – like taking them to the big Tesco for their shopping. Tesco arrived 30 years ago, and there really is not much competition. Stratford and Chrisp Street market, that’s it. But yes, there’s the LINC Centre for the young and Fern Street for the elderly.

Ann is involved in community activities of all sorts. For instance, she is a local recycling champion: »» You know – they filmed me four years ago doing food waste! It is important that we recycle. Tower Hamlets sends food waste to Kent where it is burnt and made into compost.

She is also a resident inspector for Poplar HARCA, the local Housing Association, and takes part in meetings up to four times per week. Some years ago, residents in Bromley-by-Bow were asked to vote whether they wanted their homes to remain with the local Council, or whether they preferred Poplar HARCA to take over the housing stock. Most leaseholders voted against the takeover.

According to Ann, this was due to leaseholders having to contribute financially to Poplar HARCA’s work and the refurbishment of building stock. At any rate, leaseholders were not even allowed into the second voting, which turned them even more against Poplar HARCA. »» To be honest: I wouldn’t trust Poplar HARCA, but they are still slightly better than some! They made 97 local offers – and did it before they even had to. They really met some of the offers!

Claire, 47

Born in London, single, two kids, completed secondary school, unemployed (seeking work), receives benefits.

Claire had moved to Bromley-by-Bow six months earlier because she had lost her job and was unable to come up with the rent for her flat. Now, she lives with her sister in a 1BR flat owned and recently refurbished by Poplar HARCA. They spent only about £20 per month on the rent, the rest is paid for by housing benefits.

Claire does not own a car, a motorcycle or a bicycle; she usually walks or takes the bus. She is not aware of a nursery, kindergarten or secondary school in the neighbourhood; nor does she know of an adult education centre. She does not know of an urban farming/organic box scheme, a farmers’ market, restaurant, or street food. Claire only eats out about once a week, usually on Friday (payday), and treats herself to some Bengali food.

She disagrees with the statement that the kitchen should be spacious.

Although there remain serious mould and damp issues after the recent refurbishment Claire seems happy with most aspects regarding the flat. She stays in most of the time, watching TV in the sitting room and smoking cigarettes. About once a week, she takes part in a training course organised for the community. At night, she and her sister sleep together on a mattress on the floor of the sitting room.

They both have problems breathing in the bedroom – the walls and ceiling have become overgrown with mould.

Continued on page 10 >>

<< Continued from page 7: Constructed Scarcity

Dougald Hind notes: “this is not to deny the force of material conditions, but it is to say that - most of the time - there is social and cultural room for manoeuvre.”11 Second, because that construction is both social and physical, and this places the designer in the broader field where I have argued elsewhere they should be located– not just fixated with the manipulation of stuff for stuff ’s sake, but engaging with the processes, flows and politics of how stuff is produced.12 Quite how this may achieved within present limits of creative design tactics will be the subject of another working paper, but for the time being I want to end with a slight warning.

In writings from both left and right, then is sometimes a sense that scarcity is inevitable and inescapable, and so leaves no room for manoeuvre. On the left, the brilliant analyses of the political ecologists often leaves one with a sense of helplessness, as if the knot of the construction of scarcity is so tightly tied that it leaves no space for intervention.13 On the right, as Iain Boal so clearly argues, scarcity has been used too long as a fear mechanism to impose power and unequal distribution, and done so in manner in which the imposition of power is so forceful that individuals are left with no choice or means to escape the condition of scarcity.14 My way out of these apparent cul-de-sacs lies in the notion of critical agency. As both an optimist with a belief in the efficacy of transformative action, and a realist with a critical awareness of the social triad of scarcity’s production (scarcity, power and meaning) I will brazenly steal and alter Lefebvre’s maxim, and so if (social) scarcity is (social) product, then there is space for all us to consider ourselves as part of that production and do something about it.

Notes 1. This paper was written before the publication of: The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation, ed. by Lyla Mehta (London: Earthscan, 2010) This book raises some of the same issues in rather more depth than I do here.

2. Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2009) In particular chapters 3 and 11.

3. William Sewell, ‘Toward a PostMaterialist Rhetoric for Labor History’, in Rethinking Labor History: Essays on Discourse and Class Analysis, ed. by Lenard Berlanstein (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 29.

4. All quotes in italics are from an entry on our initial blog site in a piece written by Jon Goodbun.

5. In his work on water scarcity Erik Swyngedouw makes it clear that scarcity is not an absolute, but is “discursively produced…the discursive representation of water as being an integral part of nature permits casting ‘nature’ into pole position to explain scarcity. In other words, nature is the principal ‘cause’ of water scarcity rather than the particular political economic configuration through which water becomes urbanised in highly selective and uneven ways, resulting in a serious ‘scarcity’ for the poor and powerless and abundant waters for the socio-economic and political elites” Erik Swyngedouw, Social Power and the Urbanization of Water (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 47.

6. S. J. Scanlan, J. C. Jenkins and L. Peterson, ‘The Scarcity Fallacy’, Contexts, 9 (2010), 34-39.

7. David Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2000), 217.

8. “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”

9. Sewell, 33.

10. Sewell, 33.

11. Dougal Hine, ‘Scarcity and Abundance’ http://dougald.co.uk/scarcebooks.htm

[accessed 18 January 2011]. This page also has a useful reading list around the issues of scarcity.

12. Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy. Till, Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture (London: Routledge, 2011).

13. I am thinking in particular of the work of Eric Swyngedouw and of Mike Davies.

14. ‘Iain Boal: Specters of Malthus’ www. counterpunch.org/boal09112007.html

[accessed 18 January 2011].

A FEW STEPS TOWARDS AN OPERATIONAL NOTION OF SCARCITY Michael Klein, Vienna Presentation at the ARCHTHEO, Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Istanbul, November 2011

Architecture and Heteronomy Nothing has had comparable influence on the academic debate of architecture and urbanism in the last ten years as the issue of sustainability. After the proclaimed death of modernism (Jencks 1977) and subsequent a self-imposed hermitage in a formal exegesis of the fold or alternatively, the search for the best-selling icon, architecture had somehow lost credibility. With sustainability, so the assumption, architecture has rediscovered purpose per se; with it, architecture has found a new challenge to take responsibility and contribute to our common future. But how to do? And how to think of prior attempts?

A certain fear haunts the vision of tomorrow. Whether it is running out of oil, of water, or land or the need to limit emissions: the concept underlying many of the notions and ideas of sustainability is the exhaustibility of resources, of limits.

True or wrong, exaggerated or with good cause, moralized or condemned -with such turn, scarcity was back on the agenda again. Again?

Scarcity, this is what this text will be about, has been a major determinate in architecture and the city. There has been no major sensation about scarcity in architecture, nor has there been any theory on it. Yet at any point, the availability of resource - be it material or immaterial for the ends aimed at, have marked the central substance architecture is made of.

Such notion conceptualizes architecture basically along its means-ends relation. Any architecture has always been formed out of the resources available, in a quite literal sense. The way, in which this has been followed, is, what I would say is central to architecture as a modern project.

There is something unsatisfying about sustainability, as the “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.“ as it has been defined in the Brundtland Report(World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). The far-reaching range of interpretation of such definition might give a reason for the triumph of sustainability. Yet, a slight touch of conserving the existing status quo takes over, that it is more about adapting than a fundamental change. The projects and ideas in fact sum up a variety of diverse, even contradictory approaches, concepts and aims, that have let become sustainability a somehow hollow term. Nonetheless, it shows comprehensiveness not seen for long that allows for the coaction of disciplines and fields that have grown apart, such as theory and design practice.

Reconsidering the Bruntland definition again, brings the means-ends relation to the fore. Sustainable is, what in an intra-generational relationship allows for future’s ends regarding today’s limited means and around. Sustainability thus, encompasses the “project of tomorrow”, the fact of scarcity and both, their relational status.

My aim here is to operationalize scarcity.

I will do so by discussing it on a general Continued on page 11 >>

10 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 9: Life in Deprivation?

Ahmed, 47

Sonara, 61

Born in Bangladesh, separated, children, university degree, employed full time, annual income £30-40K

Born in Sylhet (Bangladesh), widowed, one son, completed secondary school, retired, annual household income <£10K, receives benefits.

Sonara moved to Bromley-by-Bow when she and her husband were assigned this 2BR flat 21 years ago by the Council.

She likes the proximity of the mosque and the fact that the Bromley-by-Bow Centre is so close. About once a month, when she feels strong, Sonara takes part in community events at the Bromley-by-Bow Centre or Fern Street Settlement. After her husband’s death in 2006 and her son’s move back to Bangladesh (he moved back with his wife and two kids, to teach them Bengali – but they are planning to come back in a couple of years), her nephew moved in with her and now helps to take care of her and of the flat. She goes back to Bangladesh every year, but never stays longer than three months. »» My son pays for my ticket to Bangladesh.

There is nothing left after I pay for all the bills. But it is comfortable to live here with all the benefits and doctors. And all my memories are here.

Sonara pays £390 in rent and is not happy with the condition of the kitchen and bathroom, which have not been refurbished since she first moved in. The house was very cold from the beginning, she says, and nothing was done until 2000, when Poplar HARCA took over and replaced all windows. She sees taking good care of the flat as her responsibility before the Council – and before Allah.

Despite the contribution toward heating that she receives from the Council she fears her energy bills and does not heat as much as she would like to.

Sonara does not own any private means of transportation and relies on her Freedom Pass when she needs to go somewhere. But for shorter distances, she usually walks or takes the bus. She eats pizza or chicken and chips about once a week, when her nephew brings food home.

Ruhin, 26

Born in Bangladesh, single, no children, college degree, university student, employed part-time, annual income £20-30K Ruhin moved to Bromley-by-Bow six months ago because of the good transport links and proximity to work. He divides his time between his studies and a part-time job at Tesco. His Bangladeshi landlord sleeps in the sitting room and lets out the two bedrooms in order to be able to pay off his mortgage. »» It’s painful to watch my landlord – he is 65 now, he has five kids in this country, and they let him live in the sitting room. It’s painful. We want to spend time with him, but we can’t. Yesterday we came home at midnight and he was all alone.

Ruhin’s room is £250 per month, and he shares it with another man. He is not happy with the thermal comfort in his flat, the condition of kitchen and bathroom and the design of common areas. He has replaced the curtains, shower head and shelves and is saving to buy a new washing machine; for now, he uses his cousin’s, or the launderette nearby. Ruhin relies entirely on the Tube and walking; he does not own a car, a motorcycle or a bicycle.

He does not know of a public library or adult education centre; urban farming/organic box scheme; or street food stalls in walking distance. He eats out almost every day, mostly Chinese and Indian food – and never fast food! Once a month, he takes part in events organised

by Bangladeshi cultural groups such as Udichi.

Ruhin strongly agrees that each member of the household should have a private room to her- or himself, but strongly disagrees that corridors and stairways should not be used for storage - something that the management of his building is trying to implement for reasons of health and safety.

Ahmed had just completed his MSc at the University of Dhaka (Bangladesh) when he arrived in London in the hope of a good job 20 years ago, after marrying his British-Bangladeshi cousin. The Council assigned to them a two-bed flat in the Euston area. But his married life was not happy: he wanted to continue his education in order to increase his chances for a professional job – his wife wanted him to do low-paid restaurant jobs in order to provide for her and their new-born baby.

After only two years, when Ahmed found himself in debt because of the loan he had taken out in a (failed) attempt to complete a university degree, his marriage ended.

He had to move out of the Council flat. He secured a nursing job at UCL hospital and lived in shared accommodation for years.

Much later, he graduated with a diploma in Pharmacy Science and was promoted to a better post.

Ahmed learned from a colleague about the opportunity to buy a flat in this new development in Bromley-by-Bow – and of the promise that market values in the area would rise immensely with the Olympic Games 2012. But he did not have enough money to pay for the deposit and had to borrow it from his ex-wife. Two and a half years ago, he moved into the new-built 1BR flat, with open-plan kitchen/sitting room, and is now paying back his ex-wife and financing a £700/month, interestonly mortgage. »» The show-flat I saw when I made up my mind to buy this place had a bigger kitchen.

They led me to believe that my kitchen would be this size. It is too small now, really.

He likes living here, especially for the closeness of the Bengali community, but finds that his new neighbours are very busy and there is hardly a chance to socialise. He never participates in community events, though, and eats out on a daily basis, mostly fast food. Inspired by the Chinese couple next door – who let out their bedroom and added a partition wall between the originally open-plan kitchen and the sitting room – Ahmed found a Bangladeshi flatmate. He charges him £750 a month and is happy to have found a way to ease his financial burdens – and someone to keep him company when he comes home from work in the evenings.

Even, if that means sacrificing his only bedroom. »» The sitting room looks quite cramped now, as I am using it as my bed-room. There is not enough space to hang clothes. My flatmate is using the back of the door.

Although the flat is brand-new, Ahmed is not happy with the noise insulation and the design of common areas. The bathroom is modern, but small, he says, and so he does not like it. He frequently uses less energy than needed because of his energy bills. He relies, albeit reluctantly, entirely on bus and rail. Before moving into his flat, Ahmed had to sell his car: »» More than 400 flats here, but the Council does not allow for parking spaces! People park their cars far away and then they have to walk. The development is obviously not designed for families... But I need a car to take my daughter to Westfield; I need it to buy rice… My daughter does not like to take the public transport.

Ahmed likes using the parks in the area, they remind him of the time spent there with his daughter. After dark, he avoids Devons Road because he is scared of possible mugging. He does not know of any adult education facilities and urban farming/organic box schemes in the area. »» People dry their clothes using the communal balconies, the deck access. I don’t like that. You should not use communal space to store your private stuff. Or shop keepers, displaying their produce on the pavement.

It looks ugly and disturbs pedestrian movements. And then – look, the waste bins are open and full most of the time. The Council has to be more frequent in collecting the rubbish!

Ahmed hopes that the price of his flat will rise by at least £30,000 after the Olympics. He has started thinking of

selling it soon, so that he can make a good profit and buy a bigger flat. Ultimately, he hopes to be able to return to Bangladesh after retirement: »» Sometimes, I think I just spent my life making money to repay loans and help relatives in Bangladesh – but I never spent anything on myself! I want to go back to Bangladesh to spend the rest of my life with my siblings, my nephews and nieces, my mother! But could I go back to Bangladesh, leaving my daughter behind here?

Gladys, 73

Born in the UK, single, no kids, completed secondary school, retired, annual income <£10K. Gladys moved to the 3BR Poplar HARCA terrace 44 years ago. The rent is £500 per month, and she shares the house with her niece. Although quite content otherwise - Poplar HARCA recently refurbished her shower, kitchen, electricity and windows - she is not very happy with the noise insulation of her flat. »» I don’t want to be racist, but there are way too many people coming into the country.

The NHS was put in place for British people, for instance, not for them coming in, having babies here and then disappearing…

Gladys does not own a car, a motorcycle or a bicycle, and uses the bus only occasionally. She relies on her Freedom Pass, which lets her call a minicab whenever she needs to get somewhere.

Gladys says there is no kindergarten in walking distance; no public library or community centre. She does not know of an urban farming/organic box scheme, of a farmers’ market, convenience store or supermarket; or of a restaurant or street food close by. She eats out about once a month, on special occasions only and never fast food, and she never takes part in community events of any sort. Most of all, she misses a good pub for people her age.

Hilla, 60

Born in Sylhet (Bangladesh), widowed, children, completed primary school, retired, annual household income <£10K, receives some benefits.

Hilla moved to Bromley-by-Bow and into her 3BR Council flat on the ground floor about 30 years ago. She remembers that the area was known as very dangerous back then: »» Every day, someone would die. We were the first and only two Bangladeshi families here, and especially the ‘black people’ were very unfriendly. They used to throw garbage and stones at our house. They used to throw eggs at us. This went on for about a year.

Six months or so later, more Bangladeshi families started to move into the neighbourhood. Then, about nine years ago, her family bought the flat straight out, and now the widow lives here with her son, her daughter-in-law and their new-born baby. They have installed new appliances in kitchen and bathroom, painted the walls and decorated the flat throughout. However, it can get a bit cold, Hilla says, because of the ground floor condition. The government pays for part of the heating – £200, a once-per-winter allowance for pensioners – but Hilla is still concerned about bills, claiming she needs more help to pay for water and electricity. Her son owns a car, but they don’t have a parking space. She reckons that as a pensioner, she should get a parking space for free, instead of having to pay more money to the Council.

She does not know of a restaurant, coffee shop or street food in walking distance, but took part in a farming scheme for the Bangladeshi community until recently. Residents can grow their own herbs and vegetables on a shared plot. Hilla eats out 2-6 times per week, mostly Bengali food or chicken & chips.

On Saturdays and Sundays, she walks around by herself; during the week, someone from the GP takes her for walks.

She goes to Koran class at the Mosque on Wednesdays and at Kingsley Hall on Thursdays. She takes part in community activities several times a week – often organised by the Bromley-by-Bow Centre.

She agrees that corridors and stairways

should not be used for storage. But what to do when there is no space, she wonders?

Frida, 36

Born in Sylhet (Bangladesh), married, four kids, completed secondary school, unemployed (not seeking work), annual household income £10-15K, receives some benefits.

Frida moved into the Council flat 15 years ago, when she first arrived in the UK with her six months old son to join her husband. She did not miss Bangladesh, she says, because she had her kids to take care of. She now lives with her husband, four kids and mother-in-law, paying off a mortgage in rates of £600 per month (interest only). »» We have two singles and two doubles here, and seven people altogether. My husband and my son have the singles. Myself and the baby boy, we have a double. The other double, my mother-in-law shares with the two girls. She is here permanently. […] And no, no more kids, thank you.

She likes what Poplar HARCA is doing in terms of redevelopment in the area, but complains that she does not know what they are doing for her own building. »» Every now and then, there is a notice informing us of something. But I don’t always understand what it is about. Poplar HARCA is trying to let people know what they are doing. But it is in English only, and occasionally in Bengali. It is good that they are trying to inform people, but it would be better, of course, to receive all information in Bengali.

Apparently, the Housing Association wrote to them when works on the refurbishment began, notifying them that, as leaseholders, they would need to contribute financially: £2000 per year for the outside works, and double that amount if they wanted work done on the inside. Frida and her husband have not paid Poplar HARCA their share for the refurbishment yet and are looking into alternatives to fix problems in their flat.

For instance, they have mould in two of the rooms and water leaking from the ceiling. They are not at all happy with noise insulation and thermal comfort and frequently use less energy than needed because of energy bills. There are also problems with traffic in the vicinity: »» Empson Street is dangerous with all the big lorries. When they pass, the whole house is shaking. The road conditions become worse every day. The Council say they are doing something about it, but actually, they are not.

Frida’s husband owns a car, but she relies on bus and rail, or simply walks: »» There are cars everywhere! The underpass lets me go to Tesco’s without the hassle. It is beautiful, I think, safe and friendly. One or two times per week, when I go shopping, I use it. It is the shortest way to reach Tesco’s.

Frida is not aware of a public library, restaurant, or any form of street food availability in walking distance from her home. She eats out frequently, about 2-6 times per week: Indian, fast food, or ‘whatever comes along’. She tries to keep a vegetable garden, but the cold weather, she says, gets in the way. »» We paved the garden ourselves. We bought seeds from the local shops, but we knew what to do with them from back in Bangladesh.

If the veggies grow well, we use them for everyday food.

She does not like the pub around the corner; it opens at seven every night and her kids get woken up by drunken people shouting and fighting in the middle of the night. »» The pub customers are not from this area, Bangladeshis don’t do that. The local white people don’t have that habit, either. The pub opens late at night and after drinking, people walk through the estates disturbing residents.

There are other issues. The gap between the two buildings over there, for instance – where people walk: the dogs use it for a toilet – and so especially in the summer the place is not nice with all the smell.

Not a confident English speaker, she only takes part in community events about once per year, when they take place close enough, for instance at the Bromleyby-Bow or Marner School Centre, and

Opposite, from top to bottom: Ahmed’s former sitting room in his new-built 1BR-flat; now used as a bedroom. © Ahmed, SCIBE Ahmed envies the residents of this former Council estate for the parking spaces attached to their flats. His own apartment block is a designated car-free development. © Ahmed, SCIBE The self-built aquarium is Frida’s pride and joy. © Frida, SCIBE ‘My mother taught me how to grow everything we need, back in Bangladesh’. Romana, like many others, grows herbs and vegetables in her backyard. © Romana, SCIBE

11 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

organised for Bangladeshis. »» It would be good for the kids to go to better schools, of course. I want to educate them in higher education. I am hopeful that we can afford it and will try to send all of them, girls and boys, to university.

Romana, 40

Born in Sylhet (Bangladesh), married, four kids, completed secondary school, unemployed (not seeking work), annual household income <£10K, receives housing and other benefits.

Romana moved into the 4BR terraced Council house 19 years ago. She likes the area, especially with Chrisp Street Market so close by. All her children were born here. Poplar HARCA charges £637 per month, but her family only needs to pay some £260, the rest is covered by their housing benefit. Romana is quite happy with all aspects of the house. Two stories, laminate floor. She says she never has to worry about her energy bills. Romana disagrees with the statement that every member of the household should have a private room to her- or himself, but agrees that every child should have their own room. She strongly disagrees that every home should have a sitting room and that corridors and stairways should not be used for storage. Then again, she agrees that the kitchen should be spacious (although hers is, admittedly, almost oversized).

Romana’s husband owns a car, but she usually walks or takes the bus. They would have bought cars for the kids, but there is not enough on-street parking in the vicinity, and they would need four more parking spaces. That stopped them from buying.

The only facilities that Romana finds missing in walking distance from her home are an urban farming/organic box scheme and a proper sit-down restaurant.

Her sons, 18 and 20 years old, play football nearby at Marner School – they are nice over there, Romana says, for allowing the kids to use the grounds; but, she adds, having similar facilities for girls and women would be really good.

The park in front of her front door is the only real problem, with young people shouting and smoking cigarettes all night.

Sometimes, Romana calls the police, but there has been no improvement. »» In the summer time, local kids hang out in the park. Last summer, they were breaking benches and spraying graffiti. It is very important to stop this – I don’t want them to set an example for my kids! My daughter is 16 years old and she cannot use the space because of these people.

Romana spends two hours a day in her backyard, tending to her herbs and vegetables. Friends often come over to help.

She put in the paving four years ago, so that she wouldn’t need to clean the house all the time, with the kids bringing in the dirt. Romana buys the seeds at B&Q and grows pumpkin, peppers, cucumber, tomatoes, spinach, mustard and coriander – she gets everything she needs to cook a fresh meal fresh from her garden. Her mother taught her how to do that; back in Bangladesh. This way, she only eats out about once a week, usually fast food.

About once a month, Romana takes part in community events.

Jhuma (and Ziaul)

Born in Sylhet (Bangladesh), married, two children, completed secondary school, unemployed (not seeking work), annual income <£10K, receives housing and other benefits.

Jhuma and Ziaul arrived in London in 2003. Ziaul used to make furniture back in Bangladesh, insisting that he was better off back home: »» I have a family business over there – and shops. I rent them out in Sylhet. But you know how it is. In Bangladesh, you don’t know what happens next. In this country, life is secure.

The Council, renting from Poplar HARCA, assigned to Jhuma and Ziaul their current 2BR flat temporarily, and they are happy with most aspects of it. But Continued on page 12 >>

<< Continued from page 9: Operational Notion of Scarcity

level in order to open it up to an architectural debate. Looking at architecture in regard of scarcity focuses on its engagement with the surrounding and its reactions. My concern thus, will be with architecture’s modes of production as well as it will be always consider architecture to be relational.

This relational status entails the connection to fields such as politics, economy or technology. Space is a social reality that shapes the social as it is shaped by the social, as Henri Lefèbvre (1991) has put it. Architecture thereby is understood as physical figure, as practice and as theory at the same time.

With the new purpose in architecture, it has obtained meaning for urban issues again that a previous attention to so-to-say formalism handed over to other disciplines such as planning. The contemporary debate however, on the city re-attaches a major attention to material as well as immaterial resources, their flows and their right allocation in a relational sense. This main focus reveals not only scarcity’s ontological condition for sustainability in architecture. The relationships once again, emphasize architecture’s dependency and embeddedness: Architecture is a heteronomous discipline.

Social Housing My intent is to examine how to critically read the prior undertakings in what today would be called sustainable as well as to show scarcity’s role on architecture and urban development. Therefore, I have chosen the field of social housing as an integral aspect of a modernist project.

Over the 20th century, social housing has been an elementary component in building the European city in shape, conception and social life. For this reason, it downright epitomizes architecture’s possible embeddings and relationship to city, politics and society in the face of scarcity. Even during the prosperous years of the welfare state, social housing as a cost-intensive pillar had to economize on almost every level.

Aspects brought up today in terms of sustainability, have been discussed, planned and realized during this 20th century enterprise. Levelling out social inequality, providing long-term stability and poverty reduction, the right to the city, the availability of land and the topic of density, the use of technology, as well as the question of how to formulate ideas of communality, of welfare spatially and architecturally – these all have been discussed in the recent debate of sustainability as they have been all over the 20th century.

And even though some of these might have failed, and some have, for sure, it is worth reconsidering. As we have seen: a good cause is not enough.

Amongst the European Cities providing a meaningful contribution to social housing, Vienna stands out as a particular example. Not only was it confronted with major housing shortage at the beginning of the 20th century after rapid growth over the preceding 60 years, but from then onwards, it has gradually created a system of social housing provision which is amongst the most comprehensive, with about 48% of the total housing stock. To focus on one city will furthermore allow working out the different forms and modes of scarcity.

Scarcity Scarcity has been described as central to the field of economics, even to define it as “the science, which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative use” (Robbins 2007). My assumption here is, that Scarcity, together with prospects to Abundance and Sufficiency is one of the central driving forces for the world we live in (1). - That Scarcity is productive (2).

Scarcity, as a concept, is quite evident.

Given a set of goods, this insufficiency of goods, as we could describe scarcity emerges through an operation: access

- meaning the goods have to be taken.

Since those involved know that access produces scarcity – they seek to ensure by more access. Access thus, produces, what it aims to dispose: scarcity is a paradoxical problem. Niklas Luhmann (1994) describes this as a form of unfolded self-reference. In a de-paradoxed form it is transformed into (or coded as) a system of equilibrium, of supply and demand and the possibility of scarcity keeps a certain mobility and regulates value.

Finite resources can lead to scarcity, so does excessive demand. In any case it is an imbalance in the set-access-ratio.

In Mainstream economics, scarcity is treated as a temporary condition.

Temporary, as it either can be compensated within time, through more efficient methods in production, through technological innovation or substituted by something else. In the possibility to overcome it by such means, it obtained another meaning: scarcity has been referred to as a motor of progress and gained productive impact for economy.

Preconditions of Social Housing in Vienna The rapid growth of Vienna during the 19th century due to industrialization social and political changes resulted in the City’s major housing shortage. In only 50 years, the population almost tripled to about 2.1 millions in 1910. A continuous lack of dwellings stimulated massive production of habitation - the biggest, Vienna had ever undergone, and scarcity can be set at the beginning of a series of changes in architecture- on an urban scale as well as on the level of the dwelling. By late 1870 the municipality had implemented the grid as the ordering device for the city. For the very first time in the history of Vienna, a planning rationale based on uniformity, repetition and re-applicability, that followed economic thinking had become urban form –by housing the masses.

Yet, at no point during these times, housing stock was able to cope the actual demand. Thus the module of the grid, the Viennese Block – dense apartment buildings in repetitive dimensions, developed into capitalizing land to its extreme, occupying often more than 85 % of a parcel, with small, dark flats. A permanent lag resulted in overcrowded flats, miserable living conditions and poor hygienic standard. Scarcity had reformulated the city through the grid as an economizing and ordering device.

This condition – scarcity in housing stock - has to be seen as the starting point of social housing in Vienna. And it should remain central for the following decades.

By 1923, the Social Democratic government launched a housing programme, with the decision to build 25.000 dwelling in five years. Until its violent end in 1934, the municipality of Red Vienna had built 65.000 dwelling units. Tackling housing scarcity had been a major undertaking of Red Vienna’s Programme, along with education and health- hygienic issues as to raise the general misery of the working poor in the modern city. Yet, they did so while adhering to an idea of a modern city at any time.

Absolute Scarcity On classic economic theory, scarcity had encroached through the writing s of R. Th. Malthus. Absolute Scarcity- this is basically the scarcity Malthus writes about, although he did not entitle it as such, is basically the scarcity of ultimate means.

In An Essay on the Principle of Population (Malthus 1976), he uses it to describe a relation of the growth rate of demographic and production development with given resources that are finite. There, Malthus states finite resources and a growing population. Population develops geometrically, food growth only linear. They implicate, so to say, demand outrunning supply, and culminate in a point of crisis, basically resulting in “not enough for all”.

But Malthus introduces scarcity for a political purpose. The conclusion of his “scientific” thesis is following: Misery and poverty is a natural law- it is the poor Continued on page 13 >>

12 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 11: Life in Deprivation?

the condition of the bathroom concerns them; it has not been refurbished in more than twenty years. They do not plan on doing anything themselves, even after five years here – it is only temporary, after all, they reckon; and they are bidding to move to a 3BR flat to which, officially, they are entitled: »» Some people get their homes two to three weeks after declaring homelessness. It’s not fair. They should have priority lists.

We’ve been waiting seven years! Our flat is overcrowded. I mean, it’s alright for now, but when the kids grow older, it will be difficult.

I apply for three or four houses every week, but no luck yet.

Ziaul owns a car, he is a minicab driver and usually does night shifts. The ongoing refurbishment works on the in- and outside of the building disturb him greatly: he cannot get enough sleep during the day because of the noise. In addition, all the passing trucks and lorries churn up the dust that the adjacent cement factory produces, making it necessary for Ziaul to spent £7 every day to have his car washed. »» A few years ago, I made 300-400£ a night. Now, I spend 16-18 hours on the road and I can’t get anything. Imagine: it’s 90£ from Marriott to Heathrow: 50£ for me, 40£ for the various commissions. I am prepared and ready to switch to something else to do for a living.

Jhuma and Ziaul do not know of a public library, community- or adult education centre; urban farming/organic box scheme, farmers’ market, or street food stalls in walking distance. They eat out 2-6 times per week, mostly Indian or Bengali food, and never participate in community events. Jhuma says: »» My mother-in-law is here to visit right now. She can only bear to stay with us a few weeks at a time, because she misses the company, the community back home. It’s like jail here, she says.

Bahiya, 31

Born in Sierra Leone, single, four kids, completed secondary school, employed part-time, annual income <£10K, receives income support and housing benefits Bahiya lives just outside the margins of Bromley-by-Bow; she moved to the area eight years ago. She lives in a dark 2BR maisonette, owned by Poplar HARCA, with her four kids: ten, eight and five years old, plus a new-born. The full rent is £800 per month, but she receives housing benefit to help her with payments. She is not at all happy with the state of the kitchen, the bathroom, noise insulation and thermal comfort in her flat, and dislikes the design of the common areas – especially now, with the construction of a new residential development going on right in front of her doorstep: »» There are just buildings, nothing more. It will be too many people in one place soon. No freedom for the kids! If you put them in the house, they will be frustrated. They won’t get self-confidence. You can’t let them play on the balcony – there are people who need to take a rest, who need to go to work. They will complain about the kids.

Bahiya frequently uses less energy than needed because of concerns about her energy bills – something that worries her greatly with the baby in the house.

She does not own a car, a motorcycle or a bicycle and relies entirely on the Tube and walking. She sends her kids to a Catholic School in Commercial Road – quite a distance away – because she wants them to grow up in a mixed community, ‘exposed to different cultures’. Her own neighbourhood, she reckons, must be about 90% Asian. She only takes part in community events and activities about once per year, usually a trip somewhere, organised by the Burdett Centre.

Bahiya does not know of a library, adult education centre or church; of an urban farming/organic box scheme, farmers’ market for fresh food, or of street food availability in walking distance. When she eats out, usually once a week, she takes her kids along and goes for something quick: pizza or fast food.

»» You know what makes us have take-out food? That kitchen! I don’t want to cook here.

A big kitchen to cook; not like my box! A bigger kitchen, more storage, an additional toilet – that would be good! A nice dining room - that’s what makes you happy and lead a healthy life!

She disagrees with the statement that each member of the household, including every child, should have a private room to her- or himself: »» Where I come from, sharing is good. But here, I am waiting for me to have my own room!

Nadira, 34

Born in Sylhet (Bangladesh), married, six kids, completed secondary school, unemployed (not seeking work), receives housing and other benefits.

Nadira, her husband and six kids share the 4BR terraced house assigned to them by the Council as temporary accommodation little more than five years ago. They spend about £200 per month on the rent.

The kitchen is more than 30 years old, and the bathroom more than 20. The noise insulation is bad and the common areas not well designed – or maintained.

Thermal comfort, however, is satisfactory, according to Nadira. Nonetheless, the family use less energy than they need because they are concerned about energy bills. She disagrees with the statement that every member of the household (let alone every child) should have a private room to her- or himself.

Nadira’s husband owns a car, but she usually walks or takes the bus. She is quite happy to live in Bromley-by-Bow, especially so close to the Mile End Leisure Centre, where swimming is free and where she can send the kids to spend time during their holidays. Nadira herself only takes part in community events about once a year. She is not aware of an urban farming/organic box scheme in walking distance to her home. She eats out about once a week, usually fast food.

Zhuma, 39

Born in Sylhet (Bangladesh), married, no children, completed primary school, unemployed (not seeking work), annual household income <£10K, receives benefits.

Zhuma first arrived in London to get married to her husband, a diploma engineer 14 years her senior, in 1991.

The relationship to her parents-in-law was complicated from the beginning, especially as her mother-in-law collected the income of all family members and distributed the money as she seemed fit. Zhuma did not receive any ‘pocket money’, and even after six months in the UK, she had to beg her husband to show her what a £5 or £10 note looked like. In 1997, her husband was hospitalised with a mental problem. »» One day I found my husband cutting his hair. He said it was because it disturbed him. He told me he wants to go and swim in the Thames. Of course I tried to stop him, but he made me leave the room, and when I returned, he was gone. I ran and grabbed my mother-in-law’s legs, begging her to help; but she refused. She told me to go away and pray to Allah.

After trying to live with her parentsin-law for a short while, her husband still in hospital, Zhuma’s parents-in-law succeeded to have her sent back to Bangladesh. It took her eight and a half years to save enough for a plane ticket back to London, and she finally arrived here in 2005. She had to move in with her parents-in-law again, only to find that her sister-in-law and her husband had occupied her former room – and that she would be treated like a slave by the rest of the family. She had to stay in the sitting room, which her parents-in-law kept purposely unheated. They threw her out of the flat after eight months, but a family friend took her in. It took Zhuma four months to find out how to get help from the government, charities and other organisations. A benefit adviser filled in her sick form; a job adviser helped her to move things on. She stayed with friends and relatives for years

until 2008. Then, she moved into a hostel for homeless women in the Brick Lane area, a traumatic experience for Zhuma, who is very religious and does not think much of drinking alcohol or inviting men to stay over – all things that most women in the hostel did on a regular basis: »» Many had boyfriends; they came into the rooms and were using drugs, and they were fighting among each other. There were only few Bangladeshis, but they had family issues themselves and so I did not want to interact with them.

Finally, in December 2011, Zhuma received her current 1BR flat in Bromleyby-Bow. The flat is located in an old Council housing block, it is not carpeted, and the walls, very clearly, need urgent painting. Zhuma says having the walls painted will set her back £300, but she has made the necessary arrangements.

She cannot afford to buy curtains, so she hangs her bed sheets in front of the big windows instead. Zhuma – a small, skinny woman who looks much older than her age – almost disappears in the context of her big bedroom, sitting on her oversized bed.

Downstairs, the security gates (she finds them in need of some re-painting) are always closed, but nonetheless, Zhuma complains that she sees strangers walking about in the building. Her letterbox is locked, but she fears that people could get to her mail from outside, and that important letters might get lost or stolen. »» I have a good window to look out from.

And tiles and a sink in the kitchen! The tray is broken, however, and I cannot buy a new one right away. I got the glass in my art class; the bowl is my neighbour’s, I have washed it to bring it back. I decorated the flour jar myself at the Hostel. Every Tuesday we had art class at the Hostel. Monday to Friday in the afternoon, they gave us yoghurt, snacks, salad – this part I enjoyed. Four of us would share a kitchen. Four women, one kitchen, two cookers, one sink…

Zhuma cooks for herself and hardly takes part in community activities or events. She walks a lot, and only uses the bus when she visits her husband at Homerton Hospital. Her biggest hope is that one day, he might be well enough to join her in the new flat, and that they will live together as husband and wife again.

Steven, 24

Born in London, of Bangladeshi descent, single, no children, completed sixth form, employed part-time, annual household income <£10K, receives some benefits.

Steven was born in Bromley-by-Bow and moved to this 4BR terraced Council house eleven years ago, when his family’s home was demolished to make way for redevelopment. The site where his home was located is still vacant. Steven is happy with all aspects of the house, but admits that his family sometimes uses less energy than needed because of the energy bills.

His father owns a car, but Steven usually walks or uses rail and bus. He often picks up his little nephew from school and finds traffic in the vicinity of the school dangerous: »» A dangerous crossing with no lights or pedestrian markings! At times cars can be unseen to the eyes. Maybe put a zebra crossing or some pedestrian lights?

Although he finds the on-going construction works in the neighbourhood quite disruptive to his day-to-day life at times, he feels that they are necessary – especially in view of the Olympics – in order to improve the image of the area.

Like most residents, he finds that waste is an issue and collection needs to be improved.

Steven appreciates that the Bromleyby-Bow Centre is located just across the street, but he never takes part in the community events organised there.

Philippa, 48

Born in Bangladesh, married, one child, completed primary school, unemployed (not seeking work), annual income <£10K, receives housing and other benefits.

Philippa moved into the 1BR Council flat five years ago, just before Poplar HARCA took over. She pays £65 per month, sharing the flat with her son. Her husband lives and works in Birmingham.

They only see each other once in two or three weeks. Two nieces stay with her often, and so a lot of space in her sitting room is occupied by the bunk bed they sleep in. Philippa cannot find anything to complain about with regards to her flat and thinks of it as being in a very good condition. She wallpapered it herself, and Poplar HARCA completed some renovation work just on the outside just recently.

She does not own a car, a motorcycle or a bicycle. Usually, she walks or uses bus and rail. Philippa does not know of a library in walking distance; an urban farming/organic box scheme or a farmers’ market; or of a restaurant, coffee shop, or street food stall. She eats out almost every day, however, and almost always fast food. She never takes part in community events of any sort.

Apon, 23

Born in Bangladesh, single, no children, university student, annual income <£10K. There are seven things you have to believe, Apon says: (1) believe in Allah; (2) believe in the Prophet; (3) believe in the Holy Book; (4) believe in Angels; (5) believe in Jins; (6) believe in Death; (7) believe in After-Death. »» There was a murder a few months ago.

Right there at the underpass. Ever since, every time I walk through this, I feel very odd. I feel this – this is a good country – and this thing to happen here makes me feel insecure.

Sometimes when I go to buy something – whenever I can, I try to avoid walking through the underpass. I saw the photo, I read the news, and it’s this place. I feel odd and upset.

Apon is a full-time university student and moved to Bromley-by-Bow one year ago because of the good transport links, the proximity to mosques, and the overall peacefulness of the area. »» I love this place – It’s a nice place. I walk over to the park and enjoy the beautiful city.

There are high-rise buildings, and there are patches of grass. Walking on the grass is good. From my window, you can see the road and the primary school. There is nothing else to see. Kids are shouting and laughing in the morning time.

He lives in a 1BR flat (no sitting room), rented from a private landlord, which he shares with two others. The rent is £560 per month. »» We live here three people. We have lots of clothes. If we wash them, there is not enough space to hang them. So sometimes our bed sheets hang around the curtain rail to dry.

And sometimes, we keep them there to make it dark and warm.

Apon does not know of any nurseries or secondary schools in the area – nor is he aware of a public library, community- or adult education centre; urban farming/ organic box scheme, farmers’ market or supermarket; restaurant or street food stalls in walking distance. He does not own a car, a motorcycle or a bicycle, so he relies entirely on public transport and walks a lot. He never participates in community events and eats out on a daily basis, mostly Bengali, Indian and fast food. »» Most of the time, I study at home. This is my study desk. My flatmates use the coke can as an ashtray. My roommate puts his mobile on the table. There is a calling card.

One week ago, I went to the pound shop and bought stuff – scissors – congestion! There is the SCIBE journal. There is my cap – on Friday, my cap was on the top of the table.

It’s called ‘tupi’. My radio – it’s my only entertainment. Sometimes I want to listen to a song when my roommates come and want to sleep. I use my headphones. My Holy Koran is inside the yellow towel. When I feel very bad and remember my family, I read the Koran. Then, we have a bottle of water. Some medicine – I felt a cold and I bought it. I lived here one year and after four months my roommates already felt like my friends. Sometimes – I can play guitar. Every Thursday they request that I play a song or write a poem – but sometimes I feel too

Opposite, from top to bottom: Zhuma has hung bed sheets in front of her windows; she cannot afford to buy curtains. © Zhuma, SCIBE Apon is happy with the kitchen in his shared flat; he has seen worse! © Apon, SCIBE Dreaded corner: a place where young people in the area meet after dark and cause trouble for residents of the former Council estate. © R Begum, SCIBE ‘We would love to hang some pictures in the flat, but we can’t afford them’. Messi and his family have just recently moved into their brand-new Council flat. © Messi, SCIBE

13 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

gloomy. And they try to cheer me up. If they want to meet their girlfriends, they meet at a relative’s place. In our house, all people are smoking. I came home one day and they were all drunk. And I just had a glass of milk and became drunk with them [laughs]. One of my flatmates is 40. The other guy is 26/27, just a bit older than me. It is difficult to match the language and mentality with the Sylheti people. I will look for a new room in a few months’ time.

Should he stay on in this flat, Apon is committed to painting the walls and putting in a new carpet. He is not happy with the condition of the bathroom, common areas and, especially, the kitchen: »» When someone is cooking, we put a piece of carton in front of the wall and we change it once a month. We get it at the pound shop.

And sometimes we use foil. I don’t know about the kitchen, really, because I don’t know what other kitchens are like. This kitchen is better than my last kitchen, for instance. It was old and very cold, and the drain was blocked a lot. The washing machine was too loud. We had five rooms and one kitchen. Ten people!

Now, it’s three people and one kitchen; that’s easier. We don’t have a proper place to dry our clothes so we put them on the door to dry.

R Begum, 41

Born in Bangladesh, married, children, college degree, employed part-time, annual household income <£10K, receives housing and other benefits.

R Begum moved to Bromley-by-Bow a year and a half ago and likes it for its peacefulness. She enjoys Rounton Park nearby, especially in the mornings, and frequently accompanies her mother-inlaw on walks there. However, there are some issues in the immediate vicinity of her home: »» Downstairs, at the entrance to my building. It’s youngsters; English, Black, sometimes Bangladeshis. People are drinking here and they pee and defecate. It scares me.

Every time I pass there is rubbish. The Council cleans it every now and then. The problem has been reported and they say that they are looking at it.

She reckons it is strange for the living room and kitchen of her maisonette to be located upstairs, and the two bedrooms downstairs. She frequently uses less energy than needed because of energy bills and is not at all happy with the bathroom, which has not been refurbished in more than 20 years and does not even have a shower. Nonetheless, she pays £1200 per month in rent (part of this is paid for by the housing benefit). It seems to her that the landlord does not want to renew her one-year contract and tries to push them out of the flat, hoping to let the flat out at a higher price. Every now and then she receives a letter to notify her that the rent is overdue – when in fact she has never fallen behind her payments.

R Begum does not own a car, motorcycle or bicycle, and relies entirely on public transport (rail and bus). She is not aware of a community or adult education centre, urban farming/organic box scheme, restaurant or street food stall in walking distance of her home.

She eats out frequently, about 2-6 times per week (chicken and chips, pizza). She never takes part in any community events – except for Eid festivals, when she visits relatives.

Zara, 36

Born in Bangladesh, married, two kids, university degree, unemployed (not seeking work), annual household income £20-30K, receives some benefits Zara likes Bromley-by-Bow for its good transport links (Zone 2!), the closeness to the Bengali community, and the overall peacefulness of the neighbourhood.

Before moving into the brand-new 2BR Housing Association flat just recently, Zara, her husband and the two small kids lived in a Victorian house near Bow Road.

But Zara hated that. »» It made me sad.

In her old house, they had to be careful Continued on page 14 >>

<< Continued from page 11: Operational Notion of Scarcity

masses that grow fast. Any attempt to fight poverty, would only let increase their number even faster- and thus create even more squalor. So, the best thing to do is – to do nothing. Scarcity, by Malthus, is seen as both, the origin of poverty and the effective instrument against it. What Malthus claims for, is in fact to set things scarce, or what one could name to scarcify.

Not more for the poor it says, as Malthus used it as an argument against state support for the impoverished masses. It might be one reason why economics have been called the dismal science.

Comparable to Malthus’ explanation has been the arguing against social housing in order to counter the shortcomings and the misery at Vienna’s turn of the century, as brought up by conservatives against the socialist housing programme. In such argument, the reasons for squalor are shifted from a created by circumstances related to market and practices by landlords over to natural law and the population itself.

Yet, the history of Vienna’s dwellings provides us with further situations, where scarcity has been instrumentalized as to follow political intent, even beyond Malthus.

Most dehumanizing, such restructuring of the existing housing stock has been followed as policy of the City during the Nazis. Since economic scarcity precluded following the megalomaniac housingprogramme the party-municipality had announced, yet the population still faced housing shortage, systematic expulsion had been taken as a measure of urban planning. Genocide was considered to be the appropriate means for planning to fight the housing shortage. In November 1941, Hitler let know that it was not about “realisation of new city quarters”, but rather “clearing the existing conditions”: “To begin with, (…) all Jews are to deport as soon as possible, followed by the Czech and other of alien race, who hinder uniform political orientation and opinion making of the Viennese Population. If, through such provision, you bring down the population (…) to 1.5 to 1.4 millions, housing shortage was resolved in the best, the easiest and the fastest way.” (see Csendes & Opll 2006).

Scarcity, which had been the central reason for the building program of Red Vienna, was now fought by racial politics of expulsion. Clearing, in this sense means building against scarcity.

Beyond the aspects of resource, set and access, scarcity is involved in a broader social context, as soon as it is attempted to overcome, or instrumentalized as to follow particular social or political intent.

Coming back to Malthus’ example of scarcity, it has been heavily criticized in its aftermath by people from all camps such as Ricardo and Marx. The controversy incited by Malthus has in fact not ended. The Malthusian argument arises again and again, be it to argue against the idea of the commons or, since the seventies most notably in the debate on sustainability and limits.

The problem with Malthusianism is not absolute scarcity per se. It is the immutability, the claimed universality of scarcity and its problematic deductions and conclusions with a claim for what we could call scarcification. It is true that some resources are limited on earth. But that alone does not make them scarce.

As they are related to human production, resources always have social and cultural connex. The operation needed as to get things scarce is to take: access. Scarcity, to follow is an imbalance in the set-accessratio. There is no natural law in scarcity, but a social relation- it is relational. The availability, access and allocation of resources changes within time, space and culture. Scarcity emerges locally and temporally. For it is related to a certain context, which might be different, Scarcity is contingent and changing within its context. So is the conception of scarcity, which over time is changing as well.

Need - the operation driving access varies according to a set of practices.

What is defined as scarce is structured according to discourse. Any Scarcity we

state is, in its relation to all that always constructed. Even if there was real scarcity, we can only deal with it socially.

But this does not make it less important.

Our way of understanding the real world out there is constructed and not natural.

There will be no chance to overcome that, yet there is a certain need for awareness of it.

Even without ultimate finiteness, scarcity emerges: In the relationship between ends and means, which have alternative uses.

This second form, economists call it relative scarcity emerges in the possibility to choose. Scarcity here does not correspond to a not enough for all, an insufficiency but rather a scarcity emerging through an alter-use of something. The alternative use turns necessary for relative scarcity, this choice between two mutually exclusive.

In economic theory these alternatives are referred to as opportunity costs.

Reconstruction The municipality of Vienna decided to continue social housing after WWII. War has left marks on Vienna – 86.875 dwellings were destroyed and uninhabitable, some 35.000 people were homeless, further 30.000 escapees had returned and 6.000 flats had to be provided to the Allied liberators. In an Enquete for the Reconstruction of the City of Vienna, in 1945, expert committees deliberated upon the penury and scarcity of housing.

Yet: “Reconstruction means making it better”, as Theodor Körner - mayor at that time - put it, already describes the endeavour to modernize Vienna. Again: the Position taken was decidedly in opposition to the historic city and in favour of Red Vienna’s legacy.

Another decision to be taken was how to follow such plan – where and how to build social housing. The first question was basically a result of the will to a new, modern and the refusal of the historic city: “The Großstadt has to be decongested, according to the Erkenntnisse of modern city planning”, wrote planning council Novy in 1946. Großstadt, here, after years of Blood and Soil, reads as a clear concession to urbanity, Erkenntnis to science. This will to modern Großstadt is profoundly affected by a strong belief in “plannability”: For the question how design- and thus the allocation of resource - should be laid out, for the manifold social, urban, technical and economical, purposes, the research centre for dwelling and building was installed. In search of the “ideal” design variations were evaluated, measured according to sun exposure, ventilation, practicability, circulation, costs. “Quality of plan” was to replace the “architectural ethos”. The ideal of an optimized product- the plan- is basically the idea of efficiency- the most efficient exhaust as to minimize relative scarcity.

In spite of the ideal habitat at hand, many projects built at that time contrast the vision of a decongested, green city.

The high demand in housing and the scarcity of land owned made the city act against its project – densification instead of decongestion.

An early example of constructing the new, modern city outside the historic fabric despite of material scarcity, is the Per-Albin-Hansson-Siedlung with the overall layout developed by Franz Schuster.

Here, scarcity found a straight way into technological innovation: in lack of other construction material, the VibroblockSystem allowed to proceed debris and cement into bricks. Regarding design, it takes up the legacy of the garden city with a notion of self-supply.

Scarcity was the reason brought up for another big invention during the years of reconstruction, the Schnellbauprogramm (quick-building-program). As resources and finances in the post-war City were limited, yet the demand of ever more dwellings seemed unsatisfiable, the municipality’s planning department introduced so-called Duplex-flats– two flatlet adjoining each other, able to be merged into one “family-friendly”, big flat, as soon as “economic prosperity” and “family situation” would permit. Scarcity here was conceived as conquerable and Continued on page 15 >>

14 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 13: Life in Deprivation?

about their energy bills, and sometimes used less energy than needed for heating.

Now, they only pay a third (£12) of what they used to pay for electricity in their old home. They pay $867 in rent, including a service charge of £67. »» Well, it’s not easy in terms of managing our resources. Priorities have to be set: food is first, then clothing, then Arabic lessons… My husband and I buy clothing for ourselves only two times per year.

Apart from the scarce storage space (the new flat does not have closets), Zara is very happy with most aspects of her home: »» They clean every day. The children can play in the communal garden – it’s big, and it’s safe. Sometimes, you don’t even need electricity for heating because the flat is so well insulated! Also, in terms of sound – you close the door and you don’t hear what’s going on next door!

Zara strongly agrees with the statement that each adult member of the household should have a private room to her- or himself, but disagrees that every child should have their own room. For this reason, she feels a bit worried about the future and how they will manage in this flat when the kids grow older. Currently, she is considering with her husband a proposal to take up a mortgage in order to buy a share of a property in the building next door.

The family owns a car, but Zara usually uses her bicycle or walks. She cannot think of a secondary school or library in walking distance, and also finds an urban farming/organic box scheme missing.

She eats out frequently, about 2-6 times per week, usually fast food. About once a year, she takes part in community events organised by the Bromley-by-Bow Centre or other local Centres.

Messi, 34

Born in Kosovo, married, three kids, completed secondary school, employed part-time, annual income £15-20K, receives housing and other benefits Messi arrived in London in 2006 and used to live close to Bow Road station before the Council assigned the 3BR flat on the top floor of a new-built to him and his family. They had only moved in a few weeks earlier, having lived in a flat with an open plan kitchen, where the kids all slept in one room, before: »» We moved in there when the kids where small, so they grew up there and liked it a lot. They still like to sleep together. When I was little, in Kosovo, we were ten – when it became cold, we all slept in one room to keep warm.

Messi, his wife and the three kids now have a brand-new flat with a huge sitting room, and only putting in the carpet cost them £2000. They are exuberant with regards to the flat and cannot find anything to complain about. He now pays £260 per month; the rest is paid by housing benefits. His positive attitude, Messi believes, has contributed to their luck to get their new flat. »» I left for Germany when I was 17, in 1993.

For five years, I worked hard. I wanted to work; I was not allowed to, but I wanted to, I didn’t want to just hang out in the camp.

They gave us 80 Deutsche Mark a month, can you imagine – ‘Sozialhilfe’ they called it. So we went and started to work illegally.

It was the most difficult time, with the war and all; I used to wake up in panic in the middle of the night. I used to work as a gardener, you know, growing trees and stuff.

One day, my boss gave me 1000 Deutsche Mark extra. It was the most incredible thing.

He said: ‘You work so hard, you deserve it.

I wish I had more people working like you’.

But it was hard. There were frequent raids and sometimes we had to hide in the boiler room. Police control. Arbeitspolizei. Why did they not allow us to work? Coming to the UK felt like paradise in comparison. So much more freedom. Now we have indefinite leave, finally. I have settled here.

Messi does not own a car, but they have bicycles which they frequently use.

Otherwise, the family relies on bus and rail for transportation. When they have

time, they take the DLR to Stratford – the kids like hanging out at Westfield. They wish they could buy a few beautiful prints, and put them up on the empty walls of their flat. But for now, they cannot afford to. »» I work in a restaurant. The Christmas decoration was very nice this year. Beautiful.

Festive. Compare that to the rubbish in front of our door! It’s such a pity, to do that in such a nice area – they ruin it. They make all this mess, it’s disgusting. They even put up posters saying – do not dump rubbish.

Messi eats at the Italian restaurant that he works for on a daily basis. He does not know of a secondary school; a library, community- or adult education centre, or church; of an urban farming/organic box scheme, farmers’ market or speciality store; a restaurant, coffee shop or street food stall in walking distance. He does not take part in any community events.

now. Proposals were to be based on a set of ground rules: * Future visions should be extrapolated from and respond to conditions found on the ground in Bromley-byBow today (i.e., they should not be invented ab initio or be generic). This is not to put a brake on the creativity of the proposals but to contextualise it. * Visions should address scarcity – real, perceived and/or constructed – in a manner that mitigates its triggers, conditions and effects. * Visions should work more with resources (infrastructure, people, materials, etc.) that are there already rather than bringing in new stuff. * Focus should be more on the means, actions, devices and methods of achieving the vision than the design of it as some form of ‘solution’. * Proposals can be at any scale.

The Traveller

Procedure Rather than run a traditional selection competition, The Architecture Foundation and SCIBE held two events in in June and July 2012, from which the collaborating teams emerged. The process was open to anyone and we welcomed proposals from beyond the fields of architecture and design, in particular those engaged with creative approaches to socio-economic scenarios.

During Stage One, participants were issued with the briefing document and prepared first responses to the issues raised. They presented their responses during the London Festival of Architecture on 28th June 2012. Event 1 was designed as an informal, collaborative afternoon; participants had a strict 200 seconds to introduce their interests and approaches to everyone else. After the presentations, a networking event with food and drink allowed for the clarification of details, the exchange of names and the self-selection of like-minded people into newly formed teams.

Her husband was from the East End. Her mother raised 14 children by herself and got a house in Hackney when she grew old. »» We don’t need community organisations, there is always someone looking out for you here.

She depends on benefits, and settled here with the five children and one baby just a few months ago. The fact that her brother holds a plot on this site made things easier for her; getting one is almost impossible otherwise. One has to be on the waiting list for ten, eleven years. Her caravan is, in effect, a surprisingly spacious, well-insulated 3BR, and there is an extra pull-out bed in the sitting room. »» The scheme is simple: the Council pays for the plot, but if you don’t have a caravan, you have to give them a deposit, £1200, and they’ll deliver one from Derbyshire. You have to give them another £600 for the delivery, though. That’s why I came here from Wales, They don’t have that there, and the Council doesn’t pay for the plot.

Every plot has its own meter and one pays for what one uses. Every site has a utility block with toilets and showers; travellers don’t usually use facilities inside the caravan. This site has space for about twenty caravans and there is CCTV, too, for added security. They told them recently that they would have to vacate the site, because Crossrail construction will start here soon. First, they were promised a replacement site in Hackney Wick. »» But Boris Johnson said no – no more sites. The times have changed. We have to leave then and there when they serve us with Section 61. You can’t travel anymore – you have to move in with people you don’t know anything about. They don’t care about your culture. Especially the older generations find it hard to go into houses. »» Home, this is home.

Acknowledgement: Ms Farjana Islam (University of Edinburgh) has assisted with interviews and translations.

SCARCE TIMES: ALTERNATIVE FUTURES (STAF) Deljana Iossifova and Jeremy Till, London A Call for Collaboration. Available online: goo.gl/BcQM4

The Architecture Foundation and SCIBE in London collaborated with strong groups of creative professionals capable of proposing innovative strategies and tools to address conditions of scarcity in the built environment.

Mission Based on a thorough understanding of the current conditions of real, perceived and constructed scarcity in Bromley-byBow, teams were invited to develop a vision for the area in 2062 and to propose the devices and approaches that would be needed to achieve this vision starting from

STAF: A REPORT Jeremy Till, London Published here: http://www.scibe.eu/staf/scarce-timesalternative-futures-report-on-event-1

For the final stage of the London project, we are going to be working with teams of designers in Bromley-by-Bow. The question was how to select these designers.

Typically people go to teams they know or else hold a competition. Often these are almost one and the same thing, as competition juries tend to land on stuff that they are comfortable with or already know. The trouble with architectural competitions is that they privilege objects over approaches, pictures over ideas, taste over mess, and the static over the dynamic. In addition, while they might give breaks to the chosen few, competitions generally sanction unpaid labour in which architects give up their intellectual capital and human resource, seemingly willingly but actually exploited. Finally, they present designs as architectural fait accomplis, drowning out the voices of others and eschewing all but the most token of consultation. Though trumpeted by the great and good such as Sir David Chipperfield as the way forward, competitions perpetuate much about architectural culture that I find problematic. This is especially the case for this SCIBE project, in which engagement with the here and now is essential, and where scarcity shifts attention from the refinement of the object. We also wanted to encourage teams of varied people to come forward, and preferably those with fresh approaches rather than rolling out what they had done before.

We therefore came up with a different way of engaging with potential teams.

The first stage of the process, held on 2nd July as part of the London Festival of Architecture, was the result of a completely open call announced with our partners

at the Architecture Foundation. The task was to make a 200 second presentation in response to the issues raised by Deljana Iossifova’s magnificent brief, which set out the conditions of scarcity encountered in Bromley-by-Bow. We sat back, rather nervously, to see what would come in.

Nervous, because we had no control over who and what might emerge.

On 2nd July 100 people gathered in Kingsley Hall, home for Gandhi on his 1934 London visit and to R.D.Laing’s anti-psychiatry experiments in the 1960s; a historically counter-culture place in the heart of Bromley-by-Bow. The purpose of the event was not to judge the presentations, but to allow people to share ideas openly and coalesce teams around them.

In my introduction to the day, I noted that the event had to be conducted in a spirit of generosity (“please applaud after each presentation…”) and also expressed my concern that in normal circumstances give an architect a PowerPoint opportunity and they will load up 100s of images, thereby greatly exceeding the 200 second limit (which we needed to stick to if the 27 scheduled presentations were not to go on all night).

As it turned out, all our fears were put to rest. The event was wonderful, not just for the ideas presented but also for the spirit in which it was conducted. It probably helped that the call had attracted a huge variety of people, from local historians to fundraisers, from students to experienced urban designers, from activists to the odd hard-core designer. Just this mix exploded the limited purview of a typical design competition, allowing other voices to enter the conversation. It probably helped too that the gender balance of the presenters was exactly equal, far away from the male world of most architectural events.

And it definitely helped that Deljana had organised the event scrupulously, and that nearly everyone defied norms and kept to the 200 seconds.

It is probably invidious to talk about particular presentations given the collective mood, but to give a flavour of the event, here are some. Alison Killing showed how it was done in Rotterdam. BS&T acted out a performance that at the same time was funny and asked difficult questions of the research team. 815Agency showed some inspiring work of playful cities. Boom Collectivesomehow managed to get over a convincing vision of a carbon-free transport system in 200 seconds. Dan Hopewell of the brilliant Bromley-byBow Centre showed quite how our fragile society is held together through the selfless and unsung efforts of people and organisations like his. Assemble had the best punchline: “If you want a pizza, build a pizzeria.” Vision from the South, a collaborative from Portugal, came up with the great anti-Nimby slogan: AIMBY: All in My Back Yard, as a vision of collective space. And finally, local residents Lutfa Begum and Sonia Khan who did a barnstorming performance which said architects might actually be useful, but only if they listen. All this and much more, from a self-selecting group of generally unpublished and unrecognised people, ideas popping up where previously they had no outlet. And then afterwards people stepped outside their individual boxes and began to form loose teams of shared interests and mutual skills.

The next event, on 23rd July 2013, will be longer presentations from these newly formed teams, from which will emerge four partners to work with the SCIBE teams. If this second event goes half as well as the first, then the decision to go down a different selection route will have been vindicated, and will suggest the benefits of alternatives to architectural competitions. After all, conversations are much more interesting than pictures.

STAF: INITIAL RESULTS Deljana Iossifova, London

Four teams were selected to work with SCIBE to implement their approaches:

Opposite, from top to bottom: Invitation to Scarce Times: Alternative Futures © SCIBE Audience and participants mingle during STAF Event 1 on 2 July 2012. © SCIBE Intense conversations STAF Event. © SCIBE

during

BOW D.I.Y. - an event organised by 00:/alma-nac at Kingsley Hall in Bromley-by-Bow © 00:/almanac, SCIBE

15 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

scarce times: alternative futures WHat is tHe PrOJect?

The Architecture Foundation and SCIBE (Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment, University of Westminster in London) are looking for strong ideas and new visions for the future of Bromleyby-Bow! For more info, visit www.scibe.eu/category/staf

WHO can enter?

Anyone with new ideas or existing projects seeking to improve the local area and built environment.

WHat DO i Have tO DO? You can be part of the project in three different ways: *

Develop your own vision for Bromley-by-Bow in 2062 and tell us what needs to be done, now, in order to achieve this vision. Submit your registration form and attend the SCIBE event at Kingsley Hall on 2 July 2012 to present yourself and your ideas in 200 seconds.

*

See what others have in mind at Kingsley Hall on 2 July 2012, and team up with like-minded people!

*

Help us select the best projects and teams at Kingsley Hall on 23 July 2012 by being part of the audience!

WHat Will i acHieve frOm it?

The first event (2 July) will be a chance to present your ideas, hear what other people have to say and build new partnerships with like-minded people. During the second event (23 July), you will be able to present your more developed ideas and designs, and the audience and a panel of professionals will select four winning projects. Each selected project will receive £4,000 to start their work on the future of Bromley-by-Bow!

team Community Collabor-8 proposed to transform unused public space through a re-interpretation of scarcity; the team িতু ি নিন্তাধারায় ২০৬২ সালের ব্রমনে-িাআ-বিা behind ‘BOOM Collaboration’, looking at কি প্রিল্প ? কি প্রিল্প প্রিল্প ? the challenge from an urban metabolism কি নক প্রকল্প ? অর্কি টেকচায টেকচায পাউটে঱ন পাউটে঱ন এফং এফং SCIBE SCIBE প্রকল্প প্রকল্প (‘নাগর্যক (‘নাগর্যক জীফটনয জীফটনয ঄বাফ ঄বাফ এফং এফং অর্কি perspective, assumed that Bromley-byঅর্কি টেকচায পাউটে঱ন SCIBE প্রকল্পপ্রকল্প (‘নাগর্যক জীফটনয ঄বাফ ঄বাফ এফং অর্কি টেকচায পাউটে঱ন এফং এফংওটেষ্ট SCIBE (‘নাগর্যক এফং ঳ৃজন঱ীরতা’, ঳ৃ জ ন঱ীরতা’, আউর্নবাযর্঳টি ঄ফ র্ভনস্টায, রেন) ২০৬২ ঳াটরযজীফটনয ব্রভর্র-ফাআ-বফা ঳ৃ জ ন঱ীরতা’, আউর্নবাযর্঳টি ঄ফ ওটেষ্ট র্ভনস্টায, রেন) ২০৬২ ঳াটরয ব্রভর্র-ফাআ-বফা ঳ৃজন঱ীরতা’, আউর্নবাযর্঳টি ঄ফ ওটেষ্ট র্ভনস্টায, রেন) ২০৬২ ঳াটরয ব্রভর্র-ফাআ-বফা আউর্নবাযর্঳টি ঄ফবর্ফলযটতয ওটেষ্ট র্ভনস্টায, ২০৬২ ঳াটরয ব্রভর্র-ফাআ-বফা এরাকায কার্িত বর্ফলযটতয এরাকায কার্িত কার্িত বর্ফলযটতয জনয নতু নতু রেন) ন এফং এফং ফাস্তফ঳ম্মত ফাস্তফ঳ম্মত ঩র্যকল্পনা খুজ জটে। টে। র্ফস্তার্যত র্ফস্তার্যত Bow will be in a coastal position by 2062 এরাকায জনয ন ঩র্যকল্পনা খু এরাকায কার্িত বর্ফলযটতয জনয নতু ন এফং ফাস্তফ঳ম্মত ঩র্যকল্পনা খু জটে। র্ফস্তার্যত বেখু ননতু ঃ www.scibe.eu/category/staf জনয ন এফং ফাস্তফ঳ম্মত ঩র্যকল্পনা খুজটে। র্ফস্তার্যত বেখুনঃ www.scibe.eu/category/staf বেখু বেখুন নঃ​ঃ www.scibe.eu/category/staf www.scibe.eu/category/staf and proposed to begin wiring the area কি অংশগ্রহন অংশগ্রহন িরতে িরতে পারতে? পারতে? কি বক করলতপারতে? পারলি? কি ঄ংশগ্রহি অংশগ্রহন িরতে back into larger infrastructure systems by বম বকান বকান ফযর্ি ফযর্ি মায মায নতু নতু ন ন ঩র্যকল্পনা ঩র্যকল্পনা যটেটে যটেটে ঄থফা ঄থফা মায মায ফতি ফতি ভাটন ভাটন ঩ার্য঩ার্বি ঩ার্য঩ার্বিক ক এরাকা এফং এফং বম a zero carbon transportation hub. বম বকান বকান ফযর্ি নতু ন যটেটে যটেটে ঄থফা মায ফতি ভাটন এরাকা এফং বম ফযর্িমাযমায নতু঩র্যকল্পনা ন ঩র্যকল্পনা ঄থফা মায ঩ার্য঩ার্বি ফতি ভাটনক এরাকা ঩ার্য঩ার্বি ক এরাকা এফংcreating ঩র্যটফ঱ ঩র্যটফ঱ উন্নেন উন্নেন কযায কযায প্রোট঱ প্রোট঱ প্রকল্প প্রকল্প যটেটে। যটেটে। ঩র্যটফ঱ ঩র্যটফ঱ কযায উন্নেন প্রোট঱ কযায প্রোট঱ প্রকল্প যটেটে। উন্নেন প্রকল্প যটেটে। 00:/alma-nac planned to reveal hidden আমাতি কি িরতে হতে? আমাতি আমাতি কি কি িরতে িরতে হতে? হতে? resources in the ward and to strengthen অমালক নক করলত হলি? অ঩র্ন র্তনটি র্তনটি উ঩াটে এআ এআ প্রকটল্প ঄ং঱ ঄ং঱ র্নটত ঩াটযনঃ ঩াটযনঃ অ঩র্ন অ঩র্ন র্তনটি উ঩াটে উ঩াটে এআ প্রকটল্প প্রকটল্প ঄ং঱ র্নটত র্নটত ঩াটযনঃ the community by enhancing existing * ২০৬২ ঳াটরয ব্রভর্র-ফাআ-বফা এরাকাযর্নটত জনয ঩াটযনঃ অ঩নায ঩র্যকল্পনা ঩র্যকল্পনা ততর্য করুন। করুন। অ঩র্ন র্তনটি উ঩াটে এআ প্রকটল্প ঄ং঱ * * ২০৬২ ২০৬২ ঳াটরয ঳াটরয ব্রভর্র-ফাআ-বফা ব্রভর্র-ফাআ-বফা এরাকায এরাকায জনয জনয অ঩নায অ঩নায ঩র্যকল্পনা ততর্য ততর্য করুন। অ঩নায ঩র্যকল্পনা ঩র্যকল্পনা এফং তা ফাস্তফােটনয ফাস্তফােটনয জনয জনয এখন এখন মা মা কযা কযা প্রটোজন প্রটোজন ব঳গুটরা ব঳গুটরা অভাটেয অভাটেয তা অ঩নায ২০৬২ ঳াটরযএফং ব্রভর্র-ফাআ-বফা ঩র্যকল্পনা করুন। অ঩নায ঩র্যকল্পনা skills; and team ‘Bow-nanza’ proposed অ঩নায ঩র্যকল্পনা এফং তা ফাস্তফােটনয এরাকায জনয এখনজনয মা অ঩নায কযা প্রটোজন ব঳গুটরাততর্য অভাটেয ঳াটথ অটরাচনা করুন। অ঩নায বযর্জটে঱ন পভি জভা র্েন এফং ২যা জু র াআ ২০১২ ঳াটথ অটরাচনা করুন। বযর্জটে঱ন পভি জভা এফং জু তা ফাস্তফােটনয জনয এখন মা কযা ঳াটথ অটরাচনা ঳াটথ এফং অটরাচনা করুন। অ঩নায অ঩নায বযর্জটে঱ন পভি প্রটোজন জভা র্েন র্েন ব঳গুটরা এফং ২যা ২যাঅভাটেয জুর রাআ াআ ২০১২ ২০১২ তার্যটখ SCIBE SCIBE এয এয র্কং঳টর র্কং঳টর ঴টর ঄নু ঄নুর্র্িতফয িতফয আটবটে আটবটে ঄ং঱গ্র঴টনয ঄ং঱গ্র঴টনয ভাধটভ ভাধটভ অ঩নায অ঩নায aকরুন। platform to help residents in the area তার্যটখ তার্যটখঅ঩নায SCIBEবযর্জটে঱ন এয র্কং঳টরপভি ঴টর ঴টর ঄নু র্িতফয আটবটে ঄ং঱গ্র঴টনয ভাধটভ অ঩নায জভা র্েন এফং ২যা জু র াআ ২০১২ তার্যটখ SCIBE এয র্কং঳টর ঴টর ঩র্যকল্পনা ২০০০ ২০০০ ব঳টকটে ব঳টকটে উ঩স্঴া঩ন উ঩স্঴া঩ন করুন। করুন। ঩র্যকল্পনা ঩র্যকল্পনা ২০০০ ব঳টকটে উ঩স্঴া঩ন করুন। self-employed entrepreneurs.. ঄নু র্িতফয আটবটে ঄ং঱গ্র঴টনয ভাধটভ অ঩নায ঩র্যকল্পনা ২০০০঴নব঳টকটে উ঩স্঴া঩ন become করুন। * ২যা জু র াআ ২০১২ তার্যটখ র্কং঳টর ঴টর ঄নযটেয র্চন্তাধাযা ঳ম্পটকি ও ঄ফগত এফং * ২যা জুরাআ ২০১২ তার্যটখ র্কং঳টর ঴টর ঄নযটেয র্চন্তাধাযা ঳ম্পটকি ও ঄ফগত ঴ন এফং

঄নিনিত সময়ঃ নিকল্প ভনিষ্যৎ

* ২যা জুরাআ ২০১২ তার্যটখ র্কং঳টর ঴টর ঄নযটেয র্চন্তাধাযা ঳ম্পটকি ও ঄ফগত ঴ন এফং ঳েৃ ২যাফযর্িটেয জুরাআ ২০১২ তার্যটখ ঱ভনা ঳াটথ ের গঠন র্কং঳টর করুন। ঴টর ঄নযটেয র্চন্তাধাযা ঳ম্পটকি ও ঄ফগত ঴ন এফং ঳েৃ ঳েৃ঱ ঱ভনা ভনা ফযর্িটেয ফযর্িটেয ঳াটথ ঳াটথ ের ের গঠন গঠন করুন। করুন। * ২৩ব঱ ২৩ব঱ জুর রাআ ২০১২ ২০১২ র্কং঳টর ঴টর ে঱ি ে঱িক র্঴঳াটফ র্঴঳াটফ ঄ং঱গ্র঴ন কটয কটয ব঳যা প্রকল্পগুটরা প্রকল্পগুটরা ফযর্িটেয ঳াটথ তার্যটখ ের গঠন করুন। * * ২৩ব঱ জু জুরাআ াআ ২০১২ তার্যটখ তার্যটখ র্কং঳টর র্কং঳টর ঴টর ঴টর ে঱িক ক র্঴঳াটফ ঄ং঱গ্র঴ন ঄ং঱গ্র঴ন কটয ব঳যা ব঳যা প্রকল্পগুটরা

঳েৃ঱ভনা

Developing Public Space for Young People With a special focus on children and অনম নক ঄র্ জ ি করি? প্রথভ আটবটে (২যা (২যা জুর রাআ) অ঩র্ন অ঩র্ন অ঩নায ঩র্যকল্পনা ঩র্যকল্পনা উ঩স্঴া঩ন এফং এফং ঄নযটেয প্রথভ প্রথভ আটবটে আটবটে (২যা জু জুরাআ) াআ) অ঩র্ন অ঩নায অ঩নায ঩র্যকল্পনা উ঩স্঴া঩ন উ঩স্঴া঩ন এফং ঄নযটেয ঄নযটেয ঩র্যকল্পনা ব঱ানায ব঱ানায এফং এফং ঳েৃ ঳েৃ঱ভনা ভনা ফযর্িটেয ফযর্িটেয ঳াটথ ঳াটথ নতু ন ন ঄ং঱ীোর্যত্ব গঠন গঠন কযায কযায ঳ু ঳ুটটমাগ মাগ young people, Community Collabor-8 ঩র্যকল্পনা ঩র্যকল্পনা ব঱ানায এফং ঳েৃ঱ ঱ভনা ফযর্িটেয ঳াটথ নতু নতু ন ঄ং঱ীোর্যত্ব ঄ং঱ীোর্যত্ব গঠন কযায টমাগ প্রথভ আটবটে (২যা জুরাআ) অ঩র্ন অ঩নায ঩র্যকল্পনা উ঩স্঴া঩ন এফং ঳ুঅযও ঄নযটেয ঩র্যকল্পনা ব঱ানায ঩াটফন। র্িতীে আটবটে (২৩ব঱ জু র াআ), অ঩র্ন অ঩নায প্রকল্প ও ঩র্যকল্পনা ঩াটফন। আটবটে অযও ঩াটফন। র্িতীে আটবটে (২৩ব঱ (২৩ব঱ জু জুর রাআ), াআ), অ঩র্ন অ঩র্ন অ঩নায অ঩নায প্রকল্প প্রকল্প ও ও ঩র্যকল্পনা অযও র্ফস্তার্যতবাটফ উ঩স্঴া঩ন কযায ঳ুটটমাগ মাগ ঩াটফন। ে঱ি ে঱িক ক গঠন ও েক্ষ েক্ষকযায র্ফচাযকটেয ঩যাটনর ৪টি র্িতীে আটবটেare এফং ঳েৃ঱র্িতীে ভনা উ঩স্঴া঩ন ফযর্িটেয ঳াটথ নতু ন ঄ং঱ীোর্যত্ব ঳ু঩র্যকল্পনা টমাগ঩যাটনর ঩াটফন। (২৩ব঱concerned with various scarcities in র্ফস্তার্যতবাটফ কযায ঳ু ঩াটফন। ও র্ফচাযকটেয ৪টি র্ফস্তার্যতবাটফ উ঩স্঴া঩ন কযায ঳ু টমাগ ঩াটফন। ে঱িক ও েক্ষ র্ফচাযকটেয ঩যাটনর ৪টি প্রকল্পটক জেী বঘালণা কযটফন। ব্রভর্র-ফাআ-বফা এয অযও কার্িতর্ফস্তার্যতবাটফ বর্ফলযটতয রটক্ষয রটক্ষয কাজ শুরু শুরু কযায ঳ুটমাগ ঩াটফন। জুপ্রকল্পটক রাআ), জেী অ঩র্ন অ঩নায প্রকল্প ও ঩র্যকল্পনা উ঩স্঴া঩ন বঘালণা কযটফন। ব্রভর্র-ফাআ-বফা এয বর্ফলযটতয প্রকল্পটকজনয জেী প্রটতযক বঘালণা র্নফি কযটফন। ব্রভর্র-ফাআ-বফা এয কার্িত কার্িত বর্ফলযটতয রটক্ষয কাজ কাজ শুরু public space; they use mapping, interকযায ার্চত র্চত ঩যাটনর প্রকল্প £৪০০০ গ্র঴ন কযটফ। ে঱ি ক ও েক্ষ র্ফচাযকটেয ৪টি প্রকল্পটক জেী বঘালণা কযটফন। ব্রভর্র-ফাআ-বফা এয কার্িত কযায জনয প্রটতযক র্নফি া প্রকল্প £৪০০০ গ্র঴ন কযটফ। কযায জনয প্রটতযক র্নফিার্চত প্রকল্প £৪০০০ গ্র঴ন কযটফ। বর্ফলযটতয রটক্ষয কাজ শুরু কযায জনয প্রটতযক র্নফিার্চত প্রকল্প £৪০০০ গ্র঴ন কযটফ। views and actor analysis to understand the links between the management of public space and regulatory regimes on the one hand – and the perception, experience, use of and self-regulation in the everyday reality of people on the other. The team find that institutional regulations are strongly interconnected with social regulation in public space and that, most importantly, how and if social activities are acceptable depends on the time ad space in which they take place. They claim that a lack of sense of ownership in public open space represents a constructed scarcity. The ultimate aim of the project is to explore the space around regulation and to adapt this to the needs of young people in Bromley-by-Bow. এফং েরগুটরা েরগুটরা অভাটেয করুন। এফং ২৩ব঱ জুফাোআটে রাআ ২০১২ তার্যটখ঳া঴াময র্কং঳টর ঴টর ে঱িক র্঴঳াটফ ঄ং঱গ্র঴ন কটয ব঳যা প্রকল্পগুটরা এফং েরগুটরা এফং েরগুটরা ফাোআটে ফাোআটে অভাটেয অভাটেয ঳া঴াময ঳া঴াময করুন। করুন। ফাোআটে অভাটেয ঳া঴াময করুন। আকম কি অর্ অর্জন িরে? িরে? আকম আকম কি কি অর্জজ ন ন িরে?

Rethinking Waste and Transportation BOOM Collaboration proposed a Zero Carbon Transportation Hub and Architectural Reclamation Market for Bromley-by-Bow. The team is interested in addressing the challenges of climate change adaptation, population increase and peak oil directly and incorporate an emerging cultural shift in their proposal.

They build on the idea that London, as a huge metropolis, is not likely to become self-sufficient and that it needs sustainable infrastructure in order to improve its resilience. Their idea is to re- or upcycle the building material waste which is continuously produced in and around Bromley-by-Bow, owing to current and planned expansive demolition, refurbishment and construction activities. The team’s aim is to move building material waste via zero carbon canal cargo barges to a local market site where it can be traded – a reclamation market to up-cycle and re-use salvaged building elements and materials. Zero carbon cargo barges will further transport re-cycled, up-cycled and salvaged building elements and materials to and from construction sites.

The Architectural and Building Materials Reclamation Market is expected to create new job opportunities, greater prosperity and increased collaboration between East London Boroughs - making Bromley-byBow a destination.

Building a Local Platform for Exchange In response to the competition brief, 00:/alma-nac considered future trends to guide their approach to real and perceived scarcity through ‘making do’, resourcefulness and local networks. The team started with the hypothesis that there is a wealth of skills, know-how, and agency in Bromley-by-Bow, but people have not been able to use them – most significantly because of a lack of appropriate platforms for exchange. In an event – the Bow DIY day – the team sought to uncover local energies and skills, to identify hurdles and to help local residents to think of others as potential collaborators. In short: to reveal, connect, and strengthen local skills and resources as a strategy for fostering greater resourcefulness and resilience in Bromley-by-Bow. The team met with a local teacher, a local community worker and a local reverend to explore different options and approaches to find access to the Continued on page 17 >>

<< Continued from page 13: Operational Notion of Scarcity

temporary, even certain to be overcome.

This Schnellbauprogramm should allow for a large number of accommodations. Yet, in conjunction with the general housing programme it was designed to provide a basis for future according to the strategic planning of reproduction in a twofold sense: on the one hand the dwelling as the means of social reproduction for labour and secondly the reproduction of the family through which the former should be anchored. Housing, and this issue was kept throughout the years of prosperity, had become a means of family planning and with it, even society. Or as the mayor Franz Jonas put it (in a glance to Winston Churchill): “First it is the people forming houses, then it is the houses forming the people.”

Scarcity as a Motor of Growth Scarcity has been already referred to as a catalyst for technical improvement.

Technological innovation such as the Vibroblock-System would have been hardly imaginable in circumstances of abundant construction material, the duplex-flats, the change to the Gründerzeit-block at the second half of the 19th century without severe shortage on housing stock. Yet scarcity can be taken as productive even beyond the ad-hoc reactions to it, involved in economic long-term developments development.

Facing the paradox of scarcity, (that it emerges out of access that aims to dispose what it creates), as an operation relates to such productivity: for those involved, as participants of an economic system, it differentiates between either have on the one side and have not on the other. Since all involved know about the fact of more access resulting in more scarcity, they are involved observers letting value develop according to supply and demand. Those that have not are equally involved (at least for most economic systems) - for reasons of the social stability of a system- as those that potentially can have.

Regarding the developments on the Vienna’s housing market, despite of a decreasing population from WWI on, the demand for dwellings had continuously raised. And it can be considered to be one major stimulant as to go for large-scale housing structures in the 1960ies. Apart from number, area has grown as well. A change in society - households becoming successively smaller while increasing by number gives one reason. Yet from the years of prosperity in the 1950ies on and with raising incomes and welfare, demand for floor area and size of flats raised as well: up to today’s use of 48 square metres per capita compared to 22 metres in 1961 (Statistik Austria 2001) Within the difference of have and have not the aspect of desire and imitation comes to light. For a capitalist society this entails the aspiration for progress and growth: Scarcity becomes a basic requirement, progress always means overcoming scarcity to a possible conceivable future without, “projecting the culturally supplied expectations onto the socially offered opportunities”(Bauman 1976) – admittedly for the emergence of new ones. What is perceived as scarce, is above all relational: to social status and to the compared reality out there - a comparative scarcity (Balla 2005) - best exemplified

by Marx and Engels in Wage Labour and Capital: “A house may be large or small; as long as the neighbouring houses are likewise small, it satisfies all social requirement for a residence. But let there arise next to the little house a palace, and the little house shrinks to a hut. (Marx & Engels 2000) Scarcity and the Political: a will to autonomy If progress- understood as the development of means, as to fulfil changing ends – is accompanied by the development of wants produced by the difference of have and have not, scarcity obtains value for a political project.

As Zygmunt Bauman put it, “Capitalism […] stands and falls by the continual recreation of scarcity”(Bauman 1976). This recreation of scarcity keeps the political

will for the other awake. If the capitalist economic process reproduces scarcity artificially as well the will to overcome, then, scarcity’s production of desire and want also raises the prospect for other, new ways of living. In this respect, it raises the spectre of another different society beyond as well. (Panayotakis 2003). Unequal social order, or here: unequal accessibility is kept up by artificial scarcity and competitive practices. The idea, Scarcity raises of a common future beyond itself, is promptly replied by the answer scarcity establishes regarding social structure. Scarcity, in this regard is both universalizing and particularizing.

Yet - Despite all endeavours of fragmentation, scarcity still raises the spectre of another society. It points beyond societies actual limits and serves as the transcendentory aspect of capitalism that opens up spaces for the political.

It is a political undertaking due to its antagonistic being as it necessarily positions a new social structure against the existing. Moreover it acknowledges this antagonism as constituent (Mouffe 2005).

Two moments of politics in space Two of such examples that evolve within scarcity and developed as a spatial political project in housing formed at the beginning of the 20th century: the Siedlerbewegung and succeeding, Red Vienna, that introduced communal social housing as such.

Both projects evolved out of – or actually against - the acute shortages during WWI. The former grew out of people squatting land at the outskirts, in parks and forests, first for growing vegetables and livestock breeding, by and by for dwelling in shantytowns, they had their sheds extended to. As conditions did not better after the war, these wild settlements organized into cooperatives and probably the City’s biggest self-organized movement concerned housing, the Viennese cooperative garden city movement. Opposed to conservative developments of the garden city in the rest of European, the cooperative idea in Vienna was basically borne by workers and a group of intellectuals and architects. Even if the majority of this avant-garde positioned close to the ideas of socialism, it was their common share of the progressive, modern thought and a pragmatic approach to make do with limited means that got them active on behalf of the garden city movement.

In its early moments, the movement assembled positions of various political orientations from culturally conservative petit bourgeoisie to socialism and anarchism. Through its processes of (self-) institutionalization through cooperatives and associations, it was incorporated into Social Democracy soon, where it was strongly subsidized. It allowed, though to become a more and more efficient way for ever more people to create an alternative to the poor conditions in the dense cityblocks. With this turn and a gradually settling economy, dwellings were arranged in bigger connected structures making up autonomous forms. Their design, still was affected by the scarce situation, yet on a architectonically formulated level, informed by elemental functionality, as Loos’ proposal for the Haus mit einer Wand points out. Attached to one-another, Loos simply left out one wall, so that each house has solely one structural wall. Over the years, the structures became denser with dwelling coming to the fore of the initial concurrence of housing and food production, as to shelter more people.

Finally, the municipality decided to move over to building denser and urban structures – the Gemeindehöfe Red Vienna is known for.

If the Viennese garden city movement is the reformulation of economy out from below, Red Vienna’s attempt was to reformulate society through reformism and social democracy and the party. They did so by following a particularly spatial and urban practice through social housing.

This had been made possible by two strategies: (1) First, the introduction of socially graded taxes on luxury, land Continued on page 17 >>

16 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

Left: Living in Bromley-by-Bow. Study of current layout and usage of available space by a family from Bangladesh.

Source: DS9, University of Westminster.

Student: Kyung (Jade) Yoon.

N

N N

N

Below: Site analysis, the Rounton Road Triangle (currently a Traveller Caravan Site).

Source: DS9, University of Westminster.

Students: Jessica Moult, Richard F. Glass, Kyung Yoon, Roberto Lozano Bernabeu, Louisa Cooper - King, Liva Kreislere, Sebastian Tanti Burlò.

001

A

002

SUN-PATH DIALS.

003

004

005

006

007

008

009

24HR TRAIN F R E Q U E N C Y.

010

011

G Y P S Y VA R D O A N D C A R AVA N .

012

013

014

015

016

017

ROUNTON ROAD

SITE SURVEY DIAGRAMS.

Access to A11 Access to A11/ nearest tube station

20

A

15

10

5

23

22

0

19

2

3

17 18

D.S. 09

Access to the site

1

20

21

B

B

16

4 5

Lamp Vent

Windowboard Gutter

Weatherboards

9

6

8

7

Stove pipe and cowl

Mollicroft Front porch Back porch

Crown board Gargoyles/Floral

Engine shed

Shutter Stanchion

Porch brackets

Penny-boarding

Carriage lamps Window-boards

Ribbs or Standards Shutter stop Waist board

1860 Water-jack

Cratch and cratch cover

School

Footboard

Spinning Mills

Splinter-bar

Back-carragie or cradle

Spreader Break wheel futchels

Steps (slung for the road) Pan-box Grease-cap

Axle-case Shafts

Tyre

Shaft bracing struts Stays

Sick Asylum

Monday to Saturday Hammersmith and City District Line.

Summer Solstice.

C

Shaft-ends

Carriage Shed

Spokes

Stepiron

Spring block

Spring

Drag Shackles Break block Ring plate

Roller-scotch

Main bolster

Access to A12/ nearest DLR station

Forecarriage

C

B R O M L E Y Carriage Shed

- B Y -

1890

School

15

St Andrew’s church Sick Asylum

10

B O W

Vehicular flow

Carriage Shed

5

22

1

23

0

1

2

Bromley Institution

3

4

17 18 19 20

2

Goods and Coal Depot

D

5

City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetry

6 7

Bromley by Bow is located in the heart of the London Borough of

5

8

16

D

9

10

Tower Hamlets in East London. It is an area of great interest with

1

11 12 13 1 4

Bromley station

regards to development, with the gentrification of East London for

Carriage Shed

the recent London 2012 Olympics. There has been a substantial

Starch factory

1910

amount of social housing development, including the Bow Bridge

Depot

Estate, and soon to include the Stroudley Walk area of the Bow

Wellington Primary school

Cross Estate. Originally, the area was predominantly terraced

Playground

Autumn Equinox.

E

housing for the factories that built Bromley by Bow; but has now

City of London and Tower Hamlets Cemetry

Sunday Hammersmith and City District Line.

become rife with social housing. Terraced houses have turned

Fencing Carriage Shed

Clothing factory

Marner Primary School

A high percentage of the areas populus are receiving housing

St Andrew’s hospital

benefits, so instead of paying £1000 a month in some cases,

1960

Bromley station

larger families have a reduced cost of about half that. It suffers

HISTORICAL URBAN TIME-LINE

10

from high unemployment, low income, poor health, overcrowding and poor quality housing. A feeling of isolation is clear in the

23

0

1

2

3

5

SELF EMPLOYED WORKERS IN THE U.K.

area, crossing a threshold in the form of two very busy A-roads,

Use of the arches

6 7

source. N.S.O.

5

8

16

F

4

17 18 19 20

2

5

22

E

people have settled in the area in the past, including working

are unable to afford the high prices of rent in the London area.

Metal containers works

1

into blocks of flats, with more going up every year. A variety of

class British, now it is dominated by Bangladeshi families who

Playground

a series of railway lines and a canal route that cuts off the site from all four sides. It is an interesting contrast having such a poor

F

9

area of London so close to one of the richest areas of the world

10

1

11 12 13 1 4

in the form of Canary Wharf. A link between the two has only be developed in the last few years, but does little to integrate the areas. Bromley by Bow is surrounded by areas of great interest in London, yet it seems to have been forgotten in the great scheme of things, causing it to be one of the most deprived wards in the UK. Monday to Saturday c2c National Rail Train

Winter Solstice.

G

Layout of arches

INDEX

G

Side A.

Side B.

SUN-PATH DIALS.

A.001

ON-SITE PHOTOS.

24HR TRAIN F R E Q U E N C Y.

A.003

NOISE LEVELS.

B.003

HISTORIC URBAN TIME-LINE.

E.009

SOCIO-ECONOMIC INFO.

C.001

F. 0 0 5

LAND-USE MAP

A.012

G Y P S Y & T R AVE L L E R S C A R AVA N SITE.

H.014

SELF-EMPLOYED WORKERS (UK).

G Y P S Y VA R D O C A R AVA N .

2

22

23

0

1

2

A.011

3

17 18 19 20

1

A.009

STUDENTS

4

5

6

H

7 9

5

8

16

H

&

SITE SURVEY DIAGRAM.

5

B.017

Jessica Moult

Richard F. Glass

Train Schedule.

Solar Mapping.

Kyung Yoon

Liva Kreislere

Socio-Economic Information.

Editing, Historic Time-Line, Self Employed Workers in the U.K., Site Survey Diagrams.

Roberto Lozano Bernabeu

Sebastian Tanti Burlò

Land-Use Map.

Editing, Land-Use, Gypsy & Traveller Sites, London, Gypsy Vardo & Caravans, Site Photos.

10

11 12 13 1 4

1

Louisa Cooper - King History Research.

Sunday c2c National Rail Train

Spring Equinox.

I

001

002

003

004

A. 005

006

007

008

009

010

011

012

013

014

015

016

I

017

17 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 15: STAF Initial Results

community. One first idea consisted in setting up a temporary residence in the local high street, where the team would curate workshops; others consisted in giving live demonstrations in public space; encouraging an online platform and forming an online community; and – more generally – mapping and navigating resources in Bromley-by-Bow. Hurdles to the process included the lack of time to devote to coordination and conversation with individuals. Quite apparently, the project had to engage with the community rather superficially due to the lack of time and resources, and so the team members had to rely on information they acquired in interviews with key informants – for instance with regards to the everyday habits and realities of Muslim women in the area.

The event, attended by approximately 30 people (in their report, the team writes: ‘the turnout reinforced our hypothesis about hyper-local (limited) mobility in the area’), relied on contacts at organisations to spread the word and was structured around a workshop table (to facilitate thinking differently about skills); a photo and poster area (where portraits of people were taken promoting their skills and interests); and an ideas zone (with connection to the internet where projects or valuable resources in the area could be live-uploaded). At the event, the team discovered that people are willing to support each other informally and to expand their existing networks. The also identify that there seems to be need for local, yet equally distributed presence in the area, as people are often limited in their mobility. Lastly, they find that there is a need to use trusted local figures to find one’s way into the community.

Addressing the Scarcity of Fresh Food Reacting to the competition brief – which highlighted that over ninety per cent of interview respondents eat out regularly – Bownanza asked how to improve what people eat and at the same create a vibrant street life and sense of community similar to that found in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh . The team focuses on the promotion of street food as an alternative to fast food in Bromley by Bow and aims to use street food as a potential source of employment and entrepreneurship within Bromley by Bow. They do so by investigating the possibility of using cargo bikes for the delivery and distribution of street food; the business plan behind their venture envisages a parent company owning the bikes, and prospective street food sellers renting them for their business (this, strikingly, bears resemblance to standard forms of exploitative street food business in developing and developed countries).

In order to implement the project, the team have undertaken considerable desktop research, including the inquiry into licensing and health & safety requirements for street food vehicles. It was especially in this regard that the project has been met with the resistance; the local Council, for instance, has not responded to their application for mobile licensing in two months.

SMOOTH AND STRIATED: FUTURE URBAN TOPOGRAPHIES IN BROMLEY-BY-BOW Ulysses Sengupta with Eric Cheung and Dean Smith Design Unit 1A, University of Nottingham, Year 2011/2012

Unit 1A explores contemporary design theories, processes and tools within socio-politically complex urban situations which are subject to pressures resulting in rapid change. We question the

importance of the object within the larger patterns and flows of the city and attempt to work from intellectual perspectives acknowledging alternative possibilities and multiple realities for the future.

The in-consequential city?

Any serious study into designing for the urban must by necessity negotiate the relationship of the object and/or enclave with and within the city and balance the space for the private with that of the public. The position of the Architect as simply the designer of the object within a pre-defined red line negates any real possibility of a deeper dialogue. The architect becomes complicit in the continuing commodification of space and the pretence of social aspiration, advertising café consumerism as culture while neglecting the needs of the citizen.

Study the Past, situate the Present and speculate about the Future Readings of Guattari’s Three Ecologies (Guattari 2000), make it possible to examine the environment, human subjectivity and social relations as interconnected phenomena. In parallel, an examination of the morphology of cities over time makes obvious the constantly changing nature of urban topographies in relation to urban ecologies. Hence, when working within the context of an urban territory under immediate, obvious and extreme pressure lto undergo social and topographical change, an approach could be to imagine or speculate about a desirable direction for this inevitable change.

The aim of the exploration this past year was the implementation of strategic projects that would act as catalysts towards as yet unrealised futures, providing the possibility of spaces that de-limit society.

It became pertinent to work with timelines and understand that architects must work in-between that which exists and that which is yet to come, on the emergent edge of change.

Students were asked to think not only of the stone that they chose to throw into the pond, but of the ripples they wished to create within the wider context over time.

The only limitation was creativity and imagination. They formulated personal briefs based upon four loosely defined sites/fields of high potentiality. The final projects were aimed at responding to the social, historic and cultural context through an intense, personal and ongoing interrogation of the site, with an emphasis on tracing urban change in order to challenge the dominant paradigm with imagination within the shifting topography of the site.

DS9 SELF MADE SELF BUILD: COMMUNITY STRUCTURES AND HOUSING, BROMLEY-BY-BOW Camilla Wilkinson, Eric Guibert Year Brief 2012-13, University of Westminster

Whilst a boom in London’s prime private housing market is designed to attract international buyers in a period of global economic crisis, we return to East London and delve deeper into life in Bromleyby-Bow in order to study social housing and infrastructure for communities - for whom the economic crisis is an everyday living condition.

The challenge to build mass social housing has been the subject of continuous debate for architects and planners since the mid 19thC and the development of the Welfare State. Rocking between the idealised utopias of Garden Cities and more abstract concept of ‘machines for living in’, perhaps the success of social housing schemes, in terms of community,

depends on a more finely tuned set of nongeneric conditions?

The social welfare project succeeded in raising the housing standards for – virtually – all in the developed world. Yet this has not been without consequences; many people have criticised the lack of identity and anonymity of the architecture of Council Estates such those found in Bow. The style of the architecture is often blamed for the problems that happen within. As far as space is concerned, inhabitants are generally considered passive users to whom the Council provides housing and maintenance of the public and communal areas. Could there be an alternative where the inhabitants are active and contribute to the creation and care of their environment?

We propose to start from the premise that people are happier in spaces that they can make their own. That it is in such conditions that they take ownership. Such an approach involves a radical rethink of the roles and responsibilities of the residents, the Council/Housing Associations and the Architect. * How do we (architects) design buildings to support low cost housing ‘stakeholders’? * What is our role in the design process? * How do we develop architectural language?

Through the year we will refer to the SCIBE project in Bromley by Bow in trying to understand what scarcity means in this context. As well as a four day Field Trip, we will organise a number of visits to existing housing estates and housing projects in the UK in order to understand the reasons for success and failure (for example the Byker Estate in Newcastle).

Semester 1, Building for Community use In addition to the wealth of research available through Westminster University’s collaboration on the SCIBE project and the Bow Community project, we will ask you to make your own observations in a mapping project that will lead to the design of community structures that can support and enhance the lives of those living in Social Housing in Bromley-byBow in a form of Co-housing community building.

Semester 2, Flexible Settlement We will invite you to design a flexible small housing settlement with a specific kind of tenant in mind. You will be developing a support structure that will allow for future alterations and/or additions by the inhabitants. We will ask you to think of the home not simply as a place to live but also as a place of production of goods or delivery of services.

Your design will not be judged as a finished object but in terms of its capacity to adapt to change. You will show us how your building can retain a sense of identity through time, looking at questions of materiality and decoration of the structure and/or facade.

The housing may be developed in relation to a Housing Association Scheme or Co-op. Some of the land might be sold in order to raise funds for your proposed housing.

NAMING SCARCITY: SOCIOMATERIAL, TRANSCALAR AND TRANSLOCAL Deljana Iossifova, London A policy paper presented in October 2012 at the Sixth World Bank Urban Research and Knowledge Symposium 2012 on Cities of Tomorrow: Framing the Future; Barcelona, Spain.

Just as critical resources can be natural, socioeconomic, and cultural, their management and governance is subject Continued on page 19 >>

<< Continued from page 15: Operational Notion of Scarcity

and rents and the government’s decision to fix indivual rents. This made private speculation on land highly unattractive and entailed the municipality as sole buyer of then connectable lots. By doing so, they annulled the mechanism of the market, and on a long term base - scarcifying interest and letting prices fall, which allowed to acquire land within the city, at low costs.

(2) And Second, even underlying this, the formulation of a program to re-build the city from within. Broken down to means-ends-relation, Social Democracy had little chance to accomplish to better housing situation fundamentally. Yet, in its attempt to practice Austro-Marxism, Red Vienna shows strong commitment to pragmatism and reformism.

Reformulating the own incapacity as strength, it took up strategic spatial thinking: instead of the erection of a new workers’ city aside the existing, Red Vienna pursued what can be described as an insular urbanism: to position new buildings on unbuilt land within the existing city fabric.

This opened up the possibility to intervene on what through action became territory: It gave opportunity to act on a physical level: To provide shelter for those in need (1), on an architectonic level to represent working class in and to re-shape the image of the city (2), on the level of rent markets, again on a long term base, affecting the markets locally and regionally through an “oversupply” of affordable dwelling (3) and on the political landscape, by countering sociospatial segregation through redistributing working class over the city and with it change actively election-votes (4).

This project, meant the creation of a totality over the territory, on which the spatial strategy of punctual action was pursued. This is basically Red Vienna’s spatial strategy or even more: a theory on the city that implied how to act.

The action taken to confront the misery resulting from the process of scarcification during promoterism, in Red Vienna was to create oversupply.

To build and keep prices down. On the level of markets, it worked and allowed to provide a roof overhead. This practice has been kept: the perpetuation of social housing, had remained a central means to regulate rents.

For today’s situation it is about to think about alternatives. Regarding architecture, there is no question about the necessity of goods. But the concept of growth has beguiled us of thinking about allocating things differently. And In all the restless, perpetually unfulfilled desires, the aspect of the ends that we aim for has been lost out of sight. For today’s debate on the allocation of goods, no matter whether it is about finances or material resources, it is necessary, to keep in mind scarcity’s underlying characteristics of being relational, discursive and contingent. It is relational as it is related to defined ends encountered by human access, so to society, its modes of (re)production and consumption. So is it to have and have not. Stating scarcity does not mean that this scarcity is natural or universal. At any point it is contingent.

We might then consider whether the dialectical opposite of material scarcity at any moment is really material abundance.

Understanding Scarcity as the “social perception of limits/restrictions” (Luhmann 1994), that is structured relational, discursively and that is contingent, we point (unlike Luhmann) at its very political meaning. Scarcity, then, is not only about economics, but, before all, it relates to society’s idea of the valuable.

Regarding scarcity as giving information about the relationship between resource, means and ends must not stop at looking at the availability of resources- but rather it is necessary to attach society’s idea of the valuable to the aspect of ends. This side- the ends - must not be left out of consideration in the debate on sustainability and the allocation of goods.

Therefore, it is necessary to find new politics, of what is considered to become

scarce, how it is created and how it relates to both sides: the aspect of resource and means and their access on the one side and that of what it aims for on the other – a new ecology of scarcities.

References Balla, B., 2005. Knappheit als Ursprung sozialen Handelns, Krämer, Hamburg.

Bauman, Z., 1976. Socialism: The Active Utopia, Taylor & Francis.

Csendes, P. & Opll, F., 2006. Wien: Geschichte einer Stadt, Böhlau.

Jencks, C., 1977. The Language of PostModern Architecture, Revised Enlarged Edition, Rizzoli.

Lefèbvre, H., 1991. The production of space, Wiley-Blackwell.

Luhmann, N., 1994. Die Wirtschaft der Gesellschaft 6th ed., Suhrkamp Verlag.

Malthus, T.K., 1976. An Essay on the Principle of Population and a Summary view of the principle of Population A. Flew, ed., Penguin Books.

Marx, K. & Engels, F., 2000. Lohnarbeit und Kapital. In Werke, 43 Bde., Bd.6, November 1848 bis Juli 1849. Dietz, Berlin.

Mouffe, C., 2005. On the Political New edition., Routledge.

Panayotakis, C., 2003. Capitalism’s “Dialectic of Scarcity” and the Emancipatory Project. Capitalism Nature Socialism, 14(1), p.88.

Robbins, L., 2007. An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science 3rd ed., The Mises Institute.

World Commission on Environment and Development, 1987. Our common future, Oxford : New York: Oxford University Press.

THE PRODUCTION OF VALUE - SCARCITY/ ABUNDANCE: REALITY/IDEOLOGY: SOCIAL/NATURAL Jon Goodbun, London

Scarcity is a term that can be used to describe and think about aspects of ‘reality’. However, whenever this term is used, it also simultaneously performs and produces an ideology (a complex term, which I use here in the classic Marxian sense of ‘false consciousness’).

I’ll start by considering how scarcity as a concept is used to describe aspects of our ‘reality’. There is for us today a dominant global system of production: capitalism. Real ‘scarcities’ can be said to play real roles in the way that this system dynamically regulates and reproduces itself. That is to say, at any given instant there are real limits and real barriers to real ‘metabolic’ material resource and energy flows. These limits and barriers are defined and produced by a combination of natural and social factors. They are relational: the product of dynamic systemic relations. That is to say, there are systemic limits to the possible metabolic flow of any given resource in the system, at a given time, and the concept of scarcity has been used to try to both describe and manage this condition.

The concept of scarcity describes a specific kind of relation between supply and demand within a system of resource flows. Specifically of course, scarcity describes a condition of limited resources in comparison to demand. Scarcity is in this sense the binary pair of the concept of abundance (which I will return to).

In summary then, at any given instant, there can be real chronic scarcities within a system. Equally, the concept in general refers to a supply/demand ratio. This is broadly the role that the concept plays in describing resource relations in classical economics.

In addition to this, the concept of scarcity plays an ideological role. That is to say, it naturalises – it makes obscure – the social component of the limits of, and barriers to, these flows. These Continued on page 19 >>

18 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

2 TOWER BLOCKS

3 WORKMEN

Both disconnected from the street scene and leading to extremely high density living.

During the day there are a large number of workmen. This is to do with refurbishments of old flats and new builds.

1 THE ONLY ROW OF SHOPS IN THE AREA

One of the most notable aspects to the area is the lack of commerce

4 MARKET STOOLS

The food market is both very encouraging as people are using their initiative to start businesses and a sign of poverty.

6 NO SITTING

5 BARRIERS

A surface has been placed on this drain cover to stop people from sitting and lurking. There is nowhere to sit in the square. Fear?

Throughout BBB these barriers limit the pedestrian. Why are cars so much more important in this area?

A01 6

7

Left: A series of exploratory mapping studies attempting to intuitively associate existing knowledge of socio-economic issues with spatial attributes and conditions demonstrating change. The studies are comparable and contrast various areas clearly.

Source: Design Unit 1A, University of Nottingham, Year 2011/2012.

Student: Tom Glover

2 GREEN SHUT OFF

A green is located by this block of flats, but who is it for. People have no access to it.

3 REFURBISHMENT

1 PUBLIC HOUSE

Blocks of flats being converted from social housing to private flats.

This is happening all over BBB.

One of three pubs in the area. None serve food. There are 4 closed down pubs also in BBB.

A02 8

9

3 OLD CHURCH YARD

2 PUBLIC HOUSE CLOSED

A thirteenth century church once stood here. The yard is now left vacant.

Possibility for a new project site as it would not destroy anything. Plus it has interesting artefacts that could be incorporated into a new building.

3 NEW SMART PRIvATE HOUSING

Many of the pubs in BBB are now shut down

These flats are being built around the fringes gradually edging their way in. They are not affordable to many of the local residents.

A03 10

11

4 TRAIN TRACK

1 DARK ENCLOSED SPACES

Ran into the path of two junkies, steeling scrap metal as I was walking towards this tunnel. Darker side to Bow.

One of the major transport infrastructures that is cutting up and isolating the area. It puts a divide through the neighbourhood that at night is too dangerous to penetrate.

5 MOTHERS AND CHILDREN

Apart from workmen, most of the people I saw during this day study were women and children.

2 NEW SMART FLATS

3 OLD TOWER BLOCKS

More new smart flats. These were integrated very well into the existing street.

Allowing contact with the street creating a safe feeling environment in what was close to an unsafe area.

This style of tower block had a purpose in the 50â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s after the war where rapid mas housing was required.

They are now unsafe and created a sense of fear and isolation.

4 DEAD END

6 NEW SMART FLATS

There is no through road of cars. This transformed the street. Children were playing in the road.

People were about.

The place felt homely and welcoming. Just by removing the traffic priority.

These are the sort of flats that are expensive private and are causing locals to be moved to even less well off areas.

A04

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1 RUNNING TRACK

This space could work really well in the summer.

Activities are provided for people to play. Could be intimidating for those who do not like sport.

5 FENCES

Fences everywhere. People are constantly being guided though these small openings. WHY!!?!?!

2 HIGH FENCES

BBB is but up as an area, but on a human scale there are boundaries and divisions at every turn. People need options to feel safe.

14

3 DISCONNECTED

The flats are disconnected, or removed from the public realm.

There is little interaction between the mothers in the windows and the children playing in the park.

4 CRANES

The cranes in the distance are a constant reminder that the developers are coming.

A05 15

A sociospatial investigation mapping individual stories of 15 interviewed residents in Bromley-by-Bow to the territories they use and are familiar with, demonstrating the direct and looped relationship between space, familiarity and use and the limited spaces of the city that are a part of the civic life of residents. Source: Design Unit 1A, University of Nottingham, Year 2011/2012.

Student: Zanda Lapsa

19 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 17: Naming Scarcity

to particular social institutions, social cycles, and social order and thus linked to socially constructed identities, norms, and hierarchies (see Machlis, Force, & Burch, 1997). Scarcity is defined as the condition when demand for a resource outstrips supply. The demand-to-bemet can be ‘real’, i.e. it must be met in order to secure the continued existence of the system producing it (‘need’); or it can be ‘artificial’, i.e. optional for survival (‘want’). The supply of a resource (or good, or service) can be based on its natural availability; or it can be the result of human management and distribution processes. In the context of a global capitalist society, scarcity is the result of engineered demand and regulated supply and is thus no longer exclusively a function of the natural abundance of resources or goods (see, for instance, Castree, 2003; Harvey, 1999; Schoenberger, 2011; Zimmermann, 1951). This makes scarcity a sociomaterial process. Gold offers an interesting example on which to examine these propositions: the physical qualities and (relative) natural scarcity of gold led to its association with high social value and later to the restriction of its ownership; despite its increasing availability in the course of history, it had to remain ‘vanishingly scarce for most’ and ‘comparatively abundant for some’ (Schoenberger, 2011).

Thus, the natural scarcity of gold was ‘significantly amplified by a wholly artificial scarcity produced by the way gold has been used by those who possessed it’ (Schoenberger, 2011). Here, real (natural) and artificial (engineered, constructed) scarcity are coupled.

Working from this understanding, the paper contributes to the recent debate on the nature of scarcity (see, for instance, Bookchin, 2004; Homer-Dixon, 2001; Matthaei, 1984; Meadows, Meadows, Randers, & Behrens Iii, 1974; Mehta, 2010; Perelman, 1979; Xenos, 1989) in identifying the condition as always intrinsically both – social and material, and hence only to be addressed effectively in the context of its sociomaterial reality. Using findings from empirical research in Bromley-byBow, east London (a contested urban territory with many aspects of social and spatial inequality) to illustrate the translocal and transcalar dimensions of systemic scarcity, the aim of this paper is, ultimately, to begin to expose its triggers, instances and effects.

Scarcity or Deprivation?

The case study area, Bromley-by-Bow, is located in east London – historically known as home to London’s worst slums (see Dench, Gavron, & Young, 2006; Hanley, 2007; Wise, 2009; Young & Willmott, 1979) and in-between the City, the Canary Wharf Estate and the site of the London Olympics. Over eighteen months, door-to-door interviews were conducted with 104 residents to develop an understanding of local conditions, resources and needs. In order to understand the experiences and perceptions of residents better, 33 participants were asked to take photographs of instances of scarcity in their day-to-day lives and to speak about these in in-depth photo-elicitation interviews. An initial synthesis of the collated material was published in a report entitled ‘Scarce Times: Alternative Futures’ (SCIBE & The Architecture Foundation, 2012) and constituted the basis for teams of designers, architects and other interested individuals to develop approaches to the documented themes and present during two events in July 2012. Four teams were selected to begin implementing their proposals.

Often, the notion of scarcity is used to explain or justify the phenomena of poverty or deprivation, and thus the three concepts are closely interrelated and frequently confused. Assuming that it would hold a number of existing and emerging scarcities in the context of its built environment, Bromley-by-Bow was chosen as the case study area because it was ranked London’s most deprived out of 628 wards in 2007 in the Indices of Deprivation (Leeser, 2008). Deprivation is defined as the lack of material standards/access

to social activities which are normally available or commonly experienced and accepted in a society (Townsend, 1987), i.e., the concept is not based on the supply of material or social resources in response to actual demand, but rather on material or social (and always socially constructed) standards. This exposes the concept’s relativity and suggests a clearly normative dimension. The achievement of accepted social or material standards (measured, of course, by the consumption of goods, services and, necessarily, resources) is taken as a precondition for membership in society. Poverty is defined as the lack of or access to the resources needed to obtain the material or social standards which allow membership in society, i.e., money (Townsend, 1979). In other words, living below the socially accepted material standards in a society makes us by definition deprived; if this, then, is not a matter of choice but rather resulting from the lack of income to obtain socially constructed material and social standards, we live, by definition, in poverty. Yapa (1996) summarises the relationship between the three concepts brilliantly: the material deprivation experienced by the poor is a form of socially constructed scarcity.

Having briefly looked at the relationship between the concepts of scarcity, deprivation and poverty, before turning to the relevance of built-environmentrelated deprivation indicators and the Indices of Deprivation in the context of Bromley-by-Bow for building an understanding of the real needs of low-income neighbourhoods in the remainder of this paper, the following section will explore the translocal links between east London and Sylhet (Bangladesh).

Sylhet in London in Sylhet It is worth noting here that only about one quarter of those we interviewed in Bromley-by-Bow were born in the UK; the majority were born in Bangladesh (59.6%), with 38.5% of all participants originating from Sylhet, a district in northeast Bangladesh (the 2001 Census reports 40.1% people of Bangladeshi origin in Bromley-by-Bow; Office for National Statistics, 2001a). As early as the late nineteenth century, many Sylhetis began to settle in the UK, not returning from ship journeys to the island. The majority arrived in the 1950s and 1960s, following the encouragement of the British authorities who acted in response to the scarcity of local labour. As in many other cases of chain migration, ‘men from particular villages and lineages gained employment through the patronage of their relatives and neighbours’ (Gardner, 2008), and the links between them remained strong long after arrival in Britain. Among the main reasons named by interview participants for living in Bromley-by-Bow were the established Bangladeshi community, the closeness to relatives and friends and the rich availability of mosques. Never entirely tackled, however, housing shortages and overcrowding (re-)appeared in east London (these problems had been addressed earlier in that east London families were resettled to new-built homes in the suburbs outside of the city (London Borough of Tower Hamlets, 2009)). In this way, at the risk of oversimplifying complex relationships, it can be said that the demand for human labour in this case led to the ‘import’ of labourers from nowBangladesh and elsewhere, and the need to house these labourers led to a renewed scarcity of housing, particularly in east London.

Migrants remained rooted in social networks in Bangladesh, and even after decades of living in London, the ‘home country’ is still an important part of their social life. For instance, Sonara1, 61, stayed on in the two-bedroom council flat after her husband’s death in 2006. Together with his wife, her son had moved back to Bangladesh to teach their two children Bengali culture and language. Sonara’s nephew moved in with her to help her with her daily deeds and to house-sit when she is away on visits to Bangladesh: »» My son pays for my ticket to Bangladesh.

There is nothing left after I pay for all the bills here. But it is comfortable to live here with all the benefits and doctors. (Interview with

Sonara, December 2011).

Often, living below the poverty line in Britain and having to depend on benefits, like 65% of our interviewees, is still seen as desirable when compared to the potential insecurities and desperate poverty back in Bangladesh (see Dench, et al., 2006; Gardner, 2008). Take Jhuma and her husband Ziaul, who arrived in London in 2003. They have been bidding to move from their two-bedroom council flat to a three-bedroom flat ever since the arrival of their second baby – which lead to the increased frequency and duration of visits by Ziaul’s mother from Bangladesh.

Ziaul used to make furniture back ‘home’, insisting that he was better off there: »» I have a family business in Sylhet – and shops. I rent them out. But you know how it is. In Bangladesh, you don’t know what happens next. In the UK, life is secure. (Interview with Ziaul, December 2011) Those who remain in Bangladesh often depend on the money that their relatives send back – and on their help to set up their own businesses. Some Londonis2, Gardner (2008) reports, build multi-storied houses made of stone and featuring foreign architectural styles (see BBC News Berkshire, 2011 for an example). They also invest in the construction of mosques, apartment blocks and shopping centres that carry names reminiscent of their UK counter parts, such as ‘Tessco’ or ‘Harrods’ (Gardner, 2008). Hardly the centre of Sylheti community life in London, as the interviews in Bromley-by-Bow show (more than half of the respondents with Bangladeshi background stated that they never take part in events organised by community centres), mushrooming community centres in rural Bangladesh form a curious translocal trend. Most strikingly, in certain areas of the Sylhet region affording to buy land has become intrinsically linked to access to British income, with prices for an acre reaching more than ten times of prices elsewhere in the country; this has led to a hierarchy of place, where land is owned in the majority by Londonis and often no longer cultivated (Gardner, 2008).

Thus, Londoni investment activities have contributed (and continue to contribute) to fuelling potentially wasteful lifestyles and, more or less directly, to a scarcity of arable land.

MEASURING DEPRIVATION The Indices of (Multiple) Deprivation are based on a number of indicators, including those directly related to the built environment, namely household overcrowding; the ratio of owner-occupation; the proportion of housing which fails to meet a decent standard; and the accessibility of GPs, supermarkets and convenience stores, primary schools and post offices (Communities and Local Government, 2008). The following sections will examine these indicators in more detail in the context of Bromley-by-Bow. Overcrowding The Office for National Statistics (2003) measures overcrowding and underoccupancy using the ‘occupancy rating’, which assumes that ‘every household, including one person households, requires a minimum of two common rooms (excluding bathrooms)’. The occupancy rating poses that a household consisting of three grown men would have the ‘right’ amount of rooms if they had two common rooms (living room and kitchen) in addition to one bedroom for each member: five rooms in total. According to this definition, Apon, for instance, lives under severely overcrowded conditions. Apon is a full-time university student who moved to Bromley-by-Bow in 2010 to share a two-room flat (i.e., a sitting room and kitchen) with two others. However, he explains why and how sharing space with his flatmates is usually not a problem: »» This is my study desk. […] My radio is my only entertainment. Sometimes I want to listen to a song when my roommates come home and want to sleep. I use my headphones. […] If they want to meet their girlfriends, they meet at a relative’s place. […] I don’t know what other kitchens are like, Continued on page 20 >>

<< Continued from page 17: The Production of Value

social aspects can take many forms. For example, in capitalism, the processes that determine who gets what proportion of the available materials and energy is mediated by a range of social constructs such as money, ownership, technology, nationality etc. These mediations determine not just the allocation of resources, but also the ownership and management of the system or flow. Clearly, those in the system who own and manage these flows have a vested interest in maintaining scarcities. Scarcities, the control of resources, are real social power.1 Importantly, these social mediations are obscured, and made to look inevitable, natural, the democracy of the market etc, and the ideology of scarcity plays a key role in maintaining this ‘false consciousness’ culturally and politically.

If scarcity can be understood as a dialectical relation between reality and ideology, which itself unfolds into a further dialectical relation between the natural and the social (I will return to this), it also works dialectically with abundance, in a related way. Abundance as a concept also has real and ideological moments. As with scarcity, what I mean by its real moment is broadly the same as the way that it operates in classical economic theory. And classically in capitalist economics, certain natural resources are imagined to be abundant (such as air, water from rivers, waste sinks etc.)

Abundance describes a condition in which a resource flow can be considered infinite and inexhaustible for a given system. For example, oxygen is typically considered to be abundant on the surface of the earth (leaving aside questions of pollution etc for the moment). If you are planning for a herd of cows, oxygen will not figure as a resource issue, whereas other resource flows will.

Like scarcity, the socio-cultural uses of the concept of abundance also promote various forms of false consciousness, most notably perhaps the idea that we can extract as much as we want from the planet. So, we literally get hit conceptually in both directions by these two terms… and this keeps people confused!

Importantly, precisely the same kind of argument and ideological construction that can be found in classical economics, tends to be used within certain traditions of environmental theory, but reversed.

Most notably, there are repeated references to the idea that the earth is a “closed system”, and that natural resources are finite, limited and scarce.2 There are important moments of truth in all of these statements, but there are problems with such formulations too. The earth is not really a closed system, as whilst it is true that certain material resources are effectively finite, it is equally true that the natural world is constantly engaged in self-production (autopoiesis), in very complex ways. The most extreme version of the ‘limits to growth’ discourse, which can be found in some forms of deep ecology, describes humans as a species that is uniquely outside of and in opposition to nature. These forms of deep ecology are often a curious mirror image of the kinds of western thinking that they seek to oppose, and in both cases a total nature/ culture distinction is drawn.

I mention this, as I think that it is crucial to try to grasp the way that the dialectical relation between the real and ideological performance of scarcity and abundance, unfolds into a further dialectical relation between the natural and the social. To repeat, scarcity is a concept that provides a series of mechanisms for managing the human metabolic relation with nature in ways that obscure the social form of these relations. Scarcity is a primarily social construct, not a natural necessity. It is produced by what Neil Smith and David Harvey have described as “uneven development” in “the social production of nature”.3 Harvey and Smith have tried to develop a dialectical model of the concept of nature, primarily through a Marxian theory of “uneven development”, which describes the way that capital works as

a process in space (and in time).4 Smith captures some of the complex relations that define nature and space: »» ...the problems of nature, of space, and of uneven development are tied together by capital itself. Uneven development is the concrete process and pattern of the production of nature under capitalism.5 The question of “the production of nature” as set out in the above two quotes is a complex and apparently paradoxical one, and many thinkers have struggled with this. It is either rejected as absurd (“how can humans produce nature?”) or is taken to mean that the human is distinct in the natural world, in that the human species alone changes nature.

This is not however how we should understand the production of nature at all.

As Harvey makes clear: »» we produce nature; things happen there through what we do, in the same way that things happen there through what beavers do, and what ants do, and what all kinds of organisms do.6 Nature then is produced, and it is constantly autopoietically produced and reproduced, universally, by nature itself.

The human metabolic relation is but one network of flows in a much broader web of life. It is this conception of the production of nature which distinguishes Marxian ecology from some forms of Deep Ecology,7 or some ecocentric notions which can suggest that humans uniquely degrades nature. As Harvey and Smith point out, any absolute attempt to bracket off some conception of the “natural” is always ideological, and generally today reproduces bourgeois conceptual divisions. As Harvey repeatedly emphasises: »» ... one of the big problems that has arisen in the bourgeois era has been precisely the way in which conceptually, and also through practices, and social institutions, we have increasingly seen nature as something over there, and society as something over here.8 It is quite simply impossible to maintain any clear distinction between the natural and the cultural. There is no definitive boundary there, but instead a series of metabolic relationships. As Smith concludes, »» ...when we eventually look back at the intellectual shibboleths of the high capitalist period – say the last three centuries – few ingrained assumptions will look so wrongheaded or so globally destructive as the common sense separation of society and nature. Historically and geographically, most societies have avoided such a stark presumption of hubristic folly, but from physicists to sociologists, physicians to poets, the brains of the ascendent capitalist west not only embraced but made a virtue of society’s separation form nature (and vice versa).9 Scarcity then, needs to be understood both as a series of dialectical movements through scarcity/abundance, natural/ social, reality/ideology, and equally needs to be grasped as part of a network of other (equally problematic) terms, including ‘resources’, ‘limits’,.. etc. Perhaps the most important of these other terms, is value.

If we ask, what is the actual technical role that the concept of of scarcity plays in classical economic theory, the answer is that it is part of a mechanism for determining value in the marketplace, through a supply and demand type process. Indeed, the relation of scarcity to a conception and production of value is absolutely critical and essential to the term.

If we think of the very best examples of any given category, whether restaurants, universities, paintings etc, they are by definition scarce.10 However, whilst scarcity might be a necessary factor in any such a definition of value or quality, it is not sufficient. Just being scarce does not of course make something inherently valuable. Indeed, one could just as easily argue that there is a scarcity of the very worst restaurants, universities etc! Nonetheless, in classical economic theory the concept of scarcity plays a role in understanding the determination of price value in a market, and of course, this means that there are scarcities of Continued on page 21 >>

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<< Continued from page 19: Naming Scarcity

[but our current] kitchen is better than my last kitchen, for instance. […] We had five rooms there and one kitchen. Ten people! Now, it’s easier. (Interview with Apon, December 2011) In 2001, 34.35% of households in Bromley-by-Bow were rated as ‘overcrowded’, i.e., they occupied one or more rooms less than they were thought to require (Office for National Statistics, 2001b). The average household size in our interview sample was 4.37 people (roughly 2.33 for people of English and 4.85 for people of Bangladeshi origin), but only about one third of the housing stock in Bromley-by-Bow offered five rooms or more (Office for National Statistics, 2001b). This hints at a possible mismatch between the demand for family-sized homes and their supply – a scarcity of adequately sized homes that becomes manifest in high levels of overcrowding. The Council has recognised and attempted to address this through small-scale strategies, such as plans to build social rent homes on land within existing estates; buying back large Right to Buy (RTB)3 properties; or offering incentives to under-occupiers to vacate their homes (London Borough of Tower Hamlets, 2009). These strategies, however, come under increasing threat because of decisions made at higher levels of governance: for instance, the replacement of ‘Social Rent’ as the main type of all new ‘social’ housing supply with ‘Affordable Rent’ (which offers property at 80% of average market rent for the respective area) will show impact on the capability of low-income families to rent in sought-after areas – contributing, in effect, not only to a widening gap between rich and poor in London and beyond, but also, potentially, to further segregation based on ethnic or cultural preferences.

Take Ann’s story: now 60 years old, she was born in Bromley-by-Bow. After taking over from the Council a few years ago, the Housing Association (HA) begun moving her old neighbours out and replacing them with new: »» We’ve been together for 30 years; we’d celebrate Eid and Christmas together. All my neighbours moved out because of the refurbishment. They offered them money and a house elsewhere. […] The new ‘affordable’ rents, at which they are offering the flats, now, are not affordable for most. But people started moving in again. I can tell you, the newcomers do not care about where they live.

They buy the flats and receive welcome packs – like in the development next door they offer them a ‘buy four get five’ deal! It’s mostly Hong Kong investors that go for it. (Interview with Ann, January 2012)

In the UK, the much-cited housing shortage (see, for instance, Hanley, 2011; McCann, 2011; Steele, 2010) is rooted to a great extend in shrinking household sizes – the result of decreasing fertility rates and growing numbers of divorces and single households. Bahiya, a 31 year old single mother from Sierra Leone who lives with four children in a two-bedroom flat, further summarises the importance of context and the tendency toward individuation in London: »» Where I come from, sharing is good. But here, I am waiting for me to have my own room! (Interview with Bahiya, November 2011) What appears problematic is the acceptance of living standards that are based on the preferences of and tendencies within a dominant group (i.e., single or small family households) as the living standards for all members of a society. Failing to respond to the needs of ‘minorities’ (such as the demand for larger homes that are suitable for extended families) could even be interpreted as the missed opportunity to take advantage of possible benefits arising from the preservation of culturally specific lifestyles in a multicultural city like London, be it the willingness to share one’s home with and provide care for the older generation, or the provision of other forms of informal support. In short, it may be that some aspects of ‘minority’ lifestyles that are frequently associated with poverty and deprivation should, rather, be regarded as examples of resilience and resourcefulness when it comes to addressing existing and emerging scarcities.

Owner-occupation The Indices of Deprivation consider the difficulty of access to owner-occupation, measured by the proportion of households under 35 unable to afford owner occupation, as another indicator of deprivation. Notably, this defines owneroccupation as the only desirable form of dwelling. The preferential treatment of owner occupation blatantly signifies the growing commodification of housing in England. The consequences can be felt on the ground.

Only less than 15% our sample owned or leased their homes; those who did saw themselves faced with a number of challenges, much to the contrary of the assumed higher socio-economic standing of owner-occupiers. For instance, ‘only’ around 40% of tenants stated that they sometimes used less energy than needed because of their energy bills, in stark contrast to 73% of the owner-occupiers.

Coming up with repayments on mortgages or other debt was stated frequently

as problematic. Take the example of Ahmed, a 47 years old homeowner who lives in one of the ubiquitous new-built, gated developments of Bromley-by-Bow. He arrived in London in the early 1990s, hoping for a good job, after marrying his British-Bangladeshi cousin. The Council assigned a flat to the couple, but Ahmed found himself in debt because of the loan he had taken out in a (failed) attempt to complete a university degree, and his marriage ended. He had moved out and lived in shared accommodation for years when he learned from a colleague about the opportunity to buy – and of the promise that market values in the area would rise immensely with the Olympic Games 2012. He borrowed the money for the deposit from his ex-wife and moved into the new-built one-bedroom flat with open-plan kitchen/sitting room in 2009, spending the majority of his salary on repayments to his wife and a £700/month, interest-only mortgage. These days, he finds himself sleeping on the couch in the kitchen/sitting room, having sublet his only bedroom for £750/month, to ease his financial burden.

Decent Homes The Indices of Deprivation take into consideration ‘the probability that any given dwelling fails to meet the decent standard’ (Leeser, 2008), defined by ‘the statutory minimum standard for housing’, being ‘in a reasonable state of repair’, having ‘reasonably modern facilities and services’ and providing a ‘reasonable degree of thermal comfort’ (Department of Communities and Local Government, 2006). Almost one quarter of the people we interviewed in Bromley-by-Bow stated that they were not happy with at least one aspect of their homes, but the local HA (who took over from the Council in 2007) appeared determined to improve grim housing conditions for residents and to bring all homes up to the decent homes standard, replacing kitchens, refurbishing bathrooms and attempting to give estates an overall facelift.

In one particular case, routine maintenance with a focus on aesthetics and cost effectiveness turned into a complete retrofit promising to reduce ‘residents’ energy costs by as much as 25% while achieving greater comfort, reduced energy consumption and lower carbon emissions’ (Saint-Gobain Weber Ltd., 2012). The HA’s builder delivered the retrofit (including thick external insulation) on top of the standard maintenance work for which they were commissioned, at no added cost to the HA, claiming that this was achieved simply by getting ‘the best performance from the least intervention’(McCabe,

2012). Laudable as the strife for energy and cost efficiency may seem, however, the retrofit project left some residents disappointed.

Housing blocks on the estate had been quite airtight even before the intervention, and homes suffered from problems with ventilation and, in effect, condensation and mould. Residents thus had hoped that especially issues around dampness and mould would be resolved as a result of the retrofit and were surprised to see these grow even worse after the intervention.

Claire’s flat, for instance, had just been refurbished – in fact, the scaffolding was still up at the time of the interview – but Claire and her sister had to share a mattress in the sitting room because both had problems breathing in the only available bedroom; the walls and ceiling there had become overgrown with mould. In this case, striving to reduce energy demand in order to satisfy primarily technical criteria has helped to exacerbate existing issues with respect to the health and wellbeing of individual residents. This makes explicit the need to explore the effects of an intervention at different scales and to acknowledge the sociomaterial nature of the problem.

Availability and Accessibility: Food The accessibility of GPs, supermarkets and convenience stores, primary schools and post offices serves as another indicator of deprivation for the Indices of Deprivation. In this case study, residents of Bromley-by-Bow were asked how they perceived the availability of facilities and services (such as coffee shops, community centres, libraries or nurseries) in walking distance from their respective homes4. According to the interviewees, Bromley-by-Bow lacked a library (the public library had been sold off and converted into private flats some years ago) as well as street food, sit-down restaurants, farmers markets and urban farming opportunities– in short, ‘healthy’ food seemed difficult to come by.

More than 91% of our interviewees stated that they ate out more or less frequently, and three quarters ate (mainly) fast food. One interviewee blamed the size of her kitchen5 for having to feed her children take-out food from the local chicken and chips shop. About one third of our interviewees ate out once and another third two to six times per week; almost 7% daily. Were it not for some reassurance which emerged from in-depth interviews with those who seemed hooked on fast food, these numbers would be a cause of very serious concern. However, we found that many of the residents in ‘deprived’ Bromley-by-Bow who often ate out also

kept herb and vegetable gardens in their backyards and balconies, growing anything from fresh salad to tomatoes and zucchinis themselves – and not requiring organic box schemes, farmers markets or the alternative forms of local food production usually associated with higher incomes and (at least) middle class residential areas. Many respondents had acquired the necessary skills in their childhood and did not feel the need to be taught how to work the soil or when to plant seeds – evidencing a startling resilience to the shortages in locally available fresh food. For instance, Romana, 40, spends two hours a day in her backyard, tending to her garden. She buys the seeds at the nearby superstore and grows pumpkin, peppers, cucumber, tomatoes, spinach, mustard and coriander: »» I grow everything I need to cook a fresh meal in my garden. My mother taught me how to do that, back in Bangladesh.

(Interview with Romana, November 2011) Unravelling Scarcity The instances of scarcity assembled in this paper begin to sketch a more systemic view of scarcity and its sociomaterial, transcalar and translocal dimensions. The paper illustrates how scarcity is translocal: the materiality of individual realities is connected across time and space and thus processes initiated in one place can impact on the trajectory of development in another. The scarcity of local labour in Britain, for instance, led to the ‘import’ of labourers from now-Bangladesh and elsewhere, and the need to house them and their families contributed to new scarcities of housing in east London.

Remittances to their extended families in Bangladesh led to the accumulation of wealth and redistribution of land ownership, triggering new local inequalities there and making arable land scarce.

Resource flow and decision making processes transgress national, regional, local and architectural thresholds, and the paper reveals the transcalar dimension of scarcity in relating decisions made at the scale of the Central Government, the city, the borough and the ward to the experience of scarcity at the scale of the human.

The scarcity of adequately sized homes in the study area, for instance, becomes evident in high levels of ‘overcrowding’; but the local Council’s strategies to remedy this situation are not only undercut – their effect is reversed by political decisions at higher levels of governance, and the most recently introduced reforms are thus likely to exacerbate the scarcity of low-income housing further. Financially weak households that succumb to the commonly propagated ideal of owner-occupation as

21 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

the only desirable form of tenancy (an instance of consumption as a precondition for membership in society) may be forced to prioritise their limited resources in ways that eventually may lead to extreme poverty.

There is no doubt that existing practices of policy, planning and design at various scales do not even begin to address scarcity and that thus, alternative approaches are direly needed. Deprivation indicators that fail to measure demand can, at times, indicate nothing but low levels of participation in the consumer lifestyles expected for membership in society – indicating socially constructed deprivation rather than real scarcity. Just as critical design practice is rooted in the ‘unravelling of the social reality of the given condition so as to be able to understand how to transform it into something better’ – embracing the radical ‘possibility of doing otherwise’ (Schneider & Till, 2009) – it is necessary for governance bodies to understand the day-to-day dynamics and activities that take place locally in order to pre-empt jumping to the wrong conclusions (as the example of common individual food growing activities in the case study area shows). Whilst it is certainly useful to establish and use a set of common indicators in order to compare different regions and allocate resources better, these indicators must reconsider the original meaning of ‘scarcity’ (i.e., demand outstrips supply), rather than label areas as deprived based on assumptions about standard demands.

In order to address scarcity, governance at all scales must study the particular needs of ‘local people’ (unfortunately, especially in the British context, an over- and misused term). The labelling of communities or areas as ‘deprived’ carries the danger of facilitating large-scale gentrification and, ultimately, depriving areas of their placespecific identity and communities of their intrinsic resourcefulness and resilience.

A more systemic approach based on an understanding of scarcity as the trigger or effect of more complicated sociomaterial processes across different scales and between different locations is necessary in order to address real need and genuine scarcity through policy making and design.

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Castree, N. (2003). Commodifying what nature? Progress in Human Geography, 27, 273-297.

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CONTRIBUTORS SCIBE LONDON An incomplete list.

Flora Bowden

Flora graduated in Fine Art. She worked in the field of sustainable architecture in London before taking up the position of Environmental Design Coordinator at the Parliamentary Design Group (Policy Connect). She collaborates with Clare Brass at the SEED Foundation.

Jon Goodbun

Jon completed his PhD ‘The Architecture of the Extended Mind: Towards a Critical Urban Ecology’ in Summer 2011. He has written widely on architecture, urbanism and related issues, teaches at University of Westminster, Royal College of Art and Bartlett UCL, and runs the design research lab rheomode (www.rheomode.org.uk).

Claire Harper

Claire has experience working in architectural practice in the UK and The Netherlands. She joined the University of Westminster in 2009 with a PhD scholarship awarded to research the design of

(2008). The English Indices of Deprivation 2007. In. London: Communities and Local Government.

Dench, G., Gavron, K., & Young, M. (2006). The new East End: kinship, race and conflict. London: Profile Books.

Department of Communities and Local Government. (2006). A Decent Home: Definition and guidance for implementation. In Communities and Local Government (Ed.). London: DCLG Publications.

Gardner, K. (2008). Keeping connected: security, place, and social capital in a ‘Londoni’ village in Sylhet. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 14, 477-495.

Goodbun, J., Till, J., & Iossifova, D. (2012). Scarcity: architecture in an age of depleting resources. In Architectural Design (Vol. 82, No. 4). London: Wiley.

Hanley, L. (2007). Estates: an intimate history. London: Granta Books.

Hanley, L. (2011). Only central government has the power to resolve Britain’s housing crisis. In guardian.co.uk.

Harvey, D. (1999). The Limits to Capital.

London: Verso.

Homer-Dixon, T. F. (2001). Environment, scarcity, and violence: Princeton University Press.

Leeser, R. (2008). London Ward level summary measures for the Indices of Deprivation 2007. In. London: Data Management and Analysis Group, Greater London Authority.

London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

(2009). Overcrowding Reduction Strategy 2009-2012. In. London: London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

Machlis, G. E., Force, J. E., & Burch, W. R. (1997). The human ecosystem Part I: The human ecosystem as an organizing concept in ecosystem management. Sociey & Natural Resources: An International Journal, 10, 347-367.

Matthaei, J. (1984). Rethinking Scarcity: Neoclassicism, NeoMalthusianism, and NeoMarxism. Review of Radical Political Economics, 16, 81-94.

McCabe, J. (2012). Cheaper by the Durkan.

In (Vol. 2012): InsideHousing.co.uk.

McCann, K. (2011). 100,000 new homes to be built on surplus public land. In The Guardian.

Meadows, D. H., Meadows, D. L., Randers, J., & Behrens Iii, W. W. (1974).

The Limits to Growth: A report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind.

London and Sidney: Pan Books.

Mehta, L. (2010). The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation. In S. Rayner (Ed.), Science in Society (pp. 270).

London & Washington, DC: Earthscan.

Office for National Statistics. (2001a).

Ethnic Group (KS06). In Office for National Statistics (Ed.). Hampshire.

Office for National Statistics. (2001b).

Occupancy Rating (UV59). In. London: Office for National Statistics.

Office for National Statistics. (2003).

Census 2001: National report for England and Wales. In. London: Office for National Statistics.

Perelman, M. (1979). Marx, Malthus, and the Concept of Natural Resource Scarcity.

Antipode, 11, 80-91.

Saint-Gobain Weber Ltd. (2012). Weber like to refresh, renew and restore. In. Bedford, UK: Saint-Gobain Weber Ltd. Schneider, T., & Till, J. (2009). Beyond Discourse: Notes on Spatial Agency.

Footprint, 2009, 97-111.

Schoenberger, E. (2011). Why is gold valuable? Nature, social power and the value of things. Cultural Geographies, 18, 3-24.

SCIBE, & The Architecture Foundation.

(2012). Scarce Times: Alternative Futures.

In. London: University of Westminster.

Steele, F. (2010). How do we fix our housing shortage? In The Times (Times Online ed.).

Townsend, P. (1979). Poverty in the United Kingdom: A survey of household resources and standards of living: University of California Press.

Townsend, P. (1987). Deprivation. Journal of Social Policy, 16, 125-146.

Wise, S. (2009). The Blackest Streets: the life and death of a Victorian slum. London: Vintage Books.

Xenos, N. (1989). Scarcity and modernity.

London: Routledge Kegan & Paul.

Yapa, L. (1996). What Causes Poverty?: A Postmodern View. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 86, 707-728.

Young, M., & Willmott, P. (1979). Family and Kinship in East London (Revised Edition ed.). Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd. Zimmermann, E. W. (1951). World Resources and Industries: a functional appraisal of the availability of agricultural and industrial materials. New York, London: Harper and Row.

higher-density housing for London.

in urban planning, design and international development. She holds an MSc in Urban Design for Development from University College London and is currently a PhD researcher at the University of Westminster, contributing to SCIBE. Her experience includes over 5 years of research and fieldwork on the urban dimensions of chronic poverty, diversity in the built environment, urban transport, citizen participation, slum upgrading and community-led development in collaboration with a range of organisations.

Deljana Iossifova

Deljana is Lecturer in Architectural Studies at the Manchester Architecture Research Centre (MARC), University of Manchester. Previously she was a Research Fellow on SCIBE at the School of Architecture and the Built Environment, University of Westminster, and PhD/ Postdoctoral Fellow (Sustainable Urban Futures) at the United Nations University, Institute of Advanced Studies. As an architect, she led a number of awardwinning projects in East Asia. Her main research interests are around processes of sociospatial transition, transformation and inequality with a special focus on urban conditions in China.

Kate McGeevor

Kate is a researcher and project manager who specialises on issues relating to the environment, sustainability and local food. For six years, Kate worked at the boundary of research and policy as a senior researcher at the Policy Studies Institute. She is now coordinator of Forty Hall Farm, a 140 acre organic farm in Enfield, north London.

Isis Nunez Ferrera

Isis is a Honduran architect specializing

Notes 1 Pseudonyms are used throughout the paper to maintain anonymity.

2 ‘Londoni’ households are those with members in Britain.

3 Housing stock has been continuously transferred from public to quasi private ownership ever since the 1980s, essentially facilitated by the ‘Right to Buy’ policy, introduced in 1980 to give public tenants the right to buy their homes at a discount.

4 This indicates the supply with facilities and services – but not the demand.

5 Kitchens were pointed out as very important by many interviewees (81% stated that the kitchen should be very spacious!).

Jeremy Till

Jeremy is an architect, writer and educator. He is Head of Central Saint Martins and Pro Vice-Chancellor of University of the Arts London. Previously he was Dean of Architecture and the Built Environment at the University of Westminster, and Professor of Architecture and Head of School of Architecture at the University of Sheffield. His extensive written work includes Flexible Housing (with Tatjana Schneider, 2007), Architecture Depends (2009) and Spatial Agency (with Nishat Awan and Tatjana Schneider, 2011). All three of these won the RIBA President’s Award for Outstanding Research, an unprecedented sequence of success in this prestigious prize. As an architect he worked with Sarah Wigglesworth Architects, and in particular on their own house and office, 9 Stock Orchard Street.

<< Continued from page 19: The Production of Value

expensive goods in those parts of society that cannot afford to buy them etc.

It is worth noting here that for Marx value is a nebulous concept, which in capitalism can be understood through or as a dialectical relationship between what he calls ‘use value’ and ‘exchange value’.

Use value is what you can actually do with something. Use values are fundamentally, even radically, qualitative, and exist in all socio-economic forms, not just capitalism. Exchange value by distinction, is a purely quantitative concept, and is specific to capitalism. Use values are absolutely heterogeneous (think of the different specific uses of bread, cars, holidays, etc), whereas exchange value strips the actual sensuous thing of all specificity, and asks ‘how many of these is equivalent to one of those?’, and ultimately asks this question in terms of the abstract equivalence of quantities of money. Famously in this analysis, capitalism meets the social need for use values incidentally, it does not aim to be useful. Capitalism rather, prioritises the production of exchange values, and reorganises the world to support this process, through processes of commodification. The process of commodification is the process of finding ways to produce exchange value out of use value. Whilst clearly the capitalist commodity broadly needs use value, capital is not able to ‘value’ this in itself, as it were. Use value is in a sense invisible or irrelevant to the processes of capital.

So, for Marx value is unified concept composed out of a relation between use and exchange values, and importantly, one of the things that exchange value does, is obscure the social relations embedded in any object.11 What does this mean for thinking about scarcity? Firstly, scarcity as a concept of classical economics, is primarily concerned with establishing exchange value. And more than that, creating real scarcities in the market place is, in addition, a mechanism for maintaining or increasing exchange value. Furthermore, anything that is abundant in capitalism has no exchange value at all often (eg air).12 For a whole series of ecological economists versions of this argument lie at the basis of the concept of natural capital (attempts to quantify currently abundant biosphere services that capitalism does not ‘value’, yet relies upon). We also noted that both scarcity as ideology, and exchange value, are involved in processes of obscuring social relations.

It seems to me that the relation of scarcity to value is critical, but elusive, and is crucial somehow to our research.

The production of exchange value is absolutely tied to the production of scarcity in some form. Equally, many activist social and design projects concerned with scarcity issues, are actually about allowing people to value things differently. For example, many of the kinds of grassroots type network projects associated with design researchers like Manzini, can be understood as producing use values but not capitalist exchange values. David Harvey discusses something like this when he reminds us that Marx states that “a thing can be useful, and a product of human labour, without being a commodity.” Harvey suggests that “I grow tomatoes in my backyard, and I eat them... A lot of labouring (particularly in the domestic economy) goes on outside of commodity production.”13 A commodity needs to have an exchange value in the marketplace. A great deal of activist design and social work, is focused upon areas of real acute scarcity, where an economy based upon exchange value is unable to deliver. These projects typically explore ways to met those needs outside of the capitalist valuation process - by using community labour, sharing etc etc.

Whether such existing experiments are enclaves of a new economy that might supersede capital valuation processes, whether they are enclaves of another economy that can fill economic niches in the gaps of a capitalist economy, or whether they are actually just clearing the way for new waves of commodification,

remains to be seen.

Ultimately Harvey concludes, »» If you want to understand who you are and where you stand ... what you have to do is understand how value gets created, how it gets produced, and with what consequences, socially, environmentally, and all the rest of it. And if you think that you can solve the environmental question, of global warming and all that kind of stuff, without actually confronting the whole question of who determines the value structure, and how is it determined by these processes, then you have got to be kidding yourself.14 Work to be done Scarcity is a difficult term for many of us, as it is primarily a term of classical economics rather than critical political economy. Scarcity as a concept and a reality plays a distinct and historical role in the specific valuation processes of capitalism. Scarcity has built into it all kinds of biases and assumptions about the form and nature of our metabolic relation to the non-human world that are simply wrong, ideological, puritanical, etc. Equally, that is part of the interest of scarcity as a concept! Nonetheless, it may be that whilst a negative critique of the concept and existence of scarcity is necessary, interesting and useful, the core concept is simply incapable of supporting a progressive role today. I increasingly feel that we will need to approach it through a term that definitely can be (and always is being) positively redefined. I think that might be value, and that we need to confront value, head on.

At the very least, I think that we need to do some work thinking about value.

Perhaps the various approaches to scarcity that the different aspects of the SCIBE research project are looking at, are in fact already approaching scarcity through more or less critical or ‘new’ definitions of value? * A tentative outline of research work to be done, which gets more ill defined the further it goes, might be: * An ideological critique of existing scarcity discourse. * An account of the historical emergence of the terms scarcity and abundance. * An account of non-capitalist uses of the concept of scarcity, and/or an account of related concepts that side step scarcity, might be very interesting, and provide key material for denaturalising the capitalistic forms. * Explore what role designed objects and built environments play in maintaining both of these concepts.

Designed objects and environments often obscure their conditions of production, and also obscure the flows that they are a part of.

If scarcity is primarily a social construction, then two tasks become important: * Can we stage ‘experiments’ in the social arena that might lead to increasing democratic control of the social production of the Built Environment * Can we stage ‘experiments’ in the social arena that reveal how existing control produces scarcities * Can we promote new modes or social forms of creativity and design, that seek to both resolve the reality of scarcity, and expose the ideology of it.

In both cases, this is achieved through a making visible and ‘democratic’ the ecology of economic flows through an extension of design.

Can we start to critique the production of value in architectural education.. we spend an awful lot of energy creating certain sites of value, through practices, drawing techniques, etc. Would an ideological critique of contemporary architecture ask, in what ways are these design practices increasing false consciousness around the system of production? In what ways could they be revealing the networks and flows, or facilitating democratic ‘local’ control (and indeed ultimately ‘global’ control) of aspects of Continued on page 23 >>

22 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 1

seems bereft of any basis; in particular, the argument that: “only by the solution of the social question, that is, by the abolition of the capitalist mode of production, is the solution of the housing question made possible.”2 Since the 1960s the capitalist mode of production has expanded radically into society at large3, including into what Marx had called the Non-Labour. The labour class has disintegrated since this time; its particularized contemporaries are no longer represented within the general discourse. This has led to a situation in which the social question has been excluded, as if it has already been solved by individualization and particularization.

Thus the current situation has presented itself as if there is, on the one hand, no need to reform and actualize the current liberalized systems of housing provision towards more common wealth. On the other hand, the current situation has created a situation in which it is utterly unacceptable to speak about revolutionary policy. Still I believe that exactly this idea of a possible revolutionary politics is actually necessary in order to not succumb to the liberal promise that we are all liable for our own luck.

The Research Our local research project Modelling Vienna4 – as part of a larger research consortium comprising a team at the University of Westminster, a team from the School of Architecture in Oslo, and colleagues from Iceland – sets out to research the specific practice of the Vienna model of public housing provision. The research in Vienna will be conducted in two phases. The first part is an endeavour to analyse the current model of public housing provision, understanding the domain of housing as a field that is crossed by many different professions and disciplines. The research so far includes: the missing history of Red Vienna’s post World War II legacy, interviews with experts in Vienna, analysis of the discourse that occurs in and around the model of housing provision, and reviews of cases (concrete objects of the currently themed housing production, from the ‘car-free settlement’ to ‘young and affordable housing’ to ‘young architects’).

In the second (future) phase the research aims to develop alternative scenarios for a future model of housing provision, beyond the simple binary of liberalism versus socialism, engaging in the current state of austerity measures …

Vienna Model of Social Housing Provision Somehow the city of Vienna managed to keep its stock of Gemeindebauten that the municipality had built since the early 1920s; additionally, in the 1990s it was able to rearrange the production of public and social housing in a specific way: it liberalized the system of social housing provision, securing its leading position within the Vienna market. Thus the municipality is still the main player setting the criteria for the production of housing, actually owning or through subsidies indirectly controlling about 50% of the housing stock in Vienna5. It thus has a huge influence on the private market of real estate and through this, one can argue, has established a kind of alternative economy in the city of Vienna.

Only slowly are we able to identify the limits of the system of social housing provision and its alternative economy beyond an obvious critique of the anachronistic and unbearable attitude of the centralistic model of governance that is in place in Vienna. And we start to understand how the overall highly successful model of housing provision is coming under scrutiny and being diluted by its actors (be it Architects, be it developers, be it politicians) unable to step outside the binary of liberalism versus socialism. With the global financial crisis and an ever more dominant dictum of austerity policy, even the City of Vienna aims to consolidate its treasury and proposes supposedly ‘innovative’ ways of solving the problem of affordable housing production

with the introduction of the so-called Wohnbauinitiative. The city hands out public money to so-called private partners building large housing projects. In return these new consortia of financial service providers and building contractors are bound to a specific maximum rent for the next 10 years. At the same time, bottomup initiatives promoting Co-Housing have recently sprung up making themselves visible within the city’s discourse …

In this issue of dérive we are able to present some of the findings of our research so far. Starting with a genealogy of publicly funded housing since the end of the World War II, the text investigates the alteration of a formerly ideologically coined politics towards a liberalized system of an integrated housing market in which Vienna’s municipality directly and indirectly controls about the half of housing real estate in the Austrian capital, and in which the boundaries between social housing and private investment are blurry. The subsequent text presents parts of a wider analysis of the discourse in and around the Vienna model of housing provision, discussing the aspiration of the city of Vienna to address a multitude of possible ‘consumers’. A third text reports on a series of (anonymous) interviews conducted by the research team last winter. The interviewees speak about their personal prospects and challenges in the Vienna housing provision. Finally, the concluding text tries to frame the current situation by looking at the Superblock turned Überstadt. The text aims to address the specific Viennese situation and its innovative efforts.

Notes 1 Christian Marazzi: The Violence of Financial Capitalsim, Semiotext(e) intervention series, Los Angeles: 2010 2 Friedrich Engels: The Housing Question (1872). Online: http://www.marxists. org/archive/marx/works/1 872/ housing-question/index.htm, German:

Friedrich

Engels:

Zur

Wohnungsfrage:

http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me18/ me18_209.htm

3 I refer here to the German translation: Mario Tronti, Arbeiter und Kapital, Verlag Neue Kritik, Frankfurt am Main: 1974 (Italian Original: 1966; the text factory and society was first published in: Quaderni Rossi, 2/1962, pp. 17–40).

4 The research team of Modelling Vienna is hosted by TU Vienna – Institute for Design & Assessment of Technology Multidisciplinary Design Group Professor Ina Wagner and is part of the HERA/ESF-funded research project: SCIBE – Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment (www.scibe.eu).

5 The City owns 27% of the housing stock in Vienna (Public Housing, Gemeindebauten). A further 21% of the housing stock is owned (and controlled) by limited profit housing developers; they are socially bound, and through the subsidies and the quality measures indirectly controlled by the municipality.

MODELS AND SOLUTIONS, LIFE AND PRACTICE IN SOCIAL HOUSING IN VIENNA Michael Klein, Vienna Published in dérive, issue 46, January – March 2012, p. 6-15.

Social housing is one of the key instruments of welfare provision in Vienna.

That this is unique to the city is perhaps not surprising: the City of Vienna is one of Europe’s biggest holders of residential real estate (220,000 units), complemented by limited profit housing cooperations (LPHCs) (some further 136,000 units)1.

This is not just uniqueness through market power, however: beyond the immense share, it is the model itself that is unique.

Developed over almost a hundred years, this model has been consistently adapted to changing economic, societal and spatial conditions. Housing has been an enduring subject for changes to how the city has been built upon; it has always mirrored and reacted to its actual discoursive framing.

This text discusses the way in which the model of housing has evolved over time.

First, it describes the transition from a political conception to the contemporary notion of housing as part of a liberalized and competitive model. Second, it discusses these changes in the practice of social housing using some key terms.

I will argue that housing substantially contributes to the city’s fabric, to its built structure and its image. Housing conditions are central to how a city’s quality of life is experienced. At the same time, housing has served as an instrument by which to govern population. Social Housing has thus always been about more than providing affordable accommodation; it was and is entangled in economic interests, political powers and in society’s discourses on welfare: both in Post-War Austria and in contemporary deviations.

Housing here is understood (beyond the object level) as a practice. It is a spatial practice, working on two levels: it reacts to the existing conditions acting upon the existing city and it envisions its possible futures, projecting new conditions and ways of living together. Thus it is always both forwards and backwards looking.

Housing operates between these levels and is constrained within these limits.

Henri Lefèbvre’s assertion that “(social) space is a (social) product” (Lefèbvre 1991, p.28; 68) - that space is both shaped as well as it is shaping finds questionable expression in social housing in the 20th century: that of ‘building new societies’.

Even with scepticism about the causal relation between spatial form and society, the housing question cannot be dealt with in isolation from social processes.

Constraints and scarcities, as well as desires and hopes, have been central to this ongoing development, not only for the dwellers and inhabitants of a city, but also for those involved in production and provision and the municipal administration.

In the first part of this text I will discuss how the model of social housing in Vienna has significantly changed in the course of its journey towards today’s liberalized, yet still regulated, system of competition. The changes in social housing since World War II illustrate a notable structural shift towards a predominantly economic and managerial conception of Housing. I will focus on what has been done: on how the city has been conceived as a reality to operate upon; on what social housing aimed for and by what means the ensuing forms of housing came about. This is what I mean by a ‘model’ of housing.

These models have evolved with changes and innovations both, within and outside the housing system and with the perceptions, knowledge and practices involved.

Reflection and emphasis on the model as a relational, changing and contingent one is indispensable for any consideration of prospective forms of social housing.

This brief genealogy is important: it outlines some of the substantial forces that have shaped the current model. The second part of the text moves away from the linear timeline and discusses the changing roles of government, subject and of lifestyle with regards to today’s housing. Exploring housing developments before 1945 and opening up the ‘political’ aspect of housing, I will juxtapose aspects of city, of life and of spatial and societal ‘solutions’ with the aim of retracing the changes in the purpose, the practices and the techniques of public housing provision in Vienna.

I. HOUSING AFTER 1945 The Historic City and the Reconstruction of Post-War Vienna Today’s image of Vienna is largely that of a historic city. Paradoxically, this is due to the way in which the city engaged with modernization and reconstruction after World War II. The attitude towards

Above, from top to bottom, and opposite, from top to bottom: Public and Social Housing Production in the Years: 1919 – 1934 1934 – 1945 1945 – 1960 1961 – 1970 1971 – 1980 1981 – 1990 since 1991 All images: © SCIBE Vienna Research Collective, Public and Social Housing Map, Vienna 2012

23 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

modernization was highly ambivalent.

On the one hand, there was a strong endeavour to modernize, best exemplified by mayor Theodor Körner’s maxim: “[r]econstruction means making it better” (Singer 1965, p.83). On the other hand, the practice of social housing - a significant tool of modernization- has been rather restrained. Housing had become a priority concern after WWII, confronted as the city was with major destruction and with the homeless, returnees and expelled.

The political decision for new social housing, however, underlined the commitment of the municipality to the legacy of Red Vienna, the interwar period of Social Democracy and its social housing programme. Now, again, housing was conceived as a right and basic means of welfare. The plan for a new city included strong public activity and the call for “experts to dedicate to the common good” with “man - and not profit - at the centre of planning” (Marchart 1984, p.31), as “reconstruction must not be a private affair.” (Pirhofer & Stimmer 2007, p.29). Gemeinnützigkeit - to contribute to the common good - is a key-aspect of social housing in Vienna. In addition to the municipality, so-called Gemeinnützige Bauträger (LPHCs), housing cooperatives whose profit is limited and must be returned into the housing production cycle, play an integral role.

Reconstruction implied a clear vision of a new Vienna in opposition to the historic city2. “The Großstadt has to be decongested, according to the Erkenntnisse of modern city planning”, stated the first issue of the journal ‘der Aufbau’ (Reconstruction) (Novy 1946). Großstadt, here, reads as a clear concession to modern urbanity; Erkenntnis to science and ‘plannability’. With the installation of the “research centre for dwelling and building” and the activities and practices related to it, housing had become accepted as a means of social engineering and a way by which to build a new society. Within this process, the dwelling unit became a product open to the ideal of optimization, replacing the ‘architectural ethos’ with the ‘quality of plan’(Stadtbauamt der Stadt Wien 1956).

Despite the grand vision of the ideal new habitat, however, many projects built at the time contrasted with the modernist vision of a decongested, green city (cf. Bobek & Lichtenberger 1966, p.125). Confronted with the actual need for dwellings, the lack of vacant land for large-scale development at reasonable price and the city’s administrative zones by the Allies, the modern project seemed difficult to achieve. Thus reconstruction, in practice, often meant the pragmatic and literal re-construction of the existing city pattern. In other words: what actually got built often contradicted the visionary ideas of the modern city. Instead of decongestion the city was densified.

In the dilemma of whether to reconstruct the old city or build up a new one, the municipality focussed on one thing: building. Housing became an eligible tool for the governance of an upcoming society, in terms of bio-power with its capacity for family-planning or increasing health status and its contribution to the general economy at the same time as providing welfare. The post-war society had undergone a fundamental restructuring, with an ever-increasing amount of one- and two-person households. The municipality reacted to high demand by launching a Schnellbauprogramm (quickbuilding-program)(Schuster 1956).

Designs such as the Duplex-flats3 contain both an immanent conception of the actual economic situation as conquerable and the conception of the nuclear family as the foundation of society.

Housing in Post-War Vienna thus provided basis for multiple forms of reproduction: the dwelling served as the place for recreation (the ‘other side’ of labour); the place of consumption; of the reproduction of labour power; of social reproduction and beyond that the reproduction of the family by which all the former were anchored.

The model of reconstruction is thus Continued on page 24 >>

<< Continued from page 21: The Production of Value

these systems, etc?

Notes 1 In energy supply for example, big power companies are amongst the most obstructive organisations re local decentralised generation, and most supportive of technologies such as nuclear, which require centralised organisational forms that facilitate the control and production of relative scarcity. And as I think the social ecology anarchist Murray Bookchin noted, a wind farm owned by a multi-national power corporation is not an alternative technology!

2 These statements are frequently fed into various ideas within ecological politics that challenge the notion of the perpetual economic growth that is broadly agreed (from Marxists to greens to classical economists) to be an internal necessity of capitalistic processes of circulation and accumulation.

3 I group Harvey and Smith together here as these concepts were clearly developed in some way together, and Smith was a student of Harvey’s. The key texts here are David Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996) and Neil Smith Uneven Development - Nature, Capital and the Production of Space (Athens, GA: University of Georgia, 2008). John Bellamy Foster has also made useful contributions to this discussion in various places, eg John Bellamy Foster, Marx’s Ecology (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1999).

4 Although the role of time was well established in the earliest political economy, and they do not add to that, but rather recast time in a series of different productive relations with space.

5 Smith, Uneven Development, 8.

6 Harvey, Reading Marx’s Capital Lesson 5, www.davidharvey.org

7 Deep Ecology is a philosophical position most closely associated with Arne Naess, although other figures such as Fritjof Capra also use the term to describe their (closely related) positions. Naess also referred to Deep Ecology as Ecosophy, a term which Felix Guattari also uses in The Three Ecologies (London: New Brunswick, 2000), without reference (or direct relation) to Naess.

8 Harvey goes on to say that “this leads me to make strong propositions of the sort: any ecological project is always a social project, all social projects are ecological projects, you cannot view them as separate from each other...” Harvey, Reading Marx’s Capital Lesson 5.

9 Neil Smith, ‘Foreword’, in Heynen, Kaika and Swyngedouw (eds), In the Nature of Cities, (Oxford: Routeledge, 2006) xi.

10 I am referring here of course to an argument that Ed Robbins made at the SCIBE meeting in London in Sept 2010.

11 For example, you can’t tell the difference between two items of clothing, one produced by machine, the other by slave labour, simply through the exchange value (they might both cost £10 say).

12 For example, oxygen in the air has no exchange value: no-one has commodified it yet (though of course processes of pollution might ultimately result in the commodification of air through clean air canisters etc).

13 David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Capital (London: Verso, 2010) 22.

14 www.davidharvey.org

SCARCITY CONTRA AUSTERITY Jeremy Till, London Published in Places, 10 August 2012

We live in an age of austerity; or, rather, we are told that we live in an age of austerity. In the United States and throughout Europe, austerity is presented as a necessary stricture, and the mantra “cuts now, growth later” is repeated so steadily that it seems an inevitability, with consequences

ranging from the personal (shortened shopping lists) to the public (cutbacks in major civic projects). As a discipline that spans the private-public spectrum, architecture inevitably is bound to this new regime, and so it is not surprising that the machinations of economic austerity are being played out in the mainstream of contemporary building.

For the large majority of the profession — let’s say the 99% — the wider context of economic leanness is profoundly influencing every stage of the process. It is a depressing and paradoxical turn of events that the global financial crisis, which was caused by indiscriminate risk-taking, should result in a culture of heightened risk aversion. In architecture — certainly in the U.K. and likely elsewhere — this has meant that the choice of architects is largely determined by procurement managers making crude calculations that effectively exclude smaller practices and those who produce value through design rather than spreadsheets. Once selected, architects are then increasingly asked to take the hurt during the early stages by working on speculation; if the job lands, they are then paid at ever-reduced fee levels, set against project costs that are continually pared down through valueengineering (an Orwellian euphemism indeed). When the job goes on site, the contract is endlessly subdivided in order to pass risk down the contractual chain, and there is ever increasing reliance on off-site and standardized construction.

Nor is the architectural academy exempt from the drive to austerity, given the ever more strident demands for market-ready students, often conveyed in terms of the irrelevance of theory or experiment, and revealing an anti-intellectualism that threatens the very basis of educational values.

There is nothing particularly new about such straitened circumstances; the design professions have navigated successive waves of recession, e.g., in the early ‘80s, the early ‘90s, the early ‘00s. But the current crisis has persisted to the point where conditions of austerity are magnified and architecture seems helplessly adrift in the wake of wider economic currents. It’s not surprising, then, that another reaction to contemporary austerity is the effort to escape its political constructions and take refuge in the more rarefied realm of aesthetic discourse, in which austerity becomes reified, even celebrated. This is the path of the architectural elite — let’s say the 1% — which although in the minority nonetheless functions as a kind of redemption for the 99%, offering the promise of loftier values beyond the dross of efficiency gains. Rationalized by the revived Miesian homily, “less is more,” the aesthetics of austerity thus emerge, and become a source of solace, the means to revalidate the very essence of architecture in defiance of the diminished world outside the studio.

During the boom years — so recent yet so distant — there was a real correlation between the culture of the global plutocracy and the resulting architectural excess, with the design production of the 1% predictably reduced to another form of commodity. In Spain, for example, the barely occupied shells of buildings by architects such as Oscar Niemeyer and Peter Eisenman have become poignant markers of the collective madness of the period. So in the new age of austerity, architecture is encouraged to disassociate itself from this previous decadence: to demonstrate the propriety of the discipline, critics argue, we need to reassert its core and authentic values. [1] Thus a loose grouping of European architecture offices are championed in the pages of publications such as The Architectural Review, Building Design, 2G and Detail as bearers of good sense: Caruso St John, Tony Fretton and Sergison Bates in the U.K., Peter Märkli and Valerio Olgiati in Switzerland, Robbrecht & Daem and Stéphane Beel in Belgium, to name just a few.

Most of the buildings designed by these firms are not exactly austere, at least in the financial sense; but they typically Continued on page 25 >>

24 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 23

characterized by its strong ambivalence: on the one hand it is a vision of a new society and a new city based on modern, scientific principles; on the other hand it employs a pragmatic practice that actually counteracts this vision.

The modern city outside the city If the endeavour to modernize society by building on the outskirts of the city was rather restrained in the years directly after World War II, the 1960s brought about a gradual shift. With economic prosperity and the immediate housingshortage having been overcome through reconstruction and the housing program of the 1950s, inner-city plots had become scarce and expensive; extension outside, therefore, offered a cost-efficient solution (cf. Biehl 2006, p.590). Faith in and utilization of emerging technologies explains the 1960s interest in prefabrication and serial production in housing.

Lack of a skilled workforce together with the possibility of year round production was the reasoning put forward by the municipality; rising wages were also a consideration, and made it desirable to reduce labour-intensive production.

Prefabrication advanced the post-war Stadterweiterung (City Extension), the concept of modernizing through extension.

The key term describing the paradigm of Stadterweiterung was growth: growth in terms of a constantly expanding economy; growth in terms of city expansion and growth in terms of bigger floor areas. The demand for housing was constantly high, increased further by prosperity and full employment. 1960s building production was a continuation of the ‘scientification’ of the building and design process that emerged after World War II. Automation and pre-fabrication of building-elements followed the Fordist logic of efficiency and optimization.

A new splendid vision of urbanity, to be realized according to the principles of ‘Light, Air and Sunshine’ stood in opposition to the dense congested historic city blocks. At the edge of the city, axes for future developments were defined: one that realized modern functional separation in recurring linear patterns with Eastern Europe’s major standardized housing pre-fab system4. For the layout of about 10,000 dwelling units, the “main principle” was the “functionally right allocation of spaces” to the “changing activities that were to perform in the flat” (Wachberger 1978), resulting in standardized plans offering little flexibility and even less adaptability.

Many of the 1960s slab structures were built according to the urban development plan of Roland Rainer, although with ‘slight’ deviations. Rainer’s proposal aimed to raise general standards and surface area, so as to counter speculation and keep housing affordable, both of which were central to the city’s housing policies. Instead of Rainer’s 3-4 storey design, however, 5-9 storey buildings were realized: technical feasibility had prevailed over architectural thought. In only ten years 105,744 flats were built, with an average increase in size from 61sqm to 75sqm.

With growth being the main goal, and aided by increasing technologization, the dwelling came to absorb formerly exterior and communal facilities. This turn towards the private supported the supremacy of the nuclear family in society. Future and progress seem to be both the means and the end in the model of housing.

Reconsidering modernism Up until the 1970s large parts of the historic city, especially of the Gründerzeitviertel5, remained untouched by post-war modernization. This led to a significant disparity between the modern outskirts and the historic City core.

The dense Gründerzeit-blocks had been the symbol of miserable living conditions and the cutthroat activities of private landlords ever since Red Vienna, the interwar period that initiated social housing. The opposition to the Gründerzeit-Block not only marked the beginnings of Vienna’s

large-scale social housing initiative; it had continued into the period proceeding WorldWar II. Thus, the majority of historic housing stock had not undergone renovation. This resulted in about a third of the city’s population living in about 300,000 sub-standard flats without a proper bathroom or toilet.

Along with oil crisis, economic recession, a change of mindset in the young generation of ‘68 and the obvious need for re-developing the historic housing stock, the modern project faced severe criticism. Standardization; inadaptability; the separation of functions of living and working; the lack of social infrastructure and urban quality became the main issues. The problems of the modern post-war quarters were not only broached by the conservatives: more and more critique evolved by way of upcoming counter-cultures that had evolved in the niches off modernization. Large-scale projects that proposed to actually replace parts of the historic city became subject to severe scrutiny, resulting in housesquatting and in protests which called for a general and publicly funded upgrading of these quarters, essentially: preservation instead of replacement. A series of today’s alternative culture locations (Arena, Amerlinghaus, WUK; as well as parts of the Freihausviertel and the Naschmarkt) relate to or have been the focus of such citizens’ initiatives. Considering this critique to have been voiced from the ’progressive’ side, from within, indeed, the modern project itself, we could even specify it as a form of modern self-critique.

The Historic Urban Renewal Act (Stadterneuerungsgesetz 1974) with its protection of historically valuable areas; the Dwelling Amelioration Act (Wohnungsverbesserungsgesetz 1969) and the introduction of the Gebietbetreungen - a local service institution, the function of which is to moderate upgrade processes mark a change in the municipality’s attitude towards the old city. In the course of this process housing subsidies – until then preferentially earmarked for buildings by the municipality itself, or by housing cooperatives (LPHCs) – were extended to include the renovation of private housing stock. This led, on the one hand, to the liberalization of the model of housing subsidy and, on the other, to the involvement of individuals. By doing so, however, it extended the possibility of regulation to the restoration of the historic city.

Subsidies and the provision of loans thus operated as techniques of subjectifying responsibility and competency by binding owners of private real-estate closely to the City’s authority and its regulations.

The concept of ‘soft urban renewal’ (‘sanfte Stadterneuerung’) attempts city upgrade at the block-level. It uses a participatory approach that involves landlords, tenants and authorities and aims for high residential satisfaction, to strengthen local businesses and to engage cultural diversity. This model – it was awarded UN Habitat Best Practice Example for sustainable urban renewal twice – was to avert radical gentrification accompanied by severe rises in rents. Nevertheless, it could not prevent long-term rental increases and demographic changes (Hatz & Lippl 2009, p.161) affecting most notably those not within reach of social and regulated housing.

The modern regime found itself exposed to growing scepticism. With the rediscovery of the historic cityscape, and with its upgrade at issue, the individual subject was becoming incorporated as an active agent in housing policy. By reallocating subsidies, the government entrusted responsibility to private figures. It employed, so to say, the individual subject in urban development in an entrepreneurial understanding.

The end of grand narratives With this turn towards the refurbishment of the old city and soft urban renewal, the municipality’s housing policy lost the spatial uniqueness that had previously characterized it. New social housing was, in fact pursued in the 1970s and was added to by city revitalization.

The Kreisky-era can be considered the time in which large sections of society

achieved a certain wealth and the working class was considered to have upgraded to the standards of the middle class.

Subsidized housing, which in Vienna had provided a substantial contribution, accompanied these developments. Apart from subsidizing new housing schemes, the municipality also aimed to fund private revitalization and building activity.

In response to the discrepancies of and the critique on modernist paternalism, a multiplicity of spatial schemes unfolded, amongst which was the mode of Fordist city extension. The urban development plan from 1984 - STEP 84 - exemplifies the equal weight placed on city extension and the refurbishment of the historic city.

The instalment of the Vienna Property Acquisition and Urban Development Fund (Wiener Bodenbereitstellungs- und Stadterneuerungsfonds) marked a shift towards quality-orientation (rather than quantity, which was the major goal after the war) and a focus on distinctiveness and difference. The housing stock built during the 1980s is characterized by its wide scope: ranging from small-scale upgrades to the grand gesture and a penchant for the spectacular and iconic, best exemplified by the Hundertwasserhaus.

This multitude of approaches as opposed to the one single ‘unique solution’ could be described as a postmodern uncertainty: the end of grand narratives applied to housing in Vienna. Throughout the post-war period, for both the welfare state and social democracy, social housing had not only the function of satisfying demand and offering shelter, but had aimed at levelling out social inequality.

Underlying this ambition for equality was the presupposition of a subject’s abstract, standardized and unified need. This ‘flatness’ began to be critically reviewed – a process that entailed a shift in housing practice towards diversity in supply.

The critique on modernism unfolded alongside expanding lifestyles. Variety, difference and flexibility superseded the former recurring patterns. This increasing variety expanded the housing market, which was by then comprised of a multiplicity of agents. Governance and management thus evolved as the main municipal means in the practice of housing.

Housing today With the widening supply range and market, at the urging of commercial developers and the conservative opposition, the model of housing provision has undergone a structural shift towards regulated competitiveness. Other European cities decided to sell out their publicly owned housing stock; in Vienna, the social housing program was continued, but the system was restructured in a significant way. (This renewal into a liberalized model came alongside the appointment of Werner Faymann as the new housing councillor in 1995.) The municipality withdrew from the active production of housing and contented itself with (1) administering the existing housing stock that it owned, and (2) managing the future housing stock by providing land, subsidies, regulations and themes for social housing. The Property Acquisition and Urban Development Fund, a service institution founded in 1984, was employed as the basic organ of this. Acting as the sole provider of land for social housing projects, it serves as a municipal regulative in terms of distribution and quality.

Its main instrument are the developers’ competitions (Bauträgerwettbewerb) issued for housing developments above 200-300 units. In these competitions, architects and developers6 team up to deliver a project that is then measured against a quality scheme (the so-called columns of the Bauträgerwettbewerb) consisting of (1) architectural quality, (2) economy, (3) ecology and - introduced in 2008, (4) social sustainability. All projects have to pass the Grundstücksbeirat, an advisory board assembling experts from various fields dealing with social housing.

Since its introduction in 1995, about 50 competitions have been held all over the city. Most have been thematically focussed competitions, so as to challenge planners and architects to focus on

specific issues in contemporary housing.

Competition thus broadened the range of dwelling-types.

The introduction of competition marks the last major restructuring in Vienna’s social housing provision. Today’s model is coined by regulated competitiveness.

The framework the authorities set up for the current model attempts to combine both the possibility of municipal regulation and the productivity or the “invisible hand” of competition.

II. CONTEMPORARY PARADIGMS OF GOVERNING AND OF LIFE Since the end of World War II, social housing as a system of welfare provision has not been questioned fundamentally by any of the political parties in the City government. For Social Democrats, it became the main project by which to even out inequality; for conservatives, it ensured social reproduction for a competitive economy; even Liberals conceived it as means to sustain market mechanisms.

With Austria being a conservative or corporatist welfare regime7 (EspingAndersen 2007, p.167) and an integrated housing market (with commercial and regulated markets competing) social housing was thus either implemented by the municipality or by LPHCs in proximity to political parties. Allocation of shares followed the voting’s proportional representation; politics and housing were thus in direct relationship and involved institutions of all stripes.

The conservatives’ urge to liberalize the model in the 1980s was two-fold: beyond economic liberalization through the privatization and outsourcing of former public service was a bid to challenge the given order by the re-distribution of market shares. The introduction of competition as the last major change in the structure of social housing however came alongside a broad remodelling of social democratic politics all over Europe.

The advent of New Labour with Tony Blair or Gerhard Schröder’s Neue Mitte, the so-called Third Way Politics emerging throughout the 1990s: all were marked by the introduction of regulated competition that aimed to maintain core-elements of welfare provision while orienting to (neoliberal) economic criteria.

The introduction of competition and other ‘moderated’ forms of evaluation as adequate techniques in finding solutions and reaching consensus beyond and outside of the oppositional practice of dissens in politics has been described as a post-political practice (Mouffe 2005, p.2): a de-politicized form of politics. Increased use of terms such as servicing; customers; quality competition; as well as the emphasis laid on the new and innovation accentuates this change towards a managerial understanding. The consequence for social housing, would be prioritisation of the economic over the political or social element of housing provision. The optimised allocation of resources - the economic argument - appears logical, transparent and therefore preferable to the political or social conception.

The recent past in the practice of housing competition seems to prove the argument for efficiency. The introduction of competition, as has been underlined by interviewees (see text on interviews with actors involved in the current model in this issue of dérive), has considerably reduced costs while at the same time increasing the architectural and living quality. A belief does persist in the social caring mission as a necessarily interventionist practice, with current schemes putting emphasis on social sustainability; the trend among European municipalities, however, is to align themselves with entrepreneurism, and housing is unlikely to be an exception. For the time being, costs have been at the core in any consideration in subsidized housing. Though, efficiency is no longer a means: it is becoming an end in itself.

During Reconstruction and Modern City Extension, housing practice followed the already established logic of optimisation so as to lower costs and increase efficiency and production. Its model, we

could say, was that of the Fordist factory.

The administrative apparatus needed was large, and the recurring patterns, be they in the floor plan or in the design, were adjusted to ‘discipline’.

The introduction of competition can be considered as a highly productive extension of the critique of modern social housing (how and what to build). In competition, former critique becomes productive and propositional. The administrative apparatus has been reduced with the outsourcing of planning production. Its model is, to follow, is entrepreneurism: where rivalry is the positive motivation for ever-new solutions at the best prices.

A new, flexible economic rationale is becoming a major structuring device for the city, its objects, its citizens and their lives.

Housing, dwelling and living The changing face of social housing has also impacted on the interior of the flat. Dwelling has undergone particular cultural change and social housing has responded, accompanied and taken part in this change. It is not only the making of housing that has aligned itself to markets; it is the flat itself too. Although municipal intervention still counteracts rapid rental boosts, the widening range of supply, the growing significance of the user and the introduction of competition have brought about what could be described as the further commodification of the flat. With general rise in wealth, the ‘user group’ has shifted and ‘upgraded’: Today’s ‘postutopian’ housing programs and object subsidies target mainly at middle-income groups; lower income groups rely on additional subject subsidies.

During the years of reconstruction and in the 1950s, the ‘scientific’ approach to planning meant that the flat was organized with the objective of optimization.

The optimal plan, so to speak, was the maximum of activities on the minimum surface area, so as to make dwelling available for the largest number possible.

This has continued during City extension, with standardization and the typical plan allowing for the growth of the flat and the increased privacy of the individual dwellers. Up until this point, housing had been a merely quantitative matter as supply had been constantly below demand. When demand for housing had been satisfied at large, it allowed for further differentiation, along cultural, market and regulatory lines. If today’s society is denoted characterized by individuation and by strong emphasis on the subject, this finds particular expression in dwelling. The flat is viewed as a vehicle for self-realization, creativity and flexibility. The disciplinary model and the submissive notion of how to behave in the functional floor plan, standardized and repeated in modernist housing structures, has given way to selfresponsibility, self-invention and, as it is a model of differentiation, to competition.

Apparent difference meets the market’s demands. ‘No flat is like another’: the characteristic slogan demonstrates how, in housing too, uniqueness has become a selling point. The critique of modernist paternalism involved a promise of a ‘gain in freedom’; this freedom has merged with contemporary forms of competitive capitalism that have expanded into a totality over life.

III. HOUSING BEFORE 1945 Housing, dwelling and life II There is a clear sense, throughout all the models of housing, of ‘life’ perceived as a category to be determined, rather than as a determined category. Exploring developments before 1945 and their relationship to ‘life’ should allow us to retrace elementary changes in social housing.

Its potential to influence how life is led – in terms of demographics; family planning; forms of cohabitation – has been one of the enduring elements in the power aspect of social housing.

The separation of living areas from sleeping rooms, for example, and, furthermore, of parents from children, would have been hard to imagine for the majority of people right up until World War I. Social housing was a way of binding the

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population and the state closer together into co-dependence. When considering the goals of social housing and its relationship to ‘life’, the primary question is: who is it for, and who not.

It is its direct access to, the exclusion of and the judgement over life that harbours the Fascist potential of practicing ‘social’ housing. I do not mean here the housing practice during Austrofascism: that period which reduced social housing to fighting pauperism; to ‘surviving’ only; which conceived welfare almost as an act of grace of charity; which built scattered shelter-settlements (so-called Erwerbslosensiedlungen) outside the city, thus ruralising the urban housing question(Maderthaner 2006, pp.480494). I mean, rather, the production and use of ‘bare life’ of minorities that was decided upon by the Nazis that was introduced into the practice of housing ‘provision’: When housing scarcity became increasingly urgent and the megalomaniacal plan to erect 60,000 dwelling units turned out to be implausible, the municipality-party employed systematic clearance and Endlösung as the solution to the housing question “instead” of the “realisation of new city quarters”. As Hitler let know: “To begin with, (…) all Jews are to be deported as soon as possible, followed by the Czech and others of alien race, who hinder uniform political orientation and opinion making of the Viennese Population. If, through such provision, you bring down the population (…) to 1.5 or to 1.4 million, housing shortage will be resolved in the best, the easiest and the fastest way”8 In about 50,000 ‘wild’ and 8,000 ‘official’ aryanizations people were taken away their homes; the occupants were brought to so-called Sammelwohnungen (collection apartments) and further on to detention camps before they were, ultimately, deported. The modern discourse on hygiene found a monstrous conclusion in its translation into genocide in ‘modern’ urban planning. Cleansing had become building.

An oppositional understanding of living and housing?

Although the relationship of social housing and ‘life’ has recurred as a means of policing and regulating the population - as bio-power - we must not reduce power to simply domination.

In the course of modernization, power always both overpowers and empowers society’s subjects. Housing as an instrument of power has not been an exception therein. In the notion of power to as empowerment, two paradigms stand out in particular: Siedlerbewegung and Red Vienna. To refer to them is to underline their difference to what came after: in their relation to the political. ‘Political’ in this context is not to be confused with ‘everyday’ politics, its institutionalized form; it is to be understood as an antagonism creating a “we” opposed to a “them” (cf.

Mouffe 1993, p.111).

The rapid growth of Vienna in the Gründerzeit had stimulated massive housing production, the biggest the City had yet undergone. By the 1870s the grid had been implemented, allowing for repeated application, fast urbanization and maximum capitalization of land. Yet, because supply was perpetually below need, and with no system of rent control, overcrowded flats, Bettgeher9, and miserable living conditions characterized workingclass housing at the turn of the century.

When, during World War I, the situation worsened - due to war-time inflation, aggressive rent raises and expulsions by landlords - the royal government passed an emergency act to prevent uproar on the part of the families of soldiers.

The Rent control intended for pacification, however, was not only incapable of solving the housing shortage it resulted in a disrupted housing market with construction activity brought to a standstill - as it had become unprofitable - and no more change of residence, with hundreds of thousands left homeless.

When, in the interval, people had squatted land for self-supply and when, later, resources became even scarcer, they had their sheds extended and moved

in, it became clear, that they have taken a new charge of their lives. After the war, the shantytown-dwellers mobilized into cooperatives, forming the “probable most widespread example of physical self-help in housing in the 20th century in an industrialized nation”, as Peter Marcuse described it (Marcuse 1986, p.565).

Unlike in other cities, the Viennese cooperative garden city movement formed up an outspokenly progressive, modern and urban alternative beyond capitalist and state-controlled production and distribution, even though it was later financially backed by the City. (cf. Blau 1999, p.90 ff.)

Many of the achievements of the ‘selfhelp’ movement had been enabled by notions of sharing, by cooperative thinking and a strong idea of Gemeinnützigkeit.

It is particularly this drive to form an alternative in opposition to existing modes and demanding the space and support to do so (as has been done in protest marches) that accounts for the political nature of the settlement movement.

Foucault’s remark, that it is the “people, who, refusing to be the population, disrupt the system” (Foucault 2010, p.66) applies to the way-paving meaning of the settlers’ undertaking for Red Vienna.

Their active withdrawal from the existing housing market allowed for the creation of new structures beyond this market.

With strong support from intellectuals and architects10 the settlers managed to establish new, alternative lifestyles and structures that outreached dwelling concerns11. The cooperative movement was characterized by the strong agency of those involved: actors, institutions, the objects they produced and their relationship; modern and “traditional” knowledge; they all contributed to the project of a ‘different’ life. Self-help, cohelp and communality seem to be closely interwoven when faced with scarcity and miserable living conditions.

It was not until 1922 that the Social Democrats, who had provided financial and organizational support for the settlers, became capable of a major undertaking for new (and indended socialist) forms of living. Yet Red Vienna found itself challenged by the building of ‘a new socialist society‘; by the balancing act between on the one hand keeping up with international competitiveness – which could require unpopular measures – and on the other retaining the confidence of the voting public and not losing their support to the radical side. Lowering living and housing costs had emerged as a major goal and had actually – due to the rent control act, a federal law – come within reach. Fixed rents and a series of socially graded taxes set real estate on the way to becoming unprofitable and made the social housing programme of Red Vienna possible. Beyond its provision of dwelling so as to counter squalor, however, it must be considered as an attempt to build up socialism by reform and within Capitalism.

The communal programs accompanying housing schemes and the high employment ensured by labour intensive production illustrate this endeavour. At length, even export rates increased. The controversial shift in emphasis from supporting settlers to creating densified public mass housing marks the change in the model of housing provision. Both the ends -what to build for - and the means – how to accomplish this - have changed and so, therefore, has the conception of how to live life.

Building ‘within’ accounts as well for the spatiality of Red Vienna. Instead of extension - and with the fiscal interventions’ result of low costs - the social democrats bought land scattered all over the city and pursued what can best be described as insular urbanism: within the existing city fabric they positioned buildings of varying size, concept and rhetoric. In a range from add-ons to uncompleted blocks aligning with the existing patterns to the so-called mega-or superblocks, cities within the city were created, in formal opposition to the rejected bourgeois city and creating new forms of living together. If programme and tax reform created a totality, insular urbanism was the action

pursued. By the time of its violent abolition in 1934, Red Vienna had built 63.000 flats.

Summary and Conclusion Social housing in Vienna is a reaction to the misery resulting from shortages over the course of the 19th century. Its beginnings are to be found in self-organized measures that in modern self-help found their way to cooperative and communal activity. The expansion of this onto the large scale was the project attempted

by Red Vienna. The understanding of social housing in its beginnings was politically motivated - in the sense of an oppositional practice; it was then perverted by Fascism, with welfare and care being turned against parts of society in the quest for racial purity. After the war, as part of the reconstruction process, social housing aimed for the wealth of the greatest part of population possible by embracing technology and growth as main agents of modernization. A growing critique on of this method, and public desire to preserve the historically varied cityscape variety through social housing led to the adoption and then expansion of competition as an organizing device.

In retracing the models of social housing a shift in conception emerges: one that moves from a political to a governmental and, lastly, to a managerial and economic understanding. Solution, here, turns out to be a strictly temporary condition. It changes with time and context and yesterday’s solutions do not necessarily meet tomorrow’s demand.

What is modern also necessarily changes with time. Social housing as a modern undertaking has to account for that. The functional plan of the 1960s is not necessarily functional in 2020.

Throughout the 20th century and up until the present day housing has been actively involved in regulating and governing. It has done so through a multiplicity of plans and strategies. Competition may be a good and appropriate technique in finding contributions; as a sole economic device on rental markets it has turned out to be a reason for social housing. Outsourcing and economization may have shifted responsibility; growing competitiveness, however, can be precarious for those involved. Much as we appreciate freedom and flexibility we have to be aware that self-actualization and self-fulfilment can end unstable and insecure: such as in temporary or precarious conditions of employment. The contributions against insecurity have been major achievements of social housing; they date back to the political understanding.

There are be good reasons for entertaining ‘social’ housing again12 as a way to face re-growing inequality and current developments of poverty and instability.

The present models of ‘social’ housing have become hardly affordable for those living in precarious situations. For such prospective models of social housing some questions remain to be clarified: what is it to aim for, how is it to be done and who is it for?

All translations by author.

References Biehl, G., 2006. In P. Csendes & F. Opll, eds. Wien - Geschichte einer Stadt. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag Wien.

Blau, E., 1999. The architecture of Red Vienna, 1919-1934, Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

Bobek, H. & Lichtenberger, E., 1966. Wien bauliche Gestalt und Entwicklung seit der Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts, Vienna: Böhlau.

Botz, G., 1975. Wohnungspolitik und Judendeportation in Wien 1938 bis 1945.

Zur Funktion des Antisemitismus als Ersatz nationalsozialistischer Sozialpolitik, Vienna - Salzburg: Veröffentlichungen des historischen Instituts der Universität Salzburg. Vienna: Geyer-Edition.

Esping-Andersen, G., 2007. Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. In C. Pierson, Francis G. Castles, & Francis Geoffrey Castles, eds. The welfare state reader. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.

Continued on page 26 >>

<< Continued from page 23: Scarcity contra Austerity

aspire to an aesthetic of minimalist decorum and tectonic rectitude in contrast to what now seem the baubles of the past decade. Writing in Building Design about some recent work by Peter Märkli, Ellis Woodman notes that the projects are “... concerned with issues that preoccupied architects for centuries — grammar, proportion, propriety, measure — but [that] are discussed only in the most limited terms today. ... If we are once again to have an architecture that speaks of values other than the spectacular, it is surely through a return to those concerns that that we will find it.” [2] And just as the politics of austerity often claims a moral imperative (“we are all in this together,” has become the chant of the right wing in Britain), so too this architecture of austerity — of the 1% — does not merely trumpet the aesthetics of simplicity, precision and honesty, but insinuates that they are a form of moral action. “Beauty is the most radical thing I know,” claims Märkli. [3] Caught between the diminished architecture of the 99% and the austere architecture of the 1%, we are left helpless; architecture is once again simply a kind of after-effect — the residue of dominant economic forces. But architecture is of course far from the only victim of austerity. Politicians often suggest the inevitability and universality of austerity, and argue that it is necessary in order to re-establish economic equilibrium; but too often programs of austerity function to conceal powerful systems of authority. Scratch the surface and one finds that this argument for “inevitability” masks a deeply ideological underbelly, which on both sides of the Atlantic is resulting in ever greater social inequality and ever more privatization of vital public goods. [4] In the U.K. — and in the U.S., Spain, Greece, Italy, et al. — citizens are expected to endure stringencies in the short term in order to ensure economic salvation in the long term: budget cuts today, we are assured, will produce growth tomorrow — and growth, of course, is the sine qua non of capitalist orthodoxy.

But here the argument becomes necessarily more complex: here the political ideology of austerity is challenged by the real condition of scarcity. For if we understand that austerity is a political response in the Global North to the economic crisis, and as such neither natural nor inevitable but imposed; and if we understand scarcity to mean the actual phenomenon of lack — the quantifiable dwindling of limited resources — then it’s clear that we are being confronted with nonnegotiable limits to growth.

Endless growth is impossible in the context of finite resources — especially as the harmful impact of that growth on the biosphere becomes increasingly palpable. Growth, as a bedrock assumption of capitalism, is thus shadowed by the condition of scarcity. This is why scarcity has long been the spectre at the feast of neoclassical economics.

Although austerity and scarcity are inevitably intertwined — the regimes of austerity induce real scarcities — austerity is not the same as scarcity. Austerity is the outcome of the ideologies of neo-liberalism, whereas scarcity is a higher-level condition that both drives those ideologies and also threatens them. Scarcity is the motor of capitalism: scarcity of supply regulates the market; too much stuff diminishes desire and competition. Yet the mere intimation of limits — on the supply of resources, the actions of industry, the freedom of markets, etc. — undermines the expectations of unfettered growth upon which extreme capitalism depends.

As an economic factor, scarcity is thus more complex than austerity. For one thing, scarcity is all too real (things are truly running out). From Thomas Malthus onwards, neoclassical economists have sought to naturalize scarcity as an unavoidable condition that propels the economic machine; as the influential London School of Economics professor Lionel Robbins put it, in the early 1930s:

“Economics ... is concerned with that aspect of behavior which arises from the scarcity of means to achieve given ends.

It follows that Economics is entirely neutral between ends.” [5] Yet scarcity can also be constructed. [6] The clearest example of this is food; there is plenty of food on the planet, but much of it is in wrong places; or at least, not in places where people are truly hungry. [7] The inefficiencies of distribution systems, the politics of subsidies, the machinations of global corporations: all work to construct localized scarcities of food. (And though the scarcity might be artificial, the hunger is real.)

Beyond Austerity So how might an understanding of the difference between scarcity and austerity allow contemporary designers to grapple with current challenges? One might deplore the new regime of austerity; but for most practitioners it will remain a bleak economic reality imposed by macroeconomic forces beyond our individual or even disciplinary control. We are left trying to do the same thing but with less and, in contradiction to Mies, less really is less. But scarcity is another matter; scarcity, whether real or constructed, might inspire us to widen the field of practice and allow us to operate more creatively.

How might this happen? I would argue that the first step in engaging the dilemma of scarcity is thinking beyond the object. Real scarcities counter the long-held assumption that the discipline of architecture should be defined solely through the act of building — that architectural progress is necessarily signposted through the addition of new stuff to the world. Real scarcities of raw materials such as rare earth minerals, of energy sources such as petroleum, and of natural resources such as old-growth forests all underscore that the option of continually adding new stuff will sooner or later cease to be desirable or even viable. But at the same time what we might call “scarcity thinking” opens up new possibilities for redistributing what already exists. By redistributing I do not mean doing more with less, or even renovating things in the world; I am arguing for a different kind of activity in which the creativity of the designer is focused not on objects but on the processes that precede and follow the making of objects.

Consider, for example, the processes of building procurement (which range from the traditional design-bid-build, to design-build, to construction management). Almost always these processes are framed entirely in economic terms, and tightly controlled by project managers and value engineers; and as noted, are nowadays a matter of endless cost-cutting. But what if we were to understand — to redefine — building procurement processes within the context of real and constructed scarcities? What if the quantities and costs of construction materials were not solely the purview of project managers? What if architects took on the creative challenge of redefining — you might even say deconstructing — those quantities and costs and construction materials in light of such pressing realities as finite resource flows and proliferating waste streams? The work of several practices already points in these directions.

2012Architecten is a Rotterdam-based office established in 1997 with the broad goal of developing strategies «to facilitate the transition to a more sustainable society,» and the more specific agenda of exploring ways to reduce the quantity of resources used in the production of space.

Typically its designs repurpose materials, components and objects in the forms in which they are found; an approach which, unlike recycling, doesn›t require further energy and resources to alter the found thing into another thing. The 2012 Architecten partners Jan Jongert, Césare Pereen and Joroen Bergsma call this process «super-use,» and in diverse projects they deploy surplus materials otherwise destined for landfill or incineration. For instance, Moes, Continued on page 27 >>

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<< Continued from page 25

Foucault, M., 2010. The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the College de France, 1978-1979 Reprint., Picador.

Hatz, G. & Lippl, C., 2009. Stadterneuerung: neues Wohnen in Alten Quartieren. In H. Fassmann, gerhard Hatz, & W. Matznetter, eds. Wien Städtebauliche Strukturen und gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen. Vienna - Cologne -Weimar: Böhlau.

Kapeller, V. & Bacová, A., 2006.

Plattenbausiedlungen in Wien und Bratislava Zwischen Vision, Alltag und Innovation, Wien: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.

Lefèbvre, H., 1991. The production of space, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Maderthaner, W., 2006. Von der Zeit um 1860 bis zum Jahr 1945. In P. Csendes & F. Opll, eds. Wien Geschichte einer Stadt.

Vienna: Böhlau Verlag Wien.

Marchart, P., 1984. Wohnbau in Wien 1923 - 1983 Österreichischens Institut für Bauforschung, Wien, ed., Wien: Compress Verlag Wien.

Marcuse, P., 1986. A Useful Installment of Socialist Work: Housing in Red Vienna in the 1920s. In R. Bratt, C. Hartmann, & A. Meyerson, eds. Critical Perspectives on Housing. Philadelphia: Temple Unv. Press.

Mouffe, C., 2005. On the political, London: Routledge.

Mouffe, C., 1993. The return of the political, London: Verso.

Novy, F., 1946. der Aufbau 1 Stadtbauamt der Stadt Wien, ed. , 1.

Pirhofer, G. & Stimmer, K., 2007. Pläne für Wien - Planungsgeschichte 1945 bis 2005. Available at: http://www.wien. gv.at/stadtentwicklung/grundlagen/ planungsgeschichte.html.

Schuster, F., 1956. Das Schnellbauprogramm Stadtbauamt der Stadt Wien, ed. der Aufbau, (32).

Singer, H., 1965. Wieder aufbauen hießt besser machen. In K. Ziak, ed. Wien Wiedergeburt einer Weltstadt. Vienna: Verlag für Jugend und Volk.

Stadtbauamt der Stadt Wien, 1960. der Aufbau 39. Der soziale Wohnungsbau der Stadt Wien.

Stadtbauamt der Stadt Wien ed., 1956. der Aufbau 32. , (32).

Wachberger, M., 1978. Die Zeit von 1945 bis zur Gegenwart. In K. Mang & F. Czeike, eds. Kommunaler Wohnbau in Wien.

Vienna: Presse- und Informationsdienst der Stadt Wien.

Notes 1 Together they account for what is here referred to as social housing 2 See descriptions of the historic Vienna in e.g.: Der Aufbau 39 (Stadtbauamt der Stadt Wien 1960).

3 Duplex flats are two flatlets adjoining each other, able to be merged into one ‘family-friendly’ big flat as soon as ‘economic prosperity’ and ‘family situation’ permit.

4 The French Camus-System (cf. Kapeller et al. 2006).

5 Quarters built between 1840 – World War I. For the classification, see Bobek & Lichtenberger (1966, p.30) 6 Since the introduction of the developers’ competition all developers can take part. Previously, this was restricted to gemeinnützige Bauträger (LPHCs) 7 Opposed to social democratic and liberal welfare regimes.

8 (Message to Gauleiter Schirach from the Reich chancellery, 2.11.1941 in: (Botz 1975, p.200) 9 Bettgeher were called lodgers or subtenants and were charged for some hours’ bed, sharing it with the renters and further lodgers.

10 Frank, Kampffmeyer, Loos, Neurath, Schacherl, Scheu, Schuster, SchütteLihotzky, to name a few.

11 e.g. The Settlement, Housing and Construction Guild of Austria provided construction material, consultation in design or construction and beyond that a bank and education.

12 The need for ‘very social housing that includes marginalized groups of society has been repeatedly brought up.

VIEWS FROM WITHIN: (SELF-) PERCEPTIONS, (SELF-) DESCRIPTIONS – EXPERTS’ PROSPECTS, CHALLENGES AND CRITIQUE IN THE VIENNA HOUSING PROVISION Andreas Rumpfhuber, Georg Kolmayr, Michael Klein Published in dérive, issue 46, January – March 2012, p. 16-19

The role of (Self-)Perception In addition to the architectural objects, practices and descriptions (i.e. media coverage, promotion) for such extensive models as the Viennese one, it is the proclaimed self-image, its subjective perception of its own role and the challenges that come from the encountering of critique that contribute to the discursive field of social housing provision. This field reflects and negotiates the respective current status and thus is an integral stepping-stone on the journey towards tomorrow’s model and its perpetuations, developments and changes. How housing provision is perceived, conceptualized and described by its protagonists is of particular importance. It is of substantial concern to the end of housing provision: for whom and what it is for. It deals with the role of means for the housing production. To be more precise: it broaches the issue of the techniques and methods by which the current practice of social housing is operating and through which it attempts to fulfil its goals.

Since the discursive field of the practice of social housing in Vienna is vast, we decided to take as our starting point a series of interviews with just some of the numerous protagonists involved in its production. The initial aim was simply to enter the field, to explore the self-descriptions of the current model of housing

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From top to bottom: Work in process. Documenting story board. © SCIBE Vienna Research Collective, Vienna 2012

provision: its outspoken qualities, the assigned role of the user and the practice of social housing in general, as well as the system’s alleged shortcomings, and the critique from within. Particular attention was given to the aspect of change and innovation within the field, as well as to the challenges, scarcities and deficiencies the current practice of social housing is facing.

Interviews All interviewees belong to the domain of social housing in Vienna: they are part of the administration, they work at housing associations, they belong to cooperatives, they represent developers.

Researchers and consultants were also interviewed, as well as those involved in planning and production. The interviews took place in December 2010 and January 2011. The interviews do not present objective results, but rather enable us to understand the constructed reality in Vienna through the perceptions of the protagonists who hold decisive positions within the model of social housing. Thus what we were looking for were commonalities, overlappings and differences within the colloquy we were conducting.

Furthermore, the interviews aimed at investigating how the actors in Vienna relate to circumstances both inside and out, and how they ‘inform’ and ‘feed’ the system in

preparation for adjustment and change.

We summarized the interviews in blocks: (1) addressing the intents and targets of the social housing provision, (2) its realities in social targeting, ie: how the social housing provision is coping with its social blind spots, (3) the social housing model’s overall economic performance and direct influence, (4) the spaces it produces, (5) how the model of social housing provision has been understood as a regulative and intervening practice and (5) its situation since the finance crises began in 2008. Finally, we speak about the perceived challenges that have emerged in the last years: (6) the outlooks our dialogue partners would identify, (7) the concept of innovation from within and finally (8) creative manipulation of the social housing provision.

Intent The unanimous agreement on the quality of housing provision in Vienna is difficult to unravel. Our interviewees use words and notions ranging from very good, to amongst Europe’s best to Europe’s best. This is rationalized by broad coverage and, in conjunction with this, the levelling out of social inequalities, as a majority of the population are within the potential range of subsidized housing. Unlike residual models targeting low-income groups, the Viennese model follows a rather universal

approach, covering as it does the vast majority, and yet: it excludes people at both ends of the income group (as some actors underlined). To a large extent social housing in Vienna is based on a dominant share of object subsidies, accompanied by a minor share of subject subsidies or housing allowances.1 The given practice of subsidizing objects is an effective practice of rent-control. Additionally, the provision of welfare is extended to the maximum possible citizens by the regulation of the city’s overall rent schemes through the broad share of subsidized housing. The control of almost half of the total housing stock – composed of public housing and subsidized housing owned by cooperatives – affects and indirectly controls the private sector, and aims to be universal.

As one interviewee told us: Social housing in Vienna is for all. All interviewees stressed that social housing is actively engaged in levelling out social inequalities.

The current model of housing provision favours people with a long-term plan. In other words: those with a regular and stable income who plan to stay in the city indefinitely. There are reports of a clear layering of income and age in relation to housing stock. It has been said that a growing number of people can neither afford the deposits needed to become a Continued on page 28 >>

a restaurant and bar in Amsterdam, features acoustic tiles from a nearby office building and light boxes from Schipol Airport; Wikado, a playground in Rotterdam, turns the discarded blades of a wind turbine into a maze-like recreational space; Villa Welpeloo, a residence for artists, is made from steel beams discarded from a textile factory and wood slats from old cable reels.

Raumlabor, a Berlin-based collective, is also challenging the conventions of design practice. (“No trust no city” is the idealistic slogan that greets visitors on the firm’s homepage.) A good example is Officina Roma, a project commissioned by the Roman museum MAXXI as part of its recent exhibition RE-Cycle: Strategies for Architecture, City and Planet. Working with high school students, Raumlabor constructed a temporary building in the garden of the museum’s new building by Zaha Hadid.

The partners describe the project as a “collage,” with kitchen, sleeping room and workshop made variously from old bottles, car doors, worn-out furniture, and used oil barrels and drywall panels.

Raumlabor seems aware that their rough temporary structure is inevitably in a kind of dialectic with Hadid’s MAXXI. “Although situated in the very dynamic and exclusive garden of the MAXXI,” they say on their website, the Officina Roma “speaks of deadlocks, interdependencies and the need for more fundamental and tougher negotiations over privileges in our future society.”

One more example, this from another innovative collective, the London-based 00:/. For its entry into a competition to redesign the congested corridor of a secondary school, the firm took a strategically modest approach. They spent days carefully watching the space, noting when and how it was used, and then, rather than proposing a redesign, they proposed easing the crowding by retiming and staggering the daily breaks.

The physical arrangement of the corridor would remain as it was.

In all these projects the designers were confronted with scarcities — of materials, of expertise, of money — but understood these as opportunities rather than obstacles. And in each case they shift the attention from having less to using design ingenuity to redefine the project. Where architectural procurement is normally focused on the efficient production of new buildings, here spatial intelligence is deployed to redistribute what is already there in a manner that mitigates the effects of scarcity.

Beyond Sustainability In moving beyond the fixity of objects to the dynamics of processes, scarcity thinking also begins to unravel some of the accepted norms of sustainability. At first the discourse of scarcity might seem to fit neatly with that of sustainability.

If scarcity is defined at core as lack, then the commonsense response is to use less, which is one of the central planks of sustainability in the built environment. All the main systems of sustainable measure, from BREEAM in the UK to LEED in North America, focus on using less: less water, less energy, less embodied energy, less waste, and so on. All would seemingly address the issues of scarcity head-on, by reducing the potential for future lack; and to the extent that sustainable design may result in a lessening of extraction from the biosphere, it does align with imperatives that arise from the increasing scarcity of resources.

Yet the most commonly received definition of sustainability, which is that of the Bruntland Commission, places a straitjacket around scarcity, potentially limiting it to issues of constraint. If we follow the Bruntland version of sustainability — “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” — then sustainability is assumed to be a matter of sustaining what we already have in terms of lifestyle and

consumer behavior. But I would argue that Bruntland should be read not as an emollient assurance that it is possible to sustain our current lifestyles, but rather as a straightforward contradiction in terms.

Scarcity, in its challenge to assumptions of continuing growth, allows us to reassess some of the grounding principles of sustainability, and to underscore that the very phrase “sustainable development” has become an impossible oxymoron.

We can thus see how sustainability —by reducing the complexity and temporality of the built environment to the fixity of measure and object — essentializes scarcity. Sustainability thinking assumes that scarcities are inevitable and can be quantified, and that the way to handle these scarcities is through programs of reduction and control. As the British radical thinker Iain Boal has said so precisely: “Scratch an environmentalist and you will find a Malthusian underneath” — a reference to the Reverend Malthus’s infamous proposition that future food shortages can be only be managed through population control, particularly of the poor. [8] And as with Malthus two centuries ago, the essentializing of scarcity today is used as the justification for very specific programs of control. The essentializing of scarcity has resulted in building regulations and guidelines that concentrate on very limited aspects of the design process, such as air changes (e.g., the German Passivhaus system) or carbon reduction (e.g., the UK SAP, or Standard Assessment Procedure for residential energy usage). In their various ways, all such guidelines concentrate on the technical production of the built environment and thus on the building as object, rather than on what comes before and after the object. And the assumption that the object should meet a standard of sustainability works to distract us from the more fundamental question of whether the object is needed in the first place; it also suggests that technical fixes are the solutions to problems (diminishing resources and global climate disruption) that were brought about by technological progress.

This is exactly where scarcity thinking allows us to reevaluate and rework the tenets of sustainability thinking. If, as argued above, scarcity asks us to do things differently rather than to do the same thing with less, then the discourse of sustainability is shifted from measuring and technically refining the object to understanding the object within a wider and more complex set of dynamics. To note one example: many studies show that after the installation of energy efficient measures, energy usage sometimes actually increases or at least does not deliver expected savings; this is due to the “rebound effect,” which happens when occupants believe that energy is being used more efficiently and so leave appliances on, or else never learn to use the simple controls and instead open windows when it gets too hot or cold.

[9] By concentrating on the non-human, technical aspects of a project, we can too easily overlook the human, behavioral aspects; which suggests that designers should turn their attention from the design of the kit to the use of the kit.

Scarcity thinking also allows us unpack to some of the accepted “truths” of sustainability. For example, the prioritization of energy saving through the reduction of heat loss has allowed the thermal insulation industry to dominate building design and construction. But if one sees this process in light of constructed scarcities, one can then introduce questions about that prioritization, e.g., by questioning the temperature norms that have set the energy targets or by challenging the dominance of multinational product companies and the subsequent marginalization of more local or closed-loop systems of procurement. Sustainability is thus revealed to be a political condition in which limits, set under the guise of apparent objectivity, are actually partisan.

Constructions of Scarcity Scarcity thus has a twofold constitution: Continued on page 29 >>

28 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 27

member of a housing corporation, nor are willing to pay higher rents in what is called “Superförderung”.2 Such developments have been associated with the economic crisis from 2008 onwards.

Realities in Social Targeting The reality of the housing market, however, reveals a blind spot concerning the social targeting of social housing: one that some actors tend to lack awareness of or even to neglect when stating that the system of housing provision and other accompanying programmes of welfare provide at least shelter to everyone. On the other hand, many actors suggested that there is a low-income group not captured by the current model – a situation that is neither solved by object or subject subsidies. This group comprises citizens with a low income, with a migration background, or working in precarious labour conditions. The situation has been tightened since the 1970s, during which time the share and amount of substandard flats and flatlets in Vienna has undergone a constant decrease, meaning that the private sector has ceased to exist as a provider of affordable (albeit below standard) housing.

The result is an ever-increasing tendency towards the cheap and historic stock of Gemeindebauten [public housing], producing a situation in which public housing further loses its prestige in Vienna, thus taking on the twisted image of ‘overcrowded’ and ‘immigrant’ housing in the media.

Performance of the System Yet compared to other cities and to residual-based systems of welfare provision in housing, Vienna is reported to show good economic performance, with expenditure of about 1% of the GDP. Again, this is argued with object subsidy and the high share of the total housing stock, both of which regulate rather than merely support the housing markets (as subject subsidies do). Additionally, this condition reputedly allows for fast and far reaching influences on the wider societal scale, due to its direct influence on the built structure through subsidies. Interviewees particularly referred to the fields of economy and ecology, with examples ranging from rent control and job provision to energyconcerns and thermal insulation.

Spatial Aspects The spatial distribution of social housing was brought up repeatedly to level out inequalities in a spatial sense. The result is comparatively little socio-geographical segregation over the urban area, and even quite a high mixture of incomes within housing structures when one compares it to international examples. Both are often emphasized as qualities provided by social housing and referred to as one of the main aspects of social housing’s capacities regarding social sustainability. In some of the interviews, however, attention was drawn to the deficiencies in urbanism and planning in Vienna - particularly those concerning strategies and planning goals - that no housing, whatever its quality, can level out.

Vienna’s public and social housing is considered to be urban and to have an influence on the interface between the buildings and the public space. Still, the quality triggered by housing schemes in the urban landscape is limited. A lack of urban and public quality has repeatedly been associated with the system of housing production and with its subsidy model. Since subsidies would be targeted programmatically – i.e. housing subsidies focus particularly on housing – developers are not obliged to think about an interface between urban and public space; the housing scheme, therefore, often results in mute architecture. Even though a mixed use is stipulated and favoured by all interviewees, therefore, it has hardly been achieved so far. While several interviewees involved in planning have underlined their concern about the importance of structural programmatic openness provided by design, they also brought up the need for other tools and aspects for attracting programmes other than housing. The current situation, as one interviewee put

it, generates urban monoculture rather than the qualities of a city.

A Regulative and Intervening Practice The model of housing provision is described as highly regulated and one in which local authorities take a central role.

While all actors interviewed would support municipal intervention in markets (which is what led to social housing in the first place), the model of social housing provision in Vienna as such was accused of being overregulated. A commonly raised topic in the interviews was standards in planning and construction: on the one hand the concurrence of high standards and planning requirements and on the other the limits of subsidies in allowing for little to no flexibilities in planning. The requirements are advocated by the municipality, who justify these with technical requirements and the high social standard of the model that aims to be adequate for all.

A minor topic raised in the interviews was the financial advantages of limited profit housing cooperatives (LPHC)3.

However these advantages seem to be minimal since the opening towards commercially oriented developers and the introduction of developers’ competitions in the 1990ies. Their added value, however, is limited, as profit shares have to be reinvested into the housing cycle through maintenance or new constructions. For the housing provision in Vienna, LPHCs have been indispensable. Housing, as one interviewee stated, is an untypical product and the “free” housing market is a theoretical hypothesis. Free housing markets do not necessarily produce affordable housing or satisfy demand; rather, they orientate around maximizing gains and shares.

Contrarily, limited profited housing associations, and municipal intervention in general, have both contributed to the provision of dwellings for a large section of society within an affordable price range, and thus have brought long-term stability to the housing market in Vienna.

The consensus on keeping social housing is shared by all parties; critique is, above all, expressed from outside. The European Union was said to conceptualize housing primarily as a market, where competition is to be fostered. In order to maintain the current model of social housing provision, one interviewee drew attention to the need to raise awareness of public interventions in the market. In its function of levelling out inequalities, social housing is argued to be a service of general economic interest.

Nevertheless, all interviewees were optimistic that the Viennese model could sustain minor changes and adaptations.

Economic Situation since 2008 As many have suggested in the interviews, social housing must not be reduced to the function of simply providing shelter. Due of its entanglement in the processes and machinations of society, it is necessarily involved in the overall situation of the city. It is embroiled in fields as various as ecology and economy. The system of social housing is seen to have had a positive influence on the economic situation since the beginnings of the financial crisis in 2008. The broad stock of regulated housing is said to have helped to stabilize the local economy and to prevent or cushion major speculations and raises in rents, as has happened in other places. On the other hand, the continuing discharge of object subsidies has served to foster the building industry and thereby to counteract economic recession on a local level.

Changing Challenges Some interviewees drew attention to the broad social rearrangements in the population.

Changes in work and life such as increasingly unstable labour conditions, shifts in cohabitation and family constellations have led to an ever-increasing diversification of lifestyles and situations, which are deemed atypical to the existing welfare system at work. Real estate markets are already challenged with a changing tenure-structure that shows higher flexibility and mobility. It has been underlined, however, that such flexibility relates in large part to financial insecurities and inconsistencies

29 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

Pictograms left and above: Copyright © SCIBE Vienna Research Collective, Vienna 2012

in the tenants’ environments, and extends to groups of society formerly assigned to the middle-class.

Within the existing schemes, middleincome groups with possibilities for long-term planning horizons are particularly favoured. A tightening of the housing sector could, as one interviewee claimed, reconsider the goals and the targeting of subsidies and housing provision, that is: what social housing aims for, whom it is for and how to rebuild it for more flexibility.

Outlooks and Recommendations Vienna is a growing city. Several interviewees have highlighted this in reference to the increasing demands population growth places on the housing market.

Facing the current budgetary situation, most interviewees forecasted reductions in housing subsidy. The share of object subsidies have been predicted to recede in favour of housing allowances. Though there are sufficient land resources at the moment, they will become scarce in the foreseeable future; additionally, construction costs are about to rise with the general economic situation. A long-term consequence of these developments is that rents would raise exponentially to the income situation.

The suggested conclusions to be taken from this development would be a need for (1) new models in financing, such as PPP-models (Public-Private-Partnershipmodels), (2) reducing costs at the object-level, The latter including considerations in terms of (a) reducing the demanded quality standards and (b) downsizing the floor area with smaller and more compact apartments and (c) leaving some room for experiment and freedom in order to investigate new and different approaches.

Innovation and Reform from Within?

There was a remarkably positive attitude towards innovation amongst the actors. Innovation has widely been associated with technology and with economic aspects, but also with organizational change. For most of the actors a relevant innovation of recent years is associated with ecology – namely energy reduction and thermal insulation – but aspects of management were also named: the introduction of competitions, for example, that would influence the given situation in a twofold way: on the one hand the introduction and opening up of the formerly closed social housing system towards competition is considered as an innovation in itself; On the other innovation is

understood to be central to a competition.

It has been said that only competition allows for new ideas within the model; also that prices actually dropped the minute competition was introduced into the social housing system. But it is also the current reconfiguration of the subsidy system and its opening up for ownership (for example: the possibility for purchasing a flat after having lived there for 10 years4) that has been referred to as innovation. Another thread of innovation is considered to be co-housing initiatives and participation within the model of social housing provision.

It is peculiar that none of the persons we spoke to would agree that a model could potentially self-innovate. It has been asserted that there is no reform from within. Innovation is rather always something introduced from the outside, and for the interviewees innovation is directly linked with competition and the so-called “free” market. One actor argued that only the market provokes innovation, whereas several people argued that structures within a regulated model tend to encrust. According to them, this encrusted system originated about 15 years ago, when the competition opened up the former deadlock position within the system of social housing provision, thus increasing quality and lowering prices. Within this line of argument, many argue that need for a renewed model has recurred. The most recent innovation is stated to be the introduction of social sustainability as a fourth column in the quality assessment scheme for proposed housing schemes.

When referring to the 1995 introduction of the housing developer competition,5 most of the actors also refer to the young city councillor Werner Faymann (today Austria’s chancellor) and the role the municipality’s administration has taken on in the course of innovating the model of social housing provision.

Creative Manipulation Contrary to innovation, creativity has commonly been associated with architects and designers, who operate in a clever way within a given set of regulations, but also envision possibilities for a prospective future. Yet the design of housing schemes would need different knowledge and skills than the making of other designs. Whereas generally any competition would only produce its own self-contained knowledge that would in all likelihood be redundant when the competition was lost, a housing-competition is different. In our conversations, interviewees stressed the importance of typology in housing and the fact of ever recurring themes that would eventually lead to a constantly ongoing work in progress when it comes to housing. Thus, in housing even if a competition is lost, it is won, since the knowledge gained from one competition can be reused and refined again and again.

Within this context the strict regulations of housing subsidies have been heavily criticised: subsidies and regulations would limit possible creative output, prevent innovation and lead to recurring solutions. Here again the mono-functional focus of the subsidy would cut off new programmatic combinations, functionalizing the plan and preventing any creative approach.

Our dialogue partners, who are part of the production and design process, call unanimously for more creative freedom. Other interviewees argue that creativity particularly emerges from the concurrence of regulations and the will to create: in the inventive interpretation and dodging of regulation and limits. As one person involved in developing housing schemes argued: creative solutions in design and high quality in architecture are aimed for as a mission by which to serve the public cultural quality. Furthermore, creativity allows for distinguishing from other competitors; the cultural and creative surplus is thus realized as an economic value for the developer. For this reason it is necessary to remain within the range of market demand. New ideas, often more complex than the common plan, would overstrain customers and do not sell as well as standard flats do. Following the demand basically means repeating the same and avoiding creativity. Other developers agree, underlining the importance of standardization as being in the interest of the middle-segment of the masses, additionally remarking that, for this

reason, the enterprise, in its own perception, would rather settle for being an early adopter than an innovator.

Notes: 1 Cf. Housing Glossary: Housing Promotion & Fig. 1: Vienna’s mixed system of housing promotion 2 See Glossary: Superpromotion 3 Cf. Housing Glossary 4 Cf. Housing glossary: Modes of Subsidized Housing 5 Cf. Housing Glossary: Housing Developer Competition

VIENNA’S HOUSING APPARATUS AND ITS CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES: SUPERBLOCK TURNED ÜBERSTADT Andreas Rumpfhuber Published in dérive, issue 46, January – March 2012, p. 25-29.

Life in Vienna defies the cliché of the contemporary metropolis deprived of affordable space in which to live. Life in the average contemporary city is ruled by scarcity: a scarcity that increases exponentially every day, always in parallel with the advancement of the financialization of capital that has driven the global economy not just since the real estate boom of the early 2000s and its foreseeable sub-prime crash in 2007, but from as early as the 1970s. Measures to stabilize the market, accompanied by a generally accepted austerity policy, continue to tighten the situation. Affordable space to in which to live is getting even more scarce. Until now, Vienna seems to have been an exception.

When it comes to housing, the city of Vienna’s commercial slogan: Wien ist anders [Vienna is different] seems to actually be true. In the 1990s it successfully liberalized the social housing sector. At the same time it is the authority of the municipality that still purports high quality standards and allows – so goes the official wording – for a “good tenure mix and social integration”. This is accompanied by a somewhat anachronistic administration that is organized in a strict hierarchical manner. Housing provision is ultimately centralized, as are decisionmaking processes. And social-democratic politicians, bereft of what socialist ideology could be and what it actually could produce today , appear to be paternalistic, complacent. They seem to understand today’s housing merely as a populist tool by which to stay in power. The Überstadt has generated a fragile situation wherein the social housing provision has its blind spots when it comes to really affordable housing for the lower income groups of society. It is a situation in which the governing body, always anxious to align itself with liberalism, has become passive aggressive and is no longer able to act autonomously. In other words, this situation poses serious challenges to the way housing will be produced and administered in the years to come.

The social housing production has become a subject of scrutiny, faced as it is with a global discourse of liberalism and its desire production, accompanied by the financial crises. Even though the stable mass of public and social housing in Vienna has absorbed parts of the effects of the ongoing financial crises, it is exactly because of its stability that it is not able to open up for reform that might be able to actualize the pragmatic socialist goal of solving the social question by building affordable housing for everyone. It rather seems the other way round. One gets the impression that due to a generally accepted and un-challenged austerity policy, Viennese politicians are rather ensnared to ultimately dissolve the public Continued on page 30 >>

<< Continued from page 27: Scarcity Contra Austerity

first as an actual limit on resources; and then as a socially constructed condition that results in the uneven distribution of resources. Neither kind of scarcity is going away any time soon. As long as global economic growth remains a guiding assumption of the global market, resources will inevitably dwindle, and as long as the market remains the dominant force in politics, the development and distribution of resources will become ever more uneven. And so I am arguing that in the coming age of scarcity, the focus of the designer needs to shift away from simply using less, as under the rule of austerity, to understanding the constitution of scarcity — where and why and how resources are lacking — and grappling with this in a creative manner.

I’ll end with a brilliant example of how this might play out in action. Newcastle is a typical post-industrial city in New South Wales, Australia; it’s got a deserted city center surrounded by an inner ring of abandoned factories and then an outer belt of suburbs to which people and retail retreated years ago. The buildings in the center were controlled by outdated regulations and by owners who had neither the will, means or imagination to find new uses, alternative tenants. The result was a paradoxical impasse — the city had an abundance of space but a scarcity of availability. Enter an innovative non-profit organization, Renew Newcastle, led by the artist and festival director Marcus Westbury. Working with local planners and property owners, Renew Newcastle has devised ways to help them realize the value of their buildings and spaces beyond the limited purview of traditional office or commercial retail. Through creative leasing arrangements — e.g., owners license their properties to the non-profit, which then finds short- and medium-term uses for the spaces — Renew Newcastle has brokered the reoccupation of downtown by creative businesses, social entrepreneurs and artists. While Westbury identifies this problem as essentially spatial, he argues that it’s best addressed by working not so much with the hardware of the city — the built environment — but rather with its software, “the rules and restraints that are imposed and enforced by governments.” “You need,” he writes, “to start by rewriting — or hacking — the software to change not what the city is but how it behaves.” [10] This is but one example of how conditions of scarcity demand new ways of thinking, an expansion of the role of the architect and designer outwards in order to function more broadly and imaginatively as spatial agents. In contrast to the regimes of austerity, which are ever more reductive, the territory of processes and networks opened up by scarcity is far more conducive to creative intervention.

It is here that scarcity — which can seem at first a bleak prospect — can become the inspiration and context for constructive and transformative action.

Author’s Note This article is the result of a transEuropean research project, Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment, funded by the Humanities in the European Research Area, or HERA. It is based on conversations with project members Isis Nunez Ferrara, Jon Goodbun, Deljana Iossifova, (University of Westminster), Andreas Rumpfhuber, Michael Klein, Georg Kolmayr (TU Wien), and Barbara Ascher, Christian Hermansen, Arna Mathiesen and Ed Robbins (AHO, Oslo).

Notes 1. One could cite many commentaries of this sort; a fairly recent example is a series in The Architectural Review titled “The Big Rethink.”

2. Ellis Woodman, “Beyond Babel: The Work of Swiss Architect Peter Märkli,” Building Design, July 27, 2007.

3. Florian Beigel, “Peter Märkli in Conversation,” The Architects’ Journal, November 2007. In my recent book Architecture Depends, I argue that this effort to attach aesthetics to morals is

misplaced. By associating ethics with the aesthetic statics of buildings, architecture is lifted up and away from the dynamics of social relationships, which is where ethical issues are truly played out. The ethics of aesthetics thus present a false morality, but one which many architects find comforting and indeed aspirational.

4. In the United Kingdom, so-called austerity programs in education and health can actually cost taxpayers more.

Thus in higher education, fees will triple in 2012, on the grounds that the public can no longer afford to pay for universities and so the burden should shift to the students who benefit. Yet the reality is very different: far from reducing public costs, the increased fees actually increase the burden on the taxpayer because the government will have to fund the higher loans. Under guise of austerity in education, the government is effectively privatizing the universities. See Jeremy Till, “Scar(c)e Times,” Occupied Times.

5. Lionel Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (London: Macmillan, 1932), 40.

6. See for example, The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation, Lyla Mehta, editor (London: Earthscan, 2010); Nicholas Xenos, Scarcity and Modernity (London ; New York: Routledge, 1989).

See also Jeremy Till, “Scare Stories: Scarce Stories – the Ideology of Austerity,” Occupied Times.

7. S. J. Scanlan, J. C. Jenkins and L. Peterson, “The Scarcity Fallacy,” Contexts, 9 (2010), 34–39.

8. This quote is from a lecture by Iain Boal at the University of Westminster, June 2011, as part of the “Scarcity Exchanges” series.

9. See Horace Herring and Robin Roy, “Technological innovation, energy efficient design and the rebound effect,” Technovation, 27, April 2007, 194–203.

10. Marcus Westbury, “Cities as Software,” Volume, 27 (2011), 90

SCARE STORIES: SCARCE STORIES - THE IDEOLOGY OF AUSTERITY Jeremy Till, London Published in Occupied Times, 5 April 2012

»» We live in an age of austerity.

No, that is wrong. »» We are continually told that we need to live in an age of austerity.

Better.

The difference between these two statements is crucial. The first message is the one that is repeated so often that we have come to believe it. It positions austerity as an inevitable, unavoidable, condition that we passively accept. The latter statement, which is the more accurate, begins to suggest that far from inevitable, austerity is a condition that is imposed on us as a necessary evil which will eventually lead us out of the present global instability and on to firmer ground. We all have to make sacrifices, our political masters tell us (while conveniently overlooking that the packages of austerity are far from evenly spread, and affect the poor more than any other group).

This latter sense of austerity – that it is imposed under the guise of extreme necessity – is continuously used as the justification for government policies throughout the world, with left and right alike colluding in the policies of cuts.

But scratch the surface, and it is easy to see that in many cases the programmes of austerity are not only unnecessary, but act as a mask for the playing out of deeply ideological policies.

Take my field, that of higher education. The introduction of higher fees Continued on page 31 >>

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housing provision by implementing an international practice of a ‘low-threshold’ private-public partnership (PPP) financing model outside the established model of public housing – the so-called Wohnbauinitiative. 1 Simultaneously, Baugruppen initiatives [so called CoHousing Groups] are drawing attention to themselves and claiming a creative boost for the city: in 2010 calling for the “hot fall” [Heißer Herbst], publicly discussing different models of co-housing and in 2011 organizing a tradeshow introducing projects from Berlin and Vienna to a broader public. Both the Wohnbauinitiative and the co-housing initiative are challenging the existing socially tempered climate in Vienna.

In order to understand what both of these initiatives are actually doing and aiming at, I will start by discussing a current situation and its dynamics in Vienna, before briefly speaking about the alleged shortcomings of the current housing schemes. I will then look into cohousing, analysing its entrepreneurism and how we can understand participation in a contemporary economy. Finally, I will discuss how a version of Baugruppen that I call Wohngruppen [co-living groups] could become productive in re-actualizing the social-democratic housing provision in Vienna.

Homely Desires Life in the contemporary city is driven by the desire for a – to some extent – spacious home which, at the same time, always exceeds the protagonist’s financial reality, whether one wants to buy or rent.

There is always too little money, even as the vision of how one needs to live becomes necessarily more modest: suddenly there is no need for a balcony anymore, nor for the envisioned extra room, nor the green vista, the nice kitchen, the good detailing, the lively neighbourhood, the direct access to public transport…This process of desire aligning with reality does not lead to the minimal-space concepts that early modernist architects would have conceived of, but to a very wired logic, to strange substituting acts, and to justifications that make the protagonist effectively settle for what is on offer. It becomes, finally, a compromise - albeit one that still needs to be credit-financed.

This matter is contrary to the imagery with which the media and the investors feed our desires. Be it life-style supplements to weekend issues waxing lyrical about roof-top terraces and penthouses; be it the Home & Living section of newspapers reporting ecological and socially sustainable co-housing units as harmonious environments one could invest in; even be it contemporary themed magazines such as appartamento depicting decent, likeable artist-individuals that have arranged themselves with a scarce way of contemporary living, having creatively adapted to a global, urban life in Barcelona, Madrid, London, or New York: all these are stories about lovely refurbished homes and their romantic-nostalgic-melancholic gardens and living rooms.

Of course desires are similar all over the world in a globally networked society. International trends like guerilla gardening or cycle chic, Single-Speeds or single-bean coffee do not stop at the city border of Vienna, although they may well take on their own flavour, sometimes even creating an incongruous, strange local aesthetic. And of course there are rooftop terraces in Vienna with overwhelming vistas and there is even a world-famous example of the most successful co-housing project Sargfabrik in Vienna. Thus there are legions of mid-twenty to early-forty year olds that are looking for the perfect flat to buy with what they have inherited from their parent’s savings of the last 50 years.

Relatively speaking, the rent on the real estate market in Vienna rises constantly, despite rigorous legal restrictions on how much a landlord is allowed to charge; similarly, prices on the buyers-market rise steadily. A specific urban myth fuels this. It is a recurring motif at parties and dinners that one could have bought this 200sqm

flat some years ago for the same value as what would now get you only 80sqm of space. 80sqm is not that big for Viennese conditions, bearing in mind those huge bourgeois flats of 140+sqm, and is thus most often felt to be inadequate for a young family. Speak with young families in Paris, however, or in Copenhagen, and an 80sqm flat is pure luxury. Despite the subjective experience of Viennese, there is still enough affordable and accessible space in the city of Vienna when compared with international circumstances.2 The effects of the myth are manifold.

The desirability of buying something or owning something increases because the myth suggests that there is an ever-growing market, allowing for an ever increasing share that will return when I sell my property. The myth promotes a sense of urgency, the need to act now - not in a month, or a year - as the price is constantly going up. It has a psychological effect on the owners of today’s real-estate market, encouraging the impression that there is more to be earned by splitting up their apartment building into small units and selling them to individuals, or that they would be better off only renting out the flats for a limited time, but with higher rent, which is actually not legal, but who cares? This emerging short term rent market and the insecurity it engenders again encourages the desire to own, even if purchasing something actually means taking out a loan and running into debts for the next 30 or so years. As the popular argument goes: “Rent is just lost money, but when I pay back a loan, some day all will be mine.” To be precise: to purchase means, in the average case, depositing at best a third of the amount and owing the rest to a bank. The savings of the last 50 years that a young generation has inherited from its parents often does not even make up this third. And even if you have a third of a loan to buy a 80sqm flat in Vienna at this moment in time and with low interest rates, you would still need to pay back the amount of money that would enable you to rent an apartment of about 110sqm…

Let us look in for a moment from the outside, let’s say with the trained eye of a Londoner who, no matter what her ideology, already accepts a liberalist real-estate market as the only possible scenario. She is seduced on the one hand into interpreting the Vienna situation as abundant; on the other to explain its current setting with a kind of anachronism. On the one hand: for a young Londoner family, or even for a young family living in Copenhagen, the 80sqm flat is pure luxury, extravagance and abundance. On the other, it is easy for them to dismiss the Vienna situation as inevitably transitory: a situation which will irrevocably move towards a private market and pure scarcification of space to live. As one hears: “It’s just a matter of time until things go the way they did in Copenhagen ten years ago.” I argue that both assertions accept a smooth and seamless process of globalization in which the complete real-estate market falls under the neoliberal spell of the same global logic without local deviations, or the possibility of alternative economies.

In other words both assertions are too simple, are partially wrong and do not do justice to the actual situation in place in Vienna.

The Practice of Vienna Housing Is Almost All Right The nearly one hundred years history of social-democratic ruled housing provision has actually generated, when it comes to housing, an ‘alternative’ economy in Vienna compared to the rest of Europe. Vienna is not like Berlin, for example. Berlin got rid of about 40% of its public housing stock under its finance senator Thilo Sarrazin in 2003, either selling out public housing stock or eliminating subsidies. Vienna even differs from the Austrian state, which sold its housing cooperative BUWOG with a stock of about 32.000 units in 2004. Vienna did not sell its housing stock: it actually expanded its hold on the Vienna real-estate market by intelligently liberalizing the public housing production. Today, 27% of the housing stock is owned by the municipality and

21% of the city’s housing stock are owned

by Limited Profit Housing Association (LPHA)3 but indirectly controlled by the city’s authority via quality management, land provision and subsidies. The legacy of the 1920s social-democratic intent that was backed up by the Austro-Marxism of the same period, together with the Superblock as typology, is today adjusted to globally spread liberal assumptions and has turned into Überstadt: half of the housing market is accessed by the municipality, creating a so-called integrated market with efficient management, assessment criteria, competition and quality control as the common vocabulary in today’s practice of social housing.

This Überstadt is characterized not only by the vast influence on the real estate market itself: Überstadt diffuses into all aspects of life in the city, creating a specific interrelated and interdependent network of actors that is impossible to step outside of once you engage with it. Überstadt is the ghost of the city’s housing apparatus that subtly rules and steers the City. It is a partly transparent, partly translucent and partly opaque field, infused with myths, vested with an effective and dense regulatory regime, in which everybody in the city becomes expert and amateur at the same time. In order to manoeuvre within its boundaries, one needs to be familiar with it. It is due to this that only a few international architects have built social housing in the city so far and most of them – with all respect – have failed. And it is thus that only insiders are able to understand and analyse the subtle innovations that happen – for example – in a seemingly similar and boring façade.

It is exactly this inaccessibility to Überstadt and its imperviousness to change that provokes resentment and critique. Of course, the stability of the vast housing stock generates an relative security within a fluid world economy in crisis; at the same time it seems unable to guard against the subjective dynamics of the global situation and its powerfully generated desires.

It is as if it would not be possible to think of housing schemes that are dynamic; as if such schemes can only be built under neo-liberal regimes somewhere else – be it in Copenhagen, or Berlin.

The Critique of Baugruppen One critique of the practice of social housing in Vienna has recently been brought forward by Baugruppen [CoHousing groups]. Baugruppen have increasingly drawn attention to themselves within public discourse, proclaiming to be able to reform the practice of social housing in Vienna by being a bottom up initiative that proceeds by participation, and furthermore being able to build much cheaper through lean management and the engagement of all involved. Hence the argument that Baugruppen would collectively generate a sustainable city development. To understand how such a movement - that in recent years has become most popular in Berlin and other German cities - might become a critical force leading to reform in Vienna, I will briefly analyse its general characteristics as they circulate in the discourse, before I move on to link its potential to the current practice of social housing in Vienna, and thus could become a real reformist movement.

Looking at who engages most in the promotion of co-housing groups in Vienna, one gets the impression that Baugruppen are a new business model for young architects not just in Germany, but also increasingly in Austria. It is not dissatisfied residents or citizens that have launched the Viennese co-housing initiative or the 2011 fair on co-housing projects in Vienna; it is mainly architects that have become entrepreneurs and developers of such projects. Secondly, these projects follow the logic of a growing market: building new or renovating an existing house as a group. This implies two things: on the one hand, such a co-housing project is a specific financial investment with an anticipated return of investment.

Furthermore, to build participatorily in a group implies an investment in time and knowledge that becomes part of the reduced building costs. Such a participatory

process, that ideally is seen today to be a consensual decision making process, focuses additionally on the object to be built, and thus only in limited ways on the mode of how to live together in the long term. Especially since the ultimate incentive for people to get together is the promise of individualization: to be able to design his or her own residence to his taste and her ideas. At the same time the hope is for more space with less money. Thus most of the projects are rather conventional housing typologies in contemporary design, and only seldom does one find collective typologies, like a one-kitchen-house for example, being applied. And most of the co-housing groups can be said to be comprised of only one exclusive ‘target group’ that somehow has the same social background, has somewhat similar interests and age…Most of the time, thus, exclusive groups of single mums, women, queer people, or young families get together, forming groups on a small scale. With their investment they hope to influence and upgrade the urban environment in which the co-housing object is being placed.

As the German Institute for Applied Urbanistik (ifau) together with the Berlinbased architect/theoretician Jesko Fezer have already pointed out, Baugruppen are not likely to solve any contemporary social or urban problems; with their smallproperty and social homogeneity social segregation they can be expected, rather, to increase them. Yet ifau and Fezer write about a specific situation in Berlin. With their own Baugruppe they try to establish different co-housing group, but admit that they actually fail to some extend. 4 As mentioned, the Vienna situation is different to Berlin. In order to make sense of the reformist potential for the practice of social housing in Vienna I want to make a little historic detour into another, more local phenomenon of co-housing groups that has been emerging since the 1960s and is strongly related to the transition from a fordist economy towards a postfordist mode of immaterial labour, in which the formerly clearly drawn spheres of the modernist city – labour, leisure, living – start to merge and become diffuse.

In this very moment architects became entrepreneurs, starting to critically engage with the re-organization of society.

Rationalization of the building process - making a building cheaper - also generated the possibility for individualization through rule-based participation.

It was the Linz-based architect Fritz Matzinger who started the entrepreneurial trend when he posted an ad in a local newspaper in early 1974.

With this he would start his career as a developer-architect for the most successful co-housing typology Les Palétuviers. In principle it is always a central common space, initially with a kitchen and a fireplace in the middle, around which 16 housing units are placed. Apart from its peculiar typology, it is the organizational and immaterial form of the groups over the years that Matzinger engaged with: to prevent speculation, to allow for divorce within the built structure, etc.

The entrepreneurial trend could also, however, be said to have been started by the Viennese architect Ottokar Uhl, who in the 1970s implemented a participatory public housing scheme in Vienna. Uhl, who has not received the institutional attention he should have got over the years, strongly engaged with the prefabrication and rationalization of building systems, and with this implemented a participatory process into his housing schemes.

engage in Baugruppen?

Ottokar Uhl’s housing scheme shows that even public housing can be built in a participatory manner. Still, its process was focussed on a participatory planning process and not on an integrative process of how to live together – potentially conflictive – in the long term. But the very idea of engaging with the question of how to collectively live together in the city, to engage with the existing stock and inventory of the city (and here I not only mean its existing spaces, but also its administration) might become a political movement that has the power to re-actualize the public and social housing in Vienna.

Such Wohngruppen (co-living groups) are not based on property, they comply with individual needs by engaging in the heterogeneity of the city and its potential conflicts. Wohngruppen would be able to invent new forms and organizations of spaces we can collectively live and work in, which could flexibly react to ever new situations evolving in society as a whole.

Wohngruppen could become a reformist movement that abandons the position of the critical researcher, the critical architect, or the critical building contractor.

It could become a movement that understands that looking or acting from the outside is an impossible position to take on, since such criticism is always necessarily embraced and made productive for the existing apparatus. On the contrary, applied research into the field of public housing in Vienna, especially research by designers and architects, that tries to be conscious from the very beginning of its entanglement and its impossibility to step outside, may find itself possessed of an unique possibility: that of becoming a reformist agency from within.

Towards Wohngruppen Ottokar Uhl’s participatory public housing scheme in Feßtgasse brings me back to the alternative economy of Vienna’s social housing and my initial question of how co-housing could become a reformist movement in the spirit of the pragmatist socialist ideology to solve the social question by building affordable housing for everyone. It is certainly not the particularized, socially homogenous property-owning group that is the answer. The question remains: Who is able to afford such a project? Who has got the means, the time and the knowledge to

From its very beginning, so-called Gemeinschaftseinrichtungen - communal, shared spaces accompanied the programs of social housing in Vienna. This continuity of the municipal housing program encompasses a broad range of programs and activities; the common spaces do not only concern leisure but other aspects of life as well: these are spaces of education and sports, of entertainment and hygiene; for household activity and for hobby; for organizing and for meeting. We could regard them as intermediates – on a crossing between the single dwelling unit, the workplace and the urban ‘extra’-program

Notes 1 See also Georg Kolmayr, Lucky Vienna, on page 35.

2 Yet again one needs to consider the objects that are on sale: most of them are part of the real estate stock of Gründerzeit, thus have a specific layout that is not at all optimized to contemporary standards – often with too big a bathroom at the wrong position in the layout. Certainly to only count and evaluate a flat by surface area is not enough, but it helps to make the argument here.

3 Cf. Glossary: Integrated Market.

4 ifau und Jesko Fezer about Dilemmas and Perspectives of Co-Housing Groups in Berlin (written in German). In: Arch+ features, März 2011, p. 8.

GEIMEINSCHAFTSEINRICHTUNG AND GEMEINDEBAU – THE COMMON SPACES IN VIENNESE SOCIAL HOUSING Michael Klein Presentation at the International Seminar: Architecture for leisure in post-war Europe [1945-1989], K.U.Leuven, Belgium, February 2012

31 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

(such as a stadium or a park). Some of these common spaces might be comparable to the ‘extra-program’ – such as a very small library, but they are much more mundane. Unlike the sensational stadium, most of the common spaces are recurring: they are not the exception or the event within the city (‘the national library’, ‘the city event venue’) but rather series, distributed over the city (‘one small library’, ‘the club-room’). They do however relate to these extra-programs, as well as they relate to dwelling and to labour.

I will focus on some moments or conditions of such facilities that is spaces and their particular temporal programming. Doing so should avoid regarding leisure - or more specifically, that what we call leisure - as static or stable. Instead, the meaning of leisure is considered to be variable, changing and related to its respective context. The understanding and the role of leisure and how it relates to non-leisure and other context will be my focus.

Most common, leisure is regarded to be work’s opposite: the time spent off work; in doing so, basically it is conceptualized through work, as the non-work and in this turn, in its relation to work. What has been called leisure society is, we can state, above all a working society. Leisure is not what it seems to be at first sight. It is not free-time as its German equivalent suggests: Frei – zeit. Free time is rarely free: leisure, most often is to serve for an end, it has a function; therefore it is, we could say, coded. This is accomplished by a multiplicity of practices and discursive processes amongst which mere naming, the planned and suggested use of space, the programming and architecture are just a few. The goal should not be to de-code, but rather to retrace the role of leisure and its relationship to labour and government. I will do so by referring to the use and programming of some few examples of common spaces within social housing schemes in Vienna over time; following that, two architectural projects from the late 1960s and early 70s should allow to open up for aspects of leisure in today’s societies.

Because of their intermediate position, the common spaces cannot be regarded separated from their context; for our concern, that is the aspect of housing alongside which they have been erected on the one hand and the changes in the mode of production on the other. The order and the classification I use here when referring to these common spaces does not follow the one that seems obvious - the division of labour and leisure - but instead that of public and private.

To approach with a different category avoids overemphasizing the separating (of labour and leisure); we do not have to assign space to either of these categories immediately. Apart from that, it allows for the transition between leisure and work as the contemporary mode of production suggests; it allows eluding the positing of a clear separation so that something is not necessarily leisure or labour but possibly productive in leisure and labour: Intertwined, leisure-lookalike labour or dissolved remains unanswered; yet still we have to ask how the demarcation is established and negotiated.

I. When on February 14th 1934, the last troops of the socialist Schutzbund had been overwhelmed and the KarlMarx-Hof, the edified symbol of the Austromarxist undertaking, was under control of the paramilitary forces of the Fascists, the project of Red Vienna had been forced to an end. The Gemeindehöfe, bearing names of personified socialist grandeur were renamed; the building programme was reduced and restructured, the criteria of allocation was changed fundamentally. The programs of the common spaces were changed: what had been clubs and libraries, soon became ‘emergency churches’1 so as to re–catholicise labour class and later, party-clubs of the Nazis.

II. Some 11 years before, in 1923, the Social

Democratic government of the SDAP (Sozial-Demokratische Arbeiterpartei) launched its large-scale housing programme. It was a reaction to Vienna’s notoriety of miserable living conditions, an attempt to ameliorate the situation of the labour class on the one hand and the plan for the development of a socialist society on the other. Following a series of fiscal and legal changes, real estate had become unprofitable for the private.

Land had become available at low costs, distributed all over the city. The measures Red Vienna took, was to build housing within the existing: scattered island in a sea of the liberal city - an archipelago2 of new socialist forms of living. These islands varied in architectural form, concept and size, ranging from small implementations aligning with the existing city patterns to the so-called superblock, a city within the city, formally in opposition to the rejected bourgeois city. In about ten years, the municipality of Red Vienna built over 63.000 flats.

Building against while remaining within3 was not only the spatial strategy pursued; similarly it can be considered as Red Vienna’s political concept: to build up a socialist society within capitalist structure by reform. In 1918’s atmosphere of upheaval, the bourgeoisie rather endorsed to reform as to hold off radical turnover. This brought about the SDAP’s achievements in labour struggle: social insurances, labour regulations and limitation of labour time. The latter meant the introduction of the eight-hours day and of paid vacations – that is leisure for the masses.

The dwelling units erected were small4; still - or even because, since it raised the total number of flats - they ameliorated the conditions. Unlike other social democratic building programs such as in Frankfurt, however, Red Vienna did not purpose maximising the private unit, but rather to socialize dwelling by sharing facilities.

Already the announcement of the housing program in 1923 mentions the indispensable role of the common spaces; yet even years before, when envisioning ‘building’ the coming socialist society, Otto Bauer - a key theorist of Austromarxism – not only referred to housing as a fundamental citizen’s right. He emphasized the ‘central kitchen and laundries, (…) play- and classrooms for children, common dining rooms, reading and game rooms’. Indeed, the ‘central kitchen house’ should be a one-time exception: The Heimhof with its 352 small units, a central kitchen and a dining room (that in between mealtimes served as a café), baths and a common roof terrace was a unique undertaking in ‘living differently’: It was rejected by both, conservatives (‘threat of dissolving familialism’) and working-class (‘denying individuality’)5. The remaining facilities however were largely realized. Yet some programs can hardly be assigned to leisure but pursued the opposite, such as the big, common laundries of the Sandleitenhof. The relocation of domestic work to the public is the clear distinction from leisure: by the spatial, technical and symbolic transformation to industrial laundries, the (female) homemaker is established as an (industrial) worker; reproduction labour is ‘becoming’ visible as part of the mode of production.6 Beyond that, facilities such as shower bathes, saunas and swimming pools, gyms, theatres, libraries, workers clubs, reading and meeting rooms, workshops, schools, playgrounds, kindergartens, children day-cares, clinics, shopping facilities and more enriched the life of the Gemeindebau and even beyond of the whole neighbourhood. The large courts, formed by the modern housing schemes built according to the principle of ‘Light, Air, Sunshine’ provided as well parks and yards to the public - open areas for meeting, for playing and for recreation.

What all these facilities, that almost entirely can be assigned to hygienic, cultural and educational programs, share, is the forming of der neue Mensch (the new man).

In leisure the proletarian masses were to be educated so as to hineinwachsen - to grow into the coming socialist society7.

The aspect of time - of labour and leisure time – had been at the core of labour

movement from its very beginnings. In the Grundrisse, Marx explains the social division of time as central of all ‘historic’ forms of social life; it is the struggle of the relation of ‘necessary labour time’, the ‘surplus labour time’ that the capitalist absorbs and ‘disposable time’ - the ‘room for the development of the individual’s full productive forces, hence those of society also.’8 For the labour movement, this time off work is considered as well as time for emancipation. Its goal is the cessation of disposable times to have an ‘antithetical existence’ or that ‘[t]he measure of wealth is then not any longer, in any way, labour time, but rather disposable time.’9 For the pragmatic socialists of Red Vienna pursuing an approach of reform - that is gradual amelioration - the challenge was not to stop and remain with the wealth created; for the ideal of a socialist project, it was necessary not to consider welfare as sole amenities, but rather as achievements in an ongoing struggle. The challenge for the party was to overcome the ‘tension between the masses’ struggle for the daily interest and the purposefully socialists, to whom working class’ struggle for the daily interest is not an end in itself, but only a stage - a means of its struggle - towards a socialist society”10, as Otto Bauer put it.

The reformism of Red Vienna therefore entailed the pedagogical framework. The library, the workers’ club, the theatre, as well as physical training became the moral programming of leisure in the forming of new man. Leisure then is ‘work’ on a new society; to educate the masses so as to emancipate the masses.

III. Some day in the early 1950s: a few people sitting in a room. The ceiling is rather high, the floor made out of linoleum. Simple tables and chairs, all wooden, in clear unadorned form and design are distributed over the room; sunlight is shining through the big glazed windows with heavy synthetic curtains: a sober and decent yet modern appearance.

A second picture besides, with no people in it; possibly it is the same room, but the curtains are closed now and the chairs are arranged in file – in anticipation of a theatre, the movies or an event. A third picture: a small library; children curiously crowding around the new books. The interior design, basic wooden bookshelves, is clear and kept simple without neglecting the vocabulary of the times. Even prior, on the front-page of this 3-pages leaflet: the entrance situation of a modern, pavilionlookalike building with two men scaling the few stair that let arise the porch; over them a thin concrete canopy with neon letters: volksheim.

What we see is the brochure that informs about the first ‘community centre’ in the ‘Per Albin Hansson Siedlung’11, the first major construction after the municipality’s decision in 1945 to resume social housing. Wartime destruction, demographic change, the effects of the former housing scarcity and a strong belief in ‘plannability’ served as the central motives to do so. Yet despite of mayor Körner’s slogan “Reconstruction means making it better”12 and an ideal of a modern, decongested city, the literal rebuilding of the old city was the oftenpursued reality. These disadvantageous developments notwithstanding, modernity, efficiency and optimization formed the approach by means of which to build a new society: housing as social engineering. Indeed, the objective of quantity did not allow for much common space apart from bare necessity; yet this necessity was considered to be a social one.

Built at the fringes of the city, the PerAlbin-Hansson was largely supported by Sweden, a state of central importance for Austrian social democracy; not only had it held neutral stance and distinguished through its relief operations during WWII; but its welfare system and the economic prosperity made Sweden become the redistributive ideal of the post-war social democratic state, the Folkhemmet or, in German, Volksheim (the people’s home).

Its Prime Minister Per Albin Hansson, ‘this son of a mason, who became the Continued on page 34 >>

<< Continued from page 29: Scare Stories

is ‘explained’ by the fact that we can no longer afford to fund Universities out of the public purse, and so the burden should shift to students, who will eventually benefit. This is the common sense argument so favoured by the populist right.

The assumption is that this new system will save public money. However, this is far from the truth: buried in an annex of a letter from Vince Cable to HEFCE (the higher education funding body) is the startling admission that the cost next year will actually rise from £8.9m to £9.1m.

Far from the tripling of fees being part of the government’s austerity programme, it now, astoundingly, adds extra cost to the exchequer, but we are so conditioned by the rhetoric of austerity that the new fee regime has now been passively accepted as necessary by most people. Insult is heaped upon insult with the added policy that for the first time students going to private universities will have access to student loans, so that taxpayers will effectively be subsidising and fuelling the private sector; hardly a money-saving initiative for the age of austerity.

This is just one example of the way that austerity is used as the cover for the rolling out of an ideological position (in this case the effective marketisation of the university sector). Another example is the Free School programme – an ideological programme if ever there was one. As the building of new schools in the public sector is slashed on grounds of austerity, somehow money is found to establish a range of schools which are all but private – except for the fact that the public is paying for them.

What we need to learn from these examples – and the many more like them – is that austerity is not inevitable, but is too often imposed for other political reasons which all too often ramp up social inequality. The justification for these programmes is framed by the dominance of the neo-liberal economic model that subscribes blindly to the twin gods of growth and market freedom, as if the so-called ‘logic of the market’ will lead us out of the woods. It continues to amaze that the same medicine is being prescribed to treat the very illness that the medicine initially caused.

Austerity is justified because of a wider scarcity – of money – and the only solution proposed is to limit the endless supply of money in order to re-establish economic equilibrium. In this sense, austerity, as an imposed condition, is the bastard child of scarcity. Scarcity has been used as a scare tactic ever since the invention of neo-classical economics.

It was the Reverend Malthus who first wielded the axe of scarcity in his Essay on the Principle of Population of 1798.

Malthus’ argument is straightforward: population grows at geometric rate, food supply at an arithmetic rate; at a certain moment (the Malthusian point), population demand will exceed supply; scarcity will lead to famine; population growth must therefore be restricted in the face of the spectre of scarcity. What we find behind the veil of logic and socalled objectivity is a deeply ideological text, which was to have direct political consequences. Malthus’ rationalisation in favour of population restraint brings with it some unedifying arguments in relation to the poor. If one attempts to alleviate poverty, as was being proposed in the contemporaneous Poor Laws, then (he argued) population growth with follow, which in turn will lead to scarcities. Instead, let scarcity regulate poverty, he argues; it is both the origin of poverty and the effective instrument against any population growth that might arise out of the alleviation of poverty. This laissezfaire attitude to the poor, worrying enough in its own way, is also a lever for the exploitation of the poor because, as Malthus recognised, the poverty arising out of scarcity made the working class more willing to submit to wage labour.

The immediate political consequences of Malthus’ essay were very direct. The Poor Laws, which he had argued contributed to ‘carelessness’ among the poor, and a ‘want of frugality’, were repealed under

the Malthusian spectre of the population growth of a rutting proletariat.

Is it too much to equate Malthus’ attack on the poor with this coalition government’s attack on the disabled, the homeless, the migrants and other dispossessed elements of society? I think not, because in each case scarcity is being used as the justification and cover for a deeply ideological programme.

The only way to escape the apparent hold of scarcity is to understand it not as a naturalised or inevitable condition, but as a constructed one. The most obvious example of constructed scarcity is food: there is enough food in the world to feed the global population, it is just in the wrong place and subjected to the distortions of the free market. Hunger in one part of the world is mirrored with appalling waste in another. On top of this, the intervention of multinationals such as Monsanto has exacerbated food scarcity. Using the scar(c)e story that without industrialised and genetically modified food production we face global food scarcity, Monsanto has been allowed to roll out a form of agricultural monopoly that has not only destroyed local livelihoods and practices, but done so, as so clearly shown by Vandana Shiva, with no sustained increase in yields on which the initial bargain was based.

Constructed scarcities affect every aspect of our lives. We are told that there is a housing crisis, but everywhere we look there are empty properties; scarcity here is constructed through the machinations of tenure and ownership. As soon as one understands scarcity as a constructed condition and not an inevitable one, then it makes it possible to creatively intervene in the processes that construct a particular scarcity. A good example is the Renew Newcastle project in New South Wales, Australia, where a team lead by Marcus Westbury have unlocked the empty spaces of the city through interrupting and playing with planning and legal regulations (which had constructed a scarcity of use), allowing short-term uses to take over and revitalise the previously decaying city centre.

In taking apart the various constructions of scarcity, one is resisting the scare stories that are associated with it. But this does not mean that all scarcities are constructed. There are real limits and resources really are running out as mankind endlessly exploits the biosphere.

This aspect of scarcity is all too often either denied or forgotten, because at heart it presents a threat to the neoliberal dream of endless growth and demands that we look at alternative paradigms.

It is here that the occupy movement is so important. What I learn from the occupiers is the resilience and brilliance of their organisational structures, and their overall critique of the structures of power.

What the occupiers teach us, through their spaces, their behaviour and their critique, is that other forms of social organisation are not only necessary but also possible. If, as I believe, we are moving into an era overseen by issues of scarcity (but not necessarily scary scarcity) rather than by the false hope of abundance that we’ve been promised for too long, then we need to rethink our understanding of scarcity and its implications. The Occupy Movement is a good place to start.

FROM OBJECTS OF AUSTERITY TO PROCESSES OF SCARCITY Jeremy Till, London Presentation to Society of Architectural Historians Annual Conference, Detroit, April 2012

We live in an age of austerity; or, rather, we are continually told that we live in an age of austerity and therefore must live by Continued on page 33 >>

32 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is For the first time ever, this map is a (yet unfinished) attempt to map the spatial distribution of Viennaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s social and public housing schemes. Š SCIBE Vienna Research Collective, Public and Social Housing Map (unfinished), Vienna 2012

33 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 31: From Objects of Austerity

its strictures. Both the political left and right promulgate the notion of, and need for, austerity programmes. Such is the unconditional acceptance of the term that it controls all aspects of our lives, from the very personal (i.e. shortened shopping lists) to the very public (i.e. cutbacks all round in major spending projects).

Architecture, as a discipline that spans this private-public spectrum, is thus inevitably bound to the conditions of austerity, and so it is worth unpicking some of the ways that austerity is formulated and the reaction of architects to these formulations. In order to do this, the paper will look briefly at two examples from the twentieth century in which programmes of austerity inflected on architectural production in order to see if particular traits emerge. I will then argue that austerity as a term is not sufficiently nuanced to describe the complexity of operating under the current social, economic and ecological conditions. The final section of the paper will therefore move to a formulation for spatial production based around the notion of scarcity, hence the title: “From Objects of Austerity to Processes of Scarcity”.

Episode 1: Weimar Germany This process of the abstraction and subsequent reification of austerity can be identified in my first episode of austerity and architecture, that of Weimar Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s, in which enduring post-war scarcities, global economic collapse and rising population combined to induce programmes of austerity, most notably in the Weimar budgets from 1930 to 1932. Against this economic backdrop and faced with a combination of housing shortages and the lack of resources to build that housing, architects responded in a very particular manner.1 This was also the period in which the tenets of international modernism were being formulated, and what we see is a merging of modernist ideologies with the expediencies required by austerity.

The discussion is focused most clearly through the second CIAM congress of international architects held in Frankfurt in 1929, entitled Die Wohnung für das Existenzminimum (literally translated as The Subsistence Dwelling), which was subsequently recorded in a book of the same title. Faced with an unprecedented demand for housing, but against the backdrop of post-war scarcities, architects responded in two ways. First through the development of plans for reduced space standards, and second through the employment of new industrialised technologies. Thus Karel Teige’s The Minimum Dwelling famously opens with the words: “Essentially, the housing question is a problem of statistics and technology, as is any question concerning the provision and satisfaction of human needs.”2 Teige’s directness is tempered in the language of other early modernists, who tied this technocratic regime into a wider project of social emancipation but in all cases we can see parallels with the economic discourse of the time.3 As Siegfried Giedion notes in his opening address to the Frankfurt congress: “it was settled (at the first CIAM conference) that the prime task of the architect is to ‘bring himself into line with the times’…

Connection of architecture with economy could obviously not help being made the first point of the Programme.”4 The new science of architecture takes human need in the context of imposed limits, and frames it in the quasi-scientific language that went hand-in-hand with the progressivist rhetoric of early modernism.

Austerity was seen as something that could be overcome through architectural ingenuity, rational thinking and technological advance – and more than that it was something that the older approaches to architecture and construction simply only could not deal with; efficiency of means was required and the old forms of building and aesthetics did not meet this criteria. A new way of thinking and doing was required. It is here that austerity, although framed as a challenge,

actually becomes a covert opportunity to pursue the modernist agendas developed through CIAM. Episode 2: Austerity Britain This confluence of austerity and modernizing tendencies can also be identified in Austerity Britain – the period immediately after the second world war.

As Andrew Saint argues this period represented, “a coming together of many things: the Modern Movement, a puritan strain in British philosophy and design, the needs, constraints, opportunities and organization of post-war reconstruction, and the triumph of fresh thinking about childhood, teaching and learning.”5 Again, industrialization, efficiency and technical prowess are employed as the means to address austerity, this time allied to the technical and industrial advances achieved as part of the war effort.

Austerity Britain was remarkable for its political ambition, largely driven by ideals of collective provision of health, education and welfare. For the reformers, austerity, far from a brake to the establishment of the future, was actually the motor. As David Kynaston notes in his book on the period, architects were to the fore in the envisioning of this brave new world: “if for Keynesians, social reformers and educationalists the war provided unimagined opportunities for influencing the shape of the future, this was even more true for architects and town planners and their cheerleaders.”6 In his book that documents the architectural history of the post-war era, Nicholas Bullock traces two routes under the conditions of austerity.7 One is that of the architectural elite in an internalized story of the establishment of certain forms of modernism, set apart from the backdrop of post-war exigencies and turmoil. More interesting, because less self-referential, is the second route in which the conditions of production and limits of resources led to new forms of architectural invention. Austerity, as in the 1930s, becomes both the driver and excuse for innovation. Although these new forms of construction and planning did not, Bullock points out,8 necessarily save money, they certainly provided new opportunities for architects and builders. As Andrew Saint notes of the Hertfordshire Schools architects, who were prominent at the time: “they wanted to compose not an essay or a book but a language and vocabulary, and to write the first literature in it all at the same time.”9 Austerity, far from a limit on progress, was its very genesis.

Contemporary Austerity One may hope to find lessons from these two previous episodes in order to suggest ways of coping with the contemporary conditions of austerity. However, one major difference must be noted.

Where the previous two periods were tied into a reformist political agenda, the present situation is determined by a regressive economic ideology in which neo-liberal dogma demands a singular diet of austerity.10 The argument is continually made that in order to re-establish economic equilibrium, packages of austerity are absolutely necessary. But scratch the surface and what one finds is that this argument for the ‘inevitability’ of austerity masks a deeply ideological underbelly, in which social inequality is ramped up and the private sector is given renewed prominence.11 For architects two apparently opposing positions arise out of these conditions of contemporary austerity. For the vast majority of the profession, let’s call them the 99%, the wider context of economic leanness leads to cut-rate fees, continuous value engineering and the drive towards the technicisation of the processes, with assumed efficiency gains, through BIM and other industry-led programmes.

In all these aspects architects, far from operating at the forefront of cultural expression as they were in the previous episodes of austerity, are left on the back foot, denied the resources to operate and marginalised in the wider debate about Continued on page 35 >>

34 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 31: Common Spaces

builder of new Sweden’13, who coined the term Folkhemmet, gave name to the settlement. The planning of both Volksheim and settlement was conducted by a team of architects led by Franz Schuster, who had been involved in settlement constructions from early days in the interwar period on.

Apart from the urgent topics of post-war reconstruction, the planning discourse dealt particularly with the aspects of the individual in the urban society and the way of living together. The ‘vast, unmanageable city’ had brought the ‘massification’ of society, the ‘disintegration of companionship, of the settlement, even of the family’; ‘mass production had deleted individual taste’ and above all, all that had ended in the ‘atomization of society’ as the central journal der Aufbau (Reconstruction) repeatedly stated14.

Never again, so the mutual consent, the atrocities of the anterior years in fascism – the terror the masses were capable of - should happen.15 Social housing and particularly community centres, the Volksheim - the ‘salon of the man in the streets’ - were tasked with ‘the build-up and the maintenance of society’ and the ‘valuable activity’ of the individual: at planing-benches, at sewing machines, in the showing kitchen; by lectures, films, theatres and the library; two clubrooms provided the facility for a ‘homely, comfortable gathering’. The early post-war period is driven by the impressive will to (re-)construct modernity and democracy altogether; its means, however, were not necessarily fully modern nor democratic. Housing had become a tool for family planning and for governing the population. The Volksheim purports a specific concept of leisure: individual activity - production in the scarce post-war economy - and the build-up of a new free society, so as to form the unpredictable masses into an assiduous population.

IV. Economic prosperity and general wealth brought change to housing production. Still pursuing quantitative concerns, the municipality took up prefabrication in the 1960s. ‘From social housing towards social urban planning’16 was the slogan by which the maxim of modernist planning was proclaimed. The functional separation, the decongested, sun exposed and ventilated structures brought as well change to the common spaces. With the linear schemes, however, the semi-public common space of the courtyard was gone.

Even if the modern city offered much more open space, it was used less - be it because of the oversupply of open space, or the lack of differentiation, or the little neighbourship and the anonymity that critics brought up. The decision, not to adhere to Roland Rainer’s proposed plan with 3-4-storey buildings, but rather, to rise up to 10 floors for reasons of economic efficiency, did not raise the use of open space, nor did the need for commuting. Yet there were other reasons for this ‘interiorization’ into the private sphere: The increasing motorisation - a higher mobility offered the possibility to spend time outside the city; technological advance - the spread of television and the equipment with new domestic appliances, that made some of the shared infrastructure unnecessary (e.g. since the early years of reconstruction, each flat offered hot water and bathrooms). Yet even more important was the continuous growth of the single dwelling unit: between 1952 and 1969 the average size of the new flat had increased from 47sqm17 to 75sqm18 offering each dweller more space and the majority of them had an ‘additional room outside’ - a balcony, a terrace or a loggia. With growth, a major purpose had become maximizing the individual unit. The nuclear family had become the focus group of the building programs of Reconstruction and the Wirtschaftswunder (economic miracle); and the times’ concept of leisure was closely related.

The interiorization, the turn towards the private of leisure and the decline of formerly common activities and their spaces thus cannot be regarded isolated from the development of housing.

V. Indeed, the communal provision of leisure institutions has been expanded; the infrastructure of adult education, the so-called Volkshochschule and the municipal libraries was further developed. In the conception of the municipality, however, their relative impact was obviously decreasing. Entertainment and more spectacular leisure activities had outstripped them. Shared common space related to housing schemes did not vanish, but their role had changed again.

Up on a rooftop terrace, 70 metres above ground, a collective swimming pool and view over the City. This is Vienna’s edified ‘greatest happiness principle’ Alt Erlaa. Planned and built over the 1970s and 80s by the team Glück, Requat & Reinthaller, Hlaweniczka the three blocks are the exception in mass housing for the highest dweller’s satisfaction19 and the amount of communal spaces: 7 rooftop pools, 7 indoor pools, 20 saunas and solaria, 3 indoor tennis courts, 7 play areas, 2 courts, a youth centre, a library, a shopping mall and 32 club-rooms for the 3200 dwelling units. While Alt-Erlaa is far from being representational with this equipment of common spaces, it illustrates the change in the conception and role of the spaces provided for leisure. Over the years, the general wealth has risen and large parts of the labour class have achieved middle class living standards.

Here, ‘disposable time’ has long ceased to be considered for emancipation; housing programs and common facilities are no longer considered to be an achievement in a ‘struggle forwards’; facility is an amenity and leisure an end in itself that is necessary for the reproduction of labour power; self-fulfilment in physical training. As Adorno and Eisler write: ‘In the late industrial age there is nothing else for the masses but to amuse and to recover, as part of the necessity to reproduce labour power spent in alienated labour’20.

The ‘other side of labour’, the everydaylife spaces of consumption that is the spaces of living and of leisure are centrally involved in the mode of production; both are inscribed in the production process.

The former, the dwelling unit is the space for the reproduction of the nuclear family as the elementary component of society; the latter, the spaces of leisure, pursue the reproduction of workforce by distraction, by amusement; both together, they account for the reproduction of society.

VI. The late 1960s’changes in mindset brought the critique of the technocratic and monofunctional conception of factual modern planning, of the leftovers of an only superficially democratic society, of the monotony created in planning and everyday-life as such. In Vienna, it unfolded within the niches of the historic city: In 1967, out of a window in the first floor in the Apollogasse in the 7th district, a bubble inflated. Two persons were sitting in the transparent bubble - the Ballon für zwei (balloon for two): Stoff Superhuber and Maria Ebner, while becoming engaged in this first work of Haus-Rucker-Co. Two is not yet ‘common’. And an engagement is far from it. The exteriorisation of the intimate space, however, its transparency, and the literal bubble in which this other world unfolds - almost flying away if not the steel construction would hold it back - disturbs the existing distribution: the distribution of public and private; of what is intimate; of the ‘sensible’ ‘in what is common to the community based on what they do and on the time and space in which this activity is performed… it defines what is visible or not in a common space’21. Here the intimate sphere becomes part of the common space. What Haus-Rucker-Co show is an ironic seesaw of privacy (‘You can arrange the balloon at home’) and public (the action on the street). Far from a dissent, the ‘space of love’ creates a momentary condition of otherness that we are ‘all in urgent need of’22. Yet the disturbing aspect was a momentary one.

‘Commerce and promotion, commercials and the spectacle, pleasure and irony – all of which must not be suppressed any longer’, Günther Feuerstein, their early

academic promoter, wrote; and further ‘the inflatable spaces and capsules, such as the ‘Balloon for Two’ are simple, jolly, amusing spaces – for a coming society of leisure and recreation, of play and unconcern.’23 Unintentionally, Feuerstein anticipated what came after: the otherness and the formal and aesthetic freedom were embraced and taken up by an ever-commercializing leisure-sector. Here, leisure has become an equivalent of consumption.

The second aspect of the artistic critique of the 1960s, the criticism of monotonous life and its promise of a ‘gain of freedom’ has merged with today’s mode of production: the economic equivalent of self-realization and individual responsibility is entrepreneurism and freelance.

The upcoming challenge and changes in the production of housing concern the spatial merging of living and working.

The architecture and the programs of common spaces in the municipal housing schemes in Vienna have developed with the role of leisure, with the understanding of government and the mode of production. They have changed from the forming of ‘new man’ over to the building of a ‘new society’, to ‘amusement and distraction’ and today’s ‘self-realization’.

The introduction referred to leisure as ‘coded’ with code as a certain way to structure social concerns (such as work or leisure). The sequence of steps in common spaces and the related role of leisure shows that ‘codes’ can be rewritten; it shows as well the ‘decoding’ of leisure in an advancing capitalist society.

If Red Vienna’s conception of leisure, the ‘practice of leisure’ was largely moral, one of hygiene and of education of the ‘new man’, this has been gradually released. It gave way to a concept of leisure that has commercialized, with leisure activities becoming more and more commodified and embedded in the general equivalence of money.

For Red Vienna, the beneficiary was the labour class. Conceptually, identity was above all created through the workplace – symbolically extended to the household.

Its concept of leisure was that of emancipatory work through culture and health; a grand gesture, that reappears also in the architectural rhetoric. With Post-War reconstruction and the ‘massification of fascism’ in mind, the focus on ‘class’ and ‘workers’ collectives’ had given way to recreate ‘society as a whole’ as to fight the ‘atomization of society’. The municipality did so by launching ‘community centres’ on the one hand and by fostering the nuclear family as the cornerstone of society on the other. Accordingly, the programmes addressed what and whom government wanted to establish: the proletariat in Red Vienna, society and family after WWII. Over the following years, leisure turned to the private sphere. Indeed, the focus on the general wealth as part of the Keynesian economics, the prosperity, and the amelioration of living condition itself has brought this interiorization. Up until then, leisure in the common shared space was part of a disciplinary system – an educational apparatus.

With responsibility given gradually over to the individual, new constellations emerge. Entrepreneurism and the freelance bring about new spatial arrangements, as the division of labour and leisure shifts; the use of spaces formerly attached to leisure however does not turn labour into leisure. ‘Labour cannot become play’, Marx once stated; regarding the current mode of production to state it does would amount to misrepresentation even if the border has long become porous. Our times’ common spaces – in housing and beyond - have to provide the double capacity of leisure and work. The ‘realizing self’ constantly re-negotiates the border of leisure and work; it can do so – it is forced to do so.

VII. - a design postscript In the years following 1968, the Italian group Archizoom Associati developed the architectural meta-project No-Stop City - a vast, endless extension of the urban sphere. Yet No-Stop City is not only the endless expansion of the idea of the capitalist city to the outside periphery:

‘the urban’ extends in all directions to the outside, the new and unknown as well as it extends to the inner fields, to a total ubiquity of urbanity: a programmed, isotropic system24, dissolving any possibility of an outside. No-Stop-City is based on the superimposition of the factory, the supermarket and the residential parking. Here production, distribution and consumption coincide, the various functions are homogenized in their priority; contradiction has been ruled out, and the city is becoming a de-politicized vast void filled with ‘things’.

What Archizoom initially intended with No-Stop-City was not the reformist utopian vision. Following Engels’ conception, its was designed as a ‘working class critique of the metropolis’ instead of an impossible proposal for a ‘working class metropolis’25. Instead of the ‘better’ city, No-Stop City is the ‘present’ city; instead of a proposal, it is analysis: it is the mere ‘representation of itself’. It is the analysis of today’s (still) mode of production in an exaggerated, thus readable way. The common space here has extended and has become ubiquitous while it has merged with the space of production.

In the superimposition of factory, residential parking and supermarket, any border in the succession between public and private is dissolved; here production and consumption, work, recreation and leisure have merged subsumed under ‘productivity’. The ‘social division of time’ then, does simply not exist any more.

References: Adorno, Theodor W. and Eisler Hanns. “Komposition für den Film.”

In Gesammelte Schriften Band 15, by Theodor W. Adorno. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003.

Architekturzentrum Architekturzentrum Wien and Johannes Porsch. The Austrian Phenomenon: Architektur Avantgarde 19561973. Birkhäuser, 2010.

Archizoom Associati. “No-Stop City.”

In Architecture theory since 1968, edited by K. Michael Hays. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1998.

Aureli, Pier Vittorio. the Possibility of an Absolute Architecture. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2011.

Bauer, Otto. “Integraler Sozialismus.” In Linkssozialismus: Texte zur Theorie und Praxis zwischen Stalinismus und Sozialreformismus, edited by Michael Franzke and Uwe Rempe. Politisch-philosophische Studientexte der Leipziger Gesellschaft für Politik und Zeitgeschichte e.V. Berlin, 1998.

Blau, Eve. The architecture of Red Vienna, 1919-1934. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1999.

Branzi, Andrea. No-stop city: Archizoom associati. Orléans: HYX, 2006.

Böck, Rudolf J. “Das Nachbarschaftsheim als Volksbildungszentrum.” Der Aufbau 11 (1953).

“Das Wohnbauprogramm 1952.” Der Aufbau 10 (1953).

Feuerstein, Günther. “Mutationen.” In Neue Architektur in Österreich. Vienna: R. Borhmann-Verlag, 1969.

Gruber, Helmut. Red Vienna: experiment in working-class culture, 1919-1934. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

Heller, Kurt. “Der soziale Wohnungsbau der Gemeinde Wien nach dem zweiten Weltkriegen.” In Der soziale Wohnungsbau der Stadt Wien. Der Aufbau 39. Vienna: Stadtbaudirektion der Stadt Wien, 1960.

Kreisky, Bruno. “Per Albin Hansson und die Schwedenhilfe.” In Die Per-AlbinHansson-Siedlung in Wien. Vol. 9. Der Aufbau. Vienna: Stadtbauamt der Stadt Wien, 1951.

Körner, Theodor. “Ziel und Aufgabe: ‘Aufbauen’ heißt ‘Bessermachen’.” Der Aufbau 1 (1946).

Maderthaner, Wolfgang. “Von der Zeit um 1860 bis zum Jahr 1945.” In Wien Geschichte einer Stadt Bd.3, edited by Peter Csendes and Ferdinand Opll. Vienna: Böhlau Verlag Wien, 2006.

Marchart, Peter. Wohnbau in Wien 1923 1983. Edited by Österreichischens Institut für Bauforschung, Wien. Wien: Compress Verlag Wien, 1984.

Marx, Karl. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy. Translated

by Nicolaus Martin. New York: Vintage Books, 1973.

Rancière, Jacques. The politics of aesthetics: the distribution of the sensible. Translated

by Gabriel Rockhill. London ; New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006.

Sekler, Eduard. “The Greater London Plan.” Der Aufbau 4 (1947).

Stadtbauamt, ed. “Volksheim Per Albin Hansson-Siedlung”. Stadtbauamtsdirektion der Stadt Wien, 1954.

Stadtentwicklung Wien. “Zufriedenheit mit der Ausstattung der Wohnhausanlage und der Wohnumgebung - Studie “Wohnzufriedenheit in Wien 1999/2000”, n.d. http://www.wien.gv.at/stadtentwicklung/grundlagen/stadtforschung/ verhaltensforschung/wohnzufriedenheit/ausstattung.html.

Weihsmann, Helmut. Das Rote Wien: Sozialdemokratische Architektur und Kommunalpolitik 1919 - 1934. Promedia, Wien, 2001.

Notes 1 cf. Wolfgang Maderthaner, “Von der Zeit um 1860 bis zum Jahr 1945,” in Wien - Geschichte einer Stadt Bd.3, ed. Peter Csendes and Ferdinand Opll (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag Wien, 2006), 476.

2 The aspect of the archipelago in Red Vienna was brought up by Ungers’ research on the superblock; see e.g. Pier Vittorio Aureli, the Possibility of an Absolute Architecture (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2011), 200 ff.

3 Eve Blau, The architecture of Red Vienna, 1919-1934 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1999), 176.

4 In the years before 1927, about 75% of the erected flats consisted out of anteroom, kitchen and one room with an average area size of 38sqm.

5 cf. Helmut Weihsmann, Das Rote Wien: Sozialdemokratische Architektur und Kommunalpolitik 1919 - 1934 (Promedia, Wien, 2001), 321.

6 Even if these transformations cannot be regarded uncritically as they were part of an extensive control apparatus, with e.g. only women being allowed to access the laundries.

7 cf. Helmut Gruber, Red Vienna: experiment in working-class culture, 1919-1934 (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 80 ff.

8 Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, trans.

Nicolaus Martin (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), 708.

9 Ibid.

10 Otto Bauer, “Integraler Sozialismus,” in Linkssozialismus: Texte zur Theorie und Praxis zwischen Stalinismus und Sozialreformismus, ed. Michael Franzke and Uwe Rempe, Politisch-philosophische Studientexte der Leipziger Gesellschaft für Politik und Zeitgeschichte e.V. (Berlin, 1998), 284.

11 Stadtbauamt, ed., “Volksheim Per Albin Hansson-Siedlung” (Stadtbauamts-direktion der Stadt Wien, 1954).

12 At the Enquete for the Reconstruction of the City of Vienna; see as well: Theodor Körner, “Ziel und Aufgabe: ‘Aufbauen’ heißt ‘Bessermachen’,” Der Aufbau 1 (1946): 6.

13 As Bruno Kreisky, the later Austrian Prime Minister wrote about Per Albin Hansson in a documentary of the Per-Albin-Hansson settlement. Bruno Kreisky, “Per Albin Hansson und die Schwedenhilfe,” in Die Per-AlbinHansson-Siedlung in Wien, vol. 9, Der Aufbau (Vienna: Stadtbauamt der Stadt Wien, 1951), 5 ff.

14 see e.g. Rudolf J. Böck, “Das Nachbarschaftsheim als Volksbildungszentrum,” Der Aufbau 11 (1953). or Stadtbauamt, “Volksheim Per Albin Hansson-Siedlung.” as well as the focus on community-building in Eduard Sekler, “The Greater London Plan,” Der Aufbau 4 (1947).

15 It did, in fact, not mean the de-nazification of the municipality of Vienna.

16 Kurt Heller, “Der soziale Wohnungsbau der Gemeinde Wien nach dem zweiten Weltkriegen,” in Der soziale Wohnungsbau der Stadt Wien, Der Aufbau 39 (Vienna: Stadtbaudirektion der Stadt Wien, 1960), 37.

17 own calcuation from: “Das Wohnbauprogramm 1952,” Der Aufbau

35 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

Vienna by housing tenure

<< Continued from page 33: From Objects of Austerity

rental sector social housing

owner occupied 22%

10 (1953).

18 Peter Marchart, Wohnbau in Wien 1923 - 1983, ed. Österreichischens Institut für Bauforschung, Wien (Wien: Compress Verlag Wien, 1984).

19 according to a survey from 1999/2000 for a short summary see: Stadtentwicklung Wien, “Zufriedenheit mit der Ausstattung der Wohnhausanlage und der Wohnumgebung - Studie “Wohnzufriedenheit in Wien 1999/2000” 20 Theodor W. Adorno and Eisler Hanns, “Komposition für den Film,” in Gesammelte Schriften Band 15, by Theodor W. Adorno (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2003), 11.

21 Jacques Rancière, The politics of aesthetics: the distribution of the sensible, trans.

Gabriel Rockhill (London ; New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2006), 57.

22 From the text accompanying the performance; see: Architekturzentrum Architekturzentrum Wien and Johannes Porsch, The Austrian Phenomenon: Architektur Avantgarde 1956-1973 (Birkhäuser, 2010), 350; 756.

23 Günther Feuerstein, “Mutationen,” in Neue Architektur in Österreich (Vienna: R. Borhmann-Verlag, 1969), 66.

24 Archizoom Associati, “No-Stop City,” in Architecture theory since 1968, ed.

K. Michael Hays (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1998), 56.

25 Andrea Branzi, No-stop city: Archizoom associati (Orléans: HYX, 2006), 157.

LUCKY VIENNA. THE CITY’S HOUSING PROVISION AND HOW ITS IMAGE IS CULTIVATED Georg Kolmayr Presentation at the European Network for Housing Research Conference, Lillehammer, June 2012

Our team’s contribution to SCIBE ‘Modelling Vienna’ - took as its focus the housing provision in the Austrian capital.

As well participating in the academic debate, we gave close attention to the ephemeral and popular discourse on housing. The aim was an immediacy of access to the process, implementation and impact of housing policy. Of course, by living and working in the city as trained architects, we ourselves are a part of this process.

In the course of this paper I will identify what we came to understand as the basic workings of the Viennese housing model and its institutions. I will examine some of the material collected from newspapers in order to explain how the image of the Viennese housing model is presented and made use of. Finally, I will attempt to pinpoint the publicly discussed challenges the system is facing and the ways in which it deals with them.

private market

30%

public housing

27%

Left:

21%

Housing in Vienna by Tenancy. Sources: Daniel Kamleitner and others, Wien, Die Städtische Bevölkerung Und Ihre Wohnver-sorgung, Städtebericht Wohnungspolitisches Monitoring, (Wien: Synthesis Forschung, 2007), and own calculation.

limited profit housing

Brief Characterisation of the System Before discussing the prevailing housing policies at work in Vienna I will outline the situation on the super ordinate national level. Austria can still be seen as an exemplary conservative welfare state, pursuing a corresponding housing policy that deals with the market by way of far reaching legislative regulation and public promotion. It is distinct from comparable states in three ways. Firstly, object subsidies still make up the more prominent part of the governmental housing promotion scheme and were not replaced but rather complemented by housing allowances.

Secondly, limited profit housing associations (LPHAs) successfully defended their prominent market position. Thirdly, tenancy protection may be under pressure but is still operating and influential. Austria’s rental sector approaches the ideal of the ‘integrated market’: the socially bound sector has the capacity and size to compete with the free market sector. Moreover, by competing for the same (middle-class) consumers, social housing can exert a positive influence on overall price levels and quality standards. Thus considerable economic stability and social balance can be maintained at, in international terms, low public costs of about 1,25 % of GNP. If these characteristics reveal a certain inertia with regards to developments on the international level, it should be added that in recent years federal housing policies have been subject to liberalisation, as became visible with the 2004 privatisation (or sell-out) of state-owned public housing stock (BUWOG) and with the suspension of the appropriation of earmarked housing promotion funds at the federal level in 2008. In contrast to this, Vienna’s municipal housing policy neither sold its substantial public housing stock nor redirected its housing promotion funds to other fiscal purposes upon their release, as did most other provinces.

Of importance here is Vienna’s status within the Austrian Federation. Both capital city and federal province at once, Vienna is by far the largest urban aggregation in a country otherwise dominated by fragmented and rural structures. Another important factor lies in the longstanding political predominance of the local social democratic party, which has led the city’s administration from 1919 on (with exception of the fascist regimes of 1934-45).

Ever since the public housing program of ‘Red Vienna’, the party’s history and success has been closely linked to its active housing policy in the city administration.

By successively extending social housing provision, from fighting off shortages to offering attractive homes for a very broad public, the city has made ‘housing as a social good’ one of its key policies. Today, Vienna enjoys relatively low average rent levels at high quality standards and little social segregation.

As our diagram shows, Viennese housing can be roughly quartered into four segments about equal in size. Only 22% make up the owner occupied segment; the large remaining rental share is comprised of private tenancy (30%), public housing (27%) and subsidised housing (21%).

Socially bound housing thus covers nearly half of the city’s housing provision.

At the institutional level, the city

administration prevails over the housing system: it commands the large stock of municipal housing units and dominates the production and renewal of homes through the housing promotion program. All of these issues fall under the responsibility of the ‘Administrative Group of Housing, Housing Construction and Urban Renewal’ (‘Geschäftsgruppe Wohnen, Wohnbau & Stadterneuerung’), one of eight such groups constituting the city administration. The group’s current political head is councillor Michael Ludwig. This office has been occupied by the social democrats since 1919 and is considered one of the most powerful within the party’s hierarchy. One of Ludwig’s predecessors, Werner Fayman, later rose to become party chairman and current Federal Chancellor.

The Administrative Group consists of seven municipal departments plus the subsidiary enterprise ‘Wiener Wohnen’ (Housing in Vienna). Supposedly Europe’s largest landlord, this enterprise is fully owned by the city and is in charge of the municipal housing stock known as ‘Gemeindebau’. Having been built right up until the late 1990s, some 220.000 units in more than 2.000 objects are today at the disposal of ‘Wiener Wohnen’. They are allocated to households that meet certain criteria in terms of income limits or neediness.

Of the municipal departments led by the housing administration group, the most important one to our study is the MA 50, ‘Wohnbauförderung und Schlichtungsstelle für wohnrechtliche Angelegenheiten’ (Municipal Department for Housing Promotion and Arbitration Board for Legal Housing Matters). It is responsible for the housing promotion program, which in recent years has successively taken over the agenda of social housing production. In return for granting object subsidies to developers, the city gains influence over housing’s quality standards, its allocation of households and of the rental price level. The proportion of projects erected in recent years with the help of subsidies is estimated at 80% to 90% of all newly built housing schemes.

As in traditional public housing the allocation of apartments is subject to income limits; here, however, those limits are designed to allow for a very wide array of beneficiaries, which makes the program of particular support to the middle income households.

Other institutional entities of importance to our study are the ‘wohnfonds wien’ and the ‘wohnservice wien’, both subsidiaries to the city via the MA50.

The ‘wohnfonds wien’ (fund for housing construction and urban renewal) administrates the housing promotion funds, and is responsible for land procurement. It uses an advisory board and the so-called ‘housing developer competitions’ as instruments of quality assurance. The ‘wohnservice wien’ acts as an agency for the subsidised housing market on behalf of the city. It is understood as a link between housing developers and homeseekers. As we will see, it also plays an important role in terms of the published image of the subsidised housing system.

Continued on page 36 >>

the means of production. The austerity drive passes down to architectural education as well, with ever more strident demands for market-ready students framed in terms of the decadence of the academy, an anti-intellectualism that threatens the very basis of educational values.

It is maybe not surprising that the other reaction to contemporary austerity is one of escape from its political constructions and into the more rarefied air of aesthetic discourse, treating it simply and uncritically as a condition to be reified, even celebrated. This is the path of the elite discourse in architecture, let’s call it of the 1%, which although in the minority still acts as a point of salvation for the 99%, allowing them to feel that there is higher life beyond the dross of efficient gains. Here the aesthetics of austerity emerge; they were there of course in the earlier modernist episodes, but now they become a source of solace, the means of establishing the very essence of architecture in the face of the fallen world outside. Right from the beginning of the current economic crisis in 2008, the ‘decadent’ architecture of the 2000s has been mentioned in the same breath as the excesses of the period. After establishing guilt by association, the argument goes that in order to demonstrate the propriety of architecture, we need to reassert its core, authentic, values.12 Thus a loose grouping of European architects are championed in the pages of publications such as Building Design, 2G and Detail as prophets of an era of austerity and good architectural sense: Caruso St John, Tony Fretton, Sergison Bates in the UK, Peter Märkli and Valerio Olgiati in Switzerland, and a whole range of Flemish architects including Robbrecht & Daem and Stéphane Beel. In all of these, and more, tectonic rectitude and aesthetic decorum come to fore. Austerity is appropriated for its worthiness, and in this is completely detached from its regressive economic and political genesis. The architecture of austerity does not just employ the aesthetic virtues of simplicity, precision and honesty, but celebrates them as a form of moral action (“Beauty is the most radical thing I know”, says Peter Märkli.13) I have written elsewhere about how this attachment of aesthetics to morals ends up in a dangerous cul-de-sac, where architecture assumes righteousness, but is actually completely detached from the dynamics of real ethics, played out as they are in social space, so the morality that it posits is a false one.14 Part of the problem, which the contemporary condition shares with the two previous episodes, is that the designer’s response is so tied to objects, now in the sense of them representing austerity, then through the hope of new futures being founded in the efficiency of stuff. At least in the two twentieth examples in the 1930s and post-war, the objects were attempting to deal with the condition of austerity, whereas now they just freeze it, either through the diminished architecture of the 99% or the austere aesthetic of the 1%. However, in all cases they do not (and cannot in their static conception) address the forces that have produced the austerity. We may look to the previous episodes for inspiration as to how to cope with austerity more inventively, but in the end this is in vain because the externalities that produced it are so different. The innovation and optimism that were associated with the progressivist idealism of the previous periods has been replaced with a dour realism consistent with the regressive and sometimes punitive political mood. In the place of the current understanding of austerity, we need a more nuanced term that deals with both cause and effect, with the externalities and their implications.

That term is scarcity.

Scarcity contra austerity Scarcity is not the same as austerity.

Although austerity and scarcity are intertwined – the programmes of austerity do indeed induce real scarcities of resource – the genesis of the two terms is different, and in this lie the clues as to how to deal

with the contemporary condition. As argued above, it is important to understand austerity as an imposed condition; it is not a natural or inevitable constraint, but one that is established as a result of other economic and political forces. In the current programmes of austerity that are being played in the majority of the Global North, the pervasive argument is that the economic crisis demands austerity. In these terms, austerity is the outcome of the ideologies of neo-liberalism, whereas scarcity is higher-level condition that both drives those ideologies and also threatens them. Scarcity is the motor of capitalism through the way that scarcity of supply regulates the market; too much stuff diminishes desire and competition.

But it is a threat in so much as the mere whiff of limits undermines notions of growth and freedom on which capitalism is founded. Scarcity as an economic fact is thus far more complex than austerity, the latter of which is usually presented as a blunt instrument, a fait accompli that is left as a given for architects and others to work with, and not a concept that can be unravelled strategically and tactically.

Where austerity is created in response to a presumed condition, and in this much is more artificial than natural, scarcity is both real (things really are running out) and constructed. From Malthus onwards, neoclassical economists have attempted to naturalise scarcity, describing it as an inevitable condition that drives the economic machine, most obviously in Lionel Robbins’ famous statement: “Economics … is concerned with that aspect of behaviour which arises from the scarcity of means to achieve given ends.

It follows that Economics is entirely neutral between ends.”15 However, recent discussions of scarcity have focused on its constructed nature.16 The most direct example is food scarcity. There is enough food in the world, it is just in the wrong places.17 Food distribution systems, the politics of food subsidies, the machinations of global food corporations – all these and more combine to construct a scarcity of food. The result is very real – hunger – but the underlying condition is constructed.

An understanding of scarcity might allow us to understand better how to operate in the contemporary conditions under which the built environment is produced. If one feels impotent in dealing with the causes of austerity because of their macro-economic genesis, the same is not necessarily true of the two sides of scarcity, the real and the constructed.

One might expose the ideological basis of programmes of austerity, but it is difficult to intervene in its bluntness as a financial instrument; the only way we can tolerate this impotence is through believing the promise that austerity is a short-term necessity out of which growth will once again be found. On the other hand, scarcity, both real and constructed, widens the field beyond the straightforwardly economic and forces one to engage with its underlying social, ecological and economic constitution, and the dynamic relationship between these parts. Scarcity is also not going to go away; it can but get more exaggerated in both real and constructed modes, the former as resources become increasingly stretched, the latter as the market finds ever more need to manipulate systems of production and distribution in order to keep itself going.

Contemporary scarcity The first step in dealing with scarcity is to think beyond the object. Real scarcities challenge the received notion that architecture should be defined through the act of building alone. Architectural progress is generally signposted through the additions of new stuff to the world, but under conditions of scarcity, the need to continually add is not viable, because adding built stuff by default subtracts from the natural resource base. Scarcity undermines the assumption of endless growth on which neo-classical economics is based. Where austerity leads to a solution of continuing to build, but doing it with less or less often, scarcity thinking leads Continued on page 37 >>

36 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 35: Lucky Vienna.

The Image of Housing Media Survey Our research on Viennese housing provision was accompanied by a media survey, which began in September 2010 and which gathered together a wealth of material on housing. Sources included all major Vienna-based newspapers and news-magazines; coverage in special interest or business magazines and press releases and research reports from various sources. A total of 1.500 items have been collected and organized according to scale (‘international scale’, ‘national scale’, ‘urban scale’ and ‘project scale’) and filed according to three categories: ‘research’, ‘promotion’ and ‘reportage’. In order to focus on the popular discourse, we finally condensed the survey down to newspaper articles published on local issues between June and October of 2011, as this time period comprised the most complete and concentrated part of the survey. This focus resulted in a cross section that helped us to quantify and pinpoint our findings.

We will begin our account of the popular discourse on housing with the ‘promotion’ category, (which made up 38% of items in our probe, against 62% of ‘reportage’, which we will come to later) and from here explore the city administration’s efforts to present its housing policy in favourable light.

Our survey shows three methods of publication that the administration makes use of: firstly, the administration produces and also distributes promotional material that directly communicates its causes to specific interest groups; secondly, the councillor’s spokespersons frequently issue press releases intended to spread information on housing and policy projects; thirdly, the housing group is a driving force of the so-called ‘media cooperations, which we will look into more closely now: Media Cooperations Media cooperations on social housing issues are the joint endeavour of institutional partners, which contribute content and cause, and of newspaper publishers, which contribute space and editorial work. Within these cooperations, the institutional partners are identified as the city’s ‘Press and Information Services’, the ‘Administrative Group for Housing’, the ‘wohnservice wien’ and, at times, as developers involved in the housing promotion program. The issue of disclosure is mentioned here because it demonstrates the sensitive nature of media cooperations both for publisher and client. Institutional partners tend to restrict information about media cooperations but upon request confirmed that they are issued at irregular intervals and in a wide array of different papers. This is done on the basis of media analyses, which consider circulation, reach and target groups, and are hence very similar to conventional promotional tools. Some publishers tend to obscure the cooperation’s nature in print and to omit it altogether in their online versions.

(These formed the primary sources for our own survey). An analysis of their recurrence in the key period of this survey does, however, allow for the assumption that at least three times a month one of these cooperations is launched in one of of the locally distributed newspapers or magazines.

The following section presents four examples of such media-cooperations.

These examples demonstrate the variety in appearance and theme that such cooperations encompass and are representative of the types of cooperations found in the respective newspapers.

Four Examples 1: Supplement to ‘Die Presse’ Saturday, October 1st. 2011 Marked as a remunerated special supplement with an editorial of its own, this 24-page booklet in A4 format was enclosed in the printed edition of ‘Die Presse’. Its cover shows a new ambitious high-rise housing project and is captioned: Housing in Vienna. Highlights of Viennese housing construction. Spirited architecture, family-friendly housing and a new urban district: A lot of new projects are being realised in Vienna.

The supplement opens with a full-page interview with city councillor Ludwig, in which he talks about social sustainability as a key concept for the future development of Viennese housing production. A photographic portrait of the councillor accompanies the interview.

The greater part of the booklet (pages 4 to 21) is comprised of six articles of 2 to 4 pages, each of which features two to three subsidized housing projects. The thematically bundled contributions use catchwords such as affordable housing, integrational housing, architectonic quality, passive energy housing, housing for young families and housing on restructured land. In total, 16 individual projects at different stages of planning and production are presented and information given as to their location, size, developer, modes of tenancy, date of handover and contact information for interested parties. In terms of illustration, photographs of newly finished buildings are outnumbered by prospective renderings, which mostly show exterior views from a passer-by’s perspective. They depict future street scenes in a photorealistic way, augmented with figurines, plants and urban furniture for the scale and vitality plus blue skies for the atmosphere. No plans or other abstract displays are presented.

The three closing pages inform on the facilities of the ‘wohnservice wien’, on the available informational material and on the Housing Departments’ organizational structure, its competences and contact information.

2.: ‘Heute’, page 17 - Tuesday, September 20th. 2011 Marked by the caption Housing in Vienna on the top of the page and the logo Series: Housing in Vienna, in Cooperation with the City Councillor, the two featured articles otherwise blend into the layout and appearance of this heavily circulated giveaway newspaper.

Both of the articles describe the progress of the so-called ‘Wohnbauinitiative 2011’ (Housing Production Initiative 2011), an initiative that can be described as an attempt to foster housing production despite of diminishing public housing promotion funds. The first of the two articles explains the basic principle of the initiative, presenting it as a financial tool capitalizing upon the city’s favourable market conditions. The other, more prominent, contribution, headed 6.250 new and affordable apartments, The city of Vienna is creating 6.000 additional jobs with its housing initiative, announces a major break-through in the negotiations with six bidding consortia, securing the development of this number of apartments.

The importance of continuous housing production for the local economy and its price-reducing effects on the overall Viennese housing market is emphasized.

The page is completed with an image of the city councillor in the midst of a gathering of various women and children reminiscent of a family photograph. The caption reads: Vienna’s Housing Councillor Michael Ludwig rejoices with the Viennese women in the great achievement of his Housing Initiative. (We will come back to the ‘Wohnbauinitiative’ later) 3.: ‘Der Standard’, pages 31 to 36 - Wednesday, May 25th. 2011 The caption Housing running throughout in a continuous header identifies this six-page insert, which is included in the printed edition of ‘Der Standard’. A text box on the title page alludes to a series of symposia on The Future of Housing hosted by the newspaper and names its supporters: the ‘wohnservice wien’; the ‘Austrian federation of limited profit housing associations’; two developers and a service provider. Large-scale advertisements for the supporting developers are placed at the bottom of each page.

The leading article is titled Vain Search for the Fair Rent: In the area of conflict between market forces and laws, the private housing market in Austria satisfies neither tenants nor landlords. There is, however, no simple way out: as made apparent at a Standard-Housing Symposium . It sums up the results and positions of the preceding symposium, which questioned whether current

tenancy laws and policies foster or cushion inequalities. Representatives from the housing market, tenancy protection, the judicature, public administration, research and politics were invited to discuss the issue in front of an audience largely comprised of those involved in the housing sector.

An illustration of a threatening pair of scissors symbolises the gap between decreasing subsidies and increasing rents.

The pages that follow contain nine articles, six of which cover different aspects of the issues of fair rents and housing expenses as discussed at the symposium.

The conflict of interests between the proponents of a further reaching market liberalization and those in favour of social redistribution by regulative tools are mirrored in discussions between political representatives of the social democratic and the conservative party as well as between advocates of tenancy protection and those within the real estate business.

Common to all participants is discontent with the current legal status quo. An abundance of laws on tenancy is criticised as confusing and arbitrary and in urgent need of reforms - with diverging aims, however. The balance of interests between the market and social policy appears fragile and the formulation of common goals for such reforms unlikely.

Two other articles introduce new subsidised housing projects in Vienna with emphasis on financing and rental prices and the last one reports on public housing promotion as a newly applied tool providing for affordable housing in a rural community characterized by seasonal tourism.

This insert represents a special and very sophisticated form of media cooperation: one that makes public normally exclusive and expert discussions of politically controversial issues. Even if, in the case of tenancy laws, the topic is discussed on a national level, its relevance for the large Viennese rental market segment is evident.

4.: ‘Kronen Zeitung’, page 29 - Friday, June 3rd. 2011 This one-page insert is fully embedded in the tabloid format and layout of the newspaper, which is the largest one in Austria in terms of average daily readership. Page 29 is marked by a Housing in Vienna emblem and contains four short articles of differing content.

A box on the left hand side of the page addresses the issue of improper sub-tenancies and the legal uncertainties they bring about for the tenant. It briefly introduces a specific case and its solution through legal advice by the tenant’s rights association. The text concludes with an informational phone number, presumably that of the Tenant’s Right Association.

The page’s central text reports on the case of a municipal tenant whose terrace tiling suffered damage in the course of the building’s recent overall refurbishment.

On inquiry, the city’s public housing administration agreed to swiftly repair the damage, with the city councillor giving his personal guarantee.

Two ‘before and after’ photographs of a modified apartment building illustrate the third text, which promotes the city’s urban renewal scheme and the 2010 annual report of its main agents, the area renewal offices. Their homepage is indicated.

Finally, a text-box promises information on Everything around Housing at the municipality’s service facility ‘wohnservice wien’ and Help in any of your Housing Problems by the editorial team at ‘Housing in Vienna’; this provides the only overt clue as to the underlying interests pursued within this insert.

When addressing the readership of the popular ‘Kronen Zeitung’ the housing councillor and the city’s agents present themselves as advocates for the individual resident’s concerns. Abstract matters are presented as personalized problems, to be taken care of by the public administration.

A Constructed Image The city’s great efforts to communicate its achievements become visible when

analysing media cooperations.

The cooperations take on different forms according to the paper hosting them. Appearances range from selfcontained booklets inserted into weekend issues to ambiguously marked single pages that blend into the newspapers’ layout.

It would be wrong to present media cooperations simply as bought content and promotion; the hosting paper does have an influence on the character of the cooperation. A cooperation with a quality newspaper will likely assume a more elaborate form and discuss issues in greater depth than a cooperation with the tabloid press or a lifestyle magazine.

Content and background information are, however, provided and coordinated by the administration, be it the housing group itself or the wohnservice. By spreading its cooperations widely, the administration can thus take advantage of the various papers’ differentiated strategies in order to address a wide clientele.

Three different themes feature regularly in media cooperations: new subsidised housing projects, the housing councillor’s policies and issues related to the municipal housing stock. The primary purpose of media cooperations is the promotion of subsidised housing projects. Major steps in the planning or construction of, for the most part, new developments are announced in these cooperations, usually accompanied by bright prospective images of the project. Descriptions of the project are provided as well as a set of project data, often detailed to the extent of the rental prices and one-off costs that the future user can expect. Examined separately, each article is restricted to a specific readership, ie to a specific group of potential consumers; considering, however, the quantity and rate at which they are published, we think they have a far wider impact.

Media cooperations are also used to promote the city’s housing policies on a more abstract level, bringing in social, economical and ecological issues. The cooperations present housing as a social good, a system which must be maintained despite the pressures of continuing population growth and under increasingly difficult financial premises. Advantages in location in the competition between cities through comparably low housing expenses and the stimulating effects triggered by the increased production and renewal of housing for the local building sector are being introduced as economic arguments. Housing issues also work well to demonstrate progress in the popular field of ecological renewal. On a large scale, the urban renewal program and the promotion of ecologically sensitive housing projects are described as one of the city’s most effective means of reducing its energy consumption. The presentation of policy issues is closely tied to councillor Michael Ludwig as a personality. He is frequently featured in interviews and commentaries, often along with his photographic portrait. Ludwig presents himself as a policy maker in charge, one who is capable of setting directions and who addresses problems early on by promoting pragmatic and proper solutions.

‘Life in the Gemeindebau’ is the third prominent topic to feature in media cooperations and owes much to the large pool of potential voters inhabiting municipal housing. The ‘Gemeindebau’ has traditionally been considered one of the social democratic party’s strongholds, but it now finds itself faced with increasing discontent and a decline in public image and reputation. Housing related services such as the implementation of new maintenance tools, neighbourhood management facilities and security measures are presented in this context as pragmatic solutions to problems, which have been brought to the fore by the municipal tenants.

The argument here is that the municipality has recognized a far greater potential in the promotion of housing issues than just informing those immediately affected, ie those seeking homes or inhabiting public housing. Political potential lies in the projection of an agreeable future for the entirety of the Viennese population.

The frequent promotion of the accomplishments of one of the municipality’s most successful fields of policy is a means of advertising good governance, and thus convincing voters to renew their trust in the current administration. Publications promoting new projects are probably the most positively striking way of displaying of housing policy’s successes. Seen en masse, especially in forms as concentrated as the one described above (Supplement to ‘Die Presse’), they can also be read as the narrative of a city on the make. An individual article’s focus on the promotion of a particular project broadens out, leaving the reader with the perception of an urban fabric constantly renewing itself and spreading into a pleasant future.

The amount of articles dedicated to free market housing (excluding the large number of plain newspaper ads, which were not subject to our survey) is relatively small. The papers’ weekly real estate sections use the ‘home-story’ narrative in an attempt to transcend the purely commercial nature of persuading potential customers to invest in homes.

A Discussed Image In order to put the ‘official’ image, as described above, into perspective, I will return to our media survey and briefly describe the material from ‘reportage’, the second category that we examined.

As with ‘promotion’, this category files articles according to their authorship and intent. In the ‘reportage’ category, they are characterized by a critical distance or at least a neutral stance towards their subject matter. (62% of our investigation’s articles were filed here; the remaining 38% were filed under ‘promotion’).

Reportage on individual housing projects focuses mainly on initiatives from within the residential population. Such initiatives are driven usually by a neighbourhood’s resolve to prevent a potentially threatening project from being built in the vicinity. In order to spark public debate, these initiatives rely on the support not so much of political parties, but of the tabloid press who sometimes adopt the issue and turn it into their own campaign. But even if it is a housing project that has provoked an initiative’s opposition, essentially, what is at stake is the participation of locals and citizens in decision-making processes. This observation only partially applies to another form of initiative: that of house squatting. Although rare in Vienna, squatters nonetheless aggressively address issues of housing policy, which mostly leads to reserved coverage by newspapers and active marginalisation by the administration. In contrast to this, the growing numbers of cohousing initiatives in Vienna are favourably discussed as alternative contributions to the housing system and as a positive aspect of its diversification, even if it took them some time and effort to win the administration’s active support.

On a larger scale, reportage on housing is dominated by the discussion of urban development projects and common policy issues. In order to accommodate its growing population, Vienna is pursuing a set of long-running, large-scale urban development projects. A large number of new housing schemes are concentrated in these developments, which are usually located on restructured land. Media reports do not always share the official optimism about these projects. Common measures of housing policy as dealt with by the responsible Councillor tend to be reported by journalists from local newspapers in an attentive way. The largely benevolent tone of these pieces makes apparent the widespread consensus on social housing provision.

The tone does however tend to change quickly once increases of housing expenses are reported. Although not the responsibility of social housing per se, dramatically increasing charges for water, gas, waste disposal and parking by providers nevertheless affect public opinion as to the city’s ability to provide for affordable housing expenses. Added to this, recent observations of the free market sector have led to alarming reports of price explosions. While these reported price explosions affect relatively few of

37 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

the Viennese as they relate solely to prices for newly offered tenancies on the free market, they nevertheless engender a skepticism of steady conditions on the socially bound housing sector and its overall stabilizing effects.

At national level and above, reportage on housing issues becomes rather rare and abstract. Tenancy protection, financing of housing promotion and its social targeting are at times addressed in the context of political debate. Arguments for pronounced austerity policy, further liberalisation or the justification of the welfare state call the very foundations of social housing provision into question.

As we can see, ‘reportage’ refers to a broad range of discussions, most of which, at least within the realm of this housing system, reaffirm the positive image of social housing provision as presented by the city. The administration’s massive promotional efforts meet with hardly any fundamental critique. While particular policies and measurements are well critiqued and the concern for increasing expenses is growing, the consensus on the merits of the housing system at work in Vienna is pretty comprehensive.

Challenges and Recent Measures The challenges facing the system might have only just begun to loom in popular discourse but they are far from new to expert circles. These challenges were identified as diminishing land resources, rising financing and construction costs, overregulation and exceedingly high quality standards, ever growing consumption of housing space per capita and the cutbacks in subsidisation funds to be expected due to austerity policies. These restrictions conflict with Vienna’s growing demand for housing space to accommodate the continuing growth of its population. This combination will, it seems, inevitably lead to an increase of prices.

The housing administration itself increasingly raises the issue of affordability.

In reaction to the mounting pressure on the system and having placed emphasis on affordability in his political directives the Councillor announced three different proposals to foster the production of cost-saving housing space; not, however, without asserting that neither the city’s urban renewal program nor its housing allowances will be touched on.

In the spring of 2011, the ‘wohnfonds wien’ set up a housing developer competition with the theme of ‘kostengünstiges Wohnen’ (cost-saving housing). This instrument is mandatory for the granting of object subsidies to any project above a certain size. Intended to assure high quality under competitive conditions, it is also used as a testing ground for different thematic approaches. This particular competition was the first to explicitly call for proposals that reduce costs in planning, production, financing and, ultimately, user expenses. ‘Cost-saving housing’ was juried in September 2011 and the six winning entries, comprising some 760 units, are currently in production. The result is said to be a success but has not yet been evaluated.

In March 2011, the city came up with the ‘Wohnbauinitiative 2011’ (Housing Production Initiative 2011).

The Administrative Groups for Housing and for Finance undertook this joint initiative in order to make up for the shortage in housing provision expected as a result of budgetary cutbacks to the housing promotion scheme. By borrowing 500Mio€ and distributing it among several consortia of developers and finance-institutes at low interest rates, the city aimed to boost housing production to some 6.250 additional units within three years. The Wohnbauinitiative was made possible by a historic low in interest rates and by the speed with which it was executed; it was a one-off measure, unlikely to be repeated.

This type of governmental help is not part of the established housing promotion scheme but granted to the consortia under different conditions: The rigid quality standards of subsidised housing do not apply and the initial regulation of rental prices will cease in ten years time. Thus the Wohnbauinitiative is an interesting attempt to outsmart austerity measures,

but one that comes at the price of using public funds to ultimately build for the free market segment.

Finally, in the spring of 2012, ‘smart Wohnen’ (smart housing) was introduced to the public. Organized, like ‘kostengünstiges Wohnen’, in the form of a housing developer competition by the ‘wohnfonds wien’, this call further emphasizes the need for cost-saving measures in subsidised housing production. It asks for ‘smart’ apartments that are restricted to unusually compact sizes, reducing the square footage in order to reduce rent levels. Two different furnishing standards should be offered. The ‘Smart Housing’ program’s intention is to become an integral part of all housing developer competitions in the foreseeable future.

The first competition is not yet juried and it will be interesting to see the developers’ reactions to this restrictive call.

All three of these proposals have been widely promoted by the administration. Newspapers follow their progress with interest and, with the exception of some expert criticism of aspects of the implementation, with general approval.

Since all of them remain in the making, their impact on social housing provision remains to be seen.

Conclusion Vienna’s housing provision is deemed one of the most important areas of local government politics. For decades now, councillors have adopted manifold pragmatic instruments and strategies in order to safeguard and extend the influence that the general public has over housing policy. Today, the fact that such a large share of housing is socially bound is a very real factor in maintaining low price levels, high quality standards and minimum social segregation for the city. An analysis of the popular discourse surrounding housing issues in Vienna reveals that the media is integral to local housing policy.

Above all, the way in which the media is used reinforces and inspires trust in the system of social housing; this trust may well be one of social housing provision’s most remarkable and precious assets.

Ultimately, what is at stake is the very idea of housing as a social good.

References Amann, Wolfgang, Michael Ball, Bengt Owe Birgersson, Larent Ghekiere, Martin Lux, Alexis Mundt, and Bengt Turner.

2006. Der soziale Wohnbau in Europa Österreich als Vorbild. Ed. Klaus Lugger and Wolfgang Amann. Wien: IIBW– Institut für Immobilien, Bauen und Wohnen. http://www.iibw.at/.

Herdin, Isabella, Ursula Lehner, Michaela Prammer-Waldhör, Karin Städtner, and Michael Wagner-Pinter. 2010. Wien, Die städtische Bevölkerung und ihre Wohnversorgung, Städtebericht Wohnungspolitisches Monitoring.

Wohnungspolitisches Monitoring. Wien: Synthesis Forschung. http://www.

wohnbauforschung.at/de/Projekt_ Monitoring.htm.

Mundt, Alexis, and Wolfgang Amann.

2010. “Indicators of an Integrated Rental Market in Austria.” Housing Finance International XXIV (March).

Reinprecht, Christoph. 2007. “Social Housing in Austria.” In Social Housing in Europe, 35–43. London: LSE London School of Economics and Political Science.

ALMOST ALL RIGHT: VIENNA SOCIAL HOUSING PROVISION Andreas Rumpfhuber, Michael Klein, Georg Kolmayr Published in Architectural Design, volume 82, issue 4, pages 88–93, July/August 2012

By discussing the specific case of Vienna social housing provision our aim is to identify some of the concrete aspects and functions of scarcity. By doing this we

will open up a productive understanding of the highly relevant, yet ambivalent concept of scarcity within contemporary debate. The concept of scarcity is useful when it comes to re-thinking an economy of endless growth, shifting instead towards an economy of stability, resilience and constant re-organization. Yet the question remains, what kind of economy is such a realignment actually producing?

Is it the post-capitalist society of the multitude that conceptually opens up? Or, on the contrary, does the sponsorship of scarcity in fact enable an ever more radical neo-liberal economy to continue and prosper? The case of Vienna social housing provision offers an excellent example of a social-democratic practice that has been dealing with scarcity and its ghosts in order to avoid its negative effects for about 100 years. It enables us as architects and designers to analyse and stress the emergence of specific, local scarcities, and through this, it enables us to sketch an actualised model for a prospective social housing practice.

Following the pragmatic housing policy of Vienna one understands that the objective of social housing is to manage scarcity, in terms of providing affordable space to live for all, and by doing so, ultimately to get rid of social inequality. In other words social housing is the proactive, competitive intervention into the commercial real-estate market.

The practice of social housing has been constantly evolving with new challenges. In order to adapt to new forms of capitalism, to its ever-adapting scarcities, and to the changing desires of its users, the system needed, and constantly needs, to adjust. For these reasons, the model of social housing provision has to aim for constant renewal in order stay competitive to the free market and remain attractive to individuals. The imperative for renewal, however, poses a fundamental challenge to the existing system of social housing provision and production.

The emergence of the recent financial crisis is accompanied by a broadly unquestioned austerity policy in Europe. The dominant discourse uses the argument of scarcity as an economic rationale, expanding a neo-liberal model into all domains of life, devaluing the role of the state in contemporary society, and delegating responsibilities to the individual within an unfettered market. Amongst others, this has led to the radical questioning of the welfare systems of the different nation states in Europe and their formerly appreciated achievements like social and affordable housing for all. Nowadays, when it comes to social housing in particular, it is easily noticed how neo-liberal economic arguments overrule other aspects that might be otherwise relevant – be it ideology, social issues and concerns, or design rationale.

To the outside world Vienna appears like an isolated island with a population that is fortunate enough to benefit from a welfare state that remains intact. Social housing is evenly distributed in the City’s landscape, levelling out inequalities not only in a social but also in a spatial sense, resulting in very little socio-spatial segregation and modest changes in rent between one district of the city and another. There is enough affordable accommodation for a large portion of the population; the municipality actually owns 27% of the city’s housing stock, and indirectly controls and influences another 21%, which is owned by limited-profit housing developers, resulting in a socalled “integrated market”. This means that social housing is not considered to be a supplementary, discrete market for a specific user group, such as ‘the poor’, but rather social housing in Vienna competes with the free market for the same share of potential clients. The sheer amount of public and social housing in Vienna directly influences the private market; it keeps the quality of housing relatively high, and the prices for rent relatively low.

Nobody within the democratic landscape openly questions the system of housing provision; on the contrary, stakeholders would only affirm and herald housing Continued on page 38 >>

<< Continued from page 35: From Objects of Austerity

not to adding, but redistributing what it already there. In this the creativity of the designer is focused not on objects but on systems of distribution (see examples from 00:/ and MOM). Scarcity discourse here leads away from the standardized tenets of sustainability, which tend to work within notions of limit, of using less, of saving carbon, of measuring output, and in this essentialize scarcity rather than deal with it, particularly in the increasingly technocratic mode that sustainability is turning to.

In terms of constructed scarcity, the designer shifts to an understanding of the way that scarcity has been produced. Take another example of constructed scarcity, that of space. There is more that enough raw enclosed space to meet demand in many of our cities; it is just in the wrong hands or legislative framework, and so often lies empty. The challenge here becomes to unlock those frameworks; this inherently a spatial problem, and therefore one that architects as spatial agents should be adept at addressing.18 The attention again shifts from the object to the underlying political and social processes.

This has been shown brilliantly in the space hacking movement, most notably the Renew Newcastle project in Australia, which has released thousands of square meters of empty space in the centre of Newcastle, New South Wales, through dealing with what Marcus Westbury calls the software rather than the hardware of the city.19 We can begin to see some of the same responses right outside here in Detroit with the work of urban pioneers such as Dan Pitera and Dan Carmody.

The strictures of austerity tend to lead us towards a diminished form of architectural practice overseen by the values of the market and the assumptions of state-led programmes of cuts, whereas the more complex nature of scarcities catalyses different ways of thinking and working. Once again austerity and scarcity are intertwined, with conditions of austerity forcing people to look for other ways of working, often motivated by political or activist positions that are in opposition to mainstream orthodoxies.

However, there is only so much capacity around the edges. What is now needed is for the lessons in dealing with scarcity to be brought back to the centre, allowing architects to operate in an expanded field, which sees scarcity as much more than as essentialized lack. The combination of lack and object-centered practice is inevitably reductive, whereas the territory of processes and networks that scarcity presents is much more open to creative intervention. Take on example, that of procurement of buildings. Presently this is framed solely in economic terms, with project managers and value engineers controlling the entire process, which under conditions of austerity is defined through endless cost cutting. If, however, procurement is seen as part of a chain of constructed scarcities, then creativity is needed to unlock those constructions, taking the terms of reference away from those of pure marketplace. This is a designerly and spatial act, beyond the limited remit of project managers, in which resource flows can be diverted (i.e. 2012 Architecten), material use can be redeployed (i.e. Raumlabor) or briefs rewritten to get away from purely quantifiable descriptions (i.e. DEGW).

My argument therefore is that we need to move beyond the limits presented by austerity, which end up either in a retreat in which the architect dons an aesthetic hair shirt of false morality, or else in helplessness in the face of wider forces.

If austerity is indeed a point of immediate crisis, scarcity (for all its scariness) presents longer-term possibilities for architectural practice.

Notes 1 As Catherine Bauer notes in her seminal book on Modern Housing: “There was an acute shortage at the end of the war, accompanied by a complete breakdown in the old agencies of housing production.”

Catherine Bauer, Modern Housing (Boston:

Houghton Mifflin, 1934), p. xvi.

2 Karel Teige, The Minimum Dwelling, 1st edn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2002), p.

9. Original emphasis.

3 Hilde Heynen is particularly good on the intersection of the social, the aesthetic and the technological within the wider context of economic crisis in the period of the Das Neue Frankfurt, out of which Existenzminimum arose. Hilde Heynen, Architecture and Modernity: a Critique (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1999), pp.

43–50.

4 Ernst May, Die Wohnung Für Das Existenzminimum. (Frankfurt: Englert & Schlosser, 1930), p. 8 (in English summary at end of book).

5 Andrew Saint, Towards a Social Architecture (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987), p. viii. The book is about schools, hence the last part of the quote.

6 David Kynaston, Austerity Britain, 19451951 (London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008), p. 29.

7 Nicholas Bullock, Building the Post-War World, 1st edn (Routledge, 2002).

8 Bullock, p. 192.

9 Saint, p. 65.

10 Though even as I write, Standard and Poors (amazingly still having some credibility despite being a major agent in the economic crisis in their wrapping up of junk CDM/CDC’s with decent ratings) have downgraded European economies because ‘austerity alone becomes self-defeating’.

11 In the UK so called austerity programmes in higher education, schooling, and health are in many cases actually costing the taxpayer more. Thus in higher education, fees will triple in 2012 on the grounds that the public can no longer afford to pay for Universities and so the burden should shift to the students who benefit. However, the reality is very different: far from reducing public costs the increased fees actually increase the burden on the taxpayer because the government will have to fund the higher loans. Under guise of austerity in Universities, the government is effectively privatising them. See Jeremy Till, ‘Scar(c)e Times’, Occupied Times.

12 One could cite many examples, but a recent one is Peter Buchanan, ‘The Big Rethink – Towards a Complete Architecture’, Architectural Review, 2011.

13 Florian Beigel, ‘Peter Markli in Conversation’, Architects’ Journal, 2007. In an article in Building Design at the same time, Ellis Woodman writes: “Neither of these projects (by Märkli) is easy to digest, being as they are concerned with issues that preoccupied architects for centuries — grammar, proportion, propriety, measure — but are discussed only in the most limited terms today.. If we are once again to have an architecture that speaks of values other than the spectacular, it is surely through a return to those concerns that that we will find it. Märkli’s work offers a crucial signpost along that path.”

Ellis Woodman, ‘Beyond Babel: The Work of Swiss Architect Peter Märkli’, Building Design, 2007.

14 See Jeremy Till, Architecture Depends (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009). esp.

Chapter 10.

15 Lionel Robbins, An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (London: Macmillan, 1932), p. 40.

16 See for example The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation, ed. by Lyla Mehta (London: Earthscan, 2010); Nicholas Xenos, Scarcity and Modernity (London ; New York: Routledge, 1989).

See also Jeremy Till, ‘Constructed Scarcity’ 17 S. J. Scanlan, J. C. Jenkins and L. Peterson, ‘The Scarcity Fallacy’, Contexts, 9 (2010), 34–39.

18 Nishat Awan, Tatjana Schneider and Jeremy Till, Spatial Agency: Other Ways of Doing Architecture (London: Routledge, 2011).

19 Marcus Westbury, ‘Cities as Software’ www.marcuswestbury.net and ‘Renew Newcastle’ www.renewnewcastle.org

SCARCITY IS… Deljana Iossifova, London Continued on page 43 >>

38 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 37

provision in Vienna, as does the popular discourse of newspapers and magazines in the city. Finally, politicians widely understand the provision of social housing across the Austrian capital as an instrument to counter economic crisis and to avoid scarcity - or even to annul scarcity.

Yet, despite this comforting picture telling us that Vienna’s social housing provision is almost all right, the system faces profound challenges that directly relate to the shifting, altering and emerging of new scarcities. First, access rules for social housing are in reality excluding various groups of society who do not meet certain criteria. On the one hand an ever-growing part of the population, lowincome or people that work in precarious conditions, are gradually being excluded from social housing. On the other hand, groups with a migration background are not granted access; this produces a scarcity of accessible affordable space. Secondly, social housing in Vienna is provided by a centralized, highly regulated and bureaucratic apparatus. With a tendency to suppress processes of self-actualisation, these central systems have produced a scarcity of participation. Its opaque decision processes are based on expert opinions and political directives, which creates a peculiar climate of dependency for the tenants. Thirdly, the current financial crisis, and the accompanying Europeanwide call for austerity measures, introduces a constructed scarcity into a seemingly functioning housing system, by asserting that the only way out of the financial crisis is to spare public money and cut back subsidies, thus finally attacking the very core of social housing. This attitude is the very opposite to the introduction of special housing taxes in order to initiate the system in the first place in the 1920s.

The reactions to these challenges taken up by Vienna’s municipality have been manifold.

Where other cities decided to sell out their housing stock, Vienna has kept its stock of Gemeindebauten and sustained its power over the provision by fundamentally restructuring the housing production.

A liberalised model based on regulated competition has been in place since 1995 in Vienna, ensuring high quality standards and relatively low rent levels. In recent years, projects have been commissioned with the intent to investigate and research the possibilities of cost reduction, with the aim of producing affordable housing for lower income groups without changing the current scheme of production and its routines in order to counter the scarcity of accessible affordable space. As part of a wider strategy to move neighbourhood management towards a more service orientated provision, the city has called for referenda on popular themes like the re-introduction of caretakers for the public housing schemes in 2010. In addition, housing projects themed as “CoHousing” projects have been introduced.

Both these moves are designed to create an atmosphere of participation. Finally a few months ago, the city introduced an initiative to make up for cutbacks in the housing budget demanded by austerity policy.

This creates a one-off private-public partnership financing scheme outside the established model of social housing and without its rigid quality and rental price control. The initiative is thus ultimately subsidizing the free market and extends the process of liberalisation started in the 1990s.

For us as architects and designers, the question is of course how the institutional framing of social housing production results in particular spatial organisations and tangible architecture. The recent model of social housing provision has yielded some highly interesting architectural projects that are in various ways acting intelligently within the system, applying its complex mechanisms in creative ways and by doing so altering and shifting its otherwise predetermined technocratic results. ARTEC’s Bremer Stadtmusikanten (2009) housing scheme, PPAG Architects’ Wohnen am Park (2009), and more recently Rüdiger Lainer’s Kagraner Spange (2011) and Czech, Krischanitz

and Neuwirth’s Wohnen am Mühlgrund (2011) project, are four exemplary cases that exemplify different approaches to exhaust the constraints. These recently completed projects refer to conditions and times before the cutbacks, rooted in an economy of growth. Their focus thus does not yet reflect programmes of austerity, but rather a discourse on differentiation, the multiplicity of lifestyles, of individualization, diversification and change. Nevertheless, they mirror what is possible within a budget that was already tight back then, and within conditions of regulatory scarcity.

Especially when one considers the predicted growth of the population in Vienna1, the question of course is how the system of housing can be reshaped so as to contribute to economic stability, resilience and necessary constant re-organization. And also how to rebuild a rather hierarchic system of housing provision to become a truly democratic organization, not giving way to a neo-liberal practice and the imperative of austerity, but instead keeping up the qualities that made it strong in the first place – Affordability, Communality, Solidarity.

Notes 1 Vienna’s population will be growing until 2030 by 11%. Source: Statistik Austria, online: http://www.statistik.at/web_ de/dynamic/statistiken/bevoelkerung/ demographische_prognosen/058453

VIENNA HOUSING GLOSSARY Georg Kolmayr Published in dérive, issue 46, January – March 2012, p. 30-32.

This glossary is a tool for the ‘Modelling Vienna’ team to engage in the international discourse on housing provision.

We refer to the terms as we learn of their use according to rhetorical consensus at an institutional level. The aim of this ongoing process is to frame the complexity and reach of a housing system and its institutions in ways that allow for translation not only literally (German-English) but also into different housing policies.

The glossary at first explains a term’s general application, to then point at its use in the specific Viennese situation.

of communicative tasks within a neighbourhood, empowering initiatives and participatory movements at local level.

B Building Regulations : Bauordnungen (← Regulative Instruments)

Legislative regulation which sets a minimum standard for all building activities. Building regulations are an instrument of housing policy that has far reaching influence in terms of housing production.

Vienna: In Austria the building regulations are a matter for the respective federal province. There are efforts to harmonize the nine different provincial building regulations.

Building Industry : Bauindustrie (← Housing Market)

The building industries’ interests and capacities influence the production and renewal of housing to a large extent, as is clearly visible in the materiality of whole cultural areas.

Vienna: Though the architecture of ‘Gründerzeit’ as well as that of ‘Red Vienna’ was largely realised in brickwork and with an abundance of cheap labour, the prevailing building technique shifted after WWII and along with economic uprise to prefabricated concrete structures.

To this day anything but solid construction is exotic to Viennese housing production, even in small-scale developments. The fact that in Austria the idea of sustainable building is almost exclusively linked to thermal insulation hints at the prevalence of the industry.

C D E Emergency Flats : Notfallswohnungen (←Housing Policy)

Vienna: Some 2000 flats, predominantly situated in municipal housing estates, to be assigned on short notice to persons in acute need. The individual requests are assessed according to strict criteria.

A

F

Affordability : Leistbarkeit

Funding Regulations : Förderbedingungen (←Direct Subsidy)

The term ‘affordability’ refers to the percentage of disposable income a household spends on all (→) housing expenses. Generally, no more than 30% is deemed affordable.

Vienna: in 2006 housing expenses in Austria averaged at 19.1% of household income; EU: 23%; GB: 18.2%.1 Allocation of Tenants : Wohnungsvergabe (Mieterbelegung) (←Housing Policy)

Market mechanisms of supply and demand aside, an active housing policy regulates the allocation of tenants, at least in parts of the socially bound housing stock.

Vienna: Due to the City’s large (→) municipal housing stock, its housing department (MA 50; Wiener Wohnen) allocates tenants along official guidelines within all public housing and also, due to (→) funding regulations, does so for parts of (→) subsidised housing.

Area Renewal Office : Gebietsbetreuung (← Promotion of Housing Renewals)

Vienna: facility installed by the City’s housing department at local level. Run by independent architectural or developer practices. Aside from the management and facilitation of urban renewal projects, these offices take on a wide range

Once housing projects are granted subsidies, they become subject to a set of funding regulations. These funding regulations are an instrument by which the public administration influences the organization and design of socially bound housing production.

Vienna: Funding regulations set quality standards which both complement and exceed those of (→) building regulations. An effect of this is that the quality standards reached in subsidised housing surpass those in comparable free market segments.

Funding regulations also ensure the municipalities’ influence on the social fabric by assigning a share (an average of 30%) of the erected flats to the housing department for the (→) allocation of tenants.

G Governmental Subsidies : Öffentliche Förderungen (←Housing Politics)

As one of the principal instruments of housing politics, governmental subsidies aim for the financial promotion of housing matters.

Distributed directly in the form of loans or payments (→Direct Subsidy) or indirectly in the form of tax reliefs (→Indirect Subsidy).

H Housing Expenses : Wohnkostenbelastung

The total sum of costs any household faces for housing purposes. Includes rents or mortgage payoffs; taxes; maintenance and operating expenses (energy costs and water supply).

Housing Developer Competition : Bauträgerwettbewerb (← Promotion of Housing Construction)

Vienna: Procedure for the allocation of object subsidies obligatory to housing projects larger than 200 units. This competition asks developers to team up with architects and other planning experts in order to propose a housing project which, if successful, will be granted promotion and building site by the City.

Submissions are judged by a jury identical to the (→) property advisory board along the following criteria: 1. planning qualities, 2. economy, 3. ecology 4. social sustainability. The developer competition was implemented in 1995 in order to introduce market elements to social housing while at the same time raising quality standards.

While the initial cost-cutting effects have worn off in time, this tool has been deemed successful in that it introduced ecological sustainable housing production into Vienna at a comparably early date.

Housing Market : Wohnungsmarkt

If the utopian ‘perfect market’ in which an ‘invisible hand’ regulates pricing in a free interplay between supply and demand hardly ever fits reality, it does even less so in the real estate market and its housing sector. This market is subject to a series of specific limitations such as the immobility of its goods, the inhomogeneous character of its goods and the asymmetric flow of information between participants and blindness to social issues.

Those shortcomings are dealt with in different (→) housing policies and (→) housing politics, leading to very different local market situations.

Vienna enjoys a low average rent level (an average of 8.0€/m net rent on the free market segment for new tenancies2) with high quality standards (e.g.: 42 m2 of living space per capita).

Housing Policy : Wohnpolitik auch Wohnungspolitik

Deals with shortcomings in the housing market. Two sets of instruments ensure the public authority’s influence on the housing market: 1.(→) legislative regulation and 2. public promotion such as (→) governmental subsidies. But housing policy is not restricted to government bodies; its stakeholders are widely spread in the field of (→) social housing and work on different scale levels.

Vienna: Due to the city’s unusually high influence on housing provision, housing policy is mainly controlled by the municipality’s agents and interests.

Housing Promotion, also Direct Subsidies : Wohnbauförderung auch Direktförderung (←Governmental Subsidies)

By actively promoting the production or renewal of housing (→) object subsidies or by supporting individuals to gain access to affordable housing (→) subject subsidies, communities try to influence the housing market’s pricing and standards.

Vienna / Austria: Vienna falls under Austria’s federal housing promotion program, which is financed at federal level by taxes (Contribution to Housing Promotion, dt.: Wohnbauförderungsbeitrag) and distributed by the different federal states in the form of loans or grants. The City of Vienna maintains a mixed system of housing promotion with an emphasis on (→) object subsidies above (→) subject subsidies. Housing promotion is

managed by the Municipal Department 50 (MA 50): Housing Promotion and Arbitration Board for Legal Housing Matters. Housing Promotion amounts to 1.2% of the Austrian BIP. Housing Studies : Wohnbauforschung

Academic disciplines concerned with housing studies include economics, political science, urban studies, history, social administration, sociology, geography, law and planning. Most housing studies, especially comparative ones, examine housing at national level.

Austria: In international or crossnational comparative housing studies, Austria’s social housing policy is commonly described as well performing.

Considerable economic stability and social balance can be maintained at, in international terms, low public costs.

I Indirect Subsidies : Indirekte Förderungen (←Governmental Subsidies)

Indirect forms of subsidisation such as tax reliefs and capital allowances.

Integrated Market : Integrierter Markt (←Housing Market)

In an integrated market the social housing sector is able to compete for a broad range of consumers due to its large volume and the financial stability of its suppliers.

Vienna: Due to its large stock of (→) municipal housing and a continuous policy of (→) housing promotion, the City of Vienna is capable of maintaining an integrated market with a comparatively low rent level.

J K L Limited Profit Housing Association (LPHA) : Gemeinnütziger Wohnbauträger (← Social Housing)

Co-operatives or limited profit companies, which provide socially bound housing at low cost rent. Their profits are legally restricted and they are subject to governmental control; they do, however, benefit from inherent financial guarantees.

Vienna: Limited profit housing associations took over the task of producing affordable housing from the City.

Following the implementation of the (→) housing developer competition in 1995, they now have to compete with commercial developers for housing subsidies.

M Modes of Subsidized Housing : Formen des geförderten Wohnbaus (← Promotion of Housing Construction)

Vienna: subsidized housing can take one of four modes: 1. Flats for rent 2. Flats for rent with (→) superpromotion 3. Flats for rent with ownership option (→) right to buy 4.

Owner occupied flats.

Municipal Housing, also Public Housing : Gemeindeeigenes Wohnen, Wien: ‘Gemeindebau’ (← Social Housing)

Housing built, maintained and managed by public authorities in order that sufficient affordable housing is available. Public housing is a historic model of housing policy that has long been abandoned in most places.

Vienna: Ever since the housing schemes of ‘Red Vienna’, public housing has been of pivotal importance not only

39 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

to the City’s policy but also within the public imagination. Although it abandoned the production of housing in the 1990s (handing it over to limited profit developers), the City resisted selling its housing stock and still has some 220.000 units at its disposal.

N O Object Subsidies : Objektförderung (←Direct Subsidy)

Supply side subsidies often also referred to as ‘brick and mortar subsidies’, since they are granted for the (→) promotion of housing construction or the (→) promotion of housing renewal projects.

Vienna: the ‘wohnfond_wien’, a division of the city’s housing department, is in charge of its administration.

P Promotion of Housing Construction : Neubauförderung (←Object Subsidy)

Vienna: Applicants have to apply for (→) funding regulations and above that to pass the City’s (→) property advisory board in order to be granted subsidies.

Bigger projects are compulsory subject to (→) housing developer competition.

Nearly 90% of all housing erected in Vienna in the last couple of years has been subsidized.

Promotion of Housing Renewals : Sanierungsförderung (←Object Subsidy)

Vienna: Since urban renewal became an acknowledged alternative to large scale restructuring in the 1980s, a significant share of object subsidies has flowed into the renewal of housing stock.

Property Advisory Board : Grundstücksbeirat ( ← Promotion of Housing Construction)

Vienna: This board was implemented as an instrument for quality management and is hosted by the wohnfond_wien (the body which administrates all object subsidies for the city). Any housing project applying for subsidies has to pass this board, which also constitutes the housing developer competitions’ jury. It is composed of some 12 members from different fields (with the city’s representatives in minority), who hold their posts for three years each.

Protection of Tenants : Mieterschutz (← Regulative Instruments)

Legal regulation of the relations between tenant and landlord, covering both protection against eviction and rent price protection.

Vienna: From the social achievements of the 1920s on, tenancy protection has had a key role in Austrian housing politics. Even if tenancy laws where gradually liberalised in subsequent years, the rental market is still highly regulated.

he rents under certain circumstances.

Vienna: Promoted in the form of ownership options since the 1990s, this form of dwelling seems to be less attractive than elsewhere for tenants and developers alike. It is, however, on offer as one of the (→) modes of subsidised housing.

S Subject Subsidies, also: Housing Allowances : Subjektförderung auch Wohnbeihilfe (← Direct Subsidies)

In contrast to (→) object subsidies, housing allowances go directly to the individual applicant and serve to gap the difference between affordable housing expenses and market prices. Housing allowances are seen as precise and manageable tools, but they tend to deepen the overall effects of economic crisis and are considered to exacerbate undesirable social developments such as stigmatisation or the “poverty trap”.

Vienna relies on a mixed system of object and subject subsidies, in which the latter plays a secondary role. In 2007, only 3-4% of all Austrian households obtained individual allowances. However, with the impact of the current financial crisis and the housing promotion budget cuts at large, the proportion of subject subsidies is on the rise at the expense of object subsidies.

Superpromotion : Superförderung (← Modes of Subsidized Housing)

Vienna: A mode of subsidisation that aims at providing housing for people with few financing options by reducing the initial capital required (non-recurrent contributions to real estate and construction costs) and in turn increasing monthly rents.

Social Housing : Sozialer Wohnbau

Encompasses housing either directly owned and managed by the public authorities or housing which is socially bound in exchange for public subsidisation of one form or another.

Vienna: With some 220.300 flats, the City of Vienna owns and manages a large stock of (→) public housing as an historical heritage (“Gemeindebau”). Together with some 168.300 subsidised flats (→ housing promotion) this amounts to 388.600 social housing units or 48% of all housing stock in Vienna.

T U V W X Y

Q

Z

R

Key sources: United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, ‘Guidelines on Social Housing, Principles and Examples,’ (Geneva: United Nations, Economic Commission for Europe, 2006)

Regulative Instruments : Regulierungsinstrumente (← Housing Politics)

The legislative tools of housing politics. For instance (→) building regulations that set minimal standards or the (→) protection of tenants. Usually discussed and handled at national level.

Right to Buy : Mietkauf, Mietkaufrecht (← Modes of Subsidized Housing)

System that allows the tenant to buy the flat

www.unece.org

Wolfgang Amann and others, Der Soziale Wohnbau in Europa - Österreich Als Vorbild, ed. Klaus Lugger and Wolfgang Amann (Wien: IIBW– Institut für Immobilien, Bauen und Wohnen, 2006).

‘Wohnfonds_wien Fonds Für Wohnbau Und Stadterneuerung’, (2010) www.wohnfonds.wien.at

Daniel Kamleitner and others, Wien, Die Städtische Bevölkerung Und Ihre Wohnversorgung, Städtebericht

Wohnungs-politisches Monitoring, (Wien: Synthesis Forschung, 2007) Herbert Ludl, Gemeinnützige Bauvereinigungen in Österreich (Wien: Österreichischer Verband gemeinnütziger Bauvereinigungen – (Revisionsverband, 2007)

INTRODUCING __ Expanded Design Research Collective

www.sozialbau.at

Notes 1 Wolfgang Amann and others, Der Soziale Wohnbau in Europa - Österreich Als Vorbild, ed. Klaus Lugger and Wolfgang Amann (Wien: IIBW– Institut fur Immobilien, Bauen und Wohnen, 2006), www.iibw.at [accessed 20 May 2011].

2 Immobilien-Preisspiegel 2010 (Wien: Wirtschaftskammer Österreich, Fachverband der Immobilien- und Vermögenstreuhänder, June 2010).

CONTRIBUTORS SCIBE VIENNA Michael Klein

Michael is an architect and researcher based in Vienna, Austria. He studied architecture at the TU Vienna and the ESA Paris and graduated from the Academy of fine Arts Vienna in 2007. Since then, he has been working in the field of architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism in practice, research and teaching. His research interest focuses on how political thinking, its theory and economic conditions affect design, architecture and the urban environment.

Teresa Klestorfer

Teresa is an architect and researcher based in Vienna, Austria. She is currently working on her diploma project at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

Georg Kolmayr

Georg is a Vienna-based architect and researcher specialized in housing and urban development. Besides teaching at the Institute for Architecture and Design at the TU Vienna, he runs his own office since 2004.

Marija Maric

Marija is an architect and researcher from Novi Sad, Serbia. She studied Theory and Research in Architecture and Urbanism, and currently is developing her MA thesis in Intermedia Research. Interested in methodology in architecture and urbanism, she has been working as an architect, theorist and concept developer.

Christina Nägele

Christina studied cultural science and aesthetics at the University of Hildesheim. She is working at the threshold of fine arts, architecture and design in the realm of curatorial practice, cultural education and communication. Her focus lies on projects with thematic approaches and interdisciplinary discourses that deal with cultural practices, spatial production and contemporary social and ecological conditions.

Andreas Rumpfhuber

Andreas is an architect and researcher, and founder of Expanded Design, a design research office based in Vienna, Austria. Currently he is principal investigator of the Vienna part of SCIBE – Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment, and project leader of the Austrian Science Foundation-funded (fwf.ac.at) research project, Architecture of Cybernetics of Organization, about management consultants Eberhard und Wolfgang Schnelle, their cybernetically inspired design method, and the invention of office landscaping in the 1950s in Germany.

__ is a future practice! Even though it got established only some years ago, it seems as if the practice has been run for decades, if not actually about a century. __ acts with a certain self-conception, bringing in a vast scale of knowledge that is not limited to the practicalities of architectural detailing, or refreshing design-ideas but expands to issues of policy making and politics. __ take on different roles. Sometimes __ act as architects or designers, sometimes they approach a problem as think tank, sometimes as researchers, they take on the role of policy makers addressing politics and society at large. Yet they always act as specialists of space production.

Their

projects remind us in an insistent way of the potenti-

ality of space production.

In

their projects architecture

introduces a specific order of commonality into a territory.

The territory in their understanding is not only a geographic instance, but also a discursive reality. In the terms of __ space production not only manifests itself in reality by a wall that is being built, but starts to become about in singing songs,

– also in societal discourses, in the way norms are being introduced, in the way legal issues are being settled and written down, and by the way the public discusses the issues of austerity measures of today. The order that __ think of are sometimes abstract, dealing with the legislative body of housing production, in another instance it might be a concrete design-pattern organizing the layout of a housing block, or yet in another project it would only introduce a motto, a slogan that organizes a given territory in a highly specific way. or else

It is projects in an ideological sense that __ are working on. It is an ideology not in a reductionist way of a moralizing discourse but as a set of shared beliefs, inscribed in institutions, bound up with actions, and hence anchored in reality.1 The nature of these projects imply that they contradict each other. It is not an oeuvre in the classical sense of a portfolio that architects normally show their clients. All projects have a common goal, or a certain line of flight.

All of which aim to think ways of living together and of a potential commonwealth. All of which not only accept but somehow embrace the given situation: with its dominant liberal discourses, with its austerity measures and the idea of an economy beyond growth.

Notes 1 Cf. Luc Boltanski und Eve Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism (London, New York: Verso, 2005): 3

40 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

1. Policy RIGHT TO HOUSING

1. Policy RIGHT TO HOUSING

MANIFESTO ON HOUSING

This incomplete manifesto on housing has been written by ______, articulating their beliefs, strategies, and motivations in the field. The manifesto outlines ______’s stance towards a contemporary housing policy. Being part of a work in progress, the different postulates may contradict as well as they can repeat themselfes.

The A –Z Manifesto on the Right to Housing

A home for everyone!

Be supportive for the right to housing!

Create visions of how to live, not only where to live.

Do built more state-­‐aided flats! Luxury to everyone!

Establish structures to enforce a home for everyone!

Fall for every person’s right to housing!

Get yourself a flat! In urgent cases squat vacant buildings!

Housing is much more than a financial product!

Imagine all the people sharing all the world!

Jerks out of housing politics!

Kick out european laws favouring competition over social housing.

Love your neighbor as yourself! – a guideline to living in the Gemeindebau.

More money for state subsidized flats!

No more money for arms – more money for housing!

Open the Gemeindebau, open the subsidized housing system to everybody in need!

Purge the European Union of laws commodifying housing!

Quit your real estate broker – insist on your right to housing at your local government!

Real estate speculations should be illegalized!

Squat speculative real estate property!

Take the human rights on housing serious!

Unite all institutions and individuals fighting for the right to housing!

Vote for quality housing affordable to everyone!

What about housing for everyone?

Xerox floor plans with quality flats!

Yurts are not enough for housing!

Zero out basic (housing) needs of the competitive market!

Ad Topics: Cut out Vorsorgewohnungen encourage Genossenschaften / co-­‐ownership models

Christina Nägele 4.4.13 13:56 Deleted: Call your members of Parliament so that they get into the right to housing!

Georg Kolmayr 19.2.13 14:30 Deleted: Desire production including Georg Kolmayr 19.2.13 12:52 Comment: Für Wiener Publikum verständlich?

Christina Nägele 4.4.13 14:02

Deleted: Halls of fame should be open for every person that fights for housing rights!

1. Policy RIGHT TO HOUSING

‘RIGHT TO HOUSING’ CAMPAIGN

2. Gemeindebau RESHUFFLE

2. Gemeindebau RESHUFFLE

‘RIGHT TO HOUSING’ CAMPAIGN

A campaign has been launched by ______ in order to anchor the unconditional right to housing in the European Union’s ‘Charter of Fundamental Rights’ at last.

By pointing out its revealing absence, ______ aim at a turnaround of the EU Commission’s housing related policies from favouring competition and commodification to protecting a basic human right aknowledged everywhere else.

SCIBE Research Collective Andreas Rumpfhuber, Georg Kolmayr, Michael Klein Große Neugasse 1 / 5 1040 Vienna, Austria contact@expandeddesign.net Wien, 25. März 2013

Seven One Media Austria GmbH z.H. Frau Ilona Happel Theobaldgasse 19 A-1060 Wien

Betreff Theodor Fischer Preis

Georg Kolmayr 19.2.13 14:34 Deleted: the right to open competition on housing issues of the European law

EXPANDED DESIGN www.expanded design.net

MANIFESTO ON HOUSING

1. Policy RIGHT TO HOUSING

Georg Kolmayr 19.2.13 14:29 Comment: ... commodification of housing!"

Georg Kolmayr 19.2.13 14:36

Deleted: commodified housing laws

Georg Kolmayr 19.2.13 14:36 Deleted: speculative

Georg Kolmayr 19.2.13 14:39 Deleted: for

Georg Kolmayr 19.2.13 14:39 Deleted: the functions of living

AUTONOMOUS ECONOMICAL ZONE The large share of socially bound homes in Vienna’s housing stock is designed to alleviate the impact of market shortcommings on the City’s residents. _____ consider the whole of Gemeindebau a zone of its own right and wonder whether its preconditions would qualify to dissassociate it alltogether from the financial (monetary) market system in order to introduce alternative means of allocation.

Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren, Nis expel il ipsam autat aceatiusam la volupta tassita temperit eat pa abo. Um il et esequos et, alis dolendant offici consed et everio. Sin nes ra nisquisqui duci tem vollam sunt ium volorepe voluptas auta quias dolum alitius aut la coneste ctorem laciis mod quoditis magnimus, sinctoribus aut invelit essimi, tem nos ni in experspicit, solo volentis re di doluptas sunte et etur simpor adicilignat.

Niscitae pra nonsequam et ex etur resedit omnis essunt iducia cum et omnimi, ut volupta teturibus exerorendit faccus ea simenis est eos quat. Ictionserat asimoluptia vel eum as dolorit expellectur autem quas mo idestia qui dolupta ssitatur magnient provid experum quisque dolupta quaesciat est, id ut et opta est que pos senihictum naturion con eos ea distiisque sequo voleserspit alit quiame velessi taecabo rporat fugiassimin corumqui nonseque.

AUTONOMOUS ECONOMICAL ZONE objectives: • strenghten idea of collective (communal) ownership, housing as social good.

• deal with financialisation of the socially bound housing system preconditions: • A locally constrained (immobile) stock of socially bound housing, spread throughout the City of Vienna (‘Überstadt’). A Zone with its own rules in terms of allocation and administration and a far reaching influence by the city’s administration.

• An large quantitative Segment of the Viennese housing stock. 50% of all apartments in Vienna are socially bound, a quarter are Gemeindewohnungen, another quarter of apartments are subsidised or cooperatively owned.

HOUSING SEGMENTS IN VIENNA

question: • would it be possible for the city to (further) uncouple its Gemeindebau from the housing market by introducing an alternative local currency that can incorporate parameters like need, time, services, personal contribution and societal engagement in the conventional equation ‘money equals space’?

• would it be possible to extend such a modell to the semi-public field of subsidiced housing?

OWNER OCCUPIED

HOUSING SEGMENTS IN VIENNA

GEMEINDEBAU

LIMITED PROFIT HOUSING

OWNER OCCUPIED

EINHEITSMÖBELN UNITARY FURNITURE

2.Gemeindebau FURNISH

EINHEITSMÖBELN UNITARY FURNITURE

2.Gemeindebau FURNISH

EINHEITSMÖBELN UNITARY FURNITURE

2.Gemeindebau FURNISH

GEMEINDEBAU

OWNER OCCUPIED

OWNER OCCUPIED

LIMITED PROFIT HOUSING LIMITED PROFIT HOUSING

LIMITED PROFIT HOUSING

AUTONOMOUS ZONE GEMEINDEBAU

AUTONOMOUS ZONE GEMEINDEBAU AUTONOMOUS ZONE GEMEINDEBAU

€

AUTONOMOUS SOCIALLY BOUND SECTOR

2.Gemeindebau FURNISH

PRIVATE RENTAL MARKET AUTONOMOUS ZONE GEMEINDEBAU GEMEINDEBAU PRIVATE RENTAL MARKET

GEMEINDEBAU

PRIVATE RENTAL MARKET

OWNER OCCUPIED

The Gemeindebau - Zone: large, in one hand and locally bound

LIMITED PROFIT HOUSING

HOUSING SEGMENTS IN VIENNA HOUSING SEGMENTS IN VIENNA

HOUSING SEGMENTS IN VIENNA PRIVATE RENTAL MARKET

AUTONOMOUS ZONE GEMEINDEBAU

2.Gemeindebau FURNISH

GEMEINDEBAU

PRIVATE RENTAL MARKET

€

AUTONOMOUS SOCIALLY BOUND SECTOR

AUTONOMOUS SOCIALLY BOUND SECTOR AUTONOMOUS SOCIALLY BOUND SECTOR

The Gemeindebau - Zone: a substantial quantitative share of the housing stock

AUTONOMOUS SOCIALLY BOUND SECTOR

2.Gemeindebau FURNISH

EINHEITSMÖBELN UNITARY FURNITURE

COMMON FACILITIES

COMMON FACILITIES

______ designs common facilties for the new, selfgoverned Gemeindebau. Its emerging initiatives, communities and institutions need concrete and accessible space to form, unfold and express themselves. ______ will provide such spaces, revive disused historic facilities or, where missing, create new ones.

63 m2 C-Type Council Flat, Social Housing Program, City of Vienna, 1960.

57 m2 Council Flat, Hugo-Breitner-Hof, Deutschordenstrasse, 1948.

97 m2 Council Flat, Linzer Strasse,1981.

102 m2 Council Flat, Per-Albin-Hanson-Siedlung, Zentrum Favoritenstrasse,1972.

Ironing Room, Am Tivoli, photo ca. 1931

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

e Postgass

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

Postg

asse

REAL REALTY

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

REAL REALTY

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

REAL REALTY

REAL REALTY

REAL REALTY

Auwin

kel

l Auwinke

REAL REALTY

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

Plan of communal laundry facility, Karl Marx Hof, 1927-1930

Dominikanerbastei

former “Hauptpostdirektion Wien 1”, Postgasse 10, ground plan before...

e Postgass

Postg

Auwin

kel

Auwinke

l

asse

Dominikanerbastei

... and after conversion to council housing

An entire historic public administration complex in prime inner city location.

(Hauptpostdirektion Wien 1, Postgasse 10, view corner Dominikanerbastei / Auwinkel)

- n. of apartments: 42 - total m2: 2760 - m2 average: 65

0

5

10

15

20

Conversion of several vacant floors of the 1975 (2001) ‘Galaxy’ Office Tower

Conversion of vacant floors within an 1975 (2001) Office Tower (Galaxy Tower, Praterstrasse 31,Wien 2)

partial conversion

An abandoned 1969 High-Rise building (‘Internationales Pressezentrum’ Gunoldstrasse 14, Wien 19)

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL III Overregulation

The Roundtable,

In the wake of the actual situation of economic crisis Vienna’s social housing marks a major exception, that, in an international comparison makes to an island of bliss. Are we satisfied? No, we are not; we cannot be; we must not be. And no, it is not necessary to rush it, either. Yet the very condition of social housing is not to be measured against failing housing markets, but instead, the vision of social housing has to turn into its own sharpest critic.

With no head, a round table is the most adequate for the congregations of the Knights for Wace writing about them, implying their equal status. The bulky object is not yet a symbol or a representation, but rather, it creates equality through serving the role as an obstacle. It is a barrier, an interior limit first, when taking the role of a enabling and facilitating architecture.

Social housing that is considered a mere tool for regulation will find out that it is no longer about providing possibility and enabling change. Instead, it sustains the actual status quo – alleviating contradiction and crisis – and doing so, it dangerously rejects the possibility of change. For the ones doing “less worse”, the condition of crisis implies the risk of self-complacency: Too proud of the own condition to foster the project of social housing. In fact, it mistakes doing a little better with doing well. The crisis, so this risk, is the true crisis of the satisfied. Forward!

Social housing dwellers, that is to say, are not incapacitated for living together arranging their lives. And though, there is a strong paternalism that pervades the sphere of social housing, which has been criticized not only since yesterday. If, in the wake of the crisis there is one thing to realize in welfare cuts and austerity measures, it is an alternative potential, hidden in deregulation and of autonomy.

Underlying social housing, there is a fetish for regulation that it is to uncover; a fetish in the sense that it imports superpower; regulation by a central body of knowledge that has grasped the control of markets, of labour and extended its exertion of influence to the regulation of peoples’ lives as well. It is also where a major contradiction in social housing unravels: in the will to regulation and the provision of good life, the overeager adherence to the certainty of the present or, in a regressive reference to the golden age of the past, which never existed, the fetish of implies the horror of an end of history. Against the overregulation that in fact sought to overcome the fundamental contradictions of capitalism while it necessarily stayed within, we hold the desire for autonomy and the capacities for self-management.

The roundtable in the Gemeindebau is thus not the representation of something but the violent introduction of a thing, which allows for the coequal introduction of the void: there is no grail in midst here, as there is no object of ultimate agreement but void, the empty space of the possible.

The roundtable is the architectural form of the gathering that the congregation the new council has to decide upon. If the changes in the Gemeindebau, the achieved autonomy was a play, then the Roundtable would be the MacGuffin of the piece: the thing at the centre of the plot - the object of desire with little important characteristic per se but with a lot of meaning for the development of the story. It is for this reason, the Roundtable is the first thing, the dwellers have to decide, design and make – it will determine their form of convention.

The undesigned roundtable as a type is the model of the architectural approach that we propose if architecture is to contribute to the endeavour of making the Gemeindebau a project again. An austere architectural form, reduced to a barest minimum: that of wall, surface and structure.

LATE CONTRIBUTION TO RED VIENNA Vienna’s Gemeindebau needs to become a public endeavour and a communal priority once more. ______ claims: ‘Luxury to all!’ and proposes council housing architecture for the city that dissents the ubiquituous calls for austerity and constraint on social issues.

Building on the ideas of housing as a social good and shared ownership, _____ imagines an alternative that turns housing into a save haven and a perspective for its inhabitants again.

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

LATE CONTRIBUTION TO RED VIENNA

41 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

2. Gemeindebau RESHUFFLE

2. Gemeindebau RESHUFFLE

OPEN ACCESS GEMEINDEWOHNUNG

2. Gemeindebau RESHUFFLE

OPEN ACCESS GEMEINDEWOHNUNG

Vienna’s system of public housing provision excludes a growing number of households in need. Still, _____ calls for open access to everyone, including those living on short terms and under precarious conditions.

To cut back long waits which are already exhaustive today, ______ proposes the introduction of an additional, more flexibile and faster track of allocating Gemeindewohnungen.

A Vormerkschein is the key to Vienna’s council housing system. It is a document that identifies its holder as eligible for a social housing flat, a Gemeindewohnung. Today, it is issued to applicants who meet a set of requirements plus one of seven possible reasons for eligibility. Requirements are a household income below a given limit, a registered address in Vienna for two years past, EU-citizenship or permanent residence permit plus a minimum age of 17 years. The given set of possible reasons for eligibility concerns shortcomings of the applicant’s current housing situation, like overcrowding or health hazards.

2.Gemeindebau FURNISH

2.Gemeindebau FURNISH

COMMON FACILITIES

2. Gemeindebau RESHUFFLE

OPEN ACCESS GEMEINDEWOHNUNG

2.Gemeindebau FURNISH

OPEN ACCESS GEMEINDEWOHNUNG

Today council-flats are rented out to those eligible on unlimited contracts (with extedended rights to pass them on, which surpass the national tenancy protection law). The stabilizing effects of this practice are wellcomme in the name of social cohesion, but in turn the number of flats becoming available for new allocation are scarce. Only for a very small share of council flats contracts are limited because they are bound to the occupant’s status (i.e. the city’s emergency flats).

Council housing appears blocked and inaccessible.

Opening accessibility to the social housing system and making it more flexible will have effects on the mixture of occupants within a Gemeindebau and on its structure of flats. Some flats will be rented out more frequently than the traditional unlimited ones next door. The inclusion of highly mobile households might lead to the emergence of hostel-type flats which could already be furnished to meet their needs.

schematic

schematic

2.Gemeindebau FURNISH

2.Gemeindebau FURNISH

COMMON FACILITIES

COUNCIL YARDS

LIBRARY

common facilities

Common Facilities and Functional Mix, Ground Floor Diagram, Metzleinstalerhof, 1922

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

REAL REALTY

REAL REALTY

While Vienna’s housing market is growing rapidly (and with it rental prices), the commercial segment behaves rather lethargic - but build space is too valuable to be left vacant for speculative reasons. As one way to increase the stock of social housing, _____reclaims vacant and disused buildings for the Gemeindebau. Notorious and prominently set investment ruins can be converted to social housing as well as valuable historic buildings disposed of by the public administration can be. Aside of affordable and flexibile housing solutions, ______ dwells on the symbolic impact of such appropriations by public housing vis a vis the commercial market.

common facilities

apartments

EINHEITSMÖBELN UNITARY FURNITURE

______ designs furniture for the Gemeindewohnung, making it fit for the conflicting needs of todays’ unsettled biographies which are to be accomodated in a housing programm that has been conceived for one social class to prosper and further developed into a secure haven for large parts of society.

UNITARY YARD

WELFARE INSTITUTE

apartments

EINHEITSMÖBELN UNITARY FURNITURE

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

______designs the open spaces within and attached to the Gemeindebauten. Interiour still to the public housing ‘zone’ and part of its system, these spaces will herald the new council housing to the surrounding city.

workshops / shops

2.Gemeindebau FURNISH

Common Facilities and Functional Mix, Ground Floor Diagram, Eisteichstrasse, 1976

The abandoned Telegraphenamt in the first district as social housing complex

Eisteichstrasse

Ground Floor plan, Metzleinstalerhof, 1922

I. making the Gemeindebau a project again Thinking of council housing in Vienna today, our particular interest is granted to the Gemeindebau as a project: A project in the literal sense of before doing, a meaning the Gemeindebau has lost when considering it, as the current situation proposes, a mere provision of service. Such implies

II. autonomy We have witnessed the implications of retreat and renunciation from the public sector in recent years. Against the inefficiency of a dull apparatus, the efficiency of flexibility. What was dressed elegantly in the words liberalization or autonomy most often meant the commodification or a partial privatization of formerly public services. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, freedom

the condition of business done, completed and closed from possible change. Making housing a project before doing argues instead for a permanence of the project, a strategic incompleteness that lies in the permanence of the endeavour of living together. For the designer, it means also planning the unplannable, or design, which seeks to contribute as an enabling factor instead of envisioning fixed results or solutions: The Gemeindebau as a project calls for design not as a solution but rather as a facilitator in the limiting practice of architecture.

We did want to leave the end open, didn’t we? No more commandments you said.

Another project?

Making the Gemeindebau a project again means to state a shortcoming in municipal housing. The deficiency and effeteness concerns the involvement and the autonomy of the dweller, the constraints when she wanted to start a business. Not the lack of participation as stated all

ultimately meant the freedom of markets: in the educational sector, in health systems in insurance or social security. The freedom of choice as choosing between two brands?

The idea of state universalism and a balancing out of difference has come to a critical point. Insistently, the modernist concept of housing has been criticised as patronizing from various sides.

With gradual individuation and differentiation of society, the critique is comprehensible. No longer we are one but many. And no longer, therefore, we were satisfied with the median.

What followed throughout the western world, however, in the promise of autonomy, was the reversal of the concept of universalist eligibility into the opposite of competitors and the making of a new individual subject. This neo-liberal subject is one of freedom, of self-responsibility, forced

around, in the sense of the involvement in the process of designing the harmonic commonsensical environment by mutual embrace. It is the lack of a possibility of change, a lack of freedom left to the dweller, we argue, that is limiting the actual status quo.

Waiting lists extend due to the fact of a shortage of affordable space. But considering housing beyond mere shelter, one cannot belie that structurally, something in contemporary social housing feels outdated. The initiatives towards participation turn a blind eye to disagreement and the contradictory state of living together in the city. It was not about harmony, but possibilities. Only with the chance for change and a permanence of self-actualization, social housing is to remain an ongoing undertaking. This is the chance of autonomy, of self-management and herein lies also the great chance of the city.

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

LATE CONTRIBUTION TO RED VIENNA

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

LATE CONTRIBUTION TO RED VIENNA

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

LATE CONTRIBUTION TO RED VIENNA

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

LATE CONTRIBUTION TO RED VIENNA

however to align oneself to the ever-rising costs of commodified service. Doing so, we became businesspeople in rivalry to our next neighbours.

(The seductive promise of autonomy from control was advertised as the freedom of self-management most tellingly in the educational sector, where it ended in the instruction of make more out of less unless you won’t go down. Freedom of choice ultimately meant handing over responsibilities to the management.)

In spite thereof, there is something in the story of autonomy, which is often forgotten. Behind outsourcing, austerity cuts and saving measures, autonomy persists in the very idea of determining one’s own living conditions, of the subjects full capacities. Dwellers are very well able to take matters into their hands. Thus, for the sake of Gemeinschaft, the contradictory claim: Gemeinde raus aus dem Gemeindebau.

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

LATE CONTRIBUTION TO RED VIENNA

2.Gemeindebau LUXURY TO ALL

LATE CONTRIBUTION TO RED VIENNA

42 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

Local and global problems/ opportunities: In times of abundance the amount of housing units produced on the outskirts of the RCA did not correspond with the population growth. Between 2000 and 2008, the number of dwellings in Iceland (including those under construction) increased by 26.8 per cent, while the number of inhabitants grew by only 13 per cent. From 2002-2008, 313,4m2 of dwelling was begun pro each new person in the Reykjavik Capital Region.

Over-zealous development coupled with emigration and a population shift to other less expensive towns because of the recession, has meant that existing housing stock does not meet present needs. There is unfulfilled demand for particular kinds of housing in Reykjavik: affordable rental space for dwelling and tourist accommodation. This need has been brought about by unemployment and accumulation of household debt.

Homeownership has taken precedence till now, but financial problems make it simply impossible for many people to pay the mortgages. The fact that a whole generation (the young) now own much less than nothing (through deep debt) renders the house ownership model a rather dubious part of the welfare system, of which it has long been considered part.

Social housing too is scarce and rent is expensive.

There is a need for more flexible household space, which could cater for entirely new and different needs and practices, indeed as the habits and conventions established during the boom years are brought into question, so too the built environment must morph to reflect this.

Currently young people postpone starting their own households and stay with their parents, while some small businesses economize by moving from rented space to a working space at home. In general people have more time to spend at home and with their children, due to the scarcity of work that is the result of a slowed down economy. As more time is released the opportunity for new practices for inhabitation and living arises.

Many buildings stand empty. This is especially present on the outskirts where property, which could not be paid for by the inhabitants, has been taken over by loan institutions owned to a large degree by foreign creditors. The burst of the housing bubble left behind large developments of single family houses (often 300-400m2) of which many remain unfinished. The other dominating typology is very different: Freestanding rectangular apartment blocks with considerably smaller units.

Developments on the outskirts overlap leisure spaces traditionally located on the fringe, such as the horse stalls and riding paths. These facilities remain largely unexplored in an urban setting with regards to the increasing tourism in the country, even if the Icelandic horse is an internationally renowned breed attracting scores of tourists. The horse stalls under development during the economic boom (many of which are not completed) have large living spaces integrated within their complexes; something which under present financial circumstances can be considered a superfluous luxury, but in this scenario, could serve as a resource to be further explored and possibly retrofitted. * What if: the urban landscape on the fringe of the capital lead the way for a new vision of co-living exploring new combinations of collective and individual spaces, including accommodating the alternative tourist associated with slow practices? * What incentives could support such a scenario and what sort of processes would be suitable to develop them? * How does the intervention contribute to the economy as well as the comfort of the inhabitants?

Resources: Too big homes, empty buildings, unfinished buildings, the Icelandic horse, riding paths, horse stalls, exotic nature, unused buildings, new

TRENDS IN ICELAND 1997 - 2011

LOWEST - HIGEST

The meltdown becomes a public knowledge

<< Continued from page 1: A Design Brief for Reykjavik

Sources: 1) Statistics Iceland 2) Central Bank of Iceland 3) Reykavik Energy Invest 4) Directorate of Labor 5) Sorpa Wast Management 6) Icelandic Property Registry 7) The Icelandic Road Administration 8) Eurostat 9) World bank Numbers regard Iceland as a whole unless RCA (the Reykjavik Capital Area) is mentioned specifically

The privatisation of the banks in progress

190,9 - 781,2 billion ISK (18,9 - 187,5 by foreign aluminum corporations) 364,4 - 1 890,37 billion ISK

EXPORT 1)

113,2 - 364,4 Petajoules (ca. 76% by aluminum smelters) 303,4 -15 709,7 billion ISK

HOME DEBTS 2)

GROSS ENERGY CONSUMPTION 1)

69,371 - 184,64 ISK

FOREIGN DEBT 2) 1 997 060 - 5 100 040

EXCHANGE RATE ISK-EUR 2)

12,27 - 240,86 billion ISK BUILDING COST INDEX 1) DEBTS - REYKJAVIK ENERGY COMPANY 3)

438,6 - 662,2 vehicles

666 - 11 400 people REGISTERED MOTOR VEHICLES PR.1000 INHABITANTS 1) REDUNDANCY IN THE RCA 4) 1 515 - 1 738 thousand kilom./year CAR DRIVING BY ICELANDERS 7) 1 490 - 3 878 dwellings UNDER CONSTRUCTION RCA 1)

FIXED INVESTMENT IN RESIDENTIAL DEVELOPMENT 1)

20,6 - 90,6 billion ISK 65,9 - 109,5 (2005:100)

HOUSEHOLD CONSUMPTION (VOLUME INDEX) 1) CONSTRUCTION STARTED RCA 1) 87 000 - 1 283 000 m3 CONSTRUCTION STARTED RCA 1) 155 - 2 706 dwellings WASTE RCA 5)

27 500 000 - 45 000 000 kg 4,7 - 25,8 billion ISK

GDP IN RESIDENTIAL CONSTRUCTION 1)

IMPORT 9)

GDP PR CAPITA 1) INTERNATIONAL DEPARTURES BY AIR 7)

147,6- 447,7 billion ISK

24 152 - 47 969 Euros 194 -537 thousand Icelanders

NET NATIONAL INCOME 8) 63 - 87,8 % of GDP Š April Arkitekter

1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011

43 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

social practices, eccentric tourists Food Growing

your own food is like printing

your own money.

On the level of the plot, the neighbourhood, the district – collectively or individually You are what you eat.

Local and global problems/ opportunities: Historically agricultural practices existed right within its urban fabric of Reykjavik. Post-war centralization in bigger farms and food imports have contributed to pushing agriculture out of the city. After the economic meltdown, interest in growing herbs, vegetables and fruit trees has exploded, and organic farming has increased drastically in the last years.

Farmers markets have also emerged.

In the three springs which followed the crash, around 2500 registered to courses to learn about growing food, and this trend has continued, whereas during times of apparent abundance pre-crash there was no market for this kind of teaching. The horticultural society and other agencies have become involved in projects with inhabitants and the City of Reykjavik continues to support initiatives for food growing, among them one aimed at building greenhouses which can grow food in the public parks of Reykjavik, this is especially pertinent due to the fact that greenhouse management in Iceland is relatively cheap due to hot springs and green energy for providing extra light during the darkest months. Across the RCA citizens can rent out land for allotment gardens, mostly on the fringe of the capital area.

These activities address the use of the natural urban environment at different scales (from household self-consumption to organic local farming for inland consumption vs. food import) and from the individual to collective. There is harvesting in kitchen windows, in winter gardens, on balconies, on roofs, in private gardens and on land hired from the municipalities. There has been a surge of interest in growing on the premises of apartment blocks although this has been difficult to realise, as all of the numerous owners (many owners because of the rule of home ownership) would have to agree on adapting the use of the collective premises.

Local harvesting cuts the distance between the products and the consumer and makes people less dependent on the mall and imported foods (which have become much more expensive after the crisis).

This provides a certain satisfaction for consumers who care about the origin of their food while supporting local producers. Additionally it stimulates social cohesion and serves to educate children about food production. These practices can be enforced with planning and architectural intervention.

New hedgerow-sheltered growing spaces and shelter woods might become building blocks of the multifunctional forest that is under construction in the territory of the Reykjavik Capital Area: The Green Scarf. Multi-functionality includes reducing the carbon footprint, recreation, production of wood for the building industry, erosion prevention, shelter for wind on the heaths that have been taken for development, all while reinforcing the on-going green structure of the city.

The new suburban residential areas have abundant open spaces between the buildings, not least in areas where not all the planned buildings are in place. This decentralized urban structure represents a potential for better integration of dwellings, workplaces, and actors which work with nature and agriculture than would be possible in the denser city centre. Climate change also presents an opportunity in Iceland in terms of growing food, since warmer weather makes it easier to grow more varied species.

On the city edges there are several individual actors who have were threatened by the new developments, even if they have experimented with practises that involve local resources for decades: the farmer that started experimenting with bees, the carpenter and his own wood house workshop, the scholar and his horticultural experiments and soil improvement, the

artist and her fish farming and the architect who built his house inside a greenhouse. They are pioneers that are a great resource of knowledge and inspiration. * What if: the urban landscape on the fringe of the capital had dwellings and workplaces integrated with nature, agriculture and horticulture? * What incentives could support such a scenario and what sort of processes would be suitable to develop them? * How does the intervention contribute to the economy as well as the comfort of the inhabitants?

Resources: Soil, water, geothermal water brought to the site by ready-made infrastructure, renewable electro power, horse manure, road network, more spare time, labour Water Every drop counts. On the level of the plot, the neighbourhood, the district – collectively or individually Water is essential to all life, and the quality of water is a pressing health issue.

Water sustains the human population and is vital for all ecosystems.

Local and global problems and opportunities: In the light of the fact that water is a contested good, and issues surrounding water are used, by researchers, to reveal power structures (Political Ecology), Iceland has its own treasure: the highest renewable freshwater availability per person in Europe. The freshwater resources are estimated to be around 170 000 million m3 and the reserves are the most secure ones in the world due to an average of 2 000 mm rainfall per year, scarce population and low water stress, (European Environmental Agency 2010; Icenews 2010). Water serves a purpose for swimming pools, salmon breading, fishing, spectacular recreational water courses and lakes and greenhouses.

Water is a sensitive resource, and it can be scarce even in some areas in Iceland where water may though appear to be in great abundance (i.e. Reykholt, Akureyri and Bláfjöll). Droughts, flooding and pollution are all threats to the ecological, social and economic foundations for any region.

The new housing areas on the fringe of the capital area negotiate the conservation space of the natural water resources, i.e.

Gvendarbrunnar. Furthermore current urban plans for Reykjavik might involve moving the local airstrip from the central location downtown to Hólmsheiði, near the water resource and the city of Reykjavík is planning new industrial areas (despite there being several half-built industrial areas with ready made infrastructures in the RCA).

Water is instrumental in carrying heat from the geothermal reservoir to the surface. There was extensive drilling for geothermal steam in the vicinity of the RCA during the last few years before the meltdown. However even if geothermal power is defined and marketed as green sustainable energy it poses problems for the built environment and habitation.

Airborn pollution from the plant in the RCA is health hazardous and damages electric equipment , furthermore there are local problems with water born surface pollution, even in the Þingvellir National Park. New bore-holes need to be drilled when older bore-holes are emptied since it takes an estimated 200 years to refill them.

The drilling causes fractures in the rock, generating earthquakes felt within a 45-kilometre (28-mile) radius, putting strain on built structures and stirring anxiety among the population. Currently an escalation of the drilling activity in the Reykajnes peninsula is being planned for up-scaling of aluminum plants in the vicinity of the RCA. Foreign businessmen are encouraged to participate in the processes, the idea being that foreign investment will save Iceland from economic ruin after the crash.

In new residential areas all the piping infrastructures have been implemented and in order to serve the few, widely scattered inhabited dwellings of an area,

the newly built water system needs to be used at full pressure, as if serving the number of buildings that were originally planned for the area as a whole. These, among other resource-intensive ventures, have put the energy company on the brink of bankruptcy.

Recent global changes are exacerbating the pressure on water resources around the world: With climate change there has been shifts in precipitation and evaporation patterns. The global land use intensifies with the growing population which increases water supply demand and increases discharge of pollution (nutrients concentration and pesticides in agriculture, industrial pollutants). These trends make fresh water an increasingly valuable and contested good. A rising number of conflicts for the control of water clearly demonstrate this, triggering global migration in search of better water. The abundance of water resources in Iceland makes it highly attractive worldwide for water demanding activities: (Metal smelters) for steady and low energy prices (hydroelectric power and geothermal power versus fossil-fuel price fluctuation) offered by renewable energy, and regions for export of drinking water. * What if: Reykjavík became the city of health, shifting towards more resilient water management where storage is a key concept; reducing, reusing and recycling, at all scales and starting bottom up? * What incentives could support such a scenario and what sort of processes would be suitable to develop them? * How does the intervention contribute to the economy and comfort of the inhabitants?

Resources: infrastructure, housing, land, water, energy Mobility Slow network. On the level of the plot, the neighbourhood, the district – collectively or individually The traffic network links human activities and exchange of goods.

Local and global problems and opportunities: In past decades the planning of transport infrastructure has been guided by the principle of concentrating transport into large road corridors for high dynamic traffic: A fast network. Urban highways have connected high dynamic uses, such as businesses, offices, mass recreation.

The corridors have become bigger and more difficult to cross.

The bulk of new commercial space, which in the Capital Area expanded by over 36% from 2002-2008, is lined up along the highway corridors. These spaces are surrounded with large asphalt surfaces (designed for parking) and many of them are not in use due to lack of business.

New residential areas were initially planned to be equipped with some local services, mainly schools, many of which have not been realized because of the meltdown. This makes it necessary for residents to seek these services elsewhere, which due to dispersion, is difficult to do without a car and is energy intensive, expensive, time consuming and polluting.

The issues embedded in this transport system and the deadlock of the unplanned meltdown penetrate the dynamic within the home and might impact upon gender roles. Far-flung as it may seem, careers can be defined by who gets priority in terms of car use and who must spend long hours collecting goods and ferrying children to and from schools and other activities, the further these facilities are spread apart the more time must be committed to fulfilling them.

There is an ongoing local discussion about the opportunity to increase the diversity of transport corridors with even higher connectivity, such as trains, underground or trams which might have a fair chance of competing with motorized traffic, which integrates into the existing bus network. This has been driven by a debate on reduction of co2 and it has stepped up due to the high cost of imported fossil Continued on page 44 >>

<< Continued from page 37: Scarcity Is...

…when demand outstrips supply That is, when there is not enough of a resource to meet demand. We could differentiate between slightly different modes of this condition. For instance, to take the most straight forward one: if there is more demand for a resource than is available, this could be because of genuine need. A resource is needed for survival. But who is to decide on the genuineness of needs? Probably arising from this problem, today, in regulated societies, we have standards that define the minimum amount of a resource that we need in order to survive; the minimum of a resource to which, under ideal circumstances, everyone should have access and to which everyone should be entitled. …real Scarcity is always real. Regardless of the factors that trigger or cause scarcity, it is perceived, experienced and problematized as a condition or phenomenon, and thus, as an experience, it is always real.

When used on the grounds of political or economic motivation, scarcity as a menace or threat, an empty construct, may result in real feelings and actions with real consequences. …natural Natural scarcity could be defined as the scarcity of resources which are naturally scarce, or rare – rare earth, for instance, or precious metals. Natural scarcity may also refer to scarcities caused by natural phenomena, such as draughts. There are, however, several problems with the notion of ‘natural’ scarcity. Namely, it is only through experience that the notion of scarcity becomes real, i.e., naturally relatively rare resources may not necessarily be scarce because demand for them is not large enough; or, on the other hand, naturally relatively abundant resources, such as air, may be experienced as scarce in particular contexts (for instance, when one is trapped in an elevator or cave).

Furthermore, all ‘natural’ phenomena experienced by human beings are directed or influenced by human activity, or a result thereof. A distinction between natural and human-induced scarcity seems futile. …sociomaterial As a result of human relations with non-human resources, i.e. of human and non-human agency, the notion of scarcity is one that describes a sociomaterial condition. …relative A resource may be experienced as scarce at some times and as abundant at others; it may be experienced as scarce in one place and as abundant in another; it can be experienced as scarce by one person, and as abundant by another.

Thus, in order to grasp (and transform) the meaning and reality of scarcity, it must always be framed within its spatial, temporal and sociocultural context. …relational As a social phenomenon, scarcity is always relational. Scarcity can be traced as a result of social relations in that it reveals how resources within society are handled. Power relations and sociomaterial inequalities can be revealed through the lens of scarcity, and it can be framed through the notions of distribution and redistribution. …artificial Scarcity is artificial when it is the result of misdistribution: when the supply of a resource could be large enough to respond to demand (or equally, when the demand for a resource could be small enough to respond to supply) – but when demand and supply are tweaked by decisions based on vested interest (in the interest of those in power rather than in the interest of all/the majority). …constructed Scarcity is socially constructed in that the notion is, as explained above, both relative and relational, and always

sociomaterial. The process of becoming aware of scarcity, the framing and problematizing of a certain condition as scarcity – the naming of scarcity – is the process of social construction. Socially constructed scarcity is not necessarily artificial. …engineered Scarcity is engineered when it serves an interest. It may not necessarily be the interest of ‘those in power’, the capitalists or the wealthy, but the process of engineering scarcity explicitly involves intend: increased demand for a resource in limited supply will lead to a higher prize and thus more profit; the hoarding of a resource for the in-group will lead to scarcity for the out-group; etc… …systemic: translocal, transtemporal , transcalar Of course, because it is relational, scarcity is a systemic condition. Scarcity in one place, time or scale – because of its systemic nature – can trigger scarcity in another place, time or scale through human – non-human relations and feedback mechanisms.

Creativity is… … a social skill or process common to all human beings. Design is specialised, commodified creativity which serves the generation of income and profit – in contrast to creativity, which can be applied in all situations, by everyone, and does not require an identifiable outcome or product.

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT SCARCITY Edward Robbins, Oslo

In everyday discourse the notion of scarcity is relatively straightforward: it refers to an insufficiency of amount or supply, a shortage as when we speak of a scarcity of resources. It also can refer to something that is rare, but rarity is in effect a condition of insufficiency; i.e., there is not enough of whatever thing is identified. What defines the condition of scarcity then as a measure of the availability of materials that we need for our lives is most often assumed to be obvious.

But there is a problem not so much in the everyday meaning of scarcity but where it is applied and with what measure. Is it in some way an absolute lack of something or is the shortfall the result of human desires or wants.

As a result, scarcity has been at the centre of many debates particularly those cantered on issues that revolve around the economy, and the environment. As Mehta (date) points out, the past few years has witnessed a growing concern about water and its implications for our livelihoods.

Since at least the 1970’s, and still to this day, there have been heated discussions about scarcity and what this might mean for the limits to growth. Notions of scarcity have also been at the centre of many debates about the characteristics of our economy – what moral or social imperatives drive it – and the question about the continued sustainability of the natural and human made environment to our social practices. While for many the issue of scarcity is relatively straightforward, it has become increasingly commonplace in the literature to see scarcity as a complex, variable and socially and politically embedded condition (cf. Mehta).

At the core of the debate is how we define scarcity and to what social and policy uses we put it. In other words, the notions surrounding scarcity it is argued serve different interests and moral and intellectual imperatives (Mehta, Matthaei, Perelman). This debate goes back a long way each understanding or measure of scarcity implying different social practices and different ends.

Take for example a very critical debate exemplified by the writings of Edmund Burke in his Thoughts and Details on Continued on page 45 >>

44 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 43: A Design Brief for Reykjavik

fuel, and the very few alternatives to individual car transport that exist currently.

However it is not likely to happen in any near future with the present economic situation, the buses driven by methane, and a political regime in Reykjavík that is more interested in projects in the old city center than solving problems in the more remote parts of town and neighbouring municipalities.

Highways in the capital area built between 2002 and 2008 run for 60.8 kilometres (37.7 miles), minor roads for over 163 kilometres (101.2 miles) and 9 highway interchanges were completed.

Currently there are only 1,5 km of paths exclusively built for bicycle riding, recently budgets have been allotted, but these are also meant for pedestrians.

A call for distributing individual transport in all sorts of low dynamic transport corridors could include bicycle paths, pedestrian tracks, children trails, riding paths, small boat facilities, ski-lifts like infrastructures and solutions for transporting the bikes up the hills, like bike lifts. This sort of infrastructure is cheap to implement and use and encourages a more flexible, healthy lifestyle, both in terms of exercise and mental well-being.

The slow network could go along with fine grain and land uses, for example the protected areas, the green corridors, collective ecological gardens, streams and gentler sloping sheltered areas.

A mainstream use of a slow network will demand more workplaces closer to, or inside the residential areas. * What if: the slow network of high connectivity could take over as a main source of transport in the Reykjavík Capital Area? * What incentives could support such a scenario and what sort of processes would be suitable to develop them? * How does the intervention contribute to the economy and comfort of the inhabitants?

Resources: Existing mobility network, the water network, the energy network, open areas.

SCIBE REYKJAVÍK: 2010-2013 Arna Mathiesen, Reykjavik

The aim of this project was to use the case of Reykjavik Capital Area to gain understanding on the relationship between scarcity and a building boom followed by an economic meltdown in Iceland in 2008. The project detects creativity in the built environment before the crash and has sought to develop methods to encourage spatial interventions and stimulate creativity as a solution to the problems of the local population after the blow.

The work has been threefold: Information was gathered through photography, GIS-mapping and interviews. This material was put together in written text and graphical material to form design-briefs. The briefs can function as working documents for retrofitting the new build-up in the city (25% of the city was under construction in the 6 years before the crash, this now stands half-built) which is causing a series of problems for the inhabitants and municipalities.

Two workshops (14 days in 2011 and 10 days in 2012) were organized with local institutions, involving students in architecture, planning and urbanism. A cross-disciplinary team was invited to the workshops to introduce problems and the potential of the different urban systems (water, transport, economy, ecology...) to support an integrated approach to design that would support a new green economy.

Also local agents of change; actors who have experimented with alternative practices on the fringe were invited to share their knowledge.

Platforms were made for exchange

between researchers (seminar open to the public and a book-project), who are investigating the field of the crash. In addition we invited stakeholders to the critiques of the student projects, made an exhibition of the projects for the general public, made 3 platforms in social media (a blog, a discussion forum and crisis mapping) and stimulated public discussion about the subject by writing in the public press and on widely read blogs.

SCIBE Reykjavík is a case-study under the Oslo part of the SCIBE project led by Professor Christian Hermansen. April Architects are responsible for the concept and the work of the Scibe-Reykjavík case. Architect and partner in April, Arna Mathiesen, and Dr. Giambattista Zaccariotto have conceptualized this creative progress of learning.

ICELANDIC INITIATIVES Arna Mathiesen, Oslo This is an edited version of the article originally published in Architectural Design, Scarcity: Architecture in an age of depleting resources, 04|2012, p. 94-99.

Iceland experienced extraordinary growth in the 2000s, but by October 2008 had fallen into the deepest and most rapid financial meltdown recorded in peacetime history when its three major banks all collapsed in the same week. [...] Between 2000 and 2008, the number of dwellings in Iceland (including those under construction) increased by 26.8 per cent, while the number of inhabitants grew by only 13 per cent.1 [...] The number of housing areas across the RCA with buildings at different stages of construction was amplified by the competition between municipalities with their own local agendas.

The bigger the areas the municipalities planned and the more amenities they were able to offer, the more tax revenue they could harvest to service the community. Regardless of whether the new settlements are finished, half–built, or hardly have any buildings as yet, all the roads, hot and cold water pipes, electricity and sewage have already been installed to supply all the buildings that were planned for the total development area. [...] The construction of abundant (and redundant) infrastructure has put the supply, use and conservation of life-sustaining resources under threat.

The majority of Iceland’s energy needs are met by geothermal and hydropower, and there was extensive drilling for geothermal steam in the vicinity of the RCA during the last few years before the meltdown. Excessive hot water (a side effect of the drilling) is now being reinjected into the geothermal reservoir so as not to waste energy. Unexpectedly, this procedure causes fractures in the rock, generating earthquakes felt within a 45-kilometre (28-mile) radius, putting strain on built structures and spreading anxiety among the population. […] The newly built water system needs to be used at full pressure as if serving the number of buildings that were originally planned for the area as a whole. These, among other resource-intensive ventures, have put the energy company on the brink of bankruptcy. […] The eagerness of municipalities to attract retail in order to appeal to potential inhabitants during the boom was used by private companies to cater to their own agenda. If a municipality’s ideas of the design of future amenities did not correspond to the preferences of the company in question, the company would threaten to take its plans to another municipality.2 Consequently, the planning and design of amenities relied on the premises of profitable retail, i.e. big parking lots, on a lower level close to a highway, etc. […] The sprawl has made public transport expensive and access to shopping and other services difficult for pedestrians. […] The construction in the times of boom was carried out according to

legally binding physical plans alluding to the Reykjavik masterplan from 1962 that seemingly had not been re-evaluated.

The processes leading up to the built results were legalised. Complying with an overall regional plan, each area was approved by the planning committee in the respective municipality, and every proposal passed through the hands of educated and authorised designers. The only present sign of illegality is people inhabiting houses that are not finished to the standards of the building regulations and thus are not yet approved for the purpose. […] After the crash, more than 4,500 housing units (ca. 4,5 per cent of households involved, in March 2013) in Iceland have been taken over by the loan institutions because their innovative loan products have proved more of a burden for the homeowners than projected. The percentage of housing under resident ownership dropped from 67 per cent in 2005 to only 50 per cent in 2010;3 the remaining 50 per cent belong de facto to loan institutions – which, following the financial meltdown, are largely owned by foreign creditors.

After the meltdown, the physical structure of the new urban landscape has hardly changed. But its presence, costs, and the drivers that shaped it have triggered a series of new behaviours and actions that could influence the way in which the built environment might be managed in the future. There is less consumption, car use and waste production due to the strain on household economies.4 Craftsmanship5 is more sought-after; a result of the mainstream production methods focusing on efficiency and fast building methods during the boom causing frequent building failures.6 Myriad new organisations addressing different aspects of the built environment, food, water, energy and transport have popped up.7 And participative websites supported by the authorities involving the inhabitants attempt to set new agendas.8 Today, public transport, recycling and the maintenance of public spaces are the main concerns, whereas previously the focus in public discussions was on monumental buildings, skyscraper skylines, flyovers and luxurious interiors.

Would this call for new processes of management and alternative power structures have come about if the inhabitants had not experienced the spatial inconveniences, worries for future resources and the unpredicted abyss of debt associated with the recently built environment? […]

Notes 1 Statistics Iceland (citing: National Economic Institute/Icelandic Property Registry), via Datamarket, see

Right: SCIBE Scarsity and Creativity in the Build Enviroment I Aprilarkitekter Oslo I Reykjavik Capital Area I draft 00000000 I layers:

Reykjavik Capial Area (RCA) in the context of Europe.

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2 Arna Mathiesen and Giambattista Zaccariotto’ interview with architect Gunnlaugur Johnson, 4 June 2011.

3 Figures from Statistics Iceland presented by Sveinn Oskar on the TV programme ‘Silfur Egils’ on 18 September 2011.

4 B Reynarsson, ‘Könnun á ferðavenjum sumarið2010’, Landráð sf and Pressan (Reykjavík), 1 July 2010, research on the travel habits in the Reykjavik area in 2010 presented at the research conference of the Icelandic Road Authorities on 5 November. See www.vegagerdin.is.

5 Arna Mathiesen and Giambattista Zaccariotto’ interview with Gunnar Helgason, a carpenter and coffee shop owner, 4 June 2011 6 Magnús Sædal Svavarsson, head of the Reykjavík City Department of Construction, commented publicly on this at a conference reflecting the status of the Icelandic building industry, in Reykjavik on 11 November 2010.

7 Links to the websites of many such organisatons can be found on the ScibeReykjavik study blog: http://scibereykjavik.wordpress.com

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2 workshops | 28 students | 8 groups | 4 areas | 4 themes Investigating challenges and opportunities in the newly built environment of the Reykajvik Capital Area, which increased its footprint by ca. 25% the decade before the crash. A cross-disciplinary approach on the premises of local ecology.

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Workshop 1 : 15 days in September 2011 Host: Iceland Academy of the Art’s School of Architecture (LHÍ), Sigrún Birgisdóttir, LHÍ

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<< Continued from page 43: Thoughts about Scarcity

WORKSHOP 1 LHI 2011 MOBILITY Liesa Marie Hugler LHÍ Axel Kaaber LHÍ Arnheiður Ófeigsdóttir LHÍ Continued on page 46 >>

Academic contributions for the lecture series and critiques in conjunction with the workshops: Sigrún Birgisdóttir, Iceland Academy of the Arts; Dr. Lúðvík Elíasson, The Central Bank; Salvör Jónsdóttir, formerly Director of the Planning Office of the City of Reykjavik; Þorsteinn R. Hermannsson, Discipline Manager of Transport at Mannvit; Sigríður Kristjánsdóttir, Lbhí; Hlynur Óskarsson, Lbhí; Massimo Santanicchia, Iceland Academy of the Arts; Einar Sveinbjörnsson, Veðurvaktinn Hildigunnur Sverrisdóttir, Iceland Academy of the Arts; Sybrand Tjallingii, TU Delft; Jeremy Till, Central St. Martins; Trausti Valsson, University of Iceland; Paola Vigano, Venice; Daði Þorbjörnsson, Icelandic Geosurvey.

Local agents of change, visits and sharing guiding models: Auður Ottesen, gardener, educator and publisher; Morten Lange, leader of The Bycicle Association; Línus Orri Gunnarsson Cederborg, anarchist squatter; Gunnar Helgason, carpenter running a café in Álafoss village; Ólafur Sigurðsson, architect and a pioneer living in a greenhouse; Þorsteinn Sigmundsson, innovative farmer by Elliðavatn Vilhjálmur Lúðvíksson, chemist introducing species and maximising soil fertility; Úlfar Finnbjörnsson, chef taking advantage of local opportunities; Bergljót Rist at Íslenski Hesturinn, the horses, the fringe and the opportunities; Hannes Lárusson, a conceptual artist rebuilding the Icelandic Farm; Snæbjörn Stefánsson, designer running a new hotel concept in the center of Reykjavík.

And all the other people who helped us to make it happen: Þóra and Sumarliði; Þórdís and Gunnar; Tanya and Lárus; Harpa and Björn; Eyjólfur Kjalar; Kristín Anna; Úlfur; Kjersti.

It was a creative learning process, useful for projecting future scenarios for the area.

Scarcity1 (1795) written just before his death. It is a compilation of notes given to William Pitt then Prime Minister that addresses the problem of the considerable shortfall in agricultural production in England that augured the possibility for high prices and the potential for hunger among much of the masses. Many at the time argued for government interference to deal with the problem similar to the Speenhamland System in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, which gave relief to the poor, based on the price of bread and the number of children a man had. Burke was opposed to these laws as he felt they created more problems than they solved. Because of this he also opposed any government intervention to address the agricultural shortfalls and the scarcity it would create. As he argued “Of all things, an indiscreet tampering with the trade of provisions is the most dangerous, and it is always worst in the time when men are most disposed to it; that is, in the time of scarcity. For Burke, scarcity itself was not the issue, it was clearly a shortfall. More critical to Burke was that scarcity is not a social fact but rather part of the state of nature and thus to intervene was to distort nature. What is of note is that for Burke the issue of production and the technologies and social system that guide it that may have been part of the reason for shortfalls and the economic system that priced grain and to a great extent created the hunger based on price was not a social question; it was natural. Markets and the scarcity that is central to them was natural and thus not to be questioned. What we also note here then is that scarcity where it goes as an unquestioned fact for many commentators is in effect an essentialization of one particular economic system and ideology.

If scarcity is natural in a critical sense it is not interesting either as a sociological or biological fact. It only becomes a problematic when it is seen as such and actors try to ‘tamper’ with it as Burke so disparagingly put it.

In a similar way Malthus naturalized scarcity without any corroborating data.

Malthus and other like-minded pundits saw scarcity as produced by population growth and thus were able to reject any notion that Capitalism might bear responsibility. Later in his writings he began to argue that population growth was ideally related to needs of capital.

Rational arguments were rejected in favour or a strong belief that communism or sharing would drag down society through a rapid growth of population and little growth in production thus leading to poverty for all.

Although not so insistent that government has absolutely no role to play in the economy, scarcity as an essential and natural state has played a critical role in the ideological justification of the market as we know it. Neoclassical economics argues that whereas nature provides a finite quantity of resources with which to fill our needs, we are consistently confronted by scarcity. This gives rise to economic life as we know it – property, exchange, and production. As we all try to maximize our goods this gives rise to valuation, exchange (to expand what we can get) and production which is the result of realizing that we can bring increased satisfaction by postponing present consumption to increase satisfaction in the future. Markets create a kind of Pareto Optimal allocation where no one gains without someone else losing which is a result of relative valuation to demand. (cf. Matthaei2) Thus as scarcity is the natural state of things the market is the ideal response.

As Michael Perelman points out, for Marx - and by extension with the necessary changes Marxists - population and scarcity were effectively social issues. As society grows especially as it grows in technological sophistication its impact is determined more and more by social relations especially the social relations of production. In the process of capitalist development a relative surplus of population is produced; mechanization 2,5 Km

and other new techniques create a kind of reserve army of labourers who are mostly underfed, under housed and destitute.

What appears as a crisis of overpopulation is not the result of either natural conditions or food supply but to the needs of capital accumulation. Scarcity in this context is scarcity of employment owing to the concentration of the means of production in a small class of capitalists operating according to the logic of profit and consumption. Even in those cases where a growth in demand creates shortages it is not the result of some natural logic but rooted in a social logic of production which in this case under produces. Thus scarcity neither is, fixed in human nature nor is it freely chosen, as Julie Matthaei (1984) points out. They are social products determined within a set of human interrelationships that constitute social life.

Thus through a particular deployment of one or another claim about scarcity, economists and other social theorists of particular ideology were and still are able to justify one or another economic system or social practice as necessary and natural in spite of the historically rooted nature of scarcity.

What I am arguing here is not unique (e.g. Mehta, Matthaei, Perelman). Nor is it particularly useful to engage in general theoretical discussions about scarcity except to understand them as ideological formulations justifying one or another social policy or practice. Also, to argue that the notion of scarcity is usually socially constructed while important to note is less than useful unless accompanied a discussion of how and in what way this social construction encourages or prevents one or another social action or practice. This is true even if we agree on a general meaning or application of the notion because what always needs to be in a sense adjudicated is just what we will use to measure scarcity. This is especially true of the issue which our project is addressing; i.e., more specifically architectural creativity – in our case housing - in relation to scarcity.

Let us take housing for example. There is no shortage of residential properties in many of our cities but there is a shortage of housing. Let us take NYC for example.

“The revised data from the 2008 survey of housing in NYC… found that the citywide net rental vacancy rate was 2.91 percent – not 2.88 percent as originally reported – down from 3.09 percent in 2005. The City’s total housing stock rose to more than 3.33 million units – the largest in the 43-year period since the first survey was conducted in 1965 – and all five boroughs saw an increase in housing.” 3 Yet there was also a net vacancy rate of only 2.91% in the rental market. Such a low rate of rental housing availability suggests a significant scarcity of housing even though from another perspective NYC never had more housing units available. And even as the city suffers from a shortfall in rental housing, more and more low cost rental units have been taken off the market making scarcity of housing in that market even greater. In other words, plenty of housing but not enough to go around! In other cities one finds that there is a significant number of empty housing units yet there is a shortage or “scarcity” of housing – think of the overbuilding Shanghai yet the high degree of homelessness. Does Shanghai have a surfeit of housing units or a scarcity? It depends on the measure that one uses and it depends on the descriptive criteria one uses in setting out either surfeit or scarcity. And it also is a function of the measure’s purposes; i.e., to what policy, social practice or in terms of what argument or context is the concept to be applied.

There are manifold ways to measure shortages in housing. Of course, we can look in the most conventional way and ask about the number of residences available in terms of number of people seeking them as in the example above.

We can also measure need and demand in other terms as well (and this list is not complete): Availability of housing in relation to Continued on page 47 >>

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46 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

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Result of speculation practices half of the houses are unfinished and a big deal of its inhabitants highly indebted. No social mixity. A place designed for cars.

A T M O S P H E ... the slow R mobility network of the city was intertwinedEwith the water network, which

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The downtown: located in a peripherical situation in relation with the metro BORG HÖNNUÐ FYRIR BÍLA MIÐBORGIN ER EKKI MIÐSVÆÐIS Í Á HÖFUÐBORGARSVÆÐIN A city designed for cars.

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EF MAÐUR HEFUR EKKI BÍL IfER ALLT LANGT you do not have a car,

... abandoned and underused buildings Jón Hámundur Marinósson, Lbhí The downtown: located in a peripherical situation in relation with the metropolita FYRIR BÍLASalinas MIÐBORGIN ER EKKI MIÐSVÆÐIS Í Á HÖFUÐBORGARSVÆÐINU were taken intoBORG use for HÖNNUÐ shared activities Carlos Gonzalez, TU Delft A city designed for cars. and served as places for meetings and Perrine Frick, Universitat co-operation?

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EF MAÐUR HEFUR EKKI BÍL IfER ALLT LANGT Í BURTU you do not have a car, everything is far.

... Bauhaus, a department store completed in 2008 but not taken into use, became a centre for all kinds of vehicles for leisure and mobility in the area?

Commuting from the suburbs to get to the dow LANGT FERÐALAG FRÁ BORGARJAÐRINUM NIÐUR Result of speculation practices half ÍofMIÐBÆ the houses a

WHAT IF...

inhabitants highly indebted. No social mixity. A pla

... it were possible to use the infrastructure of Reykjavik differently? How would this change the city and its functionality?

Result of speculation practices half of the houses are unfinished and a big deal of its

47 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 45: Thoughts about Scarcity

cost is probably the most salient issue in most discussions of housing scarcity; e.g., it is often the case that there are more than enough actual units but a shortage of units of a particular cost usually low cost. * Availability of residences of particular square footage * Availability of residences available with x or y number of rooms * Availability of dwellings of a given amount of square feet per person * Availability in particular neighbourhoods or locations Platform. * Availability of housing by type; e.g., single family housing, apartments, ese public transport nodes In the scale of the metropolitan area of Reykjavik, the proposed system of the development of “urban platforms will provide easier access to services that would take advantage low or high-rise, integrated commueating new centralities were of the economies of scale that the new integration of public transport nity housing etc. e sprawling character of the will bring defining public places for strong and active social interaction * Availability of dwellings with or rms includes also the interthat with time and according to the characteristics of its setting will be rt linking the high frequency differentiating. without kitchens, or indoor plumbing ould connect the platform to (relevant in much of the South) * And any combination of the above hat will set a framework that measures; e.g., availability of housing that provides space for the by type in this or that location or neighthe city according to future bourhood, or availability of housing with cross-ventilation, with central heating etc. ... platforms connected mobility intrastrucThe permutations if not infinite are ture systems as spaces of leisure and food considerable. Thus to speak of a scarcity Platform and local centralities.

SITUATION 2: MOSFELLSBÆR 2 production? of housing is of little meaning. We need to know what kind of scarcity in regard to what set of measures or attributes.

Availability also needs to be defined in terms of the groups or individuals making the demand and the method of distribution - is it calculated by individual purchasing or renting power or is it assessed in terms of social needs. The issue Alternatives of dwelling provide a diversity in size, shape and uses but of individual versus social measures is also in the way of living, sharing, growing,... not unimportant. If we see housing as a commodity that is to be individually owned or rented how we calculate what is necessary is potentially very different from an assessment based on the need to provide dwellings for groups of people; e.g., the aged, the young; single family households or extended families. Not only will our numbers be different the Before kinds of housing we will need or that are Intermodal integration of public transport and the platform. appropriate to the individual or group in question will vary. So then will the architecture.

If we add to this the reasons for one or another scarcity our challenges become more varied. What is demanded of a situation where there is an overall shortage In the context of the area of Ulfarsadalur, the location of the platform of units and need for many dwellings, reacts to the specific landscape conditions of the area: a river valley that as for example at the end of each of the connects a lagoon upstream with the sea. world wars, is different from the challenges raised by market based housing 5°C è 30°C where there may be no overall shortage of units but a shortfall of units at a given time cost usually low-cost. In the South, the Because of the pumping station located by the Varmá river it should be challenges posed by housing scarcity is possible to control the heat of the water and increase it little by little in more often an issue of the availability of longer term so the ecosystem of the river can adjust. formal and conventional housing and not With the river hot enough to go swimming in it all year around, it beAfter dwellings per se. More often too is the Integration of public transport on previuos car space in the highways. comes the perfect place for an outdoor spa. issue not so much of a general shortfall but where housing for different groups The landscape qualities are used as well as a tool for providing both is located. And most critically, how one recreational and nature features to the residents of the area as well as might respond to often housing shortbeing part of soft-mobility corridor in which different walking paths, bicycle ages, whether in the North or South, is a lanes and horse track play a role in the mobility strategy. function not only of the type of shortage but whether responses are limited by the Uncertainty surrounds the semi-finished neighbourhood of Urfasadalur. political will to address the shortage or Reacting to that we proposed that if new constructions are to built in the significant technical issues associated area, the priority should be give to the river valley for benefiting from its relatively close location to the other complementary neighbourhoods and with any housing upgrade or provision. to the slow mobility network. At the interior of the area a flexible legal To speak of scarcity in relation to framework should let the existing inhabitants of the site to use temporarily creativity in housing design then is neithe empty plots for activities that could support them including small ther straightforward. Depending on the greenhouses and workshops. 44 ... the urban landscape on the edge of the scarcity referenced and the social and ecocity served an example of collective and with the improvement nomic conditions in which this scarcity is These actionsas inside the neighbourhood together use? transformation all across the metropolitan of found , what needs to be addressed in the ofdemocratic mobility andland an urban Reykjavik with the incremental development of the platforms will set the design of housing will be significantly Alternative uses for the currently vacants lots. bases for a more inclusive and suggesting urban environment for the different. Take for example addressing future.

7 m3 è 1 house (3 housing bedrooms) shortages and challenges asthe sociated with the development of slums.

For the most part slums, it is commonly argued (UN Habitat Slum Book), are the result of some kind of scarcity be it of affordable housing, or housing in general.

HELGAFELLSLAND But depending on the type of slum and a fertile soil the type of housing that is being included in our assessment, the design issues will vary radically.

‘Slums’ are found in many shapes, ... the fertile soil and abandoned infrasizes and locations and with a varistructures responded to a call for innovaety of legal and socially accepted types tion in housing incorporating practices of tenure. Many slums were and in some that improved household economies by case still are found in the central part growing food? of our cities. They may be the result of SCIBE Scarcity and Creativity in the Build Enviroment I Aprilarkitekter Oslo I Reykjavik Capital Area I draft 00000000 I layers:

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direct investment in cheap but profitable housing by wealthy landlords seeking a maximum profit as they were in many of the notorious slums of cities like London, Manchester and New York. St. Giles Rookery described by Dickens was such a slum as was the infamous neighbourhood of Five Points in New York depicted most recently in the movie Gangs of New York

by Martin Scorsese. Or they may be areas that were previously middle class or even wealthy communities; their houses once solid bourgeois residences or grand mansions now divided into many small flats with often more than one family living in them. Some of the poorest and most destitute and rundown parts of Harlem in New York City, or central St. Louis and even parts of central Bogota or the medina in Rabat were previously more prosperous and respectable. Finally, within the central core of many of our cities are found what we might call slum estates or areas built privately by factory owners or the state; e.g., the chawls of Mumbai or the “public projects” of Chicago.

Other slums may be found in or close to the central city but are informal settlements or small even building specific slums. In Nairobi, the huge and heavily populated slum of Kibera is found not ten to fifteen minutes away from the CBD by bus yet exists as a kind of island without a clear and consistent pattern of connection to the city, with a significantly different morphology than the more formally developed neighbourhoods and with little infrastructure that connects Kibera to the city at large or that serves the community internally as dwell. There are Kibera’s throughout the South, for example Dharavi, in Mumbai, India, or the inner city areas of Ibaden.

More commonly, though, the fastest accumulation of slums exists in the marginal and peripheral areas of the cities of the South. Everywhere from the favelas of Rio de Janeiro to the Flats in Capetown, or the margins of Durban or the rapidly expanding slums on the outskirts of so many Asian and Latin American cities like Mumbai and Buenos Aires. Even cities like Paris in France and Glasgow in Scotland have and still are experiencing such peri-urban ‘slummification’, to coin a neologism.

House types found in slums also vary considerably. If what we mostly are shown in articles about slums are the self-built and informal huts made of mud, metal signs, (name of steel for roofs) and other found materials that are so common in cities of the South, they make up only one type of slum housing. At the other extreme, places that were once mansions now provide overcrowded dwellings at the heart of some our more famous slums: think again of parts of Harlem in New York City. In between we find all sorts of house types from the high-rise public housing projects like Pruitt-Igoe – which was eventually blown up because of its levels of crime and destitution – the solid working class apartment buildings of so many American cites; e.g., the South Bronx, the tenements of so many inner cities, the chawls of Mumbai, and the historical buildings of Ibadan and Rabat among others. Effectively there is no one house type that may be clearly called slums. This is important to keep in mind because it suggests that when we address the challenges posed by slums they are not reducible to one or another design approach or solution. Some house types would just need less crowding and simple upgrading while others possibly might need to be eliminated as their type and their numbers make difficult if not impossible to simply service and upgrade them.

In a similar way the spatial forms of slums also vary and also, and in more important ways – present a number of different challenges for designers and other dealing with slums. In one instance, we are faced with neighbourhoods that are essentially no different in terms of their spatial form, their street pattern, their infrastructure services, and their connectivity to the rest of the city if not the conditions in which they

The forest by Varmá will connect to the green scarf of the capital area.

By using the green scarf as a woodland production, a total of 6400 ha, it’s possible to make 150 medium sized (93m2) housing by using only 1% of the forest (depending on tree height).

Continued on page 49 >>

48 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

BUILDING

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49 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is SCIBE Scarsity and Creativity in the Build Enviroment I Aprilarkitekter Oslo I Reykjavik Capital Area I draft 00000000 I layers:

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are kept. In other instances we are faced with the neighbourhoods that are essentially without OG basic infrastructure FYRIR EFTIR such as piped water, solid waste removal, and sewage, which have a physical structure and street pattern that are distinctly different from the rest of the more formal city, that is often badly connected to the core city and which is filled with self-built generally impermanent structures. Slums in many of our central cities are little different in physical form or aesthetic from the rest of the city that surrounds them; again think of places in Paris, in New York, parts of Bogota among others.

Other neighbourhoods we call slums; the self-built informal developments, have a very different spatial order than the more formal city of which they are a part. Their street structure, their densities, the way they connect to the rest of the city through their structure of streets, their physical accessibility for cars, buses and trucks and their often lack of any orthogonal logic contrast considerably what we have come to see as the conventional urban structure that surrounds them.4 And again the variety of slum spatial forms as with housing present us with challenges that are not different only in detail but are poles apart in regard to the larger social and political issues they raise and the design strategies needed to address them.

For example, one might well argue that to respond to a condition like that imposed by a slum like Kibera with high rise or middle class housing - often the result of what is seen as creative urban upgrading - no matter formally or aesthetically pleasing or inventive is not particularly creative as it does not address the issues Kibera poses for those who live there. Indeed self-built mud shacks that engage with the conditions found in Kibera may be more creative to the extent that the designs address issues of disease, comfort, cleanliness but in conceivably unaesthetic and conventional forms. It depends on what is seen as scarce – new and inventive house types or housing serves the most people in a reasonably affordable and salubrious manner. You can take you choice. The key though is that it is a choice – it is never obvious because how we measure scarcity is never obvious.

In much of Northern Europe we often find social housing from the 1930’s compared to contemporary housing. Usually, the housing from the 1930’s is seen as of higher quality and a more creative solution to the challenges posed by the dearth of affordable housing in either period. We need to ask though whether these two periods are comparable. In the first instance scarcity was seen as a social challenge and the result of larger social forces – housing was seen as a social good and more often than not underwritten by government. Today for the most part scarcity is seen in individual terms as consequence of market forces – housing is defined in terms of market processes and built by private developers. Design in each instance aims at different targets.

In the first instance the design issue is how to make housing that will serve as many people as possible in a reasonably decent manner and provide decent social and community spaces and that will meet broad social measures. In the second instance, design is measured in terms of its attractiveness to those who can afford it and its potential in terms of resale – this of course will encourage a kind of design that meets individual expectations. What would make good design in one instance might be problematic in the other.

I could go on: The kind of creativity called for when one is addressing issues of square footage per capita is different from design issues that seek to deal with numbers of rooms; designing community based housing is different than designing single family housing; placing housing in an open green field is different than placing it within the dense city fabric and designing middle income housing is different than designing low income housing. All these housing types and responses can and often are

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2. Reintroducing nature to the vacant and abandoned area, try to plant local plant (e.g. lupine) to improve both the soil condition and the environment; after the vegetation condition and surrounding environment become better there could be temporary structures (e.g. green house), sports fields, and camping sites to bring people and more activities in.

... Hafnarfjörður were better connected with other areas in the capital area through water links?

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responses to the problems associated with housing scarcity but they set different conditions and contexts. What then is a creative response to one may not be to the other. While we can disagree that one is a “better” architecture than another along any number of different grounds, the issue is the grounds – the criteria for the design in each case differ as does the criteria for judging their creativity.

And there lies the challenge: to root the issue and the analysis not in broad theoretical terms but to address them within local contexts and with local realities in mind. The issue indeed may not even be scarcity or creativity per se but the way each delineation of both and each response addresses with local conditions.

Notes 1 In Burke: Selected Works of Edmund Burke Vol. 4 , Miscellaneous Writings.

2 Matthaei J, 1984, “Rethinking Scarcity: Neoclassicism, NeoMalthusianism, and NeoMarxism” Review of Radical Political Economics 16 81-943www.nyc.gov/html/hpd/html/pr/vacancy.shtml 4 Some argue that this new slum morphology has major lessons for city building and spatial design.

SCARCITY AND CREATIVITY Jon Goodbun, London

In this paper I will draw together some of the insights that have been gained out of my participation in a major EU HERA funded research project that has run for the last two years between a small network of European architecture schools, led by the University of Westminster (and which will be completed in summer 2013) – entitled ‘Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment’. I was a co-author of the original funding bid, and have been an active member of the team since then.

This paper will condense some of my/ our theoretical insights into what scarcity is as a concept and reality, and will also report on the findings of the design research project teams more broadly.

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Scarcity and Post-Scarcity We find ourselves today in a paradoxical situation in a highly unevenly developed world. Since the middle of the twentieth century, if not earlier, it would have been perfectly possible to reorganise human society such that there was an abundance of good food and water, and a rewarding advanced industrial-ecological urban environment and global landscape for the global human population.

Tragically, today, the very possibility of a post-scarcity society seems to be slipping over the horizon, and is barely imaginable ... but it is not gone yet. Still, rather than technological progress leading to the liberation of really-free-time (the ultimate scarcity), many of us today find ourselves working constantly under conditions of affluenza, to become ever poorer. Yet in other parts of the world, but also just a few streets away from us, fellow human beings are living under conditions of abject poverty.

At the same time, a newly constructed threat of scarcity shadows our near future. It is estimated that there will be 10 billion extra humans added to global population in the next decade. While we deal with the implications of that (which we could easily do on the basis of different global economic models)1, climate change events multiplied by the apparent endgame of this phase of capitalism suggest a very real potential for chronic scarcities across both developed and developing countries. Many of the new scarcities produced by climate and environmental change will manifest themselves through space, and there will be new forms of environmental and spatial scarcity produced.

Capitalism and Scarcity Material scarcity, as the great anarchist Continued on page 51 >>

50 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

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Kapelluhraun - 860 ára Hellnahraun - 1060 ára

Opposite: Linked to golf course.

Skúlatúnshraun - 3000 ára Reykjavíkurgrágrýti - 200.000 ára

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Controlled Usage of rainwater

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Lucile Ado, Universitat Politèchnica de Catalunya Zongkai Zhou, KU Leuven Sæunn Kolbrún Þórólfsdóttir, Lbhí NEIGHBOURS

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MORPHOLOGIES OF NATURAL ELEMANTS

51 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

SUSTAINABLE DISTRACTION

technical solutions. At least this is how they are << Continued from page 49: being presented.

Scarcity and Creativity Perhaps the production of the built environment is suffering from a “sustainable philosopher Murray Bookchin once distraction”? noted – drawing heavily, it must be said, A socially more sustainable society calls for upon the insights of Karl Marx – has been a holistic perspective. a feature of human societies up to the Kjersti Hembre, Reykjavik Let us define a new kind of pilot projects, present day: that do not primarily concentrate on fulfilling »» until very recently, human society has Presented at The Oslo Architecture the rules and regulations of tomorrow and that developed around the brute issues posed Festival, 1 April 2011. Published don`t have to pay off – at least not to begin by unavoidable material scarcity and their in: What is the question?, with. Measurable qualities should not be the subjective counterpart in denial, renunciaNational Association of Norwegian main focus – the aim would be to give room tion and guilt.2 Architects 2012. www.arkitektur. for projects that address creative alternative The various forms of domination no/?nid=227304 strategies for housing and city development and inequality which have structured Are architects not the perfect actors for – projects that provoke, trig curiosity, enthu- social relations within almost all human building societies – preferably sustainable siasm and debate, through focusing on the societies necessarily emerged out of the TO GOLF COURSE ones, also considering the social aspect of social (as well as even the aesthetic) potential everyday reality of material scarcities. It in architecture. the term? was struggle over scarce resources which One way of initiating a renaissance for com- created the possibility, perhaps the necesOur office has given it a try, in various contexts. On one occasion we proposed munal solutions might be for the authorities to sity, for the production of structures of THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE UNFINISHED a minimum size (percentage ofAREA: total power in societies, in human selves, and shared USING greenhouses as social spaces in a introduce housing area, but the wish for increased m2) for indoor shared space in new housing against the wider living world. Bookchin density and larger private gardens soon projects, area that does not have a direct affect again states that: displaced the project’s hothouses. The on the sales price. Or one should make them »» material society provided the historic area has received positive attention as a low count – prove their value. As these spaces offer rationale for the development of the patriarcost, low energy project, but we wonder relevant qualities for peoples everyday lives, chal family, private property, class dominawhat hindered the social intentions from one should think they could be integrated tion and the state; it nourished the great having an impact on the solutions? As a quite concretely in the overall sales picture. divisions that pitted town against country, colleague commented, “Social interaction Reintroduction of shared laundry facilities and mind against sensuousness, work against ... the present infrastructure and unused today is limited to tolerating the clinking of cold rooms, as we recall from 20′s housing play, individual against society, and, buildings were taken into temporary and the neighbour`s cocktails from the other projects, is once again relevant, both economfinally, the individual against himself.3 ically and environmentally. Shared space for permanent use by the tourist industry? side of the fence.”

Bookchin shows how material scarcity At the same time, we observe how kids` homework, parties and common guest must be understood as the connection business interests in smaller cities fight the rooms could be introduced as a basic ingredi- between the two distinct modes of untraces of urbanity that threaten to sneak in ent for new projects, demanded or encouraged derstanding alienation in modernity as i. through architectural competitions. The through awards or subsidies. Similarly the our individual alienation within and from municipalities` aim with the competitions authorities could encourage shared roof oneself, and from a lived and sensuous is to generate growth. But the winning terraces, green houses, allotment gardens and engagement with matter, and ii. our colNG THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE UNFINISHED AREA:ability to do this is even set a maximum size to private balconies lective estrangement from social producproposals` potential rarely obvious to the local shop owners, (as opposed to the increasing minimum size tion and the non-human natures which for whom parking capacity and profit are introduced by real estate forces) – in order to provide the context of all human practice strongly connected. They adamantly state encourage enlivening activity in the common in general. He concludes with a particucamping by useful a lotsdefinition, stating that: outdoorspace, space. it’s closed to the naturelarly that theyAwill not toleratetake losingplace incomethis on empty Self-building canusfull be developed andaapplied festival of days, as visitors occupy customer In this »» scarcity pedestrian connexions. area it’s to ride horse across theis more than a condition of scarce what it is this – an invaluable parkinglavalandscape. lots. Local authorities, of course, Maybe we canforimagine campingway asofaachieving stop into a resources: newonethe word, if it is to mean anything pay great heed to these complaints, and low cost housing, which also fosters a collecin human terms, must encompass the social road forpriority the people want beaten pass. tive spirit andtoa see senseIceland of pride. off Thisthe method parkingtouristic often remains first in the who relations and cultural apparatus that foster village centers. One can`t really blame the would also draw attention to the astounding insecurity in the psyche.4 municipalities, but who could convince economical difference between the building Michel Foucault similarly pays close the shop owner that the parking doesn’t costs and the market price of new homes. attention to the historical development ASTRUCTURE OF THE UNFINISHED AREA: have to happen right on their doorstep?

The suggested investment in pilot and of human subjectivity under changing That this way of organising the city works model projects could put the production of modes of scarcity. He describes how in against a strategic densification and living environments in a critical perspective the mercantilist period of capitalism – programming that might have generated and also highlight what is otherwise taking which dominated in Europe from the functional public spaces beneficial for all place in the sector, with regard to speculation start of 17th to the start of 18th century – a shops in the area in the long run, not to and a lack of focus on unquantifiable qualities. particular set of practices and apparatus Increased prioritizing of shared and com- were developed to deal with the threat of mention the inhabitants?

As collective solutions are considered munal solutions will undoubtedly generate scarcity. These practices were replaced in outdated and housing and city development increased friction between people. This can the 18th century by the ideas of the physineed to pay off, our field has found new, give rise to diverse and interesting results – on ocratic economists and the emergence of ethical directions in which to concentrate the one hand tension and conflict, on the other laissez-faire thinking: a different mode of its activity and engagement. Architects ap- hand better functioning living environments dealing with the threat of material scarmping take place this empty space, it’s closed to the nature a lotsabout and fruitful local processes – quite probably a city, and a different collective subjectivity. propriate new, valuable by knowledge edestrian connexions. In this area it’s usfull to ride adesign, horseenergy across the and better quality of life.

Foucault describes how mercantile universal reduction capitalism organised grain production and into build sustainably regardandscape. Maybe we can imagine this campinghow astoaplan stop a newone around an anti-scarcity system – notably ing the use of resources. With a common stic road for the people who want to see Iceland beaten pass. characterised by price controls, progoaloff of a the sustainable society, they propose hibition of hoarding, limits on export solutions on how to implement this knowl(and also limits to amount of land to be ace this empty space, it’s closed to the nature by a lots edge in architecture and urban planning. cultivated to prevent excessive abunexions. In this area it’s usfull to ride a horse across the Volumes are reduced, solar collectors are dance) – primarily to prevent scarcity ybe we can imagine this camping as a stop into a newone projected onto strategically angled surfaces provoking revolt and political unrest in and there is an ongoing densification pro- Kjersti Hembre he people who want to see Iceland off the beaten pass. the cities and towns. He describes two cess around communication nodes. At the same time we regularly check that turning Kjersti is an architect, urbanist and partner general frameworks for thinking about horizon’ of circles are sufficient, that the slopes are in April Arkitekter, an Oslo-based archi- ‘philosophical-political not too steep and that the project includes tectural practice. She studied architecture scarcity as ‘the juridicial-moral concept a balanced ventilation system with heat re- and urban planning at the Norwegian of evil human nature, of fallen nature, and the cosmological-political concept of covery, fulfilling the overall energy criteria. University of Science and Technology. fortune.’5 However, the mercantilist antiIncreasingly, there seems to be “correct scarcity system frequently failed, and the answers” in our field. Has the project Arna Mathiesen emerging physiocratic free marketeers achieved the right kWh/m2/year, the ... the position of the area was reconcepproject is considered interesting and well Arna is a practicing architect, and a 'tried to arrive at an apparatus for … tualised in relation to its proximity to the done. If, additionally, it is a pilot project on partner in April Arkitekter in Oslo. She working within the reality of fluctuations Prykjanes peninsula and the fact that it is universal design, it is a clear choice for any studied philosophy in Reykjavik and between abundance/scarcity, dearness/ unsuitable for permanent residency? guided tour of contemporary architecture architecture and urbanism in London cheapness … which is, I think, precisely and will be presented in magazines and (Kingston Polytechnic), Oslo (Oslo School an apparatus of security and no longer a on seminars. If, on top of this, the project of Architecture) and the US (Princeton juridicial-disciplinary system.'6 Writing in 1793 one of the physiocrats, can refer to use of life cycle analysis it is University School of Architecture). Arna is immediately also attractive for research. the project leader for the SCIBE-Reykjavik Louis-Paul Abeille stated that so long as there is free circulation in markets But isn`t it so that, in a longer perspective, project. then ‘scarcity is a chimera’, and Abbot the criteria that are now defining what is Ferdinando Galiani furthermore stated good or bad in architecture are matter of Giambattista Zaccariotto that ‘scarcity is, for three quarters of the course, self-evident truths? And doesn’t this applause of truisms mean that the Giambattista is an architect and educator. cases, a malady of the imagination’.7 As society, when it comes down to handing He studied Architecture and Urbanism something that afflicted an entire popuout scholarships, prizes and commissions, at Università IUAV di Venezia and at lation at once (what Foucault calls the runs the risk of being dominated by proj- Delft University of Technology). In 2010 ‘scarcity-scourge’) scarcity had indeed ects that from a more holistic perspective he concluded a European PhD study: largely become a chimera, although this may be considered main stream, though Integrated Urban Landscapes, Water is replaced by a structural necessity for clever, rather than exceptional and Sensitive Design. He currently teaches an anonymous some-of-the-population at The Oslo School of Architecture and to endure scarcity, sometimes (which repioneering?

Many of today’s so called pilot projects Design (AHO) and works as an independ- mains the basis for much of the capitalist apparatus today). While mercantile law seem to be specialised examples of ent architect.

WHAT IF...

CONTRIBUTORS SCIBE REYKJAVIK

WHAT IF...

WHAT IF ?

re scarcity was based upon a set of prohibitions, price controls and a set of legal prohibitions or moral imperatives, under laissez-faire scarcity-capitalism Foucault find the origins of a contemporary apparatus of security: »» the apparatus of security … "lets things happen." Not that everything is left alone, but laissez-faire is indispensable at a certain level: allowing prices to rise, allowing scarcity to develop, and letting people go hungry so as to prevent something else happening, namely the introduction of the general scourge of scarcity.

For Foucault the modern laissez-faire anti-scarcity system of dispersing scarcity through freer market mechanisms was more than just a more advanced form of capitalist organisation, it was a ‘security apparatus’ which constituted a new form of collective subjectivity – the atomised mass of ‘population’: »» a political subject, as a new collective subject absolutely foreign to the juridicial and political thought of earlier centuries is appearing here in its complexity, with its caesuras8 Modern capitalism developed then, as a specific historical form of an apparatus of scarcity based upon an ideology of laissez-faire. David Harvey states that 'scarcity is socially organised in order to permit the market to function,'9 whilst Andy Merrifield has similarly observes that: »» The fundamental basis of a capitalist economy, of a society based on the profit motive, on exchange value and money relations, is scarcity – the active creation and perpetuation of scarcity.10 For Bookchin however, the position of scarcity under capitalism does not stop at this point. The laissez-faire approach to structuring a capitalist economy coincided with massive developments and transformations in science, technology and manufacturing. Modernity, for the first time in human history, created the material possibility of what Bookchin describes as a ‘post-scarcity society’, a condition where all of the essential necessities of a life are delivered with a minimum amount of human labour. If the need to labour under the threat of scarcity had historically lay at the heart of all forms of oppression, inequality and alienation, both in societies and within selves, then for Bookchin post-scarcity describes 'fundamentally more than a mere abundance of the means of life: it decidedly includes the kind of life these means support.'11. Writing in the early nineteen-seventies, he argues that: »» the industrial capitalism of Marx's time organised its commodity relations around a prevailing system of material scarcity; the state capitalism of our time organises its commodity relations around a prevailing system of material abundance. A century ago scarcity had to be endured, today it has to be enforced.12 The condition today is arguably even more full of complexity and contradiction. Conceptions of post-scarcity society continues to animate much of the political imaginary of both of the great liberation philosophies of modernity – anarchism and communism. Terry Eagleton has recently restated how Marx's greatest contribution to the then already existing idea of communism was to realise that it must have a material basis, and Bookchin agrees that: »» to have seen these material preconditions for human freedom, to have emphasised that freedom presupposes free time and the material abundance for abolishing free time as a social privilege, is the great contribution of Karl Marx to modern revolutionary theory.13 But we also find an interesting postscarcity discussion happening in more mainstream arenas. Philip Sadler is one example of a contemporary business theorist who is optimistically arguing that capitalism will necessarily pass through a wholesale and largely ‘unforeseen’ transformation in the coming decades, referring to many tendencies that would not be out of place in a more Marxian or autonomist setting, such as: falling costs of production, open-source intellectual Continued on page 53 >>

52 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 1: From Scarcity to Abundance

hygienic and psychological concerns that had previously been translated into building codes for social housing.

Hygienic concerns, linked to overcrowding and low sanitary standards, had been discussed since late 1800, drove architects to aim to provide as much sunlight as possible in all rooms, leading to thin lamella blocks with balconies attached that would not take too much light from the indoor spaces, with generous green-spaces in between. While mentalhygienic issues, linked to psychological factors, lead to the use of each room within an apartment being specified in an attempt to provide more privacy for each member of a household.

These two factors have been some of the key areas of study during the war years. The extensive survey ‘People and Homes’, mennesker og boliger, on the living conditions in Oslo conducted by psychiatrists, psychologist, kindergarden teachers, doctors, architects and engineers of the Oslo Byes Velforeningen (Brochmann et al. 1948), influenced the prevailing ideals of the quality of social housing that the government needed to provide.

Most architects thus agreed with Jacob Christie Kielland, chairman of the survey and later head of the building department, who wrote in 1945 in the first issue of Byggekunst published after the war: ‘It would be worse if the reconstruction should be based on plans that do not provide a usable basis for a modern, democratic society.’ (Kielland 1945), rallying architects to use design as a means of translating the political ideals into built environments.

This new definition of housing as a social right that should be available to all citizens (Sørvoll 2011), was a major change in the housing system which, had so far been based on market- forces, providing good and spacious homes for those who could afford them, while leaving the great majority to be content with less well-appointed homes. As a solution, a socially balanced building program ‘roof over our heads’, that aimed at providing satisfactory dwellings for as many people as possible, was introduced.

The foundation of Husbanken, the State Housing Bank, as an instrument to finance social housing, bears witness to this. The State Housing Bank guaranteed the desired universal access to housing by granting loans to all citizens and housing associations that were willing to accept its conditions. The conditions included, for instance, requirements of minimum standards as well as restrictions on maximum standards such as materials and living areas. By 1980 more than 80% of the post-war housing stock in Norway had been financed by the State Housing Bank (Reiersen et al. 1996).

Municipalities like Oslo supported social housing by providing access to building plots as well as subsidies to housing co-operatives like OBOS, the Oslo Housing and Savings Association. During the years following the Second World War and the heyday of social housing in the 60s, Oslo’s housing budget remained more or less stable in terms of percentage of the total municipal budget. These subsidies were significantly reduced from the 70s on, illustrating the shift from a universal approach to housing provision to a policy that aimed at selective groups, such as old or disabled people who had difficulties in competing in the housing market (Lund 2000, Reiersen et al. 1996, Annaniassen and Bengtsson 2006).

The dual role of the State Housing Bank as a national institution that both financed and ensured the quality of dwellings is remarkable. Especially in the early years when the need for a definition of standards for architectural quality fuelled the discussion about what were considered appropriate housing standards. The discussion about what was considered good housing generally demanded measureable guidelines and standards in order to be assessed. Building standards and room sizes became the main measure of quality in housing, even in a climate where the ambition was to build the best homes

within the given financial limitations, and the continuous improvement of designs and processes was considered a collective task that involved architects, planners politicians and the public (Hansen and Guttu 2000).

In Norway, a traditional home-owner society, the ideal of “owning one’s own house” was merged with a more collective approach to create the policy of ‘sosial boligpolitikk’, were based on an ideal of ‘owning one’s own house’ – either individually or collectively (Lund 1988).

Large-scale social housing was mostly organized as housing-cooperatives.

This specific approach has previously be explained as a reaction to failures in the rental market in earlier decades, where owners were profiting from the poor living condition of the their tenants.

(Annaniassen 2006). In Norwegian housing cooperatives members would either have occupancy rights of a dwelling, or be waiting to gain those rights as members of the same organization. This solidarity was especially evident in the early years when part of the construction process was carried out as “dugnad”, collective voluntary community work (Annaniassen, 1991).

In Oslo this new cooperative housing was not only provided within the original city borders, but after the political climate enabled a merger with the surrounding municipality, Aker, a unique opportunity was created to built new communities from scratch, especially on newly acquired farmland. A series of satellite towns along newly built railway lines were thus planned according to a new general plan for the whole city. These settlements were supposed to be more than dormitory towns, based on the notion of creating healthy modern neighborhoods with a variety of shared public facilities, common spaces, public services and easy access to nature. (Benum 2002) Lambertseter Lambertseter is the earliest example of the post-war developments that were built under conditions of scarce resources (Brochmann 1958, Spjudvik 2007).

But many other settlements followed.

Between the early years and 1960 a total of 45.000 housing units had been built mostly on the eastern and south-eastern outskirts of the city (Lund 2000).

Lambertseter, was built in 1949 by the Oslo Housing and Savings Association as part of the ‘roof over our heads’ state program for housing. The layout of this new housing area south east of central Oslo, was based on a master plan by the Norwegian architect Frode Rinnan (well known as the ‘House Architect of the Labor party’ and author of the plan for the 1952 Oslo Olympics). His scheme for the area was inspired by both the German tradition of urban planning and the English garden city movement (Spjudvik 2007).

The development took the form of cooperatives in independent neighborhoods consisting of three-five storey blocks, and was supposed to strengthen the idea of the new social-democratic society. The plan had a hierarchical organization over four levels, on a first level were common playgrounds in front of the kitchen window, on the second level the neighborhood with playing fields for older children and a local shop, on the third level the vicinity center with schools and day care, youth club and kindergarden and traffic station would serve 4-6 neighborhoods with different typologies. On the fourth level the community center with municipal service buildings, a church, more varied shops, offices, hotels and high schools was planned as a district center for the whole satellite town. (Haslum 2008, Rolfsen 1950) As a result 3300 housing units, most of them three or four storeys housing blocks were grouped in 14 neighborhoods or hamlets around carefully preserved and landscaped greenspaces. Compared to later developments these earlier satellites towns are characterized by their relatively small scale and traditional building. The use of non-prefabricated building materials made standardization and mass-production unnecessary and gave an opportunity to design housing

individually. (Haslum 2008) The majority of apartments consisted of two bedrooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and a storage room. The architecture was intentionally kept modest, but represented a significant raise of standards compared to the overcrowded flats of inner-city Oslo at that time, which were badly insulated and lacked bathrooms and warm water (Bjørnsen and Kronborg 2009).

The minimal dimensions of the apartments required both functional apartment layouts as well as smart furniture solutions. This led to an active promotion in interior exhibitions and publications of modern furniture design that was flexible, multifunctional and inexpensive (Reiersen et al. 1996).

Compared to the existing housing stock, the new apartments were designed with a focus on a modern nuclear family.

The kitchen, for instance, often faced outdoor playgrounds, so the housewife could keep an eye on her offspring while cooking. Social life evolved around shops, collective functions such as shared laundry facilities, and a variety of sports facilities.

Lambertseter housed 18.000 people in its heydays and is still a popular living area for 10.000 inhabitants (Spjudvik 2007).

The drop in population being a sure sign of rising space standards, which are indicative of higher disposable incomes.

Although the architecture of Lambertseter and other early projects of publicly subsidized housing were simple in their architecture and built out of lightweight concrete with plain rendered facades, the obvious raise in building standards influenced the public housing discourse. The perceived “luxury” of this social housing fuelled an on-going debate about housing standards and innovative and efficient use of building materials (Kvarv 2003), led by engineer and private developer Olav Selvaag, who challenged the political ideas behind new housing projects within the existing institutional setting of the Oslo Housing and Savings Society. (Hasselknippe and Selvaag 1982) Not many years after they were finished, the early satellite towns were criticized, influenced by the English debate of the ‘malady of the new town’. As stated by the ‘committee for city design’, tilsynsrådet for byen utseende, after a visit to several new housing projects in 1954: ‘The committee got the impression that the restrictions- how they are applied at the moment- are so tight that they do not give any space for architectural phantasy.’ (utseende 1954) This critique of the early social housing projects and their aesthetic monotony was paired with a critique on the lack of community sense they produced. While in 1950 sanitary and social problems were still problems associated with high densities, a shift had since occurred and social critique was now directed at too low densities and lack of activities and service facilities.

As a result intimate social neighborhoods were abandoned as an unrealistic ideal – both socially and economically.

This change of opinion followed the international modernist discourse that called for increase in density to avoid sprawl and to achieve richer social environments (Haslum 2008) as housing estates from the 1960s such as Ammerud bear witness.

Ammerud And so we arrive at Ammerud, a development planned in the early 1960s which illustrates the influence of technical innovations and demand for efficiency in the building industry. Prefabrication of concrete elements that were pieced together at site made it possible to produce housing in what was considered a fast and cheap manner and in large numbers (Kronborg 2003). (However it was later proven that high-rise building was more expensive than low rise and the only economy was on land acquisition).

Ammerud was designed by the Norwegian architect Håkon Mjelva, a member of the progressive architecture group PAGON that had been strongly influenced by the international tendencies of iconic large-scale housing projects.

He conceived Ammerud as a dormitory town consisting of terraced houses with

contrasting high-rise blocks and lowrises, some of them in long terraces, and provided with a local center at the subway station. Although a train station was opened in 1966, most of the planning in the area was dictated by the emerging car-culture of the time (Kronborg 2003, Haslum 2008).

Altogether 246 housing units in lowrise blocks, 1245 apartments in high-rise blocks to the west and 236 homes in atrium-houses to the north of a rather flat field of agricultural land were built.

The neighborhood of Ammerudlia being the biggest ever housing project built in Norway with 984 units located in 4 highrise buildings with up to 13 storeys (Tvedt et al. 2010). Due to requirements for efficiency of the size of the concrete parts and the placements of the crane tracks for assembly the flats got deeper, with less façade-length per apartment. As a result kitchens, bathrooms and other secondary rooms were placed in the middle without direct openings for sunlight or ventilation. Outdoor spaces between the buildings were kept wide and open, as undifferentiated communal outdoor spaces, complemented by balconies as their clearly defined private counterpart.

The way in which these new housing projects were designed and built became more and more subject to critique. The Ammerud report by Thorbjørn Hansen and Anne Sæterdal from 1969, describing the problems of the large-scale housing projects with a lack of public facilities and difficult access to work places, started a critical discussion on how social housing had to be changed to fulfill the needs of users (Hansen and Sæterdal 1970); a criticism fueled by the international political climate of the 1968 movements and their call for more democracy and focus on ecology.

The State Housing Bank took up the discussion and used its influence to refuse loans to large-scale high-rise housing projects which did not focus on the living conditions of its inhabitants (Reiersen et al. 1996, Hansen and Guttu 2000).

The absence of discussions about user needs in the earlier processes is indeed striking and could be attributed to the modern movement’s self-appointed role of educating the inhabitant of a dwelling rather than responding to the way users appropriate their dwelling spaces.

Although a follow-up of the Ammerudreport focusing on interviews with inhabitants actually revealed a surprisingly positive attitude of the owners towards their homes (Guttu 2002) and not everyone agreed with the ‘ultrasocialist ideas’ (Mjelva 1970) of the authors of the report, the outcome of the discussion of the Ammerud-case influenced the layout of new housing areas focusing attention on the quality of outdoor spaces and lowdensity quarters.

But as the architect of the Ammerudproject Håkon Mjelva, who in other points defended his project, stated in an article in Byggekunst in 1970, ‘the surprising conclusion of the authors of the report is, that planners should be blamed for the mistakes of the authorities’(Mjelva 1970), starting a discussion of a necessary revision of the institutional and organizational framework in which architects operate.

As a result, alternative planning processes for the provision of social housing were introduced in projects such as Romsås.

Romsås Romsås is situated on a hilltop in the outskirts of east Oslo and can be viewed as a reaction to the Ammerud case and the criticisms levied by the Ammerud Report. The municipality as the owner of the land, the Oslo Housing and Savings Association as the developer, and a group of architects joined forces in 1968 in order to build a new neighborhood that would improve on the ‘failed’ examples of earlier dormitory towns (Bjørnsen and Kronborg 2009).

The Romsås team, consisting of a multidisciplinary group of experts and architects, reintroduced a hierarchical neighborhood scheme. (Haslum 2008) The spatial concept was based on the sloping topography and emphasised

proximity to nature, with spacious green forests separating the different clusters of dwellings. The main access to the area was via a central railway station or parking garages along a ring road. This supported the main intention to keep the housing areas car-free by divided walkways and driveways in two separate systems.

(Bjørnsen and Kronborg 2009).

The project consisted of six different neighbourhoods, altogether 2600 apartments in three to eight storey concrete blocks. To promote efficiency in the building process, the houses are very similar in their construction method, plan layout, and the design of the building envelop. In order to achieve variation within the project and create a sense of community through distinct spatial identity, the individual buildings were grouped in six different neighborhoods connected by shared outdoor spaces, subdivided through vegetation and topography.

Public facilities such as nursing homes, schools, kindergartens, and libraries were considered an essential part of this scheme and were delivered simultaneously to the dwellings. These welfare provisions were aimed at the lifecycle of an individual in the welfare state, which enabled both woman and men to join the workforce, while the state provides care for those in need, as illustrated in brochures for the inhabitants. (Svendsen 2002) Although participatory design was considered an essential part of the scheme, it proved to be rather difficult to engage future users in more than planning meetings. Although aimed at a diverse group of inhabitants, the first owners of the popular flats were those who could prove a long time membership in the housing association, which resulted in a high proportion of families with young children.

Romsås was the last big housing scheme that met the governmental policy that housing expenses per household should not exceed 20% of an average industrial worker’s income (Martens 1982) and is considered the most complete of the housing schemes that has been developed in the outskirts of Oslo.

Prosperity and social housing in Norway Following the discovery of the North Sea Oil in 1967, income per capita in Norway grew six fold between 1945 and 1960. The country went from being an average European economy to becoming one of the richest countries in the world.

Although the availability of resources would have put the government in a favorable position to invest in state sponsored housing programs, the opposite occured. Housing went from being considered a right to becoming more and more a commodity to be traded in the free market and thus considered a private affair (Sørvoll 2009).

The State Housing Bank started to change their criteria and begun targeting selective groups which had difficulties in competing in the private housing market.

Many other steps, including deregulating the financial market, abolishing price regulations for rent, and abolishing restriction of the sale of apartments within housing cooperatives, followed. The municipal budgets for housing decreased significantly and public social housing programs came to a halt (Lund 2000, Bjørnsen and Kronborg 2009, Reiersen et al. 1996, Hansen and Guttu 2000, Sørvoll 2009).

Perhaps most crucially, in the early 1980s The Labor Party abandoned one of their principal ideals: that social housing is one of the pillars of a welfare state and that the main political aim is to limit speculation and the influence of private capital in the housing sector. This resulted in a paradigm shift, transforming a universal approach to housing into a more meanstested system directed at those that could not compete in the private housing market (Sørvoll 2011, Ruonavaara 2008).

Providers of affordable housing, like OBOS, joined the private market, competing over land, building costs and consumers. OBOS projects like Holmlia that were planned before the retrenchment and carried out and sold on the private

53 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

market afterwards were redesigned to match market conditions (Bjørnsen and Kronborg 2009). Higher densities, more flats, less spacious green areas and increased focus on individual demands such as parking, were the result of this orientation towards the demands of individual house buyers (Martens 1982).

It was commonly argued that the most extreme housing shortages were by then solved, and that most of the people were perfectly capable to provide for themselves under market conditions (Sørvoll 2011). Government investment into social housing was therefore deemed unnecessary. With housing completely left to the mechanisms of an unregulated private market, housing prices rose significantly, although building costs remained more or less stable. The ambition of earlier governments to keep spending on housing for private households to less than 20% of their income proved to be short-lived.

The current rate has reached 34% and is still rising.

Although the 1987 overheated housing market crash created new shortages of affordable housing for those who lost their home due to foreclosure, the Norwegian government remained steadfast in following the neo-liberal tendencies of its north European and Scandinavian neighbor’s housing policies (Ruonavaara 2008).

Social housing expenditure in terms of large-scale government investment into housing has been replaced by mortgage reduction on taxes for homeowners. I would state that social housing as a state sponsored program was terminated at this point in Norway.

The three case study of Lamberseter, Ammerud and Romsås make evident that not just political agendas, be these ‘social democratic’ or ‘neo-liberal’ free market, have influenced the outcomes of social housing provisions in Oslo, but that the perception and the discourse around the architecture of earlier provision has shaped the built environment. Quality of housing is hard to measure and both the ‘social’ in social housing and the ‘affordability’ in affordable housing hard to define. But from my perspective of the Norwegian cases, it is hard to prove that there is a direct relationship between the availability of resources and the ambitions behind a state programme such as social housing.

Especially in and after the Ammerud report it becomes evident that the political system in which decisions on master plans and building schemes and budgets are taken is perceived as one of the main obstacles for producing quality housing.

The attention and creativity of the architect shifts from the design itself to design processes that would supposedly generate ‘better’ results and thus shift from politics to product- and from product to politics.

References Annaniassen, E. (1991) Boligsamvirkets historie i Norge, Oslo: Gyldendal.

Annaniassen, E. (2006) Én skandinavisk boligmodell?: historien om et sosialdemokratisk eierland og et sosialdemokratisk leieboerland, NOVA temahefte, Oslo: NOVA. Annaniassen, E. and Bengtsson, B., eds. (2006) Varför så olika? Nordisk bostadspolitik i jämförande historiskt ljus Malmö: Égalité.

Benum, E. (2002) ‘Byens “kjempeprogram” - Utbyggingen av Groruddalen’, Fremtid for fortiden, (3/4).

Bjørnsen, B. and Kronborg, A.-K. (2009) Hele folket i hus: OBOS 1970-2009, Oslo: Gaidaros.

Brochmann, O. (1958) ‘Lambertseter utenfra og Lambertseter innenfra’, Bonytt, 232-237.

Brochmann, O., Waal, N., Størmer, F. and Anonsen, C. (1948) Mennesker og boliger: familieundersøkelsens resultater, Oslo byes vels boligundersøkelser, Oslo: Cappelen.

Esping-Andersen, G. (1990) The three worlds of welfare capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press.

Guttu, J. (2002) ‘Drabantbyen som skyteskive’, Fremtid for fortiden: [], (3/4).

Hansen, T. and Guttu, J. (2000) Oslo kommunes boligpolitikk 1960-1989: fra storskalabygging til frislepp, Oslo:

Norges byggforskningsinstitutt.

Hansen, T. and Sæterdal, A. (1970) Ammerud, Oslo: Pax. Haslum, H. (2008) Reading socio-spatial interplay, unpublished thesis Arkitekturog designhøgskolen i Oslo.

Hasselknippe, O. and Selvaag, O. (1982) Olav Selvaag : mannen med ideene Oslo: Aschehoug.

Kielland, J. C. (1945) ‘Gjenreising og nyreising’, Byggekunst, 10-12.

Kronborg, A.-K. (2003) Boliger i Oslo: OBOS fra 1920-tallet til 1980-tallet, unpublished thesis Universitet i Oslo.

Kvarv, S. (2003) Yrkesroller og fagideologiske brytninger i fysisk planlegging i Norge, 1920-1970, unpublished thesis Arkitektur- og designhøgskolen i Oslo.

Lund, B. H. (2000) Beretning om Oslo kommune for årene 1948-1986, Oslo: ProArk. Lund, N.-O. (1988) ‘Housing in Scandinavia, 1945-85 : Architectural Ideologies and Physical Organization’, Scandinavian Housing & Planning Research, 55, 65 - 84.

Martens, J.-D. (1982) Norsk boligpolitikk fra sosial profil til fritt marked, Oslo: AKP. Mjelva, H. (1970) ‘Ammerudenga Ammerudfaret’, Byggekunst.

Mjelva, H. and Norseng, P. (1965) ‘Atriumhus på Ammerud’, Byggekunst, 149-151.

Reiersen, E., Thue, E. and Jensen, L.-A., eds. (1996) De tusen hjem: Den norske stats husbank 1946-96, Oslo: Ad notam Gyldendal.

Rinnan, F. (1958) Lambertseter 1958, [Oslo]: OBOS. Rolfsen, E. (1950) Generalplan for Oslo: et utkast lagt fram som diskusjonsgrunnlag for de kommunale myndigheter og etater og for andre interesserte, Oslo: Oslo reguleringsvesen.

‘Romsås’, (1975) Byggekunst, 102-106.

Ruonavaara, H. (2008) ‘Home Ownership and the Nordic Housing Policies in the Retrechment Phase’, in ENHR International Research Conference, Sæterdal, A. and Hansen, T. (1968) ‘Hvorfor blir de nye bydelene slik de blir?’, Byggekunst, 142-148.

Sørvoll, J. (2009) ‘The Polictical Ideology of Housing and the Welfare State in Scandinavia 1980 - 2008 : Change, Continuity and Paradoxes’, in Reassess Mid-term Conference, Oslo, 18 - 20 May 2009, Sørvoll, J. (2011) ‘Den boligsosiale vendingen. Norsk boligpolitikk fra midten av 1990-tallet i historisk perspektiv’ Spjudvik, M. (2007) Å bygge et sosialdemokrati: Frode Rinnan og utbyggingen av drabantbyen Lambertseter, unpublished thesis Universitet i Oslo.

Svendsen, S. E. (2002) ‘Romsås, et forsøk på å skape den ideele drabantby’, Fremtid for fortiden: [], (3/4), 68-81.

Tvedt, K. A., Johansen, B. B., Reisegg, Ø., Bryhn, R. and Olsen, O. (2010) Oslo byleksikon, Oslo: Kunnskapsforl. utseende, T. f. b. (1954) ‘Tilsynsrådets uttalelse’, Bonytt, 7, 173.

REFLEXIONES SOBRE EL ESPACIO PÚBLICO Christian Hermansen, Oslo

Estoy muy agradecido por esta invitación, es un placer estar en este país, y tengo que confesar, con algo de vergüenza, que es la primera vez que visito México.

Cuando recibí esta invitación a participar en el 6to Foro de Ciudades Mexicanas Patrimonio de la Humanidad, y viendo que el tema era Espacio Público en los Centros Históricos, pensé que como mi último libro es sobre la transformación de centros históricos Europeos, podría hacer una contribución relacionada con algún aspecto de la experiencia de Europa.

Al comenzar a investigar los espacios públicos Mexicanos me di cuenta de que el valor de esta ‘exportación’ de experiencias no era tan obvia, que en cierto sentido, como dicen los Españoles, era como llevar naranjas a Sevilla , o, si ustedes quieren, como traer maíz a México.

Espacios públicos en Mexico Los espacios públicos Mexicanos tienen una gran tradición y están a la par con los mejores espacios públicos del sur de Europa y son bastante mas vivos que aquellos del norte.

El arte de Spenser Tunick El ciudadano Mexicano parece estar más dispuesto que otros a participar en la vida de los espacios públicos, incluso cuando le piden que se desnude.

Tomando en cuenta estas consideraciones decidí que mi ponencia trataría sobre la evolución del concepto ‘espacio público’ durante el siglo pasado.

Argumentaré que la irrelevancia del rol del arquitecto y diseñador urbano en la producción contemporánea del espacio urbano está muy relacionada con las confusiones que rodearon al concepto de ‘espacio’ durante el siglo XX. We live in spacious times ‘We live in spacious times’ (Vivimos en tiempos espaciosos), escribió Ford Madox Ford a principios del siglo XX, sin embargo, como esta charla pretende mostrar, nos ha tomado la mayor parte del siglo XX para comenzar a comprender la naturaleza del espacio en que vivimos y trabajamos; o dicho de otra manera, llegar a una comprensión del concepto de espacio que nos permitiera abordar una de las pregunta más importantes en este tema: Pregunta? ¿cuáles son las relaciones entre el espacio como continente de las actividades humanas y las actividades humanas que contiene?

Voy a argumentar que la falta de comprensión de esta relación fue, y sigue siendo, una de las causas principales de los fracasos del urbanismo del siglo XX. La falta de claridad sobre el concepto ‘espacio’ durante este periodo no es sorprendente si recordamos que la modernidad ha privilegiado de manera inequívoca el tiempo por sobre el espacio.

Como David Harvey escribe: »» (...) Ya que la modernidad consiste en la experiencia de progreso durante la modernización, los escritos sobre ese tema han tendido a enfatizar la temporalidad, el proceso de llegar a ser, en vez de estar en el espacio y el lugar.

Como arquitectos nos han enseñado, y por lo general aceptamos, que el ‘espacio’ es lo más puro, la sustancia más irreducible, de que se ocupa la arquitectura, o dicho de otro modo, que modelar el espacio con fines de habitación es una actividad exclusiva de la arquitectura, lo que la distingue de otras disciplinas.

Masa y volumen Sin embargo, el término espacio no existía en el vocabulario arquitectónico hasta hace poco. Los arquitectos del siglo XVIII hablaban de volúmenes y vacíos dentro y entre ellos. Fue en la última década del siglo XIX que el término espacio se incorporó al vocabulario arquitectónico, y su adopción general por la profesión está íntimamente relacionada con el desarrollo del modernismo en el siglo XX. Desde su adopción en los campos de la arquitectura y el urbanismo, el concepto de espacio se ha visto afectado por una ambigüedad que surge de su uso anterior en otras disciplinas. El más importante entre estos diversos usos es el espacio como una categoría filosófica a priori que lo concibe como una parte integral del sistema a través del cual entendemos al mundo. El contraste no podría ser mayor: en arquitectura el espacio es algo que amoldamos, en filosofía el espacio es un prerrequisito necesario para ordenar y así conocer al mundo.

Der Stil El primer uso importante del concepto de espacio en la arquitectura surgió en el libro Der Stil que Gottfried Semper publicó en 1860. Siendo partícipe en un período de discusiones acerca del espacio dentro de la filosofía estética en Alemania, Semper argumentó que la arquitectura nace de un impulso humano innato por cercar el Continued on page 54 >>

<< Continued from page 51: Scarcity and Creativity

property and collaborative working etc.

Sadler argues that »» although the need for system change is widely accepted, there is little recognition of the need to adjust to post-scarcity conditions and to base policies and decisions on the principles of the economics of abundance rather than on the economics of scarcity.14 There are of course however significant differences between anarchocommunist visions of post-scarcity, and more capitalist ideas of commodity abundance. Indeed, it is difficult to see how the contradictions of capitalism will not necessarily derail any possibility of a capitalist condition of post-scarcity. In fact, the prospect of post-scarcity is a spectre haunting capitalism. The overwhelming tendencies are for the marginal costs of production to fall, and for the rate of profit to fall. Capitalist organisations have to constantly struggle to find ways to make a profit out of production. This involves designing-in redundancy and failure into products that could in many cases last generations rather than months or years. It involves developing highly proprietary parts and systems such that commodities cannot be repaired, and of course the projection of a vast spectacular infrastructure of advertising and branding that alienates us further and makes this insane situation seem desirable.

All of these processes and many more serve to create imaginary scarcities, and furthermore real scarcities through the wastage of materials and the pollution and destruction of the ecosystems that we rely upon for resources. And there are of course important relations between scarcity and environmental degradation: polluted and damaged environments produce less. We are then not in any simple way simply using up finite resources, but are also reducing the productive capacity of the living world. Indeed, Eagleton has argued that standing within sight of an era of post-scarcity, capitalism is gravitating towards ecological catastrophe as the best means of perpetuating itself through an extended new era of scarcity.

If Marx realised that the overcoming of scarcity was a precondition of most paths to communism, Eagleton speculates whether the emerging ecological crisis is a mechanism for historically precluding those possible futures.

However, the same deep contradictions of the capitalist process are structuring scarcity today in what are arguably even more profound ways. As already stated, the primary tendencies in production are for both costs and profits to fall. Yet as David Harvey has recently shown, the quantity of capital circulating in the global economy looking for profitable investment opportunities is greater than ever before. Since production is increasingly unable to provide capitalists, pension funds and the like with profitable investment opportunities, new avenues of speculative investment have been found through investing in assets.

Property, land and housing are typical investment routes, but so are mineral and agricultural assets, and because this kind of widespread investment necessarily has a ponzi character (if everyone invests in assets then values increase), it can seem to work. Such investment strategies have of course been behind a series of asset and share price crashes and 'market failures' since the seventies. The kinds of assets that are being targeted by investment funds have in recent years have further widened. Beyond new technologies providing one new route of speculation (remember the dot com bubble), food is increasingly an investment opportunity, and this is becoming a significant source of food scarcity and food price inflation (although there are many other fundamentals that will be pushing up global food prices in the near and medium term, notably climate change)15.

Scarcity: Reality and Ideology Scarcity then, is both a reality, and an ideology (in the classic Marxian sense of ‘false consciousness’). Real ‘scarcities’ play real roles in the complex system that

is global capitalism. There are real material and energy flows, which ultimately have a combination of geophysical and social foundations. At any one time there are limits to these flows – ie there are real scarcities.

In addition, the concept of scarcity plays an ideological role. That is to say, it naturalises (it makes obscure) the social component of the limits of these flows.

Those in the system who own and manage these geophysical resource flows have a vested interest in maintaining scarcities. Scarcities, the control of resources, are real social power. In energy supply for example, big power companies are most obstructive to local energy generation, and most supportive of inherently centralising technologies such as nuclear and fossil fuels. Yet equally, as Murray Bookchin noted, a wind farm owned by a multi-national power corporation is not an alternative or ecological technology either, as democratic social control is an essential component of ecological technology.

Scarcity works dialectically with abundance. The same system which produces scarcity in the ways described above, also constructs ‘abundance’ as both a reality and an ideology. Most notably here, the ideology of abundance promotes the false consciousness that we can extract as much as we want from the planet… so, we literally get hit conceptually in both directions… and this keeps people confused!

In both cases then, the key ideological role is to obscure the real workings of the system – and to make it seem natural, incomprehensible etc etc.

Scarcity, Design and Creativity Scarcity then, is a profoundly complex and indeed problematic term, and is far from neutral or uncontested. We can use it cautiously, as a heuristic device, and as a means of grasping and collecting together a range of responses to the complex contradictions of our socioecological condition today. But using the concept of scarcity as a means of rethinking architectural and urban design is by no means straight-forward. Clearly, our intention is to confront what urban geographer and political theorist David Harvey has described as ‘the environmental question’, defined as a problematic with simultaneously ecological, social, cultural and political dimensions. In this regard Harvey has off-handedly but brilliantly noted that ‘if you think that you can solve the environmental question, of global warming and all that kind of stuff, without actually confronting the whole question of who determines the value structure ... then you have got to be kidding yourself ’.

Scarcity indeed is a term that bridges economic and ecological domains, and perhaps enables us to grasp something of this ‘value structure’. It is often noted, ecology and economy share a common etymological root in the Greek oikos, meaning dwelling. Both economy and ecology are spatialised and temporalised in dwelling. Scarcity, universalised and naturalised in the field of economics, defines the contemporary oikos. A collective re-imagining of scarcity must necessarily entail a transformative re-imagining of economics and ecology.

So does anything interesting happen when we ask about scarcity in the built environment? Of course, we can note all kinds of fascinating examples of situations where scarce resources have provoked creative responses – both at the hands of professional designers, but also of course in all kinds of everyday and informal scenarios. Time permitted I will return to extemporise at the end this paper using illustrations of some examples of such creativity, and under what conditions this might occur – but in anticipation of that it is useful to note now that our research suggest that for a creative solution to emerge in response to one scarce variable, it is typically necessary for other variables to have some ‘slack’ in the system. Indeed, as Gregory Bateson noted in his essay ‘Restructuring the Ecology of a Great City’, we should Continued on page 55 >>

54 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 53: Reflexiones

espacio. Esta idea se arraigó rápidamente y en 1889 Camillo Sitte publica su libro Urbanismo de acuerdo a principios artísticos en el que sostenía que el diseño urbano era «el arte del espacio” (Raumkunst), extendiendo así la idea del espacio desde los interiores a la ciudad.

Además de los argumentos de Semper que colocaron al espacio en los orígenes de la arquitectura hubo otros factores que hicieron atractiva la incorporación de este concepto al vocabulario de los arquitectos modernistas. Hasta el siglo XX la arquitectura tenía el estatus social de un oficio manual o, a lo sumo, de un negocio; el concepto de espacio, en su abstracción, elevaba a la arquitectura de un oficio manual a una actividad intelectual.

Además, para los modernistas, la concepción de la arquitectura en términos de espacio permitía reforzar las diferencias formales entre la arquitectura tradicional, que enfatizaba masa y volumen, y el modernismo emergente. En la arquitectura de Mies van der Rohe vemos que el espacio fluye ininterrumpidamente, predominando sobre la masa, y con los elementos que definen el espacio reducidos a un mínimo de “piel y huesos”. Una diferenciación adicional se podía lograr haciendo hincapié en la naturaleza abstracta del espacio, lo cual no requería ninguno de los elementos simbólicos que figuraban de forma tan destacada en la arquitectura tradicional.

Mies Barcelona La idea de que la arquitectura y el diseño urbano eran las ‘artes del espacio’ ya se había establecido en la década de 1920, pero las primeras obras de arquitectura en que el espacio predomina aparecieron cuando Mies van der Rohe construyó el Pabellón de Alemania en la Exposición Internacional de Barcelona de 1929, y la casa Tugendhat en Brno, Checoslovaquia en 1930.

Gideon Space Time and Architecture La emigración a los EE.UU. de arquitectos modernistas alemanes a finales de la década de 1930 y principios de la década de 1940 introdujo el concepto del espacio arquitectónico al mundo anglo-sajón , un proceso consolidado por la publicación en 1940 de Espacio, Tiempo y Arquitectura por Sigfried Gideon, que es una historia de la arquitectura como el arte de espacio.

A mediados del siglo XX, el espacio se había consolidado como el elemento más importante de la arquitectura, tanto es así que Venturi y Scott Brown en su libro de 1972 Aprendiendo de Las Vegas, una crítica del modernismo urbano, escribieron: “Tal vez el elemento más tiránico en nuestra arquitectura actual es el espacio ...”

Si entendemos al espacio como una sustancia a moldear la pregunta acerca de las relaciones entre el espacio y las actividades que alberga no tiene relevancia. Desde 1960 en adelante se pueden identificar dos tendencias que intentaron abordar esta pregunta. Una surgió de las ciencias sociales que acusaban a la arquitectura de determinismo espacial, una teoría que enfatiza una relación causal entre el entorno construido y el comportamiento social. La segunda tendencia surgió de la arquitectura como reacción a la acusación de determinismo espacial. Los proponentes de esta última concluyeron de que si era cierto de que no había ninguna relación significativa entre espacio y actividades sociales nada impedía declarar a la arquitectura una disciplina autónoma.

Howard, Wright, Corbusier Aunque los proyectos urbanos de Ebenezer Howard, Frank Lloyd Wright y Le Corbusier son muy diferentes cada uno suponía una relación entre el diseño urbano y el estilo de vida que esa ciudad sustentaba: ruralismo autosuficiente en el caso de Wright, sub-urbanismo burgués en el caso de Howard, y chic urbano en el caso de Le Corbusier.

Arquitectura o revolución Le Corbusier, por ejemplo, escribió una serie de artículos entre 1920 y 1923 en la

revista L’Esprit Nouveau en los que sostenía que, para evitar una revolución proletaria similar a la de 1917 en Rusia los países industriales Europeos tenían que ser transformados y la arquitectura tenía que estar al centro de esta transformación. »» La cuestión de la edificación es la causa de los disturbios sociales de hoy: arquitectura o revolución (Vers une architecture, 1923) En la opinión de aquellos que entendían la sociedad en términos de relaciones sociales, la sugerencia de que el entorno físico pudiera imponer, o incluso dirigir, las actividades sociales era inaceptable.

La crítica al determinismo espacial osciló entre acusar a estos proyectos urbanos modernistas de no proporcionar el tipo de vivienda que el público deseaba, ilustrada en la declaración de Peter Hall, »» El pecado de Corbusier y los Corbusianos no estaba en sus diseños, sino en la arrogancia irreflexiva con que se los imponían a personas que no los podían acoger, y que dado un poco de reflexión, nunca los habrían podido adoptar. ... y acusar a todo el diseño urbano modernista de ingenuidad al creer que una configuración espacial podía originar un comportamiento social.

La reacción contra el determinismo espacial que los sociólogos urbanos veían en las propuestas de diseño urbano modernistas los llevo a afirmar que no había ninguna relación significativa entre la estructuración espacial y la actividad social. Esta opinión se basaba en la concepción de que el espacio no era más que un continente dentro del cual sucedían los procesos sociales y económicos. De acuerdo con esta opinión el único papel social otorgado al espacio era producir fricción al movimiento de personas, bienes e información.

Un ejemplo de esta posición lo encontramos en un artículo publicado en 1964 por Melvin Webber titulado Urban Place and the Non-Place Urban Realm en el que sostenía que con el crecimiento en sofisticación y disponibilidad de las comunicaciones la localización de las personas perdía importancia, ya que podrían llevar a cabo sus actividades independientemente de la distancia entre ellos.

Cost telephone calls A nivel superficial, esta observación de Melvin Webber hacia sentido si tomamos en cuenta elementos como el costo y la facilidad de las comunicaciones telefónicas.

Por ejemplo, una llamada telefónica de tres minutos entre Londres a Nueva York costaba, £ 500 en 1927 £ 63 en 1945 £ 13 en 1970 £ 0,52 en 1996 £ 0,00 por Skype desde 1993 en adelante.

Dos reacciones diferentes a la crítica de determinismo espacial surgieron desde dentro de la arquitectura.

Banham’s bubble Una forma de abordar el problema de la relación entre el espacio y la sociedad era pronosticar la irrelevancia o la “muerte” de la arquitectura. Esto fue propuesto por Reyner Banham en un ensayo de 1965 llamado, “A Home is not a House”, en el que sostenía que la tecnología estaba llegando a tales niveles de sofisticación que hacían a la arquitectura innecesaria e irrelevante, ya que nuestras necesidades de vivienda podían satisfacerse sin recurrir a edificios.

Esta idea la expresó en un dibujo que llegó a ser conocido como Banham’s Bubble (La burbuja de Banham). En ella vemos a Reyner Banham con una pequeña máquina capaz de satisfacer sus necesidades ambientales.

Assemblage La otra reacción a la incertidumbre acerca de las relaciones entre espacio y sociedad fue declarar a la arquitectura una disciplina autónoma, que no guarda relación con consideraciones externas a ella. El debate sobre la autonomía de la arquitectura alcanzó su cenit en los 41 números de la revista Assemblage, una revista publicada entre1986 a 2000. El partidario más vociferante de la autonomía de la arquitectura fue Peter Eisenman, quien escribió:

»» Al eliminar contexto y sujeto, la arquitectura se reduce a sus propios elementos: puntos, líneas y planos ... abriendo los procesos internos de la arquitectura a sus propias posibilidades internas.

Sin embargo, la idea de que no hay relación entre el espacio y los actos sociales, y que por lo tanto la producción del espacio es independiente de la vida social, era demasiado simplista para durar.

Lynch, Jacobs, Newman, Rossi, Venturi Desde la década de 1960 en adelante una sucesión de estudios comenzaron a erosionar esta posición al referirse a casos en los cuales había una indudable interacción entre el espacio urbano y los actos sociales.

El estudio clásico, The image of the City, publicado por Kevin Lynch en 1960 nos enseñó que la ciudad alienada es sobre todo un sistema de espacios urbanos dentro de los cuales la gente no puede concebir a la ciudad como un todo, ni establecer su propia posición dentro de él.

Jane Jacobs, en su libro The Death and Life of Great American Cities de 1961 hizo una fuerte crítica a las políticas de renovación urbana de la década de 1950 y en su lugar promovió la rehabilitación local de vecindarios tradicionales. Al formular este argumento Jacobs afirma que los cambios en la configuración del espacio urbano jugaban algún papel en la continuidad de la vida urbana.

El argumento del libro de Oscar Newman Defensible Space de 1973 y el de Alice Coleman Utopia on trial de 1985 fue que las configuraciones espaciales tenían un papel que desempeñar en la seguridad de los conjuntos de viviendas sociales.

La idea de The Architecture of the City que Aldo Rossi publicó en 1966 fue que la estructura física de una ciudad incorporaba la cultura de su población, y por esto hacia la ciudad comprensible a sus habitantes. La interrupción de este proceso histórico de constitución de la ciudad mediante la introducción de un nuevo orden espacial modernista interrumpía el proceso histórico y enajenaba al público del nuevo orden espacial.

En Learning from Las Vegas de 1972 Venturi y Scott Brown argumentaron que la cultura popular se manifestaba en aquellos entornos urbanos construidos sin la intervención de arquitectos, por lo cual eran comprensibles para sus usuarios.

Tschumi Todas estas publicaciones de distintas maneras socavaron la idea de que no había relaciones significativas entre las configuraciones espaciales y las actividades sociales. Sin embargo, Bernard Tschumi, en su libro de 1990 Questions of Space, fue el primero en declarar inequívocamente que el espacio y el lugar eran componentes substanciales de los actos sociales. Como escribió en este ejemplo ahora famoso, »» Asesinato en la calle difiere de Asesinato en la Catedral (T. S. Eliot) de la misma manera como amor en la calle difiere de Calles de Amor (Rolling Stones). Radicalmente.

Si bien estas obras erosionaban la idea de que el espacio no era más que un recipiente vacío sin relación significativa con la vida social, ninguno de sus autores intentó formular una teoría que explicara la relación entre la sociedad y los espacios que ocupaba.

Lefebvre and Foucault Este desafío fue tomado por Henri Lefebvre en su libro de 1974 The Production of Space, y en un grado menor y más difuso por Michel Foucault en su artículo Of Other Spaces de 1986. Ellos fueron los primeros en poner de relieve la importancia de considerar no sólo lo que podría llamarse ‘la geometría’ del espacio, sino también sus prácticas sociales y significados simbólicos. Ambos insistieron en que el espacio no debe ser entendido como una cosa dada, sino como un producto social. De esta manera llamaron la atención sobre su rol en la construcción y transformación de la vida social.

El argumento de Lefebvre es que el espacio es un producto social que afecta a las prácticas espaciales y las formas en que estas son percibidas. Si entendemos

el espacio de esta manera nuestro foco cambia de mirar el espacio como una construcción geométrica a mirar al proceso de la producción del espacio.

Lefebvre escribe que desde el siglo XVIII en adelante el espacio ha tenido un significado estrictamente geométrico, y por lo tanto ha sido entendido exclusivamente en términos formales y cuantitativos, como un vacío que se llena y se subdivide por medio de intervenciones materiales, como las que realiza la arquitectura.

Lefebvre llama a esto ‘espacio abstracto’, y sostiene que el predominio de esta concepción del espacio resulta en la homogenización del espacio social. En otras palabras, una concepción puramente geométrica del espacio excluye lo social, y por lo tanto excluye preguntas acerca de la relación entre las características físicas del espacio y su influencia sobre las actividades sociales.

donde suceden las cosas es fundamental para saber cómo y por qué suceden, es sin duda una buena noticia para las personas que trabajan en dar forma al entorno construido. Sin embargo, esto no es una reivindicación del determinismo espacial, las relaciones de espacio-tiempo-historia no operan en una sola dirección, no son deterministas, sino más bien interactivas.

Si es que la conceptualización ingenua de la relación entre lo social y lo espacial es una causa importante del fracaso de muchas de las propuestas urbanísticas del siglo XX, el rol futuro de los arquitectos y diseñadores urbanos dependerá de su capacidad de comprender y poner en funcionamiento las relaciones entre el espacio-tiempo-historia.

La situación actual no parece muy brillante. Dos descripciones de la producción del espacio urbano contemporáneo sirven para ilustrar mis preocupaciones.

Lefebvre’s 3 cats of space En contraste con el concepto de ‘espacio abstracto’ Lefebvre propone el concepto de ‘espacio social’ que no excluye las características geométricas del espacio, sino que las complementa con preguntas acerca de la sociedad, la historia y la política. Lefebvre sugiere que deberíamos distinguir entre tres categorías del espacio social: * Prácticas espaciales, son los espacios en los cuales transcurre nuestra vida cotidiana, (le Perçu). * Representaciones del espacio, que se refiere a cómo se conceptualiza y representa el espacio; sobre todo a las formas en que las autoridades conciben el espacio como herramienta de control social (le conçu). * Espacios de representación, son los espacios que la imaginación pretende cambiar y apropiar; espacios en que se desafían las prácticas sociales establecidas con el fin de introducir cambio social democrático (le vécu).

Estas tres categorías están generalmente conectadas y se traslapan en un mismo espacio urbano.

Non-places En Non-Places de 1992 Marc Augé sostuvo que la era post-moderna estaba produciendo una nueva categoría de espacio urbano que calificó de “non-place” (no-lugar), para referirse a los espacios de circulación, consumo y comunicación que no tienen suficiente significado para ser considerados como “lugares”.

deCertau, Harvey, Jameson, Soja Al establecer una dialéctica ‘socioespacial’ en la que la sociedad da forma a los espacios de acuerdo a sus necesidades, pero, igualmente, el espacio juega un papel formativo en la construcción de la vida social, Lefebvre abrió un campo extenso de especulación teórica e investigación que ha sido desarrollado desde la última década del siglo XX principalmente por geógrafos urbanos.

Algunas de sus figuras principales son: Michel de Certeau, critica a las ciencias sociales por haber representado a los ciudadanos como “consumidores” pasivos de cultura, descuidando su papel como transformadores de la cultura, incluyendo el espacio.

David Harvey, argumenta que nuestra percepción de la ciudad incluye importantes elementos espaciales y que estos influyen sobre nuestra concepción de dónde y cómo estamos situados en el mundo, y por lo tanto cambian nuestra forma de pensar y actuar políticamente.

Fredric Jameson, describe la postmodernidad como la espacialización de la cultura bajo la presión del capitalismo organizado. Su idea es crear un concepto de mediación para construir un modelo que pueda ser articulado en una serie de fenómenos culturales diferentes; partiendo de lo visual, pasando por lo temporal, y luego volviendo a una nueva concepción del espacio.

Edward Soja, es el más enfático en argumentar en favor de la importancia de una perspectiva espacial para interpretar el mundo. »» Yo defino a Thirdspace como otra forma de entender y actuar para cambiar la espacialidad de la vida humana, un modo distinto de conciencia espacial critica que sea apropiada al nuevo alcance y significado que surge de una trialectica re-equilibrada de los conceptos de espacialidad-historicidad-socialidad. ¿Cuáles son las consecuencias de todo esto?

Una visión de la sociedad que da prioridad al espacio, no por la simple razón de que todo sucede en el espacio, sino porque

Aviones Los no-lugares son en gran parte resultado de la globalización, la creciente demanda por viajar y los espacios asociados a viajes que esto ha generado: aeropuertos, estaciones de ferrocarril, autopistas, y cadenas hoteleras internacionales.

Estos lugares requieren códigos de comportamiento comunes que los hacen mucho más democráticos que el mundo fuera de ellos. De esta manera estos espacios ofrecen a los ocupantes transitorios la ilusión de formar parte de algún gran esquema global igualitario.

World urbanization Koolhaas propone el concepto de Junk-space (espacio-basura) que tiene ciertas similitudes con ‘non-space’, pero es más global y menos definido.

Koolhaas nos recuerda que en 2025 el número de habitantes urbanos llegará a 5 mil millones. Entre las 10 megalópolis más grandes sólo Tokio será parte de lo que se llama el mundo desarrollado. La tasa de crecimiento de estas megalópolis es explosiva, Shangai, por ejemplo, ha construido más de 10 000 rascacielos en las últimas dos décadas. El producto de este desarrollo urbano acelerado es lo que Koolhaas denomina Junk-space La causa de esta expansión explosiva de las ciudades es lo que los marxistas llaman la mercantilización (commodification) de la vida, que en el libro de Koolhaas se resume como: “Al final, no habrá nada mas que hacer que ir de compras”.

El proceso de mercantilización de la vida se manifiesta mas claramente en aquellas instituciones que originalmente no tenían propósitos mercantiles pero que han considerado necesario incorporar actividades comerciales para sobrevivir.

Heathrow 5 Consideremos al aeropuerto moderno, que ahora es un centro comercial con una pista de aterrizaje adjunta. Sus actividades mercantiles generan mas ganancias que lo que pagan las líneas aéreas por usar el aeropuerto.

El Museo Al frente de todo museo moderno encontramos la gran tienda, que es la única parte del museo que una cantidad cada vez mayor de personas visita. En respuesta, el diseño de estas tiendas se vuelve cada vez más indistinguible del propio museo.

Reconociendo esta tendencia, Saatchi y Saatchi hizo una campaña publicitaria para el Museo Victoria and Albert de Londres anunciándolo como “un muy buen café con un museo bastante bueno adyacente”.

El consumerismo es un nuevo estilo de vida que va más allá de la compra de bienes, lo que se consume son imágenes que satisfacen deseos. La visita al centro comercial puede o no resultar en una compra; en caso que la compra se

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materialice es muy probable que el comprador rápidamente pierda interés en el objeto comprado, y simultáneamente adquiera una nueva urgencia por encontrar un nuevo objeto que desear. Lo que vale es la persecución de la imagen, no la captura del objeto. Pensemos, por ejemplo, en la orden de 2 millones de iPhone 5 un día antes de que ese teléfono saliera a la venta.

Esto refleja una búsqueda de imagen, no de un objeto útil para hacer llamadas telefónicas. Como Jameson escribe: »» La materialidad es aquí un mero pretexto para nuestro ejercicio de placer mental. (...) ir de compras no requiere comprar, es una actuación que puede hacerse sin dinero, con tal de que se cuente con los espacios adecuados, o en otras palabras que el junk-space haya sido provisto. ¿Qué es Junk-Space?

Tyres * Se inicia con lo que sobra. “Si el space-junk es la basura humana que puebla al universo, el junk-space es el residuo que la humanidad deja en el planeta.” comenta Koolhaas.

Transitoriedad * Se refiere a aquellos espacios que se encuentran en reciclaje continuo. El promedio de vida de un rascacielo en Tokyo es de solo 15 años. * La arquitectura, al igual que otros productos culturales, se mercantiliza, y sufre el destino de todos los productos de consumo, se convierte en junk-space. * Junk-space, sin embargo, no es sólo una acumulación histórica accidental del mercado, sino el resultado de la producción social.

Rascacielos Estas dos explicaciones de la producción del espacio urbano en la sociedad contemporánea, los non-places y el junkspace, pretenden ser descripciones de nuestra condición actual. Ellas no deben verse como definición de un problema a resolver, sino como descripción de una realidad que debe ser entendida. La descripción de esta realidad podría dar lugar a una voluntad política que proponga cambios en nuestras prácticas de producción del espacio. Si estas prácticas cambiaran los arquitectos y diseñadores urbanos podrían, quizás, recuperar su relevancia en la producción del entorno construido.

Esta voluntad política de cambio no debe intentar resucitar el llamado de Le Corbusier “Arquitectura o Revolución”, sino más bien debe basarse en el entendido de que la construcción, el significado y la organización del espacio público sólo pueden llevarse a cabo exitosamente cuando el proceso involucre a los diversos elementos constitutivos del espacio social, como por ejemplo los tres que propone Lefebvre: prácticas espaciales, representaciones del espacio, espacios de representación.

DRAWING AND THE ECSTASY OF THE NEW: ENRIC MIRALLES Christian Hermansen Cordua, Oslo

After working for more than a year on the literature on ‘creativity’1 I found myself in Barcelona and had the opportunity to re‐visit some of Enric Miralles’ projects.

At that point it became clear that the conceptual understanding of creativity I had gained through the review of the literature, mostly in the areas of psychology and the social sciences, did not contribute much to an understanding of the nature and place of creativity in the work of Miralles. This paper is an attempt to make sense of this discrepancy.

Reading the literature on the work of Enric Miralles is not an enlightening affair, it is dominated by formal description, with few and far between insights into the nature of the work. Perhaps the

published interviews and accounts of those who worked in the office and knew him closely are the most enlightening, but even these contain only sporadic and fleeting references to Enric Miralles’ thoughts about his work, how he worked, or, more important, critical interpretations of his work.

Repeated mentions are made in these texts of his intelligence, his tireless work habits, his passion for books, and, what this paper intends to focus on, his boundless creativity. Although all commentators seem to agree that creativity was the most distinctive characteristic of Miralles’ work, I have encountered no discussion of what this creativity consisted of. Most commentators take this very ‘slippery’ concept for granted, as if it was self-evident. In this paper I will look into the relation between conceptions of creativity and ask whether these may help us better understand the nature and place of creativity in the work of Enric Miralles.

How he worked Enric Miralles’ buildings are recognisable to most architects, in some cases through visits, mostly through publications. What is perhaps less well known is how he worked and how he understood his work; something which I feel will contribute to the present discussion.

His office employed many young architects and recent graduates, many of whom worked for free in return for the experience. Enric Miralles explained to me that he considered a year in his office at least equivalent in worth to a good post-graduate degree in architecture, and perhaps even more advantageous as he was generous with letters of recommendations which would place young applicants in a very good position to get a job in an interesting studio. Apart from the times when the office was under pressure of a hand-in the tasks given to the young aspiring architects were largely experimental and exploratory; and as in any real research endeavour the results of these explorations were not guaranteed to influence the office’s architecture2.

Drawing was central and dominant to the way in which Enric Miralles conceived architecture. The allure of drawing and his particular take on it came early. After practicing with Piñón-Viaplana for 12 years, starting an office with Carme Pinós in 1984, and being appointed Professor at ETSAB in in 1985, he received his doctoral degree in 1987. The title of his thesis is Things seen to left and right [without glasses]3 and it is a collage of texts and thoughts centred on the theme of drawing as annotation of thought.

Enric Miralles explains it thus, “These pages reveal that this mode of annotation is almost writing, that it is born out of writing, and is regulated in writing” “... this thesis tells how annotation – in a surface meant to receive traces – is only produced if the thoughts that enliven it advance with interruptions, are capable of stopping at the beginning, are produced in repetition.”4 Drawing is seen not as means of representation but as a means of informing.

“There is no concern for representation in these plans (…) it is about multiplying the same intuition”5 But not only, or principally, to inform: the principal role of drawing is to discover, to explore the unknown;“ Return to where I have never been. Where things: not before, not after, no reasons, no explanations are almost unconscious.”6 It is the process of revealing rather than the discovery itself, what interests him most. “It is not about accumulating them, but in multiplying them, (…) allowing that which we had not thought of to appear (…) from here to advance to successive beginnings. Once and once again, as if each was definitive.” (...) “The best of a drawing are its intermediate stages (…) to see what is emerging (…) that which remains for another project.”7 Furthermore he suggests that the drawing has a life and role of its own, and he appeals to the observer to accept what the drawing reveals. “Sometimes traces have a meaning, if someone knows how to interpret them, understands them. Often you have to confront it like

a stranger, to accept the mark because it is there, because you have encountered it, as when you find inscriptions in a Stone. I am interested in the task of accepting the results as they appear (…)”8 His relation to drawings suggests that of a flanneur, a wandering observer who meanders through the drawing, interacts with it and in the process discovers what it has to say. “My way of working is very near to the idea of browsing distractedly. Once the problem has been comprehended, the next step is to forget the purpose of what you were doing, in order to be able to distract yourself (…)”9 More pointedly, “Our work belongs to the unconscious, without really knowing much ... like Don Quixote’s itineraries.”10 This reference is significant. In the novel, El ingenioso hidalgo don Quijote de la Mancha (The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote of La Mancha) Don Quixote is a knight-errant, a figure of medieval chivalric romance literature who wanders in search of adventures to prove his chivalric virtues. While Don Quixote’s ultimate objective is clear, to re-establish medieval chivalry, the way to this objective is not laid out in a linear planned way, it is opportunistic in that he incorporates what he happens to encounter in his wanderings into his quest for chivalric glory. “Our work belongs to the unconscious, without really knowing much …” What seems important are the encounters, each of which may be considered a failure, which Don Quijote does not deem a deterrent to his quest for chivalric glory. In addition, the word ingenioso of the title, which in English could be translated as ‘inventive’, is interesting because in the novel a criticism of reality is inherent in the hidalgo’s inventive way of interpreting it. It is through these totally unconventional interpretations of reality that Don Quijote delivers his critical view, which he does by inventing a way to transform and then incorporate his encounters into his understanding of reality.

In the case of Don Quijote what is important is not so much the result of each encounter, which are mostly misadventures, but rather the willingness to engage with reality on his (inventive) terms. Chivalry, in its nature, is not measured through success but rather through its pursuance (‘participating rather than winning’).

There is something Quixotesque in the statement which follows which reveals Miralles’ distress at turning a dynamic process which he relishes into a static object: relinquishing the building to client and user. »» Confronted with the finished construction, the architect’s reaction has often been a kind of horror vacui: what can you do with a built building? The trajectory of a project carries it from the mind - our most secret place - to the drawings made in the privacy of the studio, to a site outside the architect’s environment.

Is the act of construction therefore an act of theft? Without doubt, it cuts brutally short the possibilities for varying a project.11 There is also something of Quijote in the two ways in which Enric Miralles deals with this loss. First is his claim that his projects should not be seen as discreet entities, but that each one overlaps with the contemporaneous ones being developed at the office and is thus no more than a stage in a process. What interests Miralles is the continuous design process throughout his career rather than the periodical concretisations in the form of buildings which the process leaves behind.

Benedeta Tagliabue recounts that the office accidentally found a way of prolonging the design process beyond the finished building. “ … the cut-out photographs and photomontages … were (first) done simply to eliminate an unwanted background. But later the scissors became a kind of liberating tool, creating the illusion that the building, in its final, constructed form, could still be worked on, varied. They seemed to bring the projects back to the drawing board …

Within this framework, the built work is not the ‘main’ stage of the architectonic process, but simply another stage.”12 In Enric Miralles own words, »» A collage is a document that fixes a thought Continued on page 56 >>

<< Continued from page 53: Scarcity and Creativity

not be fooled into believing that efficiency and reduction are in any simple way sustainable solutions, as a highly efficient system has no scope for adaptation.16 Beyond that however, designed objects and built environments also play important roles in maintaining more ideological conceptions of scarcity: designed objects and environments often obscure their conditions of production, and also obscure the flows that they are a part of. There is then a second remit for design research into scarcity and creativity, which is in fact what architectural historian Manfredo Tafuri referred to as ‘ideological critique’ – in this case of the hidden conceptualisations of scarcity in existing design practices. An ideological critique might look at different approaches and ask, in what ways are these design practices increasing false consciousness around the system of production? In what ways could they be revealing the networks and flows, or facilitating democratic ‘local’ control (and indeed ultimately ‘global’ control) of aspects of these systems, etc?

Architectural, urban, planning and design research has had multiple moments of engagement with these issues: developing new forms of analysis of global flows and scarcities, developing all kinds of new so-called green technologies and systems (as well as revisiting many old technologies), and developing new forms of design practices that are more socially activist in orientation.

Equally of course, mainstream architecture, urbanism and design practices are complicit in, and indeed primary vectors for, the very forces that are causing these conditions. In recent years the dominant discourse for exploring problems and solutions has worked around the concept of ‘sustainability’. But, as has been increasing widely observed, this concept is deeply problematic: sustaining what? A modified form of existing consumer capitalism and the uneven and profoundly unjust power relations that it is built upon too often appears to be the real (if often unintended) agenda.

Scarcity, whether conceived as an actual limit on resources, or as a socially constructed condition of uneven social or global distribution of resources, has been largely absent as a critical concept in recent mainstream western architectural and design discourse. This is perhaps not surprising: the architectural profession is set up to serve the needs of the global rich. Yet, this situation is rich in possibilities for the design professions and design research. In 2003 the graphic designer Bruce Mau founded the Institute without Boundaries, based upon R Buckminster Fuller famous call for a new kind of designer, a 'synthesis of artist, inventor, mechanic, objective economist, and evolutionary strategist'. Designers might solve problems using less resources, articulate critically the existing uneven allocation of resources, promote reduced consumption of resources in using products and so on. Thinking through scarcity and design allows a reconsideration of how are things made, how are they distributed, how are they used, and what happens at the end of their use. We are compelled to design processes as much as objects, systems as much as brands.

Conclusion Leading analysts of all the major resource domains – water, food, material resources and energy – tell us that our global industrial growth models, driven by largely unplanned and irrational financial market speculation, are taking human societies to the brink of a series of chronic shortages and insecurities. Some of these are determined by real natural limits in terms of diminishing quantities of available mineral resources, ranging from metals (rare or otherwise) to oil: a condition often referred to as ‘peak everything’. Other scarcities are based upon our problematic or socially uneven management of naturally produced resources such as water, timber and food (both livestock and agriculture). Many others

still are simply based upon the socially and geographically uneven development and allocation of these resources (and power), with a transfer of real metabolic value from the poor to the rich areas of the globe. In parallel to these metabolic inputs, industrial economies are also externalising – in a generally catastrophic manner – all kinds of waste sinks. Again this is characterised by an uneven development, typified by flows of waste from rich to poor regions. In all of these cases, existing systemic stresses are expected to transform and intensify in unpredictable ways as a result of climate change and ecosystem shifts.

But we must not forget that constantly through these processes, capitalist scarcity also alienates us from a proper understanding of our relation to nature, and to the rest of the world. It turns the world into what Heidegger called a ‘standing reserve’. There is a sense in which the very idea that resources are running out is itself a huge misunderstanding, a form of alienated thinking. Capital in this sense alienates us from a creative, sensuous and social grasp of our relationship to resources (or whatever word we should use): to matter and life.

We must not allow the current normative conception of scarcity to continue to dominate... it is thoroughly ideological, and hides the reality that there is still the socio-political possibility of choosing post-scarcity. A critique of the capitalist conception of scarcity involves a re-examination of both the concept of the commons, and the production-apparatus of contemporary subjectivity. Much work has been done in this area in different-though-interrelated ways, by for example Harvey, Hardt and Negri, and various associated autonomia fellow-travellers, to name but a few. Our task is to make a specifically spatial contribution to thinking and acting around these questions, as architecture, cities and urbanisms are always some kind of mediation of modes of subjectivity constructed through relations of scarcity.

We find ourselves then, at the beginning of the twenty first century, in a paradoxical world. Our capacity to produce and meet all of our needs has never been greater, yet inequality and poverty abounds, and the methods by which we do produce all to often seems to diminish our long term wealth, and damage the web of life within which we exist. It is not at all clear that scarcity is ultimately any better a concept for trying to grasp the shear extent of the problems and opportunities contained within ‘environmental question’ broadly conceived, than sustainability or any other recent term. Indeed, our problem is precisely that we do not have a conceptual and critical language up to the job.

Notes 1 As Lyla Mehta notes in the conclusion to her edited collection of essays on scarcity, ‘as the contributors to the volume repeatedly demonstrate, there is plenty of food, water and energy on this planet to meet the requirements of a population that demographers project will peak at just below 9 million.’ in Lyla Mehta, Limits to Scarcity – contesting the politics of allocation (London: Earthscan, 2010), p.4.

2 Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism 2nd Ed (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1986), p.11.

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid. p.13.

5 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 1977-78 (NY: Pallgrave Macmillan, 2007), p.30.

6 Ibid., p.37.

7 Louis-Paul Abeille and Abbot Ferdinando Galiani both cited in Foucault, ibid., p.52.

8 Ibid., p.42.

9 David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p.114.

10 Andy Merrifield, Magical Marxism: Subversive Politics and the Imagination (London: Pluto, 2011), p.96.

11 Ibid., p.13.

12 Bookchin, ibid., p.102.

Continued on page 57 >>

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to a place, but it fixes it in a vague, deformed, and deformable way; it fixes a reality in order to be able to work with it.13 Even though Enric Miralles insists that his projects should not be seen as discreet entities but as part of one continuous process in which each design overlaps with those projects that preceded it and the ones coming after, seen from outwith the office perspective and having in mind the more usual quest for stylistic consistency, individuality seems to predominate in Miralles’s projects. Of course, within this variety, there are elements that re-occur, one of these being the long sinuous line, closer to that of Matisse than Picasso, and commonly used as route and organising spine. Inventiveness is everywhere, and every component is game for invention, to an extent which makes it very difficult to find parallels.

This is NOT the gesamtkunstwerk of early twentieth century, where all the arts were integrated into a stylistically coherent whole. Each of Miralles’ inventions IS architecture in itself. Miralles’ inventiveness seems to come from seeing every element which goes into architecture as an opportunity for invention. Most architecture, and especially so that sympathetic to the modernist project which drooled over industrially produced architectural elements, relies heavily on ready-mades which are incorporated ‘as found’ into the building. In Miralles’ work even the most mundane element is game for design invention.

This is very evident in his Scottish Parliament Building, which has been criticised for its profusion of design. I would speculate, had Enric Miralles been able to participate in the construction phase I suspect that his ‘unbridled creativity’ would have stretched the design even further.

Evidence of his creative exuberance can be found everywhere. For example in the way in which electricity cables supplying wall lights are handled in his office in Barcelona, where they twist and turn in sinuous lines, reminiscent of those in his project drawings, pinned to the walls in their exposed course from the floor up to naked light-bulbs.

The Inés Table is another case in point where the type ‘table’, horizontal surface supported by legs, is rethought into something much more ambitious which turns it into a dynamic work landscape, “The table’s quality of instability allows it to take different forms within the interior of a room, to be transformed into a landscape. (…) The table defines different areas for working and storage, mixing together the working tools and the work itself. It responds to a concept of repetition and constant transformation: the process by which the work develops into the design.”14 CREATIVITY ?

As I intimated at the start of this paper I intend to discuss Enric Miralles’s creativity by confronting current conceptions of creativity with Miralles’ work, and ask myself whether these conceptions help or hinder our understanding of the nature of Enric Miralles’s creativity.

The fascination with creativity is rooted in its divine origins. After all what differentiates Gods from mortals is their ability to make things which, from a human perspective, appear near impossible. To conceive that which had not previously existed, the essence of creativity, is as close to the Gods as humans will ever get. Since ancient times and until fairly recently creativity was in the exclusive domain of the Gods; human creativity was possible only through divine endowment; humans were mere vehicles for divine creation. The emancipation of humans from divine control manifests itself, from the Renaissance on, in a growing sense of individualism.

During the Enlightenment the idea that humans could control their own destiny, the success of the application of the principles and methods of the natural sciences to industrial production during the nineteenth century, all contributed to

a process of change in the understanding of creativity. The result was that even though creativity was no longer thought to be an act in which humans were mere mediators of divine will, creativity still retained its exclusivity through the belief that it was lodged in a few inspired individuals. The majority of existing literature on creativity, produced in the fields psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and psychology, has fuelled this conception by concentrating on finding what makes certain individuals unusually creative and thus concluding that creativity is lodged in gifted isolated geniuses. Those defined as creative have, quite understandably, not been shy to contribute to their own elevation. J.S. Bach, asked by an admirer how he managed to produce such abundant and original scores, is said to have replied ‘My dear fellow, I have no need to think of them. I have the greatest difficulty not to step on them when I get out of bed in the morning.’ In recent years the idea that creativity is embedded in individual geniuses working alone is being countered by the notion that creative ideas are more often generated in social networks; something that should not surprise those who have observed that most creative ideas emerge from large cities. In parallel to the ascendency of the belief in creative networks, and related to it, there has been a push towards the democratisation of the concept of creativity; an effort to redefine creativity as a potential distributed equally amongst the whole population rather than one lodged in a few gifted individuals.

Traditionally confined mostly to the arts, creativity has recently received the unexpected attention and legitimising boost from such unexpected fields as management and economics. The reason is that as the last remnants of manufacturing industry have moved from West to East and South, from developed to developing countries, post-industrial societies have seen in creativity a means by which to maintain economic hegemony by turning knowledge and innovation into a commodity. The culmination of this process is the emergence of the concept of the ‘Creative society’ which elevates creativity to the role of main motor of economic development. The attention bestowed on creativity has led to its ubiquitous use which in turn has obfuscated rather than clarified its meaning. The recent pervasive use of terms such as ‘creativity’, ‘innovation’ and ‘newness’ has resulted in greatly diluting their meaning.

Creativity is commonly understood as the ability to transcend traditional ideas, rules, patterns, relationships, or the like, and to create meaningful new ideas, forms, methods, interpretations, etc.

However, the problem with definitions such as this is that they don’t take us very far. They tell us little else than newness is an essential component of creativity; but ‘newness’ is itself a vague concept which carries little meaning unless extensively qualified.

The loss of meaning of the term ‘creativity’ suggests that we have to come up with a definition which, with some rigor, allows us to distinguish creative acts from those that are not so. Furthermore a precise and nuanced understanding of creativity would allow us to establish the ‘depth’ or significance of a creative act.

Most discussions of creativity concur that for an act to be considered a creative it should involve something new, useful, and valid.

NEW For something to be considered creative it must be new. Newness is the most important condition for creativity.

However, de-contextualised newness is not significant. We have to ask: for who is the idea or product new? Is it new for a single individual? For one social group?

For society as a whole? That an idea or product is new to a single individual or small group may only be indicative of their limitations. To ‘re-invent the wheel’ may be a significant creative act for the individual who was unaware of its existence, but of little consequence to contemporary society. Newness must be considered in terms of its social impact and relevance, what I call the ‘depth’ of a creative act.

USEFUL The condition that the product of a creative act should be useful serves two purposes. First, to eliminate from consideration those ideas and products which may be novel but of little social value, and second, to establish the ‘depth’ of a creative act, the extent to which a creative act makes a positive contribution to society. For example, ideas, especially those which spark paradigm shifts, can be said to be of the greatest creative depth.

For example, Newton’s ideas on universal gravitation have had influence unparalleled by his religious studies which led to the prediction that the world could only end after 2060.

VALID Creative ideas or products need to be recognized as such by those who are familiar with the field of knowledge within which the creative act falls, in other words, creative acts need to be socially validated. It is of little use for a creative act to be accepted as such out of ignorance of its field, and it is not much better for a creative act to be so far ahead of its time that no one can see its potential. In both cases the creative act will be of little social consequence.

In a broad sense this is the social sciences’ view of creativity, and if we applied it strictly we would have to conclude that Enric Miralles’ work was creative in only a very limited sense. This is not surprising if we consider what society expects of architecture, which is to house social activities as they currently occur.

Architects are not called upon to change social behaviour through their buildings, but rather to accommodate established social acts and rituals. If we think about the order of Enric Miralles’s buildings we will see that the basic functions of a cemetery, archery, parliament, market, sports hall, etc. are all very sensibly arranged for use. It is in the elements used to enclose these functions and marry the building to its context that Enric Miralles’s ‘creativity’ comes into play.

Enric Miralles’s work is new, useful, and valid, but unlike a new paradigm or an innovation which changes our lives, such as, for example, the personal computer, buildings tend not to alter the lives of a significant part of our society.

Architecture’s main mission is shelter, and although it may embody the potential for new forms of habitation it is not called upon to innovate with respect to the way people want to inhabit. This social responsibility, of course, limits architecture’s scope for creativity, something which Miralles understood well, and perhaps this is why it is not very illuminating to demand of architecture the type of creativity which we expect from, for example, consumer products, such as the personal computer.

In terms of this paper this conclusion is of limited value as it tells us mostly what Enric Miralles’s work is NOT rather than what it is. So we have to turn to a different understanding of creativity, and for this the opening paragraph of Gaston Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space provides a good starting point. Speaking of himself Bachelard says, »» A philosopher who has evolved his entire thinking from the fundamental themes of the philosophy of science, and followed the main line of the active, growing rationalism of contemporary science as closely as he could, must forget his learning and break with all his habits of philosophical research, if he wants to study the problems posed by the poetic imagination. For here the cultural past doesn’t count. The long day-in, day-out effort of putting together and constructing his thoughts is ineffectual. One must be receptive, receptive to the image at the moment it appears: if there be a philosophy of poetry, it must appear and re-appear through a significant verse, in total adherence to an isolated image; to be exact, in the very ecstasy of the newness of the image.15 Bachelard is not alone in bringing up the limitations of natural science rationalism. Paul Karl Feyerabend, like Bachelard a philosopher of science, objected to any single prescriptive scientific method and argued that a measure of theoretical anarchism was desirable to ensure scientific progress. In his Against Method he argued

that the strict application of the rules of the scientific method acts against the advance of science.

“For is it not possible that science as we know it today, or a “search for the truth” in the style of traditional philosophy, will create a monster? Is it not possible that an objective approach that frowns upon personal connections between the entities examined will harm people, turn them into miserable, unfriendly, self-righteous mechanisms without charm or humour?

“Is it not possible,” asks Kierkegaard, “that my activity as an objective [or criticorational] observer of nature will weaken my strength as a human being?”

I suspect the answer to many of these questions is affirmative and I believe that a reform of the sciences that makes them more anarchic and more subjective (in Kierkegaard’s sense) is urgently needed.16 Writing about the limitations of rationalism is not new to architecture. We need only recall the process which took Christopher Alexander, first trained as a mathematician, from Notes on the Synthesis of Form, in which he argued for a design method in which the forces that shape a design would be quantified, to The Timeless Way of Building, written in the style of prose poetry or religious scripture, in which he introduced the concept of the “quality without a name” and argued that in spite of the difficulty explaining what it was, all good buildings possessed it.

The poetic imagination, which Bachelard writes about, emerges from the interplay of the rationally conscious and the unconscious, or in other words it is where the realms of concepts and ideas coming from the rational mind and the sensual experiences of the world perceived through the body work together and in opposition. “When the intellectual realm, the realm of ideas, is in balance with the experiential realm, the realm of phenomena, form is animated with meaning. In this balance, architecture has both intellectual and physical intensity, with the potential to touch mind, eye, and soul.”17 For Freud poetic imagination and creativity are presented in terms of fantasy, which is the means by which adults escape the strictures of the reality principle. Freud states, “…happy people never make phantasies, only unsatisfied ones.

Unsatisfied wishes are the driving power behind phantasies; every separate phantasy contains the fulfilment of a wish, and improves on unsatisfactory reality.”18 The observer of the poetic image is engaged by the revelation contained in the work, recognising that it opens new possibilities. Freud writes, “But this he can only attain because other men feel the same dissatisfaction as he with the renunciation demanded by reality, and because this dissatisfaction, resulting from the displacement of the pleasure-principle by the reality-principle, is itself a part of reality.”19 In the production of this creative act the artist turns away from reality to explore new possibilities and then reveals them to the observer, who recognises the new possibilities and incorporates them into her/his reality.

For Heidegger, poetic imagination delves into the unknown and expands consciousness by revealing something new. In his philosophy of art Heidegger describes the process of revelation in which the artist and the work of art are the means by which the new is revealed through the creation of realities made apparent through the poetic image.

Working in the field between the known and the unknown the artist reaches into the unknown and through revelation displaces its boundaries. In making the unknown apparent the artist forges new words and images. A poetic moment is, for Heidegger, the origination of a reality through a poetic image which brings new things to life. The work of art is a living symbol which retains its moment of origin, the instant in which what was previously concealed is revealed, while acquiring meaning through time.

Freud and Heidegger differ in that the former sees the origins of the poetic image as a reaction to dissatisfaction with reality, whereas for the latter the

poetic image emerges from the artist’s abandoned exploration of the unknown.

However they agree that the true poetic act, in being recognised as such by others, achieves a universality which goes beyond the personal characteristics of the artist. The impact of the poetic work depends upon its ability to reveal truth to others. For Freud and Heidegger, it is the recognition that the poetic act brings into being something new, that it expands the horizons and our awareness of the known, which throws light on the nature of creativity emanating from the poetic act.

One will recognise that the descriptions which Enric Miralles makes of the way he designed are not far removed from what Freud and Heidegger described as the poetic imagination. The substantial difference lies in that for Freud and Heidegger the importance of the poetic image embodied in the finished work is that it reveals the new to others, while Enric Miralles describes how the design process, enacted through drawing, was revealing of the unknown to himself; ‘others’ are not mentioned. Furthermore by emphasising the process, and the fact that it did not end on completion of a building but was continuous from building to building, Enric Miralles further attenuates the importance of the finished work.

In The Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard argues that to be human one must be able to form concepts about the world and use these to communicate with others, to speak. “ As a general thesis I believe that everything specifically human in man is logos. One would not be able to meditate in a zone that preceded language. But even if this thesis appears to reject an ontological depth, it should be granted, at least as a working hypothesis appropriate to the subject of the poetic imagination.”20 Bachelard understands our being as formed by our experiences of the world.

In turn our experience of the world is partially shaped by our material surroundings. In poetry we can find the key to a richer understanding of the world and of our being, an understanding that necessarily requires both the experience of matter (in the past and present) and ideas and concepts (possibilities of the future). However, in categorizing the world, language, as any system, restricts what and how we see the world. In operating outwith the conventional margins of language, poetry allows us to rediscover our relationship to matter. The poetic imagination extends the real into the unreal by using existing language, breaking conventions, and extending the limits of discourse, whether linguistic or pictorial.

It is in this sense that the poetic imagination can liberate the architect to break the conventions of architectural language and reveal new experiences.

While Freud and Heidegger wrote about the effect of the poetic act embodied in the work of art, Bachelard refers to the poetic image’s role in revealing the new through experiences of the material world. It seems to me that this is how Enric Miralles saw the potential of drawing: a dialectic in which concepts and ideas coming from the rational mind and sensual experiences work together and in opposition.

There are current practices which relate the poetic image to architecture, and looking into them may throw light onto Miralles’ use of poetic imagination.

One such is The School of Architecture and Design of the Catholic University of Valparaiso, e[ad], which has, for over fifty years, been developing and refining the use of poetic images as the basis for the making and teaching architecture.21 The founding document of e[ad], Amereida, is an epic poem collectively written by its founding fathers around the middle of the twentieth century. It lays out the mission of the school and still today serves as its guiding ethos. It is written in the form of ‘concrete poetry’, a poetic movement that can be traced back to ancient Greece and had a resurgence around 1950 in Sao Paolo, Brasil. Its first modern public appearance being an international exhibition organised by the group Noigandres, who two years later published the first concrete poetry

57 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is

manifesto. The interest in concrete poetry lies in its use of words both in terms of their meaning and their place on the page.

This double use of the word, as signifier and object in space, was what attracted Enric Miralles to use this form in the layout of his PhD thesis.

For e[ad] poetry is at the origins of making architecture, nothing, according to them, precedes the poetic act.

The poetic act itself, also referred to as Phalène, takes the form of a game which is performed in a specific place and time and whose outcome is a poem generated collectively by the participants in the act.

It is the poetic act, conceived in this way, which establishes the link between the word and space. David Jolly writes that the act is a “... constructive tool for the conception of architecture ...” because “... it is a creative invention that takes the art of poetry to the experience of life, ...”

“The Phalène is a window to new horizons because it multiplies the possibilities of being. In this way it makes it possible to build not only what has been foreseen, which would condemn us to repeat what already exists, but to being more, more and different.” In this sense, “The Phalène or poetic act offers a starting point to work in the arts.22 In e[ad] works of architecture are developed through observation of life in space, looking at activities as they occur, and recording these activities through drawings and words; and here the experience of the Phalène provides the connection of the word and the place. Observation itself is about knowledge, however, the drawing is a construction which involves abstracting. The drawing carries with it a brief text related to what has been drawn.

Jolly writes that in these drawings, “… we find the sensual dimension of the habitable space which has been captured at that moment, as well as the dimensions of knowledge that presented themselves on that occasion.”23 In Both Miralles’ and e[ad]’ cases poetic imagination is the means by which to expand foreseen possibilities through the dialectics of the sensuous and knowledge. The differences lie in that whereas Miralles seems to have intuitively discovered the potential of the drawing to uncover the new and used it in his own work, e[ad], being a teaching institution and having developed the use of poetry and its links to the architecture for more than fifty years, has worked at developing and explaining the process.

In the end I would argue that it is the reliance on the poetic imagination, a dialectic finely poised inside and outwith convention, inside and outwith the rational and the subconscious, interweaving back and forth between them, that kept Enric Miralles’ design output fresh and ever inventive.

However, as Richard Kearney writes, »» One of the greatest paradoxes of contemporary culture is that at a time when the image reigns supreme the very notion of a creative human imagination seems under mounting threat. We no longer appear to know who exactly produces or controls the images which condition our consciousness.

We are at an impasse where the very rapport between imagination and reality seems not only inverted but subverted altogether. We cannot be sure which is which. And this very undecidability lends weight to the deepening suspicion that we may well be assisting at a wake of imagination. 24 This fuels, »» (...) a growing belief in certain circles that the very notion of imaginative creativity may soon be a thing of the past. We appear to have entered a postmodern civilization where the image has become less and less the expression of an individual subject and more and more the commodity of an anonymous consumerist technology.25 In this context the practice of those which privilege the poetic imagination in the making of architecture can be seen as a critical stance to what Kearney describes as the future demise of creativity and can only raise our hopes that there may be alternative futures.

Notes 1 Work done as part of a HERA funded research project called Scarcity and

Creativity in the Built Environment 2 This observation comes from accounts of some ex-students of mine who worked in his office.

3 The title in Spanish is, Cosas vistas a izquierda y a derecha (sin gafas), PhD thesis, ETSAB, 1987. All translations in this paper are my own.

4 “Estas páginas cuentan que este modo de anotar casi es una escritura, que nace de la escritura, que se regula en el escribir”. Y así, “esta tesis cuenta cómo la anotación —en esta superficie de deslizamiento— sólo se produce si el pensamiento que la anima avanza por interrupciones, es capaz de detenerse en sus inicios, se produce en la repetición”.

Enric Miralles, 1987, op.cit.

5 “En estos planos no existe preocupación por el representar [...] es un trabajo de multiplicar una misma intuición. (…), Enric Miralles,1987, op.cit. p14.

6 “Volver allí donde nunca he estado.

Donde las cosas: ni antes, ni después, ni razones, ni explicaciones son casi inconscientes.” Enric Miralles, ‘(sans titre)’ L’Architecture d’Aujourd’hui, n° 312, p.96.

7 “No se trata de acumularlos, sino de multiplicarlos, [...] de permitir que aparezca aquello en que no habíamos pensado [...] de ahí que se avance por sucesivos comienzos. Una y otra vez, como si cada uno fuera el definitivo.” Enric Miralles, 1987, op.cit. “Lo mejor de un dibujo son los estados intermedios [...] ese ver aparecer [...] aquello que queda para otro trabajo.” Quoted in: Rut Vidal Subira, La Letra Dibujada en Prosa de Enric Miralles, unpublished Masters Thesis, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Dec. 2010, p.14.

8 “a veces las marcas tienen un significado, si alguien las sabe interpretar, las entiende. Pero muy a menudo tienes que pararte como desconocido, aceptar la marca porque está ahí, porque te la has encontrado, como cuando encuentras algunas inscripciones en una roca. Me interesa ese trabajo de ir aceptando los resultados que van apareciendo.(...).

Quoted in: Rut Vidal Subira, La Letra Dibujada en Prosa de Enric Miralles, unpublished Masters Thesis, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Dec. 2010, p.23.

9 Mi modo de trabajar está muy ligado a la idea de curiosear o de distraerse.

Una vez fijado el problEnric Mirallesa, el siguiente paso es casi olvidarse de la finalidad de lo que estabas haciendo, casi como para distraerte [...]”...Quoted in: Rut Vidal Subira, La Letra Dibujada en Prosa de Enric Miralles, unpublished Masters Thesis, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona, Dec. 2010, pp.23-4.

10 From Enric Miralles’ workbook, Quoted in Benedetta Tagliabue, ‘Don Quixote’s Itineraries or Material on the Clouds’, Enric Miralles, Mixed Talks, edited by B.Tagliabue, AD, Architectural Monographs No. 40, London: Academy Editions, 1995, pp.118-120. in BT article in EM MIxed Talks AD 1995.

11 Enric Miralles, Mixed Talks, edited

by B.Tagliabue, AD, Architectural Monographs No. 40, London: Academy Editions, 1995, p. 120.

12 Ibid.

13 “El collage es un documento que fija un pensamiento en un lugar, pero lo fija de manera vaga, deformada y deformable; fija una realidad para poder trabajar con ella”. Enric Miralles, Obras y Proyectos.

Editorial Electa, Milan, 1996, p.14.

14 Enric Miralles, Mixed Talks, edited

by B.Tagliabue, AD, Architectural Monographs No. 40, London: Academy Editions, 1995, pp 54-55.

15 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Boston: Beacon,1969, p.xv 16 Paul Karl Feyerabend, Against Method: Outline of an Anarchistic Theory of Knowledge, London: New Left Books, p.

154.

17 Holl, S., 1993, “Pre-theoretical Ground,” The Steven Holl Catalogue, Zurich: Artemis and ArcenReve Centre d’Architecture, pp. 21-29. (This text also appears in “Phenomena and Idea,” in GA Architect, 11, 1983).

18 Sigmund Freud, “The Relation of the Poet to Day-Dreaming”, in Philip Rieff (ed.) Character and Culture, New York: Collier Books, 1972, p. 37.

19 Sigmund Freud, ‘Formulations Regarding the Two Principles in Mental Functioning’, in John Rickman (ed.)

A General Selection from the Works of Sigmund Freud, Garden City: Double Day Anchor Books, 1957, p. 44.

20 Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Boston: Beacon,1969, p. xxiii.

21 The sources for my understanding of e[ad]’s way of making architecture comes from visits to their school and the Open City in Ritoque. Through two books, Amereida Poesia y Arquitectura, Godofredo Iommi, Alberto Cruz, Santiago: Ediciones ARQ, 1992, and Perez de Arce, R. and Perez, F., Escuela de Valparaiso: Ciudad Abierta, Madrid, Tanais, 2003. The only attempt I know of systematically explaining e[ad]’s way of making architecture is David Jolly’s excellent PhD thesis La Capital Poética de América, ETSAB, 2012.

22 David Jolly, La Capital Poética de América, Unpublished PhD thesis, ETSAB, 2012, pp.70, 73, 75 & 79.

23 Ibid. p.127 24 Richard Kearney, The Wake of Imagination, London: Taylor and Francis, 2003, p.3 25 Ibid. p.6

CONTRIBUTORS SCIBE OSLO Barbara Elisabeth Ascher

Barbara was born in Germany and studied Architecture and Urbanism at Bauhaus University in Weimar and Oslo School of Architecture and Design with a scholarship from the German National Academic Foundation. She graduated from Bauhaus-University in 2006 and has worked as an architect an urban planner in Austria, Egypt and Norway as well as a guest critic at the University in Stavanger.

She recently joined the Oslo School of Architecture and Design as a PhD research fellow, where she researches on Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment.

Christian Hermansen Cordua

Christian studied architecture in Santiago, Chile and Washington University, USA. He has taught at Kingston School of Architecture, Strathclyde University and the Mackintosh School of Architecture Glasgow School of Art, where he was Director of Post Graduate Studies. In 2004 he became Professor of Architecture and Head of the Department of Architecture.

He has lectured widely in America, Europe and Asia and has been Visiting Professor at The Central European University; Washington University School of Architecture; and Universidad del Desarrollo. He has published several books and contributed to journals, books and exhibitions in Europe and America.

Edward Robbins

Edward, trained as an anthropologist, is Professor of Urbanism in the Institute of Urbanism, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design who has written and taught extensively about the relation of design to social theory and practice.

Presently he is engaged in working on the challenges posed by cities in the south, especially the issue of poverty.

<< Continued from page 55: Scarcity and Creativity

13 Ibid., p.102.

14 See Philip Sadler, Sustainable Growth in a Post-Scarcity World (Farnham: Gower, 2010), p.236.

15 John Beddington and Deborah Duanne in discussion on coming food price rises and scarcity on BBC Radio 4 Today programme 2.1.13 16 See on this Jon Goodbun, ‘Flexibility and Ecological Planning: Gregory Bateson on Urbanism’ in Jon Goodbun with Jeremy Till and Deljana Iossifova, AD Scarcity: Architecture in an Age of Depleting Resources (London: Wiley 2012), pp.52-55.

SCARCITY AND REDISTRIBUTION Jeremy Till with Jon Goodbun and Deljana Iossifova, London Published in The Architects’ Journal, 28 June 2012

In a conference in Barcelona last week, the brilliant architect Anne Lacaton of Lacaton and Vassal showed a picture of a pretty, if slightly rundown, provincial town square in France, which they had been asked to renovate. “The place is already rather nice”, she says to the client, “why bother to embellish it?” And with this walks away from the job.

This was just about the most radical thing we have heard said by architect in the past few years. The so-called boom of recent decades got the profession addicted to the idea that adding more, and more shiny, artefacts to the world was the supreme act of the architect.

At a stroke, Lacaton dismisses that assumption. For the past two years we at the University of Westminster, together with partners in Vienna and Olso, have been investigating what these immanent conditions of scarcity might mean to the way that architects operate in the future.

Starting with a straightforward definition of scarcity as lack, our observations and readings have lead us into a much more complex reading of the subject.

Scarcity is indeed real – things really running out – but it is also constructed, in the way the wider forces of capital construct scarcity and with this inequalities. An obvious example is food: there is enough food in the world but it is in the wrong places. The machinations of the global food corporations, of farm subsidies in the global north, and of uneven demand have created skewed distribution patterns, resulting in hunger in some areas mirrored by excess and waste in others. The same is true of the construction of scarcity of space: there is enough empty space in the UK to address housing and commercial need, but it is in the wrong hands, tied into certain tenures and locked up by systems of lending and planning legislation. Still more disturbing is the way that scarcity is used as a cover to justify the imposition of inequitable social programmes.

There is nothing new in this; ever since Malthus used the threat of future food shortages to justify population control, and the accompanying abandonment of the poor, scarcity has been used as a spectre, most clearly in the contemporary age where lack of capital liquidity and growth is used as the justification for the imposition of punitive austerity programmes.

For the architect, conditions of scarcity may shift the paradigm as to how the profession sees itself. Presently the practice of architecture is defined through the design of buildings. Under the imperative of sustainability, attention has been focussed on ensuring these buildings have as small a carbon footprint as possible. The competing systems of control and regulation (BREEAM, Passivhaus, Codes for Sustainability, LEED, etc.) have the unfortunate effect of essentialising scarcity, treating it as a pure and inevitable limit, there to be measured and controlled.

The more complex readings of scarcity challenge this reductive sense of sustainability as limit, in which attention is fastened to building as object rather what becomes before or after it.

Scarcity, if defined solely as lack and limit, would ask us to do much the same, but with less; this miserablist approach is exactly what is arising out of the current programme of austerity. Against this, we argue that a critical conception of scarcity can upset much of that which neo-liberal economics is based (such as the notion of endless growth), and with this upsets the assumption that architects should be defined solely through adding stuff to the world (which in turn is a mode of extracting from the world).

Architecture can be about much more than designing buildings. Tim Jackson’s seminal book Prosperity without Growth argues that we urgently need to address our addiction to consumption and growth, and can do so in a way that will result in a more socially equitable, happier and ecologically resilient society. A re-imagined architectural practice has real contributions to make to such a project, but only if we can start to enjoy the fact that rather than adding more stuff, we should redistribute what is there already. And rather than fixating solely on the building as object and measure, we should also talk about what comes before and after in terms of briefing, procurement and performance – and in particular to understand how scarcities are always constructed at each of those stages. The current imposed political programmes of austerity are just a vehicle for further inequalities: redistributing resources from the poor to the rich. A new critical conception of scarcity asks us to do something very different, and in this provides new opportunities for spatial intelligence.

THE FUTURE, GREEN? Deljana Iossifova, London

The vision of the future is one of ubiquitous scarcity: demand is predicted to outstrip supply – be it for reasons of everincreasing numbers of urban residents in cities around the world, or of everdepleting resources and the declining health of our natural environment.

One possible and widely propagated response to these emerging challenges has been the sustainability approach: to use as little as possible as efficiently as feasible, so that more remains available in the future and enough available for all.

Smart meters are being hailed as technical aids or even solutions to challenges within the built environment, said to be responsible for 45 per cent of carbon emissions in the UK. Measuring every drop of water, every ray of sun and every breeze of air, collecting information on every resident’s energy use at all times of the day, we are promised that they will help us, the users, to save energy and money. Energy companies, the producers, on the other hand, are enabled to distribute and sell in a smart and sustainable way. The refurbishment of existing housing stock is presented as yet another solution to ‘sustainability’ challenges, and the current Government has just launched its Green Deal initiative to introduce both smart and green technologies to weathered British homes.

Whilst on-going and future pervasive retrofit activities are sure to give the construction industry a much-needed boost, I wonder if this technical fix is, ultimately, going to deliver the much-needed change in the realities of people who live their lives tied to the whim of governments, councils and housing associations.

Is fixing the facades of estate blocks to match, for instance, current requirements for thermal insulation going to bring about the comfort and well-being that residents deserve? Or might all this fixing on the surface – justified by the Continued on page 59 >>

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SCARCITY, CREATIVITY AND GOVERNMENTALITY – FOSTERING SPACES FOR RADICAL TRANSFORMATIONS Isis Nunez Ferrera, London

Scarcity and Wellbeing – Zooming into Elementary Needs The concept of scarcity has been eagerly discussed and dissected for centuries while also being appropriated and utilized in the name of doctrines and ideologies.

Different academics, scientists, disciplines and movements have sought a definition that not only categorizes scarcity but that also facilitates an understanding of how scarcity is deployed and which are its consequences for humanity, nature, economic models and so on. In an oversimplistic manner, it could be said that discourses on scarcity are shaped into interplay between needs and resources, being this interplay the processes that governs its production. As an example, this can be illustrated in the field of neoclassical economics, where scarcity revolves around abstract or material needs such as goods and commodities which in turn can be substituted through the interplay of economic exchange and the optimization of goods under constraints (Baumgartner et al., 2006). Nonetheless, for the sake of this paper and its implicit inquiry into alternative notions of wellbeing in the built environment, the discussion will address an elementary need that falls into the ethical category (i.e. human rights, justice, freedom) as it is deeply in congruence, if not essential, to flourishing and wellbeing (Baumgartner et al., 2006). This elementary need is the users’ necessity to actively engage in the negotiations and decisions related to their own built environment.

Now, how does this relate to the focus of the SCIBE project, specifically to its premise that well-being can indeed flourish within limits? Here I will make reference to different authors coming from economic and well-being perspectives. Jackson (2003) makes a case for a more sustainable model of development by re-conceptualising established notions of prosperity. While material possessions may contribute to one’s wellbeing these do not necessarily equate to prosperity.

“Rather prosperity has to do with our ability to flourish: Physically, psychologically and socially. Beyond mere subsistence, prosperity hangs crucially on our ability to participate meaningfully in the life of society” (Jackson, 2003:143). He continues to support his argument, through the work of the psychologist Tim Kasser who identified through statistical means how “self-acceptance, affiliation and sense of belonging” indeed contribute to wellbeing, therefore increasing the potential to flourish even when material substance becomes scarce (referenced in Jackson, 2003:148). Moreover, this rationale is strongly empirically supported

by Wilkinson and Pickett’s (2009) “The Spirit Level”, a compendium of cases and statistics that illustrate how economic growth is not necessarily equivalent to wellbeing, specifically in polarized and unequal societies where exclusionary practices (at different levels) are the norm rather than exception.

This argument is the basis that prompted the focus of this paper around these “elementary needs” or as Baumgartner et al. (2006:491) frames it, those needs for which “no substitution is conceivable without degradation to human being”.

From situations of scarcity to innovative responses - Exploring radical transformations This section will explore the common

denominators that characterise social innovation and creative communities in order to understand the circumstances that preclude or foster real change in communities with scarce resources. On the one hand, Manzini (2010:3) defines ‘creative communities’ as “those groups who co-operatively invent, enhance and manage innovative solutions for new ways of living, and do this by recombining things that already exist”. Furthermore, he recognizes three common denominators that characterize creative communities and that intrinsically support the kind of sustainable change that these communities achieve through social innovation: * Cooperativism and Creativity: The ability and disposition to come together and creatively find and implement solutions with the existing resources. * Challenge to the status quo: This collective intent arises from discontent with the status quo, thus challenging the norms and introducing new ways of doing things. * Existent crucial opportunities: Previous knowledge, the potential of the existent resources (i.e. services, infrastructure, products) and the presence of fostering (or at least tolerant) social and political environments (Manzini, 2010).

In a similar manner, Jackson (2003) highlights how collective intent and fostering environments posit more chances for social innovations to succeed. Nonetheless, the author also acknowledges the danger of becoming marginalized or obsolete when trying to challenge normative values and structures that are deeply ingrained in societies or political and economic systems. For this reason his argument of flourishing within limits is counterparty to the fundamental establishment of “new structures that provide capabilities for people to flourish and particularly participate fully in the life of society, in less materialistic ways” (Ibid, 2003:153).

Both authors make emphasis on flexible environments that can tolerate and enable ‘radical transformation’ that goes beyond generic change and transcends and sustains over time. With similar concerns and in response to the changes brought upon by social innovation, Swyngedouw discusses new ways of government innovation that allows the state and institutional apparatus to breakdown and adapt “in order to respond to changing socio-economic and cultural conditions and social demands for enlarged public participation” (Swyngedouw, 2009:63).

Swyngedouw’s discourses around the reorganization of a system in order to make it not only tolerant but also flexible, open and encouraging becomes the turning point of this paper, as it pushes its focus towards new ways of governmentality. This concept, originally coined by Foucault, becomes the common umbrella that brings together the elementary need (scarcity) and the claim (creative responses) for an active agency in the production of the built environment along with the innovative forms of governance and institutional arrangements necessary to enable, achieve and sustain transformative change.

Preparing the ground for Radical Transformations - Exploring the potential of Governmentality through a case in the Global South Prompted by the previous sections, this segment of the paper will briefly explore the interconnections between governmentality and discourses of scarcity and creativity in the built environment.

Perhaps, the best example to illustrate this is the case of Baan Mankong in Thailand, a nation-wide collective housing programme implemented by the Community Organizations Development Institute (CODI), a public sector entity.1 While calling for a new approach to sustainable cities, Somsook Boonyabancha2, director of CODI asks: “how can the system make room for the force of people’s creativity to spring up and flourish so as to create this new urban development culture (whereby) instead of the city being a vertical unit of control,

smaller units – people-based and local – can be a system of self-control for a more creative, more meaningful development”.

In response, the Baan Mankong programme entails a re-configuration of government and institutional practices to include communities as active agents in the development of their own environments, therefore radically challenging the established rationalities around slums, slum-upgrading, needs and community development. And, while the scale and ambitions of the programme certainly poses challenges and limitations to its success, it is undeniable that a structural change was successfully accomplished in order for creative local initiatives to be supported and mainstreamed into the system (i.e. compost creation for cleaning of waterways/canals, cooperative housings, social enterprises etc). How was this accomplished? In a over-simplistic manner, the programme entails the transformation of social structures and managerial systems, the design and implementation of innovative ‘tools of governing’ including mechanisms of flexible finance, land sharing, community organizations, networks and cooperation at local, national and even international spectrums (with grass-roots and community-led organizations around the world).

Moreover, the programme radically challenges the normative practices of architects and urban planners, by involving professionals and students (referred to as ‘community architects’) at different scales of the process and creating professional networks where knowledge is created and transferred on issues of social justice and urban development.

Although briefly explained, this case is an illustration of how local initiatives and social innovation can be institutionalised and taken into a wider scale where longlasting positive impacts can be experienced not only by residents and entire communities but also by a wide range of civil society, grass-roots and professional organisations, related institutions and the city as whole. The case also exemplifies how new forms of governmentality can transform normative government and institutional practices and reorganize them into flexible systems where social innovation can be mainstreamed and agency can be actively exercised.

To conclude, this paper is not a manifesto but rather an invitation to reflect on the multiplicities revolving notions of scarcity; on the limitations that creative communities can encounter when faced with hostile environments and lastly on the potentialities of new ways of governmentality playing a role in the meaningful and transformative change of communities and their built environment.

Naturally, these reflections have connotations for design and radically challenge its role beyond physical determinism, which takes me to the concluding remark by Hernandez (2010:21) as an advocacy for a more holistic design practice: »» Bhabha conceives of architecture – buildings, cities, spaces – as a subject in the ‘Third Space’, that area where culture is at its most productive, because buildings and cities are always metaphorically in the middle between architects’ interests, developers’ economic expectations and planning laws, while also being continually re-signified by users.

References Baumgärtner, S. et al. (2006) Relative and absolute scarcity of nature. Assessing the roles of economics and ecology for biodiversity conservation in Ecological Economics, 59, 487-498.

Boonyabancha, S. (n.a) Unlocking People Energy, in Green Cities. United Nations Environmental Porgramme Website.

Available online: http://www.unep.org/ ourplanet/imgversn/161/content.html

Foucault, M. (1979) On Governmentality, in Ideology and Conciousness 6, pp.5-21 Hernández, F. (2010) Bhabha for Architects, Oxford: Routledge.

Jackson, T. (2003) Prosperity without Growth. Economics for a Finite Planet.

Earthscan, London – Sterling, VA. Manzini, E. (2010) Design for Social Innovation: Creative Communities and DesignOriented Networks in Sharing Experience Europe (SEE), Policy Innovation Design Bulletin,

Issue 3, May. Roy, A. (2009) ‘Civic governmentality: the politics of inclusion in Beirut and Mumbai, in Antipode, 41(1), 159-179.

Swyngedouw, E. (2009) Civil Society, Governmentality and the Contradictions of Governance-beyond-the-state: The Janus-face of Social Innovation, in MacCallum, D. et al. (eds) Social Innovation and Territorial Development, Chapter 4, pp.63-78.

Ashgate Publishing Limited.

Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K. (2009) The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. Allen Lane.

Notes 1 For more information on CODI and the Baan Mankong Programme go to:

http://www.codi.or.th/webcodi/index. php?option=com_content&task=section &id=9&Itemid=52

2 Somsook Boonyabancha is the Director of CODI and was the founding Secretary of the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights located in Bangkok, Thailand. She began experimenting with the concept of land sharing during the early 1990s as a way of arriving at settlements between slum dwellers and landowners.

SCARCITY AND CREATIVITY IN THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT: INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS AND SOCIO-SPATIAL CHANGE Isis Nunez Ferrera, London A Research Project

This research stems from concerns with pressing issues affecting the built environment in contemporary cities of both the global North and South, including economic crises, accelerated rates of urbanisation and depletion of resources, all of which are posing increasing challenges to all those living in and producing the built environment.

In developed countries, austerity measures are progressively becoming part of development and prosperity discourses as a way to deal with the limitations of ‘not having enough’; this directly affects the policies and planning strategies governing housing and service provision.

In the global south -the geographical focus of this research- scarcity in cities has been a prevalent constraint, commonly conceived in the form of material deprivation, and the limited financial and institutional capacity of governments to cope with rapid urbanisation and the plethora of political and socio-economic challenges arising from it. In both cases, when it comes to the built environment, scarcity is mainly conceived as a material condition – as a lack of resource - with little understanding of its true nature in terms of what it is, how it comes to be and how it shapes the built environment in urban settings.

Within this landscape of constant limitations, no other urban phenomena has been associated more prominently with scarcity than informal settlements1, most commonly referred to as ‘slums’.

Informal settlements are usually used as the ‘image’ of poverty, and in some cases, they seem to portray the failure of the project of the city. While they continually seem to inspire fascination and curiosity for their resourcefulness and survival strategies, they still are largely regarded by authorities as obstacles to progress, and in this overlook any transformative potential or constructive aspects that the informal might bring to the wider discourse.

Within this context, this research aims to deconstruct the concept of scarcity in relation to the built environment, therefore

exploring its spatial2 nature, focusing on informal settlements as scenarios.

The aim is to identify if there are specific characteristics within the informal that might allow for new readings of the city and possibilities for socio-spatial change under conditions of scarcity.

Study area The research begins with the premise that the examination of issues of scarcity in the production of the built environment can inform new ways of thinking and acting around cities and space. It investigates whether informal settlements, characterised as they are by their spontaneous and flexible nature and a general lack of external professional and technological inputs, constitute a scenario with unique characteristics where the construction of scarcity and its influence on creativity can be explored in a new light. In this light, the research is guided by the following research questions: * How is scarcity in the built environment constructed in the context of informal settlements in the Global South? * What are the creative strategies deployed by the different actors involved in producing the built environment within the limits of scarcity? * What is the relation between scarcity, creativity and socio-spatial3 change, and what theoretical and practical implications can be drawn from it?

Scarcity: From material accounts to socio-spatial realities Most people associate scarcity with “not having enough” of something, most usually material. As a word it is mostly used when referring to environmental issues (natural resources becoming scarce). The initial literature review therefore started exploring this field, but it soon became apparent that a wider, more nuanced, approach to the word and its meanings would be necessary.

Within environmental-related discourses4 scarcity has been considered a material condition, putting forward solutions of a exogenous kind, mainly based on costly-technological inputs and remaining oblivious to socio-economic and cultural aspects embedded in any context, whether rural or urban. Subsequently, this way of conceiving scarcity inherently pervades a sense of exclusivity when sectors of society or even entire countries and regions are unable to adapt or enforce such solutions.

These stances have been contested, particularly within the field of sociology, encouraging a transition from a view focused on natural resources to a socio-cultural theory of scarcity, where scarcity is directly associated with social conditions5. Scarcity here makes the transition from being purely associated with commodities and material conditions, to being in direct relation to subjective aspects embedded in culture and arising from societal processes. Nonetheless, although this standpoint brings the concept of scarcity closer to the complexity of human interaction and behaviour, it also tends to rely on the subjectivity of particular contexts, falling short to address structural issues of inequality, particularly if faced against the intricacy of current urban settings.

More recently, the work of political ecologists has expanded the debate on scarcity by illustrating the relationship between macro systems of allocation and context-specific conditions of insufficiency. Furthermore, political ecology has shed light on the interplay between environmental conditions and political struggles (Swyngedouw, 2004); it has introduced the discursive nature of resources (Mehta, 2010; see also Mehta, 2011) and it has shed light on the particularities embedded on difference, social movements and the construction of knowledge (Escobar, 2006). In this line, political ecology has been recognised “as an important and influential theoretical framework for environmental justice studies” (Holifield, 2009:638) and in the case of scarcity and inequality, it has Continued on page 60 >>

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experienced scarcity |

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lack of adequate laundry spaces

menace of scarcity – be just another step toward the transformation of thinking human beings into mindless consumers prepared to surrender the last bit of command over their lives to ever-calculating, omnipresent and omniscient systems of (profit-seeking) control?

deconstructing scarcity |

elements

the corridor | elements

people

rooftops

clothes

wires/illegal connections

objects (artefacts and organisms) practices (organised actions)

Components create territories by interacting with each other and

cooking & washing

passers-by

residents

inflicting effects.

Components play specific roles in each interaction.

water

no lighting houses

dirt paths open sewage

deconstructing scarcity |

the home | elements

structure owner

residents

daily activities

interior physical space

constructed scarcity |

the unallocated land | elements clothes temporary users

passers-by

other people washing garbage/sewage

dirt paths

Retrofitting the Past Studies have shown that residents on housing estates often gain little financial or health benefits from the retrofit of their homes; one reason is that their energy usage is often already quite low as they struggle to pay for their bills; another lies in the unwanted effects that some wellmeant interventions can trigger.

Take my favourite example, the recent refurbishment of a housing estate in London’s East End. Built in the 1960s, it sits in-midst a sea of vast and run-down council housing estates, their façades hastily refurbished to camouflage the long-term neglect and entrenched wear – now all the more obvious in the immediate presence of spectacular event architecture (with the Olympic Games 2012 next door) and the rapidly expanding pockets of new-build developments for the fortunate few. When the local housing association took over from the council a few years ago, residents were promised a complete make-over, including new windows (to protect them from the constant noise of the adjacent motorway), better security and a friendlier playground for their children. In a scheme designed to ‘empower’ and make residents proud of their estate – ‘a place with a bright future’ – the local housing association hired a builder to provide an aesthetic make-over and bring the estate up to a state of minimum maintenance.

The builder researched refurbishment options using specialist software and building surveys, thermal imaging and air tightness testing and proposed, to the surprise of the housing association, to do all the work they were hired for – and to throw in the complete retrofit of the housing estate and major improvements in energy efficiency from added external insulation, for free. The work was completed over the period of twelve months, but the results were not quite as good as the housing association or the residents had hoped for. Beautified on the outside, the increased insulation and the replacement of windows and door had made many flats even more airtight than they had been before. Coupled with the reality massive overcrowding in the area (one of London’s ‘most deprived’ wards with over 30% of households suffering from overcrowding) and practices aimed at saving on fuel to minimise bills (not opening windows to keep the noise out and the heat in, for instance), the retrofit made living conditions even more difficult for many residents.

Building the Future Let me take you to another reality – my own. When I was kicked out from my Stoke Newington flat a couple of months before the start of the Olympics (of course, our landlord decided to sell), I was thrilled about the opportunity to move into a brand-new flat within a, brightly coloured ‘affordable housing’ development, just a stone’s throw away from the Olympic site. Every morning, I wake up to the beeping of our smart smoke control system, which has been consistently going off every time one of our upper-floor neighbours breaks open one of the clumsily constructed automatic opening vents (AOVs) because they can no longer bear the suffocating heat that is trapped inside the building, courtesy of our generously glazed facades. This has happened so many times that our building management can no longer be bothered to send someone to reset the system. Tired residents have taken to breaking violently the little gems of highend, ever-beeping technology, just to shut them up and get a little bit of rest.

Needless to say, the intelligent automated building control system, fooled to believe that the building is on fire,

automatically disables our highly-praised key-fob security entry system, complete with high-end security entry phones (with video!) and opens all doors to the public. Anyone can now enter at any time.

Unfortunately, the very same system has no effect on the key-fob operated doors to our garbage collection rooms, and judging by the amount of garbage accumulating in front of these doors every day, it may even be that some loop in the system prevents them from opening altogether. But getting some rest at night is not an easy task also because of the reliable and powerful lights installed on the building opposite (‘designing out crime’, anyone?), and it seems only a question of time before residents begin treating these in the same way they treat our beeping smoke alarm apparatus. Our guess is that the solar panels on the roof of our building produce just about enough energy to keep the flood-lights on and the beeping going.

Today, as urban practitioners, we are faced with the conflicting realities of globalisation, climate change and perpetual financial turmoil. In our professional lives, we are confronted with the material manifestations of injustice, inequality and waste, knowing that – in order to propose useful interventions – we must find ways to address their non-physical triggers and consequences.

It seems that the quick technical fix will likely result in the waste of time, energy and resources. Digital technologies can contribute substantially to successful building retrofit management and monitoring, but in order to deploy them appropriately, it is essential to understand how diverse user groups engage with both the built environment and digital technologies. To do so requires research on the combined social, economic and environmental/technical aspects of building activities. As architects, designers and planners, we need a better, contextspecific understanding of the ways in which people live their lives, so that our proposals and interventions respond to their precise needs. I want to argue that the next step must be a step away from design for profit or even enterprise; a step away from design in the service of some few. It must be a step toward the social, and a step toward (re)cognition of creativity as a social skill, as one that serves the needs of the many, and not the wants of the few. After all, the city – indeed – is a shared resource and responsibility; and especially we, as creative professionals, have the possibility of doing otherwise.

HOW CAN ARCHITECTS CONTRIBUTE TO SOLVING THE PROBLEMS OF THE FUTURE? Arna Mathiesen, Reykjavik http://scibereykjavik.wordpress.com

The winning entry of an idea competition for the Architecture Triennial in Oslo in 2010 “Wemakecity”, claims the following: »» Before we design houses, we might have to design political and economical processes.

The architect then becomes a designer of process that as a consequence can yield particular architectural prototypes that are responding to a larger set of challenges.1 For most practicing architects the idea seems quite optimistic, if not obscure.

What does it actually mean? Are we to learn our trade again from scratch? How would an architect/ designer, whose role is currently battling inside a process, have the capacity or power to design a process?

The question was relevant for architects in Iceland after the financial crash (2008) as the whole society and its government was being re-evaluated, and people thirst Continued on page 61 >>

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been used to generate valuable empirical research (see Swyngedouw 2004, Mehta, 2001, 2010; Escobar 2006).

Through the review of this body of work on issues of scarcity, three key interwoven lessons emerged, specifically with regards to the first research question. These key lessons begin to conform a definition of ‘constructed scarcity’: Firstly, the socio-material nature of scarcity is introduced, challenging the common perception that scarcity revolves solely around the materiality of goods and commodities. This acknowledgement of societal processes, including how scarcity is perceived and how groups come together under extreme conditions and with specific interests, is crucial to understand how resources are used and managed.

Secondly, the discursive nature of scarcity is introduced, again exemplifying an [im]material aspect of this condition and illustrating how knowledge and power are intrinsically related, on the one hand, to the management and distribution of resources, and on the other, to the way responses are formulated to mitigate or get rid of scarcity.

Thirdly, it touches upon issues of distributive justice. It begs the question: who’s scarcity? Whether it stems from the reductive and exclusionary Malthusian perspective, or from a more from the structuralist point of view of political ecology, scarcity is deeply related to how resources are distributed and controlled and therefore expands to the economic and political realms.

Theories of the just city have typically addressed issues of maldistribution as a key process through which particular groups or sectors of society become marginalised and affected to a higher degree than others. As Fanstein (2010) points out, mainstream approaches to the ‘just city’ have been focused on the planning apparatus and government practices, from how public investment is conceived and implemented, to how policies are formulated.6 One example of how this is translated into a principle that can guide interventions in a city is neoliberalism, as “the doctrine in which market processes result in the efficient allocation of resources and provide incentives that stimulate innovation and economic growth” (Fanstein, 2010:8). This constitutes a very pragmatic (or technocratic) approach, focused on governance, in which the quest for achieving justice and equity in a city is marked by solutions that arise from the ‘top’ (i.e. subsidies,), and that very much ignore the particularities of context and the social complexities present in any urban agglomeration.

Other approaches to the just city have critiqued this sole emphasis on maldistribution. Iris Young (2002) and Nancy Fraser contributed to theories of justice, by making reference to how issues of power play an important role and how recognition is key to achieve any kind of justice in the city. This brings the discussion into a different kind of, we could say, ‘scarcity’ where what is lacking, in parallel to an equitable distribution of resources, is the chance to be acknowledged, to fully express difference and to influence processes that affect their chances to a dignified life in the city.

Another approach to justice relevant to this research, is the one based on freedom and capabilities, as developed by Amartya Sen (see Sen, 2009; and Stiglitz, Sen and Fitoussi, 2009, Ch.2 on Quality of Life).

This approach goes beyond the ‘lack’ of resources needed to flourish, to consider what allows or precludes individuals to transform what they have into valuable and meaningful outcomes (of both social and material nature). This is particularly relevant to contexts where what is lacking may not be material resources but opportunities of social, economic and political nature.

This focus on well-being and prosperity is also tackled in a similar way by economist Tim Jackson. Jackson (2003) makes a case for a more sustainable model of development by re-conceptualising established

notions of prosperity. While material possessions may contribute to one’s wellbeing these do not necessarily equate to prosperity. “Rather prosperity has to do with our ability to flourish: Physically, psychologically and socially. Beyond mere subsistence, prosperity hangs crucially on our ability to participate meaningfully in the life of society” (Jackson, 2003:143).

He continues to support his argument, through the work of the psychologist Tim Kasser who identified through statistical means how “self-acceptance, affiliation and sense of belonging” indeed contribute to wellbeing, therefore increasing the potential to flourish even when material substance becomes scarce (referenced in Jackson, 2003:148). Moreover, this rationale is strongly empirically supported

by Wilkinson and Pickett’s (2009) “The Spirit Level”, a compendium of cases and statistics that illustrate how economic growth is not necessarily equivalent to wellbeing, specifically in polarised and unequal societies where exclusionary practices (at different levels) are the norm rather than exception.

Thus, scarcity can be considered a socio-material condition related to the use, management and control of material and immaterial resources, hence it seems only natural to study it in contexts where it is more acutely experienced. The following literature review will investigate what makes informal settlements a unique scenario for the study of scarcity, and its potential to shed light on new ways of approaching socio-spatial change.

The term ‘informal’ was originally coined in Ghana by anthropologist Keith Hart, when undertaking research on urban labour markets in Accra (Hart, 1973). Since then, the informal has been described with mostly ‘negative’ characteristics (i.e. illegal, unplanned etc.). It is not surprising, that within the discourses of architecture and urbanism, informal settlements were also initially conceptualised as archipelagos of deprivation and uncertainty. Nevertheless, and perhaps in response to criminalising policies and state interventions, these discourses also sought to expand this reductive characterisation by examining these ‘archipelagos’ as hubs of resourcefulness and constant transformation. For example, the 1960s and 70s marked the initial efforts to recognise and value people’s agency in making good use of resources and transforming their own built environment, while challenging at the same time the principles of the established planning and architectural order of the time (Turner, 1972,1976; Rudofsky,1964). Furthermore, this period also witnessed an increasing documentation of everyday ingenuity when dealing with severe social, economic and political constrains, with the aim to contest the stigma of marginality vested in those living in informality (Pearlman, 1976; Peattie, 1968). Nevertheless, perspectives on the relationship between informality and ingenuity remained mostly localised, unconnected to the macro-structures that create the constraints in the first place and in some cases accused of perpetuating the modern model (and dualistic view) of development and emerging policies (Burgess, 1977). Hence, although spatial conditions of scarcity were inherently acknowledged within these discourses, they fell short of critically examining its nature, emergence and development.

More recently, architectural research has increasingly become preoccupied with understanding issues that are closely related to scarcity in the built environment, particularly urban poverty, inequality and lack of affordable housing in informal settlements. For example, the work of Gough and Kellett (Gough and Kellett, 2001; Kellett, 2005) has illustrated how in many of these settlements, livelihood strategies are closely linked to the use and transformation of dwelling environments, thus challenging the normative separation of ‘home’ and ‘work’ spaces that characterises many housing provision projects. Similarly, Teddy Cruz emphasises the need “to transform existing paradigms of housing, infrastructure and density” (Cruz, 2011:111). His work focuses on the neighbourhood as an ‘urban laboratory’ with potential to inform

global processes (Cruz, 2004-2005; 2008) and relies on the mapping of a variety of production processes and conditions of both abundance and scarcity, in order to inform the design of ‘new institutional protocols’ (Cruz, 2011).

Further architectural research on informal settlements has explored the particularity of spatial production within these contexts and how it puts into question the normative processes of architecture and the roles of both the professional and the resident: “If they had access to more advanced means; they would probably not act to the same artistic logic, with its openness and its creation of singular events and singular values, because all the advanced architectural means we have today were forged by and for heteronymous production” (Baltazar and Kapp, 2007; Kapp et al. 2008). Similarly, Dovey amd King (2011:12) argue that “the prospects of a sustainable in-situ development depend on the better understanding of the morphologies of informal settlements”. The focus on deconstructing how these urban settings emerge and develop, “driven by the imperatives of poverty and the slow accumulation of scarce resources” (Dovey and King, 2011:13) and identify morphological typologies to inform a new language of informality in this context.

Although current architectural research that addresses scarcity whether directly or indirectly, is limited, the previous examples bring to the fore the following key lessons for this thesis: Firstly, they illustrate the relationship between spatial patterns of production and social and economic processes related to scarcity, particularly socio-economic inequality and poverty.

Secondly, they demonstrate how informal settlements have unique characteristics that, on the one hand, govern spatial production, and on the other influence the emergence of self-organisation and creative coping strategies from a non-expert perspective, which in turn can offer lessons for the role of professionals in transforming the built environment.

Within urban planning theory, informality has also moved from a state of marginality to a significant source of knowledge, an “idiom of urbanisation” (Roy, 2009a:9) capable of informing, scrutinising and reconfiguring the theory and practice of both architecture and planning and arguing for its relevance and implications for both south and north of the globe (Pugh, 2000; Roy, 2009a). These debates are extensive, and largely go beyond the scope of this thesis. However, the following discussions remain central to this research, as they complement and in some cases, critically challenge many of the current architectural approaches to urban informality.

For instance, Simone (2005) through his work on African cities, makes reference to informal settlements as a particular logic of habitation with their own political economy, which in most cases remains incompatible with the institutional framework guiding housing provision in the city. Moreover, his work draws extensive linkages between this distinct logic and city-wide and historical processes that have slowly shaped cities in Africa, particularly in relation to longterm state absenteeism, the consequences of colonialism and the emphasis placed on land as a precious and highly contested resource.

More importantly, his work has also documented processes of resourcefulness within informal settlements, with the aim to “valorise urban Africa’s own agency, its own constructive powers”. He argues that within these scenarios, “the critical emphasis is on what residents actually do in order to enlarge their spaces of operation or, conversely, to demarcate territories of habitation that are liveable, and where the negative impacts generated by the undermining of local livelihoods and by global economic processes might be partially generated.” (Simone, 2005:2).

On the other hand, Varley offers a more specific critique to architectural approaches to urban informality. She argues that: “a re-engagement with informality as architecture may have been overdue, but it should be as an ally rather than

an alternative to ethnographic inquiry.”

(Varley, 2010:8) With this critique she warns of the perils of aestheticisating conditions and reinforcing stereotypes within informal settlements and the type of policies this “detachment’ from local experiences and perceptions can elicit: »» Is there no danger that celebration of the precarious, improvised, ephemeral, nature of informal settlements, or of their resemblance to rhizomes, with the ability to grow again (elsewhere) if disrupted, could re-legitimise hostile responses by city authorities – even eradication? Even if eviction is kept off the agenda, what kinds of intervention are encouraged by the visions of informality currently in vogue? (Varley, 2010:8) This body of work offers the following key points with value for the conceptual framework and the methodological approach: Firstly, it reinstates the position of informal settlements as unique scenarios by illustrating how acute conditions related to scarcity gives birth to a plethora of particular phenomena shaping the territory, social relationships and processes, from day to day transactions to more validated and ingrained proceedings.

Secondly, it reinforces the need to enrich literature on informal settlements based on the residents’ own experiences and perceptions.

Thirdly, although it places the importance on deconstructing local realities, in a similar manner as the socio-cultural theories of scarcity did, it does so by intrinsically connecting it to the project of the city that guides built environment production at different scales.

Immersing in the Field | Ethnographic Field Study in Mathare Valley The initial literature review demonstrated that in order to build a theory of scarcity, based on informal settlements, the research methodology should provide an insight into everyday life of residents within this context and in particular how scarcity is perceived and experienced by them. It is then necessary expand this focus to understand how these scarcities are constructed: how the relevant resources become scarce and how they are managed under the set of rules that may govern interactions, transactions and norms within the settlement and in relation to the city.

Assemblage theory: [Des] engaging with scale: When designing the methodological approach for the first exploratory fieldwork, urban political ecology played a key role as one of main disciplines that has engaged actively and critically with issues of distribution, and by implication, scarcity.

One of its key contributions has been the critical engagement with scale, and how resources and power flows are influenced by structural processes. Nonetheless, this emphasis on power relations tends to draw a larger picture that relies in mostly vertical relations, devolving the focus and capacity of change to the higher sections of the ‘vertical’ structure. Coupling this with the postcolonial discourses on urban informality and those dealing with agency and capabilities reveals a need to expand our understanding of the reality of scarcity and the micro-politics surrounding it at the local level, but most importantly to understand its many linkages with other scales and the fluidity of relations between and across actors, processes and spaces. This is supported with relevant literature on African cities, taking into account the consequences of colonialism that has shaped urban life in this context.

(See Pieterse 2005, Simone, 2005) It is here that assemblage theory becomes relevant as a tool to guide the analysis of the data collected and refine the theoretical frameworks towards the building of a theory of scarcity.

Assemblage theory is used to understand the functioning of dynamic wholes, it takes into account the constant changing of the elements, the relations between them, the making and unmaking of territories: »» Assemblages are not just things, practices and signs articulated into a formation, but

also qualities, affects, speeds and densities.

Secondly, assemblages work through flows of agency rather than through specific practices of power. And thirdly, whereas articulation emphasises the contingent connections and relations among and between elements, assemblage is also about their territorialisation and expression as well as their elements and relations. (Wise, 2006) This is highly relevant to the dynamic nature of everyday life in informal settlements and the different processes shaping the built environment on a daily basis and at larger, city-wide scale. For instance, Dovey (2010, 2011) has recently applied assemblage theory to study the morphology, resilience and image of informal settlements, by deconstructing how settlements emerge and develop, to subsequently draw typologies that can challenge the current ‘spatial’ language of informality. He argues for the use of diagrammatic tools to understand these settlements as dynamic ‘assemblages’ in constant transformation and most importantly, arising from conditions of limited resources. This approach is of relevance to this research, for methodological, theoretical and practical reasons. On the one hand, its methodology is successful in marrying the social with the material, without delegating the physical to the background, thus increasing the potential to influence built environment related fields (i.e. design, planning etc.) in both their approaches and their language.

Secondly, lessons related to how informal settlements are perceived and conceived have relevance to theory building around urban informality and to policy formulation, particularly when challenging image-related assumptions that typically influence government and even the public perception of what a ‘good’, ‘modern’ or ‘world-class’ city should be.

Based on this, the methodology pointed towards a qualitative, multi-sited ethnographic approach. Methods were tested, discarded and/or adapted in the field. The aim was to start deconstructing socio-spatial dynamics of scarcity, spanning across the perceptions and actions of different actors and the dynamic processes embedded in the production of built environment within the settlement.

Once the research departs from the lived experience of the residents, it evolves into a multi-scalar, rhyzomatic approach, by following leads into different realms, jumping from one scale to the other, depending on the processes being mapped in order to bring a series of routine events, unpack them and then uncover the connections to wider processes and elements affecting the settlement and the city as a whole.

Methods: Tracing scarcity through actors, processes and spaces The findings from the literature review revealed that there was no substantial background into the perception and experiences of scarcity, specifically those of a spatial nature. Hence, multi-sited ethnography becomes of particular relevance to this research as it is dynamic and contingent in its nature, requiring the use of and adaptation of different methods according to the situations arising, hence the flexibility of a ‘preplanned or opportunistic’ tracing of a specific enquiry.

In this line, the fieldwork in Nairobi was of exploratory kind, aiming at slowly building a puzzle of perceptions and experiences of scarcity among residents of the settlement. For this purpose, the following methods were used: 2-weeks Action-Research Workshop: Introduction to the site and piloting of methods This workshop lasted two weeks and was focused on the informal settlement of Mashimoni, within the Mathare Valley, the second biggest informal settlement in Nairobi. Through this time, my focus was on an overall recognition of the whole settlement, to then dwell into more specific particularities. Several methods were tested at this stage, including transect walks covering both the boundaries and inner corridors of the settlement and Continued on page 62 >>

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constructed scarcity |

<< Continued from page 59: Solving the Problems of the Future

layer 1 | territories as wholes

for new solutions. This paper pinpoints the main problems of traditional architectural practice as seen from a practicing architect point of view and briefly reflects on the options for alternative practices for architects, under condition of scarcity.

the scarcity assemblage |territorialisation | effects, barriers and opportunities clothes

loss/damage

risk

overcrodwing

roof passers-by

water

temporary users clothes

wires/illegal connections

competition

damage

residents

people washing

for space

risk

overcrowding

precariousness sewage/garbage

passers-by home chores

risk damage safety

structure owner vacant land

dirt paths

rigidity no lighting

water

daily activities

overcrowding

houses open sewage

physical

the scarcity assemblage |[de]territorialisation | tactics clothes less damage

risk

coordinated surveillance of clothes

roof

shared identification of vacant land

passers-by water

temporary users clothes

wires/illegal connections coordination in use of the space

risk

overcrowding

damage

residents

people washing

precariousness sewage/garbage

passers-by home chores

risk Organised shared laundry areas

Resources damage

mobilised:

Relations consolidated (networks):safety Constraints: passers-by

sewage/garbage dirt paths water scarcity

people washing

structure owner

temporary users

vacant land

rigidity

New resources: None

no lighting

water

daily activities

overcrowding

houses open sewage

physical

the scarcity assemblage |[re]territorialisation | tactics and emerging conditions

more adequate communal laundry areas

clothes

risk

roof passers-by

water

temporary users clothes

wires/illegal

connections

people washing

risk damage

residents

precariousness passers-by

sewage/garbage

home chores

risk damage safety

structure owner vacant land

dirt paths

rigidity no lighting

water

daily activities

houses open sewage

overcrowding

less overcrowding in corridors physical

Being in the process: In his “Critical view on architectural practice” Robert Gutman (1988) pointed out that ten major conditions in transformation that have been an ever increasing source of anxiety and strain to architects: (1) the extent of the demand for services, (2) the structure of demand, (3) the oversupply or entrants into the profession, (4) the new skills required as a consequence of the increased complexity and scale of building types, (5) the consolidation and professionalization of the construction industry, (6) the greater rationality and sophistication of client organizations, (7) the heightened intensity of competition between architects and other professions, (8) increased competition within the profession, (9) the difficulties of achieving profitability and obtaining sufficient personal income, and (10) greater intervention and involvement on the part of the state and the wider public in architectural concerns.2 Surely most of those conditions haven’t developed in a way that has simplified the life of the architect during the last 20 years. The competition, complexity and bureaucracy are heavier than ever. What Gutman does not mention though, is the devastating weight of the moral predicament.

Ideally the architects/urban planners should be able to focus all skill and good moral on contributing to the building of a better society. Instead they often find themselves in the impossible dilemma of negotiating between stakeholders with completely different agendas.

(1) Firstly, the architect/urban planner work for the resourceful developer, whose aim may be to make a qualitative contribution to the built environment; however this is often not the case. Sometimes developers are not even interested in building anything at all, their purpose being only to develop “paper projects” to sell with the properties, in order to increase value.

(2) Secondly, he/she works on behalf of the municipality and state, to enforce their rules, in form of building regulations and master plan.

(3) Thirdly, she/he works for the user, who more than often is not there yet, and thus cannot be identified when the work is being done.

It is not as if it really is up to the architect to select on which side he is. If he singularly chooses to work for the (often imagined) inhabitant/user/passers by he will probably lose the contract, his professional license or both, possibly with the result of the project being handed over to other architects that are more supportive to the clients’ ideas.

The last role is probably the one dominating in architecture schools, the other two hardly being mentioned to the students. It is not unlikely that the discrepancy between the typical architecture students’ idea about practice and what practice really is, is bigger than in most professions; which is a serious waste, considering how many years it takes to study architecture, then work to learn the trade for finally finding out that this profession is not really what you are interested in doing.

The lack of identifiable actors and of direct confrontations may cause an abstract relationship to the project, not only for the architect, but also for the building authorities, judging its qualities and eventually allowing its realization.

The conflicting agendas are never as present as in the housing ‘business’ where the clients and the users usually are not the same. Housing covers much more area than any other functions in most if not all cities. Housing is also the part of the built environment people personally spend the most time in and money on, and a roof over ones head is globally normative as a basic need. This important field has become the battle ground on which

the architect is torn between the interests of the market and the inhabitants. The capital interests rule the bulk of domestic architecture; the arena where architects theoretically could be contributing to a healthier society, but are hindered to do so.

Maja Breznik states: »» The sacrifice of intellectuals for the benefit of economic growth can offer only temporary gains, while in the long-term societies are going to lose a great deal. The ‘waste’ of intellectuals for the benefit of business is, to put it simply, irresponsible management of human resources.3 This applies also to architects, whose work will not be easily hidden away in a pile of paper but will be manifested in a built environment we must live with for ages. This said; let’s go back to the architect who has spent all his stamina to manage the contradictory and frustrating processes as well as possible. When the obstacles are out of the way and the building is there, one would think that the architect could continue with his business better qualified to succeed in his complex role the next time. But he might not be able to see in contentment on any achievements he might despite all have had, for too long. The market forces re-enter the scene, and the urban environment, which by architectural means has been improved, becomes gentrified, and the initial intentions to raise the standard for the inhabitants, turns out to squeeze them out to poorer territories. This shows the dilemma of the architect in a society lacking a (social) housing policy; the good you do is going to be taken advantage of by someone else and there is nothing you can do about it. That doesn’t make the architect feel particularly powerful and thus in shape to empower the others does it?

An obvious survival strategy for the architect is to focus on the outer appearance of architecture, instead of the content of the built environment. This undermines the social aspects and political potential in architecture and urbanism.

The bubble in the housing market before the credit crunch in Iceland made production of housing a very lucrative business. It has been well documented that the changes in the built environment were big, and there are already some analyses out there pointing out the big damage done.4 Now the developers, investors and contractors have gone underground in Reykjavik due to lack of funds and offers (read: young people who can be persuaded to take 100% loans to buy bad housing).

The Architects Association in Iceland has in full publicity been asked by The Parliamentarian Group on Environmental Issues to take self criticism for having betrayed their responsibility to the people and uncritically played along with the power of money. The President of the Architects Association complained in return about a lack of courtesy5.

At best, one could hope that the architect is the wise wo/man guiding the client, cleverly leading the market interests onto the good path, which is what we practicing (and naive?) architects like to believe we are doing. Or is the society better off, having him/her as the critical voice, criticizing projects and proposing alternative strategies?

Having chosen his/her position, the architect must look for appropriate and functional ways to gain influence.

Defining development strategies, for instance proposing a certain way of programming that might generate a certain transformation of an area, initiating or inhibiting gentrification, may prove more powerful than design – (thus leaving building design to those who are socially/ politically less aware and concerned?)

Who will engage the architect who has chosen the strategic tools? Is he left as an idealistic activist, or may he still play a role within the economic system of the built environment production?

What we see now is the architect trying to maneuver different tools and methods – expanding the range of work architects may take on and manage. The architect`s role is a flexible one; the flexibility representing both its strength and its ethical Continued on page 63 >>

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semi-structured interviews. During this time it was also important to investigate neighbourhood dynamics, start identifying key “creative agents” among the residents and potential gatekeepers that would accompany me for the rest of the fieldwork.

Multi-sited ethnographic fieldwork The rest of the fieldwork, carried out over 5 months, was shaped by a variety of methods to reach different actors and investigate sites and processes. It was my intention not to force or impose my own perceptions of what could be considered scarcity in the built environment in the context of Mashimoni. For this purpose, I made use of photo elicitation techniques, trying as much as possible not to influence by introducing preconceived ideas of what scarcity is in informal settlements.

Through the use of disposable cameras, residents were asked to record their daily life for a period of one week (to include labour and leisure activities), specifically those aspects that convey a lack or a difficulty they encounter in relation to their home and neighbourhood environment.

In total, I conducted 18 photo elicitation exercises, choosing 3 residents from each cluster of the neighbourhood, in order to explore the experiences arising from different geographical areas of the settlement. It was the intention to build narratives around scarcity, based on the everyday life in the settlement and uncover the complexity within micro-scenarios.

Once photographs were developed, interviewees were asked to talk more informally about the photos, specifically to describe the motivation behind taking the photos. In the majority of the cases, each picture yielded particular stories linking scarcity to a variety of different aspects of everyday life at home, within the neighbourhood and in some cases going beyond to other parts of the city.

Interviews were conducted in English when possible, otherwise in Swahili, and recorded subject to the interviewees’ consent.

The photo elicitation and subsequent interviews constituted the starting point of my fieldwork, and led me to identifying other key actors, processes and sites of crucial relevance for the research. This included 30 semi-structured interviews and participant observation with youth groups - dealing with waste management, sanitation and urban agriculture, women groups - dealing with savings and entrepreneurship, and other grassroots organisations dealing with mapping and political advocacy. Furthermore, I conducted semi-structured interviews with other relevant actors spanning across civil society organisations, academia, government and development agencies.

Once I started undertaking interviews with other relevant actors outside of the neighbourhood boundaries, I began attending meetings, including the formulation workshop for the new national urban development policy, a collaborative workshop on land issues organised by the UN, and a collaborative design workshop to discuss alternatives for Mathare, between the planning school of the University of Nairobi, residents of Mathare and involved civil society organisations.

The data from this fieldwork will be used to create analytical diagrams based on assemblage theory, that will start shaping hypotheses of scarcity and creativity processes in informal settlements.

Research Design, thesis structure and timeline The research project is concerned with understanding how scarcity is constructed in the built environment of informal settlements. Construction of scarcity here means we need to understand its discursive, distributive and spatial nature.

For this purpose, the research project is designed through a qualitative, flexible and multi-sited approach, using two case studies as testing ground to explore sociospatial dynamics of scarcity at different, interconnected scales. Therefore, the approach is inductive, aiming to construct

a theory based on data collected through qualitative fieldwork, literature review and analysis of relevant documentation.

Analysis and refining of the theoretical framework: Assemblage theory will be used here as both an approach and a tool for analysis to consequently develop hypothesis on scarcity and creativity that can be tested further in the second fieldwork. This analysis will use diagrams to illustrate how different assemblages function. Assemblages here can take the form of an object (i.e. the bags used to cover the rammed-earth walls), a place (i.e. a house, the main road, a vacant space in a corridor, the meeting place for the grassroots organisation), a particular actor (i.e. a resident, a community group, the village elder, a church) and so on. The aim is to build narratives based on how individual scarcity and creativity assemblages are constituted, how they relate to each other, how they take different roles depending on temporalities and other circumstances (i.e. when they are part of other assemblages). The resulting hypothesis would aim to explain the functioning of scarcity as a constructed condition in informal settlements and could be used consequently to device adequate interventions based on agency and creativity.

Field study II Quito: This fieldwork, to take place in Quito, Ecuador, is intended to serve as a testing field for the proposed hypothesis of scarcity and further inform their development. Consequently, this fieldwork will be less experimental and more focused in its approach. The subsequent analysis of these findings will then produce a consolidated set of thesis of scarcity with theoretical and methodological implications. Criteria will be set to evaluate how the thesis advance our capacity to explain phenomena (in this case scarcity), how much is based on assumptions and the innovation and consistency of the knowledge it leads to (based on Proctor & Capaldi, 2006:77).

Testing the toolkit | Spaces of the possible: After consolidating the theories based on the ‘spaces of the actual’ of each of the case studies, the postulates will be used to generate approaches/ tools for interventions working within and/or against scarcity. These guidelines will be tested through an action-research workshop involving built environment professionals and local actors, to take place in the setting of the second fieldwork (Quito, Ecuador). The aim is to test the applicability of the theories in guiding adequate responses. This is related to the third research question of this research, which is to inform both theoretical and empirical approaches to socio-spatial change in cities. The analysis and subsequent findings of this action-research project will inform the last chapter of this thesis (see structure above).

Consolidating theories of scarcity and creativity in informal settlements: The last part of this research will bring together the assemblages of both field studies and the findings of the action research workshop to consolidate the theoretical and empirical implications.

References Baltazar, A.P., and S. Kapp, 2007.

Learning from “Favelas”: The Poetics of Users’ Autonomous Production of Space and the Non-ethics of Architectural Interventions, in Proceedings of the International Conference Reconciling Poetics and Ethics in Architecture, McGill University, Canada, September 2007. Available at:

http://www.arch.mcgill.ca/theory/ conference/papers.htm.

Burgess, R., 1977. Self-Help Housing: A New Imperialist Strategy? A Critique of the Turner School, in Antipode, 9(2), pp.

50–59.

Cruz, T., 2004-2005. Border Postcards: Chronicles from the Edge, James Stirling Memorial Lectures on the City. Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal and London School of Economics.

Cruz, T., 2008. Architecture, Participation and Negotiation, in Ballesteros, M. et al.

(Eds.) Verb crisis. Verb Architecture Boogazine, Vol.6, pp. 150-159. Barcelona : Actar.

Cruz, T., 2011. Latin American Meander in Search of a New Civic Imagination, in Architectural Design, Vol.81 (3), pp. 110-118.

Daoud, A., 2010. Robbins and Malthus on Scarcity, Abundance and Sufficiency: The Missing Socio-cultural Element in American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 69(4), pp.1206-1229.

De Gregori, T.R.,1987. Resources are not, they become: An Institutional Theory” in Journal of Economic Issues, 21(3), pp.

1241-1263.

Dovey, K. 2010. Re-thinking Urban Informality & Resilience: Complex Adaptive Urban Assemblages, paper presented at Global Urban Frontiers: Asian Cities in Theory, Practice and Imagination, organised by the Asia Research Institute and NUS. Dovey, K. and King R. 2011. Forms of Informality: Morphology and visibility of Informal Settlements, in Built Environment, Vol. 37 (1), pp.11-29 Escobar, A., 2006. Difference and Conflict in the Struggle Over Natural Resources: A political ecology framework in Development, 49(3), pp.6-13.

Fanstein, S., 2010. The Just City. Cornell University Press.

Gough K.V., Kellett P., 2001. Housing consolidation and home-based income generation: Evidence from self-help settlements in two Colombian cities in Cities, 18(4), pp. 235-247.

Hart, K., 1973. Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana, in Journal of Modern African Studies, Vol.11(1), pp. 61-89.

Holifield, R. 2009. Actor-network theory as a critical approach to environmental justice: A case against synthesis with urban political ecology in Antipode 41 (4): 637-658.

Jackson, T., 2003. Prosperity without Growth.

Economics for a Finite Planet. Earthscan, London – Sterling, VA. Kapp, S., Baltazar, A.P. and Morado, D., 2008. Architecture as Critical Exercise: Little Pointers towards Alternative Practices in Field, 2(1), pp.7-30.

Kellett, P. 2005. The Construction of Home in the Informal City. In: Hernandez, F., Millington, M., Borden, I., (Eds.).

Transculturation: Cities, Space and Architecture in Latin America. Amsterdam and Atlanta: Rodopi BV, pp. 22-42.

Knox, P.L., 2005. Creating Ordinary Places: Slow Cities in a Fast World, in Journal of Urban Design, Vol.10 (1), pp.1-11.

Lefebvre, H., 1991. The Production of Space, Translated by Nicholson-Smith, D., Wiley-Blackwell: Oxford.

Malthus, T.R., 1976. An Essay on the Principle of Population, Penguin (Non-Classics).

Meadows, D.H. et al., 1972. The Limits to Growth: A report for the Club of Rome’s project on the predicament of mankind, London and Sidney: Pan Books.

Mehta, L., 1998. Contexts of Scarcity: The political ecology of water scarcity in Kutch, India. PhD Thesis, Institute of Development Studies, University of Sussex.

Mehta, L., 2001. The Manufacture of Popular Perceptions of Scarcity: Dams and Water-Related Narratives in Gujarat, India in World Development, 29(12), pp.2025-2041.

Mehta, L. ed., 2010. The Limits to Scarcity: Contesting the Politics of Allocation, Earthscan.

Peattie, L.R., 1968. The View from the Barrio. Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press Perlman, J. E., 1976. The Myth of Marginality: urban poverty and politics in Rio de Janerio. Berkeley; London : University of California Press.

Pieterse, E., 2005. At the limits of possibility: Working notes on a relational model of urban politics, in Simone, A. and Abouhani, A. (eds) Urban Africa: Changing contours of Survival in the City. Zed Books.

Proctor, R.W and E.J. Capaldi, 2006. Why Science Matters: Understanding the Methods of Psychological Research, John Wiley & Sons.

Pugh, C., 2000. Squatter Settlements: Their Sustainability, Architectural Contributions, and Socio-economic Roles, in Cities, 17(5), pp. 325-337.

Roy, A., 2009. Strangely Familiar: Planning and the Worlds of Insurgence and Informality, in Planning Theory, 8(1), pp. 8-11.

Rudofsky, B., 1964. Architecture without Architects: a short introduction to non-pedigreed architecture London : Academy Editions Stanley, M., 1968. Nature, Culture and

Scarcity: Foreword to a Theoretical Synthesis. In American Sociological Review, 33(6), pp.855-870.

Sen, A., 2010. The idea of Justice. Penguin, UK. Simone, A. and Abouhani, A., 2005. Urban Africa: Changing contours of Survival in the City. Zed books.

Stiglitz, J.E., Sen, A. and J.P., Fitoussi, 2009. Report by the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, CMEPSP. Swyngedouw, E., 2004. Social power and the urbanization of water: flows of power, Oxford University Press, USA Turner, J.F.C., 1972. Housing as a Verb, in Turner, J.F.C. and R. Fichter, (Eds.) Freedom to Build: Dweller control of the housing process. New York : Macmillan Turner, J.F.C., 1976. Housing by People: Towards Autonomy in Building Environments.

London: Marion Boyars UNDP, 2006. Human Development Report: Beyond scarcity: Power, poverty and the global water crisis. United Nations Development Programme, NY, USA. Varley, A., 2010. Postcolonialising Informality?, paper presented at the XI N-AERUS conference on Urban Knowledge and Cities of the South. Brussels, Belgium.

Wilkinson, R. and Pickett, K., 2009. The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better. Allen Lane.

Wise, J.M. (2006) Assemblages, in Stivale, C.J. (ed) Gilles Deleuze: Key Concepts, pp.

77-87. McGill-Queen’s University Press.

Young, I.M., 2002. Inclusion and Democracy.

Oxford University Press Notes 1 For the purpose of this research, the term informal settlement will be congruent with UN-HABITAT’s definition of a slum, meaning an urban area thats lacks one or more of the following: 1) Durable housing of a permanent nature that protects against extreme climate conditions, 2) Sufficient living space which means not more than three people sharing the same room, 3) Easy access to safe water in sufficient amounts at an affordable price, 4) Access to adequate sanitation in the form of a private or public toilet shared by a reasonable number of people and 5) Security of tenure that prevents forced evictions.

2 The term ‘spatial’ is used here in reference to a ‘Lefebvrian’ critical thinking on space (Lefebvre, 1991), where space is not an inert and material background to everyday life but an active participant in the social unfolding through the interlinkage of the material, the symbolic and the lived.

3 The term socio-spatial makes reference to the dialectic relationship between people and places: People are constantly modifying and reshaping places, and places are constantly coping with change and influencing their inhabitants (Knox 2005: 3).

4 For Malthus, scarcity was a consequence of the imbalance between nature’s resources (in this case food) and population growth, envisioning population control via preventive checks (reflection on actions and morals) and positive checks (war, severe poverty, famine) as the only solution (Malthus, 1976). Neo-Malthusians expanded this reductive notion into considering a wider range of underlying conditions i.e. industrialization, exponential growth and consumption suggesting social and technological adaptation as the way to tackle the imminent scarcity of resources (Meadows et al., 1972).

5 Scarcity exists in relation to the collective behaviour, the norms, the rules and the institutions that govern the social order (see Stanley, 1968; De Gregori, 1987) thus indicating a relationship between environmental mechanisms and sociocultural modernism (Daoud, 2010).

6 Water offers one, if not the most evident vehicle to analyse scarcity and its relationship to maldistribution, flawed policies and unequal power relationships (See for example Mehta, 1998; Swyngedouw, 2004). This extensive documentation perhaps influenced the acknowledgement of a ‘constructed’ notion of scarcity by development agencies. The Human Development

Report 2006, puts a particular emphasis on how political and regulatory practices have a crucial role in how scarcity affects specific groups or areas, situating the debate into the realm of ‘social and environmental justice’. However, despite its contribution to the debate on scarcity, the report remains very much top-down in its approach and misses an opportunity in exploring and shedding light into the crucial mechanisms embedded in the socio and spatial realms.

BEYOND SCARCITY: MAKING SPACE IN THE CITY Deljana Iossifova, London Published in CityCity Magazine, 1|2013, p. 20-23.

»» [I]n the urban, everything is calculable, quantifiable, programmable; everything, that is, except the drama that results from the co-presence and re-presentation of the elements calculated, quantified, and programmed.(Lefebvre, 2003) For China, the transition from planned to market economy has meant a progression from services and goods available to all urban residents (at least in theory) to services and goods available to those who can afford them. When authorities first started down the course of large-scale state-led gentrification, they argued that the neglected urban housing blocks and left-over shantytowns of the previous six or so decades had become unfit for dwelling, posing serious health and safety risks; that displacement and resettlement were acts of protection in the interest of residents. They no longer bother. Authorities sell swaths of urban land en bloc, developers disenthrall entire neighbourhoods from their collective memory – demolishing all buildings and displacing, to the edges of the city, all residents (unless, of course, they are wealthy enough to buy themselves the right to come back). The members of an urban middle-class, only just beginning to emerge, then take their residence in spacious flats, located in the new-built, gated residential compounds (the proud bearers of names such as ‘Fragrant Jasmine Garden’ or ‘Beautiful Venice of the East’).

Competing for foreign investment in order to become a Global City and zealously preparing to host the World EXPO 2010, now almost forgotten, Shanghai embarked on an ambitious journey to showcase what “Better City, Better Life” (the official motto of the EXPO) might look like on the ground. Countless strategies to eradicate or hide away all evidence of the poor, the old or the unworldly were put in place. By 2008, most such ambitions were already beginning to show their effect in time for the Beijing Olympics.

Surrounded by mushrooming commodity housing compounds – displaying Shanghai’s vision of a prosperous future – and located on the banks of Suzhou Creek, now ceaselessly frequented by visiting foreigners on sight-seeing boat tours, a last remaining fragment of one of Shanghai’s biggest and infamous shantytowns thus became the natural target of the district government’s modernisation and image-improving attempts.

The Village, as it was known to residents in the area, was home to long-term, mostly unemployed residents and recent rural-to-urban migrants who lived in selfmade or provisionally mended dwellings.

Because green space was hardly available within the boundaries of the Village, its residents had made it a habit to cross the street and pass the guards at the gate to the fenced Compound opposite, where they took advantage of readily available (but rarely used) manicured green spaces and play areas. Only about half of the 5,000 or so Village residents were said to be from Shanghai; they were left behind by the many that had moved out as soon as they were able to afford a better place, renting their old homes to the myriad of

63 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 61: Solving the Problems of the Future

challenges in a world shifting between abundance and scarcity.

THE ROLE OF THE ARCHITECT: By no means complete and only meant to reflect on our options as practicing architects. A list of options for working within and outside the system (in the sociological meaning of structures; legal framework, institutions, etc./not to be confused with inside and outside the economic system although there clearly is a some connection):

migrants that kept on arriving into the city.

Migration restrictions in China (i.e., the infamous hukou – or residential registration, whereby citizens were divided in two categories, rural and urban, and were only entitled to public services at their place of registration) had been relaxed in the late 1970ies. According to some China scholars, this was done in response to more than 150 Mio surplus labourers in the countryside. Initially, migrants were welcomed as cheap and exploitable labour force in factories and at constructions sites in the country’s cities. But this sentiment changed over time. Many of the elderly residents in the Village – migrants, notably, themselves, who had come from the countryside in the late 1940ies – thought of their neighbourhood as rapidly deteriorating due to the influx of their new migrant neighbours. Many were self-employed, running small businesses that ranged from selling goods to service provision. Living in small rooms in old houses or converted warehouses that they rented from the government or private landlords, they often formed homogenous communities based on their place of origin. At the centre of the Village, for example, a former warehouse was entirely occupied by a group from Sichuan Province, all of them related to each other in one way or another. They shared tiny rooms defined by flimsy cardboard partitions. Families sat in the yard and told stories whilst cleaning vegetables and preparing meat and seafood skewers for sale in the streets during the evenings and nights. Many told of their surprise to find that nothing matched what they had seen on TV about Shanghai and expected to find upon their arrival in the city. Their hard work, they said, pays for English lessons for the young ones back home; they were looking forward to the few weeks during summer, when their children would visit to spend their summer holidays and when the small yard would be buzzing with life.

The exclusion of migrants from the formal housing market leaves them confined to dorms provided by their employer, or housing in urban villages, much like the Village described above.

This is often discussed as the match between their demand for cheap housing and its availability in villages about to fall prey to urban expansion, but there is reason to question such prepositions. In the case at hand, an inquiry showed that in the Village, the availability of private bathrooms and kitchens seemed linked to the background of respective occupants: the majority of residents with urban hukou had access to such facilities; the majority of residents with rural hukou did not. Similar distinctions were found with regards to space: urban hukou holders in the Village had twice as much living space per capita at their disposal than

rural hukou holders. Most significantly, however, migrants paid up to two times more per square meter and per month than their urban hukou holding neighbours – in both the Village and the gated residential Compound across the street!

That migrants do not rent in the formal commodity housing market, then, seems rooted not exclusively in their ability to pay market rents, but rather, linked to recent policies released by the local government: over-occupation, here, served as an excuse to prevent landlords from renting out modern apartments to multiple parties (in many cases, rural hukou holders willing to share). Amply available accommodation in the Compound across the street from the Village thus remained out of reach for migrants; government and private landlords took advantage of this engineered scarcity of space within the boundaries of the Village, causing the cost of housing for migrants to soar.

The long-term residents, urban hukou holders that stayed behind in the Village, the long-term Shanghainese, continued to eagerly anticipate the day when a deal between authorities and a developer would finally be formalised, securing a future for them in new, modern resettlement homes – just like the ones they saw coming up a stone’s throw away, in the Compounds, albeit far away from the centre of the city. Once the desire for more space in an apartment with modern facilities had been kindled, continuing to live the modest lives of the past, without the added comfort of numerous white goods, an oversized TV set or a brand-new German car, seemed like a burden not many felt prepared to bear.

Meanwhile, the street in-between the old Village and the middle-class Compound – a space that Saskia Sassen (2011) might call ‘Global Street’ and I call urban borderland – came to be viewed by the authorities as a blight to the city: for all the manifestations of gregarious urban life (selling, buying, cooking, washing, knitting, sewing, cycling, driving, jogging, laughing, talking, quarrelling, drinking, eating, playing, crying) and the unruly activities of people who appropriate space as a place of encounter, exchange and interaction. Automobile traffic, disturbed by the ubiquitous presence of living beings and their countless activities as they disregard the fine line that separates the street from the sidewalk, became a welcome excuse for immediate intervention. On a week’s notice in the summer of 2008, the district government erected a two-meter high concrete fence in front of existing shop fronts along the street. This action was accompanied by a new set of rules introduced by the local government, prohibiting the common practice of using shops as dwellings outside of business hours. The consequences were, at least initially, devastating.

Indeed, for a short period of about six

months, people kept behind the fence and away from the street – mostly out of fear of prosecution. Many shopkeepers were forced to shut down their businesses as the fence kept them away from the street as much as it kept their customers away from their shops. However, with time, as they began to test a range of tactics to determine how tolerant local authorities would prove to be, the fence became the subject of creative experimentation. The spaces in-between the original façade and the fence became popular waiting areas for customers, featuring welcoming sofas and chairs; the fence itself came to serve as an extended façade. Selected concrete bars were skilfully dismounted and stored away during daytime and seamlessly replaced whenever needed. Some were removed completely to be replaced with slightly more welcoming metal gates. Life on the borderland returned, slowly, to business as usual.

Space, so the narrative goes, is scarce in cities. For those who lack in buying power, the city, in a world governed by the principles of capitalism, cannot make space. So it unfolds that perfectly good social housing on ‘prime land’ in central cities around the globe is demolished or its inhabitants displaced, giving way to much more profitable commodity developments for wealthier residents; that – in times of housing crisis – homes sit empty, awaiting those who can pay the outlandish rents; and that we are driven to believe in the realness of invented scarcities: of homes, of land, of space – skilfully engineered to drive up desire, demand and, eventually, market prices. Scarcity, in the context of a global capitalist society, is the result of generated demand and regulated supply and thus no longer exclusively a function of the natural abundance of resources or goods. It is a distinctively sociomaterial process. From London to Tokyo, one of the biggest challenges to those who plan, design, manage and build cities is that of providing shelter and vital services to an ever increasing number of urban residents. Reality in most parts of the world, however, is that they succeed in housing themselves, making do with whatever little space is left in-between the fragments of the planned city, or contributing to its unlimited growth beyond official boundaries. When formal systems of planning fail so miserably to make a city that embraces all of its residents – at least, I would argue, they should not obstruct citizens’ possibility of making the city themselves.

References Lefebvre, H. (2003). The Urban Revolution.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

Sassen, S. (2011). The Global Street.

Huffington Post Retrieved 3 October 2011, 2011, from http://www.huffingtonpost. com/saskia-sassen/the-globalstreet_b_989880.html

WITHIN THE SYSTEM: * To improve it (the system): * To work for the state on legislation * To become a politician * To work in the municipalities’ building department and be creative with interpreting the law * To work in the municipalities as a planner, making the rules (master planning) * To work at a University in education to influence the students to be critical to traditional practice * To work on research, which points out the weaknesses in the system and suggest ways to improve it; - the Vienna project, the London project, the Oslo project * To work for the conservation authorities against destruction of good environment as a result of money pressures * To work for the establishment as a curator * To enforce it and this can make your wallet stiff * To continue the traditional practice without any moral scruples – open for corruption * To work in the municipality without any moral scruples – open for corruption * To take on the role of other professions where your expertise can be used: estate agent, contractor etc. – open for corruption * Neutral practice within the system * To continue the traditional practice, but try to be the agent for the user as much as possible without losing the contract. * To work on projects which have no conflicting interests where there is consensus on goals, like schools, beautification of public places (neat “cleaning up” projects). * To work on projects where the client and the user is the same person (house/ small housing projects * To take on the role of other professions where architectural expertise can be used: estate agent, contractor etc., but try to be the agent for the user as much as possible without losing the contract.

OUTSIDE THE SYSTEM (and this might make you poor!) * To assist in neighbour protests against bad projects * To write critical articles in the newspapers influencing politicians and the public opinion - not to be confused with writing for your colleagues in the professional press (who usually are reflected on these issues and agree with you anyway). * To become a barefoot worker: students at rural studio or something like the cult of the carpenters (from the alps?) who walk from place to place in national costumes, only doing work is not subject for legislation trading work with food and bed for the night (not practical if you have a family. * To do small alterations in houses and outdoor spaces that don’t require authorization. * To become an artist doing work undermining the system, (make informative/subversive film, photography, mapping) * To become a clown * To become an activist * To make anti-gentrification projects that don’t require authorization * To become a hippie, save an old

building or move to a remote valley (not particularly influential but you might have time to help your neighbours, which is a good thing!

Notes 1 See http://oslotriennale.no/?nid=1046 2 Robert Gutman, Architectural Practice, a Critical View, p.97 3 Maja Breznik, The Role of Culture in the Strategies of Urban Regeneration, in Houses in Transformation (Rotterdam, 2008) p. 51 4 Hjálmar Sveinsson, Skipulag Auðnarinnar, Tímarit Máls og Menningar, January 2010 5 Fréttablaðið (newspaper), September 15th 2010 p. 6

FUCK SCARCITY Jon Goodbun, London

Material scarcity, as the great anarchist philosopher Murray Bookchin once noted – drawing heavily, it must be said, upon the insights of Karl Marx – has been a feature of human societies up to the present day: »» until very recently, human society has developed around the brute issues posed by unavoidable material scarcity and their subjective counterpart in denial, renunciation and guilt.1 The various forms of domination and inequality which have structured social relations within almost all human societies necessarily emerged out of the everyday reality of material scarcities. It was struggle over scarce resources which created the possibility, perhaps the necessity, for the production of structures of power in societies, in human selves, and against the wider living world. Bookchin again states that: »» material society provided the historic rationale for the development of the patriarchal family, private property, class domination and the state; it nourished the great divisions that pitted town against country, mind against sensuousness, work against play, individual against society, and, finally, the individual against himself.2 Bookchin shows how material scarcity must be understood as the connection between the two distinct modes of understanding alienation in modernity as i. our individual alienation within and from oneself, and from a lived and sensuous engagement with matter, and ii. our collective estrangement from social production and the non-human natures which provide the context of all human practice in general. He concludes with a particularly useful definition, stating that: »» scarcity is more than a condition of scarce resources: the word, if it is to mean anything in human terms, must encompass the social relations and cultural apparatus that foster insecurity in the psyche.3 Michel Foucault similarly pays close attention to the historical development of human subjectivity under changing modes of scarcity. He describes how in the mercantilist period of capitalism – which dominated in Europe from the start of 17th to the start of 18th century – a particular set of practices and apparatus were developed to deal with the threat of scarcity. These practices were replaced in the 18th century by the ideas of the physiocratic economists and the emergence of laissez-faire thinking: a different mode of dealing with the threat of material scarcity, and a different collective subjectivity.

Foucault describes how mercantile capitalism organised grain production around an anti-scarcity system – notably characterised by price controls, prohibition of hoarding, limits on export (and also limits to amount of land to be cultivated to prevent excessive abundance) – primarily to prevent scarcity provoking revolt and political unrest in the cities and towns. He describes two general frameworks for thinking about ‘philosophical-political horizon’ of scarcity as ‘the juridicial-moral concept of evil human nature, of fallen nature, and the cosmological-political concept of fortune.’4 However, the mercantilist anti-scarcity system frequently failed, and the emerging physiocratic free marketeers ‘tried to arrive Continued on page 64 >>

64 SCIBE | London | Vienna | Reykjavik | Oslo | The World | www.scarcity.is << Continued from page 63: Fuck Scarcity

at an apparatus for … working within the reality of fluctuations between abundance/ scarcity, dearness/cheapness … which is, I think, precisely an apparatus of security and no longer a juridicial-disciplinary system’.5 Writing in 1793 one of the physiocrats, Louis-Paul Abeille stated that so long as there is free circulation in markets then ‘scarcity is a chimera’, and Abbot Ferdinando Galiani furthermore stated that ‘scarcity is, for three quarters of the cases, a malady of the imagination’.6 As something that afflicted an entire population at once (what Foucault calls the ‘scarcity-scourge’) scarcity had indeed largely become a chimera, although this is replaced by a structural necessity for an anonymous some-of-the-population to endure scarcity, sometimes (which remains the basis for much of the capitalist apparatus today).

While mercantile law re scarcity was based upon a set of prohibitions, price controls and a set of legal prohibitions or moral imperatives, under laissez-faire scarcitycapitalism Foucault find the origins of a contemporary apparatus of security: »» the apparatus of security … "lets things happen." Not that everything is left alone, but laissez-faire is indispensable at a certain level: allowing prices to rise, allowing scarcity to develop, and letting people go hungry so as to prevent something else happening, namely the introduction of the general scourge of scarcity.

For Foucault the modern laissez-faire anti-scarcity system of dispersing scarcity through freer market mechanisms was more than just a more advanced form of capitalist organisation, it was a ‘security apparatus’ which constituted a new form of collective subjectivity – the atomised mass of ‘population’: »» a political subject, as a new collective subject absolutely foreign to the juridicial and political thought of earlier centuries is appearing here in its complexity, with its caesuras.7 Modern capitalism developed then, as a specific historical form of an apparatus of scarcity based upon an ideology of laissezfaire. David Harvey states that ‘scarcity is socially organised in order to permit the market to function,’8 whilst Andy Merrifield has similarly observes that: »» The fundamental basis of a capitalist economy, of a society based on the profit motive, on exchange value and money relations, is scarcity – the active creation and perpetuation of scarcity.9 For Bookchin however, the position of scarcity under capitalism does not stop at this point. The laissez-faire approach to structuring a capitalist economy coincided with massive developments and transformations in science, technology and manufacturing.

Modernity, for the first time in human history, created the material possibility of what Bookchin describes as a ‘post-scarcity society’, a condition where all of the essential necessities of a life are delivered with a minimum amount of human labour. If the need to labour under the threat of scarcity had historically lay at the heart of all forms of oppression, inequality and alienation, both in societies and within selves, then for Bookchin post-scarcity describes ‘fundamentally more than a mere abundance of the means of life: it decidedly includes the kind of life these means support.’10. Writing in the early nineteen-seventies, he argues that: »» the industrial capitalism of Marx’s time organised its commodity relations around a prevailing system of material scarcity; the state capitalism of our time organises its commodity relations around a prevailing system of material abundance. A century ago scarcity had to be endured, today it has to be enforced.11 The condition today is arguably even more full of complexity and contradiction. Conceptions of post-scarcity society continues to animate much of the political imaginary of both of the great liberation philosophies of modernity – anarchism and communism. Terry Eagleton has recently restated how Marx’s greatest contribution to the then already existing idea of communism was to realise that it must have a material basis, and Bookchin agrees that: »» to have seen these material preconditions for human freedom, to have emphasised that freedom presupposes free time and the material abundance for abolishing free time as a social privilege, is the great contribution of Karl Marx

to modern revolutionary theory.12 But we also find an interesting postscarcity discussion happening in more mainstream arenas. Philip Sadler is one example of a contemporary business theorist who is optimistically arguing that capitalism will necessarily pass through a wholesale and largely ‘unforeseen’ transformation in the coming decades, referring to many tendencies that would not be out of place in a more Marxian or autonomist setting, such as: falling costs of production, open-source intellectual property and collaborative working etc. Sadler argues that »» although the need for system change is widely accepted, there is little recognition of the need to adjust to post-scarcity conditions and to base policies and decisions on the principles of the economics of abundance rather than on the economics of scarcity13 There are of course however significant differences between anarcho-communist visions of post-scarcity, and more capitalist ideas of commodity abundance. Indeed, it is difficult to see how the contradictions of capitalism will not necessarily derail any possibility of a capitalist condition of post-scarcity. In fact, the prospect of postscarcity is a spectre haunting capitalism.

The overwhelming tendencies are for the marginal costs of production to fall, and for the rate of profit to fall. Capitalist organisations have to constantly struggle to find ways to make a profit out of production.

This involves designing-in redundancy and failure into products that could in many cases last generations rather than months or years. It involves developing highly proprietary parts and systems such that commodities cannot be repaired, and of course the projection of a vast spectacular infrastructure of advertising and branding that diverts the revolutionary libido and makes this insane situation seem desirable.

All of these processes and many more serve to create imaginary scarcities, and furthermore real scarcities through the wastage of materials and the pollution and destruction of the ecosystems that we rely upon for resources. And there are of course important relations between scarcity and environmental degradation: polluted and damaged environments produce less). Indeed, Eagleton has argued that standing within sight of an era of post-scarcity, capitalism is gravitating towards ecological catastrophe as the best means of perpetuating the era of scarcity. If Marx realised that the overcoming of scarcity was a precondition of most paths to communism, Eagleton speculates whether the emerging ecological crisis is a mechanism for historically precluding those possible futures.

However, the same deep contradictions of the capitalist process are structuring scarcity today in what are arguably even more profound ways. As already stated, the primary tendencies in production are for both costs and profits to fall. Yet as David Harvey has recently shown, the quantity of capital circulating in the global economy looking for profitable investment opportunities is greater than ever before. Since production is increasingly unable to provide capitalists, pension funds and the like with profitable investment opportunities, new avenues of speculative investment have been found through investing in assets.

Property, land and housing are typical investment routes, but so are mineral and agricultural assets, and because this kind of widespread investment necessarily has a ponzi character (if everyone does it values increase), it can seem to work. Such investment strategies have of course been behind a series of asset and share price crashes and ‘market failures’ since the seventies. The kinds of assets that are being targeted by investment funds have in recent years have further widened. Beyond new technologies providing one new route of speculation (remember the dot com bubble), food is increasingly an investment opportunity, and this is becoming a significant source of food scarcity and food price inflation (although there are many other fundamentals that will be pushing up global food prices in the near and medium term, notably climate change)14.

We find ourselves today in a paradoxical situation in a highly unevenly developed world. Bookchin, Marx, Marcuse and many others all remind us that we quite recently stood at the gates of a post-scarcity society,

and indeed, since the middle of the twentieth century, if not earlier, it would have been perfectly possible to reorganise human society such that there was an abundance of good food and water, and a rewarding advanced industrial-ecological urban environment and global landscape for the global human population. (And those responsible for precluding that possibility should be tried for crimes against humanity.)

Tragically, today the very possibility of a post-scarcity society seems to be slipping over the horizon, and is barely imaginable ... but it is not gone yet. Rather than the liberation of really-free-time (the ultimate scarcity), many of us today find ourselves today in the appallingly paradoxically compulsion to work constantly under conditions of affluenza, to become ever poorer. Yet in other parts of the world, but also just a few streets away from us, fellow human beings are living under conditions of abject poverty.

At the same time, a newly constructed threat of scarcity shadows our near future.

It is estimated that there will be 10 billion extra humans added to global population in the next decade. While we deal with the implications of that, climate change events multiplied by the apparent endgame of this phase of capitalism suggest the very actual potential for massive real scarcities across both developed and developing countries.

Many of the new scarcities produced by climate and environmental change will manifest themselves through space, and there will be new forms of environmental and spatial scarcity produced...

But we must not forget that constantly through these processes, capitalist scarcity also alienates us from a proper understanding of our relation to nature, and to the rest of the world. It turns the world into what Heidegger called a ‘standing reserve’.

There is a sense in which the very idea that resources are running out is itself a huge misunderstanding, a form of alienated thinking. Capital in this sense alienates us from a creative, sensuous and social grasp of our relationship to resources (or whatever word we should use): to matter and life.

We must not allow the current normative conception of scarcity to continue to dominate... it is thoroughly ideological, and hides the reality that there is still the possibility of choosing post-scarcity. And of course, post-scarcity thinking still needs a way to conceptualise the possibility of scarcity and how it – post-scarcity as a social form – will guarantee the holding of the possibility of an actual scarcity-scourge in permanent abeyance.

A critique of the capitalist conception of scarcity involves a re-examination of both the concept of the commons, and the production-apparatus of contemporary subjectivity. Much work has been done in this area in different-though-interrelated ways, by for example Harvey, Hardt and Negri, and various associated autonomia fellow-travellers, to name but a few. Our task is to make a specifically spatial contribution to thinking and acting around these questions, as architecture, cities and urbanisms are always some kind of mediation of modes of subjectivity.

CONTENTS

Notes 1 Murray Bookchin, Post-Scarcity Anarchism 2nd Ed (Montreal: Black Rose Books, 1986), p.11.

2 Ibid.

3 Ibid. p.13.

4 Michel Foucault, Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the College de France 197778 (NY: Pallgrave Macmillan, 2007), p.30.

5 Ibid., p.37.

6 Louis-Paul Abeille and Abbot Ferdinando Galiani both cited in Foucault, ibid., p.52.

7 Ibid., p.42.

8 David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), p.114.

9 Andy Merrifield, Magical Marxism: Subversive Politics and the Imagination (London: Pluto, 2011), p.96.

10 Ibid., p.13.

11 Bookchin, ibid., p.102.

12 Ibid., p.102.

13 See Philip Sadler, Sustainable Growth in a Post-Scarcity World (Farnham: Gower, 2010), p.236.

14 See discussion with John Beddington and Deborah Duanne on coming food price rises and scarcity on BBC Today programme 2.1.13

Gemeinschaftseinrichtung und Gemeindebau - The Common Spaces in Viennese Social Housing 30

Themes of Scarcity

1

Life in Deprivation?

London’s Olympic Fringes

1

The Vienna Model of Housing Provision in Times of Austerity 1 A Design Brief for the Reykjavik Capital Area

1

From Scarcity to Abundance: Social Housing in Oslo, 1945 – 1980 1

Scarcity and Creativity

49

Sustainable Distraction

51

Contributors SCIBE Reykjavik

51

Reflexiones sobre el espacio público 53 Drawing and the Ecstasy of the New: Enric Miralles 55 Contributors SCIBE Oslo

57

Scarcity and Redistribution

57 57

Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment

2

The Future, Green?

Constructed Scarcity

3

London: Putting Bromley-by-Bow on the Map

4

Scarcity, Creativity and Governmentality – Fostering Spaces for Radical Transformations 58

Traces of Scarcity

4

Thoughts on a Dérive

4

The Bromley-by-Bow Dérive

5

Bromley-by-Bow, 2012

6

A Few Steps towards an Operational Notion of Scarcity

Beyond Scarcity: Making Space in the City

62

9

Fuck Scarcity

63

Scarce Times: Alternative Futures (STAF)

14

STAF: A Report

14

STAF: Initial Results

14

Smooth and Striated: Future Urban Topographies

17

DS9 Self Made Self Build

17

Naming Scarcity: Sociomaterial, Transcalar and Translocal

17

The Production of Value Scarcity/Abundance: Reality/Ideology: Social/Natural

17

Contributors SCIBE London

21

Models and Solutions, Life and Practice in Social Housing in Vienna 22 Scarcity Contra Austerity

23

Views from within: (Self-)perceptions, (Self-)descriptions – Experts’ Prospects, Challenges and Critique in the Vienna Housing Provision 26 Vienna’s Housing Apparatus and its Contemporary Challenges: Superblock turned Überstadt

29

Scare Stories: Scarce Stories - The Ideology of Austerity

29

From Objects of Austerity to Processes of Scarcity

31

Lucky Vienna.

The City’s Housing Provision and How its Image is Cultivated

35

Almost All Right: Vienna Social Housing Provision

37

Scarcity is…

37

Vienna Housing Glossary

38

Contributors SCIBE Vienna

39

Some Thoughts about Scarcity

43

SCIBE Reykjavík: 2010-2013

44

Icelandic Initiatives

44

Scarcity and Creativity in the Reykjavik Capital Area

45

Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment: Informal Settlements and Socio-spatial Change

58

How can Architects Contribute to Solving the Problems of the Future? 59

The project Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment (SCIBE) explores the relationship between scarcity and creativity in the context of the built environment by investigating how conditions of scarcity might affect the creativity of the different actors involved in the production of architecture and urban design, and how design-led actions might improve the built environment in the future. Research is based on the analysis of processes in four European cities: London, Oslo, Reykjavik, and Vienna.

SCIBE is financially supported by the HERA Joint Research Programme which is co-funded by AHRC, AKA, DASTI, ETF, FNR, FWF, HAZU, IRCHSS, MHEST, NWO, RANNIS, RCN, VR and The European Community FP7 2007-2013, under the Socio-economic Sciences and Humanities programme.

SCIBE. Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment

Edited by Deljana Iossifova Published by The Bank of Ideas, London, UK © SCIBE, the Authors, 2013 and John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 2012, where indicated.

ISBN 978-0-9541362-9-1 (paper) ISBN 978-0-9541362-4-6 (eBook)

ISBN 978-0-9541362-9-1

9 780954 136291