Implementing Advanced Knowledge
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2.2.1 Scarcity as a design tool Alfredo Brillembourg & Hubert Klumpner
Scarcity as a design tool:
Notes from the new undeground Scarcity has been elevated to the defining condition of this post-crash era. To borrow a phrase from Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, it “captures the mind”i. From Athens to Reykjavik, London to Sao Paulo, the new politics of austerity has seized for itself an unwavering moral imperative. Cities worldwide have served as the collision zones of competing narratives of culpability, atonement and redemption. Scarcity is most often invoked at times of crisis – whether during the energy scares of the 1970s, the ‘inconvenient truth’ of a slow-burn climatic catastrophe, or the chastening post2008 ‘age of austerity’ that has descended upon Europe, the United States and beyond. In the popular imagination, it functions as a reaction to periods of unbridled excess. The unwelcome next morning comedown after a halfremembered night of overlooked limits and unchecked indulgence. ‘Irrational exuberance’ corrected. It was Malthus who first introduced the idea of a ‘natural’ or ‘absolute’ scarcity based on finite resources, arguing geometric population growth set against a linear expansion of food supply would inevitably result in scarcity and famineii. In classical economic theory, scarcity has been framed as constitutive of the discipline: “the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means”iii. ‘Relative’ scarcity, therefore, becomes part of the mechanism for determining value in the marketplace. This idea of ‘absolute’ versus ‘relative’ scarcity has also been likened to the difference between human needs and human desires. Yet while the vividness of the Malthusian threat has been recycled by subsequent generations warning breathlessly of the perils of the ‘population bomb’, or taken on an ecological hue via the ‘limits to growth’ dogma, it is a simplistic stance that ignores the possibility of innovation and creative adaptation. Certain natural resources are finite, but absolute scarcity misses the point. Limited resources are only scarce if demand outstrips supply. Conditions of scarcity are based on human interactions with material resources. And a resource can be experienced as scarce or abundant in different places, at different times, and by different people. When the United States Congress passed the Guano Islands Act in 1856, the excrement of seabirds and bats was prized as a crucial resource for agriculture due to its value as a fertilizer. Control over guano played a central role in the Chincha Islands War between Spain, Peru and Chile. With the development of the Haber-Bosch process by Fritz Haber in 1909, however, factoryproduced ammonia-based fertilizer cut demand for guano overnight. Haber-Bosch had succeeded in ‘turning air into bread’. The story of guano is also the story of mankind’s capacity to avoid the Malthusian catastrophe of absolute scarcity. 2
So what does this mean for architecture? Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider map out three strategies pursued in an attempt to overcome or mitigate the effects of material scarcity in relation to architectural production (we could just as easily speak here of perceived material scarcity)iv. The first is to fall back on notions of efficiency – deploying materials and space in the leanest possible manner. The second is to embrace – à la Mies – a ‘less is more’ approach, adopting a self-conscious aesthetic guise of architectural austerity. The third is the effort of the sustainability movement to address energy scarcity by using technical ingenuity to reduce the carbon load of new buildings. Till and Schneider confront us though, with a simple question: sustaining what? What is the value of virtuous selfsacrifice to preserve systemic dysfunction? Only by understanding the phenomenon through an economic lens as a distributive issue of supply and demand can we begin to explore how scarcity can emerge within, and shape, the 21st century city.
A shot across the bow
Politicians continue to preach the gospel of austerity during the prolonged hangover from the global financial crisis. But it is wrong to equate a political program of reduced spending with a generalized state of scarcity. Equally, the kinds of conditions that have led observers like Mike Davis to warn of
Cover - Site Axo Program Figure 1 - Project to develop and implement design innovations for rapid and incremental informal settlement upgrading.
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an explosively unstable urban planet on the brink do not square with an apocalyptic narrative of Third World urbanization out of controlv. What we are seeing in these teeming clusters of wood, scrap metal and canvas are a failure of equitable resource allocation. As economist Edward Glaeser has argued, cities are the answer to, not the cause of, many of the challenges that afflict human beings as a speciesvi. But cities can also be spaces of great inequality. The urgent question facing us today is one of access. Access to stable land. Access to property rights. Access to materials (and techniques) to construct robust and comfortable dwellings. Access to energy, clean water, sanitation and public transportation. In Nairobi, for instance, the informal settlement of Kibera – one of the largest on earth – is a short bus ride from downtown, but exists as a disconnected island unto itself. We have witnessed the same isolation in the
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hillside barrios of Caracas. In the favelas rising above the sundappled streets of Ipanema. Visible from the rich enclaves of the formal city, but a blight on the mental map of those inhabiting what amounts to a different world. When we crowd masses of impoverished citizens together in small areas and deprive them of sufficient resources and services to overcome the social, environmental and economic costs of a life lived in the midst of great density, the pathways out of urban poverty begin to narrow. Urban reality in most parts of the world is characterized by unplanned growth in terms of space and population. But in concentrating people, resources, information, capital and goods, cities nevertheless offer the most efficient environment to build effective systems of service provision, housing and energy supply. Talk about scarcity in an urban context amounts to an admission of collective failure. Land (space), materials and services have become symptoms of exclusionary growth. Thinking in terms of the informal settlements of the Global South specifically, this raises important issues of tenure and infrastructure. If we as architects and designers shift our perspective to that of a citizen of the informal city, illegal occupation is a reaction to the scarcity of space – whether due to property markets operating beyond the reach of the urban poor, or a lack of housing proximate to job opportunities. Similarly, building your own home and improving it incrementally over time represents a reaction to the scarcity of financial and material resources to construct a ‘real’ dwelling that meets the standards of the formal sphere. And engaging in energy piracy, or hitching a ride with an improvised moto-taxi to climb the steep, winding slopes of a favela is an attempt to adapt to an environment bereft of the services enjoyed in the rational, ordered metropolis forever at a distance. Taking cues from Henri Lefebvre, Edward Soja has staked out new theoretical territory to challenge this unequal production of urban spacevii. His focus on ‘spatial justice’ derives from the earlier work of David Harvey before his Marxist turn, who observed in Social Justice and the City that a territorial allocation of resources could be made more just when there are positive spillover or multiplier effects from the spatial pattern of public and private investments, and where special attention is given to redress unusual environmental or social problemsviii. That is, social and economic inequalities are built into the evolving geography of the city. Unjust outcomes arise from inherently unjust processes. Connecting this notion of spatial justice with the concept of scarcity, Till has illuminated the way in which scarcity is a constructed (and contested) condition, shaped by larger social, political and economic processes and power structures, as well as dominant habits of consumption and patterns of behaviorix. Scarcity is not a question of markets, but morals. Figure 2 - Slum in Caracas Figure 3 - Torre David
Again, what does this mean for architecture? Put simply, urban scarcity is not inevitable. And contrary to the natural impulse of architects, nor does it necessarily demand a material solution. As Till suggests, in many cases it is instead our responsibility to deploy “spatial intelligence” to redistribute what already exists in order to mitigate the effects of scarcityx. So with the condition diagnosed, we are faced with two connected questions. If the inequitable functioning of the urban system at this point is a given, how do individuals and communities residing in informal settlements around the world adapt to, and remain resilient in, an urban environment that confronts them with the persistent challenges of chronic scarcity? And more importantly, how can we as architects and designers learn from this spontaneous ingenuity born of deprivation? How can we calibrate our own interventions to catalyze more fundamental social change?
Experimental utopias
Torre David, in Caracas, represents a galvanizing example of how inhabitants of the informal city are dealing with scarcity. Originally conceived as a landmark commercial development, construction was abandoned in the wake of a national banking crisis in 1994. Today, Torre David is an improvised, occupied home for more than 800 families living as a self-organized community in what some have dismissed as a ‘vertical slum’. Along with our research and design teams, we spent a year studying the physical and social organization of the tower. Where some see only a failed development project, we conceived of the building as a laboratory for the study of the informal. There were no elevators. No electrical infrastructure. No running water or windows. Everything had to be added. But shops, services and sporting facilities sprung up, alongside work-in-progress living spaces. Torre David shows us how an organic, bottom-up urbanism that repurposes structures developed for different uses can address two crucial forms of urban scarcity – land and materials. Another example of creative adaptation can be seen in the context of jugaad urbanism. A term widely used in South Asia, jugaad refers to a creative idea providing a quick, alternative way of solving or fixing a problemxi. Literally, an improvised arrangement or work-around, which has to be used because of a lack of resources. The concept is expressed through simple ideas and strategies to address the material and service gaps characterizing situations of urban scarcity. In other words, a micro-scale, DIY urbanism. Motorcycle-driven pumps, homemade stoves, and self-designed water filtration systems are all examples of residents making do with what they have on hand. A similar resourcefulness is evident in the concept of kanju, or “the Figure 4 - Residence in a slum in Caracas Figure 5 - Project to develop and implement design innovations for rapid and incremental informal settlement upgrading. 8
specific creativity born from African difficulty”xii. While both terms have been quickly embraced by business schools enamored with the ‘lessons’ of frugal innovation, we cannot forget that these solutions have emerged from crisis. Individuals have been forced to respond to problems of sanitation, shelter, energy and water with improvisational survival tactics. People living amidst conditions of everyday scarcity in cities have an innate capacity to refashion the built environment to address to varying degrees the failure of urban governance and resource distribution that denies them spatial justice. Like a jerry-rigged truck, however, these are not long-term solutions. A workaround is exactly that – a choice compelled by the need to circumvent the barriers erected by actors and institutions that should be helping, not hindering. Though improving quality of life in a context where subsistence is often the main priority, these ‘hacks’ do not transform or reshape the broader systems and processes that have constructed urban scarcity. Deeper problems call for more expansive solutions. And this is where we can play a role as architects and designers. Focusing on the urban poor does not necessitate an impoverished architecture. It calls for a complete openness towards materials and processes – an architecture without restraints. The challenge is that scarcity becomes a mindset. Cognitive experiments have shown that it affects what we notice, how we weigh our choices, how we deliberate, and how we behavexiii. Yet for architects, scarcity should
Figure 6 - Infography, Alfredo Brillembourg 10
function not as a survival state, but as a design tool. Scarcity has the potential to provoke design innovation – “doing the most with the least” according to Buckminster Fuller’s mantra. Except rather than a race towards “ephemeralization”, a projected utopia of “doing everything with nothing”, the more pressing challenge is to seek design solutions whose adaptability, sustainability and basis in the fundamental principles of an equitable quality of life reshape situations of constructed scarcityxiv. In part, this echoes William McDonough’s idea of “design as the first signal of human intention”xv. In the absence of large-scale societal shifts, architects can use targeted interventions to redefine urban possibilities. Strategies that unlock existing potential while calling attention to spatial injustices.
Township blues
Our Empower Shack project was conceived in this spirit. With over 50 million people and the largest economy on the continent, South Africa shines as a source of relative stability and prosperity in its region. Yet economic inequality remains high. For more than 7.5 million people, life is lived amidst the rudimentary conditions of one of the 2,700 informal settlements spread across the country. The forced removals and racial segregation of the apartheid era ensured questions of urban design carried heavy baggage after the euphoria of 1994. The aims of the new government were embodied in the national Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP), offering new, subsidized low-cost dwellings en masse. But those facing the interminable wait for an RDP house are locked out of the formal property market due to escalating prices, limited access to financing, and inflexible land regulations complicating private development in the lowincome sector. In short, the urban situation is defined by inequality, tenure insecurity and an enduring socio-spatial structure perpetuating patterns of poverty. For the majority of South Africans, the only way to access tenure is through the subsidized RDP program. Even then, the dream does not always match reality. A significant portion of program recipients will be relocated far from the city, disconnected from public services and employment opportunities due to land affordability. The upgrading of informal settlements has only been an official element of state housing policy since 2004, signaling a shift towards greater flexibility, participation and integration when it came to the huge segment of the urban population existing on the margins of the formal city. Yet despite this shift, the state continues to view – and fund – housing policy through the lens of a consolidated subsidy prioritizing new, formal ‘turnkey’ developments planned and constructed without the involvement of local communities. While the post-apartheid Constitution enshrined a “right of access to adequate housing”, the still-worsening housing gap in South Africa is as much a product of what Edgar Pieterse labels “powerful urban logics” as scarce resourcesxvi.
The result is the continuing expansion of informal townships. In Cape Town, sprawling settlements like Khayelitsha – home of our project site, BTSection – are characterized by inadequate housing quality, as well as personal dangers and environmental risks stemming from ad hoc development patterns. An impermeable urban fabric with poorly defined thoroughfares and limited public space hinders access for emergency services and creates barriers to the introduction of basic infrastructure like water and sanitation. At the same time, despite tenure insecurity these settlements have nonetheless assumed a degree of permanence. Phumezo Tsibanto – a community leader of BT-Section and the occupant of our first built Empower Shack prototype – has lived where his upgraded shack now stands for 27 years. Far from a quick-fix, in Khayelitsha and elsewhere we see a role for architectural tactics to bring some of the benefits of the formal city, so long as these tactics respond to the aspirations and needs of residents. Accordingly, the Empower Shack project was informed by three fundamental beliefs. Firstly, that a selfbuilt, modular design system incorporating solar technology will encourage active participation in the shack upgrading process, nurture local agency and capacity building, support energy sustainability and lower production costs. Secondly, that reducing the household footprint by reorganizing private space over two floors – going vertical – will provide greater ground floor area to establish communal courtyards, interstitial space for firebreaks and the laying of basic infrastructure, as well as allow the ground floor to be used more flexibly as a working space or area to launch small commercial enterprises. And thirdly, that combining an improved shack design with a cluster formation and reconfigured urban plan will provide a controlled path to densification, allow a more efficient sharing of infrastructure through a central core unit, and open up the possibility of a revenue generating solar model in the future. While still in its early stages, the Empower Shack project is not simply about improving the lives of specific individuals through higher-quality dwellings. Instead, it is shot through with the conviction that an innovative pilot scheme can influence a new direction for housing policy across South Africa. We aspire to reshape the informal city by offering a methodology for the fair distribution of public space, a safer urban environment, improved service delivery, and an urbanization pattern that combines housing upgrading with new economic and social possibilities. Most importantly, we have not forgotten our responsibility to address more pervasive social, political and economic structures. By demonstrating the value of in situ upgrading and providing pathways for an incremental process of residentdriven development, we see the Empower Shack project as also supporting collective efforts to achieve tenure security. To paraphrase Slavoj Žižek, what cannot be spoken of speaks through architecturexvii. 12
Beyond cataclysm
In ‘The Imagination of Disaster’, Susan Sontag invoked disaster as one of the “oldest subjects of art”xviii. Half a century later, Mark Wigley suggested architectural design could be understood as “the child of crisis”xix. In this telling, our cities are recast as a silent physical record of accumulated trauma. Acute scarcities triggered by crisis function as the perpetual engine of transformation in the built environment. Whether the networked convulsions of the 2008 financial meltdown represent a turning point in our post-millennial brand of capitalism is a judgment left to history. But the exponential expansion of the informal city began before the sub-prime fuse was lit, and it continues apace. If the scarcity inherent to informal urbanization represents a state of emergency, it is an emergency a long time in the making. While governments – and the planners and designers they enlist – have either averted their gaze or engaged in misguided, broad-brush renewal schemes, entire generations have lived and died in marginalized territories shaped by deep-rooted, structural inequalities. While careful not to treat the ad hoc, self-built environment as a romantic ideal, we also reject the conventional depiction of slums as tumors on the civic body. Architects and designers have much to learn from these zones of instinctive innovation. The infinite adaptability and resourcefulness of bottomup, organic urbanism. Far from stifling the maverick spirit of jugaad or kanju, it is our role to contribute to a more fundamental vision of the city as a place of equal opportunity. As the informal expands, reproduces and generates alternative forms of urbanism, we must creatively intervene in the processes that construct parallel conditions of scarcity. Changes to the built environment are part of that equation, but cannot achieve real change in isolation. Rather than devising decontextualized monuments to good intentions, we must design products and processes that by their very existence encourage communities to envisage a different urban reality.
Notes and References
1. See Sendhil Mullainathan and Eldar Shafir, Scarcity: Why Having Too Little Means So Much (2013). 2. TR Malthus, An Essay On The Principle Of Population (1789). 3. Lionel Robbins, An Essay On The Nature And Significant Of Economic Science (1932). 4. Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider, ‘Invisible Agency’ (2012) 82 Architectural Design 38. 5. See Mike Davis, Planet Of Slums (2006). 6. See Edward Glaeser, Triumph Of The City (2011). 7. See Edward Soja, Seeking Spatial Justice (2010). 8. David Harvey, Social Justice And The City (1973). 9. Jeremy Till, Constructed Scarcity (SCIBE Working Paper 1, January 2011). 10. Jeremy Till, ‘Scarcity Contra Austerity’, Places Journal (10 August 2012). 11. See Navi Radju, Jaideep Prabhu and Simone Ahuja, Jugaad Innovation (2012). 12. See Dayo Olopade, The Bright Continent: Breaking Rules And Making Change In Modern Africa (2014). 13. Lionel Robbins, An Essay On The Nature And Significant Of Economic Science (1932). 14. Jeremy Till and Tatjana Schneider, ‘Invisible Agency’ (2012) 82 Architectural Design 38. 15. William McDonough, Design, Ecology, Ethics, And The Making Of Things (1993). 16. Edgar Pieterse, ‘Design Cannot Save The City’ (Designing Democracy Seminar, Cape Town, 29 August 2013). 17. See Adrian Lahoud, ‘Architecture, Contingency And Crisis: An Interview With Slavoj Žižek’ (2010) 207 Architectural Design 112. 18. Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation And Other Essays (1966) 212. 19. Mark Wigley, ‘Space In Crisis’ in Urban China Bootleged By C-Lab For Volume (2009).
Figure 7 - Torre David 14
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