A Slum (Hi)story

A

Slum

(Hi)story.

Kaegh Allen 4263359 History Thesis 2013

Introduction Slumming it.

Slum, Shanty Town, Favela, Rookery, Gecekondu, Skid Row, Barrio, Ghetto, Bidonville, Taudis, Bandas De Miseria, Barrio Marginal, Morro, Loteamento, Barraca, Musseque, Tugurio, Solares, Mudun Safi, Karyan, Medina Achouaia, Brarek, Ishash, Galoos, Tanake, Baladi, Hrushebi, Chalis, Communas, Katras, Zopadpattis, Bustee, Estero, Looban, Dagatan, Umjondolo, Watta, Udukku, Chereka Bete.

The name changes but the situations are the fairly similar. Over the last fifty years the evolution of what happens to these irregular settlements has evolved, and their place in society shifted.

These settlements are no longer only treated as breeding grounds for crime, illness and despair, of course this is sometimes true, but what they are now proving to provide are alternative, versatile and resilient ways of constructing our everchanging cityscapes.

As part of this history thesis I plan to walk a specific timeline, from post war Europe to contemporary India and South America – looking at perspective changes in the dealing of issues of slums, and the important actors along the way. Alongside this historical and geographical analysis there will be a personal journey undertaken in 2013, party due to my studies at TU Delft and party fueled by a passion to learn more about the situations of the urban poor in cities around the world today.

The aim of this thesis is to highlight a shift in emphasis from perfectionist mdoersnist visions to a contemporary acceptance of imperefection. Although many of the changes that are most compelling for me about this issue have occurred in the last decade there are very important historical frameworks that have allowed architecture to have such an important role in the discussion and have perhaps diverted the focus from the real issues involved.

The historical analysis will aim to set out the series of events and decisions that occurred during and after the second world war in Europe and the USA that lead to the creation of systems of public housing that have now proven to be flawed. A further exploration will look at how these systems are being replicated in developing countries which differ so greatly socially, economically and geographically from the places that created these models. Finally there will be a look at how these ideas have been processed, changed and utilized by an ever more desperate and ingenious urban population.

Throughout this narrative there will be leaps of ideas and time frames and a special attention paid to the polarity of approaches in the western/northern ‘first’ world and the eastern/southern ‘third world’ and a look at what has been learnt and what can now be implemented.

This is accompanied by a personal journey that will recount experiences and anecdotes from visits to slums in Ahmedabad and Mumbai, India, also favellas in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Medellin, Colombia and social housing projects in London, UK and Chicago, USA - all taken during the year of 2013 as part of personal research for this thesis.

What follows is a short and personal slum (hi)story.

London 1950

Rio de Janeiro 2000

Sao Paulo 2000

Buenos Aires 2010

Bogota 2000

Medellin 2010

Chicago 1991

A. Slumming It : Personal Journey 2013.

Era of Interest:

Mumbai 1990

Ahmedabad 2000

Chapter : 1 Europe & USA

‘‘It’s not the architecture that failed.’’

The word ‘slum’ has its origins in England in the 1920s. It had become common slang to mean ‘low going-ons’ or shady situations in back taverns and eating houses.

Charles Dickens used the word slum in a similar way in 1840, writing “I mean to take a great, London, back-slum kind walk tonight”. 1 But the most important first use of the word came in 1850 when the Catholic Cardinal Wiseman described the area known as Devil’s Acre in Westminster, London as follows: “Close under the Abbey of Westminster there lie concealed labyrinths of lanes and courts, and alleys and slums, nests of ignorance, vice, depravity, and crime, as well as of squalor, wretchedness, and disease; whose atmosphere is typhus, whose ventilation is cholera; in which swarms of huge and almost countless population, nominally at least, Catholic; haunts of filth, which no sewage committee can reach – dark corners, which no lighting board can brighten.”1 This passage was widely quoted in the national press, leading to the popularisation of the word slum to describe bad housing. This word has now been widely accepted and the connotations that it carries exacerbated.

Slum clearance started as a social movement in London, UK during the 1920s and 30s with the aim of replacing unsatisfactory, overcrowded and unsanitary housing with modern accommodation. This was intensified during and after the war due to an initial need to house factory workers but then also to re-house all of the population that had their housing damaged and destroyed due to the bombings and wear of the war.

This mass housing strategy, of prefabricated quick build concrete tower blocks continued well through the 1950s and 60s. These council blocks, project towers and mass housing worked momentarily, providing new affordable housing and futuristic dreams to people that had never thought it possible. But many things beyond their pure architectural merit were far more crucial to their sustainable survival.

Notorious icons such as Pruitt Igoe (East St. Louis, USA), Robin Hood Gardens (London, UK) and Cabrini Green (Chicago, USA) slowly deteriorated and fell apart as the dream that held them together became evidently corrupt, racist and negligent. The west was now left with an industrial wasteland of abandoned towers that reeked failure and wasted ideals.

‘Modern architecture died in St Louis, Missouri on July 15, 1972 at 3.32 pm (or thereabouts) when the infamous Pruitt-Igoe scheme, or rather several of its slab blocks, were given the final coup de grace by dynamite. Previously it had been vandalized, mutilated and defaced by its black inhabitants, and although millions of dollars were pumped back, trying t keep it alive (fixing the broken elevators, repairing smashed windows, repainting), it was finally put out of its misery. Boom, boom, boom.’2 But was it bad architecture to blame?

As writer of the Failed Architecture blog describes ‘‘it’s not the architecture that failed. If it was, then the Barbican Towers would be deemed failures. Park Hill and Trellick Tower would still be considered design catastrophes.

The cause of Pruitt-Igoe’s descent into its nightmare and final destruction was the failure

in the social support and a failure to maintain the buildings fabric not the concept of Yamaraki’s design.’3 But perhaps what is currently still most disturbing is that these exact same models are still being replicated all over the world - with similar repercussions. The circumstances that have placed people in them is only slightly different but the outcome is eventually a mirror. Grey, Alone and Unhappy.

In his seminal book, ‘Planet of Slums’ Mike Davis sets out an almost apocalyptic vision of the cities of the future. By the end of the first chapter the scene is set; “In 1950 there were 86 cities in the world with a population of more than one million ... by 2015 there will be at least 550”; and “For 10,000 years urban societies have struggled against deadly accumulation of their own waste”; and “neo-liberal capitalism since 1970 has multiplied Dickens’s notorious slum...By exponential powers. Residents of slums, while only 6% of the city population of the developed countries, constitute a staggering 78.2% of urbanites in the least-developed countries”; and “China ... added more city-dwellers in the 1980s than did of all Europe (including Russia) in the entire 19th century!”4 These fact are staggering but not entirely surprising, they affirm realities that are everpresent but easily ignored.

According to UN-HABITAT, around 33% of the urban population in the developing world in 2012, or about 863 million people, lived in slums.

Today, more people live in urban areas than rural areas and city populations are growing by more than 200,000 new inhabitants each day.

Cities in developing countries are expected to absorb 95 per cent of urban population growth in the next two decades, increasing the slum population by nearly 500 million between now and 2020.

Cities account for some 70 per cent of global GDP and city slums are often economically vibrant; around 85 per cent of all new employment opportunities around the world occur in the informal economy.

In 2003 UN-HABITAT defines a slum household as a group of individuals living under the same roof in an urban area who lack 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.

5. Security of tenure that prevents forced evictions.5 In Savage Inequality by Jonathan Kozol he describes the situation in East St. Louis in 1991, with poverty, racial segregation and lack of resources that make this small American city wallow is third world level plight. In Kozol’s descriptions many areas of East St. Louis would be considered a slum according to UN-HABITAT definitions.

“Nobody is East St. Louis...has ever had the clout to raise a protest. Why Americans permit this is so hard for somebody like me, who grew up in the real Third World, to understand...I’m from India. In Calcutta this would be explicable, perhaps. I keep thinking to myself, ‘My God! This is the United States!”6 This definition is also challenged in the introduction of the book by Urban Think Tank and Iwan Baan - ‘Torre David’, here the UN-HABITAT definition is further challenged looking at comparisons of squatter movements of the 80s and 90s in European cities such as Copenhagen, London, Berlin and Amsterdam which created situations where people were living in squalid, overcrowded and insecure conditions. And this is all in the developed, ‘first’ world, in our lifetime.

A clear and important example can be drawn from the Freetown of Christiania in Copenhagen. Founded and claimed in 1971 from an abandoned military barracks, Christiania has survived and grown as a people’s commune in Copenhagen’s east district.

It is declared ‘The Freetown’. Opting out of Danish laws and regulations has generated an “experiment in living”. It has also generated friction with states authorities. Yet today Christiania survives as an embodiment of ‘counter-culture’ and local self-governance.

The 850 residents have their own police force, currency and democratic process. Against the odds – squashed within a burgeoning metropolitan capital – this community has declared their own independence and took charge of their own affairs Another interesting example found in the Netherlands are the recently implemented ‘Scum Villages’. The mayor, Eberhard van der Laan, implemented this controversial new policy to tackle antisocial behaviour early in 2013. The scheme places consistently misbehaving families in isolated shipping container housing in industrial regions of Amsterdam. This isolation seems slightly counterproductive, if anything can be learn about the societies on irregular cities it is that community responsibility is the most important factor to maintain peace. As Jane Jacobs explained a constant movement of members through a community not only places the architectural elements under great strain and ‘wear out with disproportionate swiftness’ but also creates a community that is ‘in a perpetually embryonic state, or perpetually regressing to helpless infancy.’7 What is occurring in the informal settlements of the developing world is becoming ever more of an intellectual obsession, especially in the field of Architecture. The reasons for this are twofold. Either we would like to strive to change them, or we think we can learn from them. These comparisons are very important to remember in our current situation, as the developed west slowly re-emerges from an huge economic crisis perhaps there should be a reappraisal at how we are dealing with our economic and housing sector.

As explained in the opening of ‘Informal city – Caracas case’ there is an importance in making a contrast between ‘the stereotypical European image of the barrios as places of uncertainty and chaos with the potential of these informal urban districts in terms of civil society and culture’8 The Homeruskwartier district in Almere, a city with a population of 180,000, is the first self-build project attempted on a truly large scale in Europe. Since 2006, self-builders have erected 800 homes, and thousands more are on the way. Similarly in the USA there are organizations such as Rural Studio, a program in which architectural students

are trained to design and build in teams for undeserved communities in very poor neighbourhoods in Alabama, who are trying to create an applicable system that creates possible alternatives to current mass housing scenarios. Another equally simple yet radical project comes in the form of Bel Architects project ‘Grunbau und Siedler’ as part of the International Building Exhibition (IBA) in Hamburg in 2010. The project takes a basic concrete structure reminiscent of Le Corbusier’s Domino house and presents future users with a DIY manual. The inhabitant is required to buy only the basic plot in the building, with all infrastructural connections already installed and the given the instructions to complete the rest themselves.

What is key about these processes is making the end user involved in the process and making them responsible through making them collaborators and not just receivers.

Likewise there should perhaps be a reappraisal of the importance of regulations in European countries - especially in the UK where grade listing and character preservation have long caused nonsensical decisions to be made in housing redevelopment and preservation.

A clear example arose in the press in summer 2013 when a young ‘Eco-Couple’ built the house on private land in Glandwr, North Pembrokeshire were told to tear down their completely sustainable and self-built home, because ‘the benefits of a lowimpact development do not outweigh the harm to the character and appearance of the countryside.’9 This is drastically contrasted to recent attention paid to England’s 21st Century slums, these ‘sheds with beds’ are hidden at the end of suburban gardens in east London and are basic, poorly built and often illegal - but present in their thousands.

Here we are left with a subtle problematic. These crippling legislations that are suffocating development in such rural, secluded areas are also forcing this type of construction in inner city areas. Perhaps energies could be better spent of facilitating, educating and maintaining this sort of construction to be made to an acceptable level?

These bottom up, community lead processes are much more worthwhile than the topdown social housing of the last decades. These project perhaps have not been further explored in ‘developed’ countries because there is a certain acceptance of shortcomings, and incompleteness in the third world that would be seen as weakness and failure in the first.

What ever the reason they seem far more sustainable and educated than current first world techniques, which lead to a deep and powerless indifference to the place that you live and call ‘home’ - home is where the heart is, not where the planners are.

These ideas are surprisingly still not resonating with planners in even the most contemporary of cities, one large-scale and very important example is the current development of The Chicago Lakeside Development in South Chicago.

The Chicago Lakeside Development is a proposed redevelopment of about 600-acres on the former U.S. Steel SouthWorks site on the South Side of Chicago, lying about 16km south of Downtown. The project is one of the largest urban regeneration project in the USA in recent history and is dealing with a site larger than the famous ‘L’ of downtown Chicago. The plan calls for 13,575 new homes, 1,630,000 m2 of retail, including huge warehouse stores and other commercial spaces, a new high school, a slip marina, a public park and lake front access.

The Chicago Lakeside Development Master Plan will take an estimated 25 to 45 years to complete and will cost more than $4 billion in both public and private funds.

“When you think about the scale, and the fact that it’s been 25 years since that community was basically abandoned, with respect to a job-maker this thing has got enormous potential consequences,”

Dan McCaffery - Developer10

“If it’s nice, shiny and new, I don’t see why they’d include us, they’ve never included us in any particular way before, so, you don’t have enough people with the education to have the jobs to afford to buy the houses out here.”

Mike Medrano - Resident10

It is difficult to see this project succeeding, and although perhaps not surprising to see this kind of generic approach being implemented in the United States of America - what is surprising are the lack of viable alternatives. At the crux of the matter, it is pushing for ideals that are already outdated and problematic and aiming that they will be held as true in half a century. The main issue with the project seems to be one of investment. The only way to be able to regenerate the area is to gain private investment to build monolithic and expensive commercial and residential buildings that claim to be sustainable through green technologies but actually completely ignore issues about the surrounding neighbourhood. Making their integration impossible and completely ignoring issues of poverty, community and growth - which does not seem so sustainable, in the end.

What was previously unacceptable is now being scrutinized as a new alternative. The death of Modernism may be recurring as Charles Jencks describes (over and over with the demolition or even re-appropriation of their icons ) but the deep rooted ideals that allowed such moral failures to occur are still very much in place.

Enrique Peñalosa describes that ‘in many countries, the institutional set-up does not favour equality.’11 But change has to be made and it has to come quickly, ‘Such projects in Sao Paulo, Mumbai or Istanbul, are rarely comfortable academic exercises. They are driven by violent change and instability.’12 These areas of crisis are the testing grounds for new ways of developing cities and housing that is flexible and robust enough to be learn from and transplanted to our first world comforts.

But will we be brave enough to try, before it is too late?

1. Wikipedia. Slum. 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slum 2. Jencks, C. 2011. The Story of Post-Modernism.Wiley, New York.

3. Failed Architecture. 2013. http://failedarchitecture.com/2013/06/pruitt-igoe-is-failed-architecture-central-to-the-architectural- profession/#ixzz2iSeyZ9il 4. Davis, M. 2007. Planet of Slums. Verso. London.

5. UN-HABITAT. 2005. http://www.unhabitat.org/documents/media_centre/sowcr2006/SOWCR%205.pdf 6. Kozol, J. 1991. Savage Inequalities. Harper. New York.

7. Jacobs,J. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House. New York.

8. Feireiss, K. Brillembourg, A. Klumpner, H. 2005. Informal City: Caracas Case. Prestel, New York.

9. Daily Mail. 2013. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2382684/Charlie-Hague-Megan-Williams-told-pull-hobbit-home entirely-natural-materials.html 10. WBEZ 91.5 Radio, Chicago. http://www.wbez.org/sections/art/southeast-side-will-new-community-rise-old-south-works-steel- site-107443 11. UN-HABITAT. 2010. Bridging the Urban Divide. http://www.unchs.org/pmss/listItemDetails.aspx?publicationID=3016 12. Burdett, R. Sudjic, D. 2011. Living in the Endless City. PHAIDON. New York.

A. Christiania Window House : Self-Built and unique.

B. ‘Scum Village’ : Amsterdam’s solution for unrully citizens.

C. ‘Grunbau und Siedler’ : Incremental housing in Hamburg.

D. Sheds With Beds : London’s 21st Century Slums.

E: Pruitt Igoe : The Death of Modernism- 1950

Chapter : 2 India

‘One Man’s Rubish is another Man’s Treasure’

“Using and reusing to find new meaning, that is The Indian way”

Balkrishna Doshi - International Habitat Workshop, 2013.

In Architecture Depends, Jeremy Till describes that architecture relies on a semblance of order set out by Vitruvius; COMMODITY : FIRMNESS : DELIGHT. He goes on further to describe the importance of beauty, cleanliness and order as occupying ‘‘a special position amongst the requirements of civilization’’1 as set out by Sigmund Freud.

These observations are topped off by a look at Le Corbusier and his approach to dealing surgically with the unhealthy tissue of cities.

One example that is looked at is Pessac, the town near Bordeaux, in France, where Le Corbusier designed and built a community of 51 houses in the 1920’s. Till explains that if Le Corbusier visited the community in 1964 he would have found things completely different. Appropriation and customization had occurred ‘open terraces had been filled in. Steel strip windows replaced with divided timber ones complete with vernacular shutters. Pitched roofs added over leaky flat ones. Stick on bricks, moorish features, windowsills, and other forms of decoration applied over the original stripped walls. All in all, a straightforward defilement of the master’s guiding principles by an ungrateful, even unworthy public.’1 Henri Lefevre explained ‘that in Pessac Le Corbussier produced a kind of architecture that lends itself to conversion and sculptural ornamentation...and what did the occupants add?...Their needs’ The acceptance of these needs and the forward thinking that would have allowed included in the design the ability for users to manipulate the models of modernisms was perhaps all part of Le Corbusiers grand plan, but in any case it definitely rubbed off on one of his disciples.

Balkrishna Doshi an Indian architect, planner and educator. worked for four years between 1951-54 with Le Corbusier in Paris. After this time B. V. Doshi returned to Ahmedabad to supervise Le Corbusier’s projects. His studio, Vastu-Shilpa (environmental design), was established in 1955. Vastu-Shilpa Foundation for Studies and Research in Environmental Design has been instrumental in the development and education of the architectural discourse in India. VSF has also done pioneering work in low cost housing and city planning.

‘Doshi is considered one of the leading exponents of appropriate technology, whilst also being a key figure in the development of a modern Indian architecture, combining modernist influences with traditions from the East, specifically Doshi’s interest in Hindu philosophy. The name of the practice refers to the Vāstu-Shilpā Shastras, the Hindu metaphysical design philosophy based on a system of rules related to the environment, cosmology, proportion and directional alignment. He is also a founding member of the Vāstu-Shilpā Foundation, a non-profit research institution that deals with issues of sustainable design, appropriate technology, vernacular architecture and urbanism.

During the 1960s, India promoted a policy of regional industrialisation, where new factories with associated housing were to be built on the outskirts of existing towns or close to local villages. In this context, Vāstu-Shilpā developed a methodology for designing new townships which combined the demands of a growing economy with traditional skills and modes of living: prefabricated concrete elements were mixed with local materials and craft skills and a number of typologies of housing were designed that

could be added to and adapted by the inhabitants.

It was Vāstu-Shilpas organisational structure of a research institution affiliated to a design practice that allowed them to produce a design so well suited to the needs of squatter families. They were commissioned by the Indian government to spend a period of intensive research on such settlements gaining a thorough understanding of their physical, social and economic structures, a knowledge that was then applied to the design work.”2 One seminal project for VSF was Aranya. Aranya (which means “forest”) is a sites-andservices township for 40,000 people in Indore, Madhya Pradesh State. Sites-and-services project like Aranya place the bulk of investment is spent on land and infrastructure. ‘‘The township incorporates a variety of income groups on an 85 hectare site, where basic infrastructure, including electricity, water and drainage are provided. Whilst in some instances whole houses were built, for poorer families there were a range of options, including purchasing a plot only; a plot with a plinth to build on; or a built ‘service core’ of kitchen, wash-room and an additional room. Here owners could add to the given infrastructure at their own pace and with down payments related to the average income of each family, the Aranya project tried to create a model of housing which could be afforded by those with very few resources.’’2 While the VSF designed the master plan for the settlement, residents were left to build their own houses incrementally. Aranya is also a mixed-income settlement, meaning that the economically weaker sector have the same initial resources as wealthier neighbours, the main change comes in plot size and location.

This project intentionally set out what perhaps accidentally occurred in Pessac some twenty years earlier. It gave prospective residents a ground foundation slab, a staircase and then a kit of parts and ideas to allow the house to grow and develop incrementally as families grow and wealth increases.

These ideas of incremental growth are not exactly new. As describes in ‘Cities in Transition’ a conversation between artist and activist Marjetica Potrc and architectural curator Andres Lepika3 there had been interest in ideas of incremental housing as early as 1932 with an Exhibition organized by Martin Wagner in Berlin entitled ‘The Growing House’ in which various architects at the time like Walter Gropius, Erich Mendleson, Max and Bruno Taut were engaged in projects of incremental housing.

This experimentation came as result of the great depression and the end of ‘the golden twenties’ where now there was a great need of low-income housing in suburban regions of cities. With flexible, small scale plots that could be adapted to changing family and community needs. But this all came to an end when the Nazis took power. And then due to the results of the destruction that en-sewed in European city centres, once the war was over there was a clear and urgent need for mass housing at unprecedented scales and speeds, thus the ideals of gentle incrementation were washed away by industrialized habitation requirements.

Only now after yet another, much smaller, global crisis and reappraisal has there been an interest in these methods. Very few projects of this kind exist in the western world. Perhaps it is due to planning regulations and excessive preoccupation with neighbourhood characteristics.

What occurs in Aranya is a wonderful appropriation of each module and a beautifully layered and personalized set of homes that fit real needs. Clearly it is a testament to

Doshi’s design that there was still some memory of the original left in each house, giving the neighbourhood permanent sense of closure and identity.

This flexibility in design is often the most problematic issue when dealing with architecture especially social housing - if you make it hard, people want to move it.

Jeremy Till explains that garbage and building are inextricably related, “ALL ARCHITECTURE IS BUT WASTE IN TRANSIT!’1 This is never more true than in informal settlements where garbage is more often than not used as building material.

True Sustainability.

He explains that Marco Polo states about the city of Leonia (where the streets are cleaned every night, the visitors enjoy the glory in the morning but ignore the growing rubbish heaps surrounding the city). ‘‘One can have permanent newness, but it is an illusion.

It comes at a price, and that price is the making permanent of rubbish, a fate worse, perhaps, than the ephemeral charms of progress.’’1 This puts into questions many issues about value. In Michael Thompson’s book Rubbish Theory - he claims that architecture denotes two categories, transient and permanent. ‘‘Objects in the transient category decrease in value over time and have finite life-spans.

Objects in the durable category increase in value over time and have (ideally) infinite lifespans.’’1 A third category is proposed, rubbish. As in contemporary times transient objects/ building reach a level of such low value that they become worthless, and this occurs faster than ever before. Conversely one man’s rubbish is another man’s treasure, and with so much waste generated now the possibility to turn rubbish into permanent and durable material.

These ideas I think are key when speaking about the contemporary urban situation, and this is seen most clearly is informal settlements.

This acceptance that the worth or building change and that needs also change was the most important aspect of what I learnt during my participation in the Vastu Shilpa Habita Workshop.

The key aspect and realization of the workshop was accepting the limits of architecture and providing an alternative ‘masterplan’. Among the various groups that were present during the workshop one that struck me as the most interesting was one that dealt simply with the idea of shared ownership. Something that is seen occasionally in western new builds but never seen in irregular settlements because the idea of survival is too deeply ingrained - each is out for their own.

The project did not propose an architectural masterplan. It proposed a tool-kit of ideas that illustrated the potential benefits of neighbours, combining funds and energy and building together. This example is one that pushes the idea of participatory design one step further as UTT describe in their opening to the Slum Lab Magazine Issue 8 ‘Knowledge must be open-source. Architecture despite it’s reputation as being a product of the creative whim, is a collective and collaborative act’’3 These ideas are also very well shown in the work of URBZ. The collective set up by Rahul Srivastava and Matias Echanove has the slogan of ‘User Generated Cities’.

A. Aranya. 1989 : Incremental Housing

‘For URBZ, Dharavi is a kind of laboratory where a new bottom-up, self-organisational approach to urban design can be bred’4 Their approach is one of collecting and documenting rather that implementing and building. This inevitably leads to an amazing array of information about community and social infrastructure that is invaluable and essential for the development of urban projects, especially in complex informal situation.

One project that highlights this is their study of the building that houses their office The Tool House. This building is a flexible, and self built house in the illegal settlement of Dharavi in Mumbai. The project simply yet extremely thoroughly highlight the makeup of the house, explain its construction process and incremental development and then shows the past, current and potential future uses. It seems almost too basic information for architectural worth but as described this waste will soon become invaluable and as cities continue to grow and informal becomes the norm - these will be the guidelines that shape cities.

A ‘slum free India’ has been on the agenda of governments for the last decade and has created the formation of various authorities to try and deal with the issue. The Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) is one of these organizations that was set up in 1995 and is the leading authority on slum up-gradation and redevelopment.

The SRA states that there are 3 types of slum up-gradation currently practiced: * Under provisions of DCR 33(10) also called in-situ scheme. * Provisions of section 3.11 also called PAP scheme. * Under provisions of DCR 33(14) also called transit scheme.5 What is surprising and complex about these approached is the set of regulations that they incur, they often create more problems than solutions. Situations arise where people are stuck in a limbo where they cannot improve their home because if it is seen as being too ‘permanent’ in an informal settlement then it may be torn down.

Of course the issues are complex but when slum up-gradation is implemented then it should aim to maintain as much of the original characteristics and DNA that made that community autonomous and independent. ‘‘Successful unslumming means that enough people must have an attachment to the slum that they wish to stay, and it also means that it must be practical for them to stay’’

Jane Jacobs - Activist. 6

1. Till, J. 2009. Architecture Depends. MIT Press, London.

2. Spatial Agency. 2013. http://www.spatialagency.net/database/balkrishna.doshi 3. Feireiss. L et. al. 2013. Slum Lab. Sustaiinable Living Urban Model/Issue 8. ETH Zurich.

4. Domus. issue 995. 2012. http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/2012/02/13/urbz-crowdsourcing-the-city.html 5. SRA. 2012. http://www.sra.gov.in/pgeRehabiliSchemes.aspx 6. Jacobs,J. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House. New York.

B. The Urbz Tool House : A well documented example of simple living.

D. RSA Housing Blocks : Leading to Vertical Slums.

HOUSE CATALOG

2800 2800mm

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9500

3200

2000

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3400mm

3400mm

2800mm

2300

3400 3400mm

1700

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N

C. House Catalogue : Example of Before and After for 8 dwellings.

E. Rubish House : Yogeshwar Nagar, Ahmedabad

Chapter : 3 South America

‘Uma Pequena Revolução’.

‘’Therein lies the historic error of urban planners and designers and of architects: they fail to see, let alone analyse or capitalize upon, the informal aspects of urban life because they lack a professional vocabulary for describing them.”

Henry Russell Hitchcock.1

The informal city as an intellectualized terminology is nothing new as has been seen before but the first time I ever came across the term was with Urban Think Tanks Informal City, Caracas case. In the introduction to the book they define that in order to be able to speak about this issue we need to remove the derogatory terminology from the discussion - removing vocabulary such as slum, squat, economically depressed, etc.

This acceptance of the informal, chaotic and uncontrolled as an acceptable urban phenomenon is now a vital part of contemporary urban development.

Looking at examples in Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro and Medellin one can see that there are just simply too many people to re-house and an unwilling acceptance is occurring with solutions that try to justify and disguise this resignation from governments.

Urban Think Tank make a ‘call to action to our fellow architects, and all those who hope to become architects, to see in the informal settlements of the world the potential for innovation and experimentation, and to put their design talents in service to a more equitable and sustainable future’ The range of techniques recently implemented in improving these informal communities range greatly depending on the situation - many of the most critically acclaimed have recently taken place in South America.

The continent has a huge amount of informal settlements, with close to 30% of the population living in some informal community. The political, geographic and social extremity of these communities mean that even fairy light changes can have a large impact. Painting, wrapping in paper and even miniaturization - all deal with fairly aesthetic solutions - short term and low impact. Many of these projects which are currently occurring in the infamous favellas of Rio de Janeiro. Projects such as Favella Painting by Dutch artists Haas&Hahn (Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn) that aimed at adding colour and unity to irregular developments or the French artist JR’s largescaled photographic pasting projects, such as ‘Women are Heroes’ which emphasizes the important role of women in these desperate situations or also project Morrinho’s project which they claim is ‘Uma Pequena Revolução’. (a small revolution) of creating toy town miniatures of their surrounding favellas, to educate and give pride to the community.

These all address the issue through art - not architecture, but have gained notoriety through press coverage and although their ‘change’ is minimal their success is granted at simply opening a positive dialogue in places of previous despair and despondency.

They give pride, and that is enough.

Slightly more time consuming and difficult to implement are infrastructural and architectural ‘‘accupunctural’’ inputs that try and act as anchors of change. Take Urban Think Tank’s work in Caracas, Venezuela or the Libraries and Sports Complexes of Plan B, Giancarlo Mazzanti and Paisajes Emerjentes architects in Medellin, Colombia or the incremental housing stratergies of Elemental in Iquique, Chile.

All are amazingly effective architectural projects.

A. Medellin Metro-Cable : High life over the comunas.

In Medellin, Colombia the mayor Serjio Fajardo proclaimed in 2005 that “Our most beautiful buildings, must be in our poorest areas.”2 and with this simple redistribution of wealth and hope he has slowly turned one of the world’s most dangerous cities into a shining example of progressive urban renewal.

Visiting these projects one can really see that the power that they emit does not only come from their architectural beauty or their programmatic genius (although aesthetics is important) but it is something much more humble. They simply provide an other way.

In these places where powerlessness leads to hopelessness leads to violence by placing these institutions there is another door opened and seeing young children queuing up to read comics, go on the internet or go swimming, while their older brothers and sisters hide in shadows selling drugs or their bodies - it seems like an clear solution.

They give people something to be proud of in their neighbourhoods and also simply just something to do.

The success of these projects come by accepting informality and working with the community to organize, mobilize and eventually legalize. A long but extremely worthwhile journey.

Another seminal project that has been implemented in Medellin, Caracas and Rio de Janeiro has been the cable car, metro-cable or Teleférico. In Medellin the metrocable was implemented in 2004 in Santo Domingo, and carries 30,000 people daily and is fully integrated to the metro system. In 2010 UTT lead metro-cable in Caracas in San Agustín opened which was also integrated with the metro and has a current average use of 1,200 passengers per hour.

In 2011 Rio de Janeiro became the third city in South America to use the metro cable in Complexo do Alemão in the North Zone of the city. The system was inspired by the success of the metro-cable in Medellin and cost the city of Rio R$210 million (roughly 120 million US dollars) the system was only integrated to the infrequent suburban rail network, boast the capability to carry up to 30,000 passengers per day, but rarely makes 50% of that estimate.

Upon visiting these projects the differences are stark. Where as the projects in Medellin and Caracas are part of a holistic and well implemented urban renewal, with public space forming an integral part of the design along infrastructural transport constructions. The teleferico in Rio seems like a decorative gesture, the cherry on top of a less than delicious cake.

These symptoms of the cable car were discussed by The Bartlett Development Planning Unit symposium in December 2011, the overwhelming outcome of the discussion was that the greatest strength of the cable car is also its most crippling weakness.

Essentially it is a fast, cheap and highly visible solution. In terms of a governmental strategy it is perfect, it can be planned, executed and celebrated within a 4 year governance. But if not done carefully it may also prove to be a failure and a terrible waste of resources in areas with the greatest of needs.

Just as ‘informal’ is used in the discourse, Elke Krasny explains that “currently, no word exists for the action of destroying peoples’ homes and/or expelling them from their homeland. We suggest the neologism ‘domicide,’ The deliberate destruction of home...’’3.

This ‘domicide’ is hugely present in Rio de Janeiro as in 2013 as the Rio2016 Olympic

B. Torre David: Informal Appropriation of abandoned structure.

organizing committee evict and destroy what was only a few years ago awarded a Unesco World Heritage Site status. By trying to promote it’s future Rio is destroying it’s past.

Throughout the last few years there seems to be a growing obsession with these extremes of urban poverty, with these projects perhaps only highlighting ‘slum voyeurism’, ‘poverty porn’ or ‘favella chic’ but they are vital in creating an interaction between two polar worlds.

Often large-scale, extensive and expensive project are implemented in poor communities with modernist ideals capitalist intent in a hope of regenerating areas and bringing in wealth, security and more wonderful architecture.

But reappraisals of approaches could lead to more fruitful outcomes.

Working to bring wealth from within a community rather than imposing wealth upon it, ‘those who have the least, give the most’, by harnessing energies of the communities there can be much more, sustainable and logical improvements.

The subtle but hugely important difference between poor, drug dealing, kids walking around and ‘learning’ from neighbouring, rich, gated communities and rich, camera wielding tourists queuing up to take a tour of a favella or see it from above by cable car.

One creates resentment and loss of hope the other creates pride and aspirations.

Not so difficult to choose.

During the 2012 Urbanism Symposium held at TU Delft - one key idea was that us as the upcoming generation of architects should aim to NOT BUILD ANYTHING. And this is a clear topic in the contemporary architectural discussion with the Venice Biennial showcasing these ideas.

In 2010, the Dutch contribution was ‘Vacant NL, where architecture meets ideas’ which calls upon the Dutch government to make use of the enormous potential of inspiring, unoccupied buildings from the 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries for innovation within the creative knowledge economy.

Also in 2012 the German contribution was Reuse, Reduce, Recycle and then later in the 2013 Biennial the winner of the Golden Lion was Switzerland entry of Torre David, a documentation of the illegal squatting of a abandoned skyscraper in the centre of Caracas.

These examples are recent and praised within the international architectural community, but still remain within the intellectual circles of the privileged 1%.

Until issues such as squatting or self-built housing are not more openly discussed and placed on political and social agendas, especially in the developing world where need for housing is desperate and built form already exists and can be improved then the situation will forever remain illegal, poor and unchanged.

1. UN-HABITAT. 2010. Bridging the Urban Divide. http://www.unchs.org/pmss/listItemDetails.

2. Baan, I. 2013. Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities. Lars Muller Publishers, Zurich.

3. Feireiss. L et. al. 2013. Slum Lab. Sustaiinable Living Urban Model/Issue 8. ETH Zurich.

Summary The Anti-Hero

‘There is this plague of sameness which is killing the human joy’ Zita Cobb.1 Marco Casagrande explains that we are discovering and moving ‘towards the third generation city’. He describes first generation city as ‘the human settlement in straight connection with nature and dependant on nature’. The second generation city is ‘the industrial city. Industrialisation granted the citizens independence from nature - a mechanical environment could provide everything needed for humans. Nature was seen as something hostile - it was walled away from the mechanical reality.

‘The third generation city is the organic ruin of the industrial city.’2 This acceptance of a new type of city is in general what is happening with informal settlements throughout the world. There is a focus on local knowlwedge and intuitive and personal design. Casagrande claims that that ‘it is looking from local knowledge for the seeds of the third generation city.’

But this third generation city need to free of the shackles that it’s predecessors were restrained by, in their essay ‘Beyond Discourse’ Schneider and Till explain that what architecture requires is an “anti-hero, someone who is co-author from the beginning, someone who actively and knowingly gives up authority’6 this ideas of the professional and his new role is framed in the idea of removing architectural discourse from the matter ‘we are less interested in whether we are living in a critical or post-critical era, because these terms circle round each other. Indeed it is the fate of all ‘post’ terms (postmodern, post-critical, post-theoretical) that they never escape the hold of the very condition that they wish to succeed”.6

The eye-opening work of Iwan Baan provides a visual diary of options in our ever more connected world. In his 2013 TED talk ‘Ingenious Homes, in Unexpected Places’ Baan goes on a photographic journey from Caracas’s Torre David, to a city on the water in Nigeria, and an underground village in China. Amazing images show the resilience, perseverance and ingenuity of people building, and living in their own homes, built with love, care and passion. He shows that there are many different types of ‘normal’ and people need to be given the space to find and flourish in their own normal.

Homogeneous, generic landscapes formed from cookie cutter ideas about public housing are just simply no longer relevant.

As the great collective Spatial Agency have explained that we need to begin critiquing the ‘normative foundations of architetural practice’ and seriously questioning ‘the operations of neoliberal economic policy and capitalist production that frames practice’3 we can perhaps begin by simply changing the name. No longer ‘‘architects” perhaps we can view ourselves as ‘spatial agents’ or ‘moderators of change’. Through this initial process we remove the idea of the architect as the sole author, as having authority.

This is not an abstract argument. If architects ‘bite the bullet’ and begin to rehabilitate the idea architecture, they will also have to acknowledge that architecture is only a minor factor in ensuring social cohesion. They’ll need to be humble enough to argue that without wider support from society, the same problems that affected masshousing projects from the 1950s up until today will simply be repeated.

And until governments, local authorities and developert are able to supply and support these desparately needed forms of social security then the best hope for architectural housing solution for the mass urban poor are local, self-built and personal.

A. Creative Commons : A contemporary constructive cummunity.

This rhetoric is already feeling faily old, with the profession of architecture challenging itself in the last decade, more people, practicioners and even educational institutions challenging the current modernist framework that is still being flogged out - but untill the rhetorical and hypothetical becomes more mainstream that activism, the change must come.

‘With a world population in exess of 6,000,000,000 people, it is possible that there are a billion dwellings. Of these, only a miniscule proportion was designed by architeccts; 1% may well be overestimating. The real challenge is to understand what goes on in the other 99% of the global housing market.’’

P. Oliver. 4

Alastair Parvin, the creator of the WikiHouse, an open-source proect for common housing stated in his TED talk given in May 2013 ‘Design’s great project in the twentieth century was the democratization of consumtion, design’ s great project in the twentyfirst century is the democratization of production, and when it comes to architecture in cities, that really matters.’5 Once production of the urban realm is given back to the citizens then a new status quo on city life can be reached. ‘‘The critical issue for the built environment is responsibility : who is responsible for what, and to what end?’’.4 This responsibility is being illegally taken by force and violence in huge numbers and creating our world cities, in order to have some impact or even a say in the matter we must involve ourselves - oneway or another.

“Power can be taken, but not given. The process of taking is empowerment itself.”3

1. Baan.I. 2013. TED Talks. http://www.ted.com/talks/iwan_baan_ingenious_homes_in_unexpected_ places 2. Feireiss. L. 2013. Slum Lab. Sustaiinable Living Urban Model/Issue 8. ETH Zurich.

3. Schneider ,T. Till, J. 2011. Spatial Agency. Routledge. London. UK 4. Feireiss, K. Brillembourg, A. Klumpner, H. 2005. Informal City: Caracas Case. Prestel Publishing, New York.

5. Parvin, A. 2013. TED Talk. http://www.ted.com/talks/alastair_parvin_architecture_for_the_people_by_the_people.html 6. Footprint. Issue #4. 2009. http://www.footprintjournal.org/issues/download/agency-in-architecture-reframing-criticality-in-theory- and-practice

Bibliography IMAGES: Introduction: A. Slumming It. 2013. Authors Own - Travel map.

Chapter 1: A. Christiania Window House. 2007. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Christiania,_glass_house,_august_2007.jpg B. ‘Scum Village’. 2013. http://www.mnn.com/sites/default/files/ShippingContainerApartments.jpg C. ‘Grunbau und Siedler’. 2013. http://www.detail.de/uploads/pics/universal_design_award_2013_Grundbau_und_Siedler_BeL_2.jpg D. ‘Sheds with Beds’. 2013. http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/58752000/jpg/_58752294_ jex_1333766_de37-1.jpg E. Pruitt-Igoe. 1970. http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7192/6944912603_99b8799ac2_d.jpg Chapter 2: A Aranya.1989. http://urbancraftuah.files.wordpress.com/2012/12/aranya4.jpg B. Urbz Tool House. 2012. http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7102/7239303140_2414969402.jpg C. House Catalogue. 2013. VSF International Habitat Workshop 2013. Authors Own. D.RSA Housing Blocks. 2011. http://zubinpastakia.com/wp-content/ uploads/2013/02/12HousingColonyGreaterNoidaExp.jpg E. Rubish House. 2013. Authors Own. Chapter 3: A Medellin Metrocable. 2013. Authors Own. B. Torre David. 2013. http://static.dezeen.com/uploads/2012/08/dezeen_Torre-David_Gran-Horizonte_1.jpg Summary: A. Creative Commons. 2013. Collage. Authors Own + http://www.wikihouse.cc/static/gfx/slides/1885a1cd6e7d00916097f55a121a30b 2aa735189-slide.10.png

BOOKS: Till, J. 2009. Architecture Depends. MIT Press, London.

Feireiss, K. Brillembourg, A. Klumpner, H. 2005. Informal City: Caracas Case. Prestel Publishing, New York.

Jencks, C. 2011. The Story of Post-Modernism.Wiley, New York.

Baan, I. 2013. Torre David: Informal Vertical Communities. Lars Muller Publishers, Zurich.

Davis, M. 2007. Planet of Slums. Verso. London.

Burdett, R. Sudjic, D. 2011. Living in the Endless City. PHAIDON. New York.

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Jacobs,J. 1961. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. Random House. New York.

Burdett, R. Sudjic, D. 2011. Living in the Endless City. PHAIDON. New York.

Schneider ,T. Till, J. 2011. Spatial Agency. Routledge. London. UK Feireiss. L. 2013. Slum Lab. Sustaiinable Living Urban Model/Issue 8. ETH Zurich.

DOCUMENTS & ONLINE: Baan.I. 2013. TED Talks. http://www.ted.com/talks/iwan_baan_ingenious_homes_in_unexpected_places.

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