Division of Space and Spaces of Division by Melanie Miao

Division of Space & Spaces of Division: Vulnerability and Protection in the Temporary Post-Traumatic Response

RAN MIAO S1025963 University of Edinburgh MA (Hons) Architecture Year 4 Dissertation

Image on Cover Page: Oshinsky, D. and Elms, S. A line of modular homes provided by FEMA.2012. Life in Modular Home 1651707. Available from:< http://www. stry.us/stories/life-in-modular-home-no1651707/#fn2>

This Dissertation is submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Degree of Master of Arts (Hons) in Architecture

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without my dissertation tutor, Ella Chmielewska, who has provided me with invaluable guidance. Her insightful comments and advice on the topic helped me tremendously in the entire process of researching and writing.

Abstract

Abstract This study aims to understand the spatial dimensions of transitional housing in relation to the singular loss of home and individual trauma. By examining the mode of organization in this housing scheme through different scales, from a single mobile home or trailer, the street and communal spaces to the temporary park as a whole, this study analyses the Federal Emergency Management Agencyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s (FEMA) implementation of trailer parks to house the displaced population of natural disasters. Drawing connections between vulnerability and protection, this research discusses the socio-spatial materiality in post-traumatic housing deliveries and offers a rethinking of the current pragmatic approaches to the standard forms of temporary housing. It suggests an urgency for such a rethinking and the necessity for a new approach that includes the scale of the individual in situations of trauma and response. Keywords: displacement, vulnerability, loss of home, temporary housing, place-attachment, non-place, inclusion and exclusion

List of Contents

List of Contents Introduction

Images of Trauma Sites of Trauma and Methodology of Research Literature

Chapter 1: Time

Shattered Assumptions: the Loss of Home and Identity Architecture as Supplement Recovery: the Oscillation between Continuity and Discontinuity Insideness and Outsideness Ambiguities of Temporariness

Chapter 2: Community

Absence of a Sense of Place Quantification of Living Non-Place

Chapter 3: Power

Symbol of Power Inclusion and Exclusion

Conclusions and Alternatives List of Illustrations Bibliography

Appendix 1: More Information on Joplin Appendix 2: More Information on New Orleans

Image of Trauma1

1 B. Nevins, Photograph of a house destroyed in the Joplin Tornado, Joplin, 2011 [online photograph], http://www.briannevins.com/data/photos/218_1_mg_9863.jpg, (accessed 20 February 2014). 2

Introduction: Images of Trauma

Images of Trauma With no walls and no roof, the exposed platform in this photograph seems to floats like a tiny island in an ocean of debris. A violent force has broken away the boundary of protection and aggressively intruded the home. The house, which was once a shelter, is now just fragments of memories. The survivor is left abandoned, like an orphan without a home, or a doll without a playhouse. The feeling of attachment is nostalgic while the reality of disruption is agonizing. This photograph, taken after the May 22 Joplin tornado in 2011, is a typical image in the media story. It shocks the viewer with the extent and scale of the destruction, and it floats in a vast sea of similar images that illustrate media stories of disasters and destruction. In this study, photographs are employed to evoke empathy and understanding towards the traumatic experience and the survivor’s relationship with the lost past and the alienating present. They are used to draw out the notions of loss, displacement and trauma, and they are themselves a source of information by structuring critical investigations into issues of time, community and control. In this dissertation, images are carefully selected to reveal specific elements of trauma and its relationship with the built environment and carefully examined to demonstrate an emotional sensitivity that is necessary for this subject. Each image is accompanied by a short poem-like response as a critical way of getting closer to the experience in that particular time and space. This poetic response is inspired by the particular method, Bertolt Brecht used in his book, War Primer, where he responded to photographs of trauma with short lyrical texts. He created a book of what he called ‘photo-epigrams’, where each photograph from wartime mass-circulation news magazines, is followed by a 4-line poetic text. In the example shown below, a photograph of World War II Berlin is accompanied by newspaper captions, which detail a pragmatic outline of events that lead to the destruction. Brecht’s response, which also acts as a caption, reinterprets the photograph in relation to his attitude towards the war. Being displaced by the war, Brecht can fully empathize with the situation of loss in the photographs and understand and capture that in his writing.

Introduction: Images of Trauma

Photo-epigram by Bretch2 2 B. Bretch, War Primer, J. Willett (ed.), trans. N. Replansky, London, Libris, 1998, p.28. German texts read: In late summer, Hamburg, Bremen and other major German cities of industrial or military importance undertook numerous British aviation raids. The British brought down Berlin with the first set of bombs under a nighttime raid on 10-11 September. The picture shows a house in Berlin, which has been exposed to British bomb precipitation.

Introduction: Images of Trauma

This dissertation attempts to emulate the technique to exploit the emotive nature of the image and, using poems as a method of interpretation, draw out issues of loss that are deeply embedded in the situation of trauma that this study is focusing on. The poetic responses are intended to demonstrate the necessity of finding ways to include the scale of singular loss of home and individual trauma in situations of an overwhelming disaster and destruction necessarily managed at the large scale of an aggregate with logistical responses. The photograph of the Joplin disaster brings out key concepts to be discussed: place attachment, loss of home, displacement, violence, vulnerability and need for security and empowerment. In an overwhelming situation like this, the assumptive world3 has fallen apart: individuals have to deal with a tremendous sense of loss. The physical house is gone, but the individual is ever more nostalgic about their lost home. As these survivors are forced to leave their homes, they would need to re-navigate their relationship with home and destruction and the conflicting relationship between the two. The recovery process is a negotiation between continuity and disruption where the individual re-establishes meaningful relationships with place and identity and incorporates violence as part of that. This process, which demands sensitivity, is, however, steeped in logistics and management procedures of interim housing schemes. This dissertation attempts to incorporate the necessary sensitivity back into the discussion of the post-traumatic situation.

This dissertation selects two specific locations in the United States as sites of trauma to be analysed. The first is Joplin City in the state of Missouri. It is a small Midwest city with a population of over 50,000 people.4 According to the 2010 US Census, Joplin has more than 90% of its population as Caucasian, and the poverty rate is about 18%. In comparison, the second site in this study, New Orleans, is a much larger city of more than 340,000 people. It is located along the Gulf Coast and has a demograph3 J. Bulman, Shattered assumptions: Towards a New Psychology of Trauma, New York, The Free Press, 1992, p.6. 4 All statistical data from US Censes. US Census, Joplin (city), Missouri, 2010, Available from United States Census Bureau, (accessed 20 February 2014). See Appendix 1 for location map of Joplin City and list of websites for photographic research.

Introduction: Sites of Trauma and Methodology of Research

Sites of Trauma and Methodology of Research ic of 60% African Americans and 30% Whites. Its poverty rate is around 32%. These two sites have both experienced traumatizing disasters in the recent decade. Joplin was destroyed by an EF-5 (highest category) tornado in May 2011, which caused tremendous damage to the city and over 7500 structures were damaged.5 New Orleans, on the other hand, was hit by Hurricane Katrina in August 2004 and by the sixth day of the disaster, more than 80% of the city was under water and 25,000 homes were destroyed.6 The story of New Orleans was covered much more in the media due to the scale of displacement and disaster response required.

In the aftermath of both the New Orleans hurricane and the Joplin tornado, trailers and mobile homes were deployed by FEMA as a means to house the displaced victims. FEMA established trailer parks of varying sizes, ranging from the Renaissance Village, the largest of 65 trailer compounds within Louisiana, with 600 units housing 1,600 residents, to unnamed FEMA trailer establishments of a few hundred mobile homes.7 Images, interviews and various psychological studies demonstrate that the overall mood within these temporary settlements is, as one resident describes, of ‘depression… despair’.8 With no clue to when they might be able to re-establish themselves back into the community, many residents, who were already on the fringes of society before disaster, would need to live in these units with a prolonged experience of vulnerability and temporariness. Hurricane Katrina and the Renaissance Village provide a poignant example of the inadequacy of the interim housing scheme and the logistical approach in handling trauma victims. For some displaced victims,

5 K. M. Simmons and D. Sutter, Deadly Season: Analysing the 2011 Tornado Outbreaks, Massachusetts, American Meteorological Society, 2012, p. 46.

6 BBC. Mapping the Destruction: Hurricane Katrina In Depth, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/shared/ spl/hi/americas/05/katrina/html/satellite.stm, 2005, (accessed 20 February 2014). See Appendix 2 for location map of New Orleans and list of websites for photographic research. 7 P. Singer, ‘Camp FEMA. (temporary housing for the disaster victims provided by Federal Emergency Management Agency)’, National Journal, vol. 38, 2006, p20-26. Available from ThomsonGale, (accessed 20 February 2014). 8 B. Brown, D. D., Perkins, and G. Brown, ‘Place Attachment in a Revitalizing Neighborhood: Individual and Block Levels of Analysis’, Journal of Environmental Psychology, vol. 23, no. 3, 2010, pp. 259-271.

Introduction: Sites of Trauma and Methodology of Research

the FEMA trailer became a six-year ‘temporary’ shelter.9 The Joplin case presented a smaller-scale displacement in more recent years. FEMA’s role in the recovery process was to an extent lesser as the close-knitted community was more prepared for a tornado10 and more individuals were at better positions to help themselves.

For the purposes of this study, both cases are treated equally. They present two cases that are different socially, racially and economically and their response and recovery problematic are equally important for considerations of this dissertation. However, it is not within the aims of this study to compare the two. They arechosen to provide a more comprehensive pool of information, in terms of both images and texts, to better illustrate the variety of factors implicated in the post-traumatic situation. The study is organized around three key concepts: time, community and power. Each concept is analysed in a separate chapter and draws reference to a variety of sources to address the complexity of the issue at stake. Chapter 1 discusses the relationship of trailer residents with the past and how that could affect their attachment to the immediate spaces within the trailer home. Chapter 2 analyzes impacts of the environment around the trailer and the social and communal aspects of the trailer park or ‘village’ on the resident and his relationship with the unforeseeable future. Chapter 3 looks at the element of control with respect to the natural environment and social vulnerability. These three sections discuss the viability of gathering displaced people in one place, the reason behind it – concentration of control – and the impacts it has on the residents and their relationship with the past and the future. Finally, Conclusion and Alternatives section extracts the key findings from the first three chapters and briefly discusses the appropriateness of alternative housing solutions and the possibilities for further research.

9 M. Muskal, ‘Last FEMA trailer leaves New Orleans six years after Katrina’, LA Times, 15 February 2012, http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/nationnow/2012/02/last-fema-trailer-leaves-new-orleanssix-years-after-hurricane-katrina.html#sthash.khTGaaUn.dpuf, (accessed 23 February 2014). 10 J. Preussner, Examination of FEMA and the Relationship with a Community After Disaster, Masters Thesis, Kansas State University, 2009, p.10.

Introduction: Literature

Literature There is extensive research into the provision of transitional settlement and shelter. In his book, Shelter After Disaster, Ian Davis originally espoused the notion to view shelter as a process instead of an object.11 He warns that:

If shelter is perceived as a finite product [. . .], this creates a false understanding of the rich and varied approaches that are available.12

Instead, sheltering should be perceived as a response to different needs. Davis’ concept of ‘shelter as a process’ is closely linked to the idea that the displaced victims of disaster are active forces instead of passive recipients of aid. In this manner, housing in a post-traumatic situation is an instrument to empower the displaced in controlling the nature and pace of their recovery. Davis argues that perceiving shelter as an active and changing process, ‘opens the way to recognize the value of [a] range of options. It also develops an awareness of patterns of continual change, as one mode of shelter may be rapidly replaced by another within the recovery process.13

We can see from Davis’ research that from the late 70s, there is already awareness that disaster sheltering should not be a static provision but a flexible process that empowers the individual. However, as Kennedy et al. point out in their study of ‘Posttsunami Transitional Settlement and Shelter’, thirty years after Davis’ notion of ‘shelter as process’, there has been little change in perception. They write that: ‘Shelter as process’ approach is rarely implemented in the field. Instead, transitional shelter and settlement is considered to be part of non-food item distribution, rather than as an ongoing exercise in supporting livelihoods, health and security needs.14

I. Davis, Shelter After Disaster, Oxford, Oxford Polytechnic Press, 1978, p.33.

ibid.

12 I. Davis, ‘Principles Adapted from ‘Shelter after Disaster’’. Geneva, Shelter Centre, p.3, http:// sheltercentre.org/sites/default/files/SM05a-PrinciplesForShelterAndSettlements.doc, (accessed 10 January 2014). 14 J. Kennedy et al., ‘Post-tsunami Transitional Settlement and Shelter’, Humanitarian Exchange, vol. 37, 2007, pp. 28-31. 8

Introduction: Literature

There are a number of such articles focusing on pragmatic assessments of policy making and implementation and corresponding recommendations with respect to disaster housing response and recovery.15 However, these studies lack a spatial dimension that needs to be discussed in relation to an individual’s experience of violence, loss and vulnerability. In his research into the protection of the socially and politically vulnerable, such as refugees and Internally Displaced People, Camillo Boano argues that ‘the relationships that exist between space, protection and humanitarian agency, remain poorly understood.’16 His journal article entitled ‘Violent Spaces: Production and Reproduction of Security and Vulnerabilities’, describes that the research surrounding the idea of protection often concentrate on legal and logistical issues rather than on ‘matters of physical and social protection that may depend on spatial relations’.17 He writes that: The way in which space is conceptualized, applied and expressed within the field of humanitarian work focuses on material provision of ‘new spaces’ without any attempt to ‘place’ vulnerabilities as outcomes of social relations that produce spatial contexts.18

Andrew Herscher’s analysis of violence to architecture as an act of ‘inscription’ provides a possible framework to understand the relationship between destruction and space. In his book, Violence Taking Place, Herscher argues that violence to architecture is a type of ‘an investment of material with identity and meaning’.19 The 15 For example, S. Verderber, ‘Emergency Housing in the Aftermath of Hurricane Katrina: An Assessment of the FEMA Travel Trailer Program’, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment, vol. 23, no. 4, 2008, pp. 367-381; J.K. McIlwain et al, Principles for Temporary Communities, Washington, D.C., The Urban Land Institute, 2006, p.1-30; J. Burnell, and D. Sanderson, ‘Whose Reality Counts?: Shelter After Disaster’, Environmental Hazards, vol. 10, no. 3-4, 2011, pp. 189-192; N.J. Levine et al., ‘Population Displacement and Housing Dilemmas Due to Catastrophic Disasters’, Journal of Planning Literature, vol. 22, no. 1, 2007, pp. 3-15. 16 C. Boano, ‘‘Violent spaces’: production and reproduction of security and vulnerabilities’, The Journal of Architecture, vol. 16, no. 1, 2011, pp. 37-55. 17 18

ibid. p. 2 ibid.

19 A. Herscher, Violence Taking Place, The Architecture of the Kosovo Conflict, Standford University Press, Standford, 2010, p. 3. 9

Introduction: Literature

relationship between space, identity and meaning is discussed within the context of an intentional destruction, the political conflict in Kosovo. This dissertation seeks to understand the other kind of violence to place that is irrational and attempts to draw out similar issues regarding space and identity.

On the issue of trauma, current literature on the loss of home focuses on psychoanalysis while relevant articles on attachment and trauma often concentrate on bereavement.20 The study of Cox and Holmes on a bushfire disaster in 1983 in suburban Australia discusses issues of disruption, dealing and dwelling but with particular orientation towards ecology.21 A lot can be learnt from these articles of psychoanalysis and this dissertation draws on some of the issues that emerge and overlap with those that occur in an urban displacement.

This study hence attempts to connect various pragmatic and psychoanalytic investigations with spatial inquiry into violence, displacement and social vulnerability. The three chapters attempt to understand various aspects of temporary housing through an architectural framework of temporariness, community and control. Each chapter draws reference to significant works of various authors and thinkers specific to the issue and thereby attempts to focus the discussion of displacement and recovery in a natural disaster on the pertinent issues of physical and social protection through architecture.

20 For example, M.T. Fullilove, ‘Psychiatric Implications of Displacement: Contributions from the Psychology of Place’, American Journal of Psychiatry, vol. 153, no. 12, 1996, pp. 1516-1523.; J. Bowlby, Attachment and Trauma, Penguin Books, London, 1980.; C.E. Pollack, 2003. ‘Burial at Srebrenica: linking place and trauma’, Social Science and Medicine, vol. 56, no. 4, 2003, pp. 793-801. 21 H.M. Cox, and C.A. Holmes, ‘Loss, Healing and the Power of Place’, Human Studies, vol. 23, 2000, pp. 64-68.

Chapter 1: Time

Time

Waiting

A family moves into their new home A silence Decorates the wall

22 Thayer, E. Scars and Stories On Joplinâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Landscape, 2011 [online photograph], http://blogs.reuters.com/photographers-blog/2011/08/24/scars-and-stories-on-joplins-landscape/, (accessed 06 February 2014) 14

Time

A toddler sleeps on a bare mattress. His parents sit around the kitchen table. The walls are untouched, and there are hardly any personal belongings. The mood of the photograph is calm, and the content is pragmatic but the composition alludes to an oddity. This photograph is a record of trauma. In this captured frame, a void in the foreground dominates the scene. It is almost overwhelming but paradoxically infuses into the tranquillity of the background family activities. The pristine state of the home speaks of a point in time when the family has first moved in: a time of change and uncertainty.

How do we understand this present condition of living in the trailer home, in relation to the traumatic past and the uncertainty of the future? This chapter analyses the concept of time. Firstly, it looks into the reality of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;lossâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and the relationship between the individual and the traumatic event. Loss of home is not merely a material damage. It also represents a potent symbolic destruction of place attachment and seriously erodes the assumptions that sustain meaningful life and its continuity in time and space. In these scenarios, homelessness is inherently also placelessness. The experience of being dis-placed is both a forced movement from one place to another and to be devoid of a place of oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s own. This state of being a persona nonlocata is to be caught in a non-existence, hence disintegrating the nature of human relationship and identity. In the New Orleans and Joplin recovery process, the disruptive experience of the traumatic event is aggravated by the transitional condition experienced in the interim housing provided by FEMA. The second section in this chapter looks at the trailer park in terms of the prohibition of personalisation and the ambiguity of temporariness.

Time: Shattered Assumptions

Shattered Assumptions: the Loss of Home and Identity ‘Loss’ in the traumatic disaster needs to be interpreted in relation to the act of violence. Witnessing the May 22 tornado ruthlessly tearing away houses, uprooting trees and thrusting debris into buildings, survivors of the Joplin disaster are imprinted with a lasting mental image of terror. Thousands of photographs taken by survivors and journalists compare the before and after of the obliteration of the city. These images record the sheer scale and intensity of destruction that specifically reveal the reality of ‘loss’. The word reality fittingly describes the painful certainty that is to be passively accepted. This term encapsulates the immense sense of powerlessness and loss of control that is in stark contrast to the continuity of the past. Janoff Bulman has described this reality as a loss of the ‘assumptive world’.23 This assumptive world is an organizational structure onto which a person builds his or her understanding of truth regarding the world and the self, based on meaningful past experiences. Bulman identifies three central assumptions that orient our worldview: the world is benevolent; the world is meaningful; the self is worthy.24

In the event of a natural disaster, these assumptions, which have given order to life, are discovered to be illusions and the individual feels an overwhelming sense of vulnerability and disorientation. The first assumption is overturned by the reality that there is terrible destruction and loss. The second is shattered because the natural occurrence evades interpretation of rationality. The third is violated when individuals find themselves incapable in the face of the enormity of the power of nature. The violence that shatters the assumptive world is an abrupt, terrifying ‘deprivation of safety’.25 The protective norm of the good and an individual’s identity is disrupted. We can immediately see the spatial dimensions of this protection: the home provides sheltering and the destruction of home is a deprivation of security. There is a close relationship between space, security and identity. The concept of identity can be defined following Erving Goffman’s distinction of ‘felt identities’. Ac23

J. Bulman, p.6

J. Kauffman, Loss of the Assumptive World: A Theory of Traumatic Loss, Routledge, 2002, p.206

ibid.

Time: Architecture as Supplement

cording to him, felt identity is an individual’s ‘subjective sense of his own situation and his own continuity and character that he comes to obtain as a result of his various social experiences’.26 The sense of continuity is an integral element of identity. This continuity can be physically represented in the spaces individuals dwell in. These spaces provide locations for individuals to experience meaningful relationships and hence understand the world and the self. The house as a space of benevolent protection accords with the assumptions that underlie meaning in life. It is the result of a logical sequence of life events and the individual is, to a large extent, an active agent in that. A person’s relationship with the dwelling is hence one of protection and shelter both for physical sustenance and meaning.

The relationship between architecture and continuity is more than providing a space of protection. The permanent character of buildings and structures is a ‘supplement’ to the ‘plentitude’ of identity. This concept of supplementarity, as espoused by Derrida and analysed in relation to architecture by Herscher, provides an additional layer of connection between spatial protection and continuity.

Architecture as Supplement In Herscher’s study of the Kosovo conflict, he posits that there is a fundamental relationship between architecture and culture, which can be equalled to that between ‘supplement’ and ‘plentitude’. In the rational act of destruction in the war situation, the targeted building becomes a representation of a symbolic cultural and political meaning. Architecture is conceptualised as a sign or symbol of a culture and this process assumes the latter as such a plentitude. He argues that violence enables this relationship of representation and is hence more than a destructive force on architecture: violence is a generator of architecture’s cultural and political identity.27 26 E. Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity, New York, Prentice-Hall, 1963, p. 105. 27

Herscher, pg. 4.

Time: Architecture as Supplement

Derrida’s concept of the ‘supplement’ and ‘plentitude’ is aptly used by Herscher to explain this representational relationship. ‘Supplement’, is an addition to an already complete presence. It ‘adds itself, it is a surplus, a plentitude enriching another plentitude’.28 Derrida identifies that the supplement is also a fulfilment of a seemingly incomplete plentitude. The supplement ‘adds only to replace… If it represents and makes an image, it is by the anterior default of a presence… It is not simply added to the positivity of a presence… its place is assigned in the structure by the mark of emptiness.’29 In other words, the supplement is in service of and in contribution to the plentitude. In our analysis of the irrational disaster, there is a relationship between architecture and the structure of meanings that is similar to that between supplement and plentitude. In the previous section, we have looked into how identity and continuity rest upon the integrity of the structure of meanings. Architecture serves as a representation of this identity: the inherent permanent nature of architecture renders itself a continuity of time and space. In other words, architecture comprises one form of the ‘supplementary mediations that produce the sense of the very thing that they defer: the impression of the thing itself, of immediate presence, or originary perception’.30 Architecture is itself intrinsically a continuity that fulfills the assumptions underlying life but the structure of meanings also exists outside architecture. A gap, or in Derrida’s words, an ‘emptiness’ exists within centre of the signified, which is both the separate self-sustaining organisation and the absence that requires representation. Architecture as a supplement hence both replaces the absent centre of the structure and adds to this plentitude. Violence from natural disasters is not intentional and there is no target on specific groups of individuals, unlike the Kosovo conflict. However, this destruction performs a similar act of directly connecting the supplement to the plentitude. Architecture 28 J. Derrida, ‘From/Of Blindness to the Supplement’, Grammatology, trans. G C Spivak, Maryland, John Hopkins University Press, 1976, pp. 144. 29 ibid.

30 J. Derrida, ‘Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of the Human Sciences’, Writing and Difference, trans. A. Bass, London, Routledge, 1966, pp. 278-294. 18

Time: Recovery

and its ability to be a culmination of the continuous past and consequently a representation of the identity of an individual are instigated through the act of disruption. Like the relationship between architecture and culture in Herscher’s study, the relationship between architecture and identity is similarly present before the destruction but takes on a much more apparent nature through violence.

Recovery: the Oscillation between Continuity and Discontinuity The dichotomy of continuity and discontinuity is a recurring subject in the recovery process following trauma and displacement. Loss is an attenuation of the thread of continuity, which rests upon the integrity of the structure of meanings.31 Reestablishment of the structure of meanings requires the acquisition of the event into meaningful patterns of relationship. Marris describes that loss needs to be ‘accepted as something we have to understand – not just as an event that has happened, but as a series that we must now expect to happen and a retrospect of earlier events whose familiar meaning has now been shadowed by our changed circumstances’. 32 This is a process Marris sees as ‘reinterpretation of what we have learned about our purposes and attachments – and the principles which underlie the regularity of experience – radical enough to trace out the thread [of continuity] again’. 33 In respect to place attachment, the home as a space of protection needs to be reconsidered as it now also embodies the site of trauma. The specific site might be invested with particular negative associations and the disjunction causes another layer of alienation. Pollack describes the extreme spectrum of this condition in the sentence, ‘attachment to place was dislodged by trauma’.34 The loss of home, as a discontinuity to be reinterpreted, is hence an intricate and complex issue. The individual needs to find a method of accepting and incorporating disruption as a part of their identity to 31

P. Marris, Loss and Change, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974, p. 21.

ibid.

32 34

ibid.

Pollack, p. 798. 19

Time: Recovery

reconcile the destruction of the structure of meanings of a particular place caused by the trauma.

This recovery is long process that requires time. Having a memorial to the event and the destruction is one way of mitigating the disjunction between home and tragedy. Installation of a memorial on the actual site of disaster invests the place with new meanings and creates possibilities for place-attachments to be reformed.35 This process of re-establishing attachments is crucial to recovery.

However, temporary housing in trailer parks could disable the process of oscillation between continuity and discontinuity. A few months after the Joplin disaster, a portion of the surviving residents was housed in FEMA trailers homes. The period of residency ranged from a couple of months up to two years. During this time, residents are constantly looking for somewhere else to move in. In interviews with these residents, there was a common expression of desire to return to normalcy and to their former lives.36 Many feel a deep attachment to the previous environment, which is more than the physical house or street but provides a place for the individual to make up a distinctive and understandable continuity. The prolonged stay in trailer homes, characteried by the prohibition of personalisation and temporariness, however, disconnects the representational relationship between the immediate architecture and the structure of meanings. It separates ‘belonging-in-place’ and ‘living-in-space’ into two different physical locations, the former being associated with the lost residence and the latter to the trailer for basic sheltering and housing. The space for living becomes merely functional. In other words, the structure of meaning, which requires architectural representation to replace its inherent incompleteness, cannot be reconstructed. Being unable to form new place-attachments and thereby reconstructing meaning in the world and in the self, individuals are unable to re-establish continuity. Another way of interpreting the relationship between the dwelling and the individual can be understood through 35

M.T. Fullilove, p. 1520.

36 D. Oshinsky and S. Elms. Life in Modular Home 1651707, http://www.stry.us/stories/life-inmodular-home-no-1651707/, 2012, (accessed 6 Februaru 2014). 20

Time: Insideness and Outsideness

Heidegger’s notion of ‘being-in-the-world’.

Insideness and Outsideness ‘Being-in-the-world’ captures the essence of the relationship between space and man in the term ‘dwelling’. The space where one is ‘dwelling’ in provides the frame to understand connections with the external spaces and hence define the internal, the existence. This process is both metaphysical and physical; the spatial envelope of the home provides the place for the mind to dwell in.37 The condition of ‘inside’ is crucial to understanding ‘dwelling’. Being inside is itself first an omnipresent spatial situation, which then frames the ability to comprehend the individual’s relationship within his environment and through that, within the world. Dwelling is hence the ‘ideal kind of authentic existence’.38 Life in the mobile home changes the normal relationship with the physical house. Managerial decisions for the trailer to be strictly transitional and temporary consequently imposed regulations that forestall the ability to be authentically ‘inside’ the space.

The most evident of these restrictions is the prohibition on personalization. All of the housing units set up in the Joplin area are exact copies of a18m by 4m, threebed prototype. 39 The design of the trailer was conceived and implemented as a generic, no decoration and solely utilitarian type of building. Residents are threatened with legal procedures if they attempt to personalise.40 There is to be no alterations to the interior or relocation of the home itself once the unit is installed. In Stephen Verderber’s survey of 30 residents of FEMA trailers located in New Orleans, the 37 M. Heidegger, ‘Building, Dwelling, Thinking’, Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. A. Hofstadter, 1971, New York, Harper Colophon Books, cited in T. Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction, Oxford, Wiley-Blackwell, 2004, p. 45. 38

ibid.

Verderber, p. 369.

Time: Insideness and Outsideness

trailer unit was commonly identified as a ‘source of much stress’.41 There is a general dissatisfaction with the level of interior comfort, the inability to rearrange fixed furniture and appliances and to reconfigure the walls and partitions of the unit.42 The trailer’s limited space called for a downsized living, preventing its occupants their accumulating, hording habits. The sterile conditions of living and undecorated surfaces provide a constant environment of unfamiliarity. The activity of improvisation, based on instincts of protection and risk reduction, demands an intimate interaction and association with the built environment to repossess a sense of safety and identity. However, the intentional separation and suppression of attachment inhibit insideness and consequently dwelling. The individual is unable to establish the most meaningful relationship with his immediate environment and hence is unable to place himself in the world. The house is thus no longer an element of existential identity but becomes merely an inhuman container. This restriction on personalisation comes from a strict adherence to the classification of the temporary stage. It demands a lightness of structure hence allowing the trailer to be unburdened, easily removed and applied to another appropriate use. The extreme rationalization of space contrasts with the need for a certain degree of a controlled chaos that allows for overlays of personal memories and attachments. Absolute efficiency in a machine-like environment removes any human elements of messiness, which is exactly what enables the space to be individual and identifiable. Without developing and regaining their sense of identity through the most intimate spatial encounters, individuals could be disengaged from the processes of healing.43

In other words, these trailer occupants experience a paradox of insideness and outsideness in the same space. Although they are physically sheltered and protected within the structure, they are also left to feel alienated and ‘homeless’. Richard Lang describes this sense of ‘existential outsideness’, a state of being displaced and isolated, where there is no sense of attachment, in contrast with a sense of ‘existen41

ibid.

Cox and Holmes, p.16.

ibid.

Time: Ambiguities of Temporariness

tial insideness’, which is ‘incorporated and assimilated into the fabric of embodied existence.’44 The result of this separation and repressed place-attachment leads to a constant experience of transience, a process of sustaining life without any real sense of belonging. The necessary action to re-establish continuity, identity and structure of meanings suspended in time.

Ambiguities of Temporariness FEMA trailer programs always have deadlines. In the case of Hurricane Katrina, hundreds of thousands displaced from their homes and housed in mobile trailers had to eventually vacate although some have been living in there for six years. In Joplin where there is a smaller scale of displacement and less social complexity, tighter deadlines of 18 months were imposed on these interim housing. In both disasters, trailer housing exists in a transitional phase that is very loosely defined.45 This is a part of a widely implemented ‘four-step emergency management model, which presumes a relatively rapid transition from response to recovery, based on calculations of building and infrastructure reconstruction.46 However, human aspects of disaster response and recovery are very complex and many factors come into play in both decision-making and implementation, resulting in complications in the transition. Both New Orleans and Joplin trailer occupancy saw extensions of initial deadlines as residents found difficulty in finding alternative housing or rebuilding destroyed properties. The condition of temporariness became a haunting reality for an extended number of years.

44 R. Lang, ‘The Dwelling Door: Towards a Phenomenology of Transition,’ D.Seamon and R. Mugerauer (Eds.), Dwelling, Place and Environment: Towards a Phenomenology of Person and World. 1985, Dordrecht, Martinus Nijhoff, cited in Cox and Holmes, p. 5. 45

Levine, p.5.

46 ibid. p.6: ‘The Disaster Life Cycle model developed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is comprised of four phases: Pre-disaster mitigation planning; preparedness; emergency response; and recovery and reconstruction.’ 23

Time: Ambiguities of Temporariness

The prolonged period of interim housing questions the definition of ‘temporary’ itself. From the outset of the mobile home program, individuals and families are constantly pushed to find alternative housing solutions and are provided assistance in doing so. However, many on the fringes of society are taking longer to find a job, rent a flat and return to society. Criminal records are one amongst several hindrances to reintegrating back into the community, others include higher rental rates for rebuilt flats after disaster. The goal to leave the trailers as soon as possible and move the progress along to more permanent places to stay is not possible within a short period of time.47 Five years after the Katrina, residents in trailer homes report that they are unable to move out because there have been no rebuilding grants available to them and if the trailers were taken away, they would be homeless.48 Another extension of the deadline is to be expected. Naming and categorizing a temporary stage is fundamentally a method of management that does not respond appropriately to the complexities in the response and recovery process.

The condition of temporariness also indicates strong goal-orientation. It is defined by the sequential movement of time and emphasizes particularly the stage that follows. This stage is characterized by the contrasting condition of permanence. The two conditions exist solely in conjunction with each other. Although the interim housing program is a response to the traumatic event and is part of the recovery process, the reality of displacement would categorize this period as part of the disruption itself. To be temporarily housed in a mobile home is to be removed from a continuous past. Return to that continuity is the ultimate goal. This continuity itself is, however, difficult to define. For some disadvantaged residents in New Orleans for example, instability was a large part of their lives. Many residents who signed up for the FEMA interim housing scheme were non-house owners who could not find appropriate rentals back in their previous flats. Frequent relocation or even homelessness in some cases was part of the ‘permanence’ to be

Singer, p. 25.

48 S. Dewan, ‘Ready or Not, Katrina Victims Lose Temporary Housing,’ The New York Times, 7 May 2009, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/08/us/08trailer.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0, (accessed 04 March 2014). 24

Time: Ambiguities of Temporariness

returned to. The strict and clear division from the temporary stage to the next as regulated by FEMA is arbitrary. It creates a category of mobility, which is then perceived as a threat to be captured back into society. As a thing out of time, or as Tim Cresswell defines it, an ‘anachorism’, mobility becomes a social and cultural category of individuals ‘out of place’ or ‘without place entirely’. 49 This pinpointing and division between ‘placed’ and ‘displaced’ puts an unnecessary wall between the response and recovery. This chapter looked into the relationship with the past trauma and the condition of displacement. The recurring issues of temporariness and mobility within the interim housing scheme will then bring us to the next chapter, which discusses the social and cultural experiences of these trailer park residents.

Cresswell, p. 130. 25

Chapter 2: Community

Community

Hiding

The moving clouds Hang like a painting In the stationary home

50 D. Oshinsky and S. Elms. Life in Modular Home 1651707, 2012 [online photograph], http:// www.stry.us/stories/life-in-modular-home-no-1651707/, (accessed 20 February 2014). 28

Community

On the outside, mobile home number 1651707 looks identical to its neighbours. Each mobile home is a white, sterile, aluminium rectangle with wooden steps built up to meet the flimsy doors hinged onto either side of the rectangle. The units sit one-by-one in two patient rows. Their yards are the unintentional tufts of grass poking out from under the stones. The only differences that set this familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s trailer apart from the others that surround it is the white numbers spray-painted on the red rusting hitch.

The trailer home, in its modularity, has a very exact rectangular outline. Its exterior walls set a distinct boundary between inside and outside. Unlike a detached house with a covered porch or a flat with a common corridor, the trailer settlement does not have a transitional space for the semi-public or semi-private. There is no street furniture or even streets that demarcate the boundary between road, sidewalk and front yard. Public, semi-public and semi-private are indistinguishable from one another except perhaps from a careless carpet of gravel on the main access road. This absence of layering and the presence of a harsh boundary between the inside and outside create a strongly defined awareness of separation. The inside is a contained space of protection; the outside is a realm to be distinguished from. This chapter looks into the environment within which the trailers sit in. Aspects of the social environment are discussed firstly with respect to the lack of communal spaces and a sense of place and secondly to the social interpretation of the trailer as a unique housing type defined by both its flexibility and disposability. A discussion on the circulatory nature of the trailer uses Marc AugĂŠâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s analysis of non-places as a starting point to understand the effect of production on the resultant environment.

Community: Absence of a Sense of Place

Hand-painted map of the Renaissance Village trailer park in Baker, Louisiana51 51

Photograph of Renaissance Village trailer compound52

52 51 J. Warren, Renaissance Village 07, 2008, [online photography], http://jennwarren.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Renaissance-Village-07/G0000vkBbb.hnm8U/I0000QLd4.JabKR4, (accessed 06 March 2014).

52 P. Salisbury, The Gates Close on Renaissance Village, 2008, [online photography] http://www. nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/06/07/us/0607-TRAILER_index.html, (accessed on 06 March 2014). 30

Community: Absence of a Sense of Place

Absence of a Sense of Place In the Renaissance Village in Louisiana, residents took on a pessimistic view of the trailer program.53 Religious services were almost taken away from the residents because of FEMA’s fear that they would be too ‘settled into community’. There was an absence of any street-scale social spaces such as playgrounds, park benches or dining halls. Food was packed in foam boxes and handed to residents from a doublewide trailer. A building complex near the rear of the compound was designated as a community centre in the morning and an early childhood learning centre in the afternoon.54 However, these isolated installations did not seem to be function in creating a social atmosphere and residents described an overriding mood of ‘depression, … [and] despair’ in the park.55

Sister Judith, a non-profit worker at Renaissance Village, described FEMA’s approach as one that ‘gives you no way to create social fabric in that environment’.56 This is caused by and also fed into the ‘paralysis’ amongst people who were overwhelmed by a ‘fear of the unknown’.57 This situation highlighted a sad reality that hundreds of thousands of people, who have already lost their homes in the traumatic event, have to endure an environment with curtailed social connections and community support much needed for recovery.58

In a situation like this, the capacities for residents to attach to their community are almost non-existent and it raises questions about the social workability of the trailer scheme. Attachment, which is much reliant upon a sense of routine around shared experiences, cannot occur in a temporary operation like the trailer park.

53 B. Barrow, ‘FEMA to close Renaissance Village trailer site May 31,’ The Times – Picayune, 8 April 2008, http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2008/04/fema_to_close_renaissance_vill.html, (accessed 15 February 2014). 54

ibid.

Singer, p.24.

55 57

ibid.

Barrow.

58 K. Lohr, ‘Drugs and Crime Plague FEMA Trailer Park Residents,’ National Public Radio, 19 July 2006, http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5565424, (accessed 15 February 2014). 31

Community: Quantification of Living

Renaissance Village had a certain number of buildings designated as community centres or congregational spaces but residents’ descriptions nonetheless pointed to a hostile and unfriendly social environment. We can infer that social atmosphere is not created by the installation of community spaces. There is a process of assimilation and familiarisation that is crucial for a social atmosphere to be formed. This process ultimately creates a ‘sense of place’ as defined by John Brinckerhoff Jackson. Jackson describes ‘a sense of place’ as the ‘atmosphere to a place, [and] the quality of its environment’, which give us ‘a certain indefinable sense of well-being and which we want to return to, time and again’.59 The sense of place has three qualities: the ‘lively awareness of the familiar environment, a ritual repetition and a sense of fellowship based on a shared experience’.60

These qualities are absent from the trailer park environment due to the intentional adherence to the blanket rule in service to the ‘temporary’ phase. The familiarity and sense of fellowship that is vital in the formation of a system of social support is instead perceived by FEMA as an undesirable element that could complicate the termination of occupancy. The presence of community services did not necessarily assist in the formation of a sense of place due to an environment of anxiety that is inherently caused by the quantification of living and the instable, transferable and disposable nature of the mobile home. Both of these characteristics defines the trailer park as a non-place.

Quantification of Living There is a strong boundary between the inside and outside spaces of the trailer. An individual is placed within an immediate environment that has a visible boundary and provides a physical enclosure of protection. The entirety of this mode of living 59

J. B. Jackson, A Sense of Place, a Sense of Time, Yale University Press, 1994, p. 158.

60 ibid.

Community: Quantification of Living

is placed however, within a non-place, characterized as a space of circulation, fleeting and changing. There are no points of identification within the surrounding neighbourhood that can break up the vast external environment and provide markers to understand the spatial relationships between the individual unit, the streetscale neighbourhood, and the trailer community. These points of identification can be semi-private/semi-public in nature, such as a clearly defined front yard or garden which provide a necessary cushioning between the inside and the outside. Without transitional spaces, the external environment melts into an indistinguishable vastness of fleeting space. In other words, living in a modular home puts the individual in a paradoxical spatial condition where all that is outside are indistinguishable from each other and become an inseparable mass of unfamiliarity, within which he, however, also exists. The individual becomes a piece of log on water, floating amongst thousands of other logs. He exists in a specific location within an indistinguishable ‘non-place’.6861

The lived experience within this openness has resemblance to De Cauter’s decription of the generic city: ‘in the generic city, a trance reigns, an eerie calm… and an evacuation of the public domain. Its foremost attraction is an anomie, a normative vacuum.’62 He describes in this passage the tensions within the generic city. The term generic can be defined as something that has no particular distinctive quality. Each mobile home is an indistinguishable capsule that could be identified only by a serial number. The labeling of residences according to systems similar to the production line removes an intimacy from street names and instead replaces 61 J. Warren. Row R ‘Rebirth’ in Renaissance Village. Residents added their own signs to the lettered rows, naming the sections after streets in New Orleans. 62 L. De Cauter, The Capsular Civilization: On the City in the Age of Fear, Rotterdam, NAi Publishers, 2004, p. 10.

Community: Non-Places

the human quality with a machine-like living experience. Individuals are restricted from recognizing themselves and are instead just one amongst the other hundreds if not thousands. The inability to be unique and identified is a characteristic of massproduction. It creates a situation where each resident of a trailer or mobile home is simply a number that adds to the problem.

Non-Place The quantification of living is a characteristic of non-places, a concept put forward by Marc Augé. He defined non-places as ‘spaces of circulation, consumption and communication… where people co-exist or cohabit without living together’.63 Augé describes non-places in the following passage: Non-places are the real measure of our time; one that could be quantified - with the aid of a few conversions between area, volume and distance - by totaling all the air, rail and motorway routes, the mobile cabins called ‘means of transport’, the airports and railway stations, hotel chains, leisure parks, large retail outlets, and finally the complex skein of cable and wireless networks that mobilize extraterrestrial space for the purposes of a communication so peculiar that it often puts the individual in contact only with another image of himself. 64

Augé‘s non-places are marked by the ‘fleeting, the temporary and ephmeral’. They are uprooted places of mobility and travel and it curtails any moments of pause. These non-places are not ‘relational, historical or concerned with identity’65. Their dominant role is to get people from one place to another; they themselves are transitional tools to achieve the next stage. There is a similarity between non-places and trailer parks in that both are transitional in nature and defined by the element of 63 p.77.

M. Augé, Non-places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity, London, Verso, 2009,

ibid.

Community: Non-Places

temporality. This recalls our discussion on the goal-oriented characteristic of trailers in the first chapter. However, the transitional and relational nature of trailers extend beyond their management and usage. This type of temporary structure, in the entirety of its lifespan through manufacture, transportation, use and reuse, is dictated by the capacity to be transferable.

Each trailer unit can be circulated from firstly its place of production to storage, then the trailer park for residential use and when the time arises, to the next user. This is made incredibly easy by the light structures prefabricated through the processes of mass-production. In the case of the Florida hurricane, FEMA purchased twelve thousand trailers at a cost of USD 25,000 each for the displaced population.66 Once they are received at the corresponding trailer parks, they are fixed down onto the ground and the next physical translocation of the trailer would be when it is recollected from the occupants and returned back to storage parks awaiting the next deployment.

66 A. Goodnough, â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;After 4 Hurricanes, Trailers and Homelessnessâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;, The New York Times, 25 November 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/25/national/25homeless.html, (accessed 15 February 2014).

67 The Associated Press, Photograph of a line of FEMA trailers heading into New Orleans by rail in December 2005, 2011, [online photography] http://www.nola.com/hurricane/index.ssf/2011/10/ ex-fema_employee_is_offered_a.html, (accessed 20 February 2014). 35

Community: Non-Places

Mobility in this case is separated from the both physically and socially immobile residents and could be more appropriately defined as the easy transportation of a product. Living in a product, instead of a home, generates a mentality of disposability and transferability onto both the occupant and the society at large. The resident is the consumer of a product but the fact that the product is not even owned by the him drives home the idea that the individual is merely a participant, and an unwilling one, in the use-storage-reuse cycle of the trailers. Fleeting and temporary then comes to describe not the trailer program or the trailer park, but the resident himself as he becomes the flexible and disposable element within an ironically permanent and cyclical life of the mobile unit.

68 The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Hope Field FEMA Trailer Yard, 2010, [online photography], http://clui.org/ludb/site/hope-field-fema-trailer-yard, (accessed 15 February 2014). Hope Field FEMA Trailer Yard is the one of the largest trailer storage and staging areas in the United States after Hurricane Katrina.

Community: Non-Places

This chapter has looked into the situation of a lack of a sense of place and analysed the anxiety that causes it in terms of the non-place nature of the trailer park. The spatial dimensions of anxiety reveals that there are multiple contraditions within the relationship an individual has with the temporary settlement and the trailer as a type of disposable product. The next chapter logically follows the investigation into the social stigmatisation of these individuals as trouble-causing and undesirable and explores a wider social environment within which the trailer park exists in.

Chapter 3: Control

Control

Surrendering

The white gravel surrounds me It protects and traps Like an invisible cage

69 Cryptome. Katrina Refugee Renaissance Village Birdseye, 2008, [online photograph], http:// cryptome.org/eyeball/rv/rv.htm, (accessed 30 March 2014). 40

Control

The park sits in the middle of nowhere. Every morning, hourly shuttle buses bring people out of compound and return them early evening. For those without the luxury of a working car, life is mostly confined within the trailer park. The whiteness of the ground draws a visible boundary and an invisible wall around the compound. It protects the vulnerable within but also separates them from society.

In contrast to the expectation that temporality and displacement on the scale of the city would be disorganized and impromptu, the situation at the Renaissance Village appears to be systematic, demonstrating a visible and efficient plan at work. There is a clear distinction between the organic and rural setting of the surrounding neighbourhood and the dense, rigid and intentional arrangement of the trailer park. The photograph suppresses the element of destruction and trauma by conveying a semblance of order and efficiency devoid of human presence, amplified by its symmetrical and abstract composition. There is an imposed and seemingly awkward order over the occupants, which shifts the power of control from the individual to the authorities.

The trailer park is at once a juxtaposition of inclusion and exclusion. Being part of the housing scheme puts one inside a structure of protection. This protection, however, removes the individual from society, physically and socially. In other words, the power that governs and sustains life also strips it to a state of â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;bared lifeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;. This chapter looks firstly at the symbolic power of architecture to represent control and consequently over life and argues that there is a need for the displaced to be empowered and regain control in order for recovery to take place. This then prompt the discussion on an equation of inclusion and exclusion with respect to Giorgio Agambenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Homo Sacer and attempts to understand the possibilities of a circulation of power within the trailer compound. Through analysing the element of control, this chapter attempts to understand the relationship between the trailer park and the larger social environment.

Control: Symbol of Power

Symbol of Power In a natural disaster, the power over the environment is perceived to be lost. When destruction is instigated on the built environment, the destroyed architecture becomes a embodiment of the control lost to the violent force. An individual’s sense of firstly domination over the environment and secondly control over his life is physically represented through buildings, which become necessary symbols of this power.

The Midwest city of Joplin has a history of tornadoes as it sits in an area prone to such weather conditions. In 1971 and again in 1973, the city experienced deadly tornadoes and in response to that, built structures that could better protect its residents. 70 The very notion that a place can be protected infers power and control but in the event of the EF-5 in May 2011, it quickly became clear that the situation was uncontrollable. This natural event was a combination of three separate vortexes in a perfect storm scenario. At its peak, it was three quarters of a mile wide. Its winds peaked at 200 miles per hour. Its track was 6 miles long. 71 It is much more than what the residents had prepared for. control and power over nature was physically and symbolically shattered as the tornado ruthlessly lifted buildings off their foundations. There was a sense of understanding that humans, rather than being powerful masters of all that they survey, are a part of the whole, and a fairly small insignificant part at that, compared to the might of nature. Having a tornado season and repeatedly experiencing such patterns of natural destruction signaled a construction of tornado as intrinsic to the land. Nature has a powerful normative component, exemplified in the denotation ‘natural’. The act of destruction itself demonstrated the power of nature and through the stripping away of the control humans have over the environment and consequently the individual has over his life, gives architecture a symbolic meaning of ‘power’.

70 B. Belk, ‘May Tornadoes Struck Joplin Twice in 1970s,’ The Joplin Globe, 8 May 2010, http:// www.joplinglobe.com/local/x1008080420/Brad-Belk-May-tornadoes-struck-Joplin-twice-in-1970s/, (accessed 30 March 2014).

71 NOAA, 2011 Tornado Information, http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/2011_tornado_information.html, 2012, (accessed 30 March 2014). 42

Control: Symbol of Power

7272 72

This sense of power, which is disintegrated in the intensity and enormity of natural forces, is a necessary element to be regained in the recovery process. In the construction of the trailer park, there appears to be a retaking of natural landscape, and an imposition of a man-made order. However, this control is firmly held in the hands of the authorities and is not permitted to be transferred onto the disempowered individual.

72 C. Reidel, A Neighbouhood Destroyed by the Tornado, The Joplin tornado: â&#x20AC;&#x153;Lots of used-tobeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s around hereâ&#x20AC;?, 2011, [online photography] http://clikhear.palmbeachpost.com/2011/world-nation/ natural-disaster/the-joplin-tornado-it-was-15-minutes-of-hell/ 2011, (accessed 15 February 2014). 43

Control: Exclusion and Inclusion

Exclusion and Inclusion In the trailer park, control is both a protection and an entrapment. In an attempt to protect the displaced from the implications of the disaster, FEMA imposed a logistical framework, which ironically isolates the occupant within. This entrapment is physical and social at the same time. The Renaissance Village trailer park, for example, is geographically separated from other unaffected or less affected neighborhoods and infamously identified by some others as ‘the bad part of town’.73 The entrapment paradoxically contradicts the objective of the scheme to ultimately move residents out. In a few months after the Joplin tornado, displaced residents looking for a house to stay in have to undergo an application process for a place in the trailer-housing scheme. This act of asking for permission itself is a disempowerment. Entry into the housing scheme is not automatic: families wishing to be considered for temporary housing has to first be registered for disaster assistance with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security FEMA.74 This process places each family within the strict system of the authorities, with its imposed rules and regulations. The individual is hence simultaneously a subject and an object: he is subjective to control and the objective of aid. Looking to regain control over his life, he has to first actively assent to submission and relinquish part of his control to the authorities. This complex nature of power recalls Foucault’s understanding of it as something, which ‘circulates’, and of individuals being ‘always in a position of simultaneously undergoing and exercising this power’.75 His argument logically implies power to have both positive and negative dimensions. Power works in ways, which can be re73 M. Proulx, ‘Life in a Florida FEMA Trailer Park,’ Gulf Coast News, 4 May 2006, http://www. gulfcoastnews.com/GCNarchive/2007/GCNspecialReportTrailerParks.htm, (accessed 30 March 2014). 74

Elms.

75 M. Foucault, ‘Two Lectures,’ C. Gordon (ed.) Michel Foucault: Power/Knowledge - Selected Interviews and Other Writings, 1971-1977, Brighton, Harvester, cited in R. Paddison et al. Entanglements of Power: Geographies of Domination/Resistance: Geographies of Domination and Resistance, London, Routledge, 2000, p. 16. 44

Control: Exclusion and Inclusion

pressive and progressive, restraining and assisting, to be criticized and lauded. This duality of power is very evident in the trailer park.

The mobile homes and their rigid arrangement is an intentional abstraction both in service of and in contribution to the power of the authorities. Even the choice of color of the trailer park spoke of an intentionality. White focused the eye on the geometry of the architecture, its space and volume, rather than the surface and it also creates a hygienic, sterile environment. There is a complete deterrence of chaos and an institution of absolute order over the messiness and human elements that define life. These two activities are manifestations of an absolute logistical mode of thinking that recalls Ian Davis’ ‘shelter as product’. The efficiency of management and consequently the efficiency of control are placed at the utmost importance in the trailer compound. This intentionality produces an environment that has an uncomfortable resemblance to concentration camps. The occupant of the trailer experiences a sequence of displacement, disempowerment and restriction that can be similarly found, albeit at a much extensive degree, in camps. Here we refer to Agamben’s zone of exclusion and inclusion within which a ‘bared life’ resides. The argument here is not that spaces within the trailer park are characterized by the cruelty of the German camps (although there are similarities in the military-like configurations of space) but that the logic of the camp discussed in Agamben’s study of concentration and refugee camps can be applied to the trailer compound.

Agamben argues that the camp is a spatial materialization of ‘the state of exception’.76 Refugees and the displaced are constrained inside a space as they are not included or integrated into the political zone because of national security issues. This group of individuals is therefore assigned a particular territory, or a ‘zone of indistinction’, which is both inside and outside the control of the nation state. 77 Boano explains Agamben’s notion further: in the refugee camp, ‘the same act of exclusion from political existence also prefigures an act of inclusion into a regime of humanitarian 76 G. Agamben G, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics), trans D Heller-Roazen, Standford University Press, Standford, 1998, p.100. 77 ibid.

Control: Exclusion and Inclusion

effort’78. In other words, the powers that ‘strip the right to life are, at the same time, those that govern the techniques and processes that enable life’79. Agamben’s argument culminates in a humanitarian ‘biopolitics’ produced by the ‘geopolitics’ of intervention and rehabilitation.80

The homo sacer in the refugee camp and the trailer park occupant reside in a similar zone of indistinction between inclusion and exclusion. The residents of the trailer park, who are more susceptible to the implications of disaster and socially less able to help themselves, are specifically contained within a separate space in order to give structure to the chaotic aftermath and enable management of this vulnerable group of individuals. This form of control is inclusive in nature, similar to humanitarian or rehabilitative aid. However, the concentration of the displaced into an independent settlement also socially isolates the group and reinforces its exclusion from mainstream community. In other words, the positive attempts by disadvantaged individuals in their struggle to be integrated into and accepted by society leads directly to the inscription of their lives within the state of vulnerability, thereby actively contributing to the discriminating power from which they wished to be liberated from. These individuals exist within the zone of indistinction as, in the recovery process, their condition could be both alleviated and generated by this society stigmatization. The siting of the New Orleans trailer parks reveals this relationship. In Daniel P. Aldrich and Kevin Crook’s study of FEMA trailer siting after Hurricane Katrina, they identified that strangely, siting success was more frequent in vulnerable areas. 81 Some of the reasons cited were that individuals in these areas were ‘identified with evacuees’ and hence were less concerned by the emergence of trailer parks in their neighborhood.82 Aldrich and Crook states that other studies have demonstrated that ‘measures of social capital – such as voter turnout – best predicted which communi78

Boano, p. 10.

ibid.

81 D.P. Aldrich and K. Crook, ‘Taking the High Ground: FEMA Trailer Siting after Hurricane Katrina’, Public Administration Review, vol. 73, no. 4, 2013, pp. 613-622. p. 615. 82

ibid.

Control: Exclusion and Inclusion

ties would receive the facilities’.83 In other words, local residents of potential trailer sites have the political power to determine the implementation of the siting. Citizens of specific areas sometimes can hold strong collective negative views of trailer facilities.84 MacTavish highlighted that trailer occupants constantly deal with problems of stigmatization. Her interviews found that one fifth of the children living in ‘Prairieview’ (her fieldwork site) consider their residential experiences in the trailer park to be defined by social stigmatization.85 This social stigmatization and the power embedded within has the ability to determine the location of the trailer siting and the result of that is that trailers are located more in socially vulnerable geographical areas on the ground level, as opposed to a higher one above sea level. These areas are more exposed to flooding and hence create risks for revictimization and thereby decrease the ability of the displaced to control their lives to an even greater extent. There is however, also recognition that housing is on the top of priority list in a disaster situation and aid should necessarily be available. The same power that threatens the ability to re-establish life for the displaced simultaneously enables it, putting this group of people within a state of exception that is spatially manifested in the trailer park. There is inherently a contradiction within the power of social stigmatization as it both protects and entraps the displaced residents of trailer parks. These individuals, without being truly empowered, would be disabled from repossessing a sense of control necessary for the re-establishment of identity and continuity.

ibid.

84 M. Lee et al., ‘The FEMA Trailer Parks: Negative Perceptions and the Social Structure of Avoidance.’ Sociological Spectrum, vol. 27, no. 6, pp. 741–66, cited in Aldrich and Crook p. 614.

85 K. MacTavish, ‘We’re Like the Wrong Side of the Tracks: Upscale Suburban Development, Social Inequality, and Rural Mobile Home Park Residence.’ Rural Poverty Research Center, no. 06-03, cited in Aldrich and Crook, p. 614. 47

Conclusion and Alternatives

Through moving up the scale from the individual unit, the neighbourhood, to society at large, this study looked into the issues surrounding vulnerability and spatial protection of the displaced. Displacement from home (vulnerability) and replacement (protection) of the individual’s spaces for living are two central threads that tie together the discussions of various elements within the trailer park.

Chapter one looked at the individual’s relationship with the traumatic past, which has shattered his assumptive world. The violence that destroys the structure of meanings is also simultaneously a generator of architecture as a representation of identity and continuity. The individual in the recovery process needs the reconstruction of an architecture that can resignify and hence fill in the emptiness in the structure of meanings. The trailer home, however, in its temporary nature, generates a separation between the individual and his home environment, which ultimately prevents the ability for the displaced person to be re-placed and his structure of meanings to be rebuilt through the process of being ‘inside’. This concept of being included in a space is then explored on a slightly larger scale of the neighbourhood. This second chapter looks at the anxiety and uncertainty that forms the core of the social experience within the trailer park. This overriding mood of despair both causes and results from an absence of a sense of place. The lacking familiarity and repeatability in the trailer park draw similarities to the characteristics of ‘non-place’, which is steeped in quantification and temporariness. The spatial experience of the individual in the trailer park can be described as indistinguishable and fleeting, hence generating anxiety which prevents a social atmosphere.

Chapter three looks into an even bigger scale of relationship, between the trailer park and society at large. The study demonstrates that the socially vulnerable in the trailer park exists within a zone of indistinction where the same power that enables life also strips it away. The individual is both protected and trapped within the structure of social stigmatisation. Without being truly empowered, the individual is unable to regain a sense of control and reconstruct his continuity. As this study demonstrates, there is an urgent need for a change in approach to temporary housing to include attention to the singular loss of home and personal needs of attachment and continuity, social inclusiveness and empowerment. The FEMA trailer scheme has been the ‘go-to’ solution in the United States in post-traumatic responses but the implications on individuals, as demonstrated through the spatial discussions in this dissertation, do not assist in the ultimate recovery process.

There are a vast number and range of issues which are equally important in our discussions. Instead of providing a simplified conclusion that would be unable to 50

Conclusion and Alternatives

encapsulate the complexity at hand, I wish to conclude by briefly discussing the possibilities of using the understanding we now have of vulnerability and protection to better interpret the current research into alternatives for post-disaster housing. Works of the most recent Pritzker Prize winner, Shigeru Ban, demonstrate a potential for architectural solutions that allow personal control and sense of home/place. His engagement with various disaster relief efforts are examples of strategies that creates a quality within the environment with minimal cost. His container temporary housing in Onagawa, was itself a response to the standard and poorly-made temporary houses issued by the government. His proposal, stacking shipping containers in a stack-and-slide pattern, allows for bright living spaces in between the containers. The large amount of storage space available in the house is a big change from the government standards of such temporary housing. In a similar volume of space, Banâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s design, as opposed to trailer and mobile homes, allows for a more points of integration and hence familiarity. 8686

86 86 H. Hiroyuki, Onagawa Container Temporary Housing, [online photography], http://www. archdaily.com/489255/the-humanitarian-works-of-shigeru-ban/, (accessed 17 April 2014). 51

Conclusion and Alternatives

8787 The paper church in Kobe is another example of his architectural solutions applied successfully onto a disaster site. The use of paper was an appropriate solution to the disaster relief process and also rendered a serene quality to the interior spaces of the community space. Many elements of design are at work to achieve a continuous, unified space between the inside and outside and establish a visual extension of the church into the surrounding spaces.88

87 H. Hiroyuki, Paper Church, [online photography], http://www.archdaily.com/489255/thehumanitarian-works-of-shigeru-ban/, (accessed 17 April 2014). 88 AD Editorial Team (eds), The Humanitarian Works of Shigeru Ban, http://www.archdaily. com/489255/the-humanitarian-works-of-shigeru-ban/, (accessed 17 April 2014).

Conclusion and Alternatives

Another well known architect, Teddy Cruz, has been engaging the issue of the crossborder vulnerability. His project on the San Diego/Tijuana border looks at the 11 million illegal labourers who live literally on the edges of society.89 His architectural intervention is a response to the stock management strategies of the government. Cruz’s work draws on the multi-dimensional use of space and incorporate the element of flexibility into the design of the single unit, for possibilities of expansion into a extended-family dwelling.90 The resultant structures seem informal but are organized by architectural decisions on space and volume, hence rendering it manageable. His designs allows for the element of flexibility and variety which is much needed to form pockets of identifiable spaces essential in creating, in Jackson’s words, a sense of place.

8991 91

89 California Architects, Estudio Teddy Cruz, http://www.california-architects.com/en/estudio/, (accessed 5 April 2014). 90 TED (eds), The informal as inspiration for rethinking urban spaces: architect Teddy Cruz shares 5 projects, http://blog.ted.com/2014/02/05/architect-teddy-cruz-shares-5-projects/, (accessed 5 April 2014). 91 Estudio Teddy Cruz, A look at “Casa Familiar Housing,” [online photography], http://blog.ted. com/2014/02/05/architect-teddy-cruz-shares-5-projects/, (accessed 5 April 2014).

Conclusion and Alternatives

Both Ban and Cruz’s designs are socially conscious. Their involvements with humanitarian work give insight into the possibilities of design to engage with the sensitivity of the situation and produce intimate, human and social spaces that are appropriate for a post-traumatic response. Their spatial responses to vulnerability and protection are strategies that acknowledge the need of the individual, for creating possibilities of attachment to place that will alleviate a sense of loss and possibly diminish trauma.

The involvement of architects are frequently not anticipated or even considered in disaster situations, which are most frequently dominated by pragmatic institutions such as FEMA. An urgent change is necessary for an inclusion of design strategies into the stock management solutions and hence produce more appropriate spaces with a necessary and specific concern from the perspectives of the displaced individual.

It is certainly true that there can be no one all-encompassing solution. The site-specific nature of each disaster, response and recovery calls for perhaps combinations of different scales of solutions. With an increased number and severity of natural disasters due to climate change, the numbers of displaced people are growing to the point that ‘… as many as 20 million people may have been displaced by climateinduced sudden-onset natural disasters in 2008 alone’.92 There is an impending urgency to research further into possible solutions for the protection of the vulnerable in post-traumatic responses.

92 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Climate Change, Natural Disasters and Human Displacement: A UNHCR Perspective, http://www.unhcr.org/4901e81a4.html, (accessed 5 April 2014). 54

List of Illustrations

(in order of appearance)

B. Nevins, Photograph of a house destroyed in the Joplin Tornado, Joplin, 2011 [online photograph], http://www.briannevins.com/data/photos/218_1_mg_9863. jpg, (accessed 20 February 2014). B. Bretch, War Primer, J. Willett (ed.), trans. N. Replansky, London, Libris, 1998, p.28.

Thayer, E. Scars and Stories On Joplin’s Landscape, 2011 [online photograph], http://blogs.reuters.com/photographers-blog/2011/08/24/scars-and-stories-onjoplins-landscape/, (accessed 06 February 2014).

D. Oshinsky and S. Elms. Life in Modular Home 1651707, 2012 [online photograph], http://www.stry.us/stories/life-in-modular-home-no-1651707/, (accessed 20 February 2014). J. Warren, Renaissance Village 07, 2008, [online photography], http://jennwarren. photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Renaissance-Village-07/G0000vkBbb.hnm8U/ I0000QLd4.JabKR4, (accessed 06 March 2014).

P. Salisbury, The Gates Close on Renaissance Village, 2008, [online photography] http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/06/07/us/0607-TRAILER_index.html, (accessed on 06 March 2014).

The Associated Press, Photograph of a line of FEMA trailers heading into New Orleans by rail in December 2005, 2011, [online photography] http://www.nola.com/ hurricane/index.ssf/2011/10/ex-fema_employee_is_offered_a.html, (accessed 20 February 2014). The Center for Land Use Interpretation, Hope Field FEMA Trailer Yard, 2010, [online photography], http://clui.org/ludb/site/hope-field-fema-trailer-yard, (accessed 15 February 2014). Hope Field FEMA Trailer Yard is the one of the largest trailer storage and staging areas in the United States after Hurricane Katrina. Cryptome. Katrina Refugee Renaissance Village Birdseye, 2008, [online photograph], http://cryptome.org/eyeball/rv/rv.htm, (accessed 30 March 2014).

C. Reidel, A Neighbouhood Destroyed by the Tornado, The Joplin tornado: “Lots of used-to-be’s around here”, 2011, [online photography] http://clikhear.palmbeachpost.com/2011/world-nation/natural-disaster/the-joplin-tornado-it-was-15-min-

List of Illustrations

utes-of-hell/ 2011, (accessed 15 February 2014).

H. Hiroyuki, Onagawa Container Temporary Housing, [online photography], http:// www.archdaily.com/489255/the-humanitarian-works-of-shigeru-ban/, (accessed 17 April 2014). H. Hiroyuki, Paper Church, [online photography], http://www.archdaily. com/489255/the-humanitarian-works-of-shigeru-ban/, (accessed 17 April 2014). Estudio Teddy Cruz, A look at â&#x20AC;&#x153;Casa Familiar Housing,â&#x20AC;? [online photography], http://blog.ted.com/2014/02/05/architect-teddy-cruz-shares-5-projects/, (accessed 5 April 2014).

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Section Subsection

Appendix 1: Joplin City

Image from Google Maps showing location of Joplin City List of Websites showing Images of Trauma in Joplin City: http://bigstory.ap.org/content/rubble-rebuilding-year-joplin-mo-0 http://blogs.reuters.com/photographers-blog/2011/08/24/scars-and-stories-on-joplins-landscape/ http://clikhear.palmbeachpost.com/2011/world-nation/natural-disaster/the-joplin-tornado-it-was-15-minutes-of-hell/ http://m.commercialappeal.com/photos/galleries/joplin-tornado-then-and-now/ http://totallycoolpix.com/2012/05/joplin-revisited-one-year-after-the-tornado/ http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2012/05/joplin_tornado_one_year_later.html#photo23 http://www.buzzfeed.com/mjs538/devastating-pictures-of-the-joplin-missouri-torna http://www.cbsnews.com/pictures/joplin-tornado/ http://www.nicolebengiveno.com/#/joplin-missouri-tornado/Joplin3 http://www.stry.us/stories/life-in-modular-home-no-1651707/#fn2 http://www.theatlantic.com/infocus/2011/05/tornado-ravages-joplin-missouri/100072/

Section Subsection

Appendix 2: New Orleans

Image from Google Maps showing location of New Orleans List of Websites showing Images of Trauma in New Orleans: http://aquafrolic.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/so-surreal.html http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/katrina/photo-comparisons/dauphin.html http://jennwarren.photoshelter.com/gallery/Renaissance-Village-07/G0000vkBbb.hnm8U/ http://tellingtheirstories.com/exhibit/the-photos/ http://www.carsandracingstuff.com/library/special/katrina.php http://www.eonimages.com/media/4795e6fe-3891-11e0-8b04-1f9e506835d7-destroyed-houses-in-gulfportms-after-hurricane-katrina http://www.fema.gov/media-library/multimedia/collections/28 http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/06/07/us/0607-TRAILER_index.html http://www.panoramio.com/photo/9055637 http://www.statearchivists.org/prepare/2005response/hurricane-msvisit-photos.htm