During 1960s, Victoria Housing Commission declared war against residents of inner Melbourne suburbs under Slum Reclamation Program, and this project is primarily concerned with acting on the tactics imposed on residents by VHC and dealing with residual prevailing oppressive instrument left by them, the high rise public housing through SUBVERSION. From the outset, Victoria Housing Commission plans were devised with manipulative agendas. at the beginning, large proportions of public housing estates unwarranted for demand were built in regional Victoria disguised to cater for industrial expansion but have lower waiting times than metro areas, where housing was scarce. Instead of supplying in locations with established services and employment, VHC expected residents to move where stock is available effectively relocating the poor from Melbourne. Maps shown change in distribution of VHC tenants to outer Melbourne. Needs based allocation was not VHC’S priority up until 1984 thus slum clearance that took place was concurrent with gentrification of inner city. VHC declared 22 Slum Reclamation Areas of 379 hectares based on a windshield survey which contradicts with prior report documenting slum pockets within Melbourne inner suburb. 10,000 houses including sound ones were declared as unfit for habitation and requiring demolition. This sparked outrage and resistance by the residents, and started the war of compulsory acquisition of houses. Pockets of slums and repairable houses are met with block clearance instead of rehabilitation program. The slum reclamation program has no provision for relocated residents and VHC resorted in oppressing reluctant residents to leave. Block clearance displaced diverse residents, i.e.: the poor, owner-occupants and migrants. Established networks and patterns were truncated and disrupted, and what was generally achieved from the event was hardship to residents by VHC whose answering to nobody and protected by half-baked legislation. VHC Modus operandi was central in negligence for residents’ rights and at most part subverted their obligations as housing authority. Residents were threatened with demolition, and offered inadequate compensation. Bought houses were left vacant, unlocked and unfenced to allow vandalism and deteriorate or immediately demolished, even with flyby- night private demolitions. Rubbish dumping by VHC and deliberately uncleared demolition sites further deteriorates the suburb into slum. False promises of building schools on cleared sites while refusing to acknowledge local council and requests even by Town and Country Planning Board. Ad-hoc decisions and vague statements by VHC enable them to do abrupt interventions without interruptions and does most damage to psychology of residents, of defeatism.
VHC’s tactics can be comparable to Israeli Occupation in Palestine, subverted the International Humanitarian Law of Geneva Convention. The acquisition of land was resting on vague definitions of temporary barrier which allowed the Israelis to exercise compulsory acquisition of areas under the disguise of national security. Two most successful strategies was battle for hilltops and optical urbanism. These were allowed to transpire because it warrants security. The oppression was inasmuch psychological, hilltops settlements intimidates Palestinians surrounded in the valleys and the advantage of being higher is surveillance. Red roofs settlements marks Jewish territories, and established paths and roads against dirt roads of Palestinian side are all evidence of territorial establishment, and influence defeatism. Eyal Weizman’s tactics are critical in the discourse of subversion. His De-Colonizing project seeks to what extent evacuated Israeli settlements are flexible to accommodate new uses in various ways they can be adapted or transformed. Weizman formulated ways to overturn once oppressive structures to make them favourable to Palestinians. Points tackled are exactly those previously functioned as weapons and ammunitions for urban war, houses within the settlements. In UnRoofing, Red roofs are unpacked and negotiated to return to the needs and image of Palestinians, participatory to their daily activities. In UnGrounding, an accelerated decay deteriorates existing roads allowing naturalcourses to overtake the land, replaced with series of new conditions potential for reutilization. The objective of this projects is to evaluate the tactics by VHC and subvert the implications of their actions to make it favourable to residents of High Rise Public Housing, once oppressed by displacement but is still subjected to continued oppression by stigmatization and poor living conditions within a cyclical system. Stigmas owed their existence through housing policies and partially through the categorising physical genericness of the public housing type, by determining which components of the structure performs the most subjugation, a retroaction can be devised to collapse the invisible boundaries which restricts or hinder inquisition and intervention into public housing. Surgery of the building, physically and mentally will be important procedure in reducing the ‘sacredness’ or ‘scaredness’, opening it into questions. In short, overrule everything about the idea of public housing. Un-Public Housing.
This project protests against gentrification as a homogenizing agent of city and attempts to subvert this increasingly inevitable condition by promoting public housing estates as a site of urban subversion and resistance. Un-Gentrify introduces onto the Carlton public housing site, a revival of a warehouse typology progressively eliminated from inner suburbs from the 1960s. Emulating the types disused space awaiting intervention previously abundant in these suburbs which now increasingly popular to be converted to residential apartments; these bands of warehouses make available spatial opportunities to urban pioneers/creative workers , capable of injecting culture and character back into the mono-functional site. This proposition see public housing sites as ongoing indispensable elements of each suburbs; where urban pioneers benefit from continuing availability of workspace in return for re-qualifying the site for valuable use countering the allure of gentrification.
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