Cities to be Tamed? Spatial Investigations across the Urban South

Cities to be Tamed?

Spatial Investigations across the Urban South

Cities to be Tamed?

Spatial Investigations across the Urban South

Edited by

Francesco Chiodelli, Beatrice De Carli, Maddalena Falletti and Lina Scavuzzo

Cities to be Tamed? Spatial Investigations across the Urban South Edited by Francesco Chiodelli, Beatrice De Carli, Maddalena Falletti and Lina Scavuzzo This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright Š 2013 by Francesco Chiodelli, Beatrice De Carli, Maddalena Falletti, Lina Scavuzzo and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner.

ISBN (10): 1-4438-5230-9, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-5230-2

TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface ...................................................................................................... vii Part I: Spaces of Formal/Informal Interplay Chapter One ................................................................................................ 2 Formal/Informal Interplays: Spatial Tensions and Design Practices Beatrice De Carli and Maddalena Falletti Chapter Two ............................................................................................. 26 Practice in the Mess of Informality Nabeel Hamdi Chapter Three ........................................................................................... 39 Crossover Modernisms: Life and Afterlife in Michenzani, Zanzibar Viviana d’Auria and Annelies De Nijs Chapter Four ............................................................................................. 67 Chequered Urbanism: Confrontations Between Culture and Economy in Urbanising Amman Joud M.I. Khasawneh and Bruno De Meulder Chapter Five ............................................................................................. 90 Socio-Spatial Assemblages: The Backbone of Informal Settlement Regeneration Carmen Mendoza-Arroyo Chapter Six ............................................................................................. 115 New Planning Tools? Extending Water and Electricity Networks in Irregular Settlements of Lima, Peru Laure Criqui Chapter Seven......................................................................................... 135 The Spatial Imaginaries of Informal Settlement, HIV and AIDS, and the State in Southern African Cities Colin Marx

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Part II: Spaces of Power Chapter Eight .......................................................................................... 152 Power in Space: Space Regulation amidst Techniques and Politics in the Global South Francesco Chiodelli and Lina Scavuzzo Chapter Nine........................................................................................... 170 Transformative and Counter-Hegemonic Planning Regimes: South Africa and Lebanon Scott A. Bollens Chapter Ten ............................................................................................ 192 Informality as Control: The Legal Geography of Colonisation of the West Bank Erez Tzfadia Chapter Eleven ....................................................................................... 215 Sovereignty, Planning and Gray Space: Illegal Construction in Sarajevo and Jerusalem Olivier Legrand and Oren Yiftachel Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 237 Politics of Urban Form: Architecture of Tehran (1921–53) Hamed Khosravi Chapter Thirteen ..................................................................................... 262 Unravelling Spaces of Representation through Insurgent Planning Actions Ignacio Castillo Ulloa Chapter Fourteen .................................................................................... 284 The Contestation of Space and Ethics in Singapore: A Case of Dirty Hands in Planning Jeffrey Chan and Faith Wong Afterword ............................................................................................... 312 Alessandro Balducci Contributors ............................................................................................ 315

PREFACE This book draws on the conference entitled ‘Cities to be Tamed?

Standards and Alternatives in the Transformation of the Urban South’ held at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy in November 2012. The significant response to the call for papers and the productive debates that were a feature of the conference’s thematic and plenary sessions persuaded us as curators to seek avenues to extend the discussion and capture some of its highlights in a publication.

The contributions included in this book consist of a selection and reworking of some of the papers presented at the symposium. In an attempt to reflect the cross-disciplinary exchange that underpinned the conference debates, we have organised the essays into two parts, ignoring the divisions among fields of study that commonly characterise the vast area of urban research. Long-standing frictions among spatial planning, urban design, architecture, policy-making, sociology, and anthropology have been set aside in favour of establishing thematic confluence around two main topics, both of which are centred on the manifold relationships between space and conflicts in non-Western cities.

The first part of the book focuses on the contested agency of design and spatial analysis in contexts of ‘informality’. The contributions proposed address the physical and material dimension of social tensions and the spatial interfaces between diverging individual and societal purposes and aspirations. By suggesting alternative approaches, investigating ‘ordinary anomalies’, or documenting the shortcomings of official planning recipes, these writings explore the spatial challenges posed by conditions of rapid urbanisation, scarce resources, and increasing social inequalities.

The second part of the book investigates the substantive and procedural political character of space regulation and moulding. The nexus between space regulation and the political sphere has been studied extensively, in particular with reference to the global North, and the contributions in this part of the book explore certain peculiarities of this nexus with reference to specificities of the global South in an attempt to generate new points of view that may build a Southern perspective on the interrelation between space and power. The aim is not only to cope more effectively with

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problems relating to these contexts, but also to rekindle research on this topic in the North.

The preparation and quality of this book depend on the efforts of a number of institutions and individuals who by their contributions to the planning of the ‘Cities to be Tamed?’ conference helped shape its arguments and opened the way to this publication. We would like to thank the School of Architecture and Society, the Department of Architecture and Urban Studies and the Laboratory of International Cooperation at the Politecnico di Milano for their support. We put a steering group in place early on, and this group provided critical advice at the initial stage of this work, so our thanks go to its members: Alessandro Balducci, Camillo Boano, Bruno De Meulder, Jorge Fiori, Nabeel Hamdi, Agostino Petrillo, and Antonio Tosi. We are also grateful to the chairs and discussants of the debates: Paola Bellaviti, Scott A. Bollens, Massimo Bricocoli, Viviana d’Auria, Omar Nagati, Gabriele Pasqui, Ruba Saleh, Marialessandra Secchi, and Erez Tzfadia, without whom the event would not have been as successful as it was. Finally, and above all, we are exceptionally grateful to all the participants at the conference for collectively nurturing and shaping a rich dialogue, which we have attempted to channel into this book.

ContestedSpaces/SpaziContesi1 Francesco Chiodelli, Beatrice De Carli, Maddalena Falletti and Lina Scavuzzo.

1 ContestedSpaces/SpaziContesi is an urban research platform that investigates the spatial dimension of conflicts in cities of the Global South.

CONTRIBUTORS Alessandro Balducci is Vice Rector of the Politecnico di Milano, Full Professor of Planning and Urban Policies and member of the PhD Program in Spatial Planning and Urban Development. He has been President of AESOP, the Association of the European Schools of Planning (20012004), and is currently Chair of the Italian Society of Urbanists (SIU). He has been a Visiting Scholar at U.C. Berlekey (USA), and a Visiting Professor at the University of Reims (France), Tongij University (China), Aalto University in Helsinki (Finland), MIT Cambridge (USA) and at the Accademia di Architettura di Mendrisio (Switzerland). He is the author/editor of 15 books, and of more than 100 articles and essays in Italian and English.

Scott A. Bollens is Professor of Urban Planning and Warmington endowed Professor of Peace and International Cooperation, University of California, Irvine. He studies the role of urban policy and city building amidst nationalistic ethnic conflict and political transitions. Over the past 18 years Professor Bollens has interviewed over 240 urban professionals, political leaders, and community representatives in Jerusalem, Belfast, Johannesburg, Nicosia (Cyprus), Sarajevo and Mostar (Bosnia), Barcelona and Basque cities (Spain), and Beirut. His most recent book is City and Soul in Divided Societies (Routledge, 2012), which integrates elements of reportage, academic analysis, and personal narrative.

Ignacio Castillo Ulloa, architect, MSc Urban Management and PhD Candidate in Urban and Regional Planning at the Berlin University of Technology. His research interests address uneven socio–spatial development and alternative (local) practices that counteract it. He was involved in the elaboration of a new regional plan for the Great Metropolitan Area of Costa Rica (funded by the EU) and the project ‘Improving governance in secondary cities in Bangladesh’ (sponsored by the former GTZ). His dissertation problematizes, within the scope of radical planning and through spatial analysis, how protest action of urban– social movements may turn out to be a valuable asset to set off local community self–development schemes.

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Jeffrey Chan Kok Hui is Assistant Professor at the Department of Architecture, National University of Singapore. He teaches architectural design studios, and graduate seminars in research methodology and contemporary theories. His present research is on design ethics, especially on the dissonance between professional (public) obligations and the aesthetic responsibility of an architect. Jeffrey holds a BArch from the Southern California Institute of Architecture, a MEd from Harvard University and a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley.

Francesco Chiodelli, PhD in Urban Projects and Policies, is a research fellow at the Gran Sasso Science Institute, L'Aquila (Italy), where he teaches on the international doctoral programme in Urban Studies. His research focuses on themes of planning theory and urban conflicts – in particular with regards to the spatial dimension of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to questions of liberty, pluralism and tolerance in public and private spaces. His articles have appeared in international journals such as Planning Theory, Cities, Journal of Urban Affairs, Planning Perspectives, Urban Research and Practice. He has recently published Contested Jerusalem. Urban dimensions of a conflict (Carocci, 2012, in Italian).

Laure Criqui is a geographer, graduate from the London School of Economics, specialised on cities of the Global South. She has worked for several years on international cooperation projets. She is now a PhD candidate in urban planning at LATTS – University Paris-Est and fellow at the Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos of Lima. Her research focuses on the extension of electricity, water and sanitation networks in irregular settlements of Delhi and Lima: the ordinary practices of utilities’ engineers and managers, the technical, social and institutional innovations they resort to to service unplanned areas, and their potential to renew urban planning thoughts and methods.

Viviana d’Auria is Lecturer in Human Settlements in Development at the Department of Architecture, Urbanism and Planning (University of Leuven). She is also a post-doctoral Rubicon fellow at the Department of Geography, Planning and International Development Studies (University of Amsterdam), where she is exploring ‘home space’ and its contribution to the (in)formal urban development of Accra and Lima. She is co-editor of Water Urbanisms (SUN, 2008) and Human Settlements: Formulations and (re)Calibrations (SUN Academia, 2010).

Beatrice De Carli, PhD in Architecture and Urbanism, is a teaching fellow at the School of Architecture, University of Sheffield. She has previously held positions as Associate Lecturer at Politecnico di Milano,

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Italy, and at the University of Leuven, Belgium. Her research is at the intersection of urban design and critical spatial theory, currently exploring questions of diversity and participation in spatial practice. She is an Associate at Architecture Sans Frontières UK and the Vice Chair at ASFInternational, an architectural NGO that works between architecture and international development.

Bruno De Meulder is teaching urbanism at the University of Leuven, Belgium, and heading the research unit Urbanism & Architecture (OSA/RUA) at the Department of Architecture. He is also Programme Director of the postgraduate masters in Urbanism and Strategic Planning (MaUSP) and in Human Settlements (MaHS). He travels between practice and theory, analysis and design, history and critique. Colonial and postcolonial urbanism is central in his work, which has been published in numerous articles and authored and edited books.

Annelies De Nijs is an architect and urban designer, affiliated to the research unit Urbanism & Architecture (OSA) of the University of Leuven. She has undertaken (design) research projects in various contexts, including Belgium, Vietnam, China and Zanzibar. Her work in Asia focuses on water urbanism in the context of climate change and rapid urbanisation, while in the case of Zanzibar she is investigating postcolonial urbanism and lived-in architecture. Currently she is also working for the landscape and urban design office Agence Ter in Paris.

Maddalena Falletti, PhD in Urbanism, is a teaching fellow in Urban Design at MaHS/MaUSP, University of Leuven, and tutor on the PhD Programme in Territorial Government and Design at DAStU, Politecnico di Milano. Her research interests centre upon how diverging understandings of the natural environment and related problem formulations affect urban development in postcolonial countries, in between colonial heritage, globalization, supranational planning agendas and everyday praxes.

Nabeel Hamdi qualified as an architect at the Architectural Association in London in 1968. He worked for the Greater London Council between 1969 and 1978, where his award-winning housing projects established his reputation in participatory design and planning.

From 1981-1990 he was Associate Professor of Housing at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he was later awarded a Ford International Career Development Professorship. In 1997 Nabeel won the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour for his work on Community Action Planning. His publications include Housing Without Houses (Van

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Nostrand Reinhold, 1994), Small Change (Routledge, 2004), The Placemakers Guide to Building Community (Earthscan, 2010). He is currently Professor Emeritus at Oxford Brookes University.

Joud M. I. Khasawneh is a PhD researcher and a member of the research unit Urbanism & Architecture (OSA) of the University of Leuven. Her research interests include understanding the effect of interplays of culture, economy, and planning on current urban morphologies in the Middle East. Joud holds a Bachelor’s degree in Architectural Engineering from the Jordan University of Science and Technology, and a MArch in Human Settlements from the University of Leuven. She has worked as a Lecturer at the Applied Sciences University in Amman and as a researcher and architect in several organisations and consultancies.

Hamed Khosravi graduated from the Faculty of Fine Arts, University of Tehran. He later obtained a Postgraduate Masters in Urbanism from the EMU program in TU Delft and the IUAV Venice. Between 2002-2008 he worked in Tehran, and then collaborated in Studio09 and Vereniging Deltametropool. He has taught graduation projects at the Berlage Institute and Explore Lab (TU Delft). Hamed is currently a guest tutor at the Department of Architecture, TU Delft in the Netherlands. His ongoing research interests include ‘Political Theology and Urban Form’ within the framework of The City as a Project research group.

Olivier Legrand is a PhD student at Ben-Gurion University. He is doing his research, under the supervision of Professor Yiftachel, on urban sovereignty through a comparative analysis of three polarized cities: Jerusalem, Nicosia and Sarajevo.

Colin Marx is a Lecturer in Land Planning and Management at the Development Planning Unit, University College of London. He researches the ways in which different dynamics work across and between sectors and areas of cities. He has published in international peer-reviewed journals on processes that connect areas of deprivation and wealth in cities. He is currently co-editing a book that seeks to reconceptualise the diverse and multiple spatialities of urban poverty in the global South. As practitioner, he led one of South Africa's largest urban advocacy NGOs engaged in community-driven human settlement development, in the postApartheid era.

Carmen Mendoza-Arroyo is Sub-Director of the School of Architecture of the Universitat Internacional de Catalunya (ESARQ-UIC),

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Associate Professor of Urban Design and Planning, and Co-director of the Masters in International Cooperation Sustainable Emergency Architecture at ESARQ-UIC. Her research is focused on the socio-spatial regeneration of neighborhoods in the Metropolitan Region of Barcelona and informal settlements. In this field she has developed plans and projects and published articles, chapters, and co-edited books such as Reflections on Development and Cooperation (ESARQ-UIC, 2011). She is Co-principal of the firm DAC Arquitectura, Rehabilitació i Urbanisme SLP in Barcelona, in charge of Planning and Urban Design projects.

Lina Scavuzzo, architect and PhD in Urban Planning, is an Associate Lecturer in Spatial and Urban Analysis at the Faculty of Architecture of Politecnico di Milano. Her studies focus on the value of architectural design and its role in the definition of landscape, territorial and social structures, with a focus on the linkages between the design and planning of social housing in Europe. She has been a member of the non-profit organisation ASF-Italia since 2004, where she contributes to local cooperation projects. She recently published Social Housing a Vienna. Il progetto della residenza come campo di sperimentazione per le politiche pubbliche (Maggioli, 2011, in Italian).

Erez Tzfadia is a Senior Lecturer and the head of the Department of Public Policy and Administration at Sapir College in Israel. His research and publications focus on land regimes and spatial policy. His recent research is on ‘grey urbanism’ (with Oren Yiftachel), and on the ‘privatization of space’ (with Haim Yacobi). He co-authored Rethinking Israeli Space (Routledge, 2011), Israel since 1980 (Cambridge, 2008), and co-edited Abandoning State – Surveillancing State: Social Policy in Israel, 1985-2008 (Sapir and Resling, 2010, in Hebrew). Erez is a board member at ‘Bimkon – planners for human rights,’ and at Kolot BaNegev. He is the co-founder of ‘Hagar’ – a binational Jewish-Arab school located in BeerSheva.

Faith Wong completed her MArch and BAArch at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Her research interests are in spatial justice and architectural education.

Oren Yiftachel is Professor of Political Geography and Urban Studies at Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva, Israel. He works on theories of space and power, minorities and public policy, and ‘ethnocratic’ societies and land regimes.