Beyond housing Abstract
In the rapidly growing economy of Bangladesh, housing should be a significant factor in both maintaining and supporting the economy. While sectors like infrastructure, industry and connectivity enjoy prioritised attention, we feel that housing as a foundational sector of development deserves a much bigger, thoughtful and creative focus. This requires a bolder, and important innovation in the urban housing sector, one that cuts across and goes beyond housing, creating a multi-layered approach that embodies the needs of diverse people to live in dignity, and being sensitive to the needs of the environment in terms of sustainable use of energy and material, in short - to make housing future-proof! Fundamentally, our proposal encourages the development of a neighbourhood, who support each other, and learn to manage their housing as a community. Therefore, a productive, collective form of housing, with open accessible shared spaces - looking to the vernacular Bengal’s notions and use of central open-spaces, with activities to support inter generational exchange and encounters, and opportunities to learn and grow together, in growing productive gardens and communal workshops.
Introduction Housing is a fundamental right, recognised in a number of international human rights instruments. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights recognises the right to housing as part of the right to an adequate standard of living It states that: ‘Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself/ herself/themselves and of their family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.’ Bangladesh’s rapid urbanisation and the urban housing shortfall and current crisis stems from a lack of understanding of the importance of housing as both an asset, and as a form of stable security for many lower / lower middle income groups, who migrate (for variety of reasons, mostly being economic ) and a heavy reliance on the private sector to address this need, which has left cities, especially like Dhaka and surrounding cities, with squats, illegal settlements and informal market arrangements - creating infrastructures that are often not safe and inadequate and costing much more to the government, than would regulated and supportive and adequate sized housing models. Globally, urban housing is a complex social and economic dynamic whose results are the physical patterns of cities and settlements, the qualities of collective living, and the health and well-being of the people. Housing is thus a social and material fabric of any city and settlement; it is the key to enhancing the quality of life of the immediate dwellers and the overall city. Yet, housing suffers from many misconceptions and poor practices in Bangladesh.
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Visioning towards a collective, aspirational communal housing plan, our proposal takes lessons learned across the Global south, of the many Ban Maankong projects in Thailand, and others, especially in neighbouring India, Thailand, Cambodia and elsewhere, in proposing dignified housing models, which centres on the health and well being of the people and the planet. We want to go beyond that, and really hone in on the importance of design, of internal and external rooms, that can enliven and embolden the community. Looking to wider models across the globe has also helped us to position our argument in a holistic manner. Learning from both the failures and the successes of high density social housing boom of the post-war period ( failures across Soviet Union, various UK cities and elsewhere) successes across Northern Europe especially in the Netherlands, Denmark and Germany, some cities in the UK ( in the form of successful Housing Associations and Trusts ) and elsewhere - those designed for working class / lower middle income communities, successful co-operative housing models across UK cities, and also further developed across the globe, community land trust housing and the positive role of the private sector in enabling and helping with access to financial instruments to invest and build suitable housing. There are many tools and approaches we can use, however, we want to focus fundamentally on principles that will deliver dignified homes.
Conceptual Framework In defining our concepts for the proposal, we look to Amartya Sen and Martha Nusbaums ‘Capabilities Approach within healthy housing. The capability approach as a normative approach to wellbeing focuses on the real freedoms of people to choose the life they want to live (Sen, 1999). The capability approach as elaborated is to start from the definition of wellbeing of the individual instead of from ‘paternalistic’ policy aims. The starting point is not the paternalistic welfare state determining how to assist the deprived receiver with material help, but the citizen, his/her perceptions about real freedoms to choose a ‘housing’ life. This definition requires as point of departure the knowledge about the life an individual values and (s)he would choose as the life (s)he wants to live. ( Reference: https://www.feantsaresearch.org/public/user/Observatory/2019/EJH/EJH_13_1/ Feantsa-2019_13-1_Article-1.pdf ) for the above paragraph. By focusing on what people are actually able to do and be, from within the context they operate within, important limitations of other approaches to social justice can be negated (Sen 1993). Firstly, a concentration on greater equality of ‘‘goods’’ accessible to all, found in some theories of justice (such as the level of income) does not account for difference between groups. Different means may be required for the same outcomes. So for example, a pregnant women or an older person with little mobility require different resources from each other, and different resources compared to an able bodied male, to attain the same outcomes, such as adequate housing, health or well-being. Just ensuring that there is a threshold of resources available for all does not take into account other factors that enable or constrain what humans are actually capable of with these resources (Sen 2004:332). Secondly, agency is taken seriously in the capabilities approach – it is not what people do, but what they are capable of doing that is the focus. Therefore intangible measurements of equality that rely on what people actually do rather than could do are negated. The influence of context, difference and agency to the outcomes that occur are also important. ( reference for above: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14036090902764588 )
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So, given the context and limitations of the project, we have developed the following framework for our proposal to define a 'healthy housing' and explore the underlying sets of principles.
Can we aspire to define healthy housing?
Can a healthy housing act as an incubator to develop a community?
Does the community recognises individual aspirations?
How to sustain the growth of such a healthy housing environmentally?
How can the community sustain such housing economically?
Can we aspire to define healthy housing? Healthy housing is defined as one that addresses health and wellbeing of the residents, fosters a safe, educational and creative environment and enables the individual to collective empowerment to sustain its growth. Followings are the principles, we think, are essential for healthy housing:
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· Health and happiness A neighbourhood thrives on ensuring the health and wellbeing of its residents. Overall wellbeing is defined by both bodily and mental health. A healthy built environment should offer facilities for physically and mentally stimulating activities as well as a friendly and secured neighbourhood. · Cultural health: Creative, educational and recreational activities A healthy housing needs to nourish creativity for a sound cultural health. Education and recreation are of utmost necessity here, especially for children and women. · Capacity building and economic empowerment The target population belongs to lower-middle-income group. We are yet to test effective business model integrated to the housing mechanism which is critical for economic empowerment of the community and sustainability in the longer run. A healthy housing need to integrate community-led revenue generating mechanisms with shared responsibilities and benefits.
Can a healthy housing act as an incubator to develop a community? Rather than creating a space to house a number of families the concept actually takes up on the idea of designing a space that encourages, can accommodate and enable the target population to build a healthy community to which they are going to be part of. Communal development can solve complex socio-economic problems that are otherwise difficult to achieve alone. What communal development will do : • Build social capital by capitalise on local skills, resources and evoking entrepreneurship • Equip the community with negotiation power • Build capacity to respond collectively to economic, social and environmental problems • Create a sense of pride, ownership over shared spaces • Create a sense of safety • Solve interconnected social problems related to isolation and mental health. Principles for creating communal sense: ·
Building trust and communal ownership
Building the sense of ownership is at the core to develop and sustain a housing community. The idea is to create a space that could potentially and sustainably install a culture of participation and active decision making thereby developing a sense of ownership and belongingness among the targeted communities to be housed. ·
Social Cohesion and collective decision making
The housing model should foster social cohesion. Space needs to be able to open to individual ideas and aspirations and offer scopes for exchanges and collective decision making and participation in implementation. ·
Inclusiveness: Accessibility and equalities
Inclusivity in a design will respect as many people as possible, regardless of age, gender and disability. Building a strong communal sense starts with taking consideration of all the differences in the target group all aspects and address them to a common ground for manifestations and in practices. The principles that are in play for an inclusive, accessible and universal design are:
- Everyone can use and access safely, easily and with dignity - Takes on consideration of individual needs and aspiration - Different usability to different people of the community without too much effort or separation 4
Proposed programs for healthy housing that builds ‘communal sense’: We developed our space program, keeping two simple things in mind: ‘People’ in the heart of how this housing should work Scope of ‘Participation’ so that the place would be made by everyone, for everyone.
Figure: Proposed program for communal development
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Connect Space The idea of a connecting space is proposed to connect the community with the outside wider community by acting as an entry point for public with a limited accessibility to reserve community environment and privacy. It connects the different programs for social cohesion, health, entrepreneurial and agriculture and provides a platform and information centre for exchanges within and beyond the community.
Figure: The principle of connect space Artistic/ therapeutic workshop A communal workshop space that engages the community through workshops and activities. Ideas that can be practiced may include creative-recreational-awareness building workshops, products and craft making and potentially art works as part of art therapy. The decision lies with the residents for personalization and utilization of the workshop space as they feel. Play for all Playing is crucial for a healthy development of childhood and also for mental-physical wellbeing of all. There is a playground at the centre for children, women and adults to engage with outdoor physiological activities and sports. Club Activities A youth club to encourage community youths and provide educational and recreational platform to perform. Youth projects, indoor games, welfare activities, science and technology fair and other youth-led initiatives can be promoted through the club.
Early childhood learning
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A early childhood learning service is on high demand to support working women. It can provide pre-schooling, life skill and value learning and security through day care services. Idea incubator The space is for idea incubation with potentials for testing and revenue generation. It could serve multiple purposes: • Reaching out to outside to co-design projects with wider community stakes like City/ local authority, local businesses, promoters, entrepreneurs and organisations • Encouraging people to come with idea and facilitate to develop further Idea testing, training and skill building by allocating space, tool and people • Hosting business idea events to show what is possible, tested, piloted • Documenting, archiving and disseminating ideas, participations and stories Shared work space A shared workspace is much needed especially to engage the aspiring people, especially women ,in revenue generating activities (for example, making handicrafts) and can host workshops with master artisans. Community people through crafts and product making workshops can exhibit and sale products as means for individual and group earnings. Multiple groups could run simultaneously and potentially inspire others, exchange and generate ideas to work on. Productive garden Terraces along the communal streets are potential spaces for household kitchen garden or a group farming initiatives. The scope is usually lacking in urban communities which are mostly unplanned to support kitchen gardening. Individual households should avail the opportunity to productively use the space for household vegetable and spice growing. Or a group of enthusiastic families could collectively grow. There are effective techniques for making micro gardens utilizing maximum benefits of the space: • • • •
Kitchen growing bed Leafy vegetable growing nets Rooftop gardening Vertical gardening
7 Figure: Spatial diagram for community development
Does the community recognises individual aspirations? The sense of collective ownership lies deep in one's individual sense of participation and belongingness to that particular community. Hence the question arises if the community values individual aspirations. Three key principles that were taken in consideration to address here: ·
Individual ownership and identity with dignity
Individual households need to be allowed for personalisation and utilisation of one's own units. Individual families should be able to work on their own aspirations and express individual identity. Only then the families can uphold their value perceptions and dignity and co-exist in harmony. ·
Individual decision making: Control over one's own environment
As a family or units of a common group, the rights and capacity to decision making need to be upheld. Each household bears a unique taste and sense of bonding ·
Empowerment: Active participation to initiatives
Decision making in practice relies on being able to actively participate in the implementation and adaptation of practices. The community needs to recognise individual sets of skills and expertise and employ accordingly to empower the units that will eventually drive the communal growth.
Design considerations for individual aspiration in the housing: Housing units and communal street Housing units has been carefully designed to accommodate maximum facilities and flexibility for the users to decide on how they want their home to be. The smaller unit with one bed (416 soft) has a multipurpose space outside of the bed room that can be used as living room, dining space or even an additional bed cum study area. The permanent walls and openings are carefully put so that any family living in the house get maximum surface to put their furnitures against those. The larger unit (sqft) with two bedroom, two balcony , kitchen, toilet and a multipurpose space. Again the multipurpose space can accommodate one more person, or living and dining area according to the owner’s need. The division between to spaces can be a permanent wall or a storage feature, that can both work as partition a storage space that serves both the spaces. The kitchen will have provision for separate openings at eye level and above eye level that will serve the ventilation of the kitchen and also bring out the activity of cooking as an interaction tool with the neighbours. However, the option for having a private kitchen is also there as the user can close down the opening (still have ventilation) whenever they want. The front facade of each unit will be designed by the owners themselves. This gives them the power to make the front access ways as a part of their extended home as well as a shared space with neighbours, where various activity can take place, such as producing gardening, hanging out area, children play area etc. The idea is to bring the vibrancy of a communal street on each floor that will make the whole housing more connecting. If anyone decide to create some opening towards their front facade, they will get the benefit of more ventilation. This personalised facade designs will then be extended to the communal street (common access ) and be adapted by the vertical fins which are designed for the Sun. These fins and directional shapes of the communal street make scope for people to have privacy, as they guide the direction of visual attention. Also, the these create niche spaces that is more suitable for personalise by individual or among neighbours.
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Figure: Communal Street
How to sustain the growth of such a healthy housing environmentally? Form development
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How can the community sustain of such a housing economically? Considerations for cost reductions in the design • All the shared wall of the units are ten inch brick wall with ‘rat trap bond’ which reduces the material by almost one-third. • Inside the units, The walls are of three inch (with RCC tie, where needed) which again reduces the material use by one-third. • The material proposed are mostly locally produced yet massively produced. For example, shading elements on the south will be made from locally produced ventilator that had traditionally used for on houses in Bengal for many years. This can also become a way to generating economy within the building industry. Guideline for community for managing the The proposition is to generate ideas within and engaging the wider community. Initiatives are taken on a pilot or testing scale within the housing community employing local skills and resources. Local market, business opportunities and resources are accessed to develop and run revenue generating activities and projects. Thus a sustainable model of interconnected programs within the housing community and with the wider community stakes are proposed to be run. Accountabilities and benefits are distributed and shared with transparency and also reinvested for scaling up and sustaining the mechanisms.
We believe, all of this is entirely within the reach of the project, which addresses the above by meaningful design interventions in both the plans, masterplans and a suggested organisation of programming and management of services and activities over the long term, by the community.
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