Urban Informal Expressions I: Guerrilla Gardening
Sambinha Architecture, Biophysics, and Cheap Energy
To my friends and family who are unfamiliar with my town, I’ve often described it by asking them to picture the US in the pre-interstate highway era. It’d take about twice as long to drive to Seattle as it does to reach two of the largest three wilderness areas in the contiguous United States. And they are practically adjacent. But for the University nearby to keep things shaken up, it’s a fairly sleepy place. Moose have been known to wander through town often enough to delight or shock newcomers. My wife even ran into a wolf while watching owls in our favorite stand of white pine. Like I said, it’s a bit out of the way. Even so, issues of energy consumption are consistently at my doorstep.
I live a scenic distance from an inland seaport; the seaport that has over the past months been used to import enormous modules of tarsands extraction equipment. The loads are trucked overnight in order to close the long winding stretches of two-lane highway to make way for these “megaloads”
The Lochsa River somewhere near the Idaho-Montana border. Click through for image credit.
The region through which they transport this machinery is among the wildest in the US. There are very few places left where grizzlies, wolves and other predators can live, anthropophobic such as they are. That they are able live here in the Rockies is a testament to the still-healthy ecosystems—around here they are some places that are as close to unsullied as it gets: places that are the least effected by the destructive habits of capitalism. That is until you get to the extraction sites north of Edmonton, Alberta. It brings to mind historic feats of planning and industry, and then tosses them aside like broken toys. Read More…
More Definitions :: Informality vs. Informalities
While reading some of the posts from last week, I couldn’t help but ask myself again ‘What is informality?’ The more I learn about the subject, the more difficult it becomes to give a straightforward answer.
To expand, and piggyback on Paula’s thoughts, although slums are usually informal settlements, not all informal settlements are “slums”. In this same respect, informality is not necessarily equivalent to the action squatting. According to Caldeira and Holston (2008), this generalized definition of “slum”, also adopted by Mike Davis in “Planet of Slums” (2006), homogenizes and stigmatizes all non-formal shelter practices. The urban poor now have to deal with another form of social exclusion and many of these working and living neighborhoods, and communities, are reduced to eviction and demolition.
In 2009, I attended a conference titled “Peripheries,” organized by Prof. of Urban Planning Teresa Caldeira, and Professor of Geogrophy James Holston, in 2009 (UC Berkeley). The conference aimed to understand and deconstruct the label of “peripheries” by searching new perspectives and understandings of different social and urban formations contingent upon this idea. During the entirety of the conference the use of a plural “peripheries” was stressed over a singular “periphery”. In the same way, I am inclined to use the term “informalities” vs. informality. Castells states the following: “Since the informal economy does not result from the intrinsic characteristic of activities, but from the social definition of state intervention, the boundaries of the informal economy will substantially vary in different contexts and historical circumstances.”[1] Stepping away from the term’s stigmatization, there is not only one type of “informality” but various “informalities”. I will argue that informality is not Read More…
A Pleasant Encounter in a Buenos Aires Market
"Enjoy Public Space" in Buenos Aires. (J.Renteria)
In my previous post, I described my experience navigating what turned out to be just a small bit of the 20 hectares of La Salada, the self-proclaimed “largest informal market of Latin America,” located just beyond Buenos Aires’ southern edge as being, for the most part, chaotic and uncomfortably multi-sensory. This stands in stark contrast to some of what I witnessed within the city itself.
While the massive La Salada remained relatively illegible to me during my visit, having been disoriented most of the time I was there and then having needed an architect with a special research interest in the market explain its workings to me through different kinds of media in order to get some sense of its scale and complexity, the city markets often offered more intimate moments with both the vendors and the spaces out of which they sold their goods. This was largely in the shape of small, itinerant neighborhood, government-registered markets located sporadically throughout the city.
The tricky question of calling a “slum” a slum
Source: – London (Left, 1880) and Mumbai (Right, 2009) slums, London (http://affordablehousinginstitute.org/blogs/us/2008/08/how-a-slum-dies-part-2-in-the-21st-century.html), Mumbai (Author’s, Betwala Chawl)
Since most of our contributions in our delicious favelissues blog deal with slum or informal settlements I wanted to share with you today a brief analysis of the history and diversity of how we define “slums”. A couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to have Alain Gilbert as one of the jury’s of my PhD dissertation and had to defend my use of the word “slum” throughout my manuscript – bear in mind that my PhD was on slum policies so the word “slum” was very common. Alain has been one of the academics leading the “slum” definition debate and argues that academics and practitioners should avoid defining “slums” as slums because of the negative connotation this term is related to (Tucker Landesman mentions Alain’s position on his previous post)[2]. I have my own opinion about this, and will share it at the end of this post, but will first start with a brief history of the idea and definition of “slums”.
A brief history of slum definition
Slums, favelas, bidonvilles, shantytowns, villas miseria, aashwa’i are all different names that describe one of the most common human settlements in developing cities: informal settlements. But what exactly are slums or informal settlements? The first known definition in the English language of the word slum appeared in the Vocabulary of Flash Language in 1812, where it is given as a synonym with “racket” or “criminal trade” (Mike Davis, 2006). At this time slum settlements were associated with urban areas in which the poor lived under precarious sanitary conditions, an idea that is still very accurate to describe today’s slums, but also referred to areas that concentrated a number of criminal activities. The stigmatization of slums as areas housing criminal populations persisted; in 1894, the US Department of Labor, in its survey entitled The Slums of Great Cities, defined slums as “areas of dirty back streets especially when inhabited by a squalid and criminal population” Davis (2006). Today the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines slums Read More…
Favelas, Foreigners and Due Diligence
If you haven’t seen some iteration or other of the “KONY 2012″ campaign yet, you have lived a dearly rare life in America over the last few months. Likely as not you’ve even seen comments on social media about how played out it is: “get over it already,” “people only care on the internet, not in real life,” that sort of thing. You may, however, have missed the series of Tweets by an extraordinarily bright and talented writer called Teju Cole. If this is the case: here’s your chance to make good.
I bring up Mr Cole because of late I have been working on three new posts: one on household energy use in Rocinha, another that discusses the sense of community observed in favelas, and the one you’re now reading that’s been on my mind for several months now but hadn’t started writing for lack of a launching pad. Teju Cole finally provided that for me.
Author Teju Cole. (Click image for source).
Now that you’ve clicked through the link and seen his article at The Atlantic, you’ll begin to see what his Tweets and the article that sprung from them has to do with favelas. It’s all about systems and symptoms, causes, and effects, intentions and privilege. Mr. Cole is American of Nigerian decent, and you may have noticed, is a PEN/Hemingway winner. In other words, he is legit. And given his cultural heritage, life experience, perceptive mind, and provocative voice, he’s more than equipped to comment on the KONY 2012 phenomenon. Read More…
Skins+Signs :: PART 2
AESTHETIZATIONS+GENTRIFICATION
“Observers of the contemporary city have described the late capitalist urban condition as characterized by a trend toward the aesthetization, where the primacy of the visual and the centrality of the image have reduced the city to a landscape of visual consumption, an object to be gazed upon, or a spectacle. Current urban design practices are said to nourish this appeal or the embellishment of the material world by giving precedence of the façade to the creation of urbane disguises, thereby reducing the effect of much architecture to two dimensions.”[1]
Stairs in Vila Cruzeiro; source:www.favelapainting.com
In the previous post, we discussed the role of image, looking at three particular examples of representations on urban informality. In this post, we will explore some of the implications when placing too much attention solely on representation. As Namrata well pointed out in her previous post: In Retrospect, solely focusing on physical transformations, and viewing informal settlements as purely built form can lead to an aesthetization of the area, turning informal settlements into simple representations drawn up by the “bourgeois gaze.”[2] (Roy, Ananya, “Transnational Trespassing,” pp.302)
By looking at a settlement primarily as built form implies that “upgrading” would entail a “package of environmental reforms,” and that these upgrading should be based on aesthetics that are interpretations of poverty and informality by professionals; failing to take into account the socioeconomic structure of the slums. Ananya Roy argues that one element of this aesthetic is the emphasis on architecture and on the physical expression of the settlements. The limitations are basically the focus of the built environment and physical amenities over people’s capacity or livelihoods, wages and political capacities.
Ken Lum’s from shangri-la to shangri-la, 2010 site-specific installation, Vancouver, photograph by Gordon Brent Ingram; Squatting in Vancouverism, http://gordonbrentingram.ca
“To present the stories as embodied in aesthetic structures is to imagine poverty or the informal sector as a pre-capitalist domain, free of material corruptions […] The material reality of squatting is, of course, that it is very much about territorial exclusions, about Read More…
[re]visiting low-income housing :: BUILDING LOCAL WORKSHOP [JUNE 2012]
In many developing countries, current low-income housing strategies prove to be not only inefficient but also unsustainable in their designs, material and construction choices, and are impeded by high costs and inhibiting policies. In this regard, place-based responses are essential in the approach. This includes strong participatory processes to address existing realities and needs, allow community empowerment and provide long-term appropriation and self-sustainability. It also means taking advantage of local materials and related construction skills within a community, the existing cultural traditions, and surrounding ecologies in order to provide adequate solution at all scales (housing, infrastructure and urban design).
With that said, I wanted to share information on BUILDING LOCAL, a design-build workshop that will take place in Barichara, Colombia from June 15 to June 25.
The design-build studio will explore the aesthetic, assembly andtectonic qualities of local materials: earth, stone, fique, bamboo and wood, engaging students in a series of workshops that will culminate in the design and construction of an efficient and innovative low-income dwelling/farmhouse.
Barichara is a small town of 8000 people located on the Andean hills on the North Western region of Colombia, in the Department of Santander. With colonial architecture dating back to 1705, and traditions of earth and stone constructions, Barichara is one the historical landmark in the country. Currently, as the town transitions from an agricultural economy to a service based economy –relying primarily on tourism- new residents are moving in and the town is experiencing various environmental and social transformations. On the one hand, these transformations offer new opportunities for innovation, further experimenting with local materials and the existing building typologies, yet, on the other, they reflect a troubling condition for local farmers, or campesinos, that are now searching for their own space among the incoming residents and within the new economy. Barichara is therefore a unique place to learn and explore local construction techniques, while requiring a multi-dimensional proposal that addresses and engages the socio-economical and environmental impacts of a transitional economy.
LINK TO WORKSHOP WEBSITE: BUILDING LOCAL
**Image source: FUNDACION ORGANIZMO, Design-build Center for the Sustainable Habitats, www.organizmo.org
Skins+Signs :: PART 1
[Skin+Signs]: Upgrading tool driven by aesthetics and imagery. Skins+Signs focuses on minimal interventions, such as the application of paint, ornament, and marketing to the exterior of buildings and structures, attempting to beautify and brand the existing area.
- Favela Painting, Favela Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro; Source: www.favelapainting.com
To piggyback on a previous post, Remaking Rio: favela tourism and the tourist narrative, I want to focus on aspects of representation, particularly looking at the way in which informality is viewed, imagined and represented, as well as the implications on upgrading projects and their physical manifestations. For this, I will present this exploration in two initial posts:
- 1-Learning from the ‘Informal’
- 2- Facades+ Aestitzations
PART 1: Learning from the Informal
A-The Image
Aside from the artistic qualities linked to issues of image and representation, the means and methods used to represent a particular reality – be it through photography, a sketch, a rendering, a painting, a plan, or statistical projections- reflect particular ways of thinking about society and its transformation. Here, form, function and content fully overlap.
Representations are not simply the way the world is presented, but it is the way the world is intimately known, in many ways experienced, and in certain times manipulated to achieve a particular effect or describe a point of view to the audience.
- Dionisio Gonzales Photo-montages
In this regard, Loïc Wacquant, professor of Sociology at the University of California at Berkeley, points out that “poverty is too often (wrongly) equated with material dispossession or insufficient income. But in addition to being deprived of adequate conditions and means of living, to be poor in a rich society entails having the status of a social anomaly and being Read More…
SELR: Slum Electrification and Loss Reduction Program
Transforming Electricity Consumers into Customers: Case Study of a Slum Electrification and Loss Reduction Project in São Paulo, Brazil
Today I will be writing about a project that although I have known for a while keeps coming back to my head every time I try to think about a successful example of going beyond sectors (housing, energy, transport…) when doing slum upgrading interventions. I learned about this project when I was in India working on my PhD and evaluating the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme being implemented in Mumbai. I was volunteering at the Slum Rehabilitation Society – a small but inspiring NGO that worked in slums since the early 70’s – and since they were helping me out with some of my research I felt the need to help them out with one or two basic things. In return for their solidarity I agreed to help them (1) redeveloping their webpage that was quite outdated – I have to admit that I am not especially proud of my work on this area since my design skills stopped in kindergarten – and (2) help them develop a set of community workshops for a Safe Electrification and Loss Reduction Project in Mumbai that was bound to replicate the SELR project in Sao Paulo, Brazil. The NGO in which I was volunteering was in charge of communicating the project to slum households on behalf of USAID and COPPER International, the two agencies leading the projects.
I left Mumbai long before the community workshops started so my knowledge of SELR Mumbai or its outcomes stopped there but during the workshops’ preparation I learned a little about SELR Sao Paulo and that is what I wanted to share with you today. The Slum Electrification and Loss Reduction Project –SELR- aimed to (1) solve a large-scale and long-term problem of electricity losses from theft and non-payment in slums (2) while bringing more reliable and safer electricity service to its residents and (3) reduce their electricity consumption dramatically to affordable levels. Its first pilot was in Paraisópolis, a slum in Sao Paulo. At first, when I started reading the papers Read More…
Adriana Navarro Sertich
Lubaina Rangwala
Jennifer Renteria
Kirsten Larson
Proyectos Arqui5
Tucker Landesman
Namrata Kapoor
Paula Restrepo-Cadavid
Andrew Carman
Jose Antonio Ramirez
Fernando Luiz Lara
Bethany Opalach
