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 In return for their solidarity I agreed to help them (1) redeveloping their webpage that was quite outdated – I have to admit that I am not especially proud of my work on this area since my design skills stopped in kindergarten – and (2) help them develop a set of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…
Are There Many “Informalities”? Reflections from my past work…
As part of a one-year research fellowship, at the Kamla Raheja Vidhyanidhi Institute for Architecture, I studied processes of urban development and land acquisition in Mumbai, through the academic year 2006-07. The turn of the century in Mumbai came with its desire for newness—urban renewal, redevelopment, gentrification and the realization of a global city—Mumbai began its process of “Shangaification”. As part of my research project, I began tracing the developmental linkages of a Shopping Mall and Residential Condominium building in an inner city neighborhood of Central Mumbai. The case of the Shopping Mall is particularly interesting and one that raises very important questions for urban practitioners working within neoliberal societies.
In 1984 the State Government of Maharashtra, introduced the Cess Policy that entitled an additional 2.00 FSI (Floor Space Index or Floor Area Ration [FAR]) for the redevelopment of old dilapidated buildings in the Island City of Mumbai. Cessed properties are old residential or mixed-use buildings that are owned by “landlords” and occupied by tenants who often do not have the required finance capital for self-redevelopment. The policy encourages private developers to redevelop old buildings, while rehabilitating old tenants on the same plot of land and selling the additional units at market rate to offset development costs. While this policy was introduced in the best interest of communities living in the inner city neighborhoods of Mumbai, to ensure these neighborhoods could be revitalized with negligible gentrification, it was being used as a means to “illegally” acquire FSIs up to 7 and 8 times (and in some cases even higher) more than what was legally permissible. Uses that did not previously exist or tenants who were not involved were brought in to present false cases that could exploit the loopholes of the said policy. Such was the case of the City Center Shopping Mall and Orchid Enclave Residential building.
Neighboring context, average building heights 2-3 storeys.
Haphazard redeveloped buildings based on DCR 33/7 along a neighboring street from the Mall
Round the corner from the new Mall
The City Center Mall was built on a site where roughly 100 tenants with mostly commercial uses—i.e. auto-repair stores, hardware stores, and other miscellaneous retail and commerce—rented or owned space. Visually (or aesthetically) these buildings (mostly ground plus two or three storey, see above) looked dilapidated, with crumbling infrastructure, very little light or ventilation, and prone to all kinds of public health concerns. However, the cess policy does not permit Read More…
2011 Leftovers :: Floods + Stairs – Part 2
2-La ‘Niña’: too much water?
“La maldita ‘Niña‘ ha sido el karma de mi Gobierno” (The darn “Niña’ has been the karma of my government). Juan Manuel Santos, President of Colombia
Inundations in Colombia, source: El Tiempo
THE CONTEXT
Similar to many developing countries, Colombia faces pressing shortages in housing, particularly due to the inefficient production of low-income dwellings. Moreover, the continuing political violence and recent winter storms in the country have lead to unprecedented increase in displaced populations in urgent need for housing.
According to a 2011 study produced by Camacol, the Colombian Chamber for Construction, for the National Federation of Departments, the country needs to construct approximately 350 000 housing units per year for twenty years to eliminate the housing shortage that exist in the country. These numbers do not include the great percentage of the population that lives in informal settlements, many of which live under illegal and inadequate conditions, lacking basic infrastructure and services, and access to tenure.
Indeed the heavy storms at the end of 2010 and 2011 have resulted in severe inundations and displacement throughout Colombia. Classified some of the worst natural tragedies in the history of Colombia, the recent floods have affected close to 3 million people at national level. A great number of the affected population are inhabitants of informal developments and rural areas that have heavily flooded. Nevertheless, should we only blame the rain?
This image, taken in the outskirts of Bogotá, shows one example of cases where housing was built on former lakes that were filled in, or dried up with the use of particular vegetation. In this particular case, the rain have refilled the lake Fuque.
LA NINA
While many blame the amount of rain as a culprit of the inundations, disasters and displacement that Colombia is now Read More…
Who’s Afraid of the Informal?: slum as an analytical category
Photo montage by Dionsio Gonzales
Following Lubiana’s post about urban informality as a form of protesting economic inequality and my own post praising the social relations engendered by informal spaces both in Occupied space and favelas, Sylvia Soonets, from Proyectos Arqui 5 in Caracas, passionately cautioned against romanticizing informal housing settlements based on political sympathizes or allegiances to various local–global Occupy protest movements. She is right to critique discourses that seem to characterize slums as sanitized bastions of the creative and resourceful human spirit. A romantic portrayal of poverty manifested as slum was not my intention. Instead I voiced enthusiasm for resistance to the hegemonic ordering of the city in forms that benefits the few at the expense of the many. A healthy debate concerning the doubts raised by Soonets is productive, for it touches on current debates and critiques in urbanist literature questioning the trendiness of slum studies as well as sensationalism in popular media.
The encampments of Occupiers (turned squatters?) in cities across Europe and North America (inspired by movements in Latin America and North Africa) make visible, in a purposefully spatial manner, economic inequality in the ‘Global North.’ Unplanned slum settlements that are ubiquitous to the cityscapes of many ‘Global South’ cities are a continual reminder of unwarranted inequality in the world over. In fact the persistence of the dichotomous socio-spatial categories city/slum–formal/informal signifies a codependent relationship; that one does not exist without the other.
Prominent Latin Americanist Alan Gilbert has long been critical of development discourse and recently has questioned the continued use of the slum as an analytical category from which to study urban poverty [1]. The danger of validating the slum as a legitimate object of study and policy risks essentializing the urban poor as well as encouraging the modern developmentalist idea of a city without slums. The idea of a city without slums fortunately has not taken center stage in Latin America, but it Read More…
Prepping for the New Year
On behalf of the FAVELissues team, we want to wish you happy holidays and a very prosperous new year!
Thank you for your support, comments and contributions. We look forward to continue sharing, challenging and building around concepts and discussions of urban informality, seeking a more equitable and sustainable city development.
Best regards,
Incremental housing or Sites&Services Reloaded?
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Quinta Monroy, housing project in Iquique (Chile) by Elemental; Image taken from Eduardo Rojas presentation at the IADB
Most of the cities in developing countries have been constructed using incremental housing techniques. This form of urbanization – generally used by low income households to access land and housing – involves the incremental improvement of housing, passing from very basic constructions -that are usually sub-standard and have little access to basic services- to more consolidated structures with higher density.
During the past couple of years NGOs and international organizations have started thinking of using incremental housing - that low income household have used for decades- as a methodology for reconstruction following natural disasters and, more recently, as a new way of producing affordable housing. The use of incremental housing techniques for reconstruction of houses after Natural Disasters has already been experimented in a number of countries (Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Pakistan…), has proven to be more efficient than standardized top-down approaches and to lead to higher levels of satisfaction, as households rebuild according to their preferences. I will discuss incremental housing for reconstruction in another post and will concentrate on incremental housing as a source for affordable housing.
According to Eduardo Rojas from the IADB around 60% of the population builds their own home through incremental improvements that generally last around 12-15 years. But why does it take so long for households to improve and consolidate their homes? Basically there are a number of steps in the improvement process that can rarely be led by an individual household and require either the involvement of public authorities or an organized community. Providing access roads, potable water, drainage and higher security of tenure are among the incremental improvements that fall under the previous category. So how can governments use incremental housing to create more affordable housing?
In a first stage governments can coordinate the provision of components that need require the involvement of public authorities such as access roads, tenure and basic services, and leave to households Read More…
Tale of Two Transits
I recently ran into a video well worth checking out on the Abahlali baseMjondolo homepage. The video documents comments made by Bandile Mdlalose representing Abahlali baseMjondolo (The South African Shack Dwellers Movement) at a round table discussion of how the media is addressing climate change in the lead up to COP 17 now underway in Durban. Ms Mdlalose says,
“The lack from our understanding is the language [of climate change]. The language tends to be very very high class. It has spoken too much language that sometimes leaves the poor people outside the talks because the language has become too much. Maybe if we could come down with the language linking it with our daily struggle… “
Bandile Mdlalose addresses SACSIS/Friedrich Ebert Stiftung roundtable discussion on "The Media and Climate Change." Click for full video on the Abahlali baseMjondolo website.
And I find myself once again agreeing, yes the language has become too much, hasn’t it. And yes, it does leave the poor out of the conversation and yes it does ignore the daily struggles of the poor. At the rate we are going, we will be talking our planet to death. A lot of these problems were the downfall of COP 15 and are likely to provide insurmountable in COP 17 as well. And really what can we expect, the language has become too much: too much talking, too much ignoring the poor (most of the world, lest we forget).
And speaking of class as it relates to climate change, Foster + Partners just released their master plan for integrating the British transit systems. It is very cool. And huge. Colossal. It makes the word colossal seem quaint. It’s the sort of planning project that comes around only as often as ambition that boundless. So what does it have to do with class, or climate change?
Foster’s Thames Hub, is slated to be the integration of all genres of travel, freight, logistics, and even energy and information. Foster + Partners offers as its impetus for the scope of the project “Britain can no longer trade on an inadequate and aged infrastructure… We are rolling over and saying we are no longer competitive – and this is a competitive world.” The explanation of the project is sopping with bravado and enthusiasm for global capitalism, touting its ability to “maximize trade links” and offering an endorsement from a noted consultant on the positive effects of agglomeration on capitalist markets. Lord Foster (hilarious that he’s a “Lord”) even goes so far as to assert that “I believe we do not have a choice” as to building this colossus of infrastructure.
The Thames Hub, Foster + Partners. Click for F+P's project description. Image Copyright Foster + Partners.
Of course this is as silly as the presupposition that global capitalism and Britain’s success therein is what is singularly good, righteous, and necessary to the prosperity of future generations of Britons.
All the same, I was struck by my own reaction to the Thames hub. It reminded me of reading in Edmund Burke and Jean Francois Lyotard regarding the Sublime. Burke defines the Sublime as that Read More…
‘Open information solutions for the Urban Poor’
“Tools such as mobile phones can be used to empower citizens through mapping their communities, providing feedback on service delivery, and gaining access to information on jobs, markets, and hazard conditions.” Judy Baker, Lead Economist of the World Bank Institute Urban Practice
A couple of days ago I had the opportunity to attend a Brown Bag Lunch of the World Bank Institute WBI entitled ‘Open Information Solutions for the Urban Poor’. During an hour and a half four speakers advocated the use of Information and Communications Technologies ICT for development or what they call ICT4D. While, being a user of many ‘Aps’, I was aware of the endless applications that open information solutions had in developed countries – where there is a high access to information technologies – , however, their use in urban contexts in developing countries seemed to me distant and complex. It took me only an hour to change my mind.
Reality check…
I guess my ignorance of the opportunities that ICTs had for development issues came from my ignorance of the recent exponential growth of some ICTs in developing countries. While Internet is still a rare commodity in developing countries – only 11% of Africans and 24% of Asians have access to it – mobile phones have been democratized much faster than any other ICT. Since 2002, mobile penetration has grown by 321% in emerging economies compared to 46% in developed countries. Africa, the least developed continent, had only 17 million mobile connections in 2000 and has today around 620 million, corresponding to 60% of the population. But the democratization of some ICT in developing countries is only a part of the equation, how can basic information technologies help to tackle developing issues?
From Yelp to M-PESA
Today, most of the open information solutions used in developed countries are based on spatial applications that require GPS and mobile access to the internet. Smartphone applications like Yelp or Poynt – that can point you to the nearest and best reviewed restaurant – are based on information made by users for users, most of which have Read More…
Lecture at Parsons :: Vila Viva Favela Redesign, Belo Horizonte
Fernando Lara lectures at Parsons School of Design, discussing participatory budgeting strategies in Belo Horizonte, and recent projects in the Brazilian favelas.
“Vila Viva Favela Redesign, Belo Horizonte, Brazil.” Claudius Pereira, chief executive of the Agency for Housing and Urbanization for Belo Horizonte, Brazil, and Dr. Fernando Lara, architect and professor at the University of Texas, Austin, discuss the redesign of the Vila Viva Favela, winner of a Metropolis Award.
TIME: Wednesday, November 02, 2011 6:00 p.m. – 8:00 p.m.
LOCATION: 6 East 16th Street, 12th Floor, Room 1200
ADMISSION: Free; no tickets or reservations required; seating is first-come first-served
Link + Article :: Design for the Other 90% CITIES
Top: Children play on the Platform of Hope, above Gulshan Lake, Dhaka, Bangladesh. [Photo by Khondaker Hasibul Kabir] Bottom: A mural by community youth and artists Jeroen Koolhaas and Dre Urhahn, working under the nameHaas&Hahn, Vila Cruzeiro favela, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. [Photo by Haas&Hahn]
Cynthia Smith, the curator of the Cooper Hewitt’s Design for the Other 90%: CITIES exhibit wrote an interesting article on the online journal Places. The article summarizing Smith’s observations and findings, as well as showcases some particular projects. Following is a link of to the article, as well as a link to the online database of the CITIES exhibit.
Cynthia Smith on PLACES
Design for the Other 90%: CITIES ONLINE DATABASE
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
