Scene from the new documentary “Batalha do Passinho” featuring the 9-year-old champion, Christian. Click through for video.

So, I ignored the sarcasm and took a moment to explain what it was and where it came from and how it seemed to me to be following the same favela-to-mainstream cultural narrative arch that samba once had (she’s somewhat familiar with samba from watching Dancing with the Stars, well, and from being alive), only so much more quickly because of youtube. “But at least samba doesn’t sound like you’re in the ghetto!” she responded. I thought it was really interesting that she immediately associated the sound with “ghetto.” I’m not sure if she was referring to the sound engineering or production quality, or the heavily syncopated rhythms, or the rapping vocal track, or what. Maybe all of that. But it was a pretty profound thing to say I guess, even if she meant it in derogatory sense. That the sound could be an auditory expression of it’s urban circumstances, so accutely and accurately, even to someone who knows so little about any of it, is pretty amazing by itself.

Arguably the Youtube clip that started it all. Click through for video.

It is of course essential to remember that samba was once ghetto music too. It didn’t really catch on culturally until white, non-favela singers started playing it as well. For a long time it was associated with Afro-syncretic traditions, and blackness and favelas, and therefore was less acceptable to the mainstream public.

But what else is amazing is the the sheer exuberance expressed in the Passinho culture. I can’t help but think that much of this is related to the increased peace (growing pains and all) created by the favela invasions and the subsequent routing of the drug trade with it’s influence, even tyranny over so much of favela life in Rio.  As Julio Ludemir, organizer of the Vidigal Batalha do Passinho puts it, “These boys are destroying the logic of the drug trade, of all organized crime. The organized crime made people feel like prisoners in the favela, and not look beyond it. Now the favelas are getting globalized. …Through social media these boys are taking their dance to the world and bringing the world to their dance.”

Pablinho, of Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro, competes in a Batalha do Passinho in neighboring Vidigal. Click through for video.

And it is becoming a massive cultural phenomenon, not just in Rio, but around the world. The dance with it’s fusion of steps from hip-hop, break, frevo, samba, and forró makes perfect sense of the informal world it arises from. These are dances typical to various areas of Brazil and parts of Brazilian pop culture, and they become swirled together almost like the sound of walking through someplace like Rocinha on any given Saturday night: forró dance in one area, funke somewhere else, hiphop everywhere you go, samba in the bars and clubs. It’s wonderful, and it’s bringing something to funke culture that was seriously lacking in my opinion: that native brazilian joy. That happiness, that sense of neighborliness, of alegria.

So much of funke takes itself so seriously and so much of it was so negative. But I have yet to see that aspect of Passinho. And that may go to explain it’s popularity as well. I mean, when Passinho translates pretty directly to the Xuxa show, you know it’s captured the positive aspects of the world that forms it, but more importantly you know it’s made it into the mainstream. And with any luck that positive side will keep growing, and Passistas will continue as cultural ambassadors for Brazil and Brazil’s favelas.

Rising stars of Passinho perform o the Xuxa show. Click through for video.

I encourage you to take a look! There are some quite interesting posts and projects on rights to the city, reclaiming public space, greening initiatives, etc.

CITY CHANGER WEBSITE

The first Indian slum census was introduced in 1976 and since then this elaborate effort has produced authoritative and important data that helps us understand  the slum at a macro level. However what is it that we read in this data, is still determined by our biases and the meaning that we come to assign to these categories.

Gautam and Arindam’s commentary highlights the misconceptions that the data can produce. They urge us to :
“(a) question the correlation between the “slum” as defined by the census and the poor especially in the context of increased displacement of the urban poor within our cities 

(b) add dimensions of quality and kind to estimations of access to services like water, sanitation and electricity

[Photos above; Top left: bathroom space where toilets used to be in an apartment in Farkhor. Top right: current pit latrines used]

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to go to one of the most distant – and difficult to get places – in the world: Tajikistan. After landing in Dushanbe – the capital – and staying there for a couple of days I headed out to the south (Farkhor) near the Afghan border.

Farkhor is a city that has around 28,000 inhabitants and from the ‘outside’ it looks like any other poor town. Like many cities built during the Soviet era it is not very organic: its streets and housing blocks are organized and the outskirts are dominated by multistory prefab buildings. However when you start looking more in detail you realize that the city’s systems have completely collapsed. Households – that during Soviet times had water supply in their dwellings – are today getting their water through standpipes or using the irrigation canals. Some families use their balconies to collect rainwater as can be seen in the images below.

While water supply seems to be one of the main priorities in these cities, one of my biggest shocks came from the precarious sanitary conditions that these families have today. The image on the top left shows the place where toilets used to be in multistory buildings and the image on the top right shows today’s alternative for sanitation (Pit latrines). A couple of pit latrines serve around two or three buildings and are generally surrounded by illegal dumps as can be seen below.

The deterioration of living conditions in many cities in Tajikistan following the fall of the Soviet Union has many causes* but reminds us that it is not only about achieving higher welfare levels but about achieving to maintain them.

* One of the reasons for deteriorating water supply is that in the Soviet era water systems were over designed (to have 2-3 times the required capacity). Once market forces were put in place many of these systems were very expensive to operate and tariffs were not adjusted by central governments and municipalities. As a result utilities were not able to cover operating and maintenance costs.

post by Silvia Soonets

Mision Vivienda houses; Source: mvh-gob-ve.jpg

Last weeks have been really complicated in Venezuela. We have been protagonist of the news all around the world. The situation is still unsolved, and not being a politician I am nobody to predict what could happen. It is, of course, too early to announce the Revolution is over, but I feel it is maybe not premature trying to guess what the lessons learned are and what changes are here for good.

Just before the election, I attended to the annual convention of the National Real Estate Council. This institution represents most of the real estate brokers and almost all the big residential developers. It is easy to imagine that they are mostly conservative, profit centered people.

I was surprised, then, when all the speakers dealing with housing issues stated that our huge housing shortage cannot be addressed without dealing with the informal settlements, and that in our “barrios” lay an important piece of the solution. And even more amazed when the audience accepted these ideas willingly.

The ideas that the “barrios” should be upgraded and improved, and that it is foolish to believe that it is possible to eradicate them have been around for many years in sociologic and professional circles. But now the people who used to build and sell most of the formal houses accept those believes as facts. For someone like me, that have dreamt  with upgrading settlements for ten years, and that have explained why it is important to these very same people, the change is encouraging.

What has happened? I have no idea.

I suppose that the failure of the recent “Mision Vivienda” have influence. If the government did not succeeded in reaching the goals set in number of units built, even having all the power, all the money, no permits and no limits, it should be accepted that nobody could. Improving the informal houses could cut the shortage in half. Improving the “barrios” could create a massive new real estate market. And then the efforts in built new units could concentrate in quality, not only quantity.

Some of my not so optimist friends say that maybe there are other good business that I cannot see, or that the market is so little and the new houses so few that there are no other things to talk about. Other suggests that some of the new laws make so difficult to build in formal areas that the informal ones look appealing.

Is this shift a purely Venezuelan affair? Or it is happening elsewhere?

See Part 2-The urbanization of El Paso and Ciudad Juarez

Night lights: El paso + Ciudad Juarez; source: eol.jsc.nassa.gov

New city shaping influences began to emerge, supplementing the colonial designs, particularly on the US side as El Paso, which was now responding more particularly to an Anglo culture. The improvement of transportation, specifically with the arrival of the railroads 1880s had a great impact on both sides of the border.

In 1870, the construction of a transcontinental rail system connected the US borderland region for the first time, challenging the domination of the northeastern region of the country. In the period that followed infrastructure for regional change was put in place and western southern cities such as San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Denver began to establish regional importance.[1] To better position Mexico alongside economic development in the US, then Mexican President Porfirio Diaz (1876-1880) mandated the construction of a national railroad system.

This railroad system became the base of economic ties with the US.  “Transportation development was a catalyst to growth in several border cities”.[2] El Paso witnessed a large boom, its population jumped from 736 in 1880 to 10,338 in 1890, making it the largest urban and industrial center in the southwest of the United States.[3] 

Two separate bridges and a streetcar service connected EL Paso to Ciudad Juarez. These bridges acquired automobile access by the 1920s.[4] A new bridge came in 1919 to accommodate rail traffic between the city and El Paso.  Furthermore a second rail line joined the city from the south to create a junction of two railroads.[5]

Railway, Mexican Revolution [1990]; source: wikipedia

Between 1910 and 1920, the Mexican Revolution caused great turmoil to the cities of northern Mexico, including border cities. This resulted in a massive migration of Mexicans to El Paso. Most of the newcomers were poor and settled in the outskirts of the city.

EL paso [1880]; source: wikipedia

EL Paso [1908]; source: wikipedia

In contrast, the American Prohibition era led to the first big growth phase in Mexican border settlements. Ciudad Juarez, as other cities, became dependent on tourist entertainment economies sustained chiefly by North American patrons. The “culture of sin” led Mexican politicos and businessmen to embrace these “pariah economies”. The economic boom was short-lived as the effects of the Great Depression eventually affected the area.

Although it took longer for the Great Depression to arrive at US cities of the Southwest, eventually the consequences were felt harshly, particularly in El Paso. El Paso’s population declined from 102,421 in 1930 to 96,810 in 1940.[6] The New Deal programs helped alleviate some of the problems until the coming of WWII where border cities benefited from an economic boom and population explosion. In El Paso, the facilities at the military post, Fort Bliss, expanded greatly. The intensification of the national defense program contributed to the city’s growth by awarding lucrative projects to El Paso’s businessmen. As economic opportunities arose on the US side of the border, these were also felt on the Mexican side. Ciudad Juarez witnessed nearly a four-fold increase in population between 1910 and 1940.[7]

Ciudad Juarez [1920]; source: texashistory-unt-edu

Ciudad Juarez [1950]; soruce: freerepublic.com

Stay tuned for the second part of this post….

A Turma (The Gang) in Sao Remo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1996

In 1995 and 1996 I lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil while doing fieldwork and research for my Masters of Architecture thesis. One of my research sites was a small favela called Sao Remo which borders one edge of the University of Sao Paulo (USP).

While out one day measuring and photographing public spaces in this favela, I met two young girls who became my close friends during my time in Sao Paulo. (My arms are around them in this photo.)

The girls became my friends and helpmates. They were funny and bright and I thought often about what their futures might hold. At the time, the main streets of Sao Remo looked like the photo below.

Sao Remo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 1996

Houses were either CMU or wooden shacks, streets were dirt, cars were few, and there was a general feeling of “not much going on”. From what I understood, some of the residents worked at the university, but most were unemployed or underemployed.

Last month, I had an opportunity I had long been hoping for. I returned to Sao Remo in the hopes of locating my old friends, who I had not been in contact with for 17 years. I entered the favela through the old familiar gate in the university wall, and started asking people if they recognized the two young girls in the photograph I was carrying. The wonderful woman pictured below, Dona Cida, took on the project of reuniting me with my friends and didn’t give up until she had delivered me to older sister of one of the girls.

Dona Cida, Sao Remo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2013

Dona Cida had lived in Sao Remo for 40 years. When I told her I had been there in 1996, she immediately began to list all the ways the favela had physically changed since then: the paved streets, multi-car garages to accommodate residents’ new cars, one- and two-story structures growing to three- and four-stories. As she described all this, she led me past street facades that were now entirely commercial, with multiple bar/restaurants, beauty salons, boutiques, and grocery stores. The place had so much more energy and life than when I had last visited.

Sao Remo, Sao Paulo, 2013

I asked Dona Cida’s daughter what she thought of the changes. She expressed an unequivocally positive view of the benefits accrued through the incremental economic development of the neighborhood. Although my visit with her was brief, I came away with the impression that the physical and economic improvements I was seeing, combined with the extremely tight social network, made for a happy neighborhood.

I spent the next few hours while waiting for my friends at the home of my friend Marlene’s older sister. Rather than exchanging phone numbers and email addresses, she helped me “friend” the whole gang on Facebook. Finally I was taken to Marlene’s mother’s house to wait for her. She and my other dear friend, Rosilene, arrived one after the other.

A Turma, Sao Remo, Sao Paulo, Brazil, 2013

Both women are happy and healthy. Rosilene, on the left, has a beautiful 6 year old son. Marlene, in the middle, has gone to university, has a professional position, and is on her way to the US to study English. There is a lot written in the Brazilian press these days about the “new middle class” which has grown by about 42 million people in the last decade, according to the IDP. Sao Remo has become a more positive place to live and raise a family over the last 17 years, and so have many other favelas in Brazil. Though I’ve often feared it was, perhaps optimism about informal development isn’t a misuse of energy. Families in favelas doing better over time – it’s what we all hope to help happen through our work.

Alas, leave it to academics to complicate everything, for they remind us that knowledge and truth are subjective, that facts are constructed, and that power relations and socio-economic interests are imbued in what we know and how we know it.

The processes of ‘knowing’ are many, and they include academia, popular media, political rhetoric and other discourses that have interests in the knowledge-object (for example the ‘business community’ or ‘development’ agencies). Discourses compete, contradict, undermine and playoff one another, and the current socio-political context of the urban redevelopment scheme in Rio, including ‘favela integration’, is no exception. NGOs and activists argue that the current state actions repeats the classic tale of dispossession in the name of globalist progression. Politicians paint a picture of a united city (see video below). The Olympic Committee makes claims of responsible social legacies all-the-while complicit in the destruction of historical urban places. And the press struggles to work the whole thing out, mostly by telling you that everybody and nobody is sure of much of anything. Each of these discourses take ‘the favela’ as a knowable object, and subsequently constructs their arguments and lays their claims to truth based on that knowledge.

A specific example that recently caught my attention is a course being offered by the Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, a prestigious and Jesuit University in the exclusive neighborhood of Gávea. ‘Rio’s Favelas: Past and Present’ (Favelas Cariocas: Otem e Hoje) seeks to offer a foundational theoretical and historical review to favela residents, civil society leaders, and various professionals so that they may successfully implement social projects within the city’s favelas. As the university’s website does not publish the reading list or post detailed information about curriculum, it is difficult to make any judgments as to the quality or ontological merits of the course. I guess they can’t just give the knowledge away, could they?

Last week Studio X Mumbai held a day long workshop provocatively titled “Housing without Developers”. As elaborated on their website, the workshop tried to challenge the seeming inevitability of market based solutions to problems that are themselves closely associated with the privatization of housing markets. The participants in the workshop discussed how the development of slum housing in India and public housing in the west challenges the accepted norms of market based solutions. This blog post does not sum up the many interesting points made by the housing activists, planners and academics at the workshop, but discusses a couple of concepts that got me thinking about housing and policy in the city.

Aspiration:

Its often argued that slum redevelopment schemes in Mumbai succeed as slum dwellers themselves “aspire” to live in apartments and are ashamed of the slums that they inhabit. Asher Ghertner terms this “Aesthetic Govermentality”. Liza Weinstein’s doctoral thesis on Dharavi shows how this aesthetic aspiration gets further pushed on to the people by the state processes. She explains how the Mumbai slum demolitions in 2005 evicted not just the “illegal” slum dwellers but also those who had documents that made them eligible for free housing. As there was no way of telling their houses apart from the other houses in the slum, the government evicted the entire lot.

However, if one digs deeper, the utilitarian aspiration of surviving in the city immediately challenges this aesthetic aspiration. It allows us to learn a lot more about how housing form and placement relates to everyday survival and well being. This is not just an exercise that relates to the poor in the slums. In my every day conversations with friends and family, I come across instances where people express unruly desires to break the aesthetically pleasing apartments that they have come to inhabit. The desire to work from home, the desire to have nothing but a bedroom in the city, the desire to share a living room but not the kitchen with the family, wanting that extra door, a small house but a big balcony etc. Even if I keep the ownership structure and placement within the city a constant the list of formal desires still goes on. The further we dig, the more it complicates the aesthetic aspiration of owning a standard apartment in the city.

Equity:

This brings me to the next point. If aspirations and needs are so varied how do we then imagine housing these aspirations and how do we imagine housing equity? What is the right size, typology and tenure that should be the basic minimum for all? Architect Kamu Iyer’s presentation at the conference highlighted how there is no consensus in India on the basic minimum size of a dwelling unit. As he explained, the size of the British chawl housing was derived from the maximum span of wood that was available back then. Even today the minimum dwelling size proposed by the government’s redevelopment scheme is constantly under flux as it is depends on the economics and politics that pans out around individual projects.

So, if the basic minimum size itself is under flux and is subjective to ones needs, what kind of housing should activists fight for? What does housing equity look like? Prasad Shetty proposed that it’s easier to fight for infrastructural equity – equal rights to sanitation, water, transport, health and education, rather than housing equity. In fact fighting for an ideal housing type eventually plays into demands for redevelopment and erases the plurality in housing form, structure and ownership provided by the slum. Mumbai perhaps needs to revisit its slum up gradation schemes rather than push for redevelopment.

The Contradiction:

This is the point at which the US and Indian housing conversations converged. I remember sitting in an economics class in Berkeley and listening to my professor make the exact point against US public housing. Public housing carried the burden of having the state provide a certain standardized, healthy, size, quality and tenure that perhaps the residents would pass in return for cheaper quality housing that is better located. Hence goes the argument that public housing, although noble in its intent, is not the most efficient model of providing housing for the masses. Although not the “traditional” market based solution, the slum was being used to make a similar case against redevelopment housing in Mumbai.

Pitting basic quality of living and equity against plurality and individual choice left me very uncomfortable. At the end of the conference however, I was left thinking about Prasad’s statement “It’s not that equity is not important..it’s just not tactical for me to fight for it right now”.

Talking about initiatives worth following, I would add the Light Recicla program to the list.

In this program, a provider of electricity in Rio de Janeiro – called Light – gives discounts on the electricity bill in exchange for recyclable materials. Light Recicla has been piloted in a selected number of neighborhoods in Rio de Janeiro – mostly favelas that have gone through the UPP process (Pacifying Police Units). The electricity provider has organized a series of collection points (called Eco Puntos) where residents can bring their recyclable materials, get them weighted and allocate the equivalent discount to their electricity bill.  For the moment only residents from a selected number of neighborhoods can benefit from bill discounts but ALL residents in Rio de Janeiro can bring their recyclable materials and allocate the discount to a number of social institutions registered in the project (talking about co-benefits).

This program aims to improve the environmental conditions of beneficiary neighborhoods and the affordability of electricity for low-income households (many of which were recently converted to legal electricity). It would be interesting to do some research on the economic viability of this kind of model and its measurable results (i.e. increase bill collection rate, in other contexts: reduced flooding?). I also wonder how people reallocate the money they “save” from recycling.

Could this be a new way of Conditional Trash Transfer?

Here is a video (in Portuguese) and some links for more information:

http://www.treehugger.com/urban-design/the-urbanization-of-rio-de-janeiro-s-slums-a-model-for-sustainable-development.html

http://www.light.com.br/light-recicla.asp