From le treizième in Paris to Adams Morgan in Washington DC
(13 Arrondissement – Paris on the left and Adams Morgan – DC on the right)
So far I have decided to stay away from sharing things about my personal life in my posts and favored the more academic and research founded posts. However, I have been thinking for a while that we can learn a lot by looking at the way we (meaning in this case myself) live our cities and how we choose where we live. And, we can learn even more by taking these lessons a step further and trying to respond with sincerity how we think we will react when facing public policies. For instance, although most of us as urban economists, planners and architects keep talking about the benefits of a compact and dense city, are we still dreaming of having the house with the back yard and the dog?
Today, I wanted to share with you one of the things that impacted me the most when moving to Washington DC six months ago. Although expecting to face a big cultural shock related to junk food or consumerism my greatest shock dealt with spatial segregation and neighborhood gentrification. Before moving to DC I had lived for 4 years in Paris near “Place d’Italie” or in “le treizième arrondissement” as the French call it. Le treizième is home to Paris biggest China Town but is actually a cultural melting-pot were students, families, and households from a broad range of socio-economic status coexist. My routine in le treizième involved buying last-minute groceries in a close-by Vietnamese shop, eating dinner in a small, cheap and good Lebanese restaurant and – from time to time – fighting with two of my neighbors (one of whom was living with a small kid and the other who was a retired doctor) who we ended up calling “Humpty Dumpty” and “the crazy old lady” or la vielle folle. While in France it is illegal to collect information related to race and religion, meaning that there is no real evidence to evaluate spatial segregation using these two variables, in my personal view le treizième was an example of a mixed neighborhood with its benefits and disadvantages. Living in a mixed neighborhood, like le treizième, allowed me to profit from Read More…
Ways to Stay Put
Gentrification - Mural at Balamy Alley, San Francisco.
By 2050, 55% of India’s population is expected to live in cities[1]. While it has been noted that the influx of people into cities shall create a high demand for housing, it’s important to highlight that much of the immediate demand is going to be for rental housing. Given that rental rates in cities like Mumbai are sky rocketing, the demand for affordable rental housing for the lower income groups is often fulfilled by slums.
The slum serves as peculiar kind of rental housing market. The affordability of rents in a slum hinges on its “informality” and lack of services. Hence the paradox that any kind of attempt to formalize/regularize/improve the slum threatens to gentrify it. I use the term gentrify to speak about the process of displacement of the poorest renters by those who are willing to pay a higher rent. I understand that gentrification is not a term that can easily be transported to a slum because the literature, that I am familiar with, speaks very particularly about the American inner city. Yet I feel that it’s a useful term as it helps draw attention to the difference between the renting slum dwellers and the ones who come to “own” homes in the slum. The upgradation/redevelopment projects in some ways benefit those who come to “own” a house in the slum leaving tenants sensitive to rent changes at risk of displacement.
The Indian governments Rajiv Awas Yojana (RAYs program) authoritatively lays out “guidelines to create slum free cities”. It directs the local governments to increase the level of infrastructure in slums to match that of the formal city and to bring slums under formal systems of property ownership . I shall not get into the absurdity of bringing back the slum free rhetoric, but I would like to point out Read More…
The Olympic Juggernaut Hits Rio de Janeiro: Is there a compelling new story?
Guest Post by Maulik Bansal
Today more people live in urban areas than ever before. Our cities are changing rapidly and will continue to do so, and a resilient city may be one that is flexible and adaptable to these changing conditions in social, economical and physical development. Over the last decade, China and the Gulf region have been driven by economic stimulus and authoritarian governments that are able to rapidly and comprehensively change the shape of their urban structure and heritage, though sometimes in disputable and non-democratic ways. It may be argued that such interventions are often associated with authoritative governmental role. But this article contends that it is often the paradigm of intervention itself that enables the government to adopt such a role.
One such paradigm is the mega event, and its perception as a symbol of the resilience and strength of an economy, supposedly representative of the aspirations of its people. As John Short mentions in his 2008 article ‘Globalization, cities and the Summer Olympics’ published in City,
“Across the world city elites are promoting a global city imaginary; a vision of a self-consciously ‘global’ city replete with images of busy international airports, foreign tourists, inward investment, a cosmopolitan atmosphere, creative industries, cultural economies and an overwhelmingly positive image shared around the world.”
However, the scope of the event transcends mere advertising, and becomes a catalyst for significant urban renewal and socio-economic change. Here, it is not the projection of an identity, but the actual manufacturing of it that takes center stage. Here, lies the critical point of juncture – a ‘make-or-break’ situation – that the city is faced with. Facing ever-increasing pressures
On Migrations and Displacements
Intro Post by Lubaina Rangwala
[The above image is part of a photo essay titled “We Who Built Your Games”, featured in the October 9th, 2010, issue of the Tehelka. Photographs taken by Samar Jodha and the text written by Rishi Majumder. Article found here: http://www.tehelka.com/story_main47.asp?filename=hub091010We_Who.asp#]
Sanjay Kumar (age 18), is a migrant worker from Mirzapur, a small town located in the North Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. He along with several others worked on the construction site of the Shivaji Stadium in New Delhi as they dressed the city for its spectacular mega-event—the Commonwealth Games of 2010 (held between October 3rd through 14th).
For the image, the author writes, “Twilight Zone: Sanjay Kumar, 18, Mirzapur, UP. This is his first out-station job. The small farm back home is not doing well. Little water, lesser electricity to run the tube well. He now mixes cement at the Shivaji Stadium site.”
[Photograph is part of a photo essay by Ankit Sharma, titled “Toiling for the Commonwealth”, which captures the living and working conditions of construction workers building infrastructure for the Games. Images found through this link]
Worker colonies constructed using corrugated, tin roofing material, bamboo posts and blue tarp sheets to protect from rain. For several months workers lived in sub-standard informal dwelling spaces to build spectacular urban infrastructure for the city meeting international building codes. Like Sanjay (above) they came from various neighboring towns and villages to steal part of the ‘development impetus’ spurred by the mega event.
[Photograph taken by Ravi Agarwal as part of a photo essay titled “Down and Out” tracing the forms of informal labor that supports almost 80-90% of India’s population. He writes, “The expanding city, displacing periurban agriculture and a source of employment. Surat, Gujarat, 1997”. Images found here: http://www.iisg.nl/exhibitions/downandout/]
Peri-urban agriculture is another source of subsistence living that supports several agricultural households living on the outskirts of urban centers. Here men, woman and children work on their small plots of land, sometimes barely surviving and sometimes doing relatively well. Whatever be the case, the expanding city looming on the horizon poses itself as dormant threat, waiting to displace people, land and forms of employment. In some cases, 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
