Course name: User Generated Cities

Location: Mumbai, Bengaluru,Dharavi (Mumbai)

URBZ evolved a programme that included a series of different activities on the theme ‘User Generated Cities’.

Between 7 January 2009 – 27 February 2009, URBZ worked with four graduate students from the Srishti School of Design’s CEMA Programme (Centre for Experimental Media Arts) starting with a stint of fieldwork in Mumbai, wherein they worked closely with the Columbia – JJ Studio in Dharavi, on our Heaps Decent project with Paul Devro and Bappi Lahiri and then on the URBZ system itself, besides spending a good amount of time on readings and discussions about ‘user generated cities’, how to recognize and nurture them.

Details of the Course

Basic Ideas

• Cities are complex organisms generated by a multiplicity of actors over time
• Some of the most important information (qualitative and quantitative data) about cities are held at the local level by residents
• Political will is not enough to produce participatory planning. Tools and methodologies are also required
• Participatory methodologies and tools should by definition be open and adapted to the local context
• Participatory technologies such as the Internet open new grounds for urban planning

Misconceptions & Assumptions:

• People do not have the necessary skills to invest in urban development
• Urban Planning needs a top-down decision making structure
• Knowledge about cities lies amongst experts.

Essential Questions:

• What is the role of creativity and design in enhancing participation?
• How can Web technologies help stakeholders participate in urban planning projects?
• How do we best integrate online and offline participatory practices?

Knowledge/ Understandings Gained:

• How cities are developed, and experienced by its inhabitants
• How cities are spaces of control and sites of freedom
• How design promote creativity and participation at the local level

Performance/ Activities/ Skills Acquired:

• Designing user friendly Web interfaces for various constituencies (using Drupal and CSS)
• Gathering data at the local level & making data available on the Web (Social communication techniques & field experience in urban neighbourhoods)
• Web-based strategies to encourage civic participation in planning

Familiarity Gained:

• Familiarity with actual urban localities in Mumbai and Bangalore.
• Ability of looking at urban spaces with concepts and tools that translate into planning
• Ability to organize related processes that can be used by different agencies; developers, municipal governments, community leaders, resident bodies.

Evidence/Testing of Performance:

• Usability and popularity of interface developed
• Knowledge gained about specific urban neighbourhoods.

Reading & Surfing List

Alexander, C., April/May 1965, The City is not a Tree, Architectural Forum

Allen, S., Corner, J., 2003, Urban Natures, in The State of Architecture the Beginning of the 21st Century, edited by Tschumi , B., Cheng, I., New York, Monicelli/Columbia

Appadurai, A.,1996, The Production of Locality in Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press

Appadurai A., 2006, The Right to Research, in Globalisation, Societies and Education,

Vol. 4, No. 2, July 2006, pp. 167–177

Berners Lee, T., February 15, 2007, The Mobile Web, Keynote speech at the 3GSM Conference, http://opengardensblog.futuretext.com/archives/2007/02/tim_berners_lee.html

Castells, M., May 9, 2001, Identity & Change in the Network Society”, Interviewed by Harry Kreisler, UC Berkeley, Institute of International Studieshttp://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Castells/castells-con0.html Echanove M., & Srivastava R., Various texts in http://www.airoots.org

Echanove M., & Srivastava R., Various texts in Urban Typhoon Workshop 2006 & 2008, www.urbantyphoon.com (download reports)

Fals-Borda, O., April 8, 2005, Research for Social Justice: Some North-South Convergences, Plenary Address at the Southern Sociological Society Meeting, Atlanta, http://comm-org.wisc.edu/si/falsborda.htm

Freire, P., 2000, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Continuum International Publishing Group; 30 Anv Sub edition

Johnson, S., 2002, Emergence: the connected lives of ants, brains, cities and software, London, Penguin

Lynch, K., 1984, Good City Form, Cambridge, The MIT Press; Reprint edition

Meier, R. L., 1962, A Communications Theory of Urban Growth, Cambridge, The MIT Press

Mitchell, W., 2003, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, Cambridge, The MIT Press

MVRDV, 1999, Metacity Datatown. 010 Publishers

O’Reily, T., June 2004, Open Source Paradigm Shift, http://tim.oreilly.com

Patel, S., May 2004, Tools and methods for empowerment developed by Slum Dwellers Federations in India, SPARC, http://www.sparcindia.org/docs/emptools.pdf

Raymond, E., S., 2001, The Cathedral and the Bazaar, http://www.catb.org

Salingaros, N., Coward, L.A., 2004, The Information Architecture of Cities, Journal of Information Science, Volume 30 No. 2, pp. 107-118, Available at:http://www.math.utsa.edu/sphere/salingar/InfoCities.html

Saskia Sassen, 2001, The global city: strategic site/new frontier, July 2001, GLOBALIZATION–A symposium on the challenges of closer global integrationIndia-Seminar (Journal, July 2001)

Schedule:

Week 1: Jan 7 – 11

• Reading and surfing

Week 2: Jan 12 – 18

• Field work in Mumbai with the Columbia GSAPP students

Week 3: Jan 19 – 25

• Field work in Mumbai
• Training sessions and workshop with URBZ team

Week 4: Jan 26 – Feb 1

• Back to Bangalore
• Start designing a template for URBZ’s Drupal system

Week 5: Feb 2 – 8

• Design work for URBZ’s Drupal system
• Training session II with URBZ tea
• Morning: Participatory Planning strategies (Rahul & Matias)
• Afternoon: Designing templates for Drupal (Nishit Shah)

• Meetings with Matias Echanove
• Lecture 1: Theories of Urban Growth: City as Machine; City as Organism; City as Communication System; Urban Social Movements

Week 6: Feb 9 – 15

• Design work for URBZ’s Drupal system
• Meetings with Matias Echanove
• Lecture 2: Participatory Planning: Potential and Limitations

Week 7: Feb 16 – 22

• Design work for URBZ’s Drupal system
• Testing
• Meetings with Matias Echanove
• Lecture 3: Learning from the Web: Data Gathering & Processing

Week 8: Feb 23 – 27

• Implementation and evaluation by URBZ team and Srishti faculty
• Lecture 4: VirtuReality: Thinking & Desiging Beyond the Screen

Image: URBZ team members and interns with the South Dandy Squad and DJ Paul Devro (Mad Decent) at the dharavi.organic party organized in January 2009 in Dharavi.

Present Interns:

George Carothers Carothers trained as an urban planner at the University of Waterloo and later worked as a researcher of urban studies at the University of Toronto, exploring issues of urban design, community development, and participatory planning. His research and interests in urbanism have taken him to numerous cities, villages and huts around the globe, as a participant in international conversations on development and urbanization. George holds a masters degree from The Bartlett, UCL, where he investigated dialogues of participatory planning and development in Dharavi. George is currently involved in the Dharavi Shelter and the Adaptable Structures projects. He is a contributor to thepolisblog.org, a blog about cities.

Dipti Hingorani studied structural engineering and architecture at Sheffield University and completed her diploma in architecture from Oxford Brookes. She practiced in Spain and the UK and also worked in Pune working with women self-help savings groups. She is currently pursuing her Masters in Development and Emergency Practice at CENDEP, Oxford Brookes University, investigating case studies on alternative participatory and inclusive processes for slum-upgrading and rehabilitation in Mumbai and Pune. She is also actively involved with the Dharavi Shelter project in Mumbai.

Julia Siedle studied urban design at Columbia University in New York, and architecture at PBSA Duesseldorf and ESA Paris. She has been involved with the design of water management systems in both the academic and professional realms, and is interested in the interweaving and organic growth of physical with social infrastructures. With Mumbai experiencing a severe water crisis, she is currently researching the potential of micro scale water management strategies.

Sytse de Maat graduated in architecture at Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands. Parallel to his career as a professional architect he works on his fascination for the human habitat. He gave lectures in Amsterdam, Tokyo, and Mumbai. His aim is to open the eyes of students, professionals and his clients for the aliveness of their environment and help them participate in its evolution. Observing and sharing his observations is his most important strategy. Photography, blogging, and lecturing are his tools. Christopher Alexander’s “The Nature of Order” is his current inspiration.

Former Interns:

Francesco Strocchio Recenlty graduated from Turin Polytechnic with the degree thesis New Transit Camp – An informal design process in Dharavi, Mumbai. He studied architecture and building restoration in Italy and Finland (Turku University of Applied Sciences,) and worked in Finland and Spain at Stenman Oy and PO2 Arquitectos firms. Presently he is working in the OfficinaTre in Alba (Piedmont, Italy) and is taking part in the project SITUA.TO inside the program of Turin’10 European Youth Capital. SITUATO proposes different practices and tools to read the complex social and urban changes in Turin through concrete actions to improve the quality of public space through the inputs of city-users and their practices in urban planning. He was part of the HINDUSTRY URBAN RESEARCH GROUP working on urban design and studies of Indian mega cities with a special focus on the relationship of social and architectural issues. With this group he participated in 2009 at the 4th International Architecture Biennale in Rotterdam through the project ‘Coesistance as survival: Enhancing the existing synergies in the Koli community, Dharavi, Mumbai. He is involved in the work of the cultural association L’ARVANGIA, that tries to bring attention to the identity of the Langhe territory and culture in Piedmont, Italy

Alberto Botterois enrolled in the master’s degree in architecture at the Turin Polytechnic, He participated in the Erasmus European mobility project in Belgium, where he learnt about the International panorama of architecture on different scales. In Feb’08, he graduated from Turin Polytecnic with a thesis about reciprocal frame systems inspired from “BuckministerFuller”. During the last years he attended some international workshops (”A new Lingotto’s railway Bridge-Station ” in Turin with the RPI (USA); “Abandoned Sacred Spaces” in Bruxelles and “Canelli Planning” in Italy with MIT). In Sep’09, He participated in the HINDUSTRY URBAN RESEARCH GROUP at the 4th International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam through the project Coesistance as survival: Enhancing the existing synergies in the Koli community, Dharavi, Mumbai. In Oct’09, he was in Mumbai working on his thesis degree about an informal design process in Dharavi. Presently he is working for the CarloRatti office in Turin, taking part in the international competition for the Olympic Games 2012 in London through ‘TheCloud proposal’.

Guillaume Folliot, Caen, France: PhD Candidate in History at the Caen Basse-Normandie. He graduated in History, studying the production of Memory and the political use of history in media. He is now finishing a second graduation in Social Geography and Urban Issues. During his internship with URBZ he has mainly worked on two historical precincts linked with the Portuguese colonisation, Khotachiwadi in Mumbai and Fontainhas in Panaji – Goa. The aim of his work is to create databases with historical, cultural, urban and architectural information. He interned with URBZ from April 1 to August 1, 2009.

Swathi Shivanand, Bangalore, India: She is a student of Masters of Development Studies at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Worked previously with The Hindu, Bangalore as a city reporter for two years. Post graduate diploma from Asian College of Journalism, Chennai. She interned with URBZ from April 6- April 30 and June 1 – June 23, 2009.

Tilak Pattnaik, Mumbai, India: Tilak is a fifth year undergraduate from Metallurgical Engineering& Material Sciences at IIT Bombay. His interests include reading, playing, watching movies & anime and meeting & interacting with new people. He was a core group member of Techfest, IIT Bombay’s annual science & technology festival and Asia’s largest of its kind. He is also the chief editor of Pulse, IIT Bombay’s science & technology magazine. He interned from June 1 2009 onwards.

Namrata Mehta, Bangalore, India: Namrata is a post-graduate student at CEMA, Centre for Experimental Media Art, Srishti School of Art, Design and Technology, interned with URBZ during the months of January and February 2009, for a two month project in Mumbai and Bangalore. The internship explored and sought to bring together the areas of participatory planning, community informatics, community media and web development. Internship period: January 2009 – March 2009.

Internship Programme:

URBZ Internships are integral to all our activities. At present we have two streams of activities around which the internship programmes take place. One is based in Mumbai and the other in Goa, six hundred kilometers south of Mumbai citty.  Our internships have a strong pedagogical component to them in the sense that we encourage interns to develop their own projects in partnership with us. At the same time they have an option of working directly on our ongoing projects as well.  Interns  can thus bring in their own research, action, project-based, creative agendas and use the expertise of the URBZ team and the facilities of URBZ to develop them.  Or they can learn through our own projects and subsequently develop their agendas from here. Our own projects include the following:

A. Mumbai-based

1) Understanding and Documenting the Diversity of Mumbai’s Built-forms.

2) Engaging with Dharavi, Mumbai’s context in terms of architectural, planning and socio-economic projects.

3) Working with Shelter – a charitable trust in Dharavi which works with children and elderly residents from the neighbourhood.

4) Mapping resources and materials for auto-construction of structures and civic amenities in Mumbai.

5) Creativity and Art projects in Mumbai’s informal neighbourhoods.

B. Goa-based

1)  Looking at urban policy in India.

2) Exploring the idea of urban systems and networks outside the metropolitan map.

3) Local involvement in environmentally sound coastal tourism.

4) Comparing the impact of colonial histories on urban formations.

5) Exploring the relationship of fiction with architecture and urban spaces.

Since the internships form an integral part of our activities they also contribute to URBZ’ sustainability and are therefore paid programmes.

The internship fee  covers residential rent (in Dharavi/ Panjim), cost of internet, use of office space and the support provided by the URBZ team in community involvement as well as research and intellectual mentorship.

Fee Structure:

a. With residence in Dharavi / Panjim

International interns: US $ 500 a month

Local interns: Rs. 5000 a month

b. Without residence

International interns: US$ 250 a month

Exceptions can be made for highly motivated individuals who cannot afford the internship. For further information please contact us.