Trouble in paradise: Iron Ore Mine in Bicholim, North Goa

We have been busy looking at Goa’s complex urban system and networks together with a group of graduate landscape architecture students from Sweden. This studio, taking place from Feb 14th to 25th, is part of a year-long programme organized by Henrietta Palmer and Michael Dudley of the Royal Institute of Arts in Stockholm, and the Institute of Urbanology in Goa. The group was also joined by masters students of the Dr. Bhanuben Nanavati College of Architecture for Women (BNCA) based in Pune.

Goa, which is the smallest state in India, can be conceptualized as an urban system made of a network of villages and a few bigger towns of max 100,000 people. These are interspersed with fields and forests and each settlement is connected to the others through an intricate web of small roads. As is the case in many Indian cities, large infrastructure projects along with savage real estate speculation and corrupt politics are challenging the unique spatial organization of Goa.

Savoi Veren village near Ponda, which predates Portuguese colonization, is now surrounded by mines.

Historically, this spatial logic has been connected to the availability of water sources and river systems which traditionally Goan villages and hamlets were dependent on for their survival. The delicate balance of containing groundwater salinity by blocking rain water flows through intricate water management, of painstaking rain water conservation through dependency on its forests (now being ravaged by mines) and of dependence on wells for water supply are all factors that are miraculously still alive even as one part of Goa gets connected to piped water, roads and bridges.

If modern urban societies are concerned with environmental issues then a good look at Goa’s habitats and how they are embedded in its water system becomes something that everyone can learn a lot from. If the new vision that Goa is looking towards for its own growth and future need an anchoring for its regional development plans, then that vision needs to be anchored in its historical spatial logic, arranged through its water ways and systems.

Two students of the Royal Institute of Arts taking pictures of a barge transporting Iron ore on the Mandovi river.

Right now, Goa’s system of villages, towns, fields and forests are being super imposed by a planning logic connected to mainstream mechanisms of connectivity and mobility, of real estate development and aspirations. The people of Goa are struggling with the balancing out of all these factors and are looking for ways to organize Goa’s growth and future in a manner that does justice to its special cultural and historical distinctiveness that is  intimately tied to its physical, environmental and spatial logic. In a very small way, this group has tried to address some of these issues to the best of its ability.

After more than a week of travel, observations, meetings with experts and activists, the group will make a series of presentations that directly or indirectly connects with the idea of Goa’s complex water system as the base of its spatial logic and open the doors for more research in this broad area. Please come to the students’ presentation at Panjim Inn in Fontainhas, Goa, Friday February 25th at 5PM.

Students interacting with Dean D’Cruz, one of Goa’s most respected architect who is also working on the Goa regional plan.

Click here for more pictures of the studio in Goa.

Read more on Goa as an urban network on airoots.

That reality often exceeds imagination is well known. What is less often discussed is how imagination can transform reality. The urban realm offers infinite possibilities, at least in the mind. But what happens when multiple minds connect and start focusing on an idea from various perspectives, with the firm intention of actualizing it? What if that idea is stretched across the world, powered by information technology and substantiated by localized action? This is how wars, religious congregations, political campaigns, real-estate projects, festivals, movie shoots, parties and all types of creative-destructive events get realized.

A dark illustration of this capacity to actualize wild ideas is the Mumbai attacks on November 26, 2008. A small group of well-trained and hyper-determined youth navigated across the Arabian Sea and came ashore to Colaba, in South Mumbai. Equipped with state of the art killing machines, they put the whole city to a standstill for more than 3 days. They killed Mumbai’s top cops, hijacked police cars, twice and rampaged the city’s best hotels. Till the end they defied India’s best commandos. For a moment it seemed that the country’s entire army could not stop them. And the whole world was their audience.

The televised images of the attacks evoked a kind of senseless urban violence that had only been prefigured in Hollywood movies and video games like ‘Grand Theft Auto’ or emulated in US suburban school killings. The fact is that fantasies of radical transgression, including bombing and killing have always been part of a certain subversive imagination, which is particularly appealing to the youth. Especially those who have been brainwashed into negating their violent impulses, desires, drives, aspirations and ego-trips. Attraction to extreme violence, in fictional or actual form is often a response to an unbearable level of frustration caused by the repression of perfectly healthy impulses – impulses to do with expression of anger, creativity and active control of their lives.

It is unfair to expect any self-denial of these impulses from the youth. And it is even worse to lock them up in a world running on autopilot, where any sense of agency is deemed dangerous or impulsive. To them, such a world seems headed straight to a crash. So many youth across the world feel trapped in rigid urban and social structures; stuck in a reality that they are not allowed to reinvent. As a result they often respond passionately to fictionalized versions of reality, which are full of possibilities, including the most extreme and destructive ones. Most often these fictions remain in the realm of the imagination, but sometimes, when intent and determination are high enough, they do translate into reality.

All that is needed for this leap from fiction to reality to happen is an audacious idea, collective determination, a space for intervention and some special effects. That’s what we call the magic formula. It can be used in all kinds of ways. Not all of them as dramatic, psychopathic and morbid as the 26/11 attacks. In fact, it is so important to open avenues for creative-destructive expression and action in cities today. Otherwise youthful energy turns into frustration, alienation and violent expression of despair. We can use the magic formula to create a new reality, even when the odds are against us. The more we are able to do so, the less self-destructive we will be.

The space of youthful imagination is highly potent. It is like a fertile jungle continuously producing a million new audacious ideas. It is violent and exciting, destructive and creative, all at the same time. It is a space where one can get lost, discover, experiment and grow. A sacred grove of sorts, that one can come back to at any point in time to reconnect to a vital creative energy that helps accomplish wonders.

The workshops we organize draw on the radical aspirations of the youth to a different future. They open up a  time and space for individual and collective expression through bold interventions in the urban realm. They break up existing social, cultural and political hierarchies and modes of subordination, at least for a moment. The workshops are intensive 3 to 5 days long events which bring together people from completely different linguistic, cultural and economic backgrounds. They exchange local and global knowledge in search of uniquely suited solutions for specific sets of issues. The result comes in the form of a multimedia explosion (interviews, videos, stories, music, drawings, architectural renderings, photoshopping, images, etc) that sends shockwaves throughout the system. Successful workshops lead to the creation or consolidation of local initiatives, which we continuously support by deploying Web-based networking and communication tools. These can help maintain the momentum of the workshop by keeping human connections alive and by giving global visibility to local projects.

Our next workshop will happen in Mumbai in the last week of November. In May, we are planning a workshop in Geneva in the neighborhood of Les Paquis, where residents are struggling with a new brand of street violence (yes, Switzerland has it too!). In June, we may be doing a workshop in the Bay Area in California with our friends from the Center for the Living City. After this we are hoping to do something in Amsterdam, Santiago de Chile and Buenos Aires. Lots of explosive creative potential out there!

If you have a feeling that tells you to act now, to project yourself onto the world around, express your dreams, defeat your fears and realize your aspirations, please join any of our workshops. Better still, call us to your neighborhood… invoke the Urban Typhoon. Unleash the global imagination in your hillside favela, your suburban township, your artist hamlet, your satellite town, your generic city, your urbanizing village… They are all fascinating and full of potential. All they need is a little magical urbanism.

Great news… URBZ just acquired an office space in Dharavi! We will be running most of our operations from this space, including developing this website, planning our workshops, our architectural and design work. The office will also house the Dharavi School of Urbanology. This will be a space of urban research of the most grounded kind.

The Dharavi School of Urbanology uses its base here to understand and comment on urban processes everywhere. It invites researchers to understand Dharavi’s intricate history and functioning so as to gain insights on how urban space emerges to create multiple possibilities city life in other parts of the world. You can see a compressed history of urban processes here that unfolds into a multi-dimensional explanation of the inner workings of several global cities. Workings that go beyond the landscape of favelas and informal settlements and into the streets of glitzy new townships in Shanghai, along the gridded avenues of Manhattan, through the labyrinthine streets of Tokyo and the deceptively sparse urban energies of small townships every where.

We invite scholars from all over the world to come to Dharavi and compare the knowledge embedded in its intricate networks with their own experiences from other cities. This alchemy of ideas and insights will fuel it’s grounded intellectual agendas.  The Dharavi School of Urbanology makes a tentative start through our tool-house office in in this locality – as small as the tiny post industrial tenements  that  neighbour it  – and as bristling with potential and energy!

Our team includes residents who possess an intimate understanding of the place, besides being passionately involved in its issues. We also have international urban experts who provide advice on research projects as and when needed.

Do look up our section on pedagogy for related activities.

We have always felt that Dharavi is a living laboratory of urban practices that we should learn from rather than “redevelop”. This neighbourhood, wrongly known as the largest slum in Asia, is in fact a user-generated city of the most elaborate kind. What really turned it into a slum is the attitude of the authorities, who have refused to provide it with the same infrastructure and public services as any regular neighbourhood in Mumbai (water, sewage, electricity, garbage collection). Despite all this, or in spite of it, Dharavi has come up with its own solutions and processes. It is by no means a perfect place, but we feel that it has a lot of potential -if allowed to develop on its own terms. In any case, we are not here to develop Dharavi, but merely to learn from it and work in its spirit. In plus of being one of the most interesting parts of Mumbai, it is also one of the few places where we could afford to rent an office space. The real-estate market in Mumbai shows no sign of getting anywhere close to affordability, even in these times of a global financial meltdown.

It will take us about a month to get the space ready. We want to create a security exit and somehow replace the asbestos roof. We also need to paint it and add a toilet. Once this is all done, we will be welcoming visitors, artists, interns and Urbanology fellows. We are planning on organizing monthly events in the community space in front of the office, which has a stage and is used regularly by the community for public functions and weddings. These will include movie screenings and parties.

To send us postcards and visit us, use this address:

URBZ / Urbanology
Block No. 4/6/12
New Transit Camp, Dharavi
Mumbai 400-017, INDIA

Here are more images of the office and the street:

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.

The URBZ Internship program has been running successfully for the last two years with interns coming from all over the world. We invite interns who are self-motivated and independent. The contexts in which we work are far removed from the worlds where most of our interns come from – within India or abroad, which means challenging and dynamic in unexpected ways.

URBZ is not funded by any organization, institution or patron. All its team members see themselves as engaged with urban issues through their specific interests and passions. We invite interns who clearly understand this and do not see the programme the way they would a certified course in an academic context. They are free to use the internship for their own academic agendas, as long as we understand that the program is driven by concerns beyond academia.

Interns have to contribute towards the running cost of the program, which includes accommodation, office space and other infrastructure. URBZ provides them access to the communities, networks and supervision as and when required. URBZ has facilities of accommodation for a maximum of two interns at a time.

The idea is that interns join us in learning, doing and working together so that our goals of user-generated cities becomes a reality. URBZ interns must have an open mind and genuine political commitment. The internship program is not a consumerist space that can be reduced to provision of services. Nor is it a corporate internship with a rigid structure and top-down supervision. It is up to the intern to make the most out of it.

If you feel our work, concerns and passions coincides with yours, write to us for further details and join us on an exciting journey.

Past 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.

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.

For further information please contact us.