The narrative of apocalypse dominates our understanding of the global urban scenario today. The over-controlled, high-rise, desirable city is lined more often than not, by the fear of being overwhelmed by slums that seem to be spreading ‘like a virus’. Quotes like the following one by Mike Davis add to the conceptual mayhem of what slums are or are becoming:

“Night after night, hornetlike helicopters and gunships stalk enigmatic enemies in the narrow streets of the slum districts, pouring hellfire into shanties or fleeing cars. Every morning the slums reply with suicide bombers and eloquent explosions. If the empire can deploy Orwellian technologies of repression, its outcasts have the gods of chaos on their side.” (Mike Davis, 2006: Planet of Slums. Brooklyn: Verso Books, p. 206)

We use the alien from the movie District 9 as our mascot for this presentation. He represents the alien in each of us, who is being ghettoized or excluded in the city of today, whether it is because of our race, social status, sexual orientation or physical appearance. We also think that District 9 is the perfect cinematographic adaptation of Mike Davis’ paranoiac vision of a bipolar urban world.

Inevitably this apocalypse is followed by a solution that superficially speaking, seems to make sense. Providing low cost housing on a large scale. This is done with the stated intent to help the poor/immigrant/marginalized. In the case of Mumbai it is realized through incentives for the private market, which combine social concern and commercial gain (the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme). In both cases we find the situation rarely – if ever – achieving its goals. In the West, Paris and Chicago are iconic examples of failed social housing policies. In Mumbai it has validated a real-estate takeover of prime land all over the city to produce a housing stock of very low quality. This high-rise – low cost typology can be seen in Singapore, New York, Mumbai, Paris, Schenzen as we see in this slide.

The high rise city emerging before our eyes reveals  the most standardized form of an urban habitat. The vertical box-like architectural style spans from high to low-end buildings, from Seattle to Mumbai. The rich and poor neighbourhoods – all tall structures signifying a universal nod to ‘retro-futurist urban landscapes’ – embody the same limited notion of what homes are all about. Depending on income one drives the car or takes mass transportation. The city gets redefined according to motorized forms of mobility, stretching distance from living to working spaces. “World-class” cities are designed on the principle of segregating uses and functions: living here, working there, shopping over there and playing somewhere else. Their main strength is that they are easy to build and finance. They are conceptualized as financial assets rather than as living spaces. If it’s moneyed – it seems to work – however boring. If it is part of a poorer context, it crumbles.

When we see it in perspective the solutions provided to create an alternative to slums seem to be still more slums, making us ask, what is a slum after all? The mass-housing projects that house people in superficially respectable homes are not slums? Even if the residents cannot sustain their livelihoods and maintain their buildings? Aren’t we witnessing all these giant-structures getting moisturized and sick in the harsh weather of Mumbai? At the same time neighbourhoods full of shops, restaurants, workshops and assembling units are referred to as slums even when they produce wealth, provide livelihoods, sustain local economies and keep on improving themselves overtime. In the picture a seven-year old rehabilitation project in Dharavi, Mumbai. Is this supposed to be the response to “slums”?

Recently the vocabulary of urban studies was enriched by the  term slumdog. The opening sequence of the move ‘Slumdog Millionaire’ shows the two heros running in the streets of Dharavi. The slum aesthetics makes its big entry into Hollywood and everyone is fascinated. Meanwhile many residents of Dharavi and other “slums” in Mumbai respond; “we are not dogs!”

Our friends in Dharavi questioned the term too. Many of them however were not offended by the term dog – as one would have expected – but the term slum itself. The term slum is a blanket category that hides a huge variety of habitats many of whom are clearly nowhere close to the broadest negative description of a ‘slum’. In this photo, Manju Kenny in her street in Koliwada, Dharavi, which is a complex habitat with a complex class and ethnic composition. In our work with architects from Italy – many of them saw it as part of a broader story of habitats including neighbourhoods in Florence or Naples.

In the top left corner a photo of the “re” – development of Dharavi in process. But maybe we need to rewind all the way back to our initial vision of apocalyptic slums and question it – what is a slum after all?  Many neighbourhoods in Mumbai that are referred to as a slum actually sustain local economies and parts of it are enmeshed in the larger economy of the city – national as well as global. The experience of street-life will indicate to you the health of an urban economy more than anything else. Many urbanists around the world, following Jane Jacobs, have recognized the importance of street-life, markets, vendors, loiterers, pedestrians and other users of public spaces to keep places safe, culturally vibrant and economically sound.

When faced with the reality of a highly-unequal economy – where half your city’s population does not have easy access to high-quality and quantity capital or resources, what do the ‘have-nots’ do? Especially when they realize that they can complement the official economy of the city (which – lets face it – the city needs as well?) They make the most of what they have. If there is no land – they produce it. If there is unused land – which the city’s administration allows them to use – they use it. Through intensive use they generate value. The structure that emerges from this process – a house which is more than a house (a place where they work, store, produce, sleep and live) – what we refer to as tool-house – is the simplest expression of this intensive use of space and is the DNA of many so-called slums of Mumbai. Can this ever be a legitimate urban form? Can it ever exist in highly developed cities?

Lets make a leap of geography and history here. Is this process involving an intensive use of space (like the tool-house with its direct relationship between habitats and economic transactions) only unique to poor slum economies? Maybe not. Many of these factors exist in Tokyo – especially as it emerged during the post-war period. The government concentrated on transport and infrastructure and left housing to the people and private sector. Since land-holdings were small and resources scarce, many neighbourhoods in Tokyo mutated into urbanized versions of the villages they emerged from. They did not delete the earlier form. Add to this, you had a massive pressure of population and a growing economy that allowed informal production practices, mixed-use urban areas, artisanal production, to complement the countries growing global economy. What you got at the end, were urban landscapes that look astonishingly different from other developed economies.

Even today in Tokyo, a developed city through all definitions, we see street markets, low-rise high density structures, homes made out of all kinds of materials. We see a language of urbanism that in many ways is connected to the conditions of several neighbourhoods around the world – often referred to as imperfect urban areas in some way or the other. We also recognize the tool-house in its post-industrial incarnation, as the studio of the creative worker, designer or consultant who lives and works in the space. This is a common feature of so many cities today, not only in India but all over the world, from Berlin to New York.

Look carefully at the slide above. Is this Mumbai, Tokyo or a mix of both?  (It is a mix – left Dharavi, right Tokyo). Can we be audacious and say that there is something to the similarity you see in the landscapes of several neighbourhoods in Tokyo and those in Dharavi? And that these are fairly deep and connected to the way in which urban economies, land-use and urban forms emerge due to similar factors? Can we say that the question of slum is more complex than simply providing housing to the poor? What if the economic success of post-war Japan was also the success of the incremental development of its village-like neighborhoods? Would that help the contemporary scenario in any way? Where anyway the global economy has been battered  or challenged by run-away speculation, a breakdown of an industrial work ethic and the rise of new communications technology?

We believe that urban forms – in fact all habitats – are energized by its citizens and users. The contingencies of contemporary economic and political needs unfortunately produce overarching frameworks and policies with top-down urban visions. These cannot fully match the complexity of what urban economies are all about. So far – policies have been simply pushing ahead and providing quick-fix solutions to the leakages – which in several contexts are pretty large. Instead, what our projects try to do is simply allow residents and users of neighbourhoods to have a say, propose plans, collaborate with professionals and take charge of their spaces in cultural, economic and social terms. We believe that Dharavi is already developing, it doesn’t need to be redeveloped. What it needs is support systems. We have an office in Dharavi and networks deep in the communities there with whom we work on specific projects – cultural, economic, architectural and beyond.

URBZ is our portal – part online – part on the ground. It provides a set of tools for residents and users to start the process of taking charge of their neighbourhoods. The online side is an interactive website that allows users to work with a global community of supporters. It offers a way for them to showcase and upload their city/habitat/neighbourhood onto the virtual world, in a manner that connects on a hyper-local scale where the smallest of information becomes a source of local control. We use all existing online technologies and make them accessible to the residents through on-the ground activities such as workshops and community related get togethers around specific issues. We complement this process by supporting local initiatives and connecting users to each other in a manner that allow skills to be shared.

URBZ was co-founded by Geeta Mehta and us. We have a big team helping and working with us – Cole from Chile, Nishit Mehta our ICT coordinator and Dipti and George (our interns working with us now) besides a whole host of partners and interns, details of whom can be seen on our site. We are also in the process of setting up a new space in Goa with loads of supporters, partners and colleagues there.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 5th, 2010 at 4:35 pm You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.