Slum Urbanism ~ UCT's Edgar Pieterse on Africa

Thanks to Emeka Okafor at Africa Unchained for spotting UCT Professor Edgar Pieterse, head of the African Centre for Cities, exploring the reality of Slum Urbanism and future of Africa's cities...

1M/km2 ~ HK's KWC Superdense Vertical Village!

VICE Motherboard takes A New Look at Kowloon Walled City, the Internet's Favorite Cyberpunk Slum...

"Borne out of longstanding tensions between the British and Chinese governments. It was spawned by the agreement, completed in 1898, to lease Hong Kong to the British for 99 years, which didn't include the Walled City [...] The result was a heavily isolated, ramshackle city-state. [...] The lack of outside support meant the Walled City was built on itself largely by itself, with commerce and industry mixed into itself as produced by a self-sufficient population. [...] Ingenuity was spawned by the city's isolation. There was little in the way of public services, meaning sanitation, public safety, and crime prevention were all the purview of locals. [...] The Kowloon Walled City continues to captivate people because of those problems, and its ills are also what make it such powerful inspiration for fictional portrayals of what's to come."

See WSJ's City of Imagination: Kowloon Walled City 20 Years Later... Plus definitely check out -- and please support financially -- the ambitious and timely City of Darkness Revisited book publishing project on Kickstarter by co-authors Ian Lambot and Greg Girard...

"We are working together again to produce City of Darkness Revisited, an all-new edition that will combine the best of the original book with several new sections that will fill in some of the gaps and bring the story up to date. We will explore the City’s dramatic architectural evolution from a near bare site in 1945 to a 17-storey megalith housing over 33,000 people at the time of its clearance. And we will explain the City’s unique legal and political status -- under two jurisdictions but effectively managed by neither -- and how this coloured every aspect of life there. A third theme will delve into the myths and realities of the Triads’ activities within the City and how these might -- or might not -- have been effectively policed. And finally we will describe how the influence of the Walled City has spread into popular culture worldwide, and how this has allowed interest in the City -- either as myth or physical reality -- to flourish."

And as extra bonus, Ian and Greg and friend Lisa point out Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong, Urban Fabric -- Historic project prepared by Lia Tramontini, Haneen Dalla-Ali, Mona Dai, and Christopher Glebe...

Torre David ~ Skyscraper Squat in Caracas, VE

Thanks to my MIT colleague Caleb Harper for spotlighting Torre David, an abandoned and unfinished 45-story skyscraper in Caracas, Venezuela which has been taken over by 2,500 locals (some 750+ families) who now call it home. While some might be dismayed by the seemingly anarchistic nature of extra-legal squatter invasions and often hazardous conditions of the building, I especially appreciate the emergent, bottom-up solutions and DIY creativity the residents exhibit, building everything from their own private spaces, to shared-use commons and stores, to essential infrastructure and security. In their NYTimes piece and related video Squatters on the Skyline, Simon Romero and Maria Eugenia Diaz write A 45-Story Walkup Beckons the Desperate...

"The office tower, one of Latin America’s tallest skyscrapers, was meant to be an emblem of Venezuela’s entrepreneurial mettle. But that era is gone. Now, with more than 2,500 squatters making it their home, the building symbolizes something else entirely in this city’s center. The squatters live in the uncompleted high-rise, which lacks several basic amenities like an elevator. [...] Once one of Latin America’s most developed cities, Caracas now grapples with an acute housing shortage. [...] Private construction of housing here has virtually ground to a halt because of fears of government expropriation. The government, hobbled by inefficiency, has built little housing of its own for the poor. [But] strivers abound in the skyscraper. They chafe at being called “invaders,” the term here for squatters, preferring the less contentious word “neighbor.” A beauty salon operates on one floor. On another, an unlicensed dentist applies the brightly colored braces that are the rage in Caracas street fashion. Almost every floor has a small bodega. [...] “There’s opportunity in this tower."

Also check out Torre David documentary trailer... Caleb's asking the fascinating question "What if we built such towers intentionally with adequate but affordable infrastructure and amenities?" Addendum: AmusingPlanet's Kaushik revisits Torre David.

Right to Stay ~ Fighting Kenyan Slum Evictions...

MIT Urban Africa's Ben Bradlow spots The Right to Stay...

Debt Trapped ~ US Millions Living in the Red...

Benedict Carey documents Life in the Red in the NYTimes...

"The usual explanations for reckless borrowing focus on people’s character, or social norms that promote free spending and instant gratification. But recent research has shown that scarcity by itself is enough to cause this kind of financial self-sabotage. “When we put people in situations of scarcity in experiments, they get into poverty traps,” said Eldar Shafir, a professor of psychology and public affairs at Princeton. “They borrow at high interest rates that hurt them, in ways they knew to avoid when there was less scarcity.” The psychological burden of debt not only saps intellectual resources, it also reinforces the reckless behavior, and quickly."

End of Manhattantown ~ Tragic Urban "Renewal"

Thanks to Strong Towns piece It's so much more than density by Charles Marohn for spotting Reason.tv's piece on the corrupt Democratic machine-enabled Tragedy of Urban Renewal: The destruction and survival of a New York City neighborhood...

"New York City's Manhattantown (1951) was one of the first projects authorized [for destruction and "upgrading"] under urban renewal and it set the model not only for hundreds of urban renewal projects but for the next 60 years of eminent domain abuse at places such as Poletown, New London, and Atlantic Yards. The Manhattantown project destroyed six blocks on New York City's Upper West Side, including an African-American community that dated to the turn of the century. The city sold the land for a token sum to a group of well-connected Democratic pols to build a middle-class housing development. [...] The community destroyed at Manhattantown was a model for the tight-knit, interconnected neighborhoods later celebrated by Jane Jacobs and other critics of top-down redevelopment."

P.S. How ironic that Cape Town's District Six got the same treatment just a couple decades later.

Foster's New World ~ Architecting Slum Solutions

The latest Economist Intelligent Life issue includes a piece by J.M. Ledgard on architect Norman Foster's New World which includes interesting prospective slum solutions...

"In particular, the challenge for Foster is Africa. [...] Africa's population will double to 2 billion before 2050. Its urban population will more than quadruple. [...] I pressed him on the question of a new model of city for Africa, necessarily poor, without an industrial base, but youthful, vital, playful and verdant. "It is absolutely essential", he said, "to get that balance of greenery, vegetation, animals, space, silence, light and dark. We only appreciate urbanity when we have the opportunity to experience the opposite. Of course, if one thinks of wilderness, nature, safaris and biodiversity one thinks of Africa." He remains a firm believer in the transformative and lasting power of huge projects. [...] He is adamant that cities dependent on the car will fail. Rising fuel prices make this inevitable, he argues, as does the sprawl of the car-driven city. [...] What is needed in African slums", Foster ventures, "is the industrialisation of units that provide the sanitation, kitchens, energy-harvesting, run-off of rainwater, and a proper infrastructure of drains and sewers. That would be transformational, but that's a very different approach to the design-profession response to wipe it clean and superimpose another order, which completely disregards the fact that, notwithstanding the horrific deprivation, there is an underlying social order and an organic response to needs." [...] the cause of African future cities need not be philanthropy. There is plenty of money to be made from squatters. Most of the economic growth in the world in the coming years will be from the poorest bits of cities in the poorest countries. [...] instead of thinking as in the past that you have one authority talking about pylons, another rail, another roads, why not bring those together with tremendous economy and elegance? In a way, the Victorian tradition had the courage to imagine that. High-speed rail is still operating on the track Stephenson created for the Rocket. Olmsted laid out Central Park at the time when people were herding sheep, horses and carts. Now, bringing back a pedestrian-friendly experience, taking away the dependence on gasoline, why drive when you could walk, design with an understanding that these are very scarce commodities -- Africa has that opportunity."

Bold, but let's see if and how his Masdar City lives up to grandiose promises first.

Boomtown Slum ~ Economist on Kibera Daily LIfe

The Economist xmas double-issue spotlights upwardly mobile Africa in Boomtown slum ~ A day in the economic life of Africa’s biggest shanty-town...

"Africa’s biggest slum, it is home to perhaps a million people. Nobody knows for sure, since Kibera is left to its own devices. Government is absent: it offers the residents (regarded as squatters) no services, opens no schools, operates no hospitals, paves no roads, connects no power lines and pumps no water into homes. And yet Kibera, wedged in between ornate embassies and a well-tended golf course, is an integral part of Nairobi [...] Kibera’s origins are Western. A century ago British colonial rulers gave small plots of land on the edge of Nairobi to Nubian soldiers serving in the King’s African Rifles. They built mud huts [...] The land was later nationalised but the Nubians stayed put and rented parts of it to newcomers. Today most homes are made of ragged tin and reused timber. [...] Kibera is a thriving economic machine. Local residents provide most of the goods and services. Tailors are hunched over pedal-powered sewing machines. Accountants and lawyers share trestle tables in open-air offices. Carpenters carve frames for double beds along a railway line. Whole skinned cows hang in spotless butcher shops. [...] Life in Kibera can be harsh. Disease is rife, food is short for some, and death can come suddenly. [...] The key to making it in Kibera is access to capital. A market of one million potential customers crowds in on entrepreneurs, but raising the money to start a business is hard. Most banks won’t lend to them because they have no collateral, perhaps not even a fixed address. Those who manage to borrow face high interest rates. [...] Kibera may be the most entrepreneurial place on the planet. Residents have no choice but to look after themselves."

Inspiring resilience. And yet further evidence that we need more inclusive innovations and beneficial slum solutions.

Criminalizing Squatters? ~ Lousy Slum Solution...

The Guardian's Steve Rose on The politics of finding a place to live...

"The criminalising of squatters in Britain is part of a Europe-wide backlash. But with at least 10% of the world population squatting, can they really be a menace to society? [...] It is invariably rightwing governments that push through the laws [...] often on the basis of spurious arguments. [...] "it's part of a revanchist mood in politics [...] Everything that people hate is blamed on soft, leftwing politics from the 1960s and 70s -- migration, squatting, Muslims. So it's revenge against what happened in the past." [...] But if squatting is on the retreat in Europe, it has exploded in the rest of the world. According to a recent UN estimate, some 800 to 900 million people around the world are technically squatters -- over 10% of the world's population. The socio-economic conditions are different: these are overwhelmingly rural migrants settling on the outskirts of cities. But these are still people occupying land they do not own, without permission. [...] These squat neighbourhoods are often referred to as slums, shanty towns, favelas or bidonvilles. They are often characterised as grim places, with poor sanitation, high crime rates, drug gangs, and other problems. But it's often a misconception, says Robert Neuwirth, author of Shadow Cities: A Billion Squatters. He spent two years living in slums in four of the world's largest cities: Mumbai, Nairobi, Istanbul and Rio de Janeiro. "They're not criminal enterprises. They're not mafias," he says. "These are people, law-abiding citizens, workers. People who wait on the tables and clean the rooms in the tourist hotels. People help each other and take care of each other."

We urgently need more inclusive and better slum solutions.

Mapping Cape Town ~ Spotlight on SA Supercity

Cape Town, South Africa in maps...

Getting Better ~ Kenny Writes In Praise of Slums

Getting Better author Charles Kenny writes in the latest Foreign Policy Cities issue In Praise of Slums, that...

"...slums are better than the alternative. Most people who've experienced both rural and urban poverty choose to stay in slums rather than move back to the countryside. That includes hundreds of millions of people in the developing world over the past few decades -- and 130 million migrant workers in China alone. They follow a well-trodden path of seeking a better life in the bright lights of the city [...] Moving to cities makes economic sense -- rich countries are urbanized countries, and rich people are predominantly town and city dwellers. [...] all things considered, slum growth is a force for good. It could be an even stronger driver of development if leaders stopped treating slums as a problem to be cleared and started treating them as a population to be serviced, providing access to reliable land titles, security, paved roads, water and sewer lines, schools, and clinics. As Harvard University economist Edward Glaeser puts it, slums don't make people poor -- they attract poor people who want to be rich. So let's help them help themselves."

That's centrally why we have MIT Media Lab City Science Initiative.

Rethinking Slums ~ Towards Inclusive Upgrading

Thanks to Africa Unchained's Emeka Okafor for Reframing 'Slums' and pointing to Bombastic Elements and spotting this piece by Stretch Ledford on Ajelogo: After the Bulldozers in Lagos...

"Since 1997, Funmilayo Omotosho lived and worked in a market in Ajelogo, a neighborhood in Lagos, Nigeria. For reasons it has not made public, the Lagos State Government ordered that the Ajelogo market be destroyed during the early morning hours of March 7, 2010. More than 10,000 residents and vendors were displaced. With her business, home, and community in ruins, and with nowhere else to go, Fumilayo still lives in Ajelogo, amidst the ruins of her home and business."

Destroying markets seems like the very last thing one should do in order to improve peoples lives. What the hell is going on here? And here's a similar situation in Mumbai's Dharavi... And in Nairobi's Kibera...

Kliptown Youth Program ~ CNN's Change Heroes

CNN's Kathleen Toner spotlights Thulani Madondo and his KYP colleagues Helping 'Kliptown' kids take control of their future. The story begins with Kliptown resident Brian Munyai...

"Munyai found basic necessities like food and clothing difficult to come by. But although his circumstances didn't make it easy, he was determined to get an education. "I spent a lot of time without a school uniform," he said, recalling the embarrassment he felt being different from classmates from middle-class neighborhoods. "Going to school with a hungry stomach... it was very tough." Munyai worked hard, however, and in high school, he heard about the Kliptown Youth Program. The after-school program, commonly known as KYP, provided him with intensive tutoring that helped him pass his senior exams and find funding to attend the University of Johannesburg. He recently earned a national diploma in banking. "This program actually changed my future," Munyai said. "(Without it), right now, I would not be standing here and saying that I went to university."

Local Food Growing ~ Kibera Sack Gardens...

The French NGO Solidarités works in Nairobi's Kibera, Mathare and Mukuru with its garden in a sack project...

Vertical Gyms ~ Space-Saving Caracas Amenities

BBC shows Vertical gyms solve Caracas slum space shortage...

"Space is at a premium in the slums of Caracas and sports facilities are few and far between. So architects at the Urban Think Tank decided to save space by building vertical gyms that rise above the surrounding buildings. This one is planned for Los Teques, on the southern edge of Caracas."

India's Way ~ NYTimes on Pathways to Progress

Two key pieces on India's Way in the NYTimes, first Vikas Bajaj and Jim Yardley write Many of India’s Poor Turn to Private Schools...

"In India, the choice to live outside the faltering grid of government services is usually reserved for the rich or middle class, who can afford private housing compounds, private hospitals and private schools. But as India’s economy has expanded during the past two decades, an increasing number of India’s poor parents are now scraping together money to send their children to low-cost private schools in hopes of helping them escape poverty. [But] faced with sharp criticism of the woeful state of government schools, Indian policy makers have enacted a sweeping law intended to reverse their decline. But skeptics say the litany of new requirements could also wipe out many of the private schools now educating millions of students."

Second, Yardley writes In One Slum, Misery, Work, Politics and Hope...

"In the labyrinthine slum known as Dharavi are 60,000 structures, many of them shanties, and as many as one million people living and working on a triangle of land barely two-thirds the size of Central Park in Manhattan. Dharavi is one of the world’s most infamous slums, a cliché of Indian misery. It is also a churning hive of workshops with an annual economic output estimated to be $600 million to more than $1 billion. “This is a parallel economy,” said Mr. Mobin, whose family is involved in several businesses in Dharavi. “In most developed countries, there is only one economy. But in India, there are two.” India is a rising economic power, even as huge portions of its economy operate in the shadows. Its “formal” economy consists of businesses that pay taxes, adhere to labor regulations and burnish the country’s global image. India’s “informal” economy is everything else: the hundreds of millions of shopkeepers, farmers, construction workers, taxi drivers, street vendors, rag pickers, tailors, repairmen, middlemen, black marketeers and more."

See also photos on Getting Ahead in Dharavi by Adam Ferguson.

Medellín Escalator ~ Comuna 13's New Pathways!

Excellent to see Medellín residents in the Comuna 13 district Las Independencias I neighborhood benefiting from their new outdoor escalator system! Six sections of automated uplifting Connection Pathways take people from below to 28 storeys (130 meters) up in 6 minutes instead of the 35 by stairs. Hispanically Speaking News reports the escalators...

"...were inaugurated Tuesday by Medellín Mayor Alonso Salazar and the Urban Development Company, or EDU, that tackled the joint initiative four years ago. [...] The project, with a cost of 10 billion pesos (about $5.2 million), involved the Japanese company Fujitec, which designed the escalators and manufactured them at its plant in China, along with Conservicios, a local firm responsible for importing and installing the parts. [...] It’s a “transit solution that will give residents a better quality of life,” Campuzano said. EDU is a decentralized industrial and commercial organization of the municipality of Medellín, the provincial capital of Antioquia and the second most important city in Colombia. The escalators are not the first in the world to be installed outdoors, since there are several for purposes of tourism, but this is a first for urban transport. [...] The work as a whole includes 1,102 sq. meters (11,846 sq. feet) of public spaces, 343 meters (1,125 feet) of pedestrian walks, two public buildings -- one of them with a terrace overlooking the city -- plus benches and other urban furnishings."

Very interesting to consider this in light of the Hong Kong Mid-Levels Escalator project I wrote about a few weeks ago. Anyways, here's reporting from the scene of the unveiling...

Caste-Free Capitalism ~ Money vs Prejudices...

Very interesting story by Lydia Polgreen of the NYTimes on Rags to Riches: Scaling Caste Walls With Capitalism’s Ladders in India...

"The untouchable boy had become golden, thanks to the newest god in the Indian pantheon: money. As the founder of a successful offshore oil-rig engineering company, Ashok Khade is part of a tiny but growing class of millionaires from the Dalit population, the 200 million so-called untouchables who occupy the very lowest rung in Hinduism’s social hierarchy. “I’ve gone from village to palace,” Mr. Khade exclaimed, using his favorite phrase to describe his remarkable journey [...] “This is a golden period for Dalits,” said Chandra Bhan Prasad, a Dalit activist and researcher who has championed capitalism among the untouchables. “Because of the new market economy, material markers are replacing social markers. Dalits can buy rank in the market economy [...] “We are fighting the caste system with capitalism” [...] Messy industries like construction are closer to the traditional occupations of the lowest castes. [...] “In this complex society, Dalits are turning disadvantage into an advantage”

Slum Learnings ~ Density, Vitality, Resilience...

Thanks to Africa Unchained's Emeka Okafor for spotting Rebecca Tuhus-Dubrow's Globe piece Learning from Slums...

"The world's slums are overcrowded, unhealthy -- and increasingly seen as resourceful communities that can offer lessons to modern cities. [...] No one denies that slums -- also known as shantytowns, squatter cities, and informal settlements -- have serious problems. They are as a rule overcrowded, unhealthy, and emblems of profound inequality. But among architects, planners, and other thinkers, there is a growing realization that they also possess unique strengths, and may even hold lessons in successful urban development. [...] slums have assets along with their obvious shortcomings. Their humming economic activity and proximity to city centers represent big advantages over the subsistence farming that many slum dwellers have fled. Numerous observers have noted the enterprising spirit of these places, evident not only in their countless tiny businesses, but also in the constant upgrading and expansion of homes. Longstanding slum communities tend to be much more tightknit than many prosperous parts of the developed world, where neighbors hardly know one another. Indeed, slums embody many of the principles frequently invoked by urban planners: They are walkable, high-density, and mixed-use, meaning that housing and commerce mingle. [...] And there are thinkers who take the idea a step further, arguing that slums should prompt the rest of us to reconsider our own cities. While the idea of emulating slums may seem absurd, a number of planners and environmentalists say that we would do well to incorporate their promising elements."

Very compelling concept indeed. And with fast growing cities in emerging regions, such slum learning could lead to urgently needed urban innovations.

Kadogo Economy ~ CNN & NTV on Small Goods

Small is beautiful: Slum traders spark big business trend reports CNN's Lillian Leposo, on the retail goods transformation in Kenya, the rest of Africa, and emerging economies generally...

"A common factor in these goods is that they are sold in small packages, weighing from 45 grams to just four grams, and costing from as little as half a cent. Though now all her goods are sold in branded packaging, [shopkeeper Anna] Wanjiru has been selling the same items in similar small portions for decades to the low-income market. "My customers are poor and were locked out of the supermarkets where everyday things were packaged in large quantities, making them unaffordable," said Wanjiru. "So I decided to buy the big packs and then resell in small portions to my customers." The ingenuity of Wanjiru and other shopkeepers who serve people in low-income areas gave rise to Kenya's "Kadogo economy," which loosely means low-unit economy. Progressively, big consumer goods companies noticed the profits and decided to cash in as well by repackaging their products."

And here's a Kenyan NTV report on the Kadogo economy...