Sustainable lifestyle

On Mahashivaratri, Shiva's birthday, a street is transfigured and turned into a temporary temple. A building is not needed to convey the sacred (heterotopia is neither necessarily a building, nor permanent). Social practice takes place anyway. Who needs architecture? Although it becomes clear to me when studying Dharavi, that architecture has a dialectical relation to our lifestyle. The actual structure of Dharavi, like compressed villages, allows for a specific lifestyle, sustainable in some aspects (poor people are able to survive, social structures are strong), but not in others (dogs have turned blue from the poisonous emissions of the industries). A different architecture of high-rises will generate other lifestyles, maybe not as sustainable for the poor. Next phase of this semester (Architectural Body) will bring on the challenge of designing a developed and preferably more sustainable lifestyle. It will probably keep me awake at night.

Fieldwork in kumbharwada, the potters' nagar

I meet Ranchhod, a proud potter in kumbharwada. He makes a strong impression, talks english fluently - he was the only one of his generation who went to college. We have an interesting discussion about the future of the area. The interview turns into a dialogue. I discover later he will be starring in a coming documentary about the future of Dharavi. He tells me all children go to college today, people's minds evolve and what was enough yesterday won't be enough tomorrow. Change is bound to happen.

Our group organises a small workshop with children from the area, with help from inhabitants of kumbharwada. To get things organized is quite difficult but proves instructive (which spaces are to be used, are the open spaces communal or private, how do we transport the clay to the chosen spot, etc). We ask the children to use clay to build their dream house. Even a couple of grown-ups show interest and participate. All participants get a prize at the end, after a short interview.

Our last day in the area doesn't go according to plan because of lack of time. We wanted to give photographs taken the previous day to each participant, and use them to discuss with the families about the future of kumbharwada. From what we have gathered the inhabitants are very aware of the changes ahead, but they were understandingly not willing to share their plans with us the first days. But I'm pretty sure it would have been a good method to open up for a dialogue, judging from the reactions when we gave away the photographs.

Sophistication

While watching television at the guest house, I discover a local channel that features old bollywood movies and shows ads for businesses in Dharavi, that change everyday.

Food for thought

Rahul Srivastava and Matias Sendoa Echanove from Urban Typhoon talk about Mumbai consisting of denied villages. The informal city shouldn't be considered an anachronism, but a highly sophisticated and functional space (highly relevant I think!). The problem is not the slum, but the urban imagination.

Mapping Dharavi

In the evening of march 10, we are sent out to map a main road in Dharavi. But going out at night proves to be foolish and many groups go through pretty rough experiences. During the 3 weeks in Dharavi we are constantly warned by local people not to go out after darkness falls. Especially women are rarely seen outside at night. My group walks 60 Ft Rd up and down several times, but whenever we try to make notations (or take pictures) the atmosphere quickly turns sour. Dharavi can also be a very hostile environment. It is of course possible to study hostile environments, but an evening and an afternoon are not enough. More time should be spent on establishing a relationship with the people, before any actual fieldwork can be done.

Spoiling the man

Bhau Korde, a key figure of the Koli Wada community, claims that the government's proposed plan spoils the man. "Man is a social animal, when you architects design a house you destroy this." In the planned high-rises each family from Dharavi (with proof of their living there since 2000) would get a flat, but the social structure and the possibility to earn a living is lost. To work on the communal harmony after the riots of 1992-93, the different communities started discussing together what happened and tried to achieve a mutual understanding. "Only when the grassroots work, you get 100% results." But although I sympathise with this approach, I also fear it is too idealistic, because some problems require solving on more levels, Dharavi is not only enough in itself, but also part of the city that is Mumbai. Is dialogue only possible on grassroot level? Why not vertically? The fact that one party has power over the other is of course the answer. How can balance be created to allow for real dialogue, between equal parts, to take place? Is it even possible? Where does the power balance lie between the grassroot level of the struggling people of Dharavi and the government's plans to develop Mumbai as a new Shanghai? Answers to that question are complex, but some hints were given during the rest of the workshop. International focus from media acts as a deterrent to go ahead and force the development says Kalpana Sharma, journalist and author of Rediscovering Dharavi. A member of Mashal (the organisation that is carrying biometric surveys in Dharavi) explains that the very situation of Dharavi within Mumbai works to its advantage: squeezed between two of the three railway lines that millions of Mumbaikers use everyday, the inhabitants of Dharavi could make the city stop. The city is also dependent on the informal work sector to function. Imagine if the million people of Dharavi would go on a strike for one day: no taxis, no food, to name only two obvious effects.
So they are in a position of possible negociation with the government. From what I have gathered, discussion has been focusing on the amount of sqft each family would get in the new plan. Still no alternative plan has been proposed. Maybe because a truly sustainable solution would have to involve not only Dharavi, but Mumbai, its metropolitan region, even the whole country since migration to the city from villages throughout India occurs because people are looking for work.

David Harvey, Lieven de Cauter, Mukesh Mehta and the boys

David Harvey talks about the right to the city. Arguing within a marxist view of the world, he sees urbanization as a key to the capitalistic system. In times of crisis, when growth is stopped, the system circonvents crisis using urbanization to invest capital. The system constantly reinvents itself, the scale becoming bigger each time, and finds its apostle in an urban planner, like Haussmann, reengineering Paris, later admired by Robert Moses, himself answering with suburbanization to the crisis after WWII, again in a bigger scale than before.

I felt pretty convinced by his analysis, especially the very sharp reflection on how ideas about the urban are applied, then dismissed and later revalued, when a new economic crisis arises. I don't believe in culture being independent of the course of events in the world, or self-sufficient. To quote Edward W. Said, from his Culture and Imperialism (that we discussed in one of the seminars): "For the enterprise of empire depends upon the idea of having an empire, (...) and all kinds of preparations are made for it within a culture; then in turn imperialism acquires a kind of coherence, a set of experiences, and a presence of ruler and rules alike within the culture." I would also like to quote Lieven de Cauter here: "some people call me conspiracy theorist, my answer to them is that there is a conspiracy against conspiracy theories!"


Harvey's ideas about the right to the city are definitely spot on. Today we can see the appalling discrepancy between the city of slums and the city of construction sites. We are not building cities for everyone. Dharavi is the perfect example, an informal settlement with strong communities and industries, with a potential for development, different from the one proposed in the Redevelopment Plan by architect Mukesh Mehta. He expresses the wish to turn Dharavi into a middle-class neighbourhood, using words like sustainability, the poor man's struggle for a better life, branding of products, improvement of skills, social corridors created in vertical schemes, terrasses where children can play. But his answer on the question of the transition from an informal lifestyle to one that immediately requires more income, is (unconsciously?) naive. The time-span he talks about is years, but who will be able to stretch their income for so long? When the proposed plan is scrutinized it seems obvious to me that it has fallacies. What is more convincing in his discourse is his ambition to create a strategy that would make the world slum-free. I think his wish to go to history for this achievement is far more convincing than his claim to have spent 6 months in the slum (later in the lecture it became "3 or 4 months") to understand the inhabitants of Dharavi and their struggle.

Slum settlement behind the Bouwkunde

I just spent a few minutes looking at the pictures of our slum settlement the others have posted. It struck me that the interiors are very similar to the ones we created in Stockholm when we had our introduction workshop ages ago (no pictures, sorry, it was before the digital camera age). Many groups built the same kind of communal space, around an improvised table of some kind. I think the workshop was a very good team building exercise (both the one I did my first week in School of Architecture and this one). How do we build a community? It's interesting that our identity as urban body-students suddenly got a different meaning when we had to face adversity (AngryMan) and try to achieve cooperation. Standing around a fire in the cold night is probably one of the most basic communal activities, and a very enjoyable one. Too bad television has entered our lives.

The two most important things I take with me from the workshop is the fact that we became a team and the sensibility to creative solutions that Daniele talked about. Without having myself experienced hands-on the kind of problems that arise in such a situation I would probably be blind to them in Dharavi. The pictures Daniele showed us were simply amazing, each one telling the story of a problem and its solution. It's interesting that some of the creative solutions were a bit difficult to identify as creativity, for example the picture showing oil on the pavement. Who would have guessed it was an "urban device" to keep people away? Only a true detective can unfold the story. It's not enough to watch, we need to talk to people to understand where and how their creative solutions are crucial.

Slum settlement workshop

Photography workshop

I found it very inspiring to work with photography. With a digital camera, it's almost too easy to take an unlimited amount of pictures without reflecting on how they fit together, or how they are meaningful. To me creativity is only possible where there are limitations. Freedom is often supposed to be a requirement for creativity, but I think the opposite is closer to the truth - Daniele's Fantasy Saves the Planning is a good example. I have been reflecting on what these limitations can be in Dharavi, when it comes to photography. My "baddest" picture may be a starting point. But it arouses an uneasiness in me, because it clearly treats the people in the picture as objects. At the same time, I start reading their body language, without engaging in the constant search for the eye that is programmed in us to do unconsciously when we look at people, a phenomenon called the fixational eye. I'm not sure whether I want to use this very manieristic method.


I also had an interesting discussion with Stefano about photography and the way to deal with people in the street when taking pictures. Should one approach them and ask for permission, making them self-conscious, or is it better to just take the picture, preferably without them noticing (which I do sometimes)? Stefano's reply was interesting. He said that when he was doing the later, it was because he was chasing an image - I don't remember his exact words. He doesn't find that interesting anymore. I became very aware of my own chase for a good picture, in purely esthetic terms. What I find interesting in his attitude, is that it makes it clear that photography is both a result, and a process. Maybe the process should prevail. Maybe I should be more focused on the process, rather than chasing the good picture. It's an interesting ambiguity. I think the workshop has made us aware about the fact that photography is a medium which needs to be used in a very conscious way.

So following this newfound interest in the process, I decided to document in a simple sequence something that still gets my attention everyday, although I am becoming a bit "hemmablind" (swedish word for becoming blind to one's surroundings when seeing them repeatedly) since I moved to the Netherlands in july last year: the enormous windows on street level. They make the streets so interesting, framing private life (or public life for the people inside), warm light illuminating the pavement during the night. This would be unthinkable in many other places. The first sequence is from Rotterdam, the second one from Amsterdam. I notice now that there is another ambiguity at work here: dwellings and commercial spaces have the same kind of windows, and are both present in the pictures.

Holi crap!

Guys, I can't believe our luck! It turns out that the Holi Festival takes place on march 22nd this year. It's a spring festival where people throw colours at each other on the streets, accompanied by drums and music. If you're into bollywood movies, you're probably familiar with it. I know a lot of us are flying back early on the 23rd of march, so it will be an amazing way of celebrating the end of our workshop. This is something I've wanted to experience for a very long time. Still can't believe it's going to happen!

Cold wave in Mumbai!

Quoted from Mumbai Today: "The western disturbance hitting north India had an influence over Mumbai too where minimum temperatures dipped to 8.5 degrees Celsius with weathermen saying on Friday, it might be the coldest day in the metropolis since 1962."

(In)formal

The discussion we had the other day about formal vs informal reminded me of this video of an indian crossroads. As I have never been there, I cannot say if this is how it usually works in India, but it looks pretty informal to me :)

One thing I would like to discuss further with the group is the fact that it seems that slums all over the world are very similar, with some small local variations. Within the formal planning of cities there is a lot more variations (although the grid has proven very effective and is widely used). I would like to investigate what the rules are that make the slums so similar. Could this be programmed easily? Are there any studies about this?

I also read an interesting interview with Mike Davis, done shortly after the publication of Planet of Slums by BLDGBLOG. Check it out, it's worth reading. One quote particularily got my attention:
"I think the slum is universally recognized by military planners today as a challenge. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if there’s a great leap forward in our understanding of what’s happening on the peripheries of Third World cities because of the needs of Pentagon strategists and local military planners. For instance, Andean anthropology made a big leap forward in the 1960s and early 1970s when Che Guevara and his guerilla fighters became a problem.
I think there’s a consensus, both on the left and the right, that it’s the slum peripheries of poor Third World cities that have become a decisive geopolitical space. That space is now a military challenge – as much as it is an epistemological challenge, both for sociologists and for military planners."

Here's another quote about the slums being part of the same problem as the american suburbs, in terms of urbanization:
"The real challenge is to make cities better as cities. I think Planet of Slums addresses the reality that every complaint made by sociologists in the 1950s and 60s about American suburbia is now true on an exponentially increased scale with poor cities: all the problems with sprawl, all the problems with an increasing amount of time and resources tied up in commutes to work, all the problems with environmental pollution, all the problems with the lack of traditional urban apparatuses of leisure, recreation, social services and so on."