Huaycán, marketplace

Subaltern Urbanism (A. Roy)

Urban informality

"Subaltern urbanism functions through slum ontologies. Such ontological readings of the megacity and its urbanisms have repeatedly invoked the idea of the informal. Bayat (2007) asserts that informal life is the habitus of the dispossessed. Cruz (2007) sees informal habitation at the global border as an urbanism that transgresses across the ‘property line’. For Hernando de Soto (2000), the informal represents the grassroots rebellion of the poor against state bureaucracy; it is a sign of heroic entrepreneurship. Mike Davis (2004: 24) states that ‘informal survivalism’ is ‘the new primary mode of livelihood in a majority of Third World cities’. He thereby evokes an older usage of the term ‘informal’, that of Keith Hart (1973: 61, 68), who identified a ‘world of economic activities outside the organised labor force’ carried out by an ‘urban sub-proletariat’. In all such frameworks, the informal remains synonymous with poverty and even marginality. It remains the territory and habitus of subaltern urbanism.

Greenhills shopping center, inside shops
Manila, Philippines (mithunonthe.net)

Against these various interpretations, in my work I have argued that informality must be understood as an idiom of urbanization, a logic through which differential spatial value is produced and managed (Roy and AlSayyad, 2004). Urban informality then is not restricted to the bounded space of the slum or deproletarianized/entrepreneurial labor; instead, it is a mode of the production of space that connects the seemingly separated geographies of slum and suburb. The splintering of urbanism does not take place at the fissure between formality and informality but rather, in fractal fashion, within the informalized production of space. Informal urbanization is as much the purview of wealthy urbanites as it is of slum dwellers. [...] they come to be designated as ‘formal’ by the state while other forms of informality remain criminalized. For example, Weinstein (2008: 23) shows how various shopping centers in Mumbai had been ‘built illegally... by the city’s largest and most notorious mafia organization, on land belonging to the state government’s public works department’. Or, in the case of Delhi, Ghertner (2008: 66) notes that a vast proportion of city land-use violates some planning or building law, such that much of the construction in the city can be viewed as ‘unauthorized’. He poses the vital question of how and why the law has come to designate slums as ‘nuisance’ and the residents of slums as a ‘secondary category of citizens’, while legitimizing illegal and informal ‘developments that have the “worldclass” look’. Also in Delhi, Gidwani (2006: 12) characterizes the proliferation of illegal farmhouses as the ‘urban conquest of outer Delhi’, a process of ‘unauthorized construction’ that involves ‘cordoning off the few remaining agricultural tracts’."

References

Bayat, A. (2007) Radical religion and the habitus of the dispossessed: does Islamic militancy have an urban ecology? International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31.3, 579–90.

Cruz, T. (2007) Levittown retrofitted: an urbanism beyond the property line. In D. Kelbaugh and K. McCullough (eds.), Writing urbanism: a design reader, Routledge, New York.

Davis, M. (2004) Planet of slums: urban involution and the informal proletariat. New Left Review 26 March/April, 5–34.
De Soto, H. (2000) The mystery of capital: why capitalism triumphs in the West and fails everywhere else. Basic Books, New York.

Ghertner, A. (2008) Analysis of new legal discourse behind Delhi’s slum demolitions. Economic and Political Weekly 43.20, 57–66.

Gidwani, V.K. (2006) Subaltern cosmopolitanism as politics. Antipode 38.1, 7–21. Hart, K. (1973) Informal income opportunities and urban employment in Ghana. Journal of Modern African Studies 11.1, 61–89.

Roy, A. and N. AlSayyad (2004) Urban informality: transnational perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia. Lexington Books, Lanham.

Weinstein, L. (2008) Mumbai’s development mafias: globalization, organized crime and land development. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32.1, 22–39.

Roy, Ananya (2011) Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 35.2, 223-38.

Huaycán, map

Gradual Redevelopment Does Promote Community (E. Jaffe)

"Recently [sociologist Katherine] King put Jacobs's belief to an empirical test. A few studies of housing type and social relations have been done over the years: researchers have found that residents of townhouses or villas have higher social capital than those in apartments or flats; that even the position of doors and common spaces can influence social contact; and that older housing does seem to promote interaction. However the idea that gradual redevelopment improves social ties hasn't really been studied in a direct sense.

"It remains to be seen whether the diversity of forms created by gradual development in fact predicts better neighbourly social relations," writes King.

To address this gap in the literature, King studied surveys of Chicago neighborhoods that included measures of community relations. She established four metrics of social ties: cohesion (shared values), control (a belief that community works toward a collective good), inter-generational closure (adults looking after local youth), and reciprocal exchange (trading favors, advice, information, etc.). Then she matched this information with data on the "age diversity" of housing — a proxy for gradual redevelopment, since a mixture of building ages might represent neighborhood evolution.

The results showed quite clearly that a mixture of buildings indicated strong social ties. Mid-century housing age was significantly associated with all four types of social relations, while recent construction had a negative association with social control in particular. Once King controlled for other demographic factors, only housing "age diversity" kept its significant link with all four social metrics she measured.

King concludes:

Empirical results show significant links between housing age diversity (historical development pace) and four measures of neighbourly social relations, even when controlling for other neighbourhood housing features, social composition and individual sociodemographics. It may be that gradual redevelopment preserves community ties, which may take decades to form and which new residents may 'inherit' from previous neighbours."

Read the full article.

Jaffe, Eric (2013) "Jane Jacobs Was Right: Gradual Redevelopment Does Promote Community". In: The Atlantic Cities. Place Matters. http://www.theatlanticcities.com

Diversity (J. Jacobs)

The diversity, of whatever kind, that is generated by cities rests on the fact that in cities so many people are so close together, and among them contain so many different tastes, skills, needs, supplies, and bees in their bonnets.

Even quite standard, but small, operations like proprietor-and-one-clerk hardware stores, drug stores, candy stores and bars can and do flourish in extraordinary numbers and incidence in lively districts because there are enough people to support their presence at short, convenient intervals, and in turn this convenience and neighbourhood qualities are big parts of such enterprises' stock in trade. Once they are unable to be supported at close, convenient intervals, they lose this advantage. In a given geographical territory, half as ma-ny people will not support half as many such enterprises spaced at twice the distance. When distance inconvenience sets in, the small, the various and the personal wither away [...].

Smallness and diversity, to be sure, are not synonyms. The diversity of city enterprises includes all degrees of size, but great variety does mean a high proportion of small elements. A lively city scene is lively largely by virtue of its enormous collection of small elements [...]. 

To generate exuberant diversity in a city's streets and districts, four conditions are indispensable:

1. The district, and indeed as many of its internal parts as possible, must serve more than one primary function; preferably more than two. These must insure the presence of people who go outdoors on different schedules and are in the place for different purposes, but who are able to use many facilities in common.

2. Most blocks must be short; that is, streets and opportunities to turn corners must be frequent.

3. The district must mingle buildings that vary in age and condition, including a good proportion of old ones so that they vary in the economic yield they must produce. This mingling must be fairly close-grained.

4. There must be a sufficiently dense concentration of people, for whatever purposes they may be there. This includes dense concentration in the case of people who are there because of residence."

Jacobs, Jane (2011 [1961]) The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York: Modern Library. pp 192-197.

Huaycán, zona F

Lima Beyond the Park (Exhibition)

Lima Beyond the Park.

"Sustainable approaches in dealing with the extreme water shortage in the Peruvian capital Lima are the main deal of the interdisciplinary “LiWa” research project, where nine research institutes from Germany and Peru are working together. Therefore Lima, characterized by very low rainfall and over eight million people, has to struggle with high water demand besides low water availability. Nevertheless, green areas are largely irrigated by the scarce potable water resources.

LOTTE is pleased to show contributions developed by students and staff of the Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Stuttgart , that connect new approaches to solve water problems with design of urban open spaces in Lima. The resulting projects show a new understanding of productive parks, which do not exhibit expensive luxury but seek to integrate indispensable infrastructure systems. The entire process ‐ from the research of existing water resources and new technologies, the construction of prototypes as part of a summer school till to the development of comprehensive park concepts ‐ is part of the effort, which aims to implement a pilot project in situ in Lima."