Redefining

the Urban

Zeitschrift für dasPlanen und Bauenin der Dritten Welt

3/4 - 2009

TRIALOG 102/103

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Redefining the UrbanVolume Editors: Jürgen Oestereich, Klaus Teschner

Inhalt / Table of contents

02 Editorial

04 Die Stadt vom Dorf her neu denken? Einhard Schmidt-Kallert

10 Negotiated Space:Urban Villages in the Pearl River Delta

Josefine Fokdal, Peter Herrle

16 Villages within the City: Housing Rural Migrants in the Emerging Mega-City of Shenzhen, China

Pu Hao, Richard Sliuzas, Stan Geertman

21 Changing Arenas for Defining Urban India: Middle Class Associations, Municipal Councillors and the Urban Poor Joop de Wit

28 Between Hierarchies and Networks in Local Governance: Institutional Arrangements in Making Mumbai a ”World-Class City“ Mina Noor, I.S.A. Baud

35 Reframe Urban Questions and Produce New Possibilities: Contested Urbanism in Dharavi Camillo Boano

42 Fragmented Cairotopias: The ”Heterotopology“ of Greater Cairo‘s Suburban Communities Wael Salah Fahmi

48 Refugee Camps as ”Accidental Cities“:Towards an ”Urban Refugee Life-Style“?

Sylvia Maria Stoll

53 New Actors Shaping Spaces of Identity:Chilean Cases of Ethnification of Cities

Walter Alejandro Imilan

58 “If you want to play the game, play the game.” Housing as Governance in Cape Town, South Africa

Astrid Ley

64 “We Speak Louder than Before.” A reflection on participatory housing design for low-income people Rittirong Chutapruttikorn

69 Recife / Brasilien: Mutationen standardisierter Großsiedlungen durch ihre NutzerInnen

Katharina Kirsch-Soriano da Silva

75 Jenseits von „Global City“ und „Drittweltstadt“: Postkoloniale Perspektiven auf „gewöhnliche Städte“ Boris Michel

81 The Construction of the Urban: Cultural Evolution and the Asymmetry of Power

Jürgen Oestereich

86 Veranstaltungen / Forthcoming Events

88 Neue Bücher / Book Reviews

A Journal for Planning and Building

in the Third World

3/4 - 2009

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Die Stadt vom Dorf her neu denken?

Einhard Schmidt-Kallert

Redefining the city from a rural perspectiveMost recent research on urbanisation in developing countries has focused on megacities. One important thread of research emphasises the articulation between formal and informal regulation so as to better understand the internal dynamics of urbanisation. This article adds an additional perspective: Current urbanisation dynamics in Africa and Asia can only be fully understood when recognising the importance of non-permanent forms of migration and multi-locational households. In many parts of Africa and Asia, but also in the transition countries of the former Soviet Union and to a lesser extent in Latin America, informal urban-rural linkages at the household level constitute an important safety net. There is a specific type of economic and non-economic reciprocity between urban and rural parts of such spatially split households. Multi-locational households consciously live in two locations and take advantage of both urban and rural opportunities. Social networks enable the individual household to bridge the gap between the two locations.

Was macht Stadt aus, wie definiert sich das Städtische, was sind städtische Lebenswelten? Was ist Stadtkultur, was ist Stadt im 21. Jahrhundert, zu einem Zeitpunkt, zu dem mehr als die Hälfte der Menschheit in städtischen Siedlungen lebt – zumindest wenn wir uns auf die Definiti-onen der vielen statistischen Ämter verlassen, auf denen diese Zahl beruht.

Wenn von Stadt im 21. Jahrhundert die Rede ist, denken viele zuerst an die mehr als 20 Megastädte auf der Erde, in denen mindestens 10 Millionen Menschen leben. Die Megastädte Asiens und Afrikas wachsen heute so schnell wie nie in der Geschichte der Menschheit. Wir haben Bilder von endlosen Slums mit baufälligen Bretterbuden im Kopf. Oder wir denken an den täglichen Verkehrskollaps und die Abgaswolken in den notorisch verstopften Straßen von Kairo, Mumbai oder Manila. Oder an die Müllberge an

den Rändern vieler Megastädte. Stadtplaner und Sozi-alwissenschaftler sind fasziniert und ratlos zugleich: Die Megastädte stehen vor scheinbar unlösbaren Herausfor-derungen, aber der Zuzug weiterer Migranten vom Land geht ungebrochen weiter. Verwaltungen sind schon lange überfordert. Graßangelegte Forschungsprojekte widmen sich der Frage: Wie funktionieren Megastädte trotz alledem, gibt es überhaupt Steuerungsmechanismen, die sich beim Blick von außen auf das vermeintliche Chaos nur schwer erschließen (vgl. z.B. Mertins/Kraas 2008)? Letztlich: Wie funktionieren Megastädte? Wie leben die Menschen, wie organisieren sie ihr Überleben?1

Eines ist sicher: Die Megastädte sind nicht nur die Städte der Armen, auch nicht in Entwicklungsländern. Viele von ihnen nehmen auch Funktionen im globalen Netz wahr. Die meisten Megastädte in Entwicklungsländern sind vielfach fragmentiert, bestehen mindestens aus der Stadt der Armen, der Stadt der Mittelklasse und der global vernetzten Stadt. Auch die Verflechtungen zwischen den Teilen der fragmentierten Städte, zwischen der formellen und informellen Stadt sind Gegenstand vielfältiger For-schungsprojekte.

Doch in welcher Tradition stehen die schnell wachsenden Metropolen in Entwicklungsländern? Sind die afrika-nischen Städte vergrößertes Abbild des afrikanischen Dorfes? Sind die äußeren Spuren des kolonialen Ein-flusses, des arabischen Einflusses, der Kern ihrer Identität, sind diese Prägungen bestimmend für die Lebenswelten ihrer Bewohner? Bauen die asiatischen Städte auf spezifisch chinesische, indische, nepalesische Stadttraditi-onen? Welchen Einfluss haben europäisch-amerikanische Leitbilddiskurse? Welchen Einfluss hat der Funktionalis-

Bild 1 Olympic Stadium / Olympiastadion Beijing. Photo: SPRING.

1So werden allein in Deutsch-land seit 2005 mehrere große Forschungsprogramme zu Megastädten gefördert, ein Programm des Bundes-ministeriums für Bildung und Forschung, ein noch laufendes Schwerpunkt-programm der Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft und ein Forschungsprogramm der Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft.

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mus, welchen die spezifisch europäische Stadtkultur? Lassen sich die Megastädte in Entwicklungsländern allein aus der empirischen Analyse ihrer Struktur, ihrer Funkti-onen, der Polarität von Formalität und Informalität, den Gelenkverbindungen zwischen der informellen Stadt und der globalen Stadt verstehen?

Schließlich: Wo gibt es in unserer globalisierten Welt einen übergreifenden Diskurs was Stadt, was das Städtische, in Entwicklungsländern zumal, heute ausmacht? Die Frage ist rhetorisch, es gibt ihn nicht, es kann ihn nicht geben, diesen übergreifenden Diskurs. Die Diskurse sind genauso fragmentiert wie die wirkliche Welt und wie die Megastädte – doch damit nicht weniger interessant. Keiner allein hat die Definitionshoheit, was heute Stadt ausmacht und was in Zukunft Stadt ausmachen soll. Da gibt es die Stadtdefinitionen und die Stadtinszenierungen der Herrschenden, vor allem der autokratischen Regime. Da gibt es Definitionsversuche von Planern und Analysen und Deutungen von Sozialwissenschaftlern. Und dann gibt es eine weitere Perspektive, die zum Ausdruck kommt in den Geschichten der Zuwanderer, den Menschen aus den Dörfern, die in die Städte abwandern, die Städte umbau-en, umgestalten und zugleich ihrer dörflichen Herkunft treu bleiben. Diese zuletzt genannte Perspektive steht im Mittelpunkt dieses Artikels.

Die Stadt der Herrschenden

Peking 2008. Die chinesische Führung, die Stadtverwal-tung von Peking, chinesische und internationale Planer beeindruckten die Welt mit neuen Bildern der chine-sischen Metropole (vgl. Bild 1). Die olympischen Spiele waren auch eine städtebauliche Inszenierung. Dafür waren im großen Maßstab Wohnviertel, vor allem die ver-winkelten Gassen mit traditionellen Hofhäusern niederge-walzt worden. Internationale und die besten chinesischen Architekten und Stadtplaner gaben sich ein Stelldichein. Wo vorher in einer funktionierenden Nachbarschaft alte Menschen auf wackeligen Bambushockern grünen Tee geschlürft hatten, wurde nun in Coffee Houses im globa-len Stil Starbucks-Kaffee ausgeschenkt. Die internationale Städtebaukritik schwankte zwischen Bewunderung,

Ablehnung und moderater Zustimmung angesichts dieser grandiosen Neuinszenierung der Stadt. Trotzdem schaffte die chinesische Führung es nicht, das Bild des neuen Peking weltweit in den Köpfen der Fernsehzuschauer zu verankern. Denn trotz aller Faszination, für viele Beobach-ter schoben sich vor die schönen Bilder des neuen Peking Erinnerungsbilder, auch dies Fernsehbilder, die ein paar Jahre älter waren: die Bilder vom Massaker am Tien-An-Men-Platz (vgl. Bild 2). Und schließlich ist das wirkliche Peking auch die Stadt der Wanderarbeiter, genauso wie alle Großstädte an der Ostküste Chinas. Stadt der Wander-arbeiter, die in Ledigenheimen oder unter prekären Bedin-gungen in schnell hochgezogenen Einfach-Wohnblocks hausen (vgl. Bild 3). Aber dieses Bild des neuen Peking wird international kaum wahrgenommen.

Oder Dubai, die Stadt der höchsten Hochhäuser, der künstlichen Inseln, der letzte Versuch, eine autogerechte Stadt zu bauen. Eine eklektische Stadt, ausgedacht an der Schnittstelle zwischen autokratischer Herrschaft und globalen Wirtschaftsinteressen. Auch hier sind die Wohnblocks der Wanderarbeiter schamhaft versteckt. Dubai ist aus vielerlei Gründen kein Modell für eine zukunftsfähige Stadt im 21. Jahrhundert. Das liegt nicht nur am planerischen Eklektizismus, sondern auch an der Energiebilanz, am erschreckend hohen ökologischen Fußabdruck dieser Stadt.

Stadt der Herrschenden, Stadt als Kopfgeburt eines au-tokratischen Herrschers: Vor 25 Jahren hat V. S. Naipaul in seiner wunderbaren Reisereportage „The Crocodiles of Yamoussoukro“ eine unübertroffene Parabel auf Städtebau als Inszenierung autoritärer Herrschaft gege-ben. Die Reportage kreist um Yamoussoukro, die neue

Bild 2 Tien-An-Men Square in Beijing 1989.

Bild 3Urban Village in Beijng. Photo: Shangqing Qi.

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Hauptstadt der Elfenbeinküste, die der frühere Diktator Felix Houpouet-Bogny nahe seinem Heimatdorf aus dem Boden stampfen ließ. Mit einer Kathedrale höher als der Petersdom, einem Präsidentenpalast und den Teichen mit den Krokodilen, die nach Futter gieren. Die Kroko-dile im Titel sind Metapher für vieles, für afrikanische Tradition, aber nicht für die positiven Seiten der afrika-nischen Kultur, sondern für deren Abgründe, und für die menschenverachtende Brutalität einiger afrikanischer Alleinherrscher (Naipaul 1984).

Die Stadt der Planer

Städtebau kennt viele Traditionen. Stadtplaner haben das Recht, an unterschiedliche Traditionslinien anzuknüpfen. Funktionstrennung und Funktionsmischung, die auto-gerechte Stadt, auch die Idee der Gartenstadt – viele der Wege und Irrwege der europäischen Planung sind im Laufe der Zeit in Stadtentwicklungskonzepten und Master Planning Studies in Entwicklungsländern aufge-griffen worden. Auffällig ist, wie im letzten Jahrzehnt die spezifische Tradition der europäischen Stadt Faszination auf Städtebauer und Planer in einigen Entwicklungs-ländern ausübt. Einige der Satellitenstädte rund um Shanghai greifen bewusst europäische Stadttraditionen in ihrer Raumstruktur auf. Von Architekturkritikern wer-den viele dieser Versuche belächelt als Ansammlung von unverbundenen Zitaten, von Versatzstücken. Schwerer wiegt, dass das Spezifische der europäischen Stadt nicht ohne weiteres von seinem sozialgeschichtlichen und kulturhistorischen Kontext gelöst werden kann. Denn die europäische Stadt lebte von Emanzipation des Bür-gertums seit dem Ende des europäischen Mittelalters, insbesondere in der Mitte Europas.

In der neuen Hauptstadt Malaysias Putrajaya haben die Planer im Zentrum einen breiten Boulevard angelegt (vgl. Bild 4). Ganz wie in Paris oder in Budapest. Nur lei-der hat sich bis heute das erhoffte Straßenleben nicht

eingestellt. Keiner flaniert auf dem Boulevard, Straßen-cafés gibt es auch nicht. Zum Teil liegt es am Klima – es ist einfach zu heiß zum Flanieren. Zum Teil liegt es an den überdimensionierten Baukörpern der Ministerien, die nicht zum Verweilen einladen. Asien hat seine ei-gene Tradition von öffentlichen Räumen – zu beobach-ten auf den Nachtmärkten und an den Essenständen zwischen Jaipur und Surabaya. Doch der Boulevard in Putrajaya ist menschenleer. Übrig bleibt europäische Stadtbaukultur als Zitat.

Die informelle Stadt

Die Megastadtforschung des letzten Jahrzehnts hat eine breit gefächerte Literatur über Strukturen und Funkti-onsweisen des informellen Teils der Städte in Entwick-lungsländern hervor gebracht. Es gibt Forschungen über informelle Versorgungsnetzwerke, über die Nutzung von öffentlichem Raum und über informelle Planungsverfah-ren. Volker Kreibich, Wilbard Kombe und einige andere Wissenschaftler haben über Jahre den Prozess der informellen Siedlungsentwicklung und der informellen Regulierung am Beispiel von Dar es Salaam untersucht.

In einem kürzlich erschienenen Artikel spricht Volker Kreibich über die invisible hand in Bezug auf die Struk-turen, die sich bei informeller Landnahme und Besiedlung durchsetzen. Viele der Zuwanderer, die sich am Stadtrand ansiedeln, haben nicht nur die Erfahrung des Dorfes im Kopf, sondern bringen bereits eine mental map von städtischer Bebauung mit (Kreibich 2010, S. 39). Sie haben eine Vorstellung davon, dass zu städtischen Nachbar-schaften auch Wasserleitungen und Zufahrtsstraßen zur Versorgung von kleinen Betrieben gehören. So entspricht das Siedlungsmuster, das sich schließlich durchsetzt, kei-neswegs dem Bild afrikanischer Dörfer, sondern ist auch von bereits bekannten städtischen Siedlungstraditionen geprägt. Ähnliches gilt für die Art wie informelle Parzellie-rungen vorgenommen werden (Scholz 2008).

Bild 4 Central Boulevard in Putrajaya, Malaysia. Photo: SPRING.

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Dies ist nur ein Aspekt der Forschung über informelle Siedlungen. In ihrer physischen Gestalt passen sie nicht so recht in bisherige Bilder von Stadt. Sie sind kein Abbild der Dörfer, aus denen die Migranten kommen. Sie sind aber auch nicht Fortsetzung der kolonialen Stadt oder knüpfen gar an die für die Mittelklasse gebauten Wohnquartiere, gated communities und Satellitenstädte an. Sie sind etwas ganz Neues, etwas Hybrides. Ländlich aber zugleich städ-tisch. Genauso wie die Gesellschaft, die in ihnen lebt, eine Übergangsgesellschaft ist, zwischen Stadt und Land.

Leben zwischen Dorf und Stadt

Edwar fährt Taxi in Indonesiens Hauptstadt Jakarta. 12 bis 14 Stunden ist er täglich mit einem alten Mazda im Verkehrschaos dieser asiatischen Megastadt unterwegs, dann übernimmt ein anderer Fahrer die Nachtschicht. Oft steht er auf den sechs- oder achtspurigen Ausfallstra-ßen stundenlang im Stau, in brütender Hitze, atmet viele Stunden lang die Abgase ein, und ärgert sich, dass der Taxameter nicht weiter geht. Nach der Schicht rechnet er seinen Tagesverdienst zusammen. Ein eigenes Auto kann er sich noch lange nicht leisten, aber er hat das Geld, die Miete für sein bescheidenes Zimmer mit Kochstelle, Bett und Fernseher zu bezahlen. Wichtiger noch: Er spart genug, um regelmäßig etwas davon an seine Familie ins Dorf nach West-Sumatra zu schicken. Dort lebt seine Frau Hasnah mit den Kindern. Die Frau verkauft auf dem Markt in Simpang Empat selbst angebautes Gemüse, aber sie braucht Edwars Überweisungen für den Schulbus und das Schulessen für die Kinder. Einmal im Jahr fährt Edwar zurück zu seiner Familie, dafür lebt er, dafür arbeitet er das ganze Jahr als Taxifahrer in Jakarta.

Andere leben noch schlechter, noch „prekärer“ in dieser Megastadt Jakarta. Sie verdienen ihren Lebensunterhalt als Parkwächter, beim Sortieren von Müll oder als Klein-händler, typische Jobs im informellen Sektor. Einige sind täglich als fliegende Händler in den Vorortzügen unter-wegs, verkaufen Sandalen, Moskitoschutz, Werkzeug und allerlei Kleinkram an die Passagiere, die sich in den Zügen drängen. Nicht alle können ein Zimmer oder einen Schlafplatz mieten. Immer noch, auch nach vielen Jahren im Zeichen des asiatischen Wirtschaftswunders, wird die Eisenbahnstrecke im Süden Jakartas von zeltartigen Un-terkünften der Ärmsten unter den Zuwanderern gesäumt (vgl. Bild 5).

Fragt man sie nach ihrer Geschichte, dann haben fast alle von ihnen eine Migrationsgeschichte zu erzäh-len: Von ihrem Heimatdorf in Ostjava oder auf einer entfernten Außeninsel sind sie vor fünf, zehn oder 20 Jahren nach Jakarta gekommen. Einige kehren regelmä-ßig dorthin zurück, um sich als Erntehelfer zu verdin-gen. Sie leben und arbeiten das ganze Jahr in Jakarta, doch ihr emotionaler Lebensmittelpunkt bleibt das Heimatdorf, die Familie, die dort immer noch lebt. Auch Edwars Gesicht hellt sich auf, er strahlt, wenn er von seiner Familie erzählt.

Edwar ist kein Einzelfall, wie er leben viele Millionen Menschen in Asien und Afrika. Sie arbeiten in der Stadt, aber in Wirklichkeit bleiben sie Teil ihres ländlichen Haushalts. Um wirtschaftlich zurecht zu kommen, müssen sie Einkommen aus der Landwirtschaft mit Lohnarbeit in der Stadt kombinieren. Das gilt für viele Megastädte in Afrika und Asien und (in geringerem Umfang auch) in Lateinamerika. In China wird die Zahl der Wanderarbeiter, die über viele Jahre zwischen Stadt und Land pendeln, auf 140 Millionen geschätzt. Die meisten von ihnen lassen einen Teil der Familie, häufig minderjährige Kinder, im Heimatdorf zurück.

Edwars Geschichte bringt uns auf eine in Wissenschaft und Planungspraxis lange vernachlässigte Perspektive. Die Megastädte in Asien und Afrika wachsen wegen der Zuwanderung aus den ländlichen Regionen. Doch oft wur-de übersehen, dass ein großer Teil dieser Migration nicht permanenten Charakter hat. Wo die Zuwanderer regel-mäßig (z.B. zur Erntezeit) in ihr Heimatdorf zurückkehren, spricht man von „saisonaler“ Migration, wo sie zwischen Stadt und Land pendeln, von „zirkulärer“ Migration. (vgl. Bild 6). Einige Autoren vermuten, dass diese Formen von nicht-permanenter Migration heute bei weitem die per-manente Abwanderung überwiegen. Genau lässt sich das nicht nachweisen, weil nicht-permanente Migration in den Statistiken kaum erfassbar ist (Deshingkar 2005).

Lange herrschte in Wissenschaft und Planungspraxis die Vorstellung vor, dass die Migration aus Landbewoh-nern ein für alle Mal Städter macht – spätestens in der zweiten Generation. Dieses Paradigma zur Beschreibung des Migrationsprozesses war abgeleitet von europäischen Forschung und Statistik hat folglich nur die in den letzten Jahren und Jahrzehnten neu Zugewanderten im Blick, selten aber deren Beziehungen zu ihrem Herkunftsort. Und noch seltener haben Migrationsforscher sich die Mühe gemacht, den anderen Teil der Familie, die Eltern, die Kin-der, die Ehefrau am Heimatort zu befragen. Dabei liegt hier eine Spur, um zu verstehen, wie Menschen in Megastädten wirklich leben, vielleicht auch, wie Megastädte letztlich

Bild 5 Jakarta: Squatter at the commuter railway / Squatter an der Vorortbahn. Photo: SPRING.

References

Bah, Mahmoud et al. (2003) ‘Changing rural-urban linkages in Mali, Nigeria and Tanzania.’ In: Environment and Urbaniza-tion Bd. 15, Heft 1

Bohle, Hans Georg et al. (2008) ‚Reis für die Megacity.’ In: Geographische Rundschau Bd. 60, Heft 11, S. 28-37

Deshingkar, Priya (2005) ‘The role of circular migration in economic growth.’ In: Entwicklung und ländlicher Raum 5/2005: 10-12

Diaw, Kofi und Schmidt- Kallert, Einhard (1990) Effects of Volta Lake Resettle- ment in Ghana. Hamburg

Kreibich, Volker (2010) ‘The Invisible Hand: Informal Ur-banisation in Major Cities of Tanzania.’ In: Geographische Rundschau International, Bd. 6, Heft 2, S. 38-43

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funktionieren. Die wenigsten Migranten sind aber auf sich gestellt, entscheiden für sich allein, in die Stadt abzuwan-dern; sie sind eingebunden in familiäre, oft großfamiliäre Haushaltsstrukturen. Und sehr viele von ihnen leben in so genannten „multilokalen Haushalten“, d.h. ein Teil der Familie lebt in der Stadt, ein anderer bleibt auf dem Land.

Multilokale Haushalte

Ich selbst kam mit diesem Phänomen erstmals Ende der 80er Jahre im Rahmen eines Feldforschungsprojektes zu Überlebensstrategien bäuerlicher Haushalte am Volta-See in Ghana in Berührung. Eines der Ergebnisse der damaligen Studie war, dass viele Haushalte räumlich geteilt sind. Einzelne Familienmitglieder leben in einer Großstadt wie Accra und verdienen Bargeld. Ein Teil davon steht dem ländlichen Teil des Haushalts zur Zeit der Aussaat zur Verfügung. Monate später kehrt sich das Verhältnis um. Nach der Ernte erhalten die städtischen Haushaltsmitglieder vom ländlichen Teil des Haushalts Yams und andere Naturalien für die Haushaltsführung (Diaw/Schmidt-Kallert 1990). Ähnliche Ergebnisse erga-ben sich in einer umfangreichen vergleichenden Studie in Mali, Nigeria und Tanzania (Bah et al. 2003). Immer leben die Mitglieder der multilokalen Haushalte ganz bewusst an zwei oder mehr weit voneinander entfernten Standorten. Ihre Überlebensstrategie bezieht die jewei-ligen Chancen von Stadt und Land ein.

Doch solche Lebensstrategien multi-lokaler Haushalte zwischen Stadt und Land haben nicht nur ökonomische, sondern auch eine Vielzahl sozialer und kultureller Funkti-onen. So konnte Beate Lohnert eine andere Kombination von städtischen und ländlichen Lebenschancen in einer Studie über die Stadt-Land-Beziehungen zwischen den ehemaligen Townships in Kapstadt und der Provinz Eas-tern Cape in Südafrika nachweisen (Lohnert 2002). Junge Kernfamilien ziehen zwar nach Kapstadt, aber viele Kinder

verbringen nur die Ferienzeit in Kapstadt bei ihren Eltern, über 50% der Kinder leben sonst nicht in städtischen Haushalten. Denn auf dem Land ist das Leben sicherer als in den städtischen Townships.

So ergibt sich für die Organisation multilokaler Haushalte eine sehr spezifische und für das neue Südafrika typische Arbeitsteilung: Der Haushaltsstandort im ländlichen Raum hat die Funktion, Kleinkinder zu betreuen, Alte und Kranke zu versorgen und Nahrungsmittelüberschüsse für die städtischen Haushaltsmitglieder zu produzieren. Dagegen erwirtschaftet der städtische Haushaltteil das Geldeinkommen und ist eine Art Brückenkopf für neu Zu-gewanderte (vgl. Bild 7). Er dient auch dem Austausch von Gütern, Leistungen und Informationen (Lohnert 2002). In ganz ähnlicher Weise spielt in den Familien der Wander-arbeiter in China der Heimatort eine große Rolle bei der Kindererziehung (Steinbach 2004).

Multi-lokale Haushalte sind nicht nur für die klassischen Entwicklungsländer in Asien und Afrika typisch. Seit dem Zerfall der Sowjetunion haben sich ähnliche Struk-turen an den ausgefransten Rändern von Moskau, Minsk, Tbilisi, Jerewan und vieler anderer osteuropäischer Städte herausgebildet. Ohne die Subsistenzproduktion der Datschen oder der in einigen Ländern neu zugewie-senen landwirtschaftlichen Parzellen (zum Beispiel in Armenien) wäre ein großer Teil der Stadtbewohner in den Krisenjahren nie über die Runden gekommen. Auch hier lebt ein Teil der Familie saisonal oder immer auf der Datscha oder dem dörflichen Wohnhaus und bearbeitet den Garten, während andere Familienmitglieder ganz in der Stadt wohnen. Wer dann noch in den Sommermo-naten seine Stadtwohnung in Moskau an zahlungskräf-tige Ausländer vermieten kann, dem bietet das Leben zwischen Stadt und Land auch noch Möglichkeiten, das Bareinkommen zu erhöhen (vgl. Schmidt-Kallert 2010).

Die Motive, multilokale Haushaltskonstellationen auf-zubauen, können vielfältiger Art sein. Sie hängen vom sozioökonomischen Kontext im jeweiligen Land, von der Stabilität der Unterstützungsnetzwerke und von kultu-rellen Prägungen ab. Ich habe kürzlich den Versuch einer Systematisierung gemacht und drei grobe Typen von multilokalen Lebensstrategien unterschieden (Schmidt-Kallert 2009: 324):

- multilokale Lebensstrategien, in denen die ökonomische Reziprozität dominiert;

- Strategien, in denen zusätzlich zu den materiellen Austauschbeziehungen (entweder Geldflüssen oder Wa-renflüssen) nicht-materielle Güter ausgetauscht werden (z. B. Kindererziehung, Pflege alter Familienmitglieder);

- und Lebensstrategien, in denen zusätzlich die Weiter-gabe von Wissen, Werten und kulturellen Praktiken eine große Rolle spielt.

Malte Steinbrink hat kürzlich im Rahmen einer Fallstudie zu Südafrika das „Livelihood“-Konzept als akteurorien-tierten Ansatz mit Verwundbarkeitsanalysen verknüpft,

Bild 6 Ghana: between city and countryside / zwischen Stadt und Land. Photo: Einhard Schmidt-Kallert.

References (continuation)

Lohnert, Beate (2002) Vom Hüttendorf zur Eigenheim-siedlung. Osnabrück

Mertins, Günter und Kraas, Frauke (2008) ‚Megastädte in Entwicklungs-ländern.’ In: Geographische Rundschau Bd. 60, Heft 11, S. 4-10

Naipaul, V.S. (1984) Finding the Centre. Harmondsworth

Schmidt-Kallert, Einhard (2009) ‘A New Paradigm of Urban Transition: Tracing the Livelihood Strategies of Multi-Locational Households.’ In: Die Erde, Bd. 140, Heft 3, S. 319-336

Scholz, Wolfgang (2008) Challenges of Informal Urbanisation. The Case of Zanzibar/Tanzania. SPRING Research Series Nr. 50, Dortmund

Steinbach, Joseph (2004) Konsequenzen der Stadt-Land-Wanderung in der VR China seit 1990. Köln

Steinbrink, Malte (2009) Le-ben zwischen Land und Stadt. Migration, Translokalität und Verwundbarkeit in Südafrika. Wiesbaden

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um ökonomische Diversifizierung und Risikoverteilungs-strategien solcher Haushalte besser erklären zu können (Steinbrink 2009). Damit hat er Maßstäbe für die konzepti-onelle Fassung von Lebensstrategien von Haushalten, die zwischen Stadt und Land leben, gesetzt.2

Multilokalität als Übergangsphänomen Einige Autoren haben vermutet, multilokale Hauhalts-konstellationen seien ein Übergangsphänomen, typisch für den allmählichen Abnabelungsprozess der Mi-granten, die neu in der Megacity angekommen sind. Aber da, wo Haushalte über einen längeren Zeitraum beobachtet werden konnten, hat sich das Gegenteil gezeigt: Oft bleiben die ökonomischen und sozialen Austauschbeziehungen zwischen städtischen und länd-lichen Haushaltsmitgliedern über viele Jahre, manchmal auch über mehrere Generationen konstant (Bah et al. 2003). Das Urbanisierungsmodell Europas wiederholt sich weder in Asien noch in Afrika. Menschen in Asien und Afrika werden zu Städtern, und bleiben doch gleich-zeitig Landbewohner.

Nicht-permanente Wanderung und das Leben in multilo-kalen Haushaltskonstellationen sind also kennzeichnend für die meisten Megacities. Damit erledigt sich zugleich eine alte Kontroverse der Migrationsforschung: Was trägt eigentlich in der Hauptsache zum enormen Stadtwachs-tum bei? Sind es die Push-Faktoren, unproduktive Land-wirtschaft, schlechte Infrastruktur auf dem Land, oder sind es die Pull-Faktoren wie attraktivere Jobs in der Stadt, aber auch bessere Infrastruktur, bessere Bildungschan-cen, die „Lichter der Großstadt“, die immer mehr junge Menschen vom Dorf abwandern lassen? Von Fall zu Fall-mag das Pendel mal mehr in Richtung Push-Faktoren, mal mehr in Richtung Pull-Faktoren ausschlagen. Aber das bleibt am Ende eine recht oberflächliche Sichtweise.

Innerhalb eines Haushaltes sind bei der Entscheidung für die Abwanderung einzelner Mitglieder in die Stadt Pull- und Push-Faktoren in vielfältiger Weise miteinander verwoben. Ökonomische und soziale Sicherheit stehen für viele im Mittelpunkt, und da werden die je spezifischen Vorteile beider Standorte miteinander kombiniert. Und: Ent-scheidungen für oder gegen Abwanderung trifft selten ein Einzelner für sich alleine. Solche Entscheidungen sind meist eingebettet in die Strategie eines ganzen Haushaltes.

Stadt neu definieren?

Stadt in Entwicklungsländern im 21. Jahrhundert, das ist eine facettenreiche, vielschichtige Realität. Die Inszenie-rungen der Mächtigen sind häufig nur schöner Schein. Die gut gemeinten Konzepte mancher Planer, die Stärken der europäischen Tradition zu verpflanzen suchen, sind kaum identitätsstiftend für die Bewohner. In vielen Teilen der Welt ist die informelle Stadt die Stadt der Mehrheit der Einwohner. Sie identifizieren sich nicht mit den in Bildbänden und Hochglanzbroschüren abgebildeten Symbolen der neuen Urbanität. Ihre Stadt ist ein neuar-tiges hybrides Gebilde, in der es Landwirtschaft neben Kleinindustrie und Gewerbe gibt. Eine Stadt, deren Formenschatz auf städtische und ländliche Traditionen zurückgreift. Genauso wie sie im Sozialen ein hybrides Gebilde ist, in dem sich städtische und ländliche Lebens-formen vielfältig mischen. Genauso wie die Ökonomie dieser Städte nur zu verstehen ist, wenn die vielfältigen informellen Verbindungen zwischen Stadt und Land, insbesondere die Austauschbeziehungen innerhalb multilokaler Haushalte, im Blick bleiben.

Die Stadt in Entwicklungsländern mag in globale Netz-werke eingebunden sein; noch wichtiger aber zum Verständnis dessen, was diese Stadt ausmacht, sind diese intensiven und vielfältigen Stadt-Land-Beziehungen.

Bild 7 Township Khayelitsha, Cape Town: border between formal and informal settlement / Grenze zwischen formeller und informeller Bebauung. Photo: City Council Cape Town / Stadtverwaltung Kapstadt.

Einhard Schmidt-Kallert------------Prof. Dr., Fachgebiet Raumpla-nung in Entwicklungsländern der Technischen Universität Dortmund; Geschäftsführen-der Leiter des International Spatial Planning Centre der TU Dortmund, verantwortlich für den internationalen Master-Studiengang SPRING; langjäh-rige Berufserfahrung in der Entwicklungszusammenarbeit.

PhD, professor in the field of Spatial Planning in Developing Countries, University of Tech-nology Dortmund; managing director of the International Spatial Planning Centre at UT Dortmund in charge of the International Master Course SPRING; long-time profession-al experience in development cooperation.

Contact: <einhard.schmidt-kallert@tu-dortmund.de>

2 Eine ausführlichere Litera-turübersicht über Unter-suchungen zu informellen Stadt-Land-Beziehungen und multilokalen Haushalten habe ich in einem kürzlich veröf-fentlichten Artikel gegeben: Einhard Schmidt-Kallert (2009)

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Chinese context (especially in the Pearl River Delta), informal settlements, often referred to as “urban villages“, hold legal tenure—a fact which gives them considerable power in the struggle for the economic benefits of urbanisation.

In the 1980s, informality was described as an economic “sector“ (see e.g. de Soto, 1989) providing the poor with services that formal systems were not able to deliver (Roy, 2005). Recent concepts go beyond the notion of a “sur-vival strategy“; it is rather considered as “an organising logic“ (AlSayaad and Roy, 2004; Roy, 2005; Goethert, 2005; Altvater, 2005). Roy (2009:82) offers a broader view by seeing informality as a phenomenon which is not synonymous with poverty and which doesn‘t represent an unregulated system but rather a deregulated one. Informality, on a certain level, is often tolerated. Kanbur (2009) questions the matter of non-enforcement by the state and the potential that lies in tolera-tion: a non-enforcement strategy allows for negotiation.

The Pearl River Delta

The Pearl River Delta (PRD) is located in the south-east of China, next to Hong Kong and Macao. Guangzhou (for-merly Canton) is one of the oldest trading ports of China. Since the advent of economic reforms in 1978, the PRD has experienced tremendous development following the “one country, two systems“ policy (Lin, 1997; Smart, 2002; Friedmann, 2005). In little more than 20 year’s time, the PRD has developed from an agriculturally based region into what is known as “the world’s power house“ (Smart,

During the last decades the world has experienced a large increase in urban population, especially in cities of the global south (UN-Habitat, 2003; Satterthwaite, 2009). Around 18 of the 22 predicted megacities exceeding 10 million inhabitants are located in the global south (Kraas et al., 2007). Due to a failing provision of shelter by the authorities, urban growth in the global south is frequently dominated by informal settle-ment structures (Satterthwaite, 2009; Roy, 2005).

Informal settlements are often associated with illegally built structures and the absence of land tenure (de Soto, 1989; UN Habitat, 2003; AlSayyad and Roy, 2004). However, in a

Negotiated Space: Urban Villages in the Pearl River Delta

Josefine Fokdal and Peter Herrle

Ausgehandelte Raumentwicklung in den Stadtdörfern des Perlflussdeltas In China, besonders an dessen Ostküste, findet seit den 80er Jahren ein stürmischer Verstädte-rungsprozess statt. In der Folge der Wirtschaftreformen von 1978 wurden Sonderwirtschaftszonen eingerichtet, in denen Regeln des Staatssozialismus mit Verfahren der kapitalistischen Marktwirt-schaft verknüpft sind. In der Region des Perlflussdeltas wurden Shenzhen und Zhuhai zu solchen Sonderwirtschaftszonen erklärt. Besonders Shenzhen wuchs wegen der Nähe zu Hongkong und Makao extrem schnell und entfesselte in der gesamten Delta-Region ein explosionartiges Sied-lungswachstum. Auch wenn die Zentralregierung in Peking dies zunächst selbst geplant und in Gang gesetzt hatte, verläuft heute die Entscheidungsfindung über Entwicklung und Bodennutzung in den Stadtdörfern des Perlflussdeltas eher dezentral und nach informellen Regeln. Die Verstäd-terung folgt hier einem Muster, das die Ergebnisse von Verhandlungsprozessen zwischen Dorfbe-wohnern und Investoren widerspiegelt. In diesem Sinne wird die Nutzung von Grund und Boden um und zwischen den Stadtkernen als „aushandelbar“ wahrgenommen und ist letztlich ein Abbild der Machtpositionen der Verhandlungspartner.

Figure 1 The ‘growth-machine’ for economic and spatial development in the Pearl River Delta. Source: Herrle/Fokdal.

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Land ownership vs. land-use rights

In the Chinese context, both labour and capital are highly flexible and mobile factors, whereas land is an immobile resource. Several scholars have discussed the existence or non-existence of a land market in China (Yeh and Wu, 1996; Ho and Lin, 2003; Wu et al., 2007; McGee et al., 2007; Lin, 2009). Historically, a land market in China existed before 1949, but in 1956, shortly after Mao proclaimed the Peoples Republic of China, private land ownership was abolished as part of the overall strategy (Lin, 2009). All urban land was turned into state-owned land, whereas rural land was divided among rural collectives. Farmers were allowed to keep their land but should give their land-use rights to the local collective. Thus, rural collectives could use, posses, and benefit from the land but not dispose of it (McGee et al., 2007). The major purpose was to secure food produc-tion for urban areas, where most industries were located (Lin, 2009). In 1978, the Agricultural Production Respon-sibility System (APRS) was introduced on a national level, letting individual farmers use the “individual land“ (zhaijidi) for their own profit as long as they delivered the required amount of crops and vegetables to the collective (Wu et al., 2007). After reform politics were introduced in 1978, the same divide between collectively owned rural land and urban land persisted. Still, private ownership basically did not exist. However, in order to cope with the increas-ing demand for industrial land, in 1988 the national state proclaimed a division between the land-use rights and land ownership (Land Administration Law, revised in 1998). This division made it possible to transfer land-use rights and thereby created room for flexibility and negotiation.

Is there a land market?

Many scholars have focused on the development of a land market and the trading of land-ownership rights between the state and several stakeholders (Wu, 2002; McGee et al.,

2002; Enright et al., 2005). As Shenzhen (an SEZ) became a popular production location for Hong Kong-based firms, extensive development occurred literally over night, with the land-use pattern (especially along the railway from Hong Kong to Guangzhou) changing from farmlands to ru-ral industry (Lin, 1997). The typical polycentric, fragmented pattern of the urban fabric that has since developed repeats itself throughout the whole delta: the emerging landscape makes it almost impossible to define whether a particular area is rural or urban (McGee et al., 2007; Her-rle et al., 2008; Lin, 2009).

The PRD economic zone, with its two SEZs (Shenzhen and Zhuhai), became a national laboratory for foreign capital. Since 2001 a high amount of foreign direct investment (FDI) has gone directly into the area (Zhu, 2000; Enright et al., 2005). Several international firms have settled their headquarters in Hong Kong but produce their goods in the PRD. Mostly labour-intensive productions such as tanneries, garment factories, and low-tech electron-ics have settled there, accompanied by high pollution.1 Due to the large amount of unskilled labour needed for production, over 20 million migrants—not including the so called “floating population“—have been attracted to the PRD. Needless to say, there is a high demand for production land. The accumulation of FDIs (large flexible working forces) and the provision of production land have formed a growth coalition similar to the concept of the “growth machine“ defined by Logan and Molotch in 1987. Lin (2009) argues that it is not possible to transfer this model from a capitalist context to a socialist one like that of China. Especially the role of the state and its monopoly of land resources make it questionable whether it is pos-sible to talk about the growth machine (Wu et al., 2007). However, as we show in our research (Herrle et al., 2008), the major growth mechanism in the delta bears similar characteristics to the concept developed for a capitalist context, namely the dynamics of labour, capital, and land.

1This pattern is slowly changing, as the Guangdong provincial government has imposed new environmental regulation on the levels of pollution, etc.

References

AlSayyad, N. / Roy, A. (eds.) (2004) Urban informality, Lexington Books.

Altvater, E., (2004) ‘Globaliza-tion and the Informalization of the Urban Space.’ Working paper, Development Research Series (131).

Boerschmann, E. (1934) Reisebericht über Chine-sische Wohnanlagen und ihrer Bedeutung für Volks-kunde, unpubl. manuscript

Changqing, Qi / Kreibich, Volker / Baumgart, Sabine (2007) ‘Informal Elements in Urban Growth Regulation in China – Urban Villages in Ningbo’. Asien, vol. 103: 23-44.

China Daily (2008) ‘Villagers Clash with Police over Land Compensation’, available at: <www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/2008-12/25/content_7339766.htm> [ac-cessed 24.06.2009].

Figure 2 Pearl River Delta: Built-up area and transportation network in 2000 (left) and 2007 (right). Source: Herrle/Fokdal based on Survey and Mapping Office, Lands Department, Hong Kong.

2000 2007

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ence of a “black land market“ in China. Therefore, some authors conclude, there is a demand for more regulation (Lin and Ho 2005; Tian, 2008; Smart and Lin, 2007; Xu and Yeh, 2009). While unclear property rights are often blamed for creating confusion as well as for provoking uncon-trolled spatial development (Yeh and Wu, 1996; Lin and Ho, 2005; Tian, 2008), the ambiguity of the system is obviously inherent in government policy and existing regulations; this reflects the ultimate goal to create an environment that is conducive to economic growth.

Lin and Ho (2005) describe a complex land-market system that includes three ”black markets“. i) In general, the oft-used term ”primary land market“ re-lates to the transfer of land-use rights between the state and users. This refers to the conversion of rural agricul-tural land to rural construction land.ii) A ”secondary market“ regulates transfers of land-use rights from one holder to another. This ”market“ is ac-cessible only to holders of land-use rights other than the state, but includes parastatal organisations. This ”black market“ is created by the expropriation of rural land for state units (with the state subsequently selling the land-use rights to commercial users). iii) Finally, several ”black markets“ have been identified, including illegal occupation, illegal authorisation, and illegal transfer or sale, mainly through negotiation (Ho and Lin, 2003; Lin and Ho, 2005; Wu et al., 2007; Lin, 2009). This market, according to Lin and Ho (2005), consists of ”rural construction land“, which is directly leased to investors.

Land-use rights on state-owned (urban) land can be obtained by conveyance, i.e. a process of bidding, auction, or negotiation. In 1998, 90% of the land assigned through conveyance was negotiated (Ho and Lin 2003). This is what Wu, et al., (2007) define as a ”quasi-market“ approach, in contrast to the ”market“ approach through auction or bidding. Even though the ”quasi-market“ approach through negotiation might have a lower monetary benefit for the seller than the ”market approach“, the negotiable condi-tions such as provision of infrastructure, social services, etc. might in total compensate for the low cash benefits (Wu et al. 2007). In most cases, this ”market“ becomes operative in the negotiation of land-use rights between the state and investors. One of the remarkable characteristics of land transaction mechanisms is the ambiguity of proc-esses leaving room for the exertion of power and negotia-tion through the involved actors.

The role of the state

The economic boom and rapid urbanisation process in the PRD have often been subscribed to a decentralised approach and to the significant role of the local govern-ment (Zhu, 2000; Wu, 2002; Zhu, 2004a; Wu et al., 2007; Tian, 2008; Xu et al., 2009). Lin and Ho (2005) describe the Chinese state as powerful and powerless in terms of land governance. Until recently, only master plans for overall city development needed the approval of the central state

2007; Wu et al., 2007; Lin, 2009; Yeh and Xu, 1996). In the PRD, in contrast to the rest of China, rural collectives have been allowed to negotiate directly with investors since 2005, which makes it possible for them to enter the land market (Wu et al., 2007). Yet, little attention has been paid to the role of collectives and their power of negotiation in the land market. In fact, the urban villages (former collectives) hold a strong position in negotiation processes over space. Howev-er, not only the urban villages are negotiating through largely informal processes, the state is also redefining its approach constituting negotiated space. The first part of our reasoning is dedicated to defining a land market, the different stake-holders, and the negotiation processes. The second part is based on empirical evidence from our research conducted between 2007 and 2010 in the PRD, which was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). Geographically, the statements presented here are based on field work on urban villages in Guangzhou, the capital of the Guangdong Province; in the prefecture-level city of Dongguan; and in the SEZ of Shenzhen.

Land markets and black land markets

Shenzhen, defined as a SEZ, was established as a national “laboratory“ for urban planning under a new law. Therefore, it is not surprising that the first appearance of a land mar-ket in China happened here. The first transfer of land-use rights was approved in Shenzhen in 1987 (Yeh and Wu, 1996). After 1988, when land ownership was separated from the land-use rights, several attempts of simulating a land market were developed, formally and informally (Xu et al., 2009; Wu et al., 2007; Lin, 2009; Wang et al., 2009).

Property rights are negotiated and produced bottom-up (see Lin, 2009; Smart and Lin, 2007; McGee et al., 2007; Tian, 2008). Smart and Lin (2007) argue that property rights in China are defined through local informal processes rather than through general and formal institutions (Smart and Lin, 2007: 285). This process has mostly negative connotations: Zhu (2000) argues that property rights should be explicitly defined to achieve a more regulated market, while Lin and Ho (2005) blame “ambiguous“ property rights for the exist-

References (continuation)

De Soto, Hernando (1989) The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution of the Third World, London: I. B. Taurus.

Enright, M. / Scott, E. / Chang, K. (2005) Regional Powerhouse: The Greater Pearl River Delta and the Rise of China, Singapore.

Friedmann, John (2005) China’s Urban Transition. Min-neapolis/London: University of Minnesota Press.

Goethert, Reinhard (2005) ‘Planning with People – Chal-lenges to the Paradigm’, in Herrle, P. / Walther, U. (eds.) Socially Inclusive Cities, Berlin / Münster: Lit verlag

Guo, Xiaolin (2001), ‘Land Ex-propriation and Rural Conflicts in China’, The China Quarterly, vol. 166 (Jun.): 422-439.

Haila, Anne (2007) ‘The Market as The New Emperor’, Inter-national Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31(1): 3-20.

He, Shenjing / Liu, Yuting / Webster, Chris / Wu, Fu-long (2009) ‘Property Rights Redistribution, Entitlement Failure and the Impoverish-ment of Landless Farmers in China’, Urban Studies, vol. 46: 1925-1949.

Herrle, P., Ipsen, D., Nebel, S., Weichler, H. (2008) ‘Wie Bauern die mega-urbane Land-schaft in Südchina prägen. Zur Rolle der „Urban Villages“ bei der Entwicklung des Perl- flussdeltas’, Geographische Rundschau, 60 (11): 38-46.

Ho, Samuel P. S and Lin, George C. S. (2003) ‘Emerg-ing Land Markets in Rural and Urban China: Policies and Practices’, The China Quar-terly, vol. 175 (Sep.): 681-707.

Kanbur, R. (2009) ‘Conceptu-alising Informality: Regulation and Enforcement.’ Available at: <www.people.cornell.edu/pages/sk145> [accessed December 11, 2009].

VillagersHousingWorkshopsFactoriesUrban agriculture

Migrants

Cheap labor

Municipalities

TolerancePromotion of developmentMacro infrastructure

Private enterprises

Formal employmentCapital

Informality

Flexibility

PermanentRe-adjustment

Figure 3 Actors and roles in the process of peri-urbanization in the Pearl River Delta. Source: Herrle/Fokdal.

13TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

conversion of the administrative unit from a village committee to a residents’ committee and the change of the villagers’ hukou status from rural to urban. The second step involves the ”reconstruction“ of the urban village (Tian, 2008:298). However, given the strong posi-tion of villagers, planners have found it hard to enforce a uniform strategy. Instead, a ”one village, one strategy“ approach was adopted in the few pilot projects that have tried to interfere with village land management. In Guangzhou, the inner-city village Liede is an example of an urban village which has been partly reconstructed (Tian, 2008) at the price of extremely high ”compensa-tion“ costs. Another example is the land-acquisition process for Guangzhou University Town in 2003 (Wu et al., 2007). Here, negotiations were highly conflictive. Both examples show collectives that demonstrated and ex-ercised their power in negotiation processes that were widely covered by the media; negotiation processes between collectives, the state, and investors are getting increasing political and public attention.

Rural collectives and urban villages

As the local state can now acquire land for free for ”public purposes“ by ”urbanising“ rural collectives, land has become a lucrative business. Officially, rural collectives become urban units under a street committee and are administered by residents’ committees and economic cooperatives. In the transformation process, the farmlands of former rural collectives are acquired and turned into state-owned land. In return, the Guangdong provincial government re-quires 8-12% of the former farmland to be returned to the village as economic development land (EDL) (Tian, 2008; Wu, 200; Liu et al., 2010). Thus, the transformation process from rural to urban is a process of redefining property rights (Liu et al., 2010:140). This collective land is often transferred to shareholder companies owned by the villagers, making it possible for the village to generate profit as a collective. On an individual level, farmers are allowed to keep their individual residential plots (zhaijidi) (Wu et al., 2007:292). This individual land (zhaijidi) has largely ambiguous property rights and constitutes another informal land market.

(Tian, 2008). The high fragmentation of administrative levels due to the decentralisation of power, and conflict-ing interests, has left the state powerless towards land speculation and spatial development at local levels. The highly decentralised form of land management has left ample space for large-scale, uncontrolled conversion of rural collective land to urban construction activities.

On the local level, the local government itself is a powerful (Guo, 2001) actor involved in various kinds of land develop-ment. The role of the local government as an entrepreneur-ial market actor has been widely documented (Zhu 2000; Wu, 2002; Zhu, 2004a; Wu et al., 2007; Smart and Lin, 2007). Municipalities can set up land banks, so called land reserve centres (LRC). Theoretically these institutions are meant to adjust land supply and demand (Wu et al., 2007), but in practice these land banks act as substitutes for the local government and enable local governments to play a dou-ble role both as market players and regulators (Wu et al., 2007:88). Recently, the central state has shown an increas-ing tendency to move towards a recentralising approach, especially in terms of land governance, mainly due to ”local disobedience“ and uncontrollable growth coalitions (Wu et al., 2007; Wu, 2002; Xu and Yeh, 2009), i.e. the practices of in-transparent negotiation.

The role of investors

Especially within the PRD, domestic and global investors have fuelled urban development processes (Lin, 1997). The role of overseas investors on the real-estate market and their impact on the urban built-up has been analyzed by several scholars (Lin and Ho, 2005; Ma and Wu, 2005; Wu et al., 2007; McGee et al., 2007; Lin, 2009). On the one hand, many overseas investors are out of reach for the state to control because they bring capital from abroad. On the other hand, due to harsh restrictions on loans to foreigners and their often missing connections, it is in general more difficult for foreign investors than for domestic investors to get hold of land resources. Therefore, it has been profitable for foreign investors to establish joint ventures with local partners who have better connections and accessibility to local land resources (Enright et al., 2005). In the Guangdong province, activities representing the third ”black market“ have long been practiced. Investors have negotiated directly with rural collectives thereby circumventing the state and the state land-market monopoly. Since 2005, the Guangdong provincial government has legalised this mechanism (Wu et al., 2007:41).

Planners and plans for urban villages

The urban-planning bureaus of Guangzhou and district-level planning institutions have long struggled to develop a generally applicable and effective approach toward what was perceived as the informal and illegal practices of land development in the urban villages. The official strategy consists of a two-step approach. The first step aims at breaking down the social network through the

Figure 4 The spatial result of megaur-banization: fragmented land use, urban sprawl. Photo: P. Herrle.

References (continuation)

Kraas, Frauke / Bork, T. / Butsch, C. / Kroll, M. (2009) ‘Megastädte: Neue Risiken für die Gesundheit’, Deutsches Ärzteblatt, 106 (39): 1877-1881.

Kraas, F., Leuze, M., Nitschke, U. (2007) ‘Megastädte - Lebens-räume der Zukunft.’ In: Global Campus 21, avail-able at: <www.gc21.de/ibt/alumni/ibt/de/frameset.html?lang=de&Preo= 3&seek=oec&unlistLNK= them/t0807.xhtml> [accessed 20.03.2010].

Law of Land Adminis-tration of the People’s Republic of China (1998, second amendment), available at: <www.china.org.cn/english/environment/34345.htm> [ac-cessed 22.03.2010]

Life of Guangzhou (2009), available at: <www.lifeofguangzhou.com/node_10/node_38/node_68/node_73/2006/02/27/1141029327246.shtml> [accessed 15.06.2009]

Lin, George C. S. (1997)Red Capitalism in South China. Growth and Develop-ment of the Pearl River Delta, Vancouver: UBCPress.

Lin, George C. S. (2007) ‘Reproducing Spaces of Chinese Urbanisation: New City-based and Land-centred Urban Transformation’, Urban Studies, vol. 44: 1827-1855.

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take care of all social issues, the economic cooperative manages the economic assets of the villagers. As an um-brella organisation, the economic cooperative manages five village companies, i.e. companies collectively owned by the villagers. In Chen Tian, the village companies are also engaged in property management of the collective land and the buildings built on the collective land. In 2005, the city of Guangzhou acquired 50% of the former collective farmlands belonging to Chen Tian for ”public purposes“, i.e. the nearby university (he/ne-1). Each of the village companies has a ”director“ and is financially independent from the economic cooperative. The yearly turnover differs depending on the location of the proper-ties, the management, and the strategies applied. Some of the companies have hired brokers, who advertise and attract investors. Only the original villagers can have shares in the village companies, and many of the villagers have moved to other areas in Guangzhou. Their income is dependent on the yearly dividend from the village companies they belong to. The average dividend from the village companies is around 13,000 RMB per person annually (1,300 Euro) (he/ne-2).5

Around 15-20 larger private enterprises are located in Chen Tian, mainly on the properties provided by the village companies (li-1).6 They mostly produce retail parts for mobile phones and garments for the local and regional market. By attracting investors to their collec-tive property, the urban village competes directly with the local government and other real-estate actors. In the new part across the Baiyun Highway, which divides the urban village into two parts, the village companies have constructed an extensive shop complex with individual shops for rent. Since this part of Chen Tian is located next to the campus of the Guangdong University for For-eign Languages, providing services for the large amount of students is one of the major objectives. Several stores, including provincial chains such as the drinks provider 58cent, have settled here.

Due to the proximity to the new CBD to factories and the demand for low-skilled services, the urban village attracts a high number of migrants. In total, around 30,000 migrants live in 6-to-9-storey houses provided by the villagers on the former individual land (zhaijidi) (he/ne-1; Wang et al., 2009) in the residential core area of Chen Tian. The villag-ers themselves often live in a penthouse on top of these houses with a magnificent view over the village.

A largely informal property market exists in terms of the individual land (zhaijidi), which has been subcontracted by the collective to the farmers. However, as mentioned, most villagers have built residential buildings providing housing for a large amount of working migrants, thereby indirectly transferring the use rights to renters. Although this informal land market is not directly defined as a ”black market“, it is yet another example of ambiguous property rights and another level of ”negotiation“ of space. The individual land is often referred to as a ”grey area“ (Tian, 2008).

In terms of lifestyles, income sources, building styles and infrastructure, etc., these former rural villages are defi-nitely ”urban“, although they are not formally part of the urban territory2. Considering the active role many of the rural villages play in the urbanisation process, and their non-agricultural economic base, it may be justified to call them ”urban“ villages despite the fact that their inhabit-ants have a rural hukou (Herrle et al., 2008; Tian, 2008). Accommodating large numbers of migrants and often defined as unregulated, urban villages have similarities with other informal settlements around the world.

Urban villages are often described as unregulated and are widely condemned in the ongoing debate (Zhang et al. 2003). They have been analysed from a social and economic perspective as well as from the perspective of migrant settlements (Zhang et al., 2003; Wang, 2000; Wu, 2002; Zhang, 2001). Kraas et al. (2009) describes the condition of health provision and the role of informal healthcare in urban villages in the PRD. On a spatial level, Tian (2008) argues that an institutional reform of collective land is needed to solve the problems of urban villages. Hereby he focuses on property rights and the problems within the dual track system. In the central locations of cities such as Guangzhou, they play a vital role by provid-ing cheap living space for low-income migrants and locals as well as all kinds of services and goods for local needs.

The case of Chen Tian, Guangzhou

Chen Tian is an urban village in the Baiyun district of Guangzhou, the capital city of the Guangdong province. The administrative units of all villages within the core area of Guangzhou3 (139 in 2001) have been transformed from village committees into residents’ committees and eco-nomic cooperatives, and the villagers’ hukou has been changed from rural to urban (Tian, 2008:287)4. The Baiyun district is located in the north of Guangzhou and hosts, among other facilities, the new international airport. In total, the Baiyun district has four towns and 15 adminis-trative street offices (Life of Guangzhou, 15.06.2009). The urban village Chen Tian is a subdivision of the Huang Shi Street Office. It has three residents‘ committees in charge of different part of the urban villages.

Before 1994, every household had a fishpond or a veg-etable garden, of which only a few still existed in 2007. Changes started in 1994, when the farmers started to rely on the revenues from land leasing instead of agriculture. However, drastic changes in the townscape of Chen Tian did not start until 1996 (he/ne-1, Li-1). The total area of Chen Tian is around 150 ha. In 1994, 40 ha of the collec-tive land was reserved for agriculture, but in 2007 all land had been transferred into non-agricultural land.

The transformation of Chen Tian’s legal status from rural to urban took place in 2001. The former village commit-tee was transformed into residents’ committees and an economic cooperative. While the residents’ committees

2 Officially ”Urban Villages“ are so-called ”villages encircled by the city“ (chengzhongcun) (Liu et al, 2010). The phe-nomenon of villages being enclosed by urbanised fabric is not a new phenomenon. Ernst Boerschman observed several ”urban villages“ on his trips to Guangzhou in the 1930s (Boerschmann, 1934).

3 The core area of Guangzhou city includes the districts Bai-yun, Tianhe, Huangpu, Haizu, Liwan, and Yuexiu.

4 All villagers we spoke to aged 80 and over were still holding a rural hukou.

5 Company dividends are distributed on a yearly basis. Villagers aged 1-16 have 5 company shares. Thereafter, they receive one additional share per year until the age of 35. Thus, the maximum number of shares one can hold is 25 (090712ChenBao-qin and Li-1).

6 The number refers to infor-mation gained in a field study in 2007.

References (continuation)

Lin, George C. S. (2009) Developing China. Land, Politics, and Social Condi-tions, London/New York: Routledge Contemporary China Series.

Lin, George C. S. and Ho, Samuel P. S. (2005) ‘The State, Land System, and Land Development Processes in Contempo-rary China’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 95(2): 411-436.

Liu, Yuting / He, Shen-jing / Wu, Fulong / Web-ster, Chris (2010) ‘Urban Villages under China’s Rapid Urbanization: Un-regulated assets and Tran-snational Neighbourhoods’, Habitat International, vol. 34: 135-144.

Logan, J. and Molotch, H. (1987) Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley: University of California Press

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Thus, local and provincial governments have redefined their roles towards the rural collectives and on the land market. Consequently, the collectives are now in the position of negotiating land matters directly with the investors. As a consequence, an informal land market has emerged in which land-use rights for individual land owned by former farmers is traded.

Flexibility, adaptation to changing economic situations, and ambiguity seem to create the environment for a con-tinuation of negotiated space in the future. Coupled with the toleration policy—or the non-enforcement, as Kanbur (2009) calls it—of local governments, the patterns of the mega-urban landscape are unlikely to change.

While negotiation, per se, is certainly a valid instrument to realise benefits for the stakeholders involved, ques-tions remain regarding what happens to interests that are not (or not yet) involved in the negotiation proc-esses, such as environmental issues and the large-scale deterioration of the natural resources in the Delta.

Negotiated space

In the recent five years there have been signs that rural col-lectives are improving their power position in negotiations around land issues (China Daily 2008). Urban villages within the PRD often violate legal provisions such as building regulations and regulations on land conversion (Herrle et al., 2008). Because the urban villages often provide housing for working migrants, who do not have access to other kinds of affordable housing, the disregard of the building regulations are often tolerated by local officials. In other cases, fines for vertical extensions over four floors are so low compared to the additional profit that they are readily accepted by the house owners. As a new strategy in some places such as Shenzen, the government has started to legalise unauthorised building structures in urban villages (Xu et al. 2009). An even more important change has been made by the provincial government: by legalising the il-legal process of rural collectives negotiating directly with investors (”black market“), they have abolished the state monopole on the land market in the PRD.

Josefine Fokdal ------------M.Arch., architect. 2006, assistant professor at the Ball State University, College for Architecture and Planning, U.S.A. Since 2009, assistant professor at the HABITAT UNIT, Berlin University of Technol-ogy. Research and PhD thesis in the framework of the DFG research programme “Mega Cities – Mega Challenge”. Re-search focus: urban develop-ment, urbanisation processes, informal structures, social housing.

Contact: <josefine.fokdal@tu-berlin.de>

Peter Herrle ------------PhD, professor, professional background in sociology, ar-chitecture and urban planning. He has been a consultant to bilateral and international development agencies in vari-ous fields including housing, decentralisation, participative planning, urban management and urban planning in many countries, mainly in Asia and Africa. Since 1995 he is profes-sor and head of the HABITAT UNIT at the Faculty VI (Archi-tecture, Environment, Society), Berlin University of Technology. Since 2002 advisory professor at the Tongji University Shang-hai. Research projects on urbanisation, urban informality, housing and cultural identity in countries of the South. Numer-ous publications on urban development issues. Editor of the Habitat International Series at LIT-Publishers.

Contact: <habitat.unit@tu-berlin.de>; www.habitat-unit.de and www.urban-management.de

References (continuation)

Logan, John R. (2008) Urban China in Transition, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing

Ma, L.J.C. and Wu, F. (2005) Restructuring the Chinese City: Diverse Processes and Reconstituted Spaces, New York: Routledge

McGee, T. G. / Lin, G. C. S. / Mar-ton, A. M. / Wang, M. Y. L. / Wu, J. (2007) China’s Urban Space: Development under Market Socialism, London: Routledge.

Ng, Mee K. and Xu, Jiang (2000) ‘Development Control in Post-Reform China: the Case of Liuhua Lake Park, Guangzhou’, Cities, 17(6): 409–418.

Roy, Ananya (2005) ‘Urban In-formality: Towards an Epistemol-ogy of Planning’, Journal of the American Planning Association, 71(2): 147-158.

Roy, Ananya (2009) ‘Why India Cannot Plan Its Cities: Informal-ity, Insurgence and the Idiom of Urbanization’, Planning Theory, vol. 8: 76-87

Satterthwaite, David (2009) ‘The implications of popula-tion growth and urbanization for climate change’, Environ-ment and Urbanization, vol. 21: 545-567

Smart, Alan and Lin, George C. S. (2007) ‘Local Capitalisms, Local Citizenship and Translocal-ity: Rescaling from Below in the Pearl River Delta Region, China’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 31(2): 280-302.

Smart, Alan (2002) ‘The Hong Kong / Pearl River Delta Urban Region: An Emerging Transna-tional Model of Regulation or Just Muddling Through?’ In Logan (ed.) The New Chinese City. Globalization and Market Reform, Oxford: Blackwell Publisher.

Tian, Li (2008) ‘The Chengzhong-cun Land Market in China: Boon or Bane? – A Perspective on Property Rights’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(2): 282-304.

UN-HABITAT (2003) The Challenge of Slums: Global Report on Human Settlements, illustrated edition., Earthscan Publications Ltd.

Wang, Ya P. (2000) ‘Housing Reform and its Impacts on the Urban Poor in China’, Housing Studies, 15(6): 845–864.

Wang, Ya P. / Wang, Yanglin / Wu, Jiansheng (2009) ‘Urbani-zation and Informal Develop-ment in China: Urban Villages in Shenzhen’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(4): 957-73.

Wu, Fulong (2002) ‘China‘s Changing Urban Governance in the Transition Towards a More Market-oriented Economy’, Urban Studies, vol. 39: 1071-1093.

Wu, Fulong (2009) ‘Land Devel-opment, Inequality and Urban Villages in China’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(4): 885–9.

Wu, Fulong / Xu, Jiang / Yeh, Anthony (2007) Urban Develop-ment in Post-Reform China. State, Market, and Space, Lon-don/New York: Routledge.

Wu, Weiping (2002) ‘Temporary Migrants in Shanghai: Housing and Settlement Patterns’, in Logan (ed.) The New Chinese City. Globalization and Market Reform, Oxford: Blackwell Publisher.

Wu, Weiping (2004) ‘Sources of Migrant Housing Disadvantage in Urban China’, Environment and Planning A, 36:1285-1304.

Xu, Jiang and Yeh, Anthony (2009) ‘Decoding Urban Land Governance: State Reconstruction in Contemporary Chinese Cities’, Urban Studies, vol. 46: 559-581.

Xu, Jiang / Yeh, Anthony, and Wu, Fulong (2009) ‘Land Commodification: New Land Development and Politics in China since the Late 1990s’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 33(4): 890-913.

Yeh, Anthony (2005) ‘Dual Land Market and Internal Spatial Structure of Chinese Cities’, In Ma, L.J.C. and Wu, Fulong, Restructuring the Chinese City, London: Routledge.

Yeh, Anthony and Wu, Fulong (1996) ‘The New Land Development Process and Urban Development in Chinese Cities’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 20(2): 330-353.

Yeh, Anthony and Wu, Fu-long (1999) ‘Urban Spatial Struc-ture in a Transnational Economy: The Case of Guangzhou’, Journal of the American Planning As-sociation, 65(4): 377-394.

Zhang, Tinagwei (2000) ‘Land market forces and government’s role in sprawl. The case of China’, Cities, 17(2): 123–135.

Zhang, Li (2001) Stranger in the City. Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks within China’s Floating Population, Stan-ford: Stanford University Press

Zhang, L / Zhao, Simon X. B. / Tian, J. P. (2003) ‘Self-help in Housing and Chengzhongcun’ in China‘s Urbanization, Internation-al Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27(4): 912-937.

Zhu, Jieming (2000) Local Growth Coalition: ‘The Context and Implications of China’s Gradualist Urban Land Reforms’, Internation-al Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 23(6): 534-548.

Zhu, Jieming (2004a) ‘Local Developmental State and Order in China‘s Urban Development during Transition’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 28(2): 424-447.

Zhu, Jieming (2004b) ‘From Land Use Right to Land Develop-ment Right: Institutional Change in China‘s Urban Development’, Urban Studies, vol. 41: 1249-1267

Zhu, Jieming (2005) ‘A Transi-tional Institution for the Emerging Land Market in Urban China’, Urban Studies, vol. 42: 1369-1390.

16 TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

Villages within the City: Housing Rural Migrants in the Emerging Mega-City of Shenzhen, China

Pu Hao, Richard Sliuzas, Stan Geertman

Stadtdörfer als Mietwohnungsmarkt für Wanderarbeiter in der Wachstumsregion Shenzhen (Perlflussdelta) Seit Mitte der 80er Jahre im Perflussdelta die wirtschaftliche und industrielle Entwicklung und damit auch die Landflucht in einem bis dahin unbekanntem Maße einsetzte, erleben viele Dörfer in der Region eine radikale Umwandlung, um den vom Land zuströmenden Wanderarbeitern Wohnraum zu bieten. Die dabei in Selbsthilfe und ohne formale Vorschriften entstehenden „Stadt-dörfer“ gelten oft als unerfreulich, übervölkert und asozial. Als Reaktion darauf strebt die offizielle Politik den Abriss dieser Siedlungen an sowie den Bau neuer Siedlungen an gleicher Stelle, vor-zugsweise in Form großmaßstäblicher Wohn- und Infrastrukturanlagen. Aufbauend auf Felddaten, die aus Beobachtungen und Gesprächen mit Bewohnern und Behörden gewonnen wurden, be-schreiben die Autoren die Entwicklung dieser Stadtdörfer mit Bezug auf ihre geographische, soziale und institutionelle Position im regionalen Städtesystem. Danach erweisen sich viele Stadtdörfer als bedeutsame Mietwohnungsmärkte mit einem realistischen und erschwinglichen Preisniveau für die Wanderarbeiter. Die Autoren fürchten, dass die Abriss- und Wiederaufbaupolitik der Behörden eine deutliche Verengung des Wohnungsmarktes zur Folge haben könnte mit negativen Auswirkungen auf die urbane Offenheit.

Since China’s 1978 economic reform, spatial growth of its cities has been sustained as a result of the continuous economic growth and urbanisation. The urban develop-ment has been encroaching on rural land and absorbing rural migrant labourers at unprecedented speed and scale, leading to a society in which the urban is inter-weaving with the rural in both physical and social terms. The two most prominent examples are the existence of a “floating population” and the prevalence of urban villages. While the former refers to the rural migrant labourers who work and live in the city but are excluded from urban residency and its attached value, the latter emerged as the rural villages’ residential components were left un-changed in the conversion of their fields into urban use. The story of urban villages is directly interwoven with that of the floating population.

The creation of the floating population was triggered by the increasingly larger urban-rural income gap which has developed since the mid-1980s (Zhao, 1999). Hundreds of millions of rural migrants have left their homes for cities for job opportunities and better lives, resulting in a huge labour pool in urban areas. However, in Chinese cities, rural migrants are usually not granted formal approval for urban residency, which is known as hukou. As they circu-late among jobs in different cities, rural migrants barely have a chance to obtain an urban hukou with its attached value. They are officially referred to as the floating popula-

tion (Wang, 2004; Mobrand, 2006). Consequently, they are overlooked and are excluded from state-funded urban re-sources such as, among others, housing, education, and medical care (Liang and Chen, 2007; Song et al., 2008). Their needs for such services must therefore be satisfied through other means.

Figure 1The main street of an urban village. Photo: authors.

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In the meantime, the government relies on transform-ing rural land into urban land to provide new space for urban development, and in the process exacerbates the dislocation of rural populations. By paying compensation to peasants, city governments acquire land from rural vil-lages and prepare the land for urban development. In this process, the government tends to requisition farmland rather than settlement areas so as to avoid costly and time-consuming relocation programmes for the peasants. Consequently, the villages’ settlement areas remain while their surrounding environments are dramatically changed.

The villages become spatially encompassed or annexed by urban territory, forming so-called urban villages (Zhang et al., 2003; Tian, 2008). The indigenous villagers, who have exchanged their farmland for limited compensation, have to find other ways to make a living. The government usually entitles dispossessed peasants with an urban hukou status and sometimes recruits some for jobs. Many of them, those who are without proper education or skills, are rejected by urban sectors.

As former farmlands are developed into factories and other facilities, urban villages become favourable living places for migrant workers by virtue of their affordability and accessibility to jobs. The huge demand for low-cost housing from migrants, which is facilitated by urban villages, has led to the growth of the urban villages. Economic interests drive the indigenous villagers to increase floor area by expanding plot areas, increasing the height of the buildings, and redeveloping their build-ings with bigger and taller ones. By doing so, their rental profits have risen significantly. The outward and upward expansion of houses, especially in those well-located villages near industrial zones or commercial centres, is a logical and inevitable consequence of the urban devel-opment process.

Urban villages are not regulated by any form of central-ised urban planning; consequently many of them are heav-ily populated, overdeveloped with extreme plot density, and lacking in open space and infrastructure (figure 1-4). Besides, the government considers many urban villages, especially those occupying land in good locations, as an oppression of land value. As a result, many cities such as Wuhan, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, have initialised city-wide programmes to clear many urban villages and redevelop the vacant sites with modern housing and of-fice units.

This article explores the role that urban villages play in the wider city system of Shenzhen, the youngest metropolis in China. By analysing the development of urban villages in the period 1999-2004, we aim to find the development characteristics of urban villages with respect to their geographical, social, and institutional position in the city system. Thereafter, we examine the new redevelopment programmes adopted by Shenzhen to find out their impli-cations and potential risks.

Shenzhen and its urban villages

Shenzhen is probably the fastest-growing city in the world. From 1979 to 2009, its population rose from about 310,000 to 14 million. Meanwhile, its urban land expanded from 20 km2 in 1983 to 729 km2 in 2006. The Shenzhen Municipal-ity now has an administrative area of 1969 km2 with six districts. Four of them –Luohu, Futian, Yantian and Nanshan – comprise the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone (SEZ), which covers 410 km2. The SEZ was established in 1980 as a test bed for the initial introduction of a market economy in socialist China. The other two districts, Baoan and Long-gang, were incorporated as districts into the Shenzhen Municipality in 1993. They are to the north of the SEZ with an area of 714 km2 and 845 km2 respectively.

In Shenzhen, the drastic expansion of urban space that has sustained over three decades has contributed to the crea-tion of 320 urban villages (figure 5). These urban villages cover 93.5 km2, equivalent to 13.3 percent of the built-up land and 50.3 percent of the residential land. They are composed of approximately 350,000 houses, with a total floor area of 106 million m2. Most of the urban villages are located outside the SEZ. They cover 85.5 km2, accounting for more than 90 percent of the city’s urban village land. In the SEZ, urban villages cover only 8 km2. However, as they are significantly denser, they provide about 20 percent of the total floor space of urban villages in the city.

Urban villages have been a by-product since the birth of the city and have continued to prevail as the city expand-ed. Consequently urban villages are distributed across the city, on both the outskirts and in the downtown segments. In the SEZ, urban villages are close to the city centre and district centres, where they are separated by newly de-veloped urban space. The villages are therefore relatively distant from one another. The appearance of such urban villages, especially their extremely high built-up density, significantly distinguishes them from formal areas of the

Figure 2 An urban village surrounded by high-rise buildings. Photo: authors.

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Room renting is the main income source of the indig-enous villagers. Recent investigations in the Futian district reveal that family income is generally composed of four parts: profit-sharing from the collectively owned business, 30 percent (renting collect-ively owned prop-erties is the main income source of collectively owned business); house renting, 60 percent; wages, 4 percent; family business, 6 per-cent (Urban Planning and Design Institute of Shenzhen, 2005). There-fore, urban village properties are the main source of income for the indig-enous villagers. This demonstrates that the means of making a living of the landless peasants has completely transformed from agricultural production to property development and room renting.

Dynamic and diverse housing market

As a migrant city, the floating population of Shenzhen outweighs its permanent population. This is one of the most significant characteristics of Shenzhen. From 1979 to 2008, the annual growth rate of the floating population was 33.5 percent, much higher than the growth rate of the population with local hukou, which was 7.1 percent. Consequently, the proportion of the floating population in Shenzhen has been constantly increasing (figure 6).

In 2008, within the total population of 8.77 million, the floating population was 6.49 million, accounting for 74 percent. However, it is believed that the statistics left out a large number of migrants who had not been re-corded. The government estimates that the total popu-lation had already exceeded 14 million in 2007. If this is the case, the floating population could comprise as much as 84 percent of the total population. This group of people is unevenly distributed in the city. Outside the SEZ, where labour-intensive industries are mostly accommodated, the rate of the floating population is higher than the rate in the SEZ.

A large proportion of migrants are accommodated in urban villages. According to a survey taken by the Public Security Bureau of Shenzhen in 2005, the floa-ting population that lived in the urban villages was about 4.8 million, more than 13 times the number of indigenous villagers. Moreover, the increased number of low-income population was closely linked to the construction of rental living space in urban villages. From 1999 to 2004, the total floor area provided by urban villages increased by 96 percent, from 54 million m2 to 106 million m2. The number of urban village houses increased from about 240,000 to 349,000. The land coverage of the urban villages expand-ed from 73 km2 to 93 km2.

In the late 1990s, the urban villages in the SEZ were al-ready over-developed with densely built houses, with little remaining space for more buildings. More-over, there were also many large-scale residential and commercial redevelopments often associated with urban village rede-velopment, which resulted in a decrease of land coverage

city. Outside the SEZ, urban village developments are par-ticularly in district centres, sub-district centres, and close to major transportation nodes, forming many clusters. The distribution of urban village houses is often mixed with for-mal urban land use, and the boundaries of urban villages are more blurred in comparison to the villages in the SEZ.

The average floor area ratio and built-up density of urban villages in Shenzhen is 1.13 and 35 percent respectively, indicating that urban villages are much denser than the overall built-up area of the city. The construction intensi-ties between the SEZ and the non-SEZ areas are signifi-cantly different. With houses generally above 6 storeys, the average floor area ratio of urban villages in the SEZ is 2.7 and the average floor space of a single house is 506 m2. However, with much lower houses, the floor area ratio of urban villages outside the SEZ is only 1.0. And the average floor space is 275 m2 (Urban Planning and Design Institute of Shenzhen, 2005).

Figure 3 High density built-up environment. Photo: authors.

Figure 4 Low-quality infrastructure. Photo: authors.

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nue than their counterparts outside the SEZ, as the higher demand in the urban centre determines higher rents.

In all six districts, urban villages serve as a lower-end product in the housing market. However, each dis-trict is distinguished from others by its location and function. Thus, the social structures of the urban vil-lage residents vary in different districts. In Futian and Nanshan, where most office buildings are located, a big proportion of tenants are white-collar employees. In Luohu and Yantian, where commercial and tourism sectors are prominent respectively, employees in serv-ice sectors comprise more than half of the tenants. In Baoan and Longgang, the majority of tenants in urban villages work in industrial and service sectors. Besides, as Baoan accommodates a large amount of small busi-ness, there is a big proportion of tenants who are small business owners. In Shenzhen, urban villages perform as a diverse housing market, which is similar to what is found in the formal housing market.

Policy and risks

Although in Shenzhen urban villages demonstrate vital-ity, the government is determined to redevelop many of them. In 2005, the municipal government introduced a special plan: The Comprehensive Planning Guidelines for Urban Village Redevelopment 2005-2010. This plan gives four reasons to redevelop urban villages. First, as land scarcity is becoming prominent, the land covered by urban villages should be considered as potential land stock via redevelopment. Second, ille gal construc-tions, chaotic land use and social problems such as crime result in the urban villages being the most promi-nent, complicated and concentrated locations of urban problems. Third, urban villages are perceived as sup-pressing the land value of their surrounding neighbour-

by urban villages. Consequently, from 1999 to 2004 in the SEZ, urban village land increased by only 19 ha, from 781 ha to 800 ha. In the meantime, land is more abundant out-side the SEZ. While urban developments were taking over rural land, villagers were also competing to occupy more land by constructing new houses. Land coverage by urban villages in the non-SEZ districts increased from 6480 ha to 8549 ha. The number of urban village houses increased by 50 percent, from 204,870 to 306,594. And the total floor space increased by 41 million m2, which was 95 percent of the total floor space in 1999.

The growth of urban village land mainly happened out-side the SEZ. The increase in the quantity and the size of houses contributed to an increasing provision of cheap rooms in the housing market. However, in the SEZ, where expansion of urban villages was no longer possible, urban villages increased the number of rooms by adding floors and expending plot areas. Consequently, urban villages in the SEZ were becoming taller and denser. In the SEZ, the number of urban village houses increased by 20 percent, from 35,290 to 42,300. The total floor area doubled, from 10.4 million m2 to 21.4 million m2.

In the six districts, urban villages are at different devel-opment stages just like the formal urban areas they are situated in. This determines to some extent their social characteristics. For instance, there are fewer and smaller urban villages in the SEZ. However, many more tenants are accommodated in each urban village. The average ratio of landlords and tenants ranges from 1:20 to 1:40 in the four districts of the SEZ. Outside the SEZ, the lower liv-ing density of each urban village leads to a lower ratio of landlords and tenants. The average ratio of urban villages in the non-SEZ districts is about 1:10. Although, in general, the landlords of urban villages possess similar areas of floor space, landlords in the SEZ usually gain more reve-

References

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Tian, L. (2008) ’The Chengz-hongcun Land Market in China: Boon or Bane?: A Per-spective on Property Rights.‘ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32(2), 282-304.

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Zhang, L., Zhao, S. X. B. & Tian, J. P. (2003) ’Self-help in Housing and Chengzhongcun in China‘s Urbanization.‘ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27(4), 912-937.

Zhao, Y. H. (1999) ’Labor migration and earnings differences: The case of rural China.‘ Economic Develop-ment and Cultural Change, 47(4), 767-782.

Figure 5 The distribution of urban villages in Shenzhen 2005. Source: Shenzhen Urban Planning Bureau.

Baoan

Nanshan

FutianLuohu

Yantian

Longgang

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Conclusion

The urban village, as a new urban form, emerged in Chinese cities only after the initiation of the 1978 economic reform. It is a by-product of rapid urban expansion encroaching on rural areas. While the local government neglected the liveli-hood and interests of the two most vulnerable groups – the landless peasants and the rural migrant workers – urban villages have undeniably contributed to alleviating the problems of the unemployment of the former and the ac-commodation of the latter. In this situation, the former group construct and maintain urban villages based on a self-help approach, and the latter group concentrates in those urban villages based on their rational choice to seek affordable and accessible housing and minimal transport costs.

The emergence and development of urban villages in Shenzhen is an unprecedented rural-to-urban trans-formation in terms of its speed and scale. The trans-formation is tightly linked to the city’s development, economic restructuring and social transition. As the city grows, the increasing number of urban villages and their physical evolution dramatically increase the city’s overall capacity to provide housing and services, espe-cially for low-income groups. As the city goes through economic restructuring and social transition, which results in diverse development themes and social structure at the city scale, urban villages evolve differ-ently to facilitate local development and the housing demand of the local population.

However, the current policy, which aims at redeveloping many urban villages, is likely to disrupt the balance in the housing market. Moreover, without considering the diversity of the urban villages in terms of the variety of the housing provision, the redevelopment programmes targeting pre-selected urban villages will have an influ-ence on certain groups of people, including many of the city’s most vulnerable. There are risks to implement such programmes in both social and economic aspects. The potential housing stress of the low-income migrants is likely to exclude many of them from the inner city and major development areas. As urban villages are increas-ingly marginalised in policy making and planning, the social and eco-nomic influences of their upheaval could become an increasingly difficult challenge for the policy makers of Chinese cities.

hoods and therefore they limit the progress of the city’s improvement of urban struc-ture and efficiency. Fourth, urban villages are to some extent outside the formal urban administration. Their house rental business jeop-ardises the environ-ment of equal competition. And their land and housing market threatens the municipal control and profits from the land and property market.

The redevelopment plan stipulates that 8.9 million m2 of urban village land, which is covered by houses of 11.5 mil-lion m2 floor space, will be cleared during 2005-2010 to make room for new buildings with at least 25.9 million m2 floor area. When the urban villages are replaced by commercial housing and office units, the living density of these areas will significantly decline. Better-off residents will replace the former low-income tenants. In the SEZ, as commercial and business functions are promoted, a large proportion of the redeveloped space is designated for commercial use and of-fices. Consequently, housing stress in the SEZ will drastically increase, especially for white-collar employees and workers in industrial and service sectors. As they choose to live in the SEZ mainly because of the proximity to their job locations – office buildings, restaurants, shops, etc. – redevelopment of their urban villages will force them to move away from their jobs and therefore increase their commuting time and costs.

To prioritise urban villages for redevelopment, the plan placed emphasis on certain zones such as ecological zones, commercial and industrial centres, and areas that are near to existing or future metro lines. Accord-ingly, urban villages that ought to be redeveloped are selected and redevelopment proposals and site plans are prepared. Most redevelopment plans aim at improving the built-up environment and infrastructures. And in the process of redevelop-ment, indigenous villagers are often compensated with new apartment units which are not only for their own housing but also allows for maintaining their room-renting business. However, the low-income migrant tenants of the urban villages will be replaced by tenants of much better economic status. There is no con-sideration for the migrants. The majority of the residents of urban villages will then be excluded from their former neighbourhoods. Consequently a gentrification process is likely to happen in those areas. For the migrants, in-creased expenditure on housing and costs as well as time for commuting will lead to tougher living circumstances or, possibly, even exclusion from the city.

Figure 6 Population growth of Shenzhen 1979-2008, unit: 10 thousand people. Source: Shenzhen Urban Planning Bureau.

Pu Hao------------PhD candidate, Department of Human Geography and Planning, Faculty of Geo-sciences, Utrecht University and Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Observation (ITC), University of Twente, NL.

Contact: <hao@itc.nl>

Richard Sliuzas------------PhD, associate professor, Department of Urban and Regional Planning and Geo-information Management, Faculty of Geo-Information Science and Earth Obser-va-tion (ITC), University of Twente, NL. Specialist in the use of geoinformation and technol-ogy for urban planning and unplanned settlements.

Contact: <sliuzas@itc.nl>

Stan Geertman------------PhD, associate professor of geographical information sci-ence, Department of Human Geography and Planning, Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, NL. Direc-tor of the interuniversity MSc programme in Geographical Information Management and Applications (MSc GIMA). Research focus: Planning Support Systems (PSS) and spatial simulation models. Wide variety of publications.

Contact: <s.geertman@geo.uu.nl>

21TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

Changing Arenas for Defining Urban India: Middle Class Associations, Municipal Councillors and the Urban Poor

Joop de Wit

Politikräume zur Gestaltung der Stadtentwicklung in Indien: Mittelklasse-Initiativen, Stadträte und die städtischen Armen 1992 wurde eine Änderung der indischen Verfassung umgesetzt, nach der in allen größeren Städten des Landes Stadt(bezirks)räte (Municipal Councillors) gewählt werden, die für lokale Belange zuständig sind und eine gewisse Entscheidungsmacht besitzen. Diese neue Entscheidungsebene soll für eine basisnähere Staatsgewalt sorgen und die Bürger stärker einbeziehen und beteiligen. Nicht zuletzt wegen der geringen Finanzmittel und der Grenzen ihrer Entscheidungsmacht sowie wegen des Einflusses von Populismus und Korruption wird das Gebaren der Stadträte jedoch eher kritisch gesehen. Die Studie versucht, die Bedeutung dieser Räte speziell für die Armen zu erfassen. Während sich die städtische Mittelklasse mit ihren Anliegen in der Regel direkt an die kommunalen und sonstigen Behörden wenden kann, sind die Armen auf eine Vermittlung durch die Stadträte angewiesen. Es ergibt sich die Frage, ob deren Rolle mehr die einer Einbeziehung der Armen in die lokale sozio-politische Struktur ist, oder ob die gewählten Stadträte in ihrer Rolle als „Torhüter“ in wahlkampfbedingtem Selbstinteresse handeln und damit die bestehenden Muster der Ausgrenzung aufrecht erhalten. Auf dem Hintergrund theoretischer Überlegungen sowie anhand von Fallstudien in Mumbai und Delhi wird beschrieben, wie Repräsentationsmodi, Ungleichheit und Abhängigkeit von Vermittlung eine wirksame Einbeziehung der Armen behindern, wie dies die sozialräumliche Segregation zementiert und wie dadurch eine demokratische Lokalpolitik unterminiert wird.

Introduction: the changing political economy of urban India

As a result of the fast economic growth of India, two groups of urban stakeholders have become more visible as well as vocal: the Indian “middle class” and the private sector (including powerful business firms and [large] con-tractors and property developers). This has brought about processes of segregation and polarisation, which appear most pronounced in mega-cities such as Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai and Bangalore, due to their exposure to neo-liberalism and a strong market-based ideology (Banerjee-Guhan, 2000).

These local processes coincide with the consolidation of the large (mega) cities as an integral part of global capital-ism, with state and city authorities quite open to the powerful influence of both Indian big business — where several concerns have grown enormously in the past few decades and became global players — as well as foreign capital and foreign advisors/donor organisations such as, for example, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank and the USAID. All this fits the widely perceived dominance of the neo-liberal polity that India experi-ences with a strong role of the private sector, indications of which may be found in the land markets, which are being increasingly liberalised and opened for industry and

large-scale development, and in several vision docu-ments and ambitious plans for city beautification (e.g. projecting a future Mumbai as a Shanghai or Singapore), as well as in the massive JNNURM (National Urban Re-newal Mission) programme (Banarjee-Guha, 2009). This, as Ghertner (2008: 57) argues, transforms the physical urban landscape with a new private-property regime by redefining the access to the city through the stipulation of a property-based citizenship. There is evidence of build-ers having occupied open spaces in Mumbai (especially by building shopping malls), and there are plans in that city to partially privatise city-owned parks (Anjaria, 2009: 393): “This unlikely grouping of powerful builders, corrupt state officials and small-scale hawkers as urban villains suggests the uneven and contradictory nature of urban reconfiguration”.

The present urban reforms and modalities for urban services are marked by a state preference for “public-private partnerships” (Banerjee-Guha, 2009) entrusting a large role to the private sector — also in areas such as education and healthcare. It may be understood that the Indian state lacks the massive funds to finance the enormous needs in terms of urban infrastructure and services, but the present radical shift to market-driven and market-based approaches obviously harbours grave risks in terms of accountability, transparency as well as

This article is part of long term research by the author into the interfaces between the urban poor, slum communities and urban agencies (de Wit 1996). It is based on research carried out in the context of an Indo-Dutch research project which also considered the evolution and impacts of urban decentralisation reforms in Chennai, Mumbai and New Delhi (cf. Baud and de Wit 2009; Kundu 2006). Surveys were held amongst numer-ous municipal councillors in these cities, and the article mostly presents data from the survey held under 26 New Delhi coun-cillors, as well as municipal officials and MLAs. In addi-tion, it makes use of many other sources, including a very rich survey on Delhi governance included in Siddiqui et al. (2004).

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equity: after all, the private sector needs to make a profit, so though the fees may be low for the rich, they may be beyond the paying capacity of the poor.

These developments have deep implications on urban governance and urban politics, not least due to the related increased powers of middle-class organisa-tions in Indian cities (e.g. Baud and de Wit, 2009). There appears to be shifts of power with a stronger influ-ence — even if informal and somewhat hidden — of such organisations mostly captured under the label of resident welfare associations (RWA) on political parties, urban ideology and perspectives of urban planning and welfare (Tawa-Lawa, 2007; Kundu, 2009). One question is whether they have an increasing voice in urban gov-ernance at the expense of other urban “stakeholders” such as, for example, the urban poor and slum dwellers and elected politicians such as members of parliament and municipal councillors. Related to these stakehold-ers, but separate in view of their special position in the state, are the Indian High Courts and the Indian Supreme Court, which have become relatively active in regard to urban governance — ranging from rulings on anti-pollution legislation in Delhi to rulings on slums and slum evictions as documented by Ghertner (2008).

In Indian urban politics, most urban votes are with the urban poor and the slum dwellers. They are also the ones most in need of shelter and services, and they vote more heavily than any other group or class. So the question arises as to whether their voice is heard in the changing decision-making arenas to which they themselves have no access — except through mediators and patronage relations. This then brings us to the need to consider the (changing) position of the municipal councillors, who have traditionally been the agents of local governance most important and accessible to the poor; indeed, they form the apex of local and neighbourhood-level political networks (e.g. Jha et al. 2007; de Wit and Berner, 2009). So if there is a drifting apart of the rich and the poor in terms

of services, spatial segregation and political representa-tion, how do the municipal councillors react to this? Are they supportive to the urban poor who form their main “vote bank”?

The urban middle class

The growth of the Indian middle class is subject of much interest and writing, but also of considerable confusion as to its precise nature and size (Srivastava, 2009). It is generally assumed that “the middle class” is a mix of both well-established “old” and “new rich” elite groups as well as a large group of upwardly mobile households who are not very rich but both comfortable and keen to show their status, articulating a middle-class identity, for example, in terms of consumption. The political implications of the emergence of such a large, rich and influential segment of Indian urban society have recently drawn considerable attention, mostly in terms of their organisation in “resident welfare associations” as documented, for example, by An-jaria, 2009; Srivastava, 2009; Smitha, 2010; and Kundu, 2009.

The literature indicates that the urban middle class has a rather dim view of urban governance and politics. They rarely if at all vote in the local municipal elections and have an especially negative view of municipal council-lors, whom they hold to be corrupt, illiterate and self-interested. Typically, middle-class persons will not take the trouble to inform politicians of a problem or concern, but will instead approach the municipality or service provider either directly or through the leadership of their organisa-tions to demand a problem be solved. There are concerns about such developments, for example as voiced by Harris (2006: 257), who refers to “new politics”, which is taken to mean the involvement of civil society and their organisations in governance instead of political parties, and/or new social movements rather than labour or-ganisations. Such a type of “participatory governance” is in opposition to the representative democracy of “old politics”. John (2007: 3993) refers to such “initiatives by middle-class residents, especially women and retired people, to improve their neighbourhoods in the face of ‘the failures of local governance’, that seek to bypass or supplant both the elec-toral process and popular local politics”. In fact, many urban middle-class households have organised resident welfare associations (RWA) that have taken on supportive roles for their members in terms of services and security, but there are also instances where their members have supported specific candidates in local elections (Tawa-Lawa, 2007).

The growing importance of resident welfare associations (RWAs)

Anjari (2009: 391) is most critical of these RWAs in Mum-bai and says “it is these civil society organisations, not the state (…) who are the agents of increased control over populations and of the rationalisation of urban space”. He goes on to say that the civil activists use the rheto-ric of citizen participation, but that they undermine the

References

Anjaria, J.S. (2009) ‘Guard-ians of the Bourgeois City: Citizenship, Public Space, and Middle Class Activism in Mumbai’, in: City and Com-munity, nr. 8(4) pp. 391-406).

Baud, I.S.A. and de Wit (eds) (2008) New Forms of Govern-ance in Urban India: Shifts, Models, Networks and Contes-tations, New Delhi: Sage.

Banerjee-Guha, S. (2000) ‘Neo-liberalising the ‘Urban’: New Geographies of Power and Injustice in Indian Cities’, in: Economic and Political Weekly, May 30, Vol. XLIV(22), pp. 95-107.

Chandra, K. (2007) ‘Counting Heads: A Theory of Voter and Elite Behaviour in Patronage Democracies’ in: Kitscheld, H. and S. Wilkinson (eds) Patrons, Clients and Policies: Patterns of Democratic Accountability and Political Competition, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press, pp. 84-109.

Ghosh, A. and Tawa Lama-Rewal, S. (2005) Democra-tization in Progress; Women and Local Politics in Urban India, New Delhi: Tulika Books.

GoD/Government of NCT of Delhi (2006) Delhi Human Development Report 2006: Partnerships for Progress, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Figure 1 Squatter and middle class apartment blocks in New Delhi

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“radically heterogeneous forms of democratic political participation the city offers”. While the former statement seems too strong to be proven valid (even in the remain-der of the Anjari 2009 text), the latter statement finds much broader agreement. Harris (2006: 257), for example, as we have seen already, refers to “new politics” with an emphasis on the potentially exclusionary character of a governance regime based on “civil society” and social movements. Tawa-Lawa (2007: 59) argues that “these asso-ciations, promoting the political participation of the ‘middle classes’, end up empowering the already powerful”.

RWAs of diverse sizes and shapes have been formed in most Indian cities, normally representing the interests of their members in day-to-day problems faced by the resi-dents of a neighbourhood, apartment block, or compound (as in a “gated community”). While it is hard to generalise, they are often quite democratic internally with elections, chairpersons and uniform membership collections; and in my research I found that the office holders are often elderly people such as retired government officials (Smithy, 2010 on this for Bangalore). RWAs may be engaged in conveying grievances to the authorities, in dealing with security issues (for example, employing a watchman), in collecting money to pay common (electricity, water) bills, and in the main-tenance of services and parks. In Delhi, a large number of RWAs are united under the Bhagidari (“partnership”) Pro-gramme, which was initiated by the Government of Delhi in 2000. By 2005, about 1,700 citizen groups were part of the programme (GoD, 2006: 89), engaged in issues like solid-waste management, rainwater harvesting, developing com-munity parks and implementing the Right to Information Act. But while RWAs, both with or without the Bhagidari Programme, are widely seen to play useful roles for their members, increasing doubts are voiced about their wider implications in terms of city governance.

First, they are seen as unconstitutional and operating as self-styled elite clubs formed by self-selection and coop-tation; they are neither representative of their areas nor of the city as a whole, and often exclude tenants and other disadvantaged neighbours (Tawa-Lawa, 2007: 55). They tend to by-pass elected representatives whom they look down upon. Second, RWAs are seen to play an exclusion-ary role, especially in relation to the urban poor and the slum dwellers. RWAs may link up with the police to agree upon lists of those persons who are allowed to enter the locality (Srivastava, 2009: 343ff), including authorised maid servants, hawkers, plumbers. The argument is that, on the one hand, the Bhagidari Programme promotes the caring state through partnerships with citizens in legal neighbourhoods while, at the same time, endorsing and creating realms of illegality and exclusion.

More serious is the role of the courts that may endorse the public interest litigations of organised citizen groups requesting the eviction or removal of a neighbouring slum, which is then followed by actual removal by the city authorities (Ghertner, 2008: 57). Slum needs and priorities

get sidelined because RWAs have political connections and/or class affinity with ministers, as seen by Kamath et al. (2009: 373): “If, however, public land has been occu-pied by poor groups and supported by councillors for the purpose of getting votes, RWAs have been more success-ful in ousting them, particularly if they forge partnerships with government officials” (ibid.: 375). Such exclusionary trends (affecting slum dwellers, hawkers and unskilled la-bourers as well as those living in unauthorised settlements) stand in contrast to the laxity of the authorities to take action against the estimated 68-93% of illegal but “formal, concrete” constructions in, for example, Delhi. Despite be-ing ordered by courts to be demolished, they still remain in place (EPW, Sept. 30 2006: 4097).

However, for all the drawbacks and negative potential of RWAs, it is not as if they have taken over the “rationalisa-tion of urban space” from the state, as Anjari (2009, see before) argues. First, there is a sense that RWAs by and large have a utilitarian approach; focusing on immediate urban service issues, they fail to influence larger policy issues — as soon as the problem is resolved, they often stop their activities (Smithy, 2010: 77). In this respect, Tawa-Lawa (2007: 59) refers to the “parochial” nature of the RWA concerns, which is one factor why RWAs have not succeeded to be elected through local elections. Of course, this is related to the already mentioned fact that the middle classes do not normally vote as well as to the fact that their representatives are no match in the mostly murky, opaque and crude municipal election carnivals where muscle and money power, as well as threats and manipulation, are the order of the day (de Wit and Berner, 2009). Tawa-Lawa (ibid.: 58) refers to the provision of money, saris and liquor in exchange for votes. Secondly, city authorities and politicians do not appear keen to allow (even) more power to accrue to citizen groups and RWAs. Anjaria (2009: 403) indicates that the state only reacted in a “sluggish way” to the concerns of these resident associations, and that the members of the latter are not entirely united themselves in their opinions and actions (in regard to hawkers, for example), which limits their effectiveness.

Governance and poverty in New Delhi

New Delhi is the capital of India and has a population of 13.78 million inhabitants (2001 census). The metropolis is marked by an unusual density of governance institu-tions. As the capital of India, it harbours the Government of India (GoI), with its sprawling ministries and offices, as well as the Houses of Parliament with the members of parliament (MPs). The GoI owns and controls parts of Delhi in terms of land (it controls the Delhi Development Authority [DDA]), real estate and railways; and has final power over the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, or MCD (Ghosh et al. 2005: 65). Delhi’s administrative structure was reformed following an act in 1992, when a separate legislative assembly and a council of ministers were established to govern the Delhi Union Territory (GoD: the

References (continuation)

Jha, S., Rao, V. and M. Woolcock (2007) ‘Govern-ance in the Gullies: Demo-cratic Responsiveness and Leadership in Delhi’s Slums’ World Development, Vol 35(2) pp. 230-246.

John, M. (2007) ‘Women in Power? Gender, Caste, and the Politics of Local Urban Governance’ in: Economic and Political Weekly, Septem-ber 29, pp. 3986-3994.

Harris, J. (2005) ‘Political Par-ticipation, Representation and the Urban Poor: Findings from Research in Delhi’, Economic and Political Weekly, March 12, pp. 1041-1054.

Harris, J. (2006) Power Matters; Essays on Institutions, Politics, and Society in India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.

Hayami, Y., Dikshit, A.K. and Mishra, S.N. (2006) ‘Waste Pickers and Collec-tors in Delhi: Poverty and Environment in an Urban Informal Sector’, in: Journal of Development Studies, Vol. 42(1) pp. 41-69.

Kamath, L. and Vijaya-baskar, M. (2009) ‘Limits and Possibilities of Middle Class Associations as Urban Col-lective Actors’, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 19 (26 &27), pp. 368-376.

Kundu, A. (2006) New Forms of Governance in Indian Mega-cities: Decentralisation, Financial Management and Partnerships in Urban Envi-ronmental Services. A Study Sponsored under Indo-Dutch Programme for Alternate Development. New Delhi and The Hague: Final Report.

Kundu, D. (2005) Dimensions of Urban Poverty: The Case of New Delhi. Mumbai: AIILSG and Delhi: UN-Habitat.

Kundu, D. (2009) ‘Elite Capture and Marginalisation of the Poor in Participatory Governance: The Case of Res-ident Welfare Associations in Metro Cities’, in: India Urban Poverty Report 2009, New Delhi: Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and UNDP, pp. 271-284.

Siddiqui, K. Ranjan, N. and S. Kapuria (2004) ‘Delhi’ in: Megacity Governance in South Asia; A Comparative Study, edited by K. Siddiqui, A. Ghosh, S. Bhowmik, et al. Dhaka: University Press Limited, pp. 189-275.

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Government of Delhi). The act provided for a seventy-member legislative assembly with certain but limited powers to govern the State of Delhi, while it has only limited powers over the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) (Siddiqui, 2004: 201).

In addition to the democratically controlled Government of India and Government of Delhi, there is a third civic body. The largest civic body to govern Delhi in terms of citizen-focused services is the Municipal Corpora-tion of Delhi (MCD), with an executive and deliberative wing1. The deliberative or legislative wing is headed by the mayor (elected for one year), assisted by a deputy, and consists of 134 elected municipal councillors, one for each municipal ward (in addition, there are special members with specific expertise as well as a number of MPs and MLAs) (ibid.: 202). It is important to note that the MCD has gradually lost many of its initially large number of tasks and responsibilities. Today, its key tasks include public health, sanitation, low-income housing and administrating the slums (JJ colonies) through the MCD Slum Wing. The MCD has no planning powers; these are with the Delhi Development Authority, which resorts under the GoI. Unsurprisingly, there is a general lack of coordination between the various agencies governing Delhi, for example, in regard to critical areas such as land, slum and urban infrastructure (Ghosh, et al. 2005: 65).

The fact that Delhi has so many governance institutions, and that there is an unusual density of elected representa-tives in a relatively small area (MPs, MLAs, MCs) with overlapping jurisdictions, has clear implications for the role, power and position of the 134 Delhi councillors. First, there is recurring confusion about the precise mandates and responsibilities of the agencies already listed (MCD, GoD,

GoI) as well as numerous other agencies (various national and state ministries, but also parastatal agencies which are beyond democratic control). This poses problems for the efforts of elected representatives to support citizens looking for access, support and/or services, and likewise makes the need for brokers more urgent. Besides, from its establishment onwards, there have been recurring tensions between the pre-existing MDC and the relatively recently established Delhi State Government (GoD), if only because the two bodies both administer roughly the same area. One area of contestation has been the very form and size of the MCD, which has arisen partly as a result of a perception that this large corporation is not well-managed. One bone of contention has been a proposal — sup-ported by the Delhi State Government (GoD) — to split and decentralise the MCD and to establish a separate agency for slum and urban poverty concerns (Siddiqui, 2005: 231; Kundu, 2006). Unsurprisingly, this proposal was unanimous-ly rejected by the MCD councillors.

Municipal councillors and the poor in Delhi

Delhi is wealthy by Indian standards, with an aver-age per capita income of perhaps 2.5 times the Indian average (Shudarshan et al. 2009: 61). However, this may be an indication of considerable income inequality, as Delhi has both large elite areas for the urban rich as well as sprawling slum and squatter settlements with both long-term urban poor residents as well as large numbers of migrants attracted by the promises of work and incomes that the fast-growing city certainly offers (46.3% population growth between 1991-2001). The number of people below the poverty line is said to be about 8% (ibid.: 61), but Siddiqui (2004: 191) pegs it at 30% of the population. The latter estimation would be more consistent with the fact that approximately 3 million people out of 13 million live in the slums — mostly at the city’s outskirts. In addition, an estimated 1.4 million people live in unauthorised colonies (Sidiqui, 2004: 191; Sudarshan, 2009: 61) while Kundu (2005: 2) indicates that about 43% of the total population would be in need of shelter upgradation.

It is important to stress the heterogeneity of the urban poor, and that issues of poverty and marginalisation are strongly linked to cultural factors of caste and ethnicity. For example, a large proportion of India’s Scheduled Castes live in the slums in India and face considerable caste discrimi-nation. Other factors operating in slums include religion, the Muslims often being quite poor, and ethnicity, as the migrants come from different Indian states. There are also hierarchies in duration of stay in Delhi, so migrants face more problems than established “citizens” (see Hayami et al., 2006, on waste-picker migrants), as do tenants and people in unauthorised settlements. For Delhi, WaterAid (2005) makes an appropriate distinction between “formal” and “informal” Delhi. The NGO argues that as many as 70% of the city lives in informal and underserved areas, but, at the same time, most city budgets for infrastructure, trans-

References (continuation)

Sivaramakrishnan, K.C. (2004) Municipal and Metro-politan Governance: Are they relevant to the Urban Poor? Paper presented at the “Forum on Urban Infrastructure and Public Service Delivery for the Urban Poor, Regional Asia”, New Delhi, 24-25 June 2004.

Srivastava, S. (2009) ‘Urban Spaces, Disney Divinity and Moral Middle Classes in Delhi’ in: Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 14 (26 & 27), pp. 338-345.

Smitha, K.C. (2010) ‘New Forms of Urban Localism: Service Delivery in Banga-lore’, Economic and Political Weekly, February 20, Vol. XLV(8) pp. 73-77.

Sudarshan, R.M. and Bhattacharya, S. (2009) ‘Through the Magnifying Glass: Women’s Work and Labour Force Participation in Urban Delhi’ in: Economic and Political Weekly, November 28, Vol. XLIV (48) pp. 59-66.

1 In fact there are two more and smaller municipal cor-porations in Delhi: the New Delhi Municipal Committee and the Delhi Cantonment.

Figure 2Street life in New Delhi

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port, water and sanitation directly target the citizens of the formal city (ibid.: 101/2; also Kundu, 2005: 6). Their findings are corroborated by Siddiqui (2004: 250), who focuses on the provision of services to Delhi’s poor. He finds that many poor are not aware of or in touch with critical service pro-viders, especially the MCD, which has the mandate to deal with slums/J.J. Colonies.

So while the urban poor face severe problems in regard to shelter and services, they also face access problems when contacting the critical agencies which provide the services due to illiteracy, not knowing which location or of-ficial to target, or because they are simply not being heard. Therefore, the urban poor remain dependent on informal relations of patronage and clientelism of local (political) leaders and brokers, most of whom are linked to the ruling party MCs. There is an alliance here between the poor who have problems getting access to agencies (the police, municipality, hospitals) and local brokers who mediate for a fee or in exchange of a vote. More broadly and at another level, local leaders and MCs may become agents of busi-ness interests such as contractors and developers, and the MCs obtain election funds from the latter to attract or “buy” the votes of the poor in what may be called a “machine politics” perspective (de Wit, 1996) or a “patronage democ-racy”. Rather than ideology or the popularity of a leader, it’s the concrete benefits that are dispended to people that influence voting behaviour. In India, the concept of “vote bank” is often used, referring to a group of voters with common characteristics (caste, language and ethnicity).

Hence, municipal councillors (MCs) remain important for the urban poor, which is related to the fact that the urban poor are not successful in organising themselves into effective, broad-based organisations (de Wit and Berner, 2009) which could counter the powers of middle-class organisation on the one hand, and, on the other, the more hidden implications of private-sector influence such as the divide between good-quality private clinics and schools and poor public ones. It is beyond the scope of this article to deal in much detail with this complex mat-ter, but we may make a few important points here, start-ing with a survey which shows that the poor themselves think they are not united (Siddiqui, 2004: 256): “83% were unanimous that the poor were disunited”. The reasons given include that the poor are too busy to survive; are illiterate; are divided along lines of religion, caste and region; are selfish; are easily divided by the rich; and that the police disrupt the unity of the poor. The important and disturbing fact that the poor are heavily hindered (if not repressed and exploited) by the police is also argued by Jha et al., 2007: 236, and Hayami, 2006: 65.

The backgrounds of the municipal councillors

It was already mentioned that 134 councillors (MCs) are elected from an equal number of city constituencies, and that they have to work with or compete with numer-ous other politicians also elected from Delhi such as

the MPs and MLAs. The 1992 Urban Decentralisation Re-forms (74th Constitutional Amendment) were expected to confer more powers to the MCs, especially as they are now also meeting in the context of newly formed “wards committees”, which were given some limited powers in terms of ward-level consultation and decision-making. For a variety of reasons, which have been listed elsewhere (de Wit et al. 2008; Kundu, 2009), urban decentralisation has been generally ineffective, and this also applies to New Delhi. One reason is that proximity between people and the wards committees has re-mained problematic (one committee for 1.2 million per-sons), while ward-level bureaucrats have so far managed to retain pre-eminence over MCs, partly because Delhi has long been ruled by bureaucrats (Tawa-Lawa, 2007: 53; de Wit, 2009b). However, while our survey generally supports that view, there are important differences from MC to MC — some are simply better at managing of-ficials than others. So while evidence seems to indicate that the MCs have not generally become more powerful following decentralisation, MCs in Indian cities remain to be seen as having a special role in regard to the urban poor. They are active locally and are often elected on the basis of issues of neighbourhood identities (caste, religion); and, of course, for their (re-)election they rely on the massive numbers of slum votes — which are very critical because, as previously mentioned, the poor vote much more than the urban middle classes and rich.

Our survey tends to confirm the impression that the Delhi MCs are generally rather well-educated and well-off (de Wit, 2009a; Ghosh et al., 2005: 76). John (2009: 3993) says that “the Delhi MCs are much more elite than those of Bangalore, and there was much more money involved in the campaigning of the former”. It is striking — but unsurprising — that in our survey most of the male MCs (11 out of the 16) have some sort of business,

References (continuation)

Tawa Lama-Rewal, S. (2007) ‘Neighbourhood Associations and Local Democracy: Delhi Municipal Elections 2007’, Economic and Political Weekly, November 24, pp. 51-60.

Tawa Lama-Rewal, S. (2005) ‘Urban Governance through the Prism of Pri-mary Health Care Provision: A Study of Delhi’, paper presented at a workshop on Urban Actors, Policies and Governance in Delhi, Septem-ber 14, Delhi: CSH/JNU.

WaterAid India and Delhi Slum Dwellers Federation (2005) Profiling ‘Informal City of Delhi’; Policies, Norms, Institutions and Scope of Intervention, New Delhi: WaterAid India and DSDF.

De Wit, J. and Berner, E. (2009) ‘Progressive patron-age? Municipalities, NGOs, Community-Based Organiza-tions, and the Limits to Slum Dwellers’ Empowerment’, Development and Change, Vol. 40(5): 927-947.

De Wit, J. (2009a) ‘Municipal Councillors in New Delhi: Agents of Integration or Inclu-sion?’ Paper presented at the N-AERUS conference at I.H.S., Rotterdam. October 1-3.

Figure 3Water service for urban poor, New Delhi.

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But again, we do not support an overall negative image, and there are certainly also very hard-working, commit-ted and sincere MCs (cf. de Wit, 2009a). One woman MC says: “I wanted to cover a drain but [the] MCD was not interested as they are not going to make money out of it. But residents, too, have vested interests; they encroach illegally and bribe [the] MCD. We plan facilities and priori-ties on the basis of vote banks”.

But most evidence (including our survey outcomes) indicates that MCs are very much part of the networks of corruption, often being active in the repair or provision of roads, community halls and lights, etc, as a pretext for spending money — and being able to take bribes, which accumulate into amounts of money used by the party and MC for (re-)election. One respondent linked the lavish campaign spending to the fact that a lot of the money is black money: “It is simply given out, partly by the party and partly by the candidate; you can also consider such expenditure in the larger context of a candidate to show money power, with a view of investment in a longer term career extending to become [an] MLA and possibly MP”.

Says another MC: “I was supported in the elections by many people, and they had developed expectations. After the elections, their demands increased; personal equa-tions were destroyed” (de Wit, 1996; 2009b).

Hence, an MC has to entertain good relations with con-tractors and developers as well as ward officials to be able to earn incomes — partly for re-election, but also for running and managing an office, for maintaining a status befitting an important MC with cars and clothing and etc, and for providing incentives to local (slum) leaders and followers. The business background of many MCs does not help much to make them identify with the poor and vulnerable, which is confirmed in the aforementioned Siddiqui (2004: 283) survey amongst the poor: “The predominance of the business class amongst the councillors has its implications for distort-ing priorities against the interest of the poor”.

But the MCs remain dependent on the voters, and our survey revealed that all MCs are active amongst the urban poor — as mediators, problem-solvers, informa-tion transfer points, and, perhaps most importantly, as powerful agents to bend formal rules and policy to fit individual situations. The need for such services are high because it is generally difficult for people to directly contact the municipality, police or hospital; when they do, the staff may turn them away and tell them to contact a local leader (pradhan), who are again linked to MCs (cf. Jha, 2007: 235, 244). So there is little doubt that MCs are very critical mediators between the poor and the various city agencies, as they themselves admit: “In my campaign I said ‘both your official and unofficial work I will get it done’”. It likewise appears that people also expect MCs to mediate and solve problems: “I try to solve all problems of the common

and again 5 of these are in the building/real estate/prop-erty & rental business. This is consistent with findings in Chennai (de Wit, 2009b), and those of John (2007: 3988):

“Business, especially as contractors, developers and fac-tory owners, was the most common occupation among the male councillors in both cities (Delhi and Bangalore), including among husbands of women councillors”.

Role and performance of the MCs in Delhi

The context of the MC work in the municipal corporation of Delhi (MCD) is one where corruption is rife, as can be seen daily in the newspapers, and we will indicate that corruption is linked to electoral corruption and a “ma-chine politics” model which stresses the links between business and politics. A survey by the Centre of Media Studies (in Siddiqui, 2004: 222) indicates that about 50% of the MCD visitors consider the agency corrupt — 40% had given bribes in offices themselves. About 40% of the respondents had to contact officials through “middle-men”. Such findings are confirmed in the work of Ghosh et. al (2005: 118), who state that “the nexus between officials, contractors and councillors was the object of recurring complaints by women MCs against their male counterparts, especially in Mumbai and Delhi”. Many MCs benefit unduly from their unique position: they are spiders in webs made of (informal) networks of (de-pendent) voters, the MCD with its funds and officials, contractors who aspire by hook and crook to obtain lucrative tenders and, finally, the land owners/real-estate developers. They are seen to take cuts on any money over which they have some claim, including the indi-vidual discretionary MC funds at their disposal — such funds are a source of income for all groups mentioned, with sometimes only little actual (and sustainable) improvement or construction visible after some time.

References (continuation)

De Wit, J. (2009b) ‘Decentral-ised Urban Governance and Changing Roles of Municipal Councillors in Chennai, India; Continuities of Administration and Political Representa-tion following the 1992 74th Constitutional Amendment Act.´ Paper for the IDPR Anni-versary Symposium 6-7, April, University of Liverpool.

De Wit, J., Navtej, K.B. and Palnitkar, S. (2008) ‘Urban Decentralisation in India: As-sessing the Performance of Neighbourhood level Wards Committees’, in: I. Baud and J. de Wit (eds): New Forms of Governance in India: Shifts, Models, Networks and Con-testations, New Delhi: Sage, pp. 37-65.

De Wit, J. (1996) Poverty, Policy and Politics in Madras Slums; Dynamics of Survival, Gender and Leadership. New Delhi: Sage.

Figure 4Entrance of New Friends Colony housing estate, New Delhi, indicating the office of New Friends Colony Resident Welfare Association.

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particularistic, individual relations that are always based on some form of established mutual appreciation and trust so that there is some guarantee to reduce the risk of cheating. For the urban rich, such relations may be relatively equal, but for the poor they are typically asymmetrical and hierarchical patronage or brokerage relations with elements of dependency. In contrast to their rich co-citizens who have the RWAs, they are not likely to themselves organise in effective organisations, as they are fragmented by myriad divisions of income, caste, vertical relations, ethnicity, gender, religion and political affiliation (de Wit and Berner, 2009; Siddiqui, 2004: 256). The CBOs are often vehicles for the self-inter-est of local leaders and for the control of slum commu-nities rather than avenues of empowerment. Although the urban poor have a dire need for effective brokers, this article has shown that they cannot rely too much on the municipal councillors.

Where the MCs do support the poor, however, is mostly related to localised matters such as access to agencies, admissions, subsidies and licenses, and the provision of tangible services — and this is recognised by the MCs themselves. Siddiqui (2005: 259) shows that most MCs (93%) claimed success in solving local problems, and 87% claimed to have fulfilled their elec-tion promises. The MCs admitted however, that their “success was not that spectacular in law and order, housing for the poor, and poverty alleviation”, pre-cisely those matters which touch urban poverty, urban inequality and exclusion in a deeper, more structural way. So, while the poor by and large lack organisations to represent them (barring a number of urban NGOs), they cannot rely on the MCs to convey the larger and underlying issues of urban poverty, inequality and urban planning onto higher levels.

However, even while overall urban governance in India appears to move in a less pro-poor direction, we need to caution that we lack micro-level evidence as to whether and how individual poor households are actually experi-encing this downward trend. We need to be open to the scope for people benefiting from general urban economic growth, even in terms of limited “trickle down” benefits, and there are instances that city governments do a decent job in regard to unavoidable slum relocations as in Chennai. And, if key relations of power are personal, we cannot deny agency to individual poor men and women who cleverly use their resources and apply tailor-made informal strategies. Here we agree with Smitha (2010: 77), who says that it is not helpful to have dichotomised per-spectives on the middle classes versus the urban poor, as “these obscure the complex and multi-faceted ways in which the informal social networks infuse and intermesh with formal local systems”. This, of course is not to deny that the odds are against the urban poor, as they have always been, and that increased risks of both social and political exclusion are severe.

men, but cannot solve them all; people may come and fight with me and abuse me publicly”.

So even while MCs are instrumental as brokers and mediators at the interface between the poor and state agencies, this does not mean all of them do a good job. The mediation of MCs is predominantly related to “hard”, tangible matters such as roads, lights, drains, etc. Relatively few MCs mentioned issues where no or little money is involved; examples which were listed inciden-tally included support in obtaining ration cards, school admission, pensions for women and the aged — and this concerned often women MCs. Siddiqui (2004: 258) holds that the Delhi MCs see their major role as in solv-ing local problems, and 80% of the MCs claimed some improvement in their wards in terms of environment, water supply, solid waste and sewage disposal, roads and street lighting. But in stark contrast to the findings of our survey, which brought out a claim by most MCs of a special focus on the urban poor, Siddiqui (ibid.) finds that more than 50% of the interviewed urban poor were una-ware of any activity by the MC of their ward. Of the 46% who were aware, about 70% rated their MC performance as bad to very bad.

Dim perspectives for the urban poor

There is no doubt that urban India is changing very fast, both in terms of the urban economy and infrastructure as well as the land planning and urban segregation: “The urban poor are being relocated in order to sanitise cities and find space for construction of flyovers, metro systems, business hubs, and residential accommodation for the entrepreneurial class and multinationals, and for meeting the demands of upcoming global cities. The fall in the percentage of poor in the large cities corroborates the argument” (Kundu, 2009: 283). Even while the picture differs from city to city, the general pattern is that the ur-ban poor are less a factor to be counted with than in the past, and that the power of their one asset — their vote — has lost value. This is related to the increased weight and power of the urban middle class as well as the in-creased powers of the private sector, which disposes of ample money power. Hence, the arena of decision-mak-ing on urban planning and design is shifting further away from the poor, and their channels of accessing political power continue to be limited: “Squatter and slum settle-ments have long been regarded as an opportunity and a platform both for politicians and the slum residents to acquire and exercise political power. However, this well-trodden path has suffered many diversions caused by fluctuating political loyalties, pressures of the real-estate market, land-grabbing mafia, rising costs of improve-ment or redevelopment works, and the inability of most governments to be consistent for any length of time” (Sivaramakrishnan, 2004: 17).

In the patronage democracy that India is, the linkages between all urban actors that really count are informal,

Joop de Wit------------PhD, social anthropologist, teaches as senior lecturer of public policy and development management at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague NL. He previously worked at the Institute of Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS) in Rotterdam. He has also worked with the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs as local program advisor of an urban poverty project in Bangalore, India, and sub-sequently as institutional development advisor at the Ministry for Development Cooperation in The Hague. Regional interest: Asia (India, Vietnam and Indonesia), but he has also worked in Nami-bia, Ethiopia and Surinam, and carried out consultancies in Thailand and The Philippines. Key research interests: urban poverty alleviation, urban (local) governance, decentra-lisation, community dynamics and community-government interfaces. Numerous publica-tions; recently co-edited (with Isa Baud) the book New Forms of Governance in Urban India: Shifts, Models, Networks and Contestations, published by Sage in 2008.

Contact: <dewit@iss.nl>

All photos: author

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Between Hierarchies and Networks in Local Governance: Institutional Arrangements in Making Mumbai a ”World-Class City“

Mina Noor and I.S.A. Baud

Hierarchien und Netzwerke: Instititutionenbildung im Prozess der Umwandlung von Mumbai in eine „Weltstadt ersten Ranges“ Eine starke kommunale Regierungsebene mit engem Bezug zu den Bürgern und als Vermittlung zwischen lokalen Interessengruppen wird generell als wichtiges Instrument zur Förderung demo-kratischer Entscheidungsfindung angesehen. In dieser Studie wird die Frage verfolgt, was dies im Kontext der Globalisierung bedeutet, in dem Wettbewerbsfähigkeit und Lebenswertigkeit der Städte miteinander politisch konkurrieren. Die „Mumbai Vision“ von McKinsey – abgesegnet von der Regie-rung des Bundesstaates Maharashtra – soll die Stadt auf die Zugehörigkeit zur Liga der „Weltstädte ersten Ranges“ ausrichten. Zur strategischen Umsetzung wurde eine neuartige Struktur geschaffen, in der öffentlicher und privater Sektor verknüpft sind. Die Studie untersucht an diesem Beispiel formale und informelle Regeln, die hier Partizipation und Entscheidungsfindung bestimmen. Sie verarbeitet dabei die Erfahrung aus mehreren Monaten partizipatorischer Feldarbeit in Mumbai sowie 34 Tiefeninterviews mit den Beteiligten der neugeschaffenen Institutionen. Es zeigt sich, dass die Einflussnahme höchst selektiv ist und dass die Entscheidungen im Wesentlichen von Behörden sowie von Repräsentanten des Privatsektors getroffen werden. Konflikte werden dadurch vermie-den, dass Personen mit abweichenden Vorstellungen fern gehalten werden. Damit setzen sich letzt-lich Interessen des Handels- und Finanzkapitals durch, wogegen die Lebensqualität der Mehrheit der Bevölkerung Schaden nimmt, besonders in den informellen Gebieten.

Participation in new forms of urban governance is pro-moted as an important method for greater inclusiveness in decision-making. This article questions how selective such processes are by studying the formal and informal rules structuring participation and decision-making in institutional arrangements in Mumbai in the context of the transformations taking place there.

Since the late 1990s plans to transform the city into a „world-class city“ have emerged; led by the state govern-ment and private sector initiatives, the plans were laid down in the „Vision Mumbai“ plan.

This plan, developed by the private sector and accepted by Maharashtra’s government, has led to two new strate-gic institutional arrangements between public and private actors. The analysis is based on several months’ participa-tory fieldwork with members and non-members of the arrangements.

Mumbai – a city in transition

Mumbai is the capital of the state of Maharashtra, one of India’s most economically developed states. The city has

historically been the financial and commercial capital of India. It is located on the west coast of Maharashtra and has an estimated population of 16.4 million people (Greater Mumbai area). The Mumbai Metropolitan Region has a population of 24 million people (Sivaramakrishnan, Kundu & Singh, 2005), which makes it the sixth largest metropolitan area in the world. The study is confined only to the city area, not the metropolitan area.

Until the 1940s, Mumbai was a manufacturing city domi-nated by the cotton textile industry. Jobs declined in the 1970s-1980s, however, and informal economic activities and export-oriented commercial services increased in importance (e.g. call centres, software). Financial, insurance and real estate services also expanded in the 1990s (Pacione 2006). As the city is the largest port in Western India, it accommodates the headquarters of major domestic and international banks and insurance companies, the Bombay Stock Exchange, the National Stock Exchange of India, and the corporate headquarters of many Indian companies. Moreover, the city is home to India’s Hindi film industry. Other activities include tour-ism, provision of higher education and labour-intensive medical and nursing facilities (Pacione 2006).

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Institutional arrangements in the Mumbai transformation process

Although various actors and organisations have been lobbying to improve the quality of life in the city of Mumbai, the transformation agenda received a boost in September 2003 when the Vision Mumbai report was produced by McKinsey in cooperation with Bombay First. This report provides a comprehensive ten-year vision for the city. Mumbai is benchmarked with ten other cities2 and a blueprint is suggested for the overall development required to become a “world class city”.

Seven priority areas are defined: 1) boost economic growth to 8-10 percent per annum by focusing on services (high and low end), developing hinterland-based manufacturing, and making Mumbai a consumption centre; 2) improve and expand mass and private transport infra-structure, including linkages to the hinterland; 3) dramatically increase low-income housing availability; upgrade safety, air pollution control, water, sanitation, education and healthcare; 4) create a dedicated “Mumbai Infrastructure Fund” with annual funding and attract debt and private financing; 5) make governance more effective, efficient and respon-sive by corporatising key departments and streamlining important processes such as building approvals; 6) generate momentum through more than 20 quick wins to show visible on-the-ground impact during the next 1-2 years; 7) enable implementation through committed public-private resources led by the Chief Minister and make key government organisations accountable for results. The re-quired investment is $40 billion, of which a fourth will come from public sources (Bombay First & McKinsey 2003).

After submission and acceptance of the report to the Chief Minister of the Government of Maharashtra (GoM),

Since the liberalisation of the Indian economy in the late 1980s, the Indian government has been promoting consum-er-oriented and market-driven urban growth. The growing influence of private capital has significantly influenced urban development. In Mumbai, decentralisation policies at the national level provided the opportunity to shift to a strategy, supported by the private sector, to increase Mumbai’s role in the global economy (Pacione 2006, p. 238; Baud & de Wit 2008). This strategy is presented in the Vision Mumbai report, and is heavily supported by the middle-class.

Although the city is cosmopolitan, it is also a city of ex-treme contrasts – “It is, at once, the richest and poorest metropolis in India” (Pacione 2006, p. 230). First, 60% of the city population resides in slums, with no legal right to the land on which their homes are built (Risbud 2003).

Although several government programmes exist to tackle the slums, neither the state housing authority nor private builders have provided complete solutions1. The top-down strategies of the programmes lack participa-tion from slum dwellers. Moreover, housing units devel-oped by the state have proven to have unaffordable rent levels for slum inhabitants (Pacione 2006, p. 236).

A second major issue is the lack of adequate infrastruc-ture. Sewerage systems are poor and the quality and quantity of available water in the city is insufficient, with one-third of the households having no access to safe drinking water and large areas of the city lacking suf-ficient sanitation facilities (Risbud 2003).

A third issue is the management of urban traffic flows. Public transportation plays an important role for many of the city’s inhabitants, as daily around 6 million passengers travel in the suburban trains and over 4.5 million make use of buses. People travel in overcrowded conditions, however, and suburban trains with the rated carrying ca-pacity of 1,700 passengers carry some 4,700 passengers during peak hours (Follath 2007; Pacione 2006, p. 236). Coordination is lacking between the various transport agencies involved.

A fourth issue is the environmental problem caused by poor management of industrial and domestic waste. Air pollution is caused by refineries, power stations and daily emissions from automobiles.

A fifth problem relates to ethnic tensions between groups living in the city. Migrants from all over India have moved to the city, looking for employment in both formal and informal labour markets (Baud & Nainan 2008). Although the city has a liberal attitude to cultural differences, in 1993 conflicts between Hindu and Muslim communities revealed tensions that still threaten social order.

These issues indicate that Mumbai must overcome a number of significant problems if it is to achieve the status of a modern world city.

Figure 1Laundry service in a settle-ment near Mahalaxmi station, Mumbai, with ‘World-Class City’ skyline. Photo: Vincent Möller.

1

The section of government dealing with slums moves between local and state government, according to the importance given to it in politics and policies.

2 London, New York, Singapore, Hong Kong, Sao Paolo, Syd-ney, Shanghai, Bangkok, Rio de Janeiro and Toronto.

3 Some examples are: BEST – Brihan Mumbai Electric Supply & Transport Undertak-ing (providing bus services); CIDCO – City and Industrial Development Corporation; GOM – Government of Ma-harashtra; Maharashtra State Department of Public Works (responsible for construction of roads); Ministry of Urban Development; MCGM – Mu-nicipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai; MHADA – Mahar-ashtra Housing and Area De-velopment Authority; MMRDA – Mumbai Metropolitan Re-gion Development Authority; MSRDC – Maharashtra State Road Development Corpora-tion Ltd.; SPARC –Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (NGO); SRA – Slum Rehabilitation Authority (Bom-bay First & McKinsey 2003; Government of Maharashtra 2006; Pacione 2006; Anony-mous interviews).

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The private sector pushed the Vision Mumbai plan and the transformation to a “world class city” for several reasons. First, Mumbai’s economic growth rate had gone down from 7% to 2.4% between 1994 and 2002. Mumbai was losing its economic position to other cities like Bangalore, Hyderabad, and Delhi. Secondly, Mumbai’s annual contribution in taxes to the state of Maharashtra and the national government (Centre) are 40 times the amount that the city receives in return from the state and central government for capital expenditures (Bom-bay First & McKinsey 2003). Thirdly, since 1992 various organisations—such as McKinsey, Indian Merchants’ Chamber (IMC), Export-Import Bank of India, and Hous-ing Development Finance Corporation Ltd. (HDFC)—had published reports and lobbied for Mumbai’s position as an international financial capital city with little success (Laurenceson & Kamalakanthan 2004; Anonymous, inter-view). However, this time McKinsey came up with a set of recommendations for the Chief Minister. This created awareness and “a buzz around the transformation of Bombay”. Fourth, the recommendations were accepted by the task force and used as a guideline for a detailed action plan. “[The] task force was a child of the McKin-sey report” (Anonymous, interview). Bombay First then played an active role in advocating the need to set up a CAG and an EC (Bombay First webpage).

By forming the CAG and EC, a specific group of private sector actors has obtained an influential space with the political and executive wings of various levels of gov-ernment. Political support is provided not only by the Chief Minister4, but also the Prime Minister of India, who declared his dedication to making Mumbai the new finan-cial capital of Asia (Mumbai Transformation Support Unit webpage). Through the EC, which monitors the progress in implementation of transformation projects, the execu-tive wing of the government is influenced. Although these spaces had to be negotiated over several years, the cur-

a task force headed by the Chief Secretary of the GoM was set up in late 2003. Moreover, a Special Secretary of the GoM was appointed to monitor progress in reaching the goals of the transformation project. The task force studied the recommendations and came up with its own report “Transforming Mumbai into a World Class City” (Government of Maharashtra 2004), which mirrored the views presented in the Vision Mumbai document. Based on its recommendations, the Government Resolution of 17th of July 2004 created the Citizens‘ Action Group (CAG) “comprising [of] thirty eminent citizens of Mumbai, to act as a monitoring and feedback mechanism wherein the committee would review various activities and take a proactive role in identifying the immediate priorities” (Bombay First webpage).

In March 2006, the GoM also constituted an empowered committee (EC), headed by the Chief Secretary of Mahar-ashtra and including governmental authorities and seven members from the private sector. Generally, empowered committees consist of bureaucrats, but in this case partic-ipation of Mumbai’s corporate companies and NGOs was ensured. The report of McKinsey and Bombay First had suggested the creation of a single co-ordinating body with key state and city government officials and private sector participants, chaired by the Chief Secretary, to take the Vision Mumbai forward (Bombay First & McKinsey 2003, p. 32). The CAG supported the need to set up the EC.

There were several reasons to form an empowered committee: a) Mumbai is governed by many different governmental institutions3 and lacks a central point of coordination; b) the transformation process requires an approach focusing on development at city level, while secretaries of governmental departments are responsible for development of Maharashtra state. The EC overrides the decisions of line departments concerning state devel-opment (Anonymous, interviews).

4 Next to the formation of the Task Force, CAG and EC, the Chief Minister presented his views in his speech at the “Mumbai Dialogue Forum”, stating “due to increasing globalisation of the world, in-tense competition from some of the Indian cities is luring large business industries away from Mumbai. Mumbai cannot afford to lose its economic base as it can lead to large-scale unemployment. That is why Mumbai requires special attention and special package to improve its infrastructural facilities” (Mumbai Dialogue Forum 2005, p. 3).

5 Actors initially involved in the process had set up a corpus to finance the organisation. Members pay an annual membership fee (first year 10.000 rupees, thereafter 5.000 rupees annually).

6 In May 2005, Bombay First, in cooperation with the Bombay Chambers of Commerce and Industry (BCCI), organised an international conference on urban renewal. The objective of the conference was to identify the means of delineat-ing a comprehensive strategy of urban renewal in Mumbai (Bombay First webpage). Also, „A road map for Mumbai as an International Financial Centre“ was prepared by Bombay First and presented to the Prime Minister, Finance Minister and Deputy Chairman of the planning commission. In this report, Bombay First emphasised to the officials from the central and state government that Mumbai was a suitable city to become the financial centre of India. Subsequently, the Ministry of Finance of Government of India constituted on 28th of November 2005 a high-powered expert committee on making Mumbai an Asian financial centre (Nayar 2005).

Figure 2Traffic jam and highly den-sified neighbourhood close to SRA (Slum Rehabilitation Authority) offices in Bandra, Mumbai. Photo: Vincent Möller.

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Position rules Citizen Action Group Empowered Committee

Positions distinguished within network and assigned to members

No formal positions defined, except the position of chairman (Chief Minister of the GoM) and vice-chairman (chairman of Bombay First). In practice, the vice-chairman and Secretary Special Projects (not a member, but regularly present at CAG meetings as special invitee) are perceived as leading actors.

No formal positions defined, except the position of chairman (Chief Secretary of the GoM). (Semi)-governmental re-presentatives hold positions according to their function and formally hold an equal position to private sector members.

Profile members Thirty-two members, all from the non-governmental sector, from the following sectors*:Commerce and industry: 10Media, advertisement, cinema: 6Banking and financial services: 4Academe: 3IT: 2NGO: 2Automotive: 1Consultancy and other services: 1Advocate: 1Sports: 1Three CAG members are members of Bombay First, and 10 are on the gover-ning board of Bombay First.

Sixteen (semi)-governmental represen-tatives, holding positions according to their occupation in those institutions members are from the private corpo-rate sector and have equal positions as the other members. These members work in: Commerce and industry, ban-king and financial services, consultan-cy, IT and automotive industry. Two are members of Bombay First, and 4 are on the Governing Board of Bombay First.

* Based on the analysis of their back-ground, occupation (position and in which sector), and as suggested by the respondents during the interviews.

Boundary rules Citizen Action Group Empowered Committee

Member selection procedures

No formally agreed procedures. The GoM selects and appoints members by official letter. However, Bombay First’s chairman and the Secretary Special Projects to the GoM have suggested a list of potential members. Some respondents perceived the selection of members as an arbitrary choice and an ad-hoc decision.

No formally agreed procedures. The GoM selects and appoints members by official letter. Seventeen members of (semi)-governmental institutions are assigned as members, based on their position at the organisations implementing transformation projects. Selection of private sector members is based on: a) suggestions by Bombay First, b) nominations of the CAG.

Entry conditions Not formally agreed, though informally several requirements were perceived as important in order to be invited by the GoM (among others: “have a cer-tain status / image within the society; have specific knowledge / expertise; ability to contribute to the city [past track record]”).

Semi)-governmental members: Based on their position at governmental insti-tutions. Private sector members: Not formally specified, though informally several requirements were perceived as important to be invited (among others: “running own business / expe-rienced; not having a personal agenda; ability to contribute to the city”).

Exit conditions Specified in the official letter from the GoM: If the member is absent during meetings for more than three times, the member will be dismissed. In prac-tice, none of the often-absent actors have been dismissed7.

Unspecified; government represen-tatives exit the committee when they change their position at the govern-mental institution.

Table 1Position and boundary rules governing the CAG and EC

rent government allows this influence on its activities by the large private sector and one local NGO.

Organisations involved in transformation process

The Citizen Action Group (CAG) is constituted by the GoM and chaired by the Chief Minster. The group consists of 32 citizens of Mumbai from different fields (Mission Mumbai webpage). As described in the government resolution, the function of the CAG is to act as an external monitoring mechanism of government efforts concerning the trans-formation; to generate ideas; and to promote effective, responsive and proactive governance.

The Empowered Committee is constituted by the GoM and headed by the Chief Secretary. This committee consists of 24 members and aims “to oversee planning and accelerate the implementation of projects and policy changes in a coordinated manner to attain the designed goal of transforming Mumbai to a world class city” (Bom-bay First 2006a; Mission Mumbai webpage).

Bombay First is a civic organisation that was initiated and supported5 by members of the Bombay Chambers of Commerce and Industry in 1995 with the vision to “improve the economic and social infrastructure of the city to make it globally competitive and improve the quality of life of its citizens” (Bombay First webpage). Bombay First has been actively involved in the lobbying and advocacy of the trans-formation of Mumbai6, and is considered an important link between private sector actors and government authorities.

The Mumbai Transformation Support Unit (MTSU) is a unit set up by the GoM to provide logistical and administrative support to the office of the Secretary Special Projects of the GoM and to the CAG (Mission Mumbai webpage). Its activities are financed by the World Bank and Cities Alli-ance (Anonymous, interview).

Rules governing the CAG and EC: formality and practice

This section analyses the rules governing CAG and EC arrangements formally and in practice. There are no formally laid down rules for selection and exclusion of potential members for the CAG. Selection is based on suggestions by Bombay First in cooperation with the Secretary Special Projects. Similarly, within the EC, no formal selection rules exist. The GoM has selected and included government authorities responsible for transformation projects, and seven private sector actors, suggested by Bombay First and the CAG.

Both government and private sector representatives hold equal positions as members, while playing different roles within the EC. Government authorities are held re-sponsible for the projects, and have to account for them, while private sector members play the role of a pressure group to ensure progress in project implementation.

The analysis of the profiles of CAG and EC members shows that the number of actors from NGOs is remark-ably low (2 out of 32) in the CAG and none are repre-sented in the EC. The CAG was formed in order to ensure citizen participation in the transformation process. It is remarkable that the majority of CAG members are from commercial sectors, industry, media, banking, and others. Opinions about the exclusion of NGO representatives8

vary a great deal. Members of the CAG argue that includ-ing NGO representatives would lead to unbalanced group interests, as the agenda of such representatives will oppose the agenda of the majority of the group: “Activ-ists would create hurdles and obstacles in the process” (Anonymous, interview). Others added that exceptional NGO representatives can be included in the CAG, but they have to be carefully selected. Some argued that they

7 This statement holds true from the inception of the CAG until the period when the research was conducted. However, the list of CAG members was updated in January 2007. The new list includes new actors, and is missing the names of 6 previ-ous members of the CAG.

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were opposed to an open membership to the CAG. This would create opposite viewpoints, as “the vision of a slum dweller cannot extend beyond an idea of having housing or basic amenities. It will not reach the vision of London or a global city” (Anonymous, interview).

Critical voices regarding the CAG composition come from both included and excluded actors. They share the view that the majority of the group “are the captains of trade and industry” or recognised as the elite of local society. Such a composition is not necessarily negative if repre-sentatives of other groups in the city—e.g. those repre-senting unorganised labour, slum dwellers, or the “general public”—are represented as well.

Concerning the EC, the Vision Mumbai report encour-aged active corporate and (specific) NGO participation, recommending the appointment of “2-3 corporate CEOs and heads of NGOs” (Bombay First & McKinsey 2003). Although the recommendation to include 2-3 corpo-rate CEOs in the EC was followed (as all private sector members of the EC are/were corporate heads), the ap-pointment of NGO heads was left out. Several members indicate that the involvement of NGO representatives is important and valuable, but not in a decision-making body such as the EC. The main argument was that the commit-tee is a group focusing on the progress of projects. There-fore, the whole group must display the same interest to ensure cohesiveness. Critics question whether actors from business and industry can understand the issues faced by the city, as current members of the CAG and EC have their own businesses and lack the time to commit themselves to the transformation process. Moreover, “the government has a very cosy relationship with the industri-alists, and the industrialists in turn depend on the govern-ment ... From the governance point of view we need to

Authority rules Citizen Action Group Empowered Committee

Formally agreed responsibilities and duties of each actor

Attend meetings, as stated in the government resolution. In practice, members are expected to exchange information and give advice.

Not agreed per member. The government resolution includes a terms of reference, which specifies the authority of the EC.

In practice, public authorities (secretaries of governmental departments) are held ac-countable and have to report on progress in project implementation to the Chief Secretary, who is the chairman of the EC.

Private sector members monitor progress of projects through pressurising the decisi-ons made during the meetings.

Consequences for members if duties are not performed

None. None for private sector members.Governmental authorities: Not formally agreed, though in practice members can be replaced or lose their position within the (semi-)governmental institution.

Aggregation rules Citizen Action Group Empowered Committee

Decision-making process and agenda setting

Not formally agreed; decisi-ons are made by consensus. Structure of the meetings is very loose; the vice chairman (chairman of Bombay First) and Secretary Special Projects determine the agenda.

Not formally agreed; decisions are made by consensus. The chairman, the Secretary Special Projects and the team leader of the MTSU9 are perceived as the most influential actors within the group. They set the agenda (based on suggestions made by members).

Table 2Authority and aggregation rules governing the CAG and EC

have a diverse group of people, and not only people who agree with you” (Anonymous, interview).

Authority and aggregation rules for each position are not defined in the rules of conduct (table 2). No CAG mem-ber has a formally defined position with clear duties and responsibilities. Each is an equal member in a body with an advisory role and lacks authority to enforce decisions. “Vision Mumbai is not a CAG plan, but a vision followed by bureaucrats and industrialists, while we [CAG members] are merely rubber-stamp members whose approval they can use to push projects” (Anonymous, interview).

The EC has more decision-making power than the CAG; both formally and in practice. The government resolu-tion regarding the EC specifies the responsibilities and authority of the group: “[T]he Empowered Committee will take all the key policy and other decisions related to the plan of transformation of Mumbai [and]…will monitor all key initiatives for Mumbai‘s transformation. The Commit-tee will be empowered to decide on the financing model for key capital projects (e.g. roads, Mumbai metro). It is also authorised to decide on the selection of projects and funding under the Mumbai Development Fund” (Govern-ment of Maharashtra 2006, p. 3).

The majority of the group are government representa-tives, responsible for the transformation projects. As the Chief Secretary of the GoM chairs the committee, these members feel pressurised to report progress in project implementation. In contrast, the private sector members of the EC feel no pressure to account for their actions, as they monitor progress in implementation but are not held responsible for projects.

In both arrangements, decisions are made by consensus, though certain actors are perceived as more influential than others. There are few conflicts during meetings, which can be linked to the deliberate exclusion of certain groups to prevent conflicts and the need to negotiate. Moreover, the agenda is visibly dominated by a specific group of actors, leaving no space for critical views.

Information and pay-off rules governing the CAG

Members and non-members of both arrangements gener-ally have access to relevant information. Formal govern-mental records regarding the transformation projects and their financing and implementation are available and ac-cessible to everyone due to the Right to Information Act10.

Internal communication of both arrangements is based on monthly group meetings. Formally, the CAG also has to meet once in three months with the Chief Minister. At the time of research, the CAG was developing a communica-tion strategy to create awareness about the transforma-tion plan among Mumbai citizens. A website was set up to ensure updates of projects and allow stakeholders to follow their progress11.

8 Although the study concen-trates on participation within institutional arrangements, the question about represen-tation was added to the ques-tionnaire during the research process, with the aim of increasing the understand-ing of how the respondents view the composition and representation of interests in both arrangements.

9 Although the team leader of the MTSU is not an official member of the EC, he is often present during the meetings of the EC (Anonymous, interviews).

10 Right to Information Act is a law that was passed by the Parliament and came into force on 13th of October 2005. This law gives the citi-zens of India (except those in the State of Jammu and Kashmir) access to govern-ment records. This means that any person may request information from a public authority, which is obliged to reply (http:// righttoinformation.gov.in).

11 <http://ors.missionmumbai.org>; later changed to <www.visionmumbai.org>.

33TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

Categorisation of defined projects in specific themes

Thirty-two projects categorised in 3 types: “Infrastructure”, “policy reform” and “quick wins”14, in four specific themes15: 1. Infrastructure, including transportation

(21 projects: 14 infrastructure, 7 quick wins);2. Housing (5 projects: 3 policy reforms, 1 infrastructure,

and 1 quick wins related to slum areas in the city);3. Social infrastructure (4 projects: 3 quick wins, 1 infrastructure);4. Strategic planning (2 projects: 1 quick win, 1 infrastructure). Eleven

further projects are not assigned to a specific sector and are categorised as quick wins and policy reforms.

How has the list of projects been developed and by whom?

It is unclear who influenced the final choice for the projects, though CAG mem-bers indicate that decisions were influenced by private sector actors, mainly Bombay First members. EC members indicate that the decision was made by the GoM, emphasising the influence of the Chief Secretary, the Secretary Special Projects and the director of the MTSU on the final list of selected projects.

Which projects receive priority in practice?

Physical infrastructure projects (mainly projects improving connectivity and private transportation in the city, sea links and roads) are mentioned most often, and 2 quick wins (beautification projects) receive priority in implemen-tation; 8 quick-win projects are the priority of the Secretary Special Projects, who monitors progress to ensure timely and professional implementation.

Concerning the pay-off rules, no direct12 benefits are in-volved in terms of financial or other resources for members of the CAG and EC. However, an indication was given that through pushing transformation projects, (semi-)governmen-tal representatives in the EC could increase their status or receive promotions. The most important investment made by members of both arrangements is time, although govern-mental representatives allocate official working hours.

Process directions: prioritised transformation projects

This section analyses the prioritisation of certain projects, categorised by specific themes and sectors. This allows us to see how rules governing the CAG and EC influence the direction of Mumbai’s transformation processes.

Regarding the outcomes of the process, formally defined and listed projects aim to contribute to economic growth, physical infrastructure, social infrastructure (including health and education), housing, finance and governance. However, results of interviews and analysis of the agenda and topics discussed during CAG and EC meetings show that infrastructure projects and quick-win projects (beau-tification of public areas) receive priority (table 3). Most infrastructure projects are concerned with transportation and connectivity (airport improvements and new airports), building flyovers, and improving connectivity in the city and to the region (mainly for private transportation).

Although these projects are beneficial, critics argue that they will only benefit car owners13, while the majority of citizens use public (train) transportation. Even if public transportation is improved, the cost of the service may increase, and it becomes questionable whether the “com-mon man” will be able to afford it.

Several quick-win projects are prioritised to show quick visible results. Several projects concern the beautification of public areas. Although beautification benefits urban residents, there is doubt among respondents that such projects should be the government’s first priority because the city faces many other problems. Moreover, there has been no consultation process with the people living in the city on choice of improvements (table 3).

At the time of the research, the prioritised projects were not yet implemented. Therefore, it was not possible to study the outcomes of the transformation process, based on the impact of prioritised projects. However, the rules governing the CAG and EC have influenced the direc-tion of the process, in determining project priorities. As Mumbai is a highly fragmented city, “between the rich and the poor, the industrialist and the worker, the elite and the commoner, the son of the soil and the outsiders, the city-oriented and the village-oriented” (Pande 2006), the challenge in the transformation is to ensure that the majority of society benefits from such a transformation and its effects do not remain limited.

Conclusions

This article has analysed how rules governing two institu-tional arrangements structure decision-making processes in Mumbai’s transformation to a “world class city”.

Selection of members and participation in both arrange-ments is influenced by informal rules and practises, formed in conjunction between private sector actors and state government leaders. Actors with opposing views to the “Vision Mumbai” plan were largely excluded, which has helped smooth the progress of the transformation agenda. Among the excluded actors are the majority of NGOs and community-based organisations active in Mumbai, as many perceive them as activists disturbing the harmony within the two networks. Thus, potential internal conflicts are deliberately avoided through selec-tive inclusion. This conclusion confirms assumptions that institutional arrangements do not necessarily increase participation from civil society, but can lead to uneven in-clusion. The result in Mumbai is that institutional arrange-ments constituted by the government are led mainly by the elite business / corporate sector, which has formed a strong coalition with the state government in the agenda of transforming the city.

Analysing the rules governing institutional arrangements shows that the power and ability of members to influ-ence decisions is not wholly determined by formal rules. The CAG has an advisory role and all members hold equal positions, with no authority, either formally defined or in practice, to enforce decisions. The authority of the EC is defined by government resolution. However, the ability of each member to influence decisions is not for-mally defined. In practice, (semi-)governmental members within the EC fulfil different roles than private sector members. While the former group is held accountable for progress in implementing projects, the latter func-tions as a coalition pushing for quicker implementation of projects without direct accountability towards others for their actions.

Table 3 Prioritised transformation goals and projects

12 Indirect benefits, such as benefits in terms of increase in economic activities or pos-sibility for private corporate members to become an investor in transformation projects, are not explored due to the limited scope of the research.

13 It is unclear whether it will be possible to have dedicated bus lanes on flyovers and sea links, which can be used for the purpose of public trans-portation on the flyovers.

14 According to the task force report, “quick wins” are de-signed “to rally public support and to build momentum for change within the govern-ment itself” (Government of Maharashtra 2004, p. 4).

15 “Economic growth” is not defined as a separate theme, but is integrated in projects falling under other themes.

34 TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

Theory suggests that the power of participants in institutional arrangements can be uneven, with some actors influencing decision-making processes more than others. Networked forms of governance facilitate such powers, as informal mechanisms enable private sector members to push their agendas, in cooperation with government officials, and have some degree of control over implementation. Support for the agenda exists in both political and executive wings of govern-ment. Issues concerning the prioritisation and execution of transformation projects are promoted through the Chief Secretary, as chairman of the EC (executive side). When a political issue is difficult to raise at the level of Chief Secretary, the CAG can take the issue to the level of Chief Minister. Although the power of participating actors is not formally laid down in the EC, conflicts in ne-gotiations are avoided by selectively including members, excluding those with strongly differing views.

The goals and recommendations of the transformation plan, and its institutional arrangements, suggest that major modernisation measures were necessary in order to improve the quality of life of the citizens and increase economic growth. In fact, according to Pande (2006) “Vision Mumbai has become the symbol of modernisation”. This is not surprising, as the report was put forward by the corporate sector, concerned with the decline in economic growth and international competitiveness (Sharma 2003). Interviews with the involved actors revealed that the urge for change came from a range of actors, including

Mina Noor ------------MSc, research fellow Sustain-able Development Center, Maastricht School of Manage-ment, Maastricht NL. Research focus: fragile states, multi-stakeholder partnerships.

Contact: <noor@msm.nl>

I.S.A. (Isabelle Suzanne Antoinette) Baud ------------PhD, professor of International Development Studies at the Department of Human Geog-raphy, Planning and Interna-tional Development Studies, University of Amsterdam NL. Teaches aspects of human ge-ography of developing coun-tries, with particular reference to poverty and development issues. Research focus: urban governance, urban environ-mental management or hu-man resource management. Chair of the Board of CERES, National Research School.

Contact: <i.s.a.baud@uva.nl>

Baud, I.S.A. & Nainan, N. (2008) ‘Negotiated spaces for representation in Mumbai: ward committees, advanced locality management and the politics of middle-class activism’, Environ-ment & Urbanization, vol. 20, no. 2, pp. 483-499.

Baud, I.S.A. & Wit, J. de (2008) New Forms of Urban Governance in India, Sage, Los Angeles, New Delhi and Thousand Oaks.

Bombay First [Homepage of Bombay First], [Online] <www.bombayfirst.org> [2007, 10 March].

Bombay First (2006a) My Mumbai, my dream. Bombay First Annual Report 2005- 2006, Bombay First, Mumbai.

Bombay First & McKinsey (2003) Vision Mumbai: Transform-ing Mumbai into a World- Class City, McKinsey & Co, Mumbai.

Castells, M. (1989) The informa-tional city. Information Technol-ogy, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban-regional Process, Basil Blackwell, Oxford.

Douglass, M. (2000) ‘Mega-urban Regions and World City Formation: Globalisation, the economic crisis and Urban Policy Issues in Pacific Asia’, Urban Studies, vol. 37, no. 12, pp. 2315-2335.

Follath, E. (2007) ‘The Paradox of Mumbai. Slums, Stocks, Stars and the New India’, Spiegel Magazine. [Homepage of Spiegel Online International], <www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,469031-3,00.html> [2007, 17 April].

Friedmann, J. (1986) ‘The World City Hypothesis’. Development and Change, no. 17, pp. 69-83. International Institute of Social Studies, The Hague.

Government of Maharashtra (2004) Transforming Mumbai into a World-Class City. First report of the Chief Minister’s Task Force.

Government of Maharashtra (2006) ‘Constitution of Empow-ered Committee on Transforming Mumbai into a World Class City’, Government Resolution, No. MVP- 2006/C.R.04/06/S.P., March 27, 2006. Mantralaya, Mumbai.

Laurenceson, J. & Kamalakan-than, A. (2004) ‘Emerging Financial Centres in Asia: A Comparative Analysis of Mumbai and Shanghai’, Proceedings of the 16th Annual Conference of the Association for Chinese Economics Studies in Australia (ACESA), Brisbane.

Mission Mumbai [Homepage of Mumbai Transformation Support Unit], <www.missionmumbai.org/mtp> [2007, 10 March].

Mumbai Dialogue Forum (2005) ‘Chief Minister’s points for the speech’, Mumbai Dialogue Forum 11 February, Mumbai. Mission Mumbai [Homepage of Mumbai Transformation Support Unit], <www.missionmumbai.org/mtp> [2007, 10 March].

Mumbai Transformation Sup-port Unit [Homepage of Mumbai Transformation Support Unit], [Online] <www.visionmumbai.org> [2007, 10 March].

Nayar, N.K. (2005) ‘Chairman’s statement. Bombay First An-nual Report 2003-2004’, Mumbai [Homepage of Bombay First], <www.bombayfirst.org> [2007, 10 March].

Pacione, M. (2006) ‘City profile Mumbai’, Cities, vol. 23, no. 3, pp. 229–238.

Pande, B.B. (2006) ‘The Ultra-Modernization of Megacities: A new turf for human rights discourse’, Lawyers Collective, March 2006.

Risbud, N. (2003) ‘The Case of Mumbai’, Background report on slums for UN-Habitat Report on the World’s Slums, UN-Habitat, New Delhi.

Sassen, S. (2002) ‘Locating cities on global circuits’, Environment and Urbanization, vol. 14, no. 1, pp. 13-30.

Sharma, K. (2003) ‘Can Mumbai become Shanghai?’, The Hindu, [Homepage of the Hindu], <www.thehindu.com/2003/10/ 11/stories/2003101100941000. htm>[2007, 10 March].

Sivaramakrishnan, K.C.; Kundu, A. & Singh, B.N. (2005) A handbook of Urbanization in India, Oxford University Press, New Delhi.

politicians, willing to make Mumbai competitive nationally and globally. According to Pande (2006), “The difference between the world-class city and global city lies in that the first relates to status only, while the second relates to power within the global structures”. Such issues are linked to the competition for flows of resources and information, and growth of business service sectors to generate power on a global scale (Friedman 1986; Sas-sen 2002). The stated goals of Mumbai’s transformation indicated that the proposed transformation plan aimed to create favourable conditions.

Many authors have identified the complications of such an agenda. The main issue is that when governments are concerned with the competitiveness of the cities, (public) resources are devoted to meet such needs and neglect others (Douglass 2000; Laurenceson & Kamalakanthan 2004). Castells (1989) suggests that the more the economy becomes interactive globally, the less city government will prioritise basic conditions relating to the daily life of citizens. This can lead to new forms of poverty and uneven spatial development, as public priority is directed towards the needs of only certain sections of the society benefiting from the global city.

Institutional arrangements in Mumbai enable those who govern and those who will mostly benefit from the transfor-mation to determine the direction of transformation for the majority. In such a process, the voices of the common man and those excluded from the process remain unheard.

References

Reframe Urban Questions and Produce New Possibilities: Contested Urbanism in Dharavi

Camillo Boano

Urbanisierung aber wie? Möglichkeiten und Gefahren für die Bewohner von Dharavi in Mumbai Das ursprüngliche kleine Fischerdorf Dharavi, das sich im Zuge der Entwicklung Bombays oder Mumbais am Ende im Zentrum dieser Megastadt wiederfand, ist zum Symbol für Slums in Asien und darüber hinaus geworden. Die zunächst verabscheute Informalität wird nunmehr beschönigt und die brutale Armut am Ende gar fetischisiert. Hinter der Fassade werden Vitalität, Vielfalt und Dynamik entdeckt und es werden die Qualitäten herausgestellt, die sich aus der Bevölkerungsdichte und Größe ergeben. Gleichzeitig entdecken Grundstücksspekulanten die Gewinnaussichten, die Grund und Boden in dieser zentralen Lage bieten. In Dharavi stehen sich internationale Investoren, die öffentliche Hand, staatliche Institutionen, Zivilgesellschaft und Sozialbewegungen gegenüber im Kampf um Grund und Boden, Nutzungsdichte und -art sowie um das Recht auf ein angemessenes Leben. Dabei werden futuristische Konzepte vorgestellt, die an Dubai und Shanghai erinnern. In seiner Untersuchung des laufenden Transformationsprozesses verfolgt der Autor den Diskurs über die gegensätzlichen Konzepte der widerstreitenden Interessen, den er mit der Wortschöpfung der „contested urbanism“, also dem Kampf um die Idee der Stadt charakterisiert. Er verfolgt die Dynamik bei der Herausbildung, Entfaltung und Selbstorganisation der sozialen Bewegungen im Kampf um die Boden- und Bürgerrechte. Er beschreibt die Konfrontationen und Machtkämpfe um den Zugang zu Wohnungen und Verbesserungsmaßnahmen in den Slumgebieten, hinter denen nichts geringeres steht als der Kampf für soziale Gerechtigkeit.

35TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

As the complex story of Dharavi and its redevelopment plan, in its urban significance, has already been sum-marised elsewhere, this article will focus on outlining the agendas of desires, demands and tactics of different play-ers that make the experience and struggle of Dharavi citi-zens potentially important when discussing the urbanism, urbanities and new possibilities of a critical urban practice.

Monopolise urban visions

Due to its strategic location, the demographic pres-sures on the city, and the global transformative goals of the government and private sector, the Dharavi Redevelopment Project (DRP) was introduced as an integrated, special planning area in 2004. Essentially conceived as a state-facilitated public-private partner-ship orchestrated by the Maharashtra Housing and Area Development Authority (MHADA) and spatialised by the architect Mukesh Mehta, the DRP is in essence a tabula-rasa redevelopment strategy for the entire territory of Dharavi. Mehta proposes several physical alterations for Dharavi, a vision substantiated by Dhar-avi‘s artificial and instrumental division into five sectors (with no reference to existing community boundaries) to be allocated to five private developers; a maximum increase of the Floor Space Index, which contributes to higher urban densities; and the adoption of a spatial transformation from horizontal, low-rise ”slums“ to

Dharavi, at the heart of Mumbai, recently became the iconic symbol of world slums due to its intrinsic permanence, multiplicity, dynamism, density and scale; it is also viewed as the last frontier of oppositional practices confronting neo-liberal, futuristic, Dubai-style, neo-Hausmannite mega-projects. Popularly known as Asia’s largest slum, Dharavi covers almost 239 hectares and has an estimated population of between 700,000 and 1 million people (BBC 2006; Sharma 2000). Dharavi is characterised by its strategic location in the centre of Mumbai, and thus finds itself at the heart of a chal-lenging, highly contested debate over the present and future of the city. International developers, bureaucrats, state agencies, civil society and social movements are engaged in multiple confrontations over land, density, typology and the right to a decent life even as futuristic Dubai or Shanghai-style landscapes are being developed on what is now prime real estate.

Elaborating on the conceptual analytical neologism of contested urbanism, this article explores the material-discursive dynamics in the formation, transformation and representation of social civil movement struggles over space. Specifically, it aims to spatially depict the confrontational and sometimes oppositional forms of powers that shape people’s access to housing and slum redevelopment as exemplar of a wider struggle over social justice.

Reframe Urban Questions and Produce New Possibilities: Contested Urbanism in Dharavi

Camillo Boano

Urbanisierung aber wie? Möglichkeiten und Gefahren für die Bewohner von Dharavi in Mumbai Das ursprüngliche kleine Fischerdorf Dharavi, das sich im Zuge der Entwicklung Bombays oder Mumbais am Ende im Zentrum dieser Megastadt wiederfand, ist zum Symbol für Slums in Asien und darüber hinaus geworden. Die zunächst verabscheute Informalität wird nunmehr beschönigt und die brutale Armut am Ende gar fetischisiert. Hinter der Fassade werden Vitalität, Vielfalt und Dynamik entdeckt und es werden die Qualitäten herausgestellt, die sich aus der Bevölkerungsdichte und Größe ergeben. Gleichzeitig entdecken Grundstücksspekulanten die Gewinnaussichten, die Grund und Boden in dieser zentralen Lage bieten. In Dharavi stehen sich internationale Investoren, die öffentliche Hand, staatliche Institutionen, Zivilgesellschaft und Sozialbewegungen gegenüber im Kampf um Grund und Boden, Nutzungsdichte und -art sowie um das Recht auf ein angemessenes Leben. Dabei werden futuristische Konzepte vorgestellt, die an Dubai und Shanghai erinnern. In seiner Untersuchung des laufenden Transformationsprozesses verfolgt der Autor den Diskurs über die gegensätzlichen Konzepte der widerstreitenden Interessen, den er mit der Wortschöpfung der „contested urbanism“, also dem Kampf um die Idee der Stadt charakterisiert. Er verfolgt die Dynamik bei der Herausbildung, Entfaltung und Selbstorganisation der sozialen Bewegungen im Kampf um die Boden- und Bürgerrechte. Er beschreibt die Konfrontationen und Machtkämpfe um den Zugang zu Wohnungen und Verbesserungsmaßnahmen in den Slumgebieten, hinter denen nichts geringeres steht als der Kampf für soziale Gerechtigkeit.

The paper stems from a three-week studio experience as part of the completion of the MSc of Building and Urban Design for Development run in May 2009 in partnership with Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi Institute For Architecture, the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC), and the Develop-ment Planning Unit (DPU). I’m fully indebted to Melissa Garcia Lamarca and William Hunter, students in the MSc of Building and Urban Design for Development 2008/2009 for effective, active and profound-ly intellectual contribution to draft the paper as part of a follow up collaborative writing exercise. Obviously, any error or opacity in the argument is entirely my own fault. An early and longer version of this article was presented at the N-AERUS (Network- Associa-tion of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South) Conference in Rotterdam in 2009.

36 TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

are not only manifested but produced and reproduced. In order to offer a sufficient understanding of how the complexity and dynamism forms and transforms Dharavi, this part of the paper aims to theoretically sketch dif-ferent discourses of spatial transformations, adopting and elaborating on the concept of “contested urbanism” (Boano 2009; Boano, LaMarca, Hunter 2010), conceived as methods of inquiry into relationships between space, society and politics. The neologism of contested urbanism has thus been found useful in many interconnected ways in helping to:

• Depict hegemonic, technocratic, hypermodern discours-es that shape state authority material interventions in urban areas, always originating in a top-down fashion without meaningful participation.

• Focus attention on the politics of urban transformation that systematically exclude citizens — in this case slum dwellers — in the management, adaptation and evolu-tion of their living spaces. Power is thus positioned in a distant bureaucracy, facilitating functional neoliberal alliances with economically powerful developers, archi-tects and urban intellighenzia.

• Represent the economy of interconnected resistance alliances and materialities of place-based social move-ments that are able to mobilise alternative and spatial imaginaries.

• Navigate at the frontier of universal civilisation, deploy-ing a bilateral relationship that responds to local de-mands, copying and critically engaging with the global.

• Position the core attribute of architecture and design as responsive, dependent and locally grounded activity moving out of the simplified vision of building and archi-tecture as commodified objects.

Some critical concepts sustain, in a building-block fashion, the meta-narrative of urban transformations in Dharavi as a case of contested urbanism. Such blocks could be depicted around a Lefebvrian spatiology, the debate around the right to the city, and through a critical regionalist perspective. The first two will be elaborated in detail, while the third one will be only sketched.

Lefebrve in Dharavi: Between subject and spaces

In order to understand how the spatialities of contested urbanism are constructed and manifested, a dichotomist vision of space as physical, static, metric space with social dynamics must first be reinforced. Such a vision is not new, but grounded in Heiddeger’s (1962:19-21) “human spatiality”, Lefebrve’s (1991) use of “lived space of the social and politi-cal world”, and Bauman’s (1993:195) adoption of complex spatial interaction between “cognitive, moral and aesthetic spaces and products”. This framework enables a deeper perception of the power relations embedded in urban trans-formations that systematically exclude Dharavi’s citizens in the management, adaptation and evolution of their living spaces, thus directly challenging notions of homogene-ity and uniformity, creating spaces for alternative antidotes against the erasure of ”difference“ (Jameson 1991).

a high-rise podium-style typology (G+12 and higher). Informal settlements will literally be replaced with high-rise developments irrespective of the vibrant economy and society informally and complexly constructed over stratifications, adaptations and subsequent historical modifications. The expected profits should be in excess of £500,000,000 (TNN 2007). The details of the plan itself were left highly secretive, as the initial document was taken on unanimously without any significant call for citizen input (Patel and Arputham 2007).

From this massive mega-project, homogenous in its aims and modernistic in its vision, grassroots opposi-tion has emerged. The confrontational environment has boosted the development of different grassroots initiatives and spatial experimentations that challenge the DRP’s proposed relocation of residents, the com-plete lack of an inclusive process, and the possible consequences of a government/market-driven process of redevelopment irrespective of the social and spatial multiplicity of Dharavi.

In recent years, alternative critical visions of the DRP from civil society and academics have emerged through an invited space of negotiation offered by the Government of Maharashtra via an expert advisory panel (EAP). The EAP offers suggestions and options and, at the same time, maintains a close and highly strategic relationship with government bodies in order to function as a facilitator be-tween various institutional levels. The threat of demolition and possible massive relocation, as well as the opposition to this, triggered an interest in the space and the imagina-tive monopoly of some technocratic groups.

The contested urbanism

As with many other contemporary urban scenarios, Dhar-avi is located in a web of contested visions due to the perception of the production of space as an inherently conflictive process in which various forms of injustice

Figure 1... and the Dharabi Redeve-lopment Race Winner is ... – as seen by Mulkh Raj

Cartoons on this and the following pages: Mulkh Raj.

Mulkh Raj offered number of his cartoons for publication to the TRIALOG editors in 1992, when he was visiting profes-sor at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) in New Delhi and advisor to the Housing and Urban Develop-ment Corporation (HUDCO). We published some of those cartoons in previous issues of TRIALOG. Unfortunately, after Mulkh’s retirement, we lost track of him. Here again we use some of his drawings, in a context so familiar to him.

37TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

Space, in a Lefebvrian notion, is not a mere neutral con-tainer or milieu in which life transpires, nor is it the obvi-ous platform upon which all activity must occur; space is thus neither merely a medium nor a list of ingredients, but an interlinking of geography, built environment, symbol-ism, and life routines. People fight not only over a piece of turf, but over the sort of reality that it constitutes. The struggle over Dharavi is exactly this: a battle for survival of a reality, of an existence.

Moreover, in the production of Dharavi, there is an inter-esting master distinction between those who produce a space for domination versus those who produce space as an appropriation to serve human need. In this respect, the DRP envisions a spatial transformation from horizon-tal, low-rise ”slums“ to a high-rise, podium-style typology where residential units will be placed on the top floors of the buildings while the commercial units will be located on the ground and first floor. The parking area will be on the third floor, just below the pedestrian-only podium level. An emergent issue from this is how a monolithic typology attempts to accommodate the daily needs of people and their future aspirations (BUDD 2009:24).

In domination, space is put to the service of some ab-stract purpose (hence, Lefebvre`s phrase abstract space to describe the result). This can be to facilitate state pow-er (e.g., the Napoleonic version of Paris and other phallic displays) or, more pervasively, the reproduction of capital for the achievement of a neoliberal Vision Mumbai (Bom-bay First and McKinsey & Company Inc. 2003). In Mumbai, space is carved into real-estate parcels for exchange on the market; the cubes and volumes demarcated and par-titioned so as to be interchangeable as commodities. The resultant space represents the “triumph of homogeneity” (Lefebvre 2003:337) and stands, both in its totality as well as in its constituent parts, as product.

Moreover, Lefebvre (1991:76) infers the risk that ideology contributes to urban spatial planning as a discourse and

Thus, conceiving Dharavi not as an homogenous “global prototype of a population warehouse” (Davis 2006) but as “real emplacements that simultaneously represent, contest and reverse all other environments” (Faubion 2008:31) or a city made of impurity, ambiva-lence and in a state of constant metamorphosis will help us to understand slum urbanism as a response and resistance to state and economic-led utopian and modernistic planning. There, “the informal ex-plains the practices (social, economic, architectural and urban) and the forms (physical and spatial) that a group of stakeholders (dwellers, developers, plan-ners, landowners and the state) undertake not only to obtain access to land and housing, but also to satisfy their need to engage in urban life” (Brillembourg 2006). Such a heterotopian vision serves to frame Dharavi and its contested urbanism as “spaces apart, open but isolated” (Foucault 1984:180), a space of illusions that denounces all that is in place around it and contests the monotony and dominance of the DRP.

The connection with Lefebvre's (1991) work on The Production of Space is obvious and unavoidable here. On production, Lefebvre means that people create the space in which they make their lives; it is a project shaped by interests of classes, experts, grassroots and other contending forces. Space is not simply inherited from nature, nor autonomously determined by laws of spatial geometry. Space is produced and reproduced through human intentions, even if unanticipated con-sequences develop, and even as space constrains and influences those producing it. „Production“ also implies that space be considered analogous to other economic goods. The produced spatial ensemble of the built envi-ronment, nature and landscape can, among other things, be bought and sold. It makes up an important part of economies. Besides producing goods and services, economies produce spaces. Dharavi literally fills such a vision by locating itself, beyond its geographical location, in an economically-led transformation of space.

References

Bauman, Z. (1993) Postmod-ern Ethics, Oxford: Blakewell.

BBC (2006) Life in a slum, BBC (on-line). Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi /world/06/dharavi_slum/html/dhar-avi_slum_intro.stm [Accessed 9 November 2009]

Brillembourg, C. (2004) The New Slum Urbanism of Caracas, Invasions and Settlements, Colonialism, Democracy, Capitalism and Devil Worship, Architectural Design 74(2), pp.77-81.

Boano C, LaMarca M., Hunter, W. (2010) ‘Mega-projects and Mega-Resistanc-es in Contested Urbanism: Reclaiming the Right to the City in Dharavi’, in Boniburini, I., Moretto, L, Smith, H., Le Maire, J., eds., The right to the city as a common good between social politics and urban planning. Cahier de la Cambre n. 11. Forthcoming.

Boano C. (2009) Conflicting urbanism in Dharavi: dialec-tics of mega-projects and mega resistances. ABITARE: Milano. Available at: http://abitare.it/featured/conflictive-urbanism-in-dharavi-the-dialectic-of-mega-projects-and-mega-resistances/

Bombay First and McKin-sey & Company Inc. (2003) Vision Mumbai: transforming Mumbai into a world-class city. Available at: www.bombayfirst.org/McKinseyReport.pdf

Figure 2Roofs of Dharavi, Mumbai, used for plastic recycling. Photo: Vincent Möller.

38 TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

rhythms and time uses, enabling the full and complete usage of...moments and places…” (Mitchell 2003:19), the use value of the city for urban inhabitants trumps capitalism’s focus on exchange value (Mitchell 2003:19). As Harvey notes (2003:939), the right to the city is not merely a right of access to what already exists, but a right to change it after our desires, the right to remake our-selves by creating a different kind of urban sociality. The production of urban space is thus not only about planning the material city, but also integrates the production and reproduction of all aspects of urban life, including the right of appropriation, as manifested in claimed spaces in the city — such as Dharavi.

Since its formation over half a century ago, Dharavi’s residents have appropriated the 239 hectares of urban space and, in essence, claimed their right to the city, a process that has grown out of struggle, adaptation and resilience, inventing new and innovative modes of living and of inhabiting. Indeed, no master plan, urban design, zoning ordinance or construction law can claim any stake in Dharavi’s prosperity, as the city was built over many decades entirely by successive waves of immi-grants fleeing rural poverty, political oppression and nat-ural disasters (Echanove and Srivastava, 2009). Since the early 1990s, within the framework of the Government of Maharashtra’s slum-redevelopment schemes, many of Dharavi’s residents have worked with the non-profit developer wing named NIRMAN of a grassroots and NGO grouping – the Alliance – in the production of their own slum-rehabilitation housing. In these precedent-setting activities, the Alliance sought to enable a bottom-up approach by directly engaging Dharavi’s poor in urban development processes.

In recent years however, facing Dubaification in the top-down, technocratic DRP process, Dharavi’s designation as a special planning area in 2004 — a status that enables secretive modification of development control regula-tions — has thrust the reigns of Dharavi’s development completely and utterly into the hands of the government and private sector. After subsequent years of bottom-up pressure tactics and struggles — including open let-ters to the government and to the media and peaceful protests from residents of Dharavi, charismatic leaders of prominent grassroots groups and NGOs, and the Con-cerned Citizens of Dharavi (CCD) — a space was made for institutional participation of grassroots groups when the CCD was sanctioned as an expert advisory panel (EAP) in 2008. This panel, an eleven-member group of activ-ists, professionals, academics and retired civil servants, including members of the Alliance, chaired by the retired Chief Secretary of Maharashtra (Patel et. al., 2009:243), continues to struggle for the meaningful engagement of urban poor in the DRP.

Yet this case is characterised by deeply conflicting visions between and even amidst actors, questioning movement or true engagement in real rights to the city for Dharavi’s

practice by illustrating how even in a democratic capitalist society, the ideas and visions that shape spatial change in cities “are often only reflective of the homogenic desires of conflicting, but dominant, privileged minorities”. These minorities possess access not merely to an economic and technical capacity, but also possess the social networks and cultural influence to carry out spatial transformation induced by their ideological perception of what the com-mon vision should be. This perception is often in conflict with those of other less empowered, diverse groups within society who often constitute the urban majority.

What is interesting in such spatiology is that space is not just produced materially by political, economic and social forces, but that it is also produced by the ways we repre-sent it. The critical Lefebvrian thinking on Dharavi lies in the recognition that the space of the slum is not an inert supporter of social action, but participates in the action itself. The heterotopian adoption of such space makes explicit the fragmented, mobile, and conflictive nature of the production of space.

Spaces of rights: The right to the city

The second conceptual pillar of contested urbanism, the right to the city, speaks to a radical shift in current modes of spatial production towards the engagement of all ur-ban inhabitants in the development processes of the city in which they reside. While in recent years the term has become a catchphrase, frequently cited but generally not engaged in depth, at its core LefebvreLefèbvre’s right to the city is a claim for the recognition of the urban as the (re)producer of social relations of power, and of the right of citadins (urban inhabitants) to participate in this proc-ess of production (Dikeç and Gilbert 2002:65). It is less a juridical right than an oppositional demand challenging claims of the rich and powerful in their production of the city (Mayer 2009:367).

Lefebvre`s right to the city emerged from critiques of functionalist and technocratic urbanisation processes in France in the 1960s and of the ”bureaucratic society of organised consumption“ (Lefebvre 2003:337). Instead, formulating the city as the right “to urban life, to renewed centrality, to places of encounter and exchange, to life

Figure 3Dharabi Redevelopment Consultations – as seen by Mulkh Raj

References (continuation)

BUDD (2009) Dharavi: a case of contested urbanism. Field trip final report. MSc Build-ing and Urban Design For Development, Development Planning Unit. London. Avail-able at: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/DPU/courses/2009_Fieldtrip/Dharavi_Final_Report_ (low-resolution_III).pdf

Chatterjee, G. (2009) Dhar-avi Redevelopment Project, Presentation at SPARC, (Personal communication, 8 May 2009).

Committee of Experts (2009) Dharavi Redevelop-ment Project, [open letter to the Government], 7 July. Available at: www.dharavi.org/Dharavi_Advocacy/I._ Government_Documents/DRP_Letter_by _ Commitee_of_Experts [Ac-cessed 4 September 2009].

Davis, M. (2006) The Planet of Slums. London: Verso.

Dikeç, M. and Gilbert, L. (2002) ‘Right to the city: hom-age or new societal ethics?’ Capitalism Nature Socialism, 13(2), pp: 58-74.

Echanove, M. and Srivastava, R. (2009) Taking the slum out of ‘slumdog’. New York Times, Febru-ary 21. Available at: www.nytimes.com/2009/02/21/opinion/21srivastava.html?_r=4 [Accessed 16 July 2009].

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residents and how claims to this demand are effectively represented. The top-down vision is clearly and profoundly embedded in a neoliberal approach, where the DRP authority sees the project’s objective as “their [Dharavi residents’] mass economic upliftment by providing better alternatives of living and business opportunities” in the be-lief that “upgradation can maybe take them [slum dwellers] into a world-class city” (Chatterjee, 2009). The parallel claim by the DRP authority that they wish to “treat Dharavi’s resi-dents as partners in the project” and to “involve people in decision-making” (ibid) has to date been completely denied in practice, as no consultations or engagement of Dharavi’s residents has been attempted — none even sit on the EAP — which raises questions about the representation of Dharavi’s residents in the process.

The bottom-up vision — as manifested by members of the Alliance and the EAP — is more critical of the DRP, yet at the same time these actors maintain a close and highly strategic relationship with government bodies in order to function as facilitators between different institutional levels. While the EAP has successfully struggled for the adoption of urban design guidelines in the DRP and for a socioeconomic baseline survey to be conducted in Dharavi, their vision and desire for an inclusive develop-ment process has been relegated towards making the DRP more ”humane“ and guiding developers to make the developments more sensitive. The DRP, with its five-sector, five-developer, futuristic top-down vision, is fundamen-tally proceeding as planned, with the EAP tweaking the edges. It can be argued that, since the year it has been in place, rather than being truly engaged in the production of space therein, the EAP has emerged as a body legiti-mising a more ”gentle“, neoliberal approach to Dharavi’s development, clearly not pursuing a radical Lefebvrian right to the city.

In July 2009, however, the EAP released an open letter to the Government of Maharashtra calling the DRP a “so-phisticated land grab”, stating that “the correct solution to redeveloping Dharavi would be to give up the notion of making a profit out of it, either for the Government or for the builders, and to focus instead on the interests of the residents of Dharavi” (Committee of Experts, 2009). This latter shift in approach illustrates that the EAP is begin-ning to directly contest and challenge the neoliberal top-down approach, although not at the level of Lefebvre’s radical conception that rethinks fundamental premises in capitalist social relations such as ownership over urban space and who gives or how value is given to urban space. This reality is in part due to the outright rejection of several key players in the EAP — members of the Alliance — of a rights-based approach, in the belief that it is more effective to establish commonality of interest with the state than in the furtherance of the strategic needs of the urban poor.

While the realisation of Lefebvre’s right to the city requires a radical restructuring of social, political, and economic

relations, both in the city and beyond (Purcell 2002:103), the EAP does not challenge the fundamental base of the power of the state; rather, the EAP aligns with the way the right to the city is manifested in practice by grassroots groups across the world, in essence modifying the politi-cal content and meaning of the contested term (Mayer 2009). The EAP is thus offering a development alternative rather than a form of alternative development (McFarlane 2004:910); whereas the first provides strategies that seek to change and refine development positions and offer dif-ferent perspectives within the frame of the DRP, the latter seeks to redefine development altogether.

What strategies then, in this complex and highly contest-ed case of urbanism, are most effective to claim the right to the city? And can this be achieved through a collabora-tive approach to and/or radical claims for these rights? As Roy (2009a:176) posits, will demanding rights through ”rebellious citizenship“ ensure the right to the production of space for the urban poor, or will it leave them without access to the infrastructure of populist mediation and its regulated entitlements? The one issue that is clear is that movement towards greater equity and justice for the urban poor in Dharavi in this contested urbanism requires a persistent and continued struggle.

Spaces of modernisation and critical regionalism: Rajiv Indira and Bharat Janata

The DRP, and its entailed urban vision, is essentially rel-egating spaces of meanings to localised micro-territories — giving people no choice but to surrender or react on the basis of their collective engagement as manifested in claims towards the right to the city. It is important to note that symbols of ”modern“ redevelopment are already randomly mushrooming throughout Dharavi in the form of ”in-situ“ housing blocks. Two examples of these in-situ housing projects have been taken under scrutiny. Initiated by the Mumbai-based organisation named the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centre (SPARC), a key member of the Alliance, the Rajiv Indira and Bharat Janata Cooperative Housing Societies are pillars of the efforts to take Dharavi vertical, alleviating the organic density and

Figure 4Perspective of World-Class City projects – as seen by Mulkh Raj: ‘Trust us - we are low-cost housing specialists’.

References (continuation)

Faubion, J.D. (2008) ‘Hetero-topia: an ecology’, in Deheane M. and De Cauter, L., eds., Heterotopia and the city. Pub-lic space in a postcivil society. London: Routledge, p. 31.

Foucault, M. (1984) ‘Differ-ent spaces’ in Faubion, J.D. (Ed 1988), Essential Works of Foucault 1954-1984, Volume II: Aestetic, Epistemology, Methodology, New York Press: New York.

Harvey, D. (2003) ‘The right to the city’, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 27(4), pp: 939-941.

Heiddeger, M. (1962) Be-ing and Time. Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper.

Lefebvre, H. (1991) The Pro-duction of Space, translated from the French by Donald Nicholson-Smith, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.

Lefebvre, H. (2003) ‘Space and the state’, in: Brenner N., B., et. al., Eds., State/Space. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, pp.84-100.

Lefaivre, L. (2003) ‘Critical Regionalism: A Facet of Modern Architecture Since 1945’, in Tzonis, A. and Le-faivre, L., Critical Regionalism: Architecture and Identity in a Globalized World. Munich: Prestel Verlag, pp. 22‐53.

Mayer, M. (2009) ‘The ‘Right to the City’ in the context of shifting mottos of urban so-cial movements’, City 13(2-3), pp. 362-374.

McFarlane, C. (2004) ‘Geo-graphical imaginations and spaces of political engage-ment: examples from the Indian Alliance’, Antipode 36(5), pp. 890-916

Mitchell, D. (2003) The right to the city: social justice and the fight for public space. New York: Guillford Press.

Mumford, L. (1947) ‘Sky Line’, The New Yorker (magazine), October 1947, New York.

Patel, S., Arputham, J., Bur-ra, S. and Savchuk, K. (2009) ‘Getting the information base for Dharavi‘s redevelopment’, Environment and Urbanization, 21(1), pp. 241-251.

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the commencement of the project had to be signed by 70% of the considered slum dwellers. Another possibly indirect causal factor is that in terms of urban locale, unlike Rajiv Indira, the Bharat Janata settlement sits in the middle of Dharavi, and thus lacks ideal commercial market advantage and accessibility.

Called into question within these new developments, apart from the structural integrity, architectural aesthetic of the buildings, and contextual urban connections, is the impact and ramifications on people’s livelihoods. An inno-vative feature incorporated into the Rajiv Indira project was that of the 14-foot-high loft space which enabled the delin-eation and privacy of separate space in multiple-member households as well as space to facilitate any home-based business activity. But due to cost-cutting concerns, the SRA discontinued the 14-foot loft within its policy.

Alongside certain livelihood implications, further analysis revealed additional issues regarding social networks and the use of communal space in and around the build-ings. Physical layouts of the older dwellings were more conducive to socialising as the doors and windows, always open, faced the street and allowed for spontane-ous, frequent, and dynamic interaction. Although quality of life due to the newly built shelter has improved in both projects, relationships between neighbours were weakened as lives became more individualistic, as people prefer convening only on the ground floor rather than utilising the generous, common corridor spaces throughout the buildings. If preferring to congregate mainly on the ground floor, the residents were gifted with ample exterior space adjacent to the building.

Observational analysis and interviews revealed that the space was poorly designed and regulated, if designed at all. Due to lack of directional intent or strategic flex-ibility, these spaces often become grounds for dumping trash or hazardous areas used for children’s play. The overarching concern witnessed at both Rajiv Indira and Bharat Janata is that the diversity of activities and the multiplicity of uses, whether interior or exterior, in terms of functionality, facility, and design, are not recognised by the SRA policies. After all, people and place consti-tute the primary foci of the event, suggesting the critical point of urban production as being a predominantly hu-man experience within a complementary environment.

Here, the idea of sustaining livelihood and social inter-action should be added to the challenge of becoming ”modern“ while retaining cultural strengths. Despite the grassroots efforts of local citizens and the few organisa-tions that have rallied them, it is the convictions and methods used by authorities and practitioners that can lead to a holistic evolution of the area. One method that can be considered for adoption in negotiations between the top-down neoliberal Mumbai visions, including the DRP, and the needs and aspirations of locals, is the con-cept of ”Critical Regionalism“.

squalor of the low-rise hutment dwellings that character-ise the area. Formed in 1995 by fifty-four families, Rajiv Indira combined with two other housing societies by 1999, eventually representing a combined 209 families earmarked for rehabilitation shelter. Partnering with the Suryodaya Society held greater urban significance beyond the added human accountability, as this group had access to a private road that connected the Rajiv Indira site to the ”ring roads“ of Dharavi and the rest of Mumbai. Oper-ated by a leather factory enterprise, the owner argued with much reluctance against newfound unlimited access for vehicular and pedestrian traffic as a result of new development, thus delaying the progress. However, this society partnership allowed the project to move forward and by 2002 five apartment blocks were built, three of which housed community members in tenements of 225 square feet and two of which were sold on the market to recoup costs and generate profits for future projects — a concept referred to as ”transferable development rights“.

The Bharat Janata project was initiated back in 1991, but to date only three of the proposed five buildings have been constructed. Two of the buildings are purely reha-bilitation housing while a third is composite rehabilita-tion/market sale. Overall, 142 households are due to be re-housed along with 14 ”project-affected persons“ who have agreed to give up their dwellings for the construc-tion of public toilet blocks and other utility infrastructure. Much can be said about the longevity and timeframe of projects of this experimental nature and scale in an informal area like Dharavi. A major reason for the delay in this case was faulty housing surveys by representa-tives of the Slum Rehabilitation Act (SRA), and the fact that the official documents confirming agreement to

References (continuation)

Patel, S., Arputham, J. (2007) ‘An offer of partnership or a promise of conflict in Dharavi, Mumbai?’ Environment and Urbanization, 19(1), pp. 501-508.

Roy, A. (2009a) ‘Civic govern-mentality: the politics of inclu-sion in Beirut and Mumbai’, Antipode, 41(1), pp. 159-179.

Sharma, K. (2000) Rediscov-ering Dharavi: Stories from Asia‘s Largest Slum. Delhi: Penguin Books India.

Sharma, K. (2009) ‘A Reprive for Dharavi’, InfoChange India. Available at: http://infochangeindia. org/ Urban-India/Cityscapes/ A-reprieve-for-Dharavi.html [Accessed 10 November 2009].

TNN (2007) ‘Dharavi rede-velopment to begin today’, The Times of India, 1 June, 2007. Available at: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Cities/Mumbai/Dharavi-redevelopment-to-begin-today/articleshow/2090403.cms [Accessed 11 September 2009].

Watson, V. (2009) ‘Seeing from the South: Refocusing Urban Planning on the Globe’s Central Urban Issues’, Urban Studies 46(11), pp. 2259-2275. Figure 5Street scene in Dharavi, Mumbai. Photo: Vincent Möller.

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Camillo Boano ------------PhD (Oxford-UK); BA, MSc (Turin-Italy); MSc (Oxford-UK); architect. Senior lecturer and director of the MSc, Building and Urban Design for Development at University College London, Development Planning Unit; associate lecturer in the Department of Planning at Oxford Brookes University in Oxford UK. Senior researcher at WHRU (World Habitat Research Unit) at SUPSI in Lugano, Switzerland, where he is involved in research on post-disaster housing in India, Nicaragua and Sri Lanka. Work and research interests: urban development, design and urban transformations; shelter and housing interventions; reconstruction and recovery in conflicted areas and divided cities; and on the linkages between emergency and development.

Contact: <c.boano@ucl.ac.uk>

Architecture (and urban form) is not merely a means to shelter people, nor should it be seen as the picturesque no-tion of life. Rather, it is an effort to reflect and enhance the purposes and ideals which characterise a particular age and people (Lefaivre 2003). According to Mumford (1946), this takes place in meeting the practical demands of an environment modified for human use — but the modifica-tions must serve something more than immediate needs. They should “testify to the degree of order, of co-operation, of intelligence, of sensitiveness, that characterises commu-nity” (Mumford quoted in Lefaivre 2003:38). In Dharavi and Mumbai, the new housing built either in-situ (as in Bharat Janata and Rajiv Indira) or as relocation environments constitutes mainly rapid solutions sans the involvement or appropriation of community need. While the buildings themselves are more substantial structurally — although only time will tell the truth of this — the choice of immedi-ate function over sustained value-added mechanisms only serves to deliver false commodity to citizens.

So far these projects are the only opposition to the mega-block typology of the DRP. In efforts to turn attention away from such top-down plans and to uphold the individual and local architectonic against more universal and ab-stract ones, critical methods of modernisation alongside local particulars must emerge. However, no new archi-tecture can emerge without new relationships between the designer and user. Despite limitations faced, critical regionalism is a bridge over which any future humanistic architecture future should pass.

Conclusions

Exploring Dharavi has made evident what Watson (2009) defines as a “clash of rationalities” between techno-man-agerial and marketised systems of government adminis-tration, service provision and planning, and increasingly marginalised urban populations surviving largely under conditions of informality. This has manifested through a complete disconnection between the proposed DRP and the current situation of the stakeholders most affected by the process: the citizens of Dharavi. The complex and mul-tiple natures of their highly productive and largely informal work-live environment, as well as the social interactions within emergent diverse urban forms, are not integrated nor even understood. The proposed solution, ignoring any value of this dynamic spatial adaptation through time, is a tabula-rasa plan to build a world-class city.

Contested urbanism here highlights the nuances in the battles between the production of space for domination verses the production of space for appropriation to serve human needs and aspirations, the latter expressed through the spatial adaptation of residents of Dharavi and their struggles to develop housing through a bottom-up process aided by the Alliance to construct an alternative to the DRP. The DRP vision, in its own modern morphology and densities, is not able to incorporate the complex, fluid, and dynamic informal condition in its conceptualization.

An extended version of this article will be published in late 2010 as Boano, C. LaMarca, M., Hunter, W. ‘Mega-projects and Mega-Resistances in Contested Urbanism: Reclaiming the Right to the City in Dharavi’, in Boniburini, I., Moretto, L., Smith, H., Le Maire, J. (2010) The Right to the City as a Common Good: between social politics and urban planning. Cahier de la Cambre n. 11.

The neologism of contested urbanism has proven to be fundamental in depicting the material-discursive dynamics in the formation, transformation, and representation of social civil movement struggles over space, thus re-questioning entirely our conventional notion of urbanism and urbanity. Dharavi is a testimony to both the inadequacy and minimal-istic approach to upgrading initiatives and the incredible and pressuring danger of the erasure of urban areas and urban meanings by market-driven speculative reconfigurations. The ”redevelopment opportunities“ as witnessed through the DRP provide a platform for a productive discourse on informality emerging as alternative visions and effective urban possibilities — particularly its assets and values to be mapped and appreciated within the canonical theories of architecture and urbanism. For some readers familiar with post-Marxist literature on cities and the current trends on right-to-the-city perspectives, contested urbanism could be seen as either an oxymoron or not a real novelty.

For the author, however, the originality of the term lies in the fact that no matter how urbanism processes are labelled, packaged and implemented, the themes of the production of spaces and the right to it need to converse with each other explicitly because both are embedded in a potential transformative process of social change. In addition, the neologism attempts to combine an urban studies perspective with an architectural one, offering a possible combination of scales for an effective investiga-tion in a renewed, critical, architectural practice searching for alternatives and new urban possibilities.

Figure 6Kumbharwada pottery in Dharavi, Mumbai. Photo: Vincent Möller.

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Fragmented Cairotopias: The ”Heterotopology“ of Greater Cairo‘s Suburban Communities

Wael Salah Fahmi

Segregation und Klassengegensätze in den neuen Vorstädten im Osten Kairos Seit 2000 Kairos “Neustadt“ konzipiert wurde als Vereinigung der östlichen Neubausiedlungen nach dem Entwicklungsplan von Groß-Kairo, entstand dort eine große vorstädtische Siedlungszo-ne. Ursprünglich war dies das Auffanggebiet für die Opfer des Erdbebens von 1992. Dies wurde später als unverträglich mit der Entwicklung von exklusiven Golfplatz-Kolonien angesehen. Die dortige Siedlungsentwicklung lag in den Händen privater Firmen, die ihrer Klientel abgezäunte und gut gesicherte Kolonien anbieten wollten. Die empirisch geführte, ethnographische Analyse des Autors dokumentiert die daraus folgende Spannung zwischen den Armen, die ihr Recht auf Stadt einfordern und den Bewohnern der umwehrten Kolonien, die von Haus- und Bodenspekulanten, aber auch von der offiziellen Stadtentwicklungspolitik unterstützt werden. In gewisser Hinsicht finden sich in Kairo-Neustadt die für ganz Kairo typischen Probleme der sozialen Segregation, der Wohnungsnot und der Ghettoisierung. Dieser Problemmix ist das Resultat einer unkontrollierten Mischung von offenen und geschlossenen Systemen mit einem heruntergekommenen sozialen Wohnungsbestand hier und exklusiven Kolonien dort. Da Kairo-Neustadt mit seinen marktgerecht fragmentierten Einheiten internationales Kapital anziehen soll, müssen diese perfekt und ästhe-tisch, sauber und anziehend erscheinen. Damit werden jedoch Bedürfnisse der Mittel- und Unter-schichten vernachlässigt.

contributed to the cancellation of the Green Belt Project between Cairo and the eastern new settlements. Hence ”New Cairo City“ merged new settlements 1, 3, and 5 (figure1). The state was forced to re-house thousands of victims of the 1992 earthquake in New Cairo City and Badr New Town. But recently, the Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities (MHUUC) handed over the management of some of these new towns to private promoters and speculators, who consequently con-structed villa complexes and enclosed elite compounds (Denis 1997).

The GCR Master Plan‘s aims of controlling urban growth and east-west expansion, reducing population concentra-tion in the inner city, protecting arable land to the north and south of Cairo, and upgrading public facilities have in large part not been achieved. One of the major factors behind the relative failure of the 1983 plan and its 1991-1997 modifications stems from the basic inability of the new towns to attract population, with changes in housing finance being part of restructuring the Egyptian economy since 1991 in accordance with the IMF agreement (Sutton & Fahmi 2001, p143). According to Stewart (1996, p. 475), poor basic services and lack of social and educational infrastructure have also discouraged families from settling in remote desert cities. Families preferred to remain in familiar if crowded environments in Greater Cairo. As new

Greater Cairo Region Master Plan

The 1983 master plan originally planned for 10 new set-tlements ostensibly aimed to house 2-3 million people (Sutton & Fahmi 2001). These were organised into ”devel-opment corridors“ to create urban poles to the east and west and around earlier new towns. The plan’s attempt to restructure the existing metropolitan area was promoted through a scheme of 16 homogeneous sectors which sought to break up the ”mononuclear“ arrangement of the city. Each sector was to be an autonomous urban unit of 500,000-2,000,000 people and to be relatively self-sufficient in jobs and services. Delay was noted in the implementation of the concept of homogeneous sectors (HSs) because of financial constraints, inefficient local urban-planning and land-management processes, and lack of coordination with planning authorities.

The years 1991 and 1997 saw some modifications to the 1983 master plan introduced by the General Organisation for Physical Planning (GOPP) and Institut d’Amenagement Urbain et Regional de’Ile de France (IAURIF). The Ring Road, while representing the more successful infrastructural side of the plan, has served to segregate inner-Cairo from expanding outer fringe areas of higher-class residences. Such modifications affected the location of some new settlements and also

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During early 2000, nearly 320 real-estate companies planned the construction of 600,000 villas and luxury apartments in private cities (80 gated communities) with such names as Dreamland, Beverly Hills, Belle-Ville (the largest unit, ”Galleria“, at 622 m2 costs LE 1.95 million) and Gardenia Park (a 684 m2 villa costs LE 2 million). Neverthe-less, in 2003 only 60,000 housing units had been built and a decline in property prices reflected the failed attempt by real-estate agencies to attract middle-class buyers. With a three-bedroom apartment (138 m2, without air-condition-ing) being listed at LE 135,240, Wahish (1999) indicated that such prices, even if paid in instalments, was totally out of the reach of most middle-class Cairenes.

Indeed, it can be argued that not only has Greater Cairo not been mastered or planned, but that the GCR Master Plan no longer really exists in an effective way. Instead, Cairo‘s continued development has been carried out by private entrepreneurs and property speculators rather than by the city‘s planners, thus contributing to the emergence of unplanned gated desert enclaves (Sutton & Fahmi 2001).

The emergence of gated enclaves (Cairotopias) within the Greater Cairo Region

A common feature since 1990s was the full support of the government for golf tourism and related resort devel-opment and luxury housing. Whereas local authorities believed that large-scale golf course development would raise Egypt‘s tourism image and would attract business investors, golf clubs and resorts and luxury villas within gated communities contributed to the bubble economy

town housing proved to be too expensive, it eventually attracted speculators rather than residents (Fahmi 2008a for New Cairo City).

Privatised urban development

In accordance with the 1990s‘ IMF structural adjustment agreement, neo-liberal economic restructuring of the Egyptian economy opened up new avenues of invest-ment, particularly with the deregulation of government land and the transfer of desert land surrounding Cairo from public to private ownership1. With new legisla-tion allowing for the transfer of desert land to private ownership, the Egyptian government sold large portions of un-reclaimed public desert land (100 km2), at relative proximity to Cairo, to real-estate developers to finance housing development with the support of major public and private banks (such as Dwellings Finance Organisa-tions and Construction Housing Bank). In addition to making land available at cheap rates, the government heavily subsidises developers by constructing new roads and bridges and other infrastructural elements in record time (Kuppinger 2004). Mitchell (1999, p.28) indicates that these developments ”represent the most phenom-enal real-estate explosion Egypt has ever witnessed“: „The state is even involved as a developer, since the largest single builder of Cairo’s new neighbourhoods, far larger than the builders of Dreamland, is the Egyptian army. Military contractors are throwing up thousands of acres of apartments on the city’s eastern perimeter to create new suburban enclaves for the officer elite“ (Mitchell 1999, p. 29)

Figure 1 New Cairo City and New Settlements 1, 3, 5. Source: Sutton and Fahmi (2001).

References

Bayat, A. & Denis, E. (2000) 'Who is afraid of ashwaiyyat? Urban change and politics in Egypt', Environment & Urbanization, vol.12, no.2, pp. 185-199.

Blakely, E.J. & Snyder, M.G. (1999) Fortress America: Gated Communities in the United State, Brookings Insti-tution Press, Washington.

Cole, D. & Altorki S. (1998) Bedouin, Settlers, and Holiday-Makers, The American University in Cairo Press, Cairo.

Denis, E. (2006) 'From the Walled City to the Walled Community: Spectres of Risk, Enclaves of Affluence in Neo-liberal Cairo', in: Cairo Cosmopolitan: Politics, Culture, and Urban Space in the New Middle East, eds. Singerman, D. & Amar, P., American University in Cairo Press, Cairo, pp. 47–74.

Denis, E. (1997) 'Urban Plan-ning and Growth in Cairo', Middle East Report, vol. 27, no.1, pp. 7-12.

1 As in the case of Greater Cairo's western desert, communities have lost their reclaimed land to unscrupu-lous developers. According to Kuppinger (2004), various reclamation projects for new graduates were launched during the 1960s and 1970s in the western desert along the Cairo-Alexandria Highway. The scarcity of water and high expenses for maintaining the land for agriculture led to the failure of most land reclamati-on projects, which were then later leased to real estate spe-culators and business people often linked to or themselves part of the political elite. They invested bank loans in golf courses and gated resorts, particularly with the increase in land prices which largely affected the supply of low income social housing.

44 TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

of ”the good life“, and the opportunity of membership in an exclusive community. Such functioning is in accord-ance with Foucault’s (1997, p. 356) definition of the role of the heterotopia in terms of either creating „a space of illusion that exposes real space as still more illusionary“, or creating a space that is „other, another real space, as perfect, as meticulous, as well-arranged, as ours is messy, ill-constructed, and jumbled“. Since the heterotopia is a differential space, different from the places which sur-round it, the heterotopia ”has the power of juxtaposing in a single real place different spaces and locations that are incompatible“ (Foucault 1997, p. 354).

As both place of ”otherness“ and highly specified social function, heterotopias demonstrate a certain amount of friction between their normative and extraordinary identi-ties, thus underlying their ability to represent a point of de-stabilisation for current socio-political or discursive orders of power. Hetherington (1997, p. viii) defines heterotopias as ”spaces of alternate ordering“: ”A bit of social world in a way different to that which surrounds them. That alternate ordering marks them out as ‚other‘ and allows them to be an example of an alternative way of doing things“.

The current study considers heterotopia to be a concep-tual idea about space rather than a particular place, as ”a practice . . . that challenges . . . functional ordering . . . while refusing to become part of that order, even in differ-ence“ (Hetherington, 1997, p. 47). Therefore, heterotopias exist in a relational or comparative capacity, in terms of incompatible juxtapositions or combinations, through effected difference and otherness. Thus Greater Cairo‘s gated enclaves could qualify as heterotopias.

Stakeholders’ narratives and New Cairo City’s contested landscape

Between 2005 and 2007, a small area survey was admin-istered in New Cairo City through informal discussions with 70 primary-stakeholder respondents (35 residents within gated communities and 35 within resettlement housing). The selected stakeholders‘ narratives revealed

of property development; many projects, however, were left unfinished while others went into bankruptcy (such as the case of Dreamland in the western desert). This new exclusive neo-liberal model is linked to the concept of urban renaissance which ”justifies and bears witness to the performativity of liberalisation policy and to the new delegation of competences that will remake Egypt for transnational business people“ (Denis 2006). In 2000, a resident of Soleimania Golf Village in Gauch put it this way: ”Gated communities meet the wishes of wealthy Egyptians to replicate the American dream. It’s the ambition of any American family to have their own home with a backyard, a garage and a little pool. Egyptians see this on TV or when they travel . . . [it‘s] better than living in a high-rise“.

Saad (2002) highlighted ”a world of weekends“ where privatised public spaces such as Magic Land (with dol-phins, seals and a dinosaurs’ jungle) and the Dreamland Amusement Park were advertised as parts of new (resort) towns and exclusive places of leisure, consumption and recreation2. These places ”are built on extensive grounds and boast vast green areas, as well as swimming pools, mini zoos, kids‘ corner, and sometimes even golf courses . . . with countless lakes, streams, waterfalls and ponds for a leisurely weekend away from the city“.

Desert enclaves (gated communities) as heterotopiasAccording to Hook and Vrdoljak (2002), the term ”gated community“ lends itself to the amalgamation of the spa-tial and the social; ”gating“ referring to a form of spatial fortification and ”community“ to an organised social body of persons. Blakely and Snyder (1999) define gated communities as: ”Residential areas with restricted access in which normally public spaces are privatised. [Gated communities] are security developments with desig-nated parameters, usually walls or fences, and controlled entrances that are intended to prevent penetration by non-residents“ (p. 2).

The gated enclaves’ pragmatic rationale for extreme and elaborate control of space appears to serve a series of overt functions, ranging from crime-prevention, provision

Figure 2 Gated Communities. Source: Author (2007).

References (continuation)

Fahmi, W. (2008a) 'The Right to the City: Stakeholder Perspectives of Greater Cairo Metropolitan Communities', in World Cities and Urban Form: Fragmented, Polycen-tric, Sustainable?, eds. Jenks, M., Kozak, D. & Takkanon P., Routledge, London and NewYork, pp. 269-292.

Fahmi, W. (2008b) 'Global Tourism and Urban Poor's Right to the City: Spatial Contestation within Cairo's Historical Districts', in Tou-rism Development: Growth, Myth and Inequalities, eds. Burns, P.M. & Novelli, M., CAB International Publishing, Oxfordshire, pp. 159-191.

Fahmi, W. & Sutton, K. (2008) 'Greater Cairo's Housing Crisis: Contested Spaces from Inner City Areas to New Communities', Cities, vol. 25, no. 5, pp 277-297

Fahmi, W. & Sutton, K. (2006) 'Cairo's Zabaleen Garbage Recyclers: Multi-Nationals’ Takeover and State Relocation Plans', Habitat International, vol. 30, no.4, pp. 809-837.

Fahmi, W. (2005) 'The impact of privatization of solid waste management on the Zabaleen garbage collectors of Cairo', Environment and Urbanization , vol.17, no.2, pp. 155-170.

2 Kuppinger (2004) noted that exclusive residential com-munities in Egypt appeared in the 1980s in the form of holiday villages along the northwest Mediterranean coast (Cole and Altorki 1998). The Greater Cairo Region has recently begun experien-cing an unprecedented mushrooming of exclusive privatized public spaces. This ranges from shopping malls (such as City Stars in Madinat Nasr near Heliopolis), upscale hotels (New Cairo City's JW Marriot Hotel) and private clubs to gated residential communities. The correspon-ding marketing advertising targets international tourists, business travellers and the wealthy local elite who are in-terested in the articulation of western architectural styles and security technologies.

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he knew my father. I have my own privacy and I want to raise my family in El-Rehab’s quiet and clean environ-ment. I feel more comfortable that my children can go wherever they like without me having to worry about their safety.“ (Resident in Al-Rehab City) ”It takes only 25 minutes to get here every weekend. Resorts like this one are essential for people to refresh themselves before starting another working week, and for children to play and spend some time away from Cairo‘s pollution.“ (Resident in Al-Rehab City)

”To provide housing for poor and limited-income families, the authority must raise funds elsewhere. The only way was to encourage businessmen to invest in real estate, and sell them land at high prices.“ (Official at the MHUUC)”The government has sold or leased vast areas of desert, supplied with infrastructure, to private investors at very low prices to be used for luxury housing. The investors received large loans from national banks to implement the projects, pouring people‘s savings into glossy dwellings that will serve only a fraction of society.“ (Urban planners of the GOPP)

”These resorts are symbols of social inequality, tangible manifestations of the rise of the nouveau riche who are obsessed by the dream of the lavish lifestyle. Why did the government offer land at such low prices for luxury housing? This land should have been sold at double or triple the price; and the profit could have subsidised limited-income and youth housing projects. Why should the government provide such projects with infrastructure when many impoverished areas are still deprived of these basic needs?“ (Respondents at the Egyptian Centre for Housing Rights – ECHR):

Resettlement housing for the urban poor

Government-sponsored resettlement housing (5-storey, two-bedroom units) was mainly assigned on a tenancy basis to inner-city urban poor affected by the 1992 earthquake (figures 3a, 3b and 4). However, lack of utilities and infra-structure facilities, inconvenient locations, and inefficient transport systems have contributed to creating temporary occupancy and partial vacancy (n= 10 cases). Whilst inclined

the on-going spatial contest between urban poor‘s right to the city and residents of golf resorts and gated com-munities and official urban policy as well as the complex interrelated factors contributing to New Cairo City‘s spa-tial fragmentation. Such factors range from housing con-ditions/management, type of occupancy/vacancy, funding agency, housing history/mobility and future housing expectations. Primary stakeholders’ attitudes and evalu-ations were affected by such factors as socioeconomic characteristics, housing conditions, design characteristics and management (Fahmi & Sutton 2008).

Gated communities for the nouveau riche

Gated communities in New Cairo City (Katameya Heights [20 cases] and Al Rehab City [15 cases]) represent un-planned speculative and private ”luxury“ housing devel-opments and villa compounds owned by upper-middle-income elite (Figure 2). Despite the excellent conditions of these private housing developments, villa compounds are partially occupied by owners who are either com-muters (n=25 cases) or real-estate property speculators (n=10 cases). Whilst some cases (n=25 cases) optimisti-cally regarded their houses as homes for the younger generation, owners of vacant housing (n=10 cases) were in favour of property speculation and investment as they held the houses off the market in expectation of higher future prices. Here are a few significant voices:

”Our objective is to create an integrated community where people find everything. Although most people can-not afford a villa, we also offer small flats for LE 80,000 to LE 180,000 (1 USD = 5.4 LE – April 2010 rates) that can be purchased by instalments. At least 70 percent of all hous-ing units have already been sold. Egyptian expatriates are among our main target groups. Now that we have these communities, we can encourage them to return, and offer an alternative to those who tend to buy holiday homes abroad.“ (Managing director of an urban development area at Katameya Heights)

”Katameya has a good future, especially with the opening of the American, the French and the German Universities. There are good international schools for the children and excellent transportation. Known for its golf club and fam-ily atmosphere, Katameya is constantly developing, as is the cost of living there. Katameya is pretty diverse. There are upper-, middle- and upper-lower-class areas. The upper-class areas have the most impressive villas and are well laid out in general. The lower-class areas are less aesthetically pleasing but are still very nice and tend to be much cheaper.“ (Resident of Katameya Heights)

”The isolation of Egyptian suburbs and satellite cities can be problematic for many new residents. My wife liked be-ing in the city, with her close friends and family. But after living here, she has changed her mind and likes it more now.“ (Resident of Katameya Heights) ”I only know my next-door neighbour because by chance

Figure 3Resettlement Housing. Source: Author (2007).

References (continuation)

Foucault, M. (1997) 'Utopias and heterotopias,' in Rethin-king Architecture: A Reader in Cultural Theory, ed. Leach, N., Routledge, London.

Gauch, S. (2000) 'A Widening Class Divide in Egypt', Chri-stian Science Monitor, May 24, [Online]. Available: www.cs-monitor.com/2000/0524/p1s3.html [2008, 30 November].

Hetherington, K. (1996) 'Iden-tity formation, space and social centrality'. Theory, Culture and Society, vol. 13, pp. 33–52.

Hetherington, K. (1997) The Badlands of Modernity: Hete-rotopia and Social Ordering, Routledge, New York.

Hook, D. & Vrdoljak, M. (2002) 'Gated communities, heterotopia and a ‘‘rights’’ of privilege: a ‘heterotopology’ of the South African security-park', Geoforum, vol. 33, pp. 195–219.

Kuppinger, P. (2005) 'Glo-balization and Exterritoriality in Metropolitan Cairo', The Geographical Review, vol. 95, no.3, pp. 348-372.

Kuppinger, P. (2004) 'Exclu-sive Greenery: New gated Communities in Cairo', City & Society, vol. 16, no.2, pp. 35-61.

Mitchell, T. (1999) 'Dream-land: The Neoliberalism of Your Desires', Middle East Re-port, 210, {Online]. Available: www.merip.org/mer/mer210/mitch.htm [2007, 17 October].

Saad, R. (2002) 'A World of Weekends', Al-Ahram Weekly, no. 593, [Online]. Available: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2002/593/tr22.htm [2007, 15 November].

Soja, E.W. (1995) 'Hetero-pologies: A remembrance of other spaces in the citadel LA', in Postmodern Cities and Spaces, eds. Watson, S. & Gibson, K., Blackwell, Oxford.

Stewart, D. (1996) 'Cities in the Desert: the Egyptian New Towns Program', Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol. 86, no. 3, pp. 460-479.

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a soft loan, 90 percent of which would be paid over 40 years with no interest rates.

In contrast, a more negative reaction to resettlement housing was expressed by the Zabaleen garbage collec-tors who were to be evicted from their settlements in the lower Muqattam Plateau (Fahmi & Sutton 2006; Fahmi 2005): “We have been assigned flats in buildings, hous-ing which we are not accustomed to. I have a big family which will be obliged to live in an 80-square-metre (or less) ‘box’. These new (resettlement) housing units do not have courtyards and extra areas for rearing animals.”

Residents of Gamalia district, who were forced to leave their decayed housing in Medieval Cairo’s bazaar area, expressed their dissatisfaction (Sutton & Fahmi 2002a): “Those who had little money rented a place in Manshiet Nasser or some-where else nearby. They said that at least they were close to their source of livelihood in the bazaar and Gamalia. In Katameya, we are out there in the desert far from Cairo.”

Similar opinions were confirmed by Bab al Nasr tomb dwellers who had already been evicted from North Gamalia (Sutton & Fahmi 2002b, Fahmi 2008b): “We have to spend 6 LE a day on transportation taking us at least two hours going to and coming from Cairo. This is quite expensive for us. Katameya is so far from the city, where we seek work. Otherwise our families will starve. We are considering going back to Cairo even if it is difficult to find accommodation.”

This is clearly evident in one of the respondent’s state-ments at the Egyptian Centre for Housing Rights (ECHR) concerning resettlement housing: “Future supply of land for housing in the Muqattam area, the cemeteries and the bazaar district is constrained for the poor urban population while the cost of the cheapest house in the new location is artificially raised by bureaucratic controls and speculations. Government ‚low-cost‘ housing projects within the new, eastern desert communities have delivered too little, since they often ended up in the hands of middle-class groups.”

ConclusionGated communities

Suburban desert resort enclaves (Cairotopias) accommo-dated an unprecedented land speculation and construction boom that reflected features and models of urban spatial fortification, with investments being exclusively directed towards profitable luxury housing and upscale spaces of entertainment and leisure. This will aggravate Greater Cairo‘s urban polarisation with duality of planned exclusive suburbs and peripheral informal and marginal settlements (Bayat and Denis 2000). On the one hand, there is the urban poor‘s exclusion and dislocation from the emerging globalised city-scape as they are forced to move out of inner-city districts to peripheral spontaneous settlements. On the other hand, a new class of affluent nouveau riche millionaires recently abandoned the city for the newly emerging exclusive desert enclaves and condominiums, leaving Cairo—with its high

to return to inner-city areas because of the lack of job op-portunities and housing management, limited development opportunities, and substandard property, those resettled urban poor (n= 25 cases) with more mobility within informal housing expect no future in New Cairo City. Various heads of households described their lives after eviction like this: ”While most investment goes to the ‚golf people‘, we have nothing. There is no sufficient water supply, no permanent electricity. We don‘t have proper sanitation. All we have got is a water tap. There are about 300 families here. Some of us don‘t get any water, so we have to share. The local officials told us that we would be provided with all facilities“. And: ”Even though officials claimed that we will be compensated for losing our inner-city apartments, we can‘t afford to pay for Katameya’s accommodation which costs approximately LE 50,000. How can we save to pay the instalments? Who will give us a loan?“ According to official proposals at the Ministry of Housing, Utilities and Urban Communities (MHUUC), the new reset-tlement housing development would be equipped with infrastructure ranging from water supply, sanitation, road networks, open space, vocational and healthcare centres, libraries, schools, etc. Residents would be provided with

Figure 4 Population Eviction from Ce-metery Areas and Zabaleen Garbage Collectors' settle-ment to New Settlement 3. Source: Fahmi & Sutton (2006).

References (continuation)

Sutton, K. & Fahmi, W. (2001) 'Cairo’s Urban Growth and Strategic Master Plans in the Light of Egypt’s 1996 Popu-lation Census Results', Cities , vol. 18, no. 3, pp. 135-149.

Sutton, K. & Fahmi, W. (2002a) 'Rehabilitation of Histori-cal Cairo', Habitat International, vol. 26, no.1, pp. 73- 93.

Sutton, K. & Fahmi, W. (2002b) 'Cairo's "Cities of the Dead": The Myths, Problems, and Future of a Unique Squatter Settlement', The Arab World Geographer, vol. 5, no.1, pp.1-21.

Wahish, N. (1999) 'In Search of the Ideal Home', Al-Ahram Weekly, no. 452, [Online]. Available: http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/1999/452/ec6.htm [2007, 5 November].

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density, traffic congestion, and environmental pollution—and moving to new suburban houses.

Spatial contradictions could be noted as middle-income groups occupy less exclusive development such as Al Re-hab City, which promises comfort of living and safe family apartments at relatively affordable rates, while other gated golf communities emphasise exclusive luxurious lifestyles and tight security measures as they address the nouveau riche’s quests for social distinction, sentiments of fear, discourses of crime-prevention, and obsessions with privacy (Katameya Heights, Arabella and Mirage City). Whereas there is the wish for social distinction and segre-gation in Egypt‘s highly polarised society, the geographical distance to the city might not be attractive to residents of gated communities who seem to use their new houses as second or weekend resort homes.

The policing and gate-keeping procedures of New Cairo City’s enclaves operate not simply outwardly, as signs of deterrence and exclusion to the unwanted outsider, but inwardly also on residents themselves. This is something like civil co-ordinates, the discursive reference points of a new and preferable moral social ordering (Hethering-ton 1996, 1997). This is elaborated in Foucault’s criterion of heterotopias as ”juxtaposed incompatibilities“ which emphasises the ways in which the gated enclave is a compromise-function, a paradoxical balancing of danger-ous with safe spaces, communal with private, accessible with impenetrable (Hook and Vrdoljak 2002).

Establishment of the New Cairo Ciy’s heterotopic gated enclaves is not only about security measures, crime-prevention and a new sense of community, but is rather about inscribing a historical structure of privilege to space. Space is an instrumental and fundamental means of transposing the logic of power into the forms of mate-rial practice. Such practices of power realised in space in actual places may function as a practical and concrete precedent against which further relations of power may be expanded and elaborated (Soja 1995). As gated enclaves justify their elaborate controls of space, they concretise the right of exclusion, separation and privilege.

Resettlement sites

The paper indicated that the trauma of evictions of urban poor people (tomb dwellers, Zabaleen garbage collectors and residents of the medieval city) was mainly attributed to the social and economic disruption caused to those forced to move from their inner-city homes, which would be cleared for land developers to make large profits by do-ing nothing more than clear-ing inner-city areas of the poor and holding the empty land for speculation. It can further be argued that poor communities are victims of the gov-ernment‘s hidden agenda for the inner-city poverty districts of Cairo. Behind the declared objectives of improving the urban poor‘s livelihoods and environmental conditions lies a wider but hidden agenda involving the urban redevel-

opment of this part of the city. It will not have escaped the notice of property developers that inner-city poverty districts are close to good road access, relative to many other higher class residential districts, and are fairly central within Greater Cairo. If cleared of their present lower-class residents, both squatter and uncontrolled settlements have immense urban-development potential.

Such long-term ”imposed“ evictions reflect the differences in political power within the society, where economic interests resort to the law or to municipal authorities who have the power to evict people supposedly ”in the public good“. Poor resettled communities have a very weak legal position from which to fight eviction or at least negotiate concessions for time and support for moving and acquiring alternative accommodation and for compensation. Many low-income people, facing the threat of eviction, point out how it is their cheap labour that underpins the city‘s economy, yet the city has no legal accommodation which they can afford. The lack of representation of their views within the government machinery has greatly reduced the possibility of successful opposition to official plans and of any negotiation of a compromise between local authorities undertaking the redevelopment and those groups who are to be evicted. If no alternative accommodation is provided for those displaced, they have to find space in other inner-city districts and squatter areas.

Therefore, in conclusion, a stakeholder approach is pro-posed which would involve grass-root cooperation and public-private partnership between resettled people and NGOs, residents of gated communities and real-estate agents, and planning experts and local authorities in order to resolve the imbalance between resort golf enclaves and low-income accommodation (Fahmi and Sutton 2008). Such cooperation could aim to diversify housing production and tackle the phenomenon of gated communities and as-sociated housing segregation through the encouragement of more mixed residential development. The stakeholder approach calls for more restrictions on property and land speculation within new settlements, for consideration of environmental impacts of golf courses on natural desert resources, for improvement of infrastructure and transport facilities, for spreading security of housing tenure, and for the lease of public land for subsidised low-income housing and upward filtering of decayed housing stock .

Wael Salah Fahmi ------------PhD, was trained as an architect at Cairo University and received his PhD in planning and landscape from the University of Manchester (UK). Teaches architecture and urban design as an associate professor of urbanism at the Architecture Department, Helwan University in Cairo, Egypt. Through his studio Urban Design Experimental Research Studio (UDERS) he explores deconstructive experimentation within urban space, postmodern spatiality and representation of city imaging employing narratives, digital photo imaging, video stills and architectural diagrams. As a visiting academic at University of Manchester he has been working collaboratively on Greater Cairo’s urban growth problems, focusing on the rehabilitation of areas of historical Cairo and the adjacent cemetery informal settlements known as “Cities of the Dead”, and on the development of urban poverty areas, population eviction and resettlement, street movements within Cairo’s public spaces and Cairo‘s architectural heritage.

Contact: <uders2003@yahoo.co.uk>

Figure 5Resettlement Housing. Source: Author (2007).

AcknowledgementThis paper is based on collaborative work with Keith Sutton at the School of Environment and Develop-ment (SED), The University of Manchester.

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those in cities? And, in what ways do urban lifestyles in both refugee camps and cities influence refugees?

Refugee life

When talking about refugees, a clear definition of the term is essential since it is attached to a specific set of rights and obligations. Both the 1951 UN Convention relating to the Status of Refugees and the 1969 African Union Convention governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa use definitions that describe the causes of having left one’s place of origin. These causes are described as a “well-founded fear of being persecuted”1 or as having been “compelled to leave his place of habitual residence in order to seek refuge in another place outside his country of origin or nationality”2. The events causing the flight and the displaced person’s location after the flight determine whether someone can be considered a refugee. Such a flight, however, can happen more than once since refu-gees do sometimes move back and forth between bor-ders. Therefore, the refugee experience is also referred to as a cycle that can be roughly divided into three phases: (a) pre-flight, (b) temporary settlement, and (c) resettlement or repatriation (Ager, 1999; Bützer 2008).

An ever growing number of refugees (Malkki, 1996) influ-ence the developments within cities in the South through two noteworthy phenomena: Refugees flock to cities to settle and build a new life or gather in uninhabited places that then develop into refugee camps; these short-term solutions for accommodating large numbers of displaced people can develop into “accidental cities” (Jansen, 2009). Zygmunt Bauman refers to refugee camps as “perhaps the most rapidly swelling of all categories of world population” (Agier, 2002). On the African continent, continuing insecurity in a number of countries makes the return of hundreds of thousands of refugees impossible. In what ways do urban aspects that are present in refugee camps compare to

Refugee Camps as „Accidental Cities“ Towards an „Urban Refugee Life-Style“?

Sylvia Maria Stoll

Flüchtlingscamps als „zufällige Städte“: hin zu einem städtischen Flüchtlings-Lebensstil?Flüchtlinge – als aus ihrem Lande oder ihrer Heimat gewaltsam Vertriebene – beeinflussen zu-nehmend die Entwicklung der Städte im „Süden“. Flüchtlinge strömen in die Städte, um sich dort ein neues Leben aufzubauen, oder sie besiedeln zuvor unbewohnte Plätze, an denen dann Flüchtlingscamps entstehen. Nach Zygmund Bauman beherbergen Flüchtlingslager die „vielleicht am schnellsten anwachsende Kategorie von Menschengruppen auf der Welt.“ Die zunehmende Instabilität einiger Länder – vor allem auf dem afrikanischen Kontinent – sowie andere Faktoren hindern Hunderttausende von Flüchtlingen daran, an ihre Heimatorte zurückzukehren. Die zur temporären Unterbringung großer Zahlen von Vertriebenen und Entwurzelten gedachten Lager haben daher das Potenzial, sich zu dauerhaften, „zufälligen Städten“ zu entwickeln. Der Beitrag untersucht, inwieweit Aspekte städtischen Lebens in Flüchtlingslagern vergleichbar sind mit dem Lebensstil in großen Städten und in welcher Weise solch urbane Lebensstile in den Lagern und in den Städten das Verhalten der Flüchtlinge prägen. In Flüchtlingscamps entwickeln sich soziale Differenzierungen, Dienstleistungsökonomien, Bildungs- und Gesundheiteinrichtungen sowie blühende Märkte, die gemeinhin mit städtischem Leben assoziiert und oft gar als im Widerspruch zum Flüchtlingsstatus stehend wahrgenommen werden. Bei der Ausprägung einer Identität als Flüchtling oder der Annäherung von Flüchtlingen an ein städtisches Leben scheint eine große Rol-le zu spielen, ob „im Exil“ die eigene (ethnische oder politische) Herkunft und damit verbundene Ansprüche verteidigt werden oder ob der Wunsch nach Integration im Vordergrund steht.

Figure 1Phases of refugee cycles

1 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees: July 28th, 1951. Available at: <www.hrc.co.nz/home/hrc/internatio-nalhumanrights/nzandthein-ternationalinstruments/statu-sofrefugees/article1.php>

2 Organisation of African Unity: Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa. Available at: <http://migration.ucc.ie/immigration/what_is_a_refu-gee.htm>

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locals and are not obviously visible to the international community”3. Considering the struggle of “city refugees”, the following statement becomes comprehensible:

“From a refugee’s point of view, a camp might actually provide a safer and materially more secure option than self-settlement. Indeed in many mass influx situations, refugees and their leaders organise themselves into camp-like settings before UNHCR or any other humanitar-ian organisation has arrived on the scene and established an assistance programme” (Crisp & Jacobsen, 1998).

Yet, those who criticise the set-up of camps describe them as institutions that deprive refugees of “power, control and freedom” (Hoenig, 2004). As refugee camps continue to exist “beyond the duration of emergency”, changes take place in the infrastructure and the social make-up of a camp. These developments often take place much more rapidly than the urbanisation processes found in cities. “Even after three years, any given week could bring a thousand new people, and the camp continued to grow outward by miles, such that I could walk anew avenue each morning. Kakuma grew to encompass Kakuma I, II, III, and IV. It was a refugee city with its own suburbs” (Eggers, 2006).

Montclos (2000) describes the infrastructure of Dadaab camp in Kenya by listing schools, Koranic institutions, health centres, a hospital, electricity, hot water and a slaughterhouse. In addition, refugees run bars and hotels (Malkki, 1996). Refugees in cities also contribute to the development of local infrastructures. Somali refugees who settled individually in Eastleigh, an area of Nairobi, tended to stay within their districts for carrying out their economic transactions. Many of the businesses set up by Somali refugees in the Eastleigh were supported through remittances from relatives abroad. These developed into “thriving business in providing services specifically of use to Somali and other refuges, including money transfer and exchange, travel agencies, telephone and internet bureaux, language schools…” (Linday, 2007).

During the middle phase, the so-called temporary set-tlement phase, refugees gather in cities or as groups in unsettled rural areas, which later become refugee camps. Aid organisations, host governments and refu-gees themselves each play a role in the development of refugee camps. To what extent each party is involved in the early stages of the development of a refugee camp influences its structural set-up, both on a physi-cal and social level. Valentino Achang Deng, who fled as one of the lost boys of Sudan, compared Pinyudo camp in Ethiopia with Kakuma camp in Kenya, the first one being a settlement without assistance by interna-tional organisations in the initial stages and second one being “pre-planned” and “operated from the start by the UN”. The UN’s planning made Kakuma camp more orderly than Pinyudo camp (Eggers, 2006). The role and the involvement of UNHCR in refugee camps have been described comparable to that of a state (Slaughter & Crisp, 2009). With the weakening involvement of states in refugee matters, “UNHCR has been transformed from a humanitarian organisation to one that shares certain features of a state” (ibid). Similarly, Musau (2009) writes that refugees “imagine UNHCR to be a ‘super government’, operating above and autonomous of the government of Kenya”.

Nevertheless, or maybe specifically because of the UN’s ‘governing’ role, refugee camps remain a sort of no-man’s-land outside of the national realm. In these settings, spaces that are meant to serve as temporary solutions become permanent homes for people who continue to face uncertain futures. Agier (2002) points out the temporary antagonism of a refugee camp with the following definition:

“Created in a situation of emergency as a protected device intended to provide for the physical, food and health safety of all kinds of survivors and fugitives from wars, refugee camps agglomerate tens of thousands of inhabitants for periods that generally last far beyond the duration of the emergency.”

This insecurity Agier attributes to refugee camps can also be found among refugees that settle in urban areas. Lindey (2007) conducted a study on Somali refugees that settled in the Eastleigh district of Nairobi Kenya and described the environment as “a staging post to an uncertain future”. Both refugees that are accommodated in refugee camps and those that are individually settling in cities are confronted with uncertainty that is related to their legal status.

Urban lifestyles: refugee camps versus cities

There are both similarities and differences in the experi-ence of “city” and “camp refugees”. Self-settled refugees living in cities are often invisible, receiving little or no support at all from international organisations or the host government (Nilsson, 2000). “Urban refugees live among

Figure 2 Health centre in the early stages of a refugee camp in Darfur, Tchad. Photo: Thomas Gillaizeau.

Thomas Gillaizeau worked for Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF) in Iridimi and Touloum in Darfur, Tchad, in 2004. He reports that developing infrastructures in camps has always been a struggle about whether to build or not. “When I was there, I wanted to build and my superiors said no, it is not permanent and it should not remain so that we may show to the authorities that the situation will change quickly.” Yet, in 2005 MSF did away with tents and started building. Thomas explains this change of mind with the need for a “balance between the price of purcha-sing and of maintenance (the set of tents in the desert has to be completely changed once a year).” On the other hand, humanitarian agencies also need to consider the wish of the authorities, who want short-term stays for refugees.

3 <www.mapendo.org/about_mission.cfm>

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(Jansen, 2009). It is this paradox that puts into question whether the changes that take place in refugee camps can be described as forms of urbanisation. Wirth defines the city as “a relatively large, dense and permanent set-tlement of heterogeneous individuals” (Wirth, 1938). When one tries to apply Wirth’s definition to the peculiarities of a refugee camp, the term “permanent” stands out as the most problematic. Refugee camps do involuntarily be-come permanent settlements, but is this urban develop-ment recognisable in the refugees’ way of life?

This move towards permanence is of interest to host governments, as their policies normally aim to prevent the integration of refugees. In a majority of countries, the government does not allow refugees free move-ment or employment. Therefore informal economic systems develop in refugee camps that make use of the resources available through aid organisations. Malkki (1996) described how some Hutu refugees located in a camp disapproved of such informal business develop-ments: “We have not come here to make commerce. We are refugees” (Malkki, 1996). Statements such as this build on the assumption that being a refugee and making commerce are contradictory in nature. Whether commercial activities are necessary in order to be able to live an urban lifestyle is debateable. Another fac-tor that questions the possibility of urban lifestyles in refugee camps is the short-term-oriented administration of aid organisations, as their purpose is to save lives and not to build urban structures. Therefore, a more appropriate definition of the lifestyle and environment refugees experience in refugee camps may be captured with Montclos’ (2000) description of refugees as “urban dwellers in the making” (Montclos, 2000).

While reviewing researchers who reported from their field experiences, Hoenig (2004) described urban features that were observed in various refugee camps as “businesses, markets, education and health facilities, employment and

Such physical developments, due to changes in economy and infrastructure, are accompanied by socio-structural changes within a camp. Montclos (2000) calls refugee camps a form of modernity, as they constitute a space where people from many different nationalities live together and adapt to each other to a certain degree. In schools, for example, girls and boys are now eating their meals together, when they traditionally were used to eat-ing separately (Montclos, 2000).

Jansen (2009) observed a “socio-economic strata” in Kakuma camp in North-western Kenya, and attributed this structure mainly to various sources of livelihoods. Refugees who were completely dependent on the support of aid organisations formed a sort of poor under-class (Jansen, 2009). As refugee camps are often found in resource-poor areas, the contributions of aid organisations constitute a strong economic power in the local area. In Kakuma “many ‘drop-out pastoralists’ have settled around the camp seek-ing livelihoods inside the camp and its environs” (Jansen, 2009). Musau observed similar developments in Dadaab, a refugee camp in North-eastern Kenya: “A class of refugees has emerged with well-trenched commercial operations within camps, with the local community and across the Kenyan border—usually without the consent, or knowledge of the Kenyan authorities or UNHCR”.

Urban features

According to Wirth’s definition of urbanism (1938) “the urban mode of life is not confined to cities”. He de-scribes the city as “the initiating and controlling centre of economic, political, and cultural life”, which agrees with Jansen’s earlier-mentioned concept of refugee camps as “accidental cities”. Yet Jansen himself recognises that “the camp has become something of a paradox: a tem-porary place that slowly shakes its features of temporal-ity through processes of place-making that are similar to forms of urbanisation, with no end in sight as of yet”

Figure 3 Shopping street in Ifo camp, Dadaab, Kenya. Photo: Bram Jansen, Wageningen Univ., NL.

References

Ager, A. (ed.) (1999) ‘Per-spectives on the Refugee Experience.’ In: Refugees: Perspectives on the Expe-rience of Forced Migration. GB: Biddles Ltd., p. 3.

Agier, M. (2002) ‘Between War and City: Towards an Ur-ban Anthropology of Refugee Camps.’ Ethnography 2002; 3; pp. 317-341.

Barnett, M. (2005) ‘Huma-nitarianism Transformed.’ Perspectives on Politics, 3, pp. 723-740.

Jansen, B. J. (2009) ‘The Accidental City: Urbanisation in an East-African Refugee Camp.’ Urban Agriculture magazine, Nr. 21, January 2009, pp. 11-12.

Bülent, D. (2004) ‘From Re-fugee Camps to Gated Com-munities: Biopolitics and the End of the City.’ Citizenship Studies, Vol. 8, No. 1, March 2004, pp. 83-106.

Bützer, C. (2008) The Long Way Home: Contemplations of Southern Sudanese Refu-gees in Uganda. LIT Verlag: Münster, p. 11.

Crips, J. & Jakobsen, K. (1998) ‘Refugee Camps Re-considered.’ Forced Migration Review, December 1998, 3, pp. 27-30.

Eggers, D. (2006) What is the What. Vintage Books, New York.

Hoenig, W. (2004) ‘Self-image and the Well-being of Refugees in Rhino Camp, Ug-anda.’ New Issues in Refugee Research. Working Paper No. 103 UNHCR Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit, Geneva.

Linday, A. (2007) ‘Pro-tracted Displacement and Remittances: the View from Eastleigh, Nairobi. New Issues in Refugee Research. Research’, Paper No. 143 UNHCR Evaluation and Policy Analysis Unit, Geneva.

Malkki, L. (1992) ‘National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territoria-lisation of National Identity Among Scholars and Refu-gees.’ Cultural Anthropology, Vol. 7, No. 1, Space, Identity, and the Politics of Difference (Feb., 1992), pp. 22-44.

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owned and operated generators. The general population can enjoy DSTV news updates at a few restaurants and coffee houses throughout the camp8”.

Other forms of media and communication tools, like radios and phones for instance, are also available to the camp inhabitants. In fact, radio broadcasting serves as the main source of news for 70-80% of Kakuma resi-dents who own a radio. “Popular radio stations include VOA (the Voice of America, available in Amharic, Oromo, and Tigre languages), the BBC (available in Kiswahili, So-mali, and French languages), and KBC (the Kenya Broad-casting Channel, available in English and Kiswahili)9“.

The development of the Kakuma News Reflector and the improved access to television and internet has increased recently and continues to move forward a shift in media access at Kakuma refugee camp. This shift gives refugees an extended space to their geographically restricted living environment. A young man from Kakuma refugee camp described the physical environment of Kakuma refugee camp as an influence on the way refugees view the world and themselves.

For many refugees who feel imprisoned in Kakuma camp, KANERE represents a hope for change. As one refugee says, ‘Challenges are always there in my life, but no re-sponse is given by the Kenyan Government or UNHCR… Now we can start to address our life problems democrati-cally when it comes to decision making’10.

Lindsay (2007) describes a similar web of opportunities for the “city refugees” who settled in the Eastleigh district of Nairobi, Kenya. It “is a place where, by connecting into wider social networks, opportunities might arise” (Lindsey, 2007). Urban features then would begin to appear when refugees move out of on environments, where “there is nothing to do”, to environments that provide opportunities for liveli-hoods, education, and physical and psychological well-being.

training opportunities for refugees, and close contact to the local population”. Some positive aspects of living in a camp were described by refugees as advanced services and opportunities that widened their horizons. In detail, the refugees referred to the “knowledge and skills they acquired” as well as exposure to “management structures, modern technologies, and expatriates” (Hoenig, 2004).

Examples of how refugees are exposed to technology can be found at Kakuma refugee camp with initiatives such as an internet café, a local paper and FilmAid. FilmAid4, an international NGO, aims to promote hope and positive change through the power of film and regularly carries out community video projects in Kakuma. Another initiative is the Kakuma News Reflector, referred to as KANERE5, which is produced independently by Kakuma camp residents. It addresses the work of the humanitarian organisations and social issues in the camp, for example, intermarriage and the neglect of the elderly. The development of this informa-tion platform became possible through the local internet café, which has been run by refugee entrepreneurs in the Somali Community for several years6.

At the end of 2008, a refugee entrepreneur started a telecommunications business with a DSTV dish, which he makes available for subscription to the refugee commu-nity. KANERE considers such initiatives as “a turning point in information access for refugees in Kakuma, although their exposure remains low due to socio-economic fac-tors inhibiting service expansion”7. Even if this develop-ment represents a turning point in the access to media at Kakuma refugee camp, the use of television is still limited to a small number of residents:

“Personal television provides news on a much more limit-ed scale, as it is estimated that only 5-15% of the refugee population owns a television. Of those that do, a great majority reside in Zone Five (the central area of Kakuma camp) where electricity is available for a fee from refugee

Figure 4 Supermarket in Kakuma camp, Kenya. Photo: Bram Jansen, Wageningen Univ., NL.

References (continuation)

Malkki, L. (1996) ‘Speechless Emissaries: Refugees, Huma-nitarianism, and Dehistorici-sation.’ Cultural Anthropolo-gy, vol. 11, No. 3 (Aug., 1996), pp. 377-404.

Montclos, M. A. P.D. and P. Kawanja (2000) ‘Refugee Camps or Cities? The Socio-economic Dynamics of the Dadaab and Kakuma Camps in Northern Kenya.’ Journal of Refugee Studies Vol. 13, No. 2, pp. 205-222.

Musau. J. (2009) ‘Protec-ting Refugees in Dadaab: Processes, Problems and Prospects.’ Forced Migration Review 11.

Nilson, D. (2000) ‘Internally Displaced, Refugees and Returnees from and in the Sudan: A Review.’ Studies on Emergencies and Disaster Relief Report No. 8 Universi-tetstryckeriet, Uppsala.

Rieff, D. (2003) A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis. Simon & Schuster.

4 <http://en-gb.facebook. com/video/video.php?v=1008439651848>

5 <http://kakuma.wordpress.com/about-kanere/>

6 <http://kakuma.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/kanere-fills-gap-in-media-access/>

7 <http://kakuma.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/kanere-fills-gap-in-media-access/>

8 <http://kakuma.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/kanere-fills-gap-in-media-access/>

9 <http://kakuma.wordpress.com/2008/12/22/kanere-fills-gap-in-media-access/>

10 <www.haayo.org/Support-KANERE-for-an-independent.html>

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camp refugees saw themselves as a nation in exile”. She further described that the “Hutu refugees in the camp located their identities within their very displacement, extracting meaning and power from the interstitial social location they inhabited” (Malkki, 1994).

Malkki’s findings on the refugees’ differing approaches to identity—depending on whether they settled in a city or in a camp—suggests a connection between identity and urban lifestyles. Agier‘s findings (2002) support a relation-ship between “urban” developments and identity: “Social and cultural complexities emerge with the formation of the novel sociospatial form of ‘city-camps’ in which new identities crystallise and subjectivation takes root”.

A young man on a video-graphical collage of Kakuma camp residents said, “When I close my eyes I hate the environment I am living” (SMS). FilmAid, an NGO with field offices at Kakuma refugee camp, produced this informational piece. Each starting with the words “when I close my eyes”, the contributors relate images and experiences they deal with mentally. The example of the young man’s statement shows that the external world is a factor that influences the internally lived experience or identity of an individual. Geographical environments and their specific characteristics have an influence on the identity of its inhabitants (Basso, 1996). Gale (2008) noticed that “the geographic and cultural ‘microclimates’ of the camps had a profound effect on refugees’ livelihood opportunities, social networks, and future outlook and had a more immediate influence on refugee decision-making than the formal language of durable solutions”.

There seems to be a relationship between the adjust-ment of a refugee’s identity to the camp setting and the structure of relief within the camp. Hoenig (2004) referred to Knudsen (1991) who stated that “paradoxically, the camps with the most complex relief systems often leave their residents with least control over their own lives […]”. Referring to refugees that are staying in camps, Hoenig (2004) says, “Refugee’s identities are said to have to undergo transformation in order to assume the role they are supposed to play”.

Summing up the relationships between identity and environments with urban features, a possible conclusion could be this: The more urban a refugee’s lifestyle is, the more likely he or she is to be detached from national and political categories. Whether such a concept accu-rately describes the relationship between the identi-ties and the urban lifestyles of refugees needs to be tested in a longitudinal study of urban developments in refugee camps. It is clear that the ever-growing number of refugees will continue to influence structural changes in Africa and elsewhere, and that questions concerning urban lifestyles and refugees will remain relevant as camps develop further and new generations of refugees are raised in camp settings.

Investigating urbanism

The fact that urban features are likewise found in refugee camps and among “city refugees” raises further questions concerning the process involved in urban developments, which have become part of the lives of refugees. Long-term refugee camps could be viewed as being in a pre-stage to urban living, but how can such developments and the vari-ous degrees of urban lifestyles be further investigated?

In her survey Internally Displaced, Refugees and Return-ees from and in the Sudan, Nilsson (2000) discusses four forms of migration: “rural to rural; rural to urban; urban to rural; and urban to urban”. Lindley (2007) reported that “on the whole, refugees in Nairobi are more likely to be from urban than from rural backgrounds”. Therefore, differences between the refugees living in refugee camps and those living in cities can partly be attributed to the fact that many ”city refugees” had urban backgrounds be-fore their displacement. Nevertheless, not all differences between “camp” and “city refugees” can be explained with this tendency. Lindsay (2007) mentioned that:

“Many people displaced from Somalia and living in protracted exile in Kenya have self-settled in Nairobi’s Eastleigh district, defying the Kenyan government’s at-tempt to contain the refugee population in remote areas, not content to wait for elusive durable solutions.”The initiative of these “city refugees” relates to the findings of a comparative study that was carried out during the initial stages of the temporary settlement of refugees in Tanzania, both in a city and in a camp. In this study Malkki (1994) noted that the refugees in the city had the ability to adjust their identity, and “to move through categories was for many a form of social freedom and even security… For there, creolisation and cosmopolitanism tended to be celebrated, and categori-cal loyalties to be regarded with caution, sometimes disdain”. The refugees in the camp, however, were focused on containing their identity: “The most striking social fact about the camp was that its inhabitants were continually engaged in an impassioned construction and reconstruction of their history as ‘a people’… The

Sylvia Maria Stoll ------------PhD candidate at the Institute for Media Studies and coordi-nator for the NOHA Master‘s Programme in International Humanitarian Assistance at the Institute for International Law of Peace and Armed Conflict, Ruhr University Bochum. She holds a B.A. in sociocultural anthropology from Brigham Young University, USA, and a M.Sc. (Agr.) in humanitarian action from University College Dublin, Ireland.

Contact: <Sylvia.Stoll@rub.de>

References (continuation)

Slaughter, A. & Crips, J. (2009) ‘A Surrogate State? The Role of UNHCR in Protracted Refugee Situations.’ New Issues in Refugee Research. Research Paper No. 168. UNH-CR Policy and Development Evaluation Service, Geneva.

Wirth, L. (1938) ‘Urbanism as a Way of Life.’ The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 44, No. 1, pp. 1-24.

Figure 5 One of the many restaurants at Kakuma camp, Kenya. Pho-to: Bram Jansen, Wageningen Univ., NL.

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New Actors Shaping Spaces of Identity: Chilean Cases of Ethnification of Cities

Walter Alejandro Imilan

Neue Akteure und neue Identitätsräume. Beispiele aus Chile zur Ethnifizierung von Städten. Die räumliche Entwicklung der Städte in Lateinamerika wird zunehmend durch indigene Zuwanderer geprägt, die sich politisch artikulieren und die Frage ihrer Identität ins Feld führen als ein zentrales Element in der Auseinan-dersetzung um die Aneignung städtischen Raums. Der Beitrag untersucht zwei Fallbeispiele, in denen städtische Indigene durch den Aufbau eigener Organisationen und die Artikulation spezifischer Forderungen ihren Platz in der Stadt erkämpfen und gestalten. Die Fallbeispiele der Licanantay in der Stadt Calama im Norden von Chile und der Mapuche in Santiago de Chile zeigen, wie indigene Gruppen das Bild einer urbanen Lebensweise nach ihren Bedürfnissen neu definieren. Viele der in Calama lebenden Licantay geben die Verbindung zu den traditionellen Herkunftsorten und zu ihrer im Hochland zurückgebliebenen Familie nicht auf. Mit ihrer Mobilität schaffen sie eine räumliche Verbindung, die das städtische Calama mit ihren ländlichen Heimatorten verschmelzen lässt. In Santiago de Chile blieben die Mapuche trotz ihrer großen Zahl im städtischen Raum für lange Zeit unsichtbar. Solche Zeugnisse von Ethnizität in der Stadt waren für die Bewohner Santiagos bis vor kurzem ungewöhnlich und fremd. Inzwischen schufen die hier lebenden Mapuche ein neues indigenes und zugleich städtisches Subjekt: den Warriache oder Stadt-Mapuche, ein deutliches Zeichen für ein neues Selbstbewusstsein und für den Stolz der Migranten auf ihre ethnische Identität.

a new place in current modernity in which multiple and individualised sources for the construction of a sense of belonging and identity evolve.

The second dimension of ethnicity refers to identity in rela-tion to political demands. In the last years the use of ethnic roots has risen as an argument for demanding specific rights for social groups which have been discriminated and excluded by the majority society within a nation-state. This particular character of ethnicity, its political potential, has proven quite effective as a means to put pressure on law regulation processes, a pattern which has repeated itself in the last decades throughout all of Latin America.

The struggle for cultural recognition and in some cases political autonomy has given birth to various models of integration within nation-states, for instance the model of plurinational state adopted by Ecuador and Bolivia, or the model of inter-cultural societies implemented by Colombia, Mexico and Guatemala. So far this process has been prin-cipally led by political movements whose bases originate in rural areas. However, today, a very important percentage of the members of ethnic societies live in cities.

By and by, the indigenous in the city have begun to con-struct the category of “urban indigenous” not only in order to participate of the general claims of their collectivities – in which many are already active – but also to improve condi-tions of integration in the city and to discuss urban policies

Living in the ethnified city

Nowadays, urban space in many Latin American cities has been ethnified by indigenous peoples that have migrated into the city over the last decades and now articulate politi-cal claims. The urban indigenous, as a relatively recent con-cept, stages a new form of organisation that is sometimes independent or transverse to claims from other actors of the civil society and that brings the question of identity to the forefront, thus redefining social and political relations. It is expressed by the increasing ethnic ascriptions in the given city. When speaking of ethnic roots in Latin America, the reference is to those that originate from rural and indig-enous communities which preserve elements of and ties to pre-Hispanic cultures.

Ethnicity is a broad concept with at least two important dimensions. On the one hand, ethnicity refers to collective identities, and thus ethnicity becomes a resource for con-structing contemporary identities. On the other hand, ethnic-ity refers to a specific form of linking identity with politics, i.e. mediation with the political space (Martucelli 2008: 41).

The first dimension, ethnicity as resource of collective identity, alludes principally to the common origin of a group, that which is referred to “common roots”. Today, people shape their identities from different sources. Eth-nic roots replace or complement categories such as class, gender, or even consumption practices. The “ethnic” takes

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rupture with social networks, but its deterritorialisation. Wherever migrants arrived they recreated in formal and informal associations the cohesion of groups that shared common origin and organised the interrelationship with their countrymen and relatives in villages.” (p. 6)

The primary relationships of the migrants based on kinship and friendship gave the basis to construct social networks that supplied the needs of work and housing which the city and its institutions could not provide. These social relations, which were inherited from a common history of migration, have remained very important up to today. They have helped migrants to articulate occupations, places of residence, and daily life in the city (Kemper 1970; Lomnitz 1977, 1996).

The proliferation of informal economies and settlements was an expression of the strategies which the migrants developed to integrate into the city. The networks based on kinship, friendship, and compadrazgo shaped urban space. In fact, it has been established that the level of success of integration in the city is in direct relation to the strength of the communitarian tradition of the villages of origin (Velasco 2007). The more communitarianism it is possible to reproduce in the city, the higher the access to benefits. In this way, the origins of the migrants became resources of integration.

Nevertheless, this communitarianism in the city is not only the consequence of strong social bonds, it is not only a product of cultural resistance, but it is a defence mecha-nism against discrimination as well. It was the best strategy, and sometime the only one, to integrate in the city.

The concept “urban indigenous” in Latin America appeared for the first time, as social category, at the beginning of the 1990s in Mexico (Velasco 2007). Subsequently it came to be used in every country of the continent to define and identify migrants from indigenous communities and their subsequent generations who recreate social relations based on places of origin and shared indigenous tradition.

In the 1990s, the fall of the socialist block gave way to a broad spectrum of identity ascriptions. Many ascrip-tions which had been based on class were replaced by others based on ethnic origin. Socioeconomic differences became cultural differences. In 1992, the continent com-memorated the five-hundredth anniversary of the Euro-pean arrival in America; indigenous movements on the continent constructed a political claim independent of ref-erences to political parties or traditional left-wing move-ments. In the mid-1990s, a new type of regional indig-enous movement was born. The uprising in Chiapas gave a new face to this movement. On a global level it strove and achieved integration to a global network, whereas on a national level it claimed autonomy from rather than integration into national institutions, the common strategy throughout the 20th century (Pfaff-Czarnecka, et al, 2007).In this context, in 1993 the Chilean government passed the indigenous law which recognises the existence of

which affect them directly. But the urban indigenous also represent the question of identity, discussing the experi-ence of migration and cultural change.

In this sense ethnicity possesses two dimensions: a politi-cal dimension and one in which it functions as a resource for identity. Ethnification processes cannot be understood by separating these two dimensions, since these proc-esses are always very particular and each group has a specific history of relations with urban society based on a migration process or political struggle over time. In a cer-tain way they are not comparable, but they do undoubt-edly play a role in the form in which identity processes take place in the city.

The following text presents two cases in which urban indigenous are constructing a place in the city through urban organisations and claims to specific political is-sues. The first case presents the Licanantay in the north of Chile, an Andean group which has historically spread through the territory of the Salar de Atacama and the Loa River, integrating towns in the highlands with lower settlements. Calama, the capital of the Loa province, is the most important city in this area. Many Licanantay live in Calama, but they do not give up their activities and families in the highlands; instead, they construct a space through their mobility which integrates Calama city with their hometowns. This dynamic constructs a particular ethnic space whereby rural and urban areas are being linked. The second case presents the Mapuche in Santiago de Chile. This case shows how the Mapuche in the city became vis-ible to the rest of Chilean society through the constitution of organisational work, mostly the work of the subsequent generations of migrants. Despite the important amount of Mapuche living in Santiago, for a long time they remained invisible within the urban space. Traces of ethnicity in the city were not evident to the Chilean population. Nowadays, the Mapuche have constructed a new ethnic and urban agent: the Warriache, or the “Mapuche of the City”, which sums up the ethnic awareness of the migrants.

The importance of migration.

The urban explosion in Latin America took place dur-ing the mid-20th century. The process of rural-to-urban migration on the continent is still very important today for understanding the Urbanisierung of Latin American cities. First of all, the experience of migration is part of the biography of a large majority of its current inhabitants. Secondly, the relationship based on places of origin has been fundamental in building social networks that allow access to the resources of integration in the city.

For example, Jürgen Golte (1999) describes this process as follows: “The migratory movements that were wide-spread at the end of the first half of the 20th century did not mean that the people lost their bonds to their social groups of origin. The migration from peasant villages to other countryside areas, mines and cities did not mean a

References

Barth, Fredrik (1993) ‘Endu-ring and emerging issues in the analysis of ethnicity.’ In The anthropology of ethnicity. Beyond "Ethnic groups and boundaries". H. Vermeulen and K. Govers, eds. Pp. 12-32. Amsterdam.

Boccara, Guillaume (2002) ‘Colonización, resistencia y etnogénesis en la fronteras americanas.’ In Colonización, resistencia y mestizaje en la fronteras americanas. G. Boccara, ed. Pp. 47-82. Quito: Ediciones Abya-Yala.

INE (2003) Resultado Censo 2002. Santiago: Instituto Nacional de Estadísticas.

55TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

ity can be called “temporal residence”. The third group develops a kind of mobility of “alternate residences”. This group develops a very intense dynamic of mobility which is similar to a commuting practice. It can be said that the people of this group are commuters which move to work daily or weekly from outside communities to the city.

Temporal residences, as well as alternate residences, al-low the construction of a broad social space in which the Licanantay society takes shape. The people work in both spaces (the city and the community), they have networks in both spaces, and as of recent they also participate in ethnic political groups in both spaces.

The earlier-mentioned Chilean Indigenous Law of 1993 recognised the Atacameños as an indigenous people. The Atacameños-Licanantay practice a religiosity that is a mix of Catholic religion and Andean tradition, in a similar way as several indigenous groups in the Andean region. The local language Kunza began to vanish with the arrival of Tiwanaku; it was gradually replaced by Quechua and later by Spanish. On the other hand, the current political organisation of Atacameños, the Ayllu, has its basis in Andean tradition. In spite of these traces, they had not previously recognised themselves histori-cally as an indigenous or an ethnic group. During the 1990s, the state supported a development programme for the Atacameños; at that time they rejected the name Atacameño because the name had been given by the Spaniards, the colonial power. Over the last two decades, the Atacameños have adopted the name of Li-canantay, a mix from qechua and kunza. The Licanantay

a history of discrimination against indigenous people, especially against the Mapuche, whose land had been occupied by the state at the end of the 20th century. Impoverishment forced the population to migrate to the cities. As a consequence of this historical fact, the law recognises the existence of the urban Mapuche as well. In many Latin American countries the “urban indigenous” appeared as a political category almost simultaneously.

City-region Licanantay (Atacameños)

The region around the Salar de Atacama, in the Atacama Desert in the north of Chile, is occupied by peasant com-munities that have cultivated in terraces on the Andean mountains for hundreds of years. Today, this area has become an important mining region whose central man-agement is in the city of Calama, a city with over one hun-dred thousand inhabitants, most of them seasonal mining workers from different regions of Chile and Bolivia.

The Atacama inhabitants of this region have used, since ancient times, several settlements scattered throughout this territory. Andean societies have developed a unique settlement pattern in which environmental conditions play a large role. The productive capacity of a settlement is defined by the altitude in which it is located. Each altitude (between 2,000 and 4,300 metres above sea level, in this case) allows a specific agrarian and livestock production. The territory is organised in a vertical way by “ecological floors”, which means that in a relatively small area there are several ecological floors that allow diversification of produc-tion (Nuñez and Dillehey 1979). In order to take advantage of the given environmental conditions, Andean populations integrate places from different altitudes through commer-cial exchange and kinship. In this way, the Licanantay has been practicing mobility as a resource for networking differ-ent places in the Andes over centuries. Calama is within the space in which this ancient practice of mobility takes place. Originally Calama´s regional importance was related to its oases, but in the last two hundred years the Licanantay started migrating due to the mining industry.

The current relation between the towns in the highland and Calama seems to be quite interesting because of the dynamic that their mobility practices involve. According to statistics, around 90% percent of the Licanantay popula-tion inhabit the urban area of Calama (INE 2002); however, when observed closely, the characteristics of this phe-nomenon can be defined as a set of practices of mobility rather than a typical movement of one-way migration.Up to three types of Licanantay residencies can be identi-fied in Calama (Imilan 2007). The first group represents the people who migrated and reside definitely in Calama. This corresponds to a kind of “permanent residence”, as a typical case of one-way migration. The second group corresponds to people who move to the city to work tem-porarily; these Atacameños may spend a couple weeks or months in Calama, after that they go back to the com-munities where they work as peasants. This kind of mobil-

Figure 1Licanantay territory, Calama and the highland towns. Province El Loa, Chile. Source: Pablo Mancilla

References (continuation)

Feischmidt, Margit (2007) ‘Ethnizität—Perspektive und Konzepte der ethnologischen Forschung.’ In Ethnizität und Migration. B. Schmidt-Lauber, ed. Pp. 51-68. Berlin: Reime.

Gissi, Nicolas (2009) ‘La construcción de la colonia y el enclave étnico en ciudad de México. El caso de los cho-choltecos en San Miguel Teo-tongo, Iztapalapa.’ Cuicuilco. Revista de la Escuela Nacional de Antropología e Historia (ENAH). (16) 45: 211-228.

Imilan, Walter Alejandro (2007) ‘Socaireños en movi-miento. Atacameños y Calama.’ Estud. Atacam. 33: 105-123.

Imilan, Walter Alejandro and Valentina Alvárez (2008) ‘El pan mapuche. Un acercamiento a la migración Mapuche en la ciudad de Santiago.’ Revista Austral de Ciencias Sociales (14): 23-49.

Kemper, Robert (1970) ‘El estudio antropológico de la migración a las ciudades en América Latina.’ América Indígena 30(3): 609-633.

Lomnitz, Larissa (1977) Networks and marginality: Life in a Mexican shantytown. San Francisco: Academic Press Inc.

Lomnitz, Larissa (1996) ‘Die unsichbare Stadt: Familiäre Infrastruktur und soziales Netzwerk im urbanen Mexi-ko.’ In Mexiko Heute: Politik, Wirtschaft, Kultur. D. Briese-meister and K. Zimmermann. Berlin: IAI.

Marimán, Pablo (2006) ‘Los mapuches antes de la conquista militar chileno-argentina.’ In ¡Escucha Winka! Cuatro ensayos de Historia Nacional Mapuche y un epílogo sobre el futuro. P. Marimán, S. Caniuqueo, J. Millalén, and R. Levil, eds. Pp. 53-128. Santiago: LOM.

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manage specific economic activities. The formation of eth-nic enclaves within the city has been, although exceptional, very important in providing an image of ethnic traces in the city. In this way, the concentration of ethnic population in particular neighbourhoods or the development of ethnic economies marks the urban space which the inhabitants face in their everyday life (Gissi 2009). The migration of the Mapuche to the city, especially to Santiago de Chile, seems different to the general description of similar processes in the rest of Latin America.

The Mapuche in Santiago do not reterritorialise kinship or friendship relationships from the communities. They live scattered throughout the city and they do not work togeth-er. In the case of the Mapuche, the migration was rather an individual process; they did not meet to find housing or to develop economic activities. The Mapuche live in the same quarters of the poor urban population. They do not inhabit ethnified spaces of the city (Imilan 2008).

In the 1980s, there were a few Mapuche organisations in Santiago. Their main work was to organise cultural activi-ties and religious celebrations. Many political leaders sup-ported the assimilation of Mapuche into Chilean society during the second half of the 20th century, consequently their social or cultural traces were invisible in Santiago; one could say that the Mapuche were not pro-active in forming associations. The migrants practically hid their ethnic roots in order to avoid discrimination and to achieve their expectations of integration.

However, to grasp this invisible condition in the city we have to focus our view upon their social structure. Mapuche society and culture have a very particular political character and way of operating. First of all, the Mapuche is a segmentary society, a stateless society or a society “against the state”; in other words, it has led a permanent struggle against the formation of any state-like structure. Power is mainly structured through lineage. Decisions are made in an autonomous manner; the col-lective does not accept a hierarchical social organisation.

Another peculiarity is that despite of its segmentary char-acter, the Mapuche achieved negotiations with the Spanish Crown and the Chilean state which granted them an au-tonomous status – a quite exceptional case in Latin America – until the invasion of the Mapuche territory by Chilean state in the last quarter of the 19th century. Large coali-tions were formed in times of negotiations, but they were occasional and did not develop any kind of bureaucracies (Marimán 2006). The war of occupation definitely changed the Mapuche society and in certain ways its culture, but the character of a society made up of small, autonomous and territorial-based units has remained. Indeed, identity ascrip-tions, senses of belonging, and organisational structure for Mapuche are strongly linked to own lineage and territory.

Their migration process to Santiago had an individual character. In the city, most of the migrants did not par-

began to claim special rights and self-defined develop-ment programmes.

The first indigenous communities were born in the ancient towns in the highland, while in recent time a set of indigenous organisations were founded in Calama. The very first organisation in the city tried to integrate all indigenous from different towns and even ethnic collec-tives. It claims principally the construction of ritual and public spaces in the city. It tried to manage a local urban agenda, with little success.

At the beginning of 2000, the government implemented a pilot programme called “Indigenous Development Area” (ADI) which attempted to coordinate different social and economic projects oriented to the indigenous population. The ADI was designed as a set of development projects to be implemented in the traditional territory, the highland territory. The participation of communities was active and massive, but due to their mobility practices many of the participants were (and still are) living in both the highland as well as in Calama. Thus, it was clear that the political articulation between Licanantay and government had to in-tegrate both spaces. Any local agenda focused exclusively on Calama seemed senseless, whereas the towns in the highland can also not be understood as isolate units.

The political organisation of Licanantay articulates the whole region where people carry out their lives. Mobility practices allow them to overcome the borders between rural and urban space. This case shows how a historical practice re-structures the relations between spaces, identi-ties and political claims. Calama is ethnified into a regional dynamic in which ethnic relationships organise space.

Visible Mapuche Warriache

The importance of social networks for migration in Latin America has already been mentioned; their role is to allow migrants to access work or housing. In most cases, the migrants occupy specific spaces of the city, and create and

Figure 2 Street rally of Mapuche in Santiago de Chile. Photo: Francisco Huaichaqueo.

References (continuation)

Martuccelli, Danilo (2008) ‘Etnicidades modernas: Identidad y democracia.’ In Revisitar la etnicidad. Miradas cruzadas en torno a la diver-sidad. D. Gutiérrez Martínez and H. Balslev, eds. Pp. 41-67. México: Siglo XXI: El Colegio Mexiquense: El Colegio de Sonora.

Millaleo, Ana (2006) Multi-plicación y multiplicidad de las Organizaciones Mapuche Urbanas en la RM. ¿Incre-mento en la participación mapuche o fragmentación organizacional? Licenciatura en Sociología, ARCIS.

Nuñez, Lautaro and Tom Dillehey (1979) Movilidad giratoria, armonía social y desarrollo en los Andes. Santiago: SGM.

Pfaff-Czarnecka, Joanna, et al (2007) ‘Ethnisierung und De-Ethnisierung des Politischen: Aushandlungen um Inklusion und Exklusion im andinen im südasiatischen Raum.’ In Die Ethnisierung des Politischen. Identitätspo-litiken in Lateinamerika, Asien und den USA. C. Büschges and J. Pfaff-Czarnecka, eds. Pp. 19-63. Frankfurt: Campus.

Velasco, Laura (2007) ‘Migraciones indígenas a las ciudades de México y Tiju-ana.’ Papeles de Población (52): 184-209.

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of the City”. Through artistic production, urban Mapuche mix up, re-configure, and create a symbolic universe that is brought together into Warriache.

The notion of Warriache is quite interesting because it defines a new territorial link, with which urban space becomes legitimate Mapuche territory. Especially the children of migrants recognise the city as their own; the shared experience of discrimination and exclusion allows the young generation new territorial and lineage ascrip-tions—in this case with Santiago as their territory, and a lineage based on a creative community.

Besides artistic creation, political mobilisation plays an important role for this generation. The participation in demonstrations on the streets of Santiago brings to the forefront, on the one hand, the conflict of traditional communities against inhabitants of the capital city and, on the other hand, the question of identity for the urban Mapuche. This has made the visibility of Mapuche in Santiago possible. Despite having no large organisations or ethnified neighbourhoods or ethnic economies, their ethnic roots have become visible.

Conclusion: shaping spaces of identities

The two cases presented in this text show the various ways in which ethnic roots seek a place in the city. The specific history of the inhabitants becomes the first source to shape urban space as a “place” where identities can be developed.

Narratives of urban ethnification show us the quite complex context in which urban life is being carried out. Political actors are born, and they introduce new and unknown de-mands and construct new spaces of negotiation. In this way the Latin American city emerges as a fascinating place in which forces from different traditions and logics take place.

The urban indigenous refresh and overcome categories with which the city is imagined, understood, and man-aged. Probably the largest challenge in the next decades for urban managers, scholars and political leaders is to take into account the complexity of the relation between identity and politics in the urban space.

ticipate in organisations or informal networks based in places of origin. Each migrant had to seek and develop his or her own resources of integration. Today, in spite of the amount of Mapuche living in Santiago, an estimated 30% of the total Mapuche population of Chile (250,000 people) (INE 2002), the participation in organisations is not yet massive. According to studies, only five percent of the Mapuche in Santiago participate in ethnic organi-sations (Millaleo, 2005). The organisational landscape is very fragmented and unstable. The organisations are small and usually led by one or just a couple of families, and their appearance and disappearance is continuous. In fact, the non-state tradition can be recognised in the organisational dynamic.

The politics of cultural recognition in the 1990s supported the formation of organisations. For example, in 1995 there were only 15 Mapuche organisations in Santiago, but by 2003 the number had increased to 114. These organisa-tions play a role as meeting places and act as supporters of cultural activities. Today, Mapuche organisations do not have the integration into the city as their goal. This means that they do not try to supply the basic needs for work or housing: their character is non-functional. The organisa-tions shape ceremonial, religious space and, at the same time, are beginning to articulate a political urban demand oriented to the support of traditional communities and their claim to land (Millaleo 2006). Recently, in 2008, the government introduced a programme of financial and technical support for the urban indigenous. Cultural activities are still supported, but some organisations seek special funding specifically intended to improve material living conditions via social housing for indigenous.

Mapuche society, which has always been characterised by fragmentation, has never developed mass organisa-tions. The Mapuche reproduce this dynamic in the city, although many organisations do try to work together to reach specific goals. In this process, a new phenomenon is observed that is especially related to the children of migrants, the second generation.

The articulation of demands in the city allows several groups, whose lineages come from different places of the traditional Mapuche territory, to construct a new space of communication that does not exist in the traditional terri-tory. Even though each family or group recognises a par-ticular origin, they admit a shared everyday experience in the city. Especially the second generation of migrants bears this double experience, and it encourages them to act in the city as a social unit. The young generation discusses and reflects about the lost bond with its original lineages and the meaning of urban life through artistic production. In recent times, cultural expressions have developed in the realms of poetry, art and music, in which a new segment of Mapuche society express its syncretic Weltanschauung.1 The reflection on this double cultural experience unifies the urban segment under the denomi-nation of Warriache, a neologism that means “Mapuche

Figure 3 Street rally of Mapuche in Santiago de Chile. Photo: Francisco Huaichaqueo.

Walter Alejandro Imilan ------------PhD, is based at Instituto de la Vivienda (INVI) of Universidad de Chile in Santiago. He studied social anthropology at Universidad de Chile and received his PhD at the Habitat Unit, University of Technology Berlin, Germany. Areas of focus are urban development, migration, and urban identity processes.

Contact:<wimilan@uchilefau.cl>

1 Some Mapuche artist who represent this tendency are the poets Davis Añiñir and Manquepillanpaillanalan, the visual artist Francisco Huicha-queo, and the fusion music band Wechekech ñi Trawün.

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“If you want to play the game, play the game.” Housing as Governance in Cape Town, South Africa

Astrid Ley

Spieltaktik und die Informalisierung horizontaler Governance-Strukturen bei der Wohnungsversorgung in Kapstadt, SüdafrikaDie Interaktionsdynamik zwischen dem transnationalen Netzwerk Shack/Slum Dwellers International und staatlichen Akteuren wird oftmals mit einer Spieltaktik verglichen. Zwei Fallstudien zu zivilgesell-schaftlichen Allianzen in Kapstadt zeigen, wie sich deren Engagement in der Wohnraumversorgung in den verschiedenen Organisations- und Netzwerkstrukturen niederschlägt. In Kapstadt sind die insti-tutionalisierten Beteiligungsmöglichkeiten in der Wohnraumversorgung sehr beschränkt. Zivilgesell-schaftliche Akteure versuchen als Reaktion darauf, durch Lobbyarbeit größeren politischen Einfluss geltend zu machen oder strategische Partner auf staatlicher Seite zu gewinnen, um alternative Prak-tiken zu testen. Beide Handlungslogiken haben Auswirkungen auf den Organisationsaufbau. Dabei erweisen sich erstens gängige Typologien zu zivilgesellschaftlichen Organisationen oder eine Zuord-nung zu Organisationen und Netzwerken als unzureichend. Die vorgefundenen Strukturen haben sowohl Netzwerk- als auch Organisationsmerkmale inne; sie sind Hybride. Zweitens unterhalten bei-de Allianzformen unterschiedlich vielschichtige und dynamische Beziehungsgeflechte zu Akteuren auf staatlicher Seite. Als Konsequenz entstehen oszillierende Strukturen, die zeitweise stärker Orga-nisationscharakter und zeitweise stärker Netzwerkcharakter haben. Drittens entstehen informelle Governance-Räume auf Initiative der zivilgesellschaftlichen Strukturen mit Enbeziehung staatlicher Akteure. Daraus ergeben sich neue Herausforderungen an die lokalen Entscheidungsfindungspro-zesse. Neue flexible Organisationsstrukturen sowie besondere Interaktionsdynamiken mit dem Staat können neue Kooperations- und Handlungsansätze in der Wohnungsversorgung ermöglichen und können darüber hinaus einen Ausgangspunkt für die Neudefinierung des Städtischen darstellen.

plex social reality of interaction between citizens and the state in the housing process.

Conceptual background: housing, governance, civil society in South Africa

The housing process is a relevant area to study the in- teractions between actors in the city. In South Africa, hous-ing policy is characterised by a juxtaposition of state-driven mass delivery and the recognition of a process orientation in housing. This creates a governance gap and room for interpretation for actors on the ground. Against this background Pithouse (2009) outlines the systematic failure to implement “Breaking New Ground” (the revised housing policy in South Africa): a powerful anti-poor discourse and insufficient political will cause the absent implementation of progressive policy elements.

Housing issues are increasingly discussed as a govern-ance matter. Governance can be defined as a steering logic in society with a mix of actors involved in a process of no clear hierarchy (Sehested, 2001). In South Africa, the decentralisation process has created an “embedded

“If you want to play the game, play the game” was a statement expressed during interviews held with Joel Bolnick, coordinator of the Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC), a Cape Town-based non-gov-ernmental organisation that supports federation groups aligned to Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI).

Housing as a game? Arjun Appadurai (2001:32) already compared SDI activities to a fast ice hockey game, indicat-ing something which has become a central aspect in the study of governance arrangements in Cape Town’s hous-ing process: the dynamics of actors.

Now, how does this link to the topic of “re-defining the urban”? Without going into depth here, it needs to be highlighted that it is the actors who are re-defining the urban. Similarly, Manuel Castells (1983:xiv) invokes Lewis Mumford’s quote from Rousseau in his ground-laying work to study urban social movements: “Houses make a town, but citizens make a city.”

This paper focuses on studying the urban, not in terms of studying its built environment, but in terms of the com-

This paper largely draws from PhD research on the relational webs between civil-society groups and local government in Cape Town, South Africa. See: Ley, 2010. The review and synthesis work and writing of this paper was conducted during a period of research and lecturing at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johan-nesburg. I would like to thank the School of Architecture and Planning at Wits for its support and constructive feedback.

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autonomy” (Oldfield, 2002) for the local state vis-à-vis higher spheres of government. Horizontal governance, in terms of participation, also faces a “crisis of institution-alisation” (Khan and Cranko, 2002). Therefore, scholars suggest shifting from a state-centred focus on institutions to a relational perspective of state and society. Govern-ance practice, they argue, is in reality characterised by relational webs (Pieterse, 2005).

These close ties between different societal spheres include civil-society actors who might challenge and re-arrange existing governance set-ups. Civil society can be defined as the intermediary between state and society. Different perspectives stress either its relevance for performance as a third sector in society (Salamon and Anheier, 1996) or its democratic function as social capital (Putnam, 1993; Mitlin, 1999).

In the development discourse, focus has shifted from non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to grassroots or-ganisations. However, the fluidity of boundaries between these entities has been stressed recently (Hulme, 2008). In South Africa, there was a shift from organisations of resistance during apartheid to implementing agents after 1994. Since the end of the 1990s, social movements have re-emerged as opposition to privatisation and liberalisa-tion. They see housing as key for mobilisation around basic needs. The different movements share an approach which is based on alliances (Robinson and Friedman, 2005; Ballard et al., 2006).

Actors and networks

The three discourses share a central concern to under-stand the fragmented landscape of players and their relationships: organisations can be understood as such players or collective actors. They are social entities with membership, are organised systematically, and have clear system boundaries (Mayntz, 1963:36; Etzioni, 1973:12). On the other hand, relationships according to network theory are created between elements (such as organisations). A key characteristic of networks is that they are not closed entities such as organisations, but are open, decentral and informal (Messner, 2000; Knoke and Kuklinski, 1991).

Organisations such as collective actors as well as net-works are assumed to have structuring effects on the in-teraction of civil society with the state. At the same time, a debate has emerged in literature about the interde-pendency and coupling of networks and organisations. However, this has led to a problem of distinction: associ-ations, for instance, are interpreted as organisation-like networks by some (Altvater, 2000) and as network-like organisations by others (Bommes/Tacke, 2005).

How does this lack of clarity reveal itself in a specific housing process? What organisational structures and rela-tionships are characteristic of civil-society alliances and their relationships with government?

Against this background two civil-society alliances in Cape Town represent cases. They are both active in local, people-driven housing processes and interface with the same municipality. The one alliance consists of communi-ty-based grassroots organisations and NGOs around the Development Action Group (DAG) (alliance type A). The second alliance is made up of the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP), which is aligned to the transnational move-ment Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) and other NGOs (alliance type B).

Context Cape Town

The urban environment in Cape Town is characterised by urban disintegration. This is partly the result of the racial zoning during the apartheid period. However, disinte-gration continues and social disparities are increasing. Although the economy is growing, it does not produce jobs in the low-skilled labour market. Therefore, the formerly disadvantaged remain in problematic socio-economic conditions on the outskirts of the city, which is referred to as the “Cape Flats”. The prevalence of low-income housing delivery at the periphery reinforces this spatial division.

The housing backlog in the city is high (and increasing). About 300,000 households lacked adequate shelter in 2005 (City of Cape Town, 2006). The delivery of houses is very marginal and cannot even cope with the additional

Figure 1 Governance challenges in Cape Town, Source: Ley, 2010

60 TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

housing need arising each year. Planning strategies, such as the Integrated Human Settlements Strategy, are proac-tive and comprehensive. But implementation continues to be isolated project-based interventions.

Given these severe housing challenges in Cape Town, governance-related questions arise: What, for example, contributes to the failure of policy implementation within the sphere of government? There are three governance-related aspects which greatly affect the translation of institutional frameworks into practice (see fig. 1):

First, the implementation of policy in Cape Town is constrained by contestation within the political sphere. Higher spheres of government still hold vested powers and control the type of housing development taking place within the city. Power games and conflict of com-petencies between different levels of government (which are aligned to different political camps in the case of Cape Town) complicate implementation processes for city officials. Much the same can be said of the influence of red tape by higher spheres of government on the mode of local government housing delivery.

Second, at the local government level, strategic approach-es often lack political commitment. Whereas there is increasing process-orientation within the administration, the political sphere continues to be outcome-oriented in terms of housing delivery. The politicised housing agenda translates into delivery pressure for the municipal housing department, which faces difficulties in implementing its more progressive upgrading strategies.

Third, the lack of administrative capacities (evidenced by an under-resourced and understaffed housing depart-ment) and lack of interdepartmental relationships under-mine innovative approaches.

Institutional channels and civil-society reactions

The case of Cape Town reinforces observations in literature about the dynamics of political-opportunity structures. In the housing process, strategic planning is confined to stakeholder forums; at project level, there is no participation during land accessing, restrictive partici-pation during project preparation, and only standardised

participation during housing development. Allowing for any involvement outside these limited channels repre-sents a risk to officials.

Where institutional channels are ineffective, civil-society actors are not motivated to participate. Outside structures emerge instead, as is reflected by the two alliances. Both promote a people-driven housing ap-proach and share a common understanding about the deficiencies of the housing process in the city. The orientation of both alliances can be summarised as follows: Alliance A (around the Development Action Group) has its roots in the anti-apartheid movement. It is aligned to a right-based approach. It sees a neces-sity in balancing the resource inequality in the housing system through claim-making. Alliance B (aligned to the transnational movement Shack/Slum Dwellers Interna-tional) has an alternative development position. For the SDI, housing just represents an entry point for building networks and to balance power inequality.

The limits of classification of civil-society actors

Actors in alliance A can be clearly classified as organisa-tions and as NGOs and people’s organisations according to existing civil society organisations typology (Neubert, 1992; Kirsch, 1994). Alliance A is characterised by sepa-rate entities which occasionally appear together in loose working relationships. From case to case, it sometimes practices networking, but the individual organisation is prevalent. The composition is therefore additive and situ-ational (see fig. 2).

In case B, existing civil society classification shows limitations (see fig. 3). Firstly, in alliance B, network elements are integrated into the structures. The Com-munity Organisation Resource Centre, for instance, could be classified as an NGO. But its internal set-up is based on decentrally organized and independent programmes, which makes it difficult to speak of an organisation. Moreover, the Federation of the Urban Poor itself exposes both organisation-like accountabil-ity structures and is at the same time constituted by informal horizontal networks. As a result, the Federa-tion constitutes a hybrid structure combining charac-teristics of organisations and networks.

Figure 2 Alliance A: multi-organisatio-nal, NGO-centred and situati-onal, Source: Ley, 2010

References

Altvater, Elmar/Brunnengrä-ber, Achim/Haake, Markus/Walk, Heike (eds.) (2000) Vernetzt und verstrickt. Nicht-Regierungs-Organisationen als gesellschaftliche Produktivkraft, 2nd edition, Münster.

Appadurai, Arjun (2001) ‘Deep Democracy: urban go-vernmentality and the horizon of politics’, in: Environment & Urbanization 13 (2), pp. 23-44.

Ballard, Richard/Habib, Adam/Valodia, Imraan (eds.) (2006) Voices of Protest. Social Movements in Post-Apartheid South Africa, Scottsville.

Bommes, Michael/Tacke,Veronika (2005) ‘Luhmann’s System Theory and Network Theory’, in: Seidl, David/Becker, Kai Helge (eds.) Niklas Luhmann and Organization Studies, Malmö, pp. 282-304.

Castells, Manuel (1983) The City and the Grassroots. A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements, London/Victoria.

City of Cape Town (2006) State of Cape Town 2006. Development issues in Cape Town, Cape Town.

Etzioni, Amitai (1973) So-ziologie der Organisationen, München, originally published (1967) Modern Organizations, Englewood Cliffs (NJ).

Hulme, David (2008) ‘Reflections on NGOs and Development: The Elephant, the Dinosaur, Several Tigers but No Owl’, in: Bebbington, Anthony/Hickey, Sam/Mitlin, Diana (eds.)(2008) Can NGOs Make a Difference? London/New York, pp. 337-345.

Kirsch, Ottfried C. (1994) ‚Elitäre Führung oder Parti-zipation? Das Dilemma der Selbsthilfeorganisationen in Sri Lanka’, in: Hanisch, Rolf/Wegner, Rodger (eds.) (1994) Nichtregierungsorganisati-onen und Entwicklung: Auf dem Wege zu mehr Realis-mus, Hamburg, pp. 69-98.

Khan, Firoz/Cranko, Peter (2002) ‘Municipal-Community Partnerships’, in: Parnell, Su-san/Pieterse, Edgar/Swilling, Mark/Woolridge, Dominique (eds.) (2002) Democratising Local Government. The South African Experiment, Lands-downe, pp. 262-275.

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Secondly, there are organisational overlaps between NGOs and grassroots organisations. The uTshani Fund is a case in point. It is constituted by a professional arm and registered as a non-profit organisation. At the same time, it functions as a membership-based association and belongs to the Federation.

Alliance B is driven by a relational logic based on strong ties between the organisations up to a degree of symbiosis in form of organisational overlaps. It com-prises less formalised structures, where organisations constitute organisational cores of the larger structures. The hybrid character of the elements illustrate that one cannot speak of separate entities but of complex interfaces.

The findings are in line with discussions on organisations and networks that both structures are interdependent. Therefore, different patterns of organising coexist. But moreover, the findings are in line with the argument in lit-erature that the analytical boundaries between NGOs and grassroots become blurry. The findings go even further, indicating that the boundaries between the one and other are difficult to determine. This is central: NGO and grass-roots structures overlap, thus causing the emergence of new hybrid structures.

Interface at strategic level

Alliance A does not connect its strategic agenda with its projects. Therefore, people’s organisations are hardly present on the strategic level. Instead, it is driven by NGOs that are practicing critical engagement as stakeholders in institutional spaces or as consultants contracted by government.

The strategic level of alliance B is characterised by ac-tivities outside the government sphere. Core practices are savings schemes which federate. Data gathering and savings are seen as basis for negotiations and partnerships with the state. What becomes obvious is that there is a strong connection between the strategic and project levels (in terms of showcasing alterna-tives). There is also a strong link between NGOs and grassroots. Different stakeholders drive the strategic agenda. NGOs are seen as “door openers” for the Federation to embark on strategic partnerships with the state. Thereby, FEDUP leverages a high amount of state and donor resources.

The key element is that options for interfacing with the state are opened by the alliance (informal governance space1). For instance, government representatives are invited members of:

a) a trust to administer the housing subsidies (uTshani Trust), b) a trust to accelerate the process of land dispersal by

the Methodist Church of Southern Africa (MCSA) to FEDUP (land trust), and

c) a national working group to upscale the delivery of promised housing subsidies.

Furthermore, the Federation identifies individual officials (referred to as key change agents) in government and invites them on exchange visits to other municipalities organised by the larger SDI network.

Project level

Now how do these interfaces look like in different phases during the housing process on project level?

Alliance A adapts its strategy according to institutional channels provided by government (political opportunity structures). It shifts from advocacy and commissioned work, driven by NGOs, to developmental roles and rela-tions on project level determined by regulatory frame-works. Grassroots formalize during the housing process on project-level.

The Netreg Housing Project is a people’s organisation constituted by 150 backyard shack dwellers from the area. They identified a piece of land and addressed the government to release the land for housing develop-ment. This request was initially rejected. The group then approached the Development Action Group for assistance.

Figure 3 Polycentric overlapping composition of Federation alliance, Source: Ley, 2010.

1 The term “governance space” is applied beyond a territo-rial meaning. In a functional sense, it “covers all those circumstances that are cha-racteristic for governance in a society at a certain point of time”, such as output, actors and mode of production. See: Kötter 2007, p.3.

References (continuation)

Knoke, David/Kuklinski, James H. (1991) ‘Network analysis: basic concepts’, in: Thompson, Grahame/Frances, Jennifer/Levacic, Rosalind/Mitchell, Jeremy (eds.) (1991) Markets, Hierarchies and Networks. The Coordination of Social Life, London/Newbury Park/New Delhi, pp. 173-182.

Kötter, Matthias (2007) ‚Der Governance-Raum als Analysefaktor – am Beispiel von „Räumen begrenzter Staatlichkeit“’, SFB Gover-nance Working Paper Series, Nr. 3, Berlin, January 2007.

Ley, Astrid (2010) Housing as Governance. Interfaces bet-ween Local Government and Civil Society Organisations in Cape Town, South Africa, Berlin/Münster.

Mayntz, Renate (1963) Soziologie der Organisation, Hamburg.

Messner, Dirk (2000) ‚Netz-werktheorien: Die Suche nach Ursachen und Auswegen aus der Krise staatlicher Steue-rungsfähigkeit’, in: Altvater, Elmar/Brunnengräber, Achim/Haake, Markus/Walk, Heike (eds.) (2000) Vernetzt und verstrickt, Münster, pp. 28-65.

Mitlin, Diana (1999) Civil Soci-ety and Urban Poverty, Theme Paper 5, Urban Governance Partnership & Poverty Series.

Neubert, Dieter (1992) ‚Zur Rolle von freien Ver-einigungen beim Aufbau einer afrikanischen Zivil-gesellschaft’, in: Gormsen, Erdmann/Thimm, Andreas (eds.) (1992) Zivilgesellschaft und Staat in der Dritten Welt, Mainz, pp. 27-60.

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Numerous tensions between the group and the adminis-tration and local politicians led to conflicts and aggressive claim-making at the time. The group even took one official hostage, which led to a standstill of negotiations.

The Development Action Group then got involved as a mediator and facilitated capacity-building for the com-munity group. Finally, their request was met when they approached the national housing minister for support. The change of commitment was also a result of the project being integrated into a broader urban renewal project where the project was to demonstrate innovations in terms of infill land development. After project approval, the city established a steering committee for all stakeholders, inte-grating the DAG, the Netreg Housing Project, and engineers and planners from private firms to coordinate the construc-tion process. DAG provided workshops on the People‘s Housing Process and facilitated housing design participa-tion. In 2005, a private charity, the Niall Mellon Township Trust, joined in as a partner in development and from there on took over control of the process and compromised community control. Community approaches were also ne-glected since the project was under extreme time pressure. In the case of alliance B, the project preparation phase shows a consultative relationship with the local govern-

ment to solve the problems (e.g. agreements in terms of houses built over the boundary line). The larger network of the Federation of the Urban Poor is not part of the di-rect interface with government. Nevertheless, it organised financial backup for the proactive initiative to consolidate the settlement. The local group is a pro-active driver of the development and it seems to be more of a network-ing organisation. During the phase of housing develop-ment, the local group is less present in the interface with government. Here, the larger Federation network is active. CORC, which is invisible during project preparation, now gains a key role in social facilitation.

Ekupumleni

The 200 members of the Hazeldean Housing Association, which is part of the Federation network, are from site-and-service schemes in Khayelitsha. They had identi-fied a piece of land in Ekupumleni and negotiated the acquisition of the land from the private owner. In 2000, Federation members started to build houses through uTshani bridging finance. This development took place without any layout approval. One of the main obstacles in Ekupumleni was that the government does not toler-ate house construction before township establishment. Basically, non-conforming developments had to be indi-vidually negotiated with the help of the People’s Environ-mental Planning. The HHA started to build further units on uTshani Fund’s property. This was part of an agree-ment between the uTshani Fund, the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP), Shack/Slum Dwellers International (SDI) and the national housing ministry to showcase its ability to construct one-hundred houses in one-hundred days. The SDI-aligned groups then used their alignment to the larger network as a basis for negotiation on the project level. However, the process was blocked after the construction of twenty houses because of cleav-ages between the Federation and a split-off group of the Federation regarding the ownership of the project. This led the provincial government to stop the project. The

Figure 4 Netreg Housing Project in Bonteheuwel, Cape Town, Photo: Ley, 2010.

Figure 5 Ekupumleni housing develop-ment in Philippi East, Cape Town, Photo: Ley, 2010.

References (continuation)

Oldfield, Sophie (2002) ‘”Em-bedded Autonomy”and the Challenges of Developmental Local Government’, in: Parnell, Susan/Pieterse, Edgar/Swilling, Mark/Woolridge, Dominique (eds.) (2002a) Democratising Local Government. The South African Experiment, Cape Town, pp. 92-103.

Pieterse, Edgar (2005) ‘At the limits of possibility: working notes on a relational model of urban politics’, in: Simone, AbdouMaliq/Abouha-ni, Abdelghani (eds.) (2005a): Urban Africa. Changing Contours of Survival in the City, pp. 138-173.

Pithouse, Richard (2009) ‘Progressive policy without progressive politics: lessons from the failure to implement ‘Breaking New Ground’, in: Town and Regional Planning, 54, 1-14.

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Community Organisation Resource Centre consulted the Federation to pay compensation to the split-off group to unblock the project development.

What becomes apparent in both cases is: the interfaces between actors change at different levels and phases in the housing process. Thus, roles and relationships constantly shift and result in alternating functions and inclusion of actors in governance arrangements. There are dynamics which result in actors becoming “moving targets”. Therefore, at times alliances emerge as organ-isation-like networks and at other times as network-like organisations.

Given the above complexity and fluidity, this indicates the most crucial finding: organising structures oscillate.

Conclusions

The two civil-society-alliance case studies highlight that instead of distinct networks and organisations, the real-ity is closer to hybrid structures that cannot be clearly assigned to the one or other concept. Furthermore, they show that organisations and networks are dynamic and, as a result, structures oscillate between organisations and networks in governance arrangements.

The emergence of hybrid, dynamic and oscillating struc-tures, and the resulting complex interaction in the housing process, indicates some broader implications regarding the question of how the urban is re-defined.

First, housing is a governance challenge and its policies often leave open an interpretative or re-defining space for local actors. Thus, attention should shift from policy content to understanding those making use of this interpretative

space. Implementation varies according to who defines it and who benefits from it. It is therefore a political issue.

Second, the case studies illustrate that there is a tenden-cy towards flexible formations in civil-society alliances. Typologies of organisations and networks cannot explain the emerging hybrid and oscillating structures. In the context of transforming political opportunity structures, civil-society arrangements have to be increasingly flexible and dynamic to use the political space. They must develop mechanisms to respond to the changing institutional channels.

Third, existing theories try to align particular functions to specific actors. The paper provided important argu-ments that actors within hybrid structures, instead, show a complexity and fluidity of roles beyond the institutional frameworks. Functions are then not specific to one or-ganisation. Instead, within hybrid and oscillating organisa-tional forms, functions move from one actor to another. For instance, an intermediary function does not apply to one specific third actor between two separate entities. Also, a watchdog function can then even transcend to the state sector. As a result, actors are far more dynamic than suggested by conceptions.

Fourth, the research has shown that governance spaces are also organised outside the state (which would be labelled “informal” by the administration). Therefore, initiative is not confined to the state. Goethert (2005) envisages a change of participation which does not try to integrate the informal into the formal framework, but in-stead assumes a convergence towards the informal. The integration of state actors by the Federation indicates the relevance of this process. This could be a starting point to influence who is re-defining the urban.

Astrid Ley ------------PhD, is urban researcher and lecturer at Habitat Unit and at the international postgraduate master course in Urban Management Studies, both at Berlin University of Technology. She graduated in architecture and urban design and holds a PhD in architecture. Her research interest includes urbanisation in the Global South, related housing processes and the role of local governance and civil society. Recently she worked as short term lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Contact:<astrid.ley@tu-berlin.de> www.habitat-unit.de www.urban-management.de

Figure 6 Vukuzenzele housing deve-lopment with community gardens, another project of FEDUP / CORC / SDI close to Ekupumleni in Philippi East, Cape Town. Photo: K. Teschner.

References (continuation)

Putnam, Robert (1993) Making Democracy Work, Princeton.

Robinson, Mark/Friedman, Steven (2005) ‘Civil society, democratisation and foreign aid in Africa’, in: IDS Discus-sion Paper 383, Download: www.ids.ac.uk/ids/bookshop/dp/dp383.pdf (accessed 25.04.2008).

Salamon, Lester M./An-heier, Helmut K. (1996) The emerging non-profit sector: an overview, Manchester.

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“We Speak Louder than Before.” A Reflection on Participatory Housing Design in Bangkok

Rittirong Chutapruttikorn

“Wir sprechen lauter als vorher.” Gedanken zu partizipativem Wohnbauprozessen in BangkokBei früheren Wohnungsbauprogrammen in Thailand für Gruppen mit niedrigem Einkommen wa-ren letztere meist rein passive Empfänger der Maßnahmen. Das Baan Mankong Programm er-laubt dagegen nicht nur eine aktive Beteiligung der Zielgruppen, sondern weist den zukünftigen Nutzern auch eine Schlüsselrolle im Prozess der Erstellung der Wohnhäuser zu. Dabei werden sie von professionellen Wohnbauberatern unterstützt. Diese stehen nicht nur beim Hausbau mit Rat und Tat zur Seite, sie unterstützen die bislang rechtlosen Siedler zudem in der Entwicklung eines neuen Selbstbewusstseins als gleichberechtigte Bürger. Am Beispiel der Siedlung Bangra-mad stellt der Autor seine im Wege der teilnehmenden Forschung gewonnenen Erkenntnisse vor. Die Bauprojekte bewirken demnach eine eindeutig positive Veränderung des täglichen Lebens in ökonomischer wie in sozialer Hinsicht. Gleichzeitig wird der vordem enge soziale Zu-sammenhalt oft durch eine jetzt individuellere Lebensweise ersetzt. Erfolg und Nicht-Erfolg der Projekte hängen ab vom Grad des Engagements der Bewohner, von der Angemessenheit der Hauskosten und vom Verständnis zwischen Beratern und Bewohnern beim Entwurf sowie im Bauprozess. Dabei erfüllen die selbst gebauten Häuser auch die Funktion, Veränderungen des Lebensstils und die Verbesserung des sozialen Status nach außen zu spiegeln.

Squatters illegally occupy land which belongs to the State Railway of Thailand (SRT), where they construct most of their houses provisionally with recyclable materials such as advertisement banners, reused timber, and reused corrugated tin. On the basis of such conditions, they are regarded as slum dwellers. In order to resist eviction, squatters from many communities who share common concerns have gathered to form a network.

The primary role of the network is to negotiate proper-ty agreements with landowners. After a long period of struggle, the dwellers managed to secure a temporary house registration certificate, which signified that their children could enrol in school and that a basic infrastruc-ture could be installed (Chantrabha, 2001:13). They fought on until they succeeded in obtaining a thirty-year land lease, on the condition that their housing should be deve-loped or rebuilt to meet urban standards. To achieve this, they were required to register for financial support and to attend the Baan Mankong housing programme.

The Baan Mankong is managed by a government-funded organisation named the Community Organisation De-velopment Institute (CODI) which issues housing loans directly to communities. The loan plus interest must be re-payed in monthly instalments within a period of fifteen years, and the loan must be registered under the name of

a community cooperative rather than an individual (Boonyabancha, 2009:313). The programme allows low-income dwellers to take a key role in managing and designing their new housing environments by working in collaboration with other agencies, such as the local government, NGOs, and academics (CODI update, 2008:5).

CODI agencies take the role of facilitator in the whole process, from the point when the inhabitants begin sur-veying their requirements to the design of the dwellings and community layout, and up to the point of housing completion. Community participation is the programme’s main approach (Boonyabancha, 2005:25).

Working with residents to solve problems

At the time of the 2008 survey conducted by the author, several of the railway communities included in this study were at the design stage. This article is largely focused on the Bangramard community because only dwellers in this squatter settlement were at the point of starting to construct the new dwellings, some of which were finished when the programme was revisited at the end of 2009. The Bangramard community is located in a rural conservation and agricultural zone in a suburb of Bang-kok, thus only a detached style of house was approved for construction (GGWG, 2006:7,61). The house design

References

Askew, M. (1994) Interpreting Bangkok: The Urban Question in Thai Studies. Bangkok: Chul-alongkorn University Press.

Boonyabancha, S. (2005) 'Bann Mankong: going to scale with "slum" and squatter upgrading in Thailand', Envi-ronment & Urbanisation 17, pp. 21-46.

Boonyabancha, S. (2009) 'Land for housing the poor – by the poor: experiences from the Baan Mankong nationwide slum upgrading programme in Thailand', Environment & Urbanization 21, (2), pp. 309-329.

Chantrabha, A. (2001) 'Rail-way Settlements in Thailand', Housing by People in Asia, October 2003, p.36.

CODI (2008) (in Thai) Hand-book for Project Arrangement of Baan Mankong. Bangkok: Public Relations Section and Baan Mankong Office.

CODI update. (2008) 50 Community Upgrading Projects. Bangkok: Community Organisations Development Institute (5).

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Selecting the Baan Mankong programme to replace the squalor of their informal homes could increase the respect in which residents are held by society and show that they are no longer slum dwellers. Not only does the new dwelling influence a change in self-attitude and a transformed identity, but it also can communicate the dweller’s status, particularly their financial health. Moreover, as Dayaratne and Kellett (2008:60) discovered (although in a different context), the house can be “a way of rising up the social ladder and ability to acquire and conform to accepted tastes.”

Housing image: the conflict of similarity or diversity

Opposing ideas about the appearance of the new housing led to arguments among the residents during the design process. The question was whether every house should conform to a uniform appearance or whether different designs and styles could be used. The residents, who supported the former idea, claimed that similarity would make the community look orderly and beautiful; this could

(5x7 metres) was modified four times over the course of the participation project. However, its final form is still far from finalised. It emerged the problem lay not in the design itself, but in the poor communication between the designer and the residents. Due to their inability to understand architectural drawings, what the dwel-lers envisaged regarding the house was not what the architect intended. The two sides of the equation failed to correspond and the design revision process seemed difficult to conclude. Consequently, the residents and the architect felt dissatisfied with the participation process because of this lack of understanding.

I volunteered to work with the inhabitants to find a solution. Alternative scale models of the house were constructed as a means of helping the future residents better understand the design. The scale models and ensuing discussion regarding them not only increased the inhabitants’ architectural design knowledge, but also provided an in-depth understanding of their lives and situation (Stringer, 1999:10; Stoecker, 1999:884). Alongside other methods, this proved an effective way of increasing trust and rapport, as well as giving the researcher a chan-ce to contribute to the setting.

New dwelling: new image

Pejorative assumptions made about squatter settle-ments by wider society—for example, that they are a city eyesore or a social cancer (Pornchokchai 1985:13)—give a sense of exclusion and cause squatters psychological suffering. While the threat of eviction can directly lead to physical damages, a lack of respect continually corrodes mental well-being and self-esteem. An attempt to trans-form the built environment does not only signify the im-provement of their dwellings to meet socially acceptable standards, but can also lead to a higher status and new self-identity. Residents believe that owning a permanent house on secure land will give rise to many positive im-pacts on both their physical and their mental well-being.

Rhabibadana (2007:2-3), who evaluated the change in the squatters’ worldview and attitude towards self and society after acquiring the new housing under the Bann Mankong programme, points out that “having a perma-nent house significantly raises the community’s status from the fringe, where it is known by various contemp-tuous names, to the rank of a developed community. Its dignity is increased equally or more than that of other neighbourhoods.”

Such a shift in attitude can be represented through one dweller’s account of Rhabibadana’s study. “This used to be slum, but now it is a house. In the past when we went back home, we were afraid to say we live in Kao-seng (the name of community). People might look down (or) have antipathy. However, recently we speak proudly that we live in Kao-seng. We speak louder than before.”

Figure 1(left) The scale-model of the new house proposed by the CODI architect, photo: CODI

Figure 2 typical Perng-Maa-Ngaen in Thailand, source: www.siamensis.org/oldboard/4662.html

References (continuation)

Dayaratne, R. and Kellett, P. (2008). 'Housing and Home-Making in Low-Income Urban Settlements: Sri Lanka and Colombia', Journal of Housing and the Built Environment 23, pp. 53-70.

Dovey, K. (1985) 'Home and Homelessness', in Altman, I. Werner, C.M.(ed), Home Environment. Vol. 8. New York: Plenum Press, pp. 33-64.

GGWG (2006) (in Thai) Go-vernment Gazette: The Issue of Mandate. Bangkok: Service Printing Group of the Ministry and Government Gazette.

Gough, K.V. and Kellett, P. (2001) 'Housing Consolidation and Home-Based Income Generation: Evidence from Self-Help Settlements in Two Colombian Cities', Cities, 18, (4), pp. 235-247.

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significantly alter its image from that of a slum to that of a harmonious settlement. Others argued that even when the houses presented an array of different shapes and forms, this too could achieve a harmonious appearance. They commented that the community should be concer-ned with the residents’ real needs and familial financial situation rather than with community image alone.

Whenever problems arise, community members hold a meeting and solutions often result from collective engagement. The answers spontaneously emerge through working, discussing, and coming to agreement together. In Bangramard’s housing design, such collaborative and coll-ective processes often led to a satisfactory conclusion—although not everybody was pleased with the result. For example, most participants agreed to rely on a standard design drawing for housing permission requests. It would take up less time and simplify the residential planning permission process. By contrast, if different architectural drawings were created corresponding to an individual’s needs, the architect would need time to produce each new design and each family would have to request planning permission individually. The whole process would introduce considerable delay.

Nevertheless, the two-storey house design selected by the majority was unnecessarily large and expensive for some. For a female resident named Pa-umpa, the upper floor is regarded as an unused area because she is partially paralysed, unemployed and lives only with her husband. In his sixties, her husband has to exert more energy to earn money for features they do not really need. Although a one-storey dwelling would better fit their lifestyle, the majority voice indirectly forced them to accept the collective decision. Here it can be seen

that the process of decision-making has not been able to accommodate variation, affordability and family size; and the voice of the minority tends to be ignored.

Outside influence: another conflict about housing image

Besides the aforementioned issues, the understanding between facilitators and residents is a crucial factor that affects the appearance of the housing and the image of the community. Within the Baan Mankong programme, CODI encourages variation and distinctiveness in the appearance of the housing. They provide a budget speci-fically intended to generate an identity for each commu-nity (CODI 2008:48). It enlivens ‘the visual character of the new community’ (CODI update 2008:4). However, it is not clear in CODI’s documents what ‘identity’ actually means. Consequently there has emerged some con-fusion over terms. It has led to misunderstanding and conflict between facilitators and residents regarding the interpretation of identity through the built environment.

In Bangramard, the CODI architect designed the new houses for the residents1 by using two mono-pitch roofs abutting each other in the same form. He explained that this built form could represent the new image of this com-munity. The mono-pitch roof is called Perng-Maa-Ngaen and is commonly interpreted as a temporary building. This proposed design evoked an oppositional response in the community (see figures 1 and 2).

A considerable number of participants appreciated the architect’s explanation that the building would look modern as well as stay cool because of its ventilation scheme. However, other residents disliked the way its shape identified it as a provisional building. They wanted to live in a permanent house, but this roof form suggested instability to them. It became highly controversial within community because it also led to other unfavourable in-terpretations (e.g. separation, incompleteness). One older dweller expressed it thus: ‘I don’t want it. It is not good. The old saying said the „Maa-Ngaen“ is waiting.2 Good fortune won’t arrive. It is true, believe me’. Such physical symbols carry negative meanings, which can lower the residents’ self-esteem.

In the end, the proposed roof form was rejected because the ‘identity’ implied by the design was inappropriate. At-tempts to create a new housing image and represent the community’s identity must take into consideration how the residents give meaning to their built environments, since ‘specific residential neighbourhoods are associa-ted with different symbolic values’ (Hauge and Kolstad, 2007:273).

A more permanent house and its economic impact

Under the Baan Mankong programme, a huge number of informal housing projects have been developed across

Figure 3Images of Mubanjatsan in Bangkok, source: www.thaisecondhand.com

1 Degree of participation impacts heavily on the design process. While the Baan Mankong programme is a gigantic project whose goal is to upgrade two hundred thousand units by 2011 (Sirilaksanaporn, 2008:44), the number of facilitators, particularly architects, is small. Thus, the participation concept in the design pro-cess is difficult to achieve at an operational level. In some projects, the architect desi-gns the house instead of the people. In others, one house design was utilised by many communities. The diversity of people’s needs is ignored.

2 The word ‘Maa-Ngaen’ illustrates the action of a begging dog, which is raising its head and looking up. It looks like the dog is waiting for something.

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the country. A considerable tranche of government budget supports the programme and is released to the residents in form of subsidies and loans. Although the new housing brings many benefits (e.g. better quality of life, stability) a heavy burden of loan debt, which each family must confront, is the major concern of the resi-dents. Under the programme regulations, people have to establish savings groups (CODI update, 2008:3). Individu-als must have collected a minimum of ten percent of the sum they expect to borrow from CODI.

A considerable number of residents, whose savings were not sufficient, were forced to borrow money from other sources with higher interest rates because the amount loaned by CODI is not enough for constructing a new dwelling (Onndum et al, 2007:2-38). With limited income, the large debt causes them a great deal of pressure and long-term stress. Many squatters hesitate to participate in the programme. Strategies for reducing the participants’ debt should be given much greater importance and solutions implemented.

A large number of squatters made a common proposal for a significant strategy to reduce the loan, which was the method of gradually consolidating funds and impro-ving houses while they are living in and working on the dwelling. This is suggested in place of the dramatic trans-formation from their informal dwelling to the new buil-ding. The dwellings would then be gradually constructed and incrementally developed depending on the financial resources they have available.

A longitudinal study of informal settlements in Latin Ame-rica by Kellett (2005) demonstrates the benefits of a gra-dual consolidation of squatters’ dwellings. His case study showed that temporary housing materials are steadily replaced by more permanent materials in the later stages of occupancy. As residents develop the house, their quali-ty of life also improves. He also mentioned that consolida-tion can generate the possibility of a higher income (e.g. through renting out rooms) and the extra money in turn may further aid the improvement of housing conditions (Gough and Kellett, 2001:245).

Ponsawan is a community in the eastern province which was upgraded with a consolidation approach (see figure

4). The community received subsidies to improve basic infrastructure. Most residents used the loan for a land lease only, but several also borrowed more money for constructing new houses. When plots of land were secured, the dwellings were modified. Reused timbers, corrugated sheets, and other temporary materials have been steadily replaced by more permanent construc-tions. Significantly, most residents have incurred only modest debts.

However, many inhabitants disagreed with this proposal. They were afraid that some residents might construct their new house with sub-standard materials and, thus, that the community would continue to have the appea-rance of a slum. In contrast, people who proposed this idea argued that in the past they did not want to invest in the kinds of housing elements that would meet with social acceptance because they did not have ownership and might be evicted at any time.

But now their security of tenure is stable for least thirty years. They believed that, consequently, everyone would want to make their neighbourhood liveable, beautiful, and, of course, to treat it as a home. Throughout such consolidation, dwellers and their dwellings would develop together, ’over long periods of time through everyday dwelling and care‘ (Dovey, 1985:42). Although the idea of gradual consolidation cannot immediately eradicate the slum image in many squatters’ minds, it sustains long-term economic status for families who cannot access mainstream jobs and who face difficulties in generating incomes.

Figure 4Ponsawan community, Khon-kaen: the housing has been consolidated in line with what is affordable to residents. 2005 (above left), source: CODI / 2008 (above, middle and right), source: author / 2009 (bottom), source: Slum see paak.

References (continuation)

Hauge, A. and Kolstad, A. (2007) 'Dwelling as an Expres-sion of Identity: A Comparative Study among Residents in High-Priced and Low-Priced Neighbourhoods in Norway', Housing, Theory and Society, 20, (4), pp. 279-292.

Kellett, P. (2005) 'The Construction of Home in the Informal City', pp. 22-42, in Hernandez, F., Millington, M. and Borden, I. (eds) Transcul-turation: Cities, Space and Architecture in Latin America. .Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi.

Onndum, B., Boonmatayat, C., Tulata, S. and Wongasa, V. (2007) (in Thai) ‘Urban Poor: The Change of Worldview and Attitude towards Self and Society, A case study of Baan Mankong Khonkaen’, in Rhabibhadana, A. (ed.) Urban Poor: The Change of World-view and Attitude towards Self and Society. Bangkok: unknown publisher.

Pornchokchai, S. (1985) 1020. Bangkok: Physic Centre Publishing.

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Discussion

It could be assumed that the Baan Mankong might upgrade the identity of squatter settlements from places perceived as unattractive to places regarded as legiti-mate communities. The sense of a higher social position, equal to middle-class, came to the squatters’ minds after they received permanent living status (Rhabi-bandana, 2007:5). Such feelings of class adjustment are communicated through the new dwellings. The residents present a new social position by imitating models of Mu-banjatsan (private housing development), ‘where (there) are conspicuous symbols of the middle-class lifestyle based on consumption, indulgence and display’ (Askew 1994:174). Elements such as equal plot sizes on a grid layout and identical facades are employed to implement their image to meet the standard of social acceptability.

Rhabibadana (2007:5) demonstrates that the change of status influences dwellers’ tastes, attitudes and behaviour. This may transform their pattern of living from community-oriented groups to more independent, individual lifestyles resembling other urban middle-classes. Each family must concentrate more of its income to pay off debt, and concomitantly, their way of life may gradually become more individualised. Building a community does not only entail the physical impro-vement of residents’ housing, but must also investigate community values (e.g. close relationships among community members, accumulated customs) and en-courage people to realise the worth of such values. The

attainment of these goals is not only the responsibility of the residents, but also of the facilitators.

Conclusion

The Baan Mankong programme provides residents with the opportunity of generating a new image and status for themselves through self-made environments. The shift from illegal squatter status to that of home-owning citizen has helped to challenge long-term perceptions of disrepute. Their image is being transformed.

However, the freedom of community self-selection, of budgeting one’s own resources, and shaping one’s en-vironment, which is the existential value of the informal settlement (Turner, 1968:357), is being limited by official control, regulation and lack of understanding by the project’s facilitators. Constructing a community and es-tablishing homes have continued to be hindered by both internal and external forces. Based on their experiences as illegal dwellers, the fear of authority still haunts these people. Uniform housing can better represent the power of the group and help to counter such feelings of agitation. Moreover, an ideal social order represented through rectilinear layout results from the desire to cre-ate a place as close as possible to dominant residential housing forms. Although the meaning of home at this stage may remain far from a place of true autonomy, it integrates the former squatters into the city as formal and legitimate members.

Rittirong Chutapruttikorn ------------PhD, Student at the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape, Newcastle University. Rittirong graduated as an architect and worked as a tutor in the School of Fine and Applied Arts at Bangkok University. He has also practised as an architect and as a part-time art instructor. Research interest: squatter settlements, people behaviour in domestic space and socio-cultural issues.

Contact:<Rittirong.Chutapruttikorn@ncl.ac.uk> or <Rittirong72@yahoo.co.uk>

Figure 5new houses in Bangramard in 2009, photo: CODI.

References (continuation)

Rhabibhadana, A. (2007) (in Thai) ‘Urban Poor: The Change of Worldview and Attitude towards Self and Society, the Overview’, in Rhabibadana, A (ed.) Bangkok: unknown publisher.

Sirilaksanaporn, U. (2008) (in Thai) The Result of Solving of the Problem of Housing for the Poor by Community Organisations in the Baan Mankong Programme since 2002-2008. Bangkok: CODI.

Stoecker, R. (1999) 'Are Academics Irrelevant? Roles for Scholars in Participatory Research', American Beha-vioural Scientist, 42, (5), pp. 840-854.

Stringer, E.T. (1999) Action research. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publications.

Turner, J. (1968) 'The Squatter Settlement: An Architecture that Works', Architectural Design, 38, (8), pp. 355-360.

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Recife / Brasilien: Mutationen standardisierter Großsiedlungen durch ihre NutzerInnen

Katharina Kirsch-Soriano da Silva

Recife, Brasil: modifications of standardised housing estates by their residents Case studies in the Metropolitan Region of Recife (Brazil) show how modifications of huge and standardised hous-ing estates have been undertaken by their residents and, step by step, caused architectonic mutations of the exist-ing settlement structures. The analysed housing estates were constructed in the late 1970s and early 1980s within the scope of a national social housing programme. The originally very uniform buildings have been modified and individualised by different constructional interventions. Especially the multi-storey blocks have experienced vari-ous typological evolutions. The free spaces within the housing estates have also been alternated and now offer additional possibilities of use as well as different visual relations, connection paths, and spatial experiences. The multifaceted processes of mutation follow the logics of the existing settlement structures on one hand, while on the other hand they possess their own dynamics which modify the existing structures in a creative and innovative way. They agitate between the poles of “formal” and “informal” urban development and are affected by the top-down urban planning of the state agencies, which implemented the social housing complexes in the first place, as well as by the bottom-up spatial restructuring created later by the inhabitants. In this way, they open perspectives for a sustainable and user-oriented understanding of architecture and architectural typology.

Die architektonische Auseinandersetzung mit der Thema-tik des Wohnens ist spätestens seit der Industrialisierung und der mit ihr einhergehenden Urbanisierung durch das Denken in großen und immer stärker standardisierten Dimensionen gekennzeichnet. Als Reaktion auf rein kapi-talistisch orientierten Mietwohnungsbau und den mit ihm verbundenen problematischen Wohnverhältnissen für die Masse der ArbeiterInnen in den dicht besiedelten städ-tischen Ballungsräumen, wurden von Stadtverwaltungen und PlanerInnen verschiedene alternative Modelle für den urbanen Wohnungsbau entwickelt. Diese sahen u.a. eine aufgelockertere und weniger dichte Bebauung vor, the-matisierten aber auch soziale Fragen der Erschwinglich-keit und des Zugangs zum städtischen Wohnraum sowie der Notwendigkeit eines „sozialen Wohnbaus“.

Insbesondere in der Nachkriegsmoderne und den darauf folgenden Jahrzehnten fand die durch zunehmenden technologischen Fortschritt ermöglichte industrielle und rationalisierte Massenbauweise immer stärker Eingang in den Wohnungsbau. In zahlreichen Ländern wurden im Rahmen staatlicher sozialer Wohnbauprogramme großmaßstäblich geplante Wohnsiedlungen errichtet, die gleichzeitig über stark vereinheitlichte architektonische Typen verfügten. Das Konzept der so genannten „Groß-siedlung“ ist dabei zum einen als ambitionierter Versuch lesbar, nach modernen Technologien und Standards ge-staltete Wohneinheiten für möglichst alle Bevölkerungs-schichten zugänglich zu machen. Zum anderen bringt es aber auch die Herausforderung mit sich, trotz einer

gewissen Dimensionierung und Standardisierung, einen lebenswerten Wohnraum und ein vielfältiges Wohnumfeld für die BewohnerInnen und deren heterogene Bedürf-nisse zu ermöglichen1.

Konkrete Erfahrungen, wie sich solche Siedlungsformen in der Praxis - d.h. in ihrer Nutzung - bewährt haben und bewähren, eröffnen in diesem Zusammenhang wertvolle Perspektiven für die Planung zukünftiger Siedlungs- und Gebäudetypen. Beispiele aus der Großstadtregion Recife im Nordosten Brasiliens zeigen, wie BewohnerInnen selbst initiativ wurden und durch bauliche Interventionen

1 Zur Kritik monotoner Wohn-siedlungen an den Ausfall-straßen der Großstädte sowie deren Auswirkungen auf die menschliche Psyche und Wahr-nehmung vgl. Mitscherlich, Ale-xander (1965) Die Unwirtlichkeit unserer Städte. Anstiftung zum Unfrieden. Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt am Main.

Abb. 1 / Figure 1Siedlung Maranguape I / Maranguape I housing estate. Photo: K. Kirsch-Soriano da Silva.

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innovative Nachverdichtungen und Weiterentwicklungen standardisierter Großsiedlungen bewirkten und damit gleichzeitig ihren urbanen Lebensraum in vielfältigen Prozessen neu definierten2.

Errichtung standardisierter Großsiedlungen in peripheren Lagen

Die betrachteten Wohnsiedlungen Maranguape, Marcos Freire, Muribeca und Rio Doce wurden Ende der 1970er und Anfang der 1980er Jahre in peripheren Gebieten der Großstadtregion Recife erbaut. Ihre Errichtung war Teil eines landesweit angelegten Wohnbauprogramms, das von der nach 1964 in Brasilien herrschenden Militärdik-tatur zur „sozialen Stabilisierung“ des Landes initiiert worden war. Während die Existenz der Favelas, der rasant anwachsenden Armensiedlungen in den brasili-anischen Städten, bekämpft werden sollte, war es Ziel dieses Wohnbauprogramms, moderne Wohneinheiten zu schaffen und auch für sozial benachteiligte Familien mit niedrigerem Einkommen zugänglich zu machen. In den 1960er Jahren und den beiden folgenden Jahrzehnten wurden daher zum ersten Mal so genannte „Wohnsied-lungen sozialen Interesses“ in ganz Brasilien in großem Maßstab umgesetzt. Auf bundesstaatlicher bzw. auf städtischer Ebene operierten dabei staatlich eingerich-tete Wohnbaugesellschaften, Companhias de Habitação (COHABs), welche für die lokale Umsetzung des national koordinierten Wohnbauprogramms verantwortlich waren. Sie trugen die Errichtung der einzelnen Wohn-siedlungen in planerischer wie administrativer Hinsicht. Die bauliche Ausführung wurde von privaten Konstrukti-onsfirmen übernommen.

Da die meisten verfügbaren Flächen in der städtischen Peripherie lokalisiert waren, entstanden gigantische Wohngebiete innerhalb weniger Jahre quasi „auf der

grünen Wiese“ und großteils isoliert vom bereits beste-henden urbanen Siedlungsgebiet. Sie beinhalteten in der Regel mehrere tausend Wohneinheiten3, sowie mög-lichst kostengünstige und stark uniformierte architekto-nische Lösungen. Neben Einfamilien- und Reihenhäusern wurden standardisierte mehrgeschossige Wohnblöcke realisiert, welche seitens der COHAB der Großstadtregi-on Recife - wie auch in anderen Städten - im Laufe der Zeit schließlich zunehmend favorisiert wurden.

Architektonische Einflüsse kamen von verschiedenen europäischen Siedlungen der Zwischen- und Nachkriegs-zeit, wobei vor allem die durch Le Corbusier und die „Charta von Athen“ formulierten Konzepte der Moderne bei der Planung der Siedlungen prägend waren4. Nach dem Prinzip der Funktionstrennung wurden innerhalb der Siedlungen keine nutzungsgemischten Bereiche vorgesehen. Große Teile des Siedlungsgebiets waren ausschließlich mit Wohnhäusern bebaut, während die wenigen umgesetzten gemeinschaftlichen Gebäude für Geschäfte, Dienstleistungen und kommunale Einrich-tungen auf einigen zentral gelegenen Flächen konzen-triert wurden. Die mehrgeschossigen Wohnblöcke be-fanden sich in gleichmäßigen Abständen zueinander auf den Grundstücken verteilt und waren von weiten, aber keiner konkreten Gestaltung oder Nutzung zugeführten Freiräumen umgeben. Die einzelnen projektierten Wohn-einheiten verfolgten das Konzept des „Existenzmini-mums“ und hatten die Zufriedenstellung eines Mindest-maßes an Grundbedürfnissen bei gleichzeitig höchster Funktionalität und Sparsamkeit zum Ziel.

Eigentumsverhältnisse und rechtliche Rahmenbe-dingungen innerhalb der Siedlungen

Die Vergabe der Wohneinheiten sollte mittleren und niedrigeren Einkommensschichten zugute kommen und war im Prinzip über die Höhe des Familieneinkommens geregelt. Die errichteten Wohneinheiten wurden durch eine staatliche Bank vorfinanziert, sie waren allerdings als Eigentumswohnungen konzipiert und sollten von ihren BesitzerInnen in Ratenzahlungen über einen Zeitraum von bis zu 20 oder 25 Jahren abbezahlt werden. Seitens der zukünftigen BewohnerInnen war daher auch ein ge-wisses Eigenkapital erforderlich. Die als Mercado Popular bezeichnete Zielgruppe der COHAB, die zu Beginn des Wohnbauprogramms in den 1960er Jahren mit einem Familieneinkommen von 1-3 gesetzlich festgelegten Mindestlöhnen definiert worden war, wurde ab 1975 auf ein Einkommen von 2-5 Mindestlöhnen angehoben. Zum einen wurde damit auf Inflation und sinkende reale Kaufkraft der gesetzlichen Mindestlöhne reagiert, zum anderen auf zunehmende Zahlungsunfähigkeit und Zah-lungsrückstände der BewohnerInnen in den davor bereits umgesetzten Siedlungsprojekten5. Familien mit gerin-gerem Einkommen sowie Familien ohne sichere und fixe Einkünfte hatten keine Möglichkeit, sich in die Anmeldeli-ste einzutragen und durch die COHAB eine Wohnung zu-geteilt zu bekommen. Die Einkommensgrenze nach oben

2 Auf Grundlage einer detail-lierten Forschungsarbeit über die Veränderungen der Großsiedlungen entstand 2008 die Dissertation der Au-torin „Mutationen städtischer Siedlungsstrukturen in Recife/Brasilien“ an der Technischen Universität Wien, Fachbereich Städtebau.

3 Die Siedlung Maranguape verfügte bei ihrer Errichtung über 11.709 Wohneinheiten, die Siedlung Rio Doce über 9.382, die Siedlung Marcos Freire über 4.672 und die Siedlung Muribeca über 2.240.

4 Vgl. Loureiro, Cláudia; Amo-rim, Luiz Manuel do Eirado (2008) ‚A domesticidade perdida.’ In: Cadernos de Pós-Graduação em Arquitetura e Urbanismo. Nr.2. S. 60-73.

5 Vgl. Melo, Norma Moura Lacerda de (1990): Estado, capital financeiro, espaço ha-bitacional. O caso da Região Metropolitana do Recife. Ed. Universitária da UFPE, Recife, S.122 ff.

Abb. 2 / Figure 2Siedlung Marcos Freire / Marcos Freire housing estate. Photo: K. Kirsch-Soriano da Silva.

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hin wurde bei der Vergabe der Wohneinheiten hingegen nicht so streng genommen, da in der Praxis häufig nur das Einkommen des Haushaltsvorstands nachgewiesen werden musste und das gesamte Familieneinkommen durchaus höher liegen konnte. Unter den Erstwohnungs-eigentümerInnen der COHAB-Wohneinheiten verfügten 56,23% über ein Einkommen von bis zu 3 Mindestlöhnen, während 11,28% die vorgesehene Einkommensgrenze von bis zu 5 Mindestlöhnen überschritten6. Viele der Wohneinheiten wurden im Laufe der Zeit auch vermietet oder weiterverkauft. Laut einer Studie aus dem Jahr 1990 lag der Anteil der weiterverkauften oder innerhalb der Familie weitergegebenen und vererbten COHAB-Wohn-einheiten bereits damals bei über 55%6. Die nachzie-henden Familien verfügten zwar über ein vergleichbares oder sogar etwas höheres Einkommensniveau, aber häufig über unregelmäßige Einkünfte und informelle Beschäftigungsverhältnisse. Seitens der COHAB wurde die Weitergabe kaum gesteuert. Bei der Volkszählung im Jahr 2000 lag das durchschnittliche Monatseinkommen in den vier betrachteten Wohnsiedlungen zwischen 3 und 3,5 Mindestlöhnen und damit jeweils leicht über dem Durchschnitt der Großstadtregion Recife.

Da in den Wohnblöcken dieser Siedlungen im Wesent-lichen nur 2 standardisierte Wohnungstypen - nämlich Zwei Zimmer-Wohnungen mit 41 m² und Drei Zimmer-Wohnungen mit 52 m² - zur Verfügung standen, konnte bei der Vergabe der Wohneinheiten auf unterschiedliche Familiengrößen und Bedürfnisse nur sehr bedingt einge-gangen werden. Im Jahr 2000 lag die durchschnittliche Haushaltsgröße, je nach Siedlung, zwischen 3,34 und 3,75 Personen pro Haushalt. Zwischen 15 und 22% der Wohneinheiten wurden jedoch von Haushalten mit mehr als vier Personen bewohnt.

Gleichzeitig mit den einzelnen Wohneinheiten wurden die allgemeinen Gebäudeteile und das den jeweiligen Wohnblock umgebende Grundstück durch die Hausge-meinschaft aller WohnungseigentümerInnen eines Ge-bäudes erworben und in deren Verwaltungsobhut über-geben. Seit dem Bezug der Wohnblöcke verwaltet in der Regel je ein/e gewählte/r HaussprecherIn die monatli-chen Beiträge, die von den Mitgliedern der Hausgemein-schaft für die Instandhaltung des gemeinschaftlichen Eigentums eingezahlt werden. Rechte und Pflichten der Hausgemeinschaft sind gesetzlich geregelt und werden durch eine unter den WohnungseigentümerInnen getrof-fene Übereinkunft sowie eine gemeinsame Hausordnung spezifiziert. Zuwiderhandlungen können bestraft bzw. auch gerichtlich geahndet werden, wobei dafür sowohl entsprechende Kenntnisse als auch finanzielle Mittel erforderlich sind. In den betrachteten Siedlungen, wo die gemeinsamen Regelungen oft sogar nur mündlich festgehalten werden, kommt dies allerdings praktisch nicht vor. Seitens der COHAB bestand in den Kaufverträ-gen u.a. die Auflage, dass bauliche Veränderungen nicht ohne ausdrückliche Erlaubnis durch die COHAB durchge-führt werden durften - aufgrund mangelnder Kapazitäten

wurde dies in der Praxis jedoch weder kontrolliert noch exekutiert. Seit der Auflösung der Institution im Jahr 1999 beschränken sich deren Nachfolgeorgane ohnehin vorrangig auf die Sicherstellung noch ausstehender und im Einzelfall auch neu auszuhandelnder Zahlungsraten für die Wohneinheiten. Über konkrete gemeinsame Belange wie etwa Investitionen in Erhaltung, Verbesse-rung und Veränderung der gemeinschaftlichen Bereiche wird hingegen tatsächlich in den vor Ort stattfindenden Hausversammlungen diskutiert und entschieden. Gerade die Freiräume des umliegenden Grundstücks werden jedoch häufig nicht als gemeinsames Eigentum, sondern als brachliegende Restflächen wahrgenommen. Dement-sprechend werden sie in vielen Fällen wie „Niemands-land“ behandelt, um welches sich die Hausgemeinschaft nicht kümmert, das aber auf der anderen Seite durch individuelle Nutzungen, Gestaltungen und Bebauungen Aneignung finden kann.

Die Straßen innerhalb der Siedlungen sind öffentliches Gut. Ihre Erhaltung obliegt damit der jeweiligen Stadt-verwaltung, und die Hausgemeinschaften können nur

Abb. 3 / Figure 3Typ 1 - Mutationen der räum-lichen Organisation und der Erschließung / Mutations of spatial organisation and of the access pattern. © K. Kirsch-Soriano da Silva.

6 Vgl. Souza, Maria Ângela de Almeida (1990) Habitação: bem ou direito? As condições de acesso à Habitação Popu-lar analisadas à luz da atu-ação da COHAB-PE na RMR. Dissertação de Mestrado, Departamento de Arquitetura e Urbanismo, CAC, UFPE, Recife. S.153 ff.

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sehr bedingt selbst initiativ werden. Bei bestehendem Handlungsbedarf sind aber gemeinsame Beschwerden immer wieder in der Lage, Verbesserungsmaßnahmen seitens der Stadtverwaltungen zu fordern und zu be-schleunigen.

Bauliche Tätigkeiten der BewohnerInnen

Bereits kurz nach ihrem Bezug wurden die ursprünglich uniformen viergeschossigen Wohnblöcke in den betrach-teten Siedlungen baulich verändert. Durch verschiedene Interventionen versuchten die BewohnerInnen „auf eige-ne Faust“ die vorhandenen räumlichen Gegebenheiten an ihre unterschiedlichen und immer wieder sich wandeln-den Bedürfnisse anzupassen. Die meisten Eingriffe waren auf individuelle Aktivitäten einzelner Haushalte zurück-zuführen. Einige Eingriffe basierten aber auch auf der gemeinsamen Initiative und Umsetzung durch mehrere Haushalte oder eine gesamte Hausgemeinschaft. Im Wechselspiel zwischen verschiedenen lokalen Akteu-rInnen, zwischen individuellen und kollektiven Hand-lungsfeldern, sowie zwischen privater, halböffentlicher und öffentlicher Sphäre, modifizierte sich die seitens der COHAB projektierte und implementierte Bebauungsstruk-tur zusehends.

Das großmaßstäblich vorgegebene architektonische Gerüst wurde dabei durch kleinteilige bauliche Tätigkeiten nach und nach adaptiert, angereichert und erweitert. Die vorhandenen Gebäude wurden nach Möglichkeit vergrößert und mit weiteren Nutzungseinheiten verse-hen. Wo keine Expansionen bestehender Wohnblöcke möglich waren, wurden auch neue Gebäude innerhalb des Siedlungsareals errichtet und die Siedlungsstruktur auf diese Weise zusätzlich nachverdichtet. Die ursprüng-lich einheitlich gestalteten Siedlungsräume wurden immer stärker ausdifferenziert und individualisiert.

Typologische Evolution der Wohnblöcke

Nach Saverio Muratori, Gianfranco Caniggia et al. können Bautypen durch das Einsetzen eines typologischen Pro-zesses Veränderungen sowie in weiterer Folge typolo-gische Variationen und Weiterentwicklungen erfahren7. In kleinteiligen Nachjustierungen des räumlichen Gefüges werden sie den Bedürfnissen ihrer NutzerInnen angepasst und durchlaufen dabei entsprechende Mutationen. Die im Laufe dieser typologischen Entwicklungen akkumulierten Mutationen bilden den Erfahrungsschatz, auf welchen sich die Definition neuer Bautypen zu stützen vermag. Basierend auf vielschichtigen Aktualisierungsprozessen, beinhalten die Mutationen gewissermaßen das innovative Potenzial, welches der Kollektivität für das Hervorbringen weiterer baulicher Evolutionen zur Verfügung steht. Inso-fern kann der Begriff der Mutation auch als ein Teil eines größeren evolutiven Prozesses städtischer Zivilisationen verstanden werden, als Vorbereitung für mögliche zukünf-tige Entwicklungsstufen.

Die baulichen Interventionen an den Wohnblöcken der COHAB-Siedlungen in der Großstadtregion Recife haben in diesem Sinn verschiedene kreative Mutationen des archi-tektonischen Ausgangszustands hervorgebracht. Die Ge-bäudetypen erfuhren zahlreiche Weiterentwicklungen und es entstanden unterschiedliche typologische Varianten.

In ihrem Originalzustand waren die viergeschossigen Wohnblöcke in allen vier betrachteten Siedlungen sehr ähnlich ausgebildet und relativ einfach strukturiert. Sie be-saßen in der Regel 32 Wohneinheiten, die in ihrer Größe zwischen 41m² und 52m² variierten. Die Wohneinheiten waren jeweils zu zwei linearen Blöcken angeordnet, in deren Mitte die Gebäudeerschließung über zwei quer liegende Stiegenläufe erfolgte. Die beiden Stiegenhäuser definierten gleichzeitig drei nicht überdachte Höfe, von denen zwei zu den Querfassaden hin geöffnet waren und als gemeinschaftliche Zugangsflächen dienten. Die Belichtung funktionierte ausschließlich über die Längsfas-saden der Blöcke, an diesen allerdings sowohl straßensei-tig als auch hofseitig. In einer der Siedlungen erfolgte der Zugang zu den Blöcken im Erdgeschoss von allen Seiten aus in freier Form, da die Blöcke auf Säulen, so genannten Pilotis, aufgeständert waren und in den darüber liegenden Stockwerken dafür nur über 24 Wohneinheiten verfügten.

Durch die baulichen Eingriffe seitens der NutzerInnen wurden die Wohnblöcke in ihrer räumlichen Organisation, in ihrer Belichtungs- sowie in ihrer Erschließungssituation verändert. Die bestehenden Wohnungen wurden durch weitere Wohnräume, sowie durch Terrassen, Loggien oder Balkone erweitert. Zudem wurden neue eigenständige räumliche Einheiten wie Garagen, Geschäfte, Produktions-stätten oder zusätzliche Wohneinheiten geschaffen. In ge-meinschaftlicher Initiative wurden viele der ursprünglich offenen Halbhöfe an den Querseiten durch Umzäunungen geschlossen, mit Mobiliar und Bepflanzung gestaltet und dadurch mit konkreten Nutzungsmöglichkeiten für die

7 Zur typologischen Evolution vgl. Malfroy, Sylvain; Caniggia, Gianfranco (1986) Die morphologische Betrach-tungsweise von Stadt und Territorium. ETH, Architek-turabteilung, Geschichte des Städtebaus, Zürich.

8 Vgl. Kirsch-Soriano da Silva, Katharina (2009) EVOLVING BY DOING! Mutationen von Großsiedlungen in Recife / Brasilien. In: dérive, Zeitschrift für Stadtforschung, Nr. 36, Juli 2009, S. 37-41.

Abb. 4 / Figure 4Siedlung Muribeca / Muribeca housing estate. Photo: K. Kirsch-Soriano da Silva.

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Hausgemeinschaft ausgestattet. In einigen Fällen wurden diese Halbhöfe auch überdacht bzw. die Flächen der Zu-gangszonen überhaupt erweitert. Darüber hinaus wurden in zahlreichen Fällen neue Fenster an zuvor fensterlosen Fassaden geöffnet bzw. neue Eingänge an zuvor nicht als Zugangsfassaden dienenden Gebäudeseiten angebracht. Je nach Siedlung entstanden so bis zu 10 typologische Varianten des Original-Wohnblocktyps. Die ursprünglich reinen Wohngebäude erhielten in den Mutations- und Evolutionsprozessen auch diverse zusätzliche Nutzungen und wurden zu nutzungsgemischten Strukturen mit unter-schiedlichen inhaltlichen Aktivitäten und Angeboten.

Modifikation der Freiräume

Im Zuge der baulichen Umgestaltungen wurden gleichzeitig die Freiräume innerhalb der Siedlungen an vielen Stellen verändert. Wo die Blöcke ursprünglich von gleichförmigen weiten Räumen umgeben waren, haben die späteren kleinteiligen Veränderungen differenzierte räumliche Konfigurationen geschaffen. Es bildeten sich engere bzw. weitere Zwischenräume, welche als Gassen und Gänge bzw. als Höfe und Plätze interpretiert und verwendet werden. Auch die Abstufungen zwischen offenen, besser erreich-baren und zurückgezogenen, intimeren Zonen zeigen sich modifiziert. Besonders beim fußläufigen Durchqueren der Siedlungen bieten sich unterschiedlichste Sichtbeziehungen und Raumerlebnisse. Durch die neuen Eingänge, welche die einzelnen Einheiten häufig unabhängig von den gemeinschaft-lichen Erschließungszonen der Blöcke zugänglich machen, entstehen darüber hinaus neue Verbindungswege. Die davor in ihrer Anzahl begrenzten und innerhalb klarer räumlicher Bahnen verlaufenden Erschließungswege haben sich so im Laufe der Zeit stark abgeändert. Es besteht nun ein komplexes Netz unzähliger potenzieller Wegführungen, das die neu hinzugekommenen und die bereits existierenden Zugänge miteinander verbindet.

Es wird ersichtlich, wie die baulichen Veränderungen innerhalb der Siedlungen ebenso Veränderungen von Nutzungsmöglichkeiten und Verhaltensweisen bedeuten. Dabei wird längst nicht nur der individuelle Wohnraum transformiert und erweitert, sondern es entstehen auch in den öffentlichen und halböffentlichen Bereichen Treff-punkte und Begegungsorte, die für die sozialen Bezie-hungen der gesamten Siedlung von Bedeutung sind.

Entwicklungslogiken

In ihrer Entstehung und Entwicklung besitzen die beo-bachteten Mutationsprozesse komplexe Logiken und Dynamiken, welche durch ein Zusammenspiel unter-schiedlicher Faktoren geprägt werden8.

Zum einen sind sie durch soziale Faktoren beeinflusst. Dazu zählen soziodemographische Entwicklungen wie anwachsende Haushaltsgrößen und daraus entstehende zusätzliche Bedürfnisse, aber auch kulturelle Wertvor-stellungen und Gebräuche der SiedlungsbewohnerInnen

sowie deren persönliche Identifikation mit der Wohnum-gebung, die sich in den verschiedenen Eingriffen wider-spiegeln. Wirtschaftliche Überlegungen der Bewohne-rInnen betreffen häufig die Möglichkeit einer zusätzlichen Einkommensquelle nahe der eigenen Wohnung bzw. auf der anderen Seite das überhaupt für Investitionen verfügbare Kapital. Die Grundlage für die praktische Durchführbarkeit gewünschter baulicher Eingriffe liegt schließlich in der vorhandenen siedlungs-, wohnblock- bzw. haushaltsinternen Organisation. Gerade hier wird etwa deutlich wie die Verwaltung der Wohnblöcke durch die Hausgemeinschaft äußerst unterschiedlich funktionie-ren kann. In manchen Fällen sind die gemeinschaftlichen Bereiche durch verschiedene Maßnahmen über die Jahre hinweg ausgeweitet und attraktiviert worden, während in anderen Fällen nicht einmal die Fassade gestrichen und instandgehalten wurde.

Zum anderen sind die betrachteten Mutationen durch lokale Faktoren geprägt wie die Einbindung in das städtische Siedlungsgebiet, die bestehende Verkehrsan-bindung oder die vorhandene Infrastrukturausstattung. Gerade die Isoliertheit der Großsiedlungen sowie ihre prekäre Versorgung mit Dienstleistungen und Produkten des täglichen Bedarfs hat innerhalb der Siedlungsgebiete zu zahlreichen neuen Bauten und Angeboten geführt. Konkete Ausgangs- und Anknüpfungspunkte für bauliche Eingriffe stellen dabei auch die natürlichen klimatischen und topographischen Bedingungen eines Standorts dar.

In räumlicher Hinsicht sind die baulichen Veränderungen letztlich sehr stark durch die bestehenden architekto-

Abb. 5 / Figure 5Siedlungsausschnitt Muribeca - Entstehen verschiedener Zonierungen und Raumquali-täten (oben) und Entwicklung komplexer Wegführungen (un-ten) / Section of the Muribeca housing estate - development of different zones and spatial qualities (above) and develop-ment of complex access paths (below). © K. Kirsch-Soriano da Silva

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nischen Strukturen geprägt. Die Situierung der Gebäude auf der Parzelle, insbesondere ihre Lage zueinander und zur Straße sowie ihre Situierung im Gelände, geben etwa ganz wesentliche Bedingungungen für mögliche bauliche Modifikationen und Expansionen vor. So wurden neue Geschäfte z.B. idealerweise an den zur Straße hin orientierten Gebäudeseiten eingerichtet. Auch die Gebäudeeigenschaften wie Material, Konstruktion und Form sind von entscheidender Bedeutung bei der Durchführung von baulichen Veränderungen. Bei den Erdgeschoss-Wohneinheiten erfolgten so diverse seitliche Anbauten bzw., von diesen Bauten ausgehend, potenziell noch weitere Expansionen in den oberen Geschossen. Bei den auf Säulen aufgeständerten Blöcken hingegen wurde beinahe ausschließlich der bereits definierte Raum zwischen diesen Säulen im Erdgeschoss genutzt und mit neuen, unterschiedlich dimensionierten und konzipierten räumlichen Einheiten befüllt. Die auf diese Weise durch ein bestimmtes Ausgangsobjekt definierten „architekto-nischen Potenziale“ geben gewissermaßen Entwicklungs-spielräume vor. Sie beinhalten für die verschiedenen auf-kommenden Veränderungsbestrebungen Gelegenheiten, aber auch Grenzen.

In ihren Entwicklungslogiken folgen die Mutationspro-zesse der untersuchten Wohnsiedlungen also bis zu einem gewissen Grad den Logiken der bereits vorhan-denen baulichen Strukturen. Anders als die von staat-licher Seite initiierte Errichtung der Siedlungen, sind die vielfältigen baulichen Veränderungen allerdings auf „informelle“ Art und Weise entstanden, d.h. sie haben nur selten den Weg behördlicher Reglementierungen und Genehmigungen durchlaufen und setzen sich auch mit den legalisierten Grundstücks- und Eigentumsverhältnis-sen in den meisten Fällen kaum auseinander. Sie besitzen in diesem Sinn wiederum eigene Dynamiken, die den Bestand modifizieren bzw. tatsächlich restrukturieren. Die theoretisch bis zu den Grundstücksgrenzen hin reichende gemeinschaftliche Verwaltung der umliegenden Parzelle durch die jeweilige Hausgemeinschaft wird in der Praxis

selten exekutiert. An manchen Stellen werden so von der Summe der kleinteiligen baulichen Tätigkeiten auf Mikro-ebene auch Strukturen auf Makroebene berührt, indem bestehende Parzellen und Straßenläufe verändert bzw. neue Verbindungen und Plätze geschaffen werden.

Architekturtypologie

Die entstandenen Gebäudetypen unterliegen ebenso einer doppelten Prägung durch die top down implemen-tierten, von ArchitektInnen und PlanerInnen entwor-fenen Siedlungsprojekte und die bottom up realisierten, „anonymen“ baulichen Gestaltungen. Sie sind in ihren konkreten Ausformungen zwar Spezifika der unter-suchten Siedlungsstrukturen, verweisen in den mit ihnen verbundenen Prozessen aber auch auf allgemein gültige Phänomene typologischer Evolution. Sie zeigen, wie sogar standardisierte Großsiedlungen individuelle Weiterent-wicklungen erfahren können und welch bedeutsame Rolle den NutzerInnen dabei zukommt. Gerade die komplexen Wechselwirkungen zwischen Planung und Nutzung kön-nen in dieser Hinsicht fruchtbare Perspektiven eröffnen.

Nachhaltig funktionierende Bautypen sind demnach nicht als fixe und fertige Produkte zu konzipieren, sondern als adaptierbare Strukturen, die ihren BewohnerInnen Offenheiten für Weiterentwicklungen und Gestaltungen bieten. Aus konkreten Nutzungserfahrungen können auch ArchitektInnen und PlanerInnen immer wieder wichtige Kenntnisse erlangen und auf deren Grundlage neue Bautypen gestalten. Auf Basis der in der Großstadtregion Recife beobachteten Mutationsprozesse könnten Gebäu-detypen entwickelt werden, welche vorhandene Ten-denzen aufgreifen sowie von vorne herein Möglichkeiten für eine flexible und variantenreiche spätere Gestaltung durch die NutzerInnen bereitstellen. Vor Ort könnte auf di-ese Weise eine architektonische Bereicherung für aktuelle soziale Wohnbauprogramme bewirkt werden, verbunden mit einer nutzerInnenorientierten Wiederbelebung des urbanistischen Modells der Großsiedlung.

Katharina Kirsch-Soriano da Silva ------------Dr.; Dissertation zu „ Mutati-onen städtischer Siedlungs-strukturen in Recife/Brasilien“ (Fachbereich Städtebau an der TU Wien 2008), basierend auf einem Forschungsauf-enthalt an der Universidade Federal de Pernambuco zwischen April 2004 und August 2006. Als Mitarbeiterin der Wohnbaugenossenschaft „Associação de Habitação Popular do Nordeste“ war sie in diesem Zeitraum an der Entwicklung verschiedener sozialer Wohnbauprojekte im Nordosten Brasiliens beteiligt. Seit Oktober 2008 arbeitet sie in Wien für die Gebietsbetreu-ung Stadterneuerung im 14. und 15. Bezirk.

PhD; thesis on “Mutations of Urban Settlement Pattern in Recife/Brazil” (Department of Urban Design, University of Technology Vienna, 2008), based on a research assign-ment at the Universidade Federal de Pernambuco between 2004 and 2006. With the cooperative housing association "Associação de Habitação Popular do Nor-deste" she took part in the development of several social housing projects in Northeast Brazil during that time. Since October, 2008, she has been working for the service and information office on urban renewal (Gebietsbetreuung Stadterneuerung) in the 14th and 15th District of Vienna, Austria.

Contact: <katharinakirsch@gmx.at>

Abb. 6 / Figure 6Siedlung Rio Doce IV / Rio Doce IV housing estate. Photo: K. Kirsch-Soriano da Silva.

Abb. 7 / Figure 7Laden in der Siedlung Rio Doce IV / Garage shop in Rio Doce IV housing estate. Photo: K. Kirsch-Soriano da Silva.

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Jenseits von „Global City“ und „Drittweltstadt“: Postkoloniale Perspektiven auf „gewöhnliche Städte“

Boris Michel

Beyond "Global City" and "Third World City" – Postcolonial Prospects of "Ordinary Cities" In the academic community, a division of labour separates mainstream urban research, dealing mainly with big western cities (or "global cities"), from research on "developing countries", including studies on cities or metropolises in the "South". Both are linked to different sets of methods and theories. The "Third World city" paradigm creates blind spots on both sides of the academic division of labour. With western cities still largely used as the universal scale for "the urban" and as a base for theory development in this field, cities in the global "South" tend to be perceived mainly in terms of deficit. The author follows Jennifer Robinson’s demand for a postcolonial shift in urban research with concepts such as the "ordinary city", with links to the "multi-sided ethnography" and "actor-network" theories or the concepts of "flat ontology" and "assemblage" used in the British geographical debate. Urban research should deal with the historical background of different localities, with their shared complex interdependences, and the increasing transnationalisation of practices and discourses. A focus on similarities such as iconic architecture, shopping malls and other new patterns of urbanity should not lead to an universalisation or convergence approach; likewise, the focus on differences should not lead to a simple essentialisation ("each city is unique"). If urban research is based on the non-hierarchical prospect of cities in the North and the South, comparative research could be done with the intention of redefining current concepts of urbanity.

Ein Verständnis von Städten, von spezifischen städtischen Verhältnissen und sozialen Prozessen hängt eng mit den Werkzeugen, Fragen und Konzepten zusammen, mit denen sich diesen genähert wird. Dieser Beitrag möchte von einer recht banalen Beobachtung ausgehen und diese anschließen an ein Problem, das Jennifer Robinson in ihrem viel diskutierten Buch Ordinary Cities. Between Modernity and Development (2006) als ein Problem der akademischen Arbeitsteilung zwischen Stadtforschung und Entwicklungsländerforschung beschrieben hat und mit dem sie die Forderung nach einer Postkolonialisie-rung der Stadtforschung verbindet.

Die Beobachtung betrifft den Umstand, dass insbesonde-re seit den 1990er Jahren Formen gebauter Umwelt wie auch Formen städtischen Regierens, die einst als Inbegriff einer westlichen Urbanität galten, sich in besonders sichtbarer Weise in einer Reihe von Städten im Süden zeigen. Dies gilt für ikonische Architekturen, städtische Konsumlandschaften wie die großen Shoppingmalls, die neue Formen städtischer Öffentlichkeit in privatisier-ten Räumen geschaffen haben, oder eine Vielzahl von Planungs-, Governance und Kontrollstrategien. Heraus-ragende Beispiele sind die Ostküstenmetropolen Chinas, eine Reihe von Städten in Süd- und Südostasien, aber auch große Städte in anderen Regionen des Globalen Südens, etwa São Paulo. Es betrifft jene als „global“ und „kosmopolitisch“ inszenierten Räume der lokalen Eliten und Mittelschichten in Manila, Bangkok oder Shanghai

ebenso wie den Transfer von Null-Toleranz-Politiken von New York in eine Reihe südamerikanischer Großstädte (Mexiko-Stadt, Rio de Janeiro etc.). Damit stellt sich (wie-der einmal) die Frage nach Angleichung oder Divergenz von Städten in Norden und Süden und der Ebene, auf der Differenzen und Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen beiden gedacht werden.

Die von Robinson problematisierte Arbeitsteilung trennt zwischen einer Stadtforschung, die sich fast ausschließ-lich mit einer geringen Zahl großer Städte im Norden beschäftigt und die im akademischen Feld der Stadtfor-schung gleichzeitig als der Ort allgemeiner Theoriebildung funktioniert sowie einer Entwicklungsländerforschung, die sich mit Städten in der Dritten Welt befasst. Damit ist einerseits ein unterschiedliches Set von Methoden und Theorien verbunden, mit denen sich den jewei-ligen Städten genähert wird, und zum anderen werden bestimmte Realitäten als Normalität gesetzt und funk-tionieren als unmarkierte Referenz. Gewiss muss dies nicht per se problematisch sein, verschiedene Realitäten können nach verschiedenen Wegen rufen, sich diesen zu nähern und homogenisierende Großtheorien sind, wie nicht erst im Rahmen postkolonialer Kritik deutlich wurde, etwas nicht ungefährliches. Dennoch produziert auch ein solches Drittweltstadt-Paradigma eine Reihe von blinden Flecken auf beiden Seiten der akademischen Arbeitsteilung, die es zumindest zu reflektieren gilt. Insbesondere verhindert es eine gegenseitige Befruch-

References

Amin, Ash / Graham, Ste-phen (1997) ‘The Ordinary City’, in: Transactions of the Institute of British Geogra-phers 22/4, 411-429.

Atkinson, Rowland / Bridge, Gary (Hg.) (2005) Gentrification in a Global Context. The New Urban Colonialism, London.

Berking, Helmuth / Löw, Martina (Hg.) (2008) Die Eigen-logik der Städte. Neue Wege für die Stadtforschung, Frankfurt.

Chakrabarty, Dipesh (2000) Provincializing Europe, London.

Cohen, Michael (1996) ‘The Hypothesis of Urban Conver-gence: Are Cities in the North and South Becoming More Ali-ke in an Age of Globalization?’, in: Cohen, MIchael u.a. (Hg.) Preparing for the Urban Future. Global Pressures and Local Forces, Washington, 25-38.

Dick, Howard / Rimmer, Peter (1998) ‘Beyond the Third World City: The New Ur-ban Geography of South-east Asia’, in: Urban Studies 35/12, 2303-2321.

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tung jenseits eines Theorieimperialismus des Westens, in dem westliche Ansätze anstandslos auf alle anderen städtischen Kontexte angewandt werden. Nicht selten mit der Konsequenz einer Beschreibung von Städten im Süden ausschließlich in Begriffen des Defizits. Zugleich gilt es, die Anwendung verschiedener Ansätze und Methoden entlang der Linie westliche und nicht-westliche Städte gerade im Sinne einer weiter führenden Theoriebildung kritisch zu hinterfragen. Ziel ist dabei nicht die Auflösung von Unterschieden zwischen Städten, sondern vielmehr ein Ernstnehmen der Spezifika der konkreten Städte und Unterschiedlichkeiten des Städtischen, eben auch und gerade jenseits regionaler und kategorialer Verortung und Zuschreibung. Solche Verortungen sollten zumindest nicht den Ausgangspunkt einer vergleichenden und integrie-renden Stadtforschung bilden.

Zunächst soll kurz auf einige zentrale Linien der akade-mischen Auseinandersetzung mit Städten im Globalen Süden eingegangen werden, um daran anschließend insbesondere zwei jüngere Ansätze gegenüberzustellen. Leider ist hier nicht der Raum, dies auch empirisch zu fül-len und so beschränkt sich der Text auf kleinere Beispiele und Verweise.

Die “Dritte Welt” in den Großerzählungen der Stadtforschung

Eine Beschäftigung mit Städten in der Dritten Welt gibt es so lange, wie es den Begriff der Dritten Welt und einen modernisierungstheoretischen Entwicklungsdiskurs gibt. Historisch löste das Konzept der unterentwickelten Drittweltstadt die Vorstellung der kolonialen Stadt als Objekt der Intervention durch europäische Kolonialmäch-te ab oder auch regionalisierende Konzepte, wie das der

islamischen oder orientalischen Stadt. Frühe Modernisie-rungstheorien maßen Urbanisierung und urbanen Zentren eine eminente, wenngleich ambivalente Bedeutung zu. So prägte insbesondere Hoselitz den Begriff der parasitären Urbanisierung, um damit Städte zu bezeichnen, die dem Hinterland in Form eines internen Kolonialismus seine Entwicklungschancen entziehen und damit die Entste-hung einer Arbeiterschicht und folgend eine Industrialisie-rung initiieren (Hoselitz 1960; London 1979). Die Stadt, die ihre funktionale und demographische primacy zunächst ausbaut, wird so zum Motor von endogener Entwick-lung, Sammelbecken von Arbeitskraft und Kapital sowie Zentrum eines entstehenden Binnenmarkts. In klassisch modernisierungstheoretischer Manier wird, Rustows Stufenmodel folgend, der (idealisierte und homogenisier-te) Entwicklungsweg Europas und Nordamerikas univer-salisiert und als Folie für alle Entwicklungs- und Urbani-sierungspfade gedacht. Modernisierungstheorien folgen klar einer These zunehmender Konvergenz städtischer Realitäten und so wundert es wenig, dass zeitgenössische Stadtplanung geprägt war von universalistischen Konzep-ten und Entwürfen (Smith, D. 1996: 28).

In den späten 1960er Jahren wurden solche Ansätze, die ausschließlich interne Defizite als Entwicklungshemm-nisse betrachteten, in der Forschung und auf Seiten einer kritischen Entwicklungspolitik weitestgehend desavouiert. Zunächst besonders aus dependenztheo-retischer Perspektive wurde die externe Verursachung von Unterentwicklung und damit erstmals die globale Interdependenz von Urbanisierung diskutiert - ein-schließlich eines Umschlagens in eine Unterbewertung lokaler Besonderheiten und Konflikte zu Gunsten eines ausschließlichen Blicks auf Strukturgesetze des Kapitalis-mus. Die strukturelle Abhängigkeit des Südens von den Ökonomien des Nordens brachte in den dortigen Städten einen peripheren Kapitalismus hervor, der zu Proletarisie-rung und Monetarisierung führte und Orte damit in das kapitalistische Weltsystem einband, sie aber gleichzeitig in einer ökonomisch untergeordneten Position fixierte (Wal-ton 1977; Gilbert/Gugler 1992). Damit wurden städtische Armut, Informalität und Unterentwicklung nicht mehr als Residuen und Zeichen mangelnder Durchsetzung kapitali-stischer Produktionsverhältnisse, sondern als deren Kon-sequenz diskutiert, was auf der Ebene der (entwicklungs-)politischen Intervention nach ganz anderen Ansätzen rief. Einerseits konstatieren dependenztheoretische Ansätze einen strukturellen Zusammenhang, indem das Eine nicht ohne das Andere denkbar ist, gleichzeitig wird aber, ähnlich der Weltsystemtheorie, eine radikale Differenz zwischen Zentrum und Peripherie markiert, die nicht nur historisch, sondern auch funktional und theoretisch kaum auflösbar ist.

Erste wirklich globale Ansätze eines politökonomischen Verständnis von Städten, die einige konzeptionelle Mängel vorheriger Debatten überwanden, waren World City und Global City Ansätze, die seit den frühen 1980er Jahren im Anschluss an die Weltsystemtheorie und die Arbeiten zur

References (continuation)

Dick, Howard / Rimmer, Peter (2001) ‘Privatising Climate: First World Cities in South East Asia’, in: Brotchie, John u.a. (Hg.) East West Perspectives on 21st Century Urban Development, Al-dershot, 305-324.

Dick, Howard / Rimmer, Peter (2003) Cities, Transport and Communication. The Integration of Southeast Asia Since 1859, New York.

Dick, Howard / Rimmer, Peter (2009) The City in Southeast Asia. Patterns, Pro-cesses and Policy, Singapore.

Douglass, Mike / Huan, Liling (2007) ‘Globalizing the City in Southeast Asia: Utopia on the Urban Edge - The Case of Phu My Hung, Saigon’, in: International Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies 3/2, 1-42.

Friedmann, John (1986) ‘The world city hypothesis’, in: Development and Change 17/1, 69-84.

Füller, Henning / Michel, Boris (2008) ‚Zur poststruktura-listischen Kritik des Scale-Kon-zepts. Für eine (topologische) Machtanalyse’, in: Wissen, Markus/Röttgers, Bernd/Heeg, Susanne (Hg.) Politics of Scale, Münster, 144-168.

Gilbert, Alan (2007) ‘The Re-turn of the Slum. Does Langu-age Matter?’, in: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 31/4, 697-714.

Gilbert, Alan / Gugler, Josef (1992) Cities, Poverty and Development. Urbani-zation in the Third World. Second Edition, Oxford.

Graham, Stephen / Marvin, Simon (2001) Splin-tering Urbanism. Networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and the urban con-dition, London/New York.

Hoselitz, Bert (1960) Socio-logical Aspects of Economic Growth, Glencoe.

Abb. 1 / Figure 1Billigmietwohnungen neben ikonischer Architektur in Bar-celona / Low-income housing next to iconic architecture in Barcelona. Photo: K. Teschner

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Neuen Internationalen Arbeitsteilung entstanden (Fried-mann 1986; Sassen 1991). Die Konzepte von Global und World Cities stellen in der jüngeren Stadtforschung sicher-lich die einflussreichsten Repräsentationen von Städten dar (King 2006: 16). Zentral ist dabei die Konstatierung eines Bedeutungsgewinns urbaner Zentren und die Exi-stenz eines hierarchischen globalen Städtesystems, das über die zentralen Steuerungs- und Kontrollfunktionen in den avanciertesten Sektoren der globalisierten Ökonomie verfügt (besonders Finanz-, Dienstleistungs-, Immobili-ensektor). Gleichwohl geht es dabei nicht nur um einige wenige Städte an der Spitze der Hierarchie, zunächst insbesondere New York, London und Tokio, wie dies in der Diskussion zu Global Cities oftmals scheint.

Im Vorwort eines Bandes zu globalizing cities an den Rändern des Weltsystems schreibt Sassen, dass mit dem Konzept gerade versucht wurde, eine Offenheit für Städte zu erreichen, die in der Regel nicht in den Blick der Stadt-forschung geraten (Sassen 2006). Zwar wird hier durchaus der Blick geweitet und es geraten potentiell Städte aus unterschiedlichen Regionen in den Blick, gerade auch sol-che in Schwellenländern. Der Ansatz bleibt aber extrem hierarchisierend und kategorisierend und ist zudem nicht frei von einem funktionalistischen Reduktionismus und dem Eurozentrismus großer Teile der älteren Globalisie-rungsdebatten. So werden weite Bereiche der komplexen städtischen Realitäten von Global Cities ausgeblendet, solange sie nicht als Zulieferer für die zentralen Sektoren dienen (insbesondere schlechtbezahlte Servicedienstlei-stungen wie Reinigungsdienste und Sicherheitsgewerbe), und alle wesentlichen sozialen und politischen Prozesse werden aus der Integration in die globale Städtehierarchie erklärt. Soziale Konflikte (und soziale Akteure insgesamt) finden sich in dieser Sichtweise ebenso wenig wie andere Sektoren der städtischen Ökonomie (zur Kritik: Smith M.P. 2001; Knox/Taylor 1995; Brenner/Keil 2006).

Im Anschluss an die postkoloniale Kritik und die An-sätze rund um das, was in der britischen Geographie

als non-representational theory gefasst wird, wurde deutliche Kritik an solchen Perspektiven formuliert. So fordern Amin und Graham in ihrem Aufsatz The Ordinary City (1997) eine Blickverschiebung auf die Heterogenität sozialer, politischer und ökonomischer Realitäten und die Aufrechterhaltung von Widersprüchen und Unterschie-den in der Betrachtung von Städten. Als Hauptprobleme bestehender Stadtforschung und -theorie benennen sie die Probleme der Generalisierung und der Überbewertung bestimmter Orte. Deutlich wird letzteres am Fokus weiter Teile der Global Cities Literatur auf herausgehobene Seg-mente in einer bestimmten Art von Städten, der etwa New York auf wenige Blocks um Wallstreet reduziert (Soja 2000: 224). Der Fokus auf solche Paradigmen und Fallbeispiele mache es zunehmend schwierig „die Idee des Urbanen als einer Kopräsenz multipler Räume, multipler Zeiten, multip-ler Beziehungsnetze im Blick zu behalten, die lokale Orte, Subjekte und Fragmente in sich globalisierende Netzwerke ökonomischen, sozialen und kulturellen Wandels einbin-det.“1 (Amin/Graham 1997: 417f). Dazu unten mehr.

Die “Drittweltmegacity” in der westlichen Stadtforschung

Eine zweite Linie der Kritik betrifft eine Rolle, die Drittwelt-städte in Teilen der jüngeren (westlichen) Stadtforschung übernehmen. Manuel Castells, der in den 1970er Jahren wichtige Beiträge zu einer entstehenden Forschung zu Städten im Süden leistete, schreibt in seinem Informations-zeitalter: im Gegensatz zu den schillernden Städten an der Spitze der globalen Hierarchie fänden sich dort „schwarze Löcher des informationellen Kapitalismus“ (Castells 2003), strukturell irrelevante Orte, exkludierte Viertweltstädte, nicht selten exotisiert und alarmistisch als dystopische Zukunft des Städtischen präsentiert.

Beredtstes Beispiel einer solchen Literatur ist sicherlich Mike Davis’ Planet of Slums (2006; zur Kritik: Pithouse 2008; Rao 2006). Es betrifft aber ebenso weite Teile der Megacities-Forschung (einschließlich einer generellen

Abb. 2 / Figure 2Tagui Fort Bonifacio Global City, boomende Stadtent-wicklung in Manila / high end development within Metro Manila. Photo: F. Steinberg

1 „to hold sight of the idea of the urban as the co-presence of multiple spaces, multiple times, multiple webs of rela-tions, tying local sites, subjects and fragments into globalizing networks of economic social and cultural change”

References (continuation)

Janowicz, Cedric (2008) ‚Afrikas ‘gewöhnliche' Städte und ihre Eigenlogik’, in: Ber-king, Helmuth/Löw, Martina (Hg.) Die Eigenlogik der Städte. Neue Wege für die Stadtfor-schung, Frankfurt, 231-260.

King, Anthony (2006) ‘Post-colonial Cities, Postcolonial Critiques’, in: Berking, Helmuth u.a. (Hg.), Negotiating Urban Conflicts. Interaction, Space and Control, Bielefeld, 15-28.

Kaplan, Robert (1994) ‘The Coming Anarchy’, in: The Atlan-tic Magazine February 1994.

Knox, Paul / Taylor, Peter (Hg.) (1995) World Cities in a World System, Cambridge.

Koolhaas, Rem (2000) ‘Lagos’, in: Koolhas, Rem u.a. (Hg.) Mutations, Bordeaux.

London, Bruce (1979) „Inter-nal Colonialism in Thailand. Primate City Parasitism Re-considered”, in: Urban affairs Quarterly 14/4, 485-514.

Löw, Martina (2008) Soziolo-gie der Städte, Frankfurt.

Marcuse, Peter (2006) ‚Die „Stadt” - Begriff und Bedeu-tung’, in: Berking, Helmuth (Hg.) Die Macht des Lokalen in einer Welt ohne Grenzen, Frankfurt, 201-215.

Marston, Sallie u.a. (2005) ‘Human geography without scale’, in: Transactions of the Institute of British Geogra-phers 30/4, 416-432.

Marston, Sallie u.a. (2007) ‘Flattening Ontologies of Globa-lization: The Nollywood Case’, in: Globalizations 4/1, 45-63.

Michel, Boris (2010) Global City als Projekt: Neoliberale Urbanisierung und Politiken der Exklusion in Metro Mani-la, Bielefeld.

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Überbewertung von Megacities in der Forschung bei gleichzeitig weitgehender Abwesenheit von Klein- und Mittelstädten). Diese theoretisch wenig gefüllte Kategorie und die Bestimmung von Städten anhand rein quantita-tiver Merkmale und eine Faszination für große Zahlen und quantitative Fragen und Antworten insgesamt (z.B. Bron-ger 2004) oder die Bestimmung als Orte der Devianz, der Gefahr und des Risikos, ebnen einerseits qualitative und soziale Differenzen ein und zementieren gleichzeitig eine hierarchische Unterschiedlichkeit der Betrachtungsweise zwischen Städten im Norden und Süden. Dies betrifft etwa die Gleichsetzungen von Quartieren am unteren Rande der sozialen Hierarchie in verschiedenen regio-nalen Kontexten als unterschiedliche Namen für Iden-tisches (z.B. Perlman 2007), sowie die Gleichsetzung von Slum, informellen Siedlungen und Armutsvierteln. Dies ignoriert Unterschiede in Funktion, Struktur und Organi-sation solcher Quartiere sowie deren soziale Komplexi-tät, die in unzähligen Fallstudien immer wieder deutlich gemacht wurden. Bei Davis wird eine solche Komplexität in einem Slum-Begriff aufgelöst, der mehrere Jahrzehnte der Kritik an einem solchen Begriff vollkommen unbeach-tet lässt (Gilbert 2007). In seinem fulminanten Ritt durch die Globalisierung des Slums erscheinen Unterschiede zwischen Städten ausschließlich in quantitativen Steige-rungen, größeren Slums und mehr Elend.

Galten der klassischen Modernisierungstheorie Städ-te der Dritten Welt als Blick in die Vergangenheit, als Städte am Nullpunkt der Modernisierung, so wird dieser Schematismus nun Teils gewendet und als unser aller hypermoderne Zukunft theoretisiert. Was einmal als Ver-gangenheit (Tribalismus, Traditionen, Unterentwicklung) angesehen wurde, wird nun Schicksal des Städtischen irgendwo zwischen „Blade Runner“ und „Black Hawk Down“ (Rao 2006: 226). So formuliert Koolhaas über La-gos: „Lagos repräsentiert eine entwickeltes und äußerst paradigmatisches Beispiel einer Stadt an der Spitze der globalisierten Moderne. Das bedeutet, dass nicht Lagos uns einholt, sondern vielmehr wir möglicherweise Lagos einholen.“2 (Koolhaas 2000: 116). Ähnlich argumentiert Robert Kaplan in seinem viel beachteten Aufsatz The Coming Anarchy (1994).

Zwar geraten Städte im Süden in jüngster Zeit verstärkt in den Blick internationaler Debatten und entstehender globaler oder transnationaler Konzeptionen des Städtischen. Wie aber beispielsweise an Paciones als Standardwerk konzipiertem Urban Geography. A Global Perspective (2001) deutlich wird, werden einerseits „Western City“ und „Third World City“ in der Analyse von einander getrennt, und ande-rerseits „Third World Cities“ viel stärker unter der Perspektive des Defizits, der Quantitäten und eines Mangels an „city-ness“ und Urbanität diskutiert (Robinson 2002: 540).

Jenseits der “Drittweltstadt” - Konvergenzen und Divergenzen

Was heißt vor diesem Hintergrund nun, das Verständnis des Städtischen zu aktualisieren und wie kann das Städ-tische begriffen werden, angesichts der oben erwähnten Spaltungen der Beschäftigung mit Städten im Norden und Süden. Wie können Postkolonialisierung der Stadtforschung, Verständnis konkreter städtischer Realitäten in ihrer Einzigar-tigkeit und Interdependenz zusammengebracht werden?

Die Folie für diese Frage sollen zwei Perspektiven bilden, die aus sehr unterschiedlichen Richtungen versuchen, anders über Städte im Süden zu denken. Diese können als zwei Pole für eine weitere Debatte betrachtet werden. Die erste, konvergenztheoretische Perspektive geht davon aus, dass der Begriff der Drittweltstadt unter den Bedin-gungen zunehmender Globalisierung aus empirischen Gründen obsolet geworden sei. So kritisieren Howard Dick und Peter Rimmer in ihrem viel zitierten Aufsatz Beyond the Third World City, ausgehend von Urbanisierungspro-zessen in Südostasien, die Gegenüberstellung von west-licher Stadt und Third World City (Dick/Rimmer 1998; eine überarbeitete und auf Kritiken antwortende Version findet sich in Dick/Rimmer 2009) als orientalisierende Binarisie-rung ohne materielle Referenz. Insbesondere richten sie sich gegen ein „south-east-Asian-city-as-Third-World-city paradigm“ (Dick/Rimmer 1998: 2304). Diese Kritik zielt in erster Linie auf AutorInnen wie T.G. McGee, der in verschiedenen Versionen Thesen einer Divergenz und Einzigartigkeit südostasiatischer Urbanisierungsprozesse vertritt (McGee 1967; 1991; 2002), sowie gegen Thesen ei-ner Persistenz einer klaren Unterscheidung von Zentrum und Peripherie zu Gunsten einer komplexen und kleintei-ligen Segmentierung. Wenngleich es auf verschiedenen Ebenen große Differenzen zwischen Städten gäbe, so Dick und Rimmer, seien diese nicht geeignet, paradigmatische Stadttypen oder Stadtmodelle und gänzlich differente Methoden zu deren Erforschung zu begründen. Als Analy-seperspektive sei dies hochproblematisch.

Zeitdiagnostisch geht diese These von einer zuneh-menden Konvergenz zwischen den Städten der alten Industriestaaten und großen Städten in Südostasien seit den 1980er Jahren aus. So sei in Folge einer homogenisie-renden Kraft der Globalisierung nur noch von einem ein-zigen urbanen Diskurs (ebd.: 2303) auszugehen, im Zuge dessen zumindest die objektiven Bedingungen - Formen

References (continuation)

Paciones (2001) Urban Geo-graphy. A Global Perspective.

Perlman, Janice (2007) ‘Cities, like dreams, are made of our deepest desires and most fundamental fears’, in: TRIALOG 97, 4-6.

Pithouse, Richard (2008) ‘Re-view of Mike Davis' 'Planet of Slums'’, in: TRIALOG 98, 54-57.

Rao, Vyjayanthi (2006) ‘Slum as theory: the South/Asian city and globalization’, in: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 30.1, 225-32.

Ritzer, George (2004) The McDonaldization of Society. Revised New Century Edition, Thousand Oaks.

Robinson, Jennifer (2002) ‘Global and World Cities: A View from off the Map’, in: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 26/3, 531-554.

Robinson, Jennifer (2006) Ordinary Cities. Between Modernity and Development, New York.

Sassen, Saskia (1991) The Global City. New York, Lon-don, Tokyo, Princeton.

Sassen, Saskia (2006) ‘Fore-word’, in: Amen, Mark/Archer, Kevin/Bosman, Martin (Hg.) Relocating Global Cities. From the Center to the Margins, Lanham, ix-xiii.

Shatkin, Gavin (2007) ‘Global Cities of the South. Emerging perspectives on growth and inequality’, in: Cities 24/1, 1-15.

Abb. 3 / Figure 3Unreflektierte Verwendung des Begriffs "Slum" in einer Posteraktion in Vancouver, Kanada, während des Weltstadtforums 2006 / Unreflected use of the cate-gory "slum" in a street poster exhibition on global housing problems in Vancouver, Canada, during the 2006 World Urban Forum. Photo: K. Teschner

2 „Lagos represents a develo-ped, extreme paradigmatic case-study of a city at the forefront of globalizing moder-nity. This is to say that Lagos is not catching up with us. Rather we may be catching up with Lagos.“

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gebauter Umwelt, Architektur, Fragen von Arbeitslosigkeit und Umweltzerstörung, Infrastruktur und institutionelle Arrangements - in diesen Städten sich annähern (Cohen 1996: 36). Dick und Rimmer zeichnen das Bild von Städten in Südostasien, die durch ähnliche Prozesse, Governance-strategien und Projekte gekennzeichnet sind. Stadtent-wicklung, beispielsweise in Form von Suburbanisierung und bewachten Wohnquartieren, Edge Cities und städ-tischen Mega-Projekten, wie sie zahlreiche Städte in Süd-ostasien prägt, folge „westlichen“ Mustern und lasse sich nicht mit Begriffen der Drittweltstadt begreifen. Dies wird auch deutlich anhand einer Globalisierung von Strategien städtischen Regierens, wie unternehmerischen Stadtpo-litiken, der politischen Wirkmächtigkeit eines Global-City Diskurses oder Politiken einer neoliberalen Urbanisierung (z.B. Smith, N. 2002; Swanson 2007; Douglass/Huan 2007; Atkinson/Bridge 2005; Michel 2010). Folglich sei es an der Zeit, Arbeiten zur Urbanisierung im Süden wieder in eine allgemeine Stadtforschung und -theorie zu reintegrieren.

Natürlich heißt das nicht, dass nicht große Unterschiede in der gebauten Umwelt bestehen blieben. „Alles andere als das. Stattdessen wird die Annahme vertreten, dass paralle-le Analysen der Veränderung von Infrastruktur, Technologie und städtischer Entwicklung erfolgreich zwischen diesen verschiedenen Reichweiten und Kontexten unternommen werden können. [...] Ein Verstehen der ‚Räume der Moder-ne’ gegenwärtiger und historischer Städte ‚bedeutet immer ein Überschreiten des Feldes, das zwischen Totalisierung und Differenz liegt‘.“3 (Graham/Marvin 2001: 35).

Ein zentrales Problem dieser Konvergenzperspektive liegt aber in einer offenen Flanke gegenüber der Annah-me, dass schlussendlich Modernisierungstheorien recht behalten hätten. Dies drückt sich in der Vorstellung einer Homogenisierung qua Kommodifizierung (wie diese sich im populären aber kaum tragbaren Begriff der McDonal-disierung (Ritzer 2004) ausdrückt) aus und damit in einer Perspektive, die letztlich das Soziale der Determinierung durch ökonomische Macht, Technologie und damit dem westlichen Blick, unterordnet. Konvergenz findet hier zunächst in den lebensweltlichen Räumen der Mittel- und Oberschichten statt und sickert dann in die Breite. Außerdem bleibt unklar, in wieweit Dick und Rimmer ihre Perspektive auch auf Städte in anderen Weltregionen anwenden würden oder ob es sich doch um eine spezi-fische Fokussierung auf Südostasien handelt.

Während konvergenztheoretische Ansätze einerseits zu einem Technikzentrismus neigen – so haben Dick und Rim-mer (2001; 2003; 2009) insbesondere zu städtischer Infra-struktur und Kommunikationsnetzwerken gearbeitet – alte Formen von Planungseuphorie reaktivieren und zu schnell Untersuchungen von Urbanisierungsprozessen im Norden auf Beobachtungen in Städten im Süden übertragen, ohne zwischen materieller Form und sozialer Bedeutung zu dif-ferenzieren, muss die Frage der Adaption und Transforma-tion ins Zentrum der Untersuchungen gestellt werden und damit die Frage der Unterschiede in den Gemeinsamkeiten.

So bedeutet die Privatisierung städtischer Goverance in Geschäftsvierteln durch sich globalisierende Modelle – wie etwa Business Improvement Districts – im post-Apartheid Johannesburg etwas anderes als im post-industriellen Baltimore oder im Kontext bilateraler Entwicklungspolitik in Tirana. Gleichwohl verweisen alle auf eine gemeinsame globale Referenz und sind eingebunden in globale Diskurse um neue Strategien der Governance innerstädtischer Quar-tiere. Ähnliches gilt für Formen gebauter Umwelt, die sich in den letzten Jahren in zahlreichen Kontexten lokalisieren, seien es Shoppingmalls mit ihren je spezifischen Einflüs-sen auf Gebrauch und Funktion öffentlichen Raums oder die lokalspezifisch ausgeprägten Gated Communities der aufsteigenden neuen Mittelschichten.

Die zweite Perspektive rückt gerade Divergenzen ins Zentrum und zwar in einer Weise, dass Kategorisierungen selbst problematisiert werden. Diese Kritik richtet sich weniger gegen bestimmte Kategorien, die als problema-tisch begriffen werden, als vielmehr gegen die Praxis des Kategorisierens von Orten in der Forschung und plädiert für „eine Theoriebildung, die damit Städte, ’global cities’ und ’Third-World-Cities’, nicht primär in ihrer Differenz, sondern in ihrer ‚Gewöhnlichkeit’ theoretisierend wahr-nimmt“ (Janowicz 2008: 243). Es wird also nicht von einer der Untersuchung vorgängigen Differenz zwischen Regi-onen und deren Städten als ontologischer Grundannahme ausgegangen. Anders als etwa Dick und Rimmer, die em-pirische Beobachtungen einer Veränderung der gebauten Umwelt südostasiatischer Städte an den Anfang ihrer Überlegungen stellen, geht Jennifer Robinson von einem eher theoretischen Argument aus, im Anschluss an Amin und Grahams Ordinary City Ansatz, den sie aus Richtung postkolonialer Theorie weiter führt. Auch wenn insbeson-dere das südliche Afrika die empirische Folie abgibt, vor der sie ihre Konzepte entwickelt. Damit schließt sie an die Forderung einer Provinzialisierung Europas (Chakra-barty 2000) an, also die Aufgabe und Dekonstruktion des schweigenden Referenten Europa. Gleichzeitig soll dieser postkoloniale Ansatz helfen, die Simplizismen, Übergene-ralisierungen und die Romantisierungen des vermeintlich Authentischen, die sich in verschiedenen Post-Develop-ment Ansätzen finden (Ziai 2004), zu vermeiden.

Der Begriff der Ordinary City soll in Folge ein Denken über Städte ermöglichen, ohne durch Rekurs auf obige Konzepte die Entwicklung und Geschichte bestimmter Städte in der Analyse zu privilegieren und damit andere Entwicklungen aus einer Defizitperspektive zu betrachten. „Postkolonialer Urbanismus muss den Unterschieden zwischen Städten nachgehen, um einen theoretischen Ansatz des Städ-tischen zu entwerfen, ohne dessen universelle Anwend-barkeit anzunehmen, noch die Vielfältigkeit der Städte in Kategorien zu segmentieren“4 (Robinson 2006: 60). Ordinary Cities versteht Robinson als komplexe „unique assemblages of wider processes.“ Differenzen sollen zwi-schen Städten und nicht zwischen vorgegebenen Katego-rien lokalisiert werden und gleichzeitig kann auch dort, wo die ökonomischen Unterschiede riesig sind, die Forschung

References (continuation)

Smith, David, A. (1996) Third World Cities in Global Perspective, Oxford.

Smith, Michael Peter (2001) Transnational Urbanism. Loca-ting Globalization, Oxford.

Smith, Neil (2002) ‘New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy’, in: Antipode 34/3, 427-450.

Swanson, Kate (2007) ‘Revanchist Urbanism Heads South. The Regulation of Indigenous Beggars and Street Vendors in Ecuador’, in: Antipode 39/4, 708-728.

Walton, John (1977) ‘Accu-mulation and Comparative Urban Systems: Theory and Some Tentative Contrasts of Latin America and Africa’, in: Comparative Urban Research 5/1, 5-18.

Ward, Kevin (2008) ‘Editorial - Towards a Comparative (Re)Turn in Urban Studies? Some Reflections’, in: Urban Geography 29/5, 405-410.

Wiest, Karin (2010) ‚Multiple und global verwobene Mo-derne als Herausforderung für die vergleichende Stadt-forschung’, in: Belina, Bernd/Miggelbrink, Judith (Hg.) Hier so, dort anders. Raumbe-zogene Vergleiche in der Wissenschaft und anderswo, Münster, 264-282.

Ziai, Aram (2004) Entwick-lung als Ideologie? Das klassische Entwicklungspa-radigma und die Post-Deve-lopment-Kritik. Ein Beitrag zur Analyse des Entwicklungsdis-kurses, Hamburg.

3 Far from it. But it is an asserti-on that cross-cutting analyses of changes in infrastructure, technology and urban development can be profitably made across these diverse ranges and contexts. [...] Understanding the ‚spaces of modernity’ of contemporary and historical cities ‚is always about traversing the ground that lies between totalisation and difference‘“

4 „Post-colonial urbanism will need to track across the differences amongst cities to build a theoretical account of city life without assuming its universal applicability or seg-menting the world of cities into categories“

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voneinander lernen (ihr Vorbild sind unter anderem die Studien der 1940er und 1950er Jahre zu Städten des Kup-fergürtels des Südlichen Afrikas).

Ordinary Cities existieren in einer Welt der Interaktion und der Flüsse. Diese sind gleichwohl nicht als Castells globale Ströme der Macht, des Kapitals und der Waren zu verstehen sondern als eine Vielzahl von Netzwerken, Zirkulationen verschiedener Art und Reichweite, sozi-aler, ökonomischer und politischer Prozesse (Robinson 2006). Hier schließt Robinson an eine Reihe von aktuellen Ansätzen in Geographie und Soziologie an, die versuchen, diesen Gegenüberstellungen zu entgehen und flache und topologische Herangehensweisen vorschlagen, die den Strömen, den Dingen, den Menschen oder den Ideen folgen, ohne hierarchische Kategorien an den Anfang zu setzen. Beispiele dafür sind Multi-Sited Ethnography und Akteur-Netzwerk-Theorien, die einerseits eine starre Ortsgebundenheit der Betrachtung durchbrechen sowie andererseits ganz neue und zumeist sehr kleinteilige Ebenen der Interaktionen in den Blick bekommen. In Bezug auf Stadtplanung und -forschung finden sich spannende Arbeiten zum Konzept der Flat Ontology, die eine Kritik an den impliziten aber essentiell hierarchischen Ontologien der Globalisierungsdebatten übt, oder neuere Ansätze um den Begriff der Assemblage. Letzterer soll einerseits dazu beitragen, eine Perspektive zu ermöglichen, die keiner Di-mension des Sozialen eine ontologische Priorität einräumt, und soll andererseits bezogen auf Städte helfen, diese als Gleichzeitigkeiten heterogener Elemente zu verstehen. Dabei wird gerade die aktive Produktion des Sozialen durch eben diese Differenzen in den Blick genommen (Marston u.a. 2005, 2007; Füller/Michel 2008; Farías/Bender 2010).

Den Ausgangspunkt der Analyse auf die konkrete städtische Maßstabsebene zu legen bedeutet bei Robinson nicht, wie etwa in den jüngeren Debatten innerhalb der deutschspra-chigen Stadtsoziologie, „die Stadt als Ganzes“ in den Blick zu nehmen (Berking/Löw 2008; Löw 2008) und damit eine gefährliche Homogenisierung vorzunehmen und einen problematischen Stadtbegriff zu verwenden (Marcuse 2006). Vielmehr werden Begriffe wie Global und Lokal, Mikro und Makro und eben auch Stadt problematisiert. Das Problem dieser Binarisierungen, so wurde vielfach deutlich gemacht, liegt in der simplifizierenden und unterkomplexen Gegen-

überstellung von abstrakten und machtvollen Strömen globalen Kapitals und der konkreten und authentischen Lebenswelt lokaler Communities (als Orte des Widerstands, des Partikularismus oder des Stillstands).

Schluss

Dies hat zweifelsohne erhebliche Konsequenzen für die Erforschung von Städten und Orten und es verschiebt sich damit, wie Michael Peter Smith in seinem Entwurf eines transnationalen Urbanismus schreibt, die Vorstellung des Städtischen. Die ,Neue Stadtpolitik‘, die durch diese Perspektive in den Blick genommen wird, stellt sich als ein heterogenes Terrain globaler Medienflüsse, transnatio-naler Migrationnetzwerke staatlicher Akteure, multilokaler Unternehmern und multilateraler politischer Institutionen und Organisationen dar, die sich in unterschiedlichen und veränderlichen Konflikten in verschiedenen Koaliti-onen zu einander verhalten (Smith M.P. 2001: 71). In den Blick rücken so die historische Spezifik von Orten, deren Geschichte und städtischen Regimes sowie insbesondere die komplexen Interdependenzen zwischen Orten und einer zunehmenden Transnationalisierung von Praktiken und Diskursen (Shatkin 2007). Eine postkoloniale Stadtfor-schung muss einerseits Differenzen zwischen Städten und gleichzeitig Gemeinsamkeiten deutlich machen. Dabei gilt es gerade, scheinbar Unvergleichbares zu vergleichen und bestehende Hierarchisierungen aufzubrechen, die immer dazu neigen, das eine in Begriffen des Mangels gegenüber dem anderen zu denken. Die Betonung von Gemeinsam-keiten darf dabei nicht zu einer Universalisierung führen, welche die Spezifika lokaler Konstellationen als Marginalien gegenüber allgemeinen Systemen und Strukturen abtut, so wie die Betonung von Differenzen nicht zu deren Essenti-alisierung und damit der Exotisierung anderer städtischer Realitäten führen darf.

Verbunden ist damit das Plädoyer für eine neue Form vergleichender Stadtforschung und für die Analyse des Wanderns und der Interdependenzen sowohl von Stadtpo-litiken wie auch von Theorien des Städtischen. Ein solches war in den letzen Jahren verstärkt und besonders vor dem Hintergrund einer postkolonialen Kritik zu hören (Ward 2008; Wiest 2010). Neu an diesen Forderungen, die sowohl aus empirischen Beobachtungen einer wachsenden und beschleunigten Interdependenz als auch theoretischen und theoriepolitischen Überlegungen entstammen, ist weniger die Forderung nach Vergleich allgemein. Vielmehr geht es um den Versuch einer nicht-hierarchischen Perspektive auf Städte im Norden und im Süden, die weniger zum Zweck einer größtmöglichen Kontrastierung verglichen werden, als zum Zweck einer postkolonialen Kritik der Stadtfor-schung und damit einer Reformulierung gängiger Begriffe von Urbanität, die weiterhin stark an einer sehr spezi-fischen Vorstellung und Idee europäischer Städte orientiert sind. Damit wird eine Herangehensweise möglich, die auf Kategorien wie Megacity und Drittweltstadt, die oftmals mehr verschleiern als erhellen, nicht mehr als Ausgangs-punkt der Analyse angewiesen ist.

Boris Michel ------------Dr. phil., wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter am Institut für Geographie in Erlangen. Arbeits- und Forschungs-schwerpunkte sind inter-disziplinäre Stadtforschung, Diskurstheorie und Kultur-geographie. Gegenwärtig Arbeit zum globalen Transfer innerstädtischer Aufwer-tungsstrategien am Beispiel von Business Improvement Districts.

PhD, assistant professor at the Institute of Geography in Erlangen, Germany. Work and research focus: inter-disciplinary urban research, discourse theory and cultural geography. Currently wor-king on the global transfer of inner-city revalorisation strategies with the case of Business Improvement Districts.

Contact: <bmichel@geographie. uni-erlangen.de>

Abb. 4 / Figure 4Hochverdichtetes Wohn-gebiet in Tokio, nahe der Omotesando dori-Achse, mit den Hochhaustürmen von Shibuya / Densified neighbourhood in Tokio near Omotesando dori with Shi-buya CBD in the background. Photo: K. Teschner

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The Construction of the Urban: Cultural Evolution and the Asymmetry of Power

Jürgen Oestereich

Die Konstruktion des Städtischen: Kulturentwicklung und Asymmetrie von Macht Stadtbildung ist ein kollektiver Prozess, dem die Asymmetrie der Macht inhärent ist. Die Geschichte zeigt, dass Sym-metrie und Kontrolle am ehesten in kleinen, selbstverwalteten Einheiten herzustellen ist. Die Theorie der Stadtpla-nung hat dies bis heute ausgeblendet, ebenso wie die Bedeutung einer facettenreichen Kultur, die nur im Urbanen möglich ist. Der Autor empfiehlt den konstruktivistischen Ansatz, der mit dem Konzept der „Körnigkeit“ der klein-maßstäblichen Vielfalt Rechnung tragen kann. In kleinmaßstäblicher Selbstbestimmung wird das Diktat der Macht gebrochen, das ‚gute Leben’ in einem ‚guten Umfeld’ wird denkbar.

The town: a phenomenon alien to the town-plan-ning profession

There is a poem by the German poet Bertolt Brecht, which starts: “Who built the seven gates of Thebes? / The books are filled with names of kings. / Was it kings who hauled the crazy blocks of stone?”1 Towns, in legends often accredited to founding fathers, are never single-handed creations, but collective undertakings. Their beginning, unfolding, blossoming and their decay depend on an overarching societal setting. It is undisputed that, in con-trast to villages, towns are places of labour division, trade and intellectual argument. Each may become either an end in itself or stimulate the accumulation of knowledge, new riches and innovations which ease the labour of subsistence to allow, in turn, still more accumulation, etc. To this end, urban civilisations establish schools, security and other services, usually in form of common goods, or “commons”.2 These pre-suppose writing, calculation and recording, and provide for abstract communication. Urban civilisation means cultural evolution, which also means change at an unprecedented pace.3 This systemic turn is meant when we speak of “the construction of the urban”.

Is this richness adequately reflected in urban studies? There are countless publications on economic up-split-ting. There are numerous analyses of reconnection by trade and communication. Studies on cultural richness, however, are better found under „travel literature“, in movies and TV features.4 Which planner pays attention to the cultural repercussions of economic specialisation down to the use of diverse languages, often connected with contrasting ways of life and outlooks?5 Who has ever reflected on the fact that towns exist only in crowds, learning from each other? Apart from the variety of observations on cultural emanations in literature, theatre, films, etc., there are periodic or specific festivals of reli-

gious or secular character institutionalised everywhere. Only very recently and rather unrelated to the town-planning discourse, a class of agents called the „creative class“ has gained respectability.6 But, do planners really understand the function of the Brazilian or Caribbean carnival, of Indian temple celebrations, of soccer events, film festivals and their corollaries?

Teleology: a tricky approach

Coming from architecture, I have sympathy for the penchant of my colleagues to keep to what they have learned, their concentration on sound structure and elegant appearance. We are used to first solving a problem on paper and subse-quently implementing it, be it a school, a town hall, a sewage plant, the urban transport system in Curitiba, etc. This successful problem-solving by teleology corresponds with well-established roles: here the client, there the agency to produce what had been ordered, a team of craftsmen under the command of a technical director, architect or planner.

Confronted with the need for shelter in quantity, an ar-chitect with his technical background immediately thinks of producing dwellings which are as economical and as fashionable as possible. The product, be it on paper or in reality, catches the eye and tones down the mind. But this approach does not work with housing. Experts may conceive of dwellings adequate to their criteria, but the habitants also have their own criteria, and financing and the time schedules are always problematic. The barrack blocks of Hilbersheimer, Le Corbusier’s Cité radieuse, his snake of flats along the coast of the city of Algiers, or the background façades of Fritz Lang’s movie Metropolis, they all look like hives for bees or ants. Is Chandighar operat-ing in accordance with the rules which its planner, Le Corbusier, decreed?7 The “grands ensembles” built in this mass-production-centred „Fordist“ spirit after the Second

1 Translation to be found with Google.

2 Orstom (1990); Oestereich (2003).

3 Sjöberg (1960).

4 The occasional "special is-sues" dedicated to particular cities of professional journals, including TRIALOG, or books like “Hybrid Urbanism” (Alsayyad 2001) have the reputation that they lack practicability.

5 In Manila according to Daus (1997: 135) people use side by side three “constitutional” and four unofficial, but alpha-betised languages, apart from a number of regional dialects. In fact, in which town of size on earth is only one language and one way of life in use?

6 See e.g. Landry (2000); Florida (2004); Kunzmann (2008); Reckwitz (2010).

7 Sarin, Madhu (1982), dis-cussed in Oestereich (1992).

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World War in France and in many other countries have rarely succeeded. Even in Brasilia, an example of the most advanced architecture of its time, where public buildings and infrastructure came out fairly strong, ordinary hous-ing became problematic later. Neither the “post-oil city” Masdar, nor the climate neutral Chinese model cities like Linglong, near Shanghai, avoid the trap of teleology. Their structures are built in accordance with a financial logic, which requires them to be replaced after 30 years by equally short-lived new structures like those in Singapore, Seoul and Hong Kong of today.8

Financial logic responds wisely to the changing needs and changing predilections of the inhabitants. Cultural evolution, like any other evolution, is principally unpredict-able. Straight-forward teleological engineering, however, if applied in housing and town planning, ends up by causing restrictions. Moreover, bureaucrats or developers, and professionals are not infallible and often are, consciously or not, misled by hidden interests. Since they are in power they feel that, if they listen to criticism and submit to failure, they would lose their identity, function and their raison d’être.9 Against this, the Bauhaus cunningly coined the slogan “form follows function” or “function commands form and power comes second”. This would break the asymmetry of power and give authority to the user and small owner. Where in town planning discourse is this position defended or even understood?10

Town planning as a missed perspective for self-government

Some fifty years earlier Ildefonso Cerdà, a civil engineer and politician, a practitioner and theoretician, acted and argued already along these lines when proposing the quarter Eixample of Barcelona “far ahead of its time”.11 Although meant for the entire population – which resulted in him being accused by colleagues of being a social-ist – in the end only the upper middle class followed this vision. They made the quarter their own by putting something on top of Cerdà’s complexity: they instigated

the experiment of creating the Barcelonan brand of Art Nouveau, led by another charismatic figure, Antonio Gaudi. The impetus of these flows of creativity was so strong that they still continue today.12 The vigour of self-determined ownership and pride, however, has vanished. A Fordist spirit of profit-mindedness has taken over.

There is another significant example of alternative hous-ing and town planning that can be compared with Eixam-ple. Vienna, having lost its role as empirical capital after the First World War, was forced to accommodate a large number of immigrants coming from all corners of the former Austrian Empire. A social-democratic leadership answered by inventing a new kind of housing policy, the forming of neighbourhood cooperatives. This approach was not completely unique. In Germany, Scandinavia and other countries similar efforts were undertaken, but in dif-ferent political and economic settings and less systemati-cally.13 In Vienna, a special kind of tenant condominium flourished. These “Wohnhöfe” were of a scale particularly fitting to be “appropriated” (i.e. informally “owned”) by the habitant communities themselves. The approach was implemented in a craftsmanship manner by the respec-tive communities and architects who sympathised with the social-democratic party. The corresponding discussion revolved (and still revolves) primarily around the formal aspects and physical properties of the units and, to a lesser extent, the ownership and commercialisation pres-ently under way.14

The same neglect of social and political aspects can be observed with regard to another phenomenon of European town development after the Second World War. Although it occurred in front of everyone’s eyes, it took nearly fifty years before professional discourse took notice of the fact that most housing in Europe was built outside the compact city centres. In 1997, Thomas Sieverts published a book, which appeared in 2000 in English as “Cities without Cities: An interpretation of the ‘Zwischenstadt’”. Sieverts himself preferred the term „the in-between city“, while the new American translator, Diana George, chose “Where We Live

8 For Masdar, Linglong refe-rences see <www.wikipedia.org>, for others, e.g.: Epstein (1973) on Brasilia; Yeh (1975) on Singapore; Yeung /Drakakis-Smith (1982) on Hong Kong and Singapore; Kim (2008) and Seo (2008) on Seoul.

9 See Francisconi (1995) on Brasilia; Yeung /Drakakis-Smith (1982) on Hong Kong and Singapore; Kim (2008) on Seoul.

10 Possibly with John Turner further down, as with some of the articles in this issue of TRIALOG.

11 <www.wikipedia.org> on Ildefonso Cerdà (accessed 10-06-2010).

12 Mendoza (2006); Borja /Castells (1996); Hillier (1996). Dieter Frick (2006) is, by ta-king Cerdà as a starting point, the first to my knowledge to reflect on the planning routines and instruments for building a consistent theory with respect to the technical and practical aspects of town planning. But even he does not reflect the social and political perspectives which Cerdà – a politician himself – had already in view.

13 Rodrigues-Lores /Fehl (1979), Ladd (1990).

14 LLC Books (2005).

15 Thomas Sieverts and the notion “Zwischenstadt” (see <www.wikipedia.de>). For a more recent and comprehensive review see: Thomas Sieverts et al. (2005). For the US position: Katz (1994), <www.chartercities.com> and <www.stanford.edu/~promer>.

16 For community studies see the classics: Zink (1939); Warner/Lunt (1941); Hunter (1953). For a few academics who criticise neo-liberal pre-mises in planning see Peter Marcuse and John Friedmann (both under <www.wikipedia.org>).

Figure 1 Teleological planning – as seen by Mulkh Raj.

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Now”. The terminology is significant. While Sieverts and his European colleagues were concerned with cause-effect chains in economy and ecology, with social integration and local identification, the US professionals mixed “where we live now” up with a commercial real-estate selling strategy called “New Urbanism”. This was even topped by the concept of “Charter Cities” with its putting economy in absolute power.15 The inherent disdain of political and hu-man rights is astonishing insofar as there had been a wave of “community studies” in the USA in the sixties and later in Europe which dealt critically with the asymmetry of power. Obviously, planners feel at risk if they oppose neo-liberal-ism.16 Power proves to be stronger than function. Striving for a self-governed place which is good to live in

Le Corbusier’s Unité d´Habitation in Marseille, although by no means conceived as an example for self-government, may serve as case to the contrary. When I visited it in 1955, it was completely run-down and considered for demolition. Yet, two things happened: First, the build-ing was classified as a protected monument and thus became eligible for public rehabilitation funds; and second, a few enthusiasts of Le Corbusier’s architecture invented institutions capable of managing the rehabilita-tion. A tenant co-operative, followed later by an owner’s co-op, organised the letting and selling of the flats, giving preference to young couples who showed concern for the building and were prepared to participate in a kind of self-government. They converted parts of the building into a hotel for architecture tourists, etc.17 When I returned some fifty years later, the building had turned into a show piece controlled by the habitants, who were proud to show how they like to live there.

A similar transformation of a unit of two or three times the size seems to be much more difficult, as the man-agement of other, bigger cités radieuses has shown. This leads to the question which already intrigued the ancient Greeks: What is the “right size of a self-governed city, a democracy”?18 The urban civilisations we know of in history (Mesopotamia, Indus valley, Maya, Aztec and Inca towns, China, Indonesia, Angkor Vat in Cambodia etc.) all collapsed eventually. In every case, the initial hypothesis for the given collapse was a disaster; later it was discov-ered that the cause lay in problems of size and loss of social and ecological control.19 In the same spirit, main-stream social thinking and town planning suspected that the reason for the conversion of rural communities into industrial townships was to be found in the categorical change that took place collectively in the minds of town people. Many intellectuals followed (and still follow) the idea put forward by Georg Simmel around 1900, accord-ing to which socially integrated members of tight com-munities were turned into new egos which endured or enjoyed anonymity and were lonely but linked to society via neutral media (nowadays the internet) on the level of the nation-state and beyond.20

Yet, more careful studies on contemporary urban life which draw on the anthropological tool kit, arrive at different results. Pierre Bourdieu, for example, follow-ing Henri Lefebvre, insists on the prevailing patterns of behaviour and exercise of power (“habitus”) which entail non-anonymity. For example, the “landlord-tenant” or “employer-employee” dichotomy, or any membership in a family or association counteracts anonymity.21 Most languages make it easy for an individual to identify him-self or herself with a specific locality (on various levels, Mexicano, Chilango, Tepitense, i.e. belonging to Mexico as a national territory, Mexico City, the quarter of Tepito and vice versa) regardless of class, income bracket, way of life, and many other possible distinctions. The name indicates his/her right to claim a physical place to live in along given cultural lines. It emphasises by implica-tion that an urban locality means fusion, mixture. Ronald Daus has assembled an impressive overview of novels, especially films and other products of art which cor-roborates this with examples of Latin American cities, Manila, Cairo etc.22 Some cultures seem to place more emphasis on class or ethnic affiliations, which result in a different pattern of segregation. It would be interesting to confront Indian cities (whose cohesiveness is defined in terms of religion, class, culture and other distinctions) with China, where more emphasis is put on cultural uniformity.23 However, both cultural and the physical affiliations produce a conflict between the “legitimate” right of a human being for a “good” place to live and a ”legal” command over a place, i.e. power-backed, asym-metric ”formal” ownership. This makes any territory a “contested space” and a subject of political functionality, colonised or self-ruled. Certain planners, such as those assembled in this issue of TRIALOG, share this diagnosis. But do we know how to set up the conditions in which to achieve self-rule? Are we prepared to act accordingly, i.e. politically?

From a “good place” to a “good life”

The first consistent and coherent reflections about ar-ranging urban life which we have sound knowledge of come from the ancient Greeks and their heirs, the citizens of Roman-Hellenistic towns. These reflections are about political organisation. The same holds for the reinvention of ‘the urban’ in the European Middle Ages. Historians have dealt with the concepts supporting the prevailing political orders which culminated in the writings of Mar-silius and Machiavelli.24 Likewise, the contemporary con-cept of “small is beautiful”, i.e. the importance of scale for any civil evolution and ecological development, mistrusts power-backed big-scale orthodoxy.25 The “Right Liveli-hood Award” has honoured a number of partisans of this heterodox approach. One of them is John Turner, whose arguments in favour of self-help housing by the urban poor were widely praised, in TRIALOG and elsewhere.26

The World Bank tried to adopt John Turner’s recipes. They drafted a number of “site and service” or “upgrading”

17 See: <www.marseille-citera-dieuse.org> and correspon-ding links.

18 Aristotle put it at 10,000 citizens (i.e. those having the right to vote). See Finley (1976).

19 Yoffee/Cowgill (1988); Tainter (1988); Diamond (2005).

20 For Georg Simmel mirroring intellectuals: Rowe /Koetter (1978) and Appadurai (1997).

21 Henri Lefebvre and Pierre Bourdieu, see <www.wiki-pedia.org>. In addition, the social facts are reflected in the language used. “Citadin”, “citoyen“, “bourgeois-pro-priétaire“, etc. have specific French meanings. Particularly sophisticated is Spanish: The medieval expression “comun-ero” (the equivalent of the German “Bürger” i.e. the hol-der of civic rights as member of an urban community) fell into disuse when the alliance of royal, nobility and religious power broke the civil life at town level around 1400. The reference level today is “ciudadano“ (i.e. the owner of citizen rights at national level) or “habitante” (without reference to any right status). In Latin America expressions like “colon”, “poblador”, “ocu-pante”, “invasor”, “arrenda-tario”, “inquilino”, “alegado” have or avoid normative connotations according to the situation etc.

22 Daus (1997).

23 On India e.g. V. S. Naipaul or Subetu Mehta (<www.wikipedia.org>); on China e.g. Fincher (1981), Skinner (1977), Liao (2009) and contributions in TRIALOG 68 (2001).

24 See Fox (2006); Vittinghoff (1982), Tilly /Blokmans (1994); Meier (1994); Mansfield (1979).

25 Illich (1973); Kohr (2008); see also <www.wikipedia.de> for Ivan Illich, Ernest F. Schuma-cher and Leopold Kohr.

26 Turner (1978); Oestereich (1987); Mohandas (1987); Steinberg (1987); Chandhoke (1991).

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schemes. In view of the explosive proliferation of “slums” their interventions were of unprecedented size. Because of this, and due to an in-built centralisation, they devel-oped the same shortcomings as the former mass housing and, consequently, were unfit to cope with the chal-lenge.27 Likewise hypnotised by the appalling statistics, Mike Davis, in his book “A planet of slums”, accredited the failure to satisfy the basic needs of the poor to the neo-liberal order as such.28 However, his sweeping view merely leads to more mass housing. This also holds for Amnesty International’s “Dignity Campaign” against evic-tions and “slums”, which addresses only those in power. This approach incidentally also betrays the aim of the founders of AI, namely to strengthen the human rights of the individuals, which would mean insisting first on the inhabitants’ right to self-determination.

By contrast, UNCHS-Habitat, IIEC and other partisans in the field argue in favour of “housing by people” and “empowerment of the poor” in concrete cases.29 These begin on a small scale and take time to grow like giant tree forests, which grow out of tiny seeds in time. And it is not possible to predict which grains will succeed. So, self-ruled housing schemes depend on day-to-day grass-root actions as well as daring, innovative and visionary leaders. In this way organisations and movements grow into viable configurations, which normally include also elements of the commons.30 A case in point is the movement of Participatory Budgeting which started in Porto Alegre alongside a variety of local human rights based develop-ments in Latin America, India and Africa. They represent what biology calls “opportunistic evolution”.31

Such social movements depend heavily on people who are identified and identify themselves with concrete localities and communities. Cultural and political activism, coupled with personal commitment seems to be crucial for success, while agents with outside loyalties and nar-

row or uncertain time horizons have proved problematic and even counterproductive. In addition, most agents and academic planners do not have the personal experience of being identified and identifying themselves fully with a concrete place anywhere in the world.32 Could it be that the routine of shifting teachers, students and profession-als around makes them rootless and unfit for politics with the effect that they forget about the function of roots?

This is where Niklas Luhmann´s concept of social evolu-tion comes in, especially if one transgresses some of his simplifying classifications and extends the concept to in-corporate political considerations of local practice. To start with, he refutes the concept of the rootless individual, lost in anonymity, for epistemological reasons. He defines society not as individuals in exchange, but starts with communication units centred around specific topics. This “systems theory” or “constructivist” approach identifies talk about anonymity as a paradox: speaking about it is equivalent to refuting it.33 Transgressing Luhmann again, could his “communication units” be understood as sets of granulatory structures of “the urban”, organised in a contingent and dissipative way? No mind or observer can, in principle, be in a position to have a conclusive view. A statement about general development makes no sense. Sense is, however, in the individual mind (or body) acting in networks. Culture matters because it defines the legiti-macy of any intervention. Economics are crucial, because they define the command over resources and ownership. Human beings need a “good place” to be, but also space for subsistence and for leaving footprints which affect others.34 This understanding of “contested space” means that the control of power and the establishment of sym-metry is a vital issue for human survival.

“Granularity” enables us to pose questions concerning the political, cultural coherence and other affiliations, concerning explicit and hidden motives in ongoing com-munication, concerning political craftsmanship at all levels, spiritual sense, emotional satisfaction etc., from which probably as much political and societal action emanates as from economic calculations. It offers op-portunities to partake in the old Greek notion of the “good life”. In contrast to antiquity, which was the first period in which this question was formulated (but looked for its fulfilment in Arcadia, i.e. in a place unaffected by strife for survival), the “good life” today has to be constructed with environmental and human resources at hand in a limited and therefore “contested” territory. The concept of granularity is able to encapsulate the claim to a “good” place in a given physical locality, to territorial identification as the prerequisite of a “good” life. Yet if power follows form and submits to rules with respect to a well-defined territory (as the nobility of ancient Athens did), the path to democracy and a self-governed (granulatory) society is free. This will not come of its own accord. The question has to be answered with which Bertolt Brecht concluded his poem on building old Thebes: “Every ten years a great man. / Who pays the piper?”

27 See “World Bank”, and nu-merous references to “Sites and Services” and “Upgra-ding” under <www. wikipedia.org> and for a critical assessment: Reinhart Skinner et. al. (1987).

28 Davis (2006), consult also his remarkable bibliography.

29 UN-Habitat, IIEC, City Alliance, GTZ, (all under <www.wikipedia.org>, etc.), many contributions in Environment and Urbanization and TRIA-LOG; see also Herrle /Walther (2005).

30 See footnote 2. The internet world is the latest example of the way in which the commons are emerging on a new continent – in the neo-liberal times of today in more bitter competition with private profit-seekers than in the past.

31 Castells (1983); Mathéy (1995); Bolnick /Baumann (1995); Oestereich /Teschner (2000); Souza (2001); Abers (2002); Oestereich (2002).

Figure 2 Cartoon: Rick Hirst. Selected from various motives by Rick Hirst, as published in a leaflet of the Habitat International Coalition at the occasion of the UN Conference Habitat II in Istanbul in 1996.

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Yeung, Y. / Drakakis-Smith, D.W. (1982) ‘Public housing in the City States of Hongkong and Singapore’; in: Taylor, J.L. / Williams, D.G.,eds.: Urban Planning Practice in Developing Countries; London: 217-238.

Yoffee, N. / Cowgill, G.L.,eds. (1988) The collapse of ancient states and civilisations; (U Arizona P).

Zink, Harold (1939) City Bosses in the United States: A Study of Twenty Municipal Bosses; Durham (NC UP).

Jürgen Oestereich ------------PhD, architect and town planner. Since 1973, freelance and consultant for bilateral and multilateral development agencies in the fields of townplanning, slum upgrading and communal development in Africa and Asia. Guest lecturer at the Development Planning Unit, UCL London and the Institute of Urban and Regional Planning, University of Technology Berlin. Author of numerous books and articles published in professional periodicals and scientific compilations. Co-founder of TRIALOG and N-AERUS.

Contact: <JOestereic@aol.com>

32 This is well-known. Yet, it undermines the legitimacy of development assistance. Hence nobody in develop-ment assistance trade is interested in studying this fact in detail and drawing the consequences. Likewise, academics tend to avoid any self-criticism in this respect.

33 Luhmann (1990 and 2002); King /Thornhill (2005); an extensive bibliography of Luhmann is to be found on <www.wikipedia.org>. I particularly refer to his earlier studies, available only in German, which I have quoted in the references.

34 Wackernagel /Rees (1997); Oestereich (2001).

References

86 TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

Veranstaltungen / Forthcoming Events

October 3–4, 2010 in The Hague, NL The 2010 Conference Cities of Migration - an Opportunity Agenda for Cities; organised by the City of Migration Project. Contact: phone +1 416 944 2627, <citiesofmigration2010@maytree.com> http://conference.citiesofmigration.ca/

October 4–8, 2010 in The Hague, NL 15th Metropolis Conference „Justice and Mi-gration: Paradoxes of Belonging“, organised by City of The Hague. Contact: phone +31 70 346 2654, <metropolis2010@denhaag.nl> www.metropolis2010.org

October 6–8, 2010 in Córdoba, ArgentinaV Seminario Iberoamericano de Ciencia y Tecnología para el Hábitat Popular: „Hábitat co-construido. Construcción colectiva de tec-nologías sociales para el desarrollo local en el escenario del Bicentenario“, organised by AVE / CEVE, Catholic University of Córdoba and National University of Córdoba. Contact: phone +54 351 489 1413, <seminario@ceve.org.ar>, www.ceve.org.ar/seminario

October 7–9, 2010 in Basel, SwitzerlandAfrica Conference organised by the Centre for African Studies Basel and its partners in the project “Living the City”. Contact: phone +41 61 267 34 82, <afrika-tagung@unibas.ch>, www.aegis-eu.org/pdf/CFP _Living_the_City_2010Basel.pdf

October 8–12, 2010 in Quito, EcuadorIV Foro mundial de las Migraciones, organized by the International Committee. Contact: phone +593 2 603 6242, <secretaria@fsmm2010.ec>, www.fsmm2010.ec/

Oct. 11–13, 2010 in Cape Town, South AfricaNational Conference: “Re-imagining the City: A New Urban Order”, organised by Development Action Group (DAG). Contact: phone +27 21 448 7886 <zinzi@dag.org.za>, www.dag.org.za

October 11–13, 2010 in Essen, GermanyConference: Future Megacities in Balance – New Alliances for Energy- and Climate-Efficient Solutions, organised by the German Federal Ministry for Education and Research. Contact: phone +49 228 3821 552, <contact@future-megacities-2010.org>, www.emerging-megacities.de/

October 22–24, 2011 in Berlin, GermanyInternational Congress: Cracks in the Concrete Jungle: New Perspectives on Urban Ecology, organised by Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. Contact: phone +49 30 2093 9301, <urbanecology@hu-berlin.de> www.stadtoekologie-berlin.de

October 24–28, 2011 in Donostia, SpainConference: Inventive Urban Infrastructure and Services for Smart Development, organised by the International Urban Development Associa-tion. Contact: <intainfo@inta-net.org>, www.inta-aivn.org/en/inta34-home

October 25–28, 2010 in Delft, NetherlandsKnowledge Collaboration & Learning for Sustai-nable Innovation’, organised by TU Delft and The Hague University. Contact: <conference@erscp-emsu2010.org>, www.erscp-emsu2010.org/

October 28–30, 2010 in Brussels, BelgiumAssessing and exploring the state of urban knowledge: Its production, use, and dissemina-tion in cities of the South, organised by the Net-work Association of European Researchers on Urbanisation in the South (N-AERUS) Contact: <n-aerus@n-aerus.net> www.n-aerus.net/ web/sat/workshops/2010/Brussels_2010.htm

October 29–31, 2010 in Toronto, CanadaConference: Migration and the Global city, or-ganised by Research Institute on Immigration and Settlement, Ryerson University. Contact: phone +1 416 979 5000, www.riis.ryerson.ca/

October 29–31, 2010 in Innsbruck, AustriaWorkshop on Geographical Development Theories, organised by Institut für Geographie, Universität Innsbruck. Contact: phone +43 512 507 5401, <geographie@uibk.ac.at>, www.uibk.ac.at/geographie/

November 4–5, 2010 in Delft, NetherlandsConference on Neighbourhood Restructuring & Resident Relocation: Context, Choice and Consequence, organised by TU Delft. Contact: phone +31 15 278 3625, <c.h.w.swarttouw-hofmeijer@tudelft.nl>, www.otb.tudelft.nl/live/pagina.jsp?id=ccc944e0-2172-4dc5-9179-0c5388bacee1&lang=en

87TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

Nov. 12–13, 2010 in Erlangen, GermanyTagung des AK Stadtforschung im Entwick-lungskontext: „Stadt und die Veränderung sozialer und physischer Umwelten“. Contact: S. Donner, phone +49 91 3185 22633, <sdon-ner@geographie.uni-erlangen.de>, www.geographie.uni-erlangen.de/docs/akt_1011_tagung-stadt_ank.pdf,

Nov. 14–17, 2010 in Porto Alegre, Brazil54th IFHP World Congress: Building Commu-nities for the Cities of the Future, organised by the International Federation of Housing and Planning. Contact: https://fd8.formdesk.com/ifhp1/Porto_Alegre_Registration or www.ifhp2010portoalegre.com.br/

Nov. 16–17, 2010 in Baku, AzerbaijanInternational Forum on Natural Disasters and Building and Construction Safety, organised by UNECE Committee on Housing and Land Management. Contact: phone +41 22 917 2477, <jakob.krupka@unece.org>, www.unece.org/hlm/prgm/hmm/construction%20safety/baku/welcome.htm

Nov. 22–24, 2010 in New Delhi, IndiaThird International Conference on Women’s Safety: Building Inclusive Cities, organized by Women in Cities International and Jagori. Contact: phone +91 11 2468 2001, <info@indi-ahabitat.org>, www.qvc.qc.ca/womens-safety/Welcome.htm

December 9–11, 2010 in Bristol, UKDestination Slum: The production and con-sumption of poverty in travel and tourism. Conference organised by Bristol Business School. Contact: Fabian Frenzel, <fabian.fren-zel@uwe.ac.uk>, www.destinationslum.com/

January 10–14, 2011 in Hyderabad, India13th Biennial Conference of the IASC 2011 - Sustaining Commons: Sustaining our Future, organised by the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC). Contact: phone +91 2692 261402, <iasc2011@ fes.org.in>, http://iasc2011.fes.org.in/index.php

January 27–29, 2011 in Bangalore, IndiaInternational Conference and Exhibition: Urban Development, Municipal Services and Built-Environment, organised by Municipalika - Good Governance India Foundation. Contact: phone +91 986 766 2781, <gibrahim@municipalika.com>, www.municipalika.com

February 3–5, 2011 in Pune, IndiaInternational Conference on Healthy Cities-Perspective on Asian Concerns, organised by the Maharshi Karve Stree Shikshan Samstha. Contact: phone +91 20 2547 6966, <enquiry@healthycities.in>, www.healthycities.in/

February 24–26, 2011 in Singapore5th Conference of the International Forum on Urbanism (IFoU) Global Visions: Risks and Op-portunities for the Urban Planet, organised by the International Forum on Urbanism (IFOU), Department of Architecture and the Centre for Sustainable Asian Cities (CSAC) at the School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore (NUS) in collaboration with the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) Singapore and the participating univer-sities of the IFoU network. Contact: phone +65 65165186, <ifou2011@nus.edu.sg>, www.globalvisions2011.ifou.org/

March 8–11, 2011 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, USASubtropical cities 2011- Subtropical Urba-nism: Beyond Climate Change. Conference organised by the Queensland University of Technology Centre for Subtropical Design and the Florida Atlantic University College of Architecture, Urban and Public Affairs. Contact: <John@americanmeetings.com> www.subtropicalcities2011.com/

July 4–8, 2011 in Perth, AustraliaWorld Planning School Congress 2011, organi-sed by the Global Planning Education Associ-ation Network (GPEAN). Contact: phone +61 8 9389 1488, <info@eecw.com.au>, www.wpsc2011.com.au/index.html

July 12–14, 2011 in New Forest, UK5th International Conference on Sustainable Development and Planning, organised by Wes-sex Institute of Technology. Contact: phone +44 023 8029 3223, <enquiries@wessex.ac.uk>, www.wessex.ac.uk

August 22–26, 2011 in Montreal, CanadaEcocity World Summit, organised by Montreal Urban Ecology Centre. Contact: phone +1 514 395-1808, <info@ecocity2011.com>, www.ecocity2011.com

88 TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

Neue Bücher / Book Reviews

Gesellschaft und Politik

Martim Smolka; Laura Muhally (eds): Per-spectivas Urbanas. Temas críticos en polí-ticas de suelo en América Latina. 370 S., ISBN 1-55844-163-7, 2007, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, Cambridge, Mass.

Das Lincoln Institute of Land Policy – finan-ziert durch die Lincoln Foundation – gibt die Zeitschrift LANDLINES heraus, welche weltweit verteilt wird. Ihr Ziel ist die Erforschung und Propagierung von sozialverträglichen Praktiken des (privaten!) Grundbesitzes – was das Institut sicher noch auf Jahrzehnte beschäftigen dürfte.Der vorliegende Band enthält eine Auswahl von 60 Beiträgen aus den LANDLINES Zeitschriften der letzten 13 Jahre. Die Papers wurden – den primären Arbeitsfeldern des Instituts entspre-chend – gruppiert nach den Bereichen:

(a) Bodenpolitik; (b) informelle Bodenverhältnisse und deren

Regularisierung; (c) Besteuerung von Grund und Boden; (d) Besteuerung der Bodenwertsteigerung; (e) Flächennutzung und Stadtplanung; (f) Partizipation und Governance. Da die Beiträge aus den 13 Jahren selbstver-

ständlich ohne Bezug zueinander entstanden sind, ist jedem der Abschnitte ein verbindender Text vorangestellt. Viele der Beiträge sind extrem kurz (z.B. nur 2 Seiten), und so bleiben viele Fra-gen unbeantwortet. Deswegen eignet sich der Reader – trotz des beeindruckenden Umfangs – eher als Text- und Beispielsammlung denn als Grundlagenwerk.

Kosta Mathéy

Werna, E., Keivani, R., and Murphy, D. (eds.): Corporate Social Responsibility and Urban Development – Lessons from the South. Palgrave/Macmillan, Basingstoke 2008, 245 S., British Pounds 20 (www.palgrave.com; <l.dunn@palgrave.com>)

Diese Publikation ist einem Thema gewidmet, zu dem selten publiziert wird. Das Engagement der Privatwirtschaft bei der Schaffung verbes-serter städtischer Dienstleistungen, Infrastruk-turen und Nachbarschaften ist den meisten nur als kommerzielle Operation bekannt. Weit we-niger wissen wir von kostenlos gestifteten Pro-jekten privater Firmen zur Stadtentwicklung, zur Verbesserung des Lebensstandards oder der Wohlfahrt der Armen und Minderbemittelten, heute bekannt als Corporate Social Responsi-

bility (CSR). Diese CSR-Projekte werden von vielen Firmen zur Pflege des eigenen Images benutzt. Einige Firmen haben ihre eigenen Stiftungen oder CSR-Abteilungen, andere nutzen NGOs und private Hilfsorganisationen (Lions Club; Rotary Club), um Ihre finanzielle Unterstützung an die richtigen Empfänger zu bringen. Und mitunter geht es hier um in-teressante Projekte der Jugendarbeit, des Schulbaus, der Versorgung mit Gesundheits- und Sozialdiensten, um Straßenbau, Wasser und Abwasserversorgung, um Förderung von Kleinbetrieben und Beschäftigungsmaß-nahmen etc. Auch Fälle des philanthropisch motivierten Wohnungsbaus gibt es und sogar Verbesserungen in informellen Siedlungen. Wie uns die Philippine Business for Social Pro-gress (PBSP) gezeigt hat (die leider in diesem Buch nicht vorgestellt wird), kann CSR mit Hilfe von Kleinkrediten und umfassender Commu-nity-Beteiligung sogar nachhaltige Slumsanie-rung in die Wege leiten.

Wie das Buch andeutet, sind die CSR-Stadt-projekte noch selten, aber diverse Organisati-onen der Vereinten Nationen (UN Volunteers; UN-Habitat; und UNDP) haben schon erfolg-reich damit experimentiert, und planen das CSR-Konzept auch in Zukunft anzuwenden. Zwar gibt es bislang mehr CSR-Erfahrungen in reicheren und entwickelteren Ländern, doch, so meinen die Autoren, kann sich dies durch-aus auch in den Ländern des Südens noch stär-ker herausbilden.

Florian Steinberg

Infrastruktur

Abhas K. Jha: Safer Homes, Stronger Communities. A Handbook for Recon-structing after Natural Disasters. 370 S. ISBN 8-8213-8045-1. 2010. The World Bank, Washington, D.C.

Die Weltbank hat eine sehr produktive Publi-kationsabteilung, aber unter der hohen Anzahl der Titel sind die wirklich nützlichen Produkte seltene Treffer. Dieses Handbuch über den Wiederaufbau nach Katastrophen – hier nach Wirbelstürmen, Tsunamis, Erdbeben, Über-schwemmungen, Vulkanausbrüchen und Berg-rutschen – ist ein solcher Treffer. Das Handbuch wurde insbesondere für Entscheidungsträger und Projektleiter verfasst, doch einzelne Kapitel wenden sich auch an andere Zielgruppen wie Planungsbehörden, Geberinstitutionen, Bau-gruppen, etc. (sie werden jeweils am Kapitelbe-ginn aufgelistet). Neben gut erläuterten Schritt-für-Schritt Empfehlungen wird viel Wert auf das übergeordnete Verständnis des Kontextes gelegt, einschließlich kultureller und regionaler Rahmenbedingungen. Die 11 Grundprinzipien werden in fast jedem Kapitel wiederholt (denn niemand wird das komplette Buch von vorne bis hinten lesen):

1. A good reconstruction policy helps to reac-tivate communities and empowers people to rebuild their housing, their lives, and their neighbourhoods.

89TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

2. Reconstruction begins the day after the disaster.

3. Community members should be partners in policy making and leaders of local imple-mentation.

4. Reconstruction policy and plans should be financially realistic but ambitious with respect to disaster risk reduction.

5. Institutions matter and coordination among them improves outcomes.

6. Reconstruction is an opportunity to plan for the future and to conserve the past.

7. Relocation disrupt lives and should be minimized.

8. Civil society and the private sector are important parts of the solution.

9. Assessment and monitoring can improve reconstruction outcomes.

10. To contribute to long-.term development, reconstruction must be sustainable.

11. Every reconstruction project is unique.

Im Übrigen sind die 23 von verschiedenen Experten geschriebenen Kapitel entsprechend der chronologischen Folge ihrer logischen Umsetzung im Feld angeordnet. Über hundert Fallstudien werden den relevanten Abläufen zugeordnet. Wichtige Zusammenhänge werden in Flussdiagrammen und Tabellen auch visuell vermittelt. Ein Buch, das man immer griffbereit haben möchte, auch ohne vorangehende Kata-strophe.

Kosta Mathéy

Astrid Erhartt-Perez Castro: Tlatel - Die Stadt am Müll. Müll als Ressource für eine nachhaltige Stadtteilentwicklung in Mexiko-Stadt. Zweisprachig deutsch-spanisch. Reihe: Investigaciones. For-schungen zu Lateinamerika, Bd. 10, 2009, 192 S., ISBN 978-3-8258-1781-7. 29.90 EUR, br. LIT Verlag, Münster.

Astrid Erhartt-Perez Castro fokussiert das Thema „Müll und Stadtentwicklung“ anhand ei-ner Fallstudie in Mexiko-Stadt und liefert einen interessanten Beitrag zur Intensivierung des professionellen Nord-Süd Dialogs. Die mutige Auseinandersetzung mit einem für den Groß-teil der städtischen Gesellschaft eher unange-nehmen Thema eröffnet Einblick in kaum be-kannte Zusammenhänge der Müllentsorgung, in die Geschäfte mit dem Müll und seine zahl-losen Formen der Weiterverarbeitung. Dabei verschafft uns die Verfasserin im ersten Teil des Textes Einblick in die engen Zusammen-hänge zwischen den formellen wirtschaftlichen Prozessen und den zahllosen unbekannten, informellen Akteuren der Müllentsorgung in der größten Mega-City Lateinamerikas. Die

Konfrontation mit Begriffen wie „Unternehmen Müllhalde“ oder „pepenadores“ und „caciques“ öffnet eine Tür zu einer unbekannten Welt, die für viele Menschen als Überlebensstrategie zur Selbstverständlichkeit werden musste. Die dabei gewonnen Erkenntnisse über die vielsei-tigen Formen des Recyclings von städtischem Abfall lassen in einer Zeit der weltweiten Roh-stoff- und Ressourcenknappheit aufhorchen!

Die Fallstudie von Tlatel-Xochitenco im zweiten Teil porträtiert ein Stadtquartier mit 12.000 Menschen, die von den Produkten ei-ner der größten Müllhalde der Stadt leben. Diese als städtebauliche Analyse konzipierte Betrachtung beinhaltet zwei Perspektiven und präsentiert uns damit ein Wechselspiel der Er-gebnisse. Zum einen geht es um die Einschät-zung der Autorin als städtebauliche Analytike-rin zu Stärken und Schwächen von Tlatel im Hinblick auf das unmittelbare Wohnumfeld, die technische und soziale Infrastruktur und das elementare Stadtbild als Identifikationse-lement. Zum anderen wagt diese Forschung eine sensible Auseinandersetzung mit den konkreten Anforderungen und Wünschen der Bevölkerung, die zwischen den Gefahren und Chancen der Existenz in unmittelbarer Nähe der Müllhalde hin und her gerissen wird. Den Abschluss bildet ein Entwurf eines Hand-werks- und Ausbildungszentrums, das die Potenziale der stadträumlichen Situation und die Fähigkeiten der BewohnerInnen von Tlatel verknüpfen und als Basis für eine nachhaltige Weiterentwicklung der Bevölkerung fungieren soll. Die zweisprachige Herausgabe von „Tlatel – Die Stadt am Müll“ ist ein kreativer Baustein für den Nord-Süd-Dialog im Sinn einer zu-kunftsorientierten und integrativen Stadtent-wicklung. Des Weiteren ist dieses Buch auch ein Anreiz für junge AbsolventInnen der Studi-enrichtung Architektur, sich verstärkt wissen-schaftlich zu engagieren!

Andreas Hofer

Ökologie

UN-Habitat: Planning Sustainable Cities. Global report on Human Settlements 2009. 206 S. A4. ISBN 1-84407-899-8. 2009. Earthscan, London.

In regelmäßigen Abständen veröffentlicht UN-HABITAT seinen Global Report. Darin wer-den in der Regel die gerade aktuellen Themen in Stadt- und Siedlungsentwicklung gewürdigt – in dieser Ausgabe in vier großen Kapitel sor-tiert: (I) Challenges & Context (die neuen Auf-gaben von Stadtplanung und Diversität lokaler

TRIALOG

• A journal for architects, planners, sociologists, geographers, economists and development planners

• A journal for the exchange of professional expe-rience in the field of urban development in the Third World

• A journal for the presentation and discussion of new research results and for the discussion of recent concepts of development policies for urban change

• A journal of free discussions, of work reports and of documentation of alternative approaches

The thematic range of TRIALOG includes among other related topics: urbanization / housing policy / urban social movements / architecture and regional cultures / ecology and appropriate technologies / rural development strategies.

Contributions in TRIALOG are written in German or English, with a summary in the respective other language.

Available TRIALOG-numbers in English:

101 (2/09) Borders and Migration100 (1/09) Urban Visions

99 (4/08) East Africa98 (3/08) Forced Evictions95/96 (1/08) <think future>94 (3/07) Housing Policies93 (2/07) Imposing European Urban Structures92 (1/07) Megacities91 (4/06) Building on Disasters90 (3/06) Urban Coalitions89 (2/06) Controlling Urban Space -

Rise of New Actors88 (1/06) Afghanistan87 (4/05) Violence and Insecurity in Cities86 (3/05) Teaching & Research 285 (2/05) Cultural Diversity82 (3/04) Urban Mobility81 (2/04) Micro Governance80 (1/04) Neo-liberal Urbanity79 (4/03) Tourism and Development78 (3/03) Social Production of Habitat

in Latin America75 (4/02) New Settlements74 (3/02) Urban Land Management73 (2/02) Disaster Relief72 (1/02) Eco-community71 (4/01) Eco-technology70 (3/01) Peripheries

Single issue € 10 (plus postage)Previous issues (till No.87) € 6 (plus postage)

Membership / orders for previous issues:TRIALOG - Peter Gotsch, Gluckstr. 85D- 76185 Karlsruhe, Email: <pg@glora.org>

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For more information: www.trialog-journal.de

A Journal forPlanning and Building

in the Third World

90 TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

Bedingungen); (II) Planungsprozesse (neue Instrumente; Regularien und Governance); (III) Planungsthemen (Grün/Braune Agenda; In-formeller Sektor; Infrastruktur); (IV) Steuerung (Monitoring und Evaluierung der Planung, neue Aufgaben für die Planerausbildung). Empfeh-lungen aus der vorangegangenen Analyse fin-den sich im folgenden Abschnitt (V): Future Po-licy Directions. Wie immer gibt es einen Anhang mit den aktuellen statischen Daten (regional, länderweise und stadtbezogen).

Wie nicht anders zu erwarten, werden Ar-mut und Slums; Klimawandel; städtische Gewalt und Katastrophen als aktuellste He-rausforderungen an die Stadtentwicklung her-vorgehoben. Dies erfordert Anstrengungen in innovativen Ansätzen für die Stadtplanung, mehr Partizipation, Schaffung von ökono-mischen Anreizen und städtischer Identität, und – ganz besonders – eine Reformierung der Studiengänge (z.B. informeller Sektor, Sa-nierungsansätze, Klimawandel, Ethik, Bürger-rechte und Nachhaltigkeit).

Kosta Mathéy

Bicknell, J., Dodman, D., Satterthwaite, D. (Hrsg.): Adapting Cities to Climate Chan-ge, London 2009, Earthscan, isbn: 978-1-84407-745-8 (www.earthscan.co.uk).

Dies ist in der Tat ein sehr aktuelles Buch. Klimawandel steht hoch auf der internationa-len politischen Agenda, und so verwundert es natürlich nicht in unserer urbanisierten Welt, dass Klimawandel auch als sehr be-drohlich für die Städte angesehen werden muss. Dies besonders, wenn man bedenkt, wie viele Großstädte an den Küsten gelegen sind – einige von diesen in Regionen, in de-nen immer wieder klimabedingte Schäden zu verzeichnen sind, wie zum Beispiel in Florida, Texas, auf den Philippinen, in China, Vietnam, Bangladesh, Indien, in der Karibik, um nur ei-nige der regelmäßig betroffenen Gegenden zu nennen.

Dieses Buch ist ausschließlich dem Klimawan-del in armen Ländern gewidmet. Die Einleitung bietet einen guten Überblick über die zuneh-mende Bedrohung durch vom Klimawandel bedingten Katastrophen, der Möglichkeit einer Vorbereitung oder Minderung der Auswirkungen des Klimawandels sowie die Rolle der öffent-lichen Hand. Während diese Einführung recht akademisch anmutet und reichlich mit Defini-tionen zum Thema angereichert ist, bietet der Hauptteil eine Reihe von Fallstudien zu Städten, die in den letzten Jahren dem Risiko größerer Katastrophen ausgesetzt waren: u. a. Mombasa, Dhaka, Cotonou oder Städte in Asien, Afrika und Lateinamerika insgesamt (die Mehrzahl davon

schon zuvor in Environment and Urbanization veröffentlicht, leider mit sehr schlechter Foto-qualität). Unter den Fallstudien, die Konzepte für eine Adaption an die Risiken des Klimawandels aufzeigen, werden interessanterweise nur Städ-te aus Südafrika und Indien angeführt.

Im letzten, in die Zukunft schauenden Teil des Buches geht es um die Finanzierung der Adaptiv-Maßnahmen. Dies erscheint alles noch etwas frisch angedacht, und man kann sich wirklich fragen, ob kleine finanzschwache Gemeinden und Städte wirklich gewillt oder in der Lage sein werden, Kredite für den Kli-maschutz aufzunehmen. Ob alternativ kosten-lose Finanzierungen dafür zu Verfügung ste-hen werden, ist nicht abzusehen. Insgesamt überrascht es, dass den staatlichen Institu-tionen eine so große Rolle zugewiesen wird, wo sie doch in den letzten Jahrzehnten ein-deutig an Führungskapazität verloren haben. Was es in diesem Buch noch nicht gibt, sind klare Maßnahmenkataloge und Rezepte, wie zu verfahren ist. Diese “how to do”- Manuale werden mit Sicherheit erst in einigen Jahren auftauchen. Aber es kann vorausgesagt wer-den, dass in Ermangelung von Finanzhilfen die meisten dieser Maßnahmen für arme Städte unerschwinglich sein werden. Eine wichtige Einführungslektüre.

Florian Steinberg

Peter Smith: Building for a Changing Climate. The Challenge for Construc-tion, Planning and Energy. 184 S. ISBN 1-84407-735-9. 2010. Earthscan, London.

Klimatisch angepasstes Bauen ist ein Thema, zu dem sich viele Autoren gegenwärtig zu Wort melden. Auch solche, die ihre Qualifikation an-erkanntermaßen in ganz anderen Bereichen erworben haben. Peter Smith gehört nicht zu diesen: sein Buch ist kompetent, aktuell und spannend (wenn auch in seinen Prognosen al-les andere als erfreulich).

Sein Text beginnt mit der Empfehlung, uns auf eine Klimaerwärmung um 40C bis 2100 vorzubereiten – eine Annahme, die er mit ent-sprechenden Zahlen untermauert. Das damit

TRIALOGZeitschrift für das

Planen und Bauenin der Dritten Welt

• Ein Journal für Architekten, Stadtplaner, Ökologen und Entwicklungsplaner.

• Ein Journal zum Austausch beruflicher Erfahrungen im Bereich städtischer und ländlicher Entwicklung der Dritten Welt.

• Ein Journal zur Aufarbeitung neuer Forschungs-ergebnisse und zur Diskussion entwicklungspoli-tischer Konzepte für die räumliche Planung.

• Ein Journal der freien Diskussion, der Arbeitsbe-richte und der Dokumentation richtungsweisender Ansätze.

Die thematische Bandbreite von TRIALOG umfasst u.a. Verstädterung / Wohnungspolitik / städtische Sozialbewegungen / Architektur und regionale Kulturen / Ökologie, angepasste Technologien / ländliche Entwicklungsstrategien.

Themen der letzten 7 Jahrgänge:

101 (2/09) Borders and Migration100 (1/09) Urban Visions / Jubiläumsheft

99 (4/08) East Africa98 (3/08) Forced Evictions 97 (2/08) Es wandelt sich!95/96 (1/08) <think future>94 (3/07) Housing Policies93 (2/07) Imposing European Urban Structures92 (1/07) Megacities91 (4/06) Building on Disasters90 (3/06) Urban Coalitions89 (2/06) Controlling Urban Space -

Rise of New Actors88 (1/06) Afghanistan87 (4/05) Violence and Insecurity in Cities86 (3/05) Lehre + Forschung 285 (2/05) Regionalkultur84 (1/05) Orte Bauen83 (4/04) Entlang der Seidenstraße82 (3/04) Urban Mobility81 (2/04) Micro Governance80 (1/04) Neo-liberal Urbanity79 (4/03) Tourism and Development78 (3/03) Social Production of Habitat

in Latin America77 (2/03) Infrastruktur und Entsorgung76 (1/03) Stadt und Wüste75 (4/02) New Settlements74 (3/02) Urban Land Management73 (2/02) Disaster Relief - Katastrophenhilfe72 (1/02) Eco-community

Einzelheft ab Nr.88 € 10,– (zzgl. Versand)Einzelheft bis Nr.87 € 6,– (zzgl. Versand)

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Weitere Informationen: www.trialog-journal.de

91TRIALOG 102/103 3/4-2009

verbundene Ansteigen des Meeresspiegels kann bis zu 80(!) m betragen und andere Folgen lägen in verheerenden Unwettern, Versteppung und Hitzewellen. Daraus leitet er verschiedene Anforderungen an das kommende Baugesche-hen ab: dazu zählen zunächst einmal die Pas-sivhäuser (‚Climate-Proof Housing‘), von denen er verschiedene Prototypen vorstellt und disku-tiert (Kapitel 4). Natürlich helfen diese nur indi-rekt gegen die Überschwemmungsgefahr - das schaffen aber die ‚Future Proof Houses‘, die nicht nur gegen sehr starke Winde geschützt sind, sondern auch Regenablaufgräben vorse-hen oder sogar als schwimmende Wannen aus-gebildet sind. Weitere Kapitel sind der dezen-tralen Energieversorgung und den Eco-Towns vorbehalten – sie werden jeweils auch unter kritischen Gesichtspunkten gewertet.

Die zweite Hälfte des Buches beschäftigt sich eher mit Sonderthemen – wie ökologische Ge-werbe- und Institutionsbauten, den Problemen konventioneller Energieträger und den Alterna-tiven dazu – insbesondere in Hinblick auf das früher oder später reale Szenario, dass kein Erdöl mehr zu Verfügung stehen wird.

Kosta Mathéy

Mark Redwood (ed.): Agriculture in Urban Planning. 248 S. ISBN 978-1-84407-668-0. 2009. GPL 65,-. IDRC, Box 8500, Ottawa, Canada K1G 3H3. Also available from Earthscan, London.

Städtische Landwirtschaft war von 15 Jah-ren noch ein Außenseiterthema, ist aber heute Teil des entwicklungspolitisch etablierten Re-pertoires der Stadtentwicklung in den Ländern des Südens. Dieser Erfolg ist zu großen Teilen dem International Development Research In-stitute in Canada (IDRC) zu verdanken. Diese Institution war über 20 Jahre hinweg weltweit das wichtigste Informationszentrum zum Thema und hat seit 1989 auch Stipendien für eigenständige Forschungen im Bereich städ-tischer Landwirtschaft ausgeschrieben. Ein er-ster Band mit den daraus hervorgegangenen Forschungsberichten wurde 2005 veröffentli-cht. Im hier vorliegenden zweiten Band finden sich nun 12 Aufsätze mit den Ergebnissen von Projekten, die in den Jahren 2002-2005 abge-schlossen wurden.

Die Beiträge behandeln Forschungen zu Pro-jekten in Kenia, Ghana, Peru, Zimbabwe, Malawi, Ghana, Kongo, Argentinien, Senegal und Nige-ria. Als ursprünglich unabhängig voneinander formulierte Projektanträge fehlt naturgemäß so etwas wie eine rote Linie, wenngleich auch der Herausgeber in Vor- und Nachwort sich beachtliche Mühe gegeben hat, vergleichbare Teilaspekte aus den Fallstudien herauszuarbei-

ten. Häufig angesprochene Themen sind die Ein-bindung der städtischen Landwirtschaft in den urbanen Stoffkreislauf wie z.B. durch Nutzung von nährstoffreichen Abwässern und Hausmüll. Damit untrennbar verbunden sind die allseits bekannten Gesundheitsrisiken. Andere Themen sind der soziale Beitrag und die organisatorische Bewältigung der Lebensmittelproduktion in der Stadt – häufig noch ohne das Plazet der Planer. So stehen am Ende mehr neue Fragen als Ant-worten im Raum – zusammen mit der Klage über das Fehlen einer grundsätzlichen Aussage zum quantitativen Beitrag städtischer Landwirt-schaft in der lokalen Ökonomie und für die Le-bensmittelsicherheit. Betont wird im Nachwort auch die Notwendigkeit, sich dem Thema künftig stärker interdisziplinär anzunähern.

Kosta Mathéy

Jimena Martignoni: Latinscapes. Lands-cape as raw material. 175 S., ISBN 84-252-2192-7. 2008. Gustavo Gilli, Barcelona.

Landschaftsplanung als Disziplin (und als aka-demisches Studienfach) ist in Lateinamerika nicht sehr verbreitet. Dennoch stehen Gestal-tungsaufgaben im öffentlichen Raum an, die dann größtenteils von anderen Berufsgruppen wahrgenommen werden – und häufig in sehr ge-konnter Weise. Dieses statement will die Autorin, eine argentinische Freiraumplanerin, mit dieser Publikation belegen. Sie hat das Material auf vier Aufgabengruppen verteilt: Masterpläne für Städ-te oder Stadtteile; Renaturierung von städtischen Grünflächen; touristische Anlagen und Villen.

Alle Projekte stammen aus dem Zeitraum 1995-2005 und werden zweisprachig spanisch-englisch kommentiert und zweifarbig abgebildet: die Hälfte der Fotos sind Türkis eingefärbt (ohne aber dass eine Logik hinter dieser Unterschei-dung zu erkennen wäre). Ein hübsches Buch zum Durchblättern, aber kein unverzichtbares Werk.

Kosta Mathéy

Herausgeber von TRIALOG ist die Vereinigung zur wissen-schaftlichen Erforschungen des Planens und Bauens in Entwicklungsländern e.V.

Postadresse für Redaktion und Verein:TRIALOG c/o PAR - Planen und Bauen in außereuropä-ischen Regionen, TU Darmstadt El Lissitzky-Straße 1, 64287 Darmstadte-mail: <Redaktion@trialog-journal.de>

Vertrieb: Südost-Verlag Service (SVS) GmbHISSN Nr.: 0724-6234V.i.S.d.P.: Klaus Teschner

Redaktion: Jürgen Oestereich, Klaus TeschnerSatz / Layout: Simone NiliusProofreading: Bryin AbrahamDruck: E & B printware KarlsruheBuchrezensionen: Kosta Mathéy Veranstaltungen: Rossana PobletTitelbild: Graphik von Bernd D.Ciecior-Cicerón

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TRIALOG 102/103 kostet 18,- € zzgl. Versand.Stand: September 2010

Impressum

TRIALOG ISSN 0724-6234