The Slums and the Sea

Demolition of slums is often done by people, mainly other people. Nature however can be just as annoying. Of course, politicians and planners frequently feature in slum dwellers’ bad dreams. We’ll talk about that in another post. This post is not about people destroying homes, it is about nature. 

Front doors sit awkwardly high above the ground since the footpath is washed away (together with a whole row of houses). The pink house has improvised steps of stacked rubble.

In Sagar Kutir (see Wormhole post below) homes are built on Bombay’s sandy beach and therefore under constant threat of the Indian Ocean. The search for buildable land brings people to claim land from the sea although undoubtedly it will be claimed back some day. The seaside of Sagar Kutir is marked by remains of washed away homes. Some are reduced to rubble scattered in the sand. Others have partly disappeared, leaving half a home behind. Sometimes the cut is astonishingly clean with household items still on the wall while most of the house has vanished. 

The remains of households are visible after a collapse. Sandbags must keep the sea from washing away more sand and houses.

Semi open barricades help to soften the impact of waves.

The photos in this post show man’s ongoing struggle with the power of nature. We see that people build obstacles in order to break the waves. Such barricades are built of whatever the sea brings to the beach. Maritime waste is turned into protective structures. It is typical of vernacular architecture to build with local materials. This is a perfect example.

Here too, vernacular architecture is marked by the use of local materials.

There is a little lesson here about building light versus building sturdy. Kacca[1] houses have the advantage of being light and mobile; we’ll discuss them in a future post. Although they are less durable than pucca, it is often possible to relocate them whenever the sea comes too close. A pucca house is made of concrete and bricks and impossible to move. It offers more protection, but primarily through resistance. And as we know, in light of the power of the ocean resistance is futile.

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[1] Kacca houses are made of softer materials and have a temporary character. Pucca is more permanent, with more durable materials. Read more

The meaning of the word Slum

Typically, slums are found on land that is less suitable for building than where the planned city goes. Favelas in South America are often found on steep slopes. Dharavi is built on marshlands. The word ´slum´ actually has its origin in the problematic location of housing. According to The Making of the English Landscape (Hoskins 1977) the etymology of the word ‘slum’ goes back to the 1820s and refers to the geology of the land on which the upcoming large scale industries in England were built. Since steam-power was not yet available for trains in the early Industrial Revolution, most of raw materials and finished products were transported by canal-barges. Industries therefore were located near canals, often on grounds that lacked sufficient drainage. In those days, the local term for these marshy lands was 'slump,' meaning wet mire. The same word also occurs in Saxon and Scandinavian languages. Most of the accommodation for the working class developed near the factories and consequently the ´slums´ were the housing that often suffered from drainage problems.

Nowadays the word slum raises debate as it is often used to express a negative sentiment about areas and to derogate the people who live there. At the same time, slum dwellers don't mind so much or even take pride in using the word. Certain academics claim it is politically correct to avoid the s-word and stick to 'informal settlement' whereas the UN and many other organizations keep it simple; they call the spade a spade and thus call the slum a slum. Since this blog promotes an open attitude towards slums, we deliberately use the word slum in order to counterbalance the negative connotation.

Reference:

Hoskins, William George. 1977. The Making of the English Landscape. Repr. London: Hodder and Stoughton.

Formal and Informal, example of a wormhole

The slums at Versova Beach are unintentionally sanctioned by a combination of laws (see text). The slums of Sagar Kutir on the left are permanent whereas the shacks on the right are only seasonal. Image Google/DigitalGlobe.

Sagar Kutir in Mumbai's Versova neighborhood is an example of encroachment on a similarly dangerous area, the beach. Although an environmental protection program for coastal areas nowadays forbids new permanent construction closer than 500 meters to the water, many pockets of settlement still exist within reach of the waves. Sagar Kutir is exposed directly to the Arabian Sea and houses are occasionally washed away in tropical storms. In order to protect people, local authorities order inhabitants to leave the houses that are most at risk and to seek shelter elsewhere. The informal and the formal sector meet here in a fascinating way. Since the settlements as such are informal and illegal, but dwellers are protected from eviction by law[1], authorities are forced to tolerate the erection of temporary shelter on coastal land. In addition, eviction during monsoon is considered too much a burden on dwellers and thus never takes place. Migrants use this legal loophole every year. On the beach therefore, one finds a seasonal presence of farmers besides the more permanent informal dwellers. As a result, informal settlement in Versova Beach consists of two pockets: a permanent one with pucca houses (Sagar Kutir) and a seasonal kacca part made of tents. Families who lose their pucca home in a storm move to the neighboring kacca area until the rainy season is over. Then repairs can begin and people move back, or a new home is found somewhere else.

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[1] The 1995 Slum Rehabilitation Act protects from eviction those who can produce a document proving they lived in the city of Mumbai before January 1995.