The Perfect Slum

To zone or not to zone

2010-09-28T17:42:00.008+05:30

Why official planning doesn't work in hyper dense areas

The applicability of contemporary strategies of urban planning is under increasing scrutiny when it comes to dealing with equitable housing in swelling cities. There is a growing awareness of the limitations of urban planning, as we know it. A first step towards new strategies is recognising that the chaotic urbanism of informal settlement holds lessons of how cities can be built without zoning or regulation. Studying such areas offers a tabula rasa in thinking city planning. A useful case to study user generated urbanism is in informal settlement area. It shows both the power of informality and the counterproductive effects of zoning in hyper dense areas. To get a sense of what density means in informal settlements, we need some figures. In developed countries, well known dense cities are New York City (10,500 p/km2) and Tokyo (14,000) . Estimations of the density in informal settlements show figures that reach from 300,000 to over 400,000 p/km2, which is more than ten times that of Cairo (31,600), world’s densest city. Considering that in swelling cities often over 50% of urban population lives in informal settlements, while occupying only 5% of the land, it is clear that overwhelming densities are found widely and that as a result, the pressure on open space is enormous.

Photo 1. Big open public space found in informal settlement area, hosting a cricket match.

Photo 2. The surrounding houses double as tribunes.

The presence of wide open public space is probably not the first that comes to mind when imagining the effects of high population densities. Miraculously, wide open spaces do exist in informal urbanism. They serve many purposes, such as cricket ground, community gathering and playground for all. Obviously, there is the everlasting threat of newcomers who seek a place to put up a shelter. However, somehow against that incoming tide of squatters, communities manage to keep space open.

Photo 4. Public gathering in a squatter area.

One of the secrets behind surviving in such very high densities lies in the multipurpose use of both public and private space. The recipe for successful multipurpose use is to rely on the power of informality. It is typical that most westerners who visit extreme dense areas for their first time, point at the lack of zoning in the streets. They claim that sidewalks are needed to make traffic safer, that curbs would help, as would separate lanes for hand carts. It is the planner’s mind that, in the name of ‘order’, introduces all kinds of obstacles in public space, forcefully introducing formality. What they apparently do not see is that zoning itself is space consuming. By allotting space to specific activities, that space is rendered useless for other activities that take place at different moments in time. Only non-designated space can be used all day long, meeting needs exactly when they occur.

Photo 5. Informality at its best: user generated zoning.

There is an interesting parallel between urban design and the design of rooms in housing. In western housing design, rooms are designed for a specific use. Rooms get a function and are named after it. Bed room, study, kitchen, living room, etcetera. This segregation leaves many rooms unused for most of the time, much unlike the traditional Japanese house in which the function of the room changes during the day. By changing futons and furniture, the room is adapted to what is needed. The key to traditional Japanese design is the creation of an open plan. Everything can change as no elements are fixed, even walls can move by means of sliding partitions. When everything is moved to the side, a smooth, obstacle free floor is all that remains.
On a more detailed scale, furniture is a similar institutionalisation of use. The introduction of chairs and a table reduces the use of a room to sitting around a table. The absence of furniture makes it possible to use a room for whatever comes up. Especially chairs are indicative for this phenomenon. In smaller homes, chairs are often the first item no longer to be found. Sitting can be done on the floor or on a bed doubling as a sofa.
It is exactly this concept of a smooth obstacle free floor that is the most successful formula for multipurpose use of public space. Activities and the number of people involved in them change throughout the day, as do the areas occupied by them. By leaving the boundaries between activities unmarked, these boundaries can freely move to an optimum.

Photo 6. Use of the street around 10am. Few people and little traffic.

The daily routine on an average main road could look like this. In early morning, the street is relatively empty. Commuters walk to the railway station, buying a take away drink from early vendors. Waste collection is present as always. Busses and cars drive by. By ten o’clock, shopkeepers start opening their business. Some street vendors start exhibiting their merchandise. Around 11 am, road traffic is increasing. Pedestrian presence slows the trucks and busses down. Noon. As the tropical heat is increasing, pedestrians and vendors leave the scene. Car traffic becomes predominant. Between 3 and 4 pm, vendors take over the street again, this time en masse and hold their ground till 10 pm or later. Meanwhile Muslims do their prayers, thus creating a temporary open air mosque. Taxis drive by all day and continue all night.

Photo 8. Around 6pm. The street is converted into a marketplace.

Photo 9. Friday prayers. Part of the street is converted into a mosque.

All activities claim space, put pressure on other activities and then later allow others to take over space again. This flow in the use of space is most efficient when it is not hindered by physical markers such as curbs, fences, boulders, or even walls. Moreover, such street furniture items can be counterproductive in densely used areas, as they mainly split the ever-moving zones of activities rather than limit them to the intended space. In Rahul Mehrotra’s terms, the static city is at odds with the kinetic city here (1). The static city is the physical city as it is built; the kinetic city is made by the events that take place in a city. Ideally, the static and the kinetic city are in harmony.

Photo 10. Counterproductive zoning. The fence on the curb inhibits pedestrians returning to the sidewalk.

Especially fences on curbs along the sidewalks show how informal forces override the intentions of planners and urban designers. Such fences are designed to keep pedestrians on the sidewalk and to reserve the road for motor vehicle traffic. The sidewalk however is the realm of shopkeepers, street vendors, and their customers and can be so crowded that non-customers prefer to walk on the other side of the fence. Once there, it is hard to return to the sidewalk, making the whole scene less safe than without the fence.

Photo 11. Counterproductive fixed zoning. Passengers at this busstop have to wait at the traffic side of the fence, as otherwise they cannot enter the bus.

Photo 12. User generated rezoning. Street vendors using the fence as an ideal backing, knowing that the traffic is what brings customers.

In addition, this parallel flow of pedestrians is seen by street vendors as potential clientele, so the vendors pick a spot on the road side of the fence. Moreover, the fence provides a nice backing. Thus a second lane of vending activities is created, reinstalling the informal multipurpose use of space, squeezing the vehicle traffic space even further than would have been the case without the fence. In an attempt to make the fence (i.e. zoning) effective, authorities have declared street vending illegal. Policemen have a tough job enforcing this ban as they are highly outnumbered by their targets. As soon as a raid starts, the news spreads like wildfire. Vendors pick up their merchandise quickly and hide it behind a tree, a lamppost, in the subway or even in the shop of a friend legal shopkeeper. After ten minutes, when the police have left the unlikely empty street, vendors put up their business again and continue as usual.
The issue here is the incredible density of people. Of course zoning and planning do work, as long as capacities meet the numbers. When congestion occurs, people start looking for shortcuts and challenge the planned zoning and formality as a whole. Shortly the cure (zoning) becomes worse than the disease, especially when zoning is embedded in physical objects. As we have seen, physically manifested zoning of use is space consuming and for that reason a problem when dealing with hyper densities. The kinetic city is very much an alive thing, as it is capable of permanently adapting itself to the context. This ongoing adaptation marks the efficiency of user-generated zoning in informal settlement. In fact the difference between formal zoning and user generated zoning is the use of time, the use of the fourth dimension. It is what allows space to be used 24/7.
New strategies should give a significant role to informality. It is time to overcome the limitations of 20th century urban planning and enter the realm of Post-Cartesianism. A clear invitation to come and see the wonders of informal urbanism was sent by Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner in the documentary Caracas, The Informal City (2). Klumpner says about Caracas: “But why do I feel as a European that this city is a total chaos? I think it is a typical response. There is a myth that the city is ordered and that myth exists in city halls around the world. The reality is however, that the city has always been chaotic. In Caracas all these forces stream freely and have produced new forms of city that are not known to us.”

1 Rahul Mehrotra, ‘Kinetic City, Issues for Urban Design in South Asia’. In: Shannon, Kelly and Gosseye, Janina (eds.), Reclaiming (the urbanism of) Mumbai (Amsterdam, SUN Publishers, 2009) pp. 141-9.
2 Rob Schröder, Caracas, The Informal City. Documentary for VPRO television The Netherlands, http://tegenlicht.vpro.nl/backlight/Caracas-the-informal-city.html

Corrugated Steel

2010-07-05T20:08:00.009+05:30

Emblematic for the other architecture

Photo 1. Mexican restaurant in Ebisu, Tokyo, Japan. A welcome natural look between the average contemporary but sterile architecture. Corrugated steel in all its splendour.

Corrugated steel is probably the most iconic of all building materials used in squatter settlements. It is a versatile product as it is strong, watertight, easy to cut, and above all cheap. To many of us, corrugated steel may look ordinary and simple but it is exactly this simplicity which makes it such a brilliant invention. The core of it all is, needless to say, a steel sheet with a thickness of only 1 mm. Such a sheet can be bent or folded in any direction, as a flat sheet has limited stiffness. It is the corrugation which adds the typical structural character. A corrugated steel plate can easily be bent in one direction, whereas at the same time it is very rigid in the other direction.

The production of steel plate is straightforward. Solidified steel bars are rolled until they have the required thickness. Cutting is as easy as cutting paper. Then comes corrugation which requires the most basic of all machines. Let’s say that a classic machine has gear wheels. A corrugation machine would consist of two gear wheels only, nothing more than that. Turning one wheel will automatically turn the other wheel . By feeding a flat steel plate between the two wheels, a regularly corrugated steel plate will appear on the other side of the wheels. The process is beautifully simple.

The resulting wave form sheets are excellent for roofing. Due to their stiffness the sheets need limited structural support. Much like ceramic roof tiles, a limited overlap of sheets will result in a water tight roof. The corrugation prevents leakage to the sides of the sheets.

Photo 2. Corrugated steel in detail, thin like a curtain. Corrosion is typical for re-used sheets.

Steel and water are not exactly friends, which is why steel plates corrode. To avoid this corrosion, steel plates are bathed in molten zinc, a process called galvanising. The zinc keeps the water out and even inverts the corrosion process of steel. Zinc has self healing properties in case of damage of the zinc layer, be it to a certain extent. Galvanised steel can therefore not be bent, under pain of corrosion. This is probably why recycled corrugated steel sheets have a limited life, as in the process of demounting, they are often bent more than is advisable.

Photo 3. Temporary housing for road construction workers. Alibag, Mumbai, India.

The use of corrugated steel for housing has certain drawbacks. Due to its thinness, it has zero insulation capacity, leaving the interior virtually fully exposed to the fierce tropical sun. In the rainy season steel roofs are extremely noisy. It means that corrugated steel creates comfort problems all year round. This is probably why in Mumbai the use of corrugated steel is limited to the temporary housing of construction workers on building sites. Such housing is often provided by the construction company, in which case it is the easiest (i.e. cheapest) material to use. Those people who create their own shelter apparently prefer other materials than corrugated steel. It is something to consider in rehabilitation projects too.

Photo 4. The architecture of the other end. Sheets made in mass production, thought of as a system of repetition, applied in a system-less order.

As the production process is so simple, corrugated steel is ideal for mass production. By its form, it is ideal for covering large surfaces such as roofs and facades, as that would require the least of handling per sheet. This is what distinguishes the architecture of settlements from architectural design. The latter most of the times is an attempt to make something special with materials best used in a system of endless repetition which fails where it meets other systems , whereas settlers are inventive in making something unique with individual sheets, not hindered by any system at all.

The emblematic value of corrugated steel in squatter settlements lies in the fact that it is indicative for the poorest ways of creating shelter and for the poorest ways of offering relief.

Removal

2010-06-07T18:42:00.010+05:30

The only way is: up?

Photo 1. Slum rehabilitation in Andheri West, Mumbai.

A library of considerable size could be filled with all that is written about slum rehabilitation. A seemingly endless number of studies, schemes, plans, proposals, surveys, scenarios, evaluations, and elaborations are made by a similarly endless line of planners, developers, urbanists, architects, authorities, slum lords, students, social experts, economists, engineers, real estate investors, associations, communities, contractors, governments, NGO’s, and so on. The phenomenon is thus big that books (1) are written about it as such, in a variety of qualities (2).

Photo 2. Apartment block towering over Thirteenth Compound, Dharavi, Mumbai.

There is little use in coming up with another plan here. Nor is it doable to explain all strategies being used. This chapter will be limited to how people move from informal settlements to housing and back(!). A short abstract on the mechanisms of rehabilitation is inevitable though.
Slum forming is the result of mass migration into the city combined with too short supply of proper housing. Migrants create their own shelter on whatever space is available, turning the city into a vast campsite. The scale of it leads to incredible densities, leaving little space for the development of adequate housing. Replacing informal settlements by houses, requires a strategy of removing settlers to a temporary location, clearing the land, building new housing, and relocating the settlers into the new building.

Photo 3. Transit camps in Andheri West, Mumbai.

Temporary locations are called transit camps. These transit camps appear in a variety of forms. Some look like stacks of cabins, others mimic apartment blocks. One area in Dharavi, the New Transit Camp, was mainly a handing out of parcels of land allowing people to restart their dwelling-career. By now it is an area of certain urban quality as the inhabitants were able to generate their own housing, upgrading it bit by bit, backed by security of tenure.

Photo 4. Stages of planned redevelopment. Slum on the right, transit camp on the left, construction and relocation in the background. Andheri West, Mumbai.

Photo 5. The demolition of abandoned slum reveals its inner structures. The soil contains an archaeology of the recent past.

Photo 6. As every boy in the world knows, construction sites are perfect playgrounds.

Photo 7. Incremental development (left) and planned redevelopment (high-rise) in Dharavi, Mumbai.

The landscape of Dharavi is permanently changing. In the sea of informal settlements many upgraded houses appear in the user generated process of incremental development. It is a natural process in which end-users change and adapt their environment directly. And thus it will deal will the issue of too high densities as well. It guarantees that every unique need gets its own unique solution. It is the process by which the much loved organic downtown cities throughout the world have evolved. The crucial thing is: this humane process cannot be hastened.
Probably it is the subtlety of this generating process that leaves many using the word slum for areas that are beyond that poor early stage. Moreover, it is spatially intertwined and gradual in time, making it harder to distinguish and appreciate the qualities of incremental development.

Photo 8. Planned redevelopment in Dharavi.

Meanwhile some larger areas are cleared for planned redevelopment and filled in with apartment blocks. More and more blocks are shaping the skyline. As long as there is a piecemeal approach in this kind of development, it has the possibility of adapting and mitigating the worst side effects of high-rise.

Photo 9.Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar, Parel, Mumbai. Four blocks of low cost housing for former slum dwellers, flanked by high-end apartment blocks and office high-rise.

Building high-rise blocks too close to each other is where many a solution is becoming an enhanced version of the original problem. The cause lies in the scheme by which the project is financed. Authorities allow developers to create profitable high-end housing in exchange for providing housing for the poor, free of costs. This scheme is popular among developers and works quite successful in the sense that it is producing a lot of low end housing. It goes without saying that the land used to create the free housing for the poor, is kept to a minimum. By creating lots of floor area (the essence of high-rise building) the available living space per capita is forced up to the legal minimum. Still the density in terms of land per capita is problematic and sometimes even worsens. Amenities such as infrastructure, transport, commerce, schools, utilities, and qualities like daylight and fresh air are all heavily over utilised.

Photo 10. Babasaheb Ambedkar Nagar seen from Parel railway station, Mumbai. A recipe for vertical slum.

Huge blocks are built only 10 feet apart. The effects on the quality of living are dramatic. Dwellings in the centre of such three dimensional compounds enjoy little daylight and near to no natural ventilation. Not to mention the lack of privacy and the absence of psychological relief by a view from the window. In addition, the images of newly built fresh painted condominiums are deceiving as such no-revenue projects come with a standard lack of maintenance and thus pauperize in a short time. Living on one of the higher floors will inevitably turn out troublesome as elevators are not maintained either, which is a well known reason for not building higher than four or five floors for low income housing. Buildings offering such living conditions are often rightfully categorised as vertical slums. They are the planned version of the City of Darkness (3), the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong which was at its peak in the 1980’s home to some 35,000 people on a footprint of only 100 x 200 meters.

The problem of high density is the problem of too little land per capita to begin with. Adding much floor area per capita to it, is of limited help as necessary amenities will claim space outside the building as well. In fact the effectiveness of saving land by adding more floors decreases dramatically between five to ten floors (4) . The popular belief that high-rise is the cure for high population densities, is a myth. As long as there are too many people in an area, there simply are too many people in that area, no matter what fancy way they are packed or stacked.

Photo 11. On the threshold in space and time: brand new housing meets the slum it will replace.

A fair way of grading development strategies is to look at the interaction between user and building.

Only when people contribute, upgrade and improve, the building is a success.
As long as people maintain it, the building is satisfactory.
As soon as it pauperizes, the building is unsatisfactory.
When people move out often, it is a failure.

It is therefore no surprise when inhabitants of rehabilitation projects choose to sell their condo and return to informal settlements. It is a practice often frowned upon, and a show of healthy common sense.

Notes:
(1) Mike Davis, Planet of Slums, London: Verso, 2006.
(2) Planet of Slums gives an overview of the many programs carried out throughout the world and is a useful book in that way. The downside of the book is its slash-and-burn prose. Not a single program is critiqued positively, not even the demonstrably successful ones. Although Davis presents a plausible analysis of the course of events that led to immense slum forming, he refuses to even hint at a possibility of a way out. He thus takes an easy position. Too easy.
(3) Greg Girard, Ian Lambot, City of Darkness, Life in Kowloon Walled City, Watermark Publications, 1993.
(4) Charles Correa, lecture for Urban Typhoon Dharavi Mumbai, 18th March 2008.

Soap

2010-05-17T18:47:00.008+05:30

Producing clothes in high quantity is one thing, washing them all is another. Mumbai’s textile industry plays a major role in its economic history. The production of textile in India was boosted by the American Civil war (1861-1865), which interrupted cotton supplies from America to Europe. Great Britain, as the colonizing power in India, was the liaison between Europe and the rising Indian cotton and silk industry. Ever since has the textile industry dominated Mumbai’s development. Many of the old mills are closed now, but the industry is still present throughout the city. A very common sound heard when walking Dharavi, is that of the sewing machines. An endlessly ongoing ‘rrrrrrt… rrrrrrt… rrrrrrrrrrrt’, is the invisible signpost of the ubiquitous workshops.

(Click photo to enlarge)

A familiar sight in Mumbai is the Dhobi Ghat, the open-air laundry. Big ones are located near Mahalaxmi Station. Some two hundred Dhobis (laundrymen) wash clothes here, collected from local households. The clothes are hung out to dry on long cloth lines. The scale of the business is thus big, that it can be seen from afar. It even attracts foreign tourists, leaving the local people in astonishment about what on earth could be so interesting about ordinary laundry.

Except maybe for genuine dry-cleaners, laundry requires water. River banks are good locations for Dhobi Ghats, as are some ponds. Flowing water is essential as stagnant water will be polluted in no time. Step wells, stepped ponds and open tanks, all fed by natural wells, are an important part of India’s water infrastructure. Stepped ponds and tanks are often directly connected to temples and are a place of religious and cultural significance. They symbolise the Ganges; to bathe in such waters is to bathe in the sacred river. With the coming of piped water, many tanks were filled and have vanished under new development. Of all Mumbai’s tanks built in the 18th and 19th century, only two exist today – the Bandra and Banganga tanks. *

In Dharavi a tank-like Dhobi Ghat is located next to the Sion footbridge over the Central Railway tracks. It cannot be missed as the yelling of the Dhobis is advertising the intenseness of the job, much like the sound of professional tennis players. This is where the bigger pieces are treated. Not handkerchiefs and napkins, but heavy blankets and carpets are washed here. Soaked with water they are tossed onto flogging stones. One cannot be but impressed by the labour shown here.

Once cleaned the laundry is put out to dry on the pebble beds along the railway tracks. It is the last remaining open space in the vicinity, by its narrow shape only useful in small plots, it is perfectly exposed to the sun, trains provide frequent blows of wind, and stones to keep it all in place are abundant.

In its way, it is perfect.

*= Neville, Matthew, ‘Banganga. Enduring Tank, Regenerative Tissue’. In: Shannon, Kelly and Gosseye, Janina (eds.), Reclaiming (the urbanism of) Mumbai, Amsterdam, SUN Publishers, 2009, p 112.

Abundance

2010-05-12T14:15:00.005+05:30

Nothing Left Behind

The idea of waste is probably a misconception. In Dharavi virtually everything is reused. The contribution of the recycling industry to the economy is thus big that words like residue and leftover might be trashed themselves. The recycling business provides three major components of economic activities. First, the processing of waste, secondly the supply of raw materials, and third a lot of labour, thus creating livelihood for very many people.

The essence of good reuse is in separation. The more materials are mixed up, the lesser their potential for a second life. Jobs in recycling are therefore mainly concerned with sorting and collecting. Especially sorting is very labour intensive. At the closure of the markets, garbage is sorted into fractions like fruit and vegetables, plastic bags, carboard boxes etcetera.

Biological waste is served as cattle food.

Waste is collected as much as possible on fixed locations. Often a small lot with three walls. Birds, goats, and dogs pick anything edible from and around containers. Textile residues from the fashion industry are used to fire the kilns of the potters.

This waste collection is temporarily out of use. A concrete floor was just cast. Goats are waiting till their familiar spot offers something to eat. Foot prints in the freshly poured concrete illustrate their impatience.

Sorting is very time consuming. While the truck is stuck in a traffic jam, copper wire is picked from electric motors. In the north-west of Dharavi, a whole neighbourhood is busy with recycling. Its name is Thirteenth Compound. One might find it a poetic name. Twelve is considered the number of wholeness, closing many cycles, whereas this hardly known side of our world is the actual closing link in the chain.

Thirteenth Compound is marked by huge quantities of goods stored on its roofs. Whereas everywhere in Dharavi roofs only serve as a protection against the fierce sun and the monsoon rains, the roofs in Thirteenth Compound are the warehouses for light weight goods. Primarily plastics. It weighs near to nothing but is voluminous. The roof is the perfect storage in this dense built area.

The scrap dealer is unloading his truck. Metals are easy to sort as their properties are very diverse. Copper, brass, and bronze have divergent colours. Aluminium is very light weighted. Iron is magnetic whereas other metals are not.

Rusty corrugated steel sheeting, if not for roofing, is used for façades.

Tins and steel jerry cans for food purposes can be sold after cleaning. The future of such a can is destined by its condition. It returns to the original food factory (the spotless), to a manufacturer of something liquid (the second hand), or to a fuel and oil dealer (the slightly crushed).

All packaging materials like barrels and jerry cans are reused and sold. The same applies to cardboard boxes. Spotless boxes are sold back to the factory, already bearing the name of the manufacturer. Boxes in a lesser state are sold to transporter who do not care about the name. Movers, for example. Only worn out boxes are privileged to become raw material for the paper industry.

Amidst the dusty roofs of Dharavi, Thirteenth Compound is an oasis of colours.

Tailor made

2010-05-11T14:54:00.010+05:30

Dharavi is not only the destination for those from the countryside seeking the economics of the big city. Mumbai citizens indeed are also seeking shelter after eviction from other locations in the name of redevelopment. Slum areas are demolished to make place for high-rise. Those who lived there are either relocated in transition camps and find new homes in the high-rise, or cannot stay as their livelihood does not allow them to. Many entrepreneurs need a business on street level. Vending only works well on the ground.

The tailor’s shop is about 7 feet wide and 4 feet deep.

The demand for retail space in Dharavi is enormous. A shop of only 4 feet deep, or even less, is therefore already worth exploiting. Vending often begins on a cloth on the street, backed by a blind wall in an alley. A little stall is a step forward. A built shop is the logical follow up.

The tailor’s shop on the left, beginning street vendors on the right.

On top of the shop a floor was created for a room. By extending this floor over the street, more room is created inside. The extra floor doubles as a weather shade, protecting the shop against sun and rain. The shop’s counter can be moved outside, leaving more space inside the shop. Business is perfectly tuned with the spatial dimensions of the shop. No stock is kept here, production is located elsewhere.

In the shop, client’s orders are taken and delivered. All agreements regarding the design are collected in the order book. All sizes of the customers can be found here. Samples mark the chosen fabric. When a customer arrives to collect the order, a staff member walks to the studio to fetch the gown.

Production takes place in the studio on top of the shop. Thus the distance between production and retail is kept very short and efficient. The alley is in close proximity to one of the busiest streets in Dharavi, which is good for patronage.

The shop and the studio are built to a blind wall. That wall is part of a bigger house dating from times this was still a normal fishermen’s village. This story of building to and building upon is typical for the architecture of informal development and slum areas. The forces of society are clearly visible. The owner of the house was willing (or had to be) to allow trading next to his property. The width of the original alley allowed for a stall of only 4 feet. The stall was improved to a built shop. On top of that came a studio, jutting out over the street. Thus the entrepreneur found shelter for his business.

The story of this tailor’s shop is the story of many entrepreneurs in a slum. This is also the story behind the many narrow alleys in slums. Just imagine the tailor’s shop and his studio were not here. We would be standing in a very ordinary street in a very ordinary village.

Roof

2010-03-05T12:36:00.005+05:30

Of all architectural features, only the roof is essential. The need for shelter, being the most basic need in building, is expressed most clearly by the roof. In relief programs after disasters, provisional shelter is created with tents. A tent is by far the best temporary building as it is purely and essentially: a roof.

For whatever motivation people are migrating, making a roof is the start of settlement. Whether we go out from a luxurious villa to spend the weekend on a campsite, or we go from the countryside to whatever scrap of land available in the big city to build up a living, our putting up a settlement starts with making a roof.

The purpose of a roof is to protect us from the weather. Sun, rain, wind, and cold can all be kept at bay with a roof. A miniature version is the umbrella. If big enough, it will keep us dry as it makes the rain fall in a circle around us. In a crowded situation, the water of our neighbour’s umbrella may fall upon us. Likewise buildings that are directly built to each other, have to deal with rainwater in a collective way.

A proven technique to keep the water out is roof tiling. A roof tile in a sloped position drains the water to one side: the lower. As long as the next tile is below the first, it will do the same and with many roof tiles together, a long path is created to drain the water to the side of the building. Thus, the individual structure of each roof tile is contributing to the accreted structure, the roof. The same principal is used for corrugated asbestos-cement sheeting.

In dense built-up area, such as the informal settlements in Dharavi, an incredible phenomenon can be seen. Not only are individual buildings protected by roofs, made up with the overlapping tile principle. The roofs themselves are in a similar cohesion with the neighbouring structures. Actually, a whole area is protected by putting the roofs in an order that drains the rainwater all the way down to the outside rim. The incredible thing here is that we think such an intricate system can only be achieved through meticulous planning. The informal settlement, considered unplanned, is nevertheless capable of generating such accreted structures.

Pushing the Envelop

2010-01-30T22:41:00.004+05:30

The distinction between formal and informal settlement lies in the application of rules, codes, zoning plans, property rights and so on. In the formal world, the whole structure of formalities is the foundation of development. Informal settlements do not consider formalities. That is why they are called informal. In order to understand the concept of incremental development, this chapter is about growth in that other world, called the formality.

Many formalities have a restrictive character. Zoning plans limit the built-up area and the maximum height of buildings. This set of limitations is called the envelop. As regulations can be complicated, the envelop can be complicated too. Planners and architects have to figure out what the envelop precisely looks like and sometimes they need the help of law experts. This process is called pushing the envelop.

Incremental development in the formal world has much to do with pushing the envelop. Not only rules do determine the envelop, enforcement is also contributing to what is finally happening. If the rules are not enforced, they become obsolete. Changes in building codes also change the envelop. Thus, envelops are subject to continuous change and incremental development is a matter of continuously pushing the envelop.

Photo 1. Window with a weather shade and a box-grill.

To stand the heavy rains of the monsoon, a good window needs a chhajja, a weather-shade. Such a parapet is subject to building codes and may not extend more than two feet from the façade. Most buildings have weather-shades as an integral part of their structure.

As many households prefer to have the windows open, it is a safe precaution to build a box-grill on the outside. Safety in this case primarily means the safety of not falling out of the window. Adding a box-grill to the window is to the discretion of the inhabitants. Thus, the design of the grills shows a great variety. Some have beautiful ironmongery while others stick to utilitarian patterns. The space claimed by the box-grill is an extension of the house and often gives room to flower pots and various household items. It is not allowed to build the box-grill beyond the weather shade, which restricts the common box-grill to a depth of two feet.

Photo 2. Variety in box-grills.

A second feature in the extension of apartments is the balcony. In Mumbai, balconies may not extend more than three feet from the façade, whereas to make a balcony genuinely work as an outdoor space, it requires a minimum depth of six feet. For a reason the city of Mumbai limits the depth of the balconies to three feet. If you are lucky and have your window under a balcony, you may make your box-grill three feet deep.

Photo 3. Narrow alleys demand regulation on weather-shades.

These regulations on façade extension are especially important to the narrow alleys. Urban blocks in Mumbai are often close to each other.

Photo 4. Dharavi, Mumbai. Balconies built over to gain another room.

A common practice of incremental development is building over balconies and terraces, in order to add another room to the building.

Photo 5. Ballard Estate, Mumbai. Roof terrace built over.

Photo 6. Ballard Estate, Mumbai. Added weather shades to protect modern airco-units. Built over balconies.

Photo 7. Ballard Estate, Mumbai. Two(!) buildings showing different approaches to the use of weather shades and balconies.

Photo 8. Ballard Estate, Mumbai. Practical use overtaking classic forms.

Mumbai is known for its mix of Indian and colonial architecture. The photo above shows what can happen when the two meet in one building. The three windows in the top right hand corner have original classic ornamentation. They are typical European classicist elements, probably meant to frame the window in a recessed manner, thus protecting it from the weather. Apparently, this was not enough to stand the monsoon rains in India and weather shades of considerable size were added. The convenient grill boxes soon followed. The grill boxes now serve as a garage for the air conditioning units. Due to the limited size of the grill boxes, those units block the view from the windows.

The lower part of the building tells another story about pushing the envelop. Commercial activities probably take pushing the envelop as a daily exercise. Shopkeepers take it to the limit when it comes to parapets, advertising, signage, and so on. Every extension possible is used to extend the shop to the street and to connect the street to the shop. The goal is to embrace the client in the street. Most successful are those who manage to connect most smoothly the private space of the shop to the public space of the street.

An interesting phenomenon is the perception of the façade as a whole. Seen from the life in the street, the ground floor is where it all happens. The upper parts of the façade are just the backyard compared to below, being the front. It illustrates the importance of the building edge, housing the life of the street.

Photo 9. A puzzling envelop.

In informal development, the placing of a flowerpot, an air conditioning unit or a box grill is no big deal. In the formal world, much more has to be taken into account. The above photo would certainly raise some tough questions. Is it allowed to have separate weather shades for air conditioning units? Is it allowed to make box grills serving only such units? Which rule permits the screen under the weather shade of the ground floor? Or is it all legally covered by the balcony on the second floor?

Photo 10. Pushing too far: photo taken one hour before the next…

Pushing to the limits may have some repercussions. The Patel Mansion building in the above photo had a long life of 110 years. People made adjustments as they needed, as far as rules allowed them. It showed on the outside that this building was alive and changing. One day, inhabitants pushed the envelop of their apartment thus far that they made a breakthrough between rooms, without permission. They knocked out a bearing wall. Cracks occurred throughout the building and scary noises were heard. Alarmed authorities hastily evacuated the building, averting a disaster. Within a day, the building reduced itself to rubble. No one was injured.

Photo 11. A section of Patel Mansion at Dockyard Road collapsing. Photo by Kamlesh Pednekar, DNA.

Pavement Dwellings

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Living on the Sidewalk

Probably the most elementary form of informal settlement in a big city is the pavement dwelling. As the name suggests, the dwellings are located on sidewalks in streets of any size. The initial activity can be street vending, on a sheet or in an improvised little stall. The development continues with vendors spending the night on their spot, putting up a little shelter, family coming over, and so on.

Photo 1. Near Dockyard road, Mazagaon, Mumbai. Single storey flexible pavement dwelling, built with extensive use of recycled materials.

Settlements in a vulnerable location are often made of flexible materials like sheets of cardboard, plywood, corrugated steel, and tarp. The mixed use of materials requires very smart solutions. Structures that are more permanent, such as masonry and concrete, are built by dwellers with less risk of destruction. The risk can be reduced by physical factors such as less cramped lots. Political conditions also provide security. As compensation for their votes, leaders protect dwellers from eviction.

Photo 2. Pavement dwellings on the bridge over Reay Road, Mumbai. The use is mainly residential, accommodating employees of the neighbouring ship repair area. The ladders suggest the presence of attics.

Photo 3. Backsides of pavement dwellings on bridge over Reay Road.

Pavement dwellings by their nature stretch out like a ribbon along streets. This makes them more vulnerable to eviction than larger, grouped, pockets of informal settlement, especially when their presence substantially reduces the available space in the street. A narrow road is therefore a more risky location than a wide boulevard.

Photo 4. N.M. Joshi Marg, Byculla, Mumbai. Half the street is blocked by a house, reducing traffic pressure and providing a safe haven for the pavement dwellers on the right.

A dwelling’s position between vulnerability and security is reflected in its architecture. The use of materials is one of them, although the local availability of materials may have a higher priority. The application of recycled materials or sheeting is not restricted to insecure locations. Masonry and concrete however are rarely used other than in situations with a high security.

A good indicator of a sense of security is the care for aesthetics. Painting over the façade and the use of decoration evoke the message that the primary need for shelter is met.

Photo 5. N.M. Joshi Marg, Byculla, Mumbai. These structures are more permanent, as the neat use of paint is telling. Many of them have an attic.

Photo 6. First floor with a view.

Photo 7. Permanent structures, built of masonry. Painted in blue, matching the tarp and the drums.

Typical for the pavement dwelling is its adhering to a wall of a different building. The height of the dwelling is often related to the height of that wall. Dwellings with an attic often sit against higher walls.

Photo 8. A row of pavement dwellings sitting along a very long wall. The height of the dwellings follows the height of the wall.

The roof of most pavement dwellings is sloped up to the wall behind, draining the rainwater to the front and on the street. If it were the other way round, the rainwater would inevitably seep into the dwelling.

Photo 9. Ballard Estate, Mumbai. Probably the smartest of all pavement dwellings.

A very special case is a fence available on the kerb of the sidewalk. It is a rare occasion but it can be used very effectively.

Generating Process

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Incremental development by attachment

As studying incremental development nowadays mostly deals with high-density locations, it is important to consider incremental development in earlier days, when space was aplenty. Initial settlements in Dharavi can be found in Koliwada (400 years old) and near Sion (twentieth century). The detached houses had open ground around them. Over time extensions were made by adding rooms, building detached rooms, adding storeys, covering courts, changing use, covering roof terraces. Incentives for adding rooms are extension of the family or extension of business. Rooms are also rented out to third parties.

Photo 1. House near Sion Station Mumbai. The yellow house on the right, in the back, was gradually extended with many add-on rooms.

Studying the details of where buildings connect, reveals the historical order of this incremental development. Builders have to work around problems resulting from choices made in earlier days. Often compromises have to be made and these compromises are very informative. In the centre of the photo below, the small two storey extension partly covers the window of the bigger house. It tells us that the top of the bigger house, which is a vertical extension itself, is the older part.

In Koliwada, the original fishermen village with its incremental development is gradually encroached by informal settlements of squatters. In this typology, a division is made between these two. Roughly, this division coincides with the distinction between formal and informal housing. Similar to the practice of the formal-informal boundary being a grey area, the division between traditional incremental development and squatter encroachment cannot be made sharply. There is a lot in between, like property owners allowing squatters to build to the walls of their houses. Non-dwelling settlements (stalls) are often the small representatives of this semi-formal practice.

Photo 2. Darukhana, Mumbai. Ship repair area. Two-storey extension (front) of steel clad workshop (behind). The façade on the left shows how removal of parts of the façade is also a form of incremental development. Note the small candy stall on the far right, another ‘incremental development’.

In fact, these incremental developments are part of the natural growth of buildings throughout their lifetime. The term “generating process” is used here to indicate cases with a recognizable initial building of substantial sizes. The term is borrowed from Christopher Alexander.

In contrast with the wholeness of the described incremental development, today’s developments show a harsh division. It is referred to as ‘encroachment’. Squatters settle informally on land around formal settlements such as high-rise and apartment blocks.

Photo 3. Agripada, Mahalaxmi. Apartment blocks representing formality, engulfed by informal settlements.

The phenomenon of encroachment reveals weaknesses in the current formalized style of architecture and urban planning. The design, or should we say fabrication, of this type is unable to create sufficient life around these buildings. The space is dead in terms of urban dynamics and it might be considered natural that newcomers settle on these barren lands. Even the use of the word encroachment may be disputable in such cases.

New Transit Camp

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Settlements in fixed parcelling of land

The New Transit Camp in Dharavi provides specific conditions as it has planned, fixed, parcelling of the land. This is rather unique in Dharavi. The plots are about 10 by 20 feet. The long side of a plot is to the adjacent plot. The short 10 feet side is open to an alley.

Photo 4. New Transit Camp Dharavi: planned parcelling of land. Image GeoEye / Google Earth.

Photo 5. Dharavi New Transit Camp, Mahatma Gandhi Road. Facades showing the long side of the plots. Typical detached houses with pitched roofs.

Photo 6. Dharavi New Transit Camp. Short end facades in the streets perpendicular to Mahatma Gandhi Road. Almost container-like extensions, due to uniform land plots.

As a result, the main direction of incremental development is vertical here. Horizontal extension is only possible on the first floor. A cantilever over the alley is common practice. Stairs are put outside of the ground floor, in the alley, with access to the first floor through a floor hatch. The image is almost like the stacking of containers, due to the fixed dimensions of the property. Roof shapes are often pitched, as that is the economic way of draining the roof towards the alleys. Due to incremental development, the alleys tend to be fully built over.

[further research: retrieve original zoning plans from BMC]

Photo 7. Long end facades. The alley on the right is fully overbuilt, subsequently changing the roof shape from pitched to slope.

Photos 8. Alley with typical cantilever extension of the first floor, an “open roof tunnel”.

Photo 9. Stairs in alleyways. The original alley is 6 feet wide.

Random

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Attached incremental development

Informal settlements initiated by squatters have an appearance of strong randomness. The parcelling of land is done on the spot by pushing and pulling boundaries, not on the drawing board. Walls are shared. The newer settlement is “attached” to the existing. Floors are added, leaving the ground floor available for business. First floor is mostly extended as a cantilever over the street, providing both extra floor space and a weather shade to the shop below.

Photo 10. Dharavi. Variation of materials and forms.

Photo 11. Dharavi. Incremental improvement. The use of materials is shifting from recycled sheet elements to plastered brickwork.

Photo 12. Dharavi. Further incremental upgrading. Almost all provisionally used recycled material is replaced by permanent structure. The extended roof serves as Chhajja, a weather shade.

Because of the incremental process, stairs are often visible, in front of the only open façade. There are many reasons for putting the stairs this way (see also: Multiple Floors).

Photo 13. The blue house is attached to the white house, as can be told from how the roofs meet. Remarkably, they do share a wall but not the ladder.

The appearance of the houses in photo 13 has many practical backgrounds. The white house runs a sugarcane-juice shop. For hygienic reasons, the ladder is sealed with metal sheeting. A canopy of corrugated steel keeps dirt and rain out. The business in the building on the right apparently needs similar protection by a blue tarp, whereas the workshop in the centre has different standards. The blue house on top pushes the urban envelop. The room protrudes over the workshop and the window has a box grill, extending the room even further.

Photo 14. In corner buildings, expansion over both streets allows for more space at the first floor. The result is a structure with the top-heavy appearance of a mushroom.

Photo 15. Developed to a high level. Everything is in place. Doors are recessed as sophisticated weather shades. Then the view from the red house’s window is traded against the revenues from the advertisement sitting on the box grill.

Light Structures

2010-01-24T17:51:00.011+05:30

In A Dynamic Setting

In neighbourhoods directly bordering the sea, such as Darukhana in the port of Mumbai, the open space over the water is an attractive opportunity for expansion. The tide is something to bear in mind. There is two meters between the levels of low tide and high tide in Mumbai.

Photo 16. Darukhana, Mazgaon, Mumbai. Low tide, revealing the supporting piling of the light dwellings.

Darukhana’s main employment is ship repair and ship recycling. The use of sheet-shape building materials is therefore an obvious choice. Many of these come from the dismantled ships. These structures are very light, compared to concrete and masonry. Another advantage is the flexibility. Repair and expansion are easy, material is local available. In terms of sustainability, this is an exemplary site.

The roof shape is straightforward. Its slope is down to the waterside, which is the logical thing to do, as it would otherwise drain to the street, with all inconveniences. The street would turn into a mud pool; the water would be pouring from the roof right in front of the shop or the house. In the end, the water should go to the sea anyway.

To protect the ground from being washed away by the tide, the shore is paved with heavy stones. In order to keep it accessible and capable of bearing the piles under the dwellings, the stones are stacked stepwise, thus providing sufficient horizontal surface. In addition, the stairway form helps to dampen the incoming waves.

Click photo to enlarge.
Photo 17. The shore is paved stepwise, providing excellent ground for these dwellings.

Notwithstanding the wish of many for more comfortable housing, there certainly are things to be appreciated about these dwellings. Their design is practical, straightforward and natural. Everything is in the right place, and in that way it is perfect.

Pavement

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It is 2008. Many streets in Dharavi have no pavement. They are just open dirt and gravel. The encompassing Sion-Bandra Linkroad is appropriately paved, as is the Dharavi-crossing 90-Feet Road. The remainder of the streets is partly paved, partly sealed with stones and gravel, or not sealed at all. This has dramatic effects on daily routines. First, traffic is compromised. Walking over loose laying stones is far from comfortable. The accessibility of shops and workshops is hindered. Second, the open streets are a source of loose sand and dirt creeping into everything, everywhere. Everything in the neighbourhood is covered with a thick layer of brown dirt. This dirt only disappears when rains wash it all away during monsoon. In the nine months between monsoons, the dirt steadily accumulates. Then, during monsoon, the dirt roads turn into mud pools. An unexpected advantage of the open soil is its capacity to absorb the water rapidly. Whereas many cities suffer flooding drains, dehydration of the underground, and falling of the water table, the open structure of the roads in Dharavi is a blessing for groundwater.

Cleaning up a dirt road is not an easy task. To sweep litter from stones and gravel is quite an effort. Bearing that in mind the image of an average street in Dharavi is a miracle. A crowded street inevitably is littered during the day, certainly in an overcrowded area. Considering the fact that there is very little waste and litter to be seen, these people must be very tidy. If they were not, the street would be paved with a layer of garbage by now, instead of dirt and gravel.

Apparently, people litter near to nothing and sweeping is carried out regularly. Goats and dogs pick out the bio-waste quickly and efficiently. Burnable waste is collected and used as fuel. PET-bottles and metals are collected by the highly sophisticated recycling industry.

The lack of pavement is a symptom of a local government unable or unwilling to create communal provisions. As most of Dharavi consists of informal settlements, that formally do not exist, the government does not consider it its task to provide infrastructure and services. In addition, the local government lacks manpower and means to create infrastructure, education and health care of reasonable standards. It is a chicken-and-egg-dilemma. The registration office of the municipality is understaffed. As many residents have no access to the formal system of the city, they cannot be registered. Tax collection on these people is impossible, leaving the municipality with too little means to improve the registration office, let alone to spend money on infrastructure. As a result, many in Dharavi do not pay taxes and the money stays among the people. The void left here by the government is sometimes filled by civic communities, who organise things on their own account. This is how schools and other provisions are created. In worst cases, criminals fill the managerial vacuum.

The potential of self-organisation in a society, of course has its limitations. Whereas the scale of problem increases in terms of numbers of people, the feasibility rapidly deteriorates. The paving over of a big street has that many stakeholders that it cannot be organized by local groups. Parents collectively founding a school for their children can be overseen, but a street to which indeed ten thousand people should contribute, is a different thing. Paradoxically the feasibility of a communal provision decreases when the number of potential contributors rises.

Pavement in alleys is for that reason a lesser problem. Scale is on the advantage here. Many alleys are hardly a meter wide and inhabitants on both sides often join their efforts to lay pavement. This being fairly easy has to do with the small number of stakeholders who, in addition, enjoy a direct effect.

At the crossing of alleys and spots with uneven levels, the results may vary in quality. Especially pipe laying in paved alleys will end in odd results. Breaking up the neat pavement made by the neighbour is indeed not the best way to make friends. The increase of the length of the pipe also increases the number of people involved, thus decreasing chances for a good solution. It happens that water piping is laid in wastewater gutters. One might wonder why water piping is not mounted a bit higher; let us say above doorway level. It would be more convenient for pedestrians.

On locations where the municipality is active, one finds good pavement. Chawls are dwellings developed by municipalities or housing-corporations. The communal character of these buildings can easily be recognized by the roof shape. The uniform way of building creates a continuous roof over multiple houses. Individually developed houses have independent roofs. Exterior space is an important part of housing and in chawls this space is in general properly developed. Chawl-dwellers are keen on distinguishing their housing from the informal settlements around. The formal context in which chawls are created has no similarities with informal development, which is generally built on individual initiative and without a legal context.

On any location lacking collective provisions, that is about everywhere in slum, the lack of proper pavement has dramatic effects. It is needless to explain that such obstructions right in front of one’s company is bad for everything. Both customers and enterprise are not helped by it, to say the least. It remains unclear why entrepreneurs barely take initiative and at least pave the part in front of their business.

A small piece of pavement made of broken millstones.

These photocompositions of reality and fictional pavement were used in a 2008 study on the costs of proper pavement. The pavement of all streets in Koliwada, the oldest part of Dharavi, would require an investment per capita the equivalent of two small bottles of soft drink.

By the end of 2009, a considerable area was paved. The area near Sion station, the Dharavi Main Road through Koliwada, and other roads. The positive effect is dramatic and underscores the importance of proper infrastructure. Making pavement alone is not enough. Once it is there, it will be opened to allow water pipe laying and so. Closing the pavement afterwards is often done sloppy. Maintenance is as important as the initial making.

The situation in the street is worsened by digging works remaining open too long. This problem stretches beyond Dharavi. On many locations in Mumbai pavement lies open while carrying out of works is not seen anywhere in the wider vicinity.

In the old centre of Mumbai, it shows that entrance lanes to buildings create large interruptions of the sidewalk. This practice is so frequent that the sidewalk lost its continuity. One finds loose pieces of sidewalk, alternating with all kinds of entrances. Some are paved neatly, others are half sealed with gravel, and many are no more than bare ground.

Walking old Mumbai has its ups and downs.

Level

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On Higher Grounds

Whatever happens, at least one thing is always reaching higher levels: the ground level. As we know from archaeology, the ground we are living on is a big history book. We are surprised by everything appearing in excavations. It is amazing to see how deep everything is hidden. It is a strange thing that the city of the past lies a few meters deeper than the city of today. By the way, we might ask ourselves: where did all the dirt come from?

The construction of a new sewer in Dharavi reveals how quick the level is rising here. The whole package is about 75 cm thick and comprises sand, gravel, grit, pieces of glass, and other non-degradable matter. Under the package lies the floor of what once were the marshes. The layered structure shows that only every now and then a layer of grit and debris was added. Over time, dirt and sand whirled down. Dharavi once was marsh land and as people are inhabiting this area since about 50 year, the ground level is rising 1,5 cm per year.

Water piping has to be rearranged for this sewer reconstruction. This as well shows the growth of the soil package. Older pipes lie deeper now than when they were put there. The highest pipes are the most recent. Like the rings in the stem of a tree, the pipes in the ground tell the history of this neighbourhood.

In countries with a less warm climate, water piping is laid deep in the ground to protect them against freezing. In the Netherlands the typical frost-free depth is 60 centimetre. In countries with a more explicit continental climate, depths of 1 meter and more are common. In Mumbai, where midwinter temperatures do not drop below 20°C, it is no use indeed to lay pipes that deep. In addition, many inhabitants do not hold formal property rights over their house or the land they live on. There is a real risk of being expelled today or tomorrow. To dig a trench and cover the water piping is an investment that is quite risky in such a setting. Therefore, many water pipes in Dharavi run over ground. Of course, it is less convenient for pedestrians and of course, there is a risk of damage and subsequent leakage, but that does not outweigh the costs of digging. In the end, it all is covered by dirt and stones anyway.

Demolition waste is very useful in fighting floods. Especially brick and concrete debris get a good destination from it. Dharavi sits, as mentioned, on former marshlands and for that reason, the soil is soft. It cannot bear heavy loads and as a result, houses gradually sink, which is inconvenient in case of flooding. In addition, the rising street level as we saw above makes every ground floor end up as a basement some day. During monsoon, the downpour can be that heavy that drainage cannot cope with it. The lower areas of Dharavi get flooded. Houses with a floor level notably higher than street level are better of in such days. There are many advantages in keeping the debris on the location when demolishing a house. The ground floor level of the new house is on an attractive level from the start. A second advantage is cost saving on transportation. Debris is heavy and in most cases, it is impossible to get a truck near the site. The alleys and even the streets are too narrow for trucks. Manual disposal of that much material over such distances is undoable and uneconomic. Debris can only be used as road fill or land fill and that leaves it unprofitable. Balanced against the advantages of a higher ground floor, the choice is easy.

The unprofitability of transportation can also be seen at the feet of power line masts. These masts are often screened off with walls, thus providing excellent dumping grounds. By now, these masts stand sturdy up to their knees in stone. The masts themselves are used as laundry racks.

The ground level of Dharavi is on a permanent way up. Houses and streets gradually sit higher and higher. History goes deeper and deeper.

Ladder

2009-11-20T20:02:00.017+05:30

The Way Up

Stairs should overcome not only uneven levels but also challenges of a different kind. The toughest puzzle in the design of a building is the staircase between two floors. The space under the stairs is often of little use. At the top end there is no floor, there is a stairwell. A staircase thus claims space on two floors. In addition, at both ends circulation space is required to access the first step. These circulation spaces make the layout even more complicated.

This house shows exactly what is needed when making a staircase. At the times when both houses still had only one storey, ground floor, things were easy. In the corner of the houses sits a well. In order to gain access to the roof, stairs were built. The only feasible location was the edge of the well. The stairs should be closed at the underside, as dirt would otherwise fall from the steps into the well. The same applies to the red hand railing.

Once a storey was added, a stair was needed to access the next roof. That second stair was nearly impossible. An additional piece of roof was added to provide a landing to the new roof. It doubles as a canopy along the façade.

It is tempting to puzzle on the next storey.

Slum, the Vernacular Architecture of Swelling Cities

2009-11-20T20:02:00.012+05:30

The other way around

The slum phenomenon is so widespread that we may speak of a trend in architecture. The architectural debate will not go there often, there are no glossy magazines, no coffee table books and no architecture institutions which promote its design and style, but time is certainly ripe to look at the ways of building that provide housing to more than one billion people. This chapter is about the conditions under which slums arise, the place of this style in architectural theory and the relevance to the design profession.

Photo 1. Dharavi, Mumbai, India, nicknamed 'Asia’s largest slum'.

Slum develops during high urbanization. The influx of labour from the countryside to the city goes far beyond the housing and absorption capacity of the city. Industrialization is a powerful driver of urbanization. During the industrial revolution, many slums emerged in Western cities. In factory towns, people lived in high density under miserable conditions. This side effect of the industrial revolution was overcome by introducing legislation that set conditions on the quality of housing. In addition, many manufacturers took the initiative to organize a good home for their employees.

Violence is another major cause of migration. Besides the flow of migrants from rural to urban, migration of refugees is a major cause of slums. One difference between these two migrant groups is that people in the first group choose to migrate on a chosen moment, while the second group is at one time forced to leave, due to circumstances. This displacement results from natural disasters or human violence. Volcanic eruptions, floods, and wars drive people from their homes. If the house is not already destroyed, a life-threatening situation is reason enough to migrate. By its nature, the forced displacement of a refugee means that a part of the acquired property cannot be brought in the migration. In the hurry, refugees take all that can be taken. A rural migrant for that matter, has a better starting position. Possessions can be taken and acquired assets can be sold. The motive for economic migration is the lure of the city. Refugees act from the motive of expulsion.

A third stream of migrants that feeds slum formation, is caused by deportations. These forced migrations are actually a combination of the previous two forms. Under its segregation policy, the apartheid regime in South Africa forced many native Africans to leave their territory. They came up in townships like Soweto near Johannesburg and the Cape Flats in Cape Town. Under the same regime, many forced removals to the so-called ‘homelands’ took place, which have led to acute overcrowding.

In architecture, a distinction is made in style architecture and vernacular architecture. The latter is also known as folk architecture. Modern and progressive architecture are usually considered style architecture, whereas regionalism and traditionalism belong to the vernacular architecture group. Stewart Brand points out that, “in terms of architecture, vernacular buildings are seen as the opposite of whatever is ‘academic,’ ‘high style,’ ‘polite.’ Vernacular is everything not designed by professional architects – in other words, most of the world’s buildings.”1 This description covers slum architecture fully. Meanwhile, slum is a contemporary phenomenon that occurs worldwide. One might think it is a fashion phenomenon.

A much-quoted dictum of Henry Glassie states that, “a search for pattern in folk material yields regions, where a search for pattern in popular material yields periods.”2 Styles in architecture are often indicated by a period of a particular style in vogue. Victorian, Tudor, Romanesque, colonial. Periods can also be named after trends in philosophy such as Renaissance, Constructivism, Modernism, Postmodernism, and Deconstructivism. Vernacular architecture can be characterized by region. Vernacular architecture reflects the particular local conditions, materials, and techniques. The indication by region is an appropriate way to appoint the unique combination of circumstances. Examples are Mediterranean, Santa Fe, New England, and Tuscan.

The architecture in a slum is determined by local conditions and therefore counts as vernacular architecture. Style motives play no role. At the same time, slum architecture is less recognizable than the current known regional vernacular architecture. The way to build in slums seems to be the same everywhere around the world. A high-density urban environment has far fewer variations in landscape, which indeed leads to the regional recognition of vernacular architecture. The universal urban slum environment gives its architecture a globalized nature. The urbanized area is the landscape itself. The global theme of the rapid urbanization is the local condition of which slum is the vernacular architecture. This can be found especially where the pace is very high, as in swelling cities.

Photo 2: Globalised architectural features in both Mumbai...

and

Photo 3: ...Tokyo, a striking universal element is the blue tarp, which threatens to displace corrugated steel as the icon of the shantytown.

With Glassie’s statement ‘a search for pattern in popular material yields periods’ in mind, a different conclusion can be drawn. Slum occurs in a certain stage of industrial development of a country. The combination of apparent popularity and apparent period would normally reflect an architectural style. Yet that seems not correct. It is not a matter of fashion, philosophies, or imitation of aesthetic motifs. They are local economic and social developments geographical that start slum formation at one time. The global context of the swelling cities leads to uniformity of regional aspects. Despite the apparent resemblance between slums in the world, the architecture is therefore a vernacular architecture.

There have been many studies on economic, sociological, social geographical and anthropological aspects of slums. There are already many plans made by architects for improvements in slums. Experience shows that the scale of improvement plans are of major influence on the ultimate success. Large-scale plans appear more likely to fail than small-scale ones. The piecemeal approach better accommodates the intricate reality of the built environment in which social and economic structures together constitute the urban phenomenon.

Opposite the large amount of studies and policies is the lack of proper documentation of architecture in slums. Accurate knowledge of local building methods may give clues to good development programs. Many ideas on improving the living conditions of slum dwellers are based on replacement building by developers. Regardless of the varying success of such projects, the scale of the slum phenomenon is thus large that it is necessary to address the development potential of slums directly. Slum dwellers themselves are able to build. There are conditions by which development into a fully-fledged town is blocked in such areas. Visualizing this glass ceiling is the subject of many economic, sociological, social geographical and anthropological studies. Good understanding of the potentials that are below the glass ceiling is essential for promoting development.

In addition, knowledge about slums is an interesting source for historians. The development history of cities in the industrialized countries is seen in living form in the swelling cities. The initial symptoms of an urbanizing society reveal the origins of urbanism. The style of building can be seen as the beginning of architecture. The accumulation of techniques gives insight in the profession of engineers.

"The sending of cookbooks to a country suffering famine", is used as a metaphor for the effectiveness of making architectural plans for slums. In that analogy, as it is better to provide food aid that is tailored to the local gastronomy, plans that are based on the local way of building have a much better chance than externally imposed schemes. Knowledge of construction in slum areas is indispensible and it is important that this gap in the architecture library be filled. As one sixth of the world population lives in slums, the architecture section may look forward to a significant expansion of the bookcase.

1. Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, what happens after they’re built (Penguin Books USA, 1994) p 132.
2. Henrie Glassie, Pattern in the Material Folk Culture of the Eastern United States (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1968) page 33.

Constriction by Construction

2009-11-20T20:01:00.003+05:30

The narrowness of alleys in a slum

A city can suffer of vascular stenosis. Such terms are used when the density of traffic is clogging the roads. One speaks of a traffic infarct when an area is blocked by traffic jams. In this metaphor, the traffic is the blood in the vessels (the streets) of the city. Yet there is something wrong with this comparison. Blood vessels constrict by atherosclerosis, gradually diminishing the blood stream. In the case of the traffic infarct the cause is not a narrowing of the streets but an increase in traffic. It is congestion instead of constriction.

In Dharavi however, the narrowing is actually taking place in the imagery of vascular constriction. We can even speak of constriction by construction. Streets and lanes are narrowing down. A direct cause is the construction of tiny shops in narrow alleys that apparently are not narrow enough yet. The story in the chapter Tailor Made shows how this encroachment works.

Photo 1. An alley, no more than left over space between 'detached' houses.

When Koliwada was still an ordinary fishermen’s village, before it was overwhelmed by the new inhabitants of what is now called Dharavi, the streets had a normal size. Wide enough for two cars to pass each other. Houses were as far apart as enjoyable and necessary. Some intersections of streets were wide enough to form a square. With the population pressure increasing, the pressure to use the open space for building rose dramatically. Squares disappeared. Streets shrank to alleys.

Photo 2. An alley narrower than a normal doorway. Photo 3. Less than shoulder width.

Pedestrians can barely pass each other. It is ‘Hold your belly’ or wait until there is no oncoming traffic. An overview is hard to get in the network of alleyways and passages. An open space is an important marker and many routes through the maze can only be overseen by remembering which space is connected to another open space through which alley. The trouble is of course that it is a natural temptation to fill a large open space with building. To get an impression of the original width of streets and squares, it helps to distinguish the age of buildings. Doing so we see what was already there and what was built later. Insight is improved by recognizing that order. By imagining the moment a particular building did not yet exist, we get an impression of what were once the normal dimensions of public space. In the following three pictures, the big pink house in the background is what was already there.

Photo 4. Three photos of one building. With this kind of infill, open spaces disappear leaving a network of alleys only.

Clearly the gray house in the foreground was added later. It is hardly two meters wide and maybe four meters deep. The front door is covered with a blue curtain with red and yellow flowers. The stairs to the room above it are on the outside. Perhaps the upper chamber is a separate dwelling. The lacquered wooden door with the blue frame is the original door of the big pink house. The green door on the first floor is also part of the big pink house. The stairs serve both the top floor of the old house and the upper chamber of the newer house. Thinking about the order of building it could well be that the ladder was already there before the new house was built, as the first floor of the pink house had to be accessible anyway. Considering the big pink house only, the first floor is probably also added in a second stage. Therefore the stairs are outside, next to the door. It is no use to build steps right in your living room and not in front of the door either. And so on. Thus the time factor makes the logic behind this seemingly irrational compositions transparent. To get the picture of the original wider streets, just imagine that last built grayish house not being there. This once was a village with very normal streets.

A less obvious reason for the narrowing of the streets is the adding of floors on top of existing houses. Stairs play the leading role in this. The upper floor needs access of course and therefore steps are necessary. Designing a staircase is a puzzle in itself, as described in the chapter Ladder.

Photo 5. Sophisticated staircase, wrapped around the corner of the groundfloor dwelling.

Photo 6. The house on the right is extended over the alley. The columns and overhang form an arcade.

The roof is a convenient place to expand a house. Land costs do not apply and the floor is already there. Only four walls and a roof are needed, and steps to get upstairs. There are two options for the location of the stairs. Inside the existing house or outside. Stairs inside come with a few objections. A staircase takes space while the intention was to gain additional space. Also a stairwell should be made in the existing roof, which requires many additional structures. With the cutting out of the stairwell, space is lost on the floor upstairs. An internal staircase is expensive and causes a loss of space on both floors. A staircase on the outside doesn’t have such drawbacks. The existing house remains untouched. And a big advantage is the independence of the new floor. It has the potential to be rented or sold as a private entrance available. An outside staircase is thus a very sensible choice.
Therefore, with the addition of a floor usually comes a staircase outside the house.

Photo 7. Steps halve the passageway. Photo 8. The alley gradually becomes a tunnel.

These stairs, of course still requires space but in this solution it is at the expense of public space and not of their own space. The increasing number of stairs reduces the capacity of the alleys. In some situations, placing stairs is virtually impossible. And although it may sometimes look messy, the ingenuity of the builders deserves appreciation.

Photo 9. The (left) ladder’s the lower half is narrower, in favor of the traffic space in the alley.

Photo 10. The passage on the street remains usable by clever use of a platform top.

Photo 11.The elevated ground floor (convenient in case of flooding) is used as an impetus for the stairs.

Photo 12. Two photos showing two directions in one alley. The neat pavement and the overhanging first floors turn the space into a room on its own.

The additional floor on the house is often built as a cantilever. The new floor sticks out over the alley. This provides additional space on the first floor and creates a kind of ceiling in the alley. Besides the benefits to the alley, like shelter from sun and rain, there are disadvantages as well to the quality of the houses. In their growth upwards, the houses also grow closer to each other which is detrimental to the entry of light and air. Also privacy suffers considerably. Besides clean water and sanitation, privacy is a scarce article.

On the Edge

2009-11-18T16:23:00.006+05:30

Crossing Borders

Contrasts make things visible. Contrasts occur mainly at the boundary of an object, a house or a neighbourhood. Right at the edge of a slum, its particularities compared to the surrounding area are clearly visible.

In the informal society of slum dwellers, every building is an accumulation of improvements. Because of the risk of destruction, investments are kept to a minimum. Investments that yield long-term returns are impossible. The strength of formal property lies in the time factor. The certainty that a longer time is available to recover the incurred development costs, it is possible to spread those costs. When demolishing a building to make way for new construction, the residual value, the potential yield and the demolition costs are amortized. These costs can be generated from the future returns. In the informal economy demolition is an unattractive option. Distribution of costs on future returns is not possible. The lack of formal ownership annihilates guarantee about the time factor. Replacement of a building by something better is much less common than adapting a building to the changed needs. So houses clearly look like a stack of improvements and extensions.

Photo 1. Slum as stacked improving, behind it improved stacking.

The formal sector of society has the ability to accumulate capital. People bring their money to the bank for interest and have a guarantee that they are entitled to their assets. The bank can provide credit to investors and developers thus facilitating property to be developed. Like in the case of high-rise houses that can only be achieved with accumulated capital and can only yield profit on the long-term. The informal sector lacks this ability to accumulate.

The encounter of these two worlds, the formal and the informal, can be very sharp but also very diffuse. Sharp in the appearance of these buildings. Diffuse in the use of space. Owners find themselves protected by formality, squatters are informal and are at risk of destruction of their shelter. In the slum, informal and formal are being built against each other or even stacked. A shop is illegally built against a house in the formal sector, with the consent of the formal owner. An owner rents his roof to an illegal migrant. A migrant family is meanwhile legalized by a law but their house is in an illegal spot. Srinanda Sen and Jane Hobson observed that, “Under a resolution passed by the government of Maharashtra, slum dwellers that have lived in the city prior to 1995 are recognised as legitimate dwellers who are entitled to resettlement if evicted. Thus it’s a paradox that the people are legitimate but the slum in which they live is unrecognised and so merits no services.” .1

Photo 2. Encroachment on land owned by the railways.

Railway companies are big land owners and the battle for space in the city will always occur along railways. Not only the land on which the tracks lay, are part of the property. Usually a strip of land on either side of the track is in the possession of the railway, for future rearrangement or doubling of the tracks. Then if the pressure to build houses is very high, that empty spare land along the railroad becomes very tempting. The land of the railway is a lucrative business. In many countries, this reserved land is temporarily leased out or built upon by the railway itself. The revenues are substantial. The rental of land and buildings makes the railway companies an important party on the property market.

Photo 3. Railway land used to grow herbs.

It is understood that the land ownership of the railway property is thoroughly formally stated. A state with statutory ownership in the formal society is at little risk of a successful land theft. However, when that property is attacked by the informal society, matters become more complex. The unregistered, informal, sublegal, extralegal, and illegal migrants are invisible to the administration of the formal and therefore difficult to fight. They cannot be sued or addressed with an eviction notice. Only the use of force would help but leaders rarely become popular by doing so.

Besides the advantage of the invisibility enjoyed by illegal builders, the railways have a physical disadvantage. Their territory is narrow and elongated, the boundaries of their area is above average length. These long land borders are difficult to defend. When the railways clear illegal constructions in their fields, there will be replacements within a very short time. The shacks are very easy to build quickly. The rebuild rate can be huge. A shelter that has been destroyed in the afternoon will stand again the next morning. In Turkey, such dwellings are therefore called Geçekondus (“Set up overnight”). The daily cycle of evacuation and reconstruction can keep going for consecutive months. Persistence wins but the victory has a limited shelf life. This cat and mouse game makes life in the land strips along the track always uncertain. An increased risk of destruction always remains and it keeps the buildings from growing.

Photo 4. The closer to the railways (foreground), the more improvised the building.

There is safety in numbers means that the chance to become victim of something becomes smaller as the group increases. In a flock, birds flying in the heart of the swarm are least likely to be caught by a bird of prey. Therefore, it is relevant to fly in a swarm and preferably not on the edge. This instinct also explains the apparent behaviour of a swarm as a body. When each individual adheres to the swarm and escapes outside threats by flying to the heart of the swarm, the flock as a whole creates the typical forms and movements of the swarm. A school of fish moves with the same regularity. Of course, houses in a slum cannot swarm in that dynamic way. However, it explains why houses on the edges of the slum are often smaller than in the middle. The risk of destruction is greater to the edges. As can be seen in building along the railway, violating a formal property is a risk-increasing factor. Besides that, the physical situation also plays a role. The houses on the edge of a slum are simply easier to reach for bulldozers. In the heart of the slum the risk of destruction is smaller and the willingness to invest is subsequently more.

Photo 5. A wall as a clear demarcation of the railway property. Security for both parties.

A wall between the formal property of the railways and the slum reduces the risk of destruction. It is less attractive to live behind a wall outside the residential area, which is ensuring the railways’ property rights not being violated. In return it is unlikely that bulldozers get to the slum via the railway site. The houses along this border are therefore of reasonable quality, investing is less risky, the risk of destruction is notably small. The wall creates an ideal dump location, making it easy to keep the street on the slum side clean.

Photo 6. An old recipe: water provides protection against invasions.

A moat has always been an excellent defense and therefore building along this river is a fairly safe investment. The area left of the river is Thirteenth Compound, where the recycling industry is located. Roofs are used as storage for merchandise. The houses on the left have exceptional facades. Ground floor and upper floors seem to be built as one project, as the facade runs in one surface over two floors. This is exceptional as it requires a significant investment in a short period. Most homes in Dharavi are an accumulation of successive investments with significant intervals. The facades of the different phases show large variations and rarely form one continuous surface.

The river flows into Mahim Creek, a bay of the Indian Ocean. Many sewers discharge into the river and a lot of litter ends up in it. In practice, the river is a large open sewer. The pollution is so bad that fishermen of Koliwada, the original fishing village in Dharavi, can no longer catch fish in Mahim Creek. If a sewer pipe were installed directly from Dharavi into the ocean, it would be a vast improvement to the environment and fish stocks.

Photo 7. Elevation of an embankment. Building techniques are visible as in a CT-scan section of a body.

The embankment of the river is a sharp boundary of the arable land. So sharp that a view on the neighbourhood looks like an abrupt section. As the application of finishing on the water side is almost impossible, techniques used can be clearly seen on that side of the structures. Various types of stones and bricks are processed into a brick wall. The facades of the street are finished with stucco in various colours. The toilets which have been built really on the edge of the wall, have a perfect drainage. In case of interrupted water supply, the drain remains doing its job.
Life on the edge of the slum means an increased risk, as experienced by animals in herds, swarms and schools when they are on the border of the group. Only if the edge has a physical barrier such as a wall or a moat, the risk of destruction is reduced again.

1. Shelter Associates, Pune India, the Pune Slum Census project , Seventh International Seminar on GIS in developing countries, 15 - 18 May 2002, read 18 october 2009.

Multiple Floors

2009-11-18T16:23:00.005+05:30

Adding Up

Adding a floor to your house is the best way to let your home grow. An additional floor and four walls is all you need. And of course stairs to get there. Everything else is already in place, the foundation, the front door and the roof. This roof can be reused by just lifting it a few meters.

Photo 1. Multi family dwelling. Upstairs has an independent entrance.

The staircase is of course the most notable new thing in the house. In this house the staircase landing of the first floor is conveniently doubling as the front porch of the house below. Note that a tarp lies over the clothesline, to protect the washing against the bright sun and down whirling dust. In the dry season dust is blown into Mumbai from India’s interior. Everything eventually gets covered with a brown layer. Not a drop of rain falls in nine months, therefore the blanket of dust is always present. The first rain of the monsoon washes everything clean and brings happy faces. Buildings, streets, plants and trees get their original colour back.

The outside positioning of the stairs has great advantages. If a family consists of several couples, the couples can live in reasonable privacy while the house is family owned.

Photo 2. Shop houses. Front doors are accessible by ladders.

For retailers, it is of course essential to keep the entire ground floor for trade use. An upstairs apartment is the ideal solution. Here a handy combination is made of the canopy and the overhang of the floor. In some houses the entire first floor juts out, in others it is just a balcony. An awning above the store is attractive and practical. Rain and sun are kept outside by it, merchandise can be showcased and it provides a perfect position for a billboard.

Stairs to the floor are all steep. Actually they are ladders. A comprehensive step would take far too much space at the cost of shopping space. To enter the attic through the ladder is not a problem. Getting out is another thing, it requires agility to safely step out of the door on the step ladder. Where the entire upper floor is overhanging the store, serving as a canopy, it is possible to make a better foothold on the ladder. Not a door in the wall but a hatch in the floor. It is a solution with many advantages. First, it is cheaper. A door and frame is both in purchase and in maintenance more expensive than a floor hatch.

Photo 3. Shop houses without front doors.

Besides that, a door is much more sensitive to heavy rain than a closed facade. The hatch is not exposed to rainwater. A daily benefit is that the stairs are more accessible. On descent, support is easily found around the stairwell.

Photo 4. A ladder giving access to the floor through a hatch.

In this chawl the same solution is used. Chawls are homes that are built by the municipal government. They are distinguished by the serial appearance. Only chawls include several homes, sometimes ten, with several families. It is a kind of terraced houses. Identifiable are the continuous facades and the continuous roof. These are only for chawls. Individual buildings in the slum are strict individuals and never show such uniformities.

Photo 5. Chawl with ladder and floor hatch

Photo 6. Chawls are recognizable by the series. In their terrace houses like setting, they distinguish clearly from slum.

Residents of chawls are official tenants from the (semi-) government and bear legal security. The risk of destruction plays no role in their case. Chawls are therefore not considered slum. The chawls are completely surrounded by slums and slum dwellings are sometimes even built against the chawls. These people do not live in a slum but in a chawl in a slum. This is an important difference.

Whereas the steel stairs are so steep that we could better speak of ladders, steps of a more robust design are also found.

Photo 7. This stone staircase can take a beating, is less steep and has an ingenious twist to the left at its top.

Photo 8. By building a floor over an alley, the density in Dharavi surreptitiously increases.

Photo 9. Three houses with three different outcrops of the upper floor.

Three houses with three solutions. Apparently when building the first floor, it was decided to make the facades in one plane. The fitting of the stairs was resolved differently in each house. The facade of the pink house is a little backwards compared to the two yellow houses. The overhang of the floor is therefore the greatest in the pink house and the stairs can be fit finely in, with a hatch in the floor of the first floor. The overhang above the yellow house is too short for the width of the stairs. On the right it is solved by positioning the stairs next to the house instead. Left something really special is made of it. An additional little bay is made above the canopy creating enough space for a stairwell. If there is sufficient headroom at the top of the stairs, remains a question. One thing comes in handy for the people here: India is the home of Yoga. ;-)

The Use of Demolition

2009-11-18T01:18:00.007+05:30

The Risk of Destruction as a Blessing in Disguise

In case of destruction of a building, the culprit can always be found among the triplet of nature, rulers and owners.

When earthquakes, hurricanes, fires and floods destroy homes and their environment, this happens irrespective of the residents’ backgrounds. Rich and poor alike fall victim when the natural forces are at work. Nature is not impressed by the thickness of one's wallet. The only thing that affects the chances for victimization is the choice of the site. Land in higher ground is less prone to flooding. In flat land a landslide is less likely to occur than on a steep slope. The probability of a disaster depends on several factors and varies by location. Locations in risk areas are cheaper than in safe areas and slum is therefore often found in low-lying swamp land like Dharavi or on hazardous steep slopes like the favelas in Rio de Janeiro.

Leaders may decide that a building should disappear. Leaders are, in a formal society, the directors of the city. Homeowners are protected by law and can stop demolition of their home, if at least they own formally. An illegally constructed house of illegal residents stands little chance against the will of a formal ruler. This uncertainty is termed risk of destruction by experts and is often used in the field of poverty reduction. People who, for whatever reason, can not be part of the formal economy or not join the formalized society, are together with their difficultly accumulated existence continuously exposed to the risk of destruction.

Where government is weakly organized, other rulers emerge. For example influential businessmen and industrialists, in the worst case the Mafia. Between the two layers of formal power and informal leaders, other levels are found such as corrupt officials. They are the dark field of formal power being tuned by the informal power. Along this path of corruption after all money is being paid by the illegal for the use of land and utilities. In exchange, they become less prone to the risk of destruction. The boundaries between formal and informal, legal and illegal, sublegal and exralegal are very vague. In the chapter "Powertoni" in his book Maximum City1, Suketu Mehta describes inimitable how the play of forces and powers in Mumbai leads to a randomness of demolition operations in the slums.

The third potentially destructive factor to a building is the owner himself. When he decides that substitution is better than change, the fate of the old building is sealed and the demolition hammer brought out. Replacement (demolition and re-start) is economic when the investment in the old building is fully depreciated. This is an important difference between the formal and informal society. The reasoning in terms of investment and depreciation applies only in the formal society. In the formal economy, assurances can be given through property and land administration about the existence of property that may be pledged for loans. By the risk of destruction, the depreciation period does not apply in the informal society. As the bulldozer may be coming tomorrow, a depreciation of 20 years is absurd. A period of one day would be more appropriate. This clearly shows the crippling effect on credit. If no guarantee can be given that a building will be standing long enough to generate money to pay back the loan, the chances of getting a credit are nil. A mortgage with the property as collateral is unthinkable. The risk of destruction in this way limits the ability to make large investments and demolition of awkward buildings possible. Therefore modifying a building is the most common development in the informal economy.

Paradoxically, in a slum the risk of destruction prevents demolition.

1. Suketu Mehta, Maximum City, Bombay Lost and Found (Random House 2004)

The Top End Variety

2009-11-18T00:36:00.010+05:30

Not a developing countries' prerogative

Banks of Sumida river Tokyo.

A high-end economy like Japan may not be the first place to look for Economic Weaker Section (EWS) dwellings. Nevertheless, some homeless people can be found in makeshift shelters. There are several stories on the backgrounds of these homeless. A popular one among westerners says these people have become jobless and cannot bear the disgrace under the eyes of their family. Although many people serve in lifelong employment in one company, even when they do not perform satisfactory by any standard, Japan does have a labour market.
Another story deals with finance, of course. There are people in desperate deep debts, think only of the addicts who are one of the family in the Pachinko parlours. Loan agents do not hesitate to hire gangsters to collect debts. Alex Kerr explains.

"Yakuza (organised crime) threatens your family, comes banging on your door at night or calls you in the office twenty five times per day. As a result ten thousands of people disappear every year in a process known as Yonige, ”Midnight Run”. They leave their homes, change identity and move to another city, all to hide from the enforcers of Japan’s consumer loans.
Traditionally people must clear all debts by the end of the year, so New Year’s Eve is the premier time for Yonige. The 80.000 who fled in het night of 1996 had nearly doubled by 1999, to 130.000.
So popular is the Midnight Run that it has spawned a new business, Benriyasan (Mr. Convenient), facilitators who help families flee their
homes and who take care of their possessions while they are on the run. In 1999, Japanese television featured a new drama, “The Midnight Run Shop”, whose hero devises schemes for people to evade gangster lean enforcers. It’s a Mission Impossible for debtors,... "

Alex Kerr, Dogs and Demons, The Fall of Modern Japan, Penguin, 2001, page 270.

Banks of the Ara river in Tokyo.

Moreover, it is clear we are not dealing with muddled people here. The improvised dwellings are neat. They sit on a wooden platform and everything is tidied up. The gray shelter even has an overhead door on a rack. Although this scene is utterly Japanese, there is one feature that definitely refers to the global architecture of dwellings of the displaced: the blue sheet.

In real estate, there are three factors of importance to the value of property: location, location, and location. Therefore most remarkable is the location of the shelters of the homeless in Tokyo.

Photo collage of the Amsterdam Eastern Harbours(left) and Tokyo Sumida River.
In Amsterdam, living on the water is considered highly luxurious whereas in Tokyo the riverbanks are left over for the homeless.

While in many countries living on the water is considered very attractive, the Japanese consider their rivers and the sea as primarily hazardous. Rivers in Tokyo are screened off from the city with high concrete walls. The banks provide excellent space for those who look for a place to put their shelters. Others hide their tent in the bushes and shrubs in public parks.

In debates about homeless people, new groups of displaced people have appeared. Executives on business trip spend fewer nights at home than out. In addition, even ordinary commuters fall victim to this trend. As commuting becomes too time consuming, more and more people sleep in hotels instead of there home bedroom.

From the top, things may look upside down.

Tabula non rasa

2009-11-18T00:36:00.007+05:30

Slum is an accumulation of improvements

Building often begins with demolition. A building that does not meet requirements any longer must make room for something new. It is often no use to build on what already was, and the purpose of scrapping is to begin with a clean slate, the tabula rasa. Demolition makes working a lot easier for designers and builders. Designers do not need to study the current situation and do not loose time puzzling on new features in old spaces. It is easier for builders. Tinkering with existing work is very labour intensive and full of uncertainties. It is unclear how sturdy the existing work is and how it is fit together. Many builders prefer to start something new.

The building being demolished was once established through various design choices. The choices made in the past are reversed with the demolition. Demolition is actually a step back in time, a step into the situation prior to the demolished building. With this step back in time history is lost. The new building says nothing about the history of building on that spot. The building history is at best found in a memory.

In a slum, one can often not afford the luxury of demolition. Building a larger home usually means extending an existing house by a floor on top. Choices from the past remain visible and set implications for further development. Continued building means puzzling with the existing situation. The current situation imposes restrictions on the new design. It requires much creativity and inventiveness to get all connections, both spatially and technically, of old and new quite right. Design issues and building projects are therefore in a slum more complex than average. As a result, especially proven techniques are used. Style architecture makes little chance. Avoiding risk is crucial, because of financial constraints. In his book How Buildings Learn1, Stewart Brand shows how not only the initial design determines the shape of a building, but also how the subsequent existence leads to growth and change. In a slum, especially that growth and change are built, not style and originality. “High-style architecture likes to solve old problems in new ways, which is a formula for disaster, according to Dell Upton at the University of California. Vernacular builders, he says, are content to accept well-proven old solutions to old problems. Then they can concentrate all their design ingenuity strictly on new problems, if any. When the standard local roof design works pretty well, and materials and skills are readily available for later repair, why would you mess with that?”2 This risk-evading manner is a basic principle in building slums.

What makes Dharavi so fascinating is the ability to read the entire history of construction on the existing buildings. All the creativity that was necessary to achieve something good under difficult circumstances and all imagination that facilitated further development is visible to those who have an eye for it. Stewart Brand also observes that: "There is a magazine called Progressive Architecture but none called Conservative Architecture. If there were such a magazine (...), it would be largely about vernacular architecture, which is profoundly cautious and imitative, so immersed in its culture and its region that it looks interesting only to outsiders.”3 The architecture of Dharavi and other slums meets exactly this description. Indeed, not only the appearance is cautious and conservative, the physical reality is too. Demolition is a rare activity.

Although an architect will never design a slum, the architecture of a slum is an essential source for designers.

1. Stewart Brand, How Buildings Learn, what happens after they’re built (Penguin Books USA, 1994).
2. Quote in ibidem, p 132.
3. Ibidem, p 132.

What "The Perfect Slum" is about

2009-11-09T16:47:00.002+05:30

Using the word Slum in a positive way is uncommon to many of us. Generally it is used to refer to dwellings not meeting the most basic standards of hygiene and quality. Slum is considered hopeless, something to be eradicated. The word is used often to disqualify the residents and expel their position from the debate. Developers use the slum-word as a powerful sound to support their case. The slum-word is so loaded that beneficial people prefer to use 'informal settlement' or 'incremental development'.

It is the intention of the author to look for the positive side of 'slum', and to learn form it. Understanding the way of living of people is not a one way journey. The idea that architects from the so-called 'developed countries' might learn a lot from what happens in the 'developing' countries, may require a U-turn in our thinking. And as lady Margareth Thatcher once said (in a different meaning though): if you are in for a U-turn, you turn!

So please, join us to the world of practical architecture, revealing the logics we no longer value in 'modern' architecture.

No architect would ever design a 'slum' and there is no need to. People are designing and building their own home and have no need for an architect. All choices for what is needed, what is practical, what is beautiful, what works, what is feasible and what is really wise, are made like everyone in the world would do: with common sense. Their way of building is definitely the most sensible way of building there.

As all buildings, informal settlements are a reflection of the circumstances under which those houses are made and used. Climate is a clearly recognizable factor and by the form of the roof, we can recognize in what climate a house is located. Tangible circumstances include available space, available building materials, population density, and climate. Then there are the intangible conditions such as economic perspective, formalities, property, and the balance of powers.
We can find all these circumstances in the way of building. If wisely built there is a logical link between construction and conditions. This relationship has a big advantage when we get somewhere we have never been, as we can see the conditions by means of the construction. Reading the environment is a basic instinct. Wherever in the world we are, we will always make a reconstruction of the circumstances, based on what we see.

If we look with Western eyes at a house of which the roof is made watertight with a blue construction tarp, we conclude that no money is spent on an expensive roof. The money is clearly not available so the economic perspective of the residents is not good. The residents suffer poverty of course. The reconstructed condition poverty results from the Western connection that only poor people live under a rickety roof.
However, perhaps the conclusion poverty is totally wrong. Might it be prudent not to make a strong waterproof roof while not suffering poverty? Yes, in a provisional dwelling this is often very wise. The weather in Mumbai is very reliable. During the monsoon, it rains three months on end. Then the other nine months are dry and this cycle runs since immemorial times. Three quarters of the time and in fixed periods, there is certainly no rain. This security is remarkable, especially if we compare it with the certainty of the existence of an informal dwelling. There is a significant risk that the house will be demolished soon. The house is not legal and it is very wise not to make an expensive roof on an illegal house. A blue tarp for a few months per year is a much wiser investment. The conclusion from the Western perspective that the inhabitants of a ramshackle house with a shoddy roof and a blue tarp live in poverty, is not necessarily correct. Many residents have the money indeed for their home improvement and would love to spend it, but let's face it ...

Would you:
build a house for yourself ... if there is a chance of the bulldozer coming tomorrow?

build a storey to your home ... if there is a chance of the bulldozer coming tomorrow?

together with neighbours, construct a sewer in the street ... if there is a chance of the bulldozer coming tomorrow?

together with neighbours, pave the street ... if there is a chance of the bulldozer coming tomorrow?

The insight of building in a slum being done in a very sensible way and the belief that it is not justified to discard the 'slum' phenomenon as sheer poverty, are the motivations for the exciting project The Perfect Slum.

By letting residents tell about their homes, we will see the circumstances giving rise to surprising priorities in architecture. Based on their story, it is clear that building and living in a hand built shelter is a great achievement.

Connecting to People

2009-11-09T16:40:00.007+05:30

A matter of give and take

As a preparation for the Urban Typhoon 2008 workshop on the development of Dharavi, Asia’s largest slum, I travelled to Mumbai one week in advance of our gathering. In order to familiarize with the subject of our workshop I stayed in Dharavi and walked it every day. And I walked it every night. As a method of surveying cities I take pictures of everything that is catching my eye. I had done this in Tokyo one year earlier and it had proven its value to me.

The people of Dharavi are very willing to have a picture taken of themselves and their business. I took many pictures of how they live, work and trade. It gave me insight in how a slum works and how the moods are of the people living there. But it made me feel uncomfortable as well. I was taking pictures without doing anything in return. The insights all these people gave me were so invaluable that finding a returning favour became inevitable. The internet shop opposite Sion station inspired me to an appropriate response for taking pictures, which is: giving pictures. The internet shop offered printing facilities so I printed the portraits of everybody I figured I would be able to track back.

Kunal was of tremendous help, he printed dozens of portrait photos.

Armed with stacks of pictures I went back into the slum of Dharavi, where some 800.000 people live and the streets have no names, looking for people, their business, their family, their shop, their kids. And it worked out very well.. People were very surprised and very pleased to get a picture of themselves in their most daily situation. Everyone I met gave me a feeling of mutual joy. Kids rushing home cheering, waving with the picture. Grown-up men looking for words. Moreover, it opened up the world I was trying to survey. I was invited to join drinking tea in private houses, in the local gym, in what appeared to be a company in sound and lighting systems. I was guided through the narrowest backside alleys, in pitch dark, in order to find that boy in the picture who appeared to be the brother of the friend of the nephew of my friend whom I met for the first time one minute ago. And so on. In the process of delivering the pictures to the right persons I learned more about Dharavi and its people than I imagined possible.

Social structures, economics, ethnics, religious segregations, architecture, urban planning, infrastructure, commerce, business, living, education, tradition, and so on. All I wanted to know came within reach by simply giving pictures.