Informal Settlements of the Global South (Architectural Borders and Territories) [1 ed.] 1032043075, 9781032043074

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Informal Settlements of the Global South

Bringing together case studies ranging across the globe, including the US-Mexico borderlands, the Calais encampment in France, refugee camps in Kenya, Uganda and Bangladesh and contested ‘informal’ enclaves and communities in the cities of India, China, Brazil, Nigeria and South Africa, this book challenges current ways of thinking about the governance of human settling, mobility and placemaking. Together, the 15 essays question the validity of the conventional hegemonic divisions of Global North vs. Global South and ‘formal’ vs. ‘informal’, in terms of geographic presence, transborder performances and the i­ deological inter-dependence of Northern and Southern spaces, spatial practices and the uniformity of authoritative enforcements. The book, whose authors themselves come from all over the world, uses ‘Global South’ as a methodological apparatus to ask the ‘Southern’ question of ­settling and unsettling across the globe. Crucially, the studies reveal the ­sentiments, resourcefulness and the agency of those positioned by the powerful within the dichotomies of formal/informal, legitimate/ illegal, privileged/marginalized, etc., who are traditionally identified within the dominant ­development discourse as mere numbers or designated by intervening institutions as helpless recipients. By focussing on hitherto invisible events and untold stories of adaptation, negotiation and contestation by people and their communities, this volume of essays takes the ongoing North-South debate in new directions and opens up to the reader’s fresh areas of enquiry. It will be of interest to researchers and students of architecture, planning, politics and sociology, as well as built environment professionals. Gihan Karunaratne is a Sri Lankan-born British architect and studied at Royal College of Arts and Bartlett School of Architecture. He has taught and lectured in Architecture, Urban Design and Interior Design in the UK, Sri Lanka and China. He writes and researches ­extensively on art, architecture and urban design. Gihan’s current research interests are in architecture and urban conditions within cities which are undergoing constant physical, economic or social changes in patterns of urban living.

In many of his projects he has researched and explored the underbelly of the city in detail, specifically focussing on non-conformist marginalized communities. From urban transition courses and temporality in the Global South, he remains actively engaged in urban research with focus on informal settlements and communities.

Architectural Borders and Territories

Series editor: Marc Schoonderbeek, Nishat Awan, Aleksandar Staničić

Architectural Borders and Territories offers a comprehensive series of books on architectural ‘borders’ and ‘territories’, emphasising the intrinsic critical relationship as well as the inherent complexities between these two core terms of architecture. Topics include: 1 2 3 4

border and migration studies in relation to spaces of conflict; the territory and architecture, infrastructure and landscape; critical theories probing (the boundaries of) architecture as a discipline design thinking in relation to design methodologies.

The series is theoretical and historical in its scope and presents discussions relevant to international contemporary scholarship in architecture. Mapping in Architectural Discourse Place-Time Discontinuities Marc Schoonderbeek Architectural Technicities A Foray Into Larval Space Stavros Kousoulas

Informal Settlements of the Global South

Edited by Gihan Karunaratne

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Gihan Karunaratne; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Gihan Karunaratne to be identified as the author[/s] of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Karunaratne, Gihan, editor. Title: Informal settlements of the Global South / edited by Gihan Karunaratne. Description: Abingdon, Oxon : Routledge, 2023. | Series: Architectural borders and territories | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2022057054 (print) | LCCN 2022057055 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032043074 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032043111 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003191407 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Squatter settlements—Developing countries. | City planning—Developing countries. | Urban policy— Developing countries. Classification: LCC HD7287.96.D44 I54 2023 (print) | LCC HD7287.96.D44 (ebook) | DDC 307.3/36—dc23/eng/20221202 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022057054 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022057055 ISBN: 978-1-032-04307-4 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-04311-1 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-19140-7 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407 Typeset in Sabon by codeMantra Cover design by Gihan Karunaratne

Contents

List of illustrations List of contributors Introduction

xi xvii 1

BY G I H A N K A RU N A R AT N E

SECTION 1

The Emergence of ‘Global South Spaces’ in the North 1 Diasporic Urbanism

14 17

N I S H AT AWA N

2 Temporary Sheltering, Empowering Design, and the Jungle: A Case for Architects

29

T E X T BY M A R K E . B R E E Z E A N D P H O T O G R A P H Y BY H E N K W I L D S C H U T

3 Wireless Borders: Illegal Bodies and Connected Futures

47

LU IS HER NA N

4 Connecting the Camps: Spatialising the ECHO Mobile Library in Greece

63

K I T YA M A R K A N D I R I T K AT Z

5 Digital and Physical Spaces in Informal Settlements: Migrants, Refugee Camps and Mapping S I LV I O C A RTA , M I R I A M U S I S K I N , B O B BY L L OY D , A N D PAU L TA B A R

81

viii Contents SECTION 2

Seeking Refuge in Global South Camps

96

6 Accommodating Informality in the Spatial Planning of the Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement, Kenya

99

C O RY RO D G E R S A N D E K A I N A B E N YO

7 Understanding the Everyday Movements of South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda

113

RYA N J O S E P H O ’ BY R N E

8 The Ephemeral as an Instrument of Urban Design and Planning 130 N U S R AT J A H A N M I M A N D R A H U L M E H RO T R A

SECTION 3

Informal Responses of the Informal Settlements in the Global South

148

9 The Invisible beyond Visible: The Perils of Urban Regeneration in Colombo’s Slave Island

151

G I H A N K A RU N A R AT N E , J AG AT H M U N A S I N G H E A N D TA N Z I L S H A F I Q U E

10 A Note on the Door: Symbolic Erasure and Representational Resistance in Rio de Janeiro

176

B RU N A M O N T U O R I A N D A DA M K A A S A

11 Organic Urban Regeneration: An Inclusive Urban Design for Rural-to-Urban Migrants in Residential Neighbourhoods of Ningbo, China

195

A LI CH ESH M EH ZA NGI A N D EUGEN IO M A NGI

12 Toward a ‘Hybrid’ Governance Approach: The Way Out of the Urban Development Crisis in Lagos, Nigeria? A Critical Assessment with Makoko as a Case Study

217

FA B I E N N E H O E L Z E L

13 Embracing In[formal]ity: An Exploration of Grounded Architectural Practice in Cape Town RU D O L F P E RO L D A N D H E R M I E D E L P O RT

236

Contents  ix

Illustrations

Figures 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 2.8 3.1

3.2

Calais, France, by Henk Wildschut Hand-drawn map of a refugee journey out of Syria. From the Migrant Narratives project by Nishat Awan 2016 Kutupalong Rohingya Refugee Camp, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh Dispensary Lane, Slave Island, Colombo The invisible geography of the street as experienced by its diasporic users The kahve as a space made of translocal networks The Calais Jungle The Calais Jungle The Eritrean community Church, Ville de Calais A shelter set alight inside the migrant and refugee camp in The Calais Jungle Ville de Calais, Sequence Road, 9 Nov 2015 Housing Containers, The Calais Jungle Fence topped with barbed wire near the makeshift camp, The Calais Jungle Housing Containers, The Calais Jungle A map of the ‘Battlefield’. Senator Cruz describes the interference as an act of provocation from the Mexican government. Putting aside the questionable use of martial metaphors, the ‘facts’ on the ground call the assessment into question. An analysis of the first kilometres of the Tijuana-San Diego border reveals a significantly higher concentration of Verizon masts compared to those installed by Altán Redes. The waves surrounding each mast speculate on the dispersion of signal that strays across the wall An initial prototype of the Anduril Sentry. Leveraging on his support of the Trump presidential campaign in 2016, Palmer Luckey used the Sentry as a proof of concept for a situational awareness system which would enable soldiers a total view of the battlefield. The use of the Mexico-US

3 5 9 11 21 24 32 32 33 34 35 36 36 37

51

xii Illustrations

4.1 4.2 4.3 4.4 4.5 4.6 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4 5.5 5.6

7.1 7.2 7.3

border as a test ground for military hardware keeps with a long tradition of militarisation, as the McNamara Wall and SBInet show 55 The ECHO mobile library in Malakasa camp, September 2021 64 The original sketch for ECHO library, 2016 65 Location of camps visited by the ECHO library 68 Readers choosing books from the Echo Library 70 Readers choosing books to borrow from ECHO library, 2021 71 The symbolic movements of the book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone between camps peripheral to Athens 75 Detail of the large map from April 1st 2016 showing routes to Calais 84 Detail of the large map from April 1st 2016 showing routes across to Greece 85 Detail of the large map from April 1st 2016 showing routes up through Europe 86 Detail of the tablecloth map from October 19, 2018 showing a traced image overlaid onto the map’s surface 87 The tablecloth map taped to the mobile clinic, October 19, 2018 88 Men gather around world map laid on the petrol station forecourt, January 23, 2020 89 Motorbike taxis await customers at one of the main markets in the Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya 99 An aerial view of the Kakuma camp 100 Stone houses constructed under UNHCR’s ‘cash for shelter’ program at the new Kalobeyei Settlement 103 One of many restaurants and cafes run out of modified shelters in the Kakuma camp 105 Three brothers gather their goats into the corral after a day of herding. Many rural Turkana families rely on pastoralism as a major part of their livelihood and practice a semi-nomadic lifestyle in order to sustain their herds despite scarce and variably available forage 108 Pedestrians and motorbike taxis move along one of the main roads in the Kakuma camp. Wires criss-crossing the road connect shops and houses to a network of kerosene generators operated by informal energy suppliers 109 The main entrance to Palabek Refugee Settlement on my last day of fieldwork (November 2018) 116 Public bus and private vehicle, two of the most common ways a refugee in Palabek might undertake a journey (October 2018) 118 Food aid delivery during December 2017 121

Illustrations  xiii

xiv Illustrations

11.3 11.4 11.5 11.6 11.7 11.8 11.9 11.10 11.11

11.12 11.13

11.14 12.1 12.2 12.3

indicates the location of the block, located between Sangjia Industrial Park in the west and a small linear park in the east An overview of different architectural type distribution on the site Elevation and plans of typical Soviet style apartments on site and view of the conditions of the in-between spaces Changes in land use in and around Sangjia block from 2008 to 2018 Working zoning of the Sangjia rural migrants’ community and its vicinity Mapping of Sangjia block’s building function distribution on the ground floor Summary of Sangjia block’s public space analysis Summary of Sangjia block’s local activity frequency within the block and its surroundings A collage of transitions for communities such as Sangjia block, from local farmer and croplands to industrial parks and towards modern commercial and residential areas Summary of initial spatial planning considerations for the Sangjia Block. On the right a series of diagrams summarising the contextual considerations; on the left the definition of the north-to-south and the east-to-west axis and the enhancement of the connections with the green area on the east side Spatial strategy of the Sangjia block, with allocation of new nodes, open spaces, supporting functions, and connections The final masterplan submitted to the SOE and local authorities. Legend: 1 Civic centre square; 2 Open air market; 3 Central public space connected to the park; 4 Residential compound square; 5 Residential pocket gardens; 6 Parking An image of a typical pocket garden located in the housing sector. The buildings on the back are residential units retained and refurbished with low-cost solutions Location of the Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot in the Yaba Local Government area Stakeholder mapping of the Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot, including the Cooperative, during design/ planning, implementation, and operation since 2013 Stakeholder screenings during design/planning, implementation, and operation of the Neighborhood Hotspot

201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209

210 210

211 212 222 224 227

Illustrations  xv

Contributors

Nishat Awan  is based at the UCL Urban Lab. Her research focusses on the intersection of geopolitics and space, including questions related to diasporas, migration and border regimes. She is the author of Diasporic Agencies (Routledge, 2016) and co-author of Spatial Agency (Routledge, 2011). Currently, she leads the ERC-funded project, Topological Atlas on undocumented migration, border regimes and their visual representation. Ronita Bardhan is Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge and is Director of MPhil in Architecture and Urban Studies (MAUS) and leads the Sustainable Design Group at the Department of Architecture. Her work focusses on data-driven design of underrepresented built environments to reduce health and energy burdens in the warming climate. She has instrumented data-driven methods that couple architectural engineering, AI and machine learning with social sciences to provide contextualized built environment design solutions in resource-constrained societies. She has extensive body of work in the slum rehabilitation housing of the Global South. Silvio Carta  is an architect (ARB/RIBA), Chartered Building Engineer (MCABE) and Associate Professor at the University of Hertfordshire (UK), where he is Head of Design and Director of the Professional Doctorates in Design (DDES). Silvio’s research includes Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning design methods applied to the built environment, urban data science, data-driven approaches and computational design. He is currently the Section Editor of Computational Sustainability and Design, City and Built Environment (Springer/Nature), and a member of the technical committee: Data Sensing & Analysis (DSA) of the European Council on Computing in Construction (EC3). Silvio is the author of Big Data, Code and the Discrete City. Shaping Public Realms (Routledge 2019) and Machine Learning and the City: Applications in Architecture and Urban Design (Wiley 2022). Mark E. Breeze AIA  is a licensed architect, academic and Emmynominated documentary filmmaker who combines interdisciplinary

xviii Contributors practice (founding Principal, Spatial Realities), research (founding Chair, University of Cambridge Sustainable Shelter Group), teaching (Architectural Association, London) and environmental design advocacy (AIA UK Sustainability Chair). His current research examines the concepts, forms and potential futures of sustainable human shelter, through the mediums of film, architecture and writing. Ali Cheshmehzangi is a Full Professor of Architecture and Urban Design. He is an urbanist and urban designer by profession and by heart. He studies cities and city transitions, sustainable urbanism and integrated urban design strategies. Ali is Head of the Department of Architecture and Built Environment and Co-Director of Urban Innovation Lab at the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC). He is also a specially appointed Professor at Network for Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS), Hiroshima University (HU), Japan. Currently, Ali works on two research projects on ‘Integrated and Information-based Urban Modelling Framework’, and ‘ICT-based smart technologies for resilient cities’. Some of his previous projects are: ‘smart eco-cities in China and Europe’, ‘low-carbon town planning in China’, ‘green infrastructure of cities’, ‘nature-based solutions in China’, ‘toolkit for resilient cities’, ‘sponge city program’, ‘green development promotion in China’, ‘low carbon and climate-resilient planning’ and other urban transition studies. So far, Ali has 140+ journal papers and 12 books. Hermie Delport is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics at the University of Cape Town. Hermie is a professional architect and also an artist. She has been involved with higher education and specifically with architectural education for more than twenty years. She strives to develop more inclusionary educational practices with a focus on assisting a diverse body of students to excel in their studies. Her doctorate explored design-build as an alternative to the traditional studio. Her participation in curriculum development investigates the transformation of content, teaching and learning to purposefully include socially relevant, contextual and sustainable issues. She has a strong interest and practice experience in natural building, community engagement, and design-build studios as a collaborative learning experience. Cynthia Goytia is one of the most prestigious urban economists from Latin America. She obtained her MSc in Urban Economics at Torcuato Di Tella University in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where she also founded and chairs the Urban Policy and Housing Research Center (CIPUV), the leading research institution in the region that specialized in urban policies. She holds appointments as Visiting Scholar at Harvard University and HIS, at Erasmus University, leading research teams on key global urban topics, with the University of Southern California and UC Berkeley, as part of her publications and comparative research on urban transformations, housing and urban informality, land use regulation and

Contributors  xix land-based finance in cities. She is a senior urban economics’ consultant contributing to inform national and local urban and housing policies in Latin America, as part of her vast trajectory of key applied research projects for governments, and for the World Bank, IADB, CAF and United Nations, related to urban economics, land and housing markets and their impacts on informality, land use regulation and spatial inequality in the region. Luis Hernan  is a Lecturer in Architecture and Digital Cultures and the co-lead of the Masters in Urban Design at the Sheffield School of Architecture. Luis’ work explores the interface of technologies, space, everyday life and the urban environment. It combines critical theory with design explorations to interrogate technology and its spatial politics, as well as challenging discourses of progress and necessity. Luis’ creative practice includes photography, creative writing and poetry. Fabienne Hoelzel  is Professor of Urban Design at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design (since 2017) and the Founding-Director of FABULOUS URBAN, an urban design practice and think-tank specializing in regions of the Global South, following a research-led design approach (since 2014). She was the head of the urban design and planning team at the housing and urban development authority of the city of São Paulo (Brazil) from 2010 to 2012. Between 2008 and 2010 as well as between 2013 and 2017 she was research associate at the Institute for Urban Design at ETH Zurich. FABULOUS URBAN is involved in civilsociety-led urban planning policy development and in strategic smallscale upgrading projects in low-income communities in Lagos (Nigeria). Adam Kaasa’s  work moves between space, facilitation and performance. He has lectured and published widely on the architectural and urban modernity of Mexico, public space design in London and Sao Paulo, the politics of language in space, the design of cultural infrastructure and social inequalities in the city. Current work includes ‘Queer Loss’, a multi-disciplinary project on spatial and embodied emotions of change, and ‘Critical Dialogues’, a practice-based project on the spatial design and curation of communication and dialogue. Adam is particularly invested in collaboration and co-authorship as an intellectual ethic, and in exploring the possibilities of radical facilitation for collective thought and action. Adam is Senior Tutor (Research) in the School of Arts and Humanities at the Royal College of Art, Co-Founder and former Director of Theatrum Mundi and a co-founder of the Fiction Feeling Frame research collective. Gihan Karunaratne is a Sri Lankan-born British architect and studied at Royal College of Arts and Bartlett School of Architecture. He has taught and lectured in Architecture, Urban Design and InteriorDesign in the UK, Sri Lanka and China. He writes and researches extensivelyon art, architecture and urban design. Gihan’s current research interests are

xx Contributors in architecture and urban conditionswithin cities which are undergoing constant physical, economic or socialchanges in patterns of urban living. In many of his projects he has researched and explored the underbelly ofthe city in detail, specifically focussing on non-conformist marginalizedcommunities. From urban transition courses and temporality in the GlobalSouth, he remains actively engaged in urban research with focus on informalsettlements and communities. Irit Katz  is an Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urban Studies at the Department of Architecture, University of Cambridge and Fellow of Christ’s College. Her work focusses on built environments in extreme conditions, including spaces of displacement and conflict. She co-edited Camps Revisited: Multifaceted Spatialities of a Modern Political Technology (Rowman & Littlefield, 2018) and the author of The Common Camp: Architecture of Power and Resistance in IsraelPalestine (University of Minnesota Press, 2022). Bobby Lloyd is a visual artist, art therapist, supervisor, educator, researcher and CEO of Art Refuge. She has worked over many years in NHS and community settings, and internationally in contexts of conflict and social upheaval. Eugenio Mangi  is Assistant Professor in Architecture in the Department of Architecture and Built Environment at the University of Nottingham Ningbo, China and he has been adjunct professor at the Master Program of the College of Design and Innovation, Tongji University. His research interests focus on sustainable urban transformation process in China, local community engagement and participation, urban morphology and heritage re-use. Prior to joining UNNC, Eugenio has developed, first with international practices, and then with his own firm, a large number of projects ranging from interior to urban design and heritage renovation in China and Europe. Kitya Mark  is a writer and organizer from London. Her work focusses on the generative potential of everyday mobility within carceral geographies; specifically how such movement can create spaces of joy as resistance. Kitya holds a first-class Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the University of Cambridge, and a Master of Philosophy in Architecture and Urban Studies also from the University of Cambridge. She currently works in the third sector, campaigning on criminal (in)justice, education and housing. Rahul Mehrotra  is the founder principal of RMA Architects. He divides his time between working in Mumbai and Boston and teaching at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University where he is Professor of Urban Design and Planning and the John T. Dunlop Professor in Housing and Urbanization. In 2012–2015, he led a Harvard University-wide

Contributors  xxi research project with Professor Diana Eck, called The Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral Mega City. This work was published as a book in 2014 and extended in 2017 in the form of a book titled Does Permanence Matter? Mehrotra’s most recent books are titled Working in Mumbai (2020) and The Kinetic City & Other Essays (2021). The former, a reflection on his practice, evolved through its association with the city of Bombay/Mumbai. The second book presents Mehrotra’s writings over the last thirty years and illustrates his long-term engagement with and analysis of urbanism in India. This work has given rise to a new conceptualization of the city which Mehrotra calls the Kinetic City. Nusrat Jahan Mim is a Doctor of Design candidate at the Harvard Graduate School of Design (GSD) and trained as an Architect. Her research work is focussed on studying the socio-economic politics embedded in resource-constrained contexts of the Global South and designing novel and creative spaces to facilitate inclusive and democratic participation of the marginalized communities there. Her work draws upon cutting-edge critical literature in Urban Design Politics around Faith and Informalities and addresses the contemporary struggles of marginalized communities within the globalized projects of modernization, urbanization and digitization. She has also received several international awards including Lafarge-Holcim Award for sustainable construction (Next Generation), Laka International: Architecture that Reacts and HDR Graduate Student Award in Architecture and Urban Design among others. Bruna Montuori is an urban researcher and a multi-disciplinary designer based in between London and Rio de Janeiro. She is concluding her PhD at the School of Architecture, Royal College of Art (SoA/RCA), where she investigates the intersection between space, narratives and insurgent citizenship through the work of Redes da Maré organization in Maré, a compound of favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Since 2019, she has been working as a graphic designer for the same organization, co-producing projects involving themes such as public security, art, culture and urban and environmental rights. In the UK, Bruna is an Associate Lecturer for the MA Design for Art Direction at LCC/UAL, the unit Creative Unions at CSM/UAL, and has been collaborating as a Visiting Lecturer and guest critic for MA Environmental Architecture, MRes Architecture, and MA History and Theory programmes at SoA/RCA. As a researcher and practitioner, Bruna’s interests encompass relational practices in designing and planning, participatory research and ethics of care, social justice and co-production of knowledge with social movements and grassroots organizations’ agendas. Jagath Munasinghe  is currently a Professor in Town Planning in the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, where he has been employed since 1999, and a practising Architect and a Town Planner. He is a Fellow

xxii Contributors Member of the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects and a past President of the Institute of Town Planners Sri Lanka 2019–2020). He has held several key positions in the government of Sri Lanka and has involved in many local and international urban planning and design consultancy projects. His research interests are mainly focussed upon the innovative approaches and novel methods in urban planning and design, spatial cognition and its implications on planning, and issues related to contemporary urban development projects in Sri Lanka. Ekai Nabenyo  is a distinguished youth leader, human rights activist and social change-maker based in Turkana County, Kenya. He is a holder of a Master of Laws (LLM) degree from the University of Dar es Salaam (United Republic of Tanzania) with a specialization in Migration and Refugee Law. His research interests are in Refugee Law, Climate Change and Human Rights. Ekai currently serves as a Research Officer in the Social Cohesion as a Humanitarian Objective (SOCHO) project by the University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre (UK) and Maseno University (Kenya). Ryan Joseph O’Byrne  is a Post-Doctoral researcher in the Firoz Lalji Institute  for Africa at the London School of Economics and Political Science. His most recent fieldwork investigated the connections between mobility, resilience and public authority among South Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda. He has published in the Australasian Review of African Studies, Human Welfare, the Journal of Refugee and Immigrant Studies, the Journal of Refugee Studies, the Journal of Religion in Africa, Sites and Third World Thematics. He has chapters forthcoming in the edited volumes Informal Settlement in the Global South (Gihan Karunaratne, ed.) and Migration, Borders, and Refugees in Africa (Joseph K. Assan, ed.), and is co-editor of a forthcoming special issue on vernacular understandings of resilience in Uganda for the journal Civil Wars. Jiayu Pan  is a doctorate student at Sustainable Design Group, University of Cambridge. Her PhD work is on understanding the future of workspace with data-driven design approaches. She is broadly interested in the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning in architectural modelling, environmental engineering and urban spatial data analysis. She completed her MPhil in Architecture and Urban Studies at the University of Cambridge with a distinction in 2020 and her BSc in Urban Planning, Design and Management at UCL with first-class honours in 2019. Rudolf Perold  is an urban geographer and professional architect, and at present coordinates the Advanced Diploma in Architectural Technology at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town, South Africa. After completing his architectural studies, he obtained a master’s

Contributors  xxiii degree in Africa Studies at the University of the Free State and a joint doctorate in Geography and Architecture at Stellenbosch University and Hasselt University (Belgium). Further to his research on architectural practice in the context of informality, he is interested in live and designbuild projects, curriculum development, landscape architecture and permaculture. Cory Rodgers is an anthropologist exploring the influence of humanitarian and development policies on communal identity and inter-group relations. His current research in Kenya and Lebanon looks at humanitarian strategies to promote social cohesion between refugees and local communities living in contexts of protracted displacement. Since 2015, he has worked primarily in Turkana County in northwestern Kenya, the site of the decades-old Kakuma refugee camp, where he has documented the politicization of a ‘host community’ identity among Kenyans living in the vicinity of the camp. Tanzil Shafique  is currently Assistant Professor of Urban Design at the University of Sheffield. He completed his PhD in Urban Design at the Melbourne School of Design where he also taught graduate urban planning and design studios. He is an international affiliate of the Informal Urbanism Research Hub (InfUr-) at the University of Melbourne. He co-founded and now co-directs Estudio Abierto/Open Studio, a think+do tank on architecture and urbanism. Previously he was a Research Fellow and Faculty at the Fay Jones School of Architecture + Design as well as practised urban design as a Project Designer at the Community Design Center – both at the University of Arkansas, USA. Paul Tabar  is the director of the Institute for Migration Studies and Associate Professor of Sociology/Anthropology at the Lebanese American University, Beirut campus. He is also Associate Researcher at the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney, Australia. Miriam Usiskin is an art therapist, supervisor and senior lecturer on the MA Art Therapy, University of Hertfordshire. Having worked for many years in acute settings within the NHS, she is now a lead practitioner for Art Refuge and currently undergoing an Educational Doctorate focussed on its interventions.

Introduction by Gihan Karunaratne

The United Nations expects the world population to increase to 9.7 billion people by 2050 and it will reach a peak of 11 billion by the end of the century (UN DESA 2019). It is also estimated that every seventh person in the world is a migrant as 281 million people have crossed international borders and 763 million people have moved internally within national borders (IOM 2022). In addition to the rural-urban migration associated with urbanization, protracted war and internal conflicts have also forcibly displaced large numbers of people. The number of migrants resulting from internal conflicts has risen sharply to a record 100 million by 2020, mostly in countries outside Western Europe and North America. Further increases are expected in the years to come due to climate and environmental challenges (UNHCR 2022). About half of the global population currently lives in cities, either by birth or through rural-urban migration, and this figure is expected to rise to nearly 70% by 2050. The greatest population growth is expected in Asia and Africa (UN DESA 2019). At the same time, the World Bank (2020) classifies 1 billion people as ‘urban poor’, living in improvised informal settlements. For scholars and practitioners interested in spaces, governance and social lives, these illustrative figures of population growth, movement and urbanization provoke two overarching questions: how are people on the move, either voluntarily or forced, and the spaces in which they live, governed in different parts of the world? Conversely, how do people on the move, particularly the urban poor and those who live in the crevices and on the fringes of cities and in camps in different parts of the world, govern the spaces in which they live? The latter question is as equally important as the first. It is important to strike an analytical balance that accounts for structures that enable and constrain as well as for human agency, subjectivities and experiences (Giddens 1986). While these questions around governance, human mobility and space are not new (See, e.g., Pincock, Betts, and Easton-Calabria 2020), there is a range of problems that still needs scholarly attention concerning a multitude of spaces such as diasporic settlements, refugee camps and informal settlements. This comparative volume explores the problematics emerging from the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-1

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2  by Gihan Karunaratne dichotomies of: ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ placemaking; conventional border restrictions and novel cross-border communication; authoritarian rule and humanitarian assistance; and place-sensitive conservation and marketdriven regeneration of urban districts, placed on the broader Global ‘North’ and ‘South’ debate. Written by a team of exploratory architects, urban planners, geographers and social anthropologists against the backdrop of a growing, moving and urbanizing global population, this eclectic volume presents a collection of rather ‘less known’ and ‘different’ encounters associated with the governance of human settlements, mobility and the making of spaces. This volume intentionally foregrounds case studies related to the Global South. Similar to many other concepts found in the social sciences, the Global South is a contested and problematic term. Following conventional academic usage, in this work, we take the term to refer to regions spanning Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania located outside Europe, North America and Australia. It captures the economic inequalities and intertwined colonial, imperial and geopolitical history between both groupings that have existed over the past 500 years and that continue to impact the politics of migration and human mobility to date (Achiume 2019). ‘Global South’ also replaces more normative and value-laden terms that focus on development and cultural differences such as ‘the Third World’ and ‘developing countries’ (Dados and Connell 2012). Moreover, the term enables us to resist ahistorical impetuses of insularity or ‘colonial amnesia’ so rife in contemporary Western migration political discourses that so quickly forget how the metaphorical Global North is intertwined with the Global South (Danewid 2017; Gatrell 2015) and the mutual interdependence (Frank 1966, 1974) of one on the other. At the same time, we know that adopting the term Global South without reservation has problems too. Indeed, the first problem with the generalized term is that many countries – for example, China, Turkey, Mexico – that are commonly classified as the Global South, are not actually located in the southern hemisphere and/or within the Brandt line (Lees 2021). More importantly, such an oversimplified classification obscures economic and political inequalities within the West. Inequality, marginalization, poverty and injustices do not only exist ‘out there’ but also ‘here on our doorstep’ in the Global North. One must recall that the North-South concept is also traceable to Marxist Antonio Gramsci and his writings about the ‘Southern’ question, where he wrote about Italian peasants in the south colonized by capitalists from the Italian north (Dados and Connell 2012). Hence, while we build on the rationale of the geographical and historical reference of the term, in this volume we also work with a metaphorical and broader use of the term Global South to refer to people and spaces across and beyond the West that have been negatively impacted and marginalized by forces linked to economic and neoliberal globalization (Lopez 2007). Following Connell’s notion of ‘southern theory’ as the production of knowledge beyond the few global metropoles (Connell 2007), this volume

Introduction  3 brings together what could be seen as the ‘Southern spaces’ in the Global North as well, spaces that have been marginalized both epistemologically from knowledge-making and methodologically from the perspective of the state. Indeed, diasporic communities in the West, France’s Calais ‘Jungle’ (Figure 0.1), Greece’s refugee camps and the US-Mexico borderlands, places and spaces that this volume attends to, at once reinforce and trouble Global North-South distinctions, as most who migrate to these spaces are from the South and do so because of historical and geopolitical inequalities perpetuated by the North, meaning that their transnational presence and lives now straddle both the geographical North and South. In other words, in this book, ‘Global South’ is used as a methodological apparatus to ask the ‘southern’ question of settling and unsettling across the globe, rather than following the orthodox referent coined by the development industry to talk about ‘third world countries’. We take up the call from Bhan (2019), who reminds us that, ‘the concept of Southernness [is potent] to tackle relational and moving peripheries, [and] Southern questions can well be asked from the peripheries of all cities, no matter where they are’ (p. 642). Therefore, while we understand that the title of the book may mislead some to believe the book is about ‘slums’ in economically backward countries, it is a purposeful subversion, to develop a necessary contradiction against a hegemonic understanding of the Global South. Moreover, it allows a reversal of the usual direction of theoretical import from a few northern

Figure 0.1 Calais, France, by Henk Wildschut.

4  by Gihan Karunaratne cities into cities across the world, and rather, actively uses the Global South to provide an analytic register to view cities and urban issues of habitation in places of the geographic North. We hope this intellectual subterfuge is seen as only that, a ploy to bring together work that often gets slotted into mutually exclusive traditional binaries. The book is organized into three thematic sections. The first section looks at the governance of people and spaces that could be thought of as the metaphorical south in the West, such as refugee camps or marginalized parts of European cities, where human mobility and migration have transpired. The second section focusses on refugee camps in the Global South, in countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Bangladesh, expanding on issues and problems related to large-scale humanitarian interventions and spatial planning in a non-Western context. The third section draws attention to the settlements conceived of as ‘informal’ within the formal systems of planning and governance in the Global South. These settlements, which are outcomes of long-standing rural-urban migration and are commonly termed ‘slums’ and ‘shanties’, are now seen by authorities in many parts of the world as sites for urban regeneration. Foregrounding the lives of settlement-dwellers in terms of issues relating to poverty, social segregation and marginalization, and the policies governing them, this section elaborates on the impact such regeneration projects have on the inhabitants’ everyday lives, routine spaces and life-long aspirations. However, we do not use ‘informal settlements’ euphemistically as a shorthand for ‘slums’ (See Dovey et al. 2021). Rather, they are conceptualized as inevitable parts of the ‘formal’ city and the places of groups of urban citizens who have an equal right to the city. In this volume, we are interested in the myriad ways these people, communities, networks and entanglements settle into a multitude of habitations outside the ‘formal’ city – places beyond state and large-scale capital flows. The volume opens with five different case studies from the metaphorical South in the Western context. The spaces and the spatial practices presented in these cases manifest the cultures, practices and aspirations ascribed to Southerners as typical by the dominant discourses of the day. Finding safety, comfort and emotional security by flocking together with the ones of the same feather and faith, in spaces believe to offer liberty and wellbeing, escaping from the uncompromising and contested routine spaces of the South, has been a global phenomenon since the last century. The governments in the North have been experiencing the emergence of such Global South spaces in and around their territories, resulting from the intensifying asymmetries of international and inter-state politics, accelerated flows of information, fast-expanding borderless social networking and the increasing mobility of the people. Even though the phenomenon is generally pictured as ‘problematic’, the governments of Global North seem to tolerate such nuances of Southernization to varying degrees, for many known reasons related to the shortage of labour, the desire for a competitive edge in trade, and international relations.

Introduction  5 Seeing through the lens of diasporic urbanism, Nishat Awan’s research presented in the first chapter shares the new space production of Kurdish and Turkish diasporic communities in London and the subjectivities that result in the claiming and (de)territorialization of space. Attentive to Turkish coffee houses or kahve, Awan shows how the communities express their transnational relationships across cultures, spaces and times through the naming, interior design and signs of the shops and businesses they operate (Figure 0.2). The other four chapters look at more liminal and transitional spaces in the US-Mexico borderlands, the Calais encampment in France,

Figure 0.2 Hand-drawn map of a refugee journey out of Syria. From the Migrant Narratives project by Nishat Awan 2016.

6  by Gihan Karunaratne

1 2 5

3

12

10

15

THE EMERGENCE OF ‘GLOBAL SOUTH SPACES IN THE NORTH’ 1 DIASPORIC URBANISM Nishat Awan (TU Delft)

2 TEMPORARY SHELTERING, EMPOWERING DESIGN, AND THE JUNGLE: A CASE FOR ARCHITECTS Mark Breeze (Architectural Association) & Henk Wildschut (Documentary Photographer)

3 WIRELESS BORDERS: ILLEGAL BODIES AND CONNECTED FUTURES Luis Hernan (University of Sheffield)

4 CONNECTING THE CAMPS: SPATIALISING THE ECHO MOBILE LIBRARY IN GREECE Kitya Mark and Irit Katz (University of Cambridge) 5 DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL SPACES IN INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS:

SEEKING REFUGE IN GLOBAL SOUTH CAMPS 6. ACCOMMODATING INFORMALITY IN THE SPATIAL PLANNING OF THE KALOBEYEI REFUGEE SETTLEMENT, KENYA Cory Rodgers, Refugee Studies Center, (University of Oxford) & Ekai Nabenyo (Maseno University) 7. UNDERSTANDING THE EVERYDAY MOVEMENTS OF SOUTH SUDANESE REFUGEES IN UGANDA Ryan Joseph O’Byrne_Post-Doctoral Researcher | Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa (London School of Economics and Political Science) 8. THE EPHEMERAL AS AN INSTRUMENT OF URBAN DESIGN

MIGRANTS, REFUGEE CAMPS, AND MAPPING

AND PLANNING

Silvio Carta, Miriam Usiskin, Bobby Lloyd, and Paul Tabar

Nusrat Jahan Mim / Rahul Mehrotra (Harvard University)

Introduction  7

4 11 14

7

13

6

8

9

INFORMAL RESPONSES OF THE INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH 9. THE INVISIBLE BEYOND VISIBLE: THE PERILS OF URBAN REGENERATION IN COLOMBO’S SLAVE ISLAND Gihan Karunaratne, Jagath Munasinghe (University of Moratuwa) & Tanzil Shafique (University of Sheffield) 10. A NOTE ON THE DOOR: SYMBOLIC ERASURE AND REPRESENTATIONAL RESISTANCE IN RIO DE JANEIRO Adam Kaasa and Bruna Montuori (Royal College of Arts) 11. ORGANIC URBAN REGENERATION: AN INCLUSIVE URBAN DESIGN FOR RURAL-TO-URBAN MIGRANTS IN RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOODS OF NINGBO, CHINA Ali Cheshmehzangi & Eugenio Mangi (The University of Nottingham Ningbo, China) 12. TOWARDS A ‘HYBRID’ GOVERNANCE APPROACH: THE WAY OUT OF THE URBAN DEVELOPMENT CRISIS IN LAGOS, NIGERIA? A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT WITH MAKOKO AS A CASE STUDY Fabienne Hoelzel (Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design) 13. EMBRACING IN[FORMAL]ITY: AN EXPLORATION OF GROUNDED ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE IN CAPE TOWN Rudolf Perold (Cape Peninsula University of Technology) Hermie Delport, (STADIO) 14. THE WHY? HOW? WHAT? AND WHAT-IFS OF MASS SLUM

CODA 15. THE PANDEMIC AND INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS Cynthia Goytia (Cynthia Goytia. Torcuato

REHABILITATION HOUSING IN INDIA

Di Tella University and Visiting Scholar

Ronita Bardhan & Jiayu Pan (University of Cambridge)

at Harvard University)

8  by Gihan Karunaratne and Greece’s refugee camps, where people on the move similarly develop and sustain diasporic links, but have set their eyes on moving on, largely to Western countries, to settle permanently. Luis Hernan discusses the historical and ‘spectral’ use of wireless technologies that govern movement and bodies as part of the physical infrastructure of the US-Mexico border. The two chapters on Calais analyse the manner in which humanitarians better govern and meet the spatial, financial and shelter needs of people in search of survival than the authorities responsible for the same. Breeze argues for the need to integrate the architect’s mode of thinking into humanitarian responses, while the Carta explores the use of visual cues or ‘mapping’ as a good way to gather insights into the spatial experiences of migrants living in camps and informal settlements for the improvement of humanitarian designs. Kitya Mark and Irit Katz present the role played by the education, community, hope and opportunity (ECHO) library, a mobile library containing hundreds of books in a variety of languages, which moves between camps located in the Attica region of southern Greece, as an important part of connecting people between spaces of incarceration. The next three chapters shift the focus onto the geographic Global South, capturing the experiences of those living in refugee camps there. Persecution, war and violence have forced over 6.6 million people to live in planned or self-settled refugee camps (UNHCR 2021). Mostly located in Global South countries, these camps often function as ‘camps of containment’, sites that are bounded spatially, designed to be temporary, administered for an entire population as opposed to individuals, and segregated from the surrounding population (McConnachie 2016). At the same time, the structures of refugee shelters in these camps are diverse, ranging from tents, containers and ad hoc sheds to planned houses, and peppered with lived experiences, personal improvisation and innovation (Scott-Smith and Breeze 2020). While designed to be short-term, many of these camps end up warehousing refugees for decades due to protracted war and conflict. Looking at Kenya, Uganda and Bangladesh respectively, the three chapters  investigate the social lives within the refugee camps as well as their temporary architecture or structures of temporary respite. Cory Rodgers and Ekai Nabenyo record the limitations of spatial planning in the Kalobeyei Settlement, a widely celebrated settlement that opened in 2016 next to the 30-year-old Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya. The  authors question whether the new settlement met its goals of economic improvement and integration when compared to the old camp, eventually concluding that the new project’s goals were modestly met given that entrepreneurship, co-residency, intermarriage and intercultural exchange were already lived experiences occurring in the old camp. Ryan Joseph O’Byrne provides an insight useful to architects and spatial practitioners into the reasons why South Sudanese refugees living in Uganda’s Palabek Refugee Settlement move, arguing for the need to account for the historical and sociocultural reasons that underpin an individual’s decision. Mim and Mehrotra draw

Introduction  9

Figure 0.3 Kutupalong Rohingya Refugee Camp, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

out the ways Rohingya refugees in newly developed refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, ‘respond, react, repurpose, or resist’ the temporary structures imposed on them (Figure 0.3). The last few chapters bring valuable insights to our attention from the ‘informal’ settlements or neighbourhoods commonly labelled as ‘slums’ and ‘shanties’ in the Global South. Often carrying a precarious and peripheral status in relation to the ‘formal’ parts of the city, these urban districts are characterized by the residents descending from the rural agricultural areas and migrated to urban areas looking for a livelihood, and now entangled in poverty, social exclusion and substandard living conditions. Low-quality housing, densely built structures, poor sanitary conditions and degrading environments are inherent qualities of these built environments. Living either side-by-side with the formal enclaves or on the fringes of towns and cities, residents in these settlements are generally known to be living at or below the poverty line, deprived of access to basic services, infrastructure and mainstream education, disconnected from healthcare, electricity, water and sanitation facilities, and disenfranchised from political rights and representation. Yet, these spaces are vibrant and have unique processes of co-existing, connecting and dealing with the formal entities of the urbanity. What Dovey et al. (2021) call ‘self-organized modes of production through which the urban poor produce affordable housing and urban infrastructure’ encompass a myriad of people, places and pursuits. They could be places in which small businesses, schools, religious buildings and houses ranging from ad hoc, incremental, shanty-type buildings to three- and four-storey, lower- to middle-income housing are located. Many structures, whether public or private, are creatively self- or community-built due to severe resource constraints, exemplifying ad hoc and utilitarian architecture in

10  by Gihan Karunaratne which form truly follows function. These incremental structures, however, are often targets of large-scale development interventions because they do not usually comply with standard building regulations or hygiene and safety regimes, and they are also susceptible to flooding and other adverse effects of climate change. Despite, or because of, the precariousness of life in informal settlements, strong community, religious or ethnic ties often bind residents and communities together. Thus, the neighbourhoods in these informal settlements are often characterized also by resilient and harmonious social structures. The success of local, national and international development efforts will therefore depend on the extent to which they are sensitive, inclusive and mobilized upon the intricate sociocultural, political and spatial characteristics in these ‘informal’ settlements when designing and planning any interventions. The final chapters present case studies based in Sri Lanka, Brazil, China, Nigeria, South Africa and India as well as a global-level analysis of informal settlement policies in the Global South. Together these chapters reveal an interest in the conflicting and complementary encounters between informal settlements and formal urban governance, and question the quest of spatial justice. They bring to life the tensions surrounding governors and the governed, formality and informality (Raimo, Lehmann and Melis 2020) and immanent and intentional development (Cowen and Shenton 1996). They also gently remind us of the universal human ability to hold onto mental images to create and modify the physical world in which we want to live. However, the capacity to act on such an ability is highly contingent upon elite interests and ideas, policies and resources. Registering the perils of urban regeneration efforts in Colombo’s Slave Island in Sri Lanka, Gihan Karunaratne, Jagath Munasinghe and Tanzil Shafique propose an alternative urban regeneration approach, one focussed on ‘conservative surgery’ as opposed to coercive regeneration, that takes seriously the ‘people, places and pursuits historically embedded in the locality’. The case study also shows that the urban regeneration and involuntary resettlement, despite how painful they can be for too many, offered long waited opportunities for some dwellers of these informal settlements (Figure 0.4). In their chapter A Note on the Door, Bruna Montuori and Adam Kassa look at the ways favela residents or favelados in Rio de Janeiro represent themselves through writing notes on their doors to symbolically resist systematic state violence and protect their livelihoods, homes and history. The authors illustrate how urban planning decisions not only fail to provide socioeconomically for the favelados but also, in the process, misrepresent them as criminals and drug dealers, erasing their multifaceted lives and identities. Their study also reminds us of the notion of ‘the South as a region of distinctive intellectual production’ (Dados and Connell 2012, 13) and how it is often overlooked and dismissed by those who have the power to represent, write and govern. Studying residential neighbourhoods of Ningbo, China, Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi make a case for ‘organic regeneration’ and the need to

Introduction  11

Figure 0.4 Dispensary Lane, Slave Island, Colombo.

include residents in masterplans and decision-making processes organically to avoid the common problems of forced relocation and gentrification rife within conventional urban renewal practices. From the Nigerian context, Fabienne Hoelzel looks at a project in the Makoko informal settlement and proposes the need for a ‘hybrid’ governance

12  by Gihan Karunaratne approach to urban development that proactively brings together traditional community governments and central state officials. Similarly, Rudolf Perold and Hermie Delport contribute a variety of concepts to build on the idea that architects ought to place both the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ on an equal footing. They illustrate how these ideas have practically come to address issues of spatial inequality in three Cape Town informal settlements. Examining the why, how, what and what-ifs of India’s policy of slum rehabilitation housing, Ronita Bardhan and Jiayu Pan argue for a more datadriven, dweller-centric and ‘decolonized’ approach to improve rehabilitation strategies. Looking at the data pointing to the household problems generated by rehabilitation policies, the authors also outline specific design and policy parameters that ought to be imposed on private developers to ensure the urban poor can access quality tenement housing. The coda for this composition of 14 eclectic essays is played by Cynthia Goytia’s more abstract view of the urban planning lessons one can derive from the Covid-19 pandemic in relation to the Global South. Her chapter focusses on one root cause of informal settlements: land use norms and regulations mostly imported from the North as means of ‘formalizing’ the spaces and practices of the metaphoric Global South. Goytia argues that ‘curative’ policies or upgrading strategies and land tenure regularization policies do not sufficiently address the housing affordability crisis in urban contexts, which pushes low-income households to move into or create more centrally located but impoverished settlements in the first place. Instead, Goytia argues for concerted preventive policies that target the obsolete land regulations which are driving house and land prices up for everyday residents. With 15 chapters, 13 geographical contexts and a vast reservoir of ideas, insights and debates, this volume aims to provide readers with a space to critically compare a wide canvas of case studies as they relate to the governance of human settling, mobility and placemaking in the Global South, as we have defined it. The case studies teach us that while many existing governance models of camps and informal settlements have problems, there is no dearth of progressive ideas, concepts and policies, and the first step is to incorporate seriously and meaningfully – not just simply consider – the plurality of Southern voices, and the experiences and perspectives of the governed. While this volume does not claim to provide a definitive and complete picture of the Global South, it is our hope that through it we can successfully draw a more textured picture of the spaces, places and policies related to the world of those who are marginalized, focussed on those on the move, lest we think like blind individuals feeling separate parts of an elephant and speak from only one point of view.

Acknowledgements The author would like to thank Jagath Munasinghe, Koen De Wandeler, Tanzil Shafique and Joshua Yee Aung Low, for their editing guidance and advice.

References Achiume, Tendayi. 2019. ‘Migration as Decolonization.’ Stanford Law Review 71 (6): 1509–1574.

Introduction  13 Bhan, G. 2019. ‘Notes on a Southern Urban Practice.’ Environment and Urbanization 31 (2): 639–654. Connell, R., 2007. Southern Theory: The Global Dynamics of Knowledge in Social Science. Routledge. Cowen, Michael, and Robert Shenton. 1996. Doctrines of Development. London: Routledge. Dados, Nour, and Raewyn Connell. 2012. ‘The Global South.’ Contexts 11 (1): 12–13. doi: 10.1177/1536504212436479 Danewid, Ida. 2017. ‘White Innocence in the Black Mediterranean: Hospitality and the Erasure of History.’ Third World Quarterly 38 (7): 1674–1689. Dovey, Kim, Tanzil Shafique, Matthijs van Oostrum, and Ishita Chatterjee. 2021. ‘Informal Settlement is Not a Euphemism for ‘Slum’: What’s at Stake Beyond the Language?’ International Development Planning Review 43 (2): 139–150. doi: 10.3828/idpr.2020.14 Frank, Andre Gunder. 1966. ‘The Development of Underdevelopment.’ Monthly Review 18 (4): 26–36. Frank, Andre Gunder. 1974. ‘Dependence Is Dead, Long Live Dependence and the Class Struggle: An Answer to Critics.’ Latin American Perspectives 1 (1): 87–106. Gatrell, Peter. 2015. ‘Refugees – What’s Wrong with History?’ Journal of Refugee Studies 30 (2): 170–189. doi: 10.1093/jrs/few013 Giddens, Anthony. 1986. The Constitution of Society: Outline of the Theory of Structuration. Cambridge: Polity. International Organization for Migration (IOM). 2022. ‘Migration in the World.’ IOM, 18 May. https://www.iom.sk/en/migration/migration-in-the-world.html Lees, N. (2021). ‘The Brandt Line After Forty Years: The More North–South Relations Change, the More They Stay the Same.’ Review of International Studies 47 (1): 85–106. doi: 10.1017/S026021052000039X Lopez, Alfred. 2007. ‘Introduction: The (Post) Global South.’ The Global South 1: 1–11. McConnachie, Kristen. 2016. ‘Camps of Containment: A Genealogy of the Refugee Camp.’ Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Development 7 (3): 397–412. doi: 10.1353/hum.2016.0022 Pincock, Kate, Betts, Alexander, and Easton-Calabria, Evan. 2020. The Global Governed? Refugees as Providers of Protection and Assistance. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Raimo, Antonio Di, Steffen Lehmann, and Alessandro Melis, eds. 2020. Informality through Sustainability: Urban Informality Now (1st ed.). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429331701 Scott-Smith, Tom, and Mark Breeze, eds. 2020. Structures of Protection? Rethinking Refugee Shelter. New York: Berghahn Books. United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA). 2019. ‘Growing at a Slower Pace, the World Population is Expected to Reach 9.7 Billion in 2050 and Could Peak at Nearly 11 Billion Around 2100.’ United Nations, 17 June. https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/worldpopulation-prospects-2019.html United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 2021. ‘Refugee Camps Explained.’ https://www.unrefugees.org/news/refugee-camps-explained/ United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). 2022. ‘UNHCR: A Record 100 Million People Forcibly Displaced Worldwide.’ United Nations, 23 May. https://news.un.org/en/story/2022/05/1118772 World Bank. 2020. ‘Urban Development.’ World Bank. https://www.worldbank. org/en/topic/urbandevelopment/overview#1

Section 1

The Emergence of ‘Global South Spaces’ in the North

1 2 5

3

THE EMERGENCE OF ‘GLOBAL SOUTH SPACES IN THE NORTH’ 1 DIASPORIC URBANISM Nishat Awan (TU Delft)

2 TEMPORARY SHELTERING, EMPOWERING DESIGN, AND THE JUNGLE: A CASE FOR ARCHITECTS Mark Breeze (Architectural Association) & Henk Wildschut (Documentary Photographer)

3 WIRELESS BORDERS: ILLEGAL BODIES AND CONNECTED FUTURES Luis Hernan (University of Sheffield)

4 CONNECTING THE CAMPS: SPATIALISING THE ECHO MOBILE LIBRARY IN GREECE Kitya Mark and Irit Katz (University of Cambridge) 5 DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL SPACES IN INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS: MIGRANTS, REFUGEE CAMPS, AND MAPPING Silvio Carta, Miriam Usiskin, Bobby Lloyd, and Paul Tabar

14

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-2

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1

Diasporic Urbanism Nishat Awan

The question of migration has become increasingly important for architecture following the so-called ‘refugee crisis’ of 2015 that resulted in the largescale forced displacement of people in the vicinity of Europe. Since then, architecture’s response to migration has generally fallen into two major categories. The first is a concern with refugee camps and temporary shelters, a type of thinking that frames questions of migration through the lens of crisis and of emergency. Such an approach operates within an accelerated temporality and is focussed on finding solutions to given problems of housing, shelter and sustenance. The second concern can be summed up in the popular term, ‘arrival city’, where the focus shifts to questions of integration, usually understood as the process of outsiders fitting into an already existing community or neighbourhood.1 What can be discerned in these twin approaches is a way of thinking that centres the concerns of the Global North, where the displaced gain visibility when they arrive at the shores of Europe, or in the spaces of international NGOs. For those that do manage to make it to northern urban centres, their arrival is understood to be a process of assimilation. While this term has largely been replaced by others such as integration or inclusion, the core idea of a one-way exchange where the newcomer is the one who has to change remains. What would it mean, then, for architecture in the context of migration to begin with the concerns of those we are meant to be addressing, that is, the displaced? We could, for example, begin with an approach that centres mutual learning and exchange across difference, but a question that haunts this discussion is perhaps a deceptively simple one: When does a migrant or a refugee become diasporic? How long before you stop being defined by the potential to move and rather by the desire to settle? The line is clearly blurred and perhaps does not even exist in our contemporary moment where the granting of asylum is rapidly ending, as can be discerned in the hardening of borders and in the increasingly xenophobic policies of Northern states.2 In such a context, movement for most of the world’s population is not a simple linear journey from A to B, but one that consists of stops and starts and often impenetrable walls. Yet, it is also true that the racial production of contemporary borders is designed to keep people moving; not necessarily to keep them out, although

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-3

17

18  Nishat Awan this is also a very brutal part of the same system. It is a system of circulation where deportation regimes, precarious lives and militarised borders work together to create a global underclass, wanted and not wanted within the fortified spaces of Northern privilege. If we agree that forced migration today is a system of circulation then the very notion of the arrival city is overturned, since there is no moment of arrival as such. Consequently, the core concern for architecture might be to think with and through questions of ‘unsettlement’ or of ‘unbelonging’ rather than those of arrival and integration, as this seems to be the overwhelming situation for members of the global majority who are made to circulate.3 The necessarily blurred line between migrant and settled is the reason why some have dismissed the notion of diaspora, but this ability to be neither one nor the other is useful for thinking unsettlement in relation to architecture and urbanism. Diasporic urbanism tends to be understood as distinct from an urbanism practised by those who have not moved to a new place and culture and are not subject to all of the marginalities that this experience brings.4 It is an urbanism produced by those who have settled or are attempting to settle in a new place, and major themes include the relationship between such an urbanism and wider urban processes, understood particularly in relation to social and economic factors. Other considerations include the experience of racialisation and the affinity networks built in response by those who are marginalised. Regardless of the focus, such discussions tend to be located within urban areas that people have been displaced to and where they are building a new life. But if we are to think migration as circulation, then diasporic urbanism would explore these themes not only within places of attempted settlement, but also encompass the various forms of spatial production that support, facilitate and are produced by the displaced through the circulations that they are caught in. That is to say, a diasporic urbanism could equally exist in the place where someone began their journey, as much as it could be a part of the network of practices people engage in as they attempt to make a life defined by unsettlement. In this sense, the urbanism itself is diasporic, scattered across geographies and places, tied together by the series of associations, friendships and relations that people make as they are forced to keep moving on. One of the foundational concepts for thinking diasporic inhabitations of space is the translocal or translocality.5 It is a way of thinking locality grounded in a relational understanding and as a way of mitigating the inadequacy of the original definition of locality that could only describe people’s lives through the concept of a closed community. Arjun Appadurai’s re-working of locality is based in the anthropological notion that locality in indigenous communities was not a given but was instead the product of hard work. For Appadurai this material labour constituted ‘complex social techniques for the inscription of locality onto bodies’ and he described naming, circumcision and segregation as ‘ways to embody locality as well as to locate bodies in socially and spatially defined communities’.6 Thus in older

Diasporic Urbanism  19 societies locality is not seen as a given but is viewed as the result of ‘hard and regular work’ which enables it to ‘maintain its materiality’.7 In contemporary times, locality is inscribed onto bodies in other ways, for example, through the networks of relations we all carry with us as we move across space yet remain connected to others through our phones. A different type of example would be when a racialised person is stopped in the streets of a White majority area and asked to prove their identity. The inscription of locality is here the ‘bleeding scar’ of the border that Gloria Anzaldúa wrote of in the seminal book, Borderlands/La Frontera.8 If locality is simultaneously a series of rituals, rites, borders, odours – the smell of curry that all of us from the Indian Subcontinent have at some point been made to feel ashamed for – then the production of translocality is our means of survival. It is a way of connecting to other times and other places where our ways of living are not considered to be lesser. Below I analyse an instance of translocal space, small ‘members only’ clubs in north-east London established by the Turkish and Kurdish community that operate as cafés for social gathering and as informal support networks.

1.1  Diasporic Space as the Maintenance of Networks In the novel, The City and the City, China Miéville writes of two cities that occupy the same space and yet are separated, perhaps occupying ­different times.9 Read by some as a parable for class, it could equally be seen as a more general metaphor for the stratification of contemporary society. Often diasporic communities are described similarly, as occupying parallel worlds, whether this occurs through the replication of shops and services that serve particular cultural needs, or through a way of inhabiting the city that does not exclusively rely on proximate social relations. How do these inhabitations transform our understanding of the city and what types of maps do we require to negotiate such urban experiences? Walking along Stoke Newington High Street in north-east London, one could easily miss the many Turkish and Kurdish cafés that used to proliferate in this area. They were versions of the traditional Turkish coffeehouses or kahve, spaces that could easily be conceptualised as constituting ‘parallel worlds’, a phrase used to describe the juxtaposition of difference within the networked logic of contemporary European cities, where worlds and people pass each other by, never quite meeting.10 The kahve are especially easy to overlook; they are nondescript spaces housed in typical London shopfronts, offering no particular image of difference whether social, religious or political, although some do advertise their sporting allegiances. They prove useful as an example through which to interrogate the specificities of a particular strand of diasporic urban experience in which cultural and political relations are parsed through an economic logic that often transcends the monetary. When I first started researching the kahve, an architect familiar with the area related to me a story she was told by a Turkish acquaintance who insisted that if someone

20  Nishat Awan were to map all the kahve on the high street they would end up with an almost perfect map of Turkey down to the smallest village. This was due to the fact that each establishment had a strong regional affiliation to a certain area or a local football team. It was often the names of the kahve that gave an indication of their loyalties, which were usually those of the owner. In the space of the street there was an overlapping of the physical location of the kahve with their toponymic distribution that alluded to regional affinities elsewhere. This other geography that was overlaid onto the physical space of the street formed an allegorical map of Turkey that was performed daily in the everyday comings and goings of the kahve’s diasporic users (Figure 1.1). The naming of the kahve thus functioned metonymically, folding space and linking a locality in London to a specific place in Turkey. This practice of naming reterritorialised space and produced invisible borders related to the regional and political conflicts, solidarities and nostalgias of another place. While not all kahve were named after areas or regions in Turkey, having heard the claim of the existence of this other map, I was intrigued to test it, sketching out a map of the street and overlaying it with a Turkey that was deformed according to the regional affinities and the location on the street of each kahve. But whether described in words or drawings the map that I produced was always already out-dated, because the allegorical map I have alluded to is not static, it is in constant flux, shifting and changing as the kahve open and close, change names or proprietors. This allegorical map operates through the names on the signage, the colours used and the objects that are displayed, but also through word-of-mouth. Irit Rogoff has written of the importance of gossip, rumours and word-of-mouth within a feminist practice of counter-narration as ‘gossip turns the tables on conventions of “history” and “truth” by externalising and making overt its relations to subjectivity, voyeuristic pleasure and the communicative circularity of story-telling’.11 It perhaps did not matter that some of the kahve were named otherwise or that the map of Turkey that I overlaid on top of the kahve locations did not fit properly.12 What seemed important to me was the affective force of this invisible geography and how it influenced the spatial politics of those who could apprehend it. Rogoff describes one of the important functions of gossip as ‘an area for the cathexis of phantasmic projections by audiences which can alert us to the way in which we shape narratives through our own desire’.13 Here I would also add that it alerts us to the way in which we shape space because this other map of the street was overlaid onto the physical structure, causing topological deformations to the actual, lived space. This may well have been intangible to those who had no knowledge of Turkey, but for others it ranged from a background low-level reality to a kind of territory that had to be negotiated daily. While the names of the kahve hint at their affiliations, the kahve space itself sits within a network of trans-local relations that facilitate a crucial connection to ‘home’ for their users. The phrase ‘kahve talk’ refers to the

Figure 1.1 T he invisible geography of the street as experienced by its diasporic users.

Diasporic Urbanism  21

22  Nishat Awan prominent activity that takes place there; sometimes used derisorily, other times with affection, for some it is the essence of the place. But the kahve are undoubtedly gendered, they are male spaces where women enter rarely and if they do it is usually as waitresses. The mapping of the kahve interiors was based on a number of interviews I had carried out with the owners and their customers. I wanted to discover how these places functioned as diasporic space through trying to understand what purpose they served in the lives of their users. I had been observing them for a while and was aware that many of the businesses were short-lived, easily opened and closed, and one of the first casualties of the slowly encroaching gentrification that was moving northwards along the high street from the City of London. Their unassuming façades hid a space that was undoubtedly traditional but one that held the promise of another more contemporary space. It was difficult for me to gain access to the kahve as they are places for Turkish or Kurdish men only. Not only was gender a barrier but also language, because most kahve are opened by people who cannot speak English and therefore have difficulty finding jobs. I visited the kahve with a Turkish man who was a regular visitor to many of them and was happy to act as my guide. We went to a number of places together and I realised that even after what I thought was a thorough and intensive mapping of kahve locations I had missed many. Occupying first floors of buildings, hidden behind façades that claimed a different function, they were easy to miss. Alongside the interviews I took photos but this was not always possible. The images are therefore sparse but are added to with my own observations and notes. Using this information, I later drew maps that tried to show both the spatial configuration of the kahve and also their organisational structure. I paid particular attention to the networks within which these spaces operated, the ways in which they maintained connections to Turkey and how they involved themselves (if at all) in regional politics. The maps reveal that while the networks cross long distances and have an air of ephemerality about them, they are actually embedded in very particular physical locations, in certain objects, and in certain practices. The combination of these highly material and located practices with the deterritorialised condition of migration constituted the kahve as place. The networks were grouped in order to answer the question: How is the ‘state of affairs’ of the kahve sustained?14 There were a number of different types of networks and in the maps these were colour-coded according to their function. The first type of network, technology, was perhaps the most obvious. In the diaspora technology is used to maintain connections and relations across large distances and in the specific case of the kahve this technology took the form of satellite dishes and mobile phones that were able to transmit images, messages and voices from another place. The majority of the kahve had satellite television, especially through the provider ‘DigiTurk’, which was popular with younger audiences as it screened football matches and music videos. But this technology was also

Diasporic Urbanism  23 made immediately material for me through the observation that most of the satellite dishes were not bought in the UK but in Turkey. This meant cheaper rental as they were charged at the Turkish tariff, and crucially for many I spoke to, they received advertisements from Turkey rather than from Germany. ‘It is much better and makes you feel as if you are still at home and the Turkish accent is right too’.15 This alerted me to another type of network that dealt with tactics of appropriation and subversion. The purchase of the satellite dish subverted certain laws while the status of the kahve as member’s only clubs meant that they could operate under different regulations to a standard café. Appropriation of space also seemed common with a slow encroachment onto the pavement or into adjoining shops, where clandestine activity such as gambling or the provision of a hostel of sorts could take place. There were also other more subtle networks at work, such as social networks that were the main source of custom for the kahve, or relational networks that were maintained primarily through rituals and gestures. These could be seen in the use of the samovar for tea, a certain way of pouring it, the playing of particular card games, the relation of the games to the drinking of tea etc. The enactment of these gestures connects the kahve to another place, and their mapping needed to keep some of their performative quality that actively created these links. Through observation and encounters I came to know well these bodily movements and they informed the maps that I have produced. Finally, there were political networks of solidarity and conflict that played a great part in determining who could be a customer and who could not. Some kahve were more overtly political than others but they all seemed to be involved in the politics of the region in one way or another. Some places were exclusively Kurdish others were for Turks only, while one was self-consciously apolitical, its owner having banned such talk from his premises (Figure 1.2). The mapping technique reveals the importance of the way space is organised and its influence on the workings of trans-local networks. Certain spatial interfaces were important in the functioning of the kahve, for example, the threshold and the manipulation of the layers of screening on the shop, as well as the small strip of pavement in front of the kahve, which often acted as a place to meet, chat and observe. In the case of one kahve, the shopfront was used to display posters for a discussion they were hosting regarding the worker’s struggle at the Tuzla shipyard in Istanbul, making it one node in a network that stretched from the Victorian pavement of London to the industrial edges of Turkey. Through mapping the kahve as networks the multiplicity of its space is revealed, as well as the specific ways in which diasporic inhabitations transform a nondescript physical space into a kind of surrogate home where the reality of unbelonging is masked, if only temporarily, through processes of reterritorialisation. These spaces, hidden from the view of the other users of the high street are hubs of diasporic agency, places where the unsettlement of the contemporary condition of

24  Nishat Awan

Figure 1.2 The kahve as a space made of translocal networks.

migration can be mitigated somewhat, for example by providing informal lodging for those on the move. The representations of the kahve space attempt to foreground these conditions. Bes¸iktas was one of the ‘sports club’ type kahve I visited. It was a small place on the high street in a typical shop unit that was fairly run-down but serviceable. The owner, a Turkish-Cypriot, told me that it used to be a branch of the Wimpys franchise in the 1970s, then an independent burger bar and finally he decided to open a kahve on the same premises. His reason for choosing to open the kahve was that it had the advantage of being easy to manage. Although it was named after an Istanbul football team that the owner supported, the customers were mostly older Turkish-Cypriots who were first generation migrants. Different levels of privacy operated within the kahve space, from the public nature of the chairs that were placed on the pavement to the area behind the bar and the outdoor space at the back that were completely private. The adjacent shop unit was owned by the same person and since he had not been

Diasporic Urbanism  25 able to let it for a while, the kahve was allowed to spill into this space from time-to-time. I was not allowed inside this part and the roller shutter of that shop unit was rarely opened except on a few warm, sunny days. Beşiktas carried out the normal social functions associated with kahve but there was a sense that it was an overtly political place where the kahve talk revolved more around politics than sports.16 This may well have been due to the owner’s own support of worker’s rights, which he promoted through advertising and sometimes helping to arrange meetings and talks related to labour movements.17

1.2 A Diasporic Home Beyond questions of nostalgia, certain spaces, rituals and ways of inhabiting are essential to the diasporic experience since they enable the construction of a place that could function as a temporary home. Yet, the racialised and exoticised understanding of migrant neighbourhoods can mean that what were once comforting smells and familiar gestures also become part of another discussion around exoticised locales, assimilated bodies and introverted communities. The essential work of creating home occurs through translocal practices and I have explored a number of different instances related to the Turkish and Kurdish kahve: From bodily postures to affinity networks and the role of gossip and word-of-mouth. The phrase ‘kahve talk’ points to the dual nature of such spaces that through being embroiled in the regional politics of Turkey, produce their own exclusions. But these spaces that are so easily condemned for their introspection, also hold out a promise of another kind of space through their functioning within a value system alien to capitalist logic. Operating within sprawling networks of family and friendship they engage within a reciprocal economy based not just on monetary but symbolic value also. Considering the kahve in this way as social phenomenon and interior worlds required a type of practice that moved back and forth between the sharing of a place with someone who knew the kahve and could act as guide and interlocutor, and a mode of mapping that considered space as relational and the making of maps as the tracing of relations. This way of approaching the question of representation also has repercussions for the way the original question of living together is framed. The negotiation of a place together moves the discussion away from questions of inclusion, or around notions of public and private space, towards the sharing of a space that has the potential to lead to mutual exchange. Thinking with migration as unsettlement also means the acknowledgement of a different temporality, where not being able to settle down due to the circulations induced by the border regime produces a feeling of being stuck in a persistent present.18 The kahve in this case provide moments of respite where those who are attempting to find a settled life can connect with others in a similar position, discuss tactics or simply recount their

26  Nishat Awan experiences. The kahve as nodes within a diasporic urbanism are creating their own spatio-temporalities that resist the dominant gentrified urban experience. Some establishments have been in the same location for decades even if the business itself has passed from one person to another, while other places open and close quickly in order to take advantage of the shortterm leases available in the interstices of mainstream urban development. In this sense, the kahve operate in contradiction to the privileged rhythms and temporal experiences of dominant bourgeois life, but they are fragile spaces constructed through bodily gestures and a networked logic that reveals the crucial role of performativity within the construction of a diasporic urbanism. In the current political climate, where refugeehood and movement from the Global South has been so heavily restricted, it seems imperative to remind ourselves in the North of how migrant communities have always lived, flourished and contributed in myriad ways to life in the now fortified spaces of the Global North. The strict line being drawn between North and South is continually contested and blurred in the types of practices I have described above, and the call for a diasporic urbanism that begins with an understanding of migration as circulation is related to the importance of this work that thinks the North and South together through the experiences of those whose lives have necessarily straddled, and have been made to struggle, across this artificial yet highly entrenched division.

Notes 1 Doug Saunders, Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World, Reprint edition (New York: Vintage, 2012). 2 Alison Mountz, The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago (Minneapolis: Univ Of Minnesota Press, 2020). 3 Irit Rogoff, Terra Infirma: Geographies Visual Culture (London: Routledge, 2000); Rosalind C. Morris, “Dislocation and Unsettlement: Migrancy in the New Millennium,” Committee on Global Thought (New York: Columbia University, 2015). 4 Suzanne M Hall, “Migrant Urbanisms: Ordinary Cities and Everyday Resistance,” Sociology 49, no. 5 (October 1, 2015): 853–69, https://doi. org/10.1177/0038038515586680; Nishat Awan, Diasporic Agencies: Mapping the City Otherwise (Routledge, 2016); Ishan Ashutosh, “The Spaces of Diaspora’s Revitalization: Transregions, Infrastructure and Urbanism,” Progress in Human Geography 44, no. 5 (October 1, 2020): 898–918, https://doi. org/10.1177/0309132519868765. 5 Ayona Datta and Katherine Brickell, Translocal Geographies: Spaces, Places, Connections (Routledge, 2016); Arjun Appadurai, “Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy,” Theory, Culture & Society 7, no. 2 (January 6, 1990): 295–310, https://doi.org/10.1177/026327690007002017. 6 Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalisation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996), 179. 7 Appadurai, 180, 181.

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28  Nishat Awan Law, John, and John Hassard. Actor-Network Theory and After. Oxford: Blackwell, 1999. Miéville, China. The City and the City. London: Pan, 2011. Mooshammer, Helge, and Peter Mörtenböck. Networked Cultures: Parallel Architectures and the Politics of Space. Rotterdam: NAi Publishers, 2008. Morris, Rosalind C. “Dislocation and Unsettlement: Migrancy in the New Millennium.” Committee on Global Thought. New York: Columbia University, 2015. Mountz, Alison. The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago. Minneapolis: Univ of Minnesota Press, 2020. Rogoff, Irit. Terra Infirma: Geographies Visual Culture. London: Routledge, 2000. ———. “Gossip as Testimony: A Postmodern Signature.” In Amelia Jones (ed.), The Feminism and Visual Culture Reader, pp. 268–276. London: Routledge, 2003. Saunders, Doug. Arrival City: How the Largest Migration in History Is Reshaping Our World. Reprint edition. New York: Vintage, 2012.

2 Temporary Sheltering, Empowering Design, and the Jungle A Case for Architects Text by Mark E. Breeze and Photography by Henk Wildschut

The 2011 Humanitarian Emergency Response Review stated that ‘­providing shelter is one of the most intractable problems in international humanitarian response’ (Ashdown 2011, 25). Today, with more people than ever displaced – the majority from and within the Global South – the challenge of defining and providing effective shelter is as great as it has ever been (UNHCR n.d.). Humanitarian sheltering responses usually involve the complex and shifting negotiation of top-down and bottom-up needs and constraints to try to meet universal human needs. However, those human needs have specific cultural manifestations which are hard to accommodate within a highly structured universalizing system delivered with urgency. In this short chapter I will argue that, despite these many variables and challenges, humanitarian sheltering can be more enabling through a different approach: integrating architectural thinking and skills to enable sheltering responses to be reflexively adaptable to specific cultural sheltering needs of the migrant. The challenges of providing shelter remain significant: with limited and often unpredictable financial and physical resources, and usually with a range of significant logistical and political challenges, humanitarian shelter responses need to provide protection from the elements and ideally provide for a wide range of cultural, health, sanitation, safety, and social needs, for an often unspecified (although usually politically limited) amount of time, urgently, and as equitably as possible; and this is not even mentioning how the shelter response is both executed and integrated with other responses. Little has seemingly changed in the formal top-down institutional shelter responses, with arguably the most significant formal international changes in provision being two incremental shifts: a slightly improved UNHCR self-standing family tent (material modifications to enable better thermal comfort, privacy, and fire retardancy with a lighter weight material); and the roll-out of the Ikea Foundation ‘Better Shelter’ Refugee Housing Unit to provide a ‘self-build’, ‘flat pack’ solution. Of course shelter responses vary significantly, ranging from these more ‘universal’ solutions, to locally

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-4

29

30  Text by Mark E. Breeze and Photography by Henk Wildschut coordinated NGO responses, squatted buildings, and more improvised and self-built local responses, for example; many of those affected stay with friends and family too; indeed the great majority of the displaced find shelter outside of traditional ‘camps’. The needs of those requiring sheltering similarly vary significantly, given the nature and temporality of their displacement, as well as the climatic, geographical, political, economic, cultural, and social contexts. To begin to explore how empowering design in the sheltering process can create better shelter, I will focus on the unusual – but I argue very revealing – example of the ‘Campe du Lande’ in Calais, northern France (more commonly known as ‘the Calais Jungle’ – hereafter referred to as ‘the Jungle’), drawing on both secondary sources and my own site visits in 2015 and 2016. As an informal settlement for many displaced from the Global South, I will argue that the informally and later formally constructed shelters there elucidate some of the key shelter challenges and opportunities for creating culturally relevant sheltering. As such this case-study of sorts, opens-up different ways of thinking how humanitarian sheltering can be relevant and enabling within numerous and complex constraints. With this understanding I will then discuss strategies that could enable those aims to be realistically met, and hence more empowering sheltering to be provided. By reconsidering the nature of humanitarian shelter solutions, I will argue for a more design-supported approach that integrates licensed architects into the humanitarian team, so the sheltering response strategically empowers those being sheltered and creates more holistic solutions.

2.1  A Jungle of Mental and Physical Sheltering The ‘Campe du Lande’ in Calais is a useful case study for understanding the contrast of informal, improvised shelter versus formal, institutional shelter. Growing rapidly between early 2015 and October 2016, an estimated 7,000 to 9,000 migrants found shelter there at its peak just before it was forcibly cleared.1 Located adjacent to the main highway to the Channel Tunnel, the growing settlement was a well-positioned staging point for attempts to cross to the UK, and formed part of a long history of migrant encampments around the Port of Calais, from the French Red Cross Sangatte Camp (1999–2002) to informal ‘jungle’ encampments in the woods nearby (See Hagan 2020); the Pashto word ‘dzjangal’ – meaning ‘forest’ or ‘wood’ – is believed to the origin for the term ‘jungle’ (Hicks and Mallet 2019, 2). The UK government funded high security fences along the edge of the N216 highway adjoining the Jungle to prevent direct access, but the encampment continued to grow given its advantageous location around 500  m from the Channel Tunnel entrance. The site itself is a toxic former industrial waste area neighbouring dunes (‘Lande’ meaning ‘moor’ or ‘heath’); furthermore it has poor drainage, so the sticky mud is regularly water-logged throughout the autumn, winter, and spring months. Both Médicins Sans Frontières and Médicins du Monde detailed the chronically inadequate and unhealthy conditions on

Temporary Sheltering, Empowering Design, ‘The Jungle’  31 the site – from a lack of toilets, safe drinking water, healthcare, and food (MSF 2015). Conditions were so bad, and the context so politicized, that some organizations withdrew from operating in the informal settlement. Nevertheless many NGOs and volunteers provided a wide variety of forms of material and cultural support in the Jungle, boosted by the publicity that the camp received from viral social media posts and visits by prominent pop-culture figures. Using the labour and resources of volunteers and some NGOs, the migrants created a range of informal amenities, restaurants, shops, and places of worship ­throughout the camp (See Wainwright 2016). The informal shelters and structures that migrants constructed are particularly interesting and relevant for this chapter. Although many sheltered in camping tents, variously patched and modified, some extremely culturally specific shelters developed: for example, many Darfurians built small ‘compounds’ using salvaged materials, creating outdoor and indoor spaces that mimicked original domestic forms, providing sequences of internal spaces for specific activities, and more controlled semi-private outdoor space for socializing, play, and rest. Similarly, some Afghanis constructed small live-work shop structures, mimicking original cultural forms, and enabling them to have slightly better shelter than a tent while also making a small living from that same space: built of wood with tarpaulin for waterproofing, it was sturdier against the elements, better insulated, more private, more secure, and with a raised hard floor it was more comfortable, and much less prone to flooding. In creating these improvised, culturally specific forms, those migrants created familiar spaces that worked better than a tent for their needs. These structures provided more than just temporary shelter from the elements – they were culturally and socially specific structures of meaning for the migrants: a temporary but physical domestic memory, providing mental and physical comfort. As interview after interview revealed from my time in the Jungle in 2016, for the migrants it was about creating space that felt comfortable – not material comfort – but subjective, cultural, social comfort through a space (or spaces) that had familiarity, meaning, and relevance to them as social-cultural beings with histories, traditions, and ways of living. This intangible experience provided mental shelter from their otherwise extremely precarious mental and physical situations. However improvised and not fully resolved, this small but significant level of control over their own sheltering gave them something invaluable: momentary physical protection from the elements and a measure of mental safety and comfort (Figures 2.1 and 2.2). Together with the support of volunteers and some organizations, migrants also constructed improvised and inventive spaces for worship, restaurants, and shops, as mentioned above (See Wainwright 2016). These provided the beginnings of a community of spaces and functions for social, cultural, economic, and political life to grow and thrive. As precarious as they were – the church burnt down and was rebuilt several times, for example – they also symbolized an increasingly less temporary settlement, a sense of a collective (rather than a mass of individuals), where individual experiences could be

32  Text by Mark E. Breeze and Photography by Henk Wildschut

Figure 2.1  The Calais Jungle.

Figure 2.2  The Calais Jungle.

Temporary Sheltering, Empowering Design, ‘The Jungle’  33 shared, communal traditions (re)enacted, and mutual support given. Of course there were darker sides to this growing settlement too, including issues of personal safety, crime, and complex power structures within and between some of the different national communities, issues potentially exacerbated by the varying transience of its inhabitants. Similarly, the informal wiring of electricity into parts of the camp, created other safety concerns. All of these issues – from the growing size of this informal settlement, its greater sense of permanence, and all the socio-­cultural complexities – created increasing challenges for the local authorities and neighbouring resident communities. Furthermore, as the settlement grew, so did the human impacts, from sanitation (or rather raw sewage), to increasingly muddy and near-impassable ‘main streets’, to broader personal and public health concerns given these conditions, for example (Figures 2.3 and 2.4). It is easy to idealize all of these shelters and structures. However, they were very much informally improvised versions of culturally and geographically specific forms, built for a short temporary lifespan. There was no formal, professional guidance, and the structures were usually enabled by the generally unskilled labour of – and the materials sourced by – migrants, often with the help of local and international volunteers and NGOs. The structures were not built to any notional standard or code, either internally or in relation to each

Figure 2.3  The Eritrean community Church, Ville de Calais.

34  Text by Mark E. Breeze and Photography by Henk Wildschut

Figure 2.4 A shelter set alight inside the migrant and refugee camp in The Calais Jungle.

other in terms of an ‘urban’ plan. As such they were not necessarily safe most especially in terms of their structure, and the mitigation of fire risks – either internally (in terms of flammability and the improvised use of electricity), or externally in relation to their contextual layout (e.g. ensuring adequate spacing between shelters to create fire breaks). The devastating, deadly, and rapidly spreading fires in the camp in 2016 made clear the very real dangers of this approach. And as highlighted above, the increasing number of informal constructions started to create an increasing set of ‘urban’ issues of human public safety, community, and health. As unique constructions, many of these shelters had not inconsiderable financial value. Often tents would simply be deserted as migrants left to continue their journey. But these improvised structures were often bought, passed on, and sold between migrants – sometimes at thousands of euros – thereby creating a store of value. However, this also created considerable debt for many migrants too, as my interviews revealed, thereby further exacerbating the already precarious, stressful, and dangerous situations many migrants faced: one Afghani migrant spoke of paying 5,000 euros for his small oneroom shop (in which he also slept with a friend), hoping to gain it back by selling it on ultimately – a not inconsiderably risky proposition, especially given the illegal nature of the camp and other risks, such as fire, for example. For all their mental and physical benefits, the improvised nature of the shelters created many mental and physical health challenges (Figure 2.5).

Temporary Sheltering, Empowering Design, ‘The Jungle’  35

Figure 2.5  Ville de Calais, Sequence Road, 9 Nov 2015.

2.2  A Container Camp In January 2016 the French government completed construction of 125 white shipping containers in the northeastern part of the camp, all encircled by metal fencing. The irony of housing migrants in shipping containers for the transport of goods across borders was hard to ignore (See Baumann 2020). Designed to temporarily accommodate 1,500 migrants in slightly more sanitary and safer conditions, the containers were equipped with bunk beds, heaters, and windows. Families and the vulnerable were given priority access. In providing beds, heaters, and windows in a solid construction, the containers generally provided more basic physical comfort than the improvised shelters. The controlled nature of access to the container camp also made them notionally safer. These were intended as basic, temporary shelters from the elements, and in some senses they objectively provided that. However, as my interviews revealed, these qualities of the container camp did not necessarily make migrants feel safer. First, the container spaces were shared and allocated, so individual migrants especially often ended up sharing spaces with others who were not known to them. Furthermore, the container camp did not have sanitation or water facilities within the enforced compound; the existing basic facilities at the north of the camp provided those. Similarly there were no communal spaces. And as metal constructions the containers were hot in summer, and noisy in the rain (Figures 2.6 and 2.7).

36  Text by Mark E. Breeze and Photography by Henk Wildschut

Figure 2.6  Housing Containers, The Calais Jungle.

Figure 2.7 Fence topped with barbed wire near the makeshift camp, The Calais Jungle.

Temporary Sheltering, Empowering Design, ‘The Jungle’  37 Ultimately this container camp was a state-provided and state-controlled securitized space, so issues of control were significant: it had permanent guards, and entry and exit was through a controlled access point. My interviews on the ground revealed there was scepticism about the container camp and its true intentions. Access was gained by a basic handprint identification system, which raised concerns among many migrants that this monitoring was for more than just controlling access to the ­containers  – something adamantly denied by the authorities – creating concerns among the migrants that they could lose their anonymity and potentially their freedom, especially if their status was not clear or changed; although some in the camp were awaiting decisions on their asylum claim from the French authorities, many were also without any legal status in the country at all. Beyond this human monitoring, the camp was so rationalized and controlled in its spatial design, that there was no place or space for individual expression or communal activities. Indeed some of the most revealing responses from my interviews were that many people in the container camp kept their informal shelter too as the space for day-time living, as that was their personal space which they could make culturally relevant for themselves, and, in so doing, often gave them a sense of a social ­community, and a sense of dignity, importantly (Figure 2.8).

Figure 2.8  Housing Containers, The Calais Jungle.

38  Text by Mark E. Breeze and Photography by Henk Wildschut By nearly all objective measurements the informal shelters were physically ‘worse’ than the containers, in terms of structural safety, fire safety, protection from the elements, and material comfort, for example. But those being sheltered could personalize and control to some degree the informal shelter spaces, making momentary culturally relevant places for themselves; they had some level of choice over whom they sheltered with or around; these informal shelter spaces had intangible value in providing a semblance of their own control, along with elements of relevance to their mental existence and well-being; they enabled community and mental support to be built. The informal shelters stood in stark contrast to the highly controlled, observed, securitized, rational shelter spaces provided by the state. The informal shelters enabled some level of human social and cultural expression to create subjectively meaningful spaces – however momentary – that could provide for their social and cultural needs: a degree of mental respite and sensations of control and self-respect, enabling individuals to connect, remember, and engage as social and cultural beings of value. Human sheltering has to cater to human needs, however temporary they may be; these needs are culturally nuanced. The understandable challenge is how to account for and cater to such needs when they are less tangible and so culturally varied (especially given the variety of people potentially being accommodated), time is short, budgets are tight, and the practical challenges abound.

2.3  The Many Challenges of Sheltering Although the situation in the Jungle has inevitable social, cultural, political, and economic specificity, it highlights the broader key issue that humanitarian sheltering needs to do more than just shelter from the elements. How can a balance be found between providing physically safe temporary humanitarian shelter, and empowering those being sheltered as humans with their own cultural requirements and norms, seeking dignity, mental well-being, and social community, however temporary their sheltering might be? How can these social, political, economic, logistical, and cultural challenges be reconciled? There are clearly numerous challenges to shelter responses, the complexity of which is easily exacerbated if a considerable informal settlement is already in place, as at the Jungle. NGOs often have extremely limited time to plan, liaise between (and with) all relevant parties and authorities, source necessary materials, and then ensure it is realized on the ground as quickly and reliably as possible. And as InterAction’s 2020 study ‘More Than Just Four Walls and a Roof: The Wider Impacts of Humanitarian Shelter and Settlements Existence’ elucidates, the shelter response of any humanitarian aid intervention can have impacts across many areas such as health, livelihoods, society, environment, education, food security, and WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene), which are, within the traditional humanitarian structures, separately resourced and managed, making coordination of all these elements between agencies to create effective sheltering especially difficult (Hilmi 2020).

Temporary Sheltering, Empowering Design, ‘The Jungle’  39 The realities on the ground add further complexity. Indeed the exact conditions on the ground and the available physical and human resources are often unknown or not reliably known in enough detail to make specific and significant sourcing and response decisions early enough. Furthermore access to the site can be physically and/or logistically difficult. Budgets are tight, short-term, and often unpredictable. The expected lifetime of the project is often uncertain, and often quite different to the actual project lifetime. The site is often dictated rather than chosen, and layered with its own political, physical, and geographical challenges and requirements. The social, cultural, political, mental, and physical needs of those needing rapid sheltering are not fully known and can change rapidly. The standards that the shelters have to meet for safety are not internationally regulated or agreed upon, and even attaining local standards (if they exist) can be extremely challenging given practical constraints of time, materials, labour, and sourcing capabilities. And the environmental impact of all these decisions barely even registers. Added to these on-the-ground challenges and uncertainties are the often politically charged issues of who is funding, managing, executing, and overseeing the response: the donor(s) might impose certain restrictions, specify certain terms, or certain forms of shelter response. Layered into these challenges are those of necessary inter-agency and local governmental coordination. And all the while the broader political, social, cultural, and economic contexts of the response itself have to be balanced. There are many forms of institutional temporary shelter response, dependent on the specific contexts and priorities that come out of the above inputs. Understandably, given the complexity of these challenges, the shelter response can easily become essentially a technical challenge of prioritizing and coordinating competing interests as best as possible to meet the Sphere standard of 3.5  m 2 interior space per person (or 4.5  m 2 for UNHCR recommendations), comparing and balancing the often incomparable. While the immediacy of the ‘universal’ solutions – most notably the UNHCR Family Tent, and the Ikea Foundation-sponsored ‘Better Shelter’ Refugee Housing Unit – can be life-saving, their lack of contextual specificity and inevitable compromises can be problematic for those being sheltered, as Breeze (2020) and Scott-Smith (2019) have elucidated: in trying to work everywhere for everyone, a ’universal’ solution doesn’t work well anywhere for anyone. More explicitly contextual solutions aren’t necessarily a simple achievement either, as CARE post-evaluation reports on their shelter programmes in India showed for example (Newby 2016): the cultural assumptions resulted in problematic solutions that had other proliferating negative social, health, gender, cultural and economic effects, as well as wasting not inconsiderable financial and material resources. Furthermore, more abstract but nevertheless vital specific human needs for the physical and mental well-being of those being sheltered are easy to de-prioritise given how their less tangible nature means they don’t fit in such a technically measured approach: notions of privacy and security; temperature, humidity, and air

40  Text by Mark E. Breeze and Photography by Henk Wildschut quality being within accepted human comfort standards; some degree of control of sound (for rest and sleep), light (be it natural or artificial, for rest or study), to the very use of the space (from sitting, to lying down, to sharing it with others for basic social well-being), for example. In the urgency of just providing shelter from the elements it is easy to see how such concerns can seem a luxury for which there is not time, money, or resources to consider in the early stages of a sheltering response. But these are fundamental human concerns vital for any sheltering solution, and most especially those being sheltered in extremely challenging and often desperate personal situations.

2.4  Designing for Humans In all these very different situations, design is involved: humans, somewhere, at some point, have made a series of decisions about what is possible with given resources, what is needed (in as generalized or specific a way as possible), and then how that will be provided by a set of specified materials coming together in a certain way to create and define space, and provide protection from the elements (and hopefully more than just that) in that particular context. Within this sequence of decisions lies a series of subjective assumptions, preconceptions, and understandings of what is possible and what a shelter can do, needs to do, and how; what is enough (and too much); the (assumed) needs of the person/people it is sheltering; what materials are ‘appropriate’; what are priorities (as opposed to ‘luxuries’); and all within a series of existing systems of shelter delivery, and pragmatic limitations around costings, logistics, available resources, lead-times, weight, and other deployment practicalities. For the time being at least, these ­decisions – as much as there are realistic options to be chosen between in the relevant social, political, economic, and cultural context – are all human decisions. Understandably most of these key decisions are most usually made by established humanitarian shelter practitioners, dependent on the exact shelter situation and emergency context. Established humanitarian shelter sector practice advocates the use of local materials and local labour as the situation allows. Catholic Relief Services (CRS) have shown how ‘cash for shelter’ programmes can offer a way of giving some level of meaningful control to shelter recipients to make such decisions in certain situations (See CRS 2015). They identify nine key conclusions from evaluating eight of their own such shelter programmes: cash-based assistance provides people with choice; local markets can benefit from cash-based shelter programmes; beneficiaries nearly always used cash grants as anticipated (when a tranche system of distribution was used); when accompanied by technical assistance, onsite monitoring, information, education, and communication, households can construct Sphere-compliant shelters that are safe, adequate, and durable; cash grants can be quicker to disburse than materials for construction; good assessment and monitoring of shelter materials markets helps to ensure continued market function without price fluctuations; markets for shelter goods and services must

Temporary Sheltering, Empowering Design, ‘The Jungle’  41 be nearby, safe and accessible; cash may not always be the best response option; community involvement is critical to success (Catholic Relief Services 2015, 57). It is a solution that requires thoughtful application with a thorough contextual understanding, and it is seemingly not appropriate in all situations, but it can enable more personally prioritized and relevant sheltering that meets Sphere standards, often at lower cost, more quickly, and with wider community benefits. As the CRS report states, ‘cash provides ­people with the dignity of choice, and is often ­significantly more cost-efficient than the delivery of in-kind aid’ (CRS 2015, 1). Furthermore, the effects of such an approach can be proliferating, enabling new skills to be developed, more effective sheltering so recovery can happen faster, and all the while ­supporting and building the local community. The choice of the word ‘dignity’ is crucial: it is a subjective human feeling that cannot be easily and comparably measured, or ‘given’. As discussed above, a more technically focussed check-list approach to shelter provision cannot easily quantify such personal and culturally specific sensations of ‘control’, ‘privacy’, ‘community’, and ‘comfort’, which are necessarily highly contextual to the individuals and their situation. Enabling and empowering individuals to have some control over their temporary sheltering situation to enable them to have relevant shelter for their specific needs – now and as they imagine their future – cannot be ignored if the shelter is to cater to their specific needs. Defining and translating these subjective needs and what ‘some’ control means, into built – and very importantly buildable – outcomes is not easy though. Structural advice alone is not enough. The information, education, and advice given needs to be strategic (necessarily involving compromises), based on resources available, practical (informed by construction knowledge and a basic understanding of engineering), and most importantly human-centred: it needs to cater to both tangible (more objective) needs such as control of natural light, fresh air, and protection from the elements; and less tangible (more subjective) human needs such as ‘privacy’, ‘dignity’, ‘security’, and ‘comfort’. Thinking about – and strategically integrating – these issues into a coherent spatial design are the professional skills of someone trained and experienced over many years in working holistically on shelter in all its forms, finding integrated solutions through strategic compromises, to empower and enable those being sheltered: these are the skills of a professional architect. An architect is trained and experienced in designing space at a human scale to work as efficiently and effectively as possible for the needs of its users. She integrates an understanding of material behaviours and qualities, methods of construction, general climatic and geographic conditions of the context, and the economic, material, and labour resources available for each project, to design spatial solutions using an appropriate set of materials and suitable mode of construction for the planned lifetime of the project. Drawing on a wealth of historical and theoretical understanding of human architectural precedents, and with an understanding of common standards, she is experienced in creatively finding spatial solutions that are scaled to – and designed to provide for – human needs: from the three dimensional physical environment thinking

42  Text by Mark E. Breeze and Photography by Henk Wildschut from the floor to the ceiling and everything in-between, the access to natural light and ventilation, to the comfort of living in accepted temperature and humidity norms, with thought given to the acoustic experience in the space. An architect has experience in thinking and designing for different levels of privacy and publicness of spaces (visually, acoustically, and physically), to encourage community, and create a sense of individual security. This broad expertise in bringing together both the tangible and less tangible elements of effective human shelter can play a key role in humanitarian sheltering, be it temporary, short term, transitional, or more permanent. This is neither an argument for architects from afar to be imposed on humanitarian sheltering processes, nor to use a traditional architectural process. Rather, this is an argument that architects – as spatial design specialists with a plethora of knowledge and experience working within tight budgetary and resource constraints to create an integrated and efficient spatial solution – should be a key part of the existing humanitarian team throughout the entire sheltering process. This is an argument for weaving these professional shelter specialists into the entire humanitarian process to help enable more human, more contextually appropriate, more c­osteffective, healthier, and more safe and empowering temporary sheltering: a new consultative role for such architectural professionals who are as local as possible needs to be embedded in sheltering responses. It won’t be perfect by any means. The collaborative approach will not – indeed cannot give its very different structures, temporalities, and ‘client’ ­relationships  – resemble a traditional architectural approach. It is key that as much local architectural knowledge and expertise is harnessed as possible, only bringing in more regional architectural expertise when all local options are exhausted; similarly this is an important opportunity to build up local architectural expertise and skills as part of the process. With years of expertise in creating effective spaces for people, these (ideally local) architects can tactically and rapidly work in new ways with the iNGO shelter practitioners and those needing temporary shelter, finding meaningful ways of rapid collaboration through either on-the-ground assistance, digitally remote guidance, or a hybrid approach, as needs and resources enable. New forms of collaboration and humanitarian team coordination, assisted by technology, should create more effective processes and meaningful outcomes that work for the sheltered within the constraints of the response. The benefits of such close and targeted collaboration will be numerous. Beyond more temporally specific, relevant, and human sheltering, through their holistic thinking and understanding of both the micro and macro design issues, the architect can ensure that environmental issues are taken into account as much as possible – from the resources used, and the construction approach, to optimizing for broader positive environmental effects (e.g. effective temporary drainage and sewerage). Indeed they can ensure the structures are temporary in a meaningful way: reusable and/or easy to dismantle, so resources are not wasted, but local political, social, economic, and cultural concerns are also addressed; issues of ‘looking’ or

Temporary Sheltering, Empowering Design, ‘The Jungle’  43 ‘feeling’ permanent are often key concerns for many humanitarian sheltering interventions. Given the costs and logistics of importing materials and tools, and the potentially negative environmental impacts of these interventions post-crisis, an efficient and thoughtful use of equipment and materials is vital, both during and after the intervention, in the short and long term for political, economic and environmental reasons. Of great importance for the sheltering process is the contribution to the local economy more widely. As in other humanitarian interventions, through careful contextual understanding and logistical planning, the intervening humanitarian organization can ensure that the intervention itself doesn’t create proliferating negative effects such as price rises and goods shortages for existing residents, through the surge in demand for certain materials, labour, etc. Through rapid assessment of local skills and labour, this more integrated sheltering solution can harness, support, and build local labour skills and knowledge, providing employment and income to communities that will have longer term proliferating benefits too, within this balance. Layering in this architectural expertise should decrease costs ultimately, enabling more effective temporary sheltering to be provided for more people. Through the holistic thinking and direct, consultative design approaches of an architect, sheltering responses will be deeply informed by those trained and highly experienced in designing and realizing effective human sheltering that engages with human physical and mental needs to improve and enable human well-being. Thoughtful and effective design, resourcing, construction, and coordination should make for more rapid, effective, and less wasteful sheltering responses that improve physical and mental health outcomes, and bring not only shorter term financial cost-savings (that can provide more sheltering improvements and/or be reinvested in local communities, for example), but also longer term contextual benefits in terms of building local and migrant skills and knowledge, and improving existing infrastructures to mention but two possible key benefits. Such sheltering outcomes will enable better health outcomes and a quicker recovery for the displaced, again leading to proliferating cost savings for all involved, enabling more people to be sheltered for the same budget, and, most importantly, an improved quality of life – and physical and mental well-being – for the sheltered.

2.5  Architecting the Jungle We began this chapter by discussing the inventiveness and resourcefulness of many of the migrants in the Jungle in Calais in creating shelters that responded better to their physical, social, economic, and cultural needs to varying extents, however temporary. We also highlighted that these informal shelter solutions were not without their problems and challenges, especially in terms of structural integrity and fire safety, which had significant implications for the personal safety and well-being of the sheltered, but also for those that lived around them. As much as these hybrid custom shelters were better than a tent for the individuals using them – in terms of being

44  Text by Mark E. Breeze and Photography by Henk Wildschut more stable, secure, and relevant to their individual needs at that moment in time – they were still lacking many key elements of a physically safe shelter, that is climate-appropriate, responsive to (or even integrated with) a wider context of facilities (such as sanitation, food), and with a consideration for its lifespan and its ease of reuse and disassembly. No temporary shelter can do everything for everyone; and the majority of the settlement of the Jungle was informal – essentially illegal – and so there was no real planning for growth, safety, temporality, or change/ adaptability. Moreover, the basic facilities provided by NGOs within a nearby building, could not scale limitlessly. So how could the integrated involvement of professional architects as part of the humanitarian response positively transform these sheltering situations? There are many different ways that the input of professional architects, as part of a humanitarian response, could have improved this situation while acknowledging the implicitly temporary nature of this informal settlement on this toxic site. The architectural response should be fluid and open to taking many different forms at different stages of the sheltering process, as each situation and its particular challenges, resources, and changing nature allows. In terms of the individual built constructions in the Jungle, the intervention could have been highly targeted to help improve the structural integrity, ensure better safety, create more climate-relevant internal sheltering conditions from the damp cold, warm summers, and reduce fire risk. For example, a very minimal assistive role, providing specific construction and material use guidance, and working with the NGOs and/or migrants on site, could enable simple approaches to improve insulation from the cold coastal damp, make the structures more stable, and ensure better fire protection and use of flammable materials. This approach could occur before, during, and/ or after settlement, as the situation allows. At the same time this guidance can help these implicitly temporary structures work better for the migrants, not only in terms of their safety and well-being, but also as designed objects with a short life, so that resources are not wasted, and the value of the shelter is transferrable through its or its individual material re-use as a temporary structure. Furthermore, this basic knowledge-transfer can build the skills (and even community) of the migrants in this process. Through an understanding of the climatic, physical, social, economic, material, and political contexts of the site, the architect can rapidly create a series of guidelines appropriate to that individual response that strategically integrates the human sheltering needs and opportunities the site provides. This isn’t about creating a new type of shelter or even a shelter that claims to be ‘perfect’, but rather humancentric spatial design and construction guidelines that enable individuals, groups, and even local authorities to create more effective temporary human shelter that is relevant for the specific site conditions, resources available, and the unfolding situation. Beyond the individual constructions, the architect can also work collaboratively within the humanitarian response to provide vital assistance in ensuring the unplanned, informal, and ideally very temporary settlement can operate as safely and effectively as possible in every sense for everyone, in terms of layout as it evolves, the relations/ capacities of individual structures to facilities, and the effective life of the structures and site post

Temporary Sheltering, Empowering Design, ‘The Jungle’  45 settlement. This is not about creating a ‘camp’ or ‘urban’ plan, but rather informed, simple, site-specific, situation-specific, easily implementable micro guidelines, and recommendations for the placement and integration of new constructions within the informal settlement as it expands, as much as is practicable; such simple guidelines will minimize individual and group safety and health dangers for these specific site conditions. It will in no way be perfect, and the outcomes will no-doubt be variable dependent on individual and collective adherence to them, but such architecturally constructed guidance should enable a more informed settlement development, that is open to collaborative evolution by the migrants themselves: it is not about dictating forms or layouts, but rather sharing informed experience and knowledge to make the settlement safer, healthier, and more effective for everyone involved. As a professional who is politically neutral but also adept at successfully navigating complex situations and competing interests, the architect can be sensitive to the social, cultural, and political differences, forms and likely patterns of use, priorities of personal and physical safety, and issues that are likely to be challenging immediately and in the short and longer term. In this way, the architect can enable the settlement to evolve more safely and effectively, in a more responsive way to its constantly shifting needs, demands, and limits as a temporary intervention. The exact point of integrating an architect into the humanitarian response is not to create a dictated or repeatable outcome, but rather by drawing on her wealth of creative professional skills and experience, in tandem with the expertise of her humanitarian colleagues, she can help inform and shape a relevant and specific direction to each particular sheltering response: one that prioritizes and enables individual and collective human well-being in its broadest senses – from the social, the cultural, the economic, and the physical – as much as possible within the very tight and complex constraints of all temporary humanitarian responses, from available resources, the various contextual considerations, and logistical challenges, to name but a few. This is not a traditional architect-client relationship in any way, or indeed a traditional architectural process, as discussed above. But through her professional knowledge working at a variety of scales, strategically integrating conflicting inputs, working within tight budgets on tight timelines, with a fiduciary and professional responsibility of care, she can help enable safer, healthier, more relevant, appropriate, climatically suitable, environmentally responsible, holistic, and temporarily sensitive responses. Such an approach will improve health outcomes, build transferable skills and knowledge, create a safer and more effective sheltering process, enabling migrants to build new mobile social communities and long-term futures more quickly.

Note 1 Help Refugees (NGO) on-the-ground estimates, 2016. See H. Agerholm, “Refugee crisis: Fears of children vanishing from Calais Jungle as numbers at camp hit record high”, The Independent, July 21, 2016. Available online at: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugee-crisis-calais-­ jungle-child-refugee-numbers-migrants-syria-france-europe-a7148116.html (accessed 01 March 2021).

46  Text by Mark E. Breeze and Photography by Henk Wildschut

Bibliography Agerholm, H. “Refugee Crisis: Fears of Children Vanishing from Calais Jungle as Numbers at Camp Hit Record High.” The Independent. July 21, 2016. Accessed on March 01, 2021. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/­ refugee-crisis-calais-jungle-child-refugee-numbers-migrants-syria-franceeurope-a7148116.html. Ashdown, P. (ed.) Humanitarian Emergency Response Review. London: Department for International Development, 2011. Accessed on March 15, 2021. https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/+tf_/http://www.dfid.gov.uk/ emergency-repsonse-review. Baumann, H. “Moving, Containing, Displacing: The Shipping Container as Refugee Shelter.” In Structures of Protection? Rethinking Refugee Shelter, edited by T. Scott-Smith and M. Breeze, 15–30. New York: Berghahn Books, 2020. Breeze, M. “Towards Better Sheltering: Rethinking Humanitarian Sheltering.” In Structures of Protection? Rethinking Refugee Shelter, edited by T. Scott-Smith and M. Breeze, 287–300. New York: Berghahn Books, 2020. Catholic Relief Services. “Using Cash for Shelter: An Overview of CRS Programs.” 2015. Accessed on March 20, 2021. https://www.crs.org/our-work-overseas/ research-publications/using-cash-shelter. Hicks, D., & S. Mallet. Lande: The Calais ‘Jungle’ and Beyond. Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2019. Hagan, M. “The Contingent Camp: Struggling for Shelter in Calais, France.” In Structures of Protection? Rethinking Refugee Shelter, edited by T. Scott-Smith and M. Breeze, 111–121. New York: Berghahn Books, 2020. Hilmi, M. “More than Four Walls and a Roof: The Wider Impacts of Humanitarian Shelter and Settlements Existence.” Interaction (blog). 2020. Accessed on March 29, 2021. https://www.interaction.org/blog/more-than-four-walls-and-a-roof. Medicins Sans Frontières. “In Calais, Inhuman Treatment of Exiles.” 2015. Accessed on March 20, 2021. https://www.msf.org/migration-calais-inhumantreatment-exiles. Newby, T. “Post-Disaster Shelter in India: A Study of the Long-term Outcomes of Post-Disaster Shelter Projects.” 2016. Accessed on March 20, 2021. https:// insights.careinternational.org.uk/publications/post-disaster-shelter-in-india-astudy-of-the-long-term-outcomes-of-post-disaster-shelter-projects. Office of the United Nations Disaster Relief Co-ordinator. Shelter After Disaster: Guidelines for Assistance. New York: United Nations, 1982. Scott-Smith, T. “Beyond the Boxes: Refugee Shelter and the Humanitarian Politics of Life.” American Ethnologist 46, no. 4 (2019): 509–521. Accessed on 20 March 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/amet.12833. Sphere Association. The Sphere Handbook: Humanitarian Charter and Minimum Standards in Humanitarian Response. Fourth edition. Geneva, Switzerland, 2018. Accessed on March 12. 2021. www.spherestandards.org/handbook. UNHCR. “Refugee Data Finder”. UNHCR The UN Refugee Agency. Accessed on March 01. 2021. https://www.unhcr.org/refugee-statistics/. Wainwright, O. “We Built this City: How the Refugees of Calais Became the Camp’s Architects.” The Guardian, June 08, 2016. Accessed on March 18, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/jun/08/refugees-calaisjungle-camp-architecture-festival-barbican.

3

Wireless Borders Illegal Bodies and Connected Futures Luis Hernan

3.1 Introduction In the summer of 2019, Senator Ted Cruz became embroiled in a matter close to his heart: the Mexico/US border. Customers of wireless provider Verizon Network complained of ‘spotty cell service’ in early August. The issue, according to statements released by the service provider, was due to another wireless carrier, Altán Redes, operating in the same frequency band across the Mexican border.1 It soon became clear that the issue extended from San Diego into other border towns and, seizing the opportunity, Cruz wrote to Mike Pompeo, the US Secretary of State, and Ajit Pai, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission: a telecommunications carrier created by the Mexican government had decided to start operations with the full knowledge it would create interference on the US side. The impact goes beyond a patchy service to the average customer, Cruz is quick to explain, and constitutes a national security issue, affecting critical equipment at the University Medical Center at El Paso and the city’s fire and rescue services. 2 It is easy to be cynical about Senator Cruz’s motives to get involved in an otherwise technical matter. The dispute has the hallmark of an event that would be highly profitable in the runup to an electoral year: the bad hombres are at it, yet again. The issue, Cruz explains, is that the Mexican carrier has unilaterally decided to use the 700 MHz spectrum band following protocols that are incompatible with those of the United States. As if to reassert who is the more powerful party in this row with neighbours, Cruz signs off by stating: ‘There is no need for Altan (sic) to begin operations along the US-Mexican border before these significant interference issues can be resolved’. We often think of borders as articulated by physical infrastructure, especially the one between Mexico and the United States, which Donald Trump promised to rebuild as a strong, reinforced concrete wall to stop the bad people south of the border. But just as importantly, borders are often enabled and articulated by wireless technologies. I write this chapter interested in the way that wireless interacts with migration, and how the technology has recently been described as a

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-5

47

48  Luis Hernan more humane way of articulating the border. In my creative practice, I have explored techniques and tools to visualise—make visible—wireless technologies.3 Here I make visible the way wireless is spatialised at the border: the contexts in which it is ‘deployed’ and how decisions and practices around its use are informed by ideology and used to exploit, traumatise and oppress peoples. Theorising technology faces the challenge of overcoming a techno-centric, positivist discourse which assumes that all forms of technology are the result of scientific discovery and lead, invariably, to social progress. Wireless is especially interesting here. Understood widely— GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Cellular Networks, LoRa, Zigbee, RFID, Z-Wave, NFC—constitute the fabric of ‘smartness’. Promises of smart homes and smart cities are predicated on an invisible, unintrusive infrastructure that allows computational devices to connect and exchange information. Being as it is so central to our ideas of the future, wireless is often thought of as having no history. It is a neutral technology, one that is necessary and can only contribute to material and social progress.4 Wireless has a shared history with notions of the supernatural and the ghostly. I use this connection to extend the metaphor and speculate on the other ways in which the technology is ‘haunted’, and the way it conjures spectres of histories of violence. I explore how wireless, despite being a technology of the future, is inflected by long-standing issues of race, class and gender. My understanding of ghosts is influenced by the theorisation of the term by Jacques Derrida as a paradoxical figure that, despite being absent, it has the ability to influence and exert agency on the present and material world. I use spectral analogies to understand how the past and its racialised categories haunt our visions of a connected, better future. Before I begin, I must confess that the borderlands haunt me. I was born in Mexico City, more than 400 miles away from the border line. Growing up in the nineties, the border was central to our psychosocial, everyday life— not the precarity of those who attempted to cross, nor the contradictions or complexities of the borderlands, but rather the idea that the border was disappearing. The narrative that divides into first and third world and, more recently, global north and south, sustains itself through the notion of shifting, fluid borders. Politics, economics and diplomacy can make members of the global south overcome their penuries and join their brothers in the advanced, global north. Mexico has been a stellar example. When the North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) was signed, a consensus developed that Mexico was joining the first world, despite its deep roots and shared histories with Latin America.5 In parallel, a process of militarisation began at the border that NAFTA was meant to erase. In a powerful metaphor, some of the early sections of the border wall were secured with recycled landing mats used in the Vietnam War.6 Understanding the ghosts that haunt border technologies is crucial in the critical project of examining the mythologies of the ‘west’. The border that divides the global north and south is intractable, and the technologies used to reinforce them are haunted

Wireless Borders: Illegal Bodies and Connected Futures  49 by imperial projects of violence, despite claims that wireless constitutes a more humane way of articulating borders.

3.2 A Spectral Technology Wireless technologies have, historically, been linked to ghosts and spectres. The electromagnetic spectrum, a theoretical model that classifies radiation according to wavelength and photon energy, was first proposed by Sir Isaac Newton in his Experimentum Crucis.7 In a letter to the Philosophical Transactions, Newton coins the term ‘spectrum’ to describe the way that light splits after passing through an optical prism.8 The word comes from the Latin specere, ‘to look’, and shares etymology with spectrum and spectre, ghostly apparitions. Around the same, ‘spectral evidence’ was admitted in witch-hunt trials in England and the American colonies, involving a witness account of a witch seen spectrally, their spirit disembodied.9 The excess of meaning in ‘spectrum’ resonates in the development of wireless. Research on electromagnetic phenomena in the 19th century was animated by the notion of the ether, an invisible yet material force. It was this rarefied air that was thought to make electromagnetic fields possible, leading scientists such as Oliver Lodge to enquiry the connections between physical and psychic phenomena, believing ghosts and spectres were invisible yet material ‘vibrations’.10 Jeffrey Sconce reminds us that the development and popularisation of wireless telegraphy led to renewed interest in telepathy and spiritualism.11 Spectral analogies are useful in contextualising wireless technologies. Media theorist Adrian Mackenzie suggests that wirelessness involves a ‘conjunctive’ form of inhabiting places, allowing enhanced and multiple connections. The experience made possible by wireless technologies is ‘diffuse, multiple and unstable in outline’.12 Understanding wireless as a spectre is also useful in engaging with more political, urgent considerations, such as the way that the technology articulates conflicting discourses around the Mexico/US border.

3.3 A Lingering Memory At the height of the Chicano Rights movement of the 1960s, Aztlán became a symbol of emancipation. Mexicas, the original inhabitants of central Mexico also known as ‘Aztecs’, were fabled to have migrated from Aztlán to find a new homeland.13 The existence of an original place from where Mexican people originally migrated has long been debated. It is known, for example, that Mexicas recorded history in a way that would be considered imprecise to modern, Western standards: they used written records to define the main narrative stages, which were then used as template by history-tellers. In each telling, the story would be adapted to make sure everyone felt included. This approach meant skipping contentious passages,

50  Luis Hernan for example, the defeat of the local army or how a town had come to be subjugated by the Mexica Empire. The myth of Aztlán seems to have been fashioned in a similar way. The tribes that lived in Aztlán are said to come from Chicomoztoc, the place of ‘seven caves’, each representing the largest groups that lived under the rule of the Aztec empire. There is, however, some linguistic and material evidence to suggest that Nahuatls, as Mexica’s ancestors are known, had originally lived in different places of the current Southwestern United States.14 The myth of Aztlán was used by the Chicano movement to signal the historical interconnectedness of Mexican and North American communities. It was also used as a reminder of a more recent history when the United States annexed a good part of the Southwest following the Mexican-American War in the 19th century.15 The mythical place is at the core of the ‘Plan Espiritual de Aztlán’, the Spiritual Plan of Aztlán which became a rallying cry to assert the agency of the Mexican community in the United States: We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seed, water the fields, and father the crops and no to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent.16 The notion of Aztlán has been revived in recent years with antiimmigration groups linking it to a suspected attempt to invade and ‘reclaim’. Representatives of MEChA (Chicanx Movement of Aztlán), the organisation who released the original plan, insist the document should be contextualised in the radical movements of the late 1960s, but there are antiimmigration groups who take the plan literally, warning of a latent threat.17 The anxiety over this lingering memory, the ghost of a territory and its original inhabitants who might come back to reclaim it, has historically led to controversial decisions that impact the life of Latino and other minority communities such as, for example, the ban on teaching of Chicano culture in the public education system.18 There is no linguistic or etymological connection, but they are almost near homophones: Aztlán and Altán. Aztlán comes from the Náhuatl Aztatl, the name for heron in reference to the abundance of the bird species in the mythical place, but also as a symbol for the ‘place of whiteness’.19 It is not clear what the motivation was to name the consortium ‘Altán’, but it is easy to speculate that the similarity played a role in the decision of Senator Cruz to get involved in a highly technical dispute between two telecommunication companies over frequency sharing protocols. Despite having Cuban descent, Cruz is well known for his position against so-called illegal immigration. More recently Cruz made an official visit to the border and produced a documentary, in the style of wildlife, exposing a border that is ‘out of control’. Wearing a fisherman’s vest and a rolled up, unbuttoned

Wireless Borders: Illegal Bodies and Connected Futures  51

Figure 3.1 A map of the ‘Battlefield’. Senator Cruz describes the interference as an act of provocation from the Mexican government. Putting aside the questionable use of martial metaphors, the ‘facts’ on the ground call the assessment into question. An analysis of the first kilometres of the Tijuana-San Diego border reveals a significantly higher concentration of Verizon masts compared to those installed by Altán Redes. The waves surrounding each mast speculate on the dispersion of signal that strays across the wall.

52  Luis Hernan shirt, a grave Cruz speaks to camera to tell of the human traffickers on the other side of the Rio Grande ‘yelling and taunting Americans, taunting the border patrol’. 20 The controversy reveals the political imbalances in the relationship between Mexico and the United States. An analysis of the first 30km of the Tijuana/San Diego border, where the first cases of interference were reported, show over 30 masts operated by Verizon (Figure 3.1). By comparison, Altán Networks operates less than ten masts. The interference between Altán and Verizon is not unusual—the propagation of electromagnetic signals depends on a large number of factors, including the buildings, vegetation, landscape and atmospheric events, making it difficult to model their precise coverage and potential interference. Cross border interference is, in part, the subject of the 2014 World Press Photo winner ‘Signal’, by John Stanmeyer. The photograph shows a group of people gathered at the beach holding their mobile phones to a full moon sky. Stanmeyer explains the photograph was taken in a beach near Djibuoti city, where people attempt to catch mobile coverage from neighbouring Somalia, where connection rates are cheaper. 21 Reading through the letter of Senator Cruz, the interference is experienced as a haunting: fleeing, repetitive moments where home becomes unfamiliar, when ‘your bearings on the world lose direction’.22 Media coverage stressed the inconvenience for users who would rely on the network to communicate with their family and friends. Senator Cruz hammers the point by calling the situation a ‘threat of harmful interference’ and an ‘important issue to public safety and border security’, mobilising with this the imagery of a hostile state raiding the border. When describing the situation, Senator Cruz is quick to mention that the disruption has been generated by a ‘new, wholesale telecommunication carrier created by the Mexican government’. 23 Writer Colin Dickey suggests the United States is a haunted land. 24 Reflecting on the tradition of ghost stories, he argues that there is a primal anxiety in the American psyche over the ownership of the land. For the middle classes, it is anxiety over their ability to, ultimately, pay up their mortgage and truly own the land they live in. Beneath this there is a more fundamental haunting, that of the violence involved in conquering and claiming the land from its native inhabitants. As the Altán/Vodafone controversy shows, the use of wireless technology at the border seems to conjure up these ghosts once more, even over signals that stray momentarily over the wall.

3.4 Ghost Sickness If the idea of Aztlán, of a land taken by force, still haunts the borderlands, what sort of spectral figure emerges? Navajo people believe that the spirit, or chindi, enters the human body as a stiff breath at birth, and leaves it as a ghost at the time of death. Normally this transition is uneventful and the

Wireless Borders: Illegal Bodies and Connected Futures  53 chindi migrates to the underworld, where its personal identity degrades, making it difficult for it to come back and haunt its living relatives. In extraordinary circumstances, however, the chindi remains in the world and clings to the bones and worldly possessions of the deceased, becoming a malevolent force.25 The chindi is useful in imagining wireless, a spectral technology, as a device to exorcise the other ghosts of the borderlands. Research by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has revealed the use of Cellsite Simulators, also known as Stingrays, by Immigration Enforcement Agencies and, especially, by the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Stingrays can be described as ghostly.26 They imitate a cell phone mast signal to trick nearby phones into connecting to a ‘ghost’ station. Researchers at ACLU are uncertain about the capabilities of Stingray, but it is believed that they are able to pinpoint the location of connected phones. They can also access the list of recent calls and text messages, a feature which has been used by ICE to track migrants as they cross the border. 27 Stingrays are one of a panoply of wireless technologies used at the border to identify and apprehend migrants. The US Custom and Border Protection Agency has installed Rescue Beacons, also known as ‘Panic Poles’, in the Arizonian desert. They are around 10 m tall and configured to house radio equipment that allows would-be migrants to send a distress signal directly to the Border Agency. The pole also includes motion sensors and a strobing light which, along with a spinning reflective metal piece, makes it visible from afar. Placards display instructions, in English and Spanish, that explain the terms of communication: ‘If you need help, push the red button. US Border Patrol will arrive in one hour. Do not leave this location (…) You are in danger of dying if you do not summon for help’. 28 When the first poles were installed in the early 2000s, the Border Agency portrayed them as a rational response to the spiralling crisis of migrants dying in their attempt to cross the border. But as Tara Plath reminds us, poles constitute a ‘supplemental technology’ of s surveillance apparatus deployed in the wake of Operation Gatekeeper, launched in 1994 during the Clinton administration as part of a larger strategy of militarisation of the border.29 Plath suggests poles are tools of disappearance and obfuscation. While providing a technological solution to the problem of locating migrants, who might be in need of medical help, panic poles render their ‘illegality’ visible, while strategically reframing some as criminals or victims. This rhetorical function is particularly important in the media discourse at the time, which described the border as running out of control, and calling for solutions to secure the border. The poles are meant to make border crossings riskier, pushing routes away from urban environments and towards the harsher landscape of the desert. They offer the possibility of being rescued linked to the certainty of being apprehended—the expression of a ‘humanitarian’ state who understands its primary role as that of detecting and deporting ‘aliens’.

54  Luis Hernan

3.5 Spectres of a Forgotten Future The figure of the ghost was conjured in critical theory by Jacques Derrida in Spectres of Marx, which compiles a series of lectures he gave as part of Whither Marxism?, a conference held at the University of California, the borderlands, in 1993.30 The lecture reflected on the state of the left and communism after the fall of the Soviet Union, amid the much celebrated ‘end of history’ in which the liberal democracies of the West would be unhindered to spread their economic and democratic values to the rest of the world.31 Spectres of Marx is Derrida’s riposte, proposing that Marxism would continue to haunt capitalism despite the apparent crumbling of any viable alternative. Derrida suggested the notion of hauntologie, which instead of studying the nature of being as its homophone ontology does, uses the figure of the ghost as a way of studying paradoxical entities which are neither present nor absent, dead nor alive.32 Belief in actual ghosts is not important to the notion of hauntology, as Frederic Jameson reminds us. What the figure of the ghost tells us is that: The living present is scarcely as self-sufficient as it claims to be; that we would do well not to count on its density and solidity, which might under exceptional circumstances betray us. 33 The notion of hauntology is used by Mark Fisher to diagnose a contemporary fascination for the past, manifested in a predilection for ‘vintage’ elements in popular culture forms.34 Fisher concentrates primarily in popular music but his analysis of a ‘temporal malaise’ extrapolates to other forms of cultural expression, and points towards a more general ‘cancellation’ of alternative futures. The project of a smart border wall also suffers from a temporal malaise, fascinated and forgetful of the past. In July 2017, Republican Representative Will Hurd introduced the Secure Miles with All Resources and Technology Act (SMART) to the US House of Representatives. Co-sponsored by two Democratic Representatives, Vicente Gonzalez and Henry Cuellar, the bill sought to reach a consensus on the infrastructure of the Mexico/US border.35 The government of Donald Trump proposed the construction of a reinforced concrete wall along the southern border to deter so-called illegal crossings, which proved to be deeply divisive in Congress. The SMART act sought to reach a compromise by forcing the government to explore technological solutions, including computer imaging, sensor technologies, wireless and virtual reality headsets, to ‘secure’ the border. Technology was argued to create a more humane border, representing the antithesis of ‘big, beautiful’ walls.36 The SMART initiative paved the way for the Trump administration awarding a contract to Anduril for the development of ‘sentry’ towers for a virtual border wall. The towers (See Figure 3.2) integrate off-the-shelf

Wireless Borders: Illegal Bodies and Connected Futures  55

Figure 3.2 A n initial prototype of the Anduril Sentry. Leveraging on his support of the Trump presidential campaign in 2016, Palmer Luckey used the Sentry as a proof of concept for a situational awareness system which would enable soldiers a total view of the battlefield. The use of the Mexico-US border as a test ground for military hardware keeps with a long tradition of militarisation, as the McNamara Wall and SBInet show.

56  Luis Hernan sensors that are cheap and unreliable individually but, when combined with Artificial Intelligence, they are able to provide situational awareness, filtering erratic data and delivering border agents with an assessment of genuine threats.37 Anduril was founded by Palmer Luckey, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur who describes the company as an effort to leverage the expertise and technology development of Silicon Valley for the defence sector.38 Although the use of the adjective ‘smart’ suggests that the solution is novel, the idea of a technological alternative to a physical border is a recurring spectre in the borderlands. Iván Chaar-López analyses efforts in the 1970s to create an ‘electronic fence’, a complex assembly of radio waves, ground sensors, and computers to detect border crossings. The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) drew inspiration from the emerging field of cybernetics to design a system to exclude racialised migrants—‘wetbacks and narcotic smugglers’ as Border Patrol officials describe their targets. The electronic fence was, in turn, inspired by the McNamara Wall, the unsuccessful system of sensors and transmitters used to detect incursions of the Vietcong during the Vietnam War. 39 Although both the electronic fence and the McNamara Wall proved to be ineffective, due to intermittent sensor failure and frequent false positives, they continued to attract funding and political attention, becoming a powerful symbol of an ‘imperial control fantasy’. This fantasy helps explain the emergence of an almost identical ‘solution’ in the Secure Border Initiative (SBInet), implemented during the presidency of George W. Bush. The programme was commissioned to Boeing, who developed Project 28, an initial implementation covering 28 miles along the Arizona border.40 The prototype involved nine towers, around 30 m tall, integrating wireless networking, radar and high-resolution cameras. Although similar solutions had been installed along the border before, the project was considered to be a sophisticated solution aggregating sensor outputs, which were transmitted to a control centre where agents would be assisted by computers to identify ‘illegal’ crossers.41 As with the electronic fence, the project was ultimately thwarted by the challenges of the desert before it was cancelled in 2011.

3.6 Conclusions The involvement of Silicon Valley in the security of the border, and the emergence of a ‘smart’ border wall, is thought to signal a change of strategy. Specialised media discusses the long-standing interest from the Pentagon and other security agencies to ‘tap’ on the technological expertise of Silicon Valley, and their expected ability to develop and deploy comparatively cheap technologies to make security tasks more efficient that they would be able to produce if developed from scratch.42 In the political imaginary, the development of a more technological wall is also a more positive, more palatable version of the old policies of confinement and control of racialised

Wireless Borders: Illegal Bodies and Connected Futures  57 populations.43 The alliance also signals a contradiction in the ethos and agenda of Silicon Valley, whose design culture is often associated with counterculture and, generally, the aspiration to produce technologies that empower the individual and enable communities to self-organise without the need for a central government.44 However, as I have discussed in this chapter, wireless and other electronic technologies are spectral, being often associated with notions of ghosts and phantoms to account for the way they operate and the possibilities they hold. But the metaphor is also useful in navigating the contradictions inherent in the use of wireless and other electronic technologies in the borderlands. The way that these technologies are spatialised often reveal these ghosts, which range from long-standing issues of race and colonial anxieties, but also extend to issues of class and gender. More importantly perhaps, a critical examination of these technologies and their ghosts creates the theoretical foundations to challenge them and, ultimately, imagine new possibilities. The ghosts that host the borderlands, and the technologies of invisible borders, are crucial in our understanding of the Global South. Despite rhetoric that suggests that borders are ‘dematerialising’, and that the world is coming closer together, the borders that separate north and south are intractable, and new technologies reinforce their materiality. The ghost demands that we listen to the past and the boundaries of the Global South speak of material injustice and histories of violence which are difficult to ignore, despite all the cool gadgets that we use to produce smarter and invisible walls.

Notes 1 Dorian Hargrove, ‘Telecom Battle at the Border Intensifies Between Verizon and Altan Redes’, NBC 7 San Diego, accessed 13 August 2021, https://www. ­ nbcsandiego.com/news/local/telecom-battle-at-the-border-intensifies-betweenverizon-and-altan-redes/152389/. 2 Ted Cruz, ‘Letter to the Honorable Mike Pompeo and the Honorable Ajit Pai’, Correspondence, 18 August 2019, Archive of the Federal Communications Commission, https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-359364A2.pdf. 3 Luis Hernan and Martyn Dade-Robertson, ‘Atmospheres of Digital Technology: Wireless Spectres and Ghosts Outside the Machine’, Digital Creativity 27, no. 3 (2 July 2016): 214–233, https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2016.1210647. 4 Perhaps the epitome of this position can be found in William J. Mitchell’s City of Bits trilogy, which set out to understand the connections between the digital and physical world. In an often-quoted passage, Mitchell explains: ‘Every point on the surface of the earth is now part of the Hertzian landscape—the product of innumerable transmissions and of the reflections and obstructions of those transmissions (…) just as the kingdoms and empires of old struggled for control of terrestrial territory, those who seek power today increasingly contend for control of the airwaves’. In: WIlliam J. Mitchell, Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City (Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003), 55.

58  Luis Hernan

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60  Luis Hernan

Wireless Borders: Illegal Bodies and Connected Futures  61 Dickey, Colin. Ghostland: An American History in Haunted Places. New York: Penguin Publishing Group, 2016. Enns, Anthony. ‘Psychic Radio: Sound Technologies, Ether Bodies and Spiritual Vibrations’. The Senses and Society 3, no. 2 (1 July 2008): 137–152. https://doi. org/10.2752/174589308X306394. Fang, Lee, and Sam Biddle. ‘Google AI Tech Will Be Used for Virtual Border Wall, CBP Contract Shows’. The Intercept, 21 October 2020. https://theintercept. com/2020/10/21/google-cbp-border-contract-anduril/. Fara, Patricia. ‘Newton Shows the Light: A Commentary on Newton (1672) “A Letter … Containing His New Theory about Light and Colours…”’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences 373, no. 2039 (13 April 2015): 20140213. https://doi.org/10.1098/ rsta.2014.0213. Fisher, Mark. Ghosts of My Life: Writings on Depression, Hauntology and Lost Futures. London: Zero Books, 2014. Fukuyama, Francis. End of History and the Last Man. London: Penguin Books, 2012. González, Rodolpho. ‘El Plan Espiritual de Aztlán’. Atzlán: An Anthology of Mexican-American Literature. New York: Vintage Books, 1972. Gordon, Avery. Ghostly Matters: Haunting and the Sociological Imagination. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Hargrove, Dorian. ‘Telecom Battle at the Border Intensifies Between Verizon and Altan Redes’. NBC 7 San Diego. Accessed 13 August 2021. https://www. nbcsandiego.com/news/local/telecom-battle-at-the-border-intensifies-betweenverizon-and-altan-redes/152389/. Hendy, David. ‘Oliver Lodge’s Ether and the Birth of British Broadcasting’. edited by James Mussell and Graeme Gooday, 183–197. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2020. https://upittpress.org/books/9780822945956/. Hernan, Luis, and Martyn Dade-Robertson. ‘Atmospheres of Digital Technology: Wireless Spectres and Ghosts Outside the Machine’. Digital Creativity 27, no. 3 (2 July 2016): 214–233. https://doi.org/10.1080/14626268.2016.1210647. Hurd, Will. H.R.3479- Secure Miles with All Resources and Technology Act, Pub. L. No. 3479 (2017). https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/ house-bill/3479/text. Keefe, Alexa. ‘World Press 2014: Signals from Djibouti’. National Geographic, 19 February 2014. https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/article/ world-press-2014-signals-from-djibouti. Kelly, David. ‘Vision That Inspires Some and Scares Others: Aztlan’. Los Angeles Times. 7 July 2006. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-jul-07-meaztlan7-story.html. León-Portilla, Miguel. ‘Aztlán: Ruta de Venida y de Regreso’. Letras Libres, 2005. Levy, Stephen. ‘Inside Palmer Luckey’s Bid to Build a Border Wall’. Wired, 6 November 2018. https://www.wired.com/story/palmer-luckey-anduril-border-wall/. Lohne, J. A. ‘Experimentum Crucis’. Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 23, no. 2 (1 December 1968): 169–199. https://doi.org/10.1098/ rsnr.1968.0021. Mackenzie, Adrian. ‘Wirelessness as Experience of Transition’. The Fibreculture Journal 13 (2008). http://thirteen.fibreculturejournal.org/fcj-085-wirelessnessas-experience-of-transition/.

62  Luis Hernan McKeever Furst, Jill Leslie. The Natural History of the Soul in Ancient Mexico. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995. Mitchell, WIlliam J. Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Networked City. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003. Newton, Isaac. ‘A Letter of Mr. Isaac Newton, Professor of the Mathematicks in the University of Cambridge; Containing His New Theory about Light and Colors: Sent by the Author to the Publisher from Cambridge, Febr. 6. 1671/72; in Order to Be Communicated to the R. Society’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 6, no. 80 (19 February 1672): 3075–3087. https:// doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1671.0072. Noakes, Richard. ‘Thoughts and Spirits by Wireless: Imagining and Building Psychic Telegraphs in America and Britain, circa 1900–1930’. History and Technology 32, no. 2 (2 April 2016): 137–158. https://doi.org/10.1080/07341512. 2016.1217598. Parrish, Will. ‘The U.S. Border Patrol and an Israeli Military Contractor Are Putting a Native American Reservation Under “Persistent Surveillance”’. The Intercept, 25 August 2019. https://theintercept.com/2019/08/25/border-patrolisrael-elbit-surveillance/. Plath, Tara. ‘An Elusive Viewshed: An Investigation of United States’ Border Patrol Rescue Beacons in Arizona’s Western Desert’. Plot(s) Journal of Design Studies, Parsons School of Design 7, no. 2 (n.d.): 26–42. Pollard, Brittany, and Ryan Ruegg. ‘Rescue Beacons (“Panic Poles”)’. National Border, National Park: A History of Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument (blog), 7 February 2013. https://organpipehistory.com/orpi-a-z/ rescue-beacons-panic-poles/. Ramirez, Alexia. ‘ICE Records Confirm That Immigration Enforcement Agencies Are Using Invasive Cell Phone Surveillance Devices’. American Civil Liberties Union, 27 May 2020. https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/ice-recordsconfirm-that-immigration-enforcement-agencies-are-using-invasive-cell-phone­ surveillance-devices/. Rodriguez, Marc Simon. Rethinking the Chicano Movement. New York: Routledge, 2014. Salam, Erum. ‘Republican Senator Ted Cruz Mocked for Documentary-Style Trip to US-Mexico Border’. The Guardian. 27 March 2021, sec. Americas. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/27/ted-cruz-us-mexicoborder-immigration. Sconce, Jeffrey. Haunted Media: Electronic Presence from Telegraphy to Television. Console-Ing Passions: Television and Cultural Power. London: Duke University Press, 2000. South Lighthouse. ‘Mexico CDMX | FADe’. Accessed 13 August 2021. https:// fadeproject.org/?project=mexico-city. Townsend, Camilla. Fifth Sun: A New History of the Aztecs. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019. Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. Vukov, Tamara, and Mimi Sheller. ‘Border Work: Surveillant Assemblages, Virtual Fences, and Tactical Counter-Media’. Social Semiotics 23, no. 2 (1 April 2013): 225–241. https://doi.org/10.1080/10350330.2013.777592.

4

Connecting the Camps Spatialising the ECHO Mobile Library in Greece Kitya Mark and Irit Katz

Imagining the constellations did not of course change the stars, nor did it change the black emptiness that surrounds them. What it changed was the way people read the night sky. (John Berger 1984) Seen as remote dots jutting out of the landscape, and defined by demarcated borders and temporary shelters, refugee camps are often perceived as isolated and isolating spaces. In Greece, assembled on the islands and scattered around inland settlements and cities such as Athens and Thessaloniki, the camps which have appeared since 2015 following the influx of migrants to the country are usually analysed as an archipelago of bounded spaces which are detached from their surroundings, similarly to camps elsewhere (Mountz 2020; Vergou 2019). These understandings of camps as secluded spaces are based on the work of the philosopher Giorgio Agamben (2005) who views the camp as the modern nation-state’s paradigmatic space of exception, encapsulating the camp’s political role as a container for undesirable populations. Yet camps are also highly connected spaces. Although they signal immobility, camps are inherently related to modern ecologies of mobility and movement (Meiches 2015; Katz 2022), creating infrastructural junctions that simultaneously incarcerate and connect. As bounded spaces, camps are not only dependent on infrastructures and logistical apparatuses of moving materials and objects to shelter, feed, and provide other basic necessities to those suspended within them, but they are also often connected through alternative social infrastructures which provide them with basic services of care and support. This chapter focusses on one such infrastructure and its mobile objects – the ECHO mobile library that operates in the Attica region of southern Greece. The ECHO mobile library not only moves between the camps peripheral to Athens, but also connects between them with its material and social functions and forms of exchange. The ECHO mobile library is fitted into the back of a Ford Transit van that drives between remote refugee camps in southern Greece. Its eight shelves are lined with a few hundred books in a myriad of languages, much of

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-6

63

64  Kitya Mark and Irit Katz them originate from the global South, such as Arabic, Farsi, and Urdu. The library has two entrances, with rear double-doors and a sliding side door, and apart from the L-shaped bench within, there is little room for sitting, reading, or studying. But the van acts as the nucleus of a broader libraryspace; every time it parks and open its doors in one of the camps, readers spill out onto nearby stools, some chatting in groups, others finding quieter spots to read by themselves (Figure 4.1). The books that travel packed inside the van change hands between readers within a particular camp, and they are also exchanged between readers across the camps which the van visits. Like all libraries, the ECHO mobile library carries different meanings for different people; it is at once a social hub, a kids’ zone, a language learning centre, and for the regular readers, a place to find their next book. Yet with its fluidity and movement between the isolated camps, it also generates unexpected links and openings, creating opportunities for participation, learning, and human connection in the fragmented landscape of Greece’s carceral geography.

Figure 4.1 T he ECHO mobile library in Malakasa camp, September 2021. Source: © ECHO library collective.

ECHO began with a sketch drawn on an envelope in 2016 (Figure 4.2) by volunteers working at a static library in a refugee camp near the GreekMacedonian border. The anacronym ECHO stands for ‘education, community, hope and opportunity’, and the idea behind the project was simple: ‘if we could get the library into a van, then we could bring the service to so many more people who needed it’ (Dignan 2021). While the camps are designed to keep refugees isolated and peripheral, this grassroots library, beyond merely delivering exchangeable books to people in the camps, also creates human

Connecting the Camps  65 and material links between them, highlighted in its catchphrase ‘connections not collections’ (Ibid). Space, as Doreen Massey tells us, is ‘the product of interrelations’ (2005, 9), and the relations between identities/entities and their spatiality are co-constitutive and ever-changing. The mobile library, which constantly moves between camps, creates an intensive flow which changes the relations between these camps, their residents who themselves are ‘on the move’, and the world around these spaces. As a mobile informal institution the library brings to the camps, which are seen as spaces of suspension and stuckness, a spatiality of change and exchange. Yet these dynamics of movement are not created only through the tangible aspect of mobile books in a van. Rather, understanding ECHO’s mobility requires us to seriously consider the activity of borrowing and reading books in a refugee camp and the rich imaginative potential of books for the displaced, seeing books as themselves becoming part of the camp’s relationality that, with their imaginary textual infrastructures, carry readers to other worlds. The mobile library, we argue, is not only a vehicle which forms a mobile space, but also an infrastructure that connects individuals through books within and beyond the border, in both tangible and imagined ways.

Figure 4.2 The original sketch for ECHO library, 2016. Source: © ECHO library collective.

In order to fully read such connections, this chapter moves through four parts. First, it situates the library within the global placement of camps and in the specific context of Greece as one of the continent’s major entry points from the south and the east, examining camps as part of an isolating yet connected infrastructure in which people and objects, but also ideas and imaginaries, are circulated. Importantly however, the context of this chapter is European but like the books and their readers, its meanings

66  Kitya Mark and Irit Katz are global, and the ideas discussed here go beyond the boundaries of Europe, Greece, and the ECHO library itself. The chapter then undertakes a dual spatialisation of the ECHO library as an infrastructure that accesses imagined and tangible worlds, by first examining the books as infrastructures which connect between people and places, and then by mapping the movement of books between camps. Reflecting the panoply of genres held on ECHO library’s shelves, the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological threads of this chapter are interdisciplinary. We draw on spatial and quantitative data records of the books exchanged between the camps, while utilising qualitative data gathered in semi-structured interviews with one of the ECHO librarian-activists. We also draw on poetry and prose to better understand and contemplate the meaning of literature and its circulation in such contexts. In the last section of this chapter, we consider ECHO through the lens of feminist ethics of future ancestries; as a model and a set of practices for further human infrastructures that connect between camps, and to material and human worlds around them, through mutual aid. While we refer to the residents of the camps discussed here as ‘refugees’, this is a naming that does not follow the legal definition, rather it is used to recognise the inherent experience of displacement and encampment shared by disparate individuals. Indeed, the theme of this chapter is human connection. This connection is negated by state structures that siphon refugees off, isolating and disconnecting them from the world and each other, and do not relate to the subjective experience and longing for connection of those trapped within such structures. These structures form racialised constructs in the current postcolonial global order, in which settler colonial or former colonial powers – often working according to the North-South divide – block the flows of previously colonised populations into European or settler states, keeping out the (non-citizen) Others. These exclusionary constructs of separation and containment of those coming from the Global South, including the Greek camps discussed in this chapter, which are created either outside or within the territories of those states, reproduce the hierarchies and structures of coloniality (Mayblin 2017; Davies and Isakjee 2019; Sharma 2020). Books, as this chapter shows, and the connections made through books as opposed to the exclusionary and racialised attitude of the state and the global postcolonial apartheid, demonstrate that imaginations cannot be contained, and that lives are fundamentally connected and relational.

4.1 Situating a Mobile Library In this era of mass migration, more than 6.6 million refugees and others in similar circumstances of displacement live in institutional or makeshift camps (UNHCR 2021). The refugee camp is perceived as a temporary space where refugees are contained while receiving protection and humanitarian

Connecting the Camps  67 relief, until a more durable solution to their situation can be found (Ramadan 2013). However, due to the commonplace nature of protracted displacement, refugees find themselves living in camps for years, decades, and even generations (UNHCR 2020). Camps, in addition, have been recognised as part of the machinery of the ‘global apartheid’, a term for ‘the structures of control that securitise the north and foster violence in the south, that gate the north and imprison the south, and that create a form of apartheid [segregation] on a global level’ (Besteman 2019, 26). As the ECHO librarians acknowledge in a report on their work; ‘it is within this context of a bordered world that ECHO operates’ (Dignan et al. 2019, 4). The apparatus of camps in Greece and around Athens is particularly confining because of the country’s changing position in relation to the European Union. Geographically positioned at Europe’s outer south-eastern limit, Greece has been used increasingly by the EU ‘as a buffer zone against unwanted migration’ since 2015, the start of the so-called European ‘refugee crisis’ (Guardian 2020). In March 2016 the Greek-Macedonian border was closed, and later that same year, a ‘Statement of Cooperation’ was struck between the EU and Turkey which declared that every refugee arriving ‘irregularly’ to Greece would be returned to Turkey. These shifting political and physical landscapes has caused the ‘kettling of migrants within Greece’ (Dignan et al. 2019, 4), resulting in more than 186,000 officially registered refugees and asylum-seekers living in Greece in 2019, many of whom ended up being stuck in mainland camps (UNHCR 2020). These camps have been shown to function as island-like spaces of containment segregated from Greek communities and ‘hidden’ by the state (Mountz 2020, xxv; Vergou 2019). For instance, Oinoyfta is composed of disused factories 60  km from Athens; Malakasa is sprawl of isoboxes and tents 35  km from the city; and Lavrio is a self-organised Kurdish camp of re-purposed apartment blocks at the opposite end of the Attica region. Despite the heterogenous manifestations and demographics of these camps, all served by the ECHO library, their acutely peripheral conditions remain constant (See Figure 4.3). However, while these mainland camps are deliberately detached from the city, its services, and from each other, ECHO challenges such detachment by bringing a social institution to the camps while operating as an infrastructure that negotiates and resists the segregation of the border project. There is already a plethora of work in architectural theory and urban studies that has drawn on infrastructural metaphors, yet this analytical framework grows only more relevant in our current age of mobility where objects and people are constantly moving (Larkin 2013; Easterling 2014; Meiches 2015; Katz 2022). Moreover, when looking through an infrastructural lens, we see that just because certain spaces are peripheral, they are far from inconsequential. Marginalised narratives of refugees and marginalised geographies of camps underpin this spatialisation. Examining ECHO as an infrastructure also means attending to the networks of connection that extend beyond the

68  Kitya Mark and Irit Katz

Figure 4.3 Location of camps visited by the ECHO library. Source: Tsavdaroglou and Lalenis (2020), modified by the Author.

spatial and even tangible world; not only is the library moving, but the books on its shelves change hands between refugees in the different camps while acting as portals to other imaginaries when their readers are physically isolated and stuck. This chapter is concerned with the materiality and spatiality of camps, including their mobile material and human infrastructures. The term ‘human’ here is used to foreground alternate cognitive mappings of relationality which goes beyond the limited and limiting relationship between people and imposed borders and boundaries, whether these encircle countries or camps. Libraries, in their full spatial, material, and human meaning, can only exist because their readers participate within the book-exchange: this exchange of books between people deconstructs the notion of solitary selves and the ‘fiction of non-dependence’ (Gossett et al. 2020), demonstrating that there is ‘nothing human about division and separation’ (Cowan 2021, 298). This mutuality takes on a weighty significance in the context of spaces where people are relentlessly divided. ECHO is thus a key strategy for unlearning the naturalisation of carceral subjectivities and geographies.

Connecting the Camps  69

4.2 Books as Infrastructure The British and Trinidadian poet Roger Robinson writes that literature can act as a ‘portable paradise’ which transports the reader; reading takes you beyond the confines of the actual and into the realm of the imagination (2019, 81). Accordingly, the ECHO books mirror the movement of the library van; books act as imaginative vehicles or as infrastructures that connect people to fictive worlds. For those stuck within camps, to move forward in their asylum journey or even to return home is often a criminalised impossibility. However, stories are natural border-crossers; they do not abide by temporal or spatial boundaries of the possible or the probable. Within the overcrowded camp, defined by peripherality and institutional dehumanisation, books open up a different experience of space: they connect to other worlds. As one of ECHO’s librarians told us: We are often asked for popular European fiction books in a mother tongue, like Arabic or Farsi. I find it interesting because it just shows the imaginative power of books, you know? These are people who are so isolated they can’t even make one European friend outside the camp, but they can read Harry Potter, and read themselves out of the situation. To ‘read’ oneself ‘out of’ a ‘situation’ is a practice of re-situating that has transformative implications for the reader’s experience of space. This is, to a degree, a universal practice: 2,930 km away from Athens, in the lockdown days of the ongoing Covid pandemic, the words of M. Cooley are painted across the closed shutters of a Waterstones bookshop in London: ‘Reading gives us somewhere to go when we have to stay where we are’. The fictional worlds of books have always been recognised as necessary routes out of our present moment. However, the emancipatory potential of books is far more profound within the context of refugees caught at the border of Europe. Malakasa, Oinoyfta, and Lavrio camps are geographically and socially peripheral to the rest of Greek society, and ‘whilst residents are legally allowed to move in and out of the camp, many cannot afford to and fear violence, from state and non-state figures, when they do’ (Dignan et al. 2019, 5). The carceral geography of the region functions through the control of mobility, with practices of bordering foundational to the inception of the camps. Yet books crack the enclosure of this environment, acting as thresholds, providing entrances and exits to other human experiences of space (Figures 4.4 and 4.5). Time, as well as space, is controlled in carceral environments. As Jefferson et al. remark, camps ‘are not just a question of being stuck in place but equally about being stuck in time. The sense […] of not seeing a future, which leads to a sense of stuckness’ (2019, 3). Challenging this restrictive geography, the infrastructure of books connects to alternate experiences of time, as readers engage with the timelines of their literary protagonists. Of the books loaned from ECHO in 2019, 20% were written in Arabic, 31% Farsi, 34% English, and the rest an array ranging from Greek to Pashto

70  Kitya Mark and Irit Katz

Figure 4.4 Readers choosing books from the Echo Library.

(Dignan et al. 2019, 8). Loan statistics reveal that the average ECHO reader is a ‘young Syrian woman between the ages of 20 and 25’, but a ‘diverse range of people [do] access the library’ (Ibid.). The genres are similarly variegated: poetry, novels, children’s books, and comics were all borrowed in substantial quantities.

Connecting the Camps  71

Figure 4.5 Readers choosing books to borrow from ECHO library, 2021. Source: © ECHO library collective.

Between January 2019 and January 2021, however, the Harry Potter series (whether in the English original or in translation) remained among the most borrowed books from the ECHO shelves. Harry Potter could thus provide a productive framework for a temporal analysis of the meaning of

72  Kitya Mark and Irit Katz reading within the space of the camp. Like all novels, Harry Potter accesses narrative rather than chronological time; yet because the books form a series which progresses as the protagonist Harry matures, they facilitate a more immersive experience of this alternate temporality beyond the camp’s temporal stuckness. Furthermore, because Harry Potter is a Eurocentric cultural phenomenon, the books are a route into a western imaginary. They connect readers to a space and time beyond the camp, where they might arrive in London and see Kings Cross Station and the sign for Platform 9¾. Agency lies in the anticipations of these imagined futures. Reading of Harry Potter in the camp can therefore be seen as a creative and disruptive act that contests and destabilises the present moment. Similarly to other books, the series is brimming with internal complexities that act as building-materials for essential alternate worldmaking. By choosing to read Harry Potter, the residents of the camps become architects of their own imaginaries. However, this practice of worldmaking is fantastical; it is an intangible dream that can never compensate for the realities of the camp. Yet, while it is important not to over-romanticise the potentiality of literature, nor to allow this potentiality to detract from the structural marginality and precarity of lived experience, books as resources for worldmaking should not be undervalued. As Butler argues, the ‘struggle to survive is not really separable from the cultural life of fantasy. It is part of it. Fantasy is what allows us to imagine ourselves and others otherwise’ (2004, 216). Indeed, when the border is an onslaught ‘on the body and on our imaginations’, books could work for ‘its unrealness and its undoing’ (Brewer 2021). Tending to the impulse of an imaginative project which creates an alternative to the border project is therefore an act of radical resistance. Opening up fictional space through reading enlarges the possibilities of establishing an alternative view to the world as is, a view that is not merely another point of view, but a vantage point that engages with a transformational politics of what could be. Books allow readers to move beyond the ‘prison house’ of the here and now, and to ‘think and feel a then and there’ of a future yet to come (Muñoz 2009, 1). Books denaturalise the existence of borders, both geographically and socially. We can conceive of the book as relational; the page provides a meeting point between the author and the reader, a space galvanised by the intimate shared experience of living. As an ECHO librarian-activist observed in an interview with the Guardian: ‘Anne Frank came back to us recently from a man living in a tent in Malakasa […]; he said that reading about her situation had given him strength in his own’ (2020). This link between an Afghan man waiting in a refugee camp in contemporary Greece and a Jewish girl waiting in an attic in 1940s Holland demonstrates that books create constellations of connections between strangers and through time. Even while refugees are segregated from Greek communities, they can, nonetheless, through the act of reading, be part of a web-work of human connection.

Connecting the Camps  73 We might momentarily conclude by reflecting on the implications of attending to the spaces and relationalities opened up through books. In only highlighting the camp as an isolated container that is ‘geographically and socially distant from most people’s daily lives’, current discourse overlooks the non-corporeal but still deeply meaningful mobilities that permeate the border (Mountz 2020, 233). Books allow their readers an experience of interior freedom, even if material circumstances remain unchanged. As Berger observes: a ‘storyteller is like a passeur who gets contraband across a frontier’ (2016). To recognise this heterogenous space shared through stories is to recognise that via books, people are fundamentally interconnected. As such, books subvert attempts to border off camps from wider society, and illuminate the fallacy of the border imaginary altogether. This does not take away from the very real oppression which the border imposes. Instead, attuning to the flow of stories provides a liberatory point of departure to imagine beyond such violence. In the next section, we examine the material counterpart of this ephemeral infrastructure of books, before exploring the future possibilities opened up through such networks of imaginative and tangible connection.

4.3 Mapping Moving Books The concept of the network is well-founded in spatial theory. In his influential argument about the urban ‘network society’, for example, Castells highlights the extent to which connection flows through the technologies of communication (2009). While one might assume that refugee camps exist in the negative space of such hegemonic systems, it has already been established that camps are spaces which are dependent on infrastructures and their human and material mobilities (Meiches 2015; Katz 2022). Similarly, the ECHO infrastructure facilitates a material network that flows between the camps through the exchange of books. Books are lent, borrowed and emerge in different camps and are read and re-read by strangers who share similar experiences of encampment. We see this played out on the books’ pages: sentences underlined by one reader, corners folded by another. Connection is also archived indexically through the books themselves; following these links allow us to see the camps, their residents, and their books through alternative human and material lenses. When borrowing a book from ECHO, readers do not have to register a library card or even share their real name, only minimal accommodation details. This is partly because, as one of ECHO’s librarians explained, ‘readers spend so much of their time in queues and being treated like a number, that we don’t want to add to that in any way’. However, the books are documented. Each book has a code written on the inside of the title page, composed of the first two letters of the language in which the book is written: Ar for Arabic, Fa for Farsi, and so on. In collaboration with ECHO’s librarians, we used the library’s data records to trace the journeys

74  Kitya Mark and Irit Katz of exchange between the camps of one of the most borrowed books from their shelves, which is part of the beloved book series discussed earlier: the Arabic translation of J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Figure 4.4). Mapping documented books when the readers themselves are undocumented speaks to how material goods often travel across borders far more easily than human beings do. Moreover, mapping the journey of The Philosopher’s Stone is a way to acknowledge readers who choose to borrow such books and engage with alternate worlds; it is a way to value the ‘force’ of ‘fantasy’ as survival (Butler 1990, 105) (Figure 4.6). A map like the one below can never be neutral, particularly in a region where the state has invested in peripherality as a tool for segregation and obscurity. In instances like these, the simple act of locating connection on a map can be profound. Mapping The Philosopher’s Stone speaks to a broader network of countermapping projects that call for cartography not as a controlling territorialising tool but as a way of making visible and legible the unheard, the missing or the ignored. As Ramadan argues that ‘camp space is produced out of the relations between and the practices of people’ (2013, 70), so readers become nodes in an infrastructure that plots a more expansive and relational topography of the camp space. Lavrio, Malakasa, and Oinoyfta are the camps named on the map, and they all exist peripherally to the city. However, looking at the map, another space is identified: the Victoria Square Project. This is a makeshift refugee settlement in the centre of Athens that is also visited by the library van, participating in the network of exchange. Drawing attention to this occupation of space in the heart of the urban fabric demonstrates that while the space of the camp is supposedly kept segregated from the space of the city, books connect between these spaces. The links that cross the spaces in between the so-called ‘boundaries’ of the camp are an interruption, an utterance, a presence that exists within the state-curated borderscape of peripherality. Highlighting these disturbances demonstrates that human life spills over: it can never be fully contained. Through the links made by books, we see that the space of the camp and the spaces in-between are neither static nor isolated; instead they can be thought of as a continual ‘process by which a collective entity is created from the connection of a range of heterogenous components’ (Bingham 2009, 38; See also Massey 2005). Visualising this ‘collective entity’ provides a framework to think about such infrastructures transnationally. Consider the two multicultural static libraries The Kurdish Political Library and We Need Books that operate in Athens and often donate literature to ECHO’s shelves. Now reflect, in turn, on the broader trans-urban and transnational connections created by other libraries, bookshops and publishers across Europe and beyond who have shared their resources with ECHO. Even  international grassroots campaigns have given blog space to ECHO librarians to publish Farsi book-requests, literature that is harder to acquire due to trade embargos. In these few examples we see that just as oppressive

Connecting the Camps  75

Figure 4.6 The symbolic movements of the book Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone between camps peripheral to Athens. Source: Illustrated by Kitya Mark.

and exploitative projects, colonial rule, and military alliance know no bounds, so too does solidarity stretch beyond the lines that demarcate one space and nation from another. The threads that criss-cross between camps

76  Kitya Mark and Irit Katz across the Attica region extend off the page of the map, linking up to distant organisations and subjectivities. This ‘collective entity’ is forged beyond the nation; it is an ever-expanding always-in-process infrastructure of humanity.

4.4 ECHO as a Model for further Human Infrastructures This analysis is being written during a global crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic. The journeys of the mobile library can only occur in the interims between successive lockdowns. However, to some extent these past two years have not been entirely unique, as written on the library’s blog: ‘[The pandemic is] one battle in a longer struggle in which all of us are fighting for our collective survival’ (2020). In light of this expanded purview, we see that just as adversities have always existed, particularly for those most vulnerable to state violence or neglect, so tools of collective alliance have been developed and utilised long before 2020. Mutual aid is an organisational tool rooted in anarchist theory: it posits that when networks of people work together, they have the strength and capacity to survive (Solnit 2020). As ECHO affirm on their blog: ‘we use mutual aid [as a route] away from oppressive structures of big capital and states by simply doing it ourselves’ (2020). Taking a genealogical approach, it is evident that this DIY practice of mutual aid is part of a legacy formed by previous libraries on the periphery. For instance, while the origins of the public library movement in the UK are typically attributed to the efforts of aristocratic philanthropists, there existed parallel infrastructures initiated by the Chartists, who co-created reading-aloud rooms for the working-class (ECHO Librarians 2020). These were spaces for learning and gathering that also enacted a critique of structural barriers to space and education. This collective approach has been applied across temporal and spatial contexts: from the Jungle Books Library amassed in 2015 in the so called Calais ‘Jungle’ camp, to The People’s Library of the 2011 Occupy Movement. As one of the volunteer librarians at Occupy New York reflected: this guerrilla ‘space [enabled] people to arrange their own relationships and provide their own needs’ (Henk, 2011). To continue to overlook and undervalue this history ignores a shared understanding that when the systems we live under do not meet our needs then we can, and others already have, work together to forge something else (See: Olufemi 2020). Positing ECHO as a node in this ancestral web implies that future histories and future geographies will emerge from it. Lewis argues that part of feminist ethics is about thinking of ourselves as ‘already ancestors’: drawing on ‘the ancestral inheritance, and furthering it, because we are also ancestors and we owe an obligation to the future’ (2020). In thinking through ancestry, we see that attending to the knotty legacy of mutual aid is a way to shape inchoate infrastructures. As Lewis articulates: ‘the past is the stars through which we navigate our steerage towards the future’ (2020). ECHO gathers

Connecting the Camps  77 the multiplicity of the past into a set of practices, constellations for future organisations to learn from and apply. The first of these practices is a guide for resources. Refugee camps are detached from their surrounding environment and are excluded from the material and human resources of the spaces around them (Meiches 2015). ECHO uses mutual aid to intervene within this inaccessible geography. Reflecting Simone’s argument that people are themselves infrastructures (2004), ECHO is run by 15 volunteers, many of whom are residents of the camps and thus are affected directly by border violence. These librarians, like the books on ECHO’s shelves, are involved in a process of ‘cultural communing’: ‘pooling [minimal] resources together, collectively and hopefully, for mutual benefit’ (Murphy et al. 2018, I). As a refugee who lives in the camps and who volunteers with ECHO shared: There was this time with someone who was very vulnerable and needed a lot of support in a camp I didn’t live in. That person was identified to me through this string of connections that makes up the library community, and I could act as a mentor for that person. ECHO is a way to build this network, through which we all help each other. ECHO exists peripherally to state-structures of refugee protection and care; it does not accept any Governmental or EU support of any kind. If the library were to be included within the state, its material resources might increase; it could afford to visit more camps more often, it could buy more books, it could pay all its activists. However, the self-organised collective practice that grounds ECHO’s infrastructure would be lost. Mutual aid in this context is, of course, limited: while it clarifies the machinery of the border project, it cannot truly end the isolation of the camps. However, the second recommendation that ECHO imparts by example is that the connections opened up through the process of mutual aid are meaningful not just because of their material consequences, but because of what they give readers, activists, and refugee librarians through the experience of relational community. ECHO demonstrates that infrastructures can actually offer us much more when we conceive of owing something to each other, of being relational to one another in a form which Olufemi describes as a ‘sticky connectedness’, as ‘something that keeps us alive, that keeps us going’ (Lewis et al., 2020). The moment of reading the multiple subjectivities contained within a book, of knowing that the material object has passed through many hands and will pass through many more, are all fleeting moments that ‘point to a shared humanity underpinning an urgent call to reach across and connect with each other’ (Cowan 2021, 299). Learning from ECHO is therefore not just about recognising who or what is being opposed, but also understanding the collective nature of this resistance. One of the most important facets of ECHO is that it broadens conceptions about what an infrastructure is, and what an infrastructure can do. Participating in an infrastructure like ECHO, while drawing on

78  Kitya Mark and Irit Katz Federici’s feminist perspective, could mean ‘being involved in a struggle with other people, breaking out of our isolation, seeing our relations with others change, discovering new dimensions in our lives’ (1984, 343).

4.5 Conclusion ECHO mobile library is a border-crossing infrastructure and understanding it as such involves taking seriously the tangled webs of connection in which the spatial, the material, the human, and the symbolic intertwine. As the poet Jay Bernard claims: ‘life is lived through others: the people that we connect with, whether in real life or on the page, make us’ while ‘we make ourselves in the presence of others’ (2021). The wispy semiotic connections made through the library are valuable not only because the difficulty in forging these networks exposes the extreme isolation of the camps, but also because they are so rare and so needed in a place where such connections are negated. While ECHO is perhaps just a pinprick in the border project, barely noticeable against the overwhelming backdrop of the global apartheid, it is nonetheless an opening through which we might glimpse alternate possibilities to this bordered world (See: Cowan 2021). This opening, forged through creating alternative infrastructures of relationships and connectivities, could be conceptualised as a limited victory, yet this library was never built around wins or losses. Rather it is a collective process of collating what has been done before, and what can be drawn on in the future. When we value alternate ways of being and connecting with each other, then we engage in a radical form of relationality. This pinprick in the postcolonial fabric of the border becomes a tear that keeps on tearing (See Cowan 2021; Corporate Watch 2018). Even if the library cannot materially achieve liberation for all its readers, its infrastructure provides a salutary framework for alternate ways of being and connecting with one another.

References Agamben, Giorgio. State of Exception. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Berger, John. And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1984. Bernard, Jay. “Jay Bernard and Lola Olufemi in Conversation,” Torch, March 9, 2021. https://www.torch.ox.ac.uk/event/jay-bernard-and-lola-olufemi-in-conversation Besteman, Catherine. “Militarised Global Apartheid,” Current Anthropology 60, no.19 (2019): 26–38. Bingham, Nick. “Assemblage.” In The Dictionary of Human Geography, edited by Derek Gregory, Ron Johnston, Geraldine Pratt, Michael Watts and Sarah Whatmore, 38. Oxford: Blackwell, 2019. Brewer, Helen, Leah Cowan and Micha Frazer-Caroll. “Border Nation: A Story of Migration,” March 18, 2021. Accessed March 19, 202. https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=Iz3l4rwb1Xo&ab_channel=PlutoPress

Connecting the Camps  79 Butler, Judith. “The Force of Fantasy: Feminism, Mapplethorpe, and Discursive Excess,” Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 2, no.2 (1990): 105–125. Butler, Judith. Undoing Gender. New York: Routledge, 2004. Castells, Manuel. The Rise of the Network Society. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Corporate Watch. The UK Border Regime: A Critical Guide. London: Freedom Press, 2018. Cowan, Leah. Border Nation: A Story of Migration. London: Pluto Books, 2021. Davies, Thom and Arshad Isakjee. “Ruins of Empire: Refugees, Race and the Postcolonial Geographies of European Migrant Camps,” Geoforum 102 (2019): 214–217. Dignan, Keira. “The Context: ECHO library,” ECHO, March 1, 2021. Accessed March 12, 2021: http://echo-greece.org/projectcontext Dignan, Keira, Hannah-Lily Lanyon and Rebecca Wolfe. “Multicultural Libraries in a Bordered World: The Case of ECHO for Refugees,” The IFLA Library, 2019. Accessed August 1, 2022: http://library.ifla.org/2539/1/260dignan-en.pdf Easterling, Keller. Extrastatecraft: The Power of Infrastructure Space. London: Verso, 2014. ECHO. ECHO Mobile Library website, 2016. Accessed August 1, 2022: https:// echolibrary.org/about/ ECHO Librarians. “ECHO and the radical history of libraries,” Verso, March 30, 2020. Accessed August 1, 2022: https://www.versobooks.com/ blogs/4631-echo-and-the-radical-history-of-libraries Gossett, Che, Akwugo Emejulu, Amrit Wilson, Lola Olufemi and Ru Kaur. “Revolution Is Not A One-Time Event,” June 9, 2020. Accessed August 1, 2022: https://www.thewhitereview.org/feature/revolution-is-not-a-one-time-event-2/ Federici, Silvia. “Putting Feminism Back on Its Feet,” Social Text, 9, no.10 (1984): 338–346. Henk, Mandy. “Occupy Libraries: Guerrilla Librarianship for the People,” October 28, 2011. Accessed August 1, 2022: https://peopleslibrary.wordpress. com/2011/10/28/occupy-libraries-guerrilla-librarianship-for-the-people/ Jefferson, Andrew, Simon Turner and Stefen Jensen. “Introduction: On Stuckness and Sites of Confinement,” Ethnos, 84, no.1 (2019): 1–13. Katz, Irit. “Mobile Colonial Architecture: Facilitating Settler Colonialism’s Expansion, Expulsions, Resistance, and Decolonisarion,” Mobilities 17, no.2 (2022): 213–237. Larkin, Brian. “The Politics and Poetics of Infrastructure,” The Annual Review of Anthropology 42 (2013): 327–343. Lewis, Gail, Lola Olufemi and Jade Bentil. “Radicals in Conversation: Feminism, Interrupted,” Pluto Press, 2020. Accessed March 10 2021: https://www. plutobooks.com/blog/podcast-feminism-interrupted/” https://www.plutobooks. com/blog/podcast-feminism-interrupted/ Massey, Doreen. For Space. London: Sage, 2005. Mayblin, Lucy. Asylum after Empire: Colonial Legacies in the Politics of Asylum Seeking. London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Meiches, Benjamin. “A Political Ecology of the Camp’, Security Dialogue,” 46 no.5 (2015): 476–492.

80  Kitya Mark and Irit Katz Mountz, Alison. The Death of Asylum: Hidden Geographies of the Enforcement Archipelago. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2020. Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York: New York University Press, 2009. Murphy, Kevin, Damien McGlynn and Denic Stewart (eds). Making Common Cause: Exploring the Potential of Cultural Communing. London: Voluntary Arts, 2018. Olufemi, Lola. Feminism Interrupted. London: Pluto Books, 2020. Ramadan, Adam. “Spatializing the Refugee Camp,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38, no.1 (2013): 65–77. Robinson, Roger. A Portable Paradise. Leeds: Peepal Tree Press Ltd, 2019. Sharma, Nandita. Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020. Simone, AbdouMaliq. “People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg,” Public Culture, 16, no.3 (2004): 407–429. Solnit, Rebecca. “The Way We Get Through this is Together: The Rise of Mutual Aid Under Coronavirus,” The Guardian, May 14, 2020. Accessed: August 1 2022: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/mutual-aid-coronaviruspandemic-rebecca-solnit Swinton, Tilda, Colin MacCabe, Christopher Roth, dir. Interview with John Berger. The Seasons in Quincy: Four Portraits of John Berger. Icarus Films, 2016. Tsavdaroglou, C., and Lalenis, K. “Housing Commons vs. State Spatial Policies of Refugee Camps in Athens and Thessaloniki,” Urban Planning, 5 (2020): 163–176. doi: 10.17645/up.v5i3.2924. (Accessed: 16 March 2021). UNHCR. “Greece,” September 2020. Accessed August 1, 2022: https://www. unhcr.org/greece.html UNHCR. “Refugee Camps Explained,” April 6, 2021. Accessed August 1, 2022: https://www.unrefugees.org/news/refugee-camps-explained/ Vergou, Pinelopi. “Living with Difference: Refugee Education and School Segregation Processes in Greece,” Urban Studies, 56, no.15 (2019): 3162–3177.

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Digital and Physical Spaces in Informal Settlements Migrants, Refugee Camps and Mapping Silvio Carta, Miriam Usiskin, Bobby Lloyd, and Paul Tabar

5.1 Introduction According to the Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) maps dated 18/10/2019, the arrivals of refugees and migrants to Europe between January and October 2019 totalled 91,178 individuals, among whom 48,507 arrived in Greece (mainly from Syria/Turkey) and 2,911 in Tunisia (from Libya and north Africa), with most individuals attempting to reach northern parts of Europe (UNHCR 2018, 2019). Refugees move across countries and territories while their stories, experiences and interactions with local people and places are largely left to loose statistics, verbal accounts and anecdotes. We believe that there is a richness of knowledge and experience that is not shared for a complex set of reasons that include language and cultural barriers, logistical difficulties and challenges in translating spatial experiences into verbal accounts. Scholars from geography, social science and urban and planning studies are working extensively to find ways in which such experiences can be better understood and refugees better supported in being part of this. Along with scholars, volunteers, charities and activists, refugees could be better helped ‘on the ground’, supporting them in their journeys and temporary stay across foreign countries. Our work described here reflects on methods currently used to record refugees’ experiences and their journey, commenting on some new possible directions. The existing literature on migrant studies and digital technologies can be divided into two main categories. On the one hand, we have studies that focus on using new media (or traditional media like mapping yet in a novel way) to trace and record individual and communities’ experiences on their journey. These are analysed in the following section ‘Mapping and Tracing’. On the other hand, there are studies that examine and propose new technologies to create maps and log the details of the journey and their connectivity through international territories. These are explored in the ‘Using emerging technologies’ section.

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5.2 Mapping and Tracing Mapping as a tool for interviewing and eliciting information has been extensively developed, especially involving the use of mixed methods and approaches based on Geographical Information Systems (GIS). GIS methods have replaced and augmented more tradition mapping techniques based on physical urban and territorial explorations. In this case, we specifically refer to those methods where individuals and their subjectivity are put at the centre of the spatial perception of the city or landscape. This notion traces back to famous cases including le flaneur in the 19th century (See Jenks and Neves 2000) or, more recently, Lynch’s technique of spatial urban exploration famously based on nodes, paths, districts, landmarks and edges (Lynch 1960). In the present day, GIS models provide a robust and increasingly universal dataset that describe the world through consistent sets of coordinates. GIS platforms allow for spatial and non-spatial data to be combined (or rather, to nonspatial data to be associated to spatial data points). In principle, any type of information is associable to spatial coordinates. This makes it a powerful tool to link subjective experiences, that are properly encoded, to a universal spatial grid. Once properly geo-referenced and formatted, such individual experiences can be retrieved at any point in time (and anywhere in space) and combined with other datasets and information as required. For example, Brennan-Horley and Gibson (2009) engaged with inhabitants of the Australian city of Darwin to produce augmented versions of mental maps in order to identify the locations where creativity in the city takes place. Some of the techniques used in this work include Participatory Geographical Information Systems (PGIS), a type of GIS in which traditional geographical data is correlated with data from interviews and questionnaires. In this study, the two authors explored the use of ‘maps as anchoring devices for interviews, and as a new way of capturing geographical data on creativity in the city’ (Brennan-Horley and Gibson 2009). The importance of first-person experience of the urban space is demonstrated in a study by Evans and Jones (2011) which used a ‘qualitative GIS technique to analyse the effectiveness of walked interviews in capturing data relating to people’s understanding of place’ (Evans and Jones 2011, 849). Yeager and Steiger (2013) explored ways in which subjective input into GIS models can enhance the understanding of local knowledge: ‘By incorporating local participation and knowledge into qualitative GIS inquiry, researchers can better understand the meanings which local populations attribute to the landscape, which are often reflected in social and economic conditions’ (Yeager and Steiger 2013, 3). More generally, in this work we focus on the enchantments that digital technologies can bring to mapping and tracing the experience of refugees through their journeys. We present in the following section a case study from

Digital and Physical Spaces in Informal Settlements  83 the work of Art Refuge as a base for our reflection on the ways in which concrete cases may be improved by the use of advanced digital technologies.

5.3 Refugees in Calais: A Case Study Art Refuge1 uses socially engaged art and art therapy to support the mental health and wellbeing of people displaced due to conflict, persecution and poverty, both in the UK and internationally. Its work includes training and education, research, exhibitions and public awareness raising. The activities are delivered by a team of experienced art therapists, alongside visual artists with lived experience as refugees, while collaboration with local artists, poets, photographers, activists, researchers and volunteers is integral. From 2015 until the start of the Covid19 pandemic and the first UK lockdown in March 2020, Art Refuge supported the delivery of essential psychological services for people displaced in Calais in northern France (See also Kalmanowitz and Lloyd 2016). Travelling regularly from the UK, the team offered arts-based trauma-informed psychosocial support to enhance people’s emotional resilience. The work in Calais took place in partnership with Médecins du Monde, Secours Catholique and the Maria Skobtsova safe house. The use of large maps evolved out of practice in these spaces and has since been adapted for other settings, including online. People arrived in Calais disorientated (See also Lloyd et al. 2018; Usiskin et al. 2020). They had used fragments of information gleaned from Google Maps on their mobile phones and/or Facebook groups from which local information about fine detail (fields, fences, landmarks) was shared to assist them in the crossing of country borders and mapping routes on the ground. They had walked extensively, and sometimes managed to get onto a boat, bus, truck or train. Once a young man showed his entire journey from a village in Eritrea all the way to Calais, opened up in Google Maps – villages, mountain passes, desert crossings, borders crossed, days waiting, money exchanged, sea crossing, using different modes of transport towards his hoped-for destination. Often people arrived not knowing where they were physically located in relation to home, nor having seen their entire journey in one visual image. One purpose of the large maps was to offer this opportunity. The maps had a number of iterations, printed on robust vinyl material. The World map in three parts measured approximately 2.5 m by 1.5 m and was printed in strong bright colours to stand out in all weathers and times of day. It included the location of major cities, significant bodies of water, and digital hill shading. A deliberate choice was made, given the context, to use up-to-date political maps that included governmental boundaries of countries and states (Lloyd and Usiskin 2020). The large maps were used in a number of ways: to mark routes, as a tablecloth, as a large visual artwork and even as temporary physical shelter. People could take pride in their country in front of the map. The maps at times grounded the Art Refuge team, co-workers and those displaced alike by bringing a focal point. This

84  Silvio Carta et al. was in a context in which disquiet was regularly expressed at the map – ‘I belong nowhere’. Below are selections of extracts taken from Art Refuge Facebook posts2 written immediately following project delivery.

5.4 Journeys Between the Outposts – So Close and So Far – 1st April 2016 ‘Onto the large map on the outside of the building numerous journeys were marked across the day in black or red pen, each journey unique and many accompanied by conversation and description of details along the route. One boy exclaimed that he had taken only 10 days to make his way to Calais where he has now been for 5 months; a Sudanese man paused the pen on Libya, telling us he had been imprisoned there for a year, in Benghazi. Friends gathered to discuss the different points at which they had crossed from Turkey to Greece or which route they had taken up through Europe. Anger was expressed at the impossibly close distance between France and the UK’ (Figures 5.1–5.3).

Figure 5.1 Detail of the large map from April 1st 2016 showing routes to Calais. Copyright: Art Refuge.

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Figure 5.2 Detail of the large map from April 1st 2016 showing routes across to Greece. Copyright: Art Refuge.

5.5 Moving Borders – October 19, 2018 ‘At the Secours Catholique day centre we laid our large tablecloth map on the table. We also offered tracing paper and a detailed Atlas. Unchartered territories were discovered; a country traced enabled borders to be moved. One young man spent two hours tracing the East coast of America before writing across the bottom: ‘Wanted Trump – 100,000 dollars’. Toy trucks were lined up two by two in a convoy across Europe; plasticine figures were balanced on tops of cars, one held a gun; a skull and cross bone was attached to the front of the yellow desert truck which forged its journey ahead. At the distribution point on the edge of Calais, the tense atmosphere was grounded only by the Médecins du Monde mobile clinic. Numbers were much higher this week, with men from Afghanistan, Iran, Kurdistan, Sudan, Nigeria and Eritrea waiting in small clusters to see the doctor and nurse. They, in turn, spoke about higher reports of mental distress.

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Figure 5.3 Detail of the large map from April 1st 2016 showing routes up through Europe. Copyright: Art Refuge.

This week we tried using the same tablecloth map on the side of the ambulance in place of our usual map which had become heavily marked with people’s routes. The unfolded surface caught the bright sunshine and allowed us to look at the map with others in this setting in a fresh way. In  this challenging place, we were moved by the way one person would balance another person’s anger with their own openness and curiosity. Here we set up a different constellation of maps in this fragmented setting in an effort to create a sense of place – the large map on the ambulance, the map tablecloth on the ground and the new World map on the large fence behind which individuals had already pitched or were putting up tents. The World map allowed for the bigger picture to be viewed in a more dispassionate way, with conversations moving backwards and forwards between this and the more intimate large map on the ambulance. The map on the ground allowed for playful interactions, the toy cars and trucks particularly poignant in this setting’ (Figures 5.4 and 5.5).

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Figure 5.4 Detail of the tablecloth map from October 19, 2018 showing a traced image overlaid onto the map’s surface. Copyright: Art Refuge.

5.6 ‘Corners, Quantities and Cold’ – January 25, 2019 ‘We accompanied Médecins du Monde’s mobile clinic to the edge of town. Here several people came from the woods and surrounding area to see the Doctor, perhaps drawn by the map which one man said looked “beautiful”. We met men from Kurdistan, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan, Liberia, Burkino Faso, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan. One young man was impressed by seeing how far he had travelled, carefully tracing his journey onto the map with a pen, marking down the months spent in each place as he went. A man from Darfur spoke articulately about mental ill health in this setting – ‘you see how this situation affects people here; some people are ill in the heart. All the Why, What and How questions take over and then you can’t dream anymore. You can only dream when you are safe’.

5.7 Precarious Landscapes – Stuttered Stories – Calais – January 23, 2020 ‘Numbers of refugees are slowly growing in the Calais area, currently reaching one thousand. There were hundreds of flimsy tents pitched near to the

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Figure 5.5 The tablecloth map taped to the mobile clinic, October 19, 2018. Copyright: Art Refuge.

food distribution on the edge of town; wet clothes were optimistically hung out to dry on the various fences. There were so many tents that finding a place for the Médecins du Monde ambulance was problematic; eventually it was parked on the forecourt of a petrol filling station used occasionally by lorries. The sun was bright and the wintry air was crisp with little wind so we laid the large World map on the ground, not needing this week to use it to construct a shelter. Instead, we wanted to inhabit this environment with the map in a way that it could be usable. The medical team was large and well used, with many young men waiting for the doctor. Over the 3 hours people came and went, gathering around the World map, leaning in, crouching down, looking for home, the UK, a place on route; fascinated by it. For some the map in this setting was a provocation; a few young men were angry that we were there, and in this strange landscape we ourselves experienced both bitter and sweet moments. This was a dangerous place for people to be living in, with high levels of deprivation evident. There was a pervading acrid smell from the chemical works across the road. But jewels of conversation were possible under the blue skies. At one point those standing around looked as if adrift at sea, standing close, facing inwards in a shared endeavour’ (Figure 5.6).

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Figure 5.6 Men gather around world map laid on the petrol station forecourt, January 23, 2020. Copyright: Art Refuge.

5.8  The Smart Refugee This section reflects on how new technologies can be employed to create maps and log details of migrants’ journeys and their connectivity throughout their travel. The migratory journeys and experiences that individuals and communities take from countries in crisis are well documented and studied (e.g. Squire et al. 2017, Lenart-Cheng 2017, King 2002, Mainwaring and Brigden 2016, Tazzioli 2015, Schapendonk 2012, Ibrahim and Howarth 2015). In particular, the use of new media (social media) and related technologies (mobile phones) have become a useful instrument of connection between individuals with both shared and different cultural, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds (Gillespie et al. 2016) and finding new ways in which the details of journeys and experiences can be recorded. This concept is further elaborated by Mezzadra who, in his work: ‘Digital mobility, logistics, and the politics of migration’ (2017), explains how social media and general access to the internet (e.g. through 4G/5G broadband cellular networks etc.) is vital for many migrants to navigate through new

90  Silvio Carta et al. territories. This infrastructural network supports migrants not only with useful (more often vital) information about wayfinding, but, more importantly, through an extensive network of friends and contacts that help by ‘constantly exchanging information and knowledge’ (Mezzadra 2017, 1). The notion of continuous connection through digital devices like smartphones (SánchezQuerubín and Rogers 2018) is clearly defined by authors like Dekker et al. (2018) as ‘smart refugee’, Smets (2018), and Diminescu with her notion of the ‘connected migrant’ (Diminescu 2012). Diminescu describes the ‘network of belongings’ that each individual carries with them while moving. ‘Our social life is deeply rooted in mobile technologies. Whether we are concerned with communication, information or access, these terminals that we wear about ourselves interconnect us, give us access to different services (transportation, banking, traffic, monitoring) and to different spaces. They are the material support of our connection to our spheres of belonging – urban, national, banking, social, familial, and so on. The portability of the networks of belonging is a feature of all our lives. Migrant or non-migrant, practically everyone finds themselves subject to a logic of access: to circulate, to take money out of the bank, to get medical care, to enter one’s home, to call, etc.’ (Diminescu 2012, 573). When combined with several sources (e.g. Twitter geo-location) and datasets, tracing data that describes refugees’ journeys can become helpful in finding new insights into their experience of travel (Kaufmann 2020). Recently there are a number of promising studies in which researchers are developing new methods to make sense of such data (cf. Gillespie et al. 2018). For example, the work carried out by Chi and colleagues (2020) offers a new way to quantitatively assess migration intended as movement through countries and territories. In this type of work, new algorithms are developed to better understand data coming from tracing movements of people in and out of different countries and political jurisdictions. Considerations about advanced technologies and their application to migrant studies are helping to reconsider current political and physical borders. For example, the work of Madianou and colleagues (2020) on ‘The Biometric lives of migrants: borders, discrimination and (in)justice’ is helpful in pointing out critical aspects of our current understanding of the notion of digital identities and borders. Through an investigation of the ontology of biometric data (personal data related to body and behavioural characteristics including facial patterns, fingerprints etc.) and their current use, Madianou and colleagues’ work addresses the extent to which ‘biometric technologies challenge traditional notions of the physical border and what are the implications for the surveillance of and intervention on marginalized groups?’ (Madianou et al. 2020, 2). If the current notion of (physical) border is questioned, inevitably the idea of place is to be reconsidered, especially in light of the extensive and

Digital and Physical Spaces in Informal Settlements  91 growing digital activity of people online. In her work, Saskia Witteborn (2021) suggests that there is an increasing importance of the notion of digital place, especially when we consider migrants’ experience: ‘transnational migrants use social media to create a sense of past, present, and aspirational future’ (Witteborn 2021, 640). Migrants’ digital space is characterized by a series of challenges that include ‘the importance of viewing migrant agency in relation to the agency of digital data, accounting for human and nonhuman actors in placemaking processes, and studying the intersections of embodied and digital practices’ (Witteborn 2021, 643). 5.8.1  Mapping: A Powerful and (Not Yet) Perfect Tool Refugees and people on the move can face significant communication challenges in their journey through Europe. Visual and graphical ­ languages can be significantly powerful in helping communications among different groups of people. In general, the use of non-textual (or drawing-­ based) forms of communication (e.g. questionnaires) has been proved ­successful  in  many  applications, especially in learning and teaching (e.g. Reynolds-Keefer and Johnson 2011) and psychology (Roos af Hjelmsäter et al. 2014). In general terms, we recognize that mapping is a successful tool that can be used with refugees, and more broadly with any person on the move. Part of this success lies in the fact that maps provide visual cues and, as such, elicit non-verbal communication. As a visual platform of communication exchange, maps translate knowledge and experience into graphic form, helping people to express their stories. Maps work on two communicative levels. The first one is ‘person-to-person’, whereby, as seen in the examples in Calais, refugees are able to tell their stories to other people, including other refugees, workers and volunteers. Maps are a very useful tool to share information through a (geo)graphical language (Xu et al. 2015). People with different languages, cultural and social backgrounds can meet in front of a basic map (that suggests political and physical boundaries of territories) and share their stories and experiences. The second level can be defined as ‘person-to-self’, as it helps individuals to trace their journey through different territories and places. As seen in the examples in this chapter, maps can provide geographical and physical dimensions to personal experiences. They can help to understand, measure and therefore quantify the extent of each one’s personal journey, providing territorial measures and qualities, including direction, length, orientation, crossing etc. In Calais, refugees made their own maps over existing ones, for some offering the imaginative potential to rearrange borders. By examining existing maps, tracing and drawing new layers onto new maps, new layers of information and knowledge may also be generated, representing an

92  Silvio Carta et al. individual journey and transition through Europe. Individuals can discover where they have been, what they have seen, and match a personal, subjective and often scattered experience of place to a clear, subjective and measurable dimension. In this way, their own knowledge of place and space acquired through the journey is somehow augmented by a common set of references that can be used to share stories and information. While we identified mapping as a successful and powerful tool to facilitate communication and translation of spatial experiences of refugees and their journeys, we would like to emphasize that mapping is not universally (and uniformly) successful. There are still groups that are partially excluded from a direct communication and access through mapping. This is the case of, for example, children (Hodes 2000) (specifically girls) and young women (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2010) due to language and cultural barriers making younger children more vulnerable to emotional distress than older children as suggested by Van Loenen et al. (2017) and Sourander (1998). Language and cultural barriers can result in serious emotional and psychological long-term problems, including anxiety, depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) (Derluyn and Broekaert 2007). The growing use of digital technologies (Leurs and Smets 2018, Ullrich 2017) seems to suggest a possible way to improve communication and understanding with refugees, making their experience more inclusive. This would mean including migrants of all ages, gender, cultural, ethnic and socio-economic backgrounds, as well as health conditions. The notion of the smart refugee is presented here as a possible way forward. It also brings with it questions of ethics, negative implications with regards restrictions on personal freedoms as well as significant issues of digital access and inequality. Within the idea of everyone (that is also every refugee) being eventually utterly and seamlessly smart, each individual will be constantly tracked, as well as self-tracking. The map will move with each individual and will be drawn as people transit from place to place. Maps will be constantly in the making as mapping will take place synchronistically in the physical as well as in the digital environment. As in many gamified experiences, individuals can exist in the virtual environment through their avatars, communicate with each other in various ways, including graphical, and exchange information in different ways that do not necessarily require verbal languages.

Notes 1 Art Refugee’s ongoing programmes take place in the UK and northern France while the charity is involved in shorter term interventions and research projects in other settings. The project described in this section was conducted by Miriam Usiskin, Bobby Lloyd and other members of the team as a part of their on-going work with people displaced in Calais. 2 https://www.facebook.com/artrefugeuk/

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94  Silvio Carta et al. Lloyd, B., and M. Usiskin. “Reimagining an emergency space: practice innovation within a frontline art therapy project on the France-UK border at Calais”. International Journal of Art Therapy 25, no. 3 (2020): 132–142. doi: 10.1080/ 17454832.2020.1786417. Lynch K. The image of the city. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960. Madianou, M., L. Dencik, C. Aradau, L. Taylor, P. Metcalfe, and S. Perret. The Biometric Lives of Migrants: Borders, Discrimination and (In) Justice. AoIR Selected Papers of Internet Research, 2020. Mainwaring, Ċetta, and Noelle Brigden. “Beyond the border: Clandestine migration journeys.” (2016): 243–262. Mezzadra, Sandro. “Digital mobility, logistics, and the politics of migration.” Spheres: Journal for Digital Cultures 4, (2017): 1–4. Reynolds-Keefer, Laura, and Robert Johnson. “Is a picture worth a thousand words? Creating effective questionnaires with pictures.” Practical Assessment, Research & Evaluation 16 (2011): 1–6. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1261&context=pare Roos af Hjelmsäter, Emma, et al. “‘Mapping’ deception in adolescents: Eliciting cues to deceit through an unanticipated spatial drawing task.” Legal and Criminological Psychology 19, no. 1 (2014): 179–188. Sánchez-Querubín, Natalia, and Richard Rogers. “Connected routes: Migration studies with digital devices and platforms.” Social Media+ Society 4, no. 1 (2018): 2056305118764427. Schapendonk, Joris. “Turbulent trajectories: African migrants on their way to the European Union.” Societies 2, no. 2 (2012): 27–41. Smets, K. “The way Syrian refugees in Turkey use media: Understanding “connected refugees” through a non-media-centric and local approach.” Communications 43, no. 1 (2018): 113–123. Sourander, Andre. “Behavior problems and traumatic events of unaccompanied refugee minors.” Child Abuse & Neglect 22, no. 7 (1998): 719–727. Squire, Vicki, et al. Crossing the Mediterranean Sea by boat: Mapping and documenting migratory journeys and experiences. Coventry, UK: University of Warwick, 2017. Tazzioli, Martina. “Which Europe?. Migrants’ uneven geographies and countermapping at the limits of representation.” Movements. Journal for Critical Migration and Border Regime Studies 1, no. 2 (2015): 1–20. https://research.gold. ac.uk/id/eprint/30960/1/04.tazzioli--europe-migrants-geographies-counter­ mapping-representation.pdf Ullrich, Maria. “Media Use During Escape. A Contribution to Refugees’ Collective Agency.” Spheres: Journal for Digital Cultures 4, (2017): 1–11. UNHCR. And Bureau for Europe. “Ensuring Gender Sensitivity in the Context of Refugee Status Determination and Resettlement.” October 2015. Accessed October 27, 2019. https://www.refworld.org/docid/43e73af14.html UNHCR. “United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees 2018.” Reliefweb. Accessed in October 20, 2019. https://reliefweb.int/map/world/ arrivals-refugees-and-migrants-europe-2019-dg-echo-daily-map-18102019 Usiskin, M., B. Lloyd, and N. Press. “Temporary, portable and virtual, making galleries on the France-UK border at Calais”. In Art therapy in museums and galleries, edited by H. Jury, Alison Cole and Jessica Kingsley. 2020.

Digital and Physical Spaces in Informal Settlements  95 Van Loenen, Tessa, et al. “Primary care for refugees and newly arrived migrants in Europe: a qualitative study on health needs, barriers and wishes.” The European Journal of Public Health 28, no. 1 (2017): 82–87. Witteborn, Saskia. “Digital placemaking and the datafication of forced migrants.” The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies 1, no. 2 (2021): 1–12. doi: 10.1177/13548565211003876. Xu, Ying, Carleen Maitland, and Brian Tomaszewski. “Promoting participatory community building in refugee camps with mapping technology.” Proceedings of the Seventh International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development. ACM, 2015. Yeager, Charles D., and Thomas Steiger. “Applied geography in a digital age: The case for mixed methods.” Applied Geography 39, (2013): 1–4.

Section 2

Seeking Refuge in Global South Camps

SEEKING REFUGE IN GLOBAL SOUTH CAMPS 6. ACCOMMODATING INFORMALITY IN THE SPATIAL PLANNING OF THE KALOBEYEI REFUGEE SETTLEMENT, KENYA Cory Rodgers, Refugee Studies Center, (University of Oxford) & Ekai Nabenyo (Maseno University) 7. UNDERSTANDING THE EVERYDAY MOVEMENTS OF SOUTH SUDANESE REFUGEES IN UGANDA Ryan Joseph O’Byrne_Post-Doctoral Researcher | Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa (London School of Economics and Political Science) 8. THE EPHEMERAL AS AN INSTRUMENT OF URBAN DESIGN AND PLANNING Nusrat Jahan Mim / Rahul Mehrotra (Harvard University)

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Accommodating Informality in the Spatial Planning of the Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement, Kenya Cory Rodgers and Ekai Nabenyo

Motorbike taxis await customers at one of the main markets in the Kakuma refugee camp, Kenya. Credit: KANERE news

Many refugees around the world are stuck in situations of protracted displacement for years or even decades. While most find themselves in cities, a large minority reside in camps. Critical scholarship has described camps as ‘technologies of care and control’ (Malkki 1992, 34), where refugees are contained within a centralized location, provided with the basic necessities needed to survive, and segregated from wider economic opportunities and social networks. In this way, camps are said to reduce refugees to ‘bare life’ (Agamben 1998), wherein ‘the mere biological fact of life is prioritized over the way a life is lived’ (Katz 2017).

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100  Cory Rodgers and Ekai Nabenyo Those responsible for refugee protection have long recognized that better planning can contribute to better conditions in camps. An early example was the INTERTECT project, which in the early 1970s brought together engineers and planners to identify strategies for improving the management and cost-effectiveness of refugee camps (Cuny 1977). But there has more recently been a turn to urban planning in camps. This reflects a growing recognition that camps often outgrow their short-term role as places of aid distribution and survival; over time, they take on the characteristics of towns or cities (Montclos and Kagwanja 2000) and become ‘a “normal” part of the regional socio-economic landscape’ (Jansen 2016). Urban planning has therefore been adopted as one way of making camps into places where displaced people can not only survive but thrive. One high profile application of urban planning in a context of encampment is the Kalobeyei Settlement in north-western Kenya. Opened in 2016 just kilometers away from the 30-year-old Kakuma refugee camp, it was hailed as a novel alternative to the conventional approach to refugee encampment. Rather than the ‘care and maintenance’ model that is typical of most camps, the vision for the new settlement was to support self-reliance among both refugees and locals and to promote their integration within a shared economy and social environment. The settlement would be constructed according to a detailed master plan developed with support from the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), which would regulate land use, building construction and economic activity. Whereas the Kakuma camp evolved over decades of ad hoc expansion driven by

An aerial view of the Kakuma camp. Credit: Cory Rodgers.

Informality in Spatial Planning of Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement  101 the immediacy of ever-changing humanitarian priorities, the settlement would be implemented according to an urban design approach in pursuit of longer-term social and economic objectives. Taking the Kalobeyei Settlement as a case study, this chapter documents the use of spatial planning to improve sustainability, livability and social integration in contexts of refugee encampment. Insights are drawn from seven multi-week field visits between 2015 and 2022. Fieldwork included a mix of key informant interviews, structured interviews, focus group interviews, and unstructured ‘hanging out’. Our aim is not to make a final assessment of the successes and failures of spatial planning in the Kalobeyei Settlement. For one, it is too early to make such a determination. Second, if aided by both a healthy dose of scepticism and the privilege of hindsight, we can see clearly that the original vision for the Kalobeyei Settlement was overly over-ambitious. Refugees in the new settlement face the same legal restrictions on their rights to movement, employment and property ownership as in the Kakuma camp. Innovations in spatial design can provide some modest improvements but cannot compensate for constraints imposed on their fundamental rights by Kenya’s refugee laws. Rather, by comparing the informal emergence of complex communities in Kakuma with the attempts to generate a ‘hybrid community’ in Kalobeyei, we consider the role of design in pursuing social objectives such as integration. Social processes are frustrating to planners because they are often messy, unpredictable, and resistant to anticipatory design. But this messiness is a product of human agency, and if urban planning is unable to accommodate it, it is at risk of becoming paternalistic, ‘camouflaging control under what seems to be well-intended and sensitive planning’ (Dalal et al. 2018). Through our case study of spatial planning at the Kalobeyei Settlement, we examine the degree to which planners were able to respond to unanticipated and uncontrollable factors, including the unregulated workings of informal economies and the unregulatable preferences of the local population. The comparative perspective is important for this study because the value of formal designs must be assessed against what happens in their absence. As noted above, camps that endure for decades often take on the features of an urban center, even in the absence of planning (Jansen 2018). Spatial planning in the Kalobeyei Settlement must be considered in light of the organic forms of urban growth that have shaped the older Kakuma Camp. So this chapter asks: of the objectives envisioned for urban planning in the Kalobeyei Settlement, which of these had already been realised in the unplanned context of Kakuma?

6.1 A New Approach in Kalobeyei The vision for the new Kalobeyei Settlement reflects long-standing recognition of the problems of encampment, which were only relatively recently

102  Cory Rodgers and Ekai Nabenyo acknowledged in UNHCR policy. In 2014, UNHCR published its Policy on Alternatives to Camps, arguing for less restrictive work and business regulations on refugees and increased integration into host communities and their economies. While acknowledging that ‘it [may be] necessary to set up camps to ensure protection and save lives’, the document calls for camps to be treated as ‘the exception and, to the extent possible, a temporary measure’ (UNHCR 2014, 6). Where possible, camps should be phased out immediately after an emergency, and self-settlement in cities should be treated as a legitimate option for refugees. However, encampment is often a matter not only of humanitarian policy but national law. For many host governments, camps play a regulatory function (Newhouse 2015; Oliver 2017). Refugees are sometimes seen as foreign security threats, and so encampment policies are intended to keep them contained and under surveillance. In other situations, refugees are seen as political threats, and encampment prevents them from seeking employment and accessing national social services, which may raise the ire of citizens. So long as the response to protracted displacement is protracted encampment, camps will necessarily need to accommodate not only the bare necessities of biological survival but the complex human needs of social and cultural life. Where cessation of encampment is not politically feasible, the Alternatives to Camps document calls for a re-thinking of the conventional refugee camp. Specifically, it proposes constructing sustainable settlements that ‘build linkages between the camp and host communities and anchor the camp within the local economy, infrastructure and national social protection and service delivery systems’ (UNHCR 2014, 6). This reflects a long-standing interest in leveraging international aid to support local development, which was promoted as early as the 1970s under the banner of ‘refugee aid and development’ (Crisp 2001). Recast as socio-economic integration, this agenda was used to garner funding from donor countries to support the development of the Kalobeyei Settlement. In promotional documents, the concept for the new settlement was cast in contrast to the nearby Kakuma refugee camp. Established in 1992 in response to the arrival of people displaced by the Second Sudanese Civil War, Kakuma has become one of the most well-known refugee camps in the world. Refugees in Kakuma receive free food, medical treatment, psycho-social services, and education, but the Kenyan government restricts their right to work and freedom of movement. Over the past 30 years, the Kakuma camp has expanded to accommodate over 200,000 people, with sizeable representation from at least nine nationalities. Much of this expansion was unplanned, which the Advisory Development Plan for the new settlement identified as a problem in need of redress:

Informality in Spatial Planning of Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement  103 The approach adopted over the years has been based on the assumption that the refugee situation is ‘temporary’ and that the solution for displacement would be found soon. However, with the currently indefinite displacement situation continuing, it became clear that the current form of settlement is not tailored to the needs, situation and prospects of both refugees and host communities. (UN-Habitat 2018, 14) In the Advisory Plana and associated documents, the Kakuma camp was cast as a foil to the concept for the new Kalobeyei Settlement. Whereas Kakuma was taken as an exemplar of the problems of unplanned management— including environmental damage, inefficient land use, and divisive refugeehost relations—the new Kalobeyei Settlement would be based on long-term planning in pursuit of socio-economic integration between refugees and the local population. The new site was to be developed such that 60,000 refugees and members of the host community could settle in an accessible, vibrant and functional settlement, complete with adequate social and physical infrastructure and a diversity of economic opportunities (UN-Habitat 2018, 14). Residents would be supported to build permanent stone houses with small kitchen



104  Cory Rodgers and Ekai Nabenyo gardens, arranged in compounds where neighbours share communal spaces with solar lighting and outdoor latrines. The distinctiveness of the new site comes with substantial caveats. Despite the insistence of UNHCR and its partners that the ‘settlement approach’ in Kalobeyei differs from the ‘refugee camp approach’ that has long prevailed in Kenya,1 the legal basis of the new Settlement is no different from the camps that preceded it. All are governed by the same national policy of encampment. Refugees in Kakuma are required by law to reside there and may only travel outside the area with a travel permit issued by the Refugee Affairs Secretariat (RAS). The settlement provides no additional freedom of movement or rights to employment than the camp. What is distinctive is the focus on spatial planning, which is included as Component Five of the corresponding development plan (UNHCR 2018).

6.2 Planned Urbanization UN-Habitat’s spatial plan for the Kalobeyei Settlement was developed through a participatory process involving co-leadership by the County Government as well as working groups from both the refugee and host communities. The plan was written in accordance with national laws and policies, local development plans in Turkana County, and international principles. Key among the latter was Sustainable Development Goal Number 11, which calls for cities and human settlements that are ‘inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable’. Whereas the Kakuma camp took shape without any overarching site plan, urban growth across the 1,500 hectares of the Kalobeyei Settlement would be designed and regulated. As laid out in the Advisory Development Plan (UN-Habitat 2018), public space is allocated to ensure that there is adequate area for streets, agriculture, and social areas like parks and sports pitches. This planning is given structure by specific ratios for the different kinds of space: streets should take up 30–35% of the space in the settlement, open spaces should take up 15%, and the remaining 50% is for plots. As one staff member explained, ‘you have to define the public spaces, including streets as well as open areas for recreation and social interaction’, for which there is limited available space in the Kakuma camp. The site development plan organizes housing structures into compounds, with a target population density that compromises between the space required for urban agriculture and the objective of preventing urban sprawl. In order to make the settlement vibrant and livable, the site plan is designed for both external and internal connectivity. Connections between the settlement and the nearby towns, as well as the Kakuma camp, were to be facilitated by a public transport system. Within the settlement, site planning would ensure walkability, meaning that schools, markets, community spaces and public amenities are all located within a 500 m radius of most people’s homes.

Informality in Spatial Planning of Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement  105 The site planning has clearly achieved some of its more immediate goals. Houses are organized into compounds with enough space for small urban gardens, which have been found to have a moderate positive impact on household food security (Betts et al. 2018). The World Bank’s socioeconomic surveys from 2018 and 2019 show that residents of the Kalobeyei Settlement view night-time security more positively than residents of the Kakuma camp. However, not everything has gone according to plan. While the layout of housing was well planned, the plan for business development was less well coordinated. UN-Habitat had proposed a phased scheme for the incubation of businesses at a small market area that emerged around the WFP’s site for in-kind food distribution. The plan was that food distribution would eventually turn to virtual food vouchers, after which no physical distribution point would be required. In parallel to this, the businesses in this nascent market area would be required to disperse throughout the settlement. This was in line with UN-Habitat’s attempt to support walkability, with a shop located within close proximity to most households. The County Government was expected to take a leading role in urban governance. However, there was inconsistent enforcement of urban planning rules, and so refugee entrepreneurs largely established their businesses where they pleased. Without dispersal, the original market near the WFP’s food distribution point continued to develop into a bustling economic hub. But as



106  Cory Rodgers and Ekai Nabenyo one UN-Habitat staff member explained, ‘the Village 1 market was one of the most successful markets in the settlement, even though it went against the planning guidelines. It is possible that when the plan is reviewed, it should be changed to match what refugees are actually doing’. Not everyone was so flexible in their assessment; some planners saw the expansion of the market as a failure of enforcement and a problem for equitable access to shops. To some degree, flexibility was built into the Kalobeyei site plan. For example, the new settlement was designed with ‘a flexible commercial land use strategy’, in which most land can accommodate residential as well as economic purposes; ‘single-use blocks’ were intended to cover less than 10% of any neighborhood (UN-Habitat 2018, 101). But this flexibility was already implicit in the informal practices of business development in Kakuma, where people have long used their shelters for multiple economic purposes, from restaurants and shops to pharmacies and cinemas. Informal and semiformal mechanisms allowed people to erect new structures and trade or divide existing plots. Some degree of top-down regulation was provided by the Government of Kenya’s Refugee Affairs Secretariat (RAS, formerly the Department of Refugee Affairs). The RAS could take possession of any structure in the camp if it was erected in a prohibited area, or in an area required for public facilities and roads. On the downside, this arrangement limited refugees’ security of tenure. But more positively, it provided a semiofficial process for trading camp real estate.

6.3 Planned Integration Aside from livability, sustainability and security, one of the core goals of the new settlement is to promote social integration of the refugee and host communities, with a focus on ‘interaction spaces’ both within and outside of the settlement (Terada, Evans, and Mwaniki 2017). The integration agenda is, in part, an attempt to create more efficient system of service delivery wherein both refugees and national citizens can access education, health care, and other services and utilities through the same channels. It is also a response to pressure from the local host population, who have presented an array of grievances about the refugee camp, including the loss of riverine land, damage done to the local environment (especially the flora), and demands for jobs in the local aid economy (Ali and Ocha 2018; Aukot 2003; Montclos and Kagwanja 2000). In recognition that refugeecentric aid provision is politically infeasible in the long term, it has become increasingly accepted that the host community should share in the benefits of refugee aid (Rodgers 2021). The original model proposed to build a ‘hybrid community’, with refugees living side by side with nationals from the local host community. It was hoped that people from both demographics would be drawn to the integrated services, economic opportunities and improved housing on offer at the settlement. But in the end, few local Kenyans opted to move to the

Informality in Spatial Planning of Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement  107 settlement (Rodgers 2020). The population of Turkana County includes a substantial demographic of nomadic pastoralists, who rely on seasonal movements to sustain their herds. Sedentary urbanites, meanwhile, were already well established in existing communities with familiar neighbors. Some locals were suspicious of the idea of living together with refugees from unfamiliar places, and rumors circulated about bizarre customary practices, many of them based on misunderstandings and exaggerations. Others were simply concerned that the rapid influx of people in a new community would lead to an uptick in theft and other petty crimes. Even refugees from the Kakuma camp were hesitant to move to the new settlement, in part because they did not want to disrupt their existing community structures and social networks (Betts, Omata, and Sterck 2020). As UNHCR and its partners realized that co-residence of refugees and hosts was unlikely, they adjusted their strategy for promoting integration. One approach focused on incentivizing locals to visit markets, services and facilities in the settlement, which would serve as a ‘mixing point’ for refugees and hosts (UN-Habitat 2018, 120). While few hosts took up mixed residence with refugees, many moved to new villages nearby like Esikiriait, located just across the highway from the settlement. Some had formerly lived in Natukobenyo, the local name for the land on which the Kalobeyei Settlement was built. Others were newcomers who came to pursue economic opportunities in the settlement. Rather than residential compounds in the settlements, the commercial centers, schools and health care facilities were framed as points of interaction and exchange between the two communities. The increasing focus on economic forms of integration is also evident in the World Food Programme’s (WFP) retail engagement strategy. Although few Kenyans moved into the settlement as full-time residents, many opened shops in the camp. This included a number of traders registered to provide food under the WFP’s food voucher program, Bamba Chakula. Kenyan traders working in the settlement enjoy close contact with customers as well as refugee employees. In fact, many elected to save on transport costs by staying in the settlement during the week, returning to their permanent homes for the weekend. Some bring their families with them during the week, and their children go to school in the settlement. In effect, this has resulted in semi-permanent co-residence of refugees and a small number of nationals. In many ways, the promotion of economic interactions has been successful. However, again, these dynamics are not novel to the new settlement. In Kakuma, Turkana people have long enjoyed interactions with the local community, to whom they sold firewood, charcoal and locally sourced building materials. Many locals were employed as domestic workers or paid to carry water for refugee households and businesses (Oka 2011). And Kenyans have long operated businesses in the Kakuma camp, often providing goods to refugees on credit (Montclos and Kagwanja 2000).

108  Cory Rodgers and Ekai Nabenyo



Many of the ties that developed between refugees and locals at the Kakuma camps transcended the forms of interaction that can be promoted by economic schemes and social service planning. This includes inter-marriages as well as ‘bond-partnerships’, which are relations of mutual assistance developed through exchange of gifts and assistance (Ohta 2005). Churches and mosques provided another venue for emerging inter-communal relations. In many churches in Kakuma town, which is located on the opposite side of the Tarac River from the camp, refugees and local host community members pray in the same church each Sunday. One pastor explained how the Kenyans in his congregation actively reach out to Christians in the camp with invitations to join their church in town: ‘refugees could choose to pray as a group in the refugee camp, but they choose to come here… when they attend, they are treated just like Kenyans’. This was not the outcome of a formal integration agenda, but rather a decision made by a religious community to embrace solidarity in their place of worship. Such accounts fly in the face of descriptions of the camp as a bounded territory that isolates refugees from the local population. While there is good reason to critique encampment policies that aim at segregation

Informality in Spatial Planning of Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement  109

Pedestrians and motorbike taxis move along one of the main roads in the Kakuma camp. Wires criss-crossing the road connect shops and houses to a network of kerosene generators operated by informal energy suppliers. Credit: Kanere News.

and containment, it is also important to acknowledge the permeability of camp boundaries and the stubborn persistence of human sociality. A more realistic account of encampment usefully acknowledges the limited power of governments to institute divisive social categories in the name of containment, as well as the capacity of aid organizations to promote social connectivity and cohesion through formal programs and activities.

6.4 Conclusion Among the various ways that refugees can be accommodated in their host countries, camps are far from ideal. In the short-term, they provide an efficient means of responding to mass displacement. But over time, their role becomes more restrictive than protective. Urban planning offers a means to pursue some modest improvements in the livability, sustainability and security in camps. In the case of the Kalobeyei Settlement, refugees rated night-time security more positively than residents of the Kakuma camp. There has also been some success in promoting positive economic interactions between refugees and the local community. But refugees living in these spaces remain bound by legal constraints on their rights to movement, employment and property ownership. As Jansen writes, Moving beyond the metaphorical urban is problematic because the camp remains a camp, even if its materiality changes, or its longevity

110  Cory Rodgers and Ekai Nabenyo endures, but no political decision to ‘uncamp’ follows. The camp is still a decision to locate people in a certain architecture of control. (Jansen 2018, 9) Unlike in a city, where municipalities and city councils are accountable to their citizens, the agencies that plan and manage camps are primarily accountable to their funders. Spatial planning is therefore at risk of becoming a form of paternalistic control, if it is enforced too strictly. Planners must remain attentive to the messiness of social reality and find the right balance between regulation and recalibration. Indeed, some forms of regulation are simply outside planners’ control. In the Kalobeyei Settlement, the original vision for a hybrid community of refugees and nationals was discarded because local Kenyans were not interested in relocating en masse into the new settlement. Similarly, the County Government did not enforce some of the urban governance principles agreed in the site plan, which meant that emerging markets were more centralized than prescribed in the guidelines for ‘walkability’. As suggested by comments from some UN-Habitat employees, these alterations were not so much failures as reconfigurations, in which informal processes were incorporated into the planning process as the settlement unfolded. Some of the most impressive economic achievements in the Kalobeyei Settlement, such as the Village One market, can be attributed to unanticipated deviations from the original plan. Relatedly, it is arguable that the plans for Kalobeyei focused too much on what was wrong with Kakuma—and by consequence, what needed to change—and not enough on what was already working and could be better facilitated. The ethnographic literature suggests that the lived realities of camp residents always exceed the designs of humanitarian planners. Camps are spaces of not only care and maintenance, but also of political mobilization (Turner 2005), economic investment (Jansen 2016) and consumerism (Oka 2014). The temporal grid of water collection timetables and food distribution schedules are submerged within the unstructured flow of everyday life: meeting friends, playing games, sharing meals and swapping stories and gossip. Spatial plans that accommodate and facilitate these dynamics will be more successful in improving livability than those that attempt to control and direct human activity in the image of a preconceived design. The dichotomization of Kalobeyei and Kakuma was not only a misunderstanding but also an instrumental attempt to emphasize the innovativeness of the new settlement, which was a useful narrative during fundraising. But looking ahead, this seems to be giving way to a more unified approach. The Kalobeyei Integrated Social and Economic Development Plan (KISEDP) is now the guiding framework not only for the new settlement but for all of Turkana West sub-County. Moreover, UN-Habitat is now developing a strategy for ‘urban regeneration’ across the entirety of the refugee-hosting area. By May 2022, the County Assembly had already taken initial steps to confer

Informality in Spatial Planning of Kalobeyei Refugee Settlement  111 municipal status on the combined Kakuma-Kalobeyei complex, which would bring them together under a joint system of urban governance. As partners develop their strategy for urban regeneration, they should balance the implementation of new forms of regulation with attempts to accommodate the informal activities that have long provided livelihoods and driven growth for both refugees and Kenyans in this area. With a nod to Tim Ingold, it may be useful to think of urban governance not as a process of ‘designing’ but rather ‘facilitating’ urban growth: Far from standing aloof, imposing [our] designs on a world that is ready and waiting to receive them, the most [we] can do is to intervene in worldly processes that are already going on, and which give rise to the forms of the living world that we see all around us… adding [our] own impetus to the forces and energies in play. (Ingold 2013, 21)

Note 1 On the ‘Kalobeyei Settlement’ page of its official website, the UNHCR explains that ‘Kalobeyei represents a settlement approach, as opposed to refugee camp approach’ (https://www.unhcr.org/ke/kalobeyei-settlement).

References Agamben, Giorgio. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Ali, Jecinta Anomat, and Witchayanee Ocha. “East Africa Refugee Crisis: Causes of Tensions and Conflicts between the Local Community and Refugees in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya.” Journal of Social Science Studies 5, no. 1 (2018): 298. Aukot, Ekuru. “It Is Better to Be a Refugee Than a Turkana in Kakuma’: Revisiting the Relationship between Hosts and Refugees in Kenya.” Refuge 21, no. 3 (2003): 73–83. Betts, Alexander, Remco Geervliet, Claire Macpherson, Naohiko Omata, Cory Rodgers, and Olivier Sterck. Self-Reliance in Kalobeyei? Socio-Economic Outcomes for Refugees in North-West Kenya. Oxford: Refugee Studies Centre, 2018. Betts, Alexander, Naohiko Omata, and Olivier Sterck. “Self-Reliance and Social Networks: Explaining Refugees’ Reluctance to Relocate from Kakuma to Kalobeyei.” Journal of Refugee Studies 33, no. 1 (2020): 62–85. Crisp, Jeff. “Mind the Gap! UNHCR, Humanitarian Assistance and the Development Process.” New Issues in Refugee Research. Working Paper No. 43. (2001). Geneva. Cuny, Frederick C. “Refugee Camps and Camp Planning: The State of the Art.” Disasters 1, no. 2 (1977): 125–143. Dalal, Ayham, Amer Darweesh, Philipp Misselwitz, and Anna Steigemann. “Planning the Ideal Refugee Camp? A Critical Interrogation of Recent Planning Innovations in Jordan and Germany.” Urban Planning 3, no. 4 (2018): 64–78.

112  Cory Rodgers and Ekai Nabenyo Ingold, Tim. Making: Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture. London: Routledge, 2013. Jansen, Bram J. “Digging Aid’: The Camp as an Option in East and the Horn of Africa.” Journal of Refugee Studies 29, no. 2 (2016): 151–65. Jansen, Bram J. Kakuma Refugee Camp: Humanitarian Urbanism in Kenya’s Accidental City. London: Zed Books, 2018. Katz, Irit. “Between Bare Life and Everyday Life: Spatializing Europe’s Migrant Camps.” Architecture MPS 12, no. 1 (2017). Malkki, Lisa. “National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity Among Scholars and Refugees.” Cultural Anthropology 7, no. 1 (1992): 24–44. Montclos, Marc-Antoine Perous de, and Peter Mwangi Kagwanja. “Refugee Camps or Cities? The Socio-Economic Dynamics of the Dadaab and Kakuma Camps in Northern Kenya.” Journal of Refugee Studies 13, no. 2 (2000): 205–22. Newhouse, Léonie S. “More than Mere Survival: Violence, Humanitarian Governance, and Practical Material Politics in a Kenyan Refugee Camp.” Environment and Planning A 47, no. 11 (2015): 2292–2307. Ohta, Itaru. “Multiple Socio-Economic Relationships Improvised between the Turkana and Refugees in Kakuma Area, Northwestern Kenya.” In Displacement Risks in Africa, edited by I. Ohta and Y. D. Gebre, 315–337. Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2005. Oka, Rahul. “Unlikely Cities in the Desert: The Informal Economy as Causal Agent for Permanent ‘Urban’ Sustainability in Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya.” Urban Anthropology 40, no. ¾ (2011): 223–262. Oka, Rahul Chandrashekhar. “Coping with the Refugee Wait: The Role of Consumption, Normalcy, and Dignity in Refugee Lives at Kakuma Refugee Camp, Kenya.” American Anthropologist 116, no. 1 (2014): 23–37. Oliver, Kelly. Carceral Humanitarianism: Logics of Refugee Detention. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2017. Rodgers, Cory. “Hosting Refugees as an Investment in Development: Grand Designs versus Local Expectations in Turkana County, Kenya.” In Land, Investment & Politics: Reconfiguring East Africa’s Pastoral Drylands, edited by Jeremy Lind, Doris Okenwa, and Ian Scoones, 89–100. Martlesham: James Currey, 2020. ———. “The ‘Host’ Label: Forming and Transforming a Community Identity at the Kakuma Refugee Camp.” Journal of Refugee Studies 34, no. 2 (2021): 1859–1878. Terada, Yuka, David Evans, and Dennis Mwaniki. “Planning for the Integration of Refugee and Host Communities in Turkana County, Kenya.” Forced Migration Review 55, June (2017): 52–54. http://www.fmreview.org/sites/fmr/files/ FMRdownloads/en/shelter.pdf. Turner, Simon. “Suspended Spaces: Contesting Sovereignties in a Refugee Camp.” In Sovereign Bodies: Citizens, Migrants, and States in the Postcolonial World, edited by T Blom Hansen and F Stepputat, 312–332. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005. UN-Habitat. “Kalobeyei Settlement Advisory Development Plan (2016–2026): A Component of Kalobeyei Integrated Socio-Economic Development Programme, Turkana County, Kenya.” Nairobi, 2018. UNHCR. “Policy on Alternatives to Camps.” Geneva, 2014. ———. “Kalobeyei Integrated Socio-Economic Development Plan in Turkana West: Phase One (2018–2022)”, 2018.

7

Understanding the Everyday Movements of South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda Ryan Joseph O’Byrne

7.1 Introduction This chapter describes some of the many, everyday journeys undertaken by ordinary South Sudanese refugees displaced to Uganda and resettled within Palabek Refugee Settlement (PRS) in northern Uganda’s Lamwo District between 2017 and 2018. In doing so, this chapter will highlight the myriad movements undertaken by displaced people during and after conflict, as well as the many, complex reasons why and how they move. Based on 14 months ethnographic fieldwork within Palabek Refugee Settlement, as well as a longer personal history of research among South Sudanese in New Zealand (O’Byrne 2014b, 2014c, 2021a) as well as South Sudan (O’Byrne 2014a, 2017, 2021b; Storer et al., 2017), this chapter uses the ongoing movements of people displaced by violent conflict to take a longer and more wide-ranging view on the contemporary journeys of refugees. It will argue that the full range and complexity of these movements can only be fully conceptualised and understood when positioned within wider personal and historical perspectives and experiences (such as displacements caused by the violence of the Sudanese War (1955–1972), the Second Sudanese War (1983–2005), and especially the recently concluded (yet still fragile) South Sudanese Civil War (2013–2018)). In making this argument, the various ongoing, everyday movements of South Sudanese refugees which this chapter discusses also further demonstrates the general inadequacies underlying standard and rather simplistic yet widely held discourses about the processes of return and repatriation (cf. Hovil 2010; Kaiser 2010; Long 2010; Warner 1994). The ability to continue to move after or perhaps despite displacement is an essential survival strategy for many refugees (Monsutti 2008; Long 2010). This is especially true for those living close to neighbouring countries or in fragile climate-effected or conflict-ridden environments (Lubkemann 2016; Schapendonk & Steel 2014; Vancluysen 2022). Such continued postdisplacement movements have been recognised as a substantial component of South Sudanese livelihood strategies for several decades (Allen 1996; Hovil 2010; Kaiser 2010) and was perhaps most apparent following the

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-10

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114  Ryan Joseph O’Byrne Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA), which ended the Second Sudanese War in January 2005. Not all of these movements were a form of repatriation or other return migration, however, and even for those who did repatriate, the very fact of their repatriation following the CPA by no means stopped them from moving elsewhere in South Sudan or back and forth across international borders the region. The onwards movements that took place following post-CPA repatriation were especially common for the purposes of trade, employment, or education, both echoing historical journeys undertaken by South Sudanese in the past as well as prefiguring movements such as those I discovered in PRS during 2017 and 2018. Almost all the adult refugees I spoke with over the course of my 2017– 2018 fieldwork had already been refugees at least one previous time in their lives, often being displaced on three or (in one case) even four occasions. And despite these previous experiences, as well as the quite abhorrent violence of South Sudan’s most recent conflict, a sizeable proportion of these people continued to move not only throughout Uganda (their country of displacement) but also back and forth across the international border, just as they had done for the majority of their lives. In this way, just like the Afghani refugees with whom Monsutti (2008) worked, for many South Sudanese residents of PRS, ‘the leaving and coming back … [was] constant’ (Monsutti 2008: 59). Indeed, similarly to the participants in Monsutti’s Afghani fieldwork, most of the South Sudanese that I spoke with during my research moved in very much the same and for the same reasons during times of war as they did in periods of peace. Despite war and peace, people from this region have therefore always moved. However, although the overall experience of personal, familial, or communal movement has always been rather commonplace, the specific reasons behind the actual practice of those movements are much more multifaceted, often determined by a diverse array of local, regional, and international contexts (cf. Kaiser 2010: 54, 55). And more often than not, the dynamics of these movements reproduces the specific circumstances and trajectories of individuals’ own prior journeys (cf. Hovil 2010: 12–14; IRRI 2018b: 4) but also demonstrably ‘continu[es] … the mobility practices of earlier generations’ (Bjarnesen 2016: 61; cf. Vancluysen 2022). Despite the complex and multifaceted nature of the journeys that people in this region have always undertaken, however, most movements among displaced South Sudanese are seemingly assumed to be primarily livelihoods oriented. This does not mean livelihoods are not important, because they clearly are, but simply to acknowledge that other aspects of individual and familial continuity such as healthcare, schooling, spouses, and so on are just as significant as jobs or money. Thus, although it would be disingenuous to suggest that livelihood or economic concerns are not important reasons behind some of these movements – many are doubtlessly economic-based or livelihoods-focussed, after all – I would suggest that analyses which are solely (or perhaps even primarily) focussed upon livelihoods or economic

Everyday Movements of South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda  115 concerns cannot adequately account for the full range and reasons why people move, here or anywhere, displaced or not (cf. Monsutti 2008: 58, 59). In other words, the extensive range of sociocultural and relational connections maintained and encompassed by peoples’ mobility practices is wider than those generally recognised in most common humanitarianbased understandings of ‘livelihoods’. The issue is then, as Allen (1996: 7) has forcefully cautioned, that if analyses of migration and displacement does not account for the full array and complexity of the types, forms, and functions of journeys which people undertake, then such representations necessarily ‘give a false … impression that one is dealing with a simple and well circumscribed event rather than with an untidy process, involving multiple, and sometimes overlapping migrations in both directions’. It is therefore vital to give wider recognition to the full range and complexity refugees’ movements, not only regarding the practical needs of ensuring that the local, national, and international refugee response is appropriate to the task at hand, but also for the wider ethical concerns involved. Indeed, at this point it should now be expected that refugees not only engage in continued, onwards movements during their period of displacement but, moreover, that the ongoing practice of such types of further mobility will endure to take place long after their displacement ends (Long 2010: 36; cf. Monsutti 2008: 59). After all, as Ramadan (2013: 70) has argued, ‘in the absence of a durable solution to refugee status, migration and transnational networks may represent an “enduring” and effective livelihood strategy’.

7.2 Background Refugees from Uganda and Sudan/South Sudan have been hosted in the other country since the 1950s (Allen 1996: 226–228). Most displaced South Sudanese during this research resulted from the violence of the 2013–2018 South Sudanese Civil War, a conflict which killed hundreds of thousands (Checci et al. 2018) and displaced nearly four million more (OCHA 2016: 2), 860,000 of whom were at that time hosted in Uganda (UNHCR 2019a, 2019b). Uganda has been widely praised for its refugee policies, under which refugees are entitled to the same basic services as citizens, as well as some freedom of movement and rights to employment and business ownership. Such rights are often practically unavailable, however (IRRI 2018a: 4, 2018b: 7; Kaiser 2006: 601, 620; UNHCR 2019a: 6). This chapter focusses exclusively on the residents of Palabek Refugee Settlement (PRS), in the country’s northern Lamwo District. This settlement opened on 12 April 2017 following a sudden influx of South Sudanese refugees following an outbreak of fighting east of the Nile in late 2016 and early 2017 (UNHCR 2017: 1). At the time of fieldwork, the population of PRS grew from 34,000 at the end of 2018 to over 52,000 by the end of the following year (UNHCR 2019b), and although there were more than

116  Ryan Joseph O’Byrne 20 different South Sudanese ethnic groups present in the settlement, the vast majority were primarily Acholi- and Lotuko-speaking areas (UNHCR 2018) (Figure 7.1). The findings presented here are based on 12 months ethnographic fieldwork undertaken over 2017 and 2018. My interpretation of the anthropological method follows the intersubjective phenomenology articulated by Michael Jackson (1996: 9), who argues that ‘direct dialogue with others, afford[s] opportunities to explore knowledge … as an intersubjective process of sharing experience, comparing notes, exchanging ideas, and finding common ground’ (Jackson 1996: 9). A fundamental component of such a methodology is an understanding that ‘we build our ethnography by way of the relationships that we establish in the process’ (Finnström 2015: S224). As I have been working with Acholi speaking South Sudanese for over a decade, the findings I present are the result of deep interpersonal relationships built and maintained over a considerable period. As well as this intersubjective ethnography, participant observation was undertaken during food aid delivery across multiple Food Distribution Cycles (FDCs), a wide range of stakeholder meetings, the Refugee Welfare Council (RWC) elections in July and August 2018, and a number of community events or gatherings. Numerous formal, semi-formal, and informal interviews were also conducted, with NGO, OPM, and UNHCR employees as well as

Figure 7.1 T he main entrance to Palabek Refugee Settlement on my last day of fieldwork (November 2018).

Everyday Movements of South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda  117 members of the refugee and Ugandan communities. Further, 50 open-ended questionnaires about individual mobility were undertaken. 7.2.1 Cross-border Movement Among South Sudanese Refugees in Palabek It was apparent that cross border movements between Uganda and South Sudan continued throughout the recent conflict, despite large areas of South Sudan being unsafe. This research suggests that it was actually the regional variation in South Sudan’s wider conflict dynamics and the specific location and demographic composition of PRS which were the primary factors involved in the cross-border movements of many PRS-based refugees: not only did most PRS residents originate from the borderlands regions east of the Equatorian Nile but, as the border itself was only around 50km north of PRS, the very fact that ‘home’ remained both nearby and reasonably secure allowed many of the settlement’s residents to cross back and forth in relative safety. As mentioned earlier, most residents of PRS during 2017–2018 were from Acholi- and Lotuko-speaking areas of South Sudan (UNHCR 2018), communities that originated from areas of Eastern Equatoria relatively nearby or even adjacent to the Ugandan border. The proximity of PRS to the area of origin was therefore a key factor in the cross-border movements of many refugees, especially those from Magwi, Obbo, Pagee, Pajok, Palotaka, and other Acholi-speaking border communities. Although uncommon, it remained possible that refugees originating from these places could literally ‘walk back home’, much as they had walked into displacement. Unlike the Acholi, however, the Langi and Lotuko who composed the other main ethnic groups in PRS came from a much larger, famine and drought stuck but relatively more conflict-safe area further east in Eastern Equatoria, beginning in the eastern foothills of the Imatong ranges and extending as far as the Ethiopian and Kenyan borders. These refugees often had to pay significant amounts to local Lotuko vehicle owners for safe transport to the Ugandan border from their areas of origin in the further reaches of Eastern Equatoria and, due to the general lack of money or income generating activities within PRS over my fieldwork, generally could not afford to engage in temporary or irregular returns to their former communities (Figure 7.2). Thus, opportunities afforded by this combination of proximity and (relative) peace meant that, even if not entirely predictable or everyday, cross-border mobility among some (generally Acholi) refugees in PRS definitely took place with great regularity throughout my fieldwork. Furthermore, following the largely positive developments in the Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) peace initiative over the second half of 2018, such movements actually became increasingly common as my fieldwork progressed, with many refugees who had said – in 2017 or early 2018 – that they would not return

118  Ryan Joseph O’Byrne

Figure 7.2 Public bus and private vehicle, two of the most common ways a refugee in Palabek might undertake a journey (October 2018).

to South Sudan in the near future actually taking part in one or more crossborder journeys by the time the year had ended (cf. Schots & Smith 2019; Vancluysen 2022). When asked about the rationale which prompted them to return across the border, South Sudanese in PRS produced a range of personal, familial, sociocultural, political, and economic reasons. In this way the underlying drivers for their movement were diverse and multifaceted, eliding easy categorisation, much as they were for Afghani refugees displaced across central Asia in Monsutti’s seminal research (2008: 59). Indeed, often there were multiple divergent reasons driving any one specific journey while, on the other hand, seemingly distinct and unrelated movements were shown to be interlinked when subjected to deeper analysis. The most common reasons that Palabek residents gave for their cross-border movements were to visit friends and family, to collect objects left behind, to engage in trade or other business, to access gardens and engage in horticulture, to gather information about possible future repatriation, and to attend a funeral or accompany a body returning for burial (cf. Hovil: 2010: 6; Kaiser 2010: 52; REACH 2018a: 4).

Everyday Movements of South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda  119 Here I wish to highlight just two noteworthy examples for how personal, historical, cultural and regional factors intersect to drive mobility among local populations, whether displaced or not. Firstly, there is the rise in people moving across the border to engage in horticultural practices in June and July, a movement which coincides with the annual ‘short dry’ period when people from most rural communities across the region generally begin preparing for the year’s second agricultural season. This second growing season is absolutely vital in maintaining household food security in communities across the borderlands, as the November and December harvests for the crops sown during this period occur just before the threeto-four-month dry period between December and March. No matter where they live or whether or not they are eligible for refugee status, then, it is no overstatement to suggest that large sections of the regional populace depend on crops planted in June and July for their food security later in the year. Therefore, the movement of a number refugees back to familial gardens in South Sudan echo and reproduce the same seasonally based, agriculturally defined movements that had distinguished their pre-refugee lives (cf. REACH 2018a: 4, 5), during which time entire families would move for a period of several weeks to small temporary shelter in their bush gardens to best maximise the productivity of their second growing season – and thus try to best enable their continued survival. Similarly noteworthy is that some of the most significant movements in a refugee’s life are not at first necessarily obvious, nor perhaps even expected: for example, those relating to life’s end. Along with gardening, which was definitely more temporally defined in its practice, death-related mobility was probably the single most common reason I was given as to why someone might ‘go back home’, especially before the settling of the R-ARCSS peace accord in September 2018. Indeed, death-related mobility was such a common driver among PRS returnees that I feel compelled to suggest that ‘returning’ a body to its native soil, to be buried where it ‘belongs’, must be among the important yet underappreciated facets of refugees’ mobility, at least in this region. Even leaving aside the widespread cultural idea of a person’s spirit continuing to exist after their physical death (cf. O’Byrne 2017), a further element which could be considered when analysing the ways and reasons for the movement of a person across the course of the life (and afterlife), such death-related movements importantly demonstrate the myriad of ways in which refugees continue to engage in active, agencyfuelled place-making practices: by acting where possible to return their deceased, they take advantage of the opportunities and paradoxes within local governance regimes to temporarily visit areas of origin and belonging. In this way, continuity of life, meaning, and connection are maintained, despite other uncertainties. Moreover, such death-related movements also generally incorporated many of the other sociocultural and relational concerns underlying people’s movement. Thereby, someone who might

120  Ryan Joseph O’Byrne travel back to South Sudan to accompany a body for burial would also meet friends and family, collect a few items left behind when they fled, and engage in some small-scale before returning back across the border to the refugee settlement in Uganda. As well as the sociocultural and relational concerns just discussed, there were also obvious class dimensions to the ways in which refugees in Palabek crossed the border. Especially for members of the Acholi ethnicity who originated from areas immediately beside the border, cross-border movement was most common among people located at both extremes of the class spectrum and demonstrated a distinctive class profile: on the one hand, while some with dependable access to vehicular transport and a reliable supply of desirable trade goods are involved in international business, most migrants crossed the border out of sheer desperation, induced by uncertainties around the inadequate service provision within the settlement. Such patterns were particularly noticeable during a period from late 2017 to mid-2018, when the settlement was noticeably struck by was a definite food shortage but before the R-ARCSS initiative brought a more widespread and generalised ability to return in September 2018. What these class-based patterns largely meant was that those refugees with the means and resources to engage in international trade – either through their own personal wealth or via their ability to mobilise resources from among friends and family who had gained third country resettlement during one of the country’s previous conflicts – could exploit the opportunities which conflict and resettlement invariably present to the lucky few and then use these for their own personal and familial advantage. Such returnees demonstrate that, no matter one’s refugee status, mobility is not only possible but can even be leveraged for its inherent benefits. For those with the means to engage in such trade, mobility and wealth were therefore mutually reinforcing. However, the people actually able to engage in repeated, profitable border movements were very few, and, as they could also mobilise resources not readily available to many refugees, one should be wary in over generalising from their experiences. The movements of those at the other end of the class spectrum to these international businesspeople seemed more common, however. They were certainly more openly discussed. This was especially true for that period between late 2017 and mid-2018 that I mentioned earlier, during which time the settlement’s food rations seemingly rarely provided in an adequate, reliable, or timely fashion, a crucial oversight on the part of the settlement’s governance and humanitarian actors, given that the vast majority of residents depended upon their designated food aid simply to survive. Given the basic parameters of the refugee protection mandate, timely, problemfree food distribution seems like it should be among any refugee operation’s most fundamental activities. In PRS over 2017 and early 2018, however, this was simply not the case and lack of food was consistently cited as the single greatest concern of most residents, with missing or delayed food aid

Everyday Movements of South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda  121 being one of the defining features of settlement life and – I was repeatedly told – the primary reason people returned to South Sudan (Figure 7.3). Indeed, it seemed that the majority of people who moved during the February to April part of this period – one coinciding not only with the height of the dry season’s annual food scarcity but also with the worst few months of shortages induced by irregular or missing food aid – also seemed among the most peripheral of the refugee community. For many of the most marginalised individuals, life in PRS was simply too fragile to be bearable: despite their prima facie status, they had either failed to officially register with the OPM or could not afford the bribe money necessary to do so (cf. Ogeno & O’Byrne 2018) and, unable to afford life in the settlement without food, health services, or other humanitarian assistance, were driven by sheer desperation back to the uncertainty of life in South Sudan. Rather than beneficial or even glorious, as it often was for those with the resources to engage in gardening or trade, the mobility of the marginal was dangerous, always holding the potential for serious setback or even death. 7.2.2 Complicating Stories About Movement Among South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda Not all the journeys upon which refugees embark involve crossing a border, however, and the majority of those undertaken by PRS residents during the

Figure 7.3 Food aid delivery during December 2017.

122  Ryan Joseph O’Byrne course of my 2017–2018 fieldwork actually meant travelling to somewhere else within Uganda. Although this might sometimes be simply for the day, such as when someone travels to a nearby town to buy or sell goods, because refugees in Uganda are legally entitled to freedom of movement it could be for a stay of one or more nights, such as when someone is hospitalised or travels to visit family in a different area. Indeed, on any given day there will be a number of people transiting backwards and forwards for health or business reasons between the main northern towns of Kitgum or Gulu and their homes in Palabek. In fact, internal journeys of multiple days’ duration can even last for more extended periods: for example, many teenagers take part in secondary education in one of a number of boarding schools in northern or central Uganda, just as they had done before they had been forced to flee South Sudan, and the seasonal rhythms in the patterns of these children’s movements is that of the Ugandan education system rather than the annual agricultural cycle. As noted earlier, many residents of PRS had previously been made refugees during the First or Second Sudanese Wars. Due to these experiences, most Acholi-speaking adults in PRS have previously lived in at least one Ugandan refugee settlement and, despite their previous repatriations following the cessation of those conflicts, a number actually continued to maintain houses, farms, families, or businesses in or nearby the settlements in which they had once lived. This is particularly true for the area around Kiryandongo Refugee Settlement in Bweyale District, central Uganda, home to significant numbers of Acholi South Sudanese during the 1990s and 2000s (Kaiser 2006, 2010). Although most Kiryandongo residents repatriated between 2005 and 2011 following the signing of the CPA and the end of the Second Sudanese War, some remained while others self-settled in the area around nearby Bweyale town. Visits to friends and family remaining in that region thereby make up a sizeable portion of the Ugandan-based movements of PRS’s Acholi-speaking refugees (cf. REACH 2018a: 5) (Figure 7.4). Refugees do not solely move due to the needs of their present lives, however: obviously, when considering the possibility of moving, the people involved will generally think about their needs, fears, and hopes for the future (cf. Hovil 2010; Kaiser 2010). Such considerations understandably take place whether the intended journey is the simple matter of a motorcycle trip to the nearest village to visit a market as much as if the journey is one involving travel across the country to visit friends and family or across the international border to their country of origin. Indeed, many South Sudanese continue to move to and from various Ugandan locations for a variety of often mundane reasons during the course of their everyday lives, and the same is true of those who remain in South Sudan, just as it is for the Ugandans who the refugees live among. Moreover, many residents of PRS have left the settlement to visit compatriots in various parts of Uganda during their current displacement, sometimes on multiple occasions. Once again, most of these cases mirror the personal, familial, and communal

Everyday Movements of South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda  123

Figure 7.4 A rather typical Acholi household, whether Ugandan or South Sudanese, refugee or otherwise (March 2018).

experiences of movement which many South Sudanese have undertaken in the recent past and present. By the end of my fieldwork in November 2018, for assorted reasons – including safety and security as well as the need to harvest crops from the second growing season and the promise of better road conditions during the start of the approaching dry season – both internal and international mobility among PRS residents seemed to occur at the highest rate of all my fieldwork. Even at this point, however, individual and communal analyses about personal security and the stability of peace were generally still the most important factors considered when planning a potential future return to South Sudan. Concerns about personal safety and the wider security situation were obviously always given extra significance when considering such journeys, of course, as it was largely due to violence that most of PRS’s residents had become refugees. Therefore, I was told by nearly everyone I spoke with that their – and indeed most residents’ – plans for repatriation or other long-term return to South Sudan in the future depended entirely upon the continuing success of the R-ARCSS peace initiative.

124  Ryan Joseph O’Byrne Although several previous attempts had been made to end the South Sudanese Civil War, there was something intangible about the structure or timing of the R-ARCSS which led many PRS residents to consider that this ceasefire might actually work. From what I can gather, the first reports back about the nature and quality of the R-ARCSS from friends or family on the ground generally only seemed to confirm this, and it is undeniable that, after the R-ARCSS was eventually signed in September 2018, refugees from PRS almost immediately began returning across the border in greater numbers. In fact, although the following fell outside my official fieldwork time in Palabek, friends and informants in the settlement later informed me that a number of people had remained in South Sudan for quite lengthy periods of time over the November 2018 – March 2019 dry season. According to my contacts on the ground in PRS, some of these visits may even have adopted a more semi-permanent form, with those crossing the border at this time often undertaking substantial work to prepare their homes for the possibility of their eventual future repatriation, such as clearing weeds and other regrowth from household gardens and compounds. Nonetheless, even those who seemed to be most proactive about undertaking longer or multiple cross-border journeys generally still remained cautious about the future: as everyone recognised, the peace process would remain fragile for a considerable time. And, as almost all my interlocutors acknowledged, all previous ceasefires had failed. Consequently, most people took a pragmatic approach to R-ARCSS’s fragility and whether or not they would repatriate.

7.3 Discussion In this chapter I have described merely some of the myriad movements undertaken by South Sudanese refugees in Uganda during 2017 and 2018, predominantly through the lens of Acholi-speaking refugees in Palabek Refugee Settlement in the country’s northern Lamwo District. Despite what might be initially assumed, cross-border movements between Uganda and South Sudan continued throughout the South Sudanese Civil War, notwithstanding the fact that large sections of South Sudan remained incredibly unsafe during this period. In highlighting these activities, I hope to have demonstrated that how, when, and why refugees’ move actually have significant real-world consequences for the individuals and households involved, as well as for important implications for the theoretical conceptualisation of displacement-based mobility practices. Most South Sudanese refugees in PRS I spoke with during this research moved because of a combination of factors. Poverty, insecurity, and the general fragility and uncertainty of everyday life were among the most common of a range of intersecting rationales. There was thus a great deal of complexity behind how, when, and why any single refugee individual might move. Indeed, not only are there frequently multiple factors at play, but more often than not these will change over time and through

Everyday Movements of South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda  125 individual memory and reflection. For the movements discussed here, the most significant rationale behind any journey included (but were certainly not limited to) regional variation in conflict-related violence, the precise locations being left and returned to, annual and seasonal variation of a natural or anthropogenic kind, and refugee community demographics (especially age, gender and class). Moreover, everyday economic activities in the settlement were typified by such an obvious lack of money or dependable cash flow that many people went to great lengths to try to access even the most unreliable of money-making opportunities. Thus, as noted earlier, unless it were for the purposes of a death-related journey, most movements among residents of PRS usually seemed to travel elsewhere in Uganda for a period of only a few days – generally to visit friends and family or engage in healthcare or trade – or returned to their areas of origin in rural southern South Sudan to engage in activities like horticulture (Figure 7.5). Although the great majority of movements undertaken were irregular, once-off visits to one place or another, some definitely had more ‘rhythmic’ dimensions, and some of the former even became the latter over time and through repetition. Nevertheless, alongside their expected differences around the frequency and length of movements undertaken, seemingly divergent forms of mobility actually shared many similarities, including

Figure 7.5 The market near the entrance to Palabek Refugee Settlement, one of the settlement’s two largest trading areas (October 2018).

126  Ryan Joseph O’Byrne a variety of geographical (location returned to), temporal (duration of the visit), and seasonal (time of year) dimensions. Return was therefore easier than for refugees who originated further from Uganda or who would have to travel through conflict-affected regions to get back to their places of origin. Similar mobility patterns have been noted among refugees from the Equatorian regions displaced to Uganda’s north-west settlements (REACH 2018a: 5). Indeed, as Grabska (2014) and Kaiser (2010) have similarly noted among earlier populations of mobile South Sudanese, variations in who chooses to move, to where, how often, and for how long can be useful indicators of social differentiation. I end with the following conclusions, recommendations, and caveats: first is the rather obvious point that the unique position of PRS in relation to both the international border and relatively safe areas in the country of origin is a necessarily important consideration. It might therefore be difficult to extrapolate from the specific circumstances of PRS residents to make more wide-ranging statements about refugees in general, whether those in other Ugandan settlements or among the hundreds of millions of displaced people forced to live elsewhere in the world. After all, most PRS residents originate in areas directly north of Lamwo District and crossing the border was a relatively common occurrence in the lives of many PRS residents before their most recent refugee experience. Further, the ethnic Acholi residents of PRS share a language with their Ugandan hosts and can therefore pass themselves off as a Ugandan national relatively easily if stop by Ugandan police or military forces. Moreover, as well as these returns being relatively quick, easy, and cheap, the ‘home’ areas being returned to are at least relatively free of localised violence. This makes them safe to visit, if not entirely safe for extended durations. I would therefore suggest a certain caution either before considering the cross-border movements of Palabek’s Acholi refugees a form of repatriation or before generalising to broadly about their activities. Moreover, the ways in which residents of PRS speak about and practice returns to and from South Sudan are often framed through the positive and negative experiences of uncertainty and unpredictability within life in exile. As Grabska (2014: 6) has noted, ‘the visions for the future and the imagined homes that women and men long for are shaped according to their experiences in the specific framework of refugee camps’. Thus, despite what has just been mentioned about the somewhat unique proximity to point of origin and return of PRS in the Ugandan refugee context, in actuality, many of those who did return across the border on some form of more permanent basis did not do so because they wanted to ‘return home’ at that precise moment but instead did so because of the problems they faced living within resettlement. This was especially the case for those more marginal refugees who were refused food or other humanitarian aid. Finally, transformations in how, when, and why displaced people move are instructional: along with the existential difficulties of settlement life,

Everyday Movements of South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda  127 perhaps the most important parameters affecting South Sudanese refugees’ cross-border mobilities were a reduction in localised violence at the destination and the uncertain institution of a perhaps temporary peace. The likelihood of any large-scale, future repatriation therefore depends upon the stability and success of this peace, with a return to either widespread or extreme violence limiting future returns. This demonstrates the continuing importance of the international community in South Sudan’s peacebuilding efforts, not only in the provision of security, justice, and the rule of law but also in the development of rural infrastructure in neglected or war-affected areas. After all, without significant, localised rural investment, repatriation may ultimately prove unsustainable.

Acknowledgements This work was supported by the Economic and Social Research Council [ES/P008038/1]; and the Rockefeller Foundation in collaboration with the Institute of Global Affairs and the Firoz Lalji Institute for Africa (FLIA) at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The support of these funding sources is gratefully acknowledged. The author would like to acknowledge the assistance of Tim Allen, Martha Geiger, Julian Hopwood, Anna MacDonald, Naomi Pendle, Holly Porter, and everyone in the Centre for Public Authority and International Development (CPAID) and FLIA at LSE. Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank the residents of Palabek Refugee Settlement, without whose generous assistance this research would never have happened.

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128  Ryan Joseph O’Byrne Kampala: International Refugee Rights Initiative, Rights in Exile Policy Paper (2018a). Hovil, L. “Uganda’s Refugee Policies: The History, the Politics, the Way Forward.” Kampala: International Refugee Rights Initiative, Rights in Exile Policy Paper (2018b). Jackson, M. D. Things as they Are: New Directions in Phenomenological Anthropology. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996. Kaiser, T. “Between a Camp and a Hard Place: Rights, Livelihood and Experiences of the Local Settlement System for Long-Term Refugees in Uganda.” Journal of Modern African Studies 44, no.4 (2006): 597–621. Kaiser, T. “Dispersal, Division and Diversification: Durable Solutions and Sudanese Refugees in Uganda.” Journal of Eastern African Studies 4, no.1 (2010): 44–60. Long, K. Home Alone? A Review of the Relationship between Repatriation, Mobility and Durable Solutions for Refugees. Geneva: United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Policy Development and Evaluation Service (PDES), 2010. Lubkemann, S. C. “The Meanings of the Move?: From ‘Predicaments of Mobility’ to ‘Potentialities in Displacement’”. Conflict and Society 2, no.1 (2016): 16–36. Monsutti, A. “Afghan migratory strategies and the three solutions to the refugee problem.” Refugee Survey Quarterly 27, no.1 (2008): 58–73. O’byrne, R. J. “Christmas in South Sudan: Fieldnotes from a Warzone.” Australasian Review of African Studies 35, no.1 (2014a): 95–102. O’byrne, R. J. “Dancing is Like Our Identity. It Shows Us Who We Are’: Performing Identity Among Refugee-Background South Sudanese Acholi in New Zealand.” Human Welfare 3, no.1 (2014b): 5–21. O’byrne, R. J. “Narratives of Return Among Refugee-background South Sudanese in New Zealand.” Australasian Review of African Studies 35, no.1 (2014c): 76–94. O’byrne, R. J. “Becoming Christian: Personhood and Moral Cosmology in Acholi South Sudan.” Ph.D. Thesis, University College London (UCL), 2017. O’byrne, R. J. “Marriage and Belonging Among South Sudanese Acholi Refugees in New Zealand.” The Journal of Immigration and Refugee Studies 20, no. 3 (2021a): 444–458. O’byrne, R. J. “Occult Economies and the Demonic Gift: An Evangelical Biography of Evil and Redemption in Central Africa.” The Journal of Religion in Africa 50, no.3 (2021b): 1–19. Ogeno, C., and R. J. O’byrne. “The Illegal Economy of Refugee Registration: Insights into the Ugandan Refugee Scandal.” The International Refugee Rights Initiative’s Refugee Legal Aid Newsletter, 2018. https://rightsinexile.tumblr. com/post/175434663857/the-illegal-economy-of-refugee-registration Ramadan, A. (2013) “Spatialising the Refugee Camp.” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38 (2013): 65–77. REACH. Situation Overview: Regional Displacement of South Sudanese, March 2018. Geneva: REACH Initiative, 2018a. Schapendonk, J., and G. Steel. “Following migrant trajectories: The im/mobility of Sub-Saharan Africans en route to the European Union.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104, no. 2 (2014): 262–270. Schots, B., and G. Smith. “Returns in Complex Environments: The Case of South Sudan.” Forced Migration Review 62 (2019): 60–63.

Everyday Movements of South Sudanese Refugees in Uganda  129 Storer, E., Reid, K., and O’byrne, R. J. “Poisoning at the Periphery: A Multi-sited Investigation of Allocating Responsibility Across the Uganda/South Sudan Borderlands.” Third World Thematics: A TWQ Journal 2, no.2–3 (2017): 180–196. “Initial WASH Assessments in Lamwo Refugee Settlements”. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). February 25, 2017. Kampala: UNHCR. “Uganda: Refugees and Asylum Seekers,” The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). December, 2018. Kampala: OPM and UNHCR. “Uganda Country Refugee Response Plan.” The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). January 2019-December 2020. Nairobi: UNHCR Regional Refugee Coordination Office. (2019a). “Refugees and Asylum-Seekers in Uganda: Uganda Refugee Response,” The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). December 31, 2019. Kampala: OPM and UNHCR. (2019b). “Humanitarian Needs Overview: South Sudan.” United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) Juba: United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). (2016). Vancluysen, S. “Deconstructing Borders: Mobility Strategies of South Sudanese Refugees in Northern Uganda.” Global Networks 22, no.1 (2022): 20–35. Warner, D. “Voluntary Repatriation and the Meaning of Return to Home: A Critique of Liberal Mathematics.” Journal of Refugee Studies 7, no.2–3 (1994): 160–174.

8

The Ephemeral as an Instrument of Urban Design and Planning Nusrat Jahan Mim and Rahul Mehrotra

Urban temporalities, in their different forms, have challenged the logic behind permanency as the central assumption when imagining urban built environments. Today the notion of human settlements and the form they will take in the future are in flux (voluntary or forced). This situation has accelerated the process of a large part of human settlements, emerging globally, to take the form of temporary spatial occupations on expansively different temporal scales. On the one hand, the world is experiencing massive migrations and ensuing demographic shifts in many geographies across the globe, while on the other hand the state is most often imagining a more stable form of cities often instrumentalized through large architectural schemes. Today issues such as political instability and climatic adversities are forcing people to migrate or take refuge to other places, within national boundaries or internationally. And as a result, temporary transformations at local levels are becoming inevitable as the urban fluxes require spatial arrangements to accommodate temporary yet diverse social, spiritual, cultural, economic, and technological demands. With their varying temporal cycles, such ephemeral spatial arrangements engage architects and urban planners at various scales – from aiding informal urban settlements, accommodating festivals to developing refugee camps. In most cases, architectural and urban interventions focus on organizational, operational, and constructional challenges. However, how various ephemeral spatial configurations generate new layers of spatial narratives, which are different from that of conventional urban ones, is still not adequately embedded in the discourse of the urban condition and urban planning pedagogy more generally. To address some of these issues and based on an empirical study of the Rohingya Refugee Camp at Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, this essay will document how refugees respond, react, repurpose, or resist many temporary architectural as well as urban interventions inside the camp. The chapter will further explore how the refugees and host communities deal with various political tensions triggered by particular spatial articulations and formations through adaptation, negotiation, and dispositions. Finally, this chapter will argue how political and social contestations can be addressed by accommodating the notion of

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-11

The Ephemeral as an Instrument of Urban Design and Planning  131

Figure 8.1 A portion of Kutupalong Rohingya Refugee Camp, Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh.

the ephemeral in imagining settlements for refugee camps and cities more broadly (Figure 8.1).

8.1 Ephemeral Urbanism and Refugee Camps Modern urbanism, fueled by capital accumulation and growth, positions a city as a domain of constant material consumption, re configuration, and expulsion. David Harvey argues that cities are often considered as spaces that can absorb surplus capital and labor through expansions, development, and redevelopment (Harvey 2010). Since capital has to grow perpetually in a capitalist system, cities become the prime locations for investments (i.e. real estate markets, mortgage systems). Such investments register spatial permanency– largely in terms of material. Hence, the image associated with the term “city” is hugely obsessed with the trajectory of permanent configurations celebrated through architecture and infrastructure. This notion often hinders the visibility of those aspects of the city, which embrace a more elastic, “fragile”, and kinetic expression of urban conditions (Mehrotra et al. 2016). For instance, slums or informal settlements, refugee camps, temporary spatial arrangements for festivals or markets, etc. comprise these softer and often reversible articulations of space in the form of the city. These expressions are temporary in nature, dependent upon ephemeral conditions, and require perpetual modifications and reinvention. Here, designing functional systems are more crucial than the material assemblage or architectonics. This “unpopular” image of the city is premised on detachment, which challenges the notion of material

132  Nusrat Jahan Mim and Rahul Mehrotra permanency and brings “temporality” as a legitimate operational aspect of the city and its form. The processes of modernization and globalization have provoked urban scholars to synthesize modern cities and their temporalities through various lenses. One of the most prominent lenses traces the physical changes of a city on a temporal scale to evaluate its process, scale, and speed of modernization (cite). For instance, Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh project (which was patronized by Nehru’s imagination of independent India) “accelerated” the image-making of a modern city in India. Such linear temporal notions are often considered as the parameter of development, which subjugates the alternative narratives which could potentially originate from the majority world (Huyssen 2008). For instance, subaltern cultures and their negotiations with the state in the process of modernization are difficult to surface if the urban material and temporal transformations are mapped in a one-dimensional trajectory. A “simultaneous” framework is needed to successfully investigate the variants of modernities that are not produced in the West (Mehrotra 2010). Another prominent vantage point of urban temporality deals with mobilities inside and outside the urban. John Urry captures the very notion of time in the contemporary urbanscape (with diverse networks) by incorporating various forms of mobilities in the discussion of non-linear social consequences, which are the by-products of the globalization project (Urry 2016). Graham and Marvin further emphasized this ceaseless and mobile interplay of materials at many scales by connecting those with the networked urban infrastructure and technological mobilities (Graham and Marvin 2002). While their synopsis of urban mobilities and infrastructural politics is heavily backed by the accelerated “urban times”, how the notion of time often gets manipulated by various “material exercises” in the kinetic parts of the city – has rarely been discussed. In other words, the notion of the kinetic city challenges the very permanency associated with the infrastructure, which is often considered as “static”. Ahmed et al. opened up conversations around the infrastructural temporalities while explaining the residual mobilities of the marginalized urban population (Ahmed et al. 2015). For instance, one of their documentations depicts how evicted people from a slum in Dhaka (Bangladesh) managed to reconstruct a temporary informal infrastructural network within the “fixed” and formal systems of the city’s networked infrastructure. However, the question remains – how can such temporary interventions in infrastructure inform urbanism from a comprehensive perspective? To comprehend the temporal complexities in urban material settings, the broader framework of Ephemeral Urbanism can be a productive rubric. The notion of the ephemeral serves as a useful conceptual instrument that encompasses a range of alternative forms of urbanism across more diverse geographies (Mehrotra et al. 2016). This instrument can liberate the discussions about urbanism from several overriding issues such as, density, permanency, etc. In the process alternative imaginations and questions emerge

The Ephemeral as an Instrument of Urban Design and Planning  133 in the design narratives in a more meaningful, productive, and inclusive way. More fundamentally, it questions how the discourse on urbanism would benefit by dissolving the limiting binary of the ephemeral versus stable components of cities (Mehrotra et al. 2016). On the one hand, ephemerality emerges as an essential condition in the life cycle of every built environment, when analyzed over a more expansive temporal scale (Mehrotra et al. 2016). On the other hand, it works as an instrument to analyze, synthesize, and explain various actions perceived as temporary in an urban setting over a temporal scale. Employing this lens of the ephemeral as a productive instrument of urban design, if one looks at refugee camps, it opens up a fresh understanding of what are seen otherwise as transient settlements. Unlike cities, camps are mostly seen as discreet transitional spaces outside the urban realm (although in many cases the camps are located within the perimeter of a city). As impermanent spaces, camps materialize exceptions and transcend the limits of temporary use. Here, the efficiency matrix subjugates ‘actions’ and blur the threshold of what is juridical and ethically acceptable (Mehrotra et al. 2016). Hence, developing productive and inclusive tools for interventions around such non-permanent configurations pose additional challenges. In such a case, the broader framework of the ephemeral (with its meaningful political interventions) can initiate the return to the conversations of human ‘actions’ within the camp boundaries. As Mehrotra mentions, ephemeral urbanism can be both the problem when it adopts an absolute condition under the camp paradigm; or the solution, when it emerges in coexistence with permanent aspirations of a thick social fabric, offering a productive and creative force that serves the construction of a more nuanced and inclusive urban space (Mehrotra et al. 2016). In this essay we explore this notion of

Figure 8.2 Newer parts of Kutupalong Camp area showing more organized and planned arrangements of the refugee shelters.

134  Nusrat Jahan Mim and Rahul Mehrotra the ephemeral as an instrument to explain various spatial discrepancies, subjugation, interventions, and/or resistances at the Rohingya Refugee Camps in Bangladesh (Figure 8.2).

8.2 Rohingya Refugee Crisis: The Backstory The Rohingya crisis in Myanmar has received profound global attention for the past few decades for its complicated political history, as relentless scenarios of persecution, and its resulting massive cross-border migration. Since Myanmar’s independence from British rule in 1948, most state-led decisions around the minority Rohingya population have marginalized them and eventually forced them to leave Myanmar. Being a Buddhist majority country, Myanmar revealed its notion of nationalism in the form of a hegemonic ideology (Washaly 2019). The ultra-nationalists of Myanmar believed that to bring Myanmar’s pre-colonial glory, they needed to ensure a Buddhist order free from foreign influences (Washaly 2019). Such strong nationalist notions, backed by religion, marginalized other religious communities, especially the Rohingyas. After the military coup in 1962, the situation worsened. The new military government with socialist leanings initiated tremendous abusive actions against the Rohingyas (Abdelkader 2013). Massive killing, rape, and immense torturing resulted in massive expulsions in 1977 and 1992. Denial of from citizenship for the Rohingya community by the 1982 Myanmar Citizenship Act excluded them from all citizenship benefits, marked them as “non-citizens”, “aliens”, or “illegal Bengali immigrants”, and opened new episodes of persecution (Adam et al. 2017; Abdelkader 2013). The Citizenship Act in Mynmar also obstructed the Rohingya Muslims from creating any political identity or voice in the governing system (Washaly 2019). Hence, there was no support from the state or any institution to save the Rohingyas from military abuse. Moreover, the religion backed nationalist views made it difficult for the Rohingya Muslims to live in Myanmar, which they had known as their homes for generations. Bangladesh, being the neighboring country, has been experiencing chronic refugee crises since the late 1970s (Smith and Hassan 2012). The persecuted Rohingyas fled to Bangladeshi borderlands at different times, in different volumes (Mim 2020). The eruption of sectarian violence in Myanmar in the mid 2012 increased the migration rate (Zawacki 2012; Kipgen 2013; Bashar 2012). The then President of Myanmar Thein Sein suggested that the Rohingyas to go to a “third country” or UNHCR camps (Abdelkader 2013). Before 2017, about 400,000 refugees were already living in Bangladesh (Hussain et al. 2020). However, the latest and greatest influx of 2017 resulted in a number of 909,000 stateless Rohingyas residing in Ukhiya and Teknaf refugee camps at Cox’s Bazar in Bangladesh (Hussain et al. 2020). According to the latest census, 1.1 million Rohingya refugees are living in Bangladesh today. The majority of these refugees are residing

The Ephemeral as an Instrument of Urban Design and Planning  135 in 34 extremely congested camps with an uncertain future as Myanmar keeps declining to accept them as citizens (Mim 2020).

8.3 Fieldwork and Research Methods This article is based on a year-long empirical study investigating displacement, cultural marginalization, and spatial tensions in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. The field work for this study was carried out by Nusrat Jahan Mim and this study consists of three primary phases: (i) background study on Rohingya refugees, (ii) camp visits and data collection,1 and (iii) analysis of collected data. The first phase included a detailed analysis of the historical background of the Rohingyas’ people, geo-political tensions around this refugee crisis, and information collection from the growing inventory of studies done on Rohingya Refugee camps in Bangladesh. This phase identified a potential research gap in understanding the refugees’ engagement with the temporary built environment. The second phase of the study involved month-long ethnographic fieldwork at the Kutupalong Rohingya Refugee camp area in Ukhiya Upazila Cox’s Bazar in December 2019–January 2020. We conducted our study in 8 different camps in Ukhiya: Camp 1E, 4, 4E, 7, 9, 10, 12, and 17. Our fieldwork is comprised of four main components: (i) camp visits and observation of daily activities at household and community level, (ii) semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions (FGD) with camp residents and host community members, (iii) visual documentation (photos, videos, sketches), and (iv) semi-structured interviews and FGDs with NGO workers, architects, and urban planners, who are associated in different projects at the camps. The study shortlisted sites primarily based on the development phase of the camps (old or new), locations of hybrid camps and density of local inhabitants in those camps, presence and density of humanitarian services in a particular camp, and infrastructural systems and their usages. To finalize the study sites from this primary pool and get access to the community, we reached out to people in our social network, who were involved with different NGOs in different humanitarian projects. Three practicing architects became our primary informants. They all worked in the camps for more than two years and were involved in building administrative and community facility buildings in the camps. The locations of the study camps were finalized based on our primary informants’ suggestions and their field experiences. Their already established relationships helped us to gain the trust of the refugee participants. Through our primary informants, we got introduced to administrative refugee leaders of the camps we visited, popularly known as Majhi. Later, the Majhi from each camp became the ‘gatekeepers’ (Lofland and Lofland 1971) of their camps and helped us to conduct participatory observations, FGDs, and interviews in their camps.

136  Nusrat Jahan Mim and Rahul Mehrotra The participants for semi-structured interviews were selected through snowball sampling (Goodman 1961) method. We started with the Majhis of the selected camps first, whom our primary informants knew from before. Then, we expanded the participation pool using the social networks of the Majhis. Participants’ ages ranged from 22 to 70 years. Each interview was 20–30-min long on average. Although both men and women participated in semi-structured interviews, hour-long FGDs were done in genderbased separate groups of three to five people. Participation in this study was completely voluntary and unpaid. Verbal consent was taken before interviewing each participant. The interview and FGDs were conducted in both Bangla and Rohingya languages. Most of the interviews and FGDs were audio-recorded with the participants’ permission. We wrapped up the study when theoretical saturation was reached (Pandit 1996) and additional interviews started adding very little information. The third phase of this study involved categorization and analysis of the collected data. One of Mim’s local friend, who was born and raised in Cox’s Bazar and understood as well as spoke the Rohingya language which helped us to translate and transcribe the interviews and FGDs in Bangla. Later, Nusrat translated those interviews and FGDs from Bangla to English. In total, this study produced 30 semi-structured interviews, seven focus group discussions, 100 hours of observation, 150 pages of field notes, more than 1,200 photographs, and 2.5 hours of video footage. The anonymized data (interviews, field notes, and FGDs) was then analyzed using open coding (Strauss and Corbin 1990) and thematic analysis (Boyatzis 1998).

8.4 Stories from the Camp The data collected from the fieldwork reveal a wide variety of ways how, in the camps, the Rohingya refugees respond, react, re-purpose, or resist many temporary architectural/urban interventions and generate new spatiopolitical narratives. Through selected cases, this section demonstrates why such “ephemeral” narratives are essential to understand in imagining camp settlements. To better articulate the findings, we group them into three subsections: (i) adaptation, (ii) negotiation, and (iii) dispositions. 8.4.1 Adaptation Similar to any post-disaster (natural or man-made) refugee camp, the Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp in Cox’s Bazar has experienced influxes of people, incremental expansions, which has added pressure on infrastructure and increasing demand for shelters. International and local aid has played crucial roles in building infrastructure, shelters, and other camp facilities. However, the modalities of development introduced by these humanitarian and development agencies are backed mainly by public health concerns and often contradict the cultural sensitivities of the

The Ephemeral as an Instrument of Urban Design and Planning  137 Rohingyas associated with their surrounding spaces. Our studies show that in such scenarios, the refugees respond toward the imprinted urban fabric through adaptations and cultural appropriations. However, when the imposed urban fabrics do not offer much scope for inclusive adaptations or modifications, spatial marginalization occurs within the community – impacts of which tend to transcend their transitional social framework and bring the notion of the ‘ephemeral’ to the fore. The following case sheds light on this. Case 1: Our participant Selima (pseudo name, 35 years old) and her husband Kalam (pseudo name, 45 years old) live in one of the newly developed camps in Kutupalong with their three kids. Together they run a tea stall, located right beside the major, brick-built road that connects different parts of their camp. Selima opines that the newer camps are spatially more organized. Main roads are flanked by a series of almost equally distant, same-sized shelters on both sides. There are schools, health facilities, small shops, and mosques at regular intervals. However, unlike the older camps, the new camps’ well-planned and dense urban fabric does not offer any open space for the refugees to gather. According to Kalam, their massive congregational rally (demanding citizenship and other rights from the Myanmar Government) in August 2019 to mark the second anniversary of their exodus into Bangladesh agitated the camp authorities. Hence, they are designing the new camps without providing space for large social gatherings. This ultimately pushed the camp dwellers to adapt mosques as spaces to solve their social disputes or arrange any community meetings (in addition to praying). Kalam says, There are a handful number of community centers built and operated by NGOs. Those spaces are beautiful, and they invite us to participate in group discussions and meetings. We do that. However, there are issues in our community lives that we do not want to discuss in front of the NGO people or outsiders. In older camps, shelters were built haphazardly. So there were pockets of open spaces of different sizes, where we could gather. To discuss our social disputes in this new camp, we gather at our block mosque. Kalam (pseudo name, male, 45 years old, shopkeeper) Kalam took us to the mosque of their block. 2 Similar to any typical camp mosque, there was a tube well for ablution, a shed called “moktob” for young children to learn Arabic, and a praying room for the male members of the block. When necessary, Kalam informed us, they discuss their social disputes and other issues in the praying room before or after the noon, afternoon, and evening prayer times. Majhi and the Imam (who leads the prayer in the mosque) play crucial roles in these discussions. A bamboo fence surrounded the mosque area. According to Rohingya culture, women are not allowed inside this fence.

138  Nusrat Jahan Mim and Rahul Mehrotra Selima complains that such a spatial shift of community discussions from the open public spaces to the mosques has restricted women from participating in community meetings. Hence the meeting resolutions do not reflect the voices of women, and spatially, the women are marginalized. Selima says, At the Women Centers (in the camp, operated by NGOs) we learn many things to strengthen our voice. We develop our skills, learn reading, writing… All these will help us in future (when they will be back in Myanmar) to empower ourselves. We will be more vocal about our rights and wellbeing. However, they (men) are now normalizing community meetings inside the mosque. Our voices do not reach there now. In future, it will be even more difficult if the community meetings keep happening inside the mosque. Selima (pseudo name, Female, 35 years old) This case points toward two essential aspects that necessitate understanding the refugee camps under the rubric of ephemeral urbanism (Figure 8.3). First, the overall governing mechanisms of a refugee camp often mediate their power, control, and surveillance through various “impermanent” development modalities. This temporal process actively generates spatial narratives that contradict many established urban design concepts. For

Figure 8.3 Prayer room of the mosque complex, where social meetings also take place. Women are not allowed inside this structure.

The Ephemeral as an Instrument of Urban Design and Planning  139 instance, while conventional urban designs celebrate and promote open public spaces or squares and consider these spaces as generators of civic socio-political narratives, this imprinted camp planning shows otherwise. Many of our participants opined that camp controlling authorities ensured a significant reduction of open spaces inside the camps to reduce the risk of a political uprising through collective gathering. This design decision does not raise any questions since the camp, with its “light” infrastructural manifestations, does not fall under the rubric of a “permanent city”. Second, such design decisions or development modalities demand temporary spatial adaptations by the refugees, which introduce alternative “urban practices”. However, these adaptations often fail to include all the actors in the camp’s social setting. The ramifications of which (social and spatial marginalization in Selima’s case) can transcend the camp’s transitional circumstances and become irreversible, as Selima noted. This necessitates comprehending such complex camp scenarios through the lens of the ephemeral to allow urbanism with its spectrum of social life to fully unfold in refugee settlements. 8.4.2 Negotiation In many cases, transitional landscapes of a refugee camp generate spatial negotiations among its diverse actors. Negotiations range between local government and global humanitarian organizations regarding where to build the camps to negotiations between two refugee families about where to dry cloths. In fact, spatial negotiations are consistent in the refugee camps with similar exchanges in any urban situation. Oftentimes such negotiations are settled perhaps more easily considering the impermanence associated with the spatial dimension and context of the contestation. The following is a case in point. Case 2: During our fieldwork, Robi (pseudo name, male, 50 years old) was serving as the priest of the Radha Krishna Temple and the religious leader of the Hindu Camp at the Kutupalong Refugee area in Cox’s Bazar. The ethnic cleansing in August 2017 forced him to flee from Fakirabazar – a small village located in Maungdaw, Myanmar, near the Teknaf border area of Bangladesh. He informed us that a handful of Hindu Rohingyas, who could escape death in Myanmar, had been living in the Hindu Camp at Ukhiya, Cox’s Bazar, since 2017. A local Bangladeshi Muslim community surrounded this camp. Robi said that a portion of their camp belongs to local landowners, whom the humanitarian agencies requested a lease on their land for developing this camp. Hence, the Hindu Camp assumed a hybrid appearance. The arrangement of the shelters followed the central katcha (literally translated – temporary) or mud-road, which provided access to the temple. The location of the temple, with its daily rituals, weekly and monthly congregations, and different religious festivities throughout the year, held a critical spatial, visual, and acoustic value in the surrounding neighborhoods. Robi informed us that they were anxious about the reaction

140  Nusrat Jahan Mim and Rahul Mehrotra of local Muslims toward their rituals in the beginning. Robi had several conversations with Mr Rafiq (pseudo name, 58 years old, local Bangladeshi citizen, farmer), on whose land the temporary temple was built. Rafiq lived very close to the temple and wanted to negotiate about the temple’s location (Figure 8.4). Robi said, Rafiq requested us to build this temple on the north side of Hindu Camp, far from his house, as the sounds of our prayers often hamper his family’s prayers. Since the temple was built of temporary materials like bamboo and tin (corrugated iron sheets), relocating was not a big problem. However, the temple works as the community’s heart, and its current location symbolizes that. Hence we had to convince Rafiq. We always tell him that we are refugees and will be here temporarily. Hence, his problem is temporary too. I think Rafiq understands now…” Robi (pseudo name, male, 50 years old) Our conversation with Rafiq (pseudo name, 58 years old, local farmer) on this issue of spatial negotiation revealed another fascinating facet around spatial contestations in a refugee camp. According to Rafiq, sacrificing a portion of his land for camp development did not affect him financially since the humanitarian agencies were compensating him. However, initially, he was concerned about his land’s spiritual value on which the temple was built. He said, … If a mosque were built on my land, I would receive rewards from Allah in the afterlife. My land would have received more attention from surrounding local neighborhoods (mostly Muslims). People

Figure 8.4 Radha-Krishna Temple at Hindu Camp. Robi (pseudo name) is performing his morning ritual.

The Ephemeral as an Instrument of Urban Design and Planning  141 would even pay Sadka (Sadaqah or charity) to develop the mosque and its surrounding landscape. However, they (refugees of Hindu Camp) built a temple… I am not sure if I will be punished after my death for promoting the spiritual activities of other religions on my land. Also, when they (refugees) will go back to their country, how my Muslim neighbors will react to my household and land also concerns me. That is why I requested Robi for building the temple elsewhere. I just mentioned to him about the noise… Now I think… it is a temporary temple. There will be no trace of it once the refugees are gone. How much harm can it do?, Rafiq (pseudo name, 58 years old, local farmer) Similar to Robi and Rafiq’s case, we have collected many other stories that resemble how various forms of impermanence resolve many spatial disputes  – especially in camps with diverse religious and ethnic groups, where cultural differences are perceptible. This phenomenon essentially questions the programmatic fixity and the spatial tension that appear with such perceived permanence (Ayodhya’s Babri Masjid-Ram temple case, for instance) on conventional urban landscapes. In many cases, cities are recommended to be designed to absorb spatial tensions. However, cases in the Rohingya camp suggest that engaging the ephemeral as an urban design and planning instrument can potentially generate viable negotiation platforms or more maneuvering space for negotiations. 8.4.3 Dispositions During the research and fieldwork, our participants informed us that after the immediate response to the emergency situations, humanitarian agencies started to focus on the betterment of the lives of the community of Rohingya refugees. Various community facility projects started to appear spontaneously in each of the camps. Development proposals from the humanitarian agencies enriched the camps with attractive temporary structures that accommodated schools, skill training centers (for both men and women), mental health support systems, digital learning centers, nutrition centers, washing zones for women etc. Improved infrastructures made different parts of the camp more accessible. Even after the first few phases of emergency development ended, these projects confirmed the continuous flow of the capital and construction material inside the camps on a regular basis. With or without construction skills, many refugees started to join the workforce temporarily. Cash remunerations enabled them to buy and sell products and services within the camp boundaries. Among many other changes, this phenomenon tempted “illegal” small-scale material transformations at the shelter level. For instance, extensions of a shelter, replacing any parts of a shelter with more permanent materials (brick or concrete), and blocking adjacent pathways for household usages. Such

142  Nusrat Jahan Mim and Rahul Mehrotra transformative dispositions are usually discouraged by building regulations and are often demolished, although they appear out of dire necessities. The following case describes how event-induced material flow often help the refugees to justify such transformations and how, through their “pseudo temporary” material manifestations, they subvert as well as creatively extend the temporariness imposed by the camp authorities. Case 3: Abdul (pseudo name, male, 48 years old, construction worker) lives in a tiny shelter with his seven family members in one of the older camps at Kutupalong. He has two sons and four daughters. Abdul has been living in this camp since 2017. He received the shelter building materials from one of the humanitarian agencies and built the shelter by himself. He has been making improvements to his shelters whenever necessary – for instance, adding a partition inside the shelter to make two rooms, repairing the roof, and changing the plastic sheets of the wall. Over time, he developed good relations with his neighbors since he helped them make and maintain their shelters. In October 2018, he arranged the marriage of his first daughter with a shop owner, who lives three blocks away from them. In Rohingya wedding culture, the groom usually comes to the bride’s house, where the ceremony occurs. After the ceremony, the bride leaves her parent’s house and start living with the groom’s family. Abdul had to arrange a small ceremony during his daughter’s wedding. However, his tiny, congested shelter was not allowing him to host the groom and his family. Moreover, during the wedding, he had to invite his extended family members, who survived the genocide and were living at different camps in Kutupalong. He had to prepare special lunch for at least 30 people on that day. To help Abdul in this social event, his neighbors came forward. They helped him collect some discarded bamboos from one of their camp’s community facility construction projects. Two of his relatives collected good-quality plastic sheets and empty cement bags from other camps. With these materials, Abdul built a temporary shed (without walls) adjacent to his shelter to host guests on the wedding day. His daughters and neighboring kids decorated the shed with colorful papers. Cooking utensils were borrowed from different shelters of his block. Since this was a temporary structure built for a social event and was promised to remove immediately after the event, the camp authority condoned (Figure 8.5). After the event, Abdul did not demolish the shed. Instead, he let his neighbors use that space for various household purposes. Especially his wife and the female members of his neighboring family started using that space as a gathering space to chit-chat. Gradually, Abdul made the shed’s floor more durable and added bamboo fences and plastic sheets to cover the sides of the shed, which ultimately provided privacy to these women from the public pathways nearby. After a few months, Abdul converted the shed into a kitchen (previously, Abdul’s wife and daughters used to cook outside their shelter under the open sky). Neighboring families were also welcomed

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Figure 8.5 Abdul (pseudo name) converted the shed built “temporarily” for his daughter’s wedding into a kitchen.

to use that kitchen. Hence, no one from his neighborhood reported this shed as an illegal extension of Abdul’s house. His wife started a vegetable garden outside this kitchen, which ultimately helped this addition disappear. Abdul says, My daughter’s wedding event helped me gather materials and build this structure as no one saw it as an addition to my shelter. We needed a kitchen. Community kitchens made by the NGOs do not work for us as cooking is connected to a family’s dignity in our culture. Every family used to have a separate kitchen when we were in Myanmar. The shed offered me a scope to build a shaded kitchen. However, I did not do it overnight. If anyone complains, I know I have to demolish it. It has been almost a year and a half, no one has complained so far. Did you notice it from outside? Abdul (pseudo name, male, 48 years old, construction worker) Abdul’s case brings two essential issues around materiality and temporality in a refugee camp. First, the cultural events perpetuated by refugees often create gateways to materialize something temporarily, which would be unachievable otherwise. This phenomenon is connected to the broader narrative of kinetic city, where the threshold between formal and informal,

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Figure 8.6 Extension of Abdul’s shelter hidden behind the vegetable garden.

legal and illegal becomes blurred during events, festivals, and other cultural “disruptions”. However, unlike the notion of the kinetic cities, these materializations in a refugee camp often tend to expand their lifetime, blend with their “continuing” surrounding built environment, become persistent development, and start to define the future spatial dispositions of the camp. Second, in the broader temporal framework (where the whole camp is a temporary entity), such actions by the refugees generate their own scale of “pseudo-permanency”. These complex material and temporal narratives cannot be holistically comprehended unless we consider the ephemeral as an instrument for place making (Figure 8.6).

8.5 Discussion and Conclusion In this chapter, we have documented a selected set of cases that present how Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh respond to many spatio-temporal interventions within the camp environment. Our findings highlight how the refugees and host communities deal with various social and political tensions in the camp’s temporal framework through adaptation, negotiation, and dispositions. Finally, we documented how the notion of ephemeral can explain the alternative narratives around spatial contestations that appear in the refugee camps, which are different from the conventional ones that occur in conventional urban situations. Altogether, our findings essentially point toward a gap around modernist approaches to camp design. When a refugee camp enters the “development phase” (after its “emergency” situation), comparatively longer-term planning strategies become crucial for ensuring a peaceful camp life (Mim 2020). Administrative and spatial planning of this phase focus on strategic organizational layout, which conforms to modernist design approaches. Ranging from functional/ programmatic zoning to

The Ephemeral as an Instrument of Urban Design and Planning  145 rationalizing infrastructural network – planners follow modernist design strategies to limit operational frictions and to ensure efficient aid supply and surveillance (Stevenson and Sutton 2011; Mim 2020; Van der Helm et al. 2017). Such modernist planning strategies focus on temporal issues from a vantage point of growth and performative effectiveness. This narrowed vision toward capturing temporalities through modernist design tools often fails to comprehend alternative temporal narratives that emerge in refugee camps. Hence, the design interventions (from administrative to local level) tend to marginalize various actors and their actions in the camp periphery. Through this chapter, we have tried to portray such narratives and explore them through the lens of the ephemeral. We believe ephemeral urbanism as an instrument can better inform the designers, architects, and urban planners in making an inclusive, sustainable, and just camp environment and perhaps human settlements more generally.

Notes 1 Conducted by Nusrat Jahan Mim in the years 2019–2020 as part of her DDes studies at the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University. 2 Each camp is comprised of several blocks, each block has a representative or Majhi selected/elected from the refugees.

References Abdelkader, Engy. “The Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar: past, present, and future.” Organ Review International Law 15 (2013): 393. Adam, Fadzli, Fakhratu Naimah Muhad, Najihah Abdul Wahid, Salimah Abu Mansor, Zawawi Yusoff, S. H. S. Omar, E. Rahimah, and Mohd Afandi Salleh. “Myanmar’s religious crises: Proposed solution through the concept of muhibbah.” International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences 7, no. 8 (2017): 2222–6990. Ahmed, Syed Ishtiaque, Nusrat Jahan Mim, and Steven J. Jackson. “Residual mobilities: infrastructural displacement and post-colonial computing in Bangladesh.” In Proceedings of the 33rd Annual ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, pp. 437–446. 2015. Bashar, Iftekharul. “Rohingyas in Bangladesh and Myanmar: quest for a sustainable solution.” (2012). Boyatzis, Richard E. Transforming qualitative information: Thematic analysis and code development. Sage, 1998. Goodman, Lenard A. “Snowball Sampling.” The Annals of Mathematical Statistics.” (1961): 148–170. Graham, Steve, and Simon Marvin. Splintering urbanism: networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and the urban condition. Routledge, 2002. Harvey, David. L’enigma del capitale. Feltrinelli Editore, 2010. Hussain, Faheem, Abdullah Hasan Safir, Dina Sabie, Zulkarin Jahangir, and Syed Ishtiaque Ahmed. “Infrastructuring hope: Solidarity, leadership, negotiation,

146  Nusrat Jahan Mim and Rahul Mehrotra and ict among the rohingya refugees in bangladesh.” In Proceedings of the 2020 International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development, pp. 1, 12, 2020. Huyssen, Andreas, ed. Other cities, other worlds: urban imaginaries in a globalizing age. Duke University Press, 2008. Kipgen, Nehginpao. “Conflict in Rakhine State in Myanmar: Rohingya Muslims’ Conundrum.” Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs 33, no. 2 (2013): 298–310. Lofland, John, and Lyn H. Lofland. “Analyzing social settings.” (1971). Mehrotra, Rahul. “Simultaneous Modernity.” In Ruins of Modernity, pp. 244– 250. Duke University Press, 2010. Mehrotra, Rahul, Felipe Vera, and José Mayoral. Ephemeral Urbanism: Does Permanence Matter?. ARQ ediciones, 2016. Mim, Nusrat Jahan. “Religion at the margins: Resistance to secular humanitarianism at the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.” Religions 11, no. 8 (2020): 423. Pandit, Naresh R. “The creation of theory: A recent application of the grounded theory method.” The Qualitative Report 2, no. 4 (1996): 1–15. Smith, Matthew F., and Tirana Hassan. “The Government Could Have Stopped This”: Sectarian Violence and Ensuing Abuses in Burma’s Arakan State. Human Rights Watch, 2012. Stevenson, Anne, and Rebecca Sutton. “There’s no place like a refugee camp? Urban planning and participation in the camp context.” Refuge 28 (2011): 137. Strauss, Anselm, and Juliet Corbin. “Open coding.” Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory Procedures and Techniques 2, no. 1990 (1990): 101–121. Urry, John. Mobilities: new perspectives on transport and society. Routledge, 2016. Van der Helm, Alex W. C., A. Bhai, Francesca Coloni, W. J. G. Koning, and P. T. De Bakker. “Developing water and sanitation services in refugee settings from emergency to sustainability–the case of Zaatari Camp in Jordan.” Journal of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for Development 7, no. 3 (2017): 521–527. Washaly, Najeeb. “Rohingya: The Identity Crisis.” Ecos de la Academia (2019). Zawacki, Benjamin. “Defining Myanmar’s Rohingya problem.” Human Rights Brief 20 (2012): 18.

Section 3

Informal Responses of the Informal Settlements in the Global South

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9. THE INVISIBLE BEYOND VISIBLE: THE PERILS OF URBAN REGENERATION IN COLOMBO’S SLAVE ISLAND Gihan Karunaratne, Jagath Munasinghe (University of Moratuwa) & Tanzil Shafique (University of Sheffield) 10. A NOTE ON THE DOOR: SYMBOLIC ERASURE AND REPRESENTATIONAL RESISTANCE IN RIO DE JANEIRO Adam Kaasa and Bruna Montuori (Royal College of Arts) 11. ORGANIC URBAN REGENERATION: AN INCLUSIVE URBAN DESIGN FOR RURAL-TO-URBAN MIGRANTS IN RESIDENTIAL NEIGHBORHOODS OF NINGBO, CHINA Ali Cheshmehzangi & Eugenio Mangi (The University of Nottingham Ningbo, China) 12. TOWARDS A ‘HYBRID’ GOVERNANCE APPROACH: THE WAY OUT OF THE URBAN DEVELOPMENT CRISIS IN LAGOS, NIGERIA? A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT WITH MAKOKO AS A CASE STUDY Fabienne Hoelzel (Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design) 13. EMBRACING IN[FORMAL]ITY: AN EXPLORATION OF GROUNDED ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE IN CAPE TOWN Rudolf Perold (Cape Peninsula University of Technology) Hermie Delport, (STADIO) 14. THE WHY? HOW? WHAT? AND WHAT-IFS OF MASS SLUM REHABILITATION HOUSING IN INDIA Ronita Bardhan & Jiayu Pan (University of Cambridge)

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The Invisible beyond Visible The Perils of Urban Regeneration in Colombo’s Slave Island Gihan Karunaratne, Jagath Munasinghe and Tanzil Shafique

9.1 Introduction: The Concept of Urban Regeneration Urban regeneration can first be understood to be part of the widely accepted global policy consensus. Fuelled by the popular mantra ‘cities are the engines of growth of an economy’ and the United Nation’s oft-cited forecast that more than two-thirds of the world population will be living in cities by 2050, the concept takes for granted the need for international organizations, national governments and individual developers to channel resources to transform and develop cities and urban environments.1 The ongoing transformation of cities has been dominated by a variety of public- and private-led large-scale developments of housing, road, public utilities, and other infrastructures ( World Bank 1998; UN 2018). Urban regeneration, or efforts to renew the core areas of cities run down by years of negligence and disinvestment, has been a popular mode of urban development favoured in many countries. Such regeneration projects, especially in developing countries, commonly grouped together as the ‘Global South’, have two general features in common; the first pertains to the type of physical transformation it engenders, favouring typical features of the ‘global city’ (Sassen 1991). Such features include aluminium and glass-cladded monolithic high-rise buildings, the presence of corporate headquarters of multinational companies, upmarket residential apartments, branded shopping malls, and large privately owned and managed public spaces, rather than the more organic and heterogeneous built environments that survive from colonial pasts. The second feature relates to the mode of transition in which regeneration occurs, placing the utility value of land in prime urban locations above the right to space and the well-being of inhabitants. The formulation and implementation of these projects often ignore the agency of residents, providing them little opportunity to decide their own destinies, making them mere recipients of the outcomes. A fundamental commonality across these planning projects is the exacerbation of social and spatial exclusion, where the consequences are the poorest further disadvantaged and dismal environmental sustainability (Watson 2009). Although globalization is cited as being key to unlocking wealth, it seems to also have caused greater social and spatial stratification in cities across the world (Marshall 2003). Colombo is only one of many

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152  Gihan Karunaratne et al. places where such urban regeneration projects to produce ‘global cities’ are currently underway. Critical development literature often argues that the impact of urban planning and regeneration projects is far from positive. Social control, or the regulation of bodies in space with little care for the lives within them, seems to be the modus operandi of the planning practices of policymakers and government officials (Sandercock 2005). While ‘public consultation’ and ‘participatory planning’ processes are mandated staples of planning discourses, urban development decisions are often made in a highly centralized and coercive manner in violation of inhabitants’ rights to the city. There has been a long history of criticism of urban renewal projects in the US in terms of race and politics, and its failures are well-documented (See Avila and Rose 2009 for an introduction to the intersection of race, culture, and the politics of urban renewal planning in the US). In the Global South context, there are debates about the consequences of regeneration causing gentrification and dispossession (See López-Morales 2015 for an overview), and often in-depth analysis of particular regeneration projects (e.g. the consequences of the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, examined by Steinbrink, Haferburg and Ley 2011). The outcomes of urban regeneration projects are rarely as benign or beneficial as authorities propose (Watson 2009). There are instances of resistance across the Global South against such projects, but often they fall into the trap of a ‘politics of compensation’ (Roy, quoted in Karaman 2014, 290). The opposition to such projects has been noted in the Global North as well (Ruming 2018). However, there is another, more favourable view of the ‘gentrification’ of the declining central areas of cities, seeing their transformation into uppermiddle-class and wealthy residential districts as a purposive and positive policy initiative of the respective city governments (Rousseau 2009) in their attempts to rejuvenate the declining urban local economies that accompany degraded built environments in ‘post-industrial’ cities. This view of the gentrification process – even though it can be questioned on different grounds – is in some instances shared by the local communities themselves, as the process offers them a means of entering into the ‘mainstream’ society. Some inhabitants also hail the symbolic ‘quality’ and ‘formality’ that the regeneration brings to the image of their hitherto ‘degraded’ and ‘informal’ settlement. Thus, there seem to be multiple dimensions to the outcomes of urban regeneration, and there is a significant gap in the literature investigating the diversity of the destiny, intentions, and aspirations of the communities under regeneration and, more importantly, the impact of regeneration projects on the purported ‘informality’ associated with their built environments. Against this backdrop, this chapter extends the debate around the merits of regeneration and its failures through a case study of the impact of urban regeneration in Slave Island, 2 a bustling and multicultural locality in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

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9.2 Intersecting Urban Regeneration and Urban Informality The regeneration project of the Slave Island area is part of the greater Urban Regeneration Project of the City of Colombo (URPCC), implemented in 2011 by the Urban Development Authority (UDA). The process involved resettling families in newly constructed multi-storey buildings in the same area as they had lived previously in densely built, mostly dilapidated houses and shop buildings adjacent to warehouses and light industries, all of which have been cleared by now. The UDA expected to recover resettlement costs by leasing out portions of the freed land to corporations. This regeneration project was piloted in two neighbourhoods, commonly known as Glennie Street and Station Passage, the largest single land blocks in the area. Despite the objections of residents, who lost the case filed in the court of law, both lands were acquired by the UDA and then handed over to two foreign companies in 2012. The resettlement stage of the project had already been completed at the time of writing this chapter (Figure 9.1). The official project plans for the regeneration of Slave Island and similar areas identified them commonly as ‘under-served’ and ‘informal’ settlements, which connoted both ‘shanties’ and ‘slums’. 3 While there perhaps are slumlike conditions in Slave Island with run-down and degraded elements in its densely built physical environment, not all of its inhabitants were ‘underserved’ in terms of basic utilities and amenities to the extent expected to be seen in typical slum and shanty neighbourhoods. There are other aspects of urban informality and in particular how Slave Island has been a place where the right to the city is exercised by the marginalized.4 The plurality of the urban informality there, is manifested by its largely organic and diverse spatial entities and the presence of multicultural population, the trajectory of self-build initiatives by the dwellers, self-organized urban operations, informal trading activities, and overall, the social capital of mutual care and other affordances of urban living (Figures 9.2 and 9.3). The first point of arrival for this chapter is the fact that, as evidenced by the findings presented, the urban regeneration projects in Colombo have resulted in consequences both agonistic and optimistic for their inhabitants. It is important to note that the perceived informality associated with their living environments has not necessarily been appreciated by some groups within those communities. The second point argued here is that while these projects may have provided opportunities for some, in their current form of total evacuation and resettlement with tokenistic public participation they have also adversely contributed to the erasure of spatial memory and function, as a result of unjust displacement and dispossession of long-standing residents, and the loss of important relational and reciprocal spaces in the neighbourhood. The third point is that the regeneration projects in Slave Island failed to acknowledge and value the multiple shades of urban informality, and the central role they have played in creating the identity and memory of Slave

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Figure 9.2 Urban Density, Slave Island, Colombo.

Figure 9.3 Urban Density, Slave Island, Colombo.

156  Gihan Karunaratne et al. Island as a unique place in Colombo. The positive aspects of the informal are obscured, rendered invisible. Attention is only focussed on the squalor, and contrasts with the utopian image of a global city constantly portray Slave Island and places like it as impoverished and in need of wholesale regeneration. This rendering invisibility of the informal helps to reduce the vibrant and complex place into the squalor of urban poor in need of rescue, and assists in the socioeconomic legitimization of such regeneration projects. In a wiser and more strategic intervention, such informality itself could be mobilized to elevate the status of this dense, lively neighbourhood into an attractive, mainstreamed and sought-after urban district, integrating successfully into the transforming cityscape of Colombo through careful conservative surgery. To make such a case, this article is organized into three key sections. First, it contextualizes the argument by providing a schematic overview of the historical evolution of Colombo’s urban environment. This is followed by a critical analysis of the rationale of urban regeneration in Slave Island and its consequences through on-site observations and in-depth interviews conducted between January 2017 and December 2019 with long-standing residents from two Slave Island neighbourhoods, Glennie Street and Station Passage. The article concludes by reflecting on the possibilities for an urban regeneration that is economically generative yet community-centric and socially just in a rapidly changing city.

9.3 The City of Colombo: From Colonial Governance to Urban Regeneration Colombo’s evolution into a city can be traced back to the 11th century when it was first used as a small seaport by Moorish traders and later captured by the Portuguese in the early 16th century. Under Portuguese occupation, the city was confined to a fortified area of about one square mile (Hulugalle 1965). The Dutch who seized Colombo in 1658, extended the city by a few square miles beyond the original Portuguese enclave, including the vibrant neighbourhood of Slave Island, where descendants of migrant workers and enslaved Black African) people have historically resided (Brohier 1973). In 1796, the evolving political situation in Europe forced the Dutch to relinquish their territory to the British East Asia Company (Israel 1995). With the British company’s acquisition of the city and other parts of Ceylon, as Sri Lanka was called back then, Colombo eventually became the gateway that connected the island with the rest of the world. The development of the port and industries drew a large number of migrants to Colombo from around the island, who eventually found shelter in shanties constructed on low-lying lands and substandard row houses built in tenement gardens. In the 19th century, as industries and warehouses grew, Slave Island became home to a growing working-class population and to small-scale vendors. Muslim and Tamil newcomers also settled in Slave Island, as either rent-paying tenants or squatters without formal titles to the land.

The Invisible beyond Visible  157 With the growth of Colombo, the British government ushered in a wave of urban planning when in 1921 they turned to Patrick Geddes, the famed Scottish botanist and urban planner, to create a plan extending the administrative and functional area of Colombo by a few more square miles (Munasinghe, 2014). Geddes, who was sensitive to the organic nature of settlements in Indian cities, suggested a ‘conservation surgery’ approach instead of a ‘policy of sweeping clearances’ to manage informal settlements (Tyrwhitt 1947: 45). However, when in Colombo, Geddes was fascinated with the landscaping of the wealthy and middle-class residents, and aspired to turn Colombo into the ‘Garden City of the East’ (Panditharatna 1963) and his plans had no specific focus on Slave Island or any other organic developments in and around the city. In 1978 the government of Sri Lanka embraced free trade and deregulation policies in alignment with emerging global neoliberal trends. During the 1980s, Colombo started its growth into a larger metropolitan region with many commercial centres that also arose beyond the original confines of the city.5 In order to promote and regulate urban development, which became an overt focus to boost the economy, the new government established the UDA in 1978, vested with myriad powers to plan, regulate, develop, attract capital, acquire and disburse land, and clear substandard housing. In 2009, at the end of almost 30 years of civil unrest in the island, the government saw the need to repair a conflict-damaged economy, and transforming Colombo into an attractive global city was deemed key to growth.6 Seeing the quality of Colombo’s urban environment as a key factor in its liveability and investment appeal, the government began to rehabilitate public open spaces, improve walkways, build waterfronts, create new parks and recreational areas, renovate old buildings, and improve flood and drainage systems (Munasinghe, 2014). In tandem with the ongoing developments, the UDA also instigated the Urban Regeneration Project of the City of Colombo (URPCC), which aimed to bring about a slum-free, self-sustaining Colombo by 2023 and provide adequate housing for some 60,000 families deemed as living in substandard and informal neighbourhoods (UDA 2021). Since 2012, the UDA has been resettling these residents from their ‘substandard’ settlements to newly constructed, high-density, and low-cost houses in multi-storey buildings. The project has been financed through the leasing of cleared land to private sector developers, who, in turn, develop such land into commercially viable entities. One of the first urban districts identified for regeneration was Slave Island.

9.4 The Narrative of Impoverishment and the Erasure of Spatial History and Function ‘Over 50 percent of the Colombo city population lived in shanties, slums or dilapidated old housing schemes’, declares the UDA’s Urban Regeneration Project web page (UDA 2021). The matter-of-fact statement is then followed

158  Gihan Karunaratne et al. by an assertion that these residents are ‘under-served communities’ living in an unhealthy environment. The UDA then assigns itself the seemingly noble and ambitious goal of eliminating these shanties, slums, and dilapidated houses through the relocation of dwellers to new housing schemes of ‘acceptable standards’ before eventually stating that these ‘liberated lands’ are to be used for productive mixed and commercial development. In other words, the UDA considered half of Colombo city’s population and where they lived as unproductive, unattractive, and underutilized, and therefore designed regeneration interventions to ‘transform Colombo into a world recognized city’ were seen as necessary and urgent (UDA 2021). The UDA’s narrative of impoverishment that depicts half of Colombo’s people and the places in which they lived in such homogeneous, reductive, and unflattering terms carries a grain of truth, but it fails to acknowledge how built environments like Slave Island, a mixed-use and multi-ethnic community of more than 10,000 residents, are home to complex social ecosystems comprising a rich mix of ethnic, religious, class, and income groups. These places have organically evolved into their present state through incremental contributions and constructions by their non-architect residents over many decades; hence their history, strong sense of identity, and functionally built environments. With UDA’s urban regeneration project, this vibrant and organic ecosystem now faces the looming threat of demolition and erasure. Many Slave Island houses are indeed dilapidated, overcrowded, and poorly maintained, but with quite a few new and well-maintained ones, incrementally built, among them. Houses are often constructed close together and stand back-to-back to one another in a cluster, which contributes to a sense of crowdedness. In part this is because of a lack of resources, but also because residents tend to go above and beyond to hold onto ethnic and familial ties. After marriage, couples would usually occupy a unit in the cluster of Slave Island homes. Often, grandparents would also live with their family. In extreme cases, a unit might house 10 to 15 residents, sometimes with four extended families living in a tight space together. Some families sublet rooms to gain supplementary income, and in such cases there are no personal or recreational areas for family members. The cramped conditions have enabled residents to find novel means of delineating private and public territories. One can see a spatial logic in the way that varied materials and colours are used and community surveillance is employed to define personal and social boundaries. For example, contrasting types of floor materials and pavements are used to demarcate neighbourhoods, although such indicators are sometimes unclear. Throughout the day, elderly and middle-aged ladies congregate and sit outside their homes on plastic chairs in the small passages, given the paucity of indoor space and lighting. In some clusters of small houses, an unwritten rule facilitates the females of a house to change their clothes or talk privately, while all the men are obliged to leave the house and wait outside (Figure 9.4).

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Figure 9.4 Hanging laundry used to separate public and private space, Slave Island, Colombo.

At the same time, the UDA’s narrative of impoverishment failed to capture the complex mix in Slave Island communities, which comprised regular wage earners, informal workers, remittance workers, as well as middle-income business owners, who have all productively played an important if often overlooked role in the Sri Lankan economy. Slave Island is home to teachers working in government and private schools, white-collar employees of banks and other institutions, office assistants, street vendors, municipal workers, freelance mechanics, tuk-tuk (three-wheeler) operators, and unskilled labourers. Women from Slave Island are also commonly employed as domestic workers in the homes of Colombo’s upper- and middle-class families. Most work is either located at home or near their homes, but some families have members who send remittances home through their work abroad, mainly in Middle Eastern countries (Figures 9.5 and 9.6). Muslims and Malays, the dominant ethnic groups in the area, have strong ties to immediate relatives and close friends. However, marriages between ethnic and religious groups are common. Residents trust their immediate neighbours and the wider communities on whom they rely for both physical and financial security. Although most people have a basic command of English, they prefer to use their native language, either Sinhalese or Tamil. Unlike in other

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Figure 9.5 Cottage Industry, Local TV Repairman, Slave Island, Colombo.

marginalized communities in Colombo, education is also highly valued by many Slave Island parents. A vast majority of young people have at least a secondary education or a diploma. Often drawing on the remittances from family members in the Middle East, many parents send their children to attend private or international secondary schools and a few even proceed up to university or other tertiary education. On most afternoons and evenings children take Sinhala, Tamil, and mathematics tuition classes in a private residence; as many as 20 pairs of children’s shoes can be seen outside these houses. Teens, in spite of the socio-cultural differences attributed to Colombo’s popular government or local schools and the international schools that they attend, seem to have no differences when they are in the community and maintain strong bonds of friendship. These children are also digitally literate and a majority have a smartphone, with which they constantly spend time together in the alleys and open spaces, updating social media pages and sharing videos (Figure 9.7). Slave Island’s community is thus tight-knit and economically interdependent. Community micro-financing has been a common source of funding to conduct house renovations and repairs, bicycle and tuk-tuk purchases, wedding celebrations, annual festivals, and other family functions. These funds come from local lenders as well as international non-profit organizations. The local Buddhist temple or small community centres often help to facilitate

The Invisible beyond Visible  161

Figure 9.6 Cottage Industry, Local Taylor, Slave Island, Colombo.

community meetings with lenders. Nonetheless, these community debts can sometimes become untenable in the absence of good savings and economic management skills. Overall, what we see here is the invisible informal – a more complete and complex view of Slave Island that is far from the UDA’s oversimplified narrative of impoverishment. Indeed, many Slave Island residents refer to the settlement as ‘our community’ while taking offence when outsiders describe their homes pejoratively as ‘shanties’. This has prompted local

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Figure 9.7 Private tuition, students’ shoes outside an informal classroom, Slave Island, Colombo.

authorities and government agencies to use the more euphemistic term of ‘under-served settlement’ instead. Although the UDA has correctly recognized economic and spatial problems in the Slave Island as issues, one should not overlook how the old houses and buildings are also infused with creative expression, functionality, and communal identity. Through two centuries of creative place-making by long-standing community members, many of the houses and buildings  – now earmarked for regeneration and demolition – hold much cultural and functional significance for the area’s residents.

The Invisible beyond Visible  163 Many households in Slave Island are constantly reinventing the architecture of their homes as soon as they attain the means to do so. When the owners acquire funds, when their family expands, or when their children get married, they renovate their homes by adding vertical or horizontal space. Incremental cosmetic additions such as chrome-plated balconies and elaborate exterior cladding are seen as assets as well as symbols of status. Slave Islanders who have sought employment in the Middle East have introduced Arabic decoration and ornamentation as well as Islamic architectural styles to their houses, a creative expression of wealth and prosperity. These unique external architectural designs will be destroyed once the regeneration project is fully implemented (Figure 9.8).

Figure 9.8 Dispensary Lane, Slave Island, Colombo.

164  Gihan Karunaratne et al. Given Slave Island’s strong and cohesive communities, each with its own idiosyncratic internal and external social arrangements, it is also important to critically question the way in which the government’s regeneration project, which omits plans for spaces conducive to shared activities, will erode the area’s vital communal spaces. These are important relational and reciprocal spaces where residents cultivate strong bonds of mutual support and friendship. While the new multi-storey buildings do have some spaces for public gatherings on separate floors, residents have found them to be too regimented for informal gatherings of children, youth and the elderly. The 1.5-m-wide access corridors on each floor are too narrow and dark for interaction and thus the lift lobby, stairways and the open car park became the only spaces to meet, play, and mingle with neighbours. In the alleyways, eliciting from the 27 streets that spatially configured Slave Island, and due for redevelopment, elderly grandparents and young mothers would wash, clean and care for children together. One can also observe how spaces that are demarcated neither as strictly private nor public, such as small courtyards and openings between houses – ‘peripheral spaces’ – also act as sites for a rich array of socioeconomic and cultural activities, interaction, and bonding among neighbours and community members. Often, these spaces are where community members would grow plants, children would play and men would repair domestic appliances as well as tuk-tuks. These spaces foster communal resilience and togetherness as well as neighbourly tolerance (Figures 9.9 and 9.10). The street itself is another ideal public space, a space for shared social capital and a place where communities come together to work towards shared objectives. Throughout the year, residents and the wider community organize activities such as religious festivals, children’s sports days, and talent contests. These celebrations involve entire communities. Weeks of preparation include decorating streets with artefacts, colourful flags and banners, and erecting temporary ornamental structures in public spaces and the spaces between buildings. The community comes together for funerals, marriage ceremonies and birthday celebrations; for a funeral, most of the community witnesses the procession from house to crematorium. In Slave Island, communal activities compensate for deficiencies in the provision of public amenities and spaces. Peppered with rich historical identity and architectural ingenuity, Slave Island’s built environment includes well-known landmarks of Colombo, but many of these buildings are now earmarked for demolition. It is home to the picturesque Kompannaweediya Railway Station, a colonial edifice that connects commuters from outside the city to central Colombo and provides residents of Slave Island with an informal marketplace to trade and sell household goods. The Masjidul Jamiah (Malay Mosque), Jumma Masjid (Wekanda Mosque), and other mosques in the area said to have existed from the 1700s, are reflective of the large presence of Malay and Muslim communities, while the small Buddhist shrine by the railway

The Invisible beyond Visible  165

Figure 9.9 Narrow Corridor, Slave Island, Colombo.

station, the Holy Rosary Church, and Sri Murugan Kovil stand as evidence of Slave Island’s cultural and ethnic diversity. The Elephant House Factory and the John Keells Office Complex have historically provided residents with direct and indirect employment. The Rio Cinema, Castle Hotel, and Nippon Hotel are – or have been – some of Colombo’s best-known tourist

166  Gihan Karunaratne et al.

Figure 9.10 Community pocket, informal agriculture (garden), Slave Island, Colombo.

The Invisible beyond Visible  167 sites. The Castle Hotel was an iconic 141-year-old community hotel and bar for Slave Island’s middle- and working-class – tuk-tuk drivers, lowlevel office clerks and snake charmers (Ratnayake 2016). Constructed by a wealthy Ceylonese philanthropist in the 19th century, the De Soysa building was constantly bustling throughout the day with its street arcade of eateries, informal gathering places and gaming pubs (Thomas 2019). While the railway station and religious buildings have yet to be marked out for regeneration, the factory and warehouse complexes as well as the Castle Hotel and the De Soysa Building have all already been demolished. The loss of these landmarks, which are closely associated with people’s memories, day-to-day lives and histories, has been traumatic for many in the area. Even though the regeneration project has laudable aims, what we see here is that it has also brought about adverse changes to Slave Island’s historical, identity-rich and functional built environment. The changes are clear, but not limited to the physical environment. From in-depth observations and interviews, we will next see that the project also is a ground for many unheard stories and invisible episodes. They reveal that the project is robbing residents of essential sources of livelihood, displacing long-standing residents and eroding valuable spaces of interaction, congregation and interdependence, while nonetheless offering long-awaited opportunities to some residents. It is to these unheard stories that we now turn.

9.5 Resettlement with Displacement and Dispossession Lionel, a friendly and attentive Sinhala businessman from Matara, owned a small tea shop for over 20 years in the corner of a building earmarked for demolition under the regeneration project. As a teenager, he came to Colombo in 1986 to seek employment and found a job as a helper in a hardware retail shop in Slave Island. Before long, the young man endeared himself to residents who visited the shop and in 1991, with the financial support of other businesspeople in the area, he leased premises for his tea shop. The visibility and accessibility of Lionel’s tea shop, which faces two main roads, as well as his congeniality and thoughtfulness, are key factors that helped his business flourish. His affordably priced tea and the eatery became a favoured destination for residents and workers in the area. A couple of years later, Lionel bought the lease for the shop from the original lessee. Happily married, he purchased a residential flat through the Maligawatta housing scheme in Colombo and settled with his wife and two children. The tea shop was his sole source of income. Although Lionel was initially not in favour of the regeneration project, he consented to the acquisition of the property and agreed to temporarily move out of the premises while a new building was constructed. The surveys, negotiations and transfer of land happened so quickly that the building’s tenants and property owners had no opportunity to learn about the details of future space allocation. Lionel was eventually offered a shop

168  Gihan Karunaratne et al. on the second level in the interior of the new building, hardly conducive to his business. Caught off-guard with the ill-suited arrangement, Lionel has been desperately appealing to the UDA and the developer for a space on the ground level. He did not expect to lose his street-level site as well as valuable income when he consented to the development. Now, his only option is to find a buyer for the poorly located upper-level retail space. Lionel was not the alone in this plight. Shereen, a respected community member of Sinhala and Burgher descent, was born and raised in Slave Island’s Station Passage. After the death of her parents, the 6.5-perch (163 m 2) plot of land where her family house sat was divided between her and her two brothers. When her brothers sold their portions after their respective marriages, Shereen, middle-aged and single at that time, had to repair the partly demolished house to support herself. Part of her income came from the rent she received for one of the house’s two small rooms, and the rest from her respective long-time informal brokerage, moneylending and home-cleaning businesses. Shereen was entitled for a house unit that would be provided from the proposed multi-storey resettlement housing complex and temporarily provided with a monthly allowance of Rs 25,0007 by the developer. She found a small room in the Borella area, 4 km from Slave Island, for a monthly rent of SLR 10,000, but the balance of SLR 15,000 barely covered her living expenses that included essential food, grocery items and the regular medicine that she needed to deal with long-term health issues. She managed to deposit an equivalent of three months’ rent – money she had carefully saved over many years – as an advance for her new unit. However, the proposed resettlement housing project was delayed and Shereen’s temporary displacement was extended by a few years. With rising costs of rent and living, Shereen, alongside other Station Passage community members, demanded that the developer increase their monthly allowance. Under financial pressure, the development company tried to shift responsibility for cost increases to the UDA. After several rounds of negotiations, the UDA increased the allowances by SLR 5000, but Shereen’s property owner was not prepared to extend her tenancy and she was forced to seek another temporary residence. By this time, her savings had mostly depleted. Shereen expressed her predicament to many agencies, but no one offered her a solution. Once a money lender herself, she then started borrowing money at a high interest from other informal sources as a last resort. Shereen was not alone in her situation and is now living precariously under the constant threat of losing both her home and income. Miguel, a Tamil Christian who lived in a two-storey unit in an old building on Glennie Street for more than 50 years, lost both his home and business without compensation amidst the regeneration project. His grandfather first rented the unit from the building’s owner in the 1950s. The Rent Act of 1972, enacted by the socialist government to prohibit

The Invisible beyond Visible  169 property owners from increasing rent or forcibly evicting tenants like Miguel’s family, led owners to abandon and neglect their properties, which resulted in entire buildings degenerating and becoming run down. For years, Miguel paid no rent but did pay property tax and utility bills to the Municipal Council. He had also been operating a small tailoring business, first founded by his father, on the ground floor of the unit. To the surprise of Miguel and his neighbours, the descendants of the building owner, unseen for decades, suddenly came forward to claim possession and the right to compensation at the time the UDA called property owners for entitlement.8 After a lengthy hearing process, Miguel lost his case because he could not substantiate his right to the property with sufficient documents. Miguel’s family eventually lost both their long-time home and tailoring business. As he was not wealthy enough to afford another dwelling in the area, Miguel was forced to leave Slave Island. Many of his other neighbours shared a similar fate as they were all tenants with no formal lease or rental agreement with the owner of the property, and therefore could not prove ownership of and gain compensation for their lost homes. Khaleel, a Sri Lankan Malay employed as a bank clerk in Colombo, inherited a house on 6 perches (150 m 2) of land on Glennie Street from his father. He wished to fully rebuild the house on the land. Khaleel and his wife did not have sufficient savings to pay for the work, but he was able to obtain a 15-year mortgage on his property, located in a prime location, from the bank in which he had been a long-standing employee. Khaleel built a modern two-storey house with a floor area of nearly 200 m 2 and he and his wife lived in it for more than five years. In 2012, however, Khaleel’s long-term plans were derailed as his neighbourhood was considered for urban regeneration. He was entitled to compensation for his property, part of which could be exchanged for a house unit in the new multi-storey complex.9 Yet, after settling his mortgage with the bank, Khaleel was left with very few funds. By then, he and his wife had spent all their savings on rebuilding their house. Although he had a plan to purchase another property that would provide him with the amenities he had enjoyed in his own house, Khaleel did not have enough money to pursue this ambition. He and his family were forced to accept a unit in the new high-rise complex. The unit he was offered in compensation was less than 70 m 2 in area. He compared his new unit with the more comfortable and spacious house that he previously owned. Since 2017, Khaleel has been appealing to the UDA and other officials for proper compensation for the loss of his house, without success.

9.6 Opportunities for Self-evacuation Although the regeneration project has disadvantaged many Slave Island residents, it is equally important to recognize that it also benefited some of

170  Gihan Karunaratne et al. its residents. Ranasinghe, a government employee in a minor staff position, had grown up unaware of the whereabouts of his parents but knew that they possessed a 60-m 2 row house in Station Passage. After marrying a woman he met during secondary school and who comes from a middle-class family in suburban Colombo, Ranasinghe had no other place to move into other than the small inherited house. He and his wife then had two daughters, who were both sent to study at a popular government school largely attended by students of middle-class families. Among their colleagues, the two daughters along with their mother were always uncomfortable with the place of their residence, popularly known as Station Watta. Uncomfortable with their lives in Slave Island and their small home, deemed unfit for their growing daughters, Ranasinghe’s family had always aspired to move away from the tight and crowded environment of Station Passage but lacked the capital required for a down payment on a larger house elsewhere. When the regeneration project took place, they accepted compensation for their Slave Island house and happily bought a property in Homagama, 20 km from Colombo. Despite the long commute to Colombo, they saw regeneration as their way out. Other similar and positive cases can be found in both neighbourhoods, with residents viewing regeneration as a blessing for their long-term plans. While Ranasinghe’s case was an early inspiration, the post-regeneration neighbourhoods seem to have changed the perceptions of many of the other families, especially of the ones of the immediate younger generation, those who are more exposed to the outside world and trending lifestyles. The wide array of opportunities presented by the media and other information flows kindled new aspirations in those families. For some of them, especially those who lived in small, less than 30-m 2 houses with improvised conditions, the new house units in a modern multi-storey complex were a big relief, even though adapting to the new environment was difficult at the beginning. Muhammad’s family has transformed his new, sixthfloor, nearly 60-m 2 apartment provided with basic finishes in the high-rise ‘Metro Homes’ resettlement complex, with expensive floor tiling, modern bathroom fittings, and new furniture, which they talked about with some pride. This transformed house unit reflects the ‘middle-class’ aspirations hidden deep inside Muhammad and his capitalization of the opportunity given to him. Both the Station Passage and the Glennie Street regeneration projects in Colombo aimed for gentrification.10 However, the process of gentrification seems to have commenced long before its formal elements were introduced. The Metro Homes housing complex, which is the resettlement scheme for the families living in the Glennie Street area at the times of regeneration, is now a ‘hidden’ attraction to outsiders who found the economic value of its convenient and prime location in Colombo. At the time of this survey, out of 900 units, nearly 50 were owned by a set of leading politicians, high-ranking government officers, military officers, wealthy businessmen, etc., who were

The Invisible beyond Visible  171 new to Slave Island, but found their preferred site for living at the centre of the city. The ownership of the house units was either transferred from the original grantee or directly purchased from the UDA’s additional stock of units constructed to cover the expenses of the project. Some residents expressed their feeling of being privileged to become the neighbours of those respected and wealthy, elite members of the mainstream society. On the one hand, the residents found it a source of strength, feeling more secure in their neighbourhood in case of possible invasions by the authorities such as the one they had already experienced in the regeneration process. On the other hand, they welcomed such newcomers who would be the means to integrate this community into the mainstream society and diffuse the neighbourhood into the overall landscape of the city, counteracting the negative images associated with the place. However, the new spaces within and around the new housing blocks are ‘formal’, with units lying on either side of the 1.5-m-wide corridor, a lift lobby separated by a fire door and the staircase, all leading to the large parking bay at the ground level, and the 7-m-wide dual carriageway roads encircling the complex as a whole. The informal vitality experienced by the residents in the narrow streets and winding alleyways cannot be regenerated in these rigid spaces, despite some groups of the older generation still seem trying to appropriate them through different means. Even though some ‘anti-social’ activities such as drug trafficking, smuggling, illegal trading, etc., are also reported, a majority of the teens and the younger members of today’s Slave Island have become part of the modern ‘Global’ society with the benefits of the internet, smart devices and other means of exposure. The younger children sometimes find pitch in the open road and the external car parks to play cricket, yet are not permitted to do so by the authorities. The gentrification of the neighbourhood is reflected in many spaces including the parking area on the ground floor of the Metro Homes building with a large number of luxury cars and SUVs, afforded only by the wealthy middle class, parked side by side, outnumbering the row of tuk-tuks.

9.7 Concluding Reflections: Towards a Conservative Surgery Approach, The government’s intervention in Slave Island is part of the government’s plan to realign its spaces with the image of what constitutes a ‘world-class city’, defined by concepts of visual justice (Godamone, 2014). Similar to other current urban redevelopment projects implemented elsewhere in the Global South, Colombo’s regeneration projects and their aim to ‘formalize’ the city’s landscape are driven by a popular belief that spaces not ‘planned’ and organized into simple, clean geometric forms in the urban environment are ‘matters out of place’ (Douglas, 1996). Since organically evolved and self-organized entities do not comply with the dominant socio-spatial order of the city, as set out by the authorities, such built environments are

172  Gihan Karunaratne et al. generally deemed ‘informal’. As Ananya Roy (2005) observed about cities of developing countries, informality and its connotation of exceptionality is a practice by the state to rationalize planning. These are perceptions produced through development literature, government policy papers and popular planning jargon to categorize and control land, labour and territories (McFarlane, 2012). Yet, with Slave Island, it is clear that the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ or the ‘organic’ and ‘organized’ spatial order is a set of mutually reinforcing processes that cannot be disconnected from each other. Pursuing one could be at the cost of the other and therefore the current market-driven, beautification-motivated and top-down regeneration approaches popularly adopted in city planning in developing countries need to be reconsidered in light of social and environmental justice concerns. It is therefore necessary to critically rethink whether the urban regeneration in cases like Slave Island could adopt an approach that is more empathetic to the unique elements of culture and irreplaceable places in the locality – in other words, a return to Patrick Geddes’ earlier ‘conservative surgery’ regeneration approach (Tyrwhitt 1947). An approach befitting the contemporary challenges of Slave Island recognizes the need to ‘surgically’ improve the quality of life of Slave Islanders, but at the same time, it must also strengthen and support the people, places and pursuits historically embedded in the locality. The people of Slave Island, those whose forebears have lived there over many generations, could have been better served with a more community-centric approach, one that takes seriously the discourses, needs and experiences of the community, over and above the profit interests of corporations or development partners. A ‘conservative surgery’ approach could also preserve, protect and restore the character and diversity of the locales of Slave Island. The rich array of cultural, ethnic and religious practices not only supports the sociopsychological well-being of the inhabitants, but also helps to bring richness to the social fabric of the city of Colombo. The unique spatial configuration and self-built architecture, constructed in the hands of generations of skilful ‘non-architect’ residents of Slave Island, that echoed the spatial patterns of medieval European cities, ancient Japanese townships and Indian urban heritage districts, could have mostly been kept, preserved and restored rather than demolished. The government-intended gentrification of financially poor, underprivileged areas could be achieved even without total eradication and revamp, but with careful conservation, thereby improving the quality of the built environment. Such an approach would also recognize the value of the economic and cultural pursuits of Slave Islanders to the city’s and the national economy, and provide initiatives that steadily support the economic lives of these workers. Tuk-tuk repair workers, tea shop owners, business families, domestic workers, and daytime labourers of Slave Island all contribute their fair share to the economy.

The Invisible beyond Visible  173 As discussed throughout this chapter, the communities of Slave Island are not the mere ‘low-income’ groups imagined in popular urban planning and development literature, project documents, and financial instruments from multilateral organizations. Rather, they are part of a complex social ecosystem with a rich mix of ethnic, religious, and income groups, a curious juxtaposition of informal and formal, entangled in producing the uniqueness of the place. Their neighbourhoods are not mere ‘under-served settlements’ as categorized by the authorities, but spaces of history, spatial memory, co-production, contestations, and yet harmony. Rather than seeing such communities and their spaces as places that can be uprooted, demolished and resettled, a more just urban design and planning process should celebrate the inherent urban informality as the creation of communities and an expression of a rich communal life, and look for ways to sustain and build upon it as the starting point of citizen-led urbanism.

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank Dushko Bogunovich, Eve Stirling, Kate Scott, Nishat Awan, John Walsh, Joshua Yee Aung Low, Nusrat Jahan Mim, and Paul Doorly, for their editing guidance and advice.

Notes 1 It’s interesting to note that ‘urban regeneration’ has become a key product supported by a neoliberal ecosystem, where multilateral financiers such as the World Bank actively advocate regeneration projects and provide loans, largescale consultancies such as Arup provide the technical expertise worldwide, and even major universities provide architectural and urban planning degrees specifically to serve regeneration needs across the globe. 2 ‘Slave Island’, an immediate periphery of the core area of the city of Colombo that mostly bordered the Beira Lake, was given its name by the British colonial rulers to refer to how the Dutch, during their rule in Sri Lanka (1658–1796 AC), used it to house enslaved workers brought from Africa. 3 However, it has been argued elsewhere (e.g. Dovey et al. 2021), that there are ontological differences between slums (a set of physical conditions with particular lacks) and informal settlements (places produced beyond state and capital). 4 Purcell reworked the notion of such informal places in light of Lefebvre’s original conception, see: Mark Purcell. ‘A new land: Deleuze and Guattari and planning.’ Planning Theory & Practice 14, no. 1 (2013): 20–38. 5 Today, as of 2012, the Colombo Municipal Council manages an area of 35 square kilometres with a population of 780,000, while Metropolitan Colombo comprises a dozen local authorities overseeing more than three million residents. 6 The government’s priority concern were evidenced with how the defence and urban development portfolio was placed directly under the country’s president and under the ministerial supervision of his brother (2010–2015). 7 The regeneration project forced the entire Station Passage community to temporarily relocate and residents received a monthly allowance of SLR 25,000

174  Gihan Karunaratne et al. (USD 125) to live in rented accommodation for two years while waiting for their designated low-cost houses to be ready. 8 When the Slave Island regeneration project took place, the UDA conducted a detailed property survey and invited property owners entitled to compensation to submit their claims. Based on the agreement between the developer and the UDA, the developer was legally bound to issue compensation on a unit basis, either to the owner or the tenant. 9 The regeneration project observed all legal requirements, including the payment of compensation to owners and existing occupiers and the provision of resettlement options to affected families. Residents had two options: either move away with compensation paid for their lost properties or accept as compensation a unit in the high-rise housing complex that was part of the proposed development. Households were paid a monthly allowance to meet the costs of temporary accommodation. The quantum of compensation for each property was based on the Government Valuer’s assessment and the UDA was forbidden to make ex gratia payments to any of the more than 500 families who lived within the project area. 10 A good part of the land cleared of the substandard housing neighbourhoods was to be leased out to private property developers for mixed development projects, of which a major component would be upmarket residences. Inevitably, such mixed developments, on completion, are affordable only for those upper-middleincome groups who will be instrumental in transforming the surroundings of their neighbourhoods into exclusive urban environments.

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10 A Note on the Door Symbolic Erasure and Representational Resistance in Rio de Janeiro Bruna Montuori and Adam Kaasa 10.1 A Note on the Door In late January 2022, residents from Jacarezinho, a favela located on the north side of Rio de Janeiro,1 left notes and signs on their doors asking the police authorities not to invade their homes. 2 Images of the notes published in Voz das comunidades, a community-led online newspaper, show them to be handwritten in pen, highlighters and markers. In the series of notes shown from one resident, the words inform the intended audience (of a police or military on duty) of their identities (single mother and son), of their jobs (clinician and security worker) and of their working hours. The note uses polite and insistent language in efforts to demonstrate a moral character to a state entity in the only way they know they can – the presence of writing. This is but one way that favela residents attempt to make a claim that they are not criminals nor involved with drug dealing, hence demanding respect and a dignified treatment. These notes depict what we are terming representational resistance. They are a mode of emergent citizenship that attempts to make a formal claim to the state in representational value and therefore to be made legitimate with legal guarantees enshrined in the Brazilian Constitution. However, they are also informal in their materiality and temporality. Despite their claim being entered into the written form, their representational aesthetic is far from what might be imagined as legal, formal registers of sovereignty in the face of policies carrying a ‘violent and punitive character by the police and judicial bodies’, as noted by the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights (CIDH 2021, 12). Stories like this are more common than not. In 2019, a local organisation based in Maré, a compound of 16 favelas also in the north side of Rio, collected 1,509 letters from children and young people ‘expressing the feeling of those who live in the midst of armed violence in that territory’ (Redes da Maré 2022). The letters were delivered to the Conselho Nacional do Ministério Público (National Council of Prosecutors) with the goal to reduce the harm of police operations. 3 What can be said of these acts of writing, drawing and other forms of representational resistance? The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights highlighted the

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-14

A Note on the Door  177 consequences of institutional violence to be devastating to families, ‘affecting communities’ social fabric’, engendering ‘a culture of violence’ in which citizens do not trust state institutions (CIDH 2021, 119). Since 2019, the modalities of law enforcement in Rio 4 follow the rationale of what Ananya Roy and Raquel Rolnik term with specific reference to the case of the Brazilian state, the ‘alternate strategies of control and containment with actions of violent destruction and even death’ (2020, 23). In their comparative project on housing justice that presents new research methodologies across a range of global cases including Brazilian cities and Los Angeles, Roy and Rolnik write of these formal conditions of state law as ‘putting [residents] in a permanent state of spatial illegality and disenfranchisement’ (2020, 23). The question of permanence in relation to spatial illegality, or modes of what much of the literature hold as a primary definition of urban informality – that is the holding of legal property tenure or not (Macedo 2008; Van Gelder 2009; Wu et al. 2013; Wahab and Agbola 2017) – is key to the case of Rio (Banks et al. 2020). Unable to shift the spatial organisation of urban life in terms of property, favela residents resist their representational ‘illegality’. In this chapter we refer to this resistance as antagonistic to a long term process of symbolic erasure, and as working towards new modes of presence and presencing in the city. The handwritten notes reveal the nature of human rights violations in favelas, 5 and can be understood as but one impermanent, pleading gesture within a networking system of social movements contributing to the symbolic presence of favelas in the past, present and future of Rio. This is not to make light or academically theorise the real violence of having to make claims of subjecthood and sovereignty in the face of police violence across favelas in Rio (Magaloni et al. 2020), but rather to be confronted by the multitude of formal informalities constituting new social and political resistances in these places. Repressive behaviours of material and symbolic erasure are integral to the history of Rio’s favelas. This was particularly evident during the national military dictatorship between 1964 and 1985, when favela residents faced abuse, home demolition, dispossession and displacement (Brum 2019). Over the past 20 years, the aim to pacify and control favelas formed part of a larger economic, political and urban policy geared towards the development of a mega-event-driven city. These policy imperatives incited and legitimised new forms of material and symbolic erasure now equipped with technologies of surveillance and advanced weapons (Machado da Silva and Menezes 2019).6 These policies included the integration of specific favelas to the ‘formal’ city through urbanisation programmes (Landesman 2016) and public security initiatives to pacify these territories, using coercive and militarised strategies of patrol ‘allegedly to guarantee urban order’ (Silva 2016, 56). In addition to the material and symbolic erasures enacted on the favelas, their history also highlights what Cavalcanti terms a ‘grammar of social control of the favelas’ (2013, 194) sustained by

178  Bruna Montuori and Adam Kaasa the exercise of necropolitics. Necropolitics here relying on the definition provided by Achille Mbembe as referring to an expression of sovereignty that defines who matters and who does not, limiting who should die and who should keep living (2003, 14). It is, in Mbembe’s words, a project of sovereignty whose aim is ‘not the struggle for autonomy but the generalized instrumentalization of human existence and the material destruction of human bodies and populations’ (2003, 14). A note on the door becomes a ‘specific exercise of sovereignty’, as posed by Mariana Cavalcanti (2013, 193), against the dominant sovereign force of the necropolitical and its material, symbolic and bodily erasure in Rio’s favelas. In this chapter we focus specifically on the processes of reclaiming symbolic presence by favela residents in the urban imaginary of Rio, observing the forms in which these acts are carried out to resist material and symbolic erasure. The historical legacy of state militarisation in Rio left a series of symbolic erasures, not always materially visible but rather embodied by residents and their lived experiences.7 These forms of symbolic erasures reside in the long history of favela residents not being recognised as citizens living in legitimate spaces (Silva 2002, 2016; Holston 2008). The historic violence against favelas and their residents was formalised into law at the turn of the millennium. This came in the form of the Law and Order Assurance (GLO) which gave the military temporary police powers and came into power first in 1999, then again in 2001 during the second Presidential term of Fernando Henrique Cardoso. The law, which can only be enacted through Presidential decree, has been used primarily in ‘the use of troops in state government pacification operations in different communities in Rio de Janeiro’ and ‘at the 2014 World Cup and the Rio 2016 Olympic Games’ according to the national government’s own site.8 The GLO is a predecessor of the State of Rio de Janeiro’s own efforts to legalise police operations in the favelas through the creation of the Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (UPP) or ‘Pacifying Police Unit’.9 Begun in 2008 in the favela of Santa Marta, the UPP expanded rapidly to create state presence across multiple territories in Rio in advance of the 2016 Olympic Games (Franco 2014). Official statistics posit lethal deaths at the hands of the State of Rio de Janeiro at over 41,000 since 2014 (Instituto de Segurança Pública 2022).10 The spatialisation of these deaths in the metropolitan region largely correlates to the spatialisation of favelas in Rio. According to the Monitor Fuerza Letal 2022 report, during the pandemic in 2020, the Justice Supreme Court prohibited police raids, revealing a reduction of 31% in the number of deaths by lethal violence in comparison to the year before (2022, 43). Insofar as favelas’ leaderships, representatives and associations fight to change this scenario of material and bodily erasure through policy advocacy and other modes of insurgent citizenship, symbolic erasure remains (Miraftab 2017). One of the prevailing narratives about favelas and their inhabitants linked to the notion of symbolic erasure is that favelas are defined by absence: the absence of public services, of

A Note on the Door  179 infrastructure, of security and of regulation (Silva 2002). While there certainly may be forms of material and infrastructural inequity evidenced by favelas’ spatial conditions, on the ground, absence also appears in the forms of symbolic erasure where there is a removal of residents’ rights to have dignity, autonomy, agency to determine their lives, to have freedom, self-representation and, ultimately, to be alive. With that in mind, this chapter explores the historic forms of symbolic erasure in favelas within a dimension of informality that legitimises human rights violations and affects the lived experiences of residents. Second, we examine a series of citizen-led initiatives that work in the present to counter this symbolic erasure where residents work collectively to support claims of sovereignty within a necropolitical arena. The remainder of this chapter, then, is organised in two parts: (1) the context of urbanisation and militarisation of Rio de Janeiro and the legacies of a (failed) mega-event city; (2) case studies from residents groups within various favelas in Rio demonstrating ‘specific exercises of sovereignty’ (Cavalcanti 2013, 193) and activism to promote symbolic presence across the informal and formal registers of urban life.

10.2 From Material to Symbolic Erasure The history of the favela in Rio begins with the late 19th century national projects to remove the cortiços (tenements) in the central and port zones and relocate people to the suburbs (Vaz 1994; Chalhoub 1996). As related by Teresa A. Meade, in Rio “Health Inspector Souza Lima captured the prevailing sentiments of the elite when in 1891 he called for the destruction of the cortiços in the interest of freeing the central city from vice and visible poverty” (2010, 74). The relationship between presence and absence in the city predates the 1902 urban regeneration projects in Rio that centred on the displacement and disenfranchisement of the poor and were justified through prevailing economic, sanitary and moral arguments. Still this moment in the late 19th century marks a step-change in that the material removal of the cortiços, of housing for the poor and therefore of the poor from the centre of Rio, correlates to the formation of the first favela in the city. The various policies passed into law to secure the material erasure of housing for the poor in Rio that displaced some 25% of the city’s population at the time occurs at the same time as the first occupation of land by new migrants to the city, coming with the promises of work and housing (Freeman 2020, 274). Material erasure is met with material resistance. Dating from 1897, the Morro da Favella, today known as Providência, was one of the first strategic land occupations in the history of Rio by a collective, here by soldiers returning from the battle of Canudos in Bahia State, who were pressuring the Ministry of War for payment (Valladares 2005, 19). Gradually and through necessity, the group of selfbuilt shacks by the veterans extended to occupy more and more adjacent land without a street plan or access to public service infrastructure like

180  Bruna Montuori and Adam Kaasa water or sewage. Original residents of the Morro da Favella were joined by new migrants to the city from the Northeast of Brazil and from freed slaves migrating to cities across the country marking the new form of the favela as an entry point to a city without accessible or affordable housing options. Although other hill occupations took place in the same period, it was the Morro da Favella that gained recognition in the city’s physical and representational history, giving its name to this particular form of settlement. Anthropologist Lícia Valladares, in her book The Invention of the Favela (2005), offers two histories of this namesake. The first and most common is that Morro da Favella was named after the planta favela, a type of vegetation found on the hill in Rio that resembled vegetation in the region of Bahia where they were fighting. The second possibility has deeper significance. Valladares suggests that the name could have emerged in relation to the fierce resistance met by the army of the Republic at the hill of favela plants in Bahia and so adopting this name for its ‘powerful symbolic connotation that suggests resistance, the struggle of the oppressed against a powerful and dominating adversary’ (2005, 19). The history of the namesake of favela itself points to enduring symbolic conflicts over the representation of these sites then and now. In the early 20th century, popular media and the elites in government laboured to cement one representational narrative of the favelas. As an early example, Valladares highlights a newspaper article from Jornal do Brasil in 1900 which proclaimed favelas to be ‘infested with vagrants and criminals that are shocking to families’ (2005, 16). The representational history marked favelas as spaces to be combated, forming over time the basis of an ideology foregrounding the necessity of removal and operationalised as urban policies that favoured a relationship of control and cleansing. Historians of favelas recount how this ideology has been implemented throughout the 20th century, materially through the constant removal and displacement of residents and symbolically in the consciousness of society who internalised the oft repeated belief that favelas and their residents were a plague or disease to be cured through eradication (Abreu 1994; Vaz 1994; Valladares 2000; Brum 2019). In reality, the majority of favelados (a popular term for residents of favelas) were formerly enslaved people and their descendants and people from the Northeast of Brazil who came to work in Rio’s various industries and infrastructure projects during the city’s modernisation from the 1930s onwards. Most of these new migrants were racialised within the prevailing legal conditions of white supremacy settler colonialism in Brazil at the time, and most were illiterate and poor, hence precluded from voting or accessing land ownership (Martins 1981; Holston 2008, 100–102). For nearly 80 years after the founding of the first favela, various governments deployed a national policy of control, containment and erasure. Whether the justification was around beautification, sanitation and contagion, vice and mortality, or often all three, favelas became

A Note on the Door  181 the material and symbolic site of the ‘other’ in a Brazilian public sphere where their presence was argued (and argued successfully) to threaten the entirety of a social order (Valladares 2005). Forms of physical erasure – in other words, the relentless official demolition of shacks and houses in favelas – were present in residents’ daily lives and were part of official urban planning policies until the 1980s. The most notorious series of evictions and demolitions took place during the Governorship of the State of Guanabara11 by Carlos Lacerda in the 1960s, and following the beginning of the dictatorship in Brazil in 1964 through the 1970s. James Freeman cites historian Rafael Soares Gonçalves who offers this tally of the state-forced displacement during Lacerda’s time in office: ‘the final tally of the Lacerda government in this account was the removal of approximately 42,000 people, the demolition of 8078 shacks and the total or partial eradication of 27 favelas between 1962 and 1965’ (2020, 275). Freeman continues that with the military coup in 1964, Lacerda’s ‘pilot project’ was scaled up into a national policy through the creation of the National Housing Bank and financed by workers’ own funds by a new national  pension scheme – the FGTS (2020, 275). In Rio, the result of these national policies was the ‘[removal of] over 100 favelas, destroying more than 100,000 dwellings and leaving at least half a million poor people without their homes’ (Perlman 2010, 271) all between 1968–1975. Unsurprisingly from a standpoint of capital accumulation by dispossession, the removals targeted highly valued land for development in the city’s southern zone. From the eradication of the cortiços to the state-mandated demolition and forced displacement of hundreds of thousands of people, the late 19th and majority of the 20th century in Rio saw formal urban policies created to control favelas with repressive measures, in some cases even burning them to the ground (Perlman 1976). In the 1980s, new strategies of urbanisation at national and local levels reframed the discourse around favelas’ away from removal towards integration in the city. As debated by Brum (2019, 123), this moment is marked by the arrival of a re-democratisation, largely brought about through the presence of long term community movements of favela residents in the political sphere. As much as these urban integration programmes like Projeto Rio, Favela Bairro, PAC, Morar Carioca and MCMV shifted the language of policy approaches from one of eradication to one of integration, the rift between the favela and the asfalto (the name for the formally urbanised parts of the city – literally ‘the asphalt’ or ‘pavement’) grew exponentially (Cavalcanti 2013). Notwithstanding, the rise of armed groups and drug trafficking in these spaces produced another layer of representation within which favelas have been flattened into a language of violence and war. The criminalisation of entire territories under the metaphor of a ‘war on drugs’ (Silva 2017, Leite 2012) legitimised the control over their space, and had the consequence of criminalising economic activities, leisure and daily interactions.

182  Bruna Montuori and Adam Kaasa One example provided by Eliana Silva (2016), director of Redes da Maré at Maré favelas, was the shift in the organisation and the meaning of the bailes funk or funk balls – a term for street parties and gatherings emerging in the 1980s onwards, and characterised by a nascent form of musical innovation called funk carioca. Initially organised by residents for leisure and as a form of income, these balls became the representational targets of symbolic erasure through a series of laws at the State of Rio level from 1999 to 2009 that sought to outlaw these cultural practices (Sneed 2008; Lippman 2019; Gilsing 2020). Claiming them to be illegal activities full of crime, violence, pornography and vice (familiar tropes to the language used in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by elites looking to ‘eradicate’ the cortiços), these laws had the result of increasing the presence of armed groups who continued to run the balls, thus perpetuating the association between the cultural life of favelas with crime. It is not without intention that we highlight the development of new forms of urban-planning led favela integration programmes in the early 2000s along with the legal attempts to prohibit the cultural life of them in the form of laws against the bailes funk. This dual aspect of the material reorganisation of favelas along with the continued counter-cultural attacks on the life of the favela signals the rise of neoliberal development policies seeking the symbolic erasure through containment and integration. The circumstances that reproduced the public imaginaries of favelas as informal and excluded from the status of being part of the city continued in the late 1990s and 2000s. Researchers have highlighted the negative impacts of the discontinuity of urban development plans and programmes (Ximenes and Jaesnich 2020), the selective choice of which favelas to integrate (Brum 2019), the enormous costs of large scale infrastructure like the three-stop gondola in Providência prioritised over water or sewage infrastructure (Freire-Medeiros and Name 2017) and public security policies to pacify and control favelas in the name of combating crime (Cavalcanti 2013, Leite 2012). Each of these highlights symptoms of the continued stigmatisation of favelas in Rio in the 21st century as a problem to be solved (Silva 2002). The institutionalisation of urbanisation policies in favelas is publicly legitimised as a response to the territorial domination by drug traffickers (Cavalcanti 2013). The combination of neoliberal urbanisation policies and urban militarisation created an arms race between police authorities and armed groups and in 2017, a decade after the introduction of the UPPs, the number of violent deaths in the state approached the numbers registered before their introduction. The consequences of this hyper and publicly mediatised militarisation of the favelas changed their representation from the ‘language of rights’ to a ‘language of urban violence’ (Machado da Silva and Menezes 2019, 531). Citizens resist abuses inside the favelas and in the process lose neighbours, friends and family members to shootings. Their autonomy is restricted by the constant surveillance of armed groups, of police authorities and even of the army – which is the current case in favelas

A Note on the Door  183 such as Maré and the Complexo do Alemão (Silva 2017; CIDH 2021). Still, in the face of nearly 150 years of attempts to materially and symbolically erase favelados and their homes, neighbourhoods, communities and cultural life it is worth stating that residents are not passive agents, flattened to be understood only as victims. No: they carry long and complex trajectories of fighting for rights including efforts within favelas to change the policies in place and fundamentally to shift the language, narratives and image of their representation. In the final section we explore some recent manifestations of this representational resistance that works to counter the social and spatial segregation intergenerationally alive in Rio.

10.3 Representational Resistance The following three examples of representational resistance reflect the contemporary efforts of favelados to change public imaginaries in the city of Rio. The cases draw on encounters and observations during ethnographic participatory research by the primary author in Maré, between 2019 and 2020. These cases were not the main focus of the fieldwork research, which instead centres on the work of Redes de Maré, an NGO working on multiple fronts including projects around the ‘right to the city’. All of the following cases emerged in conversations at public events in Maré somewhat unexpectedly. We highlight them here as valuable illustrations of forms of representational resistance and claims for sovereignty that challenge the public security policies at play in Rio. These forms of representational resistance use knowledge production tools and technologies of and from the favelas. What we mean by this can be elucidated through an encounter with historian Pâmela Carvalho, coordinator at Redes da Maré, who mentioned the ancestral character of technologies from the favela while lecturing on blackness in October 2019. In the lecture, Carvalho emphasised that technologies emerge as local social movements leaders are replaced with a new generation of black young people who recognise the need to reclaim the past and forge ‘an ancestral fight in the future’. These new generations recognise the power of territories can be formed through the collective action of favelados movements relying on ‘technologies’ such as: data gathered and produced on-the-ground; a racialised perspective of care; and on tools that articulate the language, voice and roots of residents. Carvalho argued for care as a kind of technology, as a survival tool, fully absent in the role of the state providing rights and yet present in the care of mothers, aunts, grandmothers and neighbours. The technologies of and from the favelas that Carvalho refers to, then, are tools and knowledges expressed in publications, letters, manifestos, mappings, storytelling projects, visual materials, spatial interventions and plans and are informed on intergenerational experiences that propitiated the construction of spaces of solidarity, resistance and sociability.

184  Bruna Montuori and Adam Kaasa 10.3.1 Fórum Basta de Violência! The first case we want to highlight is ‘Fórum Basta de Violência! Outra Maré é possível…’ (the Forum Stop the Violence! Another Maré is Possible…), a group of discussions formed by residents and members from organisations and institutions in Maré and co-organised by Redes da Maré. On 24 May 2017, the first event of the Forum took place in the form of a peace march for Maré in response to the consequences of lethal violence in the area. Some 5,000 people marched through the streets of Maré protesting ongoing police operations that within the first five months of the year had killed 18 people, injured 16 and seen the death of a seven year-old child Fernanda Adriana Caparica Pinheiro while playing near Parque União (Strobi 2017). The march was a rallying call to bring attention to the violent environment to a wider public, including the media and government agencies. The Forum’s aim is to ‘advance public security via a democratic and transparent process, uniting the neighbourhood’s residents and civil society organisations in regular discussions and advocacy planning, as well as mapping police operations and publishing impact assessments’ (Ruge 2017). Once a month, activist leaders, community journalists, social workers, school teachers and members of civil society organisations meet at a municipal school in Maré alongside victims of violence and people who have lost family members and friends. Currently they debate and collaborate for the ACP (Ação civil pública, i.e. civil public action) in Maré which is a local collective demand for justice to reduce and restrain police operations. By gathering complaints, witnesses and data from incursions, they make visible the effects of the operations through a body of evidence that shows the number of deaths and injured people, the days which schools and health care centres were closed and importantly stories provided by residents who were affected. They provide locally designed strategies to reduce the lethality of operations, endorsing measures such as the presence of ambulances in operation days and the hours of incursions being different from school hours or street markets. This is not to say it is an either or scenario of ending police operations altogether, or in making adjustments to minimise their harms, but rather one that makes claims for the everyday lives of favelados and the intergenerational effects of these incursions in Maré. The Forum is an example of representational resistance as they create spaces for citizen dialogue, to unify the multiplicity of voices and agencies working within the Maré on issues of shared concern and to engage directly with public bodies and ministries to refute the dominant narratives placed on their territories (Figures 10.1 and 10.2). The second case is a community-led newspaper designed and produced by residents of Complexo do Alemão, a compound of favelas located less than three km from Maré. Voz das Comunidades is so well known that it first appeared in fieldwork conversations and interviews with Redes da Maré members working at the forefront of community-led communication

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Figure 10.1 Peace march organised by Redes da Maré in 2017 and which unfolded into the ‘Fórum Basta de violência, outra Maré é preciso…’. Photo: Douglas Lopes, 2017.

186  Bruna Montuori and Adam Kaasa

Figure 10.2 Fórum Basta de Violência’s screening event organised by Redes da Maré welcoming members from the Association Juízes para a Democracia (Judges for Democracy). Photo: Douglas Lopes, 2017 Redes da Maré.

for their local newspaper Maré de Notícias. The notion of ‘communityled communication’ became defined by favelados as entailing a practice of journalism and media production that takes favela residents as the main protagonists, centring their stories, demands and struggles. This is important since these stories are rarely acknowledged by the mainstream and national media, or if they are, they fall into familiar tropes of crime, poverty or violence. Operating since 2005, Voz das Comunidades was founded by an 11-year-old Rene Silva, who emerged as a key source of news on the ground during the 2010 UPP operations in Complexo do Alemão. Using Twitter, Silva and others connected to Voz gave real time updates of the police operations bringing visibility to the effects, the impacts and the voices of residents (Rekow 2015). A recent example of their journalism focusses on the failed infrastructure project of the Teleférico do Alemão – a high-profile cable car. As a result of the investments of the Growth Acceleration Programme in favelas (PAC), the large scale infrastructure works and the occupation of police forces through the Pacifying Police Unit (UPP), the media content team at Voz das Comunidades mapped the aftermath of these measures at Alemão and the ways they affected the lives of residents. Seeking a language that is attuned to the lived realities of residents, they provide a full account of the remaining

A Note on the Door  187 conditions of the local infrastructure (the Teleférico closed in 2016 after the Olympic Games) and the experience of safety of residents under the failed pacifying police unit programme. Gathering data from the territory and narratives of residents who lived through the implementation of policies, they address what Mariana Cavalcanti (2013) highlights as the constant waiting for urban improvement that residents endure under the ruins of a capitalistic, tourism-induced set of infrastructures. Highlighting the cable car infrastructure as an example, Voz published extensively about the failure of the public transport white elephant, which has now been abandoned and was closed for four years within the nine years of operation.12 In an interview for a research project on journalistic start-ups in Brazil by Beatriz Becker and Igor Waltz, Silva recounted that his motivation began ‘when I opened a newspaper that is widely circulated in the city and did not find even a single bit of news about the slums. I perceived that I needed to and could do something to change the situation, for the community to also begin to appear in a newspaper’ (2017, 130). Silva details the literalness of representational resistance in the fact of not being seen or reflected in the dominant public news media sources in the country. Following on from 2010, Voz emerged as the primary public journalism entity documenting the

Figure 10.3 Disabled cable car at Complexo do Alemão documented by Voz das Comunidades. Photo: Matheus Guimarães, 2022.

188  Bruna Montuori and Adam Kaasa spatial transformations before, during and after the Olympic Games of 2016 in Rio. Voz has since become the largest site for reporting on Rio’s favelas and became a reference for community journalism holding politicians, the public media and other agencies to account (Figure 10.3). 10.3.2 LabJaca The third example is the work of the laboratory of data and narratives LabJaca which is based in Jacarezinho. Jacarezinho is a favela with roughly 38,000 residents and originated from civil construction workers who settled there in the 1930s (Brum 2019). The lab was founded by two residents of Jacarezinho seeking to make data, research and communication more accessible through audiovisual narratives. According to the group’s website, LabJaca ‘is formed 100% by young black people trained in the audiovisual and is a flagship for the scientific dissemination of data and the potential of narratives from the favela and the peripheries, making research accessible to the population’ (LabJaca 2021). Different from Voz das Comunidades, the group emerged in the aftermath of the UPP and its failures. LabJaca draws on contemporary topics such as environmental racism, cyber security, technologies that reproduce systemic racism and works to address the high costs of police operations. During fieldwork meetings in Redes da Maré13, a member of LabJaca who was working in Maré at the time introduced the lab and their endeavour to interrogate the absence of data on favelas. He argued that this absence reflects a form of silencing favelados, especially during the pandemic where data over cases and deaths were outdated. Among LabJaca’s projects, the manifesto for Kathlen Romeu stands out as a particular form of contesting the necropolitical agenda of public security (LabJaca 2022). Romeu was a 24-year-old pregnant designer and resident of Complexo do Lins, another compound of favelas in the north side of the city. On 8 June 2021, Romeu died from a stray bullet during a day of police operations in the favela. As an outcome of her death, members of LabJaca and activists from the black movement of Jacarezinho created the manifesto to protest for her life and many others who died in similar circumstances (LabJaca 2022). The manifesto encompassed a plan of action and a memorial day with artists who created a graffiti wall on one of the bullet-studded walls to preserve Kathlen’s memory and what she meant for the community. The plan’s agenda gathered action lines such as investigating the current role of the Civil Police, Public Ministry and Government State, implementing a harm reduction plan for police incursions as established by the Federal Supreme Court, expelling the policemen involved in her case and the construction of a memorial in homage to black victims in Lins. This example fits within the overall object of the group which is ‘to de-marginalize the narrative of the favela resident, valuing the knowledge that comes from the communities so that public policies can be guided that

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Figure 10.4 Graffitti wall by Luna Bastos in memory of residents who died in police operations at Jacarezinho. Photo: Bruno Sousa, 2021.

aim to promote these territories, generating social impact’ (LabJaca 2021). This form of representational resistance works by incorporating data, visual design, public art and dissemination (Figure 10.4).

10.4 A New Imaginary of What Is Already There Grada Kilomba begins her oeuvre Plantation Memories with the historical analogy of the mask of speechlessness. The object was made of metal and inserted in the mouth of enslaved black people to prevent them from eating while working in plantations. As Kilomba writes: ‘in this sense, the mask represents colonialism as a whole. It symbolises the sadistic politics of conquest and its cruel regimes of silencing the so-called “Others”: who can speak? What happens when we speak? And what can we speak about?’ (2010, 16). These questions form the basis of our enquiry into symbolic erasures and representational resistance. And yet, through the mask of speechlessness Kilomba reminds us that the symbolic and representational are intrinsically linked to material conditions of life. The cases above

190  Bruna Montuori and Adam Kaasa answer the question of who can speak by creating forums, new journalism networks, or by using visual mediums to translate the narratives of the favelas. Each one of these acts of representational resistance forges new imaginaries of the favelas, but rather than arguing for what might be, they seek to demonstrate, to make visible, to presence the vitality and density of an imaginary that is already there. In this chapter we foregrounded contemporary acts of representational resistance in the favelas of Rio and in so doing worked to continue to entangle the relationships of the formal and informal that lie at the centre of a collection like this one. This chapter began by demonstrating the historic relationship between material and symbolic erasure in Rio from the cortiços in the 19th century to the favelas throughout the 20th century. In the 21st century, as the integration of favelas entail their docility (‘pacification’) and attempts of defamiliarisation (Holston 2008), urban planning becomes a ‘state of ambiguity and exception’ (Roy 2009), where life unfolds at the intersections of power relations disputes (Cavalcanti 2013). Being constantly moulded by the entrails of the hyper-militarised forces that shape territorial dynamics, residents forge alternative ways to access their rights displaying practices that circumvent the current necropolitical public security. The practices enacted by these groups seek to dismantle forms of control that are inherently violent and stigmatising, but they also illustrate the paradox of the formal and informal discourse of urban planning in these areas. As described by Cavalcanti (2013), violence is used as justification for improving infrastructure side by side with measures of control that reproduce stereotypes and segregation. Drawing from Alsayyad’s (2004) notion of informality as a new way of life, Cavalcanti addresses a ‘consolidation of favelas’ as the incorporation of these spaces and their growing centrality in city politics and policies. As favelas become more central to urban planning decisions, the institutionalisation of urbanisation policies becomes legitimised as ‘a response to the territorial domination exercised by drug trafficking in Rio de Janeiro’ (Cavalcanti 2013, 194). Instead of providing care, support and autonomy for residents through the improvement of urban infrastructure, these planning decisions remind us that for those in power, favelas remain misrepresented within the urban imaginary. Opposing this imaginary and opening paths that recognise the struggles and fights of residents, the groups we highlighted design methodologies to document old and new forms of erasure and ways to survive the control and surveillance apparatus. They offer us a new imaginary of what is already there.

Notes 1 From here on, we will refer to the city of Rio de Janeiro by the shorthand Rio. If we refer to the State of Rio de Janeiro, we will make that clear. 2 An article from the community-led newspaper Voz das comunidades published images of the signs and notes as well as of cases of home invasions in Jacarezinho. See:

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https://www.vozdascomunidades.com.br/destaques/com-medo-de-invasoesde-pms-moradores-do-jacarezinho-colocam-bilhetes-nas-portas-explicando­ suas-profissoes/. The project of letters ‘Cartas da Maré’ has been documented in the Bulletin of Public Security, organised and edited by members of the organisation Redes da Maré (2019, 20–23). Rede de observatórios de Segurança. “Operações policiais no Rio: mais frequentes, mais letais, mais assustadoras”. Rede de observatórios de Segurança. Accessed April 8, 2022. For a detailed account of the human rights violations stemming from the use of law enforcement in favelas, see the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights report released in 2021. See: Dossiê do Comitê Popular da Copa e Olimpíadas do Rio de Janeiro 2014, p. 106–108. Eliana Sousa Silva explores the contours of urban violence observed in popular spaces, addressing the histories behind the repressive character of law enforcement, especially in favelas’ territories. See: E. S. Silva, Maré Testimonies (Rio de Janeiro: Mórula, 2016) 55–57. The Law and Order Assurance (GLO – Garantia da Lei e da Ordem) is a federal act carried out in cases where there is a reduction of traditional public security forces in situations of serious disruption of order. It is written in Article 142, by Complementary Law 97, of 1999 and by Decree 3897, of 2001. GLO operations provisionally grant the military the faculty to act with police power until order is restored. More available at: https://www.gov.br/defesa/ pt-br/assuntos/exercicios-e-operacoes/garantia-da-lei-e-da-ordem. Accessed on March 3, 2022. For an in-depth analysis of the UPP in Rio de Janeiro, See Moraes et al. (2015) and Müller (2018). To put this statistic into perspective, at the time of writing this is an average of 5125 deaths per year, or about 14 deaths per day, every day for the past eight years by police or military at the State level in Rio de Janeiro. Essentially the boundaries of what are now the municipality of Rio de Janeiro and the location of Brazil’s capital until 1975. See: M. Brum, “Breve História das Favelas Cariocas – das origens aos Grandes Eventos”. In O Rio (Re)visto de suas margens, edited by R. Maia, 108–135 (Rio de Janeiro: Letra Capital, 2019) 123. At the time of writing there are renewed promises of reviving the Teleférico. See: J. Cardiano. “Em meio a protestos, governo promete iniciar obras de recuperação do Teleférico do Alemão”. Voz das Comunidades. Accessed March 28, 2022. This meeting was part of a series of weekly meetings held by the Communication Sector of Redes da Maré. The above-mentioned meeting took place in August 2020 through Zoom.

References Abreu, M. de. “Reconstruindo uma história esquecida: origem e expansão das favelas do Rio de Janeiro”. Espaço & Debates 37 (1994): 34–46. AlSayyad, N. “A ‘New’ way of life”. In Urban Informality: Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia, edited by Ananya Roy and Nezar AlSayyad, 7–33. New York: Lexington Books, 2004.

192  Bruna Montuori and Adam Kaasa Banks, N., Melanie Lombard and Diana Mitlin. “Urban informality as a site of  ­critical analysis”. The Journal of Development Studies 56, no. 2 (2020): 223–238. Becker, B. and I. Waltz. Mapping journalistic startups in Brazil: An exploratory study. Brazil: Emerald Publishing Limited, 2017. Brum, M. “Breve História das Favelas Cariocas - das origens aos Grandes Eventos”. In O Rio (Re)visto de suas margens, edited by R. Maia, 108–135. Rio de Janeiro: Letra Capital, 2019. Cardiano, J. “Em meio a protestos, governo promete iniciar obras de recuperação do Teleférico do Alemão”. Voz das Comunidades. Accessed March 28, 2022. https://www.vozdascomunidades.com.br/destaques/em-meio-a-protestosgoverno-promete-iniciar-obras-de-recuperacao-do-teleferico-do-alemao/. Cavalcanti, Mariana. “À espera, em ruínas: Urbanismo, estética e política no Rio de Janeiro da ‘PACificação’”. DILEMAS: Revista de Estudos de Conflito e Controle Social 6, no. 2 (2013): 191–228. Chalhoub, S. Cidade fabril: Cortiços e epidemias na corte imperial. São Paulo, Brazil: Companhia das Letras, 1996. CIDH, Comissão Interamericana de Direitos Humanos. 2021. Relatório da Situação dos Direitos Humanos no Brasil. Washington, DC: Comissão Interamericana de Direitos Humanos, http://www.oas.org/pt/cidh/relatorios/ pdfs/Brasil2021-pt.pdf Da Silva, Luiz Antonio Machado and Palloma Valle Menezes. “(Des)continuidades na experiência de “vida sob cerco” e na “sociabilidade violenta”’. Revista Novos Estudos CEBRAP 38, no. 3 (2019): 529–551. Franco, M. “UPP – A redução da favela a três letras: uma análise da política de segurança pública do Estado do Rio de Janeiro”. MPhil Diss., Universidade Federal Fluminense, 2014. Freeman, James. “Olympic favela evictions in Rio de Janeiro: The consolidation of a neoliberal displacement regime”. In The handbook of displacement, 271–286. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Freire-Medeiros, Bianca and Leo Name. “Does the future of the favela fit in an aerial cable car? Examining tourism mobilities and urban inequalities through a decolonial lens.” Canadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies/ Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes 42, no. 1 (2017): 1–16. Gilsing, S. “The power of silence: Sonic experiences of police operations and occupations in Rio de Janeiro’s Favelas.” Conflict and Society 6, no. 1 (2020): 128–144. Holston, J. Insurgent Citizenship. Disjunctions of democracy and modernity in Brazil. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008. “Instituto de Segurança Pública”. Índices de letalidade violenta no Rio de Janeiro, ISP Visualização de dados. Accessed April 10, 2022 http://www.ispvisualizacao. rj.gov.br/Letalidade.html. Kilomba, Grada. Plantation memories: Episodes of everyday racism. Münster: UNRAST-Verlah, 2010. LabJaca, “Em defesa da memória da Kathlen Romeu: Manifesto da Comunidade Black e amigos da Kate”. Facebook Post. Accessed March 3, 2022. https:// fb.watch/caWPZNTWpQ/. LabJaca, “A história do Labjaca #FavelaGerandoDados.” Lab Jaca. 2021. Accessed March 3, 2022. https://www.labjaca.com/sobre.

A Note on the Door  193 Landesman, T. “Remaking Rio de Janeiro through ‘favela integration’: The politics of mobility and state space”. Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics and Political Science, 2016. http://etheses.lse.ac.uk/3505/. Leite, M. P. “Da ‘metáfora da guerra’ ao projeto de ‘pacificação’: favelas e políticas de segurança pública no Rio de Janeiro.” Revista Brasileira de Segurança Pública 6, no. 2 (2012): 374–388. Lippman, A. “Sonic governance: Culturalization and criminalization of Funk Carioca in Rio de Janeiro.” Anthropological Quarterly 94, no. 3 (2021): 443–472. Macedo, J. “Urban land policy and new land tenure paradigms: Legitimacy vs. legality in Brazilian Cities”. Land Use Policy 25, no. 2 (2008): 259–270. Magaloni, Beatriz, Edgar Franco-Vivanco and Vanessa Melo. “Killing in the slums: Social order, criminal governance and police violence in Rio de Janeiro”. American Political Science Review 114, no. 2 (2020): 552–572. Martins, J. de S. O cativeiro da terra. São Paulo: Editora Contexto, 1981. Miraftab, F. “Insurgent practices and decolonization of future(s)”. In The Routledge handbook of planning theory, edited by M. Gunder, A. Madanipour and V. Watson, 276–288. London: Taylor & Francis, 2017. Monitor Fuerza Letal. “Monitor of Use of Lethal Force in Latin America and the Caribbean. National Report of Brazil”. Monitor Fuerza Letal. Accessed February  16, 2022. http://monitorfuerzaletal.com/docs/MonitorFuerzaLetal_ 2022_Brazil.pdf. Moraes, J., S. R. H. Mariano and A. M. D. S. Franco. “Unidades de Polícia Pacificadora (UPPs) no Rio de Janeiro: Uma história a partir das percepções e reflexões do gestor responsável por sua implantação”. Revista de Administração Pública 49, no. 2 (2015): 493–518. Müller, M.-M. “Policing as pacification: Postcolonial legacies, transnational connections and the militarization of urban security in democratic Brazil”. In Police abuse in contemporary democracies, edited by M. Bonner, M. Kempa, M. R. Kubal and G. Seri, 221–247. Basingstoke, England: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. Perlman, J. E. The myth of marginality: Urban poverty and politics in Rio de Janeiro. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976. Perlman, J. E. Favela: Four decades of living on the edge in Rio de Janeiro. Oxford, England; New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2010. Redes da Maré. “The Right to Public Security in Maré”. Redes da Maré. Accessed April 8, 2022. https://www.redesdamare.org.br/media/downloads/arquivos/ BoletimSegPublica_ENG_WEB_20FE.pdf. Redes da Maré. “Açāo Civil Pública da Maré.” Accessed April 8, 2022. https:// www.redesdamare.org.br/br/info/49/acao-civil-publica-da-mare. Rede de observatórios de Segurança. “Operações policiais no Rio: mais frequentes, mais letais, mais assustadoras”. Rede de observatórios de Segurança. Accessed April 8, 2022. http://observatorioseguranca.com.br/wordpress/wp-content/ uploads/2019/07/Novo-padrao-operacoes-policiais_FINAL_08_07_19.docx. pdf. Rekow, L. “Police, protests and policy in Rio de Janeiro—mega-events, networked culture and the right to the city”. In Citizen’s right to the digital city, 119–135. Singapore: Springer, 2015. Roy, Ananya. “Strangely familiar: Planning and the worlds of insurgence and informality”. Planning Theory 8, no. 1 (2009): 7–11. Roy, A. and Rolnik, R. “Metodologias de pesquisa-ação para promover a justiça habitacional”. In Cartografias da produção, transitoriedade e despossessão dos

194  Bruna Montuori and Adam Kaasa territórios populares. Observatório de remoções, Relatório bianual 2019–2020, edited by P. A. Moreira, R. Rolnik and P. F. Santoro, 17–29. 2020. Ruge, E. ‘‘Another Maré Is Possible’ Forum Models Participatory Approach to Public Security Planning”. RioOnWatch: Community Reporting on Rio. Accessed March 24, 2022. https://rioonwatch.org/?p=40721. Silva, J. de S. “Um espaço em busca de seu lugar: As favelas para além dos estereótipos. In: Território/Território: Revista do Programa de Pós-graduação em Geografia, Universidade Federal Fluminense: EDUFF, 2002. Silva, E. S. Maré Testimonies. Rio de Janeiro: Mórula, 2016. Silva, E. S. The Brazilian Army’s occupation of Maré. Residents’ impressions of the armed forces occupation of Maré. Rio de Janeiro: Redes da Maré, 2017. Sneed, P. “Favela Utopias: The “Bailes Funk” in Rio’s crisis of social exclusion and violence.” Latin American Research Review 43, no. 2 (2008): 57–79. Strobi, T. “Maré Residents Take to the Streets After Deadly Start to the Year”. RioOnWatch: Community Reporting on Rio. 2017. Accessed March 24, 2022. https://rioonwatch.org/?p=36650. Valladares, Licia. “A gênese da favela carioca. a produção anterior às ciências sociais. Revista Brasileira de Ciências Sociais.” RBCS 15, no. 44 (2000): 5–34. Valladares, L. The invention of the favela. Translated by Robert N. Anderson. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2019 [2005]. Van Gelder, Jean-Louis. “Legal tenure security, perceived tenure security and housing improvement in Buenos Aires: An attempt towards integration”. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 33, no. 1 (2009): 126–146. Vaz, Lilian Fessler. “Dos cortiços às favelas e aos edifícios de apartamentos – a modernização da moradia no Rio de Janeiro”. Análise Social – Revista do Instituto de Ciências Sociais da Universidade de Lisboa 24, no. 127 (1994): 581–597. Wahab, B. and B. Agbola. “The place of informality and illegality in planning education in Nigeria”. Planning Practice & Research 32, no. 2 (2017): 212–225. Wu, Fulong, Fangzhu Zhang and Chris Webster. “Informality and the development and demolition of urban villages in the Chinese peri-urban area”. Urban Studies 50, no. 10 (2013): 1919–1934. Ximenes, L. A. and S. T. Jaenisch. “As favelas do Rio de Janeiro e suas camadas de urbanização.” Proceedings XVIII ENANPUR (2019): 1–24.

11 Organic Urban Regeneration An Inclusive Urban Design for Rural-to-Urban Migrants in Residential Neighbourhoods of Ningbo, China Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi 11.1 Introduction This chapter focusses on a common phenomenon in many rapidly growing cities in developing countries like China, where cheap and on-demand labour force is often needed to sustain the rapid economic growth. The situation reflects on inclusivity factors for the rural migrants residing in cities or the urban environments, while often ending up in poorer and/ or degraded communities or areas that are subject to change. The urban renewal approaches then lead into eventual – yet inevitable – gentrification, where regeneration is often neglected or minimal (Urban-China n.d.). As mentioned by Chan and Zhang (1999) the implementation of the hukou system in China has partially controlled the rural-urban migration processes since its first appearance in 1958, but in recent years we see greater changes in such social dynamics. For instance, the implementation of the NewType Urbanisation Plan (NUP) has led to new rural-to-urban migration trends (Cheshmehzangi 2016). Nonetheless, rural-urban migration and urbanisation are interweaved, and internal movement of workers has led to further issues, such as inefficiency, social inequality, and land degradation (Mullan, Grosjean and Kontoleon 2011). The cityward migration in China’s early stages of rapid urbanisation from 1978 onwards (Zhang and Song 2003) is continuing at a slower pace1 but remaining to be a major phenomenon for urban centres of various size in the country. Regardless of inter and intra provincial rural-urban migration (Su, Tesfazion and Zhao 2018), the trend has a huge impact on how migrants are accommodated in cities, and how the process could lead to regenerating urban areas. In this chapter, we explore a case study research in China, where the investigation team has completed a masterplanning project. The case study is representative of many similar residential neighbourhoods in China, where regeneration and revocation strategies are needed. The work adopts a case study research conducted in 2018–2019 and, through several workshops and activities, it led to defining the concept of organic urban regeneration. The chapter is structured in four following sections of

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-15

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196  Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi (1) literature review on rural-to-urban migration challenges in China, (2) methodology and methods used for the research, (3) case study analysis, and (4)  discussions and conclusions. As a hypothesis, this chapter helps to conceptualise an organic urban regeneration model that could help to revitalise and regenerate similar residential compounds in China and elsewhere. In a way, the findings of this study help to consider a peoplecentric approach in urbanism, particularly for masterplanning and urban design projects. We suggest step-by-step regeneration plans that avoid massive built environment demolitions and local communities’ relocations, and instead help to have an inclusive process to formalise, revitalise, and regenerate poorer urban communities in Cities.

11.2 Rural-to-Urban Migration Challenges in China The phenomenon of the internal migration in mainland China can be roughly divided into three main periods (Whyte 2010): (1) the pre-1949 era, which includes both the late imperial times and the lifespan of the Republic of China; (2) the Mao-rule era, that stretches from 1949, year of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) Foundation to 1978; (3) the post-reform era spanning from 1978, year of China’s opening-up, to the contemporary period. Before the PRC’s foundation, the migratory flows were allowed, and peasants could move from their home villages and towns to more prosperous cities (generally on the coastal line) or even abroad, to look for better living conditions, while keeping strong ties with the place of origin. The situation changed drastically after 1949, and precisely in 1958: after a preparatory period, the Central Government implemented the notorious hukou – household registration – system. This was inspired by the imperial baojia system (Tian 2016), by the techniques of social control implemented by the Kuomintang and the Japanese invaders in the first half of the 20th century, and by the Soviet Union’s passbook or propiska system (Cheng and Selden 1994). Besides effectively controlling the people’s movements within the country by binding them to the place where they were registered, the hukou defined the new spatial hierarchy of China’s collectivist socialism, granting priority to the urban areas (and elites) over the rural ones. This brought to the paradoxical 2 creation of two castes: the non-agricultural hukou holders, the urbanites, that could access the healthcare services social and housing benefits in their registered cities through the work units; and the agricultural hukou holders, the peasants, who were confined in the rural areas where state investments and welfare provisions were well below than those destined to the urban centres (Ash 2006). In the post-reform period, several institutions and regulations that defined the Mao-rule era were dismantled or updated according to the new marketoriented trend. Nonetheless, the hukou system liberalisation proceeded in a much slower pace if compared to the new wave of social, economic, and political reforms. According to Wang (2021), in the 1980s rural migrants

Organic Urban Regeneration  197 had to undergo several bureaucratic processes to obtain several papers that had to be carried with them to access basic services in the destination cities. As the internal workforce demand started to boom in the 1990s, the change of the hukou classification was relaxed to allow the movement of the migrants towards the production centres, small cities, and market towns. With the 21st century, family and permanent migration became the predominant form, and some provinces and municipalities abolished the distinction between rural and non-rural household registration. Despite these changes, and because of the increasing devolution of powers from the Central to the local governments, municipalities were still entitled to include or exclude citizens from the welfare benefits. The points system implemented in several important cities3 introduced the concept of talent and defined two categories of migrants: “the migrants they want to integrate and those they treat as expendable labour” (Wang 2021, 274). Thus, there remain some conflicts in regards to the inclusion of rural-to-urban migrants in cities. While the NUP has suggested allowing gradual mobility of people from rural to small towns and cities, there are still groups of floating population moving to medium-size to larger cities as rural migrants, and often with low skills and limited employment opportunities. In the 2010s, the Central Government targeted, through the implementation of the NUP frame, the increase of China’s urbanisation levels from 52.6% to 60% and the integration of 100 million rural migrants into their place of destination, raising the urban household registration from 35.3% to 45% (State Council 2014a, State Council 2014b). On the one hand, these policies aimed to abolish the distinction between agricultural/ non-agricultural hukou status introducing a resident household registration. On the other hand, they created a further layer in the already existing dual classification, defining migrants, residence permit holders, and hukou citizens. Finally, in 2016 the introduction of the Interim Regulation on Residence Permit at the central level defined the social services that the migrants could access and the general eligibility criteria to obtain the residence permit (State Council 2015). Nevertheless, local governments can still implement this regulation with their own selection criteria according to their specific socio-economic needs. In this complex and ever-changing socio-economic scenario, and considering that only in 2019 the flow of migrant workers accounted for over 200 million units (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2020), it is selfevident how it still impacts the urban environment of the most economically advanced Chinese cities. As already largely analysed by the literature since the beginning of the last decade (Chung 2010, Wu, Zhang and Webster 2014, Wu 2012), the majority of migrants are subject to live in deprived areas because they do not satisfy the eligibility and economic requirements to access the urban housing free-market. Moreover, the institutional discrimination of local governments, which have often neglected the provision of affordable and subsidised residential spaces for fragile groups

198  Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi (Xie and Chen 2018), forced them to settle down in precarious conditions and to resort to informal construction (Zhao 2017). Under the point of view of the urban dimension, and depending on the local conditions, we can identify many different types of rural-to-urban migrant settlements (Tian 2008): in Shanghai, for example, they are mainly spread in old work-unit and municipal residential areas while in Beijing, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, the migrants are generally concentrated in chengzhongcun, villages in the city or urban villages4, once located in the peri-urban areas and nowadays completely surrounded by the new urbanisation (Zheng et al. 2013). In this chapter, we will analyse a migrant settlement called Sangjia block that is located in Yinzhou district in the coastal city of Ningbo, Eastern Zhejiang Province, China. According to the information we collected during the investigation work, this community was probably a work-unit, or danwei that, once dismissed, quickly became a rural migrants’ settlement. In some way, it can be considered a peculiar case because while it presents the typical fragilities of the chengzhongcun, such as a very dense and chaotic urban fabric, a mixed functional layout, poor living standards and basic infrastructures and lack of interaction among its residents, it rests on a land that was entirely acquired by a State Owned Enterprise (SOE) belonging to the Yinzhou district government that was in charge of its update and renovation. The work we will illustrate in the next sections is part of a larger project commissioned by this SOE to the University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) to define a series of urban design guidelines to renovate the block and improve the existing residents’ living standard without enforcing massive demolitions and relocations.

11.3 Methodology In this section, we will explain the methodological framework that was adopted to develop the investigation. The Sangjia block has been used as an example of a typical rural migrant residential neighbourhood. The majority of residents come from either the rural areas in Zhejiang or other towns and rural areas in other provinces. Hence, the community is a representation of a typical rural migrant urban neighbourhood. The study is conducted in four stages as demonstrated below: The first stage is based on a solid and comprehensive ‘Site Fieldwork’. It encompasses three rounds of fieldwork: (a) an initial site visit and data collection from governmental reports and available documents on local planning regulations and guidelines; (b) a second site visit to conduct a survey of the residents, including questionnaires focussed on their needs and daily uses of the urban environment in the community and its vicinity; (c) final site visit to take the measurements of streets, buildings, the overall layout of the block and map the functional programme of each area. The materials collected during the first site visit were employed to develop the baseline model and have a comprehensive understanding of the neighbourhood

Organic Urban Regeneration  199 conditions. Moreover, it was possible to elaborate a synthetic SWOT analysis of the site before masterplan development and proposal. The data gathered in the second site visit were mainly employed to elaborate preliminary urban design strategies that could respond to the residents’ needs and fragilities while improving the overall living conditions of the community. Lastly, the materials from the last fieldwork were used to finalise the urban design models and integrate them into the proposed masterplan options. The second stage is ‘Precedent Study’, where the work mainly benefits from relevant case study research of the same or similar situations. We analysed projects that focussed on urban regeneration approaches and renovation strategies, rather than by-default urban renewal and redevelopment schemes. These are documented in a report submitted to the SOE and representative local authorities to illustrate our approach and explore options and opportunities for masterplan development. The third stage is the ‘Masterplan Development’. In this phase, the three factors of contextual evaluation, community needs, and masterplan varieties were considered. As part of the contextual evaluation, two sets of workshops were developed with a group of final year undergraduate Architecture students at the Department of Architecture and Built Environment, UNNC. The workshops included studies that highlighted challenges and fragilities of the site, considering how it could be redeveloped in the case of keeping the rural migrant population in the neighbourhood. This approach enabled us to start further debates on conceiving an organic urban regeneration model, which allows for enhancing the physical layout and community facilities for the existing residents. It will be discussed in later sections of the chapter, where we expand on the discourse of organic urban regeneration model. By reflecting on earlier fieldwork studies, we identified the needs of this migrant neighbourhood, allowing for the masterplan development to occur in a more thoughtful and comprehensive process. In doing so, we avoid by-default master planning and urban design solutions and aim to tailor the proposal the community’s necessities. In regards the last factor on masterplan varieties, we propose a set of five masterplan options, including (1) 90% renewal ratio and retaining 10% of the site, (2) 70% renewal ratio and retaining 30% of the site, (3) a balanced model of 50% renewal and 50% retaining, (4) 30% renewal ratio and retaining 70% of the site; and (5) 10% renewal ratio and retaining 90% of the site. In doing so, we also provide a set of comparative models of masterplan development, including phasing, timeline development, and financial requirements for the urban regeneration project. The fourth stage is ‘Selection and Optimisation’. In this stage, stakeholders’ engagement is conducted to decide which masterplan option would be suitable for the community regeneration plan. At first, the selection follows the earlier evaluations of each masterplan through a comparison. Then, this is discussed with stakeholders to select the favourable masterplan option. Lastly, the selected masterplan is optimised with further stakeholder

200  Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi

Figure 11.1 Summary of the adopted methodology.

engagement, to ensure it responds to community needs. Two reports were provided to the SOE and local authorities. The first report focussed on masterplan details, including urban layout, new facilities, building-bybuilding regeneration plan, and phasing plan. The second report is mainly based on an indicative financial plan and time-frame for the masterplan development. These reports are complementary to the optimised masterplan development, addressing the conditions of the site, responding to community needs, and towards an inclusive urban design for the migrant residents. Figure 11.1 illustrates the summary of all these four investigation stages.

11.4 Case Study Introduction: Sangjia Block and its Migrant Community Sangjia block is one of the remaining older communities in the district, and it mainly includes modern historical residential compounds, with small-size mixed industries, and some commercial buildings in the northern edge of the area. The block is part of a rapidly developing district in the peri-urban area of the City of Ningbo and it is situated on the southern bank of Yongjiang River, one of the three main rivers of the city. It borders with Binjiang Road on the north, with the Sangjia industrial park on the west, with a small linear green area and a newly built gated residential compound on the east and with Shuguang North Road on the south (Figure 11.2). Since it lacks a wharf-type urban area, the community has not been replaced with

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Figure 11.2 Location of Sangjia block in the City of Ningbo, and East China. The dashed circle in the zoomed-in location indicates the location of the block, located between Sangjia Industrial Park in the west and a small linear park in the east. Source: Authors’ edition based on Google Maps.

an industrial park and it has been mainly developing with new residential compounds. Nonetheless, Sangjia block’s economy was primarily based on peasant economy, and the original cropland has been gradually eroded by industrial functions and social changes have been tangible over the years. This is one of the remaining communities of such kind in Yinzhou, as most of them have been already demolished and redeveloped since the early 2000s. Moreover, since the early 2010s, many of the existing informal settlements were demolished, and most of the area have been formalised with a new grid, new physical and road infrastructures, and new community layouts. The block’s architectural characteristics can be summarised in four types of (1) old concrete houses, (2) Soviet style apartments (or slab housing), (3) shanty town (or informal settlement), and (4) apartments with extension (Figures 11.3 and 11.4). Figure 11.5 highlights the changes that have happened in and around the site since 2008. We can see that in only ten years, there have been significant land use modifications in the district, showing rapid transition opportunities in terms of land redevelopment. As the area has developed, most of the older communities and informal settlements have been replaced by mid-to-high-rise gated communities destined to medium to high-end class residents.

202  Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi

Figure 11.3 An overview of different architectural type distribution on the site.

In the next sub-section, we focus more on contextual issues with an analytical overview of the site. 11.4.1 Contextual Issues in Sangjia: An Analytical Overview The on-site surveys showed that nearly all the residents of the community were from other provinces and they came to Ningbo for employment opportunities. 5 After further contextual analysis, we found that different characteristics of the working zoning were related to job opportunities in the vicinity. In fact, it is possible to identify three main centres that can attract migrant workers and they are represented by offices, industrial plants and services (Figure 11.6). The mapping also shows that many residents choose to be employed in the market areas, where daily operations of production and distribution demand cheap labour workforce. The block hosts a mixture of functional programmes, almost separated in to three sectors. Towards the northern edge of the site, a larger variety of building programmes exists, which includes manufacturing, car repairing, and warehouses at one side (north-west) and commercial units with some apartments and restaurants on the other side (north-east). The bottom half of the area is mainly destined to residential areas, and most of them are four storeys slab housing (Figure 11.7). As part of the analytical studies of the site, we also looked on social values, communal spaces, and infrastructures available for the communities. These

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Figure 11.4 Elevation and plans of typical Soviet style apartments on site and view of the conditions of the in-between spaces. Source: The Authors generated from student workshop events on the project development.

factors were cross-checked with local authorities and in consultation with residents through our surveys. Four public nodes appeared to be the most relevant on the site; they included the flower and plants market on the northeast, the north-south central circulation axis, the car repairing area on the north-west, and the residential settlements in the south (Figure 11.8). The

204  Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi

Figure 11.5 Changes in land use in and around Sangjia block from 2008 to 2018. Source: The Authors generated from student workshop events on the project development.

findings also indicate lack of openness and social interaction in the block, which are highlighted also by the residents. Continuing from social analysis, we also surveyed spatial uses and local activities of the block. Considering three distinct uses, we verified various activities that were related to specific industries and nodes of Figure 11.8. In the analysis, we conducted a 24h activity degree on three of the main nodes

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Figure 11.6 Working zoning of the Sangjia rural migrants’ community and its vicinity. Source: The Authors generated from student workshop events on the project development.

and identified lack of social activities and interaction within the block highlighting the need for further attention on public space interventions, public services, and social facilities (Figure 11.9). Our demographic analysis and physical surveys of the block indicate the complication in transitions, and vulnerability of the community’s sustainability in near future. The site generally lacks high quality historical and heritage buildings, public place and social events, and connection with neighbouring blocks. The new redevelopment of nearby blocks over the years has overshadowed the migrant neighbourhood, with limited renovation and regeneration opportunities. Hence, to achieve a potential regeneration, we see the need for an organic regeneration that could help to eventually redevelop the site through better spatial planning, land use distribution, and local industry enhancement. Otherwise, such communities face immediate renewal processes which often lead to foreseeable gentrification. In our collage

206  Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi

Figure 11.7 Mapping of Sangjia block’s building function distribution on the ground floor. Source: The Authors generated from student workshop events on the project development.

of Figure 11.10, we highlight how local farmers and cropland are replaced with local workers and industrial parks, which then led into faster floating populations in relatively modern commercial and residential compounds. The situation of Sangjia block resemble this transition, which remains to be a major challenge for many Chinese cities, in order to accommodate rural migrants in urban areas and ensure they are accommodated in a process that appears more holistic and inclusive. 11.4.2 A Masterplan Development Process: Initial Considerations As the first step to develop masterplan options for the site, we had to consider several key aspects of public place use, feasibility for interventions for

Organic Urban Regeneration  207

Figure 11.8 Summary of Sangjia block’s public space analysis. Source: The Authors generated from student workshop events on the project development.

existing and new industries, and opportunities to enhance social facilities and public services of the site. Without these, we trust the masterplan development process would mean having a larger renewal approach than the actual regeneration process. Hence, the focus was on how we could improve the current situation by responding to (1) the living environment and its fragilities, (2) spatial usage, and (3) non-commercialised local industries. For the latter, we aimed to refrain from commercialisation of the site, avoiding larger complex development as part of the masterplan options. In the first step, we reflected on both surveys of the site and residents’ needs. We evaluated connections with the nearby park and the retail spaces offered within the block and how to enhance them. In doing so, we defined

208  Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi

Figure 11.9 Summary of Sangjia block’s local activity frequency within the block and its surroundings. Source: The Authors generated from student workshop events on the project development.

a north-to-south axis that could link the activities to its industries and residential areas, as well as establishing spatial hierarchy of the block. For these reasons, we started by opening up spaces with a reasonable allocation of new public open spaces (Figure 11.11). This meant to retain roughly the 70% of the existing urban fabric, and either replacing or demolishing up to 30% of the remaining buildings (Figure 11.12). From our analysis, we found that a higher ratio of demolition could speed up the commercialisation process, and hence a faster push towards the gentrification of the community. To accommodate these new public open spaces, we explored options of connecting the project area with its surroundings, and creating a link through the site from north to south, and from east to west. In doing so, a new spatial configuration was proposed to address the living conditions fragilities of the existing community. In the next step, we translated the idea into spatial planning strategy, including the allocation of primary and secondary nodes, connections within the site and to/from it, adding supporting functions, and allocating openness to the site, where there were spaces for meeting points, connections, and social activity interventions. In doing so, the block was tentatively divided into two halves, with a mixed layout of small industries, commercial, and residential areas in the north sector, and retaining most of the residential

Organic Urban Regeneration  209

Figure 11.10 A collage of transitions for communities such as Sangjia block, from local farmer and croplands to industrial parks and towards modern commercial and residential areas. Source: The Authors generated from student workshop events on the project development.

compounds in the south one. By surgically adding new breathing pockets, the whole block’s layout could be structured according to a clear spatial hierarchy where the three larger open spaces are destined to the community’s public activities (i.e., at north and south edges), together with the open-air market on north-east side, while a series of smaller gardens support the residential area.

210  Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi

Figure 11.11 Summary of initial spatial planning considerations for the Sangjia Block. On the right a series of diagrams summarising the contextual considerations; on the left the definition of the north-to-south and the east-to-west axis and the enhancement of the connections with the green area on the east side.

Figure 11.12 Spatial strategy of the Sangjia block, with allocation of new nodes, open spaces, supporting functions, and connections. Source: The Authors generated from student workshop events on the project development.

Organic Urban Regeneration  211 11.4.3 Community Enhancement and Inclusivity through Urban Design In this section, we discuss how the urban design proposal submitted to the SOE and Yinzhou district authorities aims to address the needs and enhance the social cohesion and sense of belonging of the existing migrant community (Wu 2012). This was achieved by providing the Sangjia block with a series of public spaces with different characters according to their programme, size, and location within the settlement. This strategy is informed by two main principles, one related to the residents’ activities and one to the urban morphology: (1) achieving a 24h occupancy through the installation of a variety of programmes, to avoid the formation of spatial pockets where illegal activities and negative behaviours typical of these settlements could flourish (Qi 2020); (2) enhancing the creation of small-tomedium size common spaces for outdoor activities that are connected by a primary circulation spine to achieve a certain consistency with the nature of Chinese cities’ public and semi-public spaces (Miao 2001).

Figure 11.13 The final masterplan submitted to the SOE and local authorities. Legend: 1 Civic centre square; 2 Open air market; 3 Central public space connected to the park; 4 Residential compound square; 5 Residential pocket gardens; 6 Parking.

212  Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi The access of vehicular traffic to the area is restricted by providing a series of parking lots on the block’s north, west, and south sides. This has allowed us to define a main pedestrian north-to-south axis to connect the various programmes while granting full usability and accessibility of the public spaces to the residents. Considering that the north side of Sangjia is mainly devoted to small manufacturing and commercial activities, we note the importance of other typologies in the block. While residential buildings characterise the south side, we have decided to insert the main square between these two sectors to create a buffer zone where public and private dimension overlap. Besides establishing a connection with the green area on the east side, this outdoor facility is imagined as a central square for the community gatherings and activities, i.e., the prevalent square dances that take place all over the Country in the evening time (Lin, Bao and Dong 2020). In doing so, the approach considers the local community’s needs rather than developing a generic regeneration model. This approach successfully provides more public services and facilities and increases social interaction opportunities within the community and its open spaces. On the community’s northern edge, two main outdoor spaces are identified: the open market on the east and the square of the civic centre on the west. On the one hand, the market, which was obtained by keeping the structure of an old warehouse, aimed to enhance the existing economic activities of the area while retaining the vivid and bustling character of this kind of space. On the other hand, the square on the west side is surrounded by a small civic centre hosting a clinic and other community functions and a building with small restaurants and leisure spaces (Figure 11.12).

Figure 11.14 An image of a typical pocket garden located in the housing sector. The buildings on the back are residential units retained and refurbished with low-cost solutions.

Organic Urban Regeneration  213 The process of de-densification on the south side allowed the formation of a series of pocket gardens directly connected to the residential settlements (Figure 11.13). These are mainly playgrounds and sitting areas for the tenants to enhance potential interpersonal relations and the sense of neighbourliness. At the same time, the proximity to the residential buildings and the absence of vehicular traffic allows the children of the community to play freely and be monitored at the same time (Figure 11.14).

11.5 Discussions and Conclusions: Developing an Organic Urban Regeneration Model As the case study highlights, we have put people in centre of design decision-making process, enabling a sort of bottom-up approach for the community regeneration process. Hence, as a process, such approach should entail the community needs, as well as reflecting on existing living conditions. In doing so, we are able to explore methods of regeneration the existing industries as well as injecting new industries, with minimal commercialisation and gentrification possibilities. Also, through the insertion of new open spaces, we create a range of multi-use public places, social activities, and in-between spaces between and within different parts of the community. As highlighted away, such approach should help to avoid mass demolition, which is often the common practice in these situations. As it happens, gentrification becomes inevitable and community needs may not be addressed in an inclusive process. Thus, this study highlights a concept of ‘organic urban regeneration’, which means a regeneration model that is processed organically with the involvement of community and responding to their needs in master planning and design decision-making processes. The findings of this study highlight the role of the organic regeneration model to avoid the common practice of urban renewal and redevelopment, which usually ends up with massive relocations and gentrification. This study elaborates on an alternative strategy to address the social and environmental fragilities and issues affecting the migrant neighbourhoods. Starting from a detailed analysis of the existing community and its needs and a continuous engagement with the stakeholders – SOE, local authorities, and residents -, the proposal aims at responding to the detected fragilities through the definition of connections and public spaces for the improvement of the current living conditions while strengthening the existing economic activities. The decision of retaining 70% of the old urban fabric of the Sangjia block and upgrading it through the organic regeneration model highlights the intention of integrating, rather than erasing, the area and its population into the physical and social fabric of the city. Lastly, we urge relevant stakeholders, such as policy-makers, decisionmakers, and developers, to consider urban regeneration and ensure communities are upgraded, revitalised, and enhanced through an inclusive process. The proposed organic urban regeneration model may not resolve

214  Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi the entirety of rural-to-urban migration issues but opens up discussions and directions for new paradigms in masterplanning and urban design. The study helps future work be more inclusive, people-centric, and considerate in masterplanning and design decision-making processes.

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank the undergraduate intern students (at the time of the investigation) Alvin Pranata and Yanning Xiang for their help and dedication in developing the research materials. They also thank the local funders for the provision of funding and support, their engagement in our workshops, and their collaboration on the project.

Notes 1 The migrant population in 2019 is estimated to be 236 million people, slightly lower than the 241 million or 244 million registered in 2018 and 2017 respectively. In parallel, the Population with Residence Registration Inconsistency, or floating population as defined by the scholarship, has decreased as well, with an estimate of 291 million in 2017, 286 million in 2018 and 280 million in 2019 (National Bureau of Statistics of China 2020). 2 Whyte (2010) highlights that while the hukou aimed at creating a fully egalitarian society, it defined de facto two hermetically sealed castes, the urban and the rural residents. 3 Shanghai was the first main economic centre to adopt the point-based system to evaluate the talents to retain in the city, Li Zhang, “Economic Migration and Urban Citizenship in China: The Role of Points Systems.” Population and Development Review 38, no.3 (2012): 507. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/41857403.507. 4 Generally speaking, in the urban villages, that are small towns located on the fringe of the rapidly expanding major cities, the original villagers maintain rural collectives own the agricultural hukou status and the land. 5 To give an idea of the migration phenomenon in Ningbo, it is worth considering that 4.2 million migrants, roughly 42% of the total population, were living in the city in 2014 (Sisi Yang and Fei Guo. “Breaking the barriers: How urban housing ownership has changed migrants’ settlement intentions in China.” Urban Studies 55, no.16 (2018): 3689–3707. doi: 10.1177/0042098018757873.)

References Ash, Robert. “Squeezing the Peasants: Grain Extraction, Food Consumption and Rural Living Standards in Mao’s China.” The China Quarterly 188, (2006): 959–998. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0305741000043083. Chan, Kam, Wing, and Li Zhang. “The Hukou System and Rural-Urban Migration in China: Processes and Changes.” China Quarterly 160, (1999): 818–855. https://www.jstor.org/stable/656045. Cheng, Tiejun, and Mark Selden. “The Origins and Social Consequences of China’s Hukou System.” The China Quarterly 139, (1994): 644–668. https:// doi.org/10.1017/S0305741000043083.

Organic Urban Regeneration  215 Cheshmehzangi, Ali. “China’s New-type Urbanisation Plan (NUP) and the Foreseeing Challenges for Decarbonization of Cities: A Review.” Energy Procedia 104, (2016): 146–152. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.egypro.2016.12.026. Chung, Him. “Building an image of Villages-in-the-City: A Clarification of China’s Distinct Urban Spaces.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 34, no.2 (2010): 421–437. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010. 00979.x. Lin, Minhui, Jigang Bao, and Erwei Dong. “Dancing in public spaces: an exploratory study on China’s Grooving Grannies.” Leisure Studies 39, no.4 (2020): 545–557. https://doi.org/10.1080/02614367.2019.1633683. Miao, Pu. “Design with High-Density: A Chinese Perspective.” In Public Places in Asia Pacific Cities Current Issues and Strategies, edited by Pu Miao, 273–294. Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publisher, 2001. Mullan, Katrina, Pauline Grosjean, and Andreas Kontoleon. “Land Tenure Arrangements and Rural–Urban Migration in China.” World Development 39, no.11 (2011): 123–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2010.08.009. National Bureau of Statistics of China. 2-3 Migrant Population. 2020. Accessed October 24, 2021. http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2020/indexeh.htm. Qi, Ziwei. “Rural to urban migration, crime, and sentencing disparities in Guangdong, China.” International Journal of Law, Crime and Justice 63 (2020): 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijlcj.2020.100421. State Council. National New Urbanization Plan (2014–2020). 2014a. Accessed 10 24, 2021. http://www.gov.cn/zhengce/2014-03/16/content_2640075.htm. State Council. China unveils landmark urbanization plan. 2014b. Accessed October 24, 2021. http://english.www.gov.cn/policies/policy_watch/2014/08/23/ content_281474983027472.htm” http://english.www.gov.cn/policies/policy_ watch/2014/08/23/content_281474983027472.htm. State Council. Interim Regulations on the Residence Permits of the People’s Republic of China. 2015. Accessed October 24, 2021. http://hk.lexiscn.com/ law/law-english-1-2718299-T.html?eng=0. Su, Yaqin, Petros Tesfazion, and Zhong Zhao. “Where are the migrants from? Inter- vs. intra-provincial rural-urban migration in China.” China Economic Review 47, (2018): 142–155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chieco.2017.09.004. Tian, Li. “The Chengzhongcun Land Market in China: Boon or Bane? - A Perspective on Property Rights.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 32, no.2 (2008): 282–304. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2008.00787.x. Tian, Mo. “The “Baojia” System as Institutional Control in Manchukuo under Japanese Rule (1932-45).” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 59, no.4 (2016): 531–554. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26426388. Urban-China. n.d. Sustainable Urban and Rural Village Regeneration in China. Accessed October 27, 2021. https://urban-china.org/projects/sustainableurban-regeneration/. Wang, Xiang. “Permits, Points, and Permanent Household Registration: Recalibrating Hukou Policy under “Top-Level Design”.” Journal of Current Chinese Affairs 49, no.3 (2021): 269–290. https://doi.org/10.1177/1868102619894739. Whyte, Martin King. “The paradoxes of Rural-Urban Inequality in Contemporary China.” In One Country, Two Societies. Rural-Urban Inequality in Contemporary China, 1–28. Cambridge, MA; London England: Harvard University Press, 2010.

216  Ali Cheshmehzangi and Eugenio Mangi Wu, Fulong. “Neighborhood Attachment, Social Participation, and Willingness to Stay in China’s Low-Income Communities.” Urban Affairs Review 48, no.4 (2012): 547–570. https://doi.org/10.1177/1078087411436104. Wu, Fulong, Fangzhu Zhang, and Chris Webster.“Informality and the Development and Demolition of Urban Villages in the Chinese Peri-urban Area.” Urban Studies 50, no.10 (2014): 1919–1934. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098012466600. Xie, Shenghua, and Juan Chen. “Beyond Homeownership: Housing Conditions, Housing Support and Rural Migrant Urban Settlement Intentions in China.” Cities 78, (2018): 76–86. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2018.01.020. Yang, Sisi, and Fei Guo. “Breaking the Barriers: How Urban Housing Ownership Has Changed Migrants’ Settlement Intentions in China.” Urban Studies 55, no.16 (2018): 3689–3707. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098018757873. Zhang, Kevin, Honglin, and Shunfeng Song. “Rural–urban Migration and Urbanization in China: Evidence from Time-series and Cross-section Analyses.” China Economic Review 14, no.4 (2003): 386–400. https://doi.org/10.1016/ j.chieco.2003.09.018. Zhang, Li. “Economic Migration and Urban Citizenship in China: The Role of Points Systems.” Population and Development Review 38, no.3 (2012): 503–533. https://www.jstor.org/stable/41857403. Zhao, Pengjun. “An ‘Unceasing War’ on Land Development on the Urban Fringe of Beijing: A Case Study of Gated Informal Housing Communities.” Cities 60 (Part A), (2017): 139–146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2016.07.004. Zheng, Siqi, Fenjie Long, C, Cindy Fan, and Yizhen Gu. “Urban Villages in China: A 2008 Survey of Migrant Settlements in Beijing.” Eurasian Geography and Economics 50, no.4 (2013): 425–446. doi:10.2747/1539-7216.50.4.425.

12 Toward a ‘Hybrid’ Governance Approach The Way Out of the Urban Development Crisis in Lagos, Nigeria? A Critical Assessment with Makoko as a Case Study Fabienne Hoelzel 12.1 Introduction This chapter aims to explore the potential of hybrid governance approaches in fast urbanizing environments, using the poor slum community and informal settlement Makoko in Lagos, Nigeria, West Africa as a case study. The context is characterized by a fast-growing urban population (migration and natural urban growth), a complex historical background and conflicts between ethnicities, tribes and families, and challenging clashes of the influx of global capital with indigenous lifestyles. But more than any other, possibly these three factors are the most complex to deal with, in combination with the rapid urban growth: poverty, the lack of jobs (linked to the lack of education), and environmental degradation and vulnerability, respectively.1 Slums like Makoko – understood as a highly political concept yet too often stigmatizing term – are like burning glasses. They bring all the mentioned aspects together, in an extreme density and compile them literally on a very small footprint. The hypothesis of this chapter is that Lagos State government does not understand the very own population. This lack of understanding is the reason why urban development issues do not move forward. The way how issues are addresses, discussed and dealt with, is informed by the deeply embedded governance culture of a locality. 2 Urban actors must be able to position their politics within the framework and realm of Lagos’ urban polity in order to achieve real improvement for both, the community and the city. 3 Informality is certainly an important if not predominant mode of producing, governing, and managing the sub-Saharan African city.4 Therefore, a hybrid understanding of the city, where the existing modes of informality and formality are more ‘naturally’ weaved together, seems to be most pragmatic yet elusive way to read, plan and manage a city like Lagos. 5 In that sense, hybrid governance would bring formal and informal logics together, not only as de-facto mode of operation but as a pro-active planning tool.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-16

217

218  Fabienne Hoelzel

12.2 The Context: Lagos, Nigeria The actor and governance landscape in Lagos is incredibly complicated as traditional, pre-colonial systems of royal families, tribes, and chieftaincy collide with post-colonial, ‘modern’ government systems. Both, the preand post-colonial systems are hierarchical, additionally with a strong authoritarian attitude, partly resulting from the past and cruel military dictatorships. From the perspective of urban planning and development, Lagos faces enormous challenges. The last ambitious attempt to comprehensively coordinate Lagos’ urban development happened in the 1970s when the initiative for the UN-sponsored Lagos Master Plan (1980– 2000) started, addressing various problems and challenges, such as the provision of housing and the creation and expansion of economic activity centers as well as the identification and even upgrading of major informal settlements or slums.6,7 In 2000, when the plan expired, only 10% of the aspired housing units were delivered.8 Since the 1980s with then 4.3 million inhabitants, its infrastructure has been considered as insufficient. The development planner Otto Koenigsberger9 described Lagos in 1983 as an example of a city that fails to function efficiently as an urban system. As of today, with some 13 to 20 million inhabitants, its infrastructure is not only dramatically insufficient, the little existing infrastructure is mostly in a poor condition due to a lack of maintenance. The city grew between 2000 and 2018 at a rate of 3.4 and is expected to grow until 2030 at a 3.5% yearly.10

12.3 The Civil Society and Their Organizations in Lagos State Due to the long, repeated and brutal history of military dictatorship in Nigeria, there is no vibrant scene of NGOs or other organizations of the civil society. The return to military rule from 1983 marked the retreat from policy discourse to the crisis management11 that dominates the official debate on urban development to date. Many of the newly implemented legal provisions and governmental actions portray Lagos as a city under emergency rule where citizens are in extreme disagreement with government institutions.12 The APC (All Progressives Congress) has been in power in Lagos State since 1999 (end of dictatorship) and is as well the ruling party of the national government in Abuja. Governor Ambode’s office (2015–2019) applied an aggressive approach to the urban poor in Lagos. For instance, in the evening of November 9, 2016, the Lagos State government released a statement with a 7-days’ eviction notice to all waterfront communities across the state, among them Makoko.13,14,15 In April 2017, the Otodo Gbame community suffered a total eviction to make room for the private estate development ‘Imperial International Business City’ (Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria and Arctic Infrastructure 2018).16 During the many partial evictions since 2014, the community of Otodo Gbame went to court. The High Court

Towards a ‘Hybrid’ Governance Approach  219 ruled on June 20, 2017 that evictions of informal settlement, e.g. in the case of the Otodo Gbame community without provision of alternative shelter are illegal17 (Hoelzel and Niklas 2018). Since 1998, after the military regime under Abacha and during which human rights were widely abused, a number of NGOs have started to become active in the politics of infrastructure provision in Lagos (Gandy 2006: 253). Today, most of the innovative responses to Lagos’ pressing challenges in urban development come from NGOs and organizations of the civil society, but they are clearly not enough; they are especially not strong enough to stand up to the often-cruel behavior of the Lagos State government toward the urban poor (Hoelzel 2016). However, related to urban development, spatial justice, and human rights, there are a few organizations and individuals who achieved some reputation, public attention, and successes in court. One of the oldest and most respected organization in that regard is Lagos-based SERAC (Social and Economic Rights Action Centre), undertaking advocacy actions regarding slum-communities threatened by forced evictions and uncompensated displacements (ESCR-Net 2012). Similar organizations are Spaces for Change, the Justice & Empowerment Initiatives, and the Nigerian Slum/Informal Settlement Federation.

12.4 Slums and Informal Settlements in Lagos State Makoko, the case study of this chapter, is just one of many slum18 communities in Lagos State. A significant percentage of households in Lagos State exhibit various indicators of which many are typical for slum or informal settlements. Due to a number of reasons, the proliferation of slums in Lagos State and beyond is increasing. The World Bank Urban Renewal Project identified in 1991 42 slum communities. As of 2013, this number is as high as 100.19 Though the centrally located waterfront community is probably the most well-known of these settlements in Lagos State. According to the UN definition, the main characteristics defining a slum are:21 • • • • •

inadequate access to safe water inadequate access to sanitation and infrastructure poor structural quality of housing overcrowding insecure residential status

In the larger context of the sub-Saharan Africa region live 60 to 70% of urban dwellers in slums (The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/The World Bank 2015). 22 This region of the world is with 37% the least urbanized (World Bank Group/Cities Alliances 2015) but the region’s urban population doubled between 2000 and 2015, and much of it lives in poverty with inadequate housing quality, and lacks access to urban

220  Fabienne Hoelzel Table 12.1 Indicators of settlements and urban services in Lagos State20 Indicator Total population No. of persons per household (average) Total no. of households in the state Lack of access to adequate housing Urban poverty Lack of access to water Lack of access to sanitation Lack of access to solid waste collection Lack of access to transportation Lack of access to sustainable electricity Lack of rights of occupancy

Total no of households affected

Percentage of households affected (%)

22,583,305 5 4,376,610 3,063,627

70

2,363,370 3,676,352 3,019,861

54 84 69

1,225,451

28

2,275,837

52

3,851,417

88

2,757,264

63

infrastructure and services.23 Against this backdrop, it can be summarized that urbanization in sub-Saharan Africa has largely been translated into rising slum establishments, increasing poverty and inequality. Despite heavy investments, loans and grants from the World Bank, the West African city develops primarily via its informal fringes. 24 Koenigsberger stated that Lagos is an example of an ‘unplanned self-help city’, majorly produced without the participation of the planning profession. 25 As rapid urbanization continues in the region, linked to persistent poverty, to environmental devastation and to the impacts of climate change, it remains unclear how the necessary infrastructure and housing can be provided, maintained, and sustainably be operated.

12.5 Slum-upgrading in Lagos State In 1991, the Lagos State government established the Lagos State Urban Renewal Board to implement the slum-upgrading program in the mentioned 42 slum communities. Later, in 2005, the board was renamed in Lagos Urban Renewal Agency (LASURA) with a focus on slum-upgrading and urban regeneration. The Lagos Metropolitan Development and Governance Project (LMDGP) was a World Bank assisted project that commenced in 2007. The project foresaw to intervene in nine major slum communities in Lagos State, among them Makoko, the case study area of this chapter.

Towards a ‘Hybrid’ Governance Approach  221 The LMDGP consisted of social and economic infrastructure such as roads, health care, education, electricity, water, sanitation and environment. The program closed in 2013. The respective World Bank report assessed the project as ‘unsatisfactory’, reflected in the poor project performance and small results. 26 After the failure of the LMDGP, the activities of the latter were dissolved into LASURA. It is subordinate to the Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development, which might be one of the reasons, while in the 27 years of its existence, it has not achieved substantial impacts. In 2015, the French Development Agency (AfD) initiated in cooperation with the Lagos State Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget a follow-up program of the LMDGP, EKO-UP. 27 A public bid in October 2016 resulted in the selection of a consortium consisting of five organizations. EKO-UP was supposed to focus on two low-income communities in Lagos. After a few promising first steps in planning and overall coordination, as of the first quarter of 2018, EKO-UP was canceled. Currently, LASURA intends to implement the projects with tax money (around 3 billion naira) and in some sort of private-public partnership set-up that needs further specifications. 28

12.6 Case Study Makoko: Test Ground for Hybrid Governance Approaches The community of Makoko is an ancestral waterfront and water-top community of fishermen located on the shores of the Lagos Lagoon. Over the years, large-scale rural-urban migration and unregulated development have led to the devolution of the onetime coastal fishing village into an urban slum nestled in the bustling city. With a population of approximately 50,000, it is one of the largest low-income communities in Lagos state. It is a culturally diverse with six main sub-communities, four main ethnic groups, three practiced religions and over five spoken languages. Traditional governance structures and rulers (baales) exert an enormous amount of influence within the community. Historically, the residents of the community have subsisted on marine-based industry such as fishing, fish processing, and boat making. However, today a large number of its residents are migrants from other parts of the country and the neighboring Republic of Benin. In the summer of 2012, the Lagos State government, in a bid to implement its urban renewal plan, sought to roll out large-scale demolitions across the Makoko community in order to prepare the site for new development. No accommodation was made for the resettlement or compensation of community members, which led to the backlash of a public outcry and eventually a court injunction to cease the demolitions.29 Following the backlash resulting from the Makoko demolitions and the subsequent injunction, the state government expressed a willingness to consider alternative development plans for the area proposed by the community.

222  Fabienne Hoelzel From 2012, SERAC brought together a multi-national and multidisciplinary team, of which the author was part, mandated to work with the community to develop an urban regeneration plan. The plan was shortlisted for the 2014 Fuller Challenge and presented a mix of classic master planning as well as strategic and small interventions, which could be implemented immediately such as the ‘Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot’. In February 2014, the plan was presented to the Lagos State Ministry of Physical Planning and Urban Development and has since then been under evaluation.30 The heterogeneous team aspired toward the integration of government-led and community-led development, producing an alternative regeneration plan addressing the concerns of the residents while trying to meet the ambitions of the state government. The results of an in-depth situational and needs analysis conducted as part of the process indicated that apart from basic infrastructure (such as sanitation, healthcare, housing, energy, and education), community empowerment was identified as a priority area of concern. As part of the mentioned Makoko/Iwaya Regeneration Plan, the Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot, a community center and infrastructure hub, was implemented, and the directly linked Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot Multipurpose Cooperative Society Limited was founded and registered with the Lagos State Ministry of Commerce, Industries and Cooperatives (See Figure 12.1). The project was designed and led by the Zürich-based

Figure 12.1 Location of the Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot in the Yaba Local Government area.

Towards a ‘Hybrid’ Governance Approach  223 urban design firm Fabulous Urban (run by the author of this chapter), in cooperation with SERAC, the Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria, the Embassy of Switzerland to Nigeria and the Consulate General of Germany in Lagos. The Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot was designed as a technical and social infrastructure providing urban services.31 Its purpose is to serve at large as a community empowerment tool and learning center. In that sense, the Hotspot represents more of a concept than a project. The design and planning phase started in mid-2013, resulting in the completion of the building in late 2015. Since December 2017 it functions as well as business incubator promoting renewable energy production and biogas-linked community toilets, and two managers have maintained and operated the toilets and the biogas plant.32 Due to persistent conflicts within the community, the operation of the Hotspot is not as smooth as it should be.

12.7 (Failures of) Community Based Governance The above-listed initiatives are on hold or only partially successful. The intervention and project designs were based on the hypotheses that community-led or community-based approaches have the potential to deliver more flexible, more precise, more affordable, and consequently more effective solutions than pure and classic top-down approaches. 33 As mentioned as well, the Lagos State government has neither expressed nor shown any attempt in supporting the community. The described initiatives aimed at developing ‘demonstrating solutions’ to show and inspire the different government tiers (state and local) to implement different approaches, in a mix of formal and informal governance mechanisms and to bring serious improvement to a neglected community. This paragraph aims to conclude the present chapter with a critical assessment of the Neighborhood Hotspot as it was implemented. The critical assessment will use the theoretical frameworks of collaborative planning and more recent interpretations of urban governance. Collaborative planning has been researched since more than 40 years, more recently evolving around theories of complexity. Often grounded in Habermas’ theories of communicative action, the ‘collaborative rationale’ suggests to be the better approach for the many wicked problems in urban planning, especially if there is no agreement about ends and means, and it implies that the affected interests jointly engage in the process.34 Traditionally, governance has to do with what governments (e.g. state or city) do.35 A larger understanding of the term includes the civil society, organizations of the civil society, international organizations and private businesses, among others and their relations in formal or informal networks, sometimes even without the significant or the official participation of the government.36 The latter has been the case in Makoko (See Figure 12.2). The planning and implementation processes of the listed initiatives assumed to be well embedded in the complex and completely informal, hence not institutionalized decision-making processes between

224  Fabienne Hoelzel

Figure 12.2 Stakeholder mapping of the Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot, including the Cooperative, during design/planning, implementation, and operation since 2013. Source: Author’s own diagram based on field research and long-term observation/involvement.

the different actors. Key figures of the Makoko communities (Union of the Ogu Baales), NGOs, and private architecture firms formed throughout the entire process complex and ‘dynamic’, and in that sense ‘unstable’ networks. As mentioned, government agencies were hardly involved and their representatives appeared mostly in private mission during openings and similar events.

12.8 Collaborative Planning Approaches in Makoko: Critical Assessment The field research37 and the long-term observation of the Makoko communities revealed that the mixed success of the Neighborhood Hotspot is rooted in the faulty coordination of the underlying and sometimes not openly communicated interests of the different actors. One important

Towards a ‘Hybrid’ Governance Approach  225 aspect here are internal conflicts within the groups of organized actors, e.g. the Union of Ogu Baales (union of traditional leaders – See Figure 12.2) that is characterized by latent rivalry between the baales themselves. Even under the aspect of traditional ruling systems as they are common in Lagos, there are an unusually high number of traditional leaders, namely, 13, that are led by a chief baale. 38 According to Innes and Booher, the characteristics of leadership within successful collaborative project is not about having a vision or implementing it, or being the ‘czar’ or the decider. 39 It’s rather about getting something started, then encouraging, building capacities, and initiating networks.40 Throughout the long-term monitoring of the Makoko communities it became clear that the baales in general do not lead according to the before mentioned concept of leadership; they do not communicate in a transparent way to their ‘subordinate’ people. This becomes an even bigger issue as the key leadership roles in the Neighborhood Hotspot project have been with Fabulous Urban (ten relations/ties) and the Union of Ogu Baales (four relations/ties), both actors indicated with ‘V’ (veto players who can seriously hinder or block the project’s development), See Figure 12.2. Keeping in mind the required leadership in successful collaborative processes, Figure 12.3 (stakeholder screening of the Neighborhood Hotspot) reveals a series of other challenges. SERAC, a Lagos-based human-rights NGO was potentially the most influential actor and was actively involved in two of three initiatives (See Table 12.1). For several reasons, mostly internal leadership issues, the NGO was not as powerful as it could have been.41 While the good intentions of Fabulous Urban cannot be denied, it is also clear that these initiatives – as specific and professionally developed projects – came from outside, both in terms of expert power and financial power (the second in the meaning of ‘power to organize funds’). It could be argued that in both projects occurred conflicts of objectives between ‘future seeking’ (helping/improving the Makoko Communities without having a specific goal) and ‘future defining’ (helping/improving the Makoko Communities with a physical blueprint or specific project),42 understanding the collaborative decision-making process more of a path than a destination.43 On the other hand, it could be reasoned that against the backdrop of the previously described aggressive attitude of the Lagos State government toward poor slum settlements, only solid and well-visible projects could potentially convince the official authorities and prevent the demolition of Makoko – which has been the ultimate aim of all the initiatives. One could further argue that the Neighborhood Hotspot responds clearly to the findings of the survey carried out in 2013 within the collaboration framework of the Makoko Regeneration Plan, revealing a dramatic lack of basic sanitation. Another serious problem, visible in Figure 12.3, is the weak position of the ordinary community members. While their expert knowledge is extremely high – in terms what of necessary improvement – they are not heard and not integrated in the decision-making processes of the baales, nor is the information flow between the key people, the community leaders, and

226  Fabienne Hoelzel the ordinary people guaranteed or desired. Following the leadership concept of Innes and Booher44, in the case of the Neighborhood Hotspot it could be argued that the project initiators, Fabulous Urban with the support of SERAC responded to the claim for capacity building and initiating networks, followed by stepping back as the process moved forward by implementing the Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot Multipurpose Cooperative Society Limited. It is officially registered at the Lagos State Department of Cooperatives and serves as the operational and administrative body of the Hotspot. However, the cooperative does not work smoothly. A front-end analysis (FEA) based on Joe Harless and run in April 2018 revealed in the first place that the head of the cooperative who is also the chief baale seems to block any productive development, due to his weakened position among the other traditional leaders. This leads to another crucial conclusion: project initiatives that are (partly) driven from outside the affected community or group may reinforce internal conflicts, or may be abused in trials to solve internal power struggles. Figure 12.3 shows that the Neighborhood Hotspot initiative has been developed jointly by the communities, the civil society and its organizations but just because a project or program reflects community control, it does not automatically guarantee success (See also Guaraldo Choguill 1996: 431–444).45

12.9 Borrowing Strategies from Peace Promotion In fragile contexts such as Makoko that are under massive and/or latent threat and that are characterized by complex actors-constellations, theory, literature and tools from the field of conflict resolution and peace promotion might be insightful. The rationale behind such an argument could be that poverty, the lack of basic urban services, or the serious violation of human rights are primarily an expression of faulty internal state and/or city government structures. Valuable approaches include conflict sensitive intervention theories and methodologies in order to avoid that projects nurture, provoke, or reinforce conflicts despite of intentions to the contrary (‘working on conflicts’). One such tool that was applied both during the implementation and for the evaluation of the impacts of the Neighborhood Hotspot was the Framework for Analysis and Intervention Strategies by the American NGO Reflecting on Peace Practice.46 One aspect of this tool is the distinction between ‘more people’ (‘ordinary’ community or group members) and ‘key people’ (decision-makers, leaders in one or the other way) as well as the two levels of individual/personal change and of socio-political change. The authors of the tool stress the fact that the involvement of both, more people and key people is necessary for the project or process to succeed, in order to achieve subsequently either individual/personal change or socio-political change as a benchmark for success. When going back to theories of collaborative planning approaches and the necessary inclusionary decision-making, Innes and Booher emphasize that it would be ‘unethical to proceed’ if key stakeholders

Towards a ‘Hybrid’ Governance Approach  227

Figure 12.3 Stakeholder screenings during design/planning, implementation, and operation of the Neighborhood Hotspot.

228  Fabienne Hoelzel cannot be persuaded to join.47 The experience and the project evaluations show, however, that especially the involvement of the ‘more people’ as one of the keys to success is difficult to achieve, shown in Figure  12.2, as the traditional leaders fail to communicate to the ordinary community members. The fact that the community itself is too fragile and its leaders too disunited because of rivalry and jealousy, the community members were not able or willing to run the Neighborhood Hotspot informally. As a result of the incapability to properly address the rivalry, community figures of some sort of ‘second leadership circles’ (e.g. not baales) flocked together during a night in June 2018 and committed vandalism, destroying and stealing some of the equipment at the Hotspot.48

12.10 Lessons Learned The question at stake is why the project hardly or only partially succeeded, and: what is the way forward, learning from the failures. It has been and will be extremely challenging to implement successful urban planning projects in Lagos – successful in the sense of inclusive and sustainably effective, benefitting the majority of the citizens. Koenigsberger stated that cities like Lagos ‘have grown without overall plan and structure, the cost of making them function efficiently is beyond the reach of even the wealthiest communities’.49 Against this backdrop, one could argue that strategic and replicable ‘acupuncture projects’ such as the Neighborhood Hotspot may be a viable approach to partly deliver the badly needed infrastructure. It is obvious that large, state-driven infrastructure investments will nevertheless be necessary – even though it has to be taken into account that in the case of Lagos, in the past and in the present, also these projects have not contributed to the proper functionality of the city or failed already before having been fully implemented. Contemporary planning practices are inevitably related to the state, its powers, resources and regulations, whether or not they are carried out by private corporations, community organizations, or state planning departments.50 Considering the latter and following the prevailing opinion in contemporary planning theory and practice that community-led projects need to be interlinked with government authorities to achieve the desired impact, all of the above-mentioned initiatives tried to involve the government, in order to gain its support, or at least its tolerance (and despite of its intimidating and authoritarian attitude), with no success at all. In the case of the Neighborhood Hotspot, it was acknowledged already during the planning phase that many of these small-scale interventions fail due to an inappropriate governance structure, especially when it comes to the operation and to the maintenance. Nevertheless, the project has struggled with not properly functioning local governance structures and the related insufficient maintenance. In the cases of the of Neighborhood Hotspot it is not entirely clear why the communities did and do not show more

Towards a ‘Hybrid’ Governance Approach  229 engagement in running these structures. The persistent rivalry among the many baales in Makoko may be one of the explanations. Another reason may certainly be the hierarchical structures within the community itself where people are not encouraged or not allowed to show their own initiatives. All the power lies in the hands of the baales. Obviously, the constitutive complexity and diversity of the Makoko communities was so overwhelming that the decision-making was neutralized because the decision-makers did not arrive at a ‘complete’ understanding of Makoko’s everyday dynamics, or: not every interest group was consulted.51 It is as well common knowledge in contemporary planning theory and practice that the participation of the affected population is necessary.52,53 However, in urban environments such as Lagos where the state and local governance structures are weak, the civil society needs to step in and ‘participation’ gets another notion – if not a survival strategy.54 It could even be argued that the inability or unwillingness of the state opens room for new forms of management and collaboration, experimenting with new forms of governance where the state’s organizations play only one role (or possibly no role at all). In reality though, the interdependence from the Lagos State government’s goodwill, the fear from its decisions and the difficulties to assess its reactions has been one of the biggest obstacles in the Makoko initiatives. The government plays a very ambiguous and extremely unreliable role; ‘somewhere between a wait-and-see approach, and learning and retrieval’ (Blundo and Le Meur 2009: 15), as the investigated case has shown.55 The overall conclusion of the present analysis of Makoko as a test ground for community-based urban regeneration measures, linked to hybrid governance approaches is that failures and successes evolve almost solely around issued of governance and actors, hence in what ways and to what extent the different and mostly conflicting interests are brought together in the process of decision-making. All the technical and social project leaders in the investigated cases were/are familiar with the local culture and the nature of local decision-making processes. One could of course speculate whether the deep insight was deep enough – in a context where even government administration officials admit not to understand their own residents (and voters) and consequently, admit to fail to implement the appropriate measures.56 The problem, for once might not be rooted in the well-discussed conflict between planning professionals and affected residents but in the probably not well enough understood conflicts between traditional governance systems of royal families, tribes, and chieftaincy (and their relation to land ownership) and modern (Western) government administrations systems that seek for a totally different efficiency in decision-making and implementation. Traditional governance systems might be in a very strong opposition to mechanisms that seem transparent and not selective in the inclusion of interests affected by planning decisions. Here, more research and monitored practice is needed to understand and manage conflicts that emerge from the difficult goal of balancing economic

230  Fabienne Hoelzel development, social justice, local tradition, and environmental protection that are so characteristic for African cities (and in this case for Lagos). This leads to another aspect, yet very difficult to measure and to prove: the local specificity that everything, also being a member of the government administration is understood as a ‘business opportunity’. Any kind of urban projects seem to have to yield immediate return for those involved into the project. The example of the Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot shows exactly that: the (lacking) commitment to ownership and the lack of intrinsic motivation if there is no or only little monetary compensation, at least (not) in the beginning. As the Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot hopefully continues to exist and to operate, it may provide more answers on why and how such projects can be successful. The biggest goal though to save the community from forced evictions remains unsolved. Makoko is still there but rumors persist to date that the state government’s plans to remove it were not rejected. Other rumors from informal conversations with government representatives suggest that parts of the Makoko Regeneration Plan, described above may possibly be considered. As a general conclusion, drawn from the theoretical and empirical evaluation of the case studies presented in this chapter, urban designers and planners need to invest significantly more time in understanding politics. Instead of calling for more participatory work, a deeper understanding of power struggles is necessary. However, there is no clear direction how to reduce poverty and inequality, but working toward hybrid governance seems to have the most participatory, emancipatory and relational potential.57 This also leads to the insight that projects in fragile and contested territories can most probably only succeed, if they happen in collaboration with the ‘powerful’ (whether traditional/elected/appointed within the community and/or the government), at least in the context of sub-Saharan Africa where in the process of negotiation power will always prevail rationality.58 Collaborative planning practices reach their limit in the global South, where urban planning happens in mostly in conflictridden environment (Harrison 2006). 59 Consensus seeking, which will mostly be at core in collaborative planning processes in Europe and/or West Europe (and require a collective goal) is not evident in global South cities. Rather it is about recognizing that activists and decision-makers have to engage with the contradictory and elusive complexity of daily life in unregularized and underserviced areas like Makoko to generate appropriate and effective responses, be it in the form of policies or projects.60 Solely informal systems or formalized informal systems do not seem to produce the answers to tackle the inequality of informal settlements and slums.61 Hybrid governance is difficult to frame or define conceptually but it seems against the backdrop of the lived realities of a city like Lagos at least a viable option. The frustrations and achievements of the Makoko initiatives may serve as an example for this.

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Notes 1 Jérôme Chenal, The West African City. Urban Space and Model of Urban Planning. (Lausanne: EPFL Press, 2014). 2 Edgar A. Pieterse, City Futures: Confronting the Crisis of Urban Development. (London: Zed Books, 2008). 3 Pieterse, City Futures. 4 Garth Andrew Myers, African Cities. (London: Zed Books, 2011). 5 Myers, African Cities. 6 Matthew Gandy, “Planning, Anti-Planning and the Infrastructure Crisis Facing Metropolitan Lagos,” Urban studies 43, no. 3 (2006): 371–396. 7 Felix C. Morka, “UN Habitat.” 2007. Accessed August 3, 2022. http://www. unhabitat.org/grhs/2007.) 8 Morka, UN Habitat. 9 Otto H. Koenigsberger, “The Role of the Planner in a Poor (and in a Not Quite So Poor) Country.” Habitat international 7, no. 1–2 (1983): 49–55. 10 United Nations. “The World’s Cities in 2018—Data Booklet (ST/ESA/ SER.A/417).” Data, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. 2018. 11 Gandy, “Planning, Anti-Planning and the Infrastructure Crisis Facing Metropolitan Lagos.” 12 Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria and Fabulous Urban. Urban Planning Processes in Lagos. Policies, Laws, Planning Instruments, Strategies and Actors of Urban Projects, Urban Development, and Urban Services in Africa’s Largest City. (Lagos, 2016): 61–129. 13 Justice & Empowerment Initiatives, 2016. Accessed December 12, 2020. https// www.justempower.org. 14 Amnesty International. 2017. Accessed December 12, 2020. https://www.amnesty. ie/nigeria-deadly-mass-forced-evictions-threaten-waterfront-communities. 15 Nwannekanma, Bertram. “Demolition of waterfront communities in Lagos inhuman, violation of right to dignity, says court”. The Guardian. January 17, 2017. Accessed August 3, 2022. https://guardian.ng/property/demolition-ofwaterfront-communities-in-lagos-inhuman-violation-of-right-to-dignity-sayscourt. 16 Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria and Arctic Infrastructure. Lagos Development Envision Lab 2017. Achieving Mixed and Integrative Housing in the Larger Development of Lagos. Lagos. (Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria, 2017). 17 Fabienne Hoelzel, Saskia Niklas. A Future for Otodo Gbame. (Stuttgart: Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, 2018). 18 The term slum is here used as positive, political and ‘reclaiming’ term, not as pejorative or stigmatizing term. 19 Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria and Fabulous Urban. Urban Planning Processes in Lagos. 20 Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria and Fabulous Urban. Urban Planning Processes in Lagos. 21 UN Habitat. “Housing and Slum Upgrading.” Urban Themes. 2016. Accessed April 21, 2018. https://unhabitat.org/urban-themes/housing-slum-upgrading. 22 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and The World Bank. Stocktaking of the Housing Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. Challenges and Opportunities. (Washington: World Bank Group, 2015). 23 David Satterthwaite, “Urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Trends and Implications for Development and Urban Risk”. Urban Transformations (blog). 2015. Accessed December 12, 2020. http://www.urbantransformations.ox.ac. uk/blog/2015/urbanization-in-sub-saharan-africa-trends-and-implications­ for-development-and-urban-risk.

232  Fabienne Hoelzel 24 Chenal, The West African City. 25 Koenigsberger, “The Role of the Planner in a Poor (and in a Not Quite So Poor) Country.” 49–55. 26 World Bank. “Projects & Operations. Lagos metropolitan development and governance project”. World Bank. 2013. Accessed December 12, 2020. https://projects.worldbank.org/P071340/lagos-metropolitan-developmentgovernance-project?lang=en&tab=ratings. 27 Eko is the indigenous (Yoruba) name of Lagos. 28 Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria, Fabulous Urban. Urban Planning Processes in Lagos. Policies, Laws, Planning Instruments, Strategies and Actors of Urban Projects, Urban Development, and Urban Services in Africa’s Largest City. 2nd and revised edition. Lagos: edited by Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria and Fabulous Urban. Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria, 2018/19. 29 Ebun Akinsete, Fabienne Hoelzel, Lookman Oshodi. “Delivering Sustainable Urban Regeneration in Emerging Nations: Introducing Neighborhood Hotspots.” Journal of Architectural Education 68, no. 2 (2014): 238–245. 30 Fabienne Hoelzel, “Infrastructure, networks, and alliances: Approaches in urban slum regeneration in West Africa. Case study: Lagos (Nigeria).” In Polis. Rapid Urbanisation and the Rise of Informal Settlements, edited by R. Bürgin, 3–8. 2017. 31 Fabienne Hoelzel “Infrastructure, networks, and alliances.”, 2017. 32 Janet Ifidon, “Makoko Gets Faulous Lift”. Tell, November 27, 2017. Accessed August 3, 2022. http://tell.ng/makoko-gets-fabulous-lift/. 33 Celine d’Cruz Sonia Fadrigo Cadornigara David Satterthwaite. “Tools for Inclusive Cities: The Roles of Community-Based Engagement and Monitoring in Reducing Poverty.” Human Settlements Working Paper (iied) 48, 2014. 34 Judith E. Innes, David E. Booher. Planning with Complexity. An introduction to collaborative rationality for public policy. (London: Routledge, 2018). 35 Patsy Healy, Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies. (London: Red Globe Press London, 1997), 206. 36 Avis, William Robert. Urban governance: Topic guide. GSDRC. (Birmingham: University of Birmingham, 2016). 37 a Long-term monitoring of the community and the initiatives since 2013 b Expert interviews conducted in 2017, 2018 and 2019 c Group interviews (focus group discussions) with the Union of Ogu Baales (board of the traditional leaders) and with the Management Committee of the Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot Cooperative with regard to their experience in and their opinion as well as their assessment of the overall process and the upgrading measures (planning, implementation, and operation/maintenance scheme) in 2017, 2018 and 2019 d One-to-one interviews with selected key figures with the Makoko Communities in 2017, 2018 and 2019 e Re-evaluation of the survey data collection with questionnaires carried out for the elaboration of the Makoko Regeneration Plan in 2013 f Front-End-Analysis carried out by Yewande Morris/ FABULOUS URBAN in 2018 with regard to the problem identification and the problem solving of the operation of the toilets at the Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot 38 Akinsete, Hoelzel and Oshodi. “Delivering Sustainable Urban Regeneration in Emerging Nations: 238–245. 39 Innes and Booher. Planning with Complexity. An introduction to collaborative rationality for public policy, 93. 40 Innes and Booher. Planning with Complexity. An introduction to collaborative rationality for public policy, 93.

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234  Fabienne Hoelzel Chenal, Jérôme. The West African City. Urban Space and Model of Urban Planning. Lausanne: EPFL Press, 2014. Ebun, Akinsete, Fabienne Hoelzel, Lookman Oshodi. “Delivering Sustainable Urban Regeneration in Emerging Nations: Introducing Neighborhood Hotspots.” Journal of Architectural Education 68, no. 2 (2014): 238–245. Gandy, Matthew. “Planning, Anti-Planning and the Infrastructure Crisis Facing Metropolitan Lagos.” Urban Studies 43, no. 3 (2006): 371–396. Guaraldo, Choguill. “A Ladder of Community Participation for Underdeveloped Countries.” HABITAT INTL. 20, no. 3 (1996): 431–444. Harrison, Philipp. “On the Edge of Reason: Planning and Urban Futures in Africa.” Urban Studies 43, no. 2 (2006): 319–335. Healy, Patsy. Collaborative Planning: Shaping Places in Fragmented Societies. London: Red Globe Press London, 1997. UNIV OF BRITISH COLUMBIA. Healey, Patsy. “Planning trough Debate: The Communicative Turn in Planning Theory.” In Connections: Exploring Contemporary Planning Theory and Practice with Patsy Healey, edited by Jonathan Metzger and Jean Hillier. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate, 2015. Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria and Fabulous Urban. Urban Planning Processes in Lagos. Policies, Laws, Planning Instruments, Strategies and Actors of Urban Projects, Urban Development, and Urban Services in Africa’s Largest City. Lagos, 2016. Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria and Arctic Infrastructure. Lagos Development Envision Lab 2017. Achieving Mixed and Integrative Housing in the Larger Development of Lagos. Lagos: Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria, 2017. Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria, Fabulous Urban. Urban Planning Processes in Lagos. Policies, Laws, Planning Instruments, Strategies and Actors of Urban Projects, Urban Development, and Urban Services in Africa’s Largest City. 2nd and revised edition. Lagos: edited by Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria and Fabulous Urban. Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria, 2018/19. Hoelzel, Fabienne. “Rethinking Governance to Bring about the ´Good City´: The Case of Lagos.” In Open City Lagos, edited by NSIBIDI Institute, Fabulous Urban, Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria, 2–10. Lagos: Heinrich Böll Stiftung Nigeria, 2016. Hoelzel, Fabienne. “Infrastructure, networks, and alliances: Approaches in urban slum regeneration in West Africa. Case study: Lagos (Nigeria).” In Polis. Rapid Urbanisation and the Rise of Informal Settlements, edited by R. Bürgin, 3–8. 2017. Hoelzel, Fabienne, Niklas Saskia. A Future for Otodo Gbame. Stuttgart: Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design, 2018. Huxley, Margo. “The Limits to Communicative Planning.” Journal of Planning Education and Research 19, no. 4 (2004): 369–77. Ifidon, Janet. “Makoko Gets Faulous Lift”. Tell, November 27, 2017. Accessed August 3, 2022. http://tell.ng/makoko-gets-fabulous-lift/. Judith E. Innes, David E. Booher. Planning with Complexity. An introduction to collaborative rationality for public policy. London: Routledge, 2018. Justice & Empowerment Initiatives. 2016. Accessed December 12, 2020. https// www.justempower.org. Koenigsberger, Otto H. “The Role of the Planner in a Poor (and in a Not Quite So Poor) Country.” Habitat International 7, no. 1–2 (1983): 49–55.

Towards a ‘Hybrid’ Governance Approach  235 Nwannekanma, Bertram. “Demolition of waterfront communities in Lagos inhuman, violation of right to dignity, says court”. The Guardian. January 17, 2017. Accessed August 3, 2022. https://guardian.ng/property/demolition-ofwaterfront-communities-in-lagos-inhuman-violation-of-right-to-dignity-sayscourt. Morka, Felix C. “UN Habitat.” 2007. Accessed August 3, 2022. http://www. unhabitat.org/grhs/2007. Myers, Garth Andrew. African Cities. London: Zed Books, 2011. Pieterse, Edgar A. City Futures: Confronting the Crisis of Urban Development. London: Zed Books, 2008. Pierre-Yves Le Meur, Giorgio Blundo. The Governance of Daily Life in Africa: Ethnographic Explorations of Public and Collective Services. Leiden: Brill, 2009. Satterthwaite, David. “Urbanization in Sub-Saharan Africa: Trends and Implications For Development And Urban Risk”. Urban Transformations (blog). 2015. Accessed December 12, 2020. http://www.urbantransformations.ox.ac. uk/blog/2015/urbanization-in-sub-saharan-africa-trends-and-implications-for­ development-and-urban-risk. The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development and The World Bank. Stocktaking of the Housing Sector in Sub-Saharan Africa. Challenges and Opportunities. Washington: World Bank Group, 2015. UN Habitat. “Housing and Slum Upgrading.” Urban Themes. 2016. Accessed April 21, 2018. https://unhabitat.org/urban-themes/housing-slum-upgrading. United Nations. “The World’s Cities in 2018—Data Booklet (ST/ESA/SER.A/417).” Data, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division. 2018. Watson, Vanessa. “The Usefulness of Normative Planning Theories in the Context of Sub-Saharan Africa.” Planning Theory 1, (2002): 27–52. World Bank. “Projects & Operations. Lagos metropolitan development and governance project”. World Bank. 2013. Accessed December 12, 2020. https://projects.worldbank.org/P071340/lagos-metropolitan-developmentgovernance-project?lang=en&tab=ratings.

13 Embracing In[formal]ity An Exploration of Grounded Architectural Practice in Cape Town Rudolf Perold and Hermie Delport 13.1 Introduction The problems encountered in informal settlements are universal experiences of modernity, a phenomenon which manifests in different ways in each context (Elleh 2013, 108). From this perspective, we can understand the dialectic nature of informal spatial practice as a result of, and a response to, the constraints and limitations of formal urban development. Hence, the relationship between formal urban development and informal spatial practice is constantly shifted, remade and redefined (Navarro Sertich 2010). The disconnect between local government and informal settlement residents has the potential to create a zone of possibility and autonomy, allowing residents to develop complex, dynamic and highly improvising strategies for survival (Pieterse 2008, 3). Informal spatial practice entails ‘unsteady, provisional and constantly shifting’ possibilities and tactics that are important levers for collective action, and residents are adept at exploiting the opportunities for innovation and transformation that emerge where the formal and the informal meet (Du Plessis 2011, 51; De Boeck 2013, 94–97). In this context, Swilling (2013, 78) describes informal spatial practice as a ‘new kind of bottom-up inclusive urbanism’ that uses grassroots power to spur local government into action, rather than waiting for a proactive project of inclusion. This shift of power away from local government has led to informal spatial practice becoming a dominant mode of urban development in the global South, and provides architects with an opportunity to engage with residents as co-designers rather than mere beneficiaries of local government upgrading interventions (Boonstra, Vogel and Slob 2014, 258). Such engagement holds the potential to reformulate architectural practice: to resist its present marginality by empowering residents and recognising them as equal partners in the production of the built environment (Till 2009, 2). This recognition will require a blurring of the notions of formal and informal – negating the artificial boundary that separates the two – and allowing procedural as well as everyday activities to inform architectural practice (Barac 2013, 39; Oldfield 2015, 2081).

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-17

Embracing In[formal]ity  237 Notwithstanding continued calls for engagement with informal settlement upgrading, architects remain marginal to such endeavours in Cape Town, and indeed the whole of South Africa. Pieterse (2005, 52) laments the extent to which the anticipated futures of South African cities have remained unchanged, stating that we have merely ‘tinkered at the edges’. This prioritisation of disciplinary knowledge over residents’ knowledge results in upgrading interventions initiated by local government failing to respond to the needs and aspirations of residents (Patel 2004, 284). As a result, service delivery protests have become commonplace in South Africa over the past two decades, with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) often having to act as intermediaries between residents and local government in order to identify and address the cause of protest (Watson 2014, Osman 2015). The interest and values held by the architectural profession are different to those of NGOs, and even more so compared to those held by residents. This is due, in part, to the artificial boundary that exists between the formal and the informal (Roy 2005, 148). According to Combrinck (2015, 3, 4), this boundary limits the ‘ability to engage meaningfully in a context that fundamentally challenges the construct of professional architectural service’. As a result, rather than appreciating informal spatial practice as a ‘dynamic social system there to be engaged with, open to transformation’ (Till 2009, 14), architects rely on familiar, yet inappropriate, conceptual dichotomies such as formal vs. informal. However, architects are compelled by their central role in society – as spatial experts with a responsibility to foster the greater good for all (Sverrisdóttir 2014, 104–106) – to explore ways of supporting residents in the upgrading of their settlements. In their respective doctoral dissertations, Massey (2013, 186) and Combrinck (2015, iii) also identify the need for further research on architectural practice in relation to informal settlement upgrading. This chapter derives from the authors’ own doctoral research in this regard, and there are two ideas that guide and structure the research: 13.1.1 In[formal]ity The first idea is the notion of ‘in[formal]ity’ as a dialectic whole, replacing the dichotomy of formal vs. informal. This notion enables architects to ‘see the formal in the informal’ and to develop the capacities required to engage constructively with residents in informal settlement upgrading interventions. This notion requires architects to appreciate informal spatial practice as a legitimate and constructive form of urbanism. Doing so will enable them to explore the origins of the formal within the informal, as well as to appreciate the need for flexibility within the formal, so as to respond to landscape pressures such as spatial inequality. In response to the statement that ‘architecture has become too important to be left to architects’ (De Carlo 2005, 13), researchers are called on to explore residents’ informal

238  Rudolf Perold and Hermie Delport spatial practice: to explore how it can unsettle conventional architectural practice and move beyond the ‘frontiers of the possible’ (Meadowcroft 2011, 73). 13.1.2 Grounded Architectural Practice The second idea that guides and structures the research is the phenomenon of grounded architectural practice (GAP), which is understood as a material manifestation of the notion of ‘in[formal]ity’. Fully comprehending informal spatial practice from the perspective of architectural practice is challenging, despite the fact that architectural practice derives from everyday activity (Lefebvre 2002[1961], 210). As a means of recognising this challenge, the term ‘GAP’ was derived (Perold 2018) from the following observations regarding spatial practice: … being grounded in reality... overcoming existing relations – separations – between abstract processes and concrete life (Goonewardena 2008, 118) and … both processes of conceptual deconstruction and reconstruction build from grounded engagement with empirical realities and political imperatives. (Oldfield, Parnell and Mabin, 2004, 295) As a form of grounded engagement, GAP transcends professional knowledge and expertise, and requires architects to be conscious of both from whom and with whom they learn to produce ‘knowledge that can travel across the borders of academia, NGOs, [and] people’s movements’ (Oldfield 2014, 2073–2075). GAP is also a response to Pieterse’s (2011, 5) comment that we are not likely to ‘arrive at a denser, expansive and fuller conceptualization … by merely collating idiosyncratic micro examples and case studies’. We have indeed drawn on individual case studies – the most prominent way in which GAP as an emergent mode of practice is reported – and have then developed the insights gained from these by means of mapping and comparative analysis. Together, the mapping and analysis seek to inform an understanding of GAP as a phenomenon that is ‘beyond the scale of individual architectural projects’ (Barac 2013, 42).

13.2 Grounded Architectural Practice We employ socio-technical transition theory as a framework for our exploration of GAP. This theory explicates the interdependencies between complex and multi-layered interactions in socio-technical transitions,

Embracing In[formal]ity  239 and maps these onto a single hierarchical framework, referred to as the multi-level perspective (Meadowcroft 2011, 70). This perspective provides ‘an open-ended orientation for change’ (Grin, Rothmans, Schot, Geels and Loorbach 2010, 2) and constitutes the theoretical context for our exploration of GAP as a material manifestation of the notion of ‘in[formal] ity’. Socio-technical transitions entail system innovations – the fundamental reconfiguration of technologies, markets, institutions, knowledge, consumption practices and cultural norms – that occur when a disruption in a particular socio-technical system (such as energy, housing or water provision) stimulates the emergence of a new system structure (Geels 2011, 24). In this chapter, architectural practice is understood as a sociotechnical system that is disrupted by the inability to engage constructively with informal settlement upgrading, and GAP is the system innovation that stimulates the emergence of a more engaged mode of architectural practice. 13.2.1 Understanding GAP as a System Innovation System innovations involve the co-evolution of cultural, social and political institutions; the everyday activities associated with a system; and technological changes within a subsystem that enables new and unexpected uses of artefacts (Geels 2004b, 20). These innovations result from the interaction between multiple types of actors and institutions that operate at different levels within or outside of a particular context (Lawhon and Murphy 2011, 357). As indicated in Figure 13.1, the socio-technical landscape is the most broadly defined context in which transitions occur, and comprises the cultural and normative values, broad political coalitions, long-term economic developments and accumulating economic problems that influence development trajectories. Socio-technical regimes form the relatively stable middle level of the multi-level perspective, and are constituted by the codified, stable and universally agreed-upon conventions, rules and norms that guide the use of the specific technologies and everyday practices of those who participate in a particular regime. Hence, architectural practice is seen to operate on this level. The lowest, least stable level, consists of socio-technical niches, where innovation and learning occur as new social networks are built by those who wish to advance to more sustainable alternatives than those that exist in a particular regime (Geels 2004b, 32–34; Geels and Schot 2007, 400). Understood as a regime, architectural practice is seen to organise the activities within the overall socio-technical system of the built environment, and also structures the relationships between diverse actors, including local government, local organisations, professionals, residents and researchers. When all the actors within a regime are aligned through a shared understanding of priorities, rules, practices and conventions – thus only allowing incremental innovations – the system is locked into a particular

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Figure 13.1 GAP as a system innovation in response to the landscape pressure to address spatial injustice. Source: Adapted from Geels (2004a, 915).

socio-technical trajectory and is ‘dynamically stable’ (Lawhon and Murphy 2011, 358). However, the priorities, rules, practices and conventions within regimes are related to both the landscape and niche level. Spatial inequality and other landscape pressures challenge the shared understanding within regimes and stimulate the development of system innovations at the niche level. In time, system innovations are integrated into regimes, thereby altering their structures. In turn, the altered regime influences the landscape pressure that initiated the innovation (Geels 2004b, 34; Swilling, Musango and Wakeford 2015, 5). As a system innovation at the niche level, GAP constitutes a protected space where small networks of actors can learn about and develop new and novel technologies and practices (Swilling, Musango, and Wakeford 2015, 6), and then agitate to get these integrated into architectural practice. In this process of learning and development, GAP engages with informal spatial practice and requires architectural professionals to engage constructively with conflict and dissension through participatory and dialectic processes (Dodd 2011, 8, 9). In socio-technical transition theory terminology, GAP is a system innovation that responds to the landscape pressure to address spatial inequality, which alters the structure of the regime of architectural practice. 13.2.2 Exploring GAP Through the Lens of Activity Theory Based on the aforementioned, and in addition to being understood as a material manifestation of the notion of ‘in[formal]ity’, GAP is also seen as a

Embracing In[formal]ity  241 system innovation that has the potential to transform architectural practice, in order to address spatial inequality in the built environment. In addition to using socio-technical transition theory to provide a framework for exploring GAP as a system innovation, we employ third-generation activity theory to develop our understanding of GAP as a material manifestation of the notion of ‘in[formal]ity’. Activity theory allows for the mapping of the actions of local government as well as informal settlement residents on an equal footing, which in itself is a step towards spatial justice. In Figure 13.2, the activity of local government and residents is mapped as two networked, collective and object-oriented activity systems organised around a partially shared object. The activity of each group is mediated by the artefacts employed in pursuing the partially shared object of the two networked activity systems, as well as its social context, which comprises the community of stakeholders that assemble around the activity, and the rules and division of labour that pertain to the activity (Engeström 1991, 79). Activity systems are multi-voiced, and inherently entail continual negotiation. The causes of disturbances, innovations, and change are understood as contradictions embedded within the activity system. These contradictions are identified through analyses of the dilemmas, conflicts and discoordinations that arise in the complexities of social exchange and everyday practice (Delport 2016, 36). Contradictions play a central role as sources of development, and activity theory recognises that activity takes shape and transforms over extended periods of time. Activity systems

Figure 13.2 Employing third-generation activity theory to explore GAP: the networked activity systems of local government and residents arranged around a partially shared object; and GAP positioned on the boundary between these two activity systems. Source: Diagram by authors, based on Engeström (2008, 56).

242  Rudolf Perold and Hermie Delport are open and able to adopt new elements from outside, often resulting in contradictions where an existing element collides with a new element (Engeström 2008, 56, 57). The change and development that result when contradictions are resolved are understood as collective learning processes that lead to the ‘local expansive construction of new artefacts and new models of shared practice’ (Engeström 1991, 79). Our exploration of GAP positions this phenomenon as a boundary activity (Delport 2016, 13) between the networked activity systems of local government and residents, encompassing the partially shared object as well as elements of both activity systems. In the context of third-generation activity theory, the concept of ‘knotworking’ entails the resolution of contradictions through the construction of constantly changing combinations of people and artefacts over lengthy trajectories of time and widely distributed in space (Engeström 1999, 345; Oswald and Perold 2011, 34). Knotworking refers to the ‘rapidly pulsating, distributed, and partially improvised orchestration of collaborative performance between otherwise loosely connected actors and activity systems’ (Engeström 2000, 972), and entails the continual tying together, untying, and retying of otherwise separate strands of activity. In this context, knotworking shifts the unit of analysis to the ‘unstable knots’ that exist between activity systems arranged around a partially shared object, and enables architects to ‘work with the change that results from the constant shifts in human interactions, relationships and settings’ (Kaplan 1999, 19). In the context of informal settlements, these shifts have brought about spatial practices that are sustained by highly provisional relationships and interactions (Pieterse 2013, 13). Therefore, it is not possible to analyse knotworking based on the premise of activity having ‘a centre of coordination and control’, as no specific individual or group determines the tying and untying of a knot of collaborative work (Engeström 1999, 346, 347). In the context of GAP, knotworking entails the altering of mindsets, behavioural patterns, degrees of legitimacy and the profession’s relationship with residents’ informal spatial practice. As an emergent mode of practice, GAP will require a sustained engagement with the less familiar terrain of the informal. Accordingly, architects require relational agency in order to collaborate with residents in constructing partially shared objects that encompass multiple perspectives, interpretations, engagements and practices. In its engagement with the ‘subversive realities’ of informal spatial practice, GAP entails border-crossing: a form of professional suicide that has the potential to energise architectural practice. Pieterse (2005, 53) describes the challenge inherent in border-crossing as being able to achieve a balance between ‘the straightjackets of professional norms and codes’ and ‘getting lost in the rabbit hole of transgressive insurgency’. Once this balance has been found, GAP (as a system innovation) has the potential to foster niche-level contextual solutions that work in the present and add up to structural change at the regime and landscape level of the multi-level perspective.

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13.3 Case Study Findings Three informal settlement upgrading interventions facilitated by NGOs were selected to serve as case studies for our exploration of GAP. These settlements are situated in close proximity to one another: Lwazi Park in Gugulethu, Lotus Park in Nyanga and Sweet Home Farm in Philippi. The case studies represented a range of architectural practices in terms of the organisational culture of the NGOs within which it was embedded, the role of architectural practice in their intervention strategy, and the type of architectural project. We conducted a live project in each settlement, where architecture students worked in collaboration with the NGOs concerned to engage with residents and their development ambitions, towards gaining first-hand experience of the upgrading interventions that were being undertaken in each settlement. Aspects of the live projects are shown in Figures 13.3–13.5, and entailed the development of dwelling typologies at Lwazi Park, the design and construction of a sports pavilion at the recently completed Lotus Park Neighbourhood Centre, and the exploration of a dwelling typology developed by residents of Sweet Home Farm. After the conclusion of the live projects, 15 knots that relate to GAP were identified across the case studies. We undertook a comparative analysis of these knots to develop the insights gained during the activity theory mapping of each case study, with the intention of the comparative analysis being to identify patterns that emerge in relation to the nature of GAP as a physical manifestation of the notion of ‘in[formal]ity’.

Figure 13.3 A rchitecture students developed a variety of dwelling typologies in collaboration with the NGO and residents at Lwazi Park to support an upgrading intervention planned for the settlement.

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Figure 13.4 I n order to address residents’ concerns regarding the design of a sports pavilion at the Lotus Park Neighbourhood Centre, architecture students revised their original design proposal a number of times.

Figure 13.5 A local government official facilitated the resident-driven development of a dwelling typology at Sweet Home Farm by assisting with the structural design thereof.

Embracing In[formal]ity  245 13.3.1 Networked Activity Systems Our first set of findings relate to the nature of the networked activity systems of local government and residents as a whole. At the time of most of the knots being constructed, the dominant activity system was that of the residents (nine out of 15), followed by the two activity systems being in balance (four out of 15). In the remaining instances (two out of 15), the local authority’s activity system was the dominant one. This is indicative of the notion that GAP is informed by informal spatial practice – as manifested in the residents’ activity system – and its associated artefacts, community, rules and division of labour. Conventional architectural practice, on the other hand, is aligned with the formal structure and logic of the local government activity system. Therefore, many of the capacities that are required to engage effectively with both residents and local government fall outside of the scope of conventional architectural practice. Of the nine knots where the residents’ activity system is dominant, four occurred in the Lotus Park case study. This was a result of the local government appointing a NGO to implement the upgrading intervention, based on the NGOs participatory approach towards informal settlement upgrading. The same dynamic occurred in three knots in the Lwazi Park case, as a result of the local government partnering with a NGO to facilitate the reblocking and upgrading of the settlement. Thus, the involvement of NGOs and their in-house architects facilitates the incorporation of informal spatial practice into upgrading interventions. In the case of Sweet Home Farm, where a NGO was involved in the settlement before the commencement of the upgrading intervention, the residents’ activity system was dominant in two of the five knots, and as the upgrading intervention neared implementation, the activity systems came into balance. Across the three cases, there were four knots where the networked activity systems were in balance, indicating that the contradictions and knotworking elements that led to their resolution were evenly spread between the activity systems. In two of the knots, the local government activity system was dominant. The first knot was in the Lotus Park case study, where a district manager resolved three contradictions in the local government activity system to expedite the approval process for the construction of the neighbourhood centre. The second knot was in the Sweet Home Farm case study and entailed the resolution of a contradiction regarding land ownership, with the mayor allocating funds to purchase the portion of the settlement located on privately owned land to enable the commencement of the upgrading intervention. With the exception of one knot (where an artefact outside of the dominant residents’ activity system contributed to knotworking), all of the knotworking elements were located within the dominant or balanced activity system(s). This correlation between dominant activity system and knotworking

246  Rudolf Perold and Hermie Delport elements – bearing in mind the distribution of dominant activity systems discussed above – indicates that the artefacts, community and division of labour that pertain to knotworking are predominantly located in the residents’ activity system. Consequently, GAP derives from and engages with residents’ informal spatial practice. In the majority of knots (11 out of 14), there are two to three knotworking elements. This indicates that GAP is deeply embedded in the activity, and draws on multiple aspects of the dominant activity system in order to resolve contradictions. 13.3.1.1 Contradictions In the Lwazi Park case study, ten of the elements that contributed to contradictions were located in the local government activity system. This was the result of the insufficient liaison between an external consultant and the resident leadership during the preparation of the initial settlement layout, and the consultant’s continued unwillingness to engage with the resident leadership during the implementation of the alternative settlement layout prepared together with the NGO. Local government rules regarding the required documentation for the upgrading intervention also contributed to contradictions that emerged later on in the case study. Notwithstanding these contradictions, the involvement of the NGO as intermediary between the local government and the resident leadership resulted in the residents’ activity system becoming dominant as the case study progressed. However – as is evident in the different outcomes desired by the local government and residents in relation to the upgrading intervention – the imbalance of contradiction elements between the two activity systems (ten vs. five) had a detrimental effect on the degree to which the object is shared by the networked activity systems. The inverse was true for the Lotus Park case study: 14 contradiction elements were located in the residents’ activity system, compared to nine in the local government activity system. This was the result of the participatory approach employed by the NGO, which included a resident-driven project management team that worked in collaboration with the NGO. Residents’ involvement in the design and construction of the neighbourhood centre resulted in further contradictions; and hence, the majority of contradictions relate to the residents’ activity system. Conversely, the local government contradictions in one knot are evidence of the challenging nature of operationalising the notion of ‘in[formal]ity’ – in this case, attempting to obtain formal approval for the construction of the neighbourhood centre on land that is not appropriately zoned due to it being located in an informal settlement. In the Sweet Home Farm case study, the contradiction elements had a more equal distribution across the two networked activity systems. This was the result of two complementary processes: the NGO and the residents’ collaborative development of a dwelling typology, and the local government’s preparation for a settlement-wide upgrading intervention.

Embracing In[formal]ity  247 These two processes and the contradictions that emerged from them are indicative of the challenge of initiating formal interventions that support informal initiatives developed by residents and their supporting NGOs. In the last knot that was mapped, the challenging role of the architect as intermediary between the networked activity systems is made evident, with an architect of the NGO being a member of the professional team appointed by the local government, while the NGO was simultaneously represented on the project steering committee, which comprises the resident leadership and local stakeholders. In the Lwazi Park case study, three of the six contradictions were between elements of the local government activity system and the partially shared object of the networked activity systems. These contradictions emanated from the initial settlement layout, the external consultant’s unwillingness to engage with the NGO and the resident leadership in a constructive manner, and the requirements regarding documentation to support an upgrading intervention. This is indicative of the importance of architects (those employed by the NGO, in this case) developing a comprehensive understanding of the partially shared object, in order to address contradictions that arise in the local government activity system in a manner that does not disregard residents’ understanding of the partially shared object. The partially shared object of the networked activity systems of local government and residents is in essence a manifestation of the notion of ‘in[formal]ity’, and therefore it is fundamental that architects understand the nature of informal spatial practice in the particular settlement they are involved with. The Lotus Park case study had two contradictions between the local government activity system and the partially shared object, both relating to the NGO having to obtain formal approval for the construction of the neighbourhood centre on land that did not have appropriate zoning rights. The largest number of contradictions relating to one particular activity system also occurs in this case: five contradictions relating to the residents’ activity system, four of these relating to the rules. This is explained in part by the residents’ activity system being the dominant activity system in this case, with the NGO working collaboratively with the resident-driven project management team to realise the construction of the neighbourhood centre. It is furthermore also a result of the NGO being subject to the implicit rules embedded in residents’ informal spatial practice, which are often at odds with the artefacts employed by the NGO as well as with the rules of the local government activity system. There is a more equal distribution of contradictions in the Sweet Home Farm case study, which includes three contradictions involving the partially shared object. These relate to the construction of a dwelling prototype to showcase a self-build housing typology that the NGO developed together with residents: one to a lack of funding to develop the dwelling prototype, and the other to the residents’ rule that permission be obtained prior to

248  Rudolf Perold and Hermie Delport construction of the dwelling prototype, and the local government rule that an engineer must approve the structural design of the process house. These contradictions indicate that in the case of Sweet Home Farm, both the local government and the residents (with assistance from the NGO) worked towards achieving a common understanding of the partially shared object. In all three case studies, contradictions between the different activity systems account for a low portion of the total number of contradictions, indicating that activity systems networked around a partially shared object are (mostly) able to avoid contradictions between themselves. It is in this space – between the two activity systems – where GAP is situated, and from which it operates in relation to both local government and residents. 13.3.2 Knotworking The focus of this set of findings is on the elements of the two networked activity systems that contribute to GAP, in that these form the knots that resolve contradictions that arise as the activity unfolds. In the Lwazi Park and Lotus Park case studies, knotworking elements were predominantly located in the residents’ activity system. At Lwazi Park, this is the result of the NGO being appointed by the local government to facilitate the upgrading intervention which had stalled due to the eternal consultant’s unwillingness to involve the resident leadership in his planning. The local government also appointed the NGO in the Lotus Park case study to implement the upgrading intervention there, and accordingly – in both these case studies – the knotworking operated predominantly within the residents’ activity system as a result of both NGOs employing collaborative strategies that involved residents at each stage of the process. Two knots are exceptions to this pattern, with the district manager and the contractor (both located in the local government activity system) expanding their conventional role to support the upgrading process. The Sweet Home Farm case study sees knotworking elements balanced between the two activity systems – this is due in part to the local government officials involved in the planning for the upgrading intervention supporting the NGO and the resident leadership in their attempt to construct the dwelling prototype. Across the three case studies, the most prominent knotworking elements that pertain to GAP are as follows: residents’ subject (ten occurrences), residents’ division of labour (eight occurrences) and residents’ artefacts (six occurrences). In all ten occurrences of the residents’ subject, architects provided assistance or facilitation, developed typologies or entered into negotiations to resolve contradictions. The residents’ artefacts employed as knotworking elements are also mostly architectural in nature: settlement layouts, cardboard models, user scenarios and dwelling typologies. These artefacts are made accessible and useful to residents through the facilitation provided by the architects involved in each case study. In the

Embracing In[formal]ity  249 local government activity system, both artefacts and division of labour were employed as knotworking elements on three occasions. The artefacts included a mentoring process initiated by the contractor who built the neighbourhood centre at Lotus Park, the formal process that facilitated the upgrading intervention at Sweet Home Farm and a competition that enabled the NGO to develop the dwelling prototype further. The division of labour included the assistance that the district manager provided to the NGO at Lotus Park; the assistance that a local government engineer provided to the NGO at Sweet Home Farm; and the lengthy negotiations entered into by two local government departments, the local government’s professional team and the resident-driven steering committee at Sweet Home Farm to resolve contradictions relating to the upgrading intervention. 13.3.3 Relationship Between Contradictions and Knotworking The ratio of contradictions to knots provides an indication of how effectively contradictions were resolved in each knotworking instance: the higher the ratio, the more contradictions were resolved with the same knot. In all three case studies, the ratio of knots to contradictions was roughly one to two. This indicates that the right combination of knotworking elements has the potential to simultaneously resolve multiple contradictions. In the Lwazi Park case study, the local government activity system yielded the largest number of contradictions (seven, compared to two in the residents’ activity system). All of the knotworking elements were in the residents’ activity system, however, which points to the inability of the local government to address the contradictions that arose within their own activity system. It  was by partnering with the NGO at Lwazi Park, that the local government facilitated the incorporation of informal spatial practice into the upgrading intervention. This enabled the resolution of the contradictions through knotworking emanating from the residents’ activity system. At Lotus Park, the residents’ activity yielded the most contradictions as well as the most knotworking elements. To a large extent, this is by virtue of the NGO being appointed as implementing agent by the local government, effectively situating the locus of the upgrading intervention within the residents’ activity system. Hence, the architects employed by the NGO performed a number of actions that fall outside of the ambit of conventional architectural practice. Finally, in the Sweet Home Farm case study, the contradictions and knots were equally distributed across the two activity systems. As discussed in the preceding set of findings, this can be ascribed to the local government officials involved in the planning for the upgrading intervention supporting the NGO and the resident leadership in their attempt to construct the dwelling prototype for settlement upgrading, thereby bringing the two activity systems into balance as the case study developed.

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13.4 Conclusion The case study findings clearly illustrate the dialectic nature of informal spatial practice in response to the constraints and limitations of formal urban development. We have also indicated how the disconnect between local government and informal settlement residents provides architects with an opportunity to engage with residents as co-designers, and in doing so support them in the upgrading of their settlements. In this context, the notion of in[formal]ity requires architects to appreciate residents’ informal spatial practice as a legitimate and constructive form of urbanism. Architectural practice is understood as a socio-technical system that is disrupted by the inability to engage constructively with informal settlement upgrading, and GAP as the system innovation that stimulates the emergence of a more engaged mode of architectural practice. In the context of socio-technical transition theory, GAP responds to the landscape pressure to address spatial inequality, and in doing so alters the structure of the regime of architectural practice. Activity theory has allowed us to map the actions of local government and residents on an equal footing – as two networked, collective and object-oriented activity systems – which in itself is a step towards spatial justice. We have shown that GAP has the potential to foster contextual solutions that work in the present and add up to structural change at the regime and landscape level of the multi-level perspective. Engaging in GAP enables architects to consider their own practice from within the context of intervention, and develop an understanding of both the sociotechnical regime of local government and the informal spatial practice of residents. This understanding provides architects with the opportunity to promote spatial justice by advocating on behalf of the residents in support of informal settlement upgrading, according to residents’ own priorities. In doing so, architects’ involvement with residents and their informal spatial practice is extended even further, fostering an ongoing process of expansive learning with the potential to transform architectural practice into a pathway towards spatial justice. The challenge that remains is to find ways to incorporate GAP into current architectural practice.

Acknowledgement The research presented in this chapter has received financial support from the following institutions: Hasselt University Special Research Fund Bilateral Cooperation (BOF BILA) Programme [Project No. R-5041]; National Research Foundation Thuthuka Funding Instrument [Unique Grant No. 99387]; Cape Peninsula University of Technology Human Capital Staff Development Programme; and the Fundani Centre for Higher Education Development Teaching Development Grant.

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252  Rudolf Perold and Hermie Delport to Sustainability: Theory, Evidence and Policy, edited by Boelie Elzen, Frank W. Geels, and Ken Green, 19–47. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2004b. Geels, Frank W. “The Multi-Level Perspective on Sustainability Transitions: Responses to Seven Criticisms”. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions 1, no. 1 (2011): 24–40. Geels, Frank W., and Johan Schot. “Typology of Sociotechnical Transition Pathways”. Research Policy 36 (2007): 399–417. Goonewardena, Kanishka. “Marxism and Everyday Life: On Henri Lefebvre, Guy Debord, and Some Others”. In Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre, edited by Kanishka Goonewardena, Stefan Kipfer, Richard Milgrom, and Christian Schmid, 117–133. New York: Routledge, 2008. Grin, John, Jan Rotmans, and Johan Schot. Transitions to Sustainable Development: New Directions in the Study of Long Term Transformative Change. New York: Routledge, 2010. Kaplan, Allan. The Developing of Capacity. Development Dossier, United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service, 1999. http://www.cdra.org.za/articles-bycdra-practitioners.html. Lawhon, Mary, and James T. Murphy. “Socio-technical Regimes and Sustainability Transitions: Insights from Political Ecology”. Progress in Human Geography 36, no. 3 (2011): 354–378. Lefebvre, Henri. Critique of Everyday Life: Foundations for a Sociology of the Everyday, vol. 2. Translated by John Moore. New York: Verso, 2002 [1961]. Massey, Ruth. “Informal Settlement Upgrading and the Effect of Governmentality on Women’s Social Networks: A Case Study of New Rest and Makhaza, Cape Town”. Ph.D. thesis, Stellenbosch University, 2013. http://scholar.sun.ac.za/ handle/10019.1/85799?show=full. Meadowcroft, James. “Engaging with the Politics of Sustainability Transitions”. Environmental Innovations and Societal Transitions 1 (2011): 70–75. Navarro Sertich, Adriana. Resilience, Defining a New Paradigm through Informality. Favel Issues, October 22, 2010. http://favelissues.com/2010/10/22/ resilience-defining-a-new-paradigm-through-informality/. Oldfield, Sophie. “Politics, Transformation and the Southern City”. In The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South, edited by Susan Parnell and Sophie Oldfield, 255–256. London: Routledge, 2014. Oldfield, Sophie. “Between Activism and the Academy: The Urban as Political Terrain”. Urban Studies 52, no. 11 (2015): 2072–2086. Oldfield, Sophie, Susan Parnell, and Alan Mabin. “Engagement and Reconstruction in Critical Research: Negotiating Urban Practice, Policy and Theory in South Africa”. Social & Cultural Geography 5, no. 2 (2004): 285–299. Osman, Amira. What Architects Must Learn from South African Student Protests. The Conversation, November 23, 2015. http://www.theconversation.com/ whatarchitectsmustlearnfromsouthafricanstudent protests50678. Oswald, Marietjie M., and Mariechen D. Perold. “Doing Reasonable Hope Within a Cultural-Historical Activity Framework.” South African Journal of Higher Education 25, no. 1 (2011): 22–40. Patel, Zarina. “Environmental Values and the Building of Sustainable Communities”. In Voices of the Transition: The Politics, Poetics and Practices of Social Change in the New South Africa, edited by Edgar Pieterse and Frank Meintjies, 282–292. Sandown: Heinemann, 2004.

Embracing In[formal]ity  253 Perold, Rudolf. “Informal Capacities: Exploring Grounded Architectural Practice in Transitions to Sustainable Urbanism in Cape Town”. Ph.D. thesis, Hasselt University / Stellenbosch University, 2018. http://scholar.sun.ac.za/ handle/10019.1/104813. Pieterse, Edgar. “Alternative Futures of the South African City”. The Digest of South African Architecture 9 (2005): 52–53. Pieterse, Edgar. City Futures: Confronting the Crisis of Urban Development. Cape Town: UCT Press, 2008. Pieterse, Edgar. “Grasping the Unknowable: Coming to Grips with African Urbanisms”. Social Dynamics 37, no. 1 (2011), 5–23. Pieterse, Edgar. “Introducing Rogue Urbanism”. In Rogue Urbanism: Emergent African Cities, edited by Edgar Pieterse and AbdouMaliq Simone. Auckland Park: Jacana Media, 12–15. 2013 Roy, Ananya. “Urban Informality: Toward an Epistemology of Planning”. Journal of the American Planning Association 71, no. 2 (2005): 147–158. Sverrisdóttir, Hildigunnur. “The Sociopolitical Role of the Architect”. In Scarcity in Excess: The Built Environment and the Economic Crisis in Iceland, edited by Arna Mathiesen, 104–107. New York: ActarD, 2014. Swilling, Mark. “Reconceptualising Urbanism, Ecology and Networked Infrastructures”. In Rogue Urbanism: Emergent African Cities, edited by Edgar Pieterse and AbdouMaliq Simone, 65–79. Auckland Park: Jacana Media, 2013. Swilling, Mark, Josephine Musango and Jeremy Wakeford. “Developmental States and Sustainability Transitions: Prospects of a Just Transition in South Africa”. Journal of Environmental Policy & Planning 5, no. 5 (2015): 1–23. Till, Jeremy. Architecture Depends. London: MIT Press, 2009. Watson, Vanessa. “Learning Planning from the South: Ideas from the New Urban Frontiers”. In The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South, edited by Susan Parnell and Sophie Oldfield, 98–108. London: Routledge, 2014.

14 The Why? How? What? and What-ifs of Mass Slum Rehabilitation Housing in India Ronita Bardhan and Jiayu Pan 14.1 Introduction The rapid urbanization process has led to dramatic growth in the urban population and urban density. According to the World Bank data, over 56% of the total population in the world live in urban areas by 2020, which is estimated to rise to 66% by 2050 (The World Bank 2020a). In recent years, urbanization mainly happened in less developed countries. In 2020, the annual urban population growth rate in the low-income country group was at 4% compared to 0.6% in the high-income countries (The World Bank 2020b). UN data shows that, by 2018, slum dwellers will be most prevalent in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (370 million), sub-Saharan Africa (238 million) and Central and Southern Asia (226 million). The number is expected to rise in the post-pandemic time (United Nations, 2021a). Hence the future urbanities will be poor devoid of basic urban infrastructure. Urban informality and urban poor are the two consequential truths of this growth, which is often overlooked or excluded in the formal development processes. The lack of capacity to accommodate the large volume of immigrants in urban areas has led to the rise of slums. The data shows that nearly 30% of the population living in slums in 2018 (The World Bank, 2018). The densely populated informal settlements face problems like poor living environment, limited living area, lack of access to clean water and sanitation systems and no housing durability and security of tenure. Conventional urban planning, policy-making and financing rarely consider the needs and concerns of slum dwellers, which leaves a considerable gap that involves the well-being of a large population in the urban system (United Nations, 2021b). Moreover, the COVID-19 pandemic has placed this group of one billion people at high risk. The inadequate access to basic infrastructure and healthcare services has exacerbated the vulnerability of the slum population (United Nations, 2020). Slums, in general, are depicted as residential zones with dense dwelling spaces explicitly leading to degraded quality of life (Debnath, Bardhan, and Jain, 2017). This exposes the lowincome communities disproportionately to greater physical and social risks (Govender, Barnes, and Pieper, 2011).

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-18

Why? How? What? and What-ifs of Mass Slum Rehabilitation  255 In India, slums have undergone a transformational process since the 1950s when independent India started incorporating Slums within the urban policy. After 75 years of several slum amenable policies, India’s current solution to control slums is slum rehabilitation housing (SRH). This chapter takes a deeper look at the why? How? What? and What-ifs of the slum rehabilitation housing in India. It discusses why the SRH solution was adopted, how the SRH is viewed and defined in policy discourse as the future of affordable housing options, the potential opportunities, challenges and risks of living in SRH and finally, what solutions are vital for realizing the potential of SRH. The Sustainable Design Group (https://www. sdgresearch.org/) at the University of Cambridge has done considerable work in expanding and advancing the knowledge about slum rehabilitation housing. This chapter uses those and many other studies to respond to basic questions on Slum Rehabilitation Housing in India.

14.2 Slums to Slum Rehabilitation Housing – The Process Slums have been an integral part of India’s urbanization process. The importance of slums in urban planning and policy has led the Census of India to define slums discreetly. Slums are defined as ‘residential areas where dwellings are unfit for human habitation by reasons of dilapidation, overcrowding, faulty arrangements and design of such buildings, narrowness or faulty arrangement of street, lack of ventilation, light, or sanitation facilities or any combination of these factors which are detrimental to the safety and health’ (Census, 2011). In India, policy efforts were majorly concentrated on two broad aspects (i) classical approach of de-slumming of cities, i.e. eradicate the slums and (ii) neo-liberalist approach to improve the living conditions and make slums a part of the urban legal process. Both these concepts have been a long-discussed problem in urban planning and policymaking domains. However, a comprehensive solution is yet to be settled (Bardhan et al., 2015). Historically, slums are the first point of arrival in a city. Slums remain persistent due to a significant deficit in available housing stock and the unavailability of affordable shelter options within the accessible limits of subsistence activities for the urban poor. Globally, it is estimated that by 2030, three billion people will need affordable housing in cities, with 2/3rd of that stock remaining to be built. The acknowledgement of adequate or affordable housing for poverty mitigation has led to the notion of social housing in intercontinental discourse since the 1970s (Ehebrecht, 2014). Traditionally, international housing policies have observed the emergence of two concepts behind low-income housing development: (i) provider paradigm and (ii) support paradigm. While the provider paradigm cultivates the idea of technical support provided to the slum dwellers, the support paradigm integrates the concept of social support in the broader idea of mass housing. The provider model being quantitatively biased and consumerist-focussed has been intensely

256  Ronita Bardhan and Jiayu Pan criticized. Contrastingly, the support paradigm has fostered the concepts of social well-being through sustainable resource management. The process of mitigation of slum proliferation in India has followed the provider model concept, thereby excluding the socio-cultural considerations of lowincome urban life (Bardhan, Debnath, Malik, & Sarkar, 2018). While the classical approach of removing informality for improved efficiency is often responded to through relocations and forced evictions, the Neo-liberal approach emphasizes the concept of slum redevelopment with emphasis on Basic Needs and Redistribution with Growth (RWG) strategy. Thus, providing agency to the principal actor – the slum dweller in the housing activity. In India, slums are primarily a consequence of failed political instruments (Bardhan et al., 2015). Major metropolis of India like Mumbai has more than 50% of the population residing in slums or slum-like conditions. The exodus of urban poor in Mumbai started in the early 1950s postindependence when slums (locally known as jhopar-pattis) and single room tenement units called chawls started to mushroom around the city. Chawls were built to house the male-centric workforce who immigrated to Mumbai as cotton mill workers from rural areas. When the mills closed down in the 1960s, these chawls became abode to the mill worker families who subsequently immigrated to the city. The increased infrastructure pressure and overcrowding degraded the quality of life in the chawls. Since then, the government has implemented several policies to obliterate the slums. From ‘in-situ’ and aided ‘self-help approach’, the concepts of low-income housing shifted to ‘slum rehabilitation’ and ‘slum redevelopment’. However, recent studies have demonstrated that each of the policies has further aggravated the slum formation in the city, thereby recycling the poverty. Figure 14.1 illustrates the slum policies in India and how they have affected liveability. Affordable housing in Mumbai can be represented by three major archetypes of low-income settlements: (i) traditional slums, (ii) chawls built either by government agencies or by private initiatives and (iii) slum rehabilitated housing (SRH) built with private initiatives. These differ primarily in the tenure security, physical structure, public and private space ratio, and dwelling’s relation to the adjacent street. The failure of the ‘Slum Upgrading Program’ in 1985 due to high-interest rates led to the development of the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme in 1995 by the Maharashtra State Government. A special-purpose policy vehicle – Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) – was established to legalize and protect slums from eviction and provide a regulated channel for transitioning to improved housing (Nijman, 2008). The Slum Rehabilitation policy attempts to re-house the existing slum dwellers into multi-story tenement units with the presumption that the vertical tenements are a liveable alternative to ‘slums’. The private real estate developers are incentivized to build the SRA using the subsidy from profits gained through commercial exploitation of the slum land.

Figure 14.1 Slum policies in I ndia since I ndependence.

Sou rce: Sarkar (2020).

258  Ronita Bardhan and Jiayu Pan The SRH is a fourfold partnership between the State Government-SRAPrivate Developer-Slum Dwellers, where participatory planning forms the programme’s core (Bardhan et al., 2015). The SR policy provided an economical process to incentivize the private sector to participate in the slum rehabilitation process. The process allows the slum dwellers to voluntarily opt for rehabilitation by forming co-operatives that then approach a private sector real estate developer to construct the rehabilitation units. While the slum dwellers benefitted from legal tenure and better-quality housing, the private developers were incentivized to build high-end ‘sales component’ housing. However, the state government’s critical control over land remained (Nijman, 2008). Economically, the SRH doubly benefits the Mumbai government. While on the one hand, it releases the landlocked areas for development with minimal intervention, and on the other, the SRH policy

Figure 14.2 The Slum Rehabilitation process. Source: Debnath (2018).

Why? How? What? and What-ifs of Mass Slum Rehabilitation  259 rapidly closes the gaping housing deficit. Figure 14.2 illustrates the fivestage Slum Rehabilitation policy of the Government of Maharashtra. As per the SRA, till March 2022, 340,102 slum households have been housed in 203,624 tenements under the SRA scheme in Mumbai. Special development control regulations (DCR) – DCR 33(10) and DCR 33(11) were formulated to facilitate real estate developers participating in the SRA scheme. Under the special regulations participating developers are incentivized with transferable development rights in the form of an augmented floor space index. The private developer can enjoy these enhanced built-up areas to construct premium housing in exchange for building the free slum rehabilitation component. Additionally, the development control regulations for SRA tenement units are comparatively relaxed compared to other housing developments within the city. The relaxation primarily focusses on accommodating higher housing density leading to compromised environmental quality. For example, DCR 33(10) states that the distance between any two rehab/composite buildings shall not be less than 3. In contrast, for the general buildings, the distance between the buildings is regulated by the height of the building (i.e. should not be less than 1/3rd the height of the building). The special DCR allows for enhanced housing density compared to general housing. The relaxed DCR, the incentive of transferable development rights, and the free of cost slum land for premium housing development have attracted multiple developers to participate in the SRA scheme. Currently, SRA units proliferate the urban fabric of Mumbai, replacing slums. Figure 14.3 illustrates the mushrooming SRA tenement units across the city of Mumbai.

Figure 14.3 Mushrooming slum rehabilitation housing across Mumbai. Source: Sarkar (2020).

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14.3 Design of the SRH Typology and the Living Unit The Slum Rehabilitation housing is a vertical apartment typology often built in-situ at the slum location. It is characterized by hyper-dense multi-rise towers with low intra building spaces with an average population density of 5,00,000 persons/km 2 compared to 25,357 persons/km 2 of Mumbai city. The approximate space allocated per person is less than 2 m 2 . The SRH buildings are typically multi-storied buildings ranging between 5–30 floors. According to the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) guidelines in Mumbai, a slum dweller will be provided with a tenement unit of 24.9 m 2 free of cost, which shall include living room, bedroom, kitchen, bath, water closet and balcony excluding common areas like corridor and stairwell (SRA Notification, 2014). The housing complexes are designed as gated communities with inhabitants having land security and tenure. The buildings are designed as mixed-use development with commercial shops on the ground floor. The amenities include toilets in each unit or a shared toilet facility on each floor, lifts, a common central staircase, a community

Figure 14.4 (a) Archetypes of Slum rehabilitation housing design (b) Design layout of typical tenement unit inside Slum Rehabilitation Housing.

Why? How? What? and What-ifs of Mass Slum Rehabilitation  261 centre and an open central green space. It is assumed that tenureship, ease of access to secure housing, clean water and good sanitation facilities will ensure liveability. However, they often end up forfeiting the small-scale economic opportunities and the right to design their habitat. A typical floor of the SRH consists of living units aligned next to each other connected through a central corridor or gallery. There are primarily three different typologies of the SRH design (i) X type, (ii) I type and (iii) H type. These typologies are the representation of the circulation pattern. The X type has corridors in the form of X shape with the stairway and lifts placed at the junction of X. Similarly, I type represents a typical doubleloaded corridor, and the H type has access corridors in the form of a gallery circumscribing the periphery of the apartment units. In addition, each apartment unit has a multi-purpose room (sometimes having semi-partition) with an open or partitioned kitchen and a toilet facility. Figure 14.4(a) and 4(b) illustrate the designs of the three archetypes of SRA and the typical unit design, respectively.

14.4 How the Slum Rehabilitation Housing Performs Compared to Slums/Chawls While the residents gain legal tenure, essential services and free housing by shifting from slums to rehabilitation housing, the physical living environment (e.g. living space, ventilation and daylight) and social liveability (e.g. gender equality and sense of community) in this process remains to be questioned. Often these tenements perpetuate health risks with no access to daylight and ventilation. The hyper-densification within a vertical box conjectures an image of ‘vertical slums’ (Debnath, Bardhan, and Jain, 2017a). Given that there is no basic guideline for design and energy considerations (Sunikka-Blank, Bardhan, and Haque, 2019), the rebound phenomenon of losing social-physical liveability is observed due to the failure in resettlement policies (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b). The poor living environment and inconsiderate design in slum rehabilitation housing lead to concerns: low thermal comfort, high energy consumption, inaccessibility to clean water and sanitation system (Debnath, 2021) and a lack of shared activity spaces. The cumulative effects of a poor environment could expand poverty traps (Chowdhury, 2009; Sunikka-Blank, Bardhan, and Haque, 2019), and subsequently add more poverty penalties to the residents (Mendoza, 2008). In addition to the exacerbated poverty, a lowincome household in slum rehabilitation housing is exposed to significant health risks. The incidence of infectious diseases like tuberculosis is found to be higher in the resettlement colonies, especially in the units with limited access to daylight and natural ventilation (Pardeshi et al., 2020). The investigated changes are identified in Figure 14.5 as a summarized framework. The case studies in the existing research mainly locate around

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Figure 14.5 Impacts of relocation: from physical environment changes to socioeconomic consequences.

Mumbai, including slum/low-income housing sites like BDD Chawls, Ramabainagar Slum and Dharavi, and slums rehabilitation housings like Lallubhai SRH compound, Natwar Parekh Compound, Mahul Colony and PMG colony (Bardhan, Debnath, Malik, et al., 2018; Nutkiewicz, Jain, and Bardhan, 2018; Mehrotra, Bardhan, and Ramamritham, 2019; Lueker et al., 2019; Jana, Sarkar, and Bardhan, 2020; Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b; Sunikka-Blank, Bardhan, and Haque, 2019; Pardeshi et al., 2020). 14.4.1 Physical Environment Comparing the physical environment variables between the slums and rehabilitation housing indicates no significant change in the performance of built environment parameters (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b). In horizontalstructured slums, the building heights are differentiated between singlestoried and double-storied, ensuring a heterogeneous urban fabric. While building height and density were increased to accommodate more dwellers in rehabilitation housing, inadequate intra-building spaces lead to the problems of insufficient shared spaces and low ventilation rates. Most SRA prefers a domino-like layout of the buildings at the site, thereby placing the majority of the window openings in the lee-ward side, creating asymmetry in ventilation. The tall congested domino-like structures disrupt air paths and windways; generate waste-yards in extremely narrow alleyways leading to minimized site-based airflow, restricted daylight access and sky view, particularly at the bottom floors. The provided central open space is often converted to illegal parking areas frequented by unsolicited activities like drug abuse, making the space inhabitable and unavailable for the residents. The absence of accessible open space, like community areas, playgrounds or parks, leads to insufficient communal gathering space compared to the organic structure in the slums. This further causes a distortion of community and social cohesiveness. Similarly, minimal improvements are found in the indoor environment,

Why? How? What? and What-ifs of Mass Slum Rehabilitation  263 including corridors, kitchen, toilet, living area and bedroom. The restricted size of the tenement units does not allow for a decent living (SunikkaBlank, Bardhan, and Haque, 2019). The narrow corridors or galleries limit the indoor airflow and daylight. The unsegregated indoor kitchens fail to exhaust smoke and pollutants, and the high temperature and poor-quality air are concentrated in living spaces (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b). Although the indoor toilet facility has alleviated the need for retracted food intake by the females and has improved access to individual toilets, a poorly maintained environment breeds moulds, dampness and germs, subsequently leading to health and hygiene risks (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b). Figure 14.6 illustrates the condition of outdoor and indoor environment. While the evaluation of the environmental parameters involves the standard building geometry, ventilation, thermal comfort, air quality and daylight, a group of targeted studies investigate the performance of corresponding parameters in SRH cases with evident subsequent effects (Sannigrahi et al., 2020; Sarkar and Bardhan, 2019). The poor indoor air exchange leads to extreme heat, increasing humidity and stacked air pollution (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2019). While differential building heights (e.g. low and medium rise), shallow street canyon, integrated open spaces, well-acceptable aspect ratio (e.g. Height-width ratio of 0.8 in BDD chawls) and adequate inter-building spaces exhibit enhanced ventilation

Figure 14.6 (a) Outdoor environment with no central green space. (b) Indoor windows showing obstructed ventilation.

264  Ronita Bardhan and Jiayu Pan performance in the chawls and slums (Bardhan, Debnath, Malik, et al., 2018), tight narrow streets, limited inter-building spaces and deep street canyon (e.g. height-width ratio of 8.33 in Lallubhai SRH) in rehabilitation housings increase the wind resistance and block the air flow. The simulated air velocity directly reflects the difference: the average site-based air flow speed in slum/chawl sites ranges between 0.52 and 1.14 m/s (case of medium- and low-rise slums BBD Chawls and Ramabainagar Slum), while the mean value in SRH site is around 0.5 to 0.98 m/s (Lallubhai SRH) (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b). Discomfort is another key consequence in SRH exaggerated by the intense urban heat island effect, elevated temperature, limited air flow, humidity and trapped moisture. The outdoor thermal performance in slums is determined to be better compared to the performance in SRHs, with the computed heat stress risk index showing low and medium in slums (BBD Chawls and Ramabainagar Slum) and high in rehabilitation site (Lallubhai SRH) (Mehrotra, Bardhan, and Ramamritham, 2019). Similar conclusion is reported in another work (Debnath, Bardhan, and Jain, 2017b) where the horizontal slums performed better with lower operating temperature from the inter-building shades compared to the vertical redevelopment tenements. Meanwhile, natural ventilation strategies to mitigate indoor thermal discomfort (e.g. opening windows, doors and curtains) are restricted by social norms, privacy concerns and environmental nuisances in SRH (Malik et al., 2020). Indoor air pollution mainly attributes to the surrounding environment and indoor cooking. The choice of SRH location is crucial to pollution level (Jana, Sarkar, and Bardhan, 2020). For example, some studied sites (Lallubhai SRH, PMG Colony and Natwar Parakh Compound) are in the M-East Ward – at the periphery of the city and on grey field sites with a dumping ground and a biomedical incinerator facility. The residents are exposed to the hazardous conditions after they are displaced from slums in Mumbai, which exacerbated their existing health issues (Pardeshi et al., 2020). A survey of the PM2.5 level in the SRH indicates that the annual average ambient outdoor levels are in the range of 192 µ g / m3 and 413  µ g / m3, significantly higher than in the slums (118 µ g / m3). The indoor annual average concentration of PM2.5 concentrations in SRH were persistently higher at 800 µ g / m3 or more. The indoor PM2.5 concentrations can reach around 2,000 µ g / m3 during cooking activities and takes around 2.5 hours for one air exchange to occur under general operation conditions. The higher levels can be attributed to the behavioural aspects during cooking and perception window operations. Women generally keep the windows closed during cooking. This is due to dysfunctional design of the tenement units where the windows open on the access corridors, especially in the H Type and lack of exhaust fans. This situation contrasts with the assumption that vertical living will ensure better indoor air quality in SRH than in traditional slums. The

Why? How? What? and What-ifs of Mass Slum Rehabilitation  265 survey results illustrated that indoor pollutant PM 2.5 is attributed to the use of cookstoves and other sources liked to socio-cultural activities like lighting incense sticks for praying, burning mosquito repellent coils, indoor smoking and sometimes due to staking of fuel. However, the pollutant levels in both two typologies significantly exceed the standard of particulate matter exposure in World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines (Lueker et al., 2019) indicating poor indoor environment. Daylight and sky view are associated with the building height and density. Significantly lower daylight was reported in the SRH, particularly the bottom floors (ground to third floor) received minimal daylight. In most tenement units, the lux levels were persistently lower than the recommended thresholds for healthy living (>100 lux). Lack of daylight leads to mental distress and incidence of disease among resident groups after relocated to rehabilitation sites (Debnath, Bardhan, and SunikkaBlank, 2019a; Pardeshi et al., 2020). 14.4.2 Energy Consequences The change of built environment can impose an impact on residential electricity consumption through a change of household practice. The energy consumption in SRH increases dramatically compared to energy demand in slums due to the higher appliance ownership (Debnath, Bardhan, and Sunikka-Blank, 2019), which, in turn, leads to extra energy bills. A survey shows that respondents bought energy intensive electrical appliances like TV sets, ceiling fans, and refrigerator after moving into rehabilitation housing. The purchase of appliances fulfils the occupants’ aspiration of ‘having a permanent home’, while it results in a 40% increase of energy bill (Debnath, Bardhan, and Sunikka-Blank, 2019). Extreme outdoor environment caused by urban heat island, pollutant dispersion and thermal discomfort tends to push people spend more time indoor (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2019) with electro-mechanical cooling devices turned on (Nutkiewicz, Jain, and Bardhan, 2018). The close association between indoor air quality, thermal comfort and hygiene and appliances use in rehabilitation housing is validated in the survey by (Debnath, Bardhan and Sunikka-Blank, 2019). Low-energy mechanical devices like ceiling fans and exhaust fans are commonly adopted to increase air flow velocity and lower indoor temperature (Malik et al., 2020). 14.4.3 Social and Gender Discourse The dense SRH environment imposes threats to social liveability. The reduction in shared spaces, including open spaces side alleys, leads to significant concerns on safety and crime, social cohesiveness and gender inequality (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b). The residents’ level of satisfaction with the rehabilitation house compared to slums is moderate (Kshetrimayum,

266  Ronita Bardhan and Jiayu Pan Bardhan, and Kubota, 2020). While most residents are satisfied with the general condition of SRH, they report emotional distress like loneliness, anger and anxiety. At the same time, nearly 70% of residents in slums perceived a sense of community and ownership (Debnath, Bardhan, and Sunikka-Blank, 2019). The relocation to SRH reshapes female households’ routines radically (Sunikka-Blank, Bardhan, and Haque, 2019). Women are found to be more socially deprived than men. After the relocation, female activities, such as cooking, comforting, childrearing, working and entertainment practices, are significantly affected. These changes exacerbate the gender inequality in the low-income community, given the general background of gender imbalance and the male-dominant situation in South Asia. In slum structures, women have better access to public spaces and community support. The prevailing socio-cultural notion of gendered spaces in slums generates a temporality in the privacy of the organic open spaces. There are specific times within a day when the slum opens spaces are insulated from the males. Hence women can enjoy privacy and perform social networking. The public spaces provide gathering places and outdoor cooking spaces and curate informal businesses and livelihood. The lack of open spaces in the SRH and disconnect from the ground space have siloed the females inside the tenement units. Females in SRH consistently report feeling lonely and socially isolated. A narrative survey revealed that the insular nature of the SRH has led to the breakdown of the social network among the women. This has led to mistrust among neighbours. Unlike the slums where childcare was a shared activity, SRH has trapped the women in time poverty, leaving them with very little agency and time to engage in selfdevelopment activities. Additionally, female residents refrain from using electrical appliances or energy-intensive cooling devices for personal comfort or ease because of high electric bills (Debnath, Bardhan, and Sunikka-Blank, 2019). Furthermore, women’s health and well-being are threatened due to the trapped smoke and pollutants from the indoor kitchen (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b), as they are significant users of the kitchen and spend the longest time in tenement units and transact opening of windows during cooking in exchange of privacy and other cultural norms. In contrast, female inhabitants in Dharavi slums prevail better IAQ because the women tend to spend their time outdoors in nearby integrated open spaces (Sunikka-Blank, Bardhan, and Haque, 2019). 14.4.4 Health Risks The risk of exposure to different types of diseases in the SRH environment is significant. The design of the built environment could have warranted a high-quality living environment, reducing the health risk with good access to fresh air, daylight, sky view, clean water and sanitation system. In SRH,

Why? How? What? and What-ifs of Mass Slum Rehabilitation  267 the poor indoor air quality increases the incidence of asthma, hypertension, ‘sick building’ syndrome, disruption of human thermoregulation and even neurodevelopmental abnormalities (Bardhan, Debnath, Jana, et al., 2018). The incidence of tuberculosis in rehabilitation housing sites is strongly correlated to the design, closed or partially openable windows, lack of exhaust fans, and the poor outdoor environment of the tenements. It was found that while the X type design reported a lower incidence of the disease (2% of households), higher rates (8–10% of households) were reported in the I and the H type design. Often a more resistant version of the bacterium was found in these two design types. The lower floors have limited access to good ventilation and sunlight, with high tuberculosis infection rates (Pardeshi et al., 2020). Similarly, the units in the higher floors reported higher fresh air exchange with less respiratory-disease-related healthcareseeking behaviour (Bardhan, Debnath, Jana, et al., 2018).

14.5 Data-Driven Design: Framework for as a Solution The Slum rehabilitation buildings provide a base for a natural experiment to develop efficient designs. Effective low-income housing design can decouple liveability from poverty and reduce the vulnerability to different levels of risks. While the building design is significantly relevant to the liveability of low-income settlements (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b; Debnath, Bardhan, and Sunikka-Blank, 2019), there is a need to apply a standardized sustainable design guideline for low-income dwellings (Bardhan and Debnath, 2016) The data-driven design heuristics can reduce energy and health burdens in low-income communities. A novel framework for operationalizing the data-driven design heuristics is illustrated in Figure 14.7. A diverse range of datasets can be included in the data-driven design framework. The datasets include quantitative data on physical performance of design from environmental sensors, laboratory based experiments – like wind

Figure 14.7 Data-Driven Design Framework.

268  Ronita Bardhan and Jiayu Pan tunnel test, climate chamber, computational simulations; qualitative data on everydayness, people’s behaviour, socio-cultural practices, community norms from narratives, storytelling, focus group discussions, informal interviews, movies and films, etc.; and computational social science data in the form of which contains videos, tags, geolocations from social media like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc. The data-driven design has the power to generate context-specific solutions for mitigating the rebounding effects discussed in the previous sections. The novel approach of using data to deduce design solutions combines quantitative data from environmental sensors and monitors with qualitative data like narratives and informal questionnaire surveys. It combines social methods with machine learning and artificial intelligence to develop design solutions that can alleviate health and energy burdens. With data-based metrics and environmental simulation tools, corresponding parameters and solutions are suggested to improve the urban form, interior and outdoor design of SRH. The ‘Sustainable Design Group’ has conducted several experimental and simulation campaigns in SRH of Mumbai to develop a data-driven understanding of the context. The solutions presented here are part of the studies by the group (See Figure 14.8). 14.5.1 Ventilation It is well-acknowledged that adequate natural ventilation can significantly impact human comfort. The airflow around the sites can improve indoor spaces’ ventilation and air quality, thus enhancing human health and wellbeing (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b). A mix of CFD simulation, wind tunnel experiment and field measurement approaches are applied to investigate the performance of indoor and outdoor air ventilation (Kumar et al., 2021; Bardhan, Debnath, Malik, et al., 2018; Jana, Sarkar, and Bardhan, 2020; Sarkar and Bardhan, 2019). For example, the correlation between parameters of building density, building height aspect ratio and sidewalk width and wind speed is validated. Therefore, improvement in controlling corresponding parameters is needed. Creating building height differences, providing open spaces and increasing intra-building spaces are suggested to improve the outdoor airflow (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b). The effects of changing building layouts are also examined. Comparing three different housing layouts indicates that less compact and irregular urban forms can potentially create turbulences between buildings and provide a better sitebased airflow (Bardhan, Debnath, Malik, et al., 2018). Cross-ventilation is crucial for indoor ventilation, which can be directly formed by optimally positioning the indoor corridors and openings. Increasing corridor ventilation by adding more openings can create turbulence in air paths (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b). Additionally, installing exhaust fans or ventilators can better dispose of polluted air (Debnath, Bardhan and Sunikka-Blank, 2019). Introducing a partition wall to segregate the

Figure 14. 8 Experimental and measurement campaign by the Sustainable Design Group members in SR H.

Why? How? What? and What-ifs of Mass Slum Rehabilitation  269

270  Ronita Bardhan and Jiayu Pan cooking space can reduce indoor air pollution (Debnath, Bardhan, and Sunikka-Blank, 2019). The introduction of partition wall to segregate the cooking space can reduce indoor air pollution (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020b; 2019). Exploring interior design layouts for optimal indoor environmental performance further confirms the importance of partition wall design, bed and cookstove locations and a high-level air-outlet (ventilator) in design consideration (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2020a; 2019). 14.5.2 Daylight Daylight has a significant effect on adjusting human mental health and comfort level. The design parameters that affect the daylight performance mainly include orientation and window-to-wall ratio (WWR) (Debnath and Bardhan, 2016a). Therefore, the study indicates that the evaluation of daylight usability values is more effective compared to annual incident illuminance levels in assessing daylight performance. Furthermore, it points out an optimal strategy of South-East orientation with a window-to-wall ratio of 50% (Debnath and Bardhan, 2016b). It was also found the window placement can significantly change the daylight performance specially in the lower floors. 14.5.3 Thermal Comfort The mitigation to thermal discomfort mainly concentrates on heat balanced approach and adaptative approach (Malik and Bardhan, 2021). In the rehabilitation housing scenario, major approaches include improved airflow through natural ventilation and the application of mechanical controls (Malik et al., 2020). In addition, the indoorindoor thermal discomfort can be reduced by applying passive cooling design strategies (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2019), using double glazed low-emissivity glass for windows, increasing window to wall ratio and adopting reflective roof tiles and reflective paints on external walls (Malik and Bardhan, 2020; 2018). The outdoor thermal environment varies significantly based on urban form due to surface urban heat island intensity (Mehrotra, Bardhan, and Ramamritham, 2018). The early-stage design solutions for rehabilitation housing can significantly affect thermal performance, and building morphology is the most sensitive parameter to be considered. The thermal performance vertical layout varies dramatically in the sensitivity tests, indicating that careful consideration with simulation and validation is required when making design decisions (Nutkiewicz, Jain, and Bardhan, 2018). 14.5.4 Energy The energy consumption in low-income households is highly relevant to cultural and social norms, thermal discomfort (Nutkiewicz, Jain, and Bardhan, 2018), hygiene (Debnath, Bardhan, and Sunikka-Blank, 2019), daylight level (Debnath and Bardhan, 2016b) and natural ventilation

Why? How? What? and What-ifs of Mass Slum Rehabilitation  271

Figure 14.9 Roof-top solar photovoltaics installed in a SRH building by a NGO.

(Sarkar and Bardhan, 2019). Therefore, while designing the environment, the potential energy-saving strategies need to be embedded in consideration through understanding the energy consumption behaviours and simulation (Malik et al., 2022). The suggested ways of saving energy include reducing cooling energy use by lowering the use of air conditioning and ceiling fans (Sarkar and Bardhan, 2019), replacing artificial light with better access to daylight (Debnath and Bardhan, 2016b) and improving the use of building and window material (Malik and Bardhan, 2020). Additionally, the potential of renewable energy should be harnessed in these communities. Figure  14.9 demonstrates a pilot project on harnessing roof-top solar energy for lighting the common areas and lifts in an SRH.

14.6 Conclusion Global South cities face significant challenges from rapid urbanization, unplanned urban sprawl and large-scale immigration. The knowledge on how people and governments in the rapidly transitioning cities adapt, mitigate and evolve is limited and unevenly distributed. There is a strong need for a targeted study by the native researchers to understand the casespecific situation in Global South countries (Ali et al., 2022). As the slum rehabilitation housing is a commonly applied solution to mitigate the slums and supply of affordable housing to low-income immigrants, the study of policy and design from the viewpoint of dwellers is in demand. The current analysis and investigations on the slum rehabilitation have demonstrated a series of problems from both the policy side and design side. Rehabilitated households suffer from rebounding effects of thermal discomfort, mental

272  Ronita Bardhan and Jiayu Pan distress, increased health risk, exacerbated gender inequality and rising energy bills, thus trapped in the poverty cycle. Most of the identified disadvantages in slum rehabilitation housing point to a common solution – establishing standardized policy and design guidelines which are peoplecentric, inclusive and sustainable. The data-driven design approach is a novel multi-dimensional mechanism that can capture the context within engineering models for effective design solution. The data-driven approach of Sustainable design group can pave pathways towards a decolonized thinking in architecture. The modification of built environment design parameters through this stateof-art approach can restrain the rebound effects and poverty recycling. Design solutions should be developed by converging the socio-cultural context with engineering models. The design and policy parameters like building density, building height, aspect ratio, open space provision, sky view factor and window-to-wall ratio should be incorporated within the developmental control regulations. The soft parameters like low-carbon construction materials, modern methods of construction and integration of renewables should be advocated through recommendary guidelines. Design strategies such as separated kitchen, optimized furniture layout and window positioning need to be further included as a design brief. Such guidelines will impose statutory obligation beyond moral responsibility on the private developer to build quality tenement housing. Otherwise, the economic cross-subsidy will spill over as social cost and burden the urban poor.

Acknowledgements The authors acknowledge the members of the Sustainable Development Group for their contributions in building this new domain of knowledge.

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CODA

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CODA 15. THE PANDEMIC AND INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS Cynthia Goytia (Cynthia Goytia. Torcuato Di Tella University and Visiting Scholar at Harvard University)

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DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-19

15 The Pandemic and Informal Settlements Cynthia Goytia

15.1 Introduction In most of the cities from developing countries, rapid urbanization is forcing a significant share of the population to live in informal settlements. Across the developing world, over one billion people live in informal settlements, 80% attributed to three regions: Eastern and South-Eastern Asia (370 million), sub-Saharan Africa (238 million) and Central and Southern Asia (227 million). The phenomenon is widespread in areas where there is an insufficient supply of serviced land at affordable prices, in crowded urban slums that risk being COVID-19 hotspots. This number is set to increase sharply in the next eight years. An estimated three billion people will require adequate and affordable housing by 2030 (UNSTATS 2019). The coronavirus epidemic has been causing the loss of lives and upended economies and societies everywhere in the world. Informal settlements have not been an exemption. At this time, the pandemic not only has been a powerful reminder of the very real inequalities faced in most of the cities of the global south, but it makes them more visible. Those informal neighborhoods, also known as slums or squatter settlements, shanty towns, favelas, villas miseria or kampungs, face significant deprivations, but are a dominant feature of the urban economy in cities where part of the population cannot afford housing. The neighborhoods are typically built without regard to any construction or regulatory standards, with insufficient living area, low durability of housing, and insecurity of land tenure (UN-Habitat 2003). More than that, they lack adequate provision of basic infrastructure services, including very poor water and sanitation conditions. Informal developments may be located either in publicly or privately owned land and are often situated in environmentally sensitive areas. These spaces are densely populated with little or no waste management, overcrowded public transportation and low accessibility to the main urban equipment, such as public space and green areas, and limited access to formal health care facilities. Many of these characteristics of informal settlements act as socioenvironmental determinants of health, increasing risk of morbidity and mortality from common diseases such as infant mortality and, increasingly, from COVID-19 (Wilkinson 2020; French et al. 2020).

DOI: 10.4324/9781003191407-20

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280  Cynthia Goytia This chapter examines the challenges faced by urban policymakers related to informality and offers a group of decisions that may radically shape the future of cities in the world. It recognizes how the COVID-19 pandemic is raising many challenging questions for planners, and policymakers that are expected to drive meaningful engagement around better urban policies and what the most effective ones should be to address, mitigate and prevent informal land development. Therefore, the chapter pursues two essential goals. First, it highlights the many challenges cities faced in the post-pandemic stage. While policymakers and governments have spent decades making the case for upgrading programs, there are worries that the threat posed by the COVID-19 virus is causing settlements to be seen as sites of risk and for densification to fall out of favor. Second, it looks at how policymakers and planners decisions over land-use regulation and planning rather than poverty itself, is affecting informal land development. Related to this topic, the chapter is aimed at suggesting a set of urban policy tools that can be effective to address informal land development in cities of the Global South where informality is prevailing. The chapter is structured as follows. Following this introduction, Section 15.2 provides a summary of informal settlements and the policies implemented during the pandemic. Section 15.3 outlines the pos pandemic challenges and the policy failures making most people in developing countries cities to bypass the formal land market system completely through informal access to land, without legal recognition, planning, or formal service provision. Following that, Section 15.4 is intended to explain the strong emphasis given from decades to “curative” polices (i.e., upgraded infrastructure, settlements improvement programs, titling) and the challenges of identifying measures that can increase the supply of affordable land at scale to prevent informal development, and introduces land use regulation and different urban policy tools that can contribute to this preventive approach. Section 15.5 explains the new scenario that is currently driven by the pandemic, for how socially responsible governments are introducing a set of innovative tools to promote more equitable land-market and housing outcomes. Finally, Section 15.6 briefly outlines some conclusions on promising preventive policies, especially how the redistribution of the costs and the benefits of that development should be effective in addressing the challenges ahead. As a result, it has drawn lessons on good practices of functional land markets and informality reduction, that can be disseminated to an international audience that may be inspired to adopt innovative strategies and solutions, while avoiding repeating wrong doings related to the subject.

15.2 COVID-19 and Informal Settlements in the Global South The crisis unleashed by COVID-19 has deepened inequalities even further, including access to land and housing inequalities. As an example, according

The Pandemic and Informal Settlements  281 to recent data, one in four urban dwellers in LAC lives in an informal settlement (Goytia et al. 2023). During the pandemic, high population densities and poor living conditions in these informal neighborhoods contribute to exacerbate transmission. At the same time, overcrowding households make behaviors like social distancing very difficult or even impossible. In most cities, households do not have running water at home and live in crowded conditions. In some cases, they must travel outside the home to collect water and use shared toilets. Settlements are in areas with limited access to health services, a very relevant limitation for all these families. Adding to that, working in the informal sector poses risks. The economy of most residents from these informal areas- was paralyzed due to restrictions on the activity each bear by quarantine. Recall that more than 85% of workers in these neighborhoods in Buenos Aires or in Mumbai, work in the informal economy in independent jobs or eventual ones, totally lacking savings protection against emergencies, such as this health crisis. Still, the difficulty experienced by those living in structural poverty in sustaining preventive isolation was making mobility slightly higher in informal than in formal neighborhoods while reliance on crowded transport services increased contagion risk. In sum, all the measures that are usually recommended to inhibit COVID-19 transmission, such as physical distancing, hand washing, self-quarantine or community-wide lockdowns have been habitually difficult in informal settlements (UN Habitat). Governments all over the world enacted new policy tools in response to COVID-19 pandemic in informal settlements. Based on UN Habitat, 2020 guideline for response in informal settlements, some cities declare an end to all forced evictions of informal settlements and encampments and ensure implementation. They also seek to ensure all residents have access to an adequate, affordable, and proximate supply of water, toilets, showers, sanitation services, soap, hand sanitizer, disinfectants and masks. In Africa, due to rapid urbanization, the number of people in urban areas without access to water and sanitation services continues to rise, most of them are living in informal settlements. Only 56% of the urban population across the continent has access to piped water. This makes impossible to address the minimum standard of 20 L per person a day to attain essential levels of hygiene and health. This situation hurts residents of informal neighborhoods the most, who must rely only on very expensive water from informal water vendors, paying a large multiple of the utility tariff for water that is often of dubious quality (Heymans et al. 2016). To address such complex situation, the government in South Africa, has financed slums upgrading to improve access to water and sanitation facilities. All over the world, governments have tried to address the COVID-19 effects in several ways. Perhaps one of the most important and urgent was improving access to basic services including water, sanitation, and hygiene. Many national and local governments decided to ensure clean water, access

282  Cynthia Goytia to utilities and securing finance to keep them going. In Colombia, Water services were provided free of charge for families in a state of vulnerability. Other countries, like El Salvador, declared a 90-day moratorium for public services, for those who have been negatively affected by COVID-19. But Repayment of this moratorium would be done over the next 24 months (World Bank 2021). In other places, like In Kampung, Indonesia, the government was strategically placing low-cost public water containers with soap holders throughout kampungs (slums). Improving Hygiene and Handwashing was a central strategy in other cities. In Mathare, Kenya, hand washing stations have been set up while in Rwanda capital city, Kigali, portable sinks for handwashing were located at bus stops and shops. These hand washing stations have been installed by the local communities in Brazil to wash hands before entering the favelas (World Bank 2021). Other strategies for mitigating health risks have been controversial, such as redevelopment plans to decongest informal settlements. Resettlement programs are extremely costly, both to governments and to the communities affected. Namibia’s plan to decongest informal settlements was enacted as the spread of COVID-19 raised sharply, identifying suitable venues or facilities with adequate provision of water and ablution facilities, where residents were temporarily relocated. Others, like the Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) decided to redevelop slums in core city areas to decongest these locations and reduce the population density. There, slums are an integral part of the city’s habitat as over 40% of the citizens live in these slums (World Bank 2021). There, slum dwellers who were not able to follow social distancing norms were moved to other shelters throughout the city. At the same time, UN Habitat guidelines impose a prohibition of any emergency processes, such as ‘de-densification’, that involves the removal of large numbers of people. Finally, emergency housing programs for the most vulnerable were less commonly undertaken. Informal neighborhoods are very important sources of significant economic activity such as through micro-enterprises and informal labor (Ellis and Roberts 2016). Then, any response to COVID-19 should balance economic well-being and epidemic mitigation. On the economic front, recommendations such as working from home have become the default function for workers all over the world during the worst pandemic outbreaks. Following these guidelines has been a challenge for residents of informal neighborhoods working outside the formal economy. As a result, their incomes have been unstable and had very minimal savings to cope when cities and all labor market opportunities were shut down due to the spread of COVID-19 cases. However, in many places, governments imposed extremely tight quarantine and physical distancing measures for the urban poor without also ensuring that those residing in urban slums can meet their everyday needs, such as food and clean water. Moreover, those households living in urban informal settlements regularly rely on strong

The Pandemic and Informal Settlements  283 social connections to survive, such as to identify labor opportunities, to get food using credit from a street vendor, or to find reliable childcare providers, just to name a few. As part of coordinated COVID-19 response in urban informal settlements, CBOs, NGOs, schools, service providers, and faithbased organizations were vital institutions engaged. But, for doing that, it was required that government organizations identify and engage those community organizations, NGOs or civil society organizations working in the affected areas (Corburn et al. 2020). As a result, in many of the programs implemented in informal neighborhoods all over the world, all these non-government actors have been key in mobilizing, gaining trust, providing food and other essentials to households. Adding to that, seeking to ensure that any emergency financial aid offered to those in the formal economy affected by the pandemic was also made available to those in the informal economy (and in informal settlements) was very challenging for governments all over cities of the global south. For tenants in informal settlements, the loss of income from lockdowns and stay-at-home orders threatens their ability to pay for (informal) rental housing leading to evictions and new informal occupations in new and existing neighborhoods. National and local governments have been acting swiftly to implement generous financial rescue packages to save jobs in formal labor markets. There, mortgage payments were refinanced and postponed, moratoriums on evictions placed. The aim was to ensure that housing providers provide rent abatements to those affected by COVID-19 and prohibit the cutting off water and electricity services to households unable to pay their bills. However, this recovery polices have not always reached informal settlers in both developed and developing world cities (Corburn et al. 2020). Eviction rental moratoria and subsidized service tariffs on electricity gas and water, only applied to formal housing markets. Adding to that, vouchers and cash transfers were implemented to provide a social safety net, either by national or local governments distributed to informal workers. The Government of Brazil start to distribute vouchers to all informal workers that were not included in the other two flagship cash transfer programs that have been implemented previously. In the state of Uttar Pradesh in India, a compensation to poor workers via online payments if they lost their job due to the pandemic was approved, targeting vegetable vendors, rickshaw pullers, autorickshaw drivers and construction workers (World Bank 2021). However, ensuring that the compensation reaches those most in need in informal settlements was a hard challenge that was not always accomplished, raising many inclusion problems in the design of such measures that were seeking to reach the most vulnerable workers.1 The main objective was ensuring continued nutrition and education for children. Done by the Kerala state government, or the Bolivian government Bono Familia program, were intended to deliver food ingredients for mid- day meals to feed children

284  Cynthia Goytia of low-income families who will not have school breakfast during this time of quarantine.

15.3 Informal Land Development and Land Use Management Before the COVID-19 outbreak, the affordability crisis driven by the lack of affordable access to serviced land and housing was one of the biggest problems facing the cities of developing countries. While poverty is often blamed for the development of informal markets, overly stringent land use norms and regulations also play a central role by increasing prices in the formal sector. Across the developing world, many governments have inherited broken, ex-colonial norms that do not work for current days (Goytia 2019). Many researchers believe that land use restrictions inherited or borrowed from the wealthy West have helped to make markets in developing world cities dysfunctional. Brueckner and Lall (2015) remind us that extremely large minimum lot sizes in parts of sub-Saharan Africa are a legacy of colonialism. The same has been observed in Latin American cities, such as Buenos Aires or Montevideo (Bouillon 2012, Goytia and Lanfranchi 2009). Even after achieving independence, African governments continue to impose regulations that are inappropriate to the level of residents’ incomes. For example, over 90% of dwelling units in Dar Es Salaam do not meet the minimum footprint. This makes most of the housing stock illegal, which inhibits public servicing, investment, and redevelopment (Goytia and Heikkila 2022). In African cities, while most households struggle to afford a house for $15,000 (Collier and Venables 2014), the cost of constructing a basic house that meets all legal normative requirements more than tripled. Making housing affordable for ordinary residents means re-writing old colonial regulations. Large-scale ‘social housing’ programs have not helped matters (Collier and Venables 2014). First, they are extremely costly which means that they are totally unable to keep up with demand. Second, when built, it is done on less expensive but disconnected urban peripheries. Kigali’s social housing units cost upwards of $30,000; less compared to other cities, but still, this is housing for the elite, not for ordinary citizens (Collier and Venables 2014). High formal housing prices generate substitution effects, encouraging lower-income households to move to the informal sector in slums or informal settlements. The result of these policy failures is that most people bypass the formal land market system completely through informal access to land, without legal recognition, planning, or formal service provision. Instead, governments provide the primary infrastructure around which orderly private formal development will occur. Without sufficient formal development, informal settlements that are relatively central and thus close

The Pandemic and Informal Settlements  285 to jobs—such as Kibera in Nairobi, and Tandale in Dar es Salaam—are constantly growing in population. Contrary to expectations, informal plots are expensive. Although informal plots are smaller than formal plots to meet buyers’ limited purchasing power, the final sales price per square meter is much higher compared with the minimum price of formally developed parcels, once the costs of providing services is factored in. Indeed, living in squatter settlements is not cheap (Goytia 2019). For instance, residents in these cities face a high price premium on rents driven by poorly functioning land markets coupled with the fact that construction costs as well as registering property formally are more expensive compared to other cities in the world. Moreover, water must often be purchased at very high prices from local distributors. In the case of squatters, they may also have to pay a steep price for some form of protection (Lanjouw and Levy 1998).

15.4 Urban Informality: Curative or Preventive Polices? The COVID-19 has spread in urban areas revealing higher inequalities of access to land and adequate housing. Residents of informal settlements have been among those most affected in some cities. There, the spread of disease can be attributed to the multiple fragilities to which residents are subjected on account of living in precarious urbanizations. The search for strategies to reverse the urban and social problems of informal urbanization is gaining importance in the development agenda of cities in developing countries. In fact, since year 2000, the issue is emphasized by the Millennium Development Goals (UN 2019), aiming to reduce the number of people living in slums by 100 million by 2025. To work on that direction, for more than 30 years, the development agencies that strongly influence policy agendas have prioritized settlements upgrading strategies and land tenure regularization (Collier and Venables 2018). A wide array of practical experience has been accumulated from such programs all over the world, pursuing social and economic benefits, by the full integration of the settlements to the urban structure. For example, those in the Latin American region, executed in Medellin’s settlements located in the periphery of cities (Brakarz, Green and Rojas 2002), or in very central city locations, like the well- known Favela Bairro Project of Rio de Janeiro, or Barrio 31 in Argentina. Those programs are very important but at the same time, insufficient to cope and reverse informal land development. Based on information from evaluations of these programs conducted in the region by multilateral organizations from 1998 to 2016 (Goytia and Dorna 2019), the review provides valuable evidence on the doubtful effectiveness of many of those interventions. The best results were consistently obtained from infrastructure upgrading, mainly sanitation and

286  Cynthia Goytia road accessibility. Regarding urban integration, accessibility was improved in some interventions but were totally insufficient to provide a real degree of urban integration to the city. Environmental problems appear to have been only slightly reduced. Titling, which means legalizing property rights, produced negligible results in most of the interventions. Same have been suggested by studies in African cities, consistent with the notion that informal settlements upgrading can make settlements persist longer than they otherwise would (Duranton and Venables 2018), where improvements and the non-eviction guarantee led to higher population density (Collier et al. 2018). Indeed, only few upgrading programs have an explicit objective not only to upgrade existing informal settlements but to prevent informality and reduce their rate of growth. To that end, in Uruguay, upgrading programs include a Prevention Strategy, which recommends the promotion of policies and practices that reverse the generation of irregular settlements or that would contribute to their solution. 2 The COVID-19 pandemic is raising many challenging questions for planners, and policymakers and it is expected to drive meaningful engagement around urban policies related to informality. In all, it’s contributing to look for opportunities to align the short-term response with longer term policy objectives. Land regularization and upgrading programs have a remedial nature and the challenge is how informality can be prevented. Indeed, it is argued that ‘it can be easier and cheaper to prevent the process of informal land development from happening’ (Fernandes 2011). The absence of preventive action nowadays is storing up pricey problems for the future; infrastructure and land rights are proved to be very hard to retrofit. The evidence suggests that African cities are set to triple in size by 2050, and South Asian cities are set to more than double (Lall et al. 2017). If left unaddressed, these supply constraints will hamper the ability of low-income households to prosper as cities emerge from the crisis and will exacerbate inequalities.

15.5 Enabling Preventive Urban Policies for Pos Pandemic Times This section explores practical and realistic ways in which governments can make land markets work to prevent future urbanization from proceeding informally in the pos-pandemic times. Historically, cities have reacted to disease and disaster with innovative measures, like water and sewer infrastructure prompted by cholera, new public spaces, building and zoning codes or new design practices, intended to keep people healthier in congested urban areas after pandemics (Glaeser and Cutler 2021) In this wave, commitment to inclusivity must be a strong driver for postCOVID-19 recovery. What will be the valid alternatives to mitigate informal land development and increase access to formal land and housing? Several

The Pandemic and Informal Settlements  287 hypotheses are now under discussion in policy and academic circles related to how informal land development should be addressed. Both the theoretical perspective and the findings of several studies begin to support the argument that informality might be significantly mitigated or even reversed through adequate land management that corrects for land-market dysfunctionalities. Academic researchers studying developed countries have analyzed how land use regulations explain the inelasticity of the land and housing markets, limiting housing supply or affecting market prices and affordability-even functioning as a social exclusion mechanism. All these studies show a similar conclusion: the degree of land use restrictiveness is positively correlated with property prices (Quigley and Raphael 2005; Ihlanfeldt 2007; Glaeser and Ward 2009; Zabel and Dalton 2011). Restrictions can be even more distortionary in developing countries cities, where regulations are based on outdated colonial planning laws, completely removed from local contexts and affordability levels. In Dar es Salaam, the minimum land plot size is 375 m 2 , in Buenos Aires is 300 m 2 , as compared to 30 m 2 in Philadelphia when the city was at similar stages of economic development (Colliers et al. 2018). Most urban residents simply cannot afford to purchase land parcels of this size, a “minimum consumption” level that is too high for many workers (Goytia and Pasquini 2012). This pushes them into informal land and housing and hindering the emergence of a large-scale formal housing market (Lall, Henderson and Venables 2017). Moreover, high transaction costs, caused by inefficient bureaucratic procedures for subdividing and registering land (Bouillon 2012), make development of low-income affordable land and housing possible almost exclusively in the informal sector. As a result, strict government regulations intended to provide optimal conditions for land use and occupation have had a completely opposite effect (Monkkonen and Ronconi 2013). To make formal housing affordable, coordinated reforms will need to target all the regulatory barriers that drive up formal land and housing costs. First, reforms to land use regulations can significantly reduce land costs— which are responsible for up to 80% of housing costs in developing cities (Colliers and Venables 2018). Empirical studies looking into the association between the regulatory environment and informality provide evidence of the development of the informal sector associated with the characteristics of land use regulation (Lall, Wang and De Mata 2007; Duranton 2008, Goytia and Lanfranchi 2009, Monkkonen and Ronconi 2013, Feler and Henderson 2011; Goytia and Pasquini 2012; Cavalcanti et al. 2019). Those studies concluded that a large segment of the population could not realistically comply with strict urban standards and “exclusive” land use regulations. There are other complementary ways, too. One of the biggest challenges affecting land markets in cities of the Global South is the lag in the effective provisioning of basic infrastructure services. The rapid process of urbanization has generated strong demand for public goods and services,

288  Cynthia Goytia the core infrastructure around which orderly private development occurs. In practice, informal land development is exactly that: the under provisioning of serviced land at affordable prices in formal land markets, leading to irregular land occupations (Goytia and Heikkila 2022). Increasing the supply of urban and serviced land reduces land costs throughout the city. That’s why, in all cities, the provisioning of infrastructure and services becomes the greatest long-term challenge for policymakers seeking to provide serviced and affordable land at scale that could reverse informal land occupations and lower the high public costs of upgrading programs in irregular settlements. Providing core infrastructure before people settle is three times cheaper than retrofitting it in existing unplanned settlements and prevents unpopular slum clearance plans and costly upgrading schemes. Governments can provide households with serviced plots (providing water, sanitation and electricity), which will cost 8 times cheaper than public housing units (Lall, Henderson and Venables 2017). Then, the question is, whether is it possible to amplified short terms requirements to provide (remedial) infrastructure during the pandemic toward more coherent and meaningful efforts to finance infrastructure that will guide urban land development? Governments can use land value appreciation to fund the initial infrastructure investment. In fact, landbased finance mechanisms that integrate urban regulatory and fiscal dimensions are now used in many cities to mitigate informality. Those are based on the idea that the financing of infrastructure and services should be made possible using the mobilization of the land valorization produced by urbanization. In fact, many authors point to the idea of value capture as a wealth redistribution instrument (Smolka and Goytia 2019). Capturing the increase in land values created by public investment and the broader process of urban development enables scarce public resources to be recovered and reinvested in additional public goods, such as the infrastructure services the development requires. There are further reasons why the financing of infrastructure should be specifically linked with the development of more “formal” urban land. Land is a very important source of taxation in urban areas because it is immobile, and evasion is difficult. Part of its value derives from regulatory approval for changes of use from agriculture, or for more intensive redevelopment of plots or older buildings. This uplift in value attributable to an administrative decision is unearned by the landowner and therefore, an efficient target for revenue generation. Another part of the value of urban land stems from investment by other private and public sector actors nearby, so the same principle applies that much of the uplift in value is unearned. The very direct and obvious connection between public investment in infrastructure—such as water supply or roads—and the enhanced value of newly serviced land makes it particularly appropriate. Renewed policy attention and increased investments are needed to ensure affordable and adequate access to land and housing for all. That’s

The Pandemic and Informal Settlements  289 why many cities are systematically engaged in efforts in that direction by enacting normative instruments based on these concepts. These include, for example, the betterment levies or contributions for improvements, building rights charges, and land readjustment schemes. 3 Today, many local governments in Latin America are using such tools, and even, in some countries, regulating their implementation via national laws. Betterment contributions and special assessments are fees paid to the municipality by specific owners who benefit from a public improvement or service. The instrument is a longstanding practice in some Latin American countries.4 There, the tool has an extensive record of application (albeit uneven), but also a record of collecting substantive revenues to finance different public works, although collections have fluctuated over time. In formal areas, the most common uses are the provision of utilities (e.g., water, sewage), roads, and paved streets. Some municipalities implement this instrument in informal neighborhoods, when there is an improvement or public service that benefits the plots of land, and (informal) owners who are benefited pay a fee, charge, or contribution to cover the cost of the improvement. It is more used in small jurisdictions possibly because they collect little from other revenues or are even more in need to use the instrument as a necessary requirement to finance infrastructure works (Borrero Ochoa 2013). Through land readjustment schemes, infrastructure and planning can be funded by landowners giving up parts of their (more valuable) plots, enabling win-win solutions for (informal) occupiers, landowners, and governments. For example, in the metropolitan area of Bogotá and Medellin (Colombia), the land occupied informally has decreased in a very significant way in the last 20 years. Among the instruments that have the greatest impact on increasing the size of the formal land and housing market are the obligation to allocate part of the land from new developments to social and priority housing using land readjustment programs and exactions. The implementation of these instruments has expanded the supply of land (i.e., for social housing) and thus reducing the pressure on informal urbanization. Brazil has pioneered the use of ZEIS, Special Zones of Social Interest, and there is a positive relationship between this instrument and the annual reduction of households with informal tenure when comparing those municipalities in which this instrument exists and its enforced, with the municipalities where it does not exist. So, evidence from cities in Latin American now starts to suggest that the potential exists for urbanization to transform informality and raise living standards if some suitable land management conditions are established. Then, the prospects of mitigation of informal development in cities hinge on the quality of their land policies foundation, which underpin not only the relevance of their existence but also enforcement. Preventing the development of precarious urbanization might presuppose the effective implementation and enforcement of “inclusive” land use regulation that includes a diverse set of land management tools,

290  Cynthia Goytia which can increase affordability by correction of dysfunctionalities that prevail in land markets in many countries of the Global South.

15.6 Conclusion Addressing the affordable and serviced land supply shortage was not seem urgent until very recently, but this constrain will not go away with the pandemic, it will worsen and obstruct the ability to bring all households out of the crisis and onto the road to a full socioeconomic recovery. COVID-19 seems to be the time to delve deeper into effective urban policy strategies to mitigate urban informality in the developing word to make progress on building a more inclusive society. As a result, this chapter has drawn lessons on good practices on informality reduction that can be disseminated to an international audience that may be inspired to adopt innovative strategies and solutions, while avoiding repeating wrong doings related to the subject. Harnessing the nexus between land polices, infrastructure finance and informality mean that land management tools might enable major provision of urban infrastructure services, and stronger inclusionary polices as zoning with affordable standards that can be effectively enforced and obeyed. The pandemic may result in changes the way we all live and work. The acceleration of existing informality trends and the new changes that will be brought about by the pandemic will not be easily reversible as suggested in the above discussion. It is indispensable to take on a fresh look on the new opportunities open by the post-pandemic trends to unlock unsuspected public resources to redistribute investments and produce more socially and spatially inclusive balanced cities. In sum, the chapter develops an argument that identifies the way in which harnessing the value of land enables a virtuous cycle where appreciating urban land and property values finance the public investments which make cities need to mitigate informal development when growing. Moreover, the adoption of land management instruments and small land use regulatory changes in cities of the Global South can have a big impact on land supply and affordability to bring residents into the formal sector, with appropriate tenure land rights. Some urban policies, like landbased financing and inclusive zoning, may become major contributions to increase the size of the formal land and housing markets. Even though these polices are promising; realizing their developmental potential requires more systematic and concerted efforts to analyze these matters.

Notes 1 Other measures trying to increase financial support to low-income informal workers were based on the use of technology leveraging existing mobile money platforms for payment transactions and cash transfers. 2 The program includes a review of urban policies, a social rental program (by the implementation of a national rent guarantee fund), an institutional

The Pandemic and Informal Settlements  291 strengthening program for local governments and the implementation of a monitoring system (C. Goytia, and G. Dorna. “Doing Bad by Doing Good? An Empirical Analysis of the Incentives from Informal Settlements’ Upgrading Programs on Urban Informality”. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy Working Paper WP19CG1, 2019). 3 By their nature, those instruments tend to be classified in regulations as “charges or exactions”, “building rights charges” and “land readjustments”; or fees, such as “betterment levies”, “contributions for improvement or valuation” and “taxes”, such as differential property tax rates (C. Goytia and M. Cristini. “Infrastructure Investment in a Messy Urban Growth Scenario: The Role of Land Value Capture Instruments in Argentina.” Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2019.) 4 In Colombia, a pioneer in the region, this levy, called Contribución de Valorización (CV), has been collected for a hundred years, since 1921 (M.O. Smolka. Implementing Value Capture in Latin America: Policies and Tools for Urban Development. Policy Focus Report Series. Cambridge MA: Lincoln Institute for Land Policy, 2013).

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Index

Note: Bold page numbers refer to tables; italic page numbers refer to figures and page numbers followed by “n” denote endnotes. activity theory 240–243, 250 acupuncture projects 228 adaptation 136–139 Advisory Development Plan 102, 104 Agamben, G. 63 Ahmed, S.I. 132 Allen, T. 115 Alsayyad, N. 190 American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) 53 anti-social activities 171 Anzaldúa, G. 19 architectural practice 236 arrival city 17, 18 artificial intelligence 56, 268 asthma 267 augmented floor space index 259 Awan, N. 5, 5 Aztecs 49 Bardhan, R. 12 battlefield map 51 Becker, B. 187 Berger, J. 73 Bernard, J. 78 Beşiktas 24, 25 Bhan, G. 3 biometric technologies 90 bond-partnerships 108 Booher, D.E. 225, 226 Brazilian Constitution 176 Breeze, M. 39 Brennan-Horley, C. 82 Brum, M. 181 Bush, G.W. 56 business: development 105; opportunity 230

Butler, J. 72 Calais, F. 3 Calais Jungle 30, 32, 34 camps of containment 8 capitalist system 131 Cardoso, F.H. 178 CARE post-evaluation reports 39 Carvalho, P. 183 cash-based shelter programmes 40 cash remunerations 141 Castells, M. 73 Catholic relief services (CRS) 40 Catholique, S. 83 Cavalcanti, M. 177, 178, 190 Cellsite Simulators 53 Chaar-López, I. 56 Chan, K.W. 195 Channel Tunnel 30 chawls 256; see also slums Cheshmehzangi, A. 10 Chicano movement 50 Chi, G. 90 China: rural-to-urban migration challenges 196–198 class-based patterns 120 climatic adversities 130 cohesive communities 164 collaborative planning 223–226, 230 collective activity systems 241 collective entity 74, 76 Colombo’s urban environment 156 colonial amnesia 2 Combrinck, C. 237 community based governance 223–224 community-centric approach 172

296 Index community-led development 222 community micro-financing 160 community surveillance 158 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) 114 conflict-damaged economy 157 conflict-related violence 125 connecting the camps: books as infrastructure 69–73, 71; coloniality 66; ECHO 64, 65, 76–78; imaginary textual infrastructures 65; isolated and isolating spaces 63; mapping moving books 73–76; mobile informal institution 65; mobile library 66–68; refugees 66; signal immobility 63; spatial and quantitative data records 65 Connell, R. 2 conservative surgery approach 10, 157, 171–173 container camp 35–38 contemporary planning practices 228, 229 Contribución de Valorización (CV) 291n4 Cooley, M. 69 cottage industry 160, 161 cross-ventilation 268 Cruz, T. 47, 50, 51, 52 Cuellar, H. 54 cultural communing 77 data-driven design: datasets 267; daylight 270; energy 270–271; framework 267, 267–268; lowincome dwellings 267; multidimensional mechanism 272; rebounding effects 268; thermal comfort 270; ventilation 268–270 daylight 261–61, 265, 270 death-related mobility 119 Debnath, R. 258 de-densification process 213, 282 Delport, H. 12 Derrida, J. 48, 54 de-slumming 255 development control regulations (DCR) 259 diaspora technology 22 diasporic communities 3 diasporic urbanism: assimilation process 17; claiming and (de) territorialization of space 5;

deportation regimes 18; housing, shelter and sustenance 17; invisible geography 21; mainstream urban development 26; maintenance of networks 19–25; migrant neighbourhoods 25; social and economic factors 18; spatiotemporalities 26; sprawling networks 25; translocal/translocality 18, 19; unsettlement/unbelonging 18; xenophobic policies 17 Dickey, C. 52 differential property tax rates 291n3 digital technologies 81, 82, 83, 92 DigiTurk 22 dignity 41 Diminescu, D. 90 disciplinary knowledge 237 discomfort 264 dispensary lane 163; dispensary lane, Colombo 11 displacement-based mobility practices 124 dispositions 141–144 dispossession 152 disruptions 144 distortion of community 262 dominant/balanced activity systems 245–246 Dovey, K. 9 ECHO mobile library 63, 64, 64, 78 economic improvement/integration 8 economic inequalities 2 economic management skills 161 economic schemes 108 education, community, hope and opportunity (ECHO) 8, 64, 65, 76–78 EKO-UP 221 electromagnetic phenomena 49 electromagnetic spectrum 49 electro-mechanical cooling devices 265 electronic fence 56 electronic technologies 57 Emergency Response Coordination Centre (ERCC) 81 emergent citizenship 176 emotional distress 92 emotional resilience 83 energy consequences 265 energy consumption 270, 271 Engeström, Y. 241 environmental issues 42

Index  297 environmental sustainability 151 ephemeral spatial configurations: conventional urban ones 130; temporal cycles 130 ephemeral urbanism: camp stories 136–144; fieldwork and research methods 135–136; prayer room of mosque complex, social meetings 138; radha-krishna temple, hindu camp 140; refugee camps 131–134; Rohingya refugee crisis 134–135; vegetable garden 144 Eritrean community Church, Ville de Calais 33 Eurocentric cultural phenomenon 72 European refugee crisis 67 Evans, J. 82 exploratory architects 2 face significant deprivations 279 favelas 177–184, 186, 188, 190, 279 Federal Communications Commission 47 Federici, S. 78; feminist perspective 78 fiction of non-dependence 68 financial rescue packages 283 fire safety 38, 43 Fisher, M. 54 flammable materials 44 focus group discussions (FGD) 135, 136 focus group interviews 101 food aid delivery 121 food distribution cycles (FDCs) 116 formal development processes 254 formal economy 283 formal urban development 236 French Development Agency (AfD) 221 front-end analysis (FEA) 226 Frontières, M.S. 30 functional land markets 280 functional/programmatic zoning 144–145 funk carioca 182 gatekeepers 135 Geddes, P. 157 Geels, F.W. 240 gender discourse 265–266 gender inequality 266 generic regeneration model 212 gentrification 11, 152, 170, 171, 195, 213

geographers 2 geographical information systems (GIS) 82 Gibson, C. 82 Glennie Street 153, 156, 168, 169, 170 global apartheid 67 global cities 151, 152 globalization 132 Global South: economic and political inequalities 2; ghost demands 57; human settling, mobility and placemaking 12; regeneration projects 151; third world countries 3; urban development 236; see also informal settlements Gonçalves, R.S. 181 Gonzalez, V. 54 government-led development 222 Goytia, C. 12 Grabska, K. 126 Graham, S. 132 Gramsci, A. 2 grounded architectural practice (GAP): lens of activity theory 240–242; professional knowledge and expertise 238; socio-technical transition theory 238–239; spatial practice 238; system innovation 239–240, 240 Guimarães, M. 187 Habermas’ theories of communicative action 223 Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone 74, 75 Harvey, D. 131 healthcare-seeking behaviour 267 health risks 266–267 hegemonic systems 73 Hernan, L. 8 Hoelzel, F. 11 household/community level 135 household food security 105 housing containers, Calais Jungle 36, 37 hukou system 195, 196 human agency 1 humanitarian agencies 139 humanitarian designs 8 humanitarian sheltering 29, 30, 38, 40, 42 human needs 41–42 human sociality 109 human thermoregulation 267 Hurd, W. 54

298 Index hybrid governance approach: community-based urban regeneration measures 229; conflict-ridden environment 230; consensus seeking 230; contemporary planning theory and practice 228, 229; decisionmaking processes 229; intrinsic motivation 230; Lagos (see Lagos, Nigeria); Lagos, Nigeria 218; Makoko 221–223; peace promotion 226–228; pro-active planning tool 217; stakeholder screenings 227; theoretical and empirical evaluation 230; urban growth 217; wait-and-see approach 229 hypertension 267 illegal Bengali immigrants 134 illegal immigration 50 Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) 56 imperial control fantasy 56 Imperial International Business City 218 impermanent development modalities 138 inclusionary polices 290 incremental shifts 29 indoor air pollution 264 indoor environment 263–264, 263, 265 informal economy 283 informality: connotation of exceptionality 172; and formality 217; formal vs. informal dichotomy 237; GAP 238, 239, 241, 243; local government contradictions 246; regeneration projects 152; spatial inequality 237 informality reduction 280 informal land development 280, 284–285, 288 informal mechanisms 106 informal neighborhoods 279, 282 informal settlements: Calais, January 23, 2020 87–88, 89; constructions 44; corners, quantities and cold, January 25, 2019 87; COVID-19 280–284; formal urban governance 10; goals 280; governance models 12; Lagos State 219–220; land use norms and regulations 12; mapping and tracing 82–83; moving borders, October 19, 2018 85–86, 87, 88; neighbourhoods 9, 10; outposts,

1st April 2016 84, 84–86; refugees in Calais 83–84; regions 279; smart refugee 89–92; socio-cultural complexities 33; under-served 153 informal spatial practice 236 informant interviews 101 infrastructural inequity 179 infrastructural metaphors 67 infrastructure services 279, 287 Ingold, T. 111 Innes, J.E. 225, 226 institutional/makeshift camps 66 institutional temporary shelter response 39 institutional violence 177 insularity 2 intellectual subterfuge 4 interaction spaces 106 Inter-American Commission on Human Rights 176–177 internal conflicts 1 INTERTECT project 100 Jackson, M. 116 Jameson, F. 54 Jansen, B.J. 109 Jefferson, A. 69 jhopar-pattis 256 Jones, P. 82 kahve 20, 22–26 Kaiser, T. 126 Kakuma camp, restaurants/cafes 104, 105, 105 Kakuma-Kalobeyei complex 111 Kalobeyei Integrated Social and Economic Development Plan (KISEDP) 110 Kalobeyei refugee settlement, Kenya 8; anticipatory design 101; care and maintenance model 100; economic opportunities 103; hybrid community 101; national law 102; planned integration 106–109; planned urbanization 104–106; refugee aid and development 102; refugee camp approach 104; spatial planning 101; stone houses, cash for shelter program 103; sustainable settlements 102; technologies of care and control 99; unplanned management 103; urban planning 100, 101; vision 101 Karunaratne, G. 10 Kassa, A. 10 Katz, I. 8

Index  299 Kilomba, G. 189 knotworking: activity systems 247, 248; artefacts and division of labour 248–249; contradictions vs. 249; elements 245–246, 248; thirdgeneration activity theory 242; unstable knots 242 Koenigsberger, O.H. 228 Kurdish Political Library 74 Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp 9, 130, 131, 133, 134, 135, 136 LabJaca 188–189 labor opportunities 283 Lacerda, C. 181 Lagos Metropolitan Development and Governance Project (LMDGP) 220–221 Lagos, Nigeria: civil society and organizations 218–219; context 218; settlements and urban services, indicators 220; slums and informal settlements 219–220; slum-upgrading 220–221 Lagos Urban Renewal Agency (LASURA) 220, 221 Lalenis, K. 68 land-market dysfunctionalities 287 land readjustment schemes 289 land use management 284–285 Law and Order Assurance (GLO) 178, 191 Le Corbusier’s Chandigarh project 132 legacy of colonialism 284 Lewis, G. 76 lingering memory 49–52 Lodge, O. 49 Lopes, D. 185, 186 Lotus Park Neighbourhood Centre 243, 244, 245–249 low-energy mechanical devices 265 low-income settlements 256 Luckey, P. 55, 56 Luna Bastos, memory of residents 189 Lwazi Park 243, 243, 245–249 machine learning 268 Mackenzie, A. 49 Madianou, M. 90 Majhis 135, 136 makeshift camp, Calais Jungle 36 Makoko: collaborative planning approaches 224–226; hybrid governance approaches 221–223

Makoko Neighborhood Hotspot 222, 222–223, 224, 226, 230 Makoko Regeneration Plan 225 Mangi, E. 10–11 Maré de Notícias newspaper 186 marine-based industry 221 Mark, K. 8, 75 Marvin, S. 132 mask of speechlessness 189 Massey, D. 65 Massey, R. 237 masterplan development 199, 200, 206–209, 211 material exercises 132 material resistance 179 Mbembe, A. 178 Meade, T.A. 179 MEChA organisation 50 mental sheltering 30–34 Metro Homes housing complex 170 Mezzadra, S. 89 migrants digital space 91 migrant studies 81, 90 Millennium Development Goals 285 Mim, N.J. 135, 136 modernization 132 moktob 137 Monde, M. du 30, 83, 85, 87, 88 money-making opportunities 125 Monsutti, A. 114, 118 Montuori, B. 10 multi-level perspective 239 multitude of spaces 1 Munasinghe, J. 10 mushrooming slum rehabilitation housing 259 mutual aid 76, 77 Myanmar Citizenship Act (1982) 134 Nabenyo, E. 8 natural ventilation strategies 264 necropolitics 178 negotiations 139–141 neoliberal ecosystem 173n1 neo-liberalist approach 255, 256 neoliberal urbanisation policies 182 networked activity systems: complementary processes 246; contradictions 246–248; conventional architectural practice 245; knotworking elements 245, 246; local government and residents 242, 244, 245; NGOs participatory approach 245; social context 241 network society 73

300 Index neurodevelopmental abnormalities 267 neutral technology 48 Newton, I. 49 New-Type Urbanisation Plan (NUP) 195 non-citizens 134 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) 31, 237, 243 non-linear social consequences 132 non-verbal communication 91 North America Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) 48 object-oriented activity systems 241 O’Byrne, R.J. 8 organic regeneration 10–11 organic urban regeneration: decisionmaking process 213; issues 195; massive relocations and gentrification 213; masterplanning project 195; methodology 198–200, 200; pocket garden 212; regeneration and revocation strategies 195; rural-urban migration processes 195–198; Sangjia block and migrant community 200–213; stakeholders 213 outdoor environment 263, 263, 265 overcrowding households 281 Pacifying Police Unit 178, 186 Pai, A. 47 Palabek Refugee Settlement (PRS) 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118–124, 125 panic poles 53 Pan, J. 12 participatory geographical information systems (PGIS) 82 participatory planning 152 pastoralism 108 people-centric approach 196 peripheral spaces 164 Perold, R. 12 physical environment 262, 262–265 physical sheltering 30–34 Pieterse, E. 237, 238, 242 planned integration 106–109 planned urbanization 104–106 policymakers: long-term challenge 288; planners decisions 280; upgrading programs 280 policy of sweeping clearances 157 political inequalities 2 political instability 130

political networks 23 political tensions 130 politics of compensation 152 precedent study 199 property owners 168 propiska system 196 Providência 179, 182 provider paradigm 255 pseudo-permanency 144 pseudo temporary material manifestations 142 public consultation 152 public investments 290 public participation 153 Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) 282 qualitative GIS technique 82 Ramadan, A. 74, 115 Redes, A. 47 redistribution with growth (RWG) 256 Refugee Affairs Secretariat (RAS) 104, 106 refugee camps 63, 66, 77, 104, 126, 130–134, 143, 144, 145; human mobility and migration 4 refugee crisis 17 refugee journey of Syria 5 refugees in Calais 83–84 Refugee Welfare Council (RWC) 116 representational resistance: drug dealing 176; examples 183; Fórum Basta de Violência 184–188, 185, 186; knowledge production tools and technologies 183; LabJaca 188–189 repressive behaviours 177 rescue beacons 53 resettlement programs 282 resident-driven development 244 residents’ activity system 245–249 resource constraints 9–10 reterritorialisation 23 Revitalised Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in South Sudan (R-ARCSS) 117, 119, 120, 123, 124 Robinson, R. 69 Rodgers, C. 8, 100, 108 Rogoff, I. 20 Rohingya refugee crisis 134–135 Rolnik, R. 177 Romeu, K. 188

Index  301 roof-top solar photovoltaics 271 Roy, A. 177 rural-urban migration processes 1, 195–198 sales component housing 258 Sangjia block: architectural type distribution 202; building function distribution 206; community enhancement and inclusivity 211– 213; contextual issues 202–206; elevation and plans, Soviet style apartments 203; historical residential compounds 200; land redevelopment 201; land use in and around changes 204; local activity frequency 208; local farmer and croplands 209; location 201; masterplan development process 206–209; migrant settlement 198; peasant economy 201; public space analysis 207; rural migrant residential neighbourhood 198; rural migrants’ community and vicinity 205; spatial planning considerations 210; spatial strategy 210; types 201 Sarkar, A. 257, 259 Sconce, J. 49 Scott-Smith, T. 39 Secure Border Initiative (SBInet) 56 Secure Miles with All Resources and Technology Act (SMART) 54–55 selection/optimisation 199 self-evacuation 169–171 self-help approach 256 semi-formal mechanisms 106 semi-structured interviews 66, 135, 136 Shafique, T. 10 shanties 4, 9, 153, 156, 161–162 shanty towns 279 sheltering process: architecting the Jungle 43–45; challenges 38–40; designing for humans 40–43; designsupported approach 30; empowering design 30 sick building syndrome 267 Silicon Valley 56–57 Silva, E. 182 Simone, A. 77 simultaneous framework 132 site fieldwork 198 situational awareness system 55 Skobtsova, M. 83

Slave Island, Colombo: attention 156; cultural and ethnic diversity 165; dispensary lane 163; education 160; government’s plan 171; households 163; low-income groups 173; mixeduse and multi-ethnic community 158; narrow corridor 165; neighbourhoods 156; non-architect residents 172; on-site observations and in-depth interviews 156; quality of life 172; regeneration project 153; slum-like conditions 153; urban density 155; urban tissue 155 slum policies 256, 257 slum redevelopment 256 Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) 256, 258–262 slum rehabilitation housing (SRH): archetypes 260, 261; data-driven design 267–271; policy discourse 255; process 255–259; rapid urbanization process 254; vs. slums/ chawls 261–267; typical tenement unit 260; typologies 261; typology and living unit 260–261; urban infrastructure 254 slum rehabilitation process 258, 258 slums: definition 255; economically backward countries 3; Lagos State 219–220; population density 282; regeneration project plans 153; residential zones 254; squatter settlements 279; SRH vs. 261–267; transformational process 255; see also slum rehabilitation housing (SRH) slum-upgrading 220–221 Slum Upgrading Program 256 smart refugee: connected migrant 90; infrastructural network 90; mapping 91–92; material support 90; migrant studies 90; migratory journeys and experiences 89; network of belongings 90; transnational migrants 91 Smets, K. 90 Social and Economic Rights Action Centre (SERAC) 219 social anthropologists 2 social cohesiveness 262 social control 152 social differentiation 126 social discourse 265–266

302 Index social ecosystems 158, 173 social exclusion mechanism 287 social housing programs 284 social networks 4, 23, 135, 136, 266 social-physical liveability 261 social safety net 283 social sciences 2 social service planning 108 socio-cultural activities 265 socio-cultural differences 160 socioeconomic consequences 262 socio-economic integration 102, 103 socioeconomic legitimization 156 socioeconomic recovery 290 socio-environmental determinants of health 279 socio-technical regimes 239 socio-technical transition theory 238–239, 241, 250 Sourander, A. 92 Sousa, B. 189 Southern spaces 3 southern theory 2–3 South Sudanese refugees, Uganda: Acholi household 123; climateeffected/conflict-ridden environments 113; complicating stories 121–124; cross-border movement 117–121, 124; employment and business ownership 115; individual and familial continuity 114; instructional transformations 126–127; intersubjective phenomenology 116; livelihood strategies 113, 115; peacebuilding efforts 127; PRS 113–114; public bus and private vehicle 118; violent conflict 113 spatial illegality 177 spectral analogies 48, 49 spectral evidence 49 spectral technology 49 spiritualism 49 State Owned Enterprise (SOE) 198, 211 Station Passage 153, 156, 168, 170 Station Watta 170 Steiger, T. 82 sticky connectedness 77 Stingrays 53 strategic organizational layout 144 structural integrity 43 structural safety 38 structured interviews 101 substantive revenues 289

subversive realities 242 support paradigm 255–256 Sustainable Design Group 255, 267, 268, 269 sustainable resource management 256 Sweet Home Farm 243, 244, 245–249 Swilling, M. 236 symbolic erasures: armed groups and drug trafficking 181; bailes funk 182; citizen-led initiatives 179; consciousness of society 180; inhabitants 178; land occupations 179; legitimate spaces 178; material resistance 179; national pension scheme 181; planta favela 180; repressive behaviours 177; social and spatial segregation 183; social order 181; urbanisation policies 182; urban regeneration projects 179 system innovation 239–240, 240 telecommunications 47, 50, 52 telepathy 49 temporal malaise 54 temporal scales 130 thermal comfort 270 third-generation activity theory 241, 241–242 third world countries 2, 3 transformational politics 72 translocality 18, 19 translocal networks 23, 24 Trump, D. 47, 54 Tsavdaroglou, C. 68 tuberculosis 261, 267 under-served settlements 153, 162, 173 Unidade de Polícia Pacificadora (UPP) 178 United Nations Human Settlements Programme 100 University of Nottingham Ningbo China (UNNC) 198 unplanned self-help city 220 unstructured hanging out 101 urban design: community enhancement and inclusivity 211–213; guidelines 198; masterplanning 195, 196, 214; migrant residents 200; social and economic objectives 101 Urban Development Authority (UDA) 153 urban economy 279

Index  303 urban governance 105 urban informality 153–156, 177, 254, 285–286 urban infrastructure services 9, 290 urbanisation programmes 177 urban militarisation 182 urban morphology 211 urban planners 2, 130, 135, 145, 157 urban planning 33–34, 100, 109 urban policies 286–290 urban poor 1, 254, 255, 256 urban regeneration 4, 173n1, 220; city of Colombo 154, 155, 156–157; community pocket 166; concept 151–152; conservative surgery approach 171–173; displacement and dispossession 167–169; efforts 10; hanging laundry, public and private space 159; impoverishment 157–167; narrow corridor 165; opportunities for self-evacuation 169–171; private tuition, informal classroom 162; spatial history and function 157–167; urban informality 153–156 Urban Regeneration Project of the City of Colombo (URPCC) 153, 157 urban regeneration strategy 110, 111 urban renewal planning 152 urban space 82, 133 urban tissue 155 Urry, J. 132 US Custom and Border Protection Agency 53 US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) 53

Van Loenen, T. 92 ventilation 268–270 verbal consent 136 vertical slums 261 Victoria Square Project 74 villas miseria/kampungs 279 violence 190 visual cues/mapping 8 visual documentation 135 visual justice 171 Voz das comunidades 176, 184, 186, 187

Valladares, L. 180

Zhang, L. 195

walkability 104, 105, 110 Waltz, I. 187 Wang, X. 196–197 war on drugs 181 Wildschut, H. 3 window-to-wall ratio (WWR) 270 wireless borders: ghost sickness 52–53; haunt border technologies 48; lingering memory 49–52; physical infrastructure 47; smartness 48; spectral technology 49; spectres of forgotten future 54–56; spotty cell service 47; theorising technology 48 wireless technologies 8 Witteborn, S. 91 World Food Programme (WFP) 107 World Health Organization (WHO) 265 worldmaking 72 Yeager, C.D. 82