Slumchitecture

While policymakers — backed by real estate developers, the development industry, and the pressures of global capitalism — are pushing slum redevelopment models that replace informal settlements with high-rise blocks, some urban practitioners are using slums as models for redeveloping decaying neighborhoods in the West.

Architect Teddy Cruz drew on design elements he observed in the shantytowns of Tijuana to inform a redevelopment plan aimed at reintegrating poor immigrants into the fabric of a gentrifying town in Hudson River Valley. He previously incorporated Tijuana's lessons into a design for a residential complex for Latino immigrants near San Diego.

Cruz is one of a growing number of architects and other professionals looking to informal settlements for lessons on good urban design. These practitioners point out that, for all their deprivations, slums exemplify many of the textbook qualities that make up strong urban environments: low-rise, high-density, mixed use. They are home to well-functioning public spaces, heterogeneous communities and aesthetically interesting spaces. They promote safety by channeling "eyes on the street."

In an age where sustainability is the keyword, slums are "green" in their efficient use and reuse of materials for construction and livelihood activities. They are highly walkable, often represent optimal utilization of space and are easily adaptable to changing user needs.

Some have also argued that the decentralized, informal production processes and blending of live-work spaces that slum typologies allow represent a restructuring in line with the demands of a post-industrial economy.

In February, no less than Prince Charles lauded Dharavi — a vast slum in central Mumbai that he visited in 2003 and has since become the focus of a multi-billion dollar redevelopment plan — as a healthy antidote to built environments created through a "brutal and insensitive process of globalisation." He suggested that "it may be the case that in a few years’ time such communities [as Dharavi] will be perceived as best equipped to face the challenges that confront us because they have a built-in resilience and genuinely durable ways of living.”

It seems that slums are the new utopian landscapes — and they couldn't be more different than the neat segmentation and uniformity of the previous generation's suburban and modernist dreams.

While the West is trying to recapture something lost, many slum inhabitants can't wait to get out. Slum residents who are relatively wealthy, better educated and young and who live in well-developed slums in cities where building-living is the norm (which are also the ones that designers are emulating) often strive for the privacy, social mobility and security that high-rise buildings connote. On one hand, you can argue that their face-value aspirations are unreliable because they have not been presented with another version of what it means to be modern, middle-class and legal. But all of our preferences and judgments are similarly socially conditioned. Is this a case of "you don't miss it 'till it's gone"? Or is the grass always greener?

Equally eager to leave slum settlements are those on the other side of the spectrum from Dharavi, where there is no public space to speak of, no more than half of the family fits in the house at a time, and you risk getting hit by a train or falling off a water pipe when you go outside. Although such places remind us of people's capacity for ingenuity and survival and can be aesthetically interesting, no one actually wants to live here.

There are many places in between, and overall, I would guess most inhabitants of slums would prefer to preserve their current settlements and stay in ground-floor structures that they can increment over time. And there's a lot to learn from these well-functioning, organic neighborhoods.

Those who use "slum" as a blanket term to connote blight and justify self-serving solutions ignore the diversity among slums and the strengths that many already possess. However, those admiring the forms of certain types of slums should also not glaze over the diversity of slum environments — as well as the people who live in them — to make their point. Let's hope that this wave of excitement about "slumchitecture" does not lead to superficial conclusions, but rather that it energizes debates and generates perspectives that can create better cities in both proverbial hemispheres.

(Photos by Katia Savchuk. Image of Teddy Cruz's model from the New York Times.)

Posh to be Poor?

I've been reading a lot of articles lately, and as wrong as it may sound, it seems as though poor is the new black in the Western World. Now I don't mean more people are becoming poor, because that's obviously true, but it seems that lately a lot of professionals have drawn inspiration from the condition. For example, the Times ran an article about architect Teddy Cruz and his social housing experiment in the Hudson River Valley. The development, which features a modern day mesh of architectural elements, draws inspiration and, at times, form, directly from favelas.


Another prime example is seen in the press that a group of British artists received when they essentially hijacked a vacant multi-million dollar mansion. Late last year, the artist collective Da! moved their group into 18 Upper Grosvenor Street, one of London's more exclusive neighborhoods. They lived and worked here for at least a month with no word from the owners and no word from the cops. I can see this becoming a trend in America, with so many mansions going into foreclosure or sitting on the open market. Perhaps there will be a slight role reversal, where the homeless end up taking over these huge mansions because nobody can afford them or to maintain them. I mean, you can already get 3000 sq ft of 1920's craftsmanship for under 100k in Detroit, why even waste your time with money anymore? Just move in! Some cities are even working on programs to move the homeless into foreclosed homes, according to Fox News. If you want a mansion for nothing, now just may be your chance.

Finally, one of my favorite artists/designers just released a transportable abode for the homeless. I know this has been an ongoing project in every architecture school in the world for the last 50 years, but nobody does it quite like James Westwater. There is something compelling about his project, "homeless chateau," and the idea of living in a rectangular prism in an abandoned warehouse. How different is this from living in a warehouse loft? Having neither heat nor electricity would be rough, but you're not paying $3000 a month. Anyways, I'm not really suggesting these are real lifestyle choices that will become widely popular anytime soon; I'm simply suggesting these ideas are growing in popularity.

In order to dig further into this idea that we are being inspired by the conditions of being poor -- conditions that will increasingly affect the middle class worldwide -- I will investigate 3 divisions of urban planning which directly connect to choices in lifestyle and are dictated by income. Those divisions are Transportation, Food, and Shelter. Over the next 2 weeks I will dive into each category and explore the trends that are leading to a more frugal lifestyle for citizens of big cities.


(Photo from NYT, Gurdian, and James Westwater. The original full-sized color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Posh to be Poor? Housing

You've probably noticed a recurring theme throughout this series: the state of the economy sucks, and we need to learn how to deal with it. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the foreclosure crisis that is engulfing the United States, where many people have lost their homes or are very close to losing them. In Toledo, Ohio, Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur has publicly told residents facing foreclosure to simply stay put and not leave their foreclosed homes, forcing the bank to file paperwork and produce the note of ownership. There is a program in Miami that is working to move homeless families into recently foreclosed homes.

Squatting is nothing new, but the fact that government officials are basically encouraging it and, in some cases, creating programs for it somehow makes it seem more acceptable than it once was. Squatting has typically been an act of necessity for the poorest of the poor: there is nowhere else to go, so you find an abandoned house and make it your own. It has certainly never been considered an option for the middle class American, until now. So what happens when a society or a government begins to recognize squatting as a real option -- not just for the poor, but the middle class as well?

With this mainstream acceptance, the more opportunistic among us will go for the gold: mansion-squatting. Even the wealthy are getting hit with foreclosures, leaving mansions of the Mc- variety as well as sprawling Hamptons estates vacant. One art collective in London known as Da! took up residence in a 30-room mansion on Upper Grosvenor Street, one of the UK's most expensive neighborhoods. They lived in the house for nearly a month before attracting media attention. Surely, this would be difficult to pull off in many of the suburban gated communities or tight-knit small towns, because neighbors, worried about their homes' worth, would quickly call the cops. However, in cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Buffalo, where the once-prevalent upper crust is now long gone, mansions sit vacant by the dozens, with prices lower than most suburban atomic ranches. It's easy to see, in places like these, people just moving in and creating a new life. Who is going to stop them? In these neighborhoods, residents are just happy to see a new face on the block!

A great deal trendier than the opulent mansion, though equally desired, is the warehouse loft. Though the warehouse loft has been in the public eye since the 1970s, it became a real estate frenzy at the start of the new millennium. Developers began making "soft lofts," and authentic exposed brick and beams became luxuries. Poor and homeless people have taken up residence in abandoned warehouses as long as such buildings have existed; the fact that raw warehouse lofts have become such a hip environment to reside in is a clear trend toward the aesthetic appeal of poverty. Which brings me to the interior design movement that has been growing in the US known as Boho Mod, or Bohemian Modern. Basically, it's a mix of classic furniture and thrift store finds. If you open up any Urban Outfitters catalog from the last 4 years you'll see what I'm talking about. It appears that younger generations are turning away from the notion that everything has to be new, toward a more sustainable vision based on using what we already have and what is readily available.

One might say that living in a warehouse isn't the same as living in a warehouse loft, and they would be right. However, artist James Westwater is working to change that with his Homeless Chateau. This tiny wooden room provides a bit of privacy and elegance for the abandoned warehouse dweller. Maybe we all don't want to live in a box, or even in a warehouse, but the fact that so much attention is being paid to the concept is evidence enough that people are taking more and more interest in the aesthetics of poverty.

And it's not just artists and developers, architects have taken a keen interest as well. Architect Teddy Cruz has designed a multi use housing model for Hudson New York which draws heavily from the favelas of Tijuana.

"Where others saw poverty and decay, he saw the seeds of a vibrant social and architectural model, one that could be harnessed to invigorate numbingly uniform suburban communities just across the border." -NYTimes

For one reason or another, the aesthetics of poverty have slowly begun to permeate mass culture. Whether through an innovative housing model, a warehouse loft, or an abandoned mansion, there is something compelling about using what we have and turning that abandoned space into something functional and beautiful. Though many of these ideas remain tied to certain subcultures and demographics, the amount of media attention they have gained over the last decade certainly suggests that the masses are at least curious.

Posh to be Poor? Introduction
Posh to be Poor? Transportation
Posh to be Poor? Food

(Photos from Wisebread, The Guardian, Domino, James Westwater, and the NY Times. The original full-sized versions can be viewed by clicking the photos.)

The Image of the (Failed) City

With all due respect to Mr. Raymond Chandler, everyone knows Tijuana is Mexico. In fact, Mexico itself is turning into something of a Great Big Tijuana. Tijuana has gone from nasty spot on the National Conscience to pin-up city for the postculturally advanced. The term tijuanización, or tijuanization, became popular in the 1930s, as a slur against whatever had become Americanized and thus uglified. Tijuana, nonetheless, has turned its ugliness into an asset. (If you don’t believe me, just do a search on this blog for Teddy Cruz).

This is not the case of Ciudad Juárez, though, the oldest of the Mexican border cities. No one refers to Juárez as CJ. Juárez is Tijuana without the sites. Ciudad Juárez has to be the most infamous of Mexican border cities (it doesn’t get much worse than that). Throughout its history, the town had thrived on a seedy reputation, but in the 1990s Juárez found itself overwhelmed by an apocalypse-now, scarier than fiction whirlwind: bodies of hundreds of murdered women dotting its barren outskirts, sprawling slums (sardonically nicknamed Cartolandias, Cartonlands, with a distinctively Disney ring), extralegal radioactive waste heaps and random killings at narco-clubs and midday drug-related violence. Common knowledge has it that the city is one big wreck; consumed by rampant corruption, poor planning, environmental degradation, and social fracture.

Robertos Bolaño’s 2666—which Time magazine named “best book of 2008” (I myself described the novel as “ball-grabbing”)—has recently put Juárez in the limelight:

The city was very poor, with most streets unpaved and a sea of houses assembled out of scrap…they discovered rail lines and slum soccer fields surrounded by shacks, and they even watched a match, without getting out of the car, between a team of the terminally ill and a team of the starving to death, and there were two highways that led out of the city, and a gully that had become a garbage dump, and neighborhoods that had grown up lame or mutilated or blind, and, sometimes, in the distance, the silhouettes of industrial warehouses, the horizon of the maquiladoras. The city, like all cities, was endless.

Local authorities and planners have been dealing this sort of bad press (usually it’s less exquisite) for quite some time now. A couple of years ago, Juárez’s Tourist and Commercial Development Secretary launched a “Juárez Presentations Network”, a tour of promotional talks and events, as the latest of a long chain of strategies to revert the city’s “bad image”. The campaign was to present “the best of the town” in order to attract tourists by highlighting Juárez’s “values” and “cultural attractions”. For city leaders, Juárez’s main problems are conveniently reduced to a perception issue. The image of the city—not in the classical sense, in terms of readability or spatial recognition proposed by Kevin Lynch, but in terms of more recent, superficial, “urban marketing” trends—has become the pet cause and the focus of practically every policy instance.

This obsession with the image of the city has become evident in all sorts of urban actions, that range from the absurd confiscations of banned videogames that fail to show the “true values” of the city, to the serious and cynical discrediting and blaming of the families of murdered women and various social organizations for “promoting a degrading vision” of the city. What is most disturbing and revealing, though, is that this visual consumption strand of local urban policy is actually deep-rooted, that it has been at the center of planning in Juárez for decades. In my next couple of posts I’ll try to untangle the logic behind this focus and shed some light on the reasons for the supposed failure of urban “rescue” efforts in the city.


(Photo from Flickr user detritus. The original full-sized color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)