A lively crowd lolls around outside one of the hundreds of bars in the antique city of Venice where a sign taped to the front window says: “NO SPRITZ”. 

Venetians have socialised over the spritz -- prosecco and sparkling water with bitter Campari or Aperol liqueur -- ever since it was introduced by Austrian occupiers in the early 1800s. But at this bar on a street along a canal they exclusively drink wine in fluted glasses. That’s surprising because most Venetians love a spritz. The bright red drink is everywhere. Was this an outlier or a harbinger of change?

“The idea of ‘NO SPRITZ' is to be a bit provocative,” the bar’s owner-entrepreneur, Mara Sartore, explained. “But Venice needs new energy and new ideas because the city is being emptied [of people]. If you stay, you must imagine a future that differs from that of most Venetians, who think that the city has already ended."

Imagining the future occupied many Venetians after COVID-19 transformed the world heritage site — practically overnight — from over-touristed to eerily empty. The unexpected hiatus from the onslaught brought swans, cormorants, and fish to the calmed network of canals. Tranquillity generated hopes that the city might emerge from the pandemic renewed, having learned new ways to live sustainably with tourism.

The tourists have begun to return to a broad welcome, but Venice now finds that the loss of lives, jobs and businesses in the pandemic have exacted a heavy toll. Instead of new beginnings, income gaps are driving the return from lost time and revenues. Long-standing exploitation of the city’s cultural and environmental wealth has resumed. With early indications suggesting the next global wave of tourism may exceed even that up to 2020, there is no sign of an end to the exodus of longtime residents from an already depleted Venice.

“It’s like a family where they sell everything, the silverware, the house, sending the children to do ignoble work... After COVID... anyone can do whatever they want to earn money,” said economist Giampietro Pizzo, a member of the citizens’ group Venezia Cambia. Wary of growing pessimism now for the city’s prospects, he said Venice was becoming a tourism “factory” and that Venice’s pro-business Mayor, Luigi Brugnaro, believes “he is constructing the future... in reality, he is destroying the future of this city.”  

Is tourism to be the 'death of Venice,' then? The city has long evoked talk of its own demise, but the debate has moved on. Now Venetians are focused on making the city a living place.

Historian Mario Isnenghi has asked what happens if Venice lives, the title of his just-published book (Se Venezia Vive). It an oblique response to the globally popular 2014 work by Salvatore Settis, If Venice Dies.

Isnenghi sees Venice not as dying, but as reinventing itself repeatedly in the centuries since the Venetian empire abruptly ended in 1797. “Venice has not remained still in the contemplation of the past. It has known how to change, to adapt its form and speak the language of the changing times,” said Isnenghi, author some forty books on 19th and 20th century Venice. 

What’s wrong with asking whether Venice is dying? I ask.

That is to “believe in the end of history and think Venice is also finished. All these lovers of the Venetian world [of the past] want Venice to stay frozen as it is, as an expression of the end of history. History has not ended and it has not ended in Venice either,” Isnenghi responded.

The idea of Venice as doomed is most associated with Thomas Mann’s 1912 novel Death in Venice, which was about the unrequited homosexual love of a man who dies in Venice during a cholera epidemic. Talk of Venice dying returned after the all-time record acqua alta on Nov 4, 1966, and the subsequent wave of “save Venice” global sympathy. For some, the 'Venice is dying: see it before it sinks' mantra was always just a marketing slogan to attract tourists. It also served well for novelists, who have written hundreds of books that explore and profit from the city’s rich history and form.

Isnenghi said he wrote his book to oppose “poisonous ideas of the death of Venice...That’s the negation of what has actually happened. It’s the forgetting of the real story, in which the memory of the Serenissima,” the most serene empire, as the Republic was known, “overwhelms everything that came after.” So much is focused on the history of empire, he said, that people tend to neglect Venice under occupation, first by the French and then the Austrians, and the whole of Italian Venice after 1866, when a new aristocracy came to power and industrialists fostered what was called “the foreigner industry,” creating the Art Biennale, the Venice Film Festival and the luxury hotels that still host the most glamorous international elite.

If Venice Dies, in fact, has no truck with all that, making a sharp and timely warning about Venice as an example of historic cities that are increasingly square pegs being forced into a round modern mould of megacity-style consumerism and production. Settis also warned Venice’s traditions, its past and its characteristics could be forgotten, as its community melts away. The city is already well down that road.

Isnenghi looks at how in remembering the past — as in Venice, perhaps more so than other old cities — the weight of history gets in the way of the city’s own future. He regrets, for example, a decision Venice made in the 1950s. When a collapsing palazzo on the Grand Canal was in need of replacing, a new modernist design was proposed by the renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright. It would have stood out on the iconic waterway, a different kind of beauty, perhaps. But the city’s authorities rejected it, sticking instead to the idea that monuments at the end of their lives, should be replaced “com’era, dov’era” (how they were and where they were). The same thinking was applied when the Fenice theatre burned down in 1996. It was replaced with in an identical structure, one that many decry as in many ways unsuited to modern needs.

“As we are even more in love with our city even than [outsiders] are because we live in it, it poses a problem when we are faced with issues of respecting the past while we are in the changing present,” said Isnenghi. “It is never easy to balance the past and present, even less so here, but this is the challenge facing Venice. So as not to lose Venetians, Venice must change the jobs on offer, the type of housing, everything; and so as not to lose Venice the Venetians -- all those who work in Venice regardless of whether they are born there -- have to find the right balance between past and present. That’s extremely difficult. But the solution is not to stop everything with the argument that history is over.”

In fact, not everyone is quite so downbeat as economist Pizzo, but many share a sense that Venice is at a turning point. “It’s a moment when the city can decide its future,” said the director of the Venetian Hoteliers Association, Claudio Scarpa, who praised the mayor for acting decisively on such things as banning new hotels. He said the future had to grow from collective action. “If we Venetians begin to abandon our divisions, mutual hatred and anger, and begin to work together on concrete proposals in a few years we could see a different Venice,” he said, adding that, “frankly, right now, what prevails are our disagreements.” 

That spirit is behind a larger mission at the bar, Vino Vero, one of several with a natural wine, “no-spritz philosophy,” said Sartore. A few steps away, one of the mooring poles stuck into the canal is the city’s first electric charging point for boats. She and her fellow innovators want the city to multiply these points, thus ending the reign of noisy, polluting marine combustion engines and making Venice the “most ancient city of the future”.

This is one of the many futures Venetians imagine.

Though fatigue and defeat cast a pall, not least due to the last big acqua alta floods of 2019, many Venetians see a city living in harmony with the lagoon, and where mass tourism gives way to sustainable tourism. Some Venetians, losing faith in political solutions, dream of outside sages taking over, making Venice into an internationally-run city. Others want simply to conserve the community, repopulate and make housing and jobs available for young families; the business-minded see a gentrified city of highly paid smart workers in a fast-moving but still pedestrianised Venice with a diversified economy, buzzing cultural life and underground trains bringing in lower-paid workers from the terra ferma. 

These futures are at best decades away -- or they could be pipe dreams. 

The low-lying coastal city and the north Adriatic coast, much of it nearly 2 meters below mean sea level, faces the existential threat of sea level rise of half a metre or more this century. Venetians are no less prone to climate denial than anyone else, but they can more easily envision Venice as a watery Pompeii or Machu Picchu. They can even envision tenacious tourists who would arrive despite everything, “even if they had to visit in submarines,” as one recently suggested to me. That’s a future too. But Venetians, including all those who have adopted Venice as home, won’t give up without a fight -- and Venice is now in grave danger.

The battle for the tidal lagoon out of which the city rises is already centuries old. Even under the empire, Venice had to undertake pharaonic re-routings of rivers, canal digging and gigantic seawall building to protect it. The lagoon, an unstable formation that endures only with human intervention, needs constant work.

Since last year, the periodic raising of the controversial €5.5 billion MOSE dams at the openings to the Adriatic Sea has made for ambiguous progress. They may be the best short-term hope to stop repeated flooding of the city, but are already out of date.

The August, 2021 banning of the eye-catching cruise ships from passing through the city, meanwhile, was “an enormous, historic victory... but with shadows,” according to Tommaso Cacciari, champion of the decade-long No Grandi Navi (No Big Ships) protests. The “shadows” concern the unworkability of rerouting the ships via a 19 kilometre detour and the impracticality of finding them a home at Venice’s industrial port of Marghera. 

He concludes that giant ships are “incompatible with the biosphere – the model of tourism must change.” Lidia Fersuoch, president of the Venice branch of Italia Nostra, the oldest and largest environmental group in Italy, regards the decree as “an epochal defeat” that succeeded only in moving the ships out of sight while condemning the lagoon to worse erosion as they pass through a even narrower channel. “We want ships completely removed from the lagoon,” she said, as UNESCO itself has been recommending, and a shift to smaller, lagoon-compatible shipping under 25,000 tons (compared to the 230,000-plus-ton cruise ships).

Meanwhile, the hopes that Venice might relaunch itself have come up against another reality. 

Authorities and business are now pulling all stops to reopen the doors to tourism even more widely, expanding transport access to Marco Polo airport, building new electronic street monitoring of tourist movements, digging a new fast-access canal to Burano, creating more Biennale exhibitions, adding thousands of new visitor hotel rooms all around the lagoon, and further deregulating business to boost tourism profits. This is not a city preparing to moderate over-tourism.

Dangerous peaks of 80,000 tourists a day by August, 2021 already resemble those of before 2020 when Venice was deluged by 30 million annually. “These numbers are insupportable for the community that tries to live here,” said Stefano Croce, president of the Venice Tourist Guides Association. “If they occur next year there probably will be public order emergency... a collapse.” No one can say for sure, but by 2022 or 2023, according to hotelier Scarpa, “The situation will get back to what it was, and that was objectively unsustainable.” 

This is deeply disturbing for Venetians. Over-tourism undermines human relations. Knots of flâneurs blocking the narrow alley ways, make daily life – getting to work or to school – unbearably difficult. More boats, more refuse, and more traffic add to urban overloading, while housing availability, jobs beyond the tourism industry and above all, population, have been relentlessly driven in the wrong direction. 

The population in historic central Venice was down to 50,582 in October. 2021. (The actual figure may be much lower, perhaps as low as 30,000, if you subtract second and holiday homes.) It has declined steadily ever since a World War Two peak of 190,000 to 200,000, when both sides agreed to spare Venice from bombing. The number of residents plummeted to 145,402 by 1960, halved to 95,222 by 1980 and on reaching 60,000 in 2009, a mock funeral was held for Venice.

“That was for us the point of no return,” said Matteo Secchi, spokesman for the citizens’ group Venessia, which organised the funeral protest. “We thought perhaps 60,000 was the death of the city.” He is nonetheless upbeat. “The exodus could be stopped at any moment” by taking action on housing, jobs and tourism. That doesn’t happen “because the political will is lacking.... because to the machine of business, the inhabitants are seen sometimes almost like annoying side effects... They protest, want to live in Venice and take space from the tourists.”  

Officially, in fact, this exodus is not an exodus. “Those who talk of exodus from Venice are mistaken,” said the city’s top tourism official, Simone Venturini. In fact, new people are coming to the city, just not nearly as many as die or are born. The trend to push out residents was supercharged in part by the advent in 2009 of the AirBnb sharing platform, which streamlines short-term letting and makes possible “virtual hotels” of separate apartments. One in four of the 40,000 flats in Venice had been claimed by tourists by 2019. The number fell to one in five during the pandemic, as some returned to residential use.

With so many people having lost work in the pandemic and with prices rising, however, now “more families are being pushed to rent to foreigners,” said Emanuele Dal Carlo, who runs the FairBnb.Coop, a non-profit sharing platform. “With fewer Venetians the city becomes more a tourist location and less a city.” 

The thinning of residents also denies tourists the experience they crave. “People who I take around want to engage with the community. The love to see children playing in the campi (squares), and how I stop to greet friends on the street,” said Cristina Gregorin, a tourist guide for 30 years. “Tourists like to meet local people, but that doesn’t happen anymore,” due to the excessive crowding. Visitors “want to feel Venice is a living city” and are “repelled by...Venice as a theme park.”   

The viability of local life has been further undermined by neoliberal deregulation that has occurred since the 1990s. In Venice this has permitted a rapid conversion away from shops residents need — from bakeries to fruit and fish sellers — to those for tourists: souvenir shops, fast food outlets and bars. The process pushed up rents, largely decimating once-thriving traditional Venetian artisanal trades. Other touristed cities, such as Barcelona, Paris, New York and Amsterdam, have passed new laws to protect residential accommodation.

The Italian parliament’s failure to pass such legislation ties the hands of local government, but has also been used as a cover for speculators and others profiting from Venice. According to independent councillor Marco Gasparinetti, Venice’s entrepreneur-property-speculator-multi-millionaire mayor Brugnaro panders to the residents of the terra ferma, who see a commoditised Venice, while thinning transport needed by residents. He has weakened enforcement of renting rules, given priority to property owners and developers. He has failed to convert badly-needed empty flats for new residents and missed chances for economic diversification. 

For now, the key solutions put forward for Venice by authorities have been technological.

The city will track tourist movements in real time by collecting mobile phone data, including age, sex and country of origin, and use of hundreds of surveillance cameras. It will use new €3 to €10 tourist fees collected online, in-person or added to hotel prices, along with gates to control entry to the historic city. Everyone, even residents and their visitors and the 40,000 of workers who commute into Venice daily, will have to prebook and present a QR code for access. 

Tourism official Venturini insists that the system going live -- barring unforeseen pandemic events -- in summer and fall 2022 is “the only solution on the table.” In coming decades, “many more millions of people traveling the world...will make their way to Venice because, like it or not, everyone wants to see Venice once in their lifetime,” he said, predicting that the controls will improve the mix of tourists now dominated by the so-called “eat-and-run” day-trippers. Almost 70 percent of visitors, the day-trippers, impose the greatest stresses on transport, refuse collection and monuments. He wants a “slower and more experiential” tourism.

Though many worry about the invasiveness of collecting data from the mobiles of unsuspecting tourists, (authorities insist the data is anonymous and privacy is protected), Venetians generally accept the need for limits on tourist numbers. They disagree on methods. Closing Venice with gates is particularly controversial, as many believe it will turn the city into a theme park.  

Authorities “have flaunted this ‘Smart Control Room’ Big Brother system,” said tourist guide Croce, “but this is no way to manage tourism. It’s a way to understand it.” More data seemed unnecessary to Fersuoch of Italia Nostra, calling the controls “a delaying tactic.” The city should reduce tourist flow at source, setting limits on organized group visits, rather than attempting to manage the deluge of tourists already in Venice, Gasparinetti said.   

Tourism has a long history in Venice. 

Pilgrims came through with crusaders from the 11th century, and the city was on the the 17th to 19th century Grand Tours itinerary. A craze for bathing brought the rich to Venice’s Lido in the latter half of the 19th century.  

The exodus from Venice began in earnest after the First World War, when industrialists led by Giuseppe Volpi initiated Venice’s modern port and its petrochemical and metallurgical industries. As outlined in a 2021 anthropological study by Clara Zanardi, they decided Venice needed a “bonifica umana” which is the name of her book. It means a “human clear out”. The effort pushed politicised, working classes out of the Venetian islands, freeing housing for redevelopment at higher rents, in part for tourism. This policy was enthusiastically advanced under the Fascists in the 1920s, and 30s as part of its “anti-urban ideology” and “would be taken up without modification after liberation and remain the ideological line of urban development during the second half of the century as well,” she writes. 

As industrialisation began to peter out after World War Two, leaving behind a nightmare of toxic wastes, Venice relied ever more on tourism. When Venice suffered record flooding during 1966, devastating many ground-floor residences, further departures ensued. Again, the working classes lost out as government-funded housing renovations favoured the property-owning upper classes, Zanardi shows.

By the 1970s and 80s, as neoliberalism spread from America and Britain, deregulation loosened the reins on property and began undoing welfare state reforms, “with the explicit intent of bringing in a new user, one more cosmopolitan and mobile, and necessarily earning a higher income,” to afford property owners higher rents, states Zanardi. The policy of promoting tourism above all else became even more explicit under the mayoral administration of left-of-centre Massimo Cacciari from 1993. One of his deputies, Councillor D’Agostino was famously quoted as saying, “Venice is a cultural and historic heritage that must be put on the market; it’s not like it’s not for sale and transformable.” The policy, which has made Venice an international cultural centre as never before, has been pursued ever since, by left and right, making property speculation, hospitality and rental to tourists the biggest piece of Venice’s annual €10 billion economic pie. 

“Far from being a dying city, Venice represents ... a global model of development, to which many other destinations are going with force,” says Zanardi. “In this sense, it is a successful postmodern capitalist experiment that is absorbing the unyielding otherness [of Venice] in the name of characterless development and now more than ever it seems to be nearing its objective.” 

That may not be an acceptable outcome, but it’s not the same as the more poetic idea that Venice is in its death throes. 

And for all its faults, this is the same capitalism that built Venice, and in this imperfect context a great many people are working to give Venice a future. This summer, the G20 launched a new foundation dedicated to making Venice the world capital of sustainability. The city itself has a “plan to make Venice even more an international capital of the art and fashion world,” said tourism chief Venturini. 

There are many dreams for Venice. 

One of many examples is SerenDPT, a centre fostering entrepreneurs. For its director Fabio Carrera, Venice needs to address “the real problem,” depopulation, with economic diversification. Twenty years from now, “more people will grow their families in [a] Venice repopulated with...  maybe 100,000 people, one that’s more business friendly with a subway system [to improve access]... where the balance between residents and tourist is reversed,” he said. 

Venetians are leaving, out of financial need or a wish to profit from their properties, but there is another group, who tenaciously stay for its lifestyle and traditions. 

Take Katia, a former postal worker. She and her accountant husband Elio had a choice to stay or go in the 1990s. “If we had gone to the terra ferma we would have had a very big house and a car out front. We turned that down for a 70-square-metre, two-bedroom flat here in Venice,” she said. “I could not think of living in a place different from here.... We thought that perhaps making some sacrifices was worth the trouble. We thought if everyone went away there would be no one left in Venice.” 

Others around them have rented to tourists, but they will have none of that. “Venice must live,” Elio said.

Neal E. Robbins, who lives in Cambridge, England, is the author of Venice, an Odyssey: Hope, anger and the future of cities, published by La Toletta, in Venice in 2021.

A Changing Urban Landscape

Afghan cities have changed tremendously over the last 40 years, notes BBC journalist and panelist Sana Safi. War is a big reason for that. Safi recalled how many Afghan families have hybrid lifestyles where families split time between cities and rural areas for both seasonal preferences and food-security concerns. Big cities’ populations and economies have suffered enormously when rockets rained down on city streets during the Soviet and U.S. invasions alike, and political instabilities have upset systems of grassroots resilience spanning urban and rural geographies.

Afghanistan’s demographic landscape is an increasingly urban one. The Taliban’s takeover in August 2021 came with Kabul being the fifth-fastest growing city in the world, with secondary cities like Kandahar, Herat, and Mazar-i-Sharif all growing quickly as well. UN-Habitat’s Srinivasa Popuri notes that the “rapid influx of people to cities” in Afghanistan has meant high economic growth, density, and global connectedness, but also skyrocketing prices and new challenges to service delivery, especially education and healthcare. Now, the openness of Afghan urban society is under threat, said Popuri, and fear is an emotion that pervades many city dwellers’ everyday lives. In a recent article, Safi notes that “Afghan society has been transformed over the past twenty years,” but in ways that are “uneven” and nonlinear. Today the country’s cities face an “impending humanitarian catastrophe.”

“People come to Afghan cities like Kabul looking for a ‘modern life,’” argues CSIS’ Erol Yayboke. This means newcomers to Kabul might aspire toward having a salaried job, a car, and formal housing. But what happens more often is that migrants to Afghan cities instead live in informal settlements in vast and growing peripheries, or live with friends and relatives. Indeed, basic population statistics for Afghan cities are imprecise and estimates of the number of internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the country and beyond range significantly. In some cases, there remains uncertainty about where jurisdictional lines begin and end, which complicates responsibilities for public-service provision.

“That Afghanistan’s government struggled to provide basic public goods and services to their citizens, rural and urban, was certainly not the only reason in why the Talban took over so quickly,” said Yayboke. “But it contributed.”

“That Afghanistan’s government struggled to provide basic public goods and services to their citizens, rural and urban, was certainly not the only reason in why the Talban took over so quickly,” said Yayboke. “But it contributed.”

As in many countries around the world, the role of the central government in urban development in Afghanistan is quite limited. Indeed, Afghanistan is a country that governs locally despite structures and imperatives of centralisation. Popuri notes that there are debates and struggles over proper degrees of centralisation and administration through informal government networks, complemented by Yayboke’s point about the role that quasi-criminal cartels play in urban governance, including by controlling the flows of illicit goods in and through urban areas. Despite these challenges, the country has seen successful policy innovations that lie at the intersection of physical/spatial policies and socioeconomic ones. Popuri highlighted the “Cities for All” land tenure and occupancy scheme, and new approaches to collecting taxes and saving government data through biometric scans, as recent urban policy successes. The Ministry of Rural Development’s rural-area cash transfers, funded through the World Bank’s National Solidarity Program, have also made a “massive difference in peoples’ lives.”

Beyond public services, however, urban leaders’ very legitimacy was questioned by many Afghan city residents. Safi noted that Kabul’s mayor was “anointed by the Presidency” in a process that circumvented the will of the people. Such processes meant that residents never earned the respect of local governing officials over time, especially as basic services like paved roads, piped water, and sanitation continued to lag amidst large infusions of foreign aid dollars.

Humanitarian, economic, and financial crises

Afghanistan’s looming humanitarian crisis is of significant concern for all of the event’s panelists and raises issues that are both acute and short-term, and long-term and structural. Noted Yayboke: “The idea of conflict [in urban settings] is normal. But what takes conflict to violence is the concern.” Elections and functional institutions are ways to mitigate conflict, but Afghanistan also faces humanitarian needs of catastrophic proportions: it is winter and nearly half of the country is presently at risk of famine.

A central challenge now is finding the right balance between addressing urgent humanitarian issues and building a more sustainable economy less dependent on foreign aid, all within the context of an uncertain domestic political settlement. Yayboke and Popuri both agreed that while “aid fatigue is real,” using existing systems to get support to people in Afghan cities now is critical. Popuri touted the benefits of direct cash transfers through neighbourhood-specific institutions, and advanced that in the long-term, resilience must be built from the grassroots. Yayboke noted that humanitarian leaders will have to think critically about the end recipients of aid in Afghanistan to determine what “credible local leadership” looks like. It may vary by local context, and could include strategic collaborations with the Taliban, mullahs, and other informal local leaders. “We know that when women are involved in the distribution of humanitarian aid it gets much more to the people who need it,” Yayboke said. However, in a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, end recipients of aid might be “significantly less female.”

In the longer term, though, Safi cautioned that Afghanistan’s economy must not become fully dependent on external aid. She drew on wisdom from her grandmother, who once told Safi: “Afghanistan was always poor but we always found a solution, and we did it ourselves. The world did not bring us food or aid.” Long-term solutions must be based on “partnership, respect, and equality,” Safi said, and must recognise the importance of mixing embedded foreign responsibility with community self-sufficiency.

Long-term solutions must be based on “partnership, respect, and equality,” Safi said, and must recognise the importance of mixing embedded foreign responsibility with community self-sufficiency.

On Urban Futures

Thinking beyond the urgent, proximate concerns around food insecurity, IDPs, and government stability, Afghan cities face long-term challenges. One such challenge, as posed by an audience member, is mitigating climate-change risks. Yayboke notes that Afghanistan’s droughts are expected to become more frequent and longer-lasting, along with harsher winters. Climate change-induced droughts have already reduced Afghanistan’s agricultural output by around 40% this year. “Climate change is an important factor,” notes Safi. “Entire villages have emptied out because of drought. Residents are moving to Herat and living in makeshift camps because of [climate change].”

Climate change is just one of many urgent urban crises that Afghan cities face in the near future. Poverty and hunger, war, violence, displacement, and the pandemic are presenting compounding challenges in these urban spaces. The panelists agreed that cities could be a space of optimism amidst these difficulties, charting a course for new Afghan futures as hubs for economic growth. Or they could be brewing grounds for the next waves of violent conflict within uncertain governance arrangements.

During the past 40 years, Safi said, “cities were both the places of opportunity as well as the places to escape from.” Moving forward, responsible urban management and innovative service provision will be critical to ensure both short-term security and long-run prosperity in Afghanistan.

Stefan Norgaard is a PhD candidate in Urban Planning at Columbia University.

Panelists

Sana Safi is a journalist with the BBC World Service.

Srinivasa Popuri is the Senior Human Settlements Officer at the UN-Habitat Asia-Pacific Regional Office.

Erol Yayboke is a Senior Fellow with the International Security Program and Director of the Project on Fragility and Mobility at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

Shahrukh Wani is an urban economist at the International Growth Centre at the Blavatnik School of Government, University of Oxford.

Rain gardens, vegetated roofs and walls, wetlands, urban agriculture, and street trees are examples of NbS that can be applied to cities. These solutions can promote a variety of Ecosystem Services, better known as “ES.” As defined by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA, 2005), these services “are the benefits people obtain from ecosystems” which involve tangible and intangible services. They can be clustered into four categories: (i) provisioning services, such as timber extraction; (ii) regulating services, such as water purification; (iii) supporting services, such as nutrient cycling and (iv) cultural services, such as recreation. NbS, via its Ecosystem Services provision, can contribute to addressing the New Urban Agenda (UN, 2017) and supporting a number of Sustainable Development Goals (UNEP, 2019). The image presented below represents the categories of NbS and its ES, as put together in the Urban Nature Atlas (ALMASSY et al., 2018):

Categories and examples of NbS and the Ecosystem Services they can promote. Source: based on ALMASSY et al. (2018), adapted by the author.

Ecosystem Services can have a rather utilitarian view of nature, a strand of capitalism which has great environmental consequences in commodity-based economies such as those in Latin America. Nature does not need to provide a commodified utility to humankind, as the indigenous leader Krenak (2020) reminds us. Although ES provides the possibility for different areas of knowledge to inform dialogue and action, it is a concept underpinned by a neoliberal view of the world, which relegates value quantification to market relations (SCHLAEPFER et al., 2017). Assigning a value to nature has the great potential drawback of only taking into account human economic concepts, as the full comprehension of the complexity of nature remains out of humanity’s reach. On the other hand, it can be used for justifying and quantifying benefits of “greener” solutions, or even pointing out the complications of adding only more “grey” infrastructure, which can be extremely positive in terms of reviewing current mainstream technologies.

This shift towards greener solutions is already apparent in the increasing acceleration of financing for NbS. The May 2021 report State of Finance for Nature (UNEP, 2021) indicates that in order to meet climate mitigation, biodiversity and land restoration targets, the world needs triple the investment of NbS by 2030 and quadruple by 2050. These structures, though, have specific places to be allocated which need planning and have specific design guidelines for addressing local natural pressures and social needs. Hence it is imperative to discuss how designers and planners can make good use of these financing opportunities towards adequate NbS application in the Latin American reality. In this discussion, decoloniality and dialectics can make a great contribution.

SOWING DECOLONIALITY: CREATING EMANCIPATION

Any physical artifact a human being builds, they plan first. Be it a painting or a city traffic network, it is first visualized in their imagination. As Marx argues in the first volume of Capital, “A spider conducts operations which resemble those of the weaver, and a bee would put many a human architect to shame by the construction of its honeycomb cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is that the architect builds the cell in his mind before he constructs it in wax” (MARX, 1990). A key to perceiving decoloniality is recognizing how human imagination, where thoughts shape technological and scientific production, is largely influenced by history, culture, and its immediate context.

The world’s current socioeconomic system, now in its neoliberal expression, tends to homogenize this same imaginary and by extension disable the human capacity of perceiving diversity. Shiva (1993) described this phenomenon as a “mind monoculture.” In this context, there is a structural possibility of putting aside local needs when planning and designing NbS. Because Latin America has been a colonized territory, it does end up often directly reproducing what has been developed in Europe. As a result, practitioners may ignore that every new physical structure has to be in harmony with its immediate sociocultural and biogeophysical environments.

This direct reproduction of European designs without local adaptation is a common mistake. The fact that colonized countries are now independent does not make them fully emancipated territories, even centuries after their colonizing processes. Developed countries, known as the “Global North,” still apply great influence over the imaginary of developing countries, known as the “Global South,” and still expropriate tangible and intangible resources from these territories. Historical aspects underpin the present and are thus reflected in humanity’s technologies. Feenberg (2010) shows, for example, how child labour in textiles was largelly accepted during the Industrial Revolution in England under arguments such that employing adults for some tasks could be inneficient for society. Technology, in this sense, is never a neutral product (WINNER, 1986) but always a byproduct of its time and context.

"Because Latin America has been a colonized territory, it does end up often directly reproducing what has been developed in Europe. As a result, practitioners may ignore that every new physical structure has to be in harmony with its immediate sociocultural and biogeophysical environments."

In this sense, the Global North will not always be the solution for struggles in the Global South, as it has historically been the main promoter of these. For instance, while improving their own climate indicators, countries from the Global North keep their corporations extracting resources and depleting natural ecosystems in the Global South, as Russau (2016) exposes.

This same decolonial care of considering technologies locally should be applied to Nature-based Solutions. Regarding nature, answers should be found close to where questions are posed. Local people, the ones that have been effectively managing local biodiversity for centuries, should therefore lead the way. Indigenous communities show that the paradigm of development, which aspires for growth, resource extraction, and control of nature, can be shifted. For that, Acosta and Brand (2018) demonstrate that a post-extractivism needs to be taken up in the Global South. The authors also argue that de-growth should be a mandatory perspective for the Global North, which in many cases also suits big cities in the Global South.

Açaí berry harvester Edil looking upward for bunches to collect in the Marajó Archipelago, at the Amazon Rainforest, in a traditional Extractive Reserve. Source: the author, 2017.

Decolonial approaches for urban Nature-based Solutions that take into account the reality and originary heritage of Latin America include (1) social technology, (2) science and innovation, (3) communitary work and solidarity, (4) aesthetics, and (5) different types of NbS.

As previously mentioned, technology is not neutral. Vegetated roofs, for example, may fall into expensive and specialized structures, demanding costly retrofittings only accessible to consumers with significant purchasing power. On the other hand, examples of vegetated roofs are being applied as social technologies in which practitioners, scientists, and citizens come together to learn in a participatory way. As Freire (1967) states: “No one liberates himself by his own efforts alone, neither is he liberated by others. Men are liberated in communion.” There is a great difference between thinking of a product to generate profit and thinking of a product to address socio-environmental issues. Intensive vertical gardens, for example, can be extremely costly; they are profitable businesses but generate limited Ecosystem Services. When taking this difference into account, Nature-based Solutions can foster transformative practices that bring low-cost alternatives and strengthen neighborhoods. 

In the scientific industry, investments should be made so that scientists can empirically quantify the tangible and intangible impacts of NbS in Latin American cities. Scientific research can involve monitoring the efficiency of these structures and producing data so that local governments and policy-makers can decide on how best to apply NbS across their cities. Research can also provide technological innovation and guidelines for planning and design, also applying pressure on local governments for mainstreaming NbS and provisioning technical assistance for communities to manage these structures.

For NbS applied at small scale, group work for participatory construction or maintenance can be a decolonial practice towards an economy of solidarity. In El Buen Vivir, Acosta (2016) emphasizes elements of economic relations from indigeous communities in the Amazon and the Andes which can be directly applied to NbS practices: (i) Minka, a practice of mutual and reciprocal communitary help; (ii) Ranti-ranti, a solidary exchange of labour without money; (iii) Makipurarina, gathering hands together for work on something that can benefit many; (iv) Uniguilla, an exchange of food between producers of different geographical zones to diversify their diets and have food security in times of seasonality.

Aesthetic aspects and botanical choices also play a part in colonized territories: from reproducing nature domination by controlling plant growth and using pesticides, to selecting which plants are considered welcome and which are considered weeds. Even the sense of bringing “nature back” comes from a modernist heritage (BRAUN, 2008, as cited in MIKATI, 2020). There are movements from naturalist gardeners incentivizing the use of native species in plant based structures such as NbS; raising awareness to the importance of underestimated ecosystems such as savannas and their grasses, instead of focusing ecosystem restoration into solely trees (see VELDMAN et al., 2015, and O’SULLIVAN AND POON, 2021).

Under a colonized practice of Nature-based Solutions, practitioners in Latin America have also been giving too much attention to the design of new ecosystems (type 1 of NbS, see EGGERMONT et al., 2015), rather than addressing other types of NbS. These other types are relevant to countries where there is still preserved land, which can be the better management of reminiscent natural areas or restored ecosystems (types 2 and 3). The creation of new ecosystems and biodiversity is necessary, especially in cities, but it cannot divert the political attention to the still existent patches of green that are consumed everyday by cities' growth and densification. In this sense, dialectically thinking of cities as part of a greater unity of nature can be useful.

SOWING DIALECTICS: VISUALIZING NATURE AS PROCESS

Perceiving this unity of nature is not easy given that the modern era has exacerbated the human impulse for self-differentiation from the rest of nature (KOVEL, 2003; KOVEL, 2007). But as Krenak (2020) and many indigenous communities demonstrate through their day-to-day relation with their surroundings, humans are part of nature. Biotic and abiotic components exist under the same set of natural physical laws (see SIMON, 1996). This alienation, a specific form of separation under capitalism (MIKATI, 2020), has been fogging (WISNIK, 2018) humanity’s understanding of how humankind and the artifacts it creates, such as NbS, fit in this complex system of life on Earth. To better understand this interdependence, it can be useful to view nature not as a static set of objects, but rather as a network of relations, processes, change and contradictions always in motion (MIKATI, 2020). That is perceiving the dialectics of nature.

As Mikati (2020) shows, dialectics is about process, change, and motion. Hegel expresses these ideas in a beautiful passage of his Phenomenology of Spirit (HEGEL, 1807) illustrating change in nature through stages of a tree: from buds, to flowers, into fruits, each phase represents moments or excepts of an organic unity in motion. Creating cities that facilitate visualizing these natural processes or that hamper it is a political decision.

In large cities, natural processes have been taken aside to give way to progress and development. In a capitalist production of space as elucidated by Harvey (2001), urban development aims to provide profit and capital accumulation. The totality of nature is thus not mandatorily taken into account by urban planners and natural processes are hidden from sight just like rivers are suffocated by avenues.

Nature-based Solutions, as a counterpoint, can become pedagogical structures for the learning of natural processes. Locally managing rainwater runoff through the use of rain gardens represents a shift: from trying to quickly get rid of water by dumping it into water bodies and rivers to trying to infiltrate water locally is a way to complete the hydrologic cycle at plain sight. This brings people closer to the processes of nature and facilitates the understanding of its dialectics.

Cyperus sp., an exotic plant spontaneously growing in the cracks of a concrete pavement over a highline in São Paulo, Brazil. Source: the author, 2021.

Different optics are necessary to perceive nature in its totality. When watching a praying mantis eating a grasshopper, natural relations may be perceived as underpinned by competition. But in a wider scope there lies a very well-tuned orchestra of cooperation and mutual dependence. Cities also fit in this interdependent network of life, but urban planning normally gives too little attention to the natural processes that humanity depends on such as water infiltration, vegetation growth, and pollination. For better incorporating nature’s processes into planning, transdisciplinarity becomes necessary. Every field of knowledge should be dissolved into this green ink in a participatory application of NbS throughout the urban fabric.

CONCLUSION: THE FLOWERS

In this sense, for making good use of the bulk of investments in NbS, Latin America can use decoloniality to help taking into account local needs and its historical, social, and cultural context and dialectics to help incorporate the interdependence and unity of nature in the design and planning of the Nature-based Solutions. 

For incorporating decoloniality and dialectics in NbS for the Global South, the article derived from these two approaches a set of relevant shifts, ideas, and applied references. From a “monoculture of mind” to an “agroforestry of mind,” Latin America needs to perceive the interdependence of its cities' microclimates to other areas of still-preserved ecosystems such as forests and savannas. There is still a lot of forest and grasslands to protect and better manage, which should be the main focus instead of only creating new ecosystems. As the Yanomami shaman Davi Kopenawa (2013) foresees, “when the forests succumb to the reckless devastation and the last shaman dies, the sky will fall over and it will be the end of the world”. Cities, though a human creation, are not separate from the totality of nature: life on Earth exists under the same sky.

For creating new ecosystems, some indicators can be relevant to highlight. The use of social technologies, community work, bottom-up and participatory processes of planning, and learning from native ecosystems should be a must. Besides that, NbS also promotes relevant shifts, such as the decentralization of natural resource management, the pedagogical possibility of learning from natural processes, and the need for applied transdisciplinarity. 

Taking these aspects into account, Latin American cities can become a case of success for the adoption of Nature-based Solutions and enjoy the blossom of diverse colors and shapes that arise from native flowers growing from dialectical cracks in the static concrete and decolonized cracks in the colonized imaginary.

Lucas Gobatti (@g0batti) is a Brazilian Civil Engineer, trained at the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo (Brazil) (with a minor in Architecture and Urban Planning by the Faculty of Architecture in the same university), and a graduate MEng degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Sheffield (UK). He is currently reading an MSc in Nature-based Solutions at the Polytechnic School of the University of São Paulo (Brazil) and is an entrepreneur of NbS. He is interested in Nature-based Solutions, Field Science, Biomimicry, Decoloniality, Philosophy of Engineering, Nature Photography, Mountaineering and Microscopy.

E-mail: lucas.gobatti@usp.br.

REFERENCES

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Krenak, A. (2020). A Vida Não É Útil. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras. 128pp.

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The COVID 2019 pandemic has shaken the paradigms of our capitalistic world view. Countries all over the world have been forced to revisit their basic infrastructural systems that proved grossly inadequate in such times of crisis. The scenes of migrant exodus from Indian cities on foot, walking hundreds of kilometers without necessities like food and shelter, will be etched in the public memory for long. What failed at such a time was the availability of affordable and secured shelter in the cities that could harbour these citizens. With loss of daily wages, most of the migrants were unable to meet the lofty rents that their cubby holes in informal settlements demanded and were forced to return to their villages.

However, capitalism is here to stay and free markets are at the heart of most capitalist societies. Market competition promotes innovation and efficiency in operations, leading to better products at lower costs. This applies to all commodities and even personal skills, but we argue that land is not a commodity like other commodities. It is in the best interests of society if land is managed differently from the free reign given to market forces as they apply to other commodities.[1] Cost of land is dependent on its location and its value is speculated based on the development of the entire neighbourhood. This automatically marginalises the workforce within the city in distinct precincts. The nurses, teachers, plumbers, electricians, carpenters, vegetable sellers, cleaning staff and many others without whom the city would come to a screeching halt cannot afford to live in the heart of the city, close to their workplace. So, they choose to live at long commuting distances at the periphery of the city or in unhygienic, unsecured informal settlements that dot the mega cities. These settlements are interspersed in almost all Indian neighbourhoods and have emerged out of the necessity that was not met by the formal land markets. Today 42% of Mumbai’s population lives in slums and a much higher population lives in unhygienic, dense neighbourhoods. Delhi’s draft Master Plan 2041 states that 85% of the population requires affordable housing options. This mismatch has resulted in the proliferation of unauthorised colonies and slums, and densification of existing urban fabric.[2]

The last few years have also been instrumental in bringing forth possible system-changing master plans of world cities like London and Delhi. Central to these plans is an attempt at providing integrated affordable housing to the critical workforce of the city. Planning, like other services, is being deregulated and privatised. Government in most world cities have transferred the responsibility of affordable housing on private agencies with an exception of Hong Kong[3] in Asia.

In most cities, an incentive-based model exists to increase the stock of affordable housing in specific neighbourhoods. The private developer is given added building rights upon choosing to provide a certain number of small format housing. The affordability criterion in this case is limited to the area of the unit ranging from 25 to 60 sq m in Indian cities. Further, the distribution of these dwelling units is carried out by private agencies through a direct market sale. The cost of these units is rarely capped or subsidised and so, most times it fails to reach the intended demographics. In rare cases when these units do reach the intended demographics, they are put back into the market at a higher rate by the beneficiaries thus defeating the purpose of preserving or increasing the stock of affordable housing all together.

Development of a considerably larger land parcel in Indian cities comes with a mandate of providing small format housing integrated within the neighbourhood. This mandated inclusionary model is limited to 15%-20% of the new constructed units, whereas the demand is much higher. These units in some cases are handed over to the government agencies, which, in turn, distribute the dwelling units to the economically weaker section at a subsidy with a caveat that does not allow any kind of transaction of these units for the next 15 years. Thereafter, the occupants can sell out and realise the full market value of their property. In fact, in Mumbai, many beneficiaries have sold their properties, giving immediate possession together with a sale deed dated 15 years hence. This mandated inclusionary model too has failed to generate any long-term affordable housing.

In Mumbai, in order to redevelop its numerous slums, Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) came up with an incentive-based model whereby the slum land is handed over to a prospective private developer at a greatly subsidised rate. In return, the developer provides in-situ residential units of 25 square meters to all eligible slum dwellers free of cost on a part of the land.  The other part of the land is used by the developer to build luxury housing to be sold in the market that offsets the cost of the free units. On paper this scheme works well with its intended aim of integrated housing but in reality, these informal colonies exist at densities that are more often unparalleled in the world. This particular model adds further densities on the same land parcel compromising the quality of life for the slum dwellers who are stacked up with inadequate light and ventilation on a smaller part of the land. Minimum land dedicated for rehabilitation is not regulated by the authorities.  There is no provision of open space or social amenities for such dense neighbourhoods while the informal communities in their organic format successfully offered flexible spaces and usage patterns where livelihoods were integrated with residential and community spaces. These rehabilitated units that were provided free of cost were then put back on the market in no time by many beneficiaries, defeating the purpose once again.[4] No doubt, “conventional planning approaches to slums and slum dwellers are thoroughly paternalistic. The trouble with paternalistic is that they want to make impossibly profound changes, and they choose impossibly superficial means for doing so.” [5]

Initiatives in limited capacities have made affordable housing today a Sisyphean dream. Common to all the above-mentioned models is the lack of mechanism that keeps the housing stock affordable for perpetuity. In 2014 Mumbai’s Urban Design Research Institute (UDRI) had floated an International Ideas Competition named Reinventing Dharavi inviting multi professional teams for around the world to provide innovative solutions to rehabilitate and redevelop one of the densest slums in the world. With a population ranging between 340,000 to 800,000 (the correct count was never obtained) in the center of Mumbai, Dharavi spreads over 525 acres of buildable land, The authors were a part of the winning team that proposed the idea of Dharavi Community Land Trust.

Dharavi Community Land Trust (DCLT) [6]

The fundamental idea behind a Community Land Trust (CLT) was inspired from Gandhiji’s idea of ‘trusteeship,’ which asserted that land and other assets that individuals possess beyond their needs should be shared with the larger community. Vinoba Bhave, later through his Bhoodan and Gramdan[7] movement, tried to bring this idea into implementation where the land was donated by land owners and consolidated under a village trust. The idea of CLT also resonates with John Stuart Mill’s idea of ‘Unearned Increment,’ which states that appreciating value of land is created by growth and development of the society and not by the labour and investment of individual landowners and hence this unearned increment should be enjoyed by the community as a whole.

The CLT model is not a new one and has many contextual appropriations in different parts of the world. The objective behind all is equality and inclusiveness. A person’s economic profile often becomes the deciding factor to establish right to the city in a capitalist country. This approach has created an unequal world with a rising count of marginalised population. A CLT on the other hand is a non-profit corporation, that develops and stewards affordable housing and other community assets on behalf of a community.

The most significant component of a CLT is the concept of Dual Ownership—of land separate from the building. Owners of buildings on land are provided with the exclusive use of their land. They own the buildings but not the land. The building’s buyer may be an individual homeowner, a cooperative housing corporation, a non-profit organization or for-profit entity. Land becomes a single separate entity collectively owned by a trust; in this case, by DCLT. Land will always be owned by DCLT and may never be transferred to the building owner. Therefore, no concept of freehold may exist. The land can be leased to any entity. The DCLT approach de-links ownership of land and houses, taking the land off the market and keeping housing affordable.

By splitting land and the structure, DCLT manages to fulfill the criteria of perpetual affordability and perpetual responsibility. DCLT is committed to preserving the affordability of housing (and other structures) – one owner after another, one generation after another, in perpetuity. DCLT retains the option to repurchase any residential (or commercial) structures located upon its land, whenever the owners of these buildings decide to sell. The resale price is set by a formula contained in the ground lease that is designed to give present homeowners a fair return on their investment, while giving future homebuyers fair access to housing at an affordable price. As the speculative element of the real estate is eliminated and the increment value of it is earned by the Trust, it remains perpetually affordable.

The organisation of DCLT balances the need of individuals to access land and community’s need to maintain security of tenure and affordability through tripartite governance format. DCLT is governed by board of trustees. It is made up of three equal parts with equal decision-making rights. The decisive majority is proposed at 75% to avoid exclusion of any one fraction. One-third of the board represents landowner’s interests (in Dharavi’s case, the landowner being the government), one-third represents community members in general, and one-third represents neighbourhood community through organisations and professionals. Representatives of each of these 3 parts would be elected directly by the voting members of the community.

The paradigm change is the adoption of a human-centered design which is focused on the needs of the people of Dharavi but in an environmentally and physically sustainable manner. This not only gives the people participatory powers but also allows them to have a say in the financial decisions of the trust. The finance model under DCLT will operate at three levels of seed funding, maintenance and operations fund and finally the support fund for long term sustainability. Seed fund to initiate DCLT will be generated by pooling various state and central government schemes on slum redevelopment and low-income housing. Tie-ups with corporates as a part of CSR activities and international funding could also be explored. Alternatively, after the transfer of land title to DCLT, some amount of land can be mortgaged to raise the seed funding.

An initial 5-year period is suggested as a ‘Cooling Off’ period when no resale or transfer is allowed. After this first phase, DCLT may earn money for maintenance and operations from land value increment during sale or re-sale of property, long term lease agreement with structure owners and from rental income of structures that DCLT would eventually build, own and operate.

Once DCLT has been established, it can, on behalf of the community members, apply for various national and international funding available for construction of housing for Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) of the society. DCLT, with help of nationalised banks, can set up micro financing institutions and give small loans for construction and other start-up businesses.

CLTs thus create affordable housing while still allowing low-income residents to build equity as homeowners. Moreover, because the CLT retains ownership of the underlying land, this housing remains permanently affordable, even as the original beneficiaries of an affordable home price sell and move on. This long-term, continuing benefit makes CLTs an especially efficient use of affordable housing subsidies. By locking in permanent access to affordable housing, CLTs can play an important role in countering the market-driven displacement associated with gentrification.

Community Land Reserve (CLR)

The root cause of urban slumming seems to lie not in urban poverty, but in urban wealth.[8] The problem of affordable housing primarily lies in unaffordability of land. Taking land off the market is a usual practice in city planning when the land is dedicated for roads, public parks, schools, hospitals and other social amenities. The same is done with natural reserves like coastal zones, wildlife and forest reserves. Affordable housing more than anything has to be a land reserve. Community Land Reserve gives an implementable solution to this housing paradox whereby the city commits to a certain percentage of the land to be reserved for affordable housing at the outset of planning. The public land that is vacant or encroached upon could be well used for this purpose. In Indian cities, these land parcels are already appropriated by informal settlements and could provide easy transition from being unhygienic environments, lacking infrastructure to community land reserves earmarked for affordable housing and owned by the community in partnership with the government. The development of such CLRs could either be through a trust model similar to DCLT or a registered company where the community has equal say in the matters.

It's been almost 60 years since Patrick Geddes said “Slum, semi slum, super slum…..to this has come the evolution of cities”[9] and here we are still rolling the boulder of affordable housing up the Sisyphean hill.

***

Oormi Kapadia is an Architect and Urban Designer, a graduate of the University of Mumbai (2000) and of the University of Texas at Austin (2004). She heads planning research, policy and projects as a partner in plural. She is a visiting faculty and teaches Urban Design, Architectural Theory and Design Dissertation in Academy of Architecture, Mumbai.

Jasmine Saluja is an Architect and Urban Designer based in Mumbai. She received her Masters’ degree in Urban Design from the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, India in 2003. She heads an urban research laboratory as a partner at plural. She is part of the National Council of iudi (Institute of Urban Designers–India) representing Mumbai.

Plural is a Planning Research firm which offers a collaborative approach to urban research and planning realm bringing together multidisciplinary professionals and government bodies to lead them into projects addressing inclusive planning, equality in shared public spaces and affordable housing. www.plural.org.in

[1]Patel, Shirish B, et al. “In the Draft Master Plan for DELHI 2041, a Chronicle of Chaos Foretold.” Scroll.in, Scroll.in, 6 Aug. 2021, scroll.in/article/1002059/in-the-draft-master-plan-for-delhi-2041-a-chronicle-of-chaos-foretold.

[2] As per Socio-Economic Survey of Delhi, GNCTD, 2018-19, DDA published Draft Master Plan Delhi 2041, 17.3.4, 50

[3] Housing Authority, Hong Kong. “Housing in Figures 2021.” Hong Kong Housing Authority, 2021, www.thb.gov.hk/eng/psp/publications/housing/HIF2021.pdf

[4] Restepo, Paula. Moving in – Selling Out, The outcomes of slum rehabilitation in Mumbai. International Conference on Applied Economics, 2010. Paper based on findings by Tata Institute of Social Sciences in field surveys of 2003 and 2008. http://www.shram.org/uploadFiles/20140507121915.pdf

[5]Jacobs, Jane. The Death and Life of Great American Cities. New York : Vintage Books, 1992. Print.

[6] Dharavi Community Land Trust – the winning entry published by UDRI (2017) in “Reinventing Dharavi: An Ideas Compendium”, UDRI Publication, for detailed proposal access: http://www.udri.org/wp-content/uploads/UDRI%20Publications/Reinventing%20Dharavi/19%20A%20Participative%20Development%20Model%20-%20Dharavi%20Community%20Land%20Trust.pdf?utm_source=Organic&utm_medium=download&utm_campaign=Reinventing-Dharavi

[7] Bhoodan which literally means donation of land and Gramdan which means donation of entire village where private ownership ceases to exist. These movements took place in various parts of India in 1950s and 60s under the leadership of Vinoba Bhave. This was an attempt at non-violent land reform where land was voluntarily donated by wealthy landowners and distributed to the landless farmers.

[8] Verma, Gita Dewan. Slumming India: A Chronicle of Slums and Their Saviours. Penguin, 2002.

[9] Mumford, Lewis. The City in History: Its Origins, Transformations, and Its Prospects. Secker & Warburg, 1961.

“Builders sell you a dream; but seldom deliver you this dream. But at Vera Gold builders, we deliver what we promise” (Construction site manager at Vera Gold Mark luxury housing project in Zirakpur, interviewed on 3rd November, 2019) 

The construction manager at Gold Mark luxury housing site in Zirakpur was very confident that his company was going to deliver the best luxury housing project in the city. When I visited the site in late 2019, the project’s foundations had already been poured and the sales manager me that 70% of the apartments has been pre-sold. She also said that their luxury residential complex was the most unique project in the city since they were using the Mivan construction technology. Imported from Malaysia, these superior materials were chosen as distinguishing factors for constructing the apartments; it was unlike the brick, cement and lime materials used in all other group housing schemes, which has in the past led to the production of a “leaky” built environment in Zirakpur (Gandhi, 2020a).  

The construction manager explained that the Mivan construction technology was a sophisticated system where aluminum panels were installed with cement framing to create RCC walls. The buildings created were earthquake resistant and did not suffer leakage like the traditional brick and mortar structures.

Once completed, the Gold Mark housing project will be 14 floors (see Figure, 1). The sales manager of the project claimed that the condominiums will be equipped with amenities like swimming pools, gyms, 24/7 available estate managers, spas and will offer 7-star facilities to its residents. The sales brochure of the project comprises pictures of a nuclear heteronormative family with women enjoying massages at the spa, children playing in the playgrounds and men and women using gym machines and swimming in the pool. (refer to the brochure at https://www.goldmark.co.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/GM-Mini-Brochure.pdf)

Zirakpur is experiencing a boom of private builders and projects, akin to urban developments that happened in other metropolitan cities decades ago. For example, discussing the real estate growth in Delhi and its satellite city Gurgaon, Srivastava (2014:xxv) highlights that during the 1940s and 1950s the real estate company, Delhi Land and Finance (DLF) hoped to profit from the rapidly expanding demand for real estate, created advertisements using aspirational themes for gated residential communities. He contends that the real estate development in India has been a prime site for the making of the “consumer-citizen” leading to particular forms of middle-class activism.  

Figure 1: Proposed Gold Mark luxury apartments (Source: Gold mark promotion booklet)

From the interview with the two managers of Vera Gold builders it appeared that the Gold Mark luxury housing will soon represent a prosperous island in the ocean of “the ordinary”. “The ordinary” in Zirakpur represents the various group housing projects built using traditional construction materials like brick, mortar and lime that are marked by quality issues.  Kuldova (2017) describes such luxury-utopian-gated living as a “luxotopia” which represents an aspirational living not only for the urban middle and upper classes but also for the city’s poor. She however cautions that “such a luxotopia quickly turns into a dystopia of excessive fear, one excess turning into another” (Kuldova, 2017:45).

Zirakpur is a city that provides affordable housing options to skilled migrants from all over India that have moved to the tri-city region (Chandigarh-Panchkula-Mohali) for work opportunities. They find Chandigarh too expensive to buy or rent a house and have found cheaper options in the satellite city of Zirakpur. It is a classic case of splintered urbanisation (Gandhi, 2020a).

The proliferation of different types of group housing schemes has led to the creation of an uneven housing landscape in the city.

The housing schemes vary from affordable to luxury.  Since much of this development happened without a Master Plan in place, it was haphazard and patchy. Zirakpur became a haven for builders in the early 2000s since they were given a free-hand to construct in the absence of any legal framework that held them responsible for the quality of construction.

Moreover, discussions with the residents of the city and a reading of the legal documents of cases filed against the builders reveal that the Zirakpur Municipal Corporation has so far favoured the builders more than the residents of the city (cf. Gandhi 2020b.) Zirakpur got its first Master Plan only in 2008. Before that urban development was steered politically. In 2016, The Real Estate Regulatory Act (RERA) was brought into force by the Ministry of Housing and Poverty Alleviation, Government of India (see PRS, India, 2013). This act aimed at regulating the real estate sector and holding the developers responsible for the promises they have made to the buyers. However, many group-housing projects in Zirakpur were completed prior to that.

While most of the city’s residents are struggling to resolve their housing issues through litigation against the builders (Gandhi, 2020b.), Vera Gold is promising hassle-free housing where the builder takes responsibility of maintaining the houses. Similarly, other housing projects initiated after the RERA was enforced hold better promises for home-buyers than the ones built before the Act came into force. These differences in the quality of housing have created an uneven housing landscape in the city, which is now characterised by the presence of what Marcuse (1997) defines as the ghettos, enclaves and citadels among may other categories of housing.

This project once completed will be a fortified citadel where the elite in the city will deliberately segregate themselves from the rest of the city, while the housing on the sites flanking this citadel will represent enclaves, ghettos and villages that still retain their old caste-based neighbourhoods.

The types of developments now occurring in Zirakpur risk eventually leading to a Gurgaon-like scenario where grave inequalities are the order of the day (see Srivastava, 2015; Biswas, 2021). There is an informal settlement (see Figures 4 and 5) next to the Gold Mark project on one side and an affordable housing complex on the other side (see Figure 2). The site is a part of an urban village called “Balthana” which is now a part of the Zirakpur Municipal Corporation.  

Figure 2: Group housing adjacent to the Gold Mark luxury housing project, Balthana village, Zirakpur. (Source: Author)

A focus group discussion with the residents of the group housing project adjacent to the Gold Mark luxury apartments revealed that they faced the problem of leakage that is characteristic of most group housing projects in the city. Another issue was the foul smell from the Ghaggar river, which had now turned into a drain due to the dumping of solid waste and sewage-sludge in it (see Figure, 3). The discussion revealed that the residents were not happy with the housing quality and the amenities given to them but had little choice since they could not afford to buy more expensive houses.

On the other side of the Gold Mark luxury apartments is an informal settlement, where the urban-poor rent tenements and live-in abysmal conditions. There is garbage and filth strewn on the site (see Figures 3 and 4); additionally, there’s a wet market selling fish and chicken next door. The women in this settlement felt that their housing was suffocating, but expressed that they did not have another option to rent in the city. The state does not provide affordable housing options for the incoming working-class migrants from other regions. Like other Indian cities, these migrants too are forced to live on marginal lands next to dumping grounds.

Figure 3: Ghaggar River, now a drain, that flows behind the Gold Mark site (Source: Author)

Figure 4: Informal settlements adjacent to the Gold Mark luxury apartments (Source: Author)   

Figure 5: Informal shops and settlement next to the Gold Mark luxury housing project (Source: Author)

The Housing Justice in Unequal Cities Network (2019), highlights the key dimensions of the housing justice crisis, from racial segregation to the financialization of housing to the criminalization of poverty. More specifically, Roy (2019:14) contends that “In cities across the world, one of the most visible manifestations of social and political inequality is the divide between the housing landscapes of the wealthy and the housing crisis experienced by marginalized communities”.

Roy (pg. 17) further argues that “for the purposes of housing justice, a key part of this vantage point is the politics of the urban majority that in turn leads to a recasting of housing as a political problem”. In the case of Zirakpur, the residents must resort to a wide spectrum of housing-justice negotiations with the builders and with the state.

While the upper-class residents get access to both tenure and good quality housing, and the middle-class residents get tenure rights but poor quality of housing, the urban poor remain deprived from housing-justice since they have neither tenurial rights nor access to good-quality housing. They have little legal recourse to ensure their right to housing. In the cases where they have turned to the courts for housing justice, the latter has tended to not favor them (Bhan, 2009).

The hotelier on whose land the informal settlement was located, informed us that he was waiting for a profitable real-estate offer for his site. Once the deal is settled, he would evict his poor tenants. In all likelihood, these poor migrants will be pushed further off the city’s limits since its upper-class residents will not tolerate these “visual-eyesores” (cf. Baviskar’s 2003 articulation of Bourgeois Environmentalism).

It is time for the state to step-up its interventions and hold private-builders responsible for the quality of buildings that they are delivering.

The housing landscape in Zirakpur represents deep inequalities characteristic of most other Indian cities. There is a lack of allocation of housing for the urban poor who are pushed to the socio-spatial margins of the city on “uninhabitable” land. The use of sophisticated construction material and technology by some builders further exacerbates this inequality. The state has so far given a free-hand to private capital in the production of housing stock in Zirakpur; this has implied poor quality control.

As a new city, Zirakpur should be housing-just for all its residents across class-divides. To ensure this, private capital needs to be regulated and held accountable for its building practices by the state. The neoliberal turn in urban politics in India has served to deprive the poor from their “right to the city” (see Harvey, 2008). It is time for the Indian state and policy makers to step-up their welfare measures for the poor to achieve inclusive and just cities.  

Dr Kanchan Gandhi is a postdoctoral fellow at IISER, Mohali. Her research interests lie in identity-politics, urban studies and disaster studies. The author is grateful to Dr. Anu Sabhlok from IISER, Mohali, for her support and guidance on this research project. The author thanks Neha Poonia from IISER, Mohali, for her research assistance during the field-visits to Zirakpur.

Baviskar, A., 2003. Between violence and desire: space, power, and identity in the making of metropolitan Delhi.

Bhan, G. 2009 “This is no longer the city I once knew”. Evictions, the urban poor and the right to the city in millennial Delhi, Environment & Urbanization, Vol 21(1): 127–142. DOI: 10.1177/0956247809103009

Biswas, S.P. (2021) GURGAON TO GURUGRAM: A Short Biography, Rupa and Co, Delhi.

Gandhi,K. 2020a. Splintered subaltern urbanisation in the emerging Punjabi city of Zirakpur, Oxford Urbanists Magazine, https://www.oxfordurbanists.com/magazine/2020/splintered-subaltern-urbanisation-in-zirakpur-punjab

Gandhi, K. 2020b. Affordable Housing Gone Awry: The Case of Aastha Apartments in Zirakpur, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 55, Issue No. 15, 11 Apr, 2020. https://www.epw.in/engage/article/affordable-housing-gone-awry-case-aastha

Harvey, D., 2008. The right to the city. The city reader, 6(1), pp.23-40.

Kuldova, T., 2017. Guarded luxotopias and expulsions in New Delhi: Aesthetics and ideology of outer and inner spaces of an urban utopia. In Urban Utopias (pp. 37-52). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.

Marcuse, P. 1997. The enclave, the citadel and the ghetto: what has changed in the post-Fordist U.S. city. Urban Affairs Review 33(2): 228–64.

PRS India (2013) The Real Estate (Regulation and Development Bill), 2013, weblink https://www.prsindia.org/billtrack/the-real-estate-regulation-and-development-billi-2013-2861

Roy, A. 2019. Housing Justice: Towards a field of inquiry in Housing Justice in Unequal Cities eds. Roy, A and Malson, H Institute on Inequality and Democracy at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Srivastava, S., 2014. Entangled urbanism: Slum, gated community and shopping mall in Delhi and Gurgaon. OUP Catalogue.

In this thought-provoking original essay New York city resident - and current University of Oxford MSc (Sustainable Urban Development) student - Josef Goodman explores governance and the American city through the prism of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The COVID-19 pandemic, a menace to public health and the global economy, has overwhelmed America’s cities. The mayor of America’s most populous metropolitan area, Bill de Blasio, has repeatedly called on President Donald Trump to assist his hometown, criticizing POTUS’ silence on Twitter: “President Trump, what’s going on? Cat got your tongue?” (Connor, 2020).  In the absence of substantial support – compared with around $58 billion allocated to the airline industry, New York received $1.4 billion from the $2 trillion stimulus package – de Blasio has routinely exclaimed, “Where the hell is the federal government?” (Connor, 2020). Shortly after announcing $2 billion in municipal cuts, de Blasio likened the White House’s reticence to President Gerald Ford’s dismissal of the city’s financial fortunes in the 1970s, evoking the iconic Daily News headline: “Ford to City: Drop Dead” (Helmore, 2020). Fifty years since its last fiscal apocalypse, New York City, despite its global economic prominence and cultural cachet, is suffering from an acute and humbling case of deja vu.

The epidemic has laid bare the shaky sands upon which all cities in America sit. The present crisis has exposed the fatal limitations of municipal health and financial systems; equally distressing, it has magnified the flaws in the political-economic contract between the federal government and local government in the United States. The pandemic has revealed how cities are cruelly and largely left to their own resources, talents, and fortunes to sink or swim. Las Vegas epitomized urban impotence when it painted rectangles on an asphalt parking lot to remind homeless residents to sleep six feet apart (Times Editorial Board, 2020). It could do no better for its most vulnerable citizens. This precarity predates the pandemic. For fifty years, America has countenanced urbanism on the edge of the abyss.

Despite present conditions which mock the confidence Rahm Emanuel conjures in his recent book, ‘The Nation City,’ the former mayor of Chicago was not wrong when he noted, “the old federal/local partnership has for all practical purposes ceased to exist” (Emanuel, 2020). Partnership. The word evokes a bygone era, an obsolete model of urban governance, forged in the radical furnace of the New Deal era. President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration placed cities firmly at the center of its progressive and national agenda. On the federal government’s dime, mayors and municipal bureaucrats radically recast the urban landscape, constructing high-rises and highways, parks and pools.

As Mason Williams observed in City of Ambition: FDR, LaGuardia, and the Making of Modern New York, the Roosevelt administration ushered in an age of “cooperative federalism” (Williams, 2013). The burst of public capital investment birthed a “municipal government which would otherwise have been impossible” (Williams, 2013). As one key New Dealer bureaucrat prophesized in 1937, “New York’s relations with Washington will be even closer than New York’s relations with Albany. I don’t know whether this will be a good or a bad [thing]; but I know that it will be so” (Williams, 2013).

Writing several decades later, during the twilight years of cooperative federalism, the sociologist Ray Pahl weighed the merits and shortcomings of the prevailing political model of “urban managerialism” (Pahl, 1970). Influenced by the German thinker Max Weber’s equivalence of bureaucracy with power (Leonard, 1982), Pahl’s collection of essays, Whose City?,  described a robust network of ‘urban managers’ – housing officers, planners, social workers and decision-making bureaucrats – which allocated federally-funded resources, the most valuable of which was housing (Merrifield, 2014). Pahl impugned these so-called ‘social gatekeepers’ for failing to improve substantially the conditions of the poor and for possibility perpetuating their plight (Pahl, 1974).

Recent scholarship corroborates the sentiment. Lizabeth Cohen’s biography on Edward Logue, the mid-century “wizard redeveloper” of New Haven, Boston, and New York (Ehrenhalt, 2019), recounts valiant, albeit floundering efforts at urban renewal (Cohen, 2019). Logue funneled millions of federal dollars into multiple notable projects, most conspicuously into downtown New Haven, which he essentially redesigned as a suburban shopping mall. Embracing the since disgraced planning practices of the 1950s, the monotonous, boxy fortress incorporated no residential uses to bolster the retail and commercial components. To this day, the monotonous and dreary superblock discourages pedestrian curiosity and vibrant street life.

The federal urban renewal programs in New Haven inspired the Yale political scientist Robert Dahl to study their impacts on democracy. The declining industrial community was an ideal case study: per capita, New Haven received more federal dollars than any other American city (Bell & Stanley, 2012). In Who Governs?, Dahl concluded that while some people, such as Logue and the then mayor Richard Lee, archetypical urban managers, exercised more power than others, he did not discern a single homogeneous ruling elite (Dahl, 1961). Rather, he remarked upon the broad dispersal of power, which he labeled ‘pluralist democracy’ (Cohen, 2019). Dahl paid particular attention to the complexity and variability manifest in the Citizens Action Commission (CAC), the bipartisan body of six hundred people, formed to engage with the redevelopment agenda. In Dahl’s New Haven, federal dollars had democratized the political process.

Pahl recognized the pluralism imbedded in the urban managerial system and, despite its flaws, did not advocate its overthrow. Pahl credited urban managerialism for operating under the mechanics of Keynesian and the ethics of redistributive justice (Peck & Whiteside, 2016). He tempered his criticism and cautioned against the scapegoating of social gatekeepers, echoing a colleague who maintained, “criticism of local managers of the Caretaking Establishment… may lead to an uncritical accommodation to the national elite and to the society’s master institutions” (Pahl, 1974). Censure of social gatekeepers would only advantage capital’s growing dominance of the city (Pahl, 1974). Pahl warned that attacks leveled at urban management was “misdirected,” equivalent to “workers stoning the house of the chief personnel managers when their industry faces widespread redundancies through the collapse of world markets” (Pahl, 1975). If the then ascendant neoliberal city were an innately and inescapably unequal society, managers and gatekeepers could ameliorate the unequal allocation of resources (Forrest & Wissink, 2017).

As Wendell Pritchett encapsulates, the federal government’s elevated interest in urban affairs “was paralleled by a corresponding decline, among both the public and the politicians representing them, of faith in professionally managed solutions to urban problems” (Pritchett, 2008). Pahl had forewarned the erosion of the urban managerial model, which Dahl had admired; by the 1980s, urban Marxist scholar David Harvey had certified its erasure and its eclipse by its successor, ‘entrepreneurial’ urbanism (Harvey, 1989).

The advent of civic boosterism, a brand of politics which promotes inter-city economic competition (Harvey, 1989), was the chemical byproduct of a combustion of post-industrial social, economic, and political shocks referred to as the ‘urban crisis.’ The reduction in federal urban investment, the shrinkage of the local tax base due to suburbanization and deindustrialization, and the growing ideological appeal of neoconservatism colluded to weaken urban political and economic leverage and wherewithal (Harvey, 1989).

To sustain budgets and services, municipalities were compelled to adopt more business-oriented practices (Peck & Whiteside, 2016). Language morphed, masquerading deteriorating fiscal and physical conditions (Harvey, 1989). Cities became “active agents,” rather than mere things or spaces (Harvey, 1989). Increasingly, inter-city competition stressed “zero-sum dynamics,” “diminishing returns,” “first-mover advantages,” “winners” and “losers” (Peck & Whiteside, 2016). “Asset creation, valuation and securitization” facilitated global investment in “urban revitalization” (Pike et al., 2019). Hard-pressed cities came to articulate “growth” narratives, presenting potential investors with a “pipeline” of projects and robust “deal flow” (Weber, 2010).

As Harvey argued, the devolution of urban finances from federal to local government occasioned the financialization of the city and transformed urban infrastructure, once the pride of federal work programs, from a public good into an alternative asset class for financial actors (Pike et al., 2019). The expansion of private equity capital dedicated to infrastructure is telling. As of 2020, such funds have raised a total of $212 billion – double the size of funds committed five years ago (Dizard, 2020).

Fund and transaction volumes mount, despite cautionary tales, such as Chicago’s sale of its parking system to a Morgan Stanley-backed consortium in 2008. Cash-strapped during the trough of the Great Recession, Mayor Richard Daley sold the revenue rights of 36,000 parking meters for $1.2 billion (Levin, 2008). The mayor was heavily criticized for coercing the city council to approve the misguided deal. While Daley deployed the proceeds to fill shortfalls in successive annual budgets (Preston, 2010), the transaction has harmed the city’s long-term fiscal prospects. It remains a political hot potato, an albatross weighing heavily on the city’s coffers and conscience (Mohler, 2018). The consortium has doubled the system’s rates, while billing the city millions to compensate for loss revenues due to road construction and street festivals (Mohler, 2018). For the next 65 years, the transaction will likely increase the cost of critical infrastructure repairs and investments (Mohler, 2018). Meanwhile, the private consortium is anticipated to recoup its initial investment by 2021 (Mohler, 2018). Every dollar of net revenue thereafter, for the next half a century, represents pure profit.

The privatization of affordable housing has mirrored the financialization of infrastructure (Read & Sanderford, 2017). As the federal government has shifted from housing producer to market regulator and rule maker (Read & Sanderford, 2017), city leaders and agencies possess fewer resources to maintain public housing stock and are increasingly reliant upon the private sector. In 2018, de Blasio announced plans to privatize 62,000 apartments within the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) portfolio, the largest urban public housing stock in the US (Alexa, 2020). In February 2020, NYCHA sold nearly 6,000 units to a syndicate of private developers for $1.5 billion (Small, 2020). The deal was consummated under the auspices of the federal government’s Rental Assistance Demonstration (RAD) program. Under RAD, housing stock is transferred to private owners and managers. The federal Section 8 program pays tenant rents, while the private operator covers outlays for expenses, repairs, and capital investments (Small, 2020). By shifting the burden of maintaining housing from the municipality to the private sector and federal government, RAD inverts and subverts the cooperative federalist model.

Neo-Marxist theory compounds the cynicism. According to its logic, urban infrastructure and housing are fundamental to the circuit of capital (Pike et al., 2019). Competition between capitalists generates over-accumulation in the primary circuit of capital, the manufacturing sector, reducing prices, diminishing profitability, and escalating unemployment and societal discontent (Pike et al., 2019). To circumvent these constraints, capital escapes, via a proverbial release valve, to the secondary circuit, the built environment (Harvey, 1978). “As the pressure builds,” Harvey writes, “either the accumulation process grinds to a halt or new investment opportunities are found as capital flows down various channels into the secondary and tertiary circuits” (Harvey, 1978). In sharp contrast to Dahl, for Harvey and other historical materialists, the answer to the question “Whose City?” was clear: it is the city of capital.  

Macro trends and critical theory have conferred new profundity to President Lyndon Johnson’s quip – “Things could be worse. I could be a mayor” (Schragger, 2006). More so now than ever, city politics are politics by straitjacket (Peterson, 1981; Schragger, 2006). While cities in the United States are chiefly responsible for the health, safety, and welfare needs of the populace, state and federal officials determine when and under what circumstances to intervene (Schragger, 2006). Resource-rich localities can generally function, but as observed in Chicago and New York, the discrepancy between means and ends are chronic and endemic. Unlike nation-states, cities cannot control their borders; they cannot print money, implement countercyclical spending, or pursue other macroeconomic manipulations of the economy. They are vulnerable to state and national tax, redistribution, immigration, land use, labor, and industrial polices (Schragger, 2006).  

Ultimately, a city’s manipulation of land becomes its principal vehicle to attract business. As Paul Peterson posits, urban politics is above all the politics of land use (Peterson, 1981). Land policy is also the grease which perpetuates neoliberalism’s hold on American urbanism, while exacerbating its regressive tax implications. As real estate developers lobby for increased government involvement to reduce private-sector risk, municipal resources are often redistributed from low-income households towards business elites (Saegert & et al., 2009).

The redevelopment of Hudson Yards in Manhattan represents one conspicuous vindication of social worker Floyd Hunter’s research in Atlanta, Georgia, which determined that power was largely dominated by a small number of business leaders (Hunter, 1953; Clark, 1967). The sum of tax breaks and other government assistance for Hudson Yards exceeds $6 billion (Haag, 2019). New York City invested an additional $2.4 billion to extend the subway system to the new mega-development and has allocated a further $1.2 billion towards its park and public recreation spaces (Haag, 2019). When revenue from the development could not service its bonds, the New York City Council funded $359 million in interest payments (Haag, 2019).

It remains to be seen whether these public investments deliver dividends for municipal finances. In any case, the redistribution of public finances towards business elites favors the opinion that they control and benefit foremost from urban entrepreneurialism and neoliberalism. The answer to Pahl’s core questions – Who decides? and Who decides who decides? – seems definitive: follow the flow of capital.

The 20th century’s last major federal government experiment in public housing – the HOPE VI program – carries dual symbolism. The ongoing redevelopment and demolition of 250 housing projects and 210,000 housing units (Hanlon, 2012) marks a consequential shift in the role of the federal government, from active producer of the urban built environment to regulator (Read & Sanderford, 2017). The federal government has ceded its former status to the private sector, which has eagerly filled the power vacuum. HOPE VI also represents an admission of failure. Despite the vast federal sums expended to produce public housing, due to a host of factors exogenous and endogenous to the buildings themselves, these housing projects regularly failed to uplift and better their communities (Goetz, 2013).

Critique of the contemporary paradigm must weigh current challenges against past errors. More profoundly, the decline in federal action correlates with a decline of idealism. As Edward Glenn Goetz notes in New Deal Ruins: Race, Economic Justice, and Public Housing Policy, “the dismantling of public housing represents the repudiation of a New Deal policy orientation that saw merit in large-scale government social interventions, and that reflected faith that such interventions could produce positive outcomes” (Goetz, 2013).

This faith lies dormant. Prospects are dim that the CARES Act, the $2.2 trillion emergency relief package passed in March 2020, should hasten its rebirth. The law included $150 billion in direct aid to state and local governments (Mui & Sloan, 2020). Some politicians, however, have asserted that the extraordinary circumstances and the temporary aid do not warrant permanent or fundamental changes to the social contract (Times Editorial Board, 2020). As prominent activist Stacy Mitchell has lamented, “We are in an F.D.R. moment, and as far as I can see there’s no F.D.R” (Streitfeld, 2020). As society awaits the Covid-19 vaccine, it hungers for much more.  

Josef Goodman is a housing developer based in New York City. As an undergraduate at Yale, he studied contrasting approaches to urban regeneration in Detroit and Leipzig. He is currently pursuing an MSc in in Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Oxford.

Alexa, Alexandra (2020). ‘New NYCHA deal will turn 5,900 units to private developers and raise $1.5B for repairs’, 6sqft.com, February 13.

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Cohen, Lizabeth (2019). Saving America’s cities: Ed Logue and the struggle to renew urban America in the suburban age. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York.

Connor, Tracy (2020). ‘NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio: ‘Where the hell is the federal government?’ Dailybeast.com, March 20.

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In this article Tunde Ajia examines the infrastructure challenges and opportunities arising in Nigeria during a period of unprecedented growth and economic expansion. Tunde undertakes a detailed review of different infrastructure sectors identifying particular sectoral challenges and common cross-cutting themes. Tunde also notes the particular strain that the COVID-19 pandemic is currently placing on Nigeria’s infrastructure. Tunde concludes by calling for an urgent re-examination of a wider range of infrastructure delivery models, including public-private partnerships, in order to leverage developments in innovation and learn from experiences elsewhere in the world.

Over the next decade, the population of Africa is estimated to exceed 1.7 billion – representing over half of the estimated global population growth - and Africa’s population is expected to double by the year 2050. Harnessing Africa’s abundant natural resources to sustainably support this population growth and enable African nations to reach their potential is a critical task but remains difficult and expensive.

A key impediment continues to be the African continent’s infrastructure deficit. The Infrastructure Consortium for Africa (ICA) (2019) suggested that while $100.8 billion of investments were committed to infrastructure in 2018 (an all-time high) this still fell considerably short of the up to $170 billion per annum necessary to close Africa’s infrastructure gap by 2025.

Of the $100.8 billion identified by the ICA as being committed, a majority came from agencies, institutions and national governments such as the World Bank, United Nations and China. In contrast, only 25.7% was pledged by the private sector where, as this article will argue, there is enormous potential for infrastructure investment.

Bringing together all 55 member states of the African Union, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) has been established to highlight the need for further private infrastructure development in the region. The AfCFTA will create one of the largest single free trade areas for the free movement of goods, services, people and investments in the world.

With a market of 1.2 billion people and a combined GDP of $3.4 trillion, this new free market could increase intra-African trade by at least a third while doubling the size of the manufacturing sector and creating millions of new jobs. However, all of this depends on how the individual challenges facing each member state are met.

Nigeria’s economy and infrastructure provision

The provision of social amenities, services, utilities, and physical infrastructure was the sole responsibility of the Nigerian Government during the colonial era and this has generally continued following independence. The private sector has largely not been involved in this part of the economy although this has started to change as inefficiencies in government infrastructure provision have become increasingly apparent.

Studies such as that by Taiwo (2013) have identified these inefficiencies as including a heavy and cumbersome bureaucracy resulting in high cost of delivery, improper planning, political interference, inadequate managerial, human and technical, conceptual, and design skills, lack of accountability and transparency, inappropriate economic settings, as well as inadequate capital and lack of appreciation of free inter-play of market forces of demand and supply. Even before the current COVID-19 pandemic this had already led to a closer examination of infrastructure investment and delivery in the Nigerian economy.

Nigeria provides the quintessential example of the challenges presently facing Africa. It is the most populous country in Africa with a population of 200 million, and according to World Data Lab (2020), over 95 million (48%) were living in extreme poverty by January 2020. Nigeria’s economy is also the largest in Africa (by GDP) at $519 billion but is expected to contract by 2.3% in Q1, and 1.8% in Q2 of 2020. These projections precede the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic and the current oil price war between Russia and OPEC+.

The impact of COVID-19 on Nigeria’s economy

In December 2019, China experienced the outbreak of the Corona virus disease (now shortened to COVID-19) in the city of Wuhan, China. Within a space of three months, the virus had spread to other countries of the world necessitating the declaration of ‘social distancing’ in a bid to stem the rate at which the disease was spreading. Governments all over the world – even those that had relatively few virus cases - had to embark on lockdowns and stay-at-home orders were issued, tests were also simultaneously conducted to identify infected individuals for quarantine.

The aggressive nature of the virus’ spread which necessitated a lockdown of economies has started to have negative impacts on economies to such an extent that economic projections are now being reviewed downwards. The COVID-19 pandemic is expected to significantly negatively impact the world economy, and it is expected to enter a recession in a few months, due to the widespread disruptions brought about by pandemic response measures. According to the IMF (2020), global growth is expected to nosedive from 2.9% in 2019 to -3.0% in 2020, which is lower than during the 2008-09 financial crises. Following this trend, real GDP is expected to contract by -1.6% in 2020, this is nearly 5.2% points lower than what was projected in 2019.

These rapid economic changes reflect the impact of the continuous spread of COVID-19, as well as the sudden drop in the price of oil by about 50% reaching an 18-year low. As a result of this and a lull in most other commodity prices, the world’s financial condition has been tightened in 2020, as investors have withdrawn more than $90 billion from emerging markets as a result of the crises, representing the largest capital flow on record (IMF, 2020).

The leadership of the Nigerian legislature met in the last week of March 2020 to review Nigeria’s 2020 budget estimates (Tabiowo, 2020). Presently, the worst-case-scenario stares Nigerian economic planners in the face with an expected contraction rate of 3.5% in Q2, and 4.6% in Q3, and 5.2% in Q4 all of 2020.

Policy makers in Nigeria therefore face unprecedented economic and health crises as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic therefore has significant ramifications for infrastructure provision in Nigeria. Appropriate and timely policy responses are required, including not just increased public health expenditure to provide necessary emergency health services (including using emergency health infrastructure funds appropriated by the Federal Government) but also broader economic policy.

Nigeria’s infrastructure approach - a central focus on oil

More than ever the future of Nigeria therefore depends on its ability to build and modernize its infrastructure - and Nigerian governments are aware of this. Back in 2015, a 30-year plan was created for the National Integrated Infrastructure Master Plan (NIIMP) (National Planning Commission 2015); the plan focused on core infrastructure development at an estimated cost of $3 trillion. NIIMP resonates with recommendations made in the World Bank (2003) report in which the revered institution underscored the fact that ‘Sound infrastructure development policy setting is a key ingredient for sustainable long-term growth’.

However, in Nigeria, there is a chasm between the country’s ambitious infrastructure agenda and available financial resources. The investment gap is further widened by Nigeria’s rising national debt. Between 2015-18 Nigeria spent $17.84 billion servicing debts (according to the government’s debt management office), representing two thirds of total revenues due to the federal government after all allocations to states and local government. Nigeria’s finance minister Zainab Ahmed, speaking in May 2019, stated that ₦2.45 trillion is being budgeted to service debt in 2020; however, the IMF has predicted this figure could rise significantly to 36% of GDP by 2024.

Nigeria is Africa’s top oil producer and remains heavily dependent on crude oil, which as an entity represents 90% of foreign currency earnings and 70% of government income. Daily crude production in Nigeria has consistently exceeded the 1.7 million-barrel OPEC-approved benchmark (Udo, 2018), to 2.323 million barrels (The Premium Times, 2019). This underscores the fact that the country’s age-old status as a mono-product economy is yet to abate despite concerted efforts to boost agricultural production (Oxford Business Group, 2015) and support industrialization by providing the enabling environment (Gberevbie and Isiave-Ogbari, 2007, Salaudeen, 2019).

Nigeria has the tenth largest crude reserves yet spends $3.5bn yearly on fuel subsidies, equating to four times the total expenditure that could be diverted into building schools and health centers. Further compounding the problem are aging and underperforming refineries. These dilapidated structures built in the 1960s and 1970s continue to operate below capacity; opinion is divided on whether, in the face of declining oil revenues, it is better to rehabilitate them or rebuild from scratch.

Mallam Mele Kyari, CEO of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, speaks of a fresh impetus; predicting that refineries in Port Harcourt, Warri and Kaduna will be refining crude oil at optimum capacity by 2022 (Projects Today 2019). This effort suggests a potential avenue for huge savings that can be allocated to other underfunded sectors in Nigeria.

But how soon will improving the refineries help the oil-dependent economy and subsidy regime? Important legislation, such as the Petroleum Industry Bill, is one potential solution to help unlock investment in this area. Although it has been agreed on by parliament, it has yet to be approved - many stakeholders hope this will occur before the end of 2020.

Other major Nigerian infrastructure challenges and opportunities

Growth in other sectors outside of oil is slow, yet successful diversification is as critical as ever to future growth and prosperity. A step in the right direction has been taken with the Economic Recovery Growth Plan (ERGP), launched in 2016 to create a roadmap that will wean Nigeria off oil revenues and stimulate a business environment conducive to the development of a diversified economy.

The ERGP has resulted in some success; Nigeria has moved up 15 places in the World Bank's Ease of Doing Business Index (ranking 131 out of 190 countries, up 39 places since 2016) (Salaudeen 2019). Further, the economy is beginning to show signs of increasing diversification in some key sectors such as agriculture and consumer goods industry, but structural problems thwart speedy growth in manufacturing, retail and banking sectors.

Unfortunately the Nigerian geographic terrain is also littered with abandoned infrastructure projects. In 2011 the Federal Government established a Projects Assessment Committee which identified and recorded 11,866 projects that have been abandoned for a myriad of reasons.

There is, however, still vast potential for large infrastructure projects within the country, particularly in mainstream sectors such as energy and power, transportation, water, sanitation, healthcare, and education. These are the sectors which form the foundation for socioeconomic development: creating employment, reducing poverty, increasing disposable income, improving the environment and enhancing standards of living.

Electricity infrastructure

For example, Nigeria’s power infrastructure has been often been referred to as a national embarrassment (Ukanwah 2018). In 2014 only 4,000 megawatt hours were generated, when a population of the size of Nigeria’s would be expected to require closer to 15,000 megawatt hours. As a result only 45% of the population has access to the electricity grid which, in any event, highly unreliable. Secondary power systems (mostly diesel-powered generators) are common and most factories rely, at great expense, on their own energy generation.

The absence of reliable electricity power is a major constraint on the cost competitiveness of Nigerian products and stunts development of manufacturing and industrial space. The creation of a national power infrastructure that would deliver efficient and reliable power would result in economies of scale and lower costs. Major investment opportunities, which could be attractive to private sector businesses, exist in upscaling power distribution and increasing power plant usage, both at the macro level and through community-based industrialization projects.

Healthcare infrastructure

The advent of the COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the decayed state of the Nigerian healthcare delivery system and its infrastructure. The present infrastructure is mostly worn and need extensive upgrades having been mostly built around the independence of Nigeria in 1960, and left to rot over the years for lack of maintenance. For instance, the University College Hospital, Ibadan was commissioned in 1957, the Lagos University Teaching Hospital  was commissioned in 1962, and the University of Benin Teaching Hospital was commissioned in 1973. Akinsete (2016) reported that as at 2015, there were more than 3,500 healthcare institutions in Nigeria with about 27% being owned by the public sector.

Nigeria’s healthcare infrastructure has suffered from years of neglect as a result of the Nigerian Government’s nonchalant attitude towards the implementation of maintenance policy. The private sector-owned institutions are priced beyond the reach of the masses, and laws in the sector are hardly enforced. According to Chijioke (2018), the bulk of policies and laws in the healthcare sector lay dormant without implementation, and this is coupled with fragmentation of services, a dearth of medical resources, inadequate and decaying infrastructure, and inequity in resource allocation, as well as the population’s lack of access to healthcare.

Akinsete (2016) highlighted the imperative for Nigerian tertiary healthcare institutions to explore innovative approaches for closing the yawning healthcare infrastructure gap, and that this can be achieved by exploring mutually rewarding partnerships with the private sector to drive healthcare infrastructure delivery projects. Akinsete (2016) further suggested that policy makers in the public sector healthcare institutions should identify bankable expansion projects that will significantly contribute to growth objectives through their alignment with market demand and supply trends. To realise these projects, a public-private partnership structure was suggested, and a suitable framework for selecting suitable private entity partners will also be adopted based on established regulations.     

Transport infrastructure

There are 197,000 km of federal roads in Nigeria, yet only 18% of these are paved with most in poor condition. Rising traffic volumes exacerbate the situation by creating congestion and delays that have predictably adverse economic consequences. Lagos, Nigeria’s largest city, is home to 20 million people. According to BusinessDay (2019), the Lagos State Government estimated in 2015 that living with frequent traffic gridlock in Lagos has an estimated cost of $1.7 billion per annum. Most factories are in the south west away from Lagos and other ports, requiring long distances to be covered in order to reach other parts of Nigeria. An efficient railway system is a potential solution to achieving faster intra-country commerce. Realising this, the government of Nigeria in 2006 approved a US$40 billion 25-year strategic plan for the modernization of rail transportation in Nigeria (Oyefuga and Egbetokun 2007).

Private sector participation is now seen as a necessary prerequisite for development of new transportation linkages. There is some evidence of this in projects such as the Abuja Light Railway System and the new terminal at Abuja’s international airport. Similarly, in 2017 the Nigerian government announced plans to attract private sector investment by awarding reconstruction contracts for 69 highways and arterial roads. And in March 2019 the Minister of Power, Works and Housing, Babatunde Fashola, proposed floating a $27 billion bond to be used on road, rail, aviation and maritime development.

Tax incentive schemes also offer investors other opportunities to contribute to the economy. For example in 2017 a scheme called the ‘Road Trust Fund’ was instituted before being renamed the ‘Road Infrastructure Development and Refurbishment Investment Tax Credit Scheme’ (PWC 2019).  This scheme was created with the objective of incentivising private sector participants to collectively fund road projects through the opportunity to enjoy specific tax credits as well as recoup 100% of costs incurred. There is also the opportunity of tax holidays which have been pre-arranged as part of clauses inserted into eligible infrastructure project contracts.

Congestion in the two ports located in Lagos is compounded by bureaucracy and ageing infrastructure, all of which contributed to losses of $9.7 billion for Nigeria’s maritime hubs in 2018 (Oxford Business Group 2019). The symptoms of these problems include increases in shipping costs; as an example the cost of clearing a 40-foot container in Lagos went up 400% in Q4 2018.

Further traffic delays and gridlock at port access routes affect importers and exporters alike, increasing haulage costs and complicating quality concerns where perishable goods are involved. The Oxford Business Group (2019) estimates that the average annual loss of agricultural products and perishables due to port handling rose to $10 billion in 2018.

New port construction – such as the Bakassi Deep Seaport Project – is now being planned with the help of Chinese investors and public-private partnerships. It is expected that this initiative will reduce the hardship experienced by importers and exporters within the maritime industry.

Agricultural infrastructure

As part of efforts to diversify Nigeria’s economy there is also a particular focus on agriculture. Less than 40% of Nigeria’s 84 million hectares of arable land are currently under cultivation, yet Nigeria is a net importer of foodstuffs. Why is this? A key problem again is the quality of infrastructure provision. Insufficient transportation links between rural areas and urban concentrations of consumers limit access to domestic markets. Furthermore, a lack of storage facilities, unreliable power supply and limited quality control / food safety certification limit the capacity to export to European Union countries or the United States.

Cassava and yams represent over 50% of all Nigerian agricultural production with 50 million tonnes produced in 2016. However, infrastructure provision in the form of affordable transportation and well-equipped processing centres limits the development potential of these products – for example, as processed foods including flour, beer, chips, and glucose.

Water infrastructure

Similarly, Nigeria is blessed with ample water resources (many of its 36 states are named after rivers) however, in 2015 only 19% of Nigeria’s population had access to safe drinking water (The Conversation 2017). A lack of readily available, reliable and safe drinking water combined with poor sanitation and hygiene (only 33% of the population had access to basic sanitation) is estimated to cost Nigeria about $1.3 billion in healthcare and accessibility.

Nigeria’s National Water Supply and Sanitation Policy, approved in 2000, encourages private sector participation and envisages reforms being made at the state level. While this appears a helpful solution, in practice very little has happened.

In 2011 the state announced plans to build ten new wastewater plants with the help of private investors; again these have yet to be completed. It is cause for concern that, in a country with abundant water resources, standards set by the World Health Organization are not being met due to ineffective management of water infrastructure.

More efficient management of water resources is imperative to Nigeria providing the most basic requirements to its citizens. Nigeria must consider a wider range of stakeholders when drafting reforms; drawing in public-private partnerships and private sector investors who can provide the funding, expertise and knowledge required to establish appropriate policies and practices will ensure that successful reforms are designed and put into place.

The scale of Nigeria’s infrastructure challenge and emerging responses

The value of Nigeria’s total infrastructure stock is just 35% of GDP (Deloitte 2018), whereas South Africa boasts a stock worth 87% of GDP and the average for emerging economies is 70%. The scale of Nigeria’s infrastructure underfunding is immense. The World Bank estimates that to fill Nigeria’s infrastructure gaps $14.2 billion will need to be spent per annum for the next ten years (Foster and Pushak 2011).

Currently the government spends $6 billion per annum on infrastructure. However, in order to bridge this gap, it is critical that Nigeria attracts more private sector capital and professional expertise.

Central to attracting overseas investors is the establishment of trust and political stability. The fact that President Buhari is now in his second four-year term and the increasingly business-friendly environment that has emerged since civilian rule returned 20 years ago should support this (Oxford Business Group 2019).

The government’s direct actions to encourage infrastructure investment is also important. For example, in March 2019 the then-Minister for Trade and Development Okechukwu Enelamah announced plans to accelerate infrastructure investment as a key element in increasing revenue generation. He said the government would seek to increase infrastructure spending to reach the $10 billion - $20 billion range over the next 5-10 years.

Minister of Finance , Budget and National Planning, Zainab Ahmed similarly underscored the importance of investment in infrastructure when she outlined that Nigeria “… intend[s] to borrow, both locally and internationally, improve on local borrowing, introduce an infrastructure bond and identify or enhance revenue streams” (Oxford Business Group, 2019). The government would do this, she said, by partnering with other stakeholders to raise funding. The new investment program would offer investors opportunities to capitalize on Nigeria’s appetite for debt as well as long-term benefits arising from greater efficiencies in executing infrastructure improvements.

The potential role of public-private partnerships

At its conference in Cairo in November 2019, the Programme for Infrastructure Development in Africa (PIDA) called for enhanced partnerships between the public and private sectors (Tsedeke 2019) to develop infrastructure projects in industries covering energy, transport, water and ICT.

The benefits of such public-private partnerships (PPPs) are often citied to include value for money (greater efficiencies using private sector skills), faster delivery (using private sector capacity and flexibility), increased investment (the introduction of private sector finance), a longer-term approach (not driven by short-term budget pressures and political tenure), improved service delivery (each partner operating within their sphere of expertise) and private sector growth and stability (secure longer-term investments underwritten by government contracts).

While appealing in theory the PPP approach is not without challenges. In practical implementation developing countries such as Nigeria have reported difficulties in the adoption of PPP including for the delivery of infrastructure projects. Babatunde et al. (2013) identifies eight main challenges affecting PPP infrastructure delivery in Nigeria: inadequate knowledge, poor levels of skills and capacity by public and private sector participants, poor evaluation, poor monitoring and due diligence by governments, non-competitive bidding, signing of contract with no design and evidence of financing, difficulty accessing credit facility from both local and international banks, land acquisition problems, failure of risk allocations between government and the concessionaire; and the politicisation of concessions. Although Nigeria is generally well regarded for its policy-making capacity, the frameworks upon which those policies are based are often weak and are therefore at risk of being sabotaged by the factors identified (Sanni et al. 2015).

It is noted, however, that the main identified drawbacks of PPP are ‘man-made’ and, as such, they are potentially able to be managed through stronger implementation of PPP laws and more effective policy frameworks. For example, it is well established that requiring effective risk management can help reduce the risks associated with the PPP model. In the context of concession contracts, as a particular form of PPP, Sanni et al., (2015) established that effective risk allocation is a critical success factor. While they warn that both the public and private sectors should refrain from embarking on concession contracts without adequate understanding of the merits, disadvantages and critical success factors, they conclude that appropriate frameworks can significantly enhance risk allocation in concession contracts.

There will inevitably be challenges in delivering infrastructure in Nigeria through PPP models and these challenges need to be clearly recognised and provided for. Nonetheless, and in light of the government’s continued inability to otherwise provide the necessary infrastructure for the country’s wellbeing and growth (due to limited human and financial resources), PPPs provide an important alternative mechanism for infrastructure delivery worth considering further.

Conclusion: Nigeria as an economic powerhouse

This article has outlined major infrastructure issues facing Africa, and Nigeria in particular. It has also highlighted opportunities for growth and the many still untapped opportunities for infrastructure investment that will accelerate growth by uniting of the African continent under AfCFTA. Africa has been identified as one of the last frontier markets (Anjarwalla 2018) and as such many investment opportunities are beginning to be realised.

As a latecomer to infrastructure development, Africa can leverage the developments in innovation such as the falling costs of low-carbon technologies. This advantage, coupled with the opportunity to learn from other global regions’ experiences in order to achieve development objectives sooner, could soon create world-class infrastructure and – perhaps – an African renaissance. Nigeria, as the continent’s most populous country boasting the largest GDP, must surely play an integral role in this transformation and has the capacity to become an economic powerhouse.

With the exposure of the global economy to the COVID-19 pandemic, the weaknesses of historic government infrastructure investment (particularly in healthcare) the world over has been exposed. The PPP framework, more than ever, provides a potentially powerful tool for upgrading and expanding infrastructure especially in developing nations such as those in sub-Saharan Africa (including Nigeria). While this paper does identify some pitfalls that will need to be managed, nonetheless PPP models present a significant potentially opportunity to efficiently deliver both healthcare infrastructure and infrastructure across a range of other areas including transportation, energy, and water.    

Tunde Ajia is a programme delivery executive and strategy advisor, providing numerous organisations and governments with advice on strategy for major capital projects, PFI/PPP initiatives, project financing and placement of concessions. He is the founder of Jabiut Development Partners, a UK-based; infrastructure finance and project consulting organisation which is actively involved in major programme delivery.

Tunde holds an MSc in Major Programme Management from the University of Oxford, UK, an MBA from Grenoble Graduate School of Business, France, and an MSc in Project Management from Northumbria University, UK.

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To enter Zirakpur, in the state of Punjab, India, is to be greeted by uneven landscapes of both native rural settlements and gated housing societies sitting side by side in the same city. This article investigates these sharp contrasts of urban transformation and how they have been created through Zirakpur’s recent graduation from village to city.

Zirakpur’s recent growth has occurred as it has become established as a satellite city of Chandigarh. Zirakpur lies on the route that connects Chandigarh to both the National Capital Region of Delhi and other parts of Punjab, and thus has benefitted from the trade and relationships that occur along this economic corridor. According to the 2011 census,  Chandigarh had a  population of 11 million people whereas Zirakpur only had a population of around 95,000. The Municipal Executive Officer of Zirakpur estimates that Zirakpur’s population has now grown to over 3 million whereas Chandigarh has grown at a much lower rate.

Chandigarh and the newly emerged city of Zirakpur are very different cities. Chandigarh was the first planned city of post-independence India and was developed using the modernist principles by Le Corbusier. The city is characterised by an ‘elite core’, where strict building by-laws encourage a low-rise, low-density form and limit the informality common place in most other Indian cities [1]. In practice these controls, coupled with the extensive use of land in Chandigarh for government functions, means that the city is poorly equipped to respond to the burgeoning population growth now being experienced.

Unavailability of land in the free market has encouraged the emergence of dynamic, subaltern settlement patterns in the periphery of Chandigarh spaces where economic, social and transit processes can more freely operate. Zirakpur is an example of a Chandigarh peripheral growth space (other examples  include the towns of Kharar, Bannur, Mohali, Lalru and Mullanpur). While drivers of growth in each peri-urban space are different, [2] planning authorities and developers in Punjab have increasingly focussed on satellite cities due to disillusionment with the restrictive metro-centric core of Chandigarh [3]

Zirakpur started urbanising in the late 1990s as huge tracts of agricultural property were converted to urban land and a new city began to grow. Political patronage played an important role, with a number of politicians prominently involved in the early development of this new urban development site. As other developers came on board too the city become a lucrative hub for private capital.

There was, however, no master plan for the growth of Zirakpur until 2008. Private developments have dominated the city, and the absence of coordination or an active role for the state (including in infrastructure delivery), has resulted in what has been described as a messy patchwork of ‘splintered urbanism’. [4] This has included a focus on high-rise residential development which, despite the environmental benefits that higher density living can produce, [5] has often been poorly designed and constructed.

The Tragedy of Splintering

Through this peri-urban development process Zirakpur is fast becoming Chandigarh’s answer to Gurgaon in Delhi. Gurgaon is a high-rise suburb that flanks the low-rise inner city of Delhi, .

Gurgaon has evolved from being a suburb, offering affordable housing options to the people of Delhi, to a massive commercial centre in its own right that does business worth millions of dollars per month. The growth of Gurgaon has, however, been plagued by significant environmental and social concerns including the risk of extreme monsoonal flooding due to a lack of respect for natural drainage patterns. Srivastava (2015) therefore argues Gurgaon is a “tragic” case of urbanisation and its model should be avoided elsewhere in India.

Zirakpur seems, however, to be repeating many of the errors of Gurgaon. In particular, builders seem to continue to be given a free hand by the state to develop vertical group-housing enclaves. Presently, approximately 60-70 builders dominate the building and construction market of Zirakpur, including several who are also Councillors on the local Municipal Council.

A particular concern that has been expressed by the Zirakpur community is the quality of building construction in the city.[6] It has been alleged that a number of developments fail to respond to the earthquake risks identified in the Chandigarh Disaster Management Plan-2031[7] and may also potentially aggravate flooding of estates during the monsoon.

It has also been contended that in some instances it has been possible to procure false documentation in order to certify allegedly incomplete projects. For example, a number of vertical housing societies in Zirakpur have reported significant plumbing concerns, including sewage treatment plants not being connected due to their high operational cost [8].  Sewage management issues have the potential to not just impact those living in the new vertical communities themselves but also risks the outbreak of water-borne diseases (such as jaundice) among villages and slums in the vicinity due to groundwater contamination.

There is a critical role for the state in ensuring compliance to building regulation laws and infrastructure provision to avoid these types of issues.  This role is, however, dependent on agents of the government or politics operating with independence from the building industry.

In conclusion - cities writing their own scripts

Arguably small and medium cities are “writing their own scripts” in India and there is a need to study their growth and diversity in a more nuanced way and not just explain them in relation to the mega-cities [9].

In the case of Zirakpur, a script for urbanisation was originally written due to the availability of affordable housing and commercial premises close to the restrictive and expensive Chandigarh. More recently the city has also begun to forge an identity of its own that is attracting new businesses and institutions who want to be located in Zirakpur. This includes a perception not just of lower rental costs, but also of strong connection with elsewhere in India and much less extreme parking challenges.[10]

The recent concerns with the quality and strategic planning of growth in Zirakpur suggests, however, that Roy’s “informality from above” thesis also forms part of the script for Zirakpur. Roy (2009:84) contends that informality runs parallel with the formal and legal systems of the state. By making exceptions in a system of planning that is “volatile, ambiguous, and uncertain” informality becomes an integral part of the territorial practices of the state.  

In particular alleged collusion of the builders with the government has potentially created a “leaky” built environment which is marred by the issues of poor quality construction and seepage problems in most of the housing estates and has led to the production of the litigant citizen. Most Resident Welfare Associations (RWAs) in the city are engaged in court battles against their builders for the poor quality housing delivered to them.  These issues are not, of course, unique to Zirakpur, with similar challenges being identified in the Indian vertical cities of Gurgaon[11] and Noida[12] too.

Increasing privatisation in cities such as Zirakpur has led to fuzziness between the role of the private developers and the government in the provision of infrastructure. With the simultaneous presence of both old and new developments, and both under-served and well-served communities, Zirakpur has become a compelling example of splintering urbanism. So long as private capital continues to rule large in the city, it may lead to further fracturing of infrastructures and rising discontent among its citizens. 

Kanchan Gandhi is a postdoctoral research fellow at IISER, Mohali (India). Her research interests lie in identity-politics, urban studies, disaster and climate change studies. The author would like to thank Dr Anu Sabhlok, IISER Mohali for her support and guidance in conducting this research work. She would also like to acknowledge Ms Subhashri Sarkar and Ms. Neha Poonia for their research assistance in Zirakpur.

[1] Roy A. (2009) Why India Cannot Plan Its Cities: Informality, Insurgence and the Idiom of Urbanization, Planning Theory, Volume 8 Issue1.

[2] Dupont, V. (2007) “Conflicting Stakes and Governance in the Peripheries of Large Indian Metropolises – An Introduction”, Cities, 24(2): 89-94.

[3] Bunnell, T and A Maringanti (2010): “Practising Urban and Regional Research Beyond  Metrocentricity”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 34(2): 415-20.  

[4] Graham, S. and Marvin, S. (2002) Splintering urbanism: networked infrastructures, technological mobilities and the urban condition. Routledge

[5] Muggah, R (2019) Cities could be our best weapon in the fight against climate change, World Economic Forum, https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/09/cities-could-be-our-best-weapon-in-the-fight-against-climate-change/

[6] Based on discussions with RWA members and residents of Zirakpur

[7] Chandigarh Disaster Management Plan by the Government of Chandigarh - available at http://chandigarh.gov.in/cmp2031/disaster.pdf accessed on November 12, 2019

[8] Based on discussions with the residents of Zirakpur

[9] Denis, Mukhopadhyaya and Zerah (2012) Subaltern Urbanisation in India, Economic and Political Weekly, Vol XLVII No. 3: 52-62

[10] Interview with Mr Bhattacharya, Head of Karnataka Biotech (which has chosen to locate in Zirakpur). Interview conducted on 12 August 2019

[11] Srivastava, S. (2015). Entangled urbanism: Slum, gated community and shopping mall in Delhi and Gurgaon. OUP Catalogue

[12] Bellman, E (2020) India’s ‘Ghost Towns’ Saddle Middle Class With Debt—and Broken Dreams, Wall Street Journal https://www.wsj.com/articles/indias-ghost-towns-saddle-middle-class-with-debtand-broken-dreams-1579189678?mod=e2fb&fbclid=IwAR05HVXCiPfoeIGom62VGJlZYwubqrLHj9tTOWVdFlNAljj3_16-BqK0-xc

In this article Professor Michael Keith, Director of the University of Oxford’s PEAK Urban Research programme, examines the relationship between technological innovation and urban transformations. Using examples of the defibrillator, the Apple Watch and Uber, Professor Keith’s article reinforces the multiplicity of city change experiences that arise as we balance sharing of the urban commons with a desire to individually prosper

This article is based on a paper presented by Michael Keith to the World Urban Forum on 10 February 2020

As we’ve heard countless times before, technological change disrupts. These disruptions — to society; to behaviours; to the built environment — have uncertain consequences, generating substantial benefits and, also, unexpected challenges. To maximise the former and mitigate the latter, cities must balance forces that pull in different directions; recognise the trade-offs of balancing such demands; and be flexible and astute enough to capture the opportunities technological change can offer.  

This surfaces different forms of urban commons, the collective tangible and intangible resources, like the climate, air quality, open space, and culture, that we all share or utilize. Yet the city depends on the freedoms of individuals to think differently, to innovate; and to experiment, leveraging its density as a means of contact. Equally, in these forms of experimentation, the ability to monetise ideas, practices and this technological disruption mentioned above demands a security by prize of property and market reward. In other words: we need to share, but also, prosper.

Technology disrupts through dislocating the infrastructure of one or more parts of the urban system. But a city is never just a singular system; rather, it is a multiplicity, invariably a system of systems: health systems, economic systems, social systems, systems of flow and metabolic systems. All are interdependent in the urban context, meaning that cities are fundamentally open rather than closed systems. Every piece of the systems themselves is subject to change, which holds massive consequences for what a city looks like, or provides.

These increasing tensions between the commons, individual rights and property can be illustrated by three moments of modern technological advance: the defibrillator, the Apple Watch, and Uber. Each of these objects is a story of disruption, and contain three facets of complex open systems that help us better understand the power of technological change to shape urban futures [1].

Disruption 1: Emergence and the defibrillator

Open systems are characterised by emergence, a concept that crosses the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences. It is the property of complex systems that reconfigures the relations between the constitutive elements of the system itself; individual parts do not hold certain properties, but together as a system, they do. Therefore, emergence qualifies the power of prediction. If we recognise that repetition is the property of stable systems, the attempt to model and project from trend remains a powerful tool for the analysis of human behaviour and identifying pattern — especially in our cities, which are increasingly rich in data. Paradoxically, in the 21st century, the exponential rise in our ability to predict behaviour in real time means that we know more and more about the short term, yet due to the power and pace that disruptive technologies are changing the speed and fundamentals of city logics, we know less and less about the longer term beyond a matter of two to three decades at most [2]. Consequently, the  growth in big data both empowers the new urban sciences and, also, sets horizons on their ability to predict city futures.

Acknowledging that prediction lasts no longer than the stability of the system itself is a matter of scientific accuracy, or, rather, a recognition of the imperative at hand to identify the mathematics of disequilibrium in cities alongside assertions and observations of tendency towards equilibrium in system working [3].  Balancing the power of the former with the humility of the latter is a matter of judgement that invokes questions of scale and temporality: how much will change, and what form will follow? What detail of divergence do we search for, and the length of time over which we measure the urban system? Understanding that emergent systems have the power to undermine their own long-term stability — we can predict, and ultimately end up changing systems entirely — demands an ethical as well as epistemological engagement with real world claims to know the metropolis, and make scientific observations about how we think about urban futures. We have to garner a greater awareness of what is changing our cities, and also, what will be changed.

Over the last decade, new technology and innovation created defibrillators that were cheap enough to be considered for wider public use, and they then rapidly proliferated across multiple locations in cities of much of the globe. Between 2005 and 2013, the number of defibrillators in Japan alone went from just below 11,000 to over 400,000 [4]. That dispersion has huge implications for public health: for every minute that goes by where a victim of sudden cardiac arrest does not receive treatment, their chance of survival decreases by 10%. If defibrillation occurs within 1 minute of the victim collapsing, the victim's survival rate increases to 90%.

The defibrillator consequently disrupts the rhythms of speed in the city and changes the relationship between hospitals and patients suffering major cardiac incidents. This  reflects the increasing importance of public access to defibrillators more than blue light services sending ambulances from hospitals across the surface of the city through commonly congested roads [5]. Viewed through the lenses of emergence, as described, it drastically reconfigures a longstanding part of the urban system (providing emergency services over time and space), and the power relations at play (stationary hospitals and healthcare clinics), thus rethinking the system entirely.

Disruption 2: Path dependency, lock ins and Uber

But one problem that public health systems face is that technology tends to move faster than real estate markets. In the Global North, the geographical spread of primary care facilities can be defined optimally for stroke, cancer or respiratory care, but this definition will always be subject to — and handicapped by — both the optimal distribution of medical real estate and the capacity of new technologies. In China, the liberalization process after 1978 led to the decline of public investment in primary care and a massive increase in private insurance and the savings needed to pay for insurance [6]. But excessive savings diminish consumption, which undermines economic growth, and more recently — for reasons that are both economic and egalitarian — the pooled risk of increased health insurance in China aims to reduce providential savings and increase domestic spending and growth. Over in India, the Delhi city government has taken a more pragmatic approach altogether, adopting the logic of urban squatting to claim the city as a commons for innovative Mohalla clinics, or ‘pop up’ mobile constructions addressing immediate health needs in extemporised structures [7]. The particular histories of China and Europe show divergent ways in which health systems view the city as urban commons but can become locked in to geographically and culturally specific distributions of real estate reflecting existing property logics and temporal rhythms and perpetuate outdated responses to yesterday’s technological fixes.

That brings us to Uber. Likewise, cities globally have been characterised as locked in to automobile ownership, prompting urban sprawl, which lowered densities through suburban flight. Ridesharing apps like Uber are at times seen as promoting solutions to the dependency on private car ownership, but such apps depend in part on the structure (and the path dependencies) of city markets. In unregulated city markets such as Johannesburg and Mexico City, Uber disrupts rapidly; in more regulated markets such as Paris, New York or London, less so. The company itself monetises the app through the temporalities of financialised investment that speculates on the mobilities of future cities; in a sense, they’re guessing (and betting on) how cities will adapt to new forms of mobility. In 2019, Uber recorded the largest-ever single quarterly loss of $5.32 billion dollars. Investors took interest in the propensity of the disruption to monetise different data-driven modes of mobility down the line, mediated by products such as food and services delivered possibly by Uber’s pioneering development of driverless shared vehicles.

Yet as we’re seeing more and more, data is the new oil: its future is pegged in uncertainty and unforeseen costs. Uber’s driverless cars could generate more sprawl if they create comfortable working environments for longer rides, or potentially more dense urban living if they encourage people to value the freedoms of proximity to central city facilities, mediated by easier mobility, creating new environmental challenges that locked-in cities must be ready for [8]. How such mobility futures might shape future cities depends on the manner in which the technologies are regulated and nudge human behaviour of tomorrow’s ‘cityzens’, which leads to the third and final facet of open systems: the behavioural adoption of different technologies.

Disruptor 3: Adoption, commensuration, and the Apple Watch

On March 18, 2018, Elaine Herzberg was alleged to be the first pedestrian mortality of an autonomous vehicle when struck by a self-driving Uber test vehicle in Tempe, Arizona. Driverless cars, of course, generate new ethical dilemmas. How do we calculate their actuarial risk and people’s response to their presence in tomorrow’s cities? How do we value the lives of the jaywalking pedestrians, the wobbling cyclist, and the elderly or young in moral trolley dilemmas for the 21st century when sharing streets with autonomous vehicles? Technological disruption on a scale this great inevitably raises such ethical as well as behavioural and economic questions.

Impacts of technological disruptions depend on how much behaviour changes — or, at times, how much behaviour can be ‘nudged’ to change. The Apple Watch is an example of this; the device nudges people to measure exercise regimes to promote healthy lives. At the same time, private insurance companies are incentivising self-monitoring through such devices. In the UK, one company is offering to pay for a £350 Apple Watch as part of a deal that funds private health insurance and then registers activity data with the company. This all may appear innocent, at least until the data collected by the insurance company aggregates data upwards, but, also, personalises such data downwards, translating it into measures of personalised actuarial risk and premium payment levels for the insurance company. In this context, actuarial risk serves as a rational data calculus for private insurance (don’t forget: data is oil), but also simultaneously resurfaces a public concern for regulation of corporate involvement in public health.

How do we reconcile these two issues: the personal rights of the individual, as well as the commodity value of the big data they contribute to with devices such as the Apple Watch? In part this invokes measurement of different regimes of value and worth, and how we attempt to make them commensurable. How do we prioritise competing interests of mobility, public health, economic prosperity, or alternative measures of social need? The overlap of ethical judgements, economic demands, collective needs and individual rights makes the trade-offs involved in such commensuration visible.

Conclusion

Using these technological disruptions as case studies, complex systems thinking demonstrates why seeing like a city demands recognition of specific geographies and histories, as well as tested path dependencies, or what happens when city systems of the past and present do not resemble future systems. It opens contextual opportunities of place that render bespoke low-tech ‘clumsy’ solutions to ‘wicked’ convoluted urban problems more plausible [9]. Cities of the Global South have the potential to leapfrog the 20th century lock-ins of car-based urbanism and wasteful city metabolisms of water and waste. But equally, varied histories of underdevelopment have different weights in specific parts of the world; alternative visions of ‘the good life’ balance the imperatives of the urban commons — its infrastructure, and regimes of rights and freedoms — in vastly divergent ways.

In other words: context matters. But what these scenarios share is a recognition of the powers of the new urban sciences and the capacity to predict in real time (P); the contingencies of emergence in complex systems (E),  which are adopted differently according to distinct local systems of commensuration (A); and thus emphasize an experimental disposition to urban futures that demands innovative knowledge exchange across urban systems (K). This disposition of ‘PEAK Urban’ creates a framework through which technological change might be harnessed by cities that are reflexive and flexible in their response to disruption, as well as both optimistic and realistic about the propensity for technological change to shape their paths forward [10].

Michael Keith is Professor at COMPAS, University of Oxford, Director of the PEAK Urban Research programme, co-ordinator of Urban Transformations (The ESRC portfolio of investments and research on cities), and co-Director of the Oxford Programme for the Future of Cities.

He was the Director of COMPAS until October 2019, a position that he held for over a decade but has stepped down from until 2023 to focus on the PEAK Urban programme.

His research focuses on migration related processes of urban change. His most recent work is the monograph China Constructing Capitalism: Economic Life and Urban Change (2014). His next, ‘Urban transformations and public health in the emergent city’ will be published in 2020 by Manchester University Press.

[1] Open and closed design. New York: Social Sciences Research Concil, citiespapers.ssrc.org, accessed 25th February 2017

[2] Batty, M. 2013 Urban Informatics and Big Data A Report to the ESRC Cities Expert Group Swindon: ESRC

[3] Urry, J.  (2016) What is the Future? London: Polity; Sennett, R. (2014)

[4] Kitamura, T., Kiyohara, K., Sakai, T., Matsuyama, T., Hatakeyama, T. Shimamoto, Izawa, J., Fujii, T., Nishiyama, C., Kawamura, T. and Iwami, T. (2016). Public-access defibrillation and out-of-hospital cardiac arrest in Japan. New England Journal of Medicine, 375(17): 1649-1659.

[5] Deakin, C.D., Anfield, S. and Hodgetts, G.A. (2018). Underutilisation of public access defibrillation is related to retrieval distance and time-dependent availability. Heart, 104(16): 1339-1343.

[6] Liu, G. G., Vortherms, S.A. and Hong, X. (2017). China's health reform update. Annual Review of Public Health, 38(1): 431-448; Yue, D., S. Ruan, J. Xu, W. Zhu, L. Zhang, G. Cheng and Q. Meng (2017). "Impact of the China Healthy Cities Initiative on Urban Environment." Journal of Urban Health 94(2): 149-157.

[7] Bhan, G. (2019). Notes on a Southern urban practice. Environment and Urbanization, 31(2): 1-19.

[8] The Economist, 2018 Special Report on Driverless Cars March 1st https://www.economist.com/special-report/2018/03/01/autonomous-vehicle-technology-is-advancing-ever-faster, accessed January 12th 2020

[9] Thompson, M. and Beck, M. B. 2014  ‘Coping with change: urban resilience, sustainability, adaptability and path dependence  Future of cities: working paper  London: Foresight, Government Office for Science

[10] Keith, M. PEAK Urban blog; Keith, M. and Santos, A.(eds) (2020) Urban transformations and public health in the emergent city. Manchester: Manchester University Press; Keith, M. (2020) ‘Knowing the 21st century city’ https://www.peak-urban.org/blog/knowing-21st-century-city

With trust in many democratic institutions waning and increasing concentrations of power stifling the democratic process, we need to re-think how we set up and maintain our governance structures to ensure inclusiveness, equality, and efficiency. This article proposes three options cities and municipal authorities should consider as ways to improve equity, distribution of resources, and service delivery to their denizens.

Preface: A Call to Action

This article summarizes our recently released Handbook for Radical Local Democracy (available here). This work is rooted in a simple belief: we think cities and regions need to adopt new “social technologies” (i.e. policy mechanisms that allocate scarce resources) to address some of today’s most pressing challenges.[1] Our Handbook illustrates how three particular social technologies—Quadratic Voting, Quadratic Finance, and Self-Assessed Licenses Sold via Auction—can be put into practice in cities around the world. These mechanisms can make improvements in policy areas as diverse as micromobility (bikes/scooters), participatory budgeting, election funding, and parking—just to name a few.

This work is not merely academic. We are working to develop software platforms for the mechanisms discussed in this article, in partnership with Polco in the United States, as well as Democracy Earth, CONSUL, and others globally. We encourage readers who work in urban policy to get in touch with us for a demonstration ahead of our pilot program later this year.

Introduction: New Social Technologies for Today’s Challenges

Good governance requires a balance between public and private power. Public power can be fair and democratic but, if abused, it can seriously impede individual freedoms (e.g., urban renewal projects of the 1950s and ‘60s in the United States displaced more than 300,000 people, mostly people of color [2]). Private power can be flexible and efficient, but private actors with excessive power can distort the political process itself for their own ends (e.g., Citizens United and the broader struggle for campaign finance reform in the United States).

The politics of the past century have consisted of a long tug-of-war between public and private power—a transition from the New Deal Era to Reagan-era neoliberalism in the United States, with similar trends in many other developed countries. Traditional debate about the role of the public and private sectors too often ignores the dimensions of concentration. What we need now is a fresh perspective that addresses inequitable concentrations of power, wherever they arise.

History offers some clues: During the industrial era, technological disruption placed immense strains on society and hastened the need for new ways of governing. The resultant reforms included the expansion of democracy toward universal suffrage; regulations to end child labor; the rise of unions; the rise of antitrust law; and the beginnings of the welfare state.

These new modes of social organization helped society accommodate and adapt to radical changes in technology. These changes were not “pro-government” or “anti-government”. Rather, they were social innovations based on democratic values. Their common feature was that they pushed power outwards, away from sites of highly concentrated public or private power, and into the hands of individuals and communities. They enabled new, more responsive, and more genuinely democratic institutions able to support technological progress while also maintaining an open and free society. They served as a counterweight against the tendency of new technologies to generate concentrations of power in either government or private industry—and the corresponding tendencies of those concentrations of power to push societies toward anti-democratic modes of government.[3]

By mixing and balancing public and private power in new ways, while empowering communities, the reformers of the first part of the 20th Century bolstered civil society and helped the United States navigate—however imperfectly—many of the challenges that pushed other societies into totalitarianism.

We need similar social innovations today. In recent years, “social technologists”—those of us who think about how policy mechanisms can better allocate resources—have been developing new ways of striking an attractive balance between public and private power. A few of these ideas are the subject of this article. While the mechanisms may be unfamiliar, the values and the way of thinking behind them should not be.

Technology 1: Quadratic Voting

Quadratic voting (QV) is a twist on normal voting procedures which allows voters to express their wishes with more precision.[4] It lets voters trade some of their overall voting power for the right to “speak louder” on the issues they deem most important. The process is simple: voters receive a certain number of “voice credits” which they can allocate across a set of ballot issues and the cost to cast a certain number of votes is the square of the amount of votes. Two votes? That’ll be four voice credits. Three votes? Nine voice credits. And so on.

A growing body of academic work and real-world cases [5] indicates that quadratic voting captures more precise and usable information than simple voting. QV also furthers equality and dignity by giving small minorities with strong preferences the possibility of prevailing democratically against an apathetic majority.

We have begun testing out QV in the real world. For example, in 2019 the Democratic Caucus of the Colorado House of Representatives used quadratic voting to decide which spending bills to prioritize [6]. Following this experiment, we have begun working with public agencies and private companies to bring quadratic voting to life around the world [7].

One of the greatest risks with QV is the potential for “agenda gaming” because users allocate credits across a menu of options, the process by which that menu is shaped really matters. This concern suggests that QV may be more appropriate for traditional elections (e.g., many candidates running for mayor or president) and less appropriate for citizen referenda on particular topics.

We think QV can be applied in almost any decision-making setting where intensity of preference matters. To get started, here are a few examples that cities could consider:

• Small group decisions by town councils, corporate boards, or cooperatives: Instead of taking simple up-down votes on a series of issues, collect the issues on a single ballot and present this ballot to the voting members. After all the issues have been discussed and debated, have the voting members vote privately, and submit their votes simultaneously. (If there are rules such as bylaws governing how decisions need to be taken, simply conduct a quadratic vote, and then “endorse” the results through a conventional majority vote per the bylaws.)

• Public elections: QV can be used in any public election where citizens are choosing among several options. Several cities and states in the United States have begun using ranked choice voting (RCV) for many types of elections [8]. We think that QV provides a slight improvement over RCV because it allows citizens to express the intensity, not merely the order, of their preferences. QV would reduce political polarization in voting for city, state, and national leaders, as it more accurately represents the preferences of citizens.

Technology 2: Quadratic Finance

The funding of public goods is a foundational problem in economic policy, especially for local governments. A 2018 paper [9] by Vitalik Buterin, Zoe Hitzig, and Glen Weyl proposed a new mechanism design for funding public goods, which a popular economics blog referred to as “quite amazing and a quantum leap in public-goods mechanism design”[10]. Put simply, Quadratic Finance (QF) uses a new kind of funding formula to solve both the “information problem” (the government may not know how much of a certain good to provide) and the “free rider” problem (individuals often have incentives to contribute less than is optimal) which are inherent in many public good situations.

We think that QF can improve upon current funding methods in any setting where a city wants to elicit participant preferences about specific dollar amounts (i.e., participatory budgeting) or wants to administer a public matching fund for a particular purpose. Here are a few ideas that cities can consider:

• Infrastructure investments or repairs: QF has the potential to replace central analysis of infrastructure investment needs. A city or other authority could post a detailed list of possible infrastructure spending projects on a public portal. Citizens could then make pledges to the proposals that most appealed to them. The public budget would be allocated as a quadratic finance matching fund to the pledges.

• Journalism: By allowing citizens to decide which journalistic outlets they most wished to support, the government could subsidize journalist outlets without “picking winners” (or undermining journalism’s ability to be critical of politicians).

• Campaign finance: A matching fund could be set up to subsidize candidates’ campaigns. The quadratic financing mechanism would ensure that candidates with a very narrow base of support – such as those with a small number of wealthy backers – would receive minimal public financial support, whereas those with a wider support base of small-scale donors would receive greater levels of public financial support for their campaigns. For instance, New York City currently administers a small matching fund for public elections, which we think could be further improved if it were funded according to QF [11].

Technology 3: Self-Assessed License Sold via Auction

The Self-Assessed License Sold via Auction (SALSA) license system solves the “black market” and “holdout” problems that are likely to develop when a city government allocates scarce resources according to a first-come-first-served or regular auction method [12]. For instance, the Wall Street Journal reported in 2011 that New York City food cart permits were sold for just $200 to permit-holders, who in turn commanded prices in excess of $10,000 in the private market [13].

Under a SALSA system, potential license-holders bid at an initial auction and then hold their license with a self-assessment value posted publicly online. The holder pays an annual (or monthly, or weekly) fee to the city, as a percentage of their declared value (similar to a property tax). In addition, new potential holders can claim a license by simply declaring a higher value in the online marketplace (current holders would have the options to match the higher bid in order to hold on to their license). Because the threat of forced sale may reduce incentives to make long-term investments, SALSA can implement an “investment fee credit” and/or simply lower the fee assessed so that license-holders capture the returns to any long-term investments they make [14]. 

In this sense, SALSA resembles a continuous auction. SALSA advances efficiency by allocating licenses to those who value them most, but it also furthers equality: new entrants with productive ideas can’t be blocked by “lazy” license-holders, and the increased revenue from the SALSA fee can fund progressive social services.

Cities committed to social equity may be concerned that using SALSA will exclude low-income groups because it allocates resources via ability-to-pay. To remedy this, cities can also choose to set some licenses aside or scale-up bid amounts for lower-resource, historically-disadvantaged groups if ability-to-pay generates undesirable outcomes.

We think SALSA can improve equality and efficiency in almost any domain of urban life where cities need to allocate a scarce public resource. Below we will discuss in depth two of our favorite examples:

1.      Long-Term Street Parking: Many municipalities offer long-term resident-only parking permits, which allow residents to park for longer periods of time than standard public parking (e.g., two-hour parking). Unfortunately, residential parking permits are frequently either free [15] or cheap [16]. This mechanism runs the risk of allocative inefficiency: for a fixed number of parking spaces/permits, an arbitrarily low fee is unlikely to allocate the permits to those who value them most. We recommend that municipalities use a SALSA mechanism — open to residents and non-residents alike — to improve allocative efficiency. It’s easy to imagine, for instance, that non-residents who work in a given municipality may value a parking space more than a resident who already has one car and has just purchased a second one.

Policymakers may have social equity concerns. Many low- and middle-income families rely on affordable parking to support themselves economically, so policymakers may worry that a SALSA will simply allocate parking permits to a city’s wealthiest residents. To address this, policymakers could set geographic quotas for the permits: i.e., permits allow the holder to park within a certain two-block area of the city, ensuring that households in the area will be most likely to bid. And, insofar as people of similar income levels tend to live near each other, low- and middle-income households will largely be bidding against similarly-situated households for permits.

2.      Micromobility (bikes and e-scooters): Cities across the world are facing regulatory challenges related to micromobility (i.e., bikes and scooters that provide “last mile” mobility solutions). Implementing a fixed cap on the number of vehicles allowed would risk an undersupply problem (i.e., how can a municipality know exactly how many scooters its citizens demand?). However, because micromobility companies are often well-funded and pursuing network effects, cities that do not regulate supply risk becoming flooded with unused vehicles taking up valuable public space and making urban life unpleasant [17]. Some cities are considering “dynamic caps,” whereby the number of vehicles each company can deploy expands and contracts according to the “usage rate” of the vehicles[18]. We think that a SALSA mechanism could further enhance the effectiveness of a dynamic cap. Under our proposed solution, companies would purchase vehicle licenses at auction from the city and then would engage in the self-assessment and exchange process that we have described in detail above — the firms could reallocate vehicle licenses among themselves in an online marketplace and would pay a yearly holding fee based on their self-assessed value. The dynamic cap would be based on the city’s overall usage rate, rather than the usage rate of any one particular company.

Conclusion: Join the Movement

We hope this article has inspired you to brainstorm more ideas and applications for the mechanisms we have discussed. We firmly believe that the best policy ideas are produced by engaged citizens who understand the challenges of their cities firsthand. For democracy to function, everyone needs to have a voice, and everyone needs to be encouraged to engage with civic processes that allow collaboration across difference.

To revitalize democracy, we desperately need updates to our basic mechanisms of collective decision-making and resource sharing; that is what our ideas strive to achieve. If you’re interested in learning more about how QV, QF, and SALSA can restructure urban life or in joining our movement, please get in touch! More information is available at RadicalxChange.org or reach out at info@radicalxchange.org to get connected.

Matt Prewitt (@m_t_prewitt) is the President of RadicalxChange Foundation (@RadxChange). Paul Healy (@Paul_A_Healy) is a student at Yale Law School and member of the Governance team at RadicalxChange Foundation.

[1] This article and the associated Handbook draw heavily (but not exclusively) from Eric A. Posner & E. Glen Weyl, Radical Markets (2018).

[2] Katie Pierce, Lab Report: Mapping the Displacement From 'Urban Renewal', CityLab (Dec. 18, 2017), https://www.citylab.com/equity/2017/12/lab-report-how-urban-renewal-displaced-thousands/548621/.

[3] See generally Eric A. Posner & E. Glen Weyl, Radical Markets (2018).

[4] Steven Lalley & Eric Glen Weyl, Quadratic Voting: How Mechanism Design Can Radicalize Democracy (Dec 24, 2017), 1 American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings, https://ssrn.com/abstract=2003531.

[5] David Quarfoot et al., Quadratic Voting in the Wild: Real People, Real Votes (unpublished manuscript) (Mar. 21, 2016). https://ssrn.com/abstract=2755844.

[6] See, e.g., A New Way of Voting That Makes Zealotry Expensive, Bloomberg (May 1, 2019), https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-01/a-new-way-of-votingthat-makes-zealotry-expensive.

[7] E.g., The Presidential Hackathon in Taiwan allows citizens to vote on which technology initiatives receive government grants via QV. Official site of the Taiwan's 2019 Presidential Hackathon, https://presidential-hackathon.taiwan.gov.tw/en/. In addition, the technology companies Democracy Earth. PolCo, CONSUL, and deora are building QV platforms for citizen engagement.

[8] FairVote, Where Ranked Choice Voting Is Used (visited Jan. 17, 2020), https://www.fairvote.org/where_is_ranked_choice_voting_used.

[9] Vitalik Buterin, Zoe Hitzig & Eric Glen Weyl, Liberal Radicalism: A Flexible Design For Philanthropic Matching Funds (unpublished manuscript) (Dec. 2018), https://ssrn.com/abstract=3243656.

[10] Alex Tabarrok, The Liberal Radicalism Mechanism for Producing Public Goods, Marginal Revolution (Sep 27, 2018), https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2018/09/liberal-radicalism-mechanism-producing-public-goods.html.

[11] New York City Campaign Finance, https://www.nyccfb.info/program/how-it-works.

[12] Eric A. Posner & E. Glen Weyl, Property Is Only Another Name for Monopoly, 9 Journal of Legal Analysis 51–123, (Spring 2017); Anthony Zhang & Glen Weyl, Depreciating Licenses (unpublished manuscript) (2019), https://anthonyleezhang.github.io/pdfs/ownership.pdf.

[13] Prices for Food-Cart Prices Skyrocket, Wall Street Journal (Mar. 9, 2011), https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704758904576188523780657688

[14] See page 68 onward in Eric A. Posner & E. Glen Weyl, Property Is Only Another Name for Monopoly, 9 Journal of Legal Analysis 51–123 (Spring 2017), https://academic.oup.com/jla/article/9/1/51/3572441.

[15] E.g., Boston Considers Charging for Residential Parking Permits, NECN (Jun. 29, 2019) https://www.necn.com/news/new-england/Boston-Considers-Charging-for-ResidentialParking-Permits-486985971.html.

[16] E.g., Request a Residential Parking Permit, City of Cambridge MA, https://www.cambridgema.gov/iwantto/requestresidentparkingpermit.

[17] For a rather extreme example, see, e.g., Alan Taylor, The Bike-Share Oversupply in China: Huge Piles of Abandoned and Broken Bicycles, The Atlantic (Mar. 22, 2018), https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2018/03/bike-share-oversupply-in-china-hugepiles-of-abandoned-and-broken-bicycles/556268/.

[18] Polina Marinova, Lime Investor Sarah Smith: It’s ‘Inevitable’ That E-Scooters Are Coming to Every Major Market, Fortune (Feb. 7, 2019), https://fortune.com/2019/02/07/%20lime-funding-sarah-smith-bain-capital-ventures/

Circular economy thinking has become a central part of the global sustainability discourse. Recently this has included the emergence of circular economy ‘hubs’. This article looks at what these hubs are and the role they might play in achieving a circular economy transition. This article draws on the authors' recent pro-bono research for Scion - a New Zealand Government Crown research institute - on the potential for indigenous co-designed circular economy hubs in New Zealand. [1],[2]

The current global economic model is predominantly linear: resources are extracted, processed, consumed, and disposed of as waste.

From an economic perspective, a linear economy model remains viable so long as a supply of resources persists, and the social and environmental impacts of extraction are deemed acceptable. However, given that we operate in a world with finite resources and consumption continues to increase, the existing model is rapidly reaching its natural limits.

At some point the natural environment will simply not be able to continue to satisfy our demand for resources.  The circular economy idea is a potential response to the limitations of the linear economic model.

Leading circular economy advocacy organisation, the Ellen Macarthur Foundation, suggests that the circular economy is based on three fundamental principles: designing out waste and pollution, keeping resources in use, and restoring natural systems. [1]  

As an economic model, the circular economy not only tries to reduce environmental damage, but also promises broader opportunities and socio-economic benefits 

The current global regulatory and economic framework does not however necessarily favour the circular over the linear, in part because negative linear externalities - such as carbon emissions and extraction of natural capital – are often not adequately accounted for in the market. Nonetheless governments and private companies around the world are purporting to commit to a circular economy approach.

The circular economy can encompass a multitude of products and industry sectors. While waste management is maybe the most obvious sector for the circular economy, there are a range of other sectors in which circular economy thinking by smart design and material choice might also be applied. This includes sectors as diverse as electronics, healthcare, energy, food and additives, or green chemicals.

The emergence of circular economy hubs

One of the outcomes of this growing global interest in circular economy principles has been the emergence of physical spaces that provide resources and services to enable the development of circular economies. Commonly referred to as ‘circular economy hubs’, this sector is undergoing rapid development, and is characterised by a rich diversity of actors, structures, social values, and sectors serviced.

The intention of circular economy hubs is to operationalise sustainable and circular material loops. They can provide the practical means to move beyond traditional conceptions of reuse, repurposing and sharing, to address more fundamental questions of consumption  (e.g. by shifting values from status and fashion to frugality/sufficiency and functionality).

Circular economy hubs are intended to facilitate responses to so-called “wicked problems” of resource use, that might otherwise be challenging to implement

Circular economy hubs typically fall in to one of four categories. The first are hubs that focus on industry and community outreach by showcasing technologies. These tend to operate on a non-commercial basis, with the hub’s impact on society – rather than its capacity to make a profit – being the main outcome.

The highly-regarded “La Fàbrica del Sol” in Barcelona, which invites visitors and groups to experience the sustainable and circular principles for buildings and resource management first-hand, is an example of this model.

La Fàbrica del Sol is a demonstrative environmental education building, supported by the Barcelona City Council. It communicates ideas about environmentally conscious, waste-reducing architecture to the general public by letting them view and interact with an operational building that includes advanced circular feature such as a geothermal heat pump, natural ventilation and a vertical garden.

The second category of circular economy hubs emphasise business networking and knowledge sharing. Again these are non-commercial and are generally fully funded by government, participating industries or academia. These might have a physical space, to meet for events and workshops, but their primary focus is on developing and disseminating resources on circular economy practices and facilitating cooperation between entities working in the circular economy.

The “Bloom” network, which operates in a range of EU countries to boost bioeconomy research and innovation, provides an example of this approach. The Bloom project is comprised of five hubs spread out across several regions of Europe. While the Spanish and Polish hubs focus on food and agriculture, the Austrian & German hubs concentrate on innovative circular materials, the Dutch hub on bio-chemicals and bio-plastics, and the Nordic hub on wood-based products.

The Bloom network hubs work in conjunction with each other to provide co-creation workshops and outreach materials. The project aims to establish a far-reaching bioeconomy community and avoid fragmentation of knowledge, action and awareness.

The third type of circular economy hub is the physical maker and work space. Unlike the first two typologies this category of hub is normally capable of generating an income (albeit modest) by providing equipment and space for companies and individuals investigating circular economy practices.

For example, OpenCell in London is a collection of shipping containers, each hosting a start-up that conceptualizes and tests their recycled or bio-derived products onsite. The rent is subsidized and the agglomeration of bioeconomy entrepreneurs is beneficial for idea sharing and seen as a benefit to the wider community and society. 

The fourth category of circular economy hubs are those that provide physical pilot plant and production facilities (including so-called ‘slow factories’). They work either as testing facilities which allow piloting and scale-up of technology or host a range of start-ups with actual production capacity. While this type of hub has the capacity to operate on a fully commercial basis, they may also have some degree of reliance on grants, donations or volunteer work.

An example of this type of circular economy hub is Plant Chicago. Plant Chicago is a 93,500 sq. ft former meat packing plant that hosts over a dozen food businesses in a hub dedicated to inhouse circularity. These businesses produce their own individual products while harnessing synergies from mutual waste utilisation, (eg. using spent grain from the on-site brewery to grow gourmet mushrooms in the building’s repurposed cool store). Plant Chicago itself is a non-profit organization, but the hub building is owned by a commercial property developer.

The industries that circular economy hubs focus on

The choice of hub design depends on the available space, the local resources available, the regional economy, the regulatory environment and, of course, the particular industries being targeted. 

The availability of capital is often a defining factor. For example, while plastic, textile and chemical production hold significant economic and environmental potential they tend to require more complex machinery and less commonly known technologies. Whereas for health and personal care, products can range from simple nature derived balms to highly bio-engineered microorganisms, hence the capital intensity varies substantially.

Our research suggested that, to date, most hubs have specialised across multiple industry sectors and relatively few hubs only work in one sector

The diversification of sectors may reflect the potential synergies that exist including where multiple waste streams are received and utilised (which is more likely if multiple sectors are involved). There is, however, a trade-off with the machinery and knowledge expertise required where a larger number of sectors are addressed by a hub.

Hub outreach as a central design feature

Our research also reinforced that a particularly common feature of hub design is providing for outreach on concepts and practices of the circular economy. More than 80% of the hubs that we analysed included a broader engagement component (although there was considerable variation in the form of this outreach).

A common example of targeted outreach is curated employee training and workshops for government and business actors. For example, the London Waste and Recycling Board trains London Borough officers to become “champions” of the circular economy by sponsoring online training and attendance at the Circular Economy 100 Acceleration Workshop. This has led to staff embedding circular economy practices in new local housing developments.

Beyond providing an educational service, encouraging industry professionals to attend circular economy workshops or training can also contribute to building a circular ‘community of practice’ and enabling networks of circularity champions within different industries. Communities of practice can be particularly valuable for helping smaller scale businesses to participate in circular economy practices and keep economic value within local communities.

Circular economy hub outreach can also involve communicating the value of circular practices to the broader public.

Most hubs we researched included some form of public outreach in their programming

This can include facilitating tours and visits, running workshops and classes, or simply providing a venue for general community events. This recognises that the transition to a circular economy is as much about societal changes in consumption habits and daily waste behaviours as it is about technological change. Hence, the raison d'etre for many hubs is ensuring the benefits are shared rather than privatised and inspiring communities to become local co-producers and active neighbours and citizens.

Community is, of course, not homogenous and it is important that circular economy hubs respond to local context. This can not only reduce barriers to community involvement, but can also help hubs benefit from unique local knowledge and understanding .

For example, Scion’s Te Ōhanga hub program in New Zealand seeks to engage local Māori stakeholders in circular economy projects in the forestry sector. The Te Ōhanga hub program draws on existing relationships with tangata whenua in regional New Zealand to design research projects, educational programming, and employment opportunities. This will not only help the hubs become part of the communities in which they are located but also provides a unique avenue to engage with first culture approaches to circular economics and resource use.

Moving from concept to action

The circular economy is a leading concept in contemporary environmental policy and a range of governments and businesses around the world have now committed to reforming resource use processes using circular economy thinking.[4] While the increasing interest in circular economy thinking is promising, there is always the risk of it just becoming another “buzz word”.

The implementation of circular economy hubs provides a potential approach to ensure that the circular economy narrative is matched by action. A range of design features and choices exist to enable the hub to be right for the context. Through careful, case-specific design it is possible that circular economy hubs can help transition to a society more focussed on considerate consumption and significantly reduced material and carbon footprints.

Jillian Neuberger is a recent graduate of the University of Oxford's MSc in Environmental Change and Management, and a professional dedicated to sustainable development solutions. Jillian's areas of focus include natural resource management, marine ecosystems, and environmental public policy. 

Till Weidner is a PhD candidate at the University of Oxford’s Department of Engineering Science investigating the environmental benefits of combining urban agriculture with organic waste management. He is also passionate about a community driven sharing economy for private sufficiency and public well-being.

Ed Steane is reading an MSc in Sustainable Urban Development at the University of Oxford. Ed’s background is in environment law and policy and is also currently the Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford Urbanists Magazine.

[1] Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development “Circular Bio-economy Models and Practices - An Overview” 2019, Available at: https://9cd84829-b277-4a58-919f-686ed83bf178.filesusr.com/ugd/a200fc_50f0e97898d54ff98b26d4f623c07cd8.pdf. The Oxford Institute for Sustainable Development, now known as Six Degrees – Oxford Consultancy for Sustainability, is a think-tank run by University of Oxford students that provides governments, NGOs and corporates with innovative, sustainable solutions.

[2] Scion specialises in research, science and technology development for the forestry, wood product, wood-derived materials, and other biomaterial sectors and is seeking to transition New Zealand to a circular bioeconomy through thinking and practice. For more information on Scion see: https://www.scionresearch.com/.

[3] Further details available at: https://www.ellenmacarthurfoundation.org/circular-economy/concept.

[4] For a further summary of how circular economy thinking is being incorporated into modern environmental policy, University of Oxford academic Dr Kate Raworth’s recent book “Doughnut economics: seven ways to think like a 21st-century economist” (Chelsea Green Publishing, 2017) provides an accessible introduction.

This article by Dr Binti Singh focusses on the so-called ‘Southern turn’ in urbanism studies by looking to second and third tier cities in India. Dr Singh examines the influence of Government ‘smart cities’ policy, technology-driven consumerism and popular media on the development of these cities. In a context of extremely rapid urbanisation in India, Dr Singh identifies the paradox that as these cities become more identifiable in Indian urban life, they also risk becoming more homogenous. Dr Singh opens the door to a new type of theoretical framework for this type of city – a framework that celebrates individuality and uniqueness as an essential character of rapidly urbanising place.

The literature on global cities is abundant but until recently most of it has been in relation to cities of the developed North.  Rapidly urbanising second and third tier cities of India have now, however, grabbed scholarly attention propelling a ‘Southern turn’ in urban theory. The massive urban transformations currently underway throughout such cities calls for new understanding that in turn will help expand the frontiers of urban theory. These cities respond differently to the homogeneising forces of globalisation, advanced capitalism and new modes of governance. The urban (cultural, spatial, economic and political) transformations witnessed in these cities are recent in origin and cannot be fully understood deploying existing urban theories.

India does not live in villages anymore. More than 370 million Indians now live in urban areas, with urbanisation increasing from 27.81% in 2001 to 31.16% in 2011.[1] This means urban India is adding almost four times the population of Australia every decade. It is expected that India’s urban population will be almost 600 million (40% of India’s total population) by 2030. The rate of growth is double that of the rural population and it is expected that India’s urban population will surpass the country’s rural population by 2039. [2]

Most of this increase in India’s urban population is due to migration and reclassification (56% of growth) rather than natural population growth.[3] Analysis by the Indian Town and Country Planning Organisation found that a rapidly growing number of rural areas are attaining urban characteristics and been designated as towns. Reclassification resulted in the number of towns in India increasing from 5161 towns (3799 statutory towns and 1362 census towns) in 2001 to 7935 towns (4031 statutory towns and 3894 census towns) in 2012.[4]

Clearly, the urban turn in India had happened. Small and medium towns (SMT) in India (often labelled interchangeably as second and third tier cities) are the emergent urban reality of India with growing levels of consumerism, widespread use of digital technologies and satellite communications, global linkages and growing aspirations.

Urbanism in India today is inspired by global symbols, models and aspirations to be world class cities, global cities and – most recently - smart cities

For example, the Indian Government launched a Smart City Mission (SCM) in 2015. The SCM program was launched in second tier cities of India and envisaged a shift from the perceived ‘indiscipline’ and ‘messiness’ of existing cities to new technology-driven city utopias and imaginations. Technologies like artificial intelligence, internet of things, robotics, big data are deployed with a vision of a new type of city governed and run through constantly collected data.

The 2018 Union budget set out to build 100 smart cities using state-of-the-art systems and technology. This offered an urban transition opportunity for SMT cities that have previously been largely neglected in the urban narrative of India. The 100 smart cities declared under the SCM are promoted as imagined urban forms such as Smart Industrial, Smart Finance, Smart Heritage, Smart Eco city, all of which attempt to appropriate and shift the existing urban realities of these cities (only two of the cities were to be built from scratch). The selection of the first smart 25 cities showed an interesting pattern as most of them were projected to be part of large urban agglomeration in next few decades.

At the same time there has also been a cultural transition in consumption patterns in Indian SMT. India accounts for 10% of global smartphone sales and has a larger mobile app market than the United States.[5] Amazon report that more than 70% of their business in India comes from small towns, resulting in the company setting up dozens of new distribution centres.[6] Companies like Flipkart and other ecommerce companies are working out the intricacies of sending millions of shipments to customers in smaller towns and cities, chasing down the next 100 million internet users in small towns. Digital India and the power of the internet, satellite television and telecommunications are spreading new awareness and demands while also creating a new class of consumers.

SMT also now form the bulk of the audience of the Hindi television and entertainment industries. The success of films like Toilet Ek Prem Katha, Mukkebaaz, Tanu Weds Manu – all set in the ‘not-so-palatable’ SMT of India are an indicator of this trend. Consumption patterns and lifestyles of the hinterland are becoming important determinants of content for the entertainment industries tucked away in faraway big cities like Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata and Chennai.

This media trend has helped give the Indian SMT greater prominence in mainstream popular culture. The social groups and communities living in SMTs naturally want their entertainment content to be delivered in a language and format that is relatable.

The rise of a new generation of consumers with different educational backgrounds, increased disposable income and new cultural icons more rooted in the vernacular has led to massive changes in consumption of media.

It is evident that technology - especially digital technologies – are significantly altering India’s urban story in many ways. Yet tech-driven city utopias of the type encouraged by the SCM, coupled with rising changing consumer behaviour, opens a Pandora’s box of unanswered questions and contradictions. The SMT narrative stresses that each city must capitalise on its own strengths and uniqueness, while at same time putting them cities in competition with each other based on centrally determined parameters.

Indian cities face a paradox; they must remain unique yet respond to all-pervasive technology driven dictates of urbanisation

Governments might need to rethink current paradigms of urban planning in order to engage urban communities with India’s emerging urban realities, capitalise on new opportunities and highlight alternative cost-effective and sustainable solutions to growing urban challenges.

There is an imminent need for a new theoretical framework drawing from the experiences of this rapidly urbanising landscape discussed above. This landscape is generating new interest and possibilities for urban theorisation including peri-urbanisation, inner city regeneration, urban economies as spaces of informal enterprise, resilience, subaltern urbanism, and resurrection of place-based cultural identity.

Promising future urban pathways lie in embracing the local diversity of cities in the face of a universal model of globalisation, neoliberal capitalism, and technologically driven urban utopias. The sociocultural diversity and its spatial implications have economic and practical bases too, which influence it and in turn get affected. Local diversity demonstrates a much more complex microcosm, which renders the contemporary city as a place of constant vibrancy, innovation, and social change.

Dr Binti Singh is an urban sociologist/ theorist and holds a PhD. in urban studies and an M.Phil in Planning and Development from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Bombay) Mumbai, India.  Dr Singh has authored three books Culture, Place, Branding and Activism which is an ethnographic study on Lucknow, the capital of Uttar Pradesh; The Divided City Ideological and Policy Contestations in Contemporary Urban India (co-authored with Dr Mahendra Sethi) both published in 2018. Her third book Smart City in India: Laboratory, Paradigm or Trajectory (co-authored with Manoj Parmar) by Routledge UK will be released in November 2019. Dr Singh is currently faculty at KRVIA,Mumbai, India, is a  guest columnist with the Business World Smart Cities magazine and is an Associate Editor of the Oxford Urbanists.  

[1] Ministry of Urban Development (2011). India’s Urban Demographic Transition: The 2011 Census Results-Provisional. New Delhi: JNNURM Directorate and National Institute of Urban Affairs, pp. 2–4.

[2] Census of India (2011). Provisional Population Totals-2011, Paper–II, Vol–II. New Delhi: Census of India, p. 1.

[3] Mckinsey. (2010). India’s Urban Awakening: Building Inclusive Cities Sustaining Economic Growth. New Delhi: Mckinsey Global Institute, pp. 13–35.

[4]TCPO (2012).  Data Highlights (Urban) based on Census of India. New Delhi: Town & Country Planning Organisation, pp. 1–19.

[5] Sinha, Praveer. The New Age Testament-Roti Kapra Makaan and Internet, Guest Column, BW Smart Cities World Feb- March 2018, pp 46

[6] In an interesting article Mofussil.com in the Economic Times magazine dated January 21-27, 2018, one finds reference to the numerous ecommerce companies that are catering to the burgeoning demands of these faraway places

In this article Emilio Caja and Barbara Russo investigate conceptions of space in Naples. The article draws on historical literature, as well as the authors’ contemporary field research in Naples, to examine the shaping of space in the city over time.

The authors identify how emerging conceptions of space can change engagement and political representation, presenting new opportunities (and challenges) for the city. In the context of nascent civil movements around the world (including protests in Hong Kong and ongoing global climate strikes), the article provides insights into how urban space can be a tool for communication and engagement.

Emilio is currently reading for an MPhil in European Politics and Society at the University of Oxford. Barbara is studying philosophy at the University of Milan and is also a visiting student at the Sorbonne University in Paris.

To understand a city – its politics and its institutions – we need to begin from the space in which it is born and that it contributes to shape. Space, differently from place, is never simply a set of things present in a certain geographical context, but always a synergy between elements that actively live and model it. In general, the city is identified by this synergy and it is precisely for this reason that each city represents always a unique experiment.

Nevertheless, we must think about the precariousness of these experiments and about the forces that try to impose development models in contrast with the needs of the citizens. In fact, the more local administrations incentivize urban development projects driven by interests of third parties – namely foreign investors – the more it becomes difficult for the citizens to exercise a real right to the city [1].

Moving from the idea that the relation with others and with the group always and directly depends on the space we live in [2], the comprehension of the city requires a reflection on which housing model, and thus which lifestyle, are embodied in cities and neighbourhoods. In this sense, our analysis considers that the experience of an individual is above all a collective experience that needs to be investigated in the daily-life practices, singular and plural. In this way it is possible to discern why and how some of these practices survive urban systems that try to suppress them. 

In Naples, a series of occupations at the beginning of the 2010s are illustrating a path towards a free and inclusive citizen joint-participation. The reconversion of what were previously abandoned spaces, that become open spaces that spontaneously take on the territorial difficulties of Naples, can enrich the knowledge of contemporary practices of collective auto-determination. In particular, the dialogue between social movements and the local administration led to the definition of the judicial category of common goods, which goes beyond the classic definitions of both public and private property. Finally, these experiences show how the care for a common space is a political choice in contrast with the economic and moral logics of neo-liberalism. 

The socio-economic context: Benjamin’s analytical framework 

The Neapolitan socio-economic context has historically always shown a deficient attitude towards democratic participation. Consequently, powerful individuals and groups have profited from this lack of participation.

At the same time, however, creative solutions to overcome daily-life difficulties have made Naples a city full of experiments and contradictions, where improvements in living conditions develop side-by-side with street poverty.

In Walter Benjamin’s posthumous publication [3], the German philosopher and critic reports some of the most defining characteristics of Naples. Although his empirical account did not have any scientific aim, his words are helpful to understand the background of the city. Concerning the power of Church and criminal associations in the city, he says:

“Only the Church, and not the police, can face the organism of self-government of the organized crime, Camorra. Here then, a person who suffered an injustice, if she wants to have back what was stolen, does not call the police. Through civic or ecclesiastic mediators, if not personally, she speaks to a Camorrista. And through this, she negotiates a ransom.”

With respect to the way in which people live in the city:

“If it is true that the nineteenth century has transformed the medieval and natural order in favour of better living conditions for the poor, and housing and clothing have been made compulsory at the expense of food, here these norms have been refused.”

He then understands the strong psycho-geographic feature of this city [4]. There’s a strong connection between the way in which the city is built and the lives that its citizens live:

“The private life of a Neapolitan is the bizarre end up of a public life pushed to the excess. Indeed, it is not within the domestic walls, among wives and children, that private life develops, but it is in the devotion or in desperation. In the lateral alleys, going down filthy stairs, the gaze strays to dives, where two or three men sit close to each other and drink, hidden behind bins that resemble columns of a church. In these corner it is hard to distinguish the parts where buildings evolve and others where they are already in ruin. Indeed, nothing is completed and concluded. The porosity is not only in the idleness of the southerner artisan, but especially in the passion for improvisation. In any case, space and occasions shall be left to the latter. Construction sites are used as popular theatre.”

The poetical vision that Benjamin has of Naples sheds light on many of the controversies that persist in the city today as well. Idleness and a strong, eradicated relativistic morality are at the core of the conception of the city in Naples. This has allowed non-market forces, such as criminal associations, to take over city’s institutions and their role, but at the same time has preserved the identity and creativity of its inhabitants. Naples is therefore an extremely poor and informal reality, where public institutions have been historically absent. 

From “occupato” to “liberato”: the new approach to squatting 

In 2012, the Ex Asilo Filangieri was occupied by a group of activists in response to the Forum of Cultures that was taking place there and that they defined as “useless” [5]. The space was then recognized as legal through an innovative methodology of assignment: under the principle of the urban civic use, a place is considered to be legally occupied not in the presence of a recipient legal entity but on the basis of its cultural function which depends upon an open assembly promoted by a committee of guarantors. Following this starting point, developments happened in the next years both at the institutional and at the grassroots level.

In the 2010s, activists and collectives have been extremely active in Naples. In Bagnoli, a neighbourhood famous for its environmental scandals in industrial production, Villa Medusa Occupata emerged advocating an environmental transition in the neighbourhood to be guided by citizens and not by the central government, which instead has interests in transforming the whole coastal area in a touristic attraction. In this fight, the squat joined the historical occupation of Lido Pola. In poor areas of the city centre, it developed another environmental experience named Giardino Liberato, which aims at the requalification of parks and abandoned buildings in the neighbourhood of Materdei. The name “liberato” has been extensively used in this new wave of occupations.

Focussed on the city centre, activists of Santa Fede Liberata and Scugnizzo Liberato occupied two very different buildings. The former is a squat of an old oratory and the collective claims that the requalification of the city centres requires giving unutilised spaces out to social purposes. The latter is instead an enormous occupation in what was previously an abandoned reformatory and it is characterized by its strong openness to the neighbourhood. Finally, there are the Ex Opg- Je so’ pazz, which occupied what was previously a psychiatric hospital and it is politically the most active collective in the city, and the Ex Schipa- Scuola Occupata. All eight spaces have been recognized as common goods by city council’s deliberations.

At the grassroots level, all these occupations highlight new dynamics. Indeed, the chosen formula “liberato” (freed), which substitutes the more traditional “occupato” (occupied) is indicative of a shift in focus from an antagonistic approach towards institution to a more socially active engagement with the people in the neighbourhood and their problems. As an activist we interviewed said [6], militants believed that the activism based on the concept of occupation was not appropriate anymore. The new approach comes from a collective reflection on how to be more efficient on the territory. Given that they had no guidelines to follow, the experimentation has been full of errors and achievements through a trial-and-error approach.

At the institutional level, since the beginning of the mandate of the left-wing mayor Luigi De Magistris, there has been increasing attention to the theme of common usage of public goods. In particular, with the Deliberation n.740/2011, Naples City Council was the first one to pick up on the 2011 referendum Water-Common Good against the privatization of water provision. In the Deliberation, the council stated: 

“The municipality of Naples affirms the principle of water as a common good and therefore of absolute public property”

In the following years, when the recognition of the Ex Asilo Filangieri took place, a series of new deliberations identified the principles for the identification, government and management of common goods in the city of Naples. The underlying philosophy is that every citizen has to be given the possibility to participate at the spiritual and natural progress of the city for the collective well-being. With the creation of the Department of Common Goods, the council took a practical step in the direction of breaking the historical idleness described by Benjamin by putting the creativity connected to it at the centre of a political and administrative programme. 

As our interviewee confirmed, all the deliberations have been written by activists, both in their juridical and practical terms [7]. These activists are grouped into a platform called Massa Critica, whose aim is to group all the movements and collectives that want to build alternative experiences and bring their demands to the city council. It is through the gathering of different activists coming from a diverse set of backgrounds that the common good definition has emerged: an open box, where every collectivity could have the possibility to fit.

Deliberation n.446/2016 of the City Council recognizes the value of pre-existing experiences in the municipality’s territory and identifies the occupations named above as common goods. This has been the maximum point of convergence between grassroots movements and local institutions. The important step of the municipality has been to recognize that within those spaces private property no longer exists and there is no form of ownership.

Eight spaces recognized, another seven mobilized in the same direction, Massa Critica as the innovative force that provides dialogue between these institutions - where could the problem lie? As an interviewee says, “this confrontation cannot be free from a political fight”. Not all the squats in Naples have been recognized, and not all of them want to be. Older occupations, particularly, can find essential meaning in their conflict against institutions and younger activists have been conscious of this in their dealings with authority.

Deliberation n.458/2017 of the City Council, seeking “to promote actions of valorisation for social purposes of the public assets”, provides a possible point of departure for understanding this complexity. To interpret these micro-dynamics in practice, the authors visited the Scugnizzo Liberato. 

Built as a convent, and more recently the reformatory of Naples, it was closed and abandoned for 20 years until 2015 when a collective of young activists of Naples occupied (in their words “freed”) the place. The idea was to open the doors of this structure to the inhabitants of the neighbourhood Montesanto, a heterogeneous and very poor neighbourhood, where there are no spaces for aggregation nor services. Above all, before the Scugnizzo, in the district there was no cultural place to go. On the other hand, the neighbourhood has historically been a politically active place, in particular with the experience of popular canteen for poor children in the 1970s. Therefore, the idea was to act in continuity with the history of this area and involve young people and citizens in the decision-making and participation processes. 

All the spaces that are used for the activities have been redeveloped by the activists’ community and thanks to the collaboration of the people in the area. Indeed, the Interior Ministry, owner of the building, completely abandoned the place when it was closed.

After three years and a half of occupation, the Scugnizzo is perceived by citizens to be an active part of the neighbourhood. They have developed working tables for the different types of activities they organize, and a general assembly of community management. The activities organized around these tables are: schools for migrants, laboratories for artisans, libraries, gyms, a concert hall – the biggest of the city centre – whose construction has been funded through a crowd-funding initiative, and a theatre.

The artisans’ tables, particularly, operate on the basis that there is a body of traditional expert knowledge in the community that could not open a ‘laboratory’ elsewhere. In exchange for the space they organize courses for the youngsters. Similarly, the concert hall gives space to young artists that would not have possibilities to exhibit elsewhere. A football team has also recently been established after two years of territorial scouting to involve children and young people in the area. The football team trains in the courtyard of the space.

At the beginning, there was full participation in assemblies and flows of proposals came. Today, participation has decreased, but it is very fluid in the type of participation. Indeed, many activities have developed and today activists go into the assembly only when it is needed, while new people come and go once they find what they want to do. The interviewee wanted to specify that “it is a traversable space, where many people can interact and have dialogue, which is something that outside this place does not happen, because of the increasing individualism and societal fragmentation”. 

In these same years, Naples has been rediscovered as an international touristic attraction, up to the point that tourism has become a problem – “touristification”. Indeed, development through tourism may have a side-effect: while it boosts the economy in the short-term through foreign private investments, it also cyclically fades, with activities closing and leaving the poor districts of the city centre – that will be minimally touched by the touristic wave – abandoned to criminal powers.

The risk is that, unintentionally, the free regeneration of these immense buildings in poor districts in the city centre becomes an opportunity for the interests of private investors that do not care about local problems. Therefore, a utopia of participated development may turn into a dystopia for Naples’ inhabitants. 

Connecting theory and practice, given that uses of space determine the conditions of social life it is imperative to provide collective and individual answers aiming at the reappropriation of what Foucault called disciplinary spaces [8]. To follow this objective, the evolution of the city needs to be deconstructed and monitored, ensuring that the Lefebvrian right to the city is not sidelined for intrinsically market logics and continuing, instead, to plan and build sustainable living spaces.

Emilio Caja was born and raised in Milan, Italy. Emilio studied economics at Bocconi University. In the same years, Emilio founded a cultural organisation whose aim was to develop collective artistic projects, involving music, poetry and painting. With this experience Emilio learned in practice the great potential of co-operation and community engagement. Emilio is now reading for an MPhil in European Politics and Society at the University of Oxford focusing on welfare provision and territorial inequalities.

Barbara Russo was also born and raised in Naples, Italy. Barbara is completing her undergraduate student in philosophy at the University of Milan and is currently a visiting student at the Sorbonne University in Paris researching a thesis on the conception of space in Michel De Certeau.

[1] Henri Lefebvre, Le Droit à la ville, Anthropos, Paris 1968.

[2] Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1984

[3] Walter Benjamin, Immagini di Città, Einaudi, Segrate, 2007.

[4] Guy Debord, ‘Introduction to a Critique of Urban Geography’, Les Lèvres Nues, 1955.

[5] Maurizio Braucci, ‘Anche a Napoli si occupa’, Gli Asini, Roma, 2016

[6] Interview carried out in Naples, April 2019.

[7] All the deliberations can be found here: http://www.comune.napoli.it/flex/cm/pages/ServeBLOB.php/L/IT/IDPagina/16783

[8] Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish: the birth of the prison, Allen Lane, London, 1977.

In this article, Oenone Kubie investigates how childrens’ play was perceived in North American cities during the ‘Progressive Era’. Kubie’s article investigates changing approaches to the treatment of ‘play’ in the city and the rise of the ‘playground’ as city infrastructure. Decisions and approaches from this era continue to shape cities, and the place for children, to the present day. All photos sourced from the United States Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division available at: http://www.loc.gov/pictures/.

Age shapes the way we interact with our cities. Children’s access to public spaces is limited and largely controlled by adults. The state intervenes in children’s use of the city, criminalising children’s uses of the streets and trying to direct children into supervised, child-centred spaces. Much of this age-segregation emerged in the so-called Progressive Era (1890-1918) in northern cities of the United States, particularly Chicago. Informed by turn-of-the-century science, which saw children as malleable and easily corrupted by the urban environment, reformers set about to change the spaces of childhood. Using new regulations such as child labour laws and new institutions, most notably playgrounds, these child-savers sought to transform delinquent urban children into upright citizens. In doing so, reformers changed the shape of America’s cities.

In the 1890s, children dominated the streets of the city. While adult work and leisure mainly took place indoors, children worked, played, and got into trouble in the city’s outdoor spaces. Few institutions or regulations existed in the 1890s to control children’s use of the streets. Only a handful of dedicated playgrounds existed in urban America in the 1890s. Street labour, like play, was also unrestricted and even laws that prohibited adult street labour such as anti-peddling laws made exceptions for children. Although schooling was ostensibly compulsory, terms were short, days often half-shifts, and truancy laws entirely ineffective. Pushed onto the streets by cramped indoor environments and pulled out by excitement, children filled outdoor urban spaces.

All these children on the streets concerned middle-class American adults. Contrasting images of working-class, immigrant youth left unsupervised on the streets with children of their own class, who led increasingly sheltered lives, middle-class urbanites feared for the future of the country. The burgeoning reform class, led by Chicagoans such as Jane Addams, feared so-called “swarms” of children on the streets would fall into vice and the “murky fire of crime.”[1] Boys would supposedly become criminals, pimps, and vagrants, while girls would fall into lives of prostitution; all would grow up unfit for the responsibility of republican citizenship. Worse still, even those sympathetic to the immigrant communities, like Jane Addams, felt the immigrant family could not cope with the pressures of modern urban life resulting in the breakdown of social order in the cities.

To tackle these urban problems, reformers turned to the new science of child-development for solutions.

The city environment corrupted children so, reformers believed, if they could change the environment of childhood, they could save the urban child. Progressive-Era science supported this view.

A new theory of child-development known as recapitulation theory had recently emerged. Proponents of this theory, such as G. Stanley Hall, argued that children passed through (or recapitulated) all the stages of the evolution of the race before they achieved adulthood.[2] This recapitulation was physical, with scholars often pointing to the “gill-slits” visible in human embryos, but also mental and moral. In the recapitulation theory, white boys must relive the so-called “primitive” stages of the race before they could enter the more civilised state of white manhood. According to Hall and his colleagues’ understanding of delinquent behaviour, childish impulses, which were perfectly safe in the countryside, led boys in the city down dangerous paths to crime and dependency. Advocates of this new evolutionary idea of child development idealised almost all of white boys’ misbehaviour as recapitulation of the race’s past and described even serious violent behaviour such as stoning or knifing as normal childish impulses in unsupervised environments.[3]

Although recapitulation theory had room for the sons of European immigrants, girls and children of colour remained outside the narrative of idealised misbehaviour. As nineteenth century American culture linked femininity to dependence and submission, girls who misbehaved seemed unnatural and abnormal, especially when that misbehaviour took place in the city. Due to the supposed inability of boys and girls of colour to advance through the stages of recapitulation, white Americans basing reform on the recapitulation theory sought to repress the misbehaviour or so-called childhood savagery of children of colour rather than encourage it. Thus, just as white children were encouraged to embrace their inner savage and hold mock powwows and “to play Indian”, Progressive reformers confined Native American children to “civilizing” boarding schools, forbidding the use of native languages and names, and forcibly removing children from their families.[4]

In contrast to the treatment of children of colour, when it came to white boys, Progressive-Era science pathologised the city and not the child, laying the framework for urban reform. Reformers set about trying to move so-called swarms of white immigrant children off the streets and into supervised, child-centred spaces where delinquency would once again become mischief. Starting in the 1890s, in just twenty years child-savers created an array of institutions and regulations that controlled and undermined children’s use of street space. Firstly, reformers created juvenile courts and dramatically expanded definition of delinquency to included much of children’s street activities including loitering, absenting oneself from home without the knowledge of a parent or guardian, being out late at night, and trespassing on private land. New delinquency and dependency laws, alongside city ordinances and host of other regulations also outlawed children’s work on the streets and reformers created a system of probation officers and truancy officers to enforce new laws. These changes limited lawful ways children could use the city streets and essentially criminalised much of children’s use of the city even as reformers insisted white immigrant children were not inherently criminal.

Although reformers introduced new laws and regulations to limit children’s street-use, reformers did not seek to completely tame the troublesome child. Growing concerns over masculinity at the turn of the twentieth century limited reforms that could be seen as “molly-coddling”.[5] To completely crush the misbehaving instinct, many middle-class Americans believed, would be just as dangerous as allowing the instinct to carry on unsupervised.[6] Drawing on recapitulation theory, reformers believed the key to anti-delinquency among working-class, European immigrant children was providing these children with supervised, orderly places where the misbehaving instinct could safely play out. 

Central to reformers’ attempts to save but not tame working-class white children meant the development of the world’s first municipal playground system in Chicago and a plethora organised recreation clubs. Preventative not reactionary, manly not molly-coddling, playgrounds and organised recreation soon became the centrepiece of the anti-delinquency movement. By 1915, the city of Chicago ran sixty-six recreation centres in addition to the numerous schoolyards and private playgrounds in the city. President Teddy Roosevelt heralded it as “one of the most notable civic achievements of any American city.”[7] From Chicago, the idea spread around the country. By 1921, almost 200 cities employed a total of over eleven thousand men and women as year-round playground workers.[8]

But celebrations of the successes of the playground movement could not last long. If creating new institutions had been difficult, running them proved harder. In creating child-saving institutions, Progressive Era reformers had conceptualised white immigrant children as passive, completely molded by the corrupting environment of the city streets. However, children were never the passive objects of reform. Children’s ability to disrupt the official plans had repercussions for the everyday practice and shape of child-saving institutions.

Children disrupted new play spaces, using them in unintended and often undesirable ways. Playground organisers lamented that children brought their street activities into play spaces: loitering, gambling, planning thefts, fighting, and even having sex in parks and playgrounds. In confronting with disorderly and disruptive boys and girls, adults had few recourses to which to turn. When adults discovered children had, and often put to use, the power to damage and disrupt institutional spaces, adults frequently resorted to throwing out the very children they had deemed most in need of wholesome recreation. Moreover, in excluding children, adults usually didn’t succeed in regaining control. Barring certain children could lead to escalating conflict. Faced with children vandalising property, destroying club rooms, and having sex in park bushes, exasperated reformers often turned to the state for help.

But the state, too, struggled to control urban childhood. Children probably found evasion of probation and truant officers laughably easy. Most delinquent children interviewed about their experience of being released on probation by the Juvenile Court of Chicago reported it had no effect on them,[9] some could not even remember what it meant. In one case a probation officer visited the home of a delinquent boy twelve times, and never once saw him. The situation was similar for truant officers, who struggled with huge caseloads in the early twentieth century.

Even those children most directly involved with the justice system, those sentenced to the reformatory institutions, proved able to evade adult control. On the streets, escapees evaded police, probation and truant officers easily, especially when parents refused to co-operate with the authorities. Escape was a huge problem for reform institutions. A study of reform schools in and near Chicago in the early twentieth century found two-fifths of detainees left in what was euphemistically called ‘informal departure’; another study found the proportion almost one half. Escape caused such an issue for reformatories that it was considered among the most serious offences and, as such, carried the heaviest punishments including beatings, being hung by the wrists, being shackled, wearing heavy iron studded shoes, being placed in a tub of ice water, and being caged. Even as Progressive ideals ostensibly moved prisons and other reform institutions further from the punishment of the body to the treatment of the individual’s soul, in practice, reformatory officials often resorted to physical punishments for the treatment of runaways. It was directly a result of the confrontation with real children that the new juvenile institutions of the early twentieth-century differed so wildly in practice from their conception in theory.

Despite the range of new institutions and regulations and the increasingly coercive methods of the state to control children in the early twentieth century, children’s street cultures continued.

By the 1930s, however, the concept of the dangerous but ultimately salvageable swarm which had shaped Progressive Era responses to the problems of children and the city was gradually replaced by the far more pessimistic idea of individual deviant personalities.

Faith in the ability to transform children through transforming the city collapsed. Frederic Thrasher, a sociologist who had been one of the most prominent advocates for organised recreation as the cure for delinquency had completed a long-term study of a boys’ club in New York in the early 30’s. A tone of despair seeped through his reports. “If anything definite may be concluded,” Thrasher wrote, “it is that delinquency rates prior to boys club membership periods seem to be less than during membership; while the rates for periods subsequent to boys club membership are, on the whole, increased, rather than decreased.” Juvenile Courts also faced increasing pessimism. In 1936, leading child-saver Grace Abbott asked rhetorically whether the Juvenile Court of Chicago had proved a success or a failure and concluded pessimistically that “the findings of all the recent studies made [about the court] have been very discouraging to those who hoped the juvenile court would, if not prevent, at least greatly reduce, delinquency.” Delinquency experts increasingly turned to psychiatry to explain and treat criminal behaviour; the psychiatrist supplanted the playground as the key to anti-delinquency.

As reformers advocated individualised treatment of delinquent personalities, on the streets, changing priorities of policing increasingly and aggressively targeted children of colour. In addition, suburbanisation was changing the demographics of the inner city. Increasingly, white families were choosing to move out to the suburbs, a choice unavailable to most African-Americans of all classes due to racial discrimination in housing and mortgage lending.[10] European immigration also declined, and old white immigrant communities were gradually seeing more African-American migrants and Mexican-American immigrants move in. As inner-city youth became more and more synonymous with minority youth, the urban child seemed increasingly outside the realm of “saving” and middle-class white Americans responded to black youth’s corner culture with intense policing and urban flight, not playgrounds and child-saving. The pessimistic view of adults’ ability to save children on the streets laid the foundation for the increasingly racialised and violent attempts to control poor urban children in the later twentieth century.

Progressive Era child-saving condemned other ways of life as ignorant and inadequate, but believed that children of European immigrants could be full and equal American citizens. Even at its most progressive, child-saving could never solve the multiple problems of urban childhood in the long Progressive Era. While child savers acknowledged that poverty and inequality in urban America lay behind juvenile delinquency, their proposed solutions of playgrounds and juvenile courts did little to address these larger structural problems.

The legacy of the Progressive Era lives on in the broad range of institutions and regulations reformers created to try to change the environment of urban childhood and stop delinquency. With playgrounds, recreation clubs, anti-child labour laws, compulsory schooling, and juvenile justice, the legacy of the child-saving movement still affects children and urban life both in America and around the world to this day.  

Most importantly, Progressive reformers criminalised and delegitimised much of children’s traditional use of the streets, ensuring that age became a crucial component of urban discipline.

However, the top-down approaches of middle-class child-savers failed to address juvenile delinquency or the problems posed by children’s street use. Rooted in a fundamentally flawed child-development science, Progressive Era child-saving, particularly anti-delinquency, had been rife with contradictions. The Progressives’ attempts to solve delinquency had criminalised much of working-class, immigrant children’s behaviour. On the other hand, Progressives had refused to accept that juvenile delinquents, especially white boys, were inherently bad, irredeemable. Laying the blame at the door of modern, industrial, urban society, child-savers adopted a pragmatic, optimistic approach to delinquency that was at once admirable, naïve, and founded on racism.

When encounters with real children transformed institutions and regulations in unexpected ways, the result was increasingly coercive methods and policing. While child savers acknowledged that poverty and inequality in urban America lay behind juvenile delinquency, their proposed solutions of playgrounds and juvenile courts did little to address these larger structural problems. Without the participation of children and the broader community in the creation of urban spaces, top-down approaches to addressing the problems of urban childhood failed and will continue to fail.

Oenone Kubie is a research and teaching fellow at the Rothermere American Institute at the University of Oxford where she completed her doctoral research in 2018. Her research focusses on the history of urban childhood in the Progressive Era United States. She is particularly interested in ideas of work and play and held the Visiting Research Fellowship 2019 at the Texas Tech Humanities Center during the Center's year dedicated to the study of play.

[1] Jane Addams, The Spirit of Youth and the City Streets (New York, 1909). Clopper, E. N., Child Labor in City Streets, (New York, 1913); See also Lovejoy, Owen, ‘Child Labor and The Night Messenger Service’, The Survey, 24 (1910); Chicago Vice Commission, The Social Evil in Chicago: A Study of Existing Conditions (Chicago, 1911).

[2] Hall, G. Stanley, Adolescence: Its Psychology and its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology,

Sex, Crime, Religion, and Education, vol. i, ii, (New York, 1904).

[3] George E. Johnson, ‘Why Teach a Child to Play?’ (1909), 104 CHy 34, Russell Sage Foundation Microfiche, Rockefeller Archive Center; Edgar J., ‘ Some Criminal Tendencies of Boyhood: A Study in Adolescence,’ Pedagogical Seminary 8 (March 1901), 65-91.

[4] Armitage, Kevin C., "The Child Is Born a Naturalist": Nature Study, Woodcraft Indians, and the

Theory of Recapitulation’, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 6:1 (Jan., 2007), 43-70; Adams,

David Wallace, Education for Extinction: American Indians and the Boarding School Experience, 1875-

1928 (Lawrence, 1995).

[5] For example see Adams, Myron E., ‘Children in American Street Trades’, Child Labor: The Addresses at the First Annual Meeting of the National Child Labor Committee, Held in New York City, Feb 14-16, 1905 (New York, 1905), pp. 23-44

[6] For example Woods Hutchinson, ‘Can the Child Survive Civilization?’, Proceedings of the Second Annual Playground Congress (1908), 104 Chy 11, , Russell Sage Foundation Microfiche, Rockefeller Archive Center. 

[7] Graham Taylor, ‘Recreation Developments in Chicago’, Annals of the American Academy of

Political and Social Science 35:2 (1910), 88-105.

[8] ‘The Playground’ (Mar., 1922), s.3, subseries 4, b.17, fol.182, Laura Spellman Rockefeller Memorial Archives, Rockefeller Archive Center.

[9] See the Life Histories Collection, Institute of Juvenile Research, Chicago History Museum, particularly the life histories of Joe N., b.50, fol. 55 (9-4), and Laddie P., b.51, fol.58. See also Earl D. Myers, “Juvenile Delinquents” Part 1, Illinois Association for Criminal Justice c.1929, Ernest Burgess Papers, Special Collections and Research Center, University of Chicago Library, b.10, fol.1.

[10] For an introduction to this topic see Rothstein, Richard, The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated American (New York, 2017).


The practice of urban design, and its role in creating cities, is a contested space. In this original article Judith Ryser examines tensions between professional disciplines in the creation and delivery of urban design in European cities. Drawing on the work of Francis Tibbalds, Ryser uses three key city issues - climate change, ICT and public participation - to identify ways through these tensions and new opportunities for the urban design profession. Ryser tests conceptions of urban design in the shaping of cities, and identifies new ways for the profession to help achieve sustainable urban development.

Urban design, traditionally shaped by architects and engineers, has assumed a new and essential role in the making of the built environment and its social symbols. Historically, architects designed churches, fortresses and palaces as symbols of power, followed by town halls as symbols of democracy. Later they turned to skyscrapers as symbols of capitalism: global corporate headquarters, financial institutions and, more recently to high-rise living quarters for those who staff them.

The other family of large structures (significantly called ‘ouvrages d’art’ – ‘art works’ in French) was designed by engineers: bridges, viaducts, railways, motorways, airports, power stations, water reservoirs, sewage plants, waste disposal facilities, communication masts. Although considered ‘supporting’ infrastructures by architects, their scale and functional role have a considerable impact on the built environment. Urban design has filled a gap by weaving across the specialist built environment professions, contributing a more integrated approach to the built environment.

Population explosions and rapid urbanisation have created a space for new interventions in the built environment. They generated the need to manage land uses equitably, a task taken on by a new profession, the spatial planners, while the role of architects and engineers remained to design physical structures. Global conflicts led to social change, and their mass destruction brought about new attitudes toward, and uses of, the built environment. Modernist design principles promoted by architects and supported by transportation engineers are one example, but different approaches emerged alongside them as well. One became urban design, initially focusing on the assemblage of buildings and the spaces in between.

From the outset the professions of the built environment conceived two opposing roles for urban design. They considered it as either yet another professional specialisation, or as an activity weaving across the specialist design professions. What had become a major challenge for a new professional approach to the design and management of the built environment was to free its approach from the models of thinking deeply embedded in the existing professions and invent its own ethos.

Conventional wisdom perpetuates the stereotypical roles of built environment professionals with emphasis on design. Accordingly, architects see themselves as leaders of the built environment professions. Many of them still perceive spatial planning as large scale architecture and urban design as an extension of architectural design. Too often they misunderstand urban design as simply upscaling architecture and downscaling planning. In reality, urban design practice shows that operating between scales and linking them requires transposition, namely designing for a particular scale, not merely shifting between them.

Engineers dominate infrastructure and consider transportation their fiefdom. This may explain why integration between land-use and mobility, a key task of planners, remains unfulfilled.

Crudely, some architects continue to see architecture as art, engineers are banking on technology, while planners rely on restrictive checklists instead of producing forward looking conceptions for the transformation of the built environment.

A moot-point is that built environment professionals tend to under-prioritise genuine consideration for the recipients of their professional output. Although public participation appeared in planning parlance more than half a century ago[1], it has been practised only scarcely up to now. A vast literature produced by academics, practitioners as well as community activists criticises the lack of genuine citizen involvement in their built environment and its stewardship.[2]

Even urban designers have not yet been able to escape from being captives of such conventional wisdom. Many of them tend to conceive masterplans solely as physical designs, adopt new technologies unchallenged and produce guidelines and checklists under the assumption that urban design principles are universally transferable. Clearly the complexity and fuzziness of the built environment and its rapidly changing uses contradict such a simplistic outlook.

Despite these contradictions noticeable exceptions exist. Francis Tibbalds (1941-1992), a qualified architect, was a great advocate of urban design and worked on the distinction between architecture and urban design[3]. One of his legacies is the Urban Design Group[4], and its magazine ‘Urban Design’[5], which promote good urban design by sharing experiences worldwide. His understanding of urban design is “place-making”. This concept goes far beyond physical design and encompasses a broad understanding of the built environment as human and natural habitat with the various requirements it has to fulfil (many of them contradictory or in competition with each other.)

For Tibbalds, the task of urban design was to negotiate between the many demands on the built environment and develop solutions, albeit with unavoidable compromises, acceptable to most. In turn, this required urban designers to cooperate with a wide range of stakeholders and broaden their skills accordingly. Drawing on some of the most pressing contemporary issues in the built environment - climate change, the digital revolution, and communities demanding a greater say in their living environment - a few examples are selected below to further illustrate Tibbald’s approach and reflect on the future of urban design and urban designers.

Urban design and climate change

The radical intervention of Madrid Mayor Manuela Carmena in the Gran Vía, a major traffic axis in Madrid, demonstrates how cities can reduce greenhouse gas emissions while increasing quality of life. In this case, urban design consisted of reducing traffic lanes, restricting private car use, reorganising public transport and its interchanges, widening pavements, planting trees and adding street furniture. From the opening, more pedestrians were increasing foot traffic and led private landlords to upgrade and extend ground floor uses while public pocket spaces (often unused or neglected areas) were attracting pop-up activities.[6]

For such physical and tangible transformations of the built environment to be innovative, urban designers need to engage in experimentation, ‘action research’ and work with scientists. They have to work in teams, partnering with academics to carry out research and to cooperate with both architects and planners. Most importantly, they have to communicate with the public, obtain views/wants and adjust their designs accordingly.

Urban designers also need to recognise their part in politics as their work is intimately linked with that of political decision makers. This means taking risks by engaging with many other stakeholders, ranging from developers and local authorities to the general public, as well as learning from such cooperation and feedback. However, their role will always be subjected to the vagaries of party politics. The new right-wing president of the Madrid region Isabel Díaz Ayuso for whom traffic jams form part of city identity vowed to reverse the previous mayor’s efforts, despite tangible evidence of air pollution reduction.[7]

Urban design and technology

Digital technology, virtual reality, artificial intelligence, robotics, genetic engineering, to name but a few, are bound to transform the built environment radically. Information and communications technology (ICT) is affecting all built environment professions, ranging from architects and engineers to planners, urban designers and experts in communication with the general public.

Early applications of ICT in urban design were computer-aided design tools (CAD), geographic information systems (GIS) for digitised mapping of planning information and algorithms to simulate structures and their uses. Increasingly, built environment education and research are also leveraging new technologies to improve the understanding of the urban environment and how it affects people. Experiments are being carried out at Karlsruhe University with body fitted sensors to measure people’s responses through their emotions, how they influence their actions and how these results can be fed back into urban design practice.[8] AccessibleMap Association Vienna has developed another use of ICT aimed at encouraging mobility of senior citizens and people with dementia by analysing how they use the built environment, adapting it accordingly and supplying members of these communities with ICT based tools to remain independent.[9]

The use of ICT by urban designers can encourage closer cooperation with scientific research, greater use of observational data in concrete designs and improved feedback (from monitoring of implemented designs) that can enable further experimentation. This constitutes a sort of ‘circular evolution of urban design’. Akin to the notion of the ‘circular economy’ this can enable a more sustainable use of information resources. In particular ICT can be a powerful tool to share urban design knowledge, know-how and practical experiments more widely by disseminating them among the urban design profession and decision makers as well as facilitating interaction between urban designers and the recipients of their projects.  

Urban design and people

Genuine commitment to urban design that brings satisfaction to end-users is spreading across the public and the social sector, as well as across various scales of the built environment. For example, at the urban scale, in Brussels ‘sustainable neighbourhood contracts’ and ‘sustainable urban contracts’ have been negotiated for the regeneration of its vast disused industrial canal area. [10] The political will of Brussels Capital Region was to realise socio-economic mixed areas and these innovative contracts were adopted as a tool to attenuate development pressures. Their particular aim was to stem displacement of existing, often disadvantaged, residents by actively assisting them in improving both their built environment and their local economy. These contracts guaranteed security of tenure for housing as well as work places.  

At the micro scale, an expanding fringe community of the Rotterdam conurbation involved children as key participants in the design of their play space next to the new community school.[11] Examples abound of experiments in more equitable cooperation between the built environment professionals and the users of their designs. They tend to show that such negotiated solutions are accepted and well maintained as the users feel co-authorship with their outcomes.  

Conclusion

Initially, urban design was an innovative newcomer to traditional architecture, planning and landscape design. Free from professional accreditation channels urban designers were able to experiment with fresh ideas linked to socio-economic contexts and rapid urbanisation. Urban design moved beyond pure design preoccupations and extended to engineering and infrastructure. With mounting environmental concerns (particularly climate change) urban design has also increasingly encompassed sustainable urban management, weaving across traditional built environment professions and trying to influence them.

What this evolution means for the built environment professions and urban designers, in particular, is that they need to acquire new skills continually. A moot point remains the remoteness of designers from the recipients of their designs which hampers genuine interaction with the future users of their designs. Their ability to listen to and understand concerns, and then to incorporate at least some of the reflected views and ideas, may make designs more readily acceptable. This applies whether a development is a public project, privately-led or mixed-sector. Experience shows that such a participatory and interactive approach to urban design can lead to a win-win situation. Once such urban designs are realised those who use them tend to develop a sense of ownership and belonging toward these new built environments and will be taking good care of them for a long time to come.

 WORKS CITED

[1] The Skeffington Report: People and Planning, 1969 HMSO was a landmark in governmental recognition in the UK of the worth of public participation.

[2] The professional contributions from 135 countries worldwide in the International Manual of Planning Practice, Judith Ryser & Teresa Franchini eds, give a comprehensive overview of public participation deficiencies. ISOCARP 2015. 

[3] Francis Tibbalds. Making People-Friendly Towns: Improving the Public Environment in Towns and Cities. 1992. Taylor & Francis.

[4] Urban Design Group. www.udg.org

[5] E.g. Urban Design Issue 150. NorthWestern Europe. Topic editor Judith Ryser. The examples in this article are selected from this issue.

[6] Teresa Franchini analysed the scheme in ‘Remodelling of the Gran Via’ in Urban Design, Issue 150, spring 2019.

[7] ‘Madrid could become the first European city to scrap low-emissions zone’. The Guardian, Arthur Neslen, 11 May 2019.

[8] Peter Zeile, et.al. ‘Urban Emotions’. ‘Road Safety from Cyclist’s Perspective’. ‘Walk and Feel, a new integrated walkability research approach’. Papers presented at REAL-CORP conference 2019. Competence Center of Urban and Regional Planning Karlsruhe & Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karlsruhe University. Peter Zeile & Fabia Schlosser. ‘Places of Fear’. Urban Design, Issue 150, spring 2019.

[9] ‘Encouraging Mobility for People with Dementia’. Clemens Beyer & Wolfgang Wassenburger, Urban Design, Issue 150, spring 2019. ’

[10] Judith Ryser (ed). Planning for a New Era, sustainable responses to urban change. Chapter 2, Brussels, an epitome of urban complexity and contradictions for planners. The Isocarp 2015 Foundation. Forthcoming. 

[11] Aafke Nijenhuijzen. ‘Designing with Children’. Urban Design, Issue 150, Spring 2019.

AUTHOR

Judith Ryser, qualified as an architect and urbanist with an MSc in social sciences, is dedicating her cosmopolitan professional life to a sustainable built environment. Her research, writing and reviewing is focusing on cities in the knowledge society, carried out in London, Paris, Berlin, Geneva (United Nations), Stockholm and Madrid. She is on the editorial board of the Urban Design magazine and CORP (International Conference on Urban Planning and Regional Development in the Information Society) and senior member of the Chartered Institute of Journalists and a life member of ISOCARP, where she served as Vice President, General Rapporteur of the 50th anniversary congress 2015, and editor and writer of several publications, the latest “ISOCARP, 50 Years of Knowledge Creation and Sharing”; and with Teresa Franchini, the 6th edition of the International Manual of Planning Practice.

Development economists use household survey data to measure living standards across the world, but reliable data for cities in the global south is hard to come by. This article addresses three challenges to collecting data in cities – measurement, missing people, and money – as well as steps that can be taken in the design, implementation, and analysis of survey data to try and address them.

Millions of people move into cities in developing countries every month. What kind of a life awaits them there? The truth is that we don’t really know. Development economists use household survey data to measure living standards across the world, but reliable data for cities in the global south is hard to come by. In this article, I talk about three challenges to collecting data in cities – measurement, missing people, and money – as well as steps that can be taken in the design, implementation, and analysis of survey data to try and address them.

Measurement

Surveys are incredibly powerful: properly designed, they can tell us about a huge population just by looking at a small randomly selected subset of the people that live there. However, they can only tell us about the population that the survey is designed to capture. Most surveys don’t collect data that is representative for cities: they are designed to tell us about differences in living conditions across countries and regions, or in urban versus rural areas, but few allow us to identify differences between urban areas or within cities.

This matters because it is very hard to know how living conditions vary across and within different cities in a single country. To answer these questions we’d need to adjust the sampling strategy and interview many more people in cities. This is expensive: on average, living standard surveys cost 170 USD per household interviewed. It can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to capture of representative sample for a city. Moreover, this data is not easily compared across countries as there is no internationally accepted definition of ‘urban’. In practice, what counts as a city differs from one country to another, shaped by unique historical and political developments.

“Moreover, this data is not easily compared across countries as there is no internationally accepted definition of ‘urban’. In practice, what counts as a city differs from one country to another, shaped by unique historical and political developments”

Small-area estimation (SAE) provides a partial solution to this problem. This approach brings together in-depth information from a survey with more limited data that is representative at the city level, such as census data. Put simply, it takes household characteristics that are captured in both data sets and models the relationship between these characteristics and other outcomes only found in the survey, such as poverty rates. The parameters are then used to predict poverty levels of households in the census.

SAE has many uses and has shed new light on poverty and access to basic services in secondary cities in developing countries. Yet it does not resolve everything. Even if we use a population density cut-off to identify urban areas (which, for economists, is a key distinction between urban and rural), the underlying ‘area’ boundaries may be heterogenous. As such, we cannot be sure that we are comparing like with like. Moreover, SAE still depends on reliable up to date data for the urban areas, such as a census, which leads into the second challenge: accounting for missing people.

Missing people

Surveys in cities may be particularly prone to ‘missing’ certain people due to two main problems, explained below in more detail: inaccurate sample frames and non-random biases in who agrees to participate. This is worrying, because it may be the most vulnerable people in cities that are hardest to reach. These people can include single people that work all-day, tenants that share cramped conditions with other families, and households that live in dangerous neighbourhoods. It is also important to note that only people with a fixed address will be included (surveying homeless people requires entirely different methods).

All surveys need a sampling frame – a list of the population from which you can draw the random sample to be surveyed.  This is often the national census database. Yet it is not uncommon for census to be several years old. In contexts where cities are growing very quickly, large areas may be left out of the frame. In other contexts, certain areas may be left out deliberately – for example, if it is politically expedient to ignore informal areas with high levels of migrant foreign workers.

Moreover, surveys often rely on ‘two-stage’ sampling. First, areas are randomly selected from the sample frame and the number of households living in each area is verified (known as ‘listing’). Second, a set number of households in each area are randomly selected for surveying.  Certain groups can be overlooked in this process. For example, in many developing countries tenants rent one or two rooms in another family’s home. Since these people do not eat with the owner of the house, they are not counted as part of the household. Yet they may not be recorded as a separate household.

Even among households that are selected to be surveyed, some people are much less likely to participate in the survey. Since surveys take place during the day and at home, it can be hard to reach people that work all day. People that live in areas where either crime or fear of crime is high may be wary to talk to strangers; and perhaps rightly so, as criminals have been known to pose as interviewers to conduct robberies. Moreover, interviewers may pretend that people refused to answer in order to spend less time in risky neighbourhoods.

Steps can be taken to address these challenges. Satellite imagery can be used as a check on the sampling frame. In the World Bank’s MLSC survey – a survey of living standards piloted in Durban (South Africa) and Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) – satellite data was even used to identify areas with more ‘irregular’ settlement patterns. This was then built into the sampling strategy so that data can be used to compare across visibly ‘slum like’ and ‘non-slum like’ areas. The MLSC team also got interviewers to check if there were renters in the houses at the listing stage so they were included in the full list of households used in the second sampling stage. Efforts were also taken to inform the local population ahead of the survey and to monitor patterns in the data being collected in real-time.

 Money

Life in cities is highly commoditised.  A number of people have argued that this means that current practices in measuring poverty may be misleading for cities. This is partly an issue of how poverty measures are constructed – including which expenditures are considered ‘basic needs’ and the price poverty lines are set at – but it also has implications for way we collect data used in these measures. 

People in cities tend to consume a wider range of goods, eat more food outside of the home, and face smoother market prices than in rural areas. This may make some methods of collecting data on consumption more appropriate for cities than others. Indeed, research shows that small differences in the design of consumption modules – such as who answers the questions and the time-frame they are asked to report consumption for – can lead to dramatically different poverty headcount and inequality rates.

Second, it is notoriously difficult to ask people about the value of goods. Take housing. This is a huge expense for most people. How can we find out how much it costs? Surveys often ask homeowners to record the value if, instead of owning your home, you had to rent it. But people may not have a good idea of rental values. They may also overestimate the value of their own house simply because it belongs to them (in psychology this is called the ‘endowment effect’). In the MLSC survey we modified the question to: If a friend of yours wanted to buy a property like this in the same neighborhood, how much would he/she have to pay?

Surveys remain an important tool to understanding living conditions in urban areas, but there is considerable scope to refine approaches to collecting data in cities. After all, the world is already more than 50 percent urban and the total number of people living in cities is set to double by 2050.

Dr Alexandra Panman is a Lecturer in Urban Economic Public Policy at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit (UCL), having recently earned her DPhil from the University of Oxford’s Department of International Development. Dr Panman worked as a consultant in the team that developed the MLSC surveys under the World Bank Spatial Development of Cities Program. Thanks to Nancy Lozano-Gracia (Senior Economist, World Bank) for comments on this article.

Participatory governance in urban Latin America: an opportunity or a trap? A response to Andreza A. de Souza Santos’ “Trading time and space” 

Dr Markus Hochmüller

Citizen participation has become a key buzzword for policymakers, urban planners, and practitioners working in the field of urban development and security. The United Nation’s New Urban Agenda imagines the cities of the future as spaces that are ‘participatory, promote civic engagement, [and] engender a sense of belonging and ownership among all their inhabitants’.

Andreza A. de Souza Santos’s recent article “Trading time and space: Grassroots negotiations in a Brazilian mining district” (Ethnography, 2019) sheds light on the practice of participatory governance. It provides important insights to make sense of – and eventually improve – the urban condition in Latin America. Exploring how different stakeholders construct and advocate competing imaginations of a better future in the small mining town Miguel Burnier in Southeastern Brazil, de Souza Santos engages with the growing field of anthropological research on the future and competing temporalities in the global South.

In her paper, de Souza Santos examines how Miguel Burnier’s Municipal Council for the Preservation of Cultural and Natural Patrimony mediates negotiations between local residents and a mining company. While urban dwellers expected the mining project to boost employment and local development, the company prioritised expanding its mining activities and limiting popular opposition.

Seeking local approval, the company offered to compensate residents for the negative externalities of their mining activity. Company agents thus promised to implement vocational training programmes, improve recreational opportunities, and fund local cultural heritage initiatives. De Souza Santos’s ethnography, however, demonstrates that this strategy for local development could not align with local residents’ visions for a better future. In this context, local dwellers saw abandoning Miguel Burnier as a more feasible and realistic option to create a better future for themselves.

De Souza Santos shows that the mediating Council was severely limited in its decision-making due to its own economic dependencies and the fear of adverse repercussions. Hence, the Council initially abstained from taking sides, thereby reproducing the status quo that was unsatisfactory to all involved stakeholders. Succumbing to the dominance of vested political and economic interests, the Council failed the community members in finding a solution to the most pressing local concerns such as the pollution of air and drinking water.

In order to advance the negotiations, the Council created a commission composed of an architect, an environmental engineer, and a local community leader. The commission’s on-site evaluation recommended the expansion of mining activities in two of the company’s mines. It also advised closing the mine located near the centre of town in order to reduce its negative impact on the community. These recommendations were eventually accepted by both parties. The situation for the residents, however, remained largely unchanged. For instance, mines kept polluting the water and Miguel Burnier’s economic future remained uncertain.

De Souza Santos’ article thus raises important questions related to the local community’s room for manoeuvre in changing urban futures, as well as to the temporal dimension of local agency. Her essay is an invitation to critically scrutinize participatory governance. It animates readers to think about the unintended consequences of participation on the one hand, and ways to make participation a more powerful tool for urban dwellers on the other hand, which requires incorporating local concerns, in particular those of the most marginalized sectors of a city, into the process of urban governance.

Participation has become a popular way for governments to address urban problems and local discontent all over Latin America. When it comes to issues such as local development or security, citizen participation is generally expected to make the provision of goods and governance more effective and legitimate. Participation is, however, not a panacea to improve urban governance, as de Souza Santos’ analysis shows. She points to several unintended consequences of participatory governance: first, participation can reinforce existing divisions in a community; second, participation does not necessarily equal empowerment; and third, participation does not automatically improve local life-worlds.

Her analysis thus forces researchers and practitioners to question their expectations on the transformative power of community participation. In fact, participation can also become a trap for city dwellers. Policymakers may, for example, use participatory governance as a façade that locally legitimises top-down decision-making processes. State officials may also blame social issues on wrong participatory decision-making, thus avoiding their accountability over ineffective policy implementation.

De Souza Santos demonstrates that local actors have a disproportionate influence over participatory governance. While a necessary condition to improve local democracy, participation alone is not sufficient to guarantee more democratic decision-making. It can even reproduce exclusionary mechanisms and a highly asymmetrical status quo when inequalities and power relations remain unaddressed. In order to level these asymmetries and to make urban futures more sustainable, fair and empowering, new modes of participatory governance need to grant equal access to information, mediate between competing interests, and respect the different needs of city dwellers. Otherwise, ‘giving people a sense of meaningfulness’ under the guise of collectively building a better future is in fact a distraction in citizens’ quest for a future that is unlikely to materialize.

Another key take-away from de Souza Santos’ paper is that alternative futures imagined by dwellers are often pre-structured by past experiences and present power relations. Miguel Burnier’s residents, for example, sought an (idealized) past of economic opportunities in the form of employment in the local mining business. The residents ignored the exploitative working conditions in the mining sector and they would not openly challenge the powerful company. Despite the hardship and the social and environmental degradation related to past mining activities, local residents were unable to imagine a future without mining. This points to a limited capacity to aspire for a better future, to put it in Appadurai’s terms.

Hence, in order to avoid hollow forms of participation and to stimulate more radical thinking about alternative futures, participatory governance needs to create more inclusive and multi-layered spaces of participation (ranging from fora open to the general public to more specialized councils for organized civil society and ad-hoc commissions dealing with punctual issues that bring together all stakeholders of a community). Furthermore, new modes of participatory governance need to encourage thinking outside the box. While this may be a somewhat utopian perspective given the distribution of power in Latin American cities, more radical visions of alternative futures are vital to improve local democratic processes and to challenge the uneven field of political and economic participation. Only when citizens transcend narratives informed by capitalist modernization and neoliberal development, they will be able to create a more sustainable and emancipatory future for all.

In response to Dr Markus Hochmüller

Dr Andreza A. de Souza

Recently in Brazil, President Jair Bolsonaro extinguished more than 50 participatory policy councils that worked on a national level and were created under the PT administration.  When I write about the challenges and limits in participatory policy councils during a time when participatory mechanisms are under threat, I do so knowing that we do not have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It is indeed possible to improve participation, and for that, it is necessary to map the problems.

I like very much Hochmüller’s comments on my paper because it discusses the unintended consequences of participation. When designing policies for a country as large as Brazil, it is difficult to imagine what participation generates on the ground in cities as large as large as Porto Alegre, and others as small as Ouro Preto or any of its districts.

Increased competition rather than cooperation amongst community members, intimidation during negotiations, participation as a means to give legitimacy to top down decisions, distinguished time horizons between a plan offered and dwellers’ needs, are only some of the problems. What are the solutions then? By getting to know the members of the Council for the Preservation of Cultural and Natural Heritage and residents in Miguel Burnier during one year fieldwork, I could discuss some possibilities: written tools is one of them. While voicing concerns during meetings expose individuals who could then be considered to oppose to a great economic force locally; in writing demands gain a formal aspect and detaches the text from the writer when signed as an official minute or report. Written reports and minutes can soothe perceived intimidation brought by a negotiation of disenfranchised residents, locally employed technicians, and a powerful mining company.

The solution in this case may not apply to all other cases in Brazil and elsewhere. Not everyone speaks a bureaucratic language and minutes are part of this lexicon that excludes the majority. In addition, illiteracy may also feature amongst problems with the use of written language.

What my articles advocates is for more ethnographic research about policy councils and a real engagement between academia and the policy sector.

While the article speaks to the academic community, locally, I have created a local Forum on Social Governance, and in 2019 we have its third edition. The forum discusses with civil society, technicians and the local university how to make better use of participation, academia and mineral resources available. Ouro Preto sits atop mineral deposits, it is a UNESCO world heritage site and it is a University town. In addition, the city is made of 13 distinct districts, Miguel Burnier is one of them, and each has its own reality. To govern such city with international grandeur and competing local interests, there is no easy formula except that to improve methods for continuous interaction between ‘flesh and stone’: the city and its dwellers.

There is a lot to improve in the making of a democratic city and to begin; the recognition that poverty is a form of political oppression is a great start. We shall then not denigrate democratic methods when they do not function perfectly, but understand which historic, economic and social amalgam are beneath political meetings where residents silence when they do have a lot to say. 

Author Biographies 

Dr Andreza A. de Souza Santos is the director of the Brazilian Studies Programme and Lecturer at the Latin America Centre, University of Oxford. She is the author of The Politics of Memory: Urban Cultural Heritage in Brazil. 

Dr Markus Hochmüller is a postdoctoral fellow of the German Academic Exchange Service and a visiting research associate at the University of Oxford’s Latin American Centre. He is also a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Latin American Studies at Freie Universität Berlin, where he received his PhD in political science in 2018. His research looks at security, state- and peacebuilding, development, and democratic governance in (urban) Latin America.

Alex Vasudevan is an Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Oxford, and an Official Student and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford. His recent publications include The Autonomous City: A History of Urban Squatting (London: Verso, 2017), Metropolitan Preoccupations: The Spatial Politics of Squatting in Berlin (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), and (as co-editor) Geographies of Forced Eviction: Dispossession, Violence, Insecurity (London: Palgrave, 2017).

He is responding here to a set of questions developed by William Conroy, based on his work. William completed his MPhil at Oxford in 2018, and studies urban political ecology, racial capitalism, and the commons. (This interview transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.)

Squatting and Citizenship

WC: In some of your writing, you have noted that squatting can play a role in the articulation of insurgent citizenship claims. How, if at all, do squatters complicate the notion of citizenship as a “juridical relation”?

AV: One of the points of reference for thinking about insurgent citizenship in my work, unsurprisingly, is James Holston’s work in Brazil, which helps us to complicate the distinction between formality and informality. He explores the often illegal practices adopted by informal settlers, which in many cases are driven by a desire to formalize a relationship with the state. Still, much of my work is located in the Global North, and I have probably spent less time thinking about the question of insurgent citizenship in recent years. I suspect this is a product – or perhaps a consequence – of the kinds of struggles I have been working through. That being said, I think there is important work still to be done in the context o the Global North. Scholars whose work is embedded predominantly in that context would benefit from learning lessons from their counterparts in the South.

I’m thinking especially of squatting movements and their relationship to migrant struggles in Southern Europe. Those struggles often operate in a liminal or grey space, where questions of citizenship and the law actually assume a critical urgency. So, where I would, if I had time, think about those issues is in that very space. I would also add that there is far more work to be done on the relationship between the law and urban squatting, partly in response to the growing criminalization of squatting across Europe and North America.

WC: You have described squatting in the past through the lexicon of infrastructure – that is, as a “genre of urban infrastructure” (Vasudevan, 2017) that entails translocal and contingent “relations between bodies, spaces, and materials” (cf. McFarlane and Vasudevan, 2014). Could you speak more on the significance of understanding squatting as infrastructural? In what sense is that framing politically significant?  

AV: I think one of the things I am really interested in is understanding what squatters actually do – the practices they mobilize and the kinds of spaces they create. In some of my historical work, I have been struck by the infrastructures and networks that squatters were successful in producing, be that in West Berlin and Amsterdam in the early 1980s or in the East Village of New York. It struck me that the act of squatting – the act of occupying a particular vacant property or plot of land – wasn't the end point in thinking about what was going on in those and many other cases. Squatters were often involved in creating not only a space – or re-functioning a particular space – but were also often involved in trying to make connections between different practices, between bodies and space, between different understandings of architecture. I thought, and continue to think, that the term “infrastructure” was a useful point of reference, or a kind of conceptual placeholder for understanding what they were trying to do.

This type of infrastructural agenda was something that squatters were very open about articulating. They often saw their actions as a tool in a broader struggle around housing insecurity, and understood that those struggles didn't end in the act of occupation, but actually only began, in many ways, with occupation. A lot of the existing work about infrastructure within urban studies has operated in rather different contexts and with a rather different set of politics in mind. I think that the kind of practices, tactics, and makeshift knowledges that I have been involved in tracing enroll a different sense of the importance of infrastructure. Furthermore – and this is something I haven’t thought about – I think there certainly are citizenship-based claims that often attach themselves to this type of infrastructural production. We have seen this in the context of work in hydro-politics. But I think there are perhaps other ways of thinking about precisely that intersection between infrastructure and citizenship, not least in the context of squatting.

WC: To your mind, what is the role of the built form – and materiality more generally – in the production of “new forms of collective living” (Kunst and KulturCentrum Kreuzberg, 1984 quoted in Vasudevan, 2011)? How does the built form, and materiality, relate to the affective geographies of squatting, and to squatters’ attempts to transcend “particular conditionings of the individual and the self” (Heyden, 2008 quoted in Vasudevan, 2014)?

AV: Simply put, one of the things I’ve learned in my research is not to treat squatted spaces as containers for particular political forms, but actually to think about the relationship between those spaces and the kinds of political processes they produce. It's a two way process. In many cases the built form may activate certain kinds of politics; in others, a particular politics transforms the built form.

If we track the history of urban squatting – thinking again about the work I’ve been doing in Europe and North America from the late 60s onwards – the role of architecture and planning in that story is significant. Many squatters were planners or architects themselves. In some cases their impulses were preservationist: they were interested in restoring housing stock that would otherwise disappear in the context of “regeneration” and “urban renewal.”

But many of them were also interested in treating architecture as an opportunity – as a catalyst for creating different kinds of political alliances and identities. For them architecture could be actively refashioned for the sake of politics. The built form of particular squatted spaces provided an opportunity – a source for different ways of organizing relationships. Therefore, in many cases squatters quite actively transformed the spaces they occupied. There was a really active sense of refashioning space, a kind of “DIY empiricism” – and experimentalism – that involved repurposing the built form with an acute awareness of what the built form could do. 

I also use the phrase “makeshift urbanism” in this context, and it has been taken up in other ways by other scholars to try to convey and conjure a sense of both that spatial experimentation, and also the precarious nature of that kind of incremental transformation of urban space. I would add that there is a danger here that we romanticize that process. Many of the spatial tactics adopted by squatters were mobilized in settings of extreme inequality, and also in contexts where the threat of eviction and general housing insecurity was the main horizon of experience; the very act of transforming a space was one shaped by questions of survival and endurance.

Spatio-temporality

WC: How do you understand “cityness,” and in what sense is the notion of cityness – if at all – “constitutively political” (cf. McFarlane and Vasudevan, 2014)?

AV: One of my points of reference for thinking about cityness is the work of AbdouMaliq Simone. That said, I am concerned with the kinds of practices and tactics that informal settlers in the Global South and North have mobilized, and how they were – and are – attentive to what Simone would describe as cityness [attentive to the constant becoming and transformation of the city]. I think there is an understanding of cityness that’s intrinsic to the kinds of politics and practices that squatters are interested in. Elsewhere I have described squatters as radical custodians of cities; in some sense the city that they try to re-configure and assemble is built on an archive of practices and knowledges as well. I guess when I talk about cityness I’m really interested in the kind of “structure of feeling” that these kinds of practices produce, as well as recognizing that this structure has a material form as well.

WC: You have described “autonomous urbanisms” in which particular ideas about “times and spaces” were developed; you have also called attention to the anticipatory logics embedded within the “trope” of occupation (see Vasudevan, 2015a). Is there a particular spatial and/or temporal epistemology – or, perhaps, ontology – that propels practices of urban commoning?

AV: That’s a big question. First, I think there are a couple ways we can think about urban commoning. I tend to come at it by considering how the drive to produce urban commons is immanent to certain struggles within cities. Second, I’ve probably shied away from thinking through some of the bigger claims that this question is probing. My basic interest is really in trying to understand the conditions of possibility – if you like – for producing “other” kinds of urban politics, ones that are autonomous in that they exist outside of the constraints imposed by the state. There are many people who would argue, if they were putting a Foucauldian hat on, that various constraints always limit what constitutes autonomy. But in my view I think there still is some purchase – some value – in trying to think through the notion of autonomy and the urban commons. I’m probably inspired, in this sense, by debates and struggles that emerged in particular out of Italy in the 60s and 70s under the umbrella term “autonomia.”

I realize I’m skirting around your question, perhaps. It’s not one I’ve thought about – this idea of space-times – but from my point of view I am really quite interested in re-asserting the urgency of the question of autonomy in urban politics; in sketching out a horizon of urban possibility. This is especially urgent in a context in which those who are making claims to the “right to the city” are often not doing so on behalf of the commons, but on behalf of far more revanchist forms of the political. We have seen struggles over the right to the city being mendaciously mobilized by the far right in particular – as they try to parasitically use the language of rights-based discourse. And so I think the question of aligning autonomy with the commons is more urgent than ever.          

WC: You have referred to the colonization of everyday life as “globalization turned inward” (see RETORT, 2005, quoted in Jeffrey et al., 2007). What does that mean?

AV: In thinking on the question of the colonization of everyday life, the point of reference, the touchstone, is Debord. I have also spent quite a bit of time reading, and working through some of the ideas put forward by the RETORT collective as well, and they drew heavily on Debord.

Rather than solely track the different translocal scalar politics that we often associate with globalization, why not look at it from the other way around? Why not attend to the ways in which the wage relation and the question of value are imposed on people’s lives in ways that they never have before? These forces enter into the very fabric of everything we do. And obviously this has taken on new forms when one considers the really important work being done now on algorithmic governmentality which, if anything, has further weaponized these logics of value making – of extraction. It is important to attend to the sheer scale of these processes. There may still be some kind of outside, but that seems precariously poised at a horizon that is receding from view.

Obviously the word colonization also – and this is equally important – implies a particular set of practices, and I think the use of that term needs to be developed with greater precision and acuity as well. We need to place work on the colonization of everyday life in conversation with the literature on decolonization and settler colonialism. This would open up not only conceptual possibilities, but methodological ones as well. 

Commons-enclosure

WC: You have written on the “capture” and instrumentalization of occupation-based practices for the sake of “neoliberal urban renewal” (Vasudevan, 2015a). How, then, do you understand the function of squatting in the context of a “‘crisis’ urbanism” (Brickell et al., 2017) that seeks to strengthen the “intimate connection between the development of capitalism and urbanization” (Harvey, 2008, quoted in Vasudevan, 2014)? How can practices of urban occupation function, if at all, as value-creating activities that are “not subsumable to or simple expressions of capital” (Vasudevan, 2011)?

AV: This is one of the really important aspects of trying to understand struggles around housing and urban squatting, especially in Europe and North America. In that context – as a number of people have quite rightly pointed out – those practices have very routinely been coopted and captured by, broadly defined, the logics of capital, and have been subsumed in a whole host of processes of new liberal urban regeneration. In one sense squatters face a double bind – the very logics they resist often give them a kind of “line of flight” to survive in ways they otherwise wouldn't.

Historically, this has meant that the specific spaces they occupied have often persisted in some form, but at the expense of the larger neighborhoods in which they were embedded. There was always this kind of paradoxical tension as squatters found themselves complicit in the very processes that they were contesting. It’s important also to acknowledge that many activists and squatters were, in fact, actively involved in those logics of regeneration and gentrification as well. Some were perfectly relaxed about gentrification.

It is in this kind of context that one wonders whether you can still see squatting as an “other” to creative destruction. However, I think there are all sorts of ways in which squatting might generate other forms of value that are not subsumable to the logics of capital. Here, the relationship between squatting and property is important, and it’s a story that still needs to be told in greater depth. Take the Lower East Side of New York. There, many properties were actually sold to squatters – they were meant to bring them up to code using sweat equity – which lead to a particular kind of possessivism.

The question we might want to ask ourselves is: are there ways to assert other kinds of propertied relations that escape this type of possessivism? I think that would be incredibly difficult in the current conjuncture, given that the possibilities for generating alternatives right now are far more limited than they were even 10 years ago, and obviously 20 or 30 years ago – that's a very different world. That being said, there are also new horizons coming into view.

Moreover, a lot of work in Southern Europe around the “migrant crisis,” if you want to call it that, has opened up new forms of experimentation with collective living. I think those experiments may at least suggest what a different kind of urban commons might look like – one that isn’t subsumable by forms of urban renewal. Still, I’m probably relatively pessimistic. It does feel like a particular period of urban activism is coming to an end. Given the growing criminalization of squatting, for example, the room for maneuver has been profoundly circumscribed.

WC: How does race – and racialization – function in your theoretical understanding of the commons-enclosure dialectic?

AV: It doesn't enough, and this is a blind spot in my work that I’m trying to respond to; urban studies still has a long way to go in understanding and taking seriously questions of race. Obviously there are a number of people who have made that argument far more eloquently and powerfully than I can, including people like Ananya Roy (and many others), who I think has tried to re-center what it means to do urban studies. What is interesting is, for example, the recent application of debates in abolitionist political ecology to planning and architecture. There is so much more we can learn here.

When one thinks about particular histories of urban politics and urban struggle – including squatting – the question of race is always there. It’s something that I talk about certainly in The Autonomous City, but not enough. In that work, I discuss struggles around housing insecurity in London, and actions undertaken by the British Black Panthers, including people like Olive Morris. I also discuss, for example, Operation Move-In, which was a very important series of squatter-based actions in the Upper West Side – to begin with at least – in New York in the late 60s, early 70s.

Those actions were largely undertaken by working class Puerto Rican women, but that story is often written out of the more “heroic” narratives around housing struggle in New York. And yet, it's a really important part of the history. So I guess what I am trying to say is that, if we are going to think through logics of racialization in the context of particular historical processes, we also need to take seriously – in the first instance – who were in fact the subjects of historical struggles around these processes. In many cases, those struggles have been whitewashed. And, this is not only about how we theorize – this is an empirical question as well.

Method

WC: Does your interest in historical geography, and the urban archive, have a political impulse? Further still, do you understand this methodological approach [archive-based historical geography] as entailing the production of constellations, or dialectical images, in the Benjaminian sense?

AV: I’ll take the first part of the question first. As I’ve said, squatters are often radical custodians of the city. They maintain an intimate understanding and knowledge of the city. They carry with them a particular kind of archive as habitus. Related to that, squatters often assemble their own archives. Historically, they have created a meticulous and detailed archive in response to what they understood as mainstream misrepresentation. Wherever you travel in the context of the history of squatting you encounter these makeshift, assembled archives.

In some cases they have been institutionalized, so a lot of the materials that we associate with the Lower East Side in New York are now located in the Tamiment Library at NYU. Similarly, many of the archives associated with squatting in Denmark are now in the National Archive. But obviously, many of these archives also remain in quite precarious and makeshift spaces that have been created and curated by local activists. With that said, I’m really interested in how the archive – and the process of archiving – is another way of doing urban geography, or doing urban studies. There is a presentism in a lot of urban studies that ignores the importance of the historical record, and I think we can learn a lot from these archives.

Now, the second part of the question is to what extent we can or should juxtapose that historical record with our current constellation of urban practices. I think the Benjaminian term – one that I briefly allude to in Metropolitan Preoccupations – is one that would benefit from being developed in greater detail. The Benjaminian impulse is a methodological one. It’s about the way in which we present our work and how we work through particular problems. I think its important to read the history of activist practices in those terms. This method also allows us to avoid highly romanticized hagiographies of activism, which see a continuity between practices that date back to the 60s in the present, without making sense of all the disjunctures, the erasures, the occlusions embedded in those accounts.

WC: How has your early work on visual art and aesthetic theory – for example, your writing on the “rematerialization of the aesthetic object” (Vasudevan, 2007) – informed your work in urban geography and radical urban social movements?

 AV: In many ways. I’m trained as a historical and cultural geographer in the first instance, and my PhD was predominantly preoccupied with trying to understand the performance cultures that played a central role in the making of Weimar Berlin. With that project, the question of the aesthetic assumed a certain centrality, and such questions have never really disappeared. I am certainly still interested in the points of intersection between aesthetics and politics in all sorts of ways; those are very urgent questions when we consider how aesthetics and politics can be configured for very reactionary ends.

Needless to say, I am interested in the precise opposite – the way in which we can think about putting the aesthetic and political into a radically progressive constellation. The earlier question about Benjamin is a very important one in that context. Weaving through my work is an enduring concern with those kinds of issues and an attentiveness to the notion of squatting as making or fabulation. This attentiveness recognizes that in many cases squatters were themselves artists, they were involved in artistic communities, and they often instantiated new kinds of aesthetic practices within particular “scenes.”

So I don’t think my concern with the aesthetic has ever receded from view; however, the way in which I pose that question has changed considerably since my PhD and some of my earlier work. For example, I have recently been struck by conversations with the artist Tom Burrows, who was also a squatter for many years on the Maplewood Mudflats on the North Shore in Vancouver. He approached the very act of squatting in terms that were quite close to what Joseph Beuys would refer to as “social sculpture.” The kinds of questions he asked in his practice as an artist were closely intertwined with the environment in which he was living.

Ecology and Ontology

WC: You teach a course on “urban natures” and urban political ecology. In what sense can squatting be understood as an ecological practice?  

AV: I’ve come rather late to urban political ecology; that was more serendipity than anything else. I have always been familiar with it at a distance, but more recently – in teaching the course you mentioned – I do wish I had come to political ecology earlier on. There are some very interesting squatting initiatives that frame themselves in overtly ecological terms. The kinds of projects we see in Spain for example, where you have activists in Catalonia squatting a village that’s been abandoned, working to create a sustainable community out of quite literally a ruin, and adopting a whole range of “ecological sensibilities” in re-functioning that space.   

That being said, I think there is another way in which we can think about the ecological impulse of squatting more broadly – so as to recognize that this impulse is perhaps embedded in the kind of makeshift ethos adopted by a lot of squatters. I’ll be careful how I frame this, but squatters generally have a certain sensitivity to the production and maintenance of urban natures. Historically, squatters were often involved in projects like Berlin’s Prinzessinnengarten.

That is a community garden that was reclaimed by activists in recent years, and which otherwise would have been transformed, inevitably, into some kind of luxury development. And the relationship is not simply one-sided. Political ecological sensibilities in Berlin parallel in many ways the emergence of radical housing initiatives in the city. Matt Gandy’s recent documentary film – and his written work on this subject – I think requires further reading and thinking through, but it does suggest these various points of intersection and points of conversation between squatting and a type of urban environmentalism.

There are a number of other examples. For instance, one might be surprised to learn that MORUS – the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, which is in the Lower East Side – narrates two stories. One is obviously the history of squatting in the neighborhood, but the other is the history of community gardening. In that case, too, we find a radical ecological sensibility threaded through the history of urban squatting.

WC: In what sense does a “modest ontology of mending and repair” (Vasudevan, 2015b) inform the politics of squatting?

AV: I am very interested in squatting as making, as craft, as a kind of building, an active process. In my research I am often struck by the work it takes to rehabilitate and re-function a space. Moreover, the notion of a “modest ontology” is a nod to the fact that squatters are often able, quite successfully, to mobilize and produce a different sense of what it means to live in a city.

Alex Vasudevan is an Associate Professor in Human Geography at the University of Oxford, and an Official Student and Tutor of Christ Church, Oxford. His recent publications include The Autonomous City: A History of Urban Squatting (London: Verso, 2017), Metropolitan Preoccupations: The Spatial Politics of Squatting in Berlin (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015), and (as co-editor) Geographies of Forced Eviction: Dispossession, Violence, Insecurity (London: Palgrave, 2017).

William Conroy completed his MPhil at Oxford in 2018, and studies urban political ecology, racial capitalism, and the commons.

Works Cited

Brickell K, Fernández Arrigoitia M and Vasudevan A (2017) Geographies of forced eviction: dispossession, violence, resistance. In: Brickell K, Fernández Arrigoitia M and Vasudevan A (eds) Geographies of Forced Eviction: Dispossession, Violence, Resistance. London: Palgrave, pp. 1-24.  

Jeffrey A, McFarlane C and Vasudevan A (2007) Spectacle, state, modernity: a commentary on Retort’s Afflicted Powers. Geopolitics 12: 206-222.  

McFarlane C and Vasudevan A (2014) Informal infrastructures. In: Adey P, Bissell D, Hannam K, Merriman P and Sheller M (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Mobilities. New York: Routledge, pp. 256-264.

Vasudevan A (2007) ‘The photographer of modern life’: Jeff Wall’s photographic materialism. cultural geographies 14: 563-588.

Vasudevan A (2011) Dramaturgies of dissent: the spatial politics of squatting in Berlin, 1968-. Social & Cultural Geography 12(3) 283-303.

Vasudevan A (2017) Squatting the city: on developing alternatives to mainstream forms of urban regeneration. Available at: https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/squatting-the-city-on-developing-alternatives-to-mainstream-forms-of-urban-regeneration/10021291.article (accessed 6 March 2019).

Vasudevan A (2014) Autonomous urbanisms and the right to the city: the spatial politics of squatting in Berlin, 1968-2012. In: Van Der Steen B, Katzeff A and Van Hoogenhuijze L (eds) The City is Ours: Squatting and Autonomous Movements in Europe from the 1970s to the Present. Oakland: PM Press, pp. 131-152.

Vasudevan A (2015a) The autonomous city: towards a critical geography of occupation. Progress in Human Geography 39(3): 316-337.

Vasudevan A (2015b) The makeshift city: towards a global geography of squatting. Progress in Human Geography 39(3): 338-359.

The City of Edmonton, Canada, is currently a finalist in the Smart Cities Challenge, launched by the Government of Canada in 2017. This article looks at some of Edmonton’s key priorities in this process and how they used the opportunity to focus on the health and well-being of immigrants and newcomers.

The Refugee’s Journey: Welcome to Canada

Last November, a video of two Eritrean children in Toronto, dancing in the snow, went viral. Within days, there were millions of views on social media, 132,000+ likes under the Twitter hashtags #RefugeesWelcome & #NewcomersWelcome, and dozens of international news agencies re-posting the video on their platforms.

Snow is pretty standard-fare for most Canadians. But watching the children chase after snowflakes brought many viewers to tears. The video even elicited a joke by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – musing that all the children’s parents needed to do next was convince them that shoveling snow was equally enjoyable.

The video was filmed forty-eight hours after they arrived in Canada; the children were part of a family of five fleeing conflict in Eritrea. It captured the quintessential “honeymoon phase” for newcomers to Canada: the novelty offered by a new and exciting place and, for many refugees like the Eritrean family, the relief of finally leaving a refugee camp and being able to start afresh.

However, post-arrival, the majority of newcomers begin to face many struggles. What opportunities can city governments seize on to address these struggles and facilitate the social and economic integration of newcomers?

The Smart City Challenge and the City of Edmonton

Expectations for cities around the world have changed. No longer just a service and utility provider, the modern municipality is a key player in improving the social welfare of all of its citizens. City governments have the unique ability to work directly with residents and modify the local built environment to combat social isolation.

In 2017, the Government of Canada launched the Smart Cities Challenge, which encouraged cities and communities across Canada to adopt a “smart cities approach” to improve the lives of their residents through innovation, data, and connected technologies. In the next few months, the Minister of Infrastructure Canada will award $50 million to the winning city.

The City of Edmonton was selected as a Finalist in the Smart Cities Challenge, proposing to create a municipal-led Healthy City ecosystem that leverages partnerships, data sharing, and innovative technologies to improve the quality of life for residents. While smart mobility such as autonomous vehicles and service digitization are important, they do not lay a core foundation to improve the quality of life for all Canadians. Edmonton’s approach proposes to improve resident health by addressing the root causes of health issues, rather than treating the symptoms.

A city of the future - a Smart City - is a Healthy City. To achieve preventive health outcomes, municipalities need to focus on enabling the economic, physical, mental and social health of their residents. Focusing on the social determinants of health will cost less than reactive spending on healthcare and will improve the lives of citizens. This is a transformational shift in thinking - one emphasizing prevention and the role that community-building activities and services can play in contributing to health outcomes. Dr. Richard Lewanczuk (2018) found a near perfect correlation between the loneliness score of adults over 55 and the likelihood that they were among the five percent of the population that consumes 65 percent of healthcare resources (in the Province of Alberta this was equivalent to $4.3 billion in 2017). The findings from this type of research encouraged the City to focus its Smart City efforts on promoting social connectivity, particularly of vulnerable or marginalized groups, as a means of building a Healthy City.

Newcomers to Edmonton and Barriers Faced

In preparing its Smart Cities application, the City of Edmonton found a number of barriers that newcomers face. These include lack of family, language, and cultural supports, as well as limited awareness of the services available to assist them with their integration. Of the almost 3,000 Syrian refugees that arrived in Edmonton over the past few years, employment stress and deficient housing, health and mental well-being were identified as major barriers to successful integration in their host communities.

Recognizing these challenges, the City of Edmonton selected newcomers as one of its first target demographic communities, as the City embarked on its Smart City journey. The federal government of Canada has jurisdiction over immigration and the final say on who can enter the country, but it is in municipalities where newcomers live and work. Furthermore, it is very often municipal services, regulations, and infrastructure that determine the success of the immigrant experience. Despite federal funding to support settlement and agencies on the ground dedicated to supporting new arrivals, the pressures of learning a new language and securing a job can take a toll on an individual’s physical and mental health.

To enable newcomers to achieve more successful integration, the City of Edmonton chose to explore how it could increase the sense of belonging of newcomers through the provision of technology, programs and other services.

Municipal Interventions: A Smart City Approach

The question then becomes: how do municipalities become better at easing the burden for newcomers as they transition out of the honeymoon phase and into the more complex, post-arrival integration phase? The following are some key activities undertaken by the City of Edmonton to support all newcomers:

(1)   A Welcoming Message from the Top: One key consideration is a well-informed and supportive Mayor and Council. The Council recently sent a welcoming message in which it confirmed that city services would be available to all residents, regardless of documentation. This “access without fear” policy commits city officials to only ask residents for the level of identification necessary. This allows newcomers to access subsidized transit and recreation passes while waiting on their immigration status, without fear of deportation. Such political support filters down to City Administration; the Edmonton Police Service continues to foster relationships with service providers such as Migrante Alberta, Edmonton Immigrant Services Association, and the Alberta Coalition on Human Trafficking.

(2)   Stakeholder Coordination: The City of Edmonton recognizes it is not alone. There are numerous stakeholders in a municipal ecosystem and fostering strong partnerships among them is essential.

Collaboration was essential in Edmonton’s ability to absorb a large number of Syrian refugees over the past few years. When immigration began, there were concerns about whether Edmonton had sufficient support in place. But Suzanne Gross, Manager of External Partnerships and Collaboration at the Edmonton Mennonite Centre for Newcomers, recognized the benefits of bringing together traditional and non-traditional partners to fill this gap. Not long after, traditional settlement agencies and non-traditional partners such as the Edmonton Art Gallery and local Indigenous agencies were collaborating, leading to enhanced services for all.

(3)   Leveraging Data: The City of Edmonton is a Canadian leader when it comes to Open Data. Its vision is “open by default.” There are more than 2,100 data sets available on the City’s open data portal. The objective is not simply to publish and release data. It is to nurture more strategic, community-based decision making by providing data and information to all ecosystem stakeholders and ensuring they have the tools and knowledge to perform meaningful analysis. While careful precautions are always necessary for protection of privacy, such data sharing can break down silos between organizations and permit new analytics and data mining capability that furthers optimization of service delivery and accessibility.

(4)   Supporting Immigrant Community Initiatives: Edmonton also supports newcomers through direct programming and services. An example is the Emerging Immigrant and Refugee Communities Grant program, which helps to bring newcomers together to reduce isolation and build stronger communities. This program ensures that newcomers have access to training and are aware of the multitude of community services available to them. The program also aims to translate more city information into Arabic and other languages, so as to accommodate the growing diversity of languages spoken in the City. To further increase newcomers’ sense of belonging, the City of Edmonton also employs digital tools such as in-ear, real-time translation devices and app-delivered language training.

A Smart City is a Healthy City, supported by the Mayor and Council, in partnership with all stakeholders in a municipal ecosystem. This community of support is essential for delivering the high quality services to all who need them.

Inevitably, newcomers will face difficulties in settling into new surroundings. The honeymoon phase may always have a shelf life. But as the case of Edmonton demonstrates, the modern municipality can play a substantial role in alleviating post-arrival challenges and facilitating integration.

You can learn more about Edmonton’s Smart City Challenge bid here.

Tomas Ernst has worked in local, provincial, federal, and international civil service for over 15 years. Tomas’ start-up company, donatetoplay.com, was recognized by Boulevard Magazine for its innovation in transforming the financial practices of nonprofits. He spent eight years working with the United Nations and World Bank Group in Australia, Europe, East Africa, and the Middle East. He served as Acting Branch Manager and Director in the Citizen Services Department at the City of Edmonton prior to joining the Open City and Technology branch. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce and a Masters in International Relations.

Works Cited

Lewanczuk, R. (2018). The critical importance of going beyond administrative data for health systems planning and integration. International Journal of Integrated Care 18(2).

The results of Bogotá’s 2018 ender to renew its BRT fleet illustrate how Colombian cities are struggling to electricity their public transportation systems. Nevertheless, such electrification is essential, and there are a number of concrete financial and regulatory steps government can take to facilitate the transition.

In February 2018, Bogotá redrafted the tender to renew its sixteen-year-old Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), making modifications that emphasize clean energy. The review followed widespread citizen mobilization in favor of environmental sustainability; a significant portion of the public was very concerned by the marginal weight granted to clean technologies within the BRT’s mandate. In a survey conducted in 2017, 52% of the respondents reported that they believed air pollution was the country’s main environmental challenge[1]. 

In late 2018, while Ecuador’s Guayaquil and Chile’s Santiago started to electrify their BRT systems, Bogotá’s tender was awarded to a group that did not include electric buses in their bid[2]. The group’s proposal states that roughly 60% of the new buses will run on diesel and 40% on natural gas. Colombian local transport authorities argue that current upfront costs of e-buses are prohibitive[3] for public finances, especially when compared with the cost of diesel-powered buses.

Most cities in Colombia have invested in BRT systems during the past decade in an effort to provide upgraded, formal, and integrated public transit, and most of these cities have plans to further expand BRT networks.

Air pollution is especially acute in the metropolitan areas where these BRT systems operate. The electrification of BRT systems alone will not solve air quality issues. BRT accounts for only about half of commutes in the city of Bogotá[4]). However, the visibility of BRT buses makes it likely that their electrification will encourage traditional bus operators to embrace the clean energy transition. Therefore, they represent a powerful starting point for a national-level clean energy transition. In this article, I explore potential solutions to the current obstacles to such a transition. Why are Colombian cities lagging behind in electrification compared to their peers in Latin America?

The Necessity and Promise of Transport Electrification

Context is necessary in order to highlight the importance of transportation in climate change mitigation. In 2018, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) reported that without action, greenhouse gas emissions from the transportation sector are likely to double by 2050[5]. Electrifying the passenger transport industry is recognized as an effective way of both mitigating GHG emissions from the transport sector and improving local air quality.  

Electric public buses represent a double opportunity. Besides directly cutting air pollutants and GHG emissions, they indirectly diminish emissions through their contribution to more energy-efficient urban patterns, such as transit-oriented developments [6]. Cities embracing transit-oriented developments densify areas adjacent to transit lines, reducing car-dependency by making transit more accessible to a higher proportion of residents.

Air quality in Colombian cities has consistently worsened in recent years, and in them, transport accounts for 70% of particulate matter (PM). In 2017, the PM 10 concentration in 76% of monitored Colombian municipalities was above the national target, and air pollution accounted for 8,000 early deaths in Colombia in 2015[7]. Clearly, there is a need for cleaner transit.

By international standards, Colombia’s energy mix is relatively low-carbon. Hydropower accounts for two thirds of the electricity generated, with the remaining third generated by fossil fuels[8]. Electrifying the transport sector is therefore an optimal solution for reducing the country’s carbon footprint, and one that can be more easily done in Colombia than other countries more dependent on fossil fuels.

Since the debate on electrification entered the public agenda a decade ago, concerns about technical problems with e-buses have been constant. Nevertheless, recent improvements dismiss traditional arguments related to unreliability, insufficient range, and low efficiency[9]. Bogotá conducted a pilot project with BYD, a Chinese e-bus manufacturer, to test e-bus’ performance. The results were highly encouraging, with buses exhibiting a drive range of 250 km - greater than the daily distance driven by the current diesel buses within the fleet. Moreover, the cost of energy per kilometer driven was 43% lower than that of diesel buses, and maintenance cost per kilometer dropped 83%. The operation of each e-bus resulted in C02 emissions reductions of 112 tons per year[10].

Some efforts to boost electrification are already in place, but they are insufficient. In 2017, the previous central administration drafted a policy encouraging the purchase of e-vehicles (all vehicles combined, not only buses). The bill sets a 0% tariff rate - compared to the usual 35% - on imports of up to 7,000 electric or hybrid vehicles, distributed over a 10 year-period[11]. This policy is a good starting point, but its scope is limited and there is a need to both deepen incentives and tailor them to the passenger transport industry.

 Potential funding mechanisms

Perhaps the most simple way to finance BRT electrification would be to raise the passenger fee. However, this presents risks. Ridership is already declining due to widespread dissatisfaction with the quality of service. And demand is elastic, meaning a higher fare could trigger a vicious circle of decreasing ridership, slower network expansion, an increased deficit, and more investment in individual modes transportation.

Continuing to lower tariffs on imported e-vehicles seems more practical. Other governments have managed to boost e-bus purchases by providing tax exemptions. For instance, in 2015, the Chinese central government launched tax exemptions for e-bus purchases[12], leading to an exponential increase in sales. Colombia’s current tax exemption program is too narrow in scope. To make real progress, all e-bus imports should be tariff-free until full electrification is achieved.

The use of oil royalties to subsidize the electrification presents another promising option. There are £3.6 billion available in the General Royalties System (SGR) for 2019 and 2020, up 25% from the previous two-year period. These resources finance projects formulated by regional and local governments. Reserving a portion of the SGR fund for sustainable transport technologies can incentivize local governments to launch electrification schemes. Such resources could go to the acquisition of the buses and charging infrastructure, alike.

To relieve the challenges of high up-front investment, it will be critical to create a bus leasing scheme in partnership with financial institutions. In the United States, e-bus manufacturers have entered into partnerships with investment firms that acquire the vehicles and/or the batteries and then lease them to BRT operators[13]. The Colombian government could similarly incentivize traditional lenders to offer leasing opportunities by providing security deposits for leases. This option also transfers the burden of end-of-life management to the financial institution. The city of Guayaquil opted for a more traditional funding mechanism: one of the transit operators obtained a loan from CFN - a national development bank - with a preferential interest rate of 7.5%. In Colombia, operators could sign agreements either for leasing or purchase with national or multilateral development banks such as Bancoldex, the Interamerican Development Bank, or others.

Government might also consider signing agreements with utility firms for the installation of charging infrastructure. Local governments are concerned about the cost and eventual technical difficulties of installing charging stations. The natural gas industry has offered to bear the cost of this infrastructure, should the buses run on gas. Securing this type of agreement with power companies across the country will be important for making the transition affordable.

Finally, providing operators exemption from regulatory costs can speed the transition process. The Colombian Ministry of the Environment currently requires both BRT and traditional bus operators to install exhaust particle filters in their diesel-powered vehicles to mitigate PM emissions. The Ministry could exempt operators from this requirement if they opt to acquire e-buses. This policy could launch an immediate energy transition, without the need to wait for the next round of tendering processes, which take place on average every 12 years. However, this change would require more complex enforcement instruments in order to avoid potential freeriding by some operators.

Enable Cities to Lead

All of these possibilities should be made available for interested local governments, who can choose the option or combination of options that best suits their existing needs and resources. Implementing a mix of tax exemptions, dedicated grants, and leasing schemes seems may be the right approach for local governments looking to lower their opportunity cost of BRT electrification.

The policy options discussed here should be on the table at President Duque’s next meeting with the association that gathers mayors of Colombia’s largest cities (Asocapitales). Without support from the national government, municipalities will may fail to avoid decades of carbon lock-in.

Andrés Melendro Blanco, Latin America and China Coordinator for the Oxford Urbanists, is currently studying Mandarin and environmental policy at Tsinghua University in Beijing. His main interest is the spatial analysis of public policies. He is currently conducting research on China’s climate change adaptation strategies in light of its accelerated urbanization process. He is looking forward to contrasting them with Latin American experiences through his work with the Oxford Urbanists. He previously worked as an editor for The Business Year, an international media group, as a consultant for UN-Habitat, and as an urban development analyst at ProBogotá, a think-tank dedicated to fostering Bogotá’s sustainability. He holds a bachelor’s degree cum laude in Political Science and a master’s degree in Urban Policy, both from Sciences Po Paris.

Works Cited

[1] El Tiempo (newspaper), Así quedó la licitación para nuevos buses de Transmilenio, November 3d, 2018. Available at https://www.eltiempo.com/bogota/asi-quedo-la-licitacion-de-buses-para-transmilenio-289222

[2] TransMilenio oficial press release, Nueva flota de TransMilenio es en su mayoría a gas, December 21st, 2018. Available at https://www.transmilenio.gov.co/publicaciones/151058/nueva-flota-de-transmilenio-es-en-su-mayoria-a-gas/

[3] Diálogo Chino (online magazine), Bogotá le dice ‘no’ buses eléctricos y a la tecnología china, November 8th, 2018. Available at https://dialogochino.net/12261-bogota-rejects-chinese-electric-busses/?lang=es

[4] International Transport and Development Practice, Global BRT Data. Available at https://brtdata.org/location/latin_america/colombia

[5] IPCC, Global Warming of 1.5°: Summary for policymakers, October 2018.

[6] Marks, Michael, et al. People Near Transit: Improving Accessibility and Rapid Transit Coverage in Large Cities, ITDP, October 2016. Available at https://www.itdp.org/publication/people-near-transit/

[7] Energy Demand Situation in Colombia, National Planning Department (DNP), 2017. Available at https://colaboracion.dnp.gov.co/CDT/Prensa/Presentaci%C3%B3n%20Calidad%20del%20Aire%2015_02_2018.pdf

[8] International Energy Agency, Colombia Statistics. Available at https://www.iea.org/statistics/?country=COLOMBIA&year=2016&category=Key%20indicators&indicator=ElecGenByFuel&mode=chart&categoryBrowse=false&dataTable=ELECTRICITYANDHEAT&showDataTable=false

[9] Blynn, Kelly, Accelerating Bus Electrification: Enabling a sustainable transition to low carbon transportation systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2018.

[10] El Espectador (newspaper), Primer bus eléctrico de Transmilenio registró niveles de confiabilidad del 93 %, August 29th, 2018. Available at https://www.elespectador.com/noticias/bogota/primer-bus-electrico-de-transmilenio-registro-niveles-de-confiabilidad-del-93-articulo-808977

[11] Decree n° 1116 of 2017 “Tariffs lifted for electric vehicles imports”. Available at http://es.presidencia.gov.co/normativa/normativa/DECRETO%201116%20DEL%2029%20DE%20JUNIO%20DE%202017.pdf

[12] The City Fix, Shenzhen builds world’s largest electric bus fleet, April 9th, 2018. Available at  http://thecityfix.com/blog/shenzhen-build-worlds-largest-electric-bus-fleet-lu-lu-lulu-xue-weimin-zhou/

[13] Bloomberg, Buffet-backed BYD forms venture to lease electric buses in the US, July 12th, 2018. Available at https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-07-10/buffett-backed-byd-forms-venture-to-lease-electric-buses-in-u-s

As urbanization continues to accelerate in many developing countries, the development of efficient, cost-effective public transportation systems will be critical to the sustainable growth of emerging cities. This article highlights some of the key principles and lessons learned from Singapore’s transit-oriented development strategy and assesses how these principles may be considered and applied in emerging cities across the developing world.

Building effective urban mobility in land-scarce Singapore has often revolved around high-intensity transport technologies. One example is its ever-expanding Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) system, which is integrated with an extensive public bus network. What Singapore has now is the result of a growth process that has spanned over five decades. However, directly emulating such resource-intensive public transit options is not necessarily a viable solution for many developing cities. These projects require robust financial capital, careful land use and transport integration, and implementation capacities that are often lacking in developing cities. Nevertheless, policymakers and businesses in developing cities across the world may learn and benefit from the enabling factors, strategies and policy instruments underpinning Singapore’s urban transportation scene.

Planning Transport and Mobility in Singapore, the “Transit Metropolis”

As early as 1963, a UNDP report on future urban growth strategies had identified that “there is no doubt that Singapore needs some form of mass transport”. The report recommended that Singapore invest in either monorails or subways, noting that these options were the most suitable and cost-effective for the cityscape (Abrams, 1963). By 1998 Singapore’s urban transport infrastructure had grown manifold, to the point that Robert Cervero identified Singapore as a seminal example of a “Transit Metropolis”: a city which is designed to be especially conducive for sustainable public transit modes (Cervero, 1998).

Throughout its growth, Singapore has leveraged an effective array of strategies pertaining to urban mobility and transport infrastructure development to stimulate its social and economic development. Conceptually, many of Singapore’s ‘good-practices’ in urban transport can be broadly classified into four categories (Yuan, 1997):

• Incremental Development of Public Transport Capacity: Supply-side strategies that strategically expand the city-state’s urban transport capacity through continuous infrastructure investment and renewal.

• Integrating Land Usage, Land Ownership & Transport: Complementary urban planning policies streamlining planning and implementation of transport infrastructure.

• Transport Demand Management: Demand-side measures (dis)incentivising consumption behaviours to make transport infrastructure usage more efficient and sustainable.

• Leveraging Innovative Technologies for Transit-Oriented Development: Commitment to technological upgrading and encouraging private-sector participation in urban mobility.

This interlocking mosaic of policies and instruments anchors a coherent strategic vision for developing Singapore as a city.

Incremental Development of Public Transport Capacity

Despite the 1963 UNDP report, the Singapore government’s decision to finance the construction of the MRT network was only finalized in 1982 after careful feasibility studies and considerable debate due to its high expense and complexity (Chee-Meow, 1981). While multiple options were considered, such as a high-frequency bus system, the MRT network was selected as the preferred option.

Significantly, the state chose to adopt an enabling co-financing framework with end-users. Government funding covered initial capital costs for long-term infrastructure and the initial set of ‘rolling’ assets such as trains. Revenues collected from commuter fares would subsequently be priced to cover the incremental operational costs and provision for eventual replacement of transports (Li, 2008). In this way, the core ethos of financial viability for mass transit development has remained at the centre of Singapore’s ever-expanding public transport network.  Despite the importance of the MRT, it has not usurped focus on developing other transport modes; the subsequent development of a complementary bus network has served an important role, supplementing the MRT amid greater immigration and population growth (Rimmer, 1986).

With especially limited fiscal capabilities, core transport infrastructure in developing cities cannot be planned haphazardly. Although public financing on the scale of Singapore may be difficult to replicate, developing cities can still seek to emulate its ethos of strategic transport infrastructure investment. If Singapore’s history serves as a reference, there are no easy short-cut solutions. Properly implemented transportation infrastructure in cities are catalytic socioeconomic investments with beneficial spill-overs manifesting over the long term.

In order to shift public preferences from private transportation to mass transit platforms, developing cities will need to strategically invest in the incremental growth, maintenance, and improvement of services. This will improve competitiveness and ridership, raising new revenues generated both directly and indirectly, which will help further expand and improve the network.

Integrating Land Ownership, Land Usage and Transport

“Singapore’s intimate transit-land use nexus is the outcome of deliberate and carefully thought-out government decisions.” – Robert Cevero in The Transit Metropolis

Weak, decentralised systems of land rights in cities are a significant structural barrier preventing infrastructure investment and efficient land use (Collier, 2018). In Singapore, some of the most important factors enabling effective public investment in core transit infrastructure are the state’s centralization of land ownership and the integration between clearly defined plans for transportation and broader land usage (Barter, 2011).

Stemming from the 1966 Land Acquisition Act, Singapore’s government has immense prerogative in acquiring land. This enables the compulsory acquisition of land needed for “any public purpose, by any person, corporation or statutory board” and “for any residential, commercial or industrial purposes” (Halia, 2016). The government has steadily accumulated land since 1966, and now owns more than 90% of land in Singapore. This centralization has facilitated the coordination and streamlining of both public and private urban development efforts in the country.

Successful transportation planning cannot be pursued in isolation from other urban development objectives. Singapore’s institutional ability to coordinate multiple urban agendas has enabled strategic planning and provision to develop transport infrastructure in tandem with a broader urban planning and development framework.

In Singapore, the lead government agency coordinating strategy in urban transport is the Land Transport Agency — LTA (World Bank, 2014). The LTA collaborates closely with other government institutions involved in urban development - such as the Housing Development Board (HDB), Jurong Town Corporation (JTC) and the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) - as it plans and regulates transport infrastructure. This ensures a coordinated approach to urban development and the public transportation network (Barter, 2011).

The strategic framework for urban land use is provided by a broad Concept Plan common across urban development agencies. Various updated concept plans since 1971 have thus guided long-term development in urban master planning. By one account, the value of such a process is that:

“The Concept Plans cover aspirations, what the community wants to achieve, and confronts major strategic trade-offs and dilemmas – quite deliberately without getting bogged down in details. The [Master & Development Guide Plans] take the concepts as a starting point and provide the details of how the aspirations are to be achieved”

(Barter, 2011)

This streamlined approach allows current and future plans to extend public transport infrastructure to be effectively aligned and evolve alongside population densities and Singapore’s satellite towns.

Nonetheless, political centralisation and the fused nature of the city-state’s national, urban and local layers have allowed it to pursue vigorous “UrbaNational” policies (Olds, 2004). Integrated urban planning under the auspices of the state may not be a practice that developing cities in larger countries can or should directly emulate. Most cities admittedly have to work within larger regional or national frameworks, and land tenure systems differ vastly across contexts. The key takeaway for sustainable transport planning is that there are powerful benefits to achieving a degree of policy coherence & dynamism across different urban development efforts. Municipal institutions thus need to aim to reinforce policies that are sufficiently adaptable to guide a city in the medium to long term.

Transport-Demand Management: Incentivizing Efficient Infrastructure Use

Another core component of Singapore’s strategy for urban mobility focuses on policy instruments that aim to regulate and influence public usage of scarce transport resources and infrastructure.

Since 1972, Singapore has employed various mechanisms to ration the private ownership and use of cars on its roads. Traffic management policies such as the Area Licensing Scheme, (ALS), Vehicle Quota System (VQS), Electronic Road Pricing (ERP), and the Certificate of Entitlement (COE) levy additional surcharges or constraints upon private transport users (Barter, 2011). The city-state even recently initiated a “zero-growth” car policy which aims to calibrate the annual growth rate in privately-owned vehicles to zero.

Given the long construction windows and high financing costs of physical infrastructure projects, demand-regulating policies may offer viable instruments in the short-to-medium term for many developing cities. These measures can help to maximize use of transport infrastructure, incentivize shifts to public transportation, and help provide financing for further public transport infrastructure development. For instance, World Bank researchers have observed that the revenue generated from Singapore’s traffic demand management policies has also helped cover incremental costs for scaling and maintaining road and railway infrastructure (Suzuki, 2013).

Apart from the already discussed regulatory methods for controlling car ownership and use, Singapore is increasingly experimenting with positive incentives to help influence the public to make socially optimal transport decisions. For instance, temporary programmes to encourage off-peak usage of public transport, such as the “Travel Early, Travel Free” campaign, have been tested with promising preliminary results (Yong, 2017).

As developing cities seek to improve public transport infrastructure and ridership on public transport networks, they must also consider how to incentivise and habituate urban transport users into adopting and using these systems efficiently. Behavioural incentives delivered through creative public policies can provide one avenue to achieve this goal without requiring significant amounts of capital to implement. For instance, real-time comparative displays of fuel efficiency and travel times can help subtly encourage commuters to pick more ideal modes of transit and to recognize the economic and efficiency advantages of public transit.

Leveraging Innovative Technologies for Urban Mobility

Singapore’s approach to developing transit infrastructure and services increasingly integrates new technologies. Specifically, new technologies have been harnessed to generate more data-driven strategic public investments and to design incentive structures in public transport (Teck, 2018). For instance, travel cards and automated fare collection are ubiquitous in Singapore’s public transport network. In addition to enhancing customer convenience, the data collected from these systems helps planners assess current and future forecasts of urban population densities, improve dynamic route planning, and determine the potential market value of new sites. Other technological innovations currently being integrated into transport management include the shift from physical, gantry-dependent technology for charging vehicle users towards a flexible, satellite-controlled system.

In addition, private-sector actors are becoming increasingly involved in the quest for affordable and efficient mobility. In Singapore, private operators promising to streamline and optimize transport demand include logistics and ride-haling companies like Grab and Go-Jek. Seemingly more futuristic mobility innovations on the horizon in the city-state include start-ups developing air taxi and autonomous vehicle services. The city-state’s already expansive mass transit network notwithstanding, government bodies and private-sector entrepreneurs are committed to researching, investing in and scaling up complementary technologies for first and last-mile transport. This offers a notable - and potentially replicables - set of practices for any city to follow.

Despite the constraints faced by developing cities, a commitment towards integrating technologies and digital infrastructure into their urban fabric can help efficiently optimize the use of semi-formal transportation. Pedicabs, minibuses and shared vehicles can better integrate into a city’s conventional transportation infrastructure. For instance, in Kigali, the capital of Rwanda, the government has simultaneously cultivated an extensive public bus network and supported service improvement in the city’s moto-taxi industry. Innovations such as digital payment apps and safety rating systems are gradually being integrated into this semi-formal mode of transport.

Urban policymakers will nevertheless need to strike a balance between creating an enabling ecosystem for private-sector transport solutions and the need to uphold robust regulatory standards. oBike’s recent exit from Singapore due to new licensing frameworks is a case in point. For developing cities, this challenge is even more salient. Low intensity para-transit serve important functions for many low-income urban residents, providing both affordable first/last-mile mobility for customers and informal employment for service providers.

Although cities should make efforts to gradually plan for increasing mass public transit capacity, commentators from the International Growth Centre advocate that developing cities should consider transport complementarity rather than replacement. Emerging cities must thus consider policies to facilitate integration of various modes of semi-formal and formal transport. Moreover, regulations which help develop digital infrastructure, as much as the physical, will help make inclusive urban mobility a real possibility.

Nonetheless, disruptive technology should not be seen as a panacea for transport planning in developing cities. Abstracted information about transportation networks and usage gleaned from Big Data must also be contextualized with a localized understanding of transportation, mobility and land-use.

Business models and public policies need to operate with a robust theory of change that appreciates why and how preferences in transport have been constructed, as well as the existing socioeconomic roles of different transportation options in developing cities. Addressing historical, cultural and communal factors in greater depth, i.e. the existing ‘place value,’ can thus also make important contributions towards reclaiming the streets for inclusive, efficient mobility.

Effective Urban Governance at a Condensed Scale

Although policymakers in developing cities may not enjoy the same degree of institutional authority, Singapore’s experience and values in the development of its public transit highlights a set of key principles to consider when planning urban transport.

Cutting the Gordian knot of poor urban transport in developing cities will undoubtedly require actions tailored to the history and culture of each city. Individual cities will face different networks of stakeholders and considerations when planning their transit infrastructure. The specific government reforms and sociopolitical negotiations needed to achieve these objectives will necessarily differ from city to city. Yet, like Singapore, these actions should aim to forge the basic social and political consensuses needed for long-term, realistic, and appropriate urban transport improvement.

Works Cited

Abrams, C., Kobe, S., & Koenigsberger, O. (1963). Urban Growth and Renewal in Singapore. New York: United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs.

Barter, P., & Dotson, E. (2011). Urban Transport Institutions and Governance and Integrated Land Use and Transport, Singapore. Nairobi: UN Habitat. pp.3-8

Centre for Liveable Cities. (2013). Transport: Overcoming Constraints, Sustaining Mobility. Singapore: Cengage Learning.

Cervero, R. (1998). The Transit Metropolis: A Global Inquiry. Washington DC: Island Press.

Chee-Meow, S. (1981). The MRT Debate in Singapore: To Do or Not to Do. Southeast Asian Affairs.

Collier, P., Glaesar, E., Venables, E., Blake, M., & Manwaring, P. (2018). Land Rights: Unlocking Land for Urban Development. Cities that Work Policy Brief. International Growth Centre.

Halia, A. (2016). Urban Land Rent: Singapore as Property State. Oxford: Wiley Blackwell. pp.80-84

Li, Y., & Tiong, R. (2008). Financing and Operating of Singapore’s Urban Rail Transit Infrastructure. International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing

Olds, K., & Yeung, H. (2004). Pathways to Global City Formation: A view from the developmental city-state of Singapore. Review of International Political Economy, 11. pp.514

Rimmer, P. (1986). Rikisha to Rapid Transit: Urban Public Transport Systems and Policy in Southeast Asia. Oxford: Pergamon Press. pp.140-150.

Suzuki, H., Cervero, R., & Iuchi, K. (2013). Transforming Cities with Transit: Transit and Land-Use Integration for Sustainable Urban Development. Washington DC: World Bank. pp.72-73

Teck, L.C. (2018). Public Transport Planning and the Technological Revolution. Ethos 19. Singapore: Civil Service College.

Townsend, C. (2003). In whose interest? A Critical Approach to Southeast Asia's Urban Transport Dynamics. Perth: Murdoch University. pp.291-292

Urban Redevelopment Authority. (2012). Designing Our City: Planning for a Sustainable Singapore. Singapore: URA.

World Bank. (2014). Formulating an Urban Transport Policy: Choosing Between Options. Washington DC: World Bank. pp.28-29.

Yong, N., & Lim, Y.L. (2017). Temporary Incentives Change Daily Routines: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Singapore’s Subways. Management Science, 64(7). pp.3366

Yuan, L.Y. (1997). A Case Study on Urban Transportation Development and Management in Singapore. Urban Infrastructure Development, 26.

Brandon Chye is an MPhil candidate in Development Studies at Oxford’s Department of International Development. His main research focuses on the study of inter-regional networks of urban expertise and capital. Prior to coming to Oxford, he worked on international trade finance and development projects with the Africa-Southeast Asia Chamber of Commerce and GTR Ventures. Brandon holds a Bachelors degree in History from the National University of Singapore.

While assistive technologies have proliferated, researchers and developers have yet to develop sufficient standards for assessing these technologies and their socio-urban implications. This article reviews uni-disciplinary attempts made thus far and provides four interdisciplinary principles for moving forward. The principles are: (1) The Principle of Disabled-Centred Technological Development (2) The Principle of Disabled Diversity (3) The Principle of Expanding Disabled Independence and (4) The Principle of Mixed-methods Discourse.

Note: This piece was adapted from a dissertation for the Architectural and Interdisciplinary Studies program at University College London’s Bartlett School of Architecture.

GPS and other technologies have dramatically transformed contemporary urban experiences. With such technologies in the palm of our hand, trial-and-error travels are rare, and ‘trust-your-instincts’ wanders are even rarer. At unknown destinations, we turn to a suite of travel apps and accept the quickest or shortest possible routes readily available to us. Yet, there still are occasions where we struggle to find convenient routes and draw upon others’ help.

For disabled people, the stakes are much higher. They heavily rely on the availability of human and technological assistance to decide on the feasibility of their travel. While various technologies demonstrate the potential to offer urban accessibility to the disabled, such potential has yet to be fully realised.

Despite growth in assistive technologies, parallel development in standards to assess their effectiveness and socio-urban implications has not taken place. This is likely due to a lack of academic and commercial attention to assistive technologies. In an attempt to fill this gap, I propose four principles for evaluating assistive technologies.

Before presenting these principles, I first demonstrate the hitherto limited and fragmented attempts at studying (assistive) technologies in three different academic fields: architecture, computer science and engineering, and social sciences.

 Architecture

 In Architecture, disability studies and technology have often been dealt with separately, mostly under the theme of accessible/universal design (see Bloomer and Moore, 1997; Boys, 2014; Goldsmith, 2000; Hall and Imrie, 2001) and digital architecture/urbanism (see Carpo, 2017; Lynn, 1998, Mitchell, 1996). Recently, architects and architectural historians have turned to the sociological concept of care (see Mol et al., 2010; Schillmeier and Domènech, 2010; Till, 2012), as a potential area where human frailty and its supporting technologies can be simultaneously studied within architecture. Yet, the research is in its embryonic stages and much focus is on designing “care-full” architecture, often belittling the experiences of users as those of the technologically unknowledgeable (Boys, 2017). In assessing assistive technologies, this institutional perspective is problematic. Disabled users often require specific needs of which so-called superior design experts and theorists are unaware.

Computer Science and Engineering

In Computer Science and Engineering, discussions on the potential for assistive technologies to enhance mobility of the disabled (see Chib and Jiang, 2014; Rashid et al., 2016) have been fruitful yet isolated, neglecting some social repercussions. Incorporating the emerging Internet of Things (IoT), researchers have experimented with Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons and radio-frequency identification (RFID) tags to create accessible solutions (for examples, see Swobodzinski and Raubal, 2008; Chen et al., 2015). At present, the signalling between BLE/RFID and their corresponding readers are unstable and thus limited to a circumscribed, often indoor, environment. But in the ‘smart’ future, when 5G-based wireless broadband network and computerised sensors replace the BLE/RFID systems, almost everything from large-scale infrastructure (like street and traffic lights) to domestic appliances (such as remote-controlled fridges and heating systems) will be connected to some part of the IoT (Wainwright, 2014).

Many proponents of the ‘smart city’ argue that ubiquitous signal detection and transmission will bring about efficiency, allegedly a panacea to contemporary urban ills. However, such rhetoric is precarious and prone to perplexing questions. One of these is: in assessing the successfulness of assistive technology, is efficiency the ultimate goal? Or is the ultimate goal utility? If the former, can we define disabled efficiency?

 Social Sciences and Urban Studies

On the contrary, social science researchers (Amin, 2012; Coutard and Guy, 2007; Graham and Marvin, 2001) and urban practitioners (Dixon, 2013; Rogers, Capra and Schöening, 2013; Vaughan, 2013) have remained unduly conservative and censorious of technological development and resulting techno-philic enthusiasm. The work of Amin (2012), for instance, questions the role of technology, together with material infrastructure, in forming healthy interpersonal relations and a new ‘politics of togetherness’ in urban settings. He argues that such politics are often absent in urban life today, and technology creates alienation and oppression, which are opposite of the desired effects.

Similarly, Vaughan (2013) raises concerns over virtual connectivity and formation of specialised groups which hinder urban co-existence and integration. Coutard and Guy (2007) explain this through surveillance technologies, such as CCTVs that create information and power asymmetry. Graham and Davis’ Splintering Urbanism (2001) furthers this view by linking the mis-management and monopolisation of technology to urban fragmentation. The book points to the harmfulness of technological advances, including their potential to intensify socioeconomic imbalances. These views are equally contentious, as they generalise the mechanism of technologies and overlook specialised technological tools.

Altogether, there lacks a holistic and impartial review of technologies – assistive ones in particular –across disciplines. In other words, although researchers in architecture, computer science and engineering, and social sciences are interconnected in their attention to the concept of assistive technologies, they are carrying out their research in unproductive isolation.

It is vital that assistive technologies be evaluated under an ‘umbrella’ methodology that includes different theoretical and technical understandings. Below, I propose four principles which constitute a framework for evaluating issues specific to current and future assistive technologies.

With the advance of artificial intelligence and virtual reality, new types of assistive technologies will appear. Novel human-technology interaction methods, such as speech or haptic systems and motion sensors will facilitate technology’s social inclusion. But while this development inspires more inclusive and egalitarian forms of urban collectiveness, the personalisation of such interactive options and the handling of personal data must be questioned. Policy makers, designers, and developers can use the four principles I discuss to move discussions forward and optimize their efforts to facilitate accessibility for the disabled.

(1)   The Principle of Disabled-Centred Technological Development 

The fundamental necessities of disabled-centred technology are to enhance disabled people’s capabilities and to remove restrictions and injustice related to their use of technology. These fundamental necessities reject the idea that technologies are intrinsically or universally valuable, as well as the notion that usability is a quality that exists in any absolute sense. In other words, the usability of any technological tool or system must be viewed in terms of the context in which it is used and its appropriateness to that context (Brooke, 1996).

 As a result, we should applaud context-aware assistive technology that makes effective use of accessible and widespread tools. An accessible and well-established platform with which to implement technology maximises the potential reach of technologies and permits developers a guaranteed platform for their solutions. Smartphones, particularly iPhones, are one of the items that are frequently owned and used by many disabled people. The smartphone platform can offer wayfinding technology to a wide audience in the form of competitive smartphone-based applications.

(2)   The Principle of Disabled Diversity

As a consequence of the contextual nature of technology, it is very difficult to compare and measure usability across different types of assistive technology. One should avoid comparing the usability of different technologies intended for different purposes wherever possible. It may also be misleading to generalise design features and experience across technological systems. For example, the fact that a particular design feature has proven useful in one system does not necessarily mean that it will be useful in another system with a different group of users doing different tasks in different environments. Technologies must be developed on the basis that people are endowed with various physical and mental characteristics and live in diverse environments under varied socio-economic conditions. All of these factors affect the opportunities a person can realistically enjoy from the adoption of a particular piece of technology.

(3)   The Principle of Expanding Disabled Independence

 If there is an area in which it is possible to assess usability in a way that can bear cross-system comparison, it is in subjective assessments of independence. While different assistive technologies serve different groups of disabled users, their universal aim is to increase disabled independence. The ends of technology are to address disabled people’s lack of freedom by enabling them to travel on their own and carry out their daily activities without anyone’s help. Yet part of the environment into which technology enters is the social environment, which includes the ways in which disabled people are perceived by the society. In order to facilitate independence, one must carefully consider these social norms and continuously adapt the technologies to them.

In measuring disabled independence, it is therefore also crucial to observe whether technology is resistant to reification. Reification refers to the act of perceiving technology as merely material artefact with inscribed, unequivocal characteristics, independent from social practices. Technology has the flexibility to incorporate a wide range of hegemonic functions and shape the political agenda. However, unless technology is lucrative and mainstream, technology developers hold little influence over policymaking. As such, developers must be adaptive, context-aware, and proactive. When assessing a disabled-centred technology, its context-awareness and flexibility should be incorporated and valued, in addition to its direct impact on enabling independence.

(4)   The Principle of Mixed-methods Discourse

 Developers and researchers must measure the extent to which technology expands independence both quantitatively and qualitatively. To address critical socio-urban problems, such as accessibility for disabled people, either quantitative or qualitative data alone is insufficient. These problems are far “more dynamic and complex because of the number of stakeholders involved and the numerous feedback loops among inter-related [disciplines]” (Desouza and Smith, 2014). Especially when the problems are associated with social minorities, perspectives are often disregarded, hindering well-informed decision-making.

Mixed methods approaches are therefore imperative for achieving socio-urban innovation. Similarly, user-inclusive research approaches should be encouraged. In addition to researchers’ well-thought-out designs and hypotheses, the direct opinions of disabled population are equally important to shaping the course of emerging assistive technologies.

Sharon Chang is an MSc student in Social Data Science at the Oxford Internet Institute (OII). Her research interests include the development of smart cities, the Internet of Things (IoT), and ideas for improving disabled accessibility through data-driven, human-centred approaches. Before joining the OII, she studied at UCL Bartlett School of Architecture. 

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In response to persistent health challenges, start-ups are leveraging technology with the aim of providing higher quality and more widely available healthcare in India’s cities.

India has a young and rapidly growing urban population. Government-sponsored urban development schemes have incrementally provided city dwellers with facilities offering improved quality of life. Change has been most significant in sanitation, public transport, and overall governance. But while Indian urbanites are enjoying improved infrastructure and better access to technological advancements, they remain exposed to a number of health risks. Demand for quality and affordable healthcare services in the country is on the rise. As a result, health care providers are scaling up with digital technologies to reach more consumers and provide better solutions.

Persistent health challenges

Despite improvement of living standards in some areas, chronic diseases are becoming more frequent in India. A leading healthcare service provider recently conducted an assessment of disease and illness trends across 35 Indian cities. The study reports increased visits to specialists for respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and as spine and gastric conditions. While life expectancy in India has improved, the country’s urban health situation is in some respects witnessing a new low. According to recent study by the World Health Organization, India will lose $236.6 billion by 2020 as a result of unhealthy lifestyles.

The promise of digitisation

Urban India has a high concentration of health-care providers, yet not everyone has easy access to health care. With this in mind, digital health start-ups are building innovative solutions, enabling patients with better access to treatment and preventive care. Stasis Labs and mfine are two such startups.

The Bengaluru-based Stasis Labs was founded by Dinesh Seemakurty and Michael Maylahn in 2015 with the aim of increasing the accessibility and affordability of healthcare in Indian cities. Seeking to address inefficient nurse-patient ratios in hospitals, they developed a cloud-connected vitals-monitoring product for patients who require close attention. Stasis Labs’ remote patient monitoring system measures six core vital signs, deploys predictive artificial intelligence at the bedside for diagnosis, and provides actionable insights to doctors working remotely. Using the Stasis App, doctors can remotely manage vulnerable patients on their smartphones, and Stasis has helped eliminate unnecessary ICU (Intensive Care Units) admissions, helping prioritise late night emergency trauma cases. Through the use of cloud-based technology and AI, Stasis aspires to transform the way urbanites receive medical treatment.

“A hospital on the cloud and a doctor for every Indian” - this is the motto of the founders of mfine, Prasad Kompalli and Ashutosh Lawania. mfine is an artificial intelligence-powered healthcare platform with a number of functions. First, the start-up gives Bangaloreans online access to doctors from numerous hospital networks in the city. Second, mfine’s has built a “virtual doctor” that can diagnose and decide the order of treatment for over 1,000 common diseases. Finally, mfine’s cloud-based platform facilitates instant video consultations, remote prescriptions, and medication reminders. It also helps organise health records and long-term care programmes. mfine’s cofounder and CEO, Prasad Kompalli, claims that the company’s AI engine provides accurate diagnoses in more than 90% of cases.

In India, digitalisation is contributing to the health and well-being of those who have access to technology. Meanwhile, Indians are gaining increasing access to such technology while digital healthcare companies continue to scale. Though the health challenges in India remain serious, the technology industry is beginning to pull its weight.

Srividya Yiruvanti is an IT professional, with 12 years of experience in the industry. She is also a freelance writer focused on digital trends in India.

This piece was edited by Dr. Binti Singh and Diana Huynh.

Distributed, renewable electricity options are providing new opportunities to address lacking electricity access in many developing countries. Local groups – or intermediaries – provide necessary knowledge, key social connections, and ownership models to facilitate solar access in hard-to-reach places.

Households in both urban and rural communities across the Global South struggle to secure access to reliable and safe electricity. The divide in urban-rural electricity access is especially stark in some countries with large rural populations and slow electrification rates. The emerging off-grid solar sector, however, may hold potential to rectify these inequities. It currently provides lighting to as 114 million people, with about one-quarter of those on systems large enough to meet basic access standards set by the United Nation’s Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative (International Energy Agency 2017).

However, despite its promise, this sector faces a number of challenges to achieving social impact and business viability – some related to customer relationships and others related to the broader enabling environment for off-grid solutions. As a result, countries with significant off-grid populations are being ignored (Dalberg Advisors, Lighting Global, and International Finance Corporation 2018, 26). Financing and customer repayment challenges are the most frequently discussed. But social factors such as accountability and trust also help determine the success of distributed solar projects, and these require socially-driven responses (Saha, Annear, and Pathak 2013; Baruah 2010). Local groups that connect households with services, called intermediaries, constitute one promising example.

This piece illustrates four ways in which local groups which connect households with services –  called “intermediaries” – are rising to this challenge by facilitating the adoption and performance of off-grid solar products. Simpa Network’s “Women in Power” initiative and Barefoot College provide opportunities to expand access to standalone systems, such as lanterns or solar home systems, by engaging women in decision making and lowering the bar to access. Self-help groups in India and savings groups (‘chamas’) in Kenya  demonstrate the use of local organizations for maintenance, repairs, and collective purchasing power. These cases span distributed solar technologies (from small solar lanterns to microgrids) which, in practice, likely need different forms of social and technical support. Collectively, they show that, when it comes to distributed solar, working with local organizations may help address challenges with the dominant model of using individual agents to encourage off-grid solar adoption, maintenance, and repairs.

Simpa Networks and Barefoot College: Empowering women’s role in solar systems

Both Simpa Networks and Barefoot College (along with other organizations, such as Solar Sister and  Energy4Impact) recognize the importance of gender equality and local decision-making for deploying successful solar products. Simpa Networks operates in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Orissa (Odisha), and Bihar. The organizations’ “Women in Power” effort aims to increase the proportion of female customers and engages women as “village-level entrepreneurs” to enhance local presence and influence in the community.

This is important. In a sample of solar home system customers, the Global Off-Grid Lighting Association found that only 25% of solar home system customers are women, even though women often benefit more from enhanced lighting, given common household duties. Furthermore, women may influence peer purchasing decisions more than men (Global Off-Grid Lighting Association and Altai Consulting 2018). Barefoot College, which started in India but now works globally, provides solar installation and repairs training for local women. In Bhutan, Barefoot College has extended its training and capacity-building efforts by working with NGOs who can provide training in local communities.

Self-help groups and ‘chama’ culture: Developing microgrids

NGOs and private-sector partners are not only helping communities gain access to solar products and services, such as lanterns and home systems. They are also leveraging community organizations to provide new opportunities for larger systems, such as microgrids. In India, self-help groups have increased decision-making confidence, compelling women to take on leadership in village microgrid development. In Kenya, local villagers are organizing local utilities and microgrids rather than waiting for connections to the larger grid. Drawing on ‘chama’ culture, communities are partnering with other sources of funding to experiment with local electricity services.

Working with the utility: the “Abhas” program in New Delhi

While much of this experimentation is occurring in rural areas, peri-urban settings constitute unique opportunities to provide solar to areas with poor quality electricity, illegal connections, or no access at all. As illustrated in the photo below, solar is not just a rural technology. In peri-urban areas, it can be useful to facilitate electricity access prior to grid expansion, as well as to offset poor quality electricity. The Energy Sector Management Assistance Program notes that while urban areas are often covered by utilities and rural agencies have specialized agencies, peri-urban areas are often in an in-between zone, and are thus often underserved.

Partnerships across sectors can benefit peri-urban areas. Tata Power DDL’s development of the “Abhas” program in slum settlements in New Delhi, India, recruits and trains women from the local community with the hopes of reducing electricity thefts and bill nonpayment – significant contributors to nontechnical losses for utilities. The program has great potential. This year, there are expected to be 1,000 Abhas in New Delhi. The groups will play an important role in delivery and payment collection; energy efficiency and conservation; and increasing mobile payments. Such growth further indicates how leveraging social connections enhance electricity provision – not just for traditional utilities,  but for emerging off-grid companies, as well.

These experiments with management and electricity service provision are examples of the important roles non-state actors can play in meeting national and global goals for consumer services and environmental protection. They also illustrate the importance of building programs that include women – often the primary users of household electricity – and recognizing the influence of existing collective organizations, such as self-help groups or chamas.

More broadly, the cases demonstrate how new organizations and partnerships with existing local groups can help connect communities to key resources, particularly in the solar sector. Linking electricity provision to social capital enables providers to better understand community needs, build trust, and ensure households are receiving equitable and quality energy services. Partnerships — not just public-private, but private-non-profit and public-non-profit — provide opportunities for service providers to learn, build local networks, and be more effective.  

Elise Harrington is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a concentration in Environmental Policy and Planning. She is interested in energy policy, electricity access and service provision, and environmental regulation. Prior to MIT, Elise worked as a research assistant for the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, where she examined regulatory design and enforcement, and worked at the Energy Efficient Buildings Hub. She holds a BA in Architecture and Environmental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

 Works Cited

Baruah, Bipasha. 2010. “Energy Services for the Urban Poor: NGO Participation in Slum Electrification in India.” Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy 28 (6): 1011–27.

Dalberg Advisors, Lighting Global, and International Finance Corporation. 2018. “Off-Grid Solar Market Trends Report 2018.” https://www.lightingafrica.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/2018_Off_Grid_Solar_Market_Trends_Report_Full.pdf.

Global Off-Grid Lighting Association, and Altai Consulting. 2018. “Powering Opportunity: The Economic Impact of Off-Grid Solar.” Utrect, The Netherlands: UK Aid. https://www.gogla.org/powering-opportunity-the-economic-impact-of-off-grid-solar.

Goodin, Robert E., Martin Rein, and Michael Moran. 2008. “Introduction: The Public and Its Policies.” In Oxford Handbook of Public Policy, edited by Robert E. Goodin, Martin Rein, and Michael Moran. New York: Oxford University Press.

International Energy Agency. 2017. “Energy Access Outlook 2017.” Special Report. OECD/IEA. http://www.iea.org/access2017/.

Krishna, Anirudh. 2011. “Gaining Access to Public Services and the Democratic State in India: Institutions in the Middle.” Studies in Comparative International Development 46 (1): 98–117.

Saha, Somen, Peter Leslie Annear, and Swati Pathak. 2013. “The Effect of Self-Help Groups on Access to Maternal Health Services: Evidence from Rural India.” International Journal for Equity in Health 12 (May): 36.

This October’s inaugural U20 Summit offers cities the opportunity to raise the profile of urban policy issues just in advance of the G20. For the U20 to be successful, city leaders must be intentional about finding policy solutions that span scales and levels of government, include a dedicated urban focus, coordinate among cities globally on key issues, and remain context-specific.  

On October 29-30 of this year, leaders from the twenty largest nations (the Group of Twenty or G20), including heads of state and central bank officers, will gather in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for their annual conference. This year, the inaugural Urban20 (U20) summit will take place alongside the G20. Co-chaired by Mayors Horacio Rodriguez Larreta of Buenos Aires and Anne Hidalgo of Paris, the U20 “seeks to raise the profile of urban issues on the G20 agenda”. Members include first-tier cities such as Beijing, Berlin, New York City, Chicago, Johannesburg, Rome, and Tokyo.  

In an era marked by rising inequality, rapid urbanization, and authoritarian populism, the U20 offers global city leaders a tremendous opportunity to engage national governments. Through fora like the U20, subnational governments can work with national governments to advance policy initiatives on issues like social integration and inequality, and can ensure that policy solutions include an “urban lens.” Preparations for the U20 have already brought together diverse multilateral and civil-society groups like C40 Cities, United Cities and Local Governments (UCLG), UNHabitat, and the Global Platform on the Right to the City.  

For the U20 forum to most effectively advance urban policy, and for G20 heads of state to take these urban leaders most seriously, the U20 forum must emerge with concrete recommendations and present a long-term, coherent policy vision. Informed by work with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)’s Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs, Regions and Cities division, a U20 supporting institution, this author recommends that U20 leaders align their recommendations in the following ways.

(1) Develop solutions that engage different sectors, as well as multiple sectors and levels of government:  

Today’s multi-sector urban-governance models (such as public-private partnerships, collaborations between regional development and planning associations, and key relationships between governments and civic engagement nonprofits) may bring more stakeholders “to the table” of democratic decision making. However, they may also render decision-making more complex and opaque. The U20 can serve as a forum for discussing when and under what conditions multi-sector collaborations work, and when they do not. At the same time, the U20 can bring on board academic partners, think tanks, and research nonprofits to help foster understanding about what impacts different urban-governance approaches have on participatory democracy, economic and political inequality, and the provision of goods and services.  

Innovative governance experiments are underway across the globe. Kenya’s Council of Governors has experimented with devolution by creating a new level of government. In particular, it has established 47 new counties with legislative and executive functions akin to both cities and national governments – effectively creating a third, mid-sized, layer of government.

In Colombia, the Cali Economic Development Corporation is working to establish a Plan of the Territory (POT) that aspires to social and economic cohesion at a regional level. As Luis Eslava notes in his book Local Space, Global Life, the POTs are “crucial for the decentralization of development in Colombia”. POTs provide a way for governments to manage development processes not just in one city or village, but in an entire territory. At the Urban20, countries can share and compare experiments with multi-sector governance and (de)centralization at different scales.

(2) Focus squarely on urban perspectives with a dedicated “urban lens” to policy:

The U20 forum also provides an opportunity for city leaders to encourage national governments to prioritize urban policy. In doing so, U20 leaders ought to make clear for large national governments that urban issues, while multi-dimensional, are rooted in specific places, where city governments may have comparatively better expertise. National and city governments should identify and explore policies that can be carried out at the national level – yet within a “National Urban Policy” framework.  

National Urban Policy (NUP) has been recognized by the international community, at Habitat III, as an essential policy instrument for harnessing the dynamics of urbanization in order to achieve national and global goals. An example is Mexico’s National Urban Development Program, a Strategic document of the national government that sets national objectives, strategies and priorities for inclusive urban development and serves as a primary reference authority to subnational governments. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has led the way on measuring and comparing such a framework, and encouraged inclusion of local leaders as national governments implement NUPs. These actions are concentrated along five main pillars: money, place, people, connections, and institutions.

Nonetheless, according to a forthcoming UN-Habitat Global State of NUP report, only 11% of countries globally have successfully implemented a NUP. Above all, national and city administrations must align their objectives towards a shared vision of what needs to be done in cities, and then coordinate and enact this vision at the local and national levels.  

(3) Ensure policy goals and issues are coordinated across cities, particularly between issues like economic growth, social inequality, and climate change:  

City governments present at the U20 ought to ensure that their policy frameworks for certain policy issues are coordinated across cities. We know, for instance, that rates of inequality can be more pronounced in some large cities than in rural areas, and that cities account for a large majority of greenhouse gas emissions, especially in rapidly emerging economies. City-specific strategies can ameliorate these policy concerns and engage urban contexts. In other words, cities can and should encourage each other to contribute to solving problems to which they (cities) disproportionately contribute.  Moreover, city leaders can build momentum across coalitions of likeminded and similarly-affected populations and groups.

(4) Consider context-specific needs:

The U20 is an opportunity for some of the world’s first-tier cities to share best practices relating to urban inequality and governance. But policy solutions proposed by the U20 should not be monolithic. They should differ across countries, and across city and local contexts. Regions, cities, towns, and villages have particular policy needs requiring flexible, localized responses.

Recognizing this is important in the context of housing policy, for instance. Local governments influence public and private housing markets through development control decisions, have strong connections to the community, and are well positioned to facilitate a “whole-of-government” approach to housing outcomes. (Such an approach coordinates the joint activities performed by diverse ministries, public administrations and agencies; a compelling example in the health sector is Canada’s National Collaborating Centre on Healthy Public Policy.)

At the same time, even though policies like fiscal equalization – the transfer of fiscal resources across jurisdictions with the aim of offsetting differences in jurisdictions’ revenue-raising capacities—have the potential to help equalize economic growth, achieving equality of opportunity requires more context-specific solutions, as well. Specific places may also need interventions targeting education, human capital, infrastructure, and public services in order to facilitate comprehensive economic development and expand urban residents’ life opportunities. Both structural and more targeted interventions, decided upon and enacted by different levels of government, are crucial for positive outcomes.

Overall, the U20 forum offers city leaders an opportunity to engage their G20 counterparts in high-impact collaboration. To be most effective, this agenda must engage different sectors and levels of government; emphasize an “urban lens” to national policy; ensure cities coordinate on key issues such as economic growth, inequality, and climate change; and attend to local needs. The U20 must also engage urban civil-society stakeholders, academics, and practitioners.  

If done right, this year’s U20 can set the stage for robust and sustained engagement around city and metropolitan issues for years to come. With cities and mayors increasingly leading on our most vexing policy issues, we may soon be as interested in what happens at the U20 as we are in the G20.  

Stefan Norgaard is a Master in Public Policy candidate at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he serves as Managing Editor for the Kennedy School Review, a Research Associate with the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative, and a Course Coach for two of Professor Brian Mandell’s intensive experiential learning courses: Fundamentals of Negotiation Analysis and Advanced Workshop in Multiparty Negotiation and Conflict Resolution. After studying urban politics and public policy at Stanford, Stefan worked at the Ford Foundation on its Equitable Development team, seeking to disrupt the drivers of inequality and promote social and economic justice, and then served as an NYC Urban Fellow in the Administration of NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio, working with the NYC Department of Transportation. He spent this summer at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) supporting its Champion Mayors for Inclusive Growth initiative and developing global and comparative data on cities and inequality. Stefan is passionate about good governance, participatory democratic practice, and development that is equal and just.

Small-scale interventions with strong urban vision have the potential to transform obsolete spaces into active destinations. George Town, the UNESCO-recognized historic core in Penang, Malaysia, could transform its inner-block voids, making them part of a lively urban system.

Walking through the streets of George Town, Malaysia is a mesmerising experience. It was there where I first saw an Anglican Church, Chinese style Taoist temple, Hindu temple and Mosque on the same street. It’s clear that a multi-cultural society coexists within the city’s historic core.

George Town’s cultural diversity derives from its history as an important trading port. Known as the Pearl of the Orient and founded in 1786, it was the first British port town established on the Strait of Malacca.

The city received UNESCO World Heritage status in 2008 - an acknowledgment of its well-preserved urban fabric, as well as its intangible yet palpable cultural heritage.

The Geography of George Town  

Fort Cornwallis serves as a reminder of George Town’s trading tradition. It is of noticeable scale, occupying the largest footprint of all buildings and monuments in the historic core. The fort is now a tourist destination; locals use its gardens as a place for social gatherings and events.

George Town’s urban center started as a grid south of Fort Cornwallis, which gradually gained reclaimed land on its eastern end. Today, there are four main building types within the historic core: shophouses, colonial buildings, industrial sheds and jetties. Temples, markets, art-deco, and early-modern style and new buildings infiltrate this fabric, interrupting its rhythm.  

Shophouses, in compact arrays, define the block perimeters. Main streets define their orientation. Colonial buildings demarcate the north of the historic core and mainly serve as administrative offices and hotels.

Large industrial sheds and jetties are scattered about the reclaimed land to the east. Economic development has rendered such industrial fabric all but obsolete. The cruise and ferry-bus terminal are the only two active points on the water.

This layout encourages most of George Town’s activity to take place in the historic core. The shop-house lined streets are its most lively spaces, where cultures mix and communities coexist in close proximity. Their identity spills into the streets. From food to colour; from language to rituals; from craftsmanship to commerce: one feels the power of culture.

The liveliness of George Town’s streets largely results from its variety of destinations. Churches, temples, food markets and commercial clusters – they’re all there, defining the concentration of other activities and guiding where people move and gather.

Distances are walkable in the historic center – a necessity due to the area’s hot tropical weather. A covered walkway between shophouse entrances and the road provides pedestrians shade from sun and rain.

Like in most other places, temples and shops open and close according to defined schedules. But here, temporary food stalls move around, creating social spaces in different areas throughout the day, sporadically activating obsolete city voids, quiet streets and alleys.

Little India: An opportunity for productive retrofitting

Many new economic clusters have developed outside of George Town’s historic core. These include high-tech industries, hotels, and malls, accompanied by new luxury housing and residential neighborhoods. The historic core has mainly remained a tourist destination and a place to live and work for those of lower socioeconomic status.  

To preserve the historic core, it has been necessary to invent new economic activities to take place there. But it is often difficult to attract new talent to complement existing local businesses and craftsmanship. Doing so requires architectural adaptation and an understanding of relationships and complementarity on a wide urban scale.

In an effort to discover opportunities for retrofitting existing spaces in George Town, AA Streetware conducted research in Little India, a section of the historic core. In doing so, we found that local people often take shortcuts between blocks to arrive sooner to their destination. Along these pathways, one experiences strong contrasts: from lively and colourful commercial streets to quiet alleys, the backs of shophouses, parking lots, and degraded empty spaces.

There is a substantial walking network within these inner-blocks. Yet aside from the mobility they foster, these voids are largely unproductive spaces. We believe there is opportunity to turn them into active spaces – perhaps, a network of urban patios.

The urban patio

Before laying out our proposal for creating a network of urban patios in Little India, it will be useful to reflect on what defines a patio.

As Anton Capitel argues in “La Arquitectura del Patio,” one can conceive of a patio as a system of composition – a force capable of organising the various parts of the building to which it is attached.

Many cultures have patio-building in their architectural history. Greek cities of the classical era provided some of the earliest examples of the patio-house.

The image below shows Delos City, in Greece. In this drawing, one observes houses of an introverted nature. They contain no street windows and are instead oriented towards an interior dominated by a central void: the patio. The space choreographs the house’s light, visual interactions, and circulation. The blank outer wall allows for the repetition of this composition and creation of a compact urbanity.

This patio void didn't need to have a completely closed perimeter, nor did it need the same scale of the rooms around it. It could be incomplete and irregular. Its essence wouldn’t be affected.

Conceptually, a patio is a central void that organizes programmatic spaces along its perimeter. The patio-house evolved from having inward looking rooms to posessing additional layers of rooms facing the streets. Nevertheless, the logic of organization still preserved the qualities and role of this void.

Such a physical organization also has intangible qualities. Its introverted nature creates social space – semi-public or semi-private space, depending on the type of building and its accessibility.

For patios to have a social role, they need to have a pedestrian dimension – a scale and size that permit social interaction. If the capacity to engage as a pedestrian with that space is not there, the patio would be only a light void. The image below indicates the maximum threshold for meaningful contact in the course of a ground level-event. For a social space to be successful, distance is the key parameter. (Discussion of sectional, social-scale relationships can be found in Jan Gehl studies.)

We could leverage the patio’s organizational qualities, and its capacity to create a social space more intimate than the street, for George Town. Inspired by this potential, we could rethink the inner frame of the city’s inner-block spaces and turn them into urban patios.

Bringing the patio to Little India  

There are couple of ways this could be done – one temporary and quick to implement, the other permanent and in need of architectural intervention.

The first suggestion centers on the historic center’s moveable food stalls. Food stalls could begin using this inner space to create day and night food markets. For these to be attractive during the day, it would be important to include shading canopies that block out the sun.

The second suggestion is to restructure shophouses, opening up the backs of them and encouraging street-level activity. Depending on the size of the inner void in question, this could involve only opening the ground floors of these buildings or potentially adding building extensions. A new active edge facing the inner blocks would transform old voids, creating a network of productive spaces.

These simple changes could create large socio-economic and urban impacts. They could foster even greater cultural celebration, amplify existing local business, and open up space to attract new business. The introduction of urban patios represents a small-scale intervention that could help contribute to a sustainable evolution of George Town´s historic core.

Naiara Vegara is a registered architect (RIBA Part III), with an AA diploma, as well as a PhD candidate researching the topic of Streetware. She is currently the director of FM Metropoli CitiesLab London, which works on projects around the world related to urban design, landscape, and architecture. Naiara teaches in the Architectural Association Housing and Urbanism master’s programme and has been running the AA Streetware Visiting School in Southeast Asia for six years. She is a widely sought-after design critic. She has shared her research on virtual environments at workshops at Columbia University, Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania; and presented her urban projects at symposia at Taylor’s International School in Kuala Lumpur, University of San Carlos in Cebu, and ETB in Bandung, among others.

Bibliography

Capitel, Anton, “La Arquitectura del Patio”, Barcelona, 2005, Gustavo Gili, pp. 199.

de Bierre, Julia, “Penang Through Gilded Doors”, Penang, 2006, Areca Books, pp. 161.

Gehl, Jan, “Life Between Buildings. Using Public Space”, Island Press 2011, pp. 207.

Hall, Edwards. T., “Hidden Dimension“, Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, pp. 217.

su Nin, Khoo, “Streets of George Town Penang”, Penang, 2007, 4th Edition, Areca Books, pp. 190.

UNESCO, “Melaka and George Town, Historic Cities of the Straits of Malacca”, Website.  http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1223. 

Vegara, Naiara, “AA Streetware Penang I”, Madrid, 2013, pp. 177.

Vegara, Naiara, “AA Streetware Penang III”, Madrid, 2015, pp. 155.

Maimunah Mohd Sharif, the first Asian woman to serve as Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), sat down with Gus Greenstein, Publications Director for the Oxford Urbanists, to discuss UN-Habitat and her views on urban planning. Among other things, she emphasizes the need for bottom-up planning approaches and strategic collaboration between academics and practitioners. 

GG: What is something people tend to misunderstand about UN-Habitat?

MMS: I think people know about UNICEF. They know it’s about children. People know about the UNHCR. They know it’s about refugees. But when it comes to UN- Habitat, human settlements, and urbanization, it’s a little less specific. There are many factors involved, and the word “urbanization” can be quite abstract for some. The mission we’re trying to communicate is: “giving good quality of life to the people.” This is UN-Habitat’s duty.

GG: In the last decade or so, what have been some of UN- Habitat’s biggest weaknesses? Which of these are you trying to address as its leader?

MMS: Every organization has its strengths and weaknesses. I think we have been weak in communicating – in telling people what we are doing – even with the media. In addition, we are looking into how we can further share our expertise with cities, mayors, and politicians. Third, funding has been low. But after 2016 and the formalization of the Sustainable Development Goals – and with everybody talking about the New Urban Agenda and urbanization – we think that this is the time for us to rise up. To show that UN-Habitat is relevant.

GG: You speak a lot about implementation. You say it’s not only about finding the right policies, but about implementing them, because policies won’t matter if they’re not implemented. But development organizations have been thinking hard about implementation challenges for a long time, and many efforts to improve implementation have largely failed. What do you think they're getting wrong?

MMS: I was mayor of Penang, I have previously been active in the UN, and have held a number of other hats. In those capacities, I would always say: if you have a strategic plan but don’t look further down the road, into implementation, the plan will only collect dust in the cupboard.

When it comes to implementation, you have to involve the public. Because you have to have public buy-in. If you have buy-in from the people – and it’s not us wanting to implement something, but rather them wanting us to implement something – then it’s easier. Non-governmental actors may even help look for the necessary funding. They become part of the team. They feel a sense of pride, a sense of belonging. So in all of our work, I always tell my staff: “Involve the public. Involve the public.”

Doing so may mean things take longer. I know it’s not easy. I’m feeling that now. I was able to work in a bottom-up way in Penang, as mayor, but I am now working with more people - with ministers and many mayors. But I believe in bottom-up approaches, alongside top-down ones, which help provide the vision. You need a convergence of ideas.

GG: When it comes to municipal or national governments improving their sustainable development strategies, what are the easiest and most effective things they could be doing that they’re not doing now? What’s the low-hanging fruit?

MMS: To me, it’s management by walking. You walk, you see, you manage. That is the low-hanging fruit. You go to the ground. You find what you need to fix, and then you do it. But more often than not, leaders don’t go to the ground.

GG: “Management by Walking” – Is that your term?

MMS: Yes! Behind the scenes, you are managing. But when you manage by walking, the people see you. They see the mayor visiting the market, the rural areas. And you see what is not right. Often you find quick wins that you wouldn’t have found otherwise. 

GG: You’ve said that “an environment fit for women is fit for all.” Can you explain what you mean by that?

MMS: It’s not to say that we women are weak by nature. But let’s say, for example, that men can walk up a certain slope. Us women, because we bear children, et cetera. – we sometimes need a different slope. And this works for men, too. This idea also comes into play when thinking about the elderly. And it doesn’t only apply to walkways. We need to keep this in mind when thinking about public transport, lighting, and the bigger things like the economy.

GG: I want to ask you about interdisciplinary collaboration on urban development issues. One thing we’re trying to do with the Urbanists is bring all kinds of academics together – anthropologists, economists, mathematicians, etc. – to discuss. In your view, which disciplines are still underrepresented in urban development discussions?

MMS: I cannot pinpoint any single discipline. I think the key is involving humane disciplines. It can be any discipline - even engineering - but it must be humane. Human architecture, for instance. I think it’s the human aspect that’s sometimes lacking. For example, in urban planning, we talk about safe cities. To do this, we often put up CCTV, all the technology. But actually, you can create a safe city through design if you are humane enough – if you think hard about human nature and human needs.

GG: In the space you work in, tangibly trying to improve the lives people living in cities, how do you think universities can better contribute? Or what are ways in which the contributions of academia have been insufficient?

MMS: Universities are definitely very important. When I was a mayor, I involved universities in my committees and projects. As an academic, you have time to do research. As a mayor, as an Executive Director, I don’t have time to do research. I have the challenges, but you have the time to do the research. If you work together with me, we can test your research through implementation.

Then you can go back to the university and improve your ideas. So there will be a cycle of improvement. If UN- Habitat goes at it alone without connecting to universities, then we’ll have limited knowledge. We need new ideas coming in. That’s why I chose to visit Cambridge and Oxford. We need to “think, do, share, and partner.” Together, we come up with good recipes. Then we implement them.

GG: How do you think graduate students can engage in urban development efforts in a very tangible way – to bring their research to bear on real communities? How can they get involved in practical work?

MMS: Some students, even doctorate students, come to UN-Habitat to do internships. There’s an exchange program. Students can also send a synopsis of their research. If it fits with the challenges of UN-Habitat, we’ll definitely listen. For example, we’re now thinking hard about our new strategic plan. That’s why I wanted to talk to young people at Oxford, to hear what they think are the most pressing issues we need to address with the new plan. We really want to know. Sometimes in Nairobi, we lack the research inputs.

I think it’s very important for students to make themselves visible. Just email us. Organizations like UN-Habitat and UNDP will definitely be interested.

GG: When it comes to pressing urban development issues, I’m personally interested in the tension between the need to make cities more dense and compact for environmental reasons and the forced displacement that density efforts can entail. How do you think about this challenge? Are there certain principles you stick to?

MMS: Previously, we were talking about zoning. But with zoning, you can sometimes increase commute times. So zoning is not such a popular idea anymore. We also talk about urban sprawl. But this isn’t a very popular idea anymore, either. Sites of urban sprawl are becoming new cities, new towns. Then came the idea of compact cities, where people live, work, and play in the same place. Horizontal, low-density cities will be workable if we link them with public transport. But we also need to think about building vertically, making cities more compact.

However, we can’t choose just one solution. It depends on the situation. That’s where research is needed. We need to think through the particulars. What are the specific challenges? For example, because it’s an island, Singapore says it can’t afford to have low-density sprawl. So it depends on the situation. And planning will never be 100% perfect. There are always things that will need to be improved.

GG: New research is showing how some cities are growing phenomenally fast, projecting that some of them will soon become more populous than some of the biggest nations on Earth. But then you also have smaller cities, which are not growing as fast, and in some cases shrinking. When it comes to sustainable urban planning, do you think that the same principles apply to both scales? Are these comparable urban projects? Or when it comes to cities like Lagos, are we dealing with an entirely different situation?

MMS: I think the basic principles should be the same. When you plan a city or development, you need to think about the objective. We might be talking about ending poverty, climate change, or SDG 11. We have to be honest about the objective, regardless of whether we’re in an urban area or rural area. Then we need to think about the development plan components that will achieve this.

Maimunah Mohd Sharif is the first Asian woman to serve as Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat). Before assuming leadership of UN-Habitat, she served as Mayor of the City Council of Penang Island, Malaysia.  She holds a Master of Science in Planning Studies from the University of Science Malaysia and a Bacehelors of Science with honors in Town Planning Studies from the University of Wales Institute of Science and Technology in the United Kingdom. 

On 15 May 2018, Ms. Mainmunah Mohd Sharif, the first Asian woman to serve as Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Program, engaged in a roundtable discussion with students, faculty, and practitioners at the University of Oxford. She emphasized the value of inclusivity and interdisciplinary collaboration in urban planning. 

BY MAX NATHANSON AND GUS GREENSTEIN

Ms. Maimunah Mohd Sharif, Executive Director of the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), has come a long way from Kuala Pilah, the rural Malaysian village in which she grew up. But she has far from forgotten her roots. The first female mayor of Penang, the second-largest city in Malaysia, and the first Asian woman to hold the UN-Habitat ED post, she has spent her first four months as ED spreading one central message: bring communities, large and small, into urban planning processes.   

In a roundtable discussion hosted on 15 May by the Oxford Urbanists, ThinkCity, and the Oxford Sustainable Urban Development Programme, Sharif shared her personal story, outlined her mission, and sought input from students and faculty from a diverse set of backgrounds. Her aim, she says, is to crowd-source ideas for “localizing” the Sustainable Development Goals and and implementing the New Urban Agenda.

In Oxford, Sharif described a challenging childhood. One of six children, she would often tap rubber before making a three-mile journey to school. Her childhood home had no electricity. She did her homework under a kerosene lamp.

Such an upbringing instilled into her a deep conviction for change, she says. From the age of ten, Sharif knew she wanted to break “the vicious cycle of poverty.” Watching her mother make sacrifices, she committed herself to advocating for female-forward approaches in whatever she did.

Sharif received a scholarship from the Malaysian government to pursue her education in the UK, completing her A-levels in Bournemouth and a bachelor’s degree in urban planning at Cardiff University. Her first trip to Bournemouth was the first time she had left her hometown.

Upon graduating from university, Sharif returned to Malaysia to work as a city planner in Penang, where she rose through the ranks, eventually becoming mayor. Among her first objectives: introducing gender-responsive participatory budgeting and planning.  It was during her time as mayor, Sharif says, that she came to believe in the necessity of people- and culture-centred planning, in contrast to what she believed was an overemphasis on construction and architecture for its own sake.

"Urban planning is not about engineering,” Sharif opined. “It's about inclusivity. It's about building a community. Planners need to have this in mind before they begin anything."

As Director of Planning for Penang and then as mayor, Sharif promoted cultural preservation through urban regeneration as a way to foster inclusive development. She was the first General Manager of the George Town World Heritage Site, inscribed by UNESCO in 2008.

For Sharif, inclusivity also means combining as many heads as possible when engaging in strategic planning, and involving communities from the start. On her first day as Executive Director of UN-Habitat, she held an internal town hall meeting aimed at promoting core values of trust, communication, and governance. It was in this spirit that Sharif came to Oxford for a roundtable discussion focused on implementing the New Urban Agenda (NUA).

In the opening presentation of the day, Ikuno Naka, PhD candidate at Oxford’s Department of International Development, argued for close attention to the processes that are driving the development of the built environment, including financial ones. Analyzing the recent financialization of the real estate market of the Indian city of Cochin, Naka illustrated how various chains of capitalization have emerged out of speculation over Cochin’s future and examined the ramifications of the real estate bubble that has arisen as a result. Living costs have increased and construction is proceeding rapidly. 

Débora Leão, a public policy student at Oxford’s Blavatnik School of Government, subsequently detailed her work with Engajamundo, a Brazilian youth platform for engagement in global development initiatives. Engajamundo seeks to amplify youth voices from the Global South through capacity and community building, while encouraging decision-makers to more strongly consider matters important to youth. 

Especially relevant to UN-Habitat’s mission, Leão noted, are Engajamuno’s efforts to “translate” the technical language of the New Urban Agenda into something more “fun and comprehensible.” The organization is also publishing case studies of Brazilian youth-led initiatives aimed at implementing the agenda.

Following Leão, Dr. Andreza de Souza Santos, post-doctoral researcher at Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS), discussed the recent collapse of a central São Paulo building to illustrate role that academics can play in promoting heritage conservation and implementing the NUA. “How can knowledge exchange and policy agendas align in terms of timeframes, goals, processes, and messaging?” Dr. de Souza Santos asked. 

In the final presentation, Dr. David Howard, Associate Professor of Sustainable Urban Development at Oxford’s Department for Continuing Education, outlined his research on urban resilience in Kingston, Jamaica. In doing so, he critiqued the rhetoric surrounding contemporary urban resilience work.

“Who wants to be ‘resilient’ if it means you are constantly responding to problems, always in bad situations?” Dr. Howard asked. “Who wants to be future-proofed, constantly adapting to challenges?” As an alternative to the “resiliency” discourse, he recommended focusing on gender empowerment and formalization of land tenure. Most crucially, he advocated for a focus on building resilient places, through sturdy infrastructure and reliable basic services, rather than focusing on creating resilient people.

In her closing remarks, ED Sharif reiterated her belief in working toward holistic and integrated sustainable development trajectories, emphasizing the need to improve implementation through greater public participation.

“If you have a strategic plan but don’t look further down the road, into implementation, the plan will only collect dust in the cupboard,” said Sharif. “And when it comes to implementation, you have to involve the public, because you have to have public buy-in. They become part of the team. They feel a sense of pride, a sense of belonging.”

“Doing so may mean things take longer. I know it’s not easy; I’m feeling that now. But I believe in bottom-up approaches, alongside top-down ones, which help provide the vision. You need a convergence of ideas.”

Max Nathanson is co-founder and Organizational Development Director for the Oxford Urbanists. A recent graduate of Oxford University (MPhil Development Studies), his current research focuses on Chinese finance in Latin America, and he has broader interests in the political economy of sustainable development, development finance, and infrastructure and energy systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science from the University of Colorado. 

Gus Greenstein is Publications Director for the Oxford Urbanists. A recent graduate of Oxford University (MPhil Development Studies) and incoming PhD Student at Stanford University (Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources), his current research focuses on the evolution of development finance institutions, and he has broader interests in the social-environmental sustainability of large-scale infrastructure development. He holds a bachelor's degree in Environmental Studies from Amherst College. 

On Tuesday 29 May 2018, the Oxford Urbanists and Cities that Work, an initiative of the International Growth Centre, hosted a panel event titled "Can Special Economic Zones (SEZs) Drive Growth in Developing Cities?” to discuss evidence for improved policy.

How should we think about Special Economic Zones (SEZs)? What benefits can they bring to developing cities? Where do they fall short? How can governments set them up for success?

On 29 May 2018, Michael Blake, a cities economist with the International Growth Centre, moderated a discussion on these themes, with three leading experts: Tony Venables, Xiaolan Fu, and Alejandro Riaño. The event constituted the third public discussion in the Oxford Urbanists'/Cities that Work collaborative efforts to facilitate policy-relevant dialogue regarding major challenges currently facing cities across the developing world. 

The panelists each viewed SEZs through different lenses. Professor Venables helped simplify the discussion with basic economic principles, drawing from his background in spatial and trade economics. Professor Fu grounded the discussion in granular, practical examples from her field-level work on Chinese SEZs. Professor Riaño drew from his experience researching SEZs in Latin America and sharpened the discussion with points relating to international trade theory and policy.

To open, Blake set forth a basic working definition of an SEZ as “a region designated within a country to have more liberalised business policies and other government investments intending to increase investment and production.” (For a more comprehensive discussion of terminology, see the Introduction of Farole 2011.)

The promise of SEZs

All three panelists agreed that SEZs can be a productive second-best policy solution in regions where the surrounding business environment may be less than optimal. As Professor Venables put it, SEZs can help countries to generate a productive business environment “at least somewhere." In his view, SEZs can help provide – in a spatially concentrated area – several of the necessary conditions that external investors may seek. These might include adequate infrastructure, an educated and skilled labour force, and local input suppliers.

In turn, a well-executed SEZ can generate spill-overs to the rest of the economy, as export-oriented industries expand and domestic firms outside the SEZ upskill in order to supply SEZ firms. Professor Venables emphasized that countries should focus on generating investment that would not have happened in the absence of an SEZ. Otherwise, the costs of setting one up may not be justified.

Professor Fu highlighted the important role SEZs can play as “policy labs.” Governments can use them as testing grounds for more liberal business policies and then scale up the ones that work (and scrap the ones that don’t), as China has done over the past two decades. She contrasted this approach to liberalization with the once-off “big bang” phenomenon witnessed in Eastern Europe following the demise of the Soviet Union.

Professor Riaño argued that SEZs should aim to relieve particular economic distortions, rather than try to provide an economic panacea. As one example, he described how Mexico’s maquiladoras –duty-free export processing zones – absorbed excess labour supply after the U.S. government terminated the Bracero Program in 1964. (For further information on this, see Heid et al. 2013, a paper co-authored by Professor Riaño).

Professor Riaño also illustrated ways in which SEZs can facilitate production diversification away from primary commodities. This is often a priority for low-income economies, which, in frequently depending on one primary commodity, face significant macroeconomic risk. SEZs have helped the Dominican Republic and Mauritius transition away from concentrations in bananas and sugar, respectively, into higher value-added manufacturing.

Referring to an influential model by economists Dani Rodrik and Ricardo Hausmann, Professor Riaño suggested that SEZs can contribute to an economy’s “self-discovery.” The model illustrates how in the absence of government intervention, a developing economy may have too little investment in the “pre- self discovery phase” and too much product diversification in the “post- self discovery phase.” SEZs can counteract these market failures by encouraging investment and then clustering production in sectors in which a country has a comparative advantage.

Yet while SEZs may theoretically promise immense benefits for developing regions, the panelists agreed that they often fall short in practice. The second half of the discussion focused on how governments can guide SEZs to success.

What makes a successful SEZ?

First, panelists agreed that governments must work closely with investors and remain attentive to their needs. The panelists pointed to Ethiopia’s Hawassa Industrial Park, where the government has not only attracted firms, but worked closely with them to set up the SEZ. Professor Venables added that the presence of PVH, a textile manufacturing giant, has enabled Hawassa to attract high-quality input suppliers and talented labor. 

Professor Fu contrasted Ethiopia’s SEZ success with the less successful case of Nigeria through the lens of Chinese investment. She noted that, in Ethiopia, Chinese firms have sourced inputs and labour domestically, uplifting the local economy, while in Nigeria, Chinese firms have largely relied on imported inputs. Spillovers have been less frequent.

The discussion also made clear that, for SEZs to prove successful, governments must provide firms with productivity benefits rather than simply tax breaks. When potential investors are deciding whether to get involved in an SEZ, the panelists agreed, tax incentives are often among the least important of their considerations.

Instead, investors prioritize high-quality infrastructure, efficient administration (e.g., “one-stop shops” for licensing and regulatory support), and adequately skilled labour forces. (Using investor surveys, Steenbergen and Javorcik (2017) confirm that pure financial incentives are among the least important factors for SEZ investment.) Professor Venables noted that Indian SEZs have suffered from prioritizing tax incentives over more substantial productivity enhancers.

The most flagrant SEZ mishaps seem to be those in which governments fail to detect and support the most promising types of economic activities. Panelists concurred that this often results when governments pick sectors to receive SEZ benefits without sufficient input from the private sector and investment communities. Professor Riaño cited a recent Planet Money podcast that illustrated the Argentine government’s attempt to set up a manufacturing zone for Blackberry phones in Tierra del Fuego, the southern tip of the South American continent – hardly an instance of comparative advantage.

Drawing on these ideas, Professor Fu argued that African SEZ successes of the future will look very different—sectorally speaking—from East Asian success of the past. Many African countries don’t have the local supply chains needed for the types of electronics and manufacturing production that drove East Asia’s growth, she noted. Meanwhile, the so-called “Fourth Industrial Revolution” may render labour-intensive manufacturing (a major driver of foreign investment, particularly in South Asia) a less successful SEZ bet in Africa.

Professor Fu suggested that African SEZs should not exclusively focus on producing exports for the world market, as many East Asian countries have done. Instead, they should concentrate on improving domestic and regional productivity, and then move up the global value chain to produce goods for higher-income consumers.

Looking ahead

Audience questions concerned the political challenges of SEZs, the links between SEZs and cities, the role of the internet in shaping the future of SEZs, and differences between FDI vs. domestic investment.

Two questions concerning governments’ involvement in SEZs after they launch produced healthy disagreement among the panelists: How actively should governments guide an SEZ’s transition from one industry focus to another as an economy grows? Should governments actively close an SEZ in the face of potential failure?

Professors Fu and Riaño agreed that governments should step in to alleviate potential failures and guide SEZs toward new sectors. Professor Venables argued that SEZs are “birthplaces” for foreign investment, from which local market forces should determine any necessary changes.

In closing, Professor Riaño discussed the relative lack of empirical work on the economic effects of SEZ policies, a significant opportunity for future researchers. Perhaps the event inspired a few budding academics to dig deeper into SEZs.    

Paul Healy is an M.Sc. candidate in Economics for Development at the University of Oxford and incoming J.D. candidate at Yale Law School. 

Further reading

For those interested in further reading on SEZs in developing countries, we recommend the following resources to get started:

Farole, T. and G. Akinci (Eds.) (2011): “Special Economic Zones Progress, Emerging Challenges, and Future Directions,” The World Bank, Directions in Development Series.

Heid, B., L. Mario, and A. Riaño (2013): “The Rise of the Maquiladoras: A Mixed Blessing,” Review of Development Economics, 17(2), 252–267.

Steenbergen, V. and B. Javorcik (2017): “Analysing the impact of the Kigali Special Economic Zone on firm behaviour,” IGC Working Paper F-38419-RWA-1.

World Bank Group: Trade and Competitiveness Global Practice (2016): “Special Economic Zones in the Dominican Republic: Policy Considerations for a More Competitive and Inclusive Sector,” Online policy briefing.

Diego Sánchez Ancochea, Associate Professor of the Political Economy of Latin America at the University of Oxford, sat down with Luciano Mateo Rodriguez Carrington, the Latin America Coordinator for the Oxford Urbanists, to discuss challenges for social policy and cities in Latin America. He highlights Latin American countries’ unequal success in advancing social policy, a need to tailor ideas of universal social policy for the Latin American context, the relevance of social policy for urban integration, and the risks of overly broad international development goals. (This interview transcript has been edited for clarity.)

Lea este artículo en español en LA Network. 

This article also appears in Spanish on LA Network. 

LR: You’re an expert on the political economy of Latin America and the role of social policy in addressing issues of poverty and inequality. In your view, what are today’s main challenges for the provision of social policy in the region?

The end of the commodity boom in 2013-14 reversed the expansionary trend that we had seen in previous years. While social policy is now stable in most countries, it is being cut in others, such as Argentina, Brazil and Ecuador. Overall, however, no clear picture is emerging, and some trends will depend on the upcoming presidential elections in Colombia, Brazil and Mexico.

This break comes after an expansionary phase during the 2000s. High commodity prices and low interest rates contributed to a rapid upswing in government spending in general – social spending in particular. Social spending as a percentage of GDP in Latin America was seven percentage points higher in 2014 than in 2000. Many countries introduced new non-contributory programs in health care and pensions and/or reformed the existing programs. We also witnessed an increase of conditional cash transfer programs. 

The reforms helped incorporate into to the social system people who have been excluded for a long time. Yet, there are still differences in program generosity for different groups, as well as more general inequalities between these groups. Further, in a recent paper, Juliana Martínez Franzoni and I show that social policy outputs differ significantly between countries. Some countries have improved a lot – like Colombia in health care and Bolivia in pensions – while other countries have fallen behind.

What are the challenges for the future? Governments need to find ways to avoid excessive talk about fiscal austerity and find ways to expand social programs while making them less fragmented and more equal.

LR: You recently came out with a new book, The Quest for Universal Social Policy in the South, with Juliana Martínez Franzoni. What does universal social policy entail for you, and what is its role in reducing inequality and alleviating poverty?

Let me start with the second part of the question. Juliana and I argue that universal social policy is really important if we want to reduce inequality and promote social cohesion. Programs that provide similar benefits for the whole population will create cross-class coalitions that support the programs’ expansion over the long run – something that several European countries have experienced historically.

In our book, we call for a significant rethinking of universal social policy in the South in general and Latin America in particular. At the moment, scholars tend to think about universalism in two ways. A minimalist definition assumes that universal social policy is just about coverage: the goal is to cover everyone even if different groups receive very different (and unequal) benefits. This will likely not reduce inequality to the extent that many claim. A maximalist definition of universalism aligns with the Scandinavian model of social policy: the goal is to provide everyone with quality services based on the principle of citizenship, funded by general taxes. This model won’t work for Latin America. While it strives for the results we want, it requires instruments unavailable to us: the region greatly struggles to tax the rich.

Instead, Juliana and I argue that we should think about universalism in terms of policy outputs.  Universalism is secured when all of our interventions in a particular policy realm – like health care or pensions – result in similar, generous benefits for a majority of the population. We show that you can obtain these positive outputs with a combination of policy instruments, including social security and social assistance interventions.

When will we obtain universal policy outputs? In the book, we argue that this all depends on the characteristics of the policy architecture – that is, the set of instruments that define what is provided to whom and by whom. For example, Costa Rica was successful because it had a unified social security system where social assistance and social security provided the same benefits. So the challenge is to find ways to expand programs in a unified way, avoiding fragmentation of our pursuit of universalism into many different interventions.

LR: Issues of unplanned urbanization, rural to urban migration and urban poverty pose great challenges to Latin American countries. What could the role of universal social policy be in the creation of more just and socially inclusive cities in Latin America?

Cities include all kinds of groups: the poor, the middle class and the wealthy. A primary goal is mixing people from different classes. For example, we should try to create schools that are attractive for the middle class but close to areas where the poor live. Not easy… but not impossible! Social policies can help, but they have to be designed in the right way.

In the case of cities, we should adopt a broader understanding of social policy that includes services which promote mixing. Think about green areas and parks, where children from different origins can play together. Or think about the way cities like Lima are closing the avenidas on Sundays so everyone can enjoy them. We need to make sure that people mix in parks and avenues better than in malls!

LR: The New Urban Agenda is the outcome document agreed upon at the Habitat III Cities Conference in Quito, Ecuador, in October 2016. Elaborating on Goal 11 of the Sustainable Development Goals (“make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”), it provides recommendations for a range of actors, including nation-states, cities, international development funders and civil society. Do you believe that the SDGs and initiatives such as the New Urban Agenda provide useful frameworks for the implementation of social policy and the creation of more inclusive cities?

Juliana and I have shown that international ideas are really important in shaping domestic debates, but they need domestic champions that “translate” them for specific contexts and secure the political support necessary to implement them. 

I also believe that these types of international ideas shouldn’t be too broad; broadness may make it difficult to build the pressure needed to advance them. I worry about the SDGs, which, because they are about everything, could become nothing. But I am more optimistic about initiatives like the universal coverage promoted by the World Health Organization. The right ideas in the hands of the right policymakers can do a lot of good!

Diego Sánchez Ancochea is an Associate Professor at the University of Oxford, where he specialises in the political economy of Latin America, with a particular focus on Central America. His research interests centre on the determinants of income inequality and the role of social policy in reducing it. He has published extensively in international journals such as World Development, the Journal of Latin American Studies, Latin American Politics and Society and Latin American Research Review. He is also the co-editor of four books and the co-author of two books with Juliana Martínez Franzoni: Good Jobs and Social Services: How Costa Rica Achieved the Elusive Double Incorporation (Palgrave Macmillan) and The Quest for Universal Social Policy in the South: Actors, Ideas and Architectures (Cambridge University Press).

Singapore is a resource-poor city-state with one of the highest population densities in the world. Yet it has turned its challenges into strengths and increasingly branded itself as a global hub of expertise and ‘best practices’ for urban development. How might we understand the processes driving Singapore’s burgeoning influence on international city development? What are some challenges that come with this influence?

Despite having a population of only 5.6 million residents and a landmass of 720 km2, the city-state of Singapore boasts an international reputation that precedes its small size. Emblematic qualities associated with the nation include socio-political order, rapid economic development, environmental cleanliness, and efficiency in the urban environment. And while Singapore is a major international financial centre in its own right, Singaporean technical expertise and capital have also manifested in global circuits of urban planning and infrastructure development.

Singapore’s model of urban development: A roadmap from Third World to First?

A salient aspect of Singapore’s reputation concerns notions of sustainable urban development. With limited natural resources and land, the city-state has oriented most of its urban systems towards effectively dealing with resource and water management, population congestion, and other challenges associated with large urban agglomerations. Multilateral initiatives, think-tanks and conferences such as the Centre for Liveable Cities, World Cities Summit are key components of Singapore’s political and commercial scene.

‘Singapore models’ of urban modernity increasingly serve as templates for projects aimed at master planning, public housing, urban transport, and water management, to name a few. Prominent examples include the development of Amaravati, a new capital city in the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, and the Tianjin Eco-City, a bilateral Sino-Singapore collaboration in China.

The sub-Saharan African nation of Rwanda provides a vivid picture of the Singapore export. Its president, Paul Kagame, has deployed rhetoric comparing developments in his country to the Southeast Asian city-state. “When they say this is the Singapore of Africa,” Kagame has said, “I think maybe it’s a recognition that Rwanda has learnt a thing or two from Singapore and has applied it and seen its transformation”.  

Examples of this process of urban borrowing, exportation, and adaptation range from an ambitious master plan for Rwanda’s capital city of Kigali to planned systems of integrated public transport and affordable housing. As one scholar has put it, “Rwanda is attempting to remake itself as Africa's gorilla, mimicking Singapore's Asian tiger, and doing so in explicit ways by buying urban plans that consciously promise to replicate Singapore's success in central Africa” [1].

The Rwandan government is not alone in seeking to emulate the Singaporean model of urban development and governance. A cursory examination of projects drawn from the Singapore Cooperation Enterprise’s (SCE) website reveals the international scope of the city-state’s developmental footprint. A government agency within Singapore’s Ministry of Trade and Industry, the SCE describes itself as an organization dedicated to responding “effectively to the multitude of foreign requests interested in Singapore’s development experience.”

For many developing countries aspiring to leap from ‘Third World to First,’ the Singapore-brand name conjures images of well-maintained streets, tall buildings, robust public transport, and other tropes of sophisticated urbanity. That Singapore is a relatively small state compared to China, another development-model exporter often suspected to prioritize geopolitical objectives in its overseas development cooperation, potentially strengthens the attractiveness of the Singapore model. As a commentator from the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies put it,

“As an Asian player, the Singapore brand stands in contrast to the Chinese, where there are pockets of frustration and distrust towards what is perceived as too much coerciveness and political manoeuvring… Singapore’s perception as a non-threatening actor on the continent (Africa) will certainly lend itself to deepening levels of trust, which could be significant when bidding for projects of strategic national importance” [2].

How should we understand this global osmosis of urban developmental expertise from Singapore? And what are the attendant risks and challenges as the country continues its overseas activities?

The Internationalization of Singapore, Inc.

In many respects, Singapore's rise to prominence as a model-city appears to be part of a broader effort to internationalize the ‘Singapore-brand name’ through private and public sector collaboration. Government-linked companies (GLCs) are some of the most common institutional vehicles for delivering urban solutions abroad [3]. Major examples of GLCs involved in areas related to urban development include Surbana Jurong, Keppel Land, CapitaLand, and Changi Airport Group.

These hybrid corporate entities fuse public sector diplomacy with private sector consultancy [4].  Singapore’s export of urban planning and city infrastructure has been described as a catalytic process of state capitalism by Caroline Yeoh and Wilfred How. They note that the “Singapore government takes on the role of a ‘business architect’ and `knowledge arbitrageur’, identifying business opportunities, and bringing together the private sector and commercial segments of the public sector in Singapore, as well as foreign companies with specific competencies” [5].

This framework effectively creates new spheres of economic space for Singapore’s public agencies, GLCs, and private sector firms in foreign markets. The combination of political and commercial clout lends many Singapore-supported urban development initiatives special investment conditions, political endorsements from local governments, and a host of other operational benefits [6].

Challenges and tensions

Singapore’s successes with sustainable urban planning undoubtedly provides useful inspiration for developing countries experiencing massive socioeconomic transitions and rural-urban migration. But there are also many trade-offs associated with the city-state’s progress, which should be accounted for when importing the Singaporean model.  

While high modernist planning – such as Singapore’s – has an attractive lustre and can bring much developmental progress, the geometric grids and zonal theories associated with it must  constructively engage with local networks and cultures to maximize positive impacts, while minimizing negative ones.  

The ongoing project to create Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh serves as a poignant reminder that massive, centrally planned urban development projects can lead to significant socioeconomic dislocation. While the Master Plan emphasizes neatly aligned grids and orderly districts, implementing them is hardly as elegant.  To carry them out, governments often need to acquire vast amounts of land from local communities.

Furthermore, land speculation and land pooling have exacerbated price inflation and socioeconomic inequalities. Large landowners in Amaravarti profit immensely while smallplot farmers receive little compensation.  In Rwanda’s drive to modernize Kigali, inflation has displaced long-time residents of the capital city as traditional informal housing is replaced by modern homes unaffordable for the average citizen.

It was not long ago that the Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco-City project grabbed critical headlines proclaiming its infeasibility and labelling it a ‘ghost city’. Though current progress reports from the government proponents claim that the project is gaining momentum, the likelihood of the development achieving its original goals remains unclear [7].

Developing effective, localized urban solutions requires commitment and efficient cooperation between stakeholders from all levels of society. The need for “human well-being, social and economic inclusion, resilience in the face of climate change, and greater environmental sustainability” mandate such approaches to sustainable urban development [8]. How Singapore-inspired and exported urban models unfold in other contexts, and the extent to which such projects account for potential shortcomings in the model, merits research.

One could argue that it is primarily the responsibility of local governments and companies to ensure effective implementation of the Singapore model. Nonetheless, even if this is the case, one might be mistaken in believing that that local governments are the only actor groups with a strong interest in project outcomes.

As Singapore continues to internationalize its arsenal of urbanization models and technical solutions, the city-state’s reputation remains tied to the socioeconomic impacts of the projects that Singaporean expertise has had hands in shaping.  Dismissing the tensions that accompany implementation of imported urban solutions to other social ecologies risks what the anthropologist James Scott has termed “urban taxidermy”: situations in which technocratically planned development projects fail to navigate the complex social elements of human communities [9].

The Singapore model has also faced difficulties at home. Recently, the city-state’s public train network has become embroiled in controversy, with many Singaporeans questioning its reliability, transparency, and ability to serve the country amid a string of delays, errors, and “deep-seated cultural issues” hindering operational management.

Foreign observers have taken note of this blow to Singapore’s image of infrastructural and urban reliability. Covering the same issue, a journalist from the Hong Kong periodical South China Morning Post opined that, “If metro systems were like football, Hong Kong is premier league but Singapore is fighting relegation and its manager is heading for an early bath.” The challenges that have often marked the Singapore model of urbanization should serve as valuable reminders of the strengths and limitations of top-down, imported urban planning.

Will Singapore’s urban infrastructure and planning be able to rise above these challenges? While only time will tell, one thing is clear: there are larger ramifications to how urban management and infrastructural systems are managed in Singapore, as well as how its projects fare abroad. For better or worse, when it comes to urban planning, Singapore is in the international eye. Hopefully, such scrutiny will spur innovation and critical reflexivity for both domestic social benefit and the success of Singapore’s urban planning exports.

Brandon Chye is an MPhil candidate in Development Studies at Oxford’s Department of International Development. His main research focuses on the study of inter-regional networks of urban expertise and capital. Prior to coming to Oxford, he worked on international trade finance and development projects with the Africa-Southeast Asia Chamber of Commerce and GTR Ventures. Brandon holds a Bachelors degree in History from the National University of Singapore.

Works Cited and Endnotes                  

1. Sharon Meagher, “The Darker Underside of Scott’s third wave”, Cities 17 no.3, (2013) p.396

2. Robert Macpherson, “Singapore’s presence in Africa on the Rise”, ISEAS Perspective 23, (2016) p.9

3. The Singaporean version of a state-owned enterprise.  However, GLCs are run on a commercial basis, ostensibly with minimal or no state subsidization; See https://www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/staffp/2004/03/ramirez.htm for a detailed description of their structure and characteristics.

4. Gavin Shatkin,“Reinterpreting the meaning of the 'Singapore model': State Capitalism and Urban Planning”, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38 no.1, (2014) p.118

5. Caroline Yeoh and Wilfred How, “The Internationalization of Singapore’s State Enterprise Network: Notes from Singapore’s Gambits in the Gulf Region”, World Journal of Management 3 no.1, (2011) p.137

6. Ibid, p. 137.

7. Rémi Curien, “Singapore, a Model for (Sustainable?) Urban Development in China: An Overview of 20 Years of Sino-Singaporean Cooperation”, China Perspectives (2017) p.32

8. Richard Grant, “Sustainable African Urban Futures: Stocktaking and Critical Reflection on Proposed Urban Projects”, American Behavioural Scientist 59 no.3, (2015) p.308

9. James Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed, (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998) p.139

We live in the era of acceleration – in a world of constant, exhausting hypermobility and relentless, hysterical urbanisation. In what follows, I want to reflect on the phenomenon of accelerated urbanism by looking at its antithesis. My interest is in understanding how our fascination with ruins is reproduced in our cities, spurred by the decline of the industrial era alongside the rise of neoliberal globalisation and the spread of urban poverty. 

A global imagination

Ruins have re-emerged as a source of cultural fascination. In the Gothic, Romantic, and Modernist movements in art and culture, ruins frequently featured as sites of interiority, memory, and haunting. Since the 1980s, however, this fascination with ruins has been renewed by the growing fetishisation of postindustrial decay. As the standard explanation goes, the rise of post-Fordist capitalism in the late twentieth century created a set of economic and social conditions that led to the rapid and systematic gutting of many urban-industrial communities.

The post-Fordist transformation of industrial sites of production into dead zones– that is, spaces of inactivity and lifelessness – not only created ruins out of modern industrial architecture, but also generated a desire to see and experience these spaces. This has been done in a variety of ways. 

At one extreme, these spaces are deliberately preserved as ruins. An example is St. Peter’s Seminar outside Glasgow, where the cultural value of the site resides precisely in its state of ruination. The community activism around the building is focused on maintaining, rather than reversing, the conditions of material disrepair and spatial otherness. 

At the other extreme is the super-gentrification of the ruin where postindustrial sites are ‘rehabilitated’ into sanitised spaces for exclusive living. A particularly conspicuous example of this is the High Line elevated park in New York City. The project not only reclaims a derelict railway by turning it into a highly-manicured space of curated leisure. It also serves as an engine of gentrification, transforming the surrounding neighborhood into a delirious playground for luxury consumption. 

Spectral living

Both of these ruin dynamics (one involving preservation and the other involving recuperation) respond to an obsession with disorder, captivating the visual imagination in much the same way as global slums. Indeed, the slum has experienced a new wave of interest for these same reasons. What the global slum and the urban ruin both evoke is a certain condition of transience in which rapid urban acceleration yields precarious ways of living. Arjun Appadurai explores this condition of transience in his study of Mumbai, in which he uses the concept of ‘spectral housing’ to describe the improvised and speculative forms of housing that develop in slums as a result of predatory capital. A more recent example of urban transience is the case of Airbnb, whose corporate slogan, ‘Belong Anywhere’, really means ‘Live Nowhere’. 

Or, to go in another direction, consider China’s much-discussed ghost cities: vast, instant, pop-up cities, crammed with tall buildings. These urban agglomerations possess the superficial appearance of being inhabited, but are largely devoid of occupants and life. Appadurai’s example of Mumbai shows what happens when too many people compete over insufficient housing. China’s ghost cities involve the reverse: an oversupply of housing suffering from a lack of people. 

Alongside the slum and the ruin, there is also the phenomenon of ‘ghost mansions’ – the uninhabited mega-homes of the super-rich, which are similarly characterised by this condition of transience. A notable example is Antilia, Mumbai’s so-called ghost skyscraper, widely reported to be the world’s most expensive private residence at the time of construction.

Completed in 2009, Antilia belongs to Mukesh Ambani (owner of an energy and telecom conglomerate) and cost an estimated $1 billion to build. Its distinctive features include: 27 floors, a staff of 600, parking spaces for 168 cars, 3 helipads, a total living space of 48,000 square feet, and – for nearly three years after its completion – precisely zero residents. Like China’s ghost cities, Mumbai’s ghost skyscraper is haunted by the absence of inhabitation, except that here the reason has nothing to do with a bursting property bubble and everything to do with extreme excess made possible by mega-wealth. 

"The prominence of such spaces in contemporary visual culture diverts attention from the ethical demands that ruins, slums, and ghost mansions place on us."

In London, there is another version of the ghost mansion that combines excess with abandonment. Like Mumbai’s ghost skyscraper, London’s ghost mansions are the product of mega-wealth. The difference is that London’s ghost mansions function as empty repositories for the global rich. These are risk-averse investments made in times of financial volatility and crisis – a way of safely parking money in property. The result is that, despite their prime locations and opulent architecture, these multi-million-pound homes are frequently left uninhabited and neglected. As a consequence, many of the buildings decay – particularly on the inside – and slowly transform into ruins.

During a time of acute housing shortage and growing inequality, there is a certain perversity to a situation where enormous luxury homes are not only left unoccupied, but also left to decay to the point of becoming unfit for human living. This points to an uncomfortable relationship between our visual fascination with ruins and the social problems that ruins contain or express. 

For instance, consider the aesthetic similarities between the two images of ruin in Figure 5. One is an expensive residence in central London and the other is an abandoned hotel in Detroit. One space is worth millions; the other space is worth very little. Yet, they share the same condition of abandonment and decay. These parallels say something powerful about the social effects of the economic system producing both spaces. When the evacuation and injection of capital both lead to the same condition of decay, it suggests that something is not working. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say that something is working too well, in the sense that these images illustrate the degree to which short-term profit can be radically prioritised over human and social well-being. 

The postindustrial condition

What links all these different iterations of the ruin is that they are constituted within spaces where divisive and dehumanising practices are reproduced. The prominence of such spaces in contemporary visual culture diverts attention from the ethical demands that ruins, slums, and ghost mansions place on us. This happens precisely because the appearance of the spaces takes precedence over their social and material histories. As a result, it becomes increasingly easy to neglect the need to alleviate their conditions of inequality and disrepair.

Dora Apel comments on precisely this issue in her 2015 book on Detroit, Beautiful Terrible Ruins, where she sees a tension between pleasure and fear animating contemporary imaginations of the ruin. For Apel, the global fascination with urban-industrial ruins is inseparable from this tension, for which the postapocalyptic landscape of Detroit has become emblematic. In her reading of the city, the ruin becomes an expression of the anxiety of decline.

"The redevelopment of Detroit is partly emerging from decelerated creative practices through which residents resist the accelerated, atomising conditions inherent in contemporary urban living."

There is a lot to say about the complicated, contradictory functioning of ruin imagery as a source of both fear and comfort, and the role that art plays in popularising that imagery as well as circulating it. But I also think there are questions to ask about the dominant reading of Detroit as a ruined city. I do not want to downplay the very real and urgent problems of poverty, inequality, and injustice that have plagued Detroit. Nor do I want to gloss over the role of capitalism in heightening those problems. Yet it is worth pointing out that many of the labels being used to describe Detroit say as much about the categories we use to value cities as they do about the lived experience of those cities.

Detroit, for instance, is frequently described as a ‘shrinking city’ – a former manufacturing center that, like many industrial cities in the American Midwest, has seen its population and economy rapidly contract over the last few decades. But why does the size of the economy or population form the basis for measuring a city’s growth? In other words, to call Detroit a shrinking city is to continue to value it according to the very system that contributed to its ruin.

In recent years, much of the critical commentary on Detroit has shifted from cataloguing or exposing ruins to exploring what has grown in the vacant spaces left open by ruins. The picture of Detroit emerging now is one of ‘creative urbanism’, where the phenomenon of urban shrinkage has created new forms of living and working. 

This can be seen in Detroit’s recent embrace of urban farming. As a result, Detroit’s old slogan of ‘Made in Detroit’ has been replaced by the new slogan of ‘Grown in Detroit’, which not only celebrates the new prominence of urban agriculture in the city but also critiques the ‘shrinking city’ label it has been given. This is another dimension of our relationship with ruins. The redevelopment of Detroit is partly emerging from decelerated creative practices (in this case, slow food and urban farming) through which residents resist the accelerated, atomising conditions inherent in contemporary urban living. 

My broader point is that cities like Detroit, Mumbai, and London all belong to a global imaginary of ruins whose processes both resist and reinforce one another. The seductive appeal of that imaginary resides in the way ruins enable an illusion of escape from contemporary cultures of speed.

Christoph Lindner is Professor and Dean of the College of Design at the University of Oregon, where he leads the Slow Lab research initiative and writes on globalisation, cities, and visual culture. For more information, visit www.christophlindner.org 

 The ‘smart city’ concept is no paradigm shift. But with the potential for real-time data to both transform governance and perpetuate social inequalities, the technology-centred projects associated with it warrant critical examination.

Lea este artículo en español en LA Network. 

This article also appears in Spanish on LA Network. 

An earlier version of this piece previously appeared in QUBO. 

Urban planners often use resonant terms to reframe the urban agenda. From ‘global cities’ to ‘cities of information’ – not to forget ‘creative cities’, ‘sustainable cities’, and ‘resilient cities’ – we have witnessed several attempts to repackage concepts with the goal of rejuvenating certain policy discussions and urban practices. This seems to be the case with ‘smart cities’ – a term embodying today’s hegemonic urban practices, strongly driven by corporate agendas and supported by political leaders and international agencies.

The concept of the smart city emerged in the 1990s, but it was only after 2010 and a push from IBM’s Smarter Cities Challenge that it started to circulate globally. Thus, today’s emphasis on smart cities neither signifies a new era in global urbanism (Shelton, 2015), nor does it create a radically different way of ‘doing cities’ (Hollands, 2008).

Yet while it is easy to assert that smart cities represent nothing but a superficial, corporation-driven repackaging of existing products – which, by the way, is the position of a number of important urban theorists (Borja, 2015; Hollands, 2015; Vanolo, 2014) – such a perspective would be perilously reductionist. Smart city projects do exist and are helping to reshape important urban planning practices. One example is the use of real-time data to help visualise information for surveillance, transport and waste management purposes - as is happening in Dublin and London.

These phenomena require our attention. We run serious risks if we ignore or even underestimate the changes they can entail for our daily lives. Concerns over privacy and data sovereignty are particularly common. As a result, scholars are developing a critical approach to smart cities, facilitating public scrutiny over basic questions such as: Why? By whom? To whom? With what? When? and Where? (Luque-Ayala and Marvin, 2015).

Calzada (2016) argues that the narrative of the smart city risks mirroring a three-act Shakespearean tragedy. First, there is the dream of a utopian future. Technology is viewed as a powerful force. Apolitical, technocrats prevail, and corporations are the facilitators. In act two, confusion proliferates. Whether due to technical or financial infeasibility, it is not clear how to scale pilots into lasting urban infrastructures. In the third and final act, one of two models of transition emerge: one in which the city becomes a platform for urban innovation and collaboration; in the other, an entrepreneurial dream co-opts these efforts and business prevails over the common good.

When it comes to smart cities, such scholarship suggests the need for a three-prong critical response:

1.     First, it is necessary to closely observe how digitisation of everyday life gives rise to new forms of governance (Kitchin, 2014). As data travels through different entities, it assembles networks and creates potentially transformative ways for power to deploy.

2.     This calls for a critical approach to understanding data-intensive projects in the smart city (Dalton, 2016). We must identify the origin of data, the interests of those who are facilitating its flow and using it, and how these actors are dealing with privacy and personal security. More information may improve urban planning decisions, but not at the expense of the safety and freedom of citizens.

3.     Finally, we must examine the implications of using technological infrastructures for the provision of public services, recognizing their potential to reproduce or even worsen existing inequalities. Ironically, even projects aimed at enhancing inclusivity through  new forms of participation and digital services can amplify social division. (Listen to an NPR podcast on ‘Automating Inequality’; read a HuffPost commentary on the potential for Smart Cities to favour the rich.) 

We must evaluate smart cities – or, better said, the technologies associated with them – based on their capacity to improve citizens’ quality of life. We must also revisit ethical issues concerning inequality and social exclusion. Addressing the conflicts between safeguarding fundamental rights and encouraging global urbanisation will be crucial in this endeavour.

Technology can be an important force for good. But amidst the momentum surrounding smart cities, let’s not fall into thinking that it is the only, or the most important, means of progress.

Ignacio Pérez is a sociologist and urban planner currently pursuing a DPhil at the University of Oxford. His current research focuses on how digital technologies influence different processes of decision-making, redefining the way in which knowledge is created in urban contexts. Prior to Oxford, he was Research Director for TECHO, a Latin-American NGO focused on alleviating poverty in informal settlements. He has also worked on issues of urban mobility, urban poverty, and metropolitan governance. Ignacio holds a Bachelors in Sociology from the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile and an MSc in Urban Development Planning from the Development Planning Unit at University College London. You can reach Ignacio at: ignacio.perez@ouce.ox.ac.uk. 

Works Cited

 Borja, J. (2015). Smart cities: Negocio, poder y ciudadanía. Smart cities, 8.

Calzada, I. (2016), (Un)Plugging Smart Cities with Urban Transformations: Towards Multi-stakeholder City-Regional Complex Urbanity?, URBS, Revista de Estudios Urbanos y Ciencias Sociales Journal.

Dalton, C. M., Taylor, L., & Thatcher, J. (2016). Critical Data Studies: A dialog on data and space. Big Data & Society, 3(1).

Foucault, M. (1980). Power/knowledge: selected interviews and other writings, 1972-1977 (1st American ed). New York: Pantheon Books.

Hollands, R. G. (2008). Will the real smart city please stand up? Intelligent, progressive or entrepreneurial?. City, 12(3), 303-320.

Hollands, R. G. (2015). Critical interventions into the corporate smart city. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 8(1), 61–77.

Kitchin, R. (2014). The data revolution: Big data, open data, data infrastructures and their consequences. Sage.

Luque-Ayala, A., & Marvin, S. (2015). Developing a critical understanding of smart urbanism?. Urban Studies, 52(12), 2105-2116.

Shelton, T., Zook, M., & Wiig, A. (2015). The ‘actually existing smart city’. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 8(1), 13-25.

Vanolo, A. (2014). Smartmentality: The Smart City as Disciplinary Strategy. Urban Studies, 51(5), 883–898.

Sai Villafuerte speaks to Mexican photographer, Arturo Soto, about his debut photobook 'In the Heat' and what it means to negotiate our place in a city.  

Arturo Soto is pensive. In contemplating the inspiration behind his debut photobook, In The Heat, he looks back at a six-year process which has taken him to this point. His pause lingers, as if he caught himself cogitating on a memory relived.

“In The Heat represents the humidity of Panama,” the Mexican photographer says, “but it also comes from the expression ‘in the heat of the moment’ – the climax of a situation.” Soto is currently completing his doctorate in Fine Art at the University of Oxford where his work explores the significance of sociopolitical symbols in everyday urban spaces. In the Heat, which focuses on his subjective experience of Panama, was born out of a dual meaning. “I moved to Panama for personal reasons and that situation ended up not working out” he remembers. “Although that is not present in the photographs, the title represents the overwhelming situation of feeling alienated in a hot place.” 

Soto is not interested in the exotic beaches we often see re-packaged in travel brochures, nor does he aim to paint a portrait of the country’s economic renaissance. His focus on urban quotidian scenes problematises a culture which feels rather unsure of itself. “I’m not an expert” he warns, “but based on my experience there, I believe the influence of colonialism and the management which came after made it difficult for Panama to develop its own cultural identity.” The importance of cultural institutions in fostering this identity remains largely under-promoted in the country. Soto uses the example of the Panama Biennial, an international arts salon that started in 1992 but went bust in 2008. “They stopped the biennial because they couldn’t secure funding. This is despite the development boom and the large amount of money flowing in and out of the country as a tax haven,” he remarks. “That says a lot about the state of culture.”

This neglect of culture, Soto explains, manifests in the way visitors situate themselves there. Instead of developing their own understanding of the country, tourists leave with memories designed by Thomas Cook, the travel agent. “People that go to Panama sometimes don’t spend a lot of time in the capital,” Soto recounts. “Maybe they’ll spend a night there, go to a nightclub or a nice restaurant. They’ll spend the next five days in a beach resort where everything is programmed for them, then come back to the city just to get on the plane.”

“What surrounds you, what is at your disposal, what affects your mental well-being; the way you go from point A to point B – all these factors change the quality of your life.”

Indeed, this sense of detachment within an environment is a theme pervading much of Soto’s work. In using photography to negotiate his position in a space, he reacts to some of photojournalism’s traditional tropes, such as working within clearly defined objectives. “I’m not looking for the thematic consistency that photojournalism aspires to nor do I want my photographs to have social agency. If anything, I see this book as a historical document that merely reflects a certain point in time.” Soto alludes to John Gossage’s famous photobook The Pond, consisting of photographs taken at the fringes of Queenstown, Maryland, but with a couple taken in Berlin, where nature intersects with the built environment. This gave Soto the licence to make photographs in this same sequence where their ambiguity, he feels, forces the viewer to derive meaning from their context. “I want to produce images that challenge you a little bit — to figure out what you are looking at and why.”

Like Gossage, Soto challenges the ‘beauty’ of classical landscapes by focusing on snippets from everyday life. “It’s the aspect we pay least attention to,” he asserts. “People, when they go to nature, make these wonderful philosophical reflections, but then they tend not to think about the environment they live in, which arguably influences them the most.” Soto refers to the Situationists, a European intellectual group who, in the 1950s, sought to challenge the reductionist, consumption-dominated experiences of the city they believed were the norm. “What surrounds you, what is at your disposal, what affects your mental well-being; the way you go from point A to point B – all these factors change the quality of your life.”

Can observing the mundane really challenge the way we situate ourselves in a space? Perhaps not. After all, Soto captures the very essence these spaces represent where the city, for example, can make us feel fragmented and out of touch. Belligerent inequalities, perpetuated by rising house prices, austerity measures and the McDonaldisation of society, are especially apparent in cities. But as the art critic John Berger once said in his seminal book Ways of Seeing, “the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled.” Every ‘way of seeing’ is constituted by a partial understanding where each fragment, in the grand scheme of things, represents a larger body of knowledge that can help us interpret our position in a space.

“By taking these fragments of a city, you are kind of fictionalising it,” he says, “creating a version that doesn't exist.” Soto brings us back to Thomas Cook who, in the same way, are trying to sell you a city to spend all your money. “It's just a different fiction, and how we go on to represent that fiction has to do with the different decisions that one makes. In doing so, you can construct some sort of worldview out of those snippets of reality that you take out of context.”

~

In the Heat is published by The Eriksay Connection. You can order a copy here. 

On Friday, 27 April, in partnership with St Cross College, we will be hosting a panel discussion with Dr Paul Edwards (Maison Français d'Oxford) and Dr Rolando de Guardia Wald (Florida State University Panama City), to discuss Arturo Soto’s debut photobook, In the Heat. Copies of the book will be sold in the event. You can register for free here. 

Anna Isabelle 'Sai' Villafuerte is an MPhil student in Development Studies at Oxford's Department of International Development (ODID). Her research interests involve human capital development in cultural and creative industries, where she is studying at the impact of the Internet on creative value chains in the Philippine motion picture industry. In 2015, she worked in Unicef UK alongside the Head of Emergencies, drafting advocacy plans on the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Beyond her studies, she writes for The Huffington Post and has published pieces on topics relating to arts, politics and wherever they intersect.

Dr. Andreza de Souza Santos, a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oxford’s Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society (COMPAS), sat down with Luciano Mateo Rodriguez Carrington, the Latin America Coordinator for the Oxford Urbanists. She describes her research on urbanisation in Brazil, the mechanisms of migration to and from city centres, and the importance of collaboration for addressing related challenges. (This interview transcript has been edited for clarity.) 

Lea este artículo en español en LA Network. 

This article also appears in Spanish on LA Network. 

Can you tell me about your research and how it relates to migration and urbanisation?

I look at issues surrounding the restoration of city centres in Brazil, and in particular, why they need to be restored or renovated. This has a lot to do with migration. In São Paolo and many other capitals, middle and upper-middle class residents have increasingly looked for houses in the periphery of cities, where it tends to be safer.

So safety issues, not gentrification, have driven migration of middle classes to the periphery?

Yes. Safety, exclusivity, and peoples’ desires for privacy all contributed. But even though middle and upper-class residents have abandoned city centres, central areas haven’t become empty. Poorer residents have migrated inwards. This has created a wide-spread housing phenomenon that Brazilians call “cortiços,” whereby several families live in the same housing unit.

Municipal governments have responded by restoring central areas – cultural and artistic enclaves in particular - to make them more attractive to upper classes and tourists. So, in a sense, one can understand the return of middle and upper classes to city centres as the product of somewhat planned gentrification. My research looks at the national relevance of these patterns, since the restoration of historical city centres happens in many Brazilian cities. I explore the aims of these initiatives, as well as their associated problems and costs.

Do you think that challenging stigmas and preconceptions about ‘migrants’ and ‘informal settlements’ can inform policymaking?

Absolutely. “Informal” and “formal” settlers are very connected. For example, the city of Ouro Preto has a well-preserved city centre that generates a lot of tourism. But it very much depends on the informal city that is connected to it. The “formal” city needs the “informal” city to house the people that run it and its heritage site. One survives off of the other.

In Brazil, do different stakeholders hold different opinions regarding how to address informal settlements?

There are both conflicting agendas and similar interests at play. For example, residents have an interest in gaining legal ownership over their house (except when they are renting, in which case gaining ownership might mean incurring additional costs). This would require cooperating with the state. However, some residents fear that, any time the state comes in, it might expel them. To move forward, more and more grassroots movements are mapping informal areas and conducting surveys with inhabitants, so that they can demonstrate to government authorities how many people live in these neighbourhoods. They hope this will enable them to demand that the government provide streetlights, water, sewage, and other necessities.

In 2017, over 60 per cent of the world's refugees were living in urban areas, and climate change is likely to accelerate rural-to-urban migration. How do you think cities can best prepare for this?

The issue of rural-to-urban migration is often completely unmanaged. Cities fail to prepare policies and strategies. But this is no longer acceptable. Now more than ever, cities need plans for improving transportation, social inclusion, job opportunities, and housing situations. This will be crucial for informal settlements, such as favelas in the case of Brazil, since these spaces tend to absorb new migrants. But governments should also design land regulations and policies that will help slow mass migration to cities.

What do you believe are the global, overarching challenges facing informal settlements and the creation of policies to address them?

There is a need to understand how migration patterns shape informal settlements, as well as how infrastructure can help manage these processes. One of the greatest challenges will be the management of formalisation. In any case, it will be crucial to analyse and act according to specific contexts, since the composition of local economies helps determine patterns of in-migration.

In my own experiences, I have witnessed the usefulness of networks in dealing with issues of migration, urbanisation, and informal settlements. Collaboration between communities, academics, and different levels of government can greatly enhance policy outcomes. In addition, such cooperation can help break down the stigmas governments sometimes hold about informal settlements, while strengthening communities’ trust in government. Collaboration is indispensable for urban planning in Brazil and many other parts of the world.

Dr. de Souza Santos is a Post-doctoral Research Associate for the Urban Transformations portfolio. Her research interests include participatory politics, modernity, social memory, heritage, housing, and infrastructure. She has lived, studied and worked in Brazil, South Africa and India, interacting with universities, international organizations, municipal governments, and grassroots associations along the way. She obtained her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, an MA in Social Sciences at the University of Freiburg, University of KwaZulu Natal and Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a BA in Political Science at the University of Brasilia.

In Vancouver, Canada, a non-profit organisation called frida&frank aims to empower citizens to be placemakers by helping them imagine new roles for the city’s public spaces: rainy-day oases.

It’s easy to let winter get you down, especially where it’s full of wet, cold days. According to NHS estimates, 1 in 15 people in the UK suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD) between September and April. Even those not dealing with seasonal depression tend to spend less time outside, get less exercise, and do less socialising during the winter months. This means that city spaces often become vacant, exacerbating the sense of social isolation that can plague urban dwellers.

In response to these issues, some cities are enacting winter strategies to improve the lives of their citizens during the coldest months of the year. But some of the more creative initiatives have come from elsewhere. In Vancouver, Canada, a non-profit organisation called frida&frank aims to empower citizens to be placemakers by helping them imagine new roles for the city’s public spaces: rainy-day oases.

 “It’s something that’s being talked about in Vancouver and around the world, but no city is doing it right,” says Haley Roeser, co-founder of frida&frank. “We have a long history of creating urban infrastructure that counteracts nature and repels rain, but none of our public spaces really work in the rain. That’s really silly in a city like Vancouver, where it rains most of the year.”

frida&frank’s latest projects have aimed at combatting SAD through a seasonal effective design. This January, the organisation hosted a festival called winteraction — featuring events in Vancouver, Rotterdam, and Berlin — which took inspiration from a project the organisation ran last summer. Aiming to change how people conceive of Vancouver’s public spaces, frida&frank set up easily-disassembled ping-pong tables around the city, with funds from the municipal government.

“Ping-pong is a really fun game and doesn’t demand a lot from someone,” Roeser explained. “It can be short, it can be long, and you can easily converse while playing.” “While not everyone stopped to play with us, it was nice to see the number of smiles and waves we received. The idea is that people are seeing what is possible in public.” In a sense, the initiative sought to take back the streets — to bring more fun and play into the city.

I had the pleasure of playing ping-pong with frida&frank last August. It was a beautiful summer day in Vancouver — one of those that makes you remember why the city is often ranked among the best places to live in the world. frida&frank had their cheerfully decorated tables set up outside a small record store in Chinatown. Inside, n10.as, a Montreal-based online radio station, was broadcasting live. Large speakers were blasting music onto the sun-soaked sidewalk. A small crowd congregated outside, bouncing to the music and taking turns playing casual games of ping-pong.

In Vancouver, often hailed the “no fun city” because of its strict bylaws, these kinds of events are not very common, so most passers-by paused to chat. Two elderly women from the community arrived and cautiously sat court-side. Despite their limited English and shy demeanour, it was clear they wanted to play. When one of them grabbed a paddle and pointed at me, I gladly stepped up to the table. As the game commenced, it became evident that I was no match for this ping-pong master. I quickly passed the paddle to someone more skilled, but of course, she schooled them, too.

She picked us off one by one, her bashful smile growing with each good-natured defeat. Her friend excitedly clapped from the side-lines. For me, this scene encapsulates the beauty of frida&frank’s pop-up ping-pong. Living in a city, it’s not everyday people can engage with one another in such an organic and playful way.

As the summer drew to a close, the sunny days that made outdoor ping-pong possible became fewer and farther between, but frida&frank was not done with the project. “This kind of thing is easy to do in the summertime,” Roeser told me. “In winter, the social architecture of a city is sometimes not as conducive. But fostering a connection among locals shouldn’t stop when the seasons change.”

Enter winteraction. The Vancouver festival’s marquee event was called “POP! A Rainy Day Refuge.” With the help of Vancouver Design Nerds and HCMA Architecture + Design, frida&frank built a giant bubble out of clear plastic sheet and set up under the Cambie Street Bridge. “The original intent of the bubble was to create a mobile public space,” said Roeser. “It allows you to transform any environment into a place of gathering.” Events — including a design jam, storytelling, and live DJ sets — took place inside the bubble throughout the day. “It was powerful to see how a sheet of plastic could create such an intimate space,” Roeser added.

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(Images Courtesy of Haley Roeser)

All over the world, winteraction encouraged people to embrace their environment, meet people, and enjoy public space, despite the weather. frida&frank is now cataloguing the diverse actions people took as part of the festival. (Many documented these using the hashtag #winteraction.) Following, they hope to illustrate which kinds of winter interventions work well around the world.

As cities grow, it will be increasingly important to foster interaction and build community, and frida&frank are demonstrating the power of placemaking to do this. So don’t be deterred by stormy weather or unexpectedly fierce ping pong competition. Grab a plastic sheet, your local radio station, or something else, and get out there. The re-imagination and reinvention of public space starts with you.

Note: For more information and inspiration on placemaking, check out the Project for Public Spaces, the Benches Collective and PARK(ing) Day.

Zoë Johnson is the Development Coordinator for the Oxford Urbanists and an MPhil student in Oxford’s Department of International Development. She is particularly interested in the ways in which contemporary urban development is reproducing and reinforcing social inequalities. Her research focuses on local understandings of poverty in small urban centres. She holds a BSc in Global Resource Systems from the University of British Columbia.

In the Global South, informal transport systems are digitising and becoming more integrated with rapidly growing formal systems. In the North, cities are expanding microtransit in an effort to scale back inefficient formal systems. We may be witnessing a convergence of North and South models of urban mobility.

Lea este artículo en español en  LA Network. 

This article also appears in Spanish on LA Network. 

I spent two months in Cape Town last summer interning at a startup (WhereIsMyTransport) that maps informal transport routes. When I describe how informal transport works to my friends back home in the U.S., they often say, “So that’s like Uber pool, right?” This reaction underscores a nascent convergence in modes of urban transport across cities in the Global North and South.

At a recent Oxford Urbanists event, Sir Paul Collier described what he considers the optimal transport network in the Global South: a central city served by high-occupancy Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), with informal vehicles providing demand-responsive “feeder” service in peripheral urban areas. The challenge for lower-income cities is to scale-up BRT and move informal routes away from the city centre. This often involves a net decrease in the size of the informal sector, as seen in Cape Town. There, the municipal government offered minibus taxi drivers the option to become BRT bus drivers when it phased in the MyCiti BRT system in 2011 (Shalecamp & McLachlan 2016).

Many U.S. cities have been approaching a similar model from the opposite end of the formal-to-informal spectrum. With too little on-demand service and too much fixed-route service – the latter very costly – cities have been experimenting with more decentralised options as a way to enhance mobility and save money. Philadelphia, Oakland, and Tampa, for instance, have tried offering Uber subsidies as a replacement for financially infeasible bus routes on the urban periphery.

Though their success remains to be seen, brewing U.S. “microtransit” initiatives bear an even closer resemblance to informal transport. Under this model, municipal governments formally partner with on-demand rideshare companies like Via, Chariot, Uber, or Lyft. Los Angeles began accepting proposals for a  pilot last year. Arlington, Texas recently penned a deal that would make it the first U.S. city to offer public transport exclusively by microtransit. A 2015 pilot in Kansas City, Missouri, failed due to below-target ridership.

It seems easy to imagine a Capetonian, upon hearing about microtransit, saying “Oh so that’s just like a minibus taxi, right?”

Trends in the developing world could further hasten the convergence between transport systems in the Global North and South. For instance, efforts to digitise route, fare, and tracking information could make the trip-planning experience for informal modes virtually identical to taking an Uber pool. Startups like WhereIsMyTransport and AftaRobot (just to name two South African examples) will enable riders to plan their journeys with precision while allowing vehicle owners to track and optimise the use of their fleets. Meanwhile, city governments, such as Cape Town and Kigali, are digitising and unifying payment methods across modes.

Global South city governments could support innovation through subsidy programs that are conditional on drivers’ behaviour. Doing so might allow them to solve investment coordination problems while simultaneously reducing negative aspects sometimes associated with the informal sector, such as unsafe driving and violent competition. New York City’s Taxi Improvement Fund, which aimed to increase vehicle accessibility, is one example of such a scheme. A taxi improvement program launched by Cape Town in 2000 largely failed; the taxi industry called it woefully inadequate for meaningful capital upgrades (Shalecamp & McLachlan 2016). But a more generous subsidy, possibly conditional on good driving records, could drastically improve both drivers’ and riders’ transport experience.

Urbanists would do well to consider what the North and South can learn from each other in improving urban transport. For if we are talking a global convergence on mobility systems, the question seems to be not “if,” but “when."

Paul Healy is an M.Sc. candidate in Economics for Development at the University of Oxford. Prior to Oxford, Paul worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Co. and as an intern at WhereIsMyTransport, a transport startup in Cape Town. He holds a Bachelor of Arts from Georgetown University.

References

Shalecamp, H. & McLachlan, N. (2016): “Minibus-taxi operator reforms, engagement and attitudes in Cape Town,” Book chapter in Paratransit in African Cities (ed. Behrens et al.), Routledge.

Innovations like solar energy, drone-delivered medical supplies, and cashless bus routes promise to improve quality of life in Rwanda.

Rwanda’s only major international airport is located in Kigali. It runs daily flights to cities across the African continent, as well as to global transit destinations like Amsterdam, Brussels, Dubai, Istanbul, London, and Mumbai. Nearing the city centre, futuristic buildings span the metropolis. The massive dome of the Kigali Convention Centre is a highlight. For its humble size, Kigali seems to have many feathers on its cap.

The US$300 million Convention Centre is not the only structure that draws a second look. The Paediatric Cancer Centre in the south of the city, designed by renowned architect David Adjaye, was recently completed. The newly-opened Marriot Hotel dwarfs the older Kigali Serena Hotel. Construction is underway everywhere, and new projects get built quickly. In Rwanda Inc., a book detailing Rwanda’s post-conflict rise, Andrea Redmond and Patricia Crisafulli put it this way:

“There is a joke among residents and frequent visitors to Kigali, the capital city of Rwanda, that if you blink twice, you will see a building that wasn’t there just the other day. What seems like pure exaggeration became a reality for us over numerous trips made to this tiny landlocked country in eastern Africa. Each time we arrived, there was something else to see.”

Since the genocide of 1994, Rwanda has sustained high economic growth, and alongside it, the Kagame administration has ensured that Rwanda remains at the forefront of technological innovation in Africa.  

The government’s Information and Communications Technology (ICT) Policy was outlined in its Vision 2020 document, which was first published in 2000 and has been revised every year. One of its key goals includes increasing internet and mobile phone access across the densely-populated country. The goals have been met ahead of target and the proliferation of internet access has given way to a number of technological innovations in the country.

The government of Rwanda aims to increase access to its services through a versatile online portal called Irembo, which currently permits access to more than 80 services for both Rwandans and foreigners. Foreigners planning to visit Rwanda can apply for visas online, while Rwandans can request marriage certificates, register for driving tests, and seek automated reproductive health advice. In urban areas like Kigali, the local authorities use it to inform citizens of local road closures or water supply issues through text messages.

A few kilometers outside Kigali lies a major technological achievement: a £15.6 million solar power plant in the shape of the African continent. It is one of the fastest-built solar power projects in the world; construction finished within a year of contract signatures. The 8.5 megawatt plant currently supplies six percent of Rwanda’s electricity, but the government has near-term plans to build enough solar generation capacity to satisfy 50% of the country’s domestic power demand. Rwanda’s planners believe that zero-emission growth is possible, and they are leading by example.

Kigali is also the center of an ambitious plan to improve access to vital health supplies across the country. Due to Rwanda’s hilly terrain, traveling short distances by road can take hours. However, small automated aircrafts can cut such journeys to minutes, and the country is taking advantage. With the help of Zipline, a California-based drone startup, Kigali has become the center of an experiment to supply hospitals through drone delivery. 

Using a smartphone app, a hospital technician can request a certain quantity of blood, which the central repository of blood, run by the Ministry of Health in Kigali, will dispatch on a drone. Once it arrives, the drone will drop the blood package with a small parachute attached, allowing for more efficient trips and avoiding the need for landing space. The technology will soon begin supplying medicines.

Rwanda is also leading on public transport payment technology. Most bus routes in Kigali now only accept payments through the tap of a card, the first system of its kind in the African continent. Developed by a small Rwandan tech company, this method of payment has reduced delays and is already diffusing to other African cities, including Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde – much larger than Kigali. Local payment apps linked to personal bank accounts and existing mobile payment technologies like M-Pesa are gaining importance as well. Many Rwandan businesses now accept payments through them.

As cheap innovations increasingly disrupt traditional service provision, Rwanda is leading the way for its neighbours in the East African region. And at this rate, when it comes to addressing urban challenges through technical solutions, the country may soon lead the Global South.

Chinmay Rayarikar is a Development Studies MPhil student at the University of Oxford. He is currently interested in urban spaces and technology with an emphasis on the Global South and has conducted research on refugee integration in the United States, transit systems in China, and urban planning in Rwanda. He holds a bachelor’s degree in International Studies and Urban Studies from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.

On 15 November 2017, the Oxford Urbanists and the International Growth Centre’s (IGC) Cities that Work initiative co-hosted a panel discussion on the ‘Future of Informal Transport in Rapidly Growing Cities’ to discuss evidence for improved policy.

This article was originally published by the International Growth Centre. 

Transport is a vital component of connectivity in developing cities, allowing them to be a platform for prosperity and economic activity. By connecting firms and individuals, and providing access to jobs and services across a city, transport systems can provide the scale and specialisation needed for cities to undergo a ‘miracle of productivity’.

However, in many rapidly developing cities, high capacity public transport systems are in limited supply. For example, less than half of Kigali’s citizens, in Rwanda’s capital, have access to a bus station within 500m of their homes (Bajpai et al., 2012). In some cities, there is no mass transport system at all.

In this context, informal or semi-formal systems of transport, such as minibuses and motorbike taxis, form the backbone of urban mobility. In Dakar, Senegal, 80% of public transport is provided in the form of informal minibuses (Kumar and Christian Diou, 2010). How governments address, regulate and complement these privately provided systems will play a decisive role in productivity and liveability in developing cities.

To explore the key trade-offs faced by policymakers in improving current systems of urban mobility, the Oxford Urbanists and International Growth Centre’s Cities that Work initiative brought together researchers from a range of disciplines for their second collaborative panel event.

On the panel were Professors Paul Collier (University of Oxford), Tim Schwanen (Studies Unit, University of Oxford), and Dr. Clemence Cavoli (Centre for Transport Studies, University College London). Discussion explored how existing systems of informal or semi-formal transport fit into the picture for the future of mobility in rapidly growing cities.

Findings

A key insight from the discussion was that there is no one definition of informal transport. There is tremendous variation in the operation of extra-legal transport services. In Mexico City, for example, minibus owners can own thousands of vehicles and run multiple routes. In other cities, such as Lagos, most small-scale operators own their own vehicles. These services are in many cases best described as semi-formal, lacking some of the legal requirements of operation, such as vehicle permits or operation licenses, but not necessarily all. In Amman, Maputo and Adana, semi-formal minibuses operators do not adhere to formally agreed bus stops, but they do operate through legal licenses and have fees capped by government authorities.

Informal does not mean unorganised – in many cases there are strong, territorial and often highly hierarchical systems of collective organisation around vehicle ownership, maintenance and operation.

Limited enforcement of regulations means that these informal services operate and fill the gap left by a lack of adequate formal public transport. Motorcycle taxis in cities such as Lagos, Kampala and Douala, for example, have resulted from the collapse of public bus services and subsequent deregulation of the transport sector.

Due to their lack of full legal status, there is a clear distinction between formal and informal transport in their access to capital, and their resultant scale of organisation and range of technologies. Formal systems of transport have access to these in a way that informal systems do not.

Semi-formal transport systems play a crucial role in developing cities, particularly for low income households living on the outskirts of a city with limited transport alternatives. The smaller scale of these vehicles makes them relatively cheap to invest in compared to higher capacity buses. A five- to seven-year-old second hand 14 seater matatu bus in Nairobi, costs around USD$11,800, with net daily returns to owners of approximately $21 per day. This means that capital costs of the vehicle can be recouped within the first two years of vehicle operation.

By contrast, a new 35 seater matatu costs around USD$46,000 (Kumar and Barrett, 2008). This means these semi-formal services can be provided in greater supply by the private market and allows them to charge lower fares whilst remaining financially self-sufficient.

The ability of smaller vehicles to operate wherever roads exist means that they are more fluid and adaptable to the changing needs of a city (and to low quality roads in areas where often the most disadvantaged communities live). At the same time, these services also provide a key source of employment for young, mostly male, workers in rapidly developing cities.

Informal and semi-formal transport services face common challenges. In cities like Maputo, semi-formal minibuses exceed speed limits, overcrowd buses, and use poorly maintained vehicles to improve profitability, compromising safety and increasing emissions. The lack of formalised schedules mean that minibus drivers often wait for vehicles to be fully loaded, making access along routes difficult.

A more fundamental problem shared by informal systems is their lack of capacity. Taxis, motorbikes and minibuses are at best medium-capacity vehicles, and as such can result in high levels of congestion. As passenger volumes in cities rise, the time wasted in traffic from these vehicles can become extremely costly.

At the same time, the operation of these services can undercut the financial viability of higher capacity bus services. What’s more, the employment benefits of these systems are quickly outweighed by the detrimental effect they have on a city’s ability to connect and generate more high productivity jobs. 

Policy implications

1. Investing in capacity
The pressing question of how policymakers can address existing, semi-formal transport systems is clouded by prejudiced narratives. The ‘high modernist’ narrative of many governments means that in an effort to modernise a city, they seek to imitate high capacity systems of cities like Singapore, which exceed the current needs of a city.

On the other side, a number of NGOs subscribe to the narrative that ‘small is beautiful’, implying that the individual rights of transport workers are human rights. To these NGOs, policy has no place in curtailing informal operations for collective needs.

A realistic way forward for policy falls somewhere between these two narratives: incrementally improving and expanding transport systems in line with urban density and demand. By matching transport technologies with policies to enhance urban density, mass transport systems such as bus rapid transit (BRT) and railways can sustainably provide affordable access to jobs and services across dense central areas of a city. In many developing cities, this will require correcting a massive underinvestment in public goods, such as wide roads in city centres for BRT systems to run.

At the same time, lower capacity existing transport systems such as minibuses and motorbikes can be used as feeder routes to high capacity systems from low density areas, where demand is too low to warrant investment in BRT. Curitiba, the birthplace of the BRT, is a good example of where a BRT system has been coordinated with land use planning and urban density, to allow for financially sustainable services.

Therefore, simple investments in the core infrastructure needed for mass public transport, matched with formalised lower capacity feeder routes, can offer a sensible structure for transport in a middle-income city.

2. Regulation, not replacement

In this context, formalisation of semi-formal systems is key to ensuring that these systems continue to provide affordable access for citizens in developing cities. In many cases, regulation to improve the standardisation of fares and regulation on safety and emissions can improve the quality of transport systems – but this needs to be weighed against the effect of such regulations on their financial sustainability. It is crucial to avoid being too ambitious; by introducing regulations that exceed government capacity to enforce, cities risk undermining the credibility of all regulations.

In many cases, the best way for governments to improve semi-formal services is to provide the finance, or access to private finance, that allows operators to maintain and improve their vehicles. Allowing operators to move away from predatory lending schemes makes improvements in service quality more feasible. 

Challenging existing prejudiced narratives on informal transport requires two things. First, it requires recognising the key role semi-formal transport systems play in for citizens in developing cities. Second, it means acknowledging the importance of public investments in higher capacity systems to complement, and not replace, existing systems. Together, these provide a roadmap for policy.

Priya Manwaring is a Cities Economist at the International Growth Centre's London hub. Find her on Twitter @PriyaManwaring. 

A discussion between Sir Paul Collier, Dr. Tim Schwanen, and Dr. Clemence Cavoli focused on informal transport systems: their strengths and weaknesses, their role in optimal city design, and pertinent government regulation. 

Cities in the Global South are experiencing unprecedented urbanisation. Yet many are not realising the gains in living standards and per capita income that have historically accompanied urbanisation in the developed world – a phenomenon Glaeser (2014) and many others have referred to as “poor megacities.” Transport systems, which enable the agglomeration effects that give urban areas their economic advantage, will play a crucial role in determining the fate of these cities.

Perhaps the most important feature of transport in the Global South is the prevalence of informal transport, which refers to “a flexible mode of passenger transportation that does not follow fixed schedules,” (Behrens et al. 2016, 5-7). This can include fixed-route, shared-ride vehicles, like Cape Town’s minibus taxis, as well as demand-responsive, single-passenger vehicles like Kampala’s boda-bodas. Approximately 70% of road-based public trips in Johannesburg fall into this category, as do around 90% in Lagos and up to 98% in Dar es Salaam (Behrens et al. 2016). Cognisant of both the importance of transport in urban growth and the sheer scale of current informal networks, cities in the Global South are urgently re-evaluating the structure and operations of their informal transport systems.

It is in this context that the Oxford Urbanists and the International Growth Centre (IGC) co-hosted a panel called ‘Future of Informal Transport in Rapidly Growing Cities’ on Wednesday 15 November 2017. Priya Manwaring, a cities economist at IGC, moderated the discussion, which included Sir Paul Collier (Professor of Economics and Public Policy, Blavatnik School of Government and Director, International Growth Centre), Dr. Tim Schwanen (Associate Professor of Transport and Human Geography and Director, Transport Studies Unit, University of Oxford), and Dr. Clemence Cavoli (Research Associate, Centre for Transport Studies, University College London).

Drawing from their experiences working in developing cities, ranging from Manila to Maputo to Amman, three key topics emerged in the discussion: (1) the strengths and weaknesses of informal transport (2) the role of informal transport in optimal city design, and (3) government regulation of informal transport.

(1) Strengths and weaknesses of informal transport

Dr. Schwanen and Dr. Cavoli elaborated on the many strengths of informal transport, noting that these systems often outperform their formal counterparts in terms of reliability and in-ride safety. As Dr. Schwanen put it, “they may be informal, but certainly not unorganised.” By its very nature, informal transport is also more adaptable to changes in demand patterns than formal bus and rail.

However, informal transport can also exhibit significant downsides, as well. Dr. Cavoli noted that drivers, often striving to earn a living wage in what can be an intensely competitive sector, are prone to speeding and overcrowding vehicles. In addition, vehicles can create congestion in dense urban areas, where, from a city planner’s perspective, larger volume buses may be the preferred option. Sir Collier emphasised that the lack of regularly scheduled stops and timetables often characterising informal transport can inhibit commuter decision-making and overall urban efficiency.

Throughout the evening, Dr. Schwanen stressed the importance of social context in discussions of informal transport, highlighting that this sector generally provides both mobility and employment for historically marginalised segments of the city. He also cautioned that the very term “informal” can be too broad for discussing very different urban contexts and transport systems.

(2) The role of informal transport in optimal city design

Sir Collier outlined what he considers the optimal transport network design in the Global South: a central city area served by high-occupancy Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), with informal vehicles providing a “feeder” service in less-dense, peripheral urban areas. In doing so, he emphasised the role of transport in efficiently connecting people to employment and points of interests rather providing employment as a sector itself, and he cautioned against what he sees as two equally misguided attitudes on informal transport.

On the one hand, “high modernists” overlook the strengths of informal transport by replacing them with “Singapore-style” rail and bus networks. On the other hand, “NGO, pro-individual rights” advocates see regulation on informal transport systems as infringing on drivers. Dr. Cavoli and Dr. Schwanen also supported this vision but noted the practical difficulties in rearranging the routes of informal vehicles in a rational and systematic manner. Audience questions mainly cantered on this theme, prompting discussion of policies such as growth boundaries and road space rationing to limit congestion.

 (3) Government regulation of informal transport

City and regional governments across the world have fraught relationships with the informal transport sector. In the mode of “high modernism” referred to by Sir Collier, some governments have sought to drastically reduce informal transport. Others have implemented bus or rail lines in direct competition with existing informal routes, provoking backlash from informal operators.   

Recognising that governments of many Global South cities are of heavily constrained, but panellists highlighted ways in which governments can utilise informal transport systems to help make up for this. Dr. Cavoli, for instance, stressed the usefulness of taking advantage of the efficiency and adaptability of informal transport in cases where formal modes of transport suffer from operational or financial dysfunction (Cape Town presents one example). Dr. Schwanen suggested municipal governments’ provision of financing for informal vehicle upgrades, instead of vehicles or other capital directly, can amount to a particularly high-return investment strategy.

Paul Healy is an M.Sc. candidate in Economics for Development at the University of Oxford, where he is researching the ways in which public good provision can ameliorate or exacerbate inequality in developing cities. Prior to Oxford, Paul worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Co., where he served city and state government agencies across the U.S., and as an intern at WhereIsMyTransport, a transport startup in Cape Town. He holds a Bachelor of Arts, from Georgetown University.

References

Behrens et al. (2016): Paratransit in African Cities, Routledge.

Glaeser, E. (2014): “A World of Cities: The Causes and Consequences of Urbanization in Poorer Countries,” Journal of the European Economic Association, 12(5).

The Moscow municipal government provides an annual platform for international discussion of urban challenges and innovation. 

When nations do not agree, cities lead the way. Although recent policy strategy of the Russian government has not focused on cultivating cross-national alliances, the Moscow Urban Forum (MUF), organized by the Moscow city government, aims to do just that while tackling exigent problems of the world’s cities. Since its inception in 2011, the forum has grown from a platform for highlighting and addressing Moscow’s own urban challenges into an idea-sharing space for policymakers, academics, start-ups, urban planners, designers, architects, and civil society groups from across the globe. Last year’s forum hosted delegations from 68 countries.

Moscow Urban Forum takes place every year and includes the forum itself, the MUF Festival, and a Community Awards Ceremony. The MUF itself spans the two full days of programming. Within it, eight to ten global cities organise individual pavilions pertaining to their own, local design strategies, policies, projects, and challenges. The forum also presents opportunities for more explicit cross-cultural and multi-sectoral collaboration in forum-wide sessions.

MUF Festival begins two days prior to the forum with the objective of engaging the local public and MUF attendees in interactive city planning initiatives. Participants immerse themselves in digital planning tools, take part in data collection and mapping exercises, test out new cycling gear, and tour Moscow neighbourhoods. With inclusivity as one of its main objectives, MUF Festival aims to introduce tools and opportunities that enable people of all ages and cultural backgrounds to actively shape the future of their communities. The forum concludes with the Community Awards Ceremony, which honours some of the best urban projects and practices from around the world over the previous year. Currently, there are 8 sectors: Entertainment and Leisure, Education and Science, Sport and Fitness, Urban Tech, Public Good, Urban Media, Art and Culture, and Urban Design.

Each year, an array of internationally-recognized panellists develops a theme for the MUF. Past years focused on urban agglomerations, sustainable periphery development, shaping of post-industrial cities, drivers of development, megapolis, amongst others. Previous panellists have included Enrique Penalosa, former mayor of Bogota, Colombia (one of the first cities to introduce Bus Rapid Transit into its transit infrastructural framework), Vicante Guallarte, Chief Architect of Barcelona (2011-2015), and Yasushi Aoyama, former governor of Tokyo.  

In light of the upcoming FIFA World Cup, which will take place in a number of Russian cities in the summer of 2018, this year’s MUF aims to address looming challenges of new infrastructural developments. The theme will be “Sports Megaprojects as a Trigger for Urban Renewal.” Discussion will partly focus on how to best integrate Russia’s newly-added infrastructure sustainably within the country’s major urban frameworks. Local and international experts will address project scaling, lessons learnt from previous major sporting events, and visions for the future of urban agglomerations.

Have a project, research paper, or idea for MUF 2018? Get in touch with the author at yulia.conley@gtc.ox.ac.uk.

Yulia Lisovskaya is Vice President and Russia/Eastern Europe Coordinator for the Oxford Urbanists and an MSc student in Environmental Change and Management at the University of Oxford, where her current academic and professional interests lie in environmental hazard mitigation and sustainability education. Previously, she worked for the United Nations Human Settlements Programme (UN-Habitat), Chicago Transit Authority, and Centre for Neighborhood Technology. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Applied Economics and Urban Planning.

On June 9th, 2017, the Oxford Urbanists, together with the International Growth Centre’s Cities that Work program, held a debate titled Informal Settlements and the Role of Land Rights. Participants included Professor Stefan Dercon (Professor of Economic Policy at the Blavatnik School of Government and Chief Economist of the UK Department for International Development), Professor Doug Gollin (Professor of Development Economics at the Oxford Department of International Development), and Dr. Andreza de Souza Santos (Post-Doctoral Researcher at the Oxford Centre on Migration, Policy, and Society [COMPAS]).  

In what follows, Dr. de Souza Santos provides abbreviated written replies to some of the questions discussed during the debate.

In what contexts are informal settlements in low-income cities best characterised as poverty traps? In what contexts are they best characterised as springboards for social and economic integration into a city? What does this mean for policy?

I’m not sure there is such a clear distinction. For example, in the construction of Brasilia, a city meant to be different from all others in Brazil through its showcasing of housing equality, construction workers were never included in the plan. They built their own houses in the outskirts, and by doing so they “disfigured” the pattern of equal housing. The builders of Brasilia created an unplanned space. But they were not trapped in poverty. By building their own houses, they were able to access the expanding labour market offered by new capital. They made their lives and that of the rich possible, as a necessary working force. The relevance of these ambiguities to policy is what needs to be discussed.

When considering informal housing, we should look at the poverty patterns that precede it. We often say that where you live defines the opportunities you have in life, implying that informality is a poverty trap. However, moving people can increase rather than solve such problems. For example, relocation can affect social capital, which may be vey important for job opportunities and survival. Slums may occupy better parts of a city than development housing projects, which are often far removed from city centres. We need to thoughtfully consider such complexities. Rather than act on generalizing conclusions, we must discuss “traps” and “springboards” on a case-by-case basis.

What are the barriers to effective policy implementation when it comes to addressing the problems associated with informal settlements? Examples could include a lack of data, illegal land tenure preventing utility companies from delivering infrastructure, and the presence of powerful rent-seeking landlords.

I will focus on the lack of data, which is a problem. There is a lot of uncertainty about how informal settlements work. Understanding who lives in these spaces, what their incomes are, how they access education, as well as knowing something about the experiences and the expectations they associate with their environments, are necessary steps in mapping out good policies. Such information sheds light on the best ways to increase access to public services, create pathways for house ownership, or negotiate removal.

Data on informal settlements can also minimize stigmas associated with poor areas. For example, most of these places are considered violent despite residents perceiving them as safe. When poverty is associated with crime, as is in places like Brazil, this stigma further increases inequality. This begs the question: how to collect data when people may shy away from any interviewer asking about their housing situation, because they fear removal? The solution may rest in the involvement of the community itself. When residents become involved in data collection, neighbours may not have the usual skepticism.

For data collection to improve, collectors must share their data with policymakers, who should then ensure that the objectives underlying the research, such as better access to public services, are actually provided. This may make people more willing to cooperate in future studies.

In order to ensure future urban growth occurs in a more planned and orderly manner, how can policymakers most effectively enable low-cost provision of housing to poor urban residents? Discussion could focus on the costs and benefits of a “sites and services” approach.

From what I’ve observed, the “urban poor” always strive for legal recognition. They accumulate documents regarding their houses, including water bills and any postage sent to them at that address (when they do have an address). For the urban poor, houses are like their “biography,” as James Holston puts it. They improve their homes as they improve their lives. All they want is to pay their taxes and live legally. Making this affordable is a good pathway.

However, it is difficult when residents arrive before any infrastructure exists. In such situations, they build using methods and in locations that make improvements difficult. It is hard to deliver public services when streets are too narrow, houses too close together to permit public space, or land too unstable. Removal is sometimes necessary.

But concepts such as architectural acupuncture demonstrate how small interventions can be applied with high precision in ways that make a big difference. Projects such as local banks, wherein residents in poor areas develop their own currency and lending institutions to boost local business and insulate themselves from the competition of bigger companies, have also worked well. This creates stronger communities and oftentimes provides the capital necessary to finance home ownership. Other initiatives, such as cheap credit in specific situations, can come from the state.

Dr. de Souza Santos is a Post-doctoral Research Associate for the Urban Transformations portfolio. Her activities include linking Newton-funded ESRC cities research projects in Brazil, China, South Africa and India. She has lived, studied and worked in Brazil, South Africa and India, interacting with universities, international organizations, municipal governments, and grassroots associations along the way. She obtained her PhD in Social Anthropology at the University of St Andrews, an MA in Social Sciences at the University of Freiburg, University of KwaZulu Natal and Jawaharlal Nehru University, and a BA in Political Science at the University of Brasilia.

On May 15, 2017, the Oxford Urbanists held a debate titled Justice, Equity, and Transportation in Latin American Cities, in partnership with the Oxford University Latin America Society. Dr. Nihan Akyelken, a participant, reflects on the discussion. 

Transport interventions are seen as vital drivers of economic development in the Global South. However, the social justice implications of transport projects are complex and often poorly understood. The panel discussion that focused on justice, equity, and transport, organised by the Oxford Urbanists and the Oxford Latin American Society, provided refreshing insights into the topic by drawing on the examples of transport projects and mobility practices in Latin American cities. The speakers - Rafael Pereira, Juan Manuel del Nido, and Jorge Perez Jaramillo - gave excellent presentations of their current work on the equity implications of transport.

Policymakers have shared a longstanding belief in a direct and casual relation between investment in transport infrastructure and economic gains through growth and employment. They have generally assumed that transport projects will have eventual ‘trickle-down’ social benefits for all social groups. Rafael offered a critical perspective on this belief through recent findings of his research on the distribution of accessibility benefits of transport investments in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He also presented an overview of different philosophical underpinnings of distributive justice and transport. If you want to know more about the theoretical basis of his work, read Rafael’s paper in the Transport Reviews!

Juan discussed his work on the equity implications of changing spaces of work as a result of emerging mobility innovations, such as Uber, a taxi-like ride-sharing service. He shared novel insights into informality and materiality in urban transport through the case of taxi drivers in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He also pointed out critical issues regarding fairness and rights by drawing attention to various levels of interactions within the industry.

Following the first two presentations on policy and employment perspectives, Jorge provided a narrative of his experience helping design the “City of Life” urban planning strategy for Medellín, Colombia. He shared thoughtful analysis of the interdependence of the initial conditions of the city, which is very segregated, and how controversial policies, such as metro investments, faced implementation issues when seeking to use transport as a tool for building communities.

Infrastructure constituted the crosscutting theme across the three presentations. All speakers stressed that infrastructure should not be recognised as an end in itself. They all convincingly argued that the benefits of politically-popular transport projects and innovative practices are not necessarily beneficial for all segments of society and social well-being in general. The importance of the politicized nature of transport and the multi-dimensionality of justice issues it entails were also evident throughout. We closed the discussion by highlighting the importance of attention to broader and structural inequalities when identifying and addressing transport-related social justice issues.  

Dr. Nihan Akyelken joined Oxford as a Research Fellow at the Transport Studies Unit in the School of Geography and the Environment in 2008. Previously, she worked at LSE’s Public Policy Group. She is the winner of the 2015 OECD-ITF Young Researcher of the Year Award and was recognised as a World Social Science Fellow in Sustainable Urbanisation by the International Social Science Council in 2014. See her research profile here.