Muhammad Zeeshan Zaheer
Matrikel-Nr: 4057739
The
way cities are expanding and consuming the resources we should pause
and rethink the direction we choose to go forward. As Slums are a
part of the urban fabric, they are in a high contrast economically
socially. At numerous level it is seen as a failure of the city. In
this article I want to discuss some underlying solutions that I
believe can bring out these Slums (Katchi Abadi's) as we have known
them to another level where they actively become members of a growing
city. But first we have to understand the context of discussion where
I am doing my study, also the city plays an important role as in how
it thinks grows and responds. As I would like to call it “ Living
cities”.
“Slums are the
problem of failed policies, governance, corruption in appropriated
regulations, dysfunctional land markets, unresponsive financial
system and fundamental lack of political will.” Arif Hasan (An
urban architect, activist social researcher and writer)
In
this article I would be discussing few approaches that can be adapted
to improve the conditions of slums while considering the expansion of
cities in third world countries such as the one I grew up in known as
“Lahore”; capital of Punjab province . It is a culturally rich
city and cultural capital of Pakistan. By meeting the Pakistani
people one can tell if they are from Lahore because of their
carefree,witty and by their reckless nature towards abiding by road
traffic laws. These people are obese and even after knowing their
obesity problem, wouldn't care much about diet because as they
proudly say ' One who hasn't seen Lahore, isn't born yet '. Ignoring
the fact that there s limit to which Lahore can take, over population
and pollution are badly affection the city as it was once know “
City of Gardens”
With
a rich history dating back over a millennium, Lahore is a main
cultural centre of Punjab and Pakistan. One of the most densely
populated cities in the world, Lahore remains an economic, political,
transportation, entertainment, and educational hub. It is referred to
as the "Mughal City of Gardens" due to the historic
presence of gardens in and around the city dating back to the Mughal
period.
Lahore
is referred to as the cultural heart of Pakistan as it hosts most of
the arts, cuisine, festivals, film-making, music, gardening and
intelligentsia of the country. Lahore has always been a centre for
publications, where 80 percent of Pakistan's books are published and
remains the foremost centre of literary, educational and cultural
activity in Pakistan. It is also an important religious centre as it
is home to hundreds of temples, mosques, and shrines like Data Durbar
Complex. According to the 1998 census, Lahore's population was
6,310,000. A 2010 government estimate now puts the population at
10,000,000. It is ranked 25 in the most populated urban areas in the
world and the 8th largest city within the Organization of Islamic
Cooperation. Lahore has expanded almost double area-wise in the last
12 to 14 years. In 2010, Lahore was ranked as a Gamma+ world city.
The Guardian has rated Lahore as the 2nd best tourist destination in
Pakistan.
Due
to exponential rural to urban migration and also international
refuges, after Islamabad Lahore has been taking in settlers.
Pakistan's Power crisis already hitting the boundaries. Lahore has
being over populated where land value has been inflated out of the
reach of most public. Electricity crisis causes electric cut for
seven to ten hours. And in other areas up to 15 hours. Informal
communities settle in Lahore where supply and demand already has a
huge gap. Due to urban migration, there are scattered slums in the
city. Government in 1985 litigation act legalized a lot of slums. But
the problem of slum needs a more widespread solution. There are
numerous non governmental organizations (NGO's) that have been
working on slums (katchi abadi) education and trying to make them a
productive part of city but the support from municipality has been
missing whereas corruption has been to the max.
A
lot of research and analysis has been done on the limits of growth by
group of think tank including Dennis Meadows. The have projected
cities and analyzed the chain of supply-demand and resources f the
world.
We
have seen that positive feedback loops operating without any
constraints generate exponential growth. In the world system two
positive feedback loops are dominant now, producing exponential
growth of population and of industrial capital. In any finite system
there must be constraints that can act to stop exponential growth.
These constraints are negative feedback loops. The negative loops
become stronger and stronger as growth approaches the ultimate limit,
or carrying capacity, of the system's environment. Finally the
negative loops balance or dominate the positive ones, and growth
comes to an end. In the world system the negative feedback loops
involve such processes as pollution of the environment, depletion of
nonrenewable resources, and famine. The delays inherent in the action
of these negative loops tend to allow population and capital to
overshoot their ultimately sustainable levels. The period of
overshoot is wasteful of resources. It generally decreases the
carrying capacity of the environment as well, intensifying the
eventual decline in population and capital. The growth-stopping
pressures from negative feedback loops are already being felt in many
parts of human society.
The
major societal responses to these pressures have been directed at the
negative feedback loops themselves. Technological solutions, have
been devised to weaken the loops or to disguise the pressures they
generate so that growth can continue. Such means may have some short-
term effect in relieving pressures caused by growth, but in the long
run they do nothing to prevent the overshoot and subsequent collapse
of the system. Another response to the problems created by growth
would be to weaken the position feedback loops that are generating
the growth. Such a solution has almost never been acknowledged as
legitimate by any modern society, and it has certainly never been
effectively carried out. What kinds of policies would such a solution
involve? What sort of world would result? There is almost no
historical precedent for such an approach, and thus there is no
alternative but to discuss it in terms of models-either mental models
or formal, written models. How will the world model behave if we
include in it some policy to control growth deliberately? Will such a
policy change generate a "better" behavior mode?
At
this point I would like to talk about a concept that is commonly
known as “slum”. These Slums, or Shanty Towns or Katchi Abaadi's
are mostly illegal settlements and have a very drastic compromise on
basic health necessities(water, electricity, security, hygiene). The
infrastructure problems more or less are the same in all slums. But
the things that makes them different are social factors, economical
factors and also level of corruption. After studying these case
studies notions have to be understood as to how municipality deals
with different slums and how slum inhabitants react to treatment.
“Slums themselves are the
physical manifestation of several overlapping forces. On the one
hand, they are the manifestation of deep poverty, unrealistic
regulatory frameworks, ill-conceived policies, inadequate urban
planning, weak institutional capacity, and larger macroeconomic
factors. But on the other hand, slums are a manifestation of the
ingenuity and resilience with which extremely disadvantaged
populations have organized themselves in the face of these very
challenges.” Approaches to Urban Slums.
On
this point we should understand these urban colonies that gather and
live together as a colony inside an urban fabric because of their
special social, economic or religious interest. These Slums (Katchi
Abadi as known locally) have their on hierarchical system that they
follow inside it. Slums themselves are the physical manifestation of
several overlapping forces. On the one hand, they are the
manifestation of deep poverty, unrealistic regulatory frameworks,
ill-conceived policies, inadequate urban planning, weak institutional
capacity, and larger macroeconomic factors. But on the other hand,
slums are a manifestation of the ingenuity and resilience with which
extremely disadvantaged populations have organized themselves in the
face of these very challenges.
Slum
dwellers in the face of such adverse circumstances is remarkable.
Evidence demonstrates that slum dwellers collectively make a
substantial contribution to urban and national economies, and that
many towns and cities would cease to function effectively without the
people who live in slums. What slum dwellers really need is a chance
to improve their own lives, and to make a positive contribution to
the city. Plenty of evidence shows that resources spent on improving
the lives of the poor are investments that will yield global economic
and social returns. Affordable and successful adaptive measures for
existing slums have, and can, increase the well-being of millions of
slum dwellers. These measures also further unlock the productivity of
the urban poor, creating a powerful upward spiral that strengthens
both urban and national economies.
As
cities in developing countries prepare to take on the range of
challenges posed by slums, it is essential that key knowledge about
these measures be organized and disseminated in a format that can be
readily used to create the momentum necessary for policy changes,
national level programs, regulatory reform and city level projects.
There
are series of long and short term approaches that are needed to
improve urban situations as a whole. Adaptive approaches are
affordable and meaningful strategies that improve the situation of
existing slum dwellers and further strengthen their integration into
the social and economic fiber of the city. Broadly speaking, adaptive
approaches involve upgrading the level of urban services in slums:
physical, social, and economic. They also include pragmatic solutions
for dealing with the tricky issue of land and tenure. Adaptive
approaches have been proven to increase the well-being of millions of
slum dwellers while simultaneously strengthening urban and national
economies. In addition to physical services, adaptive approaches
include a range of social services. Social services in upgrading
initiatives can include education, health facilities, sporting
facilities, day care, community facilities, and the creation or
strengthening of institutions that help new migrants integrate
themselves into the city. Social services should not be taken
lightly; they often contribute to increased economic growth, reduced
crime, and better education and awareness.
Projects
may also include economic services to generate employment in the area
and to raise incomes. Economic assistance can include training, job
placement, credit and technical assistance to small businesses,
establishment of new community-owned enterprises, micro finance
opportunities, and loans for housing and for building materials. If
implemented correctly, such services will unlock bottlenecks to
development and make way for economic revitalization in the area.
Often
the trickiest issues in improving slum conditions have to do with
land and tenure. In order to propose meaningful solutions to tenure,
planners and policy makers need accurate knowledge of land ownership
patterns and precise criteria for the selection of beneficiaries. The
equitable allocation of benefits between beneficiaries is extremely
important.
Who
owns the land? Is it owned by the local government, the parks
department, a transportation authority? Is it in the freehold
ownership of a few absentee landlords? Has it been leased to private
landlords by a public agency, and is it now informally squatted upon
by the slum dwellers? If informal land markets exist, how do they
work? Is some of the land under customary or traditional
administrative structures? Does all the land implicated in the
project site fall under a single ownership pattern? If not, what are
the different patterns? Appreciating and working through the
complexity of these issues, while also understanding the social and
economic complexities rooted in land ownership, will ultimately
structure the approach to devising appropriate tenure arrangements
for households.
Often,
and with good reason, the appropriate tenure arrangements are more
complex than simply handing out individual land titles. Innovative
forms of collective tenure allow projects to accommodate the
lowest-income households that cannot immediately afford outright
ownership. Since payments are collective, such arrangements also
accommodate the irregularities in individual income through
community-based strategies such as revolving-credit schemes.
Collective
tenure can also allow communities to negotiate from a position of
much greater power and thereby secure themselves successive
improvements to their neighborhood. A collective leasehold agreement
can help to discourage premature resale and speculation. Such
collective agreements decrease the likelihood of the beneficiary
cashing in on a land title and moving to squat elsewhere in the city
in the hope of repeating the process again. Tenure is often the most
contentious issue in upgrading, and proposals need to be carefully
crafted to suit the particular realities of a given situation.
Institutional
arrangements in the implementation of adaptive approaches vary from
case to case. It is crucial to underscore the central role of local
governments and their leadership in the process. It is also important
to identify the existing and potential roles of other key
stakeholders-the poor themselves, national and provincial
governments, civil society groups, the private sector, and other
development partners.
Policy
makers and local officials will need to pay particular attention to
the financial dimension of programs and projects. This involves
issues of cost allocation across various stakeholders, the careful
targeting of subsidies when required, and protocols and mechanisms
for cost recovery. Flexibility in the choice of possible services and
service standards will accommodate a range of income brackets and
address issues of affordability and equity.
To
create pluralistic systems of supply, governments must consider
specific policy options for increasing the supply of land, material,
services, and credit in ways that can meet the needs of increasing,
and largely poor, urban populations. Some options include sites and
services, the acquisition of rights-of-way, land pooling and
readjustment, requests for proposals, and companies limited by
guarantee.
Recently,
the focus is increasingly on efforts to encourage a wide range of
innovative partnerships between the public and private sectors,
together with third-sector groups such as NGOs and community-based
organizations. These opportunities are changing the role of the
public sector in influencing urban land and housing markets and the
poor's access to these markets.
Which
brings us to the point that solving the issue of slums is more
complex as it has been thought so far. Public and Private sectors
need to work together to come towards solving the problem for slums
and shanty towns all around the world. Here I would end this report
with Aristotle's quote:
Most persons
think that a state in order to be happy ought to be large; but even
if they are right, they have no idea of what is a large and what a
small state. To the size of states there Is a limit, as there Is to
other things, plants, animals, implements; for none of these retain
their natural power when they are too large or too small, but they
either wholly lose their nature, or are spoiled. Aristotle, 322 B.C.
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