DOES INFORMALITY MEAN CHAOS?
by Aleksandra Duczmal (4059259) & Hanieh Razavi
(4059253)
INTRODUCTION
Developing countries, with a large number of people competing for a job, crumbling together in saturated urban spaces, offer low wages and augment the supply of labor. This salaries are too low in comparison to the normal prices of housing, thus cheap labor requires informal settlement. According to the data disposed by Un Habitat, 31.6% of the urban world population lives already in slums, with a 27% of slum dwellers in Latin America, a 43% in south Asian countries, and a 37% in China (UNFPA 2007). Taking into consideration this numbers and the exponential population growth, the UN predicts the number of slum dwellers to rise to 2 billion within the next 30 years (Davis 2006).
Those in opposition to informal settlements, usually operate on the principle of the so-called NIMBY (not in my backyard). They are noticeably against chaos (read: the dynamism), disordered planning (read: organic), ramshackle constructions, lack of services and the fear of slums becoming the hotbed of crime and prostitution (Sempryk 2007). But in fact, and like other informal sectors, these informal settlement benefit from the failures of their juxtaposed formal sector, and use their own capital: flexibility, pragmatism, negotiation, constant struggle for survival and self-development, in order to create an habitable environment. In other words, one could say that slums need their cities to survive, just as much these cities benefit of their slums.
Understanding a given discourse as a socially constructed system of relations in which ideas, assertions and processes get their meaning, one could say that this built around the concept of slums are uniform stories, with specific social profiles, which are implemented in order to organize certain aspects of the social life and imagination of individuals. In the case of slums, the ideas revolving around them are images of chaos, poverty, violence and disease, those being only a construct built 'outside' the slums, and – most importantly – created for people that belong 'outside' the slums. The main current theme of debate around slums is that slums are dangerous and toxic wastelands that need to be contained, tamed, and remediated, and that they would never recover without outside intervention. We expect poor communities to suffer from a “culture of poverty” that undermines initiative and rewards predatory behavior: the idea that the poor lack skills rather than resources. The expectation that the poor can only mimic the affluent and become upwardly mobile by being submissive and repetitive, while creating a culture of helplessness and chaos. Such statements cause misunderstandings and underestimation of the complex and layered structures carried by the slums within their varied internal organization. The inhabitants of the slums develop their own practical solutions, dealing with environmental, social and economic problems. These implications have to be taken into account when talking about sustainable development. Political mismanagement limiting adaptive or creative capacities could aggravate social and cultural problems. In short, one could conclude that while the negative aspects and dynamics of slums cannot be denied, the positive effects in terms of providing infrastructure, housing, communal integration and control should not be ignored either. On the one hand, it is essential to understand that slums are centers of poverty, criminality and ecological problems. On the other hand, they are centers where practical solutions are developed; slums are sources of innovative practices and do-it-yourself know-how on a scale without precedent in history.
The positioning against apocalyptic and dystopian narratives of the slum, subaltern urbanism provides accounts of the slum as a terrain of habitation, livelihood, self- organization and politics. This is a vital and essential challenge to dominate narratives of the megacity.
The sprawl of ‘informality’ acts as a parallel, to recognized governing body, force shaping the urban condition. Can these contrasting ways of producing and appropriating cities, with their different logics and rules, co-exist? We wanted to look at inner-relations within informal communities, seemingly chaotic and accidental, as well as at ways in which ‘informal’ processes contribute to a radical re-thinking of functioning of the city. By analyzing the character and dynamics of self-organization and its applications we aimed to invalidate the common theory of general chaos within informal settlements. We introduce as well examples of such communities, with diverse factors triggering and enforcing community formation to support our theory.
Informality and Self-Organization
As Ananya Roy states ‘informality’ must be understood as an idiom of urbanization, logic through which differential spatial value is produced and managed. The city is certainly a fine example of a complex system, where the parts can only be understood through the whole, and the whole is more than the simple sum of the parts. Spontaneous settlements are clear examples of complex subsystems within a complex urban system. Their morphological characteristics combined with their development process are traditionally understood as chaotic and unorganized. And so are Third World cities, traditionally known for their inherent chaotic and discontinuous spatial patterns and rapid and unorganized development process (Barros & Sobreira 2008)
Self-organization under this scope of informality could be understood as the process where some forms of global order or coordination arises out of the local interactions between the components of an initially disordered system. The process is spontaneous: it is not directed or controlled by any agent or subsystem inside or outside of the system; however, the laws followed by the process and its initial conditions may have been chosen or caused by an agent. The resulting organization is wholly decentralized or distributed over all the components of the system. As such it is typically very robust and able to survive and self-repair substantial damage or perturbations.
Self-organization and Self-Referentiality
In social theory the concept of self-referentiality has been introduced as a sociological application of self-organization theory by Niklas Luhmann (1995), where the elements of a social system are self-producing communications, i.e. a communication produces further communications and hence a social system can reproduce itself as long as there is dynamic communication.
Self-organization is the process by which the person-based social relationships common in loose networks are stabilized through the definition of mutual interests, positions and relations. Thereby trust based on direct communication in face-to-face contacts is transformed into trust in the organization. This process is usually connected to the concept of charisma – the naturally chosen leaders of communities. A typical example for the explicit identification of “governance” with “social coordination” is given by Bob Jessop, who argues that 'social coordination' refers “to the ways in which disparate but interdependent social agencies are coordinated and/or seek to coordinate themselves through different form of self-organization to achieve specific common objectives in situations of complex reciprocal interdependence. Among the many techniques and mechanisms deployed here are exchange, command, networking, and solidarity.” (Jessop & Ngai-Ling 2006)
Self-Organization and Self-Governance
Due to the fact that self-organized communities do not fall within a defined institutional framework or existing system, they are capable to articulate their needs and interests collectively. The underlying concept of 'Agora Governance' in accordance with Korff & Rothfuss (2009) offers the possibility to stimulate urban management processes in a sustainable way. Self-organization here evidence the existence of an open and complex system, characterized by situations of non-linearity, non-casuality, unsteadiness, confusion and chaos (Casakin & Portugali). Multiple social relations and interdependencies between inhabitants developed through aspects of work, trade, neighborhood, kinship or friendship, are established through organizations. Thus localized problems requiring of collective action, in this context, self-organization will be circumscribed to territorial definitions and demarcations of a collective. This is defined as 'locality'. Localities neither resemble administrative districts nor closely tie communities together. What defines a “locality” is the local organizations that have the capacity to define and maintain spatial boundaries (Korff 2003)
Critical aspects of developing countries, such as recycling and waste treatment are informally organized, and provide with cheap resources for trading, food production, labour, etc. The improvement of social cohesion increases social control, so that external control can be reduced. The self-organized community is therefore a resource in itself (or a social capital) for its members who provide mutual support and economic and social security. If social creativity is the ability to create new patterns of social relations and organizations, in self-organized groups, the social capital is maintained as collective agency through a process by which a socially cohesive collective maintains itself (Korff & Rothfuss 2009).
Self-organization and Design
Cities are considered to be very large scaled design artifacts. They are the collective outcome of synergetic and self-organizing process under which thousands of participants act locally in a relatively independent manner. Even though the whole process seems chaotic and unorganized, the results are concise and ordered elements. The whole process depends as much on organization of individual, entity, an agent, as on the community as a whole. In the western understanding of design and construction, the process has very clear structure . Through identification of the problems, designing and redesigning, reaches a point of design optimization – the end-product ready to be applied. In Informal settlements however, design is part of self-organized system. Each agent operating in the city is a planner/designer at a certain scale (Portugali 1999). This kind of bottom – up actions trigger complex dynamics which effects we cannot neither fully predict or control, however it is not an implication of chaos. Such up-coming evolutionary behaviors create the economic vitality, urban liveliness, health and livability for the residents of informal settlements. As we can see in other complex systems, the people of a city function as semi-autonomous agents, following generative rules – the laws, codes, regulations, incentives and disincentives (Mehaffy 2014).
EXAMPLES OF SELF-ORGANIZATION:
In order to exemplify how different systems of organizations work in slums, we have decided to explore the motivations and outcomes of three cases: one of cohesion gained through common culture, another aroused from strict spatial situation, and at last, those systems of self-organization motivated by those involved in a specific guild or occupation. One is the case of Calabar slum in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, with 22 thousand inhabitants located on an exclusive city ground close to the beach and to the upper-class quarters of Barra and Ondina. The second the phenomenon of Torre David, an office tower in Caracas, abandoned and illegally re-inhabited . And at last, the community of garbage collectors - Zabbaleen in Cairo, Egypt.
Salvador de Bahia - Self-Organization through common History of Struggle
About 30% of population in Brazil lives in slums, so-called ‘favelas’. Salvador represents an example of self-organized community based on a prominent history of territorial resistance on an exclusive city ground close to the beach and to the upper-class quarters of Barra and Ondina. Studying the complex relationships and ties occurring in self-constructed communities is based on long lasting research. During studies on Alto de Ondina and Alto da Sereia – two disadvantaged urban neighborhoods in the southern city centre of Salvador da Bahia, Katja Hölldampf and Eberhard Rothfuss – constructed the model on data drawn from empirical surveys. The data provided insights into auto-centered and autonomous acts of governance. It provided insights that demonstrate that system of self-organization in favelas is limited by criminality combined with patronage, thus reducing opportunities for participation (Mertins 2009). However, in the specific case of the slum of Calabar, it occurred that community, sharing a collective background of a common historical resistance, turned to be a strong basis to create associations of self-help and self-organization, leading to an articulation of interests. They managed to resist aside from formal urban governance, mainly interested in domesticating, containing and depoliticizing the ‘favelados’ (Korff & Rothfuß 2009). Such inner organization strengthen resistance and social cohesion in a struggle against the city government to avoid eviction and marginalization. The principles of self-rule and auto-centered expression of collective interests are immanently present during processes of civic self-organization. In the following decades there were established various institutions in Salvador de Bahia that forced the administration to improve the infrastructure of the favela (water drainage, electricity, tarred roads etc.) as well as to set up educational institutions, a primary school and a public library to upgrade social and economic life in Calabar (Korff & Rothfuß 2009).
Torre David - Organization in Vertical Slum - Cohesion through Strict Structure
The 45-story tower building, by the Venezuelan architect Enrique Gómez, in the city of Caracas. The third-tallest building in the country was intended as a financial center but abandoned after its developer died and the financial sector crashed. Torre David is an abandoned and subsequently invaded 45-story office tower in Caracas, Venezuela that is now home to over 3,000 people. Today the building hosts a community of more than 750 families living in an illegal and tenuous occupation that some have called a vertical slum. In the trajectory of urban research on informality, Torre David represents a shift from the marginalized fringes of the city to the urban core and existing structures. The case of Torre David, gains its cohesion with well-defined boundaries, can serve as an example of inner structure forming.
The tower's formal structure has hosted informal growth and incremental development since 2007, pointing the way to new urban models and design process. Torre David represents the territory between formal and informal: the Syncretic City. Coexistence of different forces, creating today and tomorrow’s reality. In a miniature, it’s a representation of a new model of coexistence, inhabiting informally a formal structure. The tower is only occupied up to the 28th floor due to the lack of vertical transportation. According to the Urban-Think Tank analysis, the tower would remain untouched above the 29th floor. In west side of Torre David there is located an atrium, a structure that house some of the facilities within the complex and open spaces where residents have community meetings. As of today, all of the buildings, apart from the parking structure, which has become a ramp to higher floor, serve to their original purpose, mainly been divided into apartment space, varying in shape and size according to the floor. 7th until the 16th floor, originally planned to be hotel suites, are today the main focus of occupation due to the suitability of the design to fulfill the needs of the current residents.
The community settled within the Financial city center (Centro Financiero Confianza), as mentioned before, have created a form of self-government which regulate the community, also referred to as La Directiva (The Directive), and is leaded by Alexander Daza. La Directiva form self-government system composed of several levels of power that helps determine the decisions within the community. One example of their self-management effectiveness is reflected in the low level of criminality inside the tower, in contrast to the rest of the city of Caracas –one of most dangerous cities in the world today. The low criminality is the result of an organic self-managed security system. La Directiva has been able to organize a security guard team to secure the perimeter of the tower. The security guard team gets pay a salary with a minimum wage above the city minimum wage. They are also equipped with the needed tools to perform their job such as radios to communicate among themselves. Currently, there are three active entrances to the complex and the security guards them 24 hours a day. The community has also constructed different security booth for guards to sit in during the day or night. The distribution of the space is also directed by La Directiva: throughout the floors of the Torre David, different residents have been able to establish grocery stores preventing the residents from higher floors to go local stores for needed supply. The prices of all products are as well regulated by La Directiva (Urban Think-Tank 2012).
Zabbaleen - Self-Organization - Common Activity
The Zabbaleen, In Cairo, have traditionally been a community of garbage collectors, gathering, sorting and recycling a substantial part of the city's waste stream since approximately the 1940s. Spread out among seven different settlements scattered in the Greater Cairo Urban Region, the Zabbaleen population is between 50,000 and 70,000 (Fahmi & Sutton 2006). Communities in many places of the world have been searching for effective ways to alleviate poverty through waste collection, encouraging pickers, scavengers, and traders. One distinctive feature of the Cairo informal waste collectors is that they are comparatively well organized. In addition to this, they have been working at their trade for more than fifty years, serving the same households and developing client relationships with residents. As a result, Egyptians have developed a tendency to recover, resell, reuse, and recycle man-made waste.
Zabbaleen do not represent any cost to the municipality. On the contrary, their experience and expertise are highly effective in dealing with waste. In contrast to most Western garbage collecting companies that can only recycle about 20 to 25 percent of the waste that they collect, around 85% of the waste collected by traditional garbage collectors Zabbaleen is recycled, reducing the need for landfills, which have been found to be both expensive and harmful to the environment. Many sources state that the Zabbaleen have created one of the most efficient recycling systems in the world: when men return to the village with the collected trash, their families are waiting for them so that they can begin sorting the trash. The majority of those who sort the trash are women, while certain families specialize in sorting certain materials such as paper, plastic, aluminum, glass, etc. The women and children sort the garbage into 16 different types of trash and sort out the recyclables. The sorting of garbage is a time-consuming task in which women and children may spend up to 10 to 12 hours each day separating the garbage. First, the trash is sorted into the main 16 categories, such as paper, plastic, cardboard, cans, etc. So for example, all different types of paper are placed into one pile while all different types of plastic are placed in another pile. Sorting within sub-categories does not take place until after the trash is sorted first into the major categories.
CONCLUSION
The structural analysis of the dependencies and the nature of inner organization in slums generates new possibilities and sustainable examples of synergetic approach. Such strategies if implemented by the representative municipalities, introducing top-down changes to certain areas of the cities ’ – in a process known as ‘urban acupuncture’ – are proved to be catalyzers of growth and development. One of examples of such an implant can be escalators and libraries of Medellin, Colombia. This complementary role of top-down and bottom-up process shows how well-designed strategies can contribute to gain a more mixed view over urban dynamics.
Processes occurring in informal settlements are not chaotic, but dynamic, not static but organic. They challenge our well-structured, long established way of thinking about cities and its growth. There is a lot to be learned from informal settlements and its inhabitants, without patronizing, acknowledging the complexity of those systems. The aim would be not to force them to rectify to well-known western XXI standards, but merging with them.
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