Thursday, June 29, 2017

What is The Role of Community Participatory Development in Informal Urban Settlements?

Informal settlements had drawn global attention of many with its blooming population in the past few years. Numerous efforts had given since then on slums and squatters’ upgrading in order to address the negative environmental stress, however it is still a reality struggle on maintaining the sustainability and the long term interest of the slum dwellers.

Informality is a heterogenous phenomenon and is mostly regarded by the community as the fundamental characteristic of underdevelopment of a city. This multifaceted paradox is derived by the latent nature of developing economies such as low land versus human capital and by the relationship that the country establishes regulation, monitoring and provision of public infrastructures with private agents. The following articles had shown proven data that the average population of the informal settlements declines with the overall country development, increases with the stress of governance, and decreases with the reinforcement of law and regulation (Friedman et al., 2000; Schneider and Enste, 2000; and Loayza, Oviedo, and Servén, 2005).

Informal architecture is not born in a day, nor in a short period of time, although it has always been convenient for people to think otherwise. I believe informality in architecture is a way of communication by the local poor with the physical masses throughout the city and it somehow became part of the language of the city. Even the mould on decaying organic matter has its explanation, that an over-simplified analogy might be unnecessary and appeared ironic as like all architecture, informal architecture has a derivation, that is capable of being analysed and explained to its sources. One can attempt to illustrate certain trait or nature from its origins to give emphasis on various roles and contacts, thus to say the circumstances of slum dwellers should be taken into account to ensure a successful participatory invention.

Why Community Participation?
At the UN Habitat conference in Vancouver, Canada in 1976, the urban management has adopted a pro-participation agenda. The following statement sums up the consensus that was achieved from the conference:
“Public participation should be an indispensable element in human settlements, especially in planning strategies and in their formulation, implementation and management; it should influence all levels of government in the decision- making process to further the political, social and economic growth of human settlements” (UN Conference 1, 1976).
Participation has been encouraged in all sorts of tasks in urban management for the last 30 or so years, yet in majority of circumstances is not able to permeate all stages of decision-making progress, as supported by the conference. In certain circumstances, however, communities are starting to realise and depend on participatory approached due to various failures in governance for providing the necessities, such integral approaches to participation may be deemed more noteworthy in advocating civic engagement than participation appointed from top-down.
Understanding community participation
There are numerous ways to explain the term participation to make it more understandable. On a basis, ‘dichotomised means/ends’ rhetoric prevails in the debate about participatory approaches. The distinction between ‘participation as a tool’ to achieve a certain satisfactory outcome and ‘participation as a process’ which complements the capacity of individuals to improve on their lives and facilitates social changes in accordance to the advantages or disadvantages of marginalised groups (Cleaver, 1999:598). Participation as a process means ensuring the quality and sustainability of achievements through beneficiaries’ ownership and increase efficient through their contributions (Berner and Philips, 2005:18). The shortfall in the approach of tool is that participation are made subjective throughout the whole programme.
It is necessary for the beneficiaries to be able to have an overview of the outcomes of their effort, as well as to be encouraged to entrust their mindset and energy in the long term process of ‘change’. This suggests an alliance inclined more to selecting a ‘process’ than a ‘tool’ (Cleaver, 1999). A programme by its nature after all, will be defined as a ‘package’ filled with goals to be achieved within a cost-effective budget and a time-limited framework (Botes and Rensburg, 2000). The process of participation is not just a venture to establish some outcomes or priorities but rather to gain acknowledgment for an already assembled package (Botes and Rensburg, 2000:43). Community participation in several upgrading attempts seen today has been attended towards this direction.
A deeper understanding to the complexity of peoples’ lives is infinitely crucial for an intended intervention to avoid the failures over and over again in the participatory development. Failures are often seen during the promotion of. The term community are commonly identifies as a homogenous entity bounded by natural, social and administrative barriers. If so, it is equally important that to minimise the threat of defining heterogenous social structure through simple categorisation of a role such as, women, leaders, poor etc. (Cleaver, 1999:605). An oversimplified perception of the nature of community tends to exploit those in a ‘wrong’ category thus creates disharmony of the people.
The debate about appropriate methods in participatory development imposes ‘technique-based participatory orthodoxy’ which fails to address inter-linkages in social reality (individual and institutional – both horizontal and vertical) and distribution of power, information and other resources in a community (Cleaver, 1999: 600). Starting from here, the next part aims to demonstrate difficulties which have to be taken into consideration speaking about more efficient community participation in slums.
The Push Pull Factors and Effects of Rural-Urban Migration
Before even starting to engage slum dwellers in any possible upgrading movement or enabling a informal community to change its living environment into a less vulnerable one, we should first off assess any threats to deal with together with any opportunities to take advantage of in the process. Every slum is unique with its own problems, resources and possibilities, and although general strategies can be presented for slum rehabilitation, every case is exclusive (The Guardian, 2014).

While these conditions of slums are generally “defined in terms of a lack”, they should also be understood as loci of opportunity for the often marginalised poor. Due to the limitation of land in the urban areas of the city, informal settlements are often forced to move from places to places. (Basically any left over lands that could accommodate the slum dwellers.) The migration cause the dwellers to build everything temporary. If something remains in situ, it remains in its usual place (Longman, 2011). The authorities should as well include informal settlements as potential genius loci so that they could once and for all maintain the spatial substances and living quality of the slums.

Rather, the city has been pushing it away and declaring it ‘illegal’. As a consequence, almost half of the world population who are dwelling in informal urban settlements are pushed outside the border, out of the institutional horizon. The dwellers’ needs, demands, cultural activities and social relations are not acknowledged neither by governance nor by the community, including architects. Despite being declared as queer and distorted in terms of environmental and architectural quality and has been abandoned for decades, it is still remained a dominant manner of building and should be involved in the debate of future architecture developments.

Lack of Amenities
My other assertion is consequently something that is distinct which is slum communities must be embedded in all aspects of urban planning and that they must be seen as inherent parts of the urban fabric, same like public participation which is an integral process and therefore it should not be divided into partial participation. Infrastructures such as water, sanitation, drainage, roads and emergency access, street lightings, electricity, communal spaces and structural quality are some of the aspects that should be included in slum settlements. Failing to do so would not only lead to the current general conception of participation as a way of cheap and insincere effort, but also as a inefficient mechanism for the solution of partial problems at local level.
Governance and Its Impact On Slums
The basis of the human condition and quality living should be publicly raised and debated. It’s however and irony to have the will to upgrade slums but does not address them as part of the urban fabric equally. It forms limitation, of almost everything. Factors of governance being able to distract architecture from making it more responsive to the the present conditions such as outdated government qualities, inappropriate private legal systems, incompetent national as well as being short sighted on the urban development policies.

Innovations are generated through conflict and negotiation between individuals of constructing and designing. While building typology tend to be averagely basic, the hidden complexity that emerged from distinctive synthesis of regulated and non-regulated building policies maintain a profoundly hybrid spatial quality. Hence, a ground that cultivates alternative architectural proposition of the self-governing characteristics of a building speaks to the presence of others, from the prospect of everyone that has involved themselves in the building process.

The myths of slum of it being just an illegal underdevelopment and a disgrace to the city is therefore a constraint for the governance as well as the community to envision the mission of slum elimination. There is a need for the local government to stop working around the issue of slums but should work through it in his own initiative. Accordingly, if people continue to perceive these communities as marginalised, they will eventually continue to be marginalised. This in fact from an organisational and managerial point of view, should be recognised as a major obstacle for a sustainable and equitable urban development.
Communicated Limits of Participation in Malaysia Slums
A kampong (in Malay and Indonesian) is a village known in Malaysia (also Brunei, Indonesia, Singapore and Cambodia). This term applies to traditional villages, especially consist mainly of indigenous peoples, and has also widely used to refer to urban slum areas and enclosed developments within towns and cities. The traditional kampong village designs and architecture have always been visioned to reform by urbanists and modernists and few successful efforts had since been adapted by contemporary architects in various projects. Nevertheless, traditional kampongs are regarded as a famous tourist attraction.

The idea of a spirit of a place refers to the direct response of the builders to climatic considerations, geographic make-up of the land and the culture of a particular society. Thus, these ‘traditional houses’ with its isolated mass, raised platform, generous verandahs, full length windows with ventilation grilles and high roof formed to ease the circulation of air and shed off heavy rainfalls which contrast strongly with those of heavy masonry walls with barrel vaults that contained only little openings or flushed with too much transparency for the sake of a work of art. The colonial and sino-eclectic heritage in Malaysia presents excellent examples of this type of natural identity.

The architecture of informality proclaim to the designing and building as part of an continuing process, where fundamental architecture values such as function, strength, and beauty are not given in advance but are gained though associations. Instead of architecture of static geometrical objects, it introduces dynamic and participatory processes and systems. It supersedes the mainstream aspects and is well distinguished by relationships over compositions, expression over mass, networks over structures and adaptation over stasis. Architectural relevance are hence reconstructed beyond hidden official protocols, by allowing the people to take full control and form their own living space. Thus, design and architecture becomes an evolutionary process that can reciprocate to a variety of initiatives. An open-ended system provides the means for the community to share and compare knowledge and all in all learn from mistakes in order to optimise spatial transformations for the better. Its sustainability is embedded in the construction process; in a world of growth and change, a building might seem incomplete or of lack, but is ideally functional and rational.

Assessment of Community Participatory Development in Slums
If participation is translated into ‘managerial exercise based on ‘toolboxes’ of procedures and techniques’, a risk of oversimplified solutions ignoring inclusion of different social groups becomes real (Cleaver, 1999: 608). There is a range of obstacles faced by community participation in all sorts of studies made by theorists all over the world. It is then divided in 2 sections of challenges which is the external and internal impediments.
External obstacles demonstrates literal approach in slum upgrading that are likely dictated by top-down and with political intervention whereas internal obstacles presents the main topics of the assessment of circumstances for slum dwellers’ participation. The divide here is not between formality and informality but rather a differentiation on within informality. This in turn means that informality must be understood not as the object if state regulation but rather as produced by the state itself (Roy, 2009 p.149). The three factors that challenge community participation in slums, which are also the most communicated limits of participation in Malaysia slums, follow:
Heterogenity: whose interests matter?
An informal settlement consists of diverse interest groups and individuals of various social, cultural or religious status, political interest, livelihood activities and needs to be fulfilled. Their perceptions of a community action and ‘common good’ differ in hand with their role in the community. In a slum new inhabitants may live with old timers, owners with tenants, employed with those unemployed, legally working with informally self-employed, dwellers of different generation, age, sex, education level, characteristics etc. ‘It is reported that the slum communities are often less likely to participate due to their divisions of language, tenure, income, gender, age or politics, than in less diverse communities’ (Botes and Rensburg, 2000: 48). Are the governance and the architects committed to opt all diversity contained in slums to make the best out of it? It is then motivated as a intervention of improvement than a one-sided approach.
Encouragement vs. Segregation
Local elites, slum leaders or agents intend to attract outsiders’ interest and to speak out for the community needs. ‘There is always the danger that decision-making at the community-level may fall into the hands of a small and self-perpetuating clique, which may act in its own interests with disregard for the wider community. In this regard, (Friedman, 1992: 29) has used the term ‘positioning for patronage’ (Botes and Rensburg, 2000: 48).Then, no recognition of exploitation and marginalisation inside the settlement is observed (Berner and Phillips, 2005: 24). The poorest, disabled, in-debt or similarly disregarded slum dwellers benefit the least, if ever. The conditions of slums in Malaysia demonstrates how the most vulnerable groups are still excluded from making their choice and from increasing their voice to the public.
The so-called ‘community leaders’ are often consciously channeling selected informated from the intervening agency towards the community to prevent a lost in social status or in an effort to gain more support from the ‘bottom’ to address those ‘above’. These in time has resulted in slum dwellers being hesitant to participate in most development programmes. The gradual role of political interest in slum population is slowly faded and has driven the slum communities further away from being in the norm.
Selective slum belief
As De Wit shows political representatives that may influence officials to implement a programme in a particular slum just before an election, making it clear that the slum people should be grateful to him, and that he expects them to vote for him (1997: 19). These promises are rarely fulfilled and often left slum dwellers in no choice but to do as what they say. Rarely satisfied expectations decrease a readiness to participate (Botes and Rensburg, 2000: 51). Slum dwellers’ memories count and as mentioned before, the readiness of participation as an individual is required. Believing process without product leaves communities feeling that nothing and promised changes are never really going to happen other than a lot of talking, thus, losing the social energy from the communities.
Conclusion
Certainly, many slum residents are poor. But in every slum, there are experiences, aspirations, engagements and great entrepreneurial energy which cannot be regarded as null. Therefore, slums must be recognised as inherent parts of the broader urban context. It also has to be recognised that slums will be around for a long time to come, whatever incentives are put forward. Consequently, planners, politicians, researchers and the general public must realise the vital functions that slums can represent. Slum communities will however remain marginalised as long as they are regarded as such. This has historically – and will in the future – lead to strategies which are not efficient, sustainable or equitable in the long run.
It is my belief that by overcoming prejudices and depreciatory attitudes, the developmental potential of slum communities may be realised and improved. Rethinking informal habitats, building on their existing socioeconomic and cultural patterns through community participation will hold many promises, both for the urban poor themselves and for the greater urbanities in which they reside. Moreover, if slums are going to constitute the primary habitat of mankind in a couple of decades, it should be regarded as a moral imperative to resolve these issues with regard to future generations within the context of sustainable development.
If our cities are to remain engines of development and progress, the “impoverishment of urbanity” must be addressed in a manner which makes such development sustainable and equitable for everyone. The continuous slum upgrading efforts through community participation and enabling strategies should be carried out unceasingly. Perhaps most importantly a rebirth of the slum lies on the way we interpret these communities and integrate them in the planning and organisational processes of formal architecture. The question of informality is then a secondary one. It should be regarded as a moral responsibility for governments and authorities to provide for, and support, basic needs and sustainable livelihoods for their inhabitants, whether they are formal or informal urban residents.

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