Cover of special edition of Arkitektur DK for the IFHP Centenary Congress 2013 in London

The Centennial Congress of the International Federation of Housing and Planning (IFHP) recently brought together a stimulating and highly qualified crowd of international planners for a conversation closely aligned to the DPU’s focus on global urban growth. Yet, as DPU students might have come to expect, the messages the speakers presented were as diverse as their backgrounds and veered from the highly technical to the bluntly political and everything inbetween.

The first to take the plenary podium was Mitchell Silver, Past President of the American Planning Association and Chief Planner, City of Raleigh, North Carolina. In a perhaps unlikely combination, Silver doubles up as an inspirational speaker. He called for us to ‘fall in love with planning again,’ thanked planners and asked us to find purpose, be proud of the planner’s role in and assert the planners role in ‘making a difference.’ Silver argued strongly for big ideas and courage in planning for new trends. His message was that we need to plan more for sustainability, for people and for people’s consumer preferences – and the key difference he highlighted is generational change. According to him, new approaches are needed to cater for increased mobility, urban living, quality transport, easy access to entertainment, shops and high quality public spaces.

The suburban dream is becoming outdated, both for mobile young professionals and for aging baby boomers, increasingly isolated in car dependent suburbs as age curtails mobility. In Raleigh they are responding with a ‘new’ urbanism approach – increased density, transport orientated development (TOD) and investment with a nod to environmental consideration and equity. Another good news story: density = higher tax revenues. For all the big ideas and motivation here we might have been left wondering: where are the people in this? Even further, where are the politicians? Silver’s message was one of the planner as hero, empowering enlightened planners to help people, not the other way around – politicians were peripheral, people were objects to be planned for.

Following Silver’s heavily planning orientated speech, six influential figures took to the stage, including Charles Landry, whose backgrounds and responsibilities stretched tensions between the technical and political planning to the limit. The discussion was unmistakably political, with only two ‘professional planners’ – one of them representing a multinational technology firm. Next, the event divided into sessions around themes. On the agenda were broad discussions around responding to urban growth, a case study of East London regeneration and the Olympics, smart cities, climate resilience and social justice.

I followed the seminar track on the East London case study – the subject of my dissertation and one where planning and politics are tricky to unpick. This deprived area of London is the subject of unprecedented regeneration attempts linked to Olympic ‘legacies’ but while the legacy narrative is of social development, the investment model is dominated by massive real estate development, led by financial industries and a mega event. What would be the effect on the local populations? There were three comparable and sizable interventions to look at – all heralded as part of the solution to the ‘East End problem’. Jo Negrini, Newham’s Director of Strategic Regeneration proudly announced a deal with a Chinese financial conglomerate to redevelop the Royal Docks as a third financial centre for London. The Royal Docks are currently a bleak and windswept site, isolated from the rest of London by the river, major trunk roads (the A13) and sprawling estates of suburban council housing but they are seen as a strategic growth area by the council. It was too early for detailed questions, but the sales pitch was clear – new jobs and investment in an underutilised site.

As the conference progressed, speakers included Eric Sorenson, former CEO of the London Docklands Development Corporation (LDDC), responsible for the Canary Wharf development and Paul Bricknell, head of planning for the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC). Sorenson was quick to admit that Canary Wharf remains starkly isolated from the surrounding communities and has done little to alleviate poverty and deprivation. This he said was down to physical barriers such as the (very same) A13 and a ‘needs based’ government housing policy that concentrates poverty. But would the Olympics and the Royal Docks go the same way: would economic and spatial improvements cater for the local populations or create new divisions? Bricknell, from the LLDC said no – local jobs and clear physical links are a key part of the Olympic plans; ‘Legacy’ is key. But can we really learn all the lessons of the past simply through ‘comprehensive strategic planning’? And what does ‘Legacy’ really mean?

Mike Raco, a Planning Lecturer at UCL’s Bartlett remained dubious. In his summary of the two-day seminar session, Raco asked: “If we were serious about Legacy, why were £9 bn invested in mega sports stadiums in an area of deprivation when budgets are being cut for key services?”. He invited us to imagine a planning approach for people that invested £9 bn in nursing homes for the ageing population. It went unspoken but it appeared as if Raco’s question quietly asked whether a new financial hotspot is really what Newham needs.

The conference ended as it had begun; highlighting generational change and calling the next generation of planners to step up, to use new approaches to bridge the tough social urban questions. Urbego, the new IFHP initiative for young ‘multi-disciplinary’ planners rejected the old ways but weren’t sure what to offer instead. We had to find something new, different, radical: something akin to the ‘Fosbury Flop’. So how could planning be re-imagined? Well, it seemed to depend on who you asked, but something that didn’t feature much – at least in the debates I attended – was planning with people (or by people) for people…..

Jamie is currently a student of the MSc Urban Development Planning at the DPU

This video is part of conversations with slum dwellers in the region of Valparaíso – located in the central coast of Chile- from January to April 2013.

Almost one third of the slum dwellers in the country are located in this region.  This is the second most densely populated region and more than 90% live in urban areas. The squatter settlements have been part of the landscape of the city for years; they are located on the top of the hills without formal access to water, sewage and land tenure.

Contesting the trend of the last 30 years in housing policy for the poor in Chile, the slum dwellers are fighting to stay put. The relocation as main strategy does not fit their aspirations as inhabitants of the city. In they express it, relocation would be far away from the centre of the city, in high-rise buildings and would mean to leave the place they have been living for years.

Manuel Bustos, the biggest squatter settlement in Chile, is a key example. Although the need for better housing and access to services is evident, their claim is not only based on this need, but on their aspiration: to live the life they value. This means, to re-define the way in which the city is produced based on aspirations, expressed in this case, in people’s preference for slum upgrading rather than relocation, which also implies the cost of not receiving a permanent house from the state.

Turner´s idea of housing as verb and the old debate of self-help vs. whole housing system play out in a new debate for housing policy in Chile. This case contests prominent ideas of housing such as housing as the main need for the urban poor, housing as an end and housing only as a house.  Manuel Bustos´s narratives tell a story of struggle and the need for recognition that is linked to a strong sense of place. Slum dwellers are pointing out that the house in itself might not be the final goal, yet the possibility to create and influence the development of their neighbourhood and the city are.

Although slum upgrading is not part of the current housing policy, some pilot projects have been considered and Manuel Bustos is being evaluated. This video will be part of a series exploring housing aspirations in this context.

Maria Ignacia is an Mphil/PhD candidate at the Development Planning Unit
Ignacia.ossul.11(at)ucl.ac.uk

This is an extract from the talk given to the finalists of Debating Matters, National Finals 2013 at UCL, London. Debating Matters is a competition for sixth form students, organized by the Institute of Ideas. For more information about Debating Matters, please see: http://www.debatingmatters.com/

Megacities may not be bad for the developing world in every sense. They concentrate population, resources and capital… they may support regional and national economies. However, I want to argue here that ‘Megacities are bad for the developing world’ in the sense that they constitute a threat to the dreams and aspirations of most urban citizens in the global south. In particular, I am worried about the extent to which megacities draw opportunities away from ordinary citizens and expose them to disproportionate risks.

Megacity, Sao Paulo- Brazil

When walking through tall cities of glass towers I do not experience the buzzing atmosphere that one would expect from the concentration of people. Think for example of walking in the city of London on a Sunday afternoon. These are empty, ghost landscapes- functional spaces where people do not live.

In Shanghai, the expansion of the glass city, for example, is threatening the traditional alleys, called Longtangs. To understand life in a Longtang you have to imagine beautiful narrow streets full of activity, with vendors, workers wandering, children running, elderly playing board games and most of all, the symbolic hanging of the clothes to dry. When walking through Shanghai Longtangs I was mesmerized. But when one of the residents said that they were being evicted to make space for glass towers I was sad to imagine those beautiful places, created through centuries of interaction between human and their environment, displaced by empty, glass buildings, monuments to human egos, rather than to human kindness and civilization. This cannot in any sense be a model for our future cities.

Communal Living, Longtang-Shanghai

When cities are regarded only as giant reservoirs of labour, people suffer. This is because, although work is important in people’s lives, people do more than just working. They may be obliged to be in cities if work is there, but cities have to offer as well quality of life and services including access to resources such as water, sanitation and energy and access to education and health.

UN-Habitat estimates that “over the past 10 years, the proportion of the urban population living in slums in the developing world has declined from 39 per cent in the year 2000 to an estimated 32 per cent in 2010”. They argue however that “the urban divide endures, because in absolute terms the numbers of slum dwellers have actually grown considerably, and will continue to rise in the near future.” UN-Habitat estimates that the world’s slum population is expected to reach 889 million by 2020. Even in mega-cities where the proportion of informal settlements has been reduced- especially in Asia- this has been done through evictions and relocations which destroy people’s lives and are hardly reflected in the official statistics.

While the availability of capital may make it possible to complete big infrastructure projects, these projects are unlikely to benefit the majority of the urban population, least of all the urban poor. Take the express highway in Mumbai to check this. While the center of the city is difficult to navigate, because of the continuous flow of people on foot, bikes, motorbikes and other vehicles, this highway is empty. A toll fee becomes a means to prevent the large majority of the people in Mumbai from using the highway, thus giving the richer people the privilege of traveling in less time. Scholars have described this kind of process as a form of “splintering urbanism”. “Splintering urbanism” means that in large urban centers, specially megacities, infrastructure services concentrate in wealthy areas and move away from poorer ones, leading effectively to the fragmentation of service provision. This limits the access of the underprivileged and the working class to basic services. Infrastructure may even pass through the houses of the poor but they lack access to it

The splintering of service provision is also related to resource scarcity. Megacities are often treated as isolated islands of prosperity. But the truth is that this prosperity depends on huge imbalances between the megacity and the broader regions that the city depends upon. These rural-urban imbalances draw giant flows of people and resources that may further impoverish rural areas. Moreover, megacities may export their residues they cannot deal with. In the past, these relationships have led to the vision of the city as parasitic. Cities are not parasitic, they are essential ways of organizing human life, reservoirs of creativity. But when massive growth- both of population and resources- is promoted at the expense of the larger regions where the city is located then there is a danger that this parasitic metaphor becomes real.

Take for example how mega cities are encroaching in their immediate natural environment. I call this “the paradox of the eternal suburb”. On the one hand, middle class urbanites go to the periphery in search of more relaxed forms of life, idyllic dreams or ruralized living and greater contact with nature. On the other hand, this search leads them to destroy the very environment upon which the city depends. For example, there has been in recent years a proliferation of eco-cities in Bangalore, India. Most of them are being built at the urban fringe in gated communities, hosting quite wealthy sectors of the population. Under the premise of eco-cities and using green technologies such as wind energy and solar panels, they draw on the land and water resources that belong to the whole city. Worse enough they are threatening the wildlife landscapes that surrounded the city. When I talked to one of the developers on the construction site of an eco-city she told me that only a few weeks before, in the same spot where we were standing, she had seen a tiger. ‘We are so close to nature!’ she said. I asked her whether she was not worried that their projects were destroying the natural environments upon which these tigers depended. ‘If we were not building this, other would come and would do something worse’, she said. But, to what extents do tigers mind about solar panels or wind energy?

Vincom Eco City

All these issues become now magnified by climate change. The pressing nature of climate change highlights the importance of considering seriously how megacities concentrate risks. Not only populations in megacities are exposed to climate change, but also, its impacts affect mostly the urban poor. The urban poor are often settled in areas with the highest risks, whether this is in flood prone areas or in areas affected by other risks. When floods struck Florianopolis, Brazil, in November 2008, 84 people die and 54,000 were left homelessness. Most of these people had not choice but to live in dangerous slopes where their houses became engulfed by mudslides. The vulnerability of the urban poor to climate change also determines that their reduced capacity for response and after a disaster such as this, their only option may be to continue living under the shadow of risk or move to even more dangerous areas.

Some have pointed out at megacities as providing solutions to mitigate climate change action. They claim that the key to reducing carbon emissions is achieving higher urban densities and promoting the concept of the compact city. But urban growth is highly heterogeneous. In most megacities, urban sprawl- rather than density- is the main feature. In megacities sprawl is only contained by the geography, such as it happens in Mumbai, where the impossibility of growing beyond the water has led to an increase in density at the expense of the cities mangroves- hence increasing the vulnerability of the city to climate change risks and natural disasters exponentially.

What are the best means to achieve high density? People living in informal settlements have demonstrated how they can achieve high densities by occupying urban space, rather than just by growing up vertically. In other places, like in Spain, higher density is achieved by moderately tall constructions, because the habitability of the city. Rather than conjuring visions of megacities, these examples speak to balanced, diverse cities which acknowledge the location of cities within a rural-urban continuum and that provide space and opportunities for all urban dwellers to reach their aspirations.

While high rise may have actually brought about higher densities in cities such as Hong Kong this has been at the expense of their vulnerability to climate change risks, especially heat waves. Moreover, the gains in reducing carbon emissions that follow high density may be small in comparison to the additional carbon emissions produced by the need to manage the emerging risks.

Ultimately we have to ask: what is a megacity and why we need them? They may contribute to bring together a disproportionate share of capital and build labour reservoirs. In doing so, megacities represent nodes in global financial and knowledge flows, rather than places for ordinary people to live their lives.

Vanesa is a lecturer at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit.