A blog written by Kafi Khaibar Lubis, 2022-23 student of the Environment and Sustainable Development MSc

“Your acting was great. But stop crying.”

Not more than 20 years ago, I was called by my hysterical mom to quickly get inside the house while playing outside as a sunburnt pre-teenager. She was upset like I had never seen before, locked the doors, and shouted things at me, my dad, my uncle, and everyone in my family. She cried. I was just wearing a normal-sized T-shirt gifted by my beloved uncle, the only sibling my mother had. I never understood why it upset her so much until decades later.

 

Chapter 1: Sickle and Hammer

A couple of months ago, I crashed into a screening held by a film society at one of University College London’s neighbouring universities. It was for a film that I had always wanted to see but was never able to: “The Act of Killing”, or “Jagal” in Indonesian (literal English translation: “slaughter”), a documentary by Joshua Oppenheimer, Christine Cynn, and an anonymous Indonesian co-director. It was about the mass murder that happened in Indonesia around 1965-1966 to millions of people associated, or assumed to be associated with, the Indonesian Communist Party.

This film was never formally distributed in Indonesia. It was only known through underground screenings and word of mouth, which was not a surprise since the topic of the 1965 mass murder itself is very hard to talk about in the country. One could risk being distanced from, labelled a communist (pejorative), or even prosecuted. The film, therefore, plays a significant role in opening and normalizing discussions about the topic and taking a step in unlocking what has been, for so many decades, a painfully silenced collective trauma.

 

Chapter 2: Confrontation with Reality, Truth, and Knowledge

At the beginning of the screening, they invited Soe Tjen Marching, writer of the 2017 book titled “The End of Silence: Accounts of the 1965 Genocide in Indonesia” to give an introduction. Her father would have been a victim of the mass murder, if it had not been for the delay in processing his name to join the party’s organizing committee. She introduced the film by bringing to light recently declassified documents from the government of the United States of America that played a significant role in setting off the chain of events that led to the 1965 mass murder. However unsettling, the documents act as robust evidence against justifications made for the mass murder, including and especially the government-produced film of the event that was once a mandatory watch for schoolchildren in Indonesia in the 1980-1990s. These forms of knowledge possession have perpetuated the exclusion, silencing, and denial of genocide, leaving the victims at the hand of many types of injustice (Oranli, 2018; Oranlı, 2021).

“The Act of Killing”, on the other hand, used a unique approach to documentary filmmaking that allowed the perpetrators to participate in the production process and shape the story themselves. The film asks former commanders of the Indonesian death squads, who oversaw the execution of hundreds of thousands of suspected communists and other political dissidents in the 1960s, to recreate their atrocities. Devoid of remorse, the perpetrators were proud of their actions, even providing creative choices to narrate the reenactment in the style of their favourite Hollywood genre: action western.

The film’s epistemology is based on the belief that by allowing the subjects to participate in the production process and control the narrative, the film can achieve a level of authenticity and emotional depth that traditional documentaries may not be able to achieve. One might question why after decades of silencing and exclusion, a filmmaker would give a platform to the perpetrators. They are, after all, most often indifferent to the injury they have done and lack any understanding of the extent of harm they have caused. But as the film progressed, it was clear that this was a well-calculated strategy. It was precisely by giving space for the perpetrator to show off their crime that the truth became plain and visible, the genocide clear and undeniable.

 

There was one powerful scene in which the daughter of one of the perpetrators could not stop crying after they shot a reenactment of women and kids being taken away from their homes and their houses set on fire (Fig. 1). She was just an actress, playing one of the kids in the scene. The perpetrator was visibly aware of his daughter’s distress and was trying to comfort her: “Your acting was great,” he said, “but stop crying.” It was followed by depictions of other actors, children, and adults alike, looking traumatized by the reenactment, some requiring physical assistance to calm them down and remove themselves from the situation. Although obviously much milder than what truly happened in the 1960s, the activity incited an exchange of knowledge, blurring the reality and fiction of what they wanted to portray. It was no hidden knowledge that their crime caused significant terror; it was simply something that everybody was afraid to say. Now, by loudly narrating their own ruthless crimes, the perpetrators got a taste of their own medicine.

This method of filmmaking provides an interesting basis for analysis of epistemic injustice, delving into the nature and limits of knowledge. By allowing the perpetrators to narrate the story, the film not only exposes society’s normalization of celebrating brutal murderers but also places the killers in the position to confront their own past actions and their consequences. Another interesting example was Anwar Congo, a prominent leader in the death squad. Throughout the film’s first half, Congo seemed unrepentant and rather laid-back while recounting the murderous event. However, as the cowboy style film he had directed about his killing past neared its end, he started feeling nauseous. He cried, seemingly having an extremely late epiphany (Fig. 2). In that scene, a vivid connection is built between having knowledge and being aware of one’s own actions.

 

The fact that the filmmakers tried more than 30 times to find and interview different subjects is, in some ways, an attempt to understand the many forms of knowledge and the chase of finding the hidden knowledge held by an individual, as categorized in the Johari window (Bhakta et al., 2019; Shenton, 2007). Also, such effort was a sign that the film was not about them or the filmmaking. Oppenheimer had his realization moment and shifted the focus to the perpetrators; that what they did, was almost like a multi-layer fiction, a simulacrum, to say the least, of hidden knowledge, unknown knowledge, and blind knowledge of the genocides, their regrets, and their pride that in itself is a hidden remorse trying to justify their past actions.

Reflexivity and self-awareness become the central theme in the film’s method of unveiling the truth about the tragic past. With the denialism of the perpetrators that have been observed elsewhere, the creators might or might not be intentionally utilizing this reflexive participation measure to disclose objective information and even to induce empathy in people who were detached from their cruelty. With the surfacing of the declassified government documents, the fear and secrecy of the victims, and the genocide denialism, the injustice of knowledge possession has been hiding in plain sight, crossing identities and the reality of a whole nation.

 

Chapter 3: Empathy, Trauma, and Dreams of Justices

The images of my memories started to become clearer. I understand better about that day, the day my mother was upset beyond measure towards everyone. I remember the T-shirt I wore, which my uncle gave to me. It was a dark blue T-shirt with a sickle and hammer logo and the bold black writing of “SOVIET UNION”.

The discourse on epistemic justice and participatory measures extends beyond academia and into fieldwork, practice, and lived experience. My own family had their own trauma regarding the 1965 mass murder, which I never entirely understood since it could never be talked about openly. “The Act of Killing” tried to unveil the chronic terror of the tragedy both loudly and delicately, borrowing the voice of the perpetrator to raise the volume of the victims’ collective voice. The film confronted the perpetrators not with a team of obvious enemies, but with the most powerful confronter of all: a mirror image of themselves.

The fruit of participation, or engaging people, can open and lead to many kinds of knowledge, whichever type and however vile or inspirational that is, that leads to something minuscule such as being free to wear anything we want, to be anything we want, to justice, and the truth. Moreover, the disclosure of information, whether it be from the state to the people, from the victims to the public, or even from the very perpetrators to their own eyes and mind, can be the first step to opening up a complex dialogue, taking responsibility and addressing a proper apology, healing a collective trauma, and marching towards a better, more empathetic and just future.

 

References

Bhakta, A., Fisher, J., & Reed, B. (2019). Unveiling hidden knowledge: Discovering the hygiene needs of perimenopausal women. International Development Planning Review, 41(2), 149–171.

Oppenheimer, J., Anonymous, & Cynn, C. (2012). The Act of Killing. Drafthouse Films

Oranli, I. (2018). Genocide Denial: A Form of Evil or a Type of Epistemic Injustice? European Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 4(2), 45–51.

Oranlı, I. (2021). Epistemic Injustice from Afar: Rethinking the Denial of Armenian Genocide. Social Epistemology, 35(2), 120–132. https://doi.org/10.1080/02691728.2020.1839593

Shenton, A. K. (2007). Viewing information needs through a Johari Window. Reference Services Review.

A blog written by Sophie Avent, 2022-23 student of the Environment and Sustainable Development MSc

Like all professions, academia has its own jargon; words that are typically unused in day-to-day life. During my albeit brief foray back into the world of academia, I frequently found academic terminology inaccessible and intimidating. Words such as ‘discourse’, ‘hypothesizing’ and ‘methodology’ are words that I seldom muttered before and will use scarcely again in the future. Whilst academia is its own profession, like many others it must be able to converse outside its own sphere. For the disciplines of sustainability and environment, the ability to connect with sectors and people outside its four walls is arguably its most important task. For cities, countries, and the World to meet the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) we are reminded that solutions need to be context specific and co-produced. For this to be achieved we require knowledge diversification, collaboration and ground up strategies that bring together local citizens, local government, and academics alongside other professionals.

Throughout the Environment and Sustainable Development master’s at UCL we have developed knowledge on the topic of sustainability and the environment. It encompasses balancing environmental considerations and social justice, and our program has been shaped to expose the importance of decolonizing knowledge, historicizing, and identifying unequal power distribution that has shaped environmental injustice. Our collective positionality, however, is one of Global North privilege and Western knowledge, from which it is all too easy to critique practices in the Global South. We frequently base our critiques solely on literature review, from which I question if we can ever truly understand the lived experience of those situations we are critiquing and the complexities that accompany them. In the era of decolonizing and diversifying knowledge, I have frequently found this somewhat ironic. Yet, it has reinforced the importance of collaboration and engagement with a cross-section of diverse stakeholders from geographies and disciplines to ensure a holistic view is obtained.

 

In April 2023, we embarked on our overseas practice engagement to Mwanza, Tanzania. Arguably, the perfect opportunity to put our learning into practice and work alongside residents, NGO partners, and the city utility (MWAUWASA). Our research focused on advancing just sanitation in the city of Mwanza and provided an opportunity to learn from others beyond academia. Mwanza is a city with limited water and sanitation infrastructure, a situation that is not uncommon in Africa. In 2015 African leaders committed to achieving universal access to adequate and sustainable sanitation, hygiene services and eliminate open defecation by 2030.

In Mwanza, our research considered the sustainability of the simplified sewerage system (SSS). SSS is a sewerage system technology that collects household wastewater in small-diameter pipes laid at shallow levels, making it significantly less expensive compared to conventional sewerage technology. Mwanza’s water and sewerage utility has implemented the SSS that is spatially focused on deploying the technology in unplanned settlements. Here, the landscape is steep, rocky, and predominantly only accessible via footpaths, making it a good fit for the technology. The SSS connects to the centralized sewerage system, thereby expanding the networked infrastructure. Prior to the ongoing SSS implementation, only around 5% of the city was connected to the sewerage network, perhaps the only positive legacy of colonial rule. Today, coverage extends to around 25% and SSS beneficiaries collectively commend the development as “life changing”.

Notwithstanding the considerable advancement of sanitation service coverage achieved via SSS, we suggested MWAUWASA expand their feasibility study to consider environmental impacts and the long-term financial commitments wedded to beneficiaries once connected to the service. The latter concern being that the ongoing financial commitments would be unsustainable for some residents. Our suggestion was met with opposition and the response from the SSS project manager (resident expert on the project) outlined that such an approach would have drained all the available funds, leaving nothing for infrastructure development. Whilst we failed to effectively articulate our suggestion, I took pause at the response. Cognizant of epistemic justice and decolonial thought, it reminded me that in the spirit of contextualization, knowledge diversification, and sensibility, we should not assume our suggestions would be met without challenge.

Without both conscious thought, attention and/or challenge there is risk of colonization manifesting in new forms. Further, and in acknowledgment of the tension between progress and sustainability that ricocheted through both our suggestion and the response that followed, I became aware that I had overlooked a few critical considerations in Mwanza.

The first is the importance of ethical responsibility in context. Remorse describes African ethical responsibility as promoting living, avoiding death, and leaving the land untouched for future generations (Kumalo, 2017). This stance alters the objectives of sustainability which in turn modifies the output of just decision making, bringing to life the plurality and relational nature of both concepts.

Second, was the realization that the World has competing development priorities, that do not always complement one another, or fully align. In the Global North, the priority is climate change and its consequences; biodiversity loss, extreme weather conditions, ice sheets melting, etc. Whilst these eventualities are already materializing, we are striving towards prevention rather than facilitation. In Mwanza, and in Africa more broadly, the main development challenge is to end poverty. Poverty is multidimensional and encompasses health, education, and living standards. At its core it is people-centered. In Mwanza, the utility priority is the delivery of wastewater services to improve sanitation, thereby contributing towards alleviating poverty and protecting the water quality of Lake Victoria, the city’s water source. Of a lesser concern are the future potential environmental consequences of the technical solution upon the land. In contrast to many development projects, MWAUWASA has focused on developing services within the informal spaces of the city for low-income residents, reinforcing resident’s right to the city. The tangible output of ethical decision making cannot be critiqued and has contributed towards facilitating environmental justice for beneficiaries, a decision that should be championed.

Lastly, I overlooked the temporary nature of sustainable development discourse. The LV WATSAN (Lake Victoria Water and Sanitation) project, under which the SSS forms part of was first launched in 2004. Nineteen years ago, the dominant development discourse was the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Today, the focus is Agenda 2030 and its seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) which now include a specific goal for water and sanitation (SDG 6). In this respect, LV WATSAN was ahead of the game. But in others, it is another example of a project that is contributing to the slow progress of SDG 6. It has taken nineteen years for Mwanza to develop wastewater services to cover circa one-quarter of the city, a testament to the fact that progress in sanitation can be made, albeit often at a snail’s pace. In nineteen years’ time, the development discourse will no doubt change, and accordingly, I wonder if the mainstream development discourse will deem this development unsatisfactory.

2023 marks the halfway point towards Agenda 2030 and globally all SDGs are off track. Limited funding is often cited as the dominant reason for the slow progress of SDG 6. But on reflection, I ponder if a contributing factor may be due to Northern epistemic superiority. Northern epistemic superiority cuts across all sectors but I fear it will not dissipate unless our blinkers are removed regularly. Collaboration through research is one way to facilitate such removal in academia. As we have experienced in Mwanza, research forces you to step away from academic jargon that is by nature superior, and converse in the most accessible way feasible alongside research partners, that in turn harnesses knowledge development.

Our field trip taught me the practicalities of embracing all things ‘local’ and that ‘context’ incorporates landscape, knowledge, and ethics, which cannot be learned from texts but from people who are resident experts in the local context. It also taught me the plurality of sustainability and the changeable priorities of development. For true progress to be made and epistemic justice to become a reality in research, it is imperative to trust local partners, residents, and professionals who have lived experience and intrinsic knowledge of local ethics that result in just decision making. We need to be accepting that the outcomes of due process will be just, although they might present a rich dichotomy. This will facilitate our ability to embrace the plurality of sustainability, and the differing development priorities across geographies. Without embracing and confronting the limitations of Northern epistemic superiority, development outcomes will be prohibited, and existing environmental injustices will be reinforced.

I am, however, still left wondering if this is enough or if this reflection can become reality. Moreover, whilst I am no closer to grasping how I consider temporality in the context of sustainability, I do now question if our status quo limits our ability to fully understand, consider and justify others’ development priorities that do not fully align with our own.

 

References

Elden, S. (2007). ‘There is a Politics of Space because Space is Political: Henri Lefebvre and the Production of Space’, Radical Philosophy Review. V.10, p.101-116.

Kumalo, S. (2017). ‘Problematising development in sustainability: epistemic justice through an African ethic’. Southern African Journal of Environmental Education. V. 33 (1), p. 14–24.

Plessis, C. du. (2001). ‘Sustainability and sustainable construction: the African context’. Building Research and Information: The International Journal of Research, Development and Demonstration. V. 29 (5), p. 374–380.

Sustainable Sanitation Alliance (n.d.). The Ngor Declaration on Sanitation and Hygiene. Available at: https://www.susana.org/_resources/documents/default/3-2260-7-1433512846.pdf (Accessed 8 May 2023).

UN- Habitat (2023). (LVWATSAN-Mwanza) Project: Mobilization and Institutional Facilitation of Sanitation. Available at: https://unhabitat.org/the-lake-victoria-water-and-sanitation-project#:~:text=LVWATSAN%20was%20designed%20by%20UN,for%20the%20utilities%20and%20town (Accessed 10 May 2023).

A blog written by Tywen Thomas, 2022-23 student of the Environment and Sustainable Development MSc

Invisible Domination

Until recently, I had been happy to engage with decolonisation at a discursive or theoretical level, using it as a guideline for political thought and action. My personal politics, leaning on a historical materialist understanding of the injustices of capitalism, often align with strands of decolonial thought. I have sympathised with and supported decolonial initiatives that some would term radical, such as the return of land and its socio-economic power to its rightful indigenous stewards. In hindsight, I leaned on these moments of alignment to justify a lack of further work and self-reflection. Confident in a surface-level application of what decolonisation could be, I had not worked to come to my own nuanced understanding of what it meant for me and how my decisions, and very existence, fit within it.

Decolonisation has been woven throughout the Environment and Sustainable Development programme. I digested assigned readings on topics such as decolonising academia in South Africa. As a white Canadian studying in the seat of empire, I was aware of the inherent conflicts and potential hypocrisy.

Reckoning with your relationship to decolonisation is not a simple process. The majority of people in my privileged position have not done the work. This fact indicates the entrenched coloniality of Western society. Maistry (2019) explains the difference between colonialism and coloniality:

“The former refers to the institutional or legislative governing power of the coloniser over the colony as a result of military conquest. Its counterpoint is decolonisation, the ‘return’ of the colonised territory to its original inhabitants. Coloniality, on the other hand, is a systematic, enduring process of displacement of indigenous ontologies and epistemologies within that of the colonisers… it permeates all aspects of our contemporary existence, our dress, consumption patterns, values, aspirations and our worldviews. It holds an ideological hegemony over the social, economic and political” (page 186). 

Using this interpretation, I have long aligned ideologically with decolonisation – the return of indigenous lands – for various reasons, from justice to climate practicality. However, problematically from the perspective of continuing to frame decolonisation as a vague concept to ideologically align with, this understanding of decoloniality asks much more of the individual.

A difficult realisation comes with acknowledging the degree of my entanglement in the ontological supremacy of Western worldviews. Despite ongoing efforts to decolonise the curriculum I have been studying, the media I engage with, and the institutions I am a part of, it will take a concerted effort on my part to mitigate my complicity in perpetuating coloniality. How does one decolonise their thought patterns, ways of knowing, and attitudes towards the world?

These complex thoughts swirled as my colleagues and I deliberated on how to best approach each coming day of our fieldwork in Tanzania. While it is no longer a German or British colony, contemporary Tanzania exists in a reality inseparable from coloniality. Not only were our ideas, proposed solutions and approach as researchers sitting in this shadow, but so were many of the existing Tanzanian ideas, ongoing attempts at solutions, and the hierarchical structure of stakeholders. Again from Maistry (2019):

“coloniality then is the ever-pervasive ‘invisible’ structure of management and domination in contemporary society. Its counterpoint, decoloniality might refer to the project of disrupting coloniality’s cycle of reification” (page 187).

Speaking with people experiencing simultaneous realities so different to mine brought into sharp focus that my capacity to envision a solution free from the coloniality that supports these realities is limited by my ability to escape my own coloniality. I might be able to empathise with those suffering in large part due to the extant coloniality of their society. Still, I will never be able to experience their reality (Maistry 2019 from Burrell and Flood 2019).

Constructing Imaginaries

One of the identifiable manifestations of coloniality in the context of our work in Mwanza was in the discourse around infrastructure. The discussion was frequently binary, have or have not, the unimproved or the upgraded, connected or unconnected. It did not take a sophisticated analysis to determine who or what was likely to fit into which category or to hypothesise why that might be the case. As Fanon wrote in his famous and sadly still pertinent work The Wretched of the Earth:

“The colonial world is a compartmentalised world…The colonised world is a world divided in two.” (Fanon 2004, page 3).

This compartmentalised, divided world was evident in Tanzania. We stayed in a gated hotel set in stark relief to the surrounding unplanned settlement. Our buses lurched down unpaved roads over channels carved by previous rains before popping out onto a smooth arterial highway. The tall buildings in the bustling centre of Mwanza illuminate the night sky while providing a view of squat tin-roofed communities perched on surrounding hillsides conspicuous in their relative darkness. These contrasting inequalities of capitalist imperialism are softened in the centres of colonial power where I come from, with much of the unsightly struggle and exploitation exported to the so-called developing world to sustain the reification of coloniality.

Infrastructure plays a complicated role in this dichotomy. It is a tool to create and sustain this disparity while also representing a potential path across the chasm. In development discourse, infrastructure can lift a household, a community, or a city across the divide. However, infrastructure as a construct is characterised by a duality: it can support motion and mobility but also restrict and limit.

“every day by neglect or design infrastructure fails to meet basic needs. But this conception of infrastructure, perhaps an engineer’s definition, is only one of its forms” (Cowen in Pasternak et al. 2023, page 2).

One of the biggest takeaways from our group’s work was recognising the utility of a broader people-centred conception of infrastructure, where people are more than the implementor, the beneficiary, or the victim. People themselves can form infrastructures. This people-centred view of infrastructure frees it from being limited to moving things or people, allowing it to play a role in creating emotion and, importantly, constructing realities (Cowen in Pasternak et al. 2023).

The most rewarding aspect of our project was working with community members to co-produce a sustainable ecological sanitation solution for their community. Participants grasped not only our theoretical framework of multi-scalar loops but applied a combination of theory and knowledge of sanitation technologies to imagine an alternate reality beyond the connected/unconnected binary.

Overwhelmingly, community members sought decentralised and community-driven solutions. The attraction is not hard to understand. Aside from a lack of trust in authorities, these solutions’ flexibility, adaptability, and potential empowerment works toward decoloniality by pushing against the hierarchical binaries of post-colonial realities.

Infrastructure provides opportunities to think about design, ownership, financing, process, labour, and each aspect’s political economies and ecologies (Cowen in Pasternak et al., 2023). These questions create space for community co-design, co-ownership, co-financing, etc., all of which serve as windows for decoloniality. However, we can go further.

There is yet more potential in moving conceptually beyond infrastructure as either human-made physical constructs or human-centred systems. Borrowing indigenous ways of knowing historically cast aside by coloniality, nature should be considered infrastructure.

“If we think of a river as infrastructure, then it’s not something that is built and then walked away from, nor something that just exists in space as material” (Spice in Pasternak et al. 2023, page 3).

The example of a river is particularly relevant to our work in Tanzania which exists in the context of efforts to improve water quality in the Lake Victoria watershed. If the watershed is seen as infrastructure alongside many that comprise a sanitation system, binary solutions give way to a broader understanding of potential avenues of improvement. This conceptual opening moves beyond the colonial dichotomy of have and have-not and leaves behind the constructed humanity-nature duality. This allows coloniality to be tackled not by opening a discursive window but by knocking down walls to identify processes and solutions that target root causes. As an indirect goal, supporting decoloniality aligns with many explicit intentions of social justice, aid, and research programmes. It also intentionally enables them to be lifted out of their colonial box, increasing the likelihood of real change being made along the way.

 

Citations

Fanon, F., Bhabha, H. K., & Sartre, J.-P. (2004). The wretched of the earth: Frantz Fanon. (R. Philcox, Trans.) (1st ed.). Grove Press.

Maistry, S. M. (2019). The Higher Education Decolonisation Project: Negotiating Cognitive Dissonance. Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa, 100(1), 179–189. https://doi.org/10.1353/trn.2019.0027

Pasternak, S., Cowen, D., Clifford, R., Joseph, T., Scott, D. N., Spice, A., & Stark, H. K. (2023). Infrastructure, Jurisdiction, extractivism: Keywords for decolonising geographies. Political Geography, 101, 102763. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2022.102763

A blog written by Annabel Collinson, 2022-23 student of the Environment and Sustainable Development MSc

“My house is just beyond the mango tree”

Naomi* explained, the stream gurgling quietly behind us. My hand, covered in a thin layer of dirt and sweat, added blotches to the page as I wrote furiously. After a long first day in the field we stumbled upon Naomi, washing clothes in the stream on an increasingly warm day. In the heat of the afternoon we felt overwhelmed by the prospect of another interview, but we knew we needed to speak to her; we promised we’d return. The next day, as we began our ascent into the hills of Kigoto, her house seemed to creep further and further away. Her house was behind the mango tree, sure, but far, far behind. We hiked almost vertically up a precarious hill, jumping over gaps in rocks and sliding over boulders. We grew more tired with each step we took, but the warm breeze behind us and the music coming from the homes we passed made our journey joyous. When we reached Naomi she was sitting with her nine children at the top of the hill next to her home. She helped lay out a blanket for us, her now very pregnant belly getting in the way as she tried to bend over to smooth out its woven edges. Breathless, she pulled herself up to perch on a nearby rock. We clambered onto the rug. It felt like I was five again, joining story time at the local library. As I turned to look behind me, the sea stretched out wide; islands peppered the ocean and clouds dotted the sky. The hill on which Naomi’s house was positioned dropped off almost directly beneath me—she was easily at the highest elevation of any of our participants.

All our interviews in Kigoto took almost an hour and half, including a time use survey to outline each woman’s day. Naomi’s day was by far one of the most strenuous.Without a husband and little help from other family members, Naomi is simultaneously consumed by childcare and her work as a clothes washer. The stream where we first met Naomi is where she spends most of her days, washing clothes and collecting water. Her trek to the stream devours a large part of her week; five times a day she climbs up and down the hill, carrying water back for bathing and cleaning clothes. This hike used to only take a few minutes a day, but Naomi is pregnant with her tenth child. These commutes now take almost forty minutes round trip. Her family’s clothes are washed once a week at best, once a month at worst.

Our team’s research sought to understand women’s everyday experiences as they pertained to time, labor and care. We hypothesized, initially, that improved access to sanitation would improve women’s mental and physical wellbeing. We knew that they were burdened with the majority of care work and that the taboos within the community, compounded by social norms and gender roles, created an intense environment which diminished opportunities for capacity building.

 

After an incredibly gruelling second day of interviews our team sat around a table, time use surveys spread out before us, swimming in an ocean of data and information. We were determined not to lose sight of these women and their stories, to make sure they remained at the forefront of our work. I poured over the surveys and the research, examining each one to understand underlying patterns of behavior and circumstance.We met women with no access to water or a connection via MWAUWASA, a pit latrine or an indoor toilet, a one-room home or a three-bedroom home. As I continued to scour the data I was constantly reminded of Joy.

When we met Joy we were sure we were meeting a woman in the best circumstances. She had five bedrooms in her home—so many she admitted she couldn’t use them all. She had help taking care of her children and she had both a working indoor toilet and an outdoor toilet.My assumption, at least, was that she would be the perfect example of the positive impact of improved sanitation. When we sat down with her and she shared her experience with us, however, what became undeniably clear was that her wellbeing was only partially impacted.The transformation I had been naively anticipating wasn’t there. Joy’s days were monopolized by childcare but, more importantly, she was completely isolated from anyone in the community. She wasn’t living in Kigoto out of want but rather out of necessity, and she didn’t feel connected to a community or network of other women.

Joy’s issue wasn’t sanitation—a practical need that could, with time, be fixed—but rather a feeling. Joy was incredibly lonely, and she wasn’t the only one. Time and again, no matter the circumstance, the women we spoke to were isolated and alone. In a quantitative analysis of our data Naomi and Joy could not be more dissimilar, but, through an emotional lens, their stories were incredibly alike. It was evident that, as emotional political ecology indicates, political conflicts are emotion alone; the subjectivities are contextual, but the output is the same (González-Hidalgoet al, 237). The personal is political (Crow,113). In both instances Joy and Naomi were at odds with their circumstances and without control, forced to extend themselves to accommodate for the lack of support they received. Emotional political ecology would contend that this emotional labor is to be anticipated.

Sitting at the table I concluded that, no matter what demographics we chose or what circumstances we focused on, we would continue to find women who felt hopeless and lonely, resigned to believe they were not capable of achieving better conditions. These were women with wishes and ambitions, who in many instances wanted more but felt that it just wasn’t possible. In some cases, it would be difficult to dramatically improve their situation but, for many of these women, the variable that could drastically change their lives was community.

At the intersection of pragmatic and strategic needs was the need for a network of women, a place to engage with the community and find opportunities for growth and change. Our multi-pronged solution, comprised of the introduction of female-focused, female run “care hubs,” the encouragement of increased resources for women and inclusion of their voices at every level of decision-making, and the enforcement of cluster household improvements, highlights the need to support women on multiple scales and underlines the necessity for intersectional spaces. In the case of the care hub, the women we spoke to were adamant that they wanted a space in which they could “relax and feel comfortable.” With a focus on systems of care, our solutions demand space for women and carers within infrastructure. It acknowledges that the production of infrastructure has, thus far, been disjointed and unsupportive. Underlining the methodology set out by Donna Haraway, our propositions seek to position women to create and establish knowledge, to encourage the “persistence of their vision” (Haraway, 581).

Using both emotional political ecology and feminist political ecology our solutions renegotiate the everyday, reimagining what the community could look like if it were centered around intersectional knowledge production. In this way, these ideals have the power to support meaning-making and solution- creation at both the practical and strategic level.

Each woman we spoke to unraveled a hypothesis, challenged a prediction and reconfigured an observation. We left each interview feeling rich with knowledge, and their stories have shaped our recommendations for the better. After almost every interview we invited each woman to our focus group or our final meeting with local officials. I was convinced only a handful would show, now knowing how busy and difficult their daily schedules were and how exhausted they must be. On the day of our focus group, in a small church hall hung with colorful drapes and lined with plastic chairs, in walked almost every woman we invited, eager to share and support our work. Our focus group was fruitful and vibrant, filled with poignant remarks and effervescent conversation. On the final day, knowing how far each woman had to travel, I would not have anticipated that every one of the five women we invited would have joined. I felt so grateful that they believed in our work enough to attend and that they felt comfortable with us to let us share their experiences.

Arguing for a community of care to support the needs of women in Kigoto and beyond was difficult, and we knew that our attempt to shift the narrative around women’s needs would be challenging. Feminist political ecology acknowledges the need to focus on the everyday, and emotional political ecology notes the critical gap between the emotional and the political; both of these issues, as we saw in Kigoto, shape and impact the burden of care on women (González-Hidalgo et al, 250). Critical knowledge can only be gained and supported through community; our research helped us understand the power of storytelling and the value of community for women in Kigoto. Through our insights and recommendations, we hope to empower and embolden the women of Kigoto to see themselves as part of a powerful collective and to use this power to seek opportunity and call for change.

*Names have been changed to maintain confidentiality.

 

 

Listen to the ‘Tanzania 2023’ playlist by Annabel on Spotify.

 

References

Crow, B.A. (2000). Radical feminism a documentary reader. New York New York University Press.

González-Hidalgo, M. and Zografos, C. (2019). Emotions, power, and environmental conflict: Expanding the ‘emotional turn’ in political ecology. Progress in Human Geography, [online] p.030913251882464. doi:https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132518824644.

Haraway, D. (1988). Situated Knowledges: the Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective. Feminist Studies, [online] 14(3), pp.575–599. Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3178066

Authors: Chauncie Bigler, Yuka Aota, Debayan Chatterjee, Corin Menuge (Graduates of MSc Urban Development Planning, Bartlett DPU, UCL)

Introduction

In the Autumn of 2019, a group of MSc Urban Development Planning students partnered with community groups in London’s Old Kent Road (/OKR) Neighbourhood to explore the potential of social audits as a tool for just urban transformation in the city. As part of the multi-year teaching partnership, our group had a specific objective of collaboratively designing a social audit tool with local community groups in OKR area. The purpose of this exercise was to both test the concept of social audits in London planning whilst also supporting community groups in the gathering of data on neighbourhood assets that held significant value for locals. At that time, interrupting the speculative real estate development planned for what had become a London ‘Opportunity Area’ (See Figure 1) was a key priority for the long-term residents, businesses and other groups in the area.

In July of 2021, almost two years later, we reached out to a highly-engaged community resident who had been involved in the 2019 engagement. Our intention was to ascertain whether the social auditing toolkit we had designed was still in use and, if possible, to compare its application in both a pre-pandemic and mid-pandemic context. This resident explained that the pandemic had sharpened the priorities of community organisers and those demanding more participatory development across London: “What we want is a plan B, in light of these huge changes in the last 18 months. We want a realistic appraisal of where things are at for the people who live here” (Community resident, 21 Aug 2021).

This experience of revisiting our research partnership after two years–and a global pandemic–later caused our group to reflect further on both our positionality as researchers and practitioners, and the role that academic partnerships such as ours may have in relation to the underlying goal to leave lasting and positive community impacts. Mere months after coproducing research with community activists – the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the ground upon which priorities and strategies would be developed.  As is common with planning praxis, all parties active in fighting for just planning in London, or globally, needed to reflect and react in order to move forward in highly changeable circumstances. Learning alliances such as the one we were engaged in must adapt, even in a global pandemic.

Revisiting Prior Engagement

Revisiting our study, the local groups see the multidimensional barriers of realising meaningful participation in planning. Many scholars (Fainstein, 2010; Healey, 2005) have tried to improve the UK’s institutionalised public participation system by highlighting the potential of a collaborative approach in planning and local governance. However, communities have continued to face difficulties in reflecting their insights on the OKR regeneration plan, such as when they could not attend in-person consultations due to COVID-19 pandemic impacts. Thus, this situation can lead to dominant decision-making over a particular plan (Arnstein, 1969). Community participation requires both Invited and Invented spaces (Miraftab, 2004). Invited spaces involve local authorities engaging with and integrating diverse perspectives during the initial phases of planning, acknowledging the value of individuals’ insights and experiences as future end-users (Ball, 2004). However, effective community participation also demands autonomous, Invented spaces for community knowledge development and counter-planning. Indeed the two should work iteratively.

Just Space, an informal alliance comprising approximately 80 community groups, is dedicated to amplifying local voices and perspectives from grassroots levels up to London’s major planning strategies. In their “Community-Led Plan for London” (Just Space, 2013), the alliance proposed to metropolitan planning authorities the adoption of Social Impact Assessments (SIAs) as a fundamental basis for making planning decisions. SIAs are essential in evaluating the potential impact of development proposals on existing residents and businesses within a neighbourhood. Recognizing the historical shortfall in communication and genuine participation, the Just Space network has been advocating for the incorporation of these impact assessments within borough and metropolitan planning frameworks to secure a more community-led planning process.

Later on, Just Space collaborated with faculty at the DPU to initiate a multi-year project, which our group joined in 2019. During our cohort’s involvement, we were briefed on the displacement pressures arising from the Old Kent Road’s designation as an Opportunity Area. Our primary task was to engage in propositional work: co-creating a “social audit” tool in collaboration with local communities. Social audits serve as a means to establish an evidence base that reflects the neighbourhood assets as perceived by community members. These audits are a part of the broader concept of Social Impact Assessments (SIAs), a tool which seeks to materialise a more ‘just city’ (Fanstein in Yiftachel and Mandelbaum, 2017). The overarching objective of SIAs is to empower community members to visualize and address spatial inequalities in their surroundings.

Drawing on interviews with community members and field research, the social audit handbook (See Figure 2) was designed to be a pre-emptive, modular, adaptable and reflexive toolkit for communities. The handbook visually shows the process for identifying local assets, collecting data, and seeking further support to protect what is valued by the community in the face of development. The handbook starts with contextual data on Old Kent Road and provides guidance on community goal-setting using existing data and the voices least likely to breach traditional planning approaches. Four types of community assets (green infrastructure, housing, social/community spaces and economic infrastructure) were showcased as data collection categories based on field research and interviews with Just Space (See Figure 3). The final section emphasises the significance of visualising local data and seeking options to deliver community needs (See Figure 4).

 

At the time of this action-research collaboration in 2019, the social audit handbook received positive feedback from the Old Kent Road activists and groups engaged in its coproduction. The exercise was also good practice for the budding urban development planners in our group. As students, we developed collaborative listening skills through rounds of interviews with residents, local business owners, and non-profit workers, as well as countless learning site walks. The research that underpinned the design of the tool involved an examination of best practices from social audit initiatives in different locations such as South Africa, Israel, and London. This exploration deepened our understanding of social practices within diverse contexts. The benefits to us as researchers were clear and immediate – but what about longer-term outcomes for the community groups and individuals who gave their time and insights to the work?

All components of the social audit handbook were designed according to the interpreted needs of communities at the time, yet since its original production so much has changed. Begging the question, how relevant does the tool remain in a post-COVID moment?

As one community resident noted in 2021, the city’s priorities shifted due to COVID related financial constraints. The Bakerloo line extension, upon which the original plan rested, has been effectively stopped ‘indefinitely’. What does this mean for the OKR? Perhaps counter intuitively, this withdrawal of committed public investment, combined with new local leadership within the Borough’s controlling Labour Party, could open an opportunity to achieve a more just development trajectory for OKR.

However, if this opportunity is to be realised and a Plan B is to emerge, then tools such as the social audit tested in pre-pandemic conditions may gain renewed relevance. Indeed, given that our 2019 research demonstrated how the aspiration to protect local assets is most impactful in the earliest stages of planning process, a social audit tool feels particularly salient. Rather than attempting to influence plans at a planning application stage when many decisions have already been locked in, a social audit would reflect community priorities and identify valued networks, local heritage, businesses, and public spaces as plans are being made and well before applications and capital investment arrive at the community’s door.

 

Principles for Strengthened Academic Partnerships

 

 

Through this retrospective re-examination of a project, the group synthesised three key themes which can prompt further examination by parties hoping to engage in academic-civil society co-productions and learning alliances:

(a) Barriers to collecting local information

Residents often face barriers when trying to access planning-related data and information about ongoing urban development in their neighbourhoods. While the toolkit outlines steps for data collection and visualization of community assets and needs to present to the government, updating it for longevity should include a clearer roadmap to overcome technical skill barriers. This might involve providing support for accessing and interpreting open-source community data for those with minimal formal training, suggesting low-cost programs for basic mapping and document creation, and offering straightforward project management and budgeting templates. Encouraging community members to assess their key skills related to social audits and formulating partnerships with students or business owners to address gaps could be a preliminary step. Nurturing interactions for creating living documents by connecting relevant information with residents requires time and planning. Despite community members’ superior knowledge of their needs, neighbourhood histories, and dynamics compared to decision-makers, capacity-building and skill-sharing are essential steps for promoting effective social audits or community-led plans.

(b) Ensuring Continuity of Moment-Driven Work within a Context of Rapid Change

The government can change urban development plans suddenly, making it difficult for communities to formulate interventions aligned with the government’s timeline and request them to amend formal plans. Thus, communities learn to respond rapidly to changes in local dynamics and political  priorities, and learning alliances must also face this reality.  Some of the ways that the DPU-Just Space learning alliance (See Figure 5) ensures continuity while continually adapting are by building multi-year partnerships, retaining faculty engagements around them, and designing new projects each year based on priorities from partners. The UDP cohort that followed ours (2020-21) first contributed to Just Space’s Community-led Recovery Plan for London and later shifted their attention to Southwark, where they examined the utilization, challenges, and potential of public land. This latter project connected with some of the community groups and ideas that emerged from the social audit work conducted previously. As seen in this example, COVID-19 revealed amplified inequalities of the people’s lives and has mobilised or reanimated a number of initiatives targeting alternative development visions for London. This project demonstrates a strong example of building on previous efforts while coping with changing circumstances, such as those presented by COVID-19. Under the guidance and direction of UDP faculty and with continual input from the learning alliance’s partners, later cohorts continue to support long-term attempts to promote community-led planning in the city.

(c) Structuring the Engagement for Mutually-Beneficial Outcomes

A key organising skill employed by the most successful  activist groups is never-ending creativity in the face of changing circumstances. Activists must adjust their strategies and efforts in order to seize opportunities as they come. This hard-earned skill-set can be even less straightforward to apply to an academic setting. Academia, even when a strong ethos of practice in community engagement is present, must balance adaptability with the structure needed for executing a project within a fixed academic term in a classroom setting.

The task of structuring academic co-production processes is not straightforward, and creative ways to extend the work could be explored to maximize what both the community and the students take forward from the engagement. For example, rather than attempt to theoretically frame, develop and part pilot a tool all in one term, the learning alliance could be split into curricula and extra-curricular components with students given the opportunity to continue their engagement with the project’s community partners after the completion of the assessed project. In the case of our project, such an approach could have allowed time for a more in-depth piloting and testing phase. Through that further coproduction moment, additional findings would surely surface from the community on its design, such as local capacity to collect and take forward the fact-based data, which would provide even more support towards sustainable realisation of the community’s needs. That said, given such an approach relies on voluntary capacity and will, there is a small risk that momentum wains without the incentive of assessment.

Conclusion

During the autumn academic term of 2019, our cohort of 11 UDP students actively immersed themselves in the Old Kent Road project, forging connections between academic theory and practical application. Through engaging with community leaders and collaborating closely with community groups and Just Space members, the cohort shaped the framework and toolkit. Student groups navigated the intricate local political landscape, stakeholder dynamics, Social Impact Assessments (SIAs), planning procedures, and inclusive engagement approaches. UCL, as a global university, sends its Master’s graduates into diverse sectors worldwide. Our cohort’s immersive experience enriched subsequent chapters of our journeys: from supporting grassroots initiatives at the Japanese Embassy in New Delhi, to a role as an Urban Designer in Dubai and Germany, Green Infrastructure Planner in the U.S., and a contributor to London’s social housing sector. While challenging to quantify, the impacts of such alliances extend beyond classroom walls and the Old Kent Road. Academic research underscores the notion of ‘seeding’ hope for communities grappling with injustices by both recognising and amplifying their campaigns and also nurturing a new generation of planning practitioners attuned to the diverse needs and aspirations of cities worldwide.

The multiyear learning collaborations between UCL and community groups emphasize the pivotal role of community planning and the potential to transmit the principles of socially just planning to the succeeding cohort. By introducing the social audit handbook to communities, we supported Just Space in  testing a responsive tool aligned with the community’s strategies within specific times and conditions as well as amplifying an idea whose time may yet come. This endeavour aimed to integrate a degree of procedural justice into practice by transforming environmental governance through inclusive engagement that values diverse voices and perspectives (York and Yazar, 2022). It’s crucial to acknowledge that existing communities are integral participants in regeneration, capable of enhancing their neighbourhoods, and the outcomes of their collective efforts can ripple throughout the entire city (Ball, 2004). Tools like the social audits we examined can serve as valuable documentation of neighbourhood changes and shared lessons, facilitating action planning for like-minded communities and organizations. Nevertheless, as exemplified by disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, what holds greater resilience than specific tools are the skills cultivated in response to the inherent complexities of multi-stakeholder engagement in development planning. Primarily, this involves the ability to be adaptable and strategic in action planning, consistently reassessing the scope for manoeuvring (Safier, 2002) toward community objectives.

OKR Team (2020). “Our Neighbourhood – a guide to giving power to the voices of a neighbourhood’s people to shape its future”.

 

Reference

Arnstein, S.R. (1969). ‘A ladder of citizen participation’, Journal of the American Institute of planners, 35(4), pp.216-224.

Ball, M. (2004). ‘Co-operation with the community in property-led urban regeneration’, Journal of Property Research, 21:2, pp.119-142, DOI: 10.1080/0959991042000328810.

Fainstein, S. (2010). The Just City, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.

Healey, P. (2005). Collaborative Planning (2nd ed.), Basingstoke, Macmmillan.

Just Space (2013). Towards a Community-Led Plan for London Policy directions and proposals. [online]. Available at: https://justspacelondon.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/just-space-a4-community-led-london-plan.pdf.

Langlois, A. (2023). ‘TfL Bakerloo line extension, Southwark to Lewisham: Part of tunnel design work restarted’. LondonWorld. National World Publishing Ltd, 1st June 2023. [online]. Available at: https://www.londonworld.com/news/traffic-and-travel/tfl-to-restart-part-of-tunnel-design-work-for-bakerloo-line-extension-4077412.

Safier, M. (2002). ‘On Estimating Room for Manoeuvre’, City, 6(1). pp.117-132.

Yiftachel, O. and Mandelbaum, R. (2017). ‘Doing the Just City: Social Impact Assessment and the Planning of Beersheba, Israel’, Planning Theory & Practice, 18 (4). pp.525-548.

York, A. and Yazar, M. (2022).’Leveraging shadow networks for procedural justice’, Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, Vol.57. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cosust.2022.101190.

 

Bio Statement:

This group reflection comes from four DPU alumni from the 2019-2020 Urban Development Planning cohort, on the work Social Impact Assessment as a tool for Just Planning in  Southwark, London. Yuka, Chauncie, Debayan, and Corin are now in four different parts of the world (India, USA, Germany, and the UK, respectively) working within differing sectors, all engaging with the core themes from this community-led planning practice module in some capacity. The group thanks the module leaders, Tim Wickson and Barbara Lipietz, and countless community organizers past and present for the ability to participate in this work.

 

 

This blog was written as part of the Learning Alliance between the OVERDUE project and the DPU’s MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development. Namita is a recent graduate of this MSc programme (2021/22), and her reflections on gendered sanitation infrastructures were produced in a module that tackles issues of environment and sustainable development in practice.

“It should be socially acceptable for women to wear diapers since we don’t have the freedom to urinate wherever we wish, as the men do!”

A frustrated aunt exclaimed during an 8-hour road trip when all the women in the car had to pee but could not, for the lack of toilets on Indian highways. The men, who had stopped multiple times since, to relieve themselves laughed off my aunt’s loud rumination.

I wondered why it was more intuitive for her to think of diapers before wishing for more toilets, in her moment of frustration. A redundant question, as I already knew that accessible, safe, and hygienic toilets for women along Indian highways are a utopian expectation.

It was after several such experiences that I realised that cities are not designed by or for women. The lack of toilets, streetlights, and accessible transport renders the urban space easier for the men to occupy and challenging for the women to navigate.

The simple fact that I, despite my privilege, often resorted to “disciplining my body” (Kulkarni, O’Reilly and Bhat, 2017)during road trips as a coping mechanism for the lack of decent toilets reveals the extent of the predicament faced by those from marginalised classes and vulnerable communities – their embodied and lived experiences made more adverse by their female bodies. The sociocultural notions of shame and modesty, purity and pollution and the stigmatization attached to bodily processes of women such as menstruation and excretion invisibilises their material and infrastructural needs thereby perpetuating themselves.

Thus far, my lived experiences around sanitation as a woman were always from the perspective of a user. Learning from, and with our partners in Mwanza and St. Louis, I discovered the significant role women play as the providers and producers of essential sanitation infrastructures. It was one thing to read an article about bodies as urban infrastructures (Truelove and Ruszczyk, 2022) as part of my coursework, and a completely surreal experience to witness it In real-time, through fieldwork informed by real women.

“The women carry the entire burden of sanitation, especially during the winter months. The women here help the men here, no sanitation, no pipes, the women empty the water”

acknowledged a man from the Focus Group Discussion conducted in Saint-Louis, Senegal.

Flipping the coin to view women as providers of sanitation, was a revelation. I realised how easily we dismiss women’s role in shaping urban processes specifically in water and sanitation although they are present in every sphere. It is the women who fetch the water and clean the toilets, filling the infrastructural gaps left by the governments. But they are hidden actors, their roles overlooked and under-represented.

‘Gender is not just a lens but a valuable analytical tool’ is an essential insight that I have gained through this journey. I realised it is like stained glass – look at your immediate world through it and what you will see is a different version – a different hue, a deeper saturation, set against a different mosaic.

In Africa, women perform a large bulk of care work involving activities like cleaning, cooking, and childcare. However, in the absence of effective sewerage systems in Mwanza and St. Louis, by performing sanitation work bracketed as ‘care work,’ women become the wardens and custodians of the sanitation chain. They perform the roles of essential urban sanitation infrastructures and are responsible for the maintenance of shared household toilets. They clean the toilets and empty the pit latrines without any bodily protection, motivated by the well-being of their families and children, exposing themselves to health risks and vulnerabilities emerging from routinely handling faecal matter.

Fundamentally, they are filling a critical gap in sanitation service provision, in the absence of which their settlement and city systems would collapse, especially during the winter months of severe flooding. However, their role is relegated to the ‘work’ that they are expected to perform for being born with a female body. Their contributions as providers of sanitation services are invisibilised, and unrecognised and their work is labelled as ‘duty.’ Although the sanitation responsibilities added to the burden of care, the women, aware of their role as sanitation service providers seemed content with the notion that they were only fulfilling their biological roles.

“When and how does care work become duty and duty become oppressive?”

is a question that underpinned the group research. The dissonance as to whether women should be materially compensated to ease the burden of sanitation, fulfilling practical gender needs, but perpetuating internalised gender roles or should they challenge the unequal power relations in their households and societies, bewildered me. However, learning from the African cities, I appreciated how similar lived experiences of women are across time and space, as both users and producers.

A bigger insight I gained was that women are present everywhere across the sanitation chain as both users and producers and possess specialized knowledge which can inform policy and practice and hence carry the immense potential to catalyse long-term socio-political change.  Women play highly significant roles in the sanitation realm which benefits stakeholders across the scale of the household, the community, and the state.

Thus, just sanitation is not just about providing toilets and sewerage systems. It is about acknowledging and accommodating intersectional identities, embodied experiences, bodily dignity, safety, environmental concerns, and the health and wellbeing of everyone involved. Urban trajectories that do not consciously account for sanitation justice by acknowledging its gendered dynamics and fostering distributive, procedural and recognitional justice (Rusca, Alda-Vidal and Kooy, 2018) in sanitation, will most likely produce social injustices in urban spaces. Neglecting the significance of designing cities to provide just and equitable sanitation for women will generate inequitable outcomes, not just for the women but for the city.

For more information on the OVERDUE / MSc ESD Learning Alliance, please visit https://www.esdlearningalliance.net

 

Bibliography

Desai, R., McFarlane, C. and Graham, S. (2015) ‘The Politics of Open Defecation: Informality, Body, and Infrastructure in Mumbai’, Antipode, 47(1), pp. 98–120. doi:10.1111/anti.12117.

Kulkarni, S., O’Reilly, K. and Bhat, S. (2017) ‘No relief: lived experiences of inadequate sanitation access of poor urban women in India’, Gender & Development, 25(2), pp. 167–183. doi:10.1080/13552074.2017.1331531.

Rusca, M., Alda-Vidal, C. and Kooy, M. (2018) ‘Sanitation Justice?: The Multiple Dimensions of Urban Sanitation Inequalities’, in Boelens, R., Perreault, T., and Vos, J. (eds) Water Justice. 1st edn. Cambridge University Press, pp. 210–225. doi:10.1017/9781316831847.014.

Shukla, A.M. (2019) Mumbai: Unresolved civic issues irks residents, DNA India. Available at: https://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report-mumbai-unresolved-civic-issues-irks-residents-2736710 (Accessed: 26 May 2022).

Truelove, Y. and Ruszczyk, H.A. (2022) ‘Bodies as urban infrastructure: Gender, intimate infrastructures and slow infrastructural violence’, Political Geography, 92, p. 102492. doi:10.1016/j.polgeo.2021.102492.

This blog was written as part of the Learning Alliance between the OVERDUE project and the DPU’s MSc in Environment and Sustainable Development. Amanda is a recent graduate of this MSc programme (2021/22), and her reflections on gendered sanitation infrastructures were produced in a module that tackles issues of environment and sustainable development in practice.

Unconscious biases

Before this module, I never fully understood what sanitation meant. To my assumption, sanitation only reached to the extent of water and hygiene with little focus on toilets, its infrastructure, and the stories behind its use. But perhaps this disinterest stemmed from my own privileges of living in a city where sanitation facilities meet my own needs: running water, piped sewerage, bins for sanitary pads, division of women/men toilets and decently maintained facilities.

In that very first lecture however, introducing the topic, Adriana Allen said that sanitation was both “visible yet invisible” at the same time. That statement was my personal entry point into sanitation – and as Emmanuel Osuteye said in the Learning Alliance retreat, it was my “hook” into why it is a critical entry point into unlocking just urban development.

Toilet facilities unlock the hidden everyday stories of injustice

It made me flashback to when I was based in peri-urban Kathmandu, Nepal, in 2019. Whilst I was working in a local school, I saw a young female student openly defecating behind the school’s toilet facilities. I wondered why there were practices of open defecation despite there being toilet facilities available just in front of her. After a conversation with female students, it was said that the school toilet facilities were just such poor quality, that students did not end up using them. The school toilets were created by an international non-governmental organisation (NGO) but since its creation, they played no further role. There was no running water, sanitary bins and toilets were not maintained, which resulted in further decline in the facility’s quality (Figure 1). For female students who were menstruating, they would skip an entire week of classes as the facilities were not catered for their menstrual needs. Similarly, outside of the school setting, women who menstruated were often subjected to banishment from the kitchen and places of worship due to passed down beliefs of impurity (Thapa and Aro, 2021).

Figure 1: Image of schoolgirls’ toilet in Kathmandu – similar conditions in example mentioned (Source: Shrestha, 2019)

With that conversation, I left Nepal with more questions than answers. Despite the provision of toilet facilities in schools, what was it about those toilets that discouraged female students from using them? There is a juxtaposition where toilets are visibly everywhere but everyday experiences and realities around these toilet practices, such as menstruation and taboos, continue to be invisible and under-researched. These invisible experiences allow us to understand the injustices in urban development and also provide an opportunity to advance just development. Sanitation is the artery of the city, playing a vital role in urban life, intersecting with the urban environment, health, water and more. Inequitable sanitation in the city therefore ultimately reflects the wider injustices in the city such as inequitable distribution of resources, and a lack of intersectional representation and recognition in governance (Rusca et al., 2018).

Sanitation also allows us to adopt a feminist political ecology (FPE) lens, paying particular attention to the ‘everyday’ and emotional narratives that are not usually recognised in policy and planning (Clement et al., 2019; Lancione and McFarlane, 2016). FPE enables us to understand how power relations are deeply gendered and how they marginalise groups not just related to gender but to caste, class, race, disabilities. As such, these invisible everyday realities are reflective of the inequalities in the city and therefore demonstrate how “spaces of exclusion” are created, thus leading to further injustice in the production of urban spaces (Bhakta et al., 2019).

Urban African parallels and unveiling wider institutional issues

Figure 2: Drawing parallels in Africa and Southeast Asia. A picture of toilet facility in Freetown (Source: participant photo in ESD/OVERDUE research, 2022)

Drawing parallels from the insightful work co-produced with OVERDUE partners as part of the Learning Alliance, from the toilet research in Beira, Bukavu and Freetown and across continents in the Nepali context, I see and hear stories of everyday injustices. These stories reiterate that intersectional sanitation realities – of women, the disabled, young, and elderly – remain invisible, perpetuating the social stigma and taboos around cleanliness, manifesting in lack of locks, doors, and sanitary bins for women (Figure 2), marginalising and creating greater urban inequalities. Yet as noted by Bhakta et al., (2019), these hidden sanitation realities are “characterised by unjust institutional practices” and thus expose unequal governance structures which dictate urban development such as in policy or staff development (pp.18).

Whilst these everyday stories have been powerful in revealing some of the sanitation injustices, I questioned how we could recognise these voices in a system that values quantitative data as facts. It was the use of Levy’s (1996) ‘Web of Institutionalisation’ whilst learning in the African city context that made me realise how these everyday stories of sanitation injustices can be turned into advancing just urban development. Ultimately, the Web shows how processes within institutions like local governments, can play an active role in advancing just urban development through the inclusion of women and intersectional voices in planning (Figure 3). During the Learning Alliance retreat in the UK in May 2022, Kavita Wankhade’s presentation on the Tamil Nadu Urban Sanitation Support Programme (TNUSSP) mentioned the role of civil servants being stuck in a system, where bureaucracy is dictated by wider processes but nonetheless still plays a role in representing the voices on the ground. As a civil servant working in procurement, I always assumed that I played only a minor role in local government. Kavita’s comment made me reflect on my own position in vocalising the hidden voices in sanitation. Whether that would be through advocating for gender-sensitive needs in procurement contracts (procedures), the role that we play in vocalising these hidden realities is an important step in a new governance structure which enables equal representation and just development (Levy, 1996).

Figure 3: The Web of Institutionalisation in action (Source: Author, 2022)

Sanitation’s role in advancing just urban development

To summarise, sanitation is an entry point to ensure greater equity in the city. These past months have made me reflect that sanitation is more than just water provision and cleanliness but encompasses a multitude of components like public toilets and the vital role of women as sanitation workers. Within these, it is these sanitation experiences that perpetuate injustices that continue to be hidden. By acknowledging the realities within the sanitation conversation, we also start tracing opportunities within the institutional web to change fundamental processes that impact urban development as well as awaken our own personal agency. By improving sanitation, we can therefore begin to advance genuine just urban development that is for women, men, children, elderly, disabled and for all.

For more information on the OVERDUE / MSc ESD Learning Alliance, please visit https://www.esdlearningalliance.net

 

Bibliography

Bhakta, A., Fisher, J., and Reed, B. (2019) Unveiling hidden knowledge: discovering the hygiene needs of perimenopausal women, International Development Planning Review, 41(2), pp.149-171.

Clement, F., Harcourt, W.J., Joshi, D., and Sato, C. (2019) Feminist political ecologies of the commons and communing, International Journal of the Commons, 13(1), pp.1-15

Lancione, M., and McFarlane, C. (2016) Life at the urban margins: Sanitation infra-making and the potential of experimental comparison, Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 48(12), pp.2402-2421.

Levy, C. (1996) The process of institutionalising gender in policy and planning: the ‘web’ of institutionalisation, DPU Working Paper No.74, pp.1-25.

Rusca, M., Alda-Vidal, C. and Kooy, M. (2018) Sanitation justice? The multiple dimensions of urban sanitation inequalities. In: Boelens, R., Perreault, T., and Vos, J. (eds) Water Justice, Cambridge University Press, pp.210-225

Shrestha, E. (2019) Without proper sanitation facilities, girls keep missing school during menstruation [Online] www.kathmandupost.com Available at: https://kathmandupost.com/national/2019/12/31/without-proper-sanitation-facilities-girls-keep-missing-school-during-menstruation [Accessed: 24.05.2022]

Thapa, S., and Aro, A.R. (2019) ‘Menstruation means impurity’: multi-level interventions are needed to break the menstrual taboo in Nepal, BMC Women’s Health, 21(84), pp.1-5

Cover image source: Hesperian Health Guides (2021) Sanitation for Cities and Towns [Online] Available at: https://en.hesperian.org/hhg/A_Community_Guide_to_Environmental_Health:Sanitation_for_Cities_and_Towns

This housing story will explore the housing history of my grandfather named Seiichi Aota.  Throughout his 92 years (1928-2019), Japan experienced WWII, economic rise and fall, globalisation, and big earthquakes. The housing policies and land use have changed confronted changing socio-economic and political situations. From the perspective of my grandfather, this essay aims to highlight Japanese political context on housing. Interviews with his children (Aota family 2020, personal communication, March 2020) tell his housing story and livelihood. This story shows the transformation from the past housing programmes in a rapid population growth period to the current ones with more vacant houses in a hyper aging society.

Tough time due to WW II (1928-1951)

In 1928, my grandfather Seiichi Aota was born in Kobe City, Hyogo Prefecture, in the western part of Japan. After a period of isolation from 1639 to 1853 when Japan only traded with the Netherlands, the Japanese government opened a port in Kobe in 1868 which is one of a few ports in Japan that allowed foreign trade. Railways were also established in late 1874 (Kobe City 2020), and this made Kobe accessible to the other business areas in Western Japan, such as Osaka.

At the age of six, Seiichi lost his mother and was adopted by his uncle Yutaka and aunt Mikao, who did not have children. Seiichi was moved to their house in Kitano, where the government had designated the area for Western-style residences built mostly for early foreign settlers (Kobe Ijinkan 2020). In 1939, WWII began, and he was forced to work in factories to produce weapons as part of the mobilization of students for production labour by ceasing his studies. The Japanese government banned the building of wooden houses that were more than 100 square meters (Nagano 2007). While Seiichi volunteered to be a soldier several times, as the only son of the family he was considered the single heir so his application was not passed. In 1945 there was a massive air raid that burnt down many of the traditional wooden houses, as well as almost all the houses that Seiichi’s uncle had bought before WWII. After Japan lost the war in August of 1945, it suffered terrible damage 3.1million people were killed in total and at this was also the start of the US occupation (Hirota 1992).

Part of this damaged included the 2.1 million houses that were burnt down, and it also left many people in need, there was 4.2 million houses were in urgent need to be built (Nagano 2007). The Japanese government provided temporary housing to victims of war, but the speed of provision was not enough to reach the demands. The U.S. General Headquarters (GHQ) introduced American democratic ideas to Japanese housing policies.  The GHQ’s guidance led the Japanese government to establish the Housing Loan Corporation for providing housings with low long-term interest rates. Due to the shift to a free economy, Japan faced inflation, which pushed up the price of building materials. The GHQ judged that Japan could not produce enough timber for housing. In order to promote less flammable buildings, they let Economic Science Bureau submit the comments indicating that reinforced concrete structures would be the most practical (Nagano 2007). This was the beginning of Japan addressing the issue of building less flammable housing in collaboration with private firms. These housing initiatives focused on efficient use of building materials whilst ensuring the minimum strength and promoting the use of non-combustible materials.

Seiichi’s family had all survived WWII. Because of the high demand for housing after the war, his uncle sold the remaining properties in Kobe. After that, his family left Kitano for Amakusa in Kumamoto Prefecture in the Southern part of Japan. His uncle became an investor in a relative’s shipbuilding business and negotiated with timber dealers for constructing ships in the mountains which were undamaged by the war.  Seiichi also worked in the same business. Difficulties obtaining affordable building materials led to the bankruptcy of the business. His parents went back to Kobe in 1950 and decided to open a candy store in Suidosuji shopping street in Kobe. They borrowed money from his aunt’s younger sister, who ran a restaurant close to Omuta Station in Fukuoka Prefecture. The City of Omuta was flourishing because of the coal industry and the population was the highest in 1959 (Omuta City 2020). Seiichi worked at the restaurant to reduce his uncle’s debt and earn a little pocket money. He started dating Kyoko, who was the daughter of his aunt’s eldest sister. Kyoko went on to become his wife. The loan was paid off by his parents afterwards.

 

Aotayashoten headquarters and branch (1951-1970s)

Around 1951, when the Security Treaty between the United States and Japan was signed, Seiichi’s parents opened a candy shop named Aotayashoten (Aota’s shop) on the east side of Suidosuji shopping street. Literally, in Japanese, Suido (water) Suji (street). It was developed by installing water pipes in the 1920s and was filled with lively scenes along with a market street (SUIDOUSUJI CO., Ltd 2020). His parents rented a house from the owner of a nearby shoe store.

The rental house had a shop front used for Aotayashoten with showcases of commodities and a dwelling area. Behind the shop front, there were four-tatami mats room, a small kitchen, a storage room and a toilet, there was no bathroom, so they used public bathhouses. The room was too small for the family and their employees to take meals together. Seiichi’s parents slept in a cramped tatami room that was very cold in the winter and was infested with mice. A classic example of the poor living conditions that was a result a state focused on increasing the numbers of houses and not the quality.

There was a period of economic growth from 1953 to 1973. Japan gradually started boosting up the economy by launching an economic growth policy and income doubling policy. The rapid population growth generated a housing shortage which resulted in soaring land prices, environmental problems, land sprawl, and many other issues (Nagano 2007). The government focused on housing policies and established four branches of Japan Housing Corp. in major Japanese cities, in 1955. The Corp. promoted housing estate development and land readjustment project. It launched 10,000 rental houses and 10,000 subdivisions of houses in half a year and created 35,000 new residences by the end of 1957 (Nagano 2007). In 1960, the income doubling policy led to mass-production and cost-cutting in housing. Additionally, the Ministry of Construction established the councils for prefabricated and public housing as well as financing systems which encouraged fast construction and the use of cheap materials. Due to this high demand in housing, private firms began industrialising the production of housing materials (Nagano 2007). This resulted in the creation of low-quality housing below the current standard (Suzuki 2008)

Riding on this economic wave, Seiichi’s parents rented a store on land belonged to the City of Kobe and opened a branch of the Aotayashoten in 1953. The branch was close to the east exit of the Higashi-Hatahara market, which connected to Suidosuji shopping street. The first floor had a store front with a showcase and a living quarter of around three to four tatami-mats, a kitchen, a toilet, and an entry way. There was no gas available, and they used a briquette brazier for making hot water. When they used a small heater in winter, the circuit breaker frequently tripped. So, they could not often use the heater. On the second floor, there was a six-mats tatami room and an eight-mats tatami room, a toilet, and a small wooden floored room. After Seiichi and Kyoko held their wedding at the restaurant, they left Omuta for Kobe to support Aotayashoten in Kobe. They rented a six-tatami mats room on the second floor of the apartment adjacent to the Suidosuji shopping street. Following the birth of their first son in 1954, the couple had their first daughter in 1957, the second son (my father) was born in 1959 and the second daughter in 1964. After the births they started living in the store. After living in the space, Seiichi bought the rented branch.

A house for Seiichi’s family (1970s-1980s)

The Japanese government predicted that the baby boomer generation after WWII would need residences that could accommodate their families and spouses, and the houses built after the war would need renovation. In response to the demands, the government established the five-year housing construction plan in 1960. This plan was renewed every five years and considered the foundation of Japanese housing policy, which mobilised the private housing market.

The first phase began in 1966 through to 1970 secured an increase in the average dwelling space to more than nine tatami-mats per small household (two-three people) and more than 12 tatami-mats per general household (more than four people) (Nagano 2007).  As Figure five (Nagano 2007, p28) shows, housing provision was permeating, and the government started more weighing on the housing quality. In 1973, the ratio of the average housing standard with insufficient facilities such as no bathroom was 72.7%.  Then, the Ministry of Construction started the Industrial housing performance certification system, in which users can check building standards. The oil crisis boosted up the price of building materials which caused a shortage in supplies. However, owing to the improved construction methods, during the third phase from 1976 to 1980, the ratio of people living below the minimum dwelling size standard with complex criteria (e.g.,19.5 tatami-mats per general household) decreased to one third (Nagano 2007, Uesugi & Asami 2009).

Mass produced housing built after the war needed renovation in the fourth phase.  The fourth phase, from 1981 to 1986, was aimed at securing the housing quality above the renewed minimum housing standard with more space per household. It was the beginning of introducing initiatives focusing on renovations and harmonisations with local areas (Nagano 2007). In 1982, the building performance certification system was launched to guarantee the building of long-lasting houses and to make maintenance of these houses smoother. The housing strategies were created to respond to the various demands from customers and local needs.

 

Aotayashoten gradually made profits owing to economic growth of Japan. The development of the area surrounding the store increased the number of customers. This led to the hiring of more employees who were introduced to Seiichi by his relatives in Shimabara. Seiichi rented rooms in the apartment near the store in front of Hankyu railroad crossing. His employees lived in a six tatami-mats rooms with a kitchen and shared toilet.

In order to accommodate his growing family, Seiichi decided to buy an existing house in Kuraishi within three to four minutes walking distance from Aotayashoten in the 1970s. The house was on land leased by a private owner which cost around 8 million JPY (around 62,000 GBP). The house without land tenure usually costs from 60% to 80% of the housing with land tenure dependent on the market price of the land, as the landowner pays real estate acquisition tax, property tax and city planning tax and housing costs (Iecon 2020). It was much cheaper to rent land and buy the house, than buy both the land and house together. With the permission from the landowner, he refurbished the house, which was built before the Pacific War in 1941. The newly renovated house had a Western-style room, a tatami room, a dining room and kitchen and a toilet on the first floor, and two tatami rooms on the second floor. They still used public bathhouses. Since his aunt had already passed away, he invited his uncle to move from the store to the house with him. Seiichi would often stay at the store to ensure the business ran smoothly.

 

Rise and Fall in the late 1980s, and the Hanshin Earthquake in 1995

In 1985, the U.S. invited Japan, U.K, Germany, and France to hold a G5 Summit and agreed with the Plaza to depreciate the U.S. dollar by intervening in currency markets.  This caused a sharp yen recession in Japan. Although the Bank of Japan adopted a thorough low-interest-rate policy, the result was an unprecedented “money surplus”. The surplus funds flowed into the stock market, and asset prices began to rise. The real estate market no longer played such an essential role, such as land speculation, which became a social issue. In 1989, the Bank of Japan suspended the low-interest rate policy, and the government regulated the lending. There was a rebound that had risen too sharply, and then stock prices and land prices entered a prolonged slump. This was the burst of the Japanese economic bubble. It took a long time to recover from the aftermath, and it was later called the “Lost 20 Years” (Nihon Sangyo Keizai Shimbun, 2013).

Reflecting the social and economic situation the birth rate started declining, the housing policies started to focus more on the elderly from 1986. The sixth phase of the five-year housing construction plan changed directions leaning towards integrating the housing programmes into a housing master plan. This showed the reconstruction of housing policies and the combining of the private and public housing sectors together as a commercial housing market. This encouraged local governments to reflect locally on their housing policies. The government promoted housing supply initiatives targeting the middle aged and elderly people through new town projects.

Once Seiichi’s children became independent. He decided to close the Aotayashoten in 1987, and his first daughter rented the same space and opened her own accessory store. However, the rental fee per month suddenly increased from 40,000 JPY (310 GBP) to 80,000 (620 GBP) in a half year and the impact of the economic bubble forced her to close the store.

 

After the Japanese economy experienced inflation and deflation, the Great Hanshin earthquake occurred (Kobe earthquake) at a magnitude of 7.2 on January 17, 1995, at 5:46 a.m. This caused more than 6,000 deaths and over 30,000 injuries (NIST, 2017). Although Seiichi had renovated his house and put in place measure to strengthen it against earthquakes the year before, it was still damaged. As carpenters were in high demanded after the disaster, he was unable to fix them. The revised building standard act did not allow him to have a house of the same size, and he needed to leave as he did not own the land. Seiichi gave up rebuilding the house on the same site. They had no choice but to stay at a designated evacuation area in an elementary school and got allocated to a flat in a prefabricated house after some time. He applied for the restoration housing fund several times but with too many applicants he was unable to receive it. Finally, he was able to access public housing in June 1998. This was a small flat with a six tatami-mats room, a small western room, kitchen, balcony, a toilet, and a bathroom. That was the final abode for Kyoko and Seiichi.

 Conclusion 

After WWII, Japan experienced rapid economic and population growth. In response to the housing demands, the government established regulations, initiatives, and institutions for housing provision. As time passed, they encouraged private sectors to invest in housing materials and housing constructions for improving the housing quality.

Whilst globalisation has both good and bad sides, the Japanese economy was badly damaged by the Plaza accord. This put Japan into an economic recession for a long time which led to low birth rates and triggered an aging society. In 2018, 27.7% of the population was over 65 years old, and 13.6% of Japanese houses became vacant without maintenance (Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan, 2019).

The Japanese livelihood has changed a lot over the 90 years of my grandfather’s life. In association with many life events and unavoidable circumstances such as work-related transfers, family and disasters, he lived in many different types of homes. After he cared for Kyoko who had dementia, he passed away of blood cancer last June, just one day before I got the unconditional offer from the University College London. He lived his life to the fullest.

 

Note – It is necessary to clarify a uniquely Japanese way to measure floors with using the unit of “tatami”.  The original meaning of tatami is a rectangular mat for floor covering, which consists of a thick straw base and a soft, finely woven rush cover with cloth borders from ancient times. A Danchi tatami measures approximately 170 by 85 cm and is about five cm thick (Magokorotatami 2020). Six tatami-mats room is Six tatami-mats room considered a standard size in Japan. While 4.5 mats can be recognised as small or cramped, an eight-mats or ten mats room is a quite large room in general (H&R GROUP 2018). The most Japanese houses request people to take off their shoes in the entrance.

Bibliography 

H&R GROUP. (2018) ‘Measuring Room Sizes in Japan’. Available at:  https://morethanrelo.com/en/measuring-room-sizes-in-japan/. (Accessed: 21 March 2020).

Hirota, J. (1992). ‘Taiheiyousensou ni okeru Wagakuni no Sensohigai:  Sensohigaichosa no Sengoshi Keizaigaku Saisyu Kogi yori’, The Journal of  Rikyokeizaigakukenkyu, 45 (4), pp. 1-20. Available at:

https://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/120005887738/en/. (Accessed: 21 March 2020).

Iecon (2020) ‘Shakuchitsuki Tatemono wo Konyusuru Merit・Demerit wa?  Wakariyasuku Kaisetsu’. Available at: https://iekon.jp/shakuchiken-merit-demerit/.  (Accessed: 21 March 2020).

Kobe City (2020) ‘Kindai Kobe Ryakunenpyo’. Available

at: https://www.city.kobe.lg.jp/a57337/shise/about/energy/nenpyo.html. (Accessed:  21 March 2020).

Kobe Kitano Ijinkangai (2020) ‘Kobe Kitano History’. Available at:  https://www.kobeijinkan.com/history.(Accessed: 21 March 2020).

Magokorotatami. (2020) ‘Tatami no Saizu ni tsuite’. Available at:

https://magokorotatami.co.jp/sp/stopics_tatami4-1.html. (Accessed: 21 March 2020). Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan (2019) ‘Heisei 30 nen  Jyutaku・Tochitokeichosa: Jyutaku oyobi Setai ni Kansuru Kihonsyukei Kekka  Gaiyou’. Available at:

https://www.stat.go.jp/data/jyutaku/2018/pdf/kihon_gaiyou.pdf. (Accessed: 21 March 2020).

Nagano, Y. (2007). Jyutakuseisaku to Jyutakuseisan no Henkeku ni Kansuru  Kihontekikenkyu: Mokuzojyutakuzairaikohou ni kakawaru Fukkouseisaku no  Henkaku. Quarterly Journal of Nihon Jyutaku Kyokai. Geihakukoudai (25). pp.10-75

Nihon Sangyo Keizai Shimbun (2013) ‘Genzai Nihon wo Shirutame ni (14) Baburu Keiki towa Nan Dattaka’. Available at:

https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGKDZO50544580S3A110C1TCP000/.(Accessed:  21 March 2020).

NIST (2017) ‘Earthquake Kobe Japan 1995’. Available at: https://www.nist.gov/el/earthquake-kobe-japan-1995.(Accessed: 21 March 2020).

Omuta City (2020) ‘Tokeinenkan’. Available at: https://www.city.omuta.lg.jp/hpKiji/pub/detail.aspx?c_id=5&id=3991&class_set_id= 1&class_id=206.(Accessed: 21 March 2020).

SUIDOUSUJI CO., Ltd (2020) ‘Suidosuji Syotengai ni tsuite’. Available at: http://www.suido-suji.com/about/index.php.(Accessed: 21 March 2020).

Suzuki, T. (2018) ‘Ie to Jyutakugaisya no Rekishi: Gendai ni Nokoru Kindaikenchiku  no Katachi’, 7 June 2018. Available at:

https://www.sumailab.net/column/theme/4/article/71/.(Accessed: 21 March 2020).

Statistical Bureau, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, Japan. ‘Jutaku Tokei Chosa’.

Uesugi, M. & Asami, Y. (2009). Significance of dwelling size standard and research trends in Japan. CSIS Discussion paper No.98. Available at http://www.csis.u tokyo.ac.jp/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/98.pdf. (Accessed: 21 March 2020).

 

This housing story is part of a mini-series revealing the complex ways in which personal and political aspects of shelter provision interweave over time, and impact on multiple aspects of people’s lives. Space for strategic choice is nearly always available to some degree, but the parameters of that choice can be dramatically restricted or enhanced by context. The wide range of experience presented in this collection shines a light on the wealth of knowledge and insights about housing that our students regularly bring to the DPU’s learning processes.

Introduction

This housing story follows the journey of Mum and Dad, who also happen to be my parents. Characteristically, Mum is Fire while Dad is Ice, but their housing visions and strategies ultimately align in response to two major themes. Through conversations with both characters supported by secondary sources, this essay illuminates the notion of social networks for housing and their socio-economic advantage (or lack thereof) to individuals. Secondly, this essay explores residential land-use conversion, where for specific reasons, residents are displaced because of informal and gradual residential to commercial land-use changes.

 

Starting in the backhouse

Mum and Dad began their housing story at 30 Aramide Street, Ikeja, Lagos. Dad had lived in the compound since 1990 after he migrated from the nearby city of Ibadan. Mum had also relocated to Lagos in 1986 but only joined Dad in 30 Aramide after their wedding in 1994. The couple were part of the massive immigration into Lagos, contributing to the rapid population growth from 350,000 in 1950 to 25,615,703 today (MEPB, 2019).

30 Aramide belonged to Dad’s father, Papa. Papa bought the three-bedroom detached house on a 1247 sqm plot of land in 1963 from the Western Nigerian Housing Corporation (WNHC), a public organisation mandated with the “development, construction and management of housing estates” (Onibokun, 1971) for the Western Region of Nigeria. The establishment of the First Republic of Nigeria in 1963 sub-divided the federal government into four semi-autonomous regions, rendering WNHC a federal entity. On the promise of a new country, WNHC ambitiously established the Ikeja Industrial Estate “consist[ing] of 500 acres developed for industrial establishments and ­­300 acres for housing” (Abiodun, 1976, p.343). Aramide Street was intended to accommodate higher-income managerial staff facilitating the Estate establishment. While WNHC hoped to accommodate lower-income workers in apartment blocks (ibid.) and offer more accessible payment plans, they did not urgently address this agenda. Instead, by the Corporation’s dissolution in 1966 (after the Republic’s first coup), only 505 homes[1] were built and all were sold for GBP1000 to GBP4000 to “top government and quasi-government officials, professionals, big businessmen, and high-ranking politicians” (Stren, 1972, p.504 cited Ogunpola 1969, p. 3). With friends in high places and USD4200 to spare, Papa secured freehold ownership of 30 Aramide.

Papa initially leased 30 Aramide to Chinese expatriate families. In 1973, however, Papa’s seventh child moved into the main house, while the ninth child moved into a newly built structure behind the main house called the backhouse… all at no cost. The backhouse was a small sand-crete one-bedroom bungalow with an open-air kitchen. In 1990, the seventh child moved into his own home, the ninth child relocated to the main house, and Dad (the eleventh child) moved into the backhouse. By 1973, seeking rental income on 30 Aramide was challenging. Nigeria was recovering from civil war, and the Western Region had been further divided into Lagos State and Western State. With such political instability, the country was not in a position to focus on industrial development. Besides, Papa was more than happy not to receive any financial income from 30 Aramide. As far as he was concerned, providing a soft landing for his young adult children in Lagos’s harsh environment was profit enough.

Naturally, the children were delighted to accept Papa’s benevolence because living in 30 Aramide was an opportunity they could not pass. Accommodation costs in Lagos have always been high. In fact, high rents in Lagos contributed to the national general strikes in 1964, and despite increases in minimum wages, rent continued to rise disproportionately (Stern,1972, p.503). In particular, Mum and Dad moved to Lagos at the peak of crisis caused by an economic emergency imposed by the Babangida military regime in 1985, followed by International Monetary Fund Structural Adjustments programmes in 1986. The naira had devalued from NGN0.77/USD in 1984 to NGN7.39/USD in 1990 (Iyatse, 2021). A state-imposed forex embargo encouraged a booming parallel market that demanded NGN10.70/USD (ibid.). In such conditions, how did people without generous families cope? This excerpt by Koenigsberger (1970, p.394) gives a clue: “Available accommodation became overcrowded, clandestine settlements sprang up on the outskirts of the big cities and squatters occupied open grounds near the city centres”.

Without Papa’s generosity, Mum and Dad could not afford to live in such a well-connected location. Fair enough, it was not on the Island.[2] Still, it was close enough to essential transport routes and the Lagos State Government Secretariat. Additionally, if Mum contributed rent towards her matrimonial home, she would not have been able to maintain her two-bedroom rented apartment for twelve years, where all her younger siblings lived at some point… free of charge. Papa and Mum recognised the value of oh-so-common rent-free family houses: Assets that mitigate against the social costs of poverty, particularly in contexts that lack well-developed social security systems such as Lagos (paraphrased from Korboe, 1992).

 

Fixing the backhouse

For a bachelor like Dad, the backhouse had been perfectly adequate. The ninth child had made modifications to include a living room and a dining room; The space satisfied necessary storage, rest, and wash functions. However, Mum had been accustomed to a different standard of living and things would have to change. Some of the modifications were necessary. For instance, the cooking-gas tank residing inside the small kitchen was rightly relocated outdoors. Mum and Dad had just begun building their businesses, and almost all discretionary income was reinvested in their respective ventures. Therefore, modifications were undertaken incrementally and within a tight budget, probably formulated by the ever-frugal Dad. In this case, incremental should not be mistaken for continual. Improvements were few and far between because the couple was willing to wait until they had saved enough money to afford the quality of construction they desired. Till today, Mum would say, “I don’t manage,” and the backhouse was structurally sufficient that they never had to.

Having avoided the cost of residential rent, the couple later indulged in less necessary improvements. Mum fondly recalls the most luxurious modification that literally transformed the couple’s life. In 1998, they converted a large closet into an en-suite bathroom fitted with white tiles and green sanitary wares to ease the burdens of caring for their first-born child (me). Green for no other reason than the joy it sparked in Mum. While they were at it, they repainted all the furniture in the main bedroom a glossy bright green to match the new bathroom. The backhouse served many vital functions for the young family. After all, Mum’s social stationery printing press started in its dining room. However, it was only a matter of time before they maxed out on modification value potential and outgrew their first home.

 

Moving to the main house

Eventually, Mum and Dad moved from the backhouse to the main house under exceptional circumstances. One would have expected the ninth child to leave the main house soon, Dad would move in, and the twelfth child would replace him in the backhouse. But when Papa died in 1999, he willed 30 Aramide to Dad. Papa had freehold ownership of 30 Aramide before the 1978 Land Use Act of Nigeria, “vest[ed] all Land compromised in the territory of each State (except land vested in the Federal government or its agencies) solely in the Governor of the State” (Federation of Nigeria, 1990). After the Land Use Act was ratified, his freehold ownership was replaced with 100-year leasehold ownership signed by the Lagos State Governor. Dad inherited the leasehold with 79 years left on the dial. Why Papa would will this valuable asset to his eleventh child in the backhouse instead of the ninth child in the main house, no one would say. Either way, Mum and Dad relocated to the main house, while the ninth child returned to the backhouse, thus breaking the established tenure arrangement in the family house. Indeed, the couple greatly appreciated the unfortunately circumstanced opportunity. Not only had they outgrown the backhouse, but the main house came with authoritative perks over the entire compound. For instance, they now controlled the operations of the electricity generator, essentially dictating the power supply on behalf of all residents in 30 Aramide – a fantastic privilege considering the incessant power outages that still plague Nigeria.

In 1999, the country had just ended a brutal military dictatorship and turned a new leaf as the Fourth Republic. The economy was on the up; Mum and Dad could have afforded to leave 30 Aramide and relocate to the Island where they would be closer to friends, and Dad could avoid the painful commute to his law firm. Instead, they decided to remain in Ikeja for the following reasons. Firstly, Mum had relocated her printing press to the boys’ quarters of 21 Aramide and wanted to stay within walking distance. Secondly, the couple had already been working the angles to secure a position for their first child in one of the city’s best schools nearby. Lastly, the Island notoriously flooded during the rainy season as the drainage infrastructure for the water-logged landscape was woefully inadequate. Paying rent on a home that flooded annually did not seem like good value for money. Remaining on the Mainland – on solid ground – did.

 

Changes on Aramide street

Unfortunately, the couple’s tenure in 30 Aramide would not last long owing to land-use changes on Aramide Street. In the 1970s, there had been about 60 households. Then came a Chinese restaurant, replacing a residential unit, followed by a furniture store and a logistics centre. The arrival of a mini-mall cemented the fate of the street as commercial. By 2001, only six households remained on Aramide Street. Some new businesses did little to amend the architecture of the homes, while others erected purpose-built offices. Observing the commercial land-use demands in Ikeja, the Lagos State government reactively demarcated some WNHC-zoned residential areas as commercial in the Ikeja Land Use Map of 1982[3] (Oduwaye and Enisan, 2011). Aramide Street is sure to have been rezoned. According to Mum, the transformation on Aramide Street was inevitable. The road was a major thoroughfare linking Alausa, Allen Avenue and Oba Akran Avenue, all major institutional/industrial areas. On the day of the Ikeja Cantonment Bomb Blast,[4] she recalls watching tens of thousands of people flood her street on foot, walking past her gate and observing her in her home. It was then that, with disdain, she realised she lived on the main road.

The tension between the desire for privacy and the reality of exposure was a historical theme for residents of Aramide Street. In 1980, all households replaced their steel mesh and hedge fences with tall brick walls. Every family also had a mai guard[5] who lived in a small gatehouse and provided base-level security[6] for free accommodation and a stipend. Dad went the extra mile and acquired eleven guard dogs. Yet, no measure was enough to fend off crime in light of the depletion of residential homes. The thought process of a criminal was that if no one was watching, one could easily get away with it. So it was, that when 30 Aramide stood between two commercial entities from 1999, several mid-night attempts were made to break into the compound. Mum suffered from anxiety and insomnia, but despite her worries, she did not comment on wanting to leave 30 Aramide.

Dad was grateful to live in 30 Aramide cost-free. But he certainly held no sentimental attachment to the home. It simply is not his nature. He had received many financially enticing offers for 30 Aramide, and he recalls feeling the pressure to be rational. Although, as someone who always plays the long game, he probably could have remained in 30 Aramide, knowing one of the eleven dogs could protect him. Yet, it took only one successful armed robbery attack in November 2001 for the pressure to be rational (financially) and responsible (for his family) to give way.  A week later, he accepted a ten-year leasehold offer from a bank that would pay a substantial lump sum and another payment for demolishing 30 Aramide. He broke the news on an unassuming evening, informing Mum that she had just two weeks to find a new home before the Bank took possession.

Lessons learned

Mum and Dad have since rented a three-bedroom home and now own a four-bedroom house. Both homes are in the gated community of Lira Housing Association (LIRA) Ikeja, a seven-minute walk from 30 Aramide. While their housing story has evolved, the threat of residential land-use conversion persists. Ikeja, in particular, has experienced a reduction in residential land from the initially planned 41 percent to 28.4 percent in 2010. Meanwhile, commercial land has increased from 9.5 percent to 46.06 percent. (Oduwaye and Enisan, 2011). Oosterbaan et al. (2012) highlight the widespread nature of residential to commercial conversations in sub-Saharan African cities. The process is typically informal, and many businesses promoting this phenomenon are small-scale. In response to the violation of land-use legislation, the Lagos State Physical Planning Authority (LASPPPA) is clamping down by sealing uncomplying buildings and imposing charges (Edeme, 2021; Olasunkanmi, 2021). However, Oosterbaan et al. (2012, p.63) rightly note that such sanctions could either stifle economic vitality or prove ineffective “considering the widespread, informal nature of the process, and the inadequate capacity of planning agencies to enforce such a law” (ibid.).

At a community level, LIRA is one of the few housing associations off the main road to resist land-use conversion. Aramide Street and the adjacent Adeniyi Jones Avenue remain favoured commercial axes, and businesses that cannot afford units on the main roads seek cheaper leases within housing associations. By joining the association, every resident within LIRA has agreed never to use, sell or rent their property for commercial purposes. The Executive Council – where Dad served as vice-chairman – fiercely enforces this rule to the extent that a fellow resident has been sued for using their property as an Airbnb. The resident claims an Airbnb does not qualify as a commercial enterprise, but the Council begs to differ. The case is presently pending in court.

­­­Is preserving the land use of LIRA worth the cost? To Mum and Dad, the answer is a vehement yes. Reflecting on the experience of being displaced from 30 Aramide, Dad says the following: “I have a right to safety and privacy. I should be able to stand on my balcony, let my guard down and wave at my neighbours. I should not have to deal with a restaurant or office and their associated trouble, traffic and strangers disturbing my peace. If the government cannot defend those rights, should we not do it ourselves?” The contradiction lies in the fact that Mum would not have been able to use the boys’ quarters of 21 Aramide and later the main house of 26 Aramide for her now thriving printing press presently on 24 Aramide if it were not for the informal conversion processes she opposes today. She would have been dragged to court, which would have been the end of her business. The real question should be, what determines a city’s spatial organisation? The neatly laid colour blocks on a map, the instincts of citizens, or both?

Note

The names of Aramide Street and Lira Housing Association (LIRA) have been altered to anonymise the identities of the main characters.

 

References

Abiodun, J. O. (1976). Housing problems in Nigerian cities. The Town Planning Review, 47(4), pp.339-347.

Dad(2022, April). Interview about 30 Aramide Street.

Edeme, V. (2021, November 19). Lagos govt decries conversion of residential buildings for commercial uses. Punch Nigeria. [online] Accessed April 22, 2022. Available at: https://punchng.com/lagos-govt-decries-conversion-of-residential-buildings-for-commercial-uses/

Federation of Nigeria (1990) Land Use Act, Laws of the Federation of Nigeria (ed)

Iyatse, G. (2021, October 18). Osinbajo’s prescription and painful history of naira devaluation. The Guardian Nigeria. [online] Accessed April 9, 2022. Available at: https://guardian.ng/business-services/osinbajos-prescription-and-painful-history-of-naira-devaluation/

Koenigsberger, O. (1970) Housing in the National Development Plan: An Example from Nigeria. Ekistics, 180.

Korboe, D. (1992). Family-houses in Ghanaian cities: To be or not to be?. Urban Studies, 29(7), pp.1159-1171.

Ministry of Economic Budget and Planning’ MEPB’ (2019) Lagos Socio-Economic Profile. [online] Available at: http://mepb.lagosstate.gov.ng/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2019/11/11.0-LAGOS-SOCIO-ECONOMIC-PROFILE.pdf

Mum (2022, April). Interview about 30 Aramide Street.

Oduwaye, L. & Enisan, G. (2011). Effects of Global Economy on Spatial Structure of Ikeja. Proceedings REAL CORP, pp.1257-1265.

Ogunpola, G. A. (1969). The functioning of a statutory corporation: the case of Western Nigeria Housing Corporation 1958-1966. Quarterly Journal of Administration, 4(1), pp.31-44.

Olasunkanmi, O. (2021, March 3). Lagos set to enforce converted property in government schemes. Lagos State Official Government Website. [online] Accessed April 9, 2022. Available at: https://lagosstate.gov.ng/blog/2021/03/03/lasg-set-to-enforce-converted-property-in-government-schemes/

Onibokun, G. A. (1971). Housing finance in Nigeria: A critical survey of private and public sources. The Town Planning Review, 42(3), pp.277-292.

Oosterbaan, C., Arku, G., & Asiedu, A. B. (2012). Conversion of residential units to commercial spaces in Accra, Ghana: A policy dilemma. International Planning Studies, 17(1), 45-66.

Stren, R. (1972). Urban Policy in Africa: A Political Analysis. African Studies Review, 15(3), pp.489-516.

The Birmingham Post (1963, October 1) Swamp becomes industrial estate. The Birmingham Post, p.14

[1] 505 homes in all housing estates, including the Bodija Estate, Ibadan and the Ikeja Industrial Estate, Lagos.

[2] Lagos is divided into the Mainland and the Island. The Island is home to Lagos Island and Victoria Island, which serve as the city’s Business Districts.

[3] The Ikeja Land Use Map (1982) is not publicly accessible

[4] A armoury explosion at the Ikeja Military Cantonment that killed 1,100 people and displaced over 20,000.

[5] A security personnel. Typically, a rural-urban immigrant. The concept of a mai guard deserves its own housing story.

[6] They did not have any security training but acted as eyes on the street.

 

This housing story is part of a mini-series revealing the complex ways in which personal and political aspects of shelter provision interweave over time, and impact on multiple aspects of people’s lives. Space for strategic choice is nearly always available to some degree, but the parameters of that choice can be dramatically restricted or enhanced by context. The wide range of experience presented in this collection shines a light on the wealth of knowledge and insights about housing that our students regularly bring to the DPU’s learning processes.

Introduction

Through time, the struggle of people who migrated from Peruvian rural areas to Lima, the capital of Peru, has been marked by the “informal” occupation of the land that has transformed Lima into a megalopolis. In this context, the story of Maria kicks off in the 1960s when her family was forced to move from their original Tayabamba, a small town in the Andes, to Lima. Her emigration story is the trajectory of thousands of families that were forced to occupy Lima’s outskirts due to Shining Path terrorist actions in several towns of Peru.

Maria’s story highlights the trajectory of a woman who seek to overcome the barriers of the unequal land distribution of housing and how in this context, migrants created self-constructed and self-organized agencies that enable them to create a space for their families, as portrayed in the documentary “A roof of my own” (Turner, 1964) and the follow-up “City Unfinished – Voices of El Ermitaño” (Golda-Pongratz & Flores, 2018). Likewise, it portrait how self-construction has evolved throughout time regarding the inclusion of further generations challenges.

Housing Self-Construction in Lima

In the socio-political context of Lima, self-construction practices have turned into the rule rather than the exception. Even for the past two decades, Peru has increased their economic profits, the production of informal settlements has been severely intensified. Nowadays, more than 90% of Lima’s expansion corresponded to the informal production of housing (Espinoza & Fort, 2020).

Self-construction processes started from 1960s when immigrants from the Andes and other rural regions of Peru were forced to occupy illegally Lima’s outskirts. This first period was marked by a massive and collective occupation of an undeveloped land. Andean cosmovision have its roots in a relational and collective cosmovision that were supported by the practice of “Minka” , which was a practice that entailed mutual aid and collective workforce used for the benefit of the community. Since the origin of the people who occupied those areas were rooted in those ancient collective practices, the first production of self-constructed housing was characterized by social relationships of solidarity, cooperation, and mutual-aid.

First Migration (1960): Assisted shantytowns

The story of Maria started in this first occupation of Lima’s outskirts. Up to this point, Peruvian socio-political was marked by the spatial effects of Shining Path terrorist actions over several rural areas in Peru, those actions were forcing people to move from their original regions to escape from persecution, terror, and an ever-growing internal war. Lima, the capital of Peru, was the recipient of massive occupations in underdeveloped areas.

Maria, at 25 years of age, was forced to leave her original town Tayabamba with her three sisters after her mother was assassinated when refusing to join Shining Path. Her mother was a farmer, and they live from the commercial exchange of the products that the land used to produce daily. In that sense, Maria didn’t possess any savings that allow her to take a housing mortgage and access a social housing program. This is why, in coordination with other women and families, they organized themselves to take Pampa de Cueva, which it was an undeveloped area in the Northern outskirts of Lima, that used to belong to an industrial company.

 

 

Turner (1964) in “Housing by people” explain housing self-construction processes by proposing an autonomy in its production. By recalling “people as infrastructure” (Turner, 1964, p.17), Turner states that rather than centralize the housing production in the state, this effort should be transformed into a self-governing approach by considering people’s participation as a social capital. Maria, without economic capital to invest in her own house, started to organize herself with other families in Pampa de Cueva settlement by reactivating the cooperative practices that migrants from the Andes carried out through “minka”. Initially, on how to distribute the land area for the accommodation of each family and aftwerwards on how to build-up collectively the housing dwellings of the neighbourhood.

Nevertheless, the right to access a piece of land for Maria and the other families was not that easy to achieve. During 1960, there were successive evictions reinforced by the state and land private owners of Pampa de Cueva. The association between the government and the private sector produced several attempts to evict Maria and their neighbors. However, throughout “comites” (cooperatives), which were groups in charge of the community decisions organized at the core of the initial occupation, they started a process in which different forms of organization and mutual aid will take place, becoming key elements in the fight for the land tenure.

As stated by Turner (1964), if the right to the city is understood from a democratic and socialist context, “planning and administration are legislative processes limited to actions essential to establish and maintain an equitable distribution of resources” (Turner, 1964,p. 22). In Lima of the 1960s, that distribution was concentrated in powerful families that have inherited those pieces of land from their own families. However, the social capital of lower-income people was their only possibility to make decisions collectively and negotiate within the state regarding their right to housing tenure.

“We were not able to leave our houses because we have no other option to live, we persisted and remain despite the violence of the police. We couldn’t step back” (Maria, 2022). As a result of several negotiations with the state and a massive force of cooperation and self-organization, the right to remain was approved for Pampa de Cueva dwellers.

Boom of “assisted shantytowns” and Collectivism strengthening (1970s-1980s)

Having achieved the right to remain, the spread of informal settlements increased rapidly in several underdeveloped areas of Lima as portrayed in the cover page of Architectural Design (Turner, 1963). In this period, the evolution showcases that the barriadas started covering the 10 per cent of Lima’s population in 1955 and 25 per cent in 1970 (Riofrio, 2003). Now that Maria and Pampa de Cueva dwellers have achieved the access to land tenure, the challenge was located on how to gain access to public services and technical assistance in the production of housing.

The strengthening of the social organizations in Pampa de Cueva was an important element in the process to gain access to further subsidies from the government for public services. This organization was rooted twofold. On the one hand, cooperatives operated at the level of the negotiations within the state and on the other hand, they operate at the grassroots level by negotiating with the other families regarding which decisions will be the priorities for the common challenges. In this context, Maria became a leader in the organization of all the “comites” of Pampa de Cueva, also enhancing its political capacities for the benefit of the development of the common challenges of the settlement.

Turner (1964) states that an autonomy of housing production implies that rather than centralizing the decisions towards the state, governments should act as mediators that could empower the social capacities of people and their autonomous decisions. “Instead of needing to know how many houses are or will be demanded in a given place and time or for a given social sector, planners and administrators need only know the approximate quantities of building materials, tools, and labour, land, and credit that will be required. (Turner, 1964, p. 30). Following this approach, cooperative, and collective aid keep marking the growth of self-constructed housing in Pampa de Cueva. Maria’s house was built-up with the help of their neighbours. “With the other neighbours, we organize shifts to work each weekend. We helped each other and we know that we can rely on our “compadres” to finish our housing roofs or building up our rooms” (Maria, 2022)

As a result of that force of self-organization and a massive social pressure, the Ministry of Housing approved the legal framework that will enable new shantytowns to gain access to a permanent legal tenure and further technical and economic assistance as public services and infrastructure (Castillo-Garcia, 2021). According to Espinoza, et al (2020), lower income dwellers understood that if they take the land, afterwards the government will subsidize the land tenure and the access to public services (Espinoza, et al, 2020). Peru rapidly became a reference of “assisted shantytowns” among Latin America, since it was the only government supporting the self-production of housing (Riofrio, 2003). In that sense, the agency of Maria and Pampa de Cueva dwellers contributed to the integration of the production of self-constructed housing in the National Housing policy and as part of the correlative development strategies. (Castillo-Garcia, 2021).

The switch from self-production assistance to neoliberal policies opening (1990-2000)

Nevertheless, from 1990 onwards, housing policies took as inspiration Hernando de Soto’s theories of neoliberal planning (Riofrio, 2003). According to De Soto, with the legal housing tenancy the private sector will regulate the further upgrading of informal settlements (Riofrio,2007). Technical capacity was transferred to local governments who can approve tentative land areas for social housing interests (Castillo-Garcia, 2021) and the production of social housing was commissioned to the private sector through the creation of MIVIVIENDA fund. As a result of those policies, informal land speculators appeared in several underdeveloped areas of Lima. Those neoliberal attempts were supported by Alberto Fujimori’s government, who used a populist strategy to promise housing tenure to migrants and contributed to a culture of stigmatization of cooperativism, community organization, and political participation.

“During Fujimori’s government, the members of the comites were bribed and the way we cooperate with others wasn’t the same (…) people were also afraid to be stigmatized as a terrorist for Fujimori’s associates” (Maria, 2022). Meanwhile, up to this point Alejandrina’s family grew up. She got married and after having two children her family required more space for inhabiting and working. Since the plot that Maria’s fight for allowed her to progressively adapt her house, they built a second floor for their children and expanded the first floor to open a small grocery shop. However, her sisters could no longer live with them, so they started looking for affordable options closer to their social and economic networks. In this process, the only alternative that they find it was to buy informally some plots to land trafficants in Pampa de Cueva. Having understood that the process of assisted shantytowns will further provide access to public services and land tenure, private speculators created systems of informal occupations and further traffic of land, distributing the land and selling the plots for 700 dollars, a value that lower-income families could afford by a small loan from a local bank.

This situation marked a different occupation, the mutual aid has progressively been disappearing. In addition to the regulatory opening for speculators, new generations were more interested into remain closer to their social and job networks but less interested in contributing to a community belonging (Riofrio, 2002). Even though there was initial support for self-construction processes, by opening housing regulations to “let the private sector upgrade the assisted shantytowns” (De Soto, cited in Riofrio, 2007), who were benefited were the land speculators rather than lower-income dwellers.

Second Generation Challenges and a never-ending process (2000-2022)

From 2000 onwards, the government offered the major responsability for the social housing production to the Real State sector. Influenced by the United Nations Agenda, which “recognizes that governments are not able to meet housing needs through direct action or state provision and that the diversity and scale of such need require the participation of the private sector and local communities” (UN Agenda 2012, cited in Payne, et al, 2012, p.13).

Meanwhile, alternative options for Maria’s family have been limited. Maria’s son grew up and with a family, affording the initial payment of a mortgage was not possible. Even If the government proposed subsidies for social housing in some areas located on the outskirts of Lima (Espinoza, et al, 2021), he didn’t qualify for bank credit with a $ 300 basic salary and accumulated debts. Therefore, his only alternative was still to buy a plot from the land trafficators. Consequently, self-construction from the 2000s onwards, influenced by the land traficant organizations, became the only alternative for further generations. By 2018, the production of shantytowns represented tentative the 90 percent of Lima’s expansion (Espinoza, et al, 2020).

.

 

In this context, how could regulation work to the benefit of lower-income dwellers? Turner (1990, cited in Payne & Majale, 2012) proposes a switch in the traditional housing regulation by an “open system” that will enable households to find adaptable alternatives suitable to their needs departing from a range of competition of all the suppliers involved in the production of housing. In Lima, policies oriented towards Real State profits and the inadaptability of regulations towards the needs of new generations contributed to the progression of a never-ending process of land trafficant. In that sense, the fight for affordable and secure housing persists in the story of Maria.

“Nevertheless, we are still positive in the future of our family, we struggle to build-up our houses and access to sanitation and electricity, I believe that my son will also be able to someday have a house for him and his future family” (Maria, 2022).

Conclusions

Maria’s trajectory showcase that even though the initial government support of self-construction processes benefited the development of lower-income housing access, within the enhancement of the neoliberal policies and the correlative land regulations for the benefit of Real Estate developers, a vast ground for private formal and informal speculators was opened. Furthermore, the strengthening of those policies and the new generations’ interests also has contributed to the weakening of the social organization and cooperative practices. In this regard, Maria’s story demonstrates that individual land tenure doesn’t guarantee that the right to housing will be achieved. As shown in the story, this also open the ground for alliances between the private sector and the state rooted in a long trace of corruption carried out in Peru.

Furthermore, Maria’s story also highlights the power of organization and people’s agency as social capital and strategic elements in the fight for housing. Beyond a romanticization of self-construction, the story shows that community participation is imperative in the journey toward housing. Therefore, housing requires to be reframed as a process rather than a product (Turner,1964).  Beyond understanding the housing question from a critique of the state, the story shows that the right for housing navigate in the nuances of politics, personal trajectories, community participation, and urban and housing policies. In this context, further questions need to be raised. How to co-create adaptable housing policies in which the different agents involved could generate flexible and affordable alternatives for lower-income dwellers? How to navigate land traffic challenges from a co-production and participation of further generations? And finally, how to reimagine collectively a roof of her (their) own?

Bibliography & References

• Castillo-Garcia, F (2021). Public Housing Policies in Peru 1946-2021 and contributions to a public housing policy 2021-2030. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0316-5201
• Espinoza, A. & R. Fort (2020).Mapeo y tipología de la expansión urbana en el Perú. Lima: GRADE; ADI. https://www.grade.org.pe/publicaciones/mapeo-y-tipologia-de-la-expansion-urbana-en-el-peru/
• Fernandez, J.C & Pelaez,F (2021). Unidades cooperativas: de la vivienda titulada al barrio titulado. En FIIU5. Resiliencia Urbana. Tomo I. (pp. 21 – 27). LIMA. Ocupa tu calle. https://96p.ef8.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Libro-FIIU-5.tomo1_.pdf?time=1615397872
• McGuirk, J. (2014). Radical Cities: Across the Latin America in Search of a New Architecture. London: Verso. – Watkins, Katie.
• Golda-Pongratz, K. & Flores, R. (2018). Ciudad Infinita – Voces de El Ermitaño” [City Unfinished – Voices of El Ermitaño]” (2018)
• Golda-Pongratz, K (2021). John FC Turner (1927-). The Architectural Review.Self-built housing + AR House: The Architectural Review Issue 1477, December 2020/January 2021. https://www.architectural-review.com/essays/reputations/john-fc-turner-1927
• Riofrio, G. (2003). Urban Slums reports: The case of Lima-Peru. Global Report on Human Settlements 2003. The Challenge of Slums.
• Riofrio, G. (2007). La política de vivienda en el Perú responde a la oferta y no a la demanda [In person]. Palestra, Portal de Asuntos PúblicosPE. http://repositorio.pucp.edu.pe/index//handle/123456789/11941
  
• Payne, G. & Majale, M. (2012). The Urban Housing Manual: Making Regulatory Frameworks Work for the Poor. 10.4324/9781849773362.
• Turner, J.F.C (1964). A roof of my own (UNTV 1964, 29 minutes)
• Turner, J.F.C (1976). Housing by people: Towards autonomy in building environments. London: Marion Boyars.

This housing story is part of a mini-series revealing the complex ways in which personal and political aspects of shelter provision interweave over time, and impact on multiple aspects of people’s lives. Space for strategic choice is nearly always available to some degree, but the parameters of that choice can be dramatically restricted or enhanced by context. The wide range of experience presented in this collection shines a light on the wealth of knowledge and insights about housing that our students regularly bring to the DPU’s learning processes.