Atlantis 28_2

ATLANTIS MAGAZINE FOR URBANISM & LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE

#28.2 December 2017

ACTION • REACTION

COMMITTEES 2017 We could not be as visible as we are without the great effort of a lot of active students. With the help of them we can organise excursions, lectures, workshops, drinks and events. The Polis board wants to thank all the people involved for their great efforts and positive input!

We are always looking for enthusiastic people to join. Interested in one of the Polis committees? Do not hesitate to contact us at our Polis office (01.west.350) or by e-mail: contact@polistudelft.nl URBAN AND LANDSCAPE WEEK ATLANTIS EDUCATION PR COMMITTEE BIG TRIP & SMALL TRIP

POLIS BOARD Harsh Malhotra - Chairman Gereon Rolvering - Vice Chairman Amanda Bryant - Secretary Daan Rooze - Treasurer Nilofer Afza - Public Relations Karishma Asarpota - Atlantis

JOIN US Not already a member of Polis? For only €12.50 a year as a student of TU Delft, €30 for individual professional membership, or €80 for organizations you can join our network! You will receive our Atlantis Magazine (for free) four times a year, a monthly newsletter and access to all events organized by Polis.

E-mail contact@polistudelft.nl to find out more.

FROM THE BOARD Dear Polis Members, The board of 2017 is almost at a close. It is now time to hand over our responsibilities to the next team in the new year. Our theme for this year was ‘synergy’ – between urbanism and landscape architecture, and between academics, professionals and students. We had a bigger involvement from landscape architecture students this year especially in UL week, and architecture students in Atlantis and PublicRelations. The outreach of Polis on social media has doubled this year and we took on a bigger role to welcome new students to the program.

Working together with members from a diverse background on many events and projects has been very rewarding. Our heartiest thank you to every committee member who has put in their very best to make this year a successful one for Polis.

We wouldn’t have achieved as much as we did without your commitment. We appreciate the support of our Board of Advice members and have no doubt that they will be just as valuable to the new board. Earlier this year we said goodbye to Inge Bobbink who has been replaced with Denise Piccinini. We would also like to thank all the Polis Patron’s for their trust and support. We welcome the new Polis Board 2018, who will be taking up where we shall leave off. We are certain they will enjoy it just as much as we have!

With regards, Harsh Malhotra, Amanda Bryant, Gereon Rolvering, Daan Rooze, Nilofer Afza and Karishma Asarpota.

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ATLANTIS VOL # 28 Our theme for the upcoming volume is Action and Reaction. Having successfully discussed novel ideas and concepts in our previous volume - Dialogues - we now set out to see how these ideas can be brought to the real world. When one discusses the realisation of an idea or concept, it is vital to contextualize it. Hence, in the coming four issues of Atlantis we challenge ourselves to consider implementation in as many different contexts as possible. To give our readers a diverse and unbiased picture, we look at the world through an impartial framework of time-zones. Each issue of Volume 28 will be compartmentalized as a set of time-zones to cover a heterogeneous range of content.

We also hope that this unusual lens will focus our eye on parts of the world which we may normally not consider and help us uncover links between those places that only seem to share a common time.

We plan to cover a range of topics like planning in post-conflict or post-disaster zones, how innovations changed specific parts of the world, and design in the face of extreme growth or decline to name a few.

Interested in contributing? Email us at atlantismagazinetudelft@gmail.com

Editorial As we move eastward on our journey around the globe from Europe to Western Asia, we see western ideas and practices collide with Eastern culture. In Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, we find post-Soviet countries embracing old modernist ideas, resulting in vast infrastructures greatly exceeding their required capacity. In Bangladesh, we find Dutch deltaurbanism being adapted and re-moulded to fit a context with different priorities. In Turkey, we see a well-meaning initiative to include citizens in the planning process compromised by an uncomfortable political climate.

In India, we have practitioners confronted with a complex urban condition further exaggerated by extreme climate scenarios. In a semi-fictional area in UAE we find a tribal community at odds with archaeologists. And back home, BK City promotes the collaboration between the TU Delft and its African counterparts.

As design professionals, the issues that arise once we cross national boundaries an attempt to replicate methods and practice should interest us the most, as they are often the biggest obstacles of urbanism. Rather our training is too often embedded in generic tools and methods. However, tackling such issues can only be learnt through practice. It also urges the need for us as professionals to be reflective at every turn in the development process and attentive to towards what might at first seem contextual details.

As you read through the magazine we hope that you appreciate the way our authors and contributorshave brought such issues to our attention, that would typically escape our notice.

Finally, we would like to conclude by wishing you a Merry Christmas.

IJsbrand Heeringa and Selina Abraham Editors-in-Chief

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Contents p.21

p.13 p.25

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00 #inthenews • by Karishma Asarpota, IJsbrand Heeringa, Matias Iversson Piazza & Aikaterina Myserli .......................................................................................................................... 5 01 The city as a market. by Michael de Beer ................................................................... 7 02 Learning from the African City by Gereon Rolvering ...................................................... 13 03 Why Africa by Roberto Rocco & Rachel Keeton .............................................................. 15 04 Play Istanbul interview by Panagiota Tzika Kostopoulou & Tanya Tsui with Ekim Tan

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05 Ark[s]: an alternative model for receiving the Syrian refugee flows within the EU

by Aikaterina Myserli .................................................................................................................... 19 06 The invisible layers influencing spatial planning by Karishma Asarpota ........... 21 07 Dubai: Design for people by Sreya Vempatti ................................................................ 23 08 #artspread • a walk through Moscow by Patrice Baunov ........................................... 25 09 Global Georgia? by Misak Terzibasiyan ............................................................................ 29 10 Turkmenistan in Transit by Larissa Eggers........................................................................... 31 11 Negotiating Shangri La in exile by Deepanshu Arneja ............................................. 33 12 Esoteric Earth construction by Gayatri Mutum ............................................................... 37 13 Sneak Peek: Urban practices and vulnerabilities by Sindhuja Janakiraman feat. interviews with Garima Jain & Nityanand Jayaraman ...................................................... 39 14 Extreme Conditions: Practising urbanism in Bangladesh by Anne Loes Nillesen... 43 15 Blueprints for a new capital by Selina Abraham ....................................................... 47

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ATLANTIS 28.2

Archiprix winners From Landscape to Roofscape Pritzker Prize winning architect Alejandro Aravena advocates that architecture students should be encouraged to apply their knowledge and training to the challenges society faces. Two recent graduates of TU Delft, Laura Katharina Strähle and Ellen Rouwendal, were able to do this in a poor area of western Kenya by setting up their own Design-BuildProject and designing a prototypical pavilion structure for public use in the rural village of Okana. The research of building techniques, construction materials and cultural patterns resulted in the reinterpretation of traditional patterns of inhabitation and the final design of a ‘’Roofscape”. Inspired by the local custom of gathering under the local Acacia trees, the key to their graduation project is its 64-square-meter, column-free reciprocal roof constructed of bamboo. The shape of the roof, the open courtyard and the permeable walls facilitate water catchment and provide the interior space with a

Towards the Edge of the Anthropocene

constant breeze. It is worth noting that the students acquired all the necessary funding for the implementation of the project, managed the follow-up five month construction phase and still have the project leadership on site today, while the second construction phase is taking place.

Simplicity, low-tech design solutions and an understandable design process created a link with the local inhabitants and workers and received the attention of international students as well. That being so, the students proved, within a period of less than two years, that their design fulfils its goals towards making a positive change and having a solution with a strong impact on architecture in poorer parts of the world.

A roof like the one of a tree. It provides shade, protects from the hot sun and from the rains.

People love to gather there; there underneath the natural roofscape which knows how to create light and airy spaces.

ULWeek 2017

Entitled No Further, Towards the Edge of the Anthropocene, this year’s edition of the Urbanism and Landscape Week was held in October, discussing some of the new urban challenges faced in this new epoch called the Anthropocene. The week included a series of curated lectures, debates and a student competition, thoroughly investigating the proposed theme in an attempt to understand routes, practices and issues of contemporary urbanism and landscape architecture. The ULWeek 2017 brought together more than 120 students and professionals, interested in the future development of urban landscapes and the built environment, providing them a platform for discussion from both creative and technical practices.

Eight speakers from a number of European countries participated in the series of lectures, panel discussions and the competition process. The names included Christophe Girot (ETH Zurich and Atelier Girot); Jan Willem Petersen (Specialists Operation); Godofredo Pereira (Environmental Architecture RCA); Colin Waters (British Geological Survey and University of Leicester); Sabine 5

Muller (Oslo School of Architecture and SMAQ); Jan Jongert (Superuse Studios); Adrian Lahoud (Dean of the School of Architecture at the RCA), and Claudia Pasquero (ecoLogic studio and Bartlett School of Architecture). Besides the speakers, 25 students from both TU Delft and Wageningen University were involved in the competition, reflecting on the topic and writing a manifesto, positioning themselves towards possible futures of our cities.

All the knowledge generated from the lectures, debates and competition during the 4-day event was recorded and is now being condensed into a publication, to be issued in the first months of 2018. So, if you are interested in the discussions and outcomes of the Urban and Landscape Week 2017, don’t hesitate to contact Polis or the ULWeek committee to ensure you receive a hard copy of the publication!

More information check the polistudelft.nl See you next year!

NEWS

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December 2017

Architectural Biennale Dubai 2018

The New Urban Crisis How our cities are increasing inequality, deepening segregation, and failing the middle class – and what we can do about it.

Architectural Biennale Dubai

Dubai is set to host its first month long Architectural Biennale in 2018. The bold architectural vision of Dubai is talked about globally. What is behind the architectural conceptions and visions? Who is the city designed for?

What do architects feel about design processes in their profession? How does Dubai contribute to the global dialogues in architecture today? The bi-annual, month long Biennale will provide a platform to explore the built environment from different perspectives in the city. It would be interesting to know Dubai’s stand about current global issues in the field.

With 70% of cities worldwide are facing the impact of climate change and nearly all cities are at risk (C40 Cities), adaptive planning and design has come to the forefront in recent years. Environmental sustainability is becoming prevalent in almost all spheres of design. Do professionals and designers in Dubai recognize this as a priority? Designing for a fast-changing city set among many deep environmental and economic uncertainties and being a part of the larger transient population of the city,

most architects find themselves in a unique and challenging position.

Locally, other questions can arise.

Dubai has emerged as a global city and this has reflected in architecture as well. It has become the home to the creation of many starchitects and glass skyscrapers. The Burj Al Arab and the Burj Khalifa are becoming a ‘signature’ of the city. Architectural icons play a big role in providing a visual recognition for the city. But what if Dubai did not grow to be the global city it is today. What are the alternative scenarios of development? And what would be the architectural icons we would associate with that?

A prequel to next year’s event, took place between Nov 11 – 26 in Dubai.

The theme for this year’s event was ‘What should an Architectural Biennale for Dubai look like?’. An architectural Biennale should be a representation of the city and the vision it is headed toward. The intention behind the theme is to arrive at a collective realization of what people feel so that it can be aptly represented in next year’s Biennale.

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Whether you think his ideas are sensible, irrational or down right ‘elitist’ as one writer of the Guardian put it, Florida’s books never seem to fail in drawing attention to themselves. His new book is no different. Having been much criticized for his glorification of the ‘creative class’, his new work is meant to add a much-needed nuance to his rhetoric. Having been called out for practically handing city governments an excuse for gentrification, his new book warns for the dangers that lurk behind the - what he calls - superstar cities of today, warning for gentrification, inequality and urban poverty. The ‘New Urban Crisis’ aside from only identifying the rising inequality in American and British cities goes one step further and attempts to give an advice as to what to do about it. Among other things Florida calls for; minimum wages corresponding to the living cost of a city, upgrading low-wage service jobs, inclusionary zoning, and smart clustering.

Naturally, his new book has already been called in to question by many critics.

However, if the impact of his 2002 best seller is anything to go by, you can be sure that for - better or worse - it will impact cities and governments all round the world.

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The City as a

market. by

Michael de Beer

Spatial Practitioner and Writer The article stems from a lecture by the author and Rebecca Looringh van Beeck, entitled "No Street is Lonely"

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In the globalised environment that we live it is not often that one is confronted by an environment that repositions and challenges notions of best practice, Ethiopia is one such case. With 80 different cultural groups the country is incredibly diverse, however it’s unique history in Africa, being relatively unhindered by colonial influences, has enabled the growth of a building tradition that is drawn from the commons. However, rapid urban development, which can be seen throughout Africa, threatens to rewrite traditional spatial practices. Addis Ababa, the epicentre, serves as a petri dish of what is occurring throughout the country, and the Merkato district, Harar and Lalibela markets, positions the city as a market. Advocating an alternative understanding of cities and development questioning methodologies of practice - in an environment where space is opportunity and the city is built through actions and practices.

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At first glance, Addis Ababa, the capital city of Ethiopia, is a sensory overload. The streets are teeming with life. As a foreigner the context is chaotic. On observation however a finely networked system begins to unearth itself. Between the grit and the grime there is a logic that is concerned with spatial potentiality. This temporal quality of the city is made possible by how people occupy the city. Rather than a top down system, enforced through rigid bureaucratic processes, people make the most of their environment. The quality that enables adaptation has developed over centuries.

Ethiopia is an ancient civilisation and has been a powerful empire for far longer than the period of the modern post-industrial era dominated by foreign influences. As a key-trading route into Africa, cities such as Harar to the East and Gondar to the North were key points of power and exchange.

Not only were they empowered by the goods that these points traded but through cultural exchange. The past 150 years has however brought a radical transformation colonial influences from Italy, modernism as a global movement, a post colonial period of communism (the red terror) and now China's influence in aiding the revolution of 8

modernising Ethiopia’s infrastructure and cities. These foreign influences have drawn the future development of the Ethiopian landscape into question as global aspirations are meeting local identity and practices.

Harar, is a walled city. The fine network of streets that organically move over the topography is one that developed over centuries as people have claimed spaces through various practices. Interfaces with the street offer space for various trades and selling of goods, while the interior courtyard caters for a tradition of tightly knit family structures. As one moves through the labyrinth of streets, one stumbles upon a clearing, a coming together. As a locus for public life, these spaces are etched out, each with a clear purpose. Smaller spaces form a common space, the extension of the home, school or mosque - where a tree may offer shade in the hot sun, or a slight dip may fortuitously allow for a group to sit in a circle. Larger spaces, formed by a lineage of practice and occupation are deeply rooted in the daily lives of people. The Christian and Butcher's market reflect this moulding of the public realm through daily actions and occupations of space.

HARAR

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The Christian market, at the South-western gate, carefully responds to movement.

Food and goods map out the primary walking route, while at its centre a space for auctioning livestock or making speeches allows for gathering. The butchers market, in the city interior, not only allows for those activities that one would associate to the carving, drying and selling of meat but also offers space for the vultures and dogs, the men to discuss and children to play. Spaces here have not been designed autocratically but rather through ‘common-ing’ - where over many generations spaces have been informed by the occupation and practices of their inhabitants. The same could be seen at varying scales and forms throughout Ethiopia - be it the structure of the city, such as in Mekelle where the city form accommodates the long caravans of camels, salt laden, returning from the Danakil Depression, or the varied architectural typologies found throughout the country.

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Lalibela, famed for its rock-hewn churches, draws forward the notion of the city as a market. Atop a hill, with a vast vista of the surrounding region, sits a large sparse opening - the marketplace. A centre of life. Made up of nothing more than what one could bring on the back of asses and camels. Set up in the early morning and dismantled again at night. The space retains its spatial order not in its form 9

but in the minds of those that inhabit it.

That which has given rise to this building tradition of the commons is a result of people's continuous engagement with space. The landscape is not measured by a car's odometer but rather one's walking pace. Even in the most rural and isolated environments, such as the communities of the Simien Mountains or the nomadic Afar people of the Danakil depression, space is a reflection of the practices of people. In this highly diverse country with dissimilar communities and cultures the similarity that arises is the persistence of the commons. Not to be confused with a western distinction of public and private life, the commons exist here as a collective practice. The varying actions of people enacting their daily lives remain cognisant of tradition, culture and resultant collective actions of groups and communities. The impact of this building tradition on space is uncanny and most recognisable outside of the chaotic city centres. Yet, the melting pot which is Addis Ababa is no exception, it is a product of these same processes of ‘common-ing’ moulding and defining spaces.

Geographical Addis Ababa is the junction between, North, South, East and West making the city a melting pot of cultural exchange where traditions meet global aspirations. Moving between the Merkato, the large market district of the city, and

MERKATO

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BOLE Bole the commercial district, highlights a clashing of old and new where traditions are being confronted by modern practice.

The Merkato, an industrial heart, exemplifies this character. A man carrying 20 mattresses navigates between livestock, hawkers, taxis and trucks laden with goods.

Men in suits read the paper and drink cafĂŠs, hawkers sell bits and bobs, vegetable stands offer a specialised range of salads and fruit juices, tailors, recyclers, butchers and jewellers all make up a very cosmopolitan feel to the city. Here life carries on late into the night, with the streets teeming with activity. Perhaps here more than anywhere else one can see why the Ethiopian city has enabled such diversity and activity - where mixed use exists as a matter of fact due to enough feet on the street. The high volumes of people continuously navigating the city have offered a critical mass enabling every interface to become an opportunity.

A building with three storeys of active frontage and diverse program within is commonplace. The program that the build fabric inherently holds is every architect's wet dream. An order begins to unfold, where the seemingly endless market is segmented into specialised sectors. Building materials, the recycling of car tires, textiles, leather workshops and the list goes on. The varying markets become specialised areas of focus - from the informal vegetable market on a corner to the row of shops specialising in kitchenware. Secondary activities supporting the primary focus of the areas

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are intermingled within the order, as flower shops appear near funeral parlours and gas salesmen are located next to the shop to buy your new hob.

The nature of this space however is not static, like the ebb and flow of the tide it is continuously moving and change. If you were to map the Merkato it would be like counting grains of sand and when you were done it would have all changed. It is this temporal nature that returns to the notion of ‘common-ing’ - where the fabric of the city forms a complex interplay between how people occupy space - their activities - and the resultant spatial formations. This dynamic creates a responsive urban form that is resilient due to its ability to adapt.

It is sustainable and, more importantly, preferences the lowest common dominator - empowering the impoverished and marginalised in society by offering the opportunity for equitable appropriation.

The Merkato is an extreme of the processes that have given rise to Harar. It is a process inherent in Ethiopian culture. However it is now under threat.

Ethiopia is undergoing a rapid wave of development. In every city and town, scaffolding is etching out a new skyline.

Bole, the commercial centre of Addis Ababa situated between the centre and the airport, is a reflection of what this process may bring. Here the car dominates with wide boulevards. Tower-blocks jostle for space, while the public realm is devoid of the life seen elsewhere. It is a place of rigid 11

exclusion that aims to purge the city of shanties, grit and the perception of poverty.

High walls hide lush foliage and decadence.

The only benefit of this development is that it is one of the few places where you are guaranteed a soft serve frozen yoghurt with all toppings you could wish for. It is the product of global aspirations where a western ideal of a quality of life is seen to be overwriting those qualities that make Ethiopia unique.

However, the primary threat is not the frozen yogurt stall but the rigid processes and resultant forms that have given rise to this environment. It is in opposition to the commons as these spaces are the product of singular visions, an authoritarian approach of best practice manifested in the west.

The process promises a move away from the adaptable and responsive environment to one that is rigid and exclusionary. It sees every new development as a green field opportunity, ignoring the lineage of spatial occupation that has given rise to these nuanced environments. In this sense it not only threatens an existing resilient spatial form but the unique and diverse cultural legacy of Ethiopia.

This new urban agenda raises critical questions going forward as Africa in the following decades will see an unprecedented rate of development. Bole is not unique, as in most major centres across the continent similar areas are forming, implanting a generic vision for Africa. Not only is this form unsustainable but it is also

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LALIBEL

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unresponsive to the diverse cultures and values of spaces - threatening to rewrite cultures. It is time for spatial practitioners to reflect on their methodologies of practice when working in alternative situations. To learn through observation and the study of place and praxis; there is no normative generic solution. Although Lalibela pales in significance to the Merkato, it is a reminder that it is people who collectively define the world we inhabit. With no single author no architect or planner - the most complex of environments are formed through the collective act of eternal mediation. •

All photographs are taken by the author, Îœichael de Beer 1. Dried chilis, onions and potatos lie beside a building site ready to be sold (Merkato).

2. A view of Addis Ababa from the Piazza district.

3. The Christian market in Harar.

4. The narrow streets of Harar's walled city, with a courtyard housing typology.

5. The Merkato. A huge market of varying areas and types. The image shows a particular area where development is being undertaken and how shops use the opportunity of a blank facade to position stalls.

6. Bole, the new commercial district of the city is an area that is car centric. The image shows a man walking alone in a sparse environment with little activity.

7. Lalibela market from the main entrance.

8. Lalibela market - an area specifically for selling grains.

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LEARNING FROM THE AFRICAN CITY

With the adoption of UN Habitat’s New Urban Agenda in December 2016, globally accepted initiatives proposing a seemingly neutral and nonideological common ground of urban development are now dominating the modus operandi of practitioners, politicians and scholars dealing with subSaharan Africa. However, over the past two decades an increasing number of actors has pushed for a departure from the Eurocentric reading of cities, proposing instead the establishment of a post-colonial or even African notion of the city. But can these theories support an alternative basis for the analysis of an African metropolis such as Nairobi?

by

In search of the African City

dialectics of African societies, oscillating between formal and informal, urban and rural, customary and civil, private and public, have led to a volatile relationship of Africans with urban space (Simone 2004).

The consequence of this dynamics is a city in which the people’s sense of belonging is undermined, whether through a constant struggle over access to and ownership of land or through the uncertainty of the rule of law. At the same time however, Simone sees this ambiguity as one of these societies largest strengths, because it increases their flexibility and capacity for innovation. In this sense the mediation of societal volatility is the core function the city has to fulfil.

One of the most prominent critics of the Eurocentric reading of cities, particularly in the African context is Rem Koolhaas.

In his extensive research on the city of Lagos, he suggests that not only a notion of the ‘African City’ has developed over the past decades, but that this very idea of the city foreshadows the future of the global metropolis at large (Koolhaas, Lavalou et al.

2000). At the core of this Lagosian model of urbanism is the unplanned leapfrogging of the Nigerian society from rural to urban in which the establishment of rigid urban structures seems to have been skipped. The resulting study describes Lagos as a city in which the distinction between the formal and the informal has become redundant, revealing a dynamic, adaptive and resilient (Koolhaas and Adeyemi 2016) urban system working outside of western conventions.

Because of substantial lack of scientific support however, Koolhaas’ hypothesis, while kickstarting a heated debate on the issue of African urbanism, failed to establish a common ground for discussion (Gandy 2005, Fourchard 2011).

Fortunately, in the same period, a group of primarily African researchers has taken on the challenge of analysing the African City from a post-colonial perspective. One of the most active writers in this ‘experimental’ field of urban research is AbdouMaliq Simone, whose research on the social composition and structure of African cities could be seen as a starting point to reshape practice through theory. A sociologist by training, he looks at urban processes through the lens of social linkages and their expression in space. Looking at both the colonial and post-colonial development of African cities he argues that the very 13

Gereon Rolvering MSc Urbanism TU Delft

Considering that weak government institutions largely fail to provide this mediation self-organisation of citizens substitutes established institutions. The social network of the individual replaces the

atlantis government-provided social security. In that sense, the social connections become part of a city’s infrastructure (Simone 2004). In times where political, economic and social developments increasingly undermine these infrastructures, Simone sees the strengthening of these self-help efforts as key to establishing a sense of belonging among citizens.

While Simone’s writings have now been widely recognised, some critics have highlighted deficiencies in analysis, rendering his hypothesis opaque (Small 2006) and impractical (Njeru 2006). As a practitioner, one can’t help but wonder about the general spatial implications of his hypothesis.

A comparison between both Simone’s and Koolhaas’ approach might shed some light on this question. While observing the African city from two divergent vantage points, both approaches share their analysis on the dynamic use of public space, its constant re-use, re-configuration and re-appropriation. Could a combination of these two approaches then form a pragmatic framework for practitioners to read cities in the sub-Saharan context?

Revisiting Nairobi Nairobi, the economic hub of East Africa and home to the largest office of the United Nations in the developing world, is an ideal showcase of the current situation of many sub-Saharan cities. Caught between economic growth and informal sprawl; technological revolution and democratic unrest; rural history and urban future, the city reflects the key dialectics prevalent on the continent.

The key to understanding the physical and social structure of Nairobi lies in the history of Kenya as a whole, and more particularly in the disruption of its development in the context of colonisation.

While modern Nairobi is the main hub for the region, Kenya lacks what one might call a veritable urban history. In fact, prior to its colonisation, the land that makes up Kenya today was quintessentially rural. With the exception of Muslim towns along the coast, Kenya was basically devoid of settlements considered ‘urban’ by western standards.

The few settlements that did exist were marketplaces and had little relevance as places of residence (Obudho 1979). Instead, Kenyans would live in homesteads, small collections of huts built on communal land in a framework of customary law.

The forceful occupation of East Africa by the British at the turn of the 20th century radically disrupted this traditional form of life. The large-scale appropriation and conversion of ground into ‘Crown Land’

and the spatial segregation of the native population in reserves eradicated most of the traditional forms of life and made way for the foundation of new settlements. By consequence, most of the towns that have developed in Kenya over the past 100-odd years are colonial foundations.

Established as trade posts, military camps or rail depots, these new settlements were exclusive to new white settlers and Indian administration workforce (Charton-Bigot and Rodriguez-Torres 2006, Syagga 2006).

By consequence, the only access to the city for the black population was as domestic or menial labour (Syagga 2006). Hence, large parts of the Kenyan population felt disenfranchised even after Kenya’s independence in 1963. The disconnect of the urban population with their city in many ways continues into the 21st century, most strikingly reflected in the insistence of Nairobeans on being buried in their ancestral land.

This paradigm clearly mirrors the issue of belonging, described as one of the essential characters of the African city

by AbdouMaliq Simone. The disruption of tradition and segregation of space introduced by the British has generated a population that, in large parts, does not identify with the city and as a consequence, fails to take responsibility for it. By the same token, forms of self-organisation through cooperatives or more prominently the selfhelp tradition of Harambee have emerged in post-colonial Kenya as a means of strengthening Kenyans’ sense of belonging.

Spatially, this dialectic is visible in the persistence of the typology of homesteads, which now dominate the cityscape in the form of fenced enclaves in both slums and gated communities. At the same time the streets, forming the only part of the urban structure not affected by segregation during the colonial period, developed into Nairobi’s only true public realm. In lack of space to express themselves, trade, meet or protest, Nairobeans have appropriated the streetscape and created the public inverse of the isolated, private, urban homestead.

The image of Nairobi in this analysis is thus different from what is normally associated with Kenya’s capital. Rather than focussing on the conflict between the formal and the informal, the legal and the illegal, the public and the private, it highlights the challenges and potentials of a city in which the definitions of these same dialectics are continuously changing. This however does not mean a romanticizing of the obvious precariousness of the urban poor; moreover, it challenges planners and designers to deal with the city outside of the Eurocentric conventions of formality, publicness or policy.

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Learning from the African City In 1972 the publication of Learning from Las Vegas fundamentally changed the understanding of American cities for architects and designers, establishing a model of a city that is accepting and in some cases even celebrating elements previously considered an abnormality.

African cities have yet to experience this kind of paradigm shift. This is perhaps most obviously visible in the moralist discussions that almost inevitably erupt when western planners, Chinese government institutions and well-meaning NGOs intervene in urban processes on the continent. For lack of an established, theoretical framework, interventions will almost inevitably be discussed as either neo-colonialist, romanticizing or simply naïve. However, the theories presented in this article and their potential as a means to read the city give hope that planners and designers will be able to address African cities with a foundation in local theory and not merely global policy. •

References Charton-Bigot, H. and D. Rodriguez-Torres (2006).

Nairobi contemporain. Les paradoxes d'une ville fragmentée, KARTHALA Editions.

Fourchard, L. (2011). "Lagos, Koolhaas and partisan politics in Nigeria." International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35(1): 40-56.

Gandy, M. (2005). "Learning from Lagos." New Left Review 33: 37.

Koolhaas, R. and K. Adeyemi (2016). 'Lagos shows how a city can recover from a deep, deep pit': Rem Koolhaas talks to Kunlé Adeyemi. Guardian Cities. C. Michael. London, Guardian News and Media Ltd. Koolhaas, R., et al. (2000). Mutations. Barcelona : Bordeaux :, ACTAR ; arc en rêve centre dárchitecture.

Njeru, J. (2006). "For the City Yet to Come: Changing African Life in Four Cities." URBAN GEOGRAPHY 27(4): 388389.

Obudho, R. (1979). "Urbanization and development planning in Kenya." Praeger Special Studies: 242-257.

Pieterse, E. A. and A. M. Simone (2013). "Rogue urbanism: emergent African cities."

Simone, A. (2004). For the city yet to come: Changing African life in four cities, Duke University Press.

Simone, A. (2004). "People as infrastructure: intersecting fragments in Johannesburg." Public culture 16(3): 407-429.

Small, M. L. (2006). "For the City Yet to Come: Changing African Life in Four Cities." Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 35(3): 319-319.

Syagga, P. M. (2006). "Land ownership and use in Kenya: policy prescriptions from an inequality perspective." Readings on Inequality in Kenya. Sectoral Dynamics and Perspectives, Nairobi: 289-344.

1. Learning from Las Vegas.

Source: goo.gl/rchchd 2. Learning from Nairobi.

Source: goo.gl/cPoGfM

Why Africa?

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by

Roberto Rocco & Rachel Keeton

Department of Urbanism, TU Delft

Bouwkunde has a vision for strengthening ties with Africa.

While the main responsibility for the destiny of African cities lies with African citizens, governments and institutions, we believe that universities and TU Delft in particular have a role to play in helping to shape the next generation of African planners, designers and architects, who will promote sustainable urbanisation in the African continent. We wish to reach out to African higher education institutes, governments, businesses and citizens to become partners in promoting sustainable, inclusive and fair urbanisation.

Africa is urbanising at record rates. The World bank claims that Africa’s urban population stands at 472 million people today, but this number will double over the next 25 years, reaching 1 billion people by 2040.

The World Bank emphasizes that “investments in African cities’

infrastructure, industrial, and commercial structures have not kept pace with concentration of people, nor have investments in affordable formal housing.

The potential for coordinated investments in infrastructure, residential, and commercial structures is great, which will enhance agglomeration economies and connect people with jobs”1. This means that cities in Africa are growing faster than the capacity of local governments to plan and design them. As a result, a lot of urbanisation in Africa happens informally.

While there is nothing intrinsically wrong with informal urbanisation, citizens building their own living environments are faced with important technical and capacity limitations. There is only so much citizens can do without the help of local governments and businesses. Architects, urban designers and planners can help local governments achieve much more sustainable and inclusive urbanisation. This is crucial, not only for the future of Africa, but for the sustainability of our planet. The way Africa urbanises in the next 30 to 50 years will define much of how we all use our natural resources and may have a huge impact on climate change, for instance.

With TU Delft expertise and resources, it can assist local institutions form the next generation of African architects, urban

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designers and planners. This is not a patronising position: TU Delft wants to learn from African institutions and people.

We believe African problems need African solutions. However, we also recognise we can have a role in providing world-class education and training for African students and academics in partnership with local institutions, governments and businesses.

For this reason, BK is launching the A is for Africa initiative, in which research, education and cooperation come together under one umbrella.

This main goal of this platform is to articulate initiatives in the three areas (research, education and cooperation) to maximise TU Delft’s positive impact on African education and research for the cities we need.

Africa’s urban population stands at 472 million people today, but this number will double over the next 25 years, reaching 1 billion people by 2040.

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The ULTIMATE vision is that TU Delft will become a centre of reference for African urbanisation and architecture in the next 5-10 years.

In order to achieve this aim effectively, the priority is to engage with African academics with a view to learn about the challenges of African urbanisation, find partners in the continent and prepare the path to follow.

This is why BK is organising two international conferences in 2018: the first one will be a PrepCon (a preparatory conference) organised in partnership with the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction and City Development in Addis-Ababa. In this PrepCon, we will hear from a number of African scholars from all over the continent, who will help us identify the main

The ULTIMATE vision is that TU Delft will become a centre of reference for African urbanisation and architecture in the next 5-10 years.

challenges and opportunities for African urbanisation. The main questions for this preparatory event are: • What are the challenges in contemporary African urbanisation?

• How can BK engage with African institutions to produce a positive impact on African urbanisation?

• What are on-going educational experiences and research projects from which we could learn together?

African Perspectives 2018 This conference will prepare us for a bigger event in the second semester of 2018, the AFRICAN PERSPECTIVES Conference, which celebrates its 10th anniversary at the BK by Antoni Folkers and others. The conference will gather a large of African and European academics and professionals in Delft to discuss the perspectives for African urbanisation and architecture. Students from TU Delft and from Bouwkunde in particular working with African topics are encouraged to present their work and discuss with African academics and professionals. We believe we should learn from each other, and that many minds are better than a few. For

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that reason, we are also reaching out to students, researchers or faculty members at BK City who are interested in joining the A for Africa initiative. Please send an email to africanperspectives2018-bk@tudelft. nl and get in touch! • Notes 1. World Bank (2017). Africa’s Cities Opening Doors to the World. S. V. Lall, J. V. Henderson and A. J. Venables. Washington D.C., World Bank.

1. Kilamba, Angola houses 100,000 people outside of Angola's capital city, Luanda. The new city functions as a bedroom community for people working in Luanda, and lacks urban adequate amenities and facilities. Only three different apartment typologies are offered as housing units. Is this a good solution to massive housing deficits?

Source - Rachel Keeton (2016) 2. A villa in Sheikh Zayed New City, Egypt sits empty and unfinished. Land speculation has distorted prices and this new city has become known as an enclave of gated communities for the wealthy. What happens if this spatial segregation continues?

Source - Rachel Keeton (2016)

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PLAY ISTANBUL Play the city is a company based in the Netherlands that uses gaming in order to engage multiple stakeholders in resolving complex urban challenges. It designs physical games as a method for collaborative decision making and conflict resolution, with experience in many cities around the globe. Atlantis met Ekim Tan, the founder of the company for an interview regarding the innovating method but also the difficulties that can be experienced and the benefits that it can offer in countries like Turkey.

interviews by

Panagiota Tzika Kostopoulou MSc Urbanism TU Delft

Tanya Tsui

MSc Architecture TU Delft

with

Ekim Tan

Founder Play the City

1. Diagram illustrating stakeholders coming and rules as a communication tool. Source - https://www.playthecity.nl 2. Photograph of people coming together in Turkey to play as a form of negotiation. Source - https://www. playthecity.nl

Firstly, how did you come up with the idea of play the city?

I was actually involved in a theoretical PHD at TU Delft on how cities emerge based on self organizing systems and how complexity theory can explain this phenomenon. I was mostly looking at informal towns in Turkey and other places around the globe and I was trying to figure out how our profession refers to the fact that a high percentage of cities are actually unplanned.

Understanding that people are copying and reproducing, sometimes with adding small changes, based on patterns intrigued me to see these dynamics on a city scale level.

Influenced by the book of Christopher Alexander “NEW Theory of the urban design� where he explains an experiment during which designers come up with a final idea by a sequential design process helped me understand that sequential round based games could help in assimilating self organization. Many people, especially architects ask me: but what does the game deliver? The game does what we actually need, to communicate effectively. It supports collaborative design processes.

In order for this to happen, we have to know how to exchange knowledge, we have to find a method through which we can 17

implement all the knowledge and all the smartness that exists between the different stakeholders from the very beginning of the process. In that sense it is a design tool.

But I would characterize it as a process tool, it helps all the different stakeholders that are involved to understand each other's position and strategies through effective communication and then come up with a realistic plan. It is mostly about giving people that have a question or a problem an interface, it is like letting them know what they can want, which are all the other conditions in terms of budget, legislation, other interests that are there and help them understand that these conditions are

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also limiting their possibilities. It is not a building tool but a communication and design process tool that helps in joining interests but also highlighting conflicts.

As it comes to Turkey, how did you use the game?

Well, we are not active in Turkey since 2013 due to the current political situation.

In order to use city gaming you also need a political system that allows and asks for collaboration of different stakeholders.

Even in the past we were actually working mostly with cultural institutions and NGOs that could see the value of games as a tool for bringing people together for reaching a decision, something that is actually missing in Turkey [Image 1].

In 2010 Istanbul was the capital of culture in Europe. At this point of time there was a unique office, an alternative planning department that was trying to come up with a master plan for the city. A master plan for a metropolitan city of 14-15 million citizens which was massively urbanised without any plan between 60's and 90's and that had basically developed by itself and in the last two decades the impending threat of an earthquake and urban gentrification is dominating its agenda. By taking into account the fact that the city has a strong tradition of self-building and densifying in the last fifty years, our main question was how this ongoing tradition of bottomup city making could undertake such a technically challenging task and which parties will take the lead in conducting a transformation task on such an enormous scale. With Turkey’s changing political scenario and an ever-centralizing planning system, the question arising was whether

an Ankara-centred top-down model will entirely replace self-organizing mechanisms to fulfil the transformation assignment.

And mostly, even if this happens, how will consultation of millions of inhabitants, small and medium scale developers, contractors and investors occur? As I already mentioned we were not hired by the municipality, but by cultural institutions - the most difficult part was to actually gather all of the stakeholders. Building trust amongst stakeholders: visiting most of them and convincing them to join the play sessions took as much time as inventing, designing, building and testing the play interface. Personally I think trust is the most important aspect in every city and lack of trust is the most challenging difficulty.

Starting with the fact that Istanbul would be once more densified we were trying to find ways in order not to destroy the natural resources in the North side of the city and to preserve it as a linear one. As the project was part of the official Istanbul European Capital of Culture 2010 -ECOC program and the Dutch Consulate was one of the funders of the project, we used these institutions as a framework through which to reach out big players such as, TOKI* , investors, developers and the Transformation Department of Istanbul Greater Municipality. Introducing them to our unusual method and convincing them to join us was a long process that required extra attention. Through our game, we experimented between the power relations of the stakeholders. At the beginning we played the game taking into account the existing power of the stakeholders, which ended up deepening urban conflicts and resulted in a lack of decision making.

Then we also tried to redistribute power 18

to a larger group of people like residents, business owners and contractors that completely changed the results of the game.

TOKI and the residents engaged in real co-working. However, our vision was never actually realized. In fact even the main target of keeping Istanbul as a linear city failed. A new bridge connecting the eastern part of the city with the western has been already built and expansion to the North has already Started. We really expected too much from the game and it is really difficult to introduce a new planning model and new power relationships especially in a city like Istanbul where a lot of “economic interest games” are being played.

For us the main success was that people for the first time came in the room and talked with each other [Image 2], something that was unseen in Turkey. The game could actually provide a risk free environment where everybody can talk to each other and experiment. There is a lot of knowledge being exchanged but still it is a risk free experience. It is actually as it is happening in video games: you can die in a game and then you can start again. And that invitation is really promising especially for zones like Turkey or South Africa where there is a lot of conflict and big interests are on state.

This game managed to actually bring all these people together, have fun together laugh and exchange knowledge. In Turkey the success was mostly in smoothening or unlocking conversation between the different stakeholders. • Notes *TOKI the acronym for: Toplu Konut İdaresi Başkanlığı, literally, meaning “Public Housing Development Administration"

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ARK[S] an alternative model for receiving the

SYRIAN REFUGEE FLOWS within the EU

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by

Aikaterina Myserli MSc Urbanism TU Delft

Is writing for the war in Syria still relevant? Given that refugee flows have been regulated to a certain extent, the war doesn’t make the latest news and headlines anymore. However, it is salutary to remember that waves of refugees still try to find their way in the EU; on this basis, this thesis aims at shifting our attention from a war zone to an emerging diaspora- and thus, to new reception and absorption models.

while 13.179 people died in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea.

In lieu of introduction: A crisis in numbers

In general, most refugee populations under direct aid via governments or humanitarian organizations live in camps of thousands, in small scout-style tents or –in the best cases- in metal containers. Camps are typically constructed in large open areas in spontaneously sought locations. The simple tent structures, arranged in such a way to form a ‘tent city’ are mostly made of canvas military issue tents and are often criticized for being heavy, uninsulated and unsafe. In the case of Syrian refugees in Greece, even though the Greek government has provided this kind of temporary housing to the tens of thousands trapped in the country by

According to the UNHCR (2017), since the outbreak of the civil war in Syria in 2011, more than 300.000 people have lost their lives, 4 million Syrians have left the country and around 7 million people seek a safe refuge. On the whole, an estimated 11 million Syrians have fled their homes whereas, today, in the sixth year of war, 13,5 million are in need of humanitarian assistance within the country. Since March 2011 almost 1,6 million migrants arrived on the southern borders of Europe by boat,

The case of Greece In September 2015, the Justice and Home Affairs Council decided to relocate 160.000 people in clear need of international protection from Greece and Italy, to alleviate the burden of the extended refugee flows on these two countries. However, the so-called “Relocation Scheme” has proved clearly insufficient and 70.000 people in Greece are still waiting in ill-equipped shelters to be processed, settled or deported. Since the Balkan route from the Greek borders to northern Europe (Fig. 2) was closed in March 2016, migrants and refugees are now forced to live in overcrowded refugee camps both on Aegean’s islands as well as in the mainland, in proximity to big cities, such as Athens and Thessaloniki.

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the EU-Turkey agreement, many of these camps do not meet accepted humanitarian standards.

The proposal: Floating reception centres It is true that absorbing the influx of refugees has been an enormous challenge for the EU, with strong implications for the stability of the entire region. One of the things I realised after witnessing the chaos in several refugee camps in Greece is that doing what you are good at and minimizing risks is a natural process. And by that I mean that when the UNHCR decided to build emergency tents, a great deal had been invested in this project and –I assumenobody wanted to lose the “sunk” costs. In the case of the emergency tents, engineers addressed value conflict by satisficing with moral obligations, which implies that they set as a priority to satisfy the refugee right to housing or shelter and to cover basic, non-negotiable needs. As van de Poel (2014) states, “the goal of this step is to rule out morally unacceptable options”, which in the case of UNHCR camps in Greece would have been leaving people waiting on the shores of Turkey and Greece without shelter, food, sanitation and water.

On the other side, Venice Architecture Biennale 2016 director Alejandro Aravena said that tents are a quick response to the need for emergency shelter, but “it’s money that melts”. In addition, he highlighted the need to invest in less temporary disasterrelief shelter as a longer-term solution to

atlantis housing shortage, especially in cases of huge refugee flows. Echoing his argument, this thesis starts from analysing trends and data of refugee flows in Greece and examines the spatial problem that has arisen from 2014 onwards, regarding the inadequate infrastructure and the lack of accommodation facilities, registration, identification centres and medical care facilities both on islands and in continental Greece. The insufficiency of land facilities and the belief that any humanitarian intervention through architecture cannot be captured by policy decisions led to the idea of an alternative model of receiving refugee flows in the Mediterranean Sea by creating floating reception centres.

The idea originates from the on-going use of large Greek passenger and cruise ships for the transportation of refugees from the Eastern Aegean islands to Athens. It envisions a new reception strategy and a legitimate transfer of refugees to cities in the EU, where identification, registration, accommodation and medical assistance will be provided on-board. The ship chosen as case study is Blue Star 1, a Greek passenger ship which has already been used several times since 2015 for transporting refugees from the islands of Mytilene and Kos to Athens. Its transformation into floating reception centre mainly necessitates the utilization of every usable surface,

the effective lighting and ventilation of each deck and the creation of as many circulation areas as possible. Maximum length of stay on board is estimated at 10 days.

From theory to operation Before you think that the implementation of such a system is utopian, know that my optimism arises from the magnitude of the problem, not the ease of the solutions.

Knowing that the average lifespan of a refugee camp is now close to seven years, I am positive that a flexible system of floating centres –given that Greece possesses a great number of cruise ships, almost empty during winter- may turn out extremely practical. A similar idea was implemented last year after the heavy snowfall and sub-zero temperatures nationwide during the first weeks of January; the Greek government sent a few warships to provide shelter to the Syrian refugees, since the extreme weather conditions left tens of thousands of refugees exposed to appalling living conditions aggravated by severe cold 4 weather.

This year, members of the government discussed the idea of transforming several cruise ships into floating reception centres that will remain attached to the ports but will provide better living conditions for

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the refugees. Of course, a transition from emergency tents to ships could only work if the limits and roles between governments and stakeholders involved are clearly defined. And there is no doubt that this idea doesn’t hold all the answers to the essential needs of refugees. Nonetheless, it offers new solutions to ongoing spatial problems, and the reception and accommodation problem, especially in countries like Greece or Italy, is one of them. While it is no panacea in crises of this scale, for the refugee communities in Europe it could be a game changer. •

References United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) http://data2.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean Mairs, J. (2015) Refugee tents are a waste of money, says Alejandro Aravena, Dezeen. Available: goo.gl/m1wBF5 van de Poel, I. (2014). Conflicting Values in Design for Values Design for values. In J. van den Hoven, P. E. Vermaas & I. van de Poel (Eds.), Handbook of Ethics, Values, and Technological Design (pp. 1-23): Springer Netherlands.

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1. Perspective section of the floating reception centre 2. Map of the Balkan route 3. Exploded drawing with uses layout Source - Author

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The invisible layers influencing spatial planning A semi fictional narrative about land use conflict somewhere in United Arab Emirates by

Karishma Asarpota MSc Urbanism TU Delft

One of the oldest archaeological sites in the country lies at the foothills of a mountain range and has been untouched for decades. Surrounding it are residences of descendants of a historical tribe who once inhabited the area. The area is barren and brown, covered by rocks and a handful of trees. No humans inhabit the area and very few insects and animals can sustain themselves in such an infertile condition. Occasionally a group of picnickers or some wandering goats visit the archaeological remains.

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Recently, archaeologists discovered the remains of a community grave suggesting that it was one of the largest and oldest tribes to ever inhabit the valley. In parallel to studying the area and assembling resources to plan further excavations, the Historical Preservation Department has also been pushing to create a protected archaeological park to display and educate people about its significance in the historical development of the city. After a decade of urging the involved institutions to procure resources to fence the site, work commenced and the installation of a fence from one edge of the site began. Celebrating their victory of crossing the biggest hurdle, the Department proceeded to the next step and start designing the park. Little did they know that the biggest resistance they will face would surface the following week.

On returning after the weekend, to continue installing the remaining part of the fence, the workmen find a structure, presumably a house, with a fence around it marking its territory in the middle of the archaeological site they continue to protect.

It was not a big house, seemingly a living space for 2 or 3 persons. It didn’t have the polished finish of a residence such as in the surrounding areas, but a rough uncut finish with a water tank on the ceiling. In this part of the country it was customary to have such a structure in the backyard of the family house for servants. The servants’ quarters were usually located close to the enclosure of any farm animals the family might own. And here was no exception.

Some goats roamed around within the ‘boundary’ of this new house. Bewildered, the construction workers immediately called their employers at Historical Preservation Department who rushed to inspect the scene. The site enraged and saddened the archaeologists. All said and done, they would never know if there was any valuable

information below the sub surface of that house and its immediate surroundings. The land that they worked so hard to protect and preserve for as long as they worked in the city was no more untouched.

It would take them a few more weeks to urge the concerned institution to get involved and do the needful to demolish the structure. What followed was almost a half-year long dispute between the owner of the structure and decision-making entities involved. What motivated the owner to construct a structure in two nights in the middle of a protected archaeological site?

The old man claimed that this was his ancestral land and a long dead relative had always lived there, and therefore it belongs to his family. He refused to acknowledge the ‘foreign’ archaeologists (who are expatriates) claim or effort into protecting a historical landmark in the development of his country. For years everyone who lived in the vicinity knew that the area was meant to be a protected area. There were never any fences or signage, just an unspoken rule. As long no one tried to fence the land, no one wanted parts of it for themselves.

The minute the fencing began and the announcement to create an archaeological park was made public, the peaceful neighbors woke up from their slumber and decided to claim a part of their ‘heritage’.

This raises many questions. Why did the tribes living there want to claim this small piece of land when they already own property? Who is to blame for the ignorance of the tribes and their inability to realize the scientific and historical value of the land that they destroyed? Do they have a side to the story which was unheard all these years? Why was no one guarding the site at night during the weekend? Is this after all, a security problem, an education problem or a regulation problem? Maybe it 22

1. Collage visualizing the archaeological site. Source - Abraham S. (2017) 2. The house. Source - Author (2016)

is all of the above.

Such conflicts arise in every part of the world. Land use regulation and urban development projects clash with the interest of locals, resulting in one party taking drastic measures to protect heritage and cultural value of their urban environment or to support a notion they strongly believe in. A negotiation to reach a middle point that makes both sides happy is the ideal solution. But how often does that actually happen without an expensive (in the above case irreversible) loss?

It is time for governance to anticipate these ad hoc situations and accommodate for them. In the above case there was minimum public engagement in the decisionmaking process. Perhaps if the residents were recognized as a stakeholder in the process from the beginning, an agreement making both parties happy would have been reached from the start. Cross cultural differences also play a role in this situation.

Local culture has an influence on decision making in spatial planning. Professionals from outside this culture (in this case the archaeologists) make decisions based on their expertise. Contradictions are therefore an inevitable part of the process. Who is responsible for bridging this gap? Since almost all decisions are made through a topdown framework within spatial planning, it is indisputable that a higher authority needs to step up and attempt to handle such disputes in a better manner. These ‘invisible’ layers of tribal beliefs and crosscultural differences have a spatial impact on the city and cannot be ignored.

Dubai

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design for people? by

Sreya Vempatti

Environmental and Sustainability Consultant, Dubai

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Dubai is one of the seven constituent Emirates that make up the United Arab Emirates, and is known worldwide for its rapid ascension from a sleepy port town to a cutting edge metropolis. Seemingly overnight, the city has transformed into the Middle East’s leading center for finance, real estate, media, and various other prominent sectors.

Though the city has comfortably established itself in these myriad sectors and made rapid progress, the spotlight usually shines on the real estate sector, which has spearheaded many prominent projects in a short span of time, helping to drive Dubai’s status as an iconic, modern hub.

Most of these real estate and infrastructure projects have come into existence in the past twenty years. Famous landmarks such as the Burj Khalifa, the Burj Al Arab, and dozens of skyscrapers have been built alongside large swathes of gated villa communities and mixed-use master planned developments. The construction of these towers and communities is certainly intended to act as a sign of Dubai’s economic and tourist appeal, but also represents a real need for added residential units. Over the last twenty years, the population of the city has exploded, thanks

to rapid economic growth. Data from the Dubai Statistics Centre indicate that the population has grewn by 1000% over the last forty years. This rapid growth has caused communities to develop over a very short period of time. Real estate giants such as Nakheel, Meraas, and Emaar have been responsible for planning and developing huge areas of the city. Though such master planned communities are easier and faster to plan and develop as compared to regular, organic communities, they come with certain costs.

Large-scale gated communities and master developments are frequently planned in isolation from the rest of the city’s urban fabric, therefore neglecting ideas of urban coherence and an integrated road and public transit network. Most of Dubai’s newer communities have been built in this style, creating sprawl and congestion issues.

One such illustrative example is that of Dubai Sports City, located in the southern part of the city.

The community has a sports theme, which is reflected in the variety of stadiums and athletic facilities. This is a neighborhood that has been in existence for only nine years, yet is well established as a prime residential area. [Image 1] shows a plot level land use layout of the entire

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development. As can be seen from the layout above, the different land uses in the development are quite segregated. For example, commercial uses are clustered in one area, while residential uses are in another. Though the distance between these various use types might be small, it still represents a lack of accessibility for residents and visitors. Independent houses are clustered in the western half of the development, in meandering arrangements with cul-de-sac roads. This is an additional factor that contributes to the neighborhood’s overall accessibility issues.

[Image 2] shows a street-level view of the residential area, illustrating the lack of pedestrian-friendly infrastructure.

The neighborhood’s road network does not integrate well with surrounding roads, which ends up causing heavy congestion during peak hours. [Image 3] shows connections between the development and surrounding roads – considering the size of Sports City and the number of residents who live in it, this does not represent 1. Dubai Sports City Plot Plan. http://www. twinnettdubai.com 2. Dubai Sports City Street View. Source http://media.propsearch.ae 3. Dubai Sports City, road connections.

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an efficient solution to connectivity.

Additionally, the nearest metro station is 15 km away, making public transit usage very difficult.Dubai Sports City is just one example among many neighborhoods with accessibility and walkability issues.

However, as the city continues to rapidly expand, the government has certainly put some thought into future developments, and ways to integrate and manage them better.

Of particular note are efforts being made with respect to green building initiatives and public transit.

The Dubai Green Building Regulations (DGBR) have been made mandatory for all new buildings in the city, setting a minimum standard for all new construction projects.

Among the urban planning principles that DGBR covers are access to preferred parking spaces, bicycle facilities and infrastructure, and open spaces. In addition to this, the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) standard is also quite popular in the country, helping spur further innovations in community design. In the public transit realm, the introduction of the Dubai Metro in 2009 greatly helped ease congestion throughout, and ensured more effective integration of the city’s widespread neighborhoods.

Continued expansion of the metro network is expected to further contribute to this.

However, these changes are still fairly nascent. DGBR is not strictly enforced, and there are no stringent regulations or incentives in place to build in existing areas or to build developments of certain densities. The status quo is still low to medium density communities with abundant parking, which in turn does not provide a strong push to use public transit even when available.

wAs the city continues to rapidly expand and attract more and more residents, it will be crucial to ensure that a strong urban planning foundation is established, one that will promote integrative, coherent design. There are several ways in which the government and major real estate developers can promote a more consistent cityscape. The most important of these would be to develop a comprehensive, long-term urban planning vision for the city and greater metro area. The existing Dubai 2020 plan is very high-level and simply does not provide the required level of detail for urban planning purposes. Having a robust zoning framework and stipulating minimum floor area ratio requirements for buildings within the main core would help solve existing density and land use planning issues to some extent. Additionally, it will be crucial to discontinue the existing trend of building isolated master planned communities that do not seamlessly connect to surrounding areas. The government should have stronger regulations for land use planning and road connectivity, and somehow incentivize developers to create communities that harmoniously integrate with the city.

for existing spots must increase in areas that are well served by public transit. This will provide a strong incentive to use public transit in the core of the city.

In conjunction with the above, the government should stop building massive highways that cut through the city and fragment large sections of the city, preventing dense neighborhoods and hindering walkability. There should be more of an emphasis on building smaller neighborhoods with small scale roads, which would help create stronger community level planning as well as promote walkable streets. Existing pockets of land that are fragmented due to highways could be repurposed into pocket parks or similar uses, ensuring that large swathes of land do not lay unused in the middle of the city.

In conclusion, the main issues preventing stronger urban planning within the city are lack of stringent regulations, and high emphasis on automobile accessibility.

Strengthening regulations, making the building permitting process much more comprehensive, and placing more of an emphasis on developing a stronger public transit network are the most important A second major problem is the city’s carways in which large-scale change could oriented design and scant public transit be created. Given that Dubai is among network. While the existing metro network the world’s fastest growing cities, it is certainly helped solve congestion issues to important to ensure that the government Figure Sports City Street View shift a great extent, the city has continued to 2: Dubai and associated real estate developers grow at a very rapid pace, and the metro their approach from building mega-sized coverage has simply not kept up with this large highways towards The neighborhood’s road networkcommunities does not and integrate well with surrounding demographic and spatial growth. The more medium to small scale communities which ends up causing heavy congestion during peak Figure 3 government should introduce more metro that encourage public transit usagehours. and lines to connect all neighborhoods pedestrian Doing so would connections between the within development andcomfort. surrounding roadsensure – considering the city, and promote supplementary that the city who develops intoina long-lasting, of Sports City and the number of residents live it, this does not repre services such as shuttle services to metro sustainable model that promotes a high efficient solution to Additionally, the nearest stations.

Simultaneously, the connectivity. availability of quality of life for existing and futuremetro station is away, making public transit usage very difficult. parking spots must go down, and pricing residents. •

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Figure 3: Dubai Sports City road connections 24

A walk through

Moscow

by

Patrice Baunov Photographer @baunovart_

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Moscow – the capital of the Russian Federation, is the biggest city in the country and with approximately 17 million people in the urban area, one of the global megacities. A hot spot not only for big businesses, the city in general undergoes constant changes since the Iron Curtain fell and is a Eurasian melting pot of urban culture and development.

I always visit Moscow because the family and friends of my wife live there – she is a real Muscovite, born and raised. The first time I visited Moscow was in 2012 and from the very first moment I was deeply impressed by the intensity of the city.

Because of my background in Cultural Anthropology & European Ethnography, I absorbed the impressions of the city as much as possible. Back then I did not photograph the city, but later in 2015 I discovered the medium of analogue photography to capture moments and the environment of the world around me. I also use it as a tool for documentary projects and art.

For me, Moscow in particular is a very special place to observe and document because you cannot find much visual content about the everyday life of the people in this city or generally about the city itself, even though it has so much to offer – history, architecture, urban culture, art, business and much more. I personally, try to capture the less heeded things of the everyday urban life in order to create (artistic) documentary stories of the real face of the city. So, I want to preserve and share an insight which cannot be depicted by written documentation – and instead tell a visual story influenced by anthropological observations. Thus, I try to combine art and science - Anthropology in particular - into Arthropology. •

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Global Georgia?

My first visit in December 2012 of Tbilisi was overwhelming. My office UArchitects was invited by the Dutch Embassy (and Lena Kiladze) for a program named the ‘Days of Dutch Architecture in Georgia’.

The first view of the city showed a layered city with different types of architectural styles. In the more recent buildings, such as shopping malls, offices and hotels, one could detect desire for Europe. There are some similarities with the developments of the last decades in other East-European countries, like Hungary, Bulgaria and Romania.

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Misak Terzibasiyan Founder and owner of UArchitects

Due to the geographical location of Georgia between Asia and Europe, the influence of neighbour countries such as Turkey and Russia is of great importance. Tbilisi has been occupied by the Turks and the Arabs for centuries, particularly in the nineteenth century when the city started to grow under the influence of the Russians.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 Georgia was founded again. The Russian influence is obvious in the main streets of the city, whereas other parts of Tbilisi have developed in an organic way without a city planning (before the Russian influence). The streets in the small historic living areas have developed according to the structure of the hills. Different styles of architecture can be recognized in the city of Tbilisi. The remarkable terraces at the front of the houses are beautiful and the wood work shows a high level of craftsmanship.

They were designed in a neo classical style in combination with the local taste of Georgia. Every single entrance and balcony has its own unique appearance and copies are hardly seen.

Starchitecture On the banks of the river Koera some interesting new buildings have been

realized. A pedestrian bridge designed by the Italian architect Michele De Lucchi symbolically connects the two parts of the city, aptly named ‘The Bridge of Peace’.

Further on the river, his Italian colleague Massimiliano Fuchsas built some expressive buildings and currently there are signs of the German architect Jurgen Mayer working on some projects in the capital.

The Bridge of Peace connects the two parts of the river. However, pedestrians who cross the bridge find themselves lost in the traffic once the step of it. The new central bank of Georgia by Fuchsas shows similar issues.

The roof consists of huge white leaves, which protect the glazed office spaces below. Skylights spread the daylight into the central atrium, which acts as the central heart of the building and meeting place. It is a well light and balanced space. However, entering and exiting is made difficult. A small pedestrian bridge is the main route towards the entrance. The use of steel, bad drainage in combination with the winter snow makes the crossing of the bridge a hazardous endeavours.

It looks like the city put a lot of effort into the realization of some iconic buildings, but did not pay much attention to the connection of these iconic buildings to the rest of the city.

Throughout Tbilisi one can see many examples of how starchitects completely ignore the context, the urban structure, and the local climate. Local decision makers should be more critical on the matters but 29

currently lack a discourse concerning this topic.

Global Society – Local Identity versus Symbiosis Of course, there is a global society because of the existence of the world wide web.

Numerous images are available on internet, and the influence of global images and the preference for global star architects can hardly be stopped. In my opinion, star architects can be addressed to take account of the local identity if they want to design architecture in Tbilisi. Local city planners and other decision makers should address the issue of local identity towards star architects. They shouldn’t get carte blanche for designing in Tbilisi, but should be compelled to take a responsibility for the way their designs interact with the city.

They should look for a symbiosis with the local identity.

In my vision, (global) architecture can only work if it can adapt to the local context. Adaptation to the typology, shape or materials of the local context. In the current global era I think architecture should, more than ever before, start with the research of the local identity in relation to the global society. An architect should, at any time, ask himself the questions: “what is the local identity, what is the physical and the nonphysical context?’’

“How we can connect global modernity within the culture of Georgia and the city of Tbilisi?” That should be the question

that starchitects and local decision makers should ask themselves. It is not about making iconic architecture by landmarks which are seen everywhere, but: “how we can make architecture and urban development with a meaning for the people?”

Challenges for Tbilisi The main desire/ wish in Tbilisi is: how can architecture and urban development improve the quality of life? Architecture and urban development moves people if it is more specifically made for them or based on their local identity. What is the meaning of the culture heritage of Tbilisi and Georgia and how this can be fit in with the urban development of Tbilisi? We see this culture heritage of Tbilisi in the former parts of the city before the USSR influence.

In the old parts of Tbilisi you can recognize this heritage, wonderfully decorated with unique wood crafted architecture.

With this approach we think we have a good basis in Tbilisi to discuss and to think about the urban context and texture of architecture in close connection with urban development. First of all, real scientific research towards city fabric and the typical texture and ornaments of the houses, civic buildings in Tbilisi is needed. Even when we look at the old parts of Tbilisi we see the difference and the richness of the local identity of this city and the ornamentation of the local architecture.

The starchitects in Tbilisi don’t take notice of this extraordinary beauty. Even on city planning scale, starchitects waste precious land because of the big scale and hard-core architecture approach.

On my second visit to Tbilisi in December 2016, again on invitation of the Dutch Embassy and Lena Kiladze. It was good to see that some important changes were made. The transformation of Tbilisi heritage is a new issue for its government. In the old centre of Tbilisi several old buildings have been renovated and transformed, not on base of a strict

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program of the city planning but on base of capital injection and the multiple capital output.In my presentation I introduced a new research method which could be of any use for planners and decision makers in Tbilisi. I tried to give the audience a different view on architecture and sustainability in general and explained how the planning process could be improved by taking account of the context. Four years after my first presentation in Tbilisi, once again I put the term “CONTEXT” on the agenda, but now in relation to the term “TEXTURE”. I clarified that both terms should be interpreted in a specific as well as in an abstract way, and I quoted a part of my book CONTEXT-TEXTURE. “Context refers to the coherence of objects that people are able to see, feel, smell and judge. It relies on the experience in which people can grasp the context and all elements which are related to this aspect.

Subject to this, we will focus our attention on the interpretation of context and how this interpretation influences our working method and design process.

Our architecture creates connections with the local culture. In our vision, global architecture only works if it has the ability to adapt, in regards to the typology, shape or the materials used in the local context.

In the current global era we strongly believe that architecture should, start with the research of the local identity in relation to

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the global society”. Finally, when visiting any city you should experience the reality in total, with all your senses. Experience being submerged in a city. Only then you can experience the unique specialties of a region, a city, a neighbourhood and develop the understanding of its inhabitants.

It’s a subconscious feeling being strengthened by stories and images which are part of your own personality. Like the feeling of a human being, a city can be analysed and experienced in all its wonderful performances and impressions.

When I visited Tbilisi and explored the beauty of the city I took notice of this phenomenon.

You can experience a city and its architecture with all your senses, and for that, real interpersonal contacts are very important. Without empathizing in a culture and without the understanding of a community as an architect you are powerless in designing a project within its context, no matter on which location. If it is Tbilisi or Eindhoven; understanding the local identity is of crucial importance! • 1. A view of Tbilis' traditional architecture.

2-3.Georgia's charateristic wooden balconies.

4. Michele De Lucchi's Bridge of Peace.

5. Massimiliano Fuchsas' Central Bank of Georgia.

All pictures by author

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Turkmenistan in transit

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As I travelled, roughly along the ancient silk road, my transport engineer’s eyes noticed changes in the infrastructure, vehicles and transport system change whenever I crossed a border. Every country had its own way to design roads and traffic signs, to organise its public transport system, and a notably different vehicle fleet (almost exclusively white cars in Iran, many bread loaf-shaped vehicles in Uzbekistan, secondhand Japanese vehicles with inconveniently located steering wheels in Kyrgyzstan).

The most peculiar among the countries I visited was certainly Turkmenistan, a rarely visited country between the Caspian Sea, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan and Iran. Its 5.7 million inhabitants share a country with a size similar to Spain, mostly covered by desert, with enormous reserves of natural gas and oil. Turkmen citizens

The capital Ashgabat had been described to me as a surreal dream of white marble, golden ornaments and oddly shaped buildings. After a devastating earthquake had destroyed much of the city in 1948, it was rebuilt under Soviet rule. Soon after independence in 1991, a second phase of rebuilding started. Oil and gas money was spent according to the former president’s grandiose taste. I gained an initial idea of the country’s love for superlatives, numbers and symbols through articles I read prior to my visit. I read about world-class four-lane highways, world-record holding fountains, and the world’s fourth-largest free-standing flagpole, a park in the city called the inspiration alley. Since 2013, Ashgabat even proudly holds the record for the world’s most white marble-clad buildings in one city.

Personal impressions of a surreal desert country and its deserted capital. enjoy free gas, water, salt and until recently fuel, however many people live in poor conditions, while unemployment is rumoured to be as high as 60% (government data tell a whole different story though). This is paired with an almost complete absence of political freedom or civil liberties. The authoritarian regime keeps up a restrictive visa policy that allows very few visitors to visit the country. But as Turkmenistan was on my route, I applied for a visa anyway, hoping to get a chance to see whether the wondrous stories I had heard were true.

Unlike other travellers I met on my journey, I was granted a transit visa that allowed me to do so. I was given five days to cross the country from Iran to Uzbekistan. In this article I’ll share some of the impressions I gained, mostly related to Turkmenistan’s infrastructure and urban planning.

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Larissa Eggers MSc TIL student TU Delft

Bus stop in Ashgabat

INTERSECTION in Ashgabat

Capacity: ca. 30 people; waiting passengers: 3; cleaning staff: 2

number of lanes per direction: 5; number of vehicles in or near the intersection area: 7

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View from the Arch of Neutrality

URBAN ROAD IN Ashgabat

Cars on 4-lane road:2; cars on 350-vehicle parking lots: 3; employees in the Arch of Neutrality: 7; visitors: 1

Lanes per direction: 4; vehicles on the road: 1

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Once in Ashgabat, I set out to explore the city centre on foot, as the weather was mild in early spring and the sidewalks were ample. Walking around I was constantly watched by the omnipresent police, while I in turn could watch numerous workers beautifying parks and roadsides with spring flowers or polishing balustrades, traffic lights and bus stops with small rags. Except for these two groups of people, the streets in the city centre were empty. Neither pedestrians nor vehicles made use of the praised parks and roads, and I saw very few people leaving or entering the many midrise white marble buildings neatly arranged between them. Curious whether these observations were specific to the time of my visit I read more articles and travel blogs and found out that this is in fact common sight in Ashgabat.

While most cities suffer from excess demand for road infrastructure, in Ashgabat’s centre I saw a tremendous oversupply of infrastructure. Instead of traffic jams there were empty roads and roundabouts.

Roadside information boards displayed the Turkmen flag instead of traffic advice, and beautifully ornamented traffic lights

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did not have any traffic to guide. Vast and empty parking lots accompanied the monuments and museums in which staff outnumbered visitors by far. The centre’s huge air-conditioned bus stops were at least frequented by a few travellers waiting to make use of the relatively convenient public buses. Through underpasses, the (nonexistent) pedestrian streams were separated from the barely existent vehicle streams.

Among the government’s recent infrastructure projects in Ashgabat were a new airport terminal with a capacity of 17 million passengers per year and the ‘International Passenger Bus Terminal’ for several thousand daily travellers. The government’s love for symbols is expressed in the shapes of both buildings: The airport terminal is reminiscent of a falcon, while the bus terminal is modelled after a steering wheel. Another common trait is that both are extremely oversized for current demand. The airport terminal had a passenger number of just over 100,000 in 2016 the bus terminal does not see more than a few hundred passengers per day - as I had to find out myself. With the advertised capacity of several thousand passengers 32

per day in mind, I went to the bus terminal at the crack of dawn, to continue towards the Uzbek border, only to find the terminal completely deserted! Its five (!) daily buses – none of them to international destinations – had already departed. The only remaining travel option was hitchhiking, which turned out to be somewhat organized. Along the main road towards the north, travellers were queuing and most vehicles passing by stopped. For prompt cash, preferably US dollars, they let the waiting passengers board. Finally, I had discovered actual demand – just not where the government had planned it to be. •

1. Park in Ashgabat 2. An empty road in Ashgabat with various street lights 3-6. Various urban infrastructure in Ashgabat with the author's observations Source: All Images by Author

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NEGOTIATING

Shangri-La in exile

Rethinking Tibetan monastic settlements in New Delhi

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Deepansha Arneja MSc Architecture TU Delft

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The Tibetan population in exile collectively known as diaspora was put on the Indian map in 1959. This breakaway happened when the spiritual leader and the center of the Tibetan cosmos, his holiness the Dalai Lama along with a section of refugees, fled to India evading the Chinese control of Tibet. Although the Dalai Lama was made to reside and preach his teachings from the hill town of Dharamshala, a large section of the diaspora was also granted asylum across the country including the capital city, Delhi. To this date, the Tibetans, in Tibet and in exile, follow the teachings and ideology of their leader with an unshakable faith.

The Tibetan Buddhism and the Indian Mahayana tradition historically shared similar religious foundations with four chief school of thoughts – physical and moral discipline, philosophy, metaphysics, yoga and meditation (Dowman, 1988). Due to this congruent cultural identity, the Tibetan refugee easily assimilated with their host on arrival. Resultantly, various endangered Tibetan rituals were revived and tangibly transferred from the first to the oncoming generation of refugees.

Representing India’s amicable outlook towards the diaspora, the first refugeecamps were conceptualized to resemble the monastic Shangri-Las of Tibet. ‘Shangri-La’ as a term was first used by James Hilton in his book Lost Horizons (1933) correlating the Tibetan lamaseries to mythical paradises.

In popular culture, they are visualized as a perennial source of happiness and cultural treasures tucked away from time and dimension. Emulating this concept, the Monastic settlements in Delhi such as New Aruna Nagar (built in 1959) were designed as tight-knit dwelling pockets with a Buddhist monastery called Little Tibet in the center. With a four-walled Buddhist shrine, spacious scripture halls, meditation rooms, space for chanting (the Dharma wheel hall) and a small pagoda inlaid with silver, pearls and jewels, this setup had an uncanny resemblance in terms of space and program with Gelug monasteries in Tibet (Cheng et al., 2000). Similarly, the overall aesthetic of the dwellings were also true to its context - white painted facades, ladder windows and reddish brown ornamentation with a small exception of the material palate that had to be altered for a warmer climatic zone.

Pop-Spirituality Quiet understandably, as refugees Tibetans in India face a ‘suspended’ notion of

existence and have been continuously encouraged by the Dalai Lama to pursue a powerful ambition to return to Tibet. Thus, a larger focus was laid on the continuation of tradition rather than forming a strong anchor in the context. Today, the everyday ritual for the younger populations in Aruna Nagar revolves compulsively around learning Tibetan values and religious inclinations. However, change in the geography has brought about inevitable transformations in cuisine, traditional clothing and daily practices. Majority of the economic establishments are temporal - staged for an easy deployment and displacement like internet and computer parlors, food joints, salons and guesthouses.

A closer glance reveals the ‘pick and pack’ nature of the settlement, reinforced by an array of photographs of the Dalai Lama placed ubiquitously as an ornamentation, across the public spaces in the settlement.

The Indo-Chinese relations turned sour when India gave asylum to the Dalai Lama.

However, the Indian government has been trying to improve these political ties. Due to the fragile politics involved, it has become very clear to the Indian government, and the Tibetan community in exile, that repatriation is unlikely in the near future.

Under the 1946 Foreigners Act, Tibetans in India are legally considered as ‘foreigners’though they are accorded basic rights of the citizens, they are not allowed to vote, hold Indian passports, or eligible to government or public jobs (Mehra CTA, 2017). In more than one way, the community is breaking away from its original character to integrate with the host country, while the host is becoming increasingly wary of the ‘foreign refugees’.1 The single-most powerful force anchoring a sense of ‘diasporic’ belonging against all odds is the presence of Dalai Lama. His position has far transcended a religious authority to more of a political one, reinforcing the notion of a unified 34

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Tibet subconsciously within the fragmented community. Evidently, the community has rigidly attached itself to the idea of the figure, making ‘Dalai Lama’ an uncontested center and the face of Tibetan unification.

Endangering this center is a controversial process of succession where the Dalai Lama may either choose his successor from the Tibetan diaspora living outside the autonomous region in China or not to ‘reincarnate’. The dissolution of the reverential center and the consequent absence would leave the refugees with two clear personal choices; to either go back to the Chinese controlled Tibet and embrace the new identity or anchor themselves within the host country while still being recognized as a ‘foreigner’ (SzmigielskaPiotrkows, 2016). For this article, two of the many domino processes are explored further – the creation of a void and slow disappearance of wanting a free Tibet.

atlantis Projections Richard Joncas in his analysis of Eisenman’s House X explores the spatial repercussions of the hypothetical loss of a center (Joncas, 1998). He uses history to argue that the spatial conversations are usually taken over by the void. Lacking a binding force, the participant communities go through a process of complete fragmentation and disorder, which is succeeded by reconstruction only if appropriate forces come to replace the void. Exploring the latter, one could argue that the collective memory of a homeland that is no longer accessible would find a firmer ground, replacing the resistance. It is also possible that in the absence of the Dalai Lama, Tibetans would evolve and adjust to fit into their host environment in India.

The diaspora is projected to indulge in a reassessment of its cultural identity and the settlements would witness resurgence of a poly-centered society. Buddhism as a faith system would completely engulf the program of monastery, which would not only exist as a space for religious learning but also a force keeping the commitment towards the Tibetan tradition alive. To achieve this, the monastery would leave its existing typology of a temple with a boundary and morph into a much more visible, porous and permeable public space.

In essence, it would be diffused yet visible so that it freely accommodates a renewed interest in the culture on one hand and a possible dissipation of the participants on the other. In the case of a boundaryless monastery, what could possibly be the primary and a more concrete center of the settlement? The answer could come from the void itself - a commemorative space for

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the Dalai Lama. The position of the Dalai Lama has been a highly contested situation and to constructively resolve this, one would try to replace it with a memory scape that embodies his teachings and ideologies. For the society to absolve this, the space would have to be integrated with the shared belief system and thus would require a clear spatial definition almost like a monastery.

If the diaspora intends to stay in the host environment, a cemented economic and political position would weigh much more than a ‘congruent’ religious affiliation.

In terms of governance, a share in the Indian political sphere would become indispensible for negotiating merger of interests between the hosts and the refugees.

Hence, the governing body in exile that

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1. At New Aruna Nagar Source - Mayank Soofi 2. Monastery at Delhi.

Source - Alamy 3. Tibetan, but not from Tibet.

Source - Author.

4-5. Center and the Resistance.

Source - Mayank Soofi 6. Monastery at Delhi Source - Alamy

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sits in Dharamshala right now might relocate to Aruna Nagar in Delhi to be closer to legislative and judicial processes. The settlements would then observe an advent of a new political realm with forum spaces for discussion and debate.

From an economical perspective, the Tibetan refugees up until now had only formulated an informal and subsistent economic profile in Delhi. The commercial urban typologies can be understood as quiet encroachments with a very generic programmatic disposition, offering least contestation in the host environment.

However, for an anchoring process, the Tibetan diaspora that has survived in the host environment for more than sixty years due to its introverted character would be required to step out of the closet. It would undergo a radical transformation in terms of space and content for a more visible image in the city. Needless to say, that the process of representation and formalization would invite an active participation from our discipline. The informal pocket of Aruna Nagar that is composed of ad-hoc,

unregulated and unplanned commercial setups would be reorganized for city, community and neighborhood scalar interactions.

The Tibetan diaspora would be called upon to recreate their version of Shangri-La, an avenue of opportunity and prosperity on the Indian soil. The community would be required to shed away the cover of this ‘suspended temporality’ and actively reconstruct a new multi-dimensional identity accepting the absence of the Dalai Lama and a possible return to their homeland. The design discipline would face the challenge to use their tools of space, form and program to create a contextually befitting realm responsive to integration and preservation of an endangered culture. • Notes 1. This includes rights such as: freedom to practice their own religion, access to Indian health and education facilities, right to work, and freedom of movement within the country.

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References 1. Dowman, Keith, The power-places of Central Tibet the pilgrims guide. Kathmandu, Nepal: Vajra Publications, October 1st 1988, p26-28 2. Cheng, L., Wang, B., Jinghua, R., Hualiang, P., Wang, Q., Wei, R., Sun, D., Ancient chinese architecture. Buddhist buildings: ancient Chinese architecture; May 08th 2000, pg121-122 3. This includes rights such as: freedom to practice their own religion, access to Indian health and education facilities, right to work, and freedom of movement within the country.

Central Tibetan Administration, “Tibet in Exile”, CTA. http://tibet.net/about-cta/tibet-in-exile/ 4. This includes rights such as: freedom to practice their own religion, access to Indian health and education facilities, right to work, and freedom of movement within the country.

Central Tibetan Administration, “Tibet in Exile”, CTA. http://tibet.net/about-cta/tibet-in-exile/ (Accessed Nov. 22, 2017) 5. Szmigielska-Piotrkows, K. (2016). What It Means to Be a Tibetan in India? On Consequences of Creating the Unified Pan-Tibetan Identity. Localities, 6, 93. doi:10.15299/local.2016.11.6.93 6. Joncas, R. Peter. “Fixing a Hole”: A Commentary on the Architecture of Peter Eisenman Stanford University, 13-13. doi:10.1007/1-56898-664-5_3

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ESOTERIC EARTH CONSTRUCTION Conversations concerning traditional methods of construction and building materials is always enlightening. Ar. Harsha Sridhar of Initiative for Green Habitats, aptly call themselves a growing 'tribe' of professionals who are determined to work tirelessly against the tide of commercial consumerism, aiming to turn tables by employing underrated technologies in construction.

Formulas such as rammed earth, mud blocks, bamboo etc. have resurfaced within the sub-continent and are steadily expanding beyond their vernacular niche.

Having said that, unlike timber and bamboo, the mud alternatives are yet to take their root as a viable alternative.

Rammed earth and mud blocks have been used for millennia, however today they are only sporadically explored and constantly pushed under other technologies. Having experimented with soil for decades on the Indian Institute of Science, (Bengaluru), Professor K.S. Jagadish is an established expert in alternative building materials.

Prof. Jagadish recalls the 70s when concrete blocks swept the market and mud blocks were completely forgotten. Pondering the gamut of possibilities of green construction methods confronting the resistances within our society, some front running issues are revealed as – aesthetic appeal; followed by

commercial viability of the technologies and materials; availability and use of the resources at hand; structural limitations and so on. Justifiably, the market turns towards steel, concrete, glass and numerous other synthetic materials that are developed and introduced daily into the construction industry. These mass produced materials with their factory finish are welcomed worldwide by developers, forming a global narrative through the designers, builders and its end-users.

Unfortunately, the techniques with green materials are not entirely replicable due to varying quantity and quality of raw materials (soil, bamboo, timber etc.) and their availability at different locations.

Research on contextual viability and other probabilities highlights a drawback in its commercial application, lack of knowledge on its cost-effectiveness and material

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Ar. Gayatri Mutum Proprietor, Studio Gaya

properties, which hold it back from its global usage. Another influencing factor to its low popularity is the challenge of imparting the skillsets to the local artisans for building on respective sites. Evidently, engaging with the initial training has only been seen to be effective on large projects and potential areas of implementation; however fails at a smaller scale and on single proposals.

Over the years, through gradual experimentation, these green methods have comeback with a stronger structural backbone and technological upgrade.

Stabilised rammed earth structures have evolved from single floor load bearing spaces up to four storey buildings. Yet, owing to its refreshed revival and a handful of built evidence within the country, it still faces resistance and raises doubts amongst the end-users. Projects such as Dr. Yogananda’s (Prof. IISc, Bengaluru) residence and Anna Heringer’s, (Principal, Anna Heringer Studio, Germany) successful METI School in Bangladesh show the potential of building with mud and help instill trust in the mentioned construction alternative. Particularly, the residence in Bengaluru has been marked as a breakthrough in the Indian context of mud architecture and it continues to inspire numerous other houses in and around the city since its completion. Whereas, the METI School in Rudrapur, is an awardwinning collaboration hand-built by the local craftsmen, students and teachers of the school. A modest G+1 structure built with mud and bamboo super-structure over a brick foundation. With further research and technological advances in prospect,

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Anna has expressed the ambition to erect a ‘mud skyscraper’ in the middle of Manhattan.

Building with ‘mud’ today, even after an effective technological upgrade, carries a stigma of being a backward material and a stigma of poverty and under development.

As a large developing country, the cultural attitude towards the eco-friendly materials remains a determining factor. Therefore, what is in vogue in the upper strata of the society, prevails at the lower end of the economic pyramid. Prof. Jagadish highlights that, “it might be relatively easier to convince the enlightened, environmentally conscious individuals about the new technologies, [however] both brackets of the society are seldom moved by the environmental arguments.” They seem to prioritise their requirements based on their affordability and evidence of successful applications. Nevertheless, successful post-demonstration stories from cities and villages of Karnataka, Meghalaya and other states are promising alternatives - with Mindtree office in Kalinga (used SMBs) as a terrific commercial model for the large tech-parks around the country. In the end, it is a heterogeneous pool of opinions - with those willing to trust the new methods for the sake of sustainablility at one end and those indifferent and insensitive to the environmental awareness at the other.

The indifferent, remain under the fallacy that resolving climate matters is solely the government’s responsibility. The regulations established and adopted such as the IGBC, LEED, CBRI along the veins of a sustainable construction industry have

remained a warm-up. Their implementation has been weak and ineffective in terms of promoting and embracing alternative methods. The policies and guidelines drafted are non-compliant especially in the smaller cities and towns where officials and the public alike remain oblivious to the existence of such a framework.

The knowledge gap needs to be bridged with the engagement between potential clients, professionals, the practicing tribes (architects, engineers, mistris*) and authorities. The native ‘tribes’ who have tried to disseminate the mud alternatives advocate that the top-down approach trickles down easier than the bottom-up effort. They are committed to bringing the walls down and push the awareness and acceptance levels. With sprawling professional institutions in each state, education is as critical as emphasising the link to sustainable construction choices, and their impact on the environment as a whole is essential if the required radical shift in implementation is to be achieved.

emissions. We have often realised that the effects of our industry on the environment is seldom elaborated in the Indian academic curriculum and often subdued under other mainstream subjects. Hence, a pairing of education with practical demonstration and training at all levels could be a leap and help inculcate the value and the advantages of the low-energy materials and methods. Moreover, I strongly believe that, encouragement and promotions by the social media and the publishing houses towards mentioned alternatives could provoke the mass to welcome more rustic earth structures in favour of than glasshouses and concrete jungles. It definitely is an undertaking to win mindsets and a conscious decision to share the burden of responsibility. •

Conclusion

References

Our Indian sub-continent evidently has a large appetite for tried-tested methods and products which could potentially bring about a revolution in the construction industry if it resolved to. Even so, millions still choose to ignore the sustainable construction materials, alternate technologies and their advantages. With the drastic effects of climate change in action, it still remains a challenge to promote these healthy methods of construction amongst all sections of our society and in an industry that contributes significantly to greenhouse

Jagadish, K.S., 2007, Building with Stabilized Mud, I.K. International Publishing House Sridhar, Harsha, 2014, UNDP report, Green Housing Designs for Rural Meghalaya Initiative for green habitats, India - http://www.ighindia.com/ Heringer, Anna, 2017, The warmth and wisdom of mud buildings, TedTalks

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Notes Mistris – A general word used for the local masons and technicians contributing their bit in the construction

1. The Meti School. Source - Kurt Horbst & Alexandra Grill from http://architektur. hoerbst.com 2. Mind tree Kalinga. Source - Amit Rastogi.

CnT Architects

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text & interviews by Sindhuja Janakiraman MSc Landscape Architecture TU Delft

with

Garima Jain

Senior Consultant - Practice, Indian Institute for Human Settlements

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Nityanand Jayaraman

Journalist, Environmental Activist

Today’s battle between nature and urban development is manifested all around the world and especially in the Global South. On this basis, the engagement with this issue has remained crucial over the years as it lies in the core of the urbanism field. To understand vulnerabilities and disaster risk as an urbanist, it is crucial to comprehend climate change not only through existing practice but also by employing other methods for positive outcomes. This article is a culmination of two interviews of urban practitioners from India that sheds light on topics related greatly to disaster risk reduction in policy and activism.

Sneak Peek

urban practices and vulnerabilities Garima has led several capacity building programmes and urban policy projects that cover themes on vulnerability, urban poverty and climate change. She has been instrumental in the formation of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) with United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN).

SDSN mobilizes global scientific and technological expertise to promote practical solutions for sustainable development, including the implementation of the SDGs and the Paris Climate Agreement.

How did the formulation of SDGs with UN-SDSN happen?

At IIHS (Indian Institute for Human Settlements) we were anchoring the full process 1 of the SDGs for cities and it was a

pro bono that we took as an international activist to affect international policy on this at a higher scheme. The reason we took it at IIHS was to mobilize all the organizations across the world that have a voice and are working in the space of urban issues at various scales. This was done with City Mayors, collectives, other bilateral institutions like UN-Habitat, community organizations like Slum Dwellers International or even organizations that work on climate risk like C-40. It started in 2014 and we were able to get the United Nations to adopt the 17 themes, which eventually became the SDGs. My own motivation was also to make Disaster Risk central to that idea of sustainability. Various issues like transportation, solid waste or disaster risk were not getting any attention elsewhere. So, they were struggling to

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get recognized as important issues for sustainable development in the SDGs Eleven target.

What were the biggest challenges?

What happened was that, although we wanted an outcome oriented approach, we ended up with a ‘loss and damage scenario’.

But I would probably talk about the little victory achieved in the penultimate meeting for the SDGs. In many of the appendices we managed to get in urban disaggregated data collection for all goals, which I think is an extremely good step forward as it helps develop data collection and increases capacity. Eventually we will have a lot more data specific to urban, so globally that will make a huge impact. But it was a small minor one-line intervention that managed to succeed, which I think is how it works

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largely in the space of policy. If you try and intervene with one big policy where there are no precedents or history of it, it is much harder to get a consensus to do it. Just changing one word in a policy document is a big achievement.

You have been actively involved with Capacity Building programs on vulnerabilities and disaster risk reduction, targeting urban practitioners from various fields.

What has been your experience?

We started in 2011 with the first round of Capacity building program for UNDP in India. In that time, resilience was not very well understood, certainly not by the public actors. We trained the State and National level actors, which we initially had a hard time taking the idea across because the basic understanding was missing, neither did they recognize what vulnerabilities were. Now it has been over six years since the first training and we have seen a remarkable change in vocabulary. They still might not be up to par with the latest discussion for the words, how to use them, how to do the assessment and so on, but at least the basics is known, so we don’t have to start from the basement.

Are there enough capacity building programs happening for local bodies in India?

It’s not just happening in India, but on a global scale. The leading region on this matter currently is Latin America. Also, this is because they have been more exposed to hazards, so they have learnt it the hard way.

They are very active on training, building capacities, improving technology and a lot

of ground-up action. Even big economies like the US can learn from their southern neighbours. For instance, the recent event of hurricane in the US caught the country absolutely stranded and they had no idea how to react. On the contrary, in the case of back-to-back earthquakes in Mexico, they managed to do a lot better. But coming back to India, we are very far out; our national imagination is improving a little bit although quite slowly, we are ten years behind the global vision of many of these risks. If you come down further to State level and local level, there is even further lag. In the space of Disaster Risks, the States have all the attorney to react first to the disaster that strike them and then they will call it a disaster to invite the Centre and other International agencies to help them out.

Let’s take the case of TamilNadu State: they are extremely provident as they had an experience in past of the Tsunami, where all the international agencies flew in and didn’t leave much for the State to do. When the recent floods were going on, they did not declare it as an international emergency and did not let any international agency come in at that time. There is a lot of resistance that is political, especially when it comes to disaster. Risk reduction is not really a priority, we don’t have a national imagination on that right now, we don’t have any regulatory or funding mechanism for mitigation. The first type of change is to have a National mitigation fund established which can be used in a wider way and building resilience and not just for postdisaster.

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What are the efforts taken to train local communities to deal with the threat?

There are organizations that particularly look at building capacities at local level.

In India there are few and they are very localised; the problem then is scaling these organisations up because the capacities are so local and context specific that the use of fixed models becomes very difficult. In fact, I should share a very interesting case of an Indian Administrative Service officer, who started training a fishing village in Nagapattinam on how to act at the time of floods. In 2004, there was an extreme case of rain that lead to floods, but that village did not suffer too much because these guys were trained to deal with that scenario.

Soon after, at the end of 2004, at the time of Tsunami that struck the entire coast of India, the losses in Nagapattinam district were significantly less than the neighbouring districts because they had already tested themselves out in a real scenario, UNDP had taken this as a case study and they have been writing and speaking about how community’s own capacity development is more far reaching. There are positive outcomes and it’s not just local NGOs working but also individuals in public positions who are pro-actively involved.

1. Interaction with local community as part of the policy making process. Source - Garima Jain) 2. Aerial view of an inundated area in Chennai: an aftermath of poor urban planning decisions. Source: Tamilnadu Slum Clearance Board

atlantis Nityanand is a Chennai based writer and social activist. He is part of an anti-corporate collective called Vettiver Koottamaippu, where he investigates and reports on corporate abuses of environment and human rights. He fervently works on community mobilization of fisherfolk in Ennore.

Ennore is a neighbourhood in Chennai city, bounded by the Kosasthalaiyar River, Ennore Creek and Bay of Bengal. It has become a hub for industrial development causing devastating effects on its ecosystem.

Ennore has been a very good example of community mobilization that has led to re-thinking few planning decisions. In that area, what were the measures taken out to get to this level?

Well, the first thing is imagining the possibility that the Kosasthalaiyar river can be saved. At the time we got involved it was already close to fifteen years of community struggle. By the time we went there bearing a few people in the community, a bulk of them felt that the river was beyond repair and it will not be possible to challenge the powers that be to retrieve the river. So, the first challenge was to try and change that mindset, to show that it is possible. The second challenge was to make Ennore visible and making the illegalities there visible. Ennore is on the outskirts of public visibility and even though it is very much Chennai, because it falls North of the Cooum river,

it has all the baggage that comes with low income,largely oppressed communities. I would not say we have achieved much in terms of changing planning decisions as far as Ennore is concerned. When we do it, that's really a big success. All the things that we are doing now are leading towards a time when planning decisions in Ennore is reconsidered, where the government and others acknowledge that Ennore is a place that not only has to be protected but it must be revived. The planning decisions after that are geared towards revival and conservation of Ennore as an ecologically sensitive location.

What were the methods employed to reach out to these “powerful” bodies, through the Court perhaps?

Court is probably the least helpful in these matters, because the court does not understand the urgency. It is pre-occupied with legal process under the human law and does not understand how natural law works. It is possible to win a court case even while losing the battle on the ground. I will give you an example: about 150 acres of wooded areas that formed the green belt for the existing power plants are located in the North Chennai Thermal Power Station's complex. Now the company wanted to build a third power plant and began cutting down the trees to locate that power plant in the green belt. Given that this is basically illegal, we took the matter to Court, which issued notices that took their own sweet time. The 150 acres is gone now but the

case continues. Maybe we will win the case but if we do, it does not mean that the forest will come back, and thus, a legal process is not the greatest way. The Law and the Courts of Law may have a role to play at some point but what is required more is, as I said, is to draw more public attention to the problem and the violations entailed. In Ennore, the way we make things visible is first by understanding the issue very well and by learning from the fisher-folk how the river behaves, what it is, what functions it serves for them and for the city. Eventually, the fisher-folk became the articulators of the on-going issue. The second thing that we did was of course to take people and media to visit Ennore to show them what has happened there. That became extremely powerful because Ennore is visually strong where it’s not polluted as well as where it is. So, as pollution could be made visible, it immediately started putting Ennore squarely on the map of Chennai.

One of the things that are important for troubles and movements like this is to intervene in culture, to shed light on the problem through different ways in which voices speak or sing or act.

Do you see this as an effective way to intervene into the cities’ Masterplan?

I don't consider this as method to intervene in the Masterplan. When the cultural priorities are so poor, how do you plan with the geography that you have in hand? We need to first understand the geography or respect for it that comes from your culture.

Our culture does not have that, I don't

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know whether other western cultures do. To me Master planning exercise is possible only in a democratic and equal society where different interest groups have an equal voice, otherwise a Masterplan is basically made by professionals.

According to recent reports, the State of Tamil Nadu is set to lose a large belt of coastal area in the coming years. How should Ennore as a neighbourhood in Chennai be prepared and make steps to render the place resilient instead of just repairing what’s going on?

The popular vocabulary that is used around the world when it comes to resilience is to 'build' resilience. What we have been advocating is that resilience cannot be built, you must unbuild it. Most of our cities have become vulnerable because of building, so in Ennore it is a matter of unbuilding and a matter of not building. So, you need to not build on the creek and in the setback area which will be areas that are likely to be submerged if and when sea level rises.

By way of abundant caution, one needs to retreat from the sea, and while doing that we need to ensure for us to decongest Chennai.

What I'm advocating is not that we de-urbanize Chennai and make other disasters in several other places around the countryside. I'm saying we do not repeat the

mistake of urbanization that has happened in Chennai and we try and imagine new ways of having even more dense settlements with less vulnerabilities. The urbanization phenomenon is not a force of nature, it was human founded. Once you understand the natural limitation of certain locality, then the human settlement in that locality will have to be defined by that natural limit and not by the rule of man.

Under the Coastal Regulation Zone notification, the Coastal Zone Management Plans are required to have a long-term housing plan for the fishing community.

Since the CRZ notification has the jurisdiction of 500 meters from the High tide line and 100 meters from tidal water body, it is natural that the Law has been talking about housing plan within this area, which I think is very important. But also, one would then look at removing the power plants, because the first in the line of fire is the fisher-folk who are the only ones that even if they move when sea level rises, they will have a compulsion or a need to be near the ocean because that is their place of livelihood. The rest of us being near the ocean can either be a danger or a luxury.

Reflection Often at times, dealing with disaster risk reduction and “resilience” is so complex that it requires a large knowledge pool to act upon it, even more when the idea is 42

so far-fetched to the government and the society in India. From the interviews, we can understand that time and culture play a crucial role in achieving the desired result.

While policy seeks achievement with just including words to its brief, the space of activism and community mobilization takes a different route in creating pressure to do the needful. The magnitude of outcomes from both these approaches, although slow, is very promising. It also pushes us to re-think our own approach in such a scenario of ignorance, political and cultural discrepancy, to give room for a myriad of ideas and voices. •

3. North Chennai Thermal Power Station on Ennore creek, Chennai. Source Author 4. Socio-economic vulnerability due to pollution and climate change. Source Author

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EXTREME CONDITIONS practising Urbanism in Bangladesh

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The Dutch are well known for exporting their water management practices internationally. Their cuttingedge expertise and approach to water management are continuously in motion to adapt to new values and insights. After gaining experience in the Dutch Deltaplan, Defacto Urbanism is one of the consortium members of the combined Dutch-Bangladeshi technical assistance team for the Bangladesh Deltaplan 2100. In this Deltaplan a holistic approach is taken to formulate a long-term water- and flood risk management strategy including aspects such as urbanization, climate change, food security and economic development. The technical assistance team advised on measures, strategies and projects that can be included in by the Bangladesh planning commission in the Deltaplan and 5-year plans. In this article I will both describe some of the principles we as Dutch experts could contribute to the Bangladesh Deltaplan approach, as well as some lessons and insights I gained while working as an Dutch urbanist in the Bangladesh context.

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Anne Loes Nillesen Urban designer Defacto Urbanism

1. One of Dhaka’s (polluted) water storage lakes 2. Adaptive pathway element: indicating the amount of open rain water storage that should be available in the urban areas depending on the climate change scenario.

3. A strategy examples for improving the water storage capacity in high and middle density urban areas.

Valuable insights from the Dutch Deltaplan The Dutch experience in developing long term holistic Deltaplans (as was done after the flood in 1953 and more recently was renewed from 2007 onwards) was the main reason to involve Dutch experts in the formulation of the Bangladesh Deltaplan. Based on our Dutch Deltaplan experience we could provide an integral research by design approach for a longterm water management and flood risk strategy. Essential elements of this approach are amongst others: the use of future development scenarios, an integrated system approach, the use of adaptation pathways and the use of ‘design ateliers’ as a support tool for an integral research by design approach.

Future development scenarios One of the difficulties of developing a long-term strategy for 2100 is predicting what the state of an area is in the long term. That means you can not only assess the long-term strategy on how it functions within the current situation, but should also reflect on its effectiveness in different future scenarios. Scenarios include aspects of future development that you cannot influence or guaranty with policies, such as international cooperation, economic growth and development, population growth, urban growth and spread, environmental health, and pollution or climate change. During the strategy development (of both the Dutch and Bangladesh deltaplan) the proposed strategies are assessed on their performance and robustness under different scenarios: for instance: Will there be sufficient budget available to finance the maintenance of expensive structures? And will the strategy

be able to cope with unexpected extremes in climate change? For the Bangladeshi setting, the international relations with India seemed to be a very important aspect of future scenarios since upstream dams in India have a major effect on the downstream water availability.

Adaptation pathways Since the future situation is uncertain, it is important to develop an adaptable strategy that can be adjusted in time.

Unlike a blueprint plan where you make a final masterplan, the adaptive strategy includes several alternative pathways for development to take place. Depending on different developments in time (such as moderate or extreme climate change) the strategy can lead to different end results.

Monitoring and adjusting the strategy is an integral aspect of this adaptive and open planning approach.

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System approach In the Netherlands, awareness on the impact of flood risk interventions has grown in recent years. New insights have been gained on how inherent water management interventions are in a wider delta system where different social and physical phenomena coexist. On the water system level there are already many interrelations.

The construction of polders in peat areas causes subsidence and CO2 pollution.

The sea dams provide fresh water for agriculture but has also caused ecologically important transitions between fresh and salt water to disappear. The canalization of rivers provided reliable shipping routes, but also provide a corset that cannot be

system capacity growth due to implementing measures in time system capacity growth due to immplementing measures in time

time

seasonal flood

1/year flood

100/year flood

10/year flood

SUFOLA 100/year flood SOHONIO 100/year flood SUSHOMA 10/year flood

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SOKRIO 10/year flood

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amount runoff water in time dependent on scenarios amount run-off water in for climate change time and urbanisation rate dependent on scenarios for climate change and rate of urbanisation growth flood standard in time growth flood standard dependent on scenarios in time for climate change dependent on scenarios for and urbanisation rate climate change and rate of urbanisation target dependent on scenarios target and timedependent of reaching on target scenarios on scenario s depending dependent on scenarios (amount of runoff and GDPfor growth) climate change and rate of urbanisation

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accommodated due to climate change increasing river discharges. It is therefore essential to approach a delta area as an integral system and reflect on the different future effects an intervention can have on the entire delta system.

Delta ateliers In order to come to integrated holistic solutions, it is important to understand the basic principles of each other’s disciplines (in the BDP drinking water, river management, coastal, agriculture, ecology, urban, financial, economic and governance experts where cooperating).

To collect knowledge of the Bangladesh Delta system and share knowledge between interdisciplinary experts an extensive range of delta atelier sessions were organized. In this creative and informal atelier setting experts where challenged to share ideas and come up with innovative out-of-thebox solutions, and to reflect on the integral impact of interventions in the broader delta system.

Lessons and insights with regard to working in the Bangladesh contexts Extreme circumstances What stood out immediately is that though the Dutch experts might be successful in cultivating and controlling the Dutch Delta, the Bangladesh challenges are so much more extreme. The size and force of rivers,

the impact of climate change, amount of rainfall and speed of urbanization and population growth are incomparable to the Dutch situation. This enforces the need to not merely copy Dutch interventions, but to use the Dutch approach and guiding principles as an attribute to enrich local strategies.

Urbanism as a practice When studying Dutch Urbanism at the Delft University we learnt about the city extension plans of Berlage and Witteveen from the 19th century, the garden cities projects that improved the housing of factory workers, the land reclamation and new town developments and the national highway and urban development plans as part of a Dutch historic urbanism tradition that I subsequently never practiced. In the Bangladeshi setting, those urban design tools and principles seemed very valuable while working in a context in which issues such as housing, water management and healthy living environments have not yet reached a satisfying standard.

Working in the Bangladeshi context also made me better understand Dutch phenomena that were previously difficult to grasp: I always felt the infills of canals in Dutch cities had been a misguided trend from the past that in many cities is now being rightfully being reversed. In Bangladesh, I experienced the smell of the water drainage canals (that also function as an open sewer) in the urban areas and I

could clearly understand how banning the open water from the public realm could be seen as progression from a sanitary perspective.

How to implement a plan?

In general, the urban practice in Bangladesh was focused on developing urban extensions, new town and mobility zoning plans. Reality would however catch up with those plans quickly: the city of Dhaka would already have extended beyond the borders of the masterplan before it was updated. There is a big mismatch between the blueprint top down masterplans and the lack of control over informal urbanization.

This is partly due to the poor enforcement of the plan, but sometimes there where aspects in the masterplans that tried to work against natural urban expansion principles. For instance, if you construct a new highway it can be expected that settlements will occur alongside it. So to construct a road and then apply a nobuilding zone alongside it (in a setting with poor enforcement) seems to be a set up for failure. In order to improve the chance that elements of plans could be implemented we had to develop a new toolset. The toolset includes principles that either work with the natural urban expansion principles or were derived from contexts with less top-down planning such as in the USA. For instance, we proposed to profile some green urban areas as public parks, by giving them a public function and value, the risk of gradual encroachment is reduced.

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ity, ed public The importance of spatial quality When showing my Bangladeshi colleagues some of the projects we did in the Netherlands and the USA they referred to it as ‘beautification’ projects.

This made me wonder whether the ‘spatial quality’ that has been a irrefutable value in Dutch spatial planning for decades now, is a luxury as when the basic functionality of an urban area as a healthy living environment has not been achieved. However, the World Bank reports differently: they claim a qualitative living environment is essential for economic development, since this quality is essential to keep and attract the workers that are necessary to transform to a knowledge industry and economy.

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Inspiration When in Dhaka I was particularly charmed and inspired by the Bangladesh high rise buildings that included many balcony spaces that where filled with plants and trees. This unique typology could be a powerful tool in supporting urban ecology and will hopefully applied more and more in Bangladesh and the rest of the world.

Conclusion The Dutch situation provides no blueprint for worldwide implementation: every situation and setting require a tailor-made strategy based on the context in which it is to be implemented. A successful way to export knowledge is to be inspired by principles and approaches instead of copying solutions. Applying international applied principles and approaches (including from the Netherlands) will lead to different outcomes in a different setting.

Applying them in a different setting (with regards to economics, physical surroundings and governance structure) will be challenging but rewarding, since it can lead to new successful cutting edge examples for integral flood risk management. •

4-5. Proposal for flood-proof floodplain development (under publicprivate partnership construction). With this development the water storage and ecological function of the flood plain can be contained.

6. Improved Khal in monsoon - Next to an improved discharge capacity, extra space for water storage is created by introducing height difference in the design of the public space. 7.

Proposal for expanding (and containing) the Bangladesh high-rise typology All images sourced from author

Notes An advisory report on Urbanization for the Bangladesh planning department with a wide range of possible strategies and projects are being formulated. The advice includes strategies for open water storage, adaptive delta living, green and blue networks, integral design and policy making, green city buildings, city branding, walkable cities and urban ecology. The full advisory report is expected to be revealed the end of this year.

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BLUEPRINTS FOR A NEW CAPITAL The spatial politics of authoritarian cartographies by

Selina Abraham MSc Urbanism TU Delft

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In 1327, Ghiyath-ud-din Muhammad Shah II, the then Sultan of the Tughlaq Dynasty ambitiously decided that it would be best for military strategy to shift the capital and its entire population from Delhi to Devagiri in the Deccan. Delhi due to its strategic location was subject to repeated Mongol attacks, moving to the Deccan would allow the Sultan to strengthen his court, ease collection of taxes, and consolidate southern parts of the Indian peninsular with the Mongol invaders too far to attack (Venkatesh, 2017). The city was rechristened as ‘Daulatabad’ and its new status as imperial capital meant that the city was subject to the latest town planning model of the period [Image 1]. A new city was laid out to absorb the court subjects and the citizens of Delhi with different well-marked and self-sufficient wards for different classes, massive ramparts, and an elaborate drainage system (Mate, 1983). But the shift resulted in the death of many of his subjects, who after a long journey found the region dry and arid. Additionally, the northern regions weakened considerably forcing the Sultan to grudgingly shift the capital and its population back after a mere three years.

Such a drastic authoritarian move to shift a capital city as a means for nation and state building is unusual but not uncommon. It is often a symptom of authoritarian regimes or pseudo-democratic conditions. More recent examples can be found in various countries in Latin America, Africa, and USSR in the 1950s to the 1990s (Schatz, 2004). This article briefly looks at various countries within the issue’s time-zones and the motivation of its elite to undertake this expensive and risky strategy with a glimpse at the outcomes.

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The General’s urban planner – Islamabad, Pakistan In 1958, General Ayub Khan overthrew Pakistan’s democratic government and imposed martial law. In 1960, the General made a political decision to move the national capital from Karachi in the south to Islamabad, close to the existing city of Rawalpindi. The move has not adjusted well with many, some speculate that General (of mixed Punjabi-Pashtun lineage) did not want Karachi as a capital because Punjabis were a minority and the city was filled with Indian migrants known as the Mohajirs. In contrast, Islamabad was closer to his home village and closer to Kashmir, the vulnerable Indian state with political instability (Khan, 2010).

Official reasons cited for the location are network connections (existing Grand Trunk Road and the United Nations Trans-Asian highway) and topographical conditions.

Additionally, Islamabad is in close proximity to Rawalpindi, an existing urban area that contributed to the development of Islamabad by providing access to an existing transportation network and supplying labour for the city’s construction.

Greek architect-planner Constantinos A. Doxiadis designed the Masterplan for Islamabad [Image 2] on the principles of ‘dynametropolis’ which consisted of the cities – Islamabad and Rawalpindi, and a National Park. Like many modernist planners, Doxiadis aligned himself to the closest authoritarian power, either Left or Right, that could implement total planning and development programmes at a massive scale. The city was a means to isolate the bureaucracy from the cultural and social activities of a regular city. For Doxiadis, this isolation was a means to control the city form and for the military junta it was a means to control the country. Despite his modernist background, Doxiadis in line with his science of Ekistics believed in understanding of local environmental and physical conditions while planning.

However, he did little to comprehend the socio-cultural dimensions of the city. The simplifying and external ordering of space could not grasp the homogenous sociality of Rawalpindi’s mohallas. Doxiadis abhorred by the organic development of Rawalpindi and its undiscernible structure, led him to isolate it in the planning of Islamabad. It was separated by a green belt [Image 3],

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creating a colonial-like division between the rulers and the ruled (Hull, 2009).

Furthermore, such planning institutions often devise plans to recast the entire urban social order but underestimate the cost of such an undertaking. And these ambitious plans are never fully realised (Scott, 2008).

Doxiadis’ neighbourhood units designed for the inter-mixing of various income levels [Image 4] were never fully realised.

The incomplete implementation is at odds with the planner’s intentions and the social-cultural fabric of Pakistan. In 2015, 65 years after its conception, Islamabad had yet to reach Doxiadis’ estimation of 2.5 million population. But, the topdown planning is still considered a success by many. Islamabad is seen as one of Pakistan’s most livable cities, though its Greco-Mediterranean and authoritarian origins make it sit uncomfortably within the Pakistani context.

1. An artist’s impression of the fort and town of Daulatabad. Source - (Mate, 1983) 2.Islamabad – Masterplan by Constantinos Doxiadis. Source – Constantinos and Emma Doxiadis Foundation.

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A dictator’s urban manifesto – Astana, Kazakhstan

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Kazakhstan moved its capital from Almaty to Astana in 1997. Kazakhstan faced many nation-building challenges in the early 1990s, and the relocation of the capital was to address these issues. A few official reasons were cited mainly the geographic limitations of Almaty. It was located on a heavy seismic activity zone and the Zailiiskii Alatau mountains prevented urban expansion to the south and the east. The mountains also contributed to air pollution by trapping airborne contaminants within the city extents. Also, its proximity to the Chinese border made it politically unfavourable (Schatz, 2004).

The administrative visionary behind Astana is the country’s first and only president Nursultan Nazarbayev. The state officials have consciously adopted for economic development over democracy.

The shifting of the capital allowed Nazarbayev to not only marginalize bureaucratic opposition who resisted reforms but also permitted him to push economic reform. Old patronage systems were replaced with the new patrons of Kazakhstan’s emerging oil and mineral industries. The result is a city filled with flashy starchitect buildings all competing for attention [Image 5]. Only few of these building have been designed pragmatically and rumours claim rapidly constructed building have resulted in shoddy workmanship (Schatz, 2004). The city is riddled with the President’s urban showpieces trying to create a “westernfriendly mirage”. The city is vastly empty and lacks appropriate space for pedestrians and human-scale public places. In a rush to invite international starchitects the city has side-lined the possibility of young creative professionals.

Despite these short-comings Astana has been a successful city in many ways. It was developed by Nazarbayev as an all-inclusive and tolerant city promoting intra-religions and intra-ethnic harmony. With the threat of militant Islam at the southern border, such a move is a strategic necessity.

Nazarbayev has also promoted policies geared to higher education and support of small businesses. But Astana remains at an awkward cross-road of post-Soviet

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rigid top-down planning and neo-liberal aspirational architecture, while Almaty has gained reputation of the classier city (Fraser & Kim, 2015).

described as a masterpiece in urban planning to defeat any popular revolutions, thwarted by geography and cartography (Sánchez-Cuenca, 2014).

A sign from the stars – Naypyidaw, Myanmar

The city lacks a clear and articulated urban form, but instead is arranged as a series of low density clusters linked by giant roadways. It is laid in large subadministrative zones – hotels, official residences, government buildings and military compound [Image 7]. There is no clear city centre or any public spaces where people may congregate or protest, making it the ultimate dictatorial city [Image 8]. The city boasts of 20-lane highways for cars, but lacks pedestrian paths for people [Image 6].

It boasts of at least four golf courses but no public squares. It is home to a safari park and an air-conditioned penguin habitat but very few people. It is speculated to have cost the state 4 billion dollars to construct, while spending only 0.4% of its GDP on healthcare. It boasts high speed internet and reliable electricity, when it surrounding villages are entrenched in poverty (Kennard & Provost, 2015). Such is the contradiction of Naypyidaw.

Amidst a nearly five-decade military rule Myanmar (formerly Burma), the ruling military junta shifted the administrative capital from Yangon to a greenfield site near Pyinmana. The new site located 320 km north of the old capital sprawls nearly the five times of Los Angeles, but only houses one million people. The reason for the move is shrouded in mystery. Some speculate that an astrologer close to the ruling General Than Shwe advised him to move foreseeing a coup. A year later in 2006, every ministry of the Myanmar government had moved to a vast but barren tract of land. The move was justified as solution for the expansion of government facilities without straining the urban infrastructure of Yangon. It was pitched a new “Brasilia or Canberra”. Additionally, the new site was more “strategically located” in comparison to Yangon. Military planners developed Naypyidaw with no input from civil society (Sánchez-Cuenca, 2014; Varadarajan, 2007).

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3. Rawalpindi and Islamabad green belt.

Source - reddit.com 4. Photograph of Neighbourhood model designed by Doxiadis. Source - unknown.

5. Construction projects in Astana. Source www.guardian.com 6. Starchitect buildings comissioned by Nazabayev. Source - Taimas Almukhanov (2017) www.guardian.com 8. “A 14-lane highway in the centre of Naypyidaw, the capital of Burma.” (Kennard & Provost, 2015) Image Source – (Nic Dunlop/ Panos Pictures, 2015) Retrieved from www. theguardian.com 9. Large human-less scale infrastructure Google maps 10. A city without a center. Source - Google Maps 11. Amravati - Masterplan. Source - livemint. com 12. Amravati - Renders. Source - livemint.com

However, despite official claims, many believe that the real reason was that the military junta feared a political uprising in the major city of Yangon. It has been

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In 2016, the National League for Democracy head by Aung San Suu Kyi, won the elections to form a new democratic government. But the new government despite decades of fighting against military rule has moved into its predecessors’ ode to dictatorship planning seemingly without questioning its origins. Furthermore, the

atlantis extravagant planning of the generals did not extend to housing for its non-military politicians, instead dormitories were built to accommodate the country’s premier law makers and bureaucrats. Following Suu Kyi’s election, hundreds of freshman lawmakers moved into these dormitories with conditions ironically like the prisons they occupied during the dictatorship (Bengali, 2017). Can a young democracy flourish under a dogmatic cityscape?

One of these is not like the others – Amravati, Andhra Pradesh (India)

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Shifting capital cities is not new in the Indian context. Examples include the story described in the beginning of this article, the shifting of the British Imperial Capital from Kolkata to New Delhi, and Nehru’s (the first Indian Prime Minister) tryst with High Modernism. But India’s most recent venture is the story of Amravati. Unlike the other instances in this article, Amravati is not only a capital shift, but a new capital for the newly bifurcated state of Andhra Pradesh, a democratic result. While there were existing towns such as Guntur and Vijayawada as contestants for a capital city, the new chief minister T. Chandrababu Naidu opted for a new land citing that they did not fit the parameters for the vision of a world-class capital city (Majumdar, 2016).

Land for the city was acquired through a model of acquisition called ‘landpooling’. Despite protests from farmers and activist, the government has intimidated land-owners to give up more that 13000 Ha of land from 19 villages to build Amravati. Vast expanses of highly fertile land has moved to the hands of private corporations through questionable deals.

Environmentalist have protested the location, citing that it is being built on a flood-prone and seismic zone. Delhi based architect Romi Khosla writes that, “The implementation of these projects in the form planned in these reports will destroy precious natural environmental resources, while at the same time snatching what remains from existing users by impoverishing villages and farms” (Majumdar, 2016) The designs for Amravati are flashy and unrealistic for the Indian context. But that is the result of external totalitarian planning. Naidu’s vision ranges between Amravati being a futuristic city and drawing inspiration from a city in Bahubali, a popular movie based on mythology. His government claims to be planning for a smart city but are tied to vastu, out dated cosmic spatial planning principles akin the fengshui (Shahane, n.d.). The government invited a Singapore based consortium to design the master plan and an announced open competition was announced for the

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design of the government complexes.

Despite the availability of distinguished Indian architects, the competition committee chose renowned foreign architects, Maki & Associates. However, the competition has also been riddled with stories of corruption and biased deals.

Within a year, Maki & Associate were removed, to be replaced by a consortium between Mumbai-based Hafeez Contractor and UK-based Foster+Partners in a highly suspect move. Hafeez Contractor is India’s most infamous architect, whose license was revoked in 2009 for professional misconduct (Bharucha, 2009). One can only speculate the reasons for this abrupt change.

While India is a fairly stable democratic condition, it suffers authoritarian leaders with delusions of grandeur, and bureaucratic corruption who have found ways to bypass civil society to achieve their end goals.

Reflection These new cities can be attributed to the concepts of “High modernism” as defined

by James C. Scott (2008) in his book, Seeing as A State. Scott writes that high modernism is “best conceived as a strong version of the beliefs in scientific and technical progress that were associated with industrialization in Western Europe and in North America…”. He goes on to say that it is rooted in a “supreme self-confidence about continued linear progress, […] the rational design of social order, […] and the increasing control of nature (including human nature)”. This form of high modernism often occurs due to three elements – the aspirations of the administrative order that envisions

a sweeping rational engineering of all aspects of social life to improve the human condition, the unrestrained use of the power of the modern state and a weakened civil society that is unable to resist these plans (Scott, 2008). Not all the narratives described below perfectly fit Scott’s authoritarian high modernism criteria, but some come close.

As seen with the narratives above, the most crucial element to such elaborate capital city projects might be an authoritarian leader or a megalomaniac group of leaders seeking to strengthen the nation-state. This authoritarian leader make take on many personas – the politician, the dictator, the engineer, the scientist, the architect or the planner. They envision a utopia, one engineered in all aspects of social life with the promise of improving the human condition. However, this vision is sometimes blurred by a more myopic plan for self-preservation as seen with dictatorship planning. Secondly, a chaotic and overcrowded city as the contrasting backdrop to the orderliness that new city would represent. These cities pride themselves in promoting a new social order that shuns traditional cities and planning methods. Lastly, civil-society is disabled to allow these narcistic urban endeavours, which often leads to uncomfortable spatial results.

Of course, there may be legitimate reasons for country or state to build a new capital.

But they often fall within authoritarian regimes or conditions where democracy is compromised. With increasing cases of climate driven migration and rising sea levels, many countries may be forced to move their capital cities. To ensure that 52

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foreseeable cities do not undertake similar mistakes, the importance of a stable political situation coupled with a strong civil society is paramount for successful cities. • References Bengali, S. (2017, April 19). In this desolate capital, lawmakers live like college students, sleeping in dorms and surviving on noodles. Los Angeles Times. Retrieved from http://www. latimes.comBharucha, N. (2009). Architect Hafeez barred for 1 year for figuring in ad - Times of India. Retrieved 10 December 2017, from http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com Fraser, G., & Kim, M. (2015, July 28). Welcome to Astana, Kazakhstan: one of the strangest capital cities on Earth. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com Hull, M. (2009). Uncivil politics and the appropriation of planning in Islamabad. In Crisis and Beyond (pp. 452–81).

London: Routledge.

Kennard, M., & Provost, C. (2015, March 19). Burma’s bizarre capital: a super-sized slice of post-apocalypse suburbia.

The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com Khan, S. (2010, March 27). Islamabad’s 50 Years: A Downward Spiral in Urban Planning. Retrieved 21 November 2017, from https://www.huffingtonpost.com Mate, M. S. (1983). Daulatabad: Road to Islamic Archaeology in India. World Archaeology, 14(3), 335–341.

Sánchez-Cuenca, J. (2014). An Instant Capital Expands in Myanmar. Retrieved 20 November 2017, from http://www. thepolisblog.org Schatz, E. (2004). What Capital Cities Say About State and Nation Building. Nationalism and Ethnic PoliticsScott, J. C. (2008). Seeing like a state: how certain schemes to improve the human condition have failed (Nachdr.). New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press.

Shahane, G. (n.d.). How Chandrababu Naidu’s new capital Amaravati has turned into a train wreck [Text]. Retrieved 29 November 2017, from https://scroll.in Varadarajan, S. (2007). Dictatorship by cartography, geometry.

Retrieved 20 November 2017, varadarajan.blogspot.com Venkatesh, K. (2017, March 18). Muhammad bin Tughlaq: The Sultan of Swing. http://www.livemint.com

Colophon

ATLANTIS Magazine by Polis | Platform for Urbanism and Landscape Architecture Faculty of Architecture, TU Delft Volume 28, Number 2, December 2017 Editors-in-Chief IJsbrand Heeringa (content) Selina Abraham (layout) Public relations Alexandra Farmazon Board Representative Karishma Asarpota Editorial Team Michael de Beer, Turkuaz Nacafi Felipe Chaves Gonzalez, Sarantis Georgiou Aikaterina Myserli, Dora Hegyi, Melinda Marjan Sindhuja Janakiraman, Leyden Durand Panagiota Tzika Kostopoulou, Tanya Tsui Editorial Address Polis, Platform for Urbanism Julianalaan 134, 2628 BL Delft Office: 01 West 350 tel. +31 (0)15-2784093 www.polistudelft.nl atlantismagazinetudelft@gmail.com Printer Drukkerij Teeuwen Atlantis appears four times a year.

Number of copies: 450 This issue has been made with great care; authors and redaction hold no liability for incorrect/ incomplete information. All images are the property of their respective owners. We have tried as hard as we can to honour their copyrights.

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