Slum urbanism

Introduction

     "Children are particularly fond haunting any site where thing are being visibly working on. They are irresistibly drawn to detritus generated by building, gardening, housework, tailoring or carpentry. In waste product they recognize the face that the world of things turn directly and solely to them. In using these things, they do not so much imitate the work of adults as bring together, on artifice produced in play, materials of widely differing kind in new, intuitive relationship". (Benjamin,1976)

     Global city leads to social polarization and spatial segregation. The gap between the rich and the poor is highly different in these city that lead to emergence of global slum. Higher cost living in city
forces lower class to find alternative way to survive. The advanced economies and large cultural sectors of global cities have developed a range of working connections with slum dwellers. Many of these so-called backward sectors are actually servicing the advanced economic sectors and their high-income employees. Parts of the traditional small enterprise sector and of the informal economy service particular components of the advanced sectors in a city. (Sassen, 2011)

     According to UN-HABITAT, around 33 % of the urban population in the developing world in 2012 lived in the slum and expected to double by 2030. Extremely disturbing to the fact that there is little or no planning to provide them with services and accommodate the dweller.

     This slum dweller is inherent in child's eye view of the city as Benjamin said. This lower class occupied the area of urban emptiness in the city such as abandoned industrial site, space under the bridge, empty park etc. They habit these space by using different waste material that city provide. Although it is an illegal action, they creatively transform the space become their home, office, home industry by doing collective improvisatory action in the reconfiguration of given object, materials and spaces.

    This short essay will investigate what we can learn from slum urbanism of kuningan village in Jakarta and how the architects, artist, urban planner around the world investigate the slum and what we can learn from it.

Slum in Favera, Brazil

Slum in Mumbai, India

Slum in Jakarta, Indonesia

1. Study cases - Kampoeng Kuningan

   Slum area in Jakarta is named as ”kampoeng” or village. The  name is given as the way of their informal habitation imitated the rural life. The formation and expansion of kampoeng is caused by
rapid rural-to-urban migration. Many people moved to urban area because cities promised more jobs and facilities. The formation  makes enclave and become city within city.

   Kampoeng Kuningan is located inside the perimeter of golden triangle area in Jakarta (the area that bounded by three major roads of major business and finance– Sudirman road, Rasuna said road and Gatot Subroto road). They occupied a big highly value plot land in the middle of central business. According to Land use planning from Jakarta’s government, the kampoeng area is mostly
dedicated for residential zone. (diagram 2).

Diagram 1 - location of Kuningan village. Source: Google earth

Diagram 2 - Land use (Source: Jakarta government website)

Mix program in Kampoeng Kuningan

     As there is no proper planning on the kampoeng, the land used has changed from residential to mix used. The changing of this land used as a result of creative and self organism process. Their illegal occupation has turned the land become combination of home industry and house. As the road and the sidewalk around the kampoeng is highly used, the retail and service program like small groceries shop, coffee shop, electronic shop, saloon, laundry mostly formed along the main road. The program like small agriculture industries such as small cattle depot of goat is located inside the area.

     Moreover, the member of the Kampoeng’s community understands the potential of void space between commercial blocks in CBD area. Consequently, they always occupied these area by their mobilized informal kiosk, hawker, streets vendors. These informal activities is needed by low and middle class worker who work in CBD area.

     Kampoeng Kuningan is a vibrant communities of people. They incorporate a whole range of social, community spaces and facilities. From the most minimal space for social interaction at the door step to the optimum community spaces for various social and cultural activities. They have an ever evolving network of social institutions. They have a niche, religious facility depending on their faith. This provides them with much needed spiritual strength to survive and struggle. (Diagram 3)

     Looking to diagram 4, there is a connection between the quality of the buildings to the fabric of the Jakarta city. Modern capitalist has made a different pattern of social segregation. The average and bad quality buildings is dominated by low income family of kampoeng. The pattern of these buildings are scattered as a result of no proper planning. In contrast, the good quality buildings are located in the area of standardized urban pattern. The pattern was planned by private developers for middle and upper class. Together they form a mutual organization and a diverse fabric of Jakarta.

Efficient shelter

    The dwellings in Kampoeng Kuningan has an optimum utilization of living space on minimum area. They are conceived as multi-functional living spaces, with over-lapping functions of living, sleeping, dinning, studying and family interactions. The building area approx.12-18 sqm with 5-9 people live as nuclear & extended family. The shelter is not a fixed system, but it grows as the needs of spaces (Diagram 5)

    The slum-dwellers use minimum building materials from available local building materials to create their living space. They use old and used tin sheets, timber rafters, joists and posts, country tiles, plastic sheets and other recycled materials. They built their shelters by themself with their limited technical expertise and creatively adapted to their needs.

The failure of government project

    The Jakarta government tends to do kampoeng removal project, rather than upgrading. They think kampoeng as poverty and environmental degradation. The government removed the people from their kampoeng to a subsidized apartments located in far-away from city centre. Then, they demolished the kampoeng and built subsidized low-cost apartments on the site. The apartments will be used for other low-income family from other kampoeng area. Before the demolishment, the dweller usually reluctant to move as their economy depends on the location near to the city centre. When people lose their homes in the community, they also lose their businesses.

    What is worse, such subsidized projects were often commissioned to a private developer, who managed to reduced the construction cost by using low quality material and managed to sell it to middle and high income people for more profits. Morever, people from kampoeng who used to have
social interaction on the streets can not stand living in an apartment.


The street as social space

    The Kampoeng used up to 80% of the land as ground-coverage for their housing. This enables them to have much higher densities without going higher. As a typology, it is a contrast to modernist approach of high-rise development with less ground cover.

    These collective occupation and unplanned development of the slum has created a scattered configuration of forms and provided little space for green and open space. Consequently, the slum area has turned its street, small aisle or lane way to action arena coexisting with civilian used for transportation.

    As there is lack of planning, the boundary between private and public is blurred. Street becomes collective front yard for the dweller. Street in slum area has succeed to transform into a place for human encounter, playground and a stem of public life.

    The self-organization of scattered dwelling turns its street to a labyrinth-like and creates many porosity to main road. Although it causes disorientation, the pattern has created a diverse pattern of urban fabric of Jakarta.





What can we learn from Slum urbanism?

a. The formal vs informal

    The pattern of slum urbanism is different from generic suburb. Generic planning intends to standardize urban living and its citizens. When spaces and citizens are divided according to predetermined classifications, they become atomized particles that respond only to themselves and are left to negotiate a world without the connective tissue that weaves individual buildings into a collective.

     Unable to foster social cooperation to generate an engaged public sphere, the individual then withdraws inward, into the privatized place of self. (Morphosis, 2011).
In contrast, slums are the constructive results of collective efforts of a group or community. Slums are not built as a result of ego centric gesture of an individual or a corporation.

Generic Suburb- Almere, The Netherlands (Photo by Ekim Tan)

    In Almere, residents frequently asked to make their own cities, or to build their own house. This condition is an attempt for cracking the monopoly of housing corporations and planning system from top to bottom. Furthermore, they calls for freedom in planning, for the involvement of residents and other stackholders.

    Planned cities as dull and monotonous and some event maintain that the modernist planning ideal of the 21st century should be seen as the biggest planning debacle in human history. (Adri Duivesteijn, Almere’s alderman for planning, interviewed February 2010)



    The work of Urban think tank for South African Slum shows that planning can work from bottom to top. The group of architects try to work within existing fabric and follow the very nature of the slum growth. They demonstrate how architects and urban planner can do their intervention by proposing firebreaks, visual controlability and integration, access route for emergency vehicles and providing basic services (water and sanitation)

Master plan for slum upgrading in Capetown,
South Africa. Design by Urban Think Tanks in
collaboration with ETH Zurich university



b. No mono neighbourhoods

       Base on understanding the diversity of program and self organization of slum, Brands and Marco Broekman proposed a masterplan for the new neighbourhoods Triangel in Waddinxveen by designing
flexible design strategy that can grow and develop over time. To break-up from standardized urban pattern, the architects proposed to distort the grid inspired by accidents in the grid-structures of cities like San fransisco, Melbourne and Minneapolis. Moreover, the architects proposed to have different character of neighborhoods.

Diagram 8 - Masterplan competition for new neighbourhood Triangel in Waddinxveen, 2008.
Design by Bart Brands, Marco Broekman in partnership with Change Architects (Amsterdam)

Organic city, Olympiakwartier Almere, The Netherlands (Source: MVRDV)

     Organic city is reflection of the new housing development where the master plan assigns every building a different facade, resulting in a quasi-oranically evolved street frontage. The design as a critique to monotonous planning in Almere

c. No mono building’s facade

 The image of Dioniso Gonzales shows us the organizational conflicts that squatters wrestle with in their struggle to survive, exposing tensions of being caught between the unnoticed accomplishments of their own self-assembly and of being re-imaged by some formal outside. might say, in their very
lack of formal planning, that the favela is unwittingly designed to resist any sense of conformity to our organizational understanding – to our westernized viewing of them (Finoki, 2007)

By looking this image, there is an aesthetic of chaos that is produced by slum which is different from the standardized modern housing

Photography montages by Dionisio Gonzalez - mixes slum and contemporary architecture



d. The absence of borders

We can learn the potential of the scattered slum urbanism by analyzing Moriyama house. Ryue Nizhizawa argue that by dismantling the program and distribute each of them separately turns its structures into a cluster and the landscape begins to emerge. Moreover, the alleys in this
neighborhoods don't necessary serve as passages. People’s sense of living expands beyond it, effectively erasing all borders. (Koh,2010)

Moriyama house plan by Ryu Nizhizawa

e. Grown and flexible house

There are a lot of growing concern by architects, urban planner and institution to study and understand the logic of informal housing process. The evolutionary process that happens
in kuningan village is similar with Favela slum. Both are maximizing the use of space on minimal site with using low cost material. The housing unit is not a fitted system, but its a growing
system. This unit needs to accommodate the growing number of family member and the changing
activity of the house.

Evolutionary and incremental housing procress in favela da Mare, Rio De Janeiro: From
shack to permanent housing and from public housing unit to expanded self-help housing product (source: Varella, B., Bertazzo, I., and P. Jacques, Mare Vida na Favela, Rio de Janeiro: Casa da Palavra,2002)

Urban think Tank proposed standardized slum house with low cost material for slum in Capetown,
Africa. The plan of the house is minimal and optimal in using the space. The design respond to the
need of space for small business on the ground floor. Furthermore, the house can be grown and flexible to change as the dweller needed (diagram 9)

The group tries to study the growth of slum house with different scenario that can be adapted by standardized house (diagram 10)

Diagram 9 - Urban think tank - plan of standardized units for
Capetown slum, South Africa

Diagram 10 - Urban think tank - Diagram shows variety
configurations of expansion and how units in clusters around
shared space and infrastructure

PARACITY Danshui River Island in Taipei: Marco Casagrande, Menno Cramer, Katie Donaghy,
Niilo Tenkanen, Nikita Wu, Joni Virkki, Ycy Charlie, Sauli Ylinen, Dave Kan-ju Chen.
Source: http://casagrandetext.blogspot.com.au

    While Urban think-tank looking for standardized low cost house that can be expanded and clustered, the paracity in Taipei designs one system that can be modified and grown in every condition of site and in the same time can respond to the self- organized communities and environmental sustainability.

Paracity is a biourban organism that is growing on the principles of Open Form: individual design-build actions generating spontaneous communicative reactions on the surrounding built human environment and this organic constructivist dialog leading into self-organized community structures, development and knowledge building. (Casagrande, 2014)

  The growing organism the Paracity is based on a three dimensional wooden primary structure, organic grid with spatial modules of 6 x 6 x 6 metres constructed out of CLT cross-laminated timber sticks. The assemblage of these modules become master plan in Danshui river, Taipei.

Source: http://casagrandetext.blogspot.com.au

    Master plan of Paracity in urban farming island of Danshui River, Taipei City. The island is located between the Zhongxing and Zhonxiao bridges and is around 1000 meters long and 300 meters wide. Paracity Taipei is celebrating the original first generation Taipei urbanism with high level of illegal architecture, self-organized communities, urban farms, community gardens, urban nomads and constructive anarchy.



Conclusion 

According to UN-Habitat there is 1 billion people live in slums and the number will be double by 2030. The slum can be found all over the world as an increase number of rural-urban migration due to globalization. The slum is global as global city and both developed a range of working connections according to Saskia on Forbes. The phenomena call for careful studies for developing urbanism.

By studying slum urbanism in Kuningan village, Jakarta and how architects and urban planner responded to the issue, we can summarize that:

1. The planning strategy should be more flexible and give a space for self-organized activities (In formalized the formal planning)
2. The scattered pattern of the slum created its streets and lane way to a social space (Kuningan village and Cape town master plan) which is different from standardized urban pattern. Moreover, the pattern makes the absence of border and the landscape begins to emerge (Ryu Nizhizawa).
3. The slum pattern makes a diverse fabric of city. We should aim on slum improvement, rather than slum-clearance.
4. Diverse plot of land, programs and building’s façade like slum urbanism should be integrated to the planning strategy to make a different character of neighborhoods (the work of Brands and Marco Broekman). The work of photographer Dionisio Gonzalez has give us a message that there is beauty on the chaos of slum’s houses.
5. The house in slum is the smallest dwelling which is maximized the site with over-lapping functions of living, sleeping, dinning, studying, family interactions and commercial activities. The house is not a fitted system but it's a growing system. There need a system to accommodate the expansion. ( Urban think Tank and Paracity)
6. The role of urban planner should become neighborhood director who is involved in the design, planning, construction and advocate neighborhood and government for longer period to ensure the success of bottom to top planning.


REFERENCE LIST

    Urban Think Tank in
http://www.dezeen.com/2014/03/07/empower-shack-urban-think-tank-housing-south-africa-slums/
    Sassen, Saskia. 2011 in
http://www.forbes.com/sites/megacities/2011/03/22/the-global-city-and-the-global-slum/
    Benjamin, Walter. One-way Street and Other writings. Published by Suhrkamp Verlag, Frankfurt. 1974-1976
   Putranto, Sandy. Redefining The Spatial Form of Urban Village in Mega Kuningan Jakarta as a new Urban Generator: A study of
    Socio-Economic Aspect in The Forming of Urban Spatial Configuration.2009
SUN. New Town for the 21st Century: The Planned vs The unplanned city. Publisher: SUN. Amsterdam. 2010
   Finoki, Bryan in
http://subtopia.blogspot.com.au/2007/11/squatter-imaginaries.html
    UN-Habitat. The rise of Slums. 2006
    Morphosis. Combinatory Urbanism: The Complex Behavior of Collective Form. 2011
    Kitayama, Koh. Tsukamoto, Toshiharu. Nizhizawa, Ryue. Tokyo Metabolizing. Publish: Toto. 2010
     Paracity in
http://casagrandetext.blogspot.com.au/2014/03/paracity.html