A_11 Urban Transformation - Ruby Press, Berlin, 2008

7/24/2019 A_11 Urban Transformation - Ruby Press, Berlin, 2008

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CONTENT

10Foreword

Ilka & Andreas Ruby

14City of andandand...Marc Anglil and Cary Siress

20Introduction:

Beyond Programmed ObsolescenceFernando Diez

BETWEEN ECOLOGY

ANDECONOMY

68Running the NumbersChris Jordan

CitynessSaskia Sassen

84

A Green Masterplan Is Still a MasterplanMark Jarzombek

22

The Good, the Bad, and the Utilitarian:Singapores Schizophrenic UrbanismTing-Ting Zhang and William Tan

52

Aguada Flood-Park:Recovering a Post-Industrial Urban Stream in Santiago de ChilePablo Allard and Jos Rosas

46

30ZoneKeller Easterling

4


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5

BETWEEN PUBLIC

AND PRIVATE

Introduction:Citizen or Shareholder?Kaarin Taipale

146

Re-Searching (for) the Public: Other Means of DesignIn Former East German CitiesInesWeizman

156

Empty Lots: Collective Action of Experimental Urban OccupationLouise Marie Cardoso Ganz

164

Ciclopaseoin Quito: Cycling Citizenship in the CityXimena Ganchala

170

Two Houses in SeoulMinsuk Cho

148

The City of Production:A Fantastic Opportunity to Experiment with Positive CapitalismLaurent Gutierrez and Valerie Portefaix

176

BETWEEN GLOBAL

AND LOCAL

Introduction:The Global-Local Nexus and the New Urban Order

Amer Moustafa

88

Permanent VisitorsDonald L. Bates

124

Mallorca: Island in ProgressMarc Rder

128

Caribbean Strips: Tourism in the CaribbeanJuan Alfonso Zapata and Supersudaca

116

Re: Doing DubaiWes Jones

90

[Restricted Access] or The Open City?Kees Christiaanse

138

Sustainable DifferenceSimon Hubacher

110


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290Model Houses and Show Flats or How to Buy an Apartment in KoreaHaewon Shin

Refugee Camps or Ideal Cities in Dust and DirtManuel Herz

276

Leisure Nomads of the New Third Age:Nomadic Network Urbanism of the Senior RV Community in the USDeane

Simpson

268

BETWEEN PERMANENT

AND TRANSITORY

Introduction:The Endless PresentEyal Weizman

266

BETWEEN SANCTIONED

AND SHADOW ORDER

Introduction:Learning from the Kinetic CityRahul Mehrotra

202

Dont Underestimate the Rice FieldsJuan Du

218

In-Between Legal and IllegalPhilippe Cabane

204

Trans-Border Flows: An Urbanism Beyond the Property LineTeddy Cruz

226

252Tabula Non Rasa. Toward a Performative ContextualismIlka & Andreas Ruby in Conversation with Jean-Philippe Vassal

Urban FluxHiromi Hosoya and Markus Schaefer

240

194A More Socially and Environmentally Sustainable CityEnrique Pealosa

Going PublicSarah Whiting

190

Evasion of TemporalitySrdjan Jovanovic Weiss

208


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Indifferent Urbanism or Modernism Was Almost AlrightRobert Somol

326

International Aid Cities: A By-Product of Reconstruction in Postwar CitiesPushkaraj Karakat and Snehal Hannurkar

300

Strategies for the Reuse of Temporary HousingCassidy Johnson

308

Whatever Happened to Nomadism?Florian Lippe

312

BETWEEN STANDARD

AND APPROPRIATION

Introduction:

Urban Ninjas and Pirate PlannersMark Lee

332

Elemental: Housing As an Investment not a Social ExpenseAndrs Iacobelli and Alejandro Aravena

344

CaracasMetroCable: Bridging the Formal/Informal CityAlfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner, Urban-Think Tank

358

Underneath the HighwayLaurent Gutierrez and Valerie Portefaix

368

Subversive Standards or United Bottle: A Product Designed for MisuseDirk Hebel and Jrg Stollmann

334

Authors

Image Credits

Holcim Foundation

Author Index

398

390

400

399

APPENDIX


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Sassenp. 86

Ha

Zapatap. 121

Zapatap. 121

Zapatap. 118

Puerto Plata

Punta Cana

BridgetownZapatap. 118

Jamaica

Zapatap. 121

Sassenp. 85

Sassenp. 86Chicago

Jar

C

GlendaleJarzombekp. 23

Klumpner/Brillembourgp. 385Caracas

Leipzig

Iquique

Quartzsite Simpsonp. 274New Orleans

Easterlingp. 36Fort WorthEasterlingp. 36

USAJordanp. 68

Brasilia

Christiaansep. 138

Los AngelesChristiaansep. 138

Cruzp.226Tichuana

Christiaansep. 138

Whitingp. 190

New YorkGeneralHebel/Stollmannp. 334

Christiaansep. 141

Hubacherp. 110

Amsterdam

HoustonChristiaansep. 143Sea Side

Ch

Pealosa p. 201Sao Paolo

H

QuitoGanchalap. 170

Pealosa p. 199

RomPeMadrid

Pealosa p. 199

Sassenp. 85London

Pealosa p. 199

Jarzombekp. 23

Belo HorizonteGanzp. 164

Pealosa p. 201Mexico City

Simpsonp. 271Canary IslandsBatesp. 125

Portugal/SpainBatesp. 105

TunisiaBatesp

Rderp.128

MaroccoBatesp. 124

Cap VerdeBatesp. 124

Ea

Christiaansep. 138

Sassenp. 86

Sassenp. 84

Pealosa p. 199

Bogota

Allard/Rosasp. 46Santiago de Chile

Paris

Cabane

p. BordeauxVassalp. 253

Weizma

Lagos

Easterlingp.

Christiaans

Zapatap. 118Cuba

Riviera Maya

Angelil/Siressp. 14Buenos Aires

Iacobelli/Aravenap. 352

Majorca

GEOGRAPHICAL INDEX

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Tan/Zhang p. 52

GuangzhouHosoya Schaeferp. 240

MauritiusEasterlingp. 32

23

Jarzombekp. 23

ChandigarhJarzombekp. 23

IslamabadJarzombekp. 23

CanberraJarzombekp. 23

Halifax

outh Africaatesp. 125

Seoul

KabulHannurkar/Karakatp. 300

TsetserlegLippep. 315

KarakorumLippep. 314

Easterlingp. 42

KaesongEasterlingp. 35

Christiaansep. 143ChejuEasterlingp. 35

AstanaEasterlingp. 34

KhartoumEasterlingp. 42

QatarEasterlingp. 45

KishEasterlingp. 38

Singapore

Easterlingp. 33

Lippep. 318

Beijing

JohannesburgChristiaansep. 138

Christiaansep. 140

Jonesp. 90

Christiaansep. 140

Jarzombekp. 24

Tokyo

Jarzombekp. 23Subic Bay

Guangming

ShanghaiSassenp. 84

Shinp. 290Chop. 148

ansep. 141

Christiaansep. 144

Christiaansep. 143

p. 145

p. 33

Ulaanbaatar

Pealosa p. 197Melbourne

9

Pealosa p. 198

Pealosa p. 200

EasterlingHyderabad

Saipan

31

Cabanep. 205

IndiaCabanep. 205

ChinaCabanep. 205

ThailandCabanep. 205

Easterlingp. 32

JerusalemChristiaansep. 143

Batesp. 125

ohnsonp. 309

Turkey

ssp. 208rad Istanbul

mbekp. 27

BombayEasterlingp. 33

ShenzenDup. 218Easterlingp. 33Gutierrez/Portefaixp. 368

Jarzombekp.24

DubaiBatesp. 125

Zimbabwe

Herzp. 293Bangui

Easterlingp. 35

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The book you hold in your hands evolved from a debate-platform, the

Holcim Forum for Sustainable Construction on Urban Transformation,

which took place in 2007 at Tongji University in Shanghai, China. For

three days more than 250 professionals from over 40 countries

architects, urban planners, engineers, scholars, representatives from

business and governments met in working groups and for panel

sessions to discuss the challenges cities face today in respect to

urban change. The Forum was the second international symposium for

both academics and practitioners hosted by the Swiss-based Holcim

Foundation for Sustainable Construction to encourage a dialog on the

future of the built environment. The first Forum addressing the issue

of Basic Needstook place at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology

(ETH Zurich), Switzerland, in 2004. Continuing the three-year cycle, the

next Forum will be held in 2010.

Dedicated to the topic of Urban Transformation, it seems only fit-

ting that the book would also undergo a good deal of transformation

in the process of its making. Thus, this publication does not reproduce

the conference literally, but develops it further. In addition to a selec-

tion of the best papers and keynote lectures given at the Forum in

Shanghai the book also features a number of additional contributions

by experts whom we have specially invited to contribute to the publi-cation. The structure of the book has evolved out of the Forums pro-

gram, which was divided into five thematic working groups focusing

on various phenotypes of urbanism today: green, touristic, informal,

FOREWORD

10

How to explain the paradox that urbanism, as a profession, has disap-

peared at the moment when urbanization everywhere after decades of

constant acceleration is on its way to establishing a definitive, global

triumph of the urban scale? 11

Rem Koolhaas, Whatever

happened to urbanism?, in

Rem Koolhaas und Bruce Mau,

SMLXL, (Monacelli Press 1995),

p. 961.


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temporary, normative. Finally, we added a sixth chapter dedicated tothe topic of public and private, as it turned out to be one of the most

pertinent themes of many contributions.

Indeed, if there was a recurrent theme running through it all, then

it was the collective awareness of the need to elevate the discourse

of urbanism to match and catch the myriad of expressions material-

ized in the city today. After the failure of the big urban narrative of

Modernism which had attempted to subject urban realities world-

wide to the reductive model of the contemporary cityin the wake of

CIAM and, likewise, after the failure of Postmodernism to retrodate

the present city to a past that never existed by reverting to pasturban typologies, we have finally come to understand that any urban

discourse has to first and foremost embrace the city as a multitude

of conditions that do not (and dont have to) conform to one universal

model. The end of the grand narrative has enabled us to go beyond the

phantom pain of the disappearance of urbanism as a profession as

suggested by Rem Koolhaas and embrace the city as it is experi-

enced from outside the professional realm. For clearly, the very notion

of urbanis arguably one of the hot topics of contemporary culture; it

has become the synonym of cool and serves as a Zeitgeist indicator

of lifestyle, music, food, fashion, and design. Yet precisely what urban

means in regard to urbanism and the city has become increasingly

blurred. Depending on specific geographic, climatic, economic, and

cultural conditions, there are many, and often radically conflicting

implications of urbandevelopments: the hyper-dense megalopolis

coexists with endless sprawl; traditional street life exists side by side

with massive web traffic; the hardware of architecture is augmented

by the software of the event; high-speed urbanism in China happens

simultaneously with the phenomenon of shrinking cities and the slow

dying-out of small towns in the highly industrialized developed coun-

tries. Even the very idea of the city as the result of planning has been

deeply questioned by the roaring surge of informal favela-style hous-ing settlements, which represent the type of urban condition that more

than half of the worlds population today calls their home. As op-

posed to the colonial era of the 19th century, the term urbantoday no

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longer indexes a normative cultural concept such as expressed, forinstance, in the European City but represents a cosmos of extremely

varied notions determined by geographical, cultural, and individual

preferences. Tell me what is urban for you and I can tell you who you

are. Hence, if we want to get a grip on what is urbantoday, we have

to capture it in all its disguises, gradations, and transformations oc-

curring simultaneously on a global scale.

This is exactly what this book is about. Its contributors take us on a

global drive to discover emerging urban conditions in very different

places ranging from global cities that we all know about and have

been to as well as remote areas we may have heard of but where weare unlikely to ever set foot. All of these urban conditions are equally

relevant regardless of the perceived critical mass of their issues.

There is neither hierarchy nor ranking between them, as it should be

clear after frustrating years of boycotted global climate conferences

that the challenges of our urban age can only be met with a concerted

action. Whatever happens in one place is bound to have consequences

beyond its own local perimeter, and sometimes even proliferate glob-

ally as the, by now, proverbial butterfly effect of chaos theory. The

hic et nuncof global society clearly needs to incorporate other places

and times in its definition of presence.

The contributions in the book can be differentiated into basically

four types: theoretical essays, case studies, projective prototypes, and

artworks. They all use their respective means of expression to uncover

different aspects of the discursive landscape of the city that this

book wants to probe. The theoretical essays try to trace some of the

major vectors of urban transformation today. They attempt to frame

the larger perspective on crucial developments, shedding light on the

important shifts that have occurred within recent debates on the city

and proposing new priorities for the makers of the city today. The

case studies are acute observations of specific urban conditions from

all over the globe. Analyzing urban transformation on a local level,they expose their inherent logic in order to allow us to see that they

are not only locally relevant, but offer potential prototypical condi-

tions which could be applied in other contexts as well. The projec-


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tive prototypes are both speculative and real projects by architects,urban designers, engineers, and others which test alternative modes

of urban organization, such as: how to use social housing subsidies

in order to double the built housing surface; how to retrofit a favela

city with its own public transportation system connected to the entire

public transportation network of the larger metropolitan region, or

how to re-route state funds for demolition of housing into its conser-

vation and substantial upgrading. Lastly, the artworks selected unfold

yet another view onto the city: our attention is guided to aspects of

the books topic that would otherwise escape verbalization, aspects

that fly below the radar of critical commentary. We would like to thank all contributors for their help in making

this book possible, for their efforts in reworking their Forum papers,

supplying illustrations and constructive feedback during the making

of the book. And in the name of all of them, we would like to thank

the Holcim Foundation for its generosity in organizing a conference

as inspiring as the Forum in Shanghai and in sponsoring this book to

make the substance of the conference accessible to a global audi-

ence of city aficionados. With its engagement the Holcim Foundation

aims to provide a vital platform for contemporary discourses, which

are necessarily heterogeneous and not limited to represent a specific

position, but are meant to explore the city as the most crucial ecol-

ogy of the 21st century in all its complex and controversial aspects.

Last but not least, we wish to express our distinguished gratitude to

Marc Anglil, member of the Management Board and of the Technical

Competence Center of the Foundation, and to Edward Schwarz, General

Manager of the Holcim Foundation, who have each in their own ways

been instrumental in the making of this book with tremendous support

and invaluable advice.

Ilka & Andreas Ruby


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BETWEEN ECOLOGY

AND ECONOMY

If any doubt remains as to who the true magicians of

contemporary civilization are, globalization has made it

clear: the economists. As religion has been in the previ-

ous centuries, economy has become the cornerstone of

political decisions and the compass for private ones.The notion of economic benefithas become a taboo:

the more and more rapidly a society produces, consumes,

and discards, the more successful it is considered. This

is what feeds the Gross National Product, and, therefore,

all economic indexes. Little importance is given to the

utility of such products. In the last decades of the 20thcentury, a way to measure the developmentof a nation

even consisted in measuring the quantity of garbage pro-

duced per capita: the more, the better. Programmed ob-

solescence has become a goal.

20

Beyond Programmed Obsolescence


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Fig. 3:Wigger City,Netzstadt, Franz Oswald and Peter Baccini, 2003, plan.

waters

forest

agriculture

settlement area

infrastructure

fallow land

0.5 km

Lloyd Wrights Broadacre City and the ideas of Lewis Mumford,

Oswald argues that the urban need not be centered in massive

power-cities, but that it can and must be distributed. The not-in-

the-center quality of these micro-cities would be offset by their

connectivity to the larger urban fabric and their economic semi-

independence. The distinction between city and suburb will be

removed: there will only be urbs. What makes these cities urban,

regardless of size, is an attention to time-honored qualities, but

these cities will be designed so that from the point of view of certain

environmental issues, like electricity, engineering, food production,and waste, they can be relatively self-sustaining. It is no accident

that the center of Oswalds study is the call for a new Swiss city to be

called Wigger City, located at the interstices between Zurich, Basel

and Bern.Fig.3Like all real cities, Wigger would exist as an economic

reality. Its buildings would not have to look strange or be dripping

with vines to be green.

One could compare Wigger Citywith soon to be completed Solar

City in Linz, Austria, which is advertised as the largest settlement

ever built on the basis of the tenets of sustainable architecture. The

masterplan was made by Roland Rainer. Solar Cityhas parallels tosome of the ideas worked out independently by Oswald and Bac- 27


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of spatial products (e.g., ofces, factories, warehouses, calling cen-

ters, software production facilities, etc.) that easily migrate around

the world. More and more programs and spatial products thrive in

legal lacunae and political quarantine, enjoying the insulation and lu-

brication of zone exemptions. Indeed, the zone as corporate enclave

is a primary aggregate unit of many new forms of the contemporary

global city, offering a clean slate, one-stopentry into the economy of a

foreign country. Most banish the negotiations that are usually associ-ated with the contingencies of urbanism negotiations such as those

concerning labor, human rights or environment. The zone is now the

new urban paradigm.

Many of the new legal hybrids of zone, oscillating between visibil-

ity and invisibility, identity and anonymity, have neither been mapped

nor analyzed for their disposition their patency, exclusivity, aggres-

sion, resilience or violence.

The Zone Calls Itself a City

The zone often calls itself a city, where cityis either a noun de-

scribing an urban area or a modier indicating a place where some-

thing is to be found in abundance (e.g., a shopping center might becalledshopping city). HITEC City, Ebene Cybercity or King Abdullah

Economic City, among hundreds of others, take on the title of city

as an enthusiastic expression of the zones evolution beyond being

merely a location for warehousing and transshipment. Many coun-

tries in South Asia, China and Africa used export processing zones as

a means of announcing their entry into a global market as indepen-

dent post-colonial contractors of outsourcing and off-shoring. For

example, with Ebene Cybercity, Mauritius has moved beyond EPZ

development to IT campus development with help from the devel-

opers of HITEC City in Hyderabad. Dubai has rehearsed theparkorzone with almost every imaginable program beginning with Dubai32

FTZ FOREIGN TRADE ZONEWAREHOUSING

US Foreign Trade Zone Act, 1934

EPZ EXPORT PROCESWAREHOUSING AND MANUFACTURING

e.g. Shanon International Airport, Ireland, 1960, Kandla, India,

Korea, 1970, Mauritius, 1971(entire country), Bataan, PhilippinIksan, Korea, 1973...

06914391


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Internet City in 2000, the rst IT campus as free trade zone. Each

new enclave is called a city: Dubai Health Care City, Dubai Maritime

City, Dubai Silicon Oasis, Dubai Knowledge Village, Dubai Techno

Park, Dubai Media City, Dubai Outsourcing Zone, Dubai Humani-

tarian City, Dubai Industrial City and Dubai Textile City.

The Zone Is a DoubleNow major cities and national capitals are engineering their own

zonedoppelgngers their own non-national territory within which

to legitimize non-state transactions. World cities like Hong Kong,

Singapore, and Dubai, which have assumed the ethos of free zone

for their entire territory, have become models for newly minted

cities. The world capital and national capital can shadow each other,

alternately exhibiting a regional cultural ethos and a global ambition.

Duplicity is essential to the zone. Both state and non-state actors use

the other as proxy or camouage to create the most advantageous

political or economic climate. Companies like CIDCO and SKIL

can now be hired, as they were in Navi Mumbai, to deliver infra-

structural, legal environments like those in Shenzhen and Pudong city-states with not only commercial areas but also a full array of

programs. New Songdo City, an expansion of the Incheon free trade

territories near Seoul, is a complete international city based on the

Dubai or Singapore model designed by Kohn Pederson Fox. Here,

aspiring to the cosmopolitan urbanity of New York, Venice, and

Sydney, the zone is lled with residential, cultural, and educational

programs in addition to its commercial programs. While the emo-

tional streaming videos for the smaller citiesof developing countries

are often accompanied by tinny fanfares and low production values,

the New Songdo City video messages are accompanied by new agetunes or heroic strains in the John Williams style the spectacular 33

G ZONEsiung, 1966, Masan,

t EPZ in Asia),

BIP BORDER INDUSTRIAL PROGRAMWAREHOUSING AND MANUFACTURING

1965 Border States(1980s through Mexico)

5691


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Any attempts to characterize Singapores unique condi-tions stem from Westernoriented appropriations: VirtualCity1 and Disneyland with a Death Penalty2are simplytongue-in-cheek punch-lines that do neither the citynor the critics justice. This city is, as it describes itself,Uniquely Singapore.3 Singapore lives in fear in fear of thelack of natural resources, in fear of its innitely larger

neighboring states, in fear of being the only secular statein the region, in fear of being forgotten by the potentialinvestors as international attention focuses on India andChina as the emerging Far East market, and in fear of be-ing seen as a Third World ex-colony. As these fears drivethe state, the state drives the nation with fears. In fact,it is by this incredibly intense urge to emancipate itselffrom its Third World colonial past and to make itselfa First World country that results in the Singaporeandream of creating a society as a seamless operating sys-tem of constant economical growth with a life-long sub-scription to efciency hence, Singapore Inc., a Singaporedream: a truly First World Singapore with all its citizensas employees. Economic well-being and urban transfor-mation are seen as vital goals of being a part of the FirstWorld; total control is seen as the only way to achievethese goals. Therefore, a social agreement was accorded

whereby the citizens give up their political participationin exchange for the governments promise of securityand prosperity. Armed with this Singaporean dream andan authoritarian power, the state begins master-planningsocial upgrades, urban renewal, and economic growth.Singapore Inc. is in fact a true Taylorist operation withevery aspect of the society having a specic function. Ev-erything that one can or cannot imagine is orchestrated,planned, and designed, managed by a regime that has

excluded accident and randomness.4

1Deyan Sudjic, Virtual City, in

Blueprint(Feb 1994).

2William Gibson, Disneyland

with the Death Penalty, in Wired

(Sept 1993).

3Singapore Tourism Boards mar-

keting slogan for Singapore.

52

The Good, the Bad,

and the Utilitarian: Singapores

Schizophrenic Urbanism

Ting-Ting Zhang and William Tan

4Rem Koolhaas and Bruce

Mau, S, M, L, XL, (MonacelliPress 1995).


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Fig.

1:ToaPayohhousingestateatnight:L

eCorbusier'sdreamcometrue.A

blendoftowerblocksandattedblocks.

PitchedroofofaFoodCourtontheleft,apublicschoolandthe

greenlandearmarkedforfurtherhousingconstructionontheright.Themainstreetcuttingacrossthehousingprojectgivesaccesstotheexpresswaynearb

y.


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Chris Jordan

Running the Numbers

= 10 cm


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Page 68/69:

Plastic Bottles, 200760 120" (152 cm 304cm)

Depicts two million plastic beveragebottles, the number used in the USevery ve minutes.

Page 70:

Partial zoom.

Page 71:

Detail at actual size.

71


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of the global and, further, that these alsoneed to be distinguished from familiar

vernacular cosmopolitanisms.1

The architect Ma Qingyun argues that the

Chinese city does not need public space instead,

itmakespublic spaces: when, for example, at night,

a bus shelter in Shanghai becomes a public spacewhen people set up tables to play cards. The notion

of public space as developed in a Western Euro-

pean context will be of little help in reading key

aspects of urbanity in Shanghai, or perhaps even

Mexico City. Ergo, our concept of urbanity must be

stripped of its currently overcharged meanings. In

the process, I have identied a couple of categories

that allow us to understand something about alter-

native kinds of urbanity. In traditionally dened

urbanity, multiple elements come together in the

context of an urban aggregate and produce some-

thing that is more than the sum of its individual

parts. The urban agglomerations that proliferate

across the world today vast expanses of urban

built space seem to produce a formula, whereby

the whole isnotmore than the sum of its parts. If

these urban aggregates actually contain urbanities,

it would be an obstacle to a unied notion of urban-

ity derived from the European experience. It would

indicate that we need to open up the meaning of

urbanity to a wider range of empirical instances.

Cityness

Saskia Sassen

1Saskia Sassen, The Global City(Princeton: Princeton

University Press 1991.) Id., Global Networks, Linked Cities(New York: Rontledge 2002). Id., ;Cities in a World Economy(Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage Publication2006).

The vast urban agglomerations takingshape across the world are often seen aslacking the features, quality, and senseof what we think of as urbanity.Yet, urbanity is perhaps too charged aterm charged with a Western senseof cosmopolitanism and of what publicspace is or should be. In fact, it may be

part of our current history-in-the-mak-ing that we have yet to nd a term thattriggers a new interpretation of urbanity.The term cityness suggests the possi-bility that there are kinds of urbanitythat do not t into the denition devel-oped in the West. So cityness, in a way,could be described as an instrument tocapture something that otherwise might

easily get lost: types of urbanity that arenon-Westernor that are novel and departfrom traditional notions in the West.We need to open up the discussion toa far broader range of urbanities. In my

work on global cities, I confront a paral-lel problematic in dealing with globality.It is often assumed that globality entailscosmopolitanism. However, I posit thatthere are also non-cosmopolitan forms

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2The Greek verbpoieintranslates as

making or creating.

Cityness is a concept that encompasses in-

numerable types of urbanity, including, indeed,

an intersection of differences that actually pro-

duces something new; whether good or bad, this

intersection is consequential. A very practical

and subjective example comes from London, a

city inhabited by many different types of Muslim

groups; the notion ofMuslim womanis actually

multifaceted: Muslim women from Bangladesh

intersect with Muslim women from Turkey, fromIndia, from Pakistan, from Africa or the Middle

East. Something happens in this intersection of

differences even within what we might think of as

a very narrowly dened group. Cityness must ac-

commodate these intersections which constitute

a form of subjectivity and perhaps untranslatable

into an immediate tangible outcome. Cities con-

tain a multitude of such examples.

Another more practical example can be found

in Midtown Manhattan. Midtown Manhattan

architecture sends out signals of neutrality, preci-

sion, engineering. But if you are actually there at

lunchtime, the visual experience is conjoined by

the experience of the smell of grilled meat com-

ing from immigrant vendors. A juxtaposition of

two different conditions is taking place but not

necessarily of two autonomous worlds, each exist-

ing on its own terms. The people who are eating

at those vendors at noon are not only the tour-

ists and the secretaries but also the professionals

who may not have time for a power lunch every

workday. They inhabit a high-speed work space,

and there will be days when grabbing a sausage

from the vendor on the street is the most efcient

use of time. Here we have, then, the junction of

two high-speed velocities even though each is

produced in enormously diverse settings. The

intersection of two such different worlds which

produces a third space is an instance of cityness,

though it doesnt necessarily register on the con-

ceptual radar of what we dene as urbanity. Wecould multiply these examples endlessly but what

matters here is the notion of intersection and its

capacity to make a novel condition.

These examples point to an order, albeit not

that which corresponds to the formal logic of

planners. These juxtapositions may be following a

fuzzy logic that enables a type ofmakingnot con-

tainable in the spaces of the formal plan. In this

juxtaposition, making cityness becomes possi-

ble.2 Public space, not as a representation of what

it ought to be, but public space as the activity of

making it such, is one key vector into cityness. An

important distinction must be made between pub-

lic space and a space with public access; the latter

is not by itself or as a design, a space for poesie.

The publicness of that space needs to be made

through the practices and the usages of people.

This also means that public spaces can seem

chaotic. If there is, in fact, some order underly-

ing chaotic-looking spaces, it is a nebulous order;

this way of looking at such chaos opens up to the

85


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BETWEEN GLOBAL

AND LOCAL

The quest to elucidate the urban in the context of inten-

sified globalization will have to consider the emergingrealities made visible in the contemporary landscape of

cities and in the globalization-driven new urban order.

The rise in the power and influence of the transnational

with the concomitant decline in the nation-state, has

precipitated significant shifts in the nature, formation,

and experience of cities. The new urban order is charac-terized by fragmentation, polarization and contradiction

and the city is turned into a stage where the global-local

tension is played out. As such, novel geographies are un-

folding and alternative spatialities are flourishing.

The Global-Local Nexus and

the New Urban Order

88


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for the perpetual flux of network-mediated

flows, movement, and exchange that mark the

global scene.

At the same time, enclaves tend to dis-

connect from, even shun, their local context.

Exemplified by exclusive affluent neighbor-

hoods, gated communities, high security office

compounds, theme parks, tourist attractions, andspecial function developments (e.g., a college

campus or sports facilities), enclaves intensify

fragmentation and deepen segregation. The rise

of privatization and the simultaneous decline of

the public realm have lent further momentum

to an emerging fortress city that is breaking

up into a sort of militarizedurban fragments

(Mike Davis). In Los Angeles, enclaves include

Universal Studios CityWalk, Disney Land, and

the countless gated communities across themetropolis. In Dubai, urban enclaves take the

form of Internet City, Media City, Healthcare

City, as well as the three Palm Islands, the

World, and Dubailand. As such, Dubai is turning

into a city of citieswhere, under the new urban

order, privileged enclaves are intended to serve

the needs (and wants) of global entrepreneurs,

investors, tourists, and the local super elite. The

enclaves of Dubai and Los Angeles share com-

mon ground with each other as well as with likeplaces in other global cities. They are detached

from their immediate (local) context in terms of

physical, social, and symbolic dimensions. They

are totally privatized public amenities that are

subject to heavy security and surveillance re-

gime. This detachment from the local, however,

is contrasted with significant connectedness

with other enclaves in other global cities.

In the new urban order, the forces of glo-

balization are contributing to interurban homo-

geneity (symbolized by urban analogous en-

claves) but are, simultaneously and ironically,

differentiating the interurban differentiation.

Amer Moustafa

The present global regime is shaping, if not

reproducing, the new urban order where un-

tamed capitalism, if at all tamable, capitalism

reins unfettered exacerbating the global-local

polarity. The city as a place of mobility, flows,

and everyday practices will have to be recon-

figured to facilitate the needs of this global

regime. As such, globalization tends to promotehomogenization so as to facilitate the efficient

and smooth flows of labor, capital, commodi-

ties, ideas, and culture. Global standards and

exchangeable units of transaction are essential

to efficiently sustain such flows. Homogeniza-

tion is an overarching force that finds manifes-

tation not only in culture (e.g., MacDonaldiza-

tion, Dinsneyization) but in a host of other

realms for the urban.

As they seek to advance the cause of glo-balization, international institutions such as the

World Trade Organization (WTO) and the Inter-

national Monetary Fund (IMF) persist in impos-

ing on the local specific standards for financial

practices, transportation and trade operations,

and information and telecommunication tech-

nologies. Characterized by hypermobility, global

communications, shortened distance, and neu-

tralized place, the new urban order seeks to

plug the city in the circuit of global networksand globalized cities appear to increasingly

look alike.

Amidst the seemingly irreversible drive

of globalization and the new urban order it

fosters, the transformation of the local can be

overwhelming. While a total transformation

is a long-term project, a gradual transforma-

tion of bits and pieces appears more feasible.

These bits and pieces take the shape of urban

enclaves (zones, a la Keller Esterling) that

emerge as the actualization of a global urban

order that seeks to reproduce the local so as to

synchronize it with the global. Enclave connotes

disconnectedness, rupture with the immediate

context demarcated with physical as well as

symbolic differentiation. Enclaves are privileged

spatial entities that are powerfully connected

with other valued spaces across town as well

as with similar enclaves within the national or

global spheres. They are significant locations 89


27/68

Fig. 3:Transit Tourism.


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Fig. 4:Service Worker Housing.


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Porto Adriano, 2000C-print, 3 75 92 cm

Urbanization. Santa Pona, 2001C-print, 3 75 92 cm


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33/68

Hiromi Hosoya

and Markus Schfer

Urban Flux

240

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244

City of CommoditiesGuangzhou

Export Expressways 3 Major exportdestinations

Population Foreign directinvestment

International flights

10 million

5 million

2 million

1 million


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HosoyaSchaeferArchitects/JoakimD

ahlqvist

Population 2003: 7.2 Mio.

GDP 2004: 411 bn USD (+15%)

Export and import total 2004: 44.8 bn USD (+64%)

Foreign direct investment 2003: 32.55 bn USD


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Tabula Non Rasa.

Toward a Performative Contextualism

Ilka & Andreas Ruby in Conversation with Jean-Philippe Vassal

had sought to overcome once and for all. How do

you avoid this pitfall of contextualism?

By identifying those elements, forces, and en-

ergies which are genuinely determining the spatial

performance of a given situation. And for us, this

is very often not architecture, but the activities

that take place in or around it, thanks to or despite

architecture. The famous square Djemaa El-Fnaa

in Marrakesh provides the perfect example. It is

one of the most exciting urban spaces I know, butits quality would be inconceivable if you look at it

from a purely western-European point of view. The

square is essentially a big open space only vaguely

dened by a perimeter of fairly non-descript

buildings. The urban quality of Djemaa El-Fnaa

is not derived from its architecture, but from the

ever-changing sequence of events that take place

here in the course of a day: in the morning, it is

completely ooded with cars driving over it in all

directions. After a while, an acrobat, poet or musi-

cian sets up a stage in the middle of the bustling

trafc and begins a performance. Within moments

a circle of passers-by forms to watch him. Soon

thereafter, another acrobat joins him. In this way,

the square is gradually lled with performers and

spectators until it seems to consist entirely of

circles of people around which the trafc must

weave absurd routes. Later on the square will be

transformed into a huge market, and, in the eve-

ning, it will be covered by a myriad of fast-food

stands. The place is whatever takes place on it.

You once defined your architectural creed as

never demolish, always change, add, reprogram.

Interestingly enough for an architect, this position

excludes the notion of building anew, which is

what most architects would probably see as the

essence of their discipline. Why dont you?

I really think that building anew represents

only a small share of architecture and not its es-

sence. Essentially architecture is adding things to

something existing. Even if you build an entirelynew building, you ultimately add on to a preexist-

ing organization of space be it houses in the

neighborhood, a city quarter, a group of trees

or a landscape. And I think that an addition can

become meaningful when we analyze thisproto-

conditionof architecture sincerely, in order to

determine what it might lack for only this should

be added. Emilio Ambasz once said that if nature

were perfect, we would not need houses. Following

this logic, here I would throw in the idea that ar-

chitecture should only add to reality what it lacks

in perfection.

But how do you define the existing? In the

contextualism of the 1980s, the existing was

understood as the built heritage of the city. This

often led to Postmodernist pastiches of history, a

mimicry of existing building configurations devoid

of any creative surplus: architecture had become

a kind of pre-emptive conservationism. It failed

to produce a vital city just as much as the tabula

rasa thinking of Modernism which contextualism

252


38/68

When we designed Palais de Tokyo in Paris, we

basically started out with Djemaa El-Fnaa as a

conceptual model.

This leads us to Cedric Price and his defini-

tion of architecture as an enabler, which poses

the question of solid and void, and to what degree

they contribute to shaping the space of the city.

Yes, its a question of priorities. Ultimately

architecture is a means to an end, not an end in

itself. The meaning of the walls of a house doesnot reside in the walls themselves, but in the space

they dene because you can do something within

space, but not within walls. I think there are

architects of the solid, who believe that architec-

ture is an absolute value in itself, and architects of

the void, for whom the value of architecture lies in

what architecture allows to happen though and be-

yond its own material body. We (Anne Lacaton and

myself) tend to be members of the latter species.

How can you practice such an architecture of

the void given that architects are mostly asked

(and paid) to make solids?

By rst and always scrutinizing every commis-

sion whether its task makes sense and is necessary.

One should never take this for granted. And ar-

chitects should not automatically build something

only because someone has asked them to do so;

otherwise, they turn into pure service men. We

were once asked by the city government of Bor-

deaux to do a project in the context of a public

space program calledEmbellishment of Places. The

politicians had identied forty or so squares in

Bordeaux which they thought needed embellish-

ment. We were given a small triangular square near

the main railway station called Place Lon Aucoc,

a square like any other in France, certainly not

spectacular, but charming in its modesty. When

we came to see it, we were puzzled. For us, it was

already beautiful the way it was. We could see nei-

ther how nor why we should embellishit. In order

to devise a meaningful intervention, we carefully

started to study it. We analyzed the architecture of

the surrounding houses, the surface materials and

urban furnishings of the square, the organization

of trafc, and also interviewed the inhabitants.

In the end, we found only minor mists, none of

which would have beensolvedby an architectural

project. Instead we drew up a catalogue of main-

tenance measures which were strikingly obvious

and yet, completely neglected, including regularly

253

Fig. 1: Place Leon Aucoc, Bordeaux, 1996 . Before and afterthe intervention.


39/68

outdoor spaces, such as the outdoor galleries and

the interior courtyards. It is important to note

that these rose trees are not only decorative, but

performative as well. Since the building was inau-

gurated in 2006, people who work in the univer-

sity together with residents from the neighboring

housing quarter have come together and started to

tend to the roses and now they even produce a

jam from the rose leaves!

The sites you spoke about thus far are allsites with amiable qualities dunes, forests,

gardens, roses spatial assets, which every ar-

chitect would be happy to relate to and cultivate

architecturally. But what about a context that

lacks any such qualities? How do you relate, for

instance, to those modernist cities built in the pe-

riphery of Paris and other big French cities during

the 1960s and 1970s, places that are character-

ized by a less-than-attractive architecture, urban

spaces that are often problematic and, on top of

it, cursed by the conundrum of hard-to-overcome

social problems?

The worst thing to do is certainly what the

French government is currently doing: in 2003,

the state inaugurated a national program for ur-

ban renewal one of the biggest operations of

demolition ever in the history of modern urban-

ism. 250,000 apartments located in the so-called

Grands Ensembles large mass-produced housing

complexes built in the 1960s and 1970s through-

out France are scheduled for demolition (and

as the houses themselves. Interested in this vegetal

quality of space, we noticed that there was a large

quantity of rose trees in the gardens. Hence, we

decided tooralizeour university building as well,

placing 600 different rose trees throughout its

256

Fig. 4: Ple Universitaire de Sciences de Gestion, Bordeaux,2006. 600 different rose trees form a vertical garden.


40/68

a substantial number of them have already been

demolished). Please remember that all of these

apartments are inhabited! Whats more, there is an

unfullled demand for social housing: were talking

about numbers between 600,000 and 800,000.

And last winter there were 25,000 homeless peo-

ple in Paris alone.

Obviously, this program for urban renewalis not

intended to solve a housing problem, but an image

problem. The population of these Grands En-sembles is generally made up of people from lower

income groups, a large proportion of whom are

North African immigrants. The social and ethnic

segregation of today results in high unemployment

levels and criminality. The social tension created by

this situation has given the suburbs a notoriously

bad image that politicians seek to urgently improve

(even more so after the severe riots that sprang up

in some of these neighborhoods in the past years).

Confronted with this problem, politicians have

begun to look for a culprit, and what do they nd?

The large-scale Modernist apartment complexes

that represented too visible a monument to the so-

cial plight of the suburbs and the failure of French

integration policy. Due to their alledged ideological

contamination, they are poised to disappear out

of sight, out of mind, as it were.

What happens to the residents that are cur-

rently living there?

They are temporarily relocated in hotels until

new housing units are built. This is not only highly

troublesome for the residents (a family of four

does not live well in a hotel room for months),

but also entails highly unsustainable urban con-

sequences. Whereas the Grands Ensembles were

based on high-density and small-footprint build-

ing typologies, such as towers and slabs, the new

housing units will be low-rise developments oc-

cupying a large ground surface that is more typical

of surburban areas. Due to the scarcity of available

building land in city centers, most of these new

housing developments will be located farther out

of town which means longer commuting times for

the residents.

But beyond the dubious social repercussions of

this contrived resettlement policy, the economical

implications of the program are simply unheard of.

The government program provides 167,000 EUR

257

Fig. 5:PLUSstudy, apartment-blocks of the 1960s with dor-mant qualities like transparency, visual openness, height,park space, land availability, etc. that must be revealed,developed and transcended.


41/68

dHabitations Loyer Modr de la Ville de Paris,

OPAC). They were interested in our approach and

launched a small competition for the rehabilita-

tion of one of their apartment towers situated next

to the northern section of the Pripherique, the

peripheral highway of Paris. We won the competi-

tion in 2006, and the building is now under con-

struction. The original building was designed and

built by Raymond Lopez in 1959 (who built a simi-

lar version of the design at the Interbau in Berlin,the Hansaviertel). What we are doing is to enlarge

the usable surface of the 96 ats by creating new

oor slabs on the outside of the building, which

enables not only for the living room to be enlarged,

and winter gardens and continuous balconies to

be created, but also the comfort, views, and isola-

tion of the ats are improved. The inhabitants

will either keep their ats or be able to move to a

bigger or smaller at in the same building. And it

will not be necessary to vacate the ats during the

building work. After feeling a little insecure in the

beginning, the residents soon began to embrace

the project and are now very happy with it. Only

our client is not quite so satised they seem to be

under the impression that the newly created com-

mon areas such as the proposed lobby are too

generous for a social housing project.

Are there other ways of applying the approach

of the PLUSproject to the transformation of the

built environment of France on the whole?

Yes, but its not easy, especially in France,

to prepare a substantially enlarged book version

which was published in 2007 (at Gustavo Gili in a

trilingual edition, French, English, Spanish)2. But

in France this book was ignored by the press, ar-

chitectural or otherwise, as if there were some sort

of silent agreement that it doesn't even exist.

The most tangible reaction we got was from

the Paris Public Housing Agency (lOfce Public

262

2Frdric Druot, Anne Lacaton, Jean-Philippe Vassal,

+PLUS, (Barcelona: Editorial Gustavo Gili, 2007).Fig. 14: Apartment building Bois-le-Prtre, Paris, enlarg-ing the existing apartments by adding winter gardens andbalconies.


42/68

as the policy of demolishing and rebuilding has

become the preferred modus operandi and often

even an obligatory component of competition

briefs. For instance, we were invited to a housing

competition in St. Nazaire in France. Dubbed

Le Petit Maroc, the site on the estuary of the Loire

River was occupied by a postwar housing settle-

ment containing 36 ats altogether. As these apart-

ments were considered too small, the competition

brief called for demolishing them and replacingthem with 55 new dwellings. We studied the settle-

ment and found it perfectly in order, with a series

of well-kept public spaces with trees, gardens, and

pathways. There was no need to destroy this place.

Also we realized that it was perfectly possible to

increase the number of ats per plot of land and

preserve what already existed. We then proposed

the idea of keeping 27 ats and building 28 new

ones. We expanded the existing houses with

winter-garden constructions, as described above,

and in addition we built one entirely new house.

Interestingly enough, after the jury reviewed the

projects, they informed us that they liked our pro-

posal the most, as they were positively surprised

about the possibility of fullling the demand for

housing surface without demolishing the exist-

ing buildings. However, as the demolition of the

existing buildings had already been stated in the

competition brief as if it were a nonnegotiable

prerequisite they were now legally bound to this

formulation and could not award our project the

rst prize. We had consciously overstepped this

stipulation because we found it wrong. That is to

say, we knew the risk and got caught. It was an act

of civil disobedience that was clearly incompatible

with the legal framework of the competition.

Nevertheless, the effort was not in vain. Unhappy

with the outcome of the competition, the citys so-

cial housing director presented our project to the

mayor of St. Nazaire, Joel Bateux, who instantly

understood the general approach of the project,and that one could apply this approach in a lot of

situations in the city. Ultimately, he entrusted us to

a similar project on a different site, which we are

currently working on.

Your add-on housing strategy allows you to

engage with the existing body of the city, to tune

and improve it. However, there are places in the

world that call for entirely new cities to be built

from scratch, and in a short time. How would you

deal with this type of commission? Would you ac-

cept the commission of designing the master plan

of a Chinese city for, say, 500,000 people?

First of all I think there is no such thing as a

tabula rasa. At least I personally have never been

to a place where there wasnothing. And even if you

make a city for one million people in China, unless

you erase the land beforehand, you will always have

something to deal with: be it rocks, trees, little riv-

ers, or the existing population of the place.

But even with a tabula-non-rasa condition, I

would not want to make a master plan. When you

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BETWEEN

PERMANENT ANDTRANSITORY

266

Whether surrendering to the elements, to wars, to the

accelerating cycles of the property market, to changes

in demand, taste, use all built structures are obviously

temporary, existing as long as the need for them. As ar-chitectural categories permanenceand temporarinessare

often merely employed as a form of political semiotics

that reveal more about architects, and their political en-

vironment, than about the product of their work.

The Endless Present

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267

exchange develop, and camps acquire a proto-

urban complexity. Embodying an alarmingly

prevalent condition of urbanity, could the camp

provide a vantage point to reflect on the very

nature of contemporary inhabitation? Converse-

ly, could the city and its urban culture provide

a field of references to transform the utilitarian

logic that guides the design of the built envi-ronment of refugee camps? Could the camp ever

be considered a political space, a polis?

Eyal Weizman

It was the totalitarian architecture of the

first part of the 20th century that sought to

achieve an a-historical permanence but has

often not lived to see the end of the decade.

On the other hand, the emergency architecture

of humanitarian relief constantly seek to mani-

fest temporariness, because camp residents

would often like to demonstrate the persistenceof their claim to return to places from where

they were expelled. These temporary camps

thereafter often linger for decades in what

George Orwell, in his novel 1984, called a state

of endless present a permanent temporari-

ness without past (history) or hope (future).

If permanenceand temporarinessare mere

architectural statements articulated in the

materiality and form of shelters and in the

processes of their production, it may be produc-tive to rethink the relation between the two

extremes on the urban scale of duration the

city and the camp.

With over twenty million displaced persons

worldwide and almost one thousand refugee

camps in more than forty states, city-camps

increasingly become a prevalent new socio-

spatial form of inhabitation, as Manuel Herz

describes in his contribution.

Camps are designed according to prin-ciples that intersects architectural knowledge

with that of the medical and the military. A

repetitive grid of shelters is laid out along a

disciplinary geometry of both hygiene and con-

trol. Camps fold in a complex relational geog-

raphy, entire regions from where people were

displaced are spatialized in the layout of its

districts, blocks, and clusters. Camps are cit-

ies for non citizensforming parallel universes

that operate according to their own ad hoc

rules populated by humanitarians and victims of

diverse origins. The humanitarian and the victim

meet in an area foreign to both. Camps thus

develop into what Rony Brauman, former presi-

dent of Mdecins sans frontires called: hu-

manitarian bubbles, non-places which could

be everywhere and which are nowhere."

However with the lingering of their tempo-

rary permanence, dwellings and neighbourhoods

become denser, commerce, barter and cultural 267


45/68

Liberated from the responsibilities of the rst andsecond phases of life education during childhood and

work/childcare during adulthood and uninhibited bythe physical or mental limitations of the fourth phaseof life (the old-old), the demographic segment known as

thenew third age(oryoung-old) has emerged as the siteof some of the most radical experiments in subjectivity,collectivity, and urbanism.The senior Recreational Vehicle (RV) community inthe US is one exemplary case study of this tendency.1Producing a form of nomadic network urbanism, itchallenges established models of sedentary urbanity,inasmuch as it is mobile, informal, non-hierarchical, andnetwork-based. In the US, this community conserva-

tively numbers between two and three million retireescommunicating predominantly via satellite internet.While nomadic communities are clearly not a new oc-currence, one of this size, sophistication, and connec-tivity is unprecedented. It continues to grow at a rapidrate with the expectation that it will more than triplein size over the next two decades as the Baby Boomer

generation reaches retirement age anticipating a fu-ture nomadic citygreater in population than the largest

city in the US.2 Nomadism, traditionally dened as thenegation of urbanism, in this case produces a sparseexible urban eld of dense social connectivity.3

RV Urbanism

In 1963, Buckminster Fuller proposed the end of urbanism as it

was understood at the time. In a contemporary age of hyper-mobility,

Fuller deemed the notion of self-contained permanent settle-ments obsolete. Instead, he outlined an urban strategy termed un-

Leisure Nomads

of the New Third Age:

Nomadic Network Urbanism of the

Senior RV Community in the US

Deane Simpson

1 Recreational Vehicles (RVs) aredened as vehicles that com-bine transportation and livingquarters for travel, recreationand camping and are typicallyeither towable or motorized. (Seediagram attached.) The major-ity of RVs are equipped to parkin remote areas without plug-ininfrastructure this requires self-contained water and waste dis-posal tanks and a 12-volt electrical

system, which for long-term arenormally powered by either solarpanels or a generator. (Denitionsfrom the Recreational VehicleIndustry Associationwww.rvia.org).

2The Recreational Vehicle

Industry Association anticipatesmassive industry growth based onBaby Boomer ageing.(www.rvia.org).

3Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah,

trans. Frans Rosenthal, ed. N.Dawood (Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1967), p. 118.In the preeminant text on tra-ditional nomadism: The Muqad-

dimah,medieval Arab socialhistorian Ibn Khaldun (1332-1408)described the two fundamen-tally different environments in

which all human cooperation andsocial organization developed.For Khaldun, the very nature oftheir nomadic existence is thenegation of building, which is thebasis of civilization. The nomad,or the nomadic society, has there-fore traditionally been perceivedas anti-urban as mobile otherfunctioning outside of the con-struction of the state apparatusand sedentary society.

268


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settlement, consisting of a network of hyper-mobile nomadic bodies

operating at the scale of the entire world connected through invisible

radio links.4 Here Fuller anticipated a form of urbanism that would

emerge as a reality on an unimagined scale thirty years later.

Between 1990 and 1994, Canadian anthropologists Dorothy

and David Counts conducted eld research into an emerging social

formation that would lead to their 1996 publication Over the Next

Hill: An Ethnography of RVing Seniors in North America: While young

people have been spending their energy in sedentary pursuits, buying

homes in the suburbs, working in factories and ofces, and raising

kids, a generation of elders have become nomads. () There are liter-

ally millions of them. Nobody knows how many because there is no

way to count them, but millions (two or three millions [in 1996] ap-

pears to be a conservative estimate) do not just leave home to wander

a few months of the year. These people live in those motor homes or

trailers; they have no other home.5

Leisure Nomads

The senior RV community operates similarly to the conventionallogic of nomadism, but with two important distinctions: the rst

concerns the theme of categorization, the second of interaction.

While the three basic categories of nomadism (hunter-gatherers,

pastoral- and peripatetic nomads) rely on nomadic practices for sub-

sistence, the nomadic RVer does not. This would suggest the need

for a fourth term: the leisure nomad, the emergence of which may

be understood in relation to broad demographic, sociological, and

cultural transformations. These include: a) the widespread ageing of

the population and the subsequent emergence of a new third age a

new generation ofyoung-oldwho no longer work, but enjoy extendedyears of good health; b) the process Ulrich Beck calls individualiza-

4Buckminster Fuller, Delos 1

Conference 1963, in Mark Wig-ley,Network Fever, GreyRoom 04,(Cambridge, Mass: MIT PressSummer 2001), pp. 121-122.

5Dorothy Ayers Counts and Da-

vid R. Counts, Over the Next Hill :An Ethnography of RVing Seniors inNorth America. (Ontario: Broad-view Press 1996), p. 15. Counts

and Counts note that historicallyit has been very difcult to quan-tify the population of RVers inthe US with any level of precisionas the US census has no speciccategory for RV or motor homeresidences. Estimates are basedupon a combination of industrysales gures, industry question-naires and partial censuses.

Fig. 1: RV Urbanism.

269


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MINURSO

Mission for the

Referendum in

Western Sahara

(since 1991)

MINUSTAH

United Nations

Stabilization Mission

in Haiti

(since 2004)

UNAMSIL

United Nations

Mission to

Sierre Leone(since 1999)

UNOCI

United Nations

Operations in

Cote dIvoire

(since 2004/2003)

CAR refugee camps in southern Chad;established since 2003; approx. 5 0.000 refugees

4 camps. Anarchy in northern parts of the CentAfrican Republic (CAR) since the coup detat

2003.

Buduburam refugee camp, Ghana; established 1990; ca.40.000 refugees in one camp; refugees from Libera that have

been forcibly displaced by the two civil wars (1989-1996 /1999-2003).

Refugee camps Viana & Sungi, Angola; established 1977;

approx. 12.500 refugees in 2 camps.Refugees from Katanga Province in Kongo (DRC); unrest

province with liberation efforts.

Refugee housing in Gabon; approx. 12.500 refugees in 26

locations. Refugees from the Republic of Congofleeing thecivil war of 1997-1999.

Refugee camp Meheba, Zambia; established 1971; approx.

50.000 refugees in one camp.Angolan refugees fleeing one of Africas longest civil war of

1971 to 2002. About 10.000 refugees have since returned toAngola.

Orise refugee camp in Namibia; established 1998; approx24.000 refugees in one camp Refugees fleeing from the civil

war in Angola.

In Columbia approx. 2.000.000 to 3.000.000 internallydisplaced, of whom 260.000 are cared for by UNHCR .A low intensity conflict is ongoing since 1966

between the guerilla movements FARC and ELNagainst the Columbian government troops. More than

62.000 people have since been killed in this conflict.

Refugees and Asylum seekers in Germany.

Currently approx. 700.000 recognized refugeesplus 70.000 asylum seekers in Germany. Since

1993 the number of applications for asylum hasdropped from 440.000 to 28.900 (2005). In thesame year 411 (=1.4%) applications for asylum

were approved.

Refugee camp in Gambia established ca. 1994;

approx. 10.000 refugees in one canp; (4.000Sierra Leone; 6.000 Senegal) . Refugees from the

civil war in Sierra Leone and the violence inCaramance, Senegal

Refugee camp in Sierra Leone

established ca. 1990 with approx. 60.000refugees in 8 camps;

refugees from Libera that have been forcibly

displaced by the two civil wars (1989-1996 /1999-2003).

Sahrawi refugee camps, Tindouf, Algeriaestablished 1975; appr. 165.000 refugees in 4

camps. Occupation of the Western Sahara byMorocco with the Green March in 1975 and

forced displacement of Sahrawis.

Mauretanian refugee camps in Senegal

established 1990; appr. 20 .000 refugees in 4camps ethnic displacement of black Africans by

islamic Mauretanians.

Refugee camp Shatila, Beirut, Lebanon;established 1949; approx. 8.500 refugees in one

camp.Displacedment of Palestinians during the Israeli

war of independence. Additional 200.000refugees in more than 10 further camps.

Refugeecamp on Lampedusa, Italy

continouosly approx. 200 refugees, that areforcibly returned to their country of origin afterfew days. Several thousand refugees reach the

small Italian island Lambedusa with boats fromLibya and Tunisia. The camp is publicly not

accessible. According to media reports theconditions within the camp are catastrophic.

Refugee camps in eastern Chad; established s

2003; approx. 250.000 refugees in 12 camadditionally approx. 2.000.000 internally displa

in over 50 camps in Sudan fleeing the Daconflict: civil war and forced displacementwestern Sudan.


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UNMIS

United Nations

Mission in

the Sudan

(since 2005)

UNFICYP

United Nations

Peacekeeping

Force in Cyprus

(since 1964)

UNIFIL

United Nations

Interim Force

in Lebanon

(since 1978)

UNDOF

United Nations

Disengagement

Observer Force

(since 1974)

UNTSO

United Nations

Truce Supervision

Organisation

(since 1948)

UNOMIG

United NationsObserver Mission

in Georgia

(since 1993)

NMIK

nited Nations

terim Administr.

ssion in Kosovo

nce 1999)

UNMOGIP

United Nations

Military Observer Group

in India and Pakistan(since 1949)

UNMEE

United Nations

Mission to Ethiopia

and Eritrea

(since 2000)

UC

d Nations

nization Mission

Democratic

blic of the Congo

1999)UNUB

United Nations

Operations in

Burundi

(since 2004)

Refugee camp Malindza in Swaziland; established 1978; approx.

400 Refugees in one camp. Refugees from the Apartheid- Era fromSouth Africa and Mosambique. Most of the formerly 20,000inhabitants moved back by now.

Refugee camp Dukwi, Botswana. Established 1978; approx 4000refugees in one camp. Refugees from several african countries likeAngola, Namibia, Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan, Uganda.

Urban refugee camps in South Africa; since 1993

approx 30.000 refugees and 140.000 asylum seekers from severalAfrican cities and townships. South Africa didnt host refugeesduring Apartheid.

Karen & Karenni refugee camps in Thailand;established since 1992; approx. 110.000

refugees in 9 camps; Refugees from Birma(Myanmar), that are oppressed as an ethnic

minority since following cessationattempts.

West-Papuan refugee camps in Papua New

Guinea established since 1976; approx.10.000 refugees in various camps andvillages. Refugees coming from the

Indonesian province of West-Papua,persecuted because of starting

independence movements in Indonesia.

Baxtor Detention Center in Port Augusta,

Australia established 2002. Since 2002 allrefugees that reach Australia (mostly byboat) are detained in a detention camp

where they are kept without contact to theoutside world until their asylum

application has been processed.

Refugee camps Rohingya in Bangladesh;established since 1992; approx. 25.000

refugees in 3 camps; Refugees fromBirma (Myanmar), that are oppressed as

an ethnic minority since followingcessation attempts. In addition approx.

250.000 unofficial refugees that are notrecognized by by UNHCR.

Refugee camps in Nepal established 1992;ca. 110.000 refugees in 7 camps. Refugees

from Bhutan that are oppressed as anethnic minority.

Refugee camps in Pakistan approx.

1.100.000 refugees in Afghanistan in morethan 60 camps along the Pakistani-Afghani

border. In addition approx. 1.500.000refugees in Pakistani towns that are nottreated and served by UNHCR

Refugee camps in Turkmenistan approx.11.500 refugees from Tajikistan fleeing the

civil war (1992-1997) living in one of more

than 20 refugee housing facilities. Inaddition approx. 1.500 refugees from

Afghanistan.

Refugee camps in Iran approx. 720.000refugees from Iraq and Afghanistan, living

in approx. 15 refugee camps located in therespective border regions. Since 2004 morethan 1.000.000 refugees have returned to

Afghanistan.

Displaced peoples camp in Aserbaidjan

approx. 600.000 internally displaced, livingin over 70 camps and housing facilities.

Military conflicts and civil unrest since 1991with Armenia fighting over the Republic

Bergkarabach inhabited by ethnicArmenians

Refugee camp Makhmour in Iraq established1994, approx. 10.000 Kurdish refugees from

Turkey. Further 2.000 refugees in variousrefugee housing facilities. Turkish Kurds have

been fleeing ethnic displacement since themid 1990s into Iraq.

nian refugees in the West-Bank & Gaza strip established since 1948

ntly approx. 1.700.000 palestinian refugees (1.000.000 in Gaza, 700.000 inest-Bank) that have been displaced by the Israeli war of in dependence aren several refugee camps and palestinian towns and villages.

Refugee camps Kala & Mwange inZambia; established 1998 & 2000;

approx. 50.000 refugees in 2 campsRefugees from Angola and theDemocratic Republic of Congo (DRC)

Refugee camp Kakuma in Kenya;established 1992; approx. 70.000

refugees in one camp. Sudaneserefugees fleeing theSouth-Sudanese civil war. Cease fire

in 2003 and peace treaty in 2005.

Eritrean refugee camps in Sudan.

established since 1967; ca. 150.000refugee in 12 camps; Eritrean

refugees fleeing the war ofindependence from Ethiopia. Partial

return to Eritrea since the late 1990s.

Refugee camps near Dadaab inKenya; established 1991; approx.160.000 refugees in 3 camps.

Somalian refugees fleeing theSomalian civil war and several tribal

conflicts since the fall of presidentSiad Barr in1991.

Refugee camps in the region of the

Great Lakes over 500.000 refugees inca. 35 camps in 4 countries: Tanzania:

ca. 260.000 refugees from Burundi:ca. 150.000 refugees from Congo

(DRC): ca. 2.000 refugees fromSomalia Burundi: ca. 41.000 refugees

from Congo (DRC), ca. 1.000 refugeesfrom Rwanda: ca. 35.000 refugeesfrom Congo (DRC), ca. 1.000 refugees

from Burundi Congo (DRC): ca.13.000refugees from Rwanda, ca. 20.000

refugees from Burundi.


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Fig. 3:N'Djamena, capital of Chad, city center.

Fig. 4:Camp Amboko in southern Chad, camp extension.

280


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1As quoted in:ExxonMobile

Corporation: Chad-Cameroon OilProject Celebrates Ofcial ProjectInauguration, Press Release,October 10, 2003.

2In the Human Development

Index (HDI) assembled by theUN Development Program,Chad fell from place 167 to 171out of 177 countries (UNDP,2006: p. 286).

3See Fig. 2for a map of refugee

camps and global migrationmovements. Statistics are taken

from current UNHCR data.

4The UNHCRHandbook for

Emergenciesincludes one chapterof 16 pages on planning strategiesfor housing refugees and set-ting up refugee camps. The onlyother guidelines, published by theICRC and the Norwegian RedCross are literal copies of thisoriginal text by UNHCR.

Chad

One of the poorest countries in the world, covering an area

three times the size of Germany and with a population of just eight

million inhabitants speaking 300 different languages i.e., under-

populated and fragmented Chad, a central African, landlocked

country, has probably experienced one of the worst processes of

decolonization in history. Since gaining independence in 1960, thisformer French colony has not been able to develop anything remote-

ly reminiscent of what is usually described as a civil society. The level

of development throughout the whole country is extremely low, af-

fecting the local population in terms of education, medical facilities

and availability of cultivable land and food. The whole country has

seven dentists and no bookshops. A network of paved roads hardly

exists. Half of the population never reaches the age of 40 (UNDP,

2006: p. 294) and only 9% of the inhabitants have access to sanitary

facilities (UNDP, 2006: p. 308). Its cities have no functioning water

system, nor a working electricity network. When Morris Forster,then president of ExxonMobile, opened the oil excavation and pipe-

line project in October 2003, in his opening speech he stated that he

was very proud to participate in laying the foundation for a better

future for the country and its population.1 In those last four years,

the education level has worsened, the rate of illiteracy has risen,

and the life expectancy has further decreased.2 Because of this

extremely low level of development (and apart from the oil the

general disinvestment of the international community), and because

the country is seen as a blank spot on the map, Chad has become an

ideal situation for refugee camps. The camps and the humanitarian

organizations enable the country to embed itself within an interna-

tional (economic) network. This network goes beyond the eld of

humanitarian action, reaching into areas of a global media network,

international conferences, developmental aid and logistics. The

refugees, therefore, become the countrys means of participating in

this global network and the world economy.

Planning

Approximately 30 million people are currently considered

refugees or internally displaced people in more than 1,000 refugeecamps in over 60 nations.3 Despite these facts, there is only one

single chapter within one single book that describes planning strate-

gies for refugee camps.4And even though the context within which

these camps develop could not be more political or conictual,

the planning discourse remains on a purely technical level only. It

ignores the social, political, and collective consequences that any

decision might have in this critical context.

It was a case of unhappy coincidences and sheer bad luckwhen on

March 16, 2003 the former chief of staff, Franois Bozize, toppled

Flix Patass as Head of State in the Central African Republic. Onthe day that the world stood by, watching American and British 281


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BETWEEN

STANDARD ANDAPPROPRIATION

In recent years, a question dominating online debates

within internet and video game communities has been:

Who would win a fight between ninjas and pirates?This

conflict has formed and divided masses and evolved intoa larger cultural phenomenon. What is intriguing is less

the outcome of this debate but the implications of the

conflict itself, as it alludes to modes of transgression

and rebellion against prevailing standards.

Urban Ninjas

and Pirate Planners

332


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this trajectory is countered by opposing strate-

gies of deviation and appropriation. Character-

ized by non-conformity and anomalies, these

aberrant ninjaand pirateorganizations perpetu-

ate spatial segregation to an extreme, a world

of fragmentation where separation triumphs

over combination and difference over standard-

ization. The current state of urbanism no longerpretends to revolve around a single public, a

single form, or a standard model. This is either

because the normative is outmoded and no

longer exists or because the normative accepts

everything and is instead a culmination of a

culture.

The implications of this view negate the

power of reactionary urbanism, where agents

rail against standard boundaries to create a

revolutionary alternative. Instead, the prolifera-tion of subcultures and their associated urban

forms produces inordinate additional boundaries

that provide fodder for urban transformation.

Now, even more deviations and appropriations

are possible, with concomitant agents, forms

and cultures.

An examination of the strategies of devia-

tion and appropriation within urban transforma-

tion presented by the authors in this chapter

reveal that reactionary rebellion itself is il-

lusion and innovation results from absorbing

prevailing norms into an arsenal of tools. At

the dawn of the 21st century, there are no more

avant-garde revolutionaries in urban design.

There are only ninjas and pirates.

Mark Lee

While both ninjas and pirates are cultural

deviants from established social norms, their

appearance and modes of operation could not

be more different from one another. Adorning

black clothes under the cloak of a larger col-

lective purpose, ninjas are stealthy, disciplined

and more effective working in solitude. Pirates,

on the other hand, are loud and boisterous inmotley clothing and find every opportunity to

express their individuality. Both ruthless and

savage, pirates are most effective when oper-

ating en masse. Most hackers tend to identify

themselves with the ninjas while those engag-

ing in piracy and illegal downloads naturally

gravitate towards the pirates.

Beyond cyber culture, this fixation of one

groups supremacy over the other has yielded a

wider cultural theorem of collectivity known asthe Inverse Ninja Law. The theorem asserts that

in movies, the effectiveness of a group of ninjas

is inversely proportional to the number of ninjas

in the group. In other words, the more ninjas

there are the easier they are to defeat. Pirates,

however, represent the converse of the theorem:

they fight better in groups with their effective-

ness hinging on amplifying their individuality.

For pirates, it is necessary to simulate a sense

of isolation a state of being marginalized in

order to make room for improvisation and cre-

ativity.

Transposing the Inverse Ninja Lawand its

converse to theories on urban transformations,

the models represented by ninjas and pirates

offer possibilities that transcend

Documents

A_11 Urban Transformation - Ruby Press, Berlin, 2008