Cities plus Limits

Cities Plus is a periodic publication. It presents urban issues through multiple and surprising perspectives. Each issue of Cities Plus focuses on a specific theme which is used to explore and analyse cities.

Editorial Team Christine BetiaLia BrumShareen ElnaschieSahar FaruquiLina Gast David Kostenwein Daniela SanjinésRichard W J Shepherd

Cover ImageSahar FaruquiTitle: And then they were 8.

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February 2013

Limit noun /’lIm.It/

Definition[C] The greatest amount, number or level of something that is either possible or allowed.[U] INFORMAL the amount of something that is enough and not too much.OLD-FASHIONED INFORMAL something that is very annoying or not convenient.

(Definition of limit noun from the Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)

BOGOTÁ’S CASTE SYSTEM 6by Daniela Sanjinés

PICK ‘N’ MIX 14by Shareen Elnaschie

THE LIMITS OF THE URBAN 16by David Kostenwein

OTHER PLANETS 24 by Richard W J Shepherd

CHINATOWN 28by Noel Sampson

A MERE DROP IN THE BUCKET 36by Gunther Stoll

VILA AUTODROMO 44by Lia Brum

SETTING THE “LIMITS” 52 by Nazanin Mehregan

DESERT versus DEVELOPMENT 58by Connor Cox

GARDEN FENCE 66by Shareen Elnaschie

CREATIVE STEPS 68by Ilgvars Jansons

TRAGICOMIC KRAKOW 71by Ewa Szymczyk

THE RABBIT HOLE 75Uzair A. Faruqui

EDITORIAL TEAM 82

THE LAST PAGEby Lina Gast

There’s no such thing as a limit, it exists only in the mind. So, this issue is already over before you start. Finito. Put it down and get back to browsing your email. Thanks folks, that’s all. Of course I joke. We’re not ready for an existential crisis just yet. It was Shakes-peare who said that even in a nutshell, one could be the king of infinite space. And this issue is a veritable nutbush...of city limits. See what I did there?

Limits define us and the world around us, infinite Venn diagrams that create meaning in space, that edge out worth as geography of meaning. And part of the pleasure in exploring these limits is testing them, stretching them out so they aren’t skin tight. Are we talking about borders on a map or interpretations of law? Are these different things? The second issue of Cities+ is an exercise in explo-ration, not definition.

And like true explorers, if that term hasn’t lost all of its relevance, we have trawled the globe for you, dear readers, bringing back trea-sures beyond imagining (but in a post-colonially apposite manner). Car journeys across Sydney and footsteps across Riga and satellites over Vienna and Brisbane. The devolution of Kraków from a literal human city to the amoeba of today (and what next?). The limits of the supra-physical over the physical in Haiti. Limits to patience in Rio. And the imposition of strata in Bogotá and how this could be challenged.

Coloured chickens in Qatar. Peace walls and playgrounds in Bel-fast. A city that rose from ashes, loosening its belt buckle into the Arizona desert. Millennium goals and slums on the edge. And even a rabbit hole, just to really push the limits of your contentment.

The endpoint of our hard work: writing, drawing, editing, photo-graphing, arranging, formatting, contemplating. But not interpre-ting. Our limit is your beginning. Limits have infinite definitions. They are unlimited. Thats a nice way to think about it. And we didn’t even need a Shakespeare quote to get there.

THIS ISSUE...by Richard W J Shepherd

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Strata 3; Photo by © Guadalupe Ruiz/ lupita.ch

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BOGOTÁ’S CASTE SYSTEMby Daniela Sanjinés

“Jorge is upper class. Although he lives in stratum 4, he goes to a university stratum 6 and dresses like he is stratum 8.”

Classism is a widespread burden all throughout Latin Amer-ica. Unfortunately, in Bogotá, as many other cities in Co-

lombia, this social divide has been formally translated to a nu-meric system. What started out as a well-intentioned public policy aimed at subsidizing public services, became a system that enabled citizens to categorize an existing divided society. This institutionalized segregation has had a deep effect in the way Bogotanians’ define themselves and others. This divided population lives in a city in which the rich live in the north, the poor in the south and there are limited spaces where these two have to coexist.

Public infrastructure transcends its technical characteristics and its functional role, and becomes a crucial instrument for poverty alleviation and to achieve social equity. Access to public utility services is a pressing issue in many cities, and Bogotá is no ex-ception. As a means to deal with this issue, since 1989, the city implemented a subsidizing policy for the low income popula-tion. This focused system of subsidies has improved the cover-age of public utility services, but has had drastic implications in the segregation of social classes.

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The policy consists in a classification of all residential neigh-borhoods into six different strata, based on the quality of the infrastructure and housing conditions of its inhabitants. It is presumed that the condition of your home and its surroundings reflect how much you are able to afford on public utility services. The system works as a crossed subsidy where stratum one, two and three are charged a lesser amount of the costs of the ser-vices, stratum four pays the exact amount and strata five and six pay a superior amount – uses such as industrial and commercial use are charged as if they were strata 5 or 6 and this helps cover the subsidies of the lower strata. This geographical classification is assigned by block and it is not only used to charge public ser-vices, but also for taxation, university tuition fees and to grant access to health subsidies (Medina, 2007). Although the policy has been extremely successful in achieving an average 98% of coverage in public services (Cámara de Comercio, 2005), it is debatable in terms of the social segregation it promotes.

Strata 4; Photo by © Guadalupe Ruiz/ lupita.ch

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Strata 6; Photo by © Guadalupe Ruiz/ lupita.ch

Bogotá is a city where the population is geographically and so-cially segregated into smaller cities within itself,and its differ-ent socioeconomic groups are constantly demarcating the geo-graphical boundaries between one class and the other. Although this spatial segregation has been present since the early stages of development of the city, the stratification policy sponsored by the stateonly seems to legitimize the need and convenience of the distinction amongst classes. The effects of stratification are evident in the way how society has incorporated the different strata into their daily jargon as a means to define and differenti-ate different social groups. They have become so internalized that although it doesn’t exist, people talk about a stratum zero for the extremely poor and a stratum seven and eight when re-ferring to the upper class. It is even used to refer to institutions such as universities, schools and work places, as well as language and clothing styles (Bunce, 2011).

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Strata 1 and Strata 2; Photos by © Guadalupe Ruiz/ lupita.ch

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But this policy has not only had an impact on the structure of urban society. It has also created a static division of classes where social mobility has been restricted, since people don’t wish to pay more in taxes or public service costs. This also has an enormous impact on the physical mobility of the popula-tion throughout the city as it confines them to certain areas and neighborhoods that might not always be convenient in terms of proximity to workplaces or schools.

Socioeconomic segregation is visible in the way citizens live and can be portrayed when it comes to the use of infrastructure. So-cial segregation is not uncommon in the rest of the world and it seems to be an inevitable doom of urban life. However you can also find elements of communion between citizens no matter what social or economic background they have. Even though New York City has one of the most diverse populations in the world (not only in terms of income) you can find all different social groups riding the same subway car. In Barcelona, there are richer and poorer neighborhoods, but all of them have the same garbage bins sitting on their sidewalks. These elements might seem trivial, but they do create common traits in urban society’s behavior. Access to the same quality of urban infrastructure cre-ates social equity and diminishes social gaps. The different social classes in Bogotá are so segregated that they even use different means of transportation thus making physical spaces for social interaction amongst its citizens very scarce.

Parks and plazas receive the population from the neighbor-hoods close by, and when people venture off to explore new ter-ritories they run the risk of not being welcomed. This happened one Christmas holiday when a cell phone company built an ice skating rink as a promotional strategy in a neighborhood park in a rich northern neighborhood of Bogotá. Let me just remind you that Bogotá has no snow, no ice and in fact, no seasons, and therefore an ice skating rink was something taken out of a film. So, reminiscent of when the gypsies brought the ice to Macondo, families of all strata came from different parts of the city hoping to get a chance to touch the ice.

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After neighbors’ complaints about the new visitors and restau-rant owners lost customers who were too afraid to come to the park, that was the end of ice skating in Bogotá.

All in all, the question is: how reversible is this policy and what are the mechanisms to integrate the different social groups that exist in the city? Even though the subsidizing of public utility services is needed to supply the poor with the basic infrastruc-ture for subsistence, this mechanism has created social boundar-ies and has had a deep effect in the way society functions. This evidences the need to incorporate the characteristics of pub-lic services a means for social integration. In the case of public transportation infrastructure it is clear that by improving the quality of the service and making it more efficient than other means of transportation such as private cars, this challenge can be overcome. When it comes to alternatives in charging for public utility services, though, the solutions are less obvious. Before the stratification policy, Colombia had different schemes for subsidizing public utility services including amount of con-sumption. This policy was conceived under the principle that the better off would consume more public utilities, thus would be charged more and this would subsidize the more needy. Nev-ertheless this was not always true and the government ended up subsidizing non poor and charging more to the lower income population.

The problem seems to lie in determining the capacity of pay-ment of the population based on the physical characteristics of the house and its surrounding neighborhood. If stratification is based on the specific income of the population and not its location within the city, the social segregation becomes less vis-ible in spatial distribution of social groups. Nevertheless, in a city where more than half of the population relies on informal economic activities as a means of income, this mechanism can become extremely hard to implement.

For now, Bogotá will continue to count on a network of internal boundaries, where everyone is assigned a number whose effects go far beyond the amount charged on your public services bill.

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References:

Bunce, Steven. (2011) “Commonsense practice or state-sponsored caste sys-tem? Social stratification in Bogotá, Colombia.” Available at: http://erinbtay-lor.com. (Accessed: January 2012)

Cámara de Comercio de Bogotá. (2005). Observatorio de los Servicios Pú-blicos de Bogotá.

Medina, Carlos; Morales, Leonardo. “Stratification and Public Utility Servic-es in Colombia: Subsidies to Households or Distortions on Housing Prices? Banco de la República, Colombia.” Available at: http://www.cid.harvard.edu (Accessed: January 2012)

Uribe-Mallarino, Consuelo. (2008). “Estratificación social en Bogotá: de la política pública a la dinámica de la segregación social”. Pontificia Universi-dad Javeriana, Colombia. Available at: http://www.javeriana.edu.co (Accessed: January 2012)

Leigh Star, Susan. (1999). “The Ethnography of Infrastructure”. University of California, San Diego.

Graham, Stephen. Marvin, Simon. (2001) “Splintering Urbanism”. Routlege, London.

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PICK ‘N’ MIXby Shareen Elnaschie

During a six-hour stopover in Doha, Qatar, we ventured into the old town to stretch our legs. It was around 6am, the

sun had just risen and the area surrounding Souk Waqif looked like a middle-eastern dream. Long shadows hit soft dust, gen-tly crumbling walls in tones of peach and ornate wooden doors with rusting locks and turquoise peeling paint. It was a vision of ‘wabi-sabi’. As the souk slowly came to life, storeowners un-veiled their wares: sheisha pipes, decorated slippers, gold and a sea of rich tapestries. The odyssey took a surprising turn as we negotiated a tricky corner and discovered these brightly co-loured, dyed, baby chickens.

In a time when cities are increasingly divorced from nature, you are forced to wonder: will there be no limit to their consumerist distortion of the natural world?

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THE LIMITS OF THE URBAN. A STATISTICAL ADVENTURE.by David Kostenwein

I spent half a year studying in Brisbane. It has nearly the same population as my city, Vienna, but a very different feel to it.

For example: my houses in Vienna and Brisbane were both, co-incidently, about 2.3 km away from the city centre.

Although the satellite pictures of those neighbourhoods show very different urban settings, both are considered urban areas. Talking to planners in Brisbane about urban areas or even ur-banity led to constant misunderstandings. The understanding of those terms was simply too different, especially when I was talking about the concept of urbanity. I was looked at as if as I was a member of some strange cult.

All this made me wonder and I started to think more about the meaning of the word urban. I read philosophical definitions, essays and even poems about urbanity and the beauty of the urban. I was soon even more confused. Then I chose a different approach, a far more straight forward one that would allow me to analyse the different concepts behind the term urban in dif-ferent cultures. Following the concept of law as a mirror of soci-ety, I studied legislation and statistical definitions and it helped me understand people’s concepts of the urban.

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Brisnane and Vienna, Photo source: Google Earth, Edited by David Kostenwein

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The legal limits of the urban

There are numerous different concepts and d efinitions of urban areas in spatial laws around the world. Some countries have very simple classifications, like Burundi that names Bujumbura, the capital, as the only urban area. Most countries have more com-plicated approaches and use different systems of requirements for determining whether a settlement is urban or not.

The most common concept is the minimal population of a set-tlement, ranging from a minimum of 200 inhabitants in Nor-way, Greenland and Iceland to Switzerland with 10.000 and Turkey with 20.000. Japan states a minimum number of people of 50.000 (amongst other requirements) for an urban area. It is not surprising to see that sparsely populated countries have loose definitions of urban areas.

Some countries define urban areas by their functions, like South Africa, Pakistan and Chile who see places with some form of lo-cal authority as urban areas. Sudan defines an urban area as a locality of administrative and/or commercial importance.

Some countries use the economic structure of a place as a basis for definition, often as a contrast to rural agricultural land. Israel classifies all settlements over 2000 inhabitants as urban – unless more than one third of the civil workforce is working in agri-culture. Japan requires 60% of the population to be working in manufacturing, trade and other urban businesses to be classified as urban land. Botswana and Lithuania have similar approaches. India adds the factor gender into the picture: at least three four-ths of the adult male population must be employed in pursuits other than agriculture. A town with 100% farming - if done so by woman - can therefore still be urban.

Countries like China, Japan, Canada, the United States and also Australia rely on density (population per square kilometre ra-tio).

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China considers areas with more than 1500 inhabitants per km2 as urban, whereas in Canada an urban area must have no more than 400 inhabitants per km2. In Australia, areas with more than 200 inhabitants per km2 are considered statistically as ur-ban in contrast to Japan, where a population of 4000 per km2 makes an area urban (that is 20 times denser than in Australia).

Some nations use satellite pictures to measure the distance between dwellings, some just count them. France for example measures the gaps between houses to find out whether the area can be considered as urban. Communities with more than 2000 inhabitants with not more than 200 meters between houses are considered as urban. Peru calls settlements with more than 100 dwellings urban, Equatorial Guinea with 300 dwellings.

One of the oldest ways of determining what is a city and the-refore urban and what not is the legal definition. The right to be an urban area is designated by the state. Some countries (e.g. Vanuatu, Hungary, New Caledonia, Burundi) just list all the urban areas, and those lists are sometimes shorter sometimes longer. Suriname likes it simple: Paramaribo Town is urban, nothing else.

A more exotic definition is used by Nicaragua and Panama. They use technical infrastructure as a requirement for urban areas. Nicaragua’s definition is: Administrative centres of muni-cipalities and localities of 1000 or more inhabitants with streets and electric light. Having studied all these definitions, I found myself in a jungle of classifications and approaches, but things got clearer. Until I found the definitions of Indonesia and Honduras, calling urban areas places with urban characteristics. Oh man…Anyway, what do those definitions mean on the ground? Can any place be urban now, just by choosing the right definition? I tried to figure that out too…

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Is Vienna urban now?

Okay, my experiment uses a place called Vienna - Georgia, not my city in Austria. I picked a random (well not so random in the end) little town in the USA to ask one question (besides the obvious one: Why can`t you think of a more creative name?): Is Vienna urban?

Vienna Georgia, Photo source: Google Earth, Edited by David Kostenwein.

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Vienna is…Urban Not Urban

Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Liberia, Niger, South Africa, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Greenland, Haiti, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Peru, Vene-zuela, Bahrain, Mongolia, Pakistan, Albania, Czech Republic, Iceland, Ireland, Netherlands, Norway, Spain, New Zealand, Australia

Botswana, Comoros, Sene-gal, Sudan, Zambia, Canada, Puerto Rico, USA, Virgin Islands, China, India, Is-rael, Japan, Malaysia, Syria, Turkey, Austria, France (most likely), Greece, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, Switzer-land, Samoa, Guam

Total: 31 Total: 25

Vienna is a quiet, small place and has about 3000 inhabitants living in an area of 14km2. Vienna is also the town that hosts the oldest barbecue contest in the country. Does this town have urban qualities? One might need to visit to find out – but I tried to figure out, if Vienna would be classified as urban by the statistical definitions of 56 nations around the world.

31 out of 56 countries would categorize Vienna, Georgia as ur-ban, 25 would not. It is interesting that there is apparently no correlation between region and definition or urban areas except in Latin America, where all countries apart from Puerto Rico (which is using the US – American standards) have looser defi-nition of urban areas. One cannot find a common rule for Eu-ropean, Asian or Pacific countries. One question still remains to be answered though: Is Vienna urban now?

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Vienna as an Australian City

Back to Brisbane: We have heard, that in Australia, areas with more than 200 inhabitants per km2 are considered, statistically, as urban. What makes it interesting is that gaps between two urban centres which are less than three kilometres long are also considered as urban. That could turn even sparse farmland into urban areas. Compared to other countries around the world, Australia has one of the loosest definitions of urban areas. Ma-ybe this explains all the misunderstandings in discourses about the urban during my time in Brisbane.

But all the statistics in the world could not prevent urban cul-tural clashes. One day, a colleague in a planning class asked me to show her pictures of Vienna (in Austria – not Georgia). We googled, scrolled through the first pages and saw the well-known sights in the city centre; the cathedral, the palaces and the museums in the dense multistorey cityscape of a European city. But my colleague seemed to be uneasy and somehow un-satisfied with what I showed her - until a picture of the UN Headquarters in Vienna came up. It is a skyscraper building of the 70s, isolated on an island between two rivers that doesn’t feel like part of the city at all and is surrounded by hundreds of small “Schrebergärten” (small allotment gardens). She suddenly seemed to be relaxed: “Ah, that’s the urban centre?”, finally ha-ving found something she could relate to Australian city centres. “No” I said. That was enough for her. She didn’t want to hear about Vienna anymore.

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All statistics taken from: The demographic yearbook 2005 by the United Nations (2005)

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OTHER PLANETS by Richard W J Shepherd

Standing on the balcony smoking I thought fuck it, Im going, Ive got to get out of this shit, no offence or whatever, and

we’re into a bad segue to a lift dropping down into a carpark and the sound of a new car door closing.

I love the smell of the city at night and hate this new Corolla piece of shit trash so I roll down the car window and ease out of the underground garage and into Surry Hills. It’s leafy and slow-going, dark on side streets but satisfying, with a rev of the engine, to force the hipsters back onto the kerb. I think I see Jess and slow down at the sight of a bobbing top bun but its someone else on Cleveland so I keep going, swinging right and then all the way across Redfern, down past the medieval park and onto Parra Rd where I gun it.

People will tell you that Parra Rd is dead or dying, bridal shops and bus stops and revheads with no fear. But when its not the stinking hot day, so hot the white road lines melt into wet mi-rage round every corner, it’s a breeze ride. You’re taken past but not through places, skirting suburban edges and at night the hastily tarred cracks in the road go thumpa-thumpa under your wheels. You see pubs with the same people in them and wonder about people living upstairs in dimly lit rooms smoking a joint or something. For that short bit up to Ashfield you’re wonder-ing if this could ever be like Newtown and then you’re into car dealerships, enough said.

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But before that, around Petersham I check a message and slip left before the turnoff to the M4, heading for Strathfield sta-tion: Dane. Dane who hated the train. Dane wanted a ride to his place in the back of Liverpool. It was kind of a crap detour timewise but I was only going, driving, looking for space. It was pretty quiet on the north side of Stratty, away from the buses and shops. An Asian guy watched me pull over across the road and Dane legged it over, sports bag swinging off his shoulder as he slung it into the car.

- Howsitgoin’? - Yeah good. - Whats this gay shit? - Fuck off, Dane, don’t touch the stereo or you’re walkin’. - Nah. Man, those trains are a piece of shit. Like this car. - Youre just lucky I was driving.

Canterbury Road or Hume Highway?- Whaddyareckon? - Play it by ear.

Dane’s a mate yeah, not one I’ll tell everything to, but a mate. Cover your arse in a fight somewhere out west plenty of times. Works a bit in the city but lost his license speeding so calls ev-eryone, anyone, for a lift home. Loves a chat, but there’s a limit sometimes.

Along the Hume at some point it goes from being a genteel goat track kind of road to a fuck-off vein-of-industry type road. The Western suburbs really begin and all the Banko dickheads come out in their hotted up subarus and look at you when you stop at a red, which is all the time. You pass through all these places where no-one seems to live and see how the artery of the highway, bloated, has swallowed these places. It could break your heart to see a place like Yagoona if you cared, which we don’t, unless we get another red and have to look at the endless charcoal chicken shops for 30 seconds.

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- So where ya goin?- Just out of Sydney for a night, need some space.- Yeah? You’re not going to score something in Livo?- Haha like what, an STD from ya mum?- Haha dickhead, no, like going to visit the folks

or something else?- So far Im dropping you off and gunning it down

the M5.- Yeeeeeeeessssssss.

Dane’splace is in a block near Warwick Farm station, a block he hopes the council doesn’t decide to up the densities on be-cause he reckons Pacific Islanders will move in and create ghet-toes. You can tell him he’s being a racist wanker but this stuff just comes out of everyone. You can feel the weight of race in Sydney, and when you’re in the city its like a mountain range just behind you but out of view, unless youre somewhere like Bankstown or Cabramatta and then you’re the foreigner. We’re all foreigners. I dunno.

I drop him off and head on through sad Liverpool, bypassed in every sense of the word, and through Casula where I stop for some petrol and in the quiet of the night all you smell is fuel, all you see is concrete and carlights flashing by. So I jump back in the car and see the first open space loom up around me. Euca-lypts in car headlights, the rim of light on the hills. The Hume merges onto the M5 and I really gun the Corolla now, never any cops around here, and Im doing 140 for like 15 minutes before the turnoff to Campbelltown. Roll down the windows and you can practically smell people living unfathomable lives, thou-sands of them, and you’re just slipping by in the night. And I do the big love-heart loop-exit, under and around, and head west, west, west, past the botanic gardens and the hideous church sign and up into Narellan and like everyone else, right through it.

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Along past new housing estates popping up everywhere you can see hills, still nearly bare and covered in trees. At night all you can see are the new suburbs nestling quietly beneath, one toe on the floodplain. Everywhere its so open as you motor down through Elderslie and over the little bridge up onto Argyle and through. I wanted to see little Camden tonight and it’s an abso-lute ghost, even the pubs are shut now. So I keep going through and cross into open country, fence posts and golden grass and everything. I want to stand on the edge and down past Camden, just before the big pub complex, is a road that goes all the way to the football field. It’s the road, the line, between the city and the country, and you can stand here and shout into the void, although you might wake a dog or two.

I remember when we moved out this way as my parents searched for some space and found the edge of the suburbs. It’s a little unbelievable it’s still here really. And I really lived out here, and rather than hot-rod my car into an early death I funneled all my hormones and spunk into watching the sun set over those hills. Kind of a waste. I park the car and walk down the little path to the fence and watch the creek running by spinifex. It reflects the big moon and I pull out a cigarette and take a drag. Much better.

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CHINATOWN: THE REAL ENCLAVE IN THE IMAGINARY LIMITby Noel Sampson

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Chinatowns shape and influence the limits of urban societies and the cities where they are settled. This article intends to

underline some of the socio-economic dynamics that are behind the showcases of the Chinese stores and restaurants and more important to put in discussion our perception of how ethnic enclaves contribute to the large urban ecosystem that contain them.

Chinatowns link their history to the Chinese Diaspora, which occurred from the 19th to the middle of the 20th century mainly caused by hunger and war in mainland China. Emigration was also stimulated by the gold rush in Australia, Canada, South Af-rica and United States, causing the migration of Chinese groups mainly from southeastern China.

The immigrant struggle in the different host cities was a pro-cess that went violently from rejection to assimilation. In New York City less than one thousand Chinese settled in the enclave around Five Points in Manhattan in 1880’s and a couple of years later the Chinese Exclusion Act caused a considerable decline of the number of Chinese in the entire USA.

In Australia as gold began to decrease and many Chinese pros-pectors moved to the urban areas mainly to Sydney, Australia’s’ policy institutionalized a form of racism to ‘keep the race pure’ and limiting the number of Chinese people entering the country (Anna-Lisa Mak, 2003). However, the Australian switch to the adoption of multiculturalism culminated with the acceptance of Chinatown as a pleasing expression of Chinese ethnicity within Sydney in the 1970s.

Multiculturalism of modern cities now embrace strongly these ethnic enclaves, many of them becoming tourist attractions more than living ethnic communities, but many others experi-encing both the boost of the tourism industry and the growth of the secondary economic sector.

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Chinatowns are in some cases in the limit of the urban economy or at least in the limit of the mainstream urban group, however in terms of space these enclaves are nowadays well integrated in the urban fabric of the cities. Such is the case of Chinatown in Bangkok which is located in the oldest part of the city along Yaowarat road, in the busy historic center of the city. Land pric-es around Yaowarat road are the most expensive in Bangkok and Thailand.

In Paris the Chinatown is located in the 13th arrondissement, in the south-eastern limit of the city. It was settled by Chinese refugees from former French colonies of the French Indochina (Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos) and it’s growing both in terms of demography and economy. The enclave found space in the Gaullist government’s high rise buildings that were rejected by Parisians and became attractive to emigrants due to the cheap rent.

Chinatown in lower Manhattan occupies a privileged position in the downtown area and it is one of the most vibrant Chinese expressions in non-Chinese cities. The metro line that crosses Canal Street plays the role of a wormhole letting travelers and citizens to take a shortcut to a colorful, limitless and apparently endless space where culture, tasty food and lively urban environ-ment nuanced by colors and scents.

Negatively in some cases these ethnic enclaves are characterized for having overcrowded and terrible living and working condi-tions. In addition, there is a general belief of the mainstream discourse that poses the idea that ethnic enclaves like China-towns do not contribute to the development of the large urban economy since they stay enclosed in ethnic niches that isolate them from the participation in the political and economic life of the city.

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On the contrary, although the persistency of ethnicity and race are causes for prejudice and discrimination, they are also im-portant features of personal identity that potentiates the socio-economic development of the community (M. Zhou, 1992). Segregated ethnic enclaves provide the sense of physical and immaterial security that comes from the familiar environment. The enclave economy also benefits from a positive cultural iden-tity through social institutions such as the family and commu-nity networks.

Ethnic solidarity, in the long term, supports immigrant entre-preneurs in mobilizing resources to leverage the opportunities for small-scale enterprises. In practice, many of the immigrants may prefer the enclave because it offers protection against dis-crimination and also opportunities for progress and upward so-cial mobility.

Such is the case of Barcelona where the Chinese community does not live in a Chinatown itself but has a strong entrepre-neur supporting network, facilitating resources and products to members of the community for the opening of shops and small businesses which offer products with lower prices than their Spanish counterparts.

Chinatowns have almost two centuries demonstrating they are dynamic enclaves that are constantly changing and developing. Chinatown is neither a declining urban ghetto nor a diminish-ing remainder of ethnic image, on the contrary it is a socio-economic institution that provides Chinese immigrants with advantages and opportunities that are not easily accessible in the larger society.

Chinatowns hold a collection of injustices like in any other so-ciety, low-wage jobs, exploitation and poor working conditions. However Chinese immigrants depend on Chinatowns because there they find a familiar work environment in which they do not struggle with language or education.

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They can have access to the solidarity network in their enclaves, accumulate savings and cultivate an entrepreneurial spirit that may be seen as a path for eventual self-employment.

Chinatown therefore is a small universe without limits, since it works under its own rules and dynamics and at the same time is integrated to the receptor system maintaining what it makes it different from other socio-economic and ethnic enclaves, the tireless ability to hold the community together, survive and de-velop.

References:

Zhou, Min. (1995). Chinatown: The Socioeconomic Potential of an Urban Enclave. Temple University Press.

Mak, Anna-Lisa. (2003) “Negotiating Identity: Ethnicity, Tourism and Chi-natown”. Journal of Australian Studies, No. 77: 93-100.

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A MERE DROP IN THE BUCKET: The limited outreach of the Millennium Development Goals to slum populationsby Gunther Stoll

With the onset of industrialization the world’s rural popu-lation started to move into primate-cities, metropolises

and congested urban areas in search of a more prosperous fu-ture and job opportunities. However the cities, which quickly became magnets of hope for the poorer rural population, of-ten lacked the economic capacities to provide necessary afford-able housing and formal income opportunities for the increas-ing migrant population. As a result, the urban realm gradually transformed into places of arrival, where unprecedented rates of concentrated poverty are increasingly posing immense chal-lenges to both cities’ authorities and the international develop-ment community.

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Former nomads settling at the periphery of Ulaanbaatar, MongoliaPhoto and image editing by Gunther Stoll

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This global process is nowadays commonly referred to as the “urbanisation of poverty”, materialized in the growing emer-gence of various types of slums cities and informal settlements all around the world.

In Mongolia, best known for its endless steppe and nomadic culture, this process resulted in the transformation of the coun-try’s urban peripheries into vast post-nomadic suburban shanty towns, mainly characterized by their low density, and predomi-nant dwelling types; the traditional Mongolian nomadic tent dwelling; the “Ger”. By some estimation, today these hybrid and semi-nomadic settlements, known as Ger-Areas, accommodate about four fifths of the country’s urban poor population.

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Slum structures in Ciudad Bolivar, Bogotá, ColombiaPhoto, image editing and collage by Gunther Stoll

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With the adoption of the UN Millennium Declaration in the year 2000, the 193 United Nations member states mandated UN-HABITAT to tackle the alarming levels of concentrated urban poverty in countries currently facing similar urban chal-lenges to those of Mongolia. Through setting a target to signifi-cantly improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020, the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) 7, Target 11, clearly articulated this commitment of all UN member states.

Since the adoption of the MDGs, the world has seen consider-able slum improvements through the joint efforts of interna-tional aid agencies, non-governmental organisations (NGOs), national governments, private companies and the slum dwellers themselves, and in fact, according to the United Nations the in-ternational community has already well achieved their original target.

As defined under the operational definition of slums, UN-HABITAT announced that, during the first decade of the 21st century, a total of 227 million people in less developed countries have moved out of slum conditions. This means that the UN and its member states have already exceeded their original tar-get of improving the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by more than double.

Dynamics of Urban Slum Formation from 1800 to 2050 Source: UN-HABITAT Annual Report 2005 (UN-HABITAT, 2005, p. 9) edited by Gunther Stoll

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According to UN-Habitat, only in Colombia, an estimated 3.7 million slum residents have benefited from slum upgrading and prevention strategies in poor districts such as Ciudad Bolivar, which urban area concentrates the poorest population in Bogotá in one of the most densely populated informal settlements in the world. (UN-HABITAT, 2008)

Nevertheless, the MDG 7 “slum target” appears modest and short-sighted considering the current rates of slum growth globally. In other words, this achievement must be revalued, by looking through the lens of a high increase in the absolute num-ber of slum dwellers around the world. The following figure clearly indicates the fact that addressing global urban poverty is about more than just meeting the MDG 7, Target 11, which only accounts for 10 per cent of the current global slum popula-tion.

As the figure shows the absolute number of global slum dwellers has significantly grown since the 1950s and is predicted to rise from an estimated 767 million in the year 2000 to 889 million by 2020 – or 1.4 billion in a “worst-case” scenario (UN-HABI-TAT, 2008). Hence, it is expected that, despite the efforts of the international development community to reduce urban poverty, throughout the first two decades of the new millennium the slum population will grow by at least about 122 million. There-fore, having improved the lives of 227 million slum dwellers remains as a deficient achievement in order to reduce the overall trend of excessively increasing slum populations. Due to this significant misalignment in defining the target, Geoffrey Payne concluded, “achieving the MDG would be to manage a retreat rather than achieve significant progress”, and that governments and the international development community need to exceed the MDG 7 “slum target” dramatically, if they want to confront the global challenges of slums seriously (Payne, 2005, p.135).

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As a consequence of the slow progress in reducing global urban poverty, the “matter of scale” has gained renewed prominence. As a response to the slow progress of development assistance, major actors such as the United Nations and Cities Alliances, as well as political leaders have started to emphasize the need for greater efforts in scaling up best practice development projects and programmes to a level that can keep up with the rapidly growing slum population.

However, despite the consensus of international development agencies and national governments on the importance of scal-ing up successful slum upgrading approaches, their concerted slum development efforts have still not resulted in the reduc-tion of people living in slums globally. This limited efficiency of development efforts has primarily two reasons. Firstly slum interventions aimed at reaching a large target group usually tend to focus on physical upgrading, but do not address the un-derlying causes of slum formation, such as urban poverty and urban migration. This tendency is further driven by the op-erational definition of the United Nations for monitoring the MDG 7, Target 11, which characterizes slums based on their physical and/or legal characteristics, and thereby excludes the social dimension of poverty. Secondly the long duration needed for bringing upgrading interventions to a larger scale, requires a systematic long-term strategy and serious commitment from the different stakeholders involved, which is often challenged by socio-political shifts and policy changes, and by fluctuating priorities of donors, governments, and implementation institu-tions and agencies.

Therefore creating incentives to ensure the commitment of the key stakeholders over long-term development processes, and shifting the focus of slum interventions towards the root causes of urban poverty, are two of the important ingredients to im-prove the efficiency of development efforts and thereby enhance the outreach of the MDGs to slum populations.

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References:

UN-HABITAT. (2008). State of the World’s Cities 2010/2011: Bridging the Urban Divide. Nairobi. Retrieved from http://www.unhabitat.org/pmss/

Payne, G. (2005). Getting ahead of the game: A twin-track approach to im-proving existing slums and reducing the need for future slums. Environment and Urbanization, 17(1), 135-146.

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VILA AUTODROMOby Lia Brum

In the middle of the road there was a stone there was a stone in the middle of the road there was a stone In the middle of the road there was a stone I shall never forget that event in the life of my so tired retinas I shall never forget that in the middle of the road there was a stone there was a stone in the middle of the road

[translation of the poem ‘No meio do caminho’, written by Carlos Drummond de Andrade in 1928]

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Welcome to the expanding neighborhood of Barra da Ti-juca, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Gifted with beaches and

mangroves, in the mid 1970s this is where the expansion of the city went. In Barra, urban growth followed a new model: “live where you would like to spend your holidays”, said the slogan of one of the first developments in the area.

The advertisement promise was translasted into a city where privatization prevails: a land divided into condominiums, gated communities of mansions and high rise buildings with exclu-sive services for their residents, such as swimming pools, sports courts, shopping malls, fancy offices, secluded schools, scented gardens and private security. This lifestyle was bought into not only by the upper classes looking for a holiday property, but also by a flourishing middle class whose dream was to acquire its own home, and embraced the plan of home ownership through 240-month mortgages (or, become a hostage of interest rates within twenty years).

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Commercially, the model was a success and today it continues to expand its frontiers. With vast plots in the hands of private speculators, the car dependent Barra is now the ideal scenario to materialize the 2016 Olympic Dream. Many of the sports fa-cilities for the 2007 Pan American games were built in the area, as well as the set of buildings that served as accomodation for the athletes. After only five years, the apartment buildings have partially sunk into the swampy land, the pools of the swimming park are drowned by mould, and the sports arena is the venue for expensive concerts, but not for public competitions or train-ing.

Such facts however cannot dull the glow of Barra, where a brand new olympic park is being built. On the contrary, facts serve as the reason for a wave of private investments. Surrounded by condos, hotels and their amenities, the olympic park will en-hance the already rising value of real state in the region. Even transportation, which is one of Barra’s main challenges, with daily kilometer-long traffic jams, is going to be improved with the construction of six new lanes for the express circulation of cars and one lane for a new Bus Rapid Transit route.

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Barra Tijuca, Rio de Janeiro, Photo source: Google Earth.Edited by Sahar Faruqui.

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Vila Autódromo started its history in the 1960s with the name of Lagoinha, a settlement for fishermen on the banks of a la-goon in the region of Barra da Tijuca. In the 1970s, a racetrack (autódromo in Portuguese) was built and part of the lagoon was embanked. As a consequence, the community, besides changing its name, had its physical area reduced to limits similar to the ones which are found nowadays. Since 1987, Vila Autódromo counts on an active association of residents, who, with no gov-ernmental support, mobilized and managed not only to build their own houses, but also to install electricity, water facilities, septic tanks and telephone lines. Today, around 450 families live in the neighborhood, most of them with legal permission to occupy the area, in accordance with local laws of land concession. Despite the historical ab-sence of the state, Vila Autódromo is one of the few popular neighborhoods in Rio which is not ruled by criminal entities as drug dealers or police mafia.

In the past twenty years though, residents of Vila Autódromo have been subject to seven attempts of eviction, all of them com-ing from the government. The community was already accused of aesthetic and environmental damages, of being on an area under risk of flooding, of threatening security, of blocking the way to the expansion of avenues or sports facilities. Currently, the families of Vila Autódromo figure on a list of more than seven thousand who live in self-built communities in Rio which ‘must’ be removed to fulfil the municipality’s plan to reduce the areas covered by slums. Normally residents find out about the threats through newspapers, without previous individual notice. The doors and walls of the houses are simply painted with the acronym SMH (the initials of Rio’s housing secretariat), which is the standard procedure to expel low income families from public lands where private companies want to invest.

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Vila Autódromo, Rio de Janeiro, Photo source: Google Earth.Edited by Sahar Faruqui.

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Nevertheless, the residents of Vila Autódromo have been refut-ing each of the government’s accusations. They protested in front of the city hall, informed themselves and organised meetings with the mayor, who could no longer blame the International Olympic Committee for implementing their displacement (in fact, the design for the olympic park which was internationally approved maintains Vila Autódromo where it is).

Beyond resistance, the community has proposals. The residents exchanged knowledge and experience with urban planning cen-ters from two universities in Rio, which gave them support to conclude a popular plan for the urban, economic, social and cul-tural development of the community. The plan shows the technical improvements that should be implemented by the public sector for the urbanization of the neighborhood, such as the upgrading of housing units, drain-age solutions, public transportation connections, installation of a water supply network and a garbage collection system. If car-ried out, the improvements would cost around 5,5 million euros from the city hall budget.

On the other hand, 7,5 million euros was the price that the city hall paid in 2011 for an unserviced plot located far away to resettle the families of Vila Autódromo. The plot belonged to private construction firms which had financed, in 2008, the first campaign of the recently re-elected mayor. Shall cases of evident corruption and violation of human rights keep on being the rule?

Welcome to Vila Autódromo, a small community that, while struggling to develop within its own boundaries, sets a limit to brutal land speculation, and shows that an alternative develop-ment is feasible.

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Support Vila Autódromo’s cause at http://www.portalpopulardacopa.org.br/vivaavila/

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The physical and quantitative limits of cities, such as cities’ boundaries, the relations between cities and peripheries,

minimum/maximum population size, etc, are only the apparent manifestations of a broader interconnection that the “City” and “Limit” may have.

According to the Oxford Dictionary a limit is “a restriction on the amount of something permissible or possible”. This defini-tion indicates that when considering limits in regard to cities, the concept appears to be double sided as the two words permis-sible and possible suggest. On one hand a city may face limita-tions in resources, restraining its possibilities and obstructing adequate development opportunities. On the other hand, there exist numerous urban regulations (permissions) and legal in-struments, applied by cities’ governing bodies, in fact to over-come and manage those scarcities.

The question is; how do these two kinds of limitations hinder or favor the development of a city?

SETTING THE “LIMITS” The case of Port au Prince, Haiti by Nazanin Mehregan

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The informal settlements of Pétionville, Port au Prince -Slums in Haiti hou-sing around 85% of the total urban population are evidences of the ambiguous notion of limitations in the city of PAP- Photo by Nazanin Mehregan

To support this argument, the case of Port au Prince -the capital city of Haiti-can be used as a practical example with evidences of limited resources encountering deficient regulations. The earthquake in January 2010 only revealed the existing limita-tions in this country and particularly in the capital city.

Haiti has faced a history of unstable political conditions result-ing in deficient governmental and institutional frameworks, incapable of managing the sustainable use of natural resources and urban development.

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Thereby, the international community has constantly offered its aid and involvement in the country. Whilst, since 1971 it shifted its policy towards providing aid to the NGOs rather than the government, in order to avoid corruption (Pierre-Louis, 2011). Additionally since the last few decades, mainly after the fall of Duvalier’s regime in 1986, the highly unstable political situa-tion has triggered a rising presence of international organiza-tions and different NGOs in this country.

Their efforts have particularly increased in the field of urban development and slum upgrading. Only in three years, between 2004 and 2007, these international organizations have dedi-cated about 33 million USD, to a variety of slum upgrading programs in Port-au-Prince (Forsman, 2010).

The earthquake further exposed the limited resources plus deficient governing regulations in Port au Prince, affecting mainly the urban poor and imposing relocations particularly in the slums. Photo by Nazanin Mehregan

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Consequently, the government, mainly the city or local authori-ties are constantly marginalized, as their capacities have seem-ingly proven to be insufficient in addressing the existing chal-lenges of the city especially when it comes down to the needs of the urban poor. Thereby, as international organizations tend to operate autonomously, isolated projects are scattered around the city of Port au Prince, in an uncoordinated manner, lacking efficient broader citywide regulations or governmental planning frameworks.

Undeniably, these international interventions are of high val-ue and certainly contribute to the (re)development of the city. However, since there are no established regulations or institu-tionalized supervisions, they remain as isolated interventions that in many cases are incapable of disseminating and scaling up their impacts to the entire city. Thus, these different efforts can neither work in harmony nor fulfil their own objectives.

Despite the international support and interventions, almost three years after the earthquake people still live in camps in Port au Prince, Haiti.

Photo by Nazanin Mehregan

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Governmental bodies can play an important role in manag-ing and supervising the activities and contributions of all de-velopment actors through the establishment of regulations and mechanisms that can direct diverse operations. Thereby their role needs to be acknowledged and their capacities increased. Nevertheless, currently local capacities are hardly recognized and if so, rarely built upon or reinforced. Apparently, corruption in public administration as well as protracted tangible outcomes are the main reasons for low concentration of aid on compre-hensive capacity building programs.

Thus, without prioritizing schemes to improve governance and build up the capacities of local authorities and institutions, further dependency on foreign support pursues. Meanwhile it decreases the likelihood for the governing bodies to establish and execute appropriate regulations, which would improve the chances of sustainable and effective development. Hence, they can hardly gain the opportunity to coordinate the operations and eventually implement own development programs.

Despite the many efforts of diverse commissions and organi-zations to overcome the existing gaps, malfunctioning of the development aid is constantly revealed. While the aid is impos-ing increasing dependency on the country it is even incapable of achieving its initial objectives, where almost three years after the earthquake still around 350,000 people in Port au Prince live in camps (The guardian, 2 Nov 2012). Development aid often being result-driven and concentrating on visible short-term interventions, has reached its limits in tackling the roots of problems genuinely.

The inefficiency of large amounts of financial aid and extensive uncoordinated interventions of the outsiders, indicate that pro-viding resources without competent governance is just a touch on the surface. Therefore, the limitations in the city of Port au Prince should not be acknowledged solely as scarcity of resourc-es, but rather as a lack of appropriate governing parameters; in-cluding restrictions even on the development aid in order to coordinate the undertakings.

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Nonetheless, the ultimate unanswered question is; can Haiti ever overcome this dependency? Can it ever mange the interventions and improve their efficiency perhaps by setting particular rules and regulations as priori codes for any kind of operation?

References: Forsman, A., Republic of Haiti, A situational analysis of metropolitan Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Strategic Citywide Spatial Planning, UN-Habitat, Nairobi, 2010

Pierre-Louis, F., Earthquakes, Nongovernmental Organizations, and Gover-nance in Haiti, Journal of Black Studies, SAGE Publications, 2011

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Photo by Joe Frasca

DESERT versus DEVELOPMENTPhoenix, Arizona, USAby Connor Cox

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Suburban sprawl is unwise, particularly when it destroys a desert. Phoenix, USA epitomizes this form of development.

Lying in a vast valley in Arizona’s Sonoran desert, the city ex-perienced exponential growth during the latter half of the 20th century. The unchecked growth fueled a booming local economy for several decades, but it also created many unintended social and environmental consequences in its sensitive desert environ-ment. The city’s unprecedented suburban bulge frames a current urban development debate: should outward urban growth have a limit?

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For several decades, it appeared that the outward growth of Phoenix had no limit. The city’s urban land area grew from 17 square miles (44 square km) in 1950 to 475 square miles (1,230 square km) in 2010. During the same time period, the city’s population bulged from 105,818 to 1,445,632 (U.S. Census Bu-reau). The majority of this rapid urbanization came in the form of low-density, suburban development. Cheap land prices on the city’s fringe incentivized developers to build monotonous but lucrative subdivisions with standard houses and standard non-native grass lawns.

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From 1950 to 1970, while the city’s population grew 300%, its urbanized land area grew an alarming rate of 630%. Growth did not stop there. From 1990-2000, the Phoenix metropolitan area grew by 3.25 million people (U.S. Census Bureau). Most new developments displayed undesirable characteristics including segregated land uses, commercial strip development, low-den-sity residential developments, and scattered, isolated develop-ments that “leapfrogged” over the fragile desert landscape.

1950

2010

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Phoenix was notorious for employing an aggressive annexation policy in the decades following the Second World War. This al-lowed the city to substantially expand its boundaries and greatly increase its revenue from property and sales taxes (Heim, 2011). But this era of expansion also produced many unintended social and environmental consequences. Rapid suburbanization has been blamed for severe reduction and fragmentation of desert and agricultural land, auto dependency, traffic congestion, air and water pollution, excess energy and water use, an increased urban heat island effect, increased carbon dioxide emissions, in-ner-city neglect and a declining sense of community. Developers were able to build new subdivisions at artificially low costs, both in economic and environmental terms, due to the subsidization of infrastructures from the state and federal governments. New roads, sidewalks, sewage, fire hydrants, telecommunications and water infrastructures stretched further and further to accommo-date the suburban expansion. As a result of these subsidies, de-velopers and citizens saw no reason to manage the growth and the sea of sprawl continued to spill into the disappearing desert. The subsidization of water is particularly influential in Phoenix, as the desert climate is extremely dry and only receives twenty centimeters of precipitation annually (Keys et al.).

The juxtaposition of the built environment and natural environment. Photo by Ethan Miller

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Arizona is one of seven U.S. states that depend on water diver-sions from the Colorado River to meet its drinking and agri-cultural water demands. The rights to the river’s water alloca-tion have prompted legal clashes between these states. Despite this vital natural resource limitation, Phoenix continues to grow, albeit more slowly, and water scarcity becomes an ever more contentious issue. The environmental and social consequences of Phoenix’s suburban sprawl have framed an urban develop-ment policy issue that is critical to address. However, harnessing urban development and implementing coordinated land-use programs that restrict where and how people live is a delicate proposition. Nevertheless, planners and city officials have begun to take steps to ameliorate the urban development deficiences of the last half-century. The city has promoted in-fill develop-ment, downtown revitalization projects, upzoning, alternative transportation options, transit-oriented developments, mixed-use zoning and other ‘New Urbanist’ strategies. These initiatives are helping Phoenix move in a more sustainable direction, but the problems inherited from the last half century are proving to be difficult to mitigate.

Suburban homes encroach the desert. Photo by Margaret Hall

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After sixty years of boom, the Phoenix real estate market sud-denly went bust as a result of the 2008 housing market crash. According to the Sonoran Institute, up to 1 million property lots in central Arizona were in some stage of approval for new homes when the market crashed. Some predicted that the hous-ing market crash would become a cure for sprawl and catalyze a transformation of more sustainable development patterns. That may be partially true. However, as the U.S. economy slowly as-cends, new home construction in Phoenix is hailed as a sign of resilience, progress and economic recovery. New homes are be-ginning to spring up across the desert valley, and the tug-of-war between the economy and the environment exacerbates.

If the city’s sea of sprawl does not qucikly reach a limit, Phoenix will face more serious, unforecasted consequences in the future. Let’s hope the mistakes of the last century will be used as lessons for the current century. To ensure that, planners, developers, ar-chitects and citizens need to collectively envision a new way of living in the Sonoran desert. A way that promotes density over sprawl, community over segregation, heterogeniety over homo-geneity, mixed-use zoning over Euclidean zoning, diversity over monotony, and transit accesibility over auto dependency.

Defunct sewage infrastructure in a stalled development in suburban Phoenix. Photo by Peter O’Dowd

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References:

Heim, C. (2011) Border Wars: Tax Revenues, Annexation, and Urban Growth in Phoenix, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research Volume 36, Issue 4, pages 831–859

Keys, E., Wentz, E., Redman, C. (2007) The Spatial Structure of Land Use from 1970–2000 in the Phoenix, Arizona, Metropolitan Area The Profes-sional Geographer, 59(1) pages 131–147

The Sonoran Institute http://www.sonoraninstitute.org/

United States Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/

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GARDEN FENCEby Shareen Elnaschie

Belfast is tied to a long and complex history of civil unrest between Protestant Unionists and Catholic Nationalists.

Today she is emerging with renewed hope for a better future but the city still bears many scars from the troubles. Once famed for its linen and shipping industries, tourism is now the focus of commercial activity, trading on the long-standing politico-religious divide.

Running approximately 800m in length and standing nearly 8m high, the ‘peace wall’ along Cupar Way in West Belfast is a foreboding presence. There are 99 peace walls within the city today, many concentrated around West Belfast, which bore wit-ness to some of the worst conflicts. The events of the past have manifested themselves physically within these walls to create no-go zones between communities, reinforcing a sense of fear and shared suspicion, and hindering recovery.

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Peace wall in West Belfast, Northern Ireland. Photo by Shareen Elnaschie.

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CREATIVE STEPSby Ilgvars Jansons

It is evening, 14th of June in Riga, multilayered, diverse and shrinking city in the size of Amsterdam, but with ambitions

of New York. In early summer days like this, air is full with vital-ity and it is nice to step out of four walls.

98 steps down, I exit the building and manage my way through the parked cars. I am on my way. I make a right turn, another right turn and after 816 steps I am standing at the traffic light at A. Briāna and Miera street corner. 23 seconds of peace, 19 steps and I enter Miera ielas „republika” (Peace Street „Republic”) one of so called creative quarters in Riga.

It is result of bottom - up iniciatives which emerged when world economy crisis in 2008 and 2009 left many of the first storey display windows empty and people with plenty of free time and bills piling on the desk. With limited resources and help some took the risk and started their own business applying them-selves to pursuits close to their hearts. Soon some streches of streets, courtyards between free-standing buildings, rehabili-tated industrial premises or pedestrian arcades by the help of private support programmes Atspēriens and Brigāde were turned into unique sub-centres and fertile ground for business, culture and social activities.

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Step by step I am moving along the Miera street. There is Mājas svētība (Aspidistra) on my right - housplant exchange point, hotel, sanatory and cafe. Few steps further shop 20th Century which offers vintage furniture and clothing and The Black Beak - hair salon, library and gallery have found home. They are accom-panied by the smell of chocolate in the air, coming from Laima chocolate factory which moulded the character and identity of the street for a long time. It’s massive walls are portrayed by colorful drawings and my steps lead me along other inhabitants of Miera Street „Republic” - wool workshop Taša, cult book and tea place Illuseum, vintage place Ze Store and Dad cafe. Soon smell of chocolate dissapears and the peace is shattered as well. The street ends, connecting with Brīvības iela (Freedom Street), the main traffic artery of Riga. Cars are passing in both direc-tions and street is enclosed by 4-6 storey Art Nouveau buildings, reminding of the glorious and busy days of the city century ago.

246 steps, a right turn, 161 steps more and a turn left. The street sign says - Baznīcas iela (Church Street). Peace has found a ref-uge here and cafes, boutiques, bars and handicrafts shops have followed. I am passing along outdoor cafe tables, well – lit win-dows and open doors. There is fashion and design store Baba on my right, Calvados and jazz place Muklājs and many others within short reach. I turn right on Ģertrūdes street, pass Muffins and More, turn left and take first steps on Skolas street (School Street).

After 167 steps I reach Kaņepes Cultural Center. Old and poetic wooden building with a garden in historical center of Riga. It used to be a music school, but since 2011 have become a gather-ing place for social events, concerts, exhibitions and workshops. Places like this have helped to make cultural shifts in urban life in Riga where bicycles, virtual and social networking adds unique accents. I am taking a look at the poster – thematic party countryside romatic on the 16th of June, Argentinian tango on 20th of June and guitar lessons on 21st of June. A quick look into the courtyard, it looks peaceful, just some gesturing, grima-sing and talking is taking place.

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Steps add up, I cross river Daugava and soon I am at Kalnciema iela. Quarter of two-storey wooden buildings which seemed to have experienced the best days already, but in the last few years, by private iniciatives, many of them were restored in their historical environment. I enter the courtyard nicely shaped by garden and filled by conversations and smell of food. My steps stop here and eyes shoot around. I am searching for my friends and a free chair and I am able to find only the first. There they are, standing in the queue waiting for a glass of wine. It reminds of markets which are organized around themes and public holi-days, and accompanied by concerts and attractions on Thursday afternoons and holidays. The market took its place earlier in the day, but an improvised open air cinema and movie The Artist have gathered same amount of shinny hapy people who, before the movie starts, are busy discussing the best movies of 21st cen-tury. I don’t remember the winner, we are too busy trying to find a place to sit and soon the efforts are rewarded, just a moment before the movie starts.

Silent movies are perfect for such events, when everyone is eager to chat anyway. A glass of wine, another one and words „The End” melt on the screen. People slowly dissapear and I find myself at the corner of K. Valdemāra street and Elizabetes street. I am saying goodbye to my friends and the rest of the steps I am going to make alone. I put my headphones in the ears, choose option shuffle, and in a moment words of B. Marley reach me - Get up, stand up: Stand up for your rights....

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TRAGICOMIC KRAKOWby Ewa Szymczyk

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THE RABBIT HOLEUzair A. Faruqui

The city is a living breathing steaming heap of systems and pro-cesses each layered and structured in a complexity which can only be reflected in the mind of the creators - us.

So as well as you think you know yourself and your city, I would pause and question that notion.

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Ever get the feeling that you had no idea as to what you were doing? Were you ever brave enough to admit such a thing?

It’s a question I still ask myself and after a decade of trying and arranging a shit load of money, I finally went out and got myself some more education. The realization: I still have no fucking clue. But, there was a much more profound lesson that I learnt during my master’s education. Not something that I learned from the seasoned lecturers or the varied topics, but more from what was not being said. Some lecturers hinted at it, while oth-ers would just trudge through seemingly oblivious that some-thing was not quite right. What kind of fear prevented them from voicing their thoughts; I really could not put a finger on it.

So what was this all-so-important lesson? I could sum it up in a sentence… but would you be ready to see exactly what being human means? The answer of course, is going to be at the end of this rant. So before you earn that right to know, let’s just take a step back and take a trip up the proverbial rabbit’s hole...

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Chapter 1: The Setup

We’ve all heard of the hunter gatherers settling down into agrarian societies. Yes, who’s to say grandma finally got tired of travelling and put her foot down on the issue. But according to Jane Jacobs, the settling activity might have started much earlier as a result of humans trying to lay claim to natural resources, whether fictional Obsidian or a plentiful forest, humans may have been non-nomadic at heart. As the settlements grew, these resources, would of course, eventually be advantageous in barter trading with other communities. So began the age of gifts, debts and trading. Whichever version of accepted history you choose, the purpose of the city has always been at its core; trading.

As cities developed into the form that we know and love, barter trading became more convenient with introduction of gold and other precious elements. Gold gave way to receipts and receipts to paper money. Soon, nobody really needed the actual gold it-self and the bankers realized that they could always loan out more than they had and more importantly, make a tidy sum on the side. Banking became big business, cities grew and soon the state had to step in with the central banking system to regulate the banks. Thus the state currency was born. 1750´s and the In-dustrial revolution brought about the advent of mass production and the modern working class.

It’s no great leap of faith to say the financial system lies at the very heart of the city system and naturally holds a lot of clout. Over the years, the inherent power of money has spurred and spawned many of the systems, political and social, that define the city today. With a rapidly globalizing economic system, the boundaries of the city have become blurred with the city creep-ing into the non-urban and leaping across continents. It has created multiple streams of realities within itself which can be hard to define or interpret. This exponential growth of the city system and the very definition of ‘city’ may have finally grown beyond human capacity as each generation is born into a ‘reality’ created by the one preceding it.

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Chapter 2: Firefighters & Policemen

Remember the y2k bug? The world spent billions trying to stave off the end of the world. It all began in 1980 with the need to save 8 bits of computer memory so they came up with the 2 digit system for the year. With still 20 years to when the num-bers turned over, the little oversight continued to be till 1995 when all hell broke loose. We had managed to build a whole new world on two digits and faced an imminent collapse as computers failed to calculate the rollover to the year 2000.

Much like that ‘little’ oversight, we humans have the propensity to continually build upon layers of progress. This is not to say that progress is not desirable. But what if we got something wrong? How long before we realize its effects will multiply over time? The Post Bretton Woods ideas on banking were probably great when taken in context, but when they became systems onto themselves they spurred the growth of a society addicted to consumption and a system which can only survive given ever increasing consumption.

Adding to this is the interest based economic system and sup-porting policies. While espousing a ‘self-sufficient’ system, it un-fortunately mirrors the short-lived pyramid marketing schemes on a much grander scale. It ensures that the overall direction of the money flow is always upward and somebody at the bot-tom eventually loses out. Remember, it takes money to make more money! With rapidly globalizing economies, pushed by the free-for-all market ethos, it is now possible to not only out-source opportunity, but poverty as well.

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So, in the context of development, does it make sense to tackle poverty if the system keeps on creating it? We can microfinance the shit out of the poor but does that protect them from the system that continually displaces them, erodes the value of their income and increases the cost of living? Until we reassess, un-derstand and rethink the frankenstein of a system that we have built, the role of the development professional will be relegated to putting out the fires of poverty and planners called in to keep society in check.

Chapter 3: Words

It is very easy to underestimate the power of words and easier to overestimate our capacity to understand them. We invented brave new worlds on words like democracy and freedom without knowing what they mean and entail. Where democracy is the right to vote one time in five years who gets to make the deci-sions for you. Where freedom means free-market before rights. Where our love for green technology and development will only change our patterns of consumption rather than limit it. Where slogans of pro-poor amount to being nothing more than seeing the poor as a new market. Where gambling on the stock mar-kets, which can affect price of essentials almost instantaneously, is seen as fact rather than a crime against humanity.

While the Y2K bug was easily fixed with massive investment, the problems of human society form the very fabric of its ex-istence. With our obsession with growth, we have gone from selling products to selling the intangible. We now sell lifestyles and desperately market our cities to keep them running while we wait anxiously for another bubble to burst. We could admit we were wrong and take a step back and reassess our plight, but it has become so deeply entrenched within us that convincing ourselves might be the biggest hurdle yet. And if there is any-thing we learned from history, it’s that we never learn.

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Through the ages, people have been drawn to the city with a promise which the city can only keep at the expense of ‘99’ oth-ers. With deftly edited images, the idea of the city is resold to us time and time again with images of opportunity, fame and sex, giving only enough to keep our hopes alive for another day. It is these hopes which the city feeds on... I hate getting poetic but the truth is most of us won’t make it and even though we live in the Big City, we will be confined to live along a line drawn from our home to our workplace. We may have built the cities, but, as we head toward an urban world, it is the city which now defines us and has left us unable to imagine any other reality.

By now you may have realized that we never took that trip into the rabbit hole. We all live in our own individual holes, not re-ally knowing what lies beyond or within. To be fair, the city will never reveal its inner workings because its very essence relies on you being ignorant of what it really is. But, let’s leave it at that and go straight to that all important lesson..

And that is... Honestly...

“Nobody really knows what they are doing...” Before you go all WTF on me, consider this. You already know this. You see it all around you and think “Am I the only one who doesn’t get this?” The realization can actually be liberating if you let it ... So the next time you feel something is not quite right, instead of letting self-doubt take over, you can question self-imposed realities and rethink the way we do things… and perhaps even redefine ourselves in the process....

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Darmstadt Editorial Team: Elena Reyes Ethan BrownLeona Schmidt-Roßleben

Daniela Sanjinés David Kostenwein Shareen Elnaschie Sahar Faruqui

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EDITORIAL TEAMIlustrations by Polina Koriakina

Sahar FaruquiChristine Betia Lia Brum

Richard W J Shepherd Lina Gast

Ilustrations by Lina Gast