High-res
Could one of India’s biggest slums be considered a sustainable community? Maybe so, argues Rachel Smith, citing sense of place, buzzing atmosphere and active citizens. What do you think? Can a slum be a sustainable community?
“Dharavi, one of India’s biggest slums, is a mixed-use self-contained residential and commercial ‘development’ with a guesstimated population in excess of 1 million. It has a real, and very genuine, sense of community. It has a sense of purpose, its full of people with spirit and determination but most of all it has that ‘sense of place’ that adorns Australian property development and real estate marketing materials.”
Rachel Smith considers whether one of India’s biggest slum has more sense of community than the Australian city she lives in
High-res
Since 2004 a committed group of residents in Soweto Village East, one of Kibera’s 12 villages, has been agitating for a radical plan: They want to see the single-story shanties demolished and replaced by 600 units in high-rise apartment buildings. They may get their wish, as such a plan is the pilot project for KENSUP, the Kenyan Slum Upgrading Programme.
“Hillbrow is far from just being a place of despair and crime, it’s a space of ‘becoming’, a microcosm of all the developments of South African society today: poverty but also possibility, xenophobia, but also solidarity. Here problems are visible and solutions are found that concern the whole South African nation.”
Marietta Kesting writes about the history of Hillbrow’s built environment in Shook Magazine.
The rise of the West is over.
Rural villages worldwide are shrinking, and at a particularly speedy rate in non-Western countries. As people flock to cities to live in squatter camps and slums, Stewart Brand considers the positive aspects of this change.
Although not the most captivating speaker, he raises some interesting points and presents a simple argument for the continued urbanisation of our world.
By Joe Peach
“Third World cities draw people away from subsistence farming, which is ecologically devastating, and they defuse the population bomb. In the villages, women spend their time doing agricultural stuff, for no pay, or having lots and lots of kids. When women move to town, it’s better to have fewer kids, bear down, and get them some education, some economic opportunity. Women become important, powerful creatures in the slums. They’re often the ones running the community-based organizations, and they’re considered the most reliable recipients of microfinance loans.”
Stewart Brand - Environmentalist, and founder of the Whole Earth Catalog
