Even the smaller cities

One in four residents of Berhampur, a city of 290,000 people in just inland from the Bay of Bengal in India's Orissa state, is a squatter, according to this article from The Statesman. This may indicate a sea change in urbanization, as smaller cities, too, begin to grow at unprecedented rates.

more murambatsvina?

Word in Harare is that the city government will start knocking down the informal kiosks and homes people have built since last year's demolition drive. Thousands of families are living in 'holding camps' around the city after the massive uprooting of 800,000 people during last year's 'operation drive out trash.' By the end of this month, thousands more may be rendered homeless or jobless. The UN's IRIN News reports.

demolition, then a deal

Real estate types are the same all over the world. They use fear to get what they want.
Squatters on the beach in Fiji were resisting a tourist development on the land they occupied. They went to court for a stay of demolition while the facts were sorted out. But the developer didn't wait. He tore down a squatter's hut before the court had a chance to hear arguments. After witnessing the demolition, the squatters agreed to move, the Fiji Times reports.

A city of contrasts

Rocinha, the largest and most urbanized favela in Rio de Janeiro, is full of contrasts. In parts, it has the infrastructure and commercial development of the legal city. But far up the hill, some still live in wooden shacks with unpaved streets and no electricity. Viva Favela reports, in Portuguese.

A U.S. shantytown

Voice of San Diego offers a three-part look at a squatter communtiy of Mexican immigrants in Carmel Valley.

Here are two eye-catching quotes:

Over the past few years, the men have been squeezed further and further into the valley. Now, they are cornered. The small patch of land where they currently live is bounded to the east and the south by protected city parkland, to the north by a freeway and development, and to the west by land they have already been evicted from.

Inside the camps, about 200 people -- nobody knows for sure how many -- are living in conditions that can only be described as Third World. The migrants have no running water, no electricity and no permanent structures to shelter under. They wash their bodies and their clothes in the same sulfur-yellow stream that carries the run-off of farms and houses down the valley. Most simply go to the bathroom behind the nearest bush.

..............

Migrants have lived in their shanty town of cobbled-together shacks in Carmel Valley for more than two decades. Bathing in a nearby stream and surviving on the fringes of one of the world's most affluent societies, the men have carved an existence by working on nearby farms, laboring on construction sites and working illicitly for private homeowners.

The men have been a vital cog in San Diego's economy for a long time. For decades, barely a strawberry or tomato has been picked in the county that has not been touched at one point by the hands of an undocumented migrant. Few of the vast swathes of new homes that stretch from the ocean to the desert were not built or beautified in some way by the workmanship of these men.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

"We do not want their help or money, we want a solution to our problem."

That's what a Delhi squatter whose home was destroyed in a fire that claimed 1,500 shanties in the Indian capital's Yamuna Pushta area tells the Indo Asian News Service (via Qatar's Gulf Times.) After a fire last year, squatters were given $100 and told to fend for themselves. Now the squatters want a permanent solution.

$1 per square foot

The island nation of Dominica plans to sell land to squatters in 25 communities for EC$1 per square foot, according to this article from Caribbean Net News. That's about 30 to 80 percent off market land prices, the news service reports. The government is waiving any additional fees and the squatters will have two or three months to ante up.

As I remarked in a previous post, this still may be too expensive for many squatters.

I hope Caribbean Net News or some other paper actually goes and interviews squatters to determine if the price is right.

Let's hope

Kenya President Mwai Kibaki reports that the country will spend Sh880 billion (or approximately $11 billion U.S.) on upgrading shantytowns. But what is upgrading? "Improving accessibility to basic services such as shelter, water, education, health, security and income generating activities" can mean all sorts of things.

The Kibera upgrading has been talked about for years. I'd like to know specifically what Kibaki's government is doing. Let's hope its doing something constructive.

Rocinha & Vidigal to be legalized!

15,000 families will get titles to their homes in Rocinha and Vidigal under a new plan announced by the Brazilian government, O Globo reports (in Portuguese.)

Raquel Rolnik, of the Ministry of Cities, reports that a legal survey is already in the works for 1,800 families in Parque Royal, and that all-told, 22,000 families in Rio's favelas will get legal titles. After the city does an official survey, people in the community will have the right, collectively or individually, to file for usucapiao -- usucapio in English -- which essentially converts possession into the legal title to property.

A related article notes the difficulties involved in putting usucapiao to work. These can include problems describing the urban fabric (for instance when someone has built their house on the roof of a friend's house) and legal difficulties involving the various claimants and heirs of disputed pieces of property. And another sidebar discusses the delays in providing titles to Ladeira dos Funcionarios, a small favela in the northern Rio neighborhood of Caju. This favela has long been organized and urbanized. I visited Ladeira dos Funcionarios in 1999 and found it to be a well-organized community. The residents assocation had already passed a height limit on newly constructed buildings and was seriously considering a moratorium on all new construction to prevent overdevelopment. Yet, despite strong organizing efforts, it has been almost three years since they were promised title deeds and fewer than 1/4 of the residents have actually received them. (note: you may be required to register for globo's site to read these articles.)

Thanks to Alex for writing me about this. Memo to Alex and all who speaks Portuguese better than I do: feel free to correct any mistakes I have made or to translate more of the details from these articles. And Rocinha residents: do you know anything about this? Keep us up to date!

Kyrgyzstan squatters

Land seizures are on the way in Bishkek, the capital of Kyrgyzstan. This report from the Benjamin Banneker Center for Economic Justice and Progress details how, in the difficult post-Soviet environment, "between 200,000 and 300,000 people made it to the outskirts of the capital and quickly built improvised houses. Some 15 years on, many of these huts stand without fences, with plastic bags for windows, garbage flying around freely. Most do not have basic conveniences such as electricity, water or rubbish collection."

Sounds familiar.

Mumbai's land mafia

This report, from the 24-hour news channel NDTV shows how squatters are forced to pay off politicians and their cronies to get a foothold in the city. Here are some chilling words: "occasional demolitions make it easier for slumlords to make a profit."

demolition in Istanbul

Police sprayed tear gas and used water cannons against against squatters in the Sariyer/Derbent neighborhoods, Hurriyet reports. This is interesting, as Sariyer is a reasonably well-off neighborhood, and not the kind of far-flung area where squatters normally thrive.

Young slaves of Mumbai

Hidden in the squatter communities of Mumbai: workshops that depend on the slave labor of thousands of children. The Indian newsweekly Frontline reports.

One every second

That's the number of people moving to squatter communities in the world's cities, according to this piece by Jennifer Rowell, the urban adviser for Care International, in The Guardian. It's a shocking statistic (though I've done the math, and it's actually too low: the reality is that 2 people become squatters every second.) Rowell writes: "People in many slums are treated as though they have no rights to education, to clean water or to fight eviction. But those rights are theirs. And, as their numbers grow, so too does the need for urgent solutions." I'd second that, with this proviso: the people themselves are the root of the solution.

Rowell's piece was a response to a heartfelt piece on urbanization in China, which you can read here.

[thanks to Edesio for the link]

Absolutely!

A UN official has endorsed secure land rights for squatters in Africa. "For the majority of our people, land is vital for survival," Abdoulieh Janneh, Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa said in a speech at the opening of a four-day workshop on 'Land Policy in Africa.' "Therefore, a meaningful structural economic transformation that results in employment and improved living standards for the majority of Africans will partly depend on securing land rights to millions of our people."

Demolition drive relaunched in Mumbai

Twenty-four hour TV new channel NDTV reports that the state government is again demolishing home in India's commercial capital. This is simply unconscionable. The city must respect squatters -- and that means, at the very least, not engaging in summary demolition and, instead, working with squatters to come up with alternate plans. Even the reporter understood: "Clearly, the problem of encroachments in the long run requires a much deeper solution."

Where are the leaders?

One Small Project

Archinect offers a terrific interview with Ball State U Architecture professor Wes Janz.

The leftover is a potent category; synonyms include waste, debris, rubbish, as well as surviving, unconsumed, and outstanding. Someone or something typically seen as worthless can be understood simultaneously to be worthwhile.

I like this shifted perspective. Is a "slum" a place of poverty and pain, as well as a place of vibrancy and life? What will the self-builder teach me, an architect? Am I the homeless one? Have I lost my way?

Now, I’m working bottom-up, one person and one small project at a time, taking seriously the displaced family, the claimed space, the scavenged brick. It’s the cascading energies of small responses and helping moments that interest me.

For more on Wes Janz and his approach to development, visit his group site: One Small Project.

rip off

Hundreds of squatters in Berhampur, India were chiseled out of their meager savings by unscrupulous operators who promised them a chance at 'free' land--for a fee. Read all about it in The Statesman.

I saw a similar cheat take place in Kenya -- where people handed over large amounts of money to be assured a place in a United Nations-backed redevelopment plan. It was, of course, pure thievery.

These kinds of things happen in areas where governments are corrupt and ward bosses regularly take money. When corruption is the norm, people are more apt to believe that these criminal 'pay to play' schemes are legit.

Gentrification in Istanbul

After a ban on foreign ownership was lifted, the price of property in Turkey's largest city jumped 85 percent last year. This year prices are predicted to almost double again, according to this Reuters article . And here's something that ought to concern all gecekondu residents: "potential redevelopments of Istanbul's shantytowns and earthquake-vulnerable buildings could also fuel growth."

Redevelopment is one of those great real estate code words. It means eviction and replacement with high priced housing.

a pretty good trick

Sixty squatters are studying at Cape Town's College of Magic, the International Herald Tribune reports.

In another South African news story, squatters in Durban have sued after their homes were bulldozed by a private developer.