“Taken as a whole, the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time” –Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was set up jointly by the World Meteorological Organization and the United Nations Environmental Programme to provide an authoritative international statement of scientific opinion on climate change, periodically assessing its causes, consequences and possible responses.
Climate change nowadays is an utmost emergency,
unleashing multifarious spin-offs with a worldwide impact. If years ago global
climate change still had latent effects, now they have become clearly
observable. Temperatures will continue to rise, frost-free seasons (and growing
seasons) will lengthen, precipitation patterns will change, the sea level will
rise 1-4 feet by 2100, droughts and heat waves are projected to become more and
more intense and cold waves less intense everywhere.
It seems evident that corrective measures by countries
are needed in order to stop or at least to decelerate the phenomenon: just to
mention one, the Paris climate conference (COP21) held in December 2015 was the
first-ever universal and legally binding global climate deal adopted by 195
countries in pursuance of the reduction of greenhouse emissions while limiting
global warming to 1.5°C.
Floods
There shall be no attempt in creating a hierarchy of
natural disasters, since each of them has severe impacts on the natural
environment and considerably threatens human lives.
Howbeit, there are some calamities which are
considered to be more harmful than others according to the scale of their
potential of havoc and disruption.
Pie Chart showing the economic damages (expressed in USD) of disasters by type and region (Source: UNISDR)
Floods, namely the abnormal accumulation of water over
normally dry land, are caused by the overflow of inland waters or tidal waters,
or by an unusual accumulation of water from sources such as heavy rains or dam
or levee breaches[1]. At the
moment, they are the most common (and among the most deadly) natural disasters
in the United States, with an incidence of 38% amounting to a total of $1,011 bn.
A latest study released this month, “ How Climate
Change Will Impact Major Cities Across the U.S”[2], charts
cities’ risk levels for incurring damage from climate change, such as floods
for instance; what surprisingly has been recounted by the study is that the
most vulnerable cities are also the least prepared.
The correlates of readiness and resilience are linked
to some factors worth mentioning: wealth, income, inequality, unemployment rates
and so on.
As a matter of fact, top 5 low-readiness/ high risk
have shown a considerably larger black and Latino population and higher poverty
rates, disclosing therefore a direct causality between poverty and
vulnerability to climate change.
Flooding Cities: some examples
Still and all, we shall cross the American frontier to
shed a light on some other interesting cases.
For the purpose, the Indonesian current situation case
seems to be worth of interest.
Since its capital Jakarta continues to sink in the
Java Sea, the government and its president Joko
“Jokowi” Widodo, recently announced their plan of dislocating the
capital to the verdant island of Borneo. The interesting thing to notice is how
natural disasters can revolutionize the urban planning of a city, or better, of
a whole country. In fact, Borneo promises a “greener” future for the country,
significantly reducing traffic congestion, overcrowding and air polluting
factors. The idea lies in the grand strategy and believed abstraction of making
Indonesia’s capital a “forest city”.
Another high risk zone are the Netherlands, whose
large parts are situated below the sea level. Climate change effects, namely
the aforementioned rising sea levels and heat waves, further exacerbate the
threat of flooding for the country.[3]
Since the last devastating flood of the North Sea in
1953 – which hit also England, Scotland and Germany – an elaborate system of
dams, sluice gates, storm surge barriers and other protective measures are in
place next to the dikes. These are framed within the Delta Program, whose aim
is to protect the country against the dreadful threat of floods.
Italy too has had a long history of disaster caused by
floods (Polesine in 1951, Florence in 1966, Genoa in 1970, Versilia in 1996,
Sarno in 1998, Piedmont both in 1994 and 2000, Friuli in 2003 and the most
recent in Apulia in 2005).
The safeguard protection concept has been implemented
by establishing the rules responding to the appropriate land management, while
identifying the river basin as the basic unit for developing a proper land
management plan.
The infographic provided below shows the areas at high
hydrogeological critical state per type of disaster (floods, landslides and
avalanches).
Source: “Flood Risk Management in Italy: tools for the hydrogeological land planning”[4]
Quite utopically, we could ask ourselves how a
flood-proof city would look like then.
An article from The Guardian underlines how
recent floods show that it is not just the unprecedented magnitude of storms
that can unleash a disaster, indeed massive urbanisation constitutes a
significant catalyst in this sense.
Tragic events such as the ones we have just mentioned,
shall therefore not only be seen in the light of fatalism, but rather as
artificial man-mad disasters.
For the sake of this, many architects and urbanists
are pushing creative initiatives for cities that treat stormwater as a
resource, rather than a hazard. Just to mention some, the permeable pavements
in Chicago or the construction of 16 “Sponge Cities” in China as a solution for
the freshwater scarcity and flooding suffered by many cities as a result of
urbanization.
To conclude, we have mentioned how natural disasters
can constitute a threat, endangering human lives and altering the urban
landscape. Will this detrimental ongoing process ever come to a halt? The key
then is to increase the readiness of cities to the phenomenon, as in an “urban-smart”
metamorphosis, while keeping an eye on preventive measure and impact
evaluation.
Grasping the complexity of urban life in
dense and chaotic city spaces continues to be one of the main puzzles urban
planners, sociologists, architects and urban dwellers alike try to solve. The
book aims to provide a deeper understanding of the heterogeneity of the
apparent disorder of Asian cities. More than what can be judged by an external
eye as messy, Asian urban realities
have an order, functioning, cultural meaning, and history of their own that the
different authors help us discover.
Central to the book edited by Manish Chalana and Jeffrey Hou, is a reflection on normative dichotomies between formal/informal, order/chaos, legal/illegal and the impact that these dichotomies have on urban planning practices and discourses regarding the complexity of Asian Cities. In the first chapter, Chalana and Hou frame the debate on the notion of messiness and introduce the main tensions at stake analyzed by the articles in the book. Through multiple case studies, from Hong Kong to Manila, Tokyo to Ho Chi Minh City, the book deconstructs the meaning of messiness, bringing to the surface the specific colonial, racial, and class underpinnings hidden behind it. Messiness, as defined by the editors in Chapter 1, refers to activities and structures that do not follow institutionalized or culturally prescribed notions of order.
As previously mentioned, different authors throughout the book develop their chapters on a specific reality of messiness. If Chapter 1 serves as an introduction to the collection of articles, Chapter 2 directly presents us with anhistorical account of attempts at controlling the sidewalks of HCMC. Kim unveils the consequences on street life caused by colonial city building, regulation, independence and war, post-war nationalism and recent economic liberalization in Vietnam. Kim points out that the desire to order the streets has been constant through the various historical periods, and so has been the failure in controlling their fervent activities.
Chapter 3 similarly reflects on the power relationships that inform the practices of ordering and messiness. Kusno presents an historical understanding of Jakarta’s urbanism to show how the organization of knowledge changes in time in order to make of messiness a pretext for governing. The author moreover uses the example of the growing presence of motorbikes to highlight how messiness and informality can become an insurgent practice in itself, a re-appropriation of the urban space through mobility.
Chapter 4 and chapter 5 bring us to Manila and Bangkok, putting forward the importance of space and the embedded cultural and historical meanings that define it. Indeed, the disordered layering of multiethnic urbanity in Manila assumes a new significance through Gomez’s account of the semiotics of urban space. When looking at the urban mosaic of Manila we realize that its messiness is in reality a form of cultural concordance and dynamicity, of layered and intermingled realities. In the case of Bangkok, Noobanjong also highlights the embeddedness of urban space in cultural and historical contexts through the example of Sanam Luang or Royal Field. Showing how the symbolic role of the Royal Field has changed during royal, military and democratic rule, the author joins other writers in the book in defining space as a device for the State to manifest and implement its hegemonic powers.
Similar to Gomez’s analysis of Manila, chapters 6 and 7 highlight the multiple layering of urban life. Exploring the theme of urban development and its effect on pre-existing structures, Oshima walks us through the long history of Shinjuku’s transportation and commerce node. The vernacular urbanism of Shinjuku provides an example of urban stratifications provide the dynamicity of urban experience. It is the production of meaning and practices springing from messiness that is highlighted by Daisy Tam in Chapter 7. Little Manila in Hong Kong becomes the spatial embodiment of insurgent planning in that the domestic Pilipino workers that occupy the CBD’s space on Sundays resist and redefine the ideal use of the urban space.
Chapter 8 also deals with contested urban space. Presenting the example of Mong Kok Flower Market in Hong Kong, the chapter points to the tension that exists between policy makers’ top-down planning decisions and the needs of citizens’ everyday lives. The conflicts at the Flower Market therefore also show how urban actors manage to compromise and act in a strategic way so to ensure their existence within the formal and institutional structures.
Chapter 9 returns to a post-colonial perspective in order to advocate against formalization and relocation policies with regards to informal settlements in Delhi, India. Through examples of livelihoods in Kathpuli Colony the authors show that formalization practices erase local knowledge and the local cultural structures based on which housing was built.
Chapter 10 distinguishes itself for introducing a new analytical framework. The author indeed interprets messiness as a result of transnational networks and connections that were formed in the making of the city of Chandigarh, India. Chandigarh’s architectural identity represents an example of a modernism that has been reappropriated by non-western cities.
Finally, chapter 11 and chapter 12 return to the analysis of messiness as a contested political notion. Hou in chapter 11 introduces the concept of tactical urbanism, that is, temporary tactics like the setting up of night street markets that allow the activities of these temporary urban dwellers to thrive in the cracks, so to speak, of the formal and institutional structure of the city. To conclude, Chapter 12 discusses the impact of Chinese paternalistic and developmentalist modern State practices in Quanzhou on community participatory practices and environmentally sensitive planning.
“Messy urbanism” develops a deep analysis of the meaning and historical underpinnings of urban informality. Though as hard as it can be because of the different locations and nuances of messy urbanism they deal with, the chapters lack a continuity of analysis between them. The organization of the book would have benefitted from a grouping of chapters according to their thematic and analytical framework. Because of this internal messiness the reader sometimes tends to get lost in each abstract and very specific production of knowledge without understanding what are the main narratives.
On the other hand the editors have succeeded in tying together the chapters to the overall thematic focus on messy urbanism. Analyzed in its totality, the book does a good job at reminding the reader of the importance of cultural subjectivity, historical contexts and power relationships built in urban practices.
While entering the very congested academic debate on urban informality this book provides a refreshing approach to the question of “disorderly” urbanism, cleverly using messiness as both a prism and a conceptual limit to overcome when reflecting on the chaotic nature of urban life. If the book does focus on specific contextual and historical circumstances in South-East and North-East Asia, its thematic interests contributes to answer the question of how to govern informality in today’s megalopolises of the world. It joins other authors like Castels, Portes, Roy, Al Sayyad, and Simone[1] in explaining that informal practices are not limited to survival strategies and rational economic behaviors of the urban poor but rather, they represent and are embedded in cultural and historical patterns. It is important to underline such a refusal of the liberal economic analysis of urban informal practices as framed by authors like De Soto[2] because they often end up completely ignoring the political significance of informal practices. Following Asef Bayat’s famous essay on the politics of the informal people, this book succeeds in recognizing the inherent political nature of the informal order.
Bibliography
Al Sayyad N., Roy A. (eds), 2004, Urban Informality:
Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia,
Lanham and London, Lexington Books
Bayat, Asef. “Un-Civil Society: The Politics Of
The ‘Informal People'”. Third World Quarterly 18.1 (1997): 53-72.
Web.
Chalana, Manish, and Jeffrey Hou. Messy Urbanism:
Understanding The “Other” Cities Of Asia. 1st ed. HKU Press,
2016. Print.
De Soto H., 1986, The Other Path: The Invisible Revolution
in the Third World, New York, Harpercollins [English ed., 1989]
Portes A., Castells M., Benton L. (eds), 1989, The
Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries, Baltimore,
John Hopkins University Press
Simone, A. Jakarta: Drawing the City Near, University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2014
[1] Portes A., Castells M., Benton L. (eds), 1989, The
Informal Economy: Studies in Advanced and Less Developed Countries, Baltimore,
John Hopkins University Press.
Al Sayyad N., Roy A. (eds), 2004, Urban Informality:
Transnational Perspectives from the Middle East, Latin America and South Asia,
Lanham and London, Lexington Books.
Simone, A. Jakarta: Drawing the City Near, University
of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2014.
[2] De Soto H., 1986, The Other Path: The Invisible
Revolution in the Third World, New-York, Harpercollins [English ed., 1989]
Whether you are relaxing
on a beach or you are lacking ideas for books to read this fall, have a look at
LabGov’s random and inexhaustive summer reads suggestions.
Feel free to share this article and comment with your favorite city reads on our social media pages using the #LabGovReads hashtag!
The result of years of research and experimentations on the field to investigate new forms of collaborative city-making that are pushing urban areas towards new frontiers of participatory urban governance, inclusive economic growth and social innovation.
The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone by Olivia Laing
The Fate of Rome. Climate, Disease and the End of an Empire by Kyle Harper
Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West by William Cronon
Calcutta: Two years in the City by Amit Chaudhuri
Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino
The Municipalists by Seth Fried
Tokyo on Foot: Travels in the City’s Most Colorful Neighborhoods by Florent Chavouet
Delirious New York by Rem Koolhas
Radical Cities. Across Latin America in Search of a New Architecture by Justin McGuirk
For some more committed readers and a more serious beach vibe:
All That is Solid Melts into Airby Marshall Berman
Alger, Capitale de la Révolution (French) – Algiers, Third World Capital (English – Verso) by Elaine Mokhtefi
A Moving Border. Alpine Cartographies of Climate Change by Marco Ferrari, Elisa Pasqual, and Andrea Bagnato
Extreme Cities. The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Changeby Ashley Dawson
Race, Class and Politics in the Cappuccino City by Derek S. Hyra
Palaces for the Peopleby Eric Klinenberg
Patients of the State. The Politics of Waiting in Argentina by Javier Auyero
?☀️IT’S FRIDAY and you are just in time to catch up on the latest news from #cities around the world!
The LabGov team has collected for you some interesting urban stories from cities like Olinda, Lagos and Los Angeles!
Check out our weekly recap on the #UrbanMediaLab and get updated on what has been happening around the world before you start your weekend.
Is there a “concrete”
architectural solution?
Concrete is one of
the most polluting materials, and is said to release 4-8% of the world’s CO2. That
is highly due to the clinker manufacture, part of the cement-making process.
The latter also necessitates up to 10th % of the world’s industrial
water use. Compiling examples of historical urban uses of concrete, the article
traces the economic and architectural structural changes that should be
operated as well as the change in mindset to achieve a more sustainable and
viable development model.
From a fisher
village to skyscrapers and shaped musical movement and music giant as Fela
Kuty, Lagos has also proved to be a resilient city. Through a colourful
cartoon, Tayo Fatunla pays tribute to the most populated Nigerian city.
This article
illustrates how the carnaval in the city of Olinda in Brazil triggers social
and spatial separation through the privatization of paying premises, in the so-called
camarotização process,named after the term camarotes, which,means cabin. This process, linked to the American concept of
skyboxification (M.Sandel) participates to the “gourmetização do espaço”, i.e economic-led separation and
differenciation of spaces, that fuels socio-economic categorizations and discriminations.
Article in Portuguese
It takes more than
20 years for a cup of coffee to decompose. Kaffeform, a german start-up found a
new way of creating coffee cups using old coffee grounds, wood and biological
binders and thus proposing a reusable solution.
Written as a short
story on the museums in Los Angeles by a New Yorker, the article sets the
explanatory factors of the evolution of Los Angeles museums, making as well, an
historical parallel with the city development and city artistic movements.
New Applications to help women
address sexual harassment
SafetiPin and
Harassmap are two technological tools created to support women facing sexual
harassment in public spaces.
Natives canadians especially
from the First Nation reserve are asking for property rights. Facing housing
shortages, poor living conditions, poor health, indigenous people are urging the
government for solutions since their current absence of ownership implies no
asset and therefore no mortgage. However, if one solution could be abolishing
1876 Indian Act to enable private land ownership, this remains subject to
criticism, among the Indigenous people notably. Some of them are trying to
create new models of private homes ownership.
A lot of analysts affirm that Donald J. Trump was elected as president of the “divided states of America”, but, a more in-depth analysis, reveals that Donald Trump is not the cause of this division but he is a consequence of the crisis of the American democracy.
When we talk about democratic crisis in America (but this phenomenon is about other countries in Western World, of course), we refer to polarization between right and left because Republicans and Democrats just don’t seem interested in reaching a “mutual partisan adjustment” but they prefer conflict. And this phenomenon is very rooted in the whole society: in fact, according to the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt: “Polarization is here to stay for many decades, and it’s probably going to get worse”.
Last November, Trump won the elections thanks to different aspects: the race (whites voted overwhelmingly for Trump and levels of turnout and support of racial minorities for Clinton are insufficient), party affiliation (Trump gained a great support among Republicans and also among Independents), the importance of some issues (i.e. economy, immigration, terrorism, federal government efficiency, etc.) and urban/rural conflict.
And it is the main point of focus: in America, but also in Europe, there is a stark difference between big cities and rural areas, between the center and the peripheries that leads to a polarization of political preferences among voters. This scenario reminds the masterpiece of Rokkan and Lipset about cleavage structures in Western countries. According to electoral studies based on United Kingdom (2016 Brexit referendum) and France (2017 Presidential elections) there is a re-emerging polarized pattern in American and European societies: the conflict between the center and the peripheries, namely the conflict between the more developed and richest areas and the less developed and poorest areas.
At this point, the mistake we must avoid is thinking that centralization of power is the answer to tackle the problem. Au contraire, it is not the solutions because the United States is a geographically, culturally, socially and economically varied place. In this case, a top-down approach could hit the trust in democratic institutions.
Is there a solution?
Richard Florida (director of the University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute) and Joel Kotkin (Presidential Fellow in Urban Futures at Chapman University in Orange) affirm that the way to adapt democracy under intense polarization does not lies in “enforcing uniformity from left or right but in embracing and empowering our diversity of communities”. This idea concerns two aspects.
First of all, the American citizens. Recent polls (2015 Gallup poll and separate 2015 Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor poll) say that almost half of Americans (49 percent) view the federal government as “an immediate threat to the rights and freedoms of ordinary citizens” and nearly two-thirds (64 percent) believe that “more progress” is made on critical issues at the local rather than the federal level. It is clear that citizens think that it is easier to solve problems through pragmatic responses provided by local government instead the dysfunction of national government.
In the second place, we have a lot of papers and books by political scientists, economists and sociologists that underline the fact that America is “a nation of cities” – to use a phrase popularized by Lyndon B. Johnson. One of the most important thinkers was Daniel J. Elazar, a scholar of federalism that thinks that the pragmatist orientation toward democracy and the democratic experience, emphasizing social intelligence for social problem solving and the self-guiding society, de facto offer a way to overcome the narrow view of democracy as an exclusive product of the central state.
It is indeed necessary to re-discover the importance of local roots of democracy and traditional American federalismbased on local autonomies and cities. A federal approach is necessary if we want to recover an appropriate civic environment through civil society and civil community based on collaboration, cooperation and responsibility. Measures as shifting decision-making authority from the national government to cities and metropolitan areas, giving cities greater tax and fiscal authority, creating new mechanisms to coordinate major investments in infrastructure, talent, and economic development recognizes both the advantages that come from local innovation and problem solving and the substantial variations in local capabilities and needs.
La polarizzazione ideologica nella democrazia americana ha trovato il suo apice nell’elezione a presidente di Donald Trump. Per ridurre questa polarizzazione bisogna operare a livello locale, promuovendo l’empowerment dei cittadini riscoprendo il carattere tipicamente americano di “nation of cities”.
