Hidden Dimensions (Asynchronous Session)
Land Rights of Indigenous Communities : The Way Towards Food Sovereignty and Climate Change Adaptation in Bangladesh View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Fatema Jahan Sharna
Indigenous communities of the world consider the encompassing area, forests and hills, as their ancestors. Bangladesh, one of the most vulnerable countries due to climate change, and a homogenous country in terms of language, social customs, and anthropological origin has ethnic and cultural diversity with more than 50 Indigenous communities speaking more than 30 languages. Historically, indigenous people tend to explore solutions by their unique knowledge in line with the natural change to cope with climate change. They are highly dependent on nature for their livelihood sources. However, natural climate disasters, as well as some human situations like, land acquisition or land grabbing in the name of development and tourism, imperil the circumstances. Their unique food habits and food cultivation methods, directly and indirectly, play the most important role in their lives, livelihoods, and their surroundings. Planting multiple crops, digging water reservoirs, terracing, altering patterns of houses, and staircases are some examples of their adaptation strategies. The food sovereignty of Indigenous communities paces with their adaptation abilities towards the multifold impacts of climate change. Considering the perspectives, the impact of climate change on indigenous communities should be addressed more vigorously. Along with the acknowledgment, appropriate steps should be taken to envision their voices and indigenous knowledge. Inclusion, capacity, and trust-building should be the goals of the policy initiatives. The climate change impact on Indigenous people is not only a climatic issue but also a social, cultural, and humanitarian aspect from a broader point of view.
Engaging Informality: Tactical Architecture and Urbanism in Latin America View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Gregory Marinic, Pablo Meninato
Beginning in the second half of the twentieth century, most countries in Latin America experienced unprecedented mass migrations of impoverished people moving from rural areas to informal settlements on the urban periphery. This research investigates how several contemporary Latin American architects have developed urban interventions that significantly depart from conventional approaches to architecture, urban design, and planning. It concentrates on tactical initiatives developed across the region by Teddy Cruz on the San Diego-Tijuana border, Douglas Dreher in Guayaquil, Tatiana Bilbao in Mexico City, Roberto Jáuregui in Rio de Janeiro, Flavio Janches in Buenos Aires, and Alejandro Echeverri in Medellin. The methodology for this research comprises a transnational survey of design practices employed in informal settlements across Latin America. Focusing on recent work produced by emerging and established architects, this research examines an emerging cultural shift toward incremental, adaptive, and community-driven design practices. Case studies compare diverse contexts, settler geographies, strategies, tactics, and participatory frameworks. Together, these exemplars demonstrate the varied scope and regional expression of projects pursued collaboratively by activists, citizens, community leaders, planners, and architects.
Discussing the Hidden Flaws of Modern Urbanism View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Zeinab Seifpour, Henri Pallard, Carol Kauppi, Thomas Strickland
Modernism in urban planning had a utopian image of modern cities, altering the face of modern cities in dramatic and irreparable ways. It ignored the impact of market and economic conditions, as well as the complex relationship between humans and their built environment. Although desiring a perfectly democratic and utopian society, the non-democratic process of modern urban planning, worsened by an absence of interdisciplinary, led to cities with alienated residents. Pioneers like Le Corbusier imagined heroic urban planners who were professionally qualified, and all-knowing. Because of modern principles, people have little interest in claiming space or having a sense of belonging to the community. The data used in this study comes from an in-depth literature review of critics of modern urbanism. The grounded theory approach is used to evaluate, code, and categorize the collected points of view on the reasons for its failure: neglecting the impact of market and economic conditions, dismissing the fundamental connection between people and their built environment, and the non-democratic urban planning process exacerbated by a lack of multidisciplinary study. Integrating, refining, and writing out theories was the final step. This research indicates the fundamental premise of societal uniformity was the major misconception of modernist concepts. Le Corbusier's overestimation of urban planners’ heroic role has had detrimental psychological and social consequences. Although the intentions of modernism in pursuing individual liberty and human well-being were arguably noble, the result was a more commodified human existence and the loss of a sense of belonging to the place.
From the Margins to the Center: Relocating Karachi’s Informal Retailers and Service Providers View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Sami Chohan
While urbanization has been traditionally viewed as an engine of economic prosperity, many cities have struggled to cope with the sheer pace of it, particularly in the Global South where rapid urbanization has failed to generate economic growth and provide sufficient employment opportunities for growing urban populations. This inability has resulted in widespread urban informality, more so in the cities of South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa where a vast majority of the urban workforce is employed informally. In Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city with a population of over 16 million, for instance, an estimated 72 percent of the urban workforce is engaged in informal economic activities, the majority of which is involved in retail and service provision, while the remaining is involved in construction, transportation, and manufacturing. The city’s informal retailers and service providers can be found throughout the city, mainly operating from its public spaces, streets and sidewalks in particular. Together, they sustain countless low-income households, distribute and produce valuable goods and services throughout the city, serve both formal and informal sectors, create additional employment opportunities, and make significant contributions to local economy. Yet, despite such pivotal contributions, their presence and activities remain at once unprotected, unrecognized, and unrepresented, leaving them in constant state of fear, anxiety, and exclusion. Questioning public policy, formal regulations, and conventional approaches to design of urban open spaces for public use, this paper highlights the need and benefits of reimagining Karachi’s public spaces as venues inclusive of the city's countless informal retailers and service providers.
Urban Geographies and Imaginaries of Socio-spatial Segregation: Studentification in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Oscar Fdo. Mendoza Lozano, Carlos Estuardo Aparicio-Moreno
Based in theoretical foundation by Foucault’s notion of the triad of power, where Discourse legitimates Power, Power institutionalizes Knowledge, and Power and Knowledge build together the politics of truth, it is no accident that at least the three most prominent universities in the Monterrey Metropolitan Area are linked with the main industrial and financial corporations. This research aims to analyze and interpret the role of universities as detonators of physical, social, economic and cultural transformation, by trying to respond a key question: What are the implications of private institutions being responsible of the making of the city? As a very complex urban problematic, mixed methods research is mandatory. Quantitative vision is important, as the incidence of the economic dimension in the modeling of physical space and social dynamics is evident. From this scope, statistical cartography and the revision of land value over time, is used to identify gentrification through a localized typology of two components: youthification and an increase in the quality of life. A qualitative approach is also needed to understand the human dimension beyond the numbers and statistics. An ethnographic instrument design is outlined, with a methodology that incorporates mental maps, to approach territoriality and space symbolism, based in urban imaginaries. The main objective of this research is the generation of a model of urban analysis, not of metropolitan or regional scale, but in a neighborhood scale, which is more resonant with these specific typological environments.
