Urban Commons and Commoning Practices - Active citizenship, Environmental Agency, PedagogyÂ
Market Gallery, Temporary Contemporary
March 2nd to March 12th, 2020
Co-Curated by Dr. Ioanni Delsante and Tabassum Ahmed
About the Exhibition:
Commoning actions and practices are increasingly taking place in towns and cities all around the world. They usually unfold via self-constituted groups or communities which act through a variety of means including temporary events, spontaneous interventions, un-solicited actions and the kind. At various stages of their unfolding these may be negotiated with local authorities/governments to allow occupations or temporary uses to happen within an agreement or a legal framework.
The exhibition aims at showcasing relevant precedents in terms of urban commons and related commoning practices. These are mostly small scale and low-cost interventions, built on a temporary basis, which âtacticallyâ aims at having a positive impact on cities over longer periods of time.
However, the significance of these initiative stands beyond their physical artefacts. We have tagged each project in relation to the aspirations of those who promoted, and in relation to the aims which we recognize unfolding through their activities. It also includes various teaching and research activities being developed across various disciplines, over a non-hierarchical summer school and research symposium. As such, the range of selected projects speak about active citizenship and stewarding of local initiatives, environmental concerns and agencies, pedagogical practices, sharing knowledge and peer to peer learning. The exhibition aims to provide a platform for open discussion among several actors including individuals and grass roots groups.
About the Curators
Dr. Ioanni Delsante
Reader in Urban Design at the University of Huddersfield, and Research Fellow in Architectural and Urban Design at the University of Pavia. Course Leader for MA Urban Design at the University of Huddersfield, he has taught at University of Pavia, Politecnico di Milano and Tongji University of Shanghai. He is member of the Advisory Committee of the PhD program in Arquitectura at the Escuela Tècnica Superior de Arquitectura, University of Sevilla (Spain) and Chair of the Urban Futures and Design Lab at the University of Huddersfield. Co-Editor of the Journal of Architecture, he acts as peer reviewer for various journals and research councils. He has been member of the British Council Science Research Reviewer Panel (2015-2017).  His current research interests deal with forms of alter-urbanisation and alternative urban transformations through the lens of commons.
Tabassum Ahmed
After completing a MA in Urban Design in 2019, Tabassum is continuing her research in urban commoning practices by pursuing a PhD at the University of Huddersfield. Her current research investigates how urban communities can better manage their resources in the context of climate change through commoning practices. She is an architect from Bangladesh and takes an active interest in cities, communities and environmental activism.
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Whatâs usually forgotten in the story of Magna Carta is the companion document that was incorporated into it two years later, the Charter of the Forest. Â This document explicitly protected the customary rights of commoners. Â The Charter of the Forest is a kind of human rights convention that guaranteed commoners specific uses of the forest â the right of pannage, or pasture for their pigs; the right of estover, to collect firewood; the right of agistment, to graze cattle; the right of turbary, to cut turf for fuel; and much else. Â In essence, the Charter of the Forest was the first legal limitation on privatization.
In the past, the management approach of the inland fisheries resources in Bangladesh has changed repeatedly:Â
Pre-colonial era: there was neither report of any inland fisheries management measures nor of resource scarcity and fishing was simply part of people's customary rights.Â
Colonial era: The subsequent period (from the year 1793 onwards) saw a feudal lord (zamindar) system, which was characterised by the collection of tax by feudal lords on behalf of the foreign rulers in exchange for use rights of inland waters (Muir 2003a).Â
Post colonial: With the East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950, all public water bodies â rivers, canals and permanent water bodies with the exception of privately owned fish ponds and borrow pits â were reverted to state control (Hossain et al. 2006).
Between 1950 and 1965 leases of jalmahals (or âwater estatesâ) were open to everyone, resulting in lease rights going to rich and influential non-fishers who could bid highest in the lease auctions.Â
After liberation: As a remedy, auctioning of jalmahals was restricted to registered fishers' cooperative societies from 1974 onwards. However, âthis new restriction resulted in the formation of patronised cooperative organizations with the fishermen as the focus and the traditional non-fishing ijaradars [leaseholders (local elites)] in actual controlâ (Muir 2003a, p. 24). The authority and proprietary rights over state-owned water bodies was given to Ministry of Land (MoL) and only for a short time was shifted to the Ministry of Fisheries and Livestock (MoFL), which continued the revenue-oriented short-term leasing system, before being reverted back to MoL. This institutional set-up of a short-term, revenue-oriented leasing of government owned water bodies to the highest bidder excludes poor fishers (Ahmed et al. 1997).Â
The leasing system, however, only applies to the dry season when floodplains dry up and the individual river, canal and permanent water body fisheries become discrete (Craig et al. 2004). As consequence of the short-term leases as well as the open access status during the monsoon period, there are no strong incentives for conservation. Instead, the system promotes resource over-exploitation aggravated by a lack of control and enforcement of fish conservation measures such as gear bans or restrictions of fishing juvenile and brood fish (Hossain et al. 2006).
COMMUNITY BASED GOVERNANCE
In the light of the challenges outlined above, research on alternative management approaches for the inland fisheries resources of Bangladesh was initiated. One such approach is community-based management, whereby control of the fishery resource is handed over to local community groups for an extended period.
A number of research projects on CBFM in Bangladesh have been coordinated and led by the WorldFish Center (Table 1). The overall goal of these projects was to: improve inland fisheries management policy and policy processes adopted by the Government of Bangladesh and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), resulting in more sustainable, equitable and participatory management of resources. Research was implemented in collaboration with national partners, including the DoF and a number of NGOs, through the course of several projects between 1987 and 2007.
DATA COLLECTED - METHODÂ
Key stakeholders - governing authorities and policymakers at national level, individuals at local level
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Jhenaidah community-led housing THROUGH THE LENS OF THE COMMONS
This blog post is about an exercise I conducted to understand if the community-led housing project by Jhenaidah peopleâs network matches with or shows any traits of commoning. I have mapped them against definitions or rules from key literature on commoning/commons by various scholars.
¡       manages a common pool resource (De Angelis, 2010; Bollier 2013),
The community, with the help of community architects & NGOs as facilitators, has mapped, negotiated and built 20 houses for 52 households through a collaborative process.
Those households formed five savings groups, with a leader elected to supervise, and started repaying USD 6 (BDT 500) every week. The repayments collect into a revolving fund that the community can use to upgrade their facilities in the future.
¡       a âself-defined social groupâ (Harvey 2012)
To solve their problems citizens from all walks of life and backgrounds have formed into groups resulting into the Jhenaidah citywide peopleâs network. The politically neutral network is based on communal trust, solidarity and with a strong desire to improve their conditions.
¡       as a community that âshare(s) these resources and who define for themselves the rules through which they are accessed and usedâ (De Angelis 2010)
The community relies on collective decision-making processes and co-designs through collaboration and empowerment of all participants.
the Jhenaidah citywide peopleâs network not only involves equal participation of people of all gender, age and ability but also actively engages women, children and elderly into the process extensively.Â
¡       âcommunities, however, do not necessarily have to be bound to a locality, they could also operate through trans-local spacesâ (De Angelis 2010).
80 communities who may be of low income but are full of desires and eagerness to rethink their living conditions and well-being of their city. To solve their problems citizens from all walks of life and backgrounds have formed into groups resulting into the Jhenaidah citywide peopleâs network.
¡       âthe social process that creates and reproduces the commonsâ (De Angelis 2010)
Collaboration and empowerment of all participants is ensured in a three-step process
Saving money together - own money + loan from their own cooperatives
Mapping/planning together - Community architects engage from this stage as facilitators
Building together
Mapping involved members of the community creating with some help, a map of their neighborhood in order to understand the location of each oneâs and otherâs plots. They also conceived the nature of their future building â whether single-storey or two â which were then developed the community architect and his team. For building the houses, community members themselves sourced materials from local markets, and helped in the construction, with various innovative cost cutting features, which were a key factor in keeping the construction cost of a house to about $1200 USD, an incredible figure.
¡       Ostromâs institutional design principles (1990)
Due to its rootedness within the community to manage a shared resource, it can be claimed that the activities resemble traits of commoning, described as âprocesses of shared stewardship about things that a community possesses and manages in commonâ by Helfrich and Bollier (2014)
It has a participatory framework that engages the local community to collaborate, maintain and share the resource collectively with no reliance on authorities or market (Bollier, 2013). The community are the producers, managers and consumers of the food they produce.
This blog post describes the informal settlement of Karail that houses thousands of displaced people in the urban fabric of Dhaka with new makeshift self built housing on an unused reclaimed land
Located at the heart of the capital Dhaka life is the largest informal settlements in Bangladesh called Karail, locally called a âbostiâ (Bengali word for slum). It started developing on an unused public land in 1980s and eventually expanded to encroach the water body edges. When the state or market has been absent in providing housing, the people came together to build their own housing and together with negotiations with various actors arranged for services and amenities for it to work as a settlement. It is the site for a complex mix of actors, architecture and urban phenomenon and is often advised as the âno-entryâ zone.Â
Today the slum spans over approximately 100 acres in area with a community of 200,000 people (40,000 families) all co-living with low-cost services and affordable housing. The make-shift houses, and its urban amenities, although look temporary have been built incrementally by the landlords and local leaders over a period of 40 years (Shafique, 2019). It also houses mixed productive use functions such as recycling, farming and trading which are all accessed by its own grid of walkable only streets, that are not wide enough for cars. Essentially, it can be called a city within a city, built by its community on an unused public land. Services namely as gas, electricity and water supply was hard to access initially but through financial negotiations with local providers the people have been able to get connections established, although at a higher rate than the unit price normally is. While many NGOs have been working in the slum to give them support and access to services and basic rights, all initiatives were not participatory in terms of community engagement or resilience building.
Self governed water supply system
Problem: A legislative Act in 1996 specified categories of customers for state-controlled water supply as residential, commercial or industrial. They did not include âslumsâ or âlow-income communitiesâ (LICs) as a category. For a household to get water supply, they would need to submit a document that verifies the proof of ownership of the building and thus it did not provide for setting up water connections to inhabitants of low-income communities (WaterAid, 2016).
Initiative: According to the case study report by WaterAid (2016)The community initiated a community-based organisation (CBO) with the help and monitoring of a local NGO DSK in 2005.Â
Governance: The CBO, fully formed and run by locals, collected bills from the slum dwellers and paid the government in return of water supply. The CBOs have their own executive committee that is elected by themselves. They make their own rules (forming a constitution) and regulations and also govern the membership criteria.Â
They went on to establish their own entity called Central Community Based Organisation (CCBO).
Source: WaterAid, 2016
Communityâs strategies to tackle flooding in the slum
The settlement often gets flooded because of its poor drainage system and it being on water. Based on a household survey in 2010 (Jabeen et al.) conducted, Inhabitants of the slum have developed coping strategies at various stages of flooding to reduce risk, reduce losses and facilitate recovery from the crisis. These vary in scale and typology but expand to include building barriers and higher plinths, forming community groups to clear blockages and construct drainage outlets, building temporary higher stilt bridges, etc.
Future of Karail slum, according to âformalâ planning sector
The land belongs to the Ministry of Science and Information & Communication Technology of Bangladesh who plan to eventually replace the slum with a software technology park. Since then NGOs have stood against the authorities and legally challenged them for the plans of mass eviction (Shafique, 2019). There have been many incidents of âunexplainedâ fire hazards that have burnt down parts of the slum. The community continues to live in fear of displacement and danger in the name of âcity developmentâ.
UN-Habitat recommends member states ârecognize the rights and contributions of slum dwellers and change the view that they are illegal.â
From Tanzil Shafiqueâs paper Learning from " non-design " : Claiming Urban Informality as New Design Research Territory:
The people in the informal settlements show the character of diffused designers (Manzini 2015), where they use their natural capacity as designers. Since they are not professional, there is a lack of holistic thinking. Lack of public spaces, poor sanitation, and the ills of the built environment usually stems from the lack of expert designer skills and lack of resources.
However, one must understand, in Manziniâs conception, diffuse design is not to be replaced by expert design, but the two exist in mutual symbiosis, a productive tension that taps into each otherâs strength. Manzini,in his book, produces a âdesign mode mapâ with two axes, one of expertâdiffuse design and the other of problem-solvingâsense-making.
Design mode map (Manzini 2015)
For a re-conceptualisation of urban informality, what is crucial is the âgrassroots organizationâ mode, which sits within diffuse design and problem-solving. Manzini defines this mode as âused by groups of people who design initiatives that aim to deal with local problemsâ. Urban informal practices that result in a built environment can be said to be a design of the grassroots organized kind, where a myriad of actors co-produce the built environment, albeit without the expert designer. There are valuable lessons of efficiency, grassroots initiative, adaptations and multiplicity from such places.Â
Manzini, E. (2015), Design, When Everybody Designs : An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation.
Shafique, T. (2019), What sort of âdevelopmentâ has no place for a billion slum dwellers?. Retrieved from https://theconversation.com/what-sort-of-development-has-no-place-for-a-billion-slum-dwellers-120600
WaterAid. (2016). Low-income Customer Support Units. Retrieved from https://washmatters.wateraid.org/sites/g/files/jkxoof256/files/LICSU%20Bangaldesh%20case%20study_0.pdf
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Bangladesh - an overview on geography, climate and governance
This blog post aims to give the reader an overview of Bangladesh - its urban and rural life form/ formal-informal growth and governance.
GEOGRAPHY & HOW IT SHAPES LIFE
Bangladesh sits beneath the Himalayan ranges from which two rivers - Bhamraputra and Ganges - branch out and run through towards the Bay of Bengal. These two rivers have been flowing through for hundreds of years, accumulating silt and thus have created this 150,000 sq km of land (2/3rd of which is delta) which currently houses 161.4 million (2018) people.
Bangladesh is called a land of rivers as it has about 700 rivers including tributaries. The rivers of Bangladesh are very extensive and affect both the physiography of the country and the lives of the people.Â
Source:Â https://www.imchbd.com/library/3
Majority of the rural population relies on agriculture for their livelihood and thus the relationship between land and water is very important and almost instrumental in the functioning of the settlements. The rivers are not only a major source of transportation, fishing and agriculture but also dictate the geography of livable and arable land.Â
Whenever the dominant crisscrossed rivers change their course, they either emerge new land or cause land erosion at the banks.
Source:Â
Source:Â
CLIMATE AND ARCHITECTURE
The region has a sub-tropical climate. Here the summers are hot and humid. Monsoon stays for half the year. Winters last a few weeks and are very mild. However, with the changes in climate patterns worldwide, the seasonal patterns show extremities more often than expected.
The basic elements of architecture depending on the climatic context is thus a roof to cover from rain, shading or buffer from the scorching sun and raised plinths to protect from changing water levels. Unlike Europeâs insulating provisions, an in-between/buffer space between the inside and outside is desired. Courtyards act as such an threshold space which then develop into sites of many social and communal activities. They ensure passive ventilation in the hot-humid climate.
Materials depending on the location range from bamboo, mud to brick and concrete. All construction is done by hands and human labour, with minimal use of machines only seen in bigger city construction sites.Â
CLIMATE CHANGE IN BANGLADESHÂ
Being the biggest delta and sat at the gateway to Indian Ocean, Bangladesh is prone to disasters associated to climatic events. It is estimated that by 2050 17% of its land will be under water due to impacts of climate change, triggering around 20 million climate refugees (Mallick and Vogt, 2012; National Geographic Society, 2016). With the population density of 1,240 people per sq. km. of land area and the associated risk factors, Bangladesh currently ranks as the worldâs sixth most disaster prone country (UNU-EHS, 2015).Â
During monsoon, much of the land goes under water and dry seasons make the same lands farmlands. However, with the rapid change in climate, the seasons no longer follow its regularities. Over the years rates of bank erosion, cyclones and flash floods have rapidly increased in intensity and occurrence. Additionally, border sharing country India controls the water flow of the rivers through their dams as they are closer to the Himalayan sources. During dry season, they retain the water from the Himalayas upstream (leaving Bangladeshi rivers dry) and open floodgates into the Bangladeshi lands during monsoon. These factors contribute to regular non-seasonal flash floods in Bangladesh.
Following are some recent climatic disasters and their damages
1970 great Cyclone Bhola - 300,000 casualties
Cyclone Sidr in 2007- 3,406 fatalities with 2.3 million households damaged
Cyclone Aila in 2009 - 234 deaths
1998 flood submerged about two-thirds of Bangladesh (Huq, 2016; Ahmed et al., 2016; Mallick, 2014).
Although Bangladesh is ranked as 162 out of 199 countries listed by The World Bank (2014) in terms of producing CO2, the impacts of climate change are catastrophic in Bangladesh.Â
Interesting source to be check later: https://ejfoundation.org/reports/climate-displacement-in-bangladeshÂ
More images on https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/pictures-bangladesh-front-lines-climate-crisis-191203102447517.html
CLIMATE REFUGEE MIGRATION
It is predicted that every one in 45 people (Brown, 2008) and every one in 7 people will be displaced by the impacts of climate change (CDMP II, 2014), making the climate refugees. In the context of Bangladesh, climate refugees can be defined as people who have lost their homestead, arable land or livelihoods in the rural settings after extreme climatic disasters (Ahmed, 2018). In most cases, climate refugees internally migrate to urban areas in search of livelihoods and living such as Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh.
Source:
Dhaka is the epicenter of Bangladeshâs urban expansion and is said to be the fastest growing city in the world â it is currently estimated that 400,000 migrants, mainly poor and from rural areas, continue to arrive each year. Of an urban population of 44 million people in 2010, an estimated 9.4 million people (21.3 per cent) are living in absolute poverty, and 3.4 million (7.7 per cent) are in extreme poverty with consumption levels of around 1,805 Kcal per day or less. Urban migration is largely a result of seeking better educational and employment opportunities, especially in the readymade garments sector. Push factors are also important: While most people migrate for economic reasons, more than 26% do so due to environmental and climate related reasons such as natural disasters, river erosion and recurrent flooding. Many of the migrants are concentrated in urban slums as squatters where they live in poor conditions, with limited access to urban basic services.Â
Source: Bayes Ahmed, 2018
Because of the fluid nature of the land-water relationship, a sense of âtemporarinessâ or âimpermanenceâ is quite dominant in the way the people function, live and eventually how they shape their built environment.Â
It notions towards an informal way to organise, plan and live.
GOVERNANCE and PARTICIPATIONÂ
Like most south Asian countries, it is rare in Bangladesh that people on the ground contribute to urban development activities or participate in planning or implementation of any development program. They are often treated as âclientsâ who have no stake or opinion in the structure. The private sector builds and runs the city by dominating the navigation of its resource, skills and labour.
Two decades ago, left parties in Bangladesh would organize such rallies and advocate land reform. In the 21st century, such events are organized by indigenous NGOs that are funded by Western donors. In rural Bangladesh, Nongovernmental Organisations (NGOs) play an instrumental role to incorporate participatory research, participation, and participatory appraisal. NGOs through their innovative, flexible and active promotion of democratic development and the establishment of the citizenship rights in the rural society have to the donors their reliability and effectiveness. This has led to establishing that participatory processes can only be attained by NGOs in such contexts when the conventional development efforts have failed (Barua, 2009).
In Bangladesh, the social mobilization NGO Proshika Human Development Forum (third largest NGO in BD) has occupied the rhetoric of "non-party-politics" and undertaken the organization of the poor (households that live below the Bangladeshi poverty level and own 0.5 acres of land or less fall into the category of poor) into a "grassroots political mobilization" both at the local and national levels. In the 1990s, Proshika, under the auspices of the largest NGO umbrella organization in Bangladesh, the Association of Development Agencies in Bangladesh (ADAB), organized public demonstrations of its members for the distribution of government land and for a pro-poor budget, successfully sponsored NGO women members in village level elections, and increased the participation of poor women in public rallies.Â
As a result of the donorâs role and support, the NGOs received a total of 379 million dollars through foreign aid that is 34 percent of the total aid flows disbursed to Bangladesh (Transparency International Bangladesh, 2007) in the financial year of 2003â2004, establishing. This initiative was taken to implement participatory development projects and programs for the mobilization of the marginalized people in rural Bangladesh. In fact, with the acceptance of participatory grassroots development and foreign aid, the participatory research and grassroots development toward empowerment and liberation of the disadvantaged people has been marginalized (Rahman, 1995). (note)
Through their programs and links to Western donor nations, NGOs continue to play a very prominent role in national politics. Such visibility, resources, and support from Western donor agencies give the leading NGOs tremendous power to effect changes in the lives of most people they work with. In a country with a very high unemployment rate, the leading NGOs offer the promise of jobs to the youth and the educated middle class. It is estimated that these NGOs employ 200,000 young men and women as fieldworkers. The NGOs have also introduced some novel ideas into rural communities. In contrast to the government bureaucrat who seldom goes for field visits, the educated NGO worker comes in daily contact with the villagers, visiting them in their homes. (note)
The welfare and advocacy of the NGOs straddle several contradictory and competing forces. The intention to help the poor often gets entangled in and constrained by market forces, donor mandates, state policies, national politics, and local power structures. Working in the context of these competing and at times contradictory forces, NGOs have increasingly resorted to "credit" (the extension of small loans for micro enterprises) in the 1990s as a strategy for economic and social development, targeting, above all, women as beneficiaries. (note)
To the reader who assumes that the left should be the ally of the poor, it may appear odd that NGO and not the left has come to occupy this critical role in society. In Bangladesh, the left remained trapped inside a programmatic deployment of Marxist categories of class relations, the revolutionary working class for example; but, in a country that is eighty percent peasant and nonindustrialized, this approach failed to offer any creative solutions to the problems facing the poor. Furthermore, issues of class struggle became entangled with issues of Bengali linguistic and cultural nationalism which began in 1952 and culminated in the freedom struggle against Pakistani domination in 1971. Many of the ideologues of the leftist parties in pre-independent Bangladesh, for whom nationalism was not the real revolution of the working class, failed to appreciate the importance of these cultural and political forces. In comparison to the left, the NGOs have been far more innovative in their relationship with the poor. (note)
CITIZEN-LED/DESIGNED DEVELOPMENTS IN BANGLADESH
A 2013 Rockefeller Foundation report suggested that rather than focusing on a linear vision of âworld-class citiesâ, planners and policymakers should adopt an alternative lens of âhybrid citiesâ, in which:
⌠informal economies are directly integrated into city planning and priorities.
This requires inclusion of social movements and grassroots organisations that exist in and around informal economies. A hybridised city looks to light up those areas where communities are already bringing together existing needs, new ideas, vigorous debate and innovative possibilities. John Thakara observes that informal settlements have a âDIY urbanismâ, which has implications for urban design, planning and development:
The shadow economy is more fragmented, and more reliant on social networks, than the formal one â but it is no less dynamic for that. Because social practices are a key part of this urban transformation, the tasks of design are mutating.
An integrated approach would recognise how these practices â and associated urban planning processes â respond inventively to the limits and loopholes of rapidly expanding cities. According to the Rockefeller report, such limits include:
⌠information asymmetries in the labour market that prevent equitable access to jobs; and insufficient access to resources (for example, skills, finance and markets) that enable growth.
Kim Dovey (2020) on his visit to the capital, Dhaka, describes it as a city that has seen growth in an informal organic manner. He uses the word âinformalâ to describe development that occurs outside the state controlled planning scheme.
The state puts in place a planning scheme and says that this is a residential area or that it has a particular street morphology and then the informal processes take over and a different kind of functional mix and land use emerges. Indeed a different kind of morphology often emerges if there are height limits and setbacks â they are often violated. Therefore, you get a very informal process layered on top of a formal process.
Informal urbanism is not necessarily illegal, rather it is self-organised. It is not separate from but intersects with the formal structures of state regulation and control, often in reaction to practices of displacement, marginalisation and exclusion. (note)
Architect Marina Tabassum identifies three principles that people live by in such situations (Source Harvard GSD talk):
Negotiation
Appropriation
Optimization (Minimal and basic)
They range from smaller ad-hoc interventions such as
Boat bridges
When water becomes stagnant/or unable to move, Water Hyacinth (Bengali Kochuri pana) grows which makes it impossible for boats to move and transport people. Boat men are left without no earning and people stuck at the two ends. In many villages, it boatmen build a collaborative âboat bridgeâ by joining their boats together and charge people 2 taka (2p) to use the bridge to cross the rivers.Â
...housing solutions for the displaced such as
Geneva Camp was designed as temporary accommodation for internally displaced Pakistanis in 1971 â now up to 6 stories. 05 Jul 2019
and trading areas...
temporary Informal trading zones in Old DhakaÂ
and large scale man-built settlements as...
The informal settlement of Karail with new housing on reclaimed landÂ
And also technological interventionsÂ
Kolorob: a participatory platform
Kolorob is an urban innovation initiative stemming from a multi-sectoral collaboration with the communities of two slums in Mirpur, Dhaka. Young people have been integral from the start as mappers and facilitators to collect data about services and involve communities in the applicationâs design.
The co-design of Kolorob has found significant scope for participatory platforms to enhance access to existing services and employment opportunities in these areas. They also generate the potential for broader capacity-building by linking people to skill development and institutional support where available.
http://www.kolorob.info/
Reference list:
Ahmed, B. (2018). Who takes responsibility climate refugees?. International Journal of Climate Change Strategies and Management, 10(1), 5-26.
Barua B.P. (2009) Participatory Research, NGOs, and Grassroots Development: Challenges in Rural Bangladesh. In: Kapoor D., Jordan S. (eds) Education, Participatory Action Research, and Social Change. Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Brown, O. (2008), Migration and Climate Change, IOM Migration Research Series. No. 31, IOM, Geneva.
CDMP II (2014), Trends and Impact Analysis of Internal Displacement due to the Impacts of Disasters and Climate Change. Comprehensive Disaster Management Programme (CDMP II), Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief, Dhaka.
Huq, S. (2016), Cyclone Roanu Hits Bangladesh: A Story of Loss and Damage Avoided, The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), London, available at: www.iied.org/cycloneroanu-hits-bangladesh-story-loss-damage-avoided.
Mallick, B. and Vogt, J. (2012), âCyclone, coastal society and migration: empirical evidence from Bangladeshâ, International Development Planning Review, Vol. 34 No. 3, pp. 217-240.
Mallick, B. (2014), âCyclone shelters and their locational suitability: an empirical analysis from coastal Bangladeshâ, Disasters, Vol. 38 No. 3, pp. 654-671.
National Geographic Society (2016), Climate Refugee, available at: http://nationalgeographic.org/encyclopedia/climate-refugee/.
United Nations University - Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS) (2015), World Risk Report 2015, available at: www.worldriskreport.org/.
Is there a presence of community in bigger cities anymore? Does the financial strata define or shape its spatial and social order?
Dhaka was composed of Paraas (meaning neighborhoods) where people from similar backgrounds lived and bonded over similar social values and needs. The community would use spaces, interact with each other and set parameters or guidelines for themselves and for the community's wellbeing. Here the social class was defined by their educational backgrounds or occupation but not money. The Paraa (the physical space and its social relationships) with its values, social system and context shaped an individual who belonged to this particular area. A sense of belonging and identity was defined by the social order that had sprouted within the physical boundaries of such a neighborhood.
As the city grew and social class went on to be defined by economic conditions. The idea of a community broke down to give way to an alienated form of living where social relationships played no roles anymore.
So who does the city belong to anymore? How did Paraas and its governance models survive?
I have collated my thoughts and reflections in the above post following a discussion with Architect Nurur Rahman Khan from Dhaka, Bangladesh
This is "Our Story of Community Upgrading, Jhenaidah, Bangladesh" by Co.Creation.Architects on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people whoâŚ
CO-CREATION in SPACE MAKING in rural BangladeshÂ
The following researcherâs notes are based on CAN open source article "Why should a city be CO-CREATED?â and Ar. Khandakar Hasibul Kabirâs lecture as Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel in 2018. Both sources are below:
Aim of this study: to find community-led practices in Bangladesh
LOCATION: Jhenaidah is a low-lying mid scale city in the southwestern part of Bangladesh, close to the Bay of Bengal. It has a population of about 250,000 people living on 44.33 km2 land. The river running through the city is an important resource to support its everyday life and is site for many of its socio-cultural identity. Due to unplanned drainage system of the city, the river is subject to pollution and encroachments.Â
COMMUNITY GROUPS: The authors note that the real zest of the place lies within its 80 communities who may be of low income but are full of desires and eagerness to rethink their living conditions and well-being of their city. To solve their problems citizens from all walks of life and backgrounds have formed into groups resulting into the Jhenaidah citywide peopleâs network. The politically neutral network is based on communal trust, solidarity and with a strong desire to improve their conditions.Â
Source: Facebook page of POCAAÂ
METHODS: In rural areas of Bangladesh women and children are often not part of any decision-making processes. In contrast to this, the Jhenaidah citywide peopleâs network not only involves equal participation of people of all gender, age and ability but also actively engages women, children and elderly into the process extensively. The community relies on collective decision making processes and co-designs through collaboration and empowerment of all participants.
PROCESS: 3 Steps
Saving money together - own money + loan from their own cooperatives
Mapping/planning together - Community architects engage from this stage as facilitators
Building together
Source: Facebook page of POCAA
COMMUNITY ARCHITECTâS INVOLVEMENT:Â Â The initiatives were taken by the community and coordinated by the community architects. It is unclear how the architects were invited into the process but possibly it helped because the architects were locals. They placed themselves in the situation asking the questions what can we do and where do we fit in?
According to CAN open access article, they started connecting and sharing beliefs with local authorities, facilitators and collaborators, and like minded people. They appropriated their skills and roles through direct action with low-income communities through small-scale work.Â
Source: Community Architectsâ Network, 2019Â Â
Other parallel engagements varied from local school children building small-scale eco gardens, educational groups, local governments, NGOs and young professionals. Government authorities often complain that people make their jobs harder as it is hard for them to trust the people. Linking all practices through a platform of co-creation it grew interest for people like policymakers who often are harder to reach. Gradually the city managers and its inhabitants connected with each other and over wider networks. In 2019, Jhenaidah city hosted the CAN Co-create city workshop which focused on listening to the local people, valuing their opinions and aspirations as well as actions to rethink the city.
Source: Community Architectsâ Network, 2019 Â
OUTCOMES
* Governance model of the community is not very well documented. However, according to the community architects lecture in Basel in 2018, the community initiated, developed and built the houses by themselves with coordination and support from the Co.Creation Architects who acted as facilitators and were also locals. The process later attracted the local authorities and the Mayor who according to the architects in many ways helped the process by âby-passing or changing or bendingâ rules or restrictions.
* The community now has collated data about their community. They have even mapped themselves on GIS, turning them from invisible settlement, where the municipality didnât feel the need to visit because of being low income, into a prominently located visible settlement.Â
* The community now is the expert who share with communities from other cities and policymakers how they did it.
* The community architects are not needed in the process anymore as the community has trained itself enough to be able to navigate through the process on their own and also disseminate the experience to others.
History of Enclosures & resistance to it in Britain
Aims: To map the progressive enclosure of common resources over several centuries in Britain that has deprived people of access to common lands and more importantly rights.
Consists of citizen/community resistances to enclosure, dispossession and landlessness of many commoners over time through historical accounts from writers, poets, historians and activists.
CLICK ON THE LINK FOR A BETTER VIEW OF THE MIND MAP:Â
http://www.xmind.net/m/cxXRac
Open field system
Enclosure/private property system
The Sheep Devours
The Diggers
The Blacks
Drainage of the Fens
Scottish Clearances
Allotments and small holdings
Parliamentary Enclosure
End of enclosures
References:
Asselain, J.C. (1984). Histoire Economique de la France, du 18th Siècle Ă nos Jours. 1. De lâAncien RĂŠgime Ă la Première Guerre Mondiale, Editions du Seuil.
Fairlie, S. (2009). A Short History of Enclosure in Britain. The Land Magazine, 16. Retrieved from https://www.thelandmagazine.org.uk/ Â
Stirling, P. (1963). The Domestic Cycle and the Distribution of Power in Turkish Villages in Julian Pitt-Rivers (Ed.) Mediterranean Countrymen, The Hague, Mouton: 1963
Spiess, H. U. (1994). Report on Draught Animals under Drought Fonditions in Central, Eastern and Southern zones of Region 1 (Tigray), United Nations Development Programme Emergencies Unit for Ethiopia. Retrieved from: http://www.africa.upenn. edu/eue_web/Oxen94.htm
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Commons as a form of bio-political production, capable of generating new vocabularies to address larger issues such as climate change, spatial injustice from a bottom-up level
*CLICK ON THE LINK TO ZOOM IN/EXPANDÂ http://www.xmind.net/m/HB269y
THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK
"Commons suggest alternative, non-commodified means to fulfil social needs, e.g. to obtain social wealth and to organise social production. Commons are necessarily created and sustained by âcommunitiesâ i.e. by social networks of mutual aid, solidarity, and practices of human exchange that are not reduced to the market form" - De Angelis (2003:1)
The interpretation of commons as a âform of bio-political productionâ (Hardt and Negri, 2009) gives it potential to generate new relations between people and things and, thus, develop new vocabulary of solidarity, social-spatial practices through productive moments of resistance.
USE OF THEORY
Paul Chatterton (2016) connects this potential of commons to create new ways for citizens and activists to use to challenge complex problems such as climate change, spatial injustice or urban displacement.
Interrogating how the commons and commoning are created in and through space helps us understand how alternative political strategies are formed (see also Vasudevan, Jeffrey and McFarlane 2008).
Focus group discussion: How does the community perceive community-led (and Commoning) practices
1. If you could please introduce yourselves and your roles in any initiatives, you are involved in?
Participant 1: Citizen, Dewsbury
Participant 2: Citizen, Dewsbury
Participant 3: Citizen, Huddersfield
Participant 4: Active participant in climate justice groups
2. Any thoughts on what we have seen and discussed so far?
It is amazing to see the imaginative ways seen to improve local environments.
Impressed about what has already taken place. It makes me feel more optimistic about the future for some towns.
The exhibition was positive it made me aware of how many people are working to improve our local communities.
Do we need ambassadors? Key people to lead?
3. Do you have any similar first-hand experiences?
Impressed by local groups clearing litter and looking section of the greenway
Litter picking on a local scale which can be expanded if the community wants to
Tidying up a litter-strewn area leading to two local schools. Planting some flowers
Community Forums. Repair cafĂŠ
4. Any issues or struggles you have faced there
How to involve people and keep them engaged?
We donât want it to stay a two or three people thing.
How or where to start?
Where do the funds come from?
5. Do you link commoning to the climate movement? If you do, would you elaborate a little how it might play a role?
If people value areas and look after them then it is a small step to bigger movement
Seeing people growing things in local spaces more likely to get other involved. Starting to look at importance and use of local resources.
Both climate movement and commoning are working from the bottom up. People who feel that local and national government are listening to them are coming together.
Engagement with society. Community engagement.
6. Will this experience add to your aspirations as a grassroots group? If yes, how?
Impressed by what has in the projects but especially in Todmorden where something so beneficial has grown out of something so simple and two peopleâs good ideas.
In your talk you mentioned that all people involved in project were equal that seems the right way forward.
I intend to be more proactive in looking after my local area, instead of just thinking âthere is no pointâ.
Permanent Venue for repair cafĂŠ, upscaling, events that are community led
SYNOPSIS
The participants are all local individuals with an interest in community climate activism through collective actions. Interestingly although the group did not have prior understanding of the concept of commoning at the start of the tour but could closely relate to the activities from the âbottom-upâ or to those that were âcommunity-ledâ, especially IET as it was "relatable" for being a local case and from a familiar context.
As individuals from different walks of life each person seems to have either witnessed or being a part of a local activity group. From running a repair cafĂŠ or litter picking or gardening in council owned spaces â they have highlighted that these actions have rippled across the community and instigated further community-led actions to improve their local environments. Although the actions were small and short-lived results were achieved the initiatives have contributed to change of perceptions towards those spaces collectively.
Along with this, challenges and hardships were discussed by each participant. The consensus among all participants was there is a lack of understanding about how to start any initiative. Even if active individuals partake in selfless voluntary acts it may just stay limited to that group and not grow outside its original boundaries. Funds to sustain and keeping people engaged in the long run also seems to be a general concern.
Overall the bottom up projects and their creative community-led initiatives of alternative forms of governance to improve local environments were appreciated and triggered thoughts on âpower of communityâ, âoptimismâ and âimaginative waysâ. One comment was, however, if such non-hierarchical groups need someone to lead or represent themselves? With the very brief introduction to the literature of commoning and seeing the case studies of active citizenship, the participants agreed to the notion that small steps from the bottom-up can lead to a bigger change. Such exposure to alternative forms of using space, governing resources and non-hierarchical frameworks have to ability to trigger changes and engage communities in activities to empower themselves and convert their roles into active participants, rather than passive receivers.
During the group discussions it was interesting to observe a noticeable increase in level of individual interest and curiosity in the idea that communityâs themselves can take control of their circumstances. Participants expressed that such community-led small-scale actions seem achievable and a horizontal participatory framework may give them incentive and a chance to become more proactive. Feedback of having a network for exchanging information and growing knowledge and skills between communities to support each other were shared by participants. Additionally, guidelines about starting or a better understanding of sustaining and support for such initiatives could be beneficial for an everyday person to support their journeys of alter-transformation.