Commoning blog

Urban Commons and Commoning Practices - Active citizenship, Environmental Agency, Pedagogy 

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 ‘tactically’ 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

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/19439342.2010.525246

In the past, the management approach of the inland fisheries resources in Bangladesh has changed repeatedly: 

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. 

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). 

Post colonial: With the East Bengal State Acquisition and Tenancy Act of 1950, all public water bodies – rivers, canals and permanent water bodies with the exception of privately owned fish ponds and borrow pits – were reverted to state control (Hossain et al. 2006). Between 1950 and 1965 leases of jalmahals (or ‘water estates’) were open to everyone, resulting in lease rights going to rich and influential non-fishers who could bid highest in the lease auctions. 

After liberation: As a remedy, auctioning of jalmahals was restricted to registered fishers' cooperative societies from 1974 onwards. However, ‘this 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 control’ (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). 

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 - METHOD 

This blog post is about an exercise I conducted to understand if the community-led housing project by Jhenaidah people’s 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 “self-defined social group” (Harvey 2012)

To solve their problems citizens from all walks of life and backgrounds have formed into groups resulting into the Jhenaidah citywide people’s network. The politically neutral network is based on communal trust, solidarity and with a strong desire to improve their conditions.

·        as a community that “share(s) these resources and who define for themselves the rules through which they are accessed and used” (De Angelis 2010)

The community relies on collective decision-making processes and co-designs through collaboration and empowerment of all participants.

the Jhenaidah citywide people’s 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. 

·        “communities, however, do not necessarily have to be bound to a locality, they could also operate through trans-local spaces” (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 people’s network.

·        “the social process that creates and reproduces the commons” (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 one’s and other’s plots. They also conceived the nature of their future building – whether single-storey or two – 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.

·        Ostrom‘s 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 “processes of shared stewardship about things that a  community possesses and manages in common” by Helfrich and Bollier (2014)

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 “bosti” (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 “no-entry” zone. 

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 ‘slums’ or ‘low-income communities’ (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. 

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. 

They went on to establish their own entity called Central Community Based Organisation (CCBO).

Source: WaterAid, 2016

Community’s 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 “formal” 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 “unexplained” 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 “city development”.

UN-Habitat recommends member states “recognize the rights and contributions of slum dwellers and change the view that they are illegal.”

From Tanzil Shafique’s paper  Learning from " non-design " : Claiming Urban Informality as New Design Research Territory:

https://www.academia.edu/37452593/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 Manzini’s 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 other’s strength. Manzini,in his book, produces a ‘design mode map’ with two axes, one of expert—diffuse design and the other of problem-solving—sense-making.

Design mode map (Manzini 2015)

For a re-conceptualisation of urban informality, what is crucial is the “grassroots organization” mode, which sits within diffuse design and problem-solving. Manzini defines this mode as “used by groups of people who design initiatives that aim to deal with local problems”. 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. 

Manzini, E. (2015), Design, When Everybody Designs : An Introduction to Design for Social Innovation.

Shafique, T. (2019), What sort of ‘development’ 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

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.

Source: https://water104website.weebly.com/bangladesh-flooding-and-impacts.html

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. 

Source: 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. 

Whenever the dominant crisscrossed rivers change their course, they either emerge new land or cause land erosion at the banks.

Source: 

Source: 

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 Europe’s 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. 

CLIMATE CHANGE IN BANGLADESH 

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 world’s sixth most disaster prone country (UNU-EHS, 2015). 

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. 

Interesting video: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co5uywe-1Z8).

Interesting source to be check later: https://ejfoundation.org/reports/climate-displacement-in-bangladesh 

More images on https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/inpictures/pictures-bangladesh-front-lines-climate-crisis-191203102447517.html

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?

CO-CREATION in SPACE MAKING in rural Bangladesh 

The following researcher’s notes are based on CAN open source article "Why should a city be CO-CREATED?” and Ar. Khandakar Hasibul Kabir’s lecture as Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel in 2018. Both sources are below:

http://www.communityarchitectsnetwork.info/upload/opensources/public/file_08032020131407.pdf

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0crj15I9tMw

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. 

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 people’s network. The politically neutral network is based on communal trust, solidarity and with a strong desire to improve their conditions. 

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: 

http://www.xmind.net/m/cxXRac

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/EXPAND 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 “communities” 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 “form of bio-political production” (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.

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 café

4. Any issues or struggles you have faced there

How to involve people and keep them engaged?

We don’t 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 people’s 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 ‘there is no point’.

Permanent Venue for repair café, upscaling, events that are community led