Reshaping São Paulo’s Centre Through Informality, Insurgent Planning and Art

By Luciana Lemos 

Introduction

Ocupação 9 de Julho is a building occupied by the Movimento dos Sem Teto do Centro (MSTC) in São Paulo, Brazil. MSTC, one of the main popular movements in São Paulo, aims to guarantee the constitutional right to housing and promote social reform that democratizes the right to the city. MSTC occupies ten buildings in the center of São Paulo, and the Ocupação 9 de Julho has become a symbol of the struggle for housing in the city. The building had been abandoned for over 20 years and was occupied by the MSTC in 2016. The movement’s leader, Carmen Silva, and her daughter Preta Ferreira, among other leaders, have been persecuted by the State for years. However, the occupation received strong support from members of civil society, artists, activists, politicians, and intellectuals.

Today, Ocupação 9 de Julho is home to 124 families totaling approximately 500 residents. The place has become an important meeting point and a center for the production and exhibition of artistic works. Besides a library, a garden and a communal kitchen, Ocupação 9 de Julho has a space decorated with several famous works of graffiti, the Reocupa art gallery, which promotes art exhibitions by renowned artists, and a cinema. Over the years, MSTC has promoted important cultural events, such as the “Virada Cultural da Cidade” and the Children’s Film Festival, and the Reocupa art gallery serves to connect artists with the inhabitants of 9 de Julho and the residents of the São Paulo city center.

Analysis

Founded in 2001, the MSTC has emerged as a counterpoint to the intense real estate speculation in Brazilian cities and especially São Paulo. According to the United Nations, there is a housing deficit in Brazil of around 7.7 million, of which about 5.5 million are in large urban centers. At the same time, the last census carried out in Brazil in 2010 showed that there were around 290,000 vacant properties in the central region of the city of São Paulo.

This lack of access to housing coupled with the prevalence of vacant properties is a product of the contradictions of capitalism in the production of city spaces. Mehta (2016) states that neoliberalism operates through city spaces to promote the best environment for business and financial investments. In this sense, city spaces are restructured to privilege the elites’ aspirations and to fulfill the desire to transform these cities into global cities (Mehta, 2016). The city then functions as a “kind of laboratory for a variety of neoliberal policy experiments,” with the withdrawal of the state from many areas of social provision which in turn leads to dispossession and poverty (Mehta 2016).

In contrast to this city model, the MSTC works to mobilize and organize homeless families fighting for decent housing, demanding that the Brazilian state fulfills the constitutional right of access to housing and corrects decades of failures in urban housing distribution. The housing occupied and administrated by MSTC is characterized by democratic management, which keeps the places full of life and reduces the social vulnerability of homeless residents. Through cultural and educational programs, the Ocupação 9 de Julho seeks to break the barrier of social segregation, bringing together residents and visitors around the same cause: the right to a dignified life in the city.

In this light, the artistic events promoted in Ocupação 9 de Julho are catalysts for cross-cultural conversations, providing a dialogue between the inhabitants of the occupation, members of civil society, and city authorities which may lead to an important healing process. As Sandercock and Attilli (2014) describe through their case study of the indigenous community of Burns Lake in Canada, the use of art may open the way for delicate conversations, promoting knowledge while recognizing the nature and scope of a problem. The artistic events promoted in Ocupação 9 de Julho thus provide “therapeutic planning” (Sandercock and Attilli, 2014) by enabling meetings and conversations about exclusion, invisibility and the struggle for a fairer city. Through their critical use of art, the leaders of the occupation reaffirm the existence of those who were previously invisible in Brazilian cities (Caldeira, 2012), exposing the discrimination faced by this population, calling attention to the housing problem, and sparking action.

Implications

 Neoliberal planning ideology associated with the diminished role of the state has failed to encompass the informality and insurgency of cities in the Global South (Kinyanjui, 2014). Instead of focusing on investments in social programs and services that meet the needs of the most vulnerable classes, urban development projects are designed to serve the interests of the elites (Mehta, 2016). Planning standards “separate informality from questions of social justice that are crucial to its existence” (Kinyanjui, 2014), thus deepening the problems associated with housing deficits in cities in the Global South (Kinyanjui, 2014).

In the current neoliberal context, different “insurgent planning” practices thus become even more significant in the struggle for the democratization of cities (Miraftab, 2009) by resisting, contesting, and proposing alternatives to neoliberal means of domination. Insurgency and informality contribute to shaping the city by embracing local dynamics and realities and circumventing the neoliberal model of the city, calling for a new examination of the uniqueness and values of “subaltern cities” (Miraftab, 2009).

The Ocupação 9 de Julho breaks with this neoliberal construct of the city by providing a new housing model, allowing poor people to reside in a space previously reserved for the elites. The artistic production of the occupation, in turn, inverts the logic of capital by emphasizing the people’s struggle for a dignified life instead of praising a Western model of the city. These works arouse feelings and perceptions, reflecting a way of life and a city different from that idealized by the elites. The case of Ocupação 9 de Julho shows that artistic works can serve as important instruments for reshaping the city, promoting connections between people and transforming previously abandoned spaces into democratic places of socialization. Furthermore, these artistic works emphasize a typically Brazilian aesthetic, language, and philosophy, which Kinyanjui (2014) considers essential for decolonizing the traditional planning model.

Finally, by means of insurgent planning, though, Ocupação 9 de Julho transforms the institutionalized practices of contemporary urban planning by emphasizing civil society practices of governance. Moreover, through art, Ocupação 9 de Julho brings to the center of the debate the idea of social justice, which Miraftab (2009) perceives as fundamental in the theorization of urban planning. Thus, making use of insurgent practices, the Movimento Sem Teto do Centro (MSTC) reconfigures the idea of justice based only on equal rights, emphasizing a new concept of justice based on the recognition of differences and their policies. In doing so, the movement questions the role of political representation, claiming its space as an actor capable of reconfiguring the spaces and paving the way for a more just and democratic city.

Facade of the Ocupação 9 de Julho building, in São Paulo, Brazil. Source

Courtyard of the Ocupação 9 de Julho. Festival of Politics and Culture “Hope will overcome fear”, 2022.   Source

Carmen da Silva and her daughter, Preta Ferreira, leaders of the Movimento Sem Teto do Centro (MSTC).   Source

References

Vertical gardening, memory, and place-making in Palestine

By Lama Ab Shama

Introduction

Jalazone Refugee Camp in the Ramallah and al-Bireh Governorate is one of 19 official and four unofficial Palestinian refugee camps in West Bank, Palestine. It was established in 1949 on almost 253,000m² land after the 1948 Israeli war that expelled Palestinians from 36 villages, most located in central Palestine. According to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA), in 2015, the camp accommodated nearly 11,000 refugees. The camp suffers from overcrowding problems, inadequate infrastructure, and a shortage of available land for building or expansion. While Palestinians who live in the camp have been there for more than seven decades now, many refuse to leave it because they view it as a temporary condition and a symbolic representation of their right to return to their homes before the war.

Acknowledging both the longevity of life in the camp and its temporary nature, Swedish artist Sara Gebran collaborated with students at Birzeit University in the West Bank in 2010 on a project called The Vertical Gardens, which aimed at creating green spaces in the camp, but vertically. Historically, Palestinians have strong spiritual, emotional, and physical connections to land and plants, especially older women who used to sing and talk to their plants like their children The goal of the project was to plant on walls, roofs, windows, and other vertical spaces using materials found in the camp, including recycled tires, empty plastic pots, and bottles, to increase the green cover and make the environment more pleasant and livable.

Analysis

Palestinians in Jalazone Camp dream of returning to their lands and homes, but they have been in the camp for so long that their “place attachment” to their original home may not be that strong. At the same time, making a connection to a place they consider temporary is also challenging. When the team introduced the project to the camp residents, they were concerned that residents’ might feel the project would represent a rejection of their right to return. In using plants, the project aimed at enhancing the living conditions in the camp without compromising refugees’ right to return while simultaneously connecting to their original home through their relationship with plants.

Despite the difficult material conditions of the camp and the refugees’ struggles in this temporary location, my fellow students and I noticed that residents felt an attachment to the place when we started the project. As Friedmann suggests, such place attachments can be “subjective and invisible under normal circumstances” (Friedmann, 2010, p. 155), but suddenly they may become visible when external interventions take place. This happened when we went to the camp to initiate the project: the residents responded enthusiastically and decided to join us to improve their environment, despite the temporary nature of the camp. Their engagement with the project derived from their strong sense of place, which can be understood as the bonding between a person and the environment (Shamsuddin and Ujang, 2008).

We focused the planting in the main locations where people gather, including a youth center called Al Karameh Center, a mosque, and a local café, which allowed us to foster interactions between camp residents. We also decided to add green decorative elements to the windows and facades of the buildings and create a roof garden on the top of the Al Karameh Center using portable and flexible containers. By focusing on places where people interact with each other in the camp, we pursued what Friedmann (2010) refers to as “the centering of place” to constitute place through social practice.

In the camp, elderly refugees have memories of their childhood in their original home before the war. In the project, it was essential to enhance spaces in ways that would help create memories for the young generations who were born in the camp. We did this by fostering social interactions and events that enhanced the emotional relationship between the individuals and their surroundings (Shamsuddin and Ujang, 2008) while also respecting the history and symbolism the camp holds.

Implications

Given the symbolic significance of the Jalazone as a temporary settlement, understanding the camp community and its historical background, the relationship between plants and people, and how emotional connections emerge from such interactions became crucial for the project. It was also vital to encourage participation by different age groups and residents of various backgrounds to draw on diverse experiences and knowledge. This bottom-up approach strengthened attachment to place and provided a collective sense of belonging and identity. In the long term, the small vertical gardens that were created on spaces such as windows, rooftops, and walls could also possibly provide an opportunity for economic development for Palestinians in the camp. The project thus brings various opportunities to the camp community while respecting the residents’ desire to return to their homes before the war.

The old ladies who participated in the project had happy memories of their original homes and lands where they used to plant trees, vegetables, and fruits. I believe that their nostalgia for their original homes spurred their engagement in this project. This further illustrates the power of memory and how it acted as a vital source for community-based planning. “Such affective landscapes bring together embodied, sensorial, and more-than-human fields of action to shape everyday politics in which residents narrate their marginalization within the world city and articulate their own value here.” (Gupta, 2020, p. 1688). The project reinforced a sense of community derived from shared feelings of belonging to a group and emotional connection based on a shared history, thus generating place attachment, which motivated people to improve their place under challenging circumstances. In so doing, the project transforms a “space” into a “place” by acquiring deep meaning through the “steady accretion of sentiment” and experience (Friedmann, 2010, p 156). As Shamsuddin and Ujang (2008, p 400) suggest, since the place is “an experiential process, it is important to examine the meanings that people attach to a locality in trying to create a sense of place.”

Palestinian Refugee Camp, Ramallah, West Bank.   Source

Group meeting of the Swedish artist with Birzeit University students and Jalazoune Camp residents.   Source: Photo taken by Lama Ab Shama.

Decorative elements.   Source: Photo taken by Lama Ab Shama.

Planting pots.  Source: Photo taken by Lama Ab Shama.

References

The importance of collective organization and collaboration of Kayayei in Accra, Ghana

By Tetyana Samiliv

Introduction

Kayayei or Kaya Yei (singular Kaya Yoo) is a Ga term for female porter or bearer. Kayayei are usually migrant women from the north who come to Accra in hopes of earning a living and furthering their education. When immigrating to Accra, Kayayei usually settle in the Old Fadama neighborhood, an informal settlement with between 80,000 and 100,000 residents, because it offers the most affordable housing in the city. Founded by migrants from northern Ghana during the tribal Konkomba-Nanumba tribal war, Old Fadama is located on the banks of Korle Lagoon along the Odaw River, which is flowing on the west side of the city center.

Multiple local and international organizations are working to assist Kayayei and advocate for their and their children’s future, as well as training them in skills that can help them secure permanent jobs such as sewing. One of these organizations is the Old Fadama Kayayei Organization led by 26 year-old Rukaya Bawule, which supported Kayayei during the Covid-19 pandemic by educating them on the need for PPE and vaccination, and by advocating for their needs to the local government (Wiego, 2021). Fashion organizations, such as the OR Foundation, also recognize the key role Kayayei play in the second-hand fashion industry and contribute by providing industry training to Kayayei.

Analysis

Many Kayayei make their living carrying products and materials to and from two large waste and reuse sites: the world’s largest e-waste landfill known as Agbogbloshie and the largest secondhand clothing market in the world known as Kantamanto. The e-waste landfill provides a metal mining and reuse market, while the Kantamanto market is recognized as the largest circular economy reuse and upcycle center in the world. Here, sellers and fashion designers resell and reuse clothing and fabric to make new designs and reuse clothes that would otherwise go straight to the landfill (The Or Foundation, 2021). The locals call the secondhand clothing sent from the west “obroni wavu” or “the dead white man’s clothes” in Twi, the language spoken mainly by the Akan people, the largest of seventeen ethnic groups of Ghana (Besser, 2021). Kayayei perform the onerous task of carrying heavy bundles of clothing through the market, and if they are injured on the job they are usually sent back home with no compensation. Since they are working in the informal economy, they do not receive unemployment assistance, medical care is expensive, and during Covid-19, they were the last to receive assistance.

Although Kayayei like other women in the informal sector are socially, politically, and economically invisible (Kinyajui, 2014), they have been organizing to achieve better living standards and basic needs such as shelter, safety, and healthcare. The most prominent example of these organizing efforts is the Old Fadama Kayayei Association, which provided critical support for Kayayei during the heights of the Covid-19 pandemic (WIEGO, 2021). When the markets started being cleared by the police during the pandemic, and the demand for Kayayei services dropped, evictions became more frequent, and Kayayei were often stigmatized as carriers of disease, forcing them to skip meals and send their children to relatives in the north of Ghana. In the absence of government support, the Old Fadama Kayayei Association established a support network for Kayayei to share meals and child responsibilities, educated members about the importance of PPE and vaccinations, and advocated for government protection and provision of healthcare support (WIEGO, 2021), becoming an example of what (Kinyajui, 2014: p. 14) describes as a “creative response to the innate desire for survival and self-actualization”.

The networks constituted by the Kayayei constitute what Simone (2004) refers to as an ‘infrastructure,’ where people in “conjunction with activities, modes of production and institutional forms” collaborate with each another and form social networks. Relationships are incredibly important when conventional planning and infrastructure fail to support marginalized groups (Simone, 2004), and through their movements and interactions with each other and other residents of Accra, Kayayei increase the productivity of both the formal and the informal economy. Although Arnall and Kothari (2014) argue that waste is socially constructed and usually seen as unwanted matter, in the context of Accra’s Agbogbloshie and Kantamanto markets, waste becomes a potential for business. When clothes are donated in the West or discarded, this waste becomes ‘matter-out-of-place’, which is then transported to Global South countries like Ghana, thus “connecting places where people or ships have rarely been” (Arnall and Kothari, 2014).

Implications

As Kinyanjui (2014) suggests, the rational model of planning does not account for informal networks of connections and everyday transactions (see also Kamete, 2013; Nunbogu, 2018). While Kayayei are essential to the flow of goods across Accra, “contributing to the complexity of urban morphology” (Kinyanjui, 2014: p.3), they still confront gender and economic inequalities as well as “barriers created by planning ideologies and gender insensitivity” (Kinyanjui, 2014: p.2). The example of the Kayayei highlights the importance of planners to work more closely with the movements and organization of groups that are not included in traditional planning. Women around the world provide a vast majority of labor in informal economy: in sub-Saharan Africa, 74% of women work in informal employment, and in South Asia it reaches nearly 80% (Women for Women, 2020).  Kayayei are the backbone of informal planning, and their collective organization serves as an example of how city planners can work with the city’s diverse residents.

A group of Kayayoo women marching at Ghana’s 2020 Independence Day Parade.                                                                                      Author: Quami43.   Source

Fashion Revolution.   Source

A discarded shirt in the market.                                                                              Foreign Corresponded: Andrew Greaves (ABC News).   Source

References

Placemaking through grassroots initiatives and external actor engagement

By Mohammad Arfar Razi

Introduction

In an overpopulated country like Bangladesh, where development projects embrace ideas from western countries, it is not easy to imagine a community-led development effort. However, through the project Sobai Mile Jhenaidah Gori (translated as ‘let’s build Jhenaidah together’), residents are transforming the south-western Bangladeshi town of Jheniadah into a model cityscape by engaging with local government, several local NGOs, international thinkers, and many volunteer groups. Initiated by a local architect couple, Khondaker Hasibul Kabir and Suhailey Farzana, the project has changed a riverside into a public space with pedestrian routes, gardens, and cultural amenities. Many residents have also built homes here for far less than the cost of building in some slum areas through community-based financing initiatives. In addition, residents and community partners are further planning to improve the quality of life by designing pedestrian walkways, bicycle lanes, and wide green roads. The community-engagement process and design have garnered much acclaim, receiving the Aga Khan Award for Architecture in 2022.

Analysis

Although most of the urban expansion of the twenty-first century is occurring in the Global South, dominant urban theories have their roots in the developed world (Roy, 2006). In order to contest the colonial influence in the continual shaping of history and geographies (Roy, 2006) of a country like Bangladesh, visionary urbanists and planners such as Hasibul Kabir and Farzana have developed other alternatives based on everyday urbanism and co-production. Social movements have a crucial role in defining the material configuration of society, including poverty reduction, foreign assistance mobilization, effective governance, community development, and functioning democracy (Chowdhury, 2022). The Sobai Mile Jhenaidah Gori movement of Jhenaidah has become a successful example of poverty reduction, self-governance (Nunbogu, Korah, Cobbinah, & Poku-Boansi, 2018), and community development, and brought a tremendous number of positive externalities.

The original goal of the initiative was to create a community-driven method to construct housing models. Because of the severe problems associated with housing provision and the potential social conflict due to significant inequalities, bottom-up development (Nunbogu, Korah, Cobbinah, & Poku-Boansi, 2018) was seen as necessary in order to involve community members in the process. With technical assistance from community architects, women in the neighborhood convened to make a map of the new development, allowing them to conceptualize their ideal house and better understand the size and layout of their plots. Residents expressed different wishes—some wanted a second story, a flat roof for their kids to play on, or two rooms for larger families—leading architects to develop models of a single-story and a two-story house following the requirements of residents. As Nunbogu et al. (2018) suggest in their research on self-governance in Ghana, this co-production approach allowed residents to take the initiative and coordinate their efforts, contributing significantly to the project’s success.

Later, a community-led design of a ghat (gorge) led to the development of pathways hugging the Nabaganga riverbank in the city’s center, providing safe and environmentally sound access to the river. People use this place for morning walks, bathing, and afternoon gatherings, making it a vital gathering and community space. This community-based design process shows that social capital in the form of bonding, bridging, and linking can help overcome seemingly unsurmountable planning obstacles (Nunbogu, Korah, Cobbinah, & Poku-Boansi, 2018). This case of community-led placemaking also illustrates Manzo & Perkins’s (2006: p. 336) contention that “community-focused emotions, cognitions, and behaviors may affect community planning and development.”

The bottom-up approach characteristic of Sobai Mile Jhenaidah Gori also makes it an example of everyday urbanism. As outlined by Alawadi, Hashem, & Maghelal (2022: p. 4), everyday urbanism is a movement of self-organized, leaderless, and resident-based action which is neither officially authorized by the government nor prone to co-optation by any hegemonic forces. Drawing on these local forms of everyday urbanism and with the help of local architects and NGOs, residents developed a sense of ownership of the place through the memory of their previous place-making as well as the design process. This illustrates how memory fuels placemaking, leading to the urge to preserve places that carry emotional significance (Shamsuddin & Ujang, 2008).

Multiple actors facilitated the process, including Platform for Community Action and Architecture, Co.Creation.Architects, and the architecture department at BRAC University. Asian Coalition for Housing Rights, Community Architects Network, a nearby NGO named ALIVE, and a citywide community network of savings organizations actively participated in many design workshops in partnership with neighborhood municipal authorities. However, the project was driven by local groups, not external NGOs. The planning systems in place in the majority of post-colonial settings, such as Bangladesh, have either been passed down from prior colonial regimes or been adapted from Northern contexts to meet specific local political and ideological goals (Watson, 2009). In such post-colonial settings, NGOs play a significant role in injecting Western planning systems into participatory planning processes and thus undermining community-led movements (Fawaz & Harb, 2020). This makes Sobai Mile Jhenaidah Gori unusual in terms of embracing the knowledge and ideas of local residents instead of relying on external NGOs.

Implications

Although planning is vital for providing social justice for inhabitants of informal settlements, planners in the Global South often look to the North for direction and inspiration. City planners in the Global South have an unhealthy infatuation with urban, Western modernity (Kamete, 2013), leading to a fixation on eradicating the informal city. This is often achieved with the backing of the middle and upper classes, as Mehta (2016) explains in her case study of Ahmedabad. Such formal planning in the Global South also relies on the support of NGOs and private sector actors, which are more sensitive to international narratives of order and beauty (Ogunyankin, 2019). However, the Sobai Mile Jhenaidah Gori movement did not compromise the interests of external actors, allowing the community members to control the place-making process.

Planners should try to leverage local knowledge in development projects (Escobar, 1996) and adopt a decolonial strategy that puts ordinarily marginalized people at the forefront of the conversation. Such a decolonial approach implies avoiding supporting colonial-settler neoliberal tactics that diminish and denigrate the right to self-determination of indigenous and communal people. Ortiz (2022) sees decoloniality as a re-conceptualization of ‘storytelling in planning,’ which can contribute to the discovery of alternative avenues for constructing ontological relationality within a framework of epistemological justice and healing in order to generate alternatively new imaginations for shaping urban planning. Ultimately, the Jhenaidah case illustrates the power of co-production through a collective approach and the importance of not compromising with external actors. “There is no model home to duplicate, but a model method to reproduce,” according to Khondaker Hasibul Kabir and Suhailey Farzana, suggesting that if a community can achieve a sense of ownership of their place, they will be eager to participate in their own community development.

The riverbank development initiative by Sobai Mile Jhenaidah Gori movement.   Source

Community-led design process.   Source

Women working on their own houses.   Source

Vibrant open space at the redeveloped open space at Jhenaidah. Source

Jhenaidah community-led design at night.   Source

References