Mumbai

URBZ + ENSAMBLE STUDIO/MIT-POPLAB

Mumbai is a city of disparate habitats that emerged through various historical encounters to form a global, but non-standardized, metropolis. Often represented in bipolar terms as a city of slums and high-rises, contemporary Mumbai’s diversity of built-forms represents the creative ways inhabitants occupy urban space. Within the complex city fabric, informal settlements have grown incrementally, and now absorb over half of the metropolis’s 12 million residents, most typically in thousands of tiny “tool-houses” squeezed into a disproportionately small share of the city’s land.

Serving as both a residence and workspace, Mumbai’s tool-house echoes a housing type common across Asia, from Singapore’s shop-house to Tokyo’s home-factory, and generates its value through use rather than from land speculation. It represents a lifeline that keeps millions of people afloat and allows them to productively occupy the city. In the name of redevelopment, however, these neighborhoods are being replaced by single-function high-rises, revealing the arrested imagination of the authorities.

Instead of a planet of slums in need of clearance, we see neighborhoods in different stages of evolution. The in-situ work of URBZ and Ensamble Studio/MIT-POPlab's innovative research respond to this vision with a collage of tactics, technologies, and imaginations. The air is proposed as new territory where live-work conditions and public infrastructures recover their rightful place, liberating the excessive pressure on the land. Rather than a tabula rasa, homegrown neighborhoods are seen as a “tabula pronta,” with real value to drive development strategies. This is not a speculative future, but an expanded present where inhabitants can reclaim growth for themselves.

Credits

URBZ: user-generated cities, Mumbai
Founding Partners: Matias Echanove, Rahul Srivastava, Geeta Mehta
Uneven Growth Team: Matias Echanove, Rahul Srivastava, Yehuda Safran, Ishan Tankha, Sameep Padora, Diane Athaide, Ismini Christakopoulou, Jai Bhadgaonkar, Bharat Gangurde, Shyam Kanle, Aki Lee, Itai Margula, Shardul Patil, Aditi Nair

Ensamble Studio/MIT-POPlab, Madrid and Cambridge
Ensamble Studio Principals and Founders of POPlab at MIT: Antón García-Abril, Débora Mesa
Ensamble Studio/POPlab Team: Antón García-Abril, Débora Mesa, Javier Cuesta, Ricardo Sanz, Marie Benaboud, Simone Cavallo, José María Lavena, Massimo Loia, Borja Soriano, Erin Soygenis

Istanbul

Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée + SUPERPOOL

Turkey is currently one of the fastest-growing economies in Europe. At 14 million inhabitants and a yearly growth rate of 3.5 percent, Istanbul has fully benefited from this economic boom. Starting in the 1960s, its rapid urbanization has had three main phases: gecekondus squatter villages; post-gecekondus’ additional building rights; and mass housing since the 1990s. Unlike earlier “self-building” phases, the recent mass housing is organized predominantly through the Housing Development Agency of Turkey, Toplu Konut İdaresi Başkanlığı (TOKI), and it employs a single urban typology: gated complexes of repetitive tower clusters on open land.

TOKI development parallels the emergence of a new middle class in Istanbul for whom a TOKI flat is part of a dream of car and house ownership, even if this brings social isolation, long hours in traffic, and long-term debt. This deeply indebted middle class is also prone to be the most vulnerable during periods of recession. In the face of continuing political, economic, and ecological uncertainties, and the rising costs of energy, TOKI inhabitants have to become more resilient.

Kolektif İşbirlikçi Toplum Oluşumu (KITO) is a proposal for a post-urban development agency that uses open-source, citizen-driven R-Urban regeneration to transform TOKI complexes. KITO works at different scales and levels of resilient action to retrofit spaces, equipment, services, and institutions. KITO’s collective interaction is facilitated via KITO’da, an online network that creates an alternative economy, assigning value to local actions and empowering people to make, give, share, and save energy, services, goods, knowledge, and skills. Instead of consuming the city, residents share in its production.

Credits

Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée, Paris
Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu, in collaboration with Marguerite Wable, Jeremy Galvan, Beste Kuşçu, Augustin Reynaud, and Kim Trogal
We would like to thank Andreas Lang (Public Works) and Kathrin Böhm (myvillages.org) for their advice and long-term collaboration.

Superpool, Istanbul
Nikitas Gkavogiannis, Selva Gürdoğan, Gregers Tang Thomsen, Zehra Nur Eliaçık, Derya İyikul, and Betül Nuhoğlu, in collaboration with Memed Erdener, Asbjørn Lund, and Fahri Özkaramanlı
Vienna MAK Workshop Participants: Matthieu Floret, Zoe Georgiou, Christiane Hütter, and May Krivanish
Shenzhen Workshop Participants: Chu Hou San, Tiago Guilherme Cheong

New York

SITU Studio + Cohabitation Strategies (CohStra)

Over the past two decades, global investment and profit-driven development, as well as housing policies at all government levels, have engineered New York’s social divide. With middle-income households in decline, the city’s rapid growth manifests in transformed neighborhoods, luxury developments, and a marked scarcity of affordable housing. Deregulation of private rental housing, withdrawal of funds for rental subsidies, disinvestment in housing provisions for the poor, wage stagnation, and high rents—causing more than half of all renter households to be rent burdened—have created a crisis of affordability.

A lesser-known consequence of the affordability crisis is an informal rental market that has illegally adapted, subdivided, and converted existing apartment buildings, town houses, and high-rises to accommodate the lowest-paid populations. More than a century ago, in what we like to believe was a different New York, Jacob Riis identified this same injustice: poor citizens, made invisible within existing housing stock, are left out of the policies and design decisions that shape their homes.

Two alternative approaches address New York’s housing crisis: Cohabitation Strategies proposes Housing Cooperative Trusts that challenge traditional conceptions of property. Land and buildings are owned collectively by city authorities, non-profits, community stakeholders, and tenants to guarantee permanent affordable housing while building social equity for future generations. SITU Studio proposes neighborhood-based Community Growth Corporations to open up underutilized spaces to incremental growth. Outer-borough neighborhoods collectively finance community-wide improvements that provide access to rooftops, backyards, and other occupiable spaces, facilitating a new informal rooftop urbanism for a city with scarce remaining land.

Credits

SITU Studio, New York
SITU Studio Principals: Basar Girit, Aleksey Lukyanov-Cherny, Westley Rozen, Bradley Samuels
Project Manager: McKenna Cole
Team Members: Jennie Bernstein, Zoe Demple, Kristine Ericson, Hayrettin Gunc, Derek Lange, Gabriel Munnich, Charles-Antoine Perrault, Nina Phinouwong, Katie Shima, Xiaowei Wang
Consultants: Jesse M. Keenan, Center for Urban Real Estate (CURE.), Columbia University; Michael Amabile, Arup; Sarah Watson, Citizens Housing Planning Council; Seema Agnani and Drew Goldsman, Chhaya Community Development Corporation; David Giles, Center for an Urban Future; Kevin Findlan, NYU Furman Center; Alex Washburn, Center for Coastal Resilience and Urban Xcellence (CRUX) at Stevens Institute of Technology; John Szot, Brooklyn Digital Foundry; Minkwon Center for Community Action; MFY Legal Services

Cohabitation Strategies (CohStra), Rotterdam and New York
Founding Members: Lucia Babina, Emiliano Gandolfi, Gabriela Rendón, Miguel Robles-Durán
Uneven Growth Team: Raquel de Anda, curator; Guillermo Delgado, urbanist; Juan Junca, urban planner; Jonathan Lapalme, urban strategist; Phillip Lühl, architect; Juan Pemberty, design thinker; Santiago Giraldo, urban ecologist; Rajesh Bhavnani, animation director

We would like to thank Tom Angotti, Professor of Urban Affairs and Planning at Hunter College and the Graduate Center CUNY; David Harvey, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography at the Graduate Center of CUNY; Rachel LaForest, Executive Director of The Right to the City Alliance; and all the people that were instrumental in our work.

Rio de Janeiro

RUA ARQUITETOS + MAS Urban Design, ETH Zurich

Unevenness is a dominant feature of Rio de Janeiro’s urban landscape, making it exemplary of Brazil’s reputation as an unequal country. Extreme topography confronts the city with nature and the division between rich and poor is articulated in asfalto (official city) and morro (favelas). Yet, Brazil’s income distribution has drastically changed during the last seven years—the lower middle class has increased by 40 million people and now represents the largest segment of the population. In Rio, 60 percent of favela residents now belong to this emerging middle class.

As Rio becomes a middle-class city, the government and prevailing economic system are transforming the city into a setting for market-driven development. However, the discontent of large portions of the population—demonstrated by recent protests against the FIFA World Cup and the 2016 Olympics—expresses the gap between the aspirations of an emerging consumer class and the lack of urban equality.

The cariocas (Rio’s inhabitants) have always found ways to appropriate and subvert their built environment through puxadinhos-—add-ons to existing structures made from leftover materials. Inspired by puxadinhos, the proposed Varanda Products accommodate the logic of the market in order to transform it. As an interface between individual and community, the varanda offers a middle ground for negotiation, gathering, and play. Varanda Products is a catalogue of everyday consumer products that promotes city-making as a collective endeavor bringing together diverse social milieus. Insinuating itself everywhere, Varanda Products encourages small-scale urban entrepreneurship with the openness and playfulness typical of the carioca way of life.

Credits

RUA Arquitetos, Rio de Janeiro
Coordinators: Pedro Évora, Pedro Rivera
Collaborators: Aliki Kostopoulou, Fabiano Pires, Natalia Winnika, Mariana Albuquerque, Mariana Meneguetti, Roberto Costa

MAS Urban Design, ETH Zurich
MAS Urban Design Program Chair: Marc Angélil
Coordinators: Marc Angélil, Rainer Hehl, Julian Schubert, Elena Schütz, Leonard Streich
Students: Yevgeniya Bevz, Andreas Boden, Mengxing Cao, Ondrej Chybík, Andrea de Guio, Marija Gramc Milivojevic, Heechul Jung, Minami Nagao, Theodora Papamichail, Georgios Papoulias, Artemis Pefani, Theodoros Poulakos, Konstantinos Stoforos, Henrik Syversten, Maria Fernanda Tellez Velasco, Alexander Daxböck, Zoi Georgiou, Gianmaria Socci, Fani Kostourou, Natalia Michailidou, Gerhard Ungersböck
Collaborators: João Salsa, Filipe Serro, Tobias Müller

Lagos

NLÉ + Zoohaus/Inteligencias Colectivas

Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and most populous country, is inhabited by over 170 million people. Lagos, its commercial capital, is home to about 20 million people, many of whom live in unplanned settlements with little formal infrastructure. Lagos is a paradigmatic mix of traditions, a place where history, culture, and popular wisdom interweave local knowledge and global awareness.

Challenges remain common for all Lagosians, regardless of social or economic status. While oil is cheap, the state energy network is only reliable for three hours per day. Most homes and businesses depend on generators for electricity. Nearly 30 percent of Lagos state is covered by water, yet water is highly underutilized and inadequately handled by the city’s infrastructure. A poorly connected public transportation system boosts SUV use among middle and upper classes, while mini-transport vehicles like okadas (motorcyles) or danfos (vans) proliferate among lower-income Lagosians. Urban growth is so rapid that strategies devised by authorities and city planners become obsolete before implementation. Most citizens have to set up their own businesses, often in semi-illegal conditions.

To bridge physical and socioeconomic gaps, we examine three challenges—energy supply, water supply, and transportation—and rethink them as opportunities through infrastructures, prototypes, and local collective intelligence. We propose two representational tools: a map that echoes Lagos’s complex reality, and a catalogue of local inventions, situations, and players. Using these two tools, we propose prototypes to enrich the city fabric and three depictions of a future reality in which the day-to-day skills of “informal” bottom-up initiatives merge with “formal” top-down plans.

Credits

NLÉ, Lagos and Amsterdam
Uneven Growth Team: Kunlé Adeyemi, Farooq Adenugba, Marco Cestarolli, Berend Strijland, Olina Terzi
Collaborators: Tunji Badejo, Olalekan Jeyifous, and QCP Television

Zoohaus and Inteligencias Colectivas Inteligencias Colectivas, Madrid
Uneven Growth Team: David Berkvens, Juan Chacón, Manuel Domínguez, Maé Durant, Esteban Fuertes, Luis Galán, Elisa de los Reyes García, Juanito Jones, Manuel Pascual, Luis de Prada, and Lys Villalba, with the contributions of Alfredo Borghi, Miguel Martinez, Daniel Morcillo, Julia García, Aintzane del Río, Monk Jones

Zoohaus could not have developed this project without the support of the AECID (Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation); the Spanish Embassy in Abuja; Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte—Gobierno de España; Acción Cultural Española (AC/E); and Spain Culture New York.

Hong Kong

MAP OFFICE + Network Architecture Lab

Compressed between sea and mountains, Hong Kong is a chaotic, hybrid, and colorful urban territory characterized by its extreme density and geography. Formed by a collection of more than 250 islands, mostly inhabited, the city/territory is under pressure from Beijing to absorb new waves of mainland migrants in order to accommodate a 50 percent population increase to its 7.2 million inhabitants. The threat of exponential population growth in combination with scare land resources and rising sea levels suggest an opportunity to test an artificial island scheme that could extend to the Pearl River Delta and further along the Chinese coastline.

Man-made islands offer an alternative, sustainable urban expansion with new modes of living, working, and entertaining. Paradigms of living conditions, islands exaggerate existing modes of production and consumption of urban spaces. As territorial fragments, their construction and destruction concentrates many of the forces of human civilization and offers a way to escape the present and to project the future.

Hong Kong Is Land proposes to add eight new artificial islands to the existing territory. In this way, it addresses various needs and features of prevailing contexts while taking into account near future situations. These artificial lands should not be recognized solely as islands or generators of maritime zones. Beyond offering a response to an unbalanced geography, the eight corresponding scenarios propose a new language through which to promote universal values and raise global awareness of specific contemporary issues. Myths, legends, fictions, stories, histories—as many narratives as possible are required to define the contours of a new territory.

Credits

MAP Office, Hong Kong
Project Directors: Laurent Gutierrez and Valérie Portefaix
Project Supervisor (Cartography): Gilles Vanderstocken
Project Manager: Henry Temple
Project Assistants (Cartography): Jenny Choi Hoi Ki, Xavier Chow Wai Yin, Hugo Huang Jiawu, Venus Lung Yin Fei, Winson Man Ting Fung, Tammy Tang Chi Ching, Vivienne Yang Jiawei

Network Architecture Lab, Columbia University, New York
Director and Editor, New City Reader: Kazys Varnelis
Game Design, Symtactics: Jochen Hartmann
Graphic Design, New City Reader: Neil Donnelly
Design and Managing Editor, New City Reader: Brigette Borders
Editor, New City Reader: Robert Sumrell
Project Funding and Support: Design Trust, Hong Kong Ambassadors of Design; Urban Environments Lab, School of Design, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation, Columbia University