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How Slums Can Save the Planet
Standing Bear writes "One billion people live in squatter cities and, according to the UN, this number will double in the next 25 years. Stewart Brand writes in Prospect Magazine about what squatter cities can teach us about future urban living. 'The magic of squatter cities is that they are improved steadily and gradually by their residents,' writes Brand. 'Squatter cities are also unexpectedly green. They have maximum density — 1M people per square mile in some areas of Mumbai — and have minimum energy and material use. People get around by foot, bicycle, rickshaw, or the universal shared taxi.' Brand adds that in most slums recycling is literally a way of life e.g. the Dharavi slum in Mumbai has 400 recycling units and 30,000 rag-pickers. 'Of course, fast-growing cities are far from an unmitigated good. They concentrate crime, pollution, disease, and injustice as much as business, innovation, education, and entertainment,' says Brand. Still, as architect Peter Calthorpe wrote in 1985: 'The city is the most environmentally benign form of human settlement. Each city dweller consumes less land, less energy, less water, and produces less pollution than his counterpart in settlements of lower densities.'" Reader Kanel adds this note of perspective: "Kevin Kelly is another guy who wrote about slums in a very positive light, though he was more interested in self-organisation and why cities are cool, I think. Kelly also reports on the strange trend for slum tourism. What we're seeing here is that the 'slums' have become a vehicle for people to bring out their own ideas about cities, humans, and the universe at large. I have a feeling that we're not really going to learn a lot about slums if we study them through these guys."
do others regard this as cynical as well?
You miss the point. The point is not that slums are good for the people who live in them. Slums are good for people who don't live in them.
We need a "+1 -- nice sig" moderation.
So a brief summary of the article would appear to be: affluent Westerners living in air conditioned, well educated, health insured cosmopolitan urban areas think that slums with no sewage facilities, running water, health care or protection against corruption or physical violence are a great way of housing migrant, poor populations. Said poor will have more opportunities in life if they live in urban slums than rural poverty. Rich authors of articles do not offer to move out of their million dollar homes to move into the slums, despite singing their praises.
I don't see how it can ever be pleasant to live so close to other people. I'm all for energy efficiency, but there has to be a better way.
Fewer People.
http://michaelsmith.id.au
Living in a slum is good because it's environmentally friendly and uses less resources? He may as well argue that's it's even more environmentally friendly to die young.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
I still don't think most of the readers have a concept of what it is you describe.
This topic was enough to get me up at 4am, log in to a computer that I usually do not use. Type in my horrendously complex password while still groggy eyed to expose the fantastic, misguided "progressive" bullhocky Stewart Brand is proposing.
I invite the rest of you out there to take a look at this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJhVM930YXY video, taken from a movie that I can't remember the title of at the moment in my 4am and see what it is that he thinks. The picture on the article is so sanitized it makes puke.
This is not what human kind should be reduced to. For the author of this article to believe its someones place to live like this to satisfy some "green" agenda is reprehensible.
Honestly, the best way that I've seen for enabling this segment of society to grow and prosper and have success is the availability of micro loans. The amount of success driven by this type of economic activity is truly inspiring.
I'm going back to sleep now.
"He goes and lives in Dharavi for a few weeks and describes his experiences from a micro and macro point of view."
All the time knowing he can fly home whenever he wants.
30yrs ago as a young married guy with one kid I lived on what American's call a trailer park, I worked 60hr weeks as a day labourer on nearby farms which still did not pay enough to live in a rented house. I lost count of the number of tourists I told to go fuck themselves after they had remarked to me what a "carefree lifestyle" I had.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
This article just make me sick. Any discourse involving slums without considering the effects of poverty just comes out wrong. Of course people living in slums " have minimum energy and material use". They have to. They have no choice. With such a small amount of resources that the people in the slums have they are forced to use them as efficient as possible. Something we, wealthy people, don't need to. At least in our own narrow perspective. We, the rich, aren't less energy efficient because we happen to live less dense. It because we feel like we can afford it. I can go by car, not because it's the only means of traveling, but it's more convenient and it doesn't mean I have to refrain from eating a couple of days. A enormous amount of the worlds population don't have this luxury. One proof of this missintepration of why people in densely populated areas are more energy efficient is that rich people in, for example, Manhattan (as it is used in the article) will most likely travel a lot by taxi and several times a year, if not monthly, travel by air. The reason for this: because they have the resources to do so. It seems like we're benign to use whatever resources that are available to us. I don't want force everyone to live like those in Rosinha, Rio de Janeiro. Neither do I want everyone to put a strain on the world like the financial elite. Judging by the growth of the world population and the state of the environment, we, rich and lucky, need to learn to use what we have in a much sustainable and efficient manner. We might have to look to the poor for this knowledge, but don't think that they are more efficient for no other reason then a dire need to be so.