The Economy of Sustainable Construction

Transcription

The Economy of
Sustainable Construction
Input
OUTput
Edited by
Ilka & Andreas Ruby
Nathalie Janson
Ruby Press
Can Sustainable Construction Be Economical?
A Graphic Introduction by Lucas Bretschger
Professor of Economics at ETH Zurich
A big chunk of the emissions
that can be saved through
energy efficiency is in
the construction sector
40
Buildings 25%
Appliances 10%
Lighting 5%
35
Transport 29%
GtCO2
Industry 32%
30
Remaining CO2 emissions
after energy efficiency
actions
25
20
2010
2015
2020
2025
2030
CO2 Savings Potential from Energy
CO2 Savings Potential from International Energy Agency (IEA)
Efficiency Recommendations (IEA)
Energy Efficiency Recommendations
2
3
Most of the CO2 savings
in the construction sector
can be achieved at
no or very little cost
OECD
Economies in Transition
Non-OECD/EIT
7
Energy supply
Transport
Buildings
Industry
Agriculture
Forestry
<20 <50 <100
<20 <50 <100
<20 <50 <100
<20 <50 <100
Waste
6
GtCO2-eq/yr
5
4
3
2
1
0
<20 <50 <100
<20 <50 <100
<20 <50 <100
$/tCO2-eq
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
Projections of CO2 Mitigation Potential in 2030
according to Investment Levels
4
5
Between now and 2030, half
Between
now demands
andBetween
2030,on
half
now and 2030, half
of new
energy
of newsupply
demands
on
of
new
energy
demands
on energy
are projected to come
supplyfrom
are projected
supply
to sector.
come
are projected
to come
the building
If
from the
building
from
sector.
theIfbuilding sector. If
these
IEA recommendations
these are
IEA followed,
recommendations
these
recommendations
the IEA
energy
are followed,
energy
the energy
savingsthe
willare
be followed,
huge.
savings will be huge.
savings will be huge.
1. Mandatory building energy codes
1. Mandatory
building
1. Mandatory
energybuilding
codes energy codes
and minimum
energy
performance
and minimum
and
minimum
performance
performance
(buildingenergy
envelope
and energy
equipment)
(building envelope
(building
and equipment)
envelope and equipment)
4. Building energy labels or certificates
4. Building
4. Building
energy
labels
or
energy
certificates
or certificates
(to provide
information
tolabels
owners,
(to renters)
provide
to owners,
(to provide
information
to information
owners,
buyers,
and
buyers, and renters)
buyers, and renters)
2. Aiming for net-zero energy
2. Aiming
for net-zero
2. Aiming
for net-zero energy
consumption
inenergy
buildings
consumption inconsumption
buildings in buildings
5. Improved energy performance of
5.components
Improved
energy
performance of
5. Improved
energy
performance
building
and of
systems
building
components
building components
and
systems and systems
3. Improving the energy efficiency
3. Improving
the
3. energy
Improving
efficiency
the
energy efficiency
of existing
building
blocks
of existing building
of existing
blocksbuilding blocks
IEA Policy Recommendations for Building
6
7
Developed countries
Developed
havecountries have
a big green-retrofit
a big green-retrofit
potential
potential
for existing buildings
for existing buildings
China
8
Turkey
India
Russia
Russia
6
6
2
0
0
2
4
Mexico
SpainMexicoUSA
2
0
Turkey
S. Korea India
S. Korea
Brazil
Poland
Poland Brazil
Australia
Indonesia
Canada
Canada
Netherlands
Netherlands
Sweden
Indonesia
4
China
Italy
0
4
2
Japan
6
4
UK
Spain
USA
Germany
France
Italy
Japan
8
6
Sustainability level
10
10
8
8
6
Australia
Retrofit potential
8
10
Retrofit potential
10
New construction potential
New construction potential
Developing
Developing countries
will countries will
have a lot of new
haveconstruction
a lot of new construction
with ashare
lower green share
with a lower green
Russia
4Sweden
UK
6
Sweden
UK
Sweden UK
Netherlands
USA
USA
Australia
Australia
Italy
Italy
Mexico
Mexico
Germany
Germany
Canada
Canada
Poland
Poland
S. Korea
S. Korea
Spain
France
FranceSpain
Japan
Japan
Russia
Brazil
Brazil
Turkey
Turkey
Netherlands
4
Indonesia
2 Germany
2
China
China
India
Indonesia
India
France
10
8
0
0
10
2
0
0
4
2
6
4
8
6
10
8
10
Investment Potential for New Construction
and Building Retrofits
Source: Towards a Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable Development
and Poverty Eradication (United Nations Environment Program, 2011).
8
9
Large and medium-sized
businesses in Switzerland
were asked: “Does the
issue of sustainability, as
you understand the term,
play a role in your
property decisions?”
Sustainability is becoming
“common sense” in real estate
2%
No
10%
5%
22%
Yes, occasionally
18%
23%
46%
54%
Yes, most of the time
43%
Yes, always
23%
27%
26%
2009
2010
2011
Relative Importance of Sustainability
in Property-Related Decisions in Switzerland
Source: Andreas Wiencke, Erika Meins, and Hans-Peter Bukhard,
Corporate Real Estate and Sustainability Survey: Commercial Properties
and Sustainability in Switzerland (Zurich: CB Richard Ellis and CCRS, 2012).
10
11
United States
2.51% of GDP
$356 billion
Japan
$139 billion
China
Countries would have more
room for investments
in innovative technologies
at home if they spent
less money for oil imports
2.88% of GDP
2.82% of GDP
$127 billion
$93 billion
India
Germany
2.13% of GDP
$77 billion
0
1
7.63% of GDP
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
% of GDP
Net Imports of Crude Oil, 2008
Source: Graph created by ETH Resource Economics
using IEA data and the BP Statistical Review of
World Energy for 2011.
12
13
2500
Investment in research
is consistently growing
but is still affected by
circumstantial changes
USD (millions)
2000
Rising
oil prices
Europe
1500
United States
1000
Fukushima
Japan
500
Germany
0
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
Research, Development, and Demonstration in
Renewable Energy Source (IEA Estimates)
14
15
Depending
Depending
on what
on what
percentage
percentage
of a of
nation’s
a nation’s
pastpast
carbon
carbon
emissions
emissions
we take
we take
into into
account,
account,
the degree
the degree
to which
to which
theythey
mustmust
limitlimit
theirtheir
future
future
emissions
emissions
in in
order
order
to achieve
to achieve
climate
climate
targets
targets
will vary
will vary
Colombia
Colombia
Bangladesh
Bangladesh
Nigeria
Nigeria
θ→0 θ→0
Budget
Budget
with no
with
historical
no historical
responsibility
responsibility
θ=0.5θ=0.5
Budget
Budget
with 50%
with historical
50% historical
responsibility
responsibility
θ=0.8θ=0.8
Budget
Budget
with 80%
with historical
80% historical
responsibility
responsibility
θ=1 Budget
θ=1 Budget
with complete
with complete
historical
historical
responsibility
responsibility
Not Not
considering
considering
the past
the past
JapanJapan
BrazilBrazil
Russian
Russian
Federation
Federation
Indonesia
Indonesia
United
United
States
States
European
European
UnionUnion
India India
ChinaChina
0
0
50
50
100 100
150 150
200 200
250 250
300 300
Gigatons
Gigatons
Counting
Counting
fromfrom
19901990
on on
Carbon Budgets (2008–2050)
with Different Levels of Historic Responsibility
Lucas Bretschger, “Climate Policy and Equity Principles: Fair Burden Sharing in
a Dynamic World,” Environmental and Development Economics, May 29, 2013,
http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&a
id=8993794.
16
17
With a strict climate policy,
we could have a carbon-free
economy by 2050 with
only a three-year delay
in economic development
1.8
Business as usual
1.7
80% emission reduction
through carbon tax
Normalized consumption
1.6
1.5
1.4
1.3
1.2
1.1
1
0.9
0.8
2010
2015
2020
2025
2030
2035
2040
2045
2050
Derived Impact on Long-Term Living Standards
in in
Switzerland with and without Emissions Reduction
Derived impact on long-run living standards
Lucas Bretschger, Roger Ramer, and Florentine Schwark, “Growth Effects of
Switzerland with and without emissions reduction
Carbon Policies: Applying a Fully Dynamic CGE Model with Heterogeneous
Capital,” Resource and Energy Economics 33 (2011): 963–80.
18
19
Editors: Ilka & Andreas Ruby, Nathalie Janson
Case studies: Something Fantastic
Design: Belgrad Creative
Illustrations: Judith Winterhager
Copyediting: Michael Eisenbrey
Proofreading: Max Bach
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available
from the Library of Congress, Washington, DC, USA.
Bibliographic information published by
Die Deutsche Bibliothek.
Die Deutsche Bibliothek lists this publication
in the Deutsche Nationalbibliographie; detailed
bibliographic data is available online at
http://dnb.ddb.de
The Economy of
Edited by Ilka & Andreas Ruby
and Nathalie Janson
This work is subject to copyright.
All rights are reserved, whether the whole or part of
the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation,
reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting,
reproduction on microfilms or in other ways,
and storage in data banks.
For any kind of use, permission of the copyright holder
must be obtained.
© 2014 Ruby Press, Berlin
© 2014 Holcim Foundation for Sustainable Construction, Zurich
© The contributors for their texts and images
Every effort has been made by the authors and the publishers to
acknowledge all sources and copyright holders. In the event of any
copyright holder being inadvertently omitted, please contact the
publishers directly. Please see page 414 for specific image credits.
Printed in the Czech Republic
ISBN 978-3-944074-07-8
http://www.ruby-press.com
http://www.holcimfoundation.org
20
21
Table of Contents
Graphic Introduction
Social Capital Credits:
A New Currency for Sustainability
Can Sustainable Construction
Be Economical?
70
Geeta Mehta
2
Lucas Bretschger
The Sharing Economy Comes Home:
New Housing Trends and Practices
That Are Changing How We Live
Introduction
80
Yassi Eskandari-Qajar
Putting Sustainability
in the Black
26
Ilka & Andreas Ruby and
Nathalie Janson
Building Out of Clay
102
Francis Kéré
1.
2.
Resources
Diversity
Introduction:
Reinventing Technology Locally
41
Hansjürg Leibundgut
Introduction:
Upgrading Informal Settlements While
Preserving Communities
121
Hans-Rudolf Schalcher
Local Alternatives:
Replacing Steel with Bamboo
44
Dirk Hebel
Working with the Invisible:
Unlocking the Processes and Practices
of Informal Housing
124
Neighborhoods In-Formation: Engaging
with Local Building Practices in Mumbai
Sheela Patel and Keya Kunte
55
Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava
23
Mumbai Slum Upgrades:
Can You Apply Bottom-Up Thinking?
146
4.
The Sustainable Densities Proposition:
Why Densification Is Not Always
the Answer
Uday Athavankar
Architecture Is Here to Stay
364
214
David Chipperfield
Value
Shlomo Angel
Informal Formality:
Learning from Squatter Settlements
155
Michael Sorkin
Roundtable Discussion
Introduction:
Putting a Price on Sustainability
The Politics and Planning of
Urban Compaction: The Case of
the London Metropolitan Region
Holger Wallbaum and Annika Feige
301
Household Management:
The Economy of
The Green New Deal:
Subordinating Finance to the Interests
of Society and the Ecosystem
Marc Angélil, Nirmal Kishnani,
Ashok B. Lall, Werner Sobek,
and Rolf Soiron
226
Philipp Rode
Garage Conversions
and Resilient Suburbs:
Adapting Suburban Environments
163
Aron Chang
390
The Compact City:
Sustainable, or Just Sustaining
the Economy?
310
Ann Pettifor
242
Case Studies
Harry Gugger and
Gwendolyn Kerschbaumer
Planning for Rural Settlements:
Shunyi, China, as a Case Study
Built for the Moment:
Designing for a Fast-Paced World
173
Zhang Yue
Beyond Regulations
Anne Lacaton and
Jean-Philippe Vassal
322
Sprawl: A Strategy?
From Closed System Dynamics
to Open Systems Ecologies
Lena Kleinheinz
253
185
Pierre Bélanger
Handle with Care:
How Useful Is the Research on
Green Building Prices?
Economical and Sustainable!
Twenty-one examples, compiled
and illustrated by the architecture
practice Something Fantastic,
of how economy and sustainability
go hand in hand.
Something Fantastic
64
98
140
208
238
304
344
384
338
Lessons Learned from Mumbai:
Planning Challenges for the
Compact City
Patrick McAllister
Appendix
267
3.
Rahul Mehrotra
Raising the Bottom Line:
How Sustainability Affects Occupant
Health and Productivity
Biographies
406
348
Density
Sustainability as the Rigorous
Use of Common Sense
Gail S. Brager
Image Credits
414
280
Introduction:
Revisiting the Compact City
Alejandro Aravena
205
Harry Gugger and
24
Balancing Sustainability, Quality,
and Affordability: The CASA Rating
for Affordable Housing
Donor Acknowledgment
415
358
Vishnu Swaminathan and
Martina Wengle
25
Putting Sustainability in the Black
Introduction by Ilka & Andreas Ruby and Nathalie Janson
Anyone who believes exponential growth can go on forever
on a finite planet is either a madman or an economist.
Kenneth Boulding, 19731
We’re not going to save the planet
by putting our country out of business.
George Osborne, 20112
British Tory MP George Osborne’s quip echoes a pernicious
belief among investors and developers: that sustainable
construction is more expensive than conventional
construction. A 2007 survey by the World Business Council
for Sustainable Development (WBCSB) found that business
leaders, on average, believed green buildings to be 17 percent
more expensive than conventionally designed buildings.3 The
same respondents also believed that buildings contribute only
19 percent of total carbon emissions; the erection, use, and
maintenance of our built environment are actually responsible
for around 30 to 40 percent.4, 5 With an environmental crisis
looming and rapid urbanization and population growth taxing
the capacity of the built environment, the construction
26
industry is in dire need of more sustainable measures.
Even though sustainability is widely held to be “the right
thing to do,” a major barrier to a sustainable revolution
in the construction industry has been its price, whether
perceived or real. Another study, this one by McGraw-Hill
Construction, asked firms to name the greatest challenge to
increasing green building activity. An overwhelming majority of
respondents cited higher first costs.6
This assumption—that sustainable construction costs more—
needs to be challenged. Not only because it’s dubious—the
WBCSB and the US Environmental Protection Agency put the
cost difference between green and conventional construction
at only a few percentage points—but also because it’s
founded on an outmoded way of evaluating the profitability
of a building.7 The calculations we use to define profitability
balance the initial investment in a building against its longterm operating costs and expected market price. A building’s
true price, however, goes beyond what it costs to buy
the components, hire the labor, and maintain the finished
product. Profitability calculations do not reflect our growing
awareness of a building’s social, ecological, and financial
impacts throughout its lifecycle—from resource extraction,
processing, and transport to manufacturing, use, repair,
maintenance, and eventually disposal and recycling (see
the contribution by Lena Kleinheinz, p. 322). These impacts
include lost carbon sinks when trees are cut down for lumber,
the carbon released into the atmosphere when that lumber
is transported, the environmental harm associated with
heating and cooling the building, health costs to the workers
who construct the building or those who work in it, and the
material wasted when destroying or renovating a building.
27
The impact of a building often transforms, intensifies, or
shrinks as one moves from the scale of an individual site
and building to that of the neighborhood, city, region, or
nation—all the way up to a planetary scale (see Harry Gugger
and Gwendolyn Kerschbaumer, p. 242, and Pierre Bélanger,
p. 253). Until we develop a holistic metric to track the farreaching benefits of sustainable construction—and the
hidden costs of conventional construction—across all of
these scales, the true prices of buildings will be difficult to
measure and the market will continue to favor conventional
buildings (see Holger Wallbaum and Annika Feige, p. 301).
Incidentally, the economic advantages of sustainable
solutions are becoming apparent in regions that do not
have the money to invest in conventional practices but have
sustainable local resources like clay (see Francis Kéré, p. 102)
or bamboo (see Dirk Hebel, p. 44).
As it stands, it’s still more economically viable in most of
the world for the construction sector to build in a way that’s
detrimental to the environment. Part of the problem is that
our contemporary economic system artificially separates the
health of a business from the health of the society in which
it is based and the health of the greater ecosystem, with
the latter being treated essentially as a resource to drive
growth. The push for efficiency and higher profits entices
private enterprises to cut corners where they can—lowering
wages, outsourcing jobs, using cheaper but more carbon
intensive forms of energy—which has ecological and social
consequences. Even though many investors and politicians
are concerned about these issues, both the private and
public sector are structurally handicapped when it comes
to addressing them. Few stakeholders can dedicate political
28
and financial capital to long-term issues such as climate
change when their performance is judged on a timetable of
biannual elections or quarterly profit reports. Because the
symptoms of climate change and the financial crisis often
appear far from their original sources, private enterprises
are rarely held accountable for the detrimental impacts they
have on the environment and society. The causal relationship
between construction and climate change is often
misunderstood; in a survey of American homeowners, almost
three quarters of respondents believed that their homes
had no or an “acceptable” impact on the environment.8
While individuals and commercial enterprises continue their
unsustainable practices, states and the global community
at large absorb the costs. We have to ask ourselves if this
is something that we can afford. As Rolf Soiron says in the
closing debate of this book, we need to “disincentivize
environmental harm.” He argues that not only would levying
fines on CO2 emissions and wasteful uses of land discourage
environmentally harmful practices, it would also provide a
budget to rehabilitate affected communities (see Roundtable
Discussion, p. 390).
Putting a price on harm is one way of encouraging greater
accountability. In the United States alone, buildings account
for 39 percent of total energy use, 68 percent of total
electricity use, and 12 percent of total water use. They also
contribute 38 percent of total carbon dioxide emissions,
contributing to the increasing incidence of asthma and other
respiratory illnesses.9 The costs of lost productivity and poor
health, though they should be the responsibility of polluters,
fall equally on everyone and affect the overall performance
of the economy (see Gail S. Brager, p. 348). Removing these
29
hidden subsidies to irresponsible practices—by taxing carbon
emissions, for example—would make sustainable buildings and
practices look like a bargain compared to conventional ones.
Such measures would turn the same logic that drives our
continued investment in conventional buildings on its head,
providing both a strong financial incentive for sustainable
construction and a personal stake in sustainability. In
Switzerland, for example, all household refuse must be
disposed of in expensive garbage bags; households are
therefore increasingly aware of how much it really costs to
remove their waste (see Something Fantastic, p. 98). But
it’s not all sticks; there are carrots too. Several countries
in Europe and eleven states in the United States have an
incentivized deposit-refund recycling system in which most
cans and bottles can be returned for a small deposit; they are
then recycled or cleaned and reused.
The pricing of harm would need to be regulated at a national
level, because of the complexity of such an endeavor and
because what yields short-term profits is not always in the
interests of society. In fact, many vital infrastructural and
other public services around the world have been privatized
for short-term liquidity, with poor long-term outcomes. Take
British Rail, the United Kingdom’s former public railway owner
and operator. Since its fragmentation and privatization in
1993, British taxpayers have paid more than twice as much
to support the railways, including large subsidies to failing
private businesses, even as train tickets have continuously
increased in price.10 At the same time, the United Kingdom
has seen an increase in car ridership, with congestion, air
pollution, and other negative consequences following. The
trains themselves have fallen behind the contemporary
30
standard for fuel-efficient motors, focusing instead on quicker
but less efficient journeys, which are more profitable.11
Swiss Federal Railways (SBB)—a company with only one
shareholder, the Swiss Confederation—by contrast continues
to provide smooth, highly efficient train service. Private
companies developed Switzerland’s rail network in the middle
of the nineteenth century, but over a period of 50 years,
privatized rail failed; stiff competition drove many companies
to the brink of bankruptcy. With these companies drawing
costly public subsidies, the Swiss public voted, in an 1898
referendum, to nationalize the railways; it was in the interest
of the country to unify its cantons with one coordinated
network. Today, the country is known for its dense and highly
coordinated railway system, which is completely electrified.
Improvements since the 1970s, when SBB sought to win back
some of the customers it had lost to cars, have focused not
on introducing high-speed rail but on carefully coordinating
rail with boat and bus services through a nodal system.
Swiss trains are not among the fastest in Europe, but the
perfect synchronization of the public transport system
not only helps to reduce overall travel time, it also allows
public transport to cover as much of each trip as possible,
increasing mobility throughout the country and opening up
new areas of investment for private enterprise. In 2010, the
Swiss traveled an average distance of 2,258 kilometers per
capita by rail—more than twice as far as the British average
and greater than the residents of any other country—
which has helped suppress automobile use in a country
also infamous for its sprawl.12 Rail companies throughout
Europe brag about high-speed investments; what often goes
unmentioned are cuts in the overall capacity of the network,
31
made, for example, by removing “unprofitable” lines that
serve rural communities.
Market failures in the provision of public goods like these
are widespread in an economy where the private sector is
wired to place short-term economic gain over broader, longterm concerns. Private enterprises work within their own
closed economic systems, expected by shareholders and
pressured by the exigencies of the market to operate as
profitably as possible. A company that voluntarily adopts
sustainable but “unprofitable” practices when its competitors
are not obligated to do the same will suffer in a competitive
marketplace. Private enterprise therefore cannot make
the world a better place by itself. It needs regulation and
governance to ensure that what is profitable is also socially
and environmentally just and that the playing field remains
level. Instead of laissez-faire economics, we need active
intervention in the economy to introduce regulation and
taxation that incentivizes socially and environmentally friendly
practices. A strong government—beholden to the people it
represents, concerned with public welfare and not growth for
growth’s sake—should be able to pass legislation, like carbon
taxes and minimum-wage laws, to make irresponsible practices
such as pollution, wasteful use of resources, or substandard
wages either unprofitable or illegal.
This is neither a new idea nor a radical one. Strong
governments in the form of social market democracies have
existed in Europe since the end of the Second World War,
when Europe looked for a “third way” in between one-party
communism and laissez-faire capitalism (see Ann Pettifor,
p. 310). While many countries are ramping up privatization,
32
tightening budgets, and dismantling public services as part of
their austerity policies, social market democracy is still strong
in Northern Europe. To provide a safety net against the social
and ecological risks associated with economic openness,
the Nordic states implemented strong universal welfare
programs and collective bargaining schemes, enacted high
taxes to support public spending and wealth distribution, and
invested in renewable energy, such as wind farms and wasteto-energy plants. Their efforts to address wealth and gender
inequality and protect the environment have not reduced
their economic competitiveness or harmed their quality of
life. Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Denmark all rank high in
indices of innovation, global competitiveness, happiness, and
prosperity.13
What’s more, the Nordic countries are at the forefront of
developing and consuming renewable energy. The Swedish
government, for example, levied a steep carbon tax in 1991,
which has made environmentally friendly energy sources more
financially attractive to customers and helped raise money for
Sweden to invest in its renewable energy program. In 2012,
48 percent of Sweden’s energy was derived from renewable
resources.14 The Nordic countries are not alone in recognizing
that the future of the economy is in renewable energies. The
Chinese government, too, is making the shift to renewable
resources, investing almost twice as much as the United
States in technology for renewable energy and attracting
$65 billion from private investors each year to fund Chinese
research and development.15
Depending on whom you ask, the Nordic countries were
able to weather the financial crisis—and still lower carbon
33
emissions and oil consumption—thanks either to the strength
of their welfare states or to the recent steps they have
taken to liberalize their economies. The reality is somewhere
in between; the Nordic model remains a combination of
socialism and liberalism, and this hybridity is its strength.
It encourages innovation—especially in the green sector,
where Sweden, Finland, and Denmark top the Eco-Innovations
Scoreboard—while giving the government and its constituents
greater authority to guide economic policy and balance shortterm economic growth with long-term social and ecological
concerns.16 Faced with depleting resources, unsustainable
amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and growing
wealth inequality around the world, we must recognize that
economic growth can no longer solve all our problems. It must
be guided. Continued growth provides jobs and improves
living conditions, but if liberalized too far, the economy
rewards those who hoard and abuse resources. In 2011, the
Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
reported that, out of the 35 OECD countries, Sweden had
seen the steepest increase in inequality over the last fifteen
years—starting, it should be noted, from a much lower point
than many other nations—due to neoliberal policies that
have cut taxes, reduced government spending and welfare,
weakened trade unions, and deregulated transport.17
In the coming years, Sweden, like other countries, will have
to learn how to manage economic growth in a sustainable
way. Elsewhere, in emerging economies, governments have
recently intervened to spread their wealth. Bolsa Familia in
Brazil, famous for its income disparity, is one such initiative.
The decade-old social program, which was consolidated and
expanded in the early 2000s, helps ensure that 50 million
34
Brazilians living in poverty see a share of the gains of the
country’s rapidly growing economy.18 In addition to minimum
wage legislation, investment in education, and higher
pensions, Bolsa Familia has helped provide a vital safety net
and opportunities to move up the income ladder. The cash
transfer program provides families below the poverty line a
monthly stipend of around R$32 ($14) for vaccinated children
up to the age of fifteen, R$38 ($17) for children sixteen to
seventeen still attending school, and additional R$32 stipends
for families with pregnant members or babies younger than
six months. It gives R$70 ($31), unconditionally, to each family
living in extreme poverty—which is to say, each family earning
less than R$70.19 This might not seem like much, but for a
country where almost a fifth of the population lives below
the poverty line, the impact has been impressive—both on a
local scale, where the cash transfers can more than double
a family’s income, and at a national scale. In addition to its
numerous benefits to the health and education of citizens,
Bolsa Familia has helped reduce the poverty rate in Brazil from
21 percent in 2003 to 11 percent in 2009 and the extreme
poverty rate from 10 percent in 2004 to 2.2 percent in 2009.20
The program costs Brazil only 0.5 percent of its GDP.
Since the success of Bolsa Familia, cash-transfer programs
have been introduced all over the world, most notably in
Mexico with Oportunidades and most recently in India—a
country of 1.2 billion people that remains deeply divided,
despite the impressive growth of its economy in recent
decades.21 The government hopes that, by transferring cash
directly, it can put poverty relief in the hands of those in
need; often, the Indian poor’s efforts to lift themselves up
from poverty are severely impaired by corruption and an
35
infamously opaque bureaucracy. Poverty itself presents
challenges: How can a country build a safety net for people
who, without bank accounts, addresses, or even identification
cards, effectively exist outside the formal economy? One
way is to recognize their efforts, in the absence of formal
mechanisms, to improve their livelihoods through the informal
sector—incremental investment in and expansion of a home,
for example, can provide a poor family with both shelter
and a source of income (see Matias Echanove and Rahul
Srivastava, p. 55). As investors and politicians pay more
attention to informal neighborhoods and affordable housing
in the developing world, local people and communities must
be involved in making decisions that will affect them. The
informal market is a huge part of the construction sector; new
models of representation will have to evolve to ensure that
investments made in informal neighborhoods are sustainable
and in the interests of their local communities. Such models
are already in development and even in practice: NGOs are
busy linking the efforts of local communities with existing
state programs (see Sheela Patel and Keya Kunte, p. 124),
field-testing social capital markets (see Geeta Mehta, p. 70),
and setting standards that balance quality, affordability,
and sustainability in housing for the poor (see Vishnu
Swaminathan and Martina Wengle, p. 358).
This book explores new paradigms of construction and
prosperity that can work with our environment, rather than
against it. It is titled after and inspired by the 4th Holcim
Forum, which was held in Mumbai, India by the Holcim
Foundation for Sustainable Construction in April 2013. The
three-day conference explored the complex relationships
among architecture, urbanization, and the economy. The book
36
draws on the knowledge of architects, engineers, and other
professionals from all over the world. No panacea for the
environmental, economic, and social problems that we face
today is presented in the book, but we can see two broad
strategies begin to emerge: short-term economic incentives
for sustainable construction and, in the long term, more
holistic approaches to building concerned less with profits
and more with social and ecological sustainability. Although
the two strands may seem to oppose one another, it is likely
that that the future of sustainability depends on both of
them and on the careful realignment of the interests of the
economy with those of sustainable construction.
Notes
1 Kenneth Boulding, testimony on Energy
Reorganization Act of 1973 before the US
Congress, first session, on H.R. 11510.
2 George Osborne, “Together We Will Ride Out the
Storm” (speech, Conservative Party Conference,
Manchester, United Kingdom, October 3, 2011),
Conservatives.com, http://www.conservatives.com/
News/Speeches/2011/10/Osborne_together_we_
will_ride_out_the_storm.aspx.
3 World Business Council for Sustainable
Development, Energy Efficiency in Buildings:
Business Realities and Opportunities (Geneva:
World Business Council for Sustainable
Development, 2007), 14.
4 Ibid.
5 According to the United Nations Program,
“the building sector contributes up to 30% of
global annual green house gas emissions and
consumes up to 40% of all energy.” United Nations
Environment Program, Buildings and Climate
Change: Summary for Decision-Makers (Paris:
UNEP, 2009), 3.
6 McGraw-Hill Construction, World Green Building
Trends (Bedford, MA: McGraw-Hill Construction,
2013).
7 See Energy Efficiency in Buildings and “Green
Building: Frequent Questions,” United States
Environmental Protection Agency, http://www.epa.
gov/greenbuilding/pubs/faqs.htm#14.
8 Robert Charles Lesser & Co., LLC, Green Building
Is Coming to a Market Near You. Are You Ready?
(Washington, DC: RCLCO, 2007), http://www.
usgbcncr.org/Documents/GreenMarketSnapshot.
pdf, 3.
9 United States Environmental Protection Agency,
“Buildings and Their Impact on the Environment: A
Statistical Summary,” April 22, 2009, http://www.
epa.gov/greenbuilding/pubs/gbstats.pdf.
10 Ian Taylor, “Why not… Nationalize the
Railways?” BBC, July 10, 2013, http://www.bbc.
co.uk/news/uk-politics-22700805. See also Andrew
Bowman, Peter Folkman, Julie Froud, Sukhdev
Johal, John Law, Adam Leaver, Michael Moran, and
Karel Williams, The Great Britain Robbery: Rail
Privatisation and After (CRESC: Public Interest
Report, 2013).
11 Roger Kemp, “Take the Car and Save the Planet:
The Environmental Impact of Train Travel,” IEE
Power Engineer, October/November 2004, 12–17.
12 “Grafiken UIC Statistik 2010,” LITRA, http://
www.litra.ch/de/?pos=10&section=downloads&cate
gory=32&downloads_search_keyword=.
37
13 See table in “The Secret of Their Success,”
The Economist, February 2, 2013, http://www.
economist.com/news/special-report/21570835nordic-countries-are-probably-best-governedworld-secret-their.
14 “Energy in Sweden - Facts and Figures
2012,” Swedish Energy Agency, http://www.
energimyndigheten.se/Global/Engelska/
Facts%20and%20figures/Energy%20in%20
Sweden%20facts%20and%20figures%20
2012%20(2).pdf.
1.
Resources
15 Steve Hargreaves, “China Trounces US in Green
Energy Investments,” CNN Money, http://money.
cnn.com/2013/04/17/news/economy/china-greenenergy/.
16 See “The Eco-Innovation Scoreboard,” The
Eco-Innovation Observatory, http://www.ecoinnovation.eu/index.php?option=com_content&view
=article&id=2&Itemid=34.
17 OECD, Divided We Stand: Why Inequality Keeps
Rising (OECD Publishing, 2011); for specific notes
on Sweden, see “Country Note: Sweden,” OECD,
http://www.oecd.org/els/soc/49564868.pdf.
18 Wyre Davies, ”Not Taken for Granted: Brazil
Celebrates Bolsa Familia,” BBC, October 30, 2013,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latinamerica-24743675.
19 “Benefîcios,” Ministério do Desenvolvimento
Social e Combate à Fome, http://www.mds.gov.br/
bolsafamilia/beneficios.
20 “Brazil Overview,” The World Bank, http://www.
worldbank.org/en/country/brazil/overview/.
21 ”India Rolls Out Cash Transfer Scheme for
Poor,” BBC, January 1, 2013, http://www.bbc.
co.uk/news/world-asia-india-20880436.
38
39
Reinventing Technology Locally
Introduction by Hansjürg Leibundgut
It has been 40 years since the first oil-price crisis, 20 years
since the inauguration of the term “sustainable development”
by the Brundtland Commission, and five years since the
financial shock of 2008. What is the state of sustainable
construction?
The inconvenient truth is that, although a lot of things
have been discussed, little has changed in the last 40 years
about our everyday behavior or the way we construct and
operate buildings. The number of buildings worldwide has
increased at least fourfold, harming the environment more
than ever before. Fortunately, all over the world, scientists,
architects, and engineers are working on new ideas and forms
to overcome our harmful behavior. But are these attempts
effective and timely enough? Gradual change in the system
has been favored and a 10 percent reduction in the use of
energy or the weight of a car or a plane has been celebrated.
Unfortunately, the “rebound effect”—when people respond to
increased energy efficiency by consuming more energy—and
our ever-increasing population far outstrip all improvements.
The worldwide economy relies on three pillars: raw materials
taken out of the soil, physical and mental human labor, and
capital, the result of the economic output of years past. The
economic system of the last 60 years used the environment—
the air, soil, and sea—to deposit “waste,” which is to say
material that was deemed no longer usable. It seemed cheaper
to dig up “new” minerals than to recycle the material we’d
40
41
already mined. It seemed cheaper to build the same buildings
all over the world with the same kind of materials and forms
than to use locally adapted solutions. These paradigms led to
the technologies that we have today.
land, whereas there are no geographical limitations to curtail
further expansion in Mexico City. This regional diversity
demands different considerations or measures to promote
sustainable development.
Fully transparent facades, without external shading, turn
high-rise buildings into giant solar collectors. The absorbed
heat is expelled with air, which is less efficient than water and
consumes costly space, making towers higher and heavier.
The export of high-rise tower technologies from Chicago
to Jakarta or Singapore is one of the most unsustainable
developments of the last century. These buildings use far
more building material in construction and electricity in
operation than old colonial-style houses shaded by local
vegetation. The globalization of construction also deepens the
divide between the countries and regions that predominantly
produce goods and resources and those that consume them.
Policies for sustainable development vary from nation to
nation, as do costs and economic incentives. The main
challenge in encouraging a more local and sustainable
approach to building and development will be convincing
economists and engineers that, in the long run, these
alternatives lead to better welfare for all than the existing
solutions. Engineers develop the plans; economists control
the capital necessary to make those plans a reality. They
materialize the built world and therefore determine the
sustainability of construction. It’s up to these two groups to
change the role technology and resources play in the economy
of sustainable construction.
We have to accept the progress of technology, but we
also need a new technical revolution, one based on local
materials, manufacturing, and energy sources. There neither
is a uniform global policy that will effectively achieve
sustainable development, nor should such an approach exist
for sustainable construction. The benefits or costs of a good,
service, or behavior are not homogenous all over the world.
For instance, in Afghanistan, long wooden beams are a very
scarce building material, whereas the potential for wind and
solar power is practically unlimited. By the Mediterranean,
seawater and solar energy are practically unlimited resources,
but there is a lack of capital to invest in solar-powered
seawater desalination plants. In Hong Kong, there are few
easily accessible construction sites due to the scarcity of
42
43
Local Alternatives: Replacing Steel with Bamboo
Dirk E. Hebel with Felix Heisel, Alireza Javadian, Mateusz Wielopolski,
Karsten Schlesier, and Dragan Griebel
At the Future Cities Laboratory in Singapore, Dirk Hebel and his team
review the history of bamboo as a reinforcement agent for concrete,
focusing on recent advances in reinforcement-capable bamboo composites
and their potential role in shaping a more sustainable and more just world.
Steel-reinforced concrete is the most
common building material in the world, and
developing countries use close to 90 percent
of the cement and 80 percent of the steel
consumed by the global construction sector.
However, very few developing countries have
the ability or resources to produce their
own steel, forcing them into an exploitative
import relationship with the developed
world. Out of 54 African nations, for
instance, only two are producing steel. The
other 52 countries all compete in the global
marketplace for this ever-more-expensive,
seemingly irreplaceable material.
But steel is not irreplaceable. There’s
a material alternative that grows in the
tropical zone of our planet, an area that
coincides closely with the developing world:
bamboo. Bamboo belongs to the botanical
family of grasses and is extremely resistant
to tensile stress, making it one of nature’s
most versatile materials. This has to do
with the way the grass evolved, adapting
to natural forces like wind. In contrast to
wood, the bamboo culm or haulm—the stem
of the grass—is thin and hollow. This allows
it to move with the wind, unlike a tree, which
tries to simply withstand any natural forces
it is exposed to. This adaptation for flexible
movement required nature to come up with a
very light but tension-resistant fiber in the
44
bamboo culm that is able to bend in extreme
ways without breaking. In its ability to
withstand tensile forces, bamboo is superior
to timber and even to reinforcement steel.
Bamboo is also a highly renewable and ecofriendly material. It grows much faster than
wood, is usually available in great quantities,
and is easy to obtain. It is also known for
its unrivaled capacity to capture carbon
and could therefore play an important role
in reducing carbon emissions worldwide—
another advantage for developing nations
in light of the trade in carbon emission
certificates. Simply from an economic
perspective, most developing nations should
be interested in the material. It could
strengthen local value chains, bring jobs and
trade to those countries, and lower their
dependency on international markets.
The great social, economic, and material
benefits of bamboo and its widespread
availability are not reflected in the
demand for the material, however. Despite
its strengths, bamboo has a number of
weaknesses as a construction material.
Water absorption, swelling and shrinking
behavior, limited durability, and vulnerability
to fungal attacks have limited most
applications of bamboo so far. Today,
bamboo is generally limited to traditional
↑ 1. As a cheap, light, strong, and renewable resource, bamboo
presents an appealing alternative to steel in reinforced concrete.
45
Steel producing countries world-wide↑ 2. The world’s steel-producing countries depicted in dark gray.
↑ 4. Map depicting the world’s natural bamboo habitat, outlined using red with black lines demarcating
Red line:
Global natural bamboo habitat (information from National Geographic, 1980)
the world’s tropical zone (information sourced from National Geographic, 1980).
Black line: World’s tropical zone
Comparison of maximum tensile strengths of different materials
600 MPa
820 MPa
700 MPa
375 MPa
400 MPa
Sisal
Steel
Flax
Bamboo
Carbon
Comparison of maximum tensile strenghts of different materials
↑ 3. A comparison of maximum tensile strengths of different materials shows
that bamboo is superior to steel in regard to withstanding tensile forces.
46
↑ 5. coincide
Developingwith
nations,
depicted
here in
dark gray,
coincideby
with
bamboo
Developing nations
natural
bamboo
habitats,
marked
thenatural
red line.
The habitats,
markedthe
by tropical
the red lines
(information
sourced
from
NationalGeographic,
Geographic, 1980).
black line delineates
zone
(information
from
National
1980).
47
applications of the culm as a structural
component in vernacular architecture;
early attempts to use it as an untreated,
non-composite reinforcement material
in concrete were not successful. The
technology to improve the material hasn’t
been developed yet, probably because most
countries with major bamboo resources are
in the world’s developing regions and have
little, if any, industrial capacity.
1. Natural bamboo
in fresh concrete
2. Cracks caused by the
swelling of bamboo
3. Dried bamboo
in expanded voids
↑ 6. Swelling of untreated natural bamboo
used as reinforcement in concrete.
48
At ETH Singapore’s Future Cities Laboratory
(FCL), a team of young researchers is
working to tap bamboo’s potential by
exploring new types of composite bamboo
material. The material’s tensile strength
aroused our interest as architects and
engineers and inspired us to investigate
the possibility of extracting the fiber
from the natural bamboo, transforming it
into a manageable industrial product, and
introducing it as a viable building material,
an alternative to steel and timber. Bamboo
composite material can be produced in
any of the familiar shapes and forms in
which steel and timber are produced. Like
them, the material can be used to build
wall structures for houses or any other
buildings. More interestingly, it can be used
for specific applications that best take
advantage of the material’s tensile strength,
such as reinforcement systems in concrete
or beams for ceilings and roof structures.
Worldwide, there are approximately 1,400
known species of bamboo. They demonstrate
a very wide range of material properties.
Some of the largest species can grow over
30 meters tall with a culm diameter of up
to 15 centimeters; others only reach a
height of around one meter with very thin
culms. Accordingly, the tensile strength
of the fibers also varies quite a bit. Some
have almost no tensile capacity at all, while
others are similar in strength to glass
fibers. All of this depends on the region
and climate in which the bamboo grows and
the evolutionary adaptations it underwent.
Using new technologies, we’re studying
which bamboo species are most suitable
for use as high tensile composite materials
for the construction industry and how we
can overcome some of bamboo’s material
limitations by combining it with adhesive
matter. The technology and machinery for
the production of such composite materials
could be described as “low tech” while the
research focusing on the development of
suitable adhesive and cohesive agents is
focusing more and more on a “high-tech”
micro- and nano-level.
International researchers have spent
decades searching for ways to capitalize on
bamboo’s strengths and transform bamboo
from a locally used, organic material into an
industrialized product. Interest in bamboo
as an industrialized construction material
can be traced back to the year 1914, when
PhD student H. K. Chow of MIT tested smalldiameter bamboo and bamboo splints as
reinforcement materials for concrete. Later,
many other research institutions, including
the Technische Hochschule Stuttgart under
Kramadiswar Datta and Otto Graf in 1935,
tried to find appropriate applications for
the outstanding mechanical and technical
properties of bamboo, with little success.
In 1950, Howard Emmitt Glenn of the
Clemson Agricultural College of South
Carolina (now Clemson University) started
to conduct more extensive research on
reinforcing concrete with natural bamboo.
He and his team actually tested bambooreinforced concrete applications by building
several full-scale buildings, utilizing his
experience from work he had conducted
in 1944 on bamboo-reinforced concrete
beams. Using only small-diameter culms
and bamboo splints, he demonstrated that
the application was feasible in principle;
49
however, bamboo’s elastic modulus,
susceptibility to insect and fungus attacks,
coefficient of thermal expansion, and
tendency to shrink and swell all represented
major drawbacks and failures. Due to debonding between the bamboo and concrete,
structures that were built using natural
bamboo as reinforcement collapsed days
after construction. After these disappointing
results, research almost came to a full stop.
In 1995, Khosrow Ghavami of the Pontifícia
Universidade Católica in Rio de Janeiro
started a new series of mechanical tests on
seven different types of bamboo. He hoped
to determine which was the most appropriate
species for use as reinforcement in newly
developed lightweight concrete beams.
Concrete beams reinforced with natural
bamboo splints demonstrated a remarkable
superiority, in terms of the ultimate applied
load they could support, to beams reinforced
with steel bars. This proved that, in
laboratory conditions, it is possible to utilize
the load-bearing capacity of bamboo in a
concrete application. However, the long-term
behavior of bamboo in concrete structures
remained problematic. The different thermal
expansion coefficients of bamboo and
concrete will inevitably result in the debonding of the two materials. Since bamboo
is a natural material, it will absorb water
when exposed to a concrete matrix, leading
to a progressive de-bonding of the bamboo
from the concrete due to excessive swelling
and shrinking. This expansion of the volume
will also create tiny cracks in the concrete,
weakening the structure more and more over
time and allowing biological attacks on the
bamboo.
At the FCL, extensive research is underway
into a renewable reinforcement material
made out of bamboo fibers and adhesive
agents. Our aim is to form a water-resistant,
non-swelling, durable composite material
50
that takes advantage of bamboo’s incredible
physical properties while mitigating its
undesirable qualities. The final material
reaches a density roughly three times
higher than that of natural bamboo. The
current research focuses on three areas:
treatment of the fiber, adhesives, and a
standardized production process. The
first, treatment of the fiber, is crucial to
the success of the project. Only if the
capacity of the fiber stays intact during a
process of extraction and composition will
the necessary properties be maintained. In
addition, we need to eliminate the natural
sugars in the organic material without doing
any harm to the fiber structure; a sugarfree substance is unattractive to bacteria
and resists fungal attacks. The second
focus, developing effective adhesives,
investigates the behavior of and interplay
between organic and inorganic materials.
The adhesive controls limiting factors such
as water resistance, thermal expansion,
and flammability. The third aspect, the
standardization of a production process,
is crucial for production in developing
territories in order to guarantee safety and
to certify the product as a building material.
As bamboo is still, in most countries, not
considered to be an industrial processed
resource, standardization criteria and
systems need to be developed to conduct
the research on the strictest possible
scientific terms.
If successful, the research could provide
a starting point for the introduction of
new and adapted technologies that take
a widespread natural resource as their
basic premise. Today, bamboo costs less
than a quarter as much, by weight, as steel
reinforcement. Because steel is fifteen
times denser than natural bamboo, the
figures by volume are even more impressive.
In Southeast Asia alone, there is enough
bamboo already in cultivation to provide
↑ 7. With the help of a newly established fiber laboratory, the Future Cities Lab (FCL) in Singapore is tackling
bamboo's water absorption and vulnerability to potential fungi attacks, with extensive test series underway.
↑ 8. The FCL’s research focuses on the treatment of bamboo fibers, adhesive
agents, and the standardization and transferability of the production process.
51
25 times as much bamboo composite as
there is today demand for construction
steel in the same area. Bamboo’s natural
habitat is largely congruent with developing
territories, which, with this new technology,
could potentially develop substantial
value chains. Farmers, collection centers,
distributors, and finally production facilities
could form a strong economic power—so
long as the bamboo is not simply exported
as a raw material. Developing countries
must develop and sustain knowledge and
industrial know-how in order to strengthen
their economic capacities. The production
of a high-strength building material could
establish strong new rural–urban linkages
and create an alternative source of revenue
for farmers. Expanding bamboo cultivation
would help farmers in other ways, too; due
to its fast growth, bamboo can secure open
soil and protect it against erosion. Being a
grass, bamboo also keeps the water table
high and therefore improves the productivity
of adjacent fields planted with food crops.
Bamboo could play an important role not
only as a traditional resource for vernacular
construction but also as the major
component of an industrialized product,
enabling the creation of a “smoke-free”
industry in developing nations.
↑ 9. A prototype of bamboo-reinforced concrete developed by
the FCL using a new bamboo composite that’s water resistant,
non-swelling, and durable.
52
Today, most developing territories—with an
ever-growing population, rising urbanization,
and, consequently, an ever-increasing need
for housing structures—are found in a belt
around the equator. East Africa, for example,
is urbanizing at a rate of 5 percent per year.1
Singapore, where we are conducting our
research, neighbors the “magic triangle,”
the fastest developing territories in the
world today: India, China, and Indonesia.
Within a radius of 4,000 kilometers—only 9.8
percent of the globe’s surface area—lives
one third of the world’s population. These
2.5 billion people, whose number is expected
to increase to 3.4 billion by 2025, place
very high pressure on global environmental
sustainability.2 As urban populations grow,
so does the demand for materials and
resources to support them. Where such
resource demands were once satisfied by
local and regional hinterlands, they are
increasingly global in scale and reach. Steelreinforced concrete is today the most-used
construction material worldwide, even in
territories where, for lack of resources
or know-how, steel is not and cannot be
produced.
The last century has seen an unprecedented
transfer of products and predefined
solutions—instead of capacity-building
programs—from the Global North to
the Global South, under the rubric of
“development aid.” The economic incentives
for the North are obvious: when developed
nations introduce, for example, their
reinforced concrete technology—and all the
attendant norms and standardizations—to
developing nations, those countries must
also acquire the proper machinery, the
technical expertise to maintain them, and
the building materials suitable for those
machines, and they must buy all of those
things from the North. This phenomenon
has generated transcontinental, globespanning material flows and has profound
consequences for the sustainability,
functioning, sense of ownership, and
identity of future cities. The consequence
is the division of our planet between those
who produce goods and services and develop
the means to do so and those who are meant
just to consume.
It is impossible to ignore the Chinese
dominance of the present-day construction
industry in Africa. In this situation, the
division between producers and consumers
is even bolder than just explained: the
development of new and innovatively
adapted technologies is removed from
53
the agenda completely, as are questions
of sustained quality, health impacts, and
production circumstances. Chinese products
and services are, at the moment, simply
more affordable for developing nations
than investing in the development of their
own technologies, skills, and intellectual
capacity. And why would countries like China
have an interest in changing this condition
by teaching young Africans how to overcome
such dependencies by developing their own
know-how?
Bamboo has the potential to revolutionize
the concrete sector. This revolution could be
driven by developing nations in the tropical
zone, which would be a first step toward
reversing the old North-to-South trade
routes. A material that’s superior to the
steel conventionally used in the construction
sector could be produced and marketed in
the South and exported to the North. The
preconditions for this would be a willingness
and courage on the part of developing
nations to acknowledge their great potential
and invest in such new technologies and
material research themselves, rather than
waiting for the North to send prefabricated
“solutions” to them. This will require a
change of mentality and the establishment
of research capacities as well as better
systems to protect intellectual-property
rights. Real development aid—instead of just
shipping products produced and protected
in the North—will also be crucial to sustain
these changes and reverse the status quo.
Our homogeneous, world-spanning building
industry no longer asks the most obvious
questions: What materials are locally
available? How can I utilize them in the
construction process? We need to start
research projects with local universities
and other institutions, such as vocational
training centers or material testing
operations. Developing nations themselves
54
do not devote enough attention or resources
to exploring these questions and developing
local solutions. Instead, a catalogue of
engineered answers dominates our thinking
and doing, suppressing any possible
inventions or progress toward alternatives.
The project for urban sustainability must be
global in ambition, but it cannot be a matter
of applying a universal set of rules. Rather,
sustainability requires a decentralized
approach that both acknowledges the global
dimension—climate change, for example—
and is, at the same time, sensitive to the
social, cultural, aesthetic, economic, and
ecological capacities of particular places to
thrive and endure. We believe that the most
common plant growing in the developing
regions of our planet will play an important
role in future economic and environmental
sustainability if it is effectively utilized by
the building industry.
Notes
1 World Urbanization Prospects, the 2011 Revision,
United Nations, Department of Economics and
Social Affairs, Population Division, last modified
April 26, 2012, http://esa.un.org/unup/.
2 Ibid.
Image Source
Luis Marden, “Bamboo, the Giant Grass,” National
Geographic 158, no. 4 (1980): 502–29.
Neighborhoods In-Formation: Engaging with Local
Building Practices in Mumbai
Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava
Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava of URBZ, a Mumbai-based
research and action collective, introduce the idea of “neighborhoods information” as an alternative to the euphemistic “informal settlements”
or the pejorative “slums,” arguing that developers must work with and
support the autonomous efforts of the residents of these vibrant, valuable
communities.
The apparent messiness of low-rise, highdensity, diverse “informal” neighborhoods
in Mumbai often conceals a high level of
functionality and effectiveness in their
organization. Likewise, their legal status
must be seen within the larger framework
of Mumbai, where the majority of buildings
are built on contested land and with
various degrees of compliance to codes and
regulations. In such a context, the label
“informal” seems inadequate from both
physical and legal points of view. There
is a method and a reason to the city’s
apparent madness. It must be understood if
meaningful planning is at all a priority.
Far from being formless or irrational,
neighborhoods in-formation continually
generate structures and institutions that
respond to local needs and means. They are
typically mixed-use and overlap economic,
social, and residential functions, at both
the level of the individual home and that
of the community.1 They also tend to be
more economically and environmentally
sustainable, as they optimize the use and
capacity of available resources. This is
attested by the fact that the six or seven
million people who represent the city’s
poorer half manage to live on less than
15 percent of its land. In a city that is
among the very densest in the world,
this keeps one primary issue of wasteful
consumption in check: that of precious
urban space itself.
To further appreciate the sustainability of
these neighborhoods, we need to define
sustainability not as an illusory zeroemission target or as legal compliance
with certain “green” standards, but as the
creative optimization of available resources
—environmental, economic, infrastructural,
social, or cultural. In this optimization
process, local factors are of prime
importance, whether in the exploitation
of underground water with simple wells,
the use of a strategic pedestrian artery
as a retail venue, multiplying the uses of
any given space, building in proximity to
affordable train lines, soliciting family
networks, or sharing trust among community
members. Our vision of a sustainable context
is one that forges an active relationship of
use with its environment, both social and
“natural.” This produces a regenerating
and constantly renewing environment and
economy. In contrast, economies that rely
principally on the exploitation or speculation
of resources tend to damage both the
55
environment at large and the way people
spontaneously relate to it.
Beyond the Informal: “Enformal” Processes
and Neighborhoods In-Formation
We believe that urban planners, architects,
and policymakers have much to learn from
neighborhoods in-formation, in particular
when it comes to the local management
of resources and processes. Among many
other things, they provide affordable
housing to a city in dire need of it. Ignoring
the processes at work in the city results
in policies and interventions that blindly
“redevelop” high-potential habitats into
inert, monofunctional housing blocks that
are drained of economic energy and social
dynamism.
There is a marked tendency in the social
and natural sciences to dismiss phenomena
whose function cannot be identified. For
instance, the portions of a genome for which
no function is recognized are colloquially
referred to as “junk DNA” by scientists,
regardless of the fact that the “junk”
portion is far larger than the identified
portions and is waiting to be decoded
and interpreted. Likewise, academics,
planners, and policymakers call lowincome habitats that develop outside the
planning framework “slums” or “informal
settlements.” From a purely quantitative
point of view, these areas represent the
norm rather than the exception, yet they are
seen as irrational, marginal, and deviant.
At best, the phrase “informal settlements”
evokes irregularity; at worst, it suggests
illegality. More insidiously, it classifies entire
neighborhoods as normatively undesirable,
socially dysfunctional, and therefore in need
of urgent intervention. It places the onus of
intervention on the formalization of these
areas, which is usually achieved through
forceful redevelopment projects that are
supposed to bring formal logic to previously
illogical, formless places.
Our own interventions build on the logic and
needs of incrementally developed habitats.
We work with local actors, employing a
range of activities and partnerships. Our
interventions are based on an approach
in which action, professional engagement,
and research are part of a single process;
we use the knowledge embedded in
neighborhoods as a starting point. URBZ,
our activist interface and networking
platform, and the Institute of Urbanology,
our reflective and knowledge-processing
space, represent this ongoing interplay.
Our observations and engagements over
the last six years have helped make a case
for developing the story of neighborhoods
in-formation into a larger framework
of official and professional protocol. In
order for our practice and our intellectual
engagement to come together, we refuse
to take preconceptions and clichés as our
starting point. Instead, we develop our
own understanding and concepts based on
ground-level observations, as well as the
relevant literature. In turn, these provide
entry points for us to develop strategies
of engagement in the local context. We
elaborate some of these concepts in the
following section.
56
Our work shows that, on the contrary, many
areas classified as slums by the government
are undergoing a constant process of
“structuration” driven by local actors who
incrementally improve and organize their
neighborhoods. We find Anthony Giddens’s
concept of structuration to be a useful
descriptor, as it concerns the delicate,
interactive way in which structure and
agency reproduce social systems.2 Likewise,
urban habitats regenerate and reproduce
themselves through a similar balance
between extraneous and internal factors.
This happens in all forms of habitats, and
concerns what Michel de Certeau calls
the “practice of everyday life,” which
shapes our neighborhoods gradually and
insidiously, but also purposefully and
meaningfully.3 Nowhere is that process
more apparent than in neighborhoods that
have been largely left to themselves by the
authorities. Here, the expression of agency
takes on another dimension altogether as it
produces deeply contextualized social and
urban forms.
Ananya Roy remarks that informal
settlements “are neither anomalous nor
irrational; rather, they embody a distinctive
form of rationality that underwrites a
frontier of metropolitan expansion.”4
We push the argument a little further:
describing settlements as “informal” is
counterproductive, as it undermines the
form-giving processes at work there. We
put the emphasis on local agency in the
continuous improvement of localities. The
term “neighborhood in-formation” expresses
the negentropic processes at work in the
formation of unplanned—or rather locally
planned—neighborhoods. Sustainability
is on our minds, not so much in the sense
of mitigating entropy (conservation and
durability) as in the sense of enabling formgiving dynamics. We believe that recognizing
emergent forms and functions and tolerating
the absence of form where it cannot be
recognized are integral aspects of achieving
higher sustainability.
The concept of neighborhoods information also refers to the rich notion of
“information.” The aspect of information
that we emphasize here is its production
and processing, which necessarily imply
a relationship between the emitter and
receiver. Laurent Thénévot reminds us that
“information comes from ‘informe’, which
originally meant ‘give form to’—‘enformer’
in Old French, ‘enforme’ in Middle English.” 5
By giving form, one allows experiences to
be communicated, discussed, and engaged.
Giving form is a creative act, which forces
researchers to position themselves vis-à-vis
the object of their study and practitioners to
engage with the context.
The complexity of local development
processes, which merge construction skills
with economic transactions and social
networks, means that the physical and the
nonphysical cannot be neatly dissociated.
Thus the “forms” we observe never belong
to just one realm. They are, rather, nonfinite
assemblages of people, things, relations,
and institutions. What we decide to
recognize as a form and what we ignore are
necessarily related to a certain project or
vision. The informal settlement narrative is
too often instrumentalized by proponents
of redevelopment and motivated by the
will to control space or speculate on its
value. In Mumbai, this vision has produced a
landscape of high-rise buildings and heavy
transportation infrastructure dominated
by top-heavy urban development practices,
which reduces local agency in urban
formation to its minimal expression.
The in-formation counter-narrative that we
are proposing sees value in the generation
of urban, social, and economic forms by local
actors, and defends the idea that, along
with cultural diversity and cosmopolitanism,
cities should celebrate the variety of their
habitats. Our work with small builders in
Shivaji Nagar (Deonar), Dharavi, Bhandup,
and other parts of the city is based on
an engagement with neighborhood life.
Whether it is design studios organized
with local schools, design collaborations
between architects and local builders,
or participatory planning workshops, our
interventions rely on the recognition of
existing organizational patterns rather than
the imposition of ready-made “solutions.” In
57
the collaboration itself, new forms and ideas
emerge that have transformative potential.
This approach stems from our observation
that even if most people in neighborhoods
classified as slum areas do not have legal
tenure of their homes, they develop a
sense of entitlement after living there for
one or two generations. This entitlement
is reinforced by the presence of political
parties that partially protect their
occupancy rights. Over time, residents
invest in their homes and businesses,
improve their structures, and build higher
and better. “Slum dwellers” often leverage
their homes to generate income, for example
by building an extra floor and renting
it out to relatives or newcomers. Most
neighborhoods are mixed use, and a large
number of residents use their homes as
workspaces.
A web of local owners, contractors, laborers,
carpenters, electricians, plumbers, and
material providers construct the houses.
Their structures are built locally in a
“vernacular” style. However, they are made
with industrial products such as bricks,
corrugated sheets, cement, steel pipes,
and I-beams. These products are bought at
market prices from hardware and material
stores located in the neighborhood itself.
As any middle-class homeowner would,
homeowners and contractors in these
neighborhoods generally choose high-quality
materials over low-cost ones. An investment
in quality is justified if it means enhanced
use value in the form of higher living
standards or a greater income-generating
capacity for the structure.
Neighborhoods in-formation have an
internal energy and an ability to harness
resources—both people and materials—that
provide a template for those interested in
environmentally and socially sustainable
58
urban practices. In particular, they draw on a
range of economic resources—from tradable
physical labor and community resources to
local credit—that are based on economizing
space and cost and enhancing use value by
making spaces functional at various levels,
in economic as well as residential terms.
Planning and Policy Dimensions
The dominant economic arrangements and
urban plans today, using speculation as
fuel, encourage wasteful forms and work
on a different scale and logic. The value of
real estate is now completely dissociated
from the use of space and is mostly based
on anticipated future returns. This has
encouraged the emergence of a particular
kind of urban landscape: overbuilt,
segregated, often with many vacant spaces,
and—by itself—not economically dynamic.
Within such a context, an increasing number
of “green” buildings are produced, but their
overall impact on the environment, either in
positive or negative terms, remains limited.
In contrast, when urban forms encourage
intensive use and increase land values by
multiplying use across sectors and functions,
they work on a different economic logic,
with a different set of actors. These need
to be seen as sustainable practices too, in
a manner that goes beyond the question of
material use alone. For us, the question of
sustainable urban practices has to include
the overall arrangement and contexts
that produce built forms. Unfortunately,
neighborhoods in-formation and the
practices that exist within them—which
actually represent sustainable ideals and are
economically vibrant—are instead lumped
together with the broader category of urban
“problems” that need to be “solved.”
According to Kalpana Sharma, the thousands
of units in Dharavi—Mumbai’s most
↑ 1. The tool-house, a multi-use building for living and working, represents
the dominant building typology in Dharavi, Mumbai. The three-story house
comprises a food business and the owner’s apartment on the ground floor, an
embroidery workshop-cum-living space and a rental apartment on the first
floor, and a second rental apartment and URBZ’s office on the top floor.
59
celebrated neighborhood in-formation—
involved in recycling, food processing,
embroidery, and leather products constitute
a majority of its economic fabric.6 Some have
estimated the overall turnover of Dharavi
to be in the $500 million range annually;
others put the figure much higher.7 We must
treat figures and numbers with caution,
especially when dealing with the economies
embedded in such neighborhoods; the media
are fond of quantifying economic activity
without necessarily explaining how they
come to these numbers. Even quantitative
studies tend towards speculation for
lack of paperwork and formal accounting.
However, what cannot be denied is that all
inquiries into Dharavi’s economy have clearly
identified a high level of economic dynamism.
Unfortunately, the civic authorities do not
regard this economic dimension when trying
to address the issue of urban housing or
improving the neighborhoods they refer to as
slums. They tend to address it in very limited
ways. Interventions by public planners
and private developers have, by and large,
resulted in poor-quality construction and
an inability to connect with the local scale.
The government is now actively encouraging
market-driven interventions that crosssubsidize the construction of affordable
housing stock. This is mainly done to
release land for market-friendly real estate
development—in a market that is hostile to
older mixed-use forms and heterogeneous
habitats.
↑ 2. Many tool-houses in Dharavi were built incrementally. These
sketches illustrate the process through which a temporary vending
stall becomes a semi-permanent structure, which itself consolidates
into a permanent house that keeps expanding over time to become a
residential and income-generating space. The story of a tool-house,
multiplied thousands of times, become the story of incrementally
growing neighborhoods and economies—and that of the “virtuous
cycle” between local urban and economic development.
60
The government’s Slum Rehabilitation
Scheme in Mumbai is an example of this
approach: land in officially designated
“slum areas” is cleared of its erstwhile
occupants, who are relocated to vertical
structures, while developers receive
valuable “transferable building rights.”
In other cities, developers are directly
purchasing cheap land wherever possible
and targeting new buyers from the lowermiddle-class sector who previously could
not afford housing at market rates. There,
housing is made affordable by lowering
construction costs, minimizing the footprint
of individual units, and scaling up the size
of construction projects. The result is a real
estate “product” with rapidly degrading
value that is bought and sold speculatively
by a middle class looking for affordable
property investment rather than affordable
living spaces. The people at the proverbial
“bottom of the pyramid,” who are, in theory,
the target group for affordable housing
schemes, rarely benefit.
The present housing shortage in India is
estimated to be about 25 million units,
and that number is expected to rise to
30 million by 2020.8 The logic of making
housing affordable by reducing the cost of
construction and maximizing the numbers
of individual units has led to all kinds of
malpractice. After a few years in existence,
affordable housing blocks typically start
crumbling, leading to higher maintenance
costs and lower real estate value. Very
soon, they look worse than what they were
meant to replace and seem ready to be
redeveloped themselves. This provokes us to
consider new ways of conceiving, producing,
financing, and designing affordable housing.
We can start by recognizing that many
neighborhoods can produce their own
housing stock. From this perspective, the
so-called slums of the city can be seen
as direct attempts to resolve the housing
shortage through a different construction
and financial system. Of course, the
argument is faced with many challenges—
legal, political, and economic—and questions
about design, the history of urban planning,
twentieth-century visions of modern cities,
and other rarely discussed issues that are
pertinent to a critical and effective policy
and practice about affordable housing.
61
It is also important to note that
infrastructural improvements are
already happening in many low-income
neighborhoods and that the recognition
of occupancy rights at a political level is
a reality in Mumbai. At present, however,
they happen only under the cover of
local political patronage. For example,
locally elected corporators are usually
more sympathetic to the needs of their
constituency than the bureaucracy.
They may have to struggle with the
municipal office of their own corporation.
Bureaucrats can make arbitrary choices
and often encourage a local system of
extracting revenue outside the state’s
formal apparatus. This tension between
bureaucracy and elected representatives
causes imbalances that residents must
negotiate on a daily basis.
Our approach attempts to transform these
existing impulses into a viable model for
addressing the economic and residential
problems that face the urban poor in
megacities like Mumbai. This is a starting
point for an urban practice that brings
together corporate and local economic
actors, governments, professionals such
as architects and urban planners, and
residents.
Bring an Old Paradigm Back to the Future
We are currently collaborating with
professional architects and local builders
in neighborhoods officially designated
as slums, co-creating new designs and
construction techniques. We have also
started providing high-quality construction
materials, in small quantities, in places that
have traditionally been redlined by highend suppliers. In the process, we have been
learning alongside our local partners and
have gotten involved with projects in ways
that are not available in highly regulated and
standardized development practices in other
parts of the city.
We draw on a long history of practices
and policies, developed mostly in South
America, which recognize people’s ability
to come up with the best housing and
habitat solutions for themselves. States
and global organizations like the World
Bank have also taken up these ideas in
successful but aborted programs such as
the slum upgrading schemes in Mumbai in
the 1980s. In Asia, we recognize the closer,
almost overlapping relations that habitats
have with economic functions, with the
effective combination of spaces such as
the bazaar and home, the shop-house,
and what we refer to as the “tool-house.”
Instead of seeing them as a part of the
informal world, we point out their kinship
to some urban forms in developed Asian
cities, like Tokyo. Similar typologies and
urban forms are spread all across Asia and
can be seen even in settlements referred to
as slums.
62
We have found that many local builders
and masons working in neighborhoods
in-formation produce high-quality
affordable housing at a cost that no large
or institutional actor can compete with.
The relationship between builders and their
clients, based on community and friendship
networks, is what ensures the quality of the
work. In these transactions, oral contracts
are respected.
If we can simply follow the logic of what
is already happening and encourage
bureaucratic and institutional structures
to be more responsive, things will improve
drastically. We are presently encouraging
professionals, urban practitioners, and even
some corporate groups to get involved. We
hope this will help us produce a city with
higher-quality infrastructure and economic
life and an inclusive ethos for all its
citizens.
We are not reinventing the wheel, but
simply tapping into the existing logic of
neighborhoods in-formation, as well as
drawing on a treasure trove of defunct
programs that speak as much about the
possibilities as about the limits of innovative
approaches in the context of Mumbai. We
feel that the efforts of many community
groups, cooperatives, and well-meaning
representatives of these neighborhoods
should be recognized and fully integrated
into urban plans and policy frameworks for
upgrading and the provision of affordable
housing.
Let us not squander the value and great
potential of neighborhoods in-formation
because we lack the imagination to see how
they can become highly desirable habitats.
We only need to recognize the validity of
incrementally improving neighborhoods and
support the initiative of their residents by
bringing new knowledge, technologies, and
materials into circulation. Neither the need
to provide infrastructure provision nor a
lack of apparent formal coherence should
ever be used as an excuse for wholesale
redevelopment.
Notes
1. See Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava,
“The High Rise & the Slum: Speculative Urban
Development in Mumbai,” in Handbook of Urban
Economics & Planning, eds. Nancy Brooks, Kieran
Donaghy, and Gerrit-Jan Knaap (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011).
2. Anthony Giddens, Central Problems in Social
Theory: Action, Structure, and Contradiction in
Social Analysis (Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1979), 92.
3. Michel de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien, vol.
1, Arts de faire (Paris: Gallimard, 1990).
4. Ananya Roy, “Why India Cannot Plan Its
Cities: Informality, Insurgence and the Idiom of
Urbanization,” Planning Theory 8 (2009): 86.
5. Laurent Thévenot, “Les investissements de
forme,” in Conventions économiques, ed. Laurent
Thévenot (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France,
1986).
6. Kalpana Sharma, Rediscovering Dharavi: Stories
from Asia’s Largest Slum (Delhi: Penguin, 2000).
7. “India: Inside the Slums,” The Economist,
January 27, 2005.
8. “Affordable Housing in India: An Inclusive
Approach to Sheltering the Bottom of the Pyramid”
(Jones Lang LaSalle, 2012), http://www.asiapacific.
joneslanglasalle.com/india/Affordabl_%20Housing_
in_India_2012-mailing.pdf.
Retrofitting infrastructure is not rocket
science. It has been done in many parts of
the world, including India. In fact, thanks
to the incredible resourcefulness of local
actors, much of it is already in place. Form,
structure, institutions, and agency are
there. Only recognition and wholehearted
support is missing to effectively integrate
neighborhoods in-formation and transform
the city as a whole.
63
Example from
The core ideas of the SRI method
are planting younger rice seedling
singly, rather than in bunches,
giving them more room to grow,
and watering them sparingly.
Bihar, India
Doing more with less
Farmers in the northeast of India have
drastically increased their rice harvest, from
four or five tons per hectare per year to ten
or more—as much as a world-record-setting
22.4 tons, in one farmer’s case—using no
expensive, genetically manipulated seeds,
no sophisticated pesticides, and less water
than conventional methods. What they did
use was a different cultivation technique,
64
the so-called System of Rice Intensification,
or SRI. The system, developed by a Jesuit
priest, was first used in Madagascar in the
1980s. Instead of tightly planting bunches
of mature seedlings, farmers plant much
younger seedlings—sometimes little more a
week old—one at a time, spacing them much
more widely. They then irrigate the rice
fields much more sparingly and carefully
tend to each seedling, weeding the fields
frequently. The technique is more labor
intensive than conventional rice farming,
but yields per acre are much higher, making
it attractive to small-scale farmers who
have limited space for planting. And more
efficient use of space, reduced water
usage, and the ability to forgo genetically
engineered seeds and chemical pesticides
all make SRI as ecologically friendly as it is
financially rewarding.
Source: Chris Malloy, “Instant Rice: A French
Priest’s Simple Growing Technique Is
Revolutionizing the World’s Grain,” Modern
Farmer, August 8, 2013, http://modernfarmer.
com/2013/08/feeding-the-world-a-simpletechnique-to-quadruple-rice-harvests/.
65
Example from
Zurich, Switzerland
B
A more precise schedule
can save airlines fuel and money
Swiss’s new scheduling
strategy has planes arrive
and land just in time.
Landing permits are usually
distributed on a first-come,
first-served basis. This
leads pilots to rush to their
destination, only to waste
fuel flying holding patterns
while waiting in line.
A
Swiss International Air Lines AG decided
to reorganize their landing schedules at
their main hub, Zurich, to eliminate holding
patterns. Each plane bound for the airport
is assigned a five-minute landing window
right at takeoff, and from then on plots a
course that will take it into final approach
66
just in time. In some cases, this means flying
below maximum speed. Doing so—instead
of reaching the airport as fast as possible
and then having to queue in the air, wasting
huge amounts of fuel—the airline saves
fifteen million Swiss francs ($16.5 million)
a year. Generally, 30 percent of an airline’s
expenses are fuel costs, so saving fuel is
not only an environmental concern but also
a crucial economic one. And with planes
spending less time circling Zurich, the new
scheduling strategy is good news not only
for the company’s bottom line, but also for
everyone living near the airport.
Source: Sandro Spaeth, “Swiss spart dank
tieferem Tempo Millionenbeträge,” 20 Minuten,
July 18, 2013, http://www.20min.ch/finance/
news/story/Swiss-spart-dank-tieferem-TempoMillionen-27201218.
67
Example from
Paris, France
A tower in hand is worth two
on the drawing board
For the money
needed to tear down
an existing apartment and replace it
with a new one...
...you can renovate
and expand three or
four existing apartments.
Tour Bois-le-Prêtre stands in Paris, but
it shouldn’t actually be there. The tower,
built in the 1950s and refurbished in the
’80s, was supposed to be torn down and
replaced by new, more energy-efficient,
higher-comfort social housing projects.
This seemed economically and ecologically
illogical to Paris architecture firm Lacaton
& Vassal, known for their clever, unorthodox
solutions and economically sensible thinking.
Working out the probable costs, they
68
realized that, for the price of demolishing
and rebuilding one apartment, three or
four existing apartments in the tower
could be fully refurbished and enlarged
with a layer of conservatory-like rooms
and additional balconies. They could even
add floor-to-ceiling windows and more
elevators. Armed with these projections,
they managed to convince the building owner
to opt for refurbishment. Today, the building
meets low-energy building standards—to
say nothing of its very open and sunlit
atmosphere. Furthermore, the landlord is
now able to rent out 30- to 50-percentlarger apartments at the same price per
square meter as before. The intervention
was so well orchestrated that inhabitants
were able to stay in the building through
most of the construction process, another
crucial measure to keep costs down. The
Tour Bois-le-Prêtre would be a socially,
ecologically, and economically sustainable
structure under any circumstances, but its
greatest innovation was avoiding the waste
of energy and resources required to tear
down a perfectly upgradeable old building
and replace it with a new one.
Source: Ilka Ruby, Andreas Ruby, and the German
Architecture Museum, eds., Druot, Lacaton &
Vassal: Bois-le-Prêtre (Berlin: Ruby Press, 2012).
69
Social Capital Credits:
A New Currency for Sustainability
Geeta Mehta
Can a new currency enable informal communities to spend social capital on
improving their lives and livelihoods? Geeta Mehta, of Columbia University,
thinks so. She explains how Social Capital Credits, or SoCCs, could change
life in Mumbai, India, and how they’re already being introduced through a
pilot program in Kumasi, Ghana.
The problems of inadequate housing and
infrastructure in cities in developing
countries will not be solved by government
funding or philanthropic largesse, but by
organized self-help, bankable affordable
housing, and the market economy.
According to World Bank estimates,
allowing private enterprises and loosening
protectionist state controls helped China
reduce the number of people living on less
than $1.25 per day from 85 percent of the
population in 1981 to 13 percent in 2008
(accounting for inflation), so—even when
various critiques of the Chinese system
are taken into account—we know that the
market economy can work to lift people
out of poverty.1 However, in unevenly
developing countries like India and Ghana,
poverty has persisted through economic
liberalization and impressive growth. Slums
have proliferated due to widening income
disparities. So the question is whether, in
a democratic society, free-market economic
principles can be used, with the help of
social media and big data, to facilitate
everyone’s access to a reasonably good
home, health, safety, and infrastructure.
This essay proposes a system of Social
Capital Credits (SoCCs) that can act as
a new “currency” to help harness and
trade the social capital of communities
70
for better housing and infrastructure,
working to create more equitable cities.
Just as carbon credits encourage and
reward environmental responsibility using
market mechanisms, SoCCs as proposed
here would encourage and reward social
responsibility using market mechanisms.
SoCCs also share certain characteristics of
the mobile-phone transfer system M-Pesa,
crowdfunding websites like Kickstarter,
digital currencies like BitCoin, and the
microcredit movement, which leverages
social capital to provide small loans with
social collateral (the author has helped
start over 200 microcredit banks in
southern India over the past twelve years).2
This essay describes the steps needed
to create and implement SoCCs and gives
examples of how they might work in Dharavi,
India, and Bantama, Ghana.
The true wealth of cities cannot be
measured in monetary terms alone, and
it is counterproductive for development
efforts to ignore the social wealth of
communities. Urban development narrowly
focused on short-term profits for the real
estate industry or other vested interests
diminishes and eventually destroys the
social capital of cities. Once this wealth
is destroyed, functions such as cultural
and ecological stewardship, social
accountability, community building, care of
the aged, and protection of public space—
all of which communities do efficiently and
naturally—then fall to the government. While
successful, wealthy governments might
be able to perform these functions, cashstrapped and poorly run governments simply
cannot. Their inability to do so results in the
breakdown of law and order, rising social
inequity, and the radicalization of youth on
both sides of the opportunity divide. SoCCs
could put social capital to work supporting
community functions by linking them with
the market economy in a way that would
lead to truly sustainable development—if
sustainability is considered in a holistic
sense, as something more substantial than
the green-washing campaigns and trivial
energy-saving gadgets of today. True
sustainability springs from socioeconomic
and environmental justice. This can only
come about if the community values that
can protect the global commons are priced
into the market economy at a premium to
individual greed.
While SoCCs are specifically designed to
help poor people lift themselves out of
poverty, they can serve all communities,
rich and poor, everywhere. The SoCC
system includes three main elements for
leveraging the social capital of communities:
the SoCC Market; the SoCCs Menu, which
will list goals that individuals and their
communities can accomplish to earn SoCCs;
and the redemption of SoCCs by individuals
(i-SoCCs) and communities (c-SoCCs).
SoCCs will be a global digital currency,
available to any community (defined as a
group of around 50 households that includes
women and children) to earn and trade.
SoCCs will be traded on the SoCC Market,
a global digital trading platform that is
currently under construction.3 The SoCC
market will also allow cash transactions;
SoCCs and cash will be convertible in special
situations described below. The SoCC Market
will charge a small percentage from every
SoCC to cash or cash to SoCC transaction
in order to sustain its operation. All SoCC to
SoCC transactions will be free. Communities
and individuals will be able to store their
SoCCs on the SoCC Market using electronic
wallets.
Community groups will be able to freely
access the SoCC Market to learn about
both how they can earn SoCCs and what
they can buy with the SoCCs they earn,
then join it whenever they are ready.
Communities and the individuals involved
will earn SoCCs for actions that benefit
their neighborhood, their city, the region,
or the planet in a manner that does not
exclude or harm anyone else. Examples of
how SoCCs may be earned include creating,
enhancing, or maintaining public spaces that
are truly open to all; assuming stewardship
of natural resources such as water and
trees; and running training centers for skill
enhancement, schools, and health clinics
that are accessible to all and accept SoCCs
as payment.
In addition to the above, underserved
communities (so-called slums, favelas,
gecekondular, barrios, etc.) will be able
to earn SoCCs, or SoCCs and cash, for
creating for themselves essential services
that their government has provided to most
of the wealthier communities in their city,
but has failed to provide to them. In this
case, the SoCC Market will negotiate with
the government to pay a portion of the fair
market value of the project to the SoCC
Market, which will pass those earnings on
to communities for their accomplishments.
National and international NGOs or donor
agencies that wish to help with these
projects would also pay cash into the system
and get a 200 to 300 percent return on their
71
investment by supporting projects through
the SoCC Market. Engineers and experts
will be solicited by the SoCC Market to
make themselves available to communities
in exchange for SoCCs. Communities that
have completed several projects will also
be able to earn SoCCs by mentoring and
helping other communities and by acting as
consultants to the government.
Once individuals and communities have
collected the requisite number of SoCCs,
they will be able to redeem them via the
SoCC Market for items from a menu of goods
and services. All SoCC Market services will
be available via computers or smart devices,
but also in a simpler form via ordinary
mobile phones, which are widely used in
poor communities around the world today.
In an updated version of traditional barter,
communities will also be able to trade
goods and services with one another using
SoCCs or a combination of SoCCs and cash.
Individuals in designated communities will
also be able to use SoCCs to buy items such
as school or college fees, public transport
tickets, talk-time on telephones, lower rates
for health insurance, lower-interest loans
or higher-interest savings from commercial
banks, skill-building scholarships for local
youth, Internet services, fruit-tree saplings,
and other things they can propose and get
approved by popular vote of SoCC Managers
on the SoCC Market. The SoCC Market will
also negotiate with governments to enable
communities to pay water and electricity
charges using SoCCs and to provide, on a
priority basis, services that communities
cannot build themselves.
Microhousing for a billion people in
desperate need of housing in the developing
world is a huge business opportunity.
However, affordable housing entrepreneurs
and public organizations around the world,
such as the São Paulo Municipal Housing
72
Secretariat, have had trouble attracting
investors. SoCCs could change that. Real
estate developers will be able to earn
SoCCs for helping designated communities
build infrastructure. Developers will then
be able to spend SoCCs, whether earned or
purchased for cash on the SoCC Market, on
additional FSA (floor space index, also called
floor area ratio) or other incentives from the
government that the SoCC Market will help
negotiate. Developers will be able to transfer
these incentives to other sites, under the
Transfer of Development Rights mechanism,
in transparent and corruption-free trades.
Designated neighborhoods could also be
paired with other sites, so improvements
there could occur in tandem with marketdriven real estate projects elsewhere in the
city.
Upon registering on the SoCC Market to
undertake a project, a community will
designate one or more of its members
(depending upon the community’s size)
as SoCC Managers; they will trade on the
SoCC Market on the community’s behalf and
help communities complete projects and
trades successfully. SoCC Managers will be
required to attend online training courses
and will receive small cash commissions for
each completed SoCC transaction. SoCC
transactions will be held at least once a
month in open meetings to encourage peer
review, just as is done in many microcredit
groups. Larger transactions will be held
in multi-community meetings for the same
reason. SoCC Managers could also become
aggregators for SoCCs, enrolling community
groups into blocks of SoCC earners. Social
and religious institutions could also help
people earn SoCCs by forming the nuclei
of SoCC Groups. Existing organizations
such as microcredit groups of women are
also natural candidates for becoming SoCC
Groups. While communities currently have
little reason to prioritize joint activities and
The SoCC Market will charge
a small percentage on each
SoCC transaction in order to
provide information, technical
help, training, accounting, and
trading services
SoCC Market
c-SoCCs
WILL BUY:
cement to pave
i-SoCCs WILL BUY:
streets, street
trees,
skills training for public bus tickets,
local youth, etc. electricity, water,
telephone time,
micro venture capital,
school supplies, etc.
COMMUNITIES WILL EARN
i-SoCCS AND c-SoCCs FOR:
- Accessing healthcare regularly
- Sending children to school
- Growing street trees
- Waste management
- Paving streets, etc.
Community
↑ 1. Residents will earn i-SoCCs and c-SoCCs for doing good
things for their communities, which they can then spend on
things that empower them and their families further.
73
no framework by which to do so, the SoCC
system can help them recognize the social
strengths they already possess and focus
jointly on the shared challenges they face,
thus strengthening their social capital.
↑ 2. The women in Dharavi run the fish market,
and can run much more if given an opportunity.
SoCCs can empower women by rewarding
the work they do for their communities,
which carries no direct monetary
reward and is therefore not given due
acknowledgment. Women and girls in poor
families in developing countries are usually
discouraged from participating in community
meetings and projects that could benefit
them personally, as doing so takes time
away from their household or other chores.
SoCCs could allow them to bring home an
alternative currency to the family and the
community for going to school, attending
events at social support groups, or getting
skills training. When a mother gets her child
vaccinated or sends her daughter to school,
it benefits the family, the neighborhood, and
the city. At present, neither the city nor the
neighborhood has a way to acknowledge the
mother’s contribution to its well-being. The
SoCC Market can enable this to happen by
giving i-SoCCs to the girls and women and
c-SoCCs to their communities, thus creating
social encouragement for girls and women to
realize their own potential.
How Might SoCCs Work in Dharavi, Mumbai?
↑ 3. The organization to convert one lane of a ninety-foot road
into a mosque every Friday shows a highly sophisticated level of
social capital that can be leveraged to further develop Dharavi.
74
The enormous real estate pressures on
Dharavi spring from its advantageous
location in Mumbai. Situated outside the city
through most of its long history—its core
is the fishing village of Koliwada, which is
nearly 400 years old and actually predates
Mumbai—it now finds itself at the city’s
heart, easily accessible by rail lines and
highways. The government built low-income
rental housing in this formerly remote
location, and informal settlements gradually
appeared around and in between Koliwada
and the housing projects. Now the whole
area is erroneously called “the largest slum
in Asia.”
SoCCs are based on the social capital of
communities, and Dharavi is rich in social
capital. It is an agglomeration of nearly
90 distinct communities, each made up
of migrants who originally came from a
different part of India. Friends and family
members have since joined them. Residents
who have been in Dharavi for some time
have established small businesses, cultural
traditions, and their own social and
religious institutions. They have developed
a way of life in which people help each
other to compensate for the severe lack of
infrastructure and civic services. All too
often, we hear about what is wrong with
slums, but rarely of what is right with them—
and there is a lot that is right with Dharavi.
In his book Shadow Cities, Robert Neuwirth
concludes that when people move to cities
they make more money, find better health
care and education, and have fewer children,
thereby contributing to the resolution of
the persistent development challenges of
our time.4 This is certainly true of Dharavi.
With a population of about 500,000, Dharavi
contributes about a billion US dollars to
Mumbai’s economy each year. Various
services, recycling businesses, and just-intime small-scale production units in Dharavi
are critical to the health of Mumbai’s formal
economy. Dharavi also offers new migrants a
foothold in the city, a place to begin climbing
the economic ladder toward achieving a
middle-income lifestyle, however steep and
slow that climb may be. Mumbai has no other
mechanism to perform this critical function.
So why has there been such a strong effort
to bulldoze Dharavi and put up high- and
middle-income housing and offices in its
place, exemplified by the recently scrapped
75
Dharavi Redevelopment Plan (DRP)? This
plan would have squeezed Dharavi’s current
residents into tall buildings occupying only
a part of the land Dharavi currently has, in
a process often viewed by slum dwellers
as “warehousing” them. While Dharavi’s
current high-density low-rise urban fabric is
very conducive to enhancing social capital,
putting people in badly designed, cheaply
built, and poorly maintained tall buildings
can destroy that social capital, as was
the case in the mid-rise buildings built
under the government’s Rajiv Gandhi Slum
Redevelopment scheme. The reason that
the DRP came as far as it did—before being
stopped by pressure from residents and
the government’s advisory committee—is
that the calculations for the DRP were made
using monetary considerations alone. The
enormous social capital of Dharavi was not
taken into account in such calculations, nor
the people’s capacity to self-develop the
land they occupy.
The social capital of poor communities like
Dharavi should be valued more highly than
the land they live on. With SoCCs, wellfunctioning communities like Dharavi could
leverage that social capital to purchase
tenure of their land, thus eliminating the
ever-present fear of eviction. Thanks to
the work of Hernando de Soto and others,
the improvements triggered by secure land
tenure in slum communities are now well
understood.5 Over 40 percent of Mumbai’s
population lives in slums that only occupy
about 6 percent of Mumbai’s land. Since
nearly twice that amount of land has been
“granted” to civic clubs and institutions
serving wealthy Mumbaikars in the last
decade, giving tenure to slum dwellers
should not be difficult if political will can
be rallied for it using SoCCs. Providing land
tenure to slum communities in India is one of
the goals of another laudable scheme, Rajiv
Awas Yojana (RAY). RAY could also benefit
76
greatly by leveraging the social capital of
communities through SoCCs. Communities
like Dharavi could be encouraged to form
real estate investment trusts (REIT) to
self-develop their land and build additional
income-generating properties, with or
without RAY. Such income could then be
used to further enhance communities’
physical and social infrastructure. Once
people in Dharavi get legal tenure and
critical infrastructure and services, they will
improve their homes and turn Dharavi into a
middle-class neighborhood within a decade
or so. Dharavi may gentrify and local people
may eventually be displaced. If it happens,
however, it will happen on their terms and at
their pace—not be mandated by bulldozerdriven schemes like the DRP.
Neighborhoods in Dharavi could collect
SoCCs, for example, for recycling Mumbai’s
waste and remediating the Mithi River.
They could trade these SoCCs for priority
in getting infrastructure and services that
have been deliberately denied to Dharavi,
such as well-paved roads, dependable
power, clean water, and sanitation. Just as
has been the case with Shimokitazawa in
Tokyo, informal settlements can develop into
great neighborhoods if provided with these
services.
The developers who were planning to
implement the DRP could perhaps be
redirected to help install state-of-the-art
infrastructure in Dharavi; in the process,
they would earn SoCCs that they could
trade for incentives in developing land on
the Eastern Waterfront or elsewhere in
Mumbai. The comfortable plazas, street
trees, waterfront parks, and public art
that make New York special were achieved
that way. There is no reason that Transfers
of Development Rights (TDR) cannot be
successfully used to maintain and enhance
the social capital of places like Dharavi
while making Mumbai a more equitable
city. Mumbai needs to turn back from
building gated communities for the rich in
unsustainable suburbs or high-rise innercity locations and instead nurture its
pedestrian-friendly, cosmopolitan traditions
in places like Dharavi, where people from
diverse ethnicities and income groups live
together in a symbiotic way, compared to
other more segregated cities in India and
elsewhere in the developing world.
The alternative to informal settlements like
Dharavi being allowed to self-develop has
been played out in many countries around
the world. From Beijing to Istanbul to New
York, bulldozers have destroyed wellfunctioning poor communities rich in social
capital, dispersing the poor away from the
city center. Such “urban renewal” deprives
poor people of their livelihood, which often
depends upon proximity to the city, and robs
them of the social capital that allows them
to survive harsh conditions in neighborhoods
underserved by urban infrastructure. Local
governments often characterize target
neighborhoods as “slums” so that they can
justify handing them over to developers,
who reap profits by redeveloping them into
high-income housing or shopping malls
and, theoretically if not usually in practice,
increase the city’s tax base.
SoCCs can also assist the implementation
of government programs like the Jawaharlal
Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission
(JNNURM) program in India. According to
the Comptroller and Auditor General’s (CAG)
report “Performance Audit of JNNURM,”
only 22 of the 1,517 housing projects
approved under the scheme were completed
by their due dates.6 Diversion of funds and
inappropriate allocation of benefits are
among the likely problems with the topdown delivery mechanisms of well-funded
schemes such as this one. Such programs
can be far more successful if communities
are directly harnessed as partners in
implementing them. Communities in informal
settlements that were expected to benefit
from these schemes could have been made
custodians of their specific projects. This
could have been a way to crowd-source
quality management and maintain affordable
housing and infrastructure. Slum Dwellers
International and and the non-profit Society
for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres
(SPARC) have shown that communities can
accomplish such tasks if given a chance.
Technical and management support could
come from the government or, better still,
be purchased on the SoCC Market, with
all progress and accounting put online
and made accessible to all stakeholders.
Local people could monitor the progress of
projects and organize local labor to help as
needed. A community that took stewardship
of a government-financed housing project
and saw it through to completion could earn
SoCCs and build more social capital in the
process.
SoCC Test in Kumasi, Ghana
The SoCC concept is currently being
prepared for testing at Bantama Sub-Metro.
Bantama Road is a bustling shopping and
entertainment area near the city center of
Kumasi, the second largest city in Ghana.
One of the largest markets in Western Africa
was located at the racecourse near Bantama
Road, but has recently been evacuated to
make room for a gated community of luxury
villas. Markets in Ghana are largely run by
women, and this market was no exception.
Displaced market women have since moved
on to alternative locations provided by the
government. In cases where the alternative
locations were too far from customers, these
market women have occupied the sidewalks
of busy roads. While older women manage
77
the retail operations, younger women from
the countryside, called “kayoyo,” are hired
by the vendors and their customers to
transport heavy loads.
The Millennium Cities Initiative of the
Earth Institute at Columbia University has
been working to bridge the large gaps that
currently exist in the provision of healthcare
and other services to the market women
of Bantama. One important piece of this
effort is the plan for the Bantama Women’s
and Girl’s Center, for which the Kumasi
Metropolitan Assembly has already provided
land. Local stakeholders in this project
include Bantama Sub-Metro Authority,
market women’s associations, and the
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and
Technology (KNUST). The SoCC concept
will be tested at the Bantama Center for
Women and Girls throughout its planning,
construction, and operation stages.
The goal of the Bantama Center for Women
and Girls is not just to create a building and
an institution, but also to use the building
process itself as an empowering tool for the
market women of Bantama. It will feature
local, innovative, or energy-saving materials
that women can learn to use and deploy in
their own homes; a design that makes the
building comfortable without expensive
air-conditioning; low-tech, labor-intensive
building methods which women can learn and
then use as an income-producing skill; biotoilets which women can then build or have
built in their own homes and communities;
water-harvesting devices; and more.
SPARC has already deployed such building
methodologies in Mumbai with much success.
Women who help with the planning,
construction, or operation of the Bantama
Center for Women and Girls will earn SoCCs,
which they can later trade for services that
the center will provide, credit on their mobile
78
phones, or public-bus vouchers that the
center will negotiate. The Innovation Center
at the KNUST Business School has also
offered to help negotiate favorable rates
from banks and insurance companies for
the center. The Bantama Center for Women
and Girls could also be built in part by
providing SoCCs to builders and real estate
developers in exchange for additional FAR in
other parts of Kumasi, if the government is
willing to cooperate. Local businesses will
also be incentivized by the SoCC Managers
at the women’s center to provide services
and training at the Bantama Center in turn
for SoCCs.
neighborhood, city, region, and the world.
SoCCs underscore the inherent worth
of people and human dignity and can be
a tool to address the most important
developmental issues of our time. A new
urbanism founded on sustainability and
equity is critically needed, and SoCCs
can help achieve it. At its best, the SoCC
ecosystem will trigger grassroots creativity
among communities, with new products and
application. These will be proposed, created,
made obsolete, dropped, and revived as per
the needs of communities, in a completely
free and transparent market system.
Another area where SoCCs can help is
with girls’ participation in the girls’ clubs
sponsored by the Millennium Cities Initiative
and their partner organization LitWorld.
Families are often hesitant to let girls attend
club meetings, as it takes them away from
chores at home or in the market. However,
the girls’ clubs are important; they help
girls stay in school and teach them about
reproductive health and their choices for the
future. A young girl could earn SoCCs each
time she attends a meeting, which would
encourage her family to let her attend the
meetings more regularly.
Notes
Sustainable Urbanism
SoCCs will allow communities to leverage
their social capital to improve housing,
neighborhoods, and cities in a sustainable
way. In most cases, such implementation
will need to be slow and incremental, which
will allow the community’s skills to develop
in tandem with these improvements. The
overarching goal of SoCCs is to empower
local communities to participate in an
upward development spiral toward a
healthier social and economic environment
and improved quality of life in their
1. Anup Shah, “Poverty around the World,”
Global Issues, November 12, 2011, http://www.
globalissues.org/article/4/poverty-around-theworld.
2. For additional information on microcredit banks
in India, see http://www.asiainitiatives.org/
microcreditbanks.
3. See http://www.soccs.net
4. Robert Neuwirth, Shadow Cities: A Billion
Squatters, a New Urban World (New York:
Routledge, 2005).
5. See Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital:
Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails
Everywhere Else (New York: Basic Books, 2000).
6. “Only 22 of 1,517 Housing Projects Completed
under JNNURM: CAG,” DNA, November 29, 2012,
http://www.dnaindia.com/india/1771332/reportonly-22-of-1517-housing-projects-completedunder-jnnurm-cag.
79
The Sharing Economy Comes Home: New Housing
Trends and Practices That Are Changing How We Live
Sharing housing—whether via cohousing and cohouseholding or through
short term rentals—is efficient, sustainable, and economically just.
The Sustainable Economies Law Center’s Yassi Eskandari-Qajar discusses
the legal obstacles to the expansion of the sharing economy into the
US housing sector and how the country might overcome them.
An economic revolution is underway. People
everywhere are sharing—in order to split
costs, use resources efficiently, and opt for
more convenient access to goods in place
of private ownership. This is all part of the
“sharing economy”—a set of activities,
relationships, and organizations that is
bringing innovation to nearly every part
of our lives. Sharing has manifested itself
in transportation, through carsharing,
ridesharing, and bikesharing; in energy,
through community-owned renewable
energy projects; in commerce and exchange,
through community currencies, barter
exchanges, and time banks; in food, through
cottage food businesses and community
gardens; and in enterprise, through
cooperative businesses.
Last, but not least, the sharing economy
is coming home. Recent years have seen
an explosion of interest in home coownership, cohousing, cooperative housing,
“cohouseholding,” intentional communities,
ecovillages, short-term Airbnb-style rentals,
home-based microenterprise, and other
activities that are changing the ways that
we design, finance, manage, own, and use
our homes. Social connectivity and sharing
are restoring interdependence as a means of
providing for ourselves and our communities.
80
Some credit the sharing economy with
regenerating economic and natural
abundance.1 At the same time, the sharing
economy faces a host of legal questions
that are stumping regulators and slowing its
progress. These barriers are described below,
along with suggestions for policies that carve
out a legal space for the sharing economy.
The Sharing Economy Meets Housing
Homes are natural hubs for sharing. People
routinely share household goods, host
dinner parties, and offer beds to guests.
Today, households are taking sharing to new
levels by becoming the sites of activities
that can provide additional sustenance
and income in times of high unemployment
and limited economic opportunity.2 Homes
are increasingly used to host classes,
sell homegrown produce, create childcare
cooperatives, host carsharing pods, and
rent rooms for short-term stays.
Shared housing takes the concept of
home as a sharing hub one step further by
integrating sharing into the very design of
living spaces, yards, and neighborhoods.
For example, in cohouseholding models,
unrelated individuals live together within one
housing unit and adapt the physical space
to meet their needs. In cohousing models,
also known as “intentional neighborhoods,”
families occupy small, separate units that
are clustered to promote interaction around
common areas. Cohousing increases density,
limits redundancy, reduces environmental
impact, and increases the availability of
affordable housing. It does this by enabling
residents to share common spaces and
amenities, such as a common kitchen, large
living area, laundry rooms, storage spaces,
tool sheds, and yards.
Though cohousing and cohouseholding
are perhaps the most obvious forms of
shared housing, homes and land can be
shared in other ways, including the addition
of accessory dwelling units (ADUs, also
known as in-law flats or second units) to
single-family residential properties and the
construction of ecovillages, clustered tiny
homes, and micro-apartments. A study by the
Oregon Department of Environmental Quality
evaluated 30 green building practices and
determined that reduced home sizes and
multifamily living achieved the largest
greenhouse gas reductions and significant
improvements in other impact categories.3
Clustering housing around shared
spaces and amenities can simultaneously
counteract sprawl, mitigate the negative
effects of increased density, and help
cities meet sustainability goals. When
housing is designed to facilitate sharing,
it reduces waste, energy needs, and traffic
and stimulates behaviors that promote
sustainable living: residents are better
able to create food gardens, renewable
energy systems, carpools or carsharing
clubs, and engage in other activities
that reduce their individual ecological
footprints.4 Shared living arrangements can
also alleviate affordable housing shortages
and the mounting economic pressures of
mortgages, loans, and debt.5 Finally, because
shared housing increases interaction
and interdependence among neighbors,
it strengthens community ties and builds
valuable social capital. In sum, the sharing
economy makes our households more
ecologically sound, economically stable, and
socially connected.
The Sharing Economy Meets the Old Legal
Framework
Numerous legal barriers stand in the way
of the sharing economy. In many respects,
our communities and legal systems were not
designed for sharing; on the contrary, they
hinge on separation. Zoning laws separate
cities by use, creating areas designated
as residential, commercial, agricultural, or
industrial, and restrict the activities allowed
in each of those zones. Shared housing
faces particular barriers because of zoning
tools such as density restrictions, minimum
lot and home sizes, permitting and fee
structures, and parking space requirements.
Of course, physically segregating a city
by uses has its place—where it separates
polluting industries from sensitive uses
or creates busy, transit-rich commercial
centers, for example. But certain separations
of use have negative impacts. Restricting
neighborhoods to single-family housing
diminishes community and social interaction,
limits diverse housing options, and leads
to redundancy and inefficiency where each
unit contains its own set of seldom-used
amenities. Entirely separating residential
areas from agriculture creates distance
between people and food—exacerbating
health problems, wasting productive space,
disconnecting people from knowledge of
food production, and creating a significant
carbon footprint from food transport.
Restricting business activities to commercial
and industrial zones limits the ways in which
81
people can support themselves. Further,
separating work from home encourages
car-centric suburban development and
leaves valuable city space deserted after the
workday.
Emergent Legal Gray Areas in the Sharing
Economy
Where twentieth-century city planning
draws clear lines between personal,
commercial, and public realms of life, the
sharing economy exists in the gray areas
across and between those separate uses.
Legal conundrums emerge when the sharing
economy conflicts with regulation of
separated uses. For example: When a family
occasionally houses a short-term guest
in an empty bedroom and charges a fee in
order to offset the cost of housing, are they
operating a hotel? If a resident grows more
vegetables than she needs in her backyard
and exchanges them with her neighbors,
is she operating a food business? If a
homeowner does not own a car and rents her
parking space to neighbors using an online
parking-space application, is she operating
a commercial parking lot? Where hotels, food
businesses, and parking lots are regulated,
each of these sharing uses may be illegal
under the existing legal framework.
When the sharing economy comes home,
we must ask two important questions.
First, when do varied forms of homebased exchange like swapping, bartering,
and small-sales transactions turn from
personal to commercial activities? In
the language of the traditional planning
framework: When does a sharing use shift
from being an accessory use permitted
in a residential neighborhood to being a
prohibited commercial use? Second, how
do we allow people to redesign their homes
and living arrangements to enable sharing?
82
Answering these questions will require that
cities revisit existing policies with these
new sharing objectives, arrangements,
organizations, and land uses in mind.
Welcoming the Sharing Economy Home:
Creating Policies for Twenty-First-Century
Housing
Each municipality will have to grapple with
sharing trends and legal questions within its
unique local context. However, some basic
principles can guide this legal evolution
without compromising either innovation
or the protections that zoning regulation
affords communities. The Sustainable
Economies Law Center (SELC)—a research
and advocacy organization dedicated to
navigating the legal gray areas of the
sharing economy—has created a set of
policy recommendations to serve as such a
roadmap. The following recommendations
acknowledge the benefits of shared housing
models and homes as sharing hubs and
provide a framework to replace unnecessary
barriers with appropriate regulations.
1. Expand allowable home occupations
to include sharing economy enterprises.
Small, home-based sharing economy
enterprises can provide supplemental
income and improve local livelihoods and
economic resilience in times of limited
employment opportunity. The sharing
economy has triggered the emergence of
“nano-enterprises,” small income-generating
activities made possible by communities
and technologies that connect people to
provide for each other in new ways—allowing
one person to rent household goods to
another, to rent a room to a traveler, to rent
a car to a neighbor, to charge for the use
of a parking space, or to exchange goods
and services at the neighborhood level.6
The sharing economy has even unleashed
↑ 1. Current US housing stock does not accurately reflect the population
demographics of American households. Graphics first published by the
Boston Society of Architects on architects.org, 2011.
83
84
↑ 2. These nineteen online startups unlock the latent financial
potential of the home by renting out household goods and spaces.
85
an array of mobile apps to allow users
to summon anything from a quick favor
(TaskRabbit.com) to a ride (Lyft.me) or an
overnight stay with strangers (Airbnb.com).
Local governments should redesign
regulations to allow home-based nanoenterprises at a reasonable scale, particularly
when they are unlikely to create a nuisance
or impact the neighborhood’s character.7
Municipalities can do so by defining certain
nano-enterprises and sharing activities
as accessory uses of a residence (which
would not require a zoning permit) or by
lowering the hurdles and fees associated with
obtaining permits for these activities.
Seattle, Washington, for example, permits
urban farms of any size to sell produce
grown anywhere in the city, regardless of
zoning designation, so long as neighborhood
livability requirements and standards are
met.8 And California recently joined 30 other
US states in legalizing home-based food
production when it adopted “The California
Homemade Food Act.”9 This law mandates
that cities and counties issue home business
permits to individuals who wish to produce
and sell non-potentially hazardous foods like
jams, baked goods, cereals, spices, and dried
fruits in their home kitchens.10
↑ 3. Sharing space and amenities: The Frogsong
Community in Cotati, California comprises 30 units
and 375 square meters of common facilities.
2. Allow short-term stays in residential areas
as a way to offset high housing costs and
diversify local tourism opportunities. A
number of cities, including New York City
and Quebec City, are cracking down on
short-term homestays, particularly those
facilitated by Airbnb.com. These cities deem
short-term homestays to be illegal hotels
and seek to impose on them the same zoning
restrictions, health and safety rules, and
taxes that apply to large hotels.
Many renters and property owners use
short-term homestays to offset rent or
mortgage payments, and travelers see them
as a unique way to experience a city. Such
homestays spread the wealth generated by
tourism more widely than traditional hotels.
A San Francisco study commissioned by
Airbnb in 2012 shows that, over the course
of a year, Airbnb travelers spent $56 million
in the city, and 60 percent of spending
occurred within the neighborhoods where
they stayed.11 This breaks down into $43.1
million in revenue for businesses and $12.7
million to Airbnb hosts. Of all the Airbnb
hosts surveyed, 42 percent reported using
their income primarily for regular living
expenses, including mortgage and rent.12 On
average, these hosts earn $6,900 for renting
a single room or a shared space and $9,300
for renting their entire unit. A separate
study in New York estimates that Airbnb
hosts in that city earn an average of $21,000
per year,13 and a Los Angeles resident
recently reported in the Los Angeles Times
that she earned $39,000 through Airbnb
in one year—roughly 70 percent of her
earnings.14 However, the legality of such
short-term rentals is tenuous now that
Airbnb hosts are facing increasing scrutiny
from city governments and neighborhood
councils.
There is a need for more appropriate
policies around short-term homestays.
These policies would recognize how
residents can use generated income as
an economic support that offsets housing
payments and cost of living, while also
protecting the availability and affordability
of housing for long-term renters. In an
effort to preserve the residential character
of units and neighborhoods, municipalities
could adopt policies that limit the number
of paid houseguests per year, limit the
number of guest nights, or cap each
household’s gross income from short-term
rentals at, for example, no more than half
of the costs associated with the unit.
87
These provisions recognize that the primary
purpose of sharing is not necessarily to
profit, but rather to offset the cost of
housing.15 Municipalities could also adopt
rules to ensure basic safety and quality.
For example, a city could require that hosts
provide guests with a phone number for a
local contact, an emergency exit plan, and
information about how to file a complaint
with the municipality. Cape Elizabeth, Maine,
adopted a short-term rental ordinance this
year that establishes a permitting process,
requires health and safety inspections,
restricts the number of guests, and limits
each separate rental period to seven days.16
The regulations create a detailed complaint
process, and the town council recently
enacted a $50 permit fee.17
3. Allow leasing of residential parking. Local
governments should allow leasing a parking
space as an acceptable home-business
use of a property.18 This could encourage
people to own fewer cars per household
and lighten the burden on street parking.
Moreover, because carsharing programs cite
lack of convenient parking as their biggest
barrier to expansion, legalizing the sharing
and leasing of parking spaces could expand
carsharing as well.19
4. Revise minimum parking requirements.
Many cities attempt to mitigate parking
shortages by requiring that a certain
number of parking spaces be provided
with each residential unit. Unfortunately,
minimum parking requirements unreasonably
burden cohousing developments with added
costs or even make cohousing development
impossible. Local governments should build
flexibility into parking requirements for
developments that promise to reduce car
ownership. For example, cities should ease
parking requirements for developments that
will provide on-site carsharing programs or
free transit passes to residents.
88
5. Remove density restrictions that create
barriers to shared resources and sustainable
housing. Residential density restrictions are
designed to mitigate the impact that high
density can have on local infrastructure,
including water, energy, transportation, and
sewage systems. Cohousing, cohouseholding,
and ecovillages are often designed to
mitigate the same impact. Such communities
often incorporate activities—such as
carsharing, carpooling, shared food gardens,
shared energy systems, shared compost,
and shared gray-water systems—that
reduce burdens on local infrastructure.
Unfortunately, density restrictions are not
designed to distinguish between high-impact
developments and sustainable living and
therefore can ultimately block lower-impact
developments like cohousing.
To overcome this problem, local governments
should define zoning use categories specific
to shared and sustainable housing and
permit a wide array of shared housing
models in all residential areas. In addition to
permitting shared and sustainable housing
models, local governments should reduce
or waive fees and other expensive hurdles
associated with variance applications
and conditional-use permitting when the
proposed project can demonstrate that it
will mitigate the potential negative impacts
of higher density.20 Two successful examples
in Canada are Yarrow Ecovillage and O.U.R.
Ecovillage, which received zoning approvals
by asking their local jurisdictions to take
into account the low impact the ecovillages
would have in comparison to typical
developments.
6. Remove restrictions on cohabitation.
Many municipalities have laws that prohibit
unrelated individuals from forming a
household or set a cap on the number
of people allowed to live in a unit. These
laws have presented barriers to groups
Airbnb: A Case Study of the Sharing Economy
In June 2012, ten million guest nights were booked through
Airbnb, the online marketplace launched in 2008 to allow people
to list and rent their homes to travelers. Airbnb commissioned
HR&A Advisors, Inc., to study how the $56 million spent by Airbnb
travelers in San Francisco that year have contributed to the
city’s local economy and the economic security of its hosts.
The following graphics and captions highlighting Airbnb’s impact
on San Francisco have been taken from the study.
↑ 4. All data taken from HR&A Advisors, Inc., “Airbnb:
Economic Impacts in San Francisco and Its Neighborhoods,”
(Airbnb, 2012).
Average daily rate in San Francisco
95%
$188
of Airbnb guests pay less than the
average hotel guest per night
$117
Airbnb
Hotels
↑ 5. Price sensitivity: Airbnb is 40 percent more affordable than hotels.
Lower cost is a key selling point for cost-sensitive visitors who would
otherwise not come or stay as long.
89
Airbnb usage in San Francisco
Property or properties
where I do not live
Shared room
A room in my home
Business
5%
52%
43%
Personal
reasons
14%
10%
17%
Private
room
Almost
60%
of hosts’ incomes a
less than San Franci
area median incom
What type of property do you rent on Airbnb?
Less than
$40K
40%
44%
60%
23%
$100K+
27%
$40-70K
46%
19%
$40-100K
Entire home
Apartment
My entire home
Vacation
↑ 6. Type of rental.
↑ 8. The typical host rents out the property in which he or she lives.
Hosts who rent out secondary properties are a small minority.
Airbnb usage in San Francisco
Annual household income
Almost
60%
of hosts’ incomes are
less than San Francisco
area median income
Property or properties
where I do not live
Shared room
A room in my home
Business
5%
52%
43%
Personal
reasons
14%
10%
17%
Less than
$40K
40%
23%
44%
60%
$100K+
27%
$40-70K
46%
19%
$40-100K
Entire home
Apartment
My entire home
Vacation
↑ 7. Purpose of visit.
90
↑ 9. Many hosts make less than the area median income and are employed full-time; they use
Airbnb to make ends meet. Airbnb is especially attractive to freelancers: while 8 percent of
San Francisco workers are self-employed, 20 percent of Airbnb hosts are freelancers.
91
Airbnb income and rental nights
II
Airbnb spending goes directly
hostsguests
Airbnbto
guests
Airbnb
Airbnb guests
Typical listing of an entire home
$ 9,300
$ 9,300
I
$ 1,100
58
58
Total Spending
average nights per year booked
average annual income
$ 360
Airbnb guests
$ 1,100
$ 1,100
Typical listing of a private room or shared space
$ 6,900
$ 6,900
740
$ 360$ $360
88
88
$ 1,100
$ 1,100
Hotel guests
Total Spending
Total Spending
$ 360$ 360
$ 840
Total Spending
$ 310
$ 840$ 840
$ 740$ 740
Total Hotel
Spending
income
Total Spending
Local business
Local business
income
income
Host
income
Local
business
Host income
income
$ 530
Hotel income
Hotel income
$ 530$ 530
Local business
Local business
income
income
Local business
income
$ 310$ 310
Hotel income
Hotel income
↑ 10. When asked how hosts would describe their income earned through Airbnb,
48 percent responded with extra spending money, 42 percent regular living
expenses, 7 percent other, and 3 percent primary income.
Percentage of hosts who use
Percentage of hosts who use their Airbnb income for
their Airbnb income for:
$ 530$ 530
Local business
Local business
income
income
Local business
Local business
income
income
Airbnb guest spending
$ 56M
TOTAL SPENDING
$ 12.7M
$ 11.8M
54%
↑ 12. Airbnb guests spend more over
the course of a trip than hotel guests.
+
430
Total jobs
supported
$ 43.1M
to host households
45%
$ 310$ 310
Hotel guests
Hotel guests
$ 740$ 740
56%
$ 840$ 840
Total Spending
Total Spending
Host income
Host income
Airbnb guestsHost income
Total Spending
Total Spending
Hotel guests
Hotel guests
to San Francisco business
$ 10.8M
45%
$ 9.8M
25%
$ 5.7M
Rent/mortgage
Extra spending money
Vacation
Other household
expenses
$ 4.0M
Long-term savings
$ 0.9M
Lodging
↑ 11. Hosts use their income for both
essential purposes and extra expenses.
92
Food &
beverage
Retail
Services
Entertainment
Transport
Industry
↑ 13. $56 million in economic activity benefit hosts and local
businesses. Although it is a single company, Airbnb brings
significant and rapidly growing economic activity to San Francisco.
93
Distribution of
Airbnb properties vs hotels
Distribution of Airbnb properties vs. hotels
Hotels
Airbnb active
Hotels
Airbnb active
↑ 14. With 72 percent of Airbnb properties outside
of six central hotel zip codes, Airbnb distributes the
impacts of tourism across more neighborhoods.
Annual guest daytime spending in neighborhoods where they stayed
60%
of guest spending (including daytime and
accomodation spending) occurs in the
neighborhood where they stayed
$ 4.5M
The Mission
$ 3.2M
$ 3.1M
$ 2.9M
SOMA/Potrero Hill
Haight/Ashbury
Castro
↑ 15. Airbnb guests spend more money in the neighborhoods where they stay. Many neighborhoods
that have not benefited from tourism in the past benefit from Airbnb spending. In total, guests
spent $15 million in the neighborhoods where they stayed over the course of the year.
94
that wish to live in a shared or supportive
living arrangement. Mental Health
Advocacy Services, Inc., created a set of
recommendations that can assist cities in
redefining family and occupancy standards
to better accommodate contemporary
families and their living needs. The
recommendations include eliminating
distinctions between related and unrelated
individuals in occupancy standards and
repealing numerical limits on the number of
unrelated people who may live together.21
7. Facilitate the addition of new units
to existing homes. Many localities have
permitting policies that make adding ADUs
too difficult, prohibitively expensive, or
outright illegal. These include complex and
costly zoning permits, fees for additional
utility connections, design requirements,
homeowner occupancy of at least one unit
on the property, and added parking—even
if adding parking is physically impossible.
Instead of encouraging discrete infill
development and the creation of additional
affordable housing units, these laws
incentivize building ever-bigger singlefamily homes that do not use space or
resources efficiently. Municipalities should
adopt lower fees and more streamlined
permitting processes for ADUs, possibly by
adopting a fee structure that considers the
square footage and ecological footprint of a
development, rather than just the number of
units added.22
Policymakers should take a cue from the
permissive codes of cities like Portland,
Oregon, and Vancouver, British Columbia,
which have removed the most common
barriers to ADUs. Portland does not require
owner occupancy or additional parking and
has fairly generous size limits (75 percent
of the primary house, up to 800 square
feet) and a $12,000 System Development
Charge waiver, while Vancouver even allows
two ADUs per property and requires no
added parking, owner occupancy, or special
design.23, 24
8. Facilitate development of smaller homes.
Developing smaller dwellings can create
more affordable and environmentally
sustainable housing.25 Smaller dwellings
could also create housing that is more
representative of our population. Single
people in the United States are currently
underserved by housing: in New York
City, a third of all households are single
people living alone; in San Francisco, the
number is 38 percent. In some US cities,
including Atlanta, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh,
single people represent almost half of
all households.26 Like cohousing, smaller
dwellings designed for individuals can be
arranged together to promote sharing.
Most cities do not permit small dwellings—
such as micro-apartments, tiny homes, yurts,
or homes built from repurposed shipping
containers—because they are considered
legally uninhabitable according to the
International Residential Code (a popular
standard that requires dwelling units to
include at least one room of 120 square
feet or larger). San Francisco recently
approved an ordinance to reduce minimum
dwelling unit size from 290 square feet to
220 square feet and allow construction of
up to 375 tiny apartment units.27 In addition
to size requirements, other barriers to
small dwellings and clustered villages may
stem from local or regional building, zoning,
health, or safety laws that should be revised
to promote micro housing, particularly when
units are clustered to enable sharing.28
A Call for Reform
A long and growing list of legal conundrums
has emerged from the sharing economy: How
95
can a short-term rental be distinguished
from a hotel? How can the sale of backyard
produce be distinguished from commercial
farming? How can a leased driveway be
distinguished from a commercial parking
lot?
The short answer to these questions:
it’s unclear. Our new ways of producing,
consuming, and exchanging have taken us
into new legal territory. Considering that
our current ways of living and working have
taxed our local economies, communities,
and natural environment to a point of crisis,
perhaps it’s a good thing that sharing
economy solutions don’t fit into the old legal
framework, one that hinges on separation
and not integration. The sharing economy
offers people opportunities that will get
them through tough times and lead us into
a better collective state of economic and
ecological affairs.
One thing is clear amid the gray areas:
municipalities must make space for sharing.
More appropriate policies and incentives
will vary widely depending on local context,
and finding them will require a balance of
concern for consumer protection, worker
rights, nuisance control, infrastructural
management, and much more. Policymakers
will ultimately need to draw boundaries
around a variety of sharing economy activities
to indicate what is allowed and what is not—
and do so without setting more barriers to
innovation. Although the policymaking road
will be long, it will be worthwhile; making
sharing a part of local policymaking will
enable communities to finally enjoy the full
extent of the sharing economy’s social,
economic, and ecological benefits.
Shareable Cities: A Sharing Economy Policy Primer
for Urban Leaders” (September 9, 2013), available
at http://theselc.org/city-policies. Many thanks
to attorneys Janelle Orsi and Corinne Calfee
for providing significant input on this chapter,
and special thanks to Janelle for inspiring me
to take up the cause of the grassroots sharing
economy and become an attorney through legal
apprenticeship.
1 Janelle Orsi, Practicing Law in the Sharing
Economy: Helping People Build Cooperatives, Social
Enterprise, and Local Sustainable Economies
(American Bar Association, 2012).
11 HR&A Advisors, Inc.,“Airbnb: Economic Impacts
in San Francisco and Its Neighborhoods,” Airbnb
(November 2012).
12 Ibid.
28 Orsi, “Policies for a Shareable City #5:
Affordable Housing.”
13 According to a project by the Collaborative Fund
and Startup America Partnership (2011).
Notes on Airbnb Study
14 Walter Hamilton, “In Silver Lake, Some Have
Reservations about Vacation Rental Website,”
Los Angeles Times, September 3, 2013.
15 Orsi et al., “Policies for Shareable Cities.”
2 Janelle Orsi, “Policies for a Shareable City #6:
Homes as Sharing Hubs,” Shareable.net, http://
shareable.net/blog/policies-for-a-shareable-city6-homes-as-sharing-hubs.
16 Cape Elizabeth, Maine, Zoning Ord. § 19-8-14
(2013).
3 Quantis, Earth Advantage, and Oregon Home
Builders Association, “A Life Cycle Approach to
Prioritizing Methods of Preventing Waste from
the Residential Construction Sector in the State
of Oregon,” State of Oregon Department of
Environmental Quality, http://deq.state.or.us/lq/
pubs/docs/sw/ResidentialBldgLCA.pdf.
Car Sharing and Parking Sharing,” Shareable.net,
http://shareable.net/blog/policies-for-a-shareablecity-1-car-sharing-and-parking-sharing.
4 Jonathan Taggart, “Inside an Eco-Village: Born of
Aligned Ecological Values and Design, Eco-Villages
Are Found in over 70 Countries around the World,”
Interactive Business Network Resource Library
(2009).
5 Julia Bartolf Milne, “Will Alternative Forms
of Common-Interest Communities Succeed with
Municipal Involvement? A Study of Community
Land Trusts and Limited Equity Cooperatives,” Real
Estate Law Journal 38, no. 3 (2009): 273.
6 Janelle Orsi, Yassi Eskandari-Qajar, Eve Weisman,
Molly Hall, and Ali Mann, “Policies for Shareable
Cities: A Sharing Economy Policy Primer for Urban
Leaders,” Sustainable Economies Law Center,
http://theselc.org/city-policies/.
Space Requirements,” File Number 120996, final
action December 7, 2012.
17 Orsi et al., “Policies for Shareable Cities.”
19 Susan Shaheen and Adam Cohen, “Growth
in Worldwide Carsharing: An International
Comparison,” Transportation Research Record:
Journal of the Transportation Research Board 1992
(2007): 81–89.
“Typical” listings were defined as entire homes
or private rooms/shared spaces with annual
occupancy rates of less than 50 percent, which
constitute 77 percent of all listings. Annual
income and occupancy within these groups were
calculated using a cohort analysis. Each host was
categorized into a cohort according to listing type
and historic booking availability. For each cohort,
average earnings and average occupancy of twelve
consecutive months was determined, adjusting for
seasonality and growth in users. For hosts active
on Airbnb for less than twelve months, incomes and
occupancy were annualized based on their cohorts.
I
Spending includes both accommodation (“host
income” and “hotel income”) and daytime spending
(“local business income”) per visitor per trip on
average.
II
Shareable Housing,” Shareable.net, http://
shareable.net/blog/policies-for-a-shareable-city5-shareable-housing.
21 “Fair Housing Issues in Land Use and Zoning:
Definitions of Family and Occupancy Standards”
(Mental Health Advocacy Services, Inc., 1998).
22 Orsi, “Policies for a Shareable City #5:
Shareable Housing.”
23 Eli Spevak, “Discrete Density,” Accessory
Dwellings, May 4, 2013, http://accessorydwellings.
org/2013/05/04/discrete-density.
7 Ibid.
8 Mindy Goldstein et al., “Urban Agriculture:
A Sixteen City Survey of Urban Agriculture
Practices across the Country,” Georgia Organics,
http://georgiaorganics.org/wp-content/themes/
GeorgiaOrganics/Downloads/SiteMoveOver/
urbanagreport.pdf.
24 Jordan Palmeri, “Zoning Regulations for ADUs
in 55 West Coast Cities,” Accessory Dwellings.
March 8, 2013, http://accessorydwellings.
org/2013/03/08/zoning-regulations-for-adus-in55-west-coast-cities.
25 Quantis et al., “Prioritizing Methods of
Preventing Waste.”
9 See a list of states at http://theselc.org/food.
Notes
This chapter borrows from and builds upon the
work of Janelle Orsi, Eve Weisman, Molly Hall,
Ali Mann, Neal Gorenflo, and me in “Policies for
96
10 Details of the legislation are available on the
Sustainable Economies Law Center’s website at
http://homegrownfoodlaw.org.
26 Sarah Watson, “Time to Make Room,” The
Urbanist 526 (2013).
27 Ordinance Name: “Planning Code—Efficiency
Dwelling Units—Numerical Cap and Open/Common
97
Example from
Zurich, Switzerland
Putting a price on trash makes
households more waste-conscious
The bag fee has reduced
household waste by 25
percent. The majority of
this decrease is thanks
to better, more thorough
separation of recyclable
material.
Other Organic
-25%
Plastics
Paper
Glass
The Züri-Sack is at the heart of Zurich’s
recycling system. Available at local
supermarkets, the blue-and-white trash
bags seem quite expensive—2 Fr. ($2.20)
apiece, the price for disposing of 35 liters
of trash. Recycling of glass, paper, and
clean metal, on the other hand, is free of
98
charge—these materials can be deposited
into public containers, rather than dumped
in a Züri-Sack. A small difference—paying
by volume for the waste they produce,
instead of a flat rate—has a big effect
on the way people in Zurich perceive the
amount of trash they produce and how
much it actually costs to dispose of it. Who
wouldn’t try to avoid producing trash if it
meant putting off the need to buy another
batch of ten Züri bags for 20 Fr. ($22)? The
bag fee has encouraged people to separate
their trash more carefully and shop in a
more waste-conscious way. Since the bag
was introduced, Zurich has produced
25 percent less trash.
Source: Bundesamt für Umwelt, Wald und Landschaft, Die Sackgebühr aus Sicht der Bevölkerung
und der Gemeinden (Bern: BUWAL, 2003), http://
www.bafu.admin.ch/publikationen/publikation/
00521/index.html?lang=de.
99
Example from
By drying a portion of their
harvest, mango farmers
have a second high-quality
product to offer, and one
that ensures them a steady
income year-round.
West Africa
Drying up post-crop losses means
sustained profits all year long
Mangoes
1 year
Dried Mangoes
1 year
Income
Price
One of the main problems faced by mango
farmers in West Africa is the short shelflife of mangoes, which leads to post-crop
loss. After great amounts of mangoes have
been harvested, farmers must rush to sell
all their fruit before it rots. This leads to
extreme price drops during harvesting
100
In the mango market, as everywhere, supply
and demand are mutually dependent. Mangoes
have a short shelf-life and a brief harvest
season, which means that farmers must sell
their fresh produce cheaply before it spoils.
season. With the help of solar dryers,
farmers have now started to enter a new
market: dried mango slices. By drying
the majority of their harvest, they have a
processed product to sell year-round and
can sell a smaller quantity of fresh mangoes
for higher prices during the harvest. The
only resource they need to dry and cure
their produce is sun, which is free and
abundant. So this sustainable practice not
only offers great economic opportunities
to farmers, but also guarantees that
consumers can enjoy delicious, nutritious
mangoes all year long.
Source: John Njagi, “Unique Mango Drier Offers
Rich Pickings for Small Producers,” Business Daily,
September 20, 2011, http://www.businessdaily
africa.com/Unique-mango-drier-offers-richpickings-for-small-producers/-/539444/1239068/
-/stubg1/-/index.html.
101
Building Out of Clay
Francis Kéré
I come from Burkina Faso, a landlocked country in West Africa
where building and rebuilding are a part of everyday life.
Every year, the rainy season takes its toll, and people have to
start again. This process is a part of the local culture, but it
is also a problem for village communities. Rebuilding demands
valuable time and resources that could be invested elsewhere
and holds back development. Building methods are in need of
a radical overhaul.
Africa’s development, however, is hampered by a lack of
education and architectural knowledge. In francophone West
Africa, there is just one school of architecture, and few can
afford to attend it. In addition to this, most African architects
look to the West for their inspiration, or have clients who
require them to emulate Western designs. This produces
buildings ill-suited to the climate and culture and dependent
on imports for their construction and maintenance. Africa
is in desperate need of both sustainable architecture and
infrastructural buildings such as schools. For me, this means
taking the sociocultural and economic context of the region
into account and achieving durability while using minimal
resources and technology.
↑ 1. Burkinabé villagers reapplying clay to a wall.
Unfortunately, in modern day Africa, “progress” often means
concrete buildings that rely on air conditioning. Even in
cities, this is problematic, as the materials are prohibitively
expensive. But in rural villages where there is no electricity,
air conditioning is simply not an option. Western designs and
102
103
materials are often inappropriate in the developing
world.
Achieving sustainability in developing countries requires
confronting conventional concepts of progress and modernity.
Bernard Rudofsky’s 1964 book Architecture without
Architects challenged the prevailing views of the day and
remains highly relevant today. Rudofsky opposed the ideas
of Le Corbusier and other architects who believed Western
technology was the solution to problems around the world. He
believed that developing countries are not backward—they
have their own technologies and know-how. Together with a
host of emerging contemporary architects around the world, I
am trying to revive traditional building methods and materials
and combine them with modern innovations. Some examples of
how this can be achieved follow.
↑ 2. The primary school in Gando.
In 1998, I designed a climatically adapted school for Gando,
the 2,500-person village where I was born, 200 kilometers
east of Burkino Faso’s capital city. I still remember being one
of 160 pupils in a concrete classroom, and the intolerable heat
inside. I wanted to build a school that was simply better.
A school built with locally available materials, but that could
also withstand the rain season. A school with a cool interior
and a good working environment. In order to do this, I decided
to build the school out of clay.
The beauty of clay is its abundance. We have the earth to
make bricks; we just have to dig. Clay is available locally, and
the people are used to working with it. When I first proposed
building a school out of clay, the village community was skeptical. They were enthusiastic about having their own school—
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at the time, children had to walk or cycle fifteen kilometers to
the nearest town, and many had to work in the fields. But they
doubted that a clay building could withstand the rainy season. In order to persuade them, I had to build models, inviting the villagers to test their strength, and demonstrating my
design’s durability. The school was completed in 2001. Eleven
years on, the school is still standing and has required no
maintenance. Clay had been thought of as a primitive building
material—a resource for the poor. Today, the school—with its
clay walls, ceiling, and floor—is a source of pride.
The three classrooms are arranged in a linear fashion and
separated by covered outdoor areas that can be used for
teaching and for play. The walls are made of stabilized and
compressed mud bricks, which keep the interior far cooler
than conventional concrete buildings. Concrete beams and
steel bars run across the width of the classrooms, supporting
a mud brick ceiling. To protect the walls from erosion, the
school is built on a base of cement, and a wide overlapping tin
roof shields the walls from rain.
The roof design was determined by practical considerations.
Due to the prohibitive cost of cranes and transportation, the
design used steel bars to make lightweight trusses, with tin
sheeting laid on top to form the roof. This could be assembled
on site, and once taught how to use a handsaw and a small
welder, the villagers themselves could do the work. The roof is
raised above the clay walls by a steel structure.
The corrugated tin roof, which is raised above the clay ceiling,
is heated by the sun. Air between the ceiling and roof heats
up and rises, drawing cool air from below and thereby creating
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a current. The classrooms are protected from the heat by the
thick clay ceiling, and hot air inside can rise through slits
in the ceiling. We set out to build what we call “buildings
that breathe”—buildings that work with the climate and not
against it—and this is the result.
Construction was carried out entirely by people from the
village; this is crucial to the sustainability of the project.
Only those who are involved in the development process can
appreciate the results achieved, develop them further, and
protect them. Men made clay bricks, women patted down
the floors, and children brought stones to build the foundations. Local craftsmen received on-site training; the skills
were transferrable to further initiatives in the village and
elsewhere. Two neighboring village communities subsequently
built their own schools as a cooperative effort. The local
authorities have also recognized the value of the project: not
only have they provided and paid for the teaching staff, but
they have also endeavored to employ the young people trained
there in public-sector projects, using the same techniques.
The impact of our projects has been strengthened by a longterm attachment with Gando. Each project builds on what has
come before—it doesn’t take shape in isolation. When the
primary school became too small, we built a school extension.
Difficulties in ensuring staff attendance have been tackled by
offering on-site teachers’ housing.
Education is the starting point of development. However,
in a community such as Gando, it is essential to serve the
broader needs of the people. Therefore, we have undertaken
complementary projects including a library, new wells, a
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vegetable garden, and a mango-tree nursery. In order to
assist a locally based women’s cooperative, we are currently
building a women’s center. And in 2014, our biggest project
yet will see the light of day: a secondary school for Gando.
The secondary school complex will consist of twelve classrooms, teachers’ housing, offices, and a circular building
comprising a library and meeting hall. Between the classrooms, there will be shaded areas where pupils can study or
relax. In the style of traditional compounds, a wall will surround the secondary school, protecting it from wind and dust.
Sandstorms come from the northeast, so the building faces
west.
In terms of construction, the secondary school displays a
radical new innovation. Clay is no longer made into individual
bricks: instead, the walls of the secondary school are made
by pouring a mixture of clay, gravel, and cement into a mold,
producing much larger sections. In this sense, clay can be
cast just like concrete. Using this method, the clay no longer
has to be sifted—it can be used as it is when dug out of the
ground, which saves time. This is a classic example of a way
in which traditional materials can be combined with simple
modern innovations and methods to produce a sustainable
form of architecture.
↑ 3. The community participates in the construction
of Gando’s secondary school, 2012.
Construction of the secondary school began in January 2012,
and by March the foundations were finished. It takes two days
to complete three wall sections, which are slightly curved
to make them more robust. They are produced using a twopiece iron mold bought with the prize money from winning the
Holcim Regional Award Gold last year.
↑ 4. School library, Gando.
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110
↑ 5. Layout of the Gando secondary-school complex, including
classrooms, offices, a library, and housing for teachers.
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Harmattan
(hot, dusty trade wind)
45˚C
shady
cool breeze
35˚C
buffer
ventilation duct
shady buffer zone
9: The hot corrugated iron roof
creates a chimney effect,
ensuring a steady airflow
into the classroom.
40˚C
zone
37˚C
7: The precooled air
enters the classroom
through vents in the floor.
8: Used air exits through
slots in the ceiling.
1: Mango trees shade the area
in front of the openings,
allowing grass to grow there.
2: Grass filters dust
out of the wind.
3: Moisture diffusing from clay pots
steadily waters the grass and trees.
4: Moist soil cools
the incoming air.
6: Cool groundwater is
pumped to the ventilation
ducts through a pipe
embedded in the bench.
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5: If there’s no wind or the
water pumps are out of order,
villagers refill the clay pots
with rainwater collected
during the rainy season.
↑ 6. Section diagram of the secondary school’s
passive ventilation and cooling system.
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85
The protective wall will be a bank of earth, shielding the
buildings and courtyard from the heat and from sandstorms.
Trees will be planted in the courtyard and on the earth banks
to provide shade for the pupils during breaks. Finally,
what we call a “passive ventilation system” will be put in
place.
Perpendicular to the earth bank, a concrete pipe 120
centimeters in diameter leads to each classroom, which is
water-cooled. Wind power is harnessed to pump groundwater
into a water system and channel it into subterranean pipes.
The water and moisture lead to a reduction in temperature.
The water then flows out of the pipes, and is used for
irrigation of the fields. Inside the pipes, the air is cooled; it
emerges in the classrooms through slits in the floor.
↑ 7. At the Global Holcim Award Ceremony, the children of Gando
celebrate the construction of their prize-winning secondary school.
A simpler backup system will also be installed. Vegetation
on the earth banks must be watered while minimizing water
loss through evaporation. This is done by storing water in
traditional clay pots and placing them next to trees and
plants, with drippers directly targeting the roots. The clay
pots only have to be filled once a week, keep the water cool,
and provide the plants with a small but constant supply of
water. Moisture from the plants seeps through the soil and
enters the concrete pipes.
The secondary school has the same roof design as the primary
school; together with the under-floor pipes, it is even more
effective, reducing the room temperature by six to eight
degrees Celsius. In essence, this is a zero-emissions cooling
system, using a combination of solar, wind, and thermal
energy. With minimal financial and technological resources, it
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simply isn’t possible to actively override the heat. This system
uses the climate to its advantage. The passive ventilation
system requires no electricity and very little maintenance,
making it well suited to the community.
Reforestation of the area is another important aspect of
the project, in an attempt to halt the desertification of the
region. Due to global warming and deforestation, the Sahara
Desert is expanding southward, and sandstorms are becoming
increasingly common. Due to a rapid increase in population
and the predominant use of firewood as fuel, 60 percent of
Burkina Faso’s trees have been chopped down in the past
fifteen years. With its plants and mango trees, the secondaryschool complex will be a green island in the Sahel. Through the
spreading of education and ideas such as the clay pot dripper
technology, the village community will, in the long term, have
the know-how to preserve these ideas and spread them to
other parts of the region.
Another innovation is the use of eucalyptus wood as a
construction material. Although not an indigenous plant,
eucalyptus is popular because it grows very quickly.
Unfortunately, it produces little shade and no fruit, and soaks
up vast quantities of water, which endangers agriculture
in the surrounding area. Therefore, we encourage replacing
eucalyptus with mango trees.
Due to the training of local people and the simplicity of the
technologies used, the villagers are not dependent on external
specialists should the buildings require maintenance. This
distinguishes the project from many other well-meaning but
ultimately problematic ventures. A building is not sustainable
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if there is nobody in the local area who can repair it. The
necessary skills to produce and maintain buildings such
as the first primary school will be passed on to future
generations, and in this way, a new culture of building will
develop.
Despite the fact that more than 80 percent of the people in
Gando are illiterate, and despite the need for children to work
in the fields, the scale of our projects is increasing. The first
primary school was designed to accommodate 120 pupils,
and today it has 300. The school extension created space
for a further 500. The secondary school will be large enough
for 800, with a full capacity of 1,000. This is the estimated
level of demand in five years’ time; by planning ahead, we can
cater to future needs and ensure that the project doesn’t
rapidly become obsolete.
The secondary-school project aims to combine the qualities
in all of the projects implemented over the past decade.
Firstly, the local community will continue to be involved in the
construction process. The villagers of Gando are extremely
poor and in desperate need of development. But they are also
the country’s greatest asset and the key to solving their own
problems. They want to be part of the development process,
not just in implementing it, but also conceptualizing it in the
first place. The enthusiasm and willingness of the community
to participate is essential to the project’s sustainability. The
project to build a secondary school is an attempt to enable
the people of Gando to help themselves, and to achieve
development through education. Of course, this is neither the
quickest nor the simplest way, but in the long term, it is the
most sustainable one.
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Secondly, the combination of traditional materials and
methods with modern innovations will be developed further.
Traditional clay structures can only span a small area and are
not appropriate for building a school. Only by combining local
materials with a new approach, drawing on Western know-how
without relying on hi-tech solutions, can the project succeed.
2.
Diversity
There have been problems and setbacks, but I believe that in
a few years, it will be fashionable to build houses out of clay
in Burkina Faso. As yet, the Burkinabé are still convinced that
clay isn’t as durable as concrete. We just have to show them
that clay needs to be handled differently. In this country, a
house made of clay is far better than a concrete one. There
have already been several cases of projects using a similar
design based on clay. A building has been erected in Garango
along precisely these lines, and a businessman in Laongo used
the same principles to build accommodation for his workers.
In March 2012 the secondary-school project was awarded the
Global Holcim Award Gold and, fittingly, a second ceremony
was held in Gando in December. It was an unexpected honor
and a great source of encouragement to be presented with
such a prestigious prize. But most important of all it was a
call for action—to continue our work and to take our projects
to the next level.
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Upgrading Informal Settlements
While Preserving Communities
Introduction by Hans-Rudolf Schalcher
In most megacities, informal settlements are emerging at an
amazing speed. Informal settlements are usually characterized
not only by high density, a strongly interrelated fabric of
dwellings and small businesses, and significant cultural and
social diversity, but also by fuzzy land ownership, precarious
construction, and insufficient infrastructure. They often lack
public utilities, transportation, and educational, leisure, and
health-care facilities. Nevertheless, informal settlements are
often the only option for poor people; although many of their
inhabitants live below subsistence level, they also offer various
job opportunities. The pressing questions that face us are how
to develop informal settlements without destroying their unique
strengths—affordability, social interconnectivity, and dynamic
enterprises—and how to secure the financial and political
resources required for such a fundamental urban transformation.
There are two main strategies used to improve living conditions
in informal settlements. The first is based on upgrading existing
buildings and infrastructure, either with or without temporary
relocation of the inhabitants. The second permanently resettles
inhabitants. Some of the following essays will elaborate on the
details of these different strategies. How these two strategies
are implemented on the ground differs tremendously depending
on context, as there isn’t only one specific kind of informal
habitat. In any megacity, there is a great variety of communities
facing different issues of land ownership, building quality, and
infrastructure. Although erected on land that usually does not
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belong to the residents and not built according to the official
building regulations and standards, such areas embody a great
deal of formality. There are many “dos and don’ts” established
by communities and widely accepted by individuals. Local
businesses are subject to certain restrictions; political power
and most of the social decision-making processes are well
defined and respected, even if they are not written down on
tablets of the law.
Such informal and often hidden regulations can hinder the
broadly anticipated improvement of squatter settlements
because they usually strive to maintain the current balance
of power. Hence there exist certain prerequisites for a
successful, community-based upgrade of informal habitats
in megacities. Three aspects are of vital importance:
organization, land ownership, and financing. First, a community
building process has to be initiated and maintained, creating
a common understanding of the problem as well as a common
vision and culture. A community needs structure and welldefined processes; a publically elected, transparent, and
reliable steering board should take the lead and responsibility
for the upgrading project. This body should be in charge of
ensuring sound decision making, obtaining legal consent,
and managing the community’s manifold relations with public
authorities and the financial institutions.
Second, land ownership needs to be clarified. This challenging
process should be carried out in close collaboration with
the authorities and the entitled landowners. This is often
complicated by the fact that areas occupied by informal
settlements have become attractive to commercial developers,
which puts tremendous pressure on land prices.
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Finally, funding has to be secured. Worldwide experience has
proven that the inhabitants of informal settlements cannot
secure adequate private finance by themselves. Upgrading
informal habitats needs considerable public funding or funds
provided by NGOs, because such projects do not offer private
investors attractive returns within a reasonable time. Once
obtained, project finances should be managed stringently to
ensure that funds are used properly and no corruption occurs.
Corruption is a potential deathblow to any urban upgrading
project, and politicians and public authorities should pay
careful attention to this issue.
The tremendous growth of informal settlements and their attendant poor living conditions will continue, and it’s likely to
spread to more megacities all over the world. Within three decades, roughly 70 percent of the world’s population will live in
urban centers, as countries continue to either ignore or support rural-to-city migration; the People’s Republic of China,
for instance, recently published a new strategy to actively
push migrants from the countryside into the cities.1 Managing
and upgrading informal settlements will therefore become the
prevailing challenge for city governments, development agencies, and financial institutions around the world. The principles
of sustainable development must be the binding guidelines for
any kind of urban intervention. We just have to apply them.
Note
1 Eduardo López Moreno, Oyebanji Oyeyinka,
and Gora Mboup, State of the World’s Cities
2010/2011—Cities for All: Bridging the Urban
Divide (Nairobi: UN Human Settlements Program,
2012).
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Working with the Invisible: Unlocking the Processes
and Practices of Informal Housing
Sheela Patel and Keya Kunte
Sheela Patel and Keya Kunte of the Society for the Promotion of Area
Resource Centres (SPARC) share some of that organization’s history
and explain how the lessons they’ve learned in India—particularly the
importance of involving the residents of informal neighborhoods in the
decisions that will affect them—can be applied to housing policy across
the developing world.
Informal neighborhoods are often treated
as aberrations and their residents as
undeserving, despite the fact that they
form in response to official neglect.
Governments neither acknowledge nor plan
for the inevitable presence of the poor, who
then must live in risk-prone, vulnerable
conditions. Yet informality is deeply
embedded in cities. Informal livelihoods
support the formal city, particularly in the
developing world. After years of neglect,
citizens and policymakers are beginning to
debate how to upgrade informal habitats and
improve their water, sewage, and transport
infrastructure without destroying their
self-sufficiency and social capital. From
the slum clearance programs of the 1950s
to the slum improvement programs of the
1970s, policies for the urban poor have seen
a giant transformation. Yet the politics of
slum upgrading has usually either excluded
the marginalized from the decision-making
process or led to communities being coopted to serve the financial interests of
cities.
Maintaining the strengths of these
communities demands that we first
understand and identify those strengths:
the processes and practices at work
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within the community. The survival
strategies of poor communities have
many valuable elements, evolved out of
necessity, which need to be included in the
interventions brought by state investment.
State intervention that does not give
communities and their associations a
chance to participate and contribute loses
out on culture, valuable social resilience,
and collective action. All are critical in a
changing world with increasing economic
and climate-related challenges.
The strategies of the SPARC alliance, which
will be described below, emerged from
several decades of experience in mobilizing
individuals and communities of the urban
poor to explore solutions to ongoing
evictions and informal housing. The SPARC
alliance consists of SPARC—an NGO founded
in Mumbai in 1984 to mobilize the urban
poor to gain access to basic facilities—the
National Slum Dwellers Federation (NSDF),
and the Mahila Milan, a decentralized
network of poor women’s collectives. The
alliance builds on communities’ abilities to
naturally collectivize and intuitively design
solutions for housing, while also working
with local governments and the state to
provide legal tenure, infrastructure, and
amenities. By setting up savings groups and
carrying out surveys, the alliance seeks to
collectivize and empower slum dwellers—
particularly women—to negotiate with
the state for better facilities. The SPARC
alliance works to transform slum residents’
perception of themselves as victims to that
of crucial actors in the development of
their habitat. While government consultants
and other organizations working with
informality often pay lip service to this issue
of participation, SPARC’s strategies can
produce engagement, innovative practices,
and a capacity to adapt to local contexts,
thus affecting the delivery of state-provided
housing.
Counting the Invisible
In 1980 and 1981, the government of
Maharashtra, in one of its several attempts
to beautify Mumbai, demolished pavement
dwellings on Senapati Bapat Marg in Dadar,
a central neighborhood. In the midst of the
monsoon, the police escorted buses and
trucks filled with residents outside the
city limits and dumped them there. NGOs in
the city took a petition to the High Court;
demolitions were suspended and most of the
residents eventually returned and rebuilt
their dwellings. In 1985, the Supreme Court
of India ruled on the matter in the case
Olga Tellis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation.
While the ruling demonstrated sympathy
for the plight of pavement dwellers, it also
determined that the municipality was obliged
to keep the pavement clear for the good of
the city and that this obligation superseded
the pavement dwellers’ claims to life and
livelihood. The city was to give prior notice
and evict the pavement dwellers after
November 1, 1985.
SPARC and other NGOs in the city now had
a crisis to face. Two strategies emerged
as a response. Some NGOs, working with
representatives from various pavements,
sought to produce defiant opposition to the
demolition squads. In contrast, the SPARC
alliance entered a dialogue with the city to
seek reconciliation. SPARC had just begun
working with Mahila Milan (Women Together),
a women’s collective that had formed
among the pavement dwellers. These women
understood that confrontation would lead
to the arrests of their husbands and sons,
for whose release they would then have to
bribe the police. On their urging, the SPARC
alliance produced a solution that allowed for
relocation rather than evictions.
In its engagement with the city, the
alliance found that neither the city nor
research organizations had much data
about pavement dwellers. Therefore, they
undertook the first such survey of southcentral Mumbai’s E-Ward and its arterial
roads, the areas that faced the greatest
threat of evictions. The city expected
that once it had carried out evictions, the
pavements would remain free of occupants;
both the government and academics believed
that pavement dwellers were transient
migrants. The survey produced by the
Alliance, published in a report called We the
Invisible, refuted this widely held belief.1
The report showed that the poorest, most
deprived households from the poorest
districts of India had migrated to Mumbai
in search of work. The lack of affordable
housing options had left them setting up
houses on the pavements. Contrary to the
government’s belief, pavement dwellers
generally came back to their dwelling sites
within a week of being evicted or relocated
nearby.
The government had not collected their
own data on pavement or slum dwellers;
the report finally made them sit up and
take notice. It provided an identity for the
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previously invisible pavement dwellers and
brought attention to their plight. It helped
open up dialogue with local officials and
led to opportunities where previously there
had been none. It also inaugurated one
of the main mobilizing processes of the
SPARC alliance: surveying. Counting people
through the census is crucial to creating
an organizational entity and bringing
neighborhoods together as a “federated
community.” It also bolsters anecdotal
evidence with data and helps contest state
data, which is difficult to disaggregate
down to the household level.2 Gathering
citywide data on slums and their households
is a vital first step to improving living
conditions.
Empowering Women to Participate
In 1986, several pavement dwellings and
other slums in southern Mumbai were
demolished by the local government.
Households were taken in trucks to the
outskirts of the city, beyond the airport in
Dindoshi, Goregaon. At the time, this was a
forest area inhabited by dacoits—bandits.
The entire site, which was to house 1,800
households, was demarcated into sectors
where groups of evicted households from
across the city were placed. Each household
was provided a 150-square-foot plot of land
with no basic amenities and expected to
build their own homes.
One such group, pavement dwellers from E.
Moses Road, had been part of SPARC’s 1985
census of pavement slums, and through
this connection, the alliance offered to
work with the evicted households. Between
1986 and 1990, the alliance worked with 42
households from E. Moses Road who had
been relocated to a precarious hill slope in
Dindoshi. They had identified another piece
of land in the Goregaon area that had better
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access to basic amenities and roads and
wanted to move there. The alliance surveyed
these households, established savings
groups, and successfully negotiated with the
municipality for the new land. Mahila Milan
assisted residents with the move, obtaining
transport, ration shops, and other amenities.
The new settlement became known as Adarsh
Nagar Housing Cooperative.
Life-size model-home exhibitions were used
to display, on a human scale, the size and
layout of a residential unit. The strategy
was developed to improve on the existing
paradigm, in which professionals often told
communities what to do rather than seeking
their insight to produce appropriate house
designs. The house models opened a space
for discussion between professionals and
communities, allowing them to arrive at
design solutions together rather than from
individualistic standpoints.
From the model-home exhibitions, a
fourteen-foot-tall household unit emerged.
The fourteen-foot-high house was an idea
developed by Mahila Milan and the pavement
dwellers’ federation. Huts on the pavements
occupied a limited area and sat adjacent
to other huts; expansion could only occur
vertically. Due to a height restriction,
however, houses on the pavements could
not add an entire floor above the existing
structure. Instead, they built mezzanines,
which provided adequate privacy and extra
space, with the added benefit of being
cheaper to build than an additional floor. The
fourteen-foot height concept incorporated
this mezzanine into an apartment system of
rehabilitation housing.
By 1990, the house design had been selected
and priced at INR 16,000. The alliance had
successfully negotiated with a bank to get
five-year loans for the pavement dwellers
for houses they would build themselves.
↑ 1. Cover page of We The Invisible (SPARC, 1985)—
the alliance’s first census of pavement dwellers.
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↑ 2. Complete 1:1 scale house model with bamboo frame and
cloth wrapping to showcase space and design to communities
and city officials, Kanpur, Maharashtra, 2000.
↑ 3. The first stage of construction of a full-size house
model—the bamboo frame—Kanpur, Maharashtra, 2000.
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129
↑ 4. House-model exhibition showcasing a full-size,
fourteen-foot-high house design that accommodates
a mezzanine, Goregaon, Mumbai, 1985.
↑ 5. House-model exhibition showcasing a full-size,
thatched-roof design adapted to the local climate,
Cuttack, Odisha, 2001.
Money was saved through the wholesale
purchase of materials such as bricks and
cement, the contribution of unskilled labor
by residents working alongside professional
masons, and the use of funicular roofing
tiles, which the women learned to fabricate
themselves in order to reduce the cost
of the roofs and mezzanines. Today, the
houses are owned cooperatively by their
residents.
In 1987 and 1988, the state of Maharashtra
and Indian Railways were discussing the
challenge of slums along the railway tracks.
The railway slums slowed down trains and
made it impossible to lay additional tracks;
living so close to the tracks also put the
slum dwellers themselves in danger. The
government commissioned the SPARC
alliance to undertake a census of slums
within 80 feet of the railway, which was
published as Beyond the Beaten Track.3
Neither SPARC, nor Mahila Milan, nor
the NSDF had experience managing such
a project, and no government financial
mechanisms to support community mobilization existed at the time. The project’s
breakthroughs were vital in the collective
learning of all three organizations. Much of
the success of Adarsh Nagar can be credited
to a strong Mahila Milan leadership, which
was committed to taking loans and building
homes. Women’s collectives play a crucial
part in mobilizing their communities—they
should have a central role in developing solutions and setting precedents that change
the way the state views the demands and
expectations of the poor.
The survey also initiated the creation of
the Railway Slum Dwellers’ Federation
(RSDF). Through meetings with the pavement
dwellers’ federation and Mahila Milan, the
newly formed railway federation explored
possibilities for relocation away from
the tracks and new housing options. This
process of learning through other federation
groups became known as community
exchange; it is a crucial way to share
lessons, challenges, and strategies among
the community of slum dwellers.
Effecting Policy Changes: Negotiated
Relocations
↑ 6. House with fourteen-foot ceiling, Adarsh Nagar
Cooperative Housing Society, Goregaon, Mumbai, 2011.
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The poor have learned from experience that
developing a strategy begins with tweaking
existing regulations—setting precedents
that allow some experimentation and
dialogue, and, if successful, allow many
others to replicate the strategy. This can be
seen in the fourteen-foot height strategy
and in the two-phase relocation strategy
illustrated later in this essay. Increased
engagement and demonstrated success lead
to policy changes as well, as seen in the
resettlement and relocation policy produced
for the Mumbai Urban Transportation Project
(MUTP).
Negotiations between the RSDF and the
railway authorities were initially fruitless;
the railways wanted nothing to do with slum
dwellers. They refused permission to the
municipality to either build toilets or collect
garbage from the railway slums, fearing
that this would be seen as “recognizing
their presence.” Although they made no
breakthrough in changing the position of
the railways, the RSDF were able to organize
and begin a dialogue with the government
of Maharashtra and its urban development
department. This department then sought
the help of the RSDF in the matter of the
Mankhurd railway station.
In 1990, the Mankhurd railway station
was to be built at the northern end of the
city, connecting Mumbai to New Bombay.
About 900 railway slum dwellers from the
neighborhood of Bharat Nagar needed to
be relocated to allow the construction of
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the Mankhurd railway line. The government
provided a partially subsidized relocation
option to all displaced families; however,
about 160 households could not afford to
pay the costs of the relocation option. The
state government’s housing department
asked the NSDF and Mahila Milan to find
a way to relocate these households and
facilitated their move to state-owned land
in Mankhurd, fifteen minutes from the
site of their original homes.4 As only 118
households would fit on the allocated land,
the remaining households were provided
temporary accommodation elsewhere. Using
the same arrangement as the pavement
dwellers’ Adarsh Nagar Cooperative
Housing Society, the 118 railway settlement
households were able to build their own
homes in Mankhurd. This project came to be
known as Jan Kalyan.
In Jan Kalyan as in Adarsh Nagar, linking
community savings to seeking land and loans
showcased the bankability and commitment
of communities to what became precedentsetting projects. Though these initial
projects set vital precedents, however, they
did not impact policy and demonstrated the
need for creating more scalable, communityled solutions.
In 1998, ten years after the RSDF produced
its first survey and rehabilitation solution,
the federation had an opportunity to
demonstrate its first scalable, communityled strategy for the relocation and
rehabilitation of railway slums, this time in
Kanjurmarg, another northern suburb. The
strategy was replicated under the Mumbai
Urban Transportation Project, which saw
several slum families displaced across the
city, and eventually became state policy for
better-planned, community-led relocations.
At the time of the Kanjurmarg project,
the World Bank and the government of
134
Maharashtra had been negotiating the
Mumbai Urban Transport Project, which
includes a number of rail and road subprojects involving the displacement of
25,000 to 30,000 households in the city. For
a variety of reasons, the World Bank delayed
approving the MUTP. Responding to public
impatience, Indian Railways decided to lay
many households did not have standard
identity cards, the alliance came up with a
list of alternative documents that could form
reliable substitutes. These included hospital
receipts, school admission documents,
and even police reports that indicated the
presence of a person prior to 1995.
created to facilitate market subsidies
for redevelopment. To cover the cost
of construction of tenements for slum
dwellers—each household gets a 25-squaremeter tenement apartment—developers
receive additional FSI (floor space index,
also known as FAR, or floor area ratio)
with which they can increase the floor
the fifth and sixth corridors between Kurla
and Thane on the Central Railway using its
own budgetary resources and to follow the
relocation and rehabilitation process that
was to be developed under the MUTP so
that retroactive financing would be possible
if and when the MUTP was cleared. The
SPARC alliance was associated with the task
force and its subcommittees and was later
appointed as the facilitator to implement the
relocation and rehabilitation.
In 2000, the MUTP was approved and 18,000
households affected by the project were
relocated using the strategy designed and
executed in Kanjurmarg by the RSDF and the
alliance. This strategy has since become the
standard relocation and rehabilitation policy
for the state of Maharashtra.
area of their buildings and construct more
properties for sale on the open market. On
high-value land, redevelopment may produce
“upgrading options” that destroy slum
dwellers’ habitats and livelihoods. In order
to maximize the space available to construct
buildings for sale, developers often pack
rehabilitation buildings close together
without light, ventilation, or privacy.
Alternative Solutions for Challenging Policies
First, 900 families from along the railway
slums were relocated to a plot of land
in Kanjurmarg. Communities and their
federations produced baseline surveys,
formed cooperative societies, and developed
a new, two-phase relocation strategy with
SPARC’s support. In the first phase, the
state provided land, the railways provided
infrastructure, and households took loans
to build temporary, 120-square-foot transit
houses at Kanjurmarg. Most significantly,
the households moved voluntarily and
managed their own relocation. In the second
phase, the government utilized the Slum
Rehabilitation Act (SRA), passed in 1995 by
the Maharashtra State Government, to build
market-subsidy-based multistory buildings
to house the relocated railway dwellers.
Dharavi began as marshy swampland at the
outer edge of the city. Starting in the 1940s,
informal dwellings began to fill the area;
by the ’80s, it was one of the largest slums
in Asia. Toward the end of that decade, the
residents of Dharavi noted the emerging
community-driven solutions led by the
SPARC alliance across the city. They sought
the support of the alliance to undertake
redevelopment in Dharavi and to negotiate
for the right to manage its construction. The
first project was initiated in 1989 for the
Markendeya Society; the fourteen-foot-high
ceiling concept, first used for the pavement
dwellers, was here utilized in a four-story
building for the first time. This was
replicated later, in 2000, by another Dharavi
redevelopment, called Rajiv Indira, which
was implemented under the SRA of 1995.
The SRA provided security of tenure and
a right to claim redevelopment to slum
dwellers who had settled on January 1,
1995, or earlier. For those who could not be
given security of tenure in situ, the scheme
provided for relocation; all slum dwellers
were given the same entitlement. Because
Poor governance has allowed many SRA
projects in Mumbai to favor real estate
capitalization more than slum upgrading.
Organizations of the poor have no access
to formal finance and thus cannot manage
community projects; they must cede
control to the developer. The SRA was
After passage of the SRA, the alliance began
investigating how slum communities could
utilize the legislation to develop their own
housing. They hoped to encourage slum
dwellers to save money for and participate
actively in the design and construction
of buildings. In 1997, the Rajiv Indira
Cooperative Housing Society, in association
with the alliance, set out to develop an
in-situ upgrading project in Dharavi. The
society was initially comprised of 53
households living on state-owned land. The
first design envisaged two buildings, one
for sale and one for the slum dwellers. The
residents, with assistance from a structural
engineer, designed a three-story walk-up
structure with fourteen-foot-high ceilings
and a 100-square-foot mezzanine. However,
the SRA density requirements meant that the
buildings would need to have more units and
more stories.
Generally, when there are more rehabilitation
units constructed than there are slum
families on site, the extra rehabilitation
units are used to resettle households from
other parts of the city. Fortunately, societies
from two adjacent neighborhoods, Suryodaya
135
and Ganga, became interested and joined
the project in 1999; the existing residents of
the amalgamated communities now provided
the necessary density by themselves. This
addition added road-frontage land to the
site, which actually improved the financial
viability of the project. The site plan was
rearranged so that the larger dwelling units
fronted the main road, increasing the value
of the sale component. The height of the
sale component was restricted to three
floors because the property falls within
the Coastal Regulation Zone (CRZ), but the
alliance constructed the foundation for a
seven-floor building in case restrictions
were later rolled back. Indeed, the CRZ
regulations were recently modified; the last
remaining building will have a higher FSI.
In 2004, the state of Maharashtra announced
the Dharavi Redevelopment Project, seeking
to capitalize on land that represents the
lives and livelihoods of more than 500,000
people without even seeking their consent.5
Residents have resisted this and sought a
more central role in the project; they want
development that enhances their quality of
life.6 Following the strategies developed by
the SPARC alliance, the people of Dharavi
seek a contributing role in this process and
have demonstrated their ability to work
with professionals to undertake scalable
solutions. At the time of writing, the state
has yet to respond to acknowledge this
possibility.
Informal Challenges with No Easy Answers
By 2003, all households had settled into
their new homes. The discussions between
Citibank and the alliance to develop this
property are now part of a case study
developed by the Kennedy School at
Harvard University. The experimental project
established many precedents: crucially,
and unusually, a private bank undertook
a large, high-risk loan to a community
organization, thanks in part to a loan
guarantee from Homeless International.
Usually, the Reserve Bank of India will not
grant loans to communities or individuals
without any collateral assets or bank funds,
which is a common roadblock experienced by
community-based projects. The fourteen-foot
ceiling height and the large corridors and
landing spaces were unique design concepts
that have since been adapted for other
projects. Most importantly, the completed
project has set a precedent for communityled, rather than developer-driven, slum
redevelopment. To date, it remains the first
community-driven project to demonstrate
that, with institutional support, communities
can design their own housing projects even
in the face of policy obstacles.
136
Dealing with informality in cities means
playing catch-up with past neglect and
struggling with a system that places little
or no value on community participation.
Creating space for communities to explore
and develop their own solutions requires
overcoming obstacles, both from within
the communities and from the state, but
creating an institutional identity through
which communities can enter a dialogue
with more powerful entities like the city and
state is essential. Unless the urban poor
have a sustained capacity to stay mobilized,
negotiations will never change their roles
and functions.
Women play a central role in sustaining
mobilization, but it is important to recognize
that men and women look at change
differently. Choices depend on who is
involved and how processes are explored.
For instance, with the pavement and railway
slum dwellers in Mumbai, women made the
choice to relocate, preferring that to the
prospect of evictions and accidents. The
question of how processes are carried
↑ 7. Mahila Milan member Sagira Banoo collecting daily savings
from slum households as part of their savings and loan activity.
↑8. Mahila Milan savings blackboard tracking savings
collected across different settlements/cooperatives.
137
out—and by whom—is also very important
for surveys. The poor are mistrustful of data
collection, which does not produce benefits
they value and which they often assume
will be used against them. However, surveys
driven by communities themselves can lead
to productive discussions and produce the
basis for dialogue and negotiation with the
state.
We need to put pressure on the state to
develop more inclusive policies and financial
mechanisms that support communitybased development. It is difficult for the
urban poor to get loans, which is why most
households build incrementally. Banks
fear lending to the poor, whose political
representatives often pressure them, as part
of their electoral strategies, not to repay
loans. The government has made no serious
attempts to help banks manage risks without
increasing interest rates, and people no
longer have any faith in government rhetoric
encouraging banks to give loans to the poor.
↑ 9. Rajiv Indira-Suryodaya Housing Cooperative
after construction, Dharavi, Mumbai, 2006.
138
Until poor communities have better access
to financing, one of the most important
things we can do is identify ways to help
informal settlements help themselves—
safely, economically, and sustainably.
This will entail researching construction
materials, designs, and alternative means
of financing that can build upon and
improve the incremental solutions used
by millions of households who have built
their own homes. Forming organized
community groups, setting up savings
groups, developing women-led collectives,
and carrying out surveys are all important,
effective strategies for empowering poor
communities. They constitute a response
to lack of governance and are the tools for
negotiation with a governance structure
that often has little information about or
desire to engage with the issue of informal
habitats.
We must complement community projects
with government advocacy. Communities and
NGOs need to strengthen their advocacy
efforts in order to be heard when India’s
central government and many state
governments review their housing delivery
policies. This means that advocacy goals
have to be decadal rather than annual. In a
federal structure where state governments
set up their own policies, precedents have
to be scaled region by region. This is no
small challenge: it will take a committed
political stance and strong leadership for
governments to see that the poor themselves
make a much larger contribution to the city
than the state does.
Notes
1. We the Invisible (Mumbai: SPARC, 1985).
2. Sheela Patel and Carrie Baptist, “Editorial:
Documenting by the Undocumented,” Environment
and Urbanization 24, no. 1 (2012): 3–12.
3. Beyond the Beaten Track (Mumbai: SPARC,
1988).
4. Sundar Burra, “Resettlement and Rehabilitation
of the Urban Poor: The Story of Kanjur Marg,”
Development Planning Unit Working Paper no. 99,
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dpu-projects/drivers_urb_
change/urb_governance/pdf_comm_act/SPARC_
Burra_story_of_Kanjur_Marg.pdf
5 “Save Dharavi,” Youtube video, 6:35, uploaded by
“sparcindia,” July 20, 2007, https://www.youtube.
com/watch?v=5tE1gF4eZ5M.
6 Sheela Patel, Aneerudha Paul, Sundar Burra,
Bindi Vasavada, Sujay Kumarji, and Kairavi Dua,
RE: Interpreting, Imagining, Developing DHARAVI
(Mumbai: SPARC and KRVIA, 2010).
139
The reservoir for the
building’s sprinkler
system and its swimming pool are one and
the same.
Example from
Vienna, Austria
Having your water tank,
and swimming in it too
Alt Erlaa is a giant 1970s housing project
outside Vienna, known for being unusually
popular with its inhabitants. This can be
partly accounted for by their generous
terraced apartments, and partly by the fact
that each resident owns a small share of the
building, and perhaps partly by their choice
of 32 leisure clubs within the complex. But
the residents’ Wohnglück—their “housing
happiness,” also a play on architect Harry
140
Glück’s last name—wouldn’t be complete
without the seven swimming pools situated
atop their four housing blocks. And those
pools weren’t originally even meant to
be there: according to Austrian high-rise
building codes, the architect was obliged
to place water tanks on top of each building
in order to serve the sprinkler systems. The
static complexity of these tanks, the planning
effort that would go into incorporating them
into the buildings, and their high cost all
made Glück wonder how the tanks could be
used for nonemergency purposes. This is
how he got the idea to simply design them
as swimming pools, a luxury he otherwise
could never have afforded. Today, these
multifunctional pools—which have never
actually been used in an emergency—
are regularly used by 90 percent of the
complex’s inhabitants. Perhaps this is the
secret to the project’s success: unlike so
many other giant housing projects from its
time, Alt Erlaa is not only still standing, its
3,271 apartments are fully occupied—and it
remains beloved by its inhabitants.
Source: Architekturzentrum Wien, “Wohnpart
‘Alt Erlaa,’” nextroom, http://www.nextroom.at/
building.php?id=239.
141
Dividing the achieved energy
savings by the investment cost
gives you the proportional
impact, which expresses most
comprehensively how efficient
the measure is.
Example from
Stuttgart, Germany
A small effort can make a big difference
when it comes to energy efficiency
Investment
Installing
alphaEOS
Insulating
toward Roof
Insulating
toward Cellar
Energy Savings
10 €/m2
20%
21 €/m2
12.7 €/m2
2
0.9
11%
82 €/m2
50 €/m2
AlphaEOS, a “smart” heating control
system designed by a team of young
alumni from the University of Stuttgart, is
a technological marvel. Its AI familiarizes
itself with its environment and the habits
of its users, “learning” to optimize comfort
and energy consumption. It can even be
controlled remotely through a smartphone
app, allowing you to regulate your heating
142
19%
Insulating
All Outer Walls
Insulating
All Windows
Proportional
Impact
0.87
43%
0.5
11%
wherever you are. But alphaEOS is most
appealing from an economic perspective—
and that’s most important to people
renovating a house. It requires very little
input in terms of money, labor, or energy
compared to how much energy—and thus
money—it can save. The relatively cheap
device can be attached to any existing
heating system, just by replacing the
0.2
original regulator with a new, remotely
controlled vent, so installation costs are
extremely low. The “brain” of the device, a
small computer, connects to the Internet
through your home Wi-Fi and from there
can be accessed by smartphone. Just by
regulating your “old” heating in a smarter
way—without you even perceiving it as
a cutback—it saves as much money and
energy as other, much more work- and costintensive measures do.
Sources: http://www.alphaeos.com; Graphic based
on data from: Henning Discher, Eberhard Hinz, and
Andreas Enseling, dena-Sanierungsstudie Teil 1:
Wirtschaftlichkeit energetischer Modernisierung im
Mietwohnungsbestand (Berlin: Deutsche EnergieAgentur/Institut Wohnen und Umwelt, 2010),
http://www.dena.de/publikationen/gebaeude/
dena-sanierungsstudie-teil-1.html.
143
Example from
Paris, France
Billboards for bikes:
a public-private partnership in Paris
An invisible bond connects
the advertising panel and
the bike-sharing system
Velib': neither could exist
without the other.
The 1,500 billboards installed by
JCDecaux were authorized by the city
on the conditions that the advertising
firm not only make a third of them
available for public service, but also
pay advertising royalties to the city
and cover the expenses of the Vélib’
system, from which Paris collects the
revenue.
With 110,000 users a day, Paris’s bikesharing system, Vélib’, is one of the biggest
and most successful in the world. JCDecaux,
the advertising firm that won the city’s
bike-sharing contract, is responsible for the
maintenance and replacement of the bikes; it
also manages two-thirds of the advertising
panels that come with Vélib’ stations (the
remaining one-third of the advertising space
144
is reserved, free of charge, for public and
municipal advertising). The city of Paris
receives fees and advertising royalties
from JCDecaux and all of the revenue from
the bike-sharing system itself. In return,
JCDecaux profits from the well-situated
advertising panels on each Vélib’ rental
station. Vélib’ operates with a digital system
based on credit-card information; bikes
can be rented day-to-day or on a long-term
basis. Since its introduction, Vélib’ has
doubled the number of bicycle trips in the
city—and about one in three of these new
bicycle trips is estimated to have replaced a
trip by car. Bridging the so-called last mile
to ensure that no Parisian is ever far from a
bicycle, Vélib’ has become an important part
of the city’s transportation system.
Source: Steven Erlanger, “A New Fashion Catches
On in Paris: Cheap Bicycle Rentals,” New York
Times, July 13, 2008, http://www.nytimes.
com/2008/07/13/world/europe/13paris.html?_r=0.
145
Mumbai Slum Upgrades:
Can You Apply Bottom-Up Thinking?
Uday Athavankar
Considering the future of housing in a political climate where state
housing projects may be a thing of the past, architect and educator Uday
Athavankar surveys the range of options that developers and policymakers
have to improve informal settlements in Mumbai.
In developing economies, even “affordable
housing” is an expensive proposition in light
of the income and savings of the urban poor.
Slums are the only affordable alternative.
The problem is even more acute in large
metropolises, where the cost of living is
high. In Mumbai, slum dwellers have already
“settled”; their dwellings occupy relatively
large parcels of land that have, over time,
become valuable urban real estate. These
people have the power of numbers and insist
that they should be allowed to stay on the
same land they already occupy. Accordingly,
this paper treats housing alternatives to
Mumbai slums as a special class of housing
upgrade. The problem is not only complex
and challenging due to severe space
constraints, but also highly politicized
because slum dwellers constitute a large
electoral bloc.
Most slums in Mumbai are the outcome
of a slow, incremental, internally driven
bottom-up process that mixes residential,
commercial, and industrial units. The
bottom-up process responds to what
already exists and what can be immediately
built contiguous to it. As opportunities
grow, more residents are “accommodated”
within the available space. Sheela Patel
and Aneerudha Paul have argued that
a top-down approach, like proposing a
146
master plan, often devalues what has
developed organically.1 Top-down regulation
of development in an existing settlement
is completely inconsistent with existing
processes and is often a violent disruption
of ongoing activities. How, then, do we
control, regulate, and upgrade what was
never formally regulated, particularly when
it is a functioning habitat, and ensure that
we do so with as little disruption to the
community as possible?
In-Situ Slum Upgrading and Bottom-Up
Approaches in Mumbai
Mumbai has been grappling with the
problem of slums for the past four decades.
After initial experiments with modest slum
improvement and upgrade schemes, launched
in 1971, the city turned to World Bankassisted in situ slum upgrading in 1985.
In-situ upgrading is a bottom-up approach
based on residents’ initiatives. It tends to
look more “human” than other approaches
because it retains the built-form precedents
set by dwellers through their cultural
practices and actions—it reflects their
notions of “home and good living.” Security
of tenure is a crucial precondition for this
approach. Such a pragmatic approach
limits local resistance; it is seen as a more
workable housing-improvement strategy
both by dwellers and by an increasing
number of urbanists, experts, and NGOs like
SPARC, one of the largest groups working
with the urban poor in India.
This argument has several merits.
Experience has shown that an approach
centered on popular action ensures
continued diversity and preserves existing
community networks and economic
activities. The decisions in such a process
are demand-driven and thus incremental.
Involving residents in the development
process ensures that they identify with
the outcome; this emotional attachment
can lead to better maintenance of the
new housing. Upgrading is cheaper and
easier to implement than redevelopment.
Typically, slum dwellers are empowered
by the legal transfer of property rights;
tenure security encourages residents to
invest in improvements. Often, dwellers
themselves implement such projects with
some help from NGOs, building contractors,
and experts. Because small, independent
property development can be cumbersome,
groups of residents often get together to
collectively upgrade their own houses. So, in
practice, the area-development approach, in
which dwellers get together to collectively
upgrade or redevelop their dwellings, is
preferable to top-down redevelopment. Vinit
Mukhija, a scholar in urban development,
shows that in-situ slum upgrading is
successful where squatters occupy larger
open lots that allow enough room to add
to the existing houses.2 How valid is this
approach for Mumbai’s densely packed
slums?
Mukhija’s dissertation on Mumbai’s largest
slum, Dharavi, shows that in-situ upgrades
succeed where there is space for lateral
expansion, which is not the case in densely
packed slums. Besides, high land value
offers other, more lucrative alternatives.
Mukhija suggests that in order for the city
to cash in on potentially high land values,
three things must happen: first, lots have
to be aggregated into bigger units; second,
slum dwellers must claim additional FSI
(floor space index, the amount of usable
floor space on a plot) incentives by acting
collectively to redevelop the property; and
finally, developers must cross-subsidize
construction by putting balanced FSI on the
market.3 In fact, Mumbai city authorities
have been exploring such an approach.
In the 1991 Slum Redevelopment scheme
(SRD), developers were required to give the
dwellers legal ownership of a free apartment
between 180 and 225 square feet in size
(18 to 22 square meters) in a new structure
in the same area as their original dwelling.
This scheme allowed higher incentive
FSI so that developers could build extra
apartments to be sold on the open market,
cross-subsidizing the free apartments for
the slum dwellers while ensuring profit for
themselves.
Mumbai city authorities have been handling
FSI-based slum rehabilitation by tweaking
development control regulations so that more
housing units can be packed vertically into
a smaller footprint. This has created highdensity pockets with little access to light
and ventilation. Policymakers justify these
compromises on the grounds that they free
up substantial space for new housing stock
for the rich, whose money cross-subsidizes
the free apartments. Though the middle-class
building typology of these buildings is alien
to the slum dwellers, their condition improves
because they get more valuable housing
and the social respectability that comes
with living in an apartment. Stakeholders in
Mumbai slum redevelopment have now come
to accept the idea of in-situ redevelopment
as a win-win option, and it has overwhelming
support among slum dwellers.
147
On the ground, however, slum improvement
projects frequently struggle with delays.
Too many different agencies are involved
in sanctioning financing and construction,
approval of building designs, later changes,
and housing loans. When larger groups
are involved, a lot of time is wasted
on negotiations, legal formalities, and,
sometimes, litigation between agencies,
each trying to protect their institutional
interests. Cross-subsidization also
introduces conflicts that delay construction,
particularly when incentives increase with
each new state scheme. Sharing the new
benefits creates conflicts when there is a
chance of additional gains through extra
FSI. For instance, stakeholders might all
claim larger shares of the gain; the incentive
FSI calculated by the developer’s lobby
often differs greatly from that calculated
by the NGOs, leading to conflict. Even
when stakeholders agree to the quantity
of incentives, still more delays inevitably
arise as multiple agencies enforce their
procedures and bureaucratic red tape.
In a project’s advanced stages, revised
sanctions for the construction plan, new
legal contracts with the developer, and
the resolution of earlier contracts with
financing agencies cause further delays. In
an inflationary economy, these delays lead to
unaffordable cost overruns.
Sourcing Finance for Upgrade versus
Redevelopment
Slum upgrading projects also have issues
with financing. Dwellers’ Self Help Groups
(SHGs) promote small-scale savings
by women to take care of unexpected
expenditures, and, whenever possible, to
use for in-situ upgrading. But these savings
are often restricted by slum dwellers’
meager earnings and can only contribute
in a small way. Complementary finance
148
is required. Housing finance institutions
under the government—like HUDCO in
India—are mandated to help low-income
groups and give them low-interest loans.
But HUDCO’s conditions for institutional
guarantee for the loans are not easily met.
Government loans are also small and must
be supplemented, but commercial financial
institutions will not give loans to selfemployed individuals. They also demand tax
returns and land documents as collateral.
This is currently a major bottleneck for
bottom-up slum upgrades.
Unlike upgrading, redevelopment is capitalintensive and needs a smooth cash flow. As
we saw earlier, in Mumbai, state policies
have, since the 1990s, attracted private
finance to slum redevelopment. Mukhija
has analyzed the role played by public and
private actors. Though formal development
finance is cheaper, the developers cannot
use the land as collateral—it is given to
slum dwellers’ societies in SRA schemes.
The current avenues for generating
development finance in new constructions
include pre-purchase by would-be tenants
and investors who will sell apartments at a
profit later. Considering the uncertainties,
conflicts, and delays that plague such
projects, even this route is not easy.
Developers are forced to borrow from private
sources at unfavorable rates. In 1998, the
state proposed, as a solution, a separate
company to offer development finance. It
was expected to borrow from the capital
market and from international development
agencies. Unfortunately, with the change in
government, focus shifted away from this
idea.
Redevelopment projects tend to be large
enough to attract other avenues of funding.
NGOs can attract some international funding
from development agencies and trusts that
offer low-interest loans. It is also possible
↑ 1. Densely packed houses in Dharavi occupy almost
the entire plot, leaving little room for upgrading.
↑ 2. Slum redevelopment schemes give dwellers legal ownership of tiny
apartments in tall, densely packed buildings like the one here in Kanjur
Marg, an eastern suburb of Mumbai, creating high-density pockets.
149
to finance projects from Corporate Social
Responsibility (CSR) funds or by committing
to eco-friendly construction, claiming carbon
credits, and trading them to reduce the
costs. Though administratively cumbersome,
these are viable options for subsidizing
costs if housing societies and NGOs work
together. Besides the initial payment,
alternate revenue streams are required to
protect dwellers from defaulting.4 They will
not be discussed here.
Upgrade versus Redevelopment: A Critique
↑ 3. Slums in the hilly area in Vikroli, a suburb on the eastern
side of Mumbai. Accommodating slum dwellers in tall buildings
is difficult when land is difficult to access and develop.
↑ 4. Slum policies cannot be considered in isolation as much of the older parts of
the city has a large lower and lower-middle class population living in old dilapidated
buildings—like this chawl in Girgam, South Mumbai—that need urgent development.
150
Upgrading is far more sustainable than
redevelopment. The original dwellings and
many of the improvements are constructed
using recycled waste discarded by the rest
of the city. However, in-situ upgrade entails
a number of problems. First, the approach
is unlikely to work in densely populated
Mumbai slums, as the plots are tiny and
so close to one another that only vertical
expansion is possible. Second, getting
stakeholders to agree to the framework and
planned changes is difficult, particularly
when interests overlap and decisions are
likely to affect residents’ living standards
and conditions. Third, tenants do not
necessarily benefit from tenure legalization.
Interventions tend to increase property
value and can lead to gentrification; there
is a chance of residents being displaced
due to increased rents. Fourth, and most
worrisome, a major reorganization in layout
as part of a larger vision for the city is not
easy to implement, even if it is functionally
justified and essential for the greater good
of the community.
Unlike upgrading, slum redevelopment in
Mumbai uses cross-subsidy and incentive
regulations. Unfortunately, this alternative
cannot be used for all affordable housing
across Mumbai. Redevelopment is feasible
if the following conditions are met: if
property values are high and the free-sale
component is able to pay for procedural
expenditures and debt servicing as well as
generate corpus for future maintenance
costs. It is also difficult to use this strategy
in hilly areas or the Coastal Regulation Zone
(CRZ), an area along the coastline regulated
by special development laws (a substantial
part of Mumbai’s land, including slums,
is in the CRZ; recently, some concessions
have been sanctioned to SRA schemes
there). Problems will be encountered where
existing dwellings are larger than 225
square feet (22 square meters), where the
site is small, or where free FSI will not be
adequate to subsidize the project. Any
policy that relies on market mechanisms
will also depend on the prevailing market
conditions. Redevelopment projects based
on cross-subsidy and incentive regulations
are no panacea.
Defining the Enabling Role of the State,
in Policy and Beyond
With the state facing a resource crunch,
there is no way it can fund housing
on the scale demanded by the current
housing backlog. Instead, the World Bank
recommends that the state—and particularly
local elected bodies—should become
“enablers” and limit their involvement to
creating new policies to facilitate private
financing. Can state involvement really be
limited to simply formulating housing policy
and ensuring equitable access for slum
dwellers? If yes, how do we ensure that the
key elements of a bottom-up, people-friendly
approach are maintained?
In slum upgrade, the state’s role is limited
but not insignificant. It must transfer land
rights to motivate dwellers to upgrade or
up-cycle their settlements. It also needs
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to create new development regulations
and financial bodies to grant low-interest
loans. In Mumbai, upgrade efforts would be
restricted to low-property-value regions
where redevelopment is difficult: the CRZ,
hilly areas, and inaccessible plots. However,
as the projects become bigger and private
finance gets involved, chances are that
residents will lose control. With many new
stakeholders, ideas are unlikely to remain
completely bottom-up. A balance is possible
if the state transfers land titles to the
slum dwellers beforehand, giving them a
bigger voice and allowing them to bargain
more effectively with private developers.
The policy has a chance of success if it
embraces both demand-driven and supplydriven development.
The difficulties that private funding
creates for slum redevelopment in highproperty-value markets in Mumbai suggest
a need for flexible housing policies. These
should account for the development
potential of housing in each slum pocket
in Mumbai, which differ considerably from
one another due to factors like density,
proximity to lucrative locations, ease of
access, topography, and prospective cost
of development. To balance compensation,
incentive FSI should be proportionately
higher where real estate values are
lower. Using policy formulations to offer
incentives is a tough task, because an
approach that accounts for variations in
locations should balance compensations.
The need for flexibility and the element
of subjectivity in judging the value of
the property require that the process
be completely transparent. Recently
formulated policies show how this flexibility
can facilitate housing for the poor. For
example, the Rajiv Awas Yojana report,
published by the Ministry of Housing and
Urban Poverty Alleviation, encourages
different combinations of public-private
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partnerships and offers several schemes for
building on public as well as private land.5
State policies should also remove barriers
that create delays and, consequently,
funding difficulties. In an inflationary
economy, any delay can potentially make a
housing project unaffordable. Eliminating
delays requires structural changes in
the way the redevelopment process is
administered. Creating single-window
clearances for all institutions involved
can accomplish this. Equally critical is a
dedicated local conflict-resolution authority
empowered to ensure that progress is not
hampered. Similarly, using standardized,
legally vetted contracts can reduce the
number of disputes among developers,
financing agencies, and residents and the
attendant delays. The state should also
promote development-finance institutions,
the absence of which is presently a
major obstacle to the smooth progress of
construction activity.
Finally, the state should support social
housing and promote agencies that take
up housing as a social cause. If gains or
profits become secondary, fewer conflicts
are likely to occur. Such situations are best
handled by alternative structures like social
enterprise. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel
laureate from Bangladesh, pioneered the
idea of “social business” as an alternative
structure for the delivery of social good.
Yunus envisioned a social business as a
no-loss, non-dividend company owned
by investors who ploughed the gains
back into the company.6 Once the idea of
personal or company profits is removed,
the disputes among stakeholders in sharing
the gains will disappear. When CSR funds
are used, such projects are best taken
care of by specially created corporate
social enterprises. These institutions
could undertake turnkey design, approval,
and construction activities using rules
and legal agreements standardized by the
government.
From Quick Fixes to Larger Planning Goals
It is, however, important to note that
policies that solve local problems with quick
fixes often do not consider their impact on
larger issues. We therefore need to consider
whether upgrade and redevelopment are a
way forward, or if they are only a part of
housing policy due to current exigencies.
In most cases, slums are already in place
and it is imperative to act quickly, but
it would be incorrect to regard slum
redevelopment strategies as a panacea.
They should be a part of a broader set of
housing provision strategies and address
larger planning issues. Let us consider the
larger perspective. Slums accommodate 52
percent of Mumbai’s population. In addition,
there is a large lower and lower-middle
class that resides in tiny homes in densely
populated, old, and increasingly dilapidated
buildings. They need urgent redevelopment
and dwellers have been contributing funds
for repairs for decades. In being fair to this
group, Mumbai is trying to grapple with the
problem with similar incentive regulations.
But what are its larger implications? What
are the negative effects of such policies on
the rest of the city?
Take the case of granting incentive FSI or
transfer of development rights (TDR), which
can transfer FSI to other parts of the city.
This additional FSI is used within the city,
exacerbating population density. The city
is attempting to alleviate the resultant
commuting problems with monstrous
interventions like elevated expressways,
monorails, and subway systems, all of them
ripping through crowded, narrow access
corridors. Is it possible to provide adequate
services and infrastructure as population
densities continue increasing? Will incentive
FSI still work 50 years down the line? If
so, what will be the state of the city and
its infrastructure then? Mumbai, with a
population of over 12.5 million, continues
to grow rapidly; there are signs that it
might crumble under the weight of its own
growth. It is therefore necessary to consider
how redevelopment can decongest the city,
improve infrastructure, and give the city a
human scale.
Currently, all development regulations are
city-specific. What if this constraint were
relaxed? TDR between cities could help
siphon off congestion, ensure development
of other regions, and slow migration from
the countryside to large cities. Incentive
FSI could be scaled multiplicatively and
converted to mixed-use applications when
transferred to smaller cities. There is also
a need to build incentives for the smaller
cities within the state to accept this FSI. It
could be used to promote more commercial
and industrial development, creating jobs
and generating revenue for smaller cities.
Businesses moving out of Mumbai could
use this FSI to set up their facilities and
employee housing in new regions.
Any delay in upgrade or redevelopment
projects can be disastrous in Mumbai. At
the same time, short-term fixes are bound
to create problems for the city and its
future. Equally important is the need to
anticipate the development of “slums in
the making.” There is sufficient knowledge
available on where and when slums will
emerge. We should ask whether current
policies really offer win-win solutions.
Regulations that link overall objectives of
urban decentralization and de-densification
with slum-redevelopment efforts could offer
a true win-win—locally and regionally, in the
short- and long-term.
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Notes
1 Sheela Patel, Aneerudha Paul, Sundar Burra,
Bindi Vasavada, Sujay Kumarji, and Kairavi Dua,
RE: Interpreting, Imagining, Developing DHARAVI
(Mumbai: SPARC and KRVIA, 2010), 6.
2 Vinit Mukhija, “Squatters as Developers?
Mumbai’s Slum Developers as Equity Partners in
Redevelopment” (PhD diss., MIT, 2000), 99.
Informal Formality:
Learning from Squatter Settlements
Michael Sorkin
Tracing the course of architectural thought about housing and
3 Ibid., 175.
informality—and his own experience with alternative housing typologies
4 The chances of defaulting on repayments
are high unless opportunities are created for
generating income through formal and informal
economic activities. Upgrading is of limited use
if it fails to maintain (or, better yet, increase)
the economic vibrancy of the slums. To this end,
regulations should permit commercial use of
spaces to support residents’ small businesses.
in the US and the UK—Michael Sorkin argues that, rather than imposing
5 Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty
Alleviation, Rajiv Awas Yojana: Guidelines for
Slum-Free City Planning (New Delhi, Government
of India).
6 Muhammad Yunus, Building Social Business: The
New Kind of Capitalism That Serves Humanity’s
Most Pressing Needs (New York: Public Affairs,
2010), 1–35.
designs on informal settlements, we must better design the circumstances
under which they can thrive and improve themselves.
Informal settlements don’t exist. This isn’t
to say that vast “unplanned” territories
in Lima, Cairo, and Mumbai aren’t visible
and distinct, but rather that they’re not
discontinuous with the cities and societies
in which they’re embedded. On the one
hand, the formal culture deploys a variety
of informal means in its own development—
Ananya Roy identifies the nominally formal
planning regime in India as almost entirely
the outcome of fundamentally informal
strategies—on the other, nobody living in
an informal settlement can exist entirely
outside the routines of formality.1 Their
lives hybridize a wide variety of economic
strategies and relations: a resident might
work in the formal sector by day, return to
housing in the informal, conduct commercial
activity in a combination of both, and hold
an informal second job. This porosity also
characterizes the continuous transformation
of so-called informal settlements by various
schemes for upgrading, some imposed from
the “top” and others self-initiated from the
“bottom.”
Sympathetic observers admire informal
settlements for their spontaneity, the
intricacy of their social networks, their
capacity for economic and architectural
improvisation, the “sustainability” of the
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drastic economy imposed on them by poverty
and scarcity, and their ability to eke out
benefit at the economic margin. The idea of
informality is the subject of intense debate
in the work of scholars—including Roy,
Janice Perlman, Asef Bayat, James Holston,
and others—who seek to situate its styles
of regulation, its legal status, and its social
meaning within the larger circumstances
and practices of settlement in places like
Brazil, Egypt, or India. At the same time,
the functional and architectural character
of “informal” communities is, despite being
constantly contested, more conceptually
transparent than it might first appear and
a potential source of speculation—and
inspiration—for building in general.
Of course, as Roy et al. point out, there is
great risk in detaching the physical qualities
of these settlements from their social,
political, and economic complexities—in
particular, from the debate about the
proletarianization of their inhabitants and
the ways in which they’re caught up in the
routines of neoliberalism and globalized
capital. There is a particular danger in both
the “aestheticization” of these places—
which Roy suggests is a version of pastoral
nostalgia—and in the impetus to judge them
via their relationship to mythologies of
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rationality that have shaped the discourse
of the “modern” city. These views have led
to well-intended efforts at “upgrade” that
are simply palliative, that neglect nonarchitectural determinants of their form
and life, and that push them into dominant
routines of property, sociability, and
exchange. Such “slum upgrades” effectively
shift the burden of survival onto the poor
via the one-dimensional celebration of their
“entrepreneurialism.”
Nonetheless, there are strong arguments
for insisting that informality is at once an
illusory condition and a productive one.
Clearly, the phenomenon of the “squatter
settlement”—a place that combines poverty,
minimally built housing, big deficits of
infrastructure and other services, high rates
of non-wage economic activity, lack of social
mobility, and a very mixed picture of formal
ownership and tenure—is easy to recognize
on the ground from Karachi to Jakarta to
Bogotá. While these places are obviously
slums, they invert the typical pattern of the
poor neighborhoods of Brooklyn, Detroit,
or South Central Los Angeles, in which the
trajectory is the progressive deterioration
of market-produced stocks of housing, with
the poor arriving as some pivotal movement
in the downward spiral. Informality’s
movement, in contrast, is from zero toward
a more rationalized environment. It seems
more “natural” for us to associate heroism
with the forward motion of this bricolage.
We value informality precisely for its
creative resistance and its potential to
question the undergirding assumptions of
the modern city, to collapse the artificial
distinction that relegates the informal to a
frustrated and unfulfilled, even impossible,
aspiration to modernity, an incompetent
otherness.
From the architectural perspective, this
relationship is surely complicated by
156
modernism’s own insistent conflation of
physical and social action; the forms of the
informal have long resonated with many of
modernism’s own aspirations. Seen from
a distance, the prismatic assemblages of
houses on the hillsides above Rio evoke
modernism’s Mediterranean ideal. For those
in rebellion against the carceral homogeneity
of the “projects,” the picturesque,
“irrational” order of these settlements
appears a bracing antidote, linking formal
variety, meandering, medieval geometry,
and the liberating vibe of an “architecture
without architects.” Indeed, this was a
big part of the dream of freedom, a way
around the complicity of the architectural
profession in a classist, top-down mode
of spatial production, a restoration of the
liberatory aspirations of modernity.
The idea of informal, “user-generated,”
and restive practices of settlement aligns
with a renewed focus on the idea and
value of neighborhoods, the displacement
of the quantitative schema of modern
planning (with its neighborhood “units”)
by a more nuanced and qualitative view.
Casting about for a concept to assimilate
place and culture, this elastic increment—
the neighborhood—seems to be a nonprejudicial, global descriptor that embraces
dimension, ecology, and community. This
analysis was typified by Jane Jacobs, who
posited a collaboration between the formal
and the informal within the modern city
and celebrated strategies for vitally mixing
people, uses, and forms in a variety of
contexts. For her, the contest for the soul of
the city was between the one-dimensional,
top-down urbanism represented by Robert
Moses—the deracinated, un-textured
architectures of urban renewal—and the
informal styles of neighborliness and
cooperation that could only be conduced
by local diversity and the accumulation of
social and spatial capital.
The combination of resistance and
distress embodied in informal communities
has fascinated observers for decades.
Such places offer a set of practices and
possibilities that illuminate larger questions
about the future of the city, not simply
because the exponential growth of these
settlements has made them the literal future
of global urbanism, but more importantly
because so many have read into them a
nearly utopian horizon for self-organization,
an urban state of nature. The now dominant
conceptual axis of this appreciation stems
from the proposition, first articulated by
Henri Lefebvre and later taken up by David
Harvey, Don Mitchell, and others worldwide, of “the right to the city” and, more
specifically, the right not simply of access
and use but of the production of the city,
an idea literalized by the legions of selfhelp and autonomous builders who create
and transform the urbanism of informality.
But can these lessons of informality be
inculcated in the development of the modern
city, the historic paradigm for growth and
form that not only shapes Western practice
but also continues to be the replacement
model—the medium of annihilation—for
the informal city around the world? I don’t
wish to repudiate modernist ideology in its
entirety. Indeed, there is something vexing
about the pejorative reading back of certain
modernist design ideals onto informal
spaces, the thought that such fundamentals
as sunlight, clean air, greenery, personal
space, hygiene, and other touchstones must
be viewed as inimical to freedom, autonomy,
and difference. Is there a potential for
exchange between these supposedly
antithetical worlds?
In my architecture student days, we were
deeply fascinated by squatter settlements,
informal urbanism, and self-help housing.
There was a group of earnest investigators at MIT—John Turner most prominent
among them—who were involved in a classic
straddle of the sixties, bridging the roles
of activist, investigator, and designer. Latin
American informality in particular was a
touchstone for architects and planners
struggling with the mode of production
taught in our universities. We saw a contest
between increasingly arid formal investigations and a sense of social purpose—not
simply an artifact of the times, but a
lingering facet of the sputtering modernist enterprise that formed the ideological
core of most American architectural schools.
“Housing” and “advocacy” were the key
frames of our pushback; we were the heirs
to the housing-reform movements of the
nineteenth century, which themselves had
formed the ideological substrate for the
modernist project to house the world. We
sought to unpack this contradiction.
The idea of “housing” as an urban or
architectural category implied mass housing,
which, in turn, identified and foregrounded
a particular form of subjectivity. Those
subjects were seen to have a special species
of rights and particular formal requirements,
figuring a clear communal gestalt. The
ideal subject of this formulation was a
mythical urban proletarian; the architectural
polemic that emerged to describe his or her
rights compounded ideas about uniformity,
economy, and style. The revolutionary
vector of equality translated itself—in
the architectural field—into a precise and
insistent parity, both literal and visual, and
into strategies for the seriatim reproduction
of endless uniform habitations. It insistently
raised the question of the minimum, a theme
that arose out of the fiction of shortage
and an ethics of parsimoniousness that
was meant to suggest a righteous workingclass solidarity but that was produced from
a perspective of bourgeois charity. This
was wrapped up with the idea that housing
could be produced as an industrial process;
157
the debate over the modernist idea of the
Existenzminimum—an irreducible, infinitely
replicable quantum of housing that was
meant to define the minimum human right to
dwelling space—continues to this day.
Both in the nineteenth-century formulation
and our own, the issue that defines the
idea of “housing” as a category—and the
broader idea of the informal—is that of
scarcity. There continue to be two main
approaches to shortage: redistribution and
economy of means. The classic reading of
the redistributive side is Friedrich Engels’s
The Housing Question, which argues that
the shortage is not in housing but equity,
a situation that persists today, both in
the unequal distribution of property and
in the uneven consumption of resources
and production of waste. This raises a
second question, which lies in the idea of a
connection between the technical and the
ethical, residing in the “small is beautiful”
approach to our moral and environmental
commons, a doubling back with a new
data set. In this sense, the idea of the
Existenzminimum—with its fixation on
economy of means—could be seen as the
expression of sustainability avant la lettre,
an early address to the finitude of global
resources. But a culture of minima lacks
a true ethical basis within a finite system
unless it is paralleled by a culture of maxima
as well. Otherwise, what is left is simply
“trickle-down.”
By the time I encountered “housing” as a
problematic, it was deeply inflected with
the negative. Housing was for the poor,
for the unemployed, for people of color.
It incarnated segregation, a new form
of ghetto, a prison, an unproductive and
criminal place, a symbol of the failure
of a marginalized population to gain any
purchase in the system. Against this
monolithic, repressive, and ugly architecture,
158
the idea of the informal or squatter
settlement seemed a bracing alternative. A
key value of progressive architecture (and
the politics that informed it) was the idea
of user control, of a physical environment
rendered more and more personal and
tractable by technology and by a pervasive
idea about “flexibility.” This took various
forms, all of which associated freedom and
righteousness with impermanence, mobility,
and malleability, even if they more often
understood in terms of consumer rather
than democratic choices. In an era when the
promise of property was, to put it mildly,
under question, a romantic cachet attached
to the idea of ephemerality. The newly
growing environmentalism celebrated the
use of both found materials and off-theshelf solutions. To be sure, this was a way
for first-world architectural discourse to
extend the basic parameters of functionalist
minimalism by arrogating the luster of the
struggles for justice in the third. But, while
there was an envious—even colonial—
component in this view, it also was also
an expression of genuine solidarity and
a recognition that the problems of both
scarcity and runaway urban growth were not
parochial but planetary.
The response in the “Western”
architectural community organized both
applications at home and systems of
rationalization to transform developingworld settlements in situ. Manifestations
of this ethos in alternative practices took
several directions, embodying scales of
informality differentiated by the level of
professional expertise and the culture
of inhabitation, expressed both literally
and representationally. There was fairly
extensive, quasi-formalized squatting of
abandoned buildings and tenant takeovers
of neglected properties. I enjoyed a brief
experience of this in early ’70s London.
These were, clearly, the children of Engels;
for “illegals” in Earl’s Court or the Lower
East Side, the occupation of empty buildings
was a strategy for survival, a form of
redress, and a mode of propaganda. As in
the developing world, confrontations with
the authorities focused both on questions
of property rights and on the provision of
services like water, power, and sewage.
The Occupy movement is an heir to these
tactics and raises both the question of
housing inequality (thrown into great relief
by the mortgage meltdown) and the linked
issue of what constitutes public space, the
formal matrix of community. Understanding
that ideas of public and private are always
produced reciprocally—and that sorting
out rights and responsibilities for their
differentiation is a matter of spatial
proprietorship—lies at the core of the
imbrication of the idea of housing (and the
city) with the idea of freedom. Informal
housing cannot be approached without
addressing the nature of property. The
classic point of departure is the private
appropriation of public land (although this
is becoming less and less the predominant
model as the informal is progressively
“rationalized”) and the movement—whose
most prominent advocate is Hernando de
Soto—to establish some form of individual
security of tenure through titling. But it
is perhaps even more crucial to secure
deep connections to the webs of public
infrastructure that formalize the relationship
and establish the particularity of the social
construction of place.
The experience of the “Long Sixties” in
the United States was a model for working
out the reception of these “third-world”
practices on the terrain of our own
rebellions. The other conscious simulacrum
of the informal city was another elective
form of squatting—the communalism of
alternative communities, many of which
involved self-executed building of relatively
simple shelters. One of the most memorable
of these was Drop City, a communal
settlement founded in Colorado in 1965
and an exemplar of a minimum-consumption
lifestyle. It sat outside disdained formal
arrangements and produced an architecture
that embodied the ethos of material
minimalism and reuse, central features
of the developing-world informality now
embraced by first-world observers.
Drop City was known for its so-called zomes,
fantastic Fulleresque geodesic domes
fabricated from the recycled carcasses of
automobiles under the guidance of guru
Steve Baer. Bucky domes were then the
object of almost mystical reverence because
of their succinct geometry, their modularity,
and their rich imputation of universality
and economy. The use of abandoned cars—
detritus of the Fordist economy and symbols
of the military-industrial complex—carried
a swords-into-plowshares vibe that added
a patina of the political to the enterprise.
There is, to be sure, an air of inauthenticity
about many of the intentional communities
of the period; this grew from the degree
of their intentionality, the fact that most
of the inhabitants of these alternative
communities had other alternatives. But
the right to the city must include the right
to shape its form according to our artistic
desires and to reject the joylessness that
can’t find inspiration in acts of “empty”
creativity.
This form of communal living was joined
by a related culture of nomadism, an
elective version of the impermanence that
characterized, on the one hand, the flow of
refugees and the economically displaced
into camps and squatter settlements and,
on the other, the dramatically increased
mobility imposed on participants in the
American formal economy. For our middle-
159
class nomads and communards, a polemical
position situated somewhere between
politics and art—in the treacherous terrain
of “lifestyles”—sought both to assimilate
the qualities of social life imputed to the
improvisations of the deeply constrained
poor and to offer a critique of the forcible
character and miserable circumstances
from the oppressions of “the man,” from
inequality and disempowerment.
of the settlements that were the result.
The exploration jibed well with a more
general feeling about the need to create
“responsive” environments that could be
transformed to accommodate both immediate
user needs and more general demographic
trends. Our living arrangements were
metamorphosing at an accelerating rate,
particularly as the nuclear family ceased to
be the predominant increment of residential
demand. It is one of the ironies of the day
that the informal practices of customization
and addition, rampant in the suburbs where
our parents lived, were only later absorbed
into this lexicon of freedom.
of “supports.” This theory expressed
ambivalence about the relationship between
individual choice, convention and tradition
in the built environment, and the need for
intervention on a scale consonant with the
huge extent of the deficit of decent housing.
Habraken proposed the construction of a
kind of loft city in which housing was recast
as infrastructure—a series of vertical
frameworks to be serially inhabited by
individuals who would customize their own
spaces within a generic, putatively malleable
megastructure.
Today, infrastructure has displaced
housing as the locus of public purpose in
architecture. Infrastructure is a politically
neutral idea, a semi-visible but suggestively
universal system of support that defines
both the limit and the obligation of the
public realm. This logic appears in the dual
approach to improving informal settlements:
provide basic municipal services as part
of in-situ upgrades and offer titles to
slum dwellers to secure private control of
the environments at the end of the water
hookup. Many question titling, arguing
that it simply draws the poor deeper
into a subservient relationship with the
institutions of predatory capital, but
this critique does not gainsay the fact of
environmental control as the emblem and
means of personal freedom. Ownership
means being able to manage one’s
personal future and that of one’s private
environment. It grants a degree of freedom
160
During my student days, there were many
attempts to formally introduce informality
into the practices of first-world urbanism.
One of the most influential was the
Dutch architect John Habraken’s notion
While never convincingly depicted, these
support structures attempted to channel
both modernist fantasies of simultaneity and
extent and a sense of the “megastructural”
qualities of more timeless styles of building:
Italian hill towns, Islamic medinas, Greek
villages, and other unitary but serial
constructions. Though there is something
falsified about this distanced postcard view
of favelas on the slopes of Rio or Bogotá,
it would be a mistake to moralize this
reading as totally pernicious and misaligned.
Complexity, variation, the view-over, local
responsiveness to topography, party walls,
expandability, and extremely situational
and personal configurations are values in
the built environment that enjoy qualities
exclusive of their production in conditions
of exploitation, shortage, insalubriousness,
lack of services, and the Big Intractable:
inescapability.
Habraken’s support parti was a useful
inversion of the conditions of squatter
settlements, transmitting their positive
aspects to more developed situations.
Habraken was proposing the provision
of infrastructure before the fact of
habitation, rather than the typical upgrade
process in squatter settlements, in which
infrastructure follows the basic acts of
settlement and habitation. This demanded a
paradigm of uniformity, of very large-scale
intervention by the authorities, and of the
same base line of replicability that it sought
to critique in modernist mass housing. The
approach also failed to make a case for the
superiority of elasticity in place over the
ability to change places. But there was still
a useful ambiguity between the collective
and the individual, and Habraken’s frank
attempt to merge mass-manufacture
efficiencies with the ethos of DIY and selfhelp was tonic.
Habraken stood firmly on the shoulders of
his colleague John Turner. Turner, while
stridently denouncing the hegemony of
heteronomous—“other-determined”—
systems over autonomous ones, recognized
the ambiguities necessarily embedded in the
approach. The “freedom” he advocated was
also a constraint. As he writes, “self-help,
if limited to a narrow, do-it-yourself sense,
or even to group construction, can actually
reduce autonomy by making excessive
demands on personal time and energy and
by reducing household mobility.”2 Turner
was after a “third way” and argued, if not
entirely persuasively, that government
should cease “doing what it does badly or
uneconomically—building and managing
houses—and concentrate on what it has the
authority to do: to ensure equitable access
to resources which local communities and
people cannot provide for themselves.” His
point was that housing decisions should be
controlled by households, that “for a viable
housing process to exist, local and personal
control is essential.”3 He articulated the
necessary contingencies of such local
networks, including economic land prices,
abundant availability of tools and materials
through local suppliers, easy local credit,
and locally based supply and organizational
systems. “When dwellers control the major
decisions and are fee to make their own
contribution to the design construction or
management of their housing,” he wrote,
“both the process and the environment
produced stimulate individual and social
well-being.”4
Applying the inventive character of
informality to the modernist city generates
a paradox: the large-scale “design” of
informality. Spontaneous behavior is at the
core of the informal, which finds its genius
in negotiating the boundaries of the system.
In many ways, this reflects the character
of urban life more generally, the way in
which particular economic, spatial, and
social arrangements establish the terrain
of contention and adaptation between
subject and environment. But the main point
is political: who is in control. If the idea of
the “user” remains narrowly instrumental, it
risks simply being co-opted by the pervasive
routines of consumption. However, if it helps
secure the rights particular to democratic
citizenship (in its broadest sense) and
its goals of maximizing autonomy and
happiness, than the formulation becomes
indispensible to civic justice.
But there remains a question for design,
one that concerns the role of professionals.
Those of us on the Left frequently overreverence the “wisdom of the people,”
thinking that there is an expansively
qualifying character in the experience of
poverty and powerlessness. By romanticizing
the improvisatory creativity produced by
dire necessity, we shortchange the desire—
indeed the right—of the poor slum dweller to
interact with architecture and design as the
161
rich do, from the position of client.
To be the architect of one’s life is not
necessarily to be the architect of one’s
house.
The Turner/Habraken nexus, by recognizing
the potential of informality as a site of
empowerment and community, offers deeply
valuable hope for new intersections between
the capacities of individuals and systems,
between imagination and technology, and
between the city and its citizens. This will
always entail the design not of settlements
per se but of the circumstances of their
creation and evolution. It will embrace a
permanent elasticity in the nature of both
subsidy—or support—and freedom. At the
van of this struggle is the constitution of
the public to which these solutions are
addressed and from which they arise. The
genius and impossibility of the informal
city, however, is that it is authentically
dialectical, in a constant state of often
confusing becoming. While we celebrate its
possibilities for empowerment, liberation,
and creativity—and see its improvisation
and spirit of sacrifice and mutual aid as
crucial to its sustainability and resilience—
we must not forget that these places also
have a tremendous negative capability. They
oppress hundreds of millions with no way
out.
Notes
1 Ananya Roy and Nezar Alsayyad, eds., Urban
Informality (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2004).
2 John Turner, Housing for People: Towards
Autonomy in Building Environments (New York:
Pantheon, 1976), xiv.
3 Ibid., xvi.
4 John Turner and Robert Fichter, eds., Freedom to
Build (New York: Collier MacMillan, 1972).
Garage Conversions and Resilient Suburbs:
Adapting Suburban Environments
Aron Chang
The California suburbs were once a potent symbol of the American dream,
but today they are imperiled by financial and environmental crises. How can
a housing typology designed to resist change survive conditions so different
from the postwar world in which it originally flourished? Architect Aron Chang
looks to garage conversions and other informal adaptations for answers.
Adaptability, not constancy,
is central to success. Analogously, a
species, a person, and an industry only
remain if they adapt or adjust
to changing conditions.
Richard T. T. Forman1
I grew up in the suburban community of
Irvine, California, a place that always
seemed immutable to me, even though it
has grown dramatically since my family
moved there and even though I myself
witnessed the dramatic expansion of the
city in the 1990s and early 2000s. Aside
from the construction of more housing in
the established mold, few of us Irvineans
can imagine any real changes to our
community, its cohesive arrays of singlefamily homes, its well-designed apartments
and townhomes, its respected schools, its
abundant parks, its clean sidewalks and
well-maintained verges, and its village
shopping centers. Perhaps that sense of
stability was a function of childhood, but I
believe that the city itself—in its planning,
design, and construction—reinforces that
notion of permanence.
Only upon leaving Irvine did I begin to
understand my hometown as a curiously
162
stable piece of a much larger and everchanging metropolitan region. Irvine
itself is the product of massive changes
that swept through every part of the
United States and the world beyond.
From the mid-century industrialization of
the homebuilding process to large-scale
migration into Southern California, Irvine
would not exist if not for the greater flows
of capital, goods, and people that have
shaped the region.
Paradoxically, the same forces that have
fueled the region’s growth and sometimes
wreaked havoc on Los Angeles proper—quite
literally, in the case of the 1992 riots—
have left places such as Irvine relatively
undisturbed. Despite the startling intensity
of the violence and destruction just a short
drive to the north, life in Irvine during those
riots continued on as if Irvine and Los
Angeles had nothing to do with each other.
Perhaps many of my neighbors and even
my own family moved to Irvine precisely
for that reason, to escape the vicissitudes
of life “in the city” and to nurture a sense
of stability and certainty. Yet, one can’t
help but think that external forces such as
climate change and the ongoing economic
crisis—even if they are not cataclysmic—
163
may well require places like Irvine to
transform themselves in unexpected ways,
whether or not they are willing.
Change in the Suburban Context
Single-family detached homes comprise
over 64 percent of the housing stock in the
United States.2 They are the most visible
front lines of the ongoing foreclosure
crisis, accounting for a large share of the
nation’s 1.4 million homes that were in
foreclosure in 2012.3 Failed subdivisions
dot the country. In some, roads are laid,
utilities are in place, and a few houses
may even have been constructed, but the
subdivision is ultimately abandoned because
construction financing has fallen through
or demand has plummeted. In others,
such as those described in Christopher
Leinberger’s 2008 Atlantic article “The Next
Slum,” homes repossessed and left empty
have metastasized, the initial vacancies
undermining the stability and property
values of the surrounding neighborhood,
leading to additional departures as the
character of the subdivision breaks apart
under the strain of suburban blight.4
Human settlements have always had to
adapt in response to changing conditions
and needs. Fluctuations in population,
conflict, discovery of new resources
or reduced access to old ones, climate
change, economic upheaval, and other such
phenomena determine the shapes of cities
and civilizations. As human settlements
evolve, changes in urban form, architecture,
architectural styles, street patterns,
infrastructure networks, density, and land
use in an urban context may be contentious
and oftentimes destructive, but they are
also expected, part and parcel of the
processes public and private actors enact
each day in taking advantage of economic
164
opportunities, advancing public health
agendas, alleviating traffic flows, revitalizing
neighborhoods, developing new public
amenities, or engaging in any of the other
activities that characterize a contested, vital
urban environment.
When Boston’s Big Dig concluded in 2007,
for example, the rerouting of a highway
through a tunnel opened up a 1.5-mile-long
stretch of land in the heart of the city.
This became the Rose Kennedy Greenway, a
series of parks and plazas stretching from
the city’s North End to Chinatown. New
businesses and housing now look out onto
the Greenway, drawing from and contributing
to its public life. Cafes and shops stand
where streets once dead-ended. Blank walls
that faced the highway now feature new
windows and balconies.
Most urban revitalization efforts seek to
engender such adaptations. Streets are
widened. Buildings are torn down and new
ones erected in their place. Changes occur
within buildings as well. Historic buildings
are preserved, refurbished, and dedicated
to new uses. Well-located and sturdy
building stock—masonry or timber-frame
industrial warehouses along downtown
waterfronts, for example—is redeveloped to
provide attractive loft units or distinctive
commercial spaces.
Compare this to a typical residential
subdivision consisting of homogeneous units
arrayed and regulated to preclude the deep
structural adaptations that are so important
to the evolution of an environment. Their
typical forms, their street patterns, and
the regulatory structures that govern them
represent a longed-for stasis that is as
fundamental to the modern-day perception
of what constitutes the suburbs—and why
one would want to live there—as the green
lawn and free-standing home.
↑ 1. A view from the street of this garage conversion in Arcadia,
California, reveals nothing of its decades-long history as a
rental residence, clothing warehouse, and instrument shop.
↑ 2. On the inside, there is a workshop space,
display area, kitchen, bathroom, and storeroom.
165
↑ 3. Once a detached garage, this space in Rosemead, California,
has been renovated to serve as a place of business for a fortune
teller, who lives in the adjacent house with his family.
↑ 4. The fortune teller purchased the property with the renovation in mind. That
is, he anticipated being able to convert the garage to this new use, and made the
retrofits himself using second-hand doors, windows, and other low-cost materials.
166
Many subdivisions are governed by
homeowner associations (HOAs) and their
Covenants, Conditions and Restrictions
(CC&Rs). In these cases, the consumer
purchases not only the house, but also the
identity of the subdivision as a coherent
and stable environment. As part of his or
her purchase, a homebuyer agrees to abide
by legally binding CC&Rs, which dictate
everything from the choice of exterior paint
colors to structural modifications and modes
of occupancy. These restrictions exist on
top of basic local zoning requirements. In
short, consumers voluntarily surrender
property rights, with the knowledge that
their neighbors have done the same. They
find common cause in this effort to restrict
uses, maintain aesthetics, and ensure that
property values will at least remain stable,
even if they do not grow. After the purchase
of the home, the residents of the subdivision
maintain the agreed-upon identity of the
subdivision partly through the payment of
monthly dues to the neighborhood HOA. Each
HOA can either function as a self-governing
entity staffed by neighborhood residents
or hire a for-profit property management
company to maintain shared association
assets and services (such as a neighborhood
swimming pool or, for a gated community, a
fence and security guard) and to enforce the
subdivision CC&Rs.
In the contemporary housing market,
households that grow or shrink are much
more likely to move to a new home and
neighborhood that better suits their needs
than to adapt their existing home to meet
their needs. In a typical sequence, a young
household may begin in a small starter home,
shift to a larger home in another subdivision
as the family grows, and then downsize or
move into another housing type when the
parents become empty-nesters or retirees.
There are, of course, remodeling efforts
undertaken by millions of homeowners each
year, but within the context of HOAs and
CC&Rs, these are highly regulated and do
not change the basic land use or density of
neighborhoods.
Ironically, the light wood-frame construction
that is most common in suburban housing in
the United States is also cheap and readily
adaptable compared to masonry, concrete,
or steel-frame structures. But because of
the commitment of residents and HOAs to
perpetuating a predetermined optimal state,
these neighborhoods are far less adaptable
than urban environments. They do not have
a rich ecology of nimble and committed
stakeholders—governing bodies, residents,
developers, and institutions—equipped
with the experience, legal means, or tools
for development and redevelopment that
are necessary to address new challenges
or seize new opportunities that arise as a
result of changing conditions.
The foreclosure crisis of the last six years
has shown that if subdivisions cannot
retain occupants and keep the forces
of change at bay, they will succumb to
mortgage defaults, vacancies, and suburban
blight. A 2008 Los Angeles Times story
echoed in newspapers across the country
describes the failed Westview Estates
gated community, left incomplete by the
developer with only 35 homes constructed
of the 425 that were once planned. Thieves
have stripped the model homes of their
air-conditioning units and copper wiring.
The drinking-water system is failing. A
few homeowners have allowed banks to
foreclose on their homes rather than
continuing to make mortgage payments in a
failed development. One says, “We bought
into the vision, hook, line and sinker, but
we don’t ever see that coming to fruition.”5
With low demand, self-perpetuating deed
restrictions, the ownership of vacant lots
divided between the developer and banks,
167
few incentives or possibilities for private
redevelopment, and few mechanisms by
which public entities can acquire and
redevelop entire subdivisions or groups of
properties within a subdivision, the typical
subdivision is hard-pressed to adapt to
changing conditions.
not likely to be appropriate for these
neighborhoods. We have to look elsewhere
for viable solutions.
The number of HOAs in the United States
has risen precipitously in the last three
decades. The Foundation for Community
Associations Research estimates that
there were 10,000 association-governed
communities (approximately half of them
HOAs and other planned communities) in
1970, 309,600 in 2010, and over 320,000 by
2012, encompassing 25.9 million housing
units and 63.4 million residents—more
than 20 percent of the nation’s population.
Though the growth for these associations
has slowed during the foreclosure crisis,
dropping from 10 percent growth between
2002 and 2004 to 2.3 percent between
2010 and 2012,6 the foundation’s data
the converted garages of detached singlefamily homes. In each case, the owner of
the house had made the conversion without
the necessary permits or the approval
of municipal planning agencies, usually
because the intended use would not have
been permitted and sometimes because
the cost and hassle of entering a formal
permitting process would have been beyond
the means of the owner. These informal
dwellings and businesses are especially
prevalent in older postwar suburbs that are
not governed by HOAs.
show a consistent and decades-long trend
toward the development of HOAs. This
suggests that there are substantial and
growing numbers of settlements across
the country destined for obsolescence,
burdened with overly restrictive legal
frameworks that compromise their ability
to adapt.
Garage Conversions
The dilemma of suburban neighborhoods—
beset by broader forces and at risk of
“failure” but also ill-equipped to adapt—is
a seemingly intractable one. Subdivisions
are often geographically isolated and have
poor access to public transportation; these
factors, along with their typical landownership patterns, mean that there are few
centers of employment nearby. Conventional,
large-scale modes of redevelopment are
168
During the summer of 2008, I interviewed a
number of immigrant families and individuals
across Southern California who lived in,
had lived in, or conducted business out of
There are hundreds of thousands of these
garage conversions providing low-cost
rental housing, places to conduct business,
and secondary sources of income for
homeowners.7 In the neighborhoods where
these garage conversions are common,
typical suburban forms—tree-lined streets
of free-standing single-family houses, each
with a front yard, driveway, and garage—
belie the substantially greater diversity in
housing options and land uses provided by
the converted garages. In one case study,
for example, a family of four in a detached
single-family home maintained a violin shop
in their converted garage. The previous
homeowner had made the conversion and
additions to the garage, adding a kitchen and
bathroom so that he could rent part of the
garage as a one-person residence while using
the rest as a warehouse for his business.8
Two other interviewees, who now live in
their own single-family home, inhabited
a converted detached garage for three
years after they got married. At that time,
the garage was their cheapest option at
$300 per month instead of the $800 per
month they would have had to pay to rent
a formal residence. The conversion was a
bare-bones retrofit. There was no stove, air
conditioning, or insulation, but there was
electricity and both hot and cold water.
Space was a bit tight, especially after
they had their first child one year in, but
they were comfortable, as they were “just
starting out.”9
In a third case study, the interviewee and
his family of five moved into their 1.5-car
detached garage due to difficulties with
family finances and rented out the house
to create another source of income. They
spent less than $1,000 on the conversion,
as they did not expect to live in the garage
permanently. The retrofit included the
addition of a shower, toilet, and sink. After
three years, the family moved back into the
house and rented out the converted garage
to tenants, most of whom were relatives.10
The informal garage dwellings and
businesses of Southern California suggest
a mode of change that is unique to the
suburban context. Though they are not
common in neighborhoods governed by HOAs
and CC&Rs, they suggest possibilities for
maintaining a balance between the need to
adapt to new conditions and the desire for
stability that is so deeply embedded in the
suburban psyche. These garage conversions
allow for the evolution of the suburban
environment through internal adaptations,
even as the basic forms of buildings and the
spaces around them remain relatively stable.
The density of structures and the broader
context of street patterns, infrastructure
networks, and zoning stay largely
unchanged. On a street where garages have
been converted into dwellings or businesses,
the only indication that such changes have
been made may be an increase in the number
of cars parked on the street. The number of
houses remains stable, even if there are now
50 percent more occupants. Without proper
permitting, these garage conversions must
be discreet interventions. This is in contrast
to urban environments, where growing
building footprints and envelopes, new
signage and lighting, and fresh plantings
and architectural styles are all welcomed as
signs of progress.
The patterning of a suburban neighborhood’s
lots and structures allows these internal
adaptations to occur in distinct ways.
Because each property is conceived as a
world unto itself—despite the uniformity
of setbacks and facade treatments
and massing—and because side yards
and setbacks serve as buffers between
residences in lieu of party walls, it is
relatively easy to insert small-scale
commercial uses or even an additional
household into a suburban lot without
affecting the neighbors too much. That there
is always a driveway and that the climate
of Southern California is mild mean that
the garage can always be turned to other
uses. Garages are already commonly used as
workshop spaces, dens, storage areas, and
band practice rooms. It is a small step, then,
to convert a garage for use as a dwelling or
a place of business.
In a suburban context, a garage is not
dissimilar to a backyard. Both are “interior”
spaces, in the sense that their use need
not affect the neighborhood as a whole. It
does not matter if a homeowner has a rose
garden, tropical fruit orchard, or xeriscape
in his or her backyard. Similarly, a sewing
business or doctor’s office tucked into the
windowless garage of a suburban residence
has, as I found in my case studies, little
impact on the surrounding neighborhood,
so long as the front facade and immediately
169
perceivable affect of each property remain in
concert with the rest of the neighborhood.
adaptability as the environment and the
needs of its residents change.
Because converted garage dwellings
and businesses are necessarily discreet,
however, and because suburban forms and
patterns allow for so much to remain hidden
from view, the effects of these changes in
density and land use on public life in the
suburbs are different from the effects that
similar changes would have in an urban
setting. In my case studies of garages
converted for commercial use, for example,
the customer arrives for an appointment,
parks in the street or driveway, and enters
the garage. Upon completion of business,
the customer retraces his or her steps and
exits the neighborhood, not expecting to
avail him- or herself of other services that
may be provided in the neighborhood, none
of which would be clearly labeled and visible
from the street anyway. New businesses
contribute little to the public life of that
neighborhood. While this condition changes
in neighborhoods where such informal uses
are widely accepted and more clearly visible,
suburban zoning precludes possibilities for
commercial signage, for example.
This linkage between adaptability and
resilience is made explicit in a 2012
paper on flooding and urban resilience,
in which Kuei-Hsien Liao of the National
University of Singapore’s School of Design
and Environment compares two forms of
resilience. “In the engineering resilience
concept any change from the optimal state
is deviant, while in the ecological resilience
concept any fluctuation within the regime
is normal because systems are inherently
dynamic.” Liao describes the current
centrality of engineering resilience to
conventional flood-control measures, such
as levees and floodwalls to keep floodwaters
out. She finds problematic, however, that
engineering resilience implies “an optimal
reference state,” where a city is either “dry
and stable, or inundated and disastrous.”
In contrast, ecological resilience presumes
“inherent variability, uncertainty, and
surprise,” where “resilience to large,
unpredictable disturbances derives from
allowing smaller ones to enter the system.”11
Community Resilience
Certification systems such as LEED for
Neighborhood Development use a holistic
framework to determine how “green” a
neighborhood is. In the LEED rating system, a
neighborhood can accrue credits under three
categories: Smart Location and Linkage,
Neighborhood Pattern and Design, and
Green Infrastructure and Buildings. These
cover criteria ranging from location and
land conservation to heat island reduction
and light pollution reduction. What’s
missing from these systems is a measure
of the resiliency of a neighborhood—more
specifically, the measure of a neighborhood’s
170
These two notions of resilience suggest
critical differences in the ability that urban
and suburban settlements have to adapt
to changing conditions and outside forces.
In urban settings, periodic disturbances
and change in general are expected and
accounted for—urban areas have a built-in
measure of ecological resilience. Just as
small floods heighten awareness of flood
risk and encourage flood adaptations in
flood-prone areas, residents, institutions,
and regulatory agencies in urban settings
possess the mechanisms and experience that
are necessary to respond to disturbances
both small and large.
In suburban settings, the presumption of
an “optimal reference state” predisposes
communities to resist change. Just as
a community that seeks to maximize
engineering resilience attempts to prevent
flooding rather than adapt to flooding, a
typical subdivision and its HOA attempt to
maintain the optimal reference state that
is encoded into its marketing and bylaws,
rather than creating an environment within
which adaptations can be implemented.
Indeed, the very attraction of such a
neighborhood is founded on this illusion
of stasis. Each subdivision is a suggestion
that the future of a community can be
predetermined, even if this flies in the
face of everything that we know about the
inexorability of change.
Diversity in a Community
Liao also writes about the importance of
diversity in enhancing community resilience.
“Short-term adjustments and long-term
adaptation are impossible without a
diversity of options to choose from.” Indeed,
it is “key to resilience because it enables
adaptation by providing seeds for new
opportunities.”12 This relates to a broader
notion of biodiversity, the importance of
which biologist E. O. Wilson describes in The
Diversity of Life:
Biological diversity—“biodiversity” in
the new parlance—is the key to the
maintenance of the world as we know
it. Life in a local site struck down by
a passing storm springs back quickly
because enough diversity still exists.
Opportunistic species evolved for such
an occasion rush in to fill the spaces.13
Applied to human settlements, Wilson’s
explanation suggests that a greater
diversity of forms, functions, and
stakeholders makes a community
more adaptable and resilient. A failing
subdivision, for example, may not need to
be abandoned or torn down if there is
enough variety within the neighborhood’s
building stock and housing types to
accommodate new uses and forms of
occupancy, and if there are stakeholders
within the neighborhood who have the
experience and tools to make necessary
adaptations. This is where the study of
garage conversions yields new possibilities
for enhancing the adaptability and
resilience of suburban environments. Each
case study is an example of stakeholders
in a suburban environment—despite limited
resources and an unfavorable regulatory
framework—making incremental adaptations
to their properties that effectively
increase the density and diversity of the
neighborhood in which they live.
This is sustainable: taking advantage
of the oversized suburban spaces that
already exist, rather than starting from
scratch or allowing subdivisions to decay
while trying to maintain purity of land use
and density. Buying and selling alone are
not adequate: converting, subdividing,
aggregating, renting, and subletting are all
basic processes that need to be woven into
the maintenance of suburban environments.
Extant garage dwellings and businesses
show that such adaptations can benefit a
range of stakeholders without adversely
impacting the surrounding neighborhoods,
providing a measure of resilience not only
for those making the adaptations, but
possibly for the neighborhood as well. The
informal garage residences and businesses
of Southern California are the work of smallscale property owners, people of modest
means acting without significant attention
from the government or investment from
large-scale developers. Yet the aggregated
effects of these conversions have enabled
Southern California to absorb a huge
population influx over the last half-century.
171
For HOA-governed subdivisions and other
similarly restrictive suburban environments,
allowing such adaptive processes to take
root will require a fundamental shift in each
neighborhood’s approach to anticipating
and accommodating change. For many
subdivisions and the municipalities where
they are located, such a shift may be a
gamble, but it is one well worth taking if the
capital for wholesale redevelopment does
not exist and the survival of a subdivision is
at stake.
Further study of garage residences
and other forms of informal dwelling
and commerce can lead to new insights
into how suburban environments can be
conceived for adaptability and resilience
while retaining some of the patterns
and qualities that distinguish them from
urban environments, even if adaptability
and resilience seem antithetical to the
traditional ethos of suburban developments.
What the garage conversions already
do suggest is that the transformation
of today’s suburban landscapes—from
single-family homes to strip malls and
office parks—may depend less on utopian
schemes hatched in the minds of planners
and architects and more on the practicality
and ingenuity of each suburb’s multifarious
residents.
Notes
1 Richard Forman, Land Mosaics: The Ecology of
Landscapes and Regions (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995), 484.
2 US Census Bureau, 2011 Housing Profile: United
States, http://www.census.gov/prod/2013pubs/
ahs11-1.pdf.
3 Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard
University, The State of the Nation’s Housing
2013 Fact Sheet, Harvard University, http://www.
jchs.harvard.edu/sites/jchs.harvard.edu/files/
son_2013_key_facts.pdf.
172
4 Christopher Leinberger, “The Next Slum?,”
The Atlantic Monthly, March 2008, http://www.
theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2008/03/thenext-slum/306653/.
Planning for Rural Settlements:
Shunyi, China, as a Case Study
5 Ann M. Simmons, “Dreams Dry Up for Homeowners
in Lancaster’s Westview Estates,” Los Angeles
Times, December 15, 2008.
Zhang Yue
6 Foundation for Community Associations
Research, “Statistical Review 2012: For
U.S. Homeowner Associations, Condominium
Communities, and Housing Cooperatives,” http://
www.cairf.org/foundationstatsbrochure.pdf.
China has experienced an overwhelming wave of urbanization, straining
7 Jake Wegmann and Alison Nemirow, “Secondary
Units and Urban Infill: A Literature Review,”
University of California Berkeley Institute of Urban
and Regional Development, http://iurd.berkeley.
edu/publications/wp/2011-02.pdf.
have undertaken to develop policies that can improve rural conditions and
8 Sheng, interview by author, Arcadia, CA, August
2008.
9 Margaret Velardes and Manuel Velardes,
interview by author, Pomona, CA, August 15, 2008.
10 Bert Casiano, phone interview by author, August
20, 2008.
11 Kuei-Hsien Liao, “A Theory on Urban Resilience
to Floods—A Basis for Alternative Planning
Practices,” Ecology and Society 17, no. 4 (2012),
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol17/iss4/
art48/.
12 Ibid.
13 E. O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (New York:
W. W. Norton & Company, 1999), 15.
cities’ infrastructure and leaving rural areas underpopulated and neglected.
Zhang Yue explains the work that he and his team from Tsinghua University
create space for development without encroaching on wild or cultivated land.
Over 3,000 years of recorded history,
Chinese society has been marked with the
distinct imprint of agricultural civilization.
It was not until the middle of the nineteenth
century that China had to face the progress
that industrialization and urbanization had
made elsewhere in the world. After more
than 100 years of wars and turbulence,
China finally, in the last 30 years, stepped
into a period of rapid urbanization. The rate
of urbanization in China surged from 21.13
percent to 51.27 percent between 1982 and
2011, according to census data.1, 2
In the process, the old agricultural tradition
of China has been confronted with abrupt
change in both urban and rural areas. Today,
over 220 million rural people in China spend
more than half the year away from their
registered permanent residence.3 Most of
them are young or middle-aged, a labor
force flowing into big cities for better job
opportunities and life quality. This trend has
challenged both cities and countryside: it
is difficult to provide sufficient and fair job
opportunities and public-service facilities in
a short period, and migrant laborers flocking
into cities often cause various social
problems; meanwhile, in the countryside,
the drain on the labor force leads to the
abandonment of farmland and the stagnation
or even decline of rural development.
Therefore, the development and construction
of rural settlements has become one of the
most important issues in China.
It is in this context that, starting in 2005,
Tsinghua University’s School of Architecture
has, with support from the Beijing Municipal
Commission of Urban Planning, carried out
a series of comprehensive planning, design,
and research projects in several rural areas
of the Shunyi District. Shunyi District, on the
outskirts of Beijing, is home to a shrinking
rural population of 405,000, a third of whom
have already migrated to the cities. From our
studies in the Shunyi District, we have tried
to formulate a comprehensive planning theory and method for rural planning and design
that can be applied broadly to the improvement and development of rural settlements in
rapidly urbanizing developing countries.
Rural Sustainability and Its Three Major
Objectives
Three main objectives define rural
sustainability in China: setting ethical
standards and promoting social equity,
addressing environmental concerns and
food security, and supporting the economic
173
performance of the countryside. In the
rural areas of many developing countries,
sustainability means supplying urgent
and basic needs: shelter, water, schools,
access to goods and services, and medical
care. Urban planners’ and architects’ work
should adhere to high ethical standards and
support social equity.
Development and construction in rural
areas is generally supported and subsidized
by national and local governments. In
2006, China, the last country to impose
an agricultural tax on farmers, ended a
2,600-year-old policy of agricultural taxation
and arranged various national agricultural
subsidies. China has gradually transitioned
from a time of “exploiting farmers” to one
of “nurturing farmers.”4 In that process,
the improvement and construction of rural
infrastructure, supported by public money
mostly drawn from urban areas, has been
significant. One of our major goals at
Tsinghua University’s School of Architecture
is to reasonably guide and control the funds
and projects for nurturing rural areas,
ensuring the equal distribution of resources
and avoiding inefficiency and wasteful,
redundant construction.
The rural environment plays a very important
role in our global ecosystem. Unfortunately,
it is now in a state of stress and overuse.
Finite resources are being depleted and
much rural land is being polluted or spoiled.
A statistical bulletin from the Ministry of
Land and Resources shows that the total
area under cultivation in China shrank from
130 million hectares in 1996 to 122 million
hectares in 2008, very close to the value
of 120 million specified by the Chinese
government as a warning threshold; any
more loss of cultivated land could have a
great impact on food security in China and
perhaps even internationally. Apart from
cultivated land, woodlands, pastureland,
174
and wetlands are also in danger. The basic
substance of the natural environment that
human beings depend upon is confronted
with serious threats brought by urbanization.
Creating a sustainable countryside
thus involves planning that preserves
environmental quality, reduces waste and
consumption through sensible design,
reduces pollution by establishing efficient
transportation networks, and so forth.
In addition to social improvement and
environmental protection, another important
objective is maintaining economic growth
and vitality in rural areas at all levels. The
2010 Chinese census showed a large income
gap between urban and rural populations.
The annual per capita disposable income
of urban households is about $3,500; rural
households earn less than one-third of that.5
The planning project must be economically
feasible and innovative in its deployment of
financial resources.
Wuxiongsi’s
Wuxiongsi’s
income,
income,
2008:
2008:
¥4.8
¥4.8
million
million
($780,000)
($780,000)
Land
Land
rent
rent
from
from
private
private
enterprises
enterprises
Other
Other
(revenue
(revenue
from
from
village-owned
village-owned
enterprises,
enterprises,
etc.)
etc.)
Investment
Investment
or or
pilot-program
pilot-program
awards
awards
from
from
national
national
government
government
Land
Land
rent
rent
from
from
governmentgovernmentowned
owned
enterprises
enterprises
Subsidies
Subsidies
from
from
national
national
government
government
Village’s
Village’s
share
share
of of
taxtax
revenue
revenue
from
from
private
private
and
and
government-owned
government-owned
enterprises
enterprises
↑ 1. The annual income of Wuxiongsi, in the Shunyi
District, is typical for a Chinese village of its size.
Field Survey of Rural Planning: The
Household and the Village
Public service system of rural settlements
Compared to their urban counterparts,
the residents of rural settlements have
less public and collective consciousness,
but stronger independence on the basis
of family. Therefore, any planning and
construction involving public issues beyond
private households must be based on fully
understanding and respecting the will of
each family.
The project team, including more than
30 researchers and university students,
has carried out door-to-door visits and
mapping covering all the rural settlements
for the preliminary investigation. Our pilot
project includes five villages in the Shunyi
District; Sishang, one of the villages, has
a population of 1,546, covering an area of
Basic Services
(kindergarten, health
station, convenience
stores, Internet, etc.)
are offered in every
rural settlement.
Shared Services
Large city
Small town
Rural settlement
(educational facilities,
hospitals, sports
centers and clubs,
libraries, commercial
centers, etc.) are
offered in only some
of the villages or
small towns. They are
distributed, however,
so that every
settlement is within
the service radius of
every service on this
list.
↑ 2. Public services are distributed across rural settlements and larger villages to ensure
that each person has access to vital services without stretching the government’s budget.
175
0 25 50 100m
Structures affected by road
reconstruction program
road
main rooms removed:
13 households +13
wing rooms removed:
6 households +2
storerooms removed:
2 households +2
courtyard wall redefined:
34 households +6
public buildings removed:
2 units
for resettlements:
4 sites on unused plots
(number of households
affected within five years
+ within fifteen years)
↑ 3. Impact evaluation for the reconstruction of Wuxiongsi’s road system (depicted
in red lines), noting where buildings or parts of buildings must be removed.
Land-use type
3.5 kilometers at a density of 40 people per
hectare. Investigation teams interviewed
each family to get general information,
measured and took photos of the house
sites, house arrangements, and use
situations, and recorded and compiled the
information in a uniform format.
Detailed information acquired via the
door-to-door visits falls into three main
categories. The social category includes
each person’s name, gender, age, work and
education background, place of work or
school, and commuting mode. The economic
category includes records of income,
expenditures, consumption, investment,
and important fixed assets. The builtenvironment category includes the quality of
each house, total floor area, building time,
building practices, and people’s satisfaction
with their habitation.
The project team recorded the household
information above and established a
spatial information database for the entire
settlement, which functioned as a basic
platform for the subsequent planning,
design, and construction.6
state-owned land
water area
cultivated land
woodland
residential
administration
commercial service
manufacturing
equipped agriculture
transportation
public utility
public green
built-up land
owned by
the village
19%
0 50 150 300m
176
woodland
19%
state-owned land
water
cultivated
land 50%
↑ 4. Rezoning rural land use and defining growth boundaries for
construction, depicted here by red lines around each area.
In addition to surveying each family, the
project needed a comprehensive grasp
of the condition of the whole village
area, particularly public facilities. This
investigation was divided into five parts.
The land-use investigation included
delimitation, function examination, and
category definition of each plot of land. The
transportation and circulation investigation
analyzed accessibility and investigated
the internal road system, parking lots,
and garages. The municipal infrastructure
investigation looked at distribution
networks, water supply and drainage,
electric power, telecommunications, heating
and cooling systems, environmental safety,
disaster preparedness, and more. The public
service facilities investigation assessed the
arrangement, location, and administration
of public management, commerce, finance,
medical and health care, culture and
education, and so forth. The economy and
industry investigation researched the
village’s collective revenue and expenditures
as well as the economic aggregate and
ratios, sectors, output value, profit, and
employment opportunity of each enterprise
in the village.
Unlike in urban planning, the investor in
rural planning is usually the government,
while the beneficiaries are small villages.
The two parties are separated, so the
planner plays an important intermediary role.
The planner must explain to villagers the
importance of intensive land use and
protection of the rural environment. Often,
local village leaders resist growth limits set
by the government, as the village depends on
leasing land as a source of income. As
such, the argument for growth limits must
always include additional fiscal support.
The planner should protect the legitimate
development rights of the rural villages
and build a compensation mechanism
when development is limited. Therefore,
participation from villagers is essential to
the whole rural planning procedure. Our
team exhibited, explained, and discussed
the project throughout its duration in order
to fully engage villagers in the planning
process.
Improvement of Rural Public Service and
Municipal Infrastructure Based on Social
Objectives
The low population density of rural areas
leads to insufficient receipt of public
services and difficulties running them.
Thus, our planning of rural public service
facilities focuses on the establishment of a
177
joint construction and sharing mechanism
among multiple villages and towns. Instead
of trying to provide every service in each
village, the plan aims to provide complete
sets of facilities for a certain area and
allows all the villages within the area to
share those facilities via convenient public
transportation networks, thus avoiding the
redundant construction of facilities.
Take the case of educational facilities: there
are not enough pupils in a single village to
justify building a primary school in each
village. Instead, several villages within an
appropriate service radius can jointly found
and share a primary school, and buses can
transport children and parents from each
village to the school. Accordingly, junior and
senior high schools, vocational schools, and
technical schools should be provided within
larger areas. Other cultural, sports, and
commercial facilities could also adopt such a
staggered layout and joint construction and
sharing mechanism.
Some public service items and basic
facilities must still be locally available to
each rural settlement. Take medical and
health-care facilities, for example: without
village doctors, villagers’ illnesses cannot
be prevented or treated at an early stage;
this dramatically increases the burden
on larger cities’ hospitals when villagers
flock there for aggravated illnesses. In
our planning project, a village clinic was
reestablished in each village; it is run in
alternating years by doctors from the town
and doctors from the county. The village
clinic has become the occasion for the
villagers’ regular clinical examinations
and their procurement of medicine, as well
as just a gathering for chatting. These
clinics have shown effective performance in
providing primary healthcare and referrals
for the villagers. In addition to medical and
hygienic facilities, we have planned and
178
established a network of supermarkets
and convenience chains rooted in rural
areas with the support of the government.
The many young, educated officials sent
to rural areas by government programs
have brought and applied computer and
Internet technology, perfected the means
and methods of village management, and
enhanced the villages’ communication with
the outside world.
The construction of infrastructure in rural
areas is an important precondition for
quality-of-life enhancements and economic
development; it has been a key investment
trend for governmental finance nurturing
rural development in China in recent years.
The planning of road traffic improvements
in our project meant the adjustment and
reconstruction of road systems within
villages, as well as ensuring convenience and
access to the outside world for the villages.
We aimed at making the logic of the road
system more distinct, the street sections
more reasonable, and the roadside auxiliary
facilities more complete, meeting firefighting
and first-aid demands and eliminating floods
and inland inundation. The principles for
planning and design included making full
use of the existing roads, not interfering
with existing structures, such as residents’
courtyards, and disrupting daily life as little
as possible.
We combined construction of the sewage,
gas, electricity, and other infrastructure
with the alteration of the roads. Work
on the water supply and drainage mainly
involved adding standby wells for livelihood,
changing old water supply pipes, installing
water meters for the residents, establishing
extra charges for domestic water consumed
beyond the rated amount (to reduce waste),
laying out sewage pipelines for separate
drainage of rainwater and wastewater,
constructing sewage treatment facilities
suitable for the villages, and recycling used
water for greening and irrigation.
The energy, environment, and sanitation
work consisted of installing flush toilets,
setting garbage collection points, and
establishing a regional garbage pickup
and transportation system. The power and
telecommunication work involved updating
power and communication facilities,
implementing wireless networks with
village-wide coverage, and erecting solar
street lamps. The suitability of technologies
played a crucial role in this planning and
realization. Some technologies have become
quite mature and widely applied, while some,
such as the wetland sewage treatment
system, are still being piloted in the project
in order to gain experience and identify
possible problems.
Land-Use Planning and Control Based on
Environmental Objectives
The out-of-control expansion of urban and
rural construction is responsible for an
environmental crisis in rural areas. About
half of China’s population still lives in the
countryside, and it is customary for the
rural population to periodically renovate
or reconstruct their houses; even villagers
working in the city invest the money
they earn there in the reconstruction
of their village homes. However, when
villagers construct new houses, their old
houses are usually left standing instead
of being torn down for re-cultivation,
so the built environment in rural areas
is continuously expanding. At the same
time, the amount of rural land devoted to
industry has increased greatly in recent
years. Village industries, grappling with
inconvenient transportation and location
disadvantage, usually enhance their
market competitiveness with high energy
consumption, high pollution, and the
extensive use of land for construction.
Leasing such land has become a major
source of rural income. The accumulated
nibbling away at rural residential land
constitutes one of the principal reasons for
China’s nationwide loss of cultivated land
and green spaces.7
In rural planning, it is important to set
growth boundaries for rural construction
based on the principle of intensive land
use—China now imposes regulations that
allow no more than 150 square meters
of industrial land per capita in rural
communities—and to use already-developed
or abandoned land.
Villagers are often hostile to an outside
authority’s plans to control their use
of and construction on their land. After
planning was approved for our project, one
case village still built workshops outside
the construction growth boundary in
order to attract investment; this was soon
identified, and the village was fined for
violating the terms of the plan. The village
cadres expressed their confusion about
this matter. This led the project team to
think it over; they put forward the idea that
the management and control of rural land
should only be realized if an overall urbanrural land compensation mechanism were
implemented. When the city seeks land for
development, it deprives the village of food
security and environmental protection, which
should be compensated for or transferred in
an appropriate manner.
In the middle of the last century, Western
countries adopted welfare compensation
and transfer policies for those suffering
losses—Transferable Development Rights
(TDRs) and Purchase of Development Rights
(PDRs) programs, for example. These policy
tools, to some degree, enable agricultural
179
land and undeveloped rural land to share
the rewards of urban development.8
Recently, some Chinese scholars have
calculated the unused value of rural land in
China by using CVM (Contingent Valuation
Method) and TCM (Travel Cost Method),
methods developed by European scholars,
and have tried to establish a system of
city-to-village land development rights
transfers suitable for China’s actual
conditions.9
Micro-Spreading Renewal of Rural
Settlements and Release of Construction
Land Based on Economic Objectives
Besides improving their livelihoods and
protecting the environment, the villagers
hoped that planning would help them
obtain more construction land for nonagricultural programs and accelerate the
economic development of the countryside.
This is a challenging, long-term target for
rural planning that hopes to maintain the
potential of the original developed land
without expansion.
According to our investigation, many houses
are much larger than the requirements
specified by the national and local
governments; the average house site area
for a single plot on the outskirts of Beijing
is over 400 square meters, twice the legal
limit. Furthermore, there are more and more
vacant house sites in the countryside, left
vacant as the labor force floods into the
cities. Another investigation, this one by
the Chinese Academy of Sciences, shows
that the land in Chinese rural areas left
empty by the migration of farmers amounts
to some 76,000 square kilometers.10 Clearly,
renovation and reconstruction of rural
settlements within their original boundaries
has the potential to release a great amount
of land for construction.
180
The project team advanced a micro-spreading
renewal model in rural planning. The proposal
takes the common vacant house site as a
starting point, proposing to construct a
land-saving, high-quality new house in its
place. Bigger, two-story buildings would
provide an incentive for families to join the
program; a smaller footprint and adjoining
garden would help decrease land use. Nearby
farmers are invited to settle there, releasing
more space where two new dwelling units
can be constructed, allowing two more local
families to move in, and so forth. In the end,
the renewal project would involve whole
settlements; the land used by a settlement
could shrink to between one-half and twothirds of its original area, with buildings
more densely centered on the start point. In
this way, a substantial amount of presently
occupied land could be released for suitable
rural-industry development.
This model avoids the problem, encountered
when a new settlement is built in another
location, wherein new dwellings are
completed, but old dwellings remain intact.
Instead, old dwellings would be reused to
reach higher densities. It would also have
the advantage of following the original
road infrastructure and basically keeping
the original neighborhood and spatial
social structure intact. It is not without
potential problems however. A prolonged
land revenue cycle due to low renewal
speed would present some difficulties,
possibly resulting in insufficient support
from investors and increased construction
costs due to the small scale of renewal
in the beginning stages. The main
challenges of the program are financial,
as it depends on the developer’s budget
and the government’s fiscal support. The
formulation of corresponding state policies
and the provision of fiscal support will be
indispensable to the success of the microspreading renewal model.
Lane & infrastructure access
more
spaces
released
abandoned
site
household
1
household
2
household
3
household
2
household
3
household
4
household
5
household
4
household
5
household
6
household
7
household
1
household
6
household
7
The process begins with an abandoned lot, where
new homes are built. The homes of the households
who moved into the once-abandoned lots are
replaced with narrower houses, and the whole
neighborhood contracts toward this starting point.
The footprints of homes are reduced from
approximately 300 square meters to 200 (the
regulation size), making one-third of the
neighborhood’s original space available for
development, but because the new structures have
multiple stories, the overall living space per house is
not reduced.
house- house- household
hold
hold
2
3
1
house- house- household hold hold
3
1
2
more
spaces
released
house- house- household hold
hold
7
8
6
household
4
household
6
household
5
household
7
household
4
household
5
if they are unwilling
to move
house- house- household
hold hold
9
10
11
The social fabric of the neighborhood is essentially
maintained. Because the renewal spreads
household-by-household, the original spatial
relationships between homes are basically
maintained; neighbors remain neighbors. All the
moves and changes take place strictly at residents’
will. They are encouraged by government subsidies
offered to those residents willing to move to a
land-saving, more ecologically friendly dwelling.
↑ 5. The micro-spreading renewal model densifies residential areas, opening up land for
construction without increasing the total footprint of the community’s developed land.
181
The initial startup project for the microspreading renewal model was listed among
the projects highlighted by the Beijing
government for investment and construction
in 2007. The project team built a new energysaving farmhouse in a vacant courtyard of
the pilot village, Wuxiongsi. The household
area and the land area of the demonstrated
farmhouse were both 200 square meters,
the government-mandated size. So that the
residents would not feel oppressed by the
reduced size of their homes and courtyards,
cast iron railings without visual obstacles
were adopted along the sides of the yard
facing the street, bringing a more open and
new lifestyle to the villagers.
ENVIRONMENT
3 basic goals:
5 major works:
protecting cultivated land
and natural resources and
reducing pollution
land use
planning control
GOVERNMENT OFFICER
3 task forces:
policymaking, fiscal
support, administration,
and coordination
improving
infrastructure
ECONOMY
EQUITY
attracting external investment and opening spaces
for rural development
improving
public services
ACADEMIC + PLANNER
making field surveys and
interviews, building a
theoretical model and
comprehensive plan as the
basis of the whole project
improving rural
living conditions
housing
design
community
renewal
ARCHITECT + ENGINEER
providing relevant,
detailed designs and
professional services
↑ 6. Illustration of the basic model
for the Shunyi rural planning project.
The architectural plans took the traditional
farmhouse typology into full consideration,
employing three rooms, southern exposure,
a square structure, and a reasonable shape
coefficient to reduce heat loss. The house
has external-wall insulation in all rooms,
a rooftop solar heat collection system, a
rainwater collection system in the yard,
and other energy-saving, environmentally
friendly measures. The startup house is
mainly used as a demonstration piece to
solicit comments and ideas for improvement
from the farmers and as a test bed for
various equipment. Running equipment
in the startup house helps to determine
the expense of construction, installation,
utilization, and maintenance so that villagers
can make comparisons and select the
features they would like to see in future
houses. It also serves as a reference for the
government in establishing related subsidy
and assistance policies.
Responding to Rapid Urbanization
From the research and practice of the
project team enumerated above, we have
derived a planning and construction model
182
for rural settlements responsive to rapid
urbanization regions. The model, based
on the three basic goals and values—
environmental protection, social equity,
and economic development—is led and
funded by governmental bodies at various
levels under the banner of the nationwide
program “City Back Seeding Countryside.”
It addresses land-use planning and control,
circulation and infrastructure improvement,
public services improvement, community
renewal, housing construction, and other
fields. The project task forces are composed
of personnel from multiple departments
and specialties, including governmental
officers at various levels, who direct policy
making, implementation, and advancement;
architects and engineers, who provide
specialized solutions and technical support;
and planners, who integrate the benefit
claims of various parties and the various
engineering and technical solutions into a
coherent output.
The project was carried out between 2005
and 2008. After planning was approved,
satellite imaging began monitoring the
villages’ construction growth boundary,
effectively protecting the cultivated land
and natural environment of the area.
Infrastructure and public services have also
been greatly improved. A rural community
center, medical facilities, a library, and
computer and Internet systems have been
built, and the rural streets, water supply,
sewage, and electricity systems have also
been replaced. A demonstration house has
been built to show the high living quality
to all villagers and to attract more private
investment to support the whole village
renewal, which is still the most challenging
issue of the project today. The whole
planning work, one of the first nine pilot
projects for the whole Beijing area, has won
the Beijing Planning Award and the China
National Planning Award, which set one role
183
model of rural planning for both the city and
the country.
9 Lars Drake, The Non-Market Value of the Swedish
Agricultural Landscape (Brussels: European
Commission, 2004).
Beyond Regulations
Our project and China’s experiences point to
the importance of city governments taking a
leading role in upgrading rural areas. Rural
planning should incorporate reasonable
guidance and control to avoid inefficient
investment and redundant construction and
to prevent the encroachment of farmland
and woodland. Along with this top-down
intervention, serious field surveys and local
residents’ participation are very important.
Only with these preconditions can rural
planning be oriented toward local needs and
capacities, the perspectives of local people,
and the adoption of community values.
10 Liu Yansui et al., Report on China’s Rural
Development Research (Beijing: Science Press,
2011).
Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal
Notes
1 National Bureau of Statistics of China,
Communiqué on Major Figures of the 1982 Third
Population Census (No. 1), http://www.stats.gov.
cn/tjgb/rkpcgb/qgrkpcgb/t20020404_16769.htm.
2 National Bureau of Statistics of China,
Communiqué on Major Figures of the 2010 Sixth
Population Census (No. 1), http://www.stats.gov.
cn/tjgb/rkpcgb/qgrkpcgb/t20110428_402722232.
htm.
3 Ibid.
4 Standing Committee of the Tenth National
People’s Congress, Decision of the 19th Meeting
(2005), http://www.npc.gov.cn/huiyi/cwh/1128/
node_19058.htm.
5 National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2010
Sixth Population Census (No. 1).
6 Zhang Yue et al., “Door-to-Door Survey of
W Village in Beijing Distant Suburb,” Beijing
Planning Review 108 (2006): 36–39.
7 Zhang Yue et al., “The Suburban Expansion of
the Rural Built-Up Area in Beijing: A Case Study
on Nanjuan Village of Shunyi,” China City Planning
Review 16, no. 3 (2007): 48–55.
8 Rick Pruetz, Beyond Takings and Givings: Saving
Natural Area, Farmland and Historic Landmarks
with Transfer of Development Rights and Density
Transfer Changes (Hermosa Beach, CA: Arje Press,
2003).
184
Sustainability is the grand narrative of architecture in the
twenty-first century. If architecture in the heroic period of
modernism sought to end social injustice, today’s architects
are being called on to build more sustainably in order to save
the planet from climate change. This concern has ushered in
a whole new regime of regulations and norms that are meant
to help buildings save energy and resources. While standards
have played a positive part in improving the quality of
architecture—they played a decisive role in providing people
with bigger and better homes—not all norms and regulations
introduced in the building sector in the name of sustainability
are driving architecture forward and in a more sustainable
direction. By prescribing one-size-fits-all solutions that are
narrowly focused on carbon reduction and energy efficiency,
they can even limit the potential of a project to be sustainable
in a holistic way. For sustainability to encourage innovation
in architecture, it needs well-defined, productive goals—not
straightjacket standards.
The overarching concern of our office, Lacaton & Vassal
Architects, is to produce more luxurious, larger spaces
without either increasing the given budget or compromising
the quality of construction. We often accomplish this through
an economy of means, using nontraditional materials and
building systems. This has brought us into conflict with
strict, overly literal applications of regulations and norms and
forced us to challenge their universal applicability. A major
breakthrough in our thinking about norms occurred while we
were working on a fourteen-unit social housing project in
185
Mulhouse, France, in 2005. It was our first time incorporating
greenhouse structures into a multifamily housing complex.
Our goal in Mulhouse was to produce high-quality units that
were larger than the very small, partitioned apartments
usually provided by social housing; for that, we had to stretch
the budget as much as possible. Using cost-effective building
systems developed for agriculture and industry allowed us
to double the amount of inhabitable space by lowering the
construction costs and freeing up the budget to pay for
additional space. We built a robust, concrete post-and-beam
structure on the ground floor, which raised a platform three
meters above the ground, upon which we fixed horticultural
greenhouses. On the second level, one part of the greenhouse
is closed and heated. The other part is a winter garden,
ventilated through the roof and facade and protected from the
sun with a horizontal sunshade.
The winter gardens act as extra insulation for the heated
house. Our experience using greenhouses in single-family
houses, notably the Latapie House, has taught us that
they are resilient and resourceful structures. Made out of
galvanized metal and transparent corrugated polycarbonate
panels, they are able to withstand severe weather conditions
and have been engineered to regulate their interior
temperature with great precision, down to a fraction of a
degree. During the winter, the transparent polycarbonate
panels let in enough sun and heat to warm the winter garden.
Naturally reaching a temperature that’s seven to ten degrees
warmer than the temperature outside, the winter garden
provides a buffer zone between the heated interior spaces,
which are insulated with double-glazed sliding doors, and the
186
exterior climate. Like insulation, the winter garden minimizes
heat loss between the inside and the outside. However,
unlike insulation, which can range from 20 to 50 centimeters
in thickness, the winter garden provides a pleasant, useable
space. In the summer, the sliding doors separating the winter
garden and the interior space can be opened, creating a
larger, more light-filled and generous interior space.
Because we have experimented extensively with agricultural
greenhouses and bio-climatic envelopes, we know that these
thermal buffers are very efficient. However, this efficiency
is not easily evaluated by normative calculations, because
the buffer zone is not among their recognized typologies. It
is therefore difficult to get its use in architecture approved
and its energy efficiency properly valued. To meet the new
energy-saving regulations introduced for buildings in Europe,
you have to prove that the building is sufficiently insulated by
calculating the overall heat transfer coefficient, the U-value,
of the materials on its facade. This reductive formula does
not always accurately calculate the energy efficiency and
sustainability of a design. For example, it does not account for
the gray energy—the amount of energy required to extract,
produce, package, and transport a material—of insulation. It
also doesn’t adequately consider alternative means of carbon
reduction; natural forms of climatic control like the passive
heating and cooling of the winter garden, for example, can
drastically minimize the costs associated with the installation
and operation of mechanical systems.
Working with these standards, regulators rejected our design
for Mulhouse. In France, regulatory agencies review projects
using a notational system based on a catalogue of materials
187
and solutions. This method precludes any nuance; materials
or systems not included in the catalogue, including many
that we use, are either not rated or given a poor score. This
was a setback for the project, since social housing in France
built without regulatory approval doesn’t receive the label
that clients need to receive funding for construction. Luckily,
our client, SOMCO Mulhouse, trusted us and continued to
support our project. We went on to present the project before
a commission at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.
This commission comprises some the best thermal engineers
in France. They continuously check and edit the country’s
rules and regulations and have the power to accept particular
projects that deviate from the standard. The commission
quickly came to the conclusions that our project was perfectly
in line with the goals of the regulation and that it couldn’t
be properly evaluated using the official verification software.
To get around this, we had to develop specific calculations
that would help the software calculate our project’s actual
thermal performance. One of the engineers helped us develop
this calculation. Tested with this model, the project met all the
requirements and SOMCO was able to get subsidies for the
construction.
Relying on regulations is a mechanistic approach to
sustainability and architecture; regulations often focus
too much on carbon emissions and energy savings without
giving equal consideration to the broader and more complex
social and financial aspects of sustainability. It is a tough
battle to get these alternative, non-standardized methods
and approaches approved. But it is a battle worth fighting:
it ensures that adequate space and living conditions and
the indispensible sensual qualities of architecture are
188
↑ 1. Social housing, Mulhouse, built in 2005 and
consisting of fourteen single-family houses.
189
↑ 2. A shade cloth is drawn over the winter garden in Mulhouse,
providing a pleasant space to live during the summer.
190
191
Summer/Day
Horizontal shade cloth
drawn to create shade
and save energy
Thermal
curtain
closed
Natural
ventilation
Doors
open
Doors
open
Thermal
curtain
closed
Thermal
curtain
closed
Winter/Night
Thermal
insulation
Thermal
curtain
closed
Stored heat
Thermal
curtain
closed
0 1
Horizontal shade cloth
drawn to create shade
and save energy
Winter garden
Doors
closed
Thermal
curtain
closed
5
10m
↑ 3. In the summer, the living units are cooled by passive ventilation; in the winter, the winter garden
captures solar heat and functions as a thermal buffer between the inside and the outside. The
thermal curtains act both in the summer and winter to insulate the space from the heat and cold.
192
not sacrificed in favor of norms and regulations. We have
endeavored to preserve these qualities in our architecture.
In 2006, together with Frédéric Druot, we won a competition
to retrofit a residential tower called Tour Bois-le-Prêtre,
a project that demonstrates the layered concerns of
ecological, social, and economic sustainability. Tour Boisle-Prêtre, a fourteen-story high-rise in Paris, was built in
1959 by Raymond Lopez as part of the “Grands Ensembles”
of social housing projects erected in the postwar era. In
the 1980s, the original checkerboard high rise received a
regrettable “building services refurbishment” that replaced
the building’s loggias and balconies with fiber cement panels
and PVC window frames. By 2011, the Tour Bois-le-Prêtre
was a decaying residential tower, slated for demolition and
reconstruction by the city of Paris.
The Tour Bois-le-Prêtre was our chance to apply the principles
of “never demolish, never remove, never replace, but always
add, transform, and use” that we had outlined in Plus, which
we coauthored in 2004 with Druot.1 Our main thesis in this
study was that you don’t gain anything if you demolish a
building. If anything, you waste the existing values embedded
in the high-rise: its unobstructed views, surrounding green
spaces, and height. You also waste its existing material and
structural potential. In Plus, we therefore proposed working
with what was already there to improve living conditions in
the “grands ensembles,” opening up facades and extending
usable floor area by adding winter gardens and balconies.
This approach was also more favorable in economic terms.
The state-subsidized conversion program had budgeted
€15,000 for the demolition of an old apartment and €152,000
for the construction of a new one—a total of €167,000. We
193
concluded, after studying the case in detail, that, for the
same sum, at least three apartments could be redesigned,
enlarged, and upgraded, without the prolonged displacement
of residents and waste of existing material.
For the retrofit, we began by replacing the facade and
old thermal insulation system with a fully glazed facade,
capitalizing on the tower’s panoramic views of Paris. Next, a
prefabricated 3-by-7.5-meter steel frame was built around
the facade, adding a two-meter winter garden and a onemeter-deep balcony to each apartment. Extending the living
space with the steel frame was crucial to improving living
standards in the Tour Bois-le-Prêtre; as in Mulhouse, the
additional space it created was also the thermal strategy for
the building. The building is thermally insulated thanks to the
cumulative effect of the double-glazed facade, which encloses
the heated spaces, a thermal curtain, and, most importantly,
the passive solar heat gain of the winter garden, which is
enclosed with a corrugated polycarbonate facade. In Tour
Bois-le-Prêtre, we were able to calculate the building’s energy
efficiency using a comparative method. We measured the
energy building’s energy consumption for a full year after its
transformation and compared it with the corresponding pretransformation values. The winter garden strategy has helped
reduce the building’s energy use for heating by 60 percent—
not by wrapping the construction with mineral wool insulation,
as the regulations encouraged us to do, but by enveloping the
tower in a volume of air and making the most of the building’s
existing values. In the end, revitalizing the tower cost €11.25
million, substantially less than the €20 million that it would
have cost to demolish the tower and reconstruct its units on
site or elsewhere.
194
The winter garden reintroduces surprising and complementary
spatial effects to the building and gives individual residents
the ability to appropriate space depending on the season.
During the winter, when the garden is too cold to live in,
it can be used as an “outdoor” space to plant herbs or for
the children to play, for example; the winter garden and its
semi-transparent polycarbonate panels also give the visual
impression that the adjacent room is larger. In the summer,
the sliding doors open up to what’s potentially a living room,
dining room, playroom, or study. The winter garden and the
balcony are places where you can experience the temperature
and the change of season. While France’s climate is generally
temperate, there are a few days each year of extreme
temperatures. If you tailor thermal strategies to these
extreme highs and lows of climate you create a uniform level
of comfort in the winter and the summer. Generally, building
for this range means “overbuilding” heating systems or
insulation and minimizing the number of windows —strategies
that are useless or unappealing for the majority of the year.
We were able, with good sense and judgment, to find specific
solutions and mechanisms to withstand temporary situations,
exceptional and of short duration, instead of wearing a jacket
all year just to avoid being cold for one week.
Each resident has his or her unique thresholds of comfort.
Because of this, we believe that the user should be at the
heart of the question of human comfort. This will allow him
or her to customize his or her environment and could also
save a great amount of energy; when residents engage with
their environment, opening a window to cross-ventilate a
space, for example, they drastically minimize the energy
and resources needed by a mechanical cooling system. One
195
problem with building regulations is that they are based on
non-occupied buildings and therefore do not consider the
lived reality of a building and the behavior of inhabitants,
be it good or bad. This defines a building as an autonomous
system, with completely standardized and uniform levels of
comfort, catering to a generic type of resident. The simple
act of opening a window is a potential problem, since it could
“sabotage” the optimized functioning of the mechanical
ventilation system. It also precludes simple, energy-efficient
solutions, like the thermal curtains used in Mulhouse and
in Tour Bois-le-Prêtre, another example of a nonstandard
solution to insulating a space. When combined with bay
windows, the thermal curtain is very efficient at capturing
heat. It is, however, difficult to convince a thermal technician
that residents will use the curtains intelligently and optimally,
drawing and opening them as necessary. There’s a lack
of trust that people will take responsibility for their own
environments, and, consequently, the thermal efficiency of
the curtain is hardly taken into consideration—only, to a
small extent, in the balance sheet. We have to fight this idea.
Setting precedents that demonstrate the role that human
behavior can play in lowering energy use and carbon emissions
can help convince building operators and technicians to trust
users.
There is a beautiful short story by Jorge Luis Borges called “On
Exactitude in Science.” It is about a guild of cartographers
and their attempt to produce a 1:1 map of their Empire. When
the cartographers finish the map, it completely covers the
world it was supposed to represent. Regulations are similar
to this map. By trying to address everything, they miss many
precious and relevant aspects of reality. Rather than follow
↑ 4. During the transformation of Tour Bois-le-Prêtre in 2011, the facade of the
building was replaced with a fully glazed facade that opens up to a winter garden
and a balcony, supported by a steel structure that wraps around the building.
196
197
Tour Bois-le-Prêtre, PARIS
Transformation and extension of a social housing high-rise
Total extension of floor area: + 40%
8,900 sqm > 12,460 sqm
96 dwellings > 100 dwellings
Addition of winter gardens and balconies:
+ 22 sqm to 60 sqm / dwelling
Energy savings: – 50%
183 kwh ep/sqm > 80 kwh ep/sqm
Cost: €11.25 million net
(compared to demolition + rebuilding = €20 million)
Building occupied during renovation
↑ 6. Apartments in Tour Bois-le-Prêtre after the building's transformation,
depicting the winter gardens and balconies that now envelop the structure.
↑ 5. The net cost of the transformation of Tour Bois-le-Prêtre was
€11.25 million which represents a figure per apartment of €112,500. This was
considerably more economical than demolition and building another tower.
198
199
regulations exactingly, we prefer to keep their objectives and
goals in mind and to take the real world as our reference when
adding something to it.
↑ 7. Café Una, Architekturzentrum, Vienna.
0 1
3
5
10
We put these principles to work when we designed the Café
Una at the Architecture Center in Vienna in 2001. We had
designed the floor plan of the café so that, on your way to
the toilets from the dining hall, you have to pass through
the kitchen. We thought it would be more interesting to
move through the kitchen, as if you were traveling from one
courtyard to another, instead of passing through a hallway
to get to the bathrooms. It was also our way of showing the
visitor that the tiling of the seating area continues into the
kitchen, because the kitchen is a part of the café—even
though by regulations we had to enclose it—and occupies one
of the three bays originally intended for café space. This was
not in accordance with the sanitary laws of Vienna, however,
and the city’s building department initially denied our building
permit. Luckily, we discovered the same spatial sequence in
Café Prückel, one of Vienna’s most prestigious coffee houses,
where you pass by an open kitchen on your way down to
the bathrooms. Since Prückel is a highly regarded, classic
cultural institution in Vienna, no one dared to question the
reference. The regulators of the city therefore agreed to take
the Prückel as a precedent and let us get away with the same
programmatic sequence for our project.
Architects, engineers, and planners wanting to build more
sustainably should not take building regulations as a given;
instead they should act with judiciousness, assessing
regulations against particular contexts and projects. Because
of the financial stipulation associated with regulations, it
↑ 8. The ceiling of Café Una in the Architekturzentrum, Vienna, is covered in painted tiles.
The painted tiles continue into the kitchen, which is separated from the seating area with a
cinder-block wall but visibly accessible to visitors on their way to the bathroom.
200
201
is vital for us to show that our social housing projects meet
the aims of the regulations, differing only in their methods.
Convincing the authorities takes a lot of extra effort, and
the process can be difficult and sometimes discouraging. But
we can also see that regulations are slowly evolving because
of this constant work. For example, the latest building
regulations in the United Kingdom, passed in 2006, are much
less prescriptive than they used to be. They have decreased
the overall authorized level of carbon emissions of a building,
but without increasing minimum insulation standards. In
fact, they have even replaced U-value as the main measure of
compliance with an estimate of the carbon dioxide emissions
per square meter, which takes into account both the efficiency
of building services and additional energy created by solar
power or other means. Changes like these open up a space
for architectural innovation in sustainability and ensure that
regulations do not become outdated. Our built environments
continuously evolve; the rules invented to regulate the built
environment must therefore be continuously checked to see if
they still apply. Regulations that don’t make architecture more
sustainable should be scrapped or rewritten. Or, as the French
Enlightenment political thinker Charles de Montesquieu once
put it: “Useless laws weaken the necessary laws.”
3.
Density
Note
1 Frédéric Druot, Anne Lacaton, and Jean-Philippe
Vassal, Plus: Large-Scale Housing Developments
—An Exceptional Case (Barcelona: Gustavo Gili,
2007).
202
203
Revisiting the Compact City
Introduction by Harry Gugger and Gwendolyn Kerschbaumer
The world has shifted, after a century of unprecedented
urban growth, from being predominantly rural to being
predominantly urban. The question of how to house several
billion people in urban areas has become ever more pressing;
in recent decades, the compact city model has found wide
acceptance among planners and architects as a solution. The
term “compact city,” first coined in 1973, refers to an urban
model developed to address sprawl, dwindling resources,
and the decay of the inner city in Europe and North America.
Utilizing high residential density, mixed-use development,
and efficient public transport, it theoretically should produce
lower carbon emissions, more efficient use of resources,
and greater vitality than less-dense settlements. It should
also act as an incubator for economic development, driving
entrepreneurship, productivity, and innovation.
For these reasons, the compact city is widely believed to be
the most sustainable settlement typology and the one best
equipped to accommodate the world’s growing population and
ongoing rural-to-urban migration. But despite widespread
adherence to the model, it is difficult to find solid evidence to
support the compact city’s claim to sustainability. One problem
is that there is little consensus about what “the compact city”
and “urban sustainability” mean and how best to promote these
concepts. On top of a certain level of efficiency and density, the
compact city must provide quality of life, meet the basic needs
of residents, and be culturally rich and innovative. Yet all of
these qualities vary greatly among so-called compact cities.
204
205
It can be difficult to reconcile the social, ecological, and
economic aims of the compact city. Being more sustainable
in one area might mean being less sustainable in another.
Furthermore, from an ecological point of view, several major
new studies suggest that a person’s ecological footprint
is more strongly associated with his or her affluence and
standard of living than it is with the density of the settlement
where he or she lives. From a social perspective, too, it is
not clear that the compact city benefits the more vulnerable
members of society, such as lower-income residents.
Dense urban areas are associated with several problematic
conditions for this group, such as a shortage of decent and
affordable housing, few green areas, and poor pedestrian and
cycling options. On a more extreme level, in the developing
world, dense areas often exhibit poor sanitary conditions,
high levels of pollution, and severe overcrowding.
fields like geography, sociology, and environmental sciences
offer to the design disciplines?
4. How can the compact city model be adjusted to respond to
its current shortcomings?
It will be crucial in the near future to address the
shortcomings of the current compact city. The urbanization
of the world is projected to continue; in the next four
decades, the urban population of the developing world will
more than double. The built environment has a relatively
high environmental footprint compared to other human
activities. Rectifying poor urban settlements is very difficult
and costly; every poor decision makes the next step more
difficult. There is thus a tremendous need for adequate urban
planning, especially in the rapidly growing urban areas of the
developing world. Revisiting the compact city is an important
part of this effort.
The observations above—coupled with the fact that, in both
the developed and developing world, the current trend is
actually toward de-densification rather than densification—
underpin our interest in revisiting the compact city model.
This chapter asks whether the compact city and dense urban
environments in general further ecological and social sustainability to the same extent that they produce economic development. Within this main topic, we investigate several key
issues:
1. Is the compact city, as defined today, the most sustainable
settlement typology?
2. How should recommendations for nations with different
conditions (e.g., higher or lower GDP or density) differ?
3. What crucial information do scientific studies in related
206
207
Example from
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Sometimes, the simplest
solution is sufficient
The tanquinhos found in Brazilian favelas
are not only cheaper than common washing
machines in the formal market, but also
extremely energy efficient. The secret
behind performance that would make any
product engineer jealous? Sufficiency.
208
With the energy needed
to run one cycle in a
regular washing machine,
you can run at least ten
in a tanquinho. (One piece
of clothing represents
one cycle.)
These special washing machines are simply
built without a tumbler function. The motor
has a much lower maximum speed and
therefore requires less energy; the chassis
experiences correspondingly less stress,
so it can be built lighter and cheaper.
The design of this custom-made product
simply bears in mind that Rio’s sunny
climate allows for drying clothes outside
and that favela buildings can accommodate
drying clothes on balconies, on roofs, or in
backyards. In this context, a tumbler is just
another unnecessary, electricity-guzzling
object. Less is more.
Source: Personal experience, Something Fantastic.
209
Example from
Berlin, Germany
Using a car more
intensively is less
expensive and
more efficient.
A car-sharing business
without cars
1h/day
3h/day
An average car is
only used for one
hour each day and
spends the other
23 hours idle.
6h/day
10h/day
1h/day
3h/day
6h/day
10.60€/
hour of use
Tamyca is a car-sharing system. Like any
other car-sharing system, it is sustainable
in the sense that it decreases the overall
number of cars on the road and increases
the use of each individual car. Car sharing
accelerates the adoption of new technologies—like sustainable hybrid and electric
210
10h/day
1.77€/
hour of use
cars—and enables and promotes an urban
lifestyle in which cars are only used
occasionally. But Tamyca is even better than
regular car sharing: instead of providing
its own cars, the company provides a
platform—as well as a legal framework and
insurance—for any car owner to offer his or
her private car to others, and for anybody
with a short-term need for a car to browse
for cars available in his or her neighborhood.
By making peer-to-peer car sharing possible,
Tamyca creates an interesting alternative
not only for people who don’t have their own
cars, but also for those who do.
Source: Henrik Mortsiefer, “Carsharing: Die neue
Fahrgemeinschaft,” Der Tagesspiegel, February
3, 2013, http://www.tagesspiegel.de/wirtschaft/
carsharing-die-neue-fahrgemeinschaft/926.html.
211
Home railway
station code
Example from
Destination railway
station code
Destination
area code
Mumbai, India
Home
street
code
Home-cooked lunches hit the road
The tin dabbas used to
transport lunches in Mumbai
have codes on their top lids,
indicating destination, origin,
and the hubs they’ll pass on
their journey through the city.
Dabbawallas—deliverymen who get their
name from the lunchboxes, or dabbas, they
carry—constitute Mumbai’s lunchtime
delivery system. Every day, they deliver
more than 350,000 meals to workplaces
all over greater Mumbai. The extraordinary
efficiency and precision of the dabbawallas’
network have attracted attention and
research from companies all over the
212
world. The system even received Forbes
Magazine’s Sigma Six label for excellence
in precision. The dabbawallas’ success has
many roots: there is, for example, the fact
that dabbawallas come from the same area
of India, Pune, and are therefore familiar,
efficient communicators. But the most
striking aspect is how perfectly the system
is tailored to its surroundings: greater
Destination
building code
Destination
floor code
Mumbai. All delivery schedules and routes
are perfectly adapted to the local public
transport network. Hub-and-spoke systems,
where goods are collected in certain places
and then transported together to minimize
overall mileage, are common worldwide, but
Mumbai’s dabbawallas have made a nearperfect local application of this global idea.
They use public transport stations as their
hubs and commuter trains for long-distance
deliveries. Short distances are covered by
bus, bike, or pushcart—whatever suits the
situation and distance best.
Source: Meena Kadri, “Dabbawallas: Delivering
Excellence,” Works That Work 1 (2013), https://
worksthatwork.com/1/dabbawallas.
213
The Sustainable Densities Proposition:
Why Densification Is Not Always the Answer
Shlomo Angel
Author and New York University professor Shlomo Angel presents his
Sustainable Densities Proposition, making the case that high densities
just as well as low ones can be socially and environmentally unsustainable.
What is the sense, it is frequently
asked, of further densification given
that densities are already high and
associated with a range of problems
including infrastructure overload,
overcrowding, congestion, air pollution,
severe health hazards, lack of public
and green space, and environmental
degradation? The sustainability gains
from further densification will be limited
under conditions where densities are
already high. Under these circumstances,
the merits of urban densification
postulated for developed country cities
seem far less convincing in the context
of developing countries.
Rod Burgess1
When it comes to formulating policies to
manage the expansion of cities—whether to
reverse it, contain it, guide it, let it be, or
encourage it—density matters. The denser
the city, the less space will be required to
accommodate its population. Compact cities
can thus help protect and conserve the open
countryside. They can also bring people
closer together, shorten travel times and the
length of infrastructure networks, increase
the viability of walking, bicycling, and public
transport, save energy, and reduce carbon
emissions. Given the dire threat of climate
change, it is of paramount importance
214
that we allow and encourage densities
to increase over time. Densities are thus
sustainable if they act to contain climate
change: high enough to support public
transport, walking, and an urban lifestyle
and to conserve energy and contain carbon
emissions.
But that is not to say that a denser city
is a better city. We cannot simply assume
that urban densities are too low everywhere
and must now be increased. In some cities,
like Dhaka in Bangladesh or Mumbai in
India, densities are too high and therefore
unsustainable for a variety of reasons:
overcrowding, lack of light and air, pollution,
congestion, overburdened infrastructure,
and unaffordable land and housing. Densities
are thus sustainable only if they are also low
enough to avoid overcrowding, unaffordable
housing, congestion, and overburdened
urban services.
The Sustainable Densities Proposition,
which is one of four basic propositions in
my book Planet of Cities, is another version
of the Goldilocks Principle: densities should
be neither too high nor too low, but “just
right”—that is, within a tolerable or, to use a
more contemporary word, sustainable range.
When we seek to apply this proposition to
real-world cities, we must keep in mind that
density, or in this case the average density
of the built-up area of a city—the number
of people living there divided by the built-up
area—is only an indicator. If it is too low—
say, below 30 persons per hectare—that
suggests that large residential areas in the
city are too spread out to support public
transport. If it is too high—say, above
300 persons per hectare—that suggests
that large neighborhoods in the city are
overcrowded and congested. But a single
average number for the city as a whole is
certainly insufficient to shed light on what
actions are needed in individual residential
neighborhoods. It is not possible to enforce
strict rules that are designed to keep overall
densities in a city within a sustainable
range. We must keep in mind that densities
in specific locations in a city are the result
of a complex interplay of forces: households’
and firms’ demands for land in accessible
locations, the demand for preservation of
built-up neighborhoods, new stakeholders’
demands for new uses of land, and city
officials’ need to accommodate a host of
new and old concerns. Understanding how
densities in different parts of the city
develop and how they change over time
must be the foundation of any intervention,
whether it is an attempt to increase them to
meet environmental targets or to decrease
them to meet social targets.
Density and Carbon Emissions
A growing body of evidence suggests that
lower densities are associated with higher
levels of carbon emissions. A 1990 study
of 46 cities around the world, for example,
found that both the per capita energy used
in transport and the per capita distance
traveled per day decline with density.2
Higher-density cities were associated
with shorter travel distances and lower
energy expenditures on transport than
lower-density ones. We can infer that they
were also associated with reduced carbon
emissions.
Two more recent studies using an identical
methodology provide data on the level of
carbon dioxide emissions from all transport
modes in the major cities of China and the
United States in 2001.3 I used these data,
in conjunction with my own 2000 data on
the average built-up area densities of these
cities, to compare average emissions and
average densities in 64 Chinese cities and 54
US cities. The differences were striking. The
average population density in the Chinese
cities was seven times that of the US cities:
162 persons per hectare compared to 23
persons per hectare. Average annual CO2
emissions from transport in the US cities
studied were 56 times those in Chinese
cities: 12.8 tons per household compared to
0.27 tons per household. In truth, conditions
in China and the United States are so
different that we cannot really come to any
general conclusions given these data. Except
for these two new data sets, global data are
not yet available to compare densities and
carbon emissions among individual cities
throughout the world, but it is possible to
compare differences in densities and carbon
emissions among countries.
Figure 1 illustrates the average amount of
CO2 emissions per capita from all sources
and the average densities of cities with
100,000 people or more in 145 countries
in the year 2000. The association between
them is quite clear: the lower the density,
the higher the level of CO2 emissions per
capita. The United States had an average
density of 24 persons per hectare and an
average annual level of 20.5 tons of CO2
emissions per capita. Bangladesh had an
average density of 191 persons per hectare
and an average annual level of 0.2 tons
of CO2 emissions per capita—less than
one-hundredth that of the United States.
215
This association does not necessarily
indicate that lower densities are directly
responsible for higher carbon emissions.
Households in richer countries, for example,
can be expected to consume more resources
than households in poorer ones. They will
consume both more land and more energy
per capita and can thus be expected to both
live at lower densities and cause higher
carbon emissions. In other words, a third
factor, in this case income, can be the direct
cause of both low densities and higher
CO2 emissions, rather than higher carbon
emissions being the direct result of lower
densities.
Income alone, however, does not account for
the differences in carbon emissions shown
in figure 1. In a statistical model using
both income and average density to explain
the variation in carbon emissions among
countries, I found that income explained only
half of that variation; density explained the
other half. Density may indeed matter when
it comes to carbon emissions. Do higher
densities lead to lower carbon emissions
because they require lower levels of car
ownership and shorter trips? Possibly, but
the causal connection can go in the opposite
direction as well. In cities with higher levels
of car ownership, people can opt to live in
larger houses further away, thus lowering
overall density. In other words, low densities
beget more cars and more cars beget lower
densities.
That said, there is good reason to believe
that higher densities can indeed lead to
lower carbon emissions. Boris Pushkarev
216
and Jeffrey Zupan have observed that, in
the United States, the viability of public
transport—which emits far less CO2 per
capita for a given distance traveled than
private cars—is positively associated with
residential densities in the vicinity of transit
stations: the higher that density, the more
people use public transport.4 John Holtzclaw
found that regular bus service requires a
minimum density of 30 persons per hectare
to be financially viable.5 These findings have
established a causal link between density
and carbon emissions. All else being equal, if
densities can be increased, then transit use
can increase, decreasing carbon emissions.
Transit-Sustaining Densities
My colleagues Alex Blei, Jason Parent,
Daniel Civco, and I examined the share of the
total areas of US cities that had “transitsustaining” densities above 30 persons
per hectare in different time periods.6
We also examined the shares of the total
populations in these cities that lived at
transit-sustaining densities. In 20 cities for
which we had data for the period 1910–
2000, we found that both shares declined
substantially over time. The average share of
the area of US cities that was dense enough
to sustain transit declined tenfold during
that time, from 38 percent in 1910 to less
than 4 percent in 2000. The average share
of the population in those cities that lived
at transit-sustaining densities declined
threefold over the same period, from 90
percent to 27 percent.
Examining 447 urban areas (out of a
total of 453) in the United States in the
year 2000, we found that almost half, 46
percent, had no population living at transitsustaining densities; only 33 percent had
more than 10 percent of their population
living at transit-sustaining densities; only
22
USA
20
CO2 Emissions per Capita in the Country (tons per year)
The figure demonstrates that the average
emission values in the first four density
deciles (cities in the lower-density ranges)
are significantly higher than the average
emission values for the last three density
deciles (cities in the higher-density ranges).
Density Decile Averages
Selected Countries
18
Canada
Australia
Other Countries
16
14
12
Germany
10
Russia
Japan
UK
Italy
8
6
S. Korea
France
Ukraina
4
China
Brazil
Indonesia
2
Pakistan
India
Nigeria
Bangladesh
0
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
180
200
220
Average Density of Large Cities in the Country (persons per hectare)
↑ 1. A comparison of average urban densities in large cities and average
carbon dioxide emissions per capita from all sources in 145 countries, 2000.
217
↑ 2. In Curitiba, Brazil, dense urban development lined its five main transit
corridors in 2008, serviced by frequent and efficient bus rapid transit.
13 percent had more than 20 percent of
their population living at transit-sustaining
densities; and only 2 percent had more
than 50 percent of their population living
at such densities. The five metropolitan
areas with the highest shares were San
Francisco (71.4 percent), Los Angeles
(67.7), State College, Pennsylvania (65.3
percent), New York City (64.7 percent), and
San Jose, California (54.7 percent). In total,
27.3 percent of the US urban population
lived at transit-sustaining densities in the
year 2000. This finding does not mean that
these percentages of the population used
transit, nor that transit was even available
within walking distance. It only indicates
the percentage of the urban population
that lived at densities that could potentially
sustain public transit.
It may be that both families living at low
density and relying on their cars and families
living at higher densities and using public
transport instead of cars may be exercising
lifestyle choices by expressing cultural
differences and individual aspirations. Some
commentators, like Peter Calthorpe for
example, have recently noted that cultural
trends are now steering people away from
low-density, car-based lifestyles and toward
higher-density, transit-based lifestyles.7
This may bode well for the United States,
because the country now produces an
inordinate share of global CO2 emissions, a
share that clearly needs to be reduced to a
more reasonable level, at least on par with
countries with similar per capita incomes.
Higher densities may contribute to attaining
that goal.
A reasonable goal for the coming decades
may be to double the share of the US urban
population living at transit-sustaining
densities, from 27.3 percent to 50 percent.
This goal could be accomplished through
the selective densification of parts of the
218
↑ 3. Dedicated bus lanes in the center of major arterial roads.
With buses running frequently and reliably, a majority of Curitiba’s
commuters use the bus rapid transit to travel to work.
urban landscape—as Curitiba, Brazil, for
example, densified successfully along its
main transit corridors—but only if demand
for higher-density, transit-based living is
strong enough to support it. Calthorpe,
a champion of New Urbanism, strongly
believes that this demand is growing and
will be quite substantial in the coming years.
Indeed, recent evidence suggests that young
Americans are driving less.8
More people in the United States will need
to vote with their feet as well as voice their
political preferences for higher density to
become a reality. And that will not be easy.
The shrill voices that insist on low-density,
car-dependent development as the true
American Way have been quick to politicize
the issue to court suburban voters, who now
form the majority of the US electorate. As
Representative Michelle Bachmann sees it,
“They want Americans to take transit and
move to the inner cities. They want Americans to move to the urban core, live in tenements, [and] take light rail to their government jobs. That’s their vision for America.”9
While Americans continue to debate the
merits of densification, I believe that this
agenda should be firmly rejected in cities
that already have very high densities and
need to be decongested, in cities where
densities are declining but are likely to
remain high enough to support public
transport in coming decades, and in cities
that are growing rapidly in population and
need ample room for their expansion at their
projected densities.
We should not forget that, at the height
of the Industrial Revolution and into the
early twentieth century, Americans were
genuinely concerned that urban densities
were too high—much higher than they are in
US cities today—and needed to be reduced,
rather than increased, to ensure that people
219
had adequate living space and to bring
more light and air into their residences. In
the year 2000, the average density of the
built-up areas of US cities with 100,000 or
more people was 24 persons per hectare; the
average density of such cities in Bangladesh
was 191 per hectare—eight times higher.
In 2005, the average density in Dhaka’s
slums, taken as a whole, was 2,220 persons
per hectare. Those densities were actually
of the same order of magnitude as those
of Manhattan’s densest ward in 1910, the
Tenth—1,440 persons per hectare. Still, in
Dhaka’s densest slums—409 communities
packed with single-story houses like
the Karail Bastee in Mahakhali—average
densities in 2005 were higher than 3,750
persons per hectare, more than double that
of the Tenth Ward in 1910.10
High densities are not unique to
contemporary Dhaka, nor were they unique
to the industrial cities of the nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Kowloon Walled
City—a small stretch of no-man’s land in
Hong Kong that remained under Chinese rule
while the British governed the colony—was
demolished in 1992. It boasted much higher
densities than New York’s Lower East Side in
1910 and virtually no light or air at all. At its
peak density, in the mid-1980s, it may have
housed as many as 35,000 people on some
2.5 hectares—an average density of 13,000
people per hectare, much denser than Hong
Kong’s high-rise residential districts of
today and perhaps the highest-density
urban neighborhood of all time.11
The reduction of overcrowding in Chinese
cities, through both suburbanization and
redevelopment, has vastly increased floor
space per person in recent decades. In
Tianjin, for example, it increased from
6.5 square meters in 1988 to 19.1 square
meters in 2000 and to 25 square meters in
2005.12 This is welcome news, of course,
220
and it should come as no surprise that
this increase in floor area per person,
coupled with the introduction of light and
air into apartments, was accompanied by a
corresponding decline in average densities,
bringing them into the sustainable range
postulated earlier.
There is nothing romantic about a Dhaka
family of five still living in a ten-squaremeter room with no light or air and sharing a
water tap and a toilet with six or more other
families. I find it disconcerting that Stewart
Brand, a leading environmentalist, chooses
to celebrate the greenness of slums—their
very high densities, their minimum energy
and material use, and the preponderance
of walking, rickshaws, and shared taxis—
while avoiding any mention of overcrowding
lest it interfere with his message of
densification.13 Densities in these cities
must be allowed and encouraged to decline,
which can only be done practically and
economically by opening up new land for
expansion. And this is precisely what New
York City did when densities there reached
their highest point, in the first decade of
the twentieth century.
↑ 4. Kowloon Walled City, Hong Kong, the densest urban
neighborhood in recent memory, before its demolition in 1992.
Case Study: New York City
The tenements of New York City’s Tenth
Ward often contained 20 or more 30-squaremeter apartments with no indoor plumbing,
each containing a household of between
three and fourteen people, on a 7.5-by-30meter lot.14 Many were used as workplaces
as well as residences.
Politicians, reformers, and scholars were
seriously concerned with living conditions in
the city’s crowded neighborhoods:
The Tenth Ward has a population at the
rate of 185,513 to the square mile [708
↑ 5. The Karail Bastee in Mahakhali, Dhaka, had a population density in 2005 that
was more than double that of Manhattan’s densest ward, the Tenth Ward, in 1910.
221
persons per hectare], the Seventeenth
170,006 [657 per hectare], and so
on with others equally overcrowded.
Portions of particular wards are even in
worse condition.15
Jacob Riis, a reformist journalist and
photographer credited with exposing the
overcrowding and dire living conditions in
the city’s tenements in his book How the
Other Half Lives, was quite pessimistic about
the prospects of reducing overcrowding and
high densities:
What then are the bold facts with which
we have to deal in New York?
1. That we have a tremendous, ever
swelling crowd of wage-earners which it
is our business to house decently.
2. That it is not housed decently.
3. That it must be so housed here for the
present, and for a long time to come, all
schemes of suburban relief being at yet
utopian, impracticable.16
↑ 6. Photograph by Jacob Riis depicting a sweatshop in
a New York tenement from 1889, on Ludlow Street.
Riis was wrong. Other social reformers
sought to reduce overcrowding through
decongestion policies made possible by
the development of new transportation
technologies from the early nineteenth
century onward. These technologies reduced
the cost of movement in cities and made
it possible for large numbers of people
to commute over greater distances. Adna
Farrin Weber, in his influential The Growth
of Cities in the Nineteenth Century, had it
right: “The ‘rise of the suburbs’ it is, which
furnishes the solid basis of a hope that
the evils of city life, so far as they result
from overcrowding, may be in large part
removed.”17
There is no question that suburbanization
did facilitate the decongestion of
Manhattan’s overcrowded neighborhoods:
222
The Lower East Side contained 398,000
people in 1910, 303,000 in 1920,
182,000 in 1930, and 147,000 in 1940. To
reformers who had long pressed for the
depopulation of the slums, this leveling
out of neighborhoods was a welcome and
much celebrated relief.18
Buildings today are much higher, on average,
than they were in 1910, but they house fewer
people in smaller families who consume much
greater amounts of living space per person.
High densities throughout the island and on
the Lower East Side in particular have been
greatly reduced over the past century and
overcrowding was largely alleviated as vast
numbers of residents left Manhattan for the
suburbs.
This was made possible by an act of the New
York State legislature (Chapter 378 of the
laws of 1897) that consolidated Manhattan
and the Bronx with Kings Country (including
Brooklyn), Queens County, and Richmond
County (Staten Island) into a single City of
Greater New York, later called simply New
York City. The administrative area of the
city was thus expanded ninefold, from 87.5
square kilometers in 1810 to 790 square
kilometers in 1897. The Board of Public
Improvements, which included all the public
works commissioners and the five borough
presidents, quickly endorsed a plan for the
entire city prepared by Louis Risse, Chief
Engineer of the New York City Topographical
Bureau. The plan, submitted on January 1,
1900, was presented at the Paris Exposition
to promote New York as a major world city. It
included proposed parks as well as streets
“in those parts of the city consolidated
under the above act of the legislature and
which had no official street plan prior to
1898.” The city now had vast new lands
for expansion: the total built-up area in all
five boroughs in 1900 was only 102 square
kilometers.
223
Given the new breathing room, the city now
expanded rapidly; by 1930, its entire fiveborough administrative area was largely
built up. It now housed 6.9 million people,
85 percent of what its population would be
in 2000. Subsequent growth and expansion
took place largely outside the city limits,
and by 2010 the urbanized area of New York
amounted to 6,215 square kilometers and
was home to some 16.4 million people.19
The Sustainable Densities Proposition
The Sustainable Densities Proposition seeks
to broaden our perspective so we can see
the entire spectrum of cities—from cities
that are spread out at very low densities and
contribute an unfairly large, unsustainable
share of carbon emissions to cities that
are so dense and overcrowded that they
are unfit for dignified human habitation
and thus also unsustainable. Accordingly,
it also seeks to broaden our understanding
of sustainability to incorporate both
environmental and social concerns. No
matter how sensible and noble the motives
for densification may be, and despite our
urgent need to slow down climate change
and protect the countryside, it is not an
appropriate strategy for overcrowded cities.
Surely, the selective densification of cities
that are now too spread-out to support
public transport may yet occur. The search
for cost effective and politically acceptable
infrastructure strategies, regulations, and
tax regimes that can lead to significant
densification in low-density cities, making
them more environmentally sustainable, must
continue. In parallel, appropriate strategies
for managing urban expansion at socially
sustainable densities in rapidly growing
developing-country cities must be identified
and effectively employed.
224
Notes
This paper is an edited excerpt of the author’s
Planet of Cities (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute
of Land Policy, 2012).
1 Rod Burgess, “The Compact City Debate: A Global
Perspective,” in Compact Cities: Sustainable Urban
Forms for Developing Countries, eds. Mike Jenks
and Rod Burgess (London: Spon Press, 2000), 15.
2 Peter Newman and Jeffrey Kenworthy,
Sustainability and Cities: Overcoming Automobile
Dependence (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1999).
3 Edward L. Glaeser and Matthew E. Kahn, “The
Greenness of Cities: Carbon Dioxide Emissions and
Urban Development,” Journal of Urban Economics
67, no. 3 (2010): 404–18; and Siqi Zheng, Rui Wang,
Edward L. Glaeser, and Matthew E. Kahn, “The
Greenness of China: Household Carbon Dioxide
Emissions and Urban Development,” Journal of
Economic Geography 11, no. 5 (2011): 761–92.
4 Boris Pushkarev and Jeffrey Zupan, Public
Transportation and Land Use Policy (Bloomington:
Indiana University Press, 1977).
5 John Holtzclaw, Using Residential Patterns
and Transit to Decrease Costs (Washington, DC:
Natural Resources Defense Council, 1994).
6 Shlomo Angel, Alejandro Blei, Jason Parent, and
Daniel L. Civco, “The Decline in Transit-Sustaining
Densities in US Cities, 1910–2000,” in Climate
Change and Land Policies, eds. Gregory K. Ingram
and Yu-Hung Hong (Cambridge, MA: Lincoln
Institute of Land Policy, 2011).
Richard Koek (Rotterdam: 010 Publishers, 1998),
154.
12 Tianjin 2006 Basic Facts (Tianjin: Tianjin
Municipal Statistical Bureau, 2006).
13 Stewart Brand, “How Slums Can Save the
Planet,” Prospect, January 27, 2010.
14 Andrew Dolkart, Biography of a Tenement House
in New York City: An Architectural History of 97
Orchard Street (Santa Fe, NM: The Center for
American Places, 2007).
15 “Overcrowding in Tenement Houses,” New York
Times, December 3, 1876, http://query.nytimes.
com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=9900EED9153FE63
BBC4B53DFB467838D669FDE.
16 Jacob Riis, How the Other Half Lives (1890;
Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 1971), 223.
17 Adna F. Weber, The Growth of Cities in the
Nineteenth Century (New York: Macmillan, 1899),
475.
18 Kenneth T. Jackson, Crabgrass Frontier: The
Suburbanization of the United States (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1985), 185.
19 The US Census Bureau defines “urbanized area”
as the set of census tracts within a metropolitan
statistical area that have a gross population
density of more than 1,000 persons per square mile
(3.86 persons per hectare).
7 Peter Calthorpe, Urbanism in the Age of Climate
Change (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2011).
8 John Schwartz, “Young Americans Lead Trend to
Less Driving,” New York Times, May 13, 2013.
9 Michele Bachmann, quoted in Tim Murphy,
”First They Came for the Lightbulbs,” Mother
Jones, August 4, 2011, http://motherjones.com/
politics/2011/08/michele-bachmann-light-bulbsagenda-21.
10 Nazrul Islam, A. Q. M. Mahbub, Nurul Islam
Nazem, Gustavo Angeles, and Peter N. Lance, Slums
of Urban Bangladesh: Mapping and Census, 2005
(Dhaka, NC: Center for Urban Studies, National
Institute of Population Research and Training, and
MEASURE Evaluation, 2005), 40–41.
11 Laurence Liauw, “KWC FAR 12: Kowloon Walled
City Density Study, 1995,” in FARMAX: Excursions
on Density, eds. Winy Maas, Jacob Rijs, and
225
The Politics and Planning of Urban Compaction:
The Case of the London Metropolitan Region
Philipp Rode
The Greater London Authority, the city’s strategic planning unit, has
transformed London into a more compact, walkable, and transit-oriented
city. Philipp Rode, of the London School of Economics, explores the role of
compact city thinking in the GLA’s work.
Over the last 20 years, the “compact city
model” has received significant attention
in Europe and North America. It is also
increasingly discussed in relation to cities in
emerging economies, which are traditionally
more compact than their Western
counterparts. The compact city model is
the most generic spatial interpretation of
the sustainable city, an umbrella term for
various related concepts: the European
city model, transit-oriented development,
new urbanism, decentralized concentration,
and smart growth. All share the idea of
reinforcing access to the city based on
proximity and highlight the importance
of higher density and mixed-use urban
forms. Reducing residents’ need to travel
is a central consideration of compact city
development. According to the compact
city model, transport should no longer
be regarded as the simple facilitation of
movement; instead, it should be concerned
with the overarching objective of making
a range of destinations—jobs, services,
educational facilities, family and friends—
more accessible. Since the early 1990s,
proponents of a “new realism” in transport
planning have argued forcefully for the
“predict-and-provide” model of transport
planning to be replaced by a greater focus
on demand management and land-use
planning. This text offers a few perspectives
226
on the debate and planning related to the
compact city model and how it manifests
itself in the case of the London Metropolitan
Region.
To date, compact city policy has relied
heavily on spatial planning and investment
strategies involving three top-level policy
targets: higher urban densities, mixed use,
and urban design quality. Friends of the
Earth argues that net density levels of
225 to 300 people per hectare—equivalent
to densities in central neighborhoods of
Paris, Berlin, and Barcelona—are needed
for sustainable development in the United
Kingdom.1 Such threshold densities would
improve access to the city by foot, bicycle,
and public transport, while ensuring
reduced infrastructure and operating
costs. They imply apartment housing, with
a floor area ratio (FAR) typically above 1.0,
rather than individual houses. They also
clearly distinguish the envisioned European
compact city from sprawling agglomerations
in the United States, with fewer than 20
persons per hectare; from the garden city
model, which houses some 180 persons per
hectare; and from hyper-dense Asian cities,
with 500 and 1,500 persons per hectare.2, 3
It is difficult to propose optimal density
levels independent of context; pragmatic
approaches to the compact city model
simply refer to “suitably high density”
rather than any specific measure. For
example, in London, existing and proposed
public transport infrastructure is usually
regarded as the most important factor for
setting threshold density levels for housing
developments.
the wider European context—regarding
the advantages of nineteenth century city
design, with medium-rise, high-density
housing structured by streets and squares.
Beyond density, the compact city agenda
calls for a well-balanced mix of urban
functions, ranging from housing to work,
services, retail, and leisure. Transport
is usually a major consideration for this
mixture; reducing the need to travel through
mixed-use planning is particularly effective
for non-work-related trips. In most cities,
non-work-related trips represent the vast
majority of urban travel—83 percent of all
trips in the case of Greater London, for
example.4 Reducing commuting distances
urban region and synchronized with
transport strategies that focus on expanding
the provision of public transport, improving
walkability and opportunities for cycling,
and mitigating the adverse effects of
vehicular traffic. Typical policy instruments
include regulation (e.g., urban growth
boundaries, minimum density standards,
or mixed-use requirements) and direct
government interventions or investments.
Market-based instruments and pricing
tools are less common, although they are
regarded to be particularly effective when
addressing multidimensional policy goals.
Compact city policies are thought to be
most successful in new developments, given
how difficult it is to alter an established
urban structure, but they have also proven
successful for retrofitting existing built-up
areas.
is generally regarded as more difficult
given the complex factors that affect
where people choose to work and live.
Depending on how well different uses can be
integrated, mixed use can play a role at the
building, neighborhood, or city scale.
The final fundamental target of compact city
development is design quality, which also
serves as an instrument for its delivery;
according to this reasoning, only good
architectural interpretations for buildings,
streets, and public spaces can guarantee
the success of urban development that
includes higher densities and increased
levels of mixed use. Of particular importance
is an interconnected street plan that
reinforces walking, cycling, and efficient
public transport, as well as providing
public spaces that encourage social
interaction and safe places for children to
play. An urban grid in which streets always
terminate in other streets, with great ease
of access to buildings along streets, is
also advantageous. Today, for example,
there is a broad consensus—at least in
These major policy goals—density, mixed
use, and design quality—are usually
considered at the scale of the functional
The implementation of compact city policy
in London is coordinated by the Greater
London Authority, the city’s relatively young
strategic planning authority. London’s
governance has undergone considerable
changes over the last few decades; the
most important for city planning was the
reinstatement of a London-wide government,
with a directly elected mayor, in 2000,
which consolidated the formerly fragmented
agencies responsible for urban development
and transport. Alongside the Greater London
Authority, these administrative reforms also
established Transport for London (TfL)—still
one of the most progressive institutions for
planning and operating transport at the city
level. TfL oversees all modes of transport:
227
walking, cycling, public transit, and private
road traffic. Still, as figure 1 demonstrates, a
number of national government departments
continue to have planning and transport
responsibilities within Greater London,
including oversight of commuter railways
and a decisive voice in major planning
decisions. London’s boroughs play only a
minor role in transport—they have a limited
responsibility for local streets—but remain
centrally involved in granting planning
permission to urban development projects.
Under these new governance arrangements,
the London Plan, which is published by
the Mayor of London, has become the new
citywide spatial development strategy.
This “plan” is, despite the name, more a
strategy than a detailed land-use plan. It
is a text-heavy, 400-page document setting
a strategic vision rather than specifying
territorial features or land uses. The plan
identifies key growth corridors, “opportunity
areas,” and “areas for intensification” in
line with public transport accessibility. This
approach is also aligned with the planning
principle of accommodating London’s
future growth on brownfield sites and
the government’s Green Belt policy, which
protects open land surrounding London
from development. PTALs (Public Transport
Accessibility Levels) influence land use and
public transport integration.5 They inform
desirable housing densities, for example:
the better the access to public transport,
the higher the density level at which the
area should be developed (and the lower the
private parking provision).
Urban development patterns over the
last decade offer insight into the relative
effectiveness of the London Plan—or at
least into the degree, intentional or not, to
which spatial development has followed the
compact city model. Traditionally, London has
not been a compact city. Compared to other
large urban areas, London has relatively low
residential density, with more than half the
dwellings in Greater London being terraced,
semi-detached, or detached houses.
Typical density levels within residential
neighborhoods vary, running from 40
persons per hectare in Outer London up to
150 per hectare in Inner London (well below
the recommended threshold of 225 to 300
per hectare). Workplace density in central
London, on the other hand, is similar to that
of other urban areas, with concentrated
global city functions such as finance and
producer services—peak density in London
reaches 1,700 workplaces per hectare (see
figure 3). Access to London’s employment
hub is mainly provided by public transport.
London features one of the most extensive
rail systems in the world; its underground
covers 408 kilometers of track and regional
rail within the larger metro region (70 by 70
kilometers) some 1,400 kilometers more (see
figure 2). Although public and nonmotorized
transport modes are dominant, car use
remains significant at about 40 percent (see
figure 5).
UK CENTRAL GOVERNMENT
COMMUNITIES
TRANSPORT
MINISTER FOR
LONDON
GOVERNMENT
OFFICE
FOR LONDON
directly elected
MAYOR OF LONDON
STRATEGIC
PLANNING
TRANSPORT
LONDON BOROUGHS (33)
PLANNING
APPLICATIONS
↑ 1. London’s governance structure.
(Source: Rode, 2011)
Transport Infrastructure
Since the 1980s, urban change in London
has been led by the city’s economic
success and its status as one of the
world’s top three global cities.6 Following
the deregulation of the banking industry
in 1980, new service-sector jobs drove
population growth and a renewed appeal
for inner-city living there. London is
often referred to as the world’s most
international city, with strong economic
and political ties to many parts of the
world. Today’s population is estimated at
8.2 million, up from 6.4 million in 1991.7
This growth has largely been the result of
international migration and, more recently,
of natural growth within the city. Following
the financial crisis in 2007, London has
experienced some diversification of its
industry, with shifts towards digital
Intercity rail
Regional rail
Underground/Metro
Administrative city
Open space
Trafalgar Square
↑ 2. Rail infrastructure in London.
(Source: LSE Cities, 2009)
228
229
Cycle
1.6%
Cycle
1.6%
Walk
20.9%
London
209,357 pp/km²
Taxi
0.9%
Bus
18.1%
Taxi
0.9%
Bus
18.1%
Walk
20.9%
Luton
11,530 pp/km²
Milton Keyres
4,976 pp/km²
Motorcycle
0.8%
London
209,357 pp/km²
Motorcycle
0.8%
Oxford
12,173 pp/km²
Reading
12,086 pp/km²
Underground
9.7%
Underground
9.7%
Southend-on-Sea
7,436 pp/km²
Luton
11,530 pp/km²
Rail
7.4%
Milton Keyres
4,976 pp/km²
DLR
Rail
0.5%
7.4%
Southampton
8,835
pp/km²
Oxford
12,173 pp/km²
DLR
0.5%
Car
40.1%
Southend-on-Sea
7,436 pp/km²
Reading
12,086 pp/km²
Portsmouth
7,854 pp/km²
Modal Split
Car
40.1%
Walking and cycling
Modal Split
Public transport
Brighton
13,813 pp/km2
WalkingPrivate
and cycling
motorized transport
Public transport
Southampton
8,835 pp/km²
Private motorized transport
↑ 3. Metropolitan London, workplace densities.
Portsmouth
7,854 pp/km²
Milton Keyres
5,519 pp/km²
↑ 5. Different types of transport in London.
Brighton
13,813 pp/km2
Luton
7,988 pp/km²
London
17,325 pp/km²
Olympic Park
City of London
Oxford
6,602Oxford
pp/km²
6,602 pp/km2
Reading
8,175 pp/km²
King’s Cross
Southend-on-Sea
8,663 pp/km²
Luton
7,988 pp/km²
Milton Keyres
5,519 pp/km²
Woolwich
Paddington
London
17,325 pp/km²
Southampton
Oxford
6,462 pp/km²
6,602Oxford
pp/km²
6,602 pp/km2
Southend-on-Sea
8,663 pp/km²
Reading
8,175 pp/km²
Portsmouth
12,902 pp/km²
Brighton
13,443 pp/km²
Southampton
6,462 pp/km²
London Urban Development
Portsmouth
12,902 pp/km²
Brighton
13,443 pp/km²
Office floorspace
Retail & leisure floorspace
Residential floorspace
Major public transport development
↑ 4. Metropolitan London, residential densities.
230
↑ 6. London urban development between 2004 and 2011.
(Source: LSE Cities, 2012, based on Greater London Authority, 2012)
231
9
Car travel
(Great Britain)
Average daily numbers of trips (millions)
Average annual distance traveled per person (km)
7000
5250
Car travel
(London)
3500
Bus (incl. tram)
6
Underground
3
Bus, tube and
overground
travel (London)
1750
Rail
0
0
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
2011
↑ 7. London motorized transport travel compared.
(Source: LSE Cities, 2012, based on data from the UK Department for Transport, Transport for London)
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009
↑ 9. London public transport trends.
(Source: LSE Cities, 2012, based on data from the UK Department for Transport, Transport for London)
New York
Number of cyclist across inner-city cordons: indexed growth
400
Cycling
Total share of trips 2010
New York 0.7%
London 2.0%
Berlin 13%
Stockholm 5.1%
London
300
Berlin
200
District Population
0 - 60 000
25km
60 001 - 90 000
90 001 - 120 000
Stockholm
120 001 - 150 000
150 000 and more
50km
100
Commuter flow into
Greater London
75km
1000
2 500
100km
5 000
7 500
10 000
0
Greater London
1985
1987
1989
1991
1993
1995
1997
1999
2001
2003
2005
2007
2009 2011
↑ 8. London cycling trends compared.
232
Green Belt
↑ 10. London regional commuter flows: Green Belt jumping.
(Source: Rode, 2011)
233
technology, tourism, and education and
away from the narrower finance and
insurance sector.
Urban developement 2004–2011 (millions m3)
4
3
2
1
Housing
Retail & leisure
Office
0
500m
1km
2km
>2km
↑ 11. Proximity of new development to public transport stations.
(Source: LSE Cities, 2012, based on Greater London Authority, 2012.)
London’s spatial development continues
to be a product of its primary economic
functions, which are generally endorsed
by the London Plan. The global banking
industry and an extremely active producer
services industry have reinforced the
central core of the city as the main area of
economic activity. What is new, however, is
a significantly larger population within the
central zones and within a ten-kilometer
radius of the city center (see figure 6).
This is the result of intensified brownfield
redevelopment in areas, particularly east
of the center, that had been left vacant
by the UK’s transition, in the 1980s and
1990s, from an industrial to a service
economy. The Thames Gateway—including
the Olympic area—and redevelopments
along Regent’s Canal and King’s Cross are
part of this trend. At the same time, many
towns and cities in the so-called home
counties are also booming, with Cambridge,
Oxford, and Milton Keynes being the most
prominent examples. Here, more traditional
suburbanization has continued to develop
alongside new business parks and high-tech
industry clusters.
4
0.5 - 1km
1 - 2km
Urban developement 2004–2011 (millions m3)
0 - 500m
Floorspace
(m2)
% of
Total
Floorspace
(m2)
Office
877,730
72.8
237,951
Retail &
Leisure
454,552
52.5
351,906
Housing
2,382,790
47.7
1,777,790
> 2km
Total
3
% of
Total
2
1
Floorspace
(m2)
% of
Total
Floorspace
(m2)
% of
Total
Floorspace
(m2)
19.7
85,021
7.1
4,807
0.4
1,205,509
40.6
52,268
6.0
7,475
0.9
866,201
Housing
Retail & leisure
All
3,715,072
52.6
2,367,647
0
35.6
500m
33.5
714,090
1km
2km
851,379
>2km
14.3
Office
116,000
2.3
4,990,670
12.1
128,282
1.8
7,062,380
Transport developments in London mirror
the compact city agenda more directly
and are a consequence of related policies,
with significant investments in the public
transport system, a popular rediscovery of
walking and cycling, and one of the world’s
most significant efforts to reduce car use in
a city center: the London congestion charge.
These efforts have redistributed street
space in favor of bus lanes, cycle paths,
and pedestrian areas and made significant
investments in pedestrian infrastructure
and street designs. The effects on travel
patterns in the city are relatively clear,
as figure 7 and figure 9 demonstrate.
Travel by car has been declining for
almost two decades; public transport has
risen. Bus travel in particular has seen an
unprecedented increase in ridership during
that period. Similarly, nonmotorized travel is
on the rise, with a surge in cycling—albeit
from a low base—being the most radical
change over recent years (see figure 8).
However, there are serious shortcomings.
Road safety continues to be a major
concern, with fatalities among pedestrians
and cyclists in London totaling close to 100
in 2011.8 The overall daily travel distances
of London residents have not decreased,
remaining around 14 to 15 kilometers per
day.9 Most households still seem to choose
locations not to minimize their commutes
but to balance multiple factors including
house prices, space standards, and local
amenities. Furthermore, regional longdistance commuting is also growing, with
an increasing number of workers commuting
across London’s Green Belt (figure 10).
Estimates suggest that about 300,000
commuters do so every day, challenging a
central component of London’s compact city
policy: the form of the Green Belt itself.10, 11
The degree to which spatial development
in London has been integrated with public
transport infrastructure represents a
significant success in terms of the compact
city model. Integration of land use and
transport has been central to rolling out
new infrastructure such as the Jubilee
Line Extension, which opened in 2000, the
expansion of the Docklands Light Rail,
and the London Overground, all designed
to improve access to central parts of
East London. Of all new development in
Greater London between 2004 and 2011,
53 percent—measured by constructed
floor area—is located within 500 meters
of the nearest rail or underground station.
↑ 12. Public transport accessibility of new developments in London constructed between 2004 and 2011.
(Source: LSE Cities, 2012, based on Greater London Authority, 2012)
234
235
Another 33 percent lies between 500
meters and one kilometer from the nearest
station; only 2 percent is more than two
kilometers removed from public transit (see
figure 11).
As figure 12 indicates, the overall trend
of new floor space distribution in relation
to public transport accessibility is
similar across office, retail, and housing
developments. Still, there are some
differences among them, with new office
space having the greatest public transport
orientation and new housing developments
being less oriented toward rail and
underground stations. The most significant
shortcoming of transport and land-use
integration relates to quantitative standards
for housing, density, and parking provision.
Despite formal requirements for conformity,
boroughs and developers have not always
followed the London Plan’s compact city
policies when implementing actual projects,
usually because of market pressures or local
opposition.
London is a particularly interesting case
of how the compact city model has already
had an impact on urban development. The
city has promoted mixed-use and higherdensity developments, increased the share
of nonmotorized transport, and promoted
greater design quality—particularly related
to streets and public spaces. At least some
of these achievements have helped improve
the city’s environmental sustainability in
terms of direct, local impacts. For example,
London reduced carbon emissions from
about 7 tons per person in 2000 to 5.8 in
2008.12 The increase in housing density
also allowed a higher ratio of affordable
housing, averaging around 30 to 40 percent
over the last decade.13 Finally, the spatial
developments outlined above coincided
with a period of substantial economic
growth.
236
At the same time, London is also struggling
to implement compact city strategies—a
complex task given its size, diversity, and
changing economic structure. Shortcomings
related to commuting times and distances,
road safety, parking standards, the
location of major retail activity, and the
time lag between large-scale transportinfrastructure developments and urban
regeneration are just a few examples of this.
Although local impact has been reduced,
the significant negative environmental
consequences of London’s consumption
patterns prompt broader concerns. Carbon
emissions are 12.1 tons per person when
accounting for all imported goods.14 And
although some affordable housing has been
constructed, the housing market in general
is becoming increasingly unaffordable.
Still, London today is a prominent example
of a political agenda for urban compaction
contributing to tangible improvements on
the ground, which, in turn, have helped
improve sustainability. By successfully
managing market forces, which have clearly
dominated London’s development over the
last decades, local policy has introduced a
new, more European mode of development
to one of the world’s great cities: compact,
walkable, and transit oriented.
Notes
This essay was prepared as part of my own
research on integrated urban planning, design,
and transport. It builds on the extensive research
by LSE Cities on Greater London and the South
East of England. I would also like to thank Duncan
Smith for his support and research input related to
documenting London’s recent spatial development
patterns.
1 Ricky Burdett et al., Density and Urban
Neighbourhoods in London (London: Enterprise LSE
Cities, 2004).
3 Ricky Burdett, Myfanwy Taylor, and Adam Kaasa,
eds., Cities, Health and Well-Being (Hong Kong:
Daniel Design, 2011).
4 The London Plan (London: Greater London
Authority, 2011), http://www.london.gov.uk/
priorities/planning/publications/the-london-plan.
5 This indicator shows the degree of public
transport accessibility across Greater London
and is based on the distance to public transport
services and the frequency of service at nearby
stations.
6 See, e.g., Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New
York, London, Tokyo (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 2001).
7 “2011 Census, Population and Household
Estimates for the United Kingdom,” Office for
National Statistics, http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/
census/2011-census/population-and-householdestimates-for-the-united-kingdom/index.html.
Image Sources
Philipp Rode, “Strategic Planning for London:
Integrating City Design and Urban Transportation.”
LSE Cities, Istanbul: Cities of Intersections.
Urban Age Istanbul (Istanbul: London School of
Economics and Political Science, 2009)
LSE Cities, The Tale of Two Regions: South East
England and the Randstad (London: London School
of Economics and Political Science, 2011).
LSE Cities, South American Cities: Securing an
Urban Future, Urban Age São Paulo (São Paulo,
London School of Economics and Political Science,
2008).
LSE Cities, Ricky Burdett and Philipp Rode, “Urban
Age Electric City” (lecture, Urban Age Electric City
Conference, London School of Economics, London,
2012)
8 Travel in London, report 5 (London: Transport
for London, 2012), http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/
downloads/corporate/travel-in-london-report-5.
pdf.
9 Ibid.
10 It has been argued that other shapes of
protected green areas to limit urban sprawl such
as green wedges or corridors might be more
effective.
11 Philipp Rode, “Strategic Planning for London:
Integrating City Design and Urban Transportation,”
in Megacities: Urban Form, Governance and
Sustainability, eds. Andre Sorensen and Junichiro
Okata (Tokyo: Springer, 2011).
12 Ricky Burdett and Philipp Rode, eds., Urban Age
Electric City Conference (London: Napier Jones,
2012).
13 London Plan Annual Monitoring Report 9,
2011–2012 (London: Greater London Authority,
2013), http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/
files/archives/AMR%209.pdf.
14 Capital Consumption: The Transition to
Sustainable Consumption and Production in
London (London: Greater London Authority, 2009),
http://www.bioregional.com/files/publications/
capital-consumption.pdf.
2 Ebenezer Howard, Garden Cities of Tomorrow
(1902; London: Faber and Faber, 1946).
237
Example from
Mumbai, India
It takes two to keep a rickshaw
on the street 24/7
Sharing a rickshaw and
keeping it moving 24/7
is not only an efficient
business model for Mumbai
rickshaw owners, it also
saves resources and
space in a crowded city.
0:00
Rickshaws are not only a fast, flexible, and
cheap means of transportation in Mumbai,
but also an important source of income for
many Mumbaikars. There are about 250,000
rickshaws in the city, and they are operated
by almost exactly half a million families. This
6
238
means that two families generally share each
rickshaw. Sharing a rickshaw allows them to
operate it most efficiently: the men of the
two families take turns operating the vehicle,
keeping it on the street almost 24 hours a
day. The families share the initial investment
12:00
and fees for repair and maintenance. Jointly
operated rickshaws also mitigate the parking
problem in crowded Mumbai; the rickshaw is
seldom parked for long. So on top of being
efficient and profitable for the individual
families, the system of sharing also reduces
24:00
the demand on resources to produce and
maintain rickshaws and reduces congestion
in Mumbai.
7
239
Example from
70%
Outgaarden, Belgium
Making ends meet in the kitchen
of a Belgian farmhouse
Using 70% of the
budget on only 30%
of the kitchen space
allows for high quality
where it counts.
70%
30%
30%
Budget
Belgian architectural practice 51N4E’s latest
addition to a farmhouse in Outgaarden is
a great example of the power of setting
priorities. Confronted with a tight budget
and high demands, the firm decided to
approach the task of refurbishing the house
not only as a design project but also as the
development of a master plan. Instead of
240
distributing the small budget evenly over
the big kitchen space and stretching it
too thin, they decided to make a bold move
right at the outset and spend 70 percent of
the money on just 30 percent of the space,
equipping it with high-end appliances and
beautiful yet functional Corian, walnut, and
Carrara marble surfaces. The remaining
Space
30 percent of the budget went to the
remaining 70 percent of the kitchen, which
provides storage and extra working space
during peak times like Christmas, while the
core kitchen meets everyday needs. The
two parts of the kitchen are connected
by a large, translucent, thinly marble-clad
polycarbonate sliding door. In this case,
prioritization not only made sense as a
way to get the most out of a tight budget,
but also allowed for a more efficient, more
flexible use of space.
Source: “Masterplan Farmhouse,” 51N4E, http://
www.51n4e.com/project/masterplan-farmhouse.
241
The Compact City: Sustainable, or Just
Sustaining the Economy?
Harry Gugger and Gwendolyn Kerschbaumer
Architects and researchers Harry Gugger and Gwendolyn Kerschbaumer of
EPFL Lausanne caution against the broad, uncritical endorsement of the
compact city model. By identifying its weaknesses, they hope to open up
room for debate about how to improve it.
That the compact city is the most
sustainable settlement typology has become
a dogma among architects and planners. In
theory, the compact city performs better
in terms of social and environmental
sustainability than lower density, suburbanstyle environments. It is efficient in its use
of land, infrastructure, and public transport.
Its mixed-use neighborhoods counter
social segregation, and short distances
allow for increased pedestrian and bike
transport, offering brief commutes and
many cultural and social meeting points.
Several large-scale studies, however, have
revealed serious drawbacks and false
assumptions about this theory, calling into
question the idea that the compact city is
more environmentally friendly and socially
sustainable than less-dense settlements.
The ecological footprint of an inhabitant of
London or Helsinki, for example, is equal to
or higher than that of his rural or semirural countryman.1 From a social point of
view, too, it is unclear that the compact city
serves more vulnerable parts of society,
such as lower-income groups.2 In addition,
and particularly in the developing world, very
dense areas face serious ecologic and social
problems: poor sanitary conditions, high
levels of pollution, and severe overcrowding.
These drawbacks have not been sufficiently
identified, examined, or addressed.
242
Recent studies in the fields of economics,
sociology, environmental studies, and
planning have begun to explore these issues,
but they are not yet widely known or used
by urban planners, designers, or architects,
despite their relevance to the compact
city debate. This paper will present these
studies and use them to evaluate the topic
of sustainability with respect to the compact
city. Looking at the “success story” of the
compact city both among governments
and in certain parts of the private sector,
such as the real estate industry, we ask
to what degree the concept furthers the
goals of sustainability, especially those
related to ecological and social matters,
and to what degree it suits economic
interests.3 The concept of the compact
city is not always promoted innocently.
The real estate sector often influences
governmental decisions regarding density:
higher FAR (floor area ratio, a measure of
density) means considerably higher profits.
Core components of the compact city
concept—short distances, civic spaces,
mixed use, and access to green space—
often receive less attention than simple
profitability, suggesting that the promotion
of the compact city as the most sustainable
settlement typology been coopted by the
real estate industry to further economic
goals.
As architects and planners, we must ask
when high densities are promoted for the
sake of a more sustainable environment
and when simply for economic interests.
Furthermore, are there context-dependent
threshold densities beyond which the
compact city becomes less sustainable,
ecologically and socially? From a qualityof-life point of view, for example, evidence
suggests that when people have a choice,
they prefer—beyond a minimum density—
less dense urban areas to denser ones. The
more affluent a society or person, the more
space they tend to claim, and thus the less
dense the area they settle in. While it is
always possible for affluent members of a
society to secure decent living conditions,
regardless of density, it is in general not
possible for low-income groups to secure
such conditions in very dense urban areas.
We still believe that the compact city offers
a good starting point for a sustainable
settlement typology. We do not intend to
discredit the concept in its entirety, but
rather address its serious problems and
explore possible improvements. In order to
develop solutions, we will determine which
problems are inherent to the compact model
and density, and which are more loosely
associated—that is, which are linked
through circumstances that frequently
coincide with the compact city, but can more
easily be dissociated from it.
and sprawling suburbs. Today, it is applied
to much broader and more varied contexts,
which include rapidly developing, very large
urban areas in developing countries. Sustainability, too, is defined variously in different studies; while some limit their analysis
to the energy, material, and land consumption of the buildings and infrastructure of a
certain settlement typology, others include
the entire economic footprint of the city’s
inhabitants—thus looking at the hinterland
necessary to support the urban area—and at
other factors associated with the functioning of an urban area. There are thus many
conflicting opinions, studies, and information on how sustainable the compact city is.
It is therefore important to use an analytic,
scientific approach to answering this question. This is not to say that a scientific basis
is sufficient and that subjective perception
is less important. For example, we will also
look at “perceived quality of life” through
the work of the European Commission on
“perceived” (i.e. subjective) satisfaction on
a variety of factors pertaining to urban life.4
What we want to point out is that the actual
situation is often different from the way it
is perceived. It is thus crucial for the design
disciplines to keep track of scientific studies in fields relevant to their work, such as
geography or sociology.
Drawing the Boundary of an Inhabitant’s
Ecological Footprint
Looking for Evidence: Conflicting Information
Looking for evidence to prove the sustainability of the compact city is difficult,
because the definitions of both the compact city and sustainability are broad and
variable. The compact city model was first
developed in the 1960s and ’70s in the
United States and Europe in response to
two specific issues: decaying inner cities
The 2002 study City Limits: A Resource Flow
and Ecological Footprint Analysis of Greater
London examines the average ecological
footprint of a London inhabitant and compares it to the UK average, noting that the
Londoner has a slightly higher footprint. The
report also noted that the main factor in a
person’s ecological footprint is not the land
his dwelling or city occupies (less than 1
243
percent), but food (41 percent) and material consumption and waste (44 percent).5, 6
The other components are direct energy (10
percent), transport (5 percent), and water
(less than 1 percent).
While these findings may seem
counterintuitive—and do not necessarily
apply to every city and country—they have
been supported by several other studies.7, 8
In principle, the compact city does allow
for reductions in carbon emissions: people
travel shorter distances, use public
transport, and consume less heating an
apartment than they would heating a
detached house; infrastructure in general
can be managed more efficiently. What urban
dwellers save on fuel and heating cost,
however, they spend on other things, such
as leisure travel and consumer goods. This
phenomenon, called the rebound effect,
is examined in greater detail in Jukka
Heinonen’s study on Helsinki and Finland.9
Heinonen’s study shows that a person’s
ecological footprint is most closely linked
to his or her living standard and disposable
income, regardless of where he or she lives.
This crucial link between ecological
footprints and living standards is the main
topic of Tim Jackson’s report Prosperity
without Growth, commissioned in 2009 by
the British government as a study on a
sustainable economy. The report shows that
the developed nations are relying on what
Jackson calls the “myth of decoupling”—the
belief that, with the help of technology, our
society can indefinitely continue to grow
economically without our ecological footprint
growing at an alarming speed as well. This is
a myth because, while technology does help,
it does not develop fast enough to offset
the growth in consumption of fossil fuels
and other raw materials that accompanies
economic growth. While evidence for
this “relative decoupling” of fossil fuel
244
consumption and GDP can be found in the
most technologically advanced nations
(figure 3), there is no evidence for absolute
decoupling—an actual stabilization or drop
in fossil fuel and material consumption while
GDP continues to grow (figure 4):
Ecological footprint
(gha per capita)
Biocapacity
(gha per capita)
London
6.63
0.16
UK
6.3
1.34 (Source: Wikipedia)
World average
2.8
2.18
Despite declining energy and carbon
intensities, carbon dioxide emissions
from fossil fuels have increased by
80 percent since 1970. Emissions today
are almost 40 percent higher than they
were in 1990—the Kyoto base year—and
since the year 2000 they have been
growing at over 3 percent per year.10
World average expected
(2050)
1.44
Figure 1: The ecological sustainability of London (source: City Limits Report - http://citylimitslondon.com)
Furthermore, such official figures do not
paint the full picture; it is too complicated to
include all the secondary material resources
we use. Drawing a boundary for an ecological footprint is difficult, but it is necessary
if we want to truly assess the environmental
consequences of people living in various
societies and settlement typologies.
Insofar as the compact city is an
environment conducive to high levels of
consumerism, it can sometimes be even
less sustainable than rural settlements.
Efficiency in transport, infrastructure, and
the built environment and technological
progress are not, by themselves, an accurate
measure of sustainability. As technological
progress brings down the cost of goods,
demand rises and growth increases. Rather
than reducing the throughput of goods,
technological progress can result in an
increased production output and thus an
increased ecological footprint.11
Relative and Absolute Decoupling and the
Role of Technology
The impact of human activity on the
environment can be roughly estimated using
↑ 1. The ecological sustainability of London.
(Source: City Limits Report, 2002)
Water
Built-Land
Direct Energy
Transport
Materials and Waste
Food
Figure 2: Main components of the ecologic footprint of a London inhabitant (Source: City limits)
↑ 2. Main components of the ecologic footprint of a London inhabitant.
(Source: City Limits Report, 2002)
245
Relative Decoupling in OECD countries 1975-2000
Austria
Germany
Japan
UK
Netherlands
120
100
1975=100
80
60
40
20
1975
1985
1980
2000
1995
1990
Figure 3: Relative decoupling in OECD countries 1975 – 2000
Since the base year 1975, “material intensity” has decreased in five OECD
countries. This means that, for a given economic activity, less material has become
↑
3. Relative
decoupling
in select
OECD countries, 1975–2000: Since 1975, “material intensity”
necessary
over time
due to increased
efficiency.
(Source:
“Prosperity
withoutfive
Growth”)
has
decreased
in these
OECD countries. This means that, for a given economic activity,
less material is necessary today due to increased efficiency. (Source: Jackson, 2009)
Global Trends in Primary Metal Extraction: 1990-2007
250
1990=100
200
150
100
Iron ore
Nickel
Zink
World GPD
Bauxite
Copper
50
2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000
1999
1998
1997
1996
1995
1994
1993
1992
1991
1990
0
Figure 4: Global trends in primary metal extraction 1990 – 2007
Growth of primary metal extraction in proportion to global GDP. Regardless of
4. Global
in primary
metal
in proportion to global GDP, 1990–2007:
“relative ↑
decoupling”
via trends
more efficient
technologies,
thereextraction
has been no “absolute
decoupling”
of metal extraction
and economic
growth. Other
of our technologies, there has been no
Regardless
of relative
decoupling
via components
more efficient
ecological footprint (e.g. carbon emissions) show similar trends.
absolute decoupling of metal extraction and economic growth. Other components of our
(Source: “Prosperity without Growth”)
ecological footprint (e.g., carbon emissions) show similar trends. (Source: Jackson, 2009)
246
an equation developed by the biologist Paul
Ehrlich and the environmental policy expert
John Holdren (I = A x P x T). The equation
measures human activity by multiplying
affluence (income per person), the size of
the population, and technological factors
(environmental impact associated with each
dollar spent). For absolute decoupling to
happen, the impact of human activity on the
environment needs to remain constant or go
down over time. If population and affluence
keep rising—as they have in recent decades
and are expected to for the foreseeable
future—then absolute decoupling could only
be accomplished via the technological factor.
As Jackson writes, it is tempting to hope
that technological progress will allow for a
continuous rise in population and affluence
without further burdening the environment,
but how probable is this, given the data
we have so far? Figure 6, from the report
Prosperity without Growth, shows how much
technological progress and efficiency would
be necessary: if current trends continue,
by 2050, our carbon emissions would need
to be 21 times smaller than they are today.
In other words, for the same amount of
economic activity, our carbon output would
need to be 1/21 of what it is today. Worse,
the 21-fold improvement refers to a scenario
(1) in which wealth is distributed unequally
between developed and developing nations.
Scenario 3, which depicts worldwide affluence
at the level Europe enjoys today, would
require a roughly 100-fold improvement in
efficiency; scenario 4 depicts a world in which
the developing nations have the same living
standards the developed world has today
and the developed world’s economy has gone
on growing 2 percent per year—it requires a
carbon intensity that is 130 times lower than
today, if CO2 emissions are to stay within the
Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s
emission target.12 In other words, barring
a scientific breakthrough that allows for
economic activity with virtually no CO2 output,
we will not achieve absolute decoupling.
Technological progress alone is thus very
unlikely to suffice. Yet it remains essential
and, so far, it has not been sufficiently
explored. Developments in environmentally
friendly technologies could transform the
economies of the twenty-first century.13
Employment opportunities, for example,
could be expanded in this sector rather than
in sectors based on increased throughput
of material consumption, which have a high
environmental footprint because they imply
increased exploitation of natural resources,
carbon emissions, and so forth.
Sustainability—A Truly Fair Distribution of
Resources and Opportunities?
If we truly believe that the long-term goal
is for every person on this planet to have
similar opportunities, simple calculations
demonstrate that some restrictions
are needed. As Jackson points out, no
commonly referred-to stabilization scenario
anticipates global income parity.14 Developed
and developing nations alike will presumably
continue to experience economic growth and
a corresponding rise in living standards.
But none of the scenarios looks at a world
population with an equal living standard—
either that of today’s developed countries or
that predicted for developed countries in the
coming decades.
The truth is that there is as yet no
credible, socially just, ecologically
sustainable scenario of continually
growing incomes for a world of nine
billion people. […] Resource efficiency,
renewable energy, and reductions in
material throughput all have a vital role
to play in ensuring the sustainability of
economic activity. But […] it is entirely
247
fanciful to suppose that “deep” emission
and resource cuts can be achieved
without confronting the structure of
market economies.15
The term “economic sustainability” is thus
deceptive. Usually, “economic sustainability”
is understood to mean an economic system
that secures employment and a growing
economy. What not only government officials
but also architects and planners generally
call “economic sustainability” is therefore
actually “economic growth.” Yet economic
growth in its current form inherently
threatens ecological sustainability and, in
some areas, social sustainability. As the
term “sustainability” addresses all three
areas, the question of what “economic
sustainability” means and how it relates to
ecological and social sustainability clearly
needs to be investigated further.
In 2000, Elizabeth Burton, an architect
and researcher whose work focuses on
sustainable building design and well-being,
examined how socially just the compact city
is through an analysis of 25 towns in the
United Kingdom with populations between
80,000 and 220,000. Burton looked at how
more vulnerable parts of society, such as
low-income groups, fare in the compact city
compared to less dense towns. The compact
city, she found, has both significant positive
and negative impacts on this income group.
Benefits include improved public transport,
reduced social segregation, and better
access to facilities, while the main problems
are reduced living space, lack of affordable
housing, and lack of access to green space.16
In her detailed study, Burton explains how
high density negatively affects lower-income
groups. Housing prices tend to be high in
denser cities and, as a result, middle- and
lower-income groups are forced to live in
small spaces without much choice regarding
248
location or quality. A lack of affordable
housing also means long commuting
distances and limited access to jobs. Several
measures can address the problem of
affordable housing, such as providing land
for expansion and regulating speculation on
the housing market.17
Another negative quality of many compact
cities is a lack of access to green space.
The compact city preserves green space
outside the city, but lower-income groups
do not have the means to easily reach those
areas, nor do they have green space in
their own neighborhoods. A recent study
noted that one simple way to distinguish
neighborhoods of different affluence within
a city is to map the amount of greenery;
affluent neighborhoods have significantly
more.18 Contrary to expectations, low-income
groups are also less likely to cycle or walk
in a dense city, probably due to the fact that
walking and cycling are neither safe nor
pleasant in many compact cities.
Finally, there is a strong correlation between
density and income inequality.19, 20 Inequality
is a major cause of stress and unhappiness,
regardless of actual material wealth.
The proximity of different income groups
makes the difference more visible and thus
increases the perception of lack of wealth
in lower-income groups. Inequality is also
linked with higher crime rates. 21, 22
Gha per capita
<1
1-2
2-3
3-5
5-8
Insufficient data
Rethinking the Compact City Model
While the shortcomings of the compact city
model need to be studied and addressed,
they are not necessarily arguments against
the compact city. The fact that any savings
in energy might be spent elsewhere, for
example, cannot discredit the compact city
model as such; it only shows, that, in itself,
the compact city is not having the impact
↑ 5. Ecological footprint per person shown for each nation, 2008.
(Source: WWF, 2012)
249
on environmental footprint reduction it was
previously thought to. The compact city
remains a very efficient model with respect
to infrastructure, use of building material,
use of ground space, transport options, and
so forth; it may still be the most sustainable
settlement typology available to urbanists.
Carbon Intensities Now and Required to Meet 450 ppm Target
800
768
Carbon Intensity gCO2/$
750
700
650
600
550
500
450
400
347
350
300
244
250
200
150
100
36
50
30
14
0
2007 World
Scenario
Scenario
Scenario
Scenario
1:
2:
3:
4:
2007 UK
2007
Japan
2050
(Scen. 1)
2050
(Scen. 2)
2050
(Scen. 3)
6
2050
(Scen. 4)
9 billion people: trend income growth
11 billion people: trend income growth
9 billion people: incomes at equitable 2007 EU level
9 billion people: incomes at equitable 2007 EU level plus 2% growth
Figure 6: Carbon intensities today and those
required to meet 450-ppm target in various
for 2050
↑ 6. Carbon intensities scenarios
today and those
required to meet a 450-parts
(Source: “Prosperity
target in without
variousGrowth”)
scenarios for 2050.
per million CO2 in the atmosphere
(Source: Jackson, 2009)
250
The fact that property prices in the
compact city can lead to lower-income
groups having poor housing choices does
not entirely discredit the compact city
model either; in part, it points to the
need for governmental regulation. In part,
though, it does point to problems that are
inherent to the compact city model and that
require fundamental reconceptualizations.
Where densities are so high, for
example, that adequate housing becomes
unaffordable for middle- to lower-income
groups, artificial containment policies must
be loosened so that land becomes available
for well-planned expansion.23 The lack of
green space and adequate pedestrian and
bike lanes in dense areas must also be
addressed.
The disadvantages of the compact city
model provide an opportunity for architects
and planners to rethink the way we design
buildings and cities. For example, we might
question the notion that interior spaces,
especially in housing, should be relatively
small. Given that compact construction
already implies an efficient use of resources
in terms of material and infrastructure, more
generous interior spaces could be acceptable
if they make the compact city as attractive
as equivalent spaces in a considerably less
dense urban environment. We must rethink
programmatic aspects of our city as well,
such as the creation of public spaces that do
not rely on or require consumption. It must
be possible to engage in social and leisure
activities that are not based on shopping and
consumption of material goods.
We can also reevaluate intensity of use,
rather than density alone. New building
typologies could explore the extent to which
certain spaces and goods can be shared in
larger buildings. Examples would be laundry
rooms and equipment, cars and bikes, and
certain office equipment and spaces, such
as printers and meeting rooms. It is not
uncommon for individuals and companies to
own goods or spaces that they do not use
to their full capacity. Focusing on use rather
than ownership might lead to typologies that
make a more efficient usage possible.
Density must remain within a sensible range.
The compact city model must argue for
decreasing density where it is too high just
as it argues for increasing density where
it is too low.24 It must address the need for
context-specific recommendations and more
nuanced applications.
Governmental Regulations and the Role of
the Design Disciplines
A more sustainable compact city would
require governmental regulations to ensure
a more sustainable economy. Unless our
society adopts a more sustainable economic
model, a significant reduction in our
environmental footprint is not possible,
regardless of what settlement typologies
we employ. At the same time, it is clear that
such a fundamental change is not imminent.
Yet regardless of our governing political and
economic systems, we are faced with the
question of what kind of settlement typology
is sustainable. Even in a fairer and more
environmentally sustainable society, the
question of how to best house seven billion
people on one planet would arise. Although
new evidence clearly contradicts some of our
core assumptions about the environmental
and social sustainability of the compact
251
city, it nevertheless offers a good basis
for a sustainable settlement typology; it
is precisely for this reason that it urgently
needs to be reexamined and improved.
Within the compact city debate, we must put
a stronger focus on quality of life, especially
that of middle- and lower-income groups,
both in the developed and the developing
world. We must raise quality of life within
the compact city while limiting the growth
of its ecological footprint. Focus areas
could be the development of more adequate
housing options, more green areas, walking
and cycling opportunities, noncommercial
public space, and shared facilities. These are
technical, social, and design questions that
are best tackled by urbanists, architects,
and landscape architects. Basing their
research and work on adjacent disciplines
in the social sciences, like psychology,
geography, environmental science, and
agriculture, these specialists will be best
prepared to provide proposals to society,
governments, NGOs, and private developers.
Notes
1 Jukka Heinonen, “The Impacts of Urban Structure
and the Related Consumption Patterns on the
Carbon Emissions of an Average Consumer” (Sc.D.
diss., Aalto University, 2012); and Brook Lyndhurst,
London’s Ecological Footprint: A Review (London:
Greater London Authority, 2003).
Footprint Analysis of Greater London (Best Foot
Forward, 2002), http://www.citylimitslondon.com/.
7 Heinonen, “The Impacts of Urban Structure.”
Sprawl: A Strategy? From Closed System Dynamics to
Open Systems Ecologies
8 Tim Jackson, Prosperity without Growth? The
Transition to a Sustainable Economy (Sustainable
Development Commission, 2009), http://www.sdcommission.org.uk/publications.php?id=914.
Pierre Bélanger
9 Steve Sorrell, The Rebound Effect: An
Assessment of the Evidence for Economy-Wide
Energy Savings from Improved Energy Efficiency
(UK Energy Research Centre, 2007), http://www.
ukerc.ac.uk/Downloads/PDF/07/0710ReboundEffec
t/0710ReboundEffectReport.pdf.
11, 12, 13 Ibid., 62-63.
14 E.g., those given by the International Energy
Agency or the Stern Review on the Economics of
Climate Change.
15 Jackson, Prosperity without Growth?
16 Burton, “The Compact City.”
17 Shlomo Angel, Planet of Cities (Cambridge, MA:
Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2012).
18 Tim de Chant, “Income Inequality, as Seen
from Space,” Per Square Mile (blog), http://
persquaremile.com/2012/05/24/income-inequalityseen-from-space/.
19 Determined using the Gini coefficient, which is a
measure of statistical dispersion.
20 Edward Glaeser, Matthew Resseger, and Kristina
Tobio, “Urban Inequality,” National Bureau of
Economic Research Working Paper no. 14419, 2008.
21 Burton, “The Compact City.”
22 Glaeser, et al., “Urban Inequality.”
3 Urban Trends: Urbanization and Economic Growth
(United Nations Human Settlements Programme,
2010), http://www.unhabitat.org/documents/
SOWC10/R7.pdf.
24 Ibid.
4 Perception Survey on Quality of Life in European
Cities: Analytical Report (European Commission,
2009), http://ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/flash/
fl_277_en.pdf.
City Limits, http://www.citylimitslondon.com/.
6 City Limits: A Resource Flow and Ecological
252
thinking in environmental thought and the idea of the sustainable city in
particular. He argues that sprawl is inevitable and we must look beyond
the parameters of our current debate to find the future of the city.
10 Jackson, Prosperity without Growth?
2 Elizabeth Burton, “The Compact City: Just or
Just Compact?,” Urban Studies 37, no. 11 (2000):
1967–2001.
5 Lyndhurst, London’s Ecological Footprint.
Landscape architect Pierre Bélanger reviews the history of systems
23 Angel, Planet of Cities.
Image Sources
Jackson, Prosperity without Growth?
World Wildlife Fund, 2012 Living Planet Report,
(Gland, Switzerland: WWF, 2012).
Urban population density is in decline,
even as the world’s population increases.
As people migrate for a range of economic,
political, and social reasons, urban areas
sprawl beyond the legislative boundaries
of their cities. The urban regions
currently in formation simply do not
conform to our traditional understanding
of urbanism, which deals in cities and
concentrated populations. These ground
conditions contradict the assumption
that compactness, verticality, and high
density can contain the footprint of urban
transformation.
Proponents of environmental protection
and sustainable development have
consistently promoted compactness and
centralization. They characterize urban
growth as a problem that should be
regulated and restricted. With technoscientific instruments of zoning, boundary
demarcation, and density regulation,
the practice of urban planning was
professionalized in the twentieth century,
becoming a major discipline largely
premised on the control, optimization,
and legislation of growth. Yet the
underlying precepts of urban planning,
like compactness and density, are seldom
revisited. Our present-day discourse,
dominated by concern for the environment,
adheres unthinkingly to the concept of
carrying capacity as the most important
spatial factor for sustainability.
As the world’s population grows, we
must think beyond limits, footprints, and
boundaries. We must change our notions
of carrying capacity and move beyond the
notion of spatial compactness and control
through planning. Instead, we should
explore urban processes through distributed
structures, diffuse patterns, fluid formats,
and flexible morphologies, working with the
processes of decentralization rather than
fighting them.
Compact City versus Sprawl
Looking at urbanization from a broader
geographic perspective, rather than narrowly
at just the city, gives us new perspectives
on spatial, social, technological, political,
and ecological change. These two ways of
looking at urbanization recall the debate
in the 1960s and ’70s—when the notion
of “the environment” was first gaining
currency—between different models of
systems thinking, particularly engineer Jay
W. Forrester’s “closed system dynamics” and
ecologist Howard T. Odum’s “open systems
ecologies.”
253
Forrester’s model today represents the
status quo in compact city thinking. Odum’s
alternative could help redefine urbanization
as an open and fluid system—more complex,
more nuanced, and more flexible—in which
decentralization operates as a response
to the predominant challenges of our time:
migration, climate change, energy economies,
and resource flows.
The Cold War Environment
At the core of the debate was the formulation of the “World Problématique,” formulated by the Club of Rome, a global think
tank for the future of humanity, in the late
1960s. This problematic was at the center
of the club’s 1972 publication The Limits
to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome's
Project on the Predicament of Mankind. It
crystallized the worldview of late-twentieth
century environmental thought during a
period of socio-technological change: the
world had seen its first microprocessor in
1971, its first Earth Day in 1970, the first
men on the Moon in 1969, and, in 1968,
the first photographs of Earth from space,
brought back by the crew of Apollo 8.
Newly aware of our place in the universe,
we faced a perceived Malthusian dilemma
of population outpacing resources and
responded with the notion of carrying
capacity. Two premises underlie it: that the
resources of the world are limited and that
the problems caused by population growth
are universal. Supported by fear of nuclear
annihilation and a sense of the smallness
and fragility of Earth—the Blue Marble—in
a vast universe, a new view emerged of the
world as a closed and limited system of
resources on the brink of potential collapse.
The Limits to Growth was published a year
before the 1973 oil crisis, which greatly
254
contributed to its cause; the visibility of
Limits also grew significantly during the
1972 United Nations Conference on the
Human Environment in Stockholm. Limits
sounded an urgent alarm for a fragmented
world threatened by pollution and poverty.
In the 1970s, global inequalities were seen
through the frame of the Cold War, which
split the industrialized nations into two
camps. Limits placed itself in the middle
of a major social, political, technological,
and economic divide across the world,
challenging Cold War mentalities and
establishing an intellectual foundation
for environmental protection, resource
conservation, and sustainable development.
The cause of “the environment” fostered
political solidarity among otherwise hostile
nations during the Cold War.
↑ 1. Flexible urbanization: Okobaba Sawmill and the 200-year-old
fishing village of Makoko on the shores of the Lagos lagoon, Nigeria.
The Limits of Limits
The Limits to Growth “examined the
five basic factors that determine, and
therefore, ultimately limit, growth on
this planet—population, agricultural
production, natural resources, industrial
production, and pollution.”1 Basing their
work on system dynamics in electrical
engineering, the authors systemically
modeled these five variables in order
to “examine the complex of problems
troubling men of all nations: poverty in
the midst of plenty; degradation of the
environment; loss of faith in institutions;
uncontrolled urban spread; insecurity
of employment; alienation of youth;
rejection of traditional values; and
inflation and other monetary and economic
disruptions.”2 The authors of Limits
employed a one-world system—a closed
system diagram—to make projections
through the year 2150 and exhaustively
model the scenarios at which points of
scarcity would be reached.
↑ 1. Flexible urbanization: the 200-year old
fishing village of Makoko and Okobaba Sawmill,
on the shores of the Lagos lagoon, Nigeria.
Source: ©2011 John Vidal, Guardian, ©2012
Cnes/Spot Image, Digital Globe, GeoEye,
Google Earth.
↑ 2. Dispersal and dispersion: the decentralization of urban Mexico—the region with
the lowest per capita consumption of water in the world—between 1524 and 2012.
255
↑ 3. Environmental institutionalization: the United Nations (1946), the Club
of Rome (1969), and the United Nations Environment Programme (1972).
↑ 5. Closed system: a diagram of the world model interrelating the five variables of population,
natural resources, capital investment, capital investment in agriculture, and pollution.
↑ 4. Plans, problems, and predicaments: Towards a General Theory of Planning (1968), The
Chasm Ahead (1969), The Predicament of Mankind (1970), and The Limits to Growth (1972).
↑ 6. Jay W. Forrester: the engineer as industrialist, urbanist, and globalist.
256
257
↑ 7. Projections and biases: the Apollo 8 images As08-14-2384 and As08-16-2593,
taken by Bill Anders and released in 1969, appeared widely in media and literature.
The Club of Rome published the book with
two objectives in mind: establishing the
ideological platform of “an informal,
non-political, multi-national group of
scientists, intellectuals, educators, and
business leaders” and establishing a series
of scenarios related to global problems.3
Alarmist and catastrophic, these scenarios
of overproduction and overpopulation modeled cataclysmic levels of pollution and
plummeting food availability that would
result in mass starvation and death within
150 years. The linear forecasts and modeling
procedures suggested disastrous relationships between inputs of industrialization,
throughputs of production, and outputs of
pollution. These scenarios seem preposterous today, in a world of relative abundance
where the more pressing questions of urbanization are much more about distribution and
equity than scarcity or depletion, but they
shaped our thinking about conservation and
sustainability for decades.
From Engineering to Urbanization
The authors of The Limits to Growth were
students of Jay W. Forrester, a pioneer
of closed-systems thinking. With his
graduate students, Forrester developed
and operationalized theories of system
dynamics across a range of applications,
using a simulation language and software
respectively named DYNAMO and World3.
The latter was designed to understand and
track complex parameters and subsystems
through nonlinear relationships and
feedback look structures. Forrester had
been working for almost a decade with the
US Navy at MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory on
the development of SAGE (Semi-Automatic
Ground Environment), a radar-detection
system for intercontinental ballistic missiles.
At the Lincoln Laboratory, he also developed
technology for the most significant problem
258
↑ 8. Circuitry: Jay W. Forrester (left) pioneered the
development of magnetic core memory (bottom right)
and led Project Whirlwind (top right) for the US Navy.
of the digital era: data storage. The
magnetic-core memory he developed was
among the earliest forms of random-access
memory, or RAM, which is now found in every
computer in the world.
In a series of three books, Forrester
developed a computational model for
analyzing social systems and predicting
their future implications. Funded by the
Ford Foundation, Industrial Dynamics was
written in 1961 “to understand and to
design corporate policy.”4 Urban Dynamics,
completed in 1968, extended Forrester’s
system-dynamics approach to problems of
urban blight and renewal. At the invitation
of an MIT colleague, Club of Rome member
Carroll Wilson, and with funding from the
Volkswagen Foundation, Forrester then
applied system dynamics at a global scale
with World Dynamics, completed in 1971.
Although the computational power of
Forrester’s simulation work was significant,
the scalability of system dynamics is equally
astonishing. Within the space of a decade,
Forrester was working at three scales: the
industrial, the urban, and the global.
Whole with Holes
Forrester’s pioneering research on the
theories of system dynamics was widely
read, but, though his ideas were easy to
work with under laboratory conditions,
they were difficult to put into practice.
For corporate policymakers and city
organizations, system dynamics was hard to
understand or incorporate into established
practices. Forrester encountered prejudice
and outmoded thinking; the application of
his modeling methods and system theories
resulted in no real-world projects.
For all their brilliance, the digital innovations
at the core of Forrester’s work also resulted
259
in a technocratic view of urban society. Closed
systems had their own practical limits. Style,
design, perception, opinion, bias, media, and
politics—though seemingly unquantifiable
and subjective—actually mattered. During a
period of considerable social and economic
transformation, as cities like Detroit,
Newark, and Philadelphia were torn apart by
racial strife and industrial decline, the very
basis for system dynamics and for future
scenario planning seemed to be flawed. Cities
presented considerable complications to
modeling, let alone to actual implementation.
Cities as Circuits?
Together, these problems of modeling and
implementation point to a much deeper,
more fundamental flaw with Forrester’s
work. With its roots in theoretical dynamics
and electrical engineering as well as
convergent ideas from the social sciences
and cybernetics, the Taylorist-influenced
systemic approach to urban problems had
limits. Like any other problem, it required
boundaries and the isolation of variables,
yet urban spatial models resisted pure,
rational, or quantitative simplification, let
alone comparison to problems associated
with electrical networks. Cities simply did
not work like circuit boards.
However, the relationship between corporate
and urban scales present in the genealogy
of Forrester’s work is useful to consider.
In the 1920s, cities were incorporated one
after the other, at a very rapid pace, in
order to collect tax revenues; legally, they
emulated corporations in their governance
structure: hierarchical, multidivisional,
bureaucratic, and closed. System dynamics
worked in the corporate environment, so
it seemed appropriate for urban policy as
well. Furthermore, since large multinational
corporations—from Volkswagen in Germany
260
to Battelle in Ohio—were underwriting the
Club of Rome’s research, the relevance and
applicability of systemic research to urban
problems went unchallenged there. The club
viewed the world through an industrialized
lens, seeing problems chiefly among the
nonindustrialized other, the so-called third
world.
From Problématique to Process
Systems ecology—a holistic approach that
views natural systems at an aggregate
level, studying the interactions among
their components and their relationships
with other systems—offered an alternative
to closed-systems thinking. Among the
pioneers of this interdisciplinary field
was Howard T. Odum, who, starting with
coastal and estuarine systems in the early
1960s, developed models for mapping and
understanding natural systems through
flows and exchanges of energy. He worked
for the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC)
at the Puerto Rico Nuclear Center (PRNC)
between 1963 and 1970, researching the
effects of radiation on plants, specifically,
and forest systems in general. The PRNC
was an ecological stress test, and the
island’s tropical rainforest was a laboratory:
given their high sensitivity to atmospheric
radiation, pine trees served as bioindicators, guinea pigs of radioecology. The
AEC project was the foundation of Odum’s
work on complex ecologies as open systems,
moving systems thinking beyond metaphors
of electrical networks and circuitry.
Through an understanding of ecological
emergence and temporal indeterminacy—in
lieu of the integration and insularity of
closed systems—Odum graphically and
spatially demonstrated the biological
and metabolic structures of plant life—
and associated linkages and loops, from
↑ 9. Open systems: Odum’s post-modern concept of open systems is seen here in a
representative diagram of an urban region, showing fluidity and flows, animated through
vectors, fields, inputs, outputs, energies, exchanges, patterns, and processes.
↑ 10. Island to archipelago: often touted as a model for sustainable cities,
Hong Kong’s vertical density relies heavily on an extensive horizontal
hydrologic network consisting of freshwater reservoirs, river water from
the Dongjiang River in the neighboring Guangdong province, and the use of
seawater for toilet flushing.
261
microbial to animal—in tremendous detail.
He developed his notion of ecology through
media including maps, diagrams, aerial
photos, and charts, demonstrating that
open-ended systems could be communicated
quantitatively and qualitatively.
Flow as Form: Systems Ecologies
↑ 11. Flexibility and contingency: the distribution of storm shelters and evacuation systems
on the coast of the Bay of Bengal in Bangladesh. The South Indian Tropical Storm Basin is
one of the most extreme, most hazardous urban regions identified by the United Nations.
Odum’s models were scalable and easy to
understand, reproduce, and manipulate;
it was likewise easy to translate them
from biology to urbanism. Odum was
less interested in problematizing urban
environments than in studying and
transforming them. His modeling of complex
systems through flows helped position the
urban as a landscape of processes and
patterns, extents and intensities, economies
and ecologies. In Environment, Power, and
Society (1971) and the revised edition of
Ecological & General Systems (1994), Odum
proposed applying his studies of ecological
systems to urban regions, significantly
widening our understanding of the
complexity of the urban landscape.
Applying ecological knowledge to
urbanization reveals its basic, indivisible
flows: waste and water, food and fuel, flora
and biota, mobility and energy. Scalable
and constantly seeking new morphologies,
they provide room for growing complexity.
Waste ecologies, for example, could be
understood as an infinite multitude of
backflows, overflows, reflows, leakages,
impurities, spillovers, discards, residues,
and secondary energies. Odum understood
that systems need to change structurally
over time, through substitution: “Systems
in nature are known that shift from fast
growth to steady state gradually with
programmatic substitution, but other
instances are known in which the shift is
marked by total crash and destruction of
the growth system before the emergence of
the succeeding steady state regime.”5
Odum’s reformulated understanding of
urbanization as a form of ecology moved
beyond the centrality and singularity
of infrastructure, which had typically
dominated the engineering of urban
environments. In contrast to Forrester, Odum
moved beyond merely asserting solutions,
beyond the limits to growth, and instead
drew on the work on others—like landscape
ecologists Richard T. T. Forman, Ernst Neef,
and Zev Naveh—to make room for existing
social forces and geospatial formations.
Decentralization as Decompaction
The global phenomenon of urbanization
is a process of decentralization.
Decentralization is persistent and pervasive
thanks to the rise of the middle class
throughout the world. Geographic sprawl is
its most visible effect; a distinctive pattern
of low-rise urbanization is prevalent around
the world. What those who dismiss sprawl
as unsustainable do not understand is that
decentralization stems from the leveling
of global socioeconomic structures and
the increase in world population. It is a
process of self-actualization that has been
underway for the past two thousand years
and is unlikely to reverse. This process is
rendered visible as conventional, top-down
economies dominated by production are
supplanted by new consumer-oriented
economies. Conventional economies find
their origins in societal structures where
large populations were governed by
small elite classes: monarchies, military
dictatorships, and industrial monopolies.
Extremely hierarchical, vertical, and
autocratic, these structures dominated
much of the world’s history. The recent
flattening of these hierarchical structures
↑ 12. Altitudes of urbanization: submarine cable systems,
lower and outer satellite orbits, and space junk.
262
263
is the evidence of decentralization’s
relentless influence.6 This structural
transformation was enabled by several
major shifts during the twentieth century:
the democratic organization of large
populations; an increase in individual
purchasing power, individual access
to housing, and personal mobility; the
availability of consumer goods throughout
the world, made possible by global
transportation; and the ubiquitous spread
of real-time communications. As a result,
large populations are now better informed,
better organized, and more able to make
decisions, instigate change, and place
demands on their governments.
Flexibility, Contingency, Risk
When seen through a geographic lens, the
ecologies of urbanization reveal patterns
of flows and processes of consumption,
production, and exchange across vast
distances, in relation to planetary
processes that are dynamic, temporal, and
contingent. This broad view transcends
the legislative and political borders that
modern-day nations inherited from their
imperial and colonial masters or established
through warfare, industrial planning, or
land-use engineering. Living, dynamic
processes counteract the paradigms of
control, compactness, and containment
found in engineering-based planning
practices.
In this expanded field, the designation,
delineation, and direction of ecological and
urban processes become a new priority.
As the vertical, hierarchical differences
between engineering as a technological
discipline and ecology as a scientific
subject break down, a new set of projective
questions can emerge from the gradual deproblematization of the urban landscape:
264
Can decentralization bring spatial flexibility?
As cities like Detroit go bankrupt, can
we look to patterns of decentralization—
instead of the city as the central unit
of urban development—to unlock more
flexible infrastructures?7 Could we then
see sustainability in the flexibility of
super-urban geographies such as slums or
suburbs?8 Can large-scale ecological change
be achieved without legislative planning,
through incremental hacking and continuous
readjustments?
Through systemic modeling of real-time
decision making (guesses, estimates,
bluffs, or approximations) and geospatial
representation, can we draw ecology and
economy closer together? Through feedback
from consumption patterns, capital flows,
market structures, and resource exchanges,
can we better defend ourselves against the
unpredictability of environmental hazards
and economic risks? 9, 10, 11
Infrastructural Ecologies
Moving beyond the notions of compactness
and density by which we currently define
and measure cities, we can propose several
other projective models that reformulate
the challenges historically associated with
pollution, poverty, and population:
Altitudes and latitudes of urbanization:
Patterns of urbanization can be best
projected in section, revealing new
dimensions and extents, from the bottom of
the oceans to outer space. While population
increases but growth rates taper off, we
will not only have to plan for the global
population’s spread and waste, but also
for its growth and shrinkage in different
areas. From processes of suburbanization
to super-urbanization, from the
subterranean to the orbital, we must
design infrastructure that supports the
world we live in.
Material markets and scrap economies:
Imagine the planet as a big brownfield.
Consider it less as a virgin resource to
be protected or a sensitive system to be
saved and more as a big ball of oscillating
waste, which keeps moving and circulating.
Everything—from the oxygen in the
atmosphere to the water in the ocean—has
been used, abused, and reused. Materials
and fluids in different concentrations,
whose varying distributions are in constant
motion, are powered by existing Earth
processes—arrested, attenuated, and
accelerated by methods of extraction and
evolving technological processes; adjusted,
layered, and thickened by urban change.
Our ecological predicament must be the
impetus for cleaner production, smarter
consumption, and intelligent exchange to
reduce waste. Brown is the new green.
Littoral landscapes and coastal sprawl:
With half of the planet’s population already
living within 60 kilometers of the coast,
we must look beyond the natural contours
of urban geography—deltas, estuaries,
lagoons, river mouths, and gulfs—for space
into which coastal cities can grow.12 These
present-day landscapes can be seen as the
starting point for development out onto
the ocean: facing climate change and the
tropicalization of the planet, the dry-land
economies that have formed the basis of
trade and exchange in the twentieth century
must give way to wet, fluid ones. Taking to
the seas will provide incidental advantages
to our safety and security as well as to
wealth generation and the health of the
planet.
Together, these alternatives frame “the
urban” not as a category of problems but of
strategies. From here, processes of spatial
decentralization—political denationalization
and the weakening of states—can open
new spatial distributions and zones of
development thanks to interdisciplinary
reconfiguration, technological proliferation,
increasing social equality, and cross-border
mobility. From a distance, historically and
geographically, we begin to see horizontal
spread—whether expressed through
the prevalence of slums, suburbs, or
skyscrapers—as one of the world’s most
important spatial strategies across all
different dimensions of urban life and action,
from the planetary to the personal.
Notes
This graphic essay is the condensed version of
a paper titled “The Strategy of Urbanization: A
Preliminary Review of the ‘World Problématique’
and the Club of Rome’s 1972 ‘Limits to Growth,’”
delivered at the 4th Holcim Forum in Mumbai on
“The Economy of Sustainable Construction.”
The original version, including notes on the
original interview with Jay W. Forrester and full
references, can be downloaded here: http://src.
holcimfoundation.org/dnl/60234c0a-f496-4c6fb495-86817f917398/F13_GreenWS_Belanger.pdf.
1 Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen
Randers, and William W. Behrens III, The Limits to
Growth (New York: Universe Books, 1972), 11.
2 Ibid., 10.
3 The Club of Rome, “The Predicament of Mankind,” 9.
4 Jay W. Forrester, World Dynamics (Cambridge,
MA: Wright-Allen Press, 1971), ix
5 Howard T. Odum, “Energy, Ecology, and
Economics,” AMBIO 2, no. 6 (1973): 220–27.
6 Norman Furniss, “The Practical Significance of
Decentralization,” Journal of Politics 36, no. 4
(1974): 958–82.
7 See Elodie Vielle Blanchard, “The Origins of
Integrated Models of Climate Change,” Atoms for
Peace: An International Journal 3, no. 3 (2012):
238–55.
8 See Vyjayanthi Rao, “Slum Theory,” African Cities
Reader 1, no. 1 (2009): 23–40.
265
9 See Vit Klemeš, “Risk Analysis: The Unbearable
Cleverness of Bluffing,” in Risk, Reliability,
Uncertainty, and Robustness of Water Resource
Systems, eds. János Bogárdi and Zbigniew
Kundzewicz (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2002): 22–29.
10 See Paul N. Edwards, A Vast Machine: Computer
Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global
Warming (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2010): 5.
Lessons Learned from Mumbai:
Planning Challenges for the Compact City
Rahul Mehrotra
Can density alone be used to judge the sustainability of a city? Rahul
11 See Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of
Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 2003).
Mehrotra, principal of Mumbai-based RMA Architects, encourages us to
12 United Nations Environment Programme, “Cities
and Coastal Areas,” http://www.unep.org/urban_
environment/issues/coastal_zones.asp.
sustainable city will give rich and poor alike good access to mobility,
consider social factors as well as economic and ecological ones: a truly
infrastructure, and opportunity.
Historically, formal and informal cities
have formed a sharply juxtaposed
binary. Though these cities have been
totally interdependent in their evolving
relationship, the economic and physical
characteristics of each were distinguished
and thought to be fixed. The people that
engaged in the informal economy were
imagined to reside in the informal city and
vice versa. However, in the messy, mutinous
democratic condition of Mumbai, and indeed
in most parts of India, this relationship is
not so neat. In Mumbai, people employed
in the formal sector often reside in the
informal city and vice versa.
Although the informal city has come to
epitomize the compact city, the densities of
the informal and formal cities are similar.1
Informal city is celebrated for its economic
efficiency and human resilience in the face
of extreme infrastructural and sanitary
deficiencies. Mumbai has been at the center
of the world’s imagination in the last few
years for all the wrong reasons.2 While its
economic energy has been celebrated, what
has not been adequately articulated is its
failure to cope with infrastructure, housing,
and governance. One of the reasons for
this skewed focus is that the metrics that
we use to measure density are inadequate.
266
Measured in terms of floor area ratio, which
compares a building’s total floor area to the
area of its site, density of urban form often
does not account for intensity of use, which
would provide a more accurate estimate of
the amount of people actually using a space
and thus of its infrastructural requirements.
The notion that greater density equals
greater economic equity is often a red
herring in discussions about the compact
city and its failure to provide equitable
access to infrastructure (sanitation, water,
and mobility) to a majority of the population.
The manifestations of these failures in the
form of slums, the informal city, garbage
on the streets, overcrowding, and bizarre
adjacencies have become the new mythical
images through which the city is celebrated
globally.
The current fetishizing of informal cities has
shifted the focus of planning from avantgarde approaches to rearguard actions. In
the last few years, architects and planners
have developed strategies of incremental
growth and upgrades to the existing built
environment rather than opening up land
and planning new urban centers to disperse
growth, as was done when Navi Mumbai was
imagined in the 1970s.3 Like the preservation
debate before it, this limited narrative
267
frame around the informal city has frozen
architects and planners into inaction.
To address intensity of use in Mumbai,
we need to look at the city as a kinetic
space, a space where informal and formal
models collapse into a singular entity.4 Like
other cities in India, Mumbai has become
a critical point of contact between elite
and subaltern cultures. The fragmentation
of service and production has resulted in
a new, bazaar-like urbanism, which has
woven its presence through the entire
urban landscape. This is an urbanism
created by those outside the elite domains
of the formal modernity of the state. It is
a “pirate” modernity that slips under the
laws of the city to simply survive, without
any conscious attempt at constructing a
counterculture.5 This phenomenon is critical
to the city being connected to the global
economy. The spaces it creates, however,
have largely been excluded from the regular
discourses on planning, in which the binary
between the formal and the informal is used
to explain the asymmetries of the urban
system. As a kinetic space, however, it is a
hybrid form of urbanism in which the formal,
represented by permanent structures and
infrastructure, coalesces in the same space
as the temporary landscapes of the informal.
Critically, these don’t define mutually
exclusive economic classes. The rich, poor,
and middle class all use this multifarious
landscape to live, to celebrate, and—most
importantly—for economic exchange.
The kinetic city is uniquely characterized
by acute density and inequity. This
combination forces architects and planners
to ask questions: Who benefits from high
density? At what level does density begin
to have a negative impact on communities?
Defining appropriate densities for cities to
be productive is a difficult task given the
shifting nature of the urban landscape. The
268
more interesting—though perhaps still more
difficult—challenge is to approach density,
democracy, and the question of equity
simultaneously. Lack of access to land and
infrastructure and the impulse to go soft
on large-scale planning and infrastructural
questions has resulted in “slums” in Mumbai.
These neighborhoods are emblematic of
severe inequalities and challenge the
sustainable dimension of compact cities.
If we study Mumbai as a kinetic city and
its intensity of use, we might uncover the
lessons and challenges that Mumbai brings
to the debate on the compact city in terms
of the economy, housing, and planning. Most
importantly, it brings into the debate the
question of temporality—here, architecture
or solutions fixed in time and space are not
the only instruments by which the city, its
culture, and ultimately its urban form are
defined. This implies that incrementalism,
for example, becomes an important strategy
by which the city is made, and thus that the
city is often in a state of temporariness and
incompletion.
The Kinetic City: Hybrid Urban Space
Today, most Indian cities are distinguished
not only by architecture or cohesive urban
design gestures, but also by spaces that
facilitate the articulation of collective values
and are supportive of everyday living. The
way that people use spaces determines the
city’s form and how it is perceived; it is an
indigenous urbanism with a very particular
“local” logic. Mumbai is not necessarily a
city of the poor, as many images suggest;
rather, the city is defined temporally and
through the informal occupation of space.
This not only creates a richer sensibility
of spatial occupation, but also suggests
how spatial limits are expanded to include
formally unimagined uses in dense urban
conditions. The processions, weddings,
↑ 1. Cricket fields (or maidans) can be converted into venues for weddings. Temporary
structures create enclosures for these events. They are often erected in a matter of
hours and are dismantled by the next morning, restoring the field for use by cricketers.
269
festivals, hawkers, street vendors, and
slum dwellers create an ever-transforming
streetscape and a city in constant motion.
Architecture is no longer the “spectacle”
of Mumbai, nor does it comprise the single
dominant image of the city. In contrast,
festivals such as Diwali, Dussera, Navrathri,
Muhharam, Durga Puja, and Ganesh
Chathurthi have emerged as the popular
visual culture of Indian cities.
Festivals create a forum in which the
fantasies of the subaltern are articulated
and even organized into political action. In
Mumbai, for example, the popularity and
growth of the Ganesh festival has been
phenomenal. The Ganeshotsava, as it is
referred to locally, was reinvented in the
late nineteenth century by Lokamanya Tilak,
the first leader of the Indian independence
movement, as what the Indian poet and
cultural theorist Ranjit Hoskote describes as
“a symbol of resistance to the British colonial
regime.” The festival worked around the ban
on public gatherings. By “[taking] a domestic
and private idiom of worship and [translating]
it into a collective and public rite of selfassertion,” it became a political instrument
for public engagement for the subaltern.6
During the festival, which occurs in August
or September, numerous neighborhoods are
temporarily transformed with lights and
decoration. New spaces that range from
covered streets to freestanding pavilions
are created to house the idol of Ganesh for
ten days. During this festival period, people
celebrate as families, as neighborhoods, and
as an entire city. On the last day, a large
part of the city’s population—approximately
seven million people—carries several hundred
Ganesh idols in long processions to be
immersed in the sea.
↑ 2. Views of the Ganesh immersion at Chowpatty Beach, Mumbai.
These images visually juxtapose the static and kinetic cities.
270
Immersion is a metaphor for the spectacle
of the kinetic city. As the clay idol dissolves
in the water of the bay, the spectacle
disappears. There are no static or permanent
means to encode it. The memory of the city
is instead an enacted process: a temporal
moment as opposed to buildings that contain
the public memory as a static or permanent
entity. The city and its architecture are not
synonymous and cannot contain a single
meaning. Within the kinetic city, meanings
are not stable; spaces are continuously
consumed, reinterpreted and recycled
through use.
Economy
Mumbai dissolves the obvious physical
differences between informal and formal
cities to establish a much richer relationship
spatially and metaphorically. The dabbawalas
(literally translated as “tiffin men”) are an
example of the interdependency between the
formal and informal. The lunch tiffin delivery
service, which relies on the train system
for transportation, costs approximately
200 Indian rupees (four US dollars) per
month. A dabbawala picks up a tiffin from a
house anywhere in the city, delivers it to its
recipient’s workplace by lunchtime, and then
returns it later in the day.
Around 200,000 tiffins are delivered in
Mumbai each day by approximately 4,500
dabbawalas.7 The efficiency of Mumbai’s
train system, the spine of the linear city,
enables the complex informal system to
work. A dabba or tiffin is exchanged by
different dabbawalas up to five times
between its pickup and its return home in
the evening. The average tiffin travels about
30 kilometers each way. In economic terms,
the annual turnover amounts to roughly
50 million rupees, or about one million US
dollars.8
Entrepreneurship in the kinetic city depends
on the ability to fold the formal and
271
informal into a symbiotic relationship. The
dabbawalas, like other informal services
including banking, money transfers, couriers,
and electronic bazaars, leverage community
relationships and networks and deftly use
the city’s infrastructure beyond its intended
margins. These networks create a synergy
that depends on mutual integration without
the obsession of formalized structures.
that will facilitate not social resolution but
rather separation. An obvious extension of
the Shanghai simile is the notion of remaking
the city in a singular image and using architecture to represent a global aspiration.
Such global implications also raise political
questions that challenge the democratic
processes of city governance.9
Governance
Housing
More than 40 percent of Mumbai’s
population has no access to formal housing;
this population lives on less than 10 percent
of the city’s land in settlements that are
locally referred to as slums. Nearly half
of the population therefore experiences
instability and indeterminacy daily and has
inadequate access to basic infrastructure,
such as water and sewage services. Regular
demolitions of informal housing heighten the
tenuous nature of these settlements. A lack
of land tenure exacerbates this situation
and discourages inhabitants from investing
in their homes. Most housing in the city is
therefore mobile and impermanent, often as
a strategy to defeat eviction. It constantly
recycles its resources from demolition
sites and recycling yards in the formal and
informal cities, thus making efficient use of
resources and establishing a visual presence
on the built landscape with very little means.
The contrast between wealthy areas—suburbs on the periphery and gated communities throughout the city—and the majority
of the population is increasing. The promise
of making Mumbai as clean and efficient as
Shanghai, Dubai, or Singapore is emblematic of the one-dimensional imagination
that planners and politicians bring to bear
on decisions about the city’s development
and, more importantly, its physical form.
They propose creating a brittle urban form
272
Municipal governance is critical to
negotiating the hybrid urbanism of the
kinetic city because it provides an effective
point of intervention. Through governance
and formal planning policies, globalization
and its particular transgressions in the
urban landscape are realized. The kinetic
city’s ability to reconfigure itself socially,
culturally, and spatially to resist or
participate in the processes of globalization
and planning will determine its future.
A growing movement of slum associations
and networks in Mumbai is a potent
illustration of how much slum dwellers
have to gain by engaging with formal
government processes and organizations.
These associations work with the formal
world of the static city while mediating the
inherent issues of legality, informality, and
the mobile and temporal strategies of the
kinetic city. The most celebrated of these
movements is the alliance between the
Society for the Promotion of Area Resources,
a grassroots organization; the National Slum
Dwellers Federation, an NGO; and the Mahila
Milan, an organization of poor women. This
alliance seeks secure land and access to
urban infrastructure for poor communities.
Its work to relocate slum dwellers from the
railway tracks in Mumbai and create an
effective tripartite arrangement between
the World Bank, the state government, and
the slum dwellers was an example of how
↑ 3. Dabbawalas begin their deliveries in downtown Mumbai.
Tiffins are sorted out by code before delivery to the clients.
273
↑ 4. High rises and slums in close proximity in Mumbai—
the defining contemporary image of the city.
↑ 5. The before and after of a slum demolition.
274
275
agreements can be made across domains in
new participatory governance models.
Post Planning
How does a city like Mumbai grapple with
this condition of growing inequalities,
especially during India’s ongoing economic
liberalization? As the Chinese art critic Hou
Hanru has pointed out, commercial gains and
obsessions about the city’s economy are
not only taking precedence over everything
else, but, in fact, are also challenging and
erasing traditional planning processes. The
term “post planning,” coined by Hou, helps
describe the condition of Mumbai. Planning
in Mumbai is systematically “posterior”; it
is used as a recuperative, securing action.
In this post-planning condition, economic
benefits and profits are the central players.
As Hou describes, economics and profits
have clearly replaced traditional ideological,
social, environmental, historical, and
aesthetic elements as the main driving
forces behind the creation and expansion of
cities. In post-planned cities, citizens must
“confront urgent questions of instability,
indecision, changeability, and survival,
while established social and urban fabrics
are continuously being deconstructed and
reorganized at an alarming rate.”10 In the
process, major urban interventions have
often resulted in a new dramatic, chaotic,
and unexpected landscape.
↑ 6. A typical cluster in 1986, the year it was completed, and in 2012. The low-rise
high-density configuration of this housing type creates a great sense of cooperation.
276
Rearguard planning very quickly spirals
into a process of involution: more happens
on limited space, and cities become more
internally complex. This urban condition
is usually more economically efficient but
highly susceptible to the breakdown of
basic urban services. Mumbai’s present
state is characterized by this condition.
The densification of population and
infrastructure has resulted in uncomfortable
adjacencies. The much-celebrated slum
Dharavi is emblematic of this involutionary
process. Dharavi is compact and efficient,
a crucible for economic activity—especially
for the poor and the middle class—but
physically unsustainable, with poor
sanitation, poor access to infrastructure,
no clear ownership of land titles, and a
dysfunctional real estate market.
On the other end of this spectrum are
evolutionary or avant-garde planning
gestures. Here, the imagination of the
city is not limited in physical space, but
encompasses the greater metropolitan
region, the hinterland, and even the broader
territory of the nation-state. Cities grow
and evolve by either opening up new land
for growth or recycling land within their
boundaries. This development is crucial
to a city diversifying into more dynamic
economic and urban modes. India’s first
such attempt was New Bombay, or Navi
Mumbai as it is now called. First discussed
in 1964 by Shirish Patel, Pravina Mehta,
and Charles Correa, the idea was officially
sanctioned in the 1970s and the City and
Industrial Develoment Corporation (CIDCO),
a government agency, was established to
develop the satellite town. The project
was premised on opening up affordable
land to decongest the city. Unfortunately,
the municipal government was slow to
establish adequate infrastructure. Instead
of developing outward, the existing
island city of Mumbai simply grew denser.
Nevertheless, opening up new land created
many more opportunities for housing,
as well as new modes of governance
and implementation, like public-private
partnerships, and new relationships
between top-down and bottom-up modes of
decision making. Civil society also played
a greater role in decision making thanks to
greater transparency in the way that the
government wrote its urban policies.
277
Unfortunately, with Navi Mumbai still in
a formative stage, the government has
recently begun to sell the land to private
enterprise—a complete reversal of the
earlier policy. This nascent privatization
of development in Navi Mumbai has crucial
implications for the future of the city. Land
in Navi Mumbai is affordable and public
transportation is viable. It is still possible
for the government to allocate and develop
land for affordable housing, and publicsector mobility is the best form of subsidy
to housing; it is indirect and thus does not
have to deal with the complexities of regular
housing loans and the politics of subsidy.
For this to work effectively, however, it is
essential that the government control or
at least influence land markets—which
becomes less likely once land ownership
is devolved to the private sector. The ideal
urban form for such a system—perhaps the
most equitable form of development for a
democracy—is low rise and high density; it
supports public transportation investment
and makes it viable. This is most viable when
the government facilitates the process by
creating a consistent flow of affordable
land and allowing citizens to participate
in the process of building—most often
incrementally.
One architectural example from Navi
Mumbai that addresses the questions of
density, equity, democracy, and economy
simultaneously is Charles Correa’s Belapur
Housing project, designed for CIDCO in
1985. Equity, in terms of access to land, is
treated here as a fundamental parameter
for potentially neutralizing the polarity that
exists in cities like Mumbai. More importantly,
the project shifts its emphasis from site
planning to creating spaces for negotiations,
porous divisions, and hierarchies that
can help form neighborhoods. It squarely
addresses the question of the unsettled
nature of our cities and anticipates change
278
in our shifting demographic condition. Correa
argued that “a policy of equity plots would
have the added advantage of not predetermining social and economic mix in the
neighborhood, or across the city,” and the
project is premised on the idea that everyone
should have, as much as is possible, equal
access to land regardless of their income
group.11 However, each individual can build
as much as their income or wealth permits
them to do. Thus form is differentiated by
investment while land distribution remains
equal and fair.
The Belapur project achieves a density of
approximately 500 people or 100 families per
hectare. A six-hectare site accommodates
approximately 600 units. Slightly less
dense than the densest parts of Mumbai,
the project offers a low-rise, high-density
solution with the obvious advantages of
incremental growth and community. Correa
highlights this community aspect as he
elaborates on the intentions of the project:
“Each cluster permits the emergence of
a hyper-local community feeling, while
integrating each house to the whole
settlement at different levels; the hierarchy
itself is very organic.”12 Residents would
alter the project in various ways, making it
truly their own: “Homes are freestanding,
so residents can add on to them as their
families grow; and differently priced plans
appeal to a wide variety of income levels.”13
The incremental elements of the project
have also produced a fair amount of work
in the construction sector, with small-scale
artisans participating in the construction
process.
The most important takeaway from the
project, however, is twofold. First, its
demographic mix makes for more sustainable
communities; different sections of society
are not only represented and aware of each
other, but also offer each other services in a
mutually beneficial economy. This condition
introduces the social as a critical factor for
the sustainable city. Second, the project
shows the rich possibilities for design
when there is a shift in the frame or scale
of our gaze and the “compact” can find
a place in the broader regional planning
dimension. The location and access to public
transportation demonstrate the crucial role
that compactness can play in determining
urban form; in the case of Belapur Housing,
easy access to public transportation means
that the poor and rich are equally mobile.
Learning from Mumbai
Today, especially in the global south or
“majority world,” we must judge a city not
by how dense it is but by how it treats
its poor. This should be a fundamental
criterion for applying any global standards
of sustainability or efficiency. Sustainability
is not a matter of choosing between the
compact or non-compact city; rather, the
aspiration to be sustainable must engage
several domains in the city simultaneously:
ecology, mobility, economy, governance,
and infrastructure that, if appropriate
access to infrastructure can be ensured,
serves both poor and rich equally. Compact
cities like Mumbai sustain the economy
remarkably well. However, they will be
socially sustainable only if they can create
equitable opportunities and mobility for
the poor in terms of housing and access
to infrastructure. Any discussion of the
sustainable dimension of compact cities
must use parameters broader than the city’s
physical footprint and economy and include
social, political, and ecological dimensions.
much as is generally believed. What varies greatly,
however, is their acess to amenities. “Housing for
the Urban Poor in India: Densities, Amenities and
the Built Form” (unpublished paper, 2012).
2 Thanks to films like Slumdog Millionaire and the
many international universities that have initiated
research projects in Dharavi.
3 See William S. W. Lim, Asian Ethical Urbanism: A
Radical Postmodern Perspective (Singapore: World
Scientific Publishing, 2005).
4 For a detailed description of the idea of the
kinetic city, see Rahul Mehrotra, “Negotiating the
Static and Kinetic Cities,” in Urban Imaginaries,
ed. Andreas Huyssen (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2007).
5 Ravi Sundaram, “Recycling Modernity: Pirate
Electronic Cultures in India,” Sarai Reader 01:
The Public Domain (2001), http://www.sarai.net/
publications/readers/01-the-public-domain/093099piracy.pdf.
6 Ranjit Hoskote, “Scenes from a Festival,” The
Hindu, January 14, 2001, http://www.hindu.com/
folio/fo0101/01010180.htm.
7 Vinay Venkatramam and Stefano Mirti, “India / 1.
Network Design,” Domus, December 2005.
8 Ibid.
9 For a more detailed analysis, see Arjun Appadurai,
“Deep Democracy: Urban Governmentality and
the Horizon of Politics,” in Environment and
Urbanization 13, no. 2 (2001): 23–43.
10 Lim, Asian Ethical Urbanism, 31–32.
11 Correa Charles, The New Landscape (Bombay:
Book Society of India, 1985).
12 Ibid.
13 Rameeta Garewal, “Social Polarization and Role
of Planning: The Developed and Developing World,”
42nd ISoCaRP Congress, Yildiz Technical University,
Istanbul, September 14–18, 2006. http://www.
isocarp.net/Data/case_studies/811.pdf.
Notes
1 S. P. Shorey has shown that the densities of rich
and poor housing in urban India do not vary as
279
Sustainability as the Rigorous Use
of Common Sense
Alejandro Aravena
Is “the economy of sustainable construction” a question or
a statement? Should we respond to the question of how to
deal with the costs associated with sustainable construction,
or should we give examples demonstrating that there is
an underlying economy to building sustainably? Question
or statement, there is no doubt that there is value in
sustainability: social value in better living conditions, physical
value in a healthier and less polluted environment, long-term
monetary value in reduced maintenance costs, and, above all,
ethical value in fairness to future generations. The way things
are today, however, requires all of us to pay a high price for
achieving that value. So how do we convince decision makers
in finance and politics that we need to fund the creation
of this value? We at Elemental believe that, for those with
money and power to agree to pursue that higher value, even
if that requires more expense, we will need two things: in
this generation, an army of psychiatrists, and in the next
generation, more breastfeeding.
How did we come to these conclusions? It may have started
on February 27, 2010, at 3:34 in the morning, when an 8.8
Richter scale magnitude earthquake hit Chile. We’re used
to earthquakes in Chile; in 1960 we experienced the biggest
earthquake ever recorded, a 9.5 on the Richter scale. What
differed this time was that the earthquake was followed by a
tsunami, which destroyed many cities in the southern part of
the country.
280
After the natural catastrophe, we were asked by the forestry
company Arauco to work in a city called Constitución, which
is located 400 kilometers south of Santiago, right by the
Pacific Ocean. Constitución was hit by the tsunami and was
almost completely destroyed. The tsunami first hit at the
northernmost point of the city, with twelve-meter waves, then
kept moving through the river and hit the rest of the city with
six-meter waves. Arauco thought that they could contribute to
the recovery by donating the professional knowledge required
to design a sustainable master plan for the reconstruction
of the city, improving the local technical capacity and
saving precious time, given that a private company can hire
consultants directly instead of going through the conventional
process of public bids required by the state.
We were given one hundred days to redesign Constitución. A
hundred days is a very short period of time to design a city,
but it’s an eternity to people living on the streets. A sense
of urgency is crucial if we want to bring about major changes
to the way our cities are organized. As part of that project,
we came up with a design and plan for almost every possible
building in the city. In addition, we had to think about how to
mitigate and protect the city against future threats.
Given the unusual scale of the operation, the design process
had to be participatory. We learned the importance of
including residents and their opinions while working on
social housing projects; this time, working with Tironi and
Associates, a strategic communications company, we applied
the process at the entire city level. For us, participatory
design is not exactly codesigning; here, it meant that we
needed people to precisely define their needs and focus on
281
establishing priorities. Most importantly, the community had
to feel empowered to exert pressure on the authorities during
implementation. All major changes in cities occur over a
period of time that is much longer than the terms of political
administrations. By being involved, residents can guarantee
that the next administration implements the decisions and the
ideas that were discussed.
One critical question was how to best protect the city against
future tsunamis. Three alternatives were aired. The first
prohibited people from living in areas where the waves had
destroyed the city. Politicians and the government preferred
this solution because it was politically correct; they could say
that they were going to protect people and not allow them to
live in a dangerous area. However, we thought that this was
unrealistic. Fishermen, in particular, would settle as close as
possible to their livelihood, the river, and for the government
to ignore this would result in poor living conditions. It would
also make future tsunamis even more dangerous for them.
The second alternative, building a big wall to protect the
city, was preferred by companies in the business of heavy
infrastructure. It was also marketed to the residents as
convenient; it required no one to move, so, with a big wall
protecting them, residents could reconstruct their homes on
their original locations. The 2011 tsunami and earthquake
in Japan, however, proved how defenseless a wall could be
against the full force of nature.
Our strategy was the opposite of the second. Instead of
resisting the energy of nature, we would try to dissipate it: a
geographical answer to a geographical threat. We proposed
282
↑ 1. The earthquake that hit Chile in 2010 and the tsunami that
ensued almost completely destroyed Constitución, a city of
around 46,000 inhabitants located directly on the Pacific coast.
283
planting a forest to protect the city from tsunamis. For
this approach, we had not only mathematical models and
laboratory tests, but also empirical evidence. When the waves
first hit Constitución, they were twelve meters tall; a forested
island to the north of the city dissipated their energy and,
by the time they reached the city center, they were only six
meters tall. Our idea was therefore to protect the city by
redeveloping the riverfront with trees. This alternative was
the most challenging, politically and socially, because it
required the city to expropriate private land.
There is nothing worse than giving a good answer to the
wrong question. So we presented the residents these
alternatives not as three different answers but as three
different questions addressing different problems. They voted
for the third one citing three reasons.
The first reason was that a public forest would increase
access to the river. The plots around the river were, at that
time, privately owned, making the river inaccessible to most
people. This has been a long and very prominent debate in
the city. The proposal also responded to another discussion
about how to reinstate the identity of the city in light of how
difficult it would be to rebuild all the buildings. People said
not to worry about the buildings; they identified more with the
natural elements than with architecture. For them, the river
was far more important than any building, and they wanted a
guarantee that they would have access to it, because that was
the very heart, the real origin and real identity of the city.
284
↑ 2. Participatory community meetings explored three solutions
that would help protect Constitución from future tsunamis:
prohibiting development close to the seashore, building a wall
around the city, and creating a forested buffer zone between
the city and the Pacific.
Secondly, residents argued that there was a lack of public
space in the city. Numbers supported their claim: before the
285
tsunami struck, there were only 2.2 square meters of public
space per person. Our riverfront forest would increase that
number to 6.6 square meters per person.
Finally, people said that, though the next tsunami might not
happen for a long time, the city would surely flood each winter
because of the rain. The other alternatives, particularly the
second, would further exacerbate the problem of flooding.
Having a forest on the edge to absorb the water and rainfall
provided a solution for something that was perceived by the
community as a far more pressing issue than protecting the
city against future tsunamis.
The most popular option was also the most expensive, at
least at first glance. The first alternative, prohibiting living
by the coast, would have cost about 30 million dollars. Most
of the money would have gone into buying land in order
to forbid construction there. The second plan would have
required spending a total of about 42 million dollars on heavy
infrastructure. The third proposal cost 48 million dollars. It
required both landscaping and the expropriation of land and
was therefore more expensive than the other two proposals.
However, it also had more value: disaster mitigation, flood
prevention, providing public space, and opening up access to
the river.
And, in fact, that apparent extra cost is sometimes only a
matter of poor coordination. We discovered that the Ministry
of Housing and Urbanism had a project for a highway along
the river, the Water Department had a project for the rain
canals, and the Harbor Department had a project for the
river embankment and shore protection. They weren’t
286
Dwelling
Park mitigating the effects
of tsunamis and flooding
by rainwater
Waterfront
↑ 3. The two images on top depict the destroyed Constitución seashore before and
after the proposed landscaping of the stretch along the banks. The forested area will
also help avoid flooding from rainwater, which occurs every year in Constitución.
287
US$ US$
1,0001,000
+
+
US$ US$
20,000
20,000
=
=
US$ US$
2,0002,000
+
+
10,000
US$ US$
10,000
=
=
42 m²42 m²
9 months
9 months
72 m²72 m²
6 months
6 months
21,000
US$ US$
21,000
US$ US$
12,000
12,000
↑ 4. By combining the funds for emergency housing with those for social housing, we can
build better long-term housing for those displaced by disasters. Building half a house—with a
structurally supported space for homeowners to expand into—provides housing that is ultimately
almost twice as large as normal social housing and located in a more desirable location.
288
communicating with one another, so none of them knew
what the others were doing. The total cost of these three
projects was about 52 million dollars. So, by coordinating
existing projects—without adding anything to the budget—
we were able to implement the more sustainable alternative
for four million dollars less than it would have cost to solve
each problem separately. Of course this required not only
coordination but a slight redesign of each project so that they
could now work together as a single entity.
We were also asked to build homes for the displaced families.
We began by surveying the resources provided by the Ministry
of Housing’s different programs and the program to build
temporary emergency shelters. Typically, the government
responds to a natural disaster by providing eighteen-squaremeter wooden boxes with neither insulation nor windows,
at a cost of around 1,000 dollars per unit. The Ministry of
Housing’s long-term housing program, on the other hand, is
required by law to provide a 42-square-meter house, typically
built in nine months at a cost of 20,000 dollars.
We proposed combining these two budgets but distributing
the money differently. Instead of spending a little money
on a disposable emergency shelter and then following the
conventional program of social housing, we opted for a more
expensive, better-quality emergency shelter that could
then be dismantled and reused in an incremental socialhousing scheme. Financially speaking, the 2,000-dollar
emergency shelters were like an advance on the permanent
solution. Physically, they were the basis for a 36-squaremeter expansion into a long-term structure, which, as a
consequence, could be erected more cheaply and quickly.
289
We believe that houses should be the opposite of cars: they
should gain value over time. In social housing, that is often
not the case. The value of social housing tends to decrease
over time. Quality is not a concern in social housing, because
it’s politically fraught: higher quality housing usually means
fewer units per year, lower employment rates, and a lull in the
construction sector. However, it’s very important for social
housing to gain value over time. In a country like Chile, which
has a housing policy that is property oriented, when you
receive a subsidy, you become the owner of your house. The
housing subsidy is by far the biggest trespass of public money
into a family asset. One would like that money to grow in value
over time so that it can have a parallel life as capital. That
way, it can help lift families out of poverty—a family could, for
example, use their house as collateral to get a loan for a small
business, for a cab, or to pay for a better education for their
children. If that can happen, housing will be an investment
and not just a social expense.
There is evidence that a middle-income family can live
comfortably in around 80 square meters. If there’s money, be
it private savings or public subsidy, then there is no problem.
But what if there’s no money? What market forces tend to do
is either reduce the size of the house or displace the family,
in which case housing is built on the outskirts of cities,
where land costs next to nothing. For poor families, this is a
disaster; they’re excluded from the opportunities that cities
tend to concentrate.
Public funding in Chile can only pay for 40 square meters,
which the market treats as a small house. We thought the
problem had to be framed differently. We said: why don’t
290
↑ 5. Housing built in Constitución for residents affected
by the earthquake and tsunami, with self-built additions.
291
we conceive those 40 square meters as half of a good
house instead of a small one and build in the possibility
for residents to expand it to 80 square meters? When you
reframe the problem as having money for only half of a goodsized house, the question becomes “Which half do we do?”
We thought we should build and invest the public money into
the half that a family will never achieve on its own: a strong
structure with plumbing, openings, and access stairs. Next to
each built section of the row house is an open space of the
same size into which residents can expand their house. This
allows residents, as money becomes available, to incrementally
build upon the public investment in their home. Because half
of a house can be built in less time, a higher standard can
be achieved for less money; the rest of the money is used to
secure a more attractive location.
↑ 6. The Siamese Towers and the Angelini Innovation
Center at the Catholic University in Santiago.
292
If you want to build sustainably, you have to be prepared
to lose a job. These are the Siamese Towers in Santiago,
Chile, which we built in 2005–2006. Our first design for the
project was a low-lying building with an opaque facade,
which would help to minimize the building’s solar heat gain.
Our client, however, rejected the design; he wanted a glass
tower instead. We complied with his wishes, and focused our
efforts on mitigating the glass tower’s greenhouse effect. We
designed an outer skin that was made out of glass but allowed
hot air to leave the system before it reached the inner opaque
building. The glass layer didn’t touch the ground, so cooler air
could flow into the system. The hot air produced by the glass
then moved up by convection and was accelerated through the
“waist” of the building by a Venturi effect, leaving the system
through openings on the top. We did our best, but we thought
it was not good enough.
293
Seven years later, we were competing for the design of
the Angelini Innovation Center at Catholic University in
Santiago. It’s about three hundred meters away from
the Siamese Towers. With this project, we did not want
to make the same mistake we had with that building.
We were on the shortlist of architecture firms vying for
the project, competing against another office with a
design that considered a glass building; we thought the
client wouldn’t be able to resist a glass facade and its
connotations of contemporariness for an Innovation Center.
We were absolutely convinced that glazed facades were not
sustainable in the weather of Santiago, so we preferred to
lose the job rather than being professionally irresponsible.
We told the client that the worst thing one could do
would be to design an innovation center that soon became
outdated. The risk of being too trendy is that the building
may not stand the test of time. So instead of opting for
a contemporary look or even a futuristic one, we should
opt for timelessness. By choosing a more monolithic
architecture, we not only achieve what might be the right
character for the building but also solve its environmental
performance issues from the outset. In the climate of
Santiago, it made sense to build walls with recessed
windows that prevent solar heat gain during the summer.
A walled structure also allowed it to better withstand
earthquakes. None of this is rocket science. If you open one
window over here and another over there, you have crossventilation; that solves 90 percent of the sustainability
problem. This is traditional knowledge, which is not only
good to have at the core of an innovation center but is also
common sense in its most pure state.
294
In the end, sustainability is just the rigorous use of common
sense. One does not need to be an expert or be brilliant;
it’s mainly common sense. But why is common sense so
uncommon? Take a look at how Santiago has been built,
especially where the economic and political power is. Nearly
all of the buildings are glass towers that, in practice, are
like greenhouses, extremely hot. In order to be livable, they
require an embarrassing expenditure for air conditioning.
Why, if it’s so obvious that, for a climate like the one in
Santiago you shouldn’t be doing glass curtain walls and
should have walls with windows instead, does everybody use
glass? If it’s such common sense, if it’s so simple to arrive
at that conclusion, then why is everybody so unreasonable?
Furthermore, how is it possible that the Costanera Center
qualifies as LEED Gold—just because it has bicycle parking on
the sidewalk? Designed by Cesar Pelli, it’s promoted as the
tallest building in South America, which many Chileans feel
very proud about, but being made entirely out of glass, it’s
really the biggest greenhouse in South America. To offset the
heat gain, the Costanera Center will use water from a nearby
canal to cool the building using a “natural” cooling system.
This is a perfect example of how money and time are spent
solving a problem that didn’t have to exist to begin with.
I guess the answer is that the forces that shape our built
environment, capital and political power, follow commonplace
ideas, not common sense. The economy of sustainable
construction requires courage more than knowledge.
Innovation in the built environment does not necessarily come
from new materials, new techniques, or new systems; it comes
from the having the courage to follow common sense rather
than commonplace ideas.
295
The built environment, however, resists change, especially in
the building and construction sector. This is for two reasons.
The first one is that all the incentives in the building sector,
like in agriculture, are on the second mover. If you innovate
and succeed, everybody will copy you; there’s no way to
protect your innovation. However, if you don’t succeed,
you suffer the whole loss yourself. Everybody is waiting for
someone else to move first. Because it’s financially safer to
follow established practices, innovation in building is hard.
If you present an out-of-the-ordinary solution, investors,
developers, and politicians will typically ask you if it’s been
done before. If it hasn’t, they’ll postpone it for “next time.”
The second reason, and I guess this is the more important,
more crucial one, is that there’s a very deep fear of stepping
out of the herd, following an independent path. Money, which
is not only a currency but is also seen as an objective way
to measure success, is particularly resistant to standing out
from what everybody else is doing. We see the same thing in
politics. So what kind of people are so insecure that they are
afraid of defining their own measures of success? What kind
of people, even if they identify something that is valuable,
opt to do what everybody else says will be successful? People
who were not breastfed long enough or who didn’t have loving
enough mothers.
cannot be two. Integrity is the kind of thing you achieve if
you’re secure enough, and security comes from breastfeeding.
This is not a Freudian explanation; it is about bonding at a
very early age.
Here are three proposals for a more sustainable built
environment and more sustainable construction. We should
not preach to the converted, but rather invest in the least
innovative people in the world—the developers, the realestate world—and in the second least innovative people in
the world, politicians. What form will this investment take?
First, in this generation, we need an army of psychiatrists to
give them the security to think outside of the box. For this
generation, it might already be too late, but psychiatrists may,
to some extent, repair the damage that may allow financiers
and politicians to act with integrity. For the next generation,
we should make sure that mothers can spend enough time
breastfeeding their children. If we’re able to create enough
time for mothers to bond with their children, it might be that
future investors and real estate developers and politicians
will be willing—will have the strength and the conviction—to
follow an independent, free-minded path. So, the ultimate
antidote to carbon emissions is oxytocin.
A lack of breastfeeding means a lack of integrity. Often,
when you talk to people about sustainability, they say that
they personally agree with you, “but business is business.”
This discrepancy between their beliefs in the private realm
and their behavior in the business realm points to a lack of
integrity. Integrity, by definition, means being just one. You
296
297
4.
Value
299
Putting a Price on Sustainability
Introduction by Holger Wallbaum and Annika Feige
The growing popularity of sustainability in the building sector
is underlined by the number of sustainable and green building
certificates and tools available today, such as LEED in the
United States, BREEAM in the United Kingdom, and DGNB
in Germany.1 Despite the popularity of sustainability and
the clear importance of the building sector in the process
of environmental change—the built environment will be
responsible for a third of the anthropogenic emissions that
have been released by 2030—the proportion of sustainable,
green, or energy-efficient buildings that have actually been
built remains low.2 In January 2013, only 12,849 buildings in
the world had been certified by LEED, 254,000 by BREEAM,
and 435 by DGNB.3 The reason? Many people believe that
sustainable construction needs extra effort, extra work, and
extra money.
This belief is supported by several studies that show that,
despite the savings from lowered utility costs, the additional
expenses of sustainable buildings, including additional
planning, material, and certification costs, hardly pay off over
the building’s anticipated lifespan. This is because value in
real estate generally means financial value. It’s determined
by investors, who buy and sell buildings on the market at a
price based primarily on the costs and earnings associated
with the building. However, there are more ways of valuing
sustainability than through money alone. We need to broaden
the definition of “value” in real estate to take into account
the additional value creation, both financial and nonfinancial,
of sustainable constructions.
300
301
In contrast to market value, other value categories—social
value, value in use, and cultural value—are not so easily
calculated or quantified. However, this does not mean
that they are less important. According to David Lorenz,
institutional investors focus mainly on market values and
partly on value in use, but also on image or sign value: social
status, prestige, and identity.4 Private investors focus mainly
on value in use while also considering emotional value,
sign value, social value, and market value. These different
categories of property values all have or are influenced
by certain property characteristics that can be, using
hedonic valuation concepts, integrated into calculations
of profitability. Today, more and more major companies and
institutional investors in the construction market are shifting
toward a holistic value perspective, which is promoted by
corporate social-responsibility policies and an increasing
consciousness in the market of these nonfinancial values.
Value is also created indirectly by enhanced quality of life and
work or by decreased external effects—reduced greenhousegas emissions during use, for example. This can also translate
into direct financial value by generating higher sales and
rental prices for sustainable buildings. In this chapter, we
will introduce a modern perspective on the financial value of
buildings, taking into consideration the costs and benefits
of construction—economic, ecological, and social—to all
members of society.
buildings to be valued and priced appropriately. This will
inspire more investors to invest in green buildings and drive
future sustainable construction. It will improve the traction
of the sustainability movement within the construction
industry and therefore make a large contribution to reducing
carbon emissions, foster a more responsible usage of natural
resources, and contribute to global welfare at the same time.
Notes
1 Green buildings and green building certification
systems, such as LEED and BREEAM, generally
address only environmental issues. Sustainable
buildings are those that address all three pillars of
sustainability: ecology, economy, and society.
2 United Nations Environment Programme,
Buildings and Climate Change: Status, Challenge
and Opportunities (Paris: UNEP, 2007), http://www.
unep.fr/shared/publications/pdf/DTIx0916xPABuildingsClimate.pdf.
3 BREEAM, BRE Global, http://www.breeam.
org; LEED, US Green Building Council, http://
www.usgbc.org/leed; DGNB, German Sustainable
Building Council, http://www.dgnb.de/en.
4 David Lorenz, “Sustainability and Property Value:
A Brief International Overview,” RICS Climate
Change Series: Getting all the Green Ducks in a
Row: Energy Performance, Value and Green Homes,
London, March 29, 2010.
Putting a price on the many values of sustainable development
dispels the myth that sustainable construction always
requires more time, effort, and money. Buildings are central
to the sustainable agenda, so it is important for sustainable
302
303
Example from
Goa, India
A laid-back, economical approach
In Goa, the rule seems
to be: “If there’s no
reason not to, plant a
coconut palm!”
It seems only natural, at first, that there
are so many coconut palms in Goa; it is the
tropics, after all. The trees cover public
and private property—village squares, front
yards, parking lots, and the edges of streets
and fields—like an additional layer of the
urban-rural landscape. But it’s not entirely
natural—the trees are actually purposefully
304
planted. The rule seems to be that you put a
coconut palm wherever there’s room for one
and no reason not to plant it. This practice
originated from the insight that coconut
palms are a very low-maintenance—and
generally low-impact—way to earn some
extra money: between 50 and 100 coconuts
can be harvested from one tree each year.
Beyond simply harvesting fruit, however,
the locals make complete use of the plants:
they use the nutshells as firewood, the palm
leaves to cover the roofs of beach huts and
canopies, and the straight, flexible trunks as
lumber. The underlying logic is convincing:
even enterprises with tiny profits can
make sense, as long as they require only a
proportionately small input. The continuous
coconut grove also does great things for the
local climate, keeping temperatures in the
shade of the coconut palms at a comfortable
level, even without artificial cooling, and
sustaining a constant, refreshing breeze.
305
Example from
Vacarisses, Spain
Minimal means lead to
maximum ingenuity
In 2007, when looking for a way to minimize
the cost of fitting out a single-family
house, Barcelona-based H Arquitectes
developed a completely new way to
combine bare structural walls and hidden
electrical wiring, something that’s usually
prohibitively complicated and expensive.
Their house in Vacarisses is built from
306
Cables are guided along
the walls of the white
rooms and punctured
through where needed in
an adjacent wooden room.
Only every second room's
walls are covered with
plasterboard. In the other
rooms, the bare structural
walls are left exposed.
solid wood panels. To present as many
wooden surfaces as possible and to save
material, they clad only every second room
in the building with white plasterboard
(which hides electrical wiring). To provide
electricity in the rooms with bare wooden
walls—without visible cables—they ran
wires to the places in the adjacent,
plasterboard-walled room directly across
from where they were needed, then punched
through the walls. Thanks to this clever
idea, only 50 percent as much indoor
cladding material and paneling work was
necessary; the special character of the bare
wooden walls was also preserved. Simple
and logical, this technique could be used
in any building with aesthetically appealing
structural walls—lightweight concrete
structures, for example, which may be used
very extensively in the near future.
307
Example from
Hong Kong, China
Bamboo scaffolding relies
on the impressive properties of bamboo as much as
the skilled craftsmen who
know how to use it.
New research supports
an old tradition
Steel:
Energy to produce: 234,000 mJ/m3
Price per tube: €30–100
In Hong Kong, bamboo is widely used to
construct scaffolding. Lightweight, flexible,
and cheap, bamboo rods are perfect for work
that is done at heady heights, exclusively
by hand, extremely quickly, or with minimal
space, all of which is important in a dense
city like Hong Kong. Bamboo rods are
connected with plastic ties, producing
structures that reach 300 meters high. This
308
technique may be an endangered one; the
taap pang, as bamboo scaffolders are known
in Hong Kong, are having problems recruiting
young craftsmen. The profession is seen as
outdated, old-fashioned, and dangerous. But
it may deserve another look: contemporary
research has suggested that using bamboo
in construction has ecological, economic,
and structural benefits. Bamboo grows fast
Bamboo:
Energy to produce: 300 mJ/m3
Price per rod: €0.50–3.00
and binds large amounts of CO2; compared
to pretty much any nonorganic building
material, it’s extremely energy efficient to
produce. In the case of bamboo scaffolding,
where it directly replaces steel rods, this
difference is especially striking. It would be
a great success, not only for the 1,500-yearold traditions of the taap pang, but also for
the whole building sector, if the practice of
bamboo scaffolding got a new lease on life in
the twenty-first century.
Source: Jennifer Ngo, “Why Is Hong Kong Last
Frontier for Bamboo Scaffolding?” South China
Morning Post, October 18, 2013,
http://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/article
/1186476/why-hong-kong-last-frontierbamboo-scaffolders.
309
The Green New Deal: Subordinating Finance
to the Interests of Society and the Ecosystem
Ann Pettifor
British Economist Ann Pettifor of Prime Economics challenges the myths of
money creation and argues that the economy’s ability to create money out
of thin air can be used to serve social and ecological needs—a Keynesian
Green New Deal that will restart stalled economies, boost employment, and
lay the infrastructural foundations for a more sustainable future.
At the heart of the political response to the
recent financial crisis is an ideologically
driven and mendacious conviction: that
society can afford to defend and bail out
a systemically broken banking system, but
cannot afford to address energy insecurity,
climate change, unemployment, poverty, or
disease. Society, it is argued, “has no money”
to finance recovery and create employment.
As early as 1983, Margaret Thatcher
expressed this widespread conviction very
clearly:
The State has no source of money
other than money which people earn
themselves. If the State wishes to spend
more it can do so only by borrowing your
savings or by taxing you more. It is no
good thinking that someone else will
pay—that “someone else” is you. There is
no such thing as public money. There is
only taxpayers’ money.1
More recently, in 2010, Angela Merkel
echoed this sentiment in a speech to her
party. She suggested that governments
“should simply have asked a Swabian
housewife. She would have told us her
worldly wisdom: in the long run, you can’t
live beyond your means.”2
310
Today, these paeans to frugality sit
strangely with the facts of the bailout of the
world’s banking system, and in particular
with European Central Bank (ECB) President
Mario Draghi’s promise to bond market
speculators that “within our mandate,
the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes
to preserve the euro,” to which he added,
“Believe me, it will be enough.”3 Note that
Draghi’s “whatever it takes” cannot include
raising revenue from taxation: the ECB has
no such powers. One US estimate, prepared
by the Government Accountability Office for
Senator Bernie Sanders, puts the sum of
the financial resources mobilized to rescue
the financial system between 2007 and 2009
at $16 trillion.4 Not a cent was raised from
taxation.
Though politicians try to mislead their
electorates into believing that governments
need to “live within their means” because
“there is no money,” citizens have noticed
that central bankers can create trillions
of dollars out of thin air, and, in fact,
were able to do so practically overnight
in order to bail out the private financial
system. These resources were not raised
from taxation—and are not made available
for other urgent social and ecological
causes.
Central bankers have this great power to
create financial resources, but they are not
alone. In normal times, private commercial
banks create a much higher proportion of
the economy’s money supply “out of thin
air.” In Britain, the private banking sector
creates 95 percent of the money supply.
Paul Sheard, the chief global economist for
Standard and Poor’s, explains:
Banks lend by simultaneously creating
a loan asset and a deposit liability on
their balance sheet. That is why it is
called credit “creation”—credit is created
literally out of thin air (or with the stroke
of a keyboard). The loan is not created
out of reserves. And the loan is not
created out of deposits: Loans create
deposits, not the other way around.5
Credit Creation and
Its Potential Consequences
The peculiarity of money and its creation is
scarcely discussed publicly, but it is of the
greatest importance. Properly understood—
and controlled—it can be a force for great
good, for prosperity and social justice.
Misunderstood and freed from control,
it is a dangerous and powerful agent of
instability—both financial and ecological—
and of social injustice.
If not regulated, credit becomes “easy
money.” If interest rates are not kept
low by regulatory means, charging “rent” on
that “easy money” can quickly compound the
outstanding debt and render it unpayable.
This is particularly true for companies
borrowing to invest in risky innovation or
projects in the green sector.
Recognizing that the power to create
credit is so effortless and extraordinary,
and that high rates of interest can quickly
lead to usury and bankruptcy, accountable
institutions, including central banks and
governments, have historically governed and
regulated credit creation and the setting of
interest rates. Since the 1970s, however, an
era of liberalization has prevailed. Politicians
and governments have permitted and indeed
even come to celebrate a “light touch” in
the regulation of credit creation. Central
bankers tolerated a lack of transparency in
the financial system and looked away while
creditors set interest rates that ultimately
proved unpayable.
The Growth of Inequity
While we may all have access to money, in
the form of wages, pensions, and so on, not
all of us have easy access to credit. Only
those—the rich, generally speaking—with
existing assets, such as property, can
borrow against those assets. Those without
assets have to take on huge risks, pay
loan sharks exorbitant rates of interest for
unsecured credit, or go without. They rely
on their wages, their salaries, or the profits
from their small businesses to improve their
living standards.
The ease with which credit can be created
has inflated the value of the assets owned
by those who do have assets. Just as
too much money chasing too few goods
and services leads to inflation, too much
credit chasing too few assets inflates the
value of assets owned by those who are
already better off. Central bankers and
finance ministers are overly concerned with
preventing the inflation of prices and wages;
they have developed policies to suppress
both. By contrast, they have turned a blind
eye to the inflation of assets. This serves
to explain how the rich have gotten richer
and the poor have become poorer since
liberalization in the 1970s.
311
As the credit bubble grew and grew,
there was another deleterious impact: it
essentially mortgaged the Earth. Easy credit
enabled consumers and producers to live
far beyond not only their own means, but
also our collective means—the resources
of the global environment. In the United
States, this was typified by a rise in large,
gas-guzzling sports utility vehicles (SUVs)
and the building of ever-larger “McMansion”
houses. The massive increase in consumption
was a by-product of economies that had
prioritized one facet of the economy—
consumption—while downgrading long-term
public and private investment as a share of
GDP. In 2007, for example, consumption made
up 70 percent of US GDP.
This credit-fueled consumption in “onelegged economies” meant that the world’s
richest economies built up massive economic
and ecological deficits. While mainstream
economists railed against government
budget deficits, they ignored the limits of
ecosystems and the way in which economies
were living beyond the constraints of
“ecological budgets.” This occurs, as
Frederick Soddy once explained, because
debts are subject to the laws of
mathematics rather than physics. Unlike
wealth, which is subject to the laws of
thermodynamics, debts do not rot with
old age and are not consumed in the
process of living. On the contrary, they
grow at so much percent per annum, by
the well-known mathematical laws of
simple and compound interest.6
The Earth and its assets are finite and
subject to the process of rotting. Not so
with credit creation. Nature’s curve for
growth is almost flat. The rate of interest’s
curve is linear. Compound interest’s
312
curve is exponential, as Margrit Kennedy
demonstrates in figure 1.7
Rising real rates of interest, compounded
if debtors fell into arrears, intensified
exploitation of people and of the Earth’s
assets. Reckless credit creation led to
increased consumption, which increased
the pollution of the Earth’s sinks—the
forests, seas, and atmosphere, all of which
absorb emissions. “Easy”—but dear—money
policies of the past few decades inflated
unsustainable investments in, for example,
the housing boom in Spain. Many of these
properties now stand empty, because the
credit was dear and beyond the capacity
of borrowers to repay. The fact is that the
triple crunch of financial meltdown, climate
change, and “peak oil” has its origins firmly
rooted in the current model and architecture
of globalization.
During the 1990s, economies built on this
model used neoliberal policies to hold
wages down and borrowed money to finance
an unconstrained shopping spree. This
credit boom was punctured by high interest
rates and falling wages. It hit the buffers
of insolvency and unpayable debts on
what we think of as “debtonation” day. On
August 9, 2007, bankers suddenly realized
the true scale of “sub-prime”—nonperforming—debts on the balance sheets
of other banks, lost trust in their fellow
bankers, and froze lending to each other.
On that day, the ECB pumped €95 billion
into the credit markets to improve liquidity
and to salvage private European banks.8 As
far as the general public was concerned,
the crisis only became apparent on
September 15, 2008, with the bankruptcy
of Lehman Brothers. Since then, economic
failure and natural disasters have struck
body blows to entire national economies.
Rising oil prices reminded the world of
the potential scarcity of oil. Severe and
Basic Types of Growth Patterns
Exponential Growth Pattern
Linear Growth Pattern
C
B
growth
Excessive Credit: Mortgaging the Earth
A
Natural Growth Pattern
time
↑ 1. Graph comparing the steady growth of natural resources (A) to the
arithmetic (B) and exponential (C) growth patterns of credit creation.
(Source: Kennedy, 1995)
313
Debtor and Creditor Countries Infographics
Number of Planets Needed
If everyone lived like a resident of the following
countries, we would need:
Balanced Budget
Deficit Spending
CHINA
2.5
What about some other countries?
USA
4.16
March 28*
FRANCE
1.6
INDIA
1.8
USA
1.9
Brazil
1.95
July 6*
EGYPT
2.4
GREECE
3.1
China
1.18
November 5*
UK
3.5
ITALY
4.0
Russia
2.73
May 13*
India
0.49
SWITZER- 4.2
LAND
World Avg.
1.56 Earths
August 22*
* Overshoot Day: The day of the year
when our ecological footprint exceeds
the Earth’s biocapacity. From Overshoot
Day onward, we are overdrawing from
our future.
↑ 2. Based on humanity’s demand for and the Earth’s supply of natural resources
and ecological services, the think tank Global Footprint Network calculates how
many worlds it would take to sustain current national economies at a global scale.
(Source: Global Footprint Network, 2013)
314
How many Chinas does it take
to support China?
QATAR
5.7
JAPAN
7.1
WORLD
1.5
↑ 3. The ecological debts of individual countries.
(Source: Ecological Footprint Network, 2013)
315
often devastating weather events are
now regular features of the world’s news
bulletins.
While we, the members of the Green New
Deal group, have warned since well before
2008 of the risks the world faces by relying
on fossil fuels, and of the “bubble” in
oil resources, these warnings have been
disregarded.9 We are told that the United
Global hectares per capita
Not all countries demand more resources and services than their ecosystems can
provide. Australia, for example, uses only half its capacity—although its ecological
reserve has been eroding over time.
35
30
25
30
25
20
25
20
15
15
10
10
15
10
5
5
0
1961
20
1977
1993
2009
5
0
1961
Global hectares per capita
Australia
1977
1993
2009
0
1961
14
12
3.0
12
10
2.5
8
2.0
6
6
1.5
4
4
1.0
2
2
0.5
0
0
1961
8
1961
1977
1993
2009
Sweden
BIOCAPACITY
Biological capacity is the
ability of an ecosystem
to regenerate useful
biological resources and
absorb wastes generated
by humans, such as
carbon dioxide emissions
from fossil fuel.
1977
1993
2009
Canada
Brazil
10
States will have to be renamed “Saudi
America” because of the bounty provided
by fracking and biofuels. Fossil fuels are
attractive investments. Fracking, proponents
argue, is a risk-free route to the creation of
jobs. Yet as Jeremy Leggett, author of The
Energy of Nations: Risk Blindness and the
Road to Renaissance, writes:
0
1977
1993
2009
Madagascar
ECOLOGICAL
FOOTPRINT
An ecological footprint is
the biologically productive
land and sea area an individual, population, or activity requires to produce all
the resources it consumes
and to absorb its waste.
1961
1977
1993
2009
Indonesia
GLOBAL HECTARE
Both ccological footprint
and biocapacity results
are expressed in global
hectares, units of biologically productive land and
sea area standardized
with world-average
bioproductivity.
The fossil fuel lobby continuously
overstates, by vast amounts, the quantity
of oil that still awaits extraction.
Meanwhile oil prices continue to rise—
from about $20 per barrel in 2000 to
around $110 now. Fossil fuel and mining
companies are greatly overvalued on the
stock market, basing much of their worth
on assets which, if climate change is
to be tackled, have to remain under the
ground. That’s another bubble waiting to
go bang.10
The full gravity of the threat posed by
energy insecurity and extreme weather
events still does not appear to have been
understood by the majority, including
the media, economists, and our political
leaders.
predecessors. The most important of these
lessons is that the interests of the private
financial sector are ultimately opposed to
the interests of entrepreneurs, innovators,
creatives, and indeed society as a whole. In
the 1930s, our predecessors insisted that
democracy be placed in a position superior
to the power of money, that finance should
be servant and not master to the economy
and society. The economic cataclysm of
the Great Depression was regarded as the
direct consequence of liberal financial
arrangements that prevailed in the
1920s. Between 1931 and 1970, finance
was wrested from the private sector and
placed in the hands of transparent and
accountable state institutions, under
a mandate (the 1944 Bretton Woods
Agreement) to maintain stability and
balance in trade and finance.
From 1931, all aspects of interest-rate,
exchange, banking, and financial-market
policy became a matter for government.
Central banks were brought under increased
public control or even—as in the United
Kingdom and France—nationalized. Driving
the implementation of these policies were
politicians who represented a profound—
and equally unrecognized—shift to the
left: American President Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, French Prime Minister Léon Blum
and British Prime Minister and Labour Party
leader Clement Attlee. But the foremost
instigator and genius behind this radical
reordering of society was John Maynard
Keynes, the British economist.
Keynes and the Precedents in the 1930s
↑ 4. Countries with remaining but shrinking biological capacities.
(Source: Ecological Footprint Network, 2013)
How Did We Get Here When We Have Been
Here Before?
The tragedy is that our predicament is
the result of ignoring, denying, and
even concealing lessons known to our
316
Keynes is often derided as a “tax-andspender” or as an “inflationist.” He is most
often defined by the fiscal policies he put
in place to help economies recover from
the crisis of 1920s financial liberalism. Yet
317
Keynes was primarily a monetary reformer.
He rejected the liberal financial order of
the pre-Depression years and sought to
provide the world with a soundly managed
monetary system. Keynes argued that the
level of employment and activity in an
economy depends critically on the rate of
interest.11 Prerequisite to a prosperous and
just society is a low rate of interest. This
permits private industry to thrive; capital
investment projects need affordable finance
to expand, and affordable finance is cheap
finance. Ecologically sustainable finance
must also be cheap finance. If the cost of
finance is halved, then a great deal more
investment projects become viable, including
renewable energy projects, public transport,
and sustainable construction. Government
expenditure, too, can be freely extended if
the interest burden is low.
Keynes rejected the conventional economic
thinking of the time, which said that markets
were automatically rebalancing and that
government intervention could thus only
make things worse. He argued that the
economy could get “stuck” in a depression
and that the government had to use both
monetary policy (interest rate management)
and fiscal policy (government investment)
to get it out again, noting that “the boom,
not the slump, is the right time for austerity
at the Treasury.”12 When the UK economy
slumped in the 1930s, the Bank of England
refused to act proactively, which is why it
was nationalized in 1945 and remains to this
day under democratic control, even if that
control is not always exercised.
Keynes’s policies permitted recovery from
the Great Depression, underpinned the
Allied war effort, and finally fostered the
“golden age” of employment and economic
activity that prevailed until the 1970s. It
is a commonplace to regard the golden
age as the result of state expenditure,
318
but that is only one side of the story. Low
unemployment, high activity, and prosperity
across the globe were also the result of
private activity. When nations produced
what they consumed, industry thrived
and invested heartily. State budgets
may have expanded, but they were under
control and rarely substantially in deficit.
International trade, too, flourished, but
was complementary, not a prerequisite to
domestic achievement. There is often a
tendency today—especially in Europe—to
see trade as the only route to prosperity for
weaker economies. But Keynes saw things
differently. He argued:
If nations can learn to provide
themselves with full employment by
their domestic policy […] there need
be no important economic forces
calculated to set the interest of one
country against that of its neighbours.
[…] International trade would cease
to be what it is, namely, a desperate
expedient to maintain employment at
home by forcing sales on foreign markets
and restricting purchases, which, if
successful, will merely shift the problem
of unemployment to the neighbour which
is worsted in the struggle, but a willing
and unimpeded exchange of goods
and services in conditions of mutual
advantage.13
The Green New Deal
Drawing our inspiration from Roosevelt’s
courageous New Deal, launched in the wake
of the Great Crash of 1929, we believe that a
positive program of action can pull the world
back from today’s high unemployment and
further debt deflation. Above all, we argue
that a Green New Deal is needed because of
the failure of the world’s policymakers and
regulators to restructure and reregulate
the global financial system, to restore it
to stability. As a result, new and perhaps
more dangerous financial failures threaten.
And central bankers will, in the future, have
fewer tools with which to address these
looming crises.
The Green New Deal consists of two main
strands. First, we need to structurally
transform the regulation of national and
international monetary systems and make
major changes to taxation policies to tackle
tax evasion and fraud. Second, we must
develop a sustained program of investment
in, and crash deployment of, energy
conservation and renewable energies.
The first step is for central banks to manage
credit creation and interest rates. Managed,
carefully regulated, and affordable credit
creation by banks can provide investors,
entrepreneurs, and innovators with the
finance they need to invest in, for example,
financially risky green projects and
sustainable construction. Affordable credit
will finance a public and private spending
program to slash fossil-fuel use and
dramatically increase energy efficiency and
renewables in every building in the country.
The program, focusing initially on the goal of
making “every building a power station,” will
involve traditional energy-saving measures—
such as insulation of all properties—as well
as large-scale combined heat and power
projects and a greatly accelerated uptake
of renewable technology. This initiative
will open up a huge range of new private
business opportunities in places where
people actually live and work, requiring
a “carbon army” to fill the countless
green-collar jobs that will be created by a
determined effort to substitute human labor
for fossil-fuel use.
We will need a program of training,
education, research, and development for
this “carbon army” of workers. To reduce
carbon pollution dramatically will require
expertise ranging, at the high-skilled end,
from energy analysis, design, and the
production of hi-tech renewable alternatives
to large-scale engineering projects such
as combined heat and power and offshore
wind turbines. It will need semiskilled and
unskilled work to make “every building a
power station” and to fit more efficient
energy systems in homes, offices, and
factories.
Such public investment will offer greater
benefit to those now earning lower incomes
than those who are well off. The poor will
have more disposable income after energy
and housing costs, which in turn will boost
local and national economies. Increasing
the housing supply can also improve labormarket dynamics by enabling workers to
take jobs and improve their skills closer
to where they live, widening employment
opportunities. Lower fuel bills from the
Green New Deal’s energy-efficient new
homes will be a further advantage.
In this way, we believe, societies can begin
to stabilize the current triple-crunch crises
of financial volatility, energy insecurity, and
climate change. These policies will also lay
the foundations for the eventual emergence
of a set of resilient, job-rich, and low-carbon
economies based on independent sources of
energy, meaning far greater local production
and, consequently, enhanced national selfsufficiency and security.
Toward a Sustainable Future
Central banks’ enormous quantitative
easing (QE) programs may well be inflating
the biggest financial bubble the world
has ever seen, the popping of which could
trigger a second global slump. Central
319
bankers use this unconventional monetary
policy to increase the monetary base when
conventional monetary policy does not work
anymore and economies face deflation.
Central bankers and the financial sector,
convinced they know what they are doing,
defend these shortsighted measures. Extra
liquidity via QE, they believe, will trickle
down into higher business and consumer
confidence, and this will put the global
economy on a stronger growth path. Five
years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers,
there is little sign of recovery in the
economies most affected.
Though recovery remains elusive, central
bankers have provided essentially unlimited
liquidity and credit to financial institutions.
By doing so, they have helped inflate
three asset bubbles—stocks, bonds, and
property—in key markets such as those of
the United States, the United Kingdom, and
Australia. What if all these bubbles blow
up in unison? Will central banks be able to
underpin all three markets simultaneously?
Given the choice, they prefer now to have
the problem of asset prices going through
the roof than the problem of deflation. If
they are wrong and the bubble bursts before
the recovery arrives, it will be the mother of
all credit crunches. In the short term, and
in the event of another crisis, a commitment
to keep the money taps full on will do the
trick, they argue. Market “corrections”
will be followed by soothing words and will
prompt a further buying of assets. However,
should another crash occur, central bankers
have little room for lowering the base rate
of interest below its current very low level—
and they will be constrained in the tools
available to support the private finance
sector.
The Green New Deal offers an alternative
strategy: to replace misguided austerity
policies and financial liberalization with
320
a program of massive public and private
investment for de-carbonizing the economy,
crucially paying a living wage to those who
undertake the work. This will also provide a
range of new private business opportunities
and new, more secure investment
opportunities than those offered by today’s
increasingly volatile stock markets. This
investment could be financed by low-cost
lending through central-bank management
of credit and interest rates. Such economic
activity—employment in particular—will
increase the nation’s income: wages,
salaries, and profits, This low-cost debt
can pay for itself, thanks to the economic
principle of the multiplier—the process
by which public borrowing and sound
investment generate income, savings, and
associated tax revenues. These revenues are
then used to repay the exchequer. As Keynes
argued, when we look after employment, the
budget looks after itself.
The strongest medium- and long-term
political argument for this policy is that such
a rebuilding and de-carbonizing process
will protect the environment, dramatically
reduce our use of fossil fuels and scarce
raw materials, and, at the same time, provide
secure employment with good wages and
conditions for the vast number of workers
required. But perhaps even more important is
the fact that this approach has the promotion
of resource- and carbon-efficient lifestyles
at its heart. The Green New Deal will tackle
climate change through the rapid decarbonization of our energy and production
processes. It will also ensure a more
sustainable future with less vulnerability to
future resource shortages and to soaring
costs of commodities such as energy, food,
water, and raw materials that we are already
experiencing today. This will be achieved
by ensuring that the throughput of energy
and other raw materials is minimized in all
sectors of industry, services, and agriculture.
The Green New Deal—unlike much of today’s
antiquated economic orthodoxy—is built
on a sound understanding of the nature of
bank money, on an understanding of how
economies emerge from a slump, and on
a clear analysis of the scale of financial,
energy, and ecological risks facing society.
It is grounded in a confidence and belief in
humanity’s capacity to face, manage, and
overcome grave threats. It is rooted in the
promise of a less volatile and more stable
economic environment for the private sector.
Finally, it draws on a precious and scarce
commodity: hope—one now in very short
supply.
Notes
This text is based on various publications by the
Green New Deal Group. For further information,
see www.greennewdealgroup.org; and www.
primeeconomics.org.
1. Margaret Thatcher, “Speech to Conservative
Party Conference” (Blackpool, October 14, 1983),
Margaret Thatcher Foundation, http://www.
margaretthatcher.org/document/105454.
2 Katrin Bennhold, “In Greek Debt Crisis, a Window
to the German Psyche,” New York Times, May
4, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/04/
business/global/04iht-euro.html?_r=0.
3 Jeff Black and Jana Randow, “Draghi Says ECB
Will Do What’s Needed to Preserve Euro: Economy,”
Bloomberg, July 26, 2012, http://www.bloomberg.
com/news/2012-07-26/draghi-says-ecb-to-dowhatever-needed-as-yields-threaten-europe.html.
4 Tracey Greenstein “The Fed’s $16 Trillion
Bailouts Under-Reported,” Forbes, September
20, 2011, http://www.forbes.com/sites/
traceygreenstein/2011/09/20/the-feds-16-trillionbailouts-under-reported/.
5 Paul Sheard, Repeat after Me: Banks Cannot and
Do Not “Lend Out” Reserves (Standard and Poor’s,
2013), http://www.standardandpoors.com/spf/
upload/Ratings_US/Repeat_After_Me_8_14_13.pdf.
6 Frederick Soddy, Wealth, Virtual Wealth and Debt
(London: George Allen & Unwin, 1926), quoted in
J. Martin Hattersley, “Committee on Monetary and
Economic Reform, Frederick Soddy, and the Doctrine
of ‘Virtual Wealth,’” (paper presented to the 14th
Annual Convention of the Eastern Economics
Association, Boston, March 1988). http://nesara.
org/articles/soddy88.htm.
7 I am indebted to Margrit Kennedy for use of this
chart from her book, Interest and Inflation Free
Money: Creating an Exchange Medium That Works
for Everybody and Protects the Earth (Okemos,
MI: Seva International, 1995), http://kennedybibliothek.info/data/bibo/media/GeldbuchEnglisch.
pdf.
8 Tim Edmonds, Tim Jarrett, and John Woodhouse,
The Credit Crisis: A Timeline (House of Commons
Library, April 12, 2010), http://www.parliament.uk/
briefing-papers/sn04991.pdf, 9.
9 The Green New Deal Group consists of Larry
Elliott (economics editor of the Guardian), Colin
Hines (codirector of Finance for the Future), Tony
Juniper (director of Friends of the Earth), Jeremy
Legett (founder and chairman of Solarcentury
and Solaraid), Caroline Lucas (Green Party
MEP), Richard Murphy (codirector of Finance
for the Future and director of Tax Research
LLP), Ann Pettifor (director of policy research
in macroeconomics for PRIME), Charles Secrett
(adviser on sustainable development), and Andrew
Simms (policy director of the new economics
foundation).
10 Jeremy Leggett, The Energy of Nations: Risk
Blindness and the Road to Renaissance (London:
Routledge, 2013).
11 John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory
of Employment, Interest and Money (London:
Macmillan, 1936).
12 John Maynard Keynes, “How to Avoid a Slump,”
in Activities 1931-39: World Crises and Policies in
Britain and America, ed. Donald Moggridge, vol. 21
of The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes
(London: Macmillan, 1982), 390.
13 Ibid., 382.
Image Sources
Kennedy, Interest and Inflation Free Money:
Creating an Exchange Medium That Works for
Everybody and Protects the Earth.
Michael Borucke et al, National Footprint
Accounts 2012 Edition (Oakland: Global Footprint
Network, 2013), http://www.footprintnetwork.
org/images/article_uploads/National_Footprint_
Accounts_2012_Edition_Report.pdf.
321
Built for the Moment:
Designing for a Fast-Paced World
Lena Kleinheinz
Lena Kleinheinz of magma architecture discusses her studio's experience
designing temporary structures to house the shooting competitions for
the 2012 London Olympic and Paralympic Games, highlighting the sustainable advantages offered by temporary architecture and how harm can be
incorporated into cost calculations.
Industrial production has become the
ever-accelerating pulse generator of
contemporary life. Objects of human
production are purchased, used, and
discarded at a speed unimaginable to past
generations. The laws of the global economy
scatter production and consumption across
the continents. Raw materials and goods
are transported by ship, plane, train,
and truck. Humans themselves are also
becoming more mobile. We travel farther
and more frequently—for work, holidays,
and events, across short or long distances,
monthly, weekly, even daily.
In complete opposition to the growing
mobility and adaptability of our societies is
our built environment. Architecture is built
to last for centuries. Many of the buildings
that line the streets of our cities were
designed generations ago. Many architects
believe that, to be sustainable, architecture
must be permanent, a counter-pole to the
fast-moving throwaway society. Designers
go to great lengths to make buildings more
durable. It almost seems like the focus is
on sustaining the buildings rather than the
global environment: the longer the buildings
last, the more sustainable they are
assumed to be. At first glance, this idea of
sustainability seems coherent. Construction
322
exhausts natural resources and consumes
vast amounts of energy. Architects assume
that, once constructed, durable buildings
do not require repair or replacement for a
long time.
On the other hand, the impact our
global economy is having on the natural
environment makes it necessary for
our built environment to change. It is
no surprise that century-old buildings
fail to meet contemporary standards. In
Germany and throughout the European
Union, we are currently embarking on
massive government-supported programs
to retrofit the existing built environment
to meet our continuously rising standards
for energy performance—something that
was unforeseeable a century ago. We can
assume that the buildings we are designing
today will encounter similar paradigm
shifts and subsequent alterations in the
future: the longevity of buildings results
in a recurring obsolescence, an everlasting
process of construction to update historic
buildings to new demands. We struggle
endlessly with the inadequacy of buildings
that reflect parameters and challenges of
past times. What seemed to be a solution
in the past finds itself at the heart of the
problem today.
A re-evaluation of temporary, mobile, and
adaptable architecture can offer better
and more sustainable answers to certain
conditions. In particular, such structures
may be better suited to housing one-time
or infrequent events than conventional,
permanent buildings. Temporary and mobile
buildings for the London 2012 Olympics are
a strong example of impermanent buildings
proving to be the more sustainable option.
International sporting competitions and
expos are temporary events with growing
visitor numbers. They require elaborate
preparations including large-scale
construction. Neither temporary buildings
nor the Olympic architecture of the past
have contributed positively to global
sustainability. Whereas temporary expo
architecture is widely attributed to the
highly unsustainable throw-away society,
Olympic buildings have often become “white
elephants,” infamous burdens to cities
because of their underuse and excessive
maintenance costs. The organization of
the Olympic Games as a traveling event
guarantees their unsustainability. For
most sports, the Olympics are the marquee
event, attracting by far the largest number
of athletes and visitors. Hardly any other
sporting event requires facilities at such
a scale. However, because the Olympic
Games travel to a new host city every four
years, new large-scale sports venues are
constructed in every new location, even
though it is unlikely they ever will be used to
their full extent beyond the few weeks of the
Games. Because of this extremely short time
span—a few weeks every four years—even
fixing the Olympics in a permanent location
would prove unsustainable, as the buildings
would still remain underused for most of the
time.
One sustainable answer to this problem
could be to imagine the Olympic Games
as a traveling circus of mobile facilities.
The Olympic buildings would be assembled
only for the duration of the Games and put
in storage for the years between events.
This solution has its challenges too:
moving such large structures—a stadium
capable of seating 80,000 spectators,
for example—over long distances would
be a massive logistical feat and consume
a great amount of energy. Additionally,
the design of the buildings would have
to accommodate varying climates, sitespecific topographies, the availability
of local construction technology, and
different building regulations in various
host countries. Developing structures that
function sustainably under any climatic or
political conditions in the world would be
a fascinating, but most probably insoluble
design challenge. It remains a fact that
there are contradictions between the effects
of a large-scale, one-off event like the
Olympics and the principles of sustainable
development; nevertheless, the appeal of
the temporary has not failed to reach the
International Olympic Committee, which, a
decade ago, opted for temporary venues if
there is no legacy need.1
In 2012, London hosted the Olympic and
Paralympic Summer Games. London won the
bid for the Olympic Games in part because
it aimed to create a social, economic, and
environmental legacy, leveraging the Games
to make lasting improvements to the city. The
bid demonstrated a long-term commitment
to inspiring the broader population to
engage in sportive activities by planning to
establish a variety of facilities for popular—
rather than professional—sports in London.
Another focus was the improvement of
the urban fabric, specifically regenerating
East London by building the Olympic Park
on an underused postindustrial site. The
construction industry also anticipated longterm benefits, particularly knowledge about
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how to make a sustainable event of such
size and complexity succeed.
The London 2012 delivery body, the Olympic
Delivery Authority (ODA), strove to maximize
“the benefits that may be derived after
the Games from its preparation, whilst
contributing to sustainable development.”2
This emphasis on sustainability and longterm impact had many implications for the
architecture designed and built for the
occasion. To avoid “white elephants,” the
London Olympics became the Olympics with
the largest-ever proportion of temporary
and mobile buildings. As many temporary
spectator seats were provided in London
as had been during the three previous
Olympics—Bejing, Athens, and Sydney—
combined. Most of the buildings for the
London Olympics were commissioned by the
ODA to be converted, partially or completely
dismantled, and, ideally, reused in other
locations.
The Aquatics Centre that Zaha Hadid
designed for the 2012 Olympics
demonstrates the balance and tradeoffs made in order to meet different
requirements during and after the Games.
Hadid’s Aquatics Centre is designed as
a swimming pool for the local community.
Only for the duration of the Games did
two temporary extensions, attached like
wings to the building, provide seating for
the Olympic spectators. In contrast to the
skillfully curved shapes one expects from
the studio, the extensions looked clumsy
and awkward. On the two-time Pritzker
Prize winner’s website, the wings do not
appear in photographs of the Aquatic
Centre taken during the Games; there are
only shots of the interiors. From a design
standpoint, the appearance of the arena
during the Olympics is easy to criticize.
On the other hand, one can also praise the
courage required to build something for a
high-profile event that does not reveal its
true beauty until after the event is over. We
can look at this process of “skinning” as
a sort of metamorphosis, like a caterpillar
becoming a butterfly.
Hadid’s mindset for balancing the event
and afterlife of buildings matches our own
experience at Magma Architecture designing
for the ODA. In 2010, we were commissioned
to design the 10-, 25-, and 50-meter ranges
for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic
shooting events, held in the southeastern
district of Woolwich. The envisioned legacy
for the buildings of the shooting venue was
either to be recycled or to be reassembled
for a different use in a new location. We
were therefore asked, in addition to meeting
the specific requirements of the sport
and providing 6,400 spectator seats, to
develop fully mobile structures. Like all
Olympic architects, we had to meet the
ODA’s extensive sustainability requirements,
which were laid out in a Sustainable
Development Strategy. The usual BREEAM
and CEQUAL assessments, which were not
deployed due to the temporary nature of the
buildings, were replaced with an emphasis
on eliminating waste. With their sustainable
development strategy, the London Olympics
sought to dispel the myth that temporary
buildings prompt waste and inefficient use
of materials; the ODA therefore demanded
that all materials and construction
methods be tested against the principles of
“eliminate, reduce, reuse, recycle, recover,
and dispose,” in descending order of
emphasis. Key objectives were minimizing
the use of materials in construction and
consumption of energy in use; out of
the material that couldn’t be eliminated,
at least 90 percent had to be reused or
recycled.
Spectators Enclosure
Field of Play Enclosure
Outer Non-permeable
Membrane
Roofing
Structure
Structure
Inner Permeable
Membrane
Perimeter Wall
Seating Arrangement
Field of Play
We implemented these requirements in a
shooting venue that could be built rapidly,
↑ 1. All joints of the three shooting ranges were designed so that they could be disassembled
and reassembled, meaning that the different components could either be recycled or reused.
324
325
↑ 2. Exterior of the finals range for the London 2012 Olympic Games, as
erected on the premises of the London Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich.
326
327
↑ 3. Interior of the 25-meter pre-qualification shooting
range during the 2012 London Paralympic Games.
328
329
Warm air extract
Warm air extract
Roof
rings head rings
Warmhead
air extract
Roof
Roof head rings
Cool air intake
Cool air intake
Facade
rings head rings
Cool
air head
intake
Facade
Facade head rings
Comfort zone
Comfort zone
Cool air intake
Cool air intake
Comfort zone
Firing
line
opening
Cool air
intake
Firing line opening
Seating Seating
Firing line opening
arrangement
Seating arrangement
arrangement
Demountable
Membrane Membrane
Flutes
Demountable
Flutes
Demountable Membrane Flutes
Axo
Exploded axo
Axo
Exploded axo
Axo
Exploded axo
1
3
4
1
1
1
7
7
1. Fresh air1.intake
Fresh air intake
1. Fresh air intake
6
6
5
5
4
7
6
1
3
1
3
2
5
2
4
2
1. Modular1.
steel
towersteel
trusstower truss
Modular
2.
tubular
steel
piston
to tension
membrane
1. Telescopic
Modular2.
steel
tower
truss
Telescopic
tubular
steel
piston to
tension membrane
3.
PVCsteel
membrane
2. Phthalate-free
Telescopic
tubular
piston
to tension membrane
3. Phthalate-free
PVC membrane
4. Phthalate-free
Bolted internal
steel
platesteel
to fixplate
membrane
3.
PVC
membrane
4. Bolted
internal
to fix membrane
5. Bolted
White coated
steel
angle-head
ring
4.
internal
steel
plate
to fix
membranering
5. White
coated
steel
angle-head
6. White
Polyester
cone
(28%cone
perforation
for naturalfor
ventilation)
5.
coated
steel
angle-head
ring
6.mesh
Polyester
mesh
(28% perforation
natural ventilation)
7. Polyester
Bolted external
white
steelwhite
platesteel
to fixplate
mesh
6.
cone
(28%
perforation
for
natural
ventilation)
7.mesh
Bolted
external
to fix mesh
7. Bolted external white steel plate to fix mesh
↑ 5. The membrane was tensioned using the circular steel components, creating
a double-curvature geometry that optimizes the use of the membrane.
↑ 4. The pink, red, and blue protrusions in the facades and double membranes
serve to ventilate the interior of each venue, drawing in fresh air at the bottom
and releasing warm air through vents in the ceiling.
330
331
↑ 6. A white translucent membrane minimizes the amount of artificial
light needed inside the shooting venues. Only the finals range is
covered with an opaque membrane to meet broadcasting requirements.
then taken apart and relocated. As early as
in our method statement—part of our bid for
the commission—we explored the possibility
of using standardized, lightweight steel
trusses clad with a bespoke membrane skin.
Creating mobile, rather than just temporary,
buildings meant that we had to design all
material connections so that they could be
disassembled and reassembled elsewhere.
The mobility of the buildings was added to
the design commission as a separate task.
Accordingly, we reviewed all built-ups of the
foundations, structure, and skin in order
to ensure they could be dismantled and
reassembled. All connections would be fixed
mechanically, mostly screwed and bolted.
A result of this review was that, where
feasible, composite materials were avoided
and no adhesives were used anywhere in the
building. The only exception was the rubber
flooring under the firing line, which was
glue-fixed to a single concrete foundation—
an inevitable, sport-specific requirement.
Even though the buildings were used only
during the summer, we made allowances
for snow loads and stronger wind forces in
potential future locations.
Throughout the design process, we had
to prove that our building adhered to
our sustainability goals by studying and
comparing alternative solutions. The maxim
was to “reduce, reuse, or recycle” any
materials or works involved.
Reduce
One of the project’s major achievements
in terms of reducing material consumption
was the reduction of what was originally
planned as four buildings to three. We found
that the 10- and 50-meter prequalification
events can be carried out in one space with
the same width and number of shooting
lanes. The difference stems from the fact
332
↑ 7. The sporting requirements require the field of play to be open to the sky
and subject to wind. Plywood baffles protect spectators from ricocheting bullets.
that 50-meter shooting requires an openair space between the shooters and their
targets, the so-called field of play. For
10-meter shooting, air guns are used;
the field of play has to be fully enclosed
to prevent any interference by wind. We
installed a mobile outer wall between the
competitions to convert the 50-meter range
to a fully enclosed 10-meter air gun range,
allowing us to combine the two buildings
into one. The challenge of this operation
was not just spatial; the tight training and
competition program of the Games had to be
arranged so there would be sufficient time
for the conversion.
On other occasions, when asked to remove
materials, we were able to prove that doing
so was not always the most sustainable
solution. The buildings were designed, for
example, with a double membrane—one
external and one internal—tensioned around
a steel frame with circular openings that
act as doorways and exhaust vents. The
ODA asked us to remove the interior skin;
they assumed it was introduced to visually
disguise the modular steel inside the outer
skin. However, the roughly two-meter-wide
void between the outer and inner skin
provides an insulation layer, reducing the
heat transfer between the inside and the
outside and creating an airflow, with warm
air rising and exiting through vents above
and drawing in cooler fresh air below.
The lower circular openings are covered
with a different type of perforated and
colored membrane that allows them to draw
in fresh air. Thanks to the second inner
membrane, the buildings could be naturally
ventilated, minimizing the use of energy
for heating, cooling, and ventilation during
the Games. The need for artificial lighting
was also reduced through the introduction
of a translucent membrane in the two
prequalification ranges. The walls of the
finals range, however, are covered in an
333
opaque membrane, as they had to black
out all daylight in order to meet Olympic
broadcasting requirements.
We were clearly instructed by the client
that aesthetics would be no ground for
decisions. The underlying assumption
seemed to be that what was visually
remarkable could not possibly be
sustainable. We were therefore asked if we
could remove the steel rings, which created
brightly colored circular protrusions that
matched the Olympic color scheme, or, if
they could not be omitted, if they could
be made to resemble other, noncircular
shapes. We prepared a specific report to
compare our solution to a simple, flat-clad
box without steel rings. The facades of
the buildings were up to 25 meters high
and up to 107 meters long, all made of one
piece of continuous membrane stretched
over rectangular. Wind would strike these
large planar expanses forcefully; it would
have been difficult to prevent the flexible
membranes from fluttering in the wind.
Simply pulling the membrane over the
corners of the buildings without pushing
in and out would have required 40 percent
more steel to fortify the frame against wind
loads. The steel rings, which are braced
against the rectangular structure, are
necessary to push and pull the outer skin
in order to create tension. The ring shapes
help distribute force equally across the
fabric. Our report showed that the doublecurvature geometry is a result of the
optimal use of the membrane material. Any
other shape—like a square or cross—would
be suboptimal. On this basis, the client
accepted the steel-ring solution.
Reuse
More rigorously than most of the temporary
buildings for the London Olympics, the
334
shooting venue relies on elements that
can easily be reused. The entire loadbearing structure is built up using a kit
of standardized, lightweight steel trusses
that are widely available for rent from
temporary-works firms. Trusses are joined
using bespoke connection pieces to create
large spans without any columns, freeing
the space for good spectator sightlines.
Rather than having to be recycled—as the
bespoke steel structure of the basketball
arena was, for instance—the trusses from
the shooting venue could be returned
to the temporary-buildings market and
reused for other temporary structures
without transformation. Before becoming
the shooting venue, the structural trusses
formed the grandstand for Madonna’s
“Sticky & Sweet” tour. After the Games, they
will be transferred to Glasgow, Surrey, and
Cornwall.
The prequalification ranges have been
divided into parts: the membrane enclosures
of the spectator seats were separated from
the plywood barriers around the fields of
play. The membrane seating enclosures have
been sold to new owners. The combined 10and 50-meter building will be reconfigured
as an equestrian center in Surrey; the
25-meter building is envisioned as part of a
leisure development in Cornwall. The parts
of the ranges surrounding the field of play—
plywood walls, baffles, and canopies above
the shooters—are scheduled to be reused
for the shooting competitions during the
Glasgow Commonwealth Games in 2014.
Recycle
The membrane used for the skins of the
buildings was chosen because of its lightness, tensile qualities, and translucency.
As a result of the scale of the buildings,
the membrane inevitably had to be custom-
made. The membrane is a composite material
combining the weatherproofing benefits
of PVC with the structural strength of
polyester. To meet the conditions of the
ODA’s sustainability strategy, the industry
developed a phthalate-free PVC membrane
that could be returned to and recycled by
the manufacturer. The search for a new
location for the finals range after the Games
was unsuccessful, so the membrane was
fully recycled and the structure reused in
other projects.
Sustainable designs are often not pursued
because they require additional investment.
The cost of building sustainability, however,
depends on the parameters we set. The
London 2012 shooting ranges were cheaper
to build than their permanent Olympic
predecessors, like the permanent venue in
Beijing, because they were temporary and
could therefore be custom-designed for
this specific occasion. Because they were
used only during the summer, for instance,
they did not require any insulation, nor did
we have to provide a heating system. Their
modular steel structure was taken from the
temporary-buildings market and returned
after use. It could even have been rented
rather than bought.
By meticulously eliminating the building
elements that could not be reused or
recycled, we were able to create three
temporary buildings that left no waste
behind and did not require exorbitant
maintenance costs into the future. The
London 2012 Games have delivered an
approach worth pursuing for future
Olympics and other large-scale, shortterm major events that seek to be more
ecologically and economically sustainable.
For the rest of the built environment,
the process of questioning the merits of
longevity and considering the possibilities
of a more ephemeral approach to
architecture has yet to come; the built
environment is still too closely associated
with ideas of longevity and stability. To
become independent of the politics of the
day, manufacturer interest, or just the
weight of tradition, we need to develop
further a more holistic evaluation system for
sustainable building.
Beyond evaluating sustainable buildings
differently, a more general way of
encouraging their construction is to make
them economically attractive. The economist
Geoffrey Heal defines sustainability as
“keeping the total value of capital stock of a
country intact.”3 Capital stock, in his terms,
is not limited to what we trade on financial
markets, but includes physical, human,
intellectual, social, and natural capital. Heal
points out that our decisions to deplete
or increase these various capitals are
economically driven and that there will be no
substantial change in unsustainable human
behavior unless it is made economically
unattractive. This would mean developing
a new economic system that, rather than
responding only to the interests of financial
capital, would serve other types of capital
as well—balancing economic gain against
the loss of natural capital through the
exploitation of fossil fuels, for example.
In the built environment, such an approach
would require determining the values of
the various factors that go into building.
Architects and quantity surveyors are
skilled in calculating the construction
costs of buildings. A comprehensive model,
however, would require determining the
monetary exchange rates for the exhaustion
of natural capital and incorporate this
into a project’s construction costs. The
calculation would have to include the
depletion of raw materials, the production
of building materials and energy consumed
in that production, emissions, transport of
335
raw materials and building materials, energy
used on site, and more. The calculation
would not end with the completion of
the building, but account for energy
consumption during operation, repairs
and adaptations, and, at the end of the
building’s lifecycle, demolition and waste
removal.
An economy that reflected the
sustainability impact of materials and
building resources would change the way
we build considerably. In Adrian Forty’s
book on the ever-popular, highly durable
building material concrete, he points out
the very high embodied CO2 level of cement,
a result of the chemical reactions and heat
required for its production.4 Cement is
produced in such great quantities that it is
responsible for more carbon emissions than
air traffic.5 This gives a rough indication
of how expensive concrete construction is
when the depletion of natural resources
is taken into account. Accounting for this
might push concrete production in a more
sustainable direction; if not, it would
become very expensive and be used much
less often. Such a comprehensive valuation
system would enable architects to more
easily design sustainable buildings: rather
than having to weigh the advantages
of sustainability against the costs of
expensive options like solar panels,
geothermal energy systems, or more
insulation, architects could be confident
that the most sustainable buildings were
also the most cost efficient.
Architecture, as one of the key players
in the exploitation of natural resources,
will have to change radically if the world
is to become more sustainable. The
example of the Olympic and Paralympic
Shooting Arenas shows that building
temporary and mobile structures can be
a more sustainable approach to cope with
336
short-term needs. Requirements changing
over short periods of time are more
often the rule than one might expect. In
parts of the world, cities are shrinking;
in many others, they are growing at a
breathtaking speed. People move to the
city to escape poverty in the countryside.
Having sustainable—yet timely, livable,
and safe—solutions to absorb this mass
movement would be a major improvement
over the status quo; new migrants to
cities often live in poor conditions. Similar
solutions could deal with the ebb and flow
of tourist trends and seasonal patterns.
Temporary accommodation could be made
available only during peak times, leaving
permanent structures to the permanent
inhabitants. Other changes to which
temporary structures could respond take
place on smaller scales; urban districts
gain popularity only to be replaced by
new hot spots in other parts of the city,
and even small entities like families
regularly encounter changes in spatial
needs. Temporary, flexible, and adaptable
solutions are not a new idea. But with new
technologies and a more comprehensive
concept of sustainability, they could be
more successful and more widely accepted
than ever before. Temporary buildings can
be more than tents or containers. They
can be smart, adaptable, well-designed,
multifunctional, and eye-opening additions
to our urban fabric.
just for gala events but to cope, in a more
efficient and sustainable way, with the
needs of a changing world.
Notes
1 Richard W. Pound, Olympic Games Study
Commission (IOC: Prague, 2003), http://www.
olympic.org/Documents/Reports/EN/en_
report_725.pdf.
2 Olympic Delivery Authority, Sustainable
Development Strategy (London: ODA, 2007),
http://www.strategicforum.org.uk/pdf/
ODASDSfullpolicy.pdf.
3 Geoffrey Heal, Valuing the Future: Economic
Theory and Sustainability (New York: Columbia
Press, 1998); and “Geoffrey Heal: Managing the
Global Commons 2/5,” YouTube video, 21:07,
posted by “INETeconomics,” April 14, 2012,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WvpJ6USrAQ.
4 Adrian Forty, Concrete and Culture: A Material
History (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), 70.
Forty cites figures estimating cement production
to be responsible for 5 to 10 percent of global
anthropogenic CO2 emissions, acknowledging that
there is an ongoing debate about these figures.
5 Joyce E. Penner, David H. Lister, David J.
Griggs, David J. Dokken, and Mack McFarland,
Summary for Policymakers: Aviation and the Global
Atmosphere (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
Change, 1999), http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/specialreports/spm/av-en.pdf.
It is unlikely that we as designers will be
released from the responsibility to explore
and closely evaluate all options and their
consequences. Sustainability cannot be
achieved by adding well-known plug-ins
to conventional architecture. We have
to question everything we know about
buildings and, with an open mind, test all
imaginable solutions. Temporary and mobile
architecture may offer new and unexplored
solutions to the cities of the future—not
337
Handle with Care: How Useful Is the Research on
Green Building Prices?
Patrick McAllister
As the green share of the construction sector grows, more and more
research has been devoted to determining whether—and in what ways—
environmental certification affects real estate prices. Real estate expert
Patrick McAllister of the Bartlett at University College London turns a
critical eye to the current field of research.
Over the last decade, market participants
have grown more interested in the relative
financial costs and benefits associated with
developing or investing in green buildings.
This has also been reflected in a growing
body of work from the academic community.
Sustainability’s relationship to real estate
performance is a hot topic in the real estate
research community. Just one example is
the launch of the Journal of Sustainable
Real Estate in 2009. Within the real estate
field, the scope of research has been broad,
reflecting the large number of different
perspectives on sustainability. However,
this paper has a relatively narrow focus.
It critically evaluates the body of work
studying the effects of the environmental
performance of real estate assets on real
estate prices. It is therefore set within
mainstream economics, which tends to
view climate change as a market failure
generated by the negative externalities
of economic development. Typically,
mainstream economics holds that a range of
price and market-based policies can remedy
these adverse effects.
To date, most research in this area
has attempted to determine whether
environmental certification affects the
prices of real estate assets.1 One of the
338
direct aims of environmental certification
has been to provide information to
consumers or users about the environmental
performance of a product. The indirect
objective is to then change consumption
and investment choices, suppliers’
production outputs, and, as a result, the
level of environmentally harmful emissions.
Policymakers expect that if investors and
occupiers have independently verified
information about the environmental
performance of buildings, they will be more
willing to pay for buildings with superior
environmental performance. Consequently,
demand from investors and occupiers will
produce rental and sale price premiums,
reduce operating costs, and, since such
buildings tend to exceed current mandatory
standards, provide some protection against
more stringent environmental regulations
in the future. The “invisible hand” of the
pricing mechanism should encourage
suppliers of buildings (investors and
developers) to improve their environmental
performance.
Robust and rigorous studies of these
economic effects should be central
to evaluating the effectiveness of
environmental certification in real estate
markets. Currently, however, there is little
evidence on the effectiveness of this policy
approach for most markets. This is due to
a combination of lack of data and a limited
timescale—it’s still fairly early days.
Nevertheless, there is a growing body of
evidence that occupiers of and investors
in buildings with better environmental
performance can expect a range of benefits,
including subsidies, tax relief, reduced
regulatory barriers, and lower utility costs.
More difficult-to-quantify benefits are
associated with business performance
(lower staff turnover and absenteeism,
higher outputs inter alia), lower rates of
obsolescence, reduced regulatory risks,
and an improved public image. Advantages
for investors and developers tend to be
similar. There is a growing—albeit far from
definitive—body of research to suggest that
investors may gain from higher occupancy
rates, lower operating costs, and rental
and sale price premiums. Other cited, but
still largely unproven, potential benefits to
investors are similar to those occupiers can
expect, and include decreased depreciation,
reduced regulatory risk, and reputational
rewards.
The transmission of investors’ growing
eco-consciousness to real estate asset
pricing is also important. This presumed
relationship is based on an implicit
assumption that investor demand affects
prices. According to the efficient-markets
hypothesis, investor demand should not
matter—under this hypothesis, prices
are assumed to encapsulate the present
value of the cash flow generated by the
asset. Assuming that the level of demand
for financial assets does not affect price
(horizontal demand curve assumption),
investors can buy or sell any amount of
a security without affecting its price.
However, numerous studies demonstrate
that clientele effects do exist. Essentially,
companies with poor social performance
receive lower demand for their shares from
investors, which leads to lower share prices.
Hence, it is possible that, for buildings
with strong environmental performance,
the effect of price premiums on financial
performance is negative.
Given the growing concern about climate
change in the last two decades, there is
good reason to expect higher demand,
from both investors and occupiers,
for real estate assets with superior
environmental performance. While there
are also compelling reasons to expect
a supply response, the tangible and
intangible benefits of assets with superior
environmental performance may be
transmitted to high occupancy, reduced
time-on-market, lower operating costs,
higher rents, higher net incomes, higher
prices, and other benefits in a virtuous
circle. However, rental and sale prices
of commercial real estate are formed in
highly imperfect markets, and an “efficient”
transmission of costs and benefits to prices
and performance may not occur. There are a
number of other reasons to stamp “handle
with care” on the studies that have been
carried out to date.
Evaluating the Empirical Research:
10 Reasons to Be Careful
1. Quality control is highly variable.
Due to the pioneering nature of early
studies, lack of peer review in other cases,
and difficulties assembling appropriate data
sets, the studies that have been conducted
are of varying quality. Over time, better data
have become available and the research
community has become more knowledgeable
about the pitfalls and problems of some
of the data itself and the appropriate
techniques for analyzing it. Some papers
339
have been published in peer-reviewed
journals (in which there is also a clear
hierarchy); others are part of the “gray”
literature—they are in the public domain,
but have not been subject to peer review.
Some are moving through the various stages
of production to final publication, a path
along which they may change dramatically.
Others are published by professional bodies
or interest groups without any formal review
process. Inevitably, the most up-to-date
research will be part of the “gray” literature
studies.
2. Data quality is variable.
The feasibility and quality of empirical
research into the price effects of
environmental certification are dependent
upon the availability of data on three main
areas: market prices (rents and sales),
environmental performance of real estate
assets, and the attributes of buildings—
leases, specification, size, location, quality,
and so forth. Outside of US office markets,
adequate data in terms of scale (sample
size) and scope (number of variables) have
rarely been available, and it is unlikely that
any researcher has had all the information
that he or she would have liked. The main
problem tends to be obtaining data on
all the potential price determinants. The
related issue of omitted variable problems is
discussed in more depth below.
3. Sample size is often small.
It can be surprisingly difficult to even find
basic information in some papers about how
many “green” assets are being compared to
a (usually) much larger sample of conventional assets. In studies involving commercial real estate assets, sample sizes have
been small, with typically hundreds (but
sometimes fewer) of environmentally certified assets being compared to thousands of
340
conventional assets. For studies involving
residential properties, the sample size is
typically much larger. However, where green
buildings are an extremely small proportion
of the stock, they may constitute a highly
atypical subset of the population.
4. Results may be sensitive to econometric
model specification.
Due to circumstantial differences between
green and conventional buildings (in the US
office sector, for instance, green buildings
tend to be newer, larger, and better
located), it is usually not possible to use
simple descriptive statistics to identify
whether there are significant differences
in terms of rents and prices between green
and non-green buildings. It can be difficult
to measure the contribution of an individual
attribute (such as eco-certification, energy
performance, location, or design) to the
total price paid for a bundle of attributes.
Most studies use some variation of widely
accepted econometric procedure. This
is generally called hedonic regression. A
hedonic regression divides the object being
researched (in this case, a building) into
its various characteristics (location, size,
lease type, etc.) and estimates how much
each characteristic contributes to its value
or price. However, hedonic model outputs
can be sensitive to the choice of model
specification and the scope of explanatory
variables. Indeed, many studies apply a
number of different techniques and include
different independent variables. This can
be extremely useful, as it provides some
indication of the robustness of results—
significantly varied results among different
models are a clear red flag.
5 Data errors can bias findings.
When researchers are dealing with
thousands of observations, there can be a
significant number of errors in the data. In
pricing studies, for instance, a researcher
might accidentally attribute the price of
a portfolio sale to each building in the
portfolio, or the price of a single building
to its entire portfolio. The results can be
sensitive to such outliers.
6. There are usually omitted variable
problems.
The research question in most price studies
boils down to “all else being equal, how
does being green affect the price of a
building?” The problem for researchers lies
in the four words “all else being equal.” Due
to data constraints, researchers may omit a
variable that has an effect on the prices of
green buildings. Perhaps being green is only
one element in a bundle of “extras” that a
developer uses to create a superior product.
Homes with better energy performance, for
instance, may tend to be better constructed.
If researchers omit this variable (superior
construction) from a model, all else will
not be equal; a construction-quality price
effect will be read as an energy-efficiency
price effect. However, it is also possible that
these unobserved variables are affected by
environmental certification. For instance,
higher-quality tenants may be attracted to
eco-certified buildings. Tenants may also
take longer leases or accept fewer lease
incentives in eco-certified buildings.
Akin et al. looked at the evidence of
large price premiums that Real Estate
Investment Trusts (REITs) seemed to pay
(not necessarily for eco-certified asset) in
the United States.2 They noted a potential
bias in the studies—REITs may have
tended to buy the best properties within
a quality category, with the result that
an unobserved explanatory variable (the
premium property explanation) resulted
in hedonic models producing “unrealistic”
price premiums. They supplemented their
hedonic estimation with an analysis of
repeat sales transactions (a sample of
properties that had sold twice). Using this
approach, they estimated REIT premiums
of 6 percent compared to the 20 to 50
percent premiums estimated in their hedonic
regression models. It is possible that ecolabeled buildings may be best-in-class
assets with superior attributes that are not
included in a data set (better construction,
specification, tenants, leases, etc.).
Usually, the most important control in
this type of price study is for locational
differences. To what other buildings are
the green buildings being compared—other
buildings in the same city? Other buildings
in the same submarket? Other buildings
within a certain distance? This issue can
be crucial because green buildings may be
concentrated in specific (e.g. high value)
locations. If this factor is not adequately
controlled for, a location effect may be
misattributed as a “green” effect.
7. Results of studies are not always
consistent.
Some papers offer seemingly implausible
or illogical findings. For instance, one
unpublished working paper reported a very
large premium for eco-labelled apartments.
But, all else being equal, was it credible
that buyers would really pay nearly double
the price because the apartments were
more sustainable? In a later version of
the study published in a highly rated
journal, the premium was substantially
smaller. Consistent results are important.
Do buildings with higher sustainability
or energy-efficiency scores obtain higher
premiums? It is difficult to believe that
LEED Gold-rated offices would, all else
equal, sell for less than LEED Silver-rated
offices; a study that reports such findings
341
may have problems with data or its model
specification.
8. Findings are likely to be highly contingent.
It is important to bear in mind that supply
and demand determine prices and that
they are inherently dynamic and variable
over space. The balance between supply
and demand for green and conventional
buildings is not uniform and is evolving.
Empirical studies, while useful in a context
where evidence is scarce, necessarily look
backward. At an aggregate level, they
estimate the outcomes of previous supply
and demand conditions. Further, studies
that focus on specific sectors, in specific
countries, and over specific timeframes
make conclusions that cannot always be
generalized to other sectors, places, and
time periods. Studies can be quite broad—
covering, for example, the entire category
of offices in the United States—which
might “disguise” substantial variation in
price effects among assets. The benefits of
adopting green buildings may vary according
to climate, economic structure, prevailing
attitudes toward climate change, and a
range of other factors. Cross-sectional
and temporal variations in these and
other factors will lead to cross-sectional
variations in supply and demand.
9. There may be a decline effect.
A term first used by Joseph Banks Rhine
in the 1930s to describe changing results
in studies of extrasensory perception,
“decline effect” refers to a phenomenon
identified in some areas of scientific
research, particularly in medicine, whereby
initial strong findings disappear over time.
This effect has broadly been explained as a
consequence of the interaction of perverse
incentives for researchers and the increased
likelihood of false positives in small
342
samples. It is associated with a tendency
for a bandwagon effect with confirmatory
papers being produced early in the “hype
cycle.” However, as more rigorous studies
with larger samples are carried out, there
is a regression to the mean; later studies
fail to replicate the results of earlier ones.
Another possible cause for an apparent
strong initial effect is that the sample is not
representative of the population. In terms
of eco-labeled buildings, this is unlikely.
More relevant is the possibility that the time
period is unrepresentative. For instance,
most studies of green-building price effects
were carried out between 2007 and 2010.
This may be when interest in eco-labeled
buildings peaked. According to Google
Trends, web searches for “LEED” and “Energy
Star” peaked in 2008/09. Well-known
publication biases in academic research can
also cause a decline effect.
10. There may be publication bias.
Publication bias is a longstanding
phenomenon that refers to a tendency
for research with positive results to be
published. The bias was first noted by
Theodore Sterling, who, in 1959, showed
that 97 percent of all published papers in
psychology confirmed their hypotheses.3
As a result of publication bias, findings
that are insignificant or inconclusive are
hard to publish. This, in turn, produces a
“file drawer” effect: studies that are nonconfirmatory tend to be shelved. Publication
bias may reinforce other biases. Researchers
are not objective and may select or
selectively report results that confirm
preexisting theories and views. Publication
bias can also encourage researchers to
manipulate findings to match expectations
in order to achieve seemingly significant
results. However, as a finding becomes an
accepted fact, leading journals become less
likely to publish studies replicating existing
findings and contrary results become more
interesting and publishable. Publication bias
becomes a particular problem for papers
(such as this one) carrying out a systematic
review of research on specific issue.
Concluding Remarks
Probably the most important finding of the
body of research on the link between real
estate prices and environmental certification
is that nearly all studies find a positive
effect. However, it is worth bearing a number
of points in mind. Many of the studies have
not yet been through a rigorous peer review
process. Even for publications in highquality journals, it may be the case that the
“worthiness” and topicality of the subject
area have created a publication bias. The
vast majority of studies use hedonic analysis
to attempt to isolate the environmental
certificate’s effect on price. However, the
omitted variable problem is pervasive in such
studies. No studies completely cover all of
the price-determining variables.
Despite rapid growth in the field, a fairly
small pool of researchers is common to
many of the studies. It is possible that
the perceived worthiness of the topic has
tempted researchers to accentuate positive
findings and play down negative ones. This
may be enhanced by publication bias; some
journal editors prefer papers with strong
rather than inconclusive findings, which can
also further incentivize authors to play down
the limitations of their research. Finally,
the findings of the studies are becoming
obsolete. Broadly, they provide us with a
“noisy” signal of positive or, in some cases,
negligible price effects associated with
environmental certification. However, given
dynamic markets, up-to-date studies with
better (in terms of scale and scope) data
will still be required. Replication is central
to rigorous research. It is important to
ensure that original results are robust to
extensions over time, different data sets,
and different modeling approaches. In
addition, prices are only part of the picture.
There is still much to learn about the effect
of eco-labels on other aspects of investment
performance such as rental and capital
returns, liquidity, leasing periods, vacancy
levels, and depreciation rates.
Notes
1 The discussion over the next few pages draws
upon Franz Fuerst, Tommaso Gabrieli, and Patrick
McAllister, “A Green Winner's Curse? Investor
Behavior in the Market for Eco-Certified Office
Buildings” (Social Science Research Network,
2012), http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.
cfm?abstract_id=2114528.
2 S. Nuray Akin, Val E. Lambson, Grant R. McQueen,
Brennan C. Platt, Barrett A. Slade, and Justin
P. Wood, “Rushing to Overpay: Modeling and
Measuring the REIT Premium,” Journal of Real
Estate Finance and Economics (2012).
3 Theodore D. Sterling, “Publication Decisions and
Their Possible Effects on Inferences Drawn from
Tests of Significance—Or Vice Versa,” Journal of
the American Statistical Association 54, no. 285
(1959): 30–34.
343
... as taking them
apart. This makes
reusing or recycling
the building's parts
more economically
appealing.
Example from
Sachsenhausen, Germany
Sometimes, less than nothing
is more than enough
The remains of the crematorium at the
Sachsenhausen concentration camp, north of
Berlin, are protected by a large, white roof;
the structure is called “Station Z.” It was
designed by the Stuttgart-based architect
HG Merz in cooperation with Werner Sobek,
according to the latter's principle of
“ephemeral building.” This means taking into
account that every building is ephemeral—
344
A simple vacuum makes
the skin stick to the
structure. Joining them is
as easy, clean, and fast …
and will one day have to be replaced or
altered—and thinking of ways to make that
eventual replacement or renovation as easy,
practical, and economical as possible. The
idea of ephemeral building generally leads
to flexible concepts, structures, and details.
Building parts and materials are recyclable,
and, to promote this, easily separated. In
the case of Station Z, the polyurethane skin
of the building is only attached to its steel
structure by a vacuum. The vacuum keeps
the skin from being blown away by the wind
or falling from the ceiling. When the skin
has to be taken off for maintenance, the
vacuum can be released within seconds.
At the end of the building’s lifespan, this
same quality will make it cheap and easy
to disassemble the building and reuse or
recycle its components. Best of all, the
vacuum pump that keeps this system running
is fully powered by just eight square meters
of solar panels.
Source: “Station Z,” Werner Sobek Engineering &
Design, http://www.wernersobek.de/index.php?
page=79&modaction=detail&modid=311
345
Example from
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Coasting downhill saves fuel and turns
a profit even when tickets are cheap.
DO
UP
:R
.50
$2
WN
:R
$1
.00
Simply switching off the engine
on their way downhill saves Rio
minibus drivers fuel and money.
Passengers profit from the
transparent price policy, paying
less than half the usual price on
downhill trips.
Rio has always been a city where the poor
live in the hills and the rich in the valley
below. As more and more poor families rise
into the middle class, find jobs outside the
favelas, and patronize supermarkets and
shopping malls along the coast, there is
346
an increasing demand for transportation
up and down the hills. This demand is met
by buses owned by small enterprises and
cooperatives. And bus operators have found
a clever way to manage and even profit
from Rio’s strong topography: when driving
downhill, they don’t bother switching on
the engine. Because downhill trips don’t
require any fuel, they’re discounted to just
R$1 ($0.45), compared to the R$2.50 ($1.13)
a passenger must pay for a ride uphill.
By reflecting the actual costs of the bus
trip, this practice contributes to a better
understanding of the value of energy.
347
Raising the Bottom Line: How Sustainability
Affects Occupant Health and Productivity
Gail S. Brager
Are sustainable buildings always more expensive than their conventional
counterparts? UC Berkeley’s Gail S. Brager challenges this notion,
explaining that, if we broaden the terms we use to evaluate them, we
can identify major long-term health and productivity benefits—and
surprisingly large financial gains—offered by sustainable buildings.
The idea that green design will always
add significant cost to a project is a
serious misperception that needs to be
changed. A groundbreaking study by Davis
Langdon found that many green projects
are achieving LEED certification with little
or no added cost; while there is a very
large variation in the costs of both green
and conventional buildings, LEED-certified
buildings have, on average, budgets well
within the cost range of conventional
buildings with similar programs.1
But what are the benefits of green
buildings, particularly in the commercial
sector? People often first think of the
direct financial value from a market or real
estate perspective, wondering whether
such buildings might earn higher sales or
rental prices, or see lower vacancy rates or
insurance premiums. Next, they might think
of the reduced operating costs from lower
energy or water consumption. But one of
the most significant financial benefits of
green buildings is also the most difficult
to quantify: improved indoor environmental
quality (IEQ).
IEQ is a critically important component
of sustainable design. The term most
commonly refers to the thermal environment
348
(air temperature, radiant temperature, air
movement, and humidity), lighting (quantity
and quality of light, including glare
issues), acoustics (sound level and speech
intelligibility), and indoor air quality (odors,
pollutants). A variety of building design
and operational strategies affect IEQ, which
in turn affects various human response
factors (occupant comfort, well-being,
health, and productivity); these can have
positive or negative financial implications.
The importance of these indirect benefits is
immediately obvious when you consider two
factors. First, it’s estimated that people
spend, on average, almost 90 percent of
their time indoors, so this alone suggests
that IEQ can have a significant affect on
various human factors.2 Secondly, the costs
of worker salaries in commercial buildings
are very large compared to capital costs
or energy operating costs. Various sources
estimate that 80 to 90 percent of the costs
of a building are associated with worker
salaries, compared to only 3 percent being
associated with owning and maintaining the
property.3, 4, 5 If we are able to make even
small improvements in productivity through
better IEQ, then the value to the company’s
bottom line will be significantly higher than
the financial rewards of reduced energy
use.
On the negative side, it’s been estimated
that the costs of poor IEQ can be
significantly higher than building heating
and cooling costs.6 In the broadest of
terms, these costs can be thought of as
either direct medical costs related to
health problems caused by the building, or
indirect costs related to reduced individual
performance, which could either be because
of higher absenteeism or, more often,
reduced effectiveness at work. Health
impacts have been easier to assess than
the effects on individual performance, which
vary from job to job. For example, it’s easier
to measure for repetitive work, as in many
blue-collar jobs, and harder to measure for
knowledge workers, whose performance is
more related to creativity than the quantity
of tasks performed. This also makes it
harder to compare the results of different
studies, because there are no consistent
metrics or methods for testing or analyzing
the data.
Data commonly evaluated to estimate
health and performance include rates of
absenteeism, number of units produced,
time spent on tasks, speed and accuracy
tests, health symptoms, and occupant
comfort and satisfaction. One estimate of
the impact of poor IEQ on costs put the
value at $1,071–1,211 per person per year
for well-being and productivity.7 Another
independent analysis came up with a similar
number—$1,196 per employee per year—but
noted that this included all health-related
impacts, not just ones that come from bad
IEQ.8 Some researchers in the United States
have combined per-person estimates with
building stock models, and the numbers are
staggering. One early analysis by the US
Environmental Protection Agency estimated
the cost of indoor air pollution in the
United States to be $60 billion annually: a
3 percent productivity decrease for every
white-collar worker.9
On the positive side, researchers have
demonstrated that the economic benefits
to an individual building or company owner,
and, on a broader scale, across a community
or entire country, can be enormous.10, 11
Conceptually, the benefits of good IEQ
are simply the opposite of the detriments
described above (i.e., reduced medical
costs, reduced absenteeism, better work
performance, etc.), plus other factors such
as improved recruitment and retention of
employees and lower building-maintenance
costs due to fewer complaints. Estimates of
the financial value of health and productivity
benefits have shown that investments to
improve IEQ generally pay for themselves in
less than two years.12 Using building stock
modeling, along with what’s known about
the relationship between health benefits and
costs, William J. Fisk estimated the potential
magnitude of practical benefits of improved
IEQ in the United States; Greg H. Kats
updated the table using 2002 dollars instead
of 1996 (see figure 1). While the dollar
figures are already outdated, the order of
magnitude of the estimated impact is still
enormous, with estimates ranging from
$43–235 billion dollars per year. The value of
these benefits might be 18 to 47 times the
cost of making the improvements.13
The exact ways in which poor IEQ affects
health or reduces performance are not
always known; they are difficult to study
in real buildings because many factors
other than IEQ, which cannot be controlled
as in a laboratory experiment, affect
people’s health and performance. The
relationship between higher ventilation
rates and improved indoor air quality has
been extensively studied (researchers have
noted that higher ventilation rates can
be associated with negative energy-use
consequences). But also of interest are
strategies that affect broader dimensions of
IEQ and occupant perception, that go beyond
349
One study addressed the multiple links
between natural ventilation and sickbuilding syndrome (SBS), and then those
between SBS symptoms and performance,
concluding that natural ventilation
potentially offered a 7.7 percent increase
in overall productivity.14 Another study
compared six international field studies
done in naturally ventilated and mixed-mode
buildings (i.e., those with a combination
of natural ventilation from operable
windows and some form of mechanical
cooling), measuring productivity by a
variety of metrics including absenteeism,
perceived productivity, test scores, and SBS
symptoms.15 Overall, they found an average
8.5 percent increase in productivity, from
a range of 3 to 18 percent (figure 2). Other
studies have found that individual control
of one’s thermal conditions may have
an even greater impact than the type of
ventilation system (natural or mechanical).16
Figure 3 summarizes the results from
eight international case studies, showing
that providing individual temperature
control of each worker increases individual
productivity by a range of 0.2 to 3 percent.17
These topics have been studied extensively
at the Center for the Built Environment
(CBE) at the University of California,
Berkeley. CBE is a collaborative research
center whose mission is to improve
the environmental quality and energy
efficiency of buildings. CBE has over 40
industry partners, representing leading
organizations across the spectrum of the
350
building industry, including architecture and
engineering firms, manufacturers, builders,
and government organizations. One of the
broad areas of research at CBE focuses on
natural ventilation and mixed-mode office
buildings, which we believe offer enormous
opportunities for improving the health and
comfort of their occupants. A well-designed
mixed-mode building begins with intelligent
facade design to minimize cooling loads,
integrating mechanical cooling or ventilation
only when and where it is necessary to
maximize comfort, while avoiding the
significant energy use and operating costs
of year-round air conditioning. The benefits
to occupants, including comfort over a wider
range of temperatures, reduced levels of
SBS symptoms, and high overall occupant
satisfaction, are significant and well
documented.
Source of Productivity Gain
Potential Annual Health Benefits
Potential U.S. Annual Savings
or Productiviy Gain (2002 dollars)
1) Reduced respiratory illness
16 to 37 million avoided cases of
common cold or influenza
$7–16 billion
2) Reduced allergies and asthma
8 to 25% decrease in symptoms
within 53 million allergy sufferers
and 16 million asthmatics
$1–5 billion
3) Reduced sick building syndrome
symptoms
20 to 59% reduction in SBS health
symptoms experienced frequently at
work by ~15 million workers
$10–35 billion
Not applicable
$25–180 billion
$18–56 billion
Sub-total
4) Improved worker performance from
changes in thermal environment and
lighting
$43–235 billion
Total
Figure 4 shows the analysis of a global
database of 22,000 sets of physical and
survey data collected in approximately
160 buildings, both air-conditioned and
naturally ventilated, on four continents. The
findings show a clear difference between the
preferred indoor temperatures predicted by
laboratory experiments and those observed
in the field. The match between observed
and predicted lines in the different building
types is dramatically different, which means
that people are adapting to conditions in
naturally ventilated buildings in ways that
the lab-based predictive models do not
account for. Furthermore, people in naturally
ventilated buildings are comfortable over
a wider range of indoor conditions. We
believe that these differences are due to
shifting expectations and preferences as
a result of occupants having a greater
degree of personal control over their
thermal environment; they have also become
more accustomed to variable conditions
that closely reflect the natural rhythms of
outdoor climate patterns. These results
↑ 1. Potential productivity gains from IEQ improvement.
(Sources: Fisk, 2000, and Kats, 2003)
24%
18%
perceived
productivity
increase
20%
Average improvements 8.5%
$3,900 per employee
16%
% Improvement
building operation to inform and inspire
building design teams, and perhaps have the
potential to simultaneously improve energy
performance. With that in mind, we will look
at the effects of two particular strategies—
natural ventilation and individual
control—on improved occupant health and
productivity.
12%
8%
3.2%
4%
7% reduced
absenteeism
5.1%
40% reduced
SBS symptoms
7.5%
increased
testscores
7.7%
67% reduced
SBS symptoms
9.75%
perceived
productivity
increase
0%
Sterling and Sterling 1983
Skov et al. 1990
Heschong Mahone 2002
Kroeling et al. 1988
Leaman 2001
Rowe 2002
Annual Productivity Gains from Mixed-Mode Conditioning and Natural Ventilation
↑ 2. Productivity gains in naturally ventilated and mixed-mode buildings.
(Source: Loftness et al., 2005)
351
NaturaI Ventilation
First Author
CMU/CBPD/ABSIC BIDS™
4
Quiet Conditions (35dBA)
w/shift from 30°C to 22°C
(overall)
3
3
n = 118
2
Shifted from
24°C to 20°C in
workplace
(typing speed &
accuracy 36.6%
increase)
n = 30, p < 0.006
0.4*
95
868
Mendell
96
710
Mendell, Bunge
90, 87
1,459
Mendell, Hamison
90, 87
1,044
Zweers
92
2,806
Jaakkola
95
335
Mendell, Bunge
90, 87
863
Zweers
92
3,573
Jaakola
95
559
Teeuw
94
927
Mendell, Bunge
90, 87
1,991
Mendell, Finnegan
90, 87
787
Mendell, Hamison
90, 87
2,080
Mendell, Hedge
90, 84
1,214
Zweers
92
3,846
Brasche
99
Hawkins
91
AC +
No
Humid.
AC +
Steam
Humid.
AC +
Evap.
Humid.
AC +
Spray
Humid.
255
01
= Significantly more symptoms
20
= Reference (fewer symptoms)
h
er
se
er
se
itt
itt
W
W
te
(typing speed
3.5% increase)
Jaakkola
Natral
Ventilation
b2
n = 30, p < 0.01
b1
h
20
20
01
01
74
19
n
yo
/W
h
n = 42
7
N.
Y.
St
a
Ba
um
an
W
es
t
et
Be
al
nd
.1
/R
99
PI
6
99
.1
al
et
n
yo
W
a
n=24, p=0.05
0.2*
0.3***
0
0.7*
er
se
(occupants’
satisfaction
7% increase)
n = 30, p < 0.05
1
1.3*
itt
mean y = 1.2
(error rate on
addition tests
35% decrease)
Noisy Conditions (55dBA)
w/shift from
30°C to 22°C
(creative
thinking 19%
increase
W
% Improved Individual Productivity
(insurance claims
processing)
2.5
Year
No. of
subjects
Air-Conditioning (different systems)
↑ 5. Sick-building syndrome symptoms in
naturally ventilated vs. air-conditioned buildings.
(Source: Seppänen and Fisk, 2002)
Case Studies Introducing Improved Performance with Temperature Control
(* Performance improvement for specific tasks multiplied by estimated time at tasks)
(*** Occupant satisfaction calculated relative to productivity gains from other studies)
↑ 3. Improved performance with individual temperature control.
(Source: Loftness et al., 2003)
Average Scores by Category
Centrally controlled HVAC buildings
Naturally ventilated buildings
Top indoor comfort temperature (°C)
Top indoor comfort temperature (°C)
% Improved Individual Productivity
General Satisfaction Building
27
26
25
24
23
22
21
20
-5
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
outdoor temperature index, ET* (ºC)
27
26
General Satisfaction Workspace
25
Office Layout
24
23
Office Furnishings
22
21
Thermal Comfort
20
-5
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
Air Quality
outdoor temperature index, ET* (ºC)
Lighting
Lines are weighted linear regressions through the data points (not shown)
Predicted: Lab-based heat-balance model
Observed: Field-based adaptive model
Acoustic Quality
Cleanliness and Maintenance
↑ 4. Observed and predicted indoor comfort temperatures
in centrally controlled vs. naturally ventilated buildings.
Case Studies Introducing Improved Performance
Temperature
Control
(Source: Dewith
Dear
and Brager,
2001)
(*Performance improvement for specific tasks multiplied by estimated time at tasks)
(***Occupant satisfaction calculated relative to productivity gains from other studies)
-2
-3
-1
Negative
CBE Database (n = 42 700)
352
0
1
2
3
Positive
Mixed Mode Buildings (n = 520)
↑ 6. Average satisfaction scores for occupants of
mixed-mode buildings compared to broader population.
(Source: Brager and Baker, 2009)
353
Source: Mendell, MJ, Mirer. AG (2009) Indoor Air 19(4): 291-302
Summer Temp. Range
73.2
70.9
75.9
73.8
Summer Comfort Zone
79.3
Winter Temp. Range
74.1
70.9
72.3
72
70
76.6
Winter Comfort Zone
76.1
74
76
78
form the basis for a new adaptive comfort
standard in ASHRAE Standard 55, “Thermal
Environmental Conditions for Human
Occupancy,” and many countries are trying
to develop similar standards that would be
specific to their own regions.18
80
Research has also shown that naturally
ventilated buildings have fewer problems
associated with indoor air quality. Figure
5 shows the results of twelve field studies
from the United States and six countries
in Europe, covering 467 buildings with
approximately 24,000 total occupants.
Relative to naturally ventilated buildings,
the air-conditioned buildings (with or
without humidification) showed between 30
percent and 200 percent more cases of SBS
symptoms.19
82
Temperature (˚F)
Recommended temperature
Observed temperature
Increased symptoms
↑ 7. Observed vs. recommended temperatures in 100 US office buildings.
(Source: Mendell and Mirer, 2009)
Energy savings with Personal Comfort Systems (PECS)
40
San Francisco
35
30
Miami
25
Expanded comfort with PECS
20
Energy Saving (%)
Duluth
dead band
15
Conventional
10
Adaptive
radiant
free-running
ceiling fans
personal environmental control systems
5
PECS
0
16
18
20
22
Heating/Cooling setpoint (˚C)
24
26
28
30
16
18
20
22
26
24
28
30
Temperature (˚C)
↑ 8. Energy saved by widening heating/cooling setpoints beyond conventional ranges.
(Source: Hoyt et al., 2009)
354
Turning to the broader characteristics of
indoor environmental quality in mixed-mode
buildings, figure 6 shows the results of
a CBE web-based survey administered in
twelve mixed-mode buildings, compared
to the performance of 370 conventional
buildings that existed in the database at the
time. The mixed-mode buildings performed
exceptionally well compared to the overall
building stock, especially in thermal comfort
and air quality. The best performers were
newer, in more moderate climates, had
radiant cooling or mechanical ventilation
only, and allowed high degrees of direct user
control without window interlock systems,
which might either lock the window when the
HVAC is on, or turn off the HVAC when the
window is open.20
Another broad area of research at the
CBE addresses technologies we call
personal comfort systems (PCS), which
allow occupants to personally control their
local thermal environment in ways that will
enhance their comfort and simultaneously
save energy. Studies suggest that individual
control of one’s thermal conditions may
be even more important than the type of
ventilation system.21 As shown in figure 7,
we are overheating and overcooling our
buildings (especially in summertime),
expending enormous amounts of energy
while also creating uncomfortable and
unhealthy conditions. These results suggest
that if we increase summer setpoints, we
can simultaneously save energy and improve
health and comfort.
Providing occupants with low-power PCS
devices to control their local thermal
environment, particularly in the summer,
will allow people to remain comfortable over
a wider range of ambient temperatures,
while also providing them the opportunity
to meet their own personal preferences. We
developed a desktop fan and under-desk
radiant foot warmer that are low cost, have
personal controls, consume little energy
(the fan uses approximately 4W and the foot
warmer approximately 30W), and can easily
be used in retrofit applications. Both have
integrated occupancy sensors—they can
turn themselves off when not in use—and
incorporate various sensors to measure
temperature and use patterns.
As shown in figure 7, our simulations
suggest that a PCS allows the building
operator to expand the range of
temperatures at which occupants are
comfortable, which can reduce buildingenergy consumption by up to 30 percent
depending on climate. Conventional
buildings in the United States typically
operate between 22 and 24 Celcius; if
occupants have localized and personal
control, operators can significantly increase
the deadband of the ambient environment,
thereby increasing the times during which
the HVAC system does not need to operate.
Figure 8 shows the annual energy savings
achieved with a range of possible interior
355
setpoints. The low-power PCS units consume
negligible amounts of electricity relative
to the reduction in consumption from the
HVAC system.22 Our laboratory testing
confirmed that comfort was well-maintained
over a wide range of room temperatures
and perceived air quality was significantly
improved. Not only did the non-uniform
environments not lower occupants’ task
performance, some performance indicators
actually improved.23
Today, too many buildings are designed
not only without the planet in mind, but
also without considering their occupants.
Whether or not environmental objectives
dictate decisions being made by a building’s
design team, those decisions will influence
the occupants’ experience, so it’s prudent
to be conscientious and purposeful about
those decisions. Strategies such as
daylighting, natural ventilation, personal
control, views, and healthy materials
have all been demonstrated to improve
indoor environmental quality and occupant
experience, as well as being important
sustainable strategies that are good for
the natural environment by reducing energy
use. Decisions about the design or operation
of buildings can have a profound impact,
creating indoor environments that not only
are comfortable and healthy, but are also
connected to the natural environment,
provide a sense of place, and are a delight
to be in. This is often the “hook” for clients
who don’t necessarily care about the energy
impacts.
In organizing the complex body of
information and criteria that affect a
design problem, it is easy to postpone the
development of clear objectives for the
indoor environmental quality of your spaces.
On the other hand, sometimes the earliest
design decisions will have profound, and
often irreversible, effects on these very
356
qualities. Considering these issues early
in the design process provides valuable
opportunities for integrated architectural
and engineering solutions that add to the
richness of the building and expand the
sensory experience of the space in positive
ways. The financial implications will be
equally rewarding.
Notes
1 Lisa Fay Matthiessen and Peter Morris, The Cost
of Green Revisited: Reexamining the Feasibility and
Cost Impact of Sustainable Design in the Light of
Increased Market Adoption (Davis Langdon, 2007).
2 Derek Clements-Croome, ed., Creating the
Productive Workplace, 2nd ed. (New York: Taylor &
Francis, 2006).
3 Alex Wilson, “Making the Case for Green
Building,” Environmental Building News 14, no. 4
(2005).
4 Clements-Croome, Creating the Productive
Workplace.
5 Greg H. Kats, The Costs and Financial Benefits
of Green Building: A Report to California’s
Sustainable Building Task Force (2003).
6 Olli A. Seppänen, “Estimated Cost of Indoor
Climate in Finnish Buildings,” Proceedings of
Indoor Air 1999 3 (1999), 13–18.
7 Amanjeet Singh, Matt Syal, Sinem Korkmaz, and
Sue Grady, “Costs and Benefits of IEQ Improvements
in LEED Office Buildings,” Journal of Infrastructure
Systems 17, no. 2 (June 2011), 86–94.
8 Walter F. Stewart, Judith A. Ricci, Elsbeth Chee,
and David Morganstein, “Lost Productive Work
Time Costs from Health Conditions in the United
States: Results from the American Productivity
Audit,” Journal of Occupational and Environmental
Medicine 45, no. 12 (2003), 1234–46.
9 US Environmental Protection Agency, Report
to Congress on Indoor Air Quality; Volume II:
Assessment and Control of Indoor Air Pollution
(Washington, DC: US EPA, 1989).
10 W. J. Fisk, “Health and Productivity Benefits
from Better Indoor Environments and their
Relationship to Building Energy Efficiency,” Energy
and Environment 25 (2000), 537–66.
11 Mark J. Mendell, William J. Fisk, Kathleen
Kreiss, Hal Levin, Darryl Alexander, Walter S. Cain,
John R. Girman, et al., “Improving the Health of
Workers in Indoor Environments: Priority Research
Needs for a National Occupational Research
Agenda,” American Journal of Public Health 92, no.
9 (September 2002), 1430–40.
12 Pawel Wargocki and Olli A. Seppänen, eds.,
Indoor Climate and Productivity in Offices, vol. 6
(REHVA, Federation of European Heating and Airconditioning Associations, 2006), 80.
13 William J. Fisk and Arthur H. Rosenfeld,
“Estimates of Improved Productivity and Health
from Better Indoor Environments,” Indoor Air 7, no.
3 (1997), 158–72.
14 Pawel Wargocki, David P. Wyon, and P. O. Fanger,
“Productivity Is Affected by the Air Quality in
Offices,” Proceedings of Healthy Buildings 2000 1
(2000).
15 Vivian Loftness, Volker Hartkopf, Beran
Gurtekin, Ying Hua, Ming Qu, Megan Snyder, Yun
Gu, and Xiaodi Yang, Building Investment Decision
Support (BIDS): Cost-Benefit Tool to Promote High
Performance Components, Flexible Infrastructures
& Systems Integration for Sustainable Commercial
Buildings and Productive Organizations, AIA 2005
Report on University Research.
16 Jørn Toftum, “Central Automatic Control Or
Distributed Occupant Control for Better Indoor
Environment Quality in the Future,” Building and
Environment 45, no. 1 (January 2010), 23–28.
17 Vivian Loftness, Volker Hartkopf, Beran
Gurtekin, David Hansen, and Robert J. Hitchcock,
“Linking Energy to Health and Productivity in the
Built Environment” (US Green Building Council,
2003).
18 ANSI/ASHRAE, “ANSI/ASHRAE 55-2004:
Thermal Environmental Conditions for Human
Occupancy” (Atlanta: American Society of Heating,
Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers,
2004).
19 Olli A. Seppänen and William J. Fisk,
“Association of Ventilation System Type with SBS
Symptoms in Office Workers,” Indoor Air 12 (2002),
98–112.
22 Tyler Hoyt, Kwang Ho Lee, Hui Zhang, Edward
A. Arens, and Tom Webster, “Energy Savings
from Extended Air Temperature Setpoints and
Reductions in Room Air Mixing,” International
Conference on Environmental Ergonomics, August
2–7, 2009, Boston.
23 Hui Zhang, Edward A. Arens, DongEun Kim,
Elena Buchberger, Fred S. Bauman, and Charlie
Huizenga, “Comfort, Perceived Air Quality, and
Work Performance in a Low-Power Task—Ambient
Conditioning System,” Building and Environment
45, no. 1 (January, 2010), 29–39.
Image Sources
Fisk, “Health and Productivity Benefits from Better
Indoor Environments and Their Relationship to
Building Energy Efficiency,” 537–66.
Kats, The Costs and Financial Benefits of Green
Building.
Vivian Loftness et al., Building Investment Decision
Support (BIDS): Cost-Benefit Tool to Promote High
Performance Components, Flexible Infrastructures
& Systems Integration for Sustainable Commercial
Buildings and Productive Organizations.
Vivian Loftness et al., “Linking Energy to Health
and Productivity in the Built Environment”.
Richard J. de Dear and Gail S. Brager, “The
Adaptive Model of Thermal Comfort and Energy
Conservation in the Built Environment,”
International Journal of Biometeorology 45, no. 2
(2001), 100–8.
Olli A. Seppänen and William J. Fisk, “Association
of Ventilation System Type with SBS Symptoms in
Office Workers,” 98–112.
Gail S. Brager and Lindsay Baker, “Occupant
Satisfaction in Mixed-Mode Buildings,” 369–380.
Mark J. Mendell and A. G. Mirer, “Indoor Thermal
Factors and Symptoms in Office Workers: Findings
from the US EPA BASE Study,” Indoor Air 19, no. 4
(2009), 291–302.
Tyler Hoyt et al., “Energy Savings from Extended
Air Temperature Setpoints and Reductions in Room
Air Mixing.”
20 Gail S. Brager and Lindsay Baker, “Occupant
Satisfaction in Mixed-Mode Buildings,” Building
Research & Information 37, no. 4 (2009), 369–380.
21 Toftum, “Central Automatic Control,” 23–28.
357
Balancing Sustainability, Quality, and Affordability:
The CASA Rating for Affordable Housing
Vishnu Swaminathan and Martina Wengle
The affordable housing sector is huge; even a small shift toward
sustainable practices there will have a huge cumulative effect.
Vishnu Swaminathan and Martina Wengle of Ashoka India, a social
entrepreneurship non-profit, introduce the CASA Rating, a certification
for sustainable, affordable housing that draws on the experience and
knowledge of those who need affordable housing and offers incentives to
those who will build it.
Sustainable construction is synonymous, for
many people, with expensive construction. At
Ashoka, a global association of the world’s
leading social entrepreneurs, we believe
that this is a misapprehension, especially
when it comes to affordable housing. The
affordable housing sector is enormous; if we
can introduce a few sustainable practices
to it, we will see extremely positive results.
For Ashoka, one of the key considerations in
sustainable, affordable housing is to move
away from the notion of cheap housing,
instead creating high-quality, durable small
spaces. In addition, sustainability has to
allow financial viability and scalability. This
new perspective must come from the users
who will eventually live in these spaces,
and it must be supported by architects and
construction companies.
The affordable housing sector is likely to
boom without any emphasis on quality or
safety. Dr. Bruce W. Ferguson, former Senior
Housing and Urban Economist of the World
Bank, describes the growth potential as
follows: “Over one billion people—32 percent
of the global urban population—live in urban
slums in emerging countries, with 500,000
358
more joining them each week. In addition,
virtually all net growth of 2.6 billion in
world population between now and 2050 is
projected to occur in these cities. Relatively
poor nations will build the equivalent of
a city of more than one million people
each week for the next 45 years.”1 Such
population growth projections suggest the
critical need for affordable and safe housing.
Housing in India is regulated by a confusing
tangle of voluntary guidelines and laws.
Enforcement mechanisms are lacking and
there is no legal provision for warranties.
The system leaves much to the discretion of
real estate developers.
This problem is particularly exacerbated
when it comes to affordable housing, where
many developers try to push prices down
at the expense of quality. While some
customers from the poorest socioeconomic
group, also termed the Base of the Pyramid
(BoP), can afford a house, buying a home is
probably the biggest investment of those
customers’ lives. They cannot afford to make
a bad choice. Ensuring the safety and quality
of housing and building a relationship based
on trust between customers, developers,
and financiers are key. So far, there is little
awareness of the needs of the customers
and there are no standards for technical
requirements, environmental sustainability,
effective budget handling, or integration of
community voices.
In 2008, Ashoka began promoting Hybrid
Value Chain (HVC). HVC refers to a process
of collaborative entrepreneurship designed
to combine the strengths of businesses
and social entrepreneurs in order to repair
value chains that currently aren’t working
for a large number of people. Ashoka
enables partnerships between actors
from the private sector and communitybased organizations to provide housing to
informal-sector households in India.
To date, Ashoka has facilitated eleven such
partnerships in Ahmedabad, Bangalore,
Bhopal, Chennai, Coimbatore, Madurai, the
National Capital Region, and Pune. Generally,
developers provide technical knowledge
related to design and construction, project
financing, land acquisition, and all legal and
tax aspects of affordable housing projects.
However, they have little contact with or
access to their target market, low income
families who need smaller, more affordable
flats. Community-based organizations, on
the other hand, do have relationships with
these communities. Collaboration can thus
be very enriching, improving living conditions
for many and helping businesses to improve
their profitability and expand their clientele
base.
In order to achieve this balance between
quality and affordability, Ashoka’s Housing
for All initiative and TÜV Rheinland are
developing the CASA Rating for affordable
housing; it is expected to launch in the
second semester of 2013. Certification
systems such as LEED and Griha, India’s
green rating system, have paved the way
for other kinds of building certifications
and proved that certification systems
provide strong incentives for developers.
While those certifications target the upper
segment of the market, the CASA Rating has
the potential to democratize sustainable
construction by focusing on affordable
housing. This entails balancing quality with
cost as well as setting incentives to build
trust among the different stakeholders.
Measuring construction quality, energy
and environment management, community
integration, and financial viability, the
CASA Rating will provide a benchmark
for affordable housing. It will incentivize
high-quality products for the entire value
chain and for the whole affordable housing
industry, introducing businesses to a
new, growing market. The rating will also
promote business solutions tailored to BoP
customers and will help them make informed
consumer choices.
The CASA Rating
A major challenge of affordable housing in
India lies in reaching heretofore excluded
customers and tailoring housing solutions
to their needs. The CASA Rating focuses
on housing for informal-sector customers
from the “top” of the BoP. BoP customers
have various needs and capacities and can
be represented by a “pyramid within the
BoP.” The lowest in the pyramid, the poorest,
need government-subsidized housing. In
the middle of the pyramid are people who
have lived in slums for many years and need
home-improvement solutions. At the top of
the pyramid are people who are part of the
emerging middle class; they are both able
and willing to move to new housing. The
CASA Rating focuses on housing solutions
for this segment. It targets the development
of units valued at up to INR 1.2 million
($22,000) which are sold at market rates
359
to households with an aggregated income
not exceeding INR 25,000 per month
(approximately $455). These figures need to
be examined every year and adjusted so that
the monthly installments do not exceed 30 to
40 percent of a household’s gross monthly
income.2 The customers who can afford these
houses are typically employed as drivers,
vegetable vendors, petty shop owners, or
domestic help. Almost all of them draw an
informal income.
The Housing Council of India (HCI), also
pioneered by Ashoka, administers the CASA
Rating. The HCI is a neutral body that will
promote industry standards and research on
affordable and sustainable housing in India.
The HCI accredits certification bodies after
a thorough assessment of their capabilities;
the certification bodies rate the projects
and award certifications to a particular
project. In return, certification bodies pay
a yearly fee and an additional fee for every
license issued. These revenues allow the
HCI to cover its running costs. The HCI has
already established one such partnership
with TÜV Rheinland, a global operating
company.
Real estate developers who chose to rate
their affordable housing projects apply
directly to a third-party certification body.
The CASA Rating looks at the entire building
and its occupants over a large time span;
it is not a one-time “stamp of approval,”
but rather a process that starts during the
pre-building stage of the project, as soon as
the developer has the documentation ready.
After the developer applies for a rating with
the certification body, three audits will be
performed, one each at the pre-construction,
construction, and post-construction stages.
This will allow the developer to advertise
the rating of his product at a very early
stage and guarantee that the project is
sustainable in the long run. A real estate
360
developer applying for the rating will also
be able to improve the quality of his or her
product by leveraging the lessons learned in
prior successful affordable housing projects,
and will in turn draw lessons for future
developments. Furthermore, the CASA Rating
improves the marketing of the project by
effectively promoting sales.
The rating has a set of preconditions with
ten criteria and will only rate projects that
comply with these preconditions. Beyond
these preconditions, it rates around 80
criteria in four focus areas—construction,
community, energy and environment,
and finance. The project needs to meet
expectations in each focus area as well as in
its overall rating; otherwise, HCI refuses to
certify. This assures a minimum benchmark,
while developers who perform poorly in one
area can offset those low marks with a very
good performance in another area. The CASA
Rating can influence a project by rewarding
certain actions with a better rating.
Providing a clear benchmark for affordable
housing has several advantages. It will
encourage quality in real estate development
and will allow the government to efficiently
target and promote affordable housing. The
CASA Rating outlines stipulations that will
allow developers to address a new customer
segment. While venturing into the affordable
housing market, real estate developers need
not only to adapt their products, but also
to understand a completely new customer
segment.
Beyond Attractive Price Points
Apart from price, affordable housing must
address other crucial considerations:
quality, durability, and customers’ tastes
and aspirations. The design assumptions
developers make for “conventional”
customers do not often hold true for BoP
customers. Real estate developers entering
the affordable housing market need to make
a considerable effort to understand and
interact with this customer segment.
The Shubha project by Janaadhar
Constructions in Bangalore offers a good
example. In the first phase of construction,
the project had installed inexpensive squat
toilets, assuming that customers would
only look at the price points. Following
a multitude of requests for flush toilets,
Janaadhar Constructions reconsidered
this choice in the second phase of the
project and chose to equip units with the
more expensive flush toilets. The nascent
affordable housing sector is full of similar
examples; the rating system therefore
outlines a consultative approach. The CASA
Rating requires a developer to create a
profile of his or her target and encourages
developers to gather input on building
layout, design, and height.
Selling to the Target Segment
The CASA Rating further assesses whether
a project has made particular efforts to
sell the units to BoP customers and how
many BoP customers were actually able to
occupy the units. It evaluates whether the
developer created a pipeline of customers in
order to sell the project and whether he or
she informed customers in advance of the
commencement date for sales. The rating
system therefore requires the developer
to adapt his or her marketing methods to
low-income communities. Methods for raising
awareness about a project can range from
opting for leaflets rather than a website to
contacting the communities via a nonprofit
or association. Demonstration units or
other three-dimensional models help further
explain the project.
One of the main challenges BoP customers
face when trying to buy a home is getting a
loan. Financial literacy can help customers
to obtain mortgage finance; the rating
therefore rewards projects that provide
customers with assistance and education
on how they can access loans. This includes
help compiling all necessary documentation
and explaining the whole process of
obtaining finance. For example, a customer
who can show regular transactions on his
bank account has a much greater chance
of receiving a loan than a customer who
has an inactive or no bank account. Many
BoP customers have no bank accounts;
they need to first open one and then start
using it for transfers in order to become
eligible for a loan. A developer can assist
with this process by interacting with BoP
customers at an early stage and providing
financial literacy. The rating also evaluates
the opportunities that are curated for
customers.
In India, housing finance institutions assess
projects before accepting loan applications
from customers. By first checking the
legality of titles and the developer’s ability
and intention to deliver, housing finance
institutions reduce their risks. If a project is
evaluated and approved by a large number
of housing finance institutions, customers
will have a good choice of loan products.
Therefore, a project evaluated and approved
by many housing finance institutions will
receive a better rating than a project
approved by only a few.
Improving Transparency
The rating system encourages developers
to make thorough checks of the titles, sign
transparent agreements with clients, and
only accept non-cash transfers. Regrettably,
purchasing units partly in cash is a
361
widespread practice in India. This makes
the traceability of the transaction difficult.
Developers commonly accept cash payments
and do not declare these amounts or issue
a receipt for customers who have not yet
closed the sales deal. This sends the wrong
message to the housing finance institution
about the financial capacities of a particular
client. Later on, if a customer actually
defaults, all the involved stakeholders will
lose out.
Buying land with undisputed titles has also
proven to be difficult in India; the rating
will therefore assess the legality of titles
by considering all legal reviews made by
housing finance institutions. Furthermore,
there is a complex set of regulations
combining the recommendations of the
National Building Code (NBC) with legally
binding by-laws. The regulations are rarely
verified. The rating rewards developers for
submitting proof that these regulations have
been respected and verified and that no
major deviations have been made after the
planning phase.
The rating also encourages developers
to enter formal agreements with
their customers, stating the role and
responsibilities of each stakeholder. This
agreement should include the cancellation
policy and state the total price and available
carpet area of the unit, including a detailed
breakdown of all one-time and recurring
costs, so that the consumer gets a clear
picture of the total cost at the outset.
Optimizing Energy Use
Population densities are significantly higher
in affordable housing than in conventional
housing. This poses new challenges in terms
of drainage and waste handling in a project.
The CASA Rating encourages a developer
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to provide efficient drainage and waste
handling, keeping its maintenance and operations costs low. A key aspect is that the
responsibilities for and duration of operations and maintenance are clearly defined.
Many sustainable considerations, such
as lowering energy use, also help lower
the price of a unit over its entire lifespan.
The rating should reduce operations and
maintenance costs by ensuring that the
developer thinks about these costs at a
very early stage of the project. The CASA
Rating also encourages the use of passive
ventilation and lighting. There are many
ways to design a cool, well-ventilated, and
adequately lit unit without adding costs. The
rating also evaluates energy use, thermal
efficiency, and water management.
Providing Sustainable and Affordable
Housing
India is rapidly urbanizing and will have to
build huge volumes of housing in the near
future. If we want this sector to grow in a
sustainable way, it is high time to speak
about and address issues of sustainability.
However, the notion of sustainability needs
to be adapted for affordable housing. In
feedback, BoP customers have said that they
do not want to pay more for sustainability,
but they are willing to pay more if
they get value in return. Sustainability
therefore needs to be packaged with
high-quality products tailored to the
needs of BoP customers. Making quality a
pillar of affordable housing will increase
sustainability. For example, high-density
settlements will require good sewerage and
drainage systems to keep operations and
maintenance costs low.
housing. Private-sector players need to
realize that they face a new customer set
with needs and aspirations different from
their usual customers. In order to efficiently
tackle this customer segment, real estate
developers and housing finance institutions
need to spend time learning about their new
customers and revise their business models.
The CASA Rating was developed with these
considerations in mind and sets incentives
for developers to build quality housing using
input from the end users. We hope the CASA
Rating will be an early milestone of the
democratization of sustainability.
Notes
1 Bruce Ferguson, “A Value Chain Framework
for Affordable Housing in Emerging Countries,”
Global Urban Development 4, no. 2 (2008), http://
www.globalurban.org/GUDMag08Vol4Iss2/
FergusonValueChain.pdf.
2 KPMG, “Affordable Housing: A Key Growth
Driver in the Real Estate Sector?” (KPMG, 2010),
http://www.kpmg.com/IN/en/IssuesAndInsights/
ThoughtLeadership/Affordable_Housing.pdf.
Solutions from the conventional market
cannot simply be transposed to affordable
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Architecture Is Here to Stay
David Chipperfield
Architects are obliged, at a minimum, to observe basic standards
and regulations in terms of energy and thermal performance.
The straightforward issues of thermal performance, shading
buildings, using energy, and optimizing daylight are all now
standard considerations that architects engage very early in a
project. But our clients are also increasingly concerned about a
wider spectrum of issues that might affect the sustainability of
the project. As architects, we have to engage these concerns,
but we rarely let sustainability drive our design process.
For me, sustainability is about permanence. The idea of
permanence has always been fundamental to architecture;
there is an emotional notion that, when you build something,
you are making a lasting physical impact on the Earth and our
communities. With certain exceptions, architecture aspires to
physical longevity, and buildings, unless they’re temporary, must
be prepared for social change. The idea of permanence, however,
runs against many consumerist tendencies in contemporary
society. The market wants to continuously replace one thing with
another, feeding our frenzy for the latest fashions. The notion
of treasuring something that might last seems to be under
threat. Taking care of and valuing something seems like an oldfashioned concept in a throwaway society.
That’s not only broadly true of consumerism, but also specifically
a problem in the construction industry. In its desire to build
quicker, the construction industry often builds in a way that
undermines this idea of permanence.
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We can explore the idea of permanence on a physical level: what
buildings are built out of. Architecture aspires to more than just
the desire to survive, however; it also hopes to establish lasting
priorities and values that will endure longer than computergenerated images. The organization of our buildings and their
participation in a bigger composition gives shape and solidity
to our abstract ideas of society. They can inspire our sense of
participation in a society otherwise held together by explicit
needs and invented rituals and pastimes.
Emotionally, we still expect the same from our built
environment as we did decades and centuries ago: in cities
and neighborhoods, we hope to find protection as well as
opportunities to come together. However, it’s becoming
increasingly difficult to create public spaces—or any other
collective space that’s not commercial. This makes it even more
pressing for architects to exploit their buildings’ potential
to contribute to an environment that represents the civilized
ambitions of society. It is in this way that we can imagine
architecture contributing to the common good of society.
Only by working together can architects set precedents and
guide future development. There are few opportunities where
energies and potentials among different actors and projects are
coordinated; architects too often work in isolation, designing
singular, stand-alone buildings that are, by definition, little able
to relate to their environment either ecologically or socially.
Architects therefore need to find a way to work in a coordinated
manner with other stakeholders around something more than
just a convenient master plan. Only then can we see development
as more than just a commercial activity and instead as a way to
determine the future form of the city.
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View of London from studio
Looking out from my twelfth-floor studio, I see London. It’s
a mess, and it’s getting messier in front of our eyes. Even in
the isolation of my studio, I’m confronted everyday with the
other side of this profession. This is an explicit representation
of the cumulative effect of development. We know that the
city is generating wealth. It’s like a farm, where the crop of
buildings generates wealth. That has always been the case, but
in our free-market society there is little coordination of vision,
nothing to determine what these buildings might add up to
beyond their singular selves. I presume that every building has
conformed to regulations and new sustainable standards, and
I'm sure a lot of these projects emphasize those themes. But,
in the end, is this really a sustainable picture?
↑ 1. View of London from studio.
Via Giuseppe Verdi, Milan, 1992
As architects, we’re always hoping and looking for reasons why
our individual project might add up to more than itself. Often,
however, when we work in isolation, we try to overcook the singular building. If our buildings are singular and stand entirely on
their own merits, they miss the opportunity to draw upon the contextual setting and circumstances. We all still hanker for scenes
in which the city is more than just a collection of individual efforts. There is a tendency in modern architecture to be radical
and to undermine this; there is a notion that, in order for architecture to have authority, it somehow must be different. However,
it is more interesting to consider how architecture can be continuous, how we can develop architecture while, at the same time,
bringing our expectations and our memories along with us.
↑ 2. Via Giuseppe Verdi, Milan, 1992. Photograph by Thomas Struth.
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Pudong, Shanghai 1999
↑ 3. Pudong, Shanghai, 1999. Photograph by Thomas Struth.
This is a view of Pudong, on the east side of Shanghai
by the Huangpu River, taken five or six years ago. In the
1990s, Pudong rapidly developed into the financial center of
Shanghai and thus of China. The skyline is everything; there is
nothing at ground level. I stayed in a hotel there. When you go
downstairs, there’s no option but to get a taxi. At ground level
there is no social payoff to these objects; there is nothing
more than the cumulative effect of the single buildings. This
is a typical kind of development now, not only in China, but
across the world. Where will we get that dimension of the city
that we used to have? Where will we get “useless” spaces—
parks and squares—that are not simply just shopping malls
and other commercial investments? We must not forget about
those public spaces that are not driven commercially.
Rockbund Project, Shanghai
We have to consider continuity and build on what came before
rather than simply starting again. An interesting case study
of this is a project we are working on in Shanghai at the
moment known as the Rockbund Project. The project involves
the restoration and conversion of eleven buildings helping to
revitalize the area, which is to include office complexes, hotels,
retail buildings, and apartments in the style of Shanghai’s
colonial architecture. We’ve been working there, for three
or four years, on a row of historic colonial buildings in the
Rockbund area of Shanghai. This area of Shanghai, on the west
bank of the Huangpu River, was developed after the Opium
War of 1842. As the British, French, and Americans gained
↑ 4. Rockbund Project, Shanghai.
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access to the city, they erected commercial buildings in the
Rockbund in the Art Deco and Beaux Arts styles. This area
flourished during the 1920s and 1930s and forms the basis for
Shanghai’s development as the commercial center of Asia.
Restored Colonial Building, Rockbund Project
The easiest approach would have been to knock these historic
buildings down and replace them with something contemporary.
It was also the preferred approach; they’re very good at
copying in China and Western-style skyscrapers are in high
demand. But this approach isn’t good architecture: you lose
something material, cultural, and intellectual when you demolish
buildings and neighborhoods. It’s a struggle anywhere to make
the argument for adaptive reuse, but you really struggle in
China. If you can find the original drawings, the client will say,
"we'll tear the old building down and rebuild it."
It has been a very difficult project. We devoted three years
to painstakingly cleaning and restoring the buildings to
their original state, removing any subsequent conversions. It
seems banal—why shouldn’t you just knock them down and
start again? Except for the bank, they’re not very significant
buildings. While it is fairly obvious that we want to protect
and conserve monuments, the more complicated discussion,
however, is about buildings that play more supportive roles—
the less glamorous pieces of architecture in our cities. If we
took them all away, we’d lose something else, some part of
the organic character of our cities. I say this not as someone
fascinated by conservation, but as someone who is suspicious
of the tabula rasa agenda of contemporary development.
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↑ 5. Restored Colonial Building, Rockbund Project.
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Upcycling the built environment is a more sustainable
approach to urban development; it’s not only ecologically
and financially sustainable, but social and culturally
sustainable as well. Sustainability is not solely technical;
it overlaps with other issues. The exercise of trying to
preserve and build upon what already existed was weird and
complicated to argue, especially when it’s apparent that the
original elements themselves weren’t in great shape. When
we were trying to repair a 1920s Chinese terrazzo, which
was probably the poorest terrazzo in the world, they asked,
“Why do you want to keep that?” Our response was, “Once
we tear that away, why not take the staircase away? Why
not take the bricks away? Why not take the windows away?”
Naga Museum, Sudan
For our new projects, this approach translates into designing
buildings so that they can age with grace and dignity. In
2006, we were invited by the Society for the Promotion of
the Egyptian Museum Berlin to work on a pro-bono project
in Naga, Sudan, north of Khartoum. Over the last 25 years, a
German-Egyptian archeological team had, with funding from
the Berlin State Museum, excavated a religious center dating
back to the Meroitic Empire—from 200 BC to AD 300. The Naga
Museum that we designed is both a visitor shelter and a place
where the valuable objects can be protected throughout the
whole year.
↑ 6. Naga Museum, Sudan.
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Two issues that faced us were fascinating from a
sustainability standpoint. First, what material do you use to
build in the middle of the desert? That question forced us
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to think local and consider the local shale for the concrete
base and the roof. Everything was made on site except
for the precast concrete elements, which were made in
Khartoum. Second, because there is no one supervising or
protecting the building, it had to be as simple as it could
possibly be. As sandstorms are common in the area, even
having glass windows was an issue. So we tried to strip
back to the basic components and functions of building. We
argued that, for example, it wouldn’t be a problem if sand
came into the building—you can just sweep it out. There was
therefore no point in putting in windows to keep the sand
out and then replace them every year after they’re sandblasted. The Naga Museum was a very interesting project
to be involved in from the very beginning. It was a vital
exercise in thinking about the least that architecture could
be—what’s the minimum we need, not just in functional
terms but also in emotional terms?
Neues Museum, Berlin, post-1946
Berlin’s Neues Museum is my favorite subject when it comes
to ruins. The nineteenth-century museum was bombed, as
were Museum Island and the whole city center. All cities
have their histories; Berlin has probably had too much
history. Most of it was rebuilt after the war, but the Neues
Museum, on the Eastern side of the Berlin wall, remained a
ruin until 1977. It was stabilized during the GDR period, but
it remained a ruin. Visiting the building at that time, it had
the most extraordinary presence. Bombs alone hadn’t ruined
the building; it had also been damaged by rain, frost, and all
sorts of things that had happened since the war. There were
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↑ 7. Neues Museum, Berlin, post-1946.
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↑ 8. An imagined view of the Bank of
England in ruins, Joseph Gandy, 1830.
even trees growing in it. Yet at the same time, there were
still wall decorations and architectural elements. It was
the most extraordinary building; it had a physicality that is
often missing in contemporary architecture.
An imagined view of the Bank of England in ruins,
Joseph Gandy, 1830
Ruins have always fascinated us, because, in a way, they are
architecture stripped naked, architecture as substance. We
often discuss whether a building would make a good ruin.
Sir John Soane pondered that question when designing the
Bank of England, the most important building of the British
Empire, at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Soane
commissioned his friend Joseph Gandy to paint the building
he was designing as a ruin. For Soane, the greatest test of
architecture was seeing what it would become as a ruin, how
it would last in posterity. The interior of one of the exchange
halls of the Bank of England exudes all the pomp and glory
of this fantastic building in the center of the Empire, where
all the appropriated wealth ended up. Gandy’s depiction,
commissioned by Soane, of the same hall shows the space in
its raw condition—stripping the architecture of all of its pomp
and its temporary occupation and instead exposing what is
underneath, the real architecture.
We inherited the Neues Museum as a ruin in 1997 as if it were
the realization of a Gandy painting. Some elements were still
there, terribly damaged, and some were completely missing,
like the southeast corner of the building. One wing, which
was in general terms still standing, had all the floors missing;
↑ 9. Neues Museum, Berlin.
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at the same time, the columns were still there. The staircase
was in terrible condition, having been completely bombed.
The concept that we worked with was to restore the missing
volumes and missing spaces. Our idea was not to copy what
was there originally, but rather to protect everything that we
found and raise a new building from these ruins. If we had
tried to rebuild everything, to make it look like it used to, we
would have lost all the material that we had. Yet this matter
created a very big debate in Berlin.
Reconstructing the staircase, Neues Museum, Berlin
We started by stabilizing and rebuilding missing bits. You
start with the ruin and try to keep as much as possible.
Through that process, you somehow make sense of this
strange building: the history of the original building, the
history of the damage, and the idea of turning it into a new
museum. The biggest issue was the staircase; it was one of
the great rooms of Berlin and was completely destroyed. Our
early proposal for rebuilding the stair was to rebuild it in
a somewhat reduced version. The idea was always to make
sense of the building, but not necessarily to make a copy.
Politically, because it was so much in the public realm,
the project was incredibly important to Berliners. We had
protests and candle-lit midnight vigils. There were nearly 500
newspaper articles over the ten years it took to complete
the museum. That public discussion meant that we had to
constantly explain why we were doing things. This dialogue
was critical to the project and the participation of the client,
the Prussian Cultural Heritage Foundation, and all of the
↑ 10. Reconstructing the staircase, Neues Museum, Berlin.
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historians was absolutely fundamental. Yet in many ways, the
most interesting achievement of the project was collaboration.
Every detail and every corner had to be drawn and approved
through the very complex German public system. This meant
that, whereas in most architectural projects everybody is
sitting at different ends of the table, in this project we had to
bring everybody together. We refused to have meetings unless
everyone was present, because we realized at the beginning
of the project that there were too many different agendas
to do otherwise. As a result, what we did as architects was
to present our ideas as a collective; we unpacked all the
questions and presented each idea back to allow the group
to decide. It became a fantastic group process, one without
which such a project and sustainable outcome couldn’t have
been achieved.
Rievaulx Abbey, Roger Fenton, 1854
↑ 11. Rievaulx Abbey, Roger Fenton, 1854.
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The photograph of Rievaulx Abbey is one of my favorite
images of architecture and clearly shows a very sustainable
building. It’s a wonderful photograph by the great English
photographer Roger Fenton, who worked at the end of
the nineteenth century. I like that it shows architecture
simultaneously at its most fragile and at its strongest—it
has somehow survived. This ruin still casts an incredible
power over this place. Somehow, at this moment, architecture
has found a place of rest; architecture and nature have
become nearly indistinguishable, and that’s a wonderful idea.
Wouldn’t it be nice if architecture wasn’t something synthetic
and impermanent but rather aspired to having some physical
presence and permanence?
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Example from
Berlin, Germany
A low-price, low-tech home
high above the city
Separating the outer
shell of the house from
its core makes for a
variety of spaces with
distinct qualities.
When Christian von Borries and Vera
Tollmann decided to rent the roof of a
warehouse in the Berlin neighborhood of
Wedding and build their own house there,
they had only one requirement: it would
have to be extremely inexpensive. But they
were open to basically anything else. What
resulted is a highly individual building
that was realized at the phenomenal price
of €600 per square meter. This very low
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price was made possible by a number of
factors, like the use of industrial, premanufactured building parts, the waiving
of high-tech building control, and the use
of low-tech, mechanical solutions—when
it came to ventilation, for instance. To
put it more generally, they were able to
build cheaply by foregoing anything that
wasn’t really necessary. The overall spatial
and organizational concept of the house,
which contributed a lot to the low building
cost—and also saves them a lot of money
and energy running the building—is the
“house-in-house” principle. The building’s
outer shell is a common greenhouse
structure with polycarbonate walls and a
plastic-foil roof: translucent, lightweight,
and without insulation. The solid core, which
is insulated and can be heated in winter, is
much smaller; it contains only the bedrooms,
the kitchen, and a bathroom. Everything in
between the shell and the core is seasonally
usable space, which is at its best during
transitional times like spring and autumn,
where it uses only solar radiation to achieve
a comfortable climate in its sunlit, spacious
rooms.
Source: Christian von Borries and Vera Tollmann,
Hegemonietempel, http://www.hegemonietempel.net.
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Example from
Bad Reichenhall, Germany
Once upon a time, economy
and sustainability were one
At its core, sustainability
in forestry means planting
enough trees at a time
to maintain a constant
amount of trees of all ages.
2. SOON
1. NOW
3. LATER
Forestry is an important economic sector
worldwide. It’s also the context in which
the term “sustainability” was first coined,
in the early sixteenth century. Early
codifications of the science of sustainable
forestry—like those from Bad Reichenhall
in Germany—simply said “plant new trees
before the old ones run out.” In a nutshell,
sustainable forestry means harvesting
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trees without destroying the health of the
forest at large. It is aimed at improving—or
at least retaining—productivity, vitality,
and the long-term rejuvenation of a piece
of cultivated forest. What seems simple at
first glance is actually as complex as the
ecosystem of the forest itself: many aspects
that seem not to have a direct connection to
the productivity of a forest have to be taken
into consideration, especially if foresters
want to achieve a certain “resilience,” an
extremely crucial concept that describes
a forest’s ability to recover from major
damage—which, in forestry, means major
and ongoing financial loss. For this reason,
and because of forestry’s importance to
our global climate, practices that used to
be relegated to the niche of “ecological
forestry,” like leaving dead trees standing
to provide a habitat for animals and
plants, are increasingly becoming part of
mainstream forestry—which has strived to
be sustainable since before the word even
existed.
Source: “Nachhaltigkeit (Forstwirtschaft),” Wikipedia, http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nachhaltigkeit_
(Forstwirtschaft).
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Planting a tree right
when something is
built—to have spare
parts in the future
when its wooden parts
have to be replaced—
shows foresight.
Example from
Oxford, England
Planning—and planting—
for the future
IF YOU BUILD
WITH LUMBER ...
There is an apocryphal story, popularized
by Stewart Brand in his BBC series How
Buildings Learn, about New College at the
University of Oxford. Supposedly, somebody
discovered, late in the nineteenth century,
that the roof beams of the college’s huge,
500-year-old dining hall had become infested with beetles. Administrators had faint
hopes of finding oaks big enough to provide
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new beams, but somebody thought to ask
the college forester; to everyone’s surprise,
the man declared that he’d been expecting
this visit: five centuries earlier, when New
College was built, a stand of oaks had been
planted for the express purpose of—five
centuries later—replacing the dining hall’s
beams, which would by then surely have
deteriorated. The administration had lost
... BE SURE
TO PLANT TREES.
track of this lumber reserve, but the foresters had not; they had passed down instructions for its use from generation to generation. The truth is less tidy—there aren’t any
trees on the New College’s land destined
for one building in particular—but no less
sustainable. The college’s foresters have
always maintained mixed forests. Fastergrowing hazel and ash trees are regularly
harvested for smaller pieces of wood,
while oaks are left to grow for centuries,
eventually yielding lumber appropriate
for major construction—like replacing the
beetle-infested beams of a dining hall.
Source: Tim Maly, “On Oak Beams & Contingency
Plans,” Quiet Babylon (blog), http://quietbabylon.
com/2009/on-oak-beams-and-contingency-plans/.
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Household Management:
The Economy of Sustainable Construction
Marc Angélil, Nirmal Kishnani, Ashok B. Lall, Werner Sobek, and Rolf Soiron
Our global economy drives increasing urbanization and
ever more economic growth around the world, with serious
environmental and social consequences. Can we secure a
sustainable future without making radical changes to our
economic system? Rolf Soiron, the Chairman of the Holcim
Foundation, leads a roundtable discussion with architect
Marc Angélil from Switzerland, architect and editor Nirmal
Kishnani from Singapore, architect Ashok B. Lall from India,
and architect and engineer Werner Sobek from Germany to
discuss these matters.
Rolf Soiron: In the centuries before our time, there were
value systems that aimed at eternal life for serving the
gods, whoever the gods were. Today, earthly life plays a
much more important role—and particularly the economy.
Economic values have not only grown like never before, they
have changed the face of the earth. But though we are all
part of the global economy, we do not understand it fully.
What are the rules and mechanisms that shape the world
and how do they affect “sustainable construction”?
Marc Angélil: What’s exciting about the economy of
sustainable construction is that it brings ecology
and economy together—ecology being the science that
addresses the relationship between humans, things, and the
environment. This relationship is reflected in the origins of
the word “economy,” which comes from the Greek oikonomos
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for “household management.” The economy of sustainable
construction is therefore the management of the practices
of architecture and engineering. Interestingly, the word
“ecology” has the same root as “economy” and also refers
to these disciplines; the Greek word for house, oikos, is
fundamental to both.
However, what we’re realizing is that this world is driven
by money and that money might be the primary DNA of our
contemporary culture. The two “ecos” of “economy” and
“ecology” don’t match anymore. One has become brutal and
is destroying the other. We have reached a point where our
household management is rotten and the house is in danger
of collapsing. The curve of GDP growth over the last 50 years
is exponential. At the same time, our ecological footprint has
increased drastically. We need to retune our economic system,
capitalism, so that it doesn’t exhaust the earth that we
inhabit.
Werner Sobek: We also need to reconsider the way we
approach sustainability. In central Europe, we have, over the
last two decades, developed many technologies, thoughts, and
principles to make our built environment more sustainable and
to offset the impact of consumerism and economic growth.
However, what I experienced in Mumbai is the sheer fact
of population growth: there are 363 million people in India
who are under fifteen, a little over 30 percent of the total
population.1 There are 1.8 billion children under fifteen in the
world.2 If we want to increase their living standards to those
of Germany, for example, then we will have to reproduce the
built environment as it was in 1930 three or four times over.
This is impossible.
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We need to shift the focus of the debate around sustainability
to defining what’s sufficient for us. In India, two square
meters per person is currently the standard for housing;
the Indian government wants to increase that to four. In
Germany, the standard is 42 square meters per person and
it’s steadily increasing. There’s a rebound effect; the energy
savings associated with the reduction of energy consumption
per square meter—in Germany, about 40 percent over the
last 30 years—are offset by the increase in living space of
a typical German or central European. The result is that the
consumption of energy is still the same.
I was shocked when I saw the design for the total
redevelopment of the Bhendi Bazaar, a bustling but
dilapidated neighborhood in South Mumbai. The development
is being undertaken and funded by Saifee Burhani Upliftment
Trust, an institution created by the Dawoodi Bohras. This
religious subgroup of the Ismaili Shia branch of Islam is
strongly rooted in Bhendi Bazaar. The community-based
redevelopment project involves razing 281 old buildings,
concentrated on eighteen acres, and building high rises in
their place. Seeing this, I realized that the mistakes made
all over the world in the 1960s and ’70s are going to be
repeated: neighborhoods that, although they had problems,
were basically functioning well, were bulldozed, and we
replaced community culture and commerce, the lifeline of
many neighborhoods, with monotonous high rises. The client
had a list of about fifteen internationally renowned Western
planning firms that supported and contributed to the design.
Having seen this process fail in the West, these firms should
know better than to try it in India—I would call that ethical
corruption.
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Nirmal Kishnani: Integrity is important as a counterpoint to
the global economy, in particular the integrity of stakeholders
who shape buildings and cities. The way we define integrity
and the common good affects how we see ourselves as agents
of change and will influence our actions. This discussion of
values and action—as the outcomes of integrity—needs to
be complemented by concrete proposals that address the
magnitude and the pace of the changes occurring today.
We have 20,000 migrants moving to Asian cities every day,
which translates to roughly 100,000 new homes needed every
year. That’s not counting the people who are already living in
cities with inadequate housing. This is a serious problem—
and a rapidly accelerating one—that many discussions of
sustainability simply fail to address.
Soiron: Proponents of sustainable development have put
forth a variety of approaches to housing. They understand
the need to sustainably address the rapid urbanization
ongoing around the world, both in order to lower the impact
of the built environment on the natural environment and
to improve living conditions. What solutions have emerged
that, in your mind, are able to address these challenges?
Kishnani: Various solutions have emerged. The first is
letting the marketplace drive transformation. However,
we’ve seen in the last ten or fifteen years that the market is
not doing enough. With all due respect to the Indian Green
Building Council, certifying a few hundred buildings in more
than twelve years is not enough.3 The greening of our built
environment needs to keep up with the pace of urbanization.
The second solution involves governments acting as agents of
change. Speak to anyone from Asia, however, and you will hear
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that governments are developers incognito: there are entire
neighborhoods of Ho Chi Minh City that are being demolished
as we speak and sold off to real estate developers who then
create gated communities. The third catalyst for change is
some kind of intergovernmental agreement, such as what
we see attempted at successive Conference of the Parties
meetings under the United Nations Framework Convention on
Climate Change. There are no binding agreements emerging
from these meetings; individual countries and cities announce
their own targets and pathways. This lack of collective will
means that there is no concerted action on the scale that is
needed.
What, then, is the trigger? How much discomfort will we
tolerate before we change? We talk about economic systems
and urban systems and tweak them as we go along, but until
there is a trigger—perhaps a painful one—it’s unlikely that we
will abandon the status quo.
Sobek: Especially in India and other countries that have to
build entire new cities to accommodate their rapidly growing
populations, we should avoid durability in architecture. Most
architects and planners who have had to build a new city
have failed. We should instead come up with concepts and
strategies that are more ephemeral, that may last forever
but can also be modified tomorrow. The roles of the architect
and especially the urbanist will have to change. Architects
will have to work more as organizers, guiding the selforganization of communities. Planning will have to become
more transparent; architects have to open themselves more
to the influences and ideas of the other specialists involved
in the design process. Architects and planners should be
394
allowed to learn from their mistakes. I always quote the
famous philosopher Hegel, who said that “the fear to make
a mistake is already a mistake in itself.” We definitely need
more flexibility and a new kind of ephemeral architecture.
Soiron: There seem to be different ways to achieve
“sustainable development.” When Alejandro Aravena and
Elemental were asked to build a social-housing project
in Iquique, Chile, the government’s budget of $7,500 per
unit was entirely inadequate. But instead of dropping the
project, they came up with a unusual solution: they simply
made sure that the possibility existed, after the project
was completed, for residents to incrementally expand their
40-square-meter houses up to 80 square meters. Such
a commonsense solution! The principle of pricing seems
important to me as well. Let’s disincentivize environmental
harm: levy fines on CO2 emissions and extravagant uses of
land! The proceeds could then be distributed to affected
communities. However, there are preconditions: the absence
of corruption and the integrity of the political and social
environment. These three seemingly simple principles—
common sense, appropriate pricing of important things, and
integrity—could guide us to the answers to many complex
questions. They are not revolutionary at all, but together
they could provide a framework for the future more
powerful than words imply. What do you say, Marc?
Angélil: I agree with you, and for that reason I think we need
to expand the conversation and include a broader audience. A
majority of architects already believe that construction needs
to become more sustainable; not all developers, investors,
and politicians share our conviction, however. We need to
395
enter enemy territory and try to understand the way they
approach urban development. In Mumbai, I attended one of
India’s biggest real estate exhibitions, MCHI-CREDAI Property
2013. There was an intriguing discussion, in which investors
and developers covered many issues, ranging from illegal
construction and financial corruption to bureaucracy and
poor working conditions. Illegal construction preoccupied the
speakers because some of their colleagues—contractors and
real estate developers—were thrown in jail after an illegal
building collapsed in Mumbai, killing more than 70 people.
The issue of financial corruption also concerns them because
it decreases the financial value of their projects. They are
aware of the problems created by informal construction, like
lack of transparency and professional integrity, as well as
other issues discussed by us architects. They recognize that
they could benefit from changing the current circumstances.
I didn’t always agree with the panelists’ exclusive focus on
profit, but would nevertheless recommend that our future
discussions include people with priorities and philosophical
and ethical views different from our own.
ASHOK B. LALL: I’d add sociologists and psychologists to that
list. One of the reasons we need to get to the fundamentals of
what is driving the economy is that they are also driving the
aspirational cultures of developing countries. There’s a lack
of attention to the sociology and psychology of developing
populations. How do they receive messages through global
communication systems? How do they develop their values and
aspirations?
There should be a universal body of knowledge about the
implications of our present activities in the world. There
396
are certain principles that can fairly accurately describe
the nature and direction of change that is occurring.
This knowledge needs to be made public and needs to be
complemented by simple positive actions that societies around
the world can take. By behaving with integrity, architects
can become positive agents of change in their own individual
capacities. The true source of this agency, however, is at the
level of community. It is at the level of the social force that
is negotiating with both political systems and the market.
Encouraging architects to work with communities, using a set
of commonsense knowledge, will be the way forward.
Soiron: Everybody seems to be a convert in that respect.
Communities are going to have to make a difference, or no
difference will be made. But what worries me is something
Nirmal mentioned earlier: the necessity for speed.
Activating, enabling, and supporting communities takes an
enormous amount of time and is a daunting task. Can we
do so at the necessary speed, before poor living conditions
reach a critical point? Do we have the time? What can we do
to raise awareness of the problem more quickly?
Kishnani: One thing overlooked in the sustainability debate
is the question of the countryside. The discussion of informal
settlements in the city presupposes that the problem can be
solved within the city. Perhaps we need to ask why people
migrate to the city in the first place and how we can improve
the villages they come from to stem the tide of urbanization or
maybe reverse it. I was struck by the stories that I heard on
our tour of Dharavi, one of the biggest informal neighborhoods
in Mumbai. Women there were asked if they still had homes
in and connections to their native districts. Invariably, the
397
answer was “yes” and their eyes lit up. You got the sense
that they moved to the city out of necessity, perhaps
desperation. Some of the investments taking place in the city
might be diverted to developing the countryside, improving
opportunities and quality of life. That might turn the tide a
little. There was a time when people in the developed world
moved out of city centers and into the suburbs. We then
started to understand why cities are valuable and began to
move back into them. These trends can swing either way.
Resolving the tension between the city and the countryside
might provide a way forward. We should, however, be cautious
not to export urban methodologies and paradigms to the
countryside, because there is already a lot of local wisdom at
work there.
Soiron: How would stemming the tide of rural-to-urban
migration affect the work of architects, engineers, and
urban planners?
Angélil: Every decade, there are discourse shifts at
universities that challenge disciplinary and academic
boundaries. The most recent one in architecture and planning
involves rural territories and their relationship to urban
centers. Franz Oswald and I, at ETH Zurich, have launched
the NESTown urban development project in Ethiopia, 400
kilometers north of Addis Ababa. With the support of the
Ethiopian government, we are now building a new, resourceefficient agricultural town; scaling up the project to over
400 towns will be a challenge, but will ultimately allow us to
establish stronger communities and slow down migration to
the cities. Among the existing communities, we’ve found very
fertile ground to encourage multifunctional cooperatives.
398
We are therefore not only involved in building architecture
and material infrastructure, but also in strengthening social
infrastructure and education. The first thing we built was a
school where students learn how to build their town, practice
sustainable forms of agriculture, and produce products for
the market, rather than relying on foreign funds. In working
on this project, we’ve realized that the current discourse
shift is forcing architects, planners, and students to address
issues traditionally considered to lie outside the discipline,
such as agriculture, farming, and even sewage, which we
always take for granted in urban contexts. The best way to
address these issues is by collaborating with experts in the
related fields.
Lall: It is indisputable that, as you scale up villages and
cities, the per capita impact on the environment becomes
greater than that of simpler formations. I’m convinced that
the myth of the city as the center of creativity is about
to be blown apart. The ubiquitous city is relatively new in
our history. For thousands of years, small, simple societies
produced amazing, incisive thinking and creativity. In tiny
towns and settlements quite unlike the huge, populous
cities of today, small groups interacted with one another
and exchanged their thoughts. It was deep communication—
rather than extensive, superficial communication—that gave
us valuable instrumental knowledge, ethics, and wisdom.
With improvements in communication technologies, I believe
that that kind of knowledge exchange is going to become
universal. It will be possible to produce an alternative
model—a gracious, vibrant, comfortable, secure, dignified
way of life that is not dependent on the big aggregated city
system.
399
Soiron: Let us spend a minute discussing the omnipresent
question of the economic framework of our time:
capitalism. I'm personally neither in favor of the sharks
from Wall Street nor those from Mumbai. And there are fish
that bite in Beijing as well. But I do favor a system that
allows private property to remain private. I also believe
in improvements brought forward by the trial-and-error
processes markets generate; central economic planning
has never really helped in the long term; this is why
advocates of change must be careful. Experience tells us
again and again that changing systems has always brought
unexpected consequences and, very often, enormous costs.
Yes, some regulation might be needed to punish abuses
more effectively. But the most constructive way will be to
strengthen our value systems. They need to make space for
integrity and common sense.
Sobek: I agree to a certain extent, though I think that we
should guide social market economies better. We’ve all seen
how introducing new systems overnight typically ends in
failure. What you’re talking about is gradually improving an
existing and heavily criticized system. With time, we’ll be able
to judge what works and what doesn’t. This is, of course,
the right way, and it’s also the philosophy behind my idea of
ephemeral architecture: we cannot know that what we are
drawing up today is right for tomorrow.
Angélil: I'm not proposing a radical change either, but
rather a retooling of capitalism, our predominant system.
We need to understand the development of capitalism, from
Adam Smith to Karl Marx to John Maynard Keynes to Milton
Friedman. In the last three decades, the system has changed
400
in ways that have not benefited mankind. Unemployment
has increased, the divide between rich and poor has grown,
and social welfare, including pension plans, social security,
and health systems, has collapsed—always to the benefit
of the entrenched elite, the so-called one percent. These
consequences need to be addressed and this trajectory
cannot continue. Students and practitioners working in the
field of sustainable construction need to understand the
changes that are taking place in order to contribute to the
process of subtly shifting the priorities of the capitalist
system.
Soiron: Cities like Mumbai, however, need speedier
solutions to providing safe and sustainable housing. Nirmal,
with your experience working in Southeast Asia, how do
you approach the debate between incremental and radical
change?
Kishnani: The optimist in me would like to believe that
incremental change is enough, but I fear we have an
incredible capacity for tolerating the pain of the other. In
Asia, we’ve been through countless droughts and extreme
weather events and we read about catastrophes like
Hurricane Sandy and Katrina in the United States. Despite
this, we still believe that the global economy is capable of
buffering our lifestyles and stabilizing the situation. We
continue to tweak the system with minor adjustments. The
pessimist in me believes that we must change our system
more dramatically.
Soiron: If you had the privilege of deciding on one priority
for sustainable construction, what would it be?
401
Lall: We need to change the belief, held by many governments
and organizations promoting globalization, that the freemarket economy is the only way of generating wealth, the
only route to solving poverty. We need to dispel that myth
and tackle this incredibly powerful animal that is currently
driving India and China, two erstwhile rural nations that are
set to lead urban population growth in the coming decades.
Their governments pay lip service to the ideas of inclusive
development and equitable distribution of wealth, but they
clearly believe that the free market is the only engine that
can deliver wealth. I believe there are other engines we should
build on.
Sobek: We need to challenge the way our society values
money, placing it above other values like human dignity. We
should agree on a worldwide value system that is not based
on money.
Soiron: One key value could be safeguarding resources
for future generations. Providing healthy living conditions
for the maximum number of people could be another. Such
values could really unify society. What other values must
get more traction? Can we seek out such values? Or is
Nirmal right that it will take just more pain until humanity
finds its way?
Sobek: We cannot wait for the West to feel pain, because by
then it will be too late for the rest of the world. What we need
to do is make people conscious of the impact of their personal
actions. Few people completely understand the effects of their
actions. An example taken from the redevelopment of Bhendi
Bazaar, where they intend to landscape the new development
402
with 700 trees, can help illustrate this. The redevelopment
project seeks to replace the neighborhood’s narrow roads
with six-lane avenues. In the renderings depicting the
neighborhood after its redevelopment, there are only a few
cars on the street, making it seem less crowded than it is
today. Independently of the question of how realistic it is
to see only so few cars on the street: The cars depicted are
SUVs. The healthiest tree in the world—50 years old, full of
leaves—can bind an enormous amount of carbon dioxide every
day, but nothing compared to the amount of carbon dioxide an
SUV generates. You only have to drive your SUV 300 meters to
exceed the tree’s ability to compensate. Trees aren’t purely
functional, of course—they also provide shade and have a
positive psychological effect on residents—but if you drive
your single SUV five times around the future Bhendi Bazaar,
you have already exhausted the daily carbon dioxide binding
capacity of the neighborhood’s 700 trees.
Kishnani: As individuals, we need to distinguish between
needs and wants in what we do and acquire. There is a
tremendous confusion between the two. A building is wholly
air conditioned not because this is what people need for
comfort; it is a response to what they want. Our desires are
also tainted by what we used to have; natural ventilation in
developing Asia is seen as an old-fashioned way of delivering
comfort—surely today we deserve something different,
something more? In the documentary Surviving Progress,
based on Ronald Wright’s A Short History of Progress, there’s
an interesting explanation for this confusion between needs
and wants. The analogy offered is that we have twenty-first
century software residing in prehistoric hardware. We’re
wired for a survivalist, short-term mode of thinking. Our
403
shortsighted behavior today is rooted in impulses inherited
from our prehistoric ancestors who did not know where their
next meal was coming from. We continue to take what we
can, even if it is more than what we need, even though it is
more than the ecology of the planet can support. This impulse
is genetically programmed into us; how we get past this
programming is the question.
Soiron: Let me conclude with a personal remark: I have
six grandchildren. This gives me a particular perspective
on what is important and what isn’t. My youngest
grandchildren are five-year-old twins; they will probably
live to see the year 2090. That will be 40 years after
2050, by which time our calculations on climate, world
population, and resources predict that climate change will
have had a severe, life-changing impact across the world.
This concerns me tremendously as I see my grandchildren
playing at my feet.
Notes
This is a condensed transcript of the concluding
debate at the 4th Holcim Forum, which took place
on April 13, 2013, in Mumbai.
1 World Population Prospects: The 2012 Revision,
United Nations, Department of Economics and
Social Affairs, Population division, last modified
June 13, 2013, http://esa.un.org/wpp/.
2 Ibid.
3 See http://www.igbc.in.
404
Biographies
Shlomo Angel
Alejandro Aravena
Shlomo Angel is a senior research scholar
and adjunct professor of urban planning
at the Urbanization Project in the Stern
School of Business of New York University,
working on implementing urban expansion
schemes in rapidly growing cities. Angel
is an international expert on housing and
urban development, and has been a senior
advisor to the United Nations, the World
Bank, and the Inter-American Development
Bank. In 2012, he published Planet of Cities
and a companion volume, The Atlas of Urban
Expansion, which he coauthored with Jason
Parent, Daniel Civco, and Alejandro Blei.
Alejandro Aravena is the executive director
of Elemental, an architecture practice
based in Santiago, Chile. From 2000 to
2005, he was a visiting professor at
Harvard University. In 2010, he was named
International Fellow of the Royal Institute of
British Architects. Since 2009 he has been
a member of the Pritzker Architecture Prize
jury. He has won the Silver Lion at the 2008
Venice Biennale, the 2010 Marcus Prize, and
an Index Award in 2011. He won the Holcim
Awards Silver 2011 Latin America for his
sustainable post-tsunami reconstruction
master plan for Constitución, Chile.
Marc Angélil
Uday Athavankar
Marc Angélil is a professor at the
Department of Architecture at ETH Zurich.
His research at the Network City and
Landscape (NSL) and the Future Cities
Laboratory (FCL) in Singapore focuses on
social and spatial developments in large
metropolitan regions worldwide. He is
the author and editor of several books,
including Cidade de Deus! on informal
mass housing in Rio de Janeiro, Indizien
on the political economy of contemporary
urban territories, and Cities of Change:
Addis Ababa on urban transformation
in developing countries. He was dean
and senior dean of the Department of
Architecture at ETH Zurich from 2009 to
2013. He practices architecture with his
partners Sarah Graham and Manuel Scholl
at agps, an architectural firm with ateliers
in Los Angeles and Zurich. He is the head
of the Academic Committee of the Holcim
Foundation.
An architect and industrial designer by
training, Uday Athavankar is involved in the
teaching and practice of design. He is the
Emeritus Fellow of the Industrial Design
Centre at the Indian Institute of Technology
(IIT Bombay) in Mumbai. As an academic, he
is also actively involved in design research.
His research areas are product semantics,
role of mental imagery in design thinking,
and affordable housing.
406
Pierre Bélanger
Pierre Bélanger is a landscape architect
and an associate professor at the Harvard
Graduate School of Design. His public work and
academic research focus on the convergence
of urbanism, landscape, and ecology in the
interrelated fields of planning, design, and
engineering. Bélanger edited the Landscape
Infrastructures DVD, released by the Canadian
National Research Council, and his most
recent publications include “Landscape
Infrastructure: Urbanism beyond Engineering”
in Infrastructure Sustainability and Design,
“The Agronomic Landscape” in GAM,
“Regionalization” in the Journal of Landscape
Architecture, “Redefining Infrastructure”
in Ecological Urbanism, and “Landscape as
Infrastructure” in Landscape Journal.
biased technical change; and sustainable
development. Bretschger was a member of
the Advisory Body on Climate Change to the
Swiss government and the Swiss delegation
to the United Nations climate change
conferences COP 15 in Copenhagen and
COP 17 in Durban.
Aron Chang
Gail S. Brager
Gail S. Brager is a professor in the Building
Science Program of the Department of
Architecture at the University of California
Berkeley and the associate director of the
Center for the Built Environment, an industry/
university collaborative research center
focused on improving the design, operation,
and environmental quality of buildings. She
was the founding Chair of the US Green
Building Council’s Research Committee.
Brager conducts research and teaching
across multiple dimensions of sustainability
and high-performance buildings, with a focus
on thermal comfort and adaptation, natural
ventilation in commercial buildings, and
personalized environmental control systems.
Lucas Bretschger
Lucas Bretschger is a professor of economics
at ETH Zurich, where he is the director of
the Center for Economic Research and an
associated chair at the Center for Energy
Policy and Economics. In addition, he
is an external research associate at the
Oxford Center for the Analysis of Resource
Rich Economies and holds the title of a
professor at the University of Zurich. His
research interests include the dynamics of
resource use; climate economics; trade and
economic development; environmental and
regional economics; innovation and
Aron Chang is an architectural designer,
planner, and educator based in New Orleans.
He has taught architecture and landscape
studios, with a focus on planning and design
strategies for Gulf Coast communities, at
Louisiana State University. At Waggonner &
Ball Architects, he recently completed work
on the Greater New Orleans Urban Water Plan.
Born in Taiwan, Chang grew up in Southern
California. He studied studio art and German
at Williams College and architecture at the
Harvard Graduate School of Design.
David Chipperfield
David Chipperfield is the director of David
Chipperfield Architects, with offices in London,
Berlin, Milan, and Shanghai. The practice was
established in 1985 and has won more than 50
national and international competitions and
received more than one hundred architecture
and design awards, including the 2007 RIBA
Stirling Prize (for the Museum of Modern
Literature in Marbach), the 2011 Mies van
der Rohe Award, and the 2011 Deutscher
Architekturpreis (both for the Neues Museum).
Matias Echanove
Matias Echanove cofounded, with Rahul
Srivastava, the Institute of Urbanology, a
Mumbai-based organization that merges
research, theory, and consulting. Echanove
407
is one of the creators of urbz.net, an
action and research platform focused on
collaborative planning and design. He is the
coauthor of airoots.org and regularly writes
essays and articles for publications such
as the New York Times and for the Oxford
University Press.
Yassi Eskandari-Qajar is the director of the
City Policies and Community Currencies
programs at the Sustainable Economies
Law Center (SELC). Based in Oakland,
California, the SELC facilitates the growth of
sustainable, localized, and just economies
through education, legal research, and
advocacy. The SELC supports practices
such as barter, cooperatives, communitysupported enterprises, sharing, local
currencies, ecovillages, urban agriculture,
and local investing. Eskandari-Qajar holds
a bachelor’s degree in conservation and
resource studies from UC Berkeley, with
emphases in city and regional planning and
sustainable urban environments, and is
currently studying independently to become
a lawyer, with a focus on environmental and
social justice.
Harry Gugger
Harry Gugger is a professor of urban
and architectural design at the École
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne,
where he is the director of laba, a research
laboratory that investigates design at the
interface between urbanism and architecture.
Gugger was partner of the architectural
firm Herzog & de Meuron from 1991 until
2009. In 2010, Gugger founded Harry Gugger
Studio and became a member of the Board
of the Holcim Foundation for Sustainable
Construction. He is also a member of the
Holcim Foundation’s Academic Committee.
Dirk Hebel
Dirk Hebel is an assistant professor of
architecture and construction at the ETH
Future City Laboratory in Singapore. Prior to
holding this position, he was the founding
scientific director of the Ethiopian Institute
of Architecture, Building Construction
and City Development in Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia. Between 2002 and 2009, he taught
architecture at ETH Zurich, Princeton
University, and Syracuse University. He is
the recipient of numerous awards, including
the SMART Innovation Grant and the Red Dot
Design Award.
Annika Feige
Annika Feige is a senior consultant at Jones
Lang LaSalle based in Düsseldorf, Germany.
She was previously Research Assistant
to the Chair of Sustainable Construction
at ETH Zurich, where she completed her
PhD dissertation on “The Financial Effect
of Sustainability.” It investigates real
estate portfolios of institutional investors
in Switzerland to determine in what way
property value is affected by sustainable
design and how this factor may be involved
in the process of appraising sustainability.
408
Nathalie Janson
Based in Berlin, Nathalie Janson writes and
edits texts about architecture. Her work has
appeared in Domus, Blueprint, uncube, and
BD Online, as well as in MVRDV Buildings.
She co-curated Trust Us—, a series of
architecture-based panel discussions
held at the Victoria & Albert during the
2012 London Design Festival. Janson has
collaborated with the MAK Center for Art
and Architecture, Los Angeles; Design Corps,
New Orleans; Eric Owen Moss Architects, Los
Angeles; and the Columbia Laboratory for
Architectural Broadcasting, New York.
Francis Kéré
Francis Kéré is the principal of Berlin-based
Kéré Architecture. Kéré Architecture has
established a reputation for its focus on
enabling community-supported construction
of sustainable education facilities as an
effective social development concept.
Kéré is an expert in preserving and
developing traditional clay technologies
and architectural heritage. His firm’s built
works encompass numerous educational
buildings in Burkina Faso, an IT-training
center in Togo, and a museum and national
park complex in Mali, as well as design
proposals in Yemen and India. His other
work includes civic, cultural, and commercial
projects, as well as the permanent exhibition
design for the Red Cross Museum in Geneva,
Switzerland.
Principles for Sustainable Architecture. He is
active in education and advocacy, teaching
sustainability at the National University of
Singapore’s Department of Architecture,
where he is director of the Master of
Science in Integrated Sustainable Design.
He is also the editor in chief of FuturArc—a
magazine reporting on green buildings in
Asia—and the resident jury chair of two
design competitions, the FuturArc Prize and
the FuturArc Green Leadership Award.
Lena Kleinheinz
Educated as a sculptor and architectural
historian, Lena Kleinheinz started her career
designing large-scale interactive exhibitions.
In 2003 she teamed up with architect Martin
Ostermann to found magma architecture.
The studio works internationally, creating
visionary temporary buildings and expressive
interiors for the sport, cultural, and
commercial sectors. Kleinheinz has held
positions as a lecturer and visiting professor
at various universities.
Keya Kunte
Gwendolyn Kerschbaumer is Head of Research
at laba, an architecture and urban design
group at the École Polytechnique Fédérale
de Lausanne led by Harry Gugger. She holds
a master’s in architecture from Harvard
University and a master’s in sustainable
building from ETH Zurich. Kerschbaumer has
worked for architectural offices in Europe
and the United States, among them Peter
Eisenman, MVRDV, and Wiel Arets Architects;
she currently designs for Atelier Areti.
Nirmal Kishnani
Nirmal Kishnani is the author of the 2012
publication Greening Asia: Emerging
Keya Kunte is an architect and urban
planner employed as a consultant with
Samudaya Nirman Sahayak, the not-forprofit construction company of the Society
for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres
(SPARC), since October 2009. Prior to
joining SPARC, she worked as a research
assistant at the Wharton Real Estate
Center’s program on Housing Finance for
Developing Countries and, before that, as
an architect with the Ahmedabad Heritage
Cell. She holds a bachelor's degree in
architecture from the School of Architecture
at CEPT University in Ahmedabad and
a master’s in urban planning from the
University of Pennsylvania.
409
Lacaton & Vassal Architects
Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal are
the principals of Lacaton & Vassal
Architects. After graduating from the
École d’Architecture in Bordeaux in 1980,
Vassal moved to Niger where he worked
as an architect and urban planner, while
Lacaton worked toward her master’s degree
in urbanism. In 1998, Lacaton and Vassal
cofounded their office in Paris. Since then,
they have completed several private houses,
including the Latapie House in Bordeaux
(1993), the House in the Trees in Cap Ferrat
(1998), and the House in Coutras (2000), as
well as the Palais du Tokyo in Paris (2001), a
social-housing project in Mulhouse (2005),
a school of management in Bordeaux (2006),
and, more recently, the Nantes School of
Architecture (2009). Their ability to build
more out of less, reduce construction costs,
and approach space as it relates to climate,
flexibility, and use has won them worldwide
acclaim.
Ashok B. Lall
Ashok B. Lall is a practicing architect and
the principal of Ashok B. Lall Architects, New
Delhi. He is also a visiting professor at the
Guru Gobind Singh Indraprastha University
(GGSIPU) in New Delhi and Chair for Design
and Technology at the Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi
Institute for Architecture (KRVIA) in Mumbai.
He was Dean of the TVB School of Habitat
Studies until its merger with GGSIPU in 2007.
Currently, his research and practice are
focused on affordable housing and sustainable
urbanism for the developing world.
Hansjürg Leibundgut is a professor of
building systems at the Institute of
410
Technology in Architecture at ETH Zurich and
a partner at the Zurich-based engineering
practice Amstein + Walthert. There, he
developed the specialist areas of HLKSE
(heating, ventilation, air conditioning,
plumbing, electrical), facility management,
and dynamic building simulation and
supervised more than 100 projects for a
wide variety of architects. Leibundgut has
been a member of the Academic Committee
of the Holcim Foundation since 2007, where
he helped develop the Holcim Forums Urban
Transformation, Re-Inventing Construction,
and The Economy of Sustainable Construction.
Geeta Mehta
Architect Geeta Mehta is a professor at the
Graduate School of Architecture, Planning,
and Preservation at Columbia University. She
also serves on the Social Sector Advisory
Board of the Millennium Cities Initiative at the
Earth Institute at Columbia University. She is
the founding partner of URBZ, a think tank
in Dharavi, Mumbai, committed to developing
community tools for “User Generated Cities,”
and the founding director of Asia Initiatives,
an NGO that supports microcredit and
education projects in South Asia.
Macroeconomics (PRIME). Pettifor is the
author of several books on sovereign debt
and international finance and predicted the
global financial crisis in her 2006 book The
Coming First World Debt Crisis. She earlier
led the international coalition movement
Jubilee 2000, a campaign that resulted in
the cancellation of around $100 billion of
debt owned by 42 of the world’s poorest
countries. Pettifor is an honorary research
fellow at City University London and a
fellow of the new economics foundation. She
works in the field of international political
economy.
Patrick McAllister
Sheela Patel
Philipp Rode
Patrick McAllister is a professor of real
estate at the Bartlett School of Planning
at University College London. He has been
involved in numerous research projects
funded by or in collaboration with industry
partners and has published widely on a range
of topics linked to real estate appraisal and
investment. In particular, he has written
extensively on the relationship between the
financial and environmental performance of
commercial and residential buildings.
Sheela Patel is the founder and director
of the Society for the Promotion of Area
Resource Centres (SPARC), an NGO that,
since 1984, has supported the urban poor
in their efforts to access secure housing
and basic amenities. Since 1999, Patel has
also been Secretary and Chief Executive
of Samudaya Nirman Sahayak, a nonprofit
company that assists slum communities
taking on construction projects. Patel is a
founder and the current chair of Slum/Shack
Dwellers International, an international
network of poor people’s organizations and
the NGOs that support them in Asia, Africa,
and Latin America. She has been awarded
the United Nations Habitat Award, the David
Rockefeller Bridging Leadership Award, and
the Padmashree, the fourth-highest civilian
award conferred by the Government of India;
she was also recognized for her outstanding
contribution to Mumbai Vision 2015 by the
Observer Research Foundation.
Philipp Rode is a senior research fellow
at the London School of Economics and
Political Science (LSE) and the executive
director of LSE Cities. As the LSE Cities
program’s Ove Arup Fellow, he co-convenes
the LSE Sociology course “City Making: The
Politics of Urban Form.” He has recently
co-authored Going Green: How Cities Are
Leading the Next Economy, Towards a
Green Economy: Pathways to Sustainable
Development and Poverty Eradication,
and Transforming Urban Economies and
published the reports “Cities and Social
Equity” in 2009 and “Integrated City
Making” in 2008. He previously worked
on several multidisciplinary research and
consultancy projects in New York and Berlin
and was awarded the Schinkel Urban Design
Prize 2000.
Rahul Mehrotra
Rahul Mehrotra is a practicing architect
and educator. He works in Mumbai and
teaches at the Graduate School of Design at
Harvard University, where he is a professor
of urban design and planning, chair of the
Department of Urban Planning and Design,
and a member of the steering committee
of Harvard’s South Asia Initiative. He has
coauthored Bombay: The Cities Within, which
covers the city’s urban history from the
1600s to the present, Banganga: Sacred
Tank, Public Places Bombay, and most
recently Architecture in India since 1990.
Ann Pettifor
Ann Pettifor is the director of the Londonbased think tank Policy Research in
Ilka & Andreas Ruby
Trained as an architect and an architectural
historian, respectively, Ilka Ruby and
Andreas Ruby publish, curate, teach, and
consult on issues around architecture,
cities, and communication. Their
411
publications include Urban Transformation,
Of People and Houses, EM2N: Both-And,
Re-inventing Construction, Sadar + Vuga:
A Review, and MVRDV Buildings. They have
organized several international symposia
and exhibitions on architecture and design,
such as the “Min to Max” symposium
on affordable housing and the traveling
exhibition “Druot, Lacaton & Vassal – Tour
Bois le Prêtre.” They are the founders of
the German architecture debate platform
www.bkult.de and of the award-winning
architecture publishing house Ruby Press.
Hans-Rudolf Schalcher is Professor Emeritus
of the Department of Civil, Environmental
and Geomatic Engineering at ETH Zurich.
In 1993, Schalcher became president of
the Center for Integrated Planning in
Construction at ETH; he was head of the
Department of Civil, Environmental and
Geomatic Engineering from 1999 until 2005.
In September 2012, he was appointed as
president of the steering committee for the
Swiss National Research Program (NRP)
“Energy Turnaround.” The NRP aims to
identify approaches and contributions to
sustainable energy policy in Switzerland. At
the Holcim Foundation, he is a member of
the Board and was head of the Technical
Competence Center, now the Academic
Committee, from the inception of that
position in 2004 until 2013.
Werner Sobek
Born in 1953 in Germany, Werner Sobek is
a trained architect and structural engineer.
He heads the Institute for Lightweight
Structures and Conceptual Design at
the University of Stuttgart, Germany,
and teaches at the Illinois Institute of
412
Technology in Chicago, Illinois. In 1992, he
founded the Werner Sobek Group, a global
group of consultancies for architecture,
structures, facades, and sustainability.
Rolf Soiron
Rolf Soiron is the chairman of the Holcim
Foundation for Sustainable Construction.
He is also the chairman of Holcim Ltd., as
well as of Lonza, a Swiss chemicals and
biotechnology company. He has occupied
leadership positions in industry, not-forprofit, and public institutions. Between
1995 and 2005, he chaired the Governance
of the University of Basel. Currently, he
chairs Avenir Suisse, an independent think
tank promoting the social and economic
development of Switzerland, sits on the
board of the Swiss business association
economiesuisse, and is a member of the
supreme governing body of the International
Committee of the Red Cross.
Something Fantastic
Something Fantastic is an architectural
practice committed to smart, touching,
simple architecture. The firm authored
Something Fantastic: A Manifesto by Three
Young Architects on Worlds, People, Cities
and Houses (2010) and coedited Building
Brazil! (2011), Cidade de Deus! (2012),
and Minha Casa—Nossa Cidade! (2013).
In addition to Something Fantastic, Julian
Schubert, Elena Schütz, and Leonard
Streich operate the award-winning creative
agency called Belgrad and are currently
directing the MAS Urban Design program
at ETH Zurich. Their work has been part of
exhibitions at Kunsthalle Düsseldorf, Haus
der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, Deutsches
Architekturmuseum Frankfurt and the São
Paulo and Venice Architecture Biennales.
Michael Sorkin
Holger Wallbaum
Michael Sorkin is a Distinguished Professor
of Architecture and director of the
graduate program in urban design at the
City College of New York. He is currently a
contributing editor at Architectural Record
and the architecture critic for The Nation.
He is also the founder of Terreform, a
nonprofit organization devoted to urban and
environmental research and intervention.
His currently funded research includes
a project to examine the limits of selfsufficiency within New York City and a study
on sustainable transport systems.
Holger Wallbaum is a professor of sustainable
building at the Division of Building Technology
at Chalmers University of Technology in
Gothenburg, Sweden. From August 2006 until
May 2013, he was a member of the Technical
Competence Center—now the Academic
Committee—of the Holcim Foundation. His
work and research on sustainable building
focus on concepts, tools, and strategies to
enhance the sustainable performance of
construction materials, building products,
buildings, and entire cities.
Martina Wengle
Rahul Srivastava
Rahul Srivastava is an anthropologist
and codirector, with Matias Echanove, of
the Institute of Urbanology. He taught at
Wilson College in Mumbai and subsequently
became the Director of PUKAR (Partners for
Knowledge, Action, and Research), founded
by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai in 2001.
He writes fiction, comments on urban issues
and new knowledge practices via airoots.org,
and organizes knowledge initiatives on
urbanism around the world through URBZ
and Urbanology.
Vishnu Swaminathan
Vishnu Swaminathan is the country director
for Ashoka India, part of the Ashoka
global network of social entrepreneurs,
and the director of Ashoka’s Housing for
All initiative. He has more than eighteen
years of experience as an entrepreneur
and innovator. He started two IT-based
companies in Singapore—in the areas
of financial transactions and animation
technology—and headed a leadership school
based in Pune.
Martina Wengle is the program coordinator
for affordable-housing quality standards and
certification at Ashoka Housing for All India.
Before joining Ashoka, she worked with the
Economic Cooperation and Development
Division at the Swiss State Secretariat for
Economic Affairs (SECO) on economic and
trade policy measures. She holds a master’s
in international relations from the Graduate
Institute, Geneva.
Zhang Yue
Zhang Yue is the vice dean of and a
professor at the School of Architecture
at Tsinghua University in Beijing. He
coauthored Foodscape Beijing with Shan Jun
and has been published in journals including
Proceedings of the National China Urban
Planning Education Network (CUPEN), China
City Planning Review, and Stadt Bauwelt.
Zhang was the winner of the Global Holcim
Awards Bronze 2009 and Holcim Awards Gold
2008 Asia Pacific. The project in Shunyi,
China, was funded by the Key Laboratory of
Eco Planning & Green Building of the Chinese
Ministry of Education.
413
Image Credits
pp. 2–5, 8–19 all graphics © Ruby Press with
Something Fantastic
p. 45 © FCL Singapore
pp. 46–47 all graphics © Felix Heisel and Dirk Hebel,
redrawn by Ruby Press
p. 48 © Felix Heisel
pp. 51–52 all images © FCL Singapore
pp. 59–60 © URBZ with Francisco Allendes and José
Abásolo
pp. 64–69 © Something Fantastic
p. 73 © Geeta Mehta, redrawn by Ruby Press
p. 74 all images © Sytse de Maat
p. 83 graphic © Paste in Place / Ryan Sullivan
pp. 84–85 graphic © Collaborative Fund, in
Partnership with Startup America
p. 86 graphic © McAmant & Durett Architects
pp. 89–94 all graphics © Airbnb, redrawn by Ruby
Press
p. 103 © Diébédo Francis Kéré
p. 104 © Siméon Duchoud / Aga Khan Trust for Culture
pp. 109–13 all images and graphics © Diébédo
Francis Kéré
p. 114 © Holcim Foundation / Andreas Schwaiger
pp. 127-32, 137-38 all images © SPARC
p. 149 all images © Uday Athavankar
p. 150 top image © Uday Athavankar
p. 150 bottom image © Ameya Athavankar
pp. 165–66 all images © Aron Chang
pp. 175–76, 181–82, all graphics © Zhang Yue,
p. 189 © Philippe Ruault
pp. 190–92 all images and graphics © Lacaton &
Vassal Architects
p. 197 top image © Frédéric Druot
p. 197 bottom graphic © Lacaton & Vassal Architects
p. 199 all images © Frédéric Druot
p. 200 all images and graphics © Lacaton & Vassal
Architects
p. 217 graphic © Ruby Press
p. 218 all images © Mario Roberto Duran Ortiz
p. 221 top image © Ian Lambot
p. 221 bottom image © Aditya Kabir
p. 222 image in the Public Domain, PD-1923
pp. 229–34 all graphics © Philipp Rode, redrawn by
Ruby Press
pp. 245–46, 249–50 all graphics © Ruby Press
p. 255 top image © Google Earth
p. 255 bottom image © Opsys/Alexandra Guazza
p. 258 top images © Image Science and Analysis
Laboratory, NASA-Johnson Space Center
p. 258 bottom images © The MITRE Corporation. All
rights reserved. Used with permission.
p. 261 bottom image © Opsys/Alexandra Guazza
414
Donor Acknowledgment
p. 262 top image Opsys/Alexandra Guazza
p. 262 bottom image Opsys/Sara Jacobs-Alexander
Arroyo
p. 269 all images © Rajesh Vora / courtesy RMA
architects
p. 270 top image © Rahul Mehrotra, RMA architects
p. 270 bottom image © Jehangir Sorabjee
p. 273 all images © Rajesh Vora / courtesy RMA
architects
pp. 274–76 all images © Rahul Mehrotra, RMA
architects
pp. 283–84, 287–88, 291 all images and graphics ©
Elemental
p. 292 top image © Estudio Palma
p. 292 bottom image © Elemental
p. 313 © Ruby Press
pp. 314–16 © Global Footprint Network, National
Footprint Accounts, 2012 edition. Available at www.
footprintnetwork.org. Redrawn by Ruby Press.
p. 325 © magma architecture
pp. 326–29 © Hufton & Crow / courtesy magma
architecture
p. 330 all graphics © magma architecture
p. 331 © J. L. Diehl
p. 332 all images © Hufton & Crow / courtesy
magma architecture
p. 351 top graphic © Ruby Press
p. 351 bottom graphic © Vivian Loftness, redrawn
by Ruby Press
p. 352 top graphic © Vivian Loftness, redrawn by
Ruby Press
p. 352 bottom graphic © De Dear and Brager,
p. 353 top graphic © Ruby Press
p. 353 bottom graphic © Brager and Baker, redrawn
by Ruby Press
p. 354 all graphics © Ruby Press
p. 367 top image © David Chipperfield Architects
p. 367 bottom image © Thomas Struth
p. 368 top image © Thomas Struth
p. 368 bottom image © Christian Richters / courtesy
David Chipperfield Architects
p. 371 top image © David Chipperfield Architects
p. 371 bottom image © Christian Richters / courtesy
David Chipperfield Architects
p. 372 all images © David Chipperfield Architects
p. 375 © SMB/Zentralarchiv / courtesy David
Chipperfield Architects
pp. 376–77 © by courtesy of the Trustees of Sir
John Soane’s Museum
p. 378 © Ute Zscharnt for David Chipperfield
Architects
p. 381 bottom image © David Chipperfield Architects
p. 382 © The Metropolitan Museum of Art
p. 384–89 © Something Fantastic
The Holcim Foundation for Sustainable
Construction aims to build awareness of the
importance of sustainability in construction among
professionals and the public. It seeks to globally
interlink knowledge and to promote a mindset that
views sustainability not only in terms of complex
technical challenges, but that also incorporates
architectural excellence and leads to a higher
quality of life.
The Holcim Foundation conducts activities to
encourage innovative approaches to sustainable
construction including the Holcim Awards
competition and Holcim Forum. To pursue its
goals, the Foundation collaborates closely with
some of the most renowned technical universities:
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH
Zurich), Switzerland; Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT), USA; Tongji University (TJU),
China; Universidade de São Paulo (USP), Brazil;
University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), South
Africa; Universidad Iberoamericana (UIA), Mexico;
Ecole Supérieure d’Architecture de Casablanca
(EAC), Morocco; Indian Institute of Technology
(IIT Bombay), India; American University of Beirut
(AUB), Lebanon; Tsinghua University (THU), China;
and University of Melbourne, Australia.
The Board of the Holcim Foundation ensures
that the activities of the Holcim Foundation are
aligned with current interpretations of sustainable
construction and inspires the Foundation’s
approach by framing the architectural, scientific,
cultural, and policy concerns that should be
integrated into its initiatives and includes: Rolf
Soiron (Chair), Chairman, Holcim, Switzerland;
Bernard Fontana (Chair of Steering Committee),
CEO, Holcim, Switzerland; Alexander Biner,
Partner, MS Management Service, Switzerland;
Harry Gugger, Professor of Architecture, École
Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL),
Switzerland; Yolanda Kakabadse, President of
WWF International, Ecuador; Enrique Norten,
Principal and Founder, TEN Arquitectos, Mexico/
USA; Hans-Rudolf Schalcher, Prof. em. of Planning
and Management in Construction, ETH Zurich,
Switzerland; Klaus Töpfer, former Executive
Director of the United Nations Environment
Programme (UNEP), Germany; Simon Upton,
Director of the OECD Environment Directorate, New
Zealand/France; and Roland Walker, former Head of
Corporate Communications, Holcim, Switzerland.
ETH Zurich, succeeding Hans-Rudolf Schalcher.
Marc Angélil will join the Board of the Foundation
at the start of 2014, together with Maria Atkinson,
cofounder of the Green Building Council of
Australia, and Alejandro Aravena, Executive
Director of Elemental, Chile.
The Holcim Foundation publishes collections of
exemplary sustainable construction projects.
PDF versions of Holcim Foundation publications
are available at www.holcimfoundation.org/
publications—including commemorative books on
previous International Holcim Forums:
-1st Forum, “Basic Needs”
ETH Zurich, Switzerland 2004 (ISBN 3 7266 0069 8)
-2nd Forum, “Urban_Trans_Formation”
Tongji University, Shanghai, China 2007
(ISBN 978-3-7266-0080-8)
-3rd Forum, “Re-inventing Construction”
Universidad Iberoamericana, Mexico City,
Mexico 2010 (ISBN 978-3-7266-0090-7)
-4th Forum, “Economy of Sustainable Construction”
IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India 2013
(ISBN 978-3-944074-07-8)
For further information about the Holcim
Foundation and its initiatives, including the Holcim
Awards competition and Holcim Forum, please see:
www.holcimfoundation.org
The Holcim Foundation is supported by Swiss based
Holcim Ltd., but independent of its commercial
interests. Holcim is one of the world’s leading
suppliers of cement and aggregates (crushed
stone, gravel, and sand) as well as further
activities such as ready-mix concrete and asphalt,
including services. The Group holds majority and
minority interests in around 70 countries on all
continents, and has been included in the Dow
Jones Sustainability Index (DJSI) for nine years
running. For further information please see:
www.holcim.com
Marc Angélil, Senior Dean of Architecture, ETH
Zurich, Switzerland, was appointed Head of the
Academic Committee of the Holcim Foundation c/o
415
Sustainability’s greatest obstacle is financial.
Investors and developers blame noncompliance with
sustainability standards on the supposedly higher
costs and lower profits of sustainable construction.
But with rapid urbanization, a sluggish economy, and
a worsening climate crisis, we urgently need more
sustainable construction practices and buildings.
The Economy of Sustainable Construction seeks to
dispel the myth that sustainability cannot be
profitable, evaluate current architectural practices
and models, and introduce materials and methods
to maximize the environmental, social, and economic
performance of buildings. Essays, reports, and case
studies examine the relationship between commercial
and sustainable values and explore the paths that
construction will take in the twenty-first century.
With contributions by:
Shlomo Angel
Marc Angélil
Alejandro Aravena
Uday Athavankar
Pierre Bélanger
Gail S. Brager
Lucas Bretschger
Aron Chang
David Chipperfield
Matias Echanove
Annika Feige
Harry Gugger
Dirk Hebel
Nathalie Janson
Francis Kéré
Nirmal Kishnani
Lena Kleinheinz
Keya Kunte
Anne Lacaton
Ashok B. Lall
Patrick McAllister
Rahul Mehrotra
Geeta Mehta
Sheela Patel
Ann Pettifor
www.ruby-press.com
Printed in the Czech Republic
ISBN 978-3-944074-07-8
Philipp Rode
Ilka & Andreas Ruby
Werner Sobek
Rolf Soiron
Something Fantastic
Michael Sorkin
Rahul Srivastava
Vishnu Swaminathan
Jean-Philippe Vassal
Holger Wallbaum
Martina Wengle
Zhang Yue

The Economy of Sustainable Construction

Transcription

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