Land Search
When cities claim there is no land left for the poor, don’t believe them — they’re almost always fibbing.
And when poor people get to know their own cities and educate themselves about development plans, they can challenge this bunkum. Land-searches in cities all over Asia and Africa have helped poor communities to negotiate countless resettlement deals.
An early land-search in Bombay went like this: "We thought we could find places for poor to stay — there must be some land allocated for poor people’s housing — you can’t have a government and a city corporation which doesn’t plan for people’s housing! So we got these silly development plans, and along with a big group of Mahila Milan women, we went all over the city, locating every single place marked "Housing for the poor" on those plans.
What an eye-opener! Whatever was "green belt" on the plan was actually industrial belt. And whatever was meant for housing the poor was upper-income housing, or warehouses and factories — all kinds of things. In the same naiveté, we went to the Chief Secretary and asked him why this is happening? He told us, this is a notional plan, this is how we’d like it to be!
And that’s what it is — it’s a dream plan."
House modeling and layout
When Charlotte Mkesi, from Cape Town, went on an exchange visit to a shack settlement in Port Elizabeth, the group had just invaded.
"We want a house," they told her.
"What kind of house" she asked.
They just looked at her. So she showed them how to build house models, with cardboard and sellotape and scissors, and they made a model of their houses.
"We worked it out with a scale. They were surprised and interested because they did not know how to do it."
House modeling takes many forms. Mahila Milan used the length and width of their own sarees to understand room dimensions and ceiling heights that are otherwise incomprehensible to someone whose lived most of her life in a box-like hut on the pavements.
Elsewhere, communities use long bolts of cloth to mock-up their house designs, stretched around poles at the corners.
Whether using clay, cardboard, cloth or thermacol — at full scale or small scale — house modeling is another much-used dream prompter.
Building elements
Poor people can do many things more efficiently than the state — like building their own solid, affordable houses.
When poor communities take steps to teach themselves how to build better houses collectively, at larger scale, they are helping the state understand this and showing an alternative.This comes right down to making building materials.
When communities make blocks, or slabs or window frames, they can do it cheaper and better than any contractor or factory, because they are both manufacturer and customer, so quality control is automatic.
And in exchange, going on-site to a housing project, and actually pitching in on the work — helping build a foundation or making some blocks or funicular shells — is one of the best things to bring abstract ideas right back to the big goal — which is decent, secure houses.
This is building a up a stock, and also training others, taking over, taking charge.As the exchange network enlarges and matures, the repertoire of tools keeps expanding:
EXTRA: See Cape Town Builders Exchange Visit to Asia in April this year. HERE
EXTRA: Take a look at the recent exchange visit between Vietnam and Thailand and Surabaya to see the variety of concepts accessible on a 10 day exchange visit. HERE
NEXT: A range of tools from exchanges with Zimbabwe
Land searches in Phnom Penh
have resulted in 3 new relocations
The Federation in Phnom Penh have mapped all
vacant land in the city.
Modeling affordable housing
Space required
Making laddas Bombay
South African Federation builders
exchanging ideas in Zimbabwe