South(Africa)-South(America): Segregation and Housing in São Paulo and Johannesburg

Speakers

Marie Huchzermeyer (Architecture and Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand)

Eduardo Marques (Centre for Metropolitan Studies, University of Sao Paulo)

Comments

Charlotte Lemanski (UCL Geography)

Márcio Valença (University of Natal, Brazil)

---

The final event of the Urban Salon year, 2-5pm on Monday 23 June, will be a South(Africa)-South(America) encounter, with a Johannesburg-São Paulo comparative exchange between Marie Huchzermeyer (University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa) and Eduardo Marques (University of São Paulo, Brazil). Commentators will be Márcio Valença (University of Natal, Brazil) and Charlotte Lemanski (UCL Geography).  The afternoon workshop will explore comparative experiences of segregation and housing policy in both cities. It will also provide an opportunity to engage with wider provocations as to the scope for building understandings of urban processes through such South-South intersections, perhaps side-stepping Northern based theorisations.

An Urban Salon – UCL Urban Lab Workshop

The programme will proceed as follows:

2pm -3.15pm:

The persistence of segregated urban form in South Africa: housing policy, the planning system and rights

Marie Huchzermeyer (Architecture and Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand)

State-assisted housing in post-apartheid South Africa is largely blamed for the perpetuation of segregated urban form. In this presentation, I demonstrate the scale of this housing delivery to destitute households, and locate it within the context of the country’s high level of inequality and poverty, and the extent of reliance on social grants. However, the cause of urban expansion in highly segregated patterns lies also with an unreformed planning system which has not empowered municipalities to direct new developments (whether private or state-subsidised) in accordance with officially adopted visions of compact and less segregated urban form. Given a transformative Constitution which entrenches socio-economic rights, the Constitutional Court has been called upon to rule on inadequacies in housing policy, in the planning system and in the realization of housing-related rights. In this sense, it has contributed towards shaping three emerging normative frameworks – housing policy, planning and rights, but not in a way that reaches far enough to reverse the dominant urban spatial form.

With commentary by Márcio Valença (Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil)

3.30pm – 4.45pm:

Poverty, spaces and segregation in São Paulo, XXI century

 

Eduardo Marques (Centre for Metropolitan Studies, University of Sao Paulo)

 

The presentation will discuss the changes in poverty, social structure and residential segregation in São Paulo in the 2000s. I begin with the description of the dynamics of poverty, the labor market and income inequality in the metropolitan region, as well as the changes in social structure. Following this, I analyze the spatial distribution of social groups in space, as well as their segregation patterns by class and race. The data show no signs of social polarization and some elements of professionalization, differently from what has been discussed internationally. The metropolis continues to be intensely segregated and structured around a clear pattern of avoidance between social groups. However, although the changes of the 2000s increased the exclusivity of the areas inhabited by elites, they also tended to increase the heterogeneity in the rest of the city, contributing to greater social mix in the intermediate spaces and the peripheries. The last part of the presentation will explore information on personal networks of poor individuals in the city, discussing their possible role in bridging segregated spaces and in integrating territorially isolated individuals.

 

With commentary by Charlotte Lemanski (UCL Geography).

Final wrap up commentary: 4.45-5pm: tbc

Debating High-rise Urbanism

Panel

Dr. Andrew Harris, UCL Department of Geography

Justin McGuirk, Writer and director of Strelka Press

Dr. Richard Baxter, School of Geography, Queen Mary University of London

Paul Scott, Make Architects

Professor Peter Wynne Rees, Bartlett School of Planning, UCL, and former City Planning Officer, City of London

---

London and the UK in general are witnessing an increased interest in popular debates around the recent spurt in high-rise buildings. While much of these have been rooted in the architectural discussion around its appropriateness as a design typology to a city like London (and other British cities), the discourse is not new to urban studies either where concerns around the practice of building skyscrapers have been set against the pressures of capitalist urbanisation, with high-rises seen as a symbolically and economically essential ingredient of the �entrepreneurial city�. While these are crucial dimensions of the debate, recently scholars have begun to diversify the dialogue by exploring aspects of everyday practices that explain how this specific urbanity is globalised and localised, ranging from the design and construction process to the more quotidian reality of high-rise living. It is in this context that this event by bringing together academics and practitioners proposes an inter-disciplinary engagement with the larger challenges and opportunities embedded within the production of high-rise urbanism to bring a more nuanced understanding to the debate.

Contact:

Dr. Pushpa Arabindoo; 

Urban comparativism: some reflections and challenges on how to actually do it

Speaker
Sara Gonzalez (Geography, Leeds University)

Discussant(s)
Loretta Lees (Geography, Leicester University)

---

There is a now an established literature on urban comparativism sparked by the works of Colin McFarlane and Jennifer Robinson. This work suggests that we need to move beyond traditional urban comparative approaches, often conceived within positivists frameworks and geographically limited to the Global North. The comparativist turn argues, however, that comparison should be broadened not to just to include different cities or moments within cities but also as an approach rather than simply as a method. This involves also learning from urban difference and thinking theoretically through urban comparison.

In this session I will present some reflections and challenges of trying to do comparativist research drawing mainly from two ongoing research projects/networks: one looking at the impact of the global financial crisis in 4 European cities and another a research network between Spanish, British and Latin-American universities looking at contestation in cities. The aim of the session is not to provide answers but to spark a discussion where we can think collectively how to best approach urban comparativism drawing from examples that I will present and that the audience will hopefully bring.

All are welcome. 

Imaging Collapse: the Aesthetics of Economic Downfall 

Speaker
Mireille Roddier, Associate Professor, Taubman College of Architecture + Urban Planning, University of Michigan

Discussant(s)
Louis Moreno

Chair
Pushpa Arabindoo (Co-organiser Urban Salon)

---

Drawing from my proposed book project, Imaging Collapse is interested in expanding the lens through which extreme instances of urban blight and fiscal ill-being are portrayed, and to borrow from interdisciplinary theoretical frameworks in order to make sense of the ramifications of such accounts on contemporary architectural production outside of the claims generated from within the discipline. In particular, I would like to question four interdependent aspects of this production that seem worth probing: its reliance upon, contribution to, and naturalization of post-industrial ruin imagery understood through aesthetic and affect theories; its relationship to the relational aesthetics discourse coming from the art world; its capitalization by cultural institutions and the logics of curation, cultural power and recuperation; and its alleged role in creative class urban gentrification in light of the financing of architecture in an era of economic decline. While the focus of my work is not limited to Detroit, the city serves as a case study for many of its parts. It analyses and reveals the complications in much of the architectural work currently emerging out of socio-economically deprived urban contexts in the service of further production by asking: how do we negotiate the creation of architectural artifacts that are either intended for, or recuperated by, the cultural establishment, in a context marked by social violence on the general public.