The urbanization of Sub-Saharan Africa

Another day, another diagram. This time about urbanisation in sub-saharan countries. Since I visited Dar-es-Salaam in Tanzania I am fascinated by urbanization processes in African countries. In most cases cities grow predominantly without any form of city planning and zoning regulation, the so called 'informal urbanization'. The dashed circle is the total population per country (the African countries with less than 9 million inhabitants are left out). The smaller circle inside is the urban population; people living in cities. The segment in red is the amount of people living in slums according to UN. Although statistics on urbanisation in Africa are generally rather unreliable it gives a good indication on how precarious these cities actually are. Keep in mind that the African cities are expected to mushroom over the next decades. Also important to realize is that the qualification 'slum' is somewhat relative. 

Diagram for piracy policies in the Netherlands

For my friend Bastiaan Vader I created today this diagram on the relationship among the different stakeholders involved in the struggle against piracy off the coast of Somalia. The diagram shows only the actors involved in the process in the Netherlands. Very interesting and difficult issue! Let's hope this diagram make this more clear.

Functionalism in Rotterdam 1927-1937

The city of Rotterdam is in the Netherlands famous for its modernist/functionalist architecture. Especially  between  1927 and 1937 a lot of buildings were realize in the style of the so called 'Nieuwe Zakelijkheid' (Dutch translation of the German term Neue Sachlichkeit). A group of progressive architects such as Johannes Duiker, Cornelis van Eesteren en Leendert van der Vlugt organized meetings and published a magazine called "De 8 & Opbouw", a collaboration between architects and engineers form both Rotterdam and Amsterdam. They played an important role in de CIAM congres of 1929.
An important player for the city of Rotterdam was J.J.P Oud, who designed in 1927 the functionalist housing project in the coast village of Hoek van Holland. The houses had were white plastered, and had the characteristic horizontal windows, typical for early modernist houses. But the most important architect in Rotterdam was without any doubt Leenderd van der Vlugt. His most famous buildings are the Van Nelle factory, a project that was finished in 1928 in collaboration with Jan Brinkman (son of Michel Brinkman) and Mart Stam.
Very important for the development of high-rise apartment buildings is the Bergpolderflat. The design was made in close collaboration between Brinkman & Van der Vlugt and W. van Tijen. The building was very important for the development of post-war high-rise social housing projects.
Despite the heavy bombing of Rotterdam in May 1940 by the Nazi air force, most of these functionalist masterpieces remain intact today. One exception is the Bijenkorf, a large department store at the Coolsingel designed by W.M. Dudok. The remarkable building was hit by a bomb and after the war the remains were destroyed.
The building activity before WWII came to and end with the construction of the Feyenoord Soccer Stadium. What is is interesting about the building activity in the Interbellum is the lasting influence these buildings had in the Dutch post-war architecture.

Stadium Feyenoord Rotterdam: A Monument of Functionalist Architecture

Currently I am working on a research on the Feyenoord Stadium in Rotterdam, The Netherlands. People form Rotterdam use to call it "de Kuip". I many respects I should be considered as one of the most important remains of the functionalist movement. The building is designed by Brinkman and Van der Vlugt, who also designed the famous Van Nelle factory in Rotterdam. The building was completed in 1936, a few months after the early death of Leendert van der Vlugt. Unfortuanally the building nowadays does not show its groundbreaking features anymore, especially from the outer facade lost its modernist transparency and lightness. Important features of the building: The free-floating second ring without supporting columns at the end. The main construction on the outside, completely visible. Emphasized are the 22 staircase because the movement of the crowd had to be shown; the building is a machine. And off course, the industrial apparance is also a reference to the cranes and ships in the harbors of Rotterdam.
The pictures here below all come from the Dutch magazine Bouwkundig Weekblad, published in 1936.

Queen Europe

Recently I visited Prague where I found in one of the museums this interesting representation of Europe, depicted as a queen. I shows Bohemia, Prague as the very heart of Europe, Portugal as the crown and Spain as the face. The right hand holds a orb, symbolizing the domination over the world, probably by the Catholic Church. Sadly enough, my poor little country The Netherlands is not even mentioned on the map.
If you want to know more about this map, check out the very interesting information on wikipedia.org.
It would be interesting if someone would draw such representation of contemporary Europe in its current crisis.

Slum proportion in Africa, Latin America and Asia

I came across these maps of Africa, Latin America and Asia in the recent UN-report State of the World's cities  2010/2011: bridging the urban divide. I don't think these maps need any explanation.

Property, scarcity and urban informality (DRAFT)

Locke’s theory of property can only fully be understood in relation to the colonization of the newly discovered American continent. His idea is that appropriation of land should take place by cultivating the land; the uncultivated land did not belong to anyone. The native Americans did not own the land because they were only hunter gatherers. The more one cultivates the more one legally owns.

According to Hans Achterhuis in his study on scarcity the influence of Locke’s theories of property can be considered as the legitemization of the capitalist concept of property. However, it also influenced early socialist and anarchist movements (Achterhuis, 1988, p. 71). One of the most influential anarchist thinkers, Peter Kropotkin, in his Anarchist Manifesto (1887) – not mentioned by Achterhuis – had a comparable concept of property: the producer of an product is automatically the legitimate owner (Kropotkin, 1970).

John Turner, who was one of the most influential figures in the debate on informal urbanization during, derived his ideas on what he called ‘squatter settlements’ for an important part from anarchist theories. Turner worked in the 1950s in Lima’s barriadas. These were settlements in the empty desserts around the capital of Peru were land was as even less uncultivated as during the colonization of North America. The concept of appropriation through cultivated, in this case urbanization was not such a bad idea.

However, this become very different in a situation of scarcity. Strangely enough this receives very little attention in Turner’s work. Achterhuis, in Het rijk van de schaarste, takes scarecty as a point of departure. Scarcity leads to conflict. (To finish later…)