Housing Is Not Just Houses. Part 1

Housing is not just houses An Integrated vision based on recognition of territory and negotiation

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Introduction When Johnny Åstrand, first told me, in front of all SDD1 group — Write a book— I thought that he was teasing me. Then I recalled his particular pedagogy and the way he makes you accept tough tasks and long walks in his already famous intense courses and study visits. In fact so was it, and when he told me again to do so, I knew that this was a real issue that I was going to assume. The text is written in English as this is the original language of the HDM course at Lund and because I devote it to many men and women from nations and countries manly from Africa and Asia where colonization from XV to XX centuries was not able to leave to most of the people a decent way of living in harmony with their climate, their resources and their culture, but this language as its colonization heritage. Colonisation has not ended with XX century; actually it looks like it has adopted a new form with the so called globalization which I found it excellent as it deals with communication between nations in real 1

SDD stands for Shelter Design and Development, a Housing Development and Management (HDM) program at Lund University, granted by the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida). Johnny Åstrand is also HDM Director. The particular group is SDD Spring 2007 course.

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time, access to products and economies from all over the world for every body common good. It seems rather democratic and pretty acceptable that each person on the face of earth shall have the chance to experience the excitement of knowledge and history expertise even at the instant events that are taking place2. This unique phenomenon in our history, joined to the huge capacity to backup information, may be the perfect tools to stop inequity and bring fair opportunities for all. The incredible speed of changes has not reached housing the same way trade and communications have done. To build, yet, has an opposite connotation from information or communication, it is done to last. And with the rest of artistic expressions reveal the cultural state of a society at each epoch. This particular heritage of nations becomes the starting point of identity and many global initiatives pledge for its conservation and restoration. Since XIX century, housing in cities became a quantitative matter. Qualitative aspects were set aside as well as traditional know-how practices were dropped favouring the number of shelters for the 2

This generation had the chance to see in direct TV the 9-11 disaster.

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newly raised hand labour class, crucial for industrialisation. At that time mankind and dwellers were not quite aware and concerned with pollution or harmful practices. Nowadays we are aware of it and as thoughtful and conscious beings we must look for a healthy and sustainable housing for everyone. •

From conservation to health: RSS3, Chagas disease Santander experience, CINTROPUIS4, M.D. Victor Angulo.

In 1997 I knew about some tropical diseases, particularly malaria and dengue, but I didn’t know a word about Chagas disease5, when I was invited by Red de Solidaridad Social, RSS to make some recommendations about a Chagas disease control strategy based on housing improvement. I didn’t imagine that this consult was going to turn over my professional career. The particular case came from a research study of Dr. Victor Manuel Angulo Silva, 3

Red de Solidaridad Social, Colombian Presidential agency in charge of managing the subsidy programmes of nation created at presidential period 1994-1998. 4 The Centro de Investigaciones en enfermedades tropicales de la Universidad Industrial de Santander, founded by Víctor Manuel Angulo in 1991.. 5 In 1909, Carlos Chagas discovered and described the aetiology and the vectorial domestic transmission of American trypanosomiasis. He also called it: “The poverty disease”.

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Director of Cintrop-UIS. The particular study was essaying four different strategies for Chagas disease control: three of them based on insecticides and the fourth dealing with housing improvement. As the WHO6 funds to finance the essay were not enough to finance the dwelling improvement, Dr Angulo involved Santander Governor and six Mayors from endemic municipalities in addressing their housing improving subsidised projects, currently administrated by the presidential office RSS. As Dr Angulo’s proposal was rather innovative, RSS charge me to make some recommendations about “Housing improvement for Chagas disease control”, because current actions of housing contractors were to torn down rural houses (or worst, to leave them upstanding in risk conditions able for domiciliation of the vector) and replace them with the repetition of a typical design of a two bedroom, one bathroom, a kitchen and a corridor of about 40 sqm total built area, without considering the built patrimony of the families, or to improve the house by adding a new bedroom and upgrading the bathroom and the kitchen leaving the rest of the dwelling in risk conditions for Chagas disease transmission. My former Architectural Conservation speciality, lead me to find out that over 6

WHO, United Nations World Health Organisation

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19,000 sqm were going to be torn down, generating a severe damage to vernacular architecture and the destruction of cultural roots of places. This first experience and the particular success of my proposals for changes for an integral vision for actions from government, academic and community actors; intra and peri domicile analysis of dwellings; total upgrading instead of partial interventions and to make increase the amount of housing subsidy, from USD 1,200 to 1,800 for each dwelling (512 units in six municipalities). Then the following nomination of this experience by Colombian Health Ministry to Best Practices contest at Dubai in 19997; the following edition of an integrating protocol of the National Chagas Disease Control Programme and the National Rural Subsidy Housing Programme for INS8 in 2000; convinced me about the creation of Cesos Corporation as a Non-for profit organisation, on September 25, 2003 with the following social mission: “To promote health and general welfare of communities in harmony with environment, by means of the study, promotion and execution of investigations and projects in the fields of Physical Sciences, Human 7

http://www.bestpractices.org/database/bp_display_best_pra ctice.php?best_practice_id=954 8 INS: Instituto Nacional de Salud, National Health Institute

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Sciences and Arts”. Then as a new NGO, Cesos developed for the INS in 2004 a social participatory strategy for Dengue disease sustainable control, involving new approaches leading to an efficient social an environmental management system for municipalities. We have also prepared and held conferences and congresses, presented lectures, supported small women rural organizations and solved consulting on Social Housing Quality. This expertise is Cesos main strength as well as its board and closer volunteer collaborators. The corporation integrates working teams depending on the purpose of the project to be executed from a large Data Base of professionals. Each project has a Responsible director and an Administrative manager that become vocals at the Board. •

From health to housing: Casanare, Ministry of Housing, Environment and Territory, SDD.

The former activity brought me some popularity among Health functionaries. I was invited by Dr Juan Manuel Naranjo, who was occupying the Public Health Direction for Casanare department invited Cesos to organize a congress about housing improvement for Chagas disease control.

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Casanare is a large department (44.640 sqkm) located at the east of the country in the Orinochean natural region with huge oil and natural gas reserves, its population in 2005 Census was of 133.226 inhabitants that compared with 1993 Census figure of 161.440 shows us the general emigrational phenomena to larger cities. Two percent of population is native and live in 10 reserved areas that occupy 3,3% of territory with dramatic livelihood conditions due to acculturation from a nomad way of living in their extended vernacular territory of the Orinochean plains to a restricted territory where they are pushed to become farmers instead of semi-nomad hunters gatherers, forced to live in colonisation dwelling schemes offered by the government agencies, that are neglected as they don’t respond, for example, to their traditional separation of sanitary services from the cooking utility, or to the use of zinc metal tiles that doesn’t offer bioclimatic protection to shelter compared to traditional palm roofs, much less expensive as they are easy available in the region and incredibly efficient to keep comfortable temperatures inside dwellings in hot tropical climates. Then, I was invited to develop part of a consultation for the Ministry of Housing, Environment and

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Territory9, about shelter quality standards. This allowed me to visit several social housing projects across the country verifying sadly the extremely bad quality of urbanism, building and habitability conditions in most of the cases. I could corroborate the lack of participation of the final user in the planning and execution of these projects, not even in the recognition of the family composition to determinate the size and characteristics of the dwelling, much less in the adaptation to biological, cultural or climatic local conditions. In our diverse country it appeared as we have reached an “ideal” unique prototype present in all climates, cultures and local conditions. With this precedent information I was accepted to Shelter Design & Development course at HDM in Lund University where I could develop and present the project: “Healthy and Sustainable Habitat in Colombia. Integrated Housing in Rural and Urban Areas of Small Municipalities”. This is a demonstrative project of a protocol to create The National Health and Sustainable Habitat Programme in Colombia. It justifies and describes a process that 9

Consultoría para la formulación de guías de asistencia técnica a entidades territoriales para proyectos de Vivienda de Interés Social-VIS y sobre estándares de calidad de VIS

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starts developing a Geographical Information System (GIS) tool by which the municipal authorities and the communities, with support of academic institutions are able to recognize their identity, their territory and establish agreements to address urban land, wealth and development in the small municipalities throughout the country. •

Towards a systemic and holistic vision.

The task then is to introduce a new way to harmonise housing to environment through a systemic and holistic integrated way to approach to territories and communities, which is the reason of this book that I wish to present to people involved in social housing.

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PART ONE 1. Identity Perhaps you may have found yourself in the middle of a crowd where you don’t know anybody, but you feel safe because people are like you somehow. Certainly, you will share some interest about the meeting, or you might dress similarly, probably you speak the same language, and many people are alike you. Identity is a security factor that allows you to act freely and comfortably, opposite to a different situation where you do not recognize elements from your background. On this other pole, when you walk through a neighbourhood where the buildings are so similar that you may say they are all identical, you will not only be insecure, you will get lost. This can certainly happen to you in any of the official social housing neighbourhoods built in the last decades in Manila, Mexico, Lima, Bogotá, or many other cities with a large growing rate. This is the heritage that ideal Renaissance cities and modern mass housing production left to the actual city. An urbanism that doesn’t replicate landscape accidents denies topography and fills up waterways. It struggles against land and gives priority to the straight

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line over organic shapes. Flying across the USA you can appreciate this, and curiously the organic way some roads around oil fields are traced, or how rice terraces were built two thousand years ago, see pictures 1, 2 and 3.

Picture 1. Rice terraces, Bantad, Philipines

Picture 2. Over Arizona or New Mexico, USA

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Picture 3. Oil drilling, Texas, USA I don’t want to suggest that land cannot be managed, what I want to emphasize is that we must not scarf the planet. The consequences of the ‘non-identification’ with terrain are well known and are a cause of many of the wrongly called “natural disasters”. So, to build a ‘terrain-comprehensive urban environment’ is a first clue to have friendly neighbourhoods humanized cities and harmonious livelihoods. The former huge step does not come alone. To reach this civilized target, deep changes have to be accomplished, starting by individual ones. It is an identity recovery issue on individuals that will lead society to a better urban rich world. This change must be supported by the current formal educational system for coming generations, and bred from a non formal

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pedagogic approach for adults and populations that live in deprived conditions all over the world. Here urbanism and education touch each other in a sentence that a young Philippinean from Ifugao told me, walking through the old rice terraces, “…they have given us education, but it was not focused…” There stands all the matter: ‘focuses’. And then, some questions arise: Is it a global focus, or an international one, or a national one, a regional, or a local one? The answer is yes, to all of them, but within priorities. Focus shall be defined at first instance individually then locally, and gradually or concentrically to the other levels. There is where education for new generations shall assume its role to raise kids focused within themselves and their territories. In the first order the body and the closest surround, in farther ones the natural, economical, social, and political environment. A compulsory Territory Cathedra must be implemented into formal educational systems from nursery school to the highest educational levels. But let’s leave this immediate task for future generations to specialists’ activity: to introduce changes in educational national curriculum.; as we have to be concerned with millions of people all over the world

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living today in jeopardize, on a high degree of unsatisfactory environment, full of inequity, segregation, discrimination, degradation, injustice, lack of secure tenure, among many other inhuman conditions. To brake down these unfair conditions it is not only necessary to teach values, but to deeply inculcate them in the interior of individuals, in their emotional feelings to get a truly non rational or automatic attitude in accordance with them. Thoughts and actions shall become consciously “right”, to live joyfully and well being in common good. Human rights are written, even officially recognized by country bylaws but they are not yet culturally performed. Formative-pedagogic-cultural processes in informal educational activities of action learning by ‘creating’ shall impact for changes on individuals’ behaviour for a civil society change leading to a happy and richer world. Culture is something particular to each individual and tacit agreements are done to build it up from personal and local surround, to global levels. As the constitutive unit of culture is a personal one, coherence between what we think or desire, what we

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say and what we do, consents to the consolidation of collective cultural levels. It is practically impossible to be happy not being coherent or doing what we know that is “wrong”, living in a constant interior struggle. A clue to evaluate coherence in our lives is our behaviour towards morals and law. We are remembered for our acts, words are gone with the wind, and it is about time to put them in deeds. Besides its incidence in development, how convergence of Law, Mores and Culture, influence housing? In a convergent situation corruption does not prevail, the “right” thing is to build real nice, happy and healthy dwellings. Actual situation is opposite, as housing is also a business, forcedly generating profit, it doesn’t matter to act “wrong”, facilitating corruption and producing an unhealthy housing environment with very low living quality. How can we change this historical gap? For the change I will propose forward a methodology to implement communitarian processes towards building better neighbourhoods and cities where people identify themselves in a commune by thinking and acting consciously of each step they take.

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2. The Triple R An integral comprehension of the Triple R strategy must be fulfilled because it is the basis of a conscious behaviour in pro of a healthy and wealthy environment. This tripod has a logical staging. In first place conscience is arising about benefits and urgency of Reduction by opposition of unlimited growing10. Humankind is getting aware that our splendid planet is limited to a very fragile spot in the middle of the cosmos and that many resources are not being used properly to get a better living for everybody and that we must reduce or definitively avoid the use of many products that are harming the environment and consequently putting in danger human life. As many of these products harmful and not harmful are still being produced we shall use them until their last stand, while future industry re accommodates to pro-life standards. The second logical step is Reusing which is a practice that also forwards to diminish the manufacture of short-life products. To reuse you might need to do 10

Industrialization and post industrialization vowed for development based on growing. After 1992’s earth summit of Rio sustainability concept emerged, nowadays harmony between parts is prevailing in response to ethics and aesthetics congruity.

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some reparations to keep in function the utility, by opposition of throwing it away and getting a brand new one. You can apply this principle even in housing; as a matter of fact in Chagas disease control program in Santander, Colombia, we avoid the demolition of many vernacular houses from poor people at countryside that were “beneficiated” with a housing subsidy for building a new mini house of 40sqm with poor bioclimatic conditions. We got that government approved that family could use the subsidy’s money improving their old house to healthy conditions, using local and traditional materials in a typical reusing process. The third one refers to all the products that don’t stand any other use, these shall get going into a Recycling process that recovers the raw materials and make them able to be used in the production of new products, hopefully pro-life ones. As there is still a lot of garbage making, recycling has become a very profitable business in this decade. Actually the objective is not to recycle or to favour this new business, but to manufacture only useful products with a very long profitable life for the raw materials as they are made out of biodegradable material.

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2.1. Re-creation To reinvent and redesign to be able for RRR To put in deeds RRR, a great creative effort must be done. It is a diametrical position to change from a culture of waste towards a systemic, complex and open economy11. Cultural appropriation of new pro life habits will overcome in a democratic society in the measure that new actions entail new benefits. The reinvention and redesigning of strategies, processes and products is impositive to politicians, entrepreneurs, industrial designers, architects, among all social actors. There are already many “conscious” actors. that have introduced into their social mission the “zero emissions” concept12. They are pioneers of this new century task and they envision it as a “green” opportunity for business. So, major scientific developments, based on ethical principles for life preservation will give common people decent options for a new way of living far different from waste, as we will only get or buy what we really need, and clean production will predominate over dirty one13. It 11

Gunter Pauli, “Volver a Adam Smith”, Innovar 14, p. 12 Ibidem, founder and director of Zeri foundation, 1994: Zero emissions Research and Initiatives. 13 Sylvain Darnil, Matieu Le Roux, 80 hommes pour changer le monde, 2005 12

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is a new economical scope where prevails a practical logic for life preservation. Artists are also involved, since the beginning of XX century, Duchamp’s avantgarde rhythms of his time with his provoking readymades, questioned the absolutism of crafting, or Chaplin’s critical movies to machinism and Taylorism14 in its bad consequence of using time and motion studies simply to extract more work from employees at less pay. Contemporary, there are already several artists that with his constant provoking way to show beyond reality and question society, shall be our allies to get to communities. I met a Tarija, Bolivia a wonderful puppet man, Federico Rocha who has developed a series of plays engaged with health improvement and environmental conservation. By his “Pedrito and María” puppet play for Chagas disease control with housing improvement, adults while laughing were shown in the mirror of theatre how irrational was their domestic behaviour while kids would be able to recall to their parents about good house holding habits in 14

Frederick Winslow Taylor (1856-1915), Frederick Winslow Taylor devised a system he called scientific management, a form of industrial engineering that established the organization of work as in Ford's assembly line. He moved management theory from early time-andmotion studies to the latest total quality control ideas.

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their familiar milieu. Artists can support our task in a lot of manners; Chris Jordan’s Picture 315 has already undertaken it.

Picture 3. Chris Jordan, Cell phones #2. Atlanta 2005, 44 x 90” His images are invaluable tools for pedagogical purposes about raising consciousness among communities, and to question whether we have to focus on a number of changes in our consumption habits and to start a cultural process to reinvent and redesign.

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Intolerable Beauty: Portraits of American Mass Consumption: “As an American consumer myself, I am in no position to finger wag; but I do know that when we reflect on a difficult question in the absence of an answer, our attention can turn inward, and in that space may exist the possibility of some evolution of thought or action. So my hope is that these photographs can serve as portals to a kind of cultural self-inquiry. It may not be the most comfortable terrain, but I have heard it said that in risking self-awareness, at least we know that we are awake.”

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Changing habits, braking paradigms is a cultural process based on education through pedagogical process of “learning while doing” in a focused way into the milieu that has not yet been incorporated in formal educational programs. There is a simple practice that I propose to pupils in my walking courses, to explain RRR, the most vivid one is about the use of paper: If you write or print on the two faces of the paper instead of one (it is “bad seen” to present a homework with the two faces of the sheet printed), you are reducing in 50% the use of paper, thus half of the trees needed to make paper will not be felt down. It is also profitable to keep the paper that has one of its faces not used, to profit it for a rough draft. This habit has taken root amply but the concept of what you are doing is often confused with recycling instead of simply the reusing one.

2.2. The Balance Back in year 1999 I recall the day I read Gunter Pauli’s enlightening article “Volver a Adam Smith”16 when I understood thoroughly the RRR strategy. I hope that, when you read this, most of the world has done it also. Pauli’s point, based on Adam Smith 1767 theory, is the zero emissions vision. Nowadays, some 16

Gunter Pauli is founder an director of Zeri foundation

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companies have adopted this statement in their institutional mission17. This is another clue to make safer and pleasant environments, and above all to preserve the world for the benefit of future generations. Beyond the reduction of garbage, new entrepreneurs generations ought to be aware that a balanced behaviour is essentially the only way to avoid global warming, but they will find out that balance is also a great deal, economically rewarding, environmentally friendly and socially accepted. Simultaneous and numerous actions in this direction can become into the braking point for preserving future life on our planet. As Pauli states, economical science contradicting Adam Smith’s theory, keeps its practice improving micro economical aspects about management but leaves aside the fundamentals about the more efficient 17

Herman Miller: Our sustainability goals by the year 2020: • Zero landfill • Zero hazardous waste generation • Zero air emissions (VOCs) • Zero process water use • 100 percent green electrical energy use • Company buildings constructed to a minimum LEED Silver certification • 100 percent of sales from DfE approved products

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combination of the three economical components stated by Adams in IIXX century: capital, labour force and raw materials18. Currently, emphasis is made only on the first two, neglecting the incorporation of the last in the equation. As a direct consequence of this nonsense, a great amount of raw materials become environmental polluters. So, a balanced re-creation, where the full use of raw materials, the proportional valuation of labour hand with a minimum risk for capital loss, had to be done in a contemporary conservative thought contrasting to the theory of endless growing equivalent to development. The new production and consumption model to recreate should be able to respond to the alleviation of the critical conditions of thousands of millions of people that live overwhelmed by poverty, lacking elementary resources as clean water, food, health services, shelter, energy and productive occupation all over the world.

2.2.1.Capital Richard S. Fuld jr, former president of Lehman Brothers declare to the U.S. congress commission that 18

Adam Smith’s theory: Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, published 1776

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one of the causes of company’s bankruptcy was the simultaneity of virtual transactions, what put in evidence that, in fact, there is a large amount of capital that doesn’t really exist. This remind me about a play game where there is a number of chairs with one chair less than those of the number of players who dance around them until music stops and each one must take a chair obviously leaving one of them standing. Lehman Bros. didn’t have liquidity when the music stopped. Why? Because that money doesn’t exist as it matches to a speculation of the capital gambling. Capital became a purpose instead of an instrument, new interchange media will arise and in Antanas Mockus19words: “In XXIII century money will exist, but only in the Museums”. So, a truth dimension of capital function to get sustain of life in the planet must take place, finding its place as mere tool to create value for welfare, health and happiness of mankind.

2.2.2.Labour force “To produce more with less (hand labour)”, this popular economical paradigm of XX century has 19

Bogota’s Mayor in two period.

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conducted manhood to the unequal situation that 80% of resources are consumed by 20% of population. It also has permitted that 20% of people owns 80% of global wealth. This distorted vision has favoured increasing productivity and growth as the modern economical ideal, in disregard of human free and creative occupation. It has generated added value to products and returned it to the capital in detriment of the labourers’ incomes. This coarse and unbalanced situation not only uses ‘full employment’ as an unreachable task, but it is the main cause of the existence of such a pollutant and wasteful society. The industrialized city from its beginnings in IXX century legitimate the furnishing of sufficient and cheap labour hand that has been recurrently packed in “shanty towns” all over the world20 as an ineluctable need of having a large inventory of labourers disposed to “work more for less (pay)”. Added value to products by account of hand labour is currently easy to figure out, so that a proportional welfare of mankind is set up, and in a further appraise of interchange means, different than money, hopefully equity will arise. Meanwhile, an intensive use in 20

Term used for the first time around 1953 to design squatters in Moroq

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complete production cycles of raw materials may generate plenty of occupation for many people.

2.2.3.Raw materials Finally, due to climate change, the use of the third component of the equation is driving to collapse the whole system, the irrational use and abuse of natural raw materials. Our mother earth is been exhausted by the unconscious exploitation of natural resources over the last two centuries. To waste them as if they were unlimited is carrying us to a self destruction in a very short term. There are still running all over the planet many industrial processes that merely 10% of raw material is spent while the remaining 90% is wasted to the sewers or directly poured into the water streams21 . It is about time to reconsider these shaming activities that harsh environment and replacing them through systemic processes able to use the residual materials from one industry as raw material for another one. Human activities are boosting carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” concentrations in the atmosphere to dangerous levels. The result is rising global temperatures and an unstable climate that threatens humans, economies, and ecosystems. 21

Gunter Pauli, ibidem p. 31

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3. More urban, more rich Parodying Göran Tannerfeldt and Per Ljung book: More urban less poor (an introduction to urban development and management) my proposal leads about how people can become richer instead of just less poor. I strongly oppose to the ineluctability of this sad human condition of poverty. It is overwhelming to listen to the reports that 60.000 million tons of food is thrown to the garbage just in the United States of America, additional 6.000 thousand tons in Great Britain have the same destiny annually. This shows us that hunger reasons far differ from poverty or lack of food and recall us the unbalanced and non proportional conditions of urban development, which follows the wicked system that nowadays prevails. The concentration off huge populations in few urban cities only favours massive consumption industries whose enormous benefits grow proportionally to the inutility and futility of what it is produced and to the fact that free hand labour mobility is restricted to these gigantic centres, contradicting the angular stone of free market as Adam Smith quoted. Megalopolis at service of the accumulation of capital are perhaps the worst historical human mistake that is jeopardizing life on earth by its effects on

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environment as the main source of greenhouse gases and its expected impacts on an unstable climate22 The urgency of Mitigation: Policies and behaviours designed to reduce greenhouse gases and increase carbon sinks.

To end poverty by the creation of value, a XXI century global goal.

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Climate Change Reference Guide, Worldwatch Institute ,2009

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