Protecting the Invisible
Creating climate change resilient cities by incorporating new urban design standards
In the course of human events, there are three things that should not be denied: the world is increasingly urbanizing — about 70% of the world’s population lives in cities; climate change is real and there are noticeable fluctuations in both temperature and seasonal cycles; and lastly, that the poorest people living in the worst conditions, in “slums” and “squatter settlements,” are currently and will continue to be the individuals hit hardest by climate change.
In 1972 an MIT Report, “The Limits to Growth” used computer generated “system dynamics” modeling to predict the global human system model crashing by the mid 21st century. However, after visiting the model three decades later in 2002, the team concluded their original projections had been relatively accurate. So where are we today? According to NASA, carbon dioxide levels are at their highest in 650,000 years, nine of the ten warmest years on record have occurred from 2000–2016, and sea level has risen nearly seven inches in the past 100 years. These are present, real recorded changes that are affecting massive amounts of people.
For example, Mumbai is one of India’s fastest growing cities — it is currently home to an estimated 20 million people. Dharavi, “Asia’s largest slum” located on the west coast of Mumbai, has 1 million residents crowded into a density of roughly 18,000 people per acre. This information is particularly alarming because the whole of Mumbai is located within a “Low Elevation Coastal Zones” (LECZ), which classifies regions that fall under 10 meters of coastal elevation. One can expect to see big changes to places like Dharavi that are located less than 0.78 miles from the ocean because sea levels on the coast of India are expected to rise an additional 11 to 30 inches in the next century. This substandard housing settlement’s hybrid metal and concrete homes and dirt streets that are often covered in solid waste, possessions, animals, sewage, and hundreds of thousands of homes sit only about 13 feet above sea level. Slums like Dharavi that exist beyond the reach of governmental regulation, support systems, and infrastructure are growing quickly in both number and density — a situation that only increases their weakness to deal with natural disasters expected to come with climate change.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the United Nations’ scientific body on global warming, warned in its fourth Assessment Report on Impacts Adaptation and Vulnerability in 2007, “it is a scientifically proven fact that low-lying coastal areas are highly vulnerable to floods. Among these coastal areas, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change specifically identifies as hotspots the heavily urbanized megacities in the low lying deltas of Asia, which are in acute state of vulnerable appreciation.” This fact first reported in 2007 is even more notable and pressing as the world confronts climate change after almost a decade with little progress in the realm of green house gas emission reduction.
Measuring communities’ vulnerability to climate change is much like peeling an onion — there are many layers. The geographic features of a site are not the only influential factors in determining how bad climate change might get. The reality of climate change’s threat to an area is largely dependent upon development status. Developing nations may have general societal and governmental will to relocate those who live in low-lying coastal zones, but inadequate financial resources restrict their actions. This reveals another layer of influence: wealth. Without the necessary financial resources, a developing country’s vulnerability is greater, but more importantly, its adaptive ability is much lower than that of a first world nation — their defenseless residents are trapped. In sum, the IPCC makes clear that densely populated, poor, low-lying coastal areas in developing countries are the most “vulnerable” because neither their priorities nor resources allow for easy infrastructural changes that would better adjust them to the effects of climate change.
So far the “who” and the “where” will be hit hardest by real effects of climate change — substandard housing settlements in low coastal areas of developing countries. Now one can explore the “why.”
Why this information matters is skewed by the way the IPCC study explains what is at risk: the city. On the contrary, a city is nothing more than an aggregator for people. So why are we not focusing on the most basic unit, the root, the people? Thus arises an issue of scale that if not addressed will problematize future decisions. The IPCC spouts cautions and solutions for high-risk sites, but those solutions do not address or protect the thing most at risk: an individual’s livelihood. Climate change and its effects are often presented in an indigestible way. Facts and figures such as “anticipated sea level of up to [23.62 inches] by 2100” seem less important because there is nothing human to grab on to — it is a one dimensional fact that does not fit in our multi-dimensional, highly personal world.
When analyzed on the right scale in the correct dimension, one sees that substandard housing settlements are greatly oversimplified. Lingering colonial sentiments portray settlements like Port Au Prince, Haiti as a breeding ground for squalor, disease, and destitution. However, in reality, the substandard housing community of Haiti comprises the invisible foundation for everyday functions. For example, Haiti, a country with no formal sewage infrastructure, relies on “shadow workers” called “Baykou” who, under the cover of night, separate individuals from their own excrement by descending into concrete or earth-dug holes to remove daily waste with nothing more than their hands and a plastic bucket. Here is the “why does it matter?” Although unrecognized, the Baykou workers are integral to everyday life. Haiti’s Baykou sewage collectors, Egypt’s Zabbaleen and Mumbai’s Dharavi solid waste collectors and recyclers, and the Favelas’ dual market/housing structures all play a role in aiding greater city functions or providing needed human capital for city jobs.
Although sea level rise is the clearest threat to coastal substandard housing around the world, it is not the only danger. Increased extreme weather events could cause widespread detriment to communities without formal water collection and sanitation systems by causing flooding and mudslides, drinking water contamination, and water-born illnesses. Heat waves ripping through a community where most homes have no form of insulation could cause large-scale deaths, particularly to the elderly and the young. From this emerges the dichotomy of substandard housing settlements: they often house the most important resources and services, but are also the most vulnerable. However, innovative design and thoughtful urban planning can safeguard the contributions of substandard housing structures and residents.
Although the IPCC says that developing countries and areas have the lowest adaptive capacity, they are wrong. The lack of infrastructure is not a negative, but a freeing positive. While slums or settlements are some of the most at-risk communities to climate impacts, their informal structure and governance also make them ripe a specific sect of innovation that retains cultural authenticity and achieves heightened efficiency. For example, take the Makoko floating substandard housing settlement of Lagos, Nigeria. The floating school creation was a reaction to increasing urbanization and increasing risks of climate change. It embodies a solution that the people of Makoko already figured out: if a dwelling floats on top of the water, sea level rise is no longer a threat. Furthermore, the “floating school” design of architect Kunlé Adeyemi’s comprised a floating structure that was both stable and scalable to residents of all ages, so that it offers children a safe place to learn while doubling as a communal gathering space with great social benefits. The methods of conception and production of this structure outline a best practice process.
The two-part best practice process begins with creating designs that focus on letting nature in. Proliferation of concrete and other hard surfaces that increase soil nutrient and water runoff have only exacerbated the effects of climate change. It has become inefficient, ineffective, an uneconomical to adhere to designs that push nature away and say “we know better.” To make structures and societies that are truly sustainable, nature must be used as a source of inspiration and guidance — a bed of grass or gravel walkway absorbs a lot more rainwater than a concrete sidewalk. Often times when urban planners attempt to assert the human hierarchy, most notably in the form of levies or by filling in wetlands in the name of “land reclamation,” which would better be deemed landmass fabrication or unnatural island creation, massive failures like the one observed during hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, Louisiana take place. Thus the first best practice process for creating homes for people that will intergenerationally last the test of time requires looking at and emulating the multifunctional, highly efficient elements of nature such as trees and wetlands that actually accrue positive benefits over time.
The second best practice process calls for a focus on the culture and goals of the targeted community. A preliminary life-function assessment should be executed before any planning or designing takes place. Ignoring or marginalizing differences among communities leads to failed designs. Often it is the people closest to the project, the local population, who are the most informed, but most untapped tools for planning. Sevin Yildiz, Barnard Professor and UN Urban Designs and Human Settlements scholar explains, “You want to empower people so they can take initiative in their own transformations. Successful cases are all like that — you do not completely abandon them or dump money and funding on them, but you somehow orchestrate and strategize a process where you are the mediator between the funders and the people in need.” Successful urban development comes from input on both sides. It is integral that a dialogue where the types of family and community gatherings are understood, social and gender dynamics are respected, the multi-functional nature of homes as either both work spaces and shelter for a family, or whether just a home is recognized, and those understandings interact with expert opinions and methods to increase economic success and improve community connectivity.
Cities are growing and the substandard housing underclass that keeps them functioning must be protected from climate change in all of its forms — flooding, natural disasters, ambient temperature increase, and water shortage. As of now, the invisible supporting structure of the world has functioned without major climate change induced challenges, but this may not continue for much longer. If these substandard housing communities, their residents, and their functions remain unappreciated and without aid in the battle against climate change, invisibility will give way to actual non-existence for which there will be costs to every level of human society and the natural world.
