[Urbanstudy] Urbanstudygroup Digest, Vol 55, Issue 1

[Cheryl Deutsch]

Thanks for the forwarded blog post, Vinay.  This history of
urbanization/informalization is right on, I think, and fits with what I've
been thinking about lately in my work with hawkers.  In this blog, the
writer traces the disappearance of free land for squatting, the
privatization and sub-letting of squatter settlements, and the glut of
people trying to make a living in the informal economy.  Eventually, the
state's role becomes simply policing, militarily if necessary.

This history of disappearing space available for occupation can equally be
applied to hawkers in places like Bombay.  What I've been thinking about
lately is how so many hawkers no longer even have the right to be illegal.
Most prime hawking areas are long past "full..." making middle class
residents' associations' claims that "they will just keep coming"
illogical... in fact, it is very difficult to find lucrative space to start
a new hawking business in Bombay.  And so a whole economy of illegalities
has arisen from this space crunch.  There are so many shades of
illegality... from ward to ward, from street to street, and even from hawker
to hawker sitting on the same street.  While 99% of them are illegal and
unlicensed, all are not equal in their illegality.  I'm continually amazed
by the unevenness of police and municipal harassment: even on the same
street, some people are paying bribes to the police, while others are paying
to the municipality.  Still others are paying both, while some are paying
none.  I won't attempt to trace the patterns here, for lack of solid
empirical evidence, but my impression is that it cuts along communal,
regional, gender, and other lines of identity.

While in most of the city, this harassment and extortion is like a highly
orchestrated and rehearsed drama that gets played out again and again, we
are witnessing the real transformation of south Bombay, where the stakes
have crossed the tipping point and the state is really starting to show what
it can do.  One union leader from A Ward (which includes VT, Churchgate,
Nariman Point, etc.) told me that the number of hawkers in that ward had
been reduced from 7,000 to 2,000 in the last 6-8 years.  This is not a
rehearsed drama.  A battle has been raging along DN Road, for example, where
the hawkers have been prevented from doing business for the last 3 months...
there is perhaps no better symbol of the forces battling in Bombay than DN
Road and its hawkers: lined with colonial arcades that nowadays provide the
perfect shelter to hundreds of hawkers, one can also find along DN Road
every bank doing business in this would-be world class financial centre.
Alas, in the eyes of finance capital, all are equal outside the law...

On Fri, Sep 5, 2008 at 11:35 AM, <urbanstudygroup-request at sarai.net> wrote:

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> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Relocation without eviction in Joburg (lalitha kamath)
>   2. Understanding the politics of credit rating (lalitha kamath)
>   3. Militarisation as global urban policy (Vinay Baindur)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Fri, 29 Aug 2008 21:56:59 -0700 (PDT)
> From: lalitha kamath <elkamath at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Urbanstudy] Relocation without eviction in Joburg
> To: urbanstudygroup at sarai.net, NURM list <jnnurm at yahoogroups.com>
> Cc: reader-list <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Message-ID: <886627.66683.qm at web53603.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> The successful implementation of a Constitutional Court order on
> finding alternative housing for people about to be evicted from two
> "bad" inner city buildings shows what is possible when the rights of
> the poor are considered by the state, the Centre for Applied Legal
> Studies (Cals) said on Wednesday.
>
> http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?from=rss_South%20Africa&set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=nw20080827174307804C153163
>
>
>
>
>
>
> 'Bad building' relocated in Joburg
>
>  August 27 2008 at 07:19PM
>
> The successful implementation of a Constitutional Court order on finding
> alternative housing for people about to be evicted from two "bad" inner city
> buildings shows what is possible when the rights of the poor are considered
> by the state, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies (Cals) said on Wednesday.
>
> This follows the relocation, without eviction, of 450 people in terms of a
> court-ordered negotiation from San Jose in Johannesburg's Berea and 197 Main
> Street in the city, to new temporary accommodation.
>
> The City of Johannesburg had tried to evict them from the buildings on the
> grounds of health concerns after the owners apparently abandoned the
> building, but in March 2006, Johannesburg High Court judge Mahomed Jajbhay
> dismissed the city's eviction application because the residents had nowhere
> better to live.
>
> The matter went all the way to the Constitutional Court, which ordered the
> city and representatives of the residents to find a solution.
>
> Lawyers for the city worked with the residents and their legal
> representatives and two buildings - the MBV hospital in the central business
> district and the Old Perm building in Hillbrow - were identified, explained
> Cals' Stuart Wilson.
>
> The city provided extra fire extinguishers and other measures to address
> their health concerns, while preparations were made to adapt the buildings
> for their relocation.
>
> Needs and income assessments were undertaken, lease agreements were
> arranged and residents allocated units. The move was finally conducted
> between August 23 and 26, Wilson.
>
> The arrangement was endorsed by the Constitutional Court at the end of
> 2007.
>
> "This is a victory for the Bill of Rights and the rule of law. It is
> noteworthy that the residents of San Jose and 197 Main Street relocated
> freely and voluntarily," said Wilson.
>
> "Not one person was forcibly evicted from either of the properties. I hope
> that this spells the end of forced evictions in the name of inner city
> regeneration."
>
> Wilson explained that the deal was that they pay a deposit in instalments
> of R25, R50 and R75 for the first three months for occupation of the rooms
> with shared kitchen and ablution facilities, with rent kicking in in the
> fourth month for the residents, who are considered poor.
>
> Individuals with no familial connections will share rooms that will be
> partitioned for privacy.
>
> He said the contribution of the residents' committees was "invaluable" in
> taking into account the residents' needs before their move.
>
> The building will be managed by the City of Johannesburg, which will also
> arrange cleaning services, and a tenants committee will hold the building
> manager and residents to account.
>
> City of Johannesburg spokesperson Gabu Tugwana said the city was pleased
> with the end result, but stressed that their new accommodation was temporary
> and residents and the city of Johannesburg will negotiate permanent
> solutions which may include shelters, flats in other city-owned buildings,
> or rentals in the private sector.
>
> "I think it showed a good working relationship. It shows how conflict can
> be avoided and how communities can work together," he said.
>
> He said the court battles over the last three years often saw strong
> disagreements between the City of Johannesburg and the legal representatives
> of the property occupants.
>
> "Last weekend's move is therefore notable for its spirit of co-operation
> between the community and local government."
>
> He said considerable preparation went into it with everyone working closely
> throughout.
>
> "A lot of effort went into negotiating room allocations, lease agreements,
> house rules and the process of the move itself," he said.
>
> "But in the end it was worth it. We had a virtually trouble-free move."
>
> The city would assess whether the old buildings could be saved, or whether
> they should be demolished. - Sapa
>
>
>
> Cross posted from: DEBATE mailing list
> DEBATE at debate.kabissa.org
> http://lists.kabissa.org/mailman/listinfo/debate
>
>
>
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> Message: 2
> Date: Sat, 30 Aug 2008 04:13:41 -0700 (PDT)
> From: lalitha kamath <elkamath at yahoo.com>
> Subject: [Urbanstudy] Understanding the politics of credit rating
> To: urbanstudygroup at sarai.net, reader-list <reader-list at sarai.net>
> Message-ID: <351877.20901.qm at web53612.mail.re2.yahoo.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
> Municipal bonds and borrowing on the market depend heavily on good
> investment ratings. in turn these seem to depend on ability to raise
> revenues
> to certain 'target' levels. if 'targets' cannot be achieved, ratings
> fall. If this is really such a linear (and simplistic) process then credit
> rating companies could strongly influence many future
> decisions (capital investment, investment on O&M etc). When a Moody's
> downgrades a public utility's rating, for instance, where does the utility
> turn, as in the case of Escom in S Africa below?
>
> I have recently been fascinated by the notion, practice and politics of
> credit
> rating. All Indian cities, big and small, seem to want a rating these days
> in preparation for developing top class infrastructure.
> There are some processes in particular I'm not clear about:
> 1) How ratings are determined, monitored and revised especially given the
> difficulty of getting accounting,
> financial and other info from cities on an ongoing and current basis
> and then of actually understanding and interpreting how these systems work
> in practice.
> 2) The kind of influence ratings companies could have on service provision
> in cities and towns
> 3) To create ratings, what are the rationalizations, simplifications, and
> transformations that need to occur to create a language and systems that
> serve credit rating analysts? In this process of translation (linguistic and
> other), what gets left out?
>
> I'd appreciate any clarifications, ideas or sources of literature people
> can give me on understanding this better.
> cheers
> lalitha
>
>
>
> http://www.reuters.com/article/rbssFinancialServicesAndRealEstateNews/idUSLD59815420080813
>
> S.Africa's Eskom to seek World Bank funds - paper
> Wed Aug 13, 2008 2:43am EDT
>
> JOHANNESBURG, Aug 13 (Reuters) - South Africa's Eskom [ESCJ.J] could seek
> to borrow up to $1 billion a year from the World Bank over five years after
> a ratings downgrade made it more difficult to borrow on financial markets,
> the Business Day newspaper reported.
>
> The newspaper said on Wednesday the power utility would turn to the World
> Bank due to tough global markets and after a Moody's downgrade, which will
> likely raise the cost of borrowing money it needs for a major upgrade.
>
> It quoted Eskom Finance Director Bongani Nqwababa as saying the state-owned
> company was "rechecking" its funding strategy and was likely to focus on
> borrowing locally from development agencies such as the World Bank and
> African Development Bank and from export credit agencies.
>
> Eskom officials could not immediately be reached for comment. A World Bank
> spokeswoman said the bank was in an "ongoing dialogue" with Eskom but
> declined further comment.
>
> Business Day did not provide a source for the $1 billion a year figure.
>
> Eskom is to spend billions of dollars to boost power capacity as demand
> outstrips supply in Africa's biggest economy.
>
> A wave of blackouts has cost South Africa billions of rand in lost
> productivity and unnerved foreign investors.
>
> Ratings agency Moody's said on Monday it had cut Eskom's local currency
> rating to Baa2 from A1 and cut the foreign currency rating to Baa2 from A2.
> The outlook for all ratings was negative.
>
> The agency blamed the four notch local currency downgrade on a
> deterioration of Eskom's stand-alone credit profile due to an aggressive
> capital investment programme and the fact Eskom was not able to raise
> tariffs as much as it had requested.
>
> The National Treasury has budgeted 60 billion rand ($7.72 billion) over the
> next three years to help Eskom pay for its 343 billion rand, 5-year
> expansion programme. (Writing by Rebecca Harrison; Editing by David Cowell)
>
> (c) Thomson Reuters 2008 All rights reserved
>
> This article is cross-posted from Debate mailing list
>
>
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> Message: 3
> Date: Fri, 5 Sep 2008 11:35:30 +0530
> From: "Vinay Baindur" <yanivbin at gmail.com>
> Subject: [Urbanstudy] Militarisation as global urban policy
> To: "Urban Sarai" <urbanstudygroup at sarai.net>
> Message-ID:
>        <86b8a7050809042305k1381ba8fn1d0779b8ffe4060 at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="windows-1252"
>
> Militarization as Global Urban Policy
>
>
> http://globalsociology.edublogs.org/2008/08/31/militarization-as-global-urban-policy/
>
> August 31st, 2008 by SocProf and tagged Development, Economy,
> Globalization,
> Human Rights, Migration, Militarization, New Wars, Politics, Population,
> Poverty, Public Policy, Risk Society, Social Exclusion, Social
> Inequalities,
> social marginality, Social Stratification, Structural Violence,
> Surveillance
>
> This post at Crooks and Liars, relating the use of Blackwater for security
> operations in the aftermath the exepcted disaster of hurricane Gustav
> touches upon what I think is an important topic: the militarization of
> urban
> centers and the suppression of dissent and disorder in the name of security
> (Blackwater had also been used in New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina,
> with some disturbing consequences).
>
> This trend was also brought forth when Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi decided
> to deploy 3,000 soldiers in large Italian cities.
>
> This constitutes another layer, the hard power layer (as opposed to the
> soft
> layer of extensive networks of video surveillance), of the rise of the
> surveillance society against targeted populations (immigrants, potential
> political protesters, etc.).
>
> This is not something limited to the large cities of the core. Such
> militarization is also present in the world-cities of the periphery, as
> noted by Raúl Zibechi from the Americas program at the Center for
> International Policy.
>
>                                 "Urban peripheries in Third World countries
> have become war zones       where states attempt to maintain order based on
> the establishment of a sort of "sanitary cordon" to keep the poor isolated
> from "normal" society."
>
>                                        This is not limited to the poor, but
> to any category of people defined as undesirable or potentially disruptive
> or dangerous. What this points to is the generalized use of the military to
> manage and police undesirable urban populations. Where urban and community
> development used to be the name of the game in the 1970s, militarization
> and
> surveillance are expanding trends now.
>
> This is something already noted by Mike Davis in his latest book Planet of
> Slums. For Davis, this militarization is the product of urban chaotic
> development in the periphery, as he describes in this interview:
>
>   "Stunningly enough, classical social theory, whether Marx, Weber, or even
> Cold War modernization theory, none of it anticipated what's happened to
> the
> city over the last 30 or 40 years. None of it anticipated the emergence of
> a
> huge class, mainly of the young, who live in cities, have no formal
> connection with the world economy, and no chance of ever having such a
> connection. This informal working class isn't the lumpenproletariat of Karl
> Marx and it isn't the "slum of hope," as imagined 20 or 30 years ago,
> filled
> with people who will eventually climb into the formal economy. Dumped into
> the peripheries of cities, usually with little access to the traditional
> culture of those cities, this informal global working class represents an
> unprecedented development, unforeseen by theory. (…)
>
>   A billion people currently live in slums and more than a billion people
> are informal workers, struggling for survival. They range from street
> vendors to day laborers to nannies to prostitutes to people who sell their
> organs [for transplant]. These are staggering figures, even more so since
> our children and grandchildren will witness the final build-out of the
> human
> race. Sometime around 2050 or 2060, the human population will achieve its
> maximum growth, probably at around 10 to 10.5 billion people. Nothing as
> large as some of the earlier apocalyptic predictions, but fully 95% of this
> growth will occur in the cities of the south."
>
> This has been the pattern of urbanization in the periphery: rural
> populations, facing impoverishment, move en masse to the cities only to
> find
> themselves stuck in slums with no economic prospects to speak of. Many eke
> out a living within the informal lumpen-economy of the slums, or washing
> windshields at the intersections of the capitals of the Global South,
> become
> small vendors (if they are lucky) or just beg.
>
> It is urbanization without development and these are the urban centers
> where
> IMF riots have been taking place inthe face of the rise of food prices. No
> coincidences there.
>
>   "The mega-slums of today were largely created in the 1970s and 80s.
> Before 1960, the question was: Why were Third World cities growing so
> slowly? There were, in fact, huge institutional obstacles to fast
> urbanization then. Colonial empires still restricted entry to the city,
> while in China and other Stalinist countries, a domestic passport system
> controlled social rights and so internal migration. The big urban boom
> comes
> in the 1960s with decolonization. But then, at least, revolutionary
> nationalist states were claiming that the state could play an integral role
> in the provision of housing and infrastructure. In the 70s, the state
> begins
> to drop out, and with the 80s, the age of structural adjustment, you have
> the decade of going backwards in Latin America, and even more so in Africa.
> By then, you had sub-Saharan cities growing at faster velocities than
> Victorian industrial cities in their boom periods — but shedding formal
> jobs
> at the same time."
>
> This is not limited to the periphery and the world-cities of the Global
> South. World-cities of the core all have peripheral pockets whose
> population
> live in substandard conditions comparable to that of the Global South. And
> this in turn, is the product of a dual move in the 1970-1980s: the
> abdication of the role of the government in urban public policy (visible in
> the Reagan / Thatcher conservative policies and the structural adjustment
> policies imposed on the Global South). The ideology of letting the poor
> figure out how to make a life and a living for themselves was promoted by
> both conservative politicians and NGO activists in the name of empowerment
> (give them microloans and they'll know what to do).
>
> These new urban poor experience the full force of the risk society:
>
>   "First, the supply of free land for squatting had ended, in some cases a
> long time ago. The only way you can build a shack on free land now is to
> choose a place so hazardous that it will have no market value whatsoever.
> This increasing wager with disaster is what squatting has become. So, for
> instance, if I were to take you a few miles south and across the border to
> Tijuana you'd see almost immediately that land which once made up
> squatters'
> neighborhoods is now being sold, sometimes even subdivided and developed.
> Very poor people in Tijuana are squatting in the traditional fashion only
> at
> the edges of ravines and in streambeds where their houses will collapse in
> a
> couple of years. This is true all over the Third World.
>
>   Squatting has been privatized. In Latin America, it's called "pirate
> urbanization." Where, twenty years ago, people would have occupied vacant
> land, resisted eviction, and eventually been recognized by the state, they
> now pay high prices for small parcels of land or, if they can't afford it,
> rent from other poor people. In some slums, the majority of dwellers aren't
> squatters, they're renters. If you went to Soweto [in Johannesburg, South
> Africa], you'd see that people fill their backyards with shanties which
> they
> rent. The major survival strategy of millions of poor urban dwellers, who
> have been in the city long enough to have a little property, is to
> subdivide
> it and become landlords to yet poorer people, who sometimes subdivide and
> rent to others. So a fundamental safety valve, this much romanticized
> frontier of free urban land, has largely ended.
>
>   The other major conclusion concerns the informal economy — the ability of
> poor people to improvise livelihoods through unrecorded economic activity
> like street vending, day labor, domestic service, or even subsistence
> crime.
> If anything, economic informality has been romanticized more than
> squatting,
> with vast claims about the ability of micro-entrepreneurship to leverage
> people out of poverty. Yet scores of case studies from around the world
> show
> ever more people squeezed into a limited number of survival niches: Too
> many
> rickshaw wallahs, too many street vendors, too many African women turning
> their shanties into shabeens to sell liquor, too many people taking in
> laundry, too many people queued up at work sites."
>
> And once the slums of the Global South fill up, there is really no other
> choice than migration towards core countries that, in turn, establiish
> policies to prevent. This is where militarization comes in as well as
> patterns of urban development where world-cities are cordoned off to
> prevent
> any disruption for global business (especially since Seattle, 1999) and
> where the wealthier population protects itself in gated communities
> (actually, militarized communities) in the exurbs (and not just the
> suburbs)
> where social homogeneity prevails, except for the workforce required
> (nannies, lanscaping companies, maids, etc.) for these communities to
> function.
>
>   "If you look at American cities, the most striking thing is that exurban
> settlement — people who commute to edge cities from the former countryside
> are now living in McMansions on ever larger lots with more SUVs parked in
> front. They're making the traditional 50s Levittown suburb, with its
> ticky-tacky homes, its little cubicles of consumption, look environmentally
> efficient. In other words, as middle-class people move farther out, their
> environmental footprint goes up two or three shoe sizes."
>
> Back to Zibechi's article, the military has adapted to these new "war
> zones"
> (see the surge in Iraq, and the battles fought largely in urban centers):
>
>   "In recent years, publications on military thought as well as analyses by
> financial organisms have dedicated ample space to challenges presented by
> gangs and to debates on new problems arising from urban war. The concepts
> of
> "asymmetrical war" and "fourth generation war" are responses to problems
> identical to those created by Third World urban peripheries: the birth of a
> new type of warfare against non-state enemies, in which military
> superiority
> does not play a decisive role. (…)
>
>   A good example of this full-spectrum war is his belief that the dangers
> for United States hegemony lie in all aspects of daily life, or, if you
> prefer, in life itself. For example, he believes that "in Fourth Generation
> War, invasion by immigration can be at least as dangerous as invasion by a
> state army." New problems rooted in the "universal crisis of the legitimacy
> of the state" have "non-state enemies" at the center. This leads him to
> conclude with a double warning to military leaders: no state military has
> succeeded against a non-state enemy.
>
>   This problem is at the heart of new military modalities of thinking,
> which must be completely reformulated to face challenges that used to
> correspond to "civilian" areas of the state apparatus. Militarization of
> society in order to regain control of urban peripheries is not enough, as
> revealed in recent military experience in the Third World.
>
>   Military commanders deployed in Iraq seem to be clearly aware of the
> problems they must face. Cavalry Division Commander Gen. Peter W.
> Chiarelli,
> based on his recent experience on the outskirts of Baghdad in Sadr City,
> maintains that security is the long-term objective, but it will not be
> achieved through military action alone. "Executing traditionally focused
> combat operations … works, but only for the short term. In the long term,
> doing so hinders true progress and, in reality, promotes the growth of
> insurgent forces working against campaign objectives" (Chiarelli and
> Michaelis 2005).
>
>   This implies that the two traditional armed forces lines of
> operation—combat and the training of local security forces—are
> insufficient.
> Therefore, three "nontraditional" lines of operation should be undertaken;
> ones that previously corresponded to the government and civil society:
> essential services provided to the population, building a legitimate
> government, and empowering "economic pluralism," that is, a market
> economy."
>
> And there you have it. This is what long-term security means: the
> establishment of a specific political and economic social structure that is
> bound to fail since we already know that it created the urban problems in
> the periphery and the core in the first place. And yet, this is the
> strategy
> pursued. As Zibechi puts it bluntly,
>
>   "This combination of mechanisms is what the major global powers' armed
> forces today consider the means to achieve "true long-term security." In
> this way, "democracy," expansion of services, and a market economy will
> cease being citizens' rights or morally desirable objectives and become
> gears in a strategy of military control over a population or a region of
> the
> world and, of course, its resources."
>
> And if military strategies don't work?
>
>   "The logic is simple: "Neighborhoods that have not been crushed
> militarily are walled, enclosed, and abandoned to their luck. Complete
> areas
> of the city have been demarcated and segregated with inhabitants confined
> inside, subjected to entry and exit controls so ironclad that we can speak
> without hesitation of a ghetto policy.""
>
> This does not just apply to Iraqi neighborhood but to the US-Mexico border,
> the larger New Orleans area after Katrina (we'll see what happens with
> Gustav), or the creation of "free speech zones" in large cities to confine
> protesters.
>
> This also points to last remaining role of the government: maintaining
> order
> through policing and militarization if that does not work.
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