Manufactured Landscapes, Slum Development and Communicative Planning

On last Thursday's class (January 30th), we started the movie "Manufactured Landscapes". I had seen this movie already, but it was great to revisit it.

Without a doubt, the images by Edward Burtynsky (such as the one below) were stunning. Hear him talk about them in this wonderful TEDtalk video:

What this relates to for me is the cyclicality of our creations. What we make, often does not disappear into the ether, and these images are a beautiful but haunting reminder of that closed cycle.

This work made me think of the documentary Urbanized. I don't think I talked about it yet on this blog. Here's the preview:

Specifically, I thought of Urbanized's chapter "A Walk in the Mumbai Sky" during which Sheela Patel is interviewed and shares her expertise with the pavement dwellers of Mumbai and her implication in SPARC, the Society for the Promotion of Area Ressource Centres.

The rapid urbanization of countries in the South of the globe is predicted to be of huge impact in the 21st century. At the moment, a new city the size of Seattle is being born every 4-7 hours, (quoting Alex Steffen, himself quoting others). However, in the South, many of these city's slums are also growing at an alarming rate, further widdening economic disparity between inhabitants. This is where people like Sheela Patel and non-profit organizations like SPARC come in, working to improve the lives of slum dwellers (both in India and across the world).

Here is part one of a short documentary about a slum upgrading in Pune, India, narrated by Sheela Patel:

I admire their process and would love to learn from it, especially when it comes to the system of communication they've established with the community. Planning a city- darn, even just a neighbourhood- should always very intimately include the people who will be living in it, and who have lived in it. Are they not experts themselves of what has worked and what hasn't?

I was glad to learn lately of similar efforts here at home to involve the community in the revising of the region of Moncton's city plans. We might be not as close to slums, but the process is certainly an important one, and I was glad to see it implemented here at home!