It is always interesting to be an architect/landscape architect/urban planner in a new city, as every new thing, new smell, new trade, new color is valuable to your own research. In the other hand, everything that you study, every map, every plot, every traffic road is valuable to you as a tourist. Hence, just getting lost in the city helps you find the way for new creative solutions. This is one of the ups of being in this kind of professions. Hence, aside from our daily responsibilities, during the weekends we have dedicated our time to explore nearby settlements and tribes. This has contributed not only for our planning in the CBD but also has help us to understand the city as an alive organism that is constantly mutating.
During our first weekend we had the opportunity to visit the Sukuma tribe. It consisted of vast lands used for farming and cattle and then, once in a while a small one room house appeared in the horizon. This were houses made of soil or sun cooked bricks. They served no other function but to shelter the family from cold, heat or rain. The toilet was a mere hole in the ground, and the boundaries of the plot were defined by using a common cactus plant from the region that served as a fence. Entertainment? None. Aside from an old Nokia model cellphone, the tasks during the day seemed very obvious and simple: shepherd the herd, dismember the corncobs or remain under the shadow of a tree.
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| Sukuma tribe house type |
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| Corn |
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| Cattle coming from the river |
On our second weekend we visited the "informal settlements" around the city. These refer to the group of people with no permit to inhabit the land, but that for some reason they have just taken the land to build. About this situation, Mwanza law mentions that if someone has lived somewhere for more than 15 years, then they automatically have the right/permit to stay there. This is the case for this kind of area. However the conditions are not good for a healthy living. The area lacks infrastructure, the environment is not safe to wonder around and the houses are unsafe to inhabit.
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| Happy kids |
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| Informal Settlements |
Nonetheless, in a very different concept of what a city is, these settlements work quite well within the community. They, by themselves, have manage to work as an organized group. They educate the young ones, they wash clothes together, they sell the surplus of their crops and they manage to live a happy life. However for oneself, used to the chaos of the urban areas, these settlements seem to be capture by time. Time stops, and there is nothing left but sun, a tree and a shadow. You are back to the simplest from of life.
I wonder now, how to impose the urban chaos to a community that has it all figure out by now. What kind of spaces should our team deliver for this people to fill comfortable and at ease with them? We can also think it the other way around, how would you suddenly manage your time when placed in this kind of community? What would you miss from the city and what would you value more?
Sketch by: Hannu Eerikäinen
Story by: Natalia Rincón
In a world of freedom you don't "impose" any urban chaos or anything else. Those living there know better than you what they need and are the ones who would get stuck with your "imposed solution" on a daily basis.
ReplyDeleteL. H.
You can only seek understanding of the things they need and then help improve them.
Civilization is more than buildings. It has to do with the understanding and behavior of the people as well. Watch a movie like Crocodile Dundee and you will see why just changing the environment doesn't change a person.