The Lefebvrian Paradox
In his famous and influential book ‘The Production of Space’, Henri Lefebvre had written that ‘social space, and especially urban space, emerged in all its diversity – and with a structure far more reminiscent of flaky mille-feuille pastry than of the homogenous and isotropic space of classical (Euclidian/Cartesian) mathematics.’
Ironically, in the decades following the publication of Lefebvre’s book, it is precisely the dramatic developments in the application of ‘Eucliain/Cartesian’ mathematics to geographical analysis – namely through the development of various Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software – that helped unravel the innumerable layers of the urban mille-feuille. However, such technologies were proprietary, expensive and largely out of the reach of community groups. For the power of computerised geographical analysis to address the complexities of social space, it had to be accessible by the community and become the technological arm of 21st century participatory development. That became possible with the emergence of the Linux operating system and the free and open-source software movement as a powerful alternative to proprietary software.
Altruism through technical necessity - the revolutionary potential of the open-source movement
The democratic and community oriented nature of the open-source movement is not just a function of altruism (which definitely motivates many members of the movement) but of technical necessity. It is only through the collaborative efforts of millions of developers around the world that the open-source movement is able to create its software. The fact that the opensource geo-spatial foundation describes itself as a ‘not-for-profit organization...devoted to an open philophy and participatory community driven development’ (https://www.osgeo.org/about/) has a lot to say about the movement’s potential role in the field of participatory urban development.
A quick glance at the remarkably informative maps prepared by the citizens of Kibera slum in Nairobi demonstrates the power of this combination. My personal favourite is a thematic map on the status of safety and security in the slum, which identifies dangerous places through a clustering of “bottles” (signifying alcohol vending spots) and “bulbs” (signifying operational or non-operational street lights). A dense clustering of bottles along with black bulbs (non-operational) suggests dangerous locations. The map is prepared using the opensource QGIS software and uses openstreetmap as its base layer (https://mapkibera.org/download/maps/Security%20map%20final.pdf).
The process effectively combines the depth of qualitative information, which can only be aquired through detailed community mapping exercises, with the accuracy, speed and processing power of modern computing. This is where Cartesian/Euclidian mathematics (what are the “bottles” and “bulbs” if not coordinates on an x-y cartesian plane ?) meets the local knowledge of the community.
The major distinction between proprietary and opensource software is not that one is generally expensive and the other is mostly free. While proprietary software treats users primarily as consumers of technology (causing stready technological dependence, while simultaneously creating an illusion of being tech-savvy), opensource software encourages users to transform into collaborative developers (encouraging community participation and causing technological empowerment).
Pro-Poor Development goes Big Business - Government in hypersonic mode
Although community organisations around the world have effectively used opensource software to map their settlements and exert their agency, the increasing size, scale and speed of implementation of urban poverty alleviation programmes in the global south creates its own challenges.
In this new context it is no longer enough for community organisations to create detailed maps of their own settlements and prepare their own databases. Now, instead of having to deal with a lethargic, inefficient and apathetic bureacracy, they increasingly have to deal with a highly energetic, quick and effective state machinery, which is flush with funds and operates in partnership with large private sector consultants and technology firms to implement gigantic urban poverty alleviation programs simultaneously across thousands of slum settlements in hundreds of cities. Instead of being a reluctant antagonist, the state has turned into an extremely vigorous ally of the urban poor – in both cases community participation may suffer, but the community mobilisation methods of the past are simply not adequate in this drastically altered reality. Many NGOs and community groups have simply not grasped this altered reality well enough.
The challenge of technological development
Moreover, different slum improvement projects would require different types of maps. A Kibera like self-assessment need not map every single dwelling in the slum, but a land titling project like Jaga Mission of Odisha would require an exact mapping of the dwellings (as land rights are issued based on the area of actual occupation). Discussions on participatory mapping are incomplete if not seen in the context of the overall objective of the task and the technical requirements for accomplishing it.
In Jaga Mission, high resolution images of slums were captured using drones and GIS databases of slums were prepared by private sector technical consultants by digitizing these drone images and linking them to the household survey data. The fact that the mapping of 1725 slums spread across 109 small and medium towns of the state (spread across the 155707 sq.km area of Odisha) and the survey of about 170000 slum households was completed within a period of 7 months gives some idea of the speed, scale and intensity of the exercise. It averages out to the preparation of detailed and accurate GIS databases of about 62 slums every week for 7 months straight.
Jaga Mission achieved this through a creative combination of high technology activities (such as drone mapping and GIS) with field-based community participation activities. About 24 NGOs were engaged to undertake community mobilisation exercises and create Slum Dwellers Associations (SDAs) in each slum. Both the drone mapping by the technololgy consultants and the household surveys by the NGOs were done in coordination with the SDAs.
The combination was achieved through standardised operating procedures (SOPs) which, in turn, were based on the parameters of granting land rights as detailed out in “The Odisha Land Rights to Slum Dwellers Act, 2017”. While the slum dwellers did not prepare their own maps, as in the case of Kibera, they played a crucial role in ensuring that the mapping of the slums was done correctly.
Infantile optimism or realistic pessimism ?
Jaga shows a possible model in which community groups can become partners of large and technology heavy processes and hopefully, in the future, take over of the databases of their slums from the private technology consultants and the government. They can then initiate a Kibera like process in which the maps of Jaga are constinuously enriched with qualitative information with the help of open-source software and technology volunteers.
This may not appear as romantic as the vision of slum dwellers preparing their own maps using open-source software, but given the present reality of large-scale and high-speed projects, such approaches may be the only ones operationally possible to allow a successful egagement of communities with the developmental blitz. Over time they may even overcome the blitz and achieve the romantic vision at a massive scale – not unlike the way Linux overcame Microsoft.
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