Reviving a dormant blog...And a few words on Lefebvre, Cartesian geometry and Open-source GIS

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.

Are Cities to Blamce for Climate Change ?

In an article published by the UN – Habitat in March 2009, authors Dodman and Satterthwaite attempted to answer an interesting question – Are the cities of the world the main culprits behind global warming and climate change? They began their article by citing the finding arrived at by the Clinton Initiative, that cities are responsible for as much as 80 per cent of the total green house gas (GHG) emissions in the world. The figure was puzzling, to say the least, as it is common knowledge that many of the activities which are responsible GHG emissions are located outside urban areas and the authors’ own calculations based on the data of the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) yielded a figure of no more than 41 per cent as the maximum contribution of activities located in cities to GHG emission (Dodman and Satterthwaite: 2009, p – 12).

The authors went on to write that the puzzle of high GHG emissions due to cities can only be resolved if we shift our focus from the activities which produce these gases to the people and places which act as the root causes for the proliferation of such activities in the first place. Such re-orientation of the way in which we account for GHG emission is not difficult to understand at all. For example, most of the coal powered power stations or automobile production units are located outside urban centres but their products are largely consumed by the urban population. The authors stated that in this kind of accounting system cities could be responsible for as high as 60 per cent of the GHG emission if not 80 per cent.

However, the major contribution of the authors was not to create strong arguments to support or disprove the question. Their intention was to urge the reader to go beyond the question itself and probe deeper into the nature and location of the priorities, life-styles, choices and socio-economic realities which ultimately trigger GHG emission. If one argues that cities are the main culprits behind global warming, then one can also argue that not all cities in the world cause high GHG emission, but a few of them and these are mainly located in the developed countries of the world. After all, most cities in the developing countries have one-twentieth to one-hundredth of the per capita emission of the cities of the developed countries (ibid, p - 13). But even this information, relevant though it may be, does not tell us all that we need to know. What about the differences among cities in the developing world and, even more importantly, the differences within the cities? How can one, for example, calculate an average per capita emission figure for Mumbai using household level data from both the Dharavi slum and Mukesh Ambani’s twenty-seven storey, two billion dollar “home”? How much would such an average conceal compared to what it would show?

The authors emphasized that there exist massive differences between cities and within cities and the causes of these differences have to be seriously considered if the overall contribution of cities to GHG emission is to be curbed. Moreover, it is not just a small number of cities with a high consumption life-style which are the main cause, but also the prosperous classes of people within the cities of the poorer nations which together cause the maximum GHG emission. The authors summarise their overall findings in the following lines :

‘Most of the cities most at risk from the impacts of global warming are in low- and middle-income nations, and it is generally among the low-income populations that risks are concentrated. So these are cities that contribute very little to GHGs but which are far more at risk from the global warming created by GHGs.’ (ibid)

The issue of social and economic inequality in cities thus comes to the fore-front as a prime environmental issue also in the fight to reverse the climate change. Certain important points emerge out of the article of Dodman and Satterthwaite which cannot be avoided in any discussion regarding the kind of planning approach that should be adopted to make the urban areas of the world less environmentally damaging.

· The high consumption life–style and life-choices of a minority – It is all too clear that it is a minority group which we are dealing with albeit a socially, economically and politically influential one. It must also be borne in mind that a high consumption life-style is not necessarily a purely subjective matter, which can be overcome by changes in behaviour and a pro-active switch to various kinds of eco-products at a household level. Consumption patterns are just as much an objective factor, if seen in the context of some of the core assumptions of a developed capitalist economic system. The very culture of excessive borrowing and buying which was propagated by the banks and finance organizations in the United States is what triggered a recession in the very same economy. Caught in such an economic system the people are left with limited choices indeed to seek out genuine alternatives to the high consumption paradigm.

· The relationship between high quality of life and high emission – In order to break out of the high consumption paradigm it is important to sever the existing relationship between activities which lead to high GHG emission and notions of a high quality of life. Dodman and Satterthwaite pointed out that although cities in the United States have eight times more gasoline usage per capita compared to European cities there is no data anywhere which would suggest that a city like Chicago has a higher quality of life than Amsterdam, Oslo or Stockholm (ibid).

· A focus on the local – It is also becoming increasingly apparent that the local people and places would have to bear the brunt of global warming and they cannot afford to let the “community of nation states” to resolve the matter. Indeed, the rather disappointing achievements of nation states at Coppenhagen make it difficult to believe that another such conference in Mexico in 2010 will make a radical difference. The pressure has to be mounted from below and by the people who live below. This is not to say that the efforts of nation states are meaningless, but the struggle of poorer nations against the resolute non-compliance of developed nations can succeed only with the support of movements for alternative development paradigms being launched at the local level.