Values, investment and return in land use

Generally, the urban redevelopment costs huge money. There are construction costs, real estate, marketing costs and etc. It means that somebody should pay for that money, because developers want to collect the money that they invested.

Thus, developers shows interest the slum areas which are low real estate cost but high value for development in the city. They want to make a profit as much as they can. They gives money to something which can be marketable. Usually, marketable means two things. Space and program.

General redevelopment of slum area shows high density and vertical buildings, or luxury office or housing. In both cases, existing tenants or neighborhood lose their original characters. My question is “Is it possible to keep or intensify original character of neighborhood and tenants after the redevelopment in the view of marketability.

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Comment:

ONE-FOR-ALL?

The re-development of established living environments, where a community has been able to grow, will always involve a degree of exclusion and displacement. The questions you ask in this proposal are of extreme importance as we enter a new era in the global urban landscape. 1 billion human beings live in ‘slums’ around the world and this number continues to grow every day. The interaction between developers and these areas of extreme poverty have become an issue of human rights. In many places in the world the major development firms are either owned by the state or have a close relationship with the military and police force. In this way they are able to force people from their homes through violence, extortion, or by simply demolishing their homes without warning.

If Neil Smith is correct in his assertion that “as the neoliberal state becomes a consummate agent of—rather than a regulator of—the market, the new revanchist urbanism that replaces liberal urban policy in cities of the advanced capitalist world increasingly expresses the impulses of capitalist production rather than social reproduction”, then the protections offered by the commons to those individuals who own no property, the homeless, the displaced, or the migrant worker, will face increasing exclusion from the public land on which they are forced to live (Smith 2002, 80).

We are witnessing the largest migration of people the world has ever seen. The question of how we develop new living situations lies at the crux of problem. How can the neoliberal capitalism of the 21st century act as both the instigator and solution? Can design alone serve as the conduit through which reparations can be made? I think it can. But idealism is not enough, it takes hard work and a clear agenda to solve social problems. The architect must also be of the people, we cannot be vanguards, we must listen to the voices of the multitude. The ‘concept’ of modern architecture must evolve. We need to realize that the simple precepts of mass production, consumption, and exploitation no longer function. What needs to be marketable is human dignity, human community, and social justice. This will never be achieved by building luxury condo on what was once a thriving low-income community.

The usual approach to develop of this kind is a system of multi-use—multi-function buildings. Thus creating a kind of artificial social hierarchy while leaving room for all kinds of lifestyle. The problem with this is that the higher priced programs get privileged because they make more money for the developer. How can you design a system of housing that is both appealing to high class tastes while maintaining a low cost for low income tenants? Try to build bridges between classes instead of erecting barriers. Think of the marketability of appealing to all classes simultaneously. Think of a space for the “global citizen”, a program for a “border-less world”.

Bodhi Harnish—@—Urban Think-Tank CCS