Learning from the informal: Introduction-Learning from the informal

Qalandia refugee camp (source: palestine remembered)

Introduction

The proliferation of suburbs has become a new direction in housing provision marking the post Oslo era, specifically in the later years of the first decade of the second millennia. After 9/11 the flow of Gulf surplus capital to the West especially to the USA had shrunk dramatically and found its way to Middle Eastern capitals like Amman, Beirut, Tunis, Cairo, Istanbul, Rabat, and even eastward to central and southern Asia'. The Dubai model has replaced Beirut and Cairo as a source of inspiration for modernity; wherein, new transnational corporates such as SOLIDERE in Beirut, MAWARED in Amman" and MASSAR and PIF in the Ramallah took over the management of cities and economy with determined influence and infiltration to the frail political structure of these countries, eradicating any possibility for these governments to develop responsive welfare vision and programs.

A major transformation to the social structure in these cities has occurred bringing to the surface the business class™ and the new middle urban class living in islands within these cities with excessive consumption and a yearn for a global culture. The rapid urban reconstruction of cities was accompanied by the advent of transnational lifestyle and its 'cappuccino'^iv infrastructure. Commercial real estate businesses, on the other hand have generated, massive job opportunities causing major rural migration especially younger generations and a grave destruction of the rural economy and culture.

The critique of the suburban housing projects goes beyond their design configuration and aesthetics, as their spatial isolation and affordability marks the beginning of potential social crisis and fragmentation in Palestinian society, in reference to the historical critique to the emergence of the post war suburbs in the USA.

"But the suburbs had been built, and the radical change in lifestyle that this betokened had many social consequences, leading feminists, for example, to proclaim the suburb as the locus of all their primary discontents... the soulless qualities of suburban living also played a critical role in the dramatic events of1968 in the US. Discontented white middle-class students went into a phase of revolt, sought alliances with marginalized groups claiming civil rights and rallied against American imperialism to create a movement to build another kind of world—including a different kind of urban experience."^v

This project assumes the students as advocates of the communities that are destined to be bound to an exceptional territorial configuration. The project area is the informal belt that lies between Al-Amari Refugee Camp, Um Al-Sharayet, Kufur Aqab and Qalandia Refugee Camp. The notion of the neighborhood as a site of experimentation is fundamental to rethinking urbanity in the wake of the economic crisis and the skyrocketing land and real-estate prices. Studying the patterns of informal urbanism found in camps and dense sprawls can help rethinking the existing urban policies, as an attempt to allow each neighborhood to take its own course of development, in accordance with its own conditions and historic involvement.

This project seeks a body of knowledge, approaches and ideas to highlight the way in which neoliberal policies of the proliferated suburban housing have failed to reimagine a responsive urban environment. The project should look at housing in poverty and informal areas as more than the physical architectural aesthetics of the shelter. Therefore students are to investigate the micro-infrastructures and socioeconomic support systems that are connected to the creation of the neighborhood in the selected areas. As Teddy Cruz would frame it

"True experimental architecture can emerge from the intelligence of social networks and dynamics of informal settlements".^vi

The questions that the project tries to answer:

1. How can urban design produces new conceptions of property, co- ownership of resources, and informal social-service infrastructure?

2. How can we identify alternative political economy that can provide models for rethinking the meanings of infrastructure and density from the local informal social, political, and economic actions, exchanges, and transactions?

3. What are the formal and informal institutional mechanisms in work, which shape the place through figuring out - who owns the resources? Whose territory is this? How the territory operates?

4. How can we think about a collaboration with existing community-based NGO's, which are developing many alternative projects; and suggest how and why the municipality might adopt different models of density and mixed-use?

5. How can the Advanced Urban Design Course ENAR543 become a tool to convince decision makers that social participation in the neighborhood has an economic value within the current economic crisis?

6. How can we create an anecdote that suggests a very different kind of awareness to the complex and diverse urban conditions in contradiction to the monotonic and characterless suburban housing conditions?

Kufur Aqab

AlAmari Refugee Camp

Qalandia Refugee Camp

Um Alsharayet

The intervention we aim to accomplish is divided into three phases:

Public interventions

A documentary for each study site tackling an interesting or important creative issue.

A design issue chosen by each team and related to the context of each study site.

Our Cause

Reviving the contribution of birzeit University's students in the communal and social context: the role of birzeit university and its students have always been an effective power in the society, over the past decade this role have been limited to the educational and academic domains, and we decided to increase the public contribution of students taking advantage of this course and the opportunity it offers for us to achieve this.

Gaining the trust of people in the selected study sites

Acquiring a better understanding of each context we are working on, to be involved with the everyday life they experience,their problems, interests,and apprehensions.

References

ⁱEl-sheshtawy, Yasser, 2008, "The Great Divide : Struggling and Emerging Cities in the Arab World", p.1-26. In Elsheshtawy, Yasser (ed.), The Evolving Arab City : Tradition, Modernity, and Urban Development. New York : Routledge.

ⁱⁱDaher, Rami, 2007, "Re-conceptualizing Tourism in the Middle East: Place, Heritage, Mobility and Competitiveness" in Tourism in the Middle East: Continuity, Change and Transformation. Daher, Rami (ed.). England: Channel View Publications, p.1-69.

^mHanieh, Adam, 2011, Capitalism and Class in the Gulf Arab States. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

^ivSheller, M. and Urry, J., 2004, "Places to play, places in play", p. 1-10, in Sheller, M. and Urry, John (eds.), Tourism Mobilities : places to Plat, Places in Play. London : Routledge.

^vDavid Harvey, "The Right to the City", New Left Review, 53 Sept-Oct (2008), 28.

^viCaleb Waldorf Interview with Teddy Cruz, LatinArt.com an online journal of art and culture, USA, Nov 19, 2009

Curator And Group of Students

The students of advanced urban design course are asked to create four groups, each one is in charge of one area that the project will cover under the supervision of Dr. Yazid Anani.