Seminar History and Theory of Urban Design: 'Sites-and-Services'

Abstract

‘Sites-and-services’ was an important housing paradigm that was mobilized in the context of development aid to provide cost-efficient housing for the global poor. As these were essentially unfinished projects that relied on their future inhabitants to complete their dwellings, in this seminar we discuss what we can learn from the histories of such atypical housing projects.

Objective

By focusing on the history of sites-and-services projects, this seminar course aims to develop, on the one hand, a historical understanding of urban design in the postcolonial context of development aid, and, on the other, a theoretical understanding of the centrality of the act of inhabitation to architecture and its history. Upon completion of the course, students will have: (1) acquired a general knowledge of the role of architecture and urban planning in the historical context of development aid, the main actors involved, and strategies adopted (2) acquired an in-depth knowledge on the specific housing paradigm of ‘sites-and-services’ (3) developed a critical attitude in engaging with the history of postcolonial urban design (4) developed a theoretical understanding of the act of inhabitation as central to architecture and its history (5) developed a reflective attitude on the modes of writing architectural history and the role of inhabitation in it (6) strengthened their analytical skills by engaging in text- and project-based discussions, their collaborative skills through team-based project analyses, and their communication skills through presenting the outcomes of their work to their peers.

Content

The City Lived: 'Sites-and-Services' In our seminar series ‘The City Lived’ we focus on the history of urban design, with a particular emphasis on the lived experiences in the city. This semester’s seminar will focus on ‘sites-and-services’, an important housing paradigm that was mobilized in the context of development aid to provide cost-efficient housing for the global poor. This housing strategy consisted of providing ‘sites’ – plots of land to construct dwellings on – in combination with a set of ‘services’, ranging from infrastructural features, such as sewerage and waste disposal, to market-based interventions that aimed to make cheap building material more easily accessible, or financial loan schemes that offered inhabitants the means to invest in their homes. It often operated on a large scale, and targeted thousands of households in a single project. For several decades from the 1970s, it was heavily endorsed by major actors such as the World Bank and the United Nations as a cost-efficient way to meet the most basic housing needs of a high number of people, whilst simultaneously offering authorities the means to direct the enormous growth of spontaneous settlements in the urban peripheries as part of their broader urban development plans. As such, these sites-and-services schemes have left a major imprint on many cities in the Global South. Despite this impact, however, their histories are not well documented. Whereas sites-and-services were promoted as a cost-efficient solution to ‘the housing problem’ of the global urban poor, the housing paradigm attracted severe criticism from its inception. One line of critique considered such programs as formalizing the state’s disinvestment in its poorest citizens, symptomatic of neoliberal policies that erode structures of state support, while another line of critique considered them as instruments of a globalizing debt economy, incorporating the global poor in an expanding, profit-oriented capitalist market. Beyond its praise and criticism, in this seminar course we study sites-and-services projects in the first place as material artefacts: as man- and woman-made built environments that have shaped the lives of thousands of people, whose history for that very reason deserves to be studied. In doing so, we will discuss two broader themes. On the one hand, sites-and-services projects allow us to problematize the notion of housing expertise and how it was mobilized in the Global South. Therefore, we will discuss them against the background of housing policy in the Global South more generally. Which housing paradigms were relied upon in the context of the Global South? And what were the logics underlying them? On the other hand, since these were essentially unfinished projects that relied on their future inhabitants to complete their dwellings, in this seminar we not only intend to dig up the histories of such projects, but also to discuss what we can learn from the histories of such atypical housing projects. Inhabitants have drastically expanded and transformed the initial minimal design to often unrecognizable degrees according to their needs and resources, and many sites are now integrated into wider urban patterns. How do we write the history of ‘unfinished’ projects? How do we acknowledge the act of appropriation and inhabitation as an integral part of such projects?

Resources