Istanbul and the Grassroots - Open Lecture

text from www.mah.se

By Johanna Svensson 


Martin Schwegmann, Architect and Urban Designer from Humboldt University, Berlin will hold an open lecture with the title "Istanbul and the Grassroots – Civil Society Organizations, Local Politics and Urban Transformation" at Malmö University next Friday.

What is your lecture about? - The lecture will be about new and newly organized civil society actors in Istanbul reacting towards current trends in urban development. Istanbul is undergoing, like many other big cities in Turkey, a major paradigm shift towards a neoliberal urban agenda since the early 2000s. Rightful and de facto owners are getting expropriated, resettled and their houses demolished because of new sources of capital are trying to find ways into the often ambiguous land market in Istanbul. In this climate local and national active civil society groups emerge and struggle to find a common voice against the unjust developments.

Who should listen to the lecture in your opinion? - Everybody who is interested in examples of neoliberal urbanization patterns and civil society mobilization. It is probably not possible to “learn” something directly for Malmoe or northern Europe. Much more the lecture will give an idea of the urban background/experience of some migrant populations and also demystify informal urban development/Gecekondu to a certain extend.

Picture by Martin Schwegmann, taken on the Asian side of the Bosphorus in Istanbul in the district of Maltepe, from the neighborhood of Basibüyük towards Gülsuyu/Gülensu showing characteristic phases of urban development in Istanbul. 

You have founded a network called "Urban passion", what is it and why did you start it? -I founded Urban passion in order to find a way to frame my activities in the realm of urbanism together with friends and partners. I see Urban passion as a way of connecting the often diverse activities connected to the city. At the same time Urban passion is a platform and an open network for short termed and non bureaucratic cooperation. Urban passion also is a source of inspiration and discussion for my personal practice.

Istanbul Urban Research Blog

 
 http://istanbul-urban-research.blogspot.com


In the course of my PhD Dissertation I prepared a blog on the topic of Urban Transformation in Istanbul in order to sort and connect to the various online resrources I found and am constantly discovering. Furthermore I will share first outcomes of the particular topic of the Dissertation, namely what kind of Civil Society Organizations emerge and are active in the face of Urban Transformation in Istanbul since the 2000s and how they organize and which repertoire of resistance they potentially employ.

Martin Schwegmann, Berlin, the 20th of December 

Sustainable Habitats in India

Summer School , April 5th to April 23rd 2010 in Mumbai, India

In the framework of his phd at the habitat unit of the technical university in Berlin Martin Schwegmann from urban passion was invited to the summer school and gained substantial insides into (informal) urban dynamics of Mumbai and a bit of India.


About the summer school: 

 The German Technical Cooperation (GTZ) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) in cooperation with the School of Habitat Studies of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) were holding a 3-week Summer School on Sustainable Habitats in India. The participants were supposed to explore the emergence and consolidation of shanty towns in Mumbai.

Based on its innovative peer-learning approach, the GTZ-DAAD-Summer School participants from all over India, Germany, China, Indonesia and Chile were working together on the concept of sustainable urban development, its approach and possible implementation in the context of slums in Mumbai. “Sustainable Habitats in India” is part of the UN-Decade ‘Education for Sustainable Development’ (ESD)-project, and inspired by “Between Lecture Hall & Project Works”, GTZ-Berlin. This Summer School in India was the sixth within this framework after Vietnam, Egypt, Brazil, Peru and India. It focussed on strengthening sustainable links between researchers, civil society, businesspeople, policy makers and development practitioners as well as strengthening the scientific and institutional exchange between the involved parties from India and Germany.

The three-week program was concentrating on the following thematic areas being researched in 4 different slums in Mumbai:

• Livelihoods, Housing and Infrastructure
• Planning and Governance
• Sustainability of Urban Habitats

In the first week, the political framework, state-of-the-art methods such as action research and peer-learning techniques were introduced. In the end of the week, team work at four different research sites were initiated.

In the second week, participants continued to carry out action research in new and old shantytowns in Mumbai and started to discuss their findings with experts from different fields and perspectives in learning-dialogues.

During the third and final week, further learning-dialogues, amongst others with leading German scientists,  concluded in the presentation of the results in a public symposium on April 23rd at the auditorium of TISS.

Some leading questions to start with were:
• Who is holding the power to guarantee the elaboration and implementation of the necessary innovations to manage the most urging questions of sustainable urban development?
• Which are the pathways towards political implementation and social consensus?
• Which unknown perspectives and sustainable surviving strategies we could learn from shanty towns?
• Me personally: Are there any innovative experiences I could contribute?

In the framework of his phd at the habitat unit of the technical university in Berlin Martin Schwegmann from urban passion was invited to the summer school and gained substantial insides into (informal) urban dynamics of Mumbai and a bit of India.

During the summerschool a film team from the pubic german television ZDF followed the summer school participants in their research. The resulting reportage about  water supply problematics can be seen here:

ZDF Reportage: "Kampf um den letzten Tropfen"  (fight for the last drop - only in german)

still from the reportage (martin schwegmann, rangvir singh)