Summaries:

Home Planning and Gender in Mandatory Palestine by Sigal Davidi
The article gives a brief historical context on the Architectural trend that followed the British mandated immigration from Berlin to Palestine. This is one of the key events that triggered Zionism and the wrongful genocide of native Palestinian people. In particular the article focusses on architecture and house planning through gender norms. Concepts such as the “New Woman” in Jewish communities within Palestine and contextualizing the discourse around kitchen and how spaces can become gendered. One prominent architect is Lotte Cohn, and she designed the Rassco residential neighborhood in Northern Tel Aviv, a 300-unit apartment. Following these historic events, we see how European influence the Palestinian region through colonial mechanism such as the push for Modernism. These forces not only physically displaced people but shift the entire culture of the region in turn altering the reality of long-standing communities.

An Alternative to Functionalist Universalism: Ecochard, Candilis, and ATBAT-Afrique by ZONIQUE ELEB

Colonial forces tried to push Modernism throughout different regions of the world. In particular regions that had historically been exploited or had resources that colonial empires wished to extract. However, the way in which these movements manifested did not always follow the same trajectory. For example, this article shows how Morocco responded to modernism through a reframing and instead implemented the idea of cultural adaptation. Cultural adaptation allows for Modernist design to center around the community users. For example, Muslim-users would have apartments with courtyards that had courtyards that were invisible to the outsider, but open to the sky. Additionally, they would be placed at the center of the unit. This led to the belief that cultural adaptation was becoming the new universal modernism. Designing user specific may seem to have beneficial qualities, but the reality was that the users were often being defined by rigid specifications of ethnic and class lines. Over time this push for modernism was less over and slowly eroded longstanding traditions and placed a moral and ethical dilemma on local population as one would trade tradition for the comforts of “modernity.” A false dichotomy led to people questioning the progress of modernization. People were not given a seat at the table, but instead told how modernization would benefit them and slowly forced to accept this norm.

The Right to the City: From Capital Surplus to Accumulation by Dispossession by David Harvey

The rapid Urbanization has detrimental harm to regions as no systems are set in place to maintain and protect the historical culture and long-term residents of cities. These cities go through changes at an alarming rate and often societal norms are changing faster than locals can keep up with. Urbanization is not only an issue that faces class, but it is an intersectional issue in which race, gender, class, and other forms of identity can be targeted in order to meet dominant hegemonic forces goals. Often times this goal is centered around creating wealth inequality in which Capitalism often facilitates. I found it insightful to learn how urbanization depends on the mobilization of a surplus product, and this creates an inner connection between strengthening of capitalism and urbanization. The city itself becomes the power hub and in order to control the power hub capitalist strategies can be implemented to control labor and the market of wages. Some strategies are tech induced unemployment or direct assault on organized working class. Sometimes creating this competition through immigration policies that bring in fresh labors who may not be aware of labor laws and mistreatment. Additionally, it is not only marginalized communities that pay for this, but the natural world is often shortchanged for profiting. It becomes apparent that the right to the city creates a power dynamic in which a right to the entire urban process, and this influences the countryside.

Application and Interpretation:

Favela-Bairro in Brazil is a program in which a reconstruction was needed as Brazil has historically felt the impacts of rapid urbanization. The local communities had been impacted on the lack of foresight to include its most vulnerable residents in its city planning. Reinvestment after years of constant change in city planning have led to some progress, but Favela’s in Brazil still feel the long-term impacts of colonial movements of urbanization. Below are some images of the reinvestment campaign of the 1990s which led to day care center, community sports facilities, and healthcare facilities.

Campinho Day Care Center – Favela Fuba Campinho & Day Care Center – Favela Rio das Pedras

Takeaways:

• Colonization is adaptive in its approach to control different regions of the world.
• These methods are detrimental to local communities despite the promise of liberation, comforts of modernity, and economic prosperity.
• False promises in order to seize economic control, and line pockets of top players.
• Our cities are a powerful as they house the people to return control back to the people, but it is for this reason that often cities are the most policed and we can see the bloody history in legislative practices that subjugate different minority populations to be exploited and punished,