f t. com / i n g enu i t y

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FTurban ingenuityDecember 11 2013

foreword

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Proudwinners

As the second year of the FT/Citi Ingenuity Awardsreaches its climax, the overwhelming feeling we at theFinancial Times have is pride in being associated withsuch a stimulating and worthwhile project. What couldbe more important than seeking out and recognising

those who have found ways of solving the apparently intractableproblems of masses of urban dwellers as they search for food, jobs,healthcare, transport and security?

But those we are honouring in this magazine should feel farmore pride. They are the ones who have come up with the ideas andsucceeded in implementing them in often overwhelmingly difficultcircumstances.

As the convenor of the judging panel, I watched its membersstruggling to decide which of these worthwhile projects should berewarded above the others.

The judges were unanimous on one point: the finalists from Africawere of the highest quality. Any of the four would have made a worthywinner. In the end, they chose Sanergy, which has created a networkof low-cost toilets in Nairobi. They felt that this project satisfied allthe criteria they were looking for: it was innovative, it was sustain-able, it could be used elsewhere and it solved one of the most impor-tant problems that poor urban communities face – the dignified andhealthy disposal of human waste.

The Asia-Pacific winner, the Parinaam Foundation, which focuseson employment, financial literacy, health and childcare in Bangalore,showed the virtues of our decision this year to include projects thatdealt with several issues at once, rather than just those that fitted thetighter entry categories we used last year. Similarly, in Latin America,Fundación Calicanto imparts basic skills to women and now men inPanama.

The European winner, 3Space, persuades landlords of empty UKbuildings to open them to social enterprises on a temporary basis.One of the judges pointed out that underused buildings were a wide-spread developed-world problem, as is decay of formerly prosper-ous cities. The judges’ choice in the North American and Caribbeancategory, SeeClickFix, attempts to counter this by allowing residentsto alert authorities to problems online.

In naming Sanergy as the overall winner, the judges gave Nairobiits second worldwide award in a row. For the Kenyan capital, that,too, should be a point of pride.

Michael SkapinkerEditor, FT Special Reports

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FT/Citi Ingenuity Awards:Urban Ideas in Action

AfricA And Middle eAstWinner: Sanergyrunner-up: SDI AllianceHighly commended: BicyclingEmpowerment NetworkAsiA-PAcificWinner: Parinaam Foundationrunner-up: AProCheuroPeWinner: 3Spacerunner-up: BlaBlaCarlAtin AMericAWinner: Fundación Calicantorunner-up: AprendanortH AMericAAnd cAribbeAnWinner: SeeClickFixrunner-up: BaltimoreHousing

oVerAll Winner:Sanergy

URBANINGENUITYCONTENTS

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INTRODUCTIONRigid planning often cre-ates inhuman cities, butonly history decides whatmakes for a successful city

Janice Muthui on thejudges’ criteria

AFRICA ANDMIDDLE EASTAmman has long welcomednew arrivals but Syrianrefugees are testing thecity’s resources to the limit

Elias and Yousef Anastaslook at applying traditionalPalestinian design to se-cure modern urban spaces

ASIA PACIFICAmong the biggestobstacles to improving thelives of people in India’smegacities are bureaucracyand corruption

Peter Ellis examines India’snew energy-efficient city

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EUROPEThe continent’s cities con-tinue to struggle with theintegration of the ancientand the modern

LATIN AMERICAEnlightened planners aretrying to reverse the trendtowards the segregation ofrich and poor

Jurij Paraszczak says citiescan increase efficiency byanalysing collected data

NORTH AMERICAAND CARIBBEANYoung high earners areflocking back to US citieswhile the poor are nowmore likely to be foundin the suburbs

Amy Kenyon onhow the suburbsacceleratedDetroit’s downfall

JUDGESThe panel profiled

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WINNERS

SANERGYPay-per-go toilets and theirby-products are providing auseful living for residents ofNairobi’s slums

PARINAAMA project to help Banga-lore’s poorest slum dwell-ers targets what they sayare their most pressingconcerns

3SPACEA charity that brokersempty offices aids tenantsand landlords

CALICANTOA programme in Panamaprovides a route out of pov-erty and gang violence

SEECLICKFIXThe website and app toreport urban blight is gain-ing in popularity amongcitizens around the world

RUNNERS UP

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ANALYSIS AND COMMENT

Special reports editorMichael SkapinkerHead of editorial contentHugo GreenhalghEditorRohit JaggiProduction editorGeorge KyriakosDesignerSheila JackSub-editorPhilip ParrishPicture editorMichael CrabtreeHead of content activationAlexis JarmanAdvertising productionDaniel Lesar

CONTRIBUTORSELIAS and YOUSEF ANASTAS,principals in architecture and en-gineering practice AAU AnastasTONY BARBER,FT Europe editorSHANNON BOND,FT US reporterJAMES CRABTREE,FT Mumbai correspondentPETER ELLIS, leader of CannonDesign’s urban and city designpracticeEDWIN HEATHCOTE,FT architecture and design criticAMY KENYON, historian, authorand visiting lecturer at Gold-smiths, University of LondonEDWARD LUCE,FT Washington bureau chiefVICTOR MALLET,FT south Asia editorKATRINA MANSON,FT east Africa correspondentVERONICA MORROW,freelance journalistJANICE MUTHUI,foundation manager of the Com-munity Cooker FoundationJURIJ PARASZCZAK, director ofResearch Industry Solutions andleader of the Research SmarterCities programme at IBMJAMES PICKFORD, FT Londonand south-east correspondentJOHN PAUL RATHBONE,FT Latin America editorJOHN REED,FT Jerusalem bureau chiefANDRES SCHIPANI,FT Andes correspondent

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introduction

Photos:ReuteRs;shutteRstock

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In 1593, the Venetiansdecided to build a new cityto celebrate victory overthe ottomans at the Battleof Lepanto. A fortified city

in the shape of a nine-pointedstar with a piazza at its heart,Palmanova is the most completerealisation of a Renaissanceobsession, the ideal city.

this was to be a place ofequity, in which every citizenwould have equal access to landand knowledge, and a place inwhich life would be enhanced bybeauty and geometry. the dreamwas of craftsmen, farmers andmerchants who would create acity of wealth and culture.

Flawed visionsRigid planning often creates inhumancities,but onlyhistorydecideswhatmakes for asuccessful city, saysEdwinHeathcote

the trouble was, no onewanted to live there. the Vene-tians were very happy in theirpoky houses and dark alleyways.Venice was a place of beauty andugliness, a place that, despite itscurious location and liquid streets,remained a capital of culture.

But Palmanova’s vast centralsquare has none of the vivacityof even the scrawniest Italianpiazza. Instead, it is dead – toobig, too sunny, too dull.

Building the ideal city hasnever been easy. the most suc-cessful cities seem to grow hap-hazardly. Whether it is the inces-sant transformations of London,the untrammelled upward

extrusion of New York or theintimacy and accidental beautyof a Roman square, the citiesmost able to reinvent themselveshave been those where no singlevision has confined them.

this is, of course, an oversim-plification. All those cities havein place a plethora of regulationsand social constructs that governtheir growth – they are hardlyunplanned – but it is still strik-ing how unsuccessful centrallyplanned cities have been.

this lack of success isimportant because the worldis urbanising at an exponentialrate and many of the cities weare building are effectively new.

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Grandplansgonewrong:Brasília,opposite, andPalmanova,above

Favelas haveoftenproducedstreetscapes asintriguing andcomplex as anyinmedieval Italy

even if their location has beendictated by the existence of afishing village or trading post,their form is planned.

Many of the issues addressedby the winners of the Ft/citiIngenuity Awards are mostapplicable to cities that havegrown organically – and theirmost unplanned extensions, the“informal settlements”, or slums.But they have important lessonsfor their planned counterparts.

the phenomenon of thegrand new city tends to be asso-ciated with the desire to createa new capital or administrativecentre, and the wish of states-men, architects and planners toimbue the new city with mean-ing and symbolism.

Perhaps the most famousplanned city is Brasília, builtin the 1960s as a post-colonialcapital to take over from Rio deJaneiro. the architecture of itsadministrative heart is amongthe finest design of the 20thcentury, yet as a city it doesnot cohere, and politicians andcivil servants fly off to Rio orsão Paulo as soon as the weekfinishes.

the city centre is a vastplain dotted with architecturalmonuments; the suburbs aredormitories with nothing to do.Ironically, the poorest parts ofthe city are the liveliest, withliveable niches, intimate streetsand a human scale.

scale, of course, is often theproblem. In the search for gran-deur, city builders often overdothe monumental. Washington’sMall is an impressive space,but it is not really a park, streetor square. the monumentalconcrete architecture of chandi-garh, a 1950s attempt to createa modern northern Indian pro-vincial capital, is impressive but,as a city, not so much. Australia’scanberra has elegant buildings,but it is hardly a destination.

china is planning new citieson a vast scale. Many mightappear a little bleak, yet theauthorities have been care-ful in installing infrastructure,transport, green space and oftensurprisingly fine avenues andambitious streets. the buildingsmay be second-rate, but perhapsthe next generation of architectswill do better. If the bones aregood the city can still work.

In condemning planned citieswe often do not give them timeto take root. the world’s favour-ite cities – London, New York,Rome, Paris, Istanbul, Venice,Rome – have been around forcenturies, if not millennia; acity takes time to mature. thatplanned cities are not doomedto failure is testified by somewonderful successes.

Lisbon, for instance, wasentirely rebuilt after an earth-quake in 1755. Philadelphia waslaid out in a grid in 1682, laterexpanded by William Penn, wholaid the foundations for the widestreets and openspaces that havemade it such anenduringly suc-cessful city.

the grid, themost seeminglyinhuman andrational of townplanning systems,has proved tobe one of the most adaptablesystems for the successful city. InNew York it allowed the extraor-dinary growth of the city into acoherent yet flexible place andthe regeneration of many usdowntowns after decades of flightto the suburbs has demonstratedits resilience and relevance.

one cannot say the plannedcity is less successful than theunplanned, as almost all citiesare planned in some way. Butwhat is certain is that planningis a fashion based on taste and

technology. suburbs and exurbson the us model, now almostuniversally adopted, rely on theubiquity of personal transportand cheap fuel. Grids depend oncontemporary building tech-niques that might seem hope-lessly outdated in a century.

some contemporary plannershave turned to New urbanism, amovement that attempts to emu-late the picturesque qualities ofhistoric cities with their walk-able centres and leafy, windingresidential streets. But there is acertain lack of vision in these, asurrendering to the qualities ofan imagined history.

the biggest successes are oftenthe most surprising. take tokyo.Its architecture is a mess: build-ings are almost exclusively short-termist garbage, based on fashionand squeezing maximum floorareas into often tiny sites. Yet theresult is a city of almost unparal-leled invention and vibrancy.

or take a hillside LatinAmerican favela. housing condi-tions may be execrable, yet intheir unplanned growth theyhave often produced streetscapesas intriguing and complex as anyin medieval Italy.

that these are slowly beinggentrified (notably in Brazil)under the guise of slum clear-ance (but actually because theyare well-sited and often strik-ingly beautiful) is an indictmentof the planning of big cities suchas Brasília or the overscaledchaos of são Paulo.

What we should learn fromthe historical dialogue betweenthe planned and unplanned isthat, extraordinarily, we havelearnt nothing. Planning is hitand miss, and often the finestcities emerge from the tempo-rary and extemporised, or therational and the abstract. Wecan set out to create a great city,but only history will confirm oursuccess. n

COMMENTJANICEMUTHUI

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Last year the FT/CitiIngenuity Awardsjudging panel choseKenya’s CommunityCooker Foundation

as the winner of the Energy cat-egory and as the overall winner.

This innovative waste-to-energy technology, inventedand developed in Nairobi, isan initiative of the architects atPlanning Systems Services andsolves many problems associatedwith poor waste management indeveloping countries.

The award has propelled thefoundation into new territory,where local and internationalorganisations are showing realinterest in installing its cookersin areas of need.

This year there was a pro-found difference in the judgingprocess. In 2012, there werefour categories: health, energy,education and infrastructure.Though I was not on that panel,I imagine it must have been aharrowing task whittling theentries down to one. It musthave been difficult to measureentries by the same yardstickwhen some had much largerbudgets and financial backing,and some benefited from bettermarketing mechanisms.

But then, as with this year,the most important factor wasingenuity. Was the idea fresh andtransformative, and did it makea positive impact on people?The award for the CommunityCooker Foundation came as ahumbling yet profound stampon what we had been trying toachieve since the idea was bornin the early 1990s.

Pullingtogether: theCommunityCookerFoundationfoundmultiplesolutionstowastemanagementproblems

Thereneedsto be amoreconcerted effortto encourageideas from far-flungplaces

These people need encour-agement through local forumsand workshops, as well asconnections to funding oppor-tunities for further research anddevelopment to bring the ideasto the international stage.

Prestigious schemes such asthe FT/Citi Ingenuity Awardscan create a platform for theexchange of innovative ideasfrom people of very diversebackgrounds. One idea in needof tweaking may find a solutionfrom the other side of the world.

Such schemes also offeran opportunity for people toshowcase the innovative waysin which they have been able toaffect communities, using locallysourced materials and labour.

The real prize is that thosewith a good idea, no matter howsmall, will gain the encourage-ment and the motivation to cre-ate the next great thing. ■Janice Muthui is foundationmanager at the CommunityCooker Foundation

This year, entries were judgedregionally. A reason for thischange was that 2012’s catego-ries were very broad and each

sector covered somany areas whereinnovation wasrife. An exampleis the growth ofdigital technologyin Africa, wheremore and morepeople are carryingvirtual banks and

hospitals on their mobile phonesto avoid the problems of inad-equate fixed infrastructure.

This year, whilewe thought someregions had stron-ger entries thanothers, someideas were notas fresh as others.It was a pleas-ant surprise thatthose consideredthe freshest werefrom the so-calledpoorer regions, butwhy were there notmore entries of thisnature?

There needs to bemore of a concertedeffort to encourageideas from far-flungplaces. On urbanstreets and in smallshops people areseeking solutionsto their problemswith very rudi-mentary techni-cal expertise butgreat enthusiasmand courage.

Fresh approachesOriginality of thinkingwas oneof themost importantcriteria to occupy theminds of judges this year

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AFRICA AND MIDDLE EASTREGIONAL ANDOVERALL WINNER:SANERGY

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Life changing:Miriam Kwamboka

bought two FreshLife blocks after

people joked it was“a digital toilet”

Out of the soilPay-per-go toilets and their

by-products are providing a usefulliving for residents of Nairobi’s slums,

writesKatrinaMansonPhotographs by SiegfriedModola

Gladys NdungwaNdambuki hadnever seen a slumbefore. The 28-year-old grew up in

Kenya’s bulging capital Nairobi,but only when the insurancecompany she was employed atdid some charity work in thecity’s industrial area did shecome face to face with some ofcountry’s worst realities.

“I couldn’t comprehend thatpeople live like that, especiallythe sanitation, the pit latrines,”she says.

But in fast-growing Nairobi,most people live like that. Anestimated two-thirds of thecity’s 3.5m people make theirhomes in its 200 informal settle-ments. Poor sanitation is amongtheir biggest difficulties: everyyear, 4m tonnes of waste fromKenya’s slums are dumped intowaterways and the soil. Alongthe waterlogged dirt paths ofthe Mukuru kwa Njenga slum,where lorries compete withcows for road space, mud anddetritus produce an unhealthystench and pit latrines regularlyoverflow.

At first, Ndambuki went backto work enthused that her taskmust be to craft an insuranceproduct to help some of Kenya’spoorest people. But soon hernewfound dedication needed abigger outlet.

“These people don’t needgood insurance; good sanita-tion is the least we can give backto society,” said Ndambuki. Soshe quit her job, took a 30 percent pay cut and joined San-ergy, a social enterprise start-upfounded by US high-flyers dedi-cated to fixing the problem thatso distressed her.

Sanergy’s 115-strong team,most of whom are drawn fromthe slum, dedicates itself toimproving sanitation in the cityby trying to, in the words of ➤

AfRicA AnD miDDLe eAStSAneRgy

Sanitarysuccesses:MiriamKwamboka,above, andGladysNdungwaNdambuki,below

“Youhave tounderstandthecomplexityof thecommunityyouareworking in”

to overflow. It’s good becauseit helps people; the tenants arehappy.”

The residential model isone of several innovations bySanergy, which is expanding intonew slums but is most interestedin increasing the density of itsnetwork in existing areas, put-ting more blocks outside schoolsas well as in residential plots.

“You have to understand thecomplexity of the communityyou are working in,” says Auer-bach. “At night you want peopleto have safe places to go that arenot very far.”

The group is also encourag-ing unemployed under-25s whomight otherwise be tempted intocrime or prostitution to becomeFresh Life operators, support-ing them with training, businessskills and subsidies to get going.

Alongsidemounds of rubbishandmud, the toilet blocks standout as beacons, painted in bluewith a yellow sunburst. Sanergycreates incentives for maintaininghigh standards: it bolts them shutif they are not kept spotless. As aresult, residents are prepared topay – Ks5 ($0.06) on average foradults and Ks2 ($0.02) for chil-dren. “Join ourmovement,” saysan entreaty painted on the side ofthe toilet units.

Sanergy’s commitment toemployees and slum-dwellers isanother part of its movement.Auerbach, like some of Sanergy’sother co-founders, is informedby his MBA fromMassachusettsInstitute of Technology. San-ergy’s management approachrelies on morale-boostingpractices and an embrace ofambition, targets, communityservice and career progression.One day Sanergy wants to

have thousands of toilet blocksthroughout the city.

As area sales manager,Ndambuki has targets to expandthe network that are critical to

the team, “turn shit into gold”.Sanergy’s “Fresh Life” squat toi-lets, operated by slum residents,replace unhygienic alternativessuch as pit latrines and opendefecation, and are part of abroader effort to tackle poverty.

“Really changing urban com-munities means giving peoplethe services they need andensuring people are living goodhealthy lives,” says David Auer-bach, one of Sanergy’s founders.

The Fresh Lifesystem operates ona pay-per-use basis,run by – so far – 150resident micro-entrepreneurs inthe slum. Sanergyteam members thencollect the wastedaily with a view totransforming it intoorganic fertiliser forsale to farmers.

So far, the company has sold290 toilet blocks to residentsat cost price, generating 1,400tonnes of waste a year, withmuch more to come – more than12,000 people use the toiletsevery day.

“The big challenge is guaran-teed supply,” says Auerbach, whois still negotiating waste disposalcontracts with several flowerfarms and other agriculturebusinesses throughout Kenya.“We need to increase capacitythree or four times. We need todo 5,000 tonnes a year, buildout the units and improve thetechnology.”

For 35-year-old MiriamKwamboka, a water vendor wholives in the slum, Sanergy hasbeen life-changing. While mostof Sanergy’s toilet blocks are atcommunal sites such as mar-ket places, street corners andoutside schools, she bought twoblocks for her own residence – 12rooms that she rents out for lessthan $10 a week.

“The toiletused to fill up veryquickly and some-times I didn’t havemoney to pay themen to collect thewaste, so it used tostay there and smella lot; it used to leakand overflow,” saysKwamboka.

Sitting on a sofa in her par-lour – a small sheet-metal con-struction with net curtains forwallpaper and inflatable beachballoons for ceiling decorations– Kwamboka explains how shefirst came across the Fresh Lifetoilet. She says people told her itwas so modern they joked it was“a digital toilet”.

Kwamboka boughttwo toilets on credit at adiscount, and Sanergycreated a repaymentplan. She upped hertenants’ rent by Ks500($5.80) a month to helpher repay the loan,but she says it isworth it.

“Peoplehave seen alot of differ-ence withthe newtoilets,especiallywhen it rains,because thesmells used

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Launch pad:Ricky Ojwang,above, hopeshis job withSanergy willboost hischances ofstudyingengineering

her job. She keeps a businessself-help book on her desk and,as she strives to surpass Sanergytargets, she expects her salarywill soon outstrip that of herprevious job, all the while hop-ing to change permanently theunderprivileged world that firstjolted her into action.

“I look at the impact it has onthe people. I’m really grateful togive back to society and also cre-ate a career for myself,” she says.

The team practises constantstaff evaluation; celebrates anemployee of the month, postingpictures of star staff on a com-munal noticeboard; and holdsregular prize ceremonies for thebest toilet attendants to magnifya sense of social standing in thecommunity – the prizes are gift-wrapped and speeches adopt asolemn note to underline theimportance of the work.

For Ricky Ojwang, a job atSanergy has been a lifeline. Sit-ting on his bed in the room thatis his home, the 21-year-old sayshe came to the city last year insearch of work but found noth-ing, so he joined his father in theslum, finding only occasionalmanual labour.

He joined Sanergy following arecruitment drive, and has beenpromoted to assistant supervisor

Farmers taking delivery ofthe organic fertiliser madefrom human waste are

beginning to join the movementtoo. Komaza, a social enterprisebased on Kenya’s coast thatworks with 6,000 farmers, hasfound the Sanergy fertiliser worksmuch better than expected.

“The results were quitephenomenal,” says PatriciaGriffin, director of operationsat Komaza, of an April trialthat showed the Sanergyfertiliser boosted sorghumyields by a third. She hopes theorganisation, which is planting1m trees, will have the sameeffect on tree growth. She isnegotiating rates of sale withSanergy despite initial misgiv-ings from the farmers.

“Its raw form just looks likedirt chewed on and chompedon by the worms, but you canimagine the stigma you have toovercome when people realise itis made from human poo – it hasa yuk factor to it,” says Griffin.“My staff didn’t really want totouch it, so I had to do the trialand prove to them it worked.”

of logistics. His job is to ensurethe collection teams remove thewaste safely and on time.

“In these areas you can’t justfind a very free path to thesetoilets,” he says, explaining howmuddy pools and filth make itimpossible even for a wheelbar-row to pass, so team membersoften carry out the waste in sealedunits by hand. Ojwang hopes oneday to take an electrical engineer-ing course so that he can rejoinSanergy at a more senior level.

Auerbach says: “A lot of ourteam used to rely on day-to-daylabour, but now they have steadyincomes and get the benefits ofhealth insurance, pensions forthe first time and guaranteedenforceable contracts. When youthink about how you really liftpeople out of poverty, this is it.”n

‘Yuk’ factorFarming with waste

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Stuck in thesprawl: theUUPPacceptspovertywillpersist, so itaddresseseverydayneeds suchas health orfindingwork

Elaine Ghosh spentmuch of her lifeworrying about thepoorest families inBangalore’s most

deprived slums. But towardsthe end of her life – she died inNovember – she had concernsabout wealthier groups too: thefunders of the urban “ultra-poor”programme (UUPP) she ranwith her foundation, Parinaam.

The UUPP was Ghosh’s pas-sion – an intensive combinationof social projects establishedin 2009 that has helped about750 severely deprived familiesin eight of the southern Indiancity’s grimmest slums. Finan-cial support for the programmehad been difficult to come by,however, with an initial grant

Back to basicsAproject to help Bangalore’s poorest slumdwellers targetswhat they say are theirmostpressing concerns, reports JamesCrabtreePhotographs byAyushRanka

provided by the Michael andSusan Dell foundation due torun out in November.

“We were a bit panicked,” shesaid in an interview in Octo-ber. “We knew the programmeworked, but we couldn’t find away to convince people to give usmoney.”

The problem stemmed fromthe UUPP’s approach. Big inter-national donors often warm toanti-poverty programmes thatare cheap to operate and quickto scale up. These tend to focuson single issues, such as health-care, or on so-called “livelihood”projects, which can involveteaching basic skills such as sew-ing to help people find jobs.

Ghosh had different ideas,however, having become disil-

lusioned with the results of anearlier Parinaam venture. Thisran temporary health campsin some of the same Bangaloreslums, bringing in doctors toprovide basic check-ups andemploying health workers topersuade poorer residents toseek medical help, especially fortheir children.

“The whole programme hadlittle long-term impact, and Irealised that however much Imight think these people neededhealthcare, clearly they didn’tagree,” she said, recalling thatthe camp effort typically failedto change entrenched habits – inchild nutrition, for instance.

“It changed my whole visionof how we look at the poor,”she explained. “We stopped the

asia-pacificRegional winneR:

paRinaam foundation

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“Youhave tostep into theshoes of thepoor andaskthemwhat theythink theyneed”

health camps. It was a waste ofmoney. It became like a mantrafor us: you have to step into theshoes of the poor; you have totalk to them and ask them whatthey think they need.”

This approach became thefocus of the UUPP, which beginsits work in each slum by survey-ing residents – many of whomlive in awful conditions, in tum-bledown shacks with tarpaulinroofs – to ask what help they feelthey need.

In some areas, the surveysreveal childcare or particularhealth worries as dominantconcerns. In others, it is findingwork. Whatever the outcome,the programme begins by tryingto provide a service that willhelp.

The result is an intensive andrelatively expensive programmethat works in particular withgroups of women in each slum,providing a host of differentservices in areas ranging fromchildren’s education to basicfinancial literacy.

Having struggled for much ofthis year to convince numerouspotential donors of the meritsof her approach this summer,Ghosh secured new fundingfrom a private benefactor, withmore funds likely to follow froman international bank.

The extra income will notonly secure the UUPP’s future,she said, but also allow the pro-gramme to expand, potentiallynearly doubling the 500 or sofamilies it helps at any one timeover the next few years.

Where once Ghosh thoughtabout expanding the effort tosome of India’s other sprawlingmetropolises, including Calcuttaand New Delhi, she revised theplans to stick closer to home inBangalore. “Why go into anothercity when there are so many poor

people here who still need ourhelp?” she said.

The programme remains afamily affair: Ghosh ran it along-side her daughter Mallika, whilethe wider Parinaam foundationhas close links to a large microfi-nance business, Ujjivan, foundedby her husband Samit.

Despite its newfunding and widerambitions, theUUPP’s approachwill not change,beginning in newproject areas byfirst listening, andthen attempting to

understand the problems facedby local residents. Ghosh illus-trated this approach with workthe UUPP was undertaking in aslum predominantly inhabitedby Muslims.

“In that area, the womentold us their husbands wouldn’tlet them go out and find work,”she said, explaining that thisrestricts their ability to earn andprovide for their families. Inresponse Ghosh and her teamfocused on helping the womenlearn basic skills they can use athome, such as candle making orsewing quilts.

Elsewhere, she hoped tobuild up Parinaam’s otherprogrammes, including a muchlarger operation that focuseson teaching basic financialliteracy, and a smaller schemebased around the same slumsin Bangalore, in which she findsdonors to fund the education ofyoung children whose mothersare helped by the UUPP.

“We have to admit that theadults in these slums are nevergoing to be lifted entirely out ofpoverty,” Ghosh said, althoughthe programmes help the verypoorest move upwards to thepoint where they are no longerdestitute.

“It is only the children whowill truly lift their parents, so weneed to focus on them too.”

In the last months of her life,Ghosh was preparing her foun-dation to take on the challenge.“That is the most importantthing about any project like this,”she said. “If you start somethingyou have to finish it.” n

EuropErEgional winnEr:3spacE

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Above a red-brickgovernment officein Wimbledon,a new model ofbusiness is taking

shape. In the unadorned open-plan space, plain white tablesare occupied by an assortmentof workers on laptops or tablets.There is light, heat, WiFi, tea andcoffee, but little else.

The reason forits austere appear-ance? It is free. Thesouthwest Londonspace – and otherslike it – are run by3Space, a companyset up in 2010 byAndrew Cribb and

Filling the cracksAcharity that brokers emptyoffices aidstenants and landlords, says JamesPickfordPhotographs byCharlie Bibby

Henry Mason to match unoccu-pied premises with deserving butimpecunious social enterprises.

3Space moves into com-mercial properties that aretemporarily empty and bringsthem back to life by offering thespace rent-free to charities andother non-profit organisations.The agreements it strikes with

landlords and lease-holders – who maybe awaiting plan-ning permission, afunding deal or theright moment toredevelop – typicallylast six to 18 months.“We wedge ourselvesinto those cracks,”

says Mason, a former KPMGaccountant.

Since 3Space started, some165 companies have passedthrough its premises. The num-ber of offices on its books varies:it is running five buildings in theUK at the moment – in London,Cardiff, Blackpool and Wigan –but has had as many as 30 activeat one time.

Why would property own-ers go to the trouble of invitingunknown businesses into theirbuildings? Aside from altru-ism, there are solid commercialreasons for giving away theirspace for a time: if it is occupiedby charities or social enterprises,the business rates bill is halvedand there are reductions ininsurance and security costs. Buttenants must be ready to moveout quickly – sometimes with aslittle notice as a week.

For consumer-related busi-ness there are also potentialmarketing advantages. “Wemake it worth their whilethrough business rate savings,

If a building isoccupiedbysocialenterprises,business ratesare halved

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Fully booked:there is alongwaitinglist for oneof 3Space’sLondonvenues inOxford Street

Tenantshave savedfunds andmade someproductivecontacts

but when working with com-mercial partners there is also abrand value,” says Mason, whosays 3Space is looking to takeover some empty branches of aUK bank, which would use thedeal in its marketing.

Where the Wimbledon officeis distinct from 3Space’s othervenues is that it offers space toboth charities and for-profitcompanies, as part of a govern-ment programme to use idlesites for start-ups. Thelocal Merton Chamberof Commerce has alsobeen heavily involvedin the Wimbledoninitiative in its effortsto boost employment.

A Cabinet Officespokesman says theSpace for Growthscheme – for whichWimbledon was a pilot –encourages entrepreneurs “tomove on from their kitchens, liv-ing rooms and cafés, and benefitfrom a professional address, the

company of other workers andthe potential of networking”.

For some charities, flexibil-ity is the main attraction. TheMoroccan Children’s Trust is acharity based in Tooting, southLondon, in an office it shares –and pays for – with a sister char-ity. It uses Wimbledon as a placeto hold weekly meetings off-site,in an uncrowded and WiFi-enabled site that allows staff toSkype with their colleagues in

Morocco.“For us the main

thing about this spaceis not having thedistractions of theother activities,” saysSarah Sibley, a projectco-ordinator with thecharity.

Another occupantis Sale Servant, a

digital marketing company thathelps small and medium-sizedfashion brands drum up salesby increasing traffic to theirwebsites. Lenka Gourdie, chief

executive, says she and herbusiness partner and husbandAllan, who started the businesssix months ago, initially triedhubs such as Google’s CampusLondon or simply worked on atable in Starbucks, the cof-fee chain. But the latter is notalways the best place to hold abusiness meeting with potentialclients or to network with otherentrepreneurs.

“For us it is the convenienceof the place and having premisesto bring other people,” she says.

The floor upstairs is keptempty for workshops and meet-ings, which has allowed JohnBickell to launch Trepisphere,his social enterprise that coachesgroups of jobseekers and othersin starting a business. “Without3Space, it is possible I wouldn’thave started at all. But with it, itis an absolute no-brainer.”

To the dismay of its tenants,the Wimbledon space was set toclose at the end of November.There is a long waiting list for3Space’s other London venuein Oxford Street. But even ifthey have had only six monthsin Wimbledon, the tenantshave saved funds and madesome productive contacts. SaleServant is talking to anotheroccupant, online exercise advicebrand SNS Nutrition, aboutsharing a paid-for office space,for instance.

Mason says 3Space’s goal isto form a long-term partnershipwith a big property group – butsuch a partner would have toview the relationship as morethan a short-term financial fix.

He says the businessmodel could go from help-ing landlords struggling in arecession to revitalising wholeneighbourhoods.

“As we have evolved we havestarted to see ourselves more aspart of a wider movement forgreater efficiency, along withcompanies such as Hailo [theblack cab app] and Airbnb [anonline marketplace for flat orroom rentals],” Mason says.

“We see this as a new modelfor the property industry.” n

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When formergang leaderLuzkeira Pérezlast spoke tothe Financial

times four months ago, she wasfull of dreams and energy but stillhesitant about how her life wouldbe after the six-week educationalprogramme provided by the Fun-dación Calicanto women’s group.

Class actionAprogramme inPanamaprovidesa route out of poverty and gangviolence, reportsAndres Schipani

F t. com / i n genu i t y | 1 9

Newhorizons:Aftercompletingthe Calicantoprogramme,LuzkeiraPérez is nowrecruitingotherwomenherself

“With themenwehad to buildthe emotionalskills beforetechnical skills”

after her graduation inoctober, she is far less worried.she has developed a plan and ison her way to securing funds toexpand her business of sellingcoffee and empanadas (stuffedbread) into a catering business.and she was on the verge ofbeing offered a job at a five-starhotel about to open in a formergang headquarters in PanamaCity’s old town.

“i can say the programmechanged my life, i am evennow recruiting women to theprogramme, because i know itwill be life-changing for them,”she says. “i am confident i canachieve what i want and, finally,contribute to society.”

that was the overall feelingduring the very emotional grad-uation ceremony at the PanamaCanal museum in the historicseafront district. this class wasundoubtedly a success – out of19 women, 17 had secured a job,mostly in the country’s expand-ing tourism sector.

Calicanto is part of a commu-nity-wide effort to ensure mar-ginalised residents can seize theopportunities in fast-growingPanama. the group’s initial aimwas to maintain a sustainable,inclusive and lively neighbour-hood in the old town where richand poor could rub shoulders.

“i am in love with thisprogramme,” says Peter reil-ing, executive vice-president for

leadership and seminar pro-grammes at the aspen institute,a Us-based leadership andpolicy organisation. “not onlydoes it provide these womenwith the ‘hard’ skills to findgainful employment – and in avery practical, market-drivenway – but it also provides thoseadditional, equally essential ‘soft’skills for a whole life.”

according to Calicanto’sfounder, hildegard vásquez, aUs-trained architect, the highemployment rates are a resultof the scheme’s good name.hoteliers and other employers inPanama are now aware of whata Calicanto diploma involves.“this is now considered the

harvard for disadvantaged poorwomen,” she says.

What started in the oldtown has percolated to otherneighbourhoods. Copa airlines,Panama’s national carrier, hasasked Calicanto to provide itwith reliable workers by settingup a branch of the programmenear tocumen airport.

But demand is not restrictedto Panama. vásquez recentlyprepared educational manuals,detailing every step of the Cali-canto programme, called Capta,to implement the scheme inother Latin american cities. shehas received calls from MexicoCity, but the first overseas ven-ture will be in violence-riddenGuatemala City.

violence was a theme duringthe graduation ceremony inPanama, when the women, usingskills learned in their drama les-sons, performed a sketch mock-ing violent partners or husbands.

Mockery aside, Calicanto isalso focusing on violent men.the foundation recently helpedto set up an offshoot programmecalled esperanza san Felipewhere male gang members fromthe old town went through asimilar learning process in thesame abandoned school that hasbecome the home of Calicanto.

as with the women, thescheme included basic life andwork skills but added an elementof unarmed self-defence to helpthe men build the self-confi-dence they needed to put downtheir guns and knives for good.

“the underlying philosophy isthe same as with the women, butwith the men we had to build theemotional skills before technicalskills,” says Gilberto toro, theprogramme’s technical director.

a dozen tattooed youngsterswho until a few months agowere selling drugs on the streetsgraduated in october and nine

already have jobs.one of them is

humberto ovalle, a20-year-old formergang member whoalso had to conquerlearning disabili-ties. he is now aconcierge trainee at

a guest house and confirms thefaith shown in him. “i am reallyhappy with what i am doing,”he says. “i don’t ever want to goback to the streets.”

For Calicanto foundervásquez, one has to “believe” inpeople. “none of these womenor men were born on an equalfooting,” she says. “We cannotprovide that equal footing, butwe can give them tools so theycan find opportunities.” n

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The annoyancesof urban life arefamiliar to any citydweller: rubbish,unlit street lamps,

potholes, graffiti. Cleaning upsuch eyesores has become thebasis for an entire trend inpolicing – the “broken windows”theory, used to great effect in1990s New York, which assertsthat dealing with petty crimesmakes big crimes less likely. Inmany cities, though, it can stillbe difficult for conscientiouscitizens to report problems.

Enter SeeClickFix. Dreamt upas a quick way to report graf-fiti, the website and mobile appallow residents of cities aroundthe world to flag problems on amap. In many cases, that alertsofficials and agencies, which fixthe problem and respond to theperson who reported it.

Clean streetsThewebsite and app to report urbanblightis gaining in popularity among citizensaround theworld, reports ShannonBond

Writingon thewall:workbyartist BanksydrawsviewersinNewYork,above, butgraffiti, left, ison thedecline.Opposite:refuseremovalinUtah

north AmericA And cAribbeAnregionAl winner:

seeclickfix

f t. com / i n genu i t y | 2 1

“[SeeClickFix]has to havea resolution.A tweet doesnot have aresolution”

Founded in 2008 in NewHaven, Connecticut, SeeClickFixhas contracts with more than160 cities to provide reportingtools and software to mayors’offices, sanitation departmentsand public works agencies. Todate, more than 350,000 usershave reported some 800,000issues. While the company hasnot yet turned a profit, thisyear it expects to book $1.2min annual recurring revenues,

mainly from governmentcontracts. SeeClickFix recentlysigned up its first city in theMiddle East and inked its firstcontract with a state departmentof transportation, in Utah.

For residents, the site prom-ises to eliminate red tape andendless phone transfers whenthey report an issue, and allowsthem to see the city’s progress insolving problems. It also allowsthem to follow local “watchareas” to see what is happeningwhere they live.

“The value of SeeClickFix hasbeen creating new connectionsamong people who live reallyclose to each other, or interactin the same public space, wherethey wouldn’t have interactedbefore,” says Ben Berkowitz,SeeClickFix founder.

He tells of how one NewHaven man used the site to

organise a group of people toremove an abandoned boat froma city park.

What makes SeeClickFix dif-ferent from Facebook or Twitter,which also foster communitiesthat can extend offline, is thegovernment side of the site,where officials respond to andresolve issues.

“It has to have a resolution. Atweet does not have a resolution,”Berkowitz says, adding that this

is important for residents, whofeel their voices are being heard,and for cash-strapped citieslooking to provide better publicservices at lower cost.

SeeClickFix sells itself asa tool for the era of shrinkinggovernment spending at city,state and federal levels. Annualcontracts can total as littleas $30,000 for many cities,Berkowitz says – far less than thehundreds of thousands of dollarsoften charged for such software.

Stacy Donohue, directorof investments at OmidyarNetwork, the philanthropicinvestment company startedby Pierre Omidyar, founderof eBay, the auction site, says:“They are using technology toallow citizens to interact withgovernment in a positive waythat helps them contribute to thesolution instead of just com-

plaining about the problems.”ON was an early financial backerof SeeClickFix, investing in2011. Berkowitz raised $1.5m inventure capital funding that yearbut has not sought new invest-ment since.

Donohue says the companywas a “pioneer” as a civic-focusedstart-up and experimented witha range of revenue models, frommunicipal contracts to partner-ships with local media outlets, tofind a sustainable one.

One challenge “inhibiting”the growth of public service-focused start-ups similar toSeeClickFix, Donohue says, isthe difficulty of breaking into thebyzantine world of governmentprocurement.

Government contractors arehaving their (perhaps unwanted)moment in the limelight withthe error-plagued launch ofHealthCare.gov, the Obamaadministration’s insurancewebsite – drawing scrutiny tothe process of awarding such

projects. “The silverlining of HealthCare.gov is that what was acompletely geekyissue six weeks agois on every frontpage,” she says.

For companiesnot scared off bythe recriminationsover that rollout,

she holds up SeeClickFix as anexample because of its experi-ence in “how to sell to govern-ments as a small start-up...[It has] been through a lot ofpermutations and experimen-tation with what works andwhat doesn’t.”

The company itself is alsoembracing its role as a model. InNovember it announced a fel-lowship for aspiring New Havenentrepreneurs, who will work atSeeClickFix for six months whiledeveloping their business ideas.n

2 2 | f t . com / I n genu I t y

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AdvantageAfrica: theBicycleEmpowermentNetwork,above, and theSDIAlliance,below

Going placesProjects around theworld are changinglives, improving surroundings andfostering people’s entrepreneurial spirit

Regional runners-upAfrica andMiddle East:SDIAllianceLack of space, running waterand sanitation are endemicproblems for the informal set-tlements of South Africa. ButIkhayalama and other non-governmental organisationsworking under the umbrella ofthe SDI (Shack/Slum DwellersInternational) South AfricanAlliance, a network of commu-nity organisations, are trying tochange that through a processknown as “blocking out”.

The idea is that living condi-tions can be improved if homesare reorganised in a more struc-tured way. Courtyards providesafe play areas, while improvingsecurity and access. The processalso encourages local authoritiesto provide services such as toilets.

The upgraded shacks havezinc-aluminium walls, which are

Asia-Pacific: aProChThe Indian aProCh network hasset out to make Ahmedabad, afast-growing urban agglomera-tion, into a “child-friendly” citythrough activities catering tokids from across the country’seconomic spectrum.

The network, whose namemeans “a protagonist for everychild”, was started by Kiran BirSethi, a designer and schoolfounder. She was dismayed atthe indifferent attitudes towardschildren in the business-orien-tated urban spaces. “Childrenwere not given time, space orrespect,” she says. The initiativebegan in 2007, when Sethi andher students persuaded the policeand municipal authorities toclose the city’s busiest shoppingstreet to cars for a day and turnit into a vast play area. Today, the

Highly commendedBicycle EmpowermentNetworkThe Bicycle EmpowermentNetwork is an expanding chainof sale and repair shops acrossNamibia that have tappedwestern donations to createlocal enterprises designed to besustainable, aid social projectsand promote environmentallyfriendly transport.

Each of more than 30 outletsis supervised by a local commu-nity organisation. One faith-based group has used surplusmoney from its shop to helpfamilies with HIV, pay schoolfees and train women.

Michael Linke, founder ofBEN Namibia, says the value tolocal people has been wider thanhe thought it would. “It might besomeone who has created a busi-ness selling fresh meat from theirbicycle, or another who no longerneeds blood-pressure medicationbecause they keep fit by cycling,”he says. But he says the hardestthing to teach the shop managersis “not how to fix a bike but howto run a business”.

The scheme relies on donatedbikes – last year it receivedmore than 7,000 from Canada,Australia and Europe. Linke isexploring expanding the networkinto Madagascar, Kenya, Zambiaand Botswana.

thicker and more fire-resistantthan traditional materials, andthe community is involved in theplanning. People living in theshacks are expected to contrib-ute 20 per cent of the cost – upto $500 depending on the size ofthe shack.

Andy Bolnick, founder ofIkhayalami, says: “This is anaffordable, realistic, practicalway to deal with a compoundingproblem, not just in Cape Townbut throughout Africa.”

f t. com / I n genu I t y | 2 3

AwArdsrunners-up

Opportunities:(clockwisefrombelow)childrenat aProCh;AprendagraduatePilar Pucllas;a carpenterrenovating avacant house;“old school”hitchhiking

Europe: BlaBlaCarRide-sharing is fast becominga business. One of the outfitsseeking to make money out ofdigital hitchhiking is Paris-basedBlaBlaCar. Founded in 2009, itclaims to have 3m users across10 countries.

“Our ambition ultimatelyis to have tens of millions ofmembers,” says Nicolas Brusson,one of the three founders. Theoriginal idea came from FrédéricMazzella, a former classmate ofBrusson’s at Insead, the businessschool. Francis Nappez was thethird founder.

Car owners and ride-seekerssign up as members, postingdetails not only of planned jour-neys but also about themselves,much like a social network –BlaBlaCar emphasises how itis promoting social interaction.Potential passengers sign upfor a ride via an online bookingsystem, and drivers recoup costsrather than making a profit. The

LatinAmerica: AprendaPilar Pucllas grew up in theSanta Clara district of Lima,Peru, and for most of her life hassold food to passing motorists.But for the past year she hasbeen the proprietor of a hole-in-the-wall cevicheria (raw-fishrestaurant) in the district’scentral market.

She is a graduate of acourse run by Aprenda, theeducation and training arm ofPeruvian microlender GrupoACP, with the support of theInter-American DevelopmentBank, Australian governmentaid agency AusAID and the USThunderbird School of GlobalManagement.

Aprenda travels around Peruto deliver its course to entre-preneurial but under-educatedwomen. The course, whichaims to give students the toolsto manage a small business, istaught using a television dramaserial, El Gran Salto (The Big

city closes a main thoroughfaresix times a year for a street partyorganised by aProCh. The organi-sation also organises activities forchildren in parks twice a month.

Children who attend comefrom all social classes, includingmany brought from the slums bynon-governmental organisations.Students from private schoolsoften act as buddies to the slumchildren. The organisation aimsto expand to a national level, saysKirti Zala, a co-ordinator.

company makes its money bylevying a ¤2 fee per transaction.

BlaBlaCar claims to be book-ing 600,000 rides a month, andplays up the environmental ben-efits – Brusson says the averagecar occupancy of 2.8 compareswith a European average of 1.7.

As for the name, each mem-ber is asked to rate themselveson how much they like to talk.One bla means you want to keepto yourself; blablabla means youcan’t stop yakking.

Leap). A typical course runs fortwo or three hours, interspersingepisodes of the drama with light-hearted guidance. The womenare asked to voice their dreamsand recognise their talents, andare taught about finance.

Graduates have started arange of businesses, from tailor-ing shops to restaurants. And,according to research, they tendto share their new confidenceand knowledge with friends andfamily.

ThewomenatAprenda areasked tovoice their dreamsand recognise their talents

NorthAmerica andCarib-bean: BaltimoreHousingBaltimore, a US east coast citythat has been struck by the kindof urban decay that has blightedother cities such as Detroit, isrehabilitating neighbourhoodsthrough its Vacants to Value pro-gramme. The city has lost morethan a third of its populationsince 1950 as shipyards and steelmills closed. That has left about16,000 vacant and uninhabitableproperties.

Baltimore’s strategy involvesfacilitating private investment,offering incentives to home-buyers and demolishing buildingsin severely distressed areas. Ithas teamed up with Philadel-phia-based TRF DevelopmentPartners, a non-profit housingaffiliate, and homed in on “mid-dle-market neighbourhoods”. Itcompulsorily purchases derelictbuildings, then sells them at auc-tion to investors such as TRF thatfix them up and sell them on.

In three years the programmehas rehabilitated more than1,300 vacant homes. n

Reports byAndrew Jack,AndrewEnglandand SamMkokoli, AmyKazmin, HughCarnegy, NaomiMapstone andAnna Fifield.Editing byVeronicaMorrow

middle eastanalysis

Photo:Getty

f t. com / i n genu i t y | 2 7

Safe havenAmmanhas longwelcomednewarrivalsbut Syrian refugees are testing the city’sresources to the limit, reports JohnReed

Jordan has a world ofproblems, all visible inits expanding capital,Amman: too manyunemployed young

people, rising food and energyprices, political upheaval acrossthe region and a war in Syriathat has landed the country withmore than 600,000 refugees.

Since the Arab revolts begantwo years ago, the city of 2.5mhas come to be seen as an epit-ome of the issues facing urbanareas in the Middle east.

But the top-of-mind topicfor Fawzi Masad, Amman’s citymanager, is the capital’s mount-ing piles of rubbish. “the streetsof Amman are getting dirtier,” hesays. While Amman’s popula-tion is growing at 3-4 per cent ayear, the refuse produced by itsinhabitants has been increasingat 9 per cent. the city has had tohire 350 more sanitation work-ers and will need to tender for anew landfill site soon because itsexisting one is filling up.

Masad blames the Syrians forthe mess: “When immigrantscome, they are not as committedas the [indigenous] people … inthe city,” he says. “they are justcoming for a short while anddon’t care about cleanliness.”

the city has absorbed waveafter wave of refugees, most ofwhom have stayed and put downroots: Palestinians from Israeland the lands it occupied in 1948and 1967, still more Palestin-ians Kuwait expelled in 1991for their leaders having sided

Nabil Muhtaseb, a Palestin-ian who runs a nearby bookshop,tells me his landlord wanted toevict him and his wife from theirflat in northeast Amman, wherethey pay JD200 a month rent, toaccommodate Syrians willing topay JD500. this is happening alot around Amman – I am toldthat many of the Syrians, someof whom benefit from charitymoney, are willing to live twoor three families to a flat builtfor one. “We used to sympathisewith them, but then we noticedthey were getting more moneythan us,” Muhtaseb says.

It used to be rare to hearsuch sentiments expressed bythe famously hospitable andsoft-hearted Jordanians. But theinflux has coincided with an eco-nomic slowdown, caused by thechaos in the region, one of whoseeffects was a disruption of cheapegyptian natural gas on whichits economy relied.

“Jordan is a small country,and we are happyto do our humani-tarian responsibil-ity and shoulderthat responsibil-ity,” says Umayyatoukan, Jordan’sminister of finance.however, he adds,“the internationalcommunity should

really contribute… much morethan they are today.”

Jordan has received $400m indirect foreign aid to deal with theSyrians, according to its financeminister, but has paid out muchmore for public services such aseducation, healthcare and waterprovision. the UN last monthput the cost to Jordan of hostingSyrian refugees at $2.1bn thisyear and $3.2bn in 2014.

the International MonetaryFund stepped in last year witha $2bn loan, but asked thekingdom to cut its subsidies

The influxof Syrianrefugees hascoincidedwithan economicslowdown

with Saddam hussein when heinvaded; Iraqis after the US top-pled Saddam in 2003; and, since2011, the Syrians.

the Za’atari refugee camp,north of Amman nearer theSyrian border, has more than100,000 people living in it, andis now described as Jordan’sfourth-largest city. But most ofthe people fleeing Syria havechosen to live in Jordan’s real cit-ies, blending into the landscape– though not always gracefully.

But how is Amman, whichaccounts for about a third ofJordan’s population, coping withan influx that inmost other countrieswould cause unbear-able social strains?

In Amman’s oldcentre, gone to seedover the past decadeas more commercehas decamped tothe bourgeois pre-cincts and malls ofwest Amman, I speak to Walidhaddad, a 52-year-old clothesshop owner who describes him-self as “Jordanian” to distinguishhimself from the more than halfof the country’s inhabitants whoare Palestinian.

he complains of Syrians will-ing to work for JD150 ($212)a month – half the subsistencewage a Jordanian would expect.“they should not allow anyoneto enter,” he says. “the countryis suffering – we don’t have anywater and we have a high unem-ployment rate.”

Packedout:Amman’s

infrastructure,especially

housing andtransport, isstruggling tocopewith the

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28 | f t . com / i n genu i t y

other burgeoning cities aroundthe world, but construction washalted after MPs and the pressraised angry questions over thescheme’s suitability and steward-ship.

however, according to Masadthe project is back on track, withadvice from a Spanish consultinggroup, and is seeking parliamen-tary approval to proceed.

Ammanis offer a more cynicalview of their leaders’ competenceand goodwill, they also pointto the glassy new office tow-ers rising, with scant regard forplanning protocols, to punctu-ate (or disfigure, say many) thetraditional stone architecture oftheir skyline, as evidence of a citygrown beyond its means and itsgovernors’ abilities.

Munqeth Mehyar, who headsthe Middle east office in Ammanof Friends of the earth, the envi-

ronmental group,says many of thesolutions to the city’schallenges lie withineasy reach.

But rather thanonly blaming publicofficials he also faultsa populace trained tobelieve “government P

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for essentials such as energy andbasic foodstuffs, worth JD1bn-JD1.5bn a year. When the gov-ernment raised petrol prices inNovember 2012, riots ensued inAmman, with some rarely heardchants of “Down with the king!”

Amman as such has receivedno aid for its share of the burdenof hosting the Syrians. the cityis struggling in areas such ashousing, solid waste – the extrapopulation is causing growingproblems with sewage – andtransport. Many Ammanis getaround the capital on toyotaCoaster minibuses, and poorpeople are typically the casual-ties in their many accidents.

Planners’ response to therising demands on transportinfrastructure has been to buildmore roads, but traffic hasgrown too – most days there iscongestion and, at busy timessuch as ramadan,gridlock.

three years agothe city startedwork on a bus rapidtransit system withdedicated lanes, ofthe type that hastransformed trafficand daily life in

will do everything”, and says theyneed to learn to get involved.

there is also the matter ofAmman sitting at the centre of aregion in what looks like chronicconflict. “We are a safe haven foreveryone around us,” he says. “Icall Jordan the eye of the hur-ricane.”

the city, known as Philadelphia(“the city of brotherly love”) inroman times, has always built itsfortunes on new arrivals. MuslimCircassians fleeing the russians inthe Caucasus were amongmodernAmman’s first immigrants, arriv-ing from the 1860s. they settledmostly in the valleys, and theirdescendants now own some ofthe city’s prime properties.

Jordan’s original tribal inhab-itants have alternatively chafedat and welcomed the Palestin-ians, Iraqis and others, but theyacknowledge that the refugeesbuilt modern Amman too. eventhe Syrians, for all the frictionthey are creating, are contribut-ing to Jordan more than theycost in the goods and servicesthey demand and new jobs theycreate, observers such as thecontrarian economist yusufMansur have argued.

Some residents do not comeacross as rosy optimists as theydiscuss regional topics, rangingfrom the stalled Israeli-Pales-tinian peace talks to the warin Syria. But when it comes toAmman they soften, urging meto focus not on the problems, butthe extent to which the city iscoping with aplomb, even grace.

the city’s strengths are mostevident in the counterfactuals: ithas coped with stress and changewithout the political upheavalseen in tunis, Cairo or Damas-cus. It is even, arguably, profitingfrom its neighbours’ distress.

Amman, a safe haven for theMiddle east, offers some hopefor struggling cities across theregion. n

Speakingout: Syrianrefugees inAmman,above andtop, protestagainst theirpresident,Bashar al-Assad

middle eastanalysis

Glassynewoffice towersrisewithscant regardfor planningprotocols

In linewithtradition: the

StonesourcingSpace aims tomarkproperty

as an act ofresistance

to the path ofthewall

commentelias and yousefanastas

The traditions of thePalestinian city, fromsocial systems to thetype of housing, arebuilt around nature.

the nodal point of the city,where people live, is concen-trated and withdrawn but givesway to open landscapes. But thisdirect relationship with naturehas been subverted, first underthe ottoman empire and nowduring the conflict with Israel.

Before and during the otto-man empire, urban develop-ment was influenced by threefactors: harrat (“big families”to which every inhabitant islinked); hosh (a common sharedspace in the heart of a series ofhouses); and the typical city sur-roundings of olive orchards andterraced landscapes.

At that time, urban strate-gies were regulated betweenthemoukhtar, or chief, of eachharrat. this self-managedurbanism – which matchesmany of today’s western criteriaof a successful city – has beenprogressively disappearing. thedense nucleus is no longer asmuch a centre of interest as thesurroundings, where cities boom.

the British mandate put inplace urban planning. Powerrather than nature took prec-edence. Palestinian cities todayhave very complex boundaries.the oslo agreement, the Israelisettlements, the barrier and wallseparating Israel from the WestBank and excess urbanism havedisrupted the traditional model.the process is a vicious circle:the settlements break up Pales-tinian lands and are linked to

Theunstablepoliticalsituationleads to a lackof trust inpublic space

the use of stone from a naturalchoice to an imposed materialfor everything. this law is stillapplied despite the almost uni-versal use of reinforced concretein construction –but stone hasbeen relegated to a cladding, a topdressing to satisfy an obsolete law.

the pavilion combinesstone, and its virtues in thermalefficiency and plentiful supply,with innovative technologies.the building – a contemporaryinterpretation of themoun-

tar, a traditionalshelter found in thePalestinian country-side – aims to markproperty as an act ofresistance to the pathof the wall.

As Palestinianarchitects, our chal-lenge is to develop

urban forms that can developunder those conditions intobecoming the fabric of cities.Construction procedures, localmaterials and their relationto public space can provideinspiration. this creative processgathers architects, engineers,artisans, bricklayers and mayorswho together can develop thePalestinian city of the future. nElias and Yousef Anastas areprincipals in the Palestinianarchitecture and engineeringpractice AAU Anastas

Israeli territory by bypass routes.In response, Palestinian citieshave broken with their domesticscale, and their boundaries arebeing dictated by the wall.

the unstable political situa-tion leads to a lack oftrust in public space.

We had an oppor-tunity to addressthe question ofpublic space in thecity of Bethlehem.our architecturalpractice’s design forthe edward SaidNational Music Conservatoryplays on the hosh, aided by thedevelopment of a commercialproject on a neighbouring plot.We battled to extend the spaceinto a public pedestrian thor-oughfare. the result is an areathat embodies urban socialpower and artisanal skills, andhelps build an inclusive city.

Also in Bethlehem, we havebuilt an experimental stonepavilion, Stonesourcing Space,that adapts traditional techniques.ottoman laws transformed

Back to naturePalestinians are showinghow traditional rural design canbe reinterpreted to create securemodernurban spaces

MurkyworldsAmong thebiggest obstacles toimproving the lives of people in India’smegacities are bureaucracy andcorruption, saysVictorMallet

asia-pacificanalysis

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It took weeks for AnitaBhargava, a former execu-tive at online payment ser-vice PayPal turned urbangovernance activist, to

find out what was going on withone of Delhi’s neglected parks –municipal officials were puz-zlingly reluctant to let sponsorsfrom the local Sikh temple payfor the cleaning, refurbishmentand management of the park.

The officials in Punjabi Bagh,it turned out, were unwilling toapprove the restoration of theHerbal Garden because theywere earning a few thousandrupees a month selling woodfrom the overgrown park to alocal crematorium and ferns tonearby florists for their flowerarrangements.

The saga of the park, whichis finally on its way to beautifi-cation after the necessary “noobjection” certificate was issued,is just one example of howingenious bureaucrats in citiessuch as Delhi applytheir minds to mak-ing money for them-selves, rather thanserving the interestsof residents.

Roadside fruit-sellers in Indian cit-ies must typically payprotection moneyto police officers,while the poor are often forcedto hand over hundreds of rupeesin bribes to officials to secureeverything from ration cards forsubsidised food to voter identifi-cation cards. Many children fin-ish primary school without beingable to read or write in Hindi orEnglish, or do simple arithme-tic. Builders and householderspay to get permits for illegalconstructions that are at risk ofcollapse in an earthquake.

Yet there are also countlessways in which municipalities,charities, companies and resi-

dents are improving, or trying toimprove, the lives of Asia’s hun-dreds of millions of city-dwellers.

To an inhabitant of Tokyo orSingapore, the word “ingenuity”in the title of this report mightsuggest high-technology urbansolutions involving computer-ised metro rail systems, wasterecycling, solar panels or energy-efficient lighting.

All these are beneficial (andused) in the poorer megacities ofAsia-Pacific. But by far the mosteffective way to improve urbanlife is to ensure municipalitiesand local governments fulfiltheir commitments to providebasic services such as low-costhousing, schools, transport,sanitation and electricity.

“The lack of bureaucraticwill is the largest reason Indiais the way it is,” says Bhargava,who has identified politics andgovernance, rather than technol-ogy, as the key issues that needto be tackled if she is to achieve

her ambitious goal ofridding Delhi of itsslums in three years.

“This is not rocketscience,” she says asshe surveys a typicalDelhi scene: a shantyvillage of ramshacklebuildings next toa fetid open drainchoked with rubbish,

across the road from some of themost palatial apartments in thecapital. The air is thick with dustand traffic fumes. “It’s the lackof bureaucratic will and we keepcoming back to that,” she says.

Bhargava’s strategy has beento find a willing councillor – inthis case Satvinder Kaur Sirsain Delhi’s Ward 103 for Pun-jabi Bagh and Madipur – andbecome that person’s appointed“shadow councillor”, a positionthat allows her to apply manage-ment solutions from businessto apparently intractable

“The lack ofbureaucraticwill is thelargest reasonIndia is theway it is”

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Indeed, the new systemworked so well that it wasextended to 18 wards, but Bhar-gava says it was impossible toapply to all 274 wards in Delhibecause the refuse collectioncompanies had been servingthe 18 districts by cutting backon the rest. The companies, shesays, have only about 60 per centof the trucks they need to pro-vide the contracted daily serviceacross the city.

The view that what mattersis not fancy technology but away of solving basic problems isshared by many from Bill Gates,co-founder of Microsoft, to thesocial workers who are trying tomake life better in India’s cities.

“I certainly love theinformationtechnology thing,”Gates, who nowdedicates himselfto philanthropy,said in a recentFT interview.“But when wewant to improvelives, you’ve gotto deal with morebasic things, like child survival,child nutrition.” He comparesthe high-tech Infosys officesin Bangalore to homes nearbywhere people live without toilets P

HoTo:REuTERS

urban problems. The idea is tostart in this ward of 150,000inhabitants, and then apply thesolutions that work to the wholeof Delhi. “We want people whohave good solutions to use thisward like a laboratory. We willmake sure it is replicable.”

Corruption and inefficiencyare rampant largely becauseofficials and workers are nei-ther penalised for failure norrewarded for real successes, shebelieves. one answer is to per-suade residents to ensure theyreceive the services they are due.

To that end she has extractedfrom the bureaucracy a list ofmunicipal projects – a commonsource of corruption – and isasking residents to report (forexample) on whether a contrac-tor has indeed repaired a sectionof pavement for which it waspaid Rs500,000 ($8,000).

It is not easy to overturn asystem of entrenched corrup-tion, especially in the face ofingenious opponents seekingto defend their turf. Ward 103introduced a system of publicreporting on refuse collection,rewarding drivers and workerswho scored well and eventuallysucceeding in re-establishing thedaily rounds provided for in thesanitation contact.

or running water. Technology, hesays, is amazing, but “it doesn’tget down to the people most inneed in anything near the time-frame we should want it to”.

The winner and runner-upin the Asia-Pacific category ofthis year’s FT/Citi IngenuityAwards are both Indian projectsthat apply this basic formula:meeting an urgent need with theresources available.

“There are hundreds of non-governmental organisations thatwalk in [to slums] every day,and government officials promis-ing this and that, but hardly everdelivering anything. If you wantto make a dent in poverty youhave to take a multidimensionalapproach,” said Elaine Ghosh,who with her husband set upParinaam, the regional awardwinner (profiled on page 14).

Indian cities teem with goodideas. The country’s IT groupsprovide services to the world,and its bureaucrats sit on count-less committees formed to helpthe poor and develop the nation.

The problem is that notenough people actually do any-thing. For that reason alone, thework of people such as Bhargava,Ghosh and, yes, Gates deservesthe support of Indians and therest of the world. n

“Governmentofficialspromisethis and thatbut hardlyever deliveranything”

Mean streets:foodvendorsin India areoften forcedtohandoverprotectionmoney tocorrupt policeofficers

Greennet:JaypeeSports Cityis designedtoharnessresourcessuch as rainandwind

commentpeterellis

Our cities have beenshaped by theindustrial revolu-tion. They are com-plex machines that

bring together people to facilitatethe production and movementof goods and ideas. But they arehighly reactive mechanisms thatgrow rapidly and chaotically, alltoo often without a guiding stra-tegic vision. In addition, muchof the technology that supportsthem is obsolete, unsustainableand a significant contributor toglobal warming.

The industrial city evolvedin opposition to nature. Now,we are able to create the city inharmony with nature.

We can design cities that con-sume significantly less water andenergy than our present urbanhabitats. We can make themcompletely regenerative organ-isms, creating and recycling alltheir resources.

In India, where hundreds ofmillions of people are migratingfrom rural to urban areas, anentirely new city for 1m peopleis being designed. Jaypee SportsCity, 50km south of New Delhi,provides an opportunity to makea living, breathing metropolisthat harvests and recycles itsresources. owned entirely by theJaypee Group, an engineering tohospitality conglomerate, it is aunique example of private enter-prise developing an entire citywithout government support.

India is running out of waterand is becoming hotter. Theglaciers of the Himalayas, a lifesource for India, are diminish-ing year by year. We therefore

Wecanmakecities that arecompletelyregenerativeorganisms

amount of electricity requiredfrom the grid. Coupled with effi-cient building techniques, we canreduce urban energy and wateruse by 50 per cent.

With Jaypee Sports City wehad a clean slate and a singleowner, allowing us to integratemany systems into one struc-ture that harnesses the forces ofnature. But how do we restructureexisting cities where much of ourinfrastructure already exists?We cannot do it overnight. But

over 50 years, say, allinfrastructure willhave to be replaceddue to wear and tear.As that takes placewe can systematicallyupgrade our water,waste, energy andinformation net-

works with advanced sustainablesystems.

Several cities are experiment-ing with converting all forms ofwaste to energy. Solar and windpower are also becoming increas-ingly viable. We can bring natureback into our cities, not onlyfor its beauty but also to cleanand cool our air, and to assist incapturing storm water. This isalready happening. Many citiesare building green infrastructure,tearing up asphalt for bioswales– organic landscape features thatcapture and filter water – whilecreating networks of pedestrianand bicycle paths. Such elementscan be stitched together to make agreen net that will provide a neworganic shape for cities.

But all this requires a strategicvision which understands that allurban systems are interdependentand that, when in harmony withnature, the result of those systemscan be so much greater than thesum of their parts. nPeter Ellis is the architect of Jay-pee Sports City and leads CannonDesign’s urban and city designpractice

created a vast network of parksas an urban reservoir to collectas much monsoon rainwater asthe city consumes and feed it intothe depleted aquifers. To coolthe city, we designed the parksand streets to channelthe prevailing winds.And all buildings areorientated so to avoidthe worst of the sun’sheat. These simplebut effective tech-niques, long forgottenin the industrial city,contribute to a more liveableurban climate.

The parks also provide pedes-trian and bicycle paths as wellas public transit routes. Busesrun through the parks, avoiding

traffic hold-ups on the roads. Asthe city grows, bus routes willbe supplemented by a metro.All schools, retail centres andcivic amenities connect to transitroutes in the green net.

In every neighbourhood, wedraw water from aquifers andpurify, distribute and recycle itafter treatment in a plant thatconverts human and organicwaste to methane gas. The gaspowers the city, reducing the

Natural harmonyIn India an entirely newcity is being built, providing atemplate for energy efficiency and recycling resources

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EuropEanalysis

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From Nîmes to Naples,from Aachen to Ath-ens, Europe’s moderncities are proud pro-tectors of an extraor-

dinary cultural and architecturalheritage from the ancient Greek,Roman and medieval worlds.Yet in 1968, nothing prepareda communist Bulgarian armyconstruction corps for whatthey discovered in Plovdiv, thenation’s second city, when theystarted hollowing out a hill toexpand a municipal sports field.

It was nothing less than oneof Europe’s most perfectly pre-served Roman amphitheatres,dating from the second centuryAD, an era when there were nosouth Slavs in the region – letalone communists – and Plovdivwas known as Philippopolis.

Since the late 1960s archae-ologists have made more andmore discoveries inPlovdiv, unearth-ing treasures fromRoman, Thracian,Byzantine andOttoman times.But only now, afterBulgaria’s entry intothe EU in 2007, canPlovdiv draw on thefinancial resourcesand planning capacity needed tointegrate conservation projectswith the desperately neededmodernisation of a city that ishome to 340,000 people.

Similar challenges facemunicipal authorities in London,Rome and other European citiesof ancient origin as they clearland for housing, offices andtransport infrastructure. But incomparison with Plovdiv thesecities are dripping in wealth.

Plovdiv’s urban renewal owesalmost everything to carefullyevaluated financial grants fromthe EU, in the form of regionalaid funds, and from other inter-national sponsors, including

Growing painsThe continent’s cities continue to strugglewith the integrationof the ancient andmodern, andwithmigration-relatedethnic tensions,writesTonyBarber

Across Europe,urbandistrictsseethewithcompetition forjobs, housingandwelfare

Life on theedge:migrant

workersmake their

homeon theoutskirts of

Moscow➤PhOTO:REUTERS

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of the communist era. Theywould be instantly recognisableto any post-communist politi-cian or business executive inKraków, Poland’s second city,which epitomises the glory andgrace of the central EuropeanRenaissance but which, duringthe era of harebrained commu-nist industrialisation, began alsoto suffer from alarmingly highlevels of pollution.

Plovdiv and Kraków differfrom other, larger European

cities, however, inthat their socialand administrativefabric appears tobe under less strainfrom fast-changingpopulation profiles.In both west-ern and easternEurope, manyurban districts

seethe with competition for jobs,housing, education and welfarebetween less well-off native resi-dents and hard-pressed recentsettlers, some from the lands ofvanished European empires butothers from farther afield.

Such tensions flared inOctober in Biryulyovo, one ofMoscow’s most economicallydeprived suburbs, after the mur-der of a 25-year-old ethnic Rus-sian man by an assailant whom

PhOTOS:cORBIS

;REUTERS

the governments of Iceland,Japan, Norway and Switzerland.

It is a work in progress, butthe results to date are impres-sive. Away from the amphithea-tre, Plovdiv’s architectural richesare buried so deep and packedso densely in the city centrethat planners and engineerscame up with the arresting ideaof creating a system of under-ground, museum-like spaces,lying directly beneath a busypedestrian shopping avenue andeasily accessible tothe public. Amongthe most attractivesites is the Trakartcultural centre,which boasts amagnificent collec-tion of ancient floormosaics and is usedfor intimate jazzconcerts at night.

Undeniably, the overall qual-ity of life in Plovdiv still leavessomething to be desired. Aver-age incomes are low and muchof the housing stock is decrepit.According to a study publishedin October by the EuropeanEnvironment Agency, the city hasthe EU’s second highest air pollu-tion levels after Pernik, a smallerBulgarian city 180km to the west.

Fundamentally, however,these problems are the legacy

the victim’s girlfriend describedas coming from the caucasus.This murder sparked a riot inwhich hundreds of Russianssmashed up the neighbourhood’shuge vegetable warehouse, afacility that employs numerousworkers from the former Sovietregions of the caucasus andcentral Asia.

The incidents highlightedmany of the economic, socialand political ills of contempo-rary Moscow. According to IlyaBudraitskis, a Moscow-basedhistorian and cultural activist,unregistered migrants fromthe caucasus, central Asia andsoutheast Asia account for1m-2m of the Russian capital’s15m population.

“They are engaged in allsectors of the city’s economy –building, housing infrastructure,transport, retail and wholesaletrade,” he wrote in an analysisfor the LeftEast website.

Biryulyovo, where many ofthe migrants live and work, liesfar from central Moscow, hasno metro line and suffers fromenvironmental degradation andcrowded, poor-quality housing.Alcoholism and drug abuse arerife. In the words of Budraitskis,“the whole district resembles aghetto, where migrants and mar-

EuropEanalysis

Bulgarianchallenges:a restoredRomanstadium inPlovdiv, right,and trafficgridlock inSofia, below

Fundamentallytheproblemsof cities such asPlovdiv are thelegacyof thecommunist era

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ginalised local residents havebeen accumulating grievancesagainst each other.”

The situation cries out forprompt action both to integratethe migrants more effectivelyinto their local communityand to channel some of centralMoscow’s prosperity towardsBiryulyovo. Unfortunately, anideal opportunity to presentsuch arguments was thrownaway during this year’s mayoralelection campaign in Moscow.

Sergei Sobyanin, the pro-Kremlin incumbent and even-tual winner, blamed the city’seconomic and ethnic troublessquarely on the migrants. Butso too did Alexei Navalny, astandard-bearer of the demo-cratic opposition to VladimirPutin, Russia’s president, buta strident Russian nationalistnonetheless.

On the opposite edge ofEurope, the initiatives of munici-pal authorities and civic groupsin Dublin provide a promising,if not yet entirely successfulexample of how to tame nativ-ist prejudices. The city councilof the Irish capital has operatedan anti-racism campaign on itstransport system every year since2010, and it supports annualcultural festivals that embrace

diversity such as the chineseNew Year and Diwali, the hindufestival of lights.

Such actions reflect theimpact of the astonishing 143 percent growth in Ireland’s non-native population from 224,000in 2002 to 544,000 in 2011– about one in eight of the repub-lic’s total number of inhabitants.

Well over 100 different nation-alities now live in the capital,and the disgust with which manyDubliners reacted to one well-publicised racist incident givesgrounds for encouragement.

It involved Úna-MinhKavanagh, a Vietnam-bornwoman who was adopted inIreland as a baby, grew up fluentin the Irish language as wellas English and now works as ajournalist and blogger.

After a group of teenage boysinsulted and spat at her outsidea central Dublin hotel, she wrotein The Irish Times: “This is farfrom the first time I’ve beenracially abused … I don’t believeIreland is a racist society, butracists live among us.” her arti-cle drew expressions of shame,support and sympathy in onlinecomments.

As in Dublin, the financialcrisis and recession of the pastfive years have plunged the

southern Spanish city of Sevilleinto a host of problems involv-ing its migrant communities forwhich it was scarcely prepared.

In both cities the collapse ofthe construction and propertyindustries, and of parts of thebanking sector, threw migrantsout of work, threatened theirability to pay rents and mort-gages, and triggered a slumpin the tax revenues that pay for

urban services.In Seville, where

Romanians, Moroc-cans and Boliviansform the largestmigrant groups,thousands havesunk into a subter-ranean existence,without official

documents, that increases theirvulnerability.

Although no recent incidentin Seville compares with the riotin suburban Moscow, the undoc-umented status of migrants ineach city illustrates how someurban policy challenges are com-mon to east and west. The samegoes for the struggle to clean theair citizens breathe – and for theeffort to synthesise architecturalconservation with the demandsof modern life in a continent stillin search of unity. n

In Sevillethousands livea subterraneanexistencewithout officialdocuments

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It was a cold winter eveningin Bogotá. Drizzle wasfalling on the well-tendedgarden of a comfortablehouse in the city’s prosper-

ous northern suburb. Inside, agathering of Colombian profes-sionals had finished dinner and,flush with good food and wine,retired to sit by a roaring log fire.

They were successful, well-heeled and all old friends. Asservants brought coffee anddrinks, they discussed their sum-mer holidays in Europe, especiallya Madonna concert they hadbeen to in London’s Hyde Park.

“It was such fun!” chirped one,a mother of three in her early40s as she flicked her blondehair over her shoulder. “Wehad a picnic on the grass amidthe crowd. We’d bought ticketsmonths before – I so wanted tosee Madonna,” she said.

“What was best, though, washow everyone was mingling.That’s what I call economicdevelopment. There was no senseof rich or poor, of privileged peo-ple getting the best seats as theydo here. It was just a crowd whohad come out one night to havefun, safely, together.”

It was a revealing commentby a member of a social classbetter known for its snobberyand self-absorption than its self-knowledge. It was also a reflec-tion of how Latin America is oneof the most urbanised regions onthe globe – and one of the mostunequal, a place where the well-off and the poor rarely mingle.

There are many reasons forthis unfortunate segregation, butit has a particularly perniciouseffect: it creates unfamiliarityand ignorance across the socialclasses, and with that a breedingground for that most divisive ofhuman emotions – fear.

In many ways, Latin Americahas had a banner decade. To takejust one metric, more than 70mpeople have risen out of povertyto become part of an emergentmiddle class. Yet, at the sametime, this prosperity has notbeen matched by an increase inshared public spaces.

More than ever, the rich tendto live in gated enclaves protectedby bodyguards – for some, per-versely, a status symbol – in a kindof fur-lined rut. The less well-off,or the downright poor, live apartand rarely the twain shall meet –or at least not happily.

Such divisions are not a newfeature of urban geography.Plato wrote: “Any city, howeversmall, is in fact divided into two,one the city of the poor, the otherof the rich.” But in Latin Americathese divisions are exacerbatedby crime and violence that canturn many neighbourhoods – notjust the poorest ones, althoughthey suffer the most by far – intoplaces of terror and fear ratherthan opportunity.

Such segregation is morallyundesirable, in that it limits therichness of human interaction. Italso stunts “agglomeration eco-nomics”, the positive spilloversassociated with the greater

Bridging the gapEnlightenedplanners are trying to reversethe trend towards the segregationof richandpoor,writes JohnPaul Rathbone

latIn amerIcaanalysIs

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Great divides:homes for the

well-off and thepoor are clearlydemarcated in

SãoPaulo, Brazil

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E

Marcelo Ebrard, the formermayor of Mexico City, is anotherexample. I once asked him aboutthe underlying rationale thatlinked his apparently disparateinitiatives to improve publictransport, legalise gay marriageand decriminalise personal pos-session of drugs.

“It’s all about reducing fear,”he told me. “If people feel safe– from police persecution orstigmas about their sexuality – itchanges the tone of a city, andincreases social integration.”During his term as mayor, vio-lence fell notably too.

An obvious way to increasesocial integration is through bet-ter public transport. Again, thisis about more than providingbetter infrastructure. It is alsoabout changing public attitudes.

Take the rise of shared bicycleschemes. This is a worldwidephenomenon, but in Latin Amer-ica it comes with a difference.In London, for example, almosttwo-thirds of scheme users havea household income of morethan £50,000 a year.

In Latin America, by contrast,cycling is associated with beingpoor; the very rich prefer heli-copters or chauffeured cars. AsEnrique Peñalosa, another for-mer mayor of Bogotá, once said:“The mark of a truly advancedcity is not one where the poor use

PHoToS:rEuTErS;gETTY

population densities of cities.Thankfully, it is also a problemplanners and even entrepreneursare turning their attention to.

Colombia, by dint of its longhistory of violence, has pio-neered some of the most innova-tive schemes. one example isthe “social urbanism” of SergioFajardo, a PhD mathematicianand former mayor of Medellín.While in office between 2003and 2007, he built a series ofstriking buildings abutting someof the city’s most desperateslums, rather than in Medellín’sprosperous neighbourhoods.

“If you build a beautifullibrary in a poor neighbourhoodit gives people a sense of impor-tance. It raises their dignity andgives them access to goods suchas education,” he says. “It alsobrings visitors from other partsof the city, which encouragessocial integration.”

As with Fajardo’s, some ofthe best schemes to foster socialintegration take imaginativeforms.

Antanas Mockus, a formermayor of Bogotá (and, oddly,another mathematician) hiredmime artists to make fun oftraffic violators after he realisedColombians feared ridicule morethan being fined. The resultswere startling. Traffic fatalitiesdropped by half.

cars but one where the rich usepublic transport.”

not all successful urbanschemes are wacky. Some involvethe profit motive too. one of thebest I have seen is the project toregenerate Panama’s City’s colo-nial district, the Casco viejo, runby Fundación Calicanto, regionalwinner in the FT/Citi IngenuityAwards, profiled on page 18. Itis part funded by a former WallStreet attorney and his Pana-manian business partner whoseproperty brokerage’s charity armis seeking to redevelop PanamaCity’s crumbling and sometimesslummy colonial centre, whilemaintaining its social fabricby providing renovated socialhousing and jobs. The aim is tocreate a culturally lively neigh-bourhood where rich and poorcan live together. other colonialcities in the region, such asCartagena in Colombia, wheregentrification threatens to robthe port of its special character,should take note.

The only fear for the Casco isthat it is about to be encircledby a hideous six-lane ring road.This is fiercely opposed by theCasco community. Akin to put-ting a bridge across the grandCanyon, it will sap the Casco’sspecial character and imperil itsunesco World Heritage status.

It seems criminal that enlight-ened capitalism is rejuvenatingthe Casco, while the most crasskind of development is workingin the opposite direction. Somesay the ring road, which willconnect Panama City to outlyingsuburbs, is the price of progress.

But given how much hasalready been achieved in theCasco – the construction ofa vibrant and socially mixedcommunity – the cost of thatprogress is high. With a littleimagination – a tunnel, say,instead of a ring road – it is aprice that need not be paid. n

“If youbuild a beautiful libraryin apoor neighbourhood it givespeople a sense of importance”

latIn amerIcaanalysIs

Newdirections: aCali fashionshow, above,and cyclingis beingencouraged inBogotá,below, butthere is stillsomeway togobefore therich abandontheir cars

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commentJurIJParasZcZaK

Big cities could cuttheir operating costsby up to 50 per centif they were able toprovide the agencies

and companies that run theirinfrastructure access to data thecity itself generates.

That figure is based on anestimate by IBM, the computerservices group, of the 50 larg-est cities in the world. It foundthat cities lack information andthe tools to exchange it betweenmanagers and citizens.

As an example, a road agencymay give construction permitsto the water department anda private cable company with-out suggesting that they work

Stormdamage:using itsdata-analysismodels, Riocan allocateresourceseffectivelyto dealwithinfrastructureproblems

university’s Argonne nationalLaboratory, has created theurban Center for Computationand Data, while Carnegie Mel-lon university has launched aSmarter Infrastructure Labora-tory to study the effects of urbaninfrastructure on cities.

Creating and managingspatio-temporal data replacesa jumble of information withmeasurements that can be actedupon. In Dubuque, Istanbul andDublin planners have optimisedbus schedules and investigatednew routes based on usage andhousing patterns.

In Cambridge, ontario,multiple agencies now planlong-term maintenance budgetsco-operatively using this datarather than competing for fundsevery year.

Without data, financialresources are allocated based onhistorical precedent and notionsof equality. With data, a citymight see it is better to spend$5m on subway repairs now,rather than dividing the repairbudget evenly, because delayingthe subway repairs would cost$10m in two years and affect thelivelihood of passengers.

IBM’s experience fromroughly five years of work hasshown that the best way is tofocus on one domain and expandfrom that point. often infrastruc-ture analytics are a promisingstart. Data analytics lets citiesstart small and produce measur-able returns on investment in arelatively short time.

urban analytics hold thepromise of making cities moremanageable. Adopting thesemeasures will enable leaders toplan the wellbeing of their cities,citizens and companies intelli-gently into the future. nJurij Paraszczak is director ofResearch Industry Solutions andleader of the Research SmarterCities programme at IBM

together to dig up a road at thesame time to reduce costs andtraffic disruption.

Stories like this stem fromthe fact that cities do not co-ordinate activities in a commoncalendar, using a common map.Every department collects andkeeps its own data.

Cities can do a much better jobof maintaining their infrastruc-ture if they monitor assets suchas roads, pipes and buildings.Through the use of what academ-ics call “spatio-temporal infor-mation”, modern data-analysistechniques can highlight problemareas and predict breakdowns.

These techniques identifycommon patterns of responseand behaviour. using weatherforecasts, power cuts of above-ground power lines can be pre-dicted through statistical analy-sis. rio de Janeiro has built anemergency management systemthat relies heavily on weather andflood prediction. The city usesthose models to assign emergencycrews to specific locations.

This coupling of physical andstatistical models by locationand time is becoming an aca-demic discipline.

Dublin City university islaunching a masters in comput-ing focusing on data analytics.The Center for urban Scienceand Progress, an amalgamationof universities, companies andcity agencies based in Brooklyn,is now offering an urban systemsmasters degree.

The university of Chicago,working with Skidmore, owings& Merrill, the architects, and the

Information futureCities can runmore efficiently by analysingdata theyalready generate andapplying that knowledgebetter

CyclicalmovesYounghigh-earners are flocking back toUS citieswhile the poor are nowmore likely to befound in the suburbs,writesEdward Luce

North AmericAANAlysis

Photo:EyEvin

E

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Bill de Blasio’s land-slide election asmayor of new yorkin early novemberhas raised hopes

among US liberals of a new eraof “urban progressivism”.

De Blasio’s campaign focusedon new york’s sharp incomedivide. the wilder supporterson the left hope his victory willusher in a new era in US citypolitics, much like the reform-ers 100 years ago did by apply-ing their zeal to the fire-pronesweatshops of Brooklyn and therotting stockyards of Chicago.

the new mayor’s “tale of twonew yorks” might find an echoin other exorbitantly pricedcities around the world, suchas London. But his victory alsohighlights a growing tensionwithin US liberalism: the mostprogressive parts of the US, suchas new york and San Francisco,are also its most unequal.

the urban revival in theUS is to a largeextent driven bythe growing shiftof young, educatedand mostly liberal-minded people tothe cities. Whetherthey work in tech-nology, design orfinance, they tendto be high-earners.they are the reason places likenew york do well. they are alsolargely why the middle class canno longer afford to live there.

Any peek into the future ofUS cities has to identify thestructural forces driving theirresurgence. in 2011, populationgrowth in the cities outstrippedthat in their suburbs for the firsttime since 1920, according to theUS census. Cities also grew morethan five times faster than theirexurbs, which spread so rapidlyin the two decades prior to the2008 financial meltdown.

the pattern is common tomany, but by no means all, citiesacross the Midwest and southas well as on the two coasts.Even Detroit, which earlier thisyear went into bankruptcy – thelargest city failure in history – iswitnessing a downtown boom.

All the signs are that therevitalisation will continue. Asa rule, the denser the city, themore economically successful itis. Arguably the biggest factordriving US cities’ renaissance istheir lifestyle allure to the mil-lennial generation (young peopleborn in the 1980s or 1990s).

in ways never hinted at bytheir elders, young Americansare rejecting the trappings ofsuburbia. What their parents andgrandparents found safe and spa-cious, millennials see as stiflingand dull. Most educated youngAmericans would happily opt foran urban bike share over a tank-sized car. in the past four years,Americans have been driving

1,200 miles a yearless on average – thefirst ever decline inUS car usage.

Falling vehicleuse is no doubt mir-rored by the growthin micro-breweries,yoga centres andboutique cafés. USurban revival has a

lot to do with changing tastes.it is also about economics. in

his book The Rise of the CreativeClass, Richard Florida, oneof the leading scholars of the“new urbanism”, shows that themore diverse and tolerant a city,the more likely it is to attracteducated and enterprising peo-ple, and to post higher rates ofeconomic growth. that in turnis likely to spur inequality andpush property prices beyond thereach of the less creative classes.

Urban patterns are unfold-ing just as Florida predicted.

Themostprogressiveparts of theUS,such asNewYork, are also itsmost unequal

Hiphangout:Williamsburg, aneighbourhoodof Brooklyn,NewYork,renowned forits increasinggentrification ➤

though we live inan age of telecom-muting, entrepre-neurs prefer tocongregate. the cityis where serendip-ity is most likely tostrike.

if the city isincreasingly the future of USgrowth – and research by theBrookings Metropolitan PolicyProgram, a Washington think-tank, shows the urban growthbias in the US is intensifying– the suburbs are becoming itsback-office dormitories. the bustaking those educated 20-some-things each morning from SanFrancisco to Google’s headquar-ters in Mountain view crossestraffic bringing the cleaners,waiters, domestic helpers andshop assistants the other way.

in 2011, for the first time, amajority of Americans livingin poverty were located in thesuburbs rather than the city. thegreat white flight of the mid-dle classes from the cities in the1960s and 1970s is turning into

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the change in manufacturingtechnology – and the rise in 3Dprinting – is giving rise to moresmall-scale and capital-intensiveproduction, which can more eas-ily take place in cities.

the shift is still in its infancy,but the days of large suburbanfactories employing thousands ofhigh-school leavers are waning.the production unit of the futurewill be staffed by graduates intheir downtown milieu.

the same applies to the infor-mation technology sector, whichincreasingly is moving from thesuburbs to the city. Most of therecent social media start-ups inCalifornia, such as twitter, Zyngaand Pinterest, have chosen SanFrancisco rather than Siliconvalley as their headquarters. thebig Silicon valley employers,such as Google, lay on buses toand from San Francisco, wherea growing proportion of theiremployees prefer to live.

According to Florida, venturecapital going to urban start-upshas overtaken that for suburbanbusinesses for the first time.

a “great inversion”, in which thepoor are priced further and fur-ther from the city by its spread-ing gentrification.

the reversal is not as raciallyuniform as the original exodus– there are far more educatedblack or hispanic people todaythan a generation ago. they alsohead for the city. But the classeffect is more plainly visible.

What will become of the los-ers? the danger is that a dividebased on differences in educa-tion will only be reinforced bythe effect of property prices. thefurther low-end service workersare priced away from the city, theworse the quality of the schooldistrict, and the longer the dailycommute to work.

the car on the open road– that symbol of Americanfreedom – has morphed into aform of mobile incarcerationfor millions of US commuters.their economic banishment inturn will reduce the likelihoodthat their children will be able tobreak into a better zip code.

De Blasio’s tale of two citiesis better viewed as a nationaltale of downtowns versus theirenvirons. his plans to reduce thedivide between rich and poorwill confront forces far largerthan those affecting new york.Most big cities in the US, includ-ing Rahm Emanuel’s Chicagoand Eric Garcetti’s Los Angeles,are doing better than they were10 or 20 years ago. Like newyork, they are also increasinglybeyond the reach of people lowerdown the economic ladder.

in the absence of decent fed-eral government fromWashing-ton – which plays host, ironically,to another thriving downtown –urban politicians such as de Bla-sio are likely to keep cropping up.A rising share of the economicaction in the US is heading to itscities. the same looks like beingtrue of its politics. n

Bridging thegap: NewYorkmayorBill de Blasiowants to closethedividebetween richandpoor

The greatwhite flight ofthe 1960s and1970s is turninginto a “greatinversion”

North AmericAANAlysis

Taking flight:when thesuburbswereable to raisetheir owntaxes, thecity’s fatewassealed

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Cars put Detroit on themap, but cars meantroads, and most ofthose led away fromthe Motor City.

to make better sense of thecity’s economic decline, we mighthead out to the suburbs. As thisis also a drive back into history,we might choose a Model t,henry Ford’s affordable car forthe masses, produced from 1908.

the Model t was immediatelypopular with farmers who madetheir living outside the city, andtravelling salesmen. Ford himselfpredicted: “We shall solve thecity problem by leaving the city.”

i propose we go 20 mileswest, passing through Dearborn,site of Ford’s headquarters, to mychildhood home, Garden City.

Like much US suburbandevelopment, Garden City’sgrowth was a product of theautomotive revolution. Duringthe 1920s, car registrations inthe US rose 150 per cent, whilethe suburbs of its largest citiesgrew twice as fast as the urbancentres.

With the cost of propertyaccessible only by car lowerthan in areas served by publictransport, the great interwar

Wewereusingthe city andclaiming itssuccesses evenaswewithdrewfrom it

By the late 1950s, suburban-ites had less and less direct con-tact with Detroit, yet when wewent on holiday, we continuedto tell people we were Detroit-ers, partly because we retained anostalgic attachment to the city,expressing pride in the automo-tive dream, our sports teams andMotown music.

We were using the city andclaiming its successes even aswe withdrew from it. in whatDetroit’s radical geographer,William Bunge, called “the greatAmerican tax dodge”, subur-banisation was part of the shiftof people, resources, industryand commerce from the city tosurrounding areas, all of whichwere busily separating throughincorporation. Separating andsegregating – suburban Detroitwas, and largely remains, closedto black residence.

in July 2013, watching thetwitter feeds in the hours fol-lowing Detroit’s bankruptcyannouncement, it was easy tonote the suburbanites, many ofwhom reiterated racially biasedinterpretations. Suburbaniteshave blamed black Detroit forthe city’s problems since beforethe disorders of 1967. As a childof Garden City, i recogniseour failure to see the violenceembedded in the segregated sub-urban spaces that were so closeto Detroit and yet so far.

time to turn around. i pro-pose we abandon the Model tand return to Detroit in a new,post-bailout car, perhaps a FordFusion hybrid, to showhenryFord history is not bunk; we canacknowledge our part in the his-torical disinvestment of Detroit,and we aim to solve the city prob-lem by returning to the city.nAmy Kenyon is a historian andvisiting lecturer at Goldsmiths,University of London, and theauthor ofDreaming Suburbiaand the novel Ford Road

era of suburban developers hadarrived.

When Garden City incorpo-rated as a home-rule city in 1933,its separation from Detroit wascomplete – it could keep the gainsof its growing tax base in localcoffers. By the end of the 1950s,the decade of the next suburbanboom, an additional 22 subur-ban municipalities had incorpo-rated themselves around Detroit.

industrial suburbanisationgathered pace during the sameperiod, with Ford, Chryslerand General Motors building25 plants in suburban areasbetween 1947 and 1958. therewas a corresponding drop inDetroit’s share of the region’smanufacturing employment.

Follow the money, they say.Supermarkets, filling stations,fast-food restaurants and indoorshopping centres began to appear

along the suburbanstrip roads, whileKern’s, Detroit’ssecond-largestdepartment store,closed in 1959,removing almost anentire commercialblock from the citytax rolls.

Road to ruinHow the suburbs acceleratedDetroit’s downfall

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Abhijit Banerjeeindia-born abhijitbanerjee is the FordFoundation interna-tional Professor ofeconomics at the mas-sachusetts institute ofTechnology. He is oneof the most importantcontributors to the fieldof development eco-nomics and co-foundedthe Poverty action lab.His ideas are outlined inhis award-winning best-seller Poor Economics.

JohnBowisOBEa former UK member ofparliament and memberof the european parlia-ment, john bowis servedas both a health and atransport minister in theconservative govern-ment in the 1990s. Heis currently honorarypresident of Health Firsteurope, a non-profit alli-ance that seeks equitableaccess to healthcare.

Sir Terry FarrellOne of the world’s mostrespected architects,Sir Terry Farrell isresponsible for an arrayof highly recognisablebuildings. His practicehas huge experience ininfrastructure as well astransport and in settingout the frameworks forthe way cities will grow.

EdwinHeathcoteedwin Heathcote is theFT’s architecture anddesign critic. He is alsoan architect, a writer,designer and co-founderof architectural hardwaremanufacturer izé. He isa contributor to inter-national architecturaljournals and has writtennumerous books.

Prof CarloRattiProf ratti is an architectand engineer practicingin his native italy andteaching in the US,where he set up miT’sSenseable city lab.He holds a number ofpatents and has co-authored more than200 publications. Hiswork with Senseableis based around thestudy of the urbanenvironment andtransforming ourunderstanding of cities.

JaniceMuthuijanice muthui is foun-dation manager of theKenya-based commu-nity cooker Foundation,overall winner of lastyear’s awards, and hasworked with the refugeeagency UNHcr.

BrunoLanvinThe executive directorof the insead businessschool’s european com-petitiveness initiative isa former senior executiveat theWorld bank andthe UN. He has beena commissioner of thebroadband commis-sion and a member oftheWorld economicForum’s global advisorycouncil on the Future ofgovernment.

Anne-MarieSlaughteranne-marie Slaughterheads the New americaFoundation, a USpublic policy institute,and is a professoremeritus of politics andinternational affairs atPrinceton University.From 2009 to 2011 shewas director of policyplanning for the USDepartment of State, thefirst woman to hold thatposition.

LuanneZurloafter a career as aWall Street securitiesanalyst, luanne Zurlofounded the non-profitWorldfund in 2002,aimed at using educa-tion to fight poverty inlatin america. Witha network of partner-ships, it has launchedinnovative teachertraining programmesand literacy, numeracyand arts projects acrossthe continent.

Profiles of the judges

The judges for the secondyear of the FT/citi ingenu-ity awards cover the broadspectrum of issues thataffect cities all around the

world. co-chaired by edwin Heath-cote and bruno lanvin, the panel wasbolstered this year by the addition oftwo members.

janice muthui represented thecommunity cooker Foundation,which won the overall award as wellas the energy category last year. Shehas extensive experience workingwith refugees and in development law.anne-marie Slaughter, head of a publicpolicy institute and an academic, hasrecently been prominent in the debateon obstacles to full gender equality.