翻译:刘琼琳Text: Niall G. KirkwoodTranslator: LIU Qiong-lin
弹性城市:印度孟买的索引
作者:尼尔·G·柯克伍德
翻译:刘琼琳
Text: Niall G. Kirkwood
Translator: LIU Qiong-lin
弹性被定义为“一个生态系统能适应干扰而不会崩溃的能力”。因此弹性是赋予人类和生态系统恢复的能力和未来的适应能力以及可能给予人类运用知识来预测和计划未来的能力。随着强调和谐、人本主义和可持续的风景园林形式、城市化的进程、未来城市和社区的目的,拟解决以下问题:当代风景园林实践中涉及到我所描述的“弹性景观”的关键思想是什么?它的历史根源是什么,又是如何被组织起来的? 哪一部分是传统、有价值的、平衡的和能适应整个过程的?两个主题将被引入来应对和探索“弹性景观”的理念——全球环境下的后工业景观的角色,以及尤其在快速发展的国家如印度发现的非正式景观中的设计和基础设施问题。将通过印度城市孟买的案例详述上述主题,并会探讨是否以及为何大都市中心和它们的“弹性景观”是可持续的、能保持社会公正的,包括可以解决超越了社会、政治和文化的环境的生态环境观念。
弹性土地;景观生态;景观设计;可持续性;土地复垦;生态系统设计和修复
修回日期:2016-01-15
“很快就会有比生活在澳洲这个国家更多的人口生活在孟买这个城市。印度的主要城市的入口处就这样写道。孟买是印度最大的城市,在这个区域内居住着如此庞大数量的民众,这完全是对城市活力的一项巨大考验,一个测试:1 400万人口的居民数量使孟买成为地球上之最。孟买是这个地球上城市化未来趋势的小缩影。上帝请拯救我们吧!”
——沙克图•梅塔(Suketu Mehta)(《极限城市孟买的失和得》)[1]
弹性被定义为“一个生态系统能适应干扰而不会崩溃的能力”。①因此弹性赋予人类和生态系统都有恢复和适应的能力并给予人类运用知识来预测和计划未来的能力。城市日益成为人员、资本、文化和信息的全球交流中心。在过去30年它们的角色如金融控制中心的作用不断扩大,创造出了一种新型蔓延类型,通常是多中心的弹性城市群。现有超过20个过1 000万居住人口的特大城市区域,也有将近450个过一百万以上居住人口的城市地区。统计起来将是超过10亿的人却居住在地球上相对较小面积的表面。若它们再进一步扩大,就会形成超过5 000万居民的城市化地区,他们的足迹将直接影响地球的气候变化和生态平衡以及现有的和新兴的城市居民生活。因此本文将研究重点放在现代特大型城市的都市景观演变,尤其是印度次大陆的极端环境和过度拥挤的城市中心现象,专注于印度城市孟买(图1)。
当论及孟买的弹性景观,则是讨论强烈的美、情感、意义、生态、耐心和时间,并引入了潜在的、固有的、矛盾的世界性景观:一个迁移和回归、变异、自我分裂、爱、死亡与重生的景观。
栖息在海洋上但仍锚固在印度大陆的土壤中、富可敌国却穷得令人心酸的、历史悠久的贸易港口,而现在是一个现代化的全球企业中心同时兼有类似家庭的多样街道微型企业,过度拥挤的社会分裂但仍共生的多元种族背景和宗教,有一个城市景观和遗产建筑的核心却覆盖着不堪重负的基础设施如下水道、供水系统、道路、铁路,贫瘠的土地上不断擅自占用边界空地的激增和扩散的棚户小屋(或jopadpattis)。孟买的工业和金融资本仍占据着印度的主导地位——一片地理资源丰富、生态适应、创新、勤勉、紧张且人口密集、卫生落后但有弹性的城市土地,地处闷热的环境,被季风降雨湿透着,随着“……各种诱惑和被涡轮增压的雄心”②在经济和文化中波动。
最初的孟买市区(岛城)是由栖息在印度西海岸的撒尔塞特半岛(Salsette Island)的7个岛屿组成的,随着孟买郊区(Bombay Suburban District) 和 东 部 郊 区(Eastern Suburbs)包括新孟买(New Bombay)的创建,孟买逐渐发展为一个大都市区。孟买作为印度经济快速增长和人口膨胀时期中建立起的特大型城市,是极易被众人关注和记载到的。在印度没有哪个地方比孟买市区(岛城)更能体现出这一活力。作为拥有1 400万人口的都市,总体人口密度是每平方英里(2.59km2)17 550人,同时大孟买区域有2 100万人口。孟买中心城区的部分地区的人口密度是每平方英里(2.59km2)100万人,这与世界上任何一个地方相比都是世界上人口聚集数量最多的。预计孟买市区(岛城)的人口将会从1 400万上升到2015年的2 190万。除了紧迫需要的规划问题如交通、住房、公共卫生、城市洪水和卫生设施等需要被解决,人口过剩也是一个首要问题。
这是一片辛勤劳作的土地,一个被脆弱且有弹性的人群拖累的城市,受海洋的限制,赋予了各种神圣的意义,充满了劳动的汗水和季风降雨,被破坏的自然体系和一个摇摇欲坠的和破旧不堪的结构所困的种族。正如VS Napaul所写到的“一边说珍惜,一边不考虑它的损伤瓦解而毫无为憾地持续使用。”[2]这里是非常不适宜居留的城市环境,大多数的居民并不认为获得住房、水、电、卫生设施、开放空间、清新的空气、快捷的运输等基本物质是理所当然的,有超过60%的城市人口没有正式的住房。相反52 000个贫民窟以超过每平方英里(2.59km2)525 000人的人口密度容纳着800万城市居民,其余的60%的居民住在街道的路面,称之为路面居民。即使对于那些获得一室公寓、公共交通和卫生设施的居民,城市目前也尽是完全不足的基础设施、可怕的交通堵塞、破旧的开放空间。孟买在福布斯全球生活品质调查的218个城市中排名第163位,根据经济学人智库(Economist Intelligence Unit)的艰辛等级,在130个城市中排名第124位。
当城市重塑其肌理、建筑物、基础设施和景观空间的过程中,我们能发现有5大趋势。
第一个趋势是重点扩充贸易和经济增长,根据这个海岛城市的历史,让城市形成向北和向东扩张的结果。从小渔村到商埠、到东印度公司、再到纺织厂区、最后成为金融贸易建筑群。
第二个趋势是行政管辖。20世纪60年代中期印度共和国建立以后,孟买成为马哈拉施特拉邦(Maharashtra)的首府。城市景观的最大特点即大规模建设住宅群、商业区和基础设施。就在这个时期,在空间使用和生存问题上,在有漏洞的法规、大众政治和战术谈判支配下贫民窟渐渐开始出现在密集的城市居住区。
第三大趋势是关系到经济复苏的构建社会议程、解决当地人福利和公共健康需求问题,及更普遍财富分配的区域性问题。
第四个趋势是强调未来城市新的大型工程和大规模基础设施建设的重要性,如最近的班德拉—沃里跨海大桥项目(Bandra-Worli Sea Link),其带来了一系列显而易见的好处,带动了城市重新复苏的诸多效应。
第五个趋势是给城市美容,这是非常务实的。需要精确得当的使用建筑材料,不能再忽视这些材料的风化,破损和过度使用问题;关注文化、了解自己的弱点;没有什么比拥有逐步增加小规模项目来实现变革、引起重要的议题的能力更重要的了。一个例子就是Chickhlwadi卫生设施项目。孟买有大约一半的人口缺乏卫生设施,如自来水和污水连接器。这个项目包括了社区公共厕所的设计、构建和集体维护。它们包括被隔离开的男人、女人和小孩的空间。建设资金来自邦或直治市,同时它们还必须确保能给这个街区提供水和电。
虽然这5个趋势在城市的演变中已经或正以恰当的方式发挥作用,但也还有其他的设计活动可以在根基上对未来城市的形成产生更大影响。在本文的后面部分我想围绕着孟买,构架一个设计主题、环境、探索和猜想的索引形式③去客观地平衡作用于城市中的各方参与者、各个角度、多种推动力及影响。索引(index),最初来自拉丁语的意思是“发现者”或“指示物”,它是非常正式的、客观的文字和图形结构。它强调了一种有时复杂的、浑沌的、莫测高深的场所、文本、位置、或一组空间或状态(孟买常常会出现这种场景)的精神和物质序列。这是当前有且只有以包含过去和现在、理想和现实、神话和魔法的方式去破译孟买的城市景观。这里的故事更多地依赖于日常和季节性的潮起潮落而不是线性叙事,这样可能会浮现更全面的和富含表情的弹性的城市生活和嵌入式的设计。
3.1地图集(Atlas)
第一项索引是地图集,这是一种地理学。孟买是由两个截然不同的区域组成:孟买市区(常称为岛城)和孟买郊区,形成两个独立的马哈拉施特拉邦的地区。这个城市是印度人口最多的城市,也是世界上第二个人口数量最多的城市。它如果包括郊区新孟买(Navi Mumbai)和孟买的卫星城塔那(Thane),就约有1 900-2 000万人口,形成了全球第4大城市群(图2)。
撒尔塞特岛屿的438km2被孟买覆盖,其中近1/5的面积是属于国家公园。这意味着都市面积被压缩到约350km2。这里的总体居住密度高度拥挤,大约是伦敦居住密度的7倍。其公共开放空间是有限的,只有城市面积的1%。孟买的富裕阶层生活在一个沿着城市的南北轴拉伸的走廊区域。这里的高层住宅被密集的、低层寮屋住宅包围着。缺乏投资意味着城市基础设施无法满足不断增长的人口需求。孟买这座城市本身是被剥夺政治权利的重要形式:尽管它提供给马哈拉施特拉邦税收的最大份额(70%),但只有一小部分回归这个城市。更重要的是,邦政府控制着城市功能的运作,而不是城市本身。因此孟买很少去建立或维护基础设施。事实上,自从1947年英国撤离印度之后,很少有基础设施大规模创建。
3.2承载能力
这个课题思路是结合场地和“承载能力”来研究。承载能力是支持在孟买城市地区供给且必须的基础设施如水、电力、卫生、社区设施和食物。印度和孟买利用一切物质资源来生存,包括达到极限承载能力的土地,因此相比北美或欧洲的条件,最基本和最必须要考虑的是加强可持续性(图3)。但正如我们已经发现的,可持续性作为衡量生活质量和健康的一项措施有其使用的局限性。人口生长率和不断增加的城市密度使这片土地负担重重,最终人口数量本身无逆转的希望。真正的问题仍存在着,需要多少生产型土地、水资源环境系统和废物管理系统才可以无限期地支持孟买人口目前的消费水平需要?随着城市人口的增长速度越来越快和不断的消费,会令这些都市系统发生什么情况呢?在试图解决这些问题中一个更为根本的问题出现了——什么构成了孟买的人口过剩?
符合孟买城市条件的承载能力,是要能支持当代和后代且自然资源不被退化的自然、社会、文化和经济环境限制的特定区域内的居民数量。任何给定区域的承载能力都是不固定的、可通过技术手段来改变和改善。但环境变差,承载能力就会收缩,这将导致不能再支撑它当初的人数。在此背景下,研究更发展了这个想法,以证实特定地区的承载能力可以汇总制定出一个模式并融入到2011大都市计划(2011 Metropolitan Plan)中。但同时也引出了是否能定义可持续性的量度问题,这尚未包含有关解决资源过度利用和环境质量恶化的隐含假设问题。
3.3拼贴画
值得注意的是一些大都市的大型中心特别是亚洲的特大城市,他们都非常严谨地控制和保护它们的资源;另一些大型中心则比较不安分,在不同发展阶段中转变成新的用途。但也有其他类似孟买这样的城市,并未很好的管理拥有的物质和文化资源,还停留在凌乱未分类的原料阶段。像路面拾荒者一般,他们总徘徊着、发现了并拔起有趣的就使用,或能被出售或再次被收购的就使用,甚至是发现未来某一天可派上用场的就留下。整个过程中,缺乏任何利用资源的规定,应该如何被归类和最合理地使用资源、或预留多大空间是允许想象创意发挥等统筹步骤。这座城市制造了一个凭借自身资源的功效碎片,许多资源都是各自独立的在运作、或流言编造成故事。例如,如何将厨房里的热食通过便当仔(Tiffinwallas)配送到工作地点,从Dhobi Ghat洗衣场到盐场、到人力车出租车等种种连续的矛盾现象呈现出的视觉和逻辑的混乱(图4)。第一,大孟买市景观、区域和流域的重要性。第二,是要利用时机来弥合因让少数民族的独裁,而不信任任劳任怨的大多数民众而造成的创伤以及修复这道鸿沟。第三,是人们日常生活的模式,从务实的角度来看,在地方尺度上,还应是集体完成而不是个人的,才可以做到可靠稳固。简言之,需形成一个自给自足的城市。
3.4设计
通过简单回顾曼彻斯特、伦敦、伊斯坦布尔、伊朗和葡萄牙这几个世界主要的贸易城市和国家,不难发现孟买的商贸传统也从中借鉴了一些精神、事迹、语言和图形图标等。19世纪的孟买,大量同时期的规划设计和宗主国工程符号的涌现及统一规范化。铁路和博物馆建设不仅勾勒出了城市的轮廓,还有力控制着城市的结构和肌理。3条南北运输线运行在孟买港的长边上,它不仅联通着长短途、拉近了邻里和陌生人间的距离,更重新定义了孟买的边界和前沿。火车的出现不仅是完成地理上的运输作用,还整合提升了从孟买岛城深入到大陆板块再返回的循环系统。像老伦敦的建筑一样,孟买的博物馆建筑是被执政文化的控制者建立起来的时代教堂,英国通过多样化的过去、遥远国度的文明,来为观赏者记录这段旅途的别样风情。无论是铁路还是博物馆都可听任穿越广阔的时空,为部分城市居民带来更开阔的视野,做到安全便捷的接送他们来回。
3.5达拉维(Dharavi)
当降落在孟买的国际机场时,许多游客对城市的第一印象是一排围绕着主跑道尽头的波纹屋顶的棚屋。经常提及的事实是,这个城市近60%的人口没有正式的住房。其余60%的家庭和个人像路面居民一样生活在街头,日常琐事如睡觉、吃、做木炭或篮子、摆卖、照顾孩子、洗漱都发生在公众视线中。在孟买52 000个棚户区容纳800万户城市居民,密度超过每平方英里(2.59km2)525 000人。他们的房屋用的是未受监管的建筑结构,通常是用泥土、砖和石棉片板建造,没有卫生设施。
曾一度以上海为榜样几乎是这个国家的商业资本可行的形象,同时这些棚户区和街头生活的作风也是公然反抗政府的行为,已超过30年问题仍未解决。隐藏在达拉维和其他的孟买蔓生的棚户区的居民,是一个真实的社会结构且他们还独具企业家精神。他们催生出了从陶器加工到皮革制品的商业,现在也开始支持正规的房地产开发。孟买最大的棚户区位于达拉维,这里临近机场,占地220hm2(530英亩),毗邻一个大型自然公园,距离城市新的商务区班德拉-库尔拉(Bandra-Kurla)约1英里(1.61km)左右,有10万人每年生产超过5亿美元商品价值。最初,这个沿着马希姆河(Mahim Creek)堤岸生活的科利(Kolis)小村庄或渔村,通过几十年的居民迁移和强制拆迁来的城市其他部分的贫民窟已经填满了沼泽地,形成了被称为纳加尔(Nagars)的地毯式连续定居点。达拉维,正如记者Kalpana Sharma描述的:“今天印度各地是一个相互关联的村庄和城镇体系”。几英尺宽的小巷中有面包店、金属车间以及回收从手机、医疗注射器到电话机的废弃塑料产品的棚屋。还有塞满从屠宰场收集的水牛、山羊和其它动物皮的卡车也通过这些窄巷运到制革厂。就近,工人们在一串小车间里喷漆、切割和压制条状和板状的皮革和乙烯基,最终完成钱包、皮袋和行李箱的制作加工。超过800个家庭参与用窑匠的轮子制作达拉维内销和外销的陶器、类似传统粘土水壶和花盆等成型产品,窑烧用的除木材外还包括轮胎在内的其它污染垃圾。查尔斯王子在2003年访问达拉维时赞美了它并评论,“过几年时间后,这样的社区将被视为最好地配备去面对我们将面临的挑战,因为他们有一个内置的具复原力且真正持久的生活方式。”伦敦的《泰晤士报》将这个评论和最近好莱坞描述孟买穷人的贫困均称为“贫困色情”(Poverty Porn)。
出生在达拉维的阿卜杜勒·哈桑(AbdulHassan)和他的兄弟经营着一个有12个工人的金属加工厂,在狭小不通风的房间里铸造黄铜皮带扣等物品。在另一个车间里,带扣被电镀上镍,因为工人们说,人们更喜欢镀镍后不抛光的扣。政府很少敢驱逐贫民窟的居民,因为他们会背上破坏了穷人房子的罪责,虽然每个月有5万栋相对较新的住处也会被推平。若非要定义它为达拉维的积极方面、赞美或把它说的合理化。一些分析者也会赞美说这是直接被剥夺的结果。如居民清除和回收石棉板、蓝色塑料防潮布和竹脚手架这样低资源消耗可能对地球有好处,但它不是居民自愿的选择。类似孟买的社会促进区域资源中心(SPARC)这样的组织已经开始与居民合作一点点地重新恢复小型场地。在国际援助机构和SPARC银行的支持下,现已建立了能显著改善生活条件的21m2(225平方英尺)的公寓模块,但项目进展缓慢。过去的7年里,他们反对贫民窟康复机构(Slum Rehabilitation Authority)计划却允许私人开发商改造达拉维,将未受监管的房屋和迷你小工厂变成一个12亿美元的展示品。
3.6工厂土地
这些修复改造计划都是努力去重新生成位于城市中心的以前58个纺织厂的场地,重建、更新大约1/4属于政府所有并被住宅土地控制着的城市面积。
被停业和遗弃的孟买城市中心的58个具有历史意义的棉纺织厂所在的600亩(240hm2)土地的命运一直是持续被研究的课题(图5)。课题的关键是:环保工艺的探索,正如伴随着有限的资源、极端的人口密度、物质衰败、空间无划分等状况的城市形态的缔造者。该工厂的土地一直是公众持续炒作、激烈的报刊文章评论和专业设计师、工程师、政府官员和遗产组织的特别仔细审查的主题。工业土地的股权有3大问题:
问题1:工厂场地在西高止山脉(Western Gnats)和阿拉伯海沿岸的生态和地理之中所处的战略位置和在孟买基础设施和城市结构的持续的增长和扩大中扮演的角色。
问题2:需要重新考虑大部分工厂土地所在的Girangaon区(“工厂村庄”)的结构和城市景观系统。
问题3:个别工厂场地遗址的自我更新的方法可以成为城市其他部分恢复和发展的借鉴模式。最后,目前的规划和工程中主要缺失的是对城市景观的意识,对于接下来的规划要有一个城市组织系统的概念。
3.7季风
2005年7月26日星期二,孟买和西高止山脉周边地区在一天内创下94cm( 37 英寸)的季风降水纪录。城市的排水系统完全失控,水都汇集在人口稠密的地区。城市的“排水渠”即9英里长(14.48km)的米提河(Mithi),从豪尔湖(Vihar Lake)涌向洪水泛滥和不断溢出的马希姆河(Mahim Creek)。潮汐影响加剧排水不畅,加之缺乏土地吸收,高潮引起反向水流,海上反到回流进入排水系统中。加上在博伟山区(Powai hill area)范围的重大山体滑坡中被损坏和埋葬的茅屋、房子和人员,共有512人失去了生命(主要是溺水和触电)。为什么会发生这样的事呢?米提河的河口区域因为建造道路而过度开垦土地已经收缩到原宽度的1/3,主要是班德拉-沃里海(Bandra-Worli)的跨海大桥而引发的大规模的填海工程和为建设由MMRDA注资的班德拉-库尔勒(Bandra-Kurla)综合体工程而破坏了大规模的红树林。由于河岸的两侧都在施工,米提河也没有任何“水坝 ”了。加上忽视和在红树林沼泽的滥建,孟买的排水基础设施状态更不佳,例如用来作为天然泄洪水渠的抗冲击强度其实是比原预期差许多。国家水资源部长 AjitPawar 仅责怪棚户区的扩张阻塞了排水管,而没提那些贪婪的开发商。有个灾难管理计划在世界银行的帮助下于2003年就已拟定。它是旨在扩大公共交通的排水通道、紧急公共信息系统、应急服务无线通信和运输系统的设想。但几乎没有迹象显示这个项目是有跟进的。城市的这场洪水产生的影响也有好有坏,虽然数以百计的人被淹死。但与卡特里娜飓风(Katrina)袭击新奥尔良后的情况不同,尽管没有警察在场,犯罪率也没有升上去,这里的公民秩序仍旧有序,大家都在忙着互相帮助。棚户区的居民走上街头,把被困的司机带回自己的家,为平均入住7个成年人的一个房间再搭多了一个人的窝棚。志愿者涉过被污染的齐腰深的水送吃的给滞留在火车站的15万人。仅有少量食物的贫困家庭会放弃给那些富有却被困的人送去食物。人们筑起人墙帮助受困者走出洪水水域。大多数的政府组织没有来援助受灾民众,不过也没有人对此抱有希望。因为已对政府的帮助失去信心,孟买的居民们自己相互帮助。城市通过这样无形的援助网状系统来行使职责。
3.8 房屋复兴的土地
大多数住房开发用地都位于岛上。城市发展了大约40-60年, 普遍现象是大面积不明确的开放空间缺少有序发展, 无论是对普通民众还是房屋承租人群、市政或公务员。许多建筑物和周围街道、小巷、花园、“操场”(maidans)④、公共开放空间和游憩场地都是破旧、摇摇欲坠的,需立即重建和加固。大量的土地上还是破败的分间出租房(chawls,或称工人房)和非法贫民窟,人行道居民(pavement dwellers)占据其上。这些更新的土地是当前对所有阶层都最理想又最具争议的城市景观,无论是缺乏土地的寮屋居民、人行道居民、工作在贫民窟的居民还是生活在原殖民地区和房产中的按时交租的租户与中产阶级。
根本上,弹性其实是关于创造性的景观规划和设计的系列方法或途径,它让我们反思孟买市区(岛城)的存在、如何应对城市规模问题、地理扩张而引发自然资源和生态系统崩溃等问题。这无关乎于美,也不仅仅是没来由的形态塑造和个人的创作品,而是人民的日常生活。目的是为了理解和加入这个城市的物质和社会边界,解决大人口数量的城市弹性问题,接纳更广泛意义的改进和更新,去容纳边缘化的民众,去超越经济限制外的设计规划,敢于质疑挑战公认的概念定义。
"There will soon be more people living in the city of Bombay (Mumbai) than on the continent of Australia. URBS PRIMA IN INDUS reads the plaque outside the Gateway of India. It is also the Urbs Prima in Mundis, at least in one area, the first test of the vitality of a city: the number of people living in it. With 14 million people, Bombay is the biggest city on the planet of a race of city dwellers. Bombay is the future of urban civilization on the planet. God help us."
Suketu Mehta Maximum City, Bombay Lost and Found.[1]
Resilience is defined as "the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing”.①It is therefore conferred in human and ecological systems by their capacity for recovery and future adaptation as well as perhaps the given ability of humans to anticipate and plan for that future using that knowledge. Cities are increasingly at the center of global flows of people,capital, culture and information. Over the last thirty years their role as financial command centers has expanded, creating a new type of sprawling,often multi-centered, resilient urban agglomeration. There are now over twenty mega-city regions with more than ten million people living there. There are also nearly four hundred and fifty city regions with over one million residents. Together they house more than one billion people in a relatively small surface of the earth. As they expand even further, into urbanized regions of over fifty million inhabitants, their footprint will have a direct impact on climate change and the ecological balance of the planet, as well as on the lives of existing and new city dwellers. This article therefore concerns the evolution of the author’s research into the contemporary urban landscape of mega-cities and in particular the intense environments and potentials of overcrowded urban centers on the Indian sub-continent focused on the City of Mumbai(Figure1).
To talk about the resilient landscape of Mumbai is to talk about intense beauty, emotions, meaningfulness, ecology, patience and time and introduces the potentialities and inherent contradictions of this cosmopolitan landscapea landscape of migration and imagined return,metamorphosis, divided selves, love, death and rebirth.
Perched on the sea and yet anchored to the soil of the Indian Continent, fabulously rich yet achingly poor, a historic trading seaport and now a modern global corporate center as well as home to multiple local street micro-enterprises,grossly overcrowded with social fragmentation and yet tolerant of the multiplicity of diverse ethnic backgrounds and religions, with a core of civic landscapes and heritage buildings yet overwhelmed with an overburdened infrastructure - sewers,water supply, roads and railways and proliferated with squatter shacks (or jopadpattis)on marginal lands, the City of Mumbai still holds sway as India's industrial and financial capital- one that is geographically rich, ecologically adaptive, creative,industrious, stressed- a dense complex unsanitary yet resilient urban land set in a sultry environment,drenched by the monsoon rains and currently in economic and cultural flux with "……dizzying promise and turbocharged ambition"②
The Island City of Mumbai, originally formed from seven islands is perched on the peninsula of Salsette Island on the western coast of India and creates a metropolitan area along with the Bombay Suburban District and Eastern Suburbs including New Bombay. The fact that India is in a period of rapid economic growth and expansion of population in its mega-cities is fairly well understood and documented. Nowhere is this activity more in evidence than in the IslandCity of Mumbai. The city with a population of 14 million has an overall density of 17,550 people per square mile set within a Greater Mumbai with a population of 21 million. Some parts of central downtown Mumbai have a population density of 1 million people per square mile, the highest number of individuals massed together at any spot in the world. The population within the Island City alone is projected to rise from 14 to 21.9 million by 2015. Overpopulation is a leading if not the design issue to be addressed among other pressing issues -such as transportation, shelter, public health, urban flooding and sanitation.
It is a hard-worked land; a city encumbered by fragile yet resilient populations, constrained by the sea, best owed with a sacredness by many, saturated with the sweat of labor and monsoon rains and encumbered by devastated natural systems and a crumbling and a dilapidated built fabric that as VS Napaul has written- "continues to be cherished but continues at the same time to be used with no regret attached to its disintegration"[2]It is also a grossly inhospitable urban environment where access to the fundamentals of shelter, water,power, sanitation, open space, clean air, efficient transportation cannot be taken for granted by a majority of the inhabitants, and where over 60% of the total city population have no formal housing. Instead 52,000 slums hold 8 million urban households at densities of over 525,000 per square mile. The remaining households who fall within the 60% live on the streets as pavement dwellers. Even for those who have access to one room apartments,public transport and sanitation, the city is currently vastly overcrowded with totally inadequate infrastructure, terrible traffic congestion, and threadbare open space. Mumbai ranked 163 out of 218 cities worldwide in the Forbes’ quality of life survey and 124 out of 130 cities in the Economist Intelligence Unit's hardship ratings.
There have been five tendencies perceived in the response the city has made to reshape its physical fabric, buildings, infrastructure and landscape space.
The first is focused on the rich trading and economic prominence and history of this narrow island city and the resulting expansion of the city in successive waves to the north and eastwards. From fishing village, to trading port, to the East India Company to the textile mills to the financial trading houses.
The second tendency is administrative. After the formation of states in India in the mid 1960s,Mumbai became the capital of Maharashtra. The landscape of the city was characterised by the construction of mass housing colonies commercial districts and infrastructure. It was at this time that slums started to appear in the city- zones of dense settlements governed by porous legalities, popular politics, and tactical negotiations over space and survival.
The third tendency and one which often goes counter to its economic ascendancy are the social agendas and welfare and public health actions needed to address the needs of the local population and often more regional issues of the divides of wealth.
The fourth tendency is an emphasis on the importance for the future city of new large-scale engineering and infrastructural changes such as the recent Bandra- Worli Sea Link, over less visible yet more significant local renewal activities.
The fifth tendency of the City’s makeup is extremely pragmatic- an apparent precise use of imprecise materials and a continued disdain for their over-use weathering and destruction; an alert attitude toward culture; an eye for the poignant frailties of the vernacular; and a breath-taking ability to evoke issues of great import- none more so that than the use of the incremental small scale project to effect change. An example is the Chickhlwadi Sanitation Project. Mumbai lacks sanitation facilities for about half its population including the absence of running water and sewerage connections. The Project consists of community toilet blocks designed, constructed and maintained by collectives. They include separate spaces for men, women and children. Finance for construction comes from the state or municipalities, who also have to ensure that water and electricity are provided to the blocks.
While these five tendencies have or are taking an appropriate role in the evolution of the city, that there are other design activities that have a greater effect on the future form of the city at the ground level. For the remainder of the article I wanted to structure the design topics, environments,explorations and speculations in and around the City of Mumbai in the form of an index③to balance objectively the various participants,aspects, forces and influences at work in the city. Originally from the Latin meaning a discoverer or an indicator, an index, is the most formal and objective of written and graphic structures.It imposes a mental and physical order on a sometimes complex, chaotic and incomprehensible situation, text, place or set of spaces or conditions. (the City of Mumbai often appears as such). It is one (and only one means at hand) to decipher the City of Mumbai landscape by involving past and present, visions and reality, myth and magic. The story here relies more on daily and seasonal ebb and flow than on linear narrative so that possibly a more comprehensive and richly textured expression of a resilient urban life and the embedded matters of design may emerge.
3.1Atlas
The first entry under is appropriately Atlas,A Sort of Geography. Mumbai consists of two distinct regions: Mumbai City (known as the Island City) and Mumbai Suburban District, which form two separate districts of the State of Maharashtra. The city proper is the most populous city in India and the second most populous in the world. Along with the neighboring suburbs of Navi Mumbai and Thane, it forms the world's 4thlargest urban agglomeration, with around 19-20 million people (Figure2).
The city of Mumbai covers 438 km2of Salsette Island, although almost a fifth of this area is occupied by the National Park. This means the urban areas are condensed into about 350 km2,with a high gross residential density, about seven times the density of London and where open public space is limited - comprising only 1% of the city's area. Mumbai's more affluent classes live in a corridor stretching along the city's north-south axis. Here taller residential structures are surrounded by densely packed, low-rise squatter dwellings. Lack of investment means the urban infrastructure cannot meet the demands of a growing population. The city of Mumbai itself suffers from important forms of disenfranchisement: although it provides the lion’s share (70%) of the State of Maharashtra’s tax revenues, little of it comes back to the city;and. even more importantly, control of much of its own functioning is in the hands of the state, rather than the city itself. Consequently very little goes to building or maintaining infrastructure in Mumbai. In fact, little infrastructure has significantly been created since the British left in 1947.
3.2Carrying Capacity
A research aspect of this study into both classes of site is concerned with an exploration of 'carrying capacity' as applied to the supportable population of urban sites in Mumbai given available necessities such as an infrastructure of water, power, sanitation, community amenities and food. India and Mumbai survive because they use every material resource including land to its ultimate capacity and therefore can be considered more sustainable as a result of basic necessity compared to the North America or European condition(Figure3). But sustainability as we are finding has its limits of use as a measure of quality of life and health. The rate of growth and increasing urban densities tax the land and ultimately the population itself beyond hopes of reversal. The real question remains- how much productive land, water resources environmental systems and waste management are required to support Mumbai's population indefinitely at the current consumption level? What happens to these urban systems with increased consumption as the urban population grows at an accelerated rate? In attempting to address these questions a more fundamental issue arises - what constitutes overpopulation within the Mumbai context?
Carrying capacity as it can be applied to an urban condition like Mumbai is the number of inhabitants who can be supported in a given area within its natural resource limits without degrading the natural, social, cultural and economic environment for present and future generations. Carrying capacity for any given area is not fixed but may be altered or improved by technological means. However, once an environment is degraded,the carrying capacity shrinks, resulting in an environment that can no longer support the initial population it once did. Within this context the research advances this idea to determine if the carrying capacity of individual districts and estates can provide a model that can be integrated into the details of the new 2011 Metropolitan Plan. However it raises the question of whether it is possible to define a measure of sustainability that does not already contain implicit assumptions about the solution to the problem of resource over-use and environmental degradation.
3.3Collage
It is worth noting that some urban megacenters particularly in Asia are scrupulously tidy,controlled and guarded with their resources,others are more restless, turning up new uses and interpretations during each subsequent generation. But there are also others like Mumbai that have left their physical and cultural resources in their original condition: a vast messy pile of unsorted material across which multinational corporationsand pavement scavengers alike wander, uncovering and pulling up interesting fragments which can be sold or recycled for a price or may come in handy one day in the future. In doing so, the lack of any commanding story, which dictates how resources should be understood and ultimately used, allows space for imagination, pleasure and originality. The city makes a virtue of the fragmented awareness of its own resources and many of these resources have set up their own independent actions, myths and stories. For example, how hot food moves from home to work through the Dabbawalas (Tiffinwallas), the visual chaos and logic of the public laundry's at the Dhobi Ghat, the saltpans,the rickshaw taxis and paradoxically a set of continuities appears(Figure4). One is the enduring importance of the larger Mumbai landscape,the region and the watershed. A second is the opportunity for bridging the traumatic chasm dividing the confident ruling minority with the mistrustful yet hard working majority. And a third is the persistence of the idea of informal intelligence about the pragmatic nature of daily human life usually collective rather than individual and the reliability of it across the city at a local scale- in short- the simple idea of the user- generated city.
3.4Design
In the tradition of other major trading cities of the world- Mumbai has taken the energy, deeds,words, and images of others for its own ends;snippets from Manchester, London, Istanbul,Persia and Portugal. The nineteenth century in Bombay saw the emergence of and consolidation of a number of design and engineering symbols of the conquest of this time and space. Two of these not only captured the popular imagination then and still maintain a dominant hold on the structure and fabric of the city- the railway and the museum. The three north-south lines running the length of the island city and beyond created a journey that connected the near and distant, the neighbor and the stranger, redefined the border and the frontier,and captured longer-term changes in snapshot images of the space of the landscape out of the window and transient encounters in the congested carriages. The train came to symbolize not only geographic mobility but integration and progress reaching out from the Island City to the mainland and back again. The museum buildings like those of old London were cathedrals of time established by the mastery of the ruling culture, - the British,leading viewers through the diverse pasts and cultures of distant lands and the record of that journey. Both the railways and museums allowed travel through expanses of time and space, but left open for part of the population, the option of a possibly quick and safe return.
3.5Dharavi
Flying into Mumbai’s International Airport,many visitors’ first view of the city is of a mass of corrugated-roofed shacks clustered around the end of the main runway. The often repeated fact about the city is that approximately 60% of the population have no formal housing. In Mumbai The remaining households and individuals who fall within this 60% live in the streets as pavement dwellers. where the daily chores of sleeping, eating,making for example charcoal or baskets, hawking,child care, washing takes place in the public gaze.52,000 squatter settlements hold 8 million urban households at densities of over 525,000 people per square mile in unregulated structures,usually built of mud or brick and asbestos sheets,with no sanitation.
That is scarcely a viable image for a country's commercial capital that once set Shanghai as its role model, and it is a problem that has defied government action for over 30 years. But hidden in these and Mumbai’s other sprawling squatter settlements is an authentic social structure and entrepreneurial spirit that has spawned businesses ranging from pottery to leather goods, and that is also now beginning to support formal property development. In Dharavi, the largest squatter settlement in Mumbai, covering 220 hectares (530 acres) near the airport, adjacent to a large nature park and a mile or so from the city’s new Bandra-Kurla business district, approximately 100,000 people produce goods worth over $500m a year. Originally a village of Kolis, or fisher folk,living along the banks of Mahim Creek, decades of migration and forced relocations of slum dwellers from other parts of the city have filled in the swamps and carpeted it with a map of contiguous settlements, called nagars. Dharavi, as journalist Kalpana Sharma wrote, "is today a single interrelated construction of villages and townships from all over India" Alleyways a few feet wide lead to bakeries, metal workshops and sheds that recycle discarded plastic goods ranging from cell phones,medical syringes to telephones. Trucks crammed with buffalo, goat and other skins collected from abattoirs push through narrow lanes to grimy tanneries. Nearby, workers in a series of tiny workshops spray-paint, cut and press strips and sheets of leather and vinyl that eventually finishup as wallets, bags and luggage. More than 800 homes are involved in pottery, molding items such as traditional clay water jugs and flower pots on potters’ wheels for sale inside and outside Dharavi. Their kilns, burn wood and other polluting garbage,including tyres of all people Prince Charles praised Dharavi which he visited in 2003 and predicted that "in a few years time such communities will be perceived as best equipped to face the challenges that confront us because they have a built-in resilience and genuinely durable ways of living". The Times of London dubbed this comment and the recent Hollywood depictions of the Mumbai poor as "Poverty Porn".
Abdul Hassan, who was born in Dharavi, runs a metal workshop with his brother and 12 workers. This includes casting items such as brass beltbuckles in small unventilated rooms. In another workshop, the buckles are electroplated with nickel because, say the workers, a nickel finish does not need polishing and is more popular. Governments have rarely dared try to evict the occupants of the slums because they are condemned for destroying the homes of the poor, though 50,000 relatively new dwellings are bulldozed each month. Identifying the positive aspects of Dharavi risks glorifying it or rationalizing it. Some of the qualities extolled by analysts are direct results of deprivation. Low resource consumption such as the scavenging and recycling of asbestos sheets, blue plastic tarpaulin and bamboo scaffolding poles may be good for the earth but it is not the resident’s choice. Organizations such as SPARC (Society of Promotion of Area Resource Centers) based in Mumbai have begun redeveloping small sites on a piecemeal basis in collaboration with residents. Backed in two projects by international aid agencies and banks SPARC have built blocks of 21 sq m (225 sqft) flats that dramatically improve living conditions- but progress is slow. They oppose the Slum Rehabilitation Authority plans to allow private developers to transform Dharavi, turning the unregulated homes and mini-factories into a $1.2 billion showpiece over seven years.
3.6Mill Lands
Among these are the efforts to regenerate the sites of the 58 former textile mills located in the city center and to rebuild and renew about a quarter of the city area that is occupied by housing lands belonging to the State.
The fate of 600 acres (240 hectares) of lands generated by the closure and current abandonment of 58 historic cotton textile mills in the center of the City of Mumbai has been the subject of ongoing research(Figure5). At the heart of the work is an exploration of environmental processes as a generator of form in urban conditions with limited resources but with extremes of population density, physical deterioration and spatial demarcation. The Mill lands had been the subject of continuous public speculation, acrimonious newspaper articles and intense private scrutiny by professional designers, engineers, government officials and heritage organizations. At stake for the Mill lands are three major issues.
Issue 1- The Milll lands strategic location and role in the continued growth and expansion of the urban fabric and infrastructure of Mumbai within the regional geography and ecology of the Western Gnats and the Sea.
Issue 2- The need to reconsider the structure and urban landscape systems of the Girangaon district (the ‘village of mills’) where the majority of the Mill lands are located.
Issue 3- The nature of regeneration efforts of individual Mill sites as models for growth and development in other parts of the City. And finally absent from the current planning and engineering efforts was recognition of the urban landscape and considerations of its ongoing design as an organizing system for the city.
3.7Monsoon
On Tuesday 26th July 2005 saw record monsoon rainfall, 94cm (37'') in Mumbai and elsewhere along the Western Ghats in a single day. Drainage failed completely and water collected in heavily populated areas. The city's 'storm water drain' the 9 mile long Mithi River, running from Vihar Lake to Mahim Creek flooded and overflowed. Tidal effects compounded poor drainage and lack of land absorption, high tide causes a reverse flow of water from the sea into the drainage system. The loss of life 512 persons due to accidents (mainly drowning and electrocution)was added to by major landslides in the Powai hill area, destroying and burying huts and houses and people. Why did it happen? - the mouth of the Mithi River had been constricted to a third of its original width by excessive reclamation of land to construct roads- mainly the Bandra-Worli sea link Large scale reclamation and destruction of the mangroves for the construction of the Bandra-Kurla Complex by MMRDA contributed too. Also the Mithi River does not have any ‘flood banks’ to speak of anymore, due to uncontrolled construction on either side. In particular the poorstate of Mumbai’s drainage infrastructure, owing to neglect and indiscriminate construction on mangrove swamps, for example, which used to act as natural floodwater drains, meant the impact was worse than might have been expected elsewhere. The state water-resources minister, AjitPawar,angered many by blaming the proliferation of shanty towns for blocking drains, rather than rapacious developers. A disaster-management plan had in fact been drawn up, with the help of the World Bank, in 2003. This envisaged the augmentation of drainage corridors for public transport, an emergency public information system and wireless communication among emergency services and the transport system. But there was little sign it was followed. The flood showed the worst and the best of the city. Hundreds of people drowned. But unlike the situation after Katrina hit New Orleans, there was no widespread breakdown of civic order; even though the police were absent,the crime rate did not go up- the population were too busy helping each other. Dwellers in the squatter settlements went to the streets and took stranded motorists into their homes and made room for one more person in shacks, where the average occupancy is seven adults to a room. Volunteers waded through polluted waist-deep water to bring food to the 150,000 people stranded in train stations. Impoverished families with little food gave it up to feed those who were wealthy yet trapped. Human chains were formed to get people out of the flood-waters. Most of the government machinery was absent, but nobody expected otherwise. Mumbaikers helped each other, because they had lost faith in the government helping them. The city functions on such invisible networks of assistance.
3.8Housing Renewal Lands
Most of the housing development lands located in the Island. City are between 40 to 60 years old; typically low rise with a maximum amount of undefined open space around them and house tenant society’s as well as municipal or public employees. Most of the buildings and surrounding local streets, lanes, gardens, "maidans"④and public open spaces and recreation fields are dilapidated,crumbling and are in immediate need of urban regeneration and infill. A number of the lands also contain run-down chawls (or workers housing) and illegal slums and pavement dwellers on their sites. These renewal lands are now the most desired and contested urban landscapes by all classes, from land-less squatters, pavement dwellers and working slum-dwellers to established tenants and the middle classes in colonies and estates.
Ultimately, resilience is about a range of creative landscape planning and design approaches and tools to rethink the Island City and to counter urban scale ills and geographically expansive collapses of natural resources and systems. It is less about beauty, less about gratuitous form making and the creation of individual paradigms, rather it is to focus on everyday people lives. The purpose is to understand and include the City’s physical and social margins, to address the question of urban resilience for the majority of the population,to employ broader boundaries as definitions for improvements and renewal, to incorporate the marginalized populace, to plan beyond the economic limits, and to question social definitions.
注释:
Note:
①Webster Dictionary, 1984.
②2006年6月26日的《时代杂志》以印度的重新崛起作为一个全球性的经济和文化力量为封面故事:“如果你想看一下新的印度,所有令人眼花缭乱的展望和加速的野心,首选前往其最大、最凌乱的城市孟买。”
Time Magazine in June 26, 2006 in a cover story on the reemergence of India as a global economic and cultural force urged - “if you want to catch a glimpse of the new India,with all its dizzying promise and turbocharged ambition then head to its biggest, messiest, city- Bombay (Mumbai)”.③我要感谢2008年的普利策奖提名书作者琼·威克沙姆的《自杀索引》,和带我入门的专业书《领土:当代欧洲景观设计》。这本书由哈佛大学设计研究生院教授乔?迪斯波奇奥和Dorothee Imbertas编辑,论证了以往的索引模型和它们的组织、结构和现象。
I want to acknowledge Joan Wickersham author of the 2008 Pulitzer Prize nominated book The Suicide Index and The Landscape Abecedary from Territories: Contemporary European Landscape Design edited by GSD Professor’s Joe Disponzio and Dorothee Imbertas demonstrating previous indexing models and their organization, structure and presentation.
④操场是适应玩耍和即兴运动的开放、长草的城市空间,最著名的是孟买的椭圆球场。
Maidans are open grassed city spaces that accommodate playing fields and impromptu sports areas- most famous is the Oval in Mumbai.
⑤本文中的信息是哈佛大学董事会、监督者和作者的联合版权。没有作者的授权不可以任何形式复制本文档的任何部分。
The information in this paper is the joint copyright of The President and Overseers of Harvard College and the Author. No reproduction of any part of this document in any form is allowed without express permission of the Author.
⑥文章所有图片由尼尔•柯克伍德拍摄。
Figure1-5 Photograph by Niall G. Kirkwood.
RESILIENT CITIES: AN INDEX OF MUMBAI, INDIA
Resilience is defined as "the capacity of an ecosystem to tolerate disturbance without collapsing”. Resilience is therefore conferred in human and ecological systems by their capacity for recovery and future adaptation as well as perhaps the given ability of humans to anticipate and plan for that future using that knowledge. With the aim of projecting harmonious, humanistic and sustainable forms of landscape architecture, processes of urbanism, and future cities and communities, this article will address the following issues: what are the key ideas of contemporary landscape architecture practice that concerns what I am calling ‘resilient landscapes’ What are its historic roots and how might it be organized?And what role might heritage; values, balance and adaptation play in the process?Two topics will be introduced that address or seem to confront and explore the idea of ‘resilient landscapes’- the role of post-industrial landscapes in the global environment and the design and infrastructure issues in the informal landscape found in predominantly developing countries such as India. The article will expand on these topics through the case of the City of Mumbai, India and will explore whether, and how, metropolitan centers and their ‘resilient landscapes’ can be sustainable and socially just including addressing an understanding of ecology beyond the environmental to include the societal, political, and the cultural.
Resilient Land; Landscape Ecology; Landscape Design; Sustainability; Land Reclamation; Ecosystem Design and Repair
TU986
A
1673-1530(2016)01-0016-16
10.14085/j.fjyl.2016.01.0016.16
2015-10-25
尼尔·G·柯克伍德/博士/哈佛大学设计研究生院(GSD)教授、“技术和环境中心”主任、风景园林学系原主任/北爱尔兰厄尔斯特大学客座教授
刘琼琳/1972年生/女/广州人/华南理工大学建筑学院博士/广州筑鼎建筑与规划设计院高级工程师/研究方向:岭南传统建筑理论与创作研究(510176)
About the Author:
Niall G. Kirkwood is a tenured Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. He is also founder and director of the Center for Technology and Environment,a research, advisory, and executive education center at the Harvard GSD. Currently the Center focuses on designreclamation, real estate and land development issues on sites in Asia, India, Europe, North America and the Middle East. He held the position of Chair of the Department of Landscape Architecture at the GSD (2003-2009) and Program Director (1998-2003, 2005-2008).
About the Translator:
Qionglin Liu, born in 1972, obtains PhD. in School of Architecture, South China University of Technology. She is an architectural design senior engineer in Guangzhou Zoneteam Architectural Design & Urban Planning Institute Co. Ltd., China. She researches on Lingnan traditionalarchitectural theory and creation.
[1]Mehta, Suketa. Maximum City, Bombay Lost and Found,New York: Alfred A.Knopf,2004.
[2]Naipaul,V S. An Area of Darkness,A Discovery of India,New York:Vintage Books,2002.