Tag Archives: Changing World

Gated Communities – now available in India

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The ‘white flight’ to the suburbs was followed by other citizens who well, were not so white. When the Fair Housing Act criminalizing racial discrimination in housing came into effect followed by the gradual decline of exclusionary zoning practices like redlining, etc, communities hunkered down further by creating the ‘gated community’. Justified in the name of keeping out crime and other evil social conditions [although not always true], the gated community was the ultimate in creating a Truman’s Show world provided you had the money and of course, the right ‘attributes’. The homeowners association probably the strongest private body that can at times be so un-American played the role of the gatekeeper and of course, law-enforcer and isolator if you ever managed to crash the gates.

gated communities

In a increasingly globalized world and with the leveling of the playing field that Friedmann mistook for the flatness of the world, gated communities are making a foray in Indian cities. Expats are returning home and wish to duplicate the good life of their U.S. experiences. The market obliges and provides them with their own haven. Welcome to Palm Meadows:

It is a gated community of about 600 single family homes, with 10 or more security guards manning the gates at any given time. Some houses are big and some are small, but most houses have at least three bedrooms each. Residents of Palm Meadows are a mix of original owners, returning Indians and expats [source: Blogpourri].

Heck, even the name is U.S.-centric and trust me, I have never seen a meadow of palms. But leaving that aside, it does appear to provide all you could wish for to eke out a luxurious living. Of course, considering the clients and homeowners are considered to be rich and ‘earning in dollars’, prices are steep and as Sujatha mentions, collusion among the real estate agents have hiked up the rents further. Of course, some of that wealth trickles down to the domestic help. In India, it is quite common to have domestic help, even the middle-class families have them. The only difference is in the price.

Of course, you can enjoy all you want while you are inside Palm Meadows but once you cross the gates, not even God can help you navigate through that dreaded Bangalore traffic.

China's Manufacturing Cities

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Just when we thought that the nature of our urban spaces has been altered by the changing forms of economy and technology, the manufacturing-based cities make a comeback. In the previous half-century, we moved from a manufacturing-based economy to services-based economy thus altering the form of our cities from being centralized to being disperse. No longer was a single industry the major employer and the working class didn’t necessarily have to live near their place of employment as commuting to work became easier. This held true even in developing economies until of course, China took over the mantle of being the world’s manufacturer. Of course, manufacturing never died as someone has to manufacture the countless goods that we desire; it simply moved to places where it was more affordable to do so.

china manufacturing cities

[source]. Edward Burtynsky recently released his pithily-named book, China that contains several photographs like the one above that depict the vast manufacturing industry in China. The mass employment pattern of such industries have spawned townships that are akin to manufacturing towns that dotted the Rust Belt in the United States in the earlier part of last century. Almost all workers are employed by a single industry and work and live together in high rise apartments. Characterized by long working hours, most workers either have no need for activities apart from work or aren’t given opportunity to indulge in any such activity. The other day I was talking with my significant other regarding the proclivity of having acquaintances and friends outside of our working environment and if lack of such options would have any detrimental effect on our lives. It looks like these workers simply don’t have the luxury of such options. The images of the workers housing as shown below are indicative of their work-centric lives:

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Moving Houses

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I have always loved the concept of moving entire houses. Considering how ‘rooted’ the houses are in India because of the way they are built, this concept was completely unimaginable to me when I first heard of it. Here is a time-lapse video of moving an 1883 carriage house in Portland:

I’m sure the old neighborhood will miss it but I’m sure the new one will love it.

Resolving Poverty

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Attempts to resolve poverty and to grant economic justice has been the aim of planning ever since Charles Booth’s studies in London have shown it as a bane to the urbanscape. Planners have oscillated between objectives of eliminating poverty from the neighborhood and eliminating poverty from the people; both of which claim to achieve common ends through very different means. The former merely shifts the problem elsewhere and the latter puts the concerns of the people often in lieu of the economic process.

However one common strand has been to throw money at solving poverty, the logic being isn’t poverty defined as the lack of monetary resources so more of money would be good, right? On the contrary such methods have not only failed to make a dent in the larger issue of poverty but have often compounded the problem. Neoclassical economists will believe in letting the people choose what they want by giving them financial means to do so and if they fail to alleviate their problem, central planners will say, see we told you they cannot make the best decisions for themselves but we have to make it for them. Thus goes the struggle in trying to resolve poverty and only more money gets thrown at a problem that isn’t even close to being solved. The poverty issue has once again found its place in the limelight thanks to John Edward’s Two Americas presidential campaign.

However contrary to the popular opinion, poverty is more of a sociological problem than an economic or political one. But approaches to solve it from a social perspective by first trying to understand its underlying causes have often found lacking. I don’t propose to offer a silver bullet solution for poverty alleviation in this article (if I had one, wouldn’t I be running for President?) but rather shed some light on recent attempts especially at MIT and other top universities in trying to understand the problem and work toward finding a solution.

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