Southern Urbanism in South American contexts

Southern urban contexts offer a conceptually and empirically distinct narrative of urbanisation. With a focus on selected South American contexts, we explore three different conceptualisations and tendencies of Southern urbanisms: the unique land tenure and administrative arrangement affecting the exercise of citizenship rights and generational connection to the land in an environmentally sensitive area; an incremental, self-help housing constructions and its implications to neighbourhood management, including governance, and financing of future adaptations; and an international collaborative low-cost sustainable housing design workshop that explores the challenges of low-income home financing programs. We hope that this session will further advance Southern knowledge bases and practices of urban production.

Presenter 1: Leonardo Nogueira de Moraes

Title: Land Rights, Environmental Conservation and the Strategic Role of Oceanic Islands for Defence – Implications to Citizenship and Connection to Land – The case of Fernando de Noronha Archipelago

Abstract: Due to its strategic location for national defence, the many protected areas that cover most of its territory, and its political and administrative re-incorporation into the State of Pernambuco in 1988, Fernando de Noronha Archipelago is subject to unique land tenure and administrative arrangements, making it the only example of a state district in Brazil. Whereas these arrangements reflect questions of national interest, history and environmental conservation, they also affect the exercise of citizenship rights and generational connection to land. This presentation discusses this dilemma, highlighting the amplification of broader contextual drivers and posing postcolonial questions with implications for planning.

Presenter 2: Dr Sandra Carrasco

Title: Re-thinking Elemental’s incremental housing: Residential Satisfaction and resident-driven adaptations in Villa Verde, Chile

Abstract: Between 50 to 80% of the population in developing countries build their houses incrementally. Spontaneous and gradual household-driven housing construction is believed one of the largest producers of affordable housing in the world. Incremental housing in Chile has been encouraged in their housing programmes since the 1990s aiming to balance controversial quantitative approaches to mass-produced housing. The Elemental architecture studio designed some of the most iconic incremental housing projects through the construction of a structural framework and a partially built house that motivates residents to complete the houses based on their needs, resources and aspirations. This study analyses the outcomes after four years. This study demonstrates that residents' self-managed housing adaptations were performed according to financial capacities and individual aspirations with more than half of them built beyond the design limits. The self-help constructions followed a variety of formal and informal patterns demonstrating that the incremental process had an initial momentum that decreased as the residents’ needs were covered, but it is likely to continue and take on unpredictable and more complex forms that could impact the neighbourhood management, inclusive governance, and financing of future adaptations.

Presenter 3: Associate Professor Masa Noguchi

Title: International collaboration on low-cost sustainable housing design innovations in Brazil

Abstract: Brazil has a chronic housing deficit problem that impacts particularly low-income families. To alleviate this prolonging nationwide housing issue, the government launched the world’s largest low-income home financing program called “Minha Casa, Minha Vida” (My House, My Life) to provide 6.8 million vulnerable families with decent affordable housing access. The My House, My Life program has already contracted 3.4 million housing unit constructions. Nonetheless, due to the approved builders’ sole focus on production efficiency to reduce construction cost, the housing quality tends to be minimal, monotonous, and identical, disregarding the users’ diverse needs, desires and/or expectations. As a result, after a few years of occupancy, some return to their previous slums (or favelas) which tend to be located close to city centres or workplaces having an established sense of community unlike those built under the My House, My Life program. To remedy these shortfalls, local and international academics got gather to discuss and demonstrate relevant housing innovations through the collaborative initiation and operation of a low-cost sustainable housing design workshop called “ZEMCH Workshop.” This presentation introduces the contents and impacts generated through the teaching collaboration conducted in partnership with the State University of Londrina (2014), University of Sao Paulo (2015) and Federal University of Parana (2016) in Brazil.

Presenter bios:

Presenter 1: Dr Leonardo Nogueira de Moraes, PhD, MPIA

Leonardo is a professional and academic expert in tourism, resilience, and planning. His work looks at urban and regional planning and community self-organisation, with a focus on tourism development and building social-ecological resilience to disasters and environmental change. His research spreads across Australia, Brazil, and Scandinavia and he is currently an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

Presenter 2: Dr Sandra Carrasco

Sandra is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She received the postdoctoral McKenzie Fellowship at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Sandra is a Peruvian Architect and holds a PhD and master’s in Environmental Management from Kyoto University, Japan and a master’s in Education from Victoria University, Australia. She has professional and research experience in the Americas, Asia, and Oceania. Her research interests include equality and diversity, community resilience, disaster risk reduction, governance and city planning, and migrant and refugee studies.

Presenter 3: A/Prof Masa Noguchi

Masa is an Associate Professor in Environmental Design at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, specialising in "Environmental Experience Design (EXD)" decision-making analysis based on a mass customisation framework that embraces machine learning and value engineering techniques for improvement of operational energy efficiency, affordability, and occupants' wellbeing in the built environment. In parallel to EXD studies, he also initiated a global movement on zero energy mass custom home (ZEMCH) and vertical village/subdivision plug-in housing system research and development for future-proof city evolution.

Moderator: Dr Ariadne dos Santos Daher

Ariadne is an architect-urbanist who graduated from the Federal University of Paraná (1999), a specialist in Technical Management of the Urban Environment from the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná / Université de Technologie de Compiègne / GTU International (2001), and Master of Science in Urban Development Planning from University College London (2003, full Chevening Fellowship), and holds a PhD from the Postgraduate Program in Urban Management at the Pontifical Catholic University of Paraná (2018-2022, full CAPES fellowship). She is a senior partner at Jaime Lerner Arquitetos Associados, and her professional experience includes projects at the regional, municipal and urban scales in the areas of territorial planning and strategic projects, urban-environmental sustainability, conservation and rehabilitation of cultural and natural heritage sites, economic strategies, mobility, public spaces, urban/landscape design and tourism development. She is a senior lecturer of Urbanism and Landscape Design at Universidade Tuiuti do Paraná, having received 2012 a research grant from the International Council of Canadian Studies (2012). In 2018 she was a guest lecturer in the Master of Urban Planning program at the Melbourne School of Design, as an Endeavor Executive Fellow (2018). Research-wise, her main interests are ontological and epistemological discussions about cities and urbanization processes, and since late 2020 is part of the Editorial Team of urbe. Revista Brasileira de Gestão Urbana (ISSN 2175-3369) electronic journal.