Fwd: [P2P-URBANISM WA] Re: building towns overnight : legal loopholes in Turkey and Brasil ?

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Dante-Gabryell Monson

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Sep 9, 2011, 7:41:14 AM9/9/11
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On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 10:59 PM, Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante....@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you Myriam for these perspectives.

If you know a wiki site one of us has control over on which such discussions and edits could be appropriate, feel free to let me know.

For the moment, I will paste some of it on


Cities may last for millenias.

I am interested to know more about some of them which may have emerged out of nomad settlements, especially in harsh social and environmental conditions.

note: below I also add this link http://sharewiki.org/en/Abandoned_Villages for any of you who know of Abandoned Villages across the world.

-----------------

yes, I am aware such potentialities can lead to visions of utopia or dystopia.

I feel like replying also to the list, for general context - as such potentialities, I believe,
can bring up a holistic need for understanding , connecting with other topics we discuss.

I believe there are also strong parallels with "p2p emergency management" questioning
( such as refugee camps ),
and combining it with potential long term thinking.

The references and events you are bringing up are very interesting to me.

Yes, personally I prefer reducing or avoiding any direct confrontation,
and collaborate as much as possible,
attempt to be transparent,
reducing tension, opening up dialog,
not appearing subversive ( although for some, distributed p2p collaboration may already be seen as subversive )
and remain within non violent choices based on such dialog.

Yet even if it is only on the level of ideas,
or at the level of small scale projects,
or social research / artistic projects,
I believe such ideas can find a way of being communicated
as to be seen as beneficial to all.

I would like to think and feel about it for a few years,
while including understanding of nomadic approaches,
nomadic settlements,
and designs for towns with the potential for complex economic activity,
which can be resilient, maintain some of their organizational framework,
even in the event where they would need to be displaced within 24 hours,
by enabling the entire population and most of its valuable infrastructures to easily be moved through a specific logistical framework.

Building on p2p cooperative property, governance and production approaches :
self organized p2p governance and its communication infrastructure and procedures,
which can be maintained in case of displacement.

I would also like to imagine the p2p design for self sustaining living environments / towns,
enabling ( but not requiring ) local autonomy, for more resilience.

Possibly I could direct some of my learning experience, over the next 20 years,
with cooperatives in isolated areas, such as in mountains, potentially also building on ancient civilization knowledge.

I imagine that at first it may be easier to experiment in abandoned settlements in mountains,
such as in Spain.

I created another wiki page where I would like to reference such existing abandoned spaces which have proof of potential for local autonomy and sustainability :


with the possibility of using neo-nomad approaches to create and empower trust building for intentional networked connections and collaborations between individual village re-settlements.

Greetings
Dante




On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 9:37 PM, Myriam Mahiques <mbmah...@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you,
see my email here, I don´t want to bother the other members of the group, but I can send you some links, at least for the events in Buenos Aires, I would call them ¨tragic¨. The links will be in Spanish, they are from newspapers but you can translate them with google.
I analyzed the urban morphology of Peruvian settlements, most of them are like sand grains, no regulations, no sanitation, the social part is the worst, neighbors with legal rights on the land attacked them, and if you'd ask me, I think they are right, they have to defend their land and their public spaces from invaders, specially if they are foreign invaders, that's even worst.
Politics is so involved here, they made this because they were promised apartments, at last it became a political confrontation, the Capital and the suburbs.
You can compare this to the movie "District 9", try to watch at least a trailer.
Best regards,
Myriam
mbmah...@gmail.com


On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 12:27 PM, Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante....@gmail.com> wrote:
Thank you Myriam for your reply.

Yes, I can imagine it is a challenge for the disinherited.

I have the privilege of time and a internet connection.

I am willing to study with any of your interested, these processes further,
and understand how, through global internet cooperation through open p2p approaches,
there can be emergent support for openly and legally planning actions
as to set up towns overnight, and take into account an integral overview,
crossing legal aspects, long term urbanistic aspects, social aspects, environmental and sanitary aspects, economic aspects,
local resource aspects, 

and enable a form of p2p organization by keeping certain information accessible only in the last minute,

and unfold several years of potential p2p research within one night of action.

Greetings,
Dante


On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 9:19 PM, Myriam Mahiques <mbmah...@gmail.com> wrote:
Dante, 
I´m not sure about Brasil, but in Peru, they go with an ¨escribana¨, that´s a kind of lawyer, she prepares the grant deeds over the night.
Last month a bunch of illegal people plus some impoverished from Argentina, tried to settle down by force in some areas in Buenos Aires, the neighbors confrontated them, and the police had to intervene. They couldn´t settle down at last.
It´s not so easy to organize an ¨instant city¨.
Best regards,
Myriam

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 12:13 PM, Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante....@gmail.com> wrote:
ps: I was meant to ask more specifically,
do you know more about the legal framework in Brasil what concerns such townships ?

As to use it as a form of protection to maintain a settlement on land reclaimed overnight ?

On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 9:03 PM, Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante....@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi Miguel ( cc: p2p urbanism list )

As I noticed in your last emails some of your involvements in Brasil,

and as I am interested in understanding legal loopholes for building p2p towns overnight ( on reclaimed land ),

I remember reading ( but do not find references ) that towns, including Favelas built on reclaimed land,
can obtain a special governmental status and elect a mayor once they reach a certain population.

I am interested in setting up a town with such population in one night on reclaimed land,
and protect it under special legislative measures such as such kind of "town" status, which could enable it to have its own mayor/legislative body over the land ?

I do know a bit more about Turkish " Gecekondu" and the legal loopholes in Turkey.
Could we design a city adapted to the terrain,
for which an organized flash mob of citizens can set up the fundamentals for legal protection ( having basic living infrastructures with a roof ),

as to then further develop the other aspects of the plans setp by step later on,
potentially also through localized production and fablabs that could be brought into the new town ?

Greetings
Dante


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante....@gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 12:01 AM
Subject: building towns overnight : legal loopholes in Turkey and Brasil Re: fablab house ?
To: Eric Hunting <erich...@gmail.com>
Cc: 


Thank you Eric  
for these further details concerning that specific fablab house.

Its useful for some of the ideas that are growing in me.

Feel free to reply to the p2p world atlas if you believe it may be an interesting discussion to share.

---

I just came back from a festival where they are using Vinay Gupta's Hexayurt approach.
Vinay is also there - this will go on for a few days.


at the Burning Ice festival here in Brussels


I thought about these kind of structures within a certain legal framework, in Turkey, and in Brazil, as there might be some interesting legal opportunities.

I remember reading that in Turkey one can keep its house ( if it has a roof ) if they build it overnight.

It is called " Gecekondu"


excerpt :

<< Robert Neuwirth writes in his book Shadow Cities that these squatters are exploiting a legal loophole which states that if one starts building after dusk and moves into a completed house before dawn the same day without having being noticed by the authorities, then the next day the authorities are not permitted to tear the building down but instead must begin a legal proceeding in court (and thus it is more likely one can stay). Such buildings may be constructed without going through the necessary procedures required for construction, such as acquiring building permits, and can be very densely populated. Neuwirth states that "half the residents of Istanbul - perhaps six million people - dwell in gecekondu homes". >>

In Brasil, its a bit different.
I see potential in being able to apply for a "town" status ( with 2000 residents ? ), which gives special political rights. I remember reading this, but do not find references as yet.

I wrote this two weeks ago :

" I also have a deep interest in building up the organizational tools that allow for emergent self organization in building up towns within one night.

My interest for this idea comes from regulations , in certain countries, such as - if I remember well - Brasil or Turkey, where "land squatters" have some level of legal protection if they build up their house overnight - as they benefit from certain housing non-eviction laws.  Furthermore, in the case such squatted settlements grow to up to a certain amount of citizens, they can put forward a special status as a town, elect a mayor, and receive specific legal privileges.

I would like to figure out how non centralized emergent collaboration can happen , supporting a "flash mob" which can set up such infrastructures, apply specific legal status,
and then further develop while using materials and modules which can be designed before hand, and emergent planning which can follow certain protocols as to progressively build up hygiene, transportation, etc infrastructure "

I am also interested in finding out strategies for preparing this, by having an in depth understanding of the place where one wants to settle,
and the people that would be involved,
as to facilitate social interactions and organization,
discuss and convene on governance, property, and future production potentials before hand, understand all legal dimensions,
and eventually even create plans for successive steps of development.



On Mon, Jan 17, 2011 at 8:50 PM, Eric Hunting <erich...@gmail.com> wrote:
I saw this in an article on the international Solar Decathlon of student-designed prefab sustainable housing. The Decathlon has been an annual event here among US universities for about a decade and now has gone international.

Yes, this is called a Fab Lab House because it's made in a fab lab, or at least with the standard set of tools of the fab lab. Primarily, it's made with digital CNC cutters using sheet materials like plywood to create a stressed skin structure. The first attempt at such use of CNCs for housing may be MIT's yourHouse project;

http://mit.edu/yourhouse/index1a.html

A partnership with the Shopbot company (which has been active in the Maker and Open Manufacturing communities - http://www.shopbottools.com/), yourHouse used a puzzle-fit construction system to produce demonstration houses in the traditional style of New Orleans 'shotgun' housing, exploiting the CNC's potential for producing intricate shapes to simulate the ornate traditional facades of the style. They were supposedly taking this to the next step of commercial design and production.

The demo house yourHouse made for MoMa's Home Delivery exhibit on prefab housing in 2008 was intended to suggest a form of relief housing for the Katrina-struck region. The basic idea is that CNCs and other fab lab hardware are potentially very portable precision custom production systems -as demonstrated by this mobile fab lab developed by MIT's fab community as a mobile educational facility;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_fab_lab
http://www.thegoldenageofwireless.com/uploaded_images/_extMblLabFar-762653.jpg

So instead of pre-fabbing large amounts of relief housing transported as kits, you can transport just the small digital production facility for it and supply it with bulk sheet materials. This way you get more transportation efficiency -because a shipping container full of sheet materials equates to a whole lot more potential shelter area than the container -or similarly sized prefab building- itself. And you can customize the design of structures to suit the local environment and situation, based on a digital catalog of structure designs that can be adapted procedurally in software. MIT has even been developing software that deconstructs basic design forms entered as a 3D model into puzzle-fit component elements and then outputs them as procedurally generated CNC cutting patterns.

The problem, however, is that, so far, they are still treating housing as a 'product' instead of as an 'application' -the common mistake of all prefab housing across the 20th century and one which relates to the anachronistic assumption of architectural permanence common to professional design culture. So the sets of parts they procedurally generate for any particular structure are totally custom and specialized to that one whole building design, which is itself largely non-adaptable after its built. Once that fab trailer/container goes back to wherever it came from, you're stuck. You cannot fine tune or evolve a structure made like this using common tools and local materials. You can only obsolesce it whole, trash it, and start over -which is probably OK for the very small emergency shelter or utility shed made out of really cheap and disposable materials, but not for the long term.

The puzzle-fit scheme of MIT's at least has some demountability, which means as long as you can identify exactly what damaged/worn-out parts of a house you need to repair -and the design files are still available for- you can have them custom re-made and selectively disassemble the structure to replace them. Examples like the Solar Fab Lab House that use 'destructive construction' (ie. nails,  screws, glues, and paints -the four sins of housing construction) are less suited to this and more prone to turn into trash with time like mobile homes. Unless the structural system is truly modular or the design overall functionally generic, you can't readily adapt and repurpose to changing uses with time. You're creating a disposable product with built-in obsolescence and a tendency to generate landfill waste. Architecture as 'blobject'. May seem high-tech, but it's expressing an Industrial Age anachronism.

Eric Hunting
erich...@gmail.com



On Jan 16, 2011, at 8:38 AM, Dante-Gabryell Monson wrote:

> I guess its called " fablab house " because it can be created in a fablab ?
>
> http://www.arquinoias.com/2010/06/21/fablab-house-iaac/
>
> anyway, sounds interesting...
>
>




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