Le roi blanc, le caoutchouc rouge, la mort noire

IMAGE REPORT by Steven Wassenaar

http://archis.viewbook.com/slums_and_slabs#/1/

We had to burn the village to save it
http://londonbanker.blogspot.com/2008/10/we-had-to-burn-village-to-save-...

The title of this diary is a quote from the Vietnam era that sums up for many the arrogance and pointlessness of American aggression in Asia two generations ago. It keeps coming to mind each time I read President Bush’s (paraphrased) statement this week: We had to nationalise the banks “to preserve the free market.”

There is no free market when the government owns the actors and sets the terms of transactions. There is no village once it has been burned to the ground.

Land from the Tiller

The Push for Rural Land Privatization in China

LUKE ERICKSON

Source: China Left Review, issue no. 1.
http://chinaleftreview.org/index.php?id=58

The Debate

http://www.abahlali.org/node/4178

Slums built on the ashes of apartheid

September 21 2008 at 01:42PM

By Imraan Buccus

Last Saturday almost the entire Foreman Road shack settlement in Clare Estate, Durban, burnt down, leaving thousands destitute.
The next morning residents found a body in the ashes There was a devastating fire in the same settlement in 2007.
The photographs from the morning after are apocalyptic. The nearby Kennedy Road settlement has had seven major fires in 2008.

Source : http://blog.uwinnipeg.ca/ChristopherLeo/archives/2008/08/opposition_to_s...

For years, I've argued that urban sprawl is the source of a long list of serious urban social, economic and environmental problems. In recent years, I'm finding that more and more people agree with that line of argument. Today when they disagree, the disagreement, as often as not, takes the form, either of allegations that government policy favours cities over rural areas, or of hymns of praise to the virtues of rural life.

LE ARCHITETTURE DEI MOSTRI

* Genova
* Territori e Conflitti urbani

Source : http://liguria.indymedia.org/node/982

Poco tempo fa la neoeletta sindaco di Genova Marta Vincenzi ha annunciato il prossimo abbattimento di una parte della diga di Begato.
La cosa dovrebbe servire a risolvere una parte dei problemi abitativi e umani che da sempre, dal momento della sua costruzione, affliggono il quartiere.
Un'opera di 'bonifica' e di riqualificazione' per migliorare la qualità di vita dei suoi abitanti che s'inserisce in un più ampio progetto di riqualificazione della città.

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L’impossible accès au logement en France

Conseil des droits de l'homme - 7ème session 2008

Point 3 : promotion et protection de tous les droits de l'homme, civils, politiques, économiques, sociaux et culturels, y compris le droit au développement. Déclaration écrite du CETIM.

Cote ONU: A/HRC/7/NGO/75

Source : http://www.cetim.ch/fr/interventions_details.php?iid=293http://www.cetim...

En France, dans un pays qui compte 3.3 millions de personnes mal logées ou

Researching and exposing the colonial legacy of our great cities
and the relation between our built environment and its "urban apartheid".

Some initial infos :

Çelik, Zeynep. Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations: Algiers Under French Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press, c1997 1997.

http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft8c6009jk/
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Urban Forms and Colonial Confrontations
Acknowledgments

Introduction
Chapter 1 The Casbah and the Marine Quarter
Chapter 2 An Outline of Urban Structure