Katharine Bartsch

The Space of Citizenship: Drifting and Dwelling in “Imperial” Australia

Abstract Though rarely acknowledged, cheap labour sourced through inter-colonial networks originating in British India was instrumental to the “European” exploration and development of colonial Australia in the decades that followed the initial convict-transportation era. Among others, so-called “Afghan” cameleers left their most permanent legacy in Australia’s networks of transcontinental communication and transport, which they first charted and then instrumentally assisted in building between the 1860s and 1920s. Arguably, it was these same networks that ultimately enabled the Australian nation-state to be formed. Beyond those indelible infrastructural traces, however, this paper focuses in particular on the more enigmatic built evidence of these Muslim pioneers and their attempt to establish a foothold in Australia’s burgeoning towns and cities in the early twentieth century. We consider how this humble architectural fabric – built and projected – supported their comparatively vast commercial and communal networks, and how it also asserted the cameleer’s presumed right to citizenship within the emerging Australian Commonwealth. To build was both a practical and a political statement of the intention to dwell, we argue, in a space of opportunity and potential citizenship that was – from the cameleers’ purview as subjects of the greater British world-system – truly “imperial” in scale as well as scope for cultural diversity.

Thriving in the slums: progressive development and empowerment of the urban poor to achieve secure tenure in the Philippines

ABSTRACT Thriving cities are characterized by vigorous growth and associated with concepts and the existence of flourishing, healthy communities. However, such concepts are not immediately connected with the living conditions in squatter settlements in developing countries. With a rapidly increasing urban population, slum dwellers in developing countries continue to occupy vulnerable positions, functions and appearances in urban areas, leaving their residents exposed to the fear of eviction and displacement from their livelihoods, lifestyles and homes. While acknowledging a range of different approaches to the housing of slum dwellers, including the experience of problematic efforts to relocate inhabitants from a squatter settlement into a regular housing market in a single step, this paper examines a different case study. It describes the circumstances which have enabled squatter settlers in Davao City, in the Philippines, to achieve legal tenure and to build homes, incrementally, that are eventually compliant with the local building codes. Based on a detailed physical analysis of individual homes in combination with interviews with householders, this paper presents the findings of a comprehensive study of slum settlements in which the progressive development of urban settlements was analysed in the context of Filipino pro-people policies. These have prioritized the rights of the urban poor and empowered them to build low-income housing, enabling them to develop sustainable, secure, thriving urban settlements within cities which provide a credible and hopeful role model for the foundation of better communities and cities for the future.