Michael Barke

A review of slum housing policies in Mumbai

Mumbai (Bombay) is Indias main industrial and commercial centre. According to the United Nations it is the seventh largest city in the world with the fifth fastest rate of population growth. Over half the population, however, live in conditions of abject poverty, crammed into overcrowded slums and hutments located in unhealthy marginal environments. There are many complex reasons for Mumbais housing crisis, including strong population in-migration and growth. Former urban development policies favoured capital-intensive industries and the rapid growth of a low-wage informal sector. Subsidised transport systems allowed poor people to live and work in the city. Mumbais poor housing is also a reflection of a poor and inappropriate urban planning system, a lack of public investment and restrictions in the land and rental housing market. The failure of the city authorities to cope with the urban poor is highlighted by a review of the main housing policies implemented in the city. These range from slum clearance and the construction of high-rise apartment blocks to a range of self-help strategies and current privatised market-led schemes. Trapped between dwindling public investment and new powerful market-led forces, it is contended that the future of housing the poor in Mumbai looks bleak.

The EU LEADER initiative and endogenous rural development: The application, of the programme in two rural areas of Andalusia, Southern Spain

Abstract The European Unions LEADER Initiative represents an attempt to generate rural development at the ‘grass-roots’ level. The paper examines the application of the Initiative within Spain and, in particular, two contrasting rural areas of Andalusia. It is argued that some of the features of the way in which LEADER was initially established may have acted against the successful achievement of endogenous rural development and it is demonstrated that the relationships between local areas and the regional, national and European levels have been problematic. More specifically, it is shown that the characteristics of the two selected rural areas of Andalusia significantly influenced the nature of the local programmes proposed, with — in one case — a failure to comprehend the essential nature of the scheme. However, in neither case can it be argued that a truly ‘grass-roots’ level of development has been stimulated as there is little evidence of significant change in the process of social mobilisation with the objective of promoting self-reliant development. Instead, the Initiative has led to considerable emphasis being placed on the development of tangible products and projects.

Learning from experience? Progress towards a sustainable future for tourism in the Central and Eastern Andalucían littoral.

This paper examines the recent development of tourism on the coast of Andalucía to the east of Málaga city in the light of explicit assertions of the adoption of sustainability principles by the Spanish tourism authorities. Using a simple model of sustainable tourism and comparing the eastern coastal area with the earlier developed Costa del Sol, it is concluded that any progress towards more sustainable forms of tourism activity in the east are, at best, superficial. An examination of two major proposed developments, at Maro and Retamar, demonstrates the continuing growth-oriented strategy of tourism in the region and a clear failure to engage with the environmental, sociocultural and political contexts of sustainable tourism development.

The favelas of Rio de Janeiro: A temporal and spatial analysis

A spatial and temporal analysis, at a city wide scale, is given of the main type of informal housing (favelas) in Rio de Janeiro. Rapid change in the number and distribution of favelas and their inhabitants (favelados) over time is seen as the outcome of two opposing sets of factors. Demand-led housing factors, including population growth and variations in levels of poverty in the city, have constantly outstripped the supply side of the housing equation where inadequate housing policies and investment, together with restricted building land have been characteristic. Added to these factors are a set of more specific developments which shape the favela geography, including the timing and location of urban redevelopment, favela eradication and recognition, transport development and access by the favelados to employment sources. Evidence shows that the contemporary distribution of favelas in the city does not conform to spatial models of this urban form, and that any interpretation of the Rio favelas, including their growth, development and diversity, needs to be space and time specific.

Promoting sustainable tourism in an urban context: recent developments in Malaga City, Andalusia.

The term ‘sustainable tourism’ is rarely used within a specifically urban context yet the concept is as equally applicable to city‐based tourism as it is to rural areas. This paper explores recent attempts to promote sustainable tourism in the city of Malaga, southern Spain and examines the ways in which the activity of tourism is being more closely integrated with other facets of the citys economy and life. Rather than seeing tourism as a ‘separate’ and ‘exotic’ activity, the city authorities are attempting to use tourism in a creative way. It is argued that it is this very integration which constitutes one of the main features of ‘sustainability’ within an urban context. Specific examples of the kinds of strategies being pursued are examined and the paper concludes with a critique of these initiatives from the perspective of the debate on sustainability.

Málaga – a failed resort of the early twentieth century?

Abstract In the latter part of the nineteenth century the city of Málaga sought to develop a significant tourism function and, in northern Europe especially, became known as a potential winter resort for invalids. The citys suitability for this function was highly contested up to the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, mainly due to its reputation as insanitary and unhygienic. This reputation, based mainly on external perceptions and representations, arguably obscured the subsequent success of the city in developing as a tourist resort with a substantial domestic market. The paper traces the growth of the main tourist infrastructure from the late nineteenth century through to the 1930s and explores the role of key groups of actors in this process. The ways in which changes in the citys urban structure, including architectural qualities, were used to promote this functional change, are also demonstrated.

Samba: A Metaphor for Rio's Favelas?

Abstract This paper traces the development and diversification of the squatter housing form — favela — and the music form — samba — in Rio de Janeiro from the late 19th century to the present. It is posited that in reflecting (working class) endogenous attitudes and (middle class) exogenous social mores, these two forms have shared a parallel if not precisely time-phased evolution. Evidence is presented to show that poverty, black identity and spatial exclusion from wider society were essential contributors to the origins of the favelas in the late 19th century and the samba in the early 20th century. During the 1940s and 50s when public attitudes to the favelas and their inhabitants were strongly negative, with many favelas being eradicated under public housing policy, protest themes and songs against poverty and marginalisation in samba were suppressed by the Rio authorities. In more recent times, with official attitudes towards the favelas improving and the favelas diversifying in socio-economic and cultural terms, the samba has begun to incorporate other music forms and to widen its cultural basis. Just as attempts are now being made by the city hall to integrate the favelas with the formal city, the samba, assisted by Carnival, has become accepted as a form of mass culture, enjoyed not only by the city of Rio but also by Brazil and the world at large. The close, if not parallel, development of the Rio favelas and samba, encourages a consideration that samba can be seen as a metaphor for the favelas themselves.

Spain, its regions and the EU ‘LEADER’ initiative: some critical perspectives on its administration

This paper examines the development of the EUs LEADER Initiative for integrated rural development. It is argued that the policy process, specific to the LEADER Initiative, has to be understood in terms of the development of a ‘policy community’ in Brussels and beyond, engaged in policy developments informed by a clear ‘integrationist’ philosophy. The paper goes on to examine the administrative arrangements created within Spain to implement the EUs LEADER Initiative for integrated rural development. The intention of the schemes initiators in Brussels was that, in order to facilitate ‘grass-roots’, local development initiatives, the regional and provincial levels of administration would not be involved in the programme and that administration would take place through one national agency (IRYDA in the case of Spain). A questionnaire survey and a series of in-depth interviews with appropriate officials at the European, national, regional and local (CEDER) levels revealed that, in several of the Spanish regions (autonomous communities), there has been a considerable degree of involvement in the Initiative but that such intervention varies quite widely. It is argued that it was inevitable that some Spanish regions (e.g. the Basque Country) would seek ‘hands on’ involvement in the scheme because of their suspicion of any centralised, national level of administration. Other regions with little experience of rural development (e.g. Extremadura) have been very closely involved with IRYDA throughout, whereas in Andalusia, where rural development plans were already significantly advanced before the adoption of LEADER, the regional authority appears to have had a minimal involvement. It is clear that officials in IRYDA have not followed the intentions of Brussels and, in their relationship to the regional authorities, have been extremely flexible in their implementation of LEADER 1. However, at the European level, LEADER 2 is now under way and contains a requirement that regional levels of administration be involved in the programme. It is argued that these findings support the view that policy implementation may be seen as part of the policy process, whereby the realities of implementation force changes in the nature of policy itself in ways not originally envisaged by the i nstigators.

Changing visitor perceptions of Malaga (Spain) and its development as a winter health resort in the nineteenth century

During the early nineteenth century, Spain became an increasingly popular destination for a growing number of northern European and American “romantic” tourists. Malaga was initially a popular tourist gateway for those exploring not only southern Spain but also parts of North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean, and by the end of the nineteenth century, it had established itself as a winter health resort of some repute. This study explores the changing visitor perceptions of the city during this period of development. The published accounts of over 40 men and women travellers who visited Malaga in the nineteenth century have been examined using discourse analysis. Our analysis reveals not only the changing nature of Malaga as an emerging tourist destination but we also demonstrate the plural and contested nature of visitor perceptions of this tourist place and what these potentially reveal about the predilections and attitudes of the visitors themselves and how they reflect broader northern European social discourses towards southern Spain and its people at this time.

THE NORTH EAST COAST EXHIBITION OF 1929: ENTRENCHMENT OR MODERNITY?

HISTORY IS MADE as much by those who write about it as by the events and themes they write about, and in this context it is important to recognise that ‘memories are inherently unstable’ and that ‘there is no past that is finished: there is only how we choose to remember it’.1 In this sense the historiography of a region assumes a particular significance not as an uncontested record of events but as a repository of selective memories. With four million visitors spread over the period May–October 1929, the North East Coast Exhibition remains the largest single event ever to be held in the city of Newcastle upon Tyne.2 It is surprising, therefore, that most of the histories of the city and region published in the mid twentieth century either give the North East Coast Exhibition scant attention or fail to mention it altogether,3 a record that has scarcely been improved upon in more recent histories.4 This may reflect a judgement on what constitutes the proper subject matter for history but, in the context of a linear interpretation of the history of the region, may also be construed as an assessment of the relative failure of the Exhibition to play any significant part in a reversal of the region’s downward economic spiral in the late 1920s and 1930s. Indeed, such accounts as there are of the Exhibition almost invariably end with this rather downbeat conclusion. Despite the four million visitors, wider economic forces were soon to plunge the region even further into economic decline. Some subsequent histories have rescued the North East Coast Exhibition from oblivion but, with one exception,5 have