slum

Slum/Bin Wang

These articles inspire my consideration for the one third population on this planet, squatters, most of whom live in developing countries. Although there are also many squatters in the States, things are totally different. Based on my experience living in China and America, I feel most homeless people in America don’t intent to get a job. Many of them live in cities. Living in slums seems more a life style. While in China, most slum people have jobs (not good for sure) and are trying to get better ones for moving into cities.

My hometown, Suzhou, has one of the most well preserved city walls of the world. Attached to the outside wall, there used to be a lot of slums. As a child, I liked to go through these intimate neighborhoods. The fabric of the slums is still beautiful to me. After developing for decades, the slum had well organization and emerged into the typical housing style. However, when I went back from university last year, most slums (actually old houses) had been tore down, leaving the lonely city wall behind and several “nail residents” among the ruins. It was cruel to all the residence. I’ve be wondering where they are right now. Must be somewhere in the city. The ironical thing is that the position where they lived, from where they wanted to move into the city, had already become the centre of the city. The concept of “city” changed dramatically in the last 20 years. So they probably moved not into the “city” but to the edges of the “new city”.

The reason why most slums in China appear at the edge of cities is interesting. In China, we have policy for “registered permanent residence” according to which people can only live in their “permanent residence city”. For example a citizen born in Shanghai can’t work in Beijing under equal benefits unless changing the “registered permanent residence” to Beijing. That why people be restricted immigrating even in their own country makes no sense to me at all. But this is a policy. As a result, those people coming from the suburb have huge difficulties to get a “right identity” so it is hard to find a good job in the city. On reverse, without a job means no identity and no normal housing. The consequence is that more and more people gathered on the edge of the city waiting for an opportunity to move into the city. The slum areas thus become an in-between of suburb and cities. They witness the process of urbanism.

“Housing is a verb.” But the economic and political power have pushed this verb way beyond an architectural issue, or it never was.