Saturday, November 26, 2011

Istanbul

(Elevation of the Asian side of Istanbul as seen from the Bosphorus)
Few weeks back in India some of my friends (who are planners) and me were involved in a debate around possible development trajectory for cities with large percentage of informal housing, multiple tenancies, incremental development etc. Our discussion was mostly around Bombay and how 67% of it is informal with an additional 20% old city housing and so acknowledging it to be a 'slum city' or 'informal city' could be a first step towards finding the right solutions. Seeing the role of the designer under threat and not really believing in 'people / community knows best' I tried to defend otherwise, but after my recent visit to Istanbul, I believe maybe there is a possibility of developing multiple decentralised solutions that incorporate the presence of the informal and at the same time have a diversity of design intervention that plug into such a landscape...
...its all up to our favourite underpaid intern sitting in some basement to crack this now....

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