(RE/DE) CONSTRUCTIONS OF CITY AND SOCIETY: TRANSITIONS FROM SOVIET TO POST- SOVIET ERA IN BAKU CITY

I attended the 4th International Conference of Livable Environments & Architecture in Karadeniz Technical University Faculty of Architecture. The theme of this conference, which was held on July 9-11, 2009 in Trabzon - Turkey, was stated as "(RE/DE) CONSTRUCTIONS IN ARCHITECTURE". I had a speech about transitions from Soviet to Post-Soviet era in Baku city, collaboratively with Dr. Senem ZEYBEKOGLU SADRI. The conference program can be reached from the conference website and our speech text is below. Our full paper is published in conference proceeding (ISBN:97897501716-2-8) from page 435 to 448.

(RE/DE) CONSTRUCTIONS OF CITY AND SOCIETY:

TRANSITIONS FROM SOVIET TO POST- SOVIET ERA IN BAKU CITY

Abstract

This paper aims to understand the relationship between the political reconstruction of society and transformation of city through investigating the changes of concepts such as public and private spaces after the transition from a planned socialist economy to a free market economy in Baku city, Azerbaijan. First, I will give a brief background on the urban development of the city, and then my colleague will talk about re/deconstructions of city and society.

URBAN DEVELOPMENT OF THE CITY

In general, Baku’s urban development can be examined under four major eras; Medieval, Oil Boom, Soviet and Post-Soviet eras. Geographically, the traces of the first three eras can be observed in three concentric circles which surround the same core: the inner core was shaped during the Medieval period, and is contained within the massive citadel walls of the "Inner City"; the Oil Boom era characterizes the next, middle orbit; and the third circle, which surrounds the middle orbit was shaped during the Soviet era.

The impacts of the Post-Soviet era cannot be defined by exact geographical borders. These appear in all of these three circles and cover the traces of the previous eras.

Medieval Era - The Inner City (Ichari Shahar), located at the centre of Modern Baku, inside the fortress walls, constitutes the medieval image of Baku. This area is included in UNESCO’s list of protected sites.

Oil Boom Era - The rapidly growing oil industry during the 19th century brought about a sudden growth in Baku. During the 19th century the city extended its limits to an area of 1300 hectares and the rate of the growth of the population outran all of the big cities in Europe.

Starts with the Soviet Era - Architecture and urban planning in Baku city can be categorized under four different styles: constructivist architecture, national architecture, architecture of Stalin and architecture of Khrushchev eras.

Constructivism put an impact on the architecture of Baku especially between the years 1920-1935. Reconstruction of the city in order to improve the living conditions was the most important issue during this period. Numerous housing projects and public buildings including hospitals, educational, cultural and entertainment buildings started to be constructed especially in the suburban areas.

With the establishment of the Union of the Architects of Azerbaijan, the national style appeared. Azerbaijani architects started to use the national architectural language of Azerbaijan in their buildings and this period is called as Azerbaijani architecture of Soviet era.

The architecture of the period between 1930s and 1950s is defined as architecture of Stalin’s era. During this period the central part of the city was reconstructed. Old buildings were destroyed and buildings with unordinary heights were constructed in their place, several projects of town building were regulated in suburban areas for dwelling of inhabitants living in demolished buildings.

After 1950s the period identified with Khrushchev started. In 1958 a general plan entitled as the Decree of the Soviet Ministers of the Republic was prepared. This plan marked the development of the city for the following 20 years and aimed to improve the quality of living conditions of houses and decrease the outgoings of constructions. This period witnessed the construction of large scale mass housing projects, application of new construction methods and the use of new materials such as concrete, metal and glass.

POST-SOVIET BAKU

In the last decade of the 20th century, USSR collapsed and Azerbaijan opened its borders to free market and international economic organizations such as IMF and WB and rapidly transformed into capitalist system. The first stage of the economic development of the country was marked by a great oil contract signed in the year 1994 in Baku known as “Contract of the Century”. Later, especially after the second Gulf War, due to increasing oil prices, Azerbaijan became one of the fastest growing economies of the world.

This “Oil Boom” was paralleled by a “Building Boom”. Numerous high-rise buildings have “sprung up like mushrooms after rain”. This fast construction without depending on any plan or strategy presented a chaotic development in the city. In addition to its disorder, especially in the central part of the city with its historical value and diverse architectural styles, this stream was disruptive. With Goltz’s sentence, “the Baku which was built by the First Oil Boom was being destroyed by the Second Oil Boom”.

In addition to its damage on city’s architecture and urbanism, this fast economic development and transition caused crucial social effects especially resulting from the war with Armenia and its continued effects; the country’s poor social programme and inequitable development plan, and lack of coordination in planning of local scale.

The Post-Soviet Baku has two faces because of different powers affecting the city at the same time. On the one hand, luxurious and splendid buildings are being constructed by using the latest architectural technologies, in order to create an image for the city that could attract global capital. On the other hand, many people who had lost their jobs and social securities after the collapse of the Soviet system and others who had come to the city in search for job opportunities. In other words, it is possible to see the two faces of the city at the same time: the glorious face of the global city and the catastrophic face of deprivation and poverty.

(RE/DE) CONSTRUCTION OF CITY AND SOCIETY

Baku is a good example of reconstruction of society and city with immense changes that it went through in a short period of time. In this sense, looking at contradictions of the society and the built environment will give us the opportunity to grasp changing values during transition from soviet system to free market system.

Property ownership constitutes the most important of these changes. Encounters with the idea of property ownership for the first time through the programs of privatization of public housing agitated the urge of property ownership. The demand of having quantitatively more houses rather than liveable houses originated a new construction sector. According to this new system, contractors finish the construction work of a house at the level of rough construction, without doing any installations or finishing such as doors, windows, coating and floor covering. After that, clients buy the houses in the form of rough construction, with prices half as much as completed houses, and do the fine works according to their own will. This new system, in which clients can buy two houses with the price of one single house, increased the purchasing power and consequently boosted profits in construction sector.

In an open letter of journalist Sultan Sultanoghlu to First Lady of Azerbaijan, the relationship between capital and construction sector was reported. The part which was quoting Karl Marx states that:

“Capital is happy with a 20-percent return, delighted with a 50-percent return, ecstatic with a 100-percent return, delirious with a 200-percent return. And with a 300-percent return, Capital becomes insane. And the return rate in the building boom in Baku is 300-percent”.

Another issue related with property ownership is the maintenance of buildings. One can easily observe that communal sense did not progress in Baku city due to deprivation of people from sense of ownership during the Soviet era. As a result, people did not feel any responsibility for taking care of public spaces of their home environment such as entrances, stairways, courtyards or facades and all public spaces are in poor conditions. In addition to this lack of communal sense, the contradictions between strong wills of the property owners are also apparent on the facades of the buildings. Each apartment owner paints his apartment’s facade with a different colour. And these colourful facades show the lack of common mind in decision making even in the neighbourhood scale.

The existence of private property has also put an impact on traffic in the city. During the Soviet era, automobile ownership was strictly limited and if a person wanted to buy a car, he had to enrol in a long list. This limitation had enabled a control over motorized vehicle traffic in the city. However, streets of Post-Soviet Baku are full of European cars, which can be easily purchased. But the maintenance of streets did not come along the same way with the increase in car ownership. In addition to that, there has not been any improvement in public transportation since Soviet period and metro and public buses are in poor quality.

Furthermore, population growth in the city centre has also augmented motorized traffic and this has increased the number of cars. For that reason, the streets and wide boulevards which used to serve pedestrians during the Soviet era are now dominated by cars and full of traffic jam and noise. Traffic problem also complicated access from one place to another in the city, and this has led to the creation of polar zones and inequality within the city as centre/periphery, high quality/poor quality areas (Khanlou, 2005).

This inequality does not only exist between different parts of the city, but also between families living in the same apartment building. The construction of interiors of apartments by apartment owners resulted in different interiors depending on the economic conditions of owners.

The concept of order provided by the central government has also changed. With the disappearance of the central authority, efforts of producing long term urban development strategies have also vanished. Moreover, the pace of growth of the city does not allow such kind of planned development. The lack of a metropolitan municipality which can govern the city as a whole brings the lack of planning and this results in inadequacy in areas of infrastructure, development and heritage policies (Khanlou, 2005).

This lack of perspective and long term approach has also affected people. Architectural make-up has replaced fundamental solutions. Embellishing old buildings through wrapping their facades is not only a way of covering their problems, but also declares a good image of the building and provides good income for their owners. However, this practice and in addition to it, construction of low-standard and weak buildings to reduce expenses in an earthquake area like Baku threatens the safety of two million people living in the city.

CONCLUSION

In Post-Soviet Baku, the decisions between old/new, historical/contemporary, social life/individual benefits and motorized vehicles/pedestrians are given according to economic values, rather than human values. As a result, a fragmentation among the inhabitants of the city in terms of economic conditions has appeared.

Nevertheless, this fragmentation does not entail physical borders, but, as Peter Marcuse states clearly, it sets social, cultural and economic borders within society. “Iron curtain” was destructed but is being reconstructed again as perceivable borders among people, putting heavy impacts on living conditions of people.

City and Human Rights Symposium

Bilgi University Human Rights Law Research Centre is organizing a symposium on "City and Human Rights" (KENT VE INSAN HAKLARI SEMPOZYUMU) on the 13th and 14th of November 2009 at Dolapdere Istanbul. You can reach the conference programme from the website of Bilgi University. Some of the speakers and their presentation titles are listed bellow:

Hossein SADRI (Gazi University) From the Right to the City to Human Rights in the City (Kent Hakkından Kentte İnsan Haklarına)

Senem ZEYBEKOGLU SADRI (Dogus University) Urban Transformation and Rights in the City (Kentsel dönüşüm ve kentte insan hakları)

Murat Cemal YALCINTAN (Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University) Urban Opposition from an Right to the City Viewpoint (Kentsel Muhalefeti Kent Hakkı Kavramı Üzerinden Düşünmek)

Ezgi TUNCER GURKAS (Yıldız Technical University) Housing Right in the City: for whom? Place Making Practices of Forced Migrants in Samatya Streets (Kentte barınma hakkı: kim için? Samatya sokaklarında “zorunlu” göçmenlerin “yer-kurma” pratikleri)

Korhan GUMUS (Istanbul 2010 European Capital of Culture) Anonymity, Subjectivity and Publicness (Anonimlik, öznellik ve kamusallık)

Ayten ALKAN (Istanbul University) Gender-Based Urban Right Violations (Yerim mi dar yenim mi?” Cinsiyete dayalı kentsel hak ihlâlleri ve ötesi)

Dikmen BEZMEZ (Koc University) Sibel YARDIMCI (Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University): The Right to the City as a Citizenship Right: Rights of the People with Disabilities in Istanbul (Bir Vatandaşlık Hakkı Olarak Kent Hakkı: İstanbul Özelinde Sakat Hakları)

A Human Rights - Based Approach to the Politics of Space

University of Brighton, Centre for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics organized its fourth international interdisciplinary conference on the Politics of Space and Place. I presented a paper titled "A Human Rights - Based Approach to the Politics of Space" in a collaboration with Dr. Senem ZEYBEKOGLU SADRI. You can click for downloading conference abstracts and programme and you can find our abstract below.

A HUMAN RIGHTS - BASED APPROACH TO THE POLITICS OF SPACE

Hossein SADRI, Senem ZEYBEKOGLU SADRI

Abstract:

“Human Rights” is an idea. An idea which entails that all humans should be treated special just because they are humans. According to that, Human Rights utter certain necessities related to humans. These necessities derive from the will to respect and protect Humans’ values. In other words, Human Rights are principles which require special conditions for the realization of the natural possibilities of humans. The conditions of Human Rights can be found in the knowledge of human possibilities. Since we know that Human Rights are in a strong relationship with our possibilities and their continuity, we can understand that none of our actions are detached from Human Rights. Spaces as human possibilities and architecture as an action cannot be excluded. In fact today’s architecture needs a human rights based view more than other times.

Contemporary architecture is changing as a political tool for making economic rents. The politics of space is improving according to global streams and local advantages of power and mainly under the global economy and politics. The mission of architecture is transforming from a people-based view to a power-based one. Nowadays, urban poor are being moved out from cities through gentrification processes and the power of people on their spaces is being terminated via regeneration projects. The stages of the life circle of space - design, construction and use – are witnessing different types of human rights’ violations in contemporary world and this is determining the urgent need of reconstructing a new framework for architecture under the principles of human rights.

The main focus of this paper is politics of space as a basis for social efficiency in architecture. Thus this paper aims to characterize challenges and introduce solutions for today’s architecture to stop all kinds of human rights’ violations realized by spaces by introducing a human rights based approach to the politics of space.

Conference on the Right to the City

I had participated in the Conference on “The Right to the City:New Challenges, New Issues” inVadstena (Sweden) which had been organized by UNESCO Chair on “Urban Politics and Citizenship” and European Science Foundation on 11-15 October 2008 with a paper titled “Istanbul 2010 and the right to the city: Challenges of the European Capital of Culture” (collaboratively with Dr. Senem ZEYBEKOGLU SADRI). I decided to share our abstract and some of the videos of the conference which I found them from the web-page of UNESCO Chair on Urban Policies and Citizenship.

Istanbul 2010 and the Right to the City: Challenges of the European Capital of Culture

Hossein Sadri, Senem Zeybekoğlu Sadri

Abstract

The economic globalization of the world has brought about the decentralization of power from central governments to local authorities in terms of different aspects including the Human Rights issues. Thus, fulfilling, protecting and respecting Human Rights has become a central issue for local authorities.

Various charters which had been declared within the last couple of years concerning the Right to the City issue made an effort to illustrate the responsibilities of the local authorities in terms of Human Rights. The major emphasis of these charters is that the span of politic, civil, economic, social and cultural rights is not only limited with the citizens, but includes all of the inhabitants of the city. In addition to housing, health, education, participation, representation, equitable development, clean environment, culture, employment and security rights, the city rights also include the rights to the quality public services, usufruct and accessible public transportation, clean drinking water and cheap heating, transparency in public administration, information and leisure, sports and recreation. These charters also underline the protection and positive discrimination of vulnerable groups within the society.

With opening up to the neo-liberal economy policies at the beginning of the 1980s, it is possible to observe the diminishing command and pressure of the state over the public sphere and the increasing power and voice of private sector, civil societies and the local governments in Turkey. As a result of the adjustment of the legal system in accordance with the European Union candidacy and the harmonization process with the EU, the Human Rights issues has begun to enter the Turkish legal system and the participation of non governmental organizations in the management have been encouraged. Within this context, in years 2004 and 2005, the municipal legislations have been modified with the addition of new laws concerning the human rights issues and public participation.

It is possible to notice the impacts of these developments in the selection of Istanbul as European Capital of Culture for 2010. Accordingly, the process of ECOC 2010 is expected to contribute to the advancement of the democratic movement in Turkey through reinforcing the relationships between the state, private sector, civil society and the local government and decentralizing the supremacy of the central state in Turkey.

Despite its potential dynamics which can contribute to the development of a democratic society, the development and implementation process of ECOC 2010 might also lead to major drawbacks in the city with respect to urban projects which aim to recreate the image of the city in order to attract the mobile capital and investments:

1. The scopes of the urban projects proposed for the ECOC 2010 are short term in essence. However, most of the problems of the city need to be addressed by means of long term projects with comprehensive analysis, careful implementation and feedback. These short term projects might fail to maintain the participation of inhabitants of the city, provide long term and sustainable solutions for the problems that they address.

2. The projects aim to create an image for an international audience and this carries the risk of an ignorance of the real problems of the city.

With these issues in mind, this study will try to evaluate the pros and cons of the urban projects of Istanbul ECOC 2010 from a right to the city perspective. In that, the study seeks to bring about ideas to establish a ground for the safeguarding of human rights in the city.

Bernard Jouve (University of Lyon, FR)

Conference Opening: (Re-)Thinking about H. Lefebvre

Mark Purcell (University of Washington, US)

Equivalence, the Right to the City, and Political Movements

Kevin Cox (Ohio State University, US)

Re-Imagining the City

Rob Atkinson (University of the West of England, UK)

The renaissance of urban areas: democracy, community and everyday-life

Erik Swyngedouw (University of Manchester, UK)

The Antinomies of the Post-Political City: Questioning the Political Right to the City

Nuria Benach Rovira (University of Barcelona, ES)

The impact of global flows on the meanings of urban places and the right to the (imagined) city

Don Mitchell (Syracuse University, US) and Lynn Staeheli (Edinburg University, UK) Immigrants, Regimes of Publicity, and Claims to the Spaces of the City

Mustafa Ben Letaeif (University of Tunis, TN)

The right to the city in the urban policies in Tunisia

Ludek Sykora (Charles University, CZ)

Competition, cohesion and access to urban services

JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS AND ARCHITECTURE

I participated in the conference on Architecture and Justice, organized by EMMTEC University of Lincoln, UK on 25-27 November 2009 with a paper titled "Architecture, Human Rights and Justice". You can click here for the draft programme and you can find my speech text below.

JUSTICE, HUMAN RIGHTS AND ARCHITECTURE

The main purpose of this presentation is to highlight the necessity of adopting a human rights based approach in architectural thinking and practice in order to achieve justice through the process of production of space and the built environment. To this end this presentation is constructed under five parts. The first part will focus on the affinity between justice and human rights. The content of different rights is the theme of the second part of my presentation. I am trying to display the interactions between architecture and human rights in the third part and to explain the role of architecture in fulfilment and protection of human rights in the fourth part. The conclusion is examining how justice and human rights are being ignored in current architectural practices and what kind of solutions can be suggested.

“Justice is fundamental to our notions of societal order, that is, to the order sustained between ourselves without recourse to force. There is an increasingly strong assumption that justice is something to which we, as humans, have a universal right.” This is the definition which was mentioned in the poster of this conference. It was explained how justice is related to human rights and I think clarifying this might be a very good conceptual beginning for my speech.

Looking at the etymological meanings of “justice” and “right” in different languages, their ways of use and their philosophical conceptualization will show us the interrelations between these two concepts.

The word justice comes from the Latin word iustitia which means righteousness and equity. The word ‘right’ derives from old English riht and Germanic rekhtaz, which means ‘having moved in a straight line’.

In Arabic also the word “Hagh” (حق) which is being used in the meaning of “right” has the meaning of trueness, presence and justice and it carries the same meaning with the word “Adl” (عدل) which means justice. In Islamic philosophy there is a definition for justice which describes it as E’ta Kolle Zihagge Haggeh (اعطاء کل ذیحقه حقه) which means Justice is “giving everyone his right”. This sentence also emphasizes the interdependency between right and justice.

In Philosophy the idea of justice is attributed to Plato. In The Republic, Plato wrote a dialog between Socrates and his friend Cephalus about the meaning of justice. They came into definition of justice as returning debts. Plato wrote that justice is the repayment of debt (οφειλή) and completed when one‘s debt is fully returned.

In articulating these “debts” and the “idea of justice,” philosopher İoanna Kuçuradi emphasizes the demands deriving from injustice. “Injustice”, which is a state of affairs, is the condition which directly or indirectly limits the implementation of human possibilities. Kucuradi said that “injustice is the place where we find the debts to human beings as such; or, if we wish to call these debts by their modern name, it is the source wherefrom we deduce the principles we call basic human rights.”

Briefly, human rights, in which “all human beings are equal” and which are possessed by all human beings, are the “debts” of human beings to their fellow human beings. Thus, the concept of justice is closely associated with the demand for human rights.

According to Kucuradi, human rights secure the ground on which we can conceptualize the idea of justice, an idea and a conception of the human mind, which is related to injustice, the state of affairs. In Kucuradi’s philosophy, the idea of justice is formulated as a demand for human rights, which should be protected and fulfilled, and their various implications in the existing conditions at a given moment should be found and carried out.

That’s why the manifestation of justice in architecture is directly concerned to protection and fulfilment of human rights, especially those rights which architecture may deal with. Now two crucial questions can be asked: 1. which rights may architecture deal with? 2. How they can be protected or fulfilled through architecture?

In the search for an answer to the first question, we can examine the two different categories of human rights. First category includes rights which demand the direct protection of certain human potentialities in individuals. The second category is related to the general pre-conditions necessary to afford each individual the possibility to develop his or her potentialities. While the security of the individual and the so-called fundamental freedoms belong to the first category, the rights such as the right to a standard of living adequate for one’s health, the right to education and the right to work belong to the second category of human rights.

It is possible to say that architecture is concerned with the second category of human rights because it affects, directly or indirectly, many of the general pre-conditions which are essential for the possibility of developing human potentialities. Fulfilling most of these rights, such as housing, education, work and health, are connected to different spatial regulations. Thus, architecture has an important role in the empowerment and achievement of the rights of people to desirable work, right to rest and leisure, right to “standard of living adequate”, right to education, and right to participate in the cultural life of community, which are mentioned in the articles 23 to 27 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Among these rights, right to standard of living adequate is defined as health and well-being of people including food, clothing, housing, medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond their control.

The role of architecture in fulfilment and protection of human rights can be considered twofold. On the one hand architecture is responsible for maintaining the accessibility of all human beings to facilities which constitute the minimum standards of human rights. For example, each and every human being should have access to shelter, education and work and should have the possibility of participating in the economical, politic, cultural and social life of his/her society. As its first obligation, architecture should facilitate these accessibilities especially for disadvantaged and vulnerable groups such as women, people with disabilities, minority groups, people in the conditions of poverty, homeless people, refugees, migrants, nomads and Romani people.

On the other hand architecture should improve the conditions of these facilities in order to strengthen the minimum standards of basic individual rights. This is the second responsibility of architecture, that is to say, developing the conditions of housing, education, health, work, and economic, politic, social and cultural life of the society. This means producing spaces and buildings more affordable and adequate, people-centred, peaceful, safe and secure, healthy, green, and more respectful to human needs and abilities, to privacy, to different types of lifestyles and to different cultural values in the case that they do not violate human rights.

We can observe that, especially in the so-called post-modern era, studies about the first duty of architecture, which includes empowering the accessibilities of all human beings to basic facilities, have been insufficient. Whereas the second task of architecture, which is recovering the conditions of space, has been focal point of many architectural practices, studies and researches. As a result, while the majority of people are living deprived of their basic rights, architecture is working on improving the living conditions of a small amount of privileged people consistently. For example, architectural education and profession are nearly ignoring the needs of underprivileged people when their main focus is designing “brilliant” and luxurious buildings and environments. While, none of us, as architects, have never been thought about how architecture can provide shelter for homeless people or developing the conditions of urban poor, we learnt all of the “glittering” buildings of star architects like Frank Gehry, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid or Baron Norman Foster.

As a consequence, in terms of living conditions, the gap between prosperous part of society and distressed part is getting deep. I think architects are accomplices in this process and I have to agree all critics which condemn architecture to render service to power and capital.

For taking a step toward realization of justice in architecture, I think that architects should focus on their first obligation, which is obtaining accessibility to all people and planning different programmes which aim to answer the needs of vulnerable and disadvantaged groups. Putting human rights in the centre should take place as the main goal of architectural education and profession.