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What is our imagery of cities?
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When we imagine cities,
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we often imagine it
to be something like this.
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But what if what you're looking at
is just half a picture,
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but there is a city within the city.
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This part of the city
is often seen as slums,
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squatters, informal,
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and people living here
are called illegal, informal,
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criminals, beneficiaries,
supplicants, etc.
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But in reality,
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these are poor people with no choices.
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Poverty is a vicious cycle.
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If born poor, it can take
three or more generations
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to escape one.
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Many are forced in this cycle
without choices,
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to live on pavements,
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along train tracks,
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in dumping grounds,
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along rivers,
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swamps and many such unlivable spaces,
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without clean water, toilets or housing.
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But these places are not unfamiliar to me,
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because since the age of six,
I accompanied my father, a doctor,
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who treated patients
in the slums of Bombay.
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Growing up, I would help him
carry his bag of medicines
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after school lessons --
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I loved doing that.
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Wanting to do something
about these habitats,
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I decided to become an architect.
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But quite early on, I realized
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that the beauty of architecture
was only for the rich.
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So I decided to do urban planning
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and joined an NGO in India
that works with the urban poor
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who organize themselves
to access basic services,
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such as water, sanitation and housing,
for the poor living in cities.
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Now I spent 10 years of my life
in professional education, in learning,
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and then five years in unlearning it.
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Because I realized
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that all my training in architecture,
design and planning
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failed ground realities.
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And this is where I learned
the power of choice.
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I unlearned many things,
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but there are two myths about the poor
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that I would like to share
that we live with.
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The first myth is a perception
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that migration of poor people
into cities is a problem.
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Is migration really a choice?
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My mentor Sheela Patel
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asked to those who think
of this as a problem,
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"Go ask your grandfather
where he came from," she says.
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So what do poor people do
when they migrate in cities?
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Let me share an example.
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This is the Mumbai international airport.
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All that you see in blue
are large informal settlements around it.
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Close to 75,000 people live here.
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So who are these people
that work silently in hotels, restaurants,
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as laborers, babysitters, house helps
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and countless other jobs
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that we need for cities to function
without a glitch?
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And where do they live?
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In most cities, they live in slums.
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So let us think again.
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Do we want poor people
to stop migrating in our cities?
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What if they had a choice of not to?
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The second myth is my personal experience.
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It's this attitude that we
professionals know better.
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We professionals love
to make choices for others,
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especially for the poor.
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Let me share an experience.
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In a workshop that looked at designing
250 new houses for poor families
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from a slum nearby,
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there were different building materials
that were presented,
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ranging from papier-mâché,
cardboard, honeycomb, etc.,
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simply because they were affordable.
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But there was this one idea
that was of shipping containers.
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Now we immediately approved of it,
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because we thought it was sustainable,
scalable, affordable.
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But during this presentation,
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a lady from the slum humbly spoke up.
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And she asked the presenter,
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"Would you choose to live in it?"
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(Laughter)
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"If not, then why did you think we would?"
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Now this was a personal
unlearning moment for me,
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where I realized that poverty
only changes affordability --
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it does not change aspirations.
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Now poor people have lived
in temporary structures all their life.
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They go from wall to wall,
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moving from bricks to tin.
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They move from building from bamboo,
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tarpaulin sheets, plastic,
to cardboard, to tin,
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to bricks and cement,
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just like the way we do.
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So somewhere here, we were forcing
our choices on them.
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So should we force our choices on them,
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or should we broaden their choices?
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Now what if the opportunity to choose
was given to people?
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These are women who lived on the pavements
of a neighborhood in Mumbai.
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Now they faced constant evictions,
and in response to it,
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they organized a women's network
called Mahila Milan.
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Not only did they fight against evictions
with those in power,
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saved money and bought land,
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but they also designed
and helped construct their own houses.
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Well, these were illiterate women,
so how did they do that?
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They used floor mats and saris
to understand measurements.
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A sari is four meters in length
and one point five meters in width.
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They used these simple day-to-day items
to demonstrate house models.
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And even they made
three options to choose from
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and invited all their fellow residents
to come and have a look.
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(Laughter)
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And everybody loved this option
that had a loft in it,
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simply because it did two things.
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One is that it accommodated
larger families to sleep in,
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and two, it allowed home-based work,
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such and bangle-making, jewelry-designing,
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embroidery-stitching,
packaging items, etc.
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Now they also decided
to not have a toilet inside,
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but instead have it outside
in the corridors,
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simply because it gave them
more space and it was cheaper.
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Now, professionals
could have never thought
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of something like that.
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A formal design would have necessitated
to have a toilet inside.
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Now these are smaller examples --
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let me share some larger context.
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Eight hundred eighty-one million people --
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that's about one sixth of this world,
as we talk here --
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are living in slums
and informal settlements.
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Almost every city in the global south
has large slums in the size of townships.
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Kibera, in Nairobi,
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Dharavi, in Mumbai,
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Khayelitsha in South Africa, just a few.
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Now initially, they were all
on waste and abandoned lands
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that cities were never interested in.
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As cities grew,
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poor people started building
on these lands
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and brought value to this over time.
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And today, these lands have become
real-estate hot spots
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that everybody wants a piece of.
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So how do cities and those in power
chose to deal with them?
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They demolish them and evict them
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and move them away
from their cities and economies
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in order to build a new infrastructure.
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They move them into vertical housing,
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which in reality looks like this.
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Now when built in high densities,
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they lack natural light and ventilation,
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and it often leads
to unhealthy conditions.
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Now, on one hand,
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poor people are not involved
in the participation of design,
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and there is poor quality of construction.
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And on the other hand,
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they do not understand
how to do maintenance,
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you know, keeping bills,
keeping records, forming societies --
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this is always difficult for them.
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And being forced to move
into this formal society,
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they end up looking like this
in a few years.
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Because formalization is not a product,
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it's a process.
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Moving from informal to formal
for poor people is a journey.
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It takes time to accept and adapt.
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And when that choice is not given,
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it becomes like this,
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which I'm afraid, in future,
these would become the slums.
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Now instead of doing this,
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what if we accommodated poor people
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and gave them a choice
to be a part of our cities
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and develop them where they are,
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giving them basic services,
like in this picture?
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Now what happens if cities
and governments could work together,
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if governments acknowledge poor people,
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and they could build it together?
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This is Mukuru.
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It's a large informal
settlement in Nairobi.
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It's one of the largest
settlements in Africa.
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It's home to 300,000 people
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living over 650 acres of land.
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To help us understand that scale,
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it's like squeezing
the population of Pittsburgh
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into the New York Central Park.
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That's Mukuru.
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So to give us a glimpse,
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this is the condition of housing.
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And this is what it is in between them.
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So what is life in Mukuru like,
just talking briefly?
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Five hundred and fifty people
use one single water tap
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and pay nine times more
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than what anybody else
in the city could pay,
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simply because there is
no water infrastructure
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and water is sold.
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Many come back from work to find out
that their houses do not exist,
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because they have either been bulldozed,
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or they have been burned down.
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So, tired of this situation,
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a local slum dwellers' federation
called Muungano
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decided to do something about it.
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In four years,
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they organized 20,000 residents
to collect data,
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map structures and put it together.
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And the plan was very simple --
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they only needed four things.
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They wanted clean water,
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toilets, decent roads
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and, most importantly, not to be evicted.
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So they presented this
with the government of Nairobi.
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And for the first time in history ever,
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a city has agreed to do it.
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The city of Nairobi,
the government of Kenya,
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declared Mukuru
to be a special planning area.
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which means that people
could come up with their own plan.
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People could decide to come up
with their own norms and standards,
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because the standards that work
for the formal citizens
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do not work in informal settings.
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So what does that mean,
to give us an instance?
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If these are roads in Mukuru,
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you can see that there are houses
along both sides of the road.
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Now in order to bring in a city bus,
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as for the standards,
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planners would have gone for
a luxurious 25-meter-wide road.
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Now that would mean displacing
25 percent of the structures --
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that's a lot of people.
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So instead of doing that,
we came up with a 12-meter-wide road,
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which had the structures intact
and brought the city bus
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without compromising
on much services.
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In another instance,
let's talk about community toilets.
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You know, in high-density areas,
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where there is no scope
for individual toilets,
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like the public toilets that we have here.
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So we would go for a male section
and a female section.
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But imagine this situation.
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In the morning rush hours to the toilet,
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when everybody is in intense
pressure to relieve themselves,
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and if you're standing
in a queue of 50 people,
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and there is a child
standing behind an adult,
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who wins?
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Children end up squatting outside.
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And that's why women decided
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to come up with a separate
squatting area for children.
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Now, who could have thought
of something like that?
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The idea here is
that when poor people choose,
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they choose better.
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They choose what works for them.
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So choice is everything.
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And power decides choice.
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And we need those in power --
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politicians, leaders, governments,
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architects, planners,
institutions, researchers --
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and all of us in our everyday lives
to respect choices.
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Instead of choosing what is right
for people, for the poor,
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let's acknowledge
and empower their choices.
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And that is how we can build
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better and inclusive cities for tomorrow,
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completing the imagery of cities
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built by the choices of its own people.
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Thank you.
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(Applause)