May 1st, 2011
Megatransecting Mexico City
In 1999, American biologist J. Michael Fay set out on a project to map and survey the vegetation of Africa’s entire Congo River basin. Heavily promoted by National Geographic as “The Megatransect,” Fay’s feat involved 455 days of walking across 3,200 miles of largely untamed territory. Biologists had actually been using the term “transect” to describe such surveys since the late 19th century, but Fay’s epic-scale journey brought it widespread public recognition. In 2004 and 2005, he and Geographic extended the brand by conducting a “Megaflyover” of Africa, taking photos every 20 seconds during a 60,000 mile plus journey in a small bush plane.
Legendary as the natural surveys of explorer-biologists like Darwin and Alexander von Humboldt are, expeditions like theirs — and Fay’s — are increasingly rare now that most of “the field” has been crossed and recrossed. Geographers have turned their attention toward changes, rather than gaps, in maps of the earth’s surface — particularly those with less than natural causes. So it’s unsurprising that they have become fixated on the sites of the most intense human population growth and activity — cities. By 2008, urban centers contained, for the first time, over half the world’s people.
A long, long walk through London
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March 17th, 2008
Zoroastrian carving, Bombay. Thanks to Toreajade.
Bombay’s Zoroastrian community emigrated from Iran about 1,000 years ago and brought their religion along with them–the oldest living monotheistic faith. They are also known as Parsis, because of their Persian origin. Since they cannot marry outside the community, they have retained a distinct identity and appearance. They worship in Bombay’s towers of silence. where sky burials are also performed–a practice that has come under scrutiny in recent years because of the declining vulture population.
Though Zoroastrians represent a mere 0.005% of India’s population, they have had a considerable impact on the country. In the West, the best known Parsi is probably Queen singer Freddy Mercury, who grew up in Bombay. Indians are more familiar with the Tata family, who seem to own everything–you start your day with a cup of TataTea, pay your TataPower bills, drive to work in your TataCar, and make calls on the TataSky network. In recent years, the Tatas have moved outside of India, acquiring Tetley tea, Ritz Carlton Hotels, and Jaguar.
Kyani Café, Bombay
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February 29th, 2008
If only the bus were a little more red and a little less boxy, I could have sworn I was in South Kensington or Knightsbridge in London rather than in Mumbai. The double decker bus, the Victorian Gothic architecture — a common inheritance of the British empire that is at once familiar and strange. I did not spend long enough in Mumbai to explore further the lingering British influence and how it had been adapted to local circumstances.
I wonder if people on their first visit from Mumbai to London have that same mix of feelings of déjà vu and novelty.
December 30th, 2007
Street scene in Dharavi. Photo from the Economist
“Around 6am, the squealing of copulating rats—signalling a night-long verminous orgy on the rooftops of Dharavi, a slum in Mumbai—gives way to the more cheerful sound of chirruping sparrows. Through a small window in Shashikant (“Shashi”) Kawale’s rickety shack, daylight seeps. It reveals a curly black head outside. Further inspection shows that this is attached to a man’s sleeping body, on a slim metal ledge, 12 feet above the ground.”
It’s not the most flattering description, but the Economist’s December 19th story on Dharavi is actually a remarkably sensitive portrait of Asia’s largest slum, revealing a particularly complex social and economic space that is now threatened by redevelopment.
One million people live in Dharavi, which is somewhat incredible when you realize that it covers just one square mile. Although conditions are rough, life in the slum has improved remarkably over the past several decades. Part of the reason for that is that it has become an important economic centre, containing an estimated 15,000 single-room factories and functioning as the centre of Mumbai’s jewellery, textile and recycling industries. All of the trash thrown away in Mumbai passes through the workshops of Dhavari, where it is sorted and sold. For the slum’s residents, the line between home and work is blurred, since many living spaces also double as workshops; every inch of Dharavi is put to great use.
Government planners don’t approve of slums like this; they never have. For at least a decade, Mumbai’s officials have been trying to get rid of Dharavi. What they overlook, however, is the innovation and entrepreneurialism it produces. Dharavi is packed with an almost unimaginable number of people, but it’s also full of small businesses that were built by the most marginalized members of Indian society. Most are poor migrants from the countryside. For them, living in a slum, where living conditions are squalid but opportunities are immense, is the best way to improve their lot.
Potters at work. Photo by Akshay Mahajan
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March 17th, 2007
“My grandfather was a barber to the British,” says this umpteenth-generation barber in Dalhousie, India
In India, Victorian England is alive and well with all its stuffy floweriness and chastity belts. Picture yourself in a café painted in sombre greens. A Brahmin gentleman at the table next to yours takes Queen & Lion brand snuff out of an ancient-looking tin cylinder. A hand-painted sign on the wall reads “TIFFIN – 3:00.” Dusty black and white portraits of all the shop owners and their extended family clog the walls, hung at 45 degree angles. Underpaid Dickensian kids scurry about on all fours cleaning the floor with rags. Other higher-caste kids hurtle around refilling your glass with dysenteric water. If they’re not quick enough, their fat employers yell and slap them around.
The Brahmin gentleman remains indifferent to the bustle around him. He sits there, head raised, prattling on about the degeneracy of the irreligious and the filthiness of the lower-class plebes (who, ironically, do all the washing up around him). Because of his Christian education at private Anglo-Indian institutions in the Himalayas, he can recite Wordsworth couplets effortlessly and peppers his speech with distorted anachronistic clichés: “Actually, my darling sir, to perform such an action would be as inauspicious as carrying coal to Newcastle.”
To an outsider living in the 21st century, this aspect of India seems like some exotic Bollywood parody of Victorian England. To the actors it is not a joke. It is quite real. But then there are all the hippies…
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February 8th, 2007
Taxi drivers, it’s safe to say, have attained iconic status in the annals of urban folklore. They’re the embodiment of a city’s wiry energy and gritty determination to survive. They are strange, slightly crazy and defiantly individualistic. Surely, it takes a special character to drive strangers around for hours on end, competing with thousands of other drivers for customers and cash. (The debt faced by drivers is often staggering—in Montreal, where 9,500 taxis prowl the streets, taxi licences cost upwards of $200,000.) Maybe that’s why so many of them have such interesting things to say. Pierre-Léon, author of Un taxi la nuit, just landed a book deal; Lebanese-Canadian Rawi Hage wrote his first novel DeNiro’s Game while driving a taxi in Montreal. It was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and is now a national bestseller.
Most cabbies, however, are just trying to survive amidst the particular challenges of their own city. “Horn OK Please” is a day in the life of a Bombay taxi driver, Lucky, who struggles to earn enough rupees to buy a new air-conditioned cab. This short film, produced by a team of Indian and Irish animators at Belfast’s Flickerpix Animations, is made with a combination of stop-motion models and drawn backgrounds. The result is colourful, chaotic and charming. Take a look.
February 3rd, 2007
Most people are poor judges when it comes to architecture from one generation back. Take Montreal’s Place Bonaventure or the Concordia University Hall Building—some of you may appreciate these buildings, but most people don’t. I am considered a weirdo when I argue that Quebec City’s “le bunker” (also known as “le calorifère”) is an interesting post-war building that warrants preservation. The mainstream press look at these buildings and ask for their demolition, all the while lamenting the loss of the Victorian marvels that came before.
This is not a new phenomenon. People in the first half of the twentieth century felt the same way about late nineteenth-century architecture that we now feel about concrete. Let me illustrate this with an example: Bombay.
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