Dar es Salaam: Underwater and Underreported

If you’re reading this from outside of Tanzania, chances are you haven’t heard that large swaths of the 3-million plus city of Dar es Salaam have been underwater for several days. It’s a situation of superlatives: flash floods due to several month’s worth of rain in 72 hours, including the highest rainfall ever recorded in a single day, have caused the worst flooding the city has seen in 57 years. Thousands are homeless, much of the city has been paralyzed with damaged roads and power outages. The BBC published one article, and AccuWeather posted a video, but aside from that the disaster hasn’t registered much of a peep yet outside of the country.

If the flow of information outside of Tanzania has been a mere trickle, communication within the country has its own major blockages that are already fodder for a nasty blame game.  The government blames residents that have been warned not to construct homes in low-lying areas and “lazy engineers” that have been told time and again to fix roads and bridges. Residents and researchers have warned the government about blocked drainage systems and allowing big new developments on wetlands that don’t pay attention to flood risks (see Twitter posts below, for example). The Tanzanian Meteorological Society apparently issued warnings of high rains that were ignored by everyone.

The immediate institutional response to the floods hasn’t received rave reviews either, though rescue crews have been hard at work. Here’s a stark example from a conversation between the federal disaster management authorities and a local paper yesterday:

“The director of disaster management in the Prime Minister’s Office, Mr Joseph Shiyo, said he was on leave and directed this paper to contact Ms Nyachenge Nanai, who declined to comment. ‘I’m sorry…I think the procedure is known. I cannot comment on the matter, sorry,’ she said before hanging up.“

Where information has been slow or lacking from the sources you’d most expect it from, Twitter seems to be filling a void – a search for #DarFloods yielded a community of people that are active with the latest relief effort (and also a lot of questions about what the heck is happening in the city). Here’s a sampling:

General Information (note the first tweet is from the President himself)
@jmkikwete: Share and raise awareness on the situation through #DarFloods and SMS. (+255 754 777 775)

@IamNchaKALIH: 23 DEAD, about 68 injured and 4000 dar residents displaced due to floods caused by heavy downpour, the heaviest since 1954 #darfloods

Relief effort
@GillsaInt: At Mchikichini relief centre. Lot of homeless people. At least they are having dinner n water #DarFloods

@Tanganyikan: Here @AmorMtage serving food to more than 600 victims #darfloods

The Blame Game
@AfricanGenesis: You cannot neglect backbone of eco development e.g. infrastructure and yet pursue huge goals! Look at our drainage today! #darfloods

@wilbrodslaa: #darfloods: Poor drainage system. While collecting billions in tax, the city is running on one of the oldest drainage systems in East Africa.

I’ll leave you with a few images pulled from Twitter,  blogs, and a bike ride I took this evening to get a sense of the damage. A lot of people have lost everything. Please think of them during the holiday season and after.

~Amy

Tanzanian forces in a rescue boat | Photo: President Kikwete's Twitter feed

Damage to the Selander Bridge and burst water pipe, near the city center | Photo: by author

Flooded homes in Dar | Photo: Zainul Mzinge

Land Rover in a very large hole | Photo: @No1YouthChannel on Twitter

Messy traffic and stranded passengers | Photo: Zainul Mzinge

 

Urbanization News: July 24

“1 Million Dead in 30 Seconds”: That’s the appropriately jarring title of an article by Claire Berlinski in the Summer volume of City Journal, about the increasing risk of earthquakes for massive destruction as cities grow larger. It’s really an excellent piece that speaks to wealth, risk, and how this plays out in the human costs of a natural disaster: “Mother Nature doesn’t have it in for the poor. Rather, earthquakes come to our attention only when they are disasters, and they are disasters only when they strike dense urban areas full of badly made buildings.” The image above is an earthquake vulnerability map made by Benjamin D. Hennig at the University of Sheffield.

Flood Blame Game: Massive flooding in Lagos, Nigeria caused not only widespread damage but also accusations that President Goodluck Jonathan is insensitive to disaster victims for failing to visit the state after the destruction. The federal government shot back that the flood was the result of poor planning by a local government that allowed housing and road construction in drainage areas vulnerable to flooding. The housing problem that in part caused irresponsible building in the first place is now worsened by the loss of so many homes in the flood.

India in Numbers: The Wall Street Journal reported on India’s Census numbers, which revealed that the pace of urbanization is speeding up – the growth rate for urban areas over the last decade was about 32%, making the 12% rise in rural growth pale in comparison. Interestingly, the same WSJ India blog reported back in April about how the population in Central Delhi actually fell by 10% in the same time span – mostly due to massive slum clearance. Could that trend be reversed? Last week a panel of private sector, government and academic minds convened a panel in Mumbai moderated by Mint with a bold premise: “The country must stop looking at slums as a problem.” The post has an abbreviated transcript with some interesting thoughts about planning, urbanization, and the value of informal settlements in India.

This Week in Waste: With the heatwave it was unfortunate timing that a fire in a Manhattan wastewater treatment plant sent 200 million gallons of untreated sewage into the Hudson river last week – it not only smelled terrible but also brought to light an aging system that’s woefully under capacity especially as more people move to New York. On a brighter note, this NY Times post highlights how cities in the Western U.S. facing water shortfalls are finding opportunities in treated wastewater for irrigation instead of simply discharging it into waterways.

Sea Span: The longest sea bridge in the world opened last week in Qingdao, China. Over 26 miles (42 km) long, the Jiazhou Bay Bridge links more modern development on one side of the bay with the older government and banking center on the other side.

Public Housing in Hong Kong: Asia Sentinel report Alice Poon was interviewed by Shanghai’s Dong Fang Daily Shanghai Review of Books about her recent work, Land and the Ruling Class in Hong Kong. The interview offers interesting insights into the history of public housing and real estate development in Hong Kong, and cultural perceptions of property rights. The photos below are by photographer Michael Wolf – check out his project to photograph residents in Hong Kong’s oldest public housing estate here, where he photographed 100 rooms, each 100 square feet in size.

Armchair Engagement: Yuri Artibise’s Yurbanism blog highlighted a new tool that might just bring more people into the process of planning our cities without scheduling more public meetings. PlaceSpeak is being tested in Canada and would offer residents a way to voice their opinions about local issues using an online platform. Check it out and browse some issues in Vancouver, and what local residents have to say about them, here.

Want to take an urban land use class?: The World Bank Institute is offering a seven-week e-learning course called “Sustainable Urban Land Use Planning” starting on September 1st. The cost is $600 – registration is open until August 11.

Japan: Two Perspectives after Disaster

Two weeks after the worst earthquake in Japan’s history the discussions surround relieve and rebuilding bring multiple perspectives about what nations and NGOs are doing to help the country of Japan.  With this disaster effecting millions of people it is rather difficult to put these events into a human scale.  The two stories below attempt to do just that as two architects discuss their perspective on these events.

Architect Shigeru Ban, in a New York Times interview, discusses his design for simple partitions made out of paper for quake victims privacy as they live in shelters.  Ban has worked in many place after disasters and in this piece he also discusses his ideas for making buildings and cities strong enough to resist a tsunami.  He says:

There has to be a different kind of urban planning, such as high, heavy concrete buildings near the coast to protect the houses behind them. People could be evacuated to the rooftops of those buildings. It’s physically possible. But can you imagine how ugly this great wall along the coast would look? Architects and urban planners will have to design an anti-tsunami building that looks nice in order to create a new kind of pretty townscape.

In Salvator-John A. Liotta’s Letter from Tokyo: A Diary Account of the Earthquake, he discusses his life in Tokyo in the days following the quake. As an Italian architect working and researching for his PhD in Tokyo, he has the unique perspective of a western architect that has been in Tokyo for six year. Here are few excerpts:

• March 11: … All of a sudden our operating system disappears and we end up in an ultra- extended space without the means to live in an “advanced” way. What can be done?
• March 12: We are all asked to stay indoors as much as possible, not to use electricity. In supermarkets, there are long lines at the checkout counters; you have to wait a half an hour to pay, but it is all done with calm.
• March 13: Images of disaster, tsunamis, earthquakes are now everywhere. For the newspapers, Japan has already been in a state of nuclear cataclysm for three days.

As the world watches Japan there is certainly much to be done at the national level to aid the recovery however, personal perspectives such as these are extremely valuable as architects and planners design solutions for recovery.

- Melissa

Planning for the Unplanned: Disaster Resilience and Reconstruction

As the world watches recovery efforts from the Japan tsunami amid ongoing reconstruction efforts in Haiti, Chile, and New Orleans, the Urban Planning Student Association and International Public Service Association are convening an engaging afternoon of discussions on Tuesday, March 29 that will bring together students, faculty and practitioners to discuss planning before and after natural disasters strike.

Tuesday, March 29 | NYU-Wagner – 295 Lafayette Street, 2nd Floor

1:30 – 2:20
A student panel will share their recent experiences with post-catastrophe reconstruction in Chile, Japan, New Orleans and Haiti.

2:30 – 4:00
A multidisciplinary panel will discuss how to strengthen existing infrastructure, recover from natural disasters, and build back better.

Panelists include:

• James Stuckey - Dean, NYU Shack Institute of Real Estate
• Rae Zimmerman – Professor, NYU Wagner
• Amy Stroud – President, Building Foundation
• Donald Watson – Principal, EarthRise Design

Details below. RSVP here.