On May 25, 2021, the Institute for War and Peace Reporting in Central Asia (IWPR CA) in cooperation with the Foreign Policy Centre held a joint online discussion on negative effects of chaotic urban development, historical heritage destruction and citizen activism to protect housing and heritage in Central Asia.
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The meeting brought together researchers and experts from across the region and gave a chance to discuss the different ways for solution. At the beginning of the event, IWPR’s Regional Director in Central Asia Abakhon Sultonazarov opened the meeting, delivered his welcome speech and expressed his gratitude to the Foreign Policy Centre for their continuous work on studying Central Asian region. Сhair of the event, Adam Hug, Executive Director of the Foreign Policy Centre, made an introduction of the topic and gave the floor to the first speaker Dilmira Matyakubova, researcher, policy analyst and Co-Director of UzInvestigations. Dilmira Matyakubova spoke about the harmful effects of urban redevelopment in Uzbekistan and shared her views of what can be done.
The speaker believes that urban development impacts society socially, culturally, and economically. She said that in kleptocracies like Uzbekistan, it is natural to observe how massive urban projects are used as a tool for laundering money, enlarging capital and wealth by certain groups of political/economic power. She discussed that some construction projects have a harmful effect on those in vulnerable economic positions and that the evicted urban poor or low economic income families are strongly affected by them as they have to adapt to new environments once they are evicted. This involves changing their jobs, places of residence, school, and social networks, etc.
At the same time, urban development has an impact on medium-sized businesses. For example, a factory that has manufactured various equipment for over 20 years, has provided jobs is now being demolished to pave the way for a new elevated metro in Tashkent. The expert argues that transparency in planning is very important. Citizens should have a voice and participate in urban governance. A lack of participation of residents in planning often results in replacing spaces among houses where there are playgrounds and green spaces, with commercially oriented structures. In a way, it affects the ecosystems of residential urban spaces. Therefore, there is a need for ensuring democratic planning, citizen participation.
Citizens can engage in urban activism through mobilization, research, art, advocacy. Researching and finding out who is the developer, who is the investor, who are the beneficiaries of a certain urban project can help to create special databases. That’s what we do as part of our research projects at the UzInvestigations. Finally, it is vital to know that transparency, [corruption in urban planning] is not a local problem, it is a problem of a transnational nature, hence it is very important to act and cooperate with other researchers in the region and beyond.
The second session continued with particular focus on research by Xeniya Mironova, who explored residency registration system, demolitions and forced evictions, as well as money- making schemes in construction sector in Tajikistan. Xeniya Mironova is an independent researcher on urbanization of Central Asian capitals.
In her research, Xeniya Mironova studied residency registration system (propiska) and how it violates basic human rights; redevelopment of Dushanbe in the times of the pandemic; demolitions and forced evictions in Dushanbe; and how the representatives of the Tajik elite can benefit from the redevelopment of Dushanbe. The expert looked through these points one by one.
1) Propiska is a holdover of the Soviet Union mostly used to control the internal and external migration. It is required to meet the right to housing, labor, education, health protection, etc. But there are still lots of people who do not have propiska or/and passports in Tajikistan. Among them: orphans, disadvantaged, underprivileged people and those who used to be citizens of the neighboring countries like Afghanistan or Uzbekistan. After the collapse of the Soviet Union and during or after the civil war, some of them did not change their passports and/ or got propiska and since that time they live in Tajikistan without any official registration. Now they are subject to a fine and an administrative punishment. Along with that, they do not have any kind of social support and they are not able to get pensions, birth certificates, bank accounts, passports and even SIM cards. But there is actually an option for them, i.e. a possibility of going to reception centers (priyomniki-raspredeliteli) under the ministry of internal affairs. There, they can get their registration. However, the government officials do not provide the population with this information and people are not aware of this opportunity.
2) Demolitions and forced evictions. Demolitions in Dushanbe are happening against the old solid 2-3-4-deckers mainly located in the downtown. However, slum dwellings in the downtown and suburbs remain “untouched”. Instead, the chaotic infill development takes place. People do not have access to the general plans.
And some of the Tajik citizens faced demolitions of their tenements and forced evictions. Most of them faced dealing with real estate developers who are responsible for compensations, but who do not want to pay lucrative compensations in many cases. Real estate developers withhold paying rents, embezzle funds and use the construction materials of low-quality. Forcebly evicted people who are aware of their rights try to find solutions by appealing to media, government, court, the president or public organizations like “Independent Center for Human Rights Protection”.
3) The money-making schemes in the construction sector. The construction sector in Tajikistan is one of the most vulnerable sectors to corruption. The closure of political system allows those in the system to overstep and make good use of the office and power for their own ends. The real estate developers functioning in Tajikistan are very close to the Tajik elite and some of them are close to the family of the President. Due to this closeness, some of the money-making schemes are available for real estate developers. For example, there are cases when the government officials have registered some construction organizations with their family members. This is the case of “Elite Stroy Service”, which belongs to the family of the Head of the Tax Committee, and the case of “Komil” and “Niagara” which belong to the Head of Communication Service. Also, there are cases when elite related companies use poor quality construction materials for their buildings, and do not meet the state quality control requirements.
The next speaker Tahmina Inoyatova, Ph.D. candidate, Simon Fraser University (Canada), talked about the urban transformation and demolition of the Soviet Dushanbe. The expert noticed that demolition of historic housing and architecture is not unique to Central Asia, but the feature of global capitalism and this process is well documented in various parts of the world. She identified two main dimensions: power and production of space, resistance and social construction of space.
- power and production of space is linked to economic and ideological Economic rational is basically profit making by the states and private capital, meanwhile on the higher level it is linked to the creation of cities attractive to the global investment, commerce and tourism. Ideological/national one is manufacturing, construction and reproduction of a national identity though the construction of new administrative buildings that represent state power.
- In the dimension of resistance and social construction of space, the expert notices that it is important to know the inability of influencing the urban transformation process from the “bottom-up” in the current political environment for majority of citizens and residents of Dushanbe. Process involves forceful displacements, evictions, lack of public output into the process and secrecy behind.
The speaker also shared 3 different narratives discovered during her interviews: preservation narrative, celebratory narrative and youth, social media activism narrative.
In Dushanbe, preservation narrative is driven primarily by the native citizens, often older generation, who feel personal connection to the Soviet Dushanbe, have personal and collective memories. For this group of people, the city transformation feels the most traumatic, and they have the feeling of forgotten and ignored in the nation building process. This group is mostly privileged in terms of their ability to speak to international community- most of them are Russian speaking and educated middle class people. They usually have elitist attitude to rural newcomers of the city and their definition of modernity is based on the notion of Soviet and European modernity.
Celebratory narrative is mostly expressed by people who do not have a strong attachment to the old city and is either very young or moved to Dushanbe from other towns. They tend to welcome the changes and see them as an indicator of Tajikistan’s national development and symbolic prosperity. This group tends to compare new Dushanbe to Dubai, Urumqi, Kuala Lumpur etc. and not to tend to see it as European city as the first group. They are not vocal on social media and among the international community, and they welcome Islamic architecture and symbolism in architecture.
Youth and social media activism narrative is expressed by emerging youth and their social media accounts. People in this group were mostly born after Tajikistan’s independence and they are linked both to old and new Dushanbe. They have a more nuanced understanding and a different vision about modernity and development. This group tends to turn to social media to document and discuss recent changes in their city.
Tahmina Inoyatova concludes that when we want to preserve our cities, it is crucial to ask the question – who we are preserving it from and what we are preserving it for? Urban transformation of Dushanbe is a complex issue involving the dimensions of power and social justice. Giving more voice to local residents and activists in research and work is crucial to avoid reductionism in understanding the urban transformation in Dushanbe.
Dr. Emil Nasritdinov, Associate Professor, Director, Social Innovations Lab Kyrgyzstan, AUCA, shared the collaborated research “Kok Bishkek: Making the city blue and green again”.
The expert shared some historical background of the city and showed how the settlement map was changing over time. He notices that after the post-soviet chaos and corruption, 150 meters “red” zones along the river during Soviet Frunze was reduced to only 6 meters from the bank, so lots of areas along the rivers was taken over by private houses, some industries and lots of construction garbage by residents and companies ended up there.
Dr. Nasritdinov said that they took Ala-Archa river for analysis and hence identified several major segments along the river, such as as eco-zone, micro-districts, industrial areas, commercial areas (bazaar, malls) and greenlands (village in the city). Analyzing it, the experts developed some recommendations: preserving the authentic wild character of eco-zones, planting more trees in the micro-district area, removing some visual barriers along the rivers, creating amphitheather across the industrial zone, opening the passages on one or both sides of the river near bazaar, turning the bazaar to face the river and creating a promenade in the Urban village and opening up the Kyrgyz Film to people. Additionally, they proposed to create some activity, socialization and recreation anchors along the river, as well as restoring river bed and banks. Moreover, they proposed the idea of Bishkek eco belt, which will unite the rivers and channels into a large ring that would reconnect all main types of social spaces of the city into one integrated system of blue and green spaces.
Dr. Nasritdinov also notices that there were some project failures in the same direction, simply because they were imposed from above (top-down). But now they are doing vice-verse (bottom-up), conducting different meetings every week with communities, getting feedback and popularizing their vision.
Adil Nurmakov, Ph.D. candidate of Political Science, co-founder of the “Urban Forum Kazakhstan” spoke how activism is changing the public perception of heritage in Kazakhstan.
The speaker said that the importance of historical layers in architecture and urban fabric has risen significantly in Kazakhstan over the past few years. Advocacy campaigns, various formats of dialog platforms and educational projects are changing the public perception of heritage and fair-shared city, turning the underground fringe debates into a mainstream discourse.
The shift in public perception has taken place right on time, because for many in Kazakhstan – and Central Asia – recent heritage is synonymous to colonial legacy. This kind of sentiments were voiced quite often until recently – that we should get rid of physical objects that serve as reminders of the Soviet regime. Clearly, that in absence of significant architectural history, this reasoning eventually led to uncritical justification of any kitsch, pushed forward by big capital – be it local construction companies or foreign starchitects.
Currently, there is a new policy building up momentum, which is renovation of obsolete housing and replaced with massive complexes. There is a big share of truly poor housing buildings, many of them had been built as temporary housing, but the policy is promoting demolition of whole quarters and blocks, without public consultations, without technical assessment, with no clear strategy to improve the urban fabric. The policy, pushed forward by local authorities and construction companies, is fueled by imperfections of national economy and governance.
The expert identifies two more cases:
- The oil-driven economy provides almost no investment alternatives for big capital, apart from highly lucrative construction of housing real estate. The construction sector is the main booster of national economy, second only to extractive industries, which is certainly not relevant for cities, so encouraging construction boom is the only way to boost urban economy.
- The local administrations seek quick wins in macroeconomic and statistical dimensions that they can report back to the center and get promotion – more jobs, more investments, more taxes, more square meters of housing, more red ribbons.
In ideological terms, renovation of obsolete housing is less charged. There are not so many sentiments on fighting Sovietism in the built environment for the sake of new national identity. More emphasis is made on pragmatic arguments, which do not help much when it gets to the work with communities in neighborhoods that are subject to renovation, because of the lack of empathy, engagement and participation.
In most cases the outcome is yet again – erased identity, distorted urban fabric, aggravated transport and environmental problems, lower quality of life, lower access to social infrastructure and less human scale development.
After an interesting Q&A session IWPR’s Regional Director in Central Asia Abakhon Sultonazarov thanked all the participants and concluded the expert meeting.
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