Housing and home-making in low-income urban settlements: Sri Lanka and Colombia

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DOI 10.1007/s10901-007-9099-0 A R T I C L E

Housing and home-making in low-income urban settlements: Sri Lanka and Colombia

Ranjith Dayaratne · Peter Kellett

Received: 15 February 2007 / Accepted: 15 October 2007 / Published online: 8 February 2008

Abstract Enabling the making of home is central to the practices of housing, but constructing home is more than building adequate shelter. It is about establishing, nurturing and managing social relationships and bringing together spaces, objects and elements to represent and celebrate desired relationships, events and memories. Drawing on empirical data from Sri Lanka and Colombia, this paper examines in detail the practices of home- making in low-income settlements. By focussing on people’s conceptions of home and by identifying key social and societal practices, the paper oVers insights into the processes of home-making among ordinary dwellers in developing countries and calls for culturally sen- sitive and holistic housing interventions which support and complement these processes.

Keywords Home-making · Low-income settlements · Sri Lanka · Colombia

1 Introduction

All over the world, ordinary people who live in substandard accommodation or who consider themselves ‘homeless’ are constantly struggling to acquire the necessary resources for the seemingly basic purpose of housing themselves in a form of shelter that can oVer a sense of home. While housing experts may emphasise complex issues related to land, shelter construction, services or Wnance, it is argued that as far as the people are concerned, housing is almost always predominantly an act of ‘making home’, all the concomitant struggles being directed to this very purpose.

There is an abundance of literature on the concepts of home and homelessness and studies related to enabling the construction of houses. Yet this accumulated knowledge

R. Dayaratne (&)

Department of Civil Engineering and Architecture, College of Engineering, University of Bahrain, P. O. Box 32038, Manama, Bahrain

e-mail: [email protected] P. Kellett

Global Urban Research Unit, School of Architecture Planning and Landscape, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU Newcastle upon Tyne, UK

e-mail: [email protected]

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has had little impact on the practices which support home-making, particularly those which aim to enable housing of the poor. This is mainly because governments and housing specialists are often overwhelmed by the housing supply policy issues of Wnance, construction and management of house building. In a world with an alarming shortfall of even basic housing facilities, most programmes are struggling to provide suYcient quan- tities of houses for the ‘homeless’. In this context, this paper highlights the need to reXect on the meaning of home and the processes of home-making simultaneously, so that appropriate interventions can be devised to enable the making of homes through such housing approaches.

2 Theoretical conceptions of home

Researchers in many disciplines have examined the concept of home and a considerable literature articulates the wide range of its meanings (Heidegger 1954; Bachelard 1964;

Canter 1977; Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton 1981; Alexander 1985; Altman and Werner 1985; Dovey 1985a; Rybczynski 1986; Lawrence 1987; Despres 1991; Moore 1998). Most signiWcant of these research outcomes is the acceptance that home is central to the human experience of the world and that a ‘sense of home’ is an essential component of one’s being. Although there is considerable cultural variation, it has been argued that there is no other concept so widespread and easily understood by all people as ‘home’ (Day- aratne 1992). In most languages and cultures and in everyday experiences, home is a fundamental and essential conceptual entity. People understand the meaning of home eVortlessly; almost unconsciously, they employ it to anchor their ‘being in the world’.

The literature suggests two distinct aspects of the concept of home: spatial and social.

However these two facets are not mutually exclusive and cannot be separated. In essence, a home is a rudimentary ‘place’ in human life. Home-making is a fundamental activity which anchors an individual in the world within the universe of space, things, people and events in which he or she exists (Bachelard 1964). It enables an individual to establish a point of orientation to the rest of the world and organise social and spatial relationships around a refer- ential geographical location in space (Tuan 1977). Home is considered to consist of the history and memories of the family and is the storehouse for the physical, social, psychological or emotional wealth of its occupants (Lawrence 1987, 1991). Home is thus made in the process of living and is in a constant process of consolidation and transformation (Habraken 1983).

For many people, home or its equivalent essentially means the location where one

‘dwells’ and which aVords opportunities to claim a sense of belonging (Heidegger 1954). It is a place to return to, a place to defend against intruders and a place to contain one’s belongings. Articulating this, Bachelard (1964) writes that home is “our corner of the world

… our Wrst universe, a real cosmos in every sense of the word.”

To understand the meaning and signiWcance of home, it is also necessary to understand the signiWcance of ‘place’ in human experience. Seagart (1985) points out that home is a much more restrictive and place-based idea than dwelling. The idea of home signiWes the location in which the main activities of daily life are conducted and therefore carries symbolically charged meanings. Canter (1977) proposes that conceptualisations of place are the atomic units of human experience. He argues that in the human conception of the world as a collection of interlocking and encompassing places, home is the anchor that binds the experiential entities of physical enclosure, social relations and psychological feelings.

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Indeed, home is both the material and spiritual container of one’s life and brings a sense of totality to an individual and a family. It is the common ground protected from the rest of the world that contains everything. As a reXection of their memory of the unity of life in the womb, humans come home in search of rest, tranquillity and peace.

Homes and houses diVer in that home is a ‘place-based’ concept, whereas the house relates essentially to the physical object and its location. However, the concept of home can also be applied at a wide range of geographical scales: to land, house, district and country.

Notably, the English word ‘home’ transmits the sentimental associations of one scale to the others, although other languages do not do the same (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg- Halton 1981, p. 121).

In recent years, the value of home as a theoretical concept applicable to research in housing and architecture has been emphasised (Alexander 1985), questioned (Lawrence 1995) and disputed (Rapoport 1995a). Nevertheless, the concept articulates the bonds—

social, psychological, and spiritual—between people and their places of living. Similarly, home-making is the often unstated, yet underlying goal of all housing processes. There are at least four signiWcant aspects of home that justify its use in dealing with the central issues of housing and dwellings.

a. Most people, irrespective of social characteristics hold conceptualisations of home and place and employ these concepts to articulate the experiences of being rooted in either domestic or other locations (Canter 1977).

b. Place and home are concepts that cut across cultural geographical and disciplinary boundaries and therefore enable the establishment and synthesis of a comprehensive understanding generated through diVerent disciplines (Dovey 1985b).

c. Place and home are common concepts which enable the elimination of the gaps in the conceptions between professionals and ordinary people (Dovey 1985b).

d. The quality of the built environment is inherently related to the opportunities available for the appropriation of space, thereby building identity with place and making home (Dayaratne 1992).

Understanding the meaning and use of home and its relevance in society has long been acknowledged in research which has focussed upon varied contexts, social groups and situations (Dovey 1985a; Duncan 1981; Lawrence 1991; Moore 2000). However, the experience of home has often been examined as a static state rather than as a process (Rapoport 1995b). Also, the circumstances of the urban poor have received little attention from these perspectives. More tangible issues such as land, shelter, infrastructure and poverty are perceived to be critical and urgent, whereas a home is considered a luxury, the desire for which can be fulWlled only after all the basic needs have been satisWed. This view is reinforced by the theory of a ‘hierarchy of human needs’ (Maslow 1970). However, as Relph (1985) points out, “Love of place [and home] are scarcely sentimental extras to be indulged only when all technical and material problems have been resolved.” Home is as important to the urban poor as to the elite, to the child as to the adult and to the homeless as to the settled.

Nevertheless, in the area of housing the poor and in developing countries in particular there has been little signiWcant research that attempts to examine the idea of home and home- making. Apparently the signiWcant issues are perceived to be related to land tenure, Wnance and other managerial aspects. This paper argues that in order to support home-making—

which is the desired goal even in such situations—it is essential that a theoretical understanding be grounded in the forces, processes and mechanisms of making home.

Approaches that treat people and their environments as parts of a continuously evolving reciprocal process (Lawrence 1987) have much to oVer the study of both homelessness and

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home-making. In these approaches, the environment is not an inert entity and there is no such thing as an empty space, or a non-place. Physical contexts are shaped and deWned by the people who conceptualise and use them. People bring their own conceptualisations to settings that have potential meanings and together they make the world meaningful. The physical contexts oVer the opportunities that are appropriated by the people inhabiting them if and when they possess suitable aVordances (Rapoport 1995b). Lack of such aVordance can strain the process of appropriation but the potentials the environments oVer can be modiWed by the people themselves in given situations. In this way the circumstances and contexts in which homeless people survive can be transformed to generate meaningful places, despite their obvious inadequacies and lack of comfort. It is an understanding of the ways in which people negotiate and construct their lives and places which make sense to them that can illuminate the journey from homelessness to home.

This transactionist view (Canter 1977) of the relationships between people and environments oVers a potent framework to understand an individual’s experience of places and of the reciprocal processes that come into being between people and places such as homes and neighbourhoods. It recognises that all places are in Xux and transition and that place and home are not static phenomena. The role played by a person’s goals, conceptualisations and images is emphasised, and it is argued that the processes of home-making can be understood by exploring both individual and group intentions, uses and experiences of places.

3 Unravelling the processes of home-making

This paper draws its primary data from two substantive studies of informal urban settlements: Wrstly the urban villages of the well-known Million Housing Programme (MHP) implemented in Colombo, Sri Lanka in the late 1980s; and secondly squatter settlements in northern Colombia. Both studies examined settlements that had developed through illegal land invasions which in some cases were later oYcially recognised and upgraded. In all settlements, varying ‘degrees of homelessness’ were present among the communities both prior to and after the occupation of the settlements, and motivated people to continue to construct, shape, consolidate and create what they regarded as ‘homes in the making’. Therefore, the idea of home and the processes of home-making were explored in these settlements through detailed informal interviews and personal observations. In Colombo, the initial research activities were carried out in two selected settlements in 1990 followed by further Weldwork in 1993 and 1996. Bandaranayakapura was an upgraded settlement and Nawakelanipura was a new settlement. In Bandaranayakapura, a questionnaire survey was administered to 107 randomly sampled households from among 357, while in Nawakelanipura 95 households from 107 were surveyed. In both places, focussed informal interviews were carried out among 43 and 37 respondents respectively. These were later followed by more focussed interviews and visual sorting tasks with 27 and 23 households in the respective settlements.

In the Colombian study, the second author lived with a family in one of the settlements for extended periods to observe and document the processes of home-making, house construction and consolidation. A key method of data collection was the recording of oral testi- monies to explore the residents’ housing histories, actions and aspirations (Kellett 2000).

Forty households from two settlements were documented in detail over a six-year period (1986–1991) with follow-up visits in 1996 and 1998.¹

1 These forty households were selected using snowballing sampling techniques, complemented with a sta- tistically rigorous questionnaire survey that was administered to over 600 household heads in Wve settlements.

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The two case-study areas in Colombo, Bandarayakapura and Nawakelanipura, are settlements that developed over a period of about 50 years on the city fringe bordering uninhabitable marshes. In these settlements, houses were initially constructed using earth and waste materials salvaged locally and from the garbage yards of the city. Densities were high as many of the houses accommodated families of two or three generations in segmented spaces. The settlements grew and evolved to reXect the complex socio-politics of a constantly expanding population, giving rise to a spontaneous order of space, routes and alleyways and social networks that were sometimes strained, undesirable and unhealthy.

Although largely excluded from the mainstream of society and therefore unable to have access to schools and other infrastructure, the people were constantly struggling to establish linkages back into the mainstream of society and acquire a status of home akin to that of the ‘normal’ residents of the city.

In the Colombian city of Santa Marta, the majority of the housing supply has been through collective, illegal and frequently violent invasions of land on which are erected Ximsy, temporary shacks made largely from salvaged materials. Similar to the processes observed in Colombo, the settlements in Colombia also gradually consolidate, as the residents incrementally construct houses of permanent materials, install infrastructure services and adorn them with their belongings to make home for themselves (Kellett 1999; 2005).

Detailed studies of these two locations reveal that key to understanding the processes of home-making are the underlying forces that motivate people, the intentions and purposes behind their actions, and the roles played by individuals and institutions. Also important are the ways in which land is utilised and how materials and objects are employed to deWne and construct signiWcant places. Indeed, it is these material and non-material assimilations that can be seen as the manifestation of home which cannot be understood without a recognition of the underlying forces. Processes beyond planning, construction and Wnancing have to be observed and their implications for the creation and manifestation of conceptualisations have to be understood. Probing inquiries were made to uncover the motivations for the varying activities that were observed, the particular nature of those activities and their pro- gression and how they created both material and non-material facets of home. A number of signiWcant motivations were detected that had direct implications for making home. Many of these motivations referred either to desires and aspirations or to the absence of home.

4 The motivations for making home

In both Bandaranayakapura and Santa Marta, some kinds of ‘homes’ were created at the very earliest stages of the settlement process. These are associated with the temporary shacks—homes in the sense of places having been lived in—although ‘homes proper’ were yet to be fully realised. For example, the families would return home, value their meagre belongings stored in the shacks and have emotional attachments to the places they lived in.

It was evident that the places existed as geographical locations and deWned territories to anchor the individuals and their families and to contain the memories of their lives and signiWcant events. Privacy could be established to some extent and social relations were manifested by circumstances rather than by choice. However, people often claimed to be

‘homeless’ and were striving to make home. In Colombo for example, a common grievance was that they did not have a ‘proper’ home (Hariyata Geyak Dorak Ne). In Santa Marta they recognised the temporary shacks as the Wrst essential step in creating home, but for them a real home must be made of solid materials (Fig.1). The process of moving from temporary to permanent materials is described by Rafael:

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First I made a shack from poles and wood, then within a year I started this house of bricks and blocks. I did the building work myself with the help of my children, in fact I learnt how to build here in the barrio and now it’s how I earn my money. I help my neighbours to build their houses and I sometimes also get work on construction jobs in town. The house now has three rooms with a kitchen at the back and it’s certainly not Wnished, but I’m very proud of it. It will take many years before I get it like I want it to be.

This can be understood when home is seen as having ‘states of being’ less than fully acquired. In both Bandaranayakapura and Santa Marta, homes as socio-psychological entities were being made in a manner that was basic and rudimentary rather than articulated and fully realised. Consequently, the meanings of home and contentment derived from their being were poor. Therefore, when asked, some people would insist that they are homeless, indicating the necessity of further fulWlling spatial, material and social dimensions in order to feel a complete sense of home. Its meanings had socio-psychological connotations which had been only partially realised. Thus there was an unfulWlled desire that seems to have been at the heart of all motivations to make home: the desire to acquire a complete sense of home.

A number of such fused motivations were identiWed which throw light on the processes of making home:

1. The desire to own through the acquisition of a piece of ground.

2. The desire to acquire and conform to popular images and conventions.

3. The desire for social acceptance, social respect and personal dignity.

4. The desire to order and orchestrate space to fulWl household needs.

5. The desire to form a community.

4.1 The desire to own

It was evident that the desire to own a piece of ground is very strong within both Sri Lankan and Colombian societies. In Sri Lankan culture, attachment to land is a powerful socio-psychological force (Dissanayake 1999; Dayaratne 2000). Social stratiWcation stems very much from patterns of land ownership, ancestral and otherwise, as well as from the signiW- cance of the location, the value of land and the extent of its fertility. Housing and land are seen as material investments in both physical and social wealth. In the case of the poor,

Fig. 1 Homes in the making in Santa Marta, Colombia

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acquisition of a piece of ground makes a signiWcant diVerence to the state of being. Firstly, it transforms the status of the family from ‘unrootedness’ to ‘rootedness’, from squatters to residents; it thereby transforms the investment in housing from a temporary one to that of permanence. Secondly, it invests authority and control of power relations in the society and at the same time confers on the family the pre-requisites to access the necessary resources, a powerful notion present in both the Sri Lankan and Colombian situations.

In the Colombian study, many respondents stressed the value of having their own home, and even when technically illegal, contrasted ‘ownership’ with the instability and move- ment associated with renting or staying with relatives:

“... the most important thing is to have a house ... the most important is the home. A man has his children and his wife, but having to keep moving them from one place to the next can also be bad for the family. It’s all right for rich people if they don’t want to have their own house, because they can rent an apartment for thousands of pesos.

Someone like that has a good time because they have work and money. But a poor person doesn’t have anything but his children and wife, and must live on whatever work can be found. So the poor person really has to get a house of their own by whatever way possible, even if it’s very humble they’ve got to get it. For me having a home of my own is so important.” Carmen (a widow in her 50s.)

The alternatives to ‘owning’ are both practically and socially undesirable: to rent is insecure, relatively expensive and regarded socially as a substandard option; lodging with relatives is diYcult, especially with young children, and is not regarded as an adequate long-term solution. Carlos with his wife and three young daughters have moved house on several occa- sions: living for a while with relatives, looking after a friend’s house and also renting. But now they have managed to construct their own home, a small temporary shack high up on the hillside. Here he contrasts his own position with that of people without their own houses:

“There is such a lot of land and there are so many people who need it; many living in rented places. Here there are so many people in the situation like me, or perhaps worse, because they don’t even have a little hut of their own like I do. Some people don’t even have anything and they are in real need.” Carlos (27 years old)

Considerable importance is attached to the concept of ‘ownership’. For those on the lowest income levels it has added signiWcance by providing a level of stability which is usually lacking in their employment situation, as well as oVering residential security and the possibility of passing something on to their children.

Thus the motivation to make home derives from the desire to acquire a piece of ground that can be enriched, thereby acquiring and anchoring one’s wealth and position in society.

It oVers security to any investment in land and the buildings, while a home inXates the wor- thiness of the family as a collective being. To possess something as tangible and basic as a piece of land with a house on it undoubtedly sends a clear message to others that they have a stake in society which can now be developed by the owners who have greater power to do so. The value of having a home is therefore symbolic as much as practical and manifests in the social realm as well as the spatial.

4.2 The desire to conform to dominant images and conventions

The acquisition of a social position is also determined through conformity to the dominant images of the structures that represent social class. According to the residents, the shacks in Bandaranayakapura represent the images of the dwellings of the underclass. Lack of owner-

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ship prevented the families from investing in permanent materials to build and acquire the elements that symbolise socially accepted styles and fashions. Poverty plays a frustratingly crippling role and deters the community from establishing a sense of ‘physically generated images of home’. It was evident that the residents hold popular images of socially accepted homes. These images trickle down from residents of the middle-class housing in the vicinity of the settlement. Indeed, styles in the middle-class housing are ostentatious, Xamboyant and constantly changing. In comparison, the modest shacks of the Bandaranaikepura residents fall far short of becoming acceptable homes. This is well illustrated in the words of a 35-year-old resident who has lived all his life there but still feels homeless.

“Yes, I was born here and have lived here all my life. When I go out of this place, to work, to see relatives or whatever, I think of this place to return to, and in the eve- nings we all return here. We call this shack home and come home to it. It is all true.

But this is not ours. We can be chased any time, and we live in this fear. So it is not ours. We do not own the land, and we do not feel this shack belongs to us. We are like intruders living in this place. This shack does not look like a good home. It is inferior and we are inferior too. We have no place to live and to be (Inda hitinda thenak ne). We are homeless and must make a home that is like the others living over there. (Piyadasa of house No. 11, Bandaranayakapura)

It was observed that popular images are a strong socio-psychological force in the act of making home. Many housing programmes claim to provide a ‘roof over the head’, but this is not enough. People do not perceive home merely in terms of the amount of space enclosed within walls. A home also has to conform to popular images existing in that culture at a given place and time. Such images indicate status, a way of rising up the social ladder and an ability to acquire and conform to accepted tastes. While these dominant images appear to echo the environments and lifestyles of the nearby higher social strata, they are not necessarily copies and in some cases can produce culturally authentic hybrid forms (Kellett 2005). Similar observations have been made on settlements in Brazil (Holston 1991; Lara (forthcoming)) and Ecuador (Colloredo-Mansfeld 1994; Klaufus 2000). In both Sri Lanka and Colombia, these images can be deceptive. They often take the form of ‘facades’, constructed even when the houses are incomplete, to create appearances in conformity with currently accepted styles. In Colombia the facades of well-consolidated dwellings boast displays of decorative steel security railings, brightly coloured paint work and ubiquitous horizontal parapets used to disguise the pitched roofs which are associated with rural backwardness (Kellett 2005).

In Sri Lanka dwellings include very speciWc elements: arches, decorative gable ends,

‘Greek’ columns and classical-style divisions in windows (Fig.2). These are comparable with the styles of the middle-class houses built a few years ago, when the fashionable styles com- prised arches, trellis work in windows and tinted glass together with simple gable ends. Vari- ations exist and some trellis work has been transformed into concrete grille patterns reminiscent of present-day trends. In fact, an industry has come into being, associated primarily with informal settlements, that fabricates the elements of the ‘accepted–home images’.

Varieties of Greek columns, distorted in both shape and proportion due to lack of good crafts- manship and understanding, decorative pre-fabricated arches and ornamental grilles have mushroomed in the vicinity of settlements in response to the desire for popular facade images.

4.3 The desire for social acceptance, social respect and personal dignity

The desire for home can also be seen as a step towards achieving social acceptance. Many informal dwellers suVer from an acute sense of exclusion and rejection by the society in

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which they live. Both individually and collectively as a community, the informal settlers and settlements are seen as unacceptable forms of neighbourhoods located in the run-down areas or distant peripheries of the city occupied by the poor, uneducated lower classes. This bundling of derogative perceptions by the dominant society is a constant psychological pain that underpins the sense of homelessness.

Bandaranayakapura residents repeated the sense of exclusion they suVered and their strong desire to make homes in such a way that they will gain respect in society. The informal settlers in Santa Marta are highly conscious of their low social status which is reXected in the physical conditions in which they live. Their eVorts to improve their residential environment can be seen to stem partly from their striving for dignity and respect. Commenting on a squatter settlement in Venezuela, Lisa Peattie noted,

“the construction characteristics and the service deWciencies ... represent attributes which are devalued and devaluing. People who live in this way are thought of as people to be looked down on. That is why the energy that goes into housing improve- ment ...is as much a drive for respect as it is for comfort.” (Peattie 1992, p. 29).

Consolidated houses in Colombo and Colombia also reveal the search for the acquisition of social status through the furniture within the house. In Colombo, an expensive suite of sitting room furniture would be packed together with a display cabinet and a TV into the front room even without adequate space. Seats can hardly be used comfortably and are frequently covered with old cloths to protect them from the dust in the surroundings. Simi- larly, houses in Colombia have a large dining table and matching chairs always located adjacent to the kitchen area and visible from the entrance. Although the formally arranged dining furniture implies a formal collective dining ritual, eating takes place on a casual, informal basis throughout the house.² However as Maria, one of the dwellers put it, a house just “wouldn’t be complete without the table and a set of chairs.”

Throughout the settlements in both Bandaranaikepura and Santa Marta, resources and eVorts have been employed to satisfy ‘image and appearance needs’, sometimes before resolving practical questions of space and quality. It was evident that people allocate large portions of their limited resources to try to keep up appearances through the addition of

2 In many parts of Latin America the main meal of the day is an occasion for all the family to gather around the table. However this is not the case in Santa Marta which is part of the Caribbean cultural context.

Fig. 2 Facades replicating popular images of middle-class houses in Colombo

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apparently minor elements of the building or by acquiring consumer goods which sometimes are hardly even used.

A sharp contrast between the two cases is apparent in the layout of the settlements. With some exceptions, informal settlers in Latin America make great eVorts to achieve a conventional grid-iron settlement layout, sometimes overriding the logic of topography in order to develop settlements similar to the other parts of the city. Such rigid geometric layouts have a long history and are accepted as the correct way to create urban form. In fact, the design of the houses themselves echoes similar values which leads to relative homogeneity of both house form and settlement layout. In Bandaranayakapura however, the settlement patterns have grown from complex processes of power politics, social relations and structure. Most signiWcantly, the inhabitants attempt to recreate the settlement forms of the villages where they have come from. Because of this, ‘grid patterns’ and urban locations are despised as being alien. Taken together however, practices in Colombo and Colombia show that people take trouble to create urban forms which are as close as possible to the dominant patterns that represent acceptable social status in surrounding urban contexts.

4.4 The desire to order and orchestrate space to fulWl family needs

An underlying force that is only occasionally verbally articulated is the desire to order and orchestrate spaces to fulWl household needs. These range from the establishment of divisions between private and public spaces to the articulation of speciWc places for individual family members. The setting up of a sitting room is a priority in almost all houses even if they are small and cannot accommodate more than two or three rooms. The sitting room serves as the all-encompassing central space for family use as well as the place for enter- taining visitors. This duality of space usage can create strains within the household. The occupants have to keep it clean to ensure a good image to the outsiders and to facilitate the display of possessions and achievements while using it also as an everyday place. Often attempts are made to separate these functions so that the sense of home will appear stron- ger. However, specialised rooms are not usually feasible, since most houses are too small.

Then ‘places’ substitute for rooms; a room will be diVerentiated to create a number of places, deWned by furniture or by the way an object is positioned. Vertical space diVerenti- ations are also employed to create diVerent ‘places’, for example by making storage platforms or by piling up suitcases or boxes.

When spaces have to be managed in this way, a family feels the inadequacy of home (as the Sri Lankan respondents often claim; Hariyata Inda Hitinda Thenak Ne). A good sense of home is generated by a well-articulated set of rooms for the basic choreography of daily activities. In both contexts, social sitting places are important but dining is not. Eating is an activity that takes place within the division of time rather than space and can occur anywhere. Sleeping is also seen similarly although separate gendered spaces should be articulated. Because the house is closed to outsiders at night, the entire house can be transformed into places for sleeping, although in Santa Marta families choose to sleep close together, usually with several family members sharing beds. A greater sense of home is manifest as the house becomes more segmented (Kent 1990) with rooms for separate activities and deWned external spaces such as a veranda for leisure.

4.5 The desire to form a community

The desire to form coherent communities is a strong and powerful force. This is particularly the case among the urban poor, because their lifestyle, indeed their very survival, is

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highly dependent on sharing. Their settlements are not collections of houses of separate families, but of groups of families closely related in numerous ways. In the Colombian case, over seventy per cent of families had relatives in the same or adjacent settlement and neighbours are often chosen to be godparents. Such compadrazgo and kinship clustering facilitates the shared use of streets, open areas and common facilities. These become natu- ral extensions of the home and the entire settlement is perceived as ‘ours’ and thus ‘home of the community’. Although conXicts, rivalries and violence can undermine social solidar- ity and cohesion, ‘community’ can have real meaning in the richness of social relationships nourished through children playing together and neighbours chatting in the dusty streets, frequently bringing chairs to sit together under shady trees. In Colombo, even if the families are not related to each other, they discover other commonalities such as having common friends that can help reinforce the strong bonds between them. Houses thus respond to each other’s outdoor spaces, creating informal paths across gardens and sometimes even through the houses themselves, ‘crossing homes’ evolving as a way of establishing closer social relations and distinguishing between insiders and outsiders (Fig.3).

The forces behind the layout of settlements, houses, orientations and spatial linkages are thus community-oriented and encourage social interactions which enhance a sense of home. Invisible boundaries exist which can be crossed by insiders without violating the

‘rules’. The establishment of these spatial deWnitions is as important as the construction of the building, its embellishments and Wlling it with personal belongings and meaningful objects of each family.

5 Processes and programmes of making home

5.1 Making a spatial structure for habitation and dwelling

It is perceived that the acquisition of land and construction of an extendable house is a starting point for making a ‘new home’. However, when viewed from a home-making perspective, neither sites nor houses are mere material products because they themselves are imbued with meanings and values. Sites usually have histories and established social relations or, if not, at least the potential for relationships with other places and other people that

Fig. 3 Creating places outdoors: Colombo

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have signiWcant meanings. Thus the selection of land is a critical factor in the home-making process and undeniably provides the grounding anchor for home. If perceived to be in an

‘inappropriate location’, the entire process of home-making can become disturbed and the family literally ‘unsettled’. As an uprooted settler recalled,

We lived there for almost twenty years and have our friends and relatives around there. Our family grew up there, we have our memories and our belonging in that area. Now that we have been located here, we are lost. We have lost our connection to all we knew and have to start all over again.

Now re-located to Nawakelanipura, Alice lived for decades in an illegal settlement in the city, but was eventually evicted: undeniably, she is referring here to ‘home’ and its meaning rather than to the shanty in which she previously lived.

Contrary to the housing administrators’ emphasis on functional clarity of houses that most formal housing programmes aim for, people’s own eVorts at organising space in their self-built houses are imbued with hidden meanings and connections that sometimes even compromise functional needs. Thus a house design has to be perceived primarily as providing settings for social relations, articulated in a spatial structure to be ‘owned and occupied’

by individual members of the family overlaid upon functional needs if home-making is to be facilitated.

5.2 Filling the house with ‘things’: personalising space

One of the most signiWcant processes of making home is to Wll the spaces with things that represent the values, aYliations, identities and aspirations of the dwellers and thereby personalise both space and its images. While most furniture will be obtained for utilitarian purposes and to deWne space, the role of representation can be signiWcant. Utility may become secondary to the symbolic if and when priorities are to be worked out. Meanings and identities are constructed and reinforced through such displays which are not intended only for outsiders: through such processes the inhabitants are able to see their achievements and aspirations consolidated and reXected back to themselves. The investment in furniture and furnishings includes religious symbols, memorabilia, cherished objects and symbols indicating political aYliation. Personalisation also engages with escape and fantasy and can include calendars with popular Wlm actors and images of distant lands and lifestyles which should be ‘displayable’ and visible. In Colombo, all houses have a display cabinet with a glass frontage to contain many ‘currently popular’ objects and ornaments that will be the centre of attraction of the house. In fact ‘house Wlling’ includes imitation and follows not only the trends picked up from conventional urban neighbourhoods but also through the media and commercial activities which generate and transmit them through informal vendors and teledramas. These are processes which link poor urban dwellers and the urban middle class in shared interpolations of home.

5.3 Forming a family dwelling

With few exceptions, a home is not an individual abode but a dwelling of a family, frequently spanning several generations. In Sri Lanka, making a home is synonymous with making a family (getting married is often referred to as ‘Geyak Dorak Venawa’ or become a home) and this inalienable link between family and home plays a major role in both the conception and construction of home for the urban poor. Spatially this means to articulate either rooms or room corners for each family member, or a family itself in the event

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several families occupy a single house. In such situations rooms must contain a number of places for each family: a corner used for sitting and dining, and other areas as distinct sleeping places. In Nawakelanipura for example, a four-bedroom house was occupied by four families each having established ‘their home-places’ within a room, except for the shared kitchen. In the Colombian case, sharing of houses was very unusual. Households with larger dwellings would not consider renting out space as all families valued their independence even if it meant living for long periods in very basic and substandard shacks.

Home is believed to be incomplete without a family and without properly deWned places for all important activities of the family, places allocated both inside and outside. In the absence of suYcient quantity of space, this is diYcult to articulate, no matter how elegantly and skilfully the house is made.

5.4 Establishing a network of places: home as the centre of a universe of places

A socially isolated dwelling is an incomplete home, no matter how well-built or Wlled with furniture it may be. For the home to become a centre of the universe (Bachelard 1964), a rec- ognisable immediate ‘universe’ must be available. This is provided for in the establishment of the other places in the vicinity. These include the places where friends and relatives live, places to purchase goods for domestic needs, places to socialise, to work, and to educate children. In Santa Marta, the initial settlement layouts contain a central square and provide space for future facilities such as a church, health clinic and library, but most important are the schools. Considerable collective eVort is expended in constructing schools, as educated children are believed to represent a more prosperous future. In Colombo the temples and religious places are very signiWcant: they deWne the sacred and profane domains between which the people seem to dwell. These places oVer a network to be carefully nurtured for establishing a broader ‘home-range’, a sense of orientation in the world and also a way of

‘connecting’ to and ‘becoming’ a part of the larger community. For the urban poor these networks may be as important as the house itself, because it is these networks that oVer opportunities to construct the urban community that they seek, an identity created through home-making processes. The degree to which the network is wholesome and ‘respectable’

undeniably contributes to the sense of home in an unmeasurable way.

5.5 Performing rituals to sanctify home

Home has to be taken possession of and appropriated as an extension of the inhabitants’

being. In many non-western societies, this involves sanctiWcation of the ground through a series of rituals. SanctiWcation is believed to make the plot and its boundaries belong to the family by transforming the ground into what we may call the ‘domicile-base’ from which other beings, including the supernatural, are excluded. It is seen as a way of engaging the protection available to a family through cosmic energies and expelling the potential of evil presence. In Colombo, speciWc rituals such as ‘before cutting the Wrst sod of earth’, laying the foundations, starting the laying of bricks, the Wrst placement of roof timbers, Wxing of the Wrst door frame, and passing through the door are all celebrated with ceremonies.

Through this process, the house is set apart as the abode of the future occupants. In contrast, despite being common in the rural areas of Colombia, there was little evidence of such house construction rituals in the urban settlements of Santa Marta.

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6 Home-making as a continuous process

Home-making is not an act that has a speciWc beginning or end. It continues and consoli- dates itself with each event of signiWcance that adds to the sense of home by overcoming the obstacles that might diminish it. Continuous eVorts are made to build upon, maintain and enhance the feeling of home once established within the continuously changing circumstances of the family and their social world. These processes involve reWnements of images for both public and family display, personalisation by means of furnishing and dec- oration and the cultivation of social networks to gain social respect and personal dignity.

Added values may be invested in the meaning of home by performing ceremonies involv- ing members of the family and community. Their participation enables the formation of a community of social acceptance based upon cultural, religious and other orientations.

The making of home is motivated by the ‘desires’ which are activated and complemented by the transformation from the position of homelessness to the establishment of a full sense of home. In the case of the urban poor, these processes have to be supported. Lacking suY- cient resources to acquire both material and non-material representations, they must be pre- pared to work for many years to achieve modest improvements. Materials may be salvaged from the excesses of the urban rich or earned through the laborious struggles of daily life.

Often the family, the extended family, friends, and the community contribute to these collective constructions. For outsiders however, these activities that contribute to home-making may be considered as extravagances and interpreted as wasteful. Outsiders, oYcials and NGOs often fail to understand when the limited resources of the urban poor are channelled to adorn facades when the dwellings are in a visible state of incompleteness. For the poor dwellers, however, the home must be completed before the house because it is the sense of home that oVers them the strength to anchor and to poetically dwell (Heidegger 1954).

In the words of Somawathie a resident of Bandaranayakapura for forty years, the struggle is to build the house and at the same time to make home. You cannot wait until the house is fully completed to do all those other things, especially because our houses can never be completed. Building good complete houses costs a lot of money which we will never make in our lifetime. But we have to live our lives, while trying to build the houses. If you do not feel ‘at home’ in your house, where do you get the energy to live and to build a house?

Similarly the sense of achievement which comes with building a house, however minimal, is emphasised by Alba, a single mother of two. She was involved in a violent land invasion in Santa Marta and managed to obtain a plot and begin constructing a basic dwelling:

My situation has improved because now I have what I didn’t have before - a house of my own. [Although] the work situation has got worse, I must thank God that I’ve got enough to eat. I came here to have something of my own. I feel very content here in my little house. You can live well in a house of wooden boards especially if it’s nicely kept, and I’m always doing something. I’m really so happy here: people ask me when am I going to rest from knocking in nails and things, but I am so delighted to be here: I’ve never had a house before!

Her optimism about the future is clear and she is relishing the independence and oppor- tunity oVered by having a home of her own. Despite the minimal physical attributes of her one-room home, she keeps it in pristine condition: it is a tangible symbol of her independence and achievement.

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Despite being continuous and without a speciWc beginning, a series of speciWc acts in the process of home-making can be recognised and diagrammatically illustrated as follows (Fig.4). These are essentially visible components of the process starting with the acquisi-

Fig. 4 A Diagrammatic representation of the process of home-making

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tion of a piece of land; followed by a ground-plate to make home and culminating in a state of fulWlled sense of home.

7 Concluding remarks

This paper has attempted to interpret the nature of home-making as a complex process implicit in house building. It has aimed to draw attention to the underlying but more important activity that drives the acts of house building and eventually makes home meaningful.

The paper has endeavoured to portray an outline of the process of home-making from the perspective of the urban poor in two developing countries and to elucidate the desires and processes involved.

The studies divulged many similarities in the routes to home; the processes and practices which suggest that the most fundamental acts of home-making are universal, despite sig- niWcant cultural speciWcities. In Bandaranayakapura in Colombo, the predominant means to acquire a building site has been to invade and occupy state land in the absence of aVordable decent housing in the city. The incremental invasions, subject to the constraints of social hierarchy, power and negotiations, resulted in informal settlements comprising ad-hoc sub- divisions and a curious separation of public and private spaces. The resulting spontaneous order often reXects the dominant forms of order of the surrounding urban areas. Homes came into being through occupation over time. By defending them when confronted with intruders and government eviction orders, the inhabitants consolidate a sense of belonging.

Homes however cannot fully blossom in the presence of cognitive uncertainty despite the fact that people had lived there for a long time and had made a home within the constraints of illegality. In Bandaranayakapura the feeling of acute homelessness was present until the 1980s, when the state transferred the ownership of the land to the occupants. Since then, many processes of ‘colouring’ the sense of home have taken oV.

In Santa Marta, in contrast, the settlement form follows a rigid conventional geometry conforming to dominant norms. The settlers believe this form is essential to eventually achieve respectability and full acceptance. Within this grid-iron layout, the dwellings begin as Ximsy temporary shacks erected largely from salvaged materials but gradually consolidate as the residents incrementally construct houses of permanent materials and install infrastructure services, thus consolidating a Wrmer sense of home. In both case study areas, the struggle goes on between homelessness and home-making; a process which cannot be fulWlled without supportive interventions to remove external obstacles such as aVordable access to land ownership.

The obstacles to home-making that can be facilitated by external agencies thus seem two- fold. On the one hand, there is a need to remove the obstacles to the construction of socially relevant houses, which in turn will have an impact on home-making. At the most rudimentary level, these can emanate from insecure land tenure and other legal constraints that authorities may impose. Some projects result in house forms that lack socially appropriate spatial orders and culturally meaningful appearances. For these reasons, housing practices must strive towards a greater degree of accommodation of shared meanings and deWnitions of their perceived spatial structures and formations. It is only then that low-income housing can also provide supportive contexts for occupation and dwelling and thus for making home.

The paper has argued not only that home and a sense of home are constantly evolving perceptual and experiential entities but also that home-making refers to the construction of a structure that establishes and concretises numerous social and psychological facets and relations of an individual and family within spatial dimensions. It has unravelled the

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processes that take place in the evolution of home from a rudimentary form to a fully achieved state of home, the former often being referred to by people as a state of ‘homelessness’ and the latter as ‘home’. These processes are culture-speciWc but seem to contain similar essential elements and to occur on a continuum of everyday activities common to many people. The creation of home and a sense of home are not luxury extras to be achieved when quantitative requirements of space and infrastructure are completed. Rather, these goals must be accomplished in parallel. A shift in attitude is necessary in order to rec- ognise the signiWcance of home-making even for low-income housing and to engage sig- niWcant non-material issues in the process of housing provision. A sense of home is an essential and fundamental experiential component of ‘living in the world’, without which life makes less sense and has less value even with materially complete dwellings. It is believed that the insights gained in this investigation could enlighten and enable researchers and providers of housing. By understanding the issues of homelessness more holisti- cally, they would be able to prepare appropriate interventions in housing. Such policies would help the urban poor dwellers acquire and cultivate a true and fully articulated sense of home—an objective of all who consider themselves homeless.

Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank all the people in the settlements in Sri Lanka and Colombia who gave so generously of their time. The comments oVered by Kim Dovey, Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Melbourne, Australia, on a draft of this paper are also highly appreciated. The comments of two anonymous referees greatly helped to strengthen the arguments.

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