Container ‘Mall’ – An Example of Urban Informality in Odessa

all images taken from the amazing series by Ukrainian photographer Kirill Golovchenko

The 7KM Marketis probably Europe’s most extraordinary market, partly with the air of abazaar, partly post-soviet retail eldorado, it mainly consists out of shippingcontainers. Its atmosphere has nothing in common with the recently openedshipping container pop-up shopping mallin East London - but probably has been inspirational thereof.

Odessa’s huge container market is locatedoutside the city right along the main road which leads to the airport. Its nameindicates its location: seven kilometres out of the city. The market covers an enormousarea of 700,000 m2 and therefore is significantly tops the world’s largest shoppingmall, the GoldenResources Mall in Beijing with its 560,000 m2 or retail area and coversalmost twice the area as North America’s largest mall the West Edmonton Mallin Canada. Founded in 1989, the market claims to be the largest market inEurope. There are about 16,000 trades and it is also the region’s biggestemployer with 1,200 people mainly working as guards or janitors. In 2004, dailysales were as high as $20 million by an estimated number of 150,000 customersper day. 

7KM Market outside Odessa (via GoogleMaps)

 

The shops, or market stalls at the 7KMmarket consist mainly of shipping containers stacked on two levels and arrangedin street like layout. For orientation purposes many of these streets arecolour codes and named accordingly. On the ground floor the products are sold,and the upper levels serve as storage spaces. People describe the market as aplace of social interaction and home-like sociability - a place where peoplewould meet and hang out.

The market is known far beyond the citylimits of Odessa for its cheap products of any kind (from clothing tofurniture, electrical goods, jewellery, cosmetics, etc., etc.). Approximately60% of all Ukrainians (or 28 millions) buy their clothes on the 7KM market. Evencustomers from Russia or Moldavia and Romania come to the market, many travellingfrom as far away as 500 km. They usually arrive early morning by busses ortrains and leave the market by midday. The bought goods are usually sold againin their home countries.  Goodslike guns or drugs, are rumoured to got sold during the night before the marketofficially opens around 4 a.m. 
 

all images taken from the amazing series by Ukrainian photographer Kirill Golovchenko

 Apart from the trade with illegal goods,the market floats in a half official grey area of informal economies. Localsoften refer to the market as a ‘state within a state’, a place with its ownrules, laws and regulations. The local newspaper described the market to have‘become a sinecure for the rich and a trade haven for the poor’. It is known asa place where almost any trader avoids taxes, duties and licences. To become atrader you either need to have access to the network of the market or a decentamount of capital, or both. In the late 1990’s containers could been bought for$1,000, in 2007 the prices shot up to $240,000. One model is that the owners ofthe containers franchise out to employers who then hire sellers on a day-to-daybasis to retail the owner’s products. The sellers’ profit is reduced to aminimum. The other, more risky model is that retailers rent the containers andset up their own trading business. The owners need to make certain payments tothe market authority, whether these are taxes or rent is unclear. The authorityclaims that the market’s owner pay $11 million per year in local taxes. But forincome taxes custom duties and other taxes on goods the authority is notresponsible. This is the responsibility of each trader. The tax authorities arenot able to enter the realm of the market ‘state’, and therefore also theprices at the market can be kept that low. During the time Julia Timoshenko wasin power, she constantly threatened the market to shut down due to violation oftax regulation. Rumours circulating within the local media claim that the laterpresident. Yushchenko is said to visit the market every two months and pockets$ 20 million each time. No one knows what exactly the money is actually for,but most obviously this is some sort of protection money and the market isstill working on. 

The enormous profitability for the tradersand owners, but also for the customers who buy cheap products, obviously verymuch relies on the informality of the market system. Over the years the markethas reached a status of operating as a complex economical ecology that isdifficult to break up. The fate of the market depends very much on the economyof the Ukraine who is often been characterised as a shadow economy. Once theUkrainian economy will develop normally the necessity of the market willshrink. Moreover and recently, the market and its informal economy have notbeen able to completely withdraw from the global market developments. With theworld economic crisis also the economical success of the market shrank,resulting in many containers locked down, empty or even removed.

The main figures and fact have been takenout of the research by VeraSkvirskaja and Caroline Humphrey from highly interesting research group other markets and Steven Lee Myersarticle in the NYT.

Open Source Urbanism – Hacking The City

There exist various different notions ofOpen Source Urbanism and in recent years various – sometimes cruciallydifferent - approaches to conceptualise phenomena in the contemporarymetropolis have been developed under this terminology. Saskia Sassen’s talk on Talkingback to your Intelligent City at the BMWLab last summer was recently putonline and has been inspiring this post.

I first came across the term of Open SourceUrbanism through following the work of UrbanCatalyst, a Berlin-based research and consultant group. In their article inthe architecture magazine Arch+ dating back to the year 2007 entitled ‘OpenSource Urbanismus: vom Inselurbanism zur Urbanität der Zwischenräume’  they explored the principle ofopen-source analogous to the development of computer software. Targetingalterations in urban policy, Urban Catalyst’s planning concept proposes toencompass a multiplicity of actors with diverse backgrounds to participate inthe planning process.  Open Sourceis therefore used as the metaphor for manifold ideas that should get involvedin working towards a more socially sustainable approach in urban governance andplanning. Also the concept of considering the urban landscape as a“palmipsest”, where new layers do not obscure all traces of their predecessorswould maintain a particular sense of place, that is often lacking incontemporary planning. According to Urban Catalyst it is veryimportant to allow for modifications and ameliorations during this process.This may also result in altering the initial planning goal. The issue ofparticipation and taping the resources inherent to the urban human fabric byfar is not a new concept, although urban policy makers have been advertisingthis approach extensively the last decade. Urban Catalyst further suggest tohack the city through modes of meanwhile uses and use the existinginfrastructures as sources for urban change. In fact, I would argue that thisdefinition of Open Source Urbanism dates back to the Situationist city ofUnitary Urbanism, where urban dynamics would no longer be driven by bureaucracyand capitalism but by participation. Adaptability and the flux, favouringprocess over goal, as well as participation are ideals that are vital for thisway of urbanism. Nevertheless the concept is not new, these topics are stillhighly topical in contemporary urban discourses.

'Fassadenrepublik' by raumlabor berlin as part of the project Zwischenpalastnutzung by Urban Catalyst (image source)

The connection of Open Source Urbanism and the Situationsts havealso been explored by more technologicallydriven approaches, that I will not go deeper into herein. What willprobably be the most influential debate on this terminology would be SaskiaSassen’s. She understands Open Source Urbanism as a type in which the city‘talks back’. The city can also be understood as an assemblage of myriadinterventions and little changes from the ground up (urban protests like theStuttgart). The power lies not so much in each single one of thoseinterventions, but more in the assemblage of those. Together they add meaningto the incompleteness of the city and the city talks back in a dynamic manner.And this very incompleteness, according to Sassen, is the power of the city,something which cannot be achieved by planning the technological intelligentcity like Songdoor Masdar. With herunderstanding of Urban Source Urbanism Sassen combines the understanding ofUrban Catalysts approach that what should be strengthened is that the city isconstituted by the existing materials and the existing human fabric with thetechnological approach towards urban Source. She understands the city not onlyas consisting of hardware – like the Intelligent City – but also as thesoftware of people’s practices. Intelligent cities are closed systems who willbecome obsolete sooner. 

Sassen draws on the example of New York’s Riverside Park, whichdeveloped from a no-go area to being a park for all those who wanted to use it,partly because dog-owners started to walk their dogs in large numbers. Dogkeeping was a reaction of feeling insecure in the neighbourhood. And the citytalked back: get a dog, of course you need to walk your dog, many others do,and therefore your recover the territory of the park. Similarly the increasingamount of farmers’ markets is also an example where the city talks back. It hasnot been a top-down decision. It’s a result of various conditions, butprimarily the desire of city resident to have access to fresh produce. Whatbecomes apparent here is that a thousand individual decisions enabled thepossibility for creating a viable farmers’ market.

Riverside Park dog run (source)

Sassen sees in Open Source ‘a DNA that resonates strongly with howpeople make the city theirs or urbanize what might be an individual initiative(…) Recovering the incompleteness of cities means recovering a space where thework of open sourcing the urban can thrive’.

Urban Gardening in St Petersburg, Russia

Environmental activism in post-sovietRussia used to be the country’s most dynamic and effective forms of socialactivism. In contemporary Russia, however, activists face severe obstacles inpromoting green issues. The SaintPetersburg Urban Gardening Club, founded as early as 1993, is stillstruggling with the authorities’ acknowledgments of its important work.  

St Petersburg rooftop.Image source.

Philipp Brugner from the Austrian radio broadcasting dérive – Radio für Stadtforschung produced an interesting comment on the urban farming initiative in the second largest city in Russia:  Urban gardening in St Petersburg often is afight for survival. With 5 million inhabitants plus approximately anothermillion illegal inhabitants, St Petersburg is the northernmost megacity of theplanet. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, St Petersburg has been a boom townfor jobseekers mainly due to its numerous construction projects. Nowadays thecity is facing huge problems as a direct consequence to its boom. The citygovernment is focusing on its own prestige with building projects like the Othka Center instead oftackling its socials problems: half of the population is living below povertylevel, 6000 people are homeless and 1600 children are living on the streets ofthe tsar city. Furthermore the city is facing enormous ecological problems,where air pollution and insufficient garbage disposal are only the mostapparent.

This is the setting the Urban GardeningClub (UGC) has to face. The history of urban gardening in St Petersburg datesback to the late 19^th century when rural aristocrats moved to thecity maintaining their rural lifestyle. During the time of the Soviet Uniononly retired and disabled persons were allowed to fulfil agriculturaloccupation for their own use. Gradually the rules had been relaxed and at leastat the urban fringes gardens for personal use could have been maintained, adevelopment known as the Russian dachafarming. After the collapse of the USSR, cultivating land has been a directresult of the following years of crisis. Many could have only survived throughproducing their own food.

Raised-bed gardening for horticultural therapy. St. Petersburg's Prostheses Center during the summer of 1996. Source.

Rooftop garden on top of a  school in 1996. Source.

The UGC’s first project suggested using theroofs of buildings as croplands for socially deprived groups, due to the trickyclimate obviously a very challenging endeavour. The big advantage was that theroof grown fruits and vegetables were less polluted with heavy metals thancrops from the ground. Further projects involved cultivating the roofs of cityprison with involvements of the inmates, or cooperating with primary schools and the St Petersburg Prostheses Centre. 

Alla Sokol at one of the UGC's rooftop gardens against the backtrop ot the St Petersburg cityscape. Source.

Although the city government has recognizedthe value of the initiatives of the club, Alla Sokol, founder of the UGC,points out that the government frequently obstructs new rooftop gardenprojects, since it is very difficult to obtain the licence for using therooftop as farmland. Especially in Russia, rooftop gardening has a hugepotential, as many people in larger cities live in buildings with huge sturdyrooftops constructed to bear the heaviest snow load. But many apartment blocks stillbelong to the government. Moreover, in blocks with only homeowners, usually thestaircases and the roofs stay the property of the government. Therefore it isvital for the success of the movement that the government is highly involved.

Furthermore the controls of the produce andcomposting plants of the institute of hygiene hinder the proliferation of themovement. Often they attest polluted crops although, as Sokol explains, thetests the UGC has commissioned, attest that the vegetables from the roof gardensare much less polluted than those that are grown on the ground.  Within these controls, Sokol senses justanother administrative barrier.

Although low income, reduction ofpurchasing power, and high prices force people into subsistence agriculture inSt Petersburg, urban farming has not proliferated over the city yet. Many stillprefer the long way to the countryside, to cultivate their dacha. 

Russian dacha. Source.

Article and interview with Alla Sokol via dérive – Radio für Stadtforschung, an Austrianradio broadcasting.