Mongolian Migrations

Rob Story and Giovana Beltrao

Migration can be a comfortable pattern or a tumultuous struggle. A culture built on migration has it woven into life. Movement is integral, anticipated and essential. But migrating a culture out of that pattern can be a different story. 


The people of Mongolia have migrated for centuries, routinely carrying their iconic gers with them as the seasons changed. But now, many have made the last migration - into the city, the migration of a culture, a pattern of life, an economy and an architecture. The move is not only theirs. It is a global phenomenon over which a nomadic family has little control over the pushes, pulls and consequences.
People are pushed by nature, pressures on resources, a collapsed economy; pulled by awareness of alternatives to the hardships of traditional life, by the draw of the city's bright lights. The young leave and the traditional cycle collapses. The search for a replacement life is inevitable, but the consequences can be traumatic and adjustments complex.
The draw of the city often dumps people into an urban poverty worse than the rural one they hoped to escape. A new settlement pattern must be adopted, a new economy must be entered, accessing basic needs must be re-learned, and an architecture must adapt. Developing governments are seldom ready to cope with the needs, and neither are many families. Sprawling slums are the result.
The traditional Mongolian family is nomadic and self-sufficient, moving with its herds through the hostile environment of the open steppes from summer grazing to winter protection. Long-standing communal traditions of land tenure recognize which families have grazing rights in a particular watershed and where their winter camping spots are. When the season ends, it takes only a few hours to fold up the family ger, pack it onto a couple of camels, or into a creaking old Russian truck, and move.
Architecture is the management of environments for people and their activities. By definition it must be holistic. Good architecture embodies the realities of a community's social structure, cultural beliefs, environment, economy and available technologies and materials. Indigenous architecture is always good architecture, it has no choice or it disappears. Best of all it is innately affordable and without formal debt. The well-know ger (yurt in Russian), is a perfect example. It evolved over generations in pragmatic response to that very set of drivers. When the drivers change, the architecture will follow. The situation in Mongolia exemplifies the challenges in doing so.
The ger is designed for the pattern of seasonal migration. We are familiar with the ger's classic kit-of-parts design, the hardware components, but less familiar with the software components, traditional family roles, social structure, household routines and the community relations that the ger encompasses. Migrating to an urban setting changes all of those. The software components are the first to feel the impact of urban migration, then the hardware must evolve. On the land the squat, decorated ger door opens from the expansive steppe to culturally ensured hospitality. A visitor need never knock. The mandatory salty butter tea is always on the stove. In the city, the door is behind a high fence, the gate is locked, the door is locked and the stove may be cold with family away in the cash economy.


Four contemporary events dramatically altered Mongolia's nomadic norms: the rise of Soviet control in the 1920s, its subsequent collapse in 1990, a twist of nature and globalising communication.
Under Moscow's direction, supply-driven rural industries were established throughout the countryside spurring a wave of migration off the land as families opted to abandon their nomadic lifestyle in favour of sedentary employment. Many brought their gers with them while others took advantage of Soviet-supplied workers housing in blocks of typically poor quality flats.
The collapse of the Soviet Union triggered another wave of migration. Overnight, rural industries became unsustainable and collapsed. Former nomads were stranded in small towns without employment, and without the ability or desire to go back to the land. The option was to migrate again, this time into the capital, Ulaanbaatar.
Then nature kicked in with two consecutive devastating winters that decimated the herds of the remaining nomads and launched yet another wave of rural-urban migration, this time straight from the land to the capital.
Compounding all of these, globalised communication is beaming exposure to lifestyle alternatives into even the most remote rural ger with its satellite dish and solar panel attached to a car battery. Aspirations rise, migration accelerates.


Ulaanbaatar is centuries old having evolved as a trading hub and a religious base anchored by Buddhist temples from which nomadic monks provided far ranging support. During the 70 years of Soviet domination, large portions of the simple traditional core of Ulaanbaatar were transformed into the semblance of a developing 20th century city with a combination of grand Soviet public buildings, shoddy apartment blocks, wide streets, centralised infrastructure and central government land control. The social and architectural contrasts between the two eras are stark.
With the end of Moscow's subsidies in 1990, government resources to manage urban growth disappeared. The result is that about 70% of Ulaanbaatar's built-up area is unplanned, sprawling beyond the Soviet-era core in poorly serviced, informal ger areas.
The nomadic perception of free rural land usage is dramatically different from that of an urban sense of ownership with a cost. Government guidance to orderly development of land, infrastructure and economic development should come first as the framework for growth, but the pace of rural-urban migration far outpaces government's capacity. Families can't wait and the building is always first. Real life replaces planning. Government then struggles to overlay some form of land tenure and insert infrastructure into the organic form of an informal settlement.
Incremental processes of development and densification over time are readily evident in Ulaanbaatar's "suburbs". New families arrive on the edge and plant their ger behind a new fence. Whatever plan, infrastructure and control exist have not made the transition to urban needs. Someone will claim land ownership, official or not, and payment for a "fence" will be needed, but without recourse to a Central Land Titles Office. It may be hundreds of metres to the nearest source of water with a wheelbarrow to pay market prices  up to 20 times that of the subsidized urban core. The sanitation system is a hole in the ground. Food comes from a shop and shops want money and that needs employment.
In older ger areas a single "fence" may have densified to contain two or three gers and several contemporary structures built as the family grows, aspirations are realised, or relatives arrive to share the space. Gers may have even been replaced all together. Corresponding improvements to infrastructure, however, are usually far behind. Bankable land tenure is not in place. Primitive pit latrines remain frozen through the harsh winters, then melt in spring and flow into the dirt passages serving as streets. Coal, dung and wood smoke from thousands of rural stoves choke the urban winter air. The struggle to enter the cash economy can rapidly alter the familiar family structure with the men migrating for work, women leaving the house and kids on their own.
It is true that the perceived social and economic opportunities of the city exist, but for far too many they remain out of reach. Migrations will continue. Cities must embrace the dynamic processes involved and target the key points of intervention if the goals of urbanised social, economic and environmental health are to be met. With the framework in place, a new vernacular architecture will evolve.

Rob Story: a Calgary-based architect, urban planner, traveller and photographer working with human settlement issues throughout the developing world for the past 25 years. President of HABICO Planning + Architecture.  Giovana Beltrao: a Brazilian-born architect and urban planner who started working in the favelas of Brazil 18 years ago and continues to work on human settlement projects throughout the developing world with Rob and HABICO.

Story, Rob and Giovana Beltrao.    'Mongolia Migrates'  On Site review, no. 24 Fall 2010
©Rob Story, Giovana Beltrao and On Site review 

Samarkand

travelling the silk road, archiving empires


Gerald Forseth

Samarkand, Uzbekistan has a growing population over 425,000 of which 50% are 15 years or younger. The city is divided neatly in two: east (old) Samarkand, and west (new) Samarkand, each with a distinct spatiality.

East or Old Samarkand
Old Samarkand is an Asian town near the mid-point of the ancient Silk Road with tangled alleys on hills and valleys, tightly constructed spaces, hidden courtyards and beautiful, contemplative and reflective public places. The oldest buildings and squares remain important places of pilgrimage and visitation, and close to each other. Walking is easy and pleasurable. The main axis is Tashkent Kuchesi between the sumptuous, historic Registan Madrassah and Maydoni [public square] and the central bazaar – a frenetic and colourful display of shawls, embroidered dresses, traditional coats, western jeans, turbans and hats of every nationality and every era. The west boundary of old Samarkand is Koksarai, a modern Russian-built maydoni on a visible old/new division line running north and south.

West or New Samarkand
In Central Asia, the Russian imperialists of the late nineteenth century built beside existing towns, leaving the old intact, liveable and protected. In west Samarkand shady European avenues radiate from the Koksarai Maydoni, the modern heart of the city and province, and adjacent to the old heart, the Registan madrassah complex. Russian empire planning contributed underground sanitary services, broad boulevards, tree-lined streets, large plazas, immense parks and gardens, gigantic fountains and monumental sculpture. Beaux-art façades were built of local beige brick and stone, continuous and long on the street, with grand doorways, sculpted jambs and headers, and lofty interior rooms. Soviet planning, particularly in the 1950s, installed Corbusian planning theory: isolated, tall, concrete buildings within large green parks surrounded by wide streets specifically scaled for fast-moving automobiles. This planning has led to a continuous, sprawling footprint. Covering west Samarkand on foot requires much traversal of heroic concrete plazas, green parks and long distances. Using public transit is necessary, now handled by thousands of small Daiwoo vans.

Samarkand Through History
Samarkand (known as Marakanda to the Greeks) was founded in the fifth century BC. It is one of Central Asia’s oldest settlements, located on the edge of the Khryzlkhum desert east of the Caspian Sea, nestled into the foothills of the Tian Shen and Fan Mountains, and situated north of the great Hindu Kush and Pamir mountain ranges. In 329 BC Alexander the Great from Macedonia conquered central Asia and married pretty Roxanna from Samarkand.
At the crossroads of the great Silk Road between China, India, Persia and Italy, Samarkand grew to a city larger than the one we see today. From the sixth to thirteenth centuries it changed hands about every 100 years, occupied by Western Turks, Arabs, Persian Samanids, Karakhamids, Sejug Turks, Mongolian Karakitay and Khorizmshaw. Amir Timur, born near Samarkand, a powerful tyrant and a grand patron of literature and the arts made it the capital of the Tamarlane empire by 1370. Timur and his grandson Uleg Beg (1400-1447) forged Samarkand into a new, magical, economic, cultural and intellectual epicentre with extraordinary fortress walls and gateways, mosques, madrassahs, minarets, mausoleums, palaces, bazaars, caravansaries (traveller’s inns) and an astronomical observatory.
In 1868 the army of the Tsars of Russia arrived, constructing the Trans-Caspian Railway in 1888 as a fast link to Moscow. In 1924 Samarakand was declared, briefly, the capital of New Uzbekistan Soviet Socialist Republic, but in 1930 lost that honour to Tashkent.

Samarkand Today
Samarkand is an archive of its imperial pasts. There are archaeological sites with exposed parts of the original Arks [fortress walls] destroyed by Alexander the Great in 329BC, by Atilla the Hun in the fourth century AD, by Ghengis Khan and his Mongol horde in 1220 and by his grandson Kublai Khan in 1250. There are historic and sumptuous UNESCO-protected buildings (Zoroastrian and, after the seventh century, Islamic) commissioned by, for example, the Samini tribe (ninth century), by Amir Timur, the greatest builder in Samarkand (1369-1408), by Uleg Beg, ruler, scholar, mathematician and astronomer (1410-1450) and by the feuding Khanates from Kokhand, Bukhara and Khiva of the 1800s. There are the adjacent broad streets, immense plazas and monumental buildings parachuted into Samarkand by the Russian empire (1873-1917). There are immense and brutal concrete apartments, offices and bureaus constructed under Lenin, Stalin, Khruschev and later Soviet presidents (1917-1993). Finally there are contemporary steel /glass hotels and offices to accommodate global tourism and multi-national petroleum companies, and replacement public sculpture dedicated to the pre-Russian past representing post-Soviet unfettered capitalism and heroic nationalism (1993 – now).
By 100BC the Silk Road, linking Europe to Asia, was pretty much established. Cultural conversions and conversations moved quickly along that road – around the same time the Chinese Kushan dynasty converted to Buddhism. The peoples of the Silk Road worshipped a mix of Greek, Roman, Buddhist, Iranian and Hindu deities; this mix continues – in Samarkand today some people live as they might have the fifteenth century. Others sport iPods, buy Guess-designer clothing and drink mocha lattes. Samarkand exhibits the great mix of Europe and Asia, past and present. It also impressively presents people and places that profoundly and proudly showcase European and Asian linguistic, music, fashion and food distinctions. All this contrast can be easily and precisely observed at the boundary that separates extant old Samarkand from new Samarkand.

Forseth, Gerald. 'Samarkand' On Site review, no. 20 Winter 2008
©Gerald Forseth and On Site review

Urban Settlement: Ermenek, Turkey

Selçuk Sayin and Esra Yaldiz
Selçuk Universitesi Muhendislik-Mimarlik Fakultesi
Mimarlik Bolumu Kampus, Konya, Turkey

Cities are places where the relations between yesterday and today are traced and where people identify themselves by different place-structures. A city’s own personality is directly affected by ideology and movements in specific periods, something particularly outstanding in traditional settlement units.
A society can be defined as a cultural vicinity or an architectural vicinity. Streets, areas and houses reflect processes that form the physical environment as an accumulation of technological, economic and social status, social preferences, movements and religious perspectives, plus personal interest and necessity despite restrictions imposed by nature. People interact with culture as required: it is a communication tool between human beings and the environment. This is how place is determined.
Anatolia has had numerous civilisations, each one leaving traces on its cities. Ermenek, where traditional fabric is not yet corrupted, is one of the most significant cities in the region surrounded by Antalya in the west, Isparta-Burdur and Konya in the north, Seyhan and Ceyhan Rivers in the east and the Mediterranean to the south. Ermenek is an ancient town on the Ermenek River and has been a hub for the area throughout history.
Urban settlement sits on south-facing lower mountain slopes with a Mediterranean climate. Main economic activities are agriculture (cereals, industrial farming, horticultural production and viticulture), stock breeding, small-scale industry, trade and mining. Crafts include textiles, shoemaking, tailoring, ironwork, woodwork, rugs and copper work.
Because Ermenek has been a significant historical centre, its traditional city fabric shows interesting surprises in the integration of city and the green valleys of the Taurus Mountains. Although physical characteristics play an important role in shaping overall city structure, how people live is different from community to community, according to culture and social structure. As a result, various traditional fabrics have typologies based on identical principles with completely different uses. For example, parallel streets laid out topologically on lower mountain slopes are linked by steep streets and steps. These share in the formation of traditional Ermenek house fabric which reflect an integration of geographical circumstances, family structure and overall characteristics in the society.

Ermenek houses, spilling over the hillside, generally have two floors with animals housed on the bottom. These houses resemble steps stretching over the hillside: the roof of one house is the yard for another house. In some parts of the city, houses hang from rock faces: house façades are made of wood and supported with angle braces driven into the rock.
Roads cut into the hillsides allow one to enter houses over the streets. On main streets, upper floors are lived in while the ground floor is left as a covered passage ensuring the vivacity of the street. Streets are narrow and often end with a house, making a blind street.
Building materials in Ermenek houses include stone for the basement and load-bearing walls; wood floors, walls, cupboards, agzı açık, doors, windows and building frames; soil in roof coats and stucco; mine for mallets, door grab bars, decorations on doors and windows, and lime on the cooker and walls.

Culture, as a concept, is a complete package composed of production and consumption relations followed by beliefs, values, norms, perception, uses and customs. It can be regarded as a type of infrastructure regulating social and individual behaviours. Belief systems, ethnic roots, regional factors and interaction with other communities assume an important role in formation of culture’s structure.
Traditional societies gradually form and sustain their ways of building in ways that go beyond features of the specific region in which they live. Communities stick to their own tradition of place even if they migrate to a different physical environment — in other words they bring to their new habitat the building production of their previous habitats. Traditions of ‘cultural place’ resist environmental changes because the act of creating a place is realised in accordance with a world view. Beliefs and contemporary technology, geographical conditions of the place and materials can be both derivative and climate-determined.
Families used to live together in Turkish culture. Children did not leave home after marriage: this newly-formed family was allocated a room in the house. The room given to the little family had a wardrobe bed and a bathroom in the wardrobe bed. A musandere, above the wardrobe beds, stored dried summer food for the winter.
The sofa, connecting inner and outer places in houses, is the focus of household living in the summer. Domestic production activities, imposed by Turkish agricultural economy, take place here. The ground floor is generally kept for storage and service — there is a cooker for baking bread on the ground floor and other units such as animal housing, kitchen, and other service facilities that housewives spend most of the day with. Ambars (storehouses) are built on the ground floor for keeping wheat.

Studies of culture and human-made environments claim that buildings constitute an inseparable part of the culture and are a product of it at the same time. House-form is a complex result of socio-cultural influences dependent on factors such as climate, defence systems and building and construction technologies. Ermenek houses are models of traditional architecture shaped by regional features, culture and geography. Although ensuring physical contingency means the preservation of living environments rather than physical forms, it is highly important to conserve these fabrics shaped with such local characteristics.

Sayin, Selçuk and Esra Yaldiz. 'Ermenek' On Site review, no. 18 Fall/Winter 2007/2008
© Selçuk Sayin and On Site review