Refining SCJ Mission Specifications into Parallel Handler Designs

Safety-Critical Java (SCJ) is a recent technology that restricts the execution and memory model of Java in such a way that applications can be statically analysed and certified for their real-time properties and safe use of memory. Our interest is in the development of comprehensive and sound techniques for the formal specification, refinement, design, and implementation of SCJ programs, using a correct-by-construction approach. As part of this work, we present here an account of laws and patterns that are of general use for the refinement of SCJ mission specifications into designs of parallel handlers used in the SCJ programming paradigm. Our notation is a combination of languages from the Circus family, supporting state-rich reactive models with the addition of class objects and real-time properties. Our work is a first step to elicit laws of programming for SCJ and fits into a refinement strategy that we have developed previously to derive SCJ programs.Comment: In Proceedings Refine 2013, arXiv:1305.563

Work, Slums And Informal Settlements Traditions

This report proposes patterns, guidelines and principles for use in the design of social housing, derived from the existing “self-help” context of slums in Brazil. It is based on findings from seven years of ethnographic field observation in the Favela Grota de Santo Antonio (2008–2015). The research revealed that the presence of work activities (which generally happen within residences) has greatly modified architectural space within the favela. From a post-neoliberal point of view, the report also offers a global critique of the planning of social housing with regards to issues of labor. This report seeks to offer a new interpretation of informal settlements and the design of social housing based on an analysis of the labor practices of the residents of Brazilian favelas observed extensively in the field over the course of seven years. Following the framework developed in past IASTE publications, these practices will be considered open-ended traditions, which may serve as a “foil for exploring the contested subjectivities involved in producing and/or occupying space” (AlSayyad, 1990, p. 6). The report is based on a case study in the city of Maceió (in Alagoas state, Brazil), but as will be demonstrated, its conclusions may be extended to informal settlements around the world. In fact, the report aims to address a range of assumptions and paradoxes surrounding current theories related to informal settlements. It also reflects on the way the architecture and planning of such settlements are being taught and conceived. In this regard, its primary intent is to link an analysis of systems of labor to the design of the informal city, a connection that planning and design literature has yet to adequately explore. The field-observation phase of the research started in 2008, with the aim of exploring the dynamics of life and the daily practices of inhabitants in some of the poorest slums in Brazil These included the Favela Sururu de Capote (FSC) and the Grota do Telegrafo (GDT), also known as Favela Grota de Santo Antonio, both located in Maceió, the capital city of Alagoas State. Of the two sites, this report will mainly focus on the Grota do Telegrafo (fig.2.1-2.2). The first residents of these two favelas migrated to the city from surrounding rural areas, where many had worked as sugar-cane cutters. This migration continues today and is fueled by various motivations. Some interviewees said they decided to move to the city after becoming unemployed; others said they had run away out of misery; and a few claimed to have accepted new jobs in advance of moving, or to have simply decided to explore a different place. However, in all cases residents reported they had come to the city looking for better work opportunities and services. Within Alagoas, Maceió is commonly regarded as the “big city.” To reach it, migrants generally travel by pau-de-arara (irregular transportation on the back of a truck). Sitting uncomfortably, side by side, under a canvas cover that supposedly protects them from the harsh tropical sun, the journey may last for days. At its end, migrants hope to find a city of opportunities; however, their dreams are often dashed. On arrival, they immediately find that renting living space in formal areas is too expensive, even if they use all their savings. Needless to say, they cannot afford to buy a house or a plot of land. Housing is also not their only financial challenge. The cost of food, transportation, and other services involved in living in the city are typically far beyond what they can afford. Left with few settlement options, many seek space in an existing favela, where they are likely to encounter relatives and friends. Overall, the slum thus becomes their passageway to the city. In terms of employment, a number of interviewees revealed that many favela residents do not even work in the formal city, but within the borders of the slum itself. Their activities may include fishing, crafting, running a business, trading, collecting garbage, recycling, farming, hawking, or offering services such as sewing, hairdressing, or nursing. Favela inhabitants who find jobs in the formal city, by contrast, may work as maids, carters, babysitters, masons, hawkers, drivers, cleaners, secretaries, or clerks in supermarkets and shopping malls. Previous scholarship on economies of informal settlements, such as that of Abhijit Banerjee, Esther Duflo and Benjamin Marx, Thomas Stoker and Tevneet Suri, has typically considered the particular labor activities of residents to be secondary to the larger economic forces driving the creation of slum economies (Banerjee&Duflo, 2011; Marx et al, 2013). Likewise, work activities have rarely been accounted for by architects and planners in design and planning proposals related to such places. Based on field observation, this report argues, to the contrary, that labor must be part of the planning rationale for slums. In Brazil, these practices can represent a valuable tool in the design of space and buildings within favelas. Analysis of work activities may also offer lessons for formal housing strategies and help fill a general gap in literature related to informal settlements

Introduction

Poverty is still one of greatest challenges in our world. In the developing world, an enormous number of people live below the poverty line. It is estimated that 10% of the world population live under 1.90 dollars a day (World Bank, 2018, p. xi). Although some may argue this is a narrow and technocratic definition of poverty, these numbers indicate that much needs to be done to alleviate issues connected to poverty. Urban poverty affects non-OECD countries, such as Brazil, in a critical manner, as society is characterized by strong inequalities which put a lot of strain on social and political structures, and a very tiny percentage of people controls a great portion of the country’s GDP (Savador, 2016, p.23).1 One of the consequences of poverty and inequality is a very imbalanced and dysfunctional housing market, in which access to affordable housing is made very difficult. Informal settlements are the spatial representation of poverty and exclusion in the city. One could argue they are also the result of exclusion from structures of citizenship (Rocco & Van Ballegooijen, 2018). The growing number of people living in informal settlements coupled with prospects of high urbanization rates currently turns housing into a key aspect to address to the production of a more equitable urbanization process in the 21st century. Yet, housing is a very complex challenge that includes complex issues. In order to house people currently living in informal settlements there is no recipe or manual. The current housing crisis in the world, notably in Brazilian metropolises and small and middle-sized cities currently suffering rapid urbanization processes, demand that we question traditional design and planning approaches to housing provision for the poor. Housing provision for the poor is not only a policy challenge. It is also a ‘spatial’ challenge, insofar it involves architectural and urban spatial solutions through the design of dwelling. Local authorities, planning departments and others, try to tackle this question through policy implementation, but the spatial outcomes are often quite lacking. Poor citizens are left out of the discussion, and it is often very frustrating to see that the spatial solutions given to communities are completely disconnected from the real daily needs of citizens. Design and planning of housing can play a pivotal role to address the current housing challenges to the poor, by addressing their needs. In my work I claim that current architectural and planning responses seek to ameliorate hygienic and sanitary conditions regarding the existing standards in slums/informal settlements, but the hygienist approach is quite antiquated and fails to tackle the complex interrelations between dwelling, work, and other activities that make up a community. I claim that labor is one such component shaping, planning and governing the built environment of informal settlements that is systematically ignored by policy makers and designers alike. In literature, there is no concern about the labor practices of the poor in connection with the design, planning and production of space and as a driver of spatial development. My research explores how labor practices shape, plan and govern the spaces in informal settlements. The main method used to perform this research was participatory research, in which I actively took part in the life of the case studies, often with long periods of residence in informal settlements, in a trajectory that is much longer than my formal PhD, amounting to ten years of studies. I explored how labor shapes the houses, alleys and streets in environments that are planned and self-built by residents. I further explored how labor affects the space between the formal and informal city, how it governs economic relationships in broader territories, how it explains migration processes, the emergence and the growth of informal settlements, and how it comes to represent value and dignity for the citizens living in these settlements. By doing so, this research aims to question how labor defines the informal settlement itself, and how it could frame new theorizations and epistemologies of informality. I have employed participatory research in order to understand the needs of the poor and to elaborate a critique on why current housing solutions provided by planners and architects to residents living in informal settlements ignore their working activities, and I propose a set of benchmarks and recommendations that can be easily be used by policy makers and architects alike regarding better housing for people living in informal settlements. By doing this, I aimed to fill the gap in literature regarding the lack of research on how labor shapes space and how it can ultimately dictate the spatial logic of informal settlements. It can provide a different approach to housing the residents of slums, based on their claims and their labor needs. Doing this type of research has allowed me to understand and address the needs of people living in slums, shedding light on issues that are unknown or ignored by architects and planners. I claim that labor is an essential part of the spatial dynamics and the lives of residents of informal settlements (Cavalcanti, 2009, 2017, 2018). Labor is necessary to maintain their livelihoods both in the informal settlements and in the formal houses where they are occasionally resettled (Cavalcanti, 2018). Therefore, one of my main conclusions is related to the role of labor within housing rights, as this primary right, the right to work, allows people to exist, live, thrive, create expand and maintain spaces in informal settlements (which is particularly relevant when they are relocated to formal housing or when their settlements are subject to redevelopment plans) (Cavalcanti,2018)

Postquantum steering

The discovery of postquantum nonlocality, i.e., the existence of nonlocal correlations that are stronger than any quantum correlations but nevertheless consistent with the no-signaling principle, has deepened our understanding of the foundations of quantum theory. In this work, we investigate whether the phenomenon of Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen steering, a different form of quantum nonlocality, can also be generalized beyond quantum theory. While postquantum steering does not exist in the bipartite case, we prove its existence in the case of three observers. Importantly, we show that postquantum steering is a genuinely new phenomenon, fundamentally different from postquantum nonlocality. Our results provide new insight into the nonlocal correlations of multipartite quantum systems.Comment: 9 pages, 1 figur

Housing by people and work

The article takes its roots from a participatory research accomplished by the corresponding author in Brazilian favelas between 2009 and 2017. Ethnographic research, combined with time series analysis and post occupation studies, revealed the everyday practices of residents of informal settlements in Brazil, both in informal settlements and formal housing where residents were eventually resettled. The research proved that labor is the social practice which most of all shapes, plans and governs space of informal settlements. (Cavalcanti, 2017a). The economic activities, which may depend also on the raw materials locally available, morphology of the territory and cultural traditions of the community, are found mainly related to the provision of commerce and service (Cavalcanti, 2017a). These activities take place mostly inside the house, which accommodates both labor and domestic life (Cavalcanti, 2017a; Cavalcanti, 2016). Moreover, also the space outside the house, as well as the design of streets and common spaces are determined by the working activities emplaced by the resident (Cavalcanti, 2017a; Cavalcanti, 2016). In the last years, fast-urbanization is ‘involving mainly middle size cities’ (UN Habitat, 2016). Addressing the spatial dynamics established by inhabitants in informal settlements is becoming of paramount interest for governments and international institutions. In fact, in the time-series analysis phase of the research, it was proved that these social practices are maintained or restored by the resident of informal settlements in the short term also after being transferred into formal social housing with pure domestic function (Cavalcanti, 2018). Inhabitants are moved by contingency to change and mischaracterize the original planning of the formal projects in order to restore the economic activities originally performed in the informal settlements. In fact, interviews in the field revealed that the possibility of performing working activities overrides the right to possess a shelter designed according to principles of formal housing; right in turn paid through the source of income of the inhabitant (Cavalcanti, 2018). On the other hand, besides the legal issues of such a mischaracterization, these modifications often result in an early decay of the hygienic standards initially designed and also in severe structural safety issues, implying a “re-favelization”16 of the social housing (Angelil and Hehl, 2011). This research combines experimental data with the critical analysis of current theoretical and operative approaches in the field of informal settlements’ re-location strategies and processes. This is the approach of the “extended case method,” to “extract the general from the unique […] to connect the present to the past in anticipation of the future […] all building in preexisting theory.” (Burawoy, 1998). The goal of the study is to derive extraordinary theorization in the field of social housing from the ordinary everyday of unprivileged people living in informal settlements. This article presents a new approach of design of social housing for residents of favelas in Brazil based on the integration of space aimed for labor and domestic life. This integration derives from the depiction of social practices which are certainly not new nor limited to current favelas, but rather ancient and rooted in the history of mankind and cities around the world (Arendt, 1958). In many historic-economic contexts characterized by a vocation to commerce and service, the domestic space was still embedded with the production of work (Mumford, 1961). Productive system has also lately determined the development of modern social housing characterized by pure domestic function in industrialized societies (Le Corbusier, 1923; Kenneth Frampton, 1980). Thus, the simple transfer of models of social housing typical of industrialized countries within contexts of the so called “Global South”17, with economy predominantly based on commerce and service, is neither effective nor beneficial for the people and their cities. The critique is not related to the cogent productive systems in the different areas of the world, but rather to the capability of the architect, meant as a political actor of the society, to understand the deep relationship that not only dwelling but rather the concept of space itself establishes with labor in the domain of the city. Thus, the proposal for a new conceptof social housing passes through the critique of the housing methods currently emplaced to relocate residents from informal settlements in the countries of the Global South, both when working activities are prohibited in the house as well as when, as an emerging trend, architects accept or even encourage the modifications emplaced by the future inhabitants to formal housing projects. (Turner, 1976). Both approaches are discussed in the following paragraphs. Instead, the series of operative suggestions proposed in this article for the design of social housing aimed to residents of informal settlements takes roots in the history of mankind meant as a social entity. They restore the integration between labor and domestic life with a triple purpose: an improvement of life condition of the resident; an advancement of his/her socio-economic status; a progress of the economy of the formal city. Thus, apart from the intellectual critique, the content of this article can be operatively beneficial within projects of slum rehabilitation or resettlements processes

Urban informality shaped by labor

This doctoral thesis presents the results of ten years of research on informal settlements, with particular reference to Brazilian favelas. The research aimed to understand the social dynamics of the production of space in these settlements. To this purpose, the author took residence in favelas and performed field research for a total of six years, including the witnessing of a resettlement process from a favela to a formal social housing development in the city of Maceió, in Brazil. The social dynamics that produces and influences the space of the favelas observed in the field were systematically codified in a new pedagogic tool by the author. As main findings from the analysis, it emerged that labor primarily shapes, plans and governs space in informal settlements. Working activities explain the emergence of these settlements, influence the dynamics of space inside the domain of the house, influence the shape of streets up to the margin of the favelas, but also has influence on city and global scales. From the residents’ perspective, labor represents both a means to earn their subsistence, livelihoods and underscores their inner self-esteem as human beings. Working practices originally present in the favelas were in fact restored in the social housing development to where citizens were relocated, with their original domestic function. According to this thesis, labor practices of inhabitants of informal settlements must be addressed when designing housing solutions for deprived citizens fighting for their survival and must be considered as a housing right. The reasons why the current housing approaches do not contemplate work are understood in context and interpreted according to their historic and economic backgrounds. A housing architectural and planning approach aimed at restoring the combination of working and domestic functions of human beings is proposed instead

Work as a Housing Right

This paper hopes that architects designing social housing for people originally living in informal settlements consider the importance of social practices, namely work activities, held by residents within the established informal settlements. Both the analysis and reflection hinge upon the practices previously established by a group of resettled inhabitants from the Favela Sururu de Capote, that exists in Maceió (Brazil) since the 1970’s, to Vila São Pedro, a housing project developed by Brazilian Government in 2009. In fact, the research shows that labor, the social practice that most of all shapes and governs spaces in the favela (Cavalcanti, 2017), also drove the modifications that significantly altered the original shape of the social housing designed according to principles of formal architecture. The ethnographic research was developed according to participant observation through a multi-year field research started in 2008, before the resettlement of residents and continued after one and seven years from relocation. Information consisted of interviews, audio records of residents’ monologues, drawings, photos and video. In sum, the socio-economic traditions of residents were analysed before and after the resettlement process, both in the favela and in the social housing. Already little time after relocation, the social housing was profoundly modified and ‘mischaracterized’ by residents. Thus, the original project failed its mission, as it happened twenty years before in a similar attempt, in a project designed by the housing program PROMORAR, in 1989. From the analysis, it emerges that the herein emplaced working activities mostly drove residents to profoundly change the social housing designated to them according to traditional design and management schemes. According to this research, nearly 87% of the incremental changes in external spaces and ground level of the 380 housing units of the Vila São Pedro were devoted to give room to labor activities. The elaborated information constitutes the roots of an intellectual reflection about the in-depth reasons of this phenomenon. In fact, all the observed modifications are emplaced to preserve the source of income of residents of favelas, needed for the inhabitant to pay their bills and therefore to guarantee their permanence in the new housing units. Thus, these necessities overcome any aesthetic rigor, hygienic standards, canons, program, formal/legal constrains that are inherent the designing criteria of formal housing. This impellent necessity of unprivileged groups of society should question the role of architects within the delicate mission of providing dwelling solutions to informal settlements. But the consequences arising from this reflection invest many sectors, from institutions to academia. In fact, in the context of informal settlements, the right to have spaces to work is embedded in the right to have a housing unit. Possible strategies to rethink policies, knowledge on incremental processes, urbanization, design strategies, and the right to dwelling in a neoliberal society to consider the socio-economic tradition of labor within both the context of the architecture in informal settlements or, the resettlement process of its inhabitants, are presented in this paper