Last Thursday, Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation (GSAPP) hosted a discussion between Dr. Deepa Ramaswamy and Dr. Amiel Bizé, moderated by Professor Reinhold Martin as a part of the speaker series “Conversation on Architecture and Land in and out of the Americas.” Both speakers presented their research on the effects of “made land” on the histories of settlement.

On Thursday, Dr. Deepa Ramaswamy and Dr. Amiel Bizé joined respondent Professor Reinhold Martin for a conversation on “made land”—land created or altered by human activity—as a part of the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation’s (GSAPP) speaker series focusing on architecture and land in and out of the Americas. During the discussion, Dr. Ramaswamy and Dr. Bizé both discussed their research on the logics of settler colonialism and constructs of property development in two specific regions of the world.

Dr. Deepa Ramaswamy currently serves as the Assistant Professor of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Houston, and her research focuses on the coastal development of Mumbai from the 17th century to today. Dr. Amiel Bizé, CC ’03, is an economic anthropologist who works as an Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Cornell University; her research centers around real estate “plot” development throughout Western Kenya. Columbia’s own Professor Reinhold Martin mediated the conversation; he currently serves as a Professor of Architecture in GSAPP and chair of Columbia’s Committee on Global Thought. 

Dr. Ramaswamy began her presentation by discussing the colonial history of Mumbai through the lens of land development. First, she contextualized this history by explaining that Portugal “gave” the coastal lands of Mumbai to Britain in the 17th century, expanding the British Empire. Britain then began the process of land reclamation on the coast of Mumbai for the purpose of trade expansion. Dr. Ramaswamy projected maps created by the British Empire and the East India Company over the course of their land reclamation, showing how the British Crown made land to expand Mumbai’s territory out into the sea. This land expansion is still prevalent today, as over seventy kilometers of reclaimed land has been added to the coast of Mumbai since the 1990s. 

Coastal land reclamation comes with a host of climatic issues. Creating landforms from the sea means raising the sea level as well as making the land more susceptible to flooding and sinking. Dr. Ramaswamy contextualized these problems by showing original documents of British colonial land developers who describe their relationship with the sea as “warlike.” The volatile conditions of the ocean also make investment in land reclamation projects economically risky and expensive. But, to British land developers, expanding into what they called the “wasteland” of the sea was an opportunity for the further development of trade, no matter the ecological or economic cost. 

Throughout her discussion, Dr. Ramaswamy emphasized the ambiguous relationship between land and sea. Much of the reclaimed land of Mumbai was visible during low tide but virtually absent during high tide, and she even showed maps where the land looks vastly different depending on tide zones. Dr. Ramaswamy ended her presentation by stating that this ambiguity is even more evident today as much of the coastal lands flood every monsoon season, especially as climate change worsens.

After Dr. Ramaswamy concluded, Dr. Bizé began discussing her research with a description of current real estate development throughout Western Kenya. She explained that the large portions of agricultural land common in Western Kenya from British colonial settlement has been partitioned into separate “plots” for real estate use.

Dr. Bizé’s research focuses heavily on the use of “plots” as measurement, understanding them as imprecise, socially defined units that could be between ⅛ of an acre to a full acre. This imprecise system allows for a lot of social speculation—for example, soil type or typographical features could decrease or increase a plot’s monetary value. 

Dr. Bizé continued her presentation by describing the historical colonial settlement that laid the foundation for modern land development in Western Kenya. According to Dr. Bizé, the idea that small portions of land cannot be used for agricultural purposes was a colonial convention made to create a landless class of native Kenyans. Today, small units of land are only seen as having real estate value, as opposed to agricultural value. 

Both Dr. Ramaswamy and Dr. Bizé agreed throughout their presentations that settler colonialism laid the foundation for what “made land” means today. The making of land into property shows a story of the dispossession of native populations, and both scholars’ research reflects how patterns of colonial thought continue to shape today’s world of property development. 

Bombay city map (1880) via Wikimedia Commons