Equity Behind Our Sardines

Liveability is a concept of desirable living condition of a city in terms of a wide range of definition. It represents different ideas from different people. In this project, I focus on promoting a city to be liveable as a stage of opportunity to the citizens. It is essential to consider social equity within a city in order to achieve a liveable condition. Social equity could be reflected on various area include not limited to education, health care, housing, and livelihood. Good accessibility, diversity and social engagement could be expected by establishing a liveable, equitable city.

The site of this project is in a southwestern city on Indian Subcontinent, Kozhikode. Fishery is a traditional industry with long history of the city due to its long coastline by Arabian Sea. More than 12% of population are living in the fishery communities along the Malaba Bay. Those communities and the fishery households are suffering from poor living environment that exposed to the risk of flooding. Unstable income and declining amount of fish catch are even intensifying the situation. Alleviating income and consumption inequality in those communities would be a major concern to achieve a liveable Kozhikode.

After a series of investigation, Instead of modifying the housing quality in the communities, the aim of this project is on improving the livelihood of fishers by upgrading the infrastructure, enhancing harvesting efficiency and exploring more sources of income in the Vellayil harbour, a harbour that those communities highly rely one for the fishery practice, so that the fishery household could have higher income and incentive to rectify their living condition and thus improve the liveability of entire fishery communities. Some criteria are considered when adding new facilities to the harbour such as adding value to the harvest, reducing loss after the harvest, facilitating fair trade, caring health, and safety aspect, and also creating alternative income. In the proposed new harbour, some existing buildings like Auction Hall for fish catch are upgraded to satisfy the modern demands. Post-Harvest infrastructure like ice plant, storage and processing plant are added to the harbour to secure the harvest quality and raise the revenue.

At the same time, welling being of fishery workers are taken care in the proposed new Fisher Club building with canteen, sanitary facilities, and workshops. Potential tourism is also captured with the new Fishery Arcade and Food Plaza to provide other sources of income for fishery families.