sociologyatwork.org. July 25, 2013. In just a few hours, the UN is hosting an online panel to discuss its recent report, World Economic and Social Survey 2013: Sustainable Development Challenges. The panel will discuss issues arising from its research on building sustainable cities, food security and energy transformation. Below I provide an overview of the major findings and some sociological resources that speak to the theme of green planning.

futurecapetown.com. July 26, 2013. Rural villages worldwide are being deserted, as billions of people flock to cities, to live in teeming squatter camps and slums. And Stewart Brand says this is a good thing. Why? It’ll take you 3 minutes to find out.

Take a look: http://futurecapetown.com/why-squatter-cities-are-a-good-thing

After witnessing the appalling quality of life for people in the slum areas of South Africa, Andreas Keller — co-creator of iShack- questioned how he could help. His solution involved harnessing solar power to help build a brighter future for those living in energy poverty. Andreas shares his touching story of how his idea is fostering a renewed hope in creating a more sustainable future for slums.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)

mobile.slate.com. Dumb urban policies wiped out the best kinds of housing for the poor, young, and single. But they’re finally making a comeback in smart cities.

This article is adapted from Alan Durning’s new book, Unlocking Home: Three Keys to Affordable Communities.
“[A] good hotel room of 150 square feet—dry space, perhaps with a bath or a room sink, cold and sometimes hot water, enough electric service to run a [light] bulb and a television, central heat, and access to telephones and other services—constitutes a living unit mechanically more luxuriant than those lived in by a third to a half of the population of the earth.”
—Paul Groth in Living Downtown: The History of Residential Hotels in the United States.

Most Americans live in houses or apartments that they own or rent. But a century ago, other less expensive choices were just as common: renting space in families’ homes, for example, or living in residential hotels, which once ranged from live-in palace hotels for the business elite to bunkhouses for day laborers. Working-class rooming houses, with small private bedrooms and shared bathrooms down the hall, were particularly numerous, forming the foundation of affordable housing in North American cities. Misguided laws and regulations almost wiped out these other kinds of housing, with disastrous consequences, but now there’s a chance for them to come back, helping those who are young, single, or on the lower rungs of our increasingly unequal society.

Read more: http://mobile.slate.com/

npr.org. July 17, 2013. If you were to do a search for the Nairobi city slum of Mathare on Google Maps, you’d find little more than gray spaces between unmarked roads.

Slums by nature are unplanned, primordial cities, the opposite of well-ordered city grids. Squatters rights rule, and woe to the visitor who ventures in without permission. But last year, a group of activist cartographers called the Spatial Collective started walking around Mathare typing landmarks into hand-held GPS devices.

In a slum with no addresses and no street names, they are creating a map of what it’s like to live here.

Read more: http://www.npr.org/in-kenya-using-tech-to-put-an-invisible-slum-on-the-map

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk.  The Illegal City explores the relationship between space, law and gendered subjectivity through a close look at an ‘illegal’ squatter settlement in Delhi. Since 2000, a series of judicial rulings in India have criminalised squatters as ‘illegal’ citizens, ‘encroachers’ and ‘pickpockets’ of urban land, and have led to a spate of slum demolitions across the country. This book argues that in this context, it has become vital to distinguish between illegality and informality since it is those ‘illegal’ slums which are at the receiving end of a ‘force of law’, where law is violently encountered within everyday spaces. Ayona Datta does not shy away from asking difficult questions, writes Alex Vasudevan.

Read more: http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/the-illegal-city-space-law-and-gender-in-a-delhi-squatter-settlement/

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