Sibusiso Tshabalala ~ This Nigerian Architect Wants To Turn Africa’s Water Slums Into Floating Cities

An artist’s impression of what the Makoko water settlement could look like(Photo from NLÈ website)

Nigerian architect Kunlè Adeyemi is re-imagining African’s water slums as floating islands.

Nearly 70% of Africa’s capital cities—like Lagos, Luanda and Kinshasa—are near water, with many urban dwellers living in bungalows, wooden structures and shacks on water. But rising sea levels, increasing rainfall and climate change threaten many of these structures, leaving water slum residents vulnerable to flooding.

Linda Poon ~ Mapping The ‘Urban Fingerprints’ Of Cities

Like humans, cities and neighborhoods have their own unique fingerprints. While genes determine ours, a city’s mark is characterized by the relationship between buildings and open spaces. Think of it as “spatial DNA,” which is typically mapped out by urban designers and researchers in black-and-white diagrams. Black shapes indicate buildings and white represent the open ground.

“These are useful tools to [visualize] the micro-scale of urban [neighborhoods] and understand how buildings and their surroundings succeed or fail in making a continuous and integrated urban whole,” Peter Griffiths, editorial officer of the Cities Research Center at London School of Economics and Political Science, says in an email. The maps were created by researchers at the center’s Urban Age program, who have been studying how the layout of rapidly urbanizing cities can affect their livability. Researchers used satellite photography and official city data to create the maps.

Mariam Musa ~ Life In The Slums Of Cairo

Om Baraka, a 55-year-old inhabitant of the Sudan Nest slum, gathers wooden fragments of the ruins of her house on 26 August 2015, after a police raid was carried out to forcibly evict residents of the area (MEE/Mariam Musa)

Last Tuesday, police forces raided the Sudan Nest, a slum near al-Dokki neighbourhood in Cairo.
Police forcibly evacuated the inhabitants of the slum from their shoddy dwellings, using bulldozers to destroy houses in front of residents’ own eyes. When angry inhabitants tried to stop the demolitions and fight back, police shot tear gas and dispersed them.
“At least those who are in prison know that their suffering will end one day,” said Om Baraka, a 55-year-old resident of the Sudan Nest slum. “They dream of a better life in their homes among their families.”

“People who live here are in a bigger prison, as they don’t even dare to dream of a better future,” she continued as she stood on the ruins of what was her home after being forcibly evicted by police forces.

See more at: http://www.middleeasteye.net/cairo-part-world-slums

Gilad Isaacs ~ South Africa’s 5 Million Working Poor

Every day millions across South Africa do arduous work in jobs that cannot keep them and their dependants out of poverty. These are the “working poor” and according to a new study, there are about five and half million of them.

In a study of the South African labour market prepared as part of broader research on the national minimum wage, University of Cape Town economist Arden Finn attempts to determine the wage level at which, on average and all other things equal, a worker and his or her family could be brought up to the poverty line.

This is not a question easily answered, but R4,125 is the carefully qualified answer this study gives.

Finn’s study makes use of a new poverty line developed by the Southern Africa Labour and Development Research Unit (SALDRU) at UCT (forthcoming). Researchers Joshua Budlender, Murray Leibbrandt and Ingrid Woolard adopt the internationally established Cost of Basic Needs approach in order to quantify, in money terms, the most basic food items and other necessities that a person needs to live. They find that, in April 2015 rands, this amount is R1,319 per person per month.

But workers do not only support themselves, and wage income is not the only source of household income.

– See more at: http://groundup.org.za/article/south-africa-5-million-working-poor_3242

Olamide Udoma (Ed.) ~ “The Lagoon City First Of All Has To Add Qualities Instead Of Being The Next Parasitic Urban Development.”

In an attempt to develop visionary perspectives for the future of Lagos, Nigerian experts and DASUDA (Dutch Alliance for Sustainable Urban Development in Africa) launched a Lagos Lab earlier this summer.

On Thursday 25th June DASUDA organised a seminar with stakeholders, possible shareholders and partners, to share and tested the results of the first Lagos Lab workshop. The week long workshop focused on the big themes of Water, Housing, and Mobility in relation to the meaning of the Lagoon and in the context of an explosive growing city.

The starting point of the seminar was the vision that the lagoon is the source of Lagos and can become the vibrant heart of a 21st century worldwide renowned metropolis.

Looking At Lagos
Rapid Population Growth: The population growth of Lagos picked up in the 70’s and 80’s and then even more since 1990. The mega-city’s population is now increasing by 70 people each hour and with an average age of its citizens of 19 years the existing population of 23 million will double within one generation.
Urban Pressure On The Water Edge: The expanding city is both moving outwards in a vast sprawl and inward pressing the urban boundaries into the lagoon where floating villages exist like Makoko and reclaiming land has become the norm.

Thomson Reuters Foundation ~ Latin American Governments Fail To Tackle Booming Urban Slums: Report

www.mascontext.com

BOGOTA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Latin America’s booming urban slums look set to continue their rapid expansion as government housing policies fail to tackle an explosion in informal housing, legal experts said on Monday.

Some 113 million people across the continent — or nearly one in five people — live in sprawling slums which are fuelling inequality and social exclusion, they said in a report.
“State policies on housing — even those enshrined in the region’s constitutions — have not been able to respond to the rise of urban populations…,” the study said.
Mass migration from rural to urban areas from the 1950s onwards means 80 percent of Latin America’s population of around 600 million now live in cities — a higher number than in any other region in the world.
The report examines housing legislation and policy in 11 countries, including Latin America’s largest economies — Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Colombia and Argentina.