Photo’s Lisette-Mejia – 14 Tiny Homes That’ll Make You Want To Move In ASAP

Photo: Lisette-Mejia

ca.shine.yahoo.com. November 2014. You’ve seen models of small houses before, but wouldn’t it be nice to see tiny homes in action? Ahead, we’ve rounded up pictures with the #tinyhousemovement hashtag on Instagram. What is the tiny house movement, you ask? A trend where people live in teeny homes on wheels that measure anywhere from one square meter to 700 square feet – the whole point is that they’re affordable, movable, environmentally friendly, and most of all, perfect for living a simple life. As these photos prove, they’re pretty darn attractive, too.

See & enjoy: https://ca.shine.yahoo.com/photos/14-tiny-homes-thatll-want-slideshow/

NARCIS – National Academic Research and Collaborations Information System ~ Urban Studies

NARCIS: The gateway to scholarly information in the Netherlands. Urban Studies: 858 publications – 14 datasets – 172 research projects

NARCIS is the main national portal for those looking for information about researchers and their work. Besides researchers, NARCIS is also used by students, journalists and people working in educational and government institutions as well as the business sector.
NARCIS provides access to scientific information, including (open access) publications from the repositories of all the Dutch universities, KNAW, NWO and a number of research institutes, datasets from some data archives as well as descriptions of research projects, researchers and research institutes.

This means that NARCIS cannot be used as an entry point to access complete overviews of publications of researchers (yet). At the national level, however, there are plans to incorporate the publication data from the academic Metis systems in NARCIS. By doing so, it will become possible to create much more complete publication lists of researchers. In addition, NARCIS presents research news from, among others, Intermediair Nieuws, Science Guide and several universities.
In 2004, the development of NARCIS started as a cooperation project of KNAW Research Information, NWO, VSNU and METIS, as part of the development of services within the DARE programme of SURF foundation. This project resulted in the NARCIS portal, in which the DAREnet service was incorporated in January 2007.  NARCIS has been part of DANS since 2011.

Go to: http://www.narcis.nl/urban%20studies

Bjarke Ingels Will Make You Believe In The Power Of Architecture

Architect Bjarke Ingels at WIRED by Design, 2014. In partnership with Skywalker Sound, Marin County, CA.

To learn more visit:http://video.wired.com/watch/bjarke-ingels

Daneel Knoetze – Link Between Poor Housing, Traffic Deaths And Education Outcomes

groundup.org.za. November 2014. The 7th annual Irene Grootboom Memorial Dialogues, which explore the continuation of Cape Town’s “spatial apartheid”, are underway. On Tuesday night, the focus was on the spate of shack evictions around the city this year, and the correlation between poor, densely populated areas and traffic deaths and education outcomes.

Being poor and living in densely populated informal settlements in Khayelitsha increases your risk of being killed by a car and of your children having poor education outcomes.

These were the conclusions, illustrated by statistics, of two speakers at this year’s Irene Grootboom Memorial Dialogues, hosted by the Social Justice Coalition and the African Centre for Cities.
The Constitutional Court ruled in favour of shackdweller and housing activist Irene Grootboom in 2000. The landmark judgment outlined the duties of the state in terms of the right of access to adequate housing in section 26 of the Constitution. For instance, the judgment held that the state must provide emergency shelter for those “with no access to land, no roof over their heads, and who are living in intolerable conditions or crisis situations.”
The lectures are held annually in memoriam of Grootboom who died in 2008, without having received a house.

Read more: http://groundup.org.za/link-between-poor-housing

Christy Zinn – Why Cape Town Must Get Serious About Land

Photo: citizen.co.za

futurecapetown.com. November 2014. In the first week of June, approximately 800 people were evicted from their homes at Lwandle informal settlement in Strand, Cape Town. It was not the first or last eviction to take place in a South African city this year. In fact, evictions happen “almost everyday throughout the country,” according to S’bu Zikode, president of South Africa’s largest national organisation of shack dwellers Abahlali baseMjondolo.

Yet the highly publicised event is an example of the vast social injustices that continue to deepen the trenches between social groups in South Africa’s cities today.

As detailed in a report from activist organization Ndifuna Ukwazi, ‘The Urban Land Question,’ published in The People’s Law Journal, Issue 2, in the Lwandle case, whereby a violent eviction took place midwinter that led to displaced families living in an overcrowded community hall for over two months, the South African National Roads Agency Limited (SANRAL) unlawfully used an interim interdict, which sought to stop more people from moving onto the land, to evict people already living there.

Read more: http://futurecapetown.com/2014/11/why-cape-town-must-get-serious-about-land/#.VGzVTFfF8zE

Emily Badger – What Happens When Housing For The Poor Is Remodeled As Luxury Studios

washingtonpost.com. November 2014. CHICAGO — For years, this brown-brick building near Wrigley Field housed people who had nowhere else to go. It had peeling walls and broken smoke detectors. But its tiny one-room apartments offered homes to residents too poor for a one-bedroom, too risky to pass a credit check, too vulnerable — on the perpetual edge of homelessness — to sign a one-year lease.

Today, from the outside, the building looks the same: six stories, with tall windows and an elaborately carved entryway that still announces the property by its pre-World War II name, the “Hotel Carlos.” But it now contains studios remodeled with stainless steel appliances, granite countertops and hardwood floors. Rent reaches $1,125 a month. The ad in the window promises “vintage charm.”

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/what-happens-when