The Cyberhood’s mission is to encourage critical thinking about the the plight of communities of color, conditions in the inner city, and the problems of low-wage white workers. The website’s goal is to connect students, scholars, practitioners, and activists from across the racial and class divide in order to build meaningful relationships. The building of such connections, we believe, will strengthen the struggle to understand and transform inner cities and the metropolitan regions of which they are a part.

This area of the Cyberhood contains articles and working papers that may be of interest to scholars, students, and practitioners working in communities of color and poor central city neighborhoods:
http://www.thecyberhood.net/featured_papers

We are all trying to go ‘green’: ‘green’ world, ‘green’ city, ‘green’ household.

‘Green’ has become a buzzword for sustainable, safe, energy efficient and/or economic. The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes green architecture as a ‘philosophy of architecture that advocates sustainable energy sources, the conservation of energy, the reuse and safety of building materials, and the siting of a building with consideration of its impact on the environment’. In the world of architecture we are all trying to go green but is this the same in Africa and if it is, how is it being manifested?

After doing some research, I have realised that ‘green’ architecture in Africa does not mean the same thing as it does in Europe or America.The reason for the difference is technology, cost, and governance. I would describe the so-called ‘green’ architecture in the African context as ‘feasible’; and a by-product of becoming ‘feasible’ is to become sustainable. Feasible or Sustainable architecture in Africa is finding new ways to cut costs, take lessons from traditional building methods, conserve energy, promote reuse and still remain relevant.

Read more: http://futurecapetown.com/the-move-to-green-architecture

The Social Housing Regulatory Authority (the”SHRA”) was established in August 2010 by the Minister of Human Settlements in terms of the Social Housing Act, No. 16 of 2008. The SHRA is classified as a public entity in terms of Schedule 3A of the Public Finance Management Act.

Mission:
The SHRA will regulate and invest to deliver affordable rental homes and renew communities.

Vision:
Affordable rental homes in integrated urban environments through sustainable institutions.

Functions:
Promote the development and awareness of social housing by providing an enabling environment for the growth and development of the social housing sector.
Provide advice and support to the Department of Human Settlements in its development of policy for the social housing sector and facilitate national social housing programmes
Provide best practice information and research on the status of the social housing sector
Support provincial governments with the approval of project applications by social housing institutions
Provide assistance, when requested, with the process of the designation of restructuring zones
Enter into agreements with provincial governments and the National Housing Finance Corporation to ensure the co-ordinated exercise of powers

Read more: http://www.shra.org.za/about-us/legislative-mandate

Claude Monet – The Gare St.-Lazare (1877)

theguardian.com. April 16, 2014. We have, it seems, no difficulty in dealing with the idea of cities, historically or in day-to-day life across the world. Cities are often iconic and in many ways define national identity. On the whole, we like them.

We have much more difficulty coming to terms with urbanisation – the process by which cities grow and change. China has just announced its very first “urbanisation policy”, while India is aggressively pursuing the idea of “smart cities”. Neither takes full account of the reality faced by the overwhelming majority of citizens caught in this turmoil of urban growth. As a result, such grand strategies risk perpetuating the social exclusion, inequity and precariousness of urban life.
We might be fascinated by cities, but we tend to see them in dichotomous ways. On one hand, they are held to be the key to economic growth and increased prosperity. There is a well-established school of city utopianism as exemplified by what Harvard economist Ed Glaeser calls “the triumph of the cities”. This notion of world cities as nodes in a network of transnational flows of capital, people and ideas is central to the neoliberal agenda.

Read more: http://www.theguardian.com/whose-city-is-it-anyway

See also The Guardian Cities Section:  http://www.theguardian.com/cities

The Guardian Cities website is supported by the Rockefeller Foundation. The site offers a forum for debate and the sharing of ideas about the future of cities across the world. All content is editorially independent

gizmodo.com. April 2014. This month, architects in Amsterdam started work on the world’s first completely 3D-printed house. It’ll take three years and quite a bit of money to finish. Meanwhile, in Shanghai, a company claims to have printed ten houses with inexpensive industrial scraps in less than a day. What’s the difference?

It depends on your definition of 3D printing. Both projects are using massive 3D printers; in Shanghai, it’s 490 feet long, 33 feet wide, and 20 feet deep. Rather than expensive plastic, though, the Chinese company WinSun Decoration Design Engineering Co is printing with a concrete aggregate “made in part from recycled construction waste, industrial waste, and tailings,” according to the Architect’s Newspaper. Each of these homes costs less than $5,000.

Read more: http://gizmodo.com/how-a-chinese-company

dinardaily.net. April 2014. The Ministry of Planning revealed that 2.45 million Iraqis are living in slums in the cities and parties across the country in the statistic reflects the extent of the housing crisis in Iraq.And spreading slums on the outskirts of cities due to increasing numbers of people and the displacement of villagers towards the cities in the past three decades as a result of the deterioration of the country’s economy.And Iraq fought several wars since the early eighties of the last century and the siege imposed on him for more than 10 years, which led to the destruction of various sectors and infrastructure.The agent said the Ministry of Planning Mahdi Keywords for site ‘Twilight News’ that the slums scattered across Iraq’s provinces inhabited by a gathering of 1552 2.00045 million thousand people by 346 000 family.He said the capital Baghdad, containing one-third of the random gatherings of Nineveh and Basra followed, while considered less Karbala and Najaf provinces in the number of slums.

http://www.dinardaily.net/ministry-of-planning