Domus: Intelligent Architecture for Current Times

domusweb.it. While European cities present very low demographic growth today, they have extraordinarily urban and even agriculturally built environments. Adding to these circumstances circumstances certain environmental and social sustainable values, and bearing in mind the current economical situation, you can reach the conclusion that the re-use existing built patrimony – obsolete after new and continuous social, economic and technological changes – is a need. In this context, French architects Anne Lacaton & Jean Philippe Vassal have been developing an uncommon philosophy marked by their interest in preservation and social living improvement refurbishments, very far from the professional positioning of most reknown architects. Among their recent works are projects like the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, and others like the new Architecture School of Nantes and the peripheral extension of Bois-Le-Prêtre tower in Paris.

Read more: http://www.domusweb.it/en/architecture/intelligent-architecture-for-current-times/

Social Housing Watch – A Brief History of Social Housing

Why do we have social housing? What trends did it arise in response to? And how has it changed over the years? Take at look at our brief history of social housing.

1800 — 1850
Urban overcrowding

Between 1800 and 1850 the population of the UK doubled in size from 8 to 16 million people, and as the Industrial Revolution progressed more people moved out of the countryside and into cities to find work. By 1850 over half of the UK population lived in urban areas – mostly in squalid and overcrowded slums with open sewers and no running water. With living conditions so poor and disease so widespread, life expectancy in 1830 was a mere 29. Over the next century the need for decent housing, even for the poorest in society would become an ever larger issue.

Read more: http://socialhousingwatch.co.uk/a-brief-history-of-social-housing/

Squatters Vow To Fight City Over Land

westcapenews.com – Cape Town – January, 15,  2013 – After having failed to forcibly remove families illegally occupying land in Joe Slovo Park near Milnerton, the City of Cape Town is seeking an eviction order against the approximately 218 families from the Western Cape High Court.

Attempts by the City’s Anti Land Invasion Unit (ALIU) in November to forcibly remove the residents were unsuccessful as the informal settlement residents simply re-erected their shacks after they were demolished.

The residents also launched violent protests, stoning ALIU officials and burning tyres on Democracy Road — the main road in the township which leads to Montague Gardens. Several businesses run by foreign nationals were also set alight by residents who claimed they were being targeted while foreign national’s running businesses illegally from shipping containers were being allowed to continue.

The city has since sought an order from the High Court to have the people evicted.

Why Habitat for Humanity is Needed

Habitat.org. The world is experiencing a global housing crisis.

About 1.6 billion people live in substandard housing and 100 million are homeless.(1)

Each week, more than 1 million people are born in, or move to, cities in the developing world.(2)

One billion people (32 percent of the global urban population) live in urban slums.

If no serious action were taken, the number of slum dwellers worldwide would increase over the next 30 years to nearly 2 billion.(3)

In the United States alone, 95 million people have housing problems. 
Including payments too large a percentage of their income, overcrowding, poor quality shelter and homelessness.(4)

Clean, decent, and stable housing provides more than just a roof over someone’s head.

Stability for families and children.

Sense of dignity and pride.

Health, physical safety, and security.

Increase of educational and job prospects.

The transformational ability of good housing.

Clean, warm housing is essential for prevention and care of diseases of poverty like HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, diarrhea, and malaria.(5)

Children under five in Malawi living in Habitat for Humanity houses have 44 percent less malaria, respiratory or gastrointestinal diseases compared to children living in traditional houses.(6)

 Read more: http://www.habitat.org/how/why.aspx

Gaia Vince – Slums and The Future of Cities

bbc.com – January 14,  2013 – by Gaia Vince

Improvements are being made – some 230 million people have moved out of slum housing since 2000, for example. But whether the city of the Anthropocene will be environmentally sustainable depends on how places like Khulna evolve.

Read more: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130114-slums-and-the-future-of-cities/3

About the author

Gaia Vince is a science writer and broadcaster who is particularly interested in how humans are transforming planet Earth and the impacts our changes are having on societies and on other species. She has visited people and places around the world in a quest to understand how we are adapting to environmental change. You can follow her adventures at www.WanderingGaia.com and on Twitter at @WanderingGaia.

Kathleen Scanlon & Christine Whitehead (Eds.) Social Housing in Europe II – A Review of Policies and Outcomes

Published by LSE London, London School of Economics and Political Science

From the Preface:

This is the second book to be produced by a multidisciplinary group of housing
experts that was set up as a result of an initiative by a number of French academics
based at different Paris universities. The group was organised through
the GIS Réseau Socio-Economie de l’Habitat network, which receives support
from the PUCA (Plan Urbain Construction Amenagement, the Research Office
of the Ministry of Capital Works and Housing). Since publication of the first book,
Social Housing in Europe, the group has met three times. In November 2007 a
major international conference was organised in Paris, by the GIS. The papers
presented there, together with a great deal of further input by authors, form the
basis for this text. Since then the group has met in Vienna and in Dublin to discuss
a range of issues core to the continued development of social housing and
will work further on issues of both principles and policy over the next year. We
are extremely grateful for all those who have supported these meetings and for
their interest in ensuring the work can continue. (…) Read more