 |
|
In This Update:
Buenos Aires Urbanization Project Stirs Resentment from Locals
Mozambique Faces Housing Shortage Five Months After Cyclones Idai and Kenneth
Fairbnb Cooperative Challenges Airbnb
How Virtual Reality Technology Can Help Design Senior-Friendly Cities
Shanghai's Stringent Trash-Sorting Rules Mystify Residents
What We're Listening To: A BBC Investigation of the Slumlords of Nairobi
In the News and Around the Web
IHC Global is Looking for an Intern!
|
Buenos Aires Urbanization Project Stirs Resentment from Locals
The government of Buenos Aires recently committed $250 million to transform and formalize one of the city's worst slums into an official neighborhood, reconnect it to city services, and provide improved and safe housing. The slum, Villa 31, is notorious for poverty, violence and drugs. Gaps in basic city services mean there is no official sewage system or running water, paved roads, and no power grid, leaving residents to illegally tap electricity from nearby power lines. Despite poor living conditions, residents of Villa 31 are suspicious of the urbanization project. Their resentment is rooted in decades of government neglect and a lack of communication from the Secretariat of Social and Urban Integration. One long-term resident explains: "People don't think it's a bad thing that the government is coming and doing things. The problem is that they come in with a fixed idea of what they want to do, and don't talk to the people."
|
Mozambique Faces Housing Shortage Five Months After Cyclones Idai and Kenneth
Five months after Cyclones Idai and Kenneth devastated Mozambique cities and coastal areas, a shortage of government housing funds is preventing necessary reconstruction.
Currently, Mozambique needs to rebuild 250,000 homes at the cost of over $600 million USD. The Director of Post-Cyclone Reconstruction Office says that while donors made significant financial commitments for disaster recovery at the end of May, the donations "were for other sectors and not specifically for housing." Earlier this week the Director of the World Bank in Mozambique Mark Lundell suggested it may offer more services to Mozambique's reconstruction effort. Lundell asserted: "Rapid and resilient reconstruction of housing is of great importance for poverty reduction efforts especially for households living below the poverty line, in precarious houses in informal neighborhoods."
|
Fairbnb Cooperative Challenges Airbnb
A new housing cooperative promises ethical home-sharing in its temporary property rentals. Fairbnb is establishing itself as the antidote to Airbnb, which is frequently accused of exacerbating the urban housing crisis. Critics of Airbnb say investors are buying properties and evicting tenants in order to transform an apartment or home into a permanent Airbnb rental. In contrast, Fairbnb promises transparency, to be community-centered and prioritize people over profit, follow local regulations, measure the potential impact of renting out properties in a given neighborhood, and donate 50% of its commissions to a local community project. The cooperative may be especially popular for frustrated European city governments who penned their complaints about Airbnb to the European Union in an open letter last year: "Where homes can be used more lucratively for renting out to tourists, they disappear from the traditional housing market, prices are driven up even further and housing of citizens who live and work in our cities is hampered."
|
How Virtual Reality Technology Can Help Design Senior-Friendly Cities
MINDSPACES, a European urban planning project, is using virtual reality (VR) technology to help design cities that are more senior-friendly. The conglomerate of artists, architects, neurologists, and epidemiologists believe that older residents in cities have needs specific to their age that often go unrecognized. For instance, poor health and limited income for seniors in urban areas can lead to isolation, depression, and mental decline. MINDSPACES engages architects and artists design blueprints of cities and homes they believe are friendly and appealing to seniors. Seniors can then offer real-time feedback by viewing the blueprints through VR goggles. The initiative to make city dwellings more senior-sensitive is especially important given that older residents are increasingly comprising the populations of European cities: a 2018 European Union aging report predicts that by 2070 more than half of Europeans will be over age 65.
|
Shanghai's Stringent Trash-Sorting Rules Mystify Residents
At the start of July, Shanghai established a trash-sorting rule that requires its residents to sort their trash into four designated categories. Should residents separate their trash incorrectly, they face city fines and and even a lowering of their credit score. The four categories, however, have mystified numbers of residents, who don't understand why corn and ribs belong to the "other waste" category, fish bones are classified as "kitchen waste." The stringent trash-sorting rule is part of a larger Chinese effort to increase the percentage of its recycled waste by 2020 to match global trends. China recycles under 20% of its waste, in contrast to the 58% of waste recycled in Taiwan, 54% in South Korea, and 35% in the United States.
|
What We're Listening To: A BBC Investigation of the Slumlords of Nairobi
Slumlords in Nairobi have a "less than shining reputation" in the Kenyan media. They are frequently depicted as "ruthless" and "greedy" individuals that charge high rents for abysmal housing. In this podcast, the BBC investigates how landlords in Kibera have come to own hundreds of shacks and make tax-free profits through interviews with slumdwellers, slumlords, and activists.
Listen to the podcast here.
|
|
In the News and Around the Web
- How Much Does the World Spend on the Sustainable Development Goals - and How Much Does that Spending Matter?: The global public sector spends more than $20 trillion annually on the SDGs, but this doesn't tell us anything about the prospects of SDG achievement, say Homi Kharas and John McArthur at Land Portal.
- Measuring Foreign Aid Transparency in the United States: Devex examines how closely has the U.S. State Department has complied with the transparency standards established by the Foreign Aid Transparency and Accountability Act three years ago.
- Kelly Knight Craft at the United Nations: Jacob Kurtzer and John Goodrick at the Center for Strategic and International Studies identify the most pressing humanitarian challenges that face the newly confirmed United Nations Ambassador.
- "All I Really Need to Know about Cities I Learned from Jaws": David Dudley at CityLab explains how the shark-haunted Town of Amity demonstrates how public meetings work, the power of place-based branding, and how unpopular city officials can be re-elected.
|
IHC Global is Looking for an Intern!
IHC Global seeks a
part-time intern for Fall 2019 to provide research and project support for a number of our ongoing initiatives. For more information, please email Natalie Gill at ngill@ihcglobal.org.
|
|
Shanghai disposes 10 million tons of waste annually, largely unrecycled.
|
IHC Global invites everyone who wants to help to create inclusive and sustainable cities
in which everyone can have a decent place to live safely and securely and benefit from their services and opportunities
to join
us
our vibrant network of supporters and help us share innovative ideas and influence the global urban agenda
. Share your views (info@ihcglobal.org). Get our regular
updates. Become an
individual member. Make a
contribution. Add your company or organization to our growing
coalition.
Your financial support and your voice are vitally important
.
With your U.S. tax deductible membership, you will provide meaningful help in addressing the worldwide challenges of rapid urban growth, urban poverty and inequity. Help IHC Global "change cities for good" and secure a better urban future for us all - we need your help and your voice more than ever
.
|
|
|
|
Head Office: 5425 Wisconsin Ave, Ste 600, Chevy Chase, MD 20815
Satellite Office: 430 N. Michigan Ave, Chicago, IL 60611
|
|
|
|
|
