Search Results (74)

Refugee camps are typically designed as temporary sustainable settlements, prioritizing logistics over cultural considerations, which can lead to environments being misaligned with the lived experiences of displaced populations. This study addresses the challenge of traditional humanitarian camp designs that prioritize logistical efficiency over cultural and socio-cultural needs, leading to environments that do not align with the lived experiences of displaced populations. Focusing on the Zaatari Syrian Refugee Camp in Jordan, the research employs a structured questionnaire distributed among 102 households to investigate how refugees have reconfigured the camp’s original grid layout into more cohesive clustered patterns, informed by the principles of defensible space theory. Key findings reveal that refugees actively transform public courtyards into semi-private spaces, driven by cultural imperatives and safety needs. Statistical analyses confirm significant correlations between clustering behaviors and the attributes of defensible space, particularly the zones of influence and boundary demarcation, enhancing community resilience and accessibility. However, the study finds a limited predictive power overall, indicating that while these adaptations are significant, factors such as natural surveillance and territorial behavior do not exhibit strong influences on clustering dynamics. These findings have important implications for humanitarian planning and design. They highlight the necessity for more culturally sensitive and flexible approaches that prioritize refugee agencies and communal identity in camp layouts. This research advocates for a hybrid planning approach that integrates socio-cultural values, promoting resilience and quality of life among refugees. By aligning spatial designs with the social and cultural realities of refugee communities, humanitarian actors can enhance the effectiveness of their interventions, ultimately contributing to more sustainable and inclusive urban environments as part of broader goals related to urban planning and development. Future research is encouraged to explore these practices in diverse refugee contexts, providing further validation of these findings and enhancing the applicability of these design principles in global humanitarian efforts. Full article

The informal city, also known as the clandestine city and usually associated with the phenomenon of urban self-organisation, is a reality that cuts across all societies today and occurs in the most diverse regions of the globe, which raises the following question: Why do such different cultures, in such different geographies, adopt a common idea of an ‘informal city’ to live in? Despite the dramatic human condition that characterises slums and informal settlements, it is challenging to understand how these settlements can be adopted as a living space for so many and such diverse populations, admitting the interpretation that it is a utopia and an urban idealisation. Informal urbanisation processes occur outside the system and on the fringes of the practice of ‘institutional urban planning’, as a necessary and immediate response to the absence of public land policies, housing market failures or situations arising from social and economic crises. The object of this study is to find out to what extent the configuration of space, the territorialisation model and the morphology of the informal city, characterised by an entropic urbanism, correspond to an urban organisational structure that occurs when it is up to society to provide its own habitat and urban environment. Full article

An increasing body of literature has investigated the implications of housing quality on health, confirming the negative consequences of poor housing quality on physical and mental health. Despite this increased focus on the salutogenic impacts of housing, the relationship between housing quality and cognitive health remains understudied. This study examined how the housing quality in urban informal settlements, where living conditions are often substandard, affects women’s cognitive functioning, with a specific focus on executive function (EF) skills. EF is a decision-making system that enables us to make decisions using working memory and attentional control. This study addressed two key questions: (1) Is housing quality associated with EF skills? (2) Does perceived housing stress experienced by women mediate the housing–EF relationship? A standardized observer-based tool assessed housing quality, psychometric instruments measured EF skills, and a 12-item questionnaire evaluated perceived housing stress. Results indicated that better housing quality is positively associated with higher EF skills, with housing stress acting as a mediating factor in this relationship. These findings have important implications for both health and housing policies. Investments in improving housing conditions can yield cognitive health benefits for women, and addressing stress-inducing housing factors could further enhance cognitive outcomes. Full article

Rapid urban population growth in Bandung City has led to the development of slums due to inadequate housing facilities and urban planning. However, it remains unclear how these slums are distributed and evolve spatially and temporally. Therefore, it is necessary to map their distribution and trends effectively. This study aimed to classify slum areas in Bandung City using a machine learning-based local knowledge approach; this classification exercise contributes towards Sustainable Development Goal 11 related to sustainable cities and communities. The methods included settlement and commercial/industrial classification from 2021 SPOT-6 satellite data by the Random Forest classifier. A knowledge-based classifier was used to derive slum and non-slum settlements from the settlement and commercial/industrial classification, as well as railway, river, and road buffering. Our findings indicate that these methods achieved an overall accuracy of 82%. The producer’s accuracy for slum areas was 70%, while the associated user’s accuracy was 92%. Meanwhile, the Kappa coefficient was 0.63. These findings suggest that local knowledge could be a potent option in the machine learning algorithm. Full article

Beyond conserving urban heritage, the concept of historic urban landscapes (HULs) aims to tackle poverty and inequality, as well as to improve the quality of human settlements, through a people-centered approach in the context of rapid urbanization. This paper demonstrates the adaption of HUL tools and methodologies to investigate a slum in a historical city—the informal settlements along the Mae Kha Canal in Chiang Mai. An on-site field survey of the characteristics of the settlement’s composition and interviews with stakeholders, local authorities, and inhabitants were conducted. The analysis revealed that there is a gap between the desired strategy of the Mae Kha Canal agenda and the actual conditions of the location. The aforementioned contrast is discussed to suggest alternate options for upgrading the informal community while preserving its ancient walls, in line with HUL principles. The conclusion highlights the benefits of introducing the HUL approach in a slum setting and provides recommendations for deteriorated neighborhoods elsewhere that are either surrounded by or adjacent to historical features needing resilience. Full article

Slums are a structural feature of urbanization, and shifting urbanization trends underline their significance for the cities of tomorrow. Despite their importance, data and knowledge on slums are very limited. In consideration of the current data landscape, it is not possible to answer one of the most essential questions: Where are slums located? The goal of this study is to provide a more nuanced understanding of the geography of slums and their growth trajectories. The methods rely on the combination of different datasets (city-level slum maps, world cities, global human settlements layer, Atlas of Informality). Slum data from city-level maps form the backbone of this research and are made compatible by differentiating between the municipal area, the urbanized area, and the area beyond. This study quantifies the location of slums in 30 cities, and our findings show that only half of all slums are located within the administrative borders of cities. Spatial growth has also shifted outwards. However, this phenomenon is very different in different regions of the world; the municipality captures less than half of all slums in Africa and the Middle East but almost two-thirds of all slums in cities of South Asia. These insights are used to estimate land requirements within the Sustainable Development Goals time frame. In 2015, almost one billion slum residents occupied a land area as large as twice the size of the country of Portugal. The estimated 380 million residents to be added up to 2030 will need land equivalent to the size of the country of Egypt. This land will be added to cities mainly outside their administrative borders. Insights are provided on how this land demand differs within cities and between world regions. Such novel insights are highly relevant to the policy actions needed to achieve Target 11.1 of the Sustainable Development Goals (“by 2030, ensure access for all to adequate, safe and affordable housing and basic services, and upgrade slums”) as interventions targeted at slums or informal settlements are strongly linked to political and administrative boundaries. More research is needed to draw attention to the urban expansion of cities and the role of slums and informal settlements. Full article

Reliable data on slums or deprived living conditions remain scarce in many low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Global high-resolution maps of deprived areas are fundamental for both research- and evidence-based policies. Existing mapping methods are generally one-off studies that use proprietary commercial data or other physical or socio-economic data that are limited geographically. Open geospatial data are increasingly available for large areas; however, their unstructured nature has hindered their use in extracting useful insights to inform decision making. In this study, we demonstrate an approach to map deprived areas within and across cities using open-source geospatial data. The study tests this methodology in three African cities—Accra (Ghana), Lagos (Nigeria), and Nairobi (Kenya) using a three arc second spatial resolution. Using three machine learning classifiers, (i) models were trained and tested on individual cities to assess the scalability for large area application, (ii) city-to-city comparisons were made to assess how the models performed in new locations, and (iii) a generalized model to assess our ability to map across cities with training samples from each city was designed. Our best models achieved over 80% accuracy in all cities. The study demonstrates an inexpensive, scalable, and transferable approach to map deprived areas that outperforms existing large area methods. Full article

Diarrhea causes 1.6 million deaths annually, including 525,000 children. Further, chronic diarrhea puts children at risk for mineral deficiencies, malnutrition, and stunting which, in turn, can result in cognitive deficits, poor performance in school, and decreased disease immunity in adulthood. Most diarrhea is caused by water contaminated by fecal matter. Interventions to improve clean water and sanitation can save lives; however, challenges persist in informal settlements. In this study, we explored the views of residents of informal settlements regarding water and sanitation in their communities. Focus group interviews were conducted with residents of 6 informal settlements in Kampala, Uganda (n = 165 people), and 6 key informant interviews were conducted with governmental and nongovernmental organizations that work to improve informal settlements or provide services to them. The results from this study demonstrate that, although these informal settlements had many infrastructure “upgrades” such as latrines and toilets, water taps, wells, and garbage collection and drainage systems, the water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) system and its components largely failed due to point-of-use charges of water taps and toilets and the difficulty of emptying cesspits. Our results suggest that WASH must be considered a system and that multiple upgrading efforts are needed for WASH systems to work, including road construction and better oversight of fecal sludge disposal. Full article

A riverbank revitalization program is being carried out to overcome the problem of slum areas and restore the role of the river. Many local governments in Indonesia are working to revitalize riverbanks, with Yogyakarta being one of them. As a special region in Indonesia, the Yogyakarta government has implemented the Mundur, Munggah, Madhep Kali (M3K) program, under Government Regulation (PP) No. 38 of 2011, to manage the conservation, development, and control of the destructive power of river water. This study aimed to ascertain how changes to the riverbanks affect both people’s quality of life and the river itself. The factors that influenced the changes in the environment, society, and culture of the community after the M3K program were also determined in this study. This study used a descriptive method with qualitative and quantitative data analyses. The statistical analysis method used was logistic regression. The findings obtained show that the M3K program has transformed people’s mindsets and habits toward keeping the environment clean, particularly the river area. According to the findings of the logistic regression analysis, the variables that determine the changes in the social and cultural environment of the community affected by M3K are age, education, employment opportunities, and income. Full article

Vaccine hesitancy or low uptake was identified as a major threat to global health by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2019. Vaccine hesitancy is context-specific and varies across time, place, and socioeconomic groups. In this study, we aimed to understand the perceptions of and attitudes toward COVID-19 vaccination through time among urban slum dwellers in Dhaka, Bangladesh. In-depth telephone interviews were conducted between October 2020 and January 2021 with 36 adults (25 females and 11 males) living in three urban slums of Dhaka City, Bangladesh. Follow-up interviews were undertaken in April and August 2021 to capture any shift in the participants’ perceptions. Our findings show that for many there was an initial fear and confusion regarding the COVID-19 vaccine among people living in urban informal settlements; this confusion was soon reduced by the awareness efforts of government and non-government organizations. Women and young people were more interested in being vaccinated as they had had more exposure to the awareness sessions conducted by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and on social media. However, people living in the slums still faced systemic barriers, such as complicated online vaccine registration and long queues, which led to low uptake of the vaccine despite their increased willingness to be vaccinated. This study highlights the importance of using sources such as NGO workers and television news to debunk myths, disseminate COVID-19 vaccine information, and support adherence to vaccination among urban slum dwellers. Our study underscores the importance of addressing systemic barriers blocking access and understanding community perceptions in order to develop effective communication strategies for vulnerable groups that will then improve the COVID-19 vaccine uptake. Full article

Various programs have been implemented around the world to achieve slum upgrading, including in the city of Palembang, Indonesia, through the Kotaku Program. This program has been implemented since 2016 with a target of upgrading slum areas by 2020. However, the program has not reached the target. This study aims to identify the failure factors of not achieving the goal. This research uses a qualitative case study by conducting in-depth interviews with 20 various actors (i.e., government, academics, society, and media) involved in the Kotaku Program in Palembang City. Based on the policy network theory perspective, this research found three challenges in achieving the target, namely: (1) lack of collaboration between parties; (2) unclear roles of policy actors in housing and settlements; (3) the difficulty of building trust between actors to work together. From the interviews, new factors were found, including caring and integrity as influencing factors of the actor relationship intensity in a policy network. Consequently, to achieve success with the Kotaku Program, the aspect of the collaboration, trust, caring, integrity among stakeholders, and the aspect of the clarity of the role of the policy actors should be considered. Full article

The Bangladesh government issued a lockdown throughout the country from March–May 2020 in response to the COVID-19. The sudden lockdown caused economic ruptures across the country due to job loss. We conducted a comprehensive analysis of the outbreak through 40 in-depth interviews with men and women living in three Dhaka informal settlements from January to November 2021 to identify gaps to mitigate negative downstream effects of global pandemic policies. In this paper, we explore the critical importance of social networks as coping mechanisms for those who lost livelihood due to COVID-19 lockdown. Due to the congested living conditions in informal settlements, many established residents foster close, trusting relationships, and a strong sense of community. Formal and informal networks in urban slums, whether reciprocal or strategic, played an integral role as a way of coping during times of scarcity. We found limited analysis in public health literature on the resilience of these social networks and its impact on health and wellbeing. Our paper attempts to unpack the ways our respondents drew on their own social networks to combat the socio-economic and emotional health challenges brought on by a lack of adequate formalized support as part of the pandemic response. Full article

Urbanization is one of the defining trends of our time and appropriate models are needed to anticipate the changes in cities, which are largely determined by human behavior. In the social sciences, where the task of describing human behavior falls, a distinction is made between quantitative and qualitative approaches, each of which has its own advantages and disadvantages. While the latter often provide descriptions of exemplary processes in order to describe phenomena as holistically as possible, the goal of mathematically motivated modeling is primarily to make a problem tangible. Both approaches are discussed in terms of the temporal evolution of one of the dominant settlement types in the world today: informal settlements. These areas have been modeled in conceptual works as self-organizing entities and in mathematical works as Turing systems. It is shown that the social issues surrounding these areas need to be understood both qualitatively and quantitatively. Inspired by the philosopher C. S. Peirce, a framework is proposed in which the various modeling approaches describing these settlements can be combined to arrive at a more holistic understanding of this phenomenon by using the language of mathematical modeling. Full article

Addis Ababa is a metropolitan area faced with the challenges of Ethiopia’s urbanization, such as poverty, unemployment, informal settlements, an acute housing shortage, and environmental hazards. Yet, the non-practicality of area-based policy using the Multiple Deprivation Index (MDI) exacerbates the polarization of poverty and spatial inequality to create a divided city. The study developed the MDI for 2007 and 2016. The study’s objective was to justify the area-based policy by analyzing the overlaps of deprivations based on the relationship of pertinent indicators and components, the spatial pattern of inequality and deprivations, and the relationship of deprivation with population size and density. The findings of the study were triangulated and validated with the deductive theoretical, empirical, and SDG frameworks to replicate external validity. The research design included both descriptive and correlational methods. The inductively derived pattern using PCA (principal component analysis) and LISA (local spatial association index) of MDI components revealed spatial inequality and poverty polarization. The index of concentrated poverty was revealed by global spatial autocorrelation. The statistical and spatial trend analysis revealed concentrated poverty, especially in the inner-city slums and the peri-urban informal settlements. Most of the findings conformed to deductive theoretical and SDG frameworks, while the analysis of MDI indicators and components revealed additional slum indicators and the relevance of integrating other SDG indicators with SDG 11 for realizing sustainable urbanization. Due to spatial inequality, patterns of concentrated poverty, a large, deprived population, and easing future urbanization challenges, the study rationalized area-based policy for reducing inequality and poverty polarization. Full article

In this paper, we explore the complex entanglements between ongoing land conflicts and climate shocks, and their implications for risk governance paths and evolution. We focus on ways in which concepts of shock and conflict can be incorporated into social–ecological systems thinking and applied to risk governance practice in a southern cities context. Through a qualitative inquiry of two slum redevelopment projects in Bhubaneswar city in India, we trace the origin and evolution of conflict around land tenure and eviction in informal settlements, as well as its interaction with local manifestations of climate shocks. Climate policies, as responses to climate shock and intended to mitigate climate risk, are observed as constructed, interpreted, framed, and used strategically by formal actors to further urban development objectives, while the local knowledge systems, risk perceptions, and adaptations are ignored in practice. This study helps to re-think the complexities of climate risk governance in southern urban spaces where multiple risks overlap and interact within the diverse realities of informality and vulnerability. A singular focus on one type of risk, on the formal order to manage that risk, is likely to overlook other risks and opportunities. Hence, shocks are likely to produce more unanticipated effects, conflicts function as the unobserved middle term, and the formal policies and plans to mitigate climate risk contribute to the creation of new risk. Full article