Another shack fire broke out in Cape Town's townships last month, killing one woman and affecting 1,500 residents. Andrew Fleming reports on the City's response and the attitude of residents, and reviews some recent initiatives that may alleviate the problem of shack fires in the short and long terms.
The Government of India has launched a grand housing scheme for a 'slum-free India'. But can grand schemes work when planners and policymakers neither understand the reality of the urban poor nor connect to their aspirations?
Lots of 'solutions' get presented at events like the Urban and Housing Development conference in Cape Town, but can a model be sustainable if it excludes large parts of the city?
There is no better time to witness the shortsightedness of governments than around elections. With municipal elections just around the corner in Mumbai, a whole raft of new promises are being made to certain slum dwellers...
The breakdown of Cape Town's Housing Indaba shows how much such a forum is needed, but also shows how unready the city's stakeholders are for constructive collaboration.
While most are aware of the need for education and prevention, Noemi Reiner of ARCHIVE highlights the need for stable housing for people living with HIV/AIDS to lower transmission rates and reduce the physical and emotional risks of disease and stress.
The challenges facing the implementation of a proposal to build a self-sustainable village to the north of Port-au-Prince in one hundred days.
Andrew Fleming (Twitter: @AndrewSFleming) works as the Senior Researcher at the Cape Town Partnership, a non-profit company dedicated to the…
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The Global Urbanist is an online magazine reviewing urban affairs and urban development issues in cities throughout the developed and developing world.
Its readers are drawn from the urban policy and international development sectors, and include urban planners, officers in local, national or international government agencies, civil society leaders, and researchers.
