During the summer semester 2012 we offer a seminar on ‚Housing for the Urban poor. From Local Action to Global Networks’ at the Berlin Institute of Technology. 16 students with various international backgrounds, mainly from the field of architecture and urban design have spend the last 4 week on creating a common understanding of urbanization, urban poverty, civil society – with a special focus on grassroots -, and housing. Thereby, housing is understood as a process and not as a product. During the following two weeks the students will work in groups focusing respectively on India, the Philippines, South Africa, and Thailand. The major task is to apply the concepts mentioned above to a particular country, analyzed in-depth through a desktop study. On the 4th of June a workshop will be held at the Berlin Institute of Technology, where the different groups will present their work so far. Aim of the workshop is to create a broader understanding for the context as well as to identify crosscutting issues between the different cases.
In a second workshop on the 2nd of July focus will be on grassroots networks around housing processes, with a tendency to transcend nation states. Characteristics and comparisons between the grassroots networks will be made followed by a schematic analysis classifying the different initiatives (right-based, social movement, etc.).
The students work will become part of the DFG funded research project ‘Housing for the Urban Poor. From Local Action to Global Networks’. We kindly invite interested to join the workshops, however registration in advance is appreciated (see contact).