The project is the first phase of a new large educational center promoted by the Xaverian Missionaries in the northern suburbs of Goma. The Masterplan concentrates activities aimed at different ages in the same lot, creating paths and green filter spaces between the different functions. For the school a module of three classes has been …
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The research develops a new methodological intervention model for improving slums in West Africa. Based on an incremental approach the method propose a series of minimal actions with tangible effects. The method is based on strengthening and extending the unwritten rules of self-organization already present in different slums, proposing micro-improvement plans based on strategies and …
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On field Work direction for the restoration of fort Apollonia (british fort on Ghana’s western coast) and the creation of museum for local community. The carrying out of the museum has been part of an italian cooperation project, aiming to the development of the Nzema Area. The project, entitled “Fort Apollonia and the Nzema: community-based …
During last rainy season, two big floods have hit the city of Freetown, inundating many urban neighbourhoods and making at least ten victims. Nothing new: the effects of decades of deforestation, lack of planning, indiscriminate consumption of land all add up to a complex geographical context: a city of almost two million inhabitants squeezed between …
Continue reading “Community, Participation, Resilience: flood control strategies in Freetown”
Competent, realistic, with a clear vision of the future, an informal and friendly style and an engaging smile. This is Yvonne Aki-Sawyerr, the new mayor of Freetown. Graduated at the London School of Economics, she is currently manager of IDEA, an investment and infrastructure company in the tourism sector in Sierra Leone. She is well known …
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A popular joke in the 90’s, a time of great interventions and experimentations on urban poverty, said that there’s only one thing worst than a slum: a planned slum. Planning the unplannable is undoubtedly a bad idea, at least with methodologies used for static and controlled realities, that could inevitably never adapt to temporary and …
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We have recently told about innovative methods to fight against floods that have been implemented by the Freetown administration, but the problem is certainly not new. 12 years ago, during a survey in Kroo bay, I found myself in the middle of a huge flood that miraculously did not make any victim. That same night, …
Exactly during these days, ten years ago, I was going to the slum of Kroo bay for the first time, writing down my first, conflicting impressions on a notebook. Even if the diary pages always sound trivial and silly when read years later, I decided to keep them as they are: confused, full of mistakes …
Two years ago Marielle Franco was murdered, since then Brazil has changed dramatically and some ministers even affirm to hope to bomb the favelas. It’s a real declaration of war against the urban poor. We remember Marielle with this post, written a few hours after her assassination, but still so terribly current. Today more than …
Continue reading “To Marielle Franco and to those on the right side of the story”
In the vulnerability and risk exposure assessments within slums women usually emerges among the most fragile categories: poverty, insane environment, lack of main services and petty crime are usually widespread in most of the informal settlements, recreating a high-risk context. Several researches have shown that in many slums, the majority of family units are single-parent …
Continue reading “Women in slums, a revolution in small steps”
