Posts tagged with 'informal development'
Bukavu, Democratic Republic of the Congo, sits where Lake Kivu drains into the Ruzizi River along the border with Rwanda. The city’s steep hillsides turn heavy rains into fast-moving runoff that overwhelms drains, damages roads and threatens downstream communities. It’s ...
Well-located housing — integrated with mass transit, public services and climate-resilient design — is an instrument of urban productivity, not an add-on to urban planning. In Bogotá, this integration is becoming central to how the city responds to accelerating climate ...
In the peripheral areas of Mumbai, the humble autorickshaw provides a vital link between homes, transit stations and essential urban services. For nearly 13 million residents, shared autorickshaws function as essential first- and last-mile connections, helping commuters navigate areas where ...
On a fair-weather day, one can often gauge the livability of a dense city neighborhood by a simple test: are children active outside? The new Guide to creating urban public SPACES for children takes that test seriously by turning it ...
An ambitious reforestation program in Dire Dawa’s watershed is helping to restore hundreds of hectares of farmland and reduce flood risk, while providing 7,000 new jobs and economic opportunities, especially for women and young adults. Dire Dawa, Ethiopia, is known ...
When floods hit my hometown in Kenya last year, it was the poorest communities who suffered most. In Nairobi, where more than 3 million people live in vulnerable homes made of wood, sheet metal and concrete — many in low-lying ...
During Caroline Owala’s childhood, flooding during rainstorms was a normal occurrence. “When it rained, it would be very difficult for us to even sleep because the flooding would get into the houses,” she told WRI. Caroline grew up in Kibera, ...
In the urban neighborhood known as Kosovo Village in Nairobi, Kenya, 95% of residents defecate in communal or shared facilities where untreated human waste drains directly into a nearby river. During a storm, fetid and polluted waters flood the riverbanks, ...
Warwick Junction is a finalist for the WRI Ross Prize for Cities. Warwick Junction’s maze of stalls, arches and bridges can elicit wonder in any first-time visitor to South Africa’s largest marketplace. The area’s nine distinct markets are wedged between ...
Affordable housing is a crisis that only seems to deepen. Some 1.2 billion people in cities lack access to affordable, secure housing – a number that’s projected to grow to 1.6 billion people by 2025. Cities in the global south, ...
Although Lima’s Villa El Salvador neighborhood was just a dusty plain called the Tablada de Lurín in 1971, it would soon become home to some of the city’s poorest residents. At the time, there were no electricity lines, no wells, ...
