The unique challenges of the pandemic changed the way community organisations work. Organisations that worked in silos during other emergencies bundled their expertise and resources.
Older people in urban informal settlements live in poor socioeconomic conditions.
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Smoke alarms are used extensively in formal buildings around the world to alert occupants to impending fires, but until recently they’ve not been used informal dwellings.
Makoko neighbourhood in Lagos, initially founded as a fishing village.
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The life story of Mandlenkosi Makhoba represents the losers in the new South Africa, showing how inequality is produced and reproduced generationally.
A car that was washed away floats close to the banks of the Jukskei River in Alexandra Township after floodwaters ravaged the area on November 10, 2016.
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Besides battling the coronavirus pandemic, San Roque residents have long been locked in a bigger struggle for their very survival as a community in the face of home demolitions and relocations.
A market area in Dhaka, the Bangladeshi capital, crowded with people despite the coronavirus pandemic, May 12, 2020.
hmed Salahuddin/NurPhoto via Getty Images
Robert Muggah, Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro (PUC-Rio) e Richard Florida, University of Toronto
COVID-19 is spreading fast through not only the world’s richest cities but also its poorest, ravaging slum areas where risk factors like overcrowding and poverty accelerate disease transmission.
Many are speculating about the pandemic changing how we plan and use our cities. What they overlook is how many people live in unplanned settlements where it’s more likely to be business as usual.
Pupils take exams in a Kenyan school.
Photo by Luis TATO / AFP) (Photo credit should read LUIS TATO/AFP via Getty Images
The plight of the urban poor affected by COVID-19 highlights the need to to reaffirm that adequate housing, water supply and sanitation are basic human rights.
In our urban world, turning the makeshift and the informal into the livable and sustainable is our greatest challenge.
Durban’s Bhambayi township was among the areas wrecked by heavy rains, mudslides and winds that have left more than 300 people dead.
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