The residents of a slum have been living under a constant, unsettling threat of eviction. Developed under the central government scheme in India, the slum redevelopment project in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra is a collaboration between the slum dwellers, Snehalaya and CDA.

Sanjaynagar is a slum in Ahmednagar city in Maharashtra, home to 298 families. The redevelopment plan addresses the need for formal housing for these families, while also providing safe and adequate community spaces, preserving the strong social fabric and bonding of the community. 

As the first in-situ slum development project in this district, the initial focus of CDA and its partners has been on trust building and empowering the residents of the slum to take on the development and construction of their homes. The apartments have been designed with the help of the residents such that they allow for multiple iterations and combinations based on the needs of the families. To retain the social fabric of the slum, the G+2 buildings have been designed around seven courtyards of varying sizes, a community center, gymnasium, a government-run creche or aanganwadi, shops, etc.

While slum redevelopment in itself may be rather mainstream, the Sanjaynagar project has been developed with design, social and financial components unique to the needs and aspirations of the community. The success of this participatory model has the potential to impact housing policies and help build thousands of such thoughtfully designed communities in the future.

As cities in the developing world grow, private and public housing estates for former slum and pavement dwellers are increasing. In India, more than two decades after the completion of the first public housing projects, questions are being raised about their livability. Roofs are leaking and rainwater drainage and waste management systems are inadequate. Clean water, light and ventilation inside apartments and common areas are scarce. Outside, there is a lack of green space and open spaces for children and adults. These issues affect everyday life and cause significant health challenges.

CDA has been working with the residents of Natwar Parekh Compound (NPC), a resettlement colony in in the eastern suburbs of Mumbai, since 2016 to understand the implications of ill-thought planning on the present and future of the community and work with them to find solutions that can trigger transformation of their spaces. The project uses design and planning as a tool to address the issues of a socially, economically and spatially marginalized community. 

Through discussions and interventions with the residents and other stakeholders, CDA has learnt that residents are keen to explore options to upgrade their existing homes and spaces to improve the living environment.

In NPC, open spaces make up less than 18% of the area, most of which is encroached by water tanks, parking spots or makeshift commercial setups. What has essentially been redeveloped for the people is only the physical structure and amenities, serving a blind eye to the inhabitants quality of living and their social bonds. This lack of common spaces for play, leisure and other common activities across age groups has an impact on the community. Through design and social interventions led by the residents of NPC, we are attempting to demonstrate the potential in such spaces that will help the people recreate their sense of collective ownership. Click here to see our photo essay on the design interventions.

Santiago Cirugeda is the founder and principal of Recetas Urbanas (Urban Recipes), a design & advocacy collective of architects, lawyers, and social workers based in Seville, Spain. Founded in 2004, the collective promotes the well-being of city residents against a bureaucratic framework that favors investment and development over community life.

Cirugeda began his practice while still a student in 1997 to examine how and why formal structural elements of the city, like zoning ordinances and building codes, seemed constructed in a way that promoted investment opportunities while leaving most middle and lower-income residents displaced or deprived of the amenities necessary to create neighborhoods.

The projects of Recetas Urbanas include building cheap ‘condos’ on rooftops, attaching micro-apartments to scaffolding or placing them on stilts in alleyways, and disassembling buildings slated for demolition and reassembling them into art centers. The collective exploits loopholes in civic law to create community gathering spaces, playgrounds, and other civic amenities which the city is unwilling or unable to provide. Through this work, Recetas Urbanas introduces two layers of provocation; by providing necessary amenities through novel means, the group calls attention to the absence of such amenities, as well as to the fact that subversion is necessary to achieve them.

Most recently, Recetas Urbanas has confronted the effects of the mortgage and dispossession crisis in Spain. The collective also works alongside Arquitectura Colectiva, an international association of approximately 80 collectives of artists, architects, and hackers.

We had an opportunity to have an extended conversation with Recetas Urbanas’s founder Santiago Cirugeda on Social Design Insights. Listen to the episode below.

Dr. Joshua Silver is a physicist, inventor, and founder of the Centre for Vision in the Developing World, an organization that seeks to bring corrective eyewear to those without access.

According to the Centre for Vision in the Developing World, up to two billion people around the world lack proper eyewear. Not being able to see properly means millions of children can’t read the blackboard at school, stunting their education. For adults, it means being unable to work, drive safely, or even read and write. WHO predicts that vision issues will rise into the top ten global health issues affecting productivity and opportunities by 2030, passing HIV/AIDS in its global burden. Unfortunately, the problem is not just the availability of glasses, but rather the lack of access to eye care professionals who can assign prescriptions and fit glasses accordingly. Starting in the mid 1980’s. Dr. Silver worked with development agencies within the British Government on developing this low-cost solution. He eventually proposed a form of self-correcting adaptive eyewear – glasses that could be customized in the field, without the assistance of optometrists or expensive technology.  

Dr. Silver was able to produce eyeglasses that cost about $1 USD and can be self-adjusted by the wearer to the correct prescription. The glasses contain rigid plastic lenses which house two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe to add or reduce the amount of fluid in the sacs, thereby changing the power of the lenses. When the wearer is happy with the strength of the lenses, the membranes are sealed by twisting a small screw and the syringes are removed. The solution is scalable and effective; over 100,000 people in thirty countries now wear adaptive spectacles.

Since his invention, Dr. Silver has worked to develop an infrastructure to market and distribute the glasses. CVDW supports the self-refraction approach as an open platform, serving the community by bringing together research and practical advice, by supplying a range of inexpensive, quality self-refraction products, and by providing a forum for entrepreneurs and humanitarian organizations to exchange experiences and develop a set of practices in diverse local environments. 

We had a chance to speak more with Dr. Silver and learn more about both the glasses and their ecosystem on our podcast, Social Design Insights. Listen to the episode below.

Rural Urban Frameworks (RUF) is a research and design collaborative working to help recover and rebuild villages across China that have been affected by the massive rural-to-urban migrations.

Joshua Bolchover and John Lin set up Rural Urban Framework as a design and research lab at the University of Hong Kong. Over the past 10 years, RUF has focused on sites impacted by the dynamics between the urban and rural transformation. Conducted as a non-profit organization providing design services to charities and NGOs working in China, RUF has built or is currently engaged in over 15 projects in various villages in China. As a result of this active engagement, RUF has been able to research the links between social, economic, and political processes and the physical transformation of each village.

Thirty years ago, the majority of people in China were farmers. By 2005, however, the Chinese government announced its plan to urbanize half of the remaining 700 million rural citizens by 2030. Between the previously financially homogenous upper-division of society and the population’s major proportion of farmers emerged a middle class. This new societal structure has resulted in a new spatial logic whereby the binary relationship between rural and urban is no longer valid either socially or in the context of the physical and material world. 

In many places, built form, density, and population levels that one would typically attribute to urban areas are still legally defined as rural land. Additionally, in areas quickly becoming developed, there are no clear systems to maintain the environment and prepare it for the shift to urbanization. For example, as a high volume of waste is mainly an urban issue, many rural communities do not have prepared, clear systems of garbage collection. In Chingeltei, Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, RUF set out to create a demonstration project that could facilitate the hygienic collection of rubbish. The project engaged neighborhood participation and outreach to improve the scheduling of trucks and influence policy from the Mayor’s office to alter how they administered city-wide waste collection.

Currently the work of RUF continues to focus on both the impact of urbanization in rural China, and the impact of rural nomads settling in the city of Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. The projects include schools, community centers, hospitals, village houses, bridges, and incremental planning strategies and integrate local and traditional construction practices with contemporary technologies. 

Maya Pedal is a Guatemalan NGO based in San Andrés Itzapa. They accept bikes donated from the USA and Canada and either repair them to sell or use the components to build a range of “Bicimaquinas” (pedal powered machines).

In rural Guatemalan towns, traditional energy sources are scarce or nonexistent, making essential tasks like washing clothes and irrigating crops labor-intensive. Founded in 1997 in collaboration with a group of Canadians from the organization PEDAL, the NGO became constituted under local control as Asociación Maya Pedal in 2001. 

Following a vision for sustainable development in Guatemala, Maya Pedal repurposes donated bicycles into “bicimáquinas,” pedal-powered machines that are sturdy enough to perform tasks like grinding or blending food and lifting water from wells without requiring electricity. 

Pedal power can be harnessed for countless applications which would otherwise require electricity (which may not be available) or hand power (which is far more effort). Bicimaquinas are easy and enjoyable to use. They can be built using locally available materials and can be easily adapted to suit the needs of local people. They free the user from rising energy costs, can be used anywhere, are easy to maintain, produce no pollution and provide healthy exercise.

In San Andrés, a womens’ collective makes organic aloe shampoo with the help of the “bicycle blender,” using the proceeds to support their families and fund reforestation projects. A local group in nearby Chimaltenango uses a mill/corn degrainer design to produce organic animal feed for its farm.

The workshop in San Andrés Itzapa is staffed by local staff and international volunteers. Each machine is hand-made to order, using donated, used bicycles and salvaged concrete, wood, metal, and other locally available materials. The range of designs includes: water pumps, grinders, threshers, tile-makers, nut-shellers, blenders, and more. As well as building Bicimaquinas, Maya Pedal offers a bike repair service and sells used bikes in the surrounding area.

Maya Pedal’s designs are open source, with plans available on their website so anyone can access them. They also work with a number of local partners, NGO’s, agricultural cooperatives and organic producers.

Filipino entrepreneur and activist Illac Diaz created Liter of Light to provide informal settlements with a cheap daytime lighting source that can be produced and distributed locally.

Worldwide, hundreds of millions of people live in informal settlements lacking adequate light. Residents often resort to kerosene, candles, or inventive wiring for light, risking health and safety in the process. “Liter of light” is a clear plastic soda bottle filled with water and bleach, installed in the roof as a skylight. The water refracts sunlight as it streams through the bottle, dispersing the rays 360º and illuminating the entire room. 

Recipients of the solar bottle bulbs, who pay about $1 for the bulb and installation, save money on electricity and upgrade to hand-built solar lighting systems that reduce the use of kerosene, candles, and other fuels responsible for indoor air pollution and fire hazards. Each of the hand-built solar lights reduces carbon emissions by 1,000 kg over five years. The organization provides initial supplies and volunteers to generate interest, but its focus is on teaching communities how to locally manufacture parts and install the lights, with the end goal of creating green micro-businesses and empowering grassroots entrepreneurs at every step. 

Liter of Light has spread beyond Southeast Asia to 32 countries in South America, the Middle East, and Africa to produce easily repairable solar battery kits for reading lanterns, mobile chargers, and streetlights. There are small adaptations to the design along the way; for example, in Nepal, they put antifreeze into the liquid solution, so it doesn’t expand and contract. 

During the COVID pandemic, Liter of Light launched the “Light It Forward” campaign, asking people to build a light, post it on social media, and challenge friends to do the same. Once an abundance of lights was built, they were turned into artwork, taking over parks, rooftops, streets, and public areas all over the world. The organization shared images on social media platforms to reach the decision-makers tasked with making meaningful progress on the UN Sustainable Development Goals. The campaign attracted 30 million viewers and empowered 75,000 people in communities devastated by loss in revenues from travel and tourism. 

Before the climate change conferences in 2022-23, the organization is planning a road trip through the Middle East, North Africa, and Europe to invite people to build lights for large-scale solar messages commemorating the 10th anniversary of the super-typhoon Haiyan.

The Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) collaborates with designers, educators, advocates, students, and communities to make educational tools that demystify complex policy and planning issues.

Founded in 2001, CUP’s work addresses the needs of communities struggling to understand the complex public policies and decision-making processes that impact their lives, from affordable housing to labor rights. By collaborating with the people most impacted by public policies and systems, CUP creates easy-to-understand, culturally relevant visual materials that help marginalized communities access services, claim their rights, and fight for change. 

Their core programs include “Making Policy Public,” a production series that joins an organization with a designer to create a visual explanation of a critical policy issue in the form of a pamphlet that folds out into a large-format color poster; “Public Access Design,” a series of short, intensive collaborations resulting in a booklet for a community organization working to break down a complex policy affecting its constituents; and “Envisioning Development Toolkits,” a set of interactive tools and workshops designed to demystify urban planning and empower local community members to participate in discussions around new development proposals. Additionally, CUP organizes youth education programs to get high school students out of the classroom to explore fundamental questions about how New York City works. 

All of CUP’s visual tools are designed to be used by constituencies that can most benefit from the information. One recent initiative was  “Here to Stay!,” a trilingual guide about Special Immigrant Juvenile Status (SIJS), a form of humanitarian immigration relief for youth under 21.

Other visual tools created by CUP are “Reclaim Your Worker Rights,” a guide for workers who have been wrongly classified as contractors by their employers; “Hey, that’s not okay,” a guide for young queer people of color about fighting gender-based violence in NYC schools; and “Your Truth Your Rights,” a booklet to explain Transgender, Gender Nonconforming, Intersex, and Nonbinary folks’ rights to safe housing in New York City jails and New York State prisons. 

In 2021, CUP released “Can You See My Screen?” a booklet designed by students at KAPPA International High School about how digital equity impacts remote learning, with a focus on the 16 million K-12 students in the U.S. who did not have internet access when schools across the country closed due to COVID-19.

Civic City is an institute for critical research in design that assembles a network of designers and thinkers to create a platform for the exchange of knowledge.

Founded in Zurich in 2011 by Ruedi and Vera Baur and Imke Plinta, Civic City works as an independent association, assembling a network of professionals such as designers, architects, sociologists, political scientists, geographers, urban planners, and more. As a principle, the institute advocates against design processes that are not context-specific or embedded in the social reality of the community it seeks to serve. Instead, it focuses on design that encompasses the environment it is being used for. The organization arranges courses in design, develops research and projects in different domains connected with the city, and works on publications. 

Over several decades, the work of Civic City has been applied to nearly every discipline of design. They have worked on community-based signage for the Paris Metro, examined the visual identities of international aid organizations, and authored a breadth of theoretical work. The team at the institute is widely credited with launching a wave of political activism within the fields of graphic design and its allied professions.

Recently, Vera and Ruedi published Our City to Change, a book that seeks to graphically explain contemporary issues of economics, finance, ecology, nutrition, and immigration. The book positions itself as a ‘visual deciphering’ of the contemporary problems of the world. By partnering with data providers, many of the pressing issues of the day can be rendered more intelligible and therefore more solvable.

We had a chance to speak with Ruedi and Vera Baur on our podcast, Social Design Insights, where we discussed the evolving possibilities of graphic design in the public space, and how the graphic arts can be an agent of political change. Listen to the episode below.

Breaking Ground, formerly known as Common Ground, creates residences that are integrated into their host neighborhoods by transforming under-utilized land into property assets that benefit all of New York City.

Breaking Ground was an early pioneer in social housing in New York City, and has since grown to become the largest provider in the city. Calling its model “supportive housing,” Breaking Ground re-purposes older buildings and constructs new ones that combine dignified, permanent, affordable housing with services that support residents in breaking their cycle of homelessness.

With a traditional shelter model, moving residents out as soon as possible is frequently a priority. The resident might be ‘back on their feet’ for a period of time and then suffer a setback which sees them lose their housing again. Because shelter is only one part of the equation, a shelter-only approach has proven insufficient at actually combatting homelessness. By understanding homelessness as a multi-layered condition, Breaking Ground has made substantial progress in moving individuals and families away from recurring instability.

Breaking Ground offers its clients a complete suite of services to address concerns typically faced by homeless populations. For example, residents are provided with access to job training, substance use counseling, social support, and public benefits. The constellation of services works to address many of the root causes of chronic homelessness. Moreover, Breaking Ground’s clients are provided homes without obligation to complete a drug rehabilitation program, obtain sobriety or to meet most any other precondition.

Opened in 2022, its Betances Residence in the South Bronx is one of only a handful of supportive residences to embrace the Passive House standard, which aims to reduce energy use and push further toward net-zero emissions in new construction. In Summer of 2022, Breaking Ground opened their first passive house for homeless and low-income seniors using ground up new construction designed by COOKFOX Architects. This building will be the second largest supportive residence in the nation, converting a 29 story building in DUMBO, Brooklyn to this use. 

We had an opportunity to speak with Jonathan Kirschenfeld and Brenda Rosen on Social Design Insights. Listen to the episodes below.