MFJoe

So, one of the things I’m currently working on is a book with my pops. The book focuses on several aspects (social, technological, economic) of everyday life beginning in 1975 and projecting out 20 years into the future. Tentative topic areas include energy, jobs, news, tv, books, movies, healthcare, education…you get the picture. One of the more interesting areas to me has to do with housing, especially amidst increasing urbanization. Current estimates indicate that more than a billion people live in urban slums, mainly in the Southern Hemisphere. This fact, of course, leads to the expression of pressing concerns. For instance, what does it mean to have the majority of people on Earth living in urban areas, and the majority of these folks in slums. How will these individuals be represented in the political realm in the years to come? As some have pointed out, most specifically in my own readings, Slavoj Zizek, the slum-dwellings may well form a massive, impromptu voting bloc, almost appearing as a post-modern proletariat, or perhaps a post-modern lumpen proletariat (e.g., the force behind the empowerment of a group of South American leaders, such as Hugo Chavez).

Another important concern revolves around the structural living conditions of those individuals, and how it might be possible to create more inhabitable dwellings amidst these incredibly haphazard preexisting shanty towns. This is where movements such as the Incremental Housing Strategy in India can play a great part. Designed by Filipe Balestra and Sara Göransson, with a pilot being launched in Pune, India, the project aims to turn urban slums into more sustainable dwellings through an incremental construction procedure. The architects have designed three skeletal frames which can be built-upon and placed within existing zones without displacing the communities living in them.

(Thanks, Dezeen)