Working with Sustainability and the Urban Poor
It seems that there has been a lot of groups presenting on goal number seven, but I think that sustainability is a growing area of interest among a lot of designers. This group in particular focused on the Shelter Association in India that works on water sanitation in urban slums. The group started their presentation with a YouTube video. The video explained the slum sanitation improvement and involving the communities in the project. The communities were responsible for keeping the project going. After the video we were presented with information about the history of slums in India. The group explained that water sanitation is an important issue because women and children before the project had trouble going to the bathroom during the day for fear of being attacked by men. The group focused on the architect Pratima Joshi. She founded the Shelter Association, and she works educating the community and designing housing for the urban poor.
This topic was interesting to me because after college I would like the work in India doing something along these lines. In Bombay, the largest slum in India, there are 6.5 million people which is about the size of New York City. Besides focusing on Pratima Joshi, the group discussed other people designing for sustainability such as James Garthe. James Garthe designed a way to use plastic as fuel in replace of coal. This is a great technology for India because there is a lot of waste.