UN-Habitat Executive Director speaks at the DPU

14 March 2022 | 17:30 - 19:00 GMT

Catch up on these thought provoking words from UN-Habitat Executive Director, Maimunah Mohd Sharif, who spoke about planning equitable urban futures at The Bartlett Development Planning Unit on 14 March. 

Alongside the Bartlett Dean (Christoph Lindner) and Director of DPU (Michael Walls), KNOW Principal Investigator, Caren Levy, provided an inspiring response to Sharif's presentation, reflecting on KNOWs partnerships with equivalence, and use of reciprocal recognition, care, and solidarity as a means to creating pathways to urban equality. 

The co-production of the Metropolitan Observatory (MWO) platform

KNOW Working Paper No. 8 

This KNOW Working Paper from KNOW Small Grants Fund awardee Andrea Jimenez, in collaboration with Fenna Imara Hoefsloot and Liliana Miranda Sara, examines the development and design of the Observatorio Metropolitano de Agua para Lima-Callao (MWO): a co-produced digital observatory for water and data justice in Lima and Callao, Peru. It considers research which combined collaborative design approaches with theory-informed data justice guidelines, to develop a a MWO with participants from three districts across Lima.

Sanitation inequality and poverty in the informal settlement of Mji Mpya

KNOW Policy Brief by CCI Tanzania 

This KNOW Policy Brief from the Dar es Salaam City Partner, Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI), looks at the impacts and benefits of implementing a co-produced Simplified Sewerage Systems in the informal settlement of Mji Mpya, Dar es Salaam. Based on research findings, it considers how the process could be translated and scaled-up in other informal settlements throughout the city. 

Prosperity in Dar es Salaam: Community and stakeholder workshops 

28 March – 01 April 2022

KNOW and the Institute for Global Prosperity (IGP) have been working alongside the Centre for Community Initiatives (CCI) and community partners, to co-produce a localised prosperity index for informal settlements in Dar es Salaam.The second part of the research has involved implementing a co-designed model developed in phase one, to create households survey to measure prosperity within the chosen settlements.  Over 1,000 households were surveyed by community researchers in early 2022.  The team is currently in Dar es Salaam (28 March – 01 April 2022), to develop and share the initial research findings with key partners and stakeholders. Following the workshops, the results will be further analysed and turned into a ‘Prosperity Index’ representing how prosperous people feel, and what supports/ prevents living 'the god life'. 

Community-led development as pathways to urban equality. Perspectives from the ACHR network

09 March 2022 - LSE Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre 

Looking at case studies from the KNOW regional partner, the Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR), this roundtable discussion explored the potential of community-led development approaches in tracing pathways to urban equality. It presented the results of action-research in cities connected through the ACHR network as part of KNOW.  Namely, Nakhon Sawan, Danang, Yogyakarta, and Yangon. 

City as a classroom: Experimental learning in the urban

30 March 2022 - Via Zoom

Co-organised by IIHS and KNOW, this online panel was the second in the series ‘Dialogues with urban pedagogues: How do we teach, learn and practice urban equality?’. The series brings together work on pedagogy for urban equality within the KNOW project.

Focussing on pedagogies of studios and practica in urban education, this panel provided reflections from India, Zambia, South Africa, and Peru, highlighting potentials and challenges of experiential learning.

A recording of the event will be available online shortly. 

How do we learn cross-regional for advocacy on feminist approaches to habitat?

HIC co-learning spaces

Over the past months, WP5 was part of a co-learning process with the Habitat International Coalition, where we curated collectively the design, planning and implementing of a one-month virtual course on feminist approaches to habitat; a challenging and rewarding process where everyone has been a learner, where everyone has contributed valuable skills, knowledges and experiences, and where weaving relationships between the supporting team, facilitators and participants has been core to the pedagogy and content of the developed course. 

Knowledge co-production as a means for enhancing urban equality in Dar es Salaam informal settlements 

2 x short films from the KNOW City Partner Ardhi University, Tanzania

Low-income settlements find it difficult to improve or address their basic services without implementing collective engagements. For example, mitigating adequate water supply, or controlling localised flash flooding.

These two short documentaries from the Ardhi team, highlight the use of co-production method for improving urban livelihoods in Hanna Nassif and Goba informal settlements in Dar es Salaam Tanzania.

📹  Hanna Nassif settlement 

📹  Goba settlement 

Collective responses in times of crisis 

KNOW City Brief Yangon by Women for the World 

In times of crisis, the inequalities that characterise urban centres become even more prominent. In this KNOW City Brief, the case study of Yangon is explored. A city which has been facing the impact of a double crisis on the city's urban poor. The brief documents and illustrates the  various coping mechanisms organised by communities in the peripheries of Yangon, in order to respond to multiple crises. 

A billion of the world’s most climate-vulnerable people live in informal settlements

22 March 2022 - The Conversation Africa

This article in The Conversation Africa by KNOW investigators Emmanuel Osuteye and Vanesa Castán Broto, with Linda Westman, looks at the catastrophic effects of increased flooding as a consequence of climate change on the urban poor in the informal settlements of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.