Architects of Poverty

Architects of Poverty PDF Author: Moeletsi Mbeki
Publisher: Picador USA
ISBN: 9781770101616
Category : Africa
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Of an estimated 1 billion people in the world who are trapped in a cycle of grinding poverty and despair, a disproportionate number live in sub-Saharan Africa. In this innovative and challenging account, Moeletsi Mbeki analyses the plight of Africa and concludes that the fault lies not with the mass of its people but with its rulers - the political elites who contrive to keep their fellow citizens poor while enriching themselves. Concentrating mainly on South Africa, his country of birth, and Zimbabwe, his home when he was in exile, Mbeki tells a tale of lost opportunities and extinguished hopes. Yet Mbeki is no Afro-pessimist. Along with his candid expose of the problems, he offers some suggestions about what needs to be done to break the stranglehold of the African elites on political power, and to set sub-Saharan Africa once more on the road to development.

Architecture for the Poor

Architecture for the Poor PDF Author: Hassan Fathy
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226239144
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 369

Book Description
Architecture for the Poor describes Hassan Fathy's plan for building the village of New Gourna, near Luxor, Egypt, without the use of more modern and expensive materials such as steel and concrete. Using mud bricks, the native technique that Fathy learned in Nubia, and such traditional Egyptian architectural designs as enclosed courtyards and vaulted roofing, Fathy worked with the villagers to tailor his designs to their needs. He taught them how to work with the bricks, supervised the erection of the buildings, and encouraged the revival of such ancient crafts as claustra (lattice designs in the mudwork) to adorn the buildings.

The Divided City

The Divided City PDF Author: Alan Mallach
Publisher: Island Press
ISBN: 1610917812
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 346

Book Description
In The Divided City, urban practitioner and scholar Alan Mallach presents a detailed picture of what has happened over the past 15 to 20 years in industrial cities like Pittsburgh and Baltimore, as they have undergone unprecedented, unexpected revival. He spotlights these changes while placing them in their larger economic, social and political context. Most importantly, he explores the pervasive significance of race in American cities, and looks closely at the successes and failures of city governments, nonprofit entities, and citizens as they have tried to address the challenges of change. The Divided City concludes with strategies to foster greater equality and opportunity, firmly grounding them in the cities' economic and political realities.

A People's War on Poverty

A People's War on Poverty PDF Author: Wesley G. Phelps
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820346705
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 264

Book Description
Phelps investigates the on-the-ground implementation of President Lyndon Johnson's War on Poverty during the 1960s and 1970s and argues that the fluid interaction between federal policies, urban politics, and grassroots activists created a significant site of conflict over the meaning of American democracy.

Of Greater Dignity than Riches

Of Greater Dignity than Riches PDF Author: Farhan Karim
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 9780822965695
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
Extreme poverty, which intensified in India during colonial rule, peaked in the 1920s—after decades of imperialist exploitation, famine, and disease—a time when architects, engineers, and city authorities proposed a new type of housing for India’s urban poor and industrial workers. As Farhan Karim argues, economic scarcity became a central inspiration for architectural modernism in the subcontinent. As India moved from colonial rule to independence, the Indian government, business entities, international NGOs, and intergovernmental agencies took major initiatives to modernize housing conditions and the domestic environment of the state’s low-income population. Of Greater Dignity than Riches traces multiple international origins of austerity as an essential ingredient of postcolonial development. By prescribing model villages, communities, and ideal houses for the working class, this project of austerity eventually reduced poverty into a stylized architectural representation. In this rich and original study, Karim explains the postwar and postcolonial history of low-cost housing as an intertwined process of global transferences of knowledge, Cold War cultural politics, postcolonial nationalism, and the politics of economic development.

Radical Cities

Radical Cities PDF Author: Justin McGuirk
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1781688680
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
What makes the city of the future? How do you heal a divided city? In Radical Cities, Justin McGuirk travels across Latin America in search of the activist architects, maverick politicians and alternative communities already answering these questions. From Brazil to Venezuela, and from Mexico to Argentina, McGuirk discovers the people and ideas shaping the way cities are evolving. Ever since the mid twentieth century, when the dream of modernist utopia went to Latin America to die, the continent has been a testing ground for exciting new conceptions of the city. An architect in Chile has designed a form of social housing where only half of the house is built, allowing the owners to adapt the rest; Medellín, formerly the world’s murder capital, has been transformed with innovative public architecture; squatters in Caracas have taken over the forty-five-story Torre David skyscraper; and Rio is on a mission to incorporate its favelas into the rest of the city. Here, in the most urbanised continent on the planet, extreme cities have bred extreme conditions, from vast housing estates to sprawling slums. But after decades of social and political failure, a new generation has revitalised architecture and urban design in order to address persistent poverty and inequality. Together, these activists, pragmatists and social idealists are performing bold experiments that the rest of the world may learn from. Radical Cities is a colorful journey through Latin America—a crucible of architectural and urban innovation.

A Manifesto for Social Change

A Manifesto for Social Change PDF Author: Moeletsi Mbeki
Publisher: Pan Macmillan South africa
ISBN: 1770104984
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 120

Book Description
A Manifesto for Social Change is the third of a three-volume series that started seven years ago investigating the causes of our country’s – and the continent’s – development obstacles. Architects of Poverty (2009) set out to explain what role African elites played in creating and promoting their fellow Africans’ misery. Advocates for Change (2011) showed that there were short-term to medium-term solutions to many of Africa’s and South Africa’s problems, if only the powers that be would take note. And now, more than 22 years after the advent of democracy in South Africa, we have A Manifesto for Social Change, the conclusion in the trilogy.

Architecture and Capitalism

Architecture and Capitalism PDF Author: Peggy Deamer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135049548
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Book Description
Architecture and Capitalism tells a story of the relationship between the economy and architectural design. Eleven historians each discuss in brand new essays the time period they know best, looking at cultural and economic issues, which in light of current economic crises you will find have dealt with diverse but surprisingly familiar economic issues. Told through case studies, the narrative begins in the mid-nineteenth century and ends with 2011, with introductions by Editor Peggy Deamer to pull the main themes together so that you can see how other architects in different times and in different countries have dealt with similar economic conditions. By focussing on what previous architects experienced, you have the opportunity to avoid repeating the past. With new essays by Pier Vittorio Aureli, Ellen Dunham-Jones, Keller Easterling, Lauren Kogod, Robert Hewison, Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, Robin Schuldenfrei, Deborah Gans, Simon Sadler, Nathan Rich, and Micahel Sorkin.

The End of Poverty

The End of Poverty PDF Author: Jeffrey D. Sachs
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101643285
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 448

Book Description
"Book and man are brilliant, passionate, optimistic and impatient . . . Outstanding." —The Economist The landmark exploration of economic prosperity and how the world can escape from extreme poverty for the world's poorest citizens, from one of the world's most renowned economists Hailed by Time as one of the world's hundred most influential people, Jeffrey D. Sachs is renowned for his work around the globe advising economies in crisis. Now a classic of its genre, The End of Poverty distills more than thirty years of experience to offer a uniquely informed vision of the steps that can transform impoverished countries into prosperous ones. Marrying vivid storytelling with rigorous analysis, Sachs lays out a clear conceptual map of the world economy. Explaining his own work in Bolivia, Russia, India, China, and Africa, he offers an integrated set of solutions to the interwoven economic, political, environmental, and social problems that challenge the world's poorest countries. Ten years after its initial publication, The End of Poverty remains an indispensible and influential work. In this 10th anniversary edition, Sachs presents an extensive new foreword assessing the progress of the past decade, the work that remains to be done, and how each of us can help. He also looks ahead across the next fifteen years to 2030, the United Nations' target date for ending extreme poverty, offering new insights and recommendations.

The Ethics of Architecture

The Ethics of Architecture PDF Author: Mark Kingwell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0197558569
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 151

Book Description
A lively and accessible discussion of how architecture functions in a complex world of obligation and responsibility, with a preface offering specific discussion of architecture during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. What are the special ethical obligations assumed by architects? Because their work creates the basic material conditions that make all other human activity possible, architects and their associates in building enjoy vast influence on how we all live, work, play, worship, and think. With this influence comes tremendous, and not always examined, responsibility. This book addresses the range of ethical issues that architects face, with a broad understanding of ethics. Beyond strictly professional duties - transparency, technical competence, fair trading - lie more profound issues that move into aesthetic, political, and existential realms. Does an architect have a duty to create art, if not always beautiful art? Should an architect feel obliged to serve a community and not just a client? Is justice a possible orientation for architectural practice? Is there such a thing as feeling compelled to "shelter being" in architectural work? By taking these usually abstract questions into the region of physical creation, the book attempts a reformulation of "architectural ethics" as a matter of deep reflection on the architect's role as both citizen and caretaker. Thinkers and makers discussed include Le Corbusier, Martin Heidegger, Lewis Mumford, Rem Koolhaas, Jane Jacobs, Arthur Danto, and John Rawls.