A community-led water supply project as a device to upgrade urban citizenship

More than a third of Bogota, the capital of Colombia, is estimated to be self-built by the inhabitants, mainly in the periphery of the city. In this article, we learn from Andrés Sánchez of urbz Colombia about the emerging forms of organisation and constant transformation in these self-built neighborhoods.

Issue 04 - The Brief, illustrates all the preliminary steps taken by urbz and residents of Vithal Bhaskar Chawl to ensure that the design meets their social and spatial needs. 

Colima city in Colima State of central-western Mexico is home to disjointed and fragmented homegrown settlements, also known as colonias. In this article, we learn from Tobias Jimenez about the origins and functioning of a colonia on the outskirts of Colima city. 

Issue 3 is out now! We open Pandora's box to discover the residents concerns.

In this article, we situate ourselves in Chile and examine homegrown neighbourhoods in various terrains.

The second issue of the graphic novel will take you through the history of building and rebuilding of the Vithal Bhaskar Chawl.

The second article in the Makers of the Homegrown series takes a look at Ciudad de Barrios (City of Barrios) in Caracas, Venezuela. It is a compact and clustered neighborhood with a multitude of residents engaged in producing homes, urban space, and the city.

We are excited to present the first issue of a graphic novel about the Vithal- Bhaskar Chawl in Dharavi Koliwada. This issue sets the historical context for the issues to follow - where we draw and tell you more about the participatory redevelopment project initiated by the residents.

The homegrown neighbourhood is an expression of local organizational skills and maximum optimization of resources in the creation of built environments. In this series we attempt to understand its chief personnel, their tools and the processes involved in the making of such settlements.

In this article, published in The Architectural Review, Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivastava discuss the significance of local builders and contractors in preserving the functionality of the neighbourhood. It takes a simple shift in perspective to uncover the driving forces behind the vibrant growth of homegrown settlements such as Dharavi. 

Inviting contractors from all over Mumbai to collaborate on designs for homes in Dharavi with residents, architects, and artisans.

 Social distancing in a participatory process

In this article we discuss ways of making an immersive mangrove experience available to people. We propose varying degrees of engagement, from a full blown Koli experience to Mangrove Machans. 

The “Urban Actions and Emergent Architecture:Community Architecture 2019” first Encounter was held in the city of Bogotá, Colombia on the 25th and 26th of October of 2019. This was the first event to ever bring together community leaders, architecture colectivos, professors and students to discuss around the topic of community development initiatives.

This series of articles seeks to shed light on the origin of the unplanned settlements that are home to more than half of Caracas’s population, but whose stories have never been told. Multiple inhabitants were interviewed and shared their stories of struggles, overcoming hardships, constant improvement and self governance that are the origin of unplanned settlements in Venezuela.

urbz is working on the design of a house for a joint family of 38 people, on a plot of 330 Sq.mts (3500 Sq.ft) in the dense urban settlement of Dharavi Koliwada, Mumbai. 

Since many years, the inhabitants of the San German neighborhood (located in Usme, in the metropolitan area of Bogota) have been developing many different projects on public space improvement and infrastructure, that permitted the amelioration of life conditions. The main goal is to promote projects of community improvement on social and cultural levels of the San German community. 

urbz was involved in the design of a new community building in Dharavi.