As the Global South continues to rapidly urbanize, finding affordable and sustainable housing solutions is paramount. The Global Housing Graduation studio provides the opportunity to design new housing typologies through environmental and social lenses. São Paulo’s challenges with rapid urbanization and social inequality has left more than a million residents vulnerable to the impacts of water scarcity, lack of public infrastructure, climate, environmental risk, and climate change. Urban expansion during São Paulo’s economic boom in the 1970s led to a considerable increase of illegal land occupations in the city’s peripheries. The development of the informal settlements formed in the peripheries thus superseded the speed at which proper public infrastructure for potable water, sanitation and electricity could be implemented.

Residents in the peripheral neighborhoods occupy open land in areas of varying environmental risk, susceptible to soil degradation, flooding, landslides, and health risks due to waste discharge. They cannot access publicly supplied water or sanitation and must rely on water cisterns, illegal connections or self-made sanitation disposal to acquire the necessary infrastructure to lead a healthy life. These risks, in addition to the future risks of climate change, disproportionally impact those living in informal settlements, due to their social vulnerability and socio-economic status.

Development-induced displacement of residents within informal settlements is enforced by the São Paulo municipal government, to permit the implementation of public infrastructure such as water lines, sanitation, drainage, street paving, and the removal of housing structures in at-risk areas. While the purpose of displacement contributes towards a positive outcome - upgrading neighborhoods with much-needed services, or rehousing residents to safer environments – the social impact of displacement is palpable. Forced displacement may move residents away from their sources of income and social networks, considerably impacting their mental well-being or exposing them to financial precarity. Readaptation to new neighborhoods or lifestyles can also be difficult for residents.


The project seeks to create a balance between social and climate resiliency to address the challenges of environmental risk and resettlement. The project proposes a new social housing system, built on the principles of clustering and the Radburn Plan, to achieve an urban design which integrates public space with rainwater flows, public infrastructure, and housing. The project location, Jardim Campinas in Grajaú, São Paulo, is used as a framework for the urban system to rehouse displaced residents from various communities onto one site. The socio-ecological design approach is implemented at each scale – urban plan, sector, cluster, and dwelling unit. The design aim is a renewal of the urban fabric, by building upon existing social and ecological networks to reinvigorate social connections and relationships between natural and built environment. ... Read more

The Indonesian government mentioned the urge to accelerate the process of providing detailed spatial plan maps. Moreover, to have one standard of reference, detailed spatial plan maps need to use large-scale (1:5.000) base maps as reference. Furthermore, the Indonesian government established the One Map Policy agenda as a legal basis for accelerating large-scale data. The Geospatial Information Act (2011) mentioned that the National Mapping of Agency (NMA) of Indonesia is responsible for providing nationwide large-scale (1:5.000) base maps. However, until now, only 2.7% of large-scale (1:5.000) base maps are available from all over Indonesia . One issue is the gap between the budget needed and received annually from the national government. Dependent on the national government, the NMA faces budget uncertainty between the budget requested and received during the annual process. Moreover, the budget was focused on supplying a national program of large-scale (1:5.000) base maps. Therefore, the NMA tend to innovate its funding model to accelerate the production of large-scale (1:5.000) base maps. Innovative funding models are assessed by using Analytical Hierarcy Process, one of the Multi-Criteria Analysis. Moreover, to achieve categorize the stakeholder, a stakeholder analysis is conducted. This project shows that sharing financial resources between local and national authority is a viable option. However, both national and local government needs to set several parameters and create a proper relationship among stakeholders. ... Read more

Geographic Information (GI) has proven its value with its ability to be used in various fields, which left numerous questions about how this data should be stored, used, and managed. To facilitate the sharing and reuse of spatial data, Spatial Data Infrastructures (SDIs) emerged in the last decades and with the increase in Open Data, the belief emerged that not only the public sector should be involved in SDIs, but also companies and citizens should be included as part of the Open SDI. To evaluate its value and the success of open GI in relation to the participation of users and communities in open SDI is still a challenge. The possibility to improve user participation in open SDI, such as OpenStreetMap, needs to be assessed. This research used preliminary web-based surveys and semi-structured interviews as per Schmidt [2004] with users of the OpenStreetMap, as well as qualitative analyses and combined quantitative approaches, to explore the factors that foster user participation in the community of an open SDI, using a methodology that adapted motivational factors from Budhathoki [2010]. The selection of fundamental intrinsic and extrinsic motivational factors were used as indicators in user participation in OpenStreetMap, for both the survey and the semi structured interviews. Surveys showed that participants in this research were mostly heavy contributors, that primarily who are extrinsically motivated to participate mostly because they believe in the main goal of OSM, they value the community and the development of the platform, and trust the system and its users. Moreover, the users have intrinsic motivations to also participate for fun, instrumentality, altruism, to meet their own needs, alignment with the unique ethos and for learning. One of the conclusions that was drawn from this research is that OpenStreetMap is perceived as an Open Data Ecosystem among its users, yet some diving opinions to the perception about Open Spatial Data Infrastructures. Future development points for OSM are the need for stricter standards and safeguards against hostile commercial or external takeovers if OpenStreetMap wants to effectively engage both the public and private sector. Applying a stricter standard for the metadata of datasets that are used by governmental and external parties should guarantee
further re-use and provide sustainability for OSM. This includes an increase in their outreach through better marketing for the relevant potential users and provide further support systems for a new users. Furthermore, the expansion on different spatial data is also desirable, as well creating linked or integrated data with external open data providers. Current government or private SDIs that are in the process of transitioning into user-centric or open SDIs can apply these factors from this research into their own decision making processes if increasing user participation is their end goal. ... Read more