Valley Slum, Nairobi, Kenya
What does the future hold for urbanism? We are somewhat educated in the field of urbanism but studying urban methodology, street patterns, Lynch and urban design is merely a drop in the bucket. Cities are living organisms and here ‘in the western world’ they can be regulated rather easily but it will take more than urbanism to regulate a growing number of sheds and tents of shanty towns and slums. Of course we can not predict the future, but squatter settlings will inevitably be a big part of it. Cities like Buenos Aires, Kinshasa, Dhaka and São Paulo all contain huge areas inhabited by an increasingly poor population that simply have no choice but to live there. Urban life was created by humans for humans but has long ago muted into a new, harsh ecosystem that is a melting pot of diseases, natural disasters and fuckups caused by big international funding organizations that created them in the first place.
