User Participation in the Eyes of an Architect and Gendered Spaces
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Date
2014
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Abstract
In Kampala City, the high rate of urbanisation has led to sprawling informal settlements
which are characterised by substandard housing conditions. Urban sprawl wastes valuable
land and makes services and infrastructure delivery expensive. Several housing projects were
undertaken by government to provide affordable, adaptable and convenient housing solutions
to low-income households. Most of these projects adopted a “top-down” approach in design,
which seems not to have considered how the low-incomes households actually used. The
paper shows that considerations for space use would lead to the development of more
appropriate housing designs. It also shows that outdoor space use, which has been
insufficiently addressed in government housing projects, is both functional and a resource to
the low-income households. The paper utilises a combination of methods such as literature
and document searches and reviews, in-depth interviews and systematic sketching. It
illustrates that involving housing users in the preliminary stages of architectural design, as
well as studying the way they use both indoor and outdoor space can be a solution towards
attaining more suitable housing designs for low-income households. The paper argues that to
low-income households, the house as external and internal space is not only a home but a
space for subsistence and sustenance. It further argues that the provision of houses with
considerations for how gender is enacted spatially could lead to the development of houses
that can be user friendly to low-income households. The paper ends by suggesting that
developing house designs that adapt to the way low-income households use space while
preventing urban sprawl in the informal settlements is an important step towards the
development of more effective housing designs.
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Keywords
Low-income housing; Gender; Outdoor Space Use, Indoor Space, Communal Space, Urban Sprawl