Storms, flooding and fires, exacerbated by climate change and uncontrolled growth, can destroy existing housing and infrastructure. Droughts and conflicts cause large-scale migration. Property owners and governments evict people from vacant land and abandoned buildings. The resulting displacement creates a … Continue reading Emergency Housing: Questions and Design Inputs for Rapid Assembly and Recovery
The Human Settlements and the Circular Economy (HSCE) report shows how circular economy interventions could be adopted to develop more sustainable human settlements. The study compared current development pathways with circular alternatives for South African human settlements. It found that … Continue reading Developing More Circular Human Settlements through Policy, Planning, Industry, Capacity and Communities
Inspiring, Inclusive & Incremental – Successful, Affordable, and Beautiful Housing was the theme of this year’s World Urban Forum in Cairo, Egypt. I was invited to share a short recorded contribution. For this, I shared some key questions and approaches … Continue reading Inspiring, Inclusive & Incremental – Successful Affordable, and Beautiful Housing
For the WABER SudBE Conference 2024, I presented on Integrating Circularity into Urban Environments (ICUE). Circularity refers to using circular economy approaches to optimize resource use and minimise waste. There are many ways that circularity can be integrated into urban … Continue reading Integrating Circularity into Urban Environments (ICUE)
Many countries in Africa, Asia and South America have significant public building backlogs. Schools, colleges, clinics, and hospitals still need to be built and existing infrastructure has to be updated and refurbished. In addressing backlogs, there is the opportunity to … Continue reading A Government Sustainable Building Rating Tool?
I enjoyed working with my co-chairs Naomi Keena, Holger Wallbaum, Greg Foliente, Thomas Lützkendorf and the panel of paper reviewers in selecting best papers and outstanding reviewers for the World Sustainable Built Environment 2024 Conference. Following an intensive process, 7 … Continue reading World Sustainable Built Environment Conference 2024 (WSBE24): Best Paper and Outstanding Reviewer Awards
As part of a project investigating more circular human settlements, I enjoyed hosting a focus group with participants from ACEN, University of Witwatersrand, CSIR, Agrement and the Social Housing Regulatory Authority. We addressed the following questions: The discussions were lively … Continue reading How can Circular Human Settlements be Created? Scaffolding, Niches and Circlets
Botswana has been exploring more circular approaches for some time, so it was good share new ideas and work at a recent conference in Gaborone. My presentation covered circular opportunities for built environments and included: Continue reading Circular Building Design and Materials in Botswana
We are running the City Centre Sustainable Housing Competition again and opened with lectures on Who, Why, Where and How? I covered Who and Why. So why have a competition on city centre sustainable housing? This is because there are … Continue reading Why Have a City Centre Sustainable Housing Competition?
Jeremy Gibberd 