The Community Planning Handbook: How People Can Shape Their Cities, Towns and Villages in Any Part of the World

Editor: Nick Wates
Publisher: Earthscan (2006)

This handbook is a compilation of new methods in community planning. The growing global demand for local involvement in the planning and management of the environment now considers local participation the best way of ensuring the development of safer, stronger, and sustainable communities. The editor aims to help in the evolution of community planning through sharing the benefits of experience and facilitating international exchange of good practices. It is a good starting point for technical professionals, local authorities, community workers, students and residents as it offers a wide range of methods available from community workshops to electronic maps that help stakeholders in shaping their local environment. It has a simple and easy-to-follow format, with tips, checklists, and sample documents as well as information on best practices from local and international perspectives. It encourages users to experiment with different methods, to mix, match, and evolve to come up with approaches most suitable to their situation.

More Urban, Less Poor: An Introduction to Urban Development & Management

Authors: Goran Tannerfeldt and Per Ljung
Publisher: SIDA and Earthscan (2006)

Essential reading for public officials, development professionals, researchers, and all others engaged in the field of urban development and management, this book presents how urban centers grow; their economic development; the link between urban and rural development; and the major challenges accompanying rapid urban growth. What I like about this book is its ability to communicate its message clearly. The authors organized the ideas in a systematic manner; it starts with identification of the problem and analysis of its nature. It then illustrates the consequences of the problem, and concludes with solutions to the problem. The layout was also reader-friendly. Apart from interesting pictures of urban areas in various parts of the globe, there are tables and graphs to back up most of the information. This book is indeed an effective resource material for individuals and groups working passionately towards sustainable urban development.

Online calculators make it easy to gauge your impact on the environment

Is your lifestyle ecologically correct? Meaning, are you living an ecologically sustainable lifestyle that won’t put future generations at risk because it puts a strain on the earth’s resources? One of the steps you can take to ensure that you are living an ‘ecologically correct lifestyle is to know your ecological footprint, which is the estimated area of land and sea needed to support your consumption of food, goods, services, housing, and energy. It is usually expressed in terms of global hectares, and the number of planet earths needed to support the human population if everyone lived your kind of lifestyle. For example, if your eco-footprint is 2.5 earths, then it means that you aren’t leading an ecologically sustainable lifestyle, because the earth won’t be able to sustain its current population if everyone lived the same way that you do.

It is now easy to know the size of your ecological footprint by using online calculators. These calculators usually ask you a set of questions regarding your lifestyle, such as what kind of house you live in or what you eat. Your footprint is then calculated based on your answers to these questions. Here are two good calculators on the web:
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A TAO staff member learns how other countries are solving their housing problems

by Beryl F. Baybay

“The solutions and successes taking place in Sweden and Tanzania began with small ideas, small changes and small actions.”

The world, the potpourri of cultures, pursuits and beliefs, has but a common aspiration – quality of life. I realized this when I was given the opportunity to participate in the Shelter Design and Development (SDD) Advanced International Training course held in Lund, Sweden in April 2008 and Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania, in September 2008, through the sponsorship of SIDA. The five-phase short course also involved quick visits to Copenhagen, Denmark and Zanzibar. I was able to interact with 23 other housing professionals from Africa, Latin America, and Asia.

The two phases of the course in Sweden and in Tanzania were certainly no tourist trips. Lectures, workshops, paper work, and study visits to housing sites filled the schedule. But this gave the participants the advantage of gaining more than superficial knowledge of the two countries in a short time. The Swedish SDD tutors, who are involved in socialized human settlements studies and work globally, wanted to develop our sensitivity towards the poor and to influence us to consciously integrate sustainable plans and designs in developing socialized communities and low-cost housing units. The course conveyed that even the poor can be provided with decent, liveable and innovative shelter.

Most of the principles of sustainability and participatory processes in housing development taught in the course weren’t new to me because we have been applying them at work in TAO-Pilipinas. Nevertheless, the SDD course became a rich source of international experiences and a good training ground for honing interpersonal skills.

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