ABSTRACT
The center of gravity is shifting to the cities of the South, moving definitively below the equator. Our work as architects, researchers, and activists at Urban-Think Tank and ETH Zurich is deeply embedded in the cities of the Global South. In cities like Caracas, Sao Paulo, and Mumbai, observers continue to ineffectively comprehend and predict the pace of urbanization. As economist Edward Glaeser has argued persuasively, cities are the answer to, not the cause of, many of the challenges afflicting human beings as a species. Slum Dwellers International (SDI), for example, is a network comprised of community-based organizations in 33 countries that launched in 1996 as a global platform to sponsor local initiatives providing alternatives to evictions and improving urban development agendas. The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) opened the door to more substantive collaboration, in a context where the programs involved held the promise of operating on an entirely different scale to our previous projects.
