Urban Emergencies: El Salvador

Exhibition Mejicanos

2010-01-28T16:56:00.005+01:00

The July Exhibtion in the faculty of Architecture (TU Delft), part Mejicanos:

Supporting video impression CHSS:

Wall of CHSS:

Exhibition_CHSS

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Exhibition CHSS

2010-01-28T13:25:00.001+01:00

The July Exhibtion in the faculty of Architecture (TU Delft), part CHSS:

See more photos

Supporting video impression CHSS:

Wall of CHSS:

Exhibition_CHSS

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Presentation for Cordaid, The Hague (The Netherlands)

2010-01-27T01:02:00.002+01:00

UE_presentation_Cordaid_ElSalvador.pdf

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Phase 4 - Aftermath: Quick Update!

2009-11-13T00:22:00.002+01:00

It’s been a while since we last posted something with substance. The Post-production phase was hectic, with the symposium, exhibition, various presentations, and off course the publication which is technically still in progress. So technically we’re still in Post-Production Phase (3) but we consider this now as the fourth phase (Phase 4: Aftermath). This means we’ll focus on significantly updating this blog with old and current data and establish this blog as a platform.

The current situation after hurricane Ida shows how important it is to try to understand these circumstances of living in disaster prone areas. We’ll hope to gather information about this which will help us in our descriptions of the case study El Salvador.

Much love to all of our friend in El Salvador!

Workshop (2) Sector

2009-05-19T17:48:00.001+02:00

Workshop (2) Mejicanos: Dwelling _Report

2009-05-15T23:31:00.006+02:00

We were able to reach a lot of community members of sector Montreal in Mejicanos, who showed enthousiasm in their work and presentation for the camera.

We will prepare the result graphically back in the Netherlands.

Survey Mejicanos (2): Emergencias Urbanasa en Cucatancingo

2009-05-15T17:54:00.005+02:00

Our second survey for the case study Mejicanos is focusing on an incentive, initiated by NGO Procomes, a settlement called ´Bendición de Dios´ in Cucatancingo.

Survey Mejicanos (2): Emergencias Urbanasa en Cucatancingo

Survey Mejicanos (2): Emergencias Urbanasa en Cucatancingo

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Workshop (2) Mejicanos: Dwelling

2009-05-15T11:47:00.000+02:00

A new and final workshop for our case study Mejicanos. Well aware of the fact that we ask for specific, sometimes complicated information, within the small timeframe of a community meeting. We hope to get some great insights.

Workshop (2) Mejicanos: Dwelling_Explanation-ENG

Workshop (2) Mejicanos: Dwelling_Explanation-ENG

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Workshop (2) Mejicanos: Dwelling_Explanation-ESP

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Workshop (1) Mejicanos: Scenario Spatial Planning _Report

2009-05-13T23:31:00.000+02:00

Aside from the fact that we are obviously rookies in organizing workshops, we had a good time and gained some great information for our workshop.

We will prepare the result graphically back in the Netherlands.

Workshop (1) Mejicanos: Scenario Spatial Planning

2009-05-13T19:03:00.007+02:00

Today we start our first workshop for the case study Mejicanos

Workshop (1) Mejicanos: Scenario Spatial Planning _Explanation-ENG

Workshop (1) Mejicanos: Scenario Spatial Planning _Explanation-ENG

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Workshop (1) Mejicanos: Scenario Spatial Planning _Explanation-ESP

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Workshop (1) Mejicanos: Scenario Spatial Planning _Scenarios-ESP

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Workshop (1) Mejicanos: Scenario Spatial Planning _Work sheet-ESP
Scale 01

Scenario01 Scale01

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Scale 02

Scenario01scale02

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We are covering this workshop with multiple tools: videocamera, tape recorders etc.
We hope to have some footage online soon...

Remaining weeks on site: specifying research

2009-05-07T03:54:00.002+02:00

Introduction

We are currently in the last stage of our research, specifying our objectives and trying to gather as much information as possible on site. Besides the fact that we prioritize data gathering and not (significant less) graphic production, as our blog indicates, we need more time to verify important information. We’ve been addressing in depth interviews the issues of cultural influences on spatial planning (grass-root culture) and how/if (international) aid in the form of post-disaster responses could help develop urban vitality. A lot of this information is subjective and can be verified with sources of information, so we’ve been gathering local data in the form of reports/books/investigations etc. Our goal is to keep expanding our network that could be helpful for our specific objectives and use the time and facilities in the Netherlands during the post-production phase to process them in greater detail.

Actors

The collaboration, positive or negative, between different key-actors has repetitively shown to be very influential for the ‘successes’ or ‘failures’ of responses and incentives. We organize the actors in:
- NGO > incentives on a communal level
- Habitants/people > organized communities, individualism
- National government > decentralizing > institutions for regulations
- Local government > (financial) capacity > distribution and prioritization
- Church > influence, preference/trust from civilians
- Private (stakeholders) > obtaining/developing land, small incentives
We’ve been talking to people affiliated to all actor groups but lack information about the role of church. We aim to strengthen this contact within the coming days. Besides establishing contact we came to understand that it’s important to understand how and for whom people look for/rely on leadership (grass-root culture).

Surveys/workshops

In remaining weeks we are currently setting up workshops and continuing to process and develop more surveys. With these tools we aim to document: specific information, reach out to a lot of actors/visions and cultural perspectives. For example with the surveys we’ll try to get a clear picture about the cultural perspective on leadership and about awareness among people.

Case Studies

Mejicanos is our case study which provided a lot of information for our contemporary analysis. With this we are able to understand more and more about incentives, dependence to the city center/connectivity and vulnerability. A couple of issues we want to point out at this moment are:
- social problems
- land rights (owner)
- environmental issues
- risk reduction
- politics

In the case study of Santa Tecla we investigate the ‘migration’ of people, from the emergency phase to transitional and permanent settlements. The incentives and the reasons why people choose to migrate to certain places are key. We are critical on the way opportunities for future development (especially economical and educational) are integrated in urban planning. We’ll have to investigate the vision on these topics from the planners, so we plan to have more in-depth interviews with involved Municipalities, architects and NGOs.

For the case study CHSS (Downtown: Centro Historico San Salvador) we investigate the non-psychical, with the focus on gaining cultural perspective. For example:
- Political: the process of obtaining building permissions to develop/construct.
- Economical: city/country dependence, public space occupation by vendors
- Development: area of focus and growth to suburbia

We aim to have a more detailed description and simplistic illustration soon as well as more of our documents online.

GIS/GPS: Testing_week13

2009-04-30T20:57:00.009+02:00

We started to import GPS data into Arcmap. The illustration shows a track of Mejicanos while mapping the economical activity. To give the tracks and gathered points of interest (including pictures) more context, we imported the given Autocad map of the Greater San Salvador.

Unfortunately we came across problems, resulting in some questions

- Why presents Arc map the GPS data mirrored? What in the import process went wrong to cause this?

- How is it possible to position the Autocadmap more accurate? Now we use layer properties - transformations to transform the coordinates to the coordinates of the correct location.

We will consult our teachers in Delft, but please comment if you came across the same problems.

Meeting Report: Ricardo Barrera

2009-04-27T20:06:00.000+02:00

Meeting Report: Ricardo Barrera
Location: Alcaldia de Mejicanos
Date: 27/04/09
Time: 9:00 – 10:00
Main topic: Future plans of Sector Montreal.
Present: Ricardo Barrera, Victor Perez, Pecco and Dieuwer

Two weeks ago Ricardo Barrera gave us some drawings of a future plan of Sector Montreal. This future plan contains networks, infrastructure and land use. To get to know the ideas behind the plans we arranged this meeting.
There are some problems while making a future plan in Sector Montreal. First, to plan public buildings or recreational areas the municipality needs to find and obtain unused land first. Next to the scarcity of unused land, which gives no freedom to implement any recreational, educational or economical space within the plan, it is often difficult to find the owner of the plot. In this situation the municipality starts to clean the land and wait till somebody comes to demand their property. [If so, the municipality tries to buy the land, if not they declare it as a public space and are able by law to develop it for communal use. The process is called ‘expropriacion’.] Second, the geographical layout of the area creates difficulties for connectivity and plan infrastructure. Third, there is no money. All the plans are still far form being constructed. The aim is to create a funding with help of NGO’s like Fundasal and Procomes. The future plan where we talk about is far from being realized. The plan of the land use is still just a proposition and nothing concrete. It gives the opportunity to have a critic look at some of the aspects. The infrastructural part of the plan only contains the main roads and intends to create a better connectivity. The passages are not included, which leaves out an important part of the risk reduction in the most vulnerable spots of the area. Because this plan contains the whole area of Sector Montreal it focuses on the scale of the urban area and not on the scale of a community. To reduce the social problems, especially in the north part of the Sector Montreal there is heavy gang activity, he wants to increase the social control by creating recreational areas and public buildings. All is limited of course by the unused spaces. To create more connectivity there is a new road planned. This road connects the main road of Sector Montreal to the mountain ridge on the west. The connection is made halfway, which improves the connectivity and create a better integration, but still to leaves the north part badly connected. It would be much more effective, in terms of creating social control, to make the connection in the north part; at the end of the community of Buenos Aires. Ricardo agrees, but explains that the possibility to create this road is cut of by the just constructed El Corintho; a big gated community housing project for the middle class. This is a prime example of the lack of urban planning. There is no integrated plan. Which is this example blocks, what might have been a big help to the social problems in Buenos Aires.
The gang activity in the north of Montreal is fed by the bad connectivity, but also by the connection that this area has with two other municipalities, not by using roads but by crossing fields to Cuscatancingo and Mariona. Victor explains how the gangs were pushed out of the community of Iberia, which was the headquarters for the ‘marreros’, by just the activity of creating infrastructure. The presence of the constructors and the activity around the construction made the ‘marreros’ move to Buenos Aires. It shows the importance of social control and activity of the public space.
Within the visits to Sector Montreal we had been told by a ‘law’, which enabled the municipality to construct and help at a private owned piece of land. This ‘law’ turns out to be a figurative law and is a regulation which is carried out by the municipality to prevent favoring individuals, in fear of getting accused for corruption.
One of the drawings shows a plan of all the existing black water plants and the new planned water plants. There is a little group of people that has a black water system, but the majority has dry tanks, a hole in the ground that serves as sanitation system. The problem with these holes is that there capacity is limited and it is dangerous to dig a second hole because of the risk for collapsing. There are already cases where people dump there black water illegally in the rivers, rivers wherein the women still washes the clothes. Clearly there is a desperate need for a sanitation system.

Meeting Report: Mercedes and Jorge (Fundasal)

2009-04-27T20:02:00.002+02:00

Meeting Report: Mercedes and Jorge
Location: Fundasal
Date: 27/04/09
Time: 15:00 – 16:30
Main topic: Urban Matters
Present: Mercedes, Jorge and Dieuwer

Urban matters is a new program which is a collaboration between Cordaid, Fundasal and an umbrella of different governmental, non-governmental and private organizations.
Instead of doing a project with a community or with a municipality, this program will work integrated on multiple levels using as well as Dutch as El Salvadorian resources. The main focus is to give life to urban planning on the scale of the municipality, which is unknown in Central American countries. The biggest problem in El Salvador is the lack of resources and the short ruling period of the local government. Creating a platform where the municipality can work together with the national government, private sector and NGO’s (of Dutch and El Salvadorian origin) to create a development plan for a number of years, should lead to durability and a continues process even if the local government changes.
Urban Matters will be implemented at Sector Montreal, Mejicanos and Sector Limon, Soyapango. Both are half slum and half popular housing and evolved without any planning. First the people came, and after the municipality implemented infrastructure, basic services, and other networks. Both have gang related problems, are vulnerable for yearly repetitive disasters and outskirts of the greater San Salvador. Limon contains a population of 30 thousand families and Montreal 10 thousand. Where in Limon there are spaces to create parks recreational areas and economical activity, there is a lack of space in Montreal. Adjacent to the lack of space the area of Montreal has a geographical layout which is hard to coop with. To create improved dwellings for instance, there are two possibilities; to build a better house at the same place or to create a new settlement, which opens the possibilities for more social and economical activities. But the question is if people will give up there peace of land.
For Fundasal it is an exception on there regulations, while they intend to help only the poorest people, to work on this project. In this new program the whole area is involved, and not only the poorest people and poorest communities. But the opportunity to create the start of integrated urban planning in El Salvador could not be refused. The idea of an integrated plan goes from dwelling, infrastructure, networks, education, health, recreation etc. as far as to social programs and economical stimulation.

The structure of Dutch and El Salvadorian stakeholders should help and create a bigger participation of the El Salvadorian private sector. At this moment it is hard to find corporate funding or sponsorships because the companies don’t have any social affiliations. The Dutch private sector that is involved consists out of specialists in recycling (the mobile factory), waste and water, but also urban management (Osborne and Arcadis). Out of the Dutch ministry of VROM there will be help to create waste water treatment plants.

Meeting Report: Intercomunale II

2009-04-24T19:58:00.000+02:00

Meeting Report: Intercomunale 2
Location: Community center Iberia
Date: 24/04/09
Time: 18:00 - 20:15
Main topic: Intercomunale de Montreal: workshop of Fundaspad, survey

The inter-communal meeting is organized every Friday evening. Every other week there is a meeting with a workshop provided by FUNDASPAD and the other Fridays are reserved for the communities to discuss their problems.

FUNDASPAD

FUNDASPAD is a social organization that exists out of six volunteers working for three years to establish a sense of people’s power in different communities. They accomplish meetings in these communities to be able to teach about social and economical issues like human rights, legislation, how to get organized etc.
This meeting FUNDASPAD teach about exploitation. A small workshop is given to teach the people the boundaries of exploitation at work and their rights. When they are taken advance of, the inhabitants of the different communities can unify to plead their cause and have a better chance to accomplish their rights. The main focus of FUNDASPAD is to teach the people how to analyze their situation and construct ‘people’s power’ in the lower classes of society. In the last three years they had different experiences with these workshops
There is an attendance list kept by for the inter-communal meeting, here we can check which communities how often show up.

Survey

Some people of the communities that didn't receive a survey didn't understand the reason why and felt missed out. Victor helped explaining that a research about a part of Montreal would provide information to get a better understanding of the whole Montreal.
The willing to participate of the survey seems high. To illustrate this, one community that only received a single interview as an example, copied this in order to make the complete survey. Willington and Vera Cruz that didn't complete the survey yet will pass it through Victor Perez.

At the next meeting, the eight of May we will give a short presentation on the survey and our analysis so far.

update Presentation Week 12

2009-04-21T21:58:00.003+02:00

We presented a quick update of our findings today to Fundasal. With minimal graphic illustrations we aim to portrait gathered information for the Contemporary Urban Analysis. We'll continue to report observations, meetings, results from surveys & (planned) workshops in the remaining time of our Field Research. Graphic representation will follow in the post-production phase, back in Delft.

Also check out the Location choice presentation here.

update Presentation Week 12

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Observation Report: Housing Project Procomes, Cuscatancingo

2009-04-20T18:33:00.002+02:00

(First draft)

Observation Report: Housing Project Procomes, Cuscatancingo
Location: Cuscatancingo
Date: 20/04/09
Time: 14:00- 16:00
Main topic: Risk reduction, Maria Auxiliadora, ‘Bindicion de dios’
(A new housing project for people of community Finca Argentina, Montreal, Mejicanos).

As part of the risk reduction program in the north part of Sector Montreal Procomes initiated a housing program for a 28 families of the people of the community Finca Argentina, who were heavily affected by hurricane Stan in 2005. Together with the municipalities of Cuscatancingo and San Salvador Procomes found a more safe (according to disasters) area to built 32 new houses for 28 families who were living in Finca Argentina and 4 families that were living at a high risk place in San Salvador.
The project was initiated in 2006, it took till the summer of 2008 till the last families moved into their new homes.

The people of community worked together under supervision of constructors to build their new houses, ending in a lottery to divide the houses over the families. The process of constructing the houses everyday from 7am till 4pm was not easy, especially for the people that had to work next to these construction hours to pay the rent of their old houses. This story is told by the woman who lives with her two kids in the first house. While constructing the new houses she still had to pay a rent of 32 dollars a month, while she was earning 7 dollars a day in the ‘Maquilla”. After she finished constructing these 32 houses she found a job as masonry, so next to a new house she found a new job with this program. Al though the difficult program constructing the houses together created a stronger community.

Comparing to her old house, she rented a cement house in Finca Argentina, the new house in a big improvement. The biggest improvement is the reduced risk; she doesn’t have to be scared of water coming to her house anymore. The place itself and the construction of the houses give the people a save spot to live. The connectivity to the centre of Mejicanos, where she goes for her groceries and medical help, is not different then in Finca Argentina; a 15-20 minute bus ride. The connectivity on the smaller scale seems to be improved. The passages and paths in Finca Argentina did flood and were covered with mud during the winter, while the new excess to the main road is hardened and even supplied with a hand rail. Although the women we speak to keeps on denying the fact that she puts less energy in reaching the main road, we can assume that especially elderly and children are better of with the new situation.

The plot is very small for the construction of 32 family houses; therefore the houses are built site by site with just a single wall to divide two houses. Procomes has five different blueprints of houses. It is depending on the situation and the money which type of house is being constructed. Within this program they include some of the basic services; water and sanitation, infrastructure, disaster risk reduction, but couldn’t include electricity. The electricity is illegally tabbed from the network. Cables hanging low and weak wooden poles are used to keep them up. The electricity company putted down steel poles in the area where houses appear or being constructed. The community now is negotiating with the municipality in order to get legal electricity.

Next to the process of slowly getting al the basic necessities, the community and procomes hired a lawyer to legalize their land rights. Every family pays 16-25 dollars per person to obtain these land rights. There is a good hope the process will be finished by the end of this year.

The first problems we come across are related to the surrounding of the houses. While in finca Argentina people had bigger plots and more room to grow some vegetables and fruits, they don’t have any personal space in the new area. The people together are Obtain the land around the area by growing plants and fruits. Another problem is a small piece of deserted land just above the settlement where people used to dump the garbage. When the spot gets too polluted they make a phone call to the municipality to clear the area.

Electricity poles put down by company, negotiating with the municipality
Pay 16-25 dollar family per person.

Contact: Maria Auxiliadora
Neighborhood: Bindicion de Dios

Meeting Report: Community Meeting Sector Montreal, Mejicanos

2009-04-17T19:56:00.000+02:00

Meeting Report: Community Meeting Sector Montreal, Mejicanos
Location: Community house, Iberia
Date: 17/04/09
Time: 18:00-20:00
Main topic: Introduction to Urban Emergencies and distributing the survey

Every Friday a community meeting is held to create a platform for communities to discuss their problems and point them out to the Municipality. The organizational structure is set up with a board of directors for the whole sector (who are leading the meeting), and two spokesmen of any community who are the directors of their community. The municipality is represented by the promotional workers in the Sector: Victor and Hector. Next to the municipality there are two spokesmen of the catholic organization CEFO who worked in the area starting after the earthquake of 1986, [mostly housing.]

The community meeting starts of with the subjects of the previous meeting. The second point on the agenda is the explanation of our Urban Emergencies study followed by the distribution of the survey. Not every community is present at the meeting which makes it difficult to distribute the survey to all the intended communities. We give out an envelope with 30 surveys to the communities of Buenos Aires, Artiga, Veracruz, Iberia and Finca Argentina, and an envelope of 20 surveys to the Willington community.
While the directors and the municipality try to get all the directors to the meeting, not everybody shows up. Illustrative is the presence Buenos Aires, who attends for the first time to the meeting. After they get applause for their first attend, the sector director, Victor Perez and CEFO all give their personal appreciation to this attend. The repetitive appreciation shows how young and fragile the organization of the sector still is.
Next to the directors of the Buenos Aires community, there are four other men from the community. Their intention for this visit gets clear after we distributed the survey and the communities get the chance to point out some of the problems they have to deal with: A lower part of Buenos Aires has a problem with grey water that comes from houses at the upper part. The four present men are affected by this problem and made a plan of how to solve this problem, but the community is in need of money from the municipality to be able to carry out this plan. It seems the community is attending for this reason, reactionary to the problem.

After the discussion of this problem Victor Perez wants us to leave the community meeting, he doesn’t make clear what the exact reason for our early leaving is.

Meeting Report: Protecion Civil

2009-04-16T18:46:00.003+02:00

(First draft, text between [...] has to be verified)

Meeting Report: Protecion Civil
Location: Alcaldia Mejicanos
Date: 16/04/09
Time: 09:00-10:30
Main topic: Working methods of Protecion Civil (in Mejicanos)
Participants:[??], Victor Perez, Wouter & Sofia (UCA)

Introduction

This Protecion Civil (Civil Protection) is a department of the Alcaldia (City Hall) of Mejicanos dedicated to social development. We asked to meet with them in order to get an understanding about the involvement of the local/central government in social development and other support in Mejicanos. Accompanied by Victor Perez, we could inform about the most vulnerable zones in Mejicanos and the accessibility and possibilities to investigate these areas. They promised to share an investigation which could provide us with (general) facts and figures about […] Mejicanos. We can expect this on a digital CD, which Victor will bring with him next community meeting (Friday).

Most vulnerable zones

To choose our area of focus within Mejicanos we also informed to the most vulnerable zones concerning natural disasters. They responded with:
- Montreal
- San Ramon
- San Roque
- Chancana

About Protecion Civil

The inefficiency between the local and central government was immediately addressed; “the central government doesn’t help”. With the capacity that they have, they focus mostly on critical poverty. In order to increase their capacity (and that of the community) they are building capacity, to organize people. These projects are implemented on a national, Municipality and community scale.
In Montreal for example, after an emergency, they organized the people and distributed plastic materials (budget). They collaborated with Procomes, who shared tools with the Alcaldia while Protecion Civil was focussing on raising more awareness in developing an early alarm system [called “alarma temporal”].

They work before, during and after the emergency. During the emergency phase the have more community meetings instead of the weekly normative. They make inventory on necessities etc. and they receive help from national police, Red Cross and the army. NGO mostly helped by distributing clothes and food. Victor gave an example of ‘small’ disaster to illustrate the relation between citizens and the Alcaldia. There’s a lot of wind during summertime, trees can fall down. (He explained that he was contacted in the middle of the night by a family whose house was destroyed by a tree at 2 am and the problem was solved at 7 am.)
Before and after is more in the sense of prevention; building capacity and raising awareness. The educate how to use the community house during an emergency and about the infrastructure leading to it. Then they evaluate the system [after scenario training?] and educate the people how to use the measurement tools for quicker evacuation and prevention [help from Municipality]. The route of evacuation is identified with risk routes and they don’t have the financial capacity to improve the roads. In order to map the behaviour of people as a result of these projects (incentives) we asked about the experiences with this prevention trainings. It seems that in the summer, when the risk is lower than during winter, only a few people participate in the projects. While during the winter people experience the risk (all over again) and the participation is very high. We were told that this could be generalised as cultural perception; that people are very reactionary. [He illustrated this with the example of a volcano eruption that happened 15 years ago, killing 300 people and after that the settlement was exactly rebuild in the same way. The same could be set about the area Las Collinas, where they first earthquake of 2001 destroyed the settlement and now there is another settlement built on the other side of the hills/mountain.]

Future development

When we asked about the plans for future development, regarding for example job oppurtunities and accessibility to schools, they explained that there is no plan. There are different plans regarding subjects like security, healthcare and environmental issues but these are never integrated. To improve the liveability they explained that the (financial) capacity obstructs them to reach and improve this for more people. They focus on improving the pavements and put up protection walls on the scale of urban conditions. They look, put the responsibility, to the national government to develop an integrated plan and adjust the laws (rules & regulations). They indicated the flaws in the current political system with the example/scenario where (big) construction companies build a settlement in an identified high risk zone, volcano zone. Regardless of the problems and risk they intend to capitalize quickly and (unconsciously) add to the risks in those areas, with deforestation etc.

In the end we made to appointments with Victor Perez. One is to start attending the community meetings in Mejicanos and the other to meet with Procomes.

Meeting Report: Jamie Choto (Procomes)

2009-04-14T19:52:00.001+02:00

Meeting Report: Jamie Choto (Procomes)
Location: Procomes office
Date: 14/04/09
Time: 09:00-10:30
Main topic: Working methods of Procomes (in Mejicanos)
Participants: Jamie Choto, Eduardo, Victor Perez (Barbara, Dieuwer & Wouter)

Introduction

We were already familiar with some of the work that Procomes did in multiple communities in Mejicanos. They currently work in 9 out of the 14 departments.
Jamie Choto explained that they work closely with the Municipality and with national government in shelter response. Procomes has connections with different actors, see figure ##. The chair is formed by people from the community.

Organization

The main interest is to prevent, secondary is to react and they also help during the emergency phase. The organization has been working for 24 years in 4 programs:
- (local) people development
- basic houses
- enterprises/businesses
- microcredit
The process of covering needs:
1. Intercommunity (Intercommunal) center, group of people belonging to each community
2. Talk to mayor of Municipality
3. Organize principals
4. Decide with Municipality how to use funds
They make ‘Inventory-trips’ to define problems for community meeting. Choto explained that they are forced to first define 5 main problems, formulate solutions, project development, get funds and then solve. About the financial capacity they repeated the situation of last year, when there was 1500$ to be distributed over 16 communities for interventions.
Capacity building

They explain their way of capacity building: assist and guide people with building houses, so later on they can help other and/or take on a new job. There are success stories about this and we have the opportunity to meet two women who experienced this incentive, implemented by Procomes.

Risk prevention/reduction

They explained that since 2008 the efficiency of the alarm system improved. With the help of a metrological system, they get information about floods, strong winds and earthquakes. The information goes through SNET (national government) to inform the Municipality and communities.

During the summer they have scenario trainings and programs in the schools to raise risk awareness. During this time they have the opportunity to focus more on prevention, e.g. they go around the neighbourhood checking on trees which form a risk. The added with an example where heavy rains caused erosion and electricity poles and wires were damaged last summer.

Documentation

We received documentation in the form of educational guides and digital information on CD with lectures. We can contact them through e-mail, find more information their website and request information about the necessities lists, work plans and the places of resettlements in the community of Montreal.

We planned to visit to an area in Cuscantancingo accompanied by people of Procomes. They constructed a settlement there to move 32 families from a high risk zone to safer environment. With observation and interview as our main tool we aim to gather information about what incentives this response caused.

Introduction: Location choice

2009-04-14T19:13:00.002+02:00

During the last two weeks most updates are post in reports (see Downloads, to the right). If you missed out on this and would like to read up on our work, please download the most recent reports. We will inform you from now on with quick posts to link you directly to the newest updates.

Due to ‘Semana Santa’ (Holy Week), inconsequential access to internet and the lack of working places during this vacation we’ve been focusing on getting the case studies of the ground. As a result of the Revision, we’ve chosen the combination of Mejicanos, Downtown AMSS and Santa Tecla. See Location presentation

For the last few days we’ve been meeting with key contacts of these locations to update and brainstorm on further development of the case studies. For every case study a short overview of objectives, actions and needs were made and are available for download here. We continue in to identify ourselves and the research in more specific detail to others in order to collaborate more efficient.

For the organization of the blog, we plan to update our findings in graphic illustrations and reports, tagged according to the case study. For a clear overview and quick navigation we advice to look for the tags: Mejicanos, Santa Tecla and Downtown AMSS, on the right.

For our research concerning Architectural Body we plan to update our photographic analysis, also tagged with Architectural Body. We continue to gather more information concerning the material flow and updates for the blog will follow soon.

We look forward to your replies and are thankful for the interests shown (mostly through mails) regarding our progress.

Project Plan: Objectives

2009-04-08T18:58:00.002+02:00

Objectives (ENG) of all case study locations, available for download here (zip)

Project Plan: Location choice presentation

2009-04-07T19:10:00.002+02:00

Location presentation 20090414

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Meeting Report: Victor Perez

2009-04-06T19:50:00.000+02:00

Meeting Report: Victor Perez
Location: Alcaldia de Mejicanos
Date: 06/04/09
Time: 09:00 till 10:00
Main topic: Explanation objectives and create appointments.

Victor Perez is the promotional worker for sector Montreal in Mejicanos. He lived there for over 40 years himself and is working as a community man to strive for development of the area. The area had its biggest growth of population in the 1980s. In the end of the 80s the municipality managed to supply water and electricity for the most of the houses.
The most vulnerable communities of Sector Montreal are Buenos Aires, Willington, Finca Argentina and Iberia. These communities will have the focus of our study. In order to create a thorough analysis of the contemporary situation, the disaster risk and responses given to the area we plan observation visits, a survey and different interviews. Victor seems to have a lot of time and creates the opportunity to get the appointments really quick.

Architectural Body: Introduction first draft

2009-03-30T19:31:00.004+02:00

Architectural Body and Urban Emergencies

Our goal for Urban Emergencies is to map Urban Vitality on different scales and gather information about the incentives of natural disaster responses during the entire process. Ultimately our product is an analysis including data gathered in this field and processed to lay the foundation for further research. Especially the information gathered on the scale of liveability is complementary for our Architectural Body research. We process the observations made concerning materials and liveability in a technical perspective for Architectural Body. Our goal is to gather information about the material flow in El Salvador. Focusing on the process of extraction, the construction methods and use of materials, we analyze solutions, problems, opportunities and threats.

Organization: Work Plan

We plan to update our Architectural Body report on a regular basis. We gather information with literature, observations documented with photographs and we have the opportunity to visit places where materials are processed, accompanied by contacts from the technical staff of Fundasal headquarters.

We are able to distinct multiple housing typologies with the focus on material use. The interviews on site give us a lot of insight about the perspectives of people on the material use. For example people have more faith in the concrete panels enclosed by concrete pillars, a technique imported from Cuba. We are currently processing this type of information in illustrations which will be posted on the blog and included in this report and the Project Plan of Urban Emergencies.

To conclude this report is constantly updating with the ambition to have a weekly update available online on the blog.

Example of observation:
- Mejicanos (see Quick Scan: Mejicanos)
- Public space as incentive, initiated by NGO
- Dwellings connected to concrete staircaise
- Unused/unmaintained land
- Influence of greenery
- Example of construction typology
- Concrete grid, filled with bricks
- Steel sheet roofing: weighted down with stones

Architectural Body: v2.10.0

2009-03-30T18:44:00.000+02:00

Update available, version 2.10.0. Download here

Quick Scan: Revision

2009-03-27T18:51:00.000+01:00

As a part of the Quick Scan phase, we've documented our personal views and combined this in the Revision, download here. This will lead to discussions and will finally result in the location(s) choice.

Quick Scan: report v1.1.0

2009-03-26T18:54:00.000+01:00

All Quick Scan reports combined in one report, download here

Quick Scan: Downtown, San Salvador

2009-03-24T21:26:00.001+01:00

Quick Scan Report: Downtown, San Salvador
Accompanied by: Sandra and Vanessa + students (UCA)
Date: 24/03/09
Time: 09:00-16:00

Introduction

Downtown is the city centre of San Salvador with a history that characterizes the city on multiple levels. The population figures: former dominated by wealthy people who later migrated to the North. Architecture and public space: severely damaged by natural disasters and the civil war. Economic activity: dominated by small market stalls filling the streets. Abandoned buildings, issues of land rights and different views and responses concerning reconstruction illustrate the political individualism. The possibility for the location as a case study was initiated by word of mouth. The affection to the place is alive among the people, who all have a strong opinion eager to share. We visited the location for the second time, now joining a class of Sandra Poizat (UCA).

Buildings and public space

The centre is a centralization of economic flows. The migration into and out of San Salvador left buildings unmaintained and the earthquake of 1986 brought so much damage to the buildings that most are either completely or partially abandoned. The buildings were and still (partially) are shops and offices but the streets are the market. People living under the poverty line in greater San Salvador often go to Latiendonna (the food market) and Downtown for products. Whole families set up shops and stalls in order to have income. After walking through the streets, with a constant traffic flow which causes danger and an immediate noticeable pollution we can describe the street profiles. Enclosed by vacant buildings, the stoop for walking is narrow (fit for 1 person) because of the stalls. These stalls or parked cars are the boundaries for what is left for motorized traffic, including the constant flow of buses. On the other side of the road the same occupation is repeated. In some profiles with a two-way street, stalls are also implemented in the middle. It’s a different situation when it comes to public buildings like churches, the Cathedral or government buildings. These are well maintained with direct relations to squares and the absence of stalls. We visited an iconic Church, build in the late ‘60s with a construction method and raw material treatment very different from most buildings. It survived the earthquake of ’86 with only the tower outside the church being partially damaged. Next we visited a square, clean of stalls or other activity, enclosed by the Cathedral, library, National Palace and commercial shops/warehouses constructed in the ‘80s. Here we learned from Sandra that El Salvador had a strong movement in cultural development in their architecture, which stopped in ‘70s. The civil war and natural disasters caused very individual responses. The healing process from the war is continuous and the hope for a more united architectural vision on buildings and open space is strongly connected to political change.

Vulnerability

Aside from the earthquakes the area is vulnerable to floods. Multiple reasons can be given for this vulnerability, like the alert system, the drainage system, the deforestation causing mudslides etc. We visited a street, were the water reached about 2 meters in 5 minutes (1921) and this street was situated higher then a lot of other places we later visited. Such as a lower part, that has an open connection to the downhill stream of a river leading to Los Manantiales. The problem with the prevention of flooding and pollution is that the intervention has to start sooner, with the origin of the river which might be in Honduras. We talked with a couple of police officers who explained that the alert system improved over the last two years. An organization called COIN, distributed the stream in more canals, diminishing the pressure on a single canal. The problem of the pollution remains, as the smell is noticeable in this area, where steel sheet houses occupy the land. Although according to the police their number one concern is not the disaster vulnerability but the murder rate, such as 360 casualties in one month related to gang activity.

Work in progress

Sandra took us to a location where her office in collaboration with two other architectural offices won a design competition. The street leading to the location has a religious sentimental value; it’s a walk from one church to another (on Easter). A year ago the area used to be gang territory but now it’s a very lively street. On this moment the public space on the side of the church is being constructed, with at least 30 men working at the same time in order to finish the public space as quickly as possible. The roads where cars pass through are finished; in the future it will be a car free zone. In this area we visited a housing complex, initiated by Fundasal in collaboration with architects and inhabitants and funded by a Swedish corporation. In a process of 7 years, they first started community capacity building which took about 4 years and then another 3 years for the construction, which is now finishing. On the scale of liveability we made a couple of notes. For example 12 families that used to live there, shared a single bathroom. Now every house (family) has its own. The open court yard shows the initiative to create public open space within a closed complex. Unique in El Salvador is the typology for housing different groups of families. This complex has a dwelling for a single inhabitant as well as a duplex for a large family. They used the social organization in order to build these houses as well as the nearby shelter warehouse, where the families currently dwell. The residents have to pay a form of ‘rent’, which is 25$/month for a period of 15 years. The project was funded and so they implemented this ‘rent’ in order to have financial aid for another community project. In the end the people do not own their house and do not own their land. This is another way of dealing with the land rights.

Potentiality

For now a couple of points make up the potentiality. This was the last quick scan report and after the revision every location will be evaluated on the suitability of a case study location.

Pro’s:
- City centre: history, connectivity, metropolis
- Influences and consequences on different flows and disciplines
- Evolution of these flows: economic (market), population (migration) etc.
- Importance of public space

Con’s:
- Very challenging for 2 month period to go in specific details
- Safety issues

QS: Downtown, San Salvador

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Quick Scan: Mejicanos part 2

2009-03-17T23:35:00.002+01:00

Quick Scan Report: Mejicanos: Montreal, Iberia & Guadalupe
Accompanied by: Victor & Hector (Municipality Mejicanos) + Sofia (UCA)
Date: 17/03/09
Time: 09:00-13:00

Introduction

We visited a part of Mejicanos on Thursday, March 12th. Mejicanos is a municipality just north of the municipality of San Salvador and part of the greater San Salvador. It has a population approximately 165 thousand people, of whom mostly earn there money in the city centre. In 6 zones of the municipal, an amount of 25 000 dollars was distributed over 26 communities for the reconstruction and prevention of disasters and social programs. Today we visited a couple of communities, the main focus was on: Montreal (32 families: 4-7 persons/family), Iberia & Guadalupe.

Team

For this visit we teamed up with our contact Sofia from the student association at UCA. She helped translating while we were guided around by Hector and Victor of the municipal. At the municipal they work on reconstruction after a disaster: earthquake and yearly landslides/floods caused by heavy rain. We finished the day with a meeting reported in Meeting Report: Antonio Rodriguez.

Community house and necessities

Every community we visited is vulnerable to heavy rains, because they are enclosed by the hills. On the scale of liveability we observed the houses and accessibilities to necessities for human life. We asked around for the flows of food and medicines and learned that the communities are depended on San Salvador, while only connected with one entrance. Most of the houses are constructed with steel sheets, wooden logs and bricks. But there are also house constructed with concrete blocks. These are more resistant and a couple of these serve as a community house. Because of the repetitive floods and landslides, the community is prepared. During the rain season the municipal measures the rain fall and when necessary all the people gather in a community house. Most of the community houses are partially renovated vacant houses. In the community Montreal these vacant houses are owned by the bank but nobody is taking care of the maintenance and nobody is living in them. The municipal constructed plastic and wooden roofs for these houses, which were destroyed by the heavy rain/landslide. In the community Guadalupe a construction took place and it’s the only example where we saw public space directly connected with the community house. This is used for weekly meetings and other gathering. The community house in Iberia is the most organized in the sense of the necessities. The community made a plan a presented this in order to get international help from Germany. They implemented a sanitation system for the neighborhood, with a system of tubes where black and clean water are transported separately within one pipe. For example Montreal also has clean water system but not a sanitation network.

Incentives

While these communities are not far away from each other, the responses are very diverse. NGOs like Fundasal, Procomes, Cantizano, Oxfam and Ayuda Humanitairs helped in different fields like water, sanitation and infrastructure. While construction companies like Avance ingenieros built a gated settlement nearby. A lot of international help lead to improvement of facilities, like the Catholic school in Iberia initiated by the Spanish embassy.

Social problems

While the area is very vulnerable to natural disasters and heavy rain, the main problems seem to be social. In the communities we visited social safety is an issue because there is gang activity. The collaboration between the national government and the municipalities is inefficient, because of political differences (see Meeting Report: Antonio Rodriguez). The municipal do want they can with the small amount of finance, resulting in construction of small playing areas, walls and with help from NGO or international actors implementations like water/sanitation systems, staircases and roads.

Potentiality

QS: Mejicanos2

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GIS/GPS: Testing_week6+7

2009-03-16T23:23:00.004+01:00

We tested/used the GPS during visiting our possible Case study locations. You can also get a good idea of the map and structure of the locations we have visited by viewing the tracks.

Paraisio de Osorio, 10-3-2009

The track of Paraisio de Osorio itself is accurate, only it seemed to be impossible to shift the time in a way that all the photos found the right location. A solution to this problem will be to synchronize the times of the camera and the GPS.

There are made many locations points at a place we didn’t mean to. Maybe the button was pressed without knowing it, next time no sitting on the GPS!

Santa Tecla, 11-3-2009

The track was pretty accurate, only when we entered a building there was some distortion.

The photos made in Las Collinas, our most important site to visit, configured with the right location points. Later on, travelling by car, the photos and the location points are not exactely put at the same place. It is probably even more important to have the time of the camera synchronized with the time of the GPS when travelling with a higher velocity.

Manantiales and Mejicanos, 12-3-2009

The track of Manantiales shows distortion at the places we stood still, this problem can be solved with the configuration, to log only when you have a minimum speed. In the Mejicanos track you see the exact same problem.

The camera was set on a different time zone then the GPS. We divided the project into two different projects, Manantiales and Mejicanos, because the time shifting gets easier with two different time frames for placing the photos accurate.

San Pedro Nonualco and Santa Maria de Ostuma, 13-3-2009

When we were in a building the track shows distortions. Next time we have to turn of the GPS when we are in a building.

The information of the GPS could be written easily into the pictures of the camera of Barbara's telephone, because the time of this camera is synchronized with the GPS.

Mejicanos, 18-3-2009

The GPS track is very accurate. The GPS information was written in the photos and they were are immediately correct placed. When we are in a building you see a little distortion. We booked a lot progress after doing all the tests and are ready to start mapping.

Election Day

2009-03-15T23:52:00.004+01:00

It’s ‘Domingo Quince’ meaning Sunday the 15^th: the day of the presidential elections. There was no escaping the suspense with all the political campaigning on the streets, TV/radio and off course in everyday conversations. The rivalry is between FMLN, the left, and Arena, the right party.

As we try to stay neutral and understand as much as possible about the context, we are mostly surrounded by FMLN supporters, the left party. According to a lot of people the left has never had a candidate as strong as Mauricio Funes. From the military rulers and two decennia of the right calling the shots, the left has never been in power. In the polls the left was winning, so the anticipation about this historic change was huge. As we learned more and more about the history; fraud, repression and tricks implemented during elections we began to realize the possibility of a big anti-climax.

The government, businesses and the people organized a lot of options for people to vote, like free public transportation, discounts in different restaurants for the voters, etc. So on this Sunday everyone was gone for most of the day. In the evening the results started coming in. The final result was the FMLN winning with a close 51%.

We were invited by our friends from the hotel to the celebration of this historic day in El Salvador. A gathering at Plaza Masferrer could best be described with visual aid.

We’re entering our second week with this historic event,
Keep on checking our blog, Salut!

Exploring & Dialogue

2009-03-15T09:40:00.000+01:00

This is the first week of our Quick Scan/Inceptive phase, meaning visiting different locations in order to select our locations for the Case Study.

We started off on Tuesday with a visit to Paraíso de Osorio accompanied by people from Fundasal. We drove up a mountain for quite some time and had opportunities to enjoy the view of the big lake.

When we arrived at the location we began talking to people about the natural disasters that occurred and the vulnerability of the place. It’s obvious that interviewing offers a lot more information that we imagined. We focused on the process and the solutions and/or possibilities for the future generation. We experienced a lot curiosity in the sense that we tried to make pictures while young girls were sniggering and making pictures of us as well.

Read more about Paraíso de Osorio in our Quick Scan report.

On Wednesday we visited Santa Tecla, with our friend Roberto from Fundasal who lives there. While we did not talk to anyone specific we drove around different places which had meaning in the response process. For example a partially deserted place where people were not able to return because of economical & political reasons, to a big open football fields where the shelters were placed.

Read more about Santa Tecla in our Quick Scan report.

Thursday was the day of Los Manantiales & Mejicanos. We already learned a lot about the programs of Fundasal and we could switch from generic to specific questions in the interviews. The weather on this day was the hottest of the entire week and we experienced a little envy to the children of Los Manantiales playing in outside swimming pools. Both places, Los Manantiales & Mejicanos, showed potential for case studies, but these as well as every other location we visited were mostly affected by the earthquake of ’86. We might have to reconsider the UE-norm of a 10 year timeframe for when the last natural disaster happened.

Read more about Los Manantiales & Mejicanos in our Quick Scan report.

We round up this week with a visit two more locations in La Paz, San Pedro & Santa Maria Ostuma. Here we met keyfigures of the response process, a community leader, a local priest and City Hall council. These interviews were very productive. We were able to learn a lot about the process, social networking and plans, provided that a lot of the key information was bodied in negativity about others. We round up the day by meeting a contact from UCA, during ‘Salsa night’ in the bar next to our hotel. We might have to brush up on our salsa skills as well as our Spanish.

Read more about San Pedro & Santa Maria Ostuma in our Quick Scan report.

This is it for this week,
Please check the Quick Scan reports for a detailed description of these visits

Quick Scan: San Pedro Nonualco

2009-03-13T23:12:00.004+01:00

Quick Scan Report: San Pedro Nonualca
Accompanied by: Jorge y Manuel (Fundasal)
Date: 13/03/09
Time: 11:00-12:00

Introduction

San Pedro Nonualca is a municipality in the North part of the La Paz region, a rural area with a population of just over ten thousand. The main town of San Pedro Nonualca contains 2 percent of the area and has 35 percent of the population. The town was heavily damaged by the earthquake on 13 February 2001. Several roads, schools and infrastructure were damaged and 95% of the houses were destroyed.

We gather the information about the earthquake and its responses by observation and having an interview with Eugenio Lindor Ingles, who is a community leader of the urban part of the municipality.

Emergency phase

Within the emergency phase the community received help from all different local and international organizations. Ready made food was brought in from San Salvador, Honduras brought oil and beans, the Catholic Church distributed clothes and blankets etc. Next to the schools, which were used as shelter, most of the people build up a shelter themselves, by using ruble and receiving plastic sheeting. After two weeks the community started to clean the rubble with financial help of the government; 45 dollars a person.

Reconstruction

The reconstruction projects were initiated within the 2nd and 4th month after the disaster. Four institutions mainly worked in the reconstruction: GTZ Germany, Madre Cria El Salvador, GBC Italy and Samaritan Pours UK.

There were two types of responses within the reconstruction of the houses. The first was initiated by the GTZ, who build and paid for about 100 new houses out of 500-600 in total for people with legal land rights. The second was the supply of building materials, accessible to all, legal and illegal landowners. Some of the affected people had enough money to build back their house with their own money.

Observations

As we walk around the urban area of the municipality the roads, made out of natural stones, seem old and a lot of the new houses are decorated with traditional wood carving, under the roofs and window frames. Within the reconstruction there has been a sense of bringing back the old atmosphere within the town. Eugenio tells us that the GTZ introduced workshop in wood carving as an opportunity for new economic input.
Within our observation we see new build brick houses, next to steel sheet vulnerable houses. The reason of these differences is found in the legislation and landownership. People who didn’t have any legal land rights were not able to receive any help from the institutions that supplied the reconstruction.
Before the reconstruction most of the buildings were made of adobe (mud). Some of the buildings around the market place in the city centre have remained standing, but are severely damaged. It seems that some of the buildings that are only partially damaged didn’t receive any reconstruction help at all.
Next to the problem of land ownership, there were some problems with the distribution of materials for the new houses. Political and communal leaders had the task of distributing materials and reconstruction or relief products. Some of the leaders started selling them instead of giving the products for free. Therefore some people had no chance of building a new home and others build three. Within the rural areas some people still live in there temporary steel sheet houses.

Basic services

Eugenio said the reconstruction process was a long process. The first water projects started in 2005. Not every community had access to water in their houses yet. For the more rural communities there are some tab points along the road. At this moment several water and sewer projects are still in the making. These projects are initiated by the local social networks: SDL. These networks focus initiate and get money for different development projects within the municipality. These networks didn’t exist before the earthquake.

Future

The duration of the project is worth the effort, because liveablitiy has improved for most of the inhabitants. The problems they had with the community leaders, who tried to earn money out of the responses, were the instigators to set up the social networks, the networks which initiate different new development projects and create a stronger community. To improve the local economy these networks started festivals where people of the community sell products and food. In conclusion, Eugene would like to see the same incentives (sanitation network for example) in the neighborhood of Guadalupe as he experienced in other neighborhoods.

Potentiality

This location has proven to be very unique in the sense of preserving history, insisghtful contacts of different positions, but is also rural. After the revision we'll put the pros versus the cons.

QS: San Pedro Nonualca

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quickscan: Santa Maria Ostuma

2009-03-13T22:46:00.001+01:00

Quick Scan Report: Santa Maria Ostuma
Accompanied by: Jorge & Manuel (Fundasal)
Date: 13/03/09
Time: 13:00-15:00

Introduction

The municipality of Santa Maria Ostuma is situated in the far north part of the La Paz region. The epicenter of the second earthquake of 2001, 13 February, was in this municipality. The total population of just over 6000 people lost their homes and had to survive three days without any help, water or food from the outside world.
30% of the population is living in the urban area of the village of Santa Maria Ostuma.

In El Salvador it is common that a disaster response is coordinated either by the national/local government or by the (Catholic) Church. The responses on the earthquake in Santa Maria Ostuma were coordinated by a collaboration of those two institutions, and therefore rather special. Within our visit to the town, we speak to both parties, first we have a interview with the local priest on the corner of the street and afterwards we sit down in the city hall to speak to Deisy, who is working in different redevelopment projects.

Collaboration between government and church

After three days the first emergency help did reach the town and was coming from the central government, the municipality of Valencia (spain) and the catholic churches from the United States. In order to create a good distribution out to the beneficiaries, the local government and the church putted up a distribution center next to the church. The municipality was divided into 8 ‘cantones’ in order to control the distribution. People could make a list of necessary items and give this to there ‘canton’ in order to get the products they needed. At the start of the reconstruction process the help was given in the same way. Building materials were stocked in the distribution centers and the beneficiaries made a list of necessary building materials that they could get from the stocks.

The collaboration between the church and the municipality didn’t last very long. The priest stepped out, when he found out about different people within the local government were not equally distributing the help. The 8 ‘cantones’ kept on working together without the Local government. The inconvenience and anger of the population did the priest look for a new mayor who was elected in the local elections of January 2003. This mayor plays an important role in the reconstruction and development process.

From reconstruction to development

Next to over 1000 houses that were build with international help of Germany, Caritas and Habitat. The new mayor started to work with the central government and the program Fisdl. Another 300 houses, 4 schools and new infrastructure were built. The new mayor did see the potential of the 8 ‘cantones’ as a social network. The reconstruction process created a lot of willingness to contribute within the local community. The standard of live has gone up, and the hunger for further development has grown. The quality of houses is a lot better, new schools are built, the infrastructure did improve, and there is a community garbage disposal, there is a communal playground and they are even building a small park at the back of the church.

With the conversation at the city hall we found out that after the reconstruction process they used the community feeling and organization to develop the community. Different development programs were initiated and eventually funded and implemented. The community organizes festivals to attract tourism to give an economical input. Due to education there are different environmental projects implemented, the community works with children to create awareness of the danger, for example on deforestation by organizing tree planting activities. Another interesting education program is how the municipality is implementing a garbage separation program by letting high school kids teach the primary school children and inform elders themselves. The intent to reach the families through the (young studying) children.

Due to the earthquake of 2001 the people of Santa Maria Ostuma had to work together to built up their lives again. Where they were used to mostly think of their own, they created a social networks and a communal way of thinking. Due to the national and international help it became clear that they could develop further if they wanted to, Deisy explains. The new inputs, a social network and a good mayor created the opportunity for the municipality of Santa Maria Ostuma.

Smo Binder1

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Mozaiek: People of Los Manantiales & Mejicanos

2009-03-12T23:55:00.000+01:00

Quick Scan: Los Manantiales

2009-03-12T11:54:00.000+01:00

Quick Scan Report: Los Manantiales
Accompanied by: Claudia & Rosaria (Fundasal)
Date: 12/03/09
Time: 08:30-10:30

Introduction

‘Los Manantiales’ is a group of communities within the municipality of San Salvador, just 1 km out of the outskirts of the city centre. There live about 1481 families, with a total population of 6400 people. With 47% younger then 19 years old, the population living under poverty line is 68% and generate an average income lower then 72$/month. The communities settlements are build on the north slopes of the river Acilhuate. The name of the place ‘los manantiales’ literally means rich source of water, a name given because of the good quality and big quantity of the ground water which comes out of springs. Next to the clean ground water, the municipal is basically the sewer dump of the entire city of San Salvador. Indentified as black water, this waste flow used to be dumped directly in the clean water. The communities were struck by the earthquake of 1986 and experience repetitive floods of the river Acilhaute in the raining season.
Fundasal only works with the most poor and vulnerable people, for this reason the south part of the river bank is not part of the project. We travelled with Fundasal and mainly learned about the responses initiated by Fundasal.

Public space

Fundasal developed a project of new urban settlement (1) 2003-2005 were they worked in revitalizing public space and (ego)liveability by waterprojects. They situated a network for water waste disposal within the communities, dividing the black water from the clean water and leading it to the river. The pipes run under the new public spaces that used to be open canals of black water. Fundasal improved public space, water and sewage systems and roads but did not change the layout of the existing structures and the houses, resulting in interesting open spaces. The primary open spaces of the area were damaged by the earthquake and the floods, and these areas are improved by ingenious solutions. For example an old public swimming pool which was damaged in the earthquake of 1986 and used as a waste dump after. Within the project the government created a football field out of the orthogonal structure. The new public spaces cover the old dump areas, so they follow geology and the old morphology of the houses. These open spaces were secondary, but used primary. For example the clean water swimming pools are formed around the existing boundaries. These pools were crowded on a Thursday morning, showing us that the youth has a place to hang out resulting in strong social relations and use of public space.
The open spaces created around these swimming pools furthermore work as coverage of the sewer system. Most part of the public space is created for the youth: Playgrounds, basketball and football courts, skate parks and the swimming pools. Next to these playgrounds little gardens with sits, basic community centers and washing spots are created. Next to its recreational function the springs also give an opportunity for micro-economic activity. Women provide a little income for themselves by offering washing services.
Due to steep slopes without vegetation the places were prone to landslides. To reduce the risk and protect houses and public spaces from landslides the slopes were covered with a layer of cement.

Family life

On the scale of liveability we had some interesting interviews with inhabitants. We met a woman called Maria Emille Solia at her home with her daughter. Her family consists out of eight people, dogs and pigs. In another visit we saw a whole family working in bakery, with a dog and at least 8 pups. We heard from Claudia that this large family life is very common, were people take care of multiple children and animals (dogs). While Maria also earns money making clothes it is common that only the man works. The children go to school nearby, some part-time and if they work they keep the money for themselves. They buy their food at the market, La Tiendonna, nearby. While for merchandise they go downtown to the center of San Salvador.
Maria lives just next to the river and experienced multiple floods; while the house withdrew the pressure she had situations where she lost all her possessions. The house is build just a few meters form the river. Last year Fundasal build up a concrete river bank which creates a buffer when a flood is coming. At this moment the municipality of San Salvador is building up a block wall on top of the river bank to create even more safety. Behind the wall a canal functions as a buffer, in case of a flood this needs to guide the water back down to the river. We have our doubts about the security, since the wall is only a 10 cm wide and the canal leads in to a small opening in another wall.
For the inhabitants it gives the feeling of more security though, tells Sonia, the community leader.

The work of Fundasal has been on the scale of the urban conditions within the community, especially within the disciplines of water and waste management, public spaces and mitigation and risk management.
On the scale of sustainability there was a mutual desire to see the houses improve, with stronger materials used in the other projects.

Potentiality

After the revision we wanted to summarize the experience in pro’s and cons for the possibilities of the definitive choice of the case study location(s).

QS: Los Manantiales

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Quick Scan: Mejicanos

2009-03-12T10:57:00.001+01:00

Quick Scan Report: Mejicanos
Accompanied by: Claudia & Rosaria (Fundasal)
Date: 12/03/09
Time: 10:30-12:30

Introduction

Mejicanos is a municipality just north of the municipality of San Salvador and part of the greater San Salvador. It has a population approximately 165 thousand people, of whom mostly earn there money in the city centre.
We visit three communities form a triangle: ‘Julio Vient y cuatro’ (July 24), ‘Mayo Quince’ (May 15) and ‘Progresso’, divided by a large open space, a football field, in the middle. We visited areas where houses are informally situated on steep hills of a valley. These areas are vulnerable to landslides, which happen regularly.

Paths

Fundasal is working in Mejicanos for the first time, focusing on creating free basic services. This means they supply the neighborhood with water and sanitation, a sewer system and build cement paths and staircases to improve the open spaces. Next to these basic services and improvement of connectivity a community center is being build and people were offered micro credits to improve their houses.
Although the building process is still going on the influence are noticeable from far away. The formal planned open space versus the informal settled houses illustrates the hills. The people who are not working use these places to hang out and children found all kind of ways to play on the staircases.

Capacity

Speaking to a group of people from the community, we find out that the micro credits to improve the houses are not being used. The inhabitants don’t want to use this, because the loan is too much, for example 40$/month. In most families the husband is the only one working. There is very little economic activity in this neighborhood; just one store with some candies, sodas and basic groceries. The people work in the center and get their supplies in the center.

Future plans

The settlements are illegal and Fundasal is currently assisting the locals in their fight for legislation. Beside the political plans, Fundasal is also planning to start a neighborhood improvement program (3) to raise awareness about the possibilities and to be social organized.

Disaster

The three neighborhoods, build up on the valley slopes of little rivers are very prone to disaster, floods and mudslides occur, but haven’t been disasters yet.

Potentiality

After the revision we wanted to summarize the experience in pro’s and cons for the possibilities of the definitive choice of the case study location(s).

QS: Mejicanos

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Dynamics

2009-03-11T23:30:00.007+01:00

At midnight a coalition of the constantly underground moving plates resulted in a little earthquake, apparently very common in El Salvador. The house was only shaking for a mere ten seconds and we were able to continue our sleep. We now understand that this dynamic is interpreted as a source of energy. It was clearly a sign of the day ahead of us.

We had a meeting at the Fundasal headquarters at 8:30 in the morning (AM). Our driver Ramon, from Fundasal, picked us up and guided us during the trip, pointing out impressive areas and architecture. We saw some very dense living areas and houses build up with concrete, bricks and metal sheets. Approaching the headquarters we entered a slum area with a track running through and finally climbing a closed complex on top of a hill, enclosed by the barrio. For us this complex is a very impressive working place with a view of the mountain and a build up settlement vaguely visible.

The meeting with Fundasal was very insightful, resulting in a couple of important possibilities for the research. We introduced ourself, were introduced to the team and presented our Project Plan 4.0. While the Fundasal team and we put a lot of work load on the translator we had a positive back and forth about our quick scan. This resulted in a planned tour across ten areas for the coming week, driven and accompanied by a member of Fundasal. On the downside we experienced a lot of difficulty pointing out the essence of our case study and the flexibility. After the meeting Ramon brought us to our next appointment at UCA with Sandra Poisat. This trip we reflected at our approach in explaining the case study.

The meeting with Sandra Poisat was very productive. We were able to explain the UE aims of study in detail, same goes for the Tool Box and our Incentive-Map. The feedback was remarkable, quickly understanding our graphic illustrating and aiming at the main goals of our research. It resulted in new contacts with expertise in architecture and urban planning with disasters as a theme, literature, working places and an invitation to participate in lectures.

We round up this hectic day with a good feeling and are continuing to process our work and simultaneously translate the essence to Spanish. For a overview of the established network and locations we refer to the notules or our meeting summaries still in process, accessible to Urban Emergencies affiliated.

This is it for today,
Please keep checking the blog and, let’s keep this dynamic

Quick Scan: Santa Tecla (Las Collinas)

2009-03-11T00:07:00.000+01:00

Quick Scan Report: Santa Tecla, Las Collinas
Accompanied by: Roberto (Fundasal)
Date: 11/03/09
Time: 09:00 – 12:00

Introduction

Las Collinas is a community within the municipality of Santa Tecla. Santa Tecla is populated by 131 971 inhabitants is situated in the very south west of the greater San Salvador. Santa Tecla is seen as one of the richer and more developed parts of San Salvador. The urban morphology follows the geography of the surroundings. The north part is enclosed by a volcano and the south part by a group of steep hills. Las Colinas was build on the bottom of one of these hills.
The earthquake of 13 February 2001 instigated a big landslide which destroyed a big part of the Las Collinas neighborhood. Over 400 homes were destroyed and 800 people lost their live in this event.
Roberto of Fundasal showed us Las Collinas and other parts of Santa Tecla to get an understanding of the context. Fundasal did not respond to this disaster, because their policy is to focus their time on helping only the poorest and most vulnerable.

Mortgage

Las Collinas is nowadays a green lawn at the foot of the hill, with plots fenced off and not much is being built. The affected people still own the land, but due to the mortgages which were not remitted by the banks, they first have to pay off their houses before building a new one. The people got supported by the Taiwan government, which donated 2 million, which comes to 10 000 dollar each. This help does not come near their debts; the houses were worth around 40 000 dollar. The affected people took the case into court but despite their efforts they didn’t received more money.

Contemporary situation

The contemporary situation in Las Collinas shows that after 8 years just a tiny little is being rebuilt. The plots are visible and most of them are fenced, which shows they are still owned by different people. On the boundaries of the landslide, on the Westside we see a closed wall. This closed wall is formed by the backside of the houses that face another street. On the east side of the landslide there are ruins of half destroyed houses, next to rebuild houses, where people seem to have enough money to rebuild, that have the view over the empty space that cuts the neighborhood in two.
Next to these houses on the side, there is just three other activities. Alongside the ongoing road which passes through Las Collinas there is one building which contains a small cafeteria, a house and a garage for a public bus. On the other side of the road there is a small wooden house where they fruits and vegetables. It seems that these people managed to get their money back or sold the plot.

Emergency shelter response

Direct after the landslide the central government gave the permission to set up an shelter camp at Cafetalon, which is an big open-public place in the middle of Santa Tecla. It has the capacity of 5 football fields, enough open space to build up a camp for the survivors of the landslide. OXFAM, Plan and Care supplied tents, food, medical and psychological help. After 4 months the emergency camp was closed and all the beneficiaries found a place to live.

Transitional settlements

It is not exactly clear where al the people ended up. Roberto gave us a few different scenarios. The first is that the broken families started to live with their relatives. The second is where the family could effort another cheap house where they started to work on repaying there debts. The third is where people settled themselves in informal settlements on the outskirts of the town. Roberto shows us a neighborhood where Fundasal helped to construct a few houses. At the time they were build the government gave permission for temporary use of that specific ground. Due to the bad financial situation of the people they didn’t have any opportunity to leave this place.

Potentialities

This will follow after the Revision

QS: Santa Tecla (Las Collinas)

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Quick Scan: La Paz, Paraíso de Osorio

2009-03-10T23:27:00.000+01:00

Quick Scan Report: La Paz, paraíso de osorio
Accompanied by: Manuel and Alejandra (Fundasal)
Date: 10/03/09
Time: 13:00 – 16:00

Introduction:

La Paz is a rural area situated in the southwest of San Salvador, its main economy is agricultural and it contains villages populated by 1000 to 4500 people. Paraíso de Osorio is situated in the north of the La Paz region, a 35 km drive from San Salvador. The La Paz region was badly hit by two earthquakes, within a month, in 2001. 13th of January the first earthquake of 7.6 on the scale of Richter struck with the epicenter just out of the coast. The second on 13th of February an earthquake of 6.6 on the scale of Richter had the epicenter in the north of the La Paz region.

The village exists out of 500 to 600 families. It is mainly build around two parallel streets ending at the church and the village square.

Fundasal

Fundasal has four different development programs; one of these programs is focusing on ‘rural settlements’. The program has three important aspects. The first is to improve houses, the second to stimulate the economy by implementing ‘secome’ (economical development seed): a program where an education and micro credit is given to start up a small business, and third, setting up a social network.

Paraíso de Osorio was damaged severely by the earthquake; over 90 percent of the houses were destroyed. Fundasal took this opportunity to reconstruct, and implement their development program at the same time. Next to building new houses, they initiated a sanitation project. A new technology was implemented for the latrines, which helps the disposal water from getting contaminated.
The ‘secome’ project gave the opportunity start new businesses. For the reconstruction after the earthquake Fundasal added an extra rule within this project. In order to create a base for social networks, the application for the micro credit or building materials, had to be done by a group of at least 8 people. This rule played a very important role in contributing to the appearance of the social networks.
Nowadays the people have the feeling that they are a community that is helping each other. This is instigated by the social program but maybe by the size of the village and the way it’s connected to the outside world as well. The only road which connects this village with the ongoing road network has a big entrance portal which gives the sign of a communal feeling within this village.

Three organizations, FISDL, USAID and FUNDASAL, helped with the reconstruction of the houses in PdO. We get an insight of the changes after the reconstruction by having an interview with Rosi Diaz, who is the head of the cultural department, and Ilda, who lives just by school and offers the children free Paturnas at lunch.
At Ilda’s house we can see the different stages of the reconstruction. She tells us that she lived a few blocks away, but had to move after the earthquake because her old plot was to risky to rebuild. She was provided with shelter materials, sheets of steel and plastics, from which she build a temporary house. The materials still seem to be in use within the construction that creates shadow in front of the house. After eight months the construction of the definite houses started. The house was build with the block panel method. The method is easy to learn and makes it easy for the beneficiaries to participate in the building process. Women are involved by rebuilding the houses. Fundasal targets to include women in all the rehabilitation progresses and educate people about equal rights between men and women.

The quality of live did increase after the disaster the two women tell us. Especially the block houses give more comfort and a safer environment relating to future disaster Before the earthquake struck parts of the families were living in ‘mesones’, tenant houses where multiple families live together. The destruction of the houses by the earthquake gave the opportunity to build back an own house for every family (Rosi Diaz, head of culture department).
Old sand roads are hardened by using old floors and other cement blocks. They are protected against flooding; by little cement canals next to it.

Education

The government had built an extra primary school after the disaster. The school is situated just outside the central part of the village and attracts more people to start up a living in this area. Furthermore there is just one other primary school in the area. For the secondary school the children have to travel to another municipality.
After school children can play on the formal streets, introduced by the program of Fundasal, it’s healthier for them to play on a hardened underground.

Potentiality

After the revision we wanted to summarize the experience in pro’s and cons for the possibilities of the definitive choice of the case study location(s).

Pro:
- The location is rural and the situation is isolated, there is some kilometers distance to the nearby villages, so we can see very clear all the effects of one response.
- The government and various NGO’s have had responses with a long term effect, we can research (the effect on) sustainability of the responses.

Con:
- We have not seen yet a lot of responses by the affected people, it seems to be organized mostly by NGO’s, could have been in a earlier stage of the response.
- It’s a rural village and connected with one road to the ongoing road, so we can’t do a lot of research about the effects on higher scale (the urban scale).

Mozaiek: People of Paraiso de Osorio, La Paz

2009-03-10T01:44:00.000+01:00

GIS/GPS: Testing_week6

2009-03-08T22:33:00.000+01:00

We have tested our GPS during our trips last week. We’ve been to the market La Tiendona and to downtown.

The tracks are clear but can be improved, for example when we are standing still the GPS makes many measurements (you can see in downtown) that distort the image. With a new configuration we proceeded testing, see the track made in Santa maria de Ostuma.

Here you see distortion during entering buildings, so we have to turn it off from now on when we’ll be under a roof. But the problems of the first tracks are solved and we will proceed testing and improving the results!

First day experience

2009-03-08T01:43:00.003+01:00

After a good night sleep in this comfortable climate, the sun rises and wakes us up for the first experience of San Salvador by day. We made plans with our hostess Carmen and Werner to visit the market, Latiendonna, to stock up on fruit and fish for the coming days. We took the bus and were immediately reminded about the upcoming elections. The FLMN planned a parade, touring through the city, and the preparations caused delays and made our bus and all other traffic take a detour. The presidential election literally colors the streets. Cars with Arena or FLMN flags hanging out cruise the streets honking their horns. Poles are painted in the colors of the Arena party and everywhere you look, you see posters with the candidates.

The market is crowded. Whole families work and shop around. All kind of food is prepared fresh and salesmen try to sell anything from phones to nail clippers. There’s fruit in abundance, for example we bought 20 little mangos weighing around two kilos for two (US) dollars.

In the spirit of duality, Arena/FLMN night/day San Salvador, we visited the shopping local shopping mall, Metrocentro. Prices are way higher then the market, comparable to Dutch supermarket prices. It’s the familiar vibe of looking at and being looked at, flirting and showing off your status, all too familiar with the Downtown cities back home. We tried to buy some local chips for our phones, which we’ll receive tomorrow. We’ll post our local numbers on the blog for direct communications with you.

During our trips, we’ve tested the GPS. The results are pretty accurate and we’re organizing our working methods to use this tool to efficiency.

This is it for today,
Please keep checking the blog and we appreciate the replies.

Safe landing in El Salvador

2009-03-07T01:52:00.001+01:00

Friday morning it finally was our turn to fly of towards our adventure in El Salvador. The flied was pretty smooth and due to our own energy level maybe even relaxing. Every time we tried to read or watch a movie we felt asleep again. Even a little three our long screaming Salvadorian child couldn’t keep us awake on the last flight from Houston to our final destination El Salvador.

At the airport Roberto Aguilar, who is chief of promotion at Fundasal, and his daughter Maria picked us up and drove us to the city. Arriving at night is always a bit strange, no views, just some lights and dark silhouettes of buildings and landscape. You get this image in your head, and the next day it seems to be a whole different story.

Having the image of google earth fresh in mind, the city seems less organized then it looks in 2d. Even though I can investigate a map for hours this is a little more exciting.

The wife of Edin, chief of Fundasal, is waiting for us at our Hostel and gives us a warm welcome. By not speaking English she makes us clear that we have to stress learning Spanish the coming days. Although the understanding is goes pretty well, throwing the words out of your mouth seems to be a lot more difficult. We are lucky to have Werner around, who works as a translator for the moment and is the boyfriend of Carmen, who runs the guesthouse. Afterwards we sit down with down and have some conversation over a beer. The safety situation is always a topic, the police station is right a across the road and the whole neighborhood is good to go, every shop is secured by a guy with a shotgun though. But that’s giving some comfort.

Comfort we find back in the bathroom by intimately showering while the cockroaches make out. Haven’t spoke about the bar next door where the local band plays American pop songs till deep in the night.

Project plan 27 feb

2009-03-02T12:21:00.002+01:00

Project plan 27 feb

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GIS/GPS: seminar 2_week 3

2009-02-19T16:34:00.004+01:00

We learned how we can work in GIS with our GPS output collected during the field trip. With the GIS we’re able to generate data by ourselves and analyze this to explore spatial patterns and relationships.

GIS/GPS: seminar 1_week2

2009-02-19T16:24:00.002+01:00

We've got an introduction to GIS. GIS is a powerful tool for spatial research, design and planning. It is an important platform for visual representation, analysis and modeling of complex spatial environments. Also we learned how to use the GPS which we take with us on our field research.

Seminar: Jock Baker (CARE International) & Martin Bjerregaard (Disaster Waste Recovery)

2009-02-19T16:07:00.005+01:00

On wednesday the 18th of February lectures followed by a workshop were given by Jock Baker and Martin Bjerregaard. Baker talked about CARE International and explained the Humanitarian Accountability Framework. Martin Bjerregaard gave us insight information about disaster waste management. One key result of the workshop was the model of Objective: Outputs > Outcomes > Impact.

Output: desired results
Outcome: what in reality happened, which is our area of focus during this case study
Impacts: either positive or negative results, tested on a far greater scale

Space Syntax: Seminair 4_Week 3

2009-02-18T20:28:00.002+01:00

This week Akkelies gave a lecture for Space Syntax use in configurations and urban sustainability. It was insightful because we learned about the basis of the tool: the (architectural) theory which we could link to earlier workshops with J. Kennedy (week 0). Aspects as livelihood of suburban areas and accessibilities to economic prosperity through infrastructure.

Space Syntax: Seminair 3_Week 2

2009-02-18T20:22:00.001+01:00

This week we learn how Space Syntax can contribute to social safe experiences of urban space. Point of focus are intervisibility, unconstituded and isovist analysis. For example "Living in areas segregated from a main street, people tend to hide their entrance to their homes"

Space Syntax: Seminair 2_Week 2

2009-02-18T20:12:00.001+01:00

This week van Nes shows how to use Space Syntax to study global and local connectivity. With examples of UK case studies, we analyze the ring roads and the consequences on long-term urban development.

Update

2009-02-18T19:31:00.003+01:00

We arrived already in week three of the preliminary research and defined a bit more our research aims and frame we work in. We want to analyze the effect of informal en formal disaster response to the earthquake of 2001 on the urban transformations.

Today we had a workshop of NFRC and Jock Baker, about disasters preparedness and pointed out interesting aspects like the garbage problem due to the disaster.

Yesterday we finally booked our tickets, we're arriving the sixth of march!

Space Syntax: Seminair 1_Week 1

2009-02-18T19:29:00.007+01:00

Seminair 1/Week 1

Akkelies van Nes introduces Space Syntax , a tool we're using for analysing. Point of focus topological (the direction change), geometric (angular choice) and metric distance.

2009-02-18T19:27:00.003+01:00

Week 00

2009-02-16T11:23:00.001+01:00

Workshop James Kennedy

Weekly summaries

2009-02-16T11:20:00.000+01:00

Here is the process documented on a weekly basis

Map

2009-02-16T11:17:00.000+01:00

View Larger Map

Introduction

2009-02-16T11:15:00.001+01:00

Urban Emergencies

The Faculty of Architecture, Urbanism and Building Sciences from the Delft University of Technology (TU Delft) in the Netherlands is carrying out a research on post disaster urban responses. This pilot project has been initiated in order to find ways in which urban tools and understandings concerning urbanization processes and urban vitality can contribute to the ongoing development efforts regarding the reconstruction and redevelopment phase. The project has been setup with a three month on field mapping and analyses period to take place between March and May 2009, followed up by a 6-week postproduction phase culminating in a symposium and publication. A total of 18 students will work in groups of 3, in 6 different countries; El Salvador, Venezuela, Indonesia, Philippines, Ghana and Bangladesh, focusing on various aspects (e.g. material, architectural, spatial, organizational, socio-economical, cultural, etc). This is in order to gather more information about cultural influences on architecture and urbanism, especially in the natural disaster responses. For more information about Urban Emergencies and to download the Project Outline of the pilot, please visit the website at www.urbanemergencies.org.

Case study group El Salvador

Our group consists out of three members: B.B Olde Bijvank, D. Duif and W. Pocornie. We all followed the Bachelor course at the University of Delft. We are motivated to make this pilot a success, learn and exchange information with the established network and most of all contribute as much as possible to the ongoing practice of post disaster urban responses.

Contents of Project Plan

This document contains passages out of the Project Plan and is meant to introduce ourselves and to inform possible network contacts about our research. Currently we are in the field research phase, we aim to update our work and network as much as possible. We keep a blog up to date: www.elsalvador-urbanemergencies.blogspot.com

Problem field definition

In the development of the case study, a better understanding of the cultural background is needed. We use ‘The Evolutionary Map’. It consist generic data gathered about the country El Salvador. This information serves as a graphic illustration of the body of knowledge and is flexible which means that it keeps being updated when more data is gathered along the investigation.

It functions as a tool that maps facts and indicates growth, decrease and impacts in different fields of disciplines while simultaneously gives insight about the relations between these disciplines. This way we are able to investigate cultural events while looking for direct links with disasters and urban response processes.

Disciplines, conditions & starting points

In theory the Evolutionary Map could give insight on the entire urbanism context, any event in a period of time, milestones and process. We choose to start of with mapping five main disciplines which could be sub vided in more specific disciplines or areas:
- Natural disasters
- Spatial area
- Economy
- Population
- Political events

First of all the theme is natural disasters, this is our primary discipline for the Evolutionary Map; earthquakes, volcano eruptions, floods, landslides, hurricanes etc. Certain disasters are repetitive, such as floods and mudslides cause by heavy rain. The consequences of one disaster can also be the immediate cause for the next disaster. The other disciplines are spatial area, economy, population and political events. Economy shows us the (financial) development of the nation and cities. Within the population we focus on the population growth and migration. Political events such as wars, demonstrations and the ruling parties are graphically represented in time periods and milestones.

All the general and specific information we gather we will translate to spatial conditions, sub vided in these disciplines. The earthquake of 1986 and the two earthquakes of 2001 are the primary targets in the field of natural disasters, respectively for the case study in Downtown and in Santa Tecla. For the case study in Mejicanos the main focus will be on the vulnerability of the settlements and the repetitiveness of floods and mudslides during the rainy season.

Welcome to UE El Salvador

2009-02-15T15:34:00.000+01:00

Group Haiti changed their destination for the Urban Emergencies project. Due to some insights of different aid workers in Haiti we came to understand that the situation in Haiti is a little tensed. With the upcoming elections in April in the back of our minds we choose to think it over and made the decision, with a little pain in the heart, to change our field study to El Salvador.
So group Haiti is now group El Salvador.
To start of with a little irony, the El Salvadorians will choose their next president next month. Polls show that most likely there will be a shift of power from right to left. In the coming weeks will keep you informed about our progress of the preliminary research into El Salvador.