New asian case studies documented by ACHR

Kampung Mrican, Yogyakarta city in Indonesia

In the past, Yogyakarta’s only idea for dealing with flooding and pollution problems in the city was to evict the poor communities living along the river. In this important pilot upgrading project, an informal riverside community showed a better way, using their collective spirit.

With support from their Kalijawi community network, a team of community architects and the local government, the people planned an extraordinary project to pull back their houses from the river edge, rebuild them and create a new road along the river, which enables the city to dredge and maintain the river. And not a single family was evicted.

• Size: 200 households
• Finished: 2020 (Parts 1 & 2). Part 3 still pending in 2022
• Type: Pilot housing reblocking of a riverside settlement to make way for a riverside inspection road.

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Monorom collective housing in Cambodia

In this housing project in the northwest corner of Cambodia, a small riverside squatter settlement (called Monorom) moved to new land nearby, which was provided free by the Provincial Government.

This new community, called Poun Lue Reatrey Senchey, planned and built "self-sufficiency" plots where the families could not only live, but could raise vegetables, fruits and animals for their own consumption and for income. The project was supported by ACHR's ACCA program, and it was the first of many housing projects in Cambodia which were able to negotiate for free land from the government.

• Size: 30 households
• Finished: 2009
• Type: Nearby relocation of a small community of riverside squatters to free government land, with new houses and collective land ownership.

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Bhennatola Community upgrading in Bangladesh

Here is another small housing project in the provincial city of Jhenaidah, which shows how much even very poor, marginalized community people - and particularly women - can do to design and build solid, comfortable, low-cost houses for themselves, when they are supported by sensitive community architects and are allowed to control the money and the project themselves.

This much-visited project - and it’s sister project in Mohishakundu Shordarpara - are helping to show many in Bangladesh that peopledriven housing works and can do a great deal to help solve the country’s very big housing problems.

• Size: 62 households
• Finished: 2017
• Type: On-site upgrading of a very old inner-city community, on land the people own individually.

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