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Home > Teaching Universal Design > Course Projects, Units or Lectures > Some Contextual Considerations When Designing for the Majority World

Some Contextual Considerations When Designing for the Majority World

Jim Singh Sandhu

Inclusive Design Research Associates
Herefordshire
UK

Copyright for text and visuals held by: Jim Singh Sandhu

Keywords: majority world, poverty, shelter, life-styles, sustainability

Abstract

Design for sustainability and social responsibility, or to put it more bluntly, design for our future survival is an enormous professional challenge . The level of success will depend on whether we are capable of adopting a multi-level approach that can synergize with other like-minded professions, organizations and bureaucracies

How can design overcome poverty and environmental degradation? This is the starting point for the relatively recent but logical marriage of universal design and sustainability and the very real challenges this provides practitioners. The discussion around some of these key issues and how they impact on universal design is at the hub of this seminar which should be seen as the beginning of a wider process of understanding and awareness by designers in the so-called developed world. Its prime focus is on getting to grips with some attributes of the majority world in the context of poverty, shelter, sustainability and lifestyles. These challenges can be best expressed by a series of key questions that emerge from the visual material and their descriptions, that follow the theoretical underpinning.

Educational Value

The Seminar is an effort to link-up universal design to the practical realities of the majority world's issues, lifestyles and poverty. In terms of educational content the tangible challenges to practitioners are highlighted - including issues concerned with sustainability.

Objectives:

To make participants aware of:

Evaluation Criteria:

Theoretical Underpinning of Seminar

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Introduction

What kind of environment do we want to live in? What kind of world do we want our children and grandchildren to inherit? Is social responsibility integral to universal design? Is life worth preserving whatever the cost? How can design overcome poverty and environmental degradation? This is the starting point for the relatively recent but logical marriage of universal design and sustainability and the very real challenges this provides practitioners. The discussion around some of these key issues and how they impact on universal design is at the hub of this seminar created for Universal Design Education Online.

The one theme running throughout the seminar is that universal design not only provides a framework for action but is an approach that values and celebrates human diversity. Further, a s a product of social policy inclusive design can restore equity and enhance citizenship. This can be called the politics of sustainability and civic rights.

Seminar Rationale

This seminar should be seen as the beginning of a wider process of understanding and awareness by designers in the so-called developed world. It prime focus is on getting to grips with some attributes of the majority world in the context of poverty, shelter, sustainability and lifestyles. These provide some of the greatest challenges to the practice of universal design in the world. These challenges can be best expressed by a series of key questions that emerge from the visual material and its description.

Poverty

It is vital for the universal designer to understand poverty in all its manifestations but also to be able to draw a line between its theoretical and practical dimension. Without a close understanding of this dimension universal design can only operate in the void by definition - a central tenant of this seminar/resource.

Poverty is deeply embedded in social structures, which are geared to exclude the poor. Social exclusion is a process of discrimination, which deprives people of their human rights and results in unequal and fragmented societies. Institutionalized racism in the form of slavery in the US and subsequently in South Africa in the form of apartheid was responsible for extreme inequality in income, land and civic rights. In more ways than one, human beings were reduced to objects for pure exploitation. Other cases of social exclusion by colonial powers have led to civil wars against the oppressors. Gender discrimination remains the most common form of discrimination worldwide, leading to reductions in levels of economic growth. Practices and ideologies associated with caste in India which are illustrated in this seminar/resource pack limit the access of groups of people not only to ritual functions but also to political structures, basic services, education and opportunities to improve their well-being. In many cases, forms of deprivation overlap, which leads to greater disparities; a girl of scheduled caste in particularly poor rural areas of India being at one extreme of the scale. It would be even more extreme if she were disabled. That is rock bottom - a vicious cycle where escape is impossible.

At a socioeconomic level poverty and disability or ageing are inextricably linked. If you have no state support for your infirmity, which is usually the case, you invariably end up begging for your livelihood. Universal designers have to take note that the aggregate numbers of poor people are striking but this fact alone cannot describe what it is like to live in poverty. The author's experiences in several countries and dialogues with poor people, including close relatives, emphasize the multidimensional and dynamic nature of poverty. Interestingly, the number of established universal designers from rural backgrounds in the majority world can be counted on the fingers of one hand. I despair when American friends try to link their understanding of poverty to their slimming regimes, forgetting that they and their children are throwing away vast amounts of uneaten food daily.

We seriously need to understand how poor people experience poverty in order to be better practitioners. People in rural areas are primarily concerned about food security, lack of work and health facilities. In urban areas the poor place more emphasis on the quality of work opportunities, lack of access to water, violence, unsanitary housing, and increasingly environmental pollution resulting in respiratory problems.

The lack of access to a particular material asset, such as good quality land for agriculture and housing, is central to many descriptions of what it is like to be poor. Inability to access good quality healthy care is another. The poor perceive unemployment, underemployment and consequent exploitation and low wages as endemic to their situation. Physical health is vital to obtain work and generate income, while education generates options for future generations.

Natural Disasters

As the seminar ends with a practical solution to emergency housing it is important to understand the context. Natural disasters are frequent in the poorest countries. The poor are by far the largest victims of natural disasters, because they often only have access to low cost assets (for example land or housing), which are more vulnerable to the elements. You only have to look at the illustrations to understand how true this is. Unless people can preserve or reconstitute their asset base during and after periods of natural disasters, the numbers in poverty will increase and the depth of poverty will intensify. The international community is beginning to understand the breadth and depth of the impact of natural traumas. If the assets of the poor cannot be protected, direct asset transfers are needed to facilitate recovery. In the context of housing this provides a clear rationale for the Hong/Tickle/Sandhu emergency house described in the seminar photographs that follow.

Globalization

We are all increasingly connected to individuals we will never meet, from places we may never visit. Many of our electronic equipment, shoes, or clothes will have been made by them thousands of miles away. The fruit and vegetables for our food, the coffee in our cup, the carpets on our floor, the fuel in our cars and many other products we buy in our shops have come, probably, halfway around the world.

The world is smaller than it has ever been. Its six billion citizens are closer to each other than ever before in history. Jobs in Europe and the US depend on trade with or investment from abroad. We travel more, but so does pollution and diseases, as seen in the recent spread of SARs. Paradoxically, closer yet further apart.

As we have become increasingly more connected the process has been called globalization. Whilst the quality of life rises for many as a result globalization., more than a billion people live in extreme poverty, forced to live on a tiny income and very poor or nil services. More than 600 million amongst this group are not just poor but also disabled - largely due to poverty, malnutrition or environmental pollution.

But reducing poverty is not just a moral issue. The closer we are connected across the continents, the more we become dependent on each other. Moreover, if we do not take action now to reduce global inequality, there is a real danger that life for all of us - wherever we live - will become unsustainable.

Urbanization

Aside from the issues of pollution and a sustainable environment we can see in the accompanying illustrated resource how the poor are increasingly migrating to the cities in search for jobs. This process has been called the fastest Urbanization in history. In the context of sustainability how can universal designers make sense of cities, which are already teeming with chaotic living conditions, poor health, crowded communities where privacy or silence does not exist, and polluted environments from Dante's inferno? How can inclusive design grapple with the ever-widening cycle of poverty and creeping paralysis in the world's bustees, barriados, favelas, kampongs, gecekondos and the like? Aside from legislation and social provision design can be a powerful tool for adding to the quality of life of the urban outcastes. As practitioners universal designers have barely touched the topic. Yet this is precisely what we need to do if universal design can evolve beyond some excellent theoretical principles.

In the context of sustainability another major stumbling block in actioning sustainable design in such situations is that the problems are multi-dimensional by nature. But the institutions and bureaucracies that are meant to be tackling them are un-dimensional. And government departments the world over rarely network to meet multiple objectives.

What's Gone Wrong?

We are perhaps the first generation to see the downside of the industrial revolution. By now, it should be clear that our environment is becoming ever less capable of sustaining the growing impact of our economic activities. Everywhere our forests are over-logged, our agricultural lands over-cropped, our grasslands over-grazed, our wetlands over-drained, our seas over-fished, and just about the whole terrestrial and marine environment over-polluted with chemical and radioactive poisons. Worst still, our atmospheric environment is becoming ever less capable of absorbing either the ozone depleting gases or the greenhouse gases that are generated by our economic activities.

The ice cap is melting due to the greenhouse effect. This in turn is raising sea levels, which is effecting landmasses around the world and changing our climate. Witness the floods and fires in several countries a few years back. Seawater is 97 per cent of the earth's water supply. We have long regarded it as a sink into which we can pour pollutants. As a result virtually no part, no matter how remote, of our oceans is free of contamination.

Two main forces drive these changes: on one hand is unsustainable consumption of the Earth's resources, mainly by and in industrial countries. In others the problem, exacerbated by population increase, is pressure on resources. Interestingly, these problems were seen very differently by the participants at Rio in 1992. On one side the industrial countries comforted themselves with the belief that environmental degradation was essentially a problem of the poor. They were ready to provide some help. But few recognized the scale of the problem or their own direct involvement. None volunteered to be an example of restraint. The US was particularly at fault. With about 5 per cent of the world's population, it produces 25 per cent of the world's pollution.

In the seventies I gave a lecture at probably the world's biggest institution for people with learning disabilities. The Willowbrook State Institute on Staten Island with about 7500 human beings living in miserable conditions provided me with the first shock of the day. The cause of the second shock was not too far away - at Fresh Kills, also on Staten Island . Some may remember this is the place where most of the World Trade Centre ended for analysis after 9/11. This is also the world's biggest dumping ground for the daily garbage of the five boroughs of New York City . The landfill receives over 12 million kilograms of commercial and household waste per day. It contains 850 million cubic metres of rubbish, consisting of 101 billion kilograms of newspaper, potato peels, aerosols, chicken bones, paint cans, cigarette butts, Coke cans, etc. Despite these frightful figures Fresh Kills takes just 0.018 per cent of the waste generated in the US daily. American industry alone disposes of an additional 5500 times as much waste elsewhere.

In these circumstances, it is ironic that designers, instead of generating ideas for recycling this Everest of waste are actually increasingly focusing on a disposable world: suits, shirts, ties, underwear, socks, nappies, razor blades, pens, containers, packaging, mobiles, and there is even talk of disposable furniture and laptops. This is contrary to the principles of universal design and sustainability. T here is no doubt that this has to change drastically.

Conclusion

Design for sustainability and social responsibility, or to put it more bluntly, design for our future survival is an enormous professional challenge . The level of success will depend on whether we are capable of adopting a multi-level approach that can synergize with other like-minded professions, organizations and bureaucracies . It should be remembered that there are over one hundred major web sites concerned with all aspects of sustainability/poverty including technology but none on design. This has to be rectified urgently.

Protecting the planet creates both challenges and opportunities. Through greater efficiency, better use of natural resources combined with inclusive design it is possible to break the link between economic growth and environmental damage. By grasping opportunities for innovation it is possible to have a sustainable and greener quality of life for a substantial proportion of the world's population.

Considerable progress has been made since the Stockholm conference on the environment in 1972. However, much more remains to be done. Pressures on the environment are increasing. We have to deal with climate change, the erosion of the countryside, creeping desertification, the cutting down of forests at a pace unprecedented in history, growing quantities of waste and chemicals that get into food, air and water; the degradation of habitats and the increasing pace of Urbanization If progress is to continue, we now have to put the elimination of poverty at the heart of decision-making on every issue: from sustainable employment to housing, from industry to energy, from telematics to farming. The central message of this /Seminar is that inclusive or universal design has a key role to play in the amelioration process.

References

Papanek, V., 1983: Design for the Real World. Thames and Hudson .

Coracostas, P., & Mulder, U., 1998: Society: The endless frontier. European Commission.

Hawken, P., et al.,1999: Natural Capitalism: The next industrial revolution. Earthscan Publications.

Sandhu, J. S., 2001: An integrated approach to universal design: Towards inclusion of all ages, cultures and diversity. In: Universal Design Handbook. Edited by Wolf Preiser & Elaine Ostroff. McGraw-Hill , New York .

Sandhu, J.S., 2002: Multi-Dimensional Evaluation as a Tool in Teaching Universal Design. In: Universal Design: 17 ways of thinking and teaching. Edited by Jon Christophersen, Husbanken , Norway .

Easterly, W. 1996. Life During Growth. Washington D.C. World Bank.

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