Explore the vast range of titles available.

In Namibia, informal settlements are usually upgraded by a participatory process aimed at providing inhabitants with land tenure security through the Flexible Land Tenure Act (FLTA), followed by the provision of basic services. The pilot FLTA implementation case is the upgrading of the Freedom Square settlement in Gobabis, which was a woman-led process. This research analyzes both the experiences of the women participating during the process as well as the immediate and long-term perceived impacts on their social and economic conditions. The empirical data were collected through interviews and a focus group discussion with experts and key participants in the development process. The findings highlight socio–economic challenges faced by the participating women, including insufficient support from family and limited economic opportunities. Throughout the process, stakeholders shifted their aims. This shift influenced the involvement of women, changing their roles from active participants to service recipients. While the main goals of receiving land tenure and service provision were partially fulfilled, the long-term impact of the process on women is varied from how it was initially envisioned. This was largely due to the absence of a comprehensive plan to improve their livelihoods. The results show that for participatory land tenure processes to become inclusive, a stronger gender-mainstreaming agenda becomes necessary. It also emphasizes holistic development planning as a key factor for long-term success.

Implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) presents a unique opportunity for collective action across various spatial scales. At the local level, programs to revitalize vulnerable neighborhoods offer significant potential to contribute to the SDGs. In Germany, the “Soziale Stadt/Sozialer Zusammenhalt” (Social City/Social Cohesion) funding program supports municipalities in promoting sustainable development in these areas. However, there is currently no direct linkage between this funding program and the SDGs. This raises questions as to how the instruments of the Social City/Social Cohesion program could support the SDGs and their monitoring processes and vice versa and what adjustments could be recommended to enhance this relationship. The research presented in this article is based on a case study conducted in the urban renewal district of Stuttgart‐Münster, Germany. Students and scholars from the University of Stuttgart collaborated with municipal staff and civil society members to explore the funding program’s instruments and assess their potential for monitoring the SDGs. Based on the municipal indicator set developed with the assistance of SDG coordinators at the City of Stuttgart—Germany’s first city to pilot this indicator set in 2019—the transdisciplinary team adapted specific indicators to the neighborhood level. They also investigated the inclusion of qualitative indicators for assessing SDGs and tested a collaborative approach to gathering data for these localized indicators with input from residents. Based on the findings of this case study, this contribution reflects on recommendations for integrating the SDGs into the initial stages of urban renewal practices and related instruments.

Living conditions in Nazi concentration camps were harsh and inhumane, leading many prisoners to commit suicide. Sachsenhausen (Oranienburg, Germany) was a concentration camp that operated from 1936 to 1945. More than 200,000 people were detained there under Nazi rule. This study analyzes deaths classified as suicides by inmates in this camp, classified as homosexuals, both according to the surviving Nazi files. This collective was especially repressed by the Nazi authorities. Data was collected from the archives of Sachsenhausen Memorial and the International Tracing Service in Bad Arolsen. Original death certificates and autopsy reports were reviewed. Until the end of World War II, there are 14 death certificates which state \"suicide\" as cause of death of prisoners classified as homosexuals, all of them men aged between 23 and 59 years and of various religions and social strata. Based on a population of 1,200 prisoners classified as homosexuals, this allows us to calculate a suicide rate of 1,167/100,000 (over the period of eight years) for this population, a rate 10 times higher than for global inmates (111/100,000). However, our study has several limitations: not all suicides are registered; some murders were covered-up as suicides; most documents were lost during the war or destroyed by the Nazis when leaving the camps and not much data is available from other camps to compare. We conclude that committing suicides in Sachsenhausen was a common practice, although accurate data may be impossible to obtain.

Climate projections indicate that persistent high temperatures and related heat stress will become a common experience in the future, across Africa. It is, therefore, important to understand challenges that might result from increasing extreme heat conditions, and how humans within urban centres can adapt. In this article, we provide a review that considers the experience of poor urban residents with extreme temperatures and adaptation strategies in relation to low-income, informal urban contexts in Africa. Our analysis is carried out across four focus countries: Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, and Egypt. Only cursory insights exist in the context of informal settlements. We found that heat stress remains an overlooked topic in comparison to other climate change adaptation needs. Evidence shows that adaptation strategies varied and differed in framing, scale, and applied methods across the contexts. Adaptation strategies dominantly examine a broad variety of alternative building measures and, to a lesser degree, greening/nature-based strategies. It is important to highlight heat stress as a cross-cutting, focal topic in urban research in relation to informal settlements and generally broaden the spectrum. It is worthwhile to pay special attention to strategic actions and research designs that foresee win–win and co-beneficial options for local urban communities.

The need for a systemic transformation of the building sector is increasingly recognized, but much of the current discussion and actions focus on the creation of technical innovation, while the question of how to improve the social quality of buildings and building processes is largely ignored. Socially engaged architecture more broadly and design-build projects in particular represent an exception in this regard. Design-build studios have emerged as a new teaching method at numerous universities in North America, Europe and elsewhere to equip students with the skills needed to address pressing sustainability issues. Most design-build projects include an explicit claim to social relevance and change and opt for a co-productive process. However, the extent to which such practices have the potential to enhance the social (and, ultimately, the ecological) sustainability of buildings and construction processes has been insufficiently assessed. Based on a comparative analysis of five design-build projects carried out at the University of Stuttgart, this paper discusses critical factors that influence both the (social) quality of the design-build process as well as its (built) outcome and impact. The findings offer important insights for future design-build projects and their underlying need for revised training and teaching curricula to equip future architects and planners with the necessary knowledge and skills to act as process designers and facilitators and to shape a more people-centered built environment.

Reallabore sind ein recht junges Forschungsformat. Die Betreiber der bestehenden Reallabore in Baden-Württemberg ( BaWü-Labs ) nutzen ihre Erkenntnisse und geben neun Empfehlungen für die Fortführung von Reallaboren.

In November 2004, the exhibition \"Medicine and Crime\" was opened at the Memorial Site of Sachsenhausen near Berlin. The exhibition is located in barracks R I and R II, which have persisted in their original form. These barracks were part of the camp infirmary, which was extended repeatedly up to the end of the war. Its medical facilities included laboratories, operating theatres and wards. The infirmary was the place where \"racial research\" and numerous medical experiments were carried out on inmates. SS doctors performed compulsory sterilisations and castrations. Several thousand inmates were murdered in systematically planned programmes to dispose of the sick, such as \"Operation 14f 13\". As shown in the exhibition, the infirmary was also meant for providing minimal medical care for inmates to prevent the spread of contagious diseases and epidemics. In 1942, after setbacks in the war, attention was paid to restoring sick inmates' ability to work. Overcrowding, inhuman treatment and poor supply of medicines led to largely disastrous conditions in the infirmary. It is a special aspect of this exhibition that the events in the infirmary are told from the perspective of the inmates, i. e. the victims, not the perpetrators.

Reallabore sind ein recht junges Forschungsformat. Die Betreiber der bestehenden Reallabore in Baden-Württemberg (BaWü-Labs) nutzen ihre Erkenntnisse und geben neun Empfehlungen für die Fortführung von Reallaboren.