Participatory Empowerment as a Tool for Enhancing the Sustainable Development Process of Slums

Abstract

Many cities in Egypt have witnessed a comprehensive development of its various services and facilities. A lot of cities are established as a back of the current cities; and although this development has reached many slums, most of it has come traditionally, depending on concrete buildings only. Without consider the philosophy of sustainability or trying to exploit or recycle natural resources. The difficulty of developing slums is concentrated in several reasons, including: The development projects is usually carried out in isolation from the target community, so the projects not being associated with the actual priorities and needs of the community; The citizens have the idea of forcibly displacing homes and going to areas far away from their workplaces. There is high cost of alternative housing units and the state collects fees from residents of slums, which may exceed the capabilities of some of them. On the other hand, design research recently considered the user as a centre for deign process (User Centred Design), and to give it special attention, some design concepts that seek to place the user in the design process environment so that the solution (design) stem from it; and from these concepts: sustainable design sustainable design, co-operative design, contextual design, and participatory design.