Survey on Borei Keila: slum project

Our aim of survey on slums is to clarify the space organization of the slum on which the private sectors such as inhabitants and NGOs themselves made built environment.

Focusing on the Borei Keila we might be able to clarify these aspects like below.

---market being organized by themselves it the slum area, the inhabitants can get everyday surroundings and meals.

---hierarchy of the roads and alleys are consisted of three grades; main road, sub-main road and alley. Around the main road market are emerged.

---on the alleys in city center many human activities and everyday life belongings can be seen, but on the alleys in slum area few can be. We think the reason is by the bad condition of the alleys. Despite the few activities and everyday life belongings on the alleys, we can see many aspects of everyday lives from the activities in the house interior space.

---size of the houses is small, but the interior space is always connected to open public space. The inhabitants can always use interior spaces and exterior spaces.

---the space between alley and the house interior space is frequently used as a shopping, communication, sleeping space.

---although the houses are small they make several floor levels for their life activities. Most of the houses are built on the ground, but sleeping space and working space are on the raised floor.

---sub-main streets made around the housing area provide some kinds of activity spaces such as children’s playground.

Clean up garbage Project in Borei Keila

One of our motto is ‘practice now’. It is important to pursue the theory, but practice is also important. On Borei Keila we have surveyed built environment. From now on we will discuss about the space organization by our field survey data. It will take some months to draw the results.

We also discussed about what we can do now.

Fourteen Japanese students and eight Cambodian students participated in this project. Community leaders also participated in. We made five groups. Sum of the bag in which we gathered the garbage is around forty. We found much garbage on the road.

While we gathered the garbage, many children also began to gather them. Under the community leader’s indication, inhabitants began to clean the water path which had become dirty because the garbage in the water stopped the flow.

The theme of our survey is same as the theme of this project. But the garbage project is easier for the inhabitants to understand. So many inhabitants accepted our behavior. We think this project became the chance to communicate with the inhabitants, and we hope that they understand the meaning of our survey.

We want to have an intimate relationship with the inhabitants, NGOs, and RUFA, and want to inform our results to them someday.