Sites-and-Services

The minimal urban design of a major 1970-80s housing paradigm in Kenya, El Salvador & Egypt

‘Sites-and-services’ was an important housing paradigm that was mobilized in the context of development aid to provide cost-efficient housing for the global poor. Instead of proposing a complete design, it aimed to guide future construction by providing ‘sites’ in combination with a wide range of ‘services’, relying on the owner-occupants to complete their dwellings over time.
This online exhibition is the outcome of our Autumn 2022 seminar course, ‘The City Lived’, in which students, beyond the praise and criticism directed at such projects, studied sites-and-services projects as material artefacts that have shaped the lives of thousands of people, whose history deserves to be studied.

  1. The Dandora Community Development Project
  2. Informal Commercial Infrastructure
  3. Dandora at Night
  4. Roads in Dandora
  5. Colonia El Pepeto
  6. External Actors’ Influence
  7. Appropriation of Private Space
  8. The Influence of Gangs
  9. Community-Based Facilities & Programs
  10. Hay El Salam
  11. Materials and Social Injustice
  12. Beyond the Fields Lived
  13. Semi-Private Spaces: Protected Spaces in a Growing City