Search

During COVID-19, female informal workers living in urban informal settlements in Bangladesh have faced greater challenges in re-entering the labour market than their male counterparts. This paper presents the findings of a qualitative study, which has explored how the pre-existing socio-economic constraints around gender norms, gender roles, occupational sex-segregation, lack of education and skills, informality and restricted mobility have made the re-entry process extremely difficult for these workers during COVID-19 in Dhaka city. The paper also illustrates that these workers have adopted strategies catered for short-lasting crises to cope with the challenges arisen from their struggle to secure livelihoods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The global discourse around architecture education emphasizes rethinking curricula for engaging more with social issues. The shift from creating star architects to socially responsive professionals necessitates examining different approaches to build skills, especially in the design studio, for encouraging a comprehensive system of inquiry for developing design solutions. In Jhenaidah, a secondary city in Bangladesh, fourth-year students participated in a design studio that tried to address critical urban issues and to generate design ideas using field research and community participation. This paper shares the experience of facilitating the design studio. The learning process and studio structure included exploration, examination, consultations, mapping, vision development and strategic planning for arriving at specific design proposals. The experience of working with a local government institution was an added learning of the studio. Pedagogical exploration from the studio reiterates the arguments for balancing rationalism and social responsiveness with creativity in architecture design studios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyses of climate risks for urban low-income households are grounded in the concept of vulnerability. To address the dynamic nature of vulnerability, asset-based approaches to poverty reduction and social development advocate for identifying both risks and resilience. Applying the asset-based approach to a climate-change context brings into the discussion vulnerabilities associated with physical hazards and their impact on different types of capital assets. This paper analyses evidence from an informal settlement in Dhaka to identify the capital assets impacted by physical hazards and to develop a matrix identifying assets that can build the capacity of urban low-income households to adapt to climate extremes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]