Group 1: ID17 - Turkey, ID74 - Rwanda, ID38 - Pakistan, ID50 - Malaysia

The projects in this group address topics such as: women’s safety and well-being on public transport, mobile services for aging women, and services for women suffering workplace harassment. In all these cases, it is possible to see how starting from a specific and ‘narrow’ topic, the research process to address gender-related issues shed light on wider issues and on the tangible and intangible infrastructure that supports them. Furthermore, even if the approaches implemented by the teams are quite diverse, they are emblematic of the attempt and relevance to interact with the people affected by specific issues. This was a key element of their research process and challenges, as well as creativity, on how to do that on the researchers’ side. You can watch the project videos in this group on the GDS YouTube channel through this playlist: https://youtu.be/6UOKB29fxL

Housing Subsidies and Homelessness: A Simple Idea

Reducing homelessness is an indisputable social good, and housing subsidies offer one way to do so. However, subsidies come in many different varieties and are intricately bound up with economic and social policies. This paper, written by one of North America’s leading urban economists, cuts through the tangle and argues that the simplest approach is the best. The ideal way to deter people from harmful acts is to reward them for abstaining. Thus, to combat homelessness, governments should offer housing allowances to people for every night they are not homeless. This optimal homelessness-reducing home allowance (OHRHA) is open to adjustment to suit individual circumstances and the effects of homelessness on different demographics. It is meant to reduce homelessness by aligning individual and societal incentives, forcing people to bear the consequences or realize the benefits that their actions impose on others. The author explores methods for financing OHRHA, examines means for tailoring it to meet the diverse needs of the homeless and discusses the policy’s effect on urban housing markets, all while comparing and contrasting the proposal to existing homelessness-reduction measures in Alberta, Canada and the US

Group 4: ID33 - Ethiopia, ID79 - Tanzania, ID88 - Brazil, ID37 - Argentina

Here we have two projects from Africa and two from South America. The similarities are striking between the two projects in the two different continents. In two of them we have women’s issues that are particular to the urban environment in either continent, while the other two are focused on very remote and hard to reach rural areas in both continents. You will see how women in the city of Dar es Salaam are reinvigorating and growing the batik industry in Tanzania, while women in Cordoba, Argentina are seen discovering and making very clear the urban realities through a process of cartography. In the rural projects we see researchers engaging with remote communities in the island district of Ghana, where they explore access to the electrical grid and the other project focusing on building techniques by women in rural areas of Brazil including the Amazon. In terms of the outcomes these projects we also see prototypes that embody traditional indigenous knowledge, for example natural dyes for making batiks and a fabric carrier case that includes graphic images and serves as a manual for women’s construction knowledge. You can watch the project videos in this group on the GDS YouTube channel through this playlist: https://youtu.be/aA4mpz8KQN