As noted in a previous Club of Pioneers blog, urbanization is on the rise. And while there is the negative scenario of overpopulated cites becoming, as writer Mike Davis puts it, "a city of slums", there are urban initiatives, designers and architects who are involved in creating more liveable cities.One of those is Urban Think Tank (UTT) who work in Caracas, Venezuela.
UTT was formed ten years ago by the architects Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner who met at Columbia Univesity. Following their studies, Klumpner, who is originally from Austria, joined Brillembourg in his home town of Caracas and set up an architectural practice to bring design expertise into a city where 90 percent of its 6 million inhabitants have built their own homes.
They refer to Caracas as “the informal city” as the surrounding slums or “barrios” have no central plan, and are without infrastructure such as electricity or sanitation. As the city is overcrowded, space is always an issue when building, but UTT have found ingenious ways around this.

The Vertical Gymnasium
A major factor in the high crime rate in Caracas is the lack of public space and entertainment for young people. Many end up in gangs and Caracas has one of the highest crime rates in South America. The Vertical Gym is 3 floors and contains basketball courts, a dance studio, weight lifting, a running track, a rock climbing wall, and an open air playing field for soccer.

The design is a prototype, which means it can be easily copied and built again and again. Brillembourg says that future gymnasiums will incorporate solar energy, wind turbines and rain water.
Core Unit/Dry Toilets
The simple compost toilets designed by UTT utilizes rainwater, composts and needs no black-water pipes. In a town where water can be more expensive than gasoline, dry water toilets are essential to create sustainable and non polluted sanitation.

Instead of seeing Caracas as a no-hope zone, UTT sees is as a “laboratory” and believe that there needs to be "a network of interchanging ideas, possible solutions and goodwill” when it comes to planning for the future city.
The documentary “Caracas: The Informal City” has been made by Rob Schröder.
More information can be found here from the INTERNATIONAL ARCHITECTURE BIENNALE ROTTERDAM - Here
Urban Think Tank Website

It is not an open secret that the mega-cities of today already keep almost the majority of the world’s population. New is a number of the United Nations, revealed in t New York Times report recently: By 2030 5 billion people will live in cities and town around the world. This means that the migration into cities has not come to an end yet.

Gabarone, the Capital of Botswana, is expected to grow up to 500 000 inhabitants by 2030. In 1971 there were just 18 000As the UN point out it is not the already existing mega-city like Mexico-City, Sao Paolo or Calcutta that will extraordinary grow but the mid-sized ones like Gabarone or Botswana. Here the population will raise from 18 000 inhabitants in 1971 to 500 000 in 2030. In cities like Calcutta and others of that size more people move our then in.

The skyline of Sao Paolo
One thing that pricks up one’s ears is the fact that by 2030 developing nations will have 80 percent of the world’s urban population. While star architects in the Western world like Sir Norman Foster think about sustainable cities in the future with social areas, public transport infrastructure and roof gardens there is no way that these growing cities can adopt those ideas and set into practice until 2030. The opposite will be the case: The growing of urban slums will pollute watersheds. The struggle for clean water, for water in general, will be fought in these urban areas. The simple standards of living – like missing sanitation - there will threat the whole environmental structure of these cities.

Slum in Calcutta