The Beautiful Community Network
Begging for funds from the ‘International Community’ is a strategy that Uganda, like other developing countries, has adopted to ensure a minimum of survival in a context of harsh economic realities. This paper will argue that the paradigm of sustainable development offers a viable possibility for turning the situation of the impoverished world from that of being perpetual beggars to self-sustaining conditions with fundamentally improved livelihoods.
The premise of this paper is that a core problem in developing countries such as Uganda is a mismatch between what people crave to consume, on one hand, and what the country can produce, on the other. The consequence is that the people consume more than they produce thereby creating a deficit between demand and supply. This deficit is then covered with imports financed by begged monies. Not surprisingly, the donor alms are barely sufficient with the result that the majority of the population has a bare existence at the margin of survival. This status quo will not change unless deliberate remedial measures are undertaken. Using architecture as an example, this paper argues that the approach of sustainable development can be an efficacious remedial measure in the context of Uganda just as in other developing countries.
While arguments abound that the problems of underdevelopment are externally generated by global forces and so require outward looking solutions, this paper will argue the case that internally generated solutions can provide the impetus needed to improve developing economies. The conceptual framework for these arguments will be open systems modelling. The existing situation will be presented as a systems model that becomes increasingly worse owing to positive feedback (the vicious cycle of poverty). Remedial interventions will be explained by open systems modelling whereby a minimum importation (of information, matter and energy) into a system can lead to a self-sustaining process of improvement through positive feedback mechanisms.
The remedial interventions will be explained within the context of the field of architecture. Architecture is uniquely placed as a sector in which the production of materiality must resonate with people needs, wishes and desires because it marries functional with aesthetic aspects using material means (the buildings). Architecture can be taken to be a microcosm of the entire country as it reflects the unsustainable national situation. For example, 80 percent of the population are living in traditional houses that are increasingly socially unacceptable while in the urban areas, over 60 percent of the inhabitants stay in problematic informal settlements. This paper will argue that the building material earth can, in a sustainable way, contribute to a process of change in the field of architecture and indeed the entire country.
