4 / Weighting planning options
DESCRIPTION / From the previous activities, a series of planning options were identified associated with ownership, management, construction and finance arrangements. In the final exercise of the workshop, individuals were asked to weight up such options, as a means to reveal the preferences of local residents and discuss with them the reasons for their choices. This process of prioritisation was done in two activities. Firstly, participants were individually asked to become familiar with a poster that outlined the different options associated with ownership, management, construction and finance of upgrading initiatives. Such options were associated with housing, basic services and public spaces. Then, they were given 4 ‘like’ and 4 ‘dislike’ stickers for them to indicate the options they most and least valued (see poster on the opposite page). Following this first activity, residents were asked to identify their trajectories of preferences associated to the same planning categories. Apart from exploring individual preferences, this exercise also aimed at making residents aware of the various different types and modalities of upgrading strategies identified during the process of the research (see picture of final boards indicating the trajectories of preferences). FINDINGS / In terms of housing, the activities highlighted that residents are primarily seeking individual ownership; however many have identified collective ownership as an important intermediate stage to facilitate the 32
regularisation process. For the management of the upgrading process, residents strongly value the role of the community development group. In terms of the construction, selfconstruction is not a community priority, and residents have demonstrated interest in collective processes, as well as in subcontracting external agents. For finance, many prioritised the BONO system as a way forward. On basic services, it was perceived that the ownership of such services should be of external agents (public or private), and there was little support for off-grid solutions. Residents believe that the management of such processes should not be left to individual households, but rather the community development group should be playing that role. For the construction process, there was strong support for collective as well as external actors to be involved. On finance, many residents valued collective savings and external grants as key for the installation of basic services. Nevertheless, many demonstrated scepticism to collective savings during the exercise. When discussing about public spaces, the findings from both exercises shows that there is little agreement on the ownership of public spaces. Some have argued that they would prefer them to be owned by the community, while others argued that it would be better if they are owned by the municipality. On management, most preferred it to be led by the community development group. On construction, the community prioritised a combination between community groups and external agents. Similarly, residents prioritised the finance of the improvement of public spaces to be coming from collective savings and grants.