Housing the Urban Poor

On the New Internationalist website, Jeremy Seabrook describes a scheme in Bangladesh which has helped garment-workers, maidservants, rickshaw drivers, construction workers, vendors and labourers transform their lives through the building of multi-storey apartments for the working poor. "In the process, the lives of the people have been transformed: they acquired new skills, their livelihoods were enhanced by co-operative working, microcredit and social education, and their savings used to acquire land, on which the first block of flats has now reached its full six storeys in Mirpur in the north of Dhaka."

"The biggest obstacle to the realization of the project has been our absence of corruption. By refusing to give bribes, we have been our own worst enemy."

Read the full article in the New Internationalist.