ECO Systems

With more than half of the world’s 7 billion people living in cities, urbanization presents an opportunity to transform production and income levels in developing countries. However, 55++ million new slum dwellers have been added to the global population since 2000. It is unacceptable today that about 1 billion people live in slums and other sub-standard housing, with precarious guarantee of access and inadequate water and sanitation. By 2030, about 3 billion people, or about 40 percent of the world’s population, will need housing, basic infrastructure and services. This renders into the need of complete 96,150 housing units per day, with documented land, until 2030.

http://unhabitat.org/urban-themes/housing-slum-upgrading/

Yes– These are small– and one apartment complex can be created, floor, footing, walls and roof for LESS than $10,000. PER 8 Unit Complex, in materials, including steel reinforcement.

Cellular Concrete with Vicon Strength Admixtures builds Quality, and can incorporate the rubble and industrial waste so that higher carbon credits per project can be sold to help fund the construction.

While some cities are shrinking, many urban centres are having rapid and largely uncontrolled population growth, creating a pattern of rapid urbanization. Most of this growth is now taking place in developing countries and is concentrated in informal settlements and slum areas. The total demand housing is a measurement based on two aspects: the growth of the population and the need for replacement housing units.

Developing countries usually face grave housing deficits and the following hurdles against dwelling construction have been typically pointed out: high interest rates, elevated social taxes, high informal labor indexes, and bureaucracy. Lack of loan is an additional problem as banks may not be interested on funding or because governmental programs are scarce. As a result, a considerable percentage of the population in developing countries still lives at sub-dwelling units.

The housebuilding industry is changing. Market forces are driving the industry to reconsider their approach to serving their customers. Government agendas on Rethinking Construction, planning policy and building regulations are forcing the industry to reconsider the way houses are built. These issues together with a construction skills shortage and a huge demand for new houses mean that innovative construction types are being developed and used.

Aiming at lowering costs of households, scientific attention has been given to durable non-conventional building materials with similar features as those presented by construction materials traditionally used in civil engineering. Quest for such surrogate materials can be two-fold interesting as (i) it may help to reduce dwelling deficits (particularly in developing countries) inasmuch as cheaper houses become economically feasible and (ii) it can be environmentaly friendly as low-value wastes can be recycled or exploited. Accordingly, this review is particularly interested in agroindustrial residues or by-products as prospective non-conventional construction materials, combining some approachs such as the use of vegetable fibers as reinforcement, the use of nanotechnology, extrusion processing and functionally graded materials.