GREAT seeks to understand the ways in which being on- and off-grid provide an opportunity to rethink the relationship between people and urban infrastructure in areas of transition, as well as to analyse the off-grid city in the context of informal settlements in the Global South.
We are a partnership between Lancaster University, UCL, Universidad del Valle (Colombia), and Universidad Tecnológica de La Habana Jose Antonio Echeverría (Cuba).
Questions around gender, ethnicity, class and, in the case of Cali, whether or not one has been the victim of Colombia’s armed conflict are key to understanding the communities GREAT works with in Cali and Havana. What an equitable urban future is and might be depends on the processes that have shaped the communities of places like Brisas de las Palmas and San Nicolás.
Questions around gender, ethnicity, class and, in the case of Cali, whether or not one has been the victim of Colombia’s armed conflict are key to understanding the communities GREAT works with in Cali and Havana. What an equitable urban future is and might be depends on the processes that have shaped the communities of places like Brisas de las Palmas and San Nicolás.
In what ways should the future of the areas where GREAT is based be imagined and who should take part in the process? Often informal settlements, areas of precarity, or, popular neighbourhoods are seen as deviations from what the formal city should be, which has consequences over what is possible and imaginable, for example, in relation to land tenure, occupancy and ownership. In the context of GREAT, we think differently about the kinds of imaginaries of the areas where we work to help inform alternative visions by the residents themselves concerning issues such as transport and mobility and zero waste.