not your usual urban planning work

It's a good idea, generally speaking, to look outside your usual environment to see what others are doing.

Mitchell Sipus is someone who is working in a realm that is quite foreign to us here in Bermuda. With graduate degrees in architecture, urban planning and refugee/migration studies, he has served as an advisor in Afghanistan and Somalia, both places in a pretty constant state of (re)construction. 

The range and depth of the challenges is quite something to even contemplate for those of us living and working on a coral reef-ringed island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

His blog, Humanitarian Space, provides insightful learning opportunities for planners and is well worth checking regularly. As he describes it, "In the humanitarian aid industry, a humanitarian space is a defined, politically neutral space within an area of conflict that allows humanitarian actors to assist populations in need with decreased levels of danger." The blog is a "...virtual space committed to ideas and dialogue on issues of conflict, stabilization, displacement, aid, and development."

The blog post, Archive: 9 Posts from HSpace that you wish you had read, links to a number of blog posts Sipus views as well worth a first/second look. I would agree.

image - sutika sipus