Abstract:
There are always questions about communities and what they need. The question that should be asked first before all others is, what defines a community? Is it the housing? Is it the economy? Is it the location and geography? What really defines a community? It is the people. People define a community and all that those people represent. A community is defined by the races, ages, religions, and even classes of its people. A community does not need politics, economy, and production to be defined as one. Some communities have been around for decades. Often these people come together unintentionally from tyranny, war, famine, and death. They are defined in communities called refugee camps or Internally Displaced Person camps. The oldest existing camp is over a decade, and consists of over a million people. Now how can a community that is brought together by tears and bloodshed be made into a thriving community? Maybe people who come to a refugee camp never leave until being forced out or moved to another situation much the same or worse. The conditions never seem to change. So the challenge is to take these already- formed communities and bring the people together other than only as refugees. To create housing that is not only sustainable, “green,” and inexpensive but also life changing, and to bring to these communities what defines others, such as agriculture, sanitation (wastes, sewage and drinking water) economy, etc. The question is why a community that has been defined by its people cannot be seen as a community by others and themselves in a way that distressed communities have never been seen before.
