Rubondo Integrated Settlement Masterplan Design

As part of the larger ‘Regenerative Settlement Project’ in Rubondo, Nakivale, our pro bono partner, Arup, supported 5 design workshops which were led by YICE and Bassatu staff with future site residents. These focused on

• Understanding what each group and individual brings to the project; 

• The daily lives of participants and their needs;

• The different visions for the site, including the meaning of regeneration and the importance of inclusion, participation and co-design;

• Exploring the local system and mapping its resources;

• The environmental conditions of the site, including the soil, wind directions, sun path, water flows and hazards;

• Masterplanning and design activities including zoning, siting, housing design, water management and community building. 

To minimise travel and maximise local participation, Arup worked mainly from a distance with our partner facilitators, who led most of the workshops with the participants, future residents. Re-Alliance’s community correspondent, Rolande, who lives in Nakivale, conducted an initial survey with those who had been selected to live there to find out more about their current lives and expectations. Her survey included a series of questions about existing living condictions, family size, needs and preferences for sleeping, cooking and food growing and photographing different examples. 

Participants were invited to an initial workshop with activities to help get to know each other where, working in small groups, they mapped the following areas:

• Water: Where do you fetch water for cooking, drinking, or washing? Is it safe and reliable?

• Energy: "You need energy or other materials for cooking, warmth or using electrical appliances e.g mobile phone? What do you do?"

• Waste: "You want to dispose of your trash; what do you do and what happens?'

• Food: You need to make a meal, what do you do and what happens?"

• Shelter: You need to fix your home, what do you do? Where do you get the materials from?

• Daily life: "Where do you wash, gather, pray, play, farm, rest and meet friends/ socialise?"

• Movement: "Which paths do you walk most often? Are there difficult or unsafe areas (flooded, steep, dark)?"

• Ecological assets: Place marks on the map for trees, shade, wind direction, fertile soil, topography.

Open questions to guide discussion:

• "Which routes feel safe or unsafe? What changes when it rains or gets dark?"

• "Where do people meet, celebrate, or support one another?"

• "Where does nature help you — and where do you see it being harmed?"

This was followed by a visioning exercise using images and examples, to help imagine a better life, their basic and most pressing needs for this and what they would place where and why. The group undertook a site assessment to survey the land, map environmental characteristics (movement of sun, prevailing winds, slopes and water courses), human movement and habitation in or around the area and identify the risks and hazards to be aware of. Participants also mapped resources available onsite or nearby, availability of water and use of surrounding land, all of which led to zoning and the beginning of a masterplan design.

Two Arup staff from the London and the Nairobi offices attended for a final, in-country workshop, where  they worked with partner facilitators and participants to create a final masterplan. This included the layout of houses, the siting of toilets and washrooms, zoning for cultivation and kitchen gardens and pathways and community buildings to encourage interaction with nearby host and refugee communities. Decisions were discussed through the lens of future resilience. Participants were keen to maximise contact with others living nearby, to increase trade and build good relationships, and Re-Alliance, YICE and Bassatu were motivated by the vision of a closed-loop settlement that was designed to reuse materials and recycle waste. Together we looked at a systems informed approach, that paid particular attention to social cohesion and water retention in order to deal with repeating patterns of flood and drought.  Representatives from the Office of the Prime Minister were also invited to learn and to share their processes and minimum criteria for agreeing to sign off on the design, which was crucial before construction. 

The final masterplan and accompanying materials will guide local participants into how to grade the site, mark out areas for construction and make maximum use of sun and wind direction and natural water flows. We hope to later adapt it into materials that can be shared with other communities designing settlements in their areas. 

The experience of working largely remotely to support local community groups to manage the design and construction of a settlement themselves has taught us all a lot about different needs and approaches and how to adapt complex language into simple actionable steps. It also showed how participants, who have received minimum schooling, have a strong spatial awareness of their environment and are able to interpret and construct maps of their surroundings. We discussed with them their vision for practical, placed-based cost-effective and climate resilient designs for their homes with architects who authored Ennead Lab’s ‘Rethinking Refugee Communities. The next step is now to grade the land and to turn the site plan into a reality. 

This short video, taken by Rolande , our community correspondent in Nakivale shows more of the early design phases