When Tokyo was a slum.

[InaSamaale]

Great article thanks for sharing. Seems simple enough, get folks to build their own houses, supply them with infrastructure, allow them to run small scaled businesses and factories to generate income.

Gurey, what do you think could be the possible challenges in applying such a model to any such Somali city?

[gurey25]

No, I've never been. I don't know about you but, I would rather live in Singapore than Tokyo. Somae of the infrastructure looks cluttered and third-world like the telephone wies and power cables. Also those massive billboards of anime and manga pictures and huge neon lights are off-putting.

thats because you have been living in a normal city that developed organically, not an artificial construct like the gulf cities like Abudhabi.
Disneyland feels more real than Abudhabi and i have been to Disneyland so i can compare.
Singapore is beautiful ill give you that and it would be an amazing place to live , but i have been there too there are echos of Abudhabi,
and i am sensitive to that.

Tokyo has grown organically, it is a mixture of order and chaos, its a mixture of the cuttting edge with traditions hundreds of years old,
i found it refreshing.

[gurey25]

Gurey, what do you think could be the possible challenges in applying such a model to any such Somali city?

the main challenge is ignorance, the lack of knowledge about how to do anything, and a lack of imagination and basically apathy.
There is so much that could be done right now, it require no aid, no expensive machinery.
just an open mind.

[InaSamaale]

Lack of knowledge can be addressed by hiring individuals with that skill to teach people. The bit about lack of apathy is more problematic. How do you instill in a people the desire to be an active agent in bettering their lives and surrounding communities?

The article touched on how Tokyo's residents could easily envisage what the city had been prior to the war. Their apathy may have stemmed from that. You have 22 year olds in Somalia that may not be able to do the same so easily.

[gurey25]

there is no hope, nobody has any vision.
its more than ignorance..
this is why people are leaving on the refugee boats.

hiring educated people is not enough, because they probably do not have the right type of knowledge.
a degree in your field is not enough..
you need someone with ambition,an open mind a spark and you need to support them.

[LiquidHYDROGEN]

It's laziness and complacency.