The Addis Ababa city block

The Horizontal Above Vertical Concept (H/V)

Imagine: An older woman living in an informally built single-storey, 3 m-by-6 m house in the inner city earns her income by preparing and selling drinks, renting out bunk beds, and providing storage and a shed for street vendors; she even keeps goats. She does all of this out of her home.

Imagine: A main street in an old inner-city residential area. Shops made out of metal sheets line the street, hiding houses behind them. The owners of the houses earn income by renting out these shops, while the shop-keepers earn money by selling goods. It is a combination of Gulit (open street shops), home-based enterprises, rental shops, and micro and small enterprises.

Imagine: Another inner-city street lined with houses, where activities related to households, businesses, recreation and social functions all happen concurrently. People cook, do laundry, garden, do woodwork, raise chickens, sit outside, sell charcoal, khat, food and drinks, work as tailors, shine shoes, rent out bicycles and more.

Imagine: Informal extensions of housing, mainly in the city’s intermediate zone and outskirts, provide extra rooms to accommodate older and married children, to rent out for additional income, to run home-based enterprises, or to accommodate additional household functions. (In the majority of cases, the motivation is to generate more income.)
 

This is how a majority of low-income people in Addis Ababa’s inner city live…. In fact, Addis Ababa has been dubbed the “Blue City”, after the blue tarpaulins that cover the shops. Having even a fraction of the city’s prime spaces not just to live in, but to generate income, is vitally important for low-income people. Given this reality, the H/V concept aims to enable the City to use land for housing as efficiently as possible while preserving existing livelihood options…. Read more