Assessing people's views of infrastructure: methodologies to study urban shared sanitation

Adrien P. Mazeau (1) , Brian Reed (1)

1 WEDC - Water, Engineering and Development Centre

Providing sanitation services in low-income areas in fast-growing cities is a significant challenge for urban planners, donors and governments. Making these services sustainable by answering the needs of heterogeneous urban population is a major step to meet this challenge. This paper shows the necessity of exploring users' views when planning sanitation facilities on low-income and high-density settlements. An initial desk based study highlights the multi-disciplinary components of urban sanitation projects and the central role played by the facilities' users. Focusing on shared sanitation facilities, the users' needs and perceptions are at the crossroad of the different dimensions of sustainability. Bringing together assessment practices from social science, engineering and economics leads to new methodologies able to take a multi-dimensional picture of people's practices and needs.

Mots clés: Sustainability; people's perception; sanitation; slums; developing countries

Domaines: Environnement et Société

Adrien P. Mazeau, Brian Reed. Assessing people's views of infrastructure: methodologies to study urban shared sanitation. World Wide Workshop for Young Environmental Scientists: 2010, May 2010, Arcueil, France. ⟨hal-00521409⟩