In december 2009 a team of academics and scholars of architecture and city-planning met for an international conference on the topic: emergency housing2. The conference acknowledged as its premise that the dwelling remains a primary need for over one billion people around the world who still live in precarious conditions. The conference’s aims and objectives were to bring living back to the top of the list of concerns on the third-millennium city. Living is intended as the right to a home, as stated by the 1948 universal declaration of human rights, art. 25. Contributions to the conference explored both the processes inherent to dwelling in our cities (housing the emergency) and the problems of housing in unpredictable, disaster circumstances (the emergency of housing).
