Situation of communities in recent urban contexts, Mustafa Sherif

We had an interview with Mustafa Sherif, urban planner and architect, about the situation of communities in recent urban contexts. According to Mustafa’s professional experience, next to the use of architecture as the “hardware” of community building, it needs the “software” of social organization, the “orgware” for bringing people together to make a change. According to Mustafa, this makes the difference between a true community and a mere audience. The prevailing mode today is to have only an audience - people fed with information. But this is not enough to create communities. In this respect, we also addressed critical success factors for building communities.