Enumerate the Settlement

An important step of the reblocking process is enumeration of the settlement. This consists of a community-driven census, where community leaders survey every household to gather information about demographics as well as the physical dimensions and state of each structure. Therefore, before any map layout could be created in Flamingo, enumeration needed to take place. Although this process took place two years before our arrival to Flamingo Crescent, we learned about its benefits in the later stages of reblocking.

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Flamingo Crescent community members, ISN, and WPI students updating and digitizing the current savings

When enumeration took place in the settlement, information such as name, age, employment status, and identification number of the people living in every household was recorded.  During our work in Flamingo, this enumeration data helped us realize that many residents did not have an identification number. Therefore, we took an initiative to connect with the City in an effort to issue them new ID booklets. However, enumeration also brought information regarding physical space. Through this step, members of the community measured and assigned numbers to each of the structures. They also took notes of the desired size that each family wanted for their reblocked structure.  This data was extremely useful when planning the reblocked layout by defining the space needed for every structure.

Since enumeration was done at the very beginning of the process, it was essential to update and verify the information regularly.  Many times through the process there were households that wanted to modify their house size.  Some of them wanted to add an extension, while others wanted to downsize to a more affordable structure. Other households contained multiple families and wanted to separate their single structure into two. Some structures needed to be removed as some members of the community had moved out or unfortunately passed away. Updating the enumeration data was important in order to recognize these changes and integrate them into the reblocking layout. Because these changes were random and unexpected, we regularly asked community leaders for updates to pre-empt any changes.

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