«It was a very enriching learning experience. The most notable knowledge we acquired was to get to learn about the Ethiopian urbanism through the eyes of local students and guides in this field visit»
Giovanni Dorneles Munoz

«I was mesmerized by the dynamics and vividness of the public life on the streets and the versatile functions and overlaying usages public spaces have in Ethiopia. This is lacking when we look at our local market place in Weimar»
Leonie Magdalene Borutta

«My favourite experience was talking with this amazing lady selling coffee on the A1 in Bishoftu. She was hilarious»
Martina Hanewinkel

After getting a day of cultural programme and museum visits after arriving on early Sunday morning, on the second day the IUDD student group was invited for Workshops and lectures at the Emerging City Lab by professors of the Ethiopian Institute of Architecture, Building Construction (EIABC) at Addis Ababa University.  The sessions introduced students to current urban development in Ethiopia’s capital Addis Ababa, the challenges and contexts of rural-urban migration and typical problems of rapid urbanisation and traffic development, going hand in hand with an increased mobilisation of motorised traffic. 
 
The workshop was followed by a longer neighbourhood walk with many spontaneous encounters in a typical neighbourhood made of one-story clay and stone houses roofed by metal sheets, appearing to have characteristics of rural living, partly combined and supported through urban agriculture. Here, the group also got the chance to have a tour through a primary school and talks with school teachers who explained not only about the educational system, but also how infrastructure in water, sanitation, energy, food and a small agricultural site is organized on the school’s compound. 
 
Outside again, along the street the group also met with vendors of very small businesses, visited a sanitation project with was part of a previous BMBF funded project „Ecological sanitation and waste management, and organic urban agriculture for emerging cities in Sub-Saharan Africa“ together with scientists from FZ Jülich. Finishing the walk in the dawn, the evening ended in a traditional music  and dance hall and local food.
 
The third day served in preparation of the main focus of the study trip. Here, students from Bauhaus-University Weimar were coupled to their Ethiopian group twins from the EiABC to work together the next day. Taking place at the ECL presentations and discussion were dedicated to explore the mobility patterns and urban forms of the growing industrial city and tourist destination Bishoftu, a town of estimated 190.000 habitants, embedded in landscape of crater lakes. Amidst the lakes, being natural barriers of the urban footprint – the city is highly frequented by heavy traffic and pollution, as a main transport arteria for trucks and fright trains from the port city Djibouti to Addis Ababa. 
 
After the presentations students got a methodological preparation and short training for surveying, and were briefed how to use a mobile phone based surveying software for quantitative data collection from a survey developed for the research project. After packing the roof of the tour bus the group finally started for their four days stay in Bishoftu. After dinner, the day closed with an evening briefing for the survey on the next day. 
 
The combined small groups of German-International-Ethiopian  students sprawled out the next morning for trips to selected survey spots. While exploring Bishoftu’s city center to apply the app-based full traffic survey with their smartphones on the morning - the afternoon was dedicated to do a Micro Survey with only 4 questions. The approach was introduced to the students during lunch. The focus was to find out the mobility habits of people owning or working at businesses or as street vendors and their customers and how those destinations were embedded in the urban fabric. The evening served to discuss and evaluate the two different surveying methods and research goals. Both survey methods were repeated the next day, now for the final destination, the design studio’s site in the North-East of Bishoftu. Surveying the urban fringe with same land uses contexts as the day before lead to very new conclusions especially when considering the productive agricultural uses and the diverging goals of a city’s expansion. The evening discussion finally served an evaluation and discussion in comparing the methods again, but especially the spatial + social contexts explored on the two days. The fourth and last day in Bishoftu (12. May 2023) closed with a trip and visit of a rural settlement in the context of farming and students again could ask their questions to locals in the context of the Yerer area and transfer the micro survey to the context of farming and rural-urban interrelations. Spontaneously, a farming family invited the whole group to sit in their yard and preparing fresh coffee. For many of the group, this lead to discussions about eco-sensitivity, rural lifestyles and questions about where the importance of resources for daily life are grown. 
 
Back in Weimar, after the trip, the group started to work on the their concepts for the future visions for the Bishoftu’s North, linking parametric urban design scenarios, interpreting possible models of traffic development and integrating the knowledge based on the surveys and studies gained in Bishoftu. 
 
 
The research trip was taking place as part of the research project INTEGRATED URBAN MOBILITY (INUMO). Digital Methods for Interactive Scenario Development of Sustainable Traffic Infrastructure for Emerging Cities in Ethiopia. The collaborative project in which different disciplines and partners are involved is funded through means of the German Ministry for Education and Research (BMBF) with the German Academic Research Association (DAAD), which also supported the study trip.