Mongolia

I decided to explore the country of Mongolia for my travel project due to a pre-existing fascination with the Nomadic lifestyle of the people who live there. I was convinced to do my paper on this country when I found that the only architectural project underway directly pertained to the housing designs of the Nomadic people, the yurt.
I discovered that the Nomadic people are actually changing their pastoral lifestyle in order to better acclimate to a city setting. In search of jobs and a better income, these herdsmen have sold much of their livestock and moved their yurts into city limits, primarily in Ulaanbaatar, the country's capital city. While the yurts were perfectly adequate for country living, they fail to satisfy the structural and sanitary requirements of urban life.
Some of the questions I found myself asking pertained to the amount of cultural qualities being lost due to this transition, the struggles of a population's transformation from a familiar life to that of a practically foreign one, and (after we did presentations) how my project related to those of John and Alexandra.