More than 1.2 million households in South Africa live in informal settlements, without access to adequate shelter, services or secure tenure. There has been a gradual shift to upgrading these informal settlements in recent years, and there have been some innovative experiments. Upgrading Informal Settlements in South Africa: a partnership-based approach examines the successes and challenges of informal settlement upgrading initiatives in South Africa and contextualises these experiences within global debates about informal settlement upgrading and urban transformation. The book discusses: · The South African informal settlement upgrading agenda from local, national and international perspectives · South African ‘city experiences’ with informal housing and upgrading · The role of partnerships, actors and capabilities in pursuing an incremental upgrading agenda · Tools, instruments and methodologies for incremental upgrading · Implications of the upgrading agenda for the transformation of cities The book has been written and edited by a wide range of practitioners and researchers from government, NGOs, the private sector and academia. It covers theory and practice and represents a vast accumulated body of housing experience in South Africa.

Informal settlements are a shameful feature of poverty and inherited inequalities in South Africa. Defined in this book as 'settlements of the urban poor developed through the unauthorised occupation of land', they are regarded by many as unhealthy and overcrowded blights on the urban landscape 'squatter camps' in common parlance. Yet census data tell us that 16.4% of households across the country live in informal settlements, mostly in urban areas where an insecure foothold on the land enables these households to access the economic opportunities, social and economic networks and basic amenities that are essential to their survival.

Despite its many challenges and limitations the concept of in situ upgrading of informal settlements has become one of the most favoured approaches to the housing crisis in the ‘Global South’. Due to its inherent principles of incremental in situ development, prevention of relocations, protection of local livelihoods and democratic participation and cooperation, this approach is often perceived to be more sustainable than other housing approaches that often rely on quantitative housing delivery and top down planning methodologies. While this study does not question the benefits of the in situ upgrading approach, it seeks to identify problems of its practical implementation within a specific national and local context. The study discusses the origin and importance of this approach on the basis of a review of international housing policy development and analyses the broader political and social context of the incorporation of this approach into South African housing policy. It further uses insights from a recent case study in Cape Town to determine complications and conflicts that can arise when applying in situ upgrading of informal settlements in a complex local context. On that basis benefits and limitations of the in situ upgrading approach are specified and prerequisites for its successful implementation formulated.

"Informal settlements are a pressing urban challenge in South Africa and elsewhere in the world. ... What would a progressive upgrading agenda for informal settlements entail, and how could it be achieved? In [this book] ... the editors argue that approaches which are participatory and incremental offer possibilities that are both radical and attainable. This agenda departs substantially from conventional housing delivery models, requiring a reassembling of policies, programming, practices and--most importantly--power. The 26 chapters of this book are written by researchers and practitioners from a diverse range of backgrounds and experiences, and explore various aspects of participatory and incremental upgrading. They cover a wide range of topics, from alternative infrastructure technologies to redesigned fiscal frameworks."--Back cover.

In large Latin American cities the number of dwellings in informal settlements ranges from one-tenth to one-third of urban residences. These informal settlements are caused by low income, unrealistic urban planning, lack of serviced land, lack of social housing, and a dysfunctional legal system. The settlements develop over time and some have existed for decades, often becoming part of the regular development of the city, and therefore gaining rights, although usually lacking formal titles. Whether they are established on public or private land, they develop irregularly and often do not have critical public services such as sanitation, resulting in health and environmental hazards. In this report from the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, author Edesio Fernandes, a lawyer and urban planner from Latin America, studies the options for regularization of the informal settlements. Regularization is looked at through established programs in both Peru and Brazil, in an attempt to bring these settlements much needed balance and improvement. In Peru, based on Hernando de Soto's theory that tenure security triggers development and increases property value, from 1996 to 2006, 1.5 million freehold titles were issued at a cost of $64 per household. This did result in an increase of property values by about 25 percent, making the program cost effective. Brazil took a much broader and more costly approach to regularization by not only titling the land, but improving public services, job creation, and community support structures. This program in Brazil has had a cost of between $3,500 to $5,000 per household and has affected a much lower percent of the population. The report offers recommendations for improving regularization policy and identifies issues that must be addressed, such as collecting data with baseline figures to get a true evaluation of the benefit of programs established. Also, it shows that each individual informal settlement must have a customized plan, as a single approach will not work for each settlement. There is a need to include both genders for long-term effectiveness and to find ways to make the regularization self-sustaining financially. Any program must be closely monitored to insure the conditions are improved for the marginalized, as well as be sure it is not causing new informal settlements to be established.

In the past few years the issue of land invasion and government reposnses to landlessness in the Southern African region has been at the forefront of international attention. By confronting the the questions of exclusion and unlawful occupation this book examines the appropriateness of the informal settlement response in South Africa through a comparison with Brazil. This detailed comparison sets forth the difference in the approaches of both countries, with South Africa employing the individualised, standardised intervention and Brazil a more responsive one.

INFORMAL SETTLEMENT UPGRADING... The existence of expansive informal settlements in most African cities is deemed as an indication of failure of the public sector, the legislative framework and the economy to provide conditions through which the poor may be housed formally, whether this is through government programmes or private means. Indeed housing preferences and informal settlement upgrading pose a serious challenge to most local authorities, and have become a core focus in municipal housing units in South Africa. ...BENEFICIARIES' PREFERENCES... The main objective of this paper is to explore the outcomes of Lamontville informal settlement upgrading project in Durban, and to be able to see through the beneficiaries' eyes if houses that have been built for them is what they had always desired. The aim is to bring out the informal settlement upgrading experiences as perceived by the beneficiaries ...AND THE NEED FOR A PARADIGM SHIFT... There is need for a paradigm shift in the way in which informal settlement upgrading is executed at the municipality level. There should be extensive involvement of the civil society, non-governmental organizations and communities at large.

Winner of the ACSA/AIA Housing Design Education Award! There is an increased interest among architects, urban specialists and design professionals to contribute to solve "the housing problem" in developing countries. The Invisible Houses takes us on a journey through the slums and informal settlements of South Africa, India, Colombia, Honduras, El Salvador, Cuba, Haiti and many other countries of the Global South, revealing the challenges of, and opportunities for, improving the fate of millions of poor families. Stressing the limitations of current approaches to housing development, Gonzalo Lizarralde examines the short-, mid- and long-term consequences of housing intervention. The book covers – among others – the issues of planning, design, infrastructure and project management. It explains the different variables that need to be addressed and the causes of common failures and mistakes, while outlining successful strategies based on embracing a sustained engagement with the complexity of processes that are generally invisible.

The South African government's attempts to provide land and housing for the poor have been focused primarily on interventions at the policy level and within internal state bureaucracies. But experiences of social movements for land and housing have shown that significant opportunities for formal institutional change occur through relationships of both contestation and collaboration between such movements and state institutions, especially at the local level. Such a relatively underexplored mechanism of institutional reform enables us to understand exactly how such change processes gain legitimacy and potency. This thesis draws on case studies of two recent, formalized partnerships between grassroots social movements and local authorities in the metropolitan municipality of Cape Town and the municipality of Stellenbosch. The studies examine exactly how such relationships create the space for both conflict and collaboration between communities and city government. They are based on semi-structured interviews with government officials, community, and movement leaders, and participant observations of engagements between the movements and city authorities in January and June-August 2012. The evidence suggests that theories of the state and institutional change require much greater attention to the multiple ways in which social movements interact with the state in order to realize rights of access to land and housing. The contingent endowments of these actors allow them to be more or less able to trigger institutional reform processes. When change has occurred, collaboration has been essential. But these cases also highlight the value of a credible threat of conflict based on city-wide mobilization, no matter how quietly such a threat lurks in the background. Policy interventions in the urban land and housing sector in South Africa, pitched as rational bureaucratic recipes, are unlikely to realize such rights without institutionalized engagements, especially at the city level, with organized social movements of the landless urban poor that articulate both conflictual and collaborative tendencies.