Project topics and materials
Get Complete Project Material File(s) Now! »
Research delimitations
The study is focused on the work of Goethert & Hamdi (1997), which is considered relevant to the question regarding strategies of engagement in informal settlements.
Goethert has been teaching at Massachusetts Institute of Technology Architecture Department since 1970, where he is the director of the Special Interest Group in Urban Settlement (SIGUS). He is an educator, researcher and adviser to institutions such as the World Bank and United Nations, with specifi c interest in methodologies of settlement design, where participatory planning methods at community level are linked to strategic city planning (MIT SIGUS 2014). Hamdi comes from an architectural background with his primary working experience having been in the social housing sector in London, England.
Concerns for end-user participation as part of design development underpins the trajectory of his subsequent teaching career at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, as well has his prolifi c publications (Oxford Brookes 2015).
In 1997, the United Nations awarded Hamdi and Goethert the UN-Habitat Scroll of Honour for their work on Community Action Planning (MIT SIGUS 2014; Oxford Brookes 2015).
Principles and strategies described in the Community Action Planning, continued to infl uence Hamdi’s thinking in the publication of Small Change: About the art of practice and the limits of planning in cities (2004) and The Placemaker’s Guide to Building Community (2010).
The Masters course developed by Hamdi at Oxford Brookes University, where Goethert is a visiting tutor, further explores and applies this approach to the engagement in informal urbanism. This course has been recognised for its validity and importance by being awarded with the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Higher and Further Education in 2001 (Oxford Brookes 2015).
Continued work as educator, researcher and consultant in participatory action planning and slum upgrading has resulted in various international awards and accolades, including his acknowledgement by the University of Pretoria, South Africa, who awarded Hamdi an Honorary Doctorate in 2008.
I assumed responsibility for the research fi eld of Housing and Urban Environments (H-UE) at the honours level (4th academic year) at the Department of Architecture, University of Pretoria (UP) in 2010. The focus of the research fi eld had been infl uenced by the work of John Habraken (1972, 1998) as well as Nabeel Hamdi (2004) and includes a broad spectrum of housing-related investigation.
The seven week module dedicated to H-UE offered a well-suited platform of investigation for the question raised in this thesis, as Hamdi’s concepts were principally embedded into the philosophy of engagement. From 2011, the research fi eld was renamed Human Settlements and Urbanism (HSU) in response to the concern that a primary focus on housing would undermine a holistic and integrative perspective on the role of architects in the context of emerging urbanism. For this reason, the study resides in the research fi eld of Human Settlements and Urbanism.
Introduction to the informal settlement community residing in Slovo Park, Johannesburg, occurred by way of the (then) Minister for Human Settlements, Tokyo Sexwale and late chairperson of the Federation of the Urban Poor (FEDUP), Mr Patrick Magebula. Following on a Department of Human Settlements workshop held in 2009 where the main question of this thesis was raised, I was introduced to Mr Magebula by Minister Sexwale, who suggested a meeting with Mr Max Rambau, chairperson for Gauteng of the Community Resource Centre (CORC) at the time. Mr Rambau then introduced me to Mr Mohau Melani, a community leader in Slovo Park. Discussions with Mr Melani and other members of the Slovo Park Community Development Forum confi rmed the community’s interest in cooperation with me for the purposes of this thesis investigation as well as with the students enrolled for the honours course at UP as part of the research. For the purposes of comparative analysis, a second research site was established in 2011 through the institutional agreement between the UP Community Engagement Department and the Non-Profi t Organisation Viva Foundation (2014) in the informal settlement of Alaska to the east of Mamelodi, Pretoria. The establishment of the relationship between the University and Viva Foundation follows on the national imperative to introduce service learning to institutions of higher education in South Africa as embedded in the Higher Education Act of 1997 (SA 1997).
Motivation for the study
The motivation for this study stems from my personal experience as a practicing architect in the context of an informal settlement upgrade proposal in the Northern Cape in South Africa. During the course of this engagement, formal processes were followed in which the design mandate resided with the professional team. Regular meetings with all the relevant stakeholders including the resident community were scheduled in which design proposals were communicated in a top-down manner to the affected parties. The process spanned a period of two years, at the end of which a complete settlement layout was approved by the Surveyor- General. Despite this apparently successful conclusion, the project was terminated due to dissatisfaction by the resident community.
Subsequent workshops undertaken with the community revealed false assumptions that had been made during the course of the design development and especially highlighted the failure of the top-down decision-making model. The inability to address many of the concerns that were made evident during these workshops indicated the need for a transformation of the process of architectural engagement in this context.
Although the project served as a valuable exposure to the issues raised in this thesis, a concern with ethical and academic rigour has precluded the inclusion of further details describing this encounter.
The signifi cance of the research resides within the global concern that the profession of architecture assumes a marginal position with regard to informal urbanism. It is widely held that the profession can and ought to engage more critically within this context, both as a social responsibility to the inhumane conditions under which millions of people subsist, as well as a concern for the increased paucity of a relevant professional discourse. This concern translates into a conceptual framing that is aligned with the writings of Lopes de Souza (2012, 2014) in which he describes the need for a libertarian aspect to the debate on urban issues. The investigation is therefore biased towards discovering a potential transformation within the architectural profession to relate to the autonomy of those sectors of society currently marginalized through skewed power relations.
Within this wider concern, the research considers the context of education as the basis from which such discourse can evolve. In the South African Education Act of 1997 (SA 1997), the principle of service learning or community engagement was introduced as an important component to redress social inequity. The signifi cance of this relates to the relationship between professional capacity building as an integral part of the socio-political reconstruction of the South African society. Informal urbanism represents the physical manifestation of a continued disparity and poses a challenge for many professional fi elds, including architecture. Proposing methods of engagement in the context is therefore signifi cant in the development of architectural curricula towards modes of praxis in South Africa.
The current lack of a shared methodology or parameters of assessment result in adhoc strategies for students and practitioners of architecture to engage in informal settlements. While this is not a negative approach in principle, it is argued that such ad-hoc practices remain marginal and do not achieve the mainstream application that is required to address the problem at scale. The signifi cance of an empirical investigation of strategies proposed by Goethert & Hamdi (1997) resides in offering a critique and augmentation of the Community Action Planning platform, thereby developing a working methodology that can be duplicated and validated as an integral part of the expected outcomes of architectural education, thus creating a basis for professional praxis.
World Bank policies pertaining to slum upgrades
For the past 50 years, the World Bank has provided large loans for urban housing programmes and directed national policies, thereby rendering it the most powerful infl uence on global housing policies (Pugh 2000:327).
Between 1972 and 1982 the Bank favoured Turner’s views and promoted sites and services as well as in-situ slum upgrading projects (Pugh 2000:327). Those projects were not very successful from the Bank’s perspective, having a low cost recovery, minimal impact on citywide reforms and often resulting in greater social problems due to the remote positioning of these sites and services.
Between 1983 and 1993 the focus shifted to deeper institutional reform and development, with funds being channeled through housing fi nance systems. In low-income developing countries, however, these programmes were not always effective, if they existed at all. From the 1990s, the World Bank promoted the concept of enablement, seeing housing as economically productive in its capacity to generate income and employment multipliers (Pugh 2000:328).
Institutional reform towards economic effi cacy and social effectiveness in the housing sector, as well as improved governance, became the objective. In terms of informal settlement upgrades, the three strategic sectors would be included to create the ideal conditions for enablement: a broad, inclusive representation of the residents (community); the technical know-how (represented by the appropriate professionals) and the requisite urban authorities. Together, principles and rules of engagement and responsibility would create the required conditions for enablement.
1. Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1. Background
1.2. Main research question
1.3. Defi nition of terms
1.4. Motivation for the study
2. Chapter 2 Overview of approaches to informal settlement upgrade
2.1. Introduction
2.2. International overview
2.3. South African context
2.4. Conclusion
3. Chapter 3 Determining the key factors that contribute to the marginality of architecture to the discourse on informal settlement upgrade
3.1. Introduction
3.2. Defi nition of in-situ upgrade of informal settlements
3.3. Transformative mandate
3.4. Tri-sectoral balance
3.5. Tenure security
3.6. Participation
3.7. The role of architects
3.8. Conclusion
4. Chapter 4 Community Action Planning
4.1. Introduction
4.2. Background and chronological development
4.3. Community Action Planning as a platform of engagement to address the key factors contributing to marginality
4.4. Conclusion
5. Chapter 5 Case Study: Application of Community Action Planning at a South African school of architecture
5.1. Introduction
5.2. 2010 RFP 721 (Slovo Park, Johannesburg)
5.3. Upgrade of community hall in Slovo Park, Johannesburg
5.4. 2011 RFP 721 (Alaska, Mamelodi: Pretoria)
5.5. 2011 Workshop Series (Slovo Park, Johannesburg)
5.6. 2012 RFP 721 (Slovo Park, Johannesburg)
5.7. 2012 Hall Upgrade 2 (Slovo Park, Johannesburg)
5.8. 2013 RFP 721 (Slovo Park, Johannesburg and Alaska, Mamelodi)
5.9. Conclusion to chapter 5
6. Chapter 6 Findings from case study
6.1. Introduction
6.2. Application of CAP and Augmentation
6.3. Patterns of convergence in terms of CAP methodology
6.4. Addressing the key factors contributing to the marginality of the architectural profession to the discourse on informal settlement upgrade
6.5. Conclusion
7. Chapter 7 Conclusion
7.1. Introduction
7.2. Conclusions to sub-question one
7.3. Conclusions to sub-question two
7.4. Conclusions to sub-question three
7.5. Recommendations for further research
7.6. Conclusion
List of figures
List of tables
Bibliography
Addenda
