A review of infrastructure services for the upgrading of South African informal settlements
Informal settlements are rapidly growing around South Africa's urban centres. With the current housing policy unable to cope with the housing backlog, let alone the growth in demand, new solutions need to be found to improve the unpleasant, unhealthy and unsafe conditions in these settlements. Often, the only engineering interventions are 'emergency' services provided as a temporary solution until formal housing can be provided. While in-situ upgrading of informal settlements is becoming more widely practiced, there is still a lack of knowledge and expertise regarding the provision of infrastructure services in these settlements. Those services which are provided are simply a transfer of the same high levels of service used in greenfield low-cost housing projects. This approach ignores that fact that informal settlements are here to stay and that they are, by their nature, entirely different to other settlements and require innovative technical infrastructure solutions . The aim of this thesis is to provide a review of the various options available for upgrading infrastructure in informal settlements and to assess the applicability of each of these in the context of South African informal settlements. A broader objective is to challenge the conventional development paradigm which centres on the provision of a 'package' of linked services according to a Level of Service Matrix. It is argued that this rigid categorisation of services and settlements oversimplifies the complexity of the technical and social choices that have to be made in the context of informal settlements. The hypothesis that is presented is that it is beneficial to treat each of the services independently in order to identify the criteria for selecting particular technologies, to provide sufficient options and flexibility to create real demand for infrastructure, and to challenge the traditional associations between certain services. An analysis of each of the four main infrastructure services - Sanitation, Water Supply, Drainage and Access - has therefore been undertaken in four separate chapters.
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