give a damn

There are a few homeless people in the world, but not nearly as many as some people would have us believe.

There are billions of inadequately housed, under-resourced, oppressed, crime-ridden, malnourished and disease-afflicted people. But that is not the same as being homeless. I draw the (perhaps obvious) distinction because governments responsible for the welfare of large numbers of housing-challenged people have a tendency to set themselves housing targets so that they can claim political points for providing homes for the homeless. It's time to change the paradigm; time to take the focus off the house and put it onto the services needed to support the community.

I am not for a moment suggesting that a tin-and-cardboard shack is preferable to a more robust dwelling, but given the inability of government agencies (in South Africa, at least) to deliver houses on a scale that eliminates informal shacks and in a way that keeps communities intact, I have to wonder why there isn't official recognition that conditions in squatter settlements need to be improved.

There are South African planners who have been pushing this idea for years, but there are only isolated pockets where anything of significance has been done. In yesterday's Cape Times, chartered architect and urban designer Erik Schaug [article requires subscription] asks why site-and-service schemes have such a bad reputation. They have been done badly in the past in South Africa, but there are great international examples of places that began as site-and-service schemes and are now highly sought-after locations (Manhattan is one of them; Constantia in Cape Town is another). Site-and-service does not necessarily apply to in situ upgrading, but it can do. Schaug's point is that this approach can provide the essentials for living safely and healthily, without limiting options for building. If we limit options, we invariably limit affordability, and a creative approach could serve the poor more efficiently. South African efforts at housing former shack-dwellers - even very recent projects - have fallen woefully short of community expectations.

One way in which planners can demonstrate that they give a damn about communities is by dropping the insistence on building with concrete blocks. Design Like You Give a Damn is a book by Architecture for Humanity that provides a great illustration of ways to provide intermediate forms of housing - somewhere between leaky makeshift shacks and unaffordable brick houses. Planners and engineers fear the slackening of standards that this suggests, but what - apart from huddling under a bridge - can be worse than a tin shack? There is a tendency to assume that shacks are temporary - and can't be controlled anyway - so "let's just make sure that anything more permanent meets engineering and safety standards". Problem is, firstly, that the shacks aren't as temporary as they appear; and secondly, many of the government-mandated houses intended to replace the shacks haven't met the required standards anyway, or are too expensive for shack-dwellers. There are plenty of ideas out there for building smarter. Better designs, using materials that have reduced environmental impact. This doesn't have to apply only to the rich set.

Another way to give a damn is to allow the layout of residential areas to respond to the needs of the community. Rectangular road grids are designed to make things easier for planners, surveyors, engineers - everyone except the people who end up living in them. It's no accident that settlements that emerge organically, without formal planning, do not adopt a grid system. Like squatter settlements in South Africa, and just about every settlement in Botswana. These places are designed for people who walk. A lot.

 

I find these two images fascinating. The top one is part of the rural village of Sekoma in the Southern District of Botswana. It is informal in layout, but is officially sanctioned. In other words, the dwellings are not built by squatters, but by residents who have title to the land. Typical of Botswana, the houses (some traditional rondavels, some rectangular houses) have been arranged in ways that suit the owners, and the meandering walkways demonstrate the interconnectedness of the community and an almost complete disregard for the paved roadways that divide it.

The second image is of two informal squatter settlements in the area of Philippi East in Cape Town, South Africa, where population pressures put much more of a premium on open space than is the case in Botswana. The main difference between the densely packed shacks on the north side of Lansdowne Road and the low-density sprawl on the south side is who controls the land and how they allocate it to residents. Technically, both are illegal occupations, and both ensure that people on foot have convenient access to the public transport services on Lansdowne Road. And, crucially, they are real communities that cannot be wished away. The people who live in Philippi East, while they lack legal title, have almost as much security of tenure as the residents of Sekoma in Botswana. There are parts of Lansdowne Road where City planners would like to remove shacks from within the road reserve, so that they can add bus lanes to serve the community, but this takes delicate negotiations to avoid a political backlash.

Geometrically tidy grids are for cars, for laying pipes, for stringing wires, and for setting out rectangular houses with greater efficiency. But informal settlements don't have these things, so they don't need grids. And if they don't need grids, then engineering services such as water, sewerage, and electricity can still be brought in to established communities using more creative strategies that don't require wiping out the community with bulldozers. Piecemeal can work - not easily, but it can be done. Wholesale replacement doesn't work.

And even if we do stick with rectangular grids, despite their shortcomings, there are creative ways for arranging dwellings so that the available space - limited as it is - can be used optimally for playing, relaxing, growing vegetables, or hanging laundry.

Update on 14 May 2008:

I just came across another example of someone trying to solve the housing crisis by providing a cheaper dwelling. There have been many over the years, but this is the most recent South African example I have seen. Architect Doug Sharp, with BSB Design, from Iowa, USA, set out to solve the Third World Housing Crisis. After a year of toiling, his team came up with a starter home kit called the Abod which looks neat, can be distributed in a box small enough for FedEx to handle, and can be assembled in a day with almost no tools. Prototypes were set up in Soshanguve, near Pretoria.

Cool. But here's the clincher: the company figures that "[o]nce mass production of the homes begins, the cost per unit could be as low as $1,500." Okaaay. Where's my calculator? At today's exchange rate, that's R11,400 and change. Now somebody please tell me how that is affordable for someone living in a shantytown. I'm sure it's a pretty innovative design, and may even win an award or two. But it does not solve the housing problem.

Even if the government were to heavily subsidise this little home-in-a-box, I have a hunch that the intended recipients would not be keen to live in a tin arch. What they live in now is worse, granted, but if government is going to take credit for handing them out, history has shown that the new residents will expect something akin to what their wealthier neighbours have, not a radically cute playhouse. But let's say I'm wrong, and cultural resistance can be overcome.

A more serious concern is that they are designed for inefficient use of land. They will not achieve the densities needed to house the poor, and would end up putting people on the sprawling outskirts of cities, where they have no access to transport, jobs or amenities - exactly the problem encountered with the ill-fated RDP houses. On top of that, these houses can't be built upon by the homeowners. They can't be extended up, or sideways, or anyways. They have a fixed design, with no opportunity for residents to "grow into" as they improve their economic situation. Residents who manage to improve their wealth will move out, ensuring that the Adob suburb remains forever an impoverished suburb.

Comments

[Audrey]

Thanks for an excellent entry as usual, Rory. I keep thinking, if we had a hundred Rory Williamses and spread them around the place strategically, we'd be ok.

[Rory]

I am blushing.

[Emil]

This is an excellent post. I guess there is possibly a complete new study direction here that engineering schools should look into. City Planners and landscapers are far too traditionally schooled to tackle challenges like these. Regardless, as you say, it is not possible to wish these settlements away - and a fresh look is required to optimise traditional factors.

[Rory]

I think there is lots of good academic work out there on how to improve urban design and transport systems, but I agree that the training - especially for us engineers - is still not focused enough on how to address current challenges. I think we sometimes lose sight of the big picture.

When the automobile was introduced, it was seen as a solution to the health issues associated with too many horses in cities. Taken to the extreme, that solution clearly is now causing its own problems.

[demoerin]

Excellent post. Will visit again. It is so true, why not have a nationwide engineering/architectual competition to address housing needs. Unfortunately government just not seem to be doing enough. It is one thing to recognise a problem, but something totally different to actualy do something about it, and that would be doing something without any personal gain.