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An interdisciplinary project to coproduce sustainable and integrated approaches for community-led upgrading.
Across Africa, informal settlements struggle with poor housing, limited services and environmental hazards. But despite an increasing emphasis on participatory upgrading, communities are often constrained by lack of resources or technical knowledge to lead these processes, particularly when urban policies are designed and implemented without a clear understanding of local conditions.
Community-led Upgrading for Self-Reliance in South Africa: Integrated Construction and Environmental Management Systems in Informal Settlements seeks to support communities by strengthening their capacity to guide urban development themselves. With a focus on Durban Metropolitan Area, South Africa, the project will undertake data collection, capacity building and community mapping, in collaboration with residents, to feed into the creation of an integrated toolkit. Once the project team consolidates findings from Durban and the wider KwaZulu-Natal province, a comparison with other South African or wider African cities will be carried out. This will facilitate discussions on how the toolkit could be implemented in other regions globally.
These activities will not only build capacity of residents on community-led approaches to construction management and service provision, but also promote the creation of partnerships with other stakeholders such as local businesses, policy makers and academics. Furthermore, the knowledge generated through the research will have a wider relevance for cities in South Africa and other countries with similar challenges.