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Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme: Monwabisi Park, Cape Town Ecovillage Development and Collaborative Learning Why Monwabisi Park? Monwabisi Park (MWP) is a squatter settlement of some 5,500 households located along the southern boundary of Khayelitsha, Cape Town’s largest township. It was formed in 1997, when people began to build shacks on an adjacent, unoccupied nature reserve. Some 20,000 people, the majority from the Eastern Cape, now live in MWP. While only 20 kilometers from the central business district of Cape Town, most MWP residents have yet to find an economic foothold. The unemployment rate in MWP is about 50% and some 80% of households that do not have some form of in- come (wages, social grants, informal trading) earn less than the minimum monthly subsistence level of R1900 ($200). The Indlovu Project began in 2005 when Di Womersley of the Shaster Foundation joined forces with Buyiswa Tonono, a local street committee leader and Monwabisi Park founder of a small crèche that became the first Indlovu Centre building. The crèche and subsequent Montessori Preschool cared for young children, including AIDS or- phans. As a community-driven effort to address local needs, the project sponsored a soup kitchen, a health clinic, community gardens, and built a youth centre and a guest house, using a unique “Ecobeam” frame and sandbag construction technique. In 2007, Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) an American technical university, began working with the Indlovu project on redevelopment planning initiatives. WPI is helping to refine the project’s broad permacul- ture inspired strategy to address critical issues associ- ated with community upgrading. WPI brings intensive research and networking capacity to the project. Fifty children attend the Indlovu Crèche Buyiswa Tonono and Dianne Womersley The Challenge Informal settlements in Cape Town are home to over a million of the city’s residents. The City of Cape Town, like other cities in South Africa and around the developing world, is faced with the challenge of developing an effective approach to informal settlement upgrading. Policy has evolved from bulldozing of squatter shacks and eradication of informal settlements to in situ upgrading, but effective change on the ground is very difficult and slow. Few projects in South Africa have been successful in harnessing redevelopment investments to empower communities to address current crises in housing, water and sanitation, employment, safety and public health and questions of environmental and economic sustainability. In the foreground is one of the 221 city-installed drinking water taps in Monwabisi Park. Because The cold and wet winters of Cape Town are hard to endure in a corrugated iron shack. Gaps between the nearly half the taps in MWP are not functioning, many local residents must carry buckets of water roof and walls and nail holes, as are evident in the above photograph, let in the wind and rain which more than 200 meters to their shacks. In the background are sub-contractor serviced pour flush saturates the bedding and clothes of shack dwellers. Designing a better impermeable and insulated roof toilets. Each toilet is meant to serve 5 families, but in many cases, the toilets are poorly maintained is a high priority. or vandalized so each toilet ends up serving some 70 families. The appalling and unsafe conditions of these toilets means that many families opt to dig pit latrines near their shacks. Why a new approach for redevelopment is needed Traditional planning practices disempower citizens because they seek to impose external, technical solutions that typi- cally focus narrowly on the provision of housing rather than the development of communities. Even in terms of delivering housing, development is : too slow --- 400,000 backlog, 10,000 units delivered annually; often counter productive --- new housing projects increase sprawl and places demands on already burdened city infrastructure; poorly-suited to the needs of the community : little provision for services, community and cultural spaces; lack of consideration of public health, safety and environ- mental consequences; based on inappropriate premises of individual home own- Khayelitsha housing project. ership and suburban amenities (e.g., accommodation for cars at each house). The process of redevelopment yields few benefits in terms of sustainable jobs, training and leadership development. Such redevelopment: undermines the local economy and social networks by displacing residents during lengthy periods of relocation; fails to provide residents with employment and the skills neces- sary to maintain homes (which are often poorly built); cannot address the balkanization of city functions pertaining to informal settlements, e.g., housing, water and sanitation, disaster relief, stormwater management, electricity and trash removal, as well as “soft services” such as education, training and public health. A RADICALLY DIFFERENT APPROACH IS NEEDED Note the contrast in housing density between the state subsidized formal settlement to the north of the highway and Monwabisi Park to the south. A similar development model for MWP would lead to enormous land requirements and create a subdivision layout that reflects little of the organic settlement pattern that characterizes Monwabisi Park. Programme Goals & Partners GOALS The Partners The overall goal of this programme is to initiate The Monwabisi Park Community, participating a community-based informal settlement up- through local street committee leadership and the grading process in Monwabisi Park to: Indlovu Centre, a joint project of the community and the Shaster Foundation. 1) better the lives of community members The Shaster Foundation, dedicated to improving the 2) serve as an experimental centre and model health and well-being of impoverished communities for sustainable, in-situ community redevelop- in a sustainable way (www.shaster.org.za). ment in Cape Town. The City of Cape Town The Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrad- The over-arching vision is to forge a partnership ing Programme (VPUU), joint project with the among a diverse network of stakeholders to German Development Bank (www.vpuu.org) help the community grow from a vibrant, but Water and Sanitation Directorate impoverished squatter camp into a healthier, Sustainable Livelihoods and Greening Programme safer and more prosperous ecovillage. Ecobeam Technologies, an innovative engineering and design firm. Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), US university participating through its Cape Town Project Centre (www.wpi.edu/Academics/GPP/index.html). Ecovillage Redevelopment Principles Grow rather than supplant community Support an intensive, community-led process that can grow through collective learning over time. Combine long-term planning with meaningful, near-term im- plementation of public benefits. Address full spectrum of community needs for services and facilities. Develop infrastructure that is highly efficient, largely locally managed and job producing. Secure collective tenure and provide a basis for people to contribute and hence “earn” toward home improvements and other desired services/amenities. Strengthen social networks Facilitate local leadership and decision-making through par- ticipatory research and planning methods and leadership training. Create supportive network of actors across sectors and en- courage cross-cultural and cross-class learning and exchange among all parties. Strengthen city agencies’ capacities to understand and work with communities. Foster political support. Rapidly expand cooperation with academic institutions and students, both to create innovative responses to redevelop- ment needs, and to train next generation of urban planners, engineers, etc. Build a cohesive and caring community. Enhance resiliency and reduce vulnerability. Clockwise from the top: three local residents assist WPI researchers on a mapping project; a workshop on siting communal facilities (e.g. recreation space, youth centres); building a new shack ; boys racing Monwabisi Park style; and women using communal laundry facility at Indlovu Centre. Ecovillage Redevelopment Principles (continued) Strengthen economic development Strengthen informal economies by sourc- ing labor and services locally. Introduce formal economy opportunities (training, transportation, networking). Create complementary currency. Utilize sustainable technologies for housing and infrastructure Socially sustainable: culturally appropri- ate, community-enhancing. Economically sustainable: job producing, skill developing, inexpensive yet high quality, locally maintainable. Environmentally sustainable: resource and energy efficient, regenerative of local environment, reliant on renewable en- ergy. Heterogeneity important: no “one size fits all approach”. Using Eco-beams and sand bags, residents of Monwabisi Park build the Makazi Guest House. Ecovillage Redevelopment Strategies Plant and nurture “redevelopment seeds” strategically in community The redevelopment seed is an initial unit of development that includes: A neighborhood services centre to provide for the communal needs of local residents, including art and recreation facilities, community meeting rooms, artisanal workspaces and a soup kitchen. A water & sanitation facility to address immediate public health needs and to provide a highly visible and welcome sign of progress. The facility would use technologies such as composting toilets, in- stead of inefficient pour

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