2068 CIB World Building Congress 2007 CIB2007-087 Ready-made shacks: Learning from the informal sector to meet housing needs in South Africa Gonzalo Lizarralde (
[email protected]) Dave Root (
[email protected]) ABSTRACT The informal construction sector has been the only industry capable of providing affordable housing solutions for the urban poor in developing countries. While South African housing policies rely on the formal construction sector for attaining the ambitious targets of subsidized housing delivery, townships keep growing with the support of informal processes. The strategies and outputs of both sectors are dramatically different; while the formal industry relies on standardization, repetition, and the use of new materials and a single technology, the informal sector takes full advantage of variety, multiplicity, recycling and combination of technologies. Surprisingly, this does not prevent the informal sector from looking for specialization and innovation. In South Africa, one of these remarkable innovations is the market of pre-fabricated shacks. By using a modular design, a simplified process and an efficient service and delivery, informal enterprises display competitive advantages to adapt to the hostile conditions of the low-cost housing market. The formal housing sector has much to learn from the informal strategies, logic and processes of the informal sector. This is rather an unusual technology transfer, but it is one that has the potential to reduce the ever-growing gap between demand and formal housing delivery in South Africa. Keywords: Informal Sector; Low-cost Housing; Prefabrication, Technology Transfer, Innovation. CIB World Building Congress 2007 2069 1. INTRODUCTION Since John Turner’s call for a better understanding of spontaneous settlements (in Housing as a verb, 1972) a number of authors have emphasized the role of the informal sector in the provision of housing for the urban poor.