URBAN DESIGN FOR CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT IN INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS CASE STUDY: DIEPSLOOT, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA. PUBLIC SPACE AND ENVIRONMENTAL INFRASTRUCTURE Mark Lindsay Tyrrell URBAN DESIGN FOR CAPACITY DEVELOPMENT IN INFORMAL SETTLEMENTS CASE STUDY: DIEPSLOOT, JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA. PUBLIC SPACE AND ENVIRONMENTAL INFRASTRUCTURE c 2008 Mark Lindsay Tyrrell iii ‘Consider the informal city: one billion people live in slums; the modern city is in crisis; the population will double by 2020; only the present matters.’ (Brillembourg et al. 2005) iv EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The overall proposition of this project will be the ultimate aim of the whole of community consultation but without is that urban design can set up the process. ongoing input in the process. This vision is parameters for successful capacity not however regarded as the fi nal design Smaller projects will then form the basis of development in developing countries solution. further community, NGO and governmental through the process and product of a development partnerships, be phased over The appendix component of this document, locally and government owned urban time and acted upon. Community capacity outside its basis as a design exploration design vision or physical development and community cohesion will be built is a proposed outline of where the project framework. This vision is seen as an through the local management of the urban will lead when returned to Johannesburg. agreed direction for improvement that is design process and vision, programme The idea of producing a design framework born from specifi c realities of the site rather formulation, development planning in isolation is that it becomes a cohesive than a top down solution or element of and implementation, and evaluation and strong direction that can instigate external aid for a specifi c problem. This and maintenance of the progressive discussion and activity at community and theoretical exploration and method is to development operations. governmental level. The vision will be be put into practice through a pilot project. presented to government and community This project will develop an urban design This document is to be understood as and if government support is obtained framework for the township of Diepsloot, having two major components and an will be followed by design workshops Johannesburg. appendix. The fi rst component seeks a that try to reconfi gure the vision into working method suited to this project. The basis for the pilot project has been realisable, locally owned smaller projects. It outlines the contexts within which the founded from site based research and The appendix also sets out the steps that pilot project is taking place. These are the community consultation undertaken in will be taken to move the design vision theoretical and historical dimensions of 2007. This information has then been back into community and government capacity development and of city design taken off site and explored through this ownership. The appendix also proposes as a development tool. These explorations document. An urban design vision is evaluation methods for this project based of theoretical context will result in some proposed here that has evolved through on those used by the United Nations, of their elements being combined into a a process of examining the ‘informal’ World Bank and NGOs for capacity working method for the pilot design project layers of the township and how they work development projects. and for its restructuring once returned to with or against its ‘formal’ layers. The South Africa. This is an experimental document. It design exploration makes proposals for attempts to develop the possibilities of interventions that can become part of The second part is the urban design the practice of urban design for capacity an open discussion and design process exploration itself. This component relies development in the developing world. involving community, government on community consultation undertaken in and internal and external experts in 2007 and on the analytical tools of urban Johannesburg in mid 2008. design. It is also a visionary exercise, imagining the possibilities of what could In this phase, the urban design vision be. The pilot project is an opportunity will be challenged and reworked by to draw together ideas into a physical government and community. The design proposal and revised development reconfi guration of these proposals into a vision for the township of Diepsloot. It is new physical design vision agreed upon to be understood that this is a designer and owned by community and government led component, completed on the basis v Tyrrell 2007 vi CONTENTS PART ONE. THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXTS OF THE PILOT PROJECT 1 01. The United Nations Millennium Development Goals and defi ning an informal settlement 2 02. Combining two emerging practices: Re-thinking urban design as a capacity building tool for developing countries 4 PART TWO. THE URBAN DESIGN PILOT PROJECT 12 03. Introducing Johannesburg 13 04. Introducing Diepsloot 18 05. Xenephobic violence of 2008 19 06. Pilot project urban design methodology 20 07. The current housing situation and the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ responses to Diepsloot’s housing crisis. 22 08. How the formal housing typology, the RDP house is overlaid by the ‘informal’ urbanism and what this may suggest 26 09. Building community capacity through public open space rather than individual capacity through housing delivery 28 10. Reversing negative sense of place in Diepsloot 32 11. Connectivity: Connections between sides, connections between ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ layers 35 12. Water management and environmental identity 40 13. Urban agriculture 50 14. Sites for civic buildings, retail and new residential models 56 15. ‘The Urban Design Vision’ 58 16. Why should the government support ‘The Urban Design Vision’ 60 17. Development phasing 61 APPENDIX. A PROPOSAL FOR MOVING THE VISION FORWARD 63 18. Capacity development 64 19. Moving forward with the proposal. Some steps to shift from design vision to a development tool 66 20. Framework for ongoing evaluation 68 21 References 70 vii Tyrrell 2007 1 PART ONE THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL CONTEXTS OF THE PILOT PROJECT 2 Urban Design for Capacity Development in Informal Settlements 1.THE UNITED NATIONS MILLENNIUM DEVELOPMENT GOALS AND DEFINING AN INFORMAL SETTLEMENT In 1999, the World Bank and United Informal settlements have been recognised Nations Habitat embarked on a joint as components of the urban landscape initiative ‘Cities Without Slums’. This in most developing countries for the last emerged from their jointly funded ‘Cities fi fty years. ‘Where development has been Alliance.’ The Cities Alliance defi ned uneven often because of large scale slums as follows: ‘Neglected parts of cities displacement or war, informal settlements where housing and living conditions are have overtaken formal. This has resulted appallingly poor. Slums range from high in a majority of sub-Saharan African urban density, squalid central-city tenements to population living in informal settlements’ spontaneous squatter settlements without (UN-Habitat 2005). In many cases so legal recognition or rights, sprawling at called ‘informal’ settlements lie alongside the edge of cities’ (UN-Habitat 2005). and often within ‘formal’ settlement One year later, the United Nations patterns. In the case of South Africa, referenced its defi nition in the Millennium division and breakdown of formal urbanism Development Goals (MDGs), one goal is very clear due to the reconfi guration of stating that it aimed : ‘By 2020, to have its cities after apartheid. It is not only these achieved a signifi cant improvement in the re-colonisations that are bringing opposing lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers urban conditions side by side. In South as proposed in the cities without slums Africa, the overlay of inappropriate urban initiative’ (United Nations 2000). Later, this typologies that cannot deal with the scale goal became Target 11 and was grouped of the housing problem has resulted in a under MDG 7 ‘To Ensure Environmental constant weaving of formal and informal as Sustainability’. people try to survive in the divided cities. WHAT IS A SLUM/ INFORMAL SETTLEMENT? Slum was defi ned as any area that met the following six criteria: 1. Lack of basic services 2. Inadequate building structures 3. Overcrowding 4. Unhealthy and hazardous conditions 5. Insecure tenure 6. Poverty and exclusion (UN-Habitat 2005) Diepsloot informal settlement is a neglected part of Johannesburg where housing and living conditions are appallingly poor. (Images: Tyrrell 2007) 3 Slums can be within the centre of cities. In down town Johannesburg, thousands of immigrants have colonised city buildings which were vacated after apartheid ended. The business district was moved to the heavily fortifi ed developments of Sandton. 4 Urban Design for Capacity Development in Informal Settlements 2.COMBINING TWO EMERGING PRACTICES: RE-THINKING URBAN DESIGN AS A CAPACITY BUILDING TOOL FOR DEVELOPING COUNTRIES The following section introduces the There has been much learnt about the individual level, a similar externally driven, practice of ‘capacity development’ as a outsider’s role in advancing the processes ‘top down’ bias extended to the design broad development framework within of sustainable development in developing disciplines at this time. Fiori and Brandao which pilot projects take place. It traces countries and there is now some (2007, p.3) argue that attempts of spatial the historical shifts in the practice of agreement on practice. The way in which designers in this period such as mass capacity development in order to present the design disciplines can contribute to housing, slum eradication and modernist an understanding of current thinking. this development practice has been tested urban planning were driven by the belief This section also explores major shifts but is still to be fully understood. Likewise, that architecture and urbanism could in design theory and practice in terms of developing current understandings of what ‘promote development and shape social their contribution to development relating is now termed ‘capacity development’ relations’.