Here to work: the socioeconomic characteristics of informal dwellers in post-apartheid South Africa

2012 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 285-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Hunter ◽  
Dorrit Posel
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Household Survey ◽  
Household Formation ◽  
Family Housing ◽  
Household Survey Data ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Demographic Shifts

Government policy towards informal settlements in south africa reflects a tension between two approaches: recognizing the legitimacy of informal settlements and aggressively removing these so-called “slums”.( 1 ) drawing on nationally representative household survey data and interviews with 25 individuals relocated from an informal settlement to a “transit camp”, this paper argues that more detailed attention should be paid to the changing connection between housing, household formation and work. Whereas cities in the apartheid era were marked by relatively stable industrial labour and racially segregated family housing, today the location and nature of informal dwellings are consistent with two important trends: demographic shifts, including towards smaller more numerous households, and employment shifts, including a move from permanent to casual and from formal to informal work. This study is therefore able to substantiate in more detail a longstanding insistence by informal settlement residents that they live where they do for reasons vital to their everyday survival. The paper also highlights the limitations of relocations not only to urban peripheries but also to other parts of cities, and it underscores the importance of upgrading informal settlements through in situ development.

Young peopleʼs sexual health in South Africa: HIV prevalence and sexual behaviors from a nationally representative household survey

AIDS ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 19 (14) ◽  
pp. 1525-1534 ◽  
Author(s):  
Audrey E Pettifor ◽  
Helen V Rees ◽  
Immo Kleinschmidt ◽  
Annie E Steffenson ◽  
Catherine MacPhail ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Sexual Health ◽  
Sexual Behaviors ◽  
Household Survey ◽  
Hiv Prevalence ◽  
Nationally Representative

scholarly journals INVESTIGATING THE USE OF 3D GEOVISUALIZATIONS FOR URBAN DESIGN IN INFORMAL SETTLEMENT UPGRADING IN SOUTH AFRICA

2016 ◽  
Vol XLI-B2 ◽  
pp. 425-431
Author(s):  
V. Rautenbach ◽  
S. Coetzee ◽  
A. Çöltekin
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Spatial Data ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
3D Models ◽  
Design Activities ◽  
Feasible Alternative ◽  
Visualization Design ◽  
The Impact

Informal settlements are a common occurrence in South Africa, and to improve in-situ circumstances of communities living in informal settlements, upgrades and urban design processes are necessary. Spatial data and maps are essential throughout these processes to understand the current environment, plan new developments, and communicate the planned developments. All stakeholders need to understand maps to actively participate in the process. However, previous research demonstrated that map literacy was relatively low for many planning professionals in South Africa, which might hinder effective planning. Because 3D visualizations resemble the real environment more than traditional maps, many researchers posited that they would be easier to interpret. Thus, our goal is to investigate the effectiveness of 3D geovisualizations for urban design in informal settlement upgrading in South Africa. We consider all involved processes: 3D modelling, visualization design, and cognitive processes during map reading. We found that procedural modelling is a feasible alternative to time-consuming manual modelling, and can produce high quality models. When investigating the visualization design, the visual characteristics of 3D models and relevance of a subset of visual variables for urban design activities of informal settlement upgrades were qualitatively assessed. The results of three qualitative user experiments contributed to understanding the impact of various levels of complexity in 3D city models and map literacy of future geoinformatics and planning professionals when using 2D maps and 3D models. The research results can assist planners in designing suitable 3D models that can be used throughout all phases of the process.

scholarly journals Microestimates of wealth for all low- and middle-income countries

2022 ◽  
Vol 119 (3) ◽  
pp. e2113658119
Author(s):  
Guanghua Chi ◽  
Han Fang ◽  
Sourav Chatterjee ◽  
Joshua E. Blumenstock
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Household Survey ◽  
Heterogeneous Data ◽  
Machine Learning Algorithms ◽  
Middle Income ◽  
Middle Income Countries ◽  
Economic Development And Growth ◽  
Household Survey Data ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Low And Middle Income

Many critical policy decisions, from strategic investments to the allocation of humanitarian aid, rely on data about the geographic distribution of wealth and poverty. Yet many poverty maps are out of date or exist only at very coarse levels of granularity. Here we develop microestimates of the relative wealth and poverty of the populated surface of all 135 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) at 2.4 km resolution. The estimates are built by applying machine-learning algorithms to vast and heterogeneous data from satellites, mobile phone networks, and topographic maps, as well as aggregated and deidentified connectivity data from Facebook. We train and calibrate the estimates using nationally representative household survey data from 56 LMICs and then validate their accuracy using four independent sources of household survey data from 18 countries. We also provide confidence intervals for each microestimate to facilitate responsible downstream use. These estimates are provided free for public use in the hope that they enable targeted policy response to the COVID-19 pandemic, provide the foundation for insights into the causes and consequences of economic development and growth, and promote responsible policymaking in support of sustainable development.

scholarly journals Towards an automated monitoring of human settlements in South Africa using high resolution SPOT satellite imagery

2015 ◽  
Vol XL-7/W3 ◽  
pp. 1389-1394 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. Kemper ◽  
N. Mudau ◽  
P. Mangara ◽  
M. Pesaresi
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Satellite Imagery ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Image Features ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Image Feature ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Spot 5

Urban areas in sub-Saharan Africa are growing at an unprecedented pace. Much of this growth is taking place in informal settlements. In South Africa more than 10% of the population live in urban informal settlements. South Africa has established a National Informal Settlement Development Programme (NUSP) to respond to these challenges. This programme is designed to support the National Department of Human Settlement (NDHS) in its implementation of the Upgrading Informal Settlements Programme (UISP) with the objective of eventually upgrading all informal settlements in the country. Currently, the NDHS does not have access to an updated national dataset captured at the same scale using source data that can be used to understand the status of informal settlements in the country. <br><br> This pilot study is developing a fully automated workflow for the wall-to-wall processing of SPOT-5 satellite imagery of South Africa. The workflow includes an automatic image information extraction based on multiscale textural and morphological image features extraction. The advanced image feature compression and optimization together with innovative learning and classification techniques allow a processing of the SPOT-5 images using the Landsat-based National Land Cover (NLC) of South Africa from the year 2000 as low-resolution thematic reference layers as. The workflow was tested on 42 SPOT scenes based on a stratified sampling. The derived building information was validated against a visually interpreted building point data set and produced an accuracy of 97 per cent. Given this positive result, is planned to process the most recent wall-to-wall coverage as well as the archived imagery available since 2007 in the near future.

Unbelievable but improved cookstoves are not helpful in reducing firewood demand in Nepal

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
MANI NEPAL ◽  
APSARA NEPAL ◽  
KRISTINE GRIMSRUD
Keyword(s):  
Indoor Air ◽  
Indoor Air Pollution ◽  
Household Survey ◽  
Conservation Strategy ◽  
Household Level ◽  
Open Fire ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Different Types ◽  
Household Survey Data ◽  
Nationally Representative

ABSTRACTThis paper analyzes the effect of different types of cookstoves on firewood demand at the household level. Using nationally representative household survey data from Nepal, we find that stove type significantly affects the firewood demand for household uses. Traditional mud-stove user households seem to use less firewood than the open-fire stove users. Surprisingly, households with the so-called ‘improved’ stoves seem to use more firewood than the households with mud stoves. Thus, converting traditional open-fire stoves to mud stoves may be a better conservation strategy in the short term rather than installing improved stoves, unless the technology improves. However, in the long run, making cleaner fuel more accessible to rural households is desirable to reduce indoor air pollution.

Informal Settlement Characteristics in a Rural Land Restitution Case: Elandskloof, South Africa

2000 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-103
Author(s):  
Michael Barry ◽  
David Mayson
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Land Tenure ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
Informal Settlements ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Land Resources ◽  
Rural Land ◽  
Western Cape Province ◽  
Land Administration ◽  
Land Restitution

Research in informal settlements in South Africa has shown that conflict is inherent between groups within a settlement and between the broader community and the land administration authorities. In general, groups and sub-groups continually form, reform and dissolve within informal settlements. Moreover, the internal rules that a community creates relating to land tenure tend to be manipulated by sub-groups as they compete for land, resources and power. Internal rules are not static but are subject to continual change. Similar characteristics were observed in Elandskloof, a rural land restitution case in the Western Cape province of South Africa.

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