A Clean Conversion - South Africa

http://www.tve.org/ho/doc.cfm?aid=343

Peter Peterson 
Equator Initiative
October 1998

Introduction

Almost every town and city in the developing areas of South Africa are surrounded by growing shanties and squatter areas. Indeed, in many cities, the areas of informal housing far exceed the size of the formal city. The people in these informal settlements do not have the assets necessary to gain formal access to land, building materials and housing rights. Adequate shelter is a basic need for a growing number of people and it requires new solutions to address the problem.

Cape Town is a beautiful city, situated on Table Bay at the foot of Table Mountain. It is the seaport capital of Cape Province and, after Durban and Richard’s Bay, it is the third busiest port in South Africa. There are a lot of settlements and shanties growing around Cape Town where people are living without adequate housing and infrastructure. In a country where the majority of the population still lives in inadequate housing, any form of building using locally available materials at costs lower than conventional building methods is beneficial to the residents of the settlements.

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