Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme: Monwabisi Park, Cape Town Ecovillage Development and Collaborative Learning

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1 Informal Settlement Upgrading Programme: Monwabisi Park, Cape Town Ecovillage Development and Collaborative Learning

2 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 income (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 founder of a small crèche that became the first Indlovu Centre building. The crèche and subsequent Montessori Preschool cared for young children, including AIDS orphans. 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 permaculture inspired strategy to address critical issues associated with community upgrading. WPI brings intensive research and networking capacity to the project. Monwabisi Park Fifty children attend the Indlovu Crèche Buyiswa Tonono and Dianne Womersley

3 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 nearly half the taps in MWP are not functioning, many local residents must carry buckets of water more than 200 meters to their shacks. In the background are sub-contractor serviced pour flush toilets. Each toilet is meant to serve 5 families, but in many cases, the toilets are poorly maintained 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. The cold and wet winters of Cape Town are hard to endure in a corrugated iron shack. Gaps between the roof and walls and nail holes, as are evident in the above photograph, let in the wind and rain which saturates the bedding and clothes of shack dwellers. Designing a better impermeable and insulated roof is a high priority.

4 Why a new approach for redevelopment is needed Traditional planning practices disempower citizens because they seek to impose external, technical solutions that typically focus narrowly on the provision of housing rather than the development of communities. Even in terms of delivering housing, development is : too slow ,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 environmental consequences; based on inappropriate premises of individual home ownership 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 necessary 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 Khayelitsha housing project. 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.

5 Programme Goals & Partners GOALS The overall goal of this programme is to initiate a community-based informal settlement upgrading process in Monwabisi Park to: 1) better the lives of community members 2) serve as an experimental centre and model for sustainable, in-situ community redevelopment in Cape Town. The over-arching vision is to forge a partnership among a diverse network of stakeholders to help the community grow from a vibrant, but impoverished squatter camp into a healthier, safer and more prosperous ecovillage. The Partners The Monwabisi Park Community, participating through local street committee leadership and the Indlovu Centre, a joint project of the community and the Shaster Foundation. The Shaster Foundation, dedicated to improving the health and well-being of impoverished communities in a sustainable way ( The City of Cape Town The Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading Programme (VPUU), joint project with the German Development Bank ( Water and Sanitation Directorate Sustainable Livelihoods and Greening Programme Ecobeam Technologies, an innovative engineering and design firm. Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), US university participating through its Cape Town Project Centre (

6 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 implementation 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 participatory research and planning methods and leadership training. Create supportive network of actors across sectors and encourage 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 redevelopment 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.

7 Ecovillage Redevelopment Principles (continued) Strengthen economic development Strengthen informal economies by sourcing labor and services locally. Introduce formal economy opportunities (training, transportation, networking). Create complementary currency. Utilize sustainable technologies for housing and infrastructure Socially sustainable: culturally appropriate, 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 energy. Heterogeneity important: no one size fits all approach. Using Eco-beams and sand bags, residents of Monwabisi Park build the Makazi Guest House.

8 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, instead of inefficient pour flush models and provide both drinking water and hot water to local residents. The facility would employ a water steward to maintain the facility at a cost less than what the city currently pays to service, pump, and treat toilets. This facility would serve as a potential model for other infrastructure services. Additional housing units to accommodate residents who are relocated during the construction activities in the redevelopment seed. Redevelopment industries and training such as sand bag sewing cooperatives to produce the construction materials for new housing construction. Building a new crèche at the Indlovu Project Indlovu Project training residents to use industrial sewing machine

9 Ecovillage Redevelopment Strategies (continued) Redevelopment seed logic: Addresses community rather than individual needs first, encouraging community tolerance. Combines infrastructure services, training and job creation. Minimizes social and economic costs of relocation because higher housing densities free up land for community facilities and public amenities. Leads to development at a scale and pace that encourages learning, experimentation and adaptability. Allows deep engagement with residents most affected by change, and hence insight into needs, cultural considerations, economic interests, and the varying perspectives of citizens. Crèche at the Indlovu Centre

10 Purpose of Grant Launch redevelopment seed Support industry start ups Strengthen planning & design capacity Ecobeam building construction Enhance communications skills Sandbag sewing cooperative Develop Monwabisi Park Forum Indlovini TV Making a video documentary in MWP