Nearly 830 million people around the world currently live in slums, two thirds of them in Africa. Although UN-Habitat findings indicate that the living conditions of 24 million slum dwellers have improved over the last decade, the slum population in sub-Saharan Africa4 has only fallen by five per cent.5 Urban operations are now one of the main tools used to improve living conditions in informal settlements. The authoritarian methods that were used to characterise these operations in Africa are changing with the spread of new approaches that take greater account of human factors and encourage participation by affected residents. These approaches raise many questions about the underlying objectives of such operations, the strategic choices that shape them and the practices used to implement them. This paper aims to provide some guidelines for the designers, decision-makers and operators involved in such actions. Its particular focus is on social assistance, an aspect of these operations that is often largely ignored. The experiences presented below reflect a range of socio-economic situations and housing conditions, levels of development, amenities, access to services, etc. What they do have in common is the fact that few, if any residents, have land rights that are recognised or secured by the existing legal and institutional framework. Three types of operations are considered here: – Upgrading operations to consolidate what is already in place. These range from modest to quite ambitious interventions; – Restructuring operations, which usually include a substantial investment programme, and involve reorganising the parcel plan and displacing varying numbers of residents on a temporary or permanent basis; – Clearance operations involving major interventions, if not the complete eradication of the original settlement. The main challenge with operations of every kind is finding the right balance between over provision and under-provision, urban density and urban sprawl, razing or retaining existing neighbourhoods, and adjusting to the realities of the actual settlement and the planned neighbourhood. This paper is based on four experiences that illustrate some of the approaches currently employed in Africa

Building Cities for All: Lessons from Four African Experiences

Resource Key: PZNXUG7S

Document Type: Report

Creator:

Author:

  • Aurore Mansion
  • Virginie Rachmuhl

Contributor:

  • Papa Ameth Keita
  • Benjamin Michelon
  • Olivier Toutain

Creators Name: {mb_resource_zotero_creatorsname}

Place:

Institution: UN-Habitat, Gret, GLTN

Date: June 2012

Language:

Nearly 830 million people around the world currently live in slums, two thirds of them in Africa. Although UN-Habitat findings indicate that the living conditions of 24 million slum dwellers have improved over the last decade, the slum population in sub-Saharan Africa4 has only fallen by five per cent.5 Urban operations are now one of the main tools used to improve living conditions in informal settlements. The authoritarian methods that were used to characterise these operations in Africa are changing with the spread of new approaches that take greater account of human factors and encourage participation by affected residents. These approaches raise many questions about the underlying objectives of such operations, the strategic choices that shape them and the practices used to implement them. This paper aims to provide some guidelines for the designers, decision-makers and operators involved in such actions. Its particular focus is on social assistance, an aspect of these operations that is often largely ignored. The experiences presented below reflect a range of socio-economic situations and housing conditions, levels of development, amenities, access to services, etc. What they do have in common is the fact that few, if any residents, have land rights that are recognised or secured by the existing legal and institutional framework. Three types of operations are considered here: – Upgrading operations to consolidate what is already in place. These range from modest to quite ambitious interventions; – Restructuring operations, which usually include a substantial investment programme, and involve reorganising the parcel plan and displacing varying numbers of residents on a temporary or permanent basis; – Clearance operations involving major interventions, if not the complete eradication of the original settlement. The main challenge with operations of every kind is finding the right balance between over provision and under-provision, urban density and urban sprawl, razing or retaining existing neighbourhoods, and adjusting to the realities of the actual settlement and the planned neighbourhood. This paper is based on four experiences that illustrate some of the approaches currently employed in Africa

Download Document