Urban-Ecological Survey for Small Settlements

Urban Settlements: Case Studies in South Africa

Internationally, settlement informality (informal housing and informal settlements) is increasing, not decreasing. Thus, according to United Nations estimates, there are currently 924 million people living in various forms of slums and unauthorized or informal settlements (UN Habitat, 2003, p2). In Sub-Saharan Africa 71,9% of urban dwellers lived in slums (ibid). In South Africa, official gover...

Ecological Design of Urban Landscape

Paying attention to the spatial placement of the elements (man-made or natural) based on the landscape pattern and ecological processes in urban design would have a considerable impact on both human and the nature. In a way that the discords in the placement of patchs in respect to each other, or in respect to visual corridors and urban matrixes lead to the unwanted results in the cities. The e...

Integrating Urban Ecological Models

Over the past 20 years, understanding of the functioning of urban ecosystems has increased to the point where fairly sophisticated models of various subsystems have been developed by scientists working for federal, state, and local agencies, often in cooperation with university researchers. Each is designed to collect data and explore a specific urban/environmental system for issues related to ...

The Role of Urban Transport in Sustainable Human Settlements Development

The Legacy Effect of Squatter Settlements on Urban Redevelopment

The paper presents a theoretical model that seeks to answer the question of why former squatter settlements tend to upgrade/redevelop at a slower pace than otherwise similar settlements originating in the formal sector. We argue that squatter settlers’ initial strategy to access urban land creates a ‘legacy effect’ that curtails settlement upgrading possibilities even after the settlements are ...