In “Housing, Institutions, Money: The Failures and Promise of Human Settlements Policy and Practice in South Africa,” Bladlow, Bolnick & Shearing critiqued the People’s Housing Process (PHP) for the ineffectiveness of their projects to build affordable housing to replace informal settlements. The article advocated for “people-centered” development—input from those the policies aim to help—Cape Town’s poorest populations. The affordable housing project was dubbed a “subsidy-based housing machine that ensures private- sector profit with limited risk and creates segregated cities characterized by concrete slums and urban sprawl”[i] This article, published in Environment & Urbanization, was a large-N case study comparing individual cases of resident dissatisfaction over the newly constructed housing across the many settlement neighborhoods in Cape Town. The main argument was the implementation of people-centered development (led by the community) to fix the housing inequalities in Cape Town.
The second article I read titled “Slums of Hope: Land Tenure Reforms, Local Economic Development and Environmental Improvement in a Kenyan Shanty Town” was a small-N case study on the improvements made on a shanty town in the outskirts of Nairobi, Kenya. In this study, Toomey explained the progress of one town, Kambi Moto, by provided a historical analysis of the events and policies that lent to its success. This housing development program was also entirely community-led but had help from NGOs to gain land tenure and decriminalize their informal settlements. The article’s major points were that informal settlements should be made legal and development of these slums is not only possible, but results in greater benefits to community health within these slums.[ii] Through housing upgrades, the Kenyan shanty town were able to gain access to clean water from inside the home, as well as grow vegetation in the surrounding areas. Toomey’s main argument local economic development can be achieved through community-led slum upgrading.
Both articles I read today were neopositivist studies, according to Abbott’s definition of positivist research[iii], that pinpointed the role of governance (good or bad) as a variable in the existence and state of informal settlements in large cities. Though the role of national governance is the bucket with the most extensive research, I believe there are more schools of thought the explain why and how these informal settlements came to be.
Notes
[i] Bradlow, Benjamin, Joel Bolnick, and Clifford Shearing. “Housing, Institutions, Money: The Failures and Promise of Human Settlements Policy and Practice in South Africa.” Environment and Urbanization 23, no. 1 (2011): 267-75. doi:10.1177/0956247810392272.
[ii] Toomey, Bernard. “Slums of Hope: Land Tenure Reforms, Local Economic …” May 2010. Accessed September 24, 2018. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02690941003784317.
[iii] Abbott, Andrew. “Basic Debates and Methodological Practices.” In Methods of Discovery: Heuristics for the Social Sciences, 19-22. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 2004.
Naila,
I found your articles and the analysis of them to be an interesting perspective on it. They seem to provide differing perspectives on the same conversation of research. I’m curious as to whether these articles are representative of the entirety of the larger conversation or if they fit within more specific niches of it. In addition, both of your articles are neopositivist, and based on your analysis of that fact it appears as though you also may be moving towards neopositivism. However, I would caution against possibly ignoring an interpretivist perspective to the puzzle because it could provide a new way of looking at the research or an important aspect of the conversation. You seem to be moving in an interesting direction with your research and I look forward to seeing how it progresses.
These two articles provide a good starting point for your research, Naila. You are correct in noting that they are both neopositivist in nature, but in doing so it would also be good to identify the key research methodology elements of each. Is the role of governance the dependent or the key independent variable? What hypotheses does each author test? How does knowing those things help inform your future research and searches?