Informal settlements are residential areas where ( UN-Habitat, 2015b; Brown, 2015 ):
- inhabitants often have no security of tenure for the land or dwellings they inhabit ‒ for example, they may squat or rent informally;
- neighbourhoods usually lack basic services and city infrastructure;
What is the advantage of staying in informal settlement?
the spread of big business makes insurance more expensive to smaller business. The advantages of the informal economy is that it provides income and employment to all people regardless of education, experience etc that a formal economy is deemed to be relying on.
What does informal settler mean?
Definition: Informal settlements are: 1. areas where groups of housing units have been constructed on land that the occupants have no legal claim to, or occupy illegally; 2. unplanned settlements and areas where housing is not in compliance with current planning and building regulations (unauthorized housing). Source Publication:
What is a good sentence with settlement?
use "settlement" in a sentence The government of Tunisia supports the peaceful settlement of conflicts, and dialog in its relations with foreign powers. A peace settlement in the Middle East would be a major triumph for American diplomacy. The last ice age had a profound effect upon the settlement patterns of man.
What are the different types of settlements?
What types of settlements are there?
- Section 32. A Section 32 Waiver Agreement is when the person who has been injured on the job and an insurance company avoid going to court because they can determine ...
- Lump Sum. A lump sum payment is less popular than it once was because of the Section 32 option. ...
- Stipulation. ...
- Reduced Earnings. ...
What are examples of informal settlements?
Common categories or terms associated with informal housing include: slums, shanty towns, squats, homelessness, backyard housing and pavement dwellers.
What are the characteristics of unplanned settlements?
Now, in the residential area of Fishermen Village, there are two types of settlement areas, namely formal settlements and unplanned settlements. In unplanned settlement areas, buildings are not built on private land, buildings were built without government approval, there is no access to clean water, and no sewerage.
What are the impacts of informal settlement?
Informal settlements are characterized by a lack of basic services, pollution, overcrowding and poor waste management. These characteristics impact negatively on the environment posing risk and susceptibility to health problems associated with informal settlements.
What are the advantages of informal settlement?
It offers choice, it gives people what they want, it enables individual creativity and it is affordable. It is also simple to build and easy to use. So, a powerful brand — the informal settlement — is in town. And it's reshaping the city.
What are the social characteristics of an informal settlement?
Characteristics include inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, poor quality of housing, overcrowding, and insecure residential status.
What are the causes of informal settlement?
According to UN-Habitat (2015:2), informal settlements are caused by a range of interrelated factors, including population growth and rural-urban migration, lack of affordable housing for the urban poor, weak governance (particularly in the areas of policy, planning, land and urban management resulting in land ...
What are the challenges of informal settlements?
Informal settlements are characterized by a lack of basic services, pollution, overcrowding and poor waste management. These characteristics impact negatively on the environment posing risk and susceptibility to health problems associated with informal settlements.
What are the conditions and problems in informal settlements?
Moreover, informal settlements are space where the neighborhood effects related to poor sanitation, overcrowding, poor housing, physical hazard, pollution, and poverty exposed the dwellers to everyday health risks and keep them in a “risk trap”.
What is meant by informal settlements?
Informal settlements are residential areas that do not comply with local authority requirements for conventional (formal) townships. They are, typically, unauthorised and are invariably located upon land that has not been proclaimed for residential use.
Where are informal settlements found?
Informal settlements often sit on the periphery of urban areas, lacking access to markets and/or resources. For women, for example, this can heighten barriers they face in accessing livelihood opportunities.
Why do informal settlements exist in South Africa?
Many informal settlements in South Africa are connected to the Apartheid era, when government policies systematically segregated people based on race from housing, education and job opportunities. This in turn led many non-whitecitizens to leave the cities for informal townshipsin surrounding areas.
What is the hypothesis of informal settlement?
The hypothesis is novel as it suggests that enforcement of the law through evictions of informal settlements and curtailment of informal urban development leads to compromised livelihood for low-income groups. Consequently, the study argues that modes of informal urban development should be accepted.
What are unplanned settlements?
Unplanned settlements are as a result of some local authorities not taking time to take stock of the land under their jurisdiction and zone it appropriately as residential, commercial or industrial. Squatters take advantage of such 'free' land to build structures which are not approved.
What is the difference between planned and unplanned cities?
Housings surrounding real estate which are built by the community without going through a private developer or government are called unplanned settlements. Whereas, a real estate is a term of settlements built by private developers, which is called a planned settlement.
What are the effects of unplanned urbanization?
Unplanned urbanization may lead to main problems like inadequate solid waste disposal services, lack of adequate public water supply, traffic congestion, water logging, air pollution, noise pollution, hill cutting and even social conflicts (Alam, et al., 2006) .
What are the characteristics of urban land use?
Land use in urban areas is easily identifiable as not rural meaning there is little agricultural land use. (There are no farms.) Land use is often closely linked to the function. In almost all urban areas, residential is the main land use.
What is informal settlement?
Informal settlements are residential areas where ( UN-Habitat, 2015b; Brown, 2015 ): inhabitants often have no security of tenure for the land or dwellings they inhabit ‒ for example, they may squat or rent informally; neighbourhoods usually lack basic services and city infrastructure; housing may not comply with planning and building regulations, ...
How does informal settlement affect women?
For women, for example, this can heighten barriers they face in accessing livelihood opportunities. Home-based workers also face challenges to entrepreneurial activity ( Chant, 2014 ). Women in informal settlements spend more time and energy accessing basic services than other urban counterparts, limiting their ability and time to earn through paid employment ( UNFPA, 2007 ). In addition, the prevalence of male-biased land tenure policies and restrictions on women’s rights to own property decreases the likelihood of alternative housing options. Poor quality housing, or eviction and homelessness, can also increase the risk of insecurity and sexual violence ( Chant, 2013; McIlwaine, 2013 ).
What are the factors that contribute to the emergence of informal settlements?
A number of interrelated factors have driven the emergence of informal settlements: population growth; rural-urban migration; lack of affordable housing; weak governance (particularly in policy, planning and urban management); economic vulnerability and low-paid work; marginalisation; and displacement caused by conflict, natural disasters and climate change ( UN-Habitat, 2015b ).
What are neighbourhoods lacking?
neighbourhoods usually lack basic services and city infrastructure; housing may not comply with planning and building regulations, and is often situated in geographically and environmentally sensitive areas (see Topic Guide on Provision and Improvement of Housing for the Poor, Patel, 2013). A number of interrelated factors have driven ...
What is UNFPA 2014b?
UNFPA (2014b). Framework of actions for the follow-up to the programme of action of the international conference on population and development beyond 2014. New York: UNFPA.
What are informal settlements?
‘Informal settlement’ refers to a residential area that lacks basic services and infrastructure, where the housing stock may not comply with current planning and building regulations and where inhabitants may have no security of tenure [ 2 ]. Specific and strategic interventions must urgently be developed for informal settlements to upscale the sustainable access and use of basic facilities [ 3 ]. Informal settlements are a result of many factors, which include the political economy, uncoordinated planning, invasion of land by land barons, and inappropriate planning ideologies [ 4 ].They form spontaneously in the absence of planning; their rampant development can lead to the disorderly spread of cities and they are usually characterized by inefficient land use, environmental degradation, poor living conditions, unstable employment, and conflict over land use [ 5, 6, 7 ].
How are informal settlements important?
Like many other developing countries, informal settlements are playing an increasingly important role in providing living and working spaces for the burgeoning urban population of Tanzania. The property and business formalization program launched in 2004 and implemented in 2008 is now the main method to cope with informal development in Tanzania, which proved to be helpful for regulating the real estate market, reducing land conflicts, and promoting economic development of informal settlements [ 61, 62 ]. Many researchers reported that the morphological characteristics of informal settlements may have some important influence on sustainable development [ 15, 37 ], but how to respond is still open for discussion, and little has been done to specifically tackle this problem. According to our findings, the spatial forms of informal settlements in Tanzania do not conform well to the principles of sustainable development in terms of economic, societal, and environmental protection. Through the optimization of the structure and form of the elements of informal settlements, their spatial development can better align with the sustainable development goals, which may further enhance the effectiveness of property and business regularization projects.
What is the building diversity of Tanzania?
Building diversity, as indicated by SDI, was found to increase gradually, with Chamazi having the largest values, followed by Buhongwa and Gungu. This increase was indicative of the coexistence of broad social groups in the informal settlements of Tanzania. SEI values indicate that the building distribution in Chamazi remained relatively even, whereas that of Buhongwa was relatively heterogeneous, perhaps due to its rocky-hilly terrain and large mining areas.
What is the average shape of a building in Gungu?
The average shape of buildings was simple and almost rectangular. The length and width ratio of buildings in Gungu was the largest, followed by Buhongwa, then Chamazi. Standard deviation values indicated the degree of variation in building shape, with the largest values found for Gungu, followed by Buhongwa and Chamazi.
What are spatial pattern indices?
A set of spatial pattern indices (MSI, SDI, SEI, and ENN) were used to analyze the morphological characteristics of buildings: shape, size, density, and distribution patterns. The density of buildings is key to identifying informal settlements. A settlement can be characterized by both the building unit density (number of buildings per unit area) and building coverage (the ratio of the total area of buildings to the area of the corresponding administrative region).
What are the characteristics of informal settlements in Tanzania?
Tanzania’s informal settlements have their own unique characteristics in terms of tenure security, structural quality of housing, and inhabitants [ 50, 55 ]. First, anyone who erects a structure in the informal settlement has a perceived security of tenure emanating from three generations. Second, the use of modern building materials has increased tremendously since the early 1990s. Third, informal settlements in Tanzania consist of a wide range of socioeconomic groups [ 56 ].
How many people live in informal settlements in Africa?
More than half (61.7%) of urban residents live in informal settlements in Africa [ 8 ]. The urban population in Africa is forecast to increase from 400 million in 2010 to 1.2 billion by 2050, with significant increases in the number and population of informal settlements [ 9 ]. How to effectively guide informal settlements into a sustainable development process has become a focus of governments and academia. Although conflicts have arisen between what are understood as modernist ideas of how cities should formally appear and a flexible mode of informal development [ 10 ], the ambivalence of government policy toward informal settlements has gradually shifted into a more positive approach [ 11 ]. Many African governments are becoming increasingly aware of the potentially positive contributions of informal settlements, and plans have gradually shifted from the forced removal and relocation model to the securing tenure model [ 12 ]. Land use planning plays a supporting role that enables the property formalization process to be effective [ 13 ], and empowering local government with planning competency is an important method to remove the barriers to planning transformation [ 14 ]. Informal settlements have been widely studied within political, sociological, and economic frameworks, yet the specifics of form are generally seen as contextual or irrelevant, even though their physical morphology may be closely integrated with social networks, domestic economics, and employment [ 15 ]. Accurate, localized, and standardized qualitative and quantitative data on the environmental, physical–spatial, and socioeconomic development characteristics of informal settlements are limited [ 16] but are critical for dealing with their problems [ 15, 17 ].
Abstract
Rapid urbanization in developing countries has been accompanied by the spread of informal settlements, which is particularly prominent in sub-Saharan Africa.
Share and Cite
Zhang, J.; Shuang Chen, S.; Gao, Q.; Shen, Q.; Kimirei, I.A.; Mapunda, D.W. Morphological Characteristics of Informal Settlements and Strategic Suggestions for Urban Sustainable Development in Tanzania: Dar es Salaam, Mwanza, and Kigoma. Sustainability 2020, 12, 3807. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12093807
What is informal settlement?
Using a literature survey, this paper reviews physical and socio-economic characteristics and the factors attributed to proliferation of the informal settlements and intervention approaches. The main objective was to establish how such settlements could be improved and hence the quality of life of majority of the urban population.
What was the main objective of the informal settlements?
The main objective was to establish how the dwelling units found in such settlements could be improved and hence improve the quality of life of the urban poor in most of developing countries. Physical and socio-economic characteristics found in the informal settlements were described in detail. This was because they have profound impacts on quality ...
How many people live in informal settlements in Africa?
In Africa, from Cairo to Cape Town, millions of poor urban dwellers reside in informal settlements. It is estimated that 166 million people or 73% of sub-Saharan Africa’s urban population are currently residing in the informal settlements. In the republic of South Africa (SA), for example, up to 9.1 million people are currently residing in ...
Why is the proliferation of informal settlements important?
Proliferation of the informal settlements in developing countries is of great concern because it impacts negatively on the quality of life. Therefore, review of the factors which are attributed to the proliferation of such settlements is important.
Why are good quality dwelling units important?
This is because good quality dwelling units are vital to everyone’s quality of life including health, economic and cultural.
What is the evolution of informal settlements?
The evolution and development of informal settlements is hypothesized to be associated with the denial of the urban poor and the low income individual’s access to urban residential land for housing development. Though this assertion is strongly defended by most urban planners and local government decision makers, the emerging hypothesis, which seems to have some validity, is the significant role played by small scale landlords in the supply of housing in the informal housing market to generate rentals from the low income. It is purported in the literature that, the rapid growth of informal settlements within some major cities in the developing world is as a result of small scale landlords who build houses in informal settlements to be rented out to the needy. This is an intriguing assertion that requires some empirical investigation.The paper is an attempt to validate the assertion with respect to the mushrooming and growth of informal settlements in the City of Kitwe in Zambia which is encircled with approximately thirty informal settlements. The evidence from the research proved that, a large segment of the urban residents lives in rental accommodation in squatter settlements. The supply of informal rental housing built without following planning procedures or local authority by-laws is growing much faster than formal housing. Furthermore, house-building in informal settlements by entrepreneurial landlords or informal residents takes place without regard to planning rules or construction standards.
What is the development of informal settlements in Zambia?
The City of Kitwe and other urban areas on the Copperbelt Province of Zambia are experiencing the development of new informal settlements and expansion of existing ones. As long as informal settlements continue to evolve, develop and expand unsustainably, the settlements will continue to occupy and encroach on contested spaces in the cities and thus continue to be a source of environmental, social and moral problems. Urban populations in Zambia have increased explosively in the past 50 years, and continue to do so as the number of people born in cities increase and as people continue to migrate from rural areas to urban areas. The rate of creation of formal sector urban employment is well below the expected growth rate of the urban labour force, thus, in all probability, the majority of the city and urban entrants (i.e., as residents) are most likely to be informal settlement residents. The observed trend in other parts of the world especially in Kibera (Kenya) and Soweto (South Africa) is that the expansion of slum housing is as a result of small scale housing entrepreneurs from high and middle income classes who build homes to generate capital. The speculation is that, the housing development and delivery system in other parts of the developing world might prevail in Zambia, i.e., the middle and high income individuals who are comparatively higher on the social ladder of development might be the main drivers of the housing market in the informal settlements. The other school of thought is that, even low-income individuals living in informal settlements and low-income formal townships like Buchi, Kamitondo, Chimwemwe (located in Kitwe) and others might be land and housing development speculators. With about 60% of the Zambian urban population being in the low-income bracket who cannot afford the high formal housing prices, this has created an increased demand for informal housing which in return has motivated housing developers from other income groups to infiltrate into the informal rental sub-market by constructing affordable housing using cheaper building materials for rent to the urban poor. Based on the factors highlighted above the following questions evolved: a) What is the housing ownership tenure pattern in informal settlements in Kitwe? b) What is the nature of the rental sub-market in informal settlements of Kitwe? c) What are the factors influencing the demand and supply of rental housing in informal settlements in Kitwe? d) What are the legislative instruments that support or constrain the functioning of the informal housing development and rental housing? e) What are the effects of informal housing development and rental housing on the spatial urban development in Kitwe?
What are the factors that have led to the increase in informal housing in Kitwe?
The main factors perceived to have led to increased demand of informal rental housing in Kitwe include: i) Inadequate and unaffordable formal housing leading to high demand of cheap housing. ii) Land alienation and Deed Registry procedures are highly centralized and cumbersome making it difficult for the low-income to access land iii) Rapid population increase and industrial growth in the city iv) Discrimination of the poor in assessing land for housing development v) Political interference and corruption in the land delivery system vi) Unemployment and income poverty: source of income for informal house owners vii) Home owners do not pay to the Council and therefore can lease out more than one house at a time
