SA's affordable housing sector ailing
The affordable housing sector remains under pressure, even as demand for urban accommodation remains at a staggering 1m homes. Of the country’s four major banks, most indicated they were in the process of devising ways of assisting potential homeowners who don’t currently qualify for state housing subsidies.
Sexwale aid for poor seen as boon for banks
The government's new Finance-Linked Individual Subsidy Programme (FLIP) is intended to make it easier for low-income buyers to get loans by reducing the initial home loan amount for first-time buyers of properties that cost R300 000 or less. Banks are counting on the subsidies, together with a government mortgage guarantee program due later this year, to help revive lending, stagnant since 2009.
SA's vision of sustainable cities revealed
Government recently unveiled a plan that authorities hope will turn the country's major cities into sustainable economic hubs. Part of the new strategy would be to unlock the mineral beneficiation potential in the country's mining cities, speeding up the building of new human settlements closer to where people work and building an integrated public transport system that incorporates rail, taxis and buses.
How satellite cities are reshaping East Africa
East Africa hasn't urbanised at the same rate as the rest of the world. While over 50 per cent of the world's population now lives in cities, the East African region of Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, and Burundi - the members of the regional intergovernmental organisation East African Community - will only reach an urban population of 31 per cent by 2030.
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Community-driven disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation in urban areas
A paper published in the October 2011 issue of Environment and Urbanization Brief (a publication of the International Institute for Environment and Development) shows how support for community organizations can achieve more effective post-disaster responses and, in the longer term, more effective responses to disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation.
Whatever happened to Africa's Rapid Urbanisation?
Sub-Saharan Africa is urbanising less rapidly than is widely believed, Dr Deborah Potts of King's College London says in a February 2012 article for the Africa Research Institute's Counterpoints series. She says while the populations of many urban areas in this region are growing rapidly, the urbanisation levels of many countries are increasing only slowly. This research should be looked at against a backdrop of varying definitions of 'urban' amongst sub-Saharan countries, significant gaps in population data for countries like Angola, Nigeria and the DRC despite many new censuses being published in the 1990s to 2000s, and the fact that a region with so many countries, and such varied geography and history, will naturally produce a very mixed picture of urbanisation. Despite this, Potts' research urges us to reassess some of the generalisations about rapid urbanisation in SSA over the last 30 years.
Governance of urban land markets in Lesotho
The Lesotho government, with the support of international development partners, has for many years tried to rationalise the country's land administration system. In 2010, these efforts came to a head with the establishment of a new Land Administration Authority and the enactment of two key laws, the Land Administration Authority Act and the Land Act, which fundamentally reshaped the legislative context for the supply, development and transacting of land. Urban LandMark commissioned Prof. Clement Leduka of the Institute of Southern African Studies at the National University of Lesotho to carry out a scoping study to identify where organisations working in this field could provide support to the modernisation of Lesotho's governance systems for land administration.
Governance of urban land markets in Zimbabwe
Land is of central economic and political importance in Zimbabwe, and urban land has received greater prominence during the recent years of economic decline during which many of the formal processes for land transfer have been weakened. Notwithstanding the challenges, there are signs of community-driven innovation and participation in urban management. With donors considering future assistance to the reform of legal and policy frameworks for urban development, Urban LandMark commissioned a scoping study on the governance of Zimbabwe's urban land markets which also proposes a potential programme of work to contribute to their more effective functioning.
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