Low-cost housing location in South African cities : empirical findings on costs and benefits

Abstract

Paper presented at the 23rd Annual Southern African Transport Conference 12 - 15 July 2004 "Getting recognition for the importance of transport", CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa. Low-cost housing delivery in South Africa is largely occurring at low densities on the urban peripheries where land is cheap, but where infrastructure and transport costs are often thought to be higher. To help provide an empirical understanding of the costs of sprawl, this paper analyses evidence from eight case study areas in Johannesburg and Ethekwini on the actual costs to all parties, as well as the benefits offered by each locality to its residents. Benefits are assessed in terms of the sustainable livelihoods approach. The findings do not support the compact city hypothesis that more central locations necessarily have lower overall costs and offer higher benefits than more distant locations. Variations are observed across areas in terms of travel distances and expenditures, infrastructure and land costs, and types of benefits, which are not related to the locality of the settlement in any simple way. Historical land use policy and lack of integrated planning have distorted the urban form to such an extent that theoretical cost differentials between sprawling and denser development do not necessarily materialise. It is suggested that simplistic dichotomies such as 'central' and 'peripheral' are less useful in the context of the multi-nodal South African city, and that planners should employ a more nuanced set of measures to assess the costs and the benefits associated with any particular housing development and its associated transport implications.