No abstract available. / Thesis (M.T.R.P.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2004.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.Sc.U.R.P.)-University of Natal, Durban, 1997.

The study was conducted in the community of Wellbedacht East in eThekwini Municipality. Welbedacht East (WE) is located north-east of Umlazi Township and west of Chatsworth and also expands into the eNgonyameni Traditional Authority. WE is about 23 kilometres from Pinetown, 43 kilometres from Durban, and 15 kilometres from Chatsworth Centre. It is one of the development projects undertaken to spearhead the very ambitious programme of slums clearance, in order to confront the challenge of informal settlements in the eThekwini Municipal area. The study area has been chosen because it is one of the largest slum clearance projects in eThekwini Municipality (Durban) and it is peripherally located. Due to its peripheral location, transport services, and facilities such as schools, a clinic, a police station, churches and shops are either scarce, or non-existent. A systematic sample of 60 households was drawn from a population of residents whose characteristics had been considered to reflect those of the larger population. The project has 5000 sites and 3000 beneficiary households were relocated to this project from the inner city areas. The study is aimed at examining the impact and effects of relocation on beneficiary households in peripherally located low-income housing projects, to determine whether or not transport costs are higher in peripherally situated settlements than in more central locations, and whether residents in peripheral settlements are less able to access the benefits of urban living, including economic opportunities and social networks necessary for survival. It argues that the relocation of informal settlements to peripheral sites promotes an urban sprawl, and thus deviates from the eThekwini Municipality's goal of promoting development as a 'compact city'. The findings in this study are that, firstly, there is clear evidence to suggest that relocations to peripheral areas can cause significant harm to relocated beneficiary households' livelihood strategies, and secondly, that the municipality's failure to coordinate its relocations plan with other spheres of government involved with social service delivery, especially the departments of health and education, resulted in medium-term deprivation of access to social services. The conclusions drawn from the findings are that a holistic and integrated approach to housing development needs to be enforced, whereby the minimum facilities, such as schools, clinics and other social amenities are prioritised if the project is poorly located. The study therefore recommends that low-income housing projects be located closer to the economic nodes, in order to eliminate transport costs and other social difficulties associated with peripheral location. The compact city settlement design epitomised by higher residential densities and the development of multifunctional habitats would, to a greater extent, reduce the need to travel, and improve quality of life and access to urban goods and services. / Thesis (M.T.R.P.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2006.

This dissertation examines geographies of schooling in relation to how a group of new teachers in Canada conceptualize “inner city” schooling as a uniquely Canadian construct. The study uses a critical approach that explores issues of race, and their intersections with issues of gender, social class, and other identity markers. Seven new teachers graduating from a 2009-2010 teacher education program in the province of Ontario, Canada took part in this study. As a function of the inner city, the inner city school is problematized as a particular geographical space, complete with its own meanings. Results of this study indicate that new teacher conceptualizations of Canadian inner city schools are not uniform and coherent, but complex, contradictory, and dependent upon each individual teacher’s experiences with difference. Overall, participants demonstrated limited ability to speak to their own racial identities in relation to teaching in such schooling contexts. Because most participants learned to teach in predominantly White field-placement settings, they perceived race to be a non-issue and recognized it as a construct only if raced bodies were present. With respect to issues of gender, participants most often discussed what is often referred to as the feminization of teaching in elementary schools. However, there was a profound sense in which inner city schools were conceptualized as “male space” or as space from which female teachers needed protection. This was informed by a widespread conception that male teachers could more effectively manage inner city students. Classroom management emerged as an issue that concerned participants with the least experience with difference. Finally, there was a direct relationship between the theoretical approaches used by the teacher education program in discussing inner city schooling and individual teacher ability to articulate their pedagogical approaches to teaching in this milieu. / Thesis (Ph.D, Education) -- Queen's University, 2011-07-11 20:54:49.407

A crucial factor to enable low-income families to participate in the gradual development of their homes is to find a link between their building activities and those of the large-scale building sector. Amidst technological development and increasing demand for housing, the large-scale sector, such as government and private groups, resorted to industrialised housing to replace traditional and conventional building materials and methods. Industrialisation, however, resulted not only in expensive and inappropriate dwellings but also eliminated homeowners from the building process and management of their homes. To bring back the homeowners in the building process, the shift was towards the production of small components and partial prefabrication. / Following the same thrust, there have been numerous innovative building systems for housing developed in the Philippines in the last two decades. Private entrepreneurs develop these building systems either promoting locally invented systems or adapting imported versions. Seeing their potentials, government and private groups are trying to employ them in housing. Despite the growing number of the innovative building systems and the interest to use them, their integration in low-income housing is still limited. / Focusing on Metro Manila, the capital region of the Philippines, the thesis aims to develop a selection model for the effective integration of innovative building systems in low-income housing. The process of integration is not simply using the building systems for mass production of houses but also enabling homeowners to utilise, maintain and sustain them. The proposed model involves sets of selection parameters essential at each stage of the housing delivery based on the homeowners' progressive building process and their criteria for choosing building materials for their homes. To facilitate progressive building and enhance the homeowners' initiative to build, the model also includes design strategies when employing new building systems and suggests the necessary channels to ensure the availability of the building systems, technical assistance and information.

A large and growing body of scholarship has suggested that income poverty has recently decreased in post-apartheid South Africa. Evidence for an overall drop in poverty rates notwithstanding, there has been very little work which has examined the gendered nature of poverty. There have, however, been important changes over the period which might suggest that poverty trends have been gendered. On the one hand, for example, the post-apartheid period has seen the expansion of several grants to support the care-givers of children and the elderly as well as employment growth for women. On the other hand, this same period has been characterised by declining marital rates, rising rates of female unemployment, and women increasingly overrepresented in low-wage work, changes which would be expected to have negative implications for women's economic well-being. This thesis uses nationally representative household survey data from the October Household Surveys (1997 and 1999) and the General Household Surveys (2004 and 2006) to investigate gendered trends in income poverty in several different ways. It examines first, whether females are more likely to live in poor households than males, and whether this has changed over time; and second, how poverty has changed among female- and male-headed households. The thesis also considers why females and female-headed households are more vulnerable to poverty and why the poverty differential between males and females (and female- and male-headed households) may have widened over time. Given the criticism of headship based analyses of income poverty, the thesis also investigates poverty and female headship in greater detail by adopting several alternative definitions of female headship that are commonly used in the literature. / Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2011.

A common strategy in dealing with housing shortages is the provision of loans to low-income groups. Tried in many countries for a very long time, this approach has produced a common phenomenon - poor servicing of loans. Thus, an empirical study was undertaken in Namibia, using the country's Build Together Programme as a case study. The aim of the study was to understand how the livelihood circumstances of the beneficiaries might be contributing to their inability to meet their loan obligations. The BTP's beneficiaries and the housing officers at both local and national level constituted the study's respondents. Housing officers responded to questions in an interview schedule while the beneficiaries were engaged using an interviewer-administered questionnaire. All beneficiaries were purposefully identified on account of outstanding arrears on their loans. Reviewing of literature covered the challenge of urban housing and strategies used to address it at both global and national level, documentary analysis on government documents to provide information on establishment of BTP and lastly, the direct observation of the concerned sites. The study focused on BTP in Windhoek (WHK) particularly in two settlements, Katutura (a formal settlement) and Goreangab (an informal settlement). Poor servicing of loans was shown to be closely associated with the socio-economic circumstances of the beneficiaries. This suggests the importance to recognise that housing is not just about the physical structure called a house, but there are other more subtle but equally important considerations that need to be met. Issues such as reliance on wage labour and large household sizes combined in ways that placed limitations on their ability to service the loans. An important conclusion from the study is that understanding beneficiary' constraints and their livelihood strategies might be a very important step in future housing policy actions in Namibia. The study also highlighted concerns about the programme such as inadequate communication. Some recommendations are provided, prominent among them being the need to strengthen the training component so as to assist the beneficiaries with some of the issues, The study consists of two components: A and B. Component A comprises the study background, the problem statement, aim, objectives, literature review and methodology. Component B is presented as a research paper for publication purposes and complies with the requirements of the selected journal (Appendix six). For the purposes of the paper, relevant information from component A on the purpose of the study and methodology are incorporated in Component B. / Thesis (M.Env.Dev.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2005.

This thesis consists of three essays that address various aspects of the economics of maternal health care. The first two essays examine the determinants of utilization of maternal health care services in low-income countries, while the third essay examines the determinants of utilization of prenatal ultrasonography in Canada. The first essay examines the influence of prenatal attendance (as well as a wide array of observed individual-, household- and community-level characteristics) on a woman’s decision to give birth at a health facility or at home for thirty-two low-income countries (across Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America). This empirical investigation employs the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data and a two-level random intercept model. The results show that prenatal attendance has a substantial influence on the use of facility delivery in all three geographical regions. Women having four prenatal visits were 7.3 times more likely to deliver at a health facility than those with no prenatal care. The second essay addresses two related questions: what factors determine a woman’s decision to seek prenatal care; and are those the same factors that determine the frequency of care? This investigation also utilizes Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) data for thirty-two low-income countries (across Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America) and applies a two-part and multi-level model to that data. The results suggest that, though a wide range of factors influence both decisions, that influence varies in magnitude across the two decisions, as well as across the three geographical regions. The third essay examines the influence of various socioeconomic and demographic factors on the frequency of prenatal ultrasounds in Canada, while controlling for maternal risk profiles. This investigation utilizes data from the Maternity Experience Survey (MES) of the Canadian Perinatal Surveillance System and employs a count data regression model (the Poisson distribution) to estimate the effect of various factors on the number of prenatal ultrasounds. The results of this investigation suggest that, even after controlling for maternal risk factors, the type of health-care provider, province of prenatal care, and timings of first ultrasound are the strongest predictors of number of ultrasounds.

<p>The goal of this study is to understand how residents may benefit from living in a mixed income, HOPE VI development in the South. This analysis focuses on a former housing project and its immediate neighborhood in the aftermath of HOPE VI revitalization. I conducted a case study by utilizing original data collected from in-depth, semi-structured interviews and unstructured interviews, along with administrative records, evaluation data, media accounts, observation, and casual encounters. A unique contribution of this study of a HOPE VI development is that it also addresses the surrounding neighborhood. Furthermore, this case study offers a unique lens for examining contemporary black gentrification in a publicly constructed space. </p><p>A major finding of this study is that complex intra-racial social dynamics among African American community members may stem from HOPE VI intervention. Specifically, there may be limited positive interaction among residents in the development, and between them and residents of the proximate exterior neighborhood. Further, the nature of constrained interaction manufactures divisive processes for claiming space and community identity that may potentially have negative consequences for renters. </p><p>These consequences stem from a reproduction of space and community, which shapes social control, policing, and exclusion contests, among other tensions. Overall, this study brings to bear some unimagined consequences of HOPE VI that potentially neutralize anticipated benefits of mixed income living for the poor, based on real and perceived alterations of class, mobility, and shared identity in and around the development site.</p> / Dissertation

In South Africa, about 15,3% of the households were living in 2011 in formal state-subsidised low-income houses (houses for households with income lower than R 3500 - about $ 350 - per month), whereas 12,1% were living in informal dwellings. The sustainable development of low-income housing is therefore one of the main challenges for developing countries addressing the green Agenda as South Africa, especially considering the quality of life of inhabitants and the complex socioeconomic implications. Furthermore, the energy consumption patterns of low income households have emerged as one of the most important factors influencing the national electricity demand, as marked by the National Housing Code of 2009. The complex social and environmental issues related to the living conditions of low-income communities need to be addressed with an integrated approach to the design of the settlements. Rethinking and greening the low-income housing design principles firstly represent an opportunity to strive social inequity and improve the quality of life of households. The rationale of this study is to investigate how a strategic bottom-up approach and multi-scale low-cost green measures, implemented in the design process of South African low-cost housing, can potentially achieve environmental and social sustainability targets with affordable solutions. The dissertation analysed a representative case study of a low-cost housing development in the KwaZulu-Natal Province. The research adopted a bottom-up approach combining participatory methods through a survey and interviews with the local community, and a scenario analysis investigating design alternatives and multiscale green strategies (i.e. alternative building typologies, densification, passive design strategies). The proposed scenario evaluated the potential benefits of the green implementation, through qualitative and quantitative assessments based on sustainability indicators as environmental and energy impacts, social implications, safety and cost effectiveness, supported also by experimental methods using dynamic building energy modelling. The study promoted an integrated and holistic research and design approach to foster the sustainability in low-cost housing development. The outcome of this integrated bottom-up approach defined a framework of good criteria and methods for the design process, which can be intended as a guideline to effectively implement green measures and reach sustainability targets for low-cost settlements. / Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2014.