Hay El-Tanak, Haouch et El-Masaken El-Chaabiyah sont trois quartiers squattés localisés dans la ville d'El-Mina, au nord du Liban. Cette ville côtière de forme péninsulaire fait partie de l'union d'Al-Fayhaa dont la municipalité principale est Tripoli. Les territoires squattés sont illicitement édifiés sur des terrains privés et prennent aussi la forme de bâtiments occupés par des ménages ne disposant d'aucun titre juridique. Les populations résidant dans ces territoires, dont le plus ancien date du début du 19ème siècle, souffrent d'aléas naturels et anthropiques dont les criticités sont distinctes au sein de chaque quartier. Face à ces vulnérabilités, les projets d'amélioration des conditions de vie demeurent très rares. Cette situation de précarité a suscité des questions sur le profil de santé des habitants. Ainsi, cette étude a été effectuée à une échelle ponctuelle et fine de ces quartiers favorisant l'exploration du profil de santé des femmes au cours de la phase périnatale et des enfants jusqu'à l'âge de cinq ans. Loin des caractéristiques intrinsèques des quartiers informels, le contexte géographique externe joue-t-il un rôle dans l'état de santé de ces habitants ? Existe-t-il une influence du système de soin de la ville et quels sont les autres acteurs urbains dont dépend l'état de santé actuel ?Par conséquent, une combinaison de méthodes d'analyse statistique et spatiale a été adoptée afin de répondre à la problématique posée. L'hypothèse relevée dans cette étude a été vérifiée en mettant en évidence un état de résilience partielle chez les habitants de territoires squattés de la ville malgré les aléas qui y existent. Avec le temps, les populations y résidant ont pu surmonter les hasards et acquérir des pratiques protectrices. Ainsi, au cours de la phase périnatale une grande proportion des femmes suit leur grossesse le fait qui a minimisé les complications comme les naissances prématurées, les accouchements difficiles et les mortalités néonatales précoces. En effet, les femmes priorisent la qualité de soin et les structures spécialisées au cours de cette période. Ces pratiques sont soutenues par l'offre multiple et la prise en charge des soins existant dans la ville d'El-Mina et de Tripoli dont les tissus urbains ont fini par se joindre. Plusieurs acteurs urbains contribuent dans la facilitation de l'accessibilité au soin dont les dispensaires, les hôpitaux, les médecins spécialistes, les organisations non gouvernementales, les associations caritatives religieuses et politiques. Cependant, pour les enfants âgés de moins de cinq ans, les résultats ont montré des prévalences élevées d'infections diarrhéiques, de fièvre et de toux. Les diarrhées accompagnées de fièvre sont corrélées à la qualité de l'eau consommée dans les quartiers squattés. Cette tranche d'âge souffre aussi de retards de vaccination. En fait, les mères rencontrées dans ces quartiers recherchent l'offre la moins chère pour avoir recours au soin de leurs enfants. Les disparités dans la forme et les niveaux de vulnérabilités entre les trois quartiers ciblés n'ont pas provoqué des différences significatives dans les prévalences des indicateurs de santé. De même, cette étude témoigne d'une plus-value apportée par la géographie dans l'évaluation de la santé des plus démunis de la société. L'exploration du rôle des acteurs urbains externes aux zones informelles et facilitant le recours au soin a aidé dans l'explication du profil de santé déclaré. Cependant, cette approche demeure qualitative et recommande le développement d'un système d'information géocodé et standardisé dirigé par le ministère de santé publique dans tous les centres de soin opérant au Liban / Hay El-Tanak, Haouch and El-Masaken El-Chaabiyah are three squatter settlements located in El-Mina city, Northern Lebanon and dating back to the beginning of the 20th century. This costal city, taking a peninsular form, is part of Al-Fayhaa Federation of Municipalities headed by Tripoli municipality. Squatter territories targeted in this study include settlements illicitly built on private lands and buildings occupied by households with no tenure rights. Populations residing in these territories suffer from nature and anthropogenic hazards which criticality varies in each settlement. Despite these vulnerabilities, upgrading projects of living conditions remain very rare. This precarious situation aroused many questions about the inhabitants' health profile. Therefore, the current research is realized on a punctual small scale of these settlements favoring the exploration of women's health profile during « perinatal » phase and children's health status until the age of five. Away from internal characteristics of informal settlements, does the external geographic context play a role in the health status of these populations? Is there any impact of the health care system of the city and what are the other urban actors influencing the actual health status of the inhabitants of squatter settlements? Consequently, a combination of statistical and spatial analyses methods are adopted in order to address the health profile of women and children. The hypothesis raised in this study was verified in bringing out a partial resilience situation of the inhabitants of the squatter settlements in spite of the existing hazards. Over time, the populations targeted could overcome the danger by acquiring protective behaviors. Therefore, during the “perinatal” phase a big proportion of women interviewed declared a regular monitoring of their pregnancy the fact that decreased the complications like premature births, complicated delivery, and early neonatal mortality. In fact, women living in these settlements prioritize the quality of care and specialized health centers during the “perinatal” period. These practices are supported by the multiple health offers and the financial aid existing in the cities of Tripoli and El-Mina. Many urban actors participate in facilitating the accessibility to health care including dispensaries, hospitals, doctors, non-governmental organizations, charity religious and political associations. However, for children under five, results showed that diarrhea, cough and fever infections marked high prevalence. Diarrhea accompanied with fever is correlated to the quality of water consumed in the three squatter settlements. In addition, this category of age suffers from delays in the immunization calendar. In fact, mothers met in these settlements search for the less expensive offer when it comes for their children's health care. Disparities between the settlements' urban form and levels of vulnerability didn't lead to significant statistical differences in the prevalence of health indicators amongst their inhabitants. As well, this study witnesses an added-value brought by geography in the evaluation of marginalized populations' health. The exploration of the role of urban actors facilitating the health care use helped in the explanation of declared health profile. Nevertheless, this approach remains qualitative and recommends the development of a geocoded and standardized information system managed by the ministry of public health in all the health care centers operating in Lebanon

A research report approved by the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment of the University of Witwatersrand for the degree of Master of the Built Environment in housing / In post-apartheid South Africa, the delivery of low-income housing has been occurring at unprecedented rates since 1994. This means that more and more poor households are gaining access to secure tenure on progressive basis. Unfortunately the new low-income housing townships are often established on cheap peripheral land, adjacent or far beyond the existing apartheid townships. The widespread growth of informal settlements in urban areas has also been occurring at higher rates following the repeal of apartheid laws which restricted rural-urban migration. The growth of informal settlements is nothing but a precise indication of poverty and the desire of the poor to gain access to employment opportunities. However, the link between employment opportunities and home is often provided by transport. Travelling demands money which most of the urban poor rarely have. For the poor, proximity to areas of employment opportunities is key to surviving in urban areas. The consequence of this arrangement is the establishment of informal settlements near places of employment as a way of escaping the cost of transport. Yet the upgrading of well-located informal settlements has not been a preferred and popular strategy for the post-apartheid government as a mechanism for promoting access to opportunities. Instead the focus has largely been on providing access to individual tenure through the delivery of the free-standing housing units on the periphery where land is relatively cheap to accommodate large scale housing delivery. Is this the only factor which had motivated the rural poor to migrate to urban areas in the first place? Which matters most for the urban poor? Is it access to subsidised housing in the urban area only or is the latter. Perhaps it is a combination of both factors. To provide answers to the foregoing questions, the researcher resolved to pose two guiding questions to focus the investigation: What are the effects of relocation to the periphery on household livelihoods and how do relocated households make a living on the periphery....what sort of coping mechanisms are adopted to survive in remote, isolated, low density and sprawling low-income Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) townships of the post-apartheid South Africa? The research uses Diepsloot as a case study area because it presents all the necessary traits of a typical post-apartheid South African low-income township which had been used as a northern Johannesburg relocation site. The findings of the research suggest that the only major positive impact which result from relocation, is access to secure tenure while the major negative impact, is the poor location of Diepsloot in relation to major employment opportunities. This finding correlates with the existing literature and the hypothesis of the study.

This research explored the City of Johannesburg’s response to floods in the lower-income settlement of Soweto in February 2009, through participant observation, interviews and examination of official documentation. The municipality’s response indicates the governance forces that may shape adaptation to increasingly severe and frequent climate events in the context of development pressures and needs. It was found that the flood event provided a ‘window of opportunity’ for action and learning on flooding, but governance factors hindered an effective response. These included the framing of flood risk, limitations in the City of Johannesburg’s municipal structure, institutional power dynamics, and the performance culture. The research demonstrated that networked governance is critical to adaptation in global South cities. In the case of Johannesburg city, conflicting governance paradigms constrained the realisation of networked governance modes. Resolving tensions amongst competing governance approaches is necessary to advance both the climate and development agenda in Johannesburg.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 123-124). / The colonia popular is one of the most typical types of settlement used in Mexico City, and with some variations in other Latin American cities. Fifty per cent of the urban land in Mexico City is occupied by this type of dwelling. The purpose of this study is to develop a method to detect and measure the physical changes over time of a group of dwelling units in a colonia popular. A group of 20 dwelling units has been selected randomly in three blocks of a colonia popular. Each dwelling unit has been recorded on maps showing two physical changes that have taken place over time. The changes that we recorded were those that took place at morpholgical and functional views. A comparison of these changes will help to suggest patterns of future growth. Since we feel that these physical changes are an expression of social economic, and political changes experienced by the house holders we consider this study to be a preliminary step in a project which would relate changes in dwellings to larger social forces. / by Jorge Andrade-Narvaez. / M.Arch.

Thesis. 1979. M.Arch.A.S.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Architecture. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: p. 70. / M.Arch.A.S.

Thesis. 1978. M.C.P.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Bibliography: leaves 199-208. / M.C.P.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In recent years there has been substantial research on Dominican migration and transnationalism, yet these studies have largely overlooked both the manner in which globalisation generates new localisations, and the continuing salience of the state as a mediator between the global and the local. Based upon fieldwork in La Ciénaga, a poor barrio of Santo Domingo, this thesis argues that emplacement, rather than transnationalism, is paradigmatic of the experiences of poor Dominicans and provides their primary source of unity. Race, ethnicity, and social class have long been promoted as structuring the experiences of Caribbean people, but my analysis suggests that these operate more as sources of differentiation than of identification in Santo Domingo’s barrios. I examine the strategies and practices residents deploy to create value in place, overcome their localisation, and achieve progreso (progress) within the bounds of the state. These include transforming the material environment and its symbolic meanings, elaborating certain social hierarchies and contesting others, and developing locality-based political organisations. In the Caribbean, it has been usual for studies of cultural oppositions or dualisms to effectively constitute a different genre to studies of class, race, and globalization. My ethnography indicates that this distinction is false. Residents of La Ciénaga deploy cultural oppositions and notion of difference to define a place in the social hierarchies of the barrio and city, while simultaneously recognising the moral value and identical structural position of those around them. Popular politics in Santo Domingo are characterised by this tension between social stratification and the elaboration of cultural value in place. This thesis develops a political and social economy of value that addresses both the bases of stratification in the sphere of production and the ways in which projects of self-creation, such as through consumption, allow for the elaboration of cultural value and meaning for individuals and social groups. Given the importance of locality to popular politics, I argue that this integrated approach is necessary to any assessment of the transformative potential of community organisations and other political movements in Santo Domingo.

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Ball State University, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Feb. 08, 2010). Includes bibliographical references (p. 100-103).

M. Tech. Economics and Finance / The main aim with the current study was to explore the complexity and mobility of rural-urban migration, as well as its relation to the housing crisis and many other rural-urban socio-economic implications in Namibia. The features of rural-urban migration were analysed, alongside the migration processes and socio-economic complications. The rationale with the present study was to identify the factors responsible for the rural-urban migration in Namibia and to investigate migration mobility patterns. In addition, policy implications were explored with the aim of formulating a possible new migration policy, as well as to offer recommendations to protect urban migrants' socio-economic status. Furthermore, the current rural-urban migration patterns and imbalances in housing - which has led to the illegal erection of informal settlements around towns and cities - were uncovered.

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In recent years there has been substantial research on Dominican migration and transnationalism, yet these studies have largely overlooked both the manner in which globalisation generates new localisations, and the continuing salience of the state as a mediator between the global and the local. Based upon fieldwork in La Ciénaga, a poor barrio of Santo Domingo, this thesis argues that emplacement, rather than transnationalism, is paradigmatic of the experiences of poor Dominicans and provides their primary source of unity. Race, ethnicity, and social class have long been promoted as structuring the experiences of Caribbean people, but my analysis suggests that these operate more as sources of differentiation than of identification in Santo Domingo’s barrios. I examine the strategies and practices residents deploy to create value in place, overcome their localisation, and achieve progreso (progress) within the bounds of the state. These include transforming the material environment and its symbolic meanings, elaborating certain social hierarchies and contesting others, and developing locality-based political organisations. In the Caribbean, it has been usual for studies of cultural oppositions or dualisms to effectively constitute a different genre to studies of class, race, and globalization. My ethnography indicates that this distinction is false. Residents of La Ciénaga deploy cultural oppositions and notion of difference to define a place in the social hierarchies of the barrio and city, while simultaneously recognising the moral value and identical structural position of those around them. Popular politics in Santo Domingo are characterised by this tension between social stratification and the elaboration of cultural value in place. This thesis develops a political and social economy of value that addresses both the bases of stratification in the sphere of production and the ways in which projects of self-creation, such as through consumption, allow for the elaboration of cultural value and meaning for individuals and social groups. Given the importance of locality to popular politics, I argue that this integrated approach is necessary to any assessment of the transformative potential of community organisations and other political movements in Santo Domingo.