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  • About
  • The Global ETD Search service is a free service for researchers to find electronic theses and dissertations. This service is provided by the Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations.
    Our metadata is collected from universities around the world. If you manage a university/consortium/country archive and want to be added, details can be found on the NDLTD website.
51

Microfranchising alternative service delivery configurations – creating economic and energy resilience with the iShack

Radmore, Jack-Vincent 04 1900 (has links)
Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2015. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: This thesis emerges from the transdisciplinary work of the Enkanini Research Centre Association. Since 2011 this Association has focused on incremental informal settlement upgrading using Enkanini, Stellenbosch as a case study. This thesis explores whether management techniques and operational practises of microfranchising can support the establishment of alternative service delivery configurations in the context of in situ informal settlement upgrading. Following a transdisciplinary and multiple-case study research methodology, the theoretical argument is presented that a synthesis of the strengths and vulnerabilities of contemporary innovations from the urban development field augmented by the principles and management techniques of microfranchising could strongly influence future in situ informal settlement upgrading. In exploring this argument two sub-questions are analysed in two free standing journal articles. The first article explores the potential synthesis of the fields of microfranchising and incremental urbanism, specifically alternative service delivery configurations in the context of in situ informal settlement upgrading. The literature on incrementalism and microfranchising originate from diametrically opposite ideological traditions, namely contemporary urban development and the management sciences. However it is argued that convergent patterns highlighted by points of coherence and convergence between the fields indicate that the proposed amalgamation has strengths potentially useful in addressing mutual weaknesses inherent to both perspectives. The intersection between these two distinct theories has potential to stitch together a new community fabric, deliver basic services, promote economic and social development and integrate the oppressed into the formal economy. Building on this theoretical synthesis the second article explores potential best practice microfranchising cases. Three microfranchising cases are reviewed, Unjani Clinics NPC, African Honey Bee and Nuru Energy. Each case presents specific within-case lessons and microfranchising techniques. Cross-cutting themes from all three cases highlight knowledge, that when bolstered by everyday urbanism thinking, could be instrumental in developing a microfranchising consolidating, operating and scaling model for the iShack and the continued testing of the proposed synthesis. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Hierdie tesis het ontstaan uit die transdissiplinêre werk van die Enkanini Research Centre Association. Sedert 2011 het hierdie vereniging gefokus op die inkrementele opgradering van informele nedersettings, deur van Enkanini wat net buite Stellenbosch geleë is, as 'n gevallestudie gebruik te maak. Die studie ondersoek of die bestuurstegnieke en operasionele praktyke van die mikrofranchisebedryf die vestiging van alternatiewe diensleweringskonfigurasies in die konteks van in situ opgradering van informele nedersettings kan ondersteun. Na afloop van 'n transdissiplinêre en meervoudige gevallestudie navorsingsmetodologie word „n teoretiese argument gevoer dat die samevoeging van beide die sterk- en swakpunte van die huidige innovasies van die stedelike ontwikkelingsveld aangevul sal word deur die beginsels en tegnieke van die mikrofranchisebedryf. Hierdie tegnieke en praktyke het die vermoë om in die toekoms in situ opgradering van informele nedersettings sterk te beïnvloed. In die verkenning van hierdie argument word twee sub-vrae in twee vrystaande tydskrifartikels ontleed. Die eerste artikel ondersoek die potensiële samevoeging van die velde van die mikrofranchisebedryf en inkrementele stedelikheid, met spesifieke fokus op alternatiewe dienslewerings konfigurasies in die konteks van in situ opgradering van informele nedersettings. Alhoewel daar in die literatuur oor inkrementalisme beweer word dat die mikrofranchisebedryf afkomstig is van lynregte teenoorgestelde ideologiese tradisies, word daar aangevoer dat konvergente patrone uitgelig word deur punte van samehang. Ooreenkomste tussen die velde dui daarop dat die voorgestelde samesmelting sterkpunte het wat potensieel nuttig kan wees om wedersydse swakhede wat inherent aan beide perspektiewe is, aan te spreek. Die samesmelting van hierdie twee afsonderlike teorieë het die potensiaal om ‟n gemeenskap te bou, basiese dienste te lewer, ekonomiese en maatskaplike ontwikkeling te bevorder, asook om die onderdruktes in die formele ekonomie te integreer. Geskoei op die voorafgaande teoretiese samevoeging, ondersoek die tweede artikel die potensiële beste praktyke in die mikrofranchisebedryf. Drie mikrofranchisebedryf-gevalle word hersien: UnjaniKliniekeNPC, Afrika Heuning By en Nuru Energie. Elke geval bied spesifieke binne-geval lesse en tegnieke in die mikrofranchisebedryf. Deurlopende temas van al drie gevalle beklemtoon kennis, wat met die ondersteuning van alledaagse stedelike denke, instrumentele waarde vir die ontwikkeling van 'n mikrofranchisingkonsolidasie, bedryfstelsel en skaalmodel vir die iShack, asook die deurlopende toets van die voorgestelde samevoeging, kan inhou.
52

Colonia formation and economic restructuring in El Paso, Texas.

Towers, George William. January 1991 (has links)
In recent years, both global economic restructuring and the economic, political, and social implications of the urban landscape have been at the forefront of geographical inquiry. This dissertation links these two levels of analysis in an examination of industrial restructuring and the colonia labor force in El Paso. El Paso's economic role has been dramatically restructured. Once a center for natural resource extraction, the city is now an assembly site for labor intensive manufacturing activities. Data from a survey of 173 colonia households provide information regarding the colonia labor force. The low cost of housing and the malleability of colonias household structure allows colonia residents to accept minimal incomes and endure high rates of unemployment. In the colonias, a labor force characterized by its relative powerlessness in the American economy is created. The formation of the colonias is consonant with the restructuring of El Paso's economy.
53

Architects for empowerment : understanding, exploring, and responding to the needs of the impoverished in Pune, India

Sarpotdar, Shalaka S. January 2009 (has links)
As developing India faces rapid urbanization, the provision of sufficient infrastructure facilities to the informal settlers remains a major challenge. Pune is a second tier city in the state of Maharashtra which is transforming itself into a metropolitan city. The research is an attempt to better understand the existence of slums, explore and suggest empowerment opportunities to improve the living conditions of an informal settlement dweller. It questions the scope and limitations of the architectural profession specific to the responsibilities of architects towards the impoverished people within the society. This study argues and advocates the need to understand and respond accordingly to the needs of the people who lack access to resources. As an attempt to better understand this perspective, the study takes a closer look at the works and philosophies of Dr. Wes Janz, Dr. Nihal Perera, Prof. Hector LaSala, Lebbeus Woods, Ar. Pratima Joshi, Prof. Nabeel Hamdi, and Robert Neuwirth. Also the research explains the efforts of several non profit organizations like School on Wheels (Indianapolis), Second Helpings (Indianapolis), Hamara Footpath (Mumbai, India), and MicroPlace which work towards providing better living conditions to disadvantaged people. The study concludes with a proposal for a Non Governmental Organization in Pune, India that will provide the slum dwellers access to education, the internet, and monetary resources which will lead towards their enablement. / Paradigm shift -- The naked truth -- Generations of social exile -- Do we really know slums? -- Existence of Pune slums -- Architectural education in India -- Implications of development -- Agents of change -- Are we well equipped as professionals? -- Exploring various forms of empowerment -- Proposal for an NGO. / Department of Architecture
54

Managing the impact of informal settlements on the performance of primary school learners in Kagiso.

21 October 2008 (has links)
M.Ed. / There are remarkable differences in the academic performance between the learners residing in informal settlements and those from townships (formal settlements). Learners from informal settlements perform very poorly as compared to learners from formal settlements. From the literature review, the factors leading to study problems are identified as environment, lack of resources, available time and place to study. The socio-economic background affects a child at every point in his or her academic career. The purpose of this study was to explore ways and means of managing the negative impact of the informal settlements on the academic performance of primary school learners of Kagiso. It was also to investigate possible solutions and provide them in the form of guidelines to the Department of Education as intervention strategies to address management on the impact of informal settlements on learner performance. This was a qualitative research. The study explored the impact of the informal settlements and its management in the performance of primary school learners through in- depth interviews and observations. The researcher conducted interviews with a sample drawn from primary school principals, educators, learners and affected parents in Kagiso. The data were analyzed separately by eliciting the unique experiences of respondents and led to common emerging themes. Measures to ensure trustworthiness have been applied in the research and ethical measures have been strictly adhered to. Trustworthiness consists of four components: creditability, transferability, dependability and conformability. Validity and reliability were ensured by the use of the participant’s own language as raw as it is, in data recording. Findings from the research in line with literature review suggested that the informal settlements have a negative impact on learners. Inadequate housing and overcrowding deprive the child of privacy. Homework and study is done against a noisy background. This can be managed by all stakeholders taking part in the intervention strategies that influence policy formulation regarding the at-risk learners in Kagiso. Recommendations ensuing from this study will contribute to the development of intervention strategies to address management concerning this impact. The recommendations will be forwarded to the Department of Education and other relevant state departments. / Prof. J.R. Debeila
55

Planning : a source of education

Kuzwayo, Tidimalo Angela January 1998 (has links)
A discourse Submitted to the Faculty of Architecture, University of The Witwatersrand, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Science in Development Planning. / Andrew Chakane 2018
56

Space, society and culture: housing and local level politics in a section of Alexandra township, 1991-1992

Lucas, Justine, Clare January 1995 (has links)
A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts, 1995 / This thesis presents an analysis of the relationship between social processes, cognitive understandings and the organisation of space, as this pertains to local-level politics in a section of Alexandra township, South Africa, during 1991 and 1992. The context of the thesis is the attempts by the Alexandra Civic Organisation and the Alexandra branch of the African National Congress to elicit support from people living in formal and inform~i housing during a period of intense violence. The focus of the ethnographylis on local-level civic structures and political leadership, which in some ways support and in others contradict the aims and objectives of these two organisations. The reason for this internal political diversity is that local-level politics is embedded within social maps - cognitive orderings of space that represent patterns of social relations and structures of power. This points to the main theoretical focus of the thesis: the interrelationship of space, culture and society in an urban context. Urbanism is conventionally defined in sociological and geographical terms as the articulation between social process and urban spatial form. The thesis shows how anthropology can make a contribution to this field of study by incorporating a concern with culture. The mutually constitutive relationship of urban space, culture and society presents a way of looking at urbanism that does not depend on a rural-urban dichotomy; a social. and cultural dualism which is conventionally fitted into a modernist narrative of urbanisation. The ethnography in the thesis demonstrates the inapplicability of this narrative, and the categories of rural tradition and urban modernity which it implies. Keywords: anthropology, urbanism, urbanisation, rural-urban dichotomy, space, Alexandra, politics, civic organisation, informal housing. / AC2017
57

Recombinant urban DNA connectivity through adaptation in Diepsloot

Nair, Simona 02 1900 (has links)
70% of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050. Cities are growing faster than can be designed. Townships and informal settlements are becoming a common site within cities around the world. South African cities are ill and require healing. It has inherited an intrinsic genetic flaw, apartheid’s social and spatial planning. This urban DNA structure encouraged weakness in the connectivity systems and was designed to prevent people from connecting and contracting. It is Postapartheid times and this weakness continues. Therefore the location of interest is Diepsloot, a disconnected post apartheid township. Over 400 000 people reside in this township which is located between two major cities in Gauteng. The conceptual framework is based on the analogy of the Recombinant DNA applied to how urban design unfolds. The scientifically engineered process of healing through sharing, recombining, accepting and adapting is a strong methodology to adopt into the urban design process and methodology. The theoretical framework looks at Peter Calthorpe’s New Urban Network is based on reorganising transport networks into a hierarchy which assists in increasing connectivity and improving the quality of the urban network. While Complex Adaptive Systems theory is understood through Sanders’ five complexity-based observations about cities and urban environments. David Grahame Shane’s explanation of the theory of recombinant urbanism involves the theory that cities emerge from armatures, enclaves and heterotopias which are all constantly combined and re-combined. In addressing spatial inequalities and disconnectivity, three bases of literature have been reviewed. The literature review includes Compact City and Decentralised Concentration, New Urbanism and Transit Oriented Development – Urban Network System. The work researched and developed in these design movements and approaches are vast. This study touches on the essence of the design movements and approaches. The challenge is the application of these strong design approaches or movements into a local context. The hypothesis says that it is possible to develop a design methodology that works from a parallel system of both bottom up and top down design processes. It is possible to extract a strength in the current organic structure of a township development, and incorporate it into formal urbanism design tools. This is to ensure that the formal design intervention is adopted into the current system, or study area, and adapts and grows incrementally. Similar to the process of how the host would accept the recombinant DNA of the antivirus. The aim of the design intervention is to apply local lessons learnt in the existing spatial context and link the strengths found with contemporary urban design principles of transit oriented development that encourage connectivity and intensity of development around intermodal facilities. This approach demonstrates a design methodology that employs a parallel system of bottom up and top down processes. The approach developed is specifically, a design and a physical built morphology analysis and does not include the arm of social interaction in the form of public participation, etc. The findings demonstrate that connectivity and density is a critical component to healing the city. This discussion is held within the Transit Oriented Development model. The study analysed the level of connectivity Diepsloot exhibits from a regional scale, to a district scale and finally to a neighbourhood scale. Healing the weakness of disconnectivity requires tackling it from all scales.
58

Challenges in the implementation of the upgrading of informal settlements programme (UISP): an evaluation of two Gauteng Metropolitan Municipalities

Bafo, Pumla Sithandiwe 13 September 2016 (has links)
A Research Report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of the Built Environment in Housing. APRIL 2016 / One of the most critical housing issues of concern today is the continued proliferation of informal settlements and the failure of government to meet the housing demand. Party to the United Nations Millennium Development Goals, which includes the goal to improve the lives of at least 100 million slum dwellers by 2020 introduced the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme (UISP). Despite the introduction of this new paradigm shift, its implementation has been minimal. This report investigates: if metropolitan municipalities are implementing the programme and the underlying challenges faced by municipalities in implementation. The study points to the importance of the 5 crucial variables: Policy content, context, commitment, capacity and coalitions and clients in implementation. The research made use of qualitative methods, which included literature review of books, academic and media articles. The people interviewed comprised of political leaders, both senior and junior officials of the Municipalities and former employees of the City of Johannesburg, all tasked with informal settlement intervention implementation. The data collected was analysed using cross comparison between the various municipal officials’ responses, evaluating officials’ interpretation against policy interpretation, analysing the complexities of the policy, teasing out the comparisons, summarising data in order to make sense of what has been collected, identifying and classifying key concepts that emerge from the interviews, sorting data obtained through semi-structured interviews into smaller units in order to interpret how the two municipalities interpret and implement the programme (Gray, 2004:210), categorising data in order to understand the funding mechanisms used by the various municipalities and using the key concepts for descriptive analysis. Based on the findings of the study it was concluded that the Municipality has not been implementing UISP as per the housing code, however it has been utilising formalisation as an intervention in its informal settlement. The findings of the current study provide answers to the guiding research questions on whether municipalities are implementing UISP and interventions within the two municipalities. The conclusion is that both municipalities are not implementing UISP. However they have their own interventions which are biased toward the realities of project managers rather than the organized informal settlement communities thus disconnecting from the premise of UISP. The envisaged limitation was getting hold of municipal officials as this research was conducted in the first quarter of the new financial year and municipal officials were engaged in strategic meetings. This is an unfortunate limitation that could not be avoided therefore interviews especially in EMM were not carried out as planned but as and when the contact persons were available. This resulted in only 5 officials being interviewed as compared to the anticipated number. Secondly, one of the municipalities that the research was conducted on was reluctant to give out information.
59

An evaluation of flood risk communication efforts based upon the values judgements of the inhabitanats of a selection of informal settlements in the Cape Town municipal area

Tigere, Diana January 2013 (has links)
Proposal submitted in partial fulfilment for the award of MTech in Environmental Management / It is widely believed that experts often have a more rational approach towards risks. This is because they are known to use algorithms, formal logic, risk assessments and normative rules to make decisions about risks. The central tenet of this research is that communication based on an understanding of how people conceptualise and evaluate risk communication efforts is critical for translating risk management knowledge into effective risk practices necessary for value generation in flood risk mitigation. Rational decisionEmaking requires both analytic and intuitive systems to operate on a parallel level. Therefore, this research proposes a Flood Risk Communication Model that takes cognisance of lay perceptions. The model emphasises on how risk communication efforts are evaluated by the lay using a combination of descriptive psychological and social construction theories. In particular, the prospect theory, heuristics and biases, cultural theory and trust theory are used to provide explanatory sketches on how flood risk communication efforts are perceived in highly vulnerable environmental contexts such as informal settlements. The challenge in this research however, lies in verifying the model empirically. The associative group analysis technique will be used to generate empirical data from a case study population. Two basic analytic methods will be employed to measure psychological dispositions of respondents. Firstly, word associations are scored and weighted based on frequency of occurrence to generate a dominance score. The higher the dominance score, the greater the interpretation and the more meaningful the theme is for that particular group. Secondly, the different theories of the model are factored into a questionnaire to measure priorities. All the responses are then compared to the proposed model and also used to evaluate actual lay perceptions and feelings towards the current risk communication interventions. The results showed a high level of consistency with the FRCM and hence with the descriptive psychological models of Kahneman and Tversky. However, we conclude that what is has been proposed to be biases are intuitive tendencies to adapt and make sustainable decisions in the face of applicable contextual influences. Thus, these contextual hierarchies determine the reference point and status quo of the recipient in decision making. Therefore, these influences and hierarchies need to be factored in the designing of a risk communication.
60

Popular urban settlements in Athens : a comparative study of low income housing

Kitsiou, Triada January 1981 (has links)
Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Architecture, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographical references. / This study is concerned with aspects of housing and urban development related to the lower income groups in the context of urbanization in Athens, Greece. It identifies and evaluates typical low income housing settlements presently existing in Athens and develops a land utilization model along with a set of related planning guidelines to provide for future planned low income urban developments. The approach has been to determine the requirements of a low income housing program by identifying and evaluating the inadequacies and potentials of related existing conditions. / by Triada Kitsiou. / M.S.

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