Measuring Quality of Life in Informal Settlements in South Africa

Richards, Robin; O’Leary, Brian; Mutsonziwa, Kingstone

doi:10.1007/s11205-006-9014-1

Cited by 82 publications

(65 citation statements)

References 8 publications

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“…Black individuals in both Pretoria and Johannesburg were expected to live in townships outside of the city, hostels, if they were men migrating in from a rural homeland. Many black South Africans also lived in informal squatter camps that appeared around the cities towards the end of apartheid, as more individuals migrated from rural areas in search of work (Christopher, 2005;Richards et al, 2007). It has been estimated that by the 1980s nearly 1.5 million intra-urban commuters moved between townships and urban centres daily (Khosa, 1998).…”

Section: Social and Physical Geography Of The Johannesburg/pretoria Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longitudinal and contemporaneous manganese exposure in apartheid-era South Africa: Implications for the past and future

Hess

Smith

Trueman

et al. 2015

International Journal of Paleopathology

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Section: Social and Physical Geography Of The Johannesburg/pretoria Mmentioning

confidence: 99%

Longitudinal and contemporaneous manganese exposure in apartheid-era South Africa: Implications for the past and future

Hess

Smith

Trueman

et al. 2015

International Journal of Paleopathology

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“…On the other hand, one can invoke for more investments into urban planning approaches that are proactive in addressing future urban sprawl and land management, rather than sticking to the old methods that are rigid and cannot adopt to increasing populations and their needs. It can also be noted that the rise of informal settlements is also aggravated by the housing backlog in South Africa (Richards et al, 2007). Close to half of South Africa's 52 million people live in urban areas and of that population, a quarter of them live in informal settlements (Van Rensburg and Campbell, 2012).…”

Section: Urbanization and Informal Settlements As Challenges To Urbanmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…From this discourse, two areas were identified to be requiring improvements and these are: lack of infrastructure and ineffective governance. This further prompted for the South African housing program to aim at improving the lives of 2.2 million households by the year 2014 (Richards, Leary and Mutsonziwa, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Urban Development Planning for Sustainability: Urbanization and Informal Settlements in a Democratic South Africa

Muzondi¹

2014

MJSS

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“…Neighborhood satisfaction was best predicted by evaluations of social interactions, neighborhood crime and public facilities (parks, libraries), while housing satisfaction was predicted best by age of home and home ownership. Richards et al [39] investigate the factors that are most important in improving the quality of life of residents in informal housing as well as the main obstacles to a better quality of life. It uses regression analysis to obtain an understanding of the kinds of issues which shape quality of life in these areas and concludes by suggesting several research directions which would improve our knowledge of quality of life for informal settlement residents.…”

Section: Intruductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

An assessment of Urban Quality of Life by Using Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach (Case study: Comparative Study of Quality of Life in the North of Iran)

Lotfi¹,

Solaimani²

2009

J. of Social Sciences

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Problem Statement: Researches of quality of life are concentrated mainly on the urban nature in the recent years and the urban quality of life gained many attentions in empirical studies. The concept of urban quality of life is a multi-dimensional and complex issue. So, needless to say that this concept can be used in planning when there is an appropriate and reliable framework for measuring. Approach: The present study tried to create a framework on the base of Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) for objective measuring of urban quality of life and then it would be applied for a comparative study of two northern cities of Iran. Results: The results showed that using analytic hierarchy process model creates opportunity to involving the different groups' views of urban users with respect to their duties and functions in the stage of criteria weighting. Conclusion: This process not only provided an appropriate bed for objective measuring of urban quality of life but it facilitated the participation of urban authorities in the process of measuring and analyzing the urban quality. Also one of the advantages of the model was its high level of clarity and simplicity which could be perceived by all urban decision makers. Key words:Objective Urban Quality of Life (UQOL), Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), measuring, comparative study INTRUDUCTIONResearchers from a variety of disciplines have studied Quality Of Life (QOL) since the 1930s [53] . They tried to identify the components of QOL and compared various geographical areas such as cities, states and nations by means of QOL indices that they developed [2,3,25,48,47] . In addition to the researchers, international organizations such as UNDP [51] developed its own measures for QOL. The desire to improve the quality of life in a particular place or for a particular person or group is an important focus of attention for planners [28] . An important reason for such an interest in QOL lies in the question of effective allocation of scarce resources [32] . In fact improvement of life quality in each society is one of the important aims of public policies. In recent years studies of life quality have mainly concentrated on the urban nature and urban quality of life gained much attention among the researchers. Clearly the increase of urban population and the increasing tendency for living in the city is one of the main incentives to expand an independent movement on life quality researches.The urban QOL concept gains more importance when it is considered that the world population is expected to reach somewhere between 7.6-9.4 billion [22] and the urban population is expected to reach 50% [47] in the beginning of the next century. The multi-dimensional character and evolutional nature of quality of life led to different interpretations which made the investigation difficult. So the recent research on the quality of life emphasis on the quality of measuring this concept in the cities. Clark and Kahn [7] used a two-stage hedonic approach to estimate willingness to pay fo...

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Measuring Quality of Life in Informal Settlements in South Africa

Abstract: Alexandra, Buffalo City, Durban, informal settlements, Johannesburg, postapartheid cities, quality of life,

Cited by 82 publications

References 8 publications

Longitudinal and contemporaneous manganese exposure in apartheid-era South Africa: Implications for the past and future

Longitudinal and contemporaneous manganese exposure in apartheid-era South Africa: Implications for the past and future

Urban Development Planning for Sustainability: Urbanization and Informal Settlements in a Democratic South Africa

An assessment of Urban Quality of Life by Using Analytic Hierarchy Process Approach (Case study: Comparative Study of Quality of Life in the North of Iran)

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