A smart platform for informal dwellers

The proposed smart platform seeks to connect and empower informal and marginalised communities. The platform (created as a social media tool) will allow dwellers in informal settlements to interact, share experiences, ask for support/assistance and even share job opportunities and sell services or items. The platform will provide an opportunity for communicating and interacting with the local government (with a direct link) - necessary in case of emergency/natural hazards or urgent matters. This platform will give voice to many invisible communities of informal dwellers that struggle to improve their living conditions to negotiate critical matters within their own communities or share their experiences with other communities and/or local authorities. 

The main goal of this solution is to give voice to marginalized communities of informal dwellers that live in precarious conditions but fight to survive and to assist them in upgrading their settlements. The proposed platform can help other communities build resilience by learning from capacity building and shared lessons learned.

The main beneficiaries are informal dwellers, living in slummed environments, fighting every day to be listened. However, more broadly, the other beneficiaries are citizens living in cities in developing countries (in the Global South) where Informality is a common reality and Local Governments that need to understand the world of informal urbanization, in order to provide the necessary support and assistance.

The solution is a smart platform (as a social media tool) that will enable informal dwellers share knowledge and experiences, documentation, videos and key information. This will act as a channel to interact between informal communities and/or between communities and local authorities. 

the innovation of the proposed platform does not refer to the technology itself used (drone mapping, GIS, social media, etc.) but rather to the community driven approach and the empowerment of local, marginalised  communities who seek for a more sustainable and resilient living environment.

The "smartness" and originality of this informal platform is on sharing valuable knowledge that has been co-produced with different actors but mostly led by local dwellers.

The idea is to combine many methods, applying a transdisciplinary approach. 

The proposed platform will apply a hybrid mapping methodology of informal settlements that has been developed by two team members. This mapping methodology combines drone mapping with collaborative mapping to co-produce solutions with the local residents. Drone images are used to provide with a up-to-date picture of the Settlements and as a basis for the collaborative mapping workshops. The final outputs of this methodology are ’lived’ maps, that include all the key attributes of the settlement and the developed solutions. These maps can be uploaded in web- GIS to be made available to everyone. Indigenous knowledge systems are integral part of this platform.

through our ongoing ISULABANTU project (started in 2016) we had the opportunity to establish a trustful relationship with some local communities living in informal settlements in Durban. We trained our community researchers and with them we co-produced different outputs (posters, video documentaries, journal papers). These efforts led to convincing the local municipality to listen to the main needs of the community and support the upgrading. In this case, there will be a community driven upgrading where the municipality will assist for infrastructure and materials. The local community, together with a local NGO and our university, will lead this process. This pilot project will be a catalyst for other local communities and can be shared through the proposed platform to empower other communities in other countries. Basically this will allow us to scale up our findings and increase the impact of the project.

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As I said, the idea is to scale up the project and using the smart platform to reach as many informal communities as possible. This will imply to collaborate with other international universities, other NGOs and other local authorities to co- produce ad hoc solutions 

Mainly financial barriers, but also socio-technical ones. It’s fundamental to find the most appropriate and effective way to boost the communication and knowledge sharing between informal communities. Doing fieldwork we learned that especially for the youth, social media is the most effective channel of communication. Our idea would be to create something easy to use, efficient and well accepted by different stakeholders (predominantly informal dwellers). So many technical issues and testing to pass.

indeed! Barriers are made to overcome. The transformational power of the process of co-production will lead to a change and impact on the broader society. Informality need to be accepted as part of our 21st century cities in developing countries. And to be accepted, it needs to be studied and understood.  

The proposed network is multi-disciplinary and international. The South African team is part of a larger institution, the university of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, and more in particular the School of Built Environment and Development Studies. We are a team of researchers and lecturers - trying to bring our research to our classes, sharing with the students as agents of change.

The UK based team is composed of Dr Christina Georgiadou ( from Westminster university), Dr Priti Parikh (from University College London (UCL) and Dr Iwona Bisaga (UCL University)

the academic team includes researchers/ lecturers and students (Masters students and PhD). 

The core team in South Africa is myself, Dr Ojo-Aromokudu, Mr VILOSHIN Govender, Ms Sne Zimande, Ms Noluthando Msweli, Ms Dhlamini.

The UK based team includes Dr Christina Georgiadou, Dr Priti Parikh and Dr Iwona Bisaga.

The non academic part of the team is composed of  a group of 5 community researchers from an informal settlement in Durban, together with an NGO official and two municipal officials from the EThekwini Municipality (Durban).

we have been working with the same team for the last three years, looking at co-producing solutions for the upgrading of informal settlements. We are now at the implementation phase, when with the help of the local municipality, we will start the upgrading of a selected informal settlement, working its dwellers.

we are working with two UK based academic Institutions (Westminster University and UCL in London), a local NGO called uTshani Fund, part of the (Slum Dwellers International)SASDI network and DURBAN Municipality (called EThekwini)

The key beneficiaries and also stakeholders (who are part of the team) are local informal dwellers that are striving to improve their living conditions. What we are providing is support and assistance, capacity building to empower local communities to drive the upgrading of their settlement, themselves. 

The idea is to co-design and develop a platform that can make local, marginalized communities interacting with other similar communities, with the municipality and with academia. The platform will be a means to build capacity and support other informal communities, empowering them, to upgrade their settlements and improve their living conditions. The platform is expected to have a transformational power and lead to change

so far we have been using funding coming from a ESRC/NRF grant for urban transformation in SOuth Africa. The idea is to attract other funding and ensure the sustainability of the project by empowering communities and attracting funding from other organizations (community organizations), NGOs, and local governments.

We are also assessing the potential of crowdfunding to ensure financial sustainability 

I believe that Solve will help me to attract additional funding to successfully complete my project, and also can assist me in sharing ideas with other fellows bringing new different perspectives on informal settlements upgrading 

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other Community based organizations in the Global South working with informal communities  and also UN- Habitat

we need to prove that this platform can assist many other local communities seeking to improve their living conditions. We want to empower other communities and lead to change

we would use the prize to implement the platform and testing it in other contexts. We would use it to advertise and share this using academic and non academic channels, including TV, social media etc.

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