MILLIONS of South Africans live in poor housing structures that flood when it rains and burn annually.
It’s therefore understandable that many were shocked when the Western Cape Government tweeted: “Are you an informal settlement resident looking to improve the building structure of your home? The Western Cape Department of Human Settlements’ Better Living Challenge project provides self-build skills & knowledge. Check out the 13-part video series”. (The video shows an introduction to a tutorial about building a zinc structure commonly seen in Cape townships).
The tweet was followed by comments that marvelled at the fact that a provincial government could advocate for upgrading of shacks.
This was just a small part of the Western Cape government’s plan to address the informal settlement challenge in the province. What everyone saw was just part of a planned technology platform to enable further upgrading of informal settlements.
The plan includes a platform that will allow people to have access to knowledge resources about upgrading their housing structures.
In addition to information, the plan is to create what is called a DigiYard – a digital platform that will facilitate the flow of usable construction waste and surplus building material from construction sites to the informal settlement upgrading projects.
The platform aims to reduce construction waste in landfills while addressing the need for affordable, quality building materials in the informal housing sector.
The concept is modelled after a tool proposed by Arup, an international engineering firm. A team of consultants at Arup’s Cape Town offices began exploring the potential of an appbased tool that could help address the housing problem.
The research team decided to address the problems by conceiving the app, DigiYard, which would match unused construction site materials with small-scale builders and traders in the informal sector.
The app would use smart technology that makes it easy and efficient for builders in South African townships (and eventually, elsewhere in the world) to browse for affordable, high-quality materials that would otherwise be going to landfills. They could then collect the material and bring it to their sites.
The planned platform is intended to be used by builders who build informal structures in townships. The thinking behind the plan is that such builders can be equipped with better building and management skills to build better.
Why would an innovation project like the Better Living Challenge, which seeks to address a major challenge in society, be rejected?
Part of the answer is that in its current form the Better Living Challenge is not moving society from zero to one.
In the book Zero to One, Peter Thiel suggests that “when we think about the future, we hope for a future of progress”.
“That progress can take one of two forms. Horizontal or extensive progress means copying things that work, going from 1 to n. Horizontal progress is easy to imagine because we already know what it looks like. Vertical or intensive progress means doing new things – growing from 0 to 1.
“Vertical progress is harder to imagine because it requires doing something nobody has ever done. If you take one typewriter and build 100, you have made horizontal progress. If you have a typewriter and build a word processor, you have made vertical progress.”
In the case of the Better Living Challenge, what would it mean to move from zero to one?
It would mean moving from building an upgraded shack to building a smart home. A house built with high-quality and energy-efficient material at an affordable cost.
It would have to cost less for heating and cooling, and less for overall utilities, and meet strict energy and environmental metrics that are becoming the standard for new construction – including all-electric systems and a highly energy-efficient building envelope.
For those who want, it can also be fully wired for smart home operation; their systems can be controlled from a single tablet and set to various preprogrammed modes.
It would probably have to be built from a factory somewhere by local builders and delivered ready to the owner in a location that is free from flooding and other environmental hazards.
The structures can be built in blocks and modules in such a way that the owner can add various modules when they can afford them. In other words, one can start with one block and keep adding as the need arises.
All the information about building such a structure can be available online and off-line in the form of printed material that can enable the owner to work with a builder to design and build their preferred structure.
It is that kind of home that can be considered better. It would give its inhabitants the dignity which can never be associated with the structures that dominate in the Western Cape.
The housing issue in South Africa is complex as it involves a past that is painful and which was closely linked to subjecting people to poor living conditions. To solve it, real innovative solutions are required and not solutions that are wrapped in what looks like innovation but maintains the state of things.
The DigiYard concept is innovative as a model. However, its implementation needs to incorporate materials that do not maintain the current form of housing.
The materials shared should include building materials that would produce quality housing. Wooden and zinc structures may be fine in other parts of the world, however, in the South African context, they are associated with an ugly past and that factor should be considered in designing housing solutions that will be embraced by society.
Building materials shared via a DigiYard platform should be recycled to create better building structures that would restore people’s dignity.
Wesley Diphoko is the Editor in Chief of the Fast Company (SA) magazine.
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