Shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia

  Date: 18-20 March 2016  Students and Community members  The planning studio is a platform that brings the residents of informal settlements and students from the University of Science and Technology (NUST) Town and Regional Planning department, shack Dwellers Federation of Namibia and Gobabis Municipality officials to work together in planning for the settlement; the process gives   the students a practical experience in planning with the community. Happy about collecting data The students and community carried out a situational analysis as part of the studio. The Kanaan C planning studio follows the successful planning and design of the freedom square layout for Gobabis, for 2014-2015. Community, students, lecturer, and a Municipal official held a meeting to introduce the students to the community and have a discussion around the development needs of the community and completed a settlement...

Short update from the community members working on the data collection and entry .   My name is Rosalia Haiduwa, I was born in Gobabis on the 17 th  of June 1997 in freedom square. My parents lived here for 27 years. So I have a little bit of a story to share to the world about Freedom Square how we worked together as one team. The process started with the numbering of houses, giving numbers to structures. After we finished giving numbers, we divided ourselves into groups to start with the enumeration process, walking from house to house to collect information about people living there. So as soon as we were done with the survey, we started doing data entry, putting information that we collected into computers. After doing all the data entry we started verifying the information that we entered in computers to see if they are correct. As we were done , we started with map work. Map work was challenging to people that did not understand. We...

Community Members identifying new relocation sites   Freedom Square informal settlement residents are preparing to register their land rights as part of the Flexible Land Tenure system using the  Social Tenure Domain Model . The different components of the act was explained to the community by Mr Peter Rutsch (download copy  Flexible Land Tenure Act, Act 4 of 2012 ) , explaining the differences between starter tile and Land-hold Title .  Freedom square residents have been residing in the settlement for more than 15 years without any security of tenure, facing possible evictions from the municipality. Through partnership and community enumerations, the Gobabis municipality reconsidered the planning decisions on relocation's . The planning for the area was done through the Association of African Planning( AAPS ) studio's with Town and Regional Planning Students from the polytechnic of Namibia and the community on the design of the settlement which was ...

The planning for the freedom square informal settlement was preceded by three very important rituals , which did not form part of the planning studios as such , but were critical to building bridges for the community and local authority to reach a common understanding on the way forward . These include - enumerations  exchanges  building of partnerships : watch the video for the planning process 

Studio 2 – Participatory Layout Design Following the first studio the community was anxious to embark on the second studio.  These studios have increased in importance considering the introduction of the Mass Housing initiative of the Government of Namibia; NHAG-SDFN proposed the participatory planning process of communities to be a cornerstone for informal settlement upgrading.  The second studio took place from 7 to 10 March 2014, involving the same group of town planning students from the Polytechnic of Namibia that participated in the first studio during September 2013, now doing layout planning as third year town planning students.  The learning during this studio was not limited to academic participants but included officials from the Ministry of Regional and Local Government, Housing and Rural Development, the Opuwo Mayor and Property Officer representing team members from the UN-Habitat Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme, a Community Development offi...