At the coalface, Take 2: Lessons from students' critical reflections

摘要

Why then did our 2014 collaborations with community leaders from Europe (an informal settlement located in Gugulethu, Cape Town) fail to fulfil these learning objectives? Before turning to responses from two students' standpoints, written by Brett Petzer and Faranaaz Bassa, a brief explanation of the project's history is required. In December 2010, a local non-governmental organisation (NGO) - the Community Organisation Resource Centre (CORC) - approached faculty staff in the Master of City and Regional Planning Programme at the University of Cape Town (UCT) to assist them and community leaders in crafting in situ upgrading proposals for a state-owned parcel of land which had become home to 7462 residents. The informal settlement of Europe had emerged in the 1990s, and was built on top of a former waste disposal site, which had been used by the municipality for the disposal of solid waste between 1956 and 1987. In 1987, the landfill site was closed by the municipality, but it was neither sealed nor capped. As a result, the entire site is contaminated by methane and other noxious gasses. Despite these environmental and health hazards, residents' priority was to obtain security of tenure so that they can continue to live in Europe without fear of being evicted by the municipality. When CORC first approached us, it was this priority that was presented as residents' main concern and not the underlying contamination of the site.