The project "Empower Shack" in Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa aims to upgrade informal settlements through a housing prototype, participatory planning, and livelihoods programs. It combines multi-story housing, spatial planning led by residents, and skills training and micro-financing. This ensures dignified housing while addressing inequality. The two-story housing prototype provides secure living spaces with basic services, improving living conditions from makeshift shelters prone to hazards. Participatory planning redistributes single-story units into the new double-story design. The project evaluates its impact on health, security, and perceptions through resident interviews and surveys.

1. UN-Habitat
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N.JYOTHSNA PRIYANKA – 315106101016
V.SHARMILA - 315106101026

2. • Location: Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa
• Year: 2013-Ongoing
• Name of Organization: Urban-Think Tank
• Project name: Empower Shank
• Best practice award: Participatory Slum Upgrading

3. • The project ‘Empower Shack, an integrated development approach to informal settlement
upgrading' incorporates an innovative design and organizational model to upgrade informal
settlements through the development, implementation and evaluation of three core components:
1. a two-story housing prototype
2. a participatory spatial planning process
3. an integrated livelihoods programming approach.
• The project is located in Khayelitsha, a predominantly informal settlement south east of Cape
Town. The pilot project community have occupied the site for 28 years and the site is
characterized by inadequate housing quality, a lack of basic infrastructure and services,
environmental risks including flash fires, flooding and predatory violence. The current
population of the pilot site exceeds 280 persons occupying approximately 4000m square.

4. What is the implementation process?
• The urban upgrade methodology combines
a multi-story building prototype, inclusive
spatial planning, and integrated
livelihoods programs that encompass
micro-financing, renewable energy, water
management and skills training.
• This ensures dignified housing while
addressing entrenched inequalities by
catalyzing mixed-use development led by
local residents shut out of existing
markets.
• The planning methodology supports the
redistribution of single storey informal
settlement units into a new fully serviced
double story housing prototype.

6. Land readjustment

7. How has the initiative improved the living
environment?
• The housing component of the project is a sustainable and cost effective two story housing prototype that results
in a land readjustment capable of ensuring all residents can remain on site. The structure offers secure personal
living space distributed over two floors and responds to the demand for dignified resilient housing with basic
services.
• The prototype unit is dimensioned to receive future off-shelf components for incremental upgrading over time.
This allows low cost housing to meet the fundamental needs of residents who currently live in makeshift,
precarious shelters prone to overheating, flooding, fire, water ingress, rising damp and draft. All materials are
locally sourced.
• The evaluation framework has been designed to offer insights and measure the impact of the development
through themed indicators such as: baseline health and economics, security, perceptions of value, and are
measured through both multi-choice questionnaires and qualitative structured interviews.
• The project aims to reshape the approach to informal settlement upgrading by offering an innovative, accessible
and inclusive methodology for the fair distribution of public space, a safer urban environment, delivery of basic
services, and an urbanization scheme that combines housing upgrades with new economic and social
possibilities

8. THANK YOU