Isandla
SPRINT Learning Brief 10: Gender-Based Vulnerability and the Built Environment
This is the tenth brief in the series of learning briefs produced by Isandla Institute under the Safer Places: Resilient Institutes and Neighbourhoods Together (SPRINT) Project. The brief highlights how spatial factors can influence gender-based vulnerability to violence and crime as characteristics of space can determine whether that space is/feels inclusive and safe or unsafe to some social groups. The brief shares examples of work done to activate spaces and to make them more safe and inclusive. Finally, using the 8 key ingredients for ABVPI, the brief distills key lessons from practice in using ABVPI to prevent gender based violence and crime and proposes four critical actions that can bring about more inclusive public space.
Resource Note 1: About SPRINT
The Safer Places: Resilient Institutions and Neighbourhoods Together (SPRINT) project aims to institutionalise area-based violence prevention interventions across government policies, programmes and practices. Resource Note 1 introduces the SPRINT project and gives an overview of the 4 different project streams.
Resource Note 2: Why safety needs to be at the centre of development
The Safer Places: Resilient Institutions and Neighbourhoods Together (SPRINT) project aims to institutionalise area-based violence prevention interventions across government policies, programmes and practices. Resource Note 2 outlines the reality of crime and violence in South Africa, particularly for certain vulnerable groups, and motivates why safety should be at the centre of development planning in South Africa. It further argues that a focus on safety goes beyond security responses to address the underlying risk factors to violence and crime and bolster protective factors.
Resource Note 3: The socio-ecological model: A framework for violence prevention
The Safer Places: Resilient Institutions and Neighbourhoods Together (SPRINT) project aims to institutionalise area-based violence prevention interventions across government policies, programmes and practices. Resource Note 3 unpacks the root causes of crime and violence in South Africa. It utilises the socio-ecological model to explain the various risk and/or protective factors that occur at various levels of a person’s life that can increase or reduce their vulnerability to experiencing or perpetuating crime and/or violence.
Resource Notes 4: What is ABVPI?
The Safer Places: Resilient Institutions and Neighbourhoods Together (SPRINT) project aims to institutionalise area-based violence prevention interventions across government policies, programmes and practices. Resource Note 4 explains that area-based violence prevention interventions (ABPVI) combine spatial, social and institutional interventions aimed at reducing or removing factors that contribute to an environment of risk and vulnerability to crime and violence. It includes key ingredients for implementing ABVPI and examples of what ABVPI may include.
Backyard housing: an essential part of the solution to South Africa’s housing crisis - a submission into the proposed new Human Settlements policy and Human Settlements bill
Isandla Institute, supported by a number of civil society partners, has produced a joint civil society submission, which addresses four key areas of intervention which we believe start to address some of the significant challenges facing the backyard housing market. These key areas include access to basic services for backyard residents living on both public and private land; tenure (in)security for both landlords and backyard residents; enabling the right to self-build as an integral part of the right of access to housing; and, the importance of promoting safe neighbourhoods through an area-based violence prevention approach.
Enabling the Right to Build through Housing Support Centres (proposition paper)
Amid the growing discourse around self-build, especially in the context of fiscal constraints and the de-prioritisation of new large-scale public housing projects, there is an opportunity for self-build to be enabled and supported through Housing Support Centres, to tap into latent willingness and agency of communities for incremental top-structure consolidation. Based on the Enhanced People’s Housing Process (EPHP) as a local self-build precedent, and other examples of current and proposed models for support centres, both locally and in other global South locations (Brazil and India), Isandla Institute has proposed a municipal-led Housing Support Centre model that could provide a variety of possible housing support needs across different housing/settlement typologies, in partnership with provinces, NGOs, the private sector, and academic institutions. This proposition paper is distilled from a research paper, Enabling the right to build through Housing Support Centres, 2022 (see here)
Backyard housing: an essential part of the solution to South Africa’s housing crisis - a submission into the proposed new Human Settlements policy and Human Settlements bill
Isandla Institute, supported by a number of civil society partners, has produced a joint civil society submission, which addresses four key areas of intervention which we believe start to address some of the significant challenges facing the backyard housing market. These key areas include access to basic services for backyard residents living on both public and private land; tenure (in)security for both landlords and backyard residents; enabling the right to self-build as an integral part of the right of access to housing; and, the importance of promoting safe neighbourhoods through an area-based violence prevention approach.
Backyard housing: an essential part of the solution to South Africa’s housing crisis (animation)
Isandla Institute, supported by a number of civil society partners, has produced a joint civil society submission, which addresses four key areas of intervention which we believe start to address some of the significant challenges facing the backyard housing market. These key areas include access to basic services for backyard residents living on both public and private land; tenure (in)security for both landlords and backyard residents; enabling the right to self-build as an integral part of the right of access to housing; and, the importance of promoting safe neighbourhoods through an area-based violence prevention approach. For more details, see the civil society submission here and an animation that distils the main arguments.