News

DAG speaks at UN-Habitat Conference

15 and 16 October 2009, Warsaw, Poland. DAG was invited to participate in the UN-Habitat Global Land Tool Network (GLTN) Central, Eastern and South-Eastern Europe Regional Conference on Property and Land Taxation in Warsaw, Poland. DAG was the only Southern NGO to present a paper at the conference, entitled: Financing affordable housing and infrastructure in cities: towards innovative land and property taxation system. DAG’s paper focussed on land and property tax as a means to access housing, land and infrastructure in the South African context. The conference was an opportunity to learn and exchange lessons on policies and mechanisms in land and property taxation, to develop DAG’s networks with international experts in the field and garner international support for DAG’s research and advocacy work in value capture and urban land management.

Download the paper and presentation here.

Lessons in advocacy and social mobilsation

18 and 19 November 2009, Cape Town. DAG’s Advocacy Roundtable successfully brought together a diverse group of civil society organisations, NGOs and social movements to collectively assess lessons and emerging opportunities for social mobilisation and advocacy at a local and national level within South Africa. The lessons learnt from the Advocacy Roundtable will be used to develop guidelines on best practice in social mobilisation and advocacy in the context of access to well located serviced land for marginalised citizens. This will be presented at DAG’s National Conference ‘Building a New Urban Order - Re-imagining the City’ in October 2010.

Download the report of the Advocacy Roundtable

World Urban Forum V, Brazil

March 2010. DAG’s Director, Kailash Bhana led a delegation to the World Urban Forum (WUF) V Bridging the Urban Divide, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The delegation comprised the Executive Directors of Afesis Corplan and the Built Environment Support Group; a senior member of staff from PlanAct and Helen Macgregor, Programme Leader at DAG.

DAG’s delegation was joined by the Deputy Minister for Human Settlements, Ms Zou Kota-Fredericks and her team in a special exchange visit to Sau Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, hosted by Cities Alliance, Brazil.

The WUF focussed on the right to the city and incorporated presentations and workshops from leading organisations, universities and institutions active in the field. The event presented DAG, and its partners, with the opportunity to engage in a number of critical debates around the social and productive function of the city, property and land. The forum highlighted the right to the city as a contested right, which requires the active ‘struggle’ of civil society.

Subsequent to the WUF, DAG’s delegation visited Sao Paulo and Brasilia where they met with a range of civil society groups (including Polis and Bento Rubiao) and government representatives involved in crafting and implementing the Statutes on the Right to the City.

The World Urban Forum, Bridging the Urban Divide, and exchange visit resonated well with DAG’s current advocacy and lobbying strategy around the right to the city and the lessons learnt have already influenced the themes for the DAG National Conference entitled ‘Building a New Urban Order: Re-imagining the City’ scheduled to be hosted in Cape Town in October 2010.

For more information on DAG's National Conference contact Helen Macgregor: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

DAG launches Urban Land Matters

April 2010. DAG launched a series of 12 popular publications on Medium Density Housing entitled Urban Land Matters. The series, funded by Afrisam, is a colourful and accessible summary of the chapters and recommendations of the Sustainable Medium Density Housing Resource Book. Each publication will be distributed monthly to government officials, academics, housing and planning practitioners and researchers with the aim of influencing policy and practice on medium density housing for the poor and the provision of public rental options.

Download Urban Land Matters

Case studies of community driven housing

April 2010. DAG has published three case studies of its People’s Housing Process projects in Netreg, Freedom Park (Tafelsig) and Marconi Beam. The three case studies offer lessons for government officials, housing and planning practitioners and communities embarking on a People’s Housing Process project.

To download the case studies click here.