Housing development in South Africa is constrained by current urban development practice, in particular the approach to land use and land management. One major problem is the urban land market. Land prices in urban areas have been allowed to grow at phenomenal rates, making well-located land unaffordable for the State to develop mixed-income and mixed-use developments, which are inclusive of the poor. This would begin to redress social and economic inequality, affording the poor their right to access the vast resources, services, amenities and economic opportunities afforded by urban centres. In other words, their Right to the City.

Since the early 1990s, DAG’s work has focused on community driven development in the pursuit of adequate housing. However, DAG’s analysis has revealed that provision of self-help housing in its current form will struggle to achieve impact at scale and its location on the periphery will only further compound the structural causes of poverty and inequality.

DAG is complementing its work with a programme to improve access to land for the urban poor. The goal of the programme to see the implementation of efficient urban land management policies and practices which facilitate access to adequate housing and well-located, serviced land for South Africa’s poor and marginalised citizens.

The programme sees a lack of access to well-located land for the poor as the major determinant of the continued apartheid planning in urban centres. The programme remains community centred and works in close partnership with communities to engage them in research, advocacy and lobbying for meaningful change which shifts the poor’s access to land in our cities.

DAG is a leading advocate for the State to intervene to regulate the urban land market through fiscal and regulatory tools including “value capture”, a means for the State to recoup the increment in land value accruing to private land owners through public investment in infrastructure. Thus, increasing available municipal finance to be re-distributed for pro-poor development and making anti-social land speculation practices less attractive.

While pockets of excellence exist, spatial injustice continues. A city-wide land management strategy is required where the State plays a greater developmental role in addressing the underlying causes of the growth of informal settlements.  DAG advocates for a preventative and curative approach which would effectively address informality through upgrading existing informal settlements, and create accountable, high level political support to make well-located land available to the poor. Institutional arrangements at a city, provincial and national level are required to implement effective land management strategies which regulate the use and distribution of urban land.

We aim to achieve this by fulfilling the following Strategic Objectives:

• To create an effective and accountable State capable of developing and implementing transparent land management policies and practices which facilitate inclusion of poor and marginalised urban citizens;
• To create a vibrant, informed and active civil society which is able to articulate, demand and lobby the State to meet the needs of the urban poor.

DAG aims to achieve this goal by implementing four inter-dependent Strategic Programmes. DAG’s research informs our evidence-based advocacy. This in turn supports the development of partnerships with a range of stakeholders, which creates critical mass around DAG’s advocacy messages. DAG also generates evidence through demonstration projects, while building social capital of communities to support our advocacy aims.