Hard rain gonna fall: Strategies for sustainable urban drainage in informal settlements

Abstract

Inadequate drainage of stormwater, greywater and sewage plagues informal settlement ‘slum’ dwellers throughout the developing world. Residents, local governments and others find drainage solutions hard to come by due both to physical challenges – densely packed shack homes and few roads or open spaces – and social challenges associated with the often contentious, turbulent and legally uncertain nature of informal settlements. While concepts of sustainable urban drainage systems (SUDS) and integrated water resource management (IWRM) hold promise for informal settlements, we find little practical guidance available for their application in these contexts. To begin filling this gap, we propose a simple model for understanding various informal settlement contexts and ‘upgrading’ strategies that affect drainage development strategies. We then use this model to report on a series of small projects in South Africa that illustrate social and structural dynamics and practical techniques relevant to implementing collaborative drainage efforts in informal settlements.

Keywords::

• developing countries
• drainage
• integrated urban water management
• public participation
• SUDS
• greywater

Notes

^1. Ironically given their absence from the literature, informal settlement residents may well appreciate more immediately than most core principles of IUWM/SUDS, precisely because the rudimentary schemes available to them for potable water and stormwater, greywater, sewage and trash management are often in fact integrated, but in deeply unsustainable ways.

^2. Terms used to describe those who create and inhabit informal settlements are overwhelmingly pejorative: land invaders, squatters, illegals, aliens, etc. We've instead adopted the term “homesteaders” because it connotes for many, at least in the United States context, attributes of self-sufficiency, resilience, courage, perseverance, investment and transformation of place, the conflictual nature of homesteading as an historical process notwithstanding.