The diversity of social production of housing presented here is important in a context where we see a tendency for reductionism. We see a dominant discourse that would see informal settlements, that is socially produced housing, removed and replaced with condominiums. It is important that we push back against this tide. It is important that the diversity of socially produced housing is recognised, that the point is made that socially produced housing can be resilient, even in informal settlements. This relates to an important term that, luckily, we use a lot in the official housing discourse in South Africa, but that is hardly being used in this conference, and that is incremental. This is a very important aspect of socially produced housing. The urbamonde website seems an important tool to assist with this push-back. May it be possible to use it to flag socially produced housing that is under threat, that is likely to disappear?
We need to ask what are the kinds of support that socially produced housing needs in policy. One important aspect choice – how can socially produced housing be supported to ensure greater choice? Indeed in many contexts the situation does not allow much diversity in socially produced housing. The other point (and this also produced absence of choice) is the rights framework. There is a need strengthening the occupational rights, as much of social housing production happens on unsecured land or through informal transactions. Here the informal governance comes in, and this links to the point made about legitimacy, whether of transactions or of governance structures. Here we have to fight back against the tendency to reduce the analysis to order and disorder, and the deterministic drive to deliver what is perceived as order, that is to destroy what is perceive as disorder.
All of this requires a diversity of data. There was a session before this one on grassroots groups (SDI affiliated) collecting data and using this in partnering with governments to improve conditions. This data can surely be enriched by many additional studies. But the issue of research capacity and resources of research is a very real one. SPLUR is in the AURI network and we met two weeks ago as a network, including SPLUR and the issue of resources for research entities like SPLUR was also discussed there. So this is a nice way to close the circle and to see the networks overlap. Thank you for a very rich set of presentation.