The Phola Park Informal Settlement

The Phola Park Informal Settlement

Phola Park is an informal settlement located in the Wetton-Lansdowne development corridor (Haferburg, 2002) that shares many similarities to Cape Town’s other informal settlements including Monwabisi Park. It is an area that consists entirely of shacks and is very overcrowded, as seen in the Figure 1. There are very few businesses inside of Phola Park which makes finding work for the residents extremely difficult. Most families live as “small, two-generation families or as single mothers” and came to Phola Park in search of economic opportunity (Haferburg, 2002).

Figure 1: Drawn map of Phola Park (Haferburg, 2002)

The infrastructure in Phola Park, like that in Monwabisi Park, is nearly non- existent. Phola Park experiences frequent flooding due to the lack of a proper drainage system and a severe lack of public facilities such as toilets and water taps.

There have been some redevelopment efforts for Phola Park however. The area has received a new electricity grid with newly installed poles, and the City of Cape Town has installed street lamps to help light the area at night. The only downside is that the residents have to pay for their electricity, which many of them refuse to do in order to save as much money as possible (Haferburg, 2002). Indirectly, installation of the electric lines caused some rerouting of the paths within the park to better accommodate vehicles. Shack relocation was an issue that the planners had to deal with, and they did so in “close co-operation with the residents [which] was facilitated by community liaison officers” (Haferburg, 2002).

There still remains much to be done in terms of redevelopment; however the community there now is more stable and better off than when the park first formed. One important thing to take away from Phola Park is that redevelopment has to happen gradually as opposed to numerous changes happening all at once. It is much easier to manage upgrading one thing at a time if at all possible, rather than trying to upgrade every aspect of the park all at once.