Amy Thompson, a University of Cape Town (UCT) architectural student, was the winner of this year’s Corobrik Most Innovative Final Year Landscape Architecture Project award.

Her thesis, titled We are Europe, critiques the perception of informality within the city by addressing failings in policy and legislation to allow for better informal settlement upgrade to occur.

Thompson believes that one of the obstacles to a more forward approach to informality is a lack of understanding of how the built environment works.

A typological study into how a particular informal settlement was situated, how sites evolved and how land lines were drawn up followed. She says she looked at how different buildings were used – how a church and a shebeen met different community needs, for example.

The policy that she created in response to her research was applied to Europe, a well located informal settlement within the City of Cape Town that accommodates 7 500 people.

Europe is close to the Cape Town CDB, a kilometre away from the Cape Town International Airport and situated along the commercial corridor of Klipfontein Road.

Because of easy access to schools and jobs, she says she soon discovered that the community did not want to relocate as they valued the convenience, community bonds and the sense of place.

“By challenging the perception of informality and providing the socio-economic facilities called for within Chapter 13, the informal settlement will be connected to the surrounding area and the physical and symbolic boundaries separating the formal and informal parts of the city will be dismantled,” she says.

Thompson says that she hopes that her findings and perceptions can be applied to informal settlements in the future.

Despite the fact that agreement from a wide range of stakeholders would be needed, she feels that her thesis proves that incremental development is possible and that tenure rights and social cohesion can be valued as informal settlements are viewed as a valuable part of the built environment.

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