Voices of the Poor: Access to Urban Land

In 2007 Urban LandMark undertook a series of consultations as part of the Voices of the Poor project. Four workshops were held in the centres listed above. The workshops were attended mostly by civil society organisations as well as NGOs. In all, 105 participants from more than 30 different civil society organisations participated. This case study presents the perspectives and experiences of civil society organisations with regard to access to urban land by the poor as derived from the consultations. These perspectives are fairly representative of urban community organisations as a whole. Interestingly, very similar issues came up at each of the workshops. Regional variations were presented, for example, inner city housing issues in Johannesburg, urban-rural linkages in Pietermaritzburg, but overall, the themes are common. The material that is presented, therefore, represents fairly well the voices of poor people, hence the title of the case study “Voices of the Poor.”