Introduction

South Africa's constitution grants all its citizens the right to decent housing. But the end of apartheid did not stop some of the most visible expressions of segregation—shantytowns. In fact, the explosive growth of illegal squatter settlements on the peripheries of South African cities seems irreversible. Authorities react to the inevitable socioeconomic stress and unhealthy living conditions by building hundreds of thousands of small, identical, freestanding, subsidized houses. This is a questionable policy, due to the costs and sheer numbers of buildings involved, and because such Western-style suburbanism generally perpetuates urban sprawl, as well as social and economic fragmentation. Environmentally, economically, and socially sustainable strategies must arguably be informed by, and possibly aligned with, data on the dynamics of migration and the consequent patterns of shantytowns. The purpose of this chapter is to report on a study carried out to investigate the impact of migration—the fact that all residents are from somewhere else—on the form and function of an informal settlement, using an illegal shantytown in Mamelodi, South Africa, as a case study. It hopes to offer a tentative theory of settlement by exploring the relationships between (1) the demographic profiles of migrant households, including their origins and expectations; (2) the form of a squatter settlement; and (3) the way such a settlement actually functions as a setting for social and economic activities. It is well known that a shantytown, like all built environments, both shapes and responds to behavioral patterns, but when the study was initiated, it was not clear whether the shantytown's form and function were the direct and inevitable manifestations of existential realities—culturally value-free responses to poverty, marginalization, and lack of resources—or manifestations of an indigenous system of knowledge and consequently the expression of an intrinsic African urbanism.