GIS for Low-cost Housing Development: A Case Study for the Evaluation of

Vacant and convertible Land in Southern Surburb of Cape Town South Africa
This Report is dedicated to my best GIS Lecturer and my special GIS classmates.
You all made GIS much more fun despite all the stresses we have all gone through!
Acknowledgements

This report was completed with the efforts of my Supervisors and without them; I
would not have managed to complete this course work.

Thank you all!

Table of Contents Page
List of Abbreviations
List of Figures
Abstract

Chapter One
1.1 Introduction
1.2 Aims
1.3 Objectives

Chapter Two
2.1 Literature Review
2.2 Study Area

Chapter Three
3. Methodology

Chapter Four
4. Discussions and Conclusion

References
 CHAPTER ONE
1.1 Introduction
Cape Town's Southern Suburbs lie to the Southeast of the slopes of Table
Mountain within rich valleys and vast plains reaching from just south of the Table
Bay industrial neighbourhoods in the north to the False Bay coastal suburbs and
the Cape Peninsula cliffs to the south, and are crossed North-South by the M3 and
M5 freeways. In general, this area is identified as being the more affluent of the
Cape Town Metropolis' sections and includes some of the city's most expensive
residential neighbourhoods. The majority of the Southern Suburbs' just over
205,000 inhabitants (as of 2011) is white English-speaking.
The Southern Suburbs are a group of suburbs in Cape Town, Western Cape,
South Africa. This group includes, among others, Observatory, Mowbray,
Pinelands, Thornton, Rosebank, Rondebosch, Rondebosch East, Newlands,
Claremont, Lansdowne, Kenilworth, Bishopscourt, Constantia, Wynberg, Ottery,
Plumstead, Diep River, Bergvliet and Tokai.
Housing has been a major challenge in the Southern Suburb of Cape Town
in South Africa. As a result, economically-struggling families tend to purchase
land and built low-cost housing in suburbs located mainly in the north-west of the
city.

A number of studies on low-cost housing have been carried out over the
years. However, the application of GIS to low-cost housing assessment has been
insufficient. The application of Geographic Information System (GIS) is
significant to housing development. As according to Can (1998), GIS for spatial
analysis offers a best research environment for processing, analyzing, and
modeling housing and mortgage data sets since housing is fixed in geographical
space. The purpose of this study is therefore to analyse vacant and convertible
land in Southern Suburb, cape town under a GIS environment.

1.2 Aims

The main aim of this research study is to evaluate and identify vacant and
convertible land for low-cost housing development in Southern Suburb, Cape
Town. The identified land is meant to accommodate the economically struggling
families within the city limit, especially those living in south-western areas.

1.3 Objectives

Objectives of this study are as

follows:
1. Evaluate the landscape of Southern Surburb in terms of topography for its
suitability for low-cost housing.
2. Identify suitable vacant and convertible land for low-cost housing
development using a Digital Elevation Model.
 CHAPTER TWO
2.1 Literature Review
Urbanization is the main and rapid process currently taking place in cities all over
the world. High urban growth rate has a negative impact on housing as houses
become unaffordable to people earning below the median wage for their respective
areas. In many cases, these people are driven to live in informal settlements, in
slum houses. According to Yu & Xiaolong (2007), the majorities (more than 60%)
of the world’s low and middle income classes have urgent housing needs and are
unable to solve their own housing problems. The main goal that governments all
around the world have is to solve the problem of housing security by eliminating
slums and provide a suitable housing and living environment for all of their
respective citizens.
In a study done in Malaysia, Idrus & Siong (2008) defined low cost houses
according to their selling price, averaging about US$8 000 (N$59 353.60; 1 US$ =
7.4 N$). Such houses were first aimed for individuals earning monthly income not
exceeding US$225 (N$1 669.32). However, today the Malaysian government is
dedicated to provide adequate, affordable and quality housing to all Malaysian of
all income levels, particularly the low income group. Closer to South Africa,
Adebayo & Adebayo (2000) pointed out that one of the most important aspects of
the South African housing policy is to ensure that low cost housing is located close
to areas of economic opportunities. The importance of accessibility to employment
and services in housing planning is universally recognized. Furthermore, Burgess
Model explains that low-cost housing should mainly be built nearby industrial
areas where low income people are likely to be employed; they need to live close
to industrial areas to reduce travelling cost and rental expenses (Waugh, 2000).
Thomson and Hardin (2000) quoted Mesev (1997) that Remote Sensing and
GIS contributes to spatial analysis by providing different types of information.
Remote Sensing provides continuous data on physical surface variations while GIS
principally provides physical land cover data with a spatial attributes of population,
building activities and characteristics. Each of these data formats are inherently
different in their purpose and structure; for example, vector vs. raster, land use vs.
land cover, object oriented vs. field oriented. Thomson & Hardin (2000) further
demonstrated how GIS was used in Bangkok’s potential identification of low-cost
housing site. Using Landsat Thematic Mapper image with broad general land
cover, land was analyzed and suitable vacant land for low-cost housing
development was extracted and georeferenced to UTM coordinate system.
Furthermore, several GIS coverage that could be derived from Landsat images
were derived with input from related maps such as land use, land parcel, roads and
drainage and then classified using appropriate classifications, namely: supervised
classification and unsupervised clustering.
In South Africa, rights to land have commonly been assigned to four
categories, namely: the state land, which is used for nature conservation, game
parks and military base; town land, where standard concepts of state, municipal
and private ownership apply within proclaimed boundaries under statute law;
commercial farmland. A 2017 state-commissioned audit showed a third of rural
land was owned by individuals, with 72% of that in White hands, while companies
and trusts held 43%. The race of their beneficiaries and owners was difficult to
determine. A separate audit released in late 2017, by Agricultural Development
Solutions and farm-lobby group SA, found Black, Indian and mixed race citizens
owned 27% of farmland compared with 14% in 1994. About 81% of the country’s
60 million people are Black, 8% are White and the balance are mixed race or of
Asian descent. South Africa had 82 million hectares of White-owned agricultural
land when apartheid ended in 1994. The government set a target of redistributing
24.5 million hectares to those who had been disadvantaged by the racially
discriminatory system by 2014, but it has only acquired 8.9 million hectares so far.

2.2 Study Area

Cape Town's Southern Suburbs lie to the Southeast of the slopes of Table
Mountain within rich valleys and vast plains reaching from just south of the Table
Bay industrial neighbourhoods in the north to the False Bay coastal suburbs and
the Cape Peninsula cliffs to the south, and are crossed North-South by the M3 and
M5 freeways. Location is longitude: 33°59′0″S and latitude 18°28′30″E.
 CHAPTER THREE
3.1 Methodology
A digital data of contours representing southern suburb surrounding areas was
obtained from Google Earth in combination with GPS Visualizer and ArcPro. The
data source is from IGISMAP and Open Street map. All data available are in GCS
datum EPSG:4326 WGS84 CRS (Coordinate Reference System). The data
contained the map of south Africa comprising of the land use, railway, road
network, places, and buildings this data was very useful for the study as it served
as a base map for further spatial analysis.

The shortcoming of the data was the lack of clearly defined boundary data
separating the study area from its surrounding environment, due to this a
digitization of boundary was required to show all the areas that made up the
southern suburb of Cape Town in South Africa. This data set was entered into
ArcPro, georeferenced to Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) coordinate system
and then processed which was relevant for Digital Elevation Model (DEM) and its
derivative products.

SECTION ONE:
Mapping out of the Southern Suburb of Cape Town South Africa
Step One:
1. Addition of South Africa boundary and roads spatial data sets of Southern
Suburb, Cape Town, South Africa (Data source from OpenStreetMap and
IGISMAP)
- Go to Add Data
 - Click the “Look in” drop down menu to select the relevant data
- Click “Add”

2. Digitizing of the Study Area “Southern Suburb of Cape Town in South

Africa”.
- Go to “Add Data”
- Select the feature (Point, Line or Polygon). N/B: this feature was created
in the Catalog program of ArcPro
- Click “Add”
- Go to “Editor” and click “Start Editing”
- Click on “Create Feature”
- Select the desired construction tool and begin digitizing

3. Layout View of the Study Area Map in Progress

4. Full Extent of the Map of South Africa Showing Cape town (Next Page)
From the map above, it can be seen that the southern suburb occupies a portion of
the Western Cape region of South Africa.
 SECTION TWO:
Land Use Map of Southern Suburb of Cape Town South Africa
Step One:
1. Using the Same GIS spatial data sets of Southern Suburb, Cape Town, South
Africa in Section One, Step One.
2. Categorization and Symbolization of the Spatial Data sets.
- Right click on the layer containing the spatial data of the land Use
- Go to “Properties”
- Click the “Symbology” tab
- Click the “unique values” and choose the “value field” for color
categorization

3. Categorization and Symbolization of the Spatial Data sets (full view)

4. Completed Land Use Map of Southern Suburb of Cape Town, South Africa
 From the map above the red colored region shows that vacant and
convertible land as such nature reserve area, farmlands and parks abound
around the southern suburb. These aforementioned areas especially the nature
reserve areas in the regions should be assessed in its topography and converted
for low cost housing building projects by the government to increase housing in
the region.
Also, haphazard farming in the region should be checked to enable proper
land use planning while residential land use should be checked for the existence
of slums and ghettos for renovation.

5. Upper Region of Southern Suburb

6. Lower Region of the Southern Suburb

 SECTION THREE:
Digital Elevation Model Map of Southern Suburb, Cape Town to determine
vacant and convertible land for building
Step One:
1. Addition of the base map of South Africa for DEM Overlay
Using the Same GIS spatial data sets of Southern Suburb, Cape Town, South
Africa in Section One, Step One.

2. Google Earth View of the Study Area

- Open “Google Earth Pro”
- Zoom in to the study area
- Click “Add Placement” map button
- Create four points, one after another, to copy the longitude and latitude
coordinates of the study area.
3. Google Earth View of the Study Area (2)

4. Creating of Paths for D.E.M of the study area in Google Earth Pro (file
saved in Google Earth KML file format for conversion in GPS Visualizer)
- Click on “Add Path”
- Give any name of your choice. In this case “SS_AREA is used
- Click once to create a point, while moving the mouse click, repeatedly to
cover as many areas as possible (the more the points, the more the
accuracy).
- Click “Ok” when done
 - Click “file”
- Click “save as”
- Choose “KML”
- Click “Ok”

5. Conversion of the Google Earth KML file format to GPX for DEM in GPS
Visualizer
- Go to www.gpsvisualizer.com/elevation
- Click on “choose file” to upload the KML file
- Click “convert and add elevation” (Note: Check that the output is to
GPX file”
- Click done when conversion is completed
6. Conversion of the GPX file from GPS Visualizer into feature for DEM in
ArcPro
- Go to ArcPro and search or “GPX to Features conversion tool”
- Upload the GPX file
- Check that the output feature class is “.shp”
- Click Ok
7. Conversion completed

8. Creation of Interpolation from the points using “Kriging Method”

- Go to the “Kriging” spatial analyst tool
- Upload the “Input point features”
- Select the “Z value field”
 - Choose a desired “Output cell size” or leave it at default
- Click Ok
- Change the color schemes and manipulate the output as required.

9. Result of interpolation of the points using the “Kriging Method”

10.Full view of Result of Interpolation (Sample A)

11.Full view of Result of Interpolation (Sample B)

12.Full Contour Map of Southern Suburb

13.Overlay of the DEM and Contour map on the base map to determine areas
of suitable elevation for building.
- Turn “On” the South Africa base map to overlay the contour and the
D.E.M
 From the screenshot above, the overlay shows that the land use area in
“Section B” which showed the natural reserve areas and farmland area are of
lower elevation and therefore suitable to undertake building projects to
address the issue of inadequate housing in the region.

14.D.E.M of the Study Area

 CHAPTER FOUR
4.1 Discussion and Conclusion

The use of GIS was significant during this research study. GIS made it easier
to analyse landscape and land use in the Southern Suburb to determine
suitable vacant land for low cost housing development without visiting the
study area to capture primary data, such as elevation, which is time
consuming and expensive. GIS software and tools used, namely, ArcPro,
GPS Visualizer and Google Earth Pro demonstrated the use of secondary
data to generate useful data regarding land vacancy in the Southern Suburb
of Cape Town in South Africa.
The objectives of this research study (Chapter 1) were all covered in
the research methodology and results presented as maps. The evaluation of
DEM produced a reasonable proposal of which vacant land is to be used as
suitable for low-cost housing development. From the DEM and contour
maps obtained, it could be seen that there is still areas marked as natural
reserve areas both in the high land topography and in the lower land
topography. Those in the lower areas should be undertaken by government
to build low cost houses that can absorb some of the ever increasing
population in the region while those lands occupied by slums and ghetto
structures should be renovated and rebuilt by the government to become
healthy living standards and habitation of more residents.
 References

Adebayo, A. A., & Adebayo, P.W., (2000). Sustainable Housing Policy and
Practice –Reducing Constraints and Expanding Horizons within Housing
Delivery. Proceedings of Strategies for a Sustainable Built Environment,
Pretoria: pp 1-10.

Mesev. (1997). Planning Urban Space for Development – A Management

Vision and Mission Case Study Windhoek / Namibia. EMCON Consulting
Group, Windhoek / Namibia.

Bruce, W.J., (1998). Country Profiles Land Tenure: Africa, 1996. Research
Paper No.130, Land Tenure Centre, University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Can, A. (1998). GIS and Spatial Analysis of Housing and Mortgage

Markets, Journal of Housing Research, Volume 9, Issue 1. Pp 61-88.

Yu, L & Xiaolong, L., (2007). Analysis of Urban Security House Standard
in China: A Case Study of Low-cost Housing. AsRES 2007 Conference,
Macao: pp 1-18.