Track: Business Management

Abstract

South Africa is a signatory to the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 11 is aimed at the development of sustainable settlements and communities. City authorities especially in the so-called Global South have great challenges in attaining this goal. This is due to rapid urbanisation occurring in these spaces. As a response to SDG 11, the Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality (EMM) in South Africa has pursued an ambitious programme of integrated social housing with the view of providing 10000 rental units by 2030.  This paper assesses the sustainability of social housing projects in Ekurhuleni. These projects were assessed using Neo-Marxist theory and the Habitat Agenda's sustainability index. A quantitative research approach, which included a review of secondary data was used, with a focus on documents from the Ekurhuleni Municipality. In addition, surveys were conducted in the social housing buildings, with 20 tenants from each of the three projects being chosen to participate in the study. The findings show that the social housing projects met the Neo-Marxist theory's standards, but did not meet all of the Habitat Agenda's sustainability requirements. The study concludes that the projects are not sustainable because they fail to achieve all four components of sustainability as defined in the Habitat Agenda.