Innocent Chirisa – författare

The housing and human settlement sector is fast changing, and technology is making it more complex than ever before. With reference to Zimbabwe, a developing country in Southern Africa, the essence of this book is to bring out housing as an issue within the technology debate and practice. The following themes emerge from the 6 chapters in the book:  

• The characterisation and conceptualisation of housing and technology and the nexus of both 

• The complexity of housing challenges and the problems governments face in providing adequate housing, especially for the poor

• Diverse practices in housing construction through the application of different typologies of technology

• Discussion of alternative policy approaches that may guide technology integration in housing development. 

The book provides insights into urban infrastructure debates and discourses in Zimbabwe. Through an inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary approach, the book explores the theoretical, conceptual and lived experiences in urban infrastructure. The book focuses on case studies relating to urban transport, public housing, water and sanitation and Geographical Information Systems (GIS) among other substantive issues relating to urban infrastructure and services.

This book focuses on peri-urban development processes in Africa, with special emphasis on Zimbabwe. The debates included highlight a number of issues in the peri-urban context, such as access to water, appropriate technologies and land management, political economy in the peri-urban space, peri-urban agriculture, and place marketing in peri-urban development, among others. The debates raised by the authors in this book revolve around locating the peri-urban space within the context of sustainability, in which key issues are addressed.

The book essentially examines peri-urban development processes from various angles in an effort to understand how peri-urban areas develop, function, and how their residents survive. Per-urban dwellers currently face numerous challenges, including land tenure insecurity, poor infrastructure and services, land use conflicts, stringent planning law and land use planning regulations.

This work seeks to address the “knowledgegap” on peri-urban development processes in Africa, and is also intended to inform urban policy practice in the African Cities and beyond. Offering policy makers valuable insights on the peri-urban space, it provides guidance for decision-making in the contexts of service delivery, land management, housing, new town development and place marketing, among others.

This book discusses disaster risks and hazards as well as measures to increase people’s resilience. The 21st Century has experienced a number of disasters that resulted in hampering socio-economic development, the loss of lives and property, hence they are a threat to sustainable development. Disaster risk management efforts and practices have failed to arrest the underlying drivers of increased global risk. No country is immune to disaster risk; thus, resilience has become a critical component of disaster management. It provides an opportunity to confront the social-ecological foundations of disasters. However, it has been vaguely conceptualised, and lacks a concrete approach to operationalization. Some developing countries are gradually coming to realise that preparedness, hazard mapping, prediction, risk and vulnerability assessment and   planning are critical for increasing resilience and reducing losses following disasters. A paradigm shift is required from reactionary to proactive measures in disaster management as the later focuses more on increasing the resilience of the community. Zimbabwe’s disaster management policy of 1979  is in the process of review following Cyclone Idai in March 2019 and the Corona Virus 19 (COVID-19). Furthermore, the consequences of climate change disaster are being felt with across the world, particularly, developing countries, whose preparatory measures for such disasters are inadequate. Disasters have become inevitable and no country is every country is vulnerable to them. In the event of these disasters, the vulnerable people are at risk  and are affected more as majority of them are not able to cope. In developed countries measures are in place to assist the vulnerable in the event that a disaster strikes. However, Zimbabwe, being a developing country is not able to deal with unpredictable disasters due to lack of resources, hence the need for it to adopt mitigatory and transformative measures to reduce the impact of any form of disasters.