Towards more compact South African settlements through informal housing: the case of backyard densification in Bridgton and Bongolethu, Oudtshoorn

This article engages the concepts of urban sprawl and density, as the foundations for a discussion on South Africa's informal backyard rental sector. This research attempts to relate some of the spatial impacts levied by the backyard sector in post-apartheid South Africa, based on case study research in Oudtshoorn, Western Cape, the Rose Valley formalisation project, as well as the Bridgton and Bongolethu townships. This article employs both qualitative and quantitative analyses and arrives at several key findings. Results show that informal backyard rentals increase dwelling unit and population densities substantially in the case study, accommodating households who would otherwise occupy land illegally on the urban periphery, contributing to urban sprawl. Findings also suggest that these backyard tenants enjoy excellent access to services, placing increased pressure on Oudtshoorn's already overcapacitated infrastructure network. This article posits that informal backyarding has to be encouraged and supported based on the sector's contribution to urban compaction, but that related impacts on infrastructure be addressed in future planning interventions.
Die weg na meer kompakte Suid-Afrikaanse nedersettings deur informele behuising : die geval van agterplaas verdigting in Bridgton en Bongolethu, Oudthsoorn
Hierdie artikel betrek konsepte soos stedelike randsprei en digtheid as die grondslag vir 'n bespreking oor Suid-Afrika se informele agterplaasverhuringssektor. Die navorsing poog om die ruimtelike impak van die agterplaassektor uit te lig in die era na apartheid in Suid-Afrika, gebaseer op veldwerk in Oudtshoorn in die Wes-Kaap, die dorp se Rose Valley formaliseringsprojek en die Bridgton en Bongolethu nedersettings. Hierdie artikel maak gebruik van beide kwalitatiewe en kwantitatiewe analises om tot 'n gevolgtrekking te kom. Resultate toon aan dat informele agterplaasstrukture wooneenheid- en bevolkingsdigthede merkwaardig verhoog in die gevallestudie, terwyl die sektor huishoudings huisves wat andersins onwettig op die stedelike periferie sou vestig en randsprei bevorder. Resultate wys ook dat agterplaashuurders goeie toegang tot dienste geniet, wat meer druk op Oudtshoorn se reeds oorlaaide infrastruktuurnetwerk teweeg bring. Hierdie artikel voer dus aan dat informele agterplaasverhuring aangemoedig en ondersteun word, gebaseer op die sektor se bydrae tot stedelike kompaktheid, maar dat verwante impakte op infrastruktuur in toekomstige beplanning aangespreek word.
Malebana le bodulo bo petetsaneng haholo Afrika Borwa ka matlo a seng molaong : qaka ya teteano ya matlo dijareteng tse ka morao Bridgton le Bongolethu, Oudtshoorn
Atikele ena e sebedisa mehopolo ya ho se tswellepele ha toropo le ho teteana. Tsena di sebediswa jwalo ka metheo bakeng sa puisano ya lekala la khiriso e seng molaong ya dijarete tse ka morao matlong Afrika Borwa. Dipatlisiso tsena di leka ho amanya tse ding tsa dikgahlamelo tsa tefo ho ya ka lekala la khiriso ya dijarete tse ka morao matlong nakong ya dilemo tsa kgethollo Afrika Borwa. Dipatlisiso tsena ke ho ya ka Western Cape Town ya Oudtshoorn, projeke ya ho etsa dintho semolao ya Rose Valley le makeishene a Bridgton le Bongolethu. Atikele ena e sebedisa manollo ya lebadi le ya boleng (quantitative and qualitative analysis), mme hape e fihlella diphumano tse mmalwa tsa sehlooho. Thutong ena ya mehlala (the case study), diphetho di bontsha hore khiro e seng molaong ya dijarete tsa ka morao matlong e eketsa diyuniti tsa bodulo le bongata ba baahi, e fana ka bodulo ho malapa ao a neng a ka inkela dibaka tsa bodulo ntle le molao toropong; mme sena se bapala karolo ho se tswelleng pele ha toropo. Diphetho hape di bontsha hore bahiri ba matlo a ka morao dijareteng ba fumana ditshebeletso tsa boemo bo hodimo, mme sena se beya boima bo eketsehileng hodima marangrang a meralo ya motheo Oudtshoorn; e seng e sena bokgoni. Atikele ena e paka hore ho dula matlong a ka morao dijareteng ka ntle ho molao ho tlameha ho kgothalletswa le ho tshehetswa ho ya ka kabelo ya lekala bakeng sa ho fokotsa toropo, empa dikgahlamelo hodima meralo ya motheo di tlamehile ho sekasekwa nakong e tlang ha ho etswa merero.


INTRODUCTION
The South African city is typified by a sprawling urban form, perpetuated by peripheral, low-density subsidised housing development and mass informal housing settlements, as shanty towns (Goebel, 2007: 292;Jay & Bowen, 2011: 575;Klug, Rubin & Todes, 2013: 668;Turok, 2013: 180;Cash, 2014: 127;Du Plessis, 2014: 70). However, the low densities that characterise subsidised housing projects are augmented regularly by the addition of informal backyard rental accommodation (Gardner, 2009: 14;Shapurjee & Charlton, 2013: 663;Tshangana, 2013: 12) that also absorb a large proportion of those households who would otherwise occupy sprawling informal settlements. The informal backyard rental sector has shown sustained growth in terms of new informal backyard dwellings (Bank, 2007: 206;Lemanski, 2009: 473;Turok & Borel-Saladin, 2014: 687), but has gone underreported in the national Census (Watson, 2009: 5), remains unrecognised in national policy, and enjoys limited, piecemeal attention at both provincial and local level (Carey, 2009: 7;Rubin & Gardner, 2013: 68), particularly in smaller, undercapacitated municipalities that show a shortage of technical expertise to address it (Morange, 2002: 20). In fact, the sector has been described as terra incognita (Parnell & Hart, 1999: 367), hidden (Turok, 2012: 22) especially when its spatial implications are considered (Shapurjee et al., 2014: 21). In recognition of the above, this article intends to shed light on the spatial impacts of informal backyard rental accommodation in the smaller local municipality of Oudtshoorn and an area in the Bridgton and Bongolethu townships. Accordingly, this research aims to quantify the level of backyard densification taking place, present the case for informal backyard infill as counter to urban sprawl, and engage with consequences for bulk infrastructure and service delivery as issues to be recognised and addressed in future planning initiatives. This article is not intended as a comprehensive discussion on all facets related to informal backyard renting in South Africa.
The article begins with a literature review intended to explore core concepts such as urban sprawl and density and familiarise the South African housing and informal backyard rental sectors, all of which are revisited in the empirical section. Empirical research consists of a case study of Oudtshoorn, focusing specifically on new low-cost housing development taking place in the Rose Valley extension as well as on the established practice of informal backyard densification in Bridgton and Bongolethu.

The urban sprawl concept
Recently, urban sprawl has received amplified attention, but the concept remains elusive, with no generally agreed upon definition or empirical measurement (Inostroza, Baur & Csaplovics, 2013: 88). Yet, definitive principles seem to recur in the literature. This article provides that urban sprawl entails a change in land use from the non-urban to the urban, often as new low-density, single-use urban expansion as residential or commercial strip development at or near the urban fringe, with land consumption exceeding population growth, producing a strung out and discontinuous urban form (Fulton, Pendall, Nguyen & Harrison, 2001: 3;Ewing, Pendall & Chen, 2002: 3;Osman, Nawawi & Abdullah, 2008: 40;Brunner, 2012: 1;Inostroza et al., 2013: 88;Linard, Tatem & Gilbert, 2013: 23;Yue, Liu & FAN, 2013: 358;Cash, 2014: 126). Sprawl is mostly related to housing demand, as cities will consume new areas if housing demand cannot be met within existing urban boundaries (Broitman & Koomen, 2015: 32). Expansion is inevitable. The challenge lies in deciding on what degree of sprawl is acceptable in maintaining compact and sustainable cities (Inostroza et al., 2013: 96-97), while accommodating the effects of urbanisation and population growth. The definition also evidences the relationship between density and urban sprawl. Density is highly correlated with nearly all measures of urban sprawl (Brownstone & Golob, 2009: 91). Osman et al. (2008: 41) state that "[d]ensity is the most important dimension of sprawl" and is the most widely used indicator to evaluate the phenomenon. Density is discussed accordingly and revisited in the ensuing case study.

The density concept
Density continues to garner attention in the quest for a more sustainable urban form; this article accepts density as a principal element of sustainability. Density, as an indicator of sprawl, is considered a proxy for access to employment, amenities and other destinations (Brownstone & Golob, 2009: 91) and even socioeconomic features such as income (Forsyth, Oakes, Schmitz & Hearst, 2007: 679). In this sense, density has become an important analytical tool, but also a multifaceted one vulnerable to ambiguity and misapprehension (Turok, 2011: 470). Density can be measured and defined as dwelling units per land area; habitable rooms per land area; people or bed spaces per land area; or as stand ratios with floor area multiplied by the number of storeys/area of the site, commonly referred to as the floor area ratio (FAR) (Poulsen & Silverman, 2005: 23;CABE, 2010;McGaffin, Cirolia & Massyn, 2015: 64;Turok, 2016a). Of these, population per land area or housing unit or number of dwelling units per land area seem most popular (SCANPH, 2004), with the latter commonly favoured. Furthermore, it is important to distinguish between gross and net densities. Gross density refers to the number of stands or area used for development, including allowances for roads and other obligatory land allocations, which are excluded from net density calculations (Sivam & Karuppannan, 2012: 269). Net density is revisited in the case study research.
Densities influence urban form and function and present several positive and negative impacts. Table 1 captures these effects, providing advantages and disadvantages for increased and low-density development synthesised from the literature.
Densification is commonly pursued as a planning and sustainability goal (Rubin & Gardner, 2013: 19). However, for Turok (2016a: 238), "… urban density on its own is no panacea for prosperity". Density is a valuable condition that supports resource efficiency and human interaction, but is not sufficient on its own. It does not guarantee positive outcomes such as more sustainable urban environments (Poulsen & Silverman, 2005: 24). It would thus be irresponsible to assume that increased densities are universally positive when compared to lower density arrangements. Table 1 demonstrates that densities at any level may present challenges and opportunities and that density should be considered in a context-sensitive manner in order to balance potential positives and negatives. Context may be regarded as the single most important factor in planning. As such, the following sections introduce the South African context in terms of informal housing, the low-cost subsidised housing sector and the informal backyard rental subsector.

Informal housing in
South Africa and the post-apartheid status quo South Africa's contemporary urban structure is a product of its apartheid past (Du Plessis, 2014: 71). Apartheid planning established 'shadow cities', whereby White settlements were accompanied by 'locations', or townships, for Black or Coloured populations, located at some distance from them (Cash, 2014: 128), or separated by natural or artificial buffers (Jürgens, Donaldson, Rule & Bähr, 2013: 256) that provided a limited number of citizens with accommodation. By the end of apartheid, many of those who could not access urban areas legitimately, gained access to cities via informal housing, either in shanty towns or in the informal backyard structures erected in non-White townships (Crankshaw, Gilbert & Morris, 2000: 3 (Goebel, 2007: 292) and publications such as the Breaking New Ground Strategy (RSA, 2004) and the 2013 Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (SPLUMA) (Van Wyk & Oranje, 2014;Nel, 2016). The democratic age brought a renewed focus on urban integration and compaction (Turok, 2016b: 9) and an emphasis on low-income subsidised housing as a vehicle to remedy past injustices (Turok, 2016a), promote spatial sustainability and address the informal housing issue. The approach to low-income housing was initiated in 1994 with the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) based on eradicating informal housing and delivering home ownership opportunities to the disadvantaged via full housing subsidies (Morange, 2002: 3). Lowincome housing subsidies have been   Turok (2016aTurok ( , 2016b made available to households who earn less than R3 500 per month, delivering homes for nuclear families as detached one-to two-bedroom units of 40m² on fully serviced stands of approximately 250m² (Poulsen & Silverman, 2005: 21). Roughly 2.8 million subsidised units have now been delivered (Turok, 2016a: 235). New low-income subsidised housing projects, as discussed in the case study to follow, have had significant impacts on South Africa's urban landscape, but have generally not reversed apartheid's spatial legacy. Pressure to deliver large housing volumes within limited budgets, together with a land-intensive housing typology, have precluded the majority of low-income housing projects from securing well-located and more spatially integrated development sites (Massyn, McGaffin, Viruly & Hopkins, 2015: 413;McGaffin et al., 2015: 62). And so, the poor are commonly established on the urban periphery (Goebel, 2007: 294;Turok, 2012: 14;Haferburg, 2013: 262;Jürgens et al., 2013: 256;Turok, 2016b: 11), in suburbs that continue to contort settlement patterns and entrench fragmentation, segregation, inefficiency, and urban sprawl (Brunner, 2012: 4;Chobokoane & Horn, 2015: 79;Nel, 2016: 81). Sprawl is further intensified by the detached housing typology that requires substantial road space and establishes configurations of "very low density" (Van Rooyen, 2010: 47), generating densities of roughly 40 units and 160 persons per hectare (Poulsen & Silverman, 2005: 21). These densities are often augmented exponentially by the addition of backyard dwellings (Harrison & Todes, 2015: 157;McGaffin et al., 2015: 65).
Sprawling low-income subsidised suburbs have housed approximately 10 million beneficiaries, increasing the proportion living in formal housing from 64% in 1996 to 78% in 2011 (Turok, 2016a: 235). The proportion of urban households residing informally might have fallen, but the absolute number has risen (Turok & Borel-Saladin, 2014: 688). Land invasions persist and informal housing has increasingly sheltered the poor. The country's informal settlements have expanded in both size and number since 1994, with approximately 2 700 informal settlements now established nationally, housing nearly 1.2 million households (Turok, 2012: 21) as part of the escalating housing backlog. Progress has thus been significant, but insufficient, as the current approach to housing cannot deliver to scale at a sustainable rate (Gardner, 2009: 6). Housing only these 1.2 million households in the full RDP package, in 40m² units on 250m² stands, with a 30% allowance for roads and amenities, would require 39 000 ha of Greenfield area.
It is worthy to note that informal settlements and, to a limited extent, the state's low-income housing projects with their backyard dwellings, establish relatively high population densities on the urban outskirts (Sukhai & Jones, 2014: 12). South African cities are among few globally that present a rise in average population density with distance from the centre (Turok, 2016b: 11). Yet, average population densities remain well below density standards in comparable middle-and lowincome, developing countries and almost half of standards in higher income, developed nations (Turok, 2011: 471). These densities are often still too low to establish the thresholds needed to supply city functions viably (Massyn et al., 2015: 413). It is thus maintained that, in South Africa, low-density expansion stands in the way of more sustainable human settlements (Poulsen & Silverman, 2005: 20). "There is a clear need to break not only the pattern, but also the underpinning logics which drive the production of low-density and sprawling low-income settlements" (McGaffin et al., 2015: 73) and to introduce a more compact urban form, in which increased densities may play a crucial part (Mammon & Ewing, 2009: 4). For Carey (2009: 12), a solution to the densification conundrum lays in existing stock, in the wellestablished practice of providing informal backyard rentals. The informal backyard rental sector was established during apartheid and now houses over 756 000 households (StatsSA, 2014) in new low-cost housing settlements and more prolifically in older, well-located townships (Lemanski, 2009: 474).

Introducing the informal backyard rental sector
In lieu of an officially accepted definition, this article defines an informal backyard rental unit as An informal structure erected by a property owner or tenant within the boundaries of a formally registered property that contains at least one formal dwelling unit. The materials and construction practices used do not comply with National Norms and Standards with the structure constructed attached or adjacent to an existing formal dwelling.
Backyard densification is attributed to infill development (Lategan & Cilliers, 2013: 305) For Gardner (2009: 6), the informal backyard rental sector presents "the greatest latent human settlement potential in South Africa", whilst Shapurjee and Charlton (2013: 655) contend that the sector can improve settlement-wide performance, and Tshangana (2013: 11) confirms that informal backyard rentals may play a positive part in building sustainable human settlements. As alluded to in Section 2.3, informal backyard dwellings have contributed to intense horizontal densification nationally (McGaffin et al., 2015: 62) and continue to provide shelter to vulnerable households, those more suited to rental accommodation or awaiting ownership of subsidy homes (Rubin & Gardner, 2013: 6;Shapurjee, Le Roux & Coetzee, 2014: 20) with intermediate access to basic services, often in more central locations (Morange, 2002: 10;Bank, 2007: 206;Carey, 2009: 17;Watson, 2009: 5). Fundamentally, the majority of backyard tenants would be housed in sprawling shanty towns, if they did not contribute to backyard densification.
The effects of backyard infill on future spatial and land-use planning and municipal infrastructure management cannot be ignored (Shapurjee et al., 2014: 20). Access to urban services is a main motivation for backyard renting (Morange, 2002: 19). For, unlike those in informal shanty towns, backyard tenants may enjoy some access to sanitation, water and electricity (Shapurjee et al., 2014: 24) via services provided to their landlords in main dwellings. Electricity may be accessed via informal connections to the main house, whilst water and sanitation may be accessed through outside lavatories and taps on the stand, or access granted to facilities within the main house. When considering backyard infill and infrastructure, two main arguments have emerged (Tshangana, 2013: 7).
The first supports backyard densification to make improved use of existing infrastructure networks and capitalise on existing investments (see Table 1 (Rubin & Gardner, 2013: 6;Turok & Borel-Saladin, 2014: 687). In South Africa's low-income suburbs, infrastructure networks are generally designed to service the very low densities planned for in subsidised housing projects. The intense densification introduced by informal backyard rentals may thus place immense pressure on networks and counter the potential of backyard rentals to introduce increased densities sustainably. As a result, local authorities have generally viewed the increased occupancy densities introduced by backyard infill in a negative light, given the burden placed on municipal infrastructure (Poulsen & Silverman, 2005: 22) and the difficulties with metering, service consumption metering, and payment posed thereby (Tshangana, 2013: 10). Municipalities cannot generate an additional income through rates and taxes on informal backyard rentals and thus profit-driven authorities, or indeed smaller, underfunded municipalities, may be reluctant or unable to commit resources to the backyard sector (Carey, 2009: 12). As such, most municipalities have not extended basic services to backyard residents (Bank, 2007: 206); financing basic urban services remains a formidable challenge to sustainable urban development in South Africa (Goebel, 2007: 269).
Infrastructure upgrades or retrofits to service backyard tenants may not be unilaterally required in all low-income suburbs that present backyard densification. Some infrastructure networks are indeed buckling under the pressure, whereas others continue to cope with the added stress (Rubin & Gardner, 2013: 22). These networks may manage demand due to the capacity for which infrastructure networks were initially planned and installed.
There are examples in which original infrastructure was overspecified and thus cope with increased densities (Tshangana, 2013: 7). In the majority of cases, only minimum capacities can be sustainably serviced, as most formal low-income settlements continue to discount the potential demands of their informal tenants (Lemanski, 2009: 477).
Secondly, networks may cope due to a national decrease in average household size (Turok, 2012: 29) of 25% between 2001 and 2011 (Tshangana, 2013: 7), a trend expected to continue. It is argued that reduced average and smaller household sizes, conventionally attributed to informal backyard dwellings, indicate that the additional load imposed by backyarding is not proportional in service capacity to the number of households added to an area (Gardner, 2009: 16;Rubin & Gardner, 2013: 22), or for which services were initially planned. However, this is highly contingent on the number of backyard households presented and their and main households' specific deomographic profiles. Generalisations should be avoided and cases evaluated on a context-related basis, as backyard populations are not uniform (Shapurjee et al., 2014: 20

Research methodology
The town of Oudtshoorn was identified as case study as a fitting alternative to the abundance of planning research in South Africa focussed on metropolitan areas and large cities (Zwaig, 2015: 2 Figure 3) was targeted, given the then recent refurbishment of the Bridgton Pavilion and the aim of that research to investigate the use of public green space in low-income housing areas and to determine the effects of informal backyard renting thereupon (Lategan & Cilliers, 2014: 430

Response rate and limitations
Out of the 141 informal backyard rental structures recorded in the Bridgton/Bongolethu survey (2015), only 120 backyard households were represented in questionnaires; representing a sufficient sample size (Hashim, 2010). In addition, the stand numbers of only 81 of the 103 properties included in the survey could be retrieved on the municipal valuation roll and be allocated stand sizes by the time statistical analysis took place. The intention of the Bridgton/Bongolethu survey (2015) was to probe the informal backyard rental phenomenon with regard to spatial, demographic, economic and social trends. This article reports on the spatial aspects only.

Data analysis and interpretation of findings
Both 2013 and 2015 Bridgton/ Bongolethu questionnaires were drafted in collaboration with the North-West University's Statistical Consultancy Services, who also captured data and helped with statistical analysis and interpretation. Statistical analysis was conducted using IBM's SPSS software. It must be noted that, as convenience instead of random sampling was used, p-values are reported in this article for the sake of completeness, but not interpreted.
Case study research was further supplemented by semi-structured interviews with municipal officials in selected departments of the Oudtshoorn Local Municipality (OLM) and other stakeholders who filled gaps in the literature and provided a more nuanced perspective, as referenced throughout. Please note that pseudonyms are used to cite these interviewees.

The case of Oudtshoorn
The town of Oudtshoorn is located in South Africa's Western Cape province, within the Eden District Municipality (EDM). Oudtshoorn is the main centre of the OLM, which also includes scattered rural settlements (OLM, 2015a) (see Figure 1)   Inadequate infrastructure capacity will severely influence future residential, commercial and industrial development. Of these, residential development is of particular concern when the housing demand for the OLM and subsequent servicing demands are considered. The following section reflects on housing demand in the OLM.  (Gold, 2015). Housing demand has been expressed most urgently in recent times by the establishment of a substantial informal settlement on Oudtshoorn's periphery, as discussed accordingly.

Informal settlement in Oudtshoorn -from Riemvasmaak to Rose Valley
Oudtshoorn's housing demand reached breaking point in 2010, when a major informal settlement was established following a land invasion on Oudtshoorn's southeastern boundary (see Figure 2). The informal settlement was initially known as Riemvasmaak, but has now been baptised Rose Valley (Lategan & Cilliers, 2013: 306 (Lemanski, 2009: 474;Shapurjee & Charlton, 2013: 663), instigating the 'reinformalisation' of formal housing and the overburdening of service networks (Tshangana, 2013: 11). Robins (2002: 516) likens the way informal backyard rentals emerge from the settling dust in new housing schemes to the fortitude of the mythical phoenix.
In the Rose Valley survey (2012), 39% of the respondents foresaw that informal backyard rentals would be included in their survival strategies once they received their subsidised homes. Backyard densification has, in fact, already started, with Dickens (2016) stating that new shacks were being erected in Rose Valley as the first construction phase was under way. These shacks were addressed by the OLM's legal department and removed, as they lacked municipal approval (Daughters, 2015).
The next section investigates the case study area as the origin of many Rose Valley settlers and an area still accommodating a significant backyard tenant population.

The Bridgton and Bongolethu study area
The study area (see Figure 3) was selected based on Rose Valley findings on the origin of settlers and concentrated in a central part of both the Bridgton and Bongolethu townships, well-known as a community hub owing to landmark features such as the Bridgton Pavilion, Bridgton Post Office and Bongolethu Public Library, with a high concentration of informal backyard dwellings. Morange (2002: 10) found that in Port Elizabeth's Walmer township "… most backyard shacks concentrate in the 'old location', around the heart of the township: the community centre …", as also reflected in the study area.
The following section mainly reports on the findings of the Bridgton/ Bongolethu survey (2015) in terms of number of respondents reached, the size of main and backyard dwellings, dwelling unit and population densities, and service access, with other surveys and interviews cited where appropriate. If we accepted Census 2011 data indicating a total of 990 informal backyard dwellings in the OLM (WCHS, 2015), then this study reached 14.24% (n=141) of all backyard households. However, accepting this is problematic as this figure discounts growth in the sector post 2011 and would imply that 14.24% of backyard dwellings were located in the backyards of 0.47% (n=103) of the OLM's 21910 households.
This seems unlikely, given the proliferation of informal backyard dwellings throughout the town's Figure 3: The Bridgton/Bongolethu case study area low-income suburbs, evident in satellite imagery and site visits. The Census figure is further queried considering the extent of the OLM's housing waiting list and that the database does not include all backyard dwellers. It is common nationally for many informal backyard tenants not to be registered on the housing waiting list (Carey, 2009: 11).
In the Bridgton/Bongolethu survey (2015), only 70.8% of backyard households were represented on the housing waiting list. This article thus concurs with others who relayed that informal backyard rentals have been underreported in both official surveys and the National Census (Carey, 2009: 12;Watson, 2009: 5;Shapurjee et al., 2014: 22). Underrepresentation on the housing waiting list and underreporting in the National Census suggest that the total number of informal backyard structures and tenants in Oudtshoorn might be considerably higher than reflected on municipal spreadsheets and that real numbers remain unclear (Daughters, 2015). Regardless of numbers, backyard structures tend to display some general characteristics. ii.

The structures themselves
The majority of informal backyard structures in Oudtshoorn consist of one to two rooms (Daughters, 2015), with the informal dwellings surveyed presenting an average of 1.

iv. Reflections on sprawl issues
The value of backyard densification in counteracting urban sprawl is further highlighted by the socioeconomic characteristics of those in low-income housing. The Bridgton/ Bongolethu survey (2015) found that the majority of landlord and tenant households reported a monthly household income between R1 001 and R1 500. Consequently, private vehicle ownership was extremely low, with 10.7% of the main households and 5.8% of the backyard households reporting private vehicle ownership. The vast majority of respondents thus relied on the goodwill of others, walking or expensive minibus taxis to reach destinations. In South Africa, commuters who use minibus taxis may spend an average 26% of their income on commuting (Kerr, 2015: 16). Given the low levels of private vehicle ownership, especially in the informal backyard rental sector, the effects of relocating tenants to new low-income housing projects on the periphery, such as Rose Valley, were again stressed.
The survey (2015) further showed that backyard tenure was stable and secure. Backyard tenants reported occupying their structures for a mean of six and a half years, echoing findings in other studies (Morange, 2002;Carey, 2009;Lemanski, 2009;Watson, 2009). As such, the sudden settlement of Rose Valley underscores the real influence of political manipulation and the allure of home ownership. The survey (2015) found that 75.8% of the backyard respondents would only leave current accommodation in favour of home ownership. The Rose Valley invasion thus further evidences the challenges related to backyarding as a popular, but unideal form of accommodation. In this instance, the negatives of increased densities (see Table 1) may come into play and be intensified under low-income, mainly unemployed populations (Cameron, 2015). Of these negatives, overcapacitating infrastructure networks is a main concern, especially where existing bulk infrastructure is already under stress, as experienced in Oudtshoorn (see section 3.2).
The following section examines infrastructure access for backyard tenants in the case study to underscore the potential impacts informal backyard tenants may have on bulk capacity.

v. Infrastructure considerations and service access
The Bridgton/Bongolethu survey (2015) revealed high levels of service access for backyard households. As such, 80.8% of the backyard respondents had access to electricity, with 77.5% accessing power via informal connections from the main home. The remaining 4.3% were serviced by a formal connection. Nearly all (98.3%) backyard respondents claimed access to basic sanitation, 6.7% via an external, communal lavatory, reflecting practice in older apartheid and some RDP developments to provide ablution facilities outside the house (Gardner, 2009: 22 Table 3 shows that the informal backyard households surveyed enjoyed improved service access, at an aggregate of 14.56%, compared to averages for the OLM, with the exception of access to electricity. In a broader sense, only 4.6% of the informal backyard households go completely unserviced in the OLM when access to water, electricity and sanitation are combined as a single indicator (WCHS, 2015: 21).
Other studies have confirmed that backyard tenants generally enjoy excellent access to basic services (Gardner, 2009: 27;Lemanski, 2009: 477;Shapurjee & Charlton, 2013: 660). Note that these levels of service access are not guaranteed, with examples from around South Africa where some backyard dwellings are consistently unable to access formal ablutions and potable water (Rubin & Gardner, 2013: 21).

CONCLUSION
This article has added to the pool of established literature on core planning concepts such as urban sprawl and density, accepting that low residential densities contribute to urban sprawl at the cost of urban compaction and sustainability. The review of post-apartheid South Africa and related planning literature showed that the country has failed to deliver integrated human settlements, instead producing sprawling, lowdensity settlements that replicate an apartheid geography, conflicting with sustainable development aspirations (Turok, 2016b: 11). Literature findings were reflected in the case study of Oudtshoorn. In this instance, a new low-density low-cost housing project has been located on the fringe of an apartheidera township, as the Rose Valley extension, in response to a crippling housing demand of over 14 500 units. Rose Valley and its upgrade into a standard low-cost housing project represents a microcosm of South Africa's low-cost housing sector, encapsulating aspects such as extreme housing demand, informal land invasion, formalisation, limited delivery capacity, low-density housing development, urban sprawl, and, importantly, issues related to informal backyard accommodation. The latter related to Rose Valley in the number of settlers who previously occupied informal backyard rentals, particularly in the more centrally located Bridgton and Bongolethu townships, and the renewed opportunities for backyard densification the extension will present, even as more aggressive action in preventing illegal construction and small stand sizes seem to signify a more restrictive attitude towards future informal backyard infill.
The literature emphasised the value of informal backyard accommodation in densifying otherwise very lowdensity townships, tested in the empirical section of this article by means of an analysis of data from the Bridgton/Bongolethu surveys (2013 and 2015). Quantifying the level of densification in the case study showed that informal backyard dwellings had increased dwelling unit density by at least 68.75% and augmented population density by at least 39.38%. Consequently, informal backyard rentals house a considerable number of tenants who would otherwise occupy land informally on a sprawling urban periphery, such as Rose Valley, within the existing urban footprint where they use existing services.
However, as shown in the literature, the shared use of infrastructure is cause for concern when infrastructural capacity is considered for the majority of low-income subsidised housing suburbs. In the Bridgton/Bongolethu case and for Oudtshoorn in general, backyard tenants enjoy excellent access to services, thus placing substantial pressure on Oudtshoorn's infrastructure in a context where all bulk services are functioning at full capacity and may already be overextended, exacerbated in circumstances of high municipal debt and existing service delivery failures.
In addition to excellent service access, research revealed that informal backyard tenants in the case study generally enjoy security of tenure. As such, the mass exodus to Rose Valley indicates that backyard structures are far from ideal, that home ownership is a significant draw, and that backyarders are vulnerable to political manipulation. Rose Valley testifies to the importance of supporting and sustaining the informal backyard rental sector, if only to thwart urban sprawl by similar schemes in the future. Such initiatives will depend on accurate data regarding backyard-housing numbers for which this article has shown that the Census data may be inadequate.
Accordingly, it is recommended that local authorities, in particular, undertake informal backyard sector surveys and infrastructural evaluations to determine the status quo and take appropriate action based thereupon, ultimately bringing backyard dwellings out of the shadows of obscurity, as terra incognita, and placing them at the centre of future planning initiatives.