BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Sustain. Cities
Sec. Cities in the Global South
Volume 7 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/frsc.2025.1654705
Urban innovation in the informal city: overlapping infrastructures, co-production and sector coupling in a South African informal settlement
Provisionally accepted
Federico Caprotti1*
Jiska de Groot2
Catherine Butler1
Whitney Pailman1Norman Mathebula2Hendrik Schloemann3Alex Densmore3- 1University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom
- 2University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, South Africa
- 3Zonke Energy, Cape Town, South Africa
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Informal settlements face significant infrastructural challenges, exemplified by limited electricity access in sub-Saharan Africa. We present insights from a 2020-23 research program in a South African informal settlement that highlighted the importance of systems thinking and sector coupling for integrating infrastructural and economic interventions to address the needs of informal settlement populations sustainably. In the program, this was done through solar off-grid electricity innovations and entrepreneurship training. This study's novelty lies in its expansion of 'sector coupling' beyond its conventional technical definition, applying it to socio-technical integration across energy, entrepreneurship, and digital services in an informal urban context. It provides one of the first empirical demonstrations of how systems thinking and co-production can reframe energy provision as a foundation for multidimensional development in the informal city.
Keywords: Sector coupling, infrastructure, informal settlements, Global South, off-grid city, Co-production
Received: 26 Jun 2025; Accepted: 23 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Caprotti, de Groot, Butler, Pailman, Mathebula, Schloemann and Densmore. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Federico Caprotti, fedcaprotti@gmail.com
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.