Research on human settlements over the last four decades has changed the views of scholars in the field who now accept housing less as a problem to solve than as an important aspect of overall sustainable development. This led stakeholders to concentrate most of their energy on the economic and, more recently, environmental dimensions of development to evaluate its costs and impacts. The cultural dimension was, however, neglected despite having been identified as being not dissociable from the others in the Agenda 21 at the Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 (UNICED, 92). At the social housing level, under pretext of the pressure created by the state of emergency left by the tremendous needs, the projects tend to propose standard solutions seldom related to the context and that ignore the cultural values of the group or people affected by these projects. This approach often aimed for quantitative results and mainly considers the economic and environmental impacts, and thus engenders its own failure in the near future. This paper is about the life in the informal townships (squatter settlements) of East London in South Africa, where almost one third of the 560,000 inhabitants of the city reside. Specifically, it looks at the locations occupied by the Xhosa people, who make up 80% of the non-European population living in East London. This port city on the Indian Ocean is wedged between the Ciskei and the Transkei, former homelands where most of the Xhosa people find their roots and where they still migrate back and forth. Through a recall of parts of their history, the description of objects, spaces, dwellings and building techniques of the amaXhosa (Xhosa people), this paper aims to identify and unveil some signs of persistence and/or resistance of the peasant culture of this group in the urban context. Rather than seeing them at odds with their new setting (Mayer, 63), the goal of this paper is to seek ways to reinforce, and to build on them as important elements of the cultural core of the Xhosa People. These elements are essential for the permanence and continuity of the group, and should be taken into consideration by any project involving the built environment, especially a housing project, that aims to be supportive of the concerned group, and of the blossoming of its culture and identity
