Research Outputs (Architecture and Planning)

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Accessing the State: Everyday Practices and Politics in the South
(Journal of Asian and African Studies, 2011) Benit Gbaffou, Claire
This special issue explores everyday practices and politics of accessing the state and state resources from a southern perspective. The collection of papers documents low-income residents’ everyday relationships with the state, through the study of actual practices of interaction with a range of state representatives at the local level (councilors and officials, at various levels of local government). Formal and informal, legal and illegal, confrontational and cooperative, we analyze the multiple tactics of engagement with the state by low-income residents to understand the extent to which they allow access to state resources and to degrees of state recognition, even in contexts of mass poverty, informality and scarce public resources. The modes of interaction with the state also embody and frame low-income residents’ representations of the state, of their expectations, and of their own citizenship. This special issue thus critically draws together a wide-ranging and important debate on governance, and the relationships it constructs between state and civil society. The main question we thus raise in this special issue is how the dynamics of governance reform, with attempted development or deepening of both decentralization and participation, affect everyday practices to access the state and the resulting politics that shape state-society relations in southern contexts. Collectively, the articles in the special issue reflect on the ways in which low-income citizens access to the state challenges existing theories of the state and democracy. Stemming from a research programme entitled ‘The Voices of the Poor in Urban Governance: Participation, Mobilisation and Politics in South African Cities’, this special issue focuses on South African cities primarily but not exclusively. Although the contexts examined have their own specificities, we argue that they provide an interesting and critical context in which to work through the debate from a Southern perspective. South African societies are specific in the huge expectations residents have in the post-apartheid state, and in the ways that ideals continue to be framed in modernist terms, as emblematized by policies of mass public housing delivery and effort towards mass access to urban services. The state, even if it is not so powerful, remains at the core of representations and expectations especially of lower income residents (Borges 2006) – mass urban protests which continue to rise in South African cities today show the disappointment of these expectations rather than a disregard, ignorance or avoidance of the State (Bénit-Gbaffou 2008, Alexander 2010). Attempts to address the gaps between expectation and public delivery have taken the form of major local government restructuring in a post-apartheid context, relying extensively on principles of good governance (decentralization, democratization as well as new public management principles). However, these expectations and experiences of confrontation of civil society with the state co-exist with everyday practices of negotiation, seeking of favours, and clientelism, which also shape residents’ access to resources, and more broadly their representations of the state and the construction of their urban citizenship (Oldfield and Stokke 2004). The South African case is thus particularly relevant to study the interaction between the modern state and good governance ideals, and practices of ‘political society’.
Aiton Court: Relocating Conservation between Poverty and Modern Idealism
(International committee for documentation and conservation of buildings, sites and neighbourhoods of the modern movement, 2013-01) le Roux, Hannah; Hart, Brendan; Mayat, Yasmin
Aiton Court, in Johannesburg, is a case study in how heritage and economics clash in economically constrained cities. This iconic and formally innovative Modern apartment block from 1937 is located in an area where the income levels of tenants are now very low. Although the building is protected by legislation, the viability of its restoration is being further tested by a rent boycott. The article covers the building’s history, and questions how to approach its conservation differently, given the strong demand for housing at a cost level that would be excluded by purely market–led gentrification. We propose that locating conservation strategies in relation to the building’s history and to other subsidies aimed at the public good may provide other routes to preserving Aiton Court.
Alterations to existing House
(ELLE, 2009) Le Roux, Hannah
This tiny project added a small, largely indeterminate space to my house. It faces the garden and resolves the difficulty of a house with an existing kitchen on the north. The L shaped sliding doors and windows can be opened in different configurations, and along with the mobile, folding table, allow for winter/summer, indoor/outdoor, public/private variations of eating or just working in this stoep.
Architecture from the frontline.
(Domus, 2008-07-31) le Roux, Hannah; Southwood, David; Duker, Rob
The photographs of Noero Wolff’s Red Location Museum suggest a post-traumatic state: all debris, dust and raw material, roaming children, and a tight, almost tense order that holds it all together. The building has striking composure, but it is the gritty setting that locates it in a compelling narrative. Noero Wolff won the commission in an open competition in 1998. The brief envisaged a museum and craft centre to celebrate South Africa’s history of struggle at its heart, in Red Location, an old township that had shown strong resistance to apartheid. The post-apartheid government developed such sites as a policy of representation: unable to bring immediate wealth to their vast numbers of impoverished supporters, it invested in symbolic projects for museums and parks that could bring the subsequent benefits of tourism.
Are Johannesburg peri-central neighbourhoods irremediably ‘fluid’? The local governance of diversity, mobility and competition in Yeoville & Bertrams
(Wits University Press, 2014) Benit-Gbaffou, Claire
Johannesburg’s inner city, often emblematized by the infamously known Hillbrow, has often constituted the point of departure for depicting urban chaos, unpredictability, endless mobility, fluidity and undecipherable change – be it in novels and movies (see 2002 Welcome to our Hillbrow, 2010 Zoo City, 2008 Jerusalema), or in academic literature (Morris 1999, Simone 2006). Inner city neighbourhoods, in the CBD but also at its immediate fringe (‘peri-central’ areas) are currently functioning as ports of entry into South African economic capital, for both national and international migrants. They are characterized by a degree of urban decay that have earned these neighborhoods the label of ‘slums’, ‘sinkholes’, in need of ‘urban management’ and re-affirmation of ‘law and order’. Some have also attracted specific attempts at urban regeneration led mostly by the municipality, followed or not by private investment. They are all marked by a level of informality (in housing and in economic activities) which is often a condition for low-income migrants to enter the urban labour and housing markets.
Beyond master planning? New approaches to spatial planning in Ekurhuleni, South Africa
(Elsevier., 2010) Todes, Alison; Karam, Aly; Klug, Neil; Malaza, N
Traditional master planning has been criticised, but continues in various forms. This paper critically assesses an initiative by a South Africa metropolitan municipality to develop ‘local spatial developmen tframeworks’: comprehensive integrated plans dealing with 22 sectors, for some 103 areas, to guide land us edecisions and to provide a frame work for development. The paper concludes that despite some innovative aspects, several elements of traditional master planning were evident. New approaches to spatial planning were being shaped by older thinking, but also by the impact of a traditional land use management system.The findings point to the need for greater attention to debating alternative forms of spatial planning and their appro-priateness in various contexts. .
Book review: The Architecture of Demas Nwoko, by John Godwin and Gillian Hopwood
(Farafina, Lagos, 2007) le Roux, Hannah
Given the challenges of access and archives, it is hard to get down to detail in the documentation of modern African architecture. This architectural monograph by Nigerian based architects John Godwin and Gillian Hopwood is a moving and meticulous catalogue of the designed work of their friend, the artist Demas Nwoko, that is refreshingly full of both architectural and anecdotal details. It begins with two short essays on Nwoko’s creative background and an analysis of his approach to design, but for the most part describes, in drawings, text and photographs, his twelve built and five unexecuted works.
Carlton Centre Limited. Statistics and General Information Relating to Carlton Centre
(Johannesburg City Coucil, City Engineer., 1970-09-11) Johannesburg PD/MGS/GSF
The promotors of Carlton Centre are the Anglo American Corporation of South Africa, Limited and The South African Breweries Limited...The excavation necessary to permit the construction of the below ground levels was one of the largest ever undertaken anywhere in the world for a commercial building project.
Challenges Facing People-Driven Development in the Context of a Strong, Delivery-Oriented State: Joe Slovo Village, Port Elizabeth
(Springerlink. Urban Forum, Vol. 17, No. 1, January-March 2006., 2006-01) Huchzermeyer, Marie
The Joe Slovo settlement process on the outskirts of Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape was, in the first instance, about securing land and housing for a large number of desperate people, living in intolerable conditions that are now internationally referred to as ‘slums’ (see UN-Habitat, 2003) (Figure 1). In the international context of the Millennium Development Goal 7 Task 11 to significantly improve the lives of 100 million ‘slum’ dwellers by 2020 (United Nations, 2000), and the South African response through a new human settlement plan (Department of Housing, 2004), the Joe Slovo case gives important insight into the complex interface between organised low-income households, in this case members of the Homeless People’s Federation, actively engaging in mproving their living conditions, and government’s housing delivery and urban governance machinery.
City of Johannesburg. Brief History of the Development of its system of Government
(Public Relations Officer, City Hall, P.O.Box 1049, Johannesburg, 1967) Public Relations Office, City Hall, Johannesburg
On 8th September, 1886, Paul Kruger, president of the Transvaal Republic, signed a proclamation declaring several farms, including Randjieslaagte, on the Witwatersrand ("Ridge of White Waters") public gold diggings. The biggest gold rush in history began to what was until then a piece of bare veld and rocky outcrop.
City Planners
(HSRC Press, 2009) Todes, Alison
City planning is a small profession, with only 3 790 graduates by 2004. Data sources on the profession are limited, and there are only a few, mainly qualitative studies. 'Planning' as it is described in the Planning Professions Act (No.36 of 2002), was designated as a 'scarce skill' in the context of the Accelerated and Shared Growth Initiative for South Africa (Asgisa) and the Joint Initiative on Priority Skills Acquisition (Jipsa) (Berrisford 2006; Dol 2006b) Lack of Planning capacity was seen as constraining development in two main ways: through slow processing of land development applications, which was seen as holding up development; and through the lack of transformation of South African cities, perpetuating conditions such as long and costly travel to work, with impacts on labour costs. Further, the focus on infrastructure-led development would also require increased planning capacity.
CLAIMING ‘RIGHTS’ IN THE AFRICAN CITY: POPULAR MOBILISATION AND THE POLITICS OF INFORMALITY IN NAIROBI, RABAT, JOHANNESBURG AND CAPE TOWN.
(Oxon & New York. Routledge, 2014) Benit-Gbaffou, Claire; Oldfield, Sophie
In this chapter however, we do not directly use the term ‘right to the city’, as we follow Mayer (2009) in her call against the ‘proliferation of this rights [to the city] discourse’ that runs the risk of weakening its political power (see also Purcell 2002)....Our aim, in articulating urban mobilisation to the notion of ‘rights’ (in the plural) in this chapter, is to understand more narrowly, more practically, and perhaps then theoretically, to what extent these ‘rights’ to the city are (or not) a strategic tool for collective mobilisation in cities of the South to access urban goods, spaces, resources. In this respect, we are more interested in literature that takes the notion of ‘rights’ seriously, in line with Fernandez in Brazil (2007) or Bhan in India (2009) for instance: examining the legal dimension of ‘rights’ and its impacts in securing different forms of access to urban spaces and urban goods. But this approach needs to explicitly take into account how the formality of this definition unfolds in urban politics and collective mobilisation marked by high levels of informality.
Colonial conceptions and space in the evolution of a city: Evidence from the city of Bloemfontein, 1846-1946
(The South African Journal of Art History, 2012) van der Westhuizen, Diaan
Mainstream understanding of how the urban form of South African cities developed over the past century and a half is often traced back to the colonial town plan. Writers argue that the gridiron and axial arrangement were the most important ordering devices. For example, in Bloemfontein—one of the smaller colonial capitals in South Africa— it has been suggested that the axial arrangement became an important device to anchor “the generalist structure of the gridiron within the landscape to create a specific sense of place”. Over the years, the intentional positioning of institutions contributed to a coherent legibility of the city structure in support of British, Dutch, and later apartheid government socio-political goals. During these eras, it was the colonial conceptions of space that influenced the morphological evolution of the city. This paper suggests that an alternative process guided the expansion of Bloemfontein. Drawing on the theory of natural movement, I suggest that Bloemfontein grew mainly as a result of its spatial configurational properties. Using longitudinal spatial mapping of the city from 1846 - 1946, empirical data from a Space Syntax analysis will be used to construct an argument for the primacy of space as a robust generator of development. The paper offers an alternative interpretation of the interaction between urban morphology and the process of placemaking in a South African city.
Comment on General Notice 1851 of 2006 - Prevention of Illegal Eviction from and Unlawful Occupation of Land Amendment Bill 2006
(http://abahlali.org/files/huchzermeyer%20PIE%20Act%20amendment-comment-16-02-07.pdf, 2007) Huchzermeyer, Marie
In 2006, she co-edited a book (UCT Press) titled ‘Informal Settlements: A Perpetual Challenge?’ which seeks to promote in situ upgrading of informal settlements in South Africa and to provide a wide understanding of the complexities involved in this, also in relation to housing rights. The book was welcomed by the Department of Housing. The comment below draws on this experience. While identifying positive aspects of the amendment, it also points out where the proposed amendment is a departure from spirit and principles of the Breaking New Ground programme which introduced informal settlement upgrading, embracing a tangible operationalisation of povery alleviation and of the right to housing for desperately poor and under-housed people in South Africa.
Community leadership and the construction of political legitimacy Unpacking Bourdieu’s political capital in post-apartheid Johannesburg
(2014) Benit-Gbaffou, Claire; Katsaura, Obvious
In our attempt to unravel the structures, constraints and opportunities under which community leaders operate, we have been inspired, as many before us in different ways , by Bourdieu’s work on political capital, political representation and his analyses of the specificities of the ‘political field’ (Bourdieu, 1991). However, we also feel that his theoretical frames are built on reflections developed at a supra-local scale, in contexts of highly institutionalized or institutionalizing politics (national party apparatuses), and where the politics of informality are not at the center of his observations. We believe our perspectives on the micro-politics of the local in urban societies dominated by informality, and in globalizing and neoliberalizing governance contexts which see the proliferation of governance institutions (private and public, formal and informal, local, national and international) might bring new insights into the understanding of the complex construction of political legitimacies. In particular, we argue that community leaders – being both grounded locally, in close proximity to their constituencies; and in search of institutional recognition (by a party, or a fraction of the state) that might give them less uncertain legitimacy as well as possible access to material resources, need to build their political legitimacies not either from the bottom or from the top, but from both simultaneously. Following Bourdieu’s notion of double dealings (the need for what he calls ’professional politicians’ to fight in the political field as well as in the social field; for their own political positions and as representatives of their mandators), we then elaborate on instances where the relationships between the two legitimation processes (what we call here legitimation from the ‘bottom’ and from the ‘top’) reinforce one another or contradict one another
Community Policing and Disputed Norms for Local Social Control in Post-Apartheid Johannesburg
(Journal of Southern African Studies., 2008-03) Benit Gbaffou, Claire
This article, based on field study in suburbs and townships in post-apartheid Johannesburg, argues that there are different ‘cultures’ of policing and different conceptions of local social order embedded in different local histories and contrasting socio-economic settings. The South African state is currently attempting to homogenise security practices and to ‘educate’ people in a democratic policing culture. At the same time it is also firmly setting some limits (for instance by rejecting road closures and vigilantism) to the local security experiments developed in the period following the demise of apartheid. However, its current policy, supposedly designed to ‘unify’ the policing systems under common principles, is based on the broad encouragement of community participation in the production of security, as well as on the promotion of zero-tolerance principles. These policies actually serve to exacerbate local differentiation regarding the content and practice of policing as well as the undemocratic principles rhetorically resisted by the state.
The Congress as Architecture: modernism and politics in post-war Transvaal
(Picasso, 2007-01) le Roux, Hannah
Two significant strands of South Africa’s history - the precocious modern movement architecture of the Transvaal Group, and the political resistance that led up the Congress of the People and the Rivonia trial - remain the research subjects of quite separate disciplinary fieldsb. One of the few pieces of writing to span between the two is Rusty Bernstein’s autobiography, Memory Against Forgetting (), which traces his involvement in the political events of the 1950’s, while alluding how the theory and practice of architecture helped to support him in both material and ideological ways. Despite the optimistic title of Bernstein’s book, there is a real threat of memory loss around the way in which the events of the postwar period related to the ideals of modernity that, in both its spatial and social manifestations, was to inspire South Africa’s political transformations as late as in the 1990’s. This article revisits memories of the earlier period in order to suggest some associations between the apparently diverse areas of architectural utopianism and practice, political theory and activism, and the specific events around the planning of the Congress of the People in 1955. These associations suggest that there is an imaginative vision at the heart of modern architecture that is quite elastic, conceptually: one capable of translation into diverse manifestations, some physical, some unrealisable, and some only to be realised at another time. The article is inspired by the stories of a handful of radicalised white architects in the 1950’s, whose early formation overlaps with the emergence of the Transvaal Group. These architects, including Rusty Bernstein, Ozzy Israel, Alan Lipman, Roy Kantorowich and Clive Chipkin, studied at the University of the Witwatersrand in the late 1930’s, or in the immediate post-war period. These architects are not remembered for their designs but for the influence of their political positions on events. They were drawn to opposition politics as a way of achieving conditions of freedom and equality,conditions that would be necessary in order to implement the progressive modern architecture in foreign journals and books, including discreetly acquired copies of Architektura CCCP , that inspired them. However these conditions were not to be met in their working careers, and political events - the Sharpeville Massacre in 1961 and the Treason Trial - led them variously into exile, imprisonment, writing work and practice within the very limited circle of private clients who shared their ideals. Their most significant building, according to Clive Chipkin, was the ephemeral infrastructure that they designed and built near Soweto with hessian and timber for a political rally, the Congress of the People, in 1955. This event launched the Freedom Charter, a list of fundamental social demands including access to housing, schools and freedom of association, and in turn, in the 1990’s, became the basis for the spatial ideals of the new nation of post-apartheid South Africa. Rusty Bernstein played central roles in organising both the space and the written text of the Freedom Charter. The Congress architects’ political activities contrast with mainstream architectural activity, which was largely supportive of the capitalist apartheid state. To trace this history, it was necessary to use personal narratives as evidence, in the absence of a drawn or built archive: indeed, this may be a rare case in architectural history where the paper archive was swallowed in the face of a police raid. In its motives, this article, as well as paying tribute to a generation whose political choices led to personal hardship, tries to broaden the limits of architectural discourse to include not only built products but also their rebus, their exclusions. It suggests that what is not able to be realised does not necessarily disappear, but rather, might be translated into some other mode. Seeing the Congress as architecture draws attention to the other modernisms of the imagination that cross between transnational boundaries, between conditions of the built and the unbuildable.
Contemporary South African Urbanization Dynamics
(Urban Forum. Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010, 2010-06-16) Todes, Alison et al
Abstract The paper provides an overview of urbanization patterns and trends in the current era in South Africa, focusing in particular on the key dynamics and driving forces underlying migration and urbanization. It considers overall demographic trends with regard to migration and urbanization, and points to some of the difficulties with data, and with the analysis of trends and patterns. The paper explores the changing rural context and dynamics, and some of the significant processes in this context: large-scale displacement of black people off farms, the impact of land reform, and conditions in the former homeland areas. Circular migration continues to be an important way in which households in rural areas survive, but some are unable to move, and are falling out of these networks. International migration—the consequence of both conditions in the home country and the draw of the South African economy— is another significant process fuelling mainly urban growth. The paper demonstrates the importance of cities in terms of economic growth and employment, and thus their attractiveness to migrants. Continuing migration to cities is of course a challenge for
Contributions of Accessibility and Visibility Characteristics to Neighborhood Typologies and their Predictions of Physical Activity and Health
(7th International Space Syntax Symposium, 2009) van der Westhuizen, Diaan
In recent years, numerous studies have examined the effects of the built environment on physical activity and health outcomes. While much of this research has focused on discrete environmental measures, such as housing density, land use, or the presence or absence of sidewalks, recent studies have addressed the combined effects of ‘bundles’ of environmental measures. As part of a program of research aimed at understanding neighborhood effects on the physical activity and health of residents in three Detroit MI (USA) neighborhoods, this paper describes the process of creating micro-neighborhood types and their hypothesized affects on local physical activity and health outcomes. In particular, we consider the additive predictive significance of incorporating into our micro-neighborhood types measures of street network characteristics (connectivity and accessibility) and objective measures that capture aspects of design quality (based on visibility measures) along walking paths. Based on the theoretical significance of sets of variables from previous studies, and an analysis of the environmental characteristics of our study neighborhoods, we propose nine 'bundles' of neighborhood characteristics or micro-neighborhood types to be assessed as potential factorsaffecting our outcome variables of physical activity and health. Our intent was to identify a reasonable number (<10) of neighborhood types that shared readily observable differences that could be easily adopted by planners and designers.Patterns of residential density and land use were examined across all study neighborhoods and used to create our basic set of nine types. For the purposes of our data analysis, we further divide our typologies into sub-categories to examine the impact of different types of land uses and their projected multiplying effects as enhancers or deterrents to destination walking. Using aerial photographs and syntax analysis, we consider measures of street network characteristics (connectivity and accessibility), and the role of objective measures that capture aspects of design quality (based on measures of visibility: visual access, visual control and visual interest) along walking paths. Contributions of this study include the identification of critical 'bundles' of physical environmental characteristics that play a role in the creation of neighborhoods that support physical activity. Our current analyses are quite suggestive in postulating the contribution of syntax measures in capturing aspects of the design quality (path characteristics) and ease of reaching destinations (network characteristics) that shape respondents’ perceptions of their environment and contribute to physical activity outcomes. In future analyses we will examine the role of these characteristics in augmenting the predictive power of our neighborhood typologies.
Decentralising voice: women’s participation in Integrated Development Planning processes in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.
(Paper presented to Conference on the Place of Participation in a democratising South Africa, IFAS, HSRC and CUBES, Wits, 20-21st November, 2006., 2006-11-20) Williamson, Amanda; Sithole, Pearl; Todes, Alison
The appeal of decentralisation is based on the belief that it will foster participatory democracy, introduce more responsive service delivery and advance the rights of citizens. It is also assumed that decentralisation processes will promote gender equity and benefit women. International experience, however, has begun to show that social transformation does not necessarily follow decentralisation processes, and that the increased autonomy enjoyed by local government can roll back advances secured by national government as local elites entrench their power in ways that exclude and disempower marginalised and vulnerable groups. Against a backdrop of ambivalent evidence feminist scholars have cautioned against an uncritical acceptance of the supposed benefits of decentralisation for women.

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