ETD Collection

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    City regeneration and the making of an urban experience : The Nelson Mandela bridge as sculpture
    (2008-10-20T11:51:04Z) Stevens, Cheryl
    “Nation building without city building is a senseless exercise” - Tomlinson et al (eds.) 2003: x. What is the nation in the 21st century and how is it represented in the urban built environment? This question underlies an anthropological investigation into the meanings of the Nelson Mandela Bridge project - a simulacrum for the making of a particular Johannesburg experience. The multi-million Rand fantasy of the urban imagineers showcases a post-apartheid inner city revival through the personification of a mayoral dream for a world-class city. The city’s textured socio-cultural and political-economic urbanity, its haphazard mining town origins and the aggressive apartheid urban politics, filter into its post-apartheid urban reconfiguration. The artful juggling of socio-cultural, political and economic elements launches the project as physical and symbolic entry-point into a new urban and historical era – a new urban frontier. The project’s technological innovation and slick excesses mirrors 21st century capitalist thinking – a packaging of local experiences into a marketable landscape commodified for moneyed consumption and participation. The privatisation of public space through modes of urban gentrification elicits elitist urban engagement in a partitioned and generic urban space. The latter conflicts with the project’s official branding as: “[being]‘for the good of all’. This research interrogates the adaptation of international best practices, the machinations of trans-nationalism in setting up urban experiences that contest individual constitutional and democratic rights. Contrasted here are the un-narrated voices of the city’s dark underbelly, the uncertainties of a marginalized majority struggling for a meagre existence in the inner-city in the face of the grand-scale urban regeneration project.
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    The network approach to urban regeneration: The case of Yeoville
    (2008-05-14T10:47:23Z) Farouk, Mahomed Ismail
    Abstract Yeoville presents a particular context of the inner city in decline and has been identified by the city as a suburb in need of regeneration. In 2004, The Yeoville Rockey/Raleigh High Street Development was conceived as the urban regeneration strategy for the upgrading of the suburb. The objectives of this strategy were to upgrade strategic public facilities and to improve urban management of the area over a period of five years. Through the prioritisation of a privatised urban management system, the aim was to attract a new middle class back into Yeoville (gentrification). However, the absence of a plan for dealing with the socio-economic challenges faced by the existing poorer residents has leads to cultural and class conflicts. International experience has shown that in order to achieve the long-term, strategic regeneration of poorer neighbourhoods, social networks and community development should be prioritised. An effective regeneration strategy should budget for capacity building from the outset and should involve citizens in the design and decision making process in order to ensure that the needs of all the local actors are met and that all possible resources are mobilised. At the forefront of this approach are alternative methodologies like social network analysis, which aim to reconnect the social, cultural and economic dimensions of society to rhythms of space and time. The focus on the mapping of existing social capital resources helps to pinpoint the opportunities, and constraints presented within neighbourhoods and ultimately guide the restructuring process in a meaningful and relevant way.
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    Johannesburg as world city: Arts and culture policy in The Urban African context
    (2007-03-01T13:06:47Z) Preston, Lara
    This paper investigates contemporary world city discourse, specifically in regards to the role of arts and culture, and with a focus on the implications of this discourse and policy in the urban African context. The historical legacies of colonial policies and thinking are explored in order to understand the current status of African cities within the world system. These dominant narratives are critiqued and some alternative modes of understanding Africa within the global context are explored. These various discourses are used to investigate the implications in a specific context - that of the current urban regeneration project taking place in Newtown, Johannesburg. This paper will contextualise the language and policy relating to arts and culture from a national government to a city level, in order to unpack some the assumptions that underpin these policies and the impacts that this language and policy have on the arts within a uniquely African urban context.
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    The role of ethnic enclaves in urban regeneration: Fordsburg as a case study
    (2007-02-19T12:47:28Z) Mahomed, Ebrahim
    The aim of this research report is to determine the viability of the hypothesis that ethnic enclaves have the potential to contribute positively to urban regeneration. This research is motivated by the importance that is placed on regenerating cities at present and by the fact that many cities around the world, including Johannesburg, are intensely diverse and are composed of a significant number of ethnic minority groups. The Johannesburg Inner City area of Fordsburg has been chosen as a case study. The area has for many years been closely associated with the Indian community of Johannesburg and appears to be showing signs of renewed interest and rejuvenation. Secondary research has been employed as a means to structure the theoretical base of the report and to explain current debates regarding urban regeneration and ethnic enclaves. Quantitative and qualitative criteria have been applied in analysing the findings regarding the scenario in Fordsburg. According to the theory, even in the modern contemporary metropolis, members of society still ascribe to ethnic identities and organise themselves spatially into ethnic enclaves within cities. It is also revealed that urban regeneration can be achieved through several means and that initiatives that target and include ethnic minorities have the potential to produce coherent and desirable results. This includes meaningful input from public sector, private sector and members of community. In analysing Fordsburg, it is shown that the area could definitely be considered as an ethnic enclave and is undergoing a certain amount of regeneration. This regeneration has been mainly driven by the private sector and members of community who identify with the Indian/South Asian enclave. While public sector input has been less significant in Fordsburg’s regeneration, it is nevertheless asserted that ethnic enclaves do have the potential to positively promote urban regeneration.
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    Exploring the competing rationalities between drivers of social housing and urban regeneration in the city of Johannesburg
    (2006-11-14T10:01:07Z) Ramohlale, Selaelo
    This report explores the link between social housing and urban regeneration in Johannesburg. Social housing emerged to provide housing for people earning between R1 500 and R3 500, while regenerating and integrating the inner city. In Johannesburg social housing institutions operate in the context of the municipality’s Vision 2030, implemented through the Inner City Urban Regeneration Strategy whose focus is on renovating buildings in the inner city, with the increase property prices and attract investment. From this it is hypothesized that the objectives of social housing and urban regeneration are in conflict with one another because social housing is meant for low income a specific income group which will not be able to afford rent when property prices increase. The case study focus is the contribution that Johannesburg Housing Company as a social housing institution makes to property –led urban regeneration of the City of Johannesburg and the eKhaya Neighbourhood Programme it initiated in the Pietersen Street, Hillbrow. The report flags out the issues of who the beneficiaries of social housing are, whether the objectives of social housing and urban regeneration are in conflict or in synergy with each other, the implications of urban regeneration o property prices and the impact of this on the ability of social housing to accommodate low income earners in the inner city. This report is looked at from the theoretical angle, which acknowledges multiculturalism, communication and power struggles and conflicting rationalities.