Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)

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The dynamics of place branding in Johannesburg: 1994 - 2019
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Mbinza, Zenzile; Sihlongonyane, Mfaniseni Fana
This PhD thesis lays the ground for understanding place branding processes from cities of the Global South. It critically explores place branding as an emerging mechanism for urban governance in Johannesburg. It is critical because place branding and its related processes have increasingly gained momentum in countries, regions and cities jostling for niche status in global economics. This thesis explores the different place brands that Johannesburg coined over time, focussing on the period between 1994 and 2019. It explored the city’s place brands under the five mayors that presided over Johannesburg, beginning with Dan Pretorius (1994 – 1995), Isaac Mogase (1995 – 1999), Amos Masondo (2000 – 2011), Parks Tau (2011 – 2016) and Herman Mashaba (2016 – 2019). The thesis employed a qualitative research methodology and case study design. Primary data Archival research and interviews were the primary data collection strategies. The ensuing discussion of place brands in Johannesburg reveals the dynamics and push factors that have contributed to the development of place brands under the time in question. Politics, economics, and activities related to globalisation emerged as leading drivers for the city of Johannesburg to develop its various place brands. The thesis found that Johannesburg followed a template similar to the cities of the Global North in its application of place branding. However, the thesis also found gaps in the city’s place branding processes. For example, there was limited engagement with the city residents when developing Johannesburg’s place brands. It pointed to a unilateral, top-down application of place branding in the city, which precluded it from using these processes as democracy-building tools. It necessitates the exploration of place branding from the perspective of city governments to begin encompassing issues of inclusivity and public participation. In this light, the thesis calls for a more strategic application of place branding in the Johannesburg.
Understanding the Contribution of Informal Non-State Actors in the Governance of Cities of the Global South through Informal Institutions: The Case Study of Informal Car Guarding in Johannesburg, South Africa
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Monakedi, Tshepo Albia; Karam, Aly
The re-emergence of coproduction to explain service delivery initiatives by ordinary citizens has transcended different scholarship disciplines, including urban planning. The governance of cities of the global South is characterised by coproduction initiatives that are either unnoticed, overlooked or disregarded because they occur outside the formal institutions of the State. This thesis uses the case study of informal car guarding in Johannesburg, South Africa, to highlight the coproduction contribution of informal non- state actors in the governance of cities of the global South, thus arguing for urban theory and policy agenda that is informed by the realities of the global South. This thesis makes an original contribution to knowledge by arguing for the scope of non- state actor coproduction in governance to include informal non-state actors. Moreover, the idea is part of the scholarship to understand informality as a site of critical analysis thus moving beyond seeing informality as a function of people experiencing poverty. Informality in cities of the global South must be broader than livelihood debates or housing needs for the needy. Studies must be comprehensive and acknowledge the contribution of informality to how the cities function. In addition to the original contribution, this study generated empirical data about informal car guarding, which still needs to be studied further. The data was generated using in- depth interviews, which were largely unstructured, and participant observation. In total, 75 respondents informed this thesis across four study sites in Johannesburg: Maboneng Precinct, Maponya Mall, Parktown Office Park and Noord central business district. The study sites are representative of the localities typically associated with informal car guards in cities of the global South. Twenty themes were generated to answer the research sub-questions. The findings of the thesis are wide-ranging, pointing to the contribution of informal non-state actors and associated challenges. Notably, the idea outlines several policy recommendations for urban planning and urges cities of the global South to understand the contribution of informal non-state actors considering the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG Eleven (11) Sustainable Cities and Communities, SDG One (1) No Poverty and SDG Two (2) iii Zero Hunger). SDG 11 is about access and inclusion for informal non-state actors, and SDGs 1 and 2 are critical for the livelihoods of those in the informal secto
Place leadership for the governance of complex urban agglomerations
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Naicker, Thilgavathie; Harrison, Philip
City-regions are complex agglomerations – spatially, economically, and politically. Understanding the dynamics and mechanisms that create the foundation for their development is an important undertaking in the face of rising globalisation, urbanisation, migration, and climate change. This research explores the concept of place leadership and its relevance for a complex space like the Gauteng City-Region (GCR). Place leadership is a concept that has been studied extensively in the global North and proposes the rise of leaders across local spaces. The city- region is a dynamic space of contested politics, coalition governments, diffuse power, differing agendas, fragmented, and silo planning and a deeply rooted socio-economic history that has left a lasting impact of inequality. Building a globally competitive city-region has been on the Gauteng Provincial Government’s agenda since the mid-2000s. The city-region argument in Gauteng, South Africa, still lingers, but party politics, differing agendas, the complexities of governance in the city-region, and frequent changes in leadership have prevented the vision from being achieved. The research question of this thesis is: How may the emerging concept of place leadership be applied in the complex, dynamic, and low-trust environment of the GCR? The thesis explores three thematics to analyse place leadership – temporality, crisis, and trans-scalarity. Gauteng, a city-region in South Africa, was examined as a case study. Water governance and the COVID-19 crisis were utilised as lenses to examine place leadership in the GCR. The exploratory mixed-methods study used semi-structured interviews with leaders from political, government administration, academia, and the water sector in Gauteng. A set of questions designed to explore a thematic on leadership and governance was also included in an established broad survey done in the city-region by the Gauteng City-Region Observatory, the Quality-of-LifeVI 2020/21. The outcomes of this quantitative element were analysed by performing cross-tabulations across other thematics, including trust, corruption, participatory governance, and demographic data, to draw conclusions. The interviews were assessed and analysed across the themes of temporality, crisis, and trans-scalarity through the lenses of COVID-19 and water.
Cultural memories and place-identity: a case study of Syrian refugees’ resettlement and acculturation strategies in Egypt
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Fahmy, Randa; Elleh, Nnamdi
Focusing on the Syrian refugees in Egypt—the aftermath of the 2011 public uprising, and the so called “Arab Spring”, or the “Jasmine Revolution”—this thesis explores the interaction of four main social factors influencing Syrian refugees place identity in the host country, Egypt. The first factor is the circumstances that caused the displacement of Syrians to become refugees in Egypt. The second factor is the refugees’ production of architectonic elements in the host country that are ideologically presumed to be ‘authentic’ architectural cultural heritage from their homeland. The presumed authentic architectural culture manifests as territorialisation in the host country for the protection of Syrian refugees’ identity. The third factor is the ‘globalisation’ forces that blend commercially inspired diverse trendy architectural styles into universal interchangeable consumables while ignoring contextual and cultural specificity. The fourth factor is the elucidation of what was realised when the three factors—the refugees, presumed authentic architectural culture, and globalisation forces—come together in the host country. Preliminary studies suggest that Syrian refugees maintain interactive tensions among the perceived original homeland architectural cultural identity, globalisation forces, and the necessity to modify the presumed original culture to adjust and settle in the host country. Examining the intersections of these four factors is the topic of this thesis. It is also observed that refugees tend to conceptualise authentic heritage ideology in placemaking to maintain an assumed cultural- identity in these globalising times of displacements and movements. Thus, in the effort to realise the assumed authentic architectural cultural heritage in the host country, Syrian refugees’ placemaking in Egypt defaults into another form of territorialisation that is inspired by architectural cultural memories from their homeland. Territorialisation disaggregates, personalises, and distorts the image of cultural identity of the places where refugees dream to be because it motivates them to be distinguished from their host culture while at the same time seeking to assimilate into the host country. This irony and the conflict of wanting to belong to the host country but, at the same time, wanting to be separate by retaining their Syrian identity, is the core of the study. Also, this thesis uses the architectural production of Syrian refugees in the host land, Egypt, in examining how architectural cultural memories are used for recreating personalised places of displaced groups. It is observed that the refugees present the personalized new creations in the host country as their “authentic” architectural culture purely on ideological bases.
Lagos as a Metropolitan Assemblage: Reading the Layering and Complexity in Urban Infrastructure
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Theron, Patricia Frances d'Altera; Elleh , Nnamdi; Harrison , Philip
This thesis uses concepts that make up assemblage in Deleuze to explain an emergence of process and pattern in the urban setting of Lagos, as revealed through systems of physical infrastructure designed in relation to the network of waterways. Activities of the British Colonial Office, concentrated on accessibility of the Lagos port during the First World War, provide the initial focus. In the post-independence period, and after the Civil War (1967-1970), Lagos was a centre of exhibition for oil- wealth projects under the Nigerian Federal Military Government. Major infrastructure contracts were awarded to German-Nigerian firm, Julius Berger, which underwent a process of indigenisation in Nigeria. In 1975, a crisis of congestion resulted in a stasis at the Lagos port, with state-response involving infrastructural and legal resolutions. Julius Berger Nigeria (JBN) was to complete a new port at Tin Can Island in only 15 months, while simultaneously carrying out other extensive projects in Lagos. These undertakings would provide the blueprint for future operations at scale, and for the consolidation of the company’s footprint in territorial terms. The conceptual contribution lies in an exploration of the uses of ‘territorialisation’ and ‘coding’ that stabilise or disrupt, consolidate or expand social territories. Infrastructural projects are subject to social interactions that are coded, decoded or overcoded in organisations that are themselves forming and shaping as groups. The way in which social territories are held together through language, visual symbolism, codes of conduct and national law, constitutes this study, enabling observation of Nigeria’s complex infrastructural programmes, with emergent factors representing the binding elements at organisational and territorial levels. The archive is itself understood as an assemblage, bringing together resources of disparate origin, with Colonial Office and JBN records revealing an alternate and imagined Lagos, and effecting a reterritorialisation shaped in narrative terms. This reading attempts to speak to the complexity, in a vision of processes and interactions that were evolving and reacting in these historical periods, to respond to the question of how social territories are held together as a fabric, with processes of territorialisation and coding seen as manipulations of that fabric. Infrastructural projects are read in relation to wider strategic objectives of the Colonial Administration and the Nigerian State, involving intricate social and technical interrelations in implementation of programmes, with ideas functioning at the level of individual attitude and systemically.
Gendered strategies and aspirations of black women inhabiting borderland spaces: a case study of Musina local municipality
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2024) Muzanenhamo, Chido Anna Maria; Harrison, Philip
This research focuses on how black femininity is constructed and embodied in an African borderland at the intersections of rural-urban and transnational interfaces. Conducted in Musina local municipality, this study posits that a double borderland identity – an identity formed through the spatial overlaps of transnational, rural, and urban existence – shapes how black women are caught in-between idealized conceptualizations of black femininity and the processes of dislocation and adaptation that accompany pressures of assimilating into a borderland society. Utilizing qualitative research methods, including a case study analysis, reflexive photography and journalling, and 43 semi-structured interviews, this study explored the concepts of intersectionality, liminality, and borderlands. The findings suggest that black femininity is an ideal constructed largely of three components: selfhood, wifehood, and motherhood. These ideas frequently mirror the perception that certain categories – like gender, geography, and nationality – are fixed and unrelated. However, the study shows that gender identity in the municipality is performatively intersectional, leading to diverse liminal experiences. Identities in an African borderland can be fluid, hybrid, invisible or visible depending on the context. This study provides a more nuanced understanding of identity formation in borderland spaces. The double borderland identity is particularly important because it subverts and transforms commonly perceived notions of black femininity, being the catalyst for the experiences and embodiment of intersectional identities, often leaving many women in a permanent state of in- betweenness.
The dynamics of place branding in Johannesburg: 1994 - 2019
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-11) Mbinza, Zenzile; Sihlongonyane, Mfaniseni Fana
This PhD thesis lays the ground for understanding place branding processes from cities of the Global South. It critically explores place branding as an emerging mechanism for urban governance in Johannesburg. It is critical because place branding and its related processes have increasingly gained momentum in countries, regions and cities jostling for niche status in global economics. This thesis explores the different place brands that Johannesburg coined over time, focussing on the period between 1994 and 2019. It explored the city’s place brands under the five mayors that presided over Johannesburg, beginning with Dan Pretorius (1994 – 1995), Isaac Mogase (1995 – 1999), Amos Masondo (2000 – 2011), Parks Tau (2011 – 2016) and Herman Mashaba (2016 – 2019). The thesis employed a qualitative research methodology and case study design. Primary data Archival research and interviews were the primary data collection strategies. The ensuing discussion of place brands in Johannesburg reveals the dynamics and push factors that have contributed to the development of place brands under the time in question. Politics, economics, and activities related to globalisation emerged as leading drivers for the city of Johannesburg to develop its various place brands. The thesis found that Johannesburg followed a template similar to the cities of the Global North in its application of place branding. However, the thesis also found gaps in the city’s place branding processes. For example, there was limited engagement with the city residents when developing Johannesburg’s place brands. It pointed to a unilateral, top-down application of place branding in the city, which precluded it from using these processes as democracy-building tools. It necessitates the exploration of place branding from the perspective of city governments to begin encompassing issues of inclusivity and public participation. In this light, the thesis calls for a more strategic application of place branding in the Johannesburg.
Why do equity oriented, ‘progressive’ planning policies fail to redress the apartheid city? An examination of Planning Instrumentality in South Africa
(University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2023-09) Klug, Neil; Bénit-Gbaffou, Claire; Todes, Alison
In the immediate post-apartheid period, the fields of urban planning and housing experienced what some have called a ‘golden era’ during which planning played a significant role in the Reconstruction and Development Programme of the government, through developing new and progressive planning and housing policy instruments. Some of these instruments were designed to expedite the release of serviced land and provide subsidised housing, address the apartheid legacy of spatial segregation and housing backlogs. Despite success in the large number of houses delivered to the poor and increased service delivery to previously disenfranchised communities, by the mid 2000s there was growing criticisms of the state’s failure to redress discriminatory apartheid spatial patterns. South Africa was also experiencing growth in unemployment and inequality between emerging elites on the one hand and the majority of previously disadvantaged in society. This study sought to examine what role planning policy instruments played in failing to address the spatial legacies of apartheid. Acknowledging the wide range of potential variables contributing to this lack of efficacy, the study took an in-depth grounded, research approach. Using three case studies on different planning and housing related policy instruments and suits of instruments, at different phases of the policy cycle framework, it examined whether or not the state had managed to address housing and other inequalities. The first case study involved the examination of the processes and practices in formulating a local eviction policy instrument, the second reflected on housing officials’ engagement with the National Housing Code suit of instruments, and the third examined the practices and processes of implementing the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme. The findings of these case studies were that equity oriented, ‘progressive’ planning policies fail to redress the apartheid spatial inequalities because they are either not being selected for use or, where they are being applied, had limited impact because they were being implemented in a watered-down fashion. My thesis shows that there are multiple factors, from broad and complex governance structures to the actions of individual actors, that affect the efficacy of policy instruments.
Governance of infrastructure provision in informal settlements: the electrification of unproclaimed areas in the City of Johannesburg
(2022) Chikomwe, Savory
An increasing number of informal settlements in South Africa are receiving interim services for extended periods while awaiting permanent upgrading or housing solutions. This thesis explores the complex governance arrangements and challenges that arise around the provision of basic services using City of Johannesburg as a case study, with a focus on three ‘unproclaimed’ informal settlements that have undergone electrification. These are Stjwetla, Protea South and Slovo Park. The three cases shed light on the modes of infrastructure governance that characterize informal settlement upgrading as practiced in the City of Johannesburg and to some extent in South Africa more generally. Formal grid electrification in the case study settlements is juxtaposed by other temporary basic infrastructure provisioning in a complicated socio-political, institutional and governance context. The inquiry adopted a qualitative methodology. The case studies of the three settlements and the City of Johannesburg were compiled through an extensive literature and document review and indepth interviews with key informants. These spanned community leadership, political representatives, experts and officials in municipal, provincial and national departments and stateowned entities. The thesis finds ambivalence, disconnections, misalignments and contradictions in the basic infrastructure provision and upgrading processes within the City of Johannesburg and between the City and central government departments. This was accentuated by the role of the national state-owned electricity company Eskom in one of the three settlements. The thesis finds that the prolonged temporary status of the informal settlements promotes contestations at various levels, including ligation. In the absence of progress towards permanent upgrading, investment in grid electrification ambiguously signals permanence even where there is no state intention to upgrade in situ. Within communities, this confusion contributes to tension while also triggering consolidation and in-migration. Differing interpretations across entities of the state about the role of grid electrification in informal settlement trajectories open up space for temporary electrification ultimately to lead towards the pragmatic adoption of permanent in situ upgrading. This notwithstanding, literature reviewed for this thesis points instead toward the necessity for a turn to off-grid electrification technologies for informal settlements.

Electronic Theses and Dissertations (PhDs)

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