3. Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETDs) - All submissions
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Item Livelihoods and the transformative potential of the city of Rustenburg(2016-04-05) Mosiane, Ngakaemang BenjaminCities are characterised by a contradictory dynamic of opportunities for and the suppression of the livelihoods of the poor. At the turn of the twentieth century, well into the first half of that century, Rustenburg was defined by a broad-based participation in the local economy. Although black people’s involvement in that economy was marked by the relation of dependency to the dominant, white social formations, they both managed their relationship with the city and contributed to its vibrancy. Today, the same is true for livelihood activities in this city. However, from the mid-1990s (as it was the case from the 1940s until the official end of apartheid) various forces are delivering Rustenburg into an elite space of formal cultural practices. With that said, such exercises of power are not generalisable to the whole city. Thus, the way various sites of the city are constituted and valorised affect whether or not ordinary people can build livelihoods and pursue other goals in and through such sites. Overall, the redevelopment practices in Rustenburg bring into focus the tensions of city life – urban residents and the city space are agents of social reproduction on the one hand and are resources for creating emancipatory spaces on the other. In this sense, living and making a living in the city involves mediating such tensions – although the new spaces produced by the body and the dream often cohere into real material landscape that shapes everyday practices and social identities, the sensual, rationality, history, and the landscape provide resources for continual exploration and reproduction of new spaces of emancipation from poverty and domination.Item Radical agenda - settings? exploring informality and the spatial and economic practices of informal people within the ambit of suggestion, contestation and movement towards an alternative city(2016) Ngobese, Siphelele Lisolam MelodyThis research report examines the extent to which the economic and spatial practices of informal people can be classed as radical genda-setting towards an alternative city. In so doing the practices and perceptions of business owners, market traders and street traders in Yeoville are explored. To give greater context of what informal people are possibly pushing up against, state practice and policy are also considered. The discussion further draws on the nexus between politics and governance as well as between the state and capital on the making of contemporary cities. Social movement theory provides the initial basis to carry out the discussion. The interweaving theories of quiet encroachment (Bayat), insurgent citizenship (Holston) and subaltern urbanism (Roy) give the exploration greater depth.Item Recombinant urban DNA connectivity through adaptation in Diepsloot(2014-02) Nair, Simona70% of the world’s population will be living in cities by 2050. Cities are growing faster than can be designed. Townships and informal settlements are becoming a common site within cities around the world. South African cities are ill and require healing. It has inherited an intrinsic genetic flaw, apartheid’s social and spatial planning. This urban DNA structure encouraged weakness in the connectivity systems and was designed to prevent people from connecting and contracting. It is Postapartheid times and this weakness continues. Therefore the location of interest is Diepsloot, a disconnected post apartheid township. Over 400 000 people reside in this township which is located between two major cities in Gauteng. The conceptual framework is based on the analogy of the Recombinant DNA applied to how urban design unfolds. The scientifically engineered process of healing through sharing, recombining, accepting and adapting is a strong methodology to adopt into the urban design process and methodology. The theoretical framework looks at Peter Calthorpe’s New Urban Network is based on reorganising transport networks into a hierarchy which assists in increasing connectivity and improving the quality of the urban network. While Complex Adaptive Systems theory is understood through Sanders’ five complexity-based observations about cities and urban environments. David Grahame Shane’s explanation of the theory of recombinant urbanism involves the theory that cities emerge from armatures, enclaves and heterotopias which are all constantly combined and re-combined. In addressing spatial inequalities and disconnectivity, three bases of literature have been reviewed. The literature review includes Compact City and Decentralised Concentration, New Urbanism and Transit Oriented Development – Urban Network System. The work researched and developed in these design movements and approaches are vast. This study touches on the essence of the design movements and approaches. The challenge is the application of these strong design approaches or movements into a local context. The hypothesis says that it is possible to develop a design methodology that works from a parallel system of both bottom up and top down design processes. It is possible to extract a strength in the current organic structure of a township development, and incorporate it into formal urbanism design tools. This is to ensure that the formal design intervention is adopted into the current system, or study area, and adapts and grows incrementally. Similar to the process of how the host would accept the recombinant DNA of the antivirus. The aim of the design intervention is to apply local lessons learnt in the existing spatial context and link the strengths found with contemporary urban design principles of transit oriented development that encourage connectivity and intensity of development around intermodal facilities. This approach demonstrates a design methodology that employs a parallel system of bottom up and top down processes. The approach developed is specifically, a design and a physical built morphology analysis and does not include the arm of social interaction in the form of public participation, etc. The findings demonstrate that connectivity and density is a critical component to healing the city. This discussion is held within the Transit Oriented Development model. The study analysed the level of connectivity Diepsloot exhibits from a regional scale, to a district scale and finally to a neighbourhood scale. Healing the weakness of disconnectivity requires tackling it from all scales.Item Restitution, inclusion and identity: Gaborone First People Congress Center(2014-02-01) Mphake, LinganiIn my thesis I wish to illustrate the ability of architecture to provide restitution, inclusion and identity. In Botswana, Basarwa have been forcefully evicted from their ancestral land to facilitate diamond mining by the government. In addition to this, within other Southern African countries, Basarwa have experienced varying degrees of similar circumstances. This has resulted in Basarwa experiencing widespread exclusion, loss of culture and dispossession. The aim of this project is not to solve this issue but to create a platform to work towards improving the current state of Basarwa. The aim is to explore the notion of a cultural think-tank; an advocacy center where Basarwa from all over southern Africa can congregate and advocate for the various issues affecting them, where information and archives can be accessed and cultural performances can occur. This is a significant step towards achieving this goal. The site is in Botswana at the heart of the admin-istrative center and has been selected as a subversive form of restitution. This thesis investigates the types of dispossessions that Basarwa have experienced the resulting effects of exclusion, and the experiences of Basarwa in the Southern African context. Cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism are explored as vehicles of change that could help achieve the goal. Furthermore as a means of restitution and identity build-ing, mythological cosmology and design have been investigated as they are the essential elements in the formation of identity and a source of pride and esteem for Basarwa. By creating a building where advocacy for the plight of Basarwa can occur, which celebrates the mythological cosmology, design heritage and cultural practices of Basarwa, the aim is to achieve restitution, inclusion and identity.Item Urban estuary: a commentary on diasporic Johannesburg defining an architecture of connection for the transient communities of Yeoville(2015-04-30) Valasis, PeterThis paper explores the contradictions and complexities of the themes Diaspora, Sanctuary and Estuary. Diaspora has historically referred to people and communities who have been displaced from their native, shared homeland through movement as a result of migration, immigration, or exile. African Diaspora tells the story of displacement throughout the continent and how Africans managed to retain their traditions and restructure their identities in a western dominated world and modern urban city. Through this paper I will explore how these diasporic communities maintained a sense of belonging through the notion of sanctuaries. Where these communities and sanctuaries overlap and, much like natural estuaries, how these interactions create uniquely dynamic systems. I will address themes within the urban context of Johannesburg and their influence on the nature space. It concludes by addressing the need for a new form of accommodation in response to the transient communities and fluid nature of the city. Key words: Diaspora, Sanctuary, Estuary, Transience, Accommodation.Item Understanding legitimation and the framing of claims: challenging housing demolitions, fighting for a home in Lenasia(2015-04-30) Molopi, Moloi EdwardIn November 2012, the Gauteng Provincial Government engaged on a programme to demolish houses that were illegally built on government land in Lenasia, a suburb located 30 kilometres south of Johannesburg. Over 50 homes were demolished with further demolitions being scheduled. The demolitions spurred various actors into action. Following a court interdict applied for by the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) on behalf of the residents, the government was then forced to cease with the demolitions. Within the dispute various claims have been advanced and legitimation processes entered into. This study uses the case of the demolitions in Lenasia to investigate the nature of legitimation and the framing of claims. This is done through a consideration of the different actors in the demolitions and each of the claims advanced. The central claims of this work are that legitimacy is context-specific and in a state of constant formation. Furthermore, claims are used to express worldviews and they serve as strategic standpoints for access to various goods.Item Seeking goals in the urban estuary : how a personal migrant subjectivity is reified into productive strategies and generative social effects.(2014-07-28) O'Keefe, PeterUsing a micro-level frame of analysis, and working from in-depth interviews in Johannesburg's migrant-rich ‘urban estuaries,’ this research report considers participants’ personal, subjective, understanding of their own migrant-ness. The paper argues that theirs is a migrant subjectivity linked to the praxis of goal seeking, rather than the achievement of belonging. The goal seeking subjectivity is reified into pragmatic social strategies of network building, trust, and opportunity creation that undermine the concepts of generalized trust, communal social capital, and the host/migrant dichotomy. Personal subjectivies are rendered social. Denizens fill the social space with presentations and assessments of ‘mutual beneficence,’ and seek out demographically ambivalent networks of commonality.