Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment

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End date: 2019

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 545
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    Theorizing distributive justice and the practice of post-disaster housing recovery
    (Taylor and Francis, 2018-02-04) Tafti, Mojgan; Tomlison, Richard
    This paper examines the implications of contemporary conceptions of distributive justice for post-disaster recovery programmes. The question asked in this paper is essentially theoretical: what does a concern with distributive justice entail when developing and evaluating post-disaster recovery programmes? Housing recovery programmes are employed to provide a contextual grounding for the discussion. We present a review of the disaster recovery literature and recent programmes of post-disaster housing recovery to map the ways in which distributive justice have been theorized, interpreted, debated and put into practice. We reflect on what different principles of distributive justice imply for postdisaster recovery programmes in terms of their impact on opportunities for individuals and communities to recover from disasters, and also on their realizing possibilities of advancing justice in the post-disaster society. The paper concludes by outlining a number of dimensions of a pluralist account of distributive justice. Using these dimensions and taking into account tensions within and between them, we attempt to offer a framework for reflecting on and assessing distributive arrangements of disaster recovery programmes.
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    Corridors of Freedom: Analyzing Johannesburg’s Ambitious Inclusionary Transit-Oriented Development
    (Journal of Planning Education and Research, 2019) Harrison, Philip; Rubin, Margot; Appelbaum, Alexandra; Dittgen, Romain
    In 2013, the Mayor of Johannesburg announced the ambitious Corridors of Freedom (CoF) initiative to transform the city’s socio-spatial structure. The CoF were constructed to be an inclusionary form of transit-oriented development (TOD). Using a 1,200 respondent survey, over 75 interviews, documentary analysis, and attendance at public participation interventions, the paper questions the possibilities for, and constraints on, the practice of inclusionary TOD. Using six criteria—spatial transformation, mobility, affordable accommodation, jobs and livelihoods, social integration, and participation—we demonstrate the mixed outcomes of inclusionary TOD.
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    Architectures of visibility and invisibility: a reflection on the secret affinities of Johannesburg’s cross-border shopping hub
    (Anthropology Southern Africa, 2019) Zack, Tanya; Govender, Thireshen
    The inner city of Johannesburg, South Africa, is the site of an intense wholesale and retail trade in fast fashion. Here mostly migrant entrepreneurs supply billions of rand worth of Chinese apparel to local and cross-border shoppers from across sub-Saharan Africa. The retail phenomenon pulsates from the incrementally adapted interiors of modernist office buildings. The buildings now host secret shopping centres, with mini retail outlets and coffee shops transforming dormant interior corridors and stairwells into lively internal streets. This compressed urban environment caters exquisitely to the ambiguous needs of being both visible and invisible — to display and to conceal — in this urban context. Walter Benjamin’s musings on the architectures and social positioning of mid-nineteenth century Parisian arcades offer insight into how adaptive, rogue architectures respond to mass consumption in contemporary Johannesburg. They support the argument that the arcades of “Jeppe” are deliberate, responsive architectures.
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    Urban land reform in South Africa: Pointers for urban policy and planning
    (University of Free State, 2019) Huchzermeyer, Marie; Harrison, Philip; Charlton, Sarah; Klug, Neil; Rubin, Margot; Todes, Alison
    Urban and reform is a relatively under-researched and -considered element of the broader land-reform debate. This article reviews some of the key positions that have been explicated in the current urban land-reform debate, and seeks to extend existing contributions, fine-tune them and push the debate further. It does so by distinguishing the features of urban land, and considers these and their implications for the meaning of land reform. It also reviews the recently achieved, national policy consensus on urban development and planning, and concludes with suggestions on how to proceed with urban land reform.
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    The wrong side of the mining belt? Spatial transformations and identities in Johannesburg’s southern suburbs
    (Wits University Press, 2014) Harrison, Philip. Zack, Tanya.
    A mix of respected academics, practising urban planners and experienced policymakers offer compelling overviews of the rapid and complex spatial developments that have taken place in Johannesburg since the end of apartheid, along with tantalising glimpses into life on the streets and behind the high walls of this diverse city. The book has three sections. Section A provides an overview of macro spatial trends and the policies that have influenced them. Section B explores the shaping of the city at district and suburban level, revealing the peculiarity of processes in different areas. This analysis elucidates the larger trends, while identifying shifts that are not easily detected at the macro level. Section C is an assembly of chapters and short vignettes that focus on the interweaving of place and identity at a micro level. With empirical data supported by new data sets including the 2011 Census, the city’s Development Planning and Urban Management Department’s information system, and Gauteng City-Region Observatory’s substantial archive, the book is an essential reference for planning practitioners, urban geographers, sociologists, and social anthropologists, among others.
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    The Notice
    (Wits University Press, 2014) Kihato, Caroline.
    As the dynamo of South Africa’s economy, Johannesburg commands a central position in the nation’s imagination, and scholars throughout the world monitor the city as an exemplar of urbanity in the global South. This richly illustrated study offers detailed empirical analyses of changes in the city’s physical space, as well as a host of chapters on the character of specific neighbourhoods and the social identities being forged within them. Informing all of these is a consideration of underlying economic, social and political processes shaping the wider Gauteng region. A mix of respected academics, practising urban planners and experienced policymakers offer compelling overviews of the rapid and complex spatial developments that have taken place in Johannesburg since the end of apartheid, along with tantalising glimpses into life on the streets and behind the high walls of this diverse city. The book has three sections. Section A provides an overview of macro spatial trends and the policies that have influenced them. Section B explores the shaping of the city at district and suburban level, revealing the peculiarity of processes in different areas. This analysis elucidates the larger trends, while identifying shifts that are not easily detected at the macro level. Section C is an assembly of chapters and short vignettes that focus on the interweaving of place and identity at a micro level.
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    The north-western edge
    (Wits University Press, 2014) Klug, Neil. Rubin, Margot. Todes, Alison.
    As the dynamo of South Africa’s economy, Johannesburg commands a central position in the nation’s imagination, and scholars throughout the world monitor the city as an exemplar of urbanity in the global South. This richly illustrated study offers detailed empirical analyses of changes in the city’s physical space, as well as a host of chapters on the character of specific neighbourhoods and the social identities being forged within them. Informing all of these is a consideration of underlying economic, social and political processes shaping the wider Gauteng region. A mix of respected academics, practising urban planners and experienced policymakers offer compelling overviews of the rapid and complex spatial developments that have taken place in Johannesburg since the end of apartheid, along with tantalising glimpses into life on the streets and behind the high walls of this diverse city. The book has three sections. Section A provides an overview of macro spatial trends and the policies that have influenced them. Section B explores the shaping of the city at district and suburban level, revealing the peculiarity of processes in different areas. This analysis elucidates the larger trends, while identifying shifts that are not easily detected at the macro level. Section C is an assembly of chapters and short vignettes that focus on the interweaving of place and identity at a micro level.
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    The 2010 World Cup and its legacy in the Ellis Park Precinct: Perceptions of local residents
    (Wits University Press, 2014) Karam, Aly. Rubin, Margot.
    A mix of respected academics, practising urban planners and experienced policymakers offer compelling overviews of the rapid and complex spatial developments that have taken place in Johannesburg since the end of apartheid, along with tantalising glimpses into life on the streets and behind the high walls of this diverse city. The book has three sections. Section A provides an overview of macro spatial trends and the policies that have influenced them. Section B explores the shaping of the city at district and suburban level, revealing the peculiarity of processes in different areas. This analysis elucidates the larger trends, while identifying shifts that are not easily detected at the macro level. Section C is an assembly of chapters and short vignettes that focus on the interweaving of place and identity at a micro level.
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    Soweto: A study in socio-spatial differentiation
    (Wits University Press, 2014) Harrison, Philip. Harrison, Kirsten.
    A mix of respected academics, practising urban planners and experienced policymakers offer compelling overviews of the rapid and complex spatial developments that have taken place in Johannesburg since the end of apartheid, along with tantalising glimpses into life on the streets and behind the high walls of this diverse city. The book has three sections. Section A provides an overview of macro spatial trends and the policies that have infl uenced them. Section B explores the shaping of the city at district and suburban level, revealing the peculiarity of processes in different areas. This analysis elucidates thelarger trends, while identifying shifts that are not easily detected at the macro level. Section C is an assembly of chapters and short vignettes that focus on the interweaving of place and identity at a micro level. With empirical data supported by new data sets including the 2011 Census, the city’s Development Planning and Urban Management Department’s information system, and Gauteng City-Region Observatory’s substantial archive, the book is an essential reference for planning practitioners, urban geographers, sociologists, and social anthropologists, among others.
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    Beyond Invented and Invited spaces of participation: The Phiri and Olivia Road court cases and their outcomes
    (HRSC Press, 2015) Smith, Laila. Rubin, Margot.
    249 requires methods of public engagement that the local authorities responsible for delivery seldom have the knowledge or experience to carry out (as pointed to in Bénit-Gbaffou’s opening chapter). The result has been an increasingly frustrated public that is getting neither access to essential services nor the opportunity to engage meaningfully with the state (Bénit-Gbaffou & Oldfield 2011). The process of the public turning to the courts to hold the state to account for its enactment of socioeconomic rights has been a fascinating terrain where these governance and service delivery battles have merged into a single front. Classical legal theory argues that litigation is sought by groups because of fundamental belief in the ‘direct linking of litigation, rights, and remedies with social change’(Hunt 1990: 309). Ethnographers, such as Merry and Silbey (1984), argue that citizens turn to the law ‘when their situations or their personal, community, or economic problems seemed entirely intractable, unavoidable, and intolerable’(Merry 1990; Merry & Silbey 1984). Political opportunity theorists argue that if channels to decision-making are ‘closed’then citizens and residents will find, or invent, other methods to ensure that their voices are heard and that they are able to engage in some way with the decision-making process (Hilson 2002).