Faculty of Engineering and Built Environment

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The role of ritual in Southern African hunter-gatherer environmental adaptation
(2022) Sechaba Maape
Twentieth-century Southern African San hunter-gatherer communities are often depicted as a people who are environmentally fluid, adapting to climatic variability through mobility so as to ensure their survival. However, based on environmental psychology and phenomenology of place we also know that all humans possess the propensity to have a deep embodied attachment to place, and that change in place can cause a range of emotions between mild nostalgia to severe psychological and social crisis. Research has also demonstrated the centrality of ritual practices such as the trance dance in San culture and cosmology. This article aims to explore the phenomenological role rituals played in ensuring adaptability in the face of change, as well as providing the fundamental need for existential and psychological emplacement. Using literature from both environmental adaptation and ritual in San communities, as well as cultural neurophenomenology and embodiment as theoretical frameworks, the article will discuss how San rituals mediated people/place relationships as a means of coping with highly variable environments and change.
DETECTING ASH MIDDENS USING REMOTE SENSING TECHNIQUES: THE CASE OF SOUTHERN GAUTENG, SOUTH AFRICA
(South African Archaeological Bulletin, 2022-12) Siteleki, Mncedisi
South Africa is home to thousands of architectural remnants such as stone-walled structures and ash middens from the Late Iron Age (AD 1300–1800). Ash middens reflect the political and economic lifeways of Iron Age communities. However, the process of identifying and mapping ash middens with traditional survey techniques can be time-consuming and difficult due to dense vegetation. This report aims to assess the performance of two supervised classification techniques, Maximum Likelihood Classification (MLC) and Support Vector Machine (SVM), in detecting ash middens on two multispectral satellite images – GeoEye1 and SPOT5 – in Gauteng, South Africa. The objective is to also assess the ability of the sensors in capturing the spectral signatures of the ash middens. The high reflectance of ash middens relative to other land-cover classes indicates that they have distinct spectral signatures. GeoEye1 is better than SPOT5 in the detection of ash middens because its high spectral and spatial resolution allows for more detailed and accurate mapping. SVM, although advanced, is not a significantly better classification technique for detecting ash middens compared to MLC. This report presents a promising avenue for detecting archaeological ash middens in this part of the world using remote sensing techniques.
The persistence and rise of master planning in urban Africa: transnational circuits and local ambitions
(Routledge, 2022-03-27) Harrison, Philip; Croese, Sylvia
Master plans have long been criticized by critical planners who have argued in favour of more strategic, collaborative and relational forms of spatial planning that can more adequately respond to local needs and realities, especially in the context of the global South. Rather than critiquing master planning, this paper seeks to interrogate its recent rise in urban Africa. Building on a review of international planning trajectories, the paper seeks to challenge dominant narratives in the Western literature around the rise and decline of master planning. Planning experiences from across the African continent illustrate how master planning was a limited practice under colonialism and emerged more strongly in early post-colonial years, while persisting through a quiet period of planning and proliferating in recent times. By exploring the diversity in the influences and approaches to master planning for new and existing cities in Africa over time, the paper positions master planning as the product of a complex array of transnational circuits and multiple local actors and ambitions which intersect across different scales. The study of master planning should therefore be considered as an important entry point into understanding and rethinking the contemporary politics of urban planning, implementation, and development in Africa.
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.
The transcalar politics of urban master planning: the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in Africa
(Rouledge, 2022-09-30) Croese, Sylvia; Miyauchi, Yohei
This article sheds light on the growing, but understudied role of the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) in supporting the local production of master plans across the African continent as a tool for guiding long-term investments in urban development. To explore the multiple logics, actors and interests driving the conception, preparation and implementation of these plans, we approach urban master planning as a transcalar process, through which diverse investment, planning and governance arrangements are produced and mobilized in ways that transcend the city scale. We illuminate these dynamics by building on an analysis of the history of Japanese development cooperation and drawing on case studies of JICA master planning in Malawi, Ghana and Tanzania.
Beyond variegation: The territorialisation of states, communities and developers in large-scale developments in Johannesburg, Shanghai and London
(Urban Studies Journal, 2022) Robinson, Jennifer; Wu, Fulong; Harrison, Philip; Wang, Zheng; Todes, Alison; Dittgen, Romain; Attuyer, Katia
Large-scale urban development projects are a significant format of urban expansion and renewal across the globe. As generators of governance innovation and indicators of the future city in each urban context, large-scale development projects have been interpreted within frameworks of ‘variegations’ of wider circulating processes, such as neoliberalisation or financialisation. However, such projects often entail significant state support and investment, are strongly linked to a wide variety of transnational investors and developers and are frequently highly contested in their local environments. Thus, each project comes to fruition in a distinctive regulatory context, often as an exception to the norm, and each emerges through complex interactions over a long period of time amongst an array of actors. We therefore seek to broaden the discussion from an analytical focus on variegated globalised processes to consider three large-scale urban development projects (in Shanghai, Johannesburg and London) as distinctive (transcalar) territorialisations. Using an innovative comparative approach, we outline the grounds for a systematic analytical conversation across mega-urban development projects in very different contexts. Initially, comparability rests on the shared features of large-scale developments – that they are multi-jurisdictional, involve long time scales and bring significant financing challenges. Comparing three development projects, we are able to interrogate, rather than take for granted, how a range of wider processes, circulating practices, transcalar actors and territorial regulatory formations composed specific urban outcomes in each case. Thinking across these diverse cases provides grounds for rebuilding understandings of urban development politics.
Mobility Intersections: Gender, Family, Culture and Location in the Gauteng City‑Region
(Urban Forum, 2022-11-28) Parker, Alexandra; Rubin, Margot
The morphology of many South African cities has changed little over the last 25 years: with some of the poorest communities still living on the peripheries in informal settlements and old townships. The resulting spatial mismatch, with difculties of access and mobility, has been recorded and engaged with elsewhere; the day-to-day implications for households and families have been less well-considered. In work that was undertaken between March 2019 and February 2020 using a mixed-method approach that included focus groups, a smartphone mobility app, mapping and qualitative interviews, as well as, the use of other on-line communication platforms such as WhatsApp to gather data, the team looked at the intersection between mobility, access and household dynamics. Results surface and highlight how old spatial planning logics have direct impact on contemporary spatial footprints, mobility patterns and transit choices. Former ‘White’ neighbourhoods, designed to be relatively self-contained and meet the needs of the suburban population, still ensure relatively small spatial footprints that are car-reliant. While those living in older informal settlements and townships still have the burden of long distances to access economic and often educational advancement. Similarly, the historical layout of transport modes continues to afect the day-to-day decisions of modal choice. However, these spatial patterns and historical transit planning are overlaid with gender expectations and gendered divisions of labour—as women continue to carry most of the childcare and domestic responsibilities and men continue to feel the necessity for household income provision. Thus, historical and continued segregation in the city-region intersects with diverse dimensions of race, class and culture to perpetuate widespread gendered mobility patterns in the Gauteng City-Region.
Financing urban development, three business models: Johannesburg, Shanghai and London
(Elsevier, 2020-10-07) Robinson, Jennifer; Harrison, Philip; Shen, Jie; Wu, Fulong
There has been growing interest in the expansion of global investment in urban areas, and the financialisation of urban development, both of which bring new business logics into the production of the built environment and shape urban outcomes. At the same time, mega urban projects have continued and spread as a significant format of urban expansion and renewal, often strongly linked to transnational investors and developers. Nonetheless, the distinctive regulatory and political contexts within which transnational actors must bring such projects to fruition matter greatly to outcomes, with territorialised governance arrangements both shaping and being shaped by transnational dynamics. However, there has been little systematic comparative consideration of these diverse regulatory contexts in their own right, rather than as contributors to wider circulating processes such as neoliberalisation. As a result, the implications of different regulatory regimes for urban outcomes have not been effectively assessed. In this paper we therefore broaden the discussion from globalised processes of “financialisation” to consider three large-scale urban development projects from the perspective of their distinctive “business models”, including their place in achieving wider strategic objectives at national and metropolitan scales, their agile and often bespoke institutional configurations, and their different forms of financing, taxation and land value capture. Our cases are Lingang, Shanghai (one of nine planned satellite cities), the Corridors of Freedom project in Johannesburg (a linear transport oriented development seeking to integrate the racially divided city), and Old Oak and Park Royal in north-west London (under a mayoral development corporation, associated with significant new metropolitan and national transport investments). We observe that the business models adopted, notably in relation to financial calculations and income streams associated with the developments, are a result of strongly path dependent formats of governance and income generation in each case. However we want to move beyond seeing these as residual, as contingent and contextual to wider accounts of urban development focussed on globalised financial flows and calculations. Using a comparative approach we initiate a systematic analytical conversation about the implications of different business models for the form and socio-economic potential of mega-urban development projects.
Many ways to care: mobility, gender and Gauteng’s geography
(ORCA – Online Research at Cardiff University, 2023) Rubin, Margot; Parker, Alexandra
This paper builds on earlier work of geographies of care and parental care that traces the relationship between gender, parenting and mobility (Hanson 2010; Dowling 2015). Parenting is highly gendered and spatialized but we argue that the construction of what it means to be a ‘good’ mother or a ‘good’ father is a relational and relative social norm. These identities, coupled with the specifics of urban morphology, explain the daily spatial footprints of care in the Gauteng cityregion (GCR), South Africa. We examine three key elements in this paper: 1) the social and cultural norms and moral ideologies of parenthood; 2) the everyday practices of childcare; and 3) the mobility patterns and spatial footprints of parents. We argue that daily decisions that constitute the spatial footprints of caregivers are deeply entrenched in moral geographies and thus in the ideas that people have about what constitutes being a ‘good’ parent. We develop the existing literature on ‘good’ parenting, by demonstrating that these ideas are culturally and socially relative and overlain by class as well as geographic location. Spatiality, combined with ideology and identity, shape not only how we care but how we are able to care, which in turn reinforce notions of ‘good’ parenting.
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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