Occupying the divide: Investigating a justice-based approach to urban design in the former western areas of Johannesburg
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Date
2014-02-04
Authors
Chapman, Thomas
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Abstract
Spatial Justice has emerged in the last halfcentury
as a popular concept in geography,
economics and the social sciences.
Throughout the world, we find examples of
spatial injustices and how they have been
overcome through group efforts. Key theorists
of Spatial Justice such as Ed Soja make explicit
reference to South Africa as a country of
‘unjust geography’ (2010: 39). Looking at
development efforts in post-Apartheid
Johannesburg, this thesis aims to identify the
extents to which Spatial Justice is being
realised in the city, particularly at the
community scale.
A key theoretical focus in this thesis is the
presence of justice within the field of Urban
Design. Several local and international
methodologies are studied with the intention
of developing a toolkit for the practice of
so-called ‘ just’ urban design.
The geographical focus area of the thesis is
the former ‘Western Areas’ of Johannesburg, a
district which has seen immense physical and
social change over the last 100 years. The
primary empirical research conducted in this
thesis relates to what has been termed the
‘morphology of injustice’. This research looks
to map the Western Areas from its status in the
1940’s as a reasonably ‘ just’ landscape to the
situation today which is characterised by
severe physical and social barriers to justice.
The design component of the thesis begins
with a critical analysis of an existing urban
framework for the area which is driven
primarily by the recent development of the Rea
Vaya BRT network and places extreme
importance on densification in the area. The
alternative framework proposed in this thesis
looks to place as much importance on existing
zones of civic/ communal activity as on
transport nodes, in a low-impact structural
plan for the area. The detailed design
component looks explicitly at Main Road,
imagining it as a neutral public space for the
communities of Westbury and Sophiatown.