School of Architecture & Planning, University of the Witwatersrand, 

Johannesburg 

Ph.D. 2023 

 

 

 

 

 

Urban Scripting 

Audio-visual Forms of Storytelling in Urban Design and Planning:  

The Case of Two Activity Streets in Johannesburg 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solam Mkhabela 

288060 

Supervisor Prof. Paul Jenkins 

  



ii 

Declaration 

I declare that this thesis is my own unaided work. It is being submitted to the Degree of 

Doctor of Philosophy to the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. It has not been 

submitted before for any degree or examination to any other University. 

 

 

 

Solam Mkhabela 

17 May 2023 

  



iii 

Abstract 

South African cities reflect spaces based on Euro-American theories and norms, mapping 

methods, and design imperatives. At a local level, this imposition’s tool of static diagrams, 

plans, sections, elevation, and aerials; broader spatial plans with localized frameworks; 

regulatory plans controlling land use results in spaces hindering socio-economic 

development, especially for the marginalized, which comprises a predominantly black African 

and poor cohort. Consequently, current practice must significantly improve a city’s 

engagement with everyday users. Based on the indicated need, this thesis argues that the 

first step to effective urban design is accurately ascertaining spatial needs. In responding to 

current city-making practices that create ineffective spatial outputs, the study 

introduces Urban Scripting as a novel transdisciplinary and practice-based approach for 

assessing inhabitable urban locations. Its methodology in city-making processes strategically 

inserts social narrative to enhance understanding of daily user experiences.  

In creating accessible ways of exposing urban layer details, the procedures combine Nguni 

oral tradition (local expertise) with audio-visual (disciplinary knowledge) as a hybrid narrative 

technique that simultaneously analyzes and produces. Here narrative suggests using story to 

amplify an evolving discourse unit that writes and communicates spatial imagination. More 

so, storytelling, framed in and through interaction, finds people and information often missed 

by conventional mapping and assessment tools, specifically the voices in the ‘twilight zone,’ 

the space between legal and illegal on-the-ground operations. Transdisciplinary methods 

structure more critical and empirically on-ground evidence that inductively leads to new ways 

of thinking and analyzing. Practice-based casework turns space into place, builds an 

anthology of empirical knowledge to inform city-making methodologies, and shapes 

appropriate policies supporting subaltern communities. Programmatically and polemically, it 

explores how a cinematic frame is an inclusive tool within a specific set of urban processes. 

Ultimately, its enframing application calibrates an empathetic narrative, potentially 

transforming lives better for an African city in motion. This approach is valuable for 

practitioners as a firm departure from convention and thrusts Black African knowledge to the 

forefront, thus acting as a decolonization tool. 

Tested at two different sites in Johannesburg, Alexandra (formerly a Black dormitory 

‘township’) and Orange Grove (once a whites-only area), the approach effectively engaged 

with spatial users, specifically, the microentrepreneurs whose urban insurgency practiced on 

the side of the street serves the broader public yet remains unnoticed by spatial practice. 

Urban Scripting’s methodology better understood the urban spatial challenges and needs at 

the Johannesburg study sites. For spatial practice site assessment, theory building, and 



iv 

practical application, it is an approach that is likely to prove equally effective in 

communicating bottom-up needs to help imagine and design a fair and democratic city in 

hundreds of other similar environments in South Africa and indeed, across Africa, where 

parallel realities exist. 

  



v 

Dedication 

Dedicated to the lives of Gerald Chungu, David Goldblatt, Michael Sorkin, George Zarkalis, 

Klaus-Dieter Dörmann, and Thando Mkhabela. 

Mild men, intensely present and steadfastly insistent on remaining invisible.  



vi 

Acknowledgments  

Urban Scripting has been the product of many voices, eyes, hands, hearts, and histories. It’s 

been a long journey that we, the visible and invisible, have been part of. It is about places 

with cruel, violent, and murderous past and present. It’s also the story of Nguni people whose 

narratives tend to be told by others. In the retelling, we hope to change this. In no particular 

order, we thank the following people and everyone in the credits for playing their part: Paul 

Jenkins for encouraging the beginning and being there till the end. Jessica Hallenbeck for 

opening my academic world to storytelling. Stephen Kirker for working with me on editing 

chapters into a telling tale. Band A Part, Hiten Bawa, Shorai Kaseke, Aviwe Mandyanda, 

Leigh Maurtin, Nthabiseng Moela, Khazimuliswa Ndlovu, and Reg for calibrating content, 

Fred Swart for more than a visual identity, and Jennifer van den Bussche for workshop 

support and good energy. To my superheroes, Dean “the Falcon” Falconer and Felix “the 

Bandit” Beresford, for rendering urban space into life for those who cannot see it. Siphokazi 

Makhaye’s continued guidance and unrelenting ability to support with kindness, Batseba 

Qwabe, Bongi Mphuti, Pitso Marema, Mabore Seshebe, Lerato Nkosi and Vasentha Naidu 

for simply being there when we needed them most. My appreciation goes to Mphethi 

Morojele, Martin Mzumara, and Nnamdi Elleh for giving me the resources and time to 

complete the work. Finally, this project would not have come to fruition without the welcome it 

was warmly granted by Alexandra and Orange Grove micro-entrepreneurs and residents. A 

special thanks to Thando Hopa, Bra Niky, Bra Sam, Sipho, Leigh, Tumelo, Mangaliso, 

S’phiwe, Konke, Zela, Langa, Vuka, Kuhle, Sibusiso, Vuyo, Lesedi, Mandla, Fungai, 

Mduduzi, Rachel, Vimal, Joyce, Paddy, Vivien, Nomvula, Tasneem, MD, Iris, Tumi, Elsa, 

Jabu, Fish, Sophie, Kind, Summer, Maya, Sechaba, and Futhi. I also would like to thank the 

examiners for their valuable contributions. 

Thank you to my family, Audrey, Ronnie, Ngo, Knox, Lala, GQ, theDZL, Sula, Thalia, and 

Ilm, for being there. Thando for all memories without which getting through would have been 

impossible or worthwhile. Most importantly, Malwande and KiKi for believing in superpowers 

and keeping on. Thank you. 

A grant from the Nation Research Foundation has supported this research. 

  



vii 

Study Sites Location Map 

  

Johannesburg metropolitan area with the two study sites in relation to the inner city (reproduced from 

Google Earth). Alexandra lies 12 kilometers from the city center and is a neighbor to Sandton, one of 

Africa’s wealthiest business precincts. Orange Grove forms a midpoint between Alexandra and 

Johannesburg’s city center. 

  



viii 

Table of Contents 

DECLARATION ....................................................................................................................................... II 

ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................................. III 

DEDICATION ...........................................................................................................................................V 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .........................................................................................................................VI 

1 LOCATING A NGUNI VOICE .......................................................................................................... 1 

1.1 SITUATING: THE SCOPE .............................................................................................................. 1 

1.1.1 What is the Problem Statement? ......................................................................................... 1 

1.1.2 Addressing the Problem Statement ..................................................................................... 3 

1.1.3 Activity Street: A Democratic Palimpsest ............................................................................. 4 

1.2 DEVELOPING: A STUDY ............................................................................................................... 5 

1.2.1 Core + Sub-Questions .......................................................................................................... 5 

1.2.2 Conceptual Framework ........................................................................................................ 6 

1.2.3 Assemblage: Narrative Montage .......................................................................................... 7 

1.3 DESIGNING: THE PROJECT ........................................................................................................ 10 

1.3.1 Background, Midground, Foreground ................................................................................ 10 

1.3.2 Sensing the City ................................................................................................................. 11 

1.3.3 Rewriting Johannesburg..................................................................................................... 12 

1.4 RECOGNIZING: RELATIONAL CONCEPTS ..................................................................................... 13 

1.4.1 Argument ............................................................................................................................ 13 

1.4.2 Aim + Objective .................................................................................................................. 14 

1.4.3 How to read this Research ................................................................................................. 16 

1.4.4 Purpose .............................................................................................................................. 17 

1.5 EDITING: ABSTRACT THEMES .................................................................................................... 19 

1.5.1 Frames ............................................................................................................................... 19 

1.5.2 Producing ........................................................................................................................... 20 

1.5.3 The Twilight Zone ............................................................................................................... 22 

1.6 PRESENTING: FIELD CONTRIBUTION .......................................................................................... 23 

1.6.1 Urban Scripting ................................................................................................................... 23 

1.6.2 Limitations .......................................................................................................................... 24 

1.6.3 Overview............................................................................................................................. 25 

2 DEVELOPING: FRAMING ............................................................................................................. 28 

2.1 URBAN DESIGN: THE PRIMACY OF STREETS .............................................................................. 28 

2.1.1 Local ................................................................................................................................... 28 

2.1.2 Context ............................................................................................................................... 29 

2.1.3 Everyday............................................................................................................................. 31 

2.2 CONTEXTUALIZING THE CITY ..................................................................................................... 34 



ix 

2.2.1 Colonialism ......................................................................................................................... 34 

2.2.2 Capitalism ........................................................................................................................... 37 

2.2.3 Apartheid ............................................................................................................................ 39 

2.3 READING THE STREET............................................................................................................... 41 

2.3.1 Top-Down + Bottom-Up ..................................................................................................... 41 

2.3.2 Domination ......................................................................................................................... 43 

2.4 LOCATING THE CASE STUDY AREAS .......................................................................................... 45 

2.4.1 Opposites in a Perpetual Dance ........................................................................................ 45 

2.4.2 Building Up a City Image .................................................................................................... 47 

2.4.3 Inside .................................................................................................................................. 49 

2.4.4 Alexandra: Reverend Sam Buti Street ............................................................................... 51 

2.4.5 Orange Grove: Louis Botha Avenue .................................................................................. 53 

2.5 GATHERING THE EVIDENCE ....................................................................................................... 57 

2.5.1 Observing ........................................................................................................................... 57 

2.5.2 Reading .............................................................................................................................. 59 

2.5.3 Framing .............................................................................................................................. 62 

3 DESIGNING: SHIFTING ................................................................................................................ 65 

3.1 STORYTELLING: PUSHING BACK AGAINST EURO-AMERICAN PLANNING ....................................... 65 

3.1.1 Kwesukesukela, Once Upon a Time .................................................................................. 65 

3.1.2 Other Knowledge Cultures ................................................................................................. 67 

3.1.3 Frame of Reference ........................................................................................................... 69 

3.2 LISTENING: A FORM OF KNOWLEDGE SHARING .......................................................................... 73 

3.2.1 Listening to the Everyday ................................................................................................... 73 

3.2.2 A Sensory Approach .......................................................................................................... 75 

3.2.3 A Transformative Paradigm ............................................................................................... 76 

3.3 READING: MERGING EUROCENTRIC PLANNING CULTURE AND NGUNI STORYTELLING TRADITIONS 80 

3.3.1 Reading the Everyday ........................................................................................................ 80 

3.3.2 Locating Voices .................................................................................................................. 82 

3.3.3 New Languages ................................................................................................................. 85 

3.3.4 Bantfu neTindzawo: People and Places ............................................................................ 87 

3.3.5 A Making of . . . .................................................................................................................. 90 

3.4 SHIFTS IN THE NARRATIVE TO A LOCAL CONTEXT ....................................................................... 92 

3.4.1 Collaborating ...................................................................................................................... 92 

3.4.2 Story as Voice .................................................................................................................... 94 

3.4.3 Story as Image ................................................................................................................... 96 

3.4.4 Contextual Folder ............................................................................................................... 99 

3.5 DESIGNING THE SETTING ........................................................................................................ 101 

3.5.1 Listening ........................................................................................................................... 101 

3.5.2 Testing .............................................................................................................................. 101 

3.5.3 Designing Methods and Positions through Walking as Practice ..................................... 102 



x 

3.5.4 Shifting .............................................................................................................................. 105 

4 RECOGNIZING: POSITIONING .................................................................................................. 108 

4.1 BUILDING A LIBRARY ............................................................................................................... 108 

4.1.1 Reading Realities ............................................................................................................. 108 

4.1.2 Narrative Documentary .................................................................................................... 110 

4.1.3 Storytelling Methodologies ............................................................................................... 112 

4.2 FRAMING: TIME ....................................................................................................................... 114 

4.2.1 Stories .............................................................................................................................. 114 

4.2.2 Expressions ...................................................................................................................... 119 

4.2.3 Narrations ......................................................................................................................... 122 

4.3 SHIFTING: CONTEXT ............................................................................................................... 124 

4.3.1 Listening to People ........................................................................................................... 124 

4.3.2 Reading Places through Narrative ................................................................................... 126 

4.3.3 Writing Other Knowledge Cultures ................................................................................... 128 

4.4 POSITIONING: ACTIVITIES ........................................................................................................ 131 

4.4.1 Time: Foregrounding Stories ............................................................................................ 131 

4.4.2 Context: Constructing Hybrid Narratives .......................................................................... 132 

4.4.3 Activities: Reaching Understanding ................................................................................. 133 

4.5 COUNTERING: RETELLING EGOLI TOOLKIT ............................................................................... 135 

4.5.1 Counter-Story ................................................................................................................... 135 

4.5.2 Counter-Narrative ............................................................................................................. 137 

4.5.3 Urban Scripting ................................................................................................................. 138 

5 EDITING: CALIBRATING ............................................................................................................ 141 

5.1 SITUATING .............................................................................................................................. 141 

5.1.1 Africa ................................................................................................................................ 141 

5.1.2 South Africa ...................................................................................................................... 143 

5.1.3 Johannesburg ................................................................................................................... 145 

5.2 FRAMING WHAT IF…? ............................................................................................................. 150 

5.2.1 Continent .......................................................................................................................... 150 

5.2.2 Country ............................................................................................................................. 155 

5.2.3 City ................................................................................................................................... 160 

5.3 SHIFTING ................................................................................................................................ 165 

5.3.1 Country ............................................................................................................................. 165 

5.3.2 City ................................................................................................................................... 171 

5.3.3 Metro ................................................................................................................................ 174 

5.4 POSITIONING .......................................................................................................................... 174 

5.4.1 City ................................................................................................................................... 174 

5.4.2 Metro ................................................................................................................................ 176 

5.4.3 Street ................................................................................................................................ 178 



xi 

5.5 EDITING POINTS OF VIEW ........................................................................................................ 182 

5.5.1 Two Screenings [Multiple Audiences] .............................................................................. 182 

5.5.2 Alexandra ......................................................................................................................... 184 

5.5.3 Newtown ........................................................................................................................... 187 

5.5.4 Rewinding to Fast-forward ............................................................................................... 189 

6 RE-PRESENTING: NGUNI VOICES TO MAKE STREETS ACTIVE FOR ALL ........................ 193 

6.1 [RE] SITUATING VIEWS ............................................................................................................ 193 

6.2 [RE] DEVELOPING: FRAMING A STUDY PARADIGM..................................................................... 194 

6.2.1 Whose Frame: Revisiting the Problem Statement ........................................................... 194 

6.2.2 [Re] Assessing the Core Question ................................................................................... 196 

6.2.3 [Re] Structuring the Conceptual Framework .................................................................... 201 

6.3 [RE] DESIGNING: SHIFTING URBAN SCRIPTING ......................................................................... 203 

6.3.1 From Background to Midground to Foreground ............................................................... 203 

6.3.2 Sensing the City from the Ground Up .............................................................................. 204 

6.3.3 Rewriting Johannesburg................................................................................................... 204 

6.4 [RE] RECOGNIZING: POSITIONING THE SCRIPT ......................................................................... 205 

6.4.1 Interrogating the Purpose ................................................................................................. 205 

6.4.2 Situating the Purpose through Telling .............................................................................. 205 

6.5 [RE] EDITING: CALIBRATING THROUGH PRODUCTION ................................................................ 206 

6.5.1 The Drawn Frame: Establishing the Why ........................................................................ 206 

6.5.2 The Still Frame: Setting What is ....................................................................................... 211 

6.5.3 The Movement Frame: Asking What if? ........................................................................... 213 

6.6 [RE] PRESENTING KNOWLEDGE IN THEORY, ACADEMIA, AND PRACTICE .................................... 215 

6.6.1 From Foreground to Background ..................................................................................... 215 

6.6.2 The Twilight Zone of Knowledges .................................................................................... 216 

6.6.3 Whose Knowledge Anyway? ............................................................................................ 217 

6.6.4 Framing New Knowledge ................................................................................................. 219 

6.7 [RE] PRESENTING URBAN SCRIPTING: MISE EN SCÈNE ............................................................ 219 

CREDITS .............................................................................................................................................. 221 

BIBLIOGRAPHY .................................................................................................................................. 227 



xii 

  



xiii 

TABLE OF FIGURES 

Figure 1.1 Narrative Structure.................................................................................................... 9 
Figure 1.2 Field Casework Process ......................................................................................... 27 
Figure 2.1 Scale Matrix ............................................................................................................ 31 
Figure 2.2 Fragmented City ..................................................................................................... 36 
Figure 2.3 Twilight Sidewalk Bay ............................................................................................. 37 
Figure 2.4 Urban Scripting Scales ........................................................................................... 46 
Figure 2.5 Alexandra’s Small Grain Texture of Built and Unbuilt Urban Form ....................... 52 
Figure 2.6 Orange Grove’s Texture ......................................................................................... 55 
Figure 2.7 Sidewalk Bay .......................................................................................................... 57 
Figure 2.8 Johannesburg’s morphology [1900—2019] ........................................................... 61 
Figure 2.9 Framing Time (timeframing) ................................................................................... 64 
Figure 3.1 Locating Fungai ...................................................................................................... 66 
Figure 3.2 Inside Storytellers ................................................................................................... 71 
Figure 3.3 Shifting Characters (see Credits) ........................................................................... 84 
Figure 3.4 Framing Fungai ....................................................................................................... 89 
Figure 4.1 Animation Storyboard ........................................................................................... 116 
Figure 4.2 Panelization & Timeframing.................................................................................. 118 
Figure 4.3 Alexandra Taxi Signal ........................................................................................... 120 
Figure 4.4 Positioning Activity ................................................................................................ 137 
Figure 5.1 Street Lines: Main Axis ......................................................................................... 148 
Figure 5.2 Wide, Long, Full, Close-up ................................................................................... 148 
Figure 5.3 3-Thirds Rule and 2.4:1 Aspect Ratio .................................................................. 152 
Figure 5.4 Ground Team Notebook ....................................................................................... 155 
Figure 5.5 Viewing Inventory ................................................................................................. 155 
Figure 5.6 Large-Format-Map at Office and Home ............................................................... 156 
Figure 5.7 Page Panel Layout and Panelization ................................................................... 159 
Figure 5.8 Recording Animation Voice-Over ......................................................................... 161 
Figure 5.9 Johannesburg Metropolitan: Study Sites ............................................................. 165 
Figure 5.10 Framing Joyce .................................................................................................... 166 
Figure 5.11 Framing Rachel .................................................................................................. 168 
Figure 5.12 Paddy’s Morning Routine ................................................................................... 170 
Figure 5.13 Church Impression.............................................................................................. 171 
Figure 5.14 Aerials and Collages ........................................................................................... 173 
Figure 6.1 Bantfu Netindzawo................................................................................................ 195 
Figure 6.2 Framing Johannesburg’s Migrant Workers .......................................................... 208 
Figure 6.3 Johannesburg Composite..................................................................................... 210 
Figure 6.4 Sidewalk Bay ........................................................................................................ 211 
Figure 6.5 Aerial view of Reverend Sam Buti Street (Still from I’m a Streetwalker) ............. 213 
Figure 6.6 Bra Niky and the Tree ........................................................................................... 214 



1 

1 Locating a Nguni Voice 

“The widespread slogan in factual and ‘alternative’ realms may claim ‘the larger the 

grain, the better the politics,’ but what exclusively circulates in mass media culture is 

undoubtedly the money image. Money as money and money as capital [is] often spoken 

of as one, not two. The financial constraints are, however, not only a problem of money 

but also one of control and standardization of images and sounds. Which truth? Whose 

truth? How true?” 

When the Moon Waxes Red, (Trinh T. Minh-Ha 1991:32) 

1.1 Situating: The Scope 

1.1.1 What is the Problem Statement? 

This research project took form from a growing awareness that many spaces created by 

spatial practice conventions needed to be better suited for their users and were appropriated 

for uses without a design template. Furthermore, it was clear that there needed to be more 

consistency between the norms and best practice principles defined by academia and what 

was best for the user. Its genesis is based on a public response to previous fieldwork 

presenting an urban design framework and shaped on conventional urban practice through 

an urban design vision.1 A design team presented this vision that the scriptor2 (author) was 

part of as agents representing the city to Alexandra (Alex) residents, a high-density 

residential suburb of Johannesburg.  

The author realized that the ideal image between practice and user of space differs. 

Therefore, academia and practice could learn and develop standards more attuned to the 

user by capturing the users’ image of space. In making an image that reflects the city as it is, 

this study establishes how historical gaps between different knowledge sets related to spatial 

practice. It argues that these knowledge gaps hamper contemporary urban operations and 

 

1 In the Urban Design Guidance, Cowan outlines the steps needed for ‘Vision,’ stating, “This section comes at the 
start of the document as a concise statement of its main idea, with illustrations where appropriate. Creating the 
vision, though, will not be the first step in preparing the guidance. Appraising the site and context, for one, will 
precede it” (Cowan, 2002:28) 

2 A slight modification of Barthes’s term, “scriptor” (Barthes, 1977:145). 



2 

poorly reflect the city’s image. To respond to this weakness, it investigates ways of making 

site assessment practices, procedures, and processes more relevant. 

Johannesburg is the metropolis it is today entirely due to money – its rich bounty of gold-

bearing rock formations and the hunger for wealth, power, and survival created it. Alexandra 

is now located in a prime residential area. It has evolved, with barely any formal intervention, 

from being a pre-liberation worker dormitory to a chaotic and bustling hub in its own right. 

From the outset, many residents were skeptical about the urban design team’s presence and 

their survey methods. Some were confused by the term UDF, thinking it was a political 

party,3 others were openly hostile, assuming the team represented the city’s attempts to 

impose further limiting regulation and development in the area. Perhaps the group members 

were perceived as state agents who sought to instill control and standardization of a reality 

that was not theirs, as the apartheid authorities once did. The team was there to enable a 

conventional public participation process to introduce the urban design framework to multiple 

community stakeholders. Part of the task was establishing dates and venues for Ward Based 

workshops with Ward Councilors to get the design’s buy-in from the community.  

This skepticism may have been exacerbated by most of the team being whites who are 

seldom seen, let alone live in Alex. Also, when engaging those willing to participate, 

conventional methods were hampered by language and literacy barriers and by some willing 

participants’ apparent desire to ‘say the right thing.’ This was specifically in response to a 

local spatial framework that indicated priorities for development and policies and plans to 

shape the detail of neighborhood physical development using various tools and statutes, 

some of which included apartheid-era regulatory plans controlling land use. As a result, the 

fieldwork engagement had little value. Additionally, it was profoundly flawed by its 

conventional communication practice that relied on form-making methods through static 

plans, sections, elevations, and aerial drawings, which most community members had 

difficulty accessing. The simple conclusion from this experience led to this problem 

statement:  

Conventional urban practice methods of site assessment and participatory data 

gathering are ineffective and of little use in imagining and designing a fair and 

democratic city in environments like Alexandra. There are hundreds of these in South 

 

3 The United Democratic Front (UDF) was a South African anti-apartheid body that existed from 1983 to 1991 and 
comprised of numerous public organizations including trade unions, students' unions, women's and parachurch 
organizations (SAHO, 2023). 



3 

Africa and many similar across the African continent whose occupants deserve better. 

Unfortunately, this subaltern (Black African) is restricted by impositions – especially 

on activity streets – that are exclusionary, unidimensional, and based on colonial 

rationale and thinking. Hence, the discipline should create methods that appropriately 

engage those currently underserved to provide them with better spaces. 

Based on the failed communication between the design team’s vision and the community’s 

inability to comprehend the objective informs the inquiry’s core aim. The aim also extends 

Trinh T. Minh-Ha’s questions (see epigraph) with a vision of turning space into place – to 

locate appropriate methods of making different images and sounds that imagine and design 

a ‘true,’ fair, democratic city. 

1.1.2 Addressing the Problem Statement 

To answer the problem statement, this thesis introduces a site assessment method that 

fuses elements of modern artistic expression and reclaimed Nguni knowledge into a hybrid 

tool for urban professionals and academics. Although pitched at spatial practice, other 

disciplines will also find value in much of this transdisciplinary approach since it provides 

access to a largely underserved and absent knowledge base. At his inaugural lecture, 

Professor Mfaniseni Sihlongonyane identified some possible reasons for the author and the 

team’s experience: although the South Africa of today is much changed in almost every 

aspect of its human existence and needs, its urban practice approach remains too firmly 

burdened by a European canon (Sihlongonyane, 2022). There has been little integration of 

Nguni thinking or knowledge into urban practice because it remains stigmatized, formally 

excluded, untaught, and challenging to access. After all, institutional libraries are still full of 

predominantly European word texts. The roots of this divergence lie in “reconstruction 

thinking” (Bremner, 2010:10) and thinking based on the Congrès Internationale 

d’Architecture Moderne (CIAM) design ideas. (1933), it shaped a South African city 

misaligned with the microentrepreneurs operating along activity streets.  

Therefore, textual knowledge “is far privileged over oral, sign, image, tacit, etc. . . . (while 

African) . . . concepts are embedded in the knowledge of the African language” 

(Sihlongonyane, 2022). In Narrating Urban Landscapes, Havik et al. write, “The context in 

which (landscape) architects and urban designers work today poses new challenges for 

which conventional planning instruments seem to be unfit” (Havik, 2017:1). These arguments 

indicate that there is a clash between spatial practice design and end-user needs, which is a 

result of a gap in the knowledge that defines them These arguments echo the study’s 



4 

problem statement and call for academia and practice to find appropriate engagement 

methods to understand and make urban life better.  

1.1.3 Activity Street: A Democratic Palimpsest 

To align conflicting realities pointed out in What is the Problem Statement, engagement 

strategies must look to a city’s shared foundation for answers. Advancing this thread, Peter 

Carl argues that this common ground is “an ethical concept that invokes the one thing a city 

ought to grant – a depth that accommodates with dignity the diversity of its peoples and their 

histories” (Carl, 2011:38). Hence, Johannesburg’s activity streets provide historiographical 

perceptions of micro-architectures, space, and use. On their online page, Law Insider defines 

an activity street as a “major public street that incorporates an existing or planned public 

transport route, and adjacent land up to one block wide on both sides, used or intended for 

mixed-use development” (Law Insider, 2022). Activity streets [re]present this common ground 

which is, for many, a fundamental element of access to opportunity (Mehta, 2014). These 

streets represent common ground because many urban dwellers use them for travel, 

sourcing services, and purchasing essential and recreational supplies. This study addresses 

the problem statement using two Johannesburg activity streets – one in Alexandra and one 

in Orange Grove – that reveal the everyday life needed to create the city’s new and inclusive 

urban landscape, one fit for the subaltern/ Black African’s economic practices.  

The everyday is revealed through building up an image. This image imagines the city 

differently from its present state. Displayed in making the image is the project’s expression 

and agency and the argument, aim, objective, and purpose as themes encompassing 

inquiry’s visual discourse. Its findings, presented in two documentary texts that complement 

each other, should be read together. One is primarily a word format that reviews the 

historical and theoretical arguments that define the study and outline the methodology of its 

response (exegesis). The other is an image composite demonstrating the application of the 

creative practice methodology (audio-visual storywork). The case study’s production 

elements and outputs include site analysis and re-imagination. Both documentary outputs 

retell the history of Johannesburg – then and now: its genesis, evolution, and how it is today 

– through the lived experience of Black Africans. Examples of this are in the perspective of a 

https://www.lawinsider.com/dictionary/activity-street


5 

tree on a sidewalk or a fortuitous sidewalk extension – they examine causality4 and reveal 

African/Nguni ingenuity.  

1.2 Developing: A Study 

1.2.1 Core + Sub-Questions 

Against this backdrop, and with the concerns raised in the film I’m a Streetwalker (2017),5 the 

study looks to street voices, especially those surviving at the city’s interstices, to design a 

just city and shape a dialogue that responds to the research question: 

▪ How can local knowledge about activity streets be captured and communicated to 

enhance social, economic, and cultural inclusion in Johannesburg’s urban planning 

and design processes? 

The following sub-questions, with an emphasis on the preliminary site appraisal phase, then 

aid in creating a new understanding: 

1) What is the role of the activity street in South Africa, and how has it transitioned 

from the colonial era, through apartheid, to the present day? (Role, meaning, and 

representation: What happens on today’s activity streets, and why). 

2) What processes, practices, and knowledge should contribute to the evolution of 

the activity street as an urban place in South Africa? (Unpacking the planning 

process as is). 

3) What mistakes have arisen from omitting Othered knowledge in the design and 

representation of streets? (What do official bodies and institutions not understand, 

and what are the lessons?). 

4) How can Othered forms of knowledge be engaged and developed into a ‘shared’ 

language for diverse stakeholders through audio-visual documentation to better 

 

4 The Contextual Voices Folder (CVF) (see attached 001_URBAN SCRIPTING_CONTEXTUAL FOLDER) 
contains all the project’s production outputs. It is recommended that these outputs be read and viewed before and 
in conjunction with the text. This folder will be made publicly accessible after examination. 

5 The film’s voicer concludes with: Walking interacts with the desires and the wills of those who cross my path. 
People who share and fill the space between buildings with their presence and performance. These are single 
moments. They can occur every morning at the same time. Or surprising déjà vu. Instilling a sense of wonder. I 
have reinvented myself on the sidewalk, and I am still walking. But, as an urbanist in South Africa, I am 
concerned. 



6 

understand their value systems, desires, and needs? (How to close the 

knowledge gaps?). 

In this study, the Others are people whose culture, intelligence, knowledge, gender, and right 

to exist have been historically considered of lesser importance and deviant in all ways by the 

politics of a colonial, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, right-wing, straight-male gaze and, 

therefore, never assimilated into mainstream life. However, despite a newly (relatively) 

liberated South Africa, according to the 2011 City of Johannesburg Local Municipality 

census, this group, encompassing the vulnerable and poor, continues to comprise most of 

the city’s inhabitants.6  

The above questions situate a dialogue between three linked but poorly connected groups in 

Johannesburg. The first protagonists in the conversation are primarily the voices of the many 

actors who make their livelihood through microenterprises. Second, the city agents deployed 

to design the spaces that harbor the microentrepreneurs’ means of support. Third is the state 

which shapes policies and represents the city. This three-way discourse between actors 

(microentrepreneurs), agents, and State organizes hybrid forms (Harrison, 2006; Pieterse, 

2013; 2021) to challenge the status quo by blurring top-down/bottom-up, local/settler, 

professional practice/end-user binaries manifested as knowledge gaps expressed by 

ineffective urban planning and design realities. Therefore, observing everyday practices 

addresses the sub-questions that respond to the study’s main research question.  

1.2.2 Conceptual Framework  

In South Africa, the term ‘informal’ is a contentious composite that means different things to 

different people. To a substantial extent, ‘informality’ in Johannesburg is socially accepted 

despite nuances of negativity. It can be considered a conflict between an idealized vision of 

Euro-western norms reflecting a perceived educated modernity versus an uneducated, 

unfashionable Nguni tradition (see 2.1.3 Everyday). Street entrepreneurs are the actors who 

epitomize the essential survival nature of economic activities in the colonial city of 

Johannesburg. Commonly, problematically, and erroneously7 referred to as informal traders, 

these actors straddle a yet undefined area since they are unregulated by the state and work 

 

6 https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/johannesburg-population; 
https://www.joburg.org.za/about_/Pages/About%20the%20City/About%20Joburg/Population-and-People.aspx 

7 For a richer discussion, see Jenkins’s argument that “there is no true binary, but perhaps more of a sliding scale 

of levels of formality” in Urbanization, Urbanism, and Urbanity in an African City (2013:227—231). 

https://worldpopulationreview.com/world-cities/johannesburg-population


7 

in spaces not designed for trading. Their work invents ways of operating and surviving in 

“gray spaces . . . [which are] . . . partially outside the gaze of state authorities and city plans” 

(Yiftachel, 2011:153). In this study, these spaces, often overlooked by conventional city 

planning and urban design processes, are dubbed ‘the twilight zone’ and form the surface of 

its investigation’s focal point.  

Like Roy (2009), this study defines ‘informality’ as a twilight sector that covers a spectrum of 

production modes, social conditions, and constantly adapting entrepreneurship. Furthermore, 

this ‘informality’ engages economic opportunities in constant flux, continually pivoting, and 

not necessarily regulated, documented, or determined by the state. Accordingly, this ‘twilight 

zone’ aligns with Yiftachel’s “gray space” concept:  

“The identification of ‘gray spacing’ as a ceaseless process of ‘producing’ social 

relations by-passes the false modernist dichotomy between ‘legal’ and ‘criminal,’ 

‘oppressed’ and ‘subordinated,’ ‘fixed’ and ‘temporary.’ As such, it can provide a more 

accurate and critical lens … to analyze the making of urban space in today’s 

globalizing environment, marked by growing mobility, ethnic mixing, and political 

uncertainty” (Yiftachel, 2011:153). 

For this study, this is a sector that can be seen “as a mode of production of space defined by 

the territorial logic of deregulation” (Roy, 2009:8), one that “refers to developments, enclaves, 

populations, and transactions positioned between the ‘lightness’ of legality/approval/safety 

and the ‘darkness’ of eviction/destruction/death. Gray spaces are neither integrated nor 

eliminated.…” (Yiftachel, 2011:153). These practices occur in the twilight zone and are home 

to an overlooked “urban intelligence” (Amin & Thrift, 2017:17) expressing “Black Ingenuity” 

(Sanders, 2022:206) that brings into being “places of the possible” (Lefebvre, 1996:156) and 

offers opportunities for a new spatial [re]description (Amin & Thrift, 2002; Simone & Pieterse, 

2017). 

1.2.3 Assemblage: Narrative Montage  

In providing better descriptions of Johannesburg’s twilight activities, the study works at the 

intersection of culture, language, and semiotics to produce signs, sounds, symbols, and 

words, which operate through conceptual and material artistic frames as a communication 

practice. The communication style interweaves Nguni orality and Euro-American-based 

practice thinking. Composing montage is a hybrid language that paints pictures with various 

texts using a conceptual, artistic, and creative assemblage to collect and mix words and 

images into spatial grammar, and through this, unmasking the city’s palimpsest. 



8 

Pragmatically configured to engage wider and non-specialist audiences, this model provides 

a communicating approach and narrative structure salient to the telling of a story, collages 

Saussure’s (1959) [post]structuralist linguistics, Barthes’s (1972) semiotics, Chatman’s 

(1982), Genette’s (1983), Webster and Mertova’s (2007) narrative theories with Nguni 

storytelling traditions. The narrative structure has two threads, further consolidated in 

Chapters 2—4. First, it divides Egoli into the ‘what’ of the narrative (story). Next, it considers 

the ‘way’ (discourse). Combined, it gathers word-image (Fig. 1.1) as a way of “knowledge 

production . . . (by) thinking in, through and with art” (Borgdorff, 2010:44). Narrative operates 

a three-concept lens, framing, shifting, and positioning, calibrating an audio-visual 

storytelling process as the methodology tested in the study’s casework. 

The need for this type of approach is unrestricted to urban practice. However, its value as an 

assessment tool was first recognized in the later stages of the previous millennium: 

“Profound social changes and perceived problems with traditional social research 

practices combined in the 1980s to produce what is now called the ‘narrative turn,’ 

the increasing interest in professionals inside and outside academia in understanding 

the centrality of stories in the activities and processes of meaning-making” (Loseke, 

2022:xiii). 

Producing an image underpinned by assemblage that links to Loseke’s theory, three actions 

inspire this writing process. First, explored in Chapter 2, framing (time) presents itolo 

(yesterday) - how and what strategies brought on the Johannesburg of today (namuhla). 

Framing time uses history (such as the gold discovery) and laws (like the Land Act of 1913) 

to read, reimagine (Sandercock, 2003b; Havik & Sioli, 2021), and recreate hybrid urban 

spaces (Harrison, 2006; Pieterse, 2021) within timeframes defined by relevance. And next, 

examined in Chapter 3, shifting (context) stages namuhla (today) because of itolo’s 

(yesterday) influences. 



9 

 

Figure 1.1 Narrative Structure 

Shifting context showcases portions of the city as they are through forensic casework 

documentation of the street (such as Alexandra and Orange Grove Fieldwork Notes (2017)) 

from multiple scales and mediums. In this way, shifting listens to the subaltern, assesses 

situations, and re-centers their identity (Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o, 1993; Mbembe & Nuttall, 2008). 

Finally, considered in Chapter 4, positioning (activities) looks to the possibilities of kusasa 

(tomorrow) informed by today (namhlanje). Positioning activities uses collages like in 

Calibrating Stories (2022) to write multiple perspectives from the framing and shifting 

processes and constructs through film trajectories that fulfill user activity needs (Pieterse, 

2013; Amin & Thrift, 2017). Collectively these movements constitute a calibrating framework 

to compose nonlinear sequences of events that have, are, and might occur. Materially putting 

things together aids Africans to see themselves, speak again, and find their way back. 

Therefore, calibrating describes and speaks through building up an image of street spaces, 

using drawing, photography, and other survey work. 

An anthology of Johannesburg expresses this image story termed Retelling Egoli (see 

Table_1). Image creation is discovering local knowledge of “what is” and what local people 

think about this. With the intent for proactive change, this image-creation process must 



10 

engage with the imagination of what can “become.” An art-based practice-led making 

process signifies the research aims, values, and content. Consequently, as projects in their 

own right, compositions reflect contextual realities and seek a communicative expression that 

speaks and writes with greater fluency, persuasiveness, and accessibility. For improved 

engagement, the image moves into storytelling to understand and disseminate the existing 

dynamics and considers how these might develop. It is a reflection that means both 

understanding what those with the local knowledge (and right to express this) already 

imagine can happen – and also means stimulating this with exposure to other possible 

imagined “realities” – that is, urban planning and design “visions.” Most importantly, the 

objective here is to express and reinforce other imaginaries. 

1.3 Designing: The Project 

1.3.1 Background, Midground, Foreground 

Sandercock argues that:  

“In order to imagine the ultimately unrepresentable space, life and languages of the 

city, to make them legible, we translate them into narratives. … Let’s liberate and 

celebrate and think about the power of story. And let’s appreciate its importance to 

the 21st-century multicultural planning project, as a way of bringing people together to 

learn about each other through the telling and sharing of stories” (Sandercock, 

2003b:182-183). 

Building on Sandercock’s (2003b) observations above, this study develops a storytelling 

approach consisting of framing, shifting, and positioning, which is applied to imagine and 

describe a city more appropriate for the future needs of its residents. The tripartite model 

embraces the argument put forward by Borgdorff (2010:61) that to understand and discover 

city life is “more directed at a not-knowing, or not-yet knowing, creating room for that which is 

unthought, that which is unexpected – the idea that all things could be different.” Its approach 

advances Borgdorff’s argument to craft a communication practice for a site assessment’s 

introductory phase. As previously mentioned, street application manifests a clash between 

prospects of the top-down form of what should be and the actual bottom-up user realities in 

Johannesburg. In other words, specialist perspectives overwhelm grounded experience and 

hamper the current planning/design process when revealing urban contexts. Working in 

complex environments like Johannesburg – where historical residues remain embedded on 

the landscape – engages the argument that: 



11 

“This kind of planning work, involving dialogue and negotiation across the gulf of 

cultural difference, requires its practitioners to be fluent in a range of ways of knowing 

and communicating, from storytelling to listening to interpreting visual and body 

language” (Sandercock, 2000:25—26). 

It is also an entirely appropriate template for Johannesburg, as it is: 

“…very relevant to the new complexities of nation-building and community 

development in multicultural societies. It is perhaps the best model in situations 

where direct, fac[e]-to-face meetings are unthinkable or unmanageable due to prior 

histories of conflict and/or marginalization. In such cases, the use of narrative, of 

people telling their own stories about how they perceive the situation, becomes a 

potential consensus-building tool for unearthing issues unapproachable in a solely 

rational manner” (Sandercock, 2000:25—26). 

Sandercock’s theories and recommendations present a consensus-building tool that provides 

the shift this study needs to progress from a restricting modernist apartheid-influenced 

process to an inclusive, reformist methodology. Specifically, and crucially, it seeks a city 

user’s spatial performance appraisal. It focuses on marginalized voices and imaginaries to, at 

various scales, shift these from the city and frame background to the midground and finally 

place these in the foreground. Structuring a mise en scène, these layers trigger new 

temporal and spatial realities. As a frame’s layer, subaltern voices are compressed. They are 

simultaneously positioned and presented as a single background, midground, and 

foreground layer. Seen from establishing shots, contextual drawings, and audio points of 

view to a camera’s depth-of-field and extreme close-up, this ensemble, statistically the 

largest group of city users by demographic, social, economic, cultural, and political 

definitions, asks ‘who,’ ‘how,’ and ‘what’ defines a city: answering these questions is central 

to this study. 

1.3.2 Sensing the City 

Young defines “city life as the being together of strangers” (Young, 1990:237), which 

Hallenbeck echoes with: “Cities are an assemblage of differences: places of overlapping 

dialogues, narratives, and identities . . . people can only engage in the city if they [can] 

exercise their rights to participation and appropriation” (Hallenbeck, 2010:134). As a site of 

difference (Sandercock, 2000; Hallenbeck, 2010), Johannesburg provides a window to frame 

the question: “What kinds of knowledge do planners need in a post-modern age in which 

cities are characterized by fragmentation, polarization, and ‘difference’ in its many guises?” 



12 

(Sandercock, 1999:533). The question particularly applies to the South African context, 

which still struggles with colonial and apartheid legacies. In Johannesburg, apartheid spatial 

divisions appear impossible to mitigate or erase and continue, across multiple scales, to 

construct “conflicting realities” (Watson, 2003:403).  

These lines of thought develop a relational research design based on composition 

(assemblage and calibrating). Above all, what is most important in this construction or 

creation process, is its task of building a common yet relative world. Sensing the city’s 

foundational argument is that audio-visual storytelling fosters shared understandings 

between residents and planners, especially concerning the marginalized daily operations 

occurring in the city’s interstices (its grey spaces). Sandercock’s question informs this thesis’ 

departure point from convention – it also mandates and structures a way to contextualize 

interlaced characteristics by first untangling them. Composing starts with contextualizing the 

city. Founded solely for economic gain in 1886, Johannesburg, also known as Joburg, Jozi, 

and Egoli, the city of gold, has socially, economically, culturally, and legally, permanently 

excluded the second aspect, the Others, or subaltern from all considerations. Yet, ironically, 

the Others are the single most crucial component of the city and constitute the same human 

‘resource’ upon which Egoli emerged and still depends for its existence and growth. In such 

a conception, to be transformative and relevant to the city’s democracy, spatial practice must 

connect to marginalization and deploy all its latent skills in creatively opening possibilities of 

change (Amin & Thrift, 2002). This project aims to provide appropriate, accurate, and 

empathetic tools to create innovative and equitable realities in spatial production. 

1.3.3 Rewriting Johannesburg  

With soaring populations and mounting levels of urbanization, Havik and Sioli call for creative 

foresight to responsibly “shape our cities and society” (Havik & Sioli, 2021:160). Rewriting 

Egoli (the city of Gold) initiates an ontological and epistemological imagining to creatively 

open possibilities for change. Ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, 

becoming, existence, and reality (Mautner, 2005). Epistemology concerns the theory, nature, 

and the possibility of knowledge, especially regarding its methods, validity, and scope in 

investigating related notions such as proof, evidence, perception, belief, certainty, and 

memory (Mautner, 2005). Pressing for responsible design capacity, Anne-Marie Willis argues 

for an ontological design basis informed by “a radically different understanding of design as 

practice and object than those generally available” (Willis, 2006:80). Thus, streets and 

storytelling (see Chapters 2 and 3) test Willis’s (2006) concept in multiple ontological and 



13 

epistemological ways: rewriting the city using narrative plot, setting, style, and themes as part 

of a composite structure to present its imaginary stories/discourses. 

Compositional elements also engage with what Appadurai describes as a condition of 

“temporariness” faced by the subaltern, which for the marginalized means “things in life have 

a temporary quality—not only “physical and spatial resources” but also “housing, … social, 

political, and moral relations and relations to the sources of power” (Appadurai 2003:47). 

Once the city’s past has been rewritten, it becomes possible to reimagine and therefore 

redesign its future. To imagine and revise anew links to the rapid population growth 

characterizing major African cities because of accelerated economic urbanization and 

emergency demand caused by social, political, and environmental instability. To respond to 

these changes, urban professionals must create “careful designs attuned to the specificities 

of place” (Havik & Sioli, 2021:160). Furthermore, practice must responsibly contribute to 

“diverse social communities” to meet this requirement (Havik & Sioli, 2021:160). Achieving 

imaginative prudence involves an ontological and epistemological procedure that embraces 

“different ways of understanding how we, as modern subjects, ‘are’ and how we come to be 

who/what we are in the modern world” (Willis, 2006:80).  

For Johannesburg, which faces uncertainty and elevated levels of unemployment and 

inequality, this method designs a city that grants the marginalized agency to empower an 

altered urban experience from its current situation. However, the transformation of the 

apartheid footprint is not easy because “the link between planning and social transformation 

has . . . been complex and elusive, tempting many planners to fall back into largely 

technocratic practice” (Harrison et al., 2007:135). The validity of this observation underlines 

the need to modify existing approaches to transform a racialized city founded exclusively on 

keeping people apart and bent on maximizing profit for the few while restricting access to 

resources for the majority. 

1.4 Recognizing: Relational Concepts 

1.4.1 Argument 

To alter contemporary methodologies, the study disassembles its founding question, what 

tools are required for imagining and designing a fair and democratic city, into three inquiries 

targeting the activity streets that delineate its scope. First, What city-making tools are 

suitable? Second, What constitutes conceiving and creating a city? Third, What is a just city? 

Together, the questions respond to the urban ecology of streets. From their role in urban life, 

their design, and architecture to their performance, this thesis structures, using actual activity 

streets, a demonstration project. In total, street exploration questions who has rights to the 



14 

city and how history and institutionalized knowledge gaps significantly influence 

Johannesburg’s urban planning process, particularly in site appraisal.  

This incompatibility manifests in underperforming spaces magnified “between material 

expressions of urbanity and personhood; between urban form and urban citizenship” (Roque 

et al., 2020:333). Fractured at the foundation phase, the cracks widen during the 

design/making phase, creating spaces that impede users instead of enabling them, resulting 

in a highly unequal urban environment with poor street quality (Harber & Parker, 2018). 

Linked to who has claims to the city, due to dominant historical narratives, the knowledge 

gap in street utilization, compounded by narrow values and worldviews, is countered by 

exposing its contributory capacity to the city. An example can be found in mobility and how it 

is imagined – is it premised on mass transit, pedestrian, and non-motorized transport, or an 

exclusionary “engineered emphasis on the car” (Harber & Parker, 2018:6)? Johannesburg’s 

setting falls into the latter category and is particularly hard on pedestrians, street traders or 

microentrepreneurs. Recognizing this microentrepreneurial setting to unlock its potential 

requires collaboration between different protagonist groupings. Pieterse’s rhetorical device 

defines the protagonists in this team, with the city as “the subversive bureaucrat,” agents as 

“the artist and designer,” and the actors as “the sentinel” (Pieterse, 2021:193).  

Collaboration fosters the necessary ingredients to address ‘the condition of temporariness’ 

by ‘producing locality.’ “The production of locality is an effort to work against the constant 

corrosion of the present, both by change and by uncertainty” (Appadurai, 2003:47). In so 

doing, for the marginalized, it reveals possibilities of permanence, which ties to values and 

belonging, and contributes to unleashing the city’s potential. In Dagger’s thinking on civic 

memory, this is a measure that can “be the true home of citizenship” (Dagger, 1981:715).  

1.4.2 Aim + Objective 

Compelled by the above argument, this study aims to improve Johannesburg’s spatial 

performance by providing enhanced urban assessment through an image-making process 

that empowers subaltern economic politics. Forced into the twilight zone by colonial, 

capitalist, and apartheid ideologies, subaltern practices take on forms of insurgency that the 

study aims to visualize and [re]present as necessary for the professional field to recognize. 

Acquiring this image involves connecting with knowledge sets outside specialist (and elitist) 

boundaries and applying Aristotle’s three knowledge types: epistēmē, scientific knowledge; 

technē, knowledge of the craft; and phronēsis, ethical knowledge (Aristotle, 1999). This 

epistemological design compels interactive communication between the knowledge types to 

provide the expertise required to tackle situations efficiently. The dialogue generates a 



15 

twilight composite that reflects its proper identity and form, which Levitas (1986) argues are 

cultural artifacts essential for the city fabric. In Funny Weather: Art in an Emergency, Olivia 

Laing notes: 

“We’re so often told that art can’t change anything. But I think it can. It shapes our 

ethical landscapes; it opens us up to the interior lives of others. It is a training ground 

for possibility. It makes plain inequalities, and it offers other ways of living” (Laing, 

2020:8). 

Laing’s argument supports the study objective of establishing a practice-based/practice-led 

approach that formulates spatial narrative content voicing the twilight zone. Inquiry through a 

narrative offers radical and innovative methods of connecting with the microenterprises 

encompassing much of Johannesburg’s subaltern livelihood. Besides, these narratives 

provide rich pickings for the urban designer. “Stories about the past have power and bestow 

power. The impulse to tell new stories about the past shows us that time itself is a 

perspective in the construction of histories” (Sandercock, 1998:1). This argument calls for 

critical storytelling to rewrite history and as an appropriate method to understand current life. 

However, for the study to succeed, it must negotiate and incorporate a vastly diverse range 

of lived realities, perspectives, and expertise. Such “complexity can be approached only 

through transdisciplinarity” (Ramadier, 2004:425). Hence, its approach combines street-level 

intelligence and aesthetics with anthropology, literary studies, and social science. This 

grouping conceives a communicative strategy as cognitive art (Tufte, 1990; Gibson, 2008) 

that configures and showcases the twilight zone in various storytelling modes (Table_1).  

The objective explores how narrative constructs values and identity and social, economic, 

political, and cultural intersubjectivity relations. Joburg is aesthetically calibrated and retold 

as Retelling Egoli in the artistry of the graphic novel, fieldwork notes, and other edited 

material. In urban initiatives, the producer applies a conceptual and theoretical framework 

that inserts social narrative (Fig. 1.1), [re]writes the city, and permits it to speak. Reinforced 

by critical transdisciplinary, empirically based, and knowledge exchange ideas, this approach 

is what defines Urban Scripting – the name given to this study and the urban practice 

modalities it proposes. The author coined the term ‘Urban Scripting’ to describe a Nguni-

rooted form of reading and listening to write creatively about a city’s conditions. The 

methodology may be of equal value in any city of the world since it employs very human and 

commonly accessible and familiar tools and communication practices. It does this by 

calibrating an artistic storytelling process with deep cultural insights to unearth the twilight 

zone, address people’s needs, and help close the knowledge gap. 



16 

1.4.3 How to read this Research 

This two-textual thesis provides curated material that underpin the conceptual and theoretical 

framework and audio-visual casework as practice research. The link between the word text 

(“exegesis”) and the practice casework text is summarized in Table_1 below. Three rows 

arrange the principal structuring devices: ‘framing,’ ‘shifting,’ and ‘positioning.’ These are 

related to the scales of epistemological engagement, ‘macro,’ ‘meso,’ and ‘micro,’ and, in 

turn, connect to themes and specific casework formats with their relevant titles. The table’s 

final column illustrates the temporal nature of the study productions, indicating the year of 

core engagement with each practice-based output. It is important to emphasize again here, 

as at the beginning of this document, that the study comprises two “documentary” texts that 

need to be “read” and “engaged” with in parallel. These are the word thesis (a conceptual 

and theoretical exegesis) and the casework outputs – mostly audio-visual story-work in the 

Contextual Voices Folder (CVF).  

Table_1: Retelling Formats (See CVF) 

Modality Scale Theme Format Title  Year  

Framing  Macro Historicizing  Film  I’m a Streetwalker 2017 

Animation the block, the plot, the house, the tree 2019 

Alexandra: A Backstory 2019 

Graphic Novel Alexandra: A Backstory 2022 

Shifting  Meso Fieldwork  

 

Booklet 

 

Street Images 2017 

Street Drawings 2017 

Block Measurements 2017 

Large Format Plan 2018 

2-D Mapping  2018 

Fieldwork Notes: Alexandra 2018 

Fieldwork Notes: Orange Grove 2018 

Booklet + 

Animation 

Hand Sections 2017 

Hand Drawn Collages 2017 

Animation Shot List 2018 

Electronic Renders  2018 

Positioning  Micro Electronic Drawing Focus Blocks Modelling 2018 

Booklet Technical Sections 2018 

Animation  Drawn Sections 2018 

Flythroughs  2018 

Orange Grove Church wall Collage 2018 



17 

Modality Scale Theme Format Title  Year  

Booklet Place Sketches  2018 

Manual Drawings 2018 

Storyboards  2018 

Film Joyce 2018 

Film + Animation From Tap to Tap 2018 

Film David Goldblatt 2017 

Driving through Rev Sam Buti Street 2018 

Wednesday Rev Sam Buti Street 2018 

there’s a tree Trailer 2018 

Sidewalk Braai I 2018 

Sidewalk Braai II 2021 

Storytelling Audio Alex Soundscape 2019 

Films there’s a tree on the sidewalk  2018 

Who is the Landlord 2019 

Bhani’s Cycles 2019 

Book Calibrating Stories 2022 

The two texts [re]present a uniting movement to develop Urban Scripting as an idea, an 

emerging practice, and a fundamental ontological and epistemological approach. Though 

presented as a single body of work, this project is divided into two integral components to 

reach a more diverse audience. It also lays out the practical methodologies devised and 

employed for the field casework and assesses their efficacy in reviewing it.  

The audio-visual text constitutes the practice-based and practice-led approach to fieldwork 

examples that elucidate ethics, spatiality, temporality, memory, meaning, “and the poetics of 

making” (Havik & Sioli, 2021:160). Elevating spatial practice, the image “mak[es] the ordinary 

special and the special more widely accessible – expanding the boundaries of understanding 

and possibility with vision and common sense … and disturbing the order of things in the 

interests of change” (Hamdi, 2004:xix). Guided by historicized understandings of the 

continent, country, city, street, and person, this radical storytelling offers a hybrid imaginary. 

1.4.4 Purpose  

The core purpose of this study is to formulate a strategic storytelling application to improve 

city life. A prime objective in succeeding is redefining space as a place and, more profoundly, 

understanding public space inhabitation through grasping subaltern survival practices (Bayat, 

1997). This understanding requires strong anti-colonizing and anti-racist measures (Miraftab, 

2009; Mbembe, 2015) underpinned by a threefold-fold purpose:  



18 

▪ To apply time and movement using Deleuze’s (1992) lens as assemblage and give 

material depth and visual voice to the subaltern (Lefebvre, 1996; Bhabha, 2004).  

▪ To introduce different concerns connected to marginalized city life into local practice 

spheres and reinforce the role of other urban imaginaries (Young, 2011; Mbembe, 

2015). 

▪ To magnify spatial practice ability and language to study places and the relationships 

between people and their environments and, in doing so, disrupt elite power 

dominance and groups by making knowledge accessible to broader audiences 

(Harris et al., 2000; Sandercock, 2003b).  

Consequently, the purpose is to formulate an image (Table_1, Fig. 1.1) that provides – from 

policy to regulation and design – a better definition of the twilight zone as a cultural artifact. In 

so doing, the image enables spatial discipline to acquire a better vocabulary that deals with 

previously unfamiliar issues of this nature. Next, local activities emerge through the 

immersive observation of street use through selected character stories. These assemble 

retelling Egoli formats to address the study questions and meet the project’s objective of 

imagining and creating South African city spaces that reflect user needs. Finally, as stated 

earlier, a sensory framework developed from the theories generates a composite overview of 

site and its potential, which the study refers to as calibrating. Calibrating comprises all 

tripartite steps over time, based on the practice of storytelling:  

▪ Framing emphasizes transdisciplinary measures - it looks at past events and why, 

and asks what city-making tools suit the purpose. 

▪ Shifting underscores the need for more critical and empirical-based exploration that 

inductively leads to novel ways of thinking and analyzing - it looks at what happens in 

the present and why, and probes what constitutes conceiving and creating a city. 

▪ Positioning highlights the validity of knowledge exchange, looks at what could happen 

if frames change in the (near) future - it explores what a just city is. 

Calibrating is a partly non-linear process that incorporates all three inquiry actions, is 

complex, and requires focused situational reading, listening, and writing to assess the case’s 

context appropriately. Also, in bridging the knowledge gap, this process disseminates the 

information gathered and the immersive observation of streets through selected character 

stories. Retelling Egoli, enables local activities to emerge (see Calibrating Stories (2022+). 



19 

1.5 Editing: Abstract Themes 

1.5.1 Frames 

When building up the image, the ‘frame’ first defines a data field or surface. These are 

thoughts, imaginations, and knowledges. Such is the influence of these frames that they 

distinguish “the world in which we live from a world that only appears to be real” (Berlatsky, 

2009:163). Schapiro echoes this sentiment arguing that frames have a semantic value 

belonging to and bringing things closer to the observer’s space (1972-1973). For Henri 

Bergson, images bring sharper focus to memory. Bergson emphasizes the link between the 

body and action; what we see and feel constructs memory through an aggregate of images. 

He argues, “And by ‘image’ we mean a certain existence which is more than that which the 

idealist calls a representation, but less than that which the realist calls a thing; – an existence 

placed half-way between the ‘thing’ and the ‘representation’” (Bergson, 1911:vii). Schapiro 

and Bergson’s assertions underpin the ‘who,’ ‘how,’ and ‘what’ of defining a city introduced in 

1.2.1 Background, Midground, Foreground.  

A more accurate Johannesburg premised on merging the imaginary and the real, art and life, 

is reflected in the casework8 outputs. Formed by narrative compositionality (Rose, 2016), 

Egoli’s retelling fuses framing, shifting, and positioning modalities, extends Heidegger’s 

merging of art (work) and artist (producer), and constructs a “sensuous apprehension of lived 

experience” (aesthetics) (Heidegger, 2011:133). Merging art and life (work and aesthetics) 

symbolizes and allegorizes, in effect, recreating the experience. Heidegger argues that this 

makes “public something other than itself” and “manifest[s] something other” (Heidegger, 

2011:91). This manifestation represents subaltern survival practices and other [in]visibilities 

that are part of and take place in the twilight zone; effectively, they are manifestations of an 

“emergence of new urban colonial relations” (Heidegger, 2011:152). Envisioned in frames, 

[framing] the “slow encroachment of the ordinary” (Bayat, 1997:57) aesthetically displays “a 

silent, patient, protracted, and pervasive advancement of ordinary people on the propertied 

and powerful to survive hardships and better their lives” (Bayat, 1997:57). In totality, frames 

 

8 This study uses the term casework due to the nature of the interface at which field research was conducted. 
Oxford Language defines casework as “social work directly concerned with individuals, especially that involving a 
study of a person’s family history and personal circumstances.”  
https://www.google.com/search?q=casework&oq=cas&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j46i131i199i433i465i512l3j69i6
1l2j69i60.3690j1j4&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8  



20 

are a “reflective interval” (Minh-ha, 1991:48) between what is imagined and what is real; they 

require (and help) the viewer to make sense of what is and what they think of what is.  

Minh-ha also underscores “meaning” in the frame that “can neither be” emphasized, “nor 

denied.” Its enclosing boundary and field stress “the interval between apertures and creating 

a space in which meaning remains fascinated by what escapes and exceeds it” (Minh-ha, 

1991:49). Simone and Pieterse reaffirm Minh-ha’s claim that “details ‘leak’ from the frame. 

Urban life is replete with secretion – things overflowing their boundaries and things being 

hidden away, kept from use or made secret” (Simone & Pieterse, 2017:94). As seen in 

Retelling Formats, storytelling unfolds and leaks through-composed frames by a 

collaboration between inside-outside ‘scriptors.’ Inside are the actors who live the twilight 

phenomena referred to by Pieterse as “sentinels.” Outside are spatial experts as well as 

“artist” and “designer” specialists (Pieterse, 2021:194-5). Without rejecting their metaphoric 

amplification, frames [re]present the making of… mise en scène and discourse to enable 

novel spatial, temporal realities and consequences. To be read interpretively, mise en scène 

signifies the scriptor’s expertise in what happens in the frame (Bordwell et al., 2020).  

1.5.2 Producing 

Urban Scripting’s theoretical foundation makes artistic provocation that interlaces the 

tripartite modalities. Merging tradition and technology as fieldwork practice, the 

researcher/scriptor/producer’s use of calibrating and assemblage techniques visualizes lived 

experiences. This city life, or social, “refers to the range of economic, social and political 

relations, institutions and practices that surround an image and through which it is seen and 

used” (Rose, 2016:26). For Mbembe, ‘“the social’ is less a matter of order and contract than 

a matter of composition and experiment; that what ultimately binds societies might be some 

kind of artifice they have come to believe in” (Mbembe, 2010:655). This study targets the 

social range Rose refers to by employing contemporary audio-visual storytelling in synergetic 

ways to bring the producer closer to capturing street-level realities, who then [re]produces 

the image by narrating the lived experience, recounting events, and summarizing complex 

understandings and perspectives (Kurtz, 2014). Producing encompasses budgeting and 

guiding “the project from start to finish” (Austen, 2019:13). Here, Urban Scripting assigns 

Austen’s (2019:9) producer’s role to: 

▪ ‘Develop film ideas’ (Retelling Egoli). 

▪ ‘Work closely with the writers’ (assembling inside and outside scriptors). 

▪ ‘Find the right team to work and partner with’ (collaboration being a critical factor). 



21 

▪ ‘Raise the finance to make the project happen’ (the National Research Fund 

(NRF) Thuthuka Grant significantly assisted with the production budget and 

logistics). 

▪ ‘Produce the film’ (securing the twilight zone’s insurgent designs throughout the 

production). 

▪ ‘Supervise the post-production’ (covered in Chapters 5 and 6). 

▪ ‘Deliver the finished work’ (submitting the project’s two components: storywork 

material and exegesis). 

▪ ‘Be involved in distribution, screening, marketing, and transmission’: (see 3.4.4 

Contextual Voices Folder (CVF) and 5.5 Points of View). 

Austen argues that the producer turns a story idea into a finished film … and, most 

importantly, “must always be looking for creative solutions to any problem” (Austen, 

2019:13). In Retelling Egoli, producing extends Tufte’s (1990) methods of envisioning 

information. South African visual artist Sam Nhlengethwa, African American filmmaker Spike 

Lee, late Polish filmmaker Krzysztof Kieślowski, and British data journalist Mona Chalabi 

provide the inspiration to present the casework’s visual thinking and data readings as static 

and motion pictures. Casework examples, especially Alexandra: A Backstory (2022), draw 

further insight from Shawn Tan’s The Arrival (2006), Jimenez Lai’s Citizens of No Place: An 

Architectural Graphic Novel (2012), Lewis et al., March: Book One, (2013), March: Book Two 

(2015), and March: Book Three (2016), Trevor Getz and Liz Clarke’s Abina and the 

Important Men: A Graphic History (2016), and Will McPhail’s In. (2021). Storytelling frames, 

explained in greater detail later in the thesis, illustrate Chapter 5’s fieldwork.  

Producing introduces the concept of hybridity formed by meshing the colonizer with the 

colonized, as a person of mixed national or cultural identity, referred to as “halfies” (Abu-

Lughod, 2008:51). Access, identity, ownership, and belonging form key themes underpinning 

hybridity and provide a departure point to address Sandercock’s question about what 

knowledge planning requires. Themes historicize the subject (plot) and production site 

(setting). Both documentary texts Retelling Egoli and the exegesis simultaneously act as a 

“metaphor and an emergent assemblage” (Pieterse, 2021:192). Hence, Urban Scripting’s 

starting theory hypothesizes the frame as a hybrid language that uses critical 

transdisciplinary ideas (Minh-ha, 1991, Ramadier, 2004) for a relational emergence to situate 

and receive data. Its surface intermingles past, present, and future. Layering a direct 

palimpsest of the perceptible world, frames construct a narrative that exposes twilight 

intelligence (Amin & Thrift, 2017). Their production permits a mode of seeing, scripting and 



22 

memorializing the creativity, ingenuity, and adaptive strategies of marginalized urbanite 

halfies. 

1.5.3 The Twilight Zone 

According to Hou, “Understanding the significance and characteristics of unsanctioned and 

unscripted spatial practices is an important step in comprehending the full complexity of . . . a 

wide variety of actors and processes – some formal, some not” (Hou, 2020:123). As 

previously observed, many of these actors and their processes operate without formal 

recognition or support. They are in the twilight zone. Acknowledging the practices identified 

by Hou and drawing on subaltern knowledge is a call that responds to the challenges 

encountered when measuring and understanding the twilight zones’ vibrant insurgency 

(Sandercock, 1998; Miraftab, 2011; Jenkins, 2013; Pieterse, 2013; Huang et al.). A sign of 

the knowledge gap that separates the twilight zone from elite institutions (the academy and 

practice) is Mbembe and Nuttall describing Johannesburg as the Elusive Metropolis by 

pointing “to the gap between the way things actually are and the way they appear in theory 

and discourse” (Mbembe & Nuttall, 2008:25). 

Closing the gap through the art of making – memorializing – is an acknowledgment, amongst 

many other things, of urban marginality, ingenuity, and the aesthetic of liminal spaces. 

Premised on the “quiet encroachment of the ordinary” (Bayat, 1997:57) being critical to the 

street and, by extension, the city’s ecosystem, the twilight zone operates in interstitial, 

liminal, Othered arenas that need recognition. Creating new local landscapes that Hou 

argues “reflect the respective social settings and issues” must represent local forms 

characterized by guerrilla urbanism’ (Hou, 2010:2) and thought of as “spaces of insurgent 

citizenship” (Holston, 1998:37), ‘invented spaces of citizenship’ (Miraftab, 2004), and 

previously introduced “gray spaces” (Yiftachel, 2011). For Miraftab “‘Invented’ spaces are 

defined as those collective actions by the poor that directly confront the authorities and 

challenge the status quo” (Miraftab, 2009:38—39). In the contemporary city, the twilight zone 

conveys systems of ‘tactical urbanism’ (Lydon & Garcia, 2015), expresses ‘practices of 

resistance’ (Hou, 2020), and if “the potentialities of our moment are to be seized in full” 

(Pieterse, 2021:193) calls for new and unorthodox assessment methods. Due to a lack of 

capital and property rights, twilight zone microentrepreneurs are flexible, adaptable, and 

innovative in their work and are good at maximizing the potential they can access. This 

elastic strength is bricolage: 

“a process whereby entrepreneurs with local knowledge and access to local 

resources are best able to create enterprises using the materials at hand, rather than 



23 

overextending their efforts with externally directed attributes requiring unattainable 

resources. As such, entrepreneurial process elements may be emulated from 

successful social bricolage examples, recognizing that each context, community, and 

circumstances will require their own unique solutions” (Preece, 2014:23). 

The scriptor/producer/researcher aims to develop ‘their own’ creative and operational 

bricolage potential and respond to changing engagement and environmental conditions by 

optimizing the story/image gathering process. 

1.6 Presenting: Field Contribution 

1.6.1 Urban Scripting 

This study extends Preece’s argument to enable better design by looking for ways to write 

about people and places. Writing with people and places (ngeSiswati bantfu netindzawo) 

from the margins of Alexandra and Orange Grove gives the city (Johannesburg) life and 

forms Urban Scripting. Understanding twilight intelligence from the margins challenges 

historical approaches to architecture, the city, and urbanism, as well as political perspectives 

which rely on ‘rear-view mirror’ conventional ‘top-down’ methods. Although devised with 

honorable intent, these procedures are normative, insidious and continue to:  

▪ Promote a blanket of universal characteristics that supposedly apply and are 

desirable in all urban environments. 

▪ Assert a vision of balanced orderly development to facilitate administrative 

bureaucracy and control. 

▪ Define urban design primarily by designing stand-alone objects (three-dimensional 

form, mass, volume) and how they relate to other buildings.  

To construct other identities of becoming, being, and belonging, the casework is where the 

urban designer integrates Othered voices as a spatial producer to assemble and 

disassemble an image engaging its conceptual and intellectual framework. Each calibrating 

action operates as critical redundancy to mitigate the so-called “developmentalist solutions” 

intended to fix “the known ills of African cities” through conventional predictive tools9 by 

 

9 For a more in-depth illustration, see Edgar Pieterse’s Differential African Urbanization section in his essay 
Grasping the Unknowable: Coming to Grips with African Urbanism in Rogue Urbanism: Emergent African Cities 
(2013:24), describing how most scholarship on African cities seeks to explain “structural economic reasons for 
this state of affairs, and/or focused on specific sectoral or governance policy solutions.” 



24 

choosing instead an approach that seeks to understand the “microscopic details” of the 

African city’s everyday lived experience (Pieterse, 2013:24—27). The core research question 

frames dialogue-based audio-visual forms to establish and understand ‘microscopic’ twilight 

practices. This foundation and the comprehension it garners operate as a ‘transformative 

priority’ that combines the protagonist’s relational perspectives to structure collaborations 

that unlock Johannesburg’s social, economic, and cultural possibilities (Pieterse, 2021).  

In reviewing micro-scale inputs, the approach adopts Sandercock’s (1998), Kihato’s (2007), 

Miraftab’s (2009), Jenkins’s (2013), Pieterse’s (2013), and Sihlongonyane’s (2022) argument 

– that the understanding of African cities requires empirically based study and insurgent 

designs with new grammar that introduce different vocabularies – triggers novel knowledge 

systems and methods. Better yet, positioned as a critical insurgent practice, Urban Scripting 

uses this argument to develop a language through hybrid techniques that locate, 

conceptualize, theorize, describe, and analyze. 

1.6.2 Limitations 

Irrespective of context, real-time and resource factors restrict doctoral study engagement 

levels. This limits the exploration to two activity streets in Johannesburg: one in an apartheid-

classified township and the other in a previously white-zoned neighborhood. Neither street 

may necessarily fully represent streets in different ‘similarly classified’ contexts. However, the 

most significant limitation was the size of the teams which undertook the field and casework. 

The project assembled a film production ensemble that may not be available to others 

wishing to attempt a similar study. In addition, the specialized skill sets used within teams 

may not be accessible for all research projects of this nature, and if they are, they may lack 

adequate time and technological resources. For example, the ability to access audio-visual 

equipment, infrastructure (filming, editing), and expertise determine the levels of engagement 

possible. Additionally, the nature of the chosen sites, focus areas, choice of participants, and 

production talent all impact attainable access. Lastly, fieldwork of this nature cannot record 

all possible content co-creators (participant) views, nor can it engage in detail the micro-

levels of an entire street length. However, the study provides access to a deep, rich, 

comprehensive, and unique source of alternative knowledge that arguably has validity that 

far exceeds its limitations.  

Furthermore, it pushes the boundaries of traditional research methodologies by giving all 

protagonists an embodiment of the experience – thereby creating a more collective 

imaginary through socialization (Sandercock, 1999; Mbembe & Nuttall, 2008; Pieterse, 

2013). Through this access, the study connects the more traditional urban planning/design 



25 

site appraisal approaches with an innovative storytelling method based on extended audio-

visual work that eliminates the knowledge gap and transcends the abovementioned 

limitations. 

1.6.3 Overview  

Chapter 1 situates the study’s scope by presenting a vision of applying storytelling in 

spatial practice investigations to make an image that shows the city differently from its 

current state.  

Chapter 2 develops framing’s narrative structure (Fig. 1.1) to explore suitable city-making 

tools. Drawings, photographs, shots, panels, and animation frames historicize the landscape 

and use time to read the city.10 Framing, to describe causality, looks back to yesterday and 

recomposes Johannesburg’s plot using words, drawing lines, plans, counts, and inventories 

to uncover spatial practice’s complicity in normalizing African marginality or Othering. Next, it 

extends the narrative style, setting, and action as part of a composite structure presenting 

imaginary stories/discourses. The accompanying story-work for Alexandra: A Backstory 

(2022), the block, the plot, the house, the tree (2019), and I’m a streetwalker (2017) 

focus on the continent (macroscale), country (mesoscale), and the city/street (microscale). 

Story making establishes the project’s communicating structure, based on cinema’s mise en 

scène, which is “the representation of a scene by a specific organization of its virtual but 

figurative elements such as decor, props, and characters” (Lefèvre, 2012:71). Mbembe and 

Nuttall’s (2008) theories on transformation in practice compose the discussion of the role of 

the activity street in Johannesburg (South Africa) and how it has transitioned since its 

creation during the colonial era. This dialogue sculpts the mise en scène primary layer. 

Chapter 3 designs mechanisms to shift the frame highlighting causal effects by examining 

what constitutes conceiving and creating a city. Drawings, recordings, and films fuse urban 

design mapping cultures with Nguni oral storytelling traditions to listen to voices in marginal 

contexts. Listening argues for the shifting of prevailing narratives based on casework results 

that emerge during the image-making process, which not only come to grips with localized 

realities but produce a different image using Nguni pedagogies. From the casework, 

Alexandra: A Backstory (2022), the block, the plot, the house, the tree (2019), and I’m a 

 

10 It is recommended that the reader engages with the audio-visual material in “real-time” while reading this 
thesis. 



26 

streetwalker (2017) revealed yesterday, Fieldwork Notes (2017+) exposed today, and 

Calibrating Stories (2022+) examines thoughts for tomorrow’s reimaging. The context is 

adjusted to focus on the mesoscale. Fieldwork Notes (2017+) investigate the country, city, 

and metro to highlight present-day capitalist manifestations. I’m a Streetwalker (2017) 

reconfigures the street into representative segments containing focus blocks with full-to-

medium-shots/panels depicting characters. Informed by interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary 

insights, Chapter 3 examines what processes, practices, and knowledge should contribute to 

the evolution of activity streets as urban places in Johannesburg into “spaces of invented 

citizenship” (Miraftab, 2009:33). Shifting unpacks the planning process as it should be and is 

mise en scène secondary layer. Again, the reader is encouraged to engage with the 

casework material (CVF) parallel to the thesis text. 

Chapter 4 recognizes the practical methods to imagine the future by making and telling 

Othered stories about what a just city is. This understanding outlines how a ‘shared’ 

language that links diverse stakeholders through the rigor of audio-visual documentation 

develops an intertextual discourse composite that bridges the real and imaginary gaps. The 

casework’s application of positioning presents three films, there’s a tree on the sidewalk 

(2019), Who is the Landlord (2019), and Vimal Bhani Cycles (2019) (CVF). The film’s 

movement-image composites illustrate the focus block’s specific activity points and position 

possibilities of what can become by using close-ups to express details, gestures, and 

emotions. Positioning addresses what mistakes have arisen from the omission (what is not 

understood by official bodies and institutions and lessons) of Othered knowledge values in 

themes covering Johannesburg’s streets’ social practices, design, and representation, and is 

mise en scène final layer. 

Chapter 5, rooted in Kurtz’s Working with Stories (2014) and Haw & Hadfield’s Video in 

Social Science Research (2011) practical guides edits empirical fieldwork examples. 

Whether restricted or celebrated, Calibrating Stories (2022+) artistic story-work examines 

the city from 1834 to 2017+ as site study (Fig. 1.2). Onsite and offsite outputs form 

composites produced by layering organizational and expression elements as visually ‘thick 

descriptions.’ The descriptions focus on and showcase twilight forms of appropriation that the 

state and its agents must recognize and engage with the street’s physical expression and 

social attributes. Finally, calibr