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31-07-2021

Spaces of Transformative Practice: Co-producing, (Re)Making and Translating Fractional Urban Space in Gugulethu, Cape Town

Author: Kathryn Ewing

Published in: Urban Forum | Issue 4/2021

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Abstract

Reimagining neglected urban space offers the potential for social cohesion, integration, and connectivity. The intimate, interstitial or fractional spaces of a city represent a key component of social infrastructure in a neighbourhood. The smallest of interventions in urban space adds value and complexity to urban life. However, fractional, yet deeply transformative, urban space is often unrecognised and undocumented. Transformative practice seeks to accommodate, anticipate and represent inclusive public life but requires discovering new content and definitions on public space to decode emerging processes of incremental place-making in an African context. The narrative focuses on a network of place-making intervention projects as part of an urban upgrading programme in Lotus Park informal settlement, located in Gugulethu, Cape Town. A set of tracings, integrated with theoretical frames, reveal the impact of upgraded urban space through firstly, emerging centres and the (re)making of place on the periphery; secondly, disrupting edges and the co-production process involved in the negotiation of space; and lastly, crafting shadows and interpreting traces of micro-interventions. The purpose is to explore urban space as continually adapting to the intrusions in the city grid to translate (1) innovative modes of spatial production; (2) dynamic forms of local agency; (3) marginal ways of operating; and (4) interconnected and multi-scalar urban processes of everyday place-making. The practice of co-producing and (re)making urban space in Gugulethu uncovers alternate mechanisms for governance, partnerships and operations.

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Gugulethu mapped on green-apartheid.zsv.co.za.

The City of Cape Town by-law on Streets, Public Places and Prevention of Noise Nuisances (2007), and recently amended in 2020, regulates the conduct of individuals in public spaces. See https://openbylaws.org.za/za-cpt/act/by-law/2007/streets-public-places-noise-nuisances/eng

Fractional urbanism is reviewed by Stillinger’s (2015) “energy landscapes, inherent structures and condensed matter phenomena”, focusing on the topography of the multidimensional potential energy hypersurface created when a large number of atoms or molecules simultaneously interact with one another. Key aspects that are relevant for this paper are the multidimensional potentials of energy or social activity (people) when they interact in physical public space. Public spaces are seen to have the potential to bind people together in 3-dimenional form, acting as a part or as a network. It is a continuous process.

Conversation with Ayanda Roji on 17 August 2020 via Zoom in discussion around the Centre on African Public Space with reference to Roji’s article https://www.urbanet.info/towards-pan-african-spaces-of-public/ accessed on 17 August 2020.

Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU) is a comprehensive area-based community development programme that aims towards safe and integrated sustainable communities, citizenship, pride and the improvement of quality of life for residents in low-income neighbourhoods in the Western Cape and beyond. For further reading on the VPUU methodology, refer to Ewing and Krause (2021) (p.344). Joint learning and mainstreaming are developed in alliance with UN Habitat Safe Cities Programme & Global Network on Safer Cities.

During this time, the author worked as Workstream Leader: Situational Crime Prevention on the VPUU Programme.

Sustainable Urban Neighbourhood (SUN) Development is an implementing agent for the VPUU Programme Phases 1 to 3. VPUU non-profit company is an intermediary team active in Lotus Park, working with the methodology and strategy of the VPUU Programme. The workstreams included Situational (spatial), Social, Institutional, Project Management, Knowledge Management and Community Participation.

A research-based and participatory methodology is used following a series of logical steps: social compact, planning, implementation, operation and maintenance management and monitoring and evaluation. See Violence Prevention Through Urban Upgrading (VPUU) (2014). Violence Prevention Through Urban Upgrading. A manual for safety as a public good. Retrieved from http://vpuu.org.za/success-story/vpuu-manual/ (pp. 20–21).

Budgets are understood as: micro, under R200,000 (and did not require a tender, limited skilled labour); small, under R2million (for a building under 200m², requiring a tender and team of technical experts but focus on skills development and local labour) or medium, under R10million (for a building of 500m², lights and sports field, involving a contractor). Detailed prices are not provided in this paper.

Between 2015 and 2017, VPUU formed a partnership with APG at UCT within the architectural post-graduate programme vertical studio, convened by Francis Carter. The studio allowed students to engage in the reality on the ground in Lotus Park, mapping economic diversity, urban space and understanding the role of the street, interface, threshold and urban form in an informal context.

Urban Studio: Gugulethu Hope is a design-research studio course as part of the Master of Urban Design programme within APG at UCT.

In 2016 and 2017, VPUU engaged in a partnership with CPUT students through the convener Dr Rudolf Perold around a design-build studio. The partnership resulted in a public space intervention project in Lotus Park. For reference, Perold et al. (2016) (p. 81).

Caldeira (2017) juxtaposes dissimilar cases from cities of the Global South, particularly São Paulo. Berney’s (2011, 2017) work is the city of Bogotá. Bayat’s (1997) work references experiences from cities in the Middle East. These theories have been intentionally reviewed for their studies in the Global South urban context.

The description of “emthonjeni” is provided in Ewing and Krause (2021), “The isiXhosa word emthonjeni refers to "being at the fountain"- a place by the water… The upgrade of small scale emthonjeni is a practical solution to improve safety as they create safe places for children to play and for the provision of selected managed utilities and services. These spaces are focused internally to the neighbourhood cluster and encourage social cohesion. They are located along pedestrian desire routes and are the breathing space along pathways which connect neighbourhoods. Clustering around small open spaces helps to provide space for economic opportunities and assist in providing safe public spaces close to home” (pp. 347–348).

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Title: Spaces of Transformative Practice: Co-producing, (Re)Making and Translating Fractional Urban Space in Gugulethu, Cape Town
Author: Kathryn Ewing
Publication date: 31-07-2021
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Urban Forum / Issue 4/2021
Print ISSN: 1015-3802
Electronic ISSN: 1874-6330
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-021-09436-6

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