Abstract
Urban society in South Africa has two major cultural streams, overlaid by international ‘norms’. Historically, colonial settlement in South Africa (as elsewhere) imposed a European, metropolitan culture of cities. This included exotic flora and fauna, but most important a very different view about space, and division and ownership of land.
Urban ‘racial’ demography is increasingly reflective of the country as a whole. Rapid urbanisation is overlaid by serious social and physical pathologies and widespread alienation. Proactive central city densification, as a viable solution, requires particular sensitivity to peoples' psychical and cultural values. This calls into question the lack of enquiry in this regard. ‘Normative’ planning prevails, and any synthesised urban system, responsive to African urban society has not been conceptualised.
Cities are an invention of society, of what that society believes itself to be, in space and time. We experience cities, primarily through our ‘sense’ of space; ‘All our consciousness is bound in space’ (Kant). We have complex ways in which space is both felt and imagined, and while some spatial imagination is universal and ‘hard wired’ (increasingly verifiable through neural science), more is learnt, growing in specific social, cultural and physical environments.
Beyond that, a ‘world view’ encompasses our whole self, as social being and individual, both physically and metaphysically.
European cultural tradition is never free of ‘ordering devices’, refined, in modern history during the Enlightenment. It is further infused by doubt; validation is through material, aesthetic experience. African culture validates itself through personal and humanist values. Certain confluences occur where Greco Roman origins of Western European culture replicate African values. The potential exists to synthesise compatible urban spatial systems.
Human spatial sensibilities, and the way in which African and European cultures perceive this are examined to this end.
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Notes
The physical evidence of these ‘Cattle Culture’ ruins, although extensive, allows only speculation regarding form and plan. Most towns were well established in the 17th century, reaching populations of 20 000 or more by the 19th century. The purely urban component — of law, ritual, craft and trade — was complemented by widespread cattle stations, serving the town's practical needs (Lye and Murray, 1980)
Attachment to land among traditional aboriginal communities in Australia is both permanent and without strong physical presence: more a city of the mind, where place and route are attached permanently to a space as memory. Identity is provided by trees and prominent rock features and streams (Rykwert, 1982). Jane M. Jacobs (2002) uses the word ‘ephemerality’ to grasp the nature of applied art at special places, and to trees, stone and body, etc. Re-application requires regular renewal, and through ritual becomes ‘permanent’. There is a suggestion of ‘knowing’, in the imagination, the vastness of space in that continent, in which special sites are ‘defined’ and confirmed through constant ritual reiteration over centuries of time (Jacobs, 2002). The Hegelian term ‘third space’ describes a hybrid space which, without losing modern usage, is given recognition of pre-colonial aboriginal ownership (Ibid p. 154). Australian Architect Glen Murcot's contemporary interpretative concept of this ‘ephemeral’ sense is ‘touching the earth lightly’: figuratively to dissolve the solidity of structure into the surrounding bush by ‘feathering’ roof edges for example.
European farm settlers were often at odds with their original urban-based culture, especially Boer antagonism toward British rule: others were simply land speculators. Instances are recorded of trading enormous farms for trivial amounts, as white colonists satiated their desire for land. Speculators took on the nature of a marauding horde on a defenceless land. Rural European settlement enacted another unique concept, what I call the ‘RURAL DREAM’: to own enough land so as not to be able to see any (European) neighbour.
The author's experience over 4 years, of renovating, and extensively adding to one, intensely cultural city community, in Johannesburg, provided strong evidence of determined ‘disconnection’ to its modern, urban environment. The overriding cultural realm, implanted for some 75 years through historical circumstance in re-cycled, extremely simple, robust buildings, devoid of ‘architectural’ language (and subject to continuous government harassment), became more resilient and pure. The sense of spiritual and human value, and egalitarian principles, as in many religious institutions, reduces the fabric and built form to minimal significance.
This is changing in many crafts, where commercial interest and tourism, rather than cultural importance encourages experimentation, resulting in wide and rich diversity of expression.
The word ‘traditional’ is not used here in its literal sense. While there are substantial numbers of African people who adhere to some fundamental tradition, most have embraced contemporary religions, become leading politicians, academics, business people, poets, musicians and craftsmen without losing an African ‘world view’. Many have also embraced ‘European’ culture. The word African is used to designate black Africans.
In India, many mature architects, such as Charles Correa, trained in the US and have in recent years made a real impact on the synthesis of modern building technology with uniquely Indian culture and social system, most especially in terms of space and light. I refer to his State Assembly building at Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh.
This (limited) reference illustrates certain common principles of spatial culture, affecting urban settlement, land ownership and consciousness of spatial ‘boundaries’. It also illustrates divergence from western European notions of space, or indeed other cultures, for example, those under Koranic law or in Asian.
Liebenberg puts forward the view that Hunter/Gathering is effectively the origin of scientific research, as the necessary skills and mental development are at least equal to those required for any modern scientific research. Principal ‘skills’ of spatial imagination and applied intelligence are critical to success. In study groups of San hunter/gatherers, if all men were hunters, then perhaps 50% would be good hunter/trackers, and only two would be the best, with consistent success. Yet all would share equally and no person would assume overt superiority due to variance in ability. (Liebenberg, 2001). Many traits of knowledge gathering and skills are widely practised in all modern societies.
Christopher Lasch, ascribes narcissistic and related psychological disorders, dominant pathologies in the US, 1970, to the threat of a Holocaust, of nuclear attack and mindless cruelty (Cambodia). Rampant consumerism is another manifestation of narcissism, as also compulsion to internalise, avoid commitment and responsibility for others. (‘The Minimal Self’)
More interestingly, a powerful, mimetic relationship of individuals to the private car is revealed as an unresolved and primitive problem. Perhaps only primitive solutions will be a rational response.
Two great 19th century architects Adolph Loos and Hans Scharoun were given to quoting (this) statement' (Wilson, 1989. P. 65).
Other tensions conducive to social disruption, such as those imbedded in patriarchal rivalry and authority, and Oedipal mother/son bonds, are engaged in this process of death and re-birth.
Here there is a parallel in the early Greek city state. The reality of being an Athenian entailed an individual's sub-summation in the polis ‘……there was no existence outside the social existence, no reality outside the social reality; hence the greater one's participation in the social reality, the greater one's sense of self’ (Manville, 1990, quoting Carter, p. 28)
Much of Western culture derives from Ancient Greek city states. ‘Pre-legal’ concepts, in early Greek city settlements regarding ownership of land, are so similar to African concepts that Manville (1990) draws direct comparisons by way of clarification.Parallels tend to diverge when laws were codified and written down, mainly by Drakon , as a result of misuse of power by the ruling class, the Archons, beginning in the 4th century (Manville, 1990).
‘Mat’ associates, either agnate or not, have a ‘political’ affiliation and also assist each other in times of need, such as re-building or harvest. Members could be located over a wide area within the district, even belonging to differing tribal groups (Kuckerts, 1990). This also represents a ‘notional community’, not spatially defined, identified by 19th century Austrian sociologist Tonnies, as one characteristic advantage peculiar to city life. (In contrast are the social tyrannies of the ‘village’ of Jane Jacobs' and adherents).
In an unpublished dissertation for a Masters degree, a number of iconic public places, including for example, the Mediaeval market place, were examined in terms of Sennett's four criteria. Most fail in one or more respects. The Kgothla has all conditions in good measure (Lloyd, 1988).
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Lloyd, R. Defining spatial concepts toward an African urban system. Urban Des Int 8, 105–117 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.udi.9000100
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.udi.9000100