The role of architecture, public space and a valid architectural expression in the African City were all issues that were explored in the dissertation. It is a speculative work that proposes strategies and tactics and looks at a city beyond architecture, in which the emphasis shifts from urban forms to urban processes. The strategies were implemented on Paul Kruger Street to explore the possibilities of what an African City could or should be. / Dissertation (MArch(Prof))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Architecture / unrestricted

Abstract This research report attempts to examine how the story of gold, and gold mining, is told, and is being retold, at both the Victorian- themed Gold Reef City theme park and in within the Main Street mining precinct in the Johannesburg Central Business District (CBD). The report will therefore look at how imbued ideologies have resulted in a particular formation of the mining heritage shown in both themed spaces. Works by de Certeau (1988) and Eco (1990), for example, form a framework for academic discourse around practiced space within the ‘city’, and the nature of hyperreality. Overall, and including results from participant observation at the theme park, and sample surveys undertaken in the Main Street precinct, one is able to better attempt an understanding of how the story of gold at both sites has been created by certain ideologies, and examine them in light Johannesburg’s changing persona in light of global influences.

Cette thèse porte sur l'analyse des dynamiques de développement de l'agriculture urbaine à Bobo-Dioulasso, au Burkina Faso. Elle s’intéresse à la façon dont les agriculteurs arrivent à vivre et produire en ville en s’appuyant sur une démarche systémique centrée sur les interactions ville-agriculture. Elle cherche à décrypter les facteurs d’intégration de l’agriculture au système urbain. Cette intégration peut être d’ordre économique, socio-spatial, naturel, technique, et politique. Dans toutes ces dimensions de l’intégration, les arrangements entre acteurs sont un facteur de maintien de l’agriculture en ville : c’est la thèse défendue ici. Dans la première partie, la thèse retrace l’évolution des liens entre la ville et l’agriculture depuis l'origine de la ville, et décrit la diversité des dynamiques agricoles à l’oeuvre dans la ville et ses franges urbaines. Le développement de Bobo-Dioulasso, carrefour commercial de produits agricoles, est fortement basé sur le dynamisme agricole régional. Dynamiques régionales et urbaines ont favorisé le développement multiforme de l’agriculture urbaine : cette agriculture s’est développée, transformée et adaptée et est aujourd’hui pratiquée par une multitude d’acteurs urbains. Dans un deuxième temps, cette thèse analyse les pratiques agricoles et les arrangements socio-spatiaux entre acteurs. Les agriculteurs urbains, à travers des arrangements avec d’autres acteurs, arrivent à maintenir des formes agricoles contrastées en ville : les maraîchers, à travers une logique de mobilité au sein de l’espace urbain et des arrangements à la fois avec des acteurs institutionnels et des fournisseurs d’intrants, accèdent à des ressources essentielles à la conduite de leur activité. [etc.] / This thesis analyzes the dynamics of urban agriculture development in the city of Bobo-Dioulasso in Burkina Faso. Through a systemic approach centered on the city-agriculture interactions, it aims to understand how farmers succeed in living and cultivating within the city and the way urban agriculture can be integrated into the urban system. This integration can be economic, socio-spatial, natural, technical, and political. In each of these dimensions of integration, arrangements among actors are a central factor of the permanence of agriculture in the city: it is the central hypothesis of this thesis. In the first part, the thesis focuses on the evolution of the links between the city and the agriculture since the founding of the city, and describes the diversity of agricultural dynamics taking place in the city and its urban fringe. The development of Bobo-Dioulasso, a commercial hub for agricultural products, is strongly linked to the regional agricultural dynamism. Urban and regional dynamics have favored the multifaceted development of urban agriculture. This agriculture developed, transformed and adapted to urban dynamics and is now practiced by a multitude of urban actors. In a second step, this thesis studies the agricultural practices and socio-spatial arrangements between actors. These urban farmers, through arrangements, succeed in maintaining contrasted forms of urban agriculture in the city: on the one hand, gardeners, through a logic of mobility within the urban space and arrangements with both institutional actors and input suppliers, access to resources that are essential for them to keep on conducting their activity. [etc.]

Notre thèse s’intéresse particulièrement aux répercussions des modes d’inscription économiques des entrepreneurs chinois sur la recomposition des équilibres internes du marché du travail invisible à Dakar, incarné par des acteurs économiques accumulant les écarts aux normes majoritaires dans un environnement urbain marqué par la lutte des différents acteurs en présence pour l’appropriation des territoires et des ressources offertes par la ville. Notre ambition est de rendre compte des régimes de concurrence, de coopération, des luttes pour l’espace et les ressources offertes par la ville, des logiques de distanciation entre acteurs évoluant sur des segments concurrents. Dans cette perspective, nous avons opté pour une approche multi-site impliquant divers acteurs de la compétition urbaine : commerçants de rue sénégalais, cordonniers, pour apprécier les différentes postures d’acteurs de l’économie invisible face à la recomposition de l’équilibre interne de leurs segments d’activités. L’accent mis sur la reconfiguration du marché du travail invisible induit par cette coprésence dans cette recherche de type ethnographique interroge les rapports de domination, de résistance, mais aussi d’adaptation qui rythment le jeu des acteurs dans l’espace urbain où se construisent de nouveaux dispositifs commerciaux entre tensions et compromis. / Our thesis is particularly interested in the impact of economic modes inscriptions of Chinese entrepreneurs on the of internal balances recomposition of the invisible job market, incarnated by economic actors accumulating the differences to the majority standards in an urban environment characterized by the struggle of the different actors involved in the appropriation of land and resources offered by the city.Our goal is to realize competition regimes, cooperation, fights for space and resources offered by the city, distancing logic between actors working on competing segments. In this perspective, we opted for a multi-site approach involving various urban competition actors: Senegalese street traders, shoemakers, to appreciate the different postures of the actor’s invisible economy facing to the recomposition of the internal balance of their business segments.The emphasis on the reconfiguration of the invisible job market induced by the co-presence in this type of ethnographical research examines the domination reports, resistors, but also adaptations that punctuate the actors in the urban area where is building new trade arrangements between tension and compromise.

Various potential modes of interpreting the urban space in the inner city of Pretoria is evaluated in this study with the purpose of expanding discourse around spatial production in the city. Production of meaning through formal and structural means produced a city that served as administrative capital and ideological base for Afrikaners until the arrival of a democracy in 1994. The contemporary urban space is produced by people through everyday life, as theorised by Henry Lefebvre, rather than through formal means such as name changes. This study evaluates the way that identity and belonging is created by referring to everyday life practices, rhythmanalysis and daily activities as performances. Urban space is evaluated from a phenomenological perspective through the eyes of an artist and resident and expressed in an art exhibition. The way artists Julie Mehretu and Franz Ackermann dealt with urban space in their art is also referenced. / Art History, Visual Arts & Musicology / Master of Visual Arts

Various potential modes of interpreting the urban space in the inner city of Pretoria is evaluated in this study with the purpose of expanding discourse around spatial production in the city. Production of meaning through formal and structural means produced a city that served as administrative capital and ideological base for Afrikaners until the arrival of a democracy in 1994. The contemporary urban space is produced by people through everyday life, as theorised by Henry Lefebvre, rather than through formal means such as name changes. This study evaluates the way that identity and belonging is created by referring to everyday life practices, rhythmanalysis and daily activities as performances. Urban space is evaluated from a phenomenological perspective through the eyes of an artist and resident and expressed in an art exhibition. The way artists Julie Mehretu and Franz Ackermann dealt with urban space in their art is also referenced. / Art History, Visual Arts and Musicology / M.A. (Visual Arts)

This multidisciplinary, applied study investigated whether the township church can be repositioned or re-discovered as an asset, which could be used to form strong community structures in local communities and in turn be the foundation for community development and Local Economic Development (LED) for Tshwane (specifically Soshanguve and Hammanskraal (S&H)). The concept of oikos is of central importance in the understanding of the ecological dimension of mission in relation to LED and was used in this thesis defined as oikomissiology which has a Christological basis and broadens the scope of mission by reinterpreting missio Dei and various socio-theological themes in order to realise the vision of collective wellbeing or shalom). Oikomissiology provided a framework / worldview for analysis, description, reflection and planning for action which releases the world, economics, the church and conventional Christian theology / missiology from the traps of anthropocentrism. A narrative approach enabled the “uncovering” of the voices of grassroots communities, giving grassroots participants (i.e. local church ministry representatives) freedom to tell their stories and share their experiences as far as LED is concerned, such that major economic concepts were spoken of in these stories in laymen’s language. The narratives were supplemented by interviews with experienced practitioners and church leaders, which resulted in gaining richer perspectives on LED and on how township congregations that participated in this research are attempting to respond to current socioeconomic crises in Tshwane (S & H). A literature study and a study of the physical space were performed in dialogue with narratives and interview findings. The findings of this applied study established that the township church, in relation to other community organisations and structures, is an asset that could play a number of vital roles towards improving LED in Tshwane (S & H). / Christian Spirituality, Church History and Missiology / D.Th. (Missiology (Urban ministry))