This research dissertation employed critical research approach and postcolonial theory to investigate and expose the ways in which post-apartheid township space has been imagined and created for the black lives that twenty-one years ago emerged from the long dry season of apartheid hegemony. The dissertation used Delft South township as a case study for the reason that it carries the notion of a post-apartheid township and as a result it has been imagined as such. In its creation as a 'new' kind of township, Delft South was stipulated in terms of section 3 (1) chapter 1 of the Less Formal Township Act, 1991 and imagined through the 1994 Reconstruction and Development Programme and as well in the 1994 Housing White Paper and later expanded in the 2004 'Breaking New Ground': Comprehensive Plan for Housing. The development of housing in Delft South was adopted in 1994, followed by its physical construction in 1995. Through studying this township, it became apparent that the ways in which the post-apartheid township has been created for the black poor did not challenge the notion of township, as we know it, under the apartheid racial regime. Paradoxically, it has been found that the post-apartheid neoliberalised housing policies that promotes inclusion has exercised exclusion in the housing development and provision of low income houses to the urban black poor. Moreover, in reading what the post-apartheid statecraft has created (making of place) it became clear that the post-apartheid state to follow Achille Mbembe is not 'an economy of signs in which power is mirrored and imagined self-reflectively.' But that which is stammering to find its way out from the world of masks, of repetition to the recreation of a new community of life, of collective dreams and healing. Therefore, the creation of Delft South like any other post-apartheid township without doubt, has come to epitomize the manner in which the post-apartheid state asserted itself in the making of place and also, how it has come to create itself defectively after apartheid.

This thesis confronts the spatiality of farm worker communities in the Breërivier, in an attempt to find a programmatic intervention that will create collective community space. It thus turns to its context, the landscape and the farming that embraces the site as a generator of form and language. In essential, the thesis is hoping to find a new critical "vernacular" that responds to the ruralscape.

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No description available.

<p> A rating system known as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design for Neighborhood Development, LEED-ND, was developed in 2007 to assess sustainability at the neighborhood scale. Although at this time LEED for buildings is a well-known and well-established program in the United States, LEED for Neighborhood Development is less widely recognized since it was developed in 2007 as compared to LEED for buildings. LEED-ND requires that certified developments meet credit areas in three main categories: a) smart location and linkage (SLL), b) neighborhood pattern and design (NPD), and c) green infrastructure and buildings (GIB). LEED-ND goes above and beyond singularly requiring sustainable mobility, traditional neighborhood design, or green building; rather, it incorporates the above three categories into a single rating system. To date, prior LEED rating systems (New Construction and Existing Buildings) have focused on the building scale, as have most critiques of such metrics. Few authors have ventured to analyze the neighborhood rating system with the exception of Garde (2009) and Ewing et al. (2013) and Sharifi and Murayama (2013), who have only used only secondary scorecard data and other aggregated data to assess the success or predict outcomes of LEED-ND neighborhoods. No post-occupancy studies have been conducted to date that take into consideration the resident&rsquo;s perception and stated preferences. Additionally, no studies have examined in detail the provision of affordable housing within LEED-ND developments. </p><p> LEED-ND has been rapidly adopted as the de-facto green neighborhood standard and is now used to measure the sustainability of neighborhood design around the world. Like the previous LEED green building rating systems, LEED-ND is heavily reliant on physical &amp; environmental design criteria (measures such as compact urban form and transit accessibility), and is based on an expert-generated point system. LEED-ND thus excels in measuring &lsquo;environmental sustainability&rsquo; through its stringent environmental performance criteria. However, it fails to critically address important livability factors&mdash;namely social and economic factors&mdash;and there has not been a critical examination of how to properly weigh the various factors in response to user preferences. Scholars have emphasized that the major weakness of sustainable development agendas, emphasizing that although assessment of <i>environmental</i> sustainability is quite thorough, often sustainable development projects fail to adequately address or operationalize social and economic sustainability. Ultimately, creating metrics for <i>social</i> and <i>economic </i> sustainability is more complicated than developing metrics for environmental sustainability, which can be reduced to direct built environment performance measures. At the neighborhood scale, socio-cultural and socio-economic concerns&mdash;such as affordable housing&mdash;become magnified for residents. Accordingly, this dissertation argues that socio-cultural and socio-economic factors and user preferences require a more significant foothold in neighborhood scale rating systems, if such systems purport to fully support all three tiers of sustainability: social, economic and environmental (Wheeler 2004). Specifically, this study examines affordable housing as a proxy for social equity and social sustainability in LEED-ND neighborhoods, and determines the extent to which principles of social sustainability are being upheld. </p><p> This dissertation advances the emerging field of sustainable neighborhood rating systems, by illustrating and evaluating a significant gap in current sustainable neighborhood evaluation systems. Cutting across planning, landscape architecture, architecture, psychology and sociology in both Canada and the US, the study critically questions the LEED-ND rating system as the epitome of sustainable development. This dissertation illustrates that in order to be truly sustainable, developments must consider social-cultural and socio-economic livability factors alongside environmental factors, including post-occupancy evaluation. This dissertation also asks the question if social equity and affordability issues can be singularly addressed by a voluntary, market-based rating system, or if a broader range of strategies is needed to ensure the provision of affordable housing in new sustainable developments. Ultimately, this study provides recommendations to improve the rating system, with a specific focus on affordable housing.</p>

<p> Political protest is an increasingly frequent occurrence in urban public space. During times of protest, the use of urban space transforms according to special regulatory circumstances and dictates. The reorganization of economic relationships under neoliberalism carries with it changes in the regulation of urban space. Environmental design is part of the toolkit of protest control. </p><p> Existing literature on the interrelation of protest, policing, and urban space can be broken down into four general categories: radical politics, criminological, technocratic, and technicalprofessional. Each of these bodies of literature problematizes core ideas of crowds, space, and protest differently. This leads to entirely different philosophical and methodological approaches to protests from different parties and agencies. </p><p> This paper approaches protest, policing, and urban space using a critical-theoretical methodology coupled with person-environment relations methods. This paper examines political protest at American Presidential National Conventions. Using genealogical-historical analysis and discourse analysis, this paper examines two historical protest event-sites to develop baselines for comparison: Chicago 1968 and Dallas 1984. Two contemporary protest event-sites are examined using direct observation and discourse analysis: Denver 2008 and St. Paul 2008. </p><p> Results show that modes of protest policing are products of dominant socioeconomic models of society, influenced by local policing culture and historical context. Each of the protest event-sites studied represents a crisis in policing and the beginning of a transformation in modes of protest policing. Central to protest policing is the concept of territorial control; means to achieve this control vary by mode of protest policing, which varies according to dominant socioeconomic model. Protesters used a variety of spatial strategies at varying degrees of organization. Both protesters and police developed innovations in spatial practice in order to make their activities more effective. </p><p> This has significant consequences for professionalized urban design. Both protester and policing spatial innovation involves the tactical reorganization and occupation of urban space. As urban space plays a constituent role in protest and policing, environmental designers must be aware of the political consequences of their designs.</p>

Thesis (M.Arch.)--University of Maryland, College Park, 2006. / Adviser: William Bechhoefer. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (ML(Prof)) -- University of Pretoria, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MArch(Prof)) -- University of Pretoria, 2008. / Abstract in English. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (MInt (Prof)) -- University of Pretoria, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references.