Thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of the Built Environment (Housing), to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2017 / Johannesburg like many rapidly urbanising cities around the world has the problem of a lack of affordable accommodation and inadequate access to basic services (Tissington, 2013). Residents in the inner city use spaces and buildings in a way that reclaims the promises of the city to a better life. As historian and cultural theorist Abdou Maliq Simone (2004) has noted people within African Cities have a probable tendency to improvise. In this research I use the concept of evolutionary resilience, which has been described to account for individuals and households ability adapt in constantly changing environments (Simmie & Martin, 2010) to explore the responses of residents to precarious living conditions and vulnerability that is created by conditions of insecure tenure and evictions. There is little comparative empirical research about how inner city residents talk about their lives and experiences. This research contributes to filling this gap by examining the experiences of residents and highlighting the ways in which as Cirugeda (2004) points to, residents often use empowerment strategies that encourage inhabitants to subvert laws and regulations, in order to maximise self-help by appropriating structures for better living conditions (Cirugeda 2004). This research utilises in depth interviews that were conducted within selected buildings in the inner city using a semi structured interview guide. The objective is to examine the strategies of coping with the exposure to risk and how individuals respond to these shocks. Şoitu (undated) states that vulnerability is a situation of social, economic and physiological need when individuals are marginalised and resilience is a personal resource that allows individuals to face stress and shocks and provides strength (Şoitu, undated). This research finds that there are many difficulties, threats and vulnerabilities that residents are exposed to and residents invoke various strategies and responses for coping. KEYWORDS ‘Bad buildings’, inner city, Johannesburg, vulnerability, evolutionary resilience, precarious living conditions, basic services, insecure tenure / XL2018

This dissertation investigates the links between economic and spatial trends, with particular emphasis on office decentralisation in Durban. It focuses on globalisation and its effect on economic processes, how these have impacted on the spatial structure of cities, and whether the current changes in the economy and nature of work as opposed to environmental factors such as crime and grime, are causes of decentralising activity. This study looks at three case studies internationally, that of Glasgow, Rotterdam and Johannesburg, which give perspective on, not only the problems associated with the decline in manufacturing, but also how these cities have realigned themselves spatially into the new global economy. In the case of Johannesburg, the difficulties inherited from the apartheid era and the nature of urbanisation in the post-apartheid era are investigated, which have resulted in a fundamental restructuring of the Central Business District. Finally, the case of Durban, with particular emphasis on the area of La Lucia ridge to the north of the city is the focus area for research into office decentralisation, and the links between environmental and economic factors. The current restructuring of the CBD and its problems are highlighted, and the reasons for decentralising activity are explored in the light of the changing nature of work and the economy. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, 2001.

Within the context of a rapidly urbanizing population, both globally and nationally, this dissertation investigates how street living strategies can assist in conceptualizing a nurturing inner city environment. Responding to the dearth of implementable social policies in South Africa, this research sets out to explore methods for architects to enhance the life opportunities and choices of pavement dwellers by incorporating their livelihoods and aspirations in the design of the built environment. The research was carried out by way of reviewing existing literature on the subject, relevant case studies and precedent studies. The theories and literature discussed guide the focus of this dissertation highlighting the importance of taking people's needs, interests, livelihood strategies and their circumstances into account. The discussion illustrates how the inner city environment, underpinned by theoretical analysis of Theory of Living, Complexity Theory and Critical Regionalism, can be nurturing to life. Quantitative and qualitative methods are used to gather social and architectural data, outlining the interaction between street living strategies and the built environment, illustrating how an inner city can cater to the needs and well being (positive orientation) of the community, or in other cases, fail to do so. This will be further understood through an examination of the pavement dwellers' complex and difficult life in the Durban CBD, and how this creatively assists the design of a nurturing multipurpose dream centre, as a solution to the needs of street living and a conceptualization of a nurturing inner city environment. The outcome is the conceptualization of an inner city environment from which a set of principles and guidelines are established to inform the design of a new multipurpose dream centre in the inner city - the Durban CBD. A dream centre is possible because of the ability of "The architect [to] confront human needs and desires [and] mould the environment closer to the human dream" (Mumford, 1938: 403). / Thesis (M.Arch.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2013.

Thesis advisor: John Raeburn Thesis advisor: Laura Rigal. Includes bibliographic references (p. 363-382).

Rooms’ and ‘spaces’ are two closely linked forms of accommodation where the unit of occupation and exchange is a portion of a larger building or property, within which services and facilities are shared. ‘Rooms’ and ‘spaces’ in the inner city represented two of very few typologies research participants were aware of that allowed them access to the livelihood opportunities Johannesburg had to offer. Through participant observation and qualitative interviews this study explores two buildings featuring informal rooms and spaces and one building featuring formal rooms and spaces in Johannesburg’s inner city. While formal rooms represented the most stable support to those specific occupants, there were several ‘barriers to entry’ including the prerequisite of a stable income. There was much to be learnt from the flexibility and diversity of rooms and spaces on the informal market, which enabled occupants to cope with insecure livelihood opportunities. The research demonstrated the incredible resilience of occupants in the face of an extreme shortage of affordable accommodation in Johannesburg’s inner city (Tissington, 2013). However, the findings suggested an adverse relationship between accommodation and livelihoods demonstrated by the three ‘forms’ of rooms and spaces, where the only form available to people with the least secure livelihoods is that which, in turn, subjects them to the greatest insecurity.

No description available.

A dissertation submitted to the School of Language, Literature and Media, Faculty of Humanities for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, March 2017 / Although the burgeoning fields of linguistic and semiotic landscapes (LL and SL) studies provide extensive coverage of urban settings around the globe, it lacks a focus on urban development and the associated phenomenons such as gentrification, with the notable exception of Lou (2016). This dissertation looks at the neighbourhood of Marshalltown, located in the inner city of Johannesburg. Marshalltown is known as the mining district because of its proximity to the original goldmines that sparked the growth of the city. The neighbourhood’s SL has radically shifted from a place of urban decay to a trendy neighbourhood since the late 1990s, after urban development efforts financed by the private sector made the area stand out from the rest of the inner city. The developers working in Marshalltown have purposefully filled it with signs indexing the mining heritage its businesses which tend to cater to the middle-to-upper-classes, thus excluding poorer residents which make up most of the inner city’s population. Against this backdrop, the dissertation aims to answer the following three research questions: 1) How is Marshalltown constructed as a space of heritage, both in its materiality and in its representation in a corpus of media texts? 2) Considering that heritage entails a selection process from a more general historic field, which sections of history are curated in Marshalltown’s SL, which are silenced, and what are the implications for the narratives displayed in the context of post-apartheid South Africa? 3) How is Marshalltown’s urban environment experienced by social actors in a context of globalized trends in urban design which rely on heritage and authenticity to market formerly ignored city centres? The data for this study consists of a corpus of 25 media articles from various outlets, 255 photographs of Marshalltown and its vicinity, ethnographic field notes written between 2012 and 2016, as well as interviews with developers, heritage architect, a deputy director of immovable heritage at the City of Johannesburg, shop owners and people who work in the area. This dissertation aims to contribute to the young field of SL studies, while bringing forth Scollon and Scollon’s (2003) methodological toolkit of geosemiotic which allows for an analysis of signs in place and how people interact with them to draw a pertinent analysis of the construction of place. Geosemiotics is coupled with specific themes for each analytical chapter which brings forth a new way of analysing a SL. Those themes are 1) the language of urban development which drawing on Markus and Cameron (2002) helps analyse the representation of city neighbourhoods; 2) heritage, which brings a temporal perspective to SL studies that I call a chronoscape; 3) authenticity, which brings a visual analysis addition to the recent debate on the topic within sociolinguistics scholarship (Coupland 2003, Bucholtz 2003 and Eckert 2003) and its focus on the discursive construction of what counts as authentic. This study argues that Marshalltown’s post-apartheid SL is carefully designed by a majority of (white) developers wanting to give the area a heritage feel, borrowing from the mining history of the city; thus anchoring a European influenced heritage within their own interpretation of what an African city should look like. The heritage feel of Marshalltown is part of a broader plan to reclaim the city, which means changing the image it acquired previously during an era of urban decay as a dangerous no-go area, into an attractive tourism-friendly urban space. Those changes are achieved by inserting development efforts into the market for authentic urban lifestyle which Marshalltown can provide thanks to its preserved history. The neighbourhood stands out from the rest of the inner city by being privately controlled and maintained thus distancing itself from the popular discourse of inner city Johannesburg and instead developers redesign it as an ideal space for consumption. / XL2018

Objective: Although factors that promote initial and recurring homelessness among inner city women have been long explored, impoverished women continue enter and re-enter shelters at troubling rates. This trend is projected to increase over time. This longitudinal study uses Sydemics as a framework to advance our understanding of the relationship between depression, PTSD, trauma and intimate partner violence and the loss of housing among impoverished women using inner city Emergency Departments. We hypothesized that depression, PTSD, childhood trauma and IPV are positively associated with homelessness at baseline and that women with higher rates of a combination of these variables (e.g. PTSD and IPV) in wave 1 will have higher odds of experiencing both an initial and repeat bout of homelessness in the second and/or third waves, controlling for all other variables in the study. Method: Multivariate analyses and logistic regression, at baseline and longitudinally, were conducted to test study hypotheses with homelessness as the dependent variable. Six multivariate logistic regression models were used. Odds ratios (OR) with their 95% confidence intervals are reported. Results: Depression and childhood trauma were individually associated with homelessness at the .05 level in this sample of low income women. IPV was marginally related to homelessness (p=0.0917). PTSD however was not. Importantly, although IPV and PSTD were not individually associated with homelessness in bivariate analyses, housed, never homeless women, and women who had previously experienced homelessness had a greater odd of becoming homeless than those who experienced only one of these risk variables. Specifically, housed, never homeless women who had PTSD and IPV had a 2.2 odd of becoming homeless for the first time in waves 2 and 3, whereas those who experienced PTSD only had a 1.3 odds of becoming homeless for the first time; never homeless participants who experienced IPV only a 1.7 greater odds of becoming homeless (CI.0.348, 14.84; p=0.385), adjusting for all other variables. Similarly, the odd of becoming homeless again among participants who had PTSD and experienced IPV was 1.7 whereas the odds of recurrent homelessness was 1.2 among those who experienced PTSD only and 1.1 among those who experienced IPV only (CI.0.397, 7.46; p=0.463), controlling for all other variables in the study. Conclusion: Our findings confirm our hypotheses that low-income women who have PTSD, depression, histories of childhood trauma, and/or IPV have a higher odds of initial and recurrent homelessness when compared with women who do not have these risk variables. Our findings further confirm that women who have combinations of risk variables have even higher odds of future homelessness. Due to the low sample size of women with histories of homelessness in the study, there was lack of power. Despite this challenge, the results of these explorations (in determining heretofore unidentified effect sizes) utilizing Syndemics as a conceptual framework are promising. Future research with larger sample sizes (and sufficient power) are important to further the initial findings from this study.

Thesis (Psy. D.)--Wheaton College Graduate School, 2002. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 43-46).

The purpose of this study is to uncover the extent, causes, and to find solutions to the decay in the inner city neighbourhood of Albert Park. The Albert Park area is at a stage where appropriate intervention is required to prevent the area from deteriorating further and to improve the quality of life for the people that live and work in the area. The sources used to carry out this study entailed researching various publications such as planning related books and journals to understand the dynamics of the inner city; urban renewal theories; and political and socio-economic theories. Newspaper articles and interviews of role players also informed the study. The research methods entailed a detailed study of the area where the researcher investigated the physical characteristics of each building in detail. These were defined as buildings in good, fair and poor condition. A systematic stratified sample was used to interview thirty residents from each building condition. The physical study of the area found that the area is presently experiencing a small pocket of decay. This is surrounded by buildings in fair condition, which are beginning to deteriorate to a state of disrepair and will soon become decayed if no intervention takes place. The questionnaire survey found that people throughout the area share similar requirements for the physical and socio-economic regeneration of the area. It was concluded that although the economic characterictics of the residents residing in buildings matched the physical condition of the building they occupied, the residents themselves were not responsible for the decay of apartments. The Albert Park area is being targeted mostly by poor people for residence close to employment opportunities. The decay in the area is the result of exploitation, by landlords and managers, of tenants as minor and major maintenance is not undertaken. The recommendations for Albert Park entail a holistic approach to the area's future development. The area is experiencing a cycle of change. This change is important for the area's residents and needs to be accommodated rather than stopped. The change in the area is allowing poorer people access to inner city housing which is limited at this time. It is also possible for people of different income groups to live together. This can be achieved through improving the physical condition of buildings and the area in general. The apartments in the area need minor and major renovations. It is also necessary for social planning as there is a high level of apathy among residents. There is also a need for crime to be stopped and more community facilities to be opened in the area. / Thesis (M.T.R.P.)-University of Natal, 2001.