This document is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree Master of Urban Design at the University of the Witwatersrand, 2016 / The planned non-motorized transport (NMT) route in Sandton is part of the Corridors of Freedom project which seeks to change spatial patterns in Johannesburg. This research seeks to understand this route and how an alternative route would respond to the context and present an opportunity to create spatially equitable spaces between Alexandra and Sandton on the NMT priority space. This will be done using the mechanism of urban design tools. Urban design tools themselves face various challenges as the underlying institutional context is often not conducive to creating some of the urban design objectives of spatial equity and the prioritization of NMT. This research, through a design strategy, proposes an alternative mechanism of coding. / MT2017

Thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree: Master of Architecture (Professional) to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2016 / Hyperembodiment is an approach to negotiating the interface between spaces for women (in Johannesburg’s inner-city) and jewellery as a connector of the body – especially for women – to place. The inner-city, a space that is male-dominated and where women are present but seem to be largely excluded, or to feel unsafe and vulnerable - especially because of what the female body represents in an ‘unsafe’ male space, is also full of vibrancy and activity and has the potential for a positive and radical cultural change, but remains disconnected, nonprogressive and stagnant in thinking as well as non-inclusive of all people. The spatial investigations into places for women (modern feminist spatial concepts) and jewellery as a ‘site’ or interface between the body and architecture, and the interesting parallels it draws between feminist views, space, psychology and the body (process and development of body adornment and jewellery theories), are powerful ways of thinking about space that could suggest an appropriate architectural approach that could realign both spaces for women, a modern approach to the act of making, and creative jewellery practices in Johannesburg. The spatial connotations of the word ‘hyper’ is something that is ‘very’, ‘beyond’, or ‘very active’ and those of the word ‘embodiment’ is something ‘embodying’, ‘representing’ or ‘expressing’ a space. The compound word ‘Hyperembodiment’ used here means beyond embodiment, or very actively personifying a space and its innate properties of land, earth, materials, and the bodies (people) in it. It is also all the layers of embodiment – physical, historical, social layers – that are collaged together in one time and in one space to create a high-intensity and complex expression of place. Jewellery as a connector; for the body and for woman to place, would be these collaged layers made into a physical object and symbol made from the materials, earth, historical and social layers. It is a simultaneous case of the wearer embodying the place, and the place embodying the wearer. / MT2017

“wherever the human spirit is free, people celebrate. All cultures commemorate what makes them distinctive and worthy in their own eyes. Periodically, a common humanity in us all sets aside the work and worry of everyday life and blossoms into festivity, sometimes even in the face of cultural domination and economic deprivation.” (Rinzler & Seitel, 1982, p.7) Various cultures exist and the display of specifi c group’s values, traditions and crafts in the form of an event becomes the ‘exciting experience’ longed for by the inhabitants of the city who crave an outlet from the everyday pressures and routine of life, desire a sense of belonging, want to express their suppressed desires or share an interest in the ideals or products being portrayed. These events require space, of various nature and size, which facilitate its range of needs from culturally relevant locations to necessary features. Globally, the urban setting has proved to be ideal when computing these space requirements and municipalities are going out of their way to create or maintain spaces to host these events for the wealth of social, spatial and economic stimulation they hold.

Thesis is submitted in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Urban Design to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 2017 / The report is an investigation of urban parks as public space in Johannesburg inner-city. It investigates the current situation of a deteriorating degree of public space in Johannesburg due to growing levels of privatisation and incapacity of the public sector to design, manage and maintain good quality, inclusive and safe public open spaces in the city. My research aims at being a radical re-imagining of Inner-city of Johannesburg, through urban design, in how the inner-city can be (spatially) transformed and reconfigured through open public space, as part of the decolonization agenda for African cities. In my study, I investigate the nature of urban parks in Johannesburg’s inner-city, in an attempt to understand the ways they are being used by different user groups and how this is affected by the way they are physically designed and managed. It presents three chosen parks of study; Joubert Park, End Street Park (North and South), and Nugget Street Park, located in Doornfontein Johannesburg, and look into the chosen park’s connectivity and accessibility to streets and other public spaces. I assess how the parks’ location and proximity to activities and public infrastructure/amenities (such as housing units, retail outlets, schools and public transport interchanges) affects the number and type of users that use them as well as the kind of activities within them. As part of this assessment will be the issue of safety and security within parks and how current management approaches have been used to address the issue. I, through my research, question current urban design and management approaches; aimed at achieving increased levels of use and safety in terms of the impact they have had on the city’s public open spaces. Questions are asked on the effectiveness of safety measures such as fences, gates and security cameras and personnel and how they impact on the degree of ‘publicness’ and safety in the city’s public open spaces. As part of its aim of understanding the nature of parks in the inner-city of Johannesburg, the research reviews existing literature that has been written on public space/public park use and design and the ‘ideal’ approaches to good design and management. It focuses on the ideal of an ‘Open City’ and questions of ‘publicness’ in park use and management. The notion of decolonising Johannesburg as an African city (in its current neo-apartheid segregatory form) is also interrogated. Questions are asked on the definition of what African urban space is and the principles of its form and function, based on precolonial African city examples. The principle of common space and collective ownership and use is discussed as an essential principle that framed the configuration of african public space, which was lost in the introduction of colonial city formations. The report1 presents an analysis of End Street North and South Park located on the north and south ends of the railway line along Nugget Street in Doornfontein. It assesses the process in which End Street South Park was (re)designed and upgraded in 2009 as part of the Ellis Park precinct development for the 2010 World cup, and critically assesses the outcomes of its design in terms of both the successes and failures of the upgrade. In the analysis the report illustrates how though the park’s upgrade reduced violent crimes such as muggings in the park, the park contains illicit activities such as gambling and drug use spots along its edges and corners. The use of high fencing in the new design and deployment of private security in the park was found not to be entirely solving issues of safety in the park. Although the fence was intended to assist in the management and control of who accesses and uses the park for safety reasons, it contributes towards creating hidden spaces for gambling, drug use and bullying to occur away from the eyes of the public. The analysis of End Street North Park involves the documentation of the End Street North Park upgrade pilot project that tests a participatory approach to park design and management for safety. The objective of the project was to demonstrate an integrated stakeholder approach to public space design and management that involves sector contributions from different city departments as well as engagement with city residents and other park users in designing a safe, inclusive and sustainable public space though participatory tools and methods. This set of findings from End Street North and South Parks reveal that park use and safety issues cannot be completely addressed through design and installation of physical safety measures such as high fences, law enforcement and regulation of use by security guards or park managers alone. The report indeed proposes a radical and aggressive urban design framework and/or strategy towards transforming inner-city Johannesburg’s spatial fabric through urban park and open public space design. Part of this process involves looking into alternative design related ways of dealing with aspects of use and safety in parks as well as aspects of public participation, community co-design and comanagement processes. / XL2018

The aim of this thesis is to investigate the importance of public space and to explore the concept of public living. The concept behind this thesis exploration is to look at the Soweto yard called a `jarata` and to look at various configurations of a Soweto yard. The reason behind choosing a Soweto yard is to conceptualise a public space which has the essence of the sociality of a Soweto yard. The investigation will begin by exploring the concept of social space and to gain an understanding of what a `social space` is in comparison to a physical place. Over the years people have defined and redefined spaces around them. In shared spaces people have used traditions and cultures to dictate the manner in which they use these spaces and have therefore created unwritten rules in these spaces. As people redefine these spaces from their designed or intended use, they essentially create social spaces. These social spaces are not the physical spaces but they happen in the physical spaces, and are driven by events which are part of people’s social and cultural patterns. So therefore the architecture of a place is defined by the social spaces which are the events, activities and the happenings in the place, which are centred on social patterns. Place is the visible space, and space is the hidden place. The architectural response is a public space where public living can be embraced more especially for the residents of Soweto and more specifically to the residents of Mofolo Central where my site is based. The space will be an enabling space which should allow the users the freedom to carry out their traditions and social patterns. The space is also an event space which allows for a variety of recreational activities from musical events, celebrations, ceremonies and play. The design of the space also incorporates an existing old cinema and seeks to revive the cinema and develop it as a cinema and theatre. The purpose of reviving the cin- ema is to bring back a cinema-going culture to the area of Mofolo and Soweto at large. The exterior space will be an extension of the cinema and will function as an open-air cinema among other uses mentioned above. In addition there will be office spaces, trade spaces both formal and informal and recreational facilities. The design plays on the social patterns of public life in Soweto.

A degree submitted for the requirements of Masters of Arts in Geography School of Geography, Archaeology and Environmental Studies / Mary Fitzgerald Square is an iconic public space in Newtown, Johannesburg. In spite of its iconic status, prolific social history and commercial role in the city, there is very little that is known about it and its users. In 2009 and 2010 I undertook an ethnographic exploration of the public space using Henri Lefebvre’s (1974/1991) conceptual spatial triad, the Right to the City and Elements of Rhythmanalysis frameworks. Through informal interviews, unstructured participant observation and exploration of archived newspaper articles, public space governance by-laws, published urban literature and research, I managed to situate this public space in urban geographical discourse as contested public space. By means of conceptual analysis, this research found Mary Fitzgerald Square to be an important public space that is dominated by neoliberal politics that create struggle for inhabitants to use it meaningfully in the context of everyday life. The proliferation of neoliberal relations of urban governance have led to a situation whereby the public space is subjected to private management practices that encourage its elitist uses and thus prioritizing its commercial exchange-value over its use-value. This process as the research uncovered, undermines the public space’s use-value and consequently leads to a subliminal marginalization of ordinary inhabitants who require and desire it for their varied practices in the context of everyday life. Urban management strategies like human surveillance, Public Open Space by-Laws, architecture and planning design, public-private partnerships, and the removal of the television monitor, discourage creative African youths, skateboarders, the urban poor and elderly in the city from appropriating Mary Fitzgerald Square. Inhabitants using Mary Fitzgerald Square manage to do so by overriding and transgressing existing spatial prohibitions by conducting their social practices in the contested space outside official policing times. Other inhabitants, through play and creative expression, have devised alternative means to challenge their marginalization in and uses of the public space in spite of existing by-laws, changing architecture, and visible human surveillance including law-enforcement that are conceived in an effort to deter their social uses of it. This research proposes a return to Mary Fitzgerald Square that warrants a critical discourse analysis of the public space in an effort to gain a better and deeper understanding of inhabitants’ everyday life experiences and their political situation in the current city through the public space. This should enable a sound critique of the production of Mary Fitzgerald Square in the African metropolis where the abstract struggle between private interests and public need for the public space materializes. Key words: Mary Fitzgerald Square, Henri Lefebvre, Johannesburg, Geography, South Africa.

M.Tech. (Architectural Technology) / This dissertation explores the opportunity and necessity of a connection between Braamfontein and Newtown Johannesburg's landscape developed as a result of decades of socio-economic and geographic fragmentation where planning policies etched permanent boundaries of exclusion. The focus is to form a more integrated city fabric in the area to allow for a cross-pollination of people and activities between Braamfontein and Newtown At the same time the proposal aims to create a more socially Inclusive space that connects the urban users to each other and to the city as a whole...

A research report submitted to the Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Architecture (Professional), Johannesburg 2017 / This thesis studies the place and nature of the concept of play in society through the exploration of objects and spaces that stimulate, encourage or deter the notion of play. Nominated spaces that will ideally contribute to the study of play are reviewed, focusing in particular on areas within the local context of Johannesburg where a notion of play takes or could inherently take place. But in order to draw an understanding and a cognitive inspiration, toys are reviewed as objects of play. Toys are studied with the intention of identifying the role it encompasses and the integrity of the notion of play, with a focus on local toy design and manufacture in relation to the international market. / XL2018

D.Litt. et Phil. (Anthropology) / This thesis investigated how public spheres are spatialised in public space. The public sphere is commonly understood as the public deliberation between people to establish their common interests and the bearing this has on state authority. While it is acknowledged that public space is essential for public sphere development, this link between public space and the public sphere has not been extensively researched. There is also a lack of literature examining people’s experiences of public space in the global south, especially anthropological studies that focus on people’s experiences of and in urban parks. This thesis seek to answer how public spheres are spatialised in an urban park, Joubert Park, in Johannesburg, by asking what the context of the creation for the park is, what rules of access and use exist, and how the management model adopted by the City of Johannesburg and the managing agent, City Parks, affect what happens in the park. South Africa had, and still has, very specific patterns of spatial development and use, shaped through its colonial history, and apartheid. Post-apartheid South Africa holds the possibility of changing the way that space is used, and regulated, from being exclusionary based on race to being inclusionary. Joubert Park is situated in the inner city of Johannesburg, and is the oldest park in the city. At its establishment in 1891 it was situated in a relatively well-off area of Johannesburg. In the 1930s single houses in the area were replaced with art-deco apartment buildings, and served as a first receiving point for European and migrants from other parts of South African. The 1990s ushered in an era of white flight and decline within the inner-city, affecting the buildings around the park. Today the surrounding area is generally seen as decayed and is the focus of inner-city regeneration efforts aiming to build an “African World Class” city. The park is well used by a variety of urban dwellers and is considered by City Parks as a flagship within the city. It has an art gallery, various non-governmental organisations and is patronised by a variety of users, traders, chess-players and photographers. This thesis utilised standard ethnographic practices. Fieldwork consisted of ‘hanging out’ and participating within the park, formal interviews, directed questioning, and archival research. Data analysis proceeded from a combination of framework analysis, arising from theory, and grounded, from within the data. Findings were that although park users say that the park is freely available for all to use, it is in fact constrained by identity markers such as race, class, gender, sexuality and nationality. These factors articulate to produce certain experiences of the park. At the same time that people are excluded from the park, people also exclude themselves. These mechanisms of exclusions broadly reflect South African society, which has been described as socially conservative despite a liberal constitution that was implemented in 1996. The City of Johannesburg has rules and regulations that aim to exclude certain users, mostly poor and homeless people, from the park. Park users resist these rules but their small acts of resistance do not change how the rules are applied. At the same time as enforcing rules, both written and unwritten, on park users, the City ignored its own responsibilities as laid out in by-laws concerning the park. The City’s ideal users are different from actual park users and this causes contestations around space use. Lastly, findings were that there were wisps of public sphere activity taking place within the park, but that this is not sustained in any meaningful manner. Outside the park there are many more recognisable and sustained public sphere activities through protest marches. Park users do not participate in these protest marches despite the fact that the marches are similar to their own concerns. This thesis argues that more loosely regulated public space is necessary for public spheres to develop. This thesis addresses literature in urban anthropology, public space, and public sphere. It contributed to urban anthropology by showing how a small urban park can reveal patterns in the city as well as applying a unified framework developed by Setha Low. It contributed to public space literature by contributing to knowledge of public spaces in the global South. Lastly, it contributed to public sphere literature by showing that the type of regulations in public spaces can inhibit the formation of effective public spheres. Key words: Joubert Park, public space, public sphere, Johannesburg, urban anthropology

The present study investigated the nature of desegregation as observed by the use of space by the diverse racial groups at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (Pietermaritzburg). The researcher observed and recorded participants as they used the Hexagon Cafeteria at the University. Observations and systematic recordings were conducted in the first week in term on Monday and Tuesday over four consecutive weeks. Participants were recorded as they sat at a table and when they left the table. Their race, gender, time and table number were captured, forming data for the final analysis. The study revealed that black students were the least represented race group, in number, and were the mostly segregated from the other racial groups. Perhaps this study would have yielded different results if there were a higher proportion of black students throughout the six-day observational period. Indian students were the majority at the Cafeteria in comparison to other racial groups. It seems that the Hexagon Cafeteria is a popular meeting place for most Indian students. It can also be speculated that the Hexagon Cafeteria appears to be an ideal meeting place for most female students as they outnumbered the male students throughout the six-day observational period. Despite persistent racial segregation, points of contact (integration) were observed between the three racial groups. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2004.