Call number: LD2668 .P7 1973 D54

Call number: LD2668 .P7 1973 L35

Thesis (M.Arch. (Prof.))--University of the Witwatersrand, Faculty of Engineering and the Built Environment, School of Architecture and Planning, 2012. / Over 800 000 people access and commute through Johannesburg Inner City every single day. (JDA, 2009) Out of this, a certain group of people enter the city with every intention to fi nd permanent residency and work within the city. They mostly come from afar, rural or semi-rural areas and often from neighbouring countries. Unfortunately, with the continuously changing urban environment, it can be an incredibly difficult process to adapt to alone. As such, this can be the best time and the worst time of their lives, fi lled with mixed emotions of excitement, disappointment, fear and anticipation. This is the time where one may manage to truly live life, or end up surviving it. The sudden change in lifestyle, security, social and economic conditions, entertainment and habitat can create situations where the very best will fail in their quest to improve their lives and fall into degenerate lives of crime and despair from which very few will emerge stronger. As I see it, architecture is the science of building, in terms of not only visually inspiring structures but more importantly, structures that can improve the lives of people whilst preserving the environment and assisting in the building of a stronger economy and moral fi bre. I believe that architecture is at the root of civilization itself. However, due to a multitude of varying levels of control implemented into the urban realm of Johannesburg’s Inner City, in order to ensure this change, it appears that parts of the physical environment are being distorted to accept a selected group of city inhabitants, leaving the marginalised group to fend for themselves. In saying this, there thus appears to be a new form of segregation occurring within the city. As such, the social and physical environments are beginning to lose a certain key characteristic of what a city should be – spirit and integration between all of its parts. This thesis therefore investigates a design that strives to create a bridge between Johannesburg’s Inner City and the formal environments where new city-dwellers can fi nd respite and are assisted to achieve their goals without succumbing to the pitfalls that would otherwise await them. The design will ensure that the transition between these new-comers’ old and new lifestyles and surroundings is as painless as possible allowing them to reach their full potential quickly and hopefully removing the risk that they may become a burden to themselves and society. This thesis will focus on the construct of a 21st century interpretation of Godin’s familistère, not necessarily in its structural make up but rather in its funding, management and programmatic structure to fulfi l its mission in a sustainable manner as well as the new idea of connecting these factors into the ‘bigger picture’. (Benevolo, 1971) This thesis will address the fundamentals of target group, services provided, training, temporary living accommodation, optimal time of stay, work ethics, funding and most importantly, the spatial framework required for such integration to occur. The results of this thesis will culminate in a full-scale detailed design of such a construct and propose how it could be achieved spatially for the direct benefi t of those individuals, as well as the indirect effect it could have on the physical make-up of Johannesburg’s Inner City.

MA, Faculty of Humanities, University of the Witwatersrand, 2011 / The Newtown Cultural Precinct came about as one of government’s interventions to turn around Johannesburg’s Inner City degeneration as a result of big business’s migration to the North in the nineties when urban management and land use controls collapsed. Government’s approach to culture-led urban regeneration was by means of large public sector capital development. The research covers the history of the concept of Newtown as a cultural precinct and how it came into being. It explores the criteria for cultural precincts in terms of international best practice and whether Newtown meets these requirements. It determines whether what was planned for Newtown by government has been achieved, and is being implemented. A review of strategies, business plans, projects and activities related to the development of Newtown as a cultural precinct was undertaken, as were interviews with key stakeholders, in order to establish why the notion of a cultural precinct took root when it did, and whether it is a success or not.

No description available.

This thesis is being submitted for the Degree of Masters In Urban Design at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. / Current understandings of Urban Design point towards the fact that it is the art and science of city making. Like other aspects of Architecture, it begins with a site analysis, followed by the formulation of a vision for the built environment and thereafter a process of transforming the vision into reality (Carmona et.al, 2003). Thus, Urban Design is perceived as a discipline that gives rise to the form and defi nition of the full spectrum of forces including social, economic, cultural, ecological, political and aesthetic dynamics (Dixon, 2005). The role of the Urban Designer can therefore be understood as central to a number of other stakeholders such as Traffi c Engineers dealing with vehicular movement, Civil Engineers concerned with structural design, Architects designing built form, Landscape Architects designing open space, Urban Planners formulating policy and the Property Developers involved in aspects of land investment. However, as urban populations grow, become more diverse and fragmented, the function of Urban Design and the role of the Urban Designer becomes questionable (Madanipour, 1996). The past tradition of thought in Urban Design (visual artistic approach) incorporated a fi rm belief in the physical aspects of city making relying on built form as a primary informant. This tradition has, however, been replaced by a more recent tradition (social usage approach) which incorporates a fi rm belief in interpreting phenomena occurring in public space. This served as a response married to the phenomenon of increased population density and rapid urbanisation persistent in the developing city context due to global migration patterns (Watson, 2009). Consequently, in its plight to reframe Urban Design to sequence developing cities, this thesis conducts a comparative analysis between developed and developing world cities regarding national migratory, population density and urbanisation trends and the effects that it poses on regions, cities and localities. In so doing, it progresses to a realisation that increased living densities in turn spills over into the public realm and onto the street edge for retail and social service access purposes. Thus, a greater mix of uses in the built environment is forged. The increased density of people on sidewalks in essence stimulates transport movement as a collector service which structures street connectivity systems around retail facilities and social services. From the analytical fi ndings here, this thesis recognises that there exist relationships between built form confi guration and socio-economic activities occurring in public space. In light of the above, the thesis employs the combination of the visual artistic and social usage approaches to form the making places approach, which can be appropriate for Urban Design in developing cities. After establishing a new approach, the thesis structures the above-mentioned operations into an evolved conceptual framework. Thus, the conceptual framework recognises that time change in developing cities in conjunction with population density and migration cause overlapping relationships between building density, housing and social services, retailing, land use mixes, transport/movement and street connectivity across various scales and within the formal, semi-formal/semiinformal and informal realms. With this being the case, the thesis analyses current literature which argues that the broader problem is the fact that the interrelatedness of the above-mentioned concepts is negated in theory. It develops the problem statement further by stating that a lack of the interrelatedness of the concepts contained in the conceptual framework has in turn infl uenced a lack of such in current research and urban design practice in developing cities. This is confi rmed through measuring the extent to which three South African Urban Design practice case studies consider concepts of building density, housing and social services, retailing, land use mixes, transport/movement and street connectivity across various scales and acknowledging the lack thereof. As a means of responding to the problem identifi ed above, a set of research techniques is investigated using a Yeoville/Bellevue, Johannesburg site-specifi c case with the aim of assisting designers to better apply the evolved conceptual framework. Simultaneously, the thesis uses Yeoville/Bellevue as a focus area to illustrate the manner in which building density, housing and social services, retailing, land use mixes, transport/movement and street connectivity can be considered across various scales. This essentially progresses into the creation of an Urban Design Framework for Yeoville/Bellevue that strengthens the linkages between housing and social services, retailing and transport/movement through using principles of street connectivity, land use mix and building density creation. An implementation strategy for the Design Framework is then established. Through the execution of the above process the collective consideration of building density, housing and social services, retailing, land use mixes, transport/movement and street connectivity across various scales serves as the basis for reframing Urban Design to suit developing cities.

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Thesis. 1977. M.C.P.--Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Vita. / by Sandra Brant. / M.C.P.

Over the past 20 years, governments in many countries around the world have sought to implement governance mechanisms to measure and assess the performance of public service organisations. As a consequence, public service organisations, especially those considered as poorly-performing organisations, have been subjected to unprecedented pressure to improve their performance and sustain performance improvement as a continuous process. However, efforts of public managers to improve the performance of their organisations have been undertaken without “comprehensive theories and rigorous evidence on this issue” (Boyne, 2006: 366). This thesis takes up the challenge of providing robust evidence on the factors associated with the performance improvement of public organisations. We propose that the notion of organisational capabilities offers a promising way to meet this challenge. From this standpoint, this research sought to identify the organisational capabilities whose development and use explain a public service organisation’s ability to improve its performance and sustain good performance in the long run. The empirical analysis was conducted in a population of hospital trusts in England. We firstly applied longitudinal and comparative case studies method into two acute hospitals trusts: one case of a successful performance improvement and one case of less-successful performance improvement. The purpose was to examine how the development (or lack of) a set of capabilities over time accounted for the differences in the performance outcome and trajectory of the two cases. Our findings identified the following capabilities as advantageous for achieving a sustained performance: collective leadership; action-oriented culture; effective clinical-managerial relationship; supportive external context; performance / finance control capability; coordination capability of the key delivery process; sensing capability and learning capability. We then employed quantitative method over the population of acute hospital trusts in England to explore the relationship between complementarities of capabilities and performance. The results demonstrated that only when in combination does the presence of the capabilities yield positive and significant association with performance. In other words, the presence of the whole system of the capabilities increases the trusts’ performance, while partial presence of a set of capabilities is either not significantly associated with, or even detrimental to, the trusts’ performance.