Reimagining Urban Land for Inclusive African Futures
Lead Research Organisation:
UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH
Abstract
South Africa is the world’s most unequal country. Contemporary approaches to land reform and urban planning and development (UDP) have exacerbated spatial segregation and entrenched inequitable access to land. Reliant on frameworks inherited from colonialism, they negate Indigenous epistemologies and continue to treat land as a commodity to fund economic growth. However, land is much more than a commodity; it is a site of security and resilience, a natural resource that sustains livelihoods and ecologies and a source of communal and spiritual identity. This project challenges conventional approaches to valuing and utilising land, proposing a more inclusive, decolonised strategy towards urban planning that is rooted in and reflective of local realties, knowledge and practice.
The overall objective is: to realise new understandings of what urban land is, how it can be imagined, and how it can be used to create more equitable and inclusive cities.
We will achieve this objective by combining the following aims:
1. Explore an informal community’s relationships with urban land
Archival research, life history interviews, film and participatory drawing and mapping workshops will document the history of a community living in an informal settlement and explore their relationships with the land on which they reside; how they manage the land and their settlement; and what the land means for their communal identities, cultural practices and everyday endurance.
2. Analyse UDP practitioners' approaches to utilising urban land through a contemporary case study
Archival research, key informant interviews, photography and film will be used to study the social history of a plot of land currently undergoing development. Research will analyse the ways in which UDP practitioners value, understand and attempt to utilise urban land. We will examine the dominant epistemologies informing their relations with land and explore how they respond to informal and indigenous uses for and conceptions of land.
3. Influence professional practice and shape public debate
Following carefully designed pathways to impact, research will yield a public seminar series, a practice brief targeting UDP practitioners, an ethnographic graphic novel and a visual essay. These outputs will allow the project to intervene in contemporary debates and discussions about land in South Africa and inform UDP practice.
The project benefit:
Informal settlement community
Research will act as a bridge between residents in an informal settlement and formal UDP practitioners. Storytelling, documenting histories and participatory workshops will allow a community to tell their story in their own words and have their practices, realities and values recognised. Participating in this project will help the community advocate for themselves and protect their settlement from possible removal.
UDP specialists
The project will introduce expanded epistemologies and new strategies for realising inclusive urban development. This will be particularly beneficial for practitioners interested in working with communities in informal settlements, exploring new approaches to delivering inclusive housing opportunities, and rethinking existing practices to pursue more equitable forms of urban development
Third sector organisations
Findings and outputs will benefit third sector organisations representing marginalised and Indigenous communities involved in struggles for urban land rights.
Academia
The project will shape debates in planning, indigenous urbanism, urban studies and architectural humanities. It will chart new territory in urban scholarship in South Africa by putting South African cities into conversation with other settler colonial cities and exploring ways in which urban development and planning can effectively be decolonised.
The overall objective is: to realise new understandings of what urban land is, how it can be imagined, and how it can be used to create more equitable and inclusive cities.
We will achieve this objective by combining the following aims:
1. Explore an informal community’s relationships with urban land
Archival research, life history interviews, film and participatory drawing and mapping workshops will document the history of a community living in an informal settlement and explore their relationships with the land on which they reside; how they manage the land and their settlement; and what the land means for their communal identities, cultural practices and everyday endurance.
2. Analyse UDP practitioners' approaches to utilising urban land through a contemporary case study
Archival research, key informant interviews, photography and film will be used to study the social history of a plot of land currently undergoing development. Research will analyse the ways in which UDP practitioners value, understand and attempt to utilise urban land. We will examine the dominant epistemologies informing their relations with land and explore how they respond to informal and indigenous uses for and conceptions of land.
3. Influence professional practice and shape public debate
Following carefully designed pathways to impact, research will yield a public seminar series, a practice brief targeting UDP practitioners, an ethnographic graphic novel and a visual essay. These outputs will allow the project to intervene in contemporary debates and discussions about land in South Africa and inform UDP practice.
The project benefit:
Informal settlement community
Research will act as a bridge between residents in an informal settlement and formal UDP practitioners. Storytelling, documenting histories and participatory workshops will allow a community to tell their story in their own words and have their practices, realities and values recognised. Participating in this project will help the community advocate for themselves and protect their settlement from possible removal.
UDP specialists
The project will introduce expanded epistemologies and new strategies for realising inclusive urban development. This will be particularly beneficial for practitioners interested in working with communities in informal settlements, exploring new approaches to delivering inclusive housing opportunities, and rethinking existing practices to pursue more equitable forms of urban development
Third sector organisations
Findings and outputs will benefit third sector organisations representing marginalised and Indigenous communities involved in struggles for urban land rights.
Academia
The project will shape debates in planning, indigenous urbanism, urban studies and architectural humanities. It will chart new territory in urban scholarship in South Africa by putting South African cities into conversation with other settler colonial cities and exploring ways in which urban development and planning can effectively be decolonised.