post-apartheid urbanism Master Thesis Johannesburg, South Africa 09.2011 - 05.2012 ETH Zurich Advisor: Professor Hubert Klumpner Co-Advisors: Prof. Dr. Christian Schmid Prof. Dr. Philippe Block Partner: Vanessa Joos “Huge gaps between the frightened rich and the resentful poor, a schizophrenic cityscape of sequestered enclaves intermingled with derelict sites and concentrated pockets of inner-city impoverishment -- and ringed with informal shanty settlements where the jobless, the poor, the dispossessed, and the socially excluded are abandoned to their own struggle for survival.” - Martin Murray on Johannesburg in City of Extremes
Is this description unique, or could this represent the future of any global city? Inequalities in society and economy are continuing to increase and are a crucial factor for the survival or failure of urban areas and nations; consider Libya, Egypt, the riots in London. What will be the image of our future cities - will they be characterized fear, crime, separation and exclusion? Or will they promote inclusion and integration? South Africa is an example of a nation suspended between developed and developing. It generates over a third of Africa’s entire economy; 10% of this wealth comes from the Gauteng Region. This creates an extreme between the “haves” and have-nots”, which has stamped itself onto the fabric of Johannesburg since the time of apartheid. Nearly twenty years after the transition to a majority-ruled government, the image of the post-apartheid South African city remains the epitome of an unequal society. It consists of a series of isolated enclaves, islands in the city, connected by transit lines and the forgotten spaces in between. Some of these boundaries are physical, such as highways or industrial zones, some are perceived, such as the fear of crime. These groups of inhabitants move through the city in a series of parallel universes passing one another but rarely interacting, each ignoring the presence of the other, precluded from interacting in urban public space by the very structure of the city itself. Spatial planning under apartheid was characterized by the deliberate separation of residential areas based on race; a person was either White, Indian, Colored, or Black African. Areas were physically isolated from one another through so-called “buffer zones.” Use of this concept can be clearly identified in the geographical landscape of Johannesburg and its extensive urban areas. These areas, previously dividing disenfranchised populations, possess enormous potential for re-use as areas of social encounter in the post-apartheid era. A cooperative greening scheme in the ring-like network of buffer zone spaces creates new nodes for interaction and a chance to provide spatial justice to the marginalized.