Abstract
Reimagining neglected urban space offers the potential for social cohesion, integration, and connectivity. The intimate, interstitial or fractional spaces of a city represent a key component of social infrastructure in a neighbourhood. The smallest of interventions in urban space adds value and complexity to urban life. However, fractional, yet deeply transformative, urban space is often unrecognised and undocumented. Transformative practice seeks to accommodate, anticipate and represent inclusive public life but requires discovering new content and definitions on public space to decode emerging processes of incremental place-making in an African context. The narrative focuses on a network of place-making intervention projects as part of an urban upgrading programme in Lotus Park informal settlement, located in Gugulethu, Cape Town. A set of tracings, integrated with theoretical frames, reveal the impact of upgraded urban space through firstly, emerging centres and the (re)making of place on the periphery; secondly, disrupting edges and the co-production process involved in the negotiation of space; and lastly, crafting shadows and interpreting traces of micro-interventions. The purpose is to explore urban space as continually adapting to the intrusions in the city grid to translate (1) innovative modes of spatial production; (2) dynamic forms of local agency; (3) marginal ways of operating; and (4) interconnected and multi-scalar urban processes of everyday place-making. The practice of co-producing and (re)making urban space in Gugulethu uncovers alternate mechanisms for governance, partnerships and operations.
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
