The Language of Urban Development in Johannesburg's Inner City

Gilles Baro

doi:10.14426/mm.v4i1.51

Abstract

This article engages with the language used by urban developers when planning areas of a city and how it influences the way media and social actors come to represent place. Its theoretical approach proposes a language of urban development based on Markus and Cameron’s (2002) language of buildings concept, which looks at the discourse used by architects and promoters in the construction of buildings. An analysis of interviews with developers and social actors of the inner city of Johannesburg as well as media articles portraying the area shows a correlation between the discourse used by all three bodies in terms of both the Western aspiration of an urban development model and the importance of safety and cleanliness to signify accessibility of place in Johannesburg.

Highlights

Johannesburg became a "hip city" in 2015, at least according to the popular travel site Rough Guides, which placed the South African city at the top of its annual list of destinations to visit for that year
Most of the people I interviewed talked about being pleasantly surprised when coming to Marshalltown for the first time, or returning there after many years of avoiding it, and realizing that it “wasn’t bad at all”. This attitude was exemplified by urban developer John Dewar of the Johannesburg Land Company when recollecting his first time back in the inner city when looking for empty buildings to buy and later redevelop: So I went along with my partner and we walked down Loveday Street, from City Hall to Main Street; we had our hands in our pockets and thinking we were going to be beaten on the head any minute, and suddenly realised it wasn’t bad at all
I have presented some aspects of urban development in the inner city of Johannesburg and how it is discursively represented by developers, social actors and in the media

Summary

INTRODUCTION

Johannesburg became a "hip city" in 2015, at least according to the popular travel site Rough Guides, which placed the South African city at the top of its annual list of destinations to visit for that year. I will focus on one of those “clusters” – the neighbourhood of Marshalltown – in order to investigate if the language used by planners and developers correlates with how the area is represented by the media and social actors This task will be done by integrating Markus and Cameron’s (2002) particular discourse analysis approach, which aims at marrying architecture and sociolinguistics, an approach so far ignored by the Linguistic Landscape Studies scholarship, even though it focuses on language and place. This article focuses on certain buildings located in the inner city of Johannesburg, but on the area as a whole This broad analysis is the reason why I would like to apply Markus and Cameron’s main argument on a broader scale: instead of focusing solely on buildings and their architecture, I believe the language of buildings methodology can be turned into a language of urban development. I hope to present the broad context of Johannesburg’s inner city, while answering the following questions: How is the city represented? What model of urban development in the inner city is talked about by developers? Are social actors able to read the developer’s model when experiencing the urban environment? How do the media talk about urban development?

The inner city and its Western aspirations

Findings

CONCLUSION