Join a special breakfast session seminar as part of the Faces of the City programme:

Clash of meanings and unfulfilled ideals in Johannesburg post-apartheid public spaces
by Ilaria Boniburini

Tuesday, 9 April, breakfast session
08:00-09:30
Spatial Analysis and City Planning Board Room, South Basement, John Moffat Building, University of Witwatersrand
RSVP: thammy.jezile@wits.ac.za

Abstract: The presentation explores the role built forms have in mediating social transformations in post-colonial cities, through the production of public spaces in Johannesburg’s city centre since 1994. Johannesburg inherited parks and squares, important places for the reproduction of the colonial regimes. In post-apartheid, urban planning has attempted to challenge the socio-spatial structure of segregation, supporting ideals of integration and social justice. The objective of favoring propinquity among people of different classes and ethnicity clashes with a complexity of issues, which in the making of public spaces appear paradoxical. The physical segregation inherited from Apartheid is accompanied by the retreat into private spaces by affluent classes, who desire to separate themselves, either from crime, fear of crime or from avoiding contact with poverty. In urban spaces, colonial and neoliberal capitalist powers are celebrated, the former in the name of cultural heritage and the latter legitimized by economic regeneration and securitization imperatives. Public spaces are where decolonization is urgently needed, but also where it tends to be ignored by design practices, often biased towards a repetition of theoretical debates and models based on the archetypes of the European public space and embedded in Western cultural practices. The result is an atomisation of public life carved by divisions on the basis of class and race, creating a landscape of public borders.

Biography: Ilaria is a registered architect working on community design and public spaces, a scholar in urban studies, with research interests in African urbanism, the right to the city and the politics of architecture, and an educator.
She gained twenty years of experience as an architect, while completing a Masters and a PhD in urban planning, both with case studies in Sub-Saharan Africa. She was a senior lecturer in urban design at the University of Rwanda, a postdoc fellow at the University of Witwatersrand and an adjunct professor at the La Sapienza University of Rome, teaching urban and regional policy. Ilaria is the co-founder of two Italian not-for-profit organizations, Zone Onlus and Associazione Eddyburg and the coordinator of the environmental and planning committee of a new Italian political party. Her voluntary work includes advocacy planning, the direction of the award winning Italian website eddyburg.it, writing articles, teaching, and giving talks on environmental justice, the right to the city and urban planning.

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The Faces of the City seminar series is a partnership between the Centre for Urbanism and Built Environment Studies (CUBES) and the South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning (SA&CP) in the School of Architecture and Planning; the Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO); and the Wits City Institute (WCI).

The seminar series is an interdisciplinary forum focusing on all areas of urban interest. Presentations from fields such as urban planning, architecture, sociology, geography, anthropology, environmental studies, and cultural studies are welcome. If you would like to motivate for a particular speaker or topic, email thammy.jezile@wits.ac.za for consideration by the committee.

Attached is the schedule for the entire 2nd Quarter seminar series as arranged by Spatial Analysis & City Planning.

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Schedule of presentations:

9 April – special breakfast seminar (08:00-09:30)
Clash of meanings and unfulfilled ideals in Johannesburg post-apartheid public spaces by Ilaria Boniburini

9 April
Shifting in the city: transgender refugee experiences of being and longing in Cape Town by B. Camminga

16 April
Modes, mechanisms and modalities of middle class suburban governance by Margot Rubin and Alexandra Appelbaum

23 April
Participatory public art and the city: from JDA commissions to on the ground realisation by Yasmeen Dinath, Myer Taub, Tamara Guhrs, Stephen Hobbs

30 April
Managing security in the residential neighbourhoods of Johannesburg: neoliberalism, neo-Communitarianism, or something else? By Martin Murray (Taubman College, University of Michigan)

7 May
Development in the Gauteng City Region: macro-trends and implications for policy and governance by Michael Sachs (Southern Centre for Inequality Studies, Wits)

14 May
City-to-city learning in urban strategic planning in southern Africa: insights from the UCLG mentorship program between Durban, Mzuzu City and Otjiwarongo Councils by Sogendren Moodley (Urban Futures Centre, DUT)

28 May – special lunchtime seminar (12:30-14:00)

Curating knowledge of, and policies for, smart cities and climate changeby Richard Tomlinson (University of Witwatersrand and University of Melbourne)