From 12 – 26 September, IUSD Lab Cairo and Stuttgart, together with Politecnico di Milano – Laboratory of International Cooperation, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies and Wits City Institute, Johannesburg; co-organized a Summer School on urban transformations in Johannesburg, South Africa. The workshop focused on five themes for development in the Informal area of Kya Sands in Johannesburg. These were: Rethinking infrastructure: Urban Landscaping for alternative services provision and ecological remediation; eco-incremental housing: typologies and systems for an integrated approach to upgrading; place making: public spaces between community services, economic opportunities and leisure; designing the engine of development: alternative economies, livelihood generation and community up-skilling; and governance for collaborative upgrading: planning a multi-stakeholder strategy from policy making to tactical management.
The workshop followed three main principals for understanding the situation and proposing solutions: Exploring and drawing on bottom-up approaches, engaging a settlement and its communities in a collaborative design process; operating at the grassroots level, engaging the Kya Sands communities and building on an already established engagement between University of Witwatersrand and Kya Sands residents and; placing the process in a real-life scenario, rooting it within the goals and scope of national and local policy and programs, leveraging on the partnership with local NGOs and seeking for the active engagement of the City of Johannesburg along the process.
Summer School Transforming Johannesburg – Reshaping socio-ecological landscapes through collaborative practices
From 12 – 26 September, IUSD Lab Cairo and Stuttgart, together with Politecnico di Milano – Laboratory of International Cooperation, Department of Architecture and Urban Studies and Wits City Institute, Johannesburg; co-organized a Summer School on urban transformations in Johannesburg, South Africa. The workshop focused on five themes for development in the Informal area of Kya Sands in Johannesburg. These were: Rethinking infrastructure: Urban Landscaping for alternative services provision and ecological remediation; eco-incremental housing: typologies and systems for an integrated approach to upgrading; place making: public spaces between community services, economic opportunities and leisure; designing the engine of development: alternative economies, livelihood generation and community up-skilling; and governance for collaborative upgrading: planning a multi-stakeholder strategy from policy making to tactical management.
The workshop followed three main principals for understanding the situation and proposing solutions: Exploring and drawing on bottom-up approaches, engaging a settlement and its communities in a collaborative design process; operating at the grassroots level, engaging the Kya Sands communities and building on an already established engagement between University of Witwatersrand and Kya Sands residents and; placing the process in a real-life scenario, rooting it within the goals and scope of national and local policy and programs, leveraging on the partnership with local NGOs and seeking for the active engagement of the City of Johannesburg along the process.