Partners

UN HABITAT Urban Thinkers Campus, Georgetown Global Cities Initiative, Centre for African Public Spaces (CAPS), Mandela Bay Development Agency (MBDA), The Wot-If? Trust

Lead

Priscilla Forde

Outcomes

• All-African Woman roundtable of case study presentations on place-based issues and transformation in 3 South African urban areas

• Featured case study write-ups in official UN HABITAT report (section authored by Spaces for Souls)

Year
2023

In partnership with UN HABITAT and Georgetown Global Cities Cities Initiative, Spaces for Souls Founder, Priscilla Forde, led the event conceptualization and delivery for an Urban Thinkers Campus event focused on International Practices of Placemaking and Place Management in South Africa.

In efforts to expand the boundaries of traditional place management practice, our roundtable introduced three case studies from communities across South Africa, each grappling with inadequate delivery of urban services, as well as present-day struggles connected to the former apartheid spatial planning system. These case studies demonstrated the necessary nature of addressing past and present social ills and illuminated insights to frame place management as a tool to advance social transformation.

Our discussion included how socially responsive placemaking practice materializes in these contexts and how place management takes shape in communities characterized by informal and inconsistent access to resources, yet housing changemakers active in advancing efforts to move closer to socio-spatial transformation.

Below, you can find the event recording separated into three sections including:

• Intro + Placemaking in Johannesburg: Strengthening to Develop a Shared Public Space in Jeppestown

  • presented by Ayanda Roji (Centre on African Public Spaces and Johannesburg City Parks and Zoo)

• Safety and Peace through Urban Upgrading: The Helenvale Case Study

  • presented by Debbie Hendricks (Mandela Bay Development Agency)

• Space As An Aspirational Reprieve in Township (Diepsloot) + Final Q&A

  • presented by Nokwanda Zakiyyah Shabangu and Palesa Moreku (the Wot-If? Trust).