Re-directing developers: New models of rental housing to re-shape the post-apartheid city?

The role of developers in shaping the built environment has attracted considerable critical attention, often focussing on the overbearing role of powerful, globalised actors in urban development. But there is also evidence that regulatory pathways shape outcomes. Through the case of a large-scale initiative in Johannesburg, South Africa, the “Corridors of Freedom”, we consider whether there is potential for developmental benefit to be gained from redirecting developer interest to create new kinds of built form. Linked to investment in a bus rapid transit system and agile bureaucracy, a model of closely managed low-income rental housing is emerging, although there is evidence of some displacement of the poorest from more informal housing. The study suggests the importance of reassessing the political complexion and potential of state–developer co-operation in urban development, and of looking more closely at the diversity of developers as well as the array of forms of finance mobilised for urban development beyond financialisation

Spatial transformation in south africa : a pipe dream?

Papers presented virtually at the 41st International Southern African Transport Conference on 10-13 July 2023.The newly democratic South Africa in 1994 inherited sprawling, fragmented towns and cities with deep racialized spatial inequalities. Post-apartheid planning has embodied ideas of ‘spatial transformation’: the restructuring of space towards greater equity, efficiency, spatial justice and resilience, enabling more equitable access to jobs, livelihoods and urban services. This has included emphases on urban compaction and densification; promoting residential opportunities for low-income groups close to areas of economic opportunities; developing transport linkages and connections across the city; greater income and land use mix; and the transformation of former black townships particularly through activating economic development in these spaces. Policy and legislative frameworks in support of new approaches to planning have consolidated (although there are still gaps), while spatial development frameworks embodying these ideas have been developed with increasing sophistication and levels of detail, at least in metropolitan areas. There has also been some implementation of innovative projects, policies and processes addressing these ideas, although some have had complex outcomes. Yet 29 years later, South African cities still bear hallmarks of apartheid, and in several respects, the extended, fragmented and unequal spatial patterning of South African towns and cities has intensified. This presentation will provide a reflection on where we have come with regard to spatial transformation, and how and why spatial transformation of the sort initially anticipated in policy has been constrained. It points to the significance of the institutional and political environment; prevailing economic conditions and levels of inequality; the role of various stakeholders, as well as market forces in shaping what planning is able to achieve. While older expectations of spatial transformation might indeed be a pipe dream, more could have been (and could be) achieved. Yet the discourse of failed spatial transformation neglects the spatial changes that are occurring - we see new patterns of densification and intensification alongside growth on the edge; shifts in the racial spatial patterns; inner city change; the growth of informal economic activities and spaces; informal TOD around taxi ranks; new land use mixes; and the growth of economic activities in townships and new high streets. These could be better supported and managed

Evaluation parameters for computer aided design of irrigation systems

The research has entailed the formulation and coding of computer models for the design of pressurized irrigation systems. Particular emphasis has been given to the provision of routines for the evaluation of the expected performance from a designed system. Two separate sets of models have been developed, one for the block or in-field system and one for file mainline netWork. The thesis is presented in three seelions asfollows : * Basic theory, in which the general background to the research is covered. * The models, which includes detailed descriptions of both the design models and the computer programs. * Applications, in which several test casesof both sets of models are reported

Beyond variegation: the territorialisation of states, communities and developers in large-scale developments in Johannesburg, Shanghai and London

Large-scale urban development projects are a significant format of urban expansion and renewal across the globe. As generators of governance innovation and indicators of the future city in each urban context, large-scale development projects have been interpreted within frameworks of “variegations” of wider circulating processes, such as neoliberalisation or financialisation. However, such projects often entail significant state support and investment, are strongly linked to a wide variety of transnational investors and developers and are frequently highly contested in their local environments. Thus, each project comes to fruition in a distinctive regulatory context, often as an exception to the norm, and each emerges through complex interactions over a long period of time amongst an array of actors. We therefore seek to broaden the discussion from an analytical focus on variegated globalised processes to consider three large-scale urban development projects (in Shanghai, Johannesburg and London) as distinctive (transcalar) territorialisations. Using an innovative comparative approach we outline the grounds for a systematic analytical conversation across mega-urban development projects in very different contexts. Initially, comparability rests on the shared features of large-scale developments – that they are multi-jurisdictional, involve long time scales, and bring significant financing challenges. Comparing three development projects we are able to interrogate, rather than take for granted, how wider processes, circulating practices, transcalar actors, and territorial regulatory formations composed specific urban outcomes in each case. Thinking across these diverse cases provides grounds for rebuilding understandings of urban development politics

Conceptualizing African urban peripheries

Recent years have seen a rising interest in peri-urban spaces, urban frontiers and new suburbanisms, including in African contexts. However, given the scale of urban growth and the extreme diversity of formations emerging on the geographical edges of African city-regions, a deeper understanding is needed of the drivers of peripheral urbanisms and the lived experiences of urban change in these spaces. Based on a comparative research project in South Africa and Ethiopia, this article draws out the epistemologies of researching African urban peripheries and presents a new conceptual framework. It offers a language for interpreting processes of peripheral development and change, highlighting five distinct but overlapping logics which we term speculative, vanguard, auto-constructed, transitioning and inherited. Rather than describing bounded peripheral spaces, we argue that these logics can co-exist, hybridize and bleed into each other in different ways in specific places and at different temporal junctures. Centring our methodological practices of comparative analysis, and privileging the voices of those living in urban peripheries, the article employs critical readings of urban scholarship before exploring how these five logics illuminate the complex processes of urban peripheral evolution and transformation. Formulating these logics helps to fill a lacuna in urban conceptualization with potential relevance beyond African contexts

Self-similar solution of a nonsteady problem of nonisothermal vapour condensation on a droplet growing in diffusion regime

This paper presents a mathematically exact self-similar solution to the joint nonsteady problems of vapour diffusion towards a droplet growing in a vapour-gas medium and of removal of heat released by a droplet into a vapour-gas medium during vapour condensation. An equation for the temperature of the droplet is obtained; and it is only at that temperature that the self-similar solution exists. This equation requires the constancy of the droplet temperature and even defines it unambiguously throughout the whole period of the droplet growth. In the case of strong display of heat effects, when the droplet growth rate decreases significantly, the equation for the temperature of the droplet is solved analytically. It is shown that the obtained temperature fully coincides with the one that settles in the droplet simultaneously with the settlement of its diffusion regime of growth. At the obtained temperature of the droplet the interrelated nonsteady vapour concentration and temperature profiles of the vapour-gas medium around the droplet are expressed in terms of initial (prior to the nucleation of the droplet) parameters of the vapour-gas medium. The same parameters are used to formulate the law in accordance with which the droplet is growing in diffusion regime, and also to define the time that passes after the nucleation of the droplet till the settlement of diffusion regime of droplet growth, when the squared radius of the droplet becomes proportionate to time. For the sake of completeness the case of weak display of heat effects is been studied.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure

Including Women? (Dis)junctures Between Voice,

Abstract Integrated development plans (IDPs) are municipal strategic plans designed to bring about developmental local government. They have been criticised for providing insufficient space for democratic participation. This paper explores the extent to which a marginalised group—women—has been incorporated into the IDP process, in response to three questions. First, how have IDP participatory processes incorporated women’s voice, and are the new participatory spaces realising their transformative potential? Secondly, how have women’s interests and a gender perspective been mainstreamed in the IDP, and has it promoted transformation? And finally, at the interface between officials and women themselves, how are IDP projects implemented and does agency promote or impede the goals of gender equality? A study of three KwaZulu-Natal municipalities reveals some achievements, but unequal gender relations have not been transformed. These case studies demonstrate some of the complexities and difficulties in the practice of democratic governance

Depression and Motivation

Among the characteristic features of depression is a diminishment in or lack of action and motivation. In this paper, I consider a dominant philosophical account which purports to explain this lack of action or motivation. This approach comes in different versions but a common theme is, I argue, an over reliance on psychologistic assumptions about action–explanation and the nature of motivation. As a corrective I consider an alternative view that gives a prominent place to the body in motivation. Central to the experience of depression are changes to how a person is motivated to act and, also as central, are changes to bodily feelings and capacities. I argue that broadly characterizing motivation in terms of bodily capacities can, in particular, provide a more compelling account of depressive motivational pathology