Project Location: Pretoria 

Project Focus Area: Urban Infrastructure and Inequality 

Supervisor: Paul Devenish 

Project Description: 

The foundation of this project is based on the conviction that the transport sector plays a vital role in integrating isolated and historically segregated spaces and connecting people to vast opportunities. This follows the 1996 White Paper on National Land Transport Policy, recognizing transport as one of its five priority areas for socio-economic development (Jennings, 2015: 767). However, state efforts at strengthening this sector with resources to reduce inequality have not been met following the World Bank's acknowledgement that South Africa is the most unequal country (World Bank, 2022: 11). Such a complex matter calls for interventions that go beyond the provision of hard infrastructure, but instead providing soft infrastructures, capable mobilizing people out of systemic inequalities.

Consequently, to shift the narrative of transport infrastructure to one of mobility, city planning should adopt cross-disciplinary influences that could translate different outlooks of infrastructure from an urban scale to a human/pedestrian scale.

The study demonstrates the challenges connected with fixed dimensions of interpreting transport infrastructure and the importance of incorporating user knowledge and experiences into the guiding frameworks of efficient public transport. Certain issues identified in the study aim to address initiatives based on policymaking related to public transportation. As a result, more research might be motivated to examine the forms of social/cultural infrastructures favourable to public transportation interchanges to streamline public transportation services. This could be particularly significant.