Project Location: Boksburg CBD

Project Focus Area: Urban Infrastructure & Inequality

Supervisor: Paul Devenish 

Co-Supervisors: Tariq Toffa 

Project Description: 

Historical impressions of rapid urbanisation around specialised mining and manufacturing industries as well as the subsequent decentralised, monofunctional, segregated and unequal spatial policies and practices of the apartheid regime are significantly embedded in the development patterns of many established South African urban contexts. These urban development characteristics, premised on racial othering, resulted in unequal resource distribution that currently inhibits inclusive and sustainable development. In this post-apartheid South Africa, many previously white-only areas experienced de-gentrification as the previously disadvantaged non-white residents migrated closer to economic centres. However, many of these disadvantaged residents did not receive or complete a recognized education limiting their employment access into the surrounding specialised industries. Consequently, this forced them to establish informal enterprises or enter employment as unskilled labour. For this design project, ‘urban infrastructure and inequality’ is the topic of investigation into Boksburg’s CBD. This region of study is reflective of past injustices, associated with racial segregation, and the unequal distribution of urban infrastructure. Moreover, its past spatial planning has brought about a decentralised economy and comprises of many monofunctional facilities resulting in an urban fabric that is ineffective in the provision of the community’s socio-economic needs. A current gap in the Boksburg CBD urban fabric is the limited opportunity for community gathering, recreational spaces, and cultural programmes. In addition, educational programmes that target the mature demographic of Boksburg to acquire the necessary skills and knowledge to run a business or further their trade within the area is also explored. From this background understanding the design question of “how can the interconnection of separate systems of Boksburg's post-industrial economy, education infrastructure, and nature, provide a sustainable and resilient node to rehabilitate and revitalise the marginalised community and enable a right to the city?” is derived.

The aims of this design intervention are to centralise and network with the recreational, economic and transport functions of Boksburg’s CBD, to provide a richer, more meaningful, sensitive, exciting, and connected context.  An architectural intervention at the Boksburg bus depot aims to relocate the bus depot and to transform and repurpose the deteriorating site into a centralised hub of socio-economic and educational exchange. Inspired by the function of an artisanal and lifestyle centre, the project utilises and adapts the existing infrastructures of the bus depot into a walkable urban environment that comprises of a mixed-use community of retail, restaurants, and entertainment, to facilitate a live-work-play lifestyle and to provide and promote an improved quality of life for the residents and dwellers of the Boksburg CBD precinct. Where lifestyle centres usually provide and concentrate high-end socio-economic amenities to an area, this project aims to utilise, integrate, and activate critical urban systems of Boksburg CBD to provide a designed environment that accommodates the unemployed, unskilled, and previously disadvantaged user through key skill development programmes. The project provides the necessary skills and knowledge transfer for trade and business operations through programmes relevant to the Boksburg context. In this space, dwellers within the Boksburg community can experience a place of culture that furthers the community’s sense of identity, pride, and place. The overall success of the project is intended to contribute to neighbourhood revitalisation, improved consumer confidence, increase private investment and municipal revenue. Furthermore, through this urban intervention the users become an active participant with access to opportunities that contribute to and shape the Boksburg fabric and its processes. This provides the user with the right to the city. The area of design resolution, derived from the urban interconnectivity between the relevant topics of nature, recreation, economy, and education, is focussed on food systems which include water collection, seeding, nurturing, harvesting, food production and marketing.