Abstract
The urban policy assumption of public space’s generative capacity for cohesion stands out as limited in the face of the reality of South African urban public space. Drawing on observations and experiences in a range of Johannesburg public spaces, we critique the assumption contained in international, national, and local South African urban policies about cohesive public space. We argue that assuming the agency of people as tending towards cohesion and that the agency of space is enough to ensure this because it is necessarily similarly cohesive, is incorrect. Likewise, assuming the primacy of the agency of space is misleading. This dichotomy of relationships focussing on space as cohesive, and people as influenced by space, requires a third element. That third element is understanding space as an amplifier of the norms people chose or appear forced to practice which exist beyond public space. This imparts the necessity of acknowledging the existence of contestation and conflict alongside cohesion and collaboration in public space, and allows for a more accurate and subsequently more effective understanding of public space, particularly in the post-segregation context. Along this vein we propose approaching public spaces through an appreciation for their complex multiple simultaneous realities, including cohesion, collaboration, tension, contestation, and even conflict as a few examples. Without seeking to imply a dichotomous categorisation, we call this approach the cohesion-contestation spectrum.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Professor Mfaniseni Sihlongonyane of the Wits School of Architecture and Planning for his close read of previous drafts of this paper. The mentorship and guidance provided are much appreciated. We would also like to thank colleagues who attended our presentations at WiSER’s seminar series, and the Faces of the City, for providing insightful feedback and useful provocations. The authors acknowledge the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), as the funders of the Wits-TUB-UNILAG Urban Lab, the National Research Foundation of South Africa (NRF) as the funders of the Spatial Justice and Urban Resilience project, as well as the Life in the City scholarship program at the Wits School of Governance and the Centre for Urbanism and Built Environment Studies respectively. Finally, we acknowledge the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg, South Africa) where Postdoctoral positions and visiting fellowships allowed for the completion of this research and its early stages of writeup, as well as the University of Western Cape for continued support through revisions and editing.
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Rawhani, C., Middelmann, T. Public space and the cohesion-contestation spectrum. GeoJournal 88, 3535–3548 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10817-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-022-10817-y