Since I have taken up a full time academic
post recently at the University of
Johannesburg, the ‘communities’ that I
most often engage are the communities
of architecture, of knowledge, of learners;
for while action in the field is important
and which we are committed to, so too
is the need to build knowledge and train
future practitioners who have the value
and skills base to be able to undertake
such roles. They are of equal importance,
for one would be severely hindered
without the other. These relationships
are part of what the University of
Johannesburg and my colleagues there
have been trying to build over recent
years.
exists despite overarching economic
structures. Spatial practitioners however
are not sufficiently trained in either,
but nor should they be necessarily.
What is needed I think is to understand
the bandwidth within respective
contexts wherein to affect meaningful
transformation through their own
particular forms of spatial agency.
Generally, as is the case with many other
cities around the world, in many respects
we have an anti-city culture: fragmented,
segregated and car-dominated. In such
contexts urban design should be critical.
I believe architects need to learn to think
more urbanistically (i.e. engaging broader
spatialities), and urban designers
need to think more architecturally
(i.e. engaging more imaginatively and
thematically). With regard to upgrading
In your view, what are the main
challenges for urban planning in South informal settlements specifically, many
skills are lacking to engage this with
Africa? As an example, we previously
sufficient complexity. Re-blocking was
interviewed Sizwe Mxobo, who felt
one recent innovation that addressed
that planning South Africa should
“consider people, and not just space”? several issues in a spatial way such as
City planning is, of course, complex. Many providing emergency vehicle access. But
it also neglected others such as enabling
critiques of our urban environments
further upgrading, natural growth and
provide an economic, namely capitalist,
long-term planning because it locks in
critique; while others also describe the
its arrangements and therefore also the
unknown worlds of the everyday that
About Tariq Toffa
Tariq Toffa is a South African architect and a lecturer in the architecture
department at the University of Johannesburg (UJ). He completed his
professional architectural studies at the University of Cape Town, an
architectural research Masters at Wits University, and studied religious and
constitutional law at the University of Kwazulu-Natal. Toffa has been writing
for URB.im an international platform on social and urban topics and is a
contributor to SHiFT (Social Housing Focus Trust).
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