City-making from below : a call for communities of resistance and reconstruction

Abstract

This article laments the exclusion of small, local communities, voices and visions, from participating in making the city. It makes a case for ‘small communities’ practising resistance and reconstruction in multiple ways and places. Instead of viewing such actions as naïve or a-political, it calls for an understanding of such practices as alternatives to ‘top-down’ urban processes, and, as such, representing a different and necessary, critical political imagination. In doing so, it fuses insights from equity planning theories, praxis-based liberation theological approaches, and emancipatory community development approaches. It argues that communities, aware of the forces that would seek to tear them apart, can play a significant role in making cities ‘from below’. This, it is argued, would be even more possible through such communities finding each other, and nurturing deep solidarities, until broad-based, interconnected movements take shape, embodying concrete signs of wholeness.

Die artikel betreur die uitsluiting van klein plaaslike gemeenskappe, stemme en visies van deelname in stadsbouprosesse. ’n Saak word gemaak vir ‘klein gemeenskappe’ wat op verskeie maniere en in verskillende plekke weerstand bied en heropbou. In plaas daarvan om sulke praktyke as naïef of a-polities te sien, maak die artikel ’n oproep tot die verstaan van sulke praktyke as alternatiewe tot stedelike prosesse ‘van bo af’, en as verteenwoordigend van ’n ander en noodsaaklike, kritiese politieke verbeelding. In die proses vermeng dit insigte van ekwiteitsbeplanningsteorieë, praxis-gebaseerde bevrydingsteologieë, en emansiperende gemeenskapsontwikkelingsprosesse. Daar word gesuggereer dat gemeenskappe, bewus van die kragte wat hulle wil verdeel, ’n betekenisvolle rol kan speel in stadsbouprossese ‘van onder af’. Die bewering word gemaak dat dit selfs meer moontlik sou wees as sulke gemeenskappe mekaar sou vind en ’n diep solidariteit met mekaar sou kweek, totdat breë-gebaseerde, verbinde bewegings vorm begin aanneem, en konkrete tekens van heelheid beliggaam.

Atikele ena e lla/tletleba ka ho tlohellwa kantle ha ditjhaba tse nnyane tsa selehae, mantswe a tsona le pono ya tsona, ho nkeng karolo bakeng sa ho etsa/thea toropo. Atikele e etsa nyewe bakeng sa “ditjhaba tse nnyane” tse etsang kganyetso le kaho botjha ka mekgwa e mengata le dibakeng tse ngata. Ntle le ho sheba di ketsahalo tse tjena jwalo ka tse se nang boiphihlelo kapa tsa sepolotiki, ho batlahala kutlwisiso diketsahalong tse tjena, jwalo ka dikgetho bakeng sa mekgwa ya setoropo ya ho tloha hodimo ho ya tlase (top-down urban processes), mme ka mokgwa oo, e tlisa dipono ho tswa ho ditheori tsa thero tekano, mekgwa ya theori ya tokoloho e itshetlehileng hodima praxis (praxis-based liberation theoretical approaches), le mekgwa ya ntshetsopele ya setjhaba sa tokoloho (emancipatory community development approaches). Atikele ena e hlalosa hore ditjhaba, tse elang hloko matla a ka batlang ho di kgaola ka lehare, di ka bapala karolo ya bohlokwa bakeng sa ho etsa ditoropo “ho tswa tlase”. Ho ngangisanwa ka hore sena se ka kgonahala haholo ka hore ditjhaba di fumanane/fihlellane, hape le ho hodisa kopano e tiileng, ho fihlella mekgatlo e kopaneng e nka sebaka; e bontsha matshwao a tsitsitseng a kopano.