Discovering place: promoting place and the ecological functioning of a landscape in ruin

Abstract

The central aim of the project is to explore green infrastructure (GI) within an urban context in the Global South. Pauleit et al (2017:5) defines urban green infrastructure as “...a strategic planning approach that aims at developing networks of green and blue spaces in urban areas that are designed and managed to deliver a wide range of ecosystem services. Interlinked with GI planning on a landscape scale, urban GI planning aims at creating multifunctional networks on different spatial levels, from urban regional to city and neighbourhood planning. Due to its integrative, multifunctional approach, urban GI planning can consider and contribute to a broad range of policy objectives related to urban green spaces, such as conservation of biodiversity, adaptation to climate change, and supporting the green economy.” Green infrastructure planning methods will be explored specifically to address the problem of lost space within public open space in the city. Lost spaces are defined by Trancik (1986) as: “...the undesirable urban areas that are in need of redesign – antispaces, making no positive contribution to the surroundings or users. They are ill-defined, without measurable boundaries, and fail to connect elements in a coherent way” (Trancik 1986:4). Nonetheless, Trancik (1986) argues that these spaces can provide opportunities to designers to redevelop and rediscover hidden resources in the urban landscape. This project identifies opportunities of how lost spaces can be redeveloped through green infrastructure planning, as well as through the celebration of the existing cultures in the urban landscape of Atteridgeville, with particular focus on Atteridgeville’s existing food culture, in the form of street food. Additionally, the urban space reveals the opportunity to integrate the historic farming culture. Although areas of farming activity have rapidly been reduced since the 1940’s, many areas still showcase the Atteridgeville communities’ interest and dependence on farming activity. The sites of urban farming appears in a variety of different spaces in the urban form. Farming activity in Atteridgeville has the potential to be formalised and integrated with the culinary activities to form relationships between farmers and culinary workers and to allow culinary workers to grow their own vegetables for cooking and selling. An additional culture with the potential to be celebrated and integrated with culinary activities is the jazz culture, a well-known tourist attraction of the capital (Atteridgeville Township Tour 2022). Developing the public space with a variety of performance spaces allow the opportunity for tourism and development of the culinary activities, developing Atteridgeville as a future destination point within the City of Tshwane.