Abstract:
The challenge of spatial transformation remains a key concern in the City of Tshwane’s
(COT) reimagining of spatial access and agency. The combination of significant highway
construction, inadequate development and land use planning, and an increasing need for
housing, results in low density metropolitan areas and strip development along unstable and
fragmented urbanisation. Combating inequality remains a testing undertaking, as the state
lead endeavours at reducing inequality in our democratic dispensation have been
unsuccessful in mobilising populations out of poverty.
The study seeks to understand how matters of equity in the implementation of public
transport have causal effects on commuters experience and aspects of user awareness
integration in the service development. With context focused on the public transport nexus in
the Hatfield, Tshwane and other adjoining networks. A variety of methods of inquiry are
used, which include the analysis of hard desktop mapping, and ethnographic studies of
observations and semi structured interviews. These are conducted to investigate and
compare the misalignment in public transport efficiency indicators.
The study is based on an epistemic justice perspective and the underlying soft infrastructure
characteristics of user-centred hermeneutic injustice, as the subject highlights how
unintentional acts of inequality can be carried out through social co-ordination. Results
suggest other categories in legitimising effective transport are needed and that user
knowledge perspectives in the logical formulation of mobility infrastructure. Incorporating
commuter knowledge and intuitions may also offer insights into multimodal transport
integration, ultimately influencing mobility and welfare.
