Emthonjeni urban park : utilising landscape narratives as an informant for decolonized landscape design approaches

Abstract

The City of Tshwane is largely devoid of formally provided Public Open Space for Afrocentric cultural activities related to nature and landscape – which at present often take place in rural landscapes. This has implications for identity making and feeling ‘at home’ in the city. The aim of this project is to create an urban park that gives the residents of Malusi informal settlement, (who are mostly from rural landscapes and urban settings outside of the highly urbanized province of Gauteng) a feeling of ‘home’ in the city. Simultaneously, the project aims to addressing the shortage of public spaces in the city, and specifically in informal peripheral areas, while also reinstating the City of Tshwane’s Nursery to a functional and meaningful landscape in the urban fabric. The South African landscape, and people’s relationships to it, are deeply scarred by the abhorrent and discriminatory planning of the apartheid and colonial governing systems, evident in the 1913 Natives Land Act (27 of 1913) and the Development Trust and Land Act (18 or 1936). The forceful removal of people from the land has impacted how people now use and relate to spaces, especially in urban environments. Spatial inequality is South Africa, resulting from past laws and race based spatial planning, excluded the needs of Africans in urban areas and persists today. This means that even today most African urban residents stay the furthest from the city due to the inherited apartheid spatial planning patterns, where parks and other natural resource-related services remain limited in light of the high population levels in these areas. The impact of this, is that there are limited spaces, which truly represent African use of space, and which could support the daily, and lifetime needs of urban residents, especially in light of the fact that urbanization remains an upward trend in South Africa and will ultimately further change people’s relationship to the landscape.

The aim of the project is to use the concept of ‘biocultural diversity’ as a tool in designing public open space. Biocultural diversity is an approach that argues against the predominant worldview where culture and nature are in opposition, and instead promotes an argument that they are intertwined. The narratives, and experiences shared by participants in the research project undertaken earlier in the year, as well as the authors own personal understanding of African place-making and use, are used as informants to create an urban park where cultural activities can take place. The design approach also integrates current activities that are happening in an around the existing site, while upgrading the site to be a landscape that connects people from home through the provision of spaces to perform cultural activities, farm, and harvest medicinal plants, and to relate back nature.