Centre for Urbanism & Built Environment Studies

Start main page content

Kelvin-Alexandra-Frankenwald City Studio

This edition of the City Studio focuses on a 1km to 3km radius around the Marlboro Gautrain Station. It engages the enduring and deepening South African challenge of urban inequality by identifying parameters of spatial justice, urban resilience and sustainability and by exploring practices, agency and opportunities to achieve these.

Introduction

The City Studio involves students across Architecture, Planning, Urban Design, Urban Studies and related fields. Through studios, projects, assignments and research topics in the area, they receive cutting edge insights. They are equipped with the necessary realism, engagement techniques, agency and confidence to confront, through their careers, the spatial inequalities that exacerbate risk and vulnerability. 雷速体育_雷速体育直播s research with and alongside staff in a co-productive and participatory manner, contributing to a collective understanding of the complex urban challenges and opportunities. 

Aims & Objectives

Our aim is to enhance students’, communities’ and stakholders’ ability to realize an innovative, realistic and transformative vision for significant urban development in the diverse areas surrounding the Marlboro Station. The outputs of the City Studio are strategically arranged around the following objectives: 

  • Advancing knowledge and understanding of the area through innovative, participatory and transformative techniques; 
  • Developing and rendering transformative visualizations of an alternative future for the currently segregated, disconnected and deeply unequal Kelvin-Alexandra-Frankenwald complex.
  • Contributing to sakeholder and public engagement, and communication through a variety of methods: 
    • Participatory methods including transect walks 
    • Interactive workshops, roundtables, ‘urban café’ 
    • Exhibitions, space activations, design-build interventions 
    • Posters, blogs, opinion pieces 
    • Popular and academic publications, including an edited book

Research themes

雷速体育_雷速体育直播 research themes (2024/2025)

  • The role of reciprocity in overcoming socio-spatial inequality and segregation (Dr Paulo Moreira, CUBES)
  • Spatial justice and neighbourhood transformation (Prof Marie Huchzermeyer)
  • Governing for spatial justice (Dr Caryn Abrahams, WSG)
  • Housing design (Nomonde Gwebu, SoAP)
  • Understanding the residential real estate sector (Dr Sarita Pillay, CUBES)
  • Land tenure and a role for community land trusts (Dr Neil Klug)
  • Water, pollution, sanitation and gender (Prof Sarah Charlton, Nqobile Malaza, Dr Priscila Izar, CUBES)

PhD student research themes:

  • Lived experience in Stjwetla’s temporary relocation areas (Michelle Tatenda Sonono, supervised by Prof Marie Huchzermeyer)
  • Architectural design atelier: towards an alternative low income housing model (Nomonde Gwebu, supervised by Prof Nnamdi Elleh)

Masters student research themes (2024):

  • The intersection of informality, migration and climate change through the case of Stjwetla informal settlement in Johannesburg (Thithi Maseko – MUS HHS, supervised by Marie Huchzermeyer) 
  • Township economic development and Land Value Capture: the case of 
  • Frankenwald, Johannesburg (Ronald Mashalane – MScDP, supervised by Dr Neil Klug) 
  • The Influence of Smart Growth Development on Housing Diversity: A Case Study of the Frankenwald Urban Development Framework (Singita Mathebula – MScDP, supervised by Prof Sarah Charlton) 
  • Community centres as models for sustainable development and integration: Making a case for Stjwetla, Johannesburg (Kolobetso Selemena – MUS UM, supervised by Dr Paulo Moreira)

Honours in Urban and Regional Planning student research themes (2024):

  • Legal responses to different forms of urban land occupation: an exploration through the case of Stjwelta, Johannesburg (Sinalo Sojanga, supervised by Dr Neil Klug) 
  • Investigating urban compounding and public space economies in Alexandra, Johannesburg (Kwanele Khanyile, supervised by Nkosilenhle Mavuso) 
  • Urban planning and food sovereignty: small-scale urban agriculture in Johannesburg (Dimpho Kgwete, supervisd by Amanda Williamson)

Steering Committee

This edition is directed by Prof Marie Huchzermeyer, who is also part of the City Studio Steering Committee together with Aneri Heukelman (coordinator), Nomonde Gwebu (Architecture rep), Muhammed Suleman (Planning rep), and Dr Paulo Moreira (Centennial Postdoctoral Fellow).

Share