Doctoral Degrees (Geography and Environmental Studies)

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Browsing Doctoral Degrees (Geography and Environmental Studies) by Author "Geyer, H. S."

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    Negotiating grey spaces: A southernised relational analysis of customary land-use regulation mechanisms in peri-urban Informal mixed-use developments - A case study of the Helderberg District in Cape Town
    (Stellenbosch : Stellenbosch University, 2021-12) Geyer, H. S.; Donaldson, Ronnie; Stellenbosch University. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dept. of Geography and Environmental Studies.
    ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The study investigates the phenomenon of mixed-use development in informalised public housing (Colloquially referred to as RDP housing) developments in the Helderberg region of the City of Cape Town Metropolitan Municipality in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. This settlement is ironically termed the Location by its residents. There is an irony that these informal mixed-use developments have several attributes of smart growth, such as high densities, affordable housing, accessibility, employment opportunities, etc., in contrast to zoned formal settlements that mostly do not have these characteristics. Informal mixed- use developments occur without the influence of zoning, but is informally regulated through customary land management systems (CLMS). Another irony is that these ‘smartified’ settlements are by no means ideal spaces to live and are generally regarded as unsustainable modes of living due to its informal nature by formal actors. This study investigates these paradoxes in terms of Relational theory and Southern theory, analysing how space is actively produced, organised, and regulated in the everyday life politic of the actor. The study analysed three research problems: Is informal mixed-use development smart, i.e., sustainable? How are these settlements regulated in a CLMS? And how can we plan and zone for these settlements? The study used an ethnomethodological research method to analyse these problems using in-depth interviews. The research results indicate that the mixed-use informalisation of RDPs creates a juxtapositional and contradictory urbanism, a Heterotopia. Informality creates liveable, polymorphic spaces from the marginalised and segregated Location. It develops several smart growth characteristics, not for aesthetic reasons but to make space functional and personal for the subaltern. This creates a new mode of urbanism that gives the actor the freedom to produce their own urban, but it also disconnects the actor from the city as an informal with an uncertainty of rights and standing, it limits the accumulation of wealth, and it creates dangerous and unhealthy living conditions. The Street, a local CLMS self-regulates informal mixed land-uses in the Location. These highly organised, democratic, and transparent organisations record their transactions in ‘black’ books. The Street layers authorities and procedures to create an open and idiosyncratic method of negotiating informal land-use externalities. This system is based on the principles of Ubuntu, which customarily defines propertied relations and incentivises self-regulation of land-uses, enabling the Street committees to provide several voluntary magisterial functions. It provides de facto security for informal land uses, but also complements and reinforces the role of the state in certain limited functions. However, this is also an imperfect system that struggles to regulate non-privatised externalities and accommodate ethnic plurality. The Street committees are also often dysfunctional or corrupt. The combination of informal mixed-uses and CLMS creates a legal grey zone in the Location with alternate zonings, legislations and polycentric authorities and a hybridity of regulations. This peri-urbanisation of the Location unmaps space and protects tenure but does not provide enough legitimacy for novel policing through zoning. This delegitimises zoning but it also creates a new role for planning and zoning, away from traditional socio-technical management by specialists to a more pragmatic and selective enforcement of zoning based on common law and substantial relations tests, in close collaboration with the Streets. Although this is by no means without its challenges, continually operating within a criticality of instabilities and crises, it does, however, strengthen the role of the state as a final and objective authority and benevolent provider of services. The Location thus has the best of both worlds: a formally zoned substructure and a peri-urbanised informal top structure that provides citizenship and agency to the subaltern.