Research: Johannesburg Emerging Diverging Metropolis

posted by Ismail Farouk at Tuesday, April 03, 2007

In February 2006 I was hired as an exhibition researcher for the exhibition, Johannesburg Emerging / Diverging Metropolis' which was held in Medrisio, Switzerland. Find out more about my contribution here. Below please find the official text from the exhibition:

With an approximate metropolitan population of 3,5 million (of a total for South Africa of 40 million), a large share of its Province (Gauteng)'s 33% contribution to the country's GDP, a high level of infrastructural and technological development, a cultural and creative vitality that radiates throughout the entire country, and a growing significance in the global economy, Johannesburg is demographically and economically not only a leading metropolis on the African continent, but it also constitutes an illuminating point of reference when trying to understand the new global urban system under way.

Furthermore, Johannesburg also brings together with particular intensity all the problems inherited from a dramatically divided past under the apartheid regime: territorial and urban fragmentation, ageing infrastructure, a slowing industrial economy based on mining, economic and social polarization, a tremendous shortage of dwellings and services in the most disadvantaged sectors, the proliferation of new informal settlements, etc. It is no wonder that many of the most significant urban and architectural projects in the country are concentrated here.

The exhibition here outlined offersa - gainst the backdrop of an outlook comprising the serious problems inherited from apartheid - an overview of the transformations under way in the city and its metropolitan area, and a selection of the most interesting architectural and urban projects completed or under way in the last ten years (1995-2005).

The common denominator of the best of these projects is twofold: firstly, they implement architectural and planning practices to overcome the social, political and cultural divisions of the past and to respond to the fluidity of the post apartheid landscape; secondly, and simultaneously, they contribute to develop South Africa's enormous economic potential and to make its principal cities (most particularly Johannesburg, but also Cape Town and Durban) international points of reference.

In addition, the exhibition also includes a selection of daring projects by former students of the School of Architecture and Urban Planning of University of Witwatersrand, dealing with some of the most pressing and often intractable issues that the city faces.

Finally, an extraordinary series of photos by David Goldblatt documents and portrays how ordinary people are responding to these projects, and their agency in transforming the city; how their initiatives and the necessities of their lives (economic, social and cultural) rewrite the public and private spaces of the apartheid city (streets, parks, apartment blocks, traffic intersections, vacant land) into a fluid and contested urban terrain; and how, in the face of this, other citizens are retreating into private, parallel worlds, behind gates, fences and guard houses.

With its multi-dimensional approach, the exhibition shows how the transformations under way are often the scene of serious conflict between, on the one hand, the will to develop an urban policy that prioritizes the objective of greater justice and social and territorial balance and, on the other, strategies and large specific projects aimed at transforming an industrial economy to a financial and services based economy and at increasing competitiveness and profitability - strategies and projects that very often mean consolidating the territorial and urban guidelines handed down by apartheid.

By this token, beyond its intrinsic interest, the current South African experience, and more specifically the Johannesburg experience, speak to other 'emerging' countries and cities that are reinventing themselves in the wake of complex and divided pasts.