Output details

Mobile Johannesburg

This book chapter furthers the author's research on the post-apartheid transformation of Johannesburg. It responded, primarily, to the research question of what official (formal) and unofficial (informal) modes of city making have resulted from the racial liberation of urban space in the city. In the book chapter, new relations between the body and the city, fear and desire and living and dying in the city are analysed, along with modes of city making that have negotiated with or responded to them. The research focused on urban conditions and sites of intense mobility and flux: inner city suburbs, the taxi industry and the HIV aids epidemic. It was undertaken through internet based research, site visits and discussions with local stakeholders, architects and urban designers. The chapter concludes with some provisional remarks about the city as a grotesque body, drawing from the writings of Michel Bakhtin. An accompanying graphic, developed for the chapter from a table published by the City of Johannesburg, was published independently in Environment and Planning A 45: 1260-1261, 2013. ISSN 0308-518X (print) 1472-3409 (online), DOI: 10.1068/a45679.The research was presented at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design in 2011 <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEdk5xfmbvw>