PRUEBA DE LA HIPÓTESIS GENERAL

The description of Khayelitsha formation and evolution is essential to understand the unbuilt space, and consequently the existing or potential public open space. The following diagrams show a portion of Harare district (Figure 64 and Figure 65) within Khayelitsha that does not include any planned public space.

The analysed portion includes also the Endlovini informal settlement south of Mew Wey Road. The planned infrastructure (Figure 66) provides a typical suburban sprawl area characterised by low density, monofunctional and car-dependent community. Each single-storey house lies in its small plot without any hierarchy (Figure 67). In addition, no relationship between the street and the house/ private space is defined apart from providing car access to each plot. With this approach, pedestrian movement is not considered. The diagrams 68 and 69 show how extensions and backyard shacks densify the formal built space (normally within the formal plots) and, simultaneously, how informal settlement grew organically south of Mew Way Road and along it.

Fig. 64: Area of analysis: key plan, by M. Bodino³⁰⁷

307 Aerial map of Khayelitsha (2014). Data source: National Geo-spatial Information (NGI) Department. (Retrieved by NGI office March 3, 2016).

Fig. 65: Portion of Harare. Aerial photo, 2014³⁰⁸

308 Aerial map of Khayelitsha. Data source: National Geo-spatial Information (NGI) Department. (Retrieved by NGI office March 3, 2016).

5.2 Khayelitsha. Spatial analysis 135

Fig. 66: Infrastructure diagram, by M. Bodino, 2018

Fig. 67: Formal housing, by M. Bodino, 2018

Fig. 68: Extensions (blue), backyard-shacks (yellow), by M. Bodino, 2018

Fig. 69: Informal settlements, by M. Bodino, 2018

5.2 Khayelitsha. Spatial analysis 137 The density is slightly higher along main routes. Small shops and commercial activities, denied during the apartheid, mushroomed all around occupying containers, shacks and extended spaces along the more popular streets in order to answer to local needs and to provide little profit for local inhabitants³⁰⁹. According Barosky, “the apartheid government deliberately did not provide adequate services and infrastructure to the township as it sought to limit the number of legal black urban residents” (2014, 9).

Fig. 70: Google street view images, by Google, 2009³¹⁰

309 In the first image, a container is used to stock prefabricated panels sold to build shacks. In the other images, a hair salon shop and fruit and vegetable retailer are visible on the right.

310 Image capture November 2009. Copyright Google 2018. The first two image have Endlovini informal settlement on the right side of the figure and Harare on the left side (opposite situation for the third image). February 28 2018. Retrieved from:

https://www.google.it/maps/@34.060287,18.667805,3a,75y,279.62h,79.46t/data=!3m6!1e1!3 m4!1sVx3RvswQupYfGV7WVXmwgA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

The figure-ground diagram and its elaborations (Figure 71, 72 and 73) demonstrate the scattered feature of the settlement, hence these figures are useful to abstract some concepts about public open space in townships as Khayelitsha.

The unbuilt space was not thought together with the built space, and this phenomenon is very common in many other contemporary urban environments all over the world. The potential public open space is visible in figure 73, where the unfenced space³¹¹ (for the formal area) and the unbuilt space (for the informal area) are pointed out. The public open space is unexpectedly more interesting in the informal settlement where the unbuilt space serves directly the built space³¹². The scale of the two public spatial patters is different, but in both there is no hierarchy. In fact, informality works at a smaller scale. Firstly, the location of the shacks depends on the negotiations between people about their habits, activities and their experience about issues like fire, weather and so on. Secondly, space value is extraordinarily high as the accessibility to a piece of it could represent an income. Even if in informal areas there is an informal organization of habitants³¹³, it is very rare to find big open spaces. Instead, it is quite more common the find small open spaces which are shared and used for different activities.

Fig. 71: Figure-ground diagram – built space in black, by M. Bodino, 2018

311 The fenced space corresponds to the private space therefore the unfenced is the space which is potentially public open space.

312 Considering that most of the formal buildings are housing, they have not designed to have a relationship with the space around them.

313 It is quite common to have community leaders as reference points.

5.2 Khayelitsha. Spatial analysis 139

Fig. 72: Unbuilt space in black, by M. Bodino, 2018

Fig. 73: Potential public open space, by M. Bodino, 2018

Using Dewar’s words, the streets have been designed as road and not as the primarily form of public space (Le Grange 1994, UN-Habitat 2013 among others).

The programmatic elements of a city have been provided, by without the backbone to keep them together. In fact, there is no hierarchy in the settlement, no reference building in the monotonous environment. The boundary between public and private are not spatially defined. In fact, housings were usually built in the middle of the plot and not necessarily aligned. The edge of the private property is generally defined by an enclosure, rarely by a green fence. Because of high crime rate in the whole Cape Town, this enclosure between public roads and the private space symbolises the will of separation. Walls are as high – and strong and impenetrable – as possible. As a consequence, walking in a township street means to walk within blind walls where physical and spatial separation is stressed. This feeling exacerbates the perception of fear and insecurity. On the contrary, the informal economy has all the interest to be open towards the street. Spatially it occupies the edges between private and public. The main objective of the economic activity is to be visible by the street, where commercial opportunity can happen. At the same time, one of the main consequence is that the economic activity itself activate the street, increasing a feeling of security and “eyes on the streets”³¹⁴.

The archival research and the interviews investigated proof of public buildings or public spaces in the plan of Khayelitsha. The photos collected in the Independent Media Photographic Archive show green space areas visible during the Khayelitsha construction (Figure 74). These spaces were partially open spaces at the service of public buildings, such as schools; and partially open spaces defined as parks (Figure 75) or sport facilities, one of the few forms of public open space planned for black people. The comparison with actual aerial photographs and satellite images³¹⁵ shows that most of the green spaces of the 1990s are currently abandoned or filled with housing. The few green spaces remaining are the ones at the service of public buildings (normally sport fields for schools), which cannot be considered as public open space since they are fenced.

The use (and maintenance) of those spaces is dependent to the structure linked to them. According to the landscape architect Klitzner, “the same pattern of the bigger city is repeated at the scale of Khayelitsha” (interview 2017). In other words, the buffer zones around Khayelitsha have been repeated within the township through the creation of two water systems, that drain towards the ocean;

the railway line in the same direction and Spine Road cutting the settlement in the

314 The expression has been used during author’s interviews with Michael Krause, Nicola Irving, Julian Cooke among others. It is also used in the VPUU manual (Krause et al. 2014, 47).

315 Extremely useful for this analysis has been the use of the 3d application of Maps (Apple).

This tool allows to see Khayelitsha township with a bird eye view and analyse it with different angles. However, it is not possible to understand the exact timing of image capture that has been used to shape the virtual three-dimensional model.

5.2 Khayelitsha. Spatial analysis 141 opposite direction. Therefore, the creation of open parks was conceived to solve only a hydrological problem and not to provide public open spaces for the community. As a consequence, these spaces became soon no man’s land, litter spaces or areas controlled by gangs. These spaces quickly shift from potential meeting and inclusive spaces to conflict zone (De Leo 2016). At the same time, space is not the only reason of neglect or failure of these spaces: economic, social and political aspects should also be considered.

The sandy land on which Khayelitsha has been founded makes it difficult to use open spaces, because of the presence of strong winds that raise the sand³¹⁶ (Figure 76). As described in the chapter 3.2.1, the access to quality public spaces was denied to non-white people. In townships, few fenced and separate areas where labelled public spaces, but they didn’t have the essence nor the quality of city centre public spaces. Within this urban fabric a poor design mix of public facilities was scattered all around and fenced to be easily controlled and defendable (schools, CoCT offices, police stations…). During apartheid, gatherings were discouraged or even prohibited in order to maintain control. At a certain point, streets became social gathering to protest during apartheid (e.g.

Soweto uprising). They simply were the only place in which a large amount of people could meet. Especially in the first years of 1990s, when protests against the apartheid system started to spread all over South Africa, streets finally have been used as public spaces. Images of riots and of dispersed marches have been captured in Khayelitsha (Figure 77) as well as in many other South African townships. This research is not interested in the violence of these events. At the same time, for the first time, major streets in the townships have been use as a place of meeting, as a place to exchange ideas and to denounce common inequalities.

The overall distribution of public facilities within Khayelitsha is described through maps in Chapter 5.3.3, where it will be shown how the public structure was organized at the end of 1990s and how it has been developed in the last two decades (Figure 78 and Figure 79).

316 It has to be considered that most of the pavements in Khayelitsha have never been paved.

Fig. 74: Aerial photo of Khayelitsha construction, 1990³¹⁷

Fig. 75: A park and core housing units in Khayelitsha, 1985³¹⁸

317 This photo has been consulted in the Independent Media Photographic Archive – S15D, Khayelitsha – aerial views only (Special Collections Library, UCT, all rights reserved).

“Khayelitsha, desert”. February 20, 1990.

318 This photo has been consulted in the Independent Media Photographic Archive – S15D, Khayelitsha File 3, 1989-1992 (Special Collections Library, UCT, all rights reserved). “A park and core housing units in Khayelitsha. Planning for the parks includes provision of play equipment, seating, pergolas, trees and shrubs”, May 2, 1985.

5.2 Khayelitsha. Spatial analysis 143

Fig. 76: Sandy roads in Khayelitsha, 1990³¹⁹

Fig. 77: Street used to protest, 1990³²⁰

319 This photo (April 11, 1990) has been consulted in the Independent Media Photographic Archive – S15D, Khayelitsha File 3, 1989-1992 (Special Collections Library, UCT, all rights reserved).

320 This photo has been consulted in the Independent Media Photographic Archive – S15D, Khayelitsha - Unrest (Special Collections Library, UCT, all rights reserved). “Thousands of people walk down Mew Way on their way home after a gathering was dispersed in Zola Budd Road”, October 26, 1990.