‘NATIVE’ TOWNSHIPS IN SOUTH AFRICA

(Calderwood, 1953, p31)

• Mass housing system - Cost minimization

• Largely technical approach

• Apartheid remains the “elephant in the room’’

• Scientific (Housing standards and neighborhood planning)

• Stresses the importance social surveys

• Works used : P. Geddes, L. Mumford, C. Stein

• “Neighborhood unit", "British New Town Movement"

• Calderwood : "(social, scientific) survey before plan" - core principle, but Apartheid did not follow . Focused on technical, not social surveys

• minimum standards - 3 housing types

• First we must erect a standard of living In terms of housing, the minimum standards are set by objective criteria of air, water, sunlight, heat, privacy and so forth (Mumford cited in Calderwood, 1953 p 14

• HOWEVER ‘’ information of this type relating to the urbanizing Black population was either not available or still to be obtained‘’

Case A plots too long and narrow Case B plots reduced a space used in communal open space directly attached to dwellings. Accommodating pedestrian movement Case B is preferable.

• Suggested to:

• Humanizing the inevitable monotony of the township

• Landscaping and the encouragement of individual private gardens

• Reflective of the Modernist position „pre machine age Garden City ‟ to the modern world

• Strong advocacy for home ownership > contradiction to the government stance temporary residents of „white ‟ urban areas)

• WAIVER

• Administrative point of view > easier to administer .

• National point of view > main bastions against Communism and other social ills

Conclusion

• Modernism's failure : too focused on technical, not social ,(FOR US, 1962 )

• 16 June 1976, police fired into a large crowd of schoolchildren in the township of Soweto, Johannesburg

• Native townships became symbol of revolt to end apartheid leading to democratic elections in 1993

• Apartheid : embedded in South African systems, hard to change (beyond laws) due to " spatial segregation "

• “Most inefficient cities“ ( Mabin & Smit, 1997) . - spatial separation, fragmentation, sprawling, social and economic inequalities