Xu Yang by Yang Xu

PORTFOLIO CONQUERING THE STREET BRAAMFONTEIN, JOHANNESBURG XU YANG

Location

We can see that different groups of people are complex in this area. This project intends to develop a Spatial Design Strategy for the future development of inclusive public space in Juta Street, Braamfontein. This is a neighborhood, which sits on the apartheidplanned railway border between the inner city Johannesburg and the northern suburbs.

1.PROJECT BACKGROUND

Johannesburg is a big city in South Africa with strong economic background.

South Africa

Gauteng

JohannesburgBraamfontein

POPULATION 54,956,900

POPULATION 12,272,263

POPULATION 4,434,827

80.2% BLACK AFRICAN 8.8% COLOURED 8.4% WHITE AFRICAN 2.5% ASIAN

74.1% BLACK AFRICAN 3.5% COLOURED 19.1% WHITE AFRICAN 2.6% ASIAN

JO'BURG

LANGUAGES 11 OFFICIAL

-DENSEST PROVINCE

RELIGION 79.8% CHRISTIAN 1.5%MUSLIM 1.2%HINDU 0.3%TRADITIONAL AFRICAN 0.2% JEWISH 15.1% NO RELIGIONS

-MAJOR BUSINESS & TRADE POINT

CITY OF GOLD GANGSTERS PARADISE BRAAMFONTEIN:

-PRODUCES 10% OF AFRICA'S GDP

POPULATION 7000

-LARGE MIGRATORY POPULATION

-MAJOR BUSINESS HUB

-10% LIVE BELOW POVETY LINE

-MAJOR CULTURAL HUB -BIG STUDENT POPULATION -MAJOR COMMUTER ZONE

POLICE WORKERS SECRET STREET VENDORS

FORMAL

MIGRANT WOMEN

FILM Johannesburg From Its MARGINS

MARGINS

SHADOW CITY INVISIBLE

This is our first brief of this project. We were asked to make a short film with 20 pictures in different topic. Our topic is 'Johannesburg From Its Margins', which help me to understand johannesburg by different aspect. We read the book about the migrants women and asylum seekers to discover the conflict point in this city.

Global issues

CRITICAL REFLECTION 1

• Youth Unemployment • Economic Inequality (GINI index)

Local issues • Legacy of 40 years of disinvestment by the Apartheid government • Ethnic segregation of the communities now transformed to • economic segregation • Population expansion, urbanization and climate change has affected the water and sanitation, waste, energy, electricity, transport and social infrastructure • Shadow privatisation of public places • The transformation of the natural, historical, social and economic environmentsover time causes the change of identity. • The gated communities are being built out of the fear of crime. This is further resulting in fragmentation of the city. • Multiple ownership and divided responsibilities make the effective management of a public space difficult. • Safety issues around Nelson Mandella bridge.

South Africa

To be honest, it was my first time to understand South Africa. I think it is a big challenge to develop a spatial design strategy in a mixed area, because we need to consider more about the equity and identity.

Information gathering

The most important finding during the research period is that there is not only one method for you to understanding an area. After making the film about Johannesburg from its margin, I find it can be an effective way to learn the condition and culture of one place from local people’s stories.

• Places should be able to accommodate change over time in a day and at different times of the year which can create continuity to meet the different needs of people. • Public spaces are complex and organic. The best spaces can be achieved by experimenting with short-term improvements that can be tested and refined over many years.

We decide to develop our design proposal by seven principles wich finally were transformed to 4 target. Four of the principles are related to my individual design strategy.

2.POSITIONS

According to the certain resources we have found from different places, we found johannesburg need an acceptable design to highlight the characterisitic itself.

quity

• By retaining the key elements of the heritage, cultural and natural landscape and integrating the new proposals within their existing context the intrinsic quality of the city can be retained. • Designing theSelfpublic spaces as a viable Actualization and meaningful spatial connections within the city’s open spaces will protect and enhance theEsteem environmental resources.

ustainability

Love & Belonging Safety

Physiological Needs

daptability

Group Principles

ultidisciplinary Management

ntegration

• The projects should have a visible and immediate impact to improve the quality of the public environment. Creation of robust public spaces can enable the people not to feel inanity in the places where they spend their time.

dentity

conomic significance

• The initiation, designing and implementation and maintenance of a successful public space requires the involvement of the local planning, environment, social, cultural, technical, educational authorities, the infrastructure department and the community.

PRECEDENTS Lions Park Shade Greensboro AL, 2015

Lions Park is in desperate need of shady spaces under which to gather. They decide to make a shade place for public. The shade structures occupy three different sites in the park. They believe these three sites will stitch the park together.The shading structures will coincide with recently planted trees in the park to create a layered canopy that will change over time and throughout the seasons. REF: Lions Park, Rural Studio, Accessed by 19 Nov 2015, http:// www.ruralstudio.org/projects/lions-park-shade.

SOFTWALKS

611 Broadway #504 New York, NY

Using light, quick and inexpensive amenities mitigate risk and lead to incremental improvements. This shows how small experiments are a highly effective planning strategy for creating change within complex situations with many competing stakeholders. REF: Citysoftwalks

TARGET

Walkable Street Comfortable Sidewalk Occupying Parking lot Re-using Leftover spaces

Left-over space

Leftover Building Leftover Space

To achieve our goals, first we analyzed the site dividing into four spaces; Street, Sidewalks, Parking and Left-over spaces from the perspective of the urban qualities, activities and stakeholdersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; involved in these spaces.

3.CONTEXT & ANALYSIS

We choss Juta Street in Braamfontein as an example to draw our intervention ideas.

Parking & Sidewalk area

Sidewalk Road parking Parking on sidewalk

Traffic network Road Dead end Crossings Cycle Lane Taxi stands

Land-use planning Residential Retail Restaurant School Commercial Industrial Parking

Re: 1:1 Studio

Figure ground map

Resident

Types of Spaces and social groups analysis Morning

Night

higher income residents lower income residents homeless residents

Student university student

Street

Sidewalk

Parking lot

Leftover spaces

4 4

high school learner primary school learner

Worker outdoor ‘formal’ worker ‘informal’ street worker

Based on the given blitz research, we divided 13 social groups in four ensembles: resident, worker, student and visitor. Using graphic, photomontage and maps, we analysed this variety of people in different types of space during the day.

2 1

REF: LOCAL STUDIO

Evening

Afternoon

Social groups + Spaces

coffe shop worker Conflict between retailers and informal street workers

office worker

Retailers provide shadowed spaces

lower income retailer

Visitor tourist regular visitor

Different urban furniture is used as seat

Lack of green areas

Privatization of public space?

We strongly believe that the changes should be done gradually, considering the time as an element of the project. This chapter is to introduce our final interventions of Braamfontein and my reflection on the process of our design work.

4.SPATIAL DESIGN STRATEGY

After identifying the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;urban blind spotsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; and potential areas for re appropriating, we designed the proposal in terms of three phases; short, medium and long term.

Phase 2B (Medium)

Phase 1B (Short)

Phase 3 (Long)

Public Plaza

Walkable Street + Proposal of two storey over existing car park building

Green Walkable Flyover

Walkable Street + Commercial Area

Public Plaza + Underground Car Park

(Short) Phase 1A

(Medium) Phase 2A

STRATEGIES Transformation to a Walkable street in Phases • By using the minimal resources and small investment, producing an To produce diverse walkability • Promoting adaptable walkability in different time frame.

Occupying parking lots • We define as a strategy to “occupy” parts of the streets that are nowadays used by cars, transforming it to pedestrian public spaces, focusing on the interventions in the parking lots of the street.

Transformation to a Walkable street in Phases Sudeshna Sarkar

Tactic 1: Improving walkability within the existing urban fabric by short term interventions Public Participation

local area tours to the artists and architects from the local people

a real-time architecture competition

Give the nearby owners an incentive to develop the space before people get used to the land

Tactic 2: Transforming the street ends to public plaza by medium term interventions

Re-using the leftover space • As Juta Street is becoming a walkable street, there is a great request to re-use the leftover space on the street to attract more residents and tourists to this place.

Comfortable sidewalks • Creating attractive points on the sidewalk to engage people to share and enjoy the sidewalk, using urban furniture and green elements to make sidewalk more walkable and flexible.

Tactic 3: Promoting green public space by long term interventions

Individual commets The strategy of street is the main body of our intevention. This part make up our mind on the whole design process. According to different phases, we adjust our own strategy to the street strategy to achive the harmonize.

Occupying parking lots

Re-using the leftover space

Tactic 1: Containers of Activities

Tactic 1: Re-use Inside Leftover Spaces Restaura n

et Garde tre

f oo

Pub

opping Ma h l S

Situation: plenty of parking lots shows (and promotes) the preference to cars.

Yixin Ma

Alex

Aim: first subversive approach to start the discussion about public spaces. Get in touch with the organisation of the directed allotment (either a school or a retail). They can suggest (or define) the activities in the conteiner.

Tactic 2: Parklet

Tactic 2: Utilize the small open spaces to recreation

Present Informal Trade

Situation: cars occuppies more space than the people themselves. Aim: estabilish a closer relation between the establishment and the public spaces.

Reading time at the leftover

Public furniture can be used as extention of the near retail (also responsible for maintenance). Different activities promote uses day and night.

Tactic 3: Street Vendors Square Situation: blocks with less traffic open possibilities for a walkable city. Stigmatized street vendors are not allowed to work on the area Aim: redefine the street vendorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; restrictions. Governamental institutions should install the necessary infrastructure (such as eletricity points) to realise the open markets. Traffic control will be also necessary.

Tactic 3: Transform Leftover Space to Business

Future Informal Trade When people can be co-creators of their own spaces, those spaces become more welcoming to all.

Pingpong tables bring play to the tables

Individual commets

Retail

Market

Alex transform serveral parking lots into different activities for daily entertainment and informal trade in Juta street, which I think can have a good connection with Yixin and my strategy. It can be a lively street if we can connect our tactics into a complete line.

Strategies

Phase 2a Proposal of Public Plaza

Peace pathlet This sidewalk strategy is for medium term of the walkable braamrontein. From the existing condition we can see that most sidewalk is used for car parking and this street is a peaceful place.

Existing condition

Our strategies about medium terms is to make the peaceful area that around the living and study space into softwalk plaza or green space. So we can make some significant change here.

Sidewalk

Loveday St

Empty street Parking on sidewalk

Green sidewalk Because we exclude the motor vehicle in this area. So it is very important to make a nice street for people to enjoy green and nature. And we also pay attention on the suitable scale of the walking path.

Softwalk

Involved stakeholders

Grenoble Rd

Street vendors square

Social Facilities In Braamfontein, there are many urban leftover spaces which distribute in some abandoned places or gap between buildings. Our proposal is to re-utilize these places and give them new lives.

Situation: blocks with less traffic open possibilities for a walkable city.

Placemaking, by solidifying the links between people and their shared places, can enable us to stitch our cities back together. When we feel connected to a space, we are more likely to experience our connection to others within that space.

Aim: redefine the street vendors’ restrictions. $

n St

riso

Har

When people can be co-creators of their own spaces, those spaces become more welcoming to all.

Reading time at the leftover space

Governamental institutions should install the necessary infrastructure (such as eletricity points) to realise the open markets. Traffic control will be also necessary.

Pingpang tables bring play to the tables

Phase 1a

Simmonds St

Lively Sidewalk If we can see the exisiting condition of sidewalk in Juta street, we can find the street has few element to engage people to stop. The sidewalk in short term, we can not change a lot space of Juta street, such as the width of sidewalk. So in this term, we focus on the furnitures on the existing streets. we aim to creat several a walkable sidewalk with placing several furnitures for pedestrians to pause on the street.

Existing condition

CRITICAL REFLECTION 2

3.5M Street vegetation useless barries Parking people

Pause Space with furnitures In this phase furnitures can be placed to this area because the commercial vitality. These furnitures can be flexibly used by different social groups, such as informal traders, pedestrians and students. It can be an approach to manage the street sellings and engage people to share the sidewalk space.

Street trading

Biccard St Chatting space

Furnitures

3 Rest space

Green Sidewalk

Group spatial design strategy

Involved stakeholders

In this phase we are not going to change a lot about the street’s structure. So we can add some little vegetation with furnitures to fulfill the basic need of street greens.

Contains activities

We have seven principles since we start to develop our design strategy and we also consider to reduce the principles during the design process. But we decide to keep the principles because every principle are related to our design strategy. We summarize these seven principles and come up with four strategies. I think we still weak in how to connect our principles to our strategies.

Proof Transform

Situation: plenty of parking lots shows (and promotes) the preference to cars.

To Restaurant

To Green Garden

Aim: first subversive approach

The proof of building in this pedestrain street has great business potential, so we want to transform some proofs of building to restaurant s to attract more people come here and have a rest.

To transform the proof of buildings to green garden which would provide many different kinds of activities such as music show, sports, exhibition and public events.

to start the discussion about

Melle St

public spaces.

The proof restaurant has a better view than ground restaurant and it can make full use of the leftover spaces in this area.

The green garden is not only made for communication but also good to environment and city image.

Get in touch with the

Funding (or material) can

organisation of the directed

be asked for construction

allotment (either a school or

companies.

a retail). They can suggest (or define) the activities in the conteiner.

Light instalation as part of the new identity of the street.

Design with time line

De Beer St

Phase 3

It is a brilliant idea that we all agree with. We believe it can be a interesting project if we can divided strategy into different phase. I’ve never try to design with time line, even though it was quite complex when we were going ahead to get our ideas into shape, I learn a lot from time line design project.

Informal Business

Under the bridge

Retail

Economic activity, both formal and informal, play an integrative role within different communities as well as different ethnics, age, gender and income groups. In South Africa there are a lot of people work on informal business and they do not have safe and confortable spaces for working. For this situation, our proposal is to creat a safe and well organized spaces for people to do business.

From first draft to final version

Creating spaces for informal “survivalist trading” opportunities of different levels can enable people to fight poverty and engage in the public spaces as well.

Market

It was a little bad when we finished our first draft and uploaded it on our blog, because we still consider about the direction of our strategy. Even though the idea of timeline is good, we receive some feedback about our unfinished work. Some of the stakeholders are confused with the words because we just put some irrelevant words on our template. After that we work hard to avoid this phenomenon, we also change the order twice to find better layout for people to understand. I believe we are successful in the end.

It is possible to build a supermarket, fish shop, parking spaces or graffiti gallery in the leftover places which under the flyover. It is an attempt to activate the space which is easy to be ignored. The retails and markets can attract more people to gather and communicate.

Phase 1b Arts line This is also the first phase of our design. As we have found from exisiting condition of this area, there are few pedestrian compare to the commercial area. But lots of car parking here and they occupy a lot sidewalk place. However, we can find that street art in this area is quite presperous.

Existing condition

So it is necessary to cut down the car parking number in this area to creat space for another activities.

Sidewalk

Street art

Car parking

Vacant buildings

Pause Space with furnitures The aim of pause sapce in this part is to make place for young people to enjoy their sparetime after work and study. So we can place some furniture for fun,

Rest place

Game place

Street art

Involved stakeholders

Henri St

Parklet

Urban Farm

Situation: cars occuppies

more space than the people themselves. Aim: estabilish a closer relation between the establishment and the public spaces.

Public furniture can be used as extention of the near retail (also responsible for

maintenance).

Urban Farm Different activities promote uses day and night.

Eendracht St

Phase 2b Color sidewalk Second phase here is going to make a comfortable plaza for residents around this area. Because the end of the road is closed, so we move the car parking to the other side of the residential area and combine the big space to a plaza. Color can be a key element of sidewalk here. And it is a safety space for children to play, the color would be attractive to kids.

Existing condition

9 Dead end Street Car parking

Sidewalk

Vacant buildings

Softwalk with colors Designing the sidewalk of plaza by coloring them into different colos can be an imply and guidance for visitors to join in the plaza.

Playground for kids

Game place

Involved stakeholders

Street vendors square Situation: blocks with less traffic open possibilities for a walkable city. Aim: redefine the street vendors’ restrictions. $

Version 1

Governamental institutions should install the necessary infrastructure (such as eletricity points) to realise the open markets. Traffic control will be also necessary.

Version 2

Version 3

5.INDIVIDUAL DESIGN

â&#x20AC;˘ As we have analyzed above, the sidewalk in Juta street is in bad condition. About half of the sidewalk spaces are occupied by parking. And it is also a problem that there are few attractions on sidewalk to make people pause on the street. â&#x20AC;˘ We decided to create attractive points on the sidewalk to engage people to share and enjoy the sidewalk, using urban furniture and green elements to make sidewalk more walkable and flexible. The comfortable sidewalk aim to give more chances to residents and informal workers to experience the street sidewalk.

COMFORTABAL SIDEWALKS Arts + & Sports Sidewalk

Street art Car parking

Vacant buildings

Arts street

Lively Sidewalks

Peace Pathlet & Guided Sidewalk

Tactic 1 Arts street (Short term) This is the first phase of our design. As we have found from exisiting condition of this area, there are few pedestrian compare to the commercial area. But lots of car parking here and they occupy a lot sidewalk place. However, we can find that street art in this area is quite presperous. So it is necessary to cut down the car parking number in this area to creat space for another activities.

Pause Space with The aim of pause sapce in this part is to make place for young people to enjoy their sparetime after work and study. So we can place some furniture for fun and provide space for street artists.

Involved Stakeholders $

Tactic 2 Lively Sidewalks (Short term) The sidewalk in short term, we can not change a lot space of Juta street, such as the width of sidewalk. So in this term, we focus on the furnitures on the existing streets. we aim to creat several a walkable sidewalk with placing several furnitures for pedestrians to pause on the street.

3.5M

Involved Stakeholders $

Street vegetation useless barries Parking people

Chairs for rest

Interesting billboard

Informal trade

Chatting space

Creative furnitures

Tactic 3 Peace Pathlet (Medium term) This sidewalk strategy is for medium term of the walkable braamrontein. From the existing condition we can see that most sidewalk is used for car parking and this street is a peaceful place.

Involved stakeholders

Empty street

Sidewalk

Parking on sidewalk

Our strategies about medium terms is to make the peaceful area that around the living and study space into softwalk plaza or green space. So we can make some significant change here.

Guided Sidewalks (Medium term) Involved stakeholders

Second phase here is going to make a comfortable plaza for residents around this area. Because the end of the road is closed, so we move the car parking to the other side of the residential area and combine the big space to a plaza. Color can be a key element of sidewalk here. And it is a safety space for children to play, the color would be attractive to kids.

Sidewalk

Dead end Street Car parking

Vacant buildings

Extra Tactic Self-management (Long term) • Because in the comfortable sidewalk strategy I just design some small and removable furnitures for citizens to use. So it is free and flexible for different activities and easy to get back to original state. • Understanding the role and potential of each stakeholder and involving them in the management of the maintenance, social cohesion and inclusion is beneficial for small to large scale public spaces. • Better management of the public spaces can help to reduce the crime or the fear of crime among the citizens and will help them to engage with the spaces. • Government could spend fewer capital and human resource on management if asking the local stakeholders to manage the street beside themselves.

Final Reflection Design from afar

Because the site of our project is in South Africa which we couldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t go there. So we have to learn how to design from afar. It was my first time to develop a project without site investigation so it made me quite confuse at the beginning of our works. It was a good new for me that I have had the lesson about research methodology and tools before this project. I try to identify useful methods for me to get certain information of Johannesburg. Things that really made me surprise is I found it work when I was searching Johannesburg online. I get some important resource on Internet and some social media (Bloggers, instagrammers, facebook, etc.). During the design process, we upload our design draft to seek for feedback from local stakeholders. I thinks it should be a indispensable way for design from afar, because no design could be success without participation. Through the feedback from stakeholders and professors I found out several shortcomings myself.

Individual design strategy

Because we are work as a team for several weeks, it is quite late when we began our individual design part. I was very interested in sidewalks from the beginning so I decide to go deeper in this strategy. The sidewalk condition in Juta street is quite similar to some medium-sized city in my country which I can find lots commons between them. There is a large problem of informal street trading.I deeply understand that informal trading can not be banned totally in developing countries, so it may be better if we solve this problem by another soft means. My methods is to formalized the street trading, such as providing some settled place for them with flexible furniture. Meanwhile, asking stakeholders to manage the furniture is a good suggestion for government to solve the problem of employment. However, there are still problems to publish the rules of self-management and the suggestion could only be a suggestion of morality.

Team works

To be honest, there are some problems when we are work as a team. Our ideas sometimes were conflicting and we fell into argument which made our design process slow down. Fortunately, we solve the problems finally and reach an agreement. It is not a bad things to have different idea, even more sometimes it can help you to find problems yourselves. All in all, it is quite happy to work with my group members and it is good we are sincere to each other.