1st Edition
Decolonising the Built Environment Process, Product, and Pedagogy
Decolonising the Built Environment: Process, Product, and Pedagogy provides an important and much-needed comprehensive overview of how decolonisation is shaping the built environment in theory, in practice, and as a process/project today. The contributors provide an inclusive and trans-national conversation between a diverse set of academics, design practitioners and thinkers, and activists. This book is structured around three thematic and practical categories: Part 1 studies decolonisation conceptually; Part 2 studies decolonisation as a process; and Part 3 studies the products of decolonisation as materialised in the form of buildings, urban design, planning, policy, and social practices.
Essential reading for students, teachers, and practitioners, this book presents the project of decolonisation as a pedagogy and an ongoing process.
1. Towards a Decolonial Turn in the Built Environment
Kundani Makakavhule and Karina Landman
Part 1 From Paradigm to Process
Kundani Makakavhule and Karina Landman
2. Performing Space: Thoughts on Colonising, Decolonising, and the Concert Hall
Margaret E. Walker
3. Settler Colonial Critique and Indigenous Urbanisation
James Miller and Natalie J.K. Baloy
4. Place-Based Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Their Relevance to the Decolonisation of Urban Planning Practice in Namibia: The Olupale and the Omuvanda: Two Cultural Open Spaces
Wilson Billawer and Verna Nel
5. Place-Based Strategies for Transforming South African Urban Nature Places
Dayle Shand and Christina Breed
6. An African Landscape Design Approach for Rural Development
Molwantwa Leonard Sebotsi, Dayle Shand, and Christina Breed
Part 2 From Process to Product and Pedagogy
Kundani Makakavhule and Karina Landman
7. Decolonising the Built Environment in and around a University Campus: The Incongruence between Intellectual Discourse and Lived (Institutional) Practices
Stephan de Beer
8. Visual Redress at Stellenbosch University: Staff Reactions to the Decolonisation of Campus Spaces
Gera de Villiers, Leslie van Rooi, and Elmarie Costandius
9. The Invisible Users of the Street
Dario Schoulund
10. Ubuntu Design Aesthetics and the Built Environment in South Africa
Pfunzo Sidogi
11. An Inquiry into Visual Art as a Critical Disruptor to Reveal Emergent Narratives and Authorship in Architecture
Anika van Aswegen
12. Kamĩrĩĩthũ: An Architecture for Decolonisation
Kenny Cupers and Makau Kitata
Part 3 Reflections on the Decolonial Turn in the Built Environment
Kundani Makakavhule and Karina Landman
13. Spaces of Erasure
Siona O’Connell
14. Can the Master Speak?
Jackson Sebola-Samanyanga
15. Conclusion: Reconsidering the Decolonisation of the Built Environment
Karina Landman and Kundani Makakavhule
Biography
Kundani Makakavhule is a senior lecturer in the Department of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Pretoria, specialising in the transformation of urban public open spaces at neighbourhood and precinct scales. Her research focuses on democracy, spatial appropriation, diversity, and active citizenship, exploring how these micro-scale dynamics influence broader urban planning processes. Drawing on theories from politics, sociology, and geography, her work addresses the social and political factors shaping planning in the developing world. By emphasising multidisciplinary approaches, she contributes to solving contemporary challenges in African urban spaces.
Karina Landman is a professor in the Department of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Pretoria with a background in urban design and architecture. Her work focuses on spatial transformation, including research on gated communities and safer and sustainable neighbourhoods, regenerative and resilient cities, and public space. Her work on public space revolves around issues of inclusivity, regeneration, and resilience. Her research on sustainable development focuses on urban resilience and regenerative development and design. She has published a book, Evolving Public Space in South Africa (2019).
