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23 - Footprints of Islam in Johannesburg
- from Section C - Spatial identities
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- By Yasmeen Dinath, researcher in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Yusuf Patel, director in the developments division of Basil Read (Pty) Ltd in Johannesburg, and President of the South African Planning Institute, Rashid Seedat, head of the Gauteng Planning Commission
- Edited by Philip Harrison, Graeme Götz, Alison Todes, Chris Wray
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- Book:
- Changing Space, Changing City
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 20 April 2018
- Print publication:
- 31 December 2014, pp 456-480
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- Chapter
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Summary
Religious identities are profoundly influencing place-making and socio-spatial organisation of twenty-first-century cities around the world and they are in turn being hybridised by their contact with the urban environments in which they locate. Islam in particular has become the focus of much global geopolitical debate and research in the post-9/11 world. Its spatial footprint across the continents has become a visible public part of major cities and towns. Islam in Western Europe and North America has over the past two decades come to occupy an increasingly public presence in the city. Muslim communities, long hidden from view by virtue of their small numbers, are emerging more visibly in the spatial fabric of these cities.
While there seems to be a significant body of academic literature discussing placemaking and built environments in cities of the Muslim world, there are fewer texts that explore the urban environment dynamics of the Muslim diaspora. To date, there has been a dearth of academic work published on Islam's spatial footprint in South African cities, including Johannesburg. Tayob (1995) discusses the development of Islam in South Africa and shows how its resurgence plays out in different parts of the country. His treatment of the spatial dynamics is only tangential to his overall argument. In a different vein, Jeppie (2001) is mainly concerned with the Cape Muslim identity, with a mono-focus on the Western Cape. Paulsen's (2003) principal area of enquiry is on the syncretic beliefs and practices of Malays in Gauteng. While it has a strong spatial emphasis, it examines only Muslims who live in coloured group areas such as Westbury, Bosmont, Eldorado Park and Ennerdale. Sadouni (2012) examines the presence of the Somali community in Mayfair, Johannesburg. Although her work (see Chapter 24) has a strong socio-spatial emphasis, it focuses on a new and still small component of the wider Muslim community in the city. In a similar vein, Fakude (2002) traces the development of Islam in the townships, focusing briefly on Soweto. He is concerned with developing a socio-political critique of relations between Muslims in the townships and the ‘established’ Muslim communities – mainly those of Indian or Malay origin. It is clear that the subject is under-researched and this contribution to the literature of urban spatial planning aims to at least add one fresh perspective and stimulate additional scholarship.
12 - Between fixity and flux: Grappling with transience and permanence in the inner city
- from Section B - Area-based transformations
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- By Yasmeen Dinath, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg
- Edited by Philip Harrison, Graeme Götz, Alison Todes, Chris Wray
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- Book:
- Changing Space, Changing City
- Published by:
- Wits University Press
- Published online:
- 20 April 2018
- Print publication:
- 31 December 2014, pp 232-251
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- Chapter
- Export citation
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Summary
Restless city
How to upgrade and regenerate an inner-city environment where nothing is permanent but not everything is transient either? This seems to be the dilemma facing the City of Johannesburg Metropolitan Municipality. Does it rebuild an inner city that caters for a transient population and transient activities or does it rebuild it based on an assumption that greater stability is needed and that permanence is a legitimate aspiration? It seems that these choices lie at opposing ends of a continuum that the municipality has battled to position itself on when planning its interventions in the ever-changing spaces of the inner city.
Since pre-colonial times what is now the centre of Johannesburg has been the site of entering and leaving, staying put and moving on – a constant shift between transience and permanence. From the comings and goings of successive tribes of BaTswana, BaSotho and Matabele (Brodie 2008), to the arrival of Dutch settlers, to the appearance of prospectors, tradesmen and mine labourers – it has been a place of entry and exit, place-making and displacement, sett ling and struggling, a place where very little stays constant but some come to stay. Throughout these comings and goings, the spaces of the central city have played a number of different roles, some of which have been permanent while others have been transient and fleeting responses to the temporal and socio-political context of the day.
The bricks and mortar (or corrugated iron and timber) of the area we know as the inner city were put in place over the past 124 years. Each layer of the city's physical fabric successively represents a spatial form that tried to suit the function of the day, but the physical make up of the buildings signify only a small part of their story. The inner city has played multiple roles through time and is still required to fulfil many competing, simultaneous agendas. This dynamism has been matched by an inconsistent, fluctuating and at times incoherent governance response. Rapid spatial change as a result of social, economic and political forces has exacted a considerable toll on the state. The question of how to design, plan, manage, in some cases ‘control’ and maintain this space in flux has plagued city administrators since 1886.
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