{"id":6462,"date":"2021-10-27T12:45:47","date_gmt":"2021-10-27T10:45:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/2021\/10\/27\/the-spatiality-of-poverty-and-popular-agency-in-the-gcr-constituting-an-extended-urban-region\/"},"modified":"2025-04-23T17:12:06","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T15:12:06","slug":"the-spatiality-of-poverty-and-popular-agency-in-the-gcr-constituting-an-extended-urban-region","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/2021\/10\/27\/the-spatiality-of-poverty-and-popular-agency-in-the-gcr-constituting-an-extended-urban-region\/","title":{"rendered":"The Spatiality of Poverty and Popular Agency in the GCR: Constituting an Extended Urban Region"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Gauteng City-Region (GCR) in South Africa is a paradigmatic example of extended urbanization, in which the legacy of mining and apartheid continue to impact spatial practices and the experience of everyday life. The dynamics between urban centralities such as Johannesburg and regional-scale peripheries established by this legacy characterize the \u00abspatiality of poverty\u00bb that exists in the GCR today. Yet the relational urbanization processes occurring on these under-researched urban peripheries are also driven by the choices and strategies of people, or \u00abpopular agency,\u00bb as they negotiate both local and regional-scale spaces in pursuit of opportunities. Utilizing the northern part of the GCR as a case study, the article presents ethnographic research including a purposive sampling of informal settlement residents, government officials, and planning experts to discuss how socio-technical strategies focused on capital expenditure for infrastructure and affordable housing often reinforce existing socio-spatial inequalities. At the same time, new \u00abpopular centralities\u00bb are emerging as individual people exercise their agency to move around the region and produce alternative forms of space. Considering the agency of people calls for a decentered and transdisciplinary approach to urban analysis and spatial planning, with significant implications for both the theory and practice of urban and regional studies today.<\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_17742\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-17742\" style=\"width: 670px\" class=\"wp-caption alignleft\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-17742\" src=\"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Spatiality-Agency-2-1.jpg\" alt=\"Comparison of the City of Johannesburg\u2019s \u00abCorridors of Freedom\u00bb (COF) proposed bus-rapid-transit TOD route connecting Diepsloot to the global financial district of Sandton (left), and the paths people currently take primarily with the minibus taxi system (right). The latter is a map of a volunteered geographic information smartphone study participant, showing multiple modes of transport; dark blue is for walking, green for taxi transport, and yellow for \u00abtilting\u00bb when the person was looking at their phone). The COF is a municipality-level plan, and Diepsloot is not a part of TOD plans for the City of Tshwane (Pretoria). \u00a9 Lindsay Blair Howe, ETH Zurich\" width=\"670\" height=\"443\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-17742\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Comparison of the City of Johannesburg\u2019s \u00abCorridors of Freedom\u00bb (COF) proposed bus-rapid-transit TOD route connecting Diepsloot to the global financial district of Sandton (left), and the paths people currently take primarily with the minibus taxi system (right). The latter is a map of a volunteered geographic information smartphone study participant, showing multiple modes of transport; dark blue is for walking, green for taxi transport, and yellow for \u00abtilting\u00bb when the person was looking at their phone). The COF is a municipality-level plan, and Diepsloot is not a part of TOD plans for the City of Tshwane (Pretoria). \u00a9 Lindsay Blair Howe, ETH Zurich<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Gauteng City-Region (GCR) in South Africa is a paradigmatic example of extended urbanization, in which the legacy of mining and apartheid continue to impact spatial practices and the experience of everyday life. The dynamics between urban centralities such as Johannesburg and regional-scale peripheries established by this legacy characterize the \u00abspatiality of poverty\u00bb that exists [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6465,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_kad_blocks_custom_css":"","_kad_blocks_head_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_body_custom_js":"","_kad_blocks_footer_custom_js":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"departemente":[138,159,183],"newsletter_ausgabe":[],"class_list":["post-6462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-publikationen","departemente-departement-architektur-d-arch","departemente-institut-fuer-landschaft-und-urbane-studien-lus","departemente-prof-dr-christian-schmid"],"acf":[],"taxonomy_info":{"category":[{"value":18,"label":"Publikationen"}],"departemente":[{"value":138,"label":"Departement Architektur (D-ARCH)"},{"value":159,"label":"Institut f\u00fcr Landschaft und Urbane Studien (LUS)"},{"value":183,"label":"Prof. Dr. Christian Schmid"}]},"featured_image_src_large":["https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/10\/Spatiality-Agency-1024x931.jpg",1024,931,true],"author_info":{"display_name":"Yaxin Hou","author_link":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/author\/houya\/"},"comment_info":0,"category_info":[{"term_id":18,"name":"Publikationen","slug":"publikationen","term_group":0,"term_taxonomy_id":18,"taxonomy":"category","description":"","parent":0,"count":392,"filter":"raw","cat_ID":18,"category_count":392,"category_description":"","cat_name":"Publikationen","category_nicename":"publikationen","category_parent":0}],"tag_info":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6462"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6462\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6464,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6462\/revisions\/6464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6462"},{"taxonomy":"departemente","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/departemente?post=6462"},{"taxonomy":"newsletter_ausgabe","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xoxo.capsule.ch\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/newsletter_ausgabe?post=6462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}