The influence of insurgency on socially responsive urban development : a proposed informal recycling facility for the informal cardboard recyclers of the Durban CBD, South Africa.

Abstract

Lining the streets and the interstitial spaces of the developing cities of the modern world is an emerging citizenship that exists and thrives in the in-between. These are the new urbanites, the Insurgent Citizens; a socio spatial product of the rapid urbanisation processes that have shaped and will continue to shape the urban landscape. The physical make up of concrete and glass that forms the fantastic images of cityness and modernity house the minority population, the haves. However, in the spaces left behind, in the alley ways and on the pavements in so called residual spaces, this new insurgent citizenship is growing. Having been left out of the planning processes that define these city imageries, within exclusionary constructs these citizens are redefining how the city functions as they stake their claims to be active participants within the metabolism of the modern city. This conflicting rationality of what a city is, and for whom it shall serve is effected by the minority striving to modernise and the majority striving to survive within the same physical environment. There are countless research efforts established to disseminate cityness for the minority of haves; however this dissertation posits itself within the construct of the have-nots and their rights to the city and therefore their socio-spatial rights to redefine it. This redefinition of cityness is established as a means to support their livelihood strategies to contest their conditions of spatial and economic poverty, as shall be defined herein. This insurgent citizenship is not survivalist nor merely informal, but rather an active social agent contesting the exclusionary processes that continue to define the cities of the developing world. It is the aim of this dissertation to establish the historical and current construct under which these socio-spatiality’s exist. Thus by identifying these strategies by which these insurgents survive and contest these realities, this dissertation will explore informal recycling as a means of insurgency. By understanding the global and local phenomenon of informal recycling; considering the environmental and socio-economic benefits it yields, this dissertation seeks to uncover strategies by which inclusive developments can be adopted to facilitate this insurgent practice. The objective of this dissertation is to establish a grassroots up architectural design solution for the informal recyclers of the Durban CBD, South Africa.