New open-access articles by Lindsay!
Lindsay has published two new articles on urbanization and processes of peripheralization in Antipode and Urban Planning.
(1) Processes of Peripheralisation: Toehold and Aspirational Urbanisation in the GCR
Antipode
Are peripheries a place or a process? Lindsay has published a new peer-reviewed article about peripheralization, critically reflecting on this term. In it, she brings together perspectives from postcolonial urban studies with the scholarship on urbanization processes, showing how fruitful this juxtaposition can be to build theory from Johannesburg.
Click here to read the article!
Abstract: This article interrogates the term “periphery” by examining the forms of urbanisation unfolding in the Gauteng City-Region (GCR) of South Africa. Among the urbanisation processes identified, it focuses on two, situating them among debates on informality and defining new vocabularies of urbanisation. Aligned with discussions of peripherality as a social phenomenon, the article first depicts how some marginalised groups of people using transversal means carve out “toeholds” near urban centralities and opportunities. Second, it conveys how peripherality is also a geographical phenomenon, describing “aspirational” mass housing for the lower-middle class on urban peripheries that can generate unexpected forms of precarity. The article concludes that toehold urbanisation and aspirational urbanisation drive peripheralisation in the GCR, and considers the implications of these concepts for critical geography and urban studies.
(2) The Gender–Poverty–Mobility Nexus and the Post-Pandemic Era in South Africa
Urban Planning
In the Vol 3 No 7 of Urban Planning, Thomas Vicino curated a special issue on The Resilient Metropolis: Planning in an Era of Decentralization. Lindsay contributed an article about the social and relational dimensions of periperalization in the Johannesburg informal settlement of Denver, a “toehold” southeast of Johannesburg’s CBD.
Click here to read the article!
Abstract: As part of long-term comparative research into the Gauteng City-Region, this article presents mixed-methods studies in the informal settlement of Denver, located in the industrial belt southeast of Johannesburg’s city center. It unpacks the results of focus groups, ethnographic and expert interviews, as well as mapping with an innovative smartphone tracking application, comparing everyday life for several households in this area before the pandemic in 2019 and during the pandemic in 2020. Findings show that the pandemic exacerbated the disproportionate burdens related to gendered roles of household management, childcare, and mobility, both on the macro- as well as the micro-scale. The article thus defines the “gender–poverty–mobility nexus” that shapes space and everyday life in the Gauteng City-Region, precluding places like Denver from overcoming their marginality. Post-pandemic planning policy could be transformative for such spaces if it can build on this knowledge to better identify the needs of these vulnerable social groups and connect them to opportunities. It concludes with suggestions on how these empirically revealed dynamics could be translated into responses on the urban and regional scales, in the name of more equitable, resilient planning futures for Johannesburg and beyond.