Informal Natures

Abstract

Cape town stands at top of the most “water stressed cities” list in the world, like the other global south cities, it has disregarded its natural systems in its spatial planning and water management. This pushed the city to a Day Zero situation in 2018 implementing water restrictions on all residents of the city. But the scenario in the townships are different, these service and infrastructure deficit spaces are always and constantly in ‘drought’ like environment with limited water usage and informal areas within them with no access to water. In many ways, it can be defined as two parallel worlds. The spatial development of the city much dictated by its past apartheid mechanism has led to development of townships on the periphery and on vulnerable landscapes. These landscapes fall under the biodiversity hotspots of the city which are inaccessible, abused or undervalued. The lack of addressing socio-ecological systems in the city’s water management has further increased the inequality in townships, therefore, requiring an integrated engagement of social, hydrological and landscape processes in disaster risk reduction and in building resilience for the city, townships and biota. The research question of the project investigates on how landscape-based strategies and design principles can be applied to mitigate the drought and social inequity in townships by reinforcing inter-scalar spatial planning toward water resilience & ecosystems restoration in Cape town. Three main lenses of landscape, water and townships are used in project elaboration with theoretical underpinnings that account for resilience, socio-ecological systems, operationalizing landscapes and considering townships as ethnic enclaves. Key conclusions to frame a vision for the city through in-depth spatial analysis of the natural & social systems of the city, followed by narrowing of micro scale locations – Kuils river and Khayelitsha township. Systems interaction between the river and township are explored to design a landscape infrastructure to increase water resilience and local adaptation measures to capture, purify and reuse, to attain circularity by involving the community. The project further explains ways to spatialize and implement such ideas at neighbourhood level through two zones at Khayelitsha wetlands and Dunes at Enkanini informal settlement to create new socio-ecological possibilities and water security. Therefore, through multi-scalar and systems approach the landscape infrastructure design addresses the questions of social inequity, drought and environmental degradation to create an inclusive and resilient city.