Browsing by Author "Crooijmans-Lemmer, Hedwig"

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    Bridging the past and the present “Rediscovering Prieska's forgotten cultural landscape”
    (2025) Goeieman, Deidre Danielle; Ewing, Kathryn; Crooijmans-Lemmer, Hedwig; Truter, Georgina Jani
    The phrase “place of the lost she-goat,” derived from the Koran and associated with the Khoi people, originally referred to a location where farmers settled after rainstorms. This area, overseen by a village management board since 1882 and granted municipal status in 1892, became known for its semiprecious stones and as a vital crossing point for travelers (C K Rumboll & Partners, 2018). Historically, many locals worked at the nearby Koegas mine, which extracted blue asbestos. However, a phenomenon termed the “lost generation” has led to shifts in marginal spaces, with the Korana community noting rural-to-urban migration that diminished daily activity in these neighborhoods. Geospatial analyses suggest that the location of the lost she-goat has the potential to reshape the social geography and character of Prieska, a small town in the Northern Cape, which is the focus of this research. The physical and economic developments along “Loots Boulevard” (Main Road)—the main route to and from Prieska, crossing the Frans Loots Bridge—may serve as an urban spine, aiming to elevate the town's status relative to its surrounding areas. This study seeks to uncover Prieska's forgotten spaces, which are essential to its identity. These “lost spaces” (Trancik, 1999) include undeveloped areas in the town center, neglected pedestrian paths, abandoned railways, riverbanks and unmaintained memorial and aloe gardens. Key factors contributing to the town's fragmentation include outdated zoning policy, institutional neglect of the public urban environment and the abandonment of central industrial and military sites (Trancik, 1999). The research conclude in a design approach for a 2040 Framework, focused on reclaiming everyday spaces for Prieska's residents. Utilizing a family tree spanning four generations, the project emphasizes my personal childhood experiences through a narrative dialogue with family members. This study explores the complex process of reimagining Prieska—rich in cultural heritage yet marred by neglected sites—by transforming underutilized areas into vibrant, functional spaces that reflect and preserve the town's unique identity. The strategy aims to restore the town's physical environment while awakening the shared stories that define it
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    Enhancing livelihood and community diversity through wetland- approach to living with the wetland
    (2025) Malapile, Malose; Ewing, Kathryn; Crooijmans-Lemmer, Hedwig
    Numerous scholars studying urban informal settlements unanimously acknowledge the interconnected challenges these settlements face, encompassing health issues, hazardous natural surroundings, accidental human-induced fires, deficient public health infrastructure, limited social and shared spaces, and high crime rates, among other concerns. Despite multiple research and policy initiatives, there remains a limited understanding of informal settlements, often located in inadequate environments without the same services as wealthier urban areas. This enduring disparity highlights the stark contrast in living conditions between urban poor and rich communities. Masiphumelele, as one such informal settlement, encounters inadequate service delivery, exposing its residents to health and safety threats. This research project responds to these issues by delving into the quality of life in Masiphumelele. The primary goal is to explore the key factors influencing the community's well-being and to comprehend the intricate obstacles hindering spatial improvement. The research aims to investigate the spatial, social, and cultural dimensions of informal settlements, seeking to unravel the underlying causes and challenges faced by the community. Employing methods such as interviews with open-ended questions, guided walkabouts, analysis of archived newspapers, and engagement with both the community and the NGO, the research seeks a comprehensive understanding of the issues shaping the quality of life in environments that are unsafe and hazardous.The research culminates in several spatial design suggestions and proposals, offering potential solutions to enhance the quality of life in Masiphumelele
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    Hidden gems reimagining the public realm along independence avenue to sustain the local economy in the Windhoek central business district
    (2025) Persaud, Gwen; Ewing, Kathryn; Crooijmans-Lemmer, Hedwig
    This urban design research project investigates the reimagining of the public realm along Independence Avenue to sustain the local economy in the context of the Windhoek Central Business District (CBD). The research seeks to explore how the public spaces can be transformed to support local businesses, foster Small, Medium, and Micro Enterprises (SMMEs) and stimulate overall economic development and growth. The research question drives this research to understand 'How can the public realm sustain the local economy?'. Through qualitative methodologies such as critical theory analysis of the relationship between economies and the public realm, rhythm analysis for field observations and semi-structured interviews, this research examines the current state of the public realm along Independence Avenue. The research analyses the role of urban design concepts like placemaking and human-centred design in shaping local economic activity. The findings highlight the untapped potential of “hidden gems” as clusters of local economic innovation that can be reinforced. The research highlights the significance of accessibility, connectivity, optionality and placemaking principles in creating a vibrant and thriving public realm that empowers both local businesses and the broader community. By contextualising this CBD regeneration to a postcolonial urban environment, this research contributes to an existing body of knowledge on urban regeneration and local economic development. It provides actionable recommendations for stakeholders and policymakers to enhance the public realm in a way that promotes sustainable economic growth in the Windhoek CBD. In doing so, it also presents valuable insights into how urban design can play a key role in fostering economic resilience and innovation in the context of Windhoek
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    Our (water) ways recovering our past to reclaim our future
    (2025) Uys, Julia; Ewing, Kathryn; Crooijmans-Lemmer, Hedwig
    Cape Town - a picturesque city located between an iconic mountain range and the glistening bay. At its forefront framed by Table Mountain, the city lies nestled within bowl shaped by mountains on either side with the wide expanse of the ocean at its feet. This image of Cape Town commands the imagination when envisaging the city and used as a key landmark in orientating the individual within its urban environment. Despite this, a growing spatial paradox is emerging; a paradox of being within yet without. The vantage point from which this mental photograph is understood, represents only a two-dimensional face value view of its rich personality and a very different city to the realities on the ground. Today, the city centre is a confusing and chaotic space; on the surface a dizzying cacophony of speeding lights and towering structures, the white noise of sirens whirring within a visual-ly drab, spatially fragmented and harsh hop-scotch-like environment. And yet this reality only illustrates a part of the story, the rest buried underground in tunnels, ancient riverbeds, springs and seabed artifacts. A rich collection of memories closely tied to the character of basin the city finds itself nestled in, hidden from sight. In this emerging environment, the narrative of water and its visual reminders (both mountain and sea) have been lost. Those remaining are isolated, lacking in understanding within the current context, this is the fractured characterless reality pedestrians must navigate, indicative of the complete disconnect between inhabitants and this unique context. This thesis argues that by re-hydrating the city, the connections to people, space and place can be restored and reinvigorated
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    A people-oriented port city : urban rejuvenation: Port Louis
    (2015) Guttee, Ranvir Singh; Comrie, Henri; Crooijmans-Lemmer, Hedwig
    This urban design thesis is a study of the urban issues and design principles pertinent to Port Cities. 'Man meets water': Our primordial psyche Man has had a relationship with water since time immemorial. Moving freely from earth to water is an activity which comes naturally to the human being. According to Eastern philosophy, Earth is the most important element. It comprises matter in a solid state, represents stability, physicality and gravity. Water is the second most significant element and represents fluidity, flexibility and adaptability (Ninjutsu.co.uk). Man meets water, in other words, is the moving from one realm to the other. In urban design terms, where 'Man meets water' is the 'in between' space - the interface. This is the area where two worlds come together - an area of interaction, interconnectedness and interrelationship. The area of study is a precinct of Port Louis - the interface between land and sea, as shown in Figure 1.1. The original urban quality of Port Louis has become degraded as a result of post-independence modernisation. The interface has been reshaped spatially and functionally. The original city of Port Louis was founded on the harbour, which was central to social, commercial and residential life. Today, the harbour is segregated from the city fabric. This thesis aims to explore the nature and design principles of places and spaces that lie within this land-water interface in order to formulate an urban design proposal wherein the land is reconnected to the water - an urban intervention for a people-oriented port city.
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    Re-Imagining the Street as Placemaking Tool in Claremont CBD
    (2023) Stander, Karla; Crooijmans-Lemmer, Hedwig
    Among the many problems that exist in the urban built environment today, uninviting pedestrian spaces is a prominent characteristic especially adjacent to inner-city shopping centres. Often, this is accompanied by a divorce of the building from the street, where the irony is that the street, which is a prominent public pedestrian space and connector of people, places and everyday lives, is often an underappreciated and unrealised pedestrian space. In the CBD of Claremont suburb, Cape Town, this is a reality and the resulting social ills such as dead zones, a lack of public surveillance, high crime rates, poor quality of space and lack of sense of place- all which can clearly be seen in this area. To realise the dual role that the street can play as both a public pedestrian space and a connector of people and place, professionals and role-players in the built environment should challenge the norms around street form, street-building interaction, people's perceptions that shaped the current day street and continue to influence its physical and perceived position within our cities and town. The literature component of this study seeks to unpack the qualities and functions of urban streets and their possible role as quality public space. The design component of this study seeks to explore and identify interventions at a local scale.
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    [Re]connected and on track integrating the Nelson Mandela Bay commuter rail line with the Swartkops area through a re-imagined future
    (2025) Hill, Robert; Ewing, Kathryn; Crooijmans-Lemmer, Hedwig; Truter, Georgina Jani
    South Africa remains shaped largely by its apartheid past and its associated Modernist planning practices. This has left South African cities as fragmented, disconnected, and inequitable spaces, especially for those who still directly feel the effects of exclusionary planning practices.The commuter rail line in Nelson Mandela Bay, running between Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth) and Kariega (formerly Uitenhage) is an example of a public transport system that has failed to adapt to changes in where and how people live and move. As such, it is characterised by low frequency, low usage, inaccessible and outdated stations, and antiquated infrastructure. The line is the least used of all the Metrorail systems in South Africa by a large margin, and as such there has been a reluctance to invest into improving the existing system. Many of the stations are far removed from where the majority of the people live, particularly in the township areas of Gqeberha - the most densely populated neighbourhoods in the metro.The line itself runs, for a large portion of its length, along the Swartkops Estuary and river, a partially protected conservation area. Various plans to improve the line have been proposed, but numerous factors have led to these not being implemented. A long-term plan has involved the so-called Motherwell Loop, which aims to connect the far-removed township of Motherwell into the existing rail system. This project looks at how the line can be reimagined: not just as an infrastructural project - but as an integrated system that adds to the urban life in the metro, and creates a spatially just urban environment. This is done specifically through re-imagining the railway line by rerouting the commuter line to include the township of Motherwell, and by re-imagining the rest of the line as a corridor that connects people to the Swartkops natural system, to allow for social justice in terms of access to the city and to the natural environment.The focus area in this re-imagining becomes the Swartkops area, and the corridor linking the Njoli Square node to the Swartkops Station, village, and estuary, running through a re-imagined urban campus housing the Nelson Mandela University Ocean Sciences Campus. Currently the Swartkops Station sits isolated from its main users - people from the Kwazakhele township - and sits in an area of intense environmental degradation. This corridor of activity becomes defined by the thresholds it crosses in, and how these thresholds or edges are defined: the township to natural edge, the commerical corridor to residential edge, and the estuary to activity edge.Through these interventions, the village of Swartkops becomes a focal node in the urban fabric of Nelson Mandela Bay, and is integrated with its adjacent neighbourhoods, though a mobility corridor that links all these elements together through the creation of a safe, walkable and meaningful space, in the pursuit of a more spatially just urban landscape
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    Recalibrating mobility and access towards spatial justice in Lilongwe
    (2025) Mpanang'ombe, Wrixon; Ewing, Kathryn; Crooijmans-Lemmer, Hedwig
    Lilongwe was planned as Malawi's post-colonial new capital city. The new city's master plan followed modernist planning and design principles transforming a small colonial town into a sprawling urban territory. To date, Lilongwe has maintained the spatial legacies of colonial and modernist planning. The city's form is currently characterised by a lower-density significantly formally planned core that retains the ideals of the master plan and higher-density less formally planned auto construction sprawling on the peripheries. The city does not have a formal public transport system, and most residents rely on informal (para)transit options such as minibuses and motorcycle taxis. The informal transit options are unscheduled, usually operate beyond the carrying capacity of the vehicles used, and appropriate street public space for pick-up and drop-off stops either complementing or competing with other uses of space such as walking and informal trade within the appropriated spaces. Consequently, the informal transit options are perceived as less convenient, uncomfortable or chaotic in the way they operate in street public spaces. Furthermore, the informal transit options are mostly unsupported by appropriate spatial infrastructure since they usually operate in spaces not specially designated and designed as transit stops. Additionally, the informal transit modes are all road-based yet the roads are mostly designed with less consideration for the transit uses and are primarily developed for private car mobility. Hence, private car mobility is considered the most convenient mode of moving around and accessing places in the city. However, many people particularly those with low incomes and those dependent on informal livelihoods cannot afford to own and use private cars. The lack of a formal public transit system as well as the general absence of transit-supportive urban infrastructure in Lilongwe contributes to spatial injustice as the many people who depend on informal transit face extra hurdles moving around and accessing places in the city as compared to the convenience of private car mobility. Moreover, spatial injustice manifests in how mobility infrastructure within street public space is allocated to the various competing or complementary modes of mobility, for instance, the usual provision of road paving for private car mobility without any allocation of infrastructure for pedestrians and transit. The allocation of space to the various mobility modes, in turn, impacts how people access various spaces and places together with the opportunities they present. Therefore, this research investigated how the modes and spaces that facilitate mobility, particularly informal transit, can be reimagined or recalibrated to foster spatial justice in Lilongwe. Additionally, the research investigated how the existing informal transit system (i.e., the modes and spaces that facilitate informal transit) can be leveraged to catalyse wider spatial justice goals, especially regarding people dependent on informal livelihoods. The research utilised an urban design approach to answer the main question: How can we reimagine mobility and accessibility to foster spatial justice in Lilongwe? Importantly, the study focused on understanding mobility and access with a special lens focused on people who use informal public transit and rely on informal livelihoods. In the context of Lilongwe, the research further approached spatial justice through the lens of historical spatial marginalisation emanating from the segregated colonial town. The spatial marginalisation initiated by the colonial town's master plan was carried further by the settlement typology and land use segregation of the capital city master plan. The capital city continues to shape the current geographies of spatial marginalisation with peripheral settlements housing poor residents who mostly rely on informal transit and depend on informal livelihoods. The research process involved a month of fieldwork in Lilongwe to understand the functioning of the modes and spaces facilitating the informal transit system and to learn about people's experiences with the informal transit system particularly those dependent on informal livelihoods. The findings from the fieldwork informed the contextual analysis which revealed the capacities, opportunities and constraints for urban design interventions. The research proposed an urban design framework that aims to enhance access to services and facilities, quality public open spaces, walkability and multi-scalar accessibility in the southern peripheries of the city as a pathway towards spatial justice for the peripheral areas. The urban design framework proposed a toolkit of spatial interventions grounded on principles of incrementalism, community stewardship, and high-impact low-tech. The proposed spatial interventions form the framework by leveraging the existing multi-modal informal transit system, the network of markets and informal trading strips, clusters of public facilities, and the blue-green network of streams and rivers. However, this report does not include the design propositions that were explored during the studio project, but focuses on an overview of the background research
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    The anatomy of access: re-imagining essential service provision in complex urban neighbourhoods
    (2025) Jackson, Lizelle Kay; Ewing, Kathryn; Crooijmans-Lemmer, Hedwig; Truter, Georgina Jani
    Nearly three decades after end, the spatial legacy of Apartheid still scars the Cape Town landscape. Large urban centres remain the key destinations for peripheral suburbs and townships placing increasing pressure on the landscape as rapid urbanisation is underfoot, constantly altering the urban fabric both on the edge and within lower-income accessible neighbourhoods. These shifting states of existence produce vulnerabilities that make it difficult for access by the state for effective service provision in these neighbourhoods. This project looks at this reality of access for people living in Dunoon, a dense residential area that sits immediately south of the junction of the N7 and Malibongwe Drive. Dunoon is investigated in relation to the larger Blaauwberg District and the greater Cape Town Metropolitan and this macro analysis is paired with the more micro analysis gained from contextual nuances of the neighbourhood. The project will make proposals for reimagined service provision that claims space within the public realm as a common amenity in the dense character of the neighbourhood. I look to scholars of the Global South where, relating to this concept of peripheral urbanisation and self-constructed neighbourhoods, writing includes work by Bayat (2013); Caldeira (2017) and Roy (2011) which become crucial to grounding the research in real-world Dunoon life. Further writing on systems and infrastructure that offer deeper understanding of existing access & service models and their shortfalls in provision in a South African context are also explored (Hanyurwumutima & Gumede, 2021; Jaglin, 2014; Larkin, 2013). Building on the academic conversations surrounding these topics, the research explored the spatial implications of individually driven neighbourhood making processes on the spaces of collective occupation in Dunoon? From the research, which was undertaken using critical theory, desktop study, site visits, model building and storytelling, findings directed the question of how urban design intervention could reimagine the way in which state and user interact in complex urban environments to allow for safe and equitable conditions within these diverse urban realities. Proposal for neighbourhood structuring intervention that combines scalable spatial strategies of pricks, points, clusters and centres with scalable ownership strategies, allowed a reimagined way of working in complex urban environments like Dunoon and offers new ways for city making in the future that accommodates rapid urban growth.
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    Transforming the Potchefstroom industrial area and the Ikageng Gateway corridor to combat urban decay.
    (2025) Mokwaledi, Tshepo; Ewing, Kathryn; Crooijmans-Lemmer, Hedwig; Truter, Georgina Jani
    Urban spaces are dynamic entities shaped by the interplay of physical infrastructure, social dynamics, economic forces, and historical legacies (Stanley et al.,2012). This research project explores the complexities of urban decay and transformation within the Potchefstroom Industrial Area, South Africa, with a specific focus on the Ikageng Gateway Corridor. Grounded in the experiences of local figures such as Belinah and Napo Mokwaledi, who once thrived in this area, the study delves into the socio-economic, spatial, and infrastructural challenges and opportunities facing Potchefstroom. Through the lens of Dewar (2019), I examine the imperative of addressing historical legacies and promoting spatial justice in urban design. The Ikageng Gateway Corridor, once a vital artery of connectivity and commerce, now bears the scars of urban decay. This study aims to dissect the manifestations of decay along this corridor and engage with local stakeholders to uncover the lived experiences and aspirations of those affected. The central research question is: How can the Potchefstroom Industrial Area be transformed, with an emphasis on the Ikageng Gateway Corridor, to counter urban decay? I utilize storytelling as a comprehensive methodology, incorporating social mapping, semi-structured interviews, tracking and tracing. These techniques aim to provide a holistic understanding of the corridor's degeneration and potential for transformation. By examining socio-economic factors, spatial conditions, land use patterns, accessibility, and community interactions, I aim to identify best practices and innovative approaches for transformation. The objectives include proposing design interventions to enhance economic development, improve safety, and foster community resilience. This project seeks to review and highlight the challenges of policies, zoning regulations and development plans. And propose design strategies that can transform the Potchefstroom Industrial Area into a vibrant, resilient, and economically vital urban space. Through community engagement and a deep understanding of the area's historical and present context, I aim to contribute meaningfully to the ongoing discourse on urban transformation in Potchefstroom