Centre for Urbanism & Built Environment Studies

Start main page content

Kelvin-Alexandra-Frankenwald City Studio

The 2024-2026 City Studio critically engages the enduring and deepening South African challenges of urban inequality and spatial injustice, seeking to understand their reproduction and intensification and collaboratively searching for ways to change this course.

The City Studio focuses on a 1-3km radius around the Marlboro Gautrain Station, 20km north-east of the Johannesburg CBD.

Contrasting neighbourhoods in the City Studio area
  • To the north of Marlboro Drive, this includes Kelvin (a suburb of Santon), Frankenwald (the land that is currently being developed as the Bankenveld District City) and beyond the N3 freeway, Linbro Park (an industrial and warehousing area).
  • To the south of Marlboro Drive, the City Studio includes Marlboro Gardens (a former Indian Group Area), Stjwetla (an officially unplanned neighbourhood) and several temporary relocation areas on the western bank of the Jukskei River, and the northern end of Old Alexandra; and to the east of the Jukskei River, several more recent land occupations on the Jukskei River bank, Extension 7 (a rapidly transforming state-subsidised housing area on the Far East Bank of Alexandra) and Marlboro Station.

Events
  • Students introduce their research topics to local actors, 5 August 2025, PG Seminar Room, John Moffat Building, Wits University.
  • Photogrammetry and interactive mapping workshop 8-12 September 2025 (at Wits, Stjwetla and Extension 7).
  • The City Studio is organising the Faces of the City Seminar Series for the fourth quarter of 2025 (16 September to 21 October 2025).
  • City Forum at Marlboro Station, 28 October 2025.
Our shifting approach

The City Studio involves a collective of staff and students across Architecture, Planning, Urban Design, Urban Studies and related fields including geography and governance, that has built a relationship with local actors and organisations within the City Studio area in the hope that we could learn from one another and make a lasting contribution. In a selection of undergraduate and postgraduate courses, students are exposed to real life themes in the City Studio area through fieldtrips, transect walks, studio projects. A deeper level of engagement with the area occurs through collective field mapping, design-build initiatives, supervised undergraduate and postgraduate research and postdoctoral study.

The area, in particular the Jukskei River with related challenges such as wastewater management, flooding and relocation, has attracted university researchers over the past decade and more, providing a valuable knowledge base of the shifting socio-spatial environment. The City Studio builds on these studies and, through empirical engagement, draws extensively on local knowledge. The City Studio is also attempting to create an archive of this knowledge that will be accessible to the local community.

Through collaboration with the Gautrain Management Authority, the City Studio uses the Marlboro Station parking area, a venue that is easily accessible to local residents and actors, as a space for workshops and discussions. Through these engagements, we initially sought to support students, local communities and actors at various levels to realize an innovative, realistic and transformative vision for the diverse areas surrounding the Marlboro Station. As our understanding of the area and its complex dynamics deepens, we have become more attuned to the challenges local actors navigate and have become more measured in what we believe the City Studio may achieve.

To facilitate the initiatives mentioned above,  we have relied on a variety of funding sources, mainly within Wits University. Our attempts to tailor the City Studio to large donor’s interests were not successful. In the absence of a large grant on which to deliver, the City Studio has evolved in a far more flexible and agile way than anticipated. Small funding opportunities, though administratively onerous, have allowed us to follow evolving suggestions from within local, community-based organisations. Through a partnership with the South African Cities Network, we were able to assist the Stjwetla community with gazebo-type shelters that the Stjwetla patrollers use during night patrols. The process of creating the shelters, which included a workshop with architecture and planning students alongside local artisans, is documented through a report and video clip.

Engaged empirical research initiatives

Grappling with inequality and precarity

  • Framing paper by Marie Huchzermeyer: Precarious housing in the unequal city: The case of Stjwetla ‘informal’ settlement in Johannesburg’s northern suburbs. Forthcoming in Friendly, A. and Piemental Walker (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Precarious Housing. Routledge (in press).
  • The intersection of informality, migration and climate change through the case of Stjwetla informal settlement in Johannesburg (Thithi Maseko, MUS (HHS) supervised by Prof Marie Huchzermeyer, completed and degree awarded posthumously in July 2025)
  • The Implications of Implementers’ Policy Choices for Precarity in Informal Settlements: The Case of Stjwetla (Ayaka Mgaga, MUS(UM) supervised by Prof Marie Huchzermeyer, underway in 2025).
  • Traversing Urban Divides: Domestic Workers’ Experiences of Inequality Between Stjwetla and Kelvin (Nothando Nkosi, BSc.URP (Hon) supervised by Prof Marie Huchzermeyer, underway in 2025).
  • Unbreakable Barriers: Examining the structural forces that perpetuate poverty cycles and their impact on socioeconomic mobility in Alexandra (Nthombifuthi Khumalo, BSc.URP (Hon) supervised by Dr Christopher Onyeneke, underway in 2025).
  • Food (In)security? Analysing the relationship between residents and Big Food and Big Retail in the City Studio area (GEOG3026A Students supervised by Dr Sarita Pillay Gonzalez, underway in 2025)
Governing and navigating unequal infrastructures

  • Investigating urban compounding and public space economies in Alexandra, Johannesburg (Kwanele Khanyile, BSc.URP (Hon) supervised by Nkosilenhle Mavuso, completed in 2024). 
  • Community centres as models for sustainable development and integration: Making a case for Stjwetla, Johannesburg (Kolobetso Selemena, MUS (UM) supervised by Dr Paulo Moreira, under examination).
  • Urban mobility in the periphery: An analysis into last mile challenges in Stjwetla settlement, Johannesburg (Kaggwa Saddam, MUS (UM) supervised by Muhammed Suleman, underway in 2025).
  • The community-municipality relationship in the environmental management of the siXoba informal relocation area in Stjwetla, Johannesburg (Mpumelelo Sibanda, MUS(UM) supervised by Prof Marie Huchzermeyer, underway in 2025).
  • A case study of the Amarasta mini-grid project in Alexandra, evaluating the role of public-private partnerships through an energy justice lens (Thandile Chinyavanhu, MUS (SEEC) supervised by Dr Patricia Theron, underway in 2025).
  • Initiating informal settlement regeneration through sustainable investment by adopting environmental, social and governance (ESG) Investment principles (Sibulelokuhle Xulaba, MUS (SEEC) supervised by Garret Gantner, underway in 2025).
The river and the community

  • The Relationship Between the Stjwetla Community and the Jukskei River: Environmental and Social Impacts (Antonio Canguari, MUS (UM) supervised by Dr Paulo Moreira and Priscila Izar, underway in 2025)
  • Leveraging Social Capital for Community-Led Flood Mitigation and Adaptation: A Case Study of Stjwetla Informal Settlement (Fiona Masuku, MUS (UM) supervised by Dr Paulo Moreira, underway in 2025)
A gender lens on health and safety initiatives

  • Social and Behaviour Change: Influencing young women’s HIV prevention health-seeking behaviours through HIV health policy and governance in Stjwetla Informal Settlement, Alexandra Township (Thato Nkabinde [which degree?], supervised by Amanda Williamson, underway in 2025).
  • Women’s substantive participation in safety and security governance in Stjwetla Informal Settlement, Alexandra (Sinethemba Zonke, MUS (UM) supervised by Amanda Williamson, underway in 2025).
Land, housing and tenure

  • Legal responses to different forms of urban land occupation: an exploration through the case of Stjwelta, Johannesburg (Sinalo Sojanga, BSc.URP (Hon) supervised by Dr Neil Klug, completed 2024).
  • The relevance of community land trusts for rights-based land reform in informal settlements: A case study of Stjwetla informal settlement, Johannesburg (Hayley McKuur, MUS (HHS) supervised by Dr Neil Klug, underway in 2025).
  • The relationship between land access processes and tenure security: the case of Stjwetla (Nkazimulo Mabuyane, BSc.URP (Hon) supervised by Prof Marie Huchzermeyer, underway in 2025).
  • Experiences and responses to infrastructure pressures in a densifying neighbourhood: A case Study of backyarding in Extension 7, Alexandra (Lisakhanya Feni, MUS (HHS) supervised by Prof Sarah Charlton, underway in 2025).
  • Architectural design atelier: Towards an alternative low-income housing model (Nomonde Gwebu, PhD supervised by Prof Nnamdi Elleh).
  • Temporary or permanent? Contradictions of everyday lived experiences in Stjwetla's temporary relocation areas in Johannesburg, and their policy implications (Michelle Tatenda Sonono, PhD supervised by Professor Marie Huchzermeyer).
Spatial Transformation of Neighbourhoods

While overlapping with many of the other themes listed, Marie Huchzermeyer’s ‘work package’ within the Kelvin-Alexandra-Frankenwald City Studio seeks a grounded understanding of the shifting spatial and material reality in the neighbourhoods of the City Studio. She applies critical and comparative lenses to make sense of the unfolding reality. A further dimension is to relate understandings of the neighbourhood change to activities in political and representative community-based organisations and local government.

Draft outputs to date

  • Huchzermeyer, M. (draft paper for comment) Favelisation: Social production amidst limits to care in Stjwetla, Johannesburg. For a special issue in Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie on 'Rethinking urban space: practices of care and social reproduction'.
From Frankenwald estate to Bankenveld City District

  • ‘Private’ land and the public university: Frankenwald and WITS university in the 20th and 21st Dr Pillay Gonzalez’s research, grounded in critical geography, will draw on archival material and in-depth interviews to historicise and analyse the nature of WITS University’s shifting relationship to Frankenwald, and the various rationalities that informed decisions regarding the land.
  • The Influence of smart growth development on housing diversity: A case study of the Frankenwald Urban Development Framework (Singita Mathebula, MScDP supervised by Prof Sarah Charlton, under examination). 
  • Township economic development and land value capture: The case of Frankenwald, Johannesburg (Ronald Mashalane, MScDP, supervised by Dr Neil Klug, under examination) 
Territory, exclusion, contestation
  • Reframing boundaries as connective infrastructures: Representing the relational dynamics of boundaries and borders from the ground up (Paul Devenish, PhD supervised by Prof. Richard Ballard and Prof. Sarah Charlton, underway in 2025).This study explores how statutory, built, and topographical boundaries shape shared urban infrastructures in Alexandra’s Far East Bank, Johannesburg. Framed through assemblage theory, relational ontology, and critical theory, it investigates incremental boundary-making as a driver of infrastructure formation. Using mixed methods—mapping, counter-mapping, site observation, drawings, and semi-structured interviews—it documents boundary dynamics as socio-material interfaces. The research reframes boundaries as connective, offering insights for inclusive infrastructure strategies in contexts of inequality, informality, and spatial segregation.
  • ‘Urban Projectification’ and the politics of spatialising urbanisation through ‘projects’ (Quentin Rihoux, PhD supervised by Prof. Martin Müller, University of Lausanne (Switzerland), underway since 2023).This PhD research in Urban Political Geography investigates the phenomenon of ‘Urban Projectification’ — the processes of invoking ‘projects’ as habitual, legitimate and performative responses to urban problems — and asks how it spatially changes urban politics. Rather than taking this pervasive conceptual turn for granted or conflating it to the neoliberal transition, the research examines the interrelated processes that have led to similar outcomes in Paris and Johannesburg since the 1980s. In both contexts, this involves exploring the ‘project’ both epistemologically — as a Western modern conceptual framework with its situated meanings — and relationally — as material condensations of social relations (e.g. classed, racialised, institutionalised power struggles). By juxtaposing two dissimilar ongoing Urban Development Projects —  La Courneuve Grand Centre in Paris and the Bankenveld District City in Johannesburg — it then aims to trace both continuities and discontinuities earlier planning forms, particularly in terms of spatiality of power and contestation. Methods involve archival research and 'following the plan’ through semi-structured interviews and the analysis of 'expert' documents. 

Emerging outputs

  • Rihoux, Q. (2025) Projecting Order, Contesting Time: The Time-Space Politics of Urban Development in Paris and Johannesburg. RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2025 26 - 29 August, Birmingham.
  • Devenish, P. and Rihoux, Q. (2025) Tightening interstices: Contesting the spatial reproduction of the apartheid city. RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2025 26 - 29 August, Birmingham.
Reciprocity

City Studio postdoc Dr Paulo Moreira’s research investigates the concept of reciprocity in architecture and urbanism, with a focus on how spatial practices can cultivate mutual exchange and collective agency within contexts marked by inequality and fragmentation. Grounded in decolonial and critical urban theory, this theme centres on Stjwetla examining how residents navigate and reconfigure reciprocal relationships among people, materials, and urban infrastructure, despite systemic marginalisation. Through participatory design-build interventions, the research explores how architectural practice can both draw from and contribute to situated forms of knowledge, care, and solidarity, positioning reciprocity as a methodological and ethical principle in place-making.

Outputs to date:

  • Moreira, P. (2025) Unlearning by doing: Research pedagogies through hands-on projects in Stjwetla, Johannesburg. Estudo Prévio, 26, 44-67. 
  • Moreira, P. and Huchzermeyer, M. (2025) Inverting the Guard Hut and its Architecture of Fear: Enhancing Safety Governance through Dignified Safety Shelters in the Stjwetla Informal Settlement in Alexandra, Johannesburg. Multi-Stakeholder Partnerships for Transversal Safety Governance (Cross-University Collaboration for Professionalisation of Safety Governance). South African Cities Network, Johannesburg.

Safety Shelters, Johannesburg. Video directed by Paulo Moreira, filming and editing by Noel Chikonga, funded by South African Cities Network, Johannesburg. Click here to watch.

Exploring architectural responses to marginalised spaces

  • Soccer pitch at Marlboro Station (Samuel Ramohlola, MArch (Prof) supervised by Nomonde Gwebu, underway in 2025). 
  • Water treatment where the Gautrain crosses the Jukskei River (Michaeala Naidoo, MArch (Prof) supervised by Tahira Toffa, underway in 2025). 
  • Understanding identity at the intersection of diverse communities: Spaces of learning at Maponyaville’s community food garden (Luke Jasper, MArch (Prof) supervised by Paul Devenish, underway in 2025).
  • Recoding the buffer zone: Building for environmental, material and spatial agency in Alexandra (James Breytenbach, MArch (Prof) supervised by Paul Devenish, underway in 2025).
  • Where Alexandra mees Wynberg (Ipfi Makuya, MArch (Prof) supervised by Jabu Makhubu, underway in 2025). 

Collaborations

Support

Funding and in-kind support
  • School of Architecture and Planning, Wits University
    • Discretionary funds within CUBES
    • Research Development Working Group Fund
    • Planning and Housing Research Fund
    • Architecture Research Fund
  • DAAD through the Wits-TUB-UNILAG Urban Lab
  • South African Cities Network
  • Gautrain Managment Authority

Kelvin-Alexandra-Frankenwald City Studio Steering Committee

Steering Committee

The Kelvin-Alexandra-Frankenwald City Studio is directed by Prof Marie Huchzermeyer, who is also part of the City Studio Steering Committee together with Aneri Heukelman (coordinator in 2024), Nomonde Gwebu and Paul Devenish (Architecture representatives), Muhammed Suleman (Planning representative), and Dr Paulo Moreira (Centennial Postdoctoral Fellow).

Share