Spaces & Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies

Abstract

This paper examines the role of mobility in the ways the ordinary people of the displaced areas of Tshwane attempt to forge a sense of belonging for themselves in this changing city. Although the production of Tshwane was historically characterised, in the north, by decentralised industrialisation and ethnicity, more than two hundred and twenty thousand people have come to commute daily for work southward, where more than two thirds of formal jobs are located. As a consequence of such commuting, mobility itself has come to be a force in the production of a space of development. An ongoing research project will be used to elaborate on this argument, speaking to new ideas currently animating African suburbanisms, and more broadly, southern urbanisms – mobility as a developmental value, transit-oriented development, fantasy mega-projects, and informality.