Kelvin-Alexandra-Frankenwald City Studio

• 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.

• 足球竞彩app排名s 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.

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.

Pedagogically, the City Studio is anchored in the shared understanding students can study documented cases or develop hypothetical projects and solutions, but that these cannot substitute for experience in real-life settings and processes. Making a case for ‘active learning’, Natajaran and Short (2023:7) argue that

‘[s]tudents must grapple with matters around the production of urban development knowledge, including stakeholder learning practices and the politics of lay and professional expertise’.

In the Kelvin-Alexandra-Frankenwald City Studio has offered a dynamic context for an array of interdisciplinary pedagogic engagements. These were taken up in undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Architecture and in Planning in 2024, exploring the diverse urban fabric, questions of urban safety and inclusion, contested land, water and informality, projecting alternative futures through, understanding changes and potential changes in the area through the lens of planning instruments at various scales, and engaging local initiatives at improving sustainability and resilience. The intensity of City Studio coursework activity in 2024 and the public exhibition of student work at the Urban Fare at Marlboro Station inspired 20 postgraduate students across the School to locate their research topics within the City Studio in 2025. In 2025, coursework in the City Studio is more specialised, with an Architecture course focusing on lived intervention and a Geography course engaging in depth with unequal access to food.

2025 – Architecture and Geography

• ARPL1031A, Theories and Histories of Architecture 1 (Lecturer: Dr Sechaba Maape with Dr Paulo Moreira as collaborator). In the project Being in the World: A Lived Intervention at Brebner House, first year Architecture students were asked to explore planetary living, phenomenology, and indigenous knowledge systems through an on-site intervention. Our collaboration with the City Studio linked directly to this by incorporating materials sourced from the area, such as plastic bottles from Stjwetla and metal from Alexandra, while also engaging local artisans from Stjwetla in the design-build process. It was a powerful experience in rethinking architecture through embodied, contextual practice.
• GEOG3026A: Food Security, Politics and Culture (Lecturer: Dr Sarita Pillay Gonzalez). Third-year geography students will be grounded in the City Studio to explore the ‘production of unequal access’ to food across society and space (Alkon and Agyeman 2011, 21). In their guided engagement with residents and two sites, students will analyse geographies of production, distribution, and consumption of food in urban post-apartheid South Africa. This will involve a visit to the Maponyaneville Food Garden, and immersion and interviews at Alex Mall.

2024 – Architecture and Planning

• ARPL3021AHistories and Theories of Architecrture III (Lecturer: Nomonde Gwebu).  Through the theme ‘Engaging spatial justice, urban resilience and sustainability in Johannesburg’, students’ research on the Kelvin-Frankenwald-Alexandra area focused on the application of varying mapping techniques on the three substantially different areas (Kelvin, Linbro Park/Frankenwald and Stjwetla). The module highlighted these distinctions including varied urban fabrics, materiality and the user experiences offered to residents, pedestrians and motorists. The research aimed to equip students with frameworks and suitable mapping and representation techniques to question, critique and re-imagine the relationships between the regions. The questions that the mappings generated were translated in the design studio into conceptual architectural design proposals that either expressed a particular site in its current form, or suggested an opportunity for future transformation.

• ARPL2015A: Contemporary Design and Environmental Issues In South Africa (lecturers: Nkosilenjle Mavuso, Vuyisa Pityana). The project ‘SAKHA INDAWO – Place Making & Safety Design Strategies for Stjwetla, Alexandra’ required the second year MSc Urban and Regional Planning students to develop visions for that respond to the idea of a Safe + Inclusive + Connected Kasi (neighbourhood) that successfully merges formal and informal components. It aimed to get students to reimagine Stjwetla’s existing spatial condition and culture, as expressed in its streets, parks, housing, work and entertainment areas; into spaces where safety, exchange, learning, growing and experimenting are enabled. 足球竞彩app排名s were required to propose Precinct Design proposals around three identified “Safety Spots” in the area where they designed detailed spatial elements (both built and open) that contribute to increased safety, including public furniture that allow for trade, gathering and play for the community.
• ARPL2017A Histories, Theories and Futures of Planning (lecturers: Nqobile Malaza and Nomathemba Dladla). Second year students in BSc Urban and Regional Planning were required to apply what they had learnt their design project in the ARPL2015A: Contemporary Design and Environmental Issues In South Africa to theory on the theme of safety and inclusion. 
• ARPL3033 and ARPL5005A: Local Planning and Design (lecturers: Dr Neil Klug, Dr Mawabo Msingaphantsi, and Skhumbuzo Mtshali). The project ‘Frankenwald-Alexandra Interface Development’ simulated a land development process, focusing on the area around the Marlboro Gautrain Station. 3rd year BSc Urban and Regional Planning students 2024 were required to conduct site analysis and a feasibility study (looking at policy constraints, environmental conditions, and funding requirements). They then produced design concepts and evaluated them against project objectives before translating the concepts into township layouts that meet various technical requirements (road alignments, zoning, FAR, road hierarchy etc.). The aim was to expose students to the complexity and contested nature of urban land and to show them the role of design in spatially articulating divergent development objectives through design concepts that are refined over time to create site plans that address local issues.

• ARPL 3032A The Politics of Planning and Housing (Nqobile Malaza, Prof Sarah Charlton and Dr Priscila Izar). The project ‘Water, politics and security: exploring water access, flows and management in a dense riverside neighbourhood’ involved 3rd year BSc Urban and Regional Planning, investigating the issue of water in Stjwetla, as well safety and security associated with water through group work. Each group had to select, uncover, understand and explain an identified dimension of the matter of water in the locality.  Topics included the supply of fresh water, the disposal of grey water, water in relation to sanitation, and the river as a conduit of water. The theme of ‘safety and security’ was interpreted in diverse ways, such as secure and reliable access to clean water, or personal safety in using toilet facilities. ‘Politics’ might consider how power was distributed and where agency lay, for example. 足球竞彩app排名s visited the settlement with community guides, observed and documented conditions, held informal discussions, conducted background research, crystalised a research question, and developed a narrative for poster presentation using graphic communication where possible.
• ARPL4030A and ARPL5011A: Planning Law (Lecturer: Aneri Heukelman). This course used the Kelvin-Frankenwald-Alexandra City Studio focus area for practical examples within and throughout the course, which included the review of all framework legislation for planning.  Furthermore, the Township Establishment application for the Bankenveld District City (previously referred to as the Frankenwald development) was used to facilitate a mock municipal tribunal in order for the students to process the legislative frameworks that were taught during the course.  The students were able to envisage this specific context and apply it within the learned legal frameworks, enabling them to indicate their structured views and opinions on the background of the City Studio focus area.
• ARPL5005A: Spatial Planning, Transport and Infrastructure (lecturers: Dr Mawabo Msingaphantsi and Muhammed Suleman). The Postgraduate Diploma in Planning students’ project responded to the C40 Cities “足球竞彩app排名s Reinventing Cities” competition brief, which had land near the Marlboro station as the site. As a design course situated within an interdisciplinary programme that introduces candidates from cognate fields to the discipline of planning, the aim in this project was to provide students with an exciting opportunity to draw from their existing knowledge base to interpret the brief and define a vision for the communities of Stwetla and Kelvin. From this divergent starting point, students were introduced to the design process: objective setting, planning theory, concept-making, township layouts and 3D modelling. The project familiarised students with how these planning tools can be used to foster integration and produce local plans and other technical drawings that enable architects and engineers to produce livable settlements.

• ARPL7044A Community Participation in Urban Governance: Theories, Discourses and Practices (Lecturer, Nomathemba Dladla). Masters in Urban Studies students and MSc Development Planning students took part in a field trip to the East Bank of the City Studio area in Alexandra. 足球竞彩app排名s visited a civil society organisation, Alex Water Warriors (AWW). 足球竞彩app排名s had a full day with the AWW volunteers. Waste Pickers and Recyclers who are under AWW took the students through some sections of the Jukskei River and explained the work they do. 足球竞彩app排名s were required to reflect on their visit, paying attention to the strategies used by civil society organisations such as AWW to conserve and improve their living spaces in light of lacking service delivery by the state.

References

Natarajan, L. and Short, M. (2023) Towards engaged urban pedagogy. In Natajaran, L. and Short, M. (eds), Engaged Urban Pedagogy: Participatory Practices in Planning and Place-making. UCL Press, London.
Alkon, A. H., and Agyeman, J. (Eds.). (2011). Cultivating Food Justice: Race, Class, and Sustainability. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.

• 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 (Ntombifuthi 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 足球竞彩app排名s supervised by Dr Sarita Pillay Gonzalez, underway in 2025)

• 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).
• Urban Placemaking in Stjwetla Informal Settlement (Amy Mutua, MM (Development and Economics) supervised by Dr Caryn Abrahams, completed in 2025).
• Self-mobilisation governance practices in Stjwetla's informal settlement (Lebogang Molepo, currently registered as Princess Kobuoe, MM Governance (Public Policy), supervised by Dr Caryn Abrahams, completed in 2025).

• 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)

• 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, MUS (UPG), 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).
• Of Labour and Love: Single Working Mothers in Johannesburg (Lerato Mothapo, BSc.URP (Hon) supervised by Amanda Williamson in 2025)

• 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).

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'.

• ‘Private’ land and the public university: Frankenwald and WITS university in the 20^th and 21^st 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) 

• 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.

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. Read here. 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.

• 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 nears Wynberg (Ipfi Makuya, MArch (Prof) supervised by Jabu Makhubu, underway in 2025). 

• Stjwetla Leadership Committee
• K Stjwetla Patrollers
• Alexandra Water Worriers
• South African Cities Network

Our research is in close conversation with the UWC Governing the Just Urban Transition project which includes GCRO.

• 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

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).