Investing in Volatility: Infrastructure Design Approaches in contexts of Lucrative Instability

Abstract

Private property in South Africa has been seen as a divisive instrument used to secure white monopoly capital through land and infrastructure. The cities we produced through a property-driven lens has created incremental and intergenerational wealth for social groups and a level of economic and social stability in our cities. Regrettably the advancement of unchecked ‘Property-led Development’ in South Africa does not have the maturity or imagination to meaningfully participate in the grand project of African-city making at this moment. Within townships, property development is largely extractive, risk adverse and opportunistic – avoiding the difficult transformative and catalytic work needed in townships –townships which were denied the ability to leverage the rights to property. Townships are socially, economically and spatially scared by apartheid policies. Blind investment through property will accentuate these scars and create another iteration of socio-spatial violence - this time in the cunning guise of ‘investment’ and ‘growth’. The townships are highly volatile sites – with irregular land arrangements, social unrest, political instability, compromised infrastructure (water, electricity) and high levels of criminality. Between its history and volatility, the township remains a lucrative site for the growing volume of emerging consumers at the lower LSM’s. The intersection of property development with history and opportunity presents a unique moment to ask larger, more accountable questions such as – what can an imaginative, accountable, generous, transformative property development practice look like? How can property development reimagine itself as tool of ‘white monopoly capital’ to wards one of radical black prosperity and transformation? Through case studies and observations from the field, this contribution aims to critically examine more rogue property practices, that could hint at a more radical proposition on how property can be a more transformative and innovative act.