A team of researchers at the University of the Witwatersrand have called for contributions to a new edited book volume entitled Densification: Plans, Practices and Realities in Greater Johannesburg.
Click here to download and read the call document.
Willing contributors should submit a 300 to 400 word abstract, to Alexandra Appelbaum by 20 October 2017, indicating what type of contribution you would like to make (i.e. academic chapter, vignette or creative work) as well as your affiliation and contact details.
Over the last two decades, there have been increasing calls by multi-lateral organisations, academics and practitioners, to densify cities, citing a range of potential benefits, from climate proofing, to resilience, and lessening city spending during times of financial austerity… The outcomes have been uneven: densification policies have not always been fully implemented and where they have, there have been a wide range of outcomes, not all of them necessarily beneficial.
The proposed book will look specifically at international policy experience regarding how density has been managed, both cases that have tried compaction/densification policies, but also some examples of trying to manage high density through changing spatial form and de-densification and the consequences of such approaches. In Johannesburg, the book hopes to explore the processes of densification (and sometimes de-densification too) across the city, how it happens, its drivers, effects, experiences and if and how policy has or has not addressed it.
