05.09.2018 / News

Danish knowledge to ensure sustainable urban development in South Africa

Aarhus School of Architecture will be contributing knowledge about sustainable urban development to a collaborative project between Aarhus and Tshwane in South Africa.

The Metropolitan Municipality of Tshwane in South Africa, with its capital Pretoria, is home to three million people. Although this is almost ten times more people than live in Aarhus Municipality, Aarhus Municipality will over the next three years be helping South Africans by providing new knowledge about sustainable urban development.

These efforts will be part of a new collaborative project between Tshwane and Aarhus Municipality – a project in which Aarhus School of Architecture will be participating as knowledge partner.

“Tshwane and Aarhus are very different in almost all areas. Consequently, the project aims to look at the school’s existing knowledge about sustainable urban development and transfer it from one context into another,” says Head of Research Charlotte Bundgaard.

“At our school we want to engage with society through architecture, and this kind of project allows us to do so. Not only can we get more out of the knowledge we already have, the debates and workshops we facilitate, which involve the people from Tshwane, will also give us new knowledge to work with”, explains Associate Professor Anne Mette Boye, one of Aarhus School of Architecture’s representatives in the project.

In August, a delegation from Tshwane visited Aarhus. They also made a visit to Aarhus School of Architecture. Sustainable urban development was on the agenda at this meeting.

”We will specifically be working with an area in Tshwane, for which urban development is being planned. The area is quite complex, as it is not the city itself that owns the area. It is difficult to initiate an urban transformation that takes into account the existing diverse community as well as the new people who are moving into the area,” says Anne Mette Boye. She continues:

”It is all about implementing some principles that allow the city to develop in a sustainable way, for instance when it comes to water management. An area where it is necessary to retain some of the water but where flooding is also a challenge. But it is also about how you introduce cyclists and other vulnerable road users and how you ensure a diversified supply of homes to match different family types and people in different economic circumstances.”

The collaborative project will continue until 2020. We are currently planning for scholars from the school’s research units to participate in the project as knowledge partners.