1st Edition

Decolonising the Built Environment Process, Product, and Pedagogy

Edited By Kundani Makakavhule, Karina Landman Copyright 2025
260 Pages 35 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

260 Pages 35 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

260 Pages 35 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Decolonising the Built Environment: Process, Product, and Pedagogy provides an important and much-needed comprehensive overview of how decolonisation is shaping the built environment in theory, in practice, and as a process/project today. The contributors provide an inclusive and trans-national conversation between a diverse set of academics, design practitioners and thinkers, and activists.... Read more

1. Towards a Decolonial Turn in the Built Environment

Kundani Makakavhule and Karina Landman

Part 1 From Paradigm to Process

Kundani Makakavhule and Karina Landman

2. Performing Space: Thoughts on Colonising, Decolonising, and the Concert Hall

Margaret E. Walker

3. Settler Colonial Critique and Indigenous Urbanisation

James Miller and Natalie J.K. Baloy

4. Place-Based Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Their Relevance to the Decolonisation of Urban Planning Practice in Namibia: The Olupale and the Omuvanda: Two Cultural Open Spaces

Wilson Billawer and Verna Nel

5. Place-Based Strategies for Transforming South African Urban Nature Places

Dayle Shand and Christina Breed

6. An African Landscape Design Approach for Rural Development

Molwantwa Leonard Sebotsi, Dayle Shand, and Christina Breed

Part 2 From Process to Product and Pedagogy

Kundani Makakavhule and Karina Landman

7. Decolonising the Built Environment in and around a University Campus: The Incongruence between Intellectual Discourse and Lived (Institutional) Practices

Stephan de Beer

8. Visual Redress at Stellenbosch University: Staff Reactions to the Decolonisation of Campus Spaces

Gera de Villiers, Leslie van Rooi, and Elmarie Costandius

9. The Invisible Users of the Street

Dario Schoulund

10. Ubuntu Design Aesthetics and the Built Environment in South Africa

Pfunzo Sidogi

11. An Inquiry into Visual Art as a Critical Disruptor to Reveal Emergent Narratives and Authorship in Architecture

Anika van Aswegen

12. Kamĩrĩĩthũ: An Architecture for Decolonisation

Kenny Cupers and Makau Kitata

Part 3 Reflections on the Decolonial Turn in the Built Environment

Kundani Makakavhule and Karina Landman

13. Spaces of Erasure

Siona O’Connell

14. Can the Master Speak?

Jackson Sebola-Samanyanga

15. Conclusion: Reconsidering the Decolonisation of the Built Environment

Karina Landman and Kundani Makakavhule

Biography

Kundani Makakavhule is a senior lecturer in the Department of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Pretoria, specialising in the transformation of urban public open spaces at neighbourhood and precinct scales. Her research focuses on democracy, spatial appropriation, diversity, and active citizenship, exploring how these micro-scale dynamics influence broader urban planning processes. Drawing on theories from politics, sociology, and geography, her work addresses the social and political factors shaping planning in the developing world. By emphasising multidisciplinary approaches, she contributes to solving contemporary challenges in African urban spaces.

Karina Landman is a professor in the Department of Town and Regional Planning at the University of Pretoria with a background in urban design and architecture. Her work focuses on spatial transformation, including research on gated communities and safer and sustainable neighbourhoods, regenerative and resilient cities, and public space. Her work on public space revolves around issues of inclusivity, regeneration, and resilience. Her research on sustainable development focuses on urban resilience and regenerative development and design. She has published a book, Evolving Public Space in South Africa (2019).