Young people at the margins in Pretoria Central: Are the faith-based organisations making a difference?

The authors’ recent case study work in Pretoria Central as part of the international research project ‘Youth at the margins’ (YOMA) constitutes the focus of this article. From this vantage point, the authors offer a presentation of their research findings in order to ultimately answer the question ‘to what extent the faith-based organisations (FBOs) are making a difference in the lives of young people at the margins in this particular case study locality (Pretoria Central)’. The article begins by contextualising the lives of young people in Pretoria Central against the backdrop of far-reaching socio-economic, demographic and religious change in the area since the end of the apartheid era. After explaining the case study methodology and offering a brief profile of the research participants, the discussion then proceeds with a more detailed discussion of distinctive aspects of the case study findings. In the conclusion, the authors argue that the answer to the article’s guiding question seems to be a negative one when the reality of young people’s seemingly permanent structural exclusion is considered. At the same time, this verdict does not withhold them to also conclude with appreciative remarks about the role that churches and FBOs of the non-governmental organisation (NGO) type are playing with respect to marginalised young people in Pretoria Central

Churches claiming a right to the city? Lived urbanisms in the City of Tshwane

This article sets out to describe how churches have responded and continue to respond to fast-changing urban environments in Pretoria Central and Mamelodi East, animating Henri Lefebvre’s sociological perspective of citadins or urban inhabitants. We make tentative interpretations and offer critical appreciation. Churches, which were historically separated from the city centre, now directly participate in claiming a right to the city. With necessary fluidity, churches express lived African urbanisms through informality, place-making, spatial innovation and everyday rituals. Though not exhaustive, the article focuses on rituals shared among historic urban Christians and contemporary African urban Christians, namely prayer, listening to the Bible and worship. These rituals, when combined with the churches’ spatial innovation, to a certain degree contribute to place-making

Urban landscaping choices and people’s selection of plant traits in Cape Town, South Africa

As cities increasingly become the dominant settlement form across the world, it is critical to gain a deeper insight into their dynamics, in order to better direct environmental management towards enhancing urban sustainability and environmental quality. People are a key driver shaping the ecological makeup of cities, not least through landscaping actions and choices. In this study, we explore social factors shaping plant selection in Cape Town, South Africa through interviews with stakeholders responsible for managing and landscaping across three land use types: private residential gardens, public parks and open space, and conservation areas. We combine an interdisciplinary, multi-scalar framework on residential landscape dynamics and a plant traits lens to structure our approach to examining the influence of social factors on plant selection across spatial and institutional scales in the city, from a bottom-up perspective. Residents name a variety of reasons for plant selection at the household scale related to plant traits, including aesthetics, utility (e.g., food provision), environmental suitability, and personal symbolic meanings. Parks managers select for ecological suitability as well as aesthetic concerns, and conservation managers select chiefly for ecological integrity. All stakeholders describe factors at other scales (e.g., property structure, government policies) that influence their plant selection. We indicate that a complementary patchwork of private gardens and public open spaces could serve as a source of trait diversity and provide a variety of ecosystem functions and services in the urban landscape, and suggest that management and policy efforts can focus on leveraging synergies towards this end. This study contributes to a greater understanding of the social-ecological dynamics in a global south city and biodiversity hotspot.</p