URBAN DESIGN International (2003) 8, 105117

r 2003 Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. 1357-5317/03 $15.00

www.palgrave-journals.co.uk/udi

Defining spatial concepts toward an African urban system

Rod Lloyd*
GIA, ISAA

Urban society in South Africa has two major cultural streams, overlaid by international norms. Historically,
colonial settlement in South Africa (as elsewhere) imposed a European, metropolitan culture of cities. This
included exotic flora and fauna, but most important a very different view about space, and division and
ownership of land.
Urban racial demography is increasingly reflective of the country as a whole. Rapid urbanisation is
overlaid by serious social and physical pathologies and widespread alienation. Proactive central city
densification, as a viable solution, requires particular sensitivity to peoples psychical and cultural values.
This calls into question the lack of enquiry in this regard. Normative planning prevails, and any
synthesised urban system, responsive to African urban society has not been conceptualised.
Cities are an invention of society, of what that society believes itself to be, in space and time. We experience
cities, primarily through our sense of space; All our consciousness is bound in space (Kant). We have
complex ways in which space is both felt and imagined, and while some spatial imagination is universal
and hard wired (increasingly verifiable through neural science), more is learnt, growing in specific social,
cultural and physical environments.
Beyond that, a world view encompasses our whole self, as social being and individual, both physically and
metaphysically.
European cultural tradition is never free of ordering devices, refined, in modern history during the
Enlightenment. It is further infused by doubt; validation is through material, aesthetic experience. African
culture validates itself through personal and humanist values. Certain confluences occur where Greco
Roman origins of Western European culture replicate African values. The potential exists to synthesise
compatible urban spatial systems.
Human spatial sensibilities, and the way in which African and European cultures perceive this are
examined to this end.
URBAN DESIGN International (2003) 8, 105117. doi:10.1057/palgrave.udi.9000100
Keywords: space; spatial imagination; humanist world view; synthesis

Introduction: historical settlement

La contrerevolution ne sera point une revolution
contraire, mais le contraire de la revolution (The
counter-revolution will not be a revolution in
reverse but the opposite of revolution) (De
Maistre, 1796; quoted by Arenot 1985)
Prior to the last decades of the 19th century, a
handful of European towns existed within small
agricultural settlements at the tip of southern
Africa. Discovering the hinterland, according
to conventional history, were missionaries,
adventurers, trek-boer farmers, naturalists and
*Correspondence:
E-mail: rodlloyd@icon.co.za

hunters. Only 80 years later, there would be a total

transformation. Towns established across the
country would be linked by rail, in a relatively
industrialised, urban-based socio-political structure. All land, now surveyed and sub-divided,
would have been designated to state, tribal or
private ownership. Towns, rivers and mountains
were named systems of Scientific classification of
fauna and flora and geology, astronomy and law
were codified.

History would be written, cultural expression and

rituals devised, and town building would take
place with little reference to indigenous culture,
knowledge or sensibilities. For the indigenous

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R Lloyd
106

people, all this would fulfil De Maistres counterrevolution.

However, in a timely paradigm shift current
historical evaluations (Etherington et al, 2001),
position one in the centre of the country. From this
geographically central perspective, incumbent
nations exist and co-exist, engaging in periodic
conflict; but not for minerals and land title, rather
for the control of well-watered grazing land and
political hegemony. The European usurper approaching from coastal bases becomes one more,
albeit major, participant.
The pre-colonial cities
A perception of settlement in pre-colonial southern Africa is characterised by movement of
people, both continental and regional. Often only
burial sites, the place of the ancestors, retain
spatial identity and permanence, although this
may be for a limited number of generations.
There is, however, much evidence of permanent
urban settlement prior to the 19th century. African
towns of 1220 000 people, as large as their
contemporary, European mediaeval cities, had
existed up to 1800 (archaeological investigation of
burial sites date one site to the 12th century, and
emphasises sophistication in metal and other
crafts). These were in the central, high-veld
region, along easily mined ore bodies, of iron
and copper and even gold, and good cattle
country. Consequent trade routes in metals and
hides extended over thousands of kilometres,
linking central and east African Arab trade
systems (Lye and Murray 1980).

Over such a long period of city settlement, urban

sensitivities would have become deeply imbedded in their culture, suggesting that
a substantial and real, indigenous contribution
to town and city building was overlooked.
But by the mid-19th century, the only functioning
urban systems appeared to be those of the great
places of militarised Chiefs and Kings, moving
periodically often over quite large distances for
health or political reasons.
Scattering and movement of people became
widespread as safety and political cohesion
responded to widespread instability. This
process intensified with colonial settlement,
tending to de-materialise the lives of many
communities.
As with Australian aboriginal people, spatial
memory was absorbed into the collective memory and myth (Jacobs, 2002).2
The effective exclusion of African people from
colonial towns (other than as employees) would
be particularly reinforced by the mystery of
written law and land title.
These two concepts, the alienation of land and the
exclusive, urban town of record, imposed physical and ethical conditions without precedent in
African oral history, memory or experience. The
greater spatial imagination became blurred and
confined, while that of the urban remained a
mystery.
2

Sophisticated legal process and moral codes, and

democratic process prevailed over this whole
region. Towns, built of stone, had organised
geometry and modified terraced urban structures.
Well-organised means of sanitation, water supply
and grain storage would be essential to urban
settlement on this scale, supporting crafts and
manufacturing for trade (Wilson and Thompson,
1982).1
1
The physical evidence of these Cattle Culture ruins,
although extensive, allows only speculation regarding form
and plan. Most towns were well established in the 17th
century, reaching populations of 20 000 or more by the 19th
century. The purely urban component F of law, ritual, craft
and trade F was complemented by widespread cattle stations,
serving the towns practical needs (Lye and Murray, 1980)

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Attachment to land among traditional aboriginal communities in Australia is both permanent and without strong
physical presence: more a city of the mind, where place and
route are attached permanently to a space as memory. Identity
is provided by trees and prominent rock features and streams
(Rykwert, 1982). Jane M. Jacobs (2002) uses the word
ephemerality to grasp the nature of applied art at special
places, and to trees, stone and body, etc. Re-application
requires regular renewal, and through ritual becomes permanent. There is a suggestion of knowing, in the imagination,
the vastness of space in that continent, in which special sites
are defined and confirmed through constant ritual reiteration
over centuries of time (Jacobs, 2002). The Hegelian term third
space describes a hybrid space which, without losing modern
usage, is given recognition of pre-colonial aboriginal ownership (Ibid p. 154). Australian Architect Glen Murcots contemporary interpretative concept of this ephemeral sense is
touching the earth lightly: figuratively to dissolve the solidity
of structure into the surrounding bush by feathering roof
edges for example.

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Colonial attachment to land

European colonial culture, essentially static but
cumulative and acquisitive, was altogether less
confident. It was built around four symbiotic
orders: religious ethics, trade, law and order. An
overriding condition was to transform indigenous
land to replicate a quasi-metropolitan culture in
every physical respect. Vast areas of land were
surveyed and made available at little cost to
colonial settlers.3
This European sensitivity, toward being in
Africa, as it did in Australia (Jacobs, 2002),
required the strong stamp of formal structure,
delineation of the earth, the comfort of large
exotic trees, and above all recorded ownership of
land, in perpetuity.

Discussion: lost synthesis

Crucial to any understanding of revolutions in
the modern age is that the idea of freedom and
the experience of a new beginning should
coincide Hannah Arendt, 1985.
Contemporary South African society, in a transitional phase, nearly equally balanced between
rural and urban tends to look forward, away from
their recent, painful history. A substantial percentage of urban dwellers, white and black, have
experience and memory of an unstructured, rural
childhood.
Those childhood memories, a rural dream,
would, in African settlement, have understood
that all space is public, excepting only that defined
by ritual as private space. In the European rural
dream all space would be private, except only for
specifically designated and regulated public areas,
defined through legal process, walls and fences.
Without the colonial mindset, two quite opposite
world views (in terms of Hegels dialectic),
the African urban settlement and European
Enlightenment city cultures, might otherwise
3
European farm settlers were often at odds with their original
urban-based culture, especially Boer antagonism toward
British rule: others were simply land speculators. Instances
are recorded of trading enormous farms for trivial amounts, as
white colonists satiated their desire for land. Speculators took
on the nature of a marauding horde on a defenceless land.
Rural European settlement enacted another unique concept,
what I call the RURAL DREAM: to own enough land so as
not to be able to see any (European) neighbour.

have merged (as they did, eventually in India:

Davies, 1987). What other city form might there
have been created, whose human emphasis could
now still enrich contemporary, normative urban
theory.
The Western tradition of structured enquiry,
captured in Platos theory of idea and form still
seeks an ontology, or pure ideal for all function and
form. Current city design aims essentially to satisfy
technical and economic efficiencies, allowing,
through tacit neglect, diverse human cultures to
be suppressed, or to mutate to a bland and
universal city culture. As Anthony Giddens
(2002) has observed, globalisation, far from imposing universality, ought to create an opposite,
downward pressure, liberalising diversity and
unique culture.
More importantly, for African city dwellers there
is little direct, or even referred process of
participation in urban design delivery.
From the writers direct experience,4 four principal reasons are proposed:
 The process of urban delivery by outsiders has
become a custom (much as traditional Muslim
communities have regarded architectural
design process).
 Architecture, beyond pure function, is simply
unimportant for an intensely human-based
culture, whose verification requires only that
built fabric be functional.
 African culture traditionally tends to accept
rather than to doubt (Masolo, quoted below)
 African art tends traditionally toward a reductive and functional expression, becoming
static and minimalist in design or pattern.
Thereafter, little or no development is required
(dAzevedo, 1975).5
4
The authors experience over 4 years, of renovating, and
extensively adding to one, intensely cultural city community,
in Johannesburg, provided strong evidence of determined
disconnection to its modern, urban environment. The overriding cultural realm, implanted for some 75 years through
historical circumstance in re-cycled, extremely simple, robust
buildings, devoid of architectural language (and subject to
continuous government harassment), became more resilient
and pure. The sense of spiritual and human value, and
egalitarian principles, as in many religious institutions,
reduces the fabric and built form to minimal significance.
5
This is changing in many crafts, where commercial interest
and tourism, rather than cultural importance encourages
experimentation, resulting in wide and rich diversity of
expression.

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About 20 million people, half of South Africas

population, are said to acknowledge, to a varying
extent, traditional African custom and law.6 Many
migrant workers still lead dual lives, men of two
worlds (Moodie, 1991), living a city life but
retaining strict tradition in the homeland.
However despite considerable urgency, little
research or dialogue, or priority is given to engage
African urban populations in this specific debate
around the culture of cities. Nor has any school
of urban design emanated from Africanist
thinkers, whose sensitivity to modernity versus
tradition pervades social and political issues. As
happened in India, the few indigenous planners
and architects who qualify academically, apparently absorb European, international theory with
little modification.7
But if cities are a reflection of a society, of how it
sees itself, then their necessary psychical equilibrium requires that we first know a society
rigorously. Obviously there are problems of
objectivity and process. A serious problem of
rapport exists between planners and citizens
whose city experience has little of the depth and
history of those engaged by, say, Italian architect
Giancarlo de Carlo. His celebrated, participative
design process engages with his own people, and
also their centuries of urban experience, and
precise sense of necessity (Wilson, 1993).
Without widely agreed conceptual understandings of city culture, the extensive social research
required has little foundation. Empirical experience and common sense are valuable adjunct
tools, but perhaps, as biologist Edward Wilson
suggests, the poets sensibility may best lead to
the truth (Wilson, 1999).
Any urban enquiry begins with the nature of
space.
6

The word traditional is not used here in its literal sense.

While there are substantial numbers of African people who
adhere to some fundamental tradition, most have embraced
contemporary religions, become leading politicians, academics, business people, poets, musicians and craftsmen
without losing an African world view. Many have also
embraced European culture. The word African is used to
designate black Africans.
7
In India, many mature architects, such as Charles Correa,
trained in the US and have in recent years made a real impact
on the synthesis of modern building technology with uniquely
Indian culture and social system, most especially in terms of
space and light. I refer to his State Assembly building at
Bhopal in Madhya Pradesh.

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Spatial imagination
Spatial awareness, central to every persons
senses, is intensified in the urban condition, with
both positive and negative connotation. Pathologies such as agoraphobia or claustrophobia, the
extremes, indicate limits of a psychical spatial
envelope. Herbert Gans empirical studies in
high-rise buildings in urban America and Hong
Kong, in widely varying cultures, reveal serious
social pathologies, where each dwelling is isolated and a sense of ownership or group
cohesion cannot be understood. By contrast,
research (in a UK urban context) indicates that
higher functional levels are in fact achieved in
relatively crowded sample groups. The suggestion is that social sense is biotic and predominant
over environmental, and even cultural conditions.
Man as biological organismyfulfils his needs and
progressesythrough communal activity and social
relationships. Although his community is biotic it is
also cultural (Alexander, 1973). Space would
appear also to have an essential psychological
value, through redundancy.8
Spatial memory
Humankind, subjecting itself to the environment, assimilates to it in a process of mimetic
identification: natura naturata versus natura
naturans (Leach, 2002).
Historically, coastal or rural hill town dwellers,
having maximised defensible urban space within
costly town walls, created a highly claustrophobic
morphology. This is counter-balanced through a
retained memory of extensive spatial experience
of land or sea, presented from windows, roads
and small piazzas. Conversely in desert terrains,
notably in Muslim cities, patterns of dense form,
tiny courtyards and narrow access lanes balance,
in the mind, boundless desert space and night
skies. This simultaneous mental retention of
confined urban space and expansive natural
space, including earth and sky, is identified as
spatial imagination (Ashihara, 1983). Ashihara
also refers to the lightly partition-wall definition
of space in traditional Japanese architecture, with
8
This (limited) reference illustrates certain common principles
of spatial culture, affecting urban settlement, land ownership
and consciousness of spatial boundaries. It also illustrates
divergence from western European notions of space, or indeed
other cultures, for example, those under Koranic law or in
Asian.

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R Lloyd
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enclosing verandah, suggesting a simultaneous

memory or consciousness of the island boundaries of the sea.
San bushmen sentenced to be detained in the
Breakwater gaol, in the totally alien environment
of 19th century Cape town, retained vivid
memories of their desert home, surviving their
incarceration as though dreaming.
Origins and complexity in spatial imagination
A highly developed spatial imagination was
essential to Palaeolithic hunter/gatherer communities, stimulating brain and intellectual
growth. Human brain capacity already equal to
that of modern man retained, of necessity,
enormous knowledge of the environment,
fauna and flora, and especially an ability to
interpret, speculate and hypothesise. The
hunter imagines a quite sophisticated spatial
scenario as a dynamic process, both in threedimensional space and time and in terms of
both hunter group strategy, movement of quarry
and terrain.
Disseminating experience through story telling,
essential to continuity of knowledge, was the first
teaching (and entertainment). Teaching and learning thus developed important mimetic, cultural
and linguistic connections to space and environment. Evidence suggests that complexity in
spatial imagination is epigenetic, tied closely to
the development of intellect, language and social
abilities: a natural, more normative neural sense
(Liebenburg, 2001)
Spatial complexity is suppressed in the highly
structured urban world, except perhaps in organised games, in which spatial imagination,
and the intellect, concentration, skill and social
cooperation required of the hunter group is
replicated.9
9
Liebenberg puts forward the view that Hunter/Gathering is
effectively the origin of scientific research, as the necessary
skills and mental development are at least equal to those
required for any modern scientific research. Principal skills of
spatial imagination and applied intelligence are critical to
success. In study groups of San hunter/gatherers, if all men
were hunters, then perhaps 50% would be good hunter/
trackers, and only two would be the best, with consistent
success. Yet all would share equally and no person would
assume overt superiority due to variance in ability. (Liebenberg, 2001). Many traits of knowledge gathering and skills are
widely practised in all modern societies.

Spatial sensory development

The brain capacity of a child, only 30% developed
at birth, allows considerable scope for assimilation through culture and environment.
Play, in particular, develops cultural knowledge
through symbolic replication. Freuds view of
play was of a process through which people
and groups learn to see themselves. The
analogy is drawn of the musicians third ear or
ability to hear his or her own music (Sennett,
1993a).
But rules, or conventions, are important
social tools, notably to children at play. The
rules, often what the game is all about, are
changed to suit varying conditions, abilities and
group cohesion. Later, as adults in society,
conventions are expressed as formalised rituals
(Sennett, 1993b).
Retained rural experiences from childhood, of
unstructured and open veldt, would have trees
and rocks and water, in all its forms creating
place, boundary and landmark in complex, varying arrangements. Reiterating inherent spatial
complexity, under the unsheltered sky, and
brightness of the southern sun (Norburgh
Schulzs aphorism of being between earth and
sky), this experience is also free of segmented
time.
A city child, however, absorbs spatial experience
within geometric, man-made form and space,
predominantly hard-edged and surfaced, often
devoid of planting and trees and with a limited
sense of sky. Their inherent sense of spatial
complexity fails to develop. Diurnal time and
rhythm are predictable and modified by artificial
light. (It is not uncommon for urban children to be
psychically uncomfortable in open country, especially bush veldt, and for adults to become
disorientated.)
Pathologies of social behaviour are also exacerbated through intense urban experience. Acute
sensitivities were exposed and studied by
Freud in the rapidly urbanised and industrialised 19th century Vienna. His theories
examined and most nearly understood the
urban human condition at its most fundamental
psychological level.
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Psychology and spatial sense

Aesthetics and the pleasure principle: Freuds
theory centred around the conflict between eros
and thanatos, between love and deathy life
instincts and death instincts, relating back to
the memory of a perfect state in the womb, a
refuge for the id, y striv(ing) only for satisfaction of its instinctual needs, in accordance with
the pleasure principleyy subsequent life is
governed by a desire to return to this lost
paradisey. Freud called this the Nirvana principle
expressed in the pursuit of pleasure, psychic
equilibrium and, at the highest level, harmony
with the universe (Leach, 2002).
This drive for harmony manifests in pleasure
derived from aesthetic values, most notably,
spatial harmony, balance and proportion. Mimetic
identification with material objects, narcissism, is a
compulsion to identify the self with the other.10
(In the modern world, this other may, according
to Freud, be the motor car, an observation of some
significance to city design.)11
However, substantial mimetic satisfaction has
developed from conditions of survival. In neural
terms, areas of the lower brain, the parietal lobes
and amygdala are solely concerned with helping
us to have a positive response to some things and
negative to othersy. Apparently inconsequential
variable aspects of our environment such as
climate, landscape, flora and fauna will critically
influence the formation of our brains. (Onians,
2002). Onians suggests that meaning, and the
origin of historically formalised architectural
objects develops directly from environmental
factors, in particular those essential for social or
group survival. Certain, ubiquitous design elements, forms or space, of vital significance to, say,
specialist craftsmen are emphasised and reiterated (ibid.). Cultural meaning can be increasingly
interpreted by known environmental influences,
in which space must be seen as having
value unique in each society. humans constantly
10
Christopher Lasch, ascribes narcissistic and related psychological disorders, dominant pathologies in the US, 1970, to the
threat of a Holocaust, of nuclear attack and mindless cruelty
(Cambodia). Rampant consumerism is another manifestation
of narcissism, as also compulsion to internalise, avoid
commitment and responsibility for others. (The Minimal Self)
11
More interestingly, a powerful, mimetic relationship of
individuals to the private car is revealed as an unresolved
and primitive problem. Perhaps only primitive solutions will
be a rational response.

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attach meaning to the built

(Adorno, quoted by Leach, 2002).

environment

The western tradition

All our consciousness is grounded in spatial
experience. (Kant, quoted by Wilson, 1989).12
Artificial imagination
It has been suggested that 18th century enlightenment, the age of Humanism, represents
the highest point in Western cultural history
(Carroll, 1993).
The first half of the quatrocento renaissance in
Italian city states witnessed the emergence of a
powerful intellectual movement, led, initially
through the writing, most often in Latin, and later
practice of architecture, planning, art and sculpture by men such as Alberti, Brunelleschi,
Donatello and Bruni. They pursued the realist,
Latin rhetoric and moral philosophy of the
Roman school of Cicero, drawing also from the
writings of Vitruvius (Holms, 1969). This realist
moral philosophy underpinned outstanding artistic expression, and created an intellectual concept
fundamental to Western art and architecture (up
to the 20th century); it also reinforced the
ascendancy of artificial spatial imagination.
In Albertis satirical dialogue, Momus, Jove,
during a search on earth for the best forms of
government discovers the supreme beauty of
buildings, recognising their intrinsic ethical value
and harmony with cosmic truth. In this world,
and in all of nature, harmony or Concordia,
derived from numerical ratios in music and
architecture, prompts pursuit of social and moral
harmonies. These expressions of terrestrial civitas
find concordance with divine civitas (Tavernor,
2002). Discordance (especially in music) is thus
inherently evil, and contrary to divine truth.
Alberti devised precise rules (espoused also by
Brunelleschi) for a humanist conviction that
numerical sequence, scale and proportion were
vested entirely in human anthropomorphic values
: the ancient notion of perfection expressed numerically ibid pp. 84, 85) (Cesarianos two illustrations
in De Architectura of 1521, the near literal
12
Two great 19th century architects Adolph Loos and Hans
Scharoun were given to quoting (this) statement (Wilson, 1989.
P. 65).

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crucifix man, and the homo ad quadratum, man

spread-eagled in a square).
These absolute geometric systems were applied in
both architecture, for example, Albertis S. Maria
Novella in Florence (!448470), and in painting
and sculpture.
Vitruvians crucifix man was implanted directly,
as a footprint in many enlightenment plans, and
even elevations of churches. Simplistic symbolism
included abstract geometries such as Borrominis
17th century plan of San Carlino.
Analysis of Piero della Franscescas beautiful
painting, The Flagellation of Christ, exposes in
quite extraordinary detail adherence to the rules,
even in three dimensions that guided proportion
and numerical sequence (ibid p. 86).
This ascendancy of logic and realism was to be
supplanted in the later 15th century with a return
to the metaphysical philosophy of classic Greece
(Holms, 1969). However, the core value of logic
was to affect all subsequent philosophy, driving
artistic expression further from the reality of the
natural human condition.
Breaking this tradition, Cezanne, the earliest and
greatest of the impressionists, painted form and
space as it was, modelling only the light and
especially space, as did Mattisse after him.
But abstract art, for example of Miro or Paul Klee
(whose drawings inspired Edmund Bacons concepts of planes in space), reinforced an artificial
imagination as the primary Western way of
understanding matter and space.
Western European urban form remains steadfastly mannerist, albeit with technical emphasis.
The poetic writings of Norburgh Schulz, the
romantic influence of Camillo Sitte and of the
Kriers have all opened new ways of thinking, but
a convincing, contemporary urban system, which
connects cities to real people through the medium
of urban spatial sense, has yet to emerge (in the
way, for example, that Sennetts Public Man
devised cities for his own particular world view;
Sennett, 1993a).
Identifying spatial sense in terms of artificial
imagination must indicate a pre-existing sense of
a natural spatial imagination.

Natural imagination
There is a stream of awareness just below the
level of day-to-day self consciousness that monitors the field of spatial relationships around us.
(Wilson, 1989, p. 70). The logic of Mimesis
dictates that we are constantly assimilating to
the built environmenty The very process implies
an appropriation , a claiming of the object y.
(that) echoes the theme of Narcissus trying
to reach out and appropriate his own image
(Leach, 2002, p. 220).
Adrian Stokes invokes the idea of Einfuhlung or
empathy, the re-incorporation of an emotional
state or physical sensation, projected upon the
object of attention: Hegels Einhausung; to be at
home in the world (Wilson, 1989).
Stokes draws on Melanie Kleins studies of infant
psychology, invoking Freuds nirvanah principle: the infants memory of an enveloping state
in the womb, which becomes overlaid by postnatal detachment, otherness, separate identity,
helplessness amid a sense of physical danger
(ibid). This demands that full mimetic gratification, through aesthetic experience, hinges on both
conditions. It is uniquely the role of the masterpiece to make possible the simultaneous experience of these two polar modes: of envelopment
and detachment, of oneness and separateness
(ibid.).
How this dilemma is resolved is culturally
based. A Western European response is to develop artificial, aesthetic sensitivities: mimetic connection to objects and technology. An African
response, among other cultures emphasises
human relationship.

An African world view

The day we die, a soft breeze will wipe out our
footsteps from the sand. When the wind dies down,
who will tell the timelessness, that once we walked this
way, in the dawn of time? (from Khoisan song;
Rabethge-Schille, 1997).
Richard Nisbetts empirical studies (Nisbett, 2003)
have shown that, despite apparent similarities in
behaviour, distinctly different world views are
shared, respectively, by young western American
students, and young east Asian Chinese (Beijing)
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students. He contends that these differing world

views are entirely consistent with the respective
origins: of Western, (Greco/Roman) and Eastern
(Confucian) philosophies. The origins of these
philosophies were cultural responses in terms of
survival and growth of societies, reiterating
Onians proposal above.
Greco-Roman culture relied almost entirely
on manufacture, trade and conquest. This
promoted the value of logic, objectivity, accuracy, exhaustive enquiry after knowledge and,
particularly, the value of individual action,
thought and debate.
Survival of Chinese society was based on the
demands of an agrarian culture. This required
broader, less focused, more holistic knowledge.
Family, social relationship, group continuity,
cohesion and agreement through compromise
relegated the individual as one of the whole,
(ibid.).
An African world view falls somewhere between
the two, but unique ethical qualities define their
own unique cultural origins.
Philosophical identity
Within the space of this paper, the wide divergence that exists amongst Africanist philosophers
must be acknowledged. An extreme nationalistic
school queries, even the potential of Western
philosophical process to define an ontology of one
African philosophy. A fundamental issue is
between universal as against uniqueness
accorded to African philosophy (Masolo, 1994
p. 247). Leopold Senghor, and others identify only
uniquely African core values, overlaid by 500
years of Arab and European influence. Janheinz
Jahn, for example, observes that residual African
elements are always visible in the past and present
works, and behaviour, of all black people (ibid. p. 38)
Masolo quotes the Martinique philosopher, Fanon, using Hegelian dialectic principle to describe
history (as) a process, within which cultural ideologies
abolish each other through alienation (ibid p. 9).
Senghor defines culture as the psychic constitution that, in every people explains their civilisationy a certain way, particular to every group of
feeling, thinking, expressing and acting.
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Logic, central to European tradition, is perhaps a

defining value of African culture, which is
dominated by mystic and emotional values (ibid.
p. 26).
African thinking also tends toward greater certainty and acceptance without question, contrasting western European tradition of logic and
scientific certainty, which is in reality suffused
with doubt, generating thoughtful enquiry,
hypothesis and confirmation (Masolo, 1994).
It is widely accepted however that a universally
held, uniquely African world view can be
observed empirically in nearly all African, especially rural, populations, albeit with many variant
expressions in practice. This position, of direct
empirical study, is employed in this paper
(see Heinz Kuckertz below).
An African sense of self
In African tradition, the psychic conundrum of
self and other is recognised and resolved during
the instructive process of initiation.
An essential component of instruction is the formal
(he/she would have grown up with its practice)
introduction of the initiate into the metaphysical
concept of life beyond death, engendering important relationships to space and land.
Death is the culmination of life on earth. The way
we acknowledge this boundary to life has
psychic implications. Jean Baudrillard (1998)
argues that in modern, Western culture death
has been de-socialised by over-turning bioanthropological laws, thereby according to death
the immunity of science, and by making it
autonomous, as (an) individual fatality (p. 131).
By contrast, African societies have naturalised
death, do not recognise its materiality and
accord it social definition only, as another form
of current, social relationship. Initiation thus
engages a critical social structure, essentially
symbolic. Initiation y. aims to neither conjure
death away nor to overcome it (ibid.). Initiates
die symbolically and are re-born, having
enacted an exchange between the world of
ancestors and the living. ythey are consumed
by their ancestors, then the earth gives birth to
them, as their mothers gave birth to them. y The
initiates are left in the hands of their cultural

Defining spatial concepts

R Lloyd
113

parents. The splitting of life and death has been

conjured away (ibid.).
Sociologist Heinz Kuckertz (1990) lived intimately
for some years with, and studied, a South African
Nguni group, the Mthwa. He describes their
understanding of death as ya decidedly social
affair, which carves out as it were a group of people in
terms of their agnatic relationship. y once more the
dead person is one of us (awakothu), and the agnatic
kin group expands beyond the threshold of death (ibid.,
p. 230).

gatherings, ancestors are accorded symbolic space

and ritual sustenance. Such rituals are intended to
strengthen the group, so that through this the
individual enhances personal recognition.
(Western cultural origins, in ancient Greece, had
an equivilent role of oikos or family: nobody
(Athens in the 4th century BC) knew of a time when
membership of the Athenian community did not
depend on membership of an Athenian Oikos (Manville, 1990)).
The law and space

13

The psychic shift (through initiation) is, firstly

admission into a greatly expanded social hierarchy, which includes the ancestors, and secondly
the bonding of fellow initiates in a collectivity
(sic) of rival brothersy(as)y social beings, a
quite different and symbolic relationship (Baudrillard, p. 135). Henceforth to be part of the tribe
and family is to have life, and to be rejected is
tantamount to a living death.14
The essence of culture is thus realised as a unique
life force vested in each individual, the Being
or Munthu. The collective is Bunthu. So that
there is the aphorism (here in Xhosa) Umunthu
ngumunthu ngaBanthu (I am a person, by reason
of,/recognition by, other people) (Shutte, 1994).
Continuity of life in death destroys certain
material realities in which, for one, land or cattle
can ever be owned (in the sense of Roman law, of
alienation of title). Secondly, this blurring emphasis, of the metaphysical edge to life, dissolves the
sense of spatial boundary.
Deference to, and responsibility for, space and
ownership for those not physically present expands holistic sensibilities toward material objects.
The presence of ancestors in Mthwa society (as in
ancient Greece) is pervasive in family or tribal
affairs. Physically present at family agnate
13
Other tensions conducive to social disruption, such as those
imbedded in patriarchal rivalry and authority, and Oedipal
mother/son bonds, are engaged in this process of death and
re-birth.
14
Here there is a parallel in the early Greek city state. The
reality of being an Athenian entailed an individuals subsummation in the polis yythere was no existence outside
the social existence, no reality outside the social reality; hence
the greater ones participation in the social reality, the greater
ones sense of self (Manville, 1990, quoting Carter, p. 28)

Hannah Arendt observed that the origin of law

created unequivocal equality and uniformity.
Law, she said, was necessary not because all
men were equal but because they were not.
outside the walls of the polisy the strong did
what they could and the weak suffered what they
musty Thucidides (Ahrendt, 1985).15
Law functions in Mthwa communities within
organised settlements, under the control of a
Chief. It operates hierarchically from the household, through Mat associations, the next legal
stage up from the homestead, based neither on
territory nor on kinship,16 up to the Chief, for
appeals and serious issues. As in 4th century
Athens, openness to public scrutiny increases
with ascending seriousness of legal proceeding
(Kuckertz, 1990).
Under ritual conditions the homestead cattle
byre is referred to by the same word, Indhlu
meaning house, being part of one spatial system.
The Kgothla is the place of family discussion and
legal hearings. Its semi-public quality allows
15
Much of Western culture derives from Ancient Greek city
states. Pre-legal concepts, in early Greek city settlements
regarding ownership of land, are so similar to African concepts
that Manville (1990) draws direct comparisons by way of
clarification.Parallels tend to diverge when laws were codified
and written down, mainly by Drakon , as a result of misuse of
power by the ruling class, the Archons, beginning in the 4th
century (Manville, 1990).
16
Mat associates, either agnate or not, have a political
affiliation and also assist each other in times of need, such as
re-building or harvest. Members could be located over a wide
area within the district, even belonging to differing tribal
groups (Kuckerts, 1990). This also represents a notional
community, not spatially defined, identified by 19th century
Austrian sociologist Tonnies, as one characteristic advantage
peculiar to city life. (In contrast are the social tyrannies of the
village of Jane Jacobs and adherents).

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Defining spatial concepts

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114

attendance by non-agnate persons. This essential

devolution of private to public urban space is thus
reinforced through ritual.
Each homestead remains a cultural cell within the
urban complex: Kuckertz expresses it is the
Symbol of the World (chapter heading). It forms
part of a rising hierarchy of urban spatial
structures, headed by the Chiefs place. Politically
the chiefdom is a concatenation of alliances between
the chief and a multiplicity of homestead heads
(Kuckertz, p. 271). The Cattle byre thus represents
order, ritual and fraternity (gatherings for
weddings and burial of ancestors), its attached
dwelling representing solitude: perhaps uniquely, all of Sennetts criteria for social order, in
one spatial system (Lloyd, 1988).17
The, ubiquitous so-called bilobial house (Frescura, 1981) in traditional settlement expresses a
physical form of Adrian Stokes proposal (described above), of balance between envelopment
(the womb-like, interior) and otherness of the
outer world. Anthropomorphic language used in
built structures to define the public/private
continuum, is often in gradations of exquisite
detail. The most private place, only ever entered
by intimates, is that of the mothers hut, itself
often (although not necessarily) round and female
in form. Its access is in a sense the birth canal.
Walls are embellished by the occupant, mostly
using natural pigment. Patterns and colours,
whether in woven material or applied plaster,
are geometric, symbolic or realistic, more often
emphasising fertility through tree and plant
drawings, but also representative of animals and
of mythical association (Mathews, 1989).
It is from this humanist world with its unique
sense of physical space unbounded by earthly
life, contained by a structure of ethical and moral
law, that it is possible to conceptualise appropriate urban spatial systems (See Figures 18).

Conclusion
Richard Nisbett has revealed, through extensive
tests, the way in which Western (American)
17
In an unpublished dissertation for a Masters degree, a
number of iconic public places, including for example, the
Mediaeval market place, were examined in terms of Sennetts
four criteria. Most fail in one or more respects. The Kgothla has
all conditions in good measure (Lloyd, 1988).

URBAN DESIGN International

Figure 1. African rural dream: all space is public

except for space designated private through ritually
contrived building language.

Figure 2. European rural dream: all space is private

and designated so through legal and graphic orders, and
also visually, to the horizon.

Figure 3. Conceptual Urban System (i): (1) base

open place bonds to house plots (3) via (2), mediating
space and visual surveillance.

cultural behaviour is governed by scientific

definition: of objects, process and ideas. It is
within this Western tradition that we still define
our societys urban values and build its cities in
South Africa. It is also the way, in particular, that
we deliver housing to poor South Africans.
Delivery of urban land is contrary to most of the
urban populations tradition, and simply not
supportive of healthy communities.
It should come as no surprise that low-income
urban settlements, both formal and informal,
largely inhabited by African people have been

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R Lloyd
115

Figure 4. Conceptual Urban System (ii): base open place (1) links to shared place (2), with ritual structure (3),
order/school (4) and link (5).

Figure 5. Conceptual Urban System (iii): expanded:

shared place (1), link-as-place (2), to central urban place
(3) with transport, main market and high-order government, education and services (4). Future links (5).

described, in the respected weekly journal Financial Mail, as almost beyond recovery (Financial
Mail, 2003). In many measurable urban pathologies, South African cities rate as the worst or near
worst in the world. Research data indicate a
substantial breakdown of these urban societies.
Poverty and paucity of infrastructure exacerbates
a near destruction of traditional moral systems
and culture, to which (especially in formal
housing delivery) incompatible and alienating
spatial experience contributes.
In terms of Western, scientific process recognised
pathologies are separately addressed. But one

Figure 6. The Conceputal Urban System applied to

high-density housing (300 units/ha): winning competition
entry for housing, Cape Town, Olympic bid, 1990. Block
plan: (1) base open place shared by connected dwellings; (2) parking court mainly for access; (3) linear
garden park, shared, and link-as-place; (4) main public
square, commerce, taxis and order.

central idea, of the city as a structure incompatible with a human value culture, is not addressed.
A critical process to social health is the taking of
ownership of urban space, both in individual
and group terms, and an essential requirement for
this is legible and enabling connections between
culture and space.
This paper has argued that a uniquely African,
holistic world view exists, whose quite different
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116

stood through ritual, suggests that quite different

systems of urban land settlement and delivery are
both possible and necessary.
Understanding social, spatial systems should
engage with neural scientific research. In tested
examples of psychic concordance in music, art
and mathematics primitive, biotic harmonies,
including a long suppressed natural imagination, has been proven. However, until albeit
rapidly expanding scientific knowledge can be
fully applied understanding of spatial sense will
continue, as E.O. Wilson suggests to rely on poetic
inspiration.
Figure 7. Conceptual Urban System, Olympic village
1990, Detail: (1) shared public space; (2) shared parking
court; (3) shared linear garden; (4) public square,
commerce, taxis and order; (5) connecting pedestrial
links; (6) shared communal room (cre`che, meetings,
etc.) (each house connects via a small mediating
space).

Figure 8. Conceputal Urban System: the first built

elements are: public central space (fraternity), with
symbols of order (school, courts and social service),
and ritual (church/hall). Competition for housing in
Mexico, 2002.

(from European) spatial understanding is deeply

meshed within its culture. This suggests that
remedial action must surely begin with a deepening enquiry and understanding of this connection:
of urban space to culture in the design of cities.
Spatial imagination is shown to be both complex
and holistic in agrarian cultures. Urban systems
do not necessarily require rigid and dominant
geometries and highly defined linear edges to be
understood. Equally, the African tradition, the
rural dream in which, within a total public
realm, private space may be minimal and underURBAN DESIGN International

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