Residents’ relationship with green infrastructure in Cosmo City, Johannesburg

Abstract

Scholars have expressed concerns about environmental sustainability in low-income housing development in South Africa in terms of the poor households’ relationship with, access to and benefit from natural ecosystems and green spaces. Using a qualitative research approach – discourse-based methods (semi-structured interviews, focus group discussion and transect walks), this paper shows how low-income households in Cosmo City, Johannesburg (South Africa) benefit from green infrastructure at the domestic, neighbourhood and riparian scales. The central lesson from this case is that landscape/urban design, planning and management must recognise and respond to socio-economic and socio-ecological realities and dynamics inherent in the ways low-income households relate with green infrastructure.

Keywords:

• Green spaces
• ecosystem services
• low-income housing
• South Africa
• sustainability

Acknowledgement

For this research, the author received a bursary through grant B8749.R01 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York to the Global Change and Sustainability Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.