PURPOSEFUL VACATIONING: Johannesburg

weetuzoo's International Correspondant Amanda Carlson lands in Johannesburg for an inside perspective on downtown life and bunny chow.

Next blog stop: Johannesburg - Downtown Overhaul

By Amanda Carlson

When and where in South Africa can you eat bunny chow, Polish sausage, Argentine bondiola, Spanish paella, chick pea fudge and raw dark chocolate?  All in one sitting?  The answer can be found in Johannesburg, on Saturdays at Neighbourgoods Market, in an old parking lot in downtown’s Braamfontein neighborhood.  But, wait.  There’s a second answer.  You can eat nearly the same items while also guzzling a local brew on the following day, Sunday at Market On Main, only a few kilometers away in Johannesburg’s Maboneng Precinct.  

Across various sections of Johannesburg’s core, new markets and other revamped spaces have overhauled some of the city’s grittier plots, and with it, the city’s reputation.  According to Gerald Garner in Johannesburg: Ten Ahead – a book exploring the inner-city’s turnaround over the past 13 years – it took three interventions to reverse the trend of decay that overtook the city’s core in the 1990s:

1. Combining four separate metropolitan councils into one centralized municipality.
2. Introducing a country-wide Urban Development Zone (UDZ) tax incentive.
3. Formalizing the Inner-city Charter, which established a clear vision for the city’s future.

Of these three interventions, the one to be felt most prominently by the weekend visitor is probably the second.  

In each of Braamfontein and Maboneng, questions about the areas’ origins lead almost immediately to conversations about the private developers and the number of buildings that have been purchased for turn-around, both commercial and residential.  In the case of Maboneng, it was more than thirty.  The tracts of land in question are impressive, and these developers are literally buying the space to create their own visions for contemporary Johannesburg city-living. 

These new visions of downtown life are bringing in artists, galleries, hotels, and small-scale manufacturing, among myriad others.   Such artistic oases in pockets of the industrial inner-city mark an exciting shift in Johannesburg’s reputation and, for the weekend traveler, make downtown Johannesburg feel like a crossroads for the city, country, continent, and world.  

PURPOSEFUL VACATIONING: CAPE TOWN

weetuzoo's International Correspondant Amanda Carlson has been roaming around Africa, but pops up for another report.

Next blog stop: Cape Town - Translating the Academy

By Amanda Carlson

One of the challenges universities and other academic organizations confront is the process of making their work accessible to individuals beyond the academy.  I was fortunate enough to arrive in Cape Town, South Africa, just in time to see how one research center is bringing together scholarship from around the globe and packaging it in a format accessible to members of the public within, and beyond, Cape Town’s borders.  

On March 27, 2013, the African Centre for Cities (ACC), at the University of Cape Town, celebrated the release of the third issue of its magazine, Cityscapes, at the local bookstore, Book Lounge.  Cityscapes, is described by the ACC as a hybrid current affairs and culture magazine devoted to ‘re-thinking urban things’.”  The release was the opportunity for members of the public to hear directly from the magazine’s editors the goals of this particular issue and the magazine as a whole. 

Sean O’Toole, one Cityscapes co-editor, described the magazine’s purpose as “…an act of translating…trying to broach a public and say that there are different ways of speaking about things”.  Through photo essays, opinion pieces, and full length articles, the magazine’s third issue – devoted to the theme of The Smart City – included examples from cities as far afield as Hong Kong and Lagos, and many places in between.  

The event and subsequent reading of the magazine helped me feel connected to a new network of people thinking about urban experiences.  And, going back to the challenge facing universities, on this night, the ACC succeeded in translating its work to at least one curious member of the public.  

PURPOSEFUL VACATIONING: ETHIOPIA

weetuzoo's International Correspondant Amanda Carlson touches base from Ethiopia. We are cranking her favorite Chirp Radio DJ Bylamplight (in honor of her today and thought it was a good time to post her next adventure).

Next blog stop: Ethiopia - Streets Without Sidewalks

By Amanda Carlson

Ethiopia feels like one nation-wide construction site: the grit and dust beginning at the country’s administrative center, Addis Ababa, and continuing down the spoke-like highways leading to the borders with Djibouti, Eritrea, Kenya, Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan.

In the country’s Northwest, on the roads between Bahir Dar and Debark, newly paved roads connect the region’s cities and towns.  A two-lane highway lets road warriors – cargo trucks, tourist vans, and local buses – speed through and bypass communities that continue to move their goods by horse-drawn carriage, mule, and man-power.   Aside from obvious problems of uneven development, a design feature of modern thoroughfares is glaringly missing from these new additions to the landscape.  Sidewalks.  

What happens to a road when sidewalks, or other gathering spaces, aren’t part of construction?  Communities – men, women and children; cattle, mules and goats –use the road for non-motorized activities.  People wait for buses on the road.  Kids play soccer on the road.  Daily conversation and exchange happen on the road.  

While community life continues and accommodates for these paved changes, the road warriors barrel through towns and hurtle at the lives and livelihoods that occupy the road, creating dangerous and life-threatening situations.

Sidewalks certainly aren’t the sexiest or most obvious pieces of regional planning.  But, in their absence, their overall function and utility certainly become apparent.  

PURPOSEFUL VACATIONING: MADRID

weetuzoo's International Correspondant Amanda Carlson's Adventure Continues in Madrid. 
Next blog stop: Madrid's Industrial, Cultural Complexes
by Amanda Carlson

Meeting up with friends in Madrid, it took little effort to convince the group of Madrileños and extranjeros alike to check out two buildings that have been repurposed to function as cultural centers – Matadero (slaughterhouse) and La Tabacalera (the tobacco factory).  What we found was a fascinating comparison of how the city’s post-industrial spaces pull in locals and visitors alike, and yield events, organizations, and individuals that can engage in, and with, a broad spectrum of cultural practices.

The two centers, while having origins in Madrid’s industrial past, could not feel more different.  Matadero, a massive complex that highlights some of the best of Madrid’s creative industries, hosts co-working space, a cinema, an institute for reading and the written word, and rotating exhibition space, among others.  The buildings have been retrofitted to capitalize on design trends favoring the rustic, sleek, and minimal. Its spaces permit innumerable distinct activities to take place within the confines, while also making it easy to forget at times the location’s bloody history. 

La Tabacalera, on the other hand, remains the dark, gritty, noisy place that it must have been in the factory’s most productive years - surely contributing to this feeling was our visit coinciding with a Lucha Libre event.  The building, which is administered through the democratic participation of the organizations and individuals that utilize the building’s facilities, seems to churn with the practice, exposition, and informal gatherings. People and activities seem to smash up against each other in ways that would be impossible in an expansive site such as Matadero. 

However different the sensations brought on by these two sites, their coexistence in the city,  their vibrancy, and their accessibility showcase the breadth of cultural practice in Madrid.  Similarly, while visiting such places, it is impossible not to consider how such unique physical spaces help creativity to thrive.

Armed with the self-styled goal of "purposeful vacationing", weetuzoo Writer/Researcher Amanda Carlson loves the adrenaline of arrival. Madrid is her second report in an on going series. Stay tuned for her next adventure- things get crazy. Photos by Yolanda Jiménez.

Purposeful Vacationing: London

Armed with the self-styled goal of "purposeful vacationing", weetuzoo Writer/Researcher Amanda Carlson loves the adrenaline of arrival. Now weetu international correspondant, be on the lookout for Amanda's reports from her current US-EURO-AFRICA circuit.  Focused on collaborative city planning, while exploring the extraordinary instances that make up daily life around the world, Carlson has lived and worked in New York, Buenos Aires, London and Chicago.

Welcome to her first blog stop: London
by Amanda Carlson

The challenge of what to do with an Olympic Park has plagued many cities – the “ruins” of Athens come to mind – while others have found ways to repurpose the space for the less athletic among us – for instance, Beijing’s Water Cube, water park.

Visiting London in early February, only months after the 2012 Games ended, I trekked with my pal from North London over to the East End to check out the changed Hackney Wick.  Knowing the reputation of many Olympic sites, we were both curious to see the Games’ aftermath.

Approaching from the canals bordering the western part of the Olympic Park, what we found was a complete surprise to both of us – a massive construction site.  Surrounded on almost every side by fences, security cameras, and inaccessible pathways, the Olympic Stadium, Orbit, and all other facilities had been blocked off to pedestrians, bikes, and vehicles.  The only traversable area was a stretch of the Thames Water Greenway that led us to the View Tube, a social-enterprise community venue where information was available about the refashioning of the “Olympic Park” into the “Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park”. This £292 million investment aims to transform the site of the 2012 Summer Games into “the UK’s most exciting urban park”  and will completely alter the nature of public, recreational space in East London. 

Parts of the park and adjoining complexes are projected to be completed between 2013 and 2030, a portion, including the not wholly uncontroversial Orbit, will reopen in July of this year.  For now, visitors wanting to picture the renovated 2.5 square kilometer area will need their Olympian-caliber imaginations to visualize the Park’s final design.  For visitors not feeling up to the challenge, the View Tube provides maps of what the area will look like in 2030, including a timeline of the site’s construction.  Despite not being able to get a closer look at the Olympic Park complex, the construction site was definitely worth the visit.