Mobilising in the face of large-scale urban change: a conversation between two community organisers from Johannesburg and London

Large-scale and long-term urban development projects often cause sizeable transformations in the built and social fabric, raising questions about the impacts on existing neighbourhoods and communities, and how they might try to shape the development. There are significant challenges to achieving community-based engagement at a large scale involving mobilising a wide range of stakeholders with different positionalities, agendas and priorities across multiple and diverse areas of a city. In this interview, two experienced organisers reflect together on their different but resonant experiences in building community networks to engage with large-scale developments. Between 2016 and 2018, the research project ‘Governing the Future City’ explored the governance of large-scale developments in three urban areas—London, Johannesburg and Shanghai. In Johannesburg and London, the research process directly funded and supported community-based organising in relation to the planning and implementation of the developments. The organisers and researchers worked with existing community-based organisations to try to influence the planning process, drawing together a wide range of affected community and neighbourhood groups. During the course of the research project, the two community coordinators, Mike Makwela (Planact, Johannesburg), focusing on the Corridors of Freedom project, and Sharon Hayward (London Tenants Federation and Grand Union Alliance), working on the Old Oak Park Royal development, visited the other city to explore possibilities to learn from each other’s experiences and contexts. In 2017, while Sharon was in Johannesburg, project researcher Romain Dittgen interviewed them together, twice, on 18 and 20 July, about their experiences of organising and mobilising in their respective cities, specifically in relation to large-scale development projects and in the context of highly diverse communities. Key issues that emerged concerned shared values of community self-organising, the benefits of building consensus or working with different views, and different approaches to relations with government officials and elected representatives. In parallel, they also reflected about working and collaborating with academics, as well as about possibilities for critical analysis of the developments and mutual learning across the two cases.