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Urban Dialogues

The Urban Dialogues is a week-long, twice-annual event hosted by the School which promotes critical reflection, research, and professional engagement in the urban and built environment disciplines.  Running during the first week of quarter 2 and first week of quarter 4 each academic year, the Urban Dialogues features intensive coursework, site visits, presentations, academic events, exhibits, and public lectures, creating a buzz of activity that creates a stage for interdisciplinary discussions, innovative initiatives, and collaborative works. 

During each week, the participating degree programmes (BSc Hons URP, PG Dip, MUD, MUS, MSc DP, PhD) stray from their normal timetable and run a block timetable on-campus, offering students an opportunity to conduct extended site visits or field research, engage with students in other related disciplines, mingle with invited professionals, gain exposure to work within the disciplines, and become central players in the culture of critical inquiry within the School.  In-person attendance is required, even if courses are otherwise offered in hybrid formats, and students working while studying are expected to organise time off from work for these two weeks to take advantage of the variety of activities offered during the week.

Through the public events, the Urban Dialogues give professionals, academics, and anyone generally interested in African urbanism a way to engage with the School, find future collaborators, and participate in the ongoing conversations about the disciplines.  The latest events in the Urban Dialogues, along with an archive of past events, can be seen below. 

Urban Dialogues Week (15-19 September 2025)

 

Faces of the City: Introducing the City Studio through critical lenses: Spatial injustice, precarity, favelisation and disciplining the periphery
Tuesday 16 September 2025, 4pm to 5.30pm
Marie Huchzermeyer (Wits) and the City Studio core team
This opening session introduces the City Studio and its core team by situating this initiative within broader debates on spatial injustice and urban precarity. Drawing on the team members’ research, the presentation explores theoretical lenses, including “favelisation” and disciplining of the periphery to provoke a discussion on how the everyday urban experience is shaped and what the transformative possibilities and limits are for critical, community-engaged and design-based research.

Hybrid event: John Moffat Building, Postgraduate Seminar Room, Basement Level or
Online: https://wits-za.zoom.us/j/95811018374?pwd=BYk5csVLs0WXdqNNbj7IRTGQG94nJ4.1
(Meeting ID: 958 1101 8374; Passcode: 100206)

Keynote Address: Peripheralization of the Periphery: Perspectives from Lilongwe City, Malawi
Thursday 18 September 2025, 8.15am to 9.15am
Evance Mwathunga
Cities in the global South are experiencing a wide range of urban transformations that have put into question many of the fundamental assumptions and certainties of urban research including various phenomena that are extending the territorial reach of the urban further into the seemingly ‘non-urban’ realm. Inspired by the concepts of planetary urbanization and extended urbanization, draws experiences and perspectives from Lilongwe city, the capital of Malawi, to investigate the concrete conditions and processes shaping the emergence of peripheral areas of Lilongwe City. Thereafter, the paper discusses the ecological and governance implications of these emergent territories.

Venue: John Moffat Building, Postgraduate Seminar Room, Basement Level

SAOTA Architects Public Lecture: Design Journey
Thursday 18 September 2025, 5.30pm to 7.30pm
Presented by Dominik George
How do ideas become buildings? Join SAOTA Principal Dominik George at WITS Urban Dialogue Week for an inspiring behind-the-scenes look at the “Design Journey.”  Discover how context, climate, and collaboration shape architecture from first concept to completion. This guest lecture will offer practical insights into the creative process, from structuring ideas and to communicating design across teams.  Don’t miss this opportunity to engage with real-world projects and learn how designers balance ambition, context, and responsibility in contemporary urban work.

0.15 CAT 1 CPD Points (SACAP).
Venue: A1 Lecture Theatre, John Moffat Building, Wits School of Architecture and Planning

Past Urban Dialogues

7-11 April 2025

Ede: A Tropical Ontology of Sound & Space 
Monday 7 April 2025
Exhibit by Sechaba Maape, Adey Omotade, Emalohi Iruob.
Tropical Ontology is a collaborative exhibition exploring the equator as humanity’s original ontological home. Through AI-generated architectures, Yoruba-inspired soundscapes, and ritual video works, the exhibition weaves together themes of climate, rhythm, and identity. It challenges colonial spatial logics and imagines a conceptual return to the warmth, breeze, and resonance of the tropics—offering mediation as its central intellectual contribution, with architecture as one of many forms through which it is expressed.

Cities Rethought: A New Urban Disposition
Tuesday 8 April 2025
A Faces of the City (FoTC) seminar presented by Sue Parnell.
In a world of disruptions and seemingly endless complexity, cities have become, perhaps more than ever, central to the thinking about humanity. Yet rarely has the study of cities been more fragmented among different silos of experience, diverse genres of scholarship, and widening chasms between theory and practice. How can we do better? Cities Rethought suggests that we need to remake the way we  see and know cities in order to rethink how we act and intervene within them. To this end, it offers the contours of a new urban disposition. This disposition, articulated through its normative, analytical, and operational elements, offers an opportunity for scholars, practitoners and citizens alike to approach the complexity of cities anew, and find ways to rethink both scholarly analyses as well as modes of practice.

Community Development & Upliftment: The Role of Architects in Shaping Inclusive Cities
Thursday 10 April 2025
A public lecture presented by Mark Schaerer.
Sponsored by GiFA, Mark Schaerer will showcase his small practice, SRS Architects, highlighting its work in Brixton. He will explore how collaborations with residents, professionals, artists, and city officials has helped blur the boundaries between architecture, urban design, and community building, contributing to more inclusive cities.

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