This chapter draws from over a decade of South African urban field-based spatial development practice. This includes a series of practice-oriented reflections carefully documented alongside project collaborators, organizational peers, and project stakeholders in Johannesburg during this period. This knowledge base has been supplemented by a set of focused interviews for a Leverhulme-funded grant project – a partnership of universities, local and abroad, community-based organizations (CBOs), civic entities, and grassroots partners (GDI, 2018) – conducted remotely during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown. The chapter seeks to engage with these datasets through a discursive analysis of the contemporary understanding of participative practices in spatial development. It includes interviews with actors involved in informal settlement upgrading (ISU) in one of the most unequal cities in the world, Johannesburg, South Africa.

This chapter argues that there is a nuanced and interpersonal gap between the perceived nature of participatory spatial development processes and the realities of implementing and managing such concepts alongside the complex socio-political dynamics evident in a systemically unequal society such as South Africa. To structure this, the chapter begins with a broad theoretical starting point from which to locate the concepts of inclusion, participation, and community via the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the South African literature around spatial development in cities. This literary base is then used to introduce a suite of methods and datasets drawn from a series of nuanced, grounded, and reflective observations of socio-technical practice across South Africa. The chapter culminates in a set of summative thoughts and reflections on these experiences and the reviewed literature, leading towards suggestions and critical questions for the reader in support of their own re-imaginative and reflective processes around urban planning practices in Southern Africa and beyond. This practice-oriented study aims to articulate and share important on-the-ground knowledge for those working in the ISU sector, as well as scholars who work around this topic. It seeks to bring the realities of working in the field to contemporary academia while supporting those who refer to such literature and work in the field as they reimagine urban practice around planning in Africa and beyond. It asks readers to consider a more self-critical set of interpersonal and inter-scalar practices through a nuanced reading of these processes and their value in ISU.

A key message lies in an observation that inclusive approaches are important in making an inclusive city across multiple scales. However, they are not simple processes, will not guarantee a successful project outcome, and require complex interpersonal readings of the contextual process to be conducted effectively – but it should still be done, just better than currently.

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