Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series Johannesburg

In cities across the world, small spaces are becoming big business. From co-living developments in London to micro- apartments in Singapore, there is a growing urban trend for housing models that shrink private living space. But there is a significant gap in urban studies critically exploring the issue of shrinking domestic space outside of the Western European, US and Australian context. This event seeks to bring researchers across sub-Saharan Africa together to discuss the phenomenon of shrinking domestic space. We welcome scholars whose work has either a direct or indirect relationship to shrinking domesticities.  Contributions may focus on:

1. The relationship between state/market-led and autonomous/self-organised forms of micro-living – from backyarding, inner city shared spaces and informal settlements to inclusionary housing and micro-units;

2. How shrinking living space is narrativised and marketed by developers, governments, and other stakeholders;

3. The everyday experiences of life in shrinking domestic space;

4. How shrinking domesticities are manifesting differentially in cities across a range of regional contexts;

5. How emergent forms of micro-dwelling in western cities are imagined in relation to those associated with ‘underdevelopment’ in the global south;

6. The relationship between shrinking domesticities and urban trends including touristification, studentification and gentrification;

7. The relationship between shrinking domesticities and social inequalities, including class, gender and race;

8. The radical potential of shrinking living space;

9. The social and political implications of shrinking domesticities.

The event will take place at the NRF Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning, University of Witwatersrand across Thursday December 8th and Friday 9th 2022. It will include a seminar where participants will present their own research on shrinking domestic space followed by a comparative group discussion where we hope to come towards some larger research questions on the topic. Logistics permitting, we also hope to arrange for a smaller group of participants to visit case study sites in Johannesburg with us.

The event is part of an Urban Studies Foundation-funded seminar series which aims to expand the discussion on urban shrinking domesticities beyond the Western, anglophone context, with an eye to developing a global research agenda on the topic. Other events will take place in Buenos Aires and Tokyo in 2023, which will bring together scholars researching micro-living across East Asia and South America. The seminar series award is held by Mel Nowicki (Oxford Brookes), Ella Harris (Birkbeck) and Tim White (LSE).