Welcome back to the Talking Transformation Podcast! We'redelighted to welcome back Tanya Zack, a renowned urban planner and author, joining us from Johannesburg. Tanya first graced our podcast in February 2023 when shediscussed her book "Wake Up, This is Joburg!", a fascinatingexploration of inner-city Johannesburg urban landscape and the vibrant communities operating within that space. In this episode, Tanya is here to talk about her latestbook, "The Chaos Precinct", set in the so-called, 'Ethi...
Aug 18, 2025•45 min•Season 5Ep. 1
It's been a busy couple of months behind the scenes of the Talking Transformation podcast. I've been eager to introduce a visual element to the podcast to highlight some of the rich visual imagery and products highlighted by our guests. This has involved a lot of upskilling and learning on my part to ensure that what we produce is both fit for purpose and adds value to our listeners (soon to be listeners AND viewers!). So, here it is, Series 5, Episode 1, and the first visual introduction to the...
May 29, 2025•1 hr 1 min•Season 5Ep. 1
We follow up from our introductory episode with a second podcast episode featuring the planners who have worked as the head of the City of Johannesburg's Metro Planning unit 2000: Johan Olivier, Pete Ahmad, Nkateko Shipalana, Thandeka Mlaza-Lloyd and Minenhle Maphumulo. These guests represent a straight line of succession from the inception of the metro in 2000. Their availability and willingness to share their experiences presents a unique opportunity to go deep into the themes and aspects of m...
Oct 27, 2024•46 min•Season 4Ep. 7
After a period of downtime on the TTPod recording front, we return with this first episode of a miniseries contemplating the metropolitan scale planning challenges and approaches adopted in the City of Johannesburg since 2000. This first introductory episode acts as an introductory episode, introducing six of us: professional planners who have held the title of Assistant Director: Metroplitan Planning since the City was constituted in 2000. Colleagues Johan Olivier, Peter Ahmad, Nkateko Shiplana...
Oct 07, 2024•49 min•Season 4Ep. 6
The small-scale rental sector continues to gain momentum and prominence in discussions about city building and the required funding and infrastructure requirements to support this emerging property market, It’s also become a recurring theme on the Talking Transformation Podcast. uMaStandi has been working in this space since 2018 and continue to render financial services for emerging developers providing rental accommodation. As an offshoot of the Trust for Urban Housing Finance – TUHF it has ta...
Jun 17, 2024•1 hr•Season 4Ep. 5
In this episode of the Talking Transformation Podcast, our subject is South Africa's National Spatial Development Framework (NSDF) - a long-term spatial plan that sets South Africa's spatial agenda and trajectory towards 2050. As a legally mandated plan via SPLUMA, it completes the "set" of government spatial plans adding to the provincial and municipal spatial development frameworks prepared over many years. It also advances the ambitions and directives of the 2030 National Development Plan (ND...
May 06, 2024•59 min•Season 4Ep. 4
In August last year we were delighted to work with the fledgling Now Now Competition that used the Cape Town stadium as a focal point for its inaugural design contest. In it's second iteration the Now Now contest has shifted focus within Cape Town from Green Point to Khayelitsha's Spine Road. In this latest episode of the Talking Transformation Podcast, Sebestian Hitchcock - principal coordinator of the NowNow architecture competition - and I talk to two of the local entrepreneurs within Khayeli...
Apr 02, 2024•47 min•Season 4Ep. 3
For our first recording of the year the Talking Transformation Podcast we are blending innovation, international and entrepreneurial flavours with our guest, Marlene Lerch co-founder of the "Dooiy" – Hack your Schack NGO. Dooiy is a fledgling non-profit organisation from Germany that operates between Berlin and South Africa. I first met Marlene whilst working with the Ranyaka NGO team operating out of Stellenbosch last year. As you’ll hear, collaboration and partnership with other NGOs and agenc...
Jan 29, 2024•22 min•Season 4Ep. 2
2024 is an important year for South Africa that will - no doubt - see plenty of reflection on 30 years of democracy and consider the achievements of this democratic era and the perennial and future challenges facing communities across the country. One of those perennial challenges remains the progressive realisation of housing for all – a quest that has shaped so much of the debate and policy-making since 1994. So, it’s perhaps fitting that it’s a theme that kicks off our 2024 as we consider a n...
Jan 01, 2024•45 min•Season 4Ep. 1
I was first made aware of the unique building typologies in the Blue Downs area in the early 2020s. Central Blue eState and eHousing units certainly didn’t look like a conventional affordable housing project or subscribe to many of the unit design concepts I’m familiar with. I’ve been intrigued by the thinking behind the units and the design ever since. When I met the Managing Director and Co-founder of Citra South Africa, Joel Bauer on site a couple of months ago and he confessed to being a lis...
Dec 04, 2023•51 min•Season 3Ep. 19
In this episode of the Talking Transformation Podcast we change our geography considerably, from a South African context, to the Arabinan Peninsula and Persian Gulf region. Our guest is Mahmood Al-Wahaibi an urban planner, ethnographer and academic who heads up OTU: the Oman Think Urban. The OTU is a Think Tank that blends urban ethnography and planning methodologies to support community engagement and research impacting on a number of the major planning initiatives in Oman. It comes at a time w...
Nov 23, 2023•39 min•Season 3Ep. 15
Welcome to the latest episode of the Talking Transformation Podcast released on World Town Planning Day, the 8th of November 2023. It's a great way to celebrate this initiative with this latest episode, as we pick up on a familiar TTPod theme: the issue of state-owned land - in this instance, properties owned by Transnet - and the opportunity to build and renew our existing cities. My guest is the distinguished academic, Professor Ivan Turok who last week published an Op-Ed titled: "Transnet sho...
Nov 08, 2023•29 min•Season 3Ep. 14
In this second of the Talking Transformation Podcasts recorded at the ESRI Southern Africa User Conference, we are joined by three highly innovative and motivated individuals: Vhuyo Nevari, from ESRI South Africa Nsovo Pearl Maluleke, Planning Masters Student at the University of Johannesburg and, Tshidi Morabi , representing the STEAM4kids initiative. Vhuyo describes his journey from rural South Africa to urban professional and GIS practitioner: a truly inspiring conversation and one that celeb...
Nov 03, 2023•45 min•Season 3Ep. 13
After a welcome break from comms, welcome back to the Talking Transformation Podcast and the first of two episodes recorded at the Esri Southern Africa GIS user conference in the Drakensberg, KwaZulu Natal during the week of the 23rd of October. As somebody who's used Geographic Information System (GIS) extensively over my career as a town planner - mostly in the municipal or metropolitan planning space - it's almost impossible to imagine a world without GIS being a major contributor to the poli...
Oct 31, 2023•37 min•Season 3Ep. 12
In TTPod 1.4 “A Tour of Duty and of Service” - we highlighted the issue of healing in communities and peacemaking with the World Bank Group’s Dr Jana el Horr. Several years on from that podcast we revisit the theme, specifically the multicultural dimensions of building trust, understanding and collaboration within and between communities. Our guests are Reverends Andrew Esterhuizen and Bossie Muller. The two of them have taken their own extensive personal expertise in working with communities in...
Aug 24, 2023•33 min•Season 3Ep. 11
In this episode of the Talking Transformation Podcast, we engage with four of the collaborators behind the inaugural NowNow architecture competition - https://www.nownowcompetition.com/. It's a unique and new take on the opportunities afforded by a new sporting event in the Cape Town calendar - Formula E racing - and a brief to design a sustainable and functional pavilion for the event. How could such a piece of infrastructure, the pavilion, work to foster integration and connection between diff...
Aug 16, 2023•39 min•Season 3Ep. 10
We conclude the Talking Transformation Podcast mini-series recorded at the City of Cape Town’s Civic Centre discussing the scales of planning on show during the EXPO. We talk to the metro spatial planning team - setting the broad citywide spatial framework including the policy and strategy components. We discuss foundations of that scale of planning including the city’s land use model and spatial costing tools and trends reporting. The district level planning interprets that citywide message via...
Aug 07, 2023•50 min•Season 3Ep. 9
We are straight into our second of three Talking Transformation Podcast conversations recorded at the City of Cape Town’s Spatial Planning and Urban Design exhibition that took place between July 27th and August the 2nd. In our first episode we heard from the management and organisation teams from the City’s Planning and Urban Design department. In this second episode we shift our focus to the voices of the tertiary school participants, the lecturers and students who took part and exhibited in t...
Aug 03, 2023•30 min•Season 3Ep. 8
This Talking Transformation Podcast mini-series differs slightly from our usual approach. The episodes that follow canvass the thoughts and perspectives of participants in the City of Cape Town’s Spatial Planning and Urban Design exhibition that has been taking place between July 27th and August the 2nd. On August the 1st I spoke with many of the participants on a day that focused on inputs from tertiary institutions in the planning and urban design disciplines. What was particularly encouraging...
Aug 02, 2023•43 min•Season 3Ep. 7
Two episodes ago the Talking Transformation Podcast considered the genesis story of NGO, Development Action Group's Contractors and Developers Academy (CDA). In this episode we reconnect with the theme of micro development with two members of the CDA and two academy participants and graduates: developer Luvo Mayaphi and contractor Brian Bango. Both share an Eastern Cape heritage and reflect on their transformative experience here in the Western Cape working in the small-scale rental sector. Thes...
Jul 13, 2023•1 hr 6 min•Season 3Ep. 6
The latest Talking Transformation Podcast takes me back in time to a period when children and youth were at the forefront of planning innovation in the City of Johannesburg. In 2009 I led an initiative with the City of Johannesburg's Development Planning and Facilitation team to several schools across Johannesburg. The objectives? Interrogate and plan for the challenges and movement patterns, needs and ambitions of different schools, from the most impoverished to the most affluent. Initial excit...
Jun 30, 2023•44 min•Season 3Ep. 5
After a lengthy break, the TTPod returns with an in-depth discussion with members of DAGs Contactors and Developers Academy (CDA). We explore the genesis of the initiative and how the NGO identified a gap and need to support entrepreneurs and artisans providing affordable rental units in urban areas. This has increasingly been referred to as the small-scale rental market and has expanded the scope, permanence and quality of rental options within the township property sector. The transformation o...
Jun 21, 2023•1 hr•Season 3Ep. 4
I've always enjoyed conversations with guests and colleagues when they've published books and material that build the understanding of our cities in an accessible and visual way. This year, I was excited to learn of the collaboration between Tanya Zack and Mark Lewis. Tanya and I have known each other for many years from my extended working period in Johannesburg. Mark I hadn't met before but I'd been struck by his vivid black and white portraits, accessible via the web, in preparing for this co...
Feb 25, 2023•48 min•Season 3Ep. 3
In previous Talking Transformation Podcast episodes, we have looked in-depth at housing issues and challenges in South Africa. We’ve also considered the issue of title deed administration, and how important addresses are to the sense of place and security of tenure for communities. In this episode we go deeper into the question of title deed administration and why the processes around conveyancing are so important to the development processes and property market. Deon van Deventer has been worki...
Feb 12, 2023•43 min•Season 3Ep. 2
We kick start 2023 and a third series of the TTPod revisiting the themes of partnerships and learning. We reflect on town planner, Ashleigh Manyara’s recent study tour and studies with the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), based in the cities of Tokyo and Yokohama in Japan. Ashleigh is a Senior Professional Officer with the City of Cape Town and has extensive experience of metropolitan-scale planning issues, policy and tools relating to growth management. She was an integral member ...
Feb 04, 2023•34 min•Season 3Ep. 1
The TTPod has visited the issue of land - or rather access to land in South Africa - on several occasions. It’s well understood the one of apartheid’s primary weapons was the denial of access and ownership to property in urban centres around South Africa. For non-white groups. The inter-generational impact of that perverse legal arrangement compounds year on year and the issue of land remains one of the most pivotal of the many South African socio-economic challenges. Access to finance via the m...
Oct 10, 2022•45 min•Season 2Ep. 11
For this latest episode of the Talking Transformation Podcast we’ve extended the scope of our most recent conversation with Drakenstein's Executive Director: Planning & Development, Jacqui Samson discussing the collaboration the Drakenstein municipality has with Neumarkt in Germany and the themes and projects that underpin that partnership. We learn of these approaches and the projects being implemented with Jacqui and Ralf Mützel, who coordinates the activities of the Fairtrade city of Neum...
Sep 19, 2022•40 min•Season 2Ep. 10
This 75th published episode of the Talking Transformation Podcast explores a theme I am wanting to emphasise and develop in coming episodes: the importance of “leadership with integrity” as a foundation for South Africa’s transformation journey. In this episode we look at one of the young leaders in a position of executive authority within a rapidly growing municipality here in the Western Cape. Jacqui Samson recently celebrated a year as the Executive Director of Planning and Development within...
Aug 14, 2022•43 min•Season 2Ep. 9
I visited Ireland for the first time, earlier this month of July 2022. The countryside was as beautiful as I’d imagined and the cities, towns and hamlets full of history and aesthetic beauty. It really is a magical isle with a rich and troubled history, warm people and the home of U2 – rich talent and treasures abound! The visit provided a chance to catch up and reflect with one of my closest colleagues and earliest friends in planning – Nicolaas Louw. He and I worked together in the newly refra...
Jul 31, 2022•37 min•Season 2Ep. 8
In this episode of the Talking Transformation Podcast, we revisit the South African Province of KwaZulu-Natal and consider relief efforts in support of the severe flooding and landslides that took place there in April of 2022. The flooding led to more than 400 deaths and thousands more people went missing. More than 4,000 houses are estimated to have been destroyed and 8,000 estimated to have been damaged, particularly in and around the Durban city and surrounding areas. There was also massive d...
Jul 01, 2022•32 min•Season 2Ep. 7
