Center for Urbanisation & Peripheralization (CUSP)

CUSP brings together theory, fieldwork, and practice-based research to produce grounded public knowledge. We combine spatial and visual methods with collaborative research practices — grounded in ethics: credit, consent, and care. Our research does not stop at the academic paper. We work through exhibitions, toolkits, visual outputs, and public conversations. #CUSP #ResearchPractice #PracticeBasedResearch #CollaborativeResearch #UrbanMethods #SpatialPractice #VisualResearch #PublicKnowledge #UrbanResearch #Ethics #Care #Consent #KnowledgeProduction #urbanstudies

Urbanization unfolds unevenly. Some places are planned for, invested in, and protected. Others are shaped through neglect, extraction, and exclusion. These conditions are not accidental — they are produced. CUSP studies peripheralisation as an active process: how political decisions, economic systems, and design practices shape unequal urban worlds. By paying attention to the edges, we learn something fundamental about how urbanization works — everywhere. #CUSP #SpatialJustice #UrbanInequality #Peripheralisation #UrbanPolitics #UrbanEconomies #UrbanDesign #UrbanTheory #GlobalUrbanism #UnevenDevelopment #UrbanEdges #Justice #UrbanResearch #builtenvironment

CUSP is a research platform focused on how urbanization unfolds — and how it is shaped by inequality, power, and uneven development. We understand the periphery not as a place, but as a process — produced through planning, policy, infrastructure, finance, and governance. Over the next few weeks, we’ll introduce who we are, what we’re working on, and what comes next. #CUSP #Urbanization #Peripheralisation #UrbanResearch #SpatialJustice #UrbanTheory #GlobalSouth #UrbanStudies #Inequality #BuiltEnvironment #Urbanism #Planning #UrbanFutures #researchpractice

REFLECTIONS & DESIGN The final phase of the TUM Plenary Week in Cape Town focused on reflection, synthesis, and translating field experiences into design thinking and urban research methodologies. Following several days of immersion and engagement, students worked through collective reflection sessions, mapping exercises, discussions, and coursework development — asking how architecture and urbanism can respond more carefully and relationally to histories of inequality, environmental precarity, and spatial exclusion. The programme encouraged students to critically reflect on positionality, collaboration, and the role of design beyond purely technical solutions. Through drawing, storytelling, mapping, and conversation, students began developing design approaches grounded in observation, listening, and lived experience. At the heart of the week was a broader question: how can urban research and design move beyond extraction towards forms of practice rooted in repair, reciprocity, and long-term engagement? Thank you to everyone who contributed to making the week such a meaningful experience. #CUSP #TUM #UrbanDesign #ArchitectureStudio #SpatialJustice #Repair #SouthernUrbanism #DesignResearch #CapeTown

ENGAGEMENTS A core part of the TUM Plenary Week in Cape Town was learning through engagement — listening to local knowledge, experiences, and practices that continue to shape the city in complex and often unequal ways. Students engaged with community leaders, activists, researchers, farmers, practitioners, and residents through conversations, workshops, walks, and shared reflections. These exchanges explored housing, food systems, ecology, infrastructure, memory, and the everyday negotiations that shape urban life across Cape Town. Thank you to Daiyaan Pieterson, Barry Christianson, Jeremy Jones and the Lukhanyo Urban Farming Network for their generosity, openness, and willingness to share their work and experiences with the group throughout the week. We are also deeply grateful to colleagues, students, and staff from the University of Cape Town for contributing to the discussions and helping facilitate moments of exchange across institutions, disciplines, and contexts. The programme builds on CUSP’s broader commitment to collaborative and transdisciplinary urban research that connects design, ethnographic methods, and lived realities across the Global South and North. #CUSP #TUM #UCT #CapeTown #UrbanResearch #ParticipatoryDesign #UrbanEcologies #SouthernUrbanism #CommunityEngagement

FIELD EXPERIENCES During the Plenary Week, students and staff explored questions of Southern urbanism, repair, memory, and spatial justice through direct engagement with the city and its communities. The programme moved across Kalk Bay, Khayelitsha, the False Bay coastline, and broader urban landscapes of Cape Town — grounding discussions in lived experience rather than distant abstraction. Students participated in walks, conversations, mapping exercises, storytelling practices, and immersive site visits that explored histories of displacement, labour, ecology, and everyday urban life. A special thank you to Traci Kwaai and the Fisher Child Project for sharing histories and lived experiences connected to the Fishermen’s Village and the broader Kalk Bay community. Thank you as well to Chartfield Guest House for hosting the group and creating an important base for the week’s activities. Rather than treating Cape Town as an “object of study,” the programme sought to foreground reciprocal learning, immersion, and situated forms of knowledge production. #CUSP #TUM #CapeTown #SouthernUrbanism #UrbanResearch #SpatialJustice #KalkBay #Fieldwork #Architecture #Urbanism

Introducing Yiqiu Liu @yiqiuliu0824 An architect and urban researcher working across design, teaching, and research between Munich, Zurich, and Beijing. Yiqiu’s work explores planetary urbanization and the spatial impacts of AI’s cloud infrastructures, asking how the invisible and extraction-driven systems behind digital life might be transformed into more equitable and adaptive forms of public infrastructure. “But all the waters of the world find one another again, and the Arctic seas and the Nile gather together in the moist flight of clouds. The old beautiful image makes my hour holy. Every road leads us wanderers too back home.” — Hermann Hesse, Wandering: Notes and Sketches Something you might not know: Yiqiu collects small stones from every place she visits — and often randomly rediscovers them later in her pockets or the washing machine. Last book read: The Silk Road: A New History by Valerie Hansen, inspired by a recent visit to Dunhuang and the deep histories of exchange connecting Asia, Europe, and Africa through trade, culture, religion, and everyday life. Favourite snack? Strawberry Pocky. #CUSP #UrbanResearch #PlanetaryUrbanization #AIInfrastructure #Urbanism #DesignResearch #CloudInfrastructure #SpatialJustice #ComparativeUrbanism

Introducing Jhono Bennett @jhonobennett An architect, urban researcher, and teacher working between South Africa and elsewhere — moving between practice, teaching, and learning from the people already shaping cities in their own ways. Jhono’s work explores reparative architectures, spatial justice, and participatory design practices across Southern urban contexts, often focusing on how care, maintenance, and collective agency can help build more just urban futures. “Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world.” — Howard Zinn Something you might not know: Jhono spends a lot of time thinking about maintenance — not just in buildings, but in relationships, teaching, and everyday life. Probably more than he thinks about “design” in the conventional sense. Last book read: Disgrace by J.M. Coetzee — a difficult but important South African novel that lingers long after finishing it. Favourite snack? Biltong. Of course #CUSP #UrbanResearch #SpatialJustice #RepairativeArchitectures #Urbanism #ParticipatoryDesign #SouthernUrbanism #CityThinking #ResearchLife @repairativearchitecturesza

Introducing Lele Ramphele @leleramphele An architectural designer, urban researcher, artist — and also none of those things. Originally from Pretoria and currently based in Munich, Lele’s work moves between architecture, photography, fiction, and visual experimentation to explore how personal and collective histories are constructed, remembered, and retold. Through accessible tools and subtle interventions, he invites more inclusive ways of reading the city and the stories embedded within it. “Stories create people who create stories.” — Chinua Achebe Recently taking up dance classes, Lele quickly discovered that coordination is perhaps not one of his strengths. Currently reading Small Acts by Paul Gilroy while continuing to shape and expand his fields of research. Favourite snack? Chocolate chip cookies, always ... #CUSP #UrbanResearch #Architecture #VisualCulture #Storytelling #Urbanism #CityThinking #ResearchLife #SpatialPractice

Introducing Lindsay Sawyer An urbanist, editor, writer — and, by her own admission, a professional over-thinker. Lindsay’s work sits at the intersection of thinking, writing, and shaping how we understand cities — always asking questions, always pushing ideas further. “My favourite quote is Primo Levi’s definition of an intellectual from The Drowned and the Saved: ‘…the person educated beyond his daily trade; whose culture is alive inasmuch as it makes an effort to renew itself, increase itself and keep up to date; and who does not react with indifference or irritation when confronted by any branch of knowledge, even though, obviously, he cannot cultivate all of them!’” Fiercely competitive (to the point of being banned from Scrabble with friends and family), Lindsay is also a devoted reader — recently finishing Helm by Sarah Hall, and recommending the short story “Mrs Fox” as a place to start. Favourite snack? Crisps and beer. What else?! #CUSP #Urbanism #CityThinking #WritersOnCities #SpatialThinking #ResearchCulture

Introducing Samkelisiwe Khanyile A small-town girl who found her way into cities — and stayed for the stories they hold. Working across data, maps, and visualisations, Sam is interested in how landscapes reveal the deeper structures shaping everyday life — and what sustainability and justice actually look like on the ground. “If you are free, you need to free somebody else. If you have some power, then your job is to empower somebody else.” — Toni Morrison A quiet driver, a lover of literary fiction, and never far from a pack of chocolate chip cookies 🍪 #CUSP #UrbanResearch #SpatialJustice #MappingStories #WomenInResearch #CityThinking

Introducing the CUSP team — 01 Lindsay Blair Howe (Lead, TUM) @urban_linsen We’re starting a series to share a bit more about the people behind CUSP — the researchers and thinkers shaping how we understand urbanisation, inequality, and the spaces in between. — Who am I? I’m a perpetually curious person, and a professional urbanist, on a never-ending quest for work-life balance. Favorite quote “There is no way to repress pleasure and expect liberation, satisfaction, or joy.” — adrienne maree brown Something you wouldn’t know about me After all these years, I’m still afraid of flying. I say goodbye to the ground every time I take off — just in case. Last book I read Big Swiss — literary fiction I’d definitely recommend. Favorite snack Popcorn. Salty, not sweet. (Sorry Germans. I will never integrate!) — More from the CUSP team coming soon. #CUSP #UrbanResearch #MeetTheTeam #Urbanism #TUM #CityMaking #EverydayUrbanism #ResearchLife