Abstract
The South African cityscape has recently been redeveloped through various urban renewal initiatives based in precinct planning. Various conceptual planning tools (like sustainable development) have reshaped many global cities. This paper explores the potential of environmental justice as a theoretical construct for driving urban renewal—through the guise of heritage. The study evaluated the potential links between urban renewal, sustainable development, environmental justice, and heritage—through testing the success of such interventions by assessing shifts in the psychological landscape of some urban space within the city. The paper traces the extent whereby users of these spaces “bought into” the objectives of the urban renewal interventions, as a result of people's values changing after a visit to the site. Through interviews with all stakeholders at Constitution Hill, the study ultimately determined the extent to which visitors' understandings of urban renewal, heritage, and environmental justice impacts the physical landscape. Conceptually, an environmental justice approach informing urban renewal was not fully implemented at Constitution Hill, although the role of environmental justice in the building of sustainable cities in the future needs to be explored further.
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