Melinda Silverman is a practicing urban designer and urban strategist, involved in policy and research directed at transforming South Africa's post-apartheid cities. Her work focuses on land use management, urban regeneration, low income housing and sustainability issues. Her policy and research work includes co-authoring the Mayor of Johannesburg's mid-term report, researching land use management practices in a high-density, rapidly transforming inner city area of Johannesburg, and editing South Africa's State of the Cities Report. Her urban design projects include site planning for a new low-income housing project in inner city Johannesburg and preparing an urban design framework for a new settlement accommodating 100,000 people. She has also developed an alternative urban design for the Provincial Government Precinct in Johannesburg's inner city and prepared urban design frameworks for two new rural settlements in Gaza Province, Mozambique. She has a special interest in exploring the interface between seemingly ordered modernist physical environments and the increasingly informal processes that take place within these contexts. Her recent work focuses on exploring how both spaces and institutions can be made more responsive to the organic, informal processes that characterise developing cities.

Faculty hosts: Nezar Alsayyad, Malo Andre Hutson