Many urban poor are already living lifestyles prescient of the future described by Holmgren and other scientists, where diminished access to fossil fuel resources, scarce land and potable water resources and lack of food security are a reality.

This is evident in the South African province of Gauteng. The cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria are merging into one immense urban area connected by intricate yet heavily congested vehicular networks, which much like the vast industrial agricultural lands on the city boundary, rely heavily on oil resources. The increase in population, unsustainable development and vehicular roads puts an increasing strain on the city’s ability to sustain its residents as well as nature’s ability to sustain human beings as a species.

Thus it is the aim of this dissertation to propose a new typology for urban living.  An area south of Marabastad, in the north-western quadrant of the city of Pretoria is selected as the wasted landscape for testing the hypothesis that a drosscape has the potential to be designed and developed into agrarian conservancy to support a society in need of sustainable, innovative places.

Part One of the dissertation investigates agriculture as a method for returning the site to some utilitarian efficiency. However human beings are more than their physical, functioning forms and so too are landscapes more than functioning tracts of land with no meaning.

Thus Part Two of the dissertation investigates the fact that a creative approach to the implementation of city farming in the Steenovenspruit drosscape can ingrain in the modern industrial city a place with which the inhabitants can identify, where form does not only follow function but also enhances and expresses the celebration of man’s working relationship with the land, as well celebrating as the historic traces evident on the landscape.

A palimpsest emerges out of the faint residue of past uses, displaying traces of the character the site once had. The dissertation proposes that by capturing the essence of these past layers of productive use and further enriching the palimpsest by introducing traces of farming and gardens, meaning and experiential use of the land will be returned to the people of Pretoria.

A conservancy is proposed for the Steenovenspruit drosscape which combines the concept of palimpsest and the poetic nature of farming across a number of city blocks, connecting Marabastad and the CBD. The conservancy encapsulates a variety of land uses including residential and gathering traces, however the core of the conservancy centres around a historical city block which formed part of the old Pretoria townlands and which morphs once again into productive landscape.