Cross-disciplinarity and hybrid methodologies: an investigation of urban development in peri-urban areas in Gaborone, Botswana

This paper describes experiences with a multidisciplinary course where architecture students worked together with urban planning and engineering students looking at urban developments in peri-urban areas in Gaborone. Added to a multidisciplinary approach the course also invilved an international collaboration between Botswana and Danish students and staff. Despite its relatively small population, estimated at around 200.000 the capital of Botswana is known to be one of the fastest growing cities in Africa. A problem/project centred approach was adopted whereby the issue of urban development in peri-urban areas - described by term of sprawl in several official documents and reports on Gaborone (such as the Greater Gaborone Structure Plan, 1994-2014) - was formulated with a point of departure on actual conditions in specific localities. A multidisplinary approach was instrumental both in the identification of such localities and the issues that each group - containing at least one architect, one planner and one engineer - chose to work with.