Integrating the Voices

This work examines the impact of thinking and practice of community participation by a single firm, CS-Studio Architects & Planners, in Langa Township, Cape Town South Africa. It accepts the theory of Sanhoff, an international expert on community participation as theoretical framework of this investigation. CS- Studio has practiced extensively in social environment such as South African Townships and is well published for applying community participatory planning. This work investigated the firm''s theoretical and practical approach in terms of the international, national and local discourse on community participation. A tool, the visualised project circle has been developed in order to compare the theory and applied method of participatory approaches by CS-Studio and Sanhoff. The communalities, completions and contradictions between the theories and applied approaches of the above mentioned experts have been identified and evaluated. Consequently, the understanding of community participation mainly based on a developed country context (Sanhoff) has been related to the one of the developing country context of South Africa (CS- Studio).