In everyday usage we often think of discourse as the written word or as a certain theoretical viewpoint rather than material objects or matter. Built form appears at first sight as merely an object or collection of objects. We could, however, think of built form as also inherently encompassing the circumstances of its own production as well as its subsequent uses, interpretations, and transformations—that is, as producing and conveying meaning. Consequently, we can look upon built forms as texts that are written, read, and interpreted, that express and produce opinions, ideas, and behaviors, and thus are discursive. Architecture and urban design in the day-to-day encounter is often taken for granted and unquestioned, assumed to be neutral and to provide merely a backdrop vis-à-vis societal structures. Despite built form's seeming neutrality, it is created by those who control resources and is designed according to certain interests and with particular intentions.

Modernist built form, as propagated by the Modern Movement, has in many instances been quite easily adapted from its original social reformatory intentions and deployed for oppressive ends. This malleability has enabled modernist planning and designs to be utilized by Western practitioners in a variety of colonial contexts, including Southern African apartheid rule. Due to this adaptability, modernist architecture and urban design practices used by apartheid regimes are capable of being appropriated and reworked by present-day urban practitioners. Given the fact that the same modernist built forms have been applied to widely different socio-political contexts it might appear as if these forms are politically unbiased. However, as I have suggested above, built form is more than an object or a neutral vessel, it evolves in association with changing political and economic interests. Built form derives its potency precisely by appearing neutral and normative, often even to its creators.

In Namibia, as in South Africa, apartheid architects and urban designers borrowed from the Modern Movement to produce exclusionary urban landscapes under the banner of “separate development.” Much research has addressed the negative effects and legacies of apartheid built forms on city residents in South Africa and Namibia, especially with respect to major urban centers (see figure 1).