Course General Description

The Urban Design Masters at Wits is an interdisciplinary studio-based think tank engaged with design visions, strategies and solutions for cities and towns, focussed on learning lessons from the globalising cities of the South.

School General Description

Commonly known as “Wits”, the University of the Witwatersrand developed out of the South African School of Mines, set up in Kimberley in 1896. The institution moved to Johannesburg in 1904 and acquired full university status in 1922. From the start, it embraced a philosophy of non-discrimination on the basis of race, which led to intense conflict with the government - including police raids and the detention of both faculty and students - during the apartheid era. The university has an enrolment of 40,259 students as of 2018, of which approximately 20 percent live on campus in the university's 17 residences. 63 percent of the university's total enrolment is for undergraduate study, with 35 percent being postgraduate and the remaining 2 percent being Occasional Students.