Wendy Tsoriyo

Wendy Tsoriyo is an urban planning researcher specialising in citizen participation, spatial justice, place attachment and climate resilience in African cities. She studied planning in Zimbabwe and began teaching at Great Zimbabwe University shortly after her Master's, where she became increasingly interested in the gaps between what is taught about participation and inclusive planning and what actually happens on the ground — particularly for informal traders, pedestrians in small towns and people rarely heard in formal planning processes. This led her to a PhD examining street spaces in small towns in South Africa, working closely with street vendors, commuters and municipal workers to understand how planning decisions shape everyday life. She is currently a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Johannesburg, analysing the Gauteng City Region Quality of Life survey of over 13,000 respondents to study patterns in citizen participation, service-delivery satisfaction and neighbourhood experience, and she sits on provincial policy review committees that connect research to planning decisions. Her interests span sustainable urbanism, climate resilience, urban regeneration, citizen participation and international consulting, with a commitment to research that stays connected to real planning challenges of inclusion and spatial justice.