South Africa
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Building a city of neighbourhoods
Mokena Makeka is a Cape Town-based architect responsible for the redesign of the city’s main transit station – the heart of a 20-year vision of high-density neighbourhoods – and the celebrated Thusong Service Centre in Khayelitsha. Brett Petzer spoke with him about the wait for better spaces. Brett Petzer: Why, within walking distance of Cape […]
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Staking a claim: mining Johannesburg’s new resources
Johannesburg is a space of intense paradox. It is a city where fortunes have been made, lost and made again; a place where lives are lived in glittering luxury and/or dire poverty. The state is both absent and present; residents are visible and invisible, profoundly connected to each other and in states of intense disconnection, […]
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Five ideas from London that could work in Cape Town
London may not be able to compete with Cape Town’s weather and scenery, but we’ve narrowed down a list of five great aspects of London that could work just as well in the Mother City. 1. SHARED SPACE: EXHIBITION ROAD Credit: Charlotte Gilhooly This portal to some of London’s best museums allows for the (reduced) flow of vehicular traffic, […]
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The changing and challenging face of African capital cities
(21 October 2012, Johannesburg) – The challenge posed to capital cities is clear: Given a small and sometimes shrinking municipal fiscal base, and existing service backlog, how is it possible to fashion viable urban policies and delivery for a growing number of new urban residents? That is according to Professor Simon Bekker, co-editor with Göran […]
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Transport routing the spine of city culture
Johannesburg, 3 December 2012 — Our guide looks like an air hostess of the future. She wears a golden cape with a high-necked collar over a white shirt, dark knee-length pencil skirt and flat white shoes with red socks. She grasps a compacted white umbrella in her hand and makes her appeal: “Please, everyone, just […]
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New Year tragedies prevalent in cities across the continent
A New Year’s stampede in Abidjan leaves 61 dead. READ MORE… An overcrowded religious ceremony left 16 dead and 120 injured at the gates of the Cidadela Desportiva stadium in Luanda, Angola’s capital. READ MORE… A deadly fire suspected to have resulted due to negligence has left 4000 homeless in Khayelitsha, Cape Town. READ MORE… To […]
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Is informality being disallowed by government?
South Africa’s economic policymakers have to confront the challenge of creating jobs to absorb the unemployed. The 2011 census reveals an unemployment rate of 40%, with over 8.7 million South Africans registered as unemployed. One of the main strategies to address this challenge is focused on stimulating labour absorption by enhancing the education and skills […]
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Mass action against e-tolls only the beginning
CONGRESS of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) marched on Friday in Johannesburg and Tshwane against the controversial e-tolling system, and submitted memorandums to various national and provincial departments. At the Johannesburg march, Cosatu general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi said the congress was against the e-toll system and that Cosatu would continue to fight it. “Today […]
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Art and the Public Interest: A view from Joburg’s Premier Public Art Gathering
“Public access”, the theme of Johannesburg’s second conference on public art, held November 16-18, was aptly cued the night before the talkshop as attempts to host a tea-drinking ceremony in Hillbrow were almost scuppered. The planned street closure was denied at the last minute by metropolitan police — no such permissions are being granted for […]
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High-rise challenges to constructing a city’s identity
The Quality of Life 2011 survey, conducted biannually by the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO), was presented at University of the Witwatersrand on 23 July. The survey found overall quality of life increased slightly despite global economic recession, with government delivery as driver. But core challenges appeared to be of the intangible type that are less […]
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South Africa’s low-cost housing: constraints and opportunities
Highlighting the opportunities and constraints for better low cost housing in South Africa.
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Alternative construction techniques create jobs in South Africa
South Africa needs to reconsider how it builds public buildings to capture the sector’s full labour-creation potential. Two pioneering projects show what’s possible.
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Green infrastructure: a way to support development in Africa
Green Infrastructure presents an opportunity to rethink the way infrastructure provision and development are envisaged in African cities.
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Making space for informal traders in SA’s formal retail areas
How including micro-enterprises and informal traders in formal retail areas can help South Africa realize the goals of Inclusivity and spatial justice.
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Positive open data approaches: models for reciprocity
With cities around the world developing open data portals there is a growing need for models that make sure this information is not exploited for profit.
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Safety in the city: Contested spaces in Cape Town’s CCID
How accountable is CCID Safety and Security for their crime prevention initiatives in Cape Town’s central city?
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Troubling the image of an African city: Interview with Rike Sitas
Art can provoke new understandings of cities, and potentially dismantle polarised images that characterise African cities. UrbanAfrica.Net interviews the ACC’s Rike Sitas.
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Holding local government to account
Highlights from the launch of the Good Governance Learning Network’s annual publication in June.
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The problem with Cape Town in literature
Cape Town’s natural beauty and inequality may hinder its literary depictions.
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Cape Town’s MyCiti BRT – Four Years into its ‘Democracy’
Four years since the first MyCiti bus route started operating in Cape Town, it seems a fitting time to see how the system is faring.
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Conference: Celebrating a Century of Geography in South Africa
The Society of South African Geographers conference will celebrate a century of geography in South Africa.
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Call for Papers: 7th African Population Conference
The seventh African Population Conference will be on the theme “Demographic Dividend in Africa: Prospects, Opportunities and Challenges”.
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University of Cape Town: Assistant Lecturer/Lecturer (Environmental and Geographical Science)
The Department of Environmental and Geographical Science seeks to make an Assistant Lecturer or Lecturer level appointment. This is a new permanent academic position on academic conditions of service and is available from 1 January 2016.
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Ray Pahl Fellowship in Urban Studies, 2016
The Fellowship is open to any scholar of recent postdoctoral standing who has been or is researching African cities, and who would find the ACC a congenial work environment for intellectual reflection, scholarly engagement and debate.
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Call for papers: Rural-Urban Connections in Sub‐Saharan Africa
The conference addresses the dynamic relationships between rural and urban transformations in sub-Saharan Africa, which is also the focus of the ongoing EU funded research project RurbanAfrica.
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Curatorial and Artworks Call for Infecting the City 2016
This call is for both curators and public artists for Infecting the City 2016, which will be held 7th – 12th of March in Cape Town.
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Call for Contributions: The Southern African Cities Conference 2016
The Southern African City Studies Conference 2016 call for contributions seeks participation from scholars in all disciplines based in Southern Africa.
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Call for abstracts: 2nd Conference of Planning Students and Young Graduates
The conference targets students and young professionals from disciplines including urban and regional planning, urban studies, built environment, public governance and administration, engineering and management, as well as other relevant disciplines.
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Intern with Future Cape Town and Future Lagos
2015 applications for internships with Future Cape Town and Future Lagos are now open.
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Call for Papers: Deleuze and Guattari and Africa — Southern Responses
The themes that emerge from the philosophies of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari hold great promise for thinking through and engaging with the complexities of contemporary South Africa and Africa more broadly, with pressing concerns around identity, geopolitics, culture, art, time, memory, autonomy, oppression and justice.
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Towards Habitat III: Confronting the disjuncture between global policy and local practice on Africa’s ‘challenge of slums’
This article focuses on ‘the challenge of slums’– reviewing the housing programmes of a selected number of African countries, and confronting the disjuncture between global policy and local practice.
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Efficient informal trade: Theory and experimental evidence from the Cape Town taxi market
This article examines informal trade in regulated markets by using a randomized field experiment in the Cape Town taxi industry.
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What will housing megaprojects do to SA’s cities?
A series of new megaprojects, designed to accelerate housing delivery, is on the cards in South Africa but these schemes threaten to reinforce urban fragmentation, inefficiency and exclusion.
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South Africa’s insurgent citizens: On dissent and the possibility of politics
This book adds to a vibrant literature on contemporary crisis in South Africa and shows how practices of disruptive politics are being driven by South Africa’s insurgent and activist citizens.
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Spluma, Zoning and Effective Land Use Management in South Africa
The paper briefly outlines the requirements of South Africa’s Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act, 2013, and then evaluates the usefulness of various forms of land use management in the South African context.
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Implementation of green economy policies and initiatives in the City of Tshwane
The article examines the implementation of green economy policies using a case study approach in the City of Tshwane.
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The South African Cities Network: Towards championing the urban agenda of South Africa
This paper examines the emergence and role of the South African Cities Network (SACN) in the South African urban policy landscape.
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Housing and the urban premium
Examining housing policy and the risk that mass housing projects may produce inefficient, exclusive and environmentally-damaging urban outcomes.
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Urban Pacification and “Blitzes” in Contemporary Johannesburg
This paper discussing recent critical theory on pacification, which argues that the term captures the combination of war and police power in the replication of capitalist order.
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South Africa’s new urban agenda: Transformation or compensation?
One of the dilemmas at the heart of the new urban agenda globally is whether population growth should be accommodated by extensive or intensive urban development. The paper provides a critical and constructive assessment of what lies behind these contrasting agendas.