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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20171101T030000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20171101T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20171004T134503Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171023T123921Z
UID:5803-1509505200-1509553800@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series: Reflection is Part of Rehabilitation: Interventions in the History of a Land Occupation
DESCRIPTION:The third seminar in the annual ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series is presented by Koni Benson on Reflection is Part of Rehabilitation: Interventions in the History of a Land Occupation at 15:00 in Studio 3\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, University of Cape Town. \nABSTRACT \nIn The Fire Next Time\, James Baldwin writes: “To accept one’s past- one’s history- is not the same thing as drowning in it; it is\, learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought.” This paper looks at the dynamics of invention and uses of history in the politics of a land occupation in Tafelsig\, Mitchell’s Plain\, where\, in May 2011\, over 5000 backyard shack dwellers occupied land to set up shacks on an empty field adjacent to the Kaptiensklip train station.  From an initial 5\,000 people the group dwindled to about 30 families who continued to defend their right to erect structures under which to sleep. The city offered them temporary relocation to Blikkiesdorp\, a dumping ground\, miles away from their families and support networks. What ensued was a round of court cases and appeals and\, eventual eviction. What started as a document to record the brutality of the Anti-Land Invasion Unit became a co-authored book\, Writing Out Loud: Interventions in the History of a Land Occupation written by Faeza Meyer and Koni Benson.   The quote in the title of this paper comes from this book which creatively tracked 545 days of occupation\, and raises questions about housing struggles\, activism\, situated solidarity\, racism\, writing\, and feminist collaborative methodologies of approaching African history.  The paper today will present a draft of a new introduction to the book\, with the aim of sparking a conversation about Baldwin’s proposition of not inventing but of reflecting and using hard ‘truths’ about the past in the present\, in this case\, building and engaging struggles against ongoing segregation and criminalization of landlessness in Cape Town. \n  \nMore on the full seminar series here. \nMore on the NOTRUC programme here.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/acc-notruc-seminar-series-reflection-part-rehabilitation-interventions-history-land-occupation/
LOCATION:African Centre for Cities\, UCT Upper Campus\, Cape Town\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Seminar-series_4.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="African Centre for Cities":MAILTO:accurbanconference@gmail.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20171025T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20171025T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20171004T133020Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171023T123828Z
UID:5797-1508943600-1508949000@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series: ‘Nai-Rob-Me’ ‘Nai-Beg-Me’ ‘Nai-Shanty’: Historicizing Space-Subjectivity Connections in Nairobi from its Ruins
DESCRIPTION:The second seminar in the annual ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series is presented by Wangui Kimari on ‘Nai-Rob-Me’ ‘Nai-Beg-Me’ ‘Nai-Shanty’: Historicizing Space-Subjectivity Connections in Nairobi from its Ruins at 15:o0 in Studio 1\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, University of Cape Town. \nABSTRACT\nWhat can personal histories from poor urban settlements in Nairobi tell us about the history and future of this city? How do these entangled life stories belie vogue narratives of phenomena such as rural-urban migration\, urban-development and postcoloniality\, while also shedding light on the durability of empire? Through an ethnographic and archival exploration of the poor urban settlement of Mathare\, located close to central Nairobi\, I argue that urban planning emerges from within an assemblage of imperial political\, social\, economic and ecological ideas and practices\, to produce what I term ecologies of exclusion. In essence\, these planning interventions\, materializing from within epistemologies of empire\, co-constitutively manifest as neglect and force in Nairobi’s margins to create and sustain inequality in certain neighbourhoods—its ruins. \nIn addition\, I show how\, both now and in the past\, this mode of urban governance conjures up and sustains negative stereotypical subjectivities about certain populations in order to legitimize inequalities within its formal spatial management practices. Furthermore\, contemporary colonial modes of urban planning require a constant and ever more forceful militarization of poor urban spaces. Notwithstanding this now naturalized violent space-subjectivity enterprise\, those who have long been categorized as the “robbers\,” “beggars” and “shanty dwellers” of Nairobi engage with and emerge from these ruins of empire through unexpected ethical and political projects. And\, from within their urban struggles\, they render alternative subjectivities of self and space that articulate more grounded narrations of the history and possible futures of this city. \nMORE ON WANGUI KIMARI \nWangui Kimari completed a PhD in Anthropology at York University\, Toronto in 2017. Her research draws attention to the historical connections between formal urban spatial management and police violence in the city. She is a FURS writing-up grant recipient and\, together with Peris Jones\, received an Antipode Scholar- Activist Project Award in 2016. Wangui is also the participatory action research coordinator for Mathare Social Justice Centre (MSJC)\, a grassroots organization that documents and advocates against human rights violations in Mathare – Nairobi’s second largest poor urban settlement. \n  \nMore on the full seminar series here. \nMore on the NOTRUC programme here.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/acc-notruc-seminar-series-nai-rob-nai-beg-nai-shanty-historicizing-space-subjectivity-connections-nairobi-ruins/
LOCATION:Western Cape
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Seminar-series_2-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20171011T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20171207T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20171004T125331Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171013T090605Z
UID:5791-1507734000-1512664200@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series: Thinking Emancipatory Change through In-depth Urban Case Studies
DESCRIPTION:Cities are highly unequal places where histories of oppression is etched into the very machinery that makes them tick. This includes policies and regulations around who can trade and where\, the use of police or anti-eviction forces as an integral part of urban planning\, and how large-scale infrastructure projects can re-shape wider ecological dynamics to benefit some\, while putting others at risk. \n \nThis ACC seminar series stretches across these themes to focus broadly on urban politics through in-depth case studies of Cape Town\, Nairobi\, New Orleans and São Paulo provided by an interdisciplinary field of scholars from developmental economy\, critical anthropology\, feminist history and political ecology. \nThe seminar series has its origin in ACC’s Notations of Theories of Radical Urban Change (NOTRUC) project\, which will hold together the seminar series by facilitating a discussion with each presenter on what the political means in each study\, what possibilities the presenters see for empowerment and emancipatory change\, and what the detailed case study brings in thinking politics\, capitalism and emancipatory change in-and-through contemporary urban realities. \nAll seminars run from 15:00 to 16:30 \n11 October 2017 – Studio 1\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, UCT\nPost-Apartheid Spatial Inequality: Obstacles of Land on Township Micro-Enterprise Formalisation by Dr Andrew Charman\, Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation\, Cape Town \n  \n25 October 2017 – Studio 1\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, UCT\n‘Nai-Rob-Me’ ‘Nai-Beg-Me’ ‘Nai-Shanty’: Historicizing Space-Subjectivity Connections in Nairobi from its Ruins by Dr Wangui Kimari\, Department of Anthropology\, York University\, Toronto (PhD thesis)\, and Mathare Social Justice Centre\, Nairobi. \n  \n1 November 2017 – Studio 3\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, UCT\n‘Reflection is Part of Rehabilitation:’ Interventions in the History of a Land Occupation by Dr Koni Benson\, Department of History\, University of Western Cape\, Cape Town. \n  \n8 November 2017– Studio 3\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, UCT\nContesting the Coast: Infrastructure\, Ecology and Coastal Planning in New Orleans and the Mississippi River Delta (written by Joshua Lewis and Henrik Ernstson) by Dr Henrik Ernstson\, Department of Geography\, The University of Manchester; KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory\, KTH Royal Institute of Technology; and the African Centre for Cities\, University of Cape Town. \n  \n23 November – Studio 5\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, UCT\nDelft as a site of Productive Disjunctures: Tracing Modes of Accessing and Transforming the City in Delft\, Cape Town by Dr Suraya Scheba\, Environmental and Geographical Science Department and the African Centre for Cities\, University of Cape Town. \n  \n7 December 2017 – Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, UCT\nProducing water scarcity in São Paulo\, Brazil: The 2014 Water Crisis and the Binding Politics of Infrastructure by Dr Nate Millington\, Postdoctoral Research Fellow\, African Centre for Cities\, University of Cape Town. \n  \nStudents welcome\nWe encourage teachers to contact us to bring their classes to attend all or some of the seminars. We also invite all interested students\, scholars\, policy makers and activists. \nThe series is organized by Dr Suraya Scheba and Dr Henrik Ernstson from NOTRUC the seminars are supported by funds from the Swedish Research Council Formas (Dnr: 211-2011-1519\, MOVE\, NOTRUC) and form part of the Situated Ecologies platform and The Situated UPE Collective. \n 
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/acc-notruc-seminar-series-thinking-emancipatory-change-cape-town-nairobi-new-orleans/
LOCATION:African Centre for Cities\, UCT Upper Campus\, Cape Town\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Seminar-series_3.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="African Centre for Cities":MAILTO:accurbanconference@gmail.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20171011T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20171011T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20171004T131219Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20171011T115520Z
UID:5790-1507734000-1507739400@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series: Post-Apartheid Spatial Inequality: Obstacles of Land in Township Micro-Enterprise Formalisation
DESCRIPTION:The annual ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series kicks off with its first seminar by Andrew Charman on Post-Apartheid Spatial Inequality: Obstacles of Land in Township Micro-Enterprise Formalisation at 15:30 in Studio 1\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, University of Cape Town. \nABSTRACT \nThe presentation addresses the topic of micro-enterprise formalisation from a land perspective\, considering the various ways in which land shortage\, tenure insecurity\, land use management and land-related business regulations hinder the process of formalisation. The argument I advance will consider specific case-studies from the settlement of Ivory Park\, Johannesburg. The cases illustrates how informality (of land systems and business regulatory systems) presents both opportunities and constraints to economic growth. In making the case for formalisation\, I will argue that the land-related processes which people have to navigate to obtain business compliance resembles a Kafkaesque work: one in which the rules of nightmarishly complex\, incomprehensible and illogical. Partially as a result of these challenges\, the great majority of township informal micro-enterprises do not comply with land management systems requirements and gain few or no benefits. \nFrom the perspective of micro-entrepreneurs\, the research contents that the objectives of spatial justice and spatial resilience have little advanced since 1994. I will argue that this outcome can be attributed to the combination of inappropriate policy framing\, non-supportive legislation (especially at municipal level)\, the absence of political will to foster township economic growth and the persistence of apartheid era concerns with maintaining control to prevent ‘unruly’ social and economic activities. \nMORE ON ANDREW CHARMAN \n \nAndrew Charman is a Director of the Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation. He trained as a sociologist and development economist\, studying at the University of Cape Town and Cambridge University. Andrew has worked across the Southern African region on addressing development challenges in a broad range of contexts\, both rural and urban. His current work focuses on influencing policy towards micro-enterprises and promoting development interventions to foster growth in the township economy. \nAs a social science researcher seeking to better understand development constraints within the township economy\, I have used a range of qualitative and quantitative research methods\, including: methods to enhance stakeholder participation (participatory visual methods and action research); social-spatial methods to document specific business environments in their enterprise\, social and spatial dimensions; area based enterprise surveys to record and map the spatial dynamics of micro-enterprise activities; and qualitative in-depth interviews to comprehend the challenges that confront livelihood activities. \n  \nMore on the full seminar series here. \nMore on the NOTRUC programme here. 
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/acc-notruc-seminar-series-post-apartheid-spatial-inequality-obstacles-land-township-micro-enterprise-formalisation/
LOCATION:Studio 1\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, UCT\, Cape Town\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Seminar-series_1.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="African Centre for Cities":MAILTO:accurbanconference@gmail.com
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20170619T090000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20170623T130000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20170504T100946Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20170504T102449Z
UID:5359-1497862800-1498222800@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Annual PhD Seminar Series: Understanding Capitalism in Unequal Geographies
DESCRIPTION:The third iteration of the annual PhD seminar series presented by ACC’s Notations on Theories of Radical Urban Change project (NOTRUC)\, lead by Henrik Ernstson and Edgar Pieterse\, on Democratic Practices focuses on “Understanding Capitalis in Unequal Geographies”. The seminar series is based on reading political philosophy with and against southern urbanism. It seeks to make an intervention in how we think about the emergent city and urbanization of the global south; to seek out and make explicit its emancipatory potential\, which often gets hidden or silenced\, either by overly dogmatic “Northern” frameworks\, “developmentalist” techno-managerial approaches; or a sense of defeat that an emancipatory horizon is not any longer possible.In 2017 the series focuses on capitalism and its wider structuration of cities\, bodies and subjectivities. It seeks to understand how classic Marxist critique and its extension into intersectional analysis can be thought with and against southern/postcolonial urban geographies to make visible contemporary struggles against exploitation.Key questions:  \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nHow does capitalism function in and through its differences across time\, space\, and social location?\nHow does capitalism interact with and structure gender\, race\, and sexuality?\nHow does this play out\, manifest and structure urban spaces and extended geographies of the south?\nWhat spaces\, discourses and collectivities can a critique of capitalism help to make visible as locations to struggle against interconnected assemblages and dispositifs of oppression?\n\n\n\n\n\n\nLecturers:\nDr. Andrés Henao Castro\, University of Massachusetts\, Boston\nDr. Ashley Bohrer\, Hamilton College\, New York City\nDr. Henrik Ernstson\, KTH and University of Cape Town\n\n\n\nRead more here 
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/annual-phd-seminar-series-understanding-capitalism-unequal-geographies/
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, EGS Building\, Upper Campus\, University of Cape Town\, University of Cape Town\, Cape Town \, Western Cape\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/ACC_Democratic-Practices-in-Unequal-Geographies_2017.jpg
ORGANIZER;CN="Unnamed Organizer":MAILTO:henrik[DOT]ernstson[AT]uct[DOT]ac[DOT]za
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20170524T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20170524T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20170519T142059Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20170523T091010Z
UID:5415-1495638000-1495643400@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Socio-Spatial Transformation Seminar Series: TOD in Cape Town
DESCRIPTION:Cape Town’s spatial organisation is characterised by fragmentation; expressed in a separation of residential and employment spaces and low density urban sprawl. This imposes a considerable cost on the State\, the environment and increases the socio-economic burden and exclusion of a great majority of the city’s residents. Greater synergy between urban development and mobility through densification and the provision of quality public transport is considered to be central to the spatial and social restructuring of the city. \nThe next seminar in the ACC’s Socio-Spatial Transformation Series will take a closer look at the City of Cape Town’s plans for Transit-Oriented Development (TOD). Leigh Stolworthy from the City’s Transport and Urban Development Authority (TUD) will present the City’s TOD approach and Prof. Roger Behrens from UCT’s Department of Civil Engineering will provide a response. \nSpeaker: Mr. Leigh Stolworthy – Manager: Innovation\, Research & Development\, City of Cape Town \nPLEASE NOTE: The starting time for the seminar was changed from 2pm to 3pm.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/socio-spatial-transformation-seminar-series-tod-cape-town/
LOCATION:Studio 3\, ENGEO Building\, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town\,\, Cape Town\, Western Cape\, 8001\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Philippi_BRT-Station_Poster-1.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20170419T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20170419T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20170413T120815Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20170413T121612Z
UID:5339-1492614000-1492619400@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Neighbourhoods\, NIMBYists and nobodies: the local politics of the Corridors of Freedom
DESCRIPTION:Venue:  Seminar Room 3\, African Centre for Cities\nRSVP: Mercy Brown-Luthango at mercy.brown-luthango@uct.ac.za \nIn 2013\, Johannesburg’s former mayor\, Parks Tau\, announced the ambitious Corridors of Freedom plan to ‘restitch’ Johannesburg through a process of transit-oriented development led by the BRT and supported by a range of interventions intended to densify housing\, stimulate economic opportunities\, and develop mixed use activities. While the plan envisions large-scale transformation through long-term infrastructure investments\, the implementation of the COF has had an immediate and substantial impact at a local level. The various responses of Johannesburg communities have revealed localized governance dynamics and complex relationships with the City and the state\, speaking to significant socio-spatial politics in the city. \nBased on a survey and key informant interviews the seminar reflects on community organization (or lack thereof); the role of individual and organizational intermediaries; and tactics of engagement with the state. It focuses on three case studies in Johannesburg: Orange Grove and Norwood – a mixed middle class and low-income node on the Louis Botha Corridor; Westbury and Coronationville – a historically coloured area on Empire-Perth Corridor struggling with gang violence\, drug abuse and high levels of unemployment; and Marlboro South – an informal community living in reterritorialised industrial buildings adjacent to the historic township of Alexandra. We argue that the Corridors of Freedom project has had a substantial impact on local politics and has revealed significant social and spatial community dynamics across Johannesburg. \nThis seminar forms part of a research partnership between the AFD\, City of Johannesburg and the South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand. \nAbout The Speakers \nMargot Rubin is a senior researcher and faculty member in the University of the Witwatersrand (South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning) in Johannesburg. Since 2002\, she has worked as a researcher\, and policy and development consultant focusing on housing and urban development issues\, and has contributed to a number of research reports on behalf of the National Department of Housing\, the Johannesburg Development Agency\, SRK Engineering\, World Bank\, Ekurhuleni Metropolitan Municipality and Urban LandMark. \nHer PhD in Urban Planning and Politics interrogates the role of the legal system in urban governance and its effect on the distribution of scarce resources and larger questions around democracy. She also holds a Masters in Urban Geography from the University of Pretoria\, an Honours degree in Geography and Environmental Studies and a Bachelor of Arts in Geography and Philosophy. Of late\, Margot has been writing about inner city regeneration\, housing policy and is currently engaged in work around mega housing projects and issues of gender and the city. \n\nAlli Appelbaum is researcher at the South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning (SA&CP) who holds a Masters in Regional and Urban Planning Studies (with distinction) from the London School of Economics and Political Science\, as well as a Bachelor of Arts Honours in Urban History (in the first class) and a Bachelor of Arts in Politics and History (with distinction)\, both from the University of Cape Town. \nHer research interests are broad\, meeting at the intersection of History\, Geography\, Urban Studies and Gender Studies. They include African urbanisms\, discourse analysis\, LGBT+ and gender issues\, urban poverty reduction\, informal trading\, gated communities and urban governance. She is passionate about research that has impacts both within and beyond academia. At SA&CP she is the project manager for the AFD-funded Corridors of Freedom project\, in which she is working with a team of researchers to aid the City of Johannesburg in their ambitious plan to ‘restitch’ Johannesburg\, level apartheid spatial inequality and forge a more public-transport-oriented city. \nBefore joining SA&CP\, Alli worked in consulting and the NGO sector. She received a Commonwealth Scholarship through the Canon Collins Trust in 2014 to study for her Masters at LSE and she was a member of the South Africa Washington International Programme in 2012. She was recognised by the Mail & Guardian as one of South Africa’s ‘Top 200 Young South Africans’ in 2016.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/neighbourhoods-nimbyists-nobodies-local-politics-corridors-freedom/
LOCATION:African Centre for Cities\, UCT Upper Campus\, Cape Town\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/11021188_1671675486393608_303675625792915777_n.jpg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20170329T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20170329T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20170220T084636Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20170220T084636Z
UID:5276-1490799600-1490805000@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Luxified skies: How vertical urban housing became an elite preserve
DESCRIPTION:The African Centre for Cities and the School of Architecture\, Planning and Geomatics are pleased to co-host a Special Lecture by Prof Stephen Graham entitled ‘Luxified skies: How vertical urban housing became an elite preserve’. \nAbstract \nThis talk is a call for critical urban research to address the vertical as well as horizontal aspects of social inequality. It seeks\, in particular\, to explore the important but neglected causal connection between the demonisation and dismantling of social housing towers constructed in many cities between the 1930s and 1970s and the contemporary proliferation of radically different housing towers produced for socio-economic elites. The argument begins with a critical discussion of the economistic orthodoxy\, derived from the work of Edward Glaeser\, that contemporary housing crises are best addressed by removing state intervention in housing production so that market-driven verticalisation can take place. The following two sections connect the rise of such orthodoxy with the ‘manufactured reality’—so central to neo-liberal urban orthodoxy—that vertical social housing must necessarily fail because it deterministically creates social pathology. The remainder of the paper explores in detail how the dominance of these narratives have been central to elite takeovers\, and ‘luxification’\, of the urban skies through the proliferation of condo towers for the superrich. Case studies are drawn from Vancouver\, New York\, London\, Mumbai and Guatemala City and the broader vertical cultural and visual politics of the process are explored. The discussion finishes by exploring the challenges involved in contesting\, and dismantling\, the hegemonic dominance of vertical housing by elite interests in contemporary cities. \nBio \nStephen Graham is Professor of Cities and Society at Newcastle University’s School of Architecture\, Planning and Landscape. He has an interdisciplinary background linking human geography\, urbanism and the sociology of technology. Since the early 1990s Prof. Graham has used this foundation to develop critical perspectives addressing how cities are being transformed through remarkable changes in infrastructure\, mobility\, digital media\, surveillance\, security\, militarism and verticality. His books include Splintering Urbanism; Telecommunications and the City (both with Simon Marvin); the Cybercities Reader; Cities\, War and Terrorism; Disrupted Cities: When Infrastructures Fail; and Infrastructural Lives (with Colin McFarlane). Prof Graham’s 2011 book Cities Under Siege: The New Military Urbanism was nominated for the Orwell Prize in political writing and was the Guardian’s book of the week. His new book – Vertical: The City From Satellites to Bunkers (Verso) – was published in November 2016. Another Guardian book of the week\, it was in the books of the year lists of both the FT and the Observer.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/luxified-skies-vertical-urban-housing-became-elite-preserve/
LOCATION:Studio 3\, ENGEO Building\, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town\,\, Cape Town\, Western Cape\, 8001\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
ATTACH;FMTTYPE=image/jpeg:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/IMG_5713_1024.jpeg
END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20170315T160000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20170315T173000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20170301T120138Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20170302T121520Z
UID:5308-1489593600-1489599000@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:What must be our urban question? Reflections on Contemporary Urban Knowledge from Delhi
DESCRIPTION:ACC is delighted to be hosting Gautam Bhan from the Indian Institute of Human Settlements who will be giving a seminar as part of our socio-spatial transformations seminar series. The seminar is entitled ‘What must be our urban question? Reflections on Contemporary Urban Knowledge from Delhi’. \nAbout \nThe fact of urbanization no longer needs assertion. Today\, our problem is of an excess of speech. What do we talk about when we talk about the urban? Cities? Built Form? Economic Agglomerations? Violence? Modernity? Democracy? Nature? Infrastructure? Transport? As each of us – citizens\, theorists\, practitioners\, policy makers – seeks to grasp the urban\, we find ourselves navigating multiple and often competing visions of cities that seek to be smart\, inclusive\, resilient\, sustainable\, world-class\, ordinary\, and global all at once. \n This talk reflects on how we must think of the urban in the moment of its emergence. It asks: what are the knowledge systems\, cultures and practices that we need to in order live\, survive and intervene into our city-regions?  It does so at a moment when the urban question is once again up for global debate\, challenged to cross disciplines\, offer knowledge for urgent and transformative practice to address a maddening diversity of issues from inequality to sustainability. It does so\, in line with new theoretical thinking from the “south\,” by beginning and rooting from place\, asking questions of urban theory and practice from one its most challenging sites: the city of New Delhi. In doing so\, it also takes on the task of imagining what a decolonisation of urban studies can look like. \nBio \nGautam Bhan has a BA from Amherst College and an MA from the University of Chicago in urban sociology. He has worked as a Research Fellow at the Society for Applied Studies\, New Delhi\, where is his first work was on gender and access to health in informal urban settlements [The Effect of Maternal Education on Gender Bias in Care-seeking for common childhood illnesses\, Social Science and Medicine\, Vol. 60 (4)\, 2005] and later focused on urban poverty in Indian cities and particularly on questions of eviction\, resettlement and poverty within urban development. \nHe is the author of Swept off the Map: Surviving Eviction and Resettlement in Delhi [2005; Hindi Translation 2009] and most recently of This is Not the City I Once Knew: Evictions\, Urban Citizenship and the Right to the City in Millennial Delhi (Environment & Urbanisation\, Vol. 21 (1)\, 2009). He is also a columnist with the Indian Express\, one of India’s leading English language newspapers\, where he writes on urbanisation and urban issues in India. His ongoing research at Berkeley focuses on the changing politics of citizenship and poverty in post-liberalisation Indian cities. He was awarded the prestigious Berkeley Fellowship for 2008-2012 to support his doctoral studies. He is also currently a 2009 IDRF fellow of the Social Science Research Council\, New York.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/must-urban-question-reflections-contemporary-urban-knowledge-delhi/
LOCATION:Studio 3\, ENGEO Building\, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town\,\, Cape Town\, Western Cape\, 8001\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20170208T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20170208T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20170127T122857Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20170131T101906Z
UID:5260-1486566000-1486571400@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Theorizing Urbanization: the Universal and the Particular in Question
DESCRIPTION:The African Centre for Cities is pleased to announce it’s first Special Lecture for 2017. We will be hosting Prof Kevin Cox\, who will be presenting a lecture on ‘Theorizing Urbanization: The Universal and the Particular in Question’. \nAbstract \nOver the last twenty-five years or so urban studies has witnessed increasing skepticism towards universalizing claims and a greater interest in the particularizing. Recent arguments for a view from the global South exemplify this. This raises the question of what the relationship between universalizing and particularizing tendencies might be. This is explored firstly through an exploration of how the two might be reconciled. Two case studies then follow. One focuses on the ‘view from the South’ controversy; and the other on the politics of urban development in the US and in Western Europe and a subsequent trans-Atlantic divide. \nBio \nKEVIN R. COX\, is Emeritus Distinguished University Professor of Geography at the Ohio State University. His major research interests include the politics of urban and regional development\, geographic thought and South Africa. He is the author of numerous books\, the most recent of which are The Politics of Urban and Regional Development and the American Exception (2016) and Making Human Geography (2014.) He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and the recipient of two awards from the Association of American Geographers\, including one for distinguished scholarship. More information can be found on his website\, Unfashionable Geographies\, at https://kevinrcox.wordpress.com/. \n 
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/theorizing-urbanization-beyond-binaries/
LOCATION:Studio 3\, ENGEO Building\, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town\,\, Cape Town\, Western Cape\, 8001\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Lectures,Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20161214T173000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20161214T193000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20161207T080046Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20161209T072844Z
UID:5223-1481736600-1481743800@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:São Paulo's Peripheries: Transformations in Modes of Collective Life
DESCRIPTION:Image credit: Choque Fotos \n  \nSPEAKER: Prof Teresa Caldeira\nDATE: 14 December 2016\nTIME: 17:30 – 19:30\nVENUE: Hiddingh Hall (2nd floor)\, UCT’s Hiddingh Campus\, 31-37 Orange Street\, Gardens (opposite the Labia Theatre)\, Cape Town\, South Africa \n  \nACC is honoured to present a public lecture by Professor Teresa Caldeira (University of California\, Berkeley) on the transformations of modes of collective life in São Paulo\, Brazil\, over the past two decades. \nAbout the topic: \nSão Paulo’s peripheries\, once exclusively the spaces where the poor working classes inhabited their autoconstructed houses\, have changed considerably in the last two decades. They are now much more heterogeneous and their everyday dynamics are in need of new analyses. The mode of collective life based on autoconstruction\, industrialism\, migration\, the dignity of labour\, a certain hierarchy of gender roles\, and the articulation of urban social movements has undergone profound changes.  This talk explores the emerging mode of collective life that is being created in what are now much improved and diverse urban spaces.  It is based on new modes of consumption\, cultural production\, protest\, and circulation from the peripheries to the rest of the city. The transformed peripheries are fundamentally heterogeneous and new arrangements of domestic life and gender roles are at the core of their mutations. These transformations in modes of collective life happen not only in São Paulo\, but also in several other autoconstructed metropolises across the global South. \nAbout the speaker: \nProfessor Teresa Caldeira is an urban scholar from Brazil who teaches at the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California\, Berkeley. She does research on urban violence\, spatial segregation\, and cultural production in cities of the global South\, especially São Paulo.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/sao-paulos-peripheries-transformations-modes-collective-life/
LOCATION:Western Cape
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20161109T130000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20161109T143000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20160805T131613Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20161028T082924Z
UID:4990-1478696400-1478701800@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Finding Food in the post-2015 Development Agenda
DESCRIPTION:Food is fundamental not only to well-being\, but to our social and economic lives. Despite this\, one of the biggest challenges facing many people in cities all over the world today is hunger. As cities rapidly urbanise\, different pressures are placed on the food system which has resulted in the least nutritious food being the most affordable. This seminar series will explore the informal economy\, food systems\, food security and urbanisation. This final seminar by Dr Jane Battersby explores the global implications of the post-2015 development agenda. \nAbstract \nFood has not historically been considered central to the urban agenda. However\, good nutrition is essential for equitable growth and sustainable urban food systems are key to responding to many of the challenges posed to growing cities. In the wake of Habitat III\, this seminar examines the gaps and opportunities to engage the food system as part of urban governance and planning that have emerged in the space generated by the SDGs and New Urban Agenda document. It draws on findings from AFSUN (African Food Security Urban Network) and the Consuming Urban Poverty project. \nBio \nJane Battersby is an urban geographer with an interest in all things food related. Her current areas of particular interest are urban food systems\, urban food policies and the construction of food security theory in Northern and Southern research contexts. This work has both theoretical and applied components. Underpinning her food work is an ongoing interest in the linkages between spatial transformation and identity transformation in post-apartheid urban areas – a topic she has addressed through the lenses of youth identities\, education\, music and land restitution. Jane has been the Cape Town Partner of the African Food Security Urban Network (AFSUN) since 2008\, and is currently the Research Co-ordinator of the ACC’s Consuming Urban Poverty Project\, and is associated with the Hungry Cities Programme.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/goal-2-without-11-integrating-urban-hunger-goal-busting-silos-global-national-local-governance/
LOCATION:Studio 3\, ENGEO Building\, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town\,\, Cape Town\, Western Cape\, 8001\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20161017T090000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20161017T160000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20160805T124716Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20161012T150723Z
UID:4989-1476694800-1476720000@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Announcement: A Special Event To Commemorate World Food Day
DESCRIPTION:This event will be coordinated in partnership with the Centre of Excellence in Food Security and PLAAS.  Details to be confirmed shortly.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/world-food-day/
LOCATION:Western Cape
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160922T110000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160922T123000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20160921T133802Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20160921T135611Z
UID:5051-1474542000-1474547400@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Spatial Transformation CityLab Seminar
DESCRIPTION:South African cities today continue to be marked by spatial fragmentation\, low density sprawl and highly unequal land distribution patterns.  Cape Town as a city is plagued by the same inefficient\, fragmented and exclusionary spatial patterns inherited from Apartheid. In light of this\, the ACC has embarked on a new research project which focuses on the potential of the Voortrekker Road Corridor (VRC) and specifically the Western Area (including Maitland\, Kensington and Facreton) to bring about spatial transformation.  This work is supported by the French Development Agency (AFD). \nOne of the components of this research project is a bi-monthly seminar series which will draw academics\, officials and other practitioners into conversation about a number of pertinent topics. These include for example: unpacking what spatial transformation means in Cape Town\, the role of corridor projects in facilitating this transformation\, the potential and challenges of transit-oriented development and the role of government policy  instruments and programmes like the Urban Development Zone (UDZ) tax incentive to support social and spatial integration. \nTo kick off the seminar series\, Francesco Orsini\, a visiting researcher from Colombia will present a case study of Medellin’s Social Urbanism” programme. This will provide key insights and a useful basis for future deliberations about the nature and dynamics of interventions to transform Cape Town’s spatial form.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/5051/
LOCATION:The River Club\, Cnr Liesbeck Parkway & Observatory Road\, Cape Town \, 7705\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160914T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160914T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20240531T055033Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20240531T064512Z
UID:11660-1473865200-1473870600@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:A systematic review of the literature that focuses on both the ‘informal economy’ and ‘food security’ in South Africa
DESCRIPTION:Food is fundamental not only to well-being\, but to our social and economic lives. Despite this\, one of the biggest challenges facing many people in cities all over the world today is hunger. As cities rapidly urbanise\, different pressures are placed on the food system which has resulted in the least nutritious food being the most affordable. This seminar series will explore the informal economy\, food systems\, food security and urbanisation. \nThe second seminar is entitled ‘A systematic review of the literature that focuses on both the ‘informal economy’ and ‘food security’ in South Africa’ presented by Candice Kelly and Etai Even-Zahav (Research Fellows at the Sustainability Institute). \nAbstract \nDespite the importance of the informal food economy in fulfilling the daily and weekly food needs of a large proportion of South Africa’s low-income population\, it appears little research exists on the exact nature of the relationship between the informal food economy and food security. This paper performed the first qualitative systematic review of research from South Africa that addresses both these aspects. The methods used in the review are described in detail\, to increase the readers’ ability to assess the reliability of subsequent findings and analysis. Findings confirmed the low level of research focus on the informal food economy (and food security)\, in particular the stages of the value chain beyond the farm gate and before the consumer. Food safety research is common\, although applied narrowly and with mixed findings. The conceptualisation of nutrition research is encouragingly wide\, encompassing both over- and under-nutrition\, but does not seem to consider the broader urban informal context in which consumers are embedded. Lastly\, the research approaches used are predominately quantitative\, and the voices of those who survive within the informal food economy are largely absent. \nBios \nCandice Kelly’s doctoral research focuses on people leading food system transitions in South Africa. She teaches into the MPhil at the Sustainability Institute\, focusing on sustainable food systems. \nEtai Even-Zahav is also part of the Food Systems team at the Sustainability Institute. He is particularly interested in the informal food economy.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/systematic-review-literature-focuses-informal-economy-food-security-south-africa/
LOCATION:Studio 3\, ENGEO Building\, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town\,\, Cape Town\, Western Cape\, 8001\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160824T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160824T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20160802T113411Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20160805T131553Z
UID:4981-1472050800-1472056200@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:The Informal Economy's Role in Feeding Cities - a Missing Link in Policy Debates?
DESCRIPTION:Food is fundamental not only to well-being\, but to our social and economic lives. Despite this\, one of the biggest challenges facing many people in cities all over the world today is hunger. As cities rapidly urbanise\, different pressures are placed on the food system which has resulted in the least nutritious food being the most affordable. This seminar series will explore the informal economy\, food systems\, food security and urbanisation. \nThe first seminar is entitled ‘The Informal Economy’s Role in Feeding Cities – A Missing Link in Policy Debates?’ and will be presented by Caroline Skinner and Gareth Haysom. \nAbstract \nThe paper starts by considering the genealogy of the term ‘informal sector’ and then reviews the international context – urbanisation trends and the latest estimates on the size and contribution of the informal economy. The former confirm Crush and Frayne’s contention of the likelihood of an urban future for the majority of Africans and latter suggest that informal work is a predominant source of non-agricultural employment on the most regions of the Global South. Attention is then turned to the South African informal economy\, which although smaller than our developing country counterparts\, is still a significant source of employment. The informal economy is thus playing a key role in household income – a key aspect of accessibility\, particularly in urban areas. The paper then outlines the evidence on the informal economies role in food sourcing of poorer households. The paper critically assesses the current food security policy position in South Africa and the post-Apartheid policy response to the informal economy in general both nationally and in key urban centres. We trace a productionist and rural bias in the food security agenda and argue that the policy environment for informal operators is at best benign neglect and at worse actively destructive. \nSpeaker bios \nCaroline Skinner is a Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and Urban Policies Research Director for the global action-research-policy network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). For over 15 years\, Skinner’s work has interrogated the nature of the informal economy with a focus on informing advocacy processes and livelihood-centred policy and planning responses. She has published widely on the topic. \nDr Gareth Haysom holds a Ph.D in Environmental and Geographic Sciences from UCT. The focus of his Ph.D was on urban food system governance. Gareth is the southern cities project coordinator for the Hungry Cities Partnership project at the ACC. He also works on the Consuming Urban Poverty research project. \nVenue: Studio 3\, EGS Building\, Upper Campus\, UCT
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/informal-economys-role-feeding-cities-missing-link-policy-debates/
LOCATION:Studio 3\, ENGEO Building\, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town\,\, Cape Town\, Western Cape\, 8001\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20160704
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20160709
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20160224T120840Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20160628T035115Z
UID:4671-1467590400-1468022399@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Democratic Practices of Unequal Geographies
DESCRIPTION:  \nThe 2016 Annual ACC Seminar/PhD Course on Democratic Practices in Cape Town: \nThe Aesthetical and the Political of Unequal Geographies: \nReading across Political Philosophy and Global South Urbanism\nJuly 4-8\, 2016\, Seminar Room 1\, EGS Building\, Upper Campus\, University of Cape Town. \nOrganised by Henrik Ernstson and Andrés Henao Castro. \nThe seminar is given by the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town. To apply\, please send  your letter of interest no later than 6 May 2016 to Henrik Ernstson (henrikDOTernstsonATuctDOTacDOTza). We hope the seminar with its readings and discussions can contribute new angles and perspectives to your research. \nMore information on the 2016 theme\, reading and seminar methodology is given below. \nRationale for 2016: Aesthetics and politics! \nThe task is urgent and profound: How to make sense of rapid urbanization across Africa and the global South\, while (re)turning to explicitly think about emancipatory politics? What does the political mean in these contexts? What constitutes properly democratic practices of equality and freedom? What can we learn by rubbing political theory against urban studies of ‘the South’? \nThis annual seminar series emerges out of an interest to put into conversation political philosophy and global south urbanism. Importantly\, our objective is not that of supplementing a theoretical abstraction (e.g. ‘the political’) with some kind of concrete spatiality. Rather\, we are interested in the global south as an epistemological position and a field of experience that has specific contemporary sociomaterial realities that we hope can trouble and re-new both radical urban theory and political theory. Following last year’s seminar\, in which we related our readings of Plato to Rancière with critical urban studies of the South\, this year we gather a seminar that problematizes the relationship between the political and the aesthetic. This puts more focus on artists and activists that intervene materially and socially in the fabric of urban spaces\, and it brings us towards the political in a quite specific way. \nMore concretely we aim to relate questions around what Jacques Rancière calls the distribution of the sensible with interventions in urban spaces. We aim to push the seminar to think about the representation and troubling of an aesthetic regime from the perspective of how it has become embedded in urban and non-urban settings. We will exploit texts that have linked theoretically the political with aesthetic regimes and how this translates troubles and can be re-thought in the context of the global south. We want to ask\, for example: \n\nHow does the symbolic remaking of a space through an artistic intervention trouble the otherwise naturalization of that space as reducible to its presumable functions (i.e.\, market values)?\nWhat is the relationship between this interruption of the function of a space and that of politics?\nHow can artistic interventions force the community to confront that which it disavows?\nWhat kind of conflict do such forms of expressing the senses create within urban spaces?\nHow are those urban spaces transgressed\, circumvented\, rearranged\, reimagined\, etc.\, so as to trouble the very limits of what can be perceived and sensed in the city?\nHow do these spatial contestations take place today\, under what kind of aesthetic practices?\nAnd how could this possibly lead to processes of political subjectivization\, a politicization of collectivities\, bodies\, and spaces in the name of equality?\n\nIn light of 2015 and the student movement of South Africa\, questions of democracy\, decolonization and profound emancipatory change have brought these questions into even sharper focus. And this does not mean to forget other recent women\, workers and community rebellions\, nor the slow-grinding and incremental institutional changes of empowerment that is also ongoing. Indeed\, we hope this seminar/course will provide a chance for all participants to think about these recent events and processes. We hope it will contribute material and discussions through which you can re-think and sharpen your own research projects. \nSeminar Methodology \nOur seminar focuses on readings of political theory that interrogate the relationship between the aesthetical and the political\, across a variety of philosophical approaches. Yet it explores such relationship with a particular and rather unusual emphasis on urban and non-urban geographies of the global south. We want to discuss questions about representation\, intervention\, performativity\, sensuousness\, visibility\, audibility\, occupation\, inscription\, by placing these theories within uneven geographies that should trouble existing theoretical findings and help us to reformulate our research questions\, methodologies approaches and theoretical assumptions. In the readings we have chosen to place more emphasis on political philosophy as these are less known to most of us\, and since this makes best use of Dr. Andrés Heano Castro’s visit here at ACC in Cape Town. The texts on global south urbanism will bring in contextual and theoretical aspects into the seminar\, but we also rely on participants’ wider readings and their own research on urbanization\, global south and decolonization. Below you will find the current list of readings\, which will be updated. \nSchedule and Readings \nWe will meet for 3 hours every day. Andrés will talk for the first 30 minutes\, in order to provide context for the theoretical discussion: what is at stake in the texts\, where does the text stand in relation to intellectual debates\, and summarize main points\, etc. Then we open the floor for discussion in which the global south urbanism literature will enter as ways to unpack and think about the seminar questions\, how our empirical work are helped by these texts\, while challenging them and ‘speaking back’. Through this we will have a chance to re-think our own research and case studies. For each day we will provide questions to orient your reading\, and serve as starting point for our discussions. Based on this you can write down and raise your own questions to further give direction to the seminar. We will have a short 10 minute break two hours into the seminar and then we will return for another 45 minutes of discussion. Coffee and tea will be served during the seminar. (NB: Global south urbanism reading and questions will be complemented later alongside points 1-3 in the list below.) \nHow to Apply \nThe seminar/course is organized by Dr. Henrik Ernstson and Dr. Andrés Henao Castro. It forms part of the ACC’s new project NOTRUC\, Notations on Theories of Radical Urban Change\, which is lead by Dr. Henrik Ernstson and Professor Edgar Pieterse and it provides a terrain towards critical and radical (re)thinking on global south urbanism at ACC and beyond. \nApplication—Letter of interest \nThe seminar/course is open to PhD students and scholars. Please send an e-mail to Henrik Ernstson no later than 6 May 2016 including a 500 word motivation letter (why you would like to take this course) and a 2-page CV (not longer please). We will have between 12-18 seats available. You will know if you have been accepted a week after. \nNo course fee \nThere are no course fees. During the seminar there we will arrange coffee and tea every day\, and one dinner. The rest of food items and other costs will be on your own account. \nShort on the organizers \nDr. Andrés Fabián Henao Castro is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Massachusetts Boston. His research interests are the relationship between ancient and contemporary political theory\, particularly in reference to democratic and de-colonial theory and practices\, the question of political subjectivity and the distribution of political agency. Currently he is working on a book that explores the kind of subject-positions and forms of agency that are imagined and unimagined in the theoretical reception of Sophocles’ tragedy Antigone. As a member of the international research network on Performance Philosophy he is also developing a new project on radical interpretations of Plato’s allegories. He is also working on the relationship between text and textile by putting in conversation ancient and contemporary political weavers through their reception in contemporary feminist theory. Read more on his website: http://works.bepress.com/andres_fabian_henao_castro \nDr. Henrik Ernstson is a Research Fellow and Principal Investigator from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology\, Stockholm\, and an Honorary Visiting Scholar at the University of Cape Town\, where he has been since 2010. His theoretical and empirical work is focused on the politics and collective organizing around urban ecology\, from urban land and wetlands to waste and sanitation. With others\, he is developing a situated approach to urban political ecology drawing upon upon critical geography\, global South urbanism\, postcolonial theory and postfoundational political thought. For more information\, see http://www.situatedecologies.net and http://stanford.academia.edu/HenrikErnstson.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/democratic-practices-of-unequal-geographies-annual-phd-courseseminar/
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, EGS Building\, Upper Campus\, University of Cape Town\, University of Cape Town\, Cape Town \, Western Cape\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160518T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160518T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20160419T132021Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20160419T132021Z
UID:4773-1463583600-1463589000@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:‘A House for Dead People’: Memory and spatial transformation in Red Location\, Port Elizabeth
DESCRIPTION:ACC is pleased to be hosting the 2016 Ray Pahl Fellow in Urban Studies\, Dr Naomi Roux\, who will be presenting a paper entitled\, ‘A House for Dead People: Memory and spatial transformation in Red Location\, Port Elizabeth’. \nAbstract \nFollowing the end of apartheid in 1994\, several new projects of public memory and urban development were established in many South African cities. In Port Elizabeth\, the Red Location Museum was opened in 2006\, in a century-old informal settlement with strong histories of resistance activity. The museum was intended to acknowledge the area’s contribution to the liberation struggle\, and contribute to dismantling apartheid urban geographies by producing a tourist and cultural economy. However\, the project was highly contested from its inception by residents who felt that the priority for the neighbourhood should be housing and service delivery. Major housing-related protests erupted on the museums doorstep between 2003 and 2005\, and in late 2013 the new cultural precinct was closed down indefinitely. This paper examines the politics and controversies surrounding the Red Location developments between 1997-2013\, using this case study to consider the ways in which the protests around the museum are deeply rooted in historical and political histories which are made visible through residents’ radical claiming of ownership of the museum building. \n \nBio \nNaomi Roux is an urbanist and visual historian\, with a particular interest in the relationships between collective memory\, the politics of public space and urban transformation. She holds the Ray Pahl Fellowship in Urban Studies at the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities for 2016. Prior to this she was the 2014-2015 Mellon Fellow in Cities and Humanities at LSE Cities. Her recent PhD (Birkbeck\, 2015) focused on the politics of collective memory in the context of the changing post-apartheid city\, using Nelson Mandela Bay in South Africa’s Eastern Cape as a case study. Previous work includes published research and exhibition projects focusing on heritage\, memory and place-making in sites including Kliptown\, Soweto; Yeoville\, Johannesburg; and ‘Little Addis’ in central Johannesburg.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/house-dead-people-memory-spatial-transformation-red-location-port-elizabeth/
LOCATION:Studio 3\, ENGEO Building\, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town\,\, Cape Town\, Western Cape\, 8001\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160413T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160413T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20160323T101544Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20160411T081448Z
UID:4717-1460559600-1460565000@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:The urban network strategy - the panacea for urban and developmental ills?
DESCRIPTION:The ACC looks forward to generating a stimulating debate about the Cities Support Programme by hosting Dr Paul Hendler from iNSITE who will be presenting a paper co-authored by himself and Dr Arumugam Pillay (who will be present via Skype) entitled\, ‘The urban network strategy – the panacea for urban and developmental ills’. \nAbstract \nThe National Treasury\, through its Cities Support Programme (CSP)\, intends to get the eight metropolitan municipalities to run more efficiently\, become financially and ecologically sustainable and give the majority of their citizens access to employment and public and social amenities. The weakness of the strategy is its assumption of the inevitable upswing in the global business cycle\, the ability of cities to afford the infrastructure required for ongoing in-migration and the fact that it omits describing how broad-based\, inclusive and eco-sensitive economic development with significant employment opportunities should happen. The missing factor in the programme is state intervention aimed at economic restructuring: it simply assumes that both job creation and green manufacturing will happen without explaining how. Instead\, the paper argues that the challenge is to address the broader political economy context of sluggish growth\, low wages and high unemployment\, in order to support key CSP objectives. In this regard\, the paper identifies specifically the need for municipalities as public sector developers to directly support2 improved quality of life and work opportunities for both the urban and rural working classes\, and for the state to stem the outflow of funds from the country\, re-direct investment funds away from finance\, insurance and real estate (the jobless growth sectors) and into manufacturing and implement a coherent rural development based on technical and financial support for feasible ‘accumulation from below’ by current smallholder farmers and households in traditional areas. \nBio \nDr Paul Hendler is an extraordinary senior lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch’s School of Public Management\, and a founder of iNSITE that is working (through the Sustainability Institute\, Stellenbosch University) on the formulation of a financial mechanism for the investment of a civil society green savings fund in South Africa. Hendler has been researching the intersection of housing and the political economy for over 30 years in South Africa\, with an emphasis on critiquing neoliberal development. \nDr Arumugam (Morgan) Pillay is CEO of The Ekurhuleni Development Company. He is responsible for delivery of finance to and Social Housing. Pillay has almost 25 years of experience in Infrastructure Development and Finance within the government sector. Having worked at the National Housing Finance Corporation\, Standard Corporate and Merchant Bank\, and advising national and provincial government departments\, he is one of South Africa’s housing finance experts that has both theoretical and practical experience in the sector.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/critique-of-the-csp/
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Environmental & Geographical Sciences Building\, UCT Upper Campus
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160308T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160308T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20160223T080128Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20160225T104621Z
UID:4662-1457449200-1457454600@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Rethinking Sustainable Cities: from slogan to implementation
DESCRIPTION:ACC is excited to host representatives from Mistra Urban Futures who will be presenting on their forthcoming book entitled ‘Rethinking Sustainable Cities: from slogan to implementation’. \nOverview \nMistra Urban Futures’ forthcoming book provides detailed intellectual and practical histories of fair\, green and accessible cities – three key urban characteristics chosen to symbolise the research centre’s approach\, which utilises transdisciplinary co-production methodologies to promote sustainable urban solutions to specific local problems in each of its research platforms. These characteristics suffuse MUF’s work and Strategic Plan for 2016-19. David Simon will explain these agendas\, focusing particularly on the origins and current nature of urban greening discourses and the challenges to implementation to ensure that they make a substantive as opposed to purely marginal or incremental difference. Sue Parnell will do likewise in relation to fair cities. \nBios \nDavid Simon joined Mistra Urban Futures in September 2014 from Royal Holloway\, University of London\, where he still holds a part-time appointment as Professor of Development Geography. He was Head of theGeography Department there from 2008-11. He has vast international experience including grant-funded research on sub-Saharan Africa (especially Namibia\, South Africa\, Kenya and Ghana)\, Asia (especially Sri Lanka\, Thailand and the Philippines)\, the UK and the USA. He has also served as specialist advisor to UN-HABITAT on cities and climate change\, was one of only two academics on the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office’s specialist Africa Advisory Group prior to its disbandment\, and has consulted for various NGOs and national and international development agencies. Furthermore\, he is a Fellow of the UK Academy of Social Sciences. \nSusan Parnell’s early academic research was in the area of urban historical geography and focussed on the rise of racial residential segregation and the impact of colonialism on urbanisation and town planning in Sub-Saharan Africa. Since 1994 and democracy in South Africa her work has shifted to contemporary urban policy research (local government\, poverty reduction and urban environmental justice). By its nature this research is not been purely academic\, but has involved liasing with local and national government and international donors. Sue is also on the boards of several local NGOs concerned with poverty alleviation\, sustainability and gender equity in post-apartheid South Africa. She serves on a number of national and international advisory research panels relating to urban reconstruction.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/rethinking-sustainable-cities-from-slogan-to-implementation/
LOCATION:Studio 5\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, Cape Town\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Lectures,Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160224T030000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20160224T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20160204T105526Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20160204T105526Z
UID:4640-1456282800-1456331400@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:World-class city making in Africa – a view from Angola through the redevelopment of the Bay of Luanda
DESCRIPTION:The ACC is happy to announce the first academic seminar for 2016. Dr Sylvia Croese will be presenting a paper entitled\, ‘World-class city making in Africa – a view from Angola through the redevelopment of the Bay of Luanda’. \nAbstract \nThis paper examines the redevelopment of the Bay of Luanda as the epitome of a process of world-class city making that has unfolded in the capital of Angola since the end of the war in 2002. In an era that has been marked by ‘Africa’s rise’\, concomitant efforts towards the building of world-class African cities have generated growing research interest over the past years. However\, often these efforts are seen as uncritically adopted or externally imposed imitations of global/world city models. \nThis paper aims to take world-class city making in Luanda seriously by analyzing its dynamics on its own terms\, thereby moving beyond accounts that either romanticize or demonize this process. Based on an analysis of the history of the Bay of Luanda and the actors\, discourse and imaginaries involved in its redevelopment\, the paper makes three interrelated arguments. Firstly\, it argues that while discourses underpinning world-class city making may reflect external or economic drivers\, such as a desire to attract international investment\, the case of Luanda shows that this practice can be equally or even more strongly driven by internal or political objectives\, such as the pursuit of national legitimacy and domestic stability. From this follows that world-class city making in Africa does not necessarily have to be externally imposed\, managed or financed\, but that it can also be ‘home-grown’ and led by national rather than city governments\, especially in resource-rich and authoritarian states like Angola. \nFinally\, the paper argues that while the mainstream world-class city literature tends to focus on the futuristic nature of world-class city aesthetics\, the redevelopment of the Bay of Luanda shows how efforts to revive modernist colonial architecture may equally underpin world-class city making. The study of world-class city making should then not only consider ‘introspective’ vs ‘extrospective’ politics but also ‘retrospective’ rationales or the ways in which utopia and nostalgia intersect across time and space. \nBio \n \nDr Sylvia Croese is a post-doctoral research fellow at the department of Sociology at the University of Cape Town. She has written and conducted extensive research in and on Angola as a researcher and consultant and has an interest in issues related to housing and urban development\, local governance and electoral politics in Africa.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/world-class-city-making-in-africa-a-view-from-angola-through-the-redevelopment-of-the-bay-of-luanda-2/
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Environmental & Geographical Sciences Building\, UCT Upper Campus
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20151103T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20151103T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20151013T074405Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20151102T133013Z
UID:4405-1446562800-1446568200@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Informal Settlement as Complex Adaptive Assemblage
DESCRIPTION:The ACC is delighted to be hosting Prof Kim Dovey who will be presenting a paper entitled ‘Informal Settlement as Complex Adaptive Assemblage’. \nAbstract \nInformal urbanism\, from informal settlements to economies and street markets\, is integral to cities of the global South – economically\, socially\, environmentally and aesthetically. This paper seeks to unfold and re-think this informal/formal conception using two interconnected theoretical frameworks. First is assemblage theory derived from the work of Deleuze and Guattari\, in which a series of twofold concepts such as rhizomic/tree and smooth/striated resonate with the informal/formal construct. Second is theory on complex adaptive systems\, in which dynamic and unpredictable patterns of self-organisation emerge with certain levels of resilience or vulnerability. These approaches are drawn together into the concept of a complex adaptive assemblage\, illustrated with brief snapshots of urban informality drawn from Southeast Asian cities. The research challenge is to develop multi-disciplinary\, multi-scalar methodologies to explore the ways in which informality is linked to squatting\, corruption and poverty on the one hand\, and to growth\, productivity and creativity on the other. \nBio \nKim Dovey is Professor of Architecture and Urban Design at the University of Melbourne. He has published widely on social issues in architecture\, urban design and planning.  Books include ‘Framing Places’ (Routledge\, 2008)\, ‘Fluid City’ (UNSW Press 2005)\, ‘Becoming Places’ and the forthcoming ‘Urban Design Thinking’ (Bloomsbury).  He leads research projects on informal settlements\, transit-oriented development and creative clusters.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/informal-settlement-as-complex-adaptive-assemblage/
LOCATION:Seminar Room 1\, Environmental & Geographical Sciences Building\, UCT Upper Campus
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20151014T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20151014T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20150915T095252Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20151012T114931Z
UID:4365-1444834800-1444840200@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Food and transnational gastronomic culture amongst Cameroonian migrants in Cape Town and The Hague
DESCRIPTION:In this seminar\, post-doctoral fellow at the African Centre for Cities\, Dr Henrietta M Nyamnjoh will present a paper entitled\, ‘This Christmas I go ‘touch’ some fufu and eru”: Food and transnational gastronomic culture amongst Cameroonian migrants in Cape Town and The Hague’. \nAbstract \nMigrants’ relation to ethnic food and their experiences of migration are dynamic processes\, experienced in a multiplicity of ways. This paper focuses on how mobility and migration are fast influencing the global food cultures and how increasingly foods are windows into the ways migrants live\, think\, and identify themselves. Foods are part of migrants’ cultural\, historical and even emotional repertoires. Based on ethnographic research amongst Cameroonian migrants in Cape Town and The Netherlands\, I explore how migrants travel with their gastronomic culture and/or improvise in the absence of ethnic foods. In the Netherlands\, whilst migrants have found ‘home-away-from-home’ through the many shops that sell food from home they still manage to create transnational food chains/links when visiting home. While in Cape Town\, despite these shops the absence of certain foods has prompted migrants to improvise and complement their foods\, it has also given rise to specialised restaurants that provide Cameroonian cuisine. Through this ethnography I maintain that gastronomic culture can be thought of as a strong bond that affirms migrants’ Cameroonian-ness and keeps them attached to the home country. I question too the extent to which mobility and transnationality reconfigure food experiences amongst migrant communities and argue for multiple understandings of how migrants relate to food to the exclusion of their everyday experience. \nBio \nHenrietta Nyamnjoh is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at African Centre for Cities and Environmental and Geographical Science\, University of Cape Town. Her research focus is on migration\, transnational studies\, migrants and urban transformation and religion. She recently completed a study on the use of Information and Communication Technologies amongst Cameroonian migrants in South Africa\, The Netherlands and Cameroon. The study (Bridging Mobilities: ICTs appropriation by Cameroonians in South Africa and The Netherlands) seeks to understand migrants’ appropriation of the new Information and Communication Technologies to link home and host country and the wider migrant community. She is also the author of “We Get Nothing from Fishing” Fishing for Boat Opportunities Amongst Senegalese Fisher Migrants (2010). She is currently working on transnational families and emotions amongst Cameroonians in Cape Town.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/food-and-transnational-gastronomic-culture-amongst-cameroonian-migrants-in-cape-town-and-the-hague/
LOCATION:Studio 3\, ENGEO Building\, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town\,\, Cape Town\, Western Cape\, 8001\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20150909T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20150909T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20150821T130751Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20150826T120923Z
UID:4245-1441810800-1441816200@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Overcoming water scarcity for good?
DESCRIPTION:Dr Suraya Scheba is an ACC research fellow who will be sharing a paper entitled\, ‘Overcoming water scarcity for good: querying the adoption of desalination technology in the Knysna Local Municipality of South Africa’. \nAbstract \nIn this paper I aim to query the Ecological Modernisation vision of green growth by focusing on the emblematic case of desalination technology as the solution to the threat of water scarcity. I focus the study on a drought crisis\, which resulted in the adoption of desalination in the Eden District Municipality (EDM) of South Africa. Focusing on the towns of Sedgefield and Knysna\, in the Knysna Local Municipality (KLM) of the EDM\, I ask the questions of ‘what\, how\, by whom\, why and to what end was desalination adopted?’. This interrogation is characterised by two movements\, firstly tracing the emergence and form of the crisis – solution consensus; and secondly reading this against an examination of the historical material relations constituting both crisis and solution. The paper is informed by research that was carried out over a period of 11 months\, from October 2011 to August 2012\, during which I undertook 91 semi-structured interviews\, extensive document analysis and participant observation. \nThe twin analytical movement described above is undertaken in five parts. Firstly\, I show that the dominant representation of ‘drought crisis’ insisted upon the indisputability of drought as a threat posed by an externalised nature. Next\, in examining the historical materiality of drought I counter this narrative by showing the drought crisis to be a socio-natural assemblage\, rather than an externalised threatening nature. This is a vital finding\, showing that the support for the adoption of desalination technology as a necessary response to ‘nature’s crisis’\, pivoted on the maintenance of an ideological fiction. In the third part of the paper\, moving on to an examination of the solution\, it emerges that an essential element supporting desalination adoption was the employment of exceptional disaster and environmental legislation\, enabling the urgent release of disaster funding to ensure water security for economic growth. This section also argues that the maintenance of the dominant crisis narrative served to produce a market opportunity for the desalination industry. In the remaining two parts of the paper I evaluate the ‘promise’ of the desalination techno-fix. Through focusing on the conditionality placed on disaster funding and its impact on project assembly\, I argue that the mechanisms and logic through which the solution consensus emerged had a direct bearing on project assembly and consequent problems and costs emerging out of the desalination solution from the outset. In sum\, the paper demonstrates that the adopted E.M. logic was a false promise that served to intensify the penetration of nature by capital\, and resulted in a deeper movement into crisis by moving the problems around as opposed to resolving them. \n \nBio \nSuraya completed her PhD in geography at the University of Manchester (UK). Her doctoral work examined the Ecological Modernisation vision of green growth by focusing on the emblematic case of desalination technology as the solution to the threat of water scarcity. The study was focused on a drought crisis\, which resulted in the adoption of desalination in the Eden District Municipality (EDM) of South Africa\, focusing specifically on the towns of Sedgefield and Knysna\, in the Knysna Local Municipality (KLM) of the EDM. Since May 2015 she works as a post-doctoral research fellow at the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of the Cape Town. In this capacity\, she forms part of a research team concerned with exploring theories and practices of emancipatory change. At one level\, her focus is on leading an in-depth study on Informality\, urban poverty and inequality in the low-income community of Delft\, Cape Town. This study forms part of a larger multi-sited research project\, positioned within a collaborative initiative between a handful of South African Research Chairs working on strategies to overcome poverty and inequality. At another level she will participate in workshops and discussions\, drawing on both grounded findings and theoretical debates\, to build empirically-informed theory and policy related to questions of transformative change.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/overcoming-water-scarcity-for-good/
LOCATION:Studio 3\, ENGEO Building\, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town\,\, Cape Town\, Western Cape\, 8001\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;VALUE=DATE:20150727
DTEND;VALUE=DATE:20150801
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20150430T154221Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20150510T071114Z
UID:3628-1437955200-1438387199@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:“Political Theory Meets Global South Urbanism: Where is the Political?”
DESCRIPTION:Dr. Henrik Ernstson and Dr. Andrés Henao Castro are organising a week-long #SUPE literature seminar on “Political Theory Meets Global South Urbanism: Where is the Political?”\, July 27-31\, 2015 at ACC\, University of Cape Town. \nFor more information visit http://www.situatedecologies.net/archives/1417
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/acc-seminar-political-theory-meets-global-south-urbanism-where-is-the-political-july-27-31-2015/
LOCATION:African Centre for Cities\, UCT Upper Campus\, Cape Town\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20150608T030000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20150608T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20150515T130438Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20150521T133243Z
UID:3540-1433732400-1433781000@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Comparing urban civic networks: Insights from Britain
DESCRIPTION:In this seminar Prof Mario Diani from the University of Trento and ICREA at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra\, Barcelona will be presenting a paper entitled ‘Comparing urban civic networks: Insights from Britain’. \nAbstract \nComparative analyses of urban political civic networks are still relatively rare\, and those available are mostly conducted by an “aggregative” rather than a “relational” logic. They focus\, in other words\, on the distribution of the characteristics of individual and organizational actors rather than on the patterns of relation and interdependence between them. Drawing upon my just published book The Cement of Civil Society (Cambridge UP\, 2015)\, and focusing on civic networks in two British cities\, Bristol and Glasgow\, my talk illustrates how network analysis can contribute to a more nuanced understanding of local political networks. It shows in particular how the concept of “mode of coordination” may enable us to capture the differences between different styles of collective action. \n \nBio \nMario Diani is professor of sociology at the University of Trento\, and ICREA research professor at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra\, Barcelona. His research focuses primarily on social movements\, collective action\, and political networks. Publications include The Cement of Civil Society: Studying Networks in Localities (Cambridge University Press\, 2015)\, Social Movements (with Donatella della Porta\, Blackwell\, 20062)\,  and Social Movements and Networks (co-edited with Doug McAdam\, Oxford University Press\, 2003)\, as well as articles in leading journals such as American Sociological Review\, American Journal of Sociology\, Social Networks\, and Mobilization.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/comparing-urban-civic-networks-insights-from-britain/
LOCATION:Studio 1\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, UCT\, Cape Town\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20150513T030000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20150513T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20150306T113251Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20150511T101901Z
UID:3421-1431486000-1431534600@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Performing a New Model of Active and Activist Citizenship in South Africa
DESCRIPTION:In this seminar\, Dr Chloé Buire will be presenting a paper entitled ‘Performing a New Model of Active and Activist Citizenship in South Africa’. \nAbstract \nIn 2014\, South Africa celebrated its “Twenty Years of Democracy”. Official commemorations emphasized the pride in belonging to the Rainbow Nation\, but commentators recalled the fragility of the national myth.  Many of these commentators feared that young people who have not lived under apartheid could endanger democracy because of their unstable and conflicting political identities.  In this context\, this paper explores the kind of citizenship promoted in youth policies and curricula\, and traces how citizenship has been reframed since the heyday of the democratic transition in the 1990s.  Emerging from this analysis is an “active citizen” whose commitment to social justice is measured against her or his contribution to the national economy.  Nevertheless\, interviews with key actors from government and civil society conducted in Cape Town reveal that the definition of a self-sufficient\, responsible\, and caring citizen is contested\, as projects developed to produce young citizens engage with critical thinking as well as with personal economic advancement. While academic education remains seen as the primary tool for building citizenship\, many are exploring alternative pedagogies and experimental training to challenge the status-quo of a profoundly unequal society.  The learning process of various actors involved in youth development suggests that South African citizenship is performed through this complex relationship between a model of economically active citizens and a model of politically conscious citizens. \n \nBiography\n \nChloé completed her PhD in geography at the University of Paris Ouest (France). Her doctoral work examined the practices of urban citizenship in Gugulethu and Heideveld (Cape Town). She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of the Witwatersrand (Johannesburg) in 2012 and 2013\, where she explored the construction of political identities in Luanda\, Angola. Since January 2014\, Chloé is a post-doctoral research associate at Durham University (UK). She is currently doing fieldwork in Cape Town for YouCitizen\, a research project examining the meaning and experience of citizenship for young people in societies with histories of conflict and division (www.youcitizen.org).
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/performing-a-new-model-of-citizenship/
LOCATION:Studio 5\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, Cape Town\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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END:VEVENT
BEGIN:VEVENT
DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20150318T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20150318T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20150225T123428Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20150625T105859Z
UID:3408-1426690800-1426696200@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Transnational Labor and Place Making in the Rustbelt US: Implications for Theorizing Place  and Politics of Place in the Global Era
DESCRIPTION:ACC is excited to host Prof Faranak Miraftab in the first of our academic Seminar Series for 2015. In this seminar ‘Transnational Labor and Place Making in the Rustbelt US: Implications for Theorizing Place  and Politics of Place in the Global Era’\, Prof Miraftab will be presenting from her forthcoming book (2016) entitled Making a Home in the Heartland: Immigration and Global Labor Mobility. \nAbstract \nAs a point observation I take an industrial town in rural rustbelt of the United States\, and study the rapid social transformation of this space due to transnational labor recruitment by the meat processing industry. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Illinois\, Mexico and Togo\, I unfold the global production and social reproduction of migrant workers; how they make place globally and locally; and how they renegotiate inter-racial relations to make a former sundown town their new home in Illinois. \nFocusing on an often overlooked space in urban scholarship of globalization and taken-for-granted processes of global labor mobility\, this study recovers voices and stories often hidden\, made invisible or left out of the picture\, to theorize place and place making relationally and stress the difference that place makes. Spanning urban studies\, human geography\, immigration and transitional studies\, Making a Home in the Heartland makes important intervention in the theorization of urban\, production and social reproduction of transnational migrants\, politics of place and place making. \nBiography \n \nFaranak Miraftab is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois\, Urbana-Champaign. A native of Iran\, she did her undergraduate studies at the Tehran University; while in political asylum she earned her Master’s degree in Norway and later moved to the US and completed her doctorate at the University of California\, Berkeley. Her interdisciplinary ethnographic work crosses planning\, geography and transnational studies and is empirically based in cities of Latin America\, Africa and North America. As an urban scholar of globalization she is interested in the global and local development processes and contingencies involved in the formation of the city and citizens’ struggles to access dignified livelihood. She was named as a 2014-15 University Scholar\, a prestigious award bestowed on faculty at the University of Illinois campuses. Her most recent and forthcoming publications include Cities of the Global South Reader (Miraftab and Kudva\, Routledge 2014); Cities and Inequalities in a Global and Neoliberal World (eds. Miraftab\, Wilson and Salo\, Routledge April 2015)\, and Making a Home in the Heartland: Immigration and Global Labor Mobility (Miraftab\, Indiana University Press\, January 2016). Her presentation will draw on the latter\, a multi-sited ethnography concerning global production and social reproduction of migrant labor and how this makes for local development in the heartland US. \n 
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/making-home-heartland-immigration-global-labor-mobility/
LOCATION:Studio 5\, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building\, Upper Campus\, Cape Town\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20140820T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20140820T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20140813T073139Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20140814T093421Z
UID:3112-1408546800-1408552200@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:In the skin of the city: the street and its doubles
DESCRIPTION:In this presentation\, Anthropologist António Tomás (ACC’s the 2014 Ray Pahl Fellow) will undertake to provide a layered description of the city of Luanda by engaging with a number of ethnographic vignettes based on his wanderings through the city. “Such a methodology has two sources” says Tomás. “First\, I draw on the modernist figure of the flâneur as it was proposed by Charles Baudelaire and theorized by Walter Benjamin. Second\, I also draw on the methods for wandering in the city (later on theorized by de Certeau) that was called psycho-geography by the situationists. I use this methodology in reference to the situationists who developed it as a way to ‘deconstruct’ Le Corbusian’s modernist ambitions in transforming Paris.” \nThis exercise allows Tomás to provide a description not only of the surface of the city (or the city from the surface)\, but to also find a vantage point to “deconstruct” Luanda’s colonial and postcolonial imaginaries. By annalyzing the prevailing practices of anonymous Luandans who give names to streets that disavowal their official designations\, he gains a further understanding of the surface of the city that goes beyond its own (modernist) visibility. \nAbout the author \nAntónio Tomás received his doctoral degree in Anthropology from Columbia University\, New York. He is the author of a study on the African nationalist Amílcar Cabral titled O Fazedor de Utopias: Uma Biografia de Amílcar (The Maker of Utopias: A Biography of Amilcar Cabral (Lisbon [Portugal]; Praia [Cape Verde]\, Tinta da China; Spleen\, 2007; 2008).  Tomás is the 2014 Ray Pahl Fellow at the African Centre for Cities\, working on a book called In the skin of the city: Luanda\, or the dialectics of spatial transformation.
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/skin-city-street-doubles/
LOCATION:Davies Reading Room\, Room 2.27\, Environmental and Geographical Science\, UCT\, Cape Town\, Western Cape\, 8000\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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DTSTART;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20140730T150000
DTEND;TZID=Africa/Johannesburg:20140730T163000
DTSTAMP:20260419T192304
CREATED:20140709T120518Z
LAST-MODIFIED:20140716T073124Z
UID:2955-1406732400-1406737800@wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page
SUMMARY:Political and Affective Ecologies of the City
DESCRIPTION:In her talk\, Dr Karen Till will explore the limitations and possibilities of considering urban ecology as a means to ‘think the city differently’. Her starting premise is simple: how might we begin to challenge dominant paradigms in urban theory\, including resilience and neoliberal speculative urbanisms\, that define ground merely as property and contain time according to desire and fear? Using examples from cities around the world\, the talk will address the concept of the wounded city and a place-based ethics of care according to intersecting urban temporal and spatial meshworks that include: social and material environments\, relational networks\, local pathways\, alternative exchange systems\, affective ecologies\, enacted assemblages\, and urban ecosystem wholeness. \nAbout the speaker \nDr. Karen E. Till is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography at the National University of Ireland at Maynooth. A cultural and urban geographer\, Karen is working on a book entitled ‘Wounded Cities’. It is a comparative ethnographic project about cities marked by histories of state-perpetrated violence\, with case studies in Berlin\, Bogota\, Cape Town and Dublin. \nRequired Reading \n[button link=”https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Till_KE_2012_WoundedCities_PG.pdf” style=”download” color=”red” window=”yes”]Wounded Cities 2012[/button]
URL:https://wonderful-hopper.38-242-239-132.plesk.page/event/political-affective-ecologies-city/
LOCATION:Davies Reading Room\, Room 2.27\, Environmental and Geographical Science\, UCT\, Cape Town\, Western Cape\, 8000\, South Africa
CATEGORIES:Seminar Series
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