The ACC aims to produce credible new knowledge on the drivers of urban crisis in African cities with an eye on systemic solutions
The challenges of rapid urbanisation in large parts of Africa are beyond the capacity of local government to manage. The paper explores the arguments for a national urban policy to complement local strategies, reflecting the unique power of the central state and the special circumstances of cities. With appropriate support, urbanisation could become a more positive force for economic and human development.
Late in 2000, I asked Ponkies to accompany me through The Park to introduce me to people who had arrived since my last period of work there and to find old acquaintances after my long absence.
The apartheid city was always the ultimate paradigm for urban division and exclusion. This was even more so in the 1990s when it became clearer that urban forms and patterns in many parts of the world were going the way of intensifying segregation, fragmentation and splintering, resulting in deepening intra-urban inequalities (Graham and Marvin 2001).
It is pertinent to move away from the tropes of segregation, fragmentation and bifurcation in thinking about the African urban condition. However, it would be an error to simply trade the dominant ideas on polarisation for an account that only foregrounds interconnections and fluid intermingling.
The use and disposal of nickel–cadmium secondary cells (the basic components of NiCd batteries) in Cape Town, South Africa, has been investigated with the objective of quantifying the associated flows of cadmium.
In the wake of Mumbai terror attacks one is forced to reflect on the nature and representation of urban violence across the global South. It is clear that only certain kinds of violence and upheaval warrant attention in the public domain as reflected in the world’s globalized media.
Urbanization in Africa is real. Most political and policy leaders remain in denial about its centrality and urgency. Urbanization in Africa represents the most complex and intractable policy questions and as long as Africans do not take responsibility to shift the contemporary situation of policy failure, we are in for a crisis.
This paper examines the use of a discourse of citizenship by the leaders and members of the São Paulo housing movement, the Uniao de Movimentos de Moradia, and illustrates how they ‘see the state’ (Corbridge et al. 2005) and mobilize their members.
The purpose of this draft national urban development framework (NUDF) is to provide a common nation-wide view on how to strengthen the capacity of South Africa’s towns, cities and city-regions to realise their potential to support national shared growth, social equity and environmental sustainability.
Internationally there a few cases where street traders have been sensitively integrate into urban plans. Warwick Junction, the primary transport node in Durban, South Africa was for over 10 years one of the few exceptions.
Cities generally function as sources of economic development and human progress. One of the puzzles about Africa’s urbanization is that it has not been accompanied by greater economic dynamism.
This paper explores the meaning of the developmental state for spatial economic policy in South Africa. Two main questions are addressed: do provincial governments have a role to play in pro- moting economic prosperity, and to what extent do current provincial policies possess the attri- butes of a developmental state?
Visit AFSUN’s website to download some of their recent publications on Food Security related issues
Despite the advances in modern retailing, millions of people throughout the world still make their living partly or wholly through selling goods on the streets.
The global research-policy-action network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO) launched this dedicated urban policies research report series in October 2009. The series profiles content that makes either an empirical or theoretical contribution to existing knowledge about the urban working poor, their living and work environments and/or their organisations.
