Books
Cityscapes #7: Futurity
The seventh and latest edition of Cityscapes is framed around the rubric of “futurity”. What will tomorrow be like? It will be more urbanised. It will also, agree various contributors, bear the imprimatur of China. “Whatever the case, China has, for now, become a far more prominent actor than others in the future-making of Africa,” asserts philosopher Achille Mbembe in an anchoring essay
Rising Waters: Working together on Cape Town’s flooding
The Flooding in Cape Town under Climate Risk (FliCCR) Project book explores the challenges and opportunities of collaborative governance as a way to get a broader group of stakeholders involved in flooding responses.
Cityscapes #6: Cape Town: A City Desired
One city, eleven people, ten ideas. This, in a nutshell, is what this issue is about. In a departure from past issues of this magazine, we pause to look at one city in detail. The city: Cape Town, home to nearly 4 million inhabitants
Cityscapes #5: Design will not save the city
Where past issues of Cityscapes have looked east, particularly to the Indian subcontinent, issue five shifts the focus decisively west. Inaugurating our collaboration with USP Cidades, a research centre at the University of São Paulo, architectural critic Fernando Serapião recapitulates the history of social housing design in Brazil. “Heirs of an architectural school with deep roots, Brazilian designers still believe in the ideals of linear blocks and it is difficult for them to dialogue with the precariousness,” writes Serapião.
A Comparison of Three SA Municipalities
Cape Town and Durban are both large metropolitan municipalities where climate change adaptation is being championed from within the environment departments. However, embedding these plans into municipal budgets and operations to progress implementation is proving difficult.
The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South
The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South, Edited by Susan Parnell and Sophie Oldfield engages the twenty-first-century city through a ‘southern urban’ lens to stimulate scholarly, professional and activist engagements with the city.
Africa’s Urban Revolution edited by Susan Parnell and Edgar Pieterse
Drawing on the expertise of scholars and practitioners associated with the African Centre for Cities, and utilising a diverse array of case studies, Africa’s Urban Revolution provides a comprehensive insight into the key issues – demographic, cultural, political, technical, environmental and economic – surrounding African urbanisation.
Cityscapes #4: After informality
In the fourth issue: a grouped series of reports, essays and interviews tracing a zigzag path connecting Tel Aviv to Naples to Berlin to Guangzhou, all cities where African migrants are a feature of the urban matrix.
Planning and Transformation: Learning from the Post-Apartheid Experience
In the years after the 1994 transition to democracy in South Africa, planners were convinced that they would be able to successfully promote a vision of integrated, equitable and sustainable cities, and counter the spatial distortions created by apartheid.
Working in Warwick
Working in Warwick offers a fresh look at street traders’ lives, the role they play in city life and their contribution to its economy; and shows that it is possible to include street trading in urban plans in a way that adds to the vibrancy and attraction of cities.
Urbanisation Imperatives for Africa: Transcending Policy Inertia
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 publication by the African Centre for Cities seeks to offer a resource to policy activists in African governments, development agencies, social movements, universities and business sectors who are committed to addressing the current policy lacuna.