Learning to Swim: Strengthening Flooding Governance in the City of Cape Town
Vulnerability to flooding is a growing concern in cities of the South, where resources are concentrated and poor people often settle in flood prone areas.
Publishing
Socio-Technical Regimes and SustainabilityTransitions: Insights From Political Ecology. Progress in Human Geography 36 (3): 354 – 378
Sustainability is increasingly becoming a core focus of geography, linking subfields such as urban, economic, and political ecology, yet strategies for achieving this goal remain illusive.
Beyond the Food Desert: Finding Ways to Speak About Urban Food Security in South Africa
Urban food security is a significant development challenge in sub-Saharan Africa. However, the field is current- ly under-researched and under-theorized.
Cities and Biodiversity Outlook: A Global Assessment of the Links Between Urbanization, Biodiversity, and Ecosystem
CBO – Action and Policy provides the summary of a global assessment of the links between urbanization, biodi- versity, and ecosystem services.
Flows, Friction, and the Sociomaterial Metabolization of Alcohol
Political ecologists have considered the sociomateriality of diverse hybrids and the metabolism and circulation of urban flows such as water, food and waste. Adding alcohol to this list enhances our understanding of the geography of alcohol as well as the theory of sociomateriality.
Brokering Communities of Knowledge & Practice: Reflections on The African Centre for Cities’ Citylab
Calls for greater engagement between academia and society to address mounting societal problems per- sist. The African Centre for Cities, a University of Cape Town research entity, set up the CityLab pro- gramme to broker interdisciplinary engagement, both across academic disciplines and between academia and broader society, to engage with the issues pertinent to sustainable urban development in Cape Town.
African Perspectives [South Africa]: City, Society, Space, Literature & Architecture
This volume of the Delft School of Design Series focuses on particular urban questions related to the South African urban context. The book seeks to construct a contemporary critical dialogue of current spatial practises and contemporary design instruments in relation to social, political and governance structures through an architectural and urban lens.
The National Budget & What This Means for Smaller Municipalities
In thinking about the capital financing of municipal infrastructure it is important to sub-divide municipalities into groups as there is such a range of socio-geographic circumstances occurring in South Africa,
Quick Guide 07 – Rental Housing: a much neglected housing option for the poor
Millions of people in African cities are tenants.
Quick Guide 06 – Community Based Organizations: the poor as agents of development
The emergence of community organizations of the poor in Africa has been a very important de- velopment during the past two decades.
Quick Guide 05 – Housing Finance
The two extreme outcomes of current shelter systems that are being witnessed today are affordable shelter that is inadequate, and adequate shelter that is unaffordable.
Quick Guide 04: Eviction: Alternatives to the destruction of urban poor communities
Despite decades of work by housing and human rights organizations, NGOs, multilateral insti- tutions and community organizations, the eviction of poor households and poor communities is increasing in African cities, causing displacement, misery and impoverishment for millions of urban citizens.
Climate Change at the City Scale: Impacts, Mitigation and Adaptation in Cape Town
Emerging from the inability, at COP15 (Copenhagen), of nation states and multi- national agencies to agree on a long-term commitment to tackling climate change and managing its consequences, there has been a renewed focus on local and self-styled responses to the challenges
Rogue Urbanism: Emergent African Cities
Rogue Urbanism is the outcome of a research exploration by the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town. It arises from the need to push forward a debate on how we can think and theorise the specificity of African cities.
Growing Communities: Integrating the Social & Economic Benefits of Urban Agriculture in Cape Town
There has been growing interest in the use of urban agriculture to address food insecurity and poverty in Cape Town. This reflects debates on urban agriculture in the global south. In the North, growing food in cities has been tended to be framed in terms of its social benefits.