African Centre for Cities

ACC BROWNBAG Future Foreshore: are affordable housing and lowered freeways possible?
2018-03-08 13:00 - 14:30 (Africa/Johannesburg) | Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, Cape Town, South Africa
Join ACC on Thursday, 8 March at 13:00 for the first in a series of Brownbag seminars. The hot topic of discussion is the winning bid for the redevelopment of the Foreshore Freeway Precinct, Cape Town.
SPEAKERS
Lisa Kane
Kane is a Honorary Research Associate with the Centre for Transport Studies at UCT and co-founder and board member of Open Streets, Cape Town. Her PhD thesis considered the history and politics of engineering of the Foreshore freeway projects from its initiation to the 1980s, and how that period has informed current thinking around road engineering in South Africa.
Rob McGaffin
McGaffin is a town planner and land economist. He has worked as town planner with the City of Cape Town and the Gauteng Department of Economic Development, and in property finance at several financial institutions. He was a Mistra Urban Futures Researcher with the ACC. He lectures in the Department of Construction Economics and Management at the University of Cape Town and is a founding member of the UCT – Nedbank Urban Real Estate Research Unit.
CHAIR
Vanessa Watson
WHEN: Thursday, 8 March 2018
TIME: 13:00 to 14:30
VENUE: Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town

One Table Two Elephants
2018-02-02 13:00 - 2018-02-03 15:00 | Neville Alexander Lecture Theatre 1A, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town, Rondebosch, Western Cape, 7701, South Africa
Please join us for the screening of the film ONE TABLE TWO ELEPHANTS (84 minutes, work in progress) at the ACC International Urban Conference 2018 in Cape Town.

WHEN: Friday 2 Feb 2018, 13:00-15:00, and Saturday 3 Feb 2018, 13:00-15:00
WHERE: Neville Alexander Lecture Theatre 1A, Upper Campus, UCT (venue lies between the New Lecture Theatre and Leslie Social Science building)

The film is based on work in Cape Town by Jacob von Heland and ACC-based researcher Henrik Ernstson. These two screenings have been especially organised for the ACC IUC 2018 delegates and UCT film students. Each screening will be followed by a Q&A with Henrik Ernstson. RSVP not needed.

Synopsis

ONE TABLE TWO ELEPHANTS is a film about bushmen bboys, a flower kingdom and the ghost of a princess. Entering the city through it’s plants and wetlands, the many-layered, painful and liberating history of the city emerges as we see how biologists, hip hoppers, and wetland activists each searches for ways to craft symbols of unity and cohesion. But this is a fraught and difficult task. Perhaps not even desirable. Plants, aliens, memories and ghosts keep troubling efforts of weaving stories about this place called Cape Town.

Situated and grounded in lived experiences across a range of groups, this film follows different ways of knowing and tries to be a vehicle toward difficult yet urgently needed conversations about how race, nature and the city are intertwined in our postcolonial world where history is ever present in subtle and direct ways.

Based on years of research in Cape Town, this ‘cinematic ethnography’ is directed towards a wider audience, from the general public to students and scholars as it brings texture to understand a city like Cape Town, while providing ample possibilities to translate what is happening “there” to conversations about your own city and surroundings.

Created by: Jacob von Heland and Henrik Ernstson. Photography (DOP): Johan von Reybekiel. Sound: Jonathan Chiles. Production coordination: Jessica Rattle and Nceba Mangesi.

African Centre for Cities International Urban Conference 2018
2018-02-01 08:00 - 2018-02-03 17:00 | University of Cape Town, Upper Campus, Cape Town , Western Cape , South Africa
To celebrate the ten-year anniversary of the establishment of the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town, the International Urban Conference draws together leading urban scholars and practitioners from all corners of Africa and the world to take stock of ground-breaking urban research, to explore new avenues for enquiry and collaboration, and to make visible the vibrant state of our broad and heterogeneous field.
The conference takes place from 1 to 3 February 2018, at the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
With nearly 300 individual papers, over 80 panels and close to 20 roundtables, the conference will provide an opportunity to engage with the scale and breadth of African and southern urbanism, which calls for comparative readings of cities, alternative modes of inquiry and new geographies of theory.

THE CONFERENCE HAS REACHED MAXIMUM CAPACITY. REGISTRATION FOR THIS EVENT IS NOW CLOSED.

ACCOMMODATION & TRAVEL
We recommend preferred supplier Flywell Travel for accommodation or travel queries.

Friction in the Creative City: The Case of Bandung, Indonesia
2018-01-29 12:45 - 14:00 | Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Science, Upper Campus, UCT,, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa
Join the African Centre for Cities for a Brownbag session on 29 January 2018 from 12:45 to 14:00 by Christiaan De Beukelaer on “Friction in the Creative City: The Case of Bandung, Indonesia” hosted in Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town.
Since the foundation of the Bandung Creative City Forum (BCCF) in 2008, the city of Bandung, capital of West Java has started referring to itself as an ‘emerging creative city’. Because of the significant role BCCF, a civil society organisation, played in developing this strategy, Bandung relied far less on top-down, consultant-driven strategies than most ‘creative cities’. While their largely bottom-up engagement with the ‘creative city script’ was well-received, the practical execution of their ideas poses challenges in terms of negotiating priorities and strategies. The implementation became more complex and complicated when Ridwan Kamil, BCCF’s first director, was elected Mayor in 2013. The ensuing tensions concealed two important questions: What is the creative city? How to execute creative city strategies? Rather than engaging with these unspoken questions, Bandung has become a creative city of many definitions and strategies, while maintaining its singular brand. I explain the ensuing ‘friction’ (Tsing 2005) in two overlapping ways. First, I contrast two notions of the creative city by building on the work of geographer Oli Mould. His book Urban Subversion and the Creative City distinguishes the uppercase ‘Creative City’ (the mainstream understanding of the term) – and the lowercase ‘creative city’ (the more grounded, subversive understanding of the term). Second, I build on the work of geographer Jamie Peck, who critiques the global flow of ‘policy-fixes’ as being prone to becoming ‘fast policy’ (often captured in buzzwords), which inevitably collides with ‘slow policy’ of existing bureaucracies and power structures.

More on the speaker and respondent:
Christiaan De Beukelaer is a Lecturer in Cultural Policy at the University of Melbourne. He obtained a PhD from the University of Leeds and holds degrees in development studies (MSc, Leuven), cultural studies (MA, Leuven), and musicology (BA, Amsterdam). He won the 2012 Cultural Policy Research Award, which resulted in the book Developing Cultural Industries: Learning From the Palimpsest of Practice (European Cultural Foundation, 2015). He co-edited the book Globalization, Culture, and development: The UNESCO Convention on Cultural Diversity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, with Miikka Pyykkönen and JP Singh), and a special issue on Cultural Policy for Sustainable Development for the International Journal of Cultural Policy (2017, 23(2), with Anita Kangas and Nancy Duxbury). He is now working on the book Global Cultural Economy (co-authored with Kim-Marie Spence, forthcoming with Routledge).
Laura Nkula-Wenz is an urban geographer with a keen interest in postcolonial urban theory, African urbanism and culture. Her research focuses on the transformation of urban governance and the construction of local political agency, as well as the diverse relationships between cultural production and urban change. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Münster/Germany, where she also completed a degree in Human Geography, Communication Studies and Political Science. Laura recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Pôle de recherche pour l’organisation et la diffusion de l’information géographique (Prodig) in Paris and currently works on the Critical Urbanism Masters at the African Centre for Cities (UCT, in cooperation with the University of Basel).

ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series: Producing water scarcity in São Paulo, Brazil: The 2014 Water Crisis and the Binding Politics of Infrastructure
2017-12-07 03:00 - 16:30 | Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
The last instalment of the annual ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series is presented by Dr Nate Millington on Producing water scarcity in São Paulo, Brazil: The 2014 Water Crisis and the Binding Politics of Infrastructure at 15:00 in Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town.
ABSTRACT
In 2014, political intransigence combined with a severe drought to push São Paulo, Brazil, to the edge of a profound water crisis. In this paper, I consider the response to the crisis on behalf of the state government, focusing on both the way that the crisis was narrated as well as responded to. I consider the suite of actions taken to cope with scarcity, focusing specifically on the state’s employment of pressure reductions in the water pipes as opposed to a formal rationing. I argue that despite the state government’s claims that only a small minority was going without water, the reality was that residents of the urban periphery were facing consistent water shortages. I argue that these shortages are representative of a form of infrastructural politics, in which the seemingly most technically viable solutions to the crisis exacerbated inequality due to the inequity that is built into the city’s hydrological infrastructure itself. I conclude by thinking of the city’s crisis as indicative of the changing nature of daily life in contemporary cities in the wake of climate change at both the local and global scale.
More on the full seminar series here.
More on the NOTRUC programme here.

Science and Cocktails: Can We Move Beyond the Divided City?
2017-11-28 20:00 - 22:00 | The Orbit, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
Is urban segregation simply a fact of contemporary life? Are the shopping mall and gated community to blame for new forms of urban division? What role does the real estate market play in reproducing urban patterns? Is middle-class suburbia deracializing or not?
Does public investment in housing and social amenities worsen or improve urban divides? Do BRT systems help or hinder urban integration? Who, if anyone, can make a difference in altering spacial patterns of the city?
It is arguable that South African cities are more divided today compared to 1994. How can this be? Why are we seemingly unable to shift the contours of division and live differently?
Edgar Pieterse will review the drivers of contemporary urban divides and explore the reasons why policy after policy since 1994 say the “right” things but achieve the opposite outcome. He will place his discussion in the context of the nature of both public and private investments into South African cities and illustrate the talk with data and policy experiments in Cape Town and Johannesburg.
Pieterse will conclude by putting forward what some of the preconditions for genuine urban transformation might be.
Date: 28 November 2018
Time: Doors open at 18:30, no admittance after 20:00.
Venue: The Orbit, Braamfontein, Johannesburg
Entrance to the event: R20.
No registration is necessary but guests are strongly encouraged to arrive early. Dinner is served from 18:00. Guests wishing to have dinner before the event should book in advance with The Orbit and arrive by 18:30. (Last orders for dinner at 19:15 to make it to the event). Directions to the venue.

Mistra Urban Futures Annual International Conference 2017
2017-11-13 - 2017-11-15 | Imperial Hotel Kisumu, Kisumu, Kenya
Mistra Urban Futures Annual International Conference takes place from 13 to 15 November 2017 in Kisumu, Kenya under the banner “Realising Just Cities – Learning Through Comparison”.
The rapidly growing number of people moving into cities all over the world also present a challenge of unprecedented size. It is crucial to find ways to make urbanisation a source for wealth, health and sustainability – which is shared. Mistra Urban Futures arranges yearly a conference about Realising Just Cities.
Keynote speakers include:
Caroline Wanjiku Kihato, Visiting Researcher at the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, and a Global Scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars, Washington DC. Member of Mistra Urban Futures Board.
Edgar Pieterse, South African Research Chair in Urban Policy & Director of African Centre for Cities.
For more information click here.

Soft Infrastructure: Recalibrating Aesthetics, Economies, And Urban Epistemologies
2017-11-09 16:00 - 17:30 | Humanities Graduate Centre Seminar Room, South West Engineering Building, East Campus, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
The African Academy for Urban Diversity; a joint initiative of the African Centre for Migration & Society; the African Centre for Cities; and the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity invites you to a special public lecture by Dr Mpho Matsipa (Wits City Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg).
A city like Johannesburg offers a glimpse into how immigration, black female sexuality and shifts in urban retail economies provide important economic and cultural resources to urban residents and users. By exploring black cultural practices, like braiding, as both ontology and epistemology, the lecture will explore how such practices recalibrate local economies, infrastructures, and aesthetic codes, and thus might co-constitute emergent urban identities and a way of knowing the city. The intimate, networked, and fractal nature of black hair braiding spaces disrupts the rigid colonial spatial orders of the city and its architecture.
However, can such soft infrastructures sufficiently disrupt the grand narrative of African cities in ‘crisis’, while also disrupting colonial and colonizing cartographies of African urban environment?
Biography
Dr Mpho Matsipa is a researcher at the Wits City Institute. After completing her professional degree in Architecture at the University of Cape Town, with a distinction in design, Mpho was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and later, a Carnegie Grant as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. Her PhD in Architecture, from the University of California, Berkeley, is titled The Order of Appearances explored the entangled geographies of urban informality, urban redevelopment and the politics of race, gender and aesthetics in Johannesburg’s inner city. Mpho has written critical essays and reviews on public art, culture and space for Art South Africa, the Architectural Review and Thesis 11 (forthcoming).
Mpho has worked as an architect and she has been shortlisted in two prestigious national design competitions. She has curated several exhibitions, including of the South Africa Pavilion at the 11th International Architecture Exhibition, Venice Biennale (2008).She has been an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture and associate research scholar at Columbia GSAPP and Curator of Studio-X Johannesburg – an experimental public platform on architecture and the city sponsored by Columbia University. She is currently co-curating a pan-African architecture exhibition at the Architecture Museum in Munich titled “African Mobilities: This is not a Refugee Camp Exhibition”, that will open in April 2018.
For more information and to RSVP: info@migration.org.za
Date: Thursday 9 November 2017
Time: 16:00 to 17:30
Venue: Humanities Graduate Centre Seminar Room, South West Engineering Building, East Campus, University of the Witwatersrand

Falling Walls Conference: How Urban Studies Envision the New Era of the Metropolis
2017-11-09 | Room 3.33, Centlivres Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Berlin , Germany
African Centre for Cities Director Prof Edgar Pieterse will be one of the speakers at the Falling Walls Conference, 8 to 9 November 2017, Berlin. His talk is entitled How Urban Studies Envision the New Era of the Metropolis.
The Falling Walls Conference is an annual global gathering of forward thinking individuals from 80 countries organised by the Falling Walls Foundation. Each year on 9 November – the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall – 20 of the world’s leading scientists are invited to Berlin to present their current breakthrough research.
The aim of the Conference is to:

identify trends, opportunities and solutions for global challenges and discover international breakthrough research.
connect outstanding researchers from different disciplines and support the interdisciplinary exchange of ideas internationally.
build bridges between business, politics, academia and the arts.
promote the latest scientific findings among a broader audience.
inspire people to break down walls in science and society.

In 15-minute-talks, researchers from all disciplines present their work in front of 700 international guests. During the breaks, the Falling Walls Forum becomes the place for high-level Q&A where the audience can ask questions and engage in discussions. A new peer-learning platform, Falling Walls Connect, gives the audience the opportunity to contribute their knowledge and expertise to fellow participants.
The Conference is broadcasted online via free livestream. All presentations are available in the Falling Walls Library.
Get the full programme here.

ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series: Contesting the Coast: Infrastructure, Ecology and Coastal Planning in New Orleans and the Mississippi River Delta - Cancelled
2017-11-08 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, ENGEO Building, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town,, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8001, South Africa
This seminar focuses on environmental politics and regional urban planning based on a paper by Dr Joshua Lewis and Dr Henrik Ernstson called Contesting the Coast: Infrastructure, Ecology and Coastal Planning in New Orleans and the Mississippi River Delta. The paper is presented by Dr Henrik Ernstson who works at ACC and is affiliated to KTH Royal Institute of Technology and The University of Manchester.
The presentation will take place on 8 November 2017, at 15:00 in Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town.
Please note this seminar has been cancelled.
ABSTRACT
For over 150 years two major and capital-driven projects have re-worked the vast Louisiana coastal landscape. One has centered on ‘adapting’ the landscape to compete and increase for global maritime trade, shortening the time distance from New Orleans to the Gulf of Mexico. The second has been about increasing the amount of space for real estate and urban development. However, developing large-scale water infrastructure in a vast and complex ecosystem comes with unexpected social and ecological dynamics. Indeed, our argument is that infrastructure has changed biophysical relations that have been stable for hundreds and thousands of years to fundamentally change how ecosystems operate and function with social and ecological effects. Based on in-depth historical research, we develop an analytical repertoire for understanding historical interrelationships between water infrastructure, regional environmental politics, and large-scale coastal ecosystems. By further drawing on planning theory that has striven to de-center Habermasian consensus approaches (e.g., Vanessa Watson), this paper focuses on how knowledge controversies can help not only to ‘slow down reasoning’ (sensu Isabelle Stengers and Sarah Whatmore) to include more textured and situated ways of knowing the vast and complex Louisiana coastal landscape, but also drives the making of proper political subjects (Jacques Rancière) that can interrupt and shape the wider administration of large-scale planning efforts. Our analysis shows how water infrastructure has produced persistent divisions in the body politic to hinder contemporary strategies to secure New Orleans and other settlements in the region from devastating storm surge and inundation. In a world under climate change, when novel biophysical dynamics are constantly introduced, we believe our textured case study can help to think about the new kind of politics we need to understand, from the role of ‘ecological expertise’ (now siding increasingly with ‘engineering expertise’), to how ecological dynamics are shaping political subjectivities.

MORE ON JOSHUA LEWIS & HENRIK ERNSTSON
Dr Joshua Lewis is based in New Orleans where he studies how infrastructure networks transform regional ecosystems and its effects on environmental justice and political processes. His historically grounded focus on the implementation and maintenance of large-scale water infrastructure connects between the local and the regional and across human geography, ecology and sociology. He has also developed comprehensive vegetation studies in New Orleans (linked to a comparative study in Cape Town) to understand how hurricanes and urban development shape urban ecosystems and its often-unequal effect on different social groups. He completed his PhD at the Stockholm Resilience Centre at the Stockholm University in 2015 and he is now employed at Tulane University as Research Assistant Professor at the ByWater Institute where he is leading a novel ecological monitoring project in New Orleans that tracks ecological changes associated with a major green infrastructure and stormwater management project. With his studies in political ecology and urban ecology, he also networks with partners in the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program to deepen knowledge exchanges around urban ecology in partner cities. For more information, go here: publications.

Dr Henrik Ernstson is developing a situated approach to urban political ecology that combines critical geography, urban infrastructure studies, postcolonial urbanism and collaborations with designers, artists and activists. He has lead various projects to study collective action, environmental conflicts and urban ecosystem management in Cape Town, New Orleans and Stockholm, and infrastructure politics in Kampala. Currently he is finalizing two edited books for MIT Press and Routledge, “Grounding Urban Natures” (Ernstson & Sörlin) and “Urban Political Ecology in the Anthropo-Obscene” (Ernstson & Swyngedouw). With Jacob von Heland he has created the research-based cinematic ethnography film “One Table Two Elephants,” a film that richly surfaces the politics of nature, race, and history in a postcolonial city (71 minutes, screening 2018). In 2017 he was awarded The AXA Research Award for recognition of his innovative work on urban sustainability in the global South, which will fund a research group to study petro-urbanism and urban infrastructure in Luanda with South-South connections to Brazil and China. He holds a PhD in Natural Resource Management from Stockholm University (2008) with postdoctoral positions at Stanford University (2013-2015) and the University of Cape Town (2010-2011). He lives in Cape Town and works at the African Centre for Cities, while holding a Research Fellowship at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm contributing to KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory. In August 2017 he joined The University of Manchester as part-time Lecturer in Human Geography. For more information, go here: publications and projects.

The Global Nutrition Summit 2017
2017-11-04 | Unnamed Venue, Milan, Italy
Nutrition plays a critical role not only in child health and survival, but also in driving economic prosperity for families and nations. It is encouraging to see increased attention from world leaders to address malnutrition in all its forms and in particular to reduce stunting everywhere. It will take continued efforts and dedication to ensure this progress continues.
On Saturday, 4 November the Italian Ministry of Health and the City of Milan, will host The Global Nutrition Summit 2017 in Milan – a high-level event on nutrition and food for healthier futures. The summit will take stock of global progress toward the nutrition-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and World Health Assembly global nutrition targets. They will also make additional commitments under the umbrella of the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition (2016-2025), celebrate commitments made this year and discuss further action needed, and launch the 2017 Global Nutrition Report.
ACC’s Senior Researcher Dr Jane Battersby will present as part of a session entitled Improving nutrition within planetary boundaries: Cities taking the lead during which she will focus on the rapidly shifting nature of malnutrition in Sub-Saharan African cities with overweight status and obesity emerging as new forms of food insecurity while malnutrition persists.
Moderator:
Dr Gunhild A. Stordalen, President, EAT Foundation
Speakers:
Mr Tom Arnold, member of the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition
Mr Wayne Roberts, PhD, Canadian food policy analyst
Dr Jane Battersby, Senior Researcher in Urban Food Systems, African Centre for Cities University of Cape Town
Ms Anna Scavuzzo, Vice Mayor of Milan
Mr Albert Anda Ntsodo, Councillor of the City of Cape Town

ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series: Reflection is Part of Rehabilitation: Interventions in the History of a Land Occupation
2017-11-01 03:00 - 16:30 | African Centre for Cities, UCT Upper Campus, Cape Town, South Africa
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.
ABSTRACT
In 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.

More on the full seminar series here.
More on the NOTRUC programme here.

ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series: ‘Nai-Rob-Me’ ‘Nai-Beg-Me’ ‘Nai-Shanty’: Historicizing Space-Subjectivity Connections in Nairobi from its Ruins
2017-10-25 15:00 - 16:30
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.
ABSTRACT
What 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.
In 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.
MORE ON WANGUI KIMARI
Wangui 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.

More on the full seminar series here.
More on the NOTRUC programme here.

Joining Forces for Change: Building Learning Alliances for Social and Environmental Justice in Urban Sierra Leone
2017-10-24 16:00 - 17:30 | Pink Room, Centlivres Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
African Centre for Cities is hosting the Co-Directors of Sierra Leone Urban Research Centre, and lecturers from Institute of Geography and Development Studies, Njala University, Sierra Leone Joseph Macarthy and Braima Koroma for a talk entitled Joining Forces for Change: Building Learning Alliances for Social and Environmental Justice in Urban Sierra Leone
Date: 24 October 2017
Time: 16:00
Venue: The Pink Room, Centlivres Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town
ABSTRACT
Learning alliances are becoming increasingly popular as an important means for co-producing knowledge about urban areas. While the shift from partnering among community organisations and other development agencies (e.g. NGOs) to universities and research organisations holds the promise of revolutionising knowledge production and its reliability, it also serve not only to improve understandings about poor and marginalised groups but also helps in building strong relationships between and among the different stakeholders. However, promoting such strategic partnership involving the university, local community residents and their groups, development organisations, civil society and private sector actors has frequently involved providing answers to such questions as: what counts as learning alliance, what kinds of knowledge should be produced, for who and with what capacities?
We will discuss these and other related questions by arguing that SLURC’s learning alliance initiative has provided a platform for opening up both lateral and vertical opportunities for bringing to the doorstep of city authorities, the key concerns and aspirations of informal communities. By way of this discussion, we hope to stimulate debates on learning alliance as well as draw attention to more appropriate ways to ensure inclusive, equitable and sustainably just urban development; change the mindset of different urban actors towards community-driven development approaches; including, how best to manage relationships between stakeholders in making decisions about the city. This session is particularly interested in reflecting on the role SLURC is playing in building the capacity of informal settlement dwellers and contributing to influencing policy and urban decision-making processes. In this session, we hope to reflect on some of the main findings from recent projects (livelihoods and urban humanitarian response) and discuss about some of the challenges and opportunities in establishing partnership and managing learning alliances.

ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series: Thinking Emancipatory Change through In-depth Urban Case Studies
2017-10-11 15:00 - 2017-12-07 16:30 | African Centre for Cities, UCT Upper Campus, Cape Town, South Africa
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.

This 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.
The 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.
All seminars run from 15:00 to 16:30
11 October 2017 – Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT
Post-Apartheid Spatial Inequality: Obstacles of Land on Township Micro-Enterprise Formalisation by Dr Andrew Charman, Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation, Cape Town

25 October 2017 – Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT
‘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.

1 November 2017 – Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT
‘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.

8 November 2017– Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT
Contesting 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.

23 November – Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT
Delft 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.

7 December 2017 – Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT
Producing 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.

Students welcome
We 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.
The 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.

ACC NOTRUC Seminar Series: Post-Apartheid Spatial Inequality: Obstacles of Land in Township Micro-Enterprise Formalisation
2017-10-11 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
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.
ABSTRACT
The 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.
From 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.
MORE ON ANDREW CHARMAN

Andrew 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.
As 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.

More on the full seminar series here.
More on the NOTRUC programme here.

CT launch of 'August House is Dead, Long Live August House!'
2017-10-06 18:00 | A4 Arts Foundation, 23 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town , 8001 , South Africa
Writer, artist and research associate at the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities (ACC), Kim Gurney pens a new book on the evolving art space August House in Johannesburg.
August House is Dead, Long Live August House! The Story of a Johannesburg Atelier, published by FourthWall Books, is a fascinating study of the role of the atelier and its artists in South Africa’s fractious art world, and a consideration of the relationship between art and the ever-changing city of Johannesburg.
Join us for the official launch in Cape Town, at 18:00 on 6 October 2017 at the A4 Arts Foundation.

JHB launch of 'August House is Dead, Long Live August House!'
2017-09-27 18:00 | Point of Order Project Space, Wits School of Art , Johannesburg, South Africa
Writer, artist and research associate at the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities (ACC), Kim Gurney pens a new book on the evolving art space August House in Johannesburg.
August House is Dead, Long Live August House! The Story of a Johannesburg Atelier, published by FourthWall Books, is a fascinating study of the role of the atelier and its artists in South Africa’s fractious art world, and a consideration of the relationship between art and the ever-changing city of Johannesburg.
Join us for the official launch in Johannesburg, at 18:00 on 27 September 2017 at Point of Order Project Space, Wits School of Arts.

New Urban Worlds at Open Book Festival
2017-09-08 16:00 - 17:00 | D6 Homecoming Centre Workshop, 15 A Buitenkant Street, .Cape Town, 8001, South Africa
Ken Liu and Edgar Pieterse speak to Mark Swilling about cities of the future.
Date: 8 September
Venue: HCC Workshop
Time: 16.00 – 17.00
Price: R45
Read more about New Urban Worlds: Inhabiting Dissonant Times by Edgar Pieterse and Abdoumaliq Simone.
Full festival programme
Book tickets
NOTE: A limited number of free tickets for students are available for each event of the programme. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. To apply, email openbooktickets@gmail.com by 31 August.

Cities in Fiction at Open Book Festival
2017-09-08 14:00 - 15:00 | D6 Homecoming Centre, 15 A Buitenkant Street, Cape Town , 8001 , South Africa
Elan Mastai, Fiston Mwanza Mujila and Chibundu Onuzo speak to Luso Mnthali about the craft of writing urban spaces.
Date: 8 September
Venue: HCC Workshop
Time: 14.00 – 15.00
Price: R45
Full festival programme
Book tickets
NOTE: A limited number of free tickets for students are available for each event of the programme. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. To apply, email openbooktickets@gmail.com by 31 August.

Writing Cities at Open Book Festival
2017-09-06 12:00 - 13:00 | A4 Arts Foundation, 23 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town , 8001 , South Africa
Nechama Brodie, Kim Gurney and Sean O’Toole speak to Neo Muyanga about their representations of urban spaces.
Date: 6 September
Venue: A4 Arts Foundation – Ground
Time: 12:00 – 13:00
Price: R45
Full festival programme
Book tickets
NOTE: A limited number of free tickets for students are available for each event of the programme. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. To apply, email openbooktickets@gmail.com by 31 August.

Integration Complexities at Open Book Festival
2017-09-06 10:00 - 23:00 | The Fugard Theatre Studio, Corner Caledon & Lower Buitenkant Street, District Six, , Cape Town , 8001 , South Africa
Adi Kumar, Premesh Lalu and Edgar Pieterse report back on the Integration Syndicate – an aimed at finding solutions to challenges facing Cape Town. Chaired by Pippa Green.
Date: 6 September
Venue: Fugard Studio
Time: 10:00 – 11:00
Price: R45
Full festival programme.
Book tickets.
NOTE: A limited number of free tickets for students are available for each event of the programme. Tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis. To apply, email openbooktickets@gmail.com by no later than 31 August.

Refractions of the National, the Popular and the Global in African Cities
2017-07-31 - 2017-08-01 | STIAS Wallenberg Research Centre, 10 Marais Road, Stellenbosch, Western Cape, 7600, South Africa
The Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study (STIAS) and the African Centre for Cities (ACC) will jointly host a conference on Refractions of the National, the Popular, and the Global in African cities.
Venue: Wallenberg Research Centre in Stellenbosch, South Africa
Date: Monday, 31 July & Tuesday, 1 August 2017
There has been a significant expansion of academic research on the specificities of African urbanisms, diverse urban imaginaries and politics over the last decade. In the wake of recent formal policy shifts in acknowledging the importance of urbanisation and pro-active policy making on the one hand, and a rise in urban-based social mobilization on the other, it is opportune to create an academic space for cross-pollination and reflection.
The theme of the conference is captured in its title: Refractions of the National, the Popular, and the Global in African cities. Each of the three issues may be interrogated as follows:

How is the nationality and the nation-state manifested in the city, if at all? To what extent is the political and the social character of the state regime expressed in the city and its governance?
To what extent, in what form, and with what effect have popular forces been able for make themselves heard and influential in the city, in recent years? Why or why not? We are here thinking of protest movements, of civic associations and of reform coalitions of progressive city government.
To what extent and how has the recent and current commodity boom meant a globalization of the city? Influx of foreign capital, heating up of the real estate market, emergence or growth of financial and business services sectors, new business districts, luxury shopping, hotels, and leisure supply, immigration, skyscrapers, gated neighbourhoods, etc? How are proclaimed “world city” ambitions developing on the ground?

The conference programme is designed both to focus discussion on each of the three issues outlined above as well as to allow enough time for discussion from the participants.
For more information or to book your seat, click here.

Annual PhD Seminar Series: Understanding Capitalism in Unequal Geographies
2017-06-19 09:00 - 2017-06-23 13:00 | Seminar Room 1, EGS Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town, University of Cape Town, Cape Town , Western Cape, South Africa
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:

How does capitalism function in and through its differences across time, space, and social location?
How does capitalism interact with and structure gender, race, and sexuality?
How does this play out, manifest and structure urban spaces and extended geographies of the south?
What spaces, discourses and collectivities can a critique of capitalism help to make visible as locations to struggle against interconnected assemblages and dispositifs of oppression?

Lecturers:
Dr. Andrés Henao Castro, University of Massachusetts, Boston
Dr. Ashley Bohrer, Hamilton College, New York City
Dr. Henrik Ernstson, KTH and University of Cape Town

Read more here

Socio-Spatial Transformation Seminar Series: TOD in Cape Town
2017-05-24 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, ENGEO Building, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town,, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8001, South Africa
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.
The 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.
Speaker: Mr. Leigh Stolworthy – Manager: Innovation, Research & Development, City of Cape Town
PLEASE NOTE: The starting time for the seminar was changed from 2pm to 3pm.

ACC/ AFD Symposium on Informal Settlements, Slums and Precarious Neighbourhoods
2017-05-17 10:00 - 12:30 | Studio 3, ENGEO Building, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town,, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8001, South Africa
Cities in the Global South are characterised by the presence of marginalised areas with inadequate housing, inadequate infrastructure and inadequate security of tenure. Known by a variety of terms, such as informal settlements, slums and precarious neighbourhoods and settlements, it essential that we better understand these types of settlements and potential ways in which the lives of residents can be improved.
The African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town and the Agence Française de Développement (AFD) present and discuss a number of strands of related work, including the recent AFD book Rethinking Precarious Neighbourhoods edited by Professor Agnès Deboulet, the work of ACC’s Urban Violence, Safety and Inclusion CityLab coordinated by Dr Mercy Bown-Luthango, and the work of the Sustainable Human Settlements CityLab coordinated by Liza Cirolia.
SYMPOSIUM PROGRAMME
10:00-10:10 Welcome and introduction
10:10-10:40 “Rethinking precarious neighbourhoods” – Professor Agnès Deboulet (Professor of Sociology at the University of Paris 8 and Associate Director of the Laborotoire Ville, Architecture, Urbanisme Environment, LAVUE-CNRS)
10:40-11:10 “Informal settlement upgrading and safety: Four cases from Cape Town” – Dr Mercy Brown-Luthango (ACC)
11:10-11:40 “’Upgrading informal settlements in South Africa: Understanding the disjunctures between policy and practice” – Liza Cirolia (ACC)
11:40-12:30 Questions and discussion

Where: Studio 3, EGS Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town
Time: 10:00 – 12:30 (followed by lunch)
Date: Wednesday, 17 May 2017
Please note: Space is limited.
Please RSVP to Maryam Waglay at maryam.waglay@uct.ac.za by 12:00 on 15 May 2017.

Invitation to the next Spatial Transformation CityLab Seminar
2017-04-19 15:00 - 16:30 | Seminar Room 3, African Centre for Cities, Upper Campus, Cape Town, South Africa
The ACC is excited to host Dr. Margot Rubin and Alexandra Appelbaum from the University of the Witwatersrand for the next instalment in the Spatial Transformation seminar series. They will share with us findings from their research into Johannesburg’s Corridors of Freedom Programme.
“Neighbourhoods, NIMBYists and nobodies: the local politics of the Corridors of Freedom”

In 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.
Based 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.
This 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.

Dr Margot Rubin
Margot 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.
Her 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.

Alexandra Appelbaum
Alli 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.
Her 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.
Before 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.
RSVP: Mercy Brown-Luthango at mercy.brown-luthango@uct.ac.za

Neighbourhoods, NIMBYists and nobodies: the local politics of the Corridors of Freedom
2017-04-19 15:00 - 16:30 | African Centre for Cities, UCT Upper Campus, Cape Town, South Africa
Venue: Seminar Room 3, African Centre for Cities
RSVP: Mercy Brown-Luthango at mercy.brown-luthango@uct.ac.za
In 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.
Based 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.
This 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.
About The Speakers
Margot 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.
Her 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.

Alli 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.
Her 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.
Before 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.

Luxified skies: How vertical urban housing became an elite preserve
2017-03-29 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, ENGEO Building, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town,, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8001, South Africa
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’.
Abstract
This 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.
Bio
Stephen 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.

What must be our urban question? Reflections on Contemporary Urban Knowledge from Delhi
2017-03-15 16:00 - 17:30 | Studio 3, ENGEO Building, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town,, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8001, South Africa
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’.
About
The 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.
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.
Bio
Gautam 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.
He 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.
