African Centre for Cities

Exhibition: 'this image may contain' by heeten bhagat
2018-11-21 18:00 - 23:55 (Africa/Johannesburg) | The Quad, The Arena Theatre, Cape Tpwn
Join ACC’s PhD candidate heeten bhagat for ‘this image may contain’ – a visual articulation of research in speculative indigeneities on Wednesday, 21 November 2018, 18:00 at The Quad, The Arena Theatre.
The aim of this doctoral research was to attempt an interdisciplinary approach to search for registers (and absences) of indigeneity through a close reading of the 2017 Independence day celebration, held at the National Sports Stadium in Harare, Zimbabwe. The focus of this study was motivated by two distinct elements from the event: The first is a banner that hangs over the official entrance to the performance arena, that declares – ‘ZIMBABWE WILL NEVER A BE COLONY AGAIN’. The second element is a fragment from the president’s address to the nation at this ceremony, which proclaims, “…..we can now call ourselves full the masters of our destiny”.
This works on show constitute the concluding articulation of this research journey into notions of speculative and speculating indigeneities.

LAUNCH: 'Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks: Running our Cities to Fill the Food Cap'
2018-11-21 17:30 - 19:00 | The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland Street, Cape Town, South Africa
Join ACC for the Cape Town launch of Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks: Running our Cities to Fill the Food Gap, by Leonie Joubert with Jane Battersby and Vanessa Watson published by the African Centre for Cities on Wednesday, 21 November 2018, 17:30 for 18:00 at The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland Street, Cape Town. Author Leonie Joubert will be in conversation with Nancy Richards.
The book is based on research conducted by the Consuming Urban Poverty team comprised of urban geographers, sociologists, economists and planners from the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town, Copperbelt University in Zambia, the University of Zimbabwe, and the Kisumu Local Interaction Platform (KLIP), in Kisumu, Kenya.
Tomatoes & Taxi Ranks, illustrated with evocative photography by Samantha Reinders and Masixole Feni, distills the research into a digestible read and is published alongside the academic book Urban Food Systems Governance and Poverty in African Cities (Routledge, 2018) edited by Jane Battersby and Vanessa Watson.
Both book are available as Open Access downloads from www.tomatoesandtaxiranks.org.za
Hard copies of the book are available for purchase from The Book Lounge for R150. All proceeds are donated to the Open Box School Library project.

Public Finance – the Life Blood of our Cities?
2018-11-19 15:00 - 17:00 | Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Bushbuckridge mayor embarks on debt collection exercise
“The municipality has disclosed that it is owed R1 billion in unpaid municipal services such as water supply, refuse removal and property rates.” – Mpumalanga News, 1 October 2018

Heads Roll Amid VBS Municipal Probe
“Cooperative Governance and Traditional Affairs (Cogta) Minister Dr Zweli Mkhize says several municipal officials have been suspended and in some instances, charged with fraud in relation to investments made in VBS Mutual Bank.” – AllAfrica.com 23 October 2018

Join African Centre for Cities on Monday, 19 November 2018, from 15:00 to 17:00 for a lecture by Dr Matthew Glasser on public finance.
Across the globe, there is increasing emphasis on the role of cities and local government in delivering services, meeting the Sustainable Development Goals, addressing climate change, and equalizing opportunity. These assigned roles do not often translate into reality. Many South African municipalities are failing to provide effective services to their residents. Part of the reason for this are the regular financial crises which local governments face. Importantly, South Africa is one of very few countries in the world that has specific legislation intended to resolve fiscal problems at the municipal scale. This legislation is little known and little used.
In 2000-2003, Dr Matthew Glasser helped develop the legislation regarding financial problems in municipalities, as reflected in Section 139 (as amended) of the Constitution, and Chapter 13 of the Municipal Finance Management Act. For the last two years, he has been working with National Treasury to take stock of the implementation of those provisions over the intervening 15 years.
At this seminar, we will discuss the legal and regulatory framework that was developed to deal with financial emergencies in South African cities; review the experience to date with implementation of that framework; and reflect on the ways in which South Africa’s social and political context shapes local implementation. Glasser will discuss the genesis of the legislation, the divergence between legal framework and actual implementation, and the important Emalahleni litigation related to fiscal intervention in municipalities, which has set an important precedent in South Africa. There will be ample time to discuss the fiscal challenges of South African local and city government, following the lecture.
WHEN: Monday, 19 November 2018
TIME: 15:00 to 16:30
VENUE: Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

Mistra Urban Futures Realising Just Cities - Comparative Co-production
2018-11-06 - 2018-11-07 | SunSquare Hotel, 23 Buitengracht Street, Cape Town , Western Cape , South Africa
The rapidly growing number of people moving into cities all over the world presents 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 Annual Conferences about Realising Just Cities, which are hosted at our research platforms.
The 2018 conference will take place in Cape Town, South Africa and focus on comparative co-production and how we jointly can address global urban challenges. The conference intends to share and reflect on a selection of the comparative projects that have been co-produced in Mistra Urban Futures’ second phase: Cultural Heritage and Just Cities; Knowledge Transfer through embedded research; Migration and Urban Development; Participatory Cities; Solid Waste Management; Sustainable Development Goals; Transportation and Urban Development; Urban Food Value Chain and Urban Public Finance.
Dates
Internal workshops
The internal workshops, only available for invited participants involved in Mistra Urban Futures’ comparative projects, will be held on 5 November 2018. Find the internal programme here
Conference
The conference takes place on 6 and 7 November 2018. Find the programme here
Follow the ACC social media channels for live reporting from the conference:
Facebook
Twitter

Urban Humanities: Contextualising strategies to enable LGBT rights in Africa: legitimacies, spatial inequalities and socio-spatial relationships
2018-11-01 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Join us for the an Urban Humanities academic seminar entitled Contextualising strategies to enable LGBT rights in Africa: legitimacies, spatial inequalities and socio-spatial relationships, by Dr Andrew Tucker on Thursday, 1 November 2018 at 15:00.
ABSTRACT
This paper explores the potential benefits of relationally considering the efficacy of radically different strategies to support LGBT rights in Africa. While a great deal has been written about the deployment of human rights-based framings to support LGBT needs on the continent, less attention has been paid to other emergent strategies based around HIV/AIDS programming and economic development initiatives. This paper sets out a schema to consider the relational nature of these different strategies and highlights how such a schema can also enable researchers to better understand how civil society groups strategically and pragmatically harness different approaches in particular places and at particular times.
WHEN: Thursday, 1 November 2018
TIME: 15:00 to 16:30
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT

Urban Humanities: False Bay: Perspectives from the Environmental Humanities
2018-10-25 13:00 - 14:00 | Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
ACC is very excited to host Dr Shari Daya in conversation with Dr Hedley Twidle, reflecting on the Environmental Humanities through encounters with False Bay.
Dr Twidle is a senior lecturer in the English Department at UCT.
“I joined the department in 2010 as a lecturer in southern African and postcolonial literatures. Much of my current work addresses contemporary life-writing and non-fiction narrative. What, after all, does the word ‘literary’ signify in a phrase like ‘literary non-fiction’? And how can one explore the array of non-fictional modes that are simultaneously drawn on, refashioned and blurred into each other in South African writing: experimental auto/biography, investigative journalism, the Struggle memoir, the diary, microhistorical and archival reconstruction.
My research also explores the difficult relation between environmental thought and social history in southern Africa. Since 2013 I have been involved in the conceptualisation and planning of a new interdisciplinary M Phil in the Environmental Humanities, launched in February 2015. I am also a member of the Archive and Public Culture research initiative, a dynamic intellectual space where new research can be presented to experts in the field”.

Urban Humanities: Storytelling as method: migration, gender and inclusion in Durban
2018-10-18 08:00 - 17:00 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
ABSTRACT
Storytelling as a form of urban scholarship has the potential for empathetic ways of producing knowledge, understanding, seeing and being in the city. This seminar explores how storytelling in a multitude of forms can be a productive method for data collection, public dissemination and advocacy for social justice. It discusses this based on a year and half long partnership project between scholars and civil society organisations on Migration, Gender and Inclusion in the city of Durban. In this project women’s stories of arriving in the city and making it something like home were positioned at the centre of project activities. Thirty oral histories of migrant women, both South African women living in a Durban hostel and women arriving from the DRC, Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Uganda formed the primary data set. These narratives were then developed into a verbatim theatre performance titled The Last Country that was performed in many different settings around the city. The seminar outlines how the play was both a form of storytelling in itself, making accessible the oral history data to a broader public audience, and a form of data collection through discussion sessions with audience members and city officials. This seminar looks at the learnings and challenges we experienced through being a part of a project built around the idea of sharing stories in the city.

BIOGRAPHY
Dr Kira Erwin is a sociologist and senior researcher at the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology. Kira’s research and publications focus largely around race, racialisation, racism and anti-racism work in South Africa. She is interested in how place identities related to space and the built environment impact on ideas of social difference. Kira makes use of creative participatory methods in her research and engagement projects, and collaborates with colleagues in the creative arts to design forms of storytelling that extend research findings beyond the walls of academia.
WHEN: 18 October 2018
TIME: 15:00 – 16:30
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

Urban Humanities: Conversations on cultural mapping and planning
2018-10-11 13:00 - 14:00 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
“Cultural planning sits at the intersection of people, places and policies— It provides a framework for addressing the needs and objectives of a city’s cultural sector and cultural life including arts, culture and heritage groups and practitioners that shape a city’s cultural ecosystem.”

Dr Rike Sitas will facilitate a discussion between three panelists that will look at how cultural mapping and planning responds to different research contexts depending on the questions asked and the way in which every day cultural practises unfold in different communities, namely, Hanover Park and Mannenberg, Cosmo City and Mitchells Plain. The overall aims of this research is to unearth some of the cultural practises and narratives in deprived communities in South African cities and how people navigate and express themselves despite the lack of material resources and services. These types of research projects also help to inform policy around arts and cultural services for local government.

BIOS
Shamila Rahim is a cultural worker and activist who has worked extensively in the Arts, Cultural and Heritage sector in Cape Town for the last 25 years. Currently she works at City of Cape Town as a Professional Officer in the Arts and Culture Branch. Her interests are in understanding and using arts, culture and heritage as agents to facilitate mind set change which empower the individual to voice and become active in creating positive narratives of themselves and society as a whole.

Vaughn Sadie is a conceptual artist, educator and researcher, living and working in Cape Town (South Africa). He is currently registered in the PhD Programme at the Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology and work at African Centre for Cities as a researcher. He is interested in interdisciplinary and participatory practices, and the place of art in various social contexts.

Alicia Fortuin is a Masters Graduate from the School of Architecture and Planning where she completed her Masters degree in City and Regional Planning. Her Dissertation looked at the Spaces of and for Participation in the Restitution of land in District Six. It is through this research process where her interests in urban governance, rights, community participation and healing and memory evolved. She has most recently received the Pan African College Phd Scholarship at the African Centre for Cities, where she will be embarking on a PHD journey which will look at the impacts and of land use dynamics and urban sprawl on young professionals in Cape Town.

Urban Humanities: Speculative Indigeneity – A (K)new Now by heeten bhagat
2018-09-27 13:00 - 14:00 | Studio 3,, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Join ACC for a brown bag lecture by PhD student heeten bhagat on entitled Speculative Indigeneity — A (K)new Now.
Heeten holds a BA in Design and Merchandising from The American College in London and a Masters in Audio Visual Production from London Metropolitan University.
His initial training as a pattern cutter has allowed him the chance to grow, and, to experience and work: designing period costumes; building sets for adventure programmes; making experimental films; curating a national gallery; teaching at a French university; providing strategic support to newer organisations; making curious podcasts; and inviting a provocative hybridity to his family’s cookbook.
Currently journeying through a PhD, he simultaneously offer creative, strategic, and manual support to a number of organisations and communities regionally.
His research delves into notions of indigenousness and indigeneity in contemporary Zimbabwe. Of particular focus is the objective to explore/engineer/imagine methodologies, through speculative research, that trouble indigenous essentialisms.

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: The Invention of the ‘Sink Estate’: Consequential Categorization and the UK Housing Crisis
2018-09-20 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
The Invention of the ‘Sink Estate’: Consequential Categorization and the UK Housing Crisis presented by Tom Slater explores the history and traces the realisation of a category that was invented by journalists, amplified by free market think tanks and converted into policy doxa (common sense) by politicians in the United Kingdom: the ‘sink estate’. This derogatory designator, signifying social housing estates that supposedly create poverty, family breakdown, worklessness, welfare dependency, antisocial behaviour and personal irresponsibility, has become the symbolic frame justifying current policies towards social housing that have resulted in considerable social suffering and intensified dislocation. The article deploys a conceptual articulation of agnotology (the intentional production of ignorance) with Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power to understand the institutional arrangements and cognitive systems structuring deeply unequal social relations. Specifically, the highly influential publications on housing by a free market think tank, Policy Exchange, are dissected in order to demonstrate how the activation of territorial stigma has become an instrument of urban politics. The ‘sink estate’, it is argued, is the semantic battering ram in the ideological assault on social housing, deflecting attention away from social housing not only as urgent necessity during a serious crisis of affordability, but as incubator of community, solidarity, shelter and home.
WHEN: Thursday 20 September 2018
TIME: 15:00 to 16:30
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: Vital Geopolitics by Gerry Kearns
2018-09-18 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Vital Geopolitics is the study of international relations from the perspective of life itself. Colonialism and neoliberalism are not only economic forces, they shape social reproduction and the geography of labour power. Viewed in this way, demography and gender, famine and migration, intellectual property and extortion, suicide and capital punishment share a profound set of mutual determinants. Tracing marginality as a set of biological relations reveals some of the links between, for example, primitive accumulation and the Anthropocene.
Gerry Kearns is Professor of Human Geography at Maynooth University, Ireland, and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. His is the author of Geopolitics and Empire (Oxford University Press 2009) and co-editor of Spatial Justice and the Irish Crisis (Royal Irish Academy 2014).
WHEN: Tuesday, 18 September 2018
TIME: 15:00 to 16:30
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

IMAGE CREDIT: Michael Farrell, Wounded Wonder, Mixed media on paper, 96.5 x 105 cm.

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: pumflet - art, architecture and stuff by Ilze Wolff
2018-09-06 12:30 - 13:30 | Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Ilze Wolff co-directs Wolff Architects with Heinrich Wolff and co-founded Open House Architecture (OHA), a research practice that documents and reflects on Southern Africa architecture in Cape Town. In 2016/7 she was the recipient of the L’erma C International Prize for Scholarly Works in Modern and Contemporary Art and Architecture, Rome, for her dissertation Unstitching Rex Trueform, the story of an African factory, published in 2018. The work of Wolff Architects has exhibited at the Venice Biennale; MOMA, New York; Louisiana MOMA, Denmark; Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture, Shenzhen; and the Chicago Architecture Biennale. OHA/Wolff regularly host exhibitions, interventions, publications and talks in collaboration with artists and scholars so as to develop an enduring public culture around the city, space and personhood. In 2018 she was shortlisted for the Architectural Review’s Moira Gemmill Emerging Architect of the year award and is currently a fellow at the University of the Western Cape’s Centre for Humanities Research.
‘pumflet’ was founded in 2016 by the pumfleteers collective (Wolff and Kemang Wa Lehulere) in order to publish interventions into the social imagination. The talk will show recent pumflet projects and reflect on some of the themes that ground the work and that are beginning to emerge such as, nostalgia vs histories of the present; the importance of the social imagination, aesthetics of repair and conversations as scholarly discourse.

WHEN: Thursday, 6 September 2018

TIME: 12:30 to 13:30
VENUE: Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

ACC at the Open Book Festival 2018
2018-09-05 12:00 - 2018-09-07 11:00
African Centre for Cities (ACC) teams up with The Book Lounge to present five urban-focussed events at the forthcoming 2018 Open Book Festival, which takes place from 5 to 9 September, Cape Town.
The five events draws on the ACC community to engage and interrogate a series of topics ranging from inclusive urban development and issues of mobility to urban activism and blackness in the city.

5 September 2018
12.00 – 13.00
Fugard Studio, Corner Caledon & Lower Buitenkant Street, Cape Town
Kigali to Cape Town: Tomá Berlanda and Rick de Satge speak to Philippa Tumubweinee about inclusive urban development.
6 September 2018
10.00 – 11.00
A4 Arts Foundation – Ground, 23 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town
Mobility and the City: Phumeza Mlungwana for UniteBehind and Cllr Brett Herron, City of Cape Town join David Schmidt in conversation with Pippa Green about getting from A – B.
12.00 – 13.00
A4 Arts Foundation – Ground, 23 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town
Activist Cities: Richard Dyantyi, Axolile Notywala and Ichumile Gqada speak to Ella Scheepers about militant urbanism.
14.00 – 15.00
A4 Arts Foundation – Ground, 23 Buitenkant Street, Cape Town
Integration Syndicate Provocations: Tracy Jooste, Nishendra Moodley and Kate Philip speak to Andrew Gasnolar about the findings of the Integration Syndicate over the past year.
7 September
10.00 – 11.00
Homecoming Centre Workshop, 15A Buitenkant Street, Cape Town
Urbanity, Blackness & Mobilities: Mpho Matsipa and Sammy Baloji speak to Mokena Makeka.

For the full festival programme click here.
To purchase tickets for these events go here.

SCREENING: Not in my Neighbourhood
2018-08-31 14:00 - 16:00 | LS3B, Leslie Social Sciences Building, Upper Campus UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Not in My Neighbourhood (Official Trailer) from Azania Rizing Productions on Vimeo.
As cities around the world catapult themselves into ‘World Class’, Global City status, we have to ask ourselves, “at what cost”? Not in my Neighbourhood (NIMN), a film by Kurt Orderson of Azania Rizing Productions, tells the intergenerational stories of the ways in which ordinary citizens respond to the policies, processes and institutions driving contemporary forms of spatial violence. With the aim of building solidarity amongst active urban citizens, the film provides insights into the tools and approaches used by urban activist to shape and navigate their cities, from the bottom up.
The film explores the effects of various forms of spatial violence on the spirit and social-psyche of citizens. It follows their daily struggles, trials and triumphant moments. Portraying our characters as active citizens, fighting for their right to the city, the film acts as a portrait of stories telling the history of spatial violence within the background of colonization, architectural Apartheids and gentrification. The production of NIMN film took place over a 4-year period of exploring, unpacking and unveiling the violence of modernist political culture and its translation into spatial planning. Making the film over four years allowed for a transectional analysis of the developments in a city over time.
WHEN: Friday, 31 August
TIME: 14:00 to 16:00
VENUE: LS3B, Leslie Social Sciences Building, Upper Campus UCT
ENTRANCE: Free of charge and open to all

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: Dr Sabina Favaro: 'in search of thick mapping: listening to Cape Town's cities'
2018-08-30 03:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3
Dr Sabina Favaro will be sharing a paper entitled ‘in search of thick mapping: listening to Cape Town’s cities’

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: Valmont Layne on 'Auditing' vernacular Cape Town as a sonic city
2018-08-23 13:00 - 14:00 | Studio 3
We are excited to host Valmont Layne from the University of the Western Cape’s Humanities Research Centre who will be reflecting on ‘Auditing’ vernacular Cape Town as a sonic city’
ABSTRACT: Cape Town offers a generative example of the postcolonial port city as an affective space – especially reading its vernacular musicking lifeworld as sonic expressions of oceanic and terrestrial worlds. In this talk, Valmont Layne share some of the opportunities and challenges of doing this work, and will reflect on the possible implications for new epistemic engagements with the postcolonial city drawing on literatures on affect and on sound studies.
WHEN: Thursday, 23 August 2018
TIME: 13:00-14:00
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Buildings, Upper Campus, UCT

The Integrated City: Local Cultural Policy and Sustainable Integrated Urban Development
2018-08-17 08:30 - 15:00 | John Martin Room, New Engineering Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
This seminar at UCT’s African Centre for Cities looks to continue a set of dialogues around cultural governance and sustainable urban development in South Africa. It brings two processes together:

The Local Cultural Policy Agenda: South African cities are potential spaces for dynamic change as a result of being the nexus for flows of people and ideas. Culture is increasingly seen as significant in urban transformation. A long-term approach to exploring innovative urban governance frameworks that forward the use of culture has been proposed as a research agenda. These speak to new national frameworks around integrated urban development as well as revisions to the Arts and Culture White paper.
Integrating the Dual City: The African Centre for Cities recent Integration and Ideas Festival continue a interest in the role of culture for sustainable development, putting forward a number of innovative provocations to address the dual city. These included a strong focus on issues related to culture (memory, storytelling and identity), placemaking (densified, dynamic neighborhoods) and relationality (including through mobility, solidarity networks, “hubs”, and the digital space).

The seminar objectives

Further a dialogue between researchers working in civil society and government concerned with the culture and its role in urban transformation.
To test the viability of a specific provocation – the UCLG Agenda 21 for Culture – Culture Actions: a framework for governance that furthers the use of culture for sustainable development in cities – against provocations at the recent festival, and including engaging with practitioners.

To identify possible future paths of inquiry and collaboration amongst researchers based in Cape Town with those elsewhere in South Africa.

WHEN: 17 August 2018
TIME: 8.30 for 9:00-15:00
VENUE: John Martin Room, New Engineering Building, UCT
RSVP: Places are limited. Please send an RSVP email with any dietary requirements to africancentreforcities.rsvp@gmail.com
PROGROGRAMME
8:30-9:00 Registration and coffee
9:00-9:30 Welcome, Introduction and Viewing of Exhibition
Introduction. Providing the input on Local Cultural Policy Agenda, responding to Integration ideas Festival and introducing the UCLG Agenda 21 for Culture Actions.
Speaker: Zayd Minty
9:30-10:30 Cultural Narratives – Heritage, Creativity, Urban Change
Working with memory and notions of heritage, building on local creativity, provide a powerful way to build meaning for citizens and so build sense of purpose. Why is this important for cities and what can we do about it?
Presenters: Naomi Roux (UCT) and Valmont Layne (UWC)
Respondent: Deirdre Prins-Solani (Education, Culture and Heritage Specialist)
10:30-11:00 Tea
11:00-12:00 Place Making and the potential of Socially Engaged Public Practise
There is a growing need for thinking about denser, more livable spaces that are also more resonant and meaningful through socially engaged public art/practices. How can local government make this happen?
Presenters: Rike Sitas (UCT) and Anna Selmeczi (UCT)
Respondent: Brenda Skelenge (Lukhanyo Hub)
12:00-13:00 Cultural Mapping and Planning
The CoCT’s Cultural Mapping and Planning initiative provides an opportunity for communities to revalue their tangible and intangible assets and begin dialogues for community change. How is this relevant for cities?
Presenters: Vaughn Sadie (UCT/DUT) and Laura Nkula-Wenz (UCT)
Respondent: TBC
13:00-14:00 Lunch
14:00-15:00 Closing discussion
Way forward for research, policy and practice agendas and support network. Led by Avril Joffe (Wits)

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: Inclusive Cultural Governance: Integrating artistic and cultural practices into national urban frameworks by Avril Joffe
2018-08-16 03:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Join African Centre for Cities for the second seminar the second seminar in our Urban Humanities series, Zayd Minty will be responding to Avril Joffe talking about Inclusive Cultural Governance: Integrating artistic and cultural practices into national urban frameworks
WHEN: 16 August 2018
TIME: 15:00 to 16:30
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town.
SPEAKER
Avril Joffe is an economic sociologist with experience in the field of cultural policy, culture and development and the cultural economy. She is the head of the Cultural Policy and Management Department at the Wits School of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. Avril is an active member of UNESCO’s Panel of Experts for Cultural Policy and Governance undertaking missions to support African governments in developing cultural policies, cultural industry strategies, reporting on their implementation of the UNESCO Convention, writing and editing training manuals and recently contributed to the Global Monitoring Report 2018 on the ‘Integration of Culture in Sustainable Development’. Avril is a member of the South African Ministerial Review Panel to draft a revised cultural policy for South Africa. She is on the board of the National Arts Council and chairs the Audit and Risk Committee for the NAC.
RESPONDENT
Zayd Minty is a professional cultural development manager and curator. He has previously, since 1993, worked in and with the cultural sector, civil society, academia and government, in various leadership roles. In addition to cultural policy and strategy work, he has curated various arts projects and festivals. He is currently registered at the African Centre for Cities doing a doctorate looking at Cultural Clusters and Urban Development in the Johannesburg Inner City.

Urban Humanities Seminar Series: Prof Sophie Oldfield "High Stakes, High Hopes: Creating Collaborative Urban Theory"
2018-08-07 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
PLEASE NOTE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN MOVED TO TUESDAY, 7 AUGUST DUE TO A CLASH WITH THE UCT MEMORIAL SERVICE FOR THE LATE PROF BONGANI MAYOSI.
ACC is excited to invite you to the first Urban Humanities Seminar Series. Prof Sophie Oldfield will be presenting a paper entitled ‘High Stakes, High Hopes: Creating Collaborative Urban Theory’.
ABSTRACT: High Stakes, High Hopes creates urban theory in the political and physical realities of everyday southern city life. This work examines the high stakes at play in a decade-long research and teaching partnership, which has brought this university and the neighbourhood’s civic organization in Cape Town to research the city together to collaboratively build urban theory. In narrating the project and partnership, this lecture will explore collaborative forms of urban theory, immersed in the registers, inspirations and meanings of everyday struggles and learning across the city. This approach brings together multiple voices, registers and accounts, shaping urban theory in shared spaces across the city. In this context of extreme urban inequality, this approach to theorising infuses the personal, political, and public struggles through which urban theory is generated, expertise opened up, and solidarity and commitment built.
BIO: Sophie Oldfield holds the University of Basel–University of Cape Town Professorship in Urban Studies, based at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town. Her research is grounded in empirical and epistemological questions central to urban theory. Focusing on housing, informality and governance, mobilization and social movement organizing, and urban politics, her work pays close attention to political practice and everyday urban geographies, analysing the ways in which citizens and organized movements craft agency to engage and contest the state. She has a track record of excellence in collaborative research practice, challenging how academics work in and between “university” and “community.”

Urban Humanities Seminar Series 2018
2018-08-02 01:00 - 2018-11-15 16:30 | Environmental and Geographical Science Building, South Lane, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Academic Seminars (15:00 – 16:30)
7 August
High Stakes, High Hopes: Creating Collaborative Urban Theory – Prof Sophie Oldfield
16 August
Inclusive Cultural Governance: Integrating artistic and cultural practices into national urban frameworks – Avril Joffe with respondent Zayd Minty
30 August
in search of thick mapping: listening to Cape Town’s cities – Dr Sabina Favaro
18 September
Vital Geopolitics – Gerry Kearns
20 September
The invention of the ‘Sink Estate’: Consequential Categorization and the UK Housing Crisis – Dr Tom Slater
18 October
Storytelling as method: migration, gender and inclusion in Durban – Dr Kira Erwin
1 November:
Contextualising strategies to enable LGBT rights in Africa: legitimacies, spatial inequalities and socio-spatial relationships – Dr Andy Tucker
15 November
Representing urban life in Africa and its diasporas – Dr Shari Daya and Dr Rike Sitas
Brown Bags (13:00-14:00)
23 August
‘Auditing’ vernacular Cape Town as a sonic city – Valmont Layne
6 September
pumflet: art, architecture and stuff – Ilze Wolff
27 September
Speculative Indigeneity – A (K)new Now – heeten bhagat
11 October
Conversations on cultural mapping and planning – Alicia Fortuin, Vaughn Sadie and Shamila Rahim
25 October
False Bay – Dr Hedley Twidle

PUBLIC LECTURE: Soft Thresholds - RMA Architects, Mumbai by Rahul Mehrotra
2018-07-31 16:00 - 17:30 | Centre of the Book, 62 Queen Victoria Street, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa
Rahul Mehrotra, Professor of Urban Design and Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, will give a public lecture entitled Soft Thresholds – RMA Architects, Mumbai, co-hosted by African Centre for Cities, UCT Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, UWC Centre for Humanities Research and Wolff Architects.
Mehrotra, who recently received a Special Mention at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, is a practicing architect, urban designer, and educator. His Mumbai-based firm, RMA Architects, was founded in 1990 and has designed and executed projects including government and private institutions, corporate workplaces, private homes, and unsolicited projects driven by the firm’s commitment to advocacy in the city of Mumbai. The firm has designed a software campus for Hewlett Packard in Bangalore, a campus for Magic Bus (a NGO that works with poor children), led the restoration of the Chowmahalla Palace in Hyderabad, and formulated a conservation master plan for the Taj Mahal with the Taj Mahal Conservation Collaborative. The firm also recently designed and built a social housing project for 100 elephants and their caretakers in Jaipur as well as a corporate office in Hyderabad. The firm has designed several single family houses in different parts of India and one in Karachi, Pakistan.

Recently, Mehrotra completed the Lab of the Future on the Novartis Campus in Basel, Switzerland and in 2015 was a finalist in an international design competition for the Museum of Modern Art in Sydney.
Mehrotra has written and lectured extensively on issues to do with architecture, conservation, and urban planning and design in Mumbai and India. His writings include coauthoring Bombay: The Cities Within, which covers the city’s urban history from the 1600s to the present; Banganga: Sacred Tank; Public Places Bombay; Anchoring a City Line, A history of the city’s commuter railway; and Bombay to Mumbai: Changing Perspectives. He has also coauthored Conserving an Image Center: The Fort Precinct in Bombay. Based on this study and its recommendations, the historic Fort District in Mumbai was declared a conservation precinct in 1995 – a first such designation in India. In 2000, he edited a book for the Union of International Architects, which earmarks the end of the last century and is titled The Architecture of the 20th Century in the South Asian Region. In 2011, Mehrotra wrote Architecture in India – Since 1990, which is a reading of contemporary architecture in India which he extended through an exhibition he cocurated titled The State of Architecture: Practices and Processes in India, at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Mumbai in Jan 2016. This was followed in 2018 by an exhibition titled: The State of Housing : Realities, Aspirations and imaginaries in India which showed between Jan and March 2018 and will travel over the next two years in India.

Mehrotra is a member of the steering committee of the South Asia Institute at Harvard. In 2012-2015, he led a Harvard University-wide research project with Professor Diana Eck, called The Kumbh Mela: Mapping the Ephemeral Mega City. This work was published as a book in 2014. This research was extended in 2017 in the form of a book titled Does Permanence Matter? Mehrotra’s latest co- authored book is titled Taj Mahal : Multiple Narratives which was published in Dec 2017. His current research is on the small towns and emerging urban conglomerations in India and is expected to be published as book in late 2018.
Rahul Mehrotra has long been actively involved in civic and urban affairs in Mumbai, having served on commissions for the conservation of historic buildings and environmental issues, with various neighbourhood groups and, from 1994 to 2004, as Executive Director of the Urban Design Research Institute in Mumbai. He studied at the School of Architecture, Ahmedabad (CEPT), and graduated with a master’s degree with distinction in Urban Design from Harvard University. He has taught at the University of Michigan (2003–2007) and at the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at MIT (2007–2010). From 2010 to 2015, he chaired the Department of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard Graduate School of Design.
WHEN: Tuesday, 31 July 2018
TIME: 16:00 to 17:30
VENUE: Baxter Theatre, Main Road, Cape Town
RSVP: Space is limited. Please send an email to africancentreforcities.rsvp@gmail.com to secure your seat.

Integration & Ideas Festival
2018-07-26 08:00 - 17:30 | Guga S’Thebe, Washington Street, Langa, Cape Town, South Africa
The Integration Syndicate is a three-phase project that started off with a series of nine “episodes” over the course of 2017, which explored the obstacles and solutions to social-spatial integration in the Cape Town metropolitan region. From these episodes, in which a closed group of academics, activists, public and private sector actors participated, five provocations were developed that represent five potential springboard ideas to create and facilitate greater socio-spatial integration.
During the first half of 2018 the five provocations were presented to focus groups of stakeholders for critical input to further shape the ideas. Now the next step is to take these five ideas to a broader audience with a public event, the Integration & Ideas Festival.
Integration & Ideas Festival programme
You are invited to join us for the Integration & Ideas Festival
WHEN: 26 July 2018
TIME: 08:00 to 17:30
WHERE: Guga S’thebe, Washington Street, Langa, Cape Town
RSVP: Please complete the form here to RSVP for this event.
If you have any queries please send an email to integration.syndicate@gmail.com

Cities and Climate Change Seminar 4
2018-06-12 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Working at the interface of climate science, urban policy and practice: developing ideas of distillation and receptivity
WHEN: 12 June 2018
TIME: 3:00 to 4:30
WHERE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town
The last seminar in the 4 part series on cities and climate change will focus on how the worlds of climate science and urban policy making and implementation are being brought closer together in ways that might support more evidence-based decision making on urban matters that are climate sensitive. Drawing primarily on the efforts of, and experiences from, the Future Resilience of African Cities and Lands (FRACTAL) project, the speakers will present ideas and practices of distilling relevant, actionable climate information and fostering greater receptivity to engaging, co-producing and acting on climate information. Central to this is the creation of city learning labs as a space for bringing together a diversity of people and knowledge to generate new thinking and possibly nudge processes of decision making in new directions. Experiences of designing and implementing such labs in Maputo, Lusaka and Windhoek will be discussed in relation to emerging concepts of distillation and receptivity. The seminar will provide an opportunity to share insights about working at science-policy-practice interfaces between those working in the climate space and those working in other urban science-policy domains, like health, water management, housing and biodiversity.
CHAIR: Prof Sue Parnell
SPEAKERS:

Dr Chris Jack, Principal Scientific Officer, Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG), and ACDI Senior Fellow
Dr Di Scott, African Centre for Cities
Dr Izidine Pinto, Climate System Analysis Group

Cities, geo-technologies and data-driven urbanism
2018-06-11 08:30 - 16:45 | Room 3B, RW James Building, University Avenue North, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
African Centre for Cities, along with Prodig, French National Centre for Scientific Research, French Institute of South Africa and the French Institute for Research in Africa, are presenting a one-day workshop entitled Cities, geo-technologies and data-driven urbanism.
The programme is structured into four sessions with two sessions of strategic input from research and practice by various presenters (see below) and two work sessions to discuss and synthesize the inputs.
WHEN: Monday, 11 June 2018
TIME: 08:30 to 16:45
WHERE: Room 3B, RW James Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town

While a curated group of people have been invited to the workshop, five places are still available. These places will be allocated on a first come, first serve basis. To secure your spot send an email to elisabeth.peyroux@cnrs.fr or call +2772 250 7804.

PRESENTATIONS:
Interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives on cities and geo-technologies – Elisabeth Peyroux, National Centre for Scientific Research, Prodig, & Nancy Odendaal, School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, UCT
Technology and spatial governance in Southern cities – Nancy Odendaal, School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, UCT
(Big) Data, knowledge, and their use in decision-making and policy-making: Perspectives from ICT4D – Ulrike Rivett, Department of Information Systems, School of IT, UCT
Disruptive technologies, new power relationships and challenges to urban governance – Sabelo Mahlangu, School of Architecture and Planning, Wits University & Samy Katumba, Gauteng City-Region Observatory (GCRO)
Linking research, practice and higher education – Herrie Schalekamp, Centre for Transport Studies (CfTS), UCT
Geospatial data analysis: The significant rise in local service levels coming from Cityspec intervention in Monwabisi Park and Lotus Park (Cape Town) – Chris Berens, GIS expert, Knowledge Management, VPUU & Nhlanhla May, Spatial Data Analyst, VPUU
City making and the rise of urban and technology-oriented development interventions in Nairobi – Prince Guma, Human geography and Planning, University of Utrecht
ICT for e-Culture: cultural storytelling and innovative services. The “Smart Square” in Hamburg and its application in Cape Town – Sumarie Roodt, Department of Information Systems, Commerce Faculty UCT & Jens Bley, HafenCity University
Demo of 3D scanning technologies applied to the built environment – Jason Stapleton CEO Metascale Services and Consulting (MSC)

Towards the Just City: Race, Space and Design
2018-06-06 13:00 - 14:00
Join African Centre for Cities and the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics for a lunch time seminar by Prof Toni L. Griffin on 6 June 2018, from 13:00-14:00 in Room 3.33, Centlivres Building, Upper Campus, University of Cape Town.
Griffin is the founder of Urban Planning for the American City, based in New York, specialising in leading complex, trans-disciplinary planning and urban design projects for multi-sector clients in cities with long histories of spatial and social injustice. Recent and current clients include the cities of Detroit, Memphis, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis.
She is also Professor in Practice of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and leads The Just City Lab, a research programme for developing values-based planning methodologies and tools, including the Just City Index – a framework of indicators and metrics for evaluating public life and urban justice in public spaces.

My Just City is Black and White: Race, Space and Design
2018-05-31 18:00 - 20:00 | Nelson Mandela Foundation, 107 Central Street, Houghton, Johannesburg, South Africa
The Nelson Mandela Foundation along with African Centre for Cities and the US Embassy in South Africa are hosting a Nelson Mandela 100 Lecture to be delivered by Prof Toni L. Griffin entitled My Just City is Black and White: Race, Space and Design.
Cities in both South Africa and the United States have long histories of spatial and social injustice, and remain sites of inequality. There continues to be divisions along racial, cultural and socio-economic lines despite shifts in patterns of ownership and changing demographics.
With the new impetus towards land justice in South Africa, the Nelson Mandela Foundation and the African Centre for Cities, with the support of the United States State Department, will host a Nelson Mandela 100 lecture to facilitate public discourse on the issues of urban justice, access to the city and overcoming segregation and displacement in cities.
The lecture will be delivered by Toni L. Griffin, Professor in Practice of Urban Planning at the Harvard Graduate Centre of Design. Griffin is also the founder of Urban Planning and Design for the American City, based in New York, and until recently was a Professor of Architecture and the founding Director of the J. Max Bond Center on Design for the Just City at the Spitzer School of Architecture at the City College of New York. Part of Professor Griffin’s recent work seeks to define the core values of a just city and offer a performance measurement tool to assist cities and communities with evaluating how design facilitates urban justice in the built environment.
The lecture will allow for an international comparative discussion, with two local respondents who will provide reflections, followed by an open question and answer session.
Respondents
Professor Edgar Pieterse, DST/NRF Research Chair in Urban Policy, and Director of the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town
Mandisa Dyantyi, Deputy General Secretary of the Social Justice Coalition
DATE: 31 May 2018
TIME: 18:00-20:00
VENUE: The Nelson Mandela Foundation, 107 Central Street, Houghton, Johannesburg
RSVP: LeeD@nelsonmandela.org

Cities and Climate Change: Seminar 3
2018-05-28 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3,, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
Nate Millington will present a talk entitled Making sense of our water crisis: what can we learn from São Paulo? as part of our on-going series on Cities and Climate Change on 28 May 2018, at 15:00 to 16:30 in Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT.
Both Cape Town and São Paulo have recently been marked by drought-induced water crises, as pre-existing infrastructures were forced to confront changing climates, continued growth, and infrastructural breakdown. These dynamics coexist in intimate ways with long histories of auto-construction, heterogeneous infrastructural development, and uneven water security. While water insecurity has long marked cities in the global south, multi-year droughts have resulted in water crises in southern cities with previously robust water management systems. Experiences of citywide scarcity in these two cities point to the increasing regularity and visibility of persistent water crisis at the global level, which is drawing new actors into new coalitions and reconfiguring existing governance patterns. The intensity of the droughts that affected São Paulo in 2013-2015 and Cape Town in 2015-17 are undoubtedly outliers, but when situated in multi-year frameworks the trends seem to suggest that water patterns in both cities are shifting in line with expanded water use and increased urbanization. This has implications not just for São Paulo and Cape Town, but also for southern cities where water insecurity is more chronic.
In this seminar, we think comparatively about São Paulo’s experience of crisis and its implication both for Cape Town as well for cities more generally. We ask how São Paulo’s experience with scarcity helps us to think through and make sense of Cape Town’s ongoing crisis. At the same time, we are interested in thinking comparatively about the differences in how the two cities responded. Ultimately, our intention is to think both globally and locally: to put two these two cities in conversation while being clear that global climate change is a planetary phenomenon.

Speaker: Nate Millington
Discussant: Anna Taylor
Chair: Gina Ziervogel

WHEN: 28 May 2018
TIME: 15:00 to 16:30
VENUE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, Cape Town

Cities and Climate Change: Seminar 2
2018-05-15 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
The second seminar in the Cities and Climate Change series will explore low carbon urban energy transitions in (mostly South) African cities, paying particular attention to the institutional dimensions of transforming energy systems to increase energy access and increase sustainability by reducing GHG emissions in growing cities.

In the 20th century, grid electric power radically changed the face of household and community services, industry and commerce. Influence over the electricity grid by powerful human actors also enabled establishment and maintenance of fundamental social and economic structures. However, such influence has not remained uni-directional. The grid, too, has come to influence powerful human actors in ways probably not intended. Hilton Trollip will discuss Hodder’s (2014) use of the ‘entanglement’ concept with reference to analysis of historic and recent developments in South Africa’s energy system.

Saul Roux will discuss research conducted within the Mistra Urban Futures – Knowledge Transfer Programme (MUF-KTP), which involved spending three years in the City of Cape Town, embedded in its Energy and Climate Change Unit, focussing on the conditions under which energy systems transition to more sustainable configurations, through an exploration of the City’s electricity distribution system. Theoretically, the study is situated within debates on socio-technical transitions and the multi-level perspective (MLP) of socio-technical change. Overall, the study explored the implications of applying the multi-level perspective to cities (scale) in the Global South (geographical context) and examines and the role of regulatory and organisational conditions in shaping sustainable transitions.

Anton Cartwright will bring these inputs into conversation with seminar participants around questions of governing low carbon, sustainable and inclusive transitions in African cities.

Hodder, I., 2014. The Entanglements of Humans and Things: A Long-Term View. New Literary History, 45(1), pp.19–36. Available at:http://muse.jhu.edu/content/crossref/journals/new_literary_history/v045/45.1.hodder.html.

Speakers

Hilton Trollip, senior researcher in energy policy, Energy Research Centre
Saul Roux, legal campaigner, Centre for Environmental Rights (previously ACC Mistra Urban Futures embedded researcher with City of Cape Town)

Chair & discussant

Anton Cartwright, institutional economics research fellow, African Centre for Cities

WHEN: 15 May 2018
TIME: 15:00 – 16:30
WHERE: Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Science Building, Upper Campus, UCT

Academic Seminar Series: Cities and Climate Change
2018-04-24 15:00 - 2018-06-12 16:30 | Studio 3, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town , South Africa
What does transforming Cape Town into a zero carbon, climate resilient city entail? What about Windhoek, Accra or São Paulo? This series of ACC Seminars explores the intersection of urbanisation and climate change.
The first seminar in the series reflects on the recent international conference on cities and climate change, the first of its kind convened by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Through a panel discussion between representatives from the City of Cape Town, the African Centre for Cities, UCT’s Climate System Analysis Group and the African Climate and Development Institute, who all participated in the conference, we will draw out key themes and debates surfacing within the climate change and cities field internationally, as well as reflect on any notable silences or gaps. We will also share a snapshot of what inputs we offered to the international science and policy community concerned with cities and climate change. This will establish the main contours of the climate change and cities research space, framing the three subsequent seminars in the series.
The second and third seminars will delve deeper into the mitigation / emissions and impacts / adaptation ‘sides’ of the climate change field, focussing on the city scale. We will explore low carbon urban energy transitions in (mostly South) African cities, paying particular attention to what it takes to reduce GHG emissions while reducing poverty and inequality in growing cities. And we will bring the water crises in the cities of Sao Paulo and Cape Town into conversation, through critically reflecting on the notions of resilience and adaptation to see what lessons can be drawn for dealing with drought and water scarcity in cities.
The series will wrap up with a seminar discussing the science-policy-practice interfaces for addressing climate change in southern African cities, drawing on work being undertaken in the Future Resilience of African Cities and Lands (FRACTAL) project. The discussion will centre on understanding urban climate governance, how robust, defensible and actionable climate information can be co-produced and how to create entry points and receptivity for the use of that climate information in decision-making that shapes the future of cities.

Dates
The series runs on Tuesday afternoons from 15:00 to 16:30 on:

24 April 2018
15 May 2018
28 May 2018
12 June 2018

Speakers and panellists:

Victor Indasi, climate science post doc, Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG)
Amy Davison, Head of Environmental Strategy Implementation, City of Cape Town
Alice McClure, FRACTAL coordinator, Climate System Analysis Group
Anna Taylor, urban geography post doc, African Centre for Cities (ACC) & CSAG
Lorena Pasquini, risk governance research fellow, African Climate and Development Initiative
Anton Cartwright, institutional economics research fellow, African Centre for Cities
Hilton Trollip, senior researcher in energy policy, Energy Research Centre
Saul Roux, environmental law researcher, Centre for Environmental Rights (previously ACC Mistra Urban Futures embedded researcher with City of Cape Town)
Nate Millington, urban geography post doc, African Centre for Cities
Di Scott, senior social scientist on the FRACTAL project, African Centre for Cities
Chris Jack, climate science senior researcher, Climate System Analysis Group

Cities and Climate Change: Seminar 1
2018-04-24 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 1, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, UCT, Cape Town, South Africa
The first seminar in the academic seminar series on Cities and Climate Change reflects on the recent international conference on cities and climate change, the first of its kind convened by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Through a panel discussion between representatives from the City of Cape Town, the African Centre for Cities, UCT’s Climate System Analysis Group and the African Climate and Development Initiative, who all participated in the conference, we will draw out key themes and debates surfacing within the climate change and cities field internationally, as well as reflect on any notable silences or gaps. We will also share a snapshot of what inputs we offered to the international science and policy community concerned with cities and climate change. This will establish the main contours of the climate change and cities research space, framing the three subsequent seminars in the series.

SPEAKERS

Victor Indasi, climate science post doc, Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG)
Amy Davison, Head of Environmental Strategy Implementation, City of Cape Town
Alice McClure, FRACTAL coordinator, Climate System Analysis Group
Lorena Pasquini, risk governance research fellow, African Climate and Development Institute

DISCUSSANT
Anna Taylor, urban geography post doc, ACC & CSAG
