African Centre for Cities

The Housing Affordability Challenge: What Are the Questions?
2015-03-24 01:00 - 14:00 (Africa/Johannesburg) | Davies Reading Room
In this Brownbag presentation, Dr Robert Buckley will be presenting on ‘The Housing Affordability Challenge: What Are the Questions?’
Abstract
In the past few years, sixteen developing countries have mounted multi-billion-dollar urban subsidy programs. Unfortunately, as currently structured, very few of these programs will help address the housing challenges faced by cities. They are deeply flawed even if they come with support from leading think tanks such as the McKinsey Global Institute and from foreign advisors and investors. They often repeat the now severely criticized approaches pursued by OECD countries in the early post–World War II years, when a similar moment in urban policy arose. Participants at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Conference Center discussed the proposed approaches as well as why it is perhaps not surprising that few foreign investors take any of the risks inherent in plans to reshape the cities of the developing world.
Biography
Bob Buckley is a senior fellow in the Graduate Program in International Affairs at The New School. Previously, he was an advisor and managing director at the Rockefeller Foundation, and lead economist at the World Bank. Buckley’s work at both the foundation and the World Bank focused largely on issues relating to urbanization in developing countries. He is particularly interested in the policy issues related to slum formation and approaches to dealing with them (see more here).

Transnational Labor and Place Making in the Rustbelt US: Implications for Theorizing Place and Politics of Place in the Global Era
2015-03-18 15:00 - 16:30 | Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Sciences Building, Upper Campus, Cape Town, South Africa
ACC is excited to host Prof Faranak Miraftab in the first of our academic Seminar Series for 2015. In this seminar ‘Transnational Labor and Place Making in the Rustbelt US: Implications for Theorizing Place and Politics of Place in the Global Era’, Prof Miraftab will be presenting from her forthcoming book (2016) entitled Making a Home in the Heartland: Immigration and Global Labor Mobility.
Abstract
As a point observation I take an industrial town in rural rustbelt of the United States, and study the rapid social transformation of this space due to transnational labor recruitment by the meat processing industry. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in Illinois, Mexico and Togo, I unfold the global production and social reproduction of migrant workers; how they make place globally and locally; and how they renegotiate inter-racial relations to make a former sundown town their new home in Illinois.
Focusing on an often overlooked space in urban scholarship of globalization and taken-for-granted processes of global labor mobility, this study recovers voices and stories often hidden, made invisible or left out of the picture, to theorize place and place making relationally and stress the difference that place makes. Spanning urban studies, human geography, immigration and transitional studies, Making a Home in the Heartland makes important intervention in the theorization of urban, production and social reproduction of transnational migrants, politics of place and place making.
Biography

Faranak Miraftab is Professor of Urban and Regional Planning at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. A native of Iran, she did her undergraduate studies at the Tehran University; while in political asylum she earned her Master’s degree in Norway and later moved to the US and completed her doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley. Her interdisciplinary ethnographic work crosses planning, geography and transnational studies and is empirically based in cities of Latin America, Africa and North America. As an urban scholar of globalization she is interested in the global and local development processes and contingencies involved in the formation of the city and citizens’ struggles to access dignified livelihood. She was named as a 2014-15 University Scholar, a prestigious award bestowed on faculty at the University of Illinois campuses. Her most recent and forthcoming publications include Cities of the Global South Reader (Miraftab and Kudva, Routledge 2014); Cities and Inequalities in a Global and Neoliberal World (eds. Miraftab, Wilson and Salo, Routledge April 2015), and Making a Home in the Heartland: Immigration and Global Labor Mobility (Miraftab, Indiana University Press, January 2016). Her presentation will draw on the latter, a multi-sited ethnography concerning global production and social reproduction of migrant labor and how this makes for local development in the heartland US.

Hungry Cities Partnership Meeting
2015-02-10 08:00 - 2015-02-13 17:00 | UCT, Seminar Room 1 Chemical Engineering, UCT Upper Campus, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Running from the 10th to the 13th of February 2015 is the second project meeting for the Hungry Cities Partnership, an IDRC/SSHRC (Canada) partnership programme within the International Partnership for Sustainable Societies process. The project is a collaboration between Canadian Universities and universities and organisations in the global south. The University of Cape Town is the IDRC grant holder partnering with university partners in Kingston, Jamaica; Mexico City; Maputo and Nanjing, China. Other partners include the African Population and Health Research Centre in Nairobi and the MS Swaminathan Research Foundation in Chennai.
The project aims to promote inclusive growth in the informal food economy of cities of the global south.

Migration and Informality Workshop
2015-02-09 09:00 - 16:00 | UCT, Seminar Room 1 Chemical Engineering, UCT Upper Campus, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
The ACC, SAMP, GCRO, IMRC, Eduardo Mondlane University, Queens University (Canada) and Wilfred Laurier University will be hosting a dissemination workshop at UCT to present the findings from a recent multi-country research project that examined the role of migrant entrepreneurs in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe.
This dissemination workshop will present the results of the IDRC-funded Growing Informal Cities project, which examined and profiled the role of migrant entrepreneurship in South Africa, Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The project was conducted jointly by the African Centre for Cities (University of Cape Town), the Southern African Migration Programme (SAMP), the Gauteng City Regional Observatory (GCRO), Eduardo Mondlane University and the International Migration Research Centre (IMRC). Interviews and surveys were conducted in Cape Town, Harare, Johannesburg and Maputo with migrant entrepreneurs and cross border traders to better understand the linkages between migration, informality, inclusive growth and violence against migrant-owned businesses.

"Not in my neighbourhood" - Filmscreening and Discussion
2014-12-04 18:00 - 20:00 | City Hall, Darling Street, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa
FREE ENTRY
Post-apartheid Woodstock is one of the few areas where low-income residents have been able to maintain a foothold close to inner-city work opportunities and cultural amenities. However, the area’s historic cultural fabric and socio-economic diversity are increasingly threatened by soaring property prices that tend to make life for long-term tenants more and more unaffordable.
In light of the adverse effects of this process known as ‘gentrification’, we would like you to participate in a dialogue, inspired by the international documentary “Not in my neighbourhood” by Kurt Orderson.
This event will also be an opportunity to share stories and personal experiences, as well as to explore alternatives for more inclusive urban development in Woodstock and Cape Town at large.
As part of this event we will have:
Kurt Orderson – Filmmaker
Mohammed Rahim (Rashied) – Woodstock Community Member (respondent to film preview)
Jodi Allemeier -Moderator and facilitator

POSTPONED!! Speculative Design Ecologies: exploring relations between humans, non-humans, and artificial systems
2014-12-04 13:00 - 14:00 | Davies Reading Room, Room 2.27, Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000, South Africa
THIS EVENT IS POSTPONED UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE

Speakers: Dr. Martín Ávila (Design for Sustainable Development at Konstfack Art and Design Institute in Stockholm) and Dr. Henrik Ernstson (African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town & KTH Environmental Humanities, Division of History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm).

Based in the emergent practices around speculative design, the seminar will depart from Dr. Martín Ávila’s thesis “Devices” that explored the notion of hospitality and hostility in design ecologies, i.e. the assemblages between human and non-human agents that have emergent properties which we cannot fully control. This will lead into a discussion of the present project “Tactical Symbiotics” to which Dr. Henrik Ernstson is also contributing. The project Tactical Symbiotics searches for tactics that can reinforce the interdependence between cultural and biological variation and diversity through cooperation and/or togetherness between humans and non-humans.

Move beyond the comfort zone: three speculative designs
During 2014, Dr. Ávila has worked in Argentina and developed three sub-projects called Doomestics, Dispersal Machines, and Spices/Species. These projects are organized around questions such as: What if individual households would become parts of a decentred industry that capitalises on humans’ negative emotions to certain animals? What if agricultural machines would maintain the diversity of local ecosystems, helping birds and insects pollinate and fertilize, while producing food for humans? What if we could develop affection for insects and parasitoids that participate in the lifecycles of domestic plants? The projects are design-driven and uses speculative philosophy to make explicit alternative versions of the present or near future. By focusing on relations between humans and natural-artificial systems, the projects strives to de-centre anthropocentric viewpoints to become a platform from which to provoke a possibility to reimagine everyday life.
Doomestics work with the tension established by the ecological need (if we are to maintain biological diversity) to cohabit with beings that are perceived as dangerous, undesirable or disgusting. Among them, spiders, scorpions and bats, to name a few. The project stages a series of products that make these beings visible and integrate them in different ways to everyday urban life. Dispersal Machines proposes interventions in agricultural systems that most humans have no direct relationship to. This project conceives machines that complement, supplement and/or maintain the activities of beings that participate in different natural processes such as the dispersion of seeds or pollen, or the secretion of nutrients to the soil. Spices/Species addresses an intimate level of human relationship with nonhuman beings. This concerns plants eaten as food or used for medicinal purposes and the ecosystem functions they perform through forms of symbioses with, for example, insects and parasitoids.
The projects sketch and engage a diversity of responses that range from the intimate, to completely detached human-nonhuman relations. They still have in common that they affect the diversity of, and our relationship to, urban and agro-ecosystems. By confronting us with alternative realities—and alternative emotions, feelings and shivers—the project aims to open up new, and perhaps surprising ethical and moral dimensions to revalue and re-evaluate our present relations with non-humans.

The project strives to formulate a different response to our planetary ecological crisis than those strategies that often sort under terms like “ecosystem services” or “natural resources”. One inspiration for the project can be found in how Michel De Certeau spoke of tactics as practices that evade strategies of power. The seminar will present underlying theory and practical design projects.

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Martín Avila is a Researcher, and Senior Lecturer in Design for Sustainable Development at Konstfack in Stockholm, Sweden. Martin obtained a PhD in design from HDK (School of Design and Crafts) in Gothenburg, Sweden, and has published his thesis entitled Devices. On Hospitality, Hostility and Design (2012). The PhD work was awarded the 2012 prize for design research by the The Swedish Faculty for Design Research and Research Education. Currently working (2013-2016) on a postdoctoral project financed by the Swedish Research Council: Symbiotic tactics. Design interventions for understanding and sensitizing to ecological complexity.

Sanitation politics in Mumbai and Cape Town
2014-11-26 13:00 - 14:00 | Davies Reading Room, Room 2.27, Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000, South Africa
In this talk, Colin McFarlane and Jonathan Silver will reflect on their past work in Mumbai and their new research on the politicisation of sanitation in Cape Town, with particular reference to the ‘poo protests’.
Colin will reflect on his work in the politics of sanitation in Mumbai’s informal settlements. He will draw out some key processes through which sanitation is organised in Mumbai, and the politics around that, as well highlighting some of the theoretical challenges the research presented for thinking about infrastructure and other strands of urban theory.

He will also briefly reflect on emerging work on the politics of sanitation in Cape Town. Their aim is to deepen understanding of how sanitation is politicised in cities, and to contribute to debate and ongoing work on sanitation politics in Cape Town. The objectives are to: examine why and how the ‘poo protests’ emerged in Cape Town; investigate why they took the form that they did; and contextualise the protests in the wider debates about service delivery, urban politics, and social justice in Cape Town. They will conduct the research through interviews with a range of relevant actors including residents, civil society groups, municipal officials, academics and political parties. The research builds on McFarlane’s work in India on the politics of urban sanitation, and Silver’s work on the politics of urban infrastructure in South Africa. These previous research projects examined often ignored everyday experiences of sanitation and infrastructure and used the findings in discussions with municipal officials and civil society groups.
Colin McFarlane is an urban geographer whose work focusses on the experience and politics of informal neighbourhoods. This has involved research into the relations between informality, infrastructure and knowledge in urban India and elsewhere. A key part of this has been a focus on the experience and politics of sanitation in informal settlements in Mumbai, which was part of an Economic and Social Research Council ethnographic project on the everyday cultures and contested politics of sanitation and water in two informal settlements. His current work examines the politicisation of informal neighbourhoods in comparative perspective, including African and South Asian cities.

AAPS 2014 Conference
2014-11-17 - 2014-11-19 | Lagoon Beach Hotel, Lagoon Gate Drive, Milnerton, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
The Association of African Planning Schools (AAPS) is hosting its fourth all-schools conference in 2014. The conference theme is ‘African Urban Planning and the Global South: Pedagogy, Research, Practice’.
The AAPS 2014 Conference will address the central themes and problems of African urbanization. It will focus on developing our understanding of these issues, and how planning curricula can respond to them. While the conference is focused on sub-Saharan Africa, the discussion will be extended to other contexts in the global South.
AAPS 2014 will feature keynote presentations from a number of international experts on cities and urbanization in Africa and the global South, including Edgar Pieterse (African Centre for Cities), Oren Yiftachel (Ben-Gurion University) and Colin MacFarlane (Durham University).
The conference is aimed at urban planning educators, researchers and practitioners seeking to enhance their knowledge of the contemporary issues and debates surrounding African and Southern cities and urbanization. It will also appeal to other built environment professionals, as well as academics in related disciplines with an interest in urban issues.
This is the first time that the AAPS conference will be open to wider attendance. AAPS welcomes submissions from those outside Africa working on urban issues in the global South.

Kapuscinski Development Lecture: Aromar Revi
2014-11-05 18:00 - 19:30 | Lecture Hall 3B, New Snape Building, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa
Putting the Urban at the Heart of the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals
The Millennium Development Goals are expiring and need to be replaced with a new set of globally applicable and locally implementable Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for 2030. Climate Change negotiations are stalled and need a more determined and pragmatic approach if run-away impacts are to be avoided. It is clear that a different economic, social and human development path must be established to ensure greater sustainability and inclusion of all citizens into productive economic life and well-being. Cities and regions across the world provide the opportunity to do this. Africa and Asia are at the centre of the urban, social and economic transitions that the world will witness over the next two decades. It is important that we see political imaginations and leadership from these geographies that address local, regional and global themes.
The lecture will interest policy makers, activists, business leaders, journalists and academics.
About the speaker:
Aromar Revi is Director of the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS) India’s prospective independent national University for Research & Innovation addressing its challenges of urbanisation. He has been a senior advisor to various ministries of the Government of India, and has consulted for a wide range of UN, multilateral, bilateral development and private sector institutions. He is a member of the Leadership Council of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), co-chair of its urban thematic group, and a Fellow of the India China Institute at the New School, New York. A global expert on sustainable urban development, he has co-led a successful international campaign for an urban Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) as part of the UN’s post-2015 development agenda, which brought the major global urban institutions and over 200 cities and institutions together. He has led over 100 major research, consulting and implementation assignments in India and abroad. He has helped structure, design and review development investments in excess of $8 billion, including housing and urban development plans for two-thirds of India’s 29 states in the 1990s. Besides being part of multiple international projects in 6 countries, he has worked on 3 of the world’s 10 largest cities, and with communities across 25 Indian states. A leading expert on Global Environmental Change especially on Climate Change adaptation and mitigation, he is one of the Coordinating Lead Authors for the Urban Areas section of the IPCC 5th Assessment report (2014), and co-PI of an international Climate Adaptation research programme than spans India and Africa. He is one of South Asia’s leading disaster mitigation and management experts and has led emergency teams to assess, plan and execute recovery and rehabilitation programmes for 10 major earthquake, cyclone, surge and flood events affecting over 5 million people, and serves on the Advisory Board of the UNISDR Scientific & Technical Advisory Group and its Global Assessment of Risk.
The Kapuscinski Development Lectures are a series of high-level lectures focused on development-related issues organized jointly by the United Nations Development Programme, the European Community and leading universities and think-tanks. There have been over 50 lectures by top development thinkers since 2009. The lectures honour Ryszard Kapuscinski, the celebrated Polish writer and journalist who covered developing countries. Past lectures have been delivered by, among others, Aung San Suu Kyi, Ashraf Ghani, Jagdish Bhagwati, Helen Clark, Jan Pronk, Jeffrey Sachs, José Antonio Ocampo, Kamal Dervis, Mark Malloch-Brown, Michelle Bachelet and Paul Collier. See: http://kapuscinskilectures.eu
The Kapuscinski Development Lecture in Cape Town is a joint initiative of the European Commission, the United Nations Development Programme, the African Centre for Cities, and the University of Cape Town. The project is funded by the European Commission.
Please take your seats from 5:45 as the lecture is being streamed live and will start at 6:00 promptly.
RSVP maryam.waglay@uct.ac.za using subject line “Kapuscinski Development Lecture”

Density Syndicate Conference
2014-11-03 09:00 - 19:30 | City Hall, Darling Street, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa
The Density Syndicate Think Tank invites you to participate in the presentation of a seven-month project by three multi-disciplinary teams of South African and Dutch designers, city officials and researchers looking at the future of three urban sites in Cape Town. As part of the City Desired Exhibition, project contributors, key City officials and a select number of stakeholders will convene on 3 November 2014 at the City Hall to review and discuss findings.
Twenty years after democracy, South African cities remain stubbornly divided, fragmented, inconvenient for the poor and uninspiring. This has manifested in cities made up of a patchwork of disconnected business districts, wealthy neighbourhoods, gated communities and poor townships. In the case of Cape Town, the affluent City Bowl and southern and northern suburbs stand in contrast to large swathes of township and informal areas. Despite considerable deracialisation of lower middle-class suburbs, the townships and informal areas remain profoundly mono-functional, racially homogenous and most vulnerable to a multiplicity of risks. It is uncontested that the current situation is socially, economically and ecologically unsustainable, yet, despite the availability of urban design expertise and policy commitment to transformation, we have very few compelling examples of how we can imagine and build our city differently. In order to explore how to address these challenges, ACC and INTI have worked with the City of Cape Town on a series of three speculative studios. By using the combined design intelligence of Dutch and South African specialists, The Density Syndicate has enabled the exploration of innovative, alternative strategies for the future of Cape Town.
The symposium will shed light on the proposed scenarios and will invite key stakeholders from local government, academia and mass media to provide feedback on their appropriateness, viability and desirability. The format provides a platform for authors to exhibit the proposal and for key ‘respondents’ to immediately interrogate proposals and raise questions for debate. Animated deliberations are expected to set the tone for an enlightening symposium.
The sites studied by the Density Syndicate are the following:
LOTUS PARK
Lotus Park is a small informal settlement situated between the Khayelitsha-Cape Town train line and the Lotus River Canal. Lotus Park is adjacent to western forecourt of the Nyanga Junction station. The Lotus Park team focused on: maintaining existing density to avoid any relocation; consider how best to optimise mixed use (economic, social and cultural) planning; taking the Lotus River into account in advancing sustainability planning principles.
MAITLAND
Voortrekker Road stretches around 15km from Woodstock in central Cape Town, through Maitland, Goodwood, and Parow to Bellville. It is a busy transport corridor between Bellville and the CBD and is lined with a range of small businesses and light industry. Of particular interest to this project is the Maitland stretch of the corridor. There is a significant unrecognised African immigrant population living and running small businesses in the area and offers another kind of opportunity for exploring density and diversity in Cape Town. In particular, it offers an opportunity to explore a different model of urban regeneration to what has unfolded in the Woodstock and Salt River stretches, anchored by creative industries and high-end retail and fine dining.
TRUP-PLUS + GREENFIELDS STRIP
The TRUP-plus+ site is a greenfield strip that includes the Two Rivers Urban Park and the Athlone Power Station. Situated halfway between the airport and the Cape Town CBD, the decommissioned Athlone Power Station site is uniquely located between three very different suburbs: Pinelands, a predominantly middle class ‘white’ suburb; Athlone, a predominantly ‘coloured’ neighbourhood’; and Langa, a largely poor ‘black’ area. The TRUP-plus+ offers a unique opportunity of experimenting with possibilities of social integration at the nexus of these suburbs.
The Density Syndicate held two studios: one in May and one in July 2014. Participants include representatives from: African Centre for Cities (SA); Cape Town Partnership (SA); City of Cape Town Spatial Planning & Urban Design (SA); Community Organisation Resource Centre (SA); dhk urban (SA); Doepel Strijkers (NL); H+N+S Landscape Architects (NL); International New Town Institute (NL); Jakupa architects + urban designers (SA); Land+Civilization Compositions (NL); Provincial Department of Human Settlements (SA); Sustainability Institute (SA); Urban Water Management Research Unit (SA); Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (SA); Witteveen+Bos (NL); Uberbau (GER); NL Architects (NL).
Conference Programme will be uploaded soon. Watch this space!

The Density Syndicate is a think-tank initiative by the African Centre for Cities (ACC), International New Town Institute (INTI), and in collaboration with the City of Cape Town and Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU). It has been made possible by the City of Cape Town, the Dutch Creative Industries Fund, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and the Netherlands Consulate General, Cape Town. It is also a programmatic component for NL@WDC2014, an initiative of the Netherlands Consulate-General in Cape Town.
Follow us on Facebook and Twitter @ through #DensitySyndicate or #WDC234

Radical Incrementalism & Theories/Practices of Emancipatory Change
2014-10-23 14:00 - 2014-10-24 16:30 | Studio 3, ENGEO Building, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town,, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8001, South Africa
This workshop examines ideas of radical incrementalism across our towns and cities. It seeks to explore theories and practices that can support emancipatory change across urban regions through the power of urban dwellers to challenge poverty, oppression and unjust environments. Such actions and processes take place within and beyond the state and suggest important ways to evaluate prospects for socio-ecological equality across infrastructures, everyday life and the wider urban condition.

This workshop is part of a series of conversations that form a collaborative investigation into developing situated ways of undertaking urban political ecology. Each session focuses on different dimensions of critical approaches to urban theory and brings together scholars from different disciplines whose work explores critical understandings of processes of socio-ecological urbanization. We have 17 confirmed participants who will provide a series of keynotes and shorter provocations to support the open debate nature of the workshop.
Speakers include: Malini Ranganathan (American University, Washington D.C.), Mark Swilling, University of Stellenbosch, Edgar Pieterse (ACC, UCT), Laurence Piper (University of Western Cape), Andrew Charman (Sustainable Livelihoods Foundation), Jonathan Silver (Durham University), and Henrik Ernstson (ACC, UCT).
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The workshop starts at 14.00 on Thursday 23rd of October with an afternoon session and keynote by Edgar Pieterse. This is followed by a full day of workshop sessions between 9.00-16.30 on Friday 24th of October, covering the following themes: “Outlining a radical incrementalism in theory and practice”; “Articulating a radical incrementalism”; “Experiments across infrastructures”; “In and beyond the state”.
The event is open to additional students and scholars. Please email Henrik Ernstson (henrik.ernstson@uct.ac.za) or Jonathan Silver (j.d.silver@durham.ac.uk) as soon as possible if you like to attend or have any questions, or to access detailed background information and schedule. Erin Goodling (Portland State University) will function as rapporteur for this workshop.
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The workshop is an initiative by the Situated Urban Political Ecologies Collective (#SUPE) and the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. It forms part of SUPE Year of Conversation 2014.

Wake up, this is Joburg!!!
2014-10-17 01:00 - 14:00 | Davies Reading Room, Room 2.27, Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000, South Africa
WAKE UP, THIS IS JOBURG: ORDINARY TO OUTRAGEOUS ETHNOGRAPHIES OF URBAN LIFE, is a series of ten photobooks by Tanya Zack and Mark Lewis about the city we hate to love but do anyway. Wake up, this is Joburg tells the stories of ten ordinary, interesting, odd or outrageous denizens of the city of Johannesburg.
The series is published by Fourthwall Books (www.fourthwallbooks.com or www.facebook.com/fourthwallbooks). Note: A limited number of the four titles will be available for sale at the Brown Bag at R150 each, cash only.
Tanya Zack will talk to some of the stories of intersections of particular lives, livelihoods and spaces that make up the first four titles in this series. These are:
Skop: S’kop takes readers into a disused parking garage in the inner city, where cow heads are being chopped. It explores the informal business of chopping cow heads the stories of ‘the butchers and traders and entrepreneurs who have made this business uniquely theirs, speak of the hardships of their work in the meat trade and the occasional rewards of making it on their own.
Zola: Under the Mooi Street off-ramp is an overflow rank for taxis waiting between peak hours to ferry people between the inner city and Zola, Soweto. Here entrepreneurs cater all day to the needs of drivers from an array of mobile and stationary stalls, selling food and snacks, socks, window wipers, mobile phone attachments and bumper stickers with messages like ‘You also drive like shit so fuck off’.
Tony Dreams in Yellow and Blue: In the nondescript working class suburb of Turffontein, which has always hosted migrants, a restless outsider artist is at work transforming his home into a veritable castle of lights, turrets, murals, manikins and stairways. He is an obsessive collector of ‘waste’, but also an entrepreneur whose property is home to 17 rent-paying households.
Inside Out: This is a story of low-end globalisation—of food and other commodities traded and retailed informally across South Africa’s borders by people using the same principles as multinationals, but with no formal credit or banking facilities.

Tanya Zack is a town planner. Her major areas of focus have been in housing research and policy development, community participation and evaluation of large scale development projects. She has worked within local government and as a private consultant, both on policy work and in practical projects. She has a close relationship to Wits University where she obtained a PhD for work on critical pragmatism in planning. Tanya grew up in the inner city suburbs of Johannesburg.Her current interest is in the narratives of entrepreneurs working in the Johannesburg CBD.
Image credit: Mark Lewis

Complicit masculinity on the African urban periphery
2014-10-08 13:00 - 14:00 | Davies Reading Room, Room 2.27, Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000, South Africa
In her talk titled “Entrepreneurs and consumers: complicit masculinity on the African urban periphery”, Dr Jordanna Matlon will explore the relationship between masculinity and work in the double context of protracted economic and political crisis in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire. She draws on participant observation fieldwork and interviews with men in Abidjan’s informal sector from 2008 to 2009, and is supplemented by visual data. Ivoirian men who engage in informal activities overwhelmingly claim that they cannot be viable marriage partners, and are thus incapable of achieving adult masculinity. “I examine two groups of men: political propagandists (orators) and mobile street vendors, to understand how men affirm themselves in the absence of steady and dignifying work”, she says. Both groups rejected the wage-earning working ideal as “Francophone” and asserted alternative modalities of economic participation as “Anglophone” men: entrepreneurs or consumers. Orators used ties to President Laurent Gbagbo’s political regime to secure livelihoods and pursue entrepreneurial identities. Vendors bypassed the state and asserted consumerist models of black masculinity from across the African diaspora. I employ “complicit masculinity” to examine how a relationship to capital mediates masculine identity. In doing so I demonstrate how men’s desires to counter gendered socioeconomic exclusion generate consent toneoliberal capitalism.
About the speaker
Jordanna Matlon is a postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse and received her doctorate in Sociology from UC Berkeley in 2012. She uses participant observation, interviews and visual analysis to study the livelihoods and lifestyles of men in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire’s informal economy. More generally, she is interested in questions of race and belonging in Africa and the African diaspora, and the ways “blackness” as a signifier – and in its intersection with gender, class, and national identity – illuminates understandings of popular culture, postcoloniality and neoliberalism in the contemporary city. Jordanna’s work has appeared in Antipode, Contexts, Ethnography and Poetics, among other places, and she is currently preparing her book manuscript, tentatively titled “I will be VIP!”: Masculinity, Modernity and Crisis on the Neoliberal Periphery.

Video abstract:
http://antipodefoundation.org/2014/02/17/narratives-of-modernity-masculinity-and-citizenship/

Streets can be more than they are: Exploring Open Streets
2014-09-17 13:00 - 14:00 | Davies Reading Room, Room 2.27, Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000, South Africa
Open Streets Cape Town, despite its short existence, has succeeded in capturing the imagination of many local residents.
With origins in Bogota Colombia in the mid 1970s, “Open Streets” has become a global movement with increased growth in the past five years. Tactics to explore and reclaim public space are central to the Open Streets philosophy. However, tactics must be shifted and changed given the location and context. It is in this spirit that this talk will discuss the nature of Open Streets in other cities, what has been possible in Cape Town to date, future visions for the Cape Town Open Streets, and what type of impact the programme, and similar programmes, can aim to have in terms of social development, urban planning and economic opportunity.
The discussion will be reflective in nature addressing critical questions such as how can a powerful event translate into a lifestyle? how can it address conflicting uses of the street? and how can it genuinely bridge the spatial divide of our city?
About the Speakers
Marcela Guerrero Casas was born and raised in Bogota, Colombia, Marcela Guerrero Casas is passionate about cities and public space. Marcela holds a Masters in Public Administration and International Affairs from Syracuse University and has worked in policy and advocacy for almost ten years. Marcela moved to Johannesburg in 2006 and worked in Zimbabwe, Swaziland and Kenya before moving permanently to Cape Town in 2011. In 2012, Marcela co-founded Open Streets, a citizen-led organization working to transform how streets are perceived, utilized and experienced. Marcela is also a co-founder of SUR Collective, a platform for cultural exchange between Latin American and Sub-Saharan African countries and is currently a contributor to the African Centre for Cities’ Serious Fun.
Diana Sanchez-Betancourt is a senior researcher at the HSRC. She holds an MA in social sciences from Uppsala Universitet in Sweden and a BA degree in political science and international relations from Universidad Externado in Colombia. She is currently a World Social Sciences Fellow on Sustainable Urbanisation (2013-2015).Her research is trans-disciplinary and her main areas of interest include sustainable urbanisation, citizen engagement, social cohesion and collaborative work with Latin America. Amongst other projects Diana coordinates a cross-regional Learning Alliance on citizen engagement and oversight under the international ELLA (Evidence and Lessons from Latin America) programme, and a study on citizen engagement in the sphere of local government within the Cities Support Programme led by National Treasury. Her most recent work, to be published, explores the relationship between public spaces, social integration and sustainable urbanisation in Cape Town, where she is also an activist and volunteer around these issues.

In the skin of the city: the street and its doubles
2014-08-20 15:00 - 16:30 | Davies Reading Room, Room 2.27, Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000, South Africa
In this presentation, Anthropologist António Tomás (ACC’s the 2014 Ray Pahl Fellow) will undertake to provide a layered description of the city of Luanda by engaging with a number of ethnographic vignettes based on his wanderings through the city. “Such a methodology has two sources” says Tomás. “First, I draw on the modernist figure of the flâneur as it was proposed by Charles Baudelaire and theorized by Walter Benjamin. Second, I also draw on the methods for wandering in the city (later on theorized by de Certeau) that was called psycho-geography by the situationists. I use this methodology in reference to the situationists who developed it as a way to ‘deconstruct’ Le Corbusian’s modernist ambitions in transforming Paris.”
This exercise allows Tomás to provide a description not only of the surface of the city (or the city from the surface), but to also find a vantage point to “deconstruct” Luanda’s colonial and postcolonial imaginaries. By annalyzing the prevailing practices of anonymous Luandans who give names to streets that disavowal their official designations, he gains a further understanding of the surface of the city that goes beyond its own (modernist) visibility.
About the author
António Tomás received his doctoral degree in Anthropology from Columbia University, New York. He is the author of a study on the African nationalist Amílcar Cabral titled O Fazedor de Utopias: Uma Biografia de Amílcar (The Maker of Utopias: A Biography of Amilcar Cabral (Lisbon [Portugal]; Praia [Cape Verde], Tinta da China; Spleen, 2007; 2008). Tomás is the 2014 Ray Pahl Fellow at the African Centre for Cities, working on a book called In the skin of the city: Luanda, or the dialectics of spatial transformation.

Cape Town’s new Development Charges Policy for Engineering Services
2014-08-13 13:00 - 14:00 | Davies Reading Room, Room 2.27, Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000, South Africa
The City of Cape Town has recently approved a new Development Charges Policy for Engineering Services. This policy pins down some vexing questions.
When land use intensifies the municipality has to increase its infrastructure networks to accommodate the increased demand for services. There is always a cost to the city, but who should cover that cost: the developer or the body of ratepayers as a whole? How should the municipality calculate that amount? Should socially beneficial land use changes, like low-income housing have to pay the same as land use changes that are commercially driven? Should there be a different method of calculating this amount for small or emerging businesses as opposed to big businesses? Why can’t the costs of extending the infrastructure networks be covered through monthly tariffs for the different services?
Nick Graham and Stephen Berrisford have been part of the professional team, headed by AECOM, drafting the new policy for the City of Cape Town. They are also working on the National Treasury’s process to develop national law and policy on the subject. They will share their experiences at the ACC’s Brown Bag session and explain the rationale behind the new policy as well as identify some of the implications for the city of the new approach.
Nick Graham is a Director at PDG, responsible for the Urban Systems Practice Area. He is an urban geographer and registered professional engineer with Masters degrees in civil engineering, environmental policy and urban geography.
Stephen Berrisford is an independent consultant specialising in the legal and policy frameworks governing urban land and development. He is trained as a lawyer and urban planner, with degrees from the Universities of Cape Town and Cambridge. He works primarily in southern and eastern Africa as well as on global initiatives for agencies such as UN-Habitat, Cities Alliance and the World Bank. Stephen is an adjunct associate professor at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and visiting professor at the University of the Witwatersrand. He was the governance coordinator for the Urban Land Markets Programme Southern Africa (Urban LandMark), a UK aid-funded think tank focused on making urban land markets in southern Africa work better for the poor.
Image credit: Barry Christianson

Political and Affective Ecologies of the City
2014-07-30 15:00 - 16:30 | Davies Reading Room, Room 2.27, Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000, South Africa
In her talk, Dr Karen Till will explore the limitations and possibilities of considering urban ecology as a means to ‘think the city differently’. Her starting premise is simple: how might we begin to challenge dominant paradigms in urban theory, including resilience and neoliberal speculative urbanisms, that define ground merely as property and contain time according to desire and fear? Using examples from cities around the world, the talk will address the concept of the wounded city and a place-based ethics of care according to intersecting urban temporal and spatial meshworks that include: social and material environments, relational networks, local pathways, alternative exchange systems, affective ecologies, enacted assemblages, and urban ecosystem wholeness.
About the speaker
Dr. Karen E. Till is Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography at the National University of Ireland at Maynooth. A cultural and urban geographer, Karen is working on a book entitled ‘Wounded Cities’. It is a comparative ethnographic project about cities marked by histories of state-perpetrated violence, with case studies in Berlin, Bogota, Cape Town and Dublin.
Required Reading
Wounded Cities 2012

Critical gaming practices: Alex Apsan Frediani in conversation with Liza Cirolia
2014-07-17 18:00 - 19:30 | PROVENANCE AUCTION HOUSE, 6 - 8 VREDE STREET, GARDENS, CAPE TOWN, Western Cape, 8001, South Africa
Alexandre Apsan Frediani is co-director of the masters programme in Social Development Practice at the Bartlett Development Planning Unit, University College London (UCL). He has worked extensively in various parts of the world exploring the potential of urban games to address injustices in the city — especially when applied in contexts of informal settlement upgrading.
In a wide ranging conversation with Liza Cirolia, a housing policy specialist who co-convenes the Human Settlements CityLab at African Centre for Cities, Frediani will discuss the capacity of urban games to creatively engage with social diversity and power relations and foster cross-scalar thinking and share some of his experiences working with Architecture Sans Frontières and in Salvador (Brazil), Nairobi (Kenya) and Quito (Ecuador) with local collectives who embedded participatory design initiatives within their wider agenda of deepening democratic practices in the city.

Ronald Wall: Investment flows into African & European cities
2014-06-25 13:00 - 14:00 | Davies Reading Room, Room 2.27, Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000, South Africa
In his talk “South Rising? Exploring ten years of investment flows into African and European countries and cities” Ronald Wall compares ten years of investment flows into African and European countries and cities and also shows which social, economic and spatial location factors are important for attracting these investments and how these differ across the two regions. Wall includes GIS mapping of the networks and econometric results in his analysis. This will be followed by a discussion on how African cities could use this type of knowledge for development strategies.

About the Speaker
Ronald Wall is an economic geographer and urban planner who has worked for various urban planning offices, governmental organizations and academic institutions. He is head of the economic geography department at the IHS / Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. He specializes in economic network analysis e.g trade and investment flows between cities. Wall has worked on projects in Africa, The Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and Europe. Over the past 15 years, the central focus of his work has been the development of resilient urban planning based on interdisciplinary collaboration and by understanding the local, regional and global network characteristics of cities. He has worked with architects, scientists, policymakers and academics – and won various architectural prizes, been awarded several research grants and published in leading journals. Wall lectures at a variety of urban planning and economics schools.

BOOK LAUNCH: Africa's Urban Revolution
2014-05-27 18:00 - 19:30 | Book Lounge, 71 Roeland Street, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8001, South Africa
UCT and The Book Lounge will be hosting the launch of Africa’s Urban Revolution, the new volume edited by Susan Parnell and Edgar Pieterse

Sub-Saharan Africa's New Suburbs
2014-05-22 13:00 - 14:00 | Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Science, Upper Campus, UCT,, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa
Remaking the Edges: Sub-Saharan Africa’s New Suburbs — This paper examines the edge areas of Lusaka, based on fieldwork from 2013, as a broad example of the trajectory of urban expansion at the new urban frontiers in Sub-Saharan Africa. I emphasize four themes: (1) the significance of new foreign investment in urban frontier zones (particularly from China); (2) the bifurcated character of the expansion; (3) the rise of surveillance technologies; and (4) the endurance of continuities with European colonialism.
About the Speaker:
Garth Myers is the Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Urban International Studies at Trinity College. He is Director of the Urban Studies Program. A geographer with thirty years of research experience on and in African cities, Myers teaches courses in both urban studies and international studies at Trinity. Myers has contributed to the growth of urban studies and geography research on the continent, through 5 books and more than 60 articles and book chapters. His most recent book is African Cities: Alternative Visions of Urban Theory and Practice (London: Zed Books, 2011).

Density Syndicate: Studio 01
2014-05-13 08:00 - 2014-05-16 17:00 | Guga S’Thebe Arts and Culture Centre, Washington Street, Langa (right turn off Bunga Ave at Fisher's Corner Cafe) , Cape Town, 8000, South Africa
The Density Syndicate officially kicks off with its first studio on 12 May 2014 at Guga S’Thebe Arts and Culture Centre in Langa. Multi-disciplinary teams, consisting of Dutch and South African urbanists, researchers, and activists will collaborate to develop speculative designs that improve density, and accommodate social mix in a sustainable way. Participants include representatives from: African Centre for Cities (SA); Arup (SA); Cape Town Partnership (SA); City of Cape Town Spatial Planning & Urban Design (SA); Community Organisation Resource Centre (SA); dhk urban (SA); Doepel Strijkers (NL); Dutch Consulate (NL-SA); H+N+S Landscape Architects (NL); International New Town Institute (NL); Jakupa (SA); Land+Civilsation Compositions (NL); Provincial Department of Human Settlements (SA); Sustainability Institute (SA); Urban Water Management Research Unit (SA); Violence Prevention through Urban Upgrading (SA); Witteveen+Bos (NL).
Follow us on the ACC website; Facebook and Twitter @ through #DensitySyndicate or #WDC234

Politics, informality and clientelism
2014-04-29 11:00 - 12:00 | Studio 5, Environmental and Geographical Science, Upper Campus, UCT,, Cape Town, 8001, South Africa
In her paper “Politics, informality and clientelism – exploring a pro-poor urban politics” Diana Mitlin explores what we have learnt about how to instigate, negotiate or otherwise secure pro-poor government in towns and cities of the global South. With competition for scarce resources, the processes of urban development and specifically the acquisition of land and basic services are intensely political. While the nature of urban poverty differs, there is a consistent set of needs related to residency in informal settlements; tenure is insecure and there is a lack of access to basic services, infrastructure, and sometimes other entitlements. Households and communities have to negotiate these collective consumption goods in a context in which political relations are primarily informal with negotiations that take place away from the transparent and accountable systems of ‘modern’ government. Clientelist bargaining prevails. Much of the existing literature is polarised either critiquing clientelism for its consequences, or arguing that it has been dismissed without any grounded assessment of what might take its place and any considered analysis of what it has managed to deliver.
About the Speaker:
Diana Mitlin is principle researcher in the Human Settlements Group of the International Institute for Environment and Development. Her areas of research interest and expertise include urban poverty, poverty reduction, community development and civil society. Her current work focuses on collaboration with grassroots organization and support agencies to improve urban neighbourhoods (land tenure, basic services and housing). Before starting with IIED she worked as an economist for the UK Government and has also taught at the Institute for Development Policy and Management at the University of Manchester.
Advance Reading: ESID working paper_Mitlin

Towards Accessible Urban Areas
2014-04-23 13:00 - 14:00 | Davies Reading Room, Room 2.27, Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000, South Africa
Towards Accessible Urban Areas for Persons with Disabilities: Over 600 million people, approximately 10% of the world’s population, have some type of a disability. In developing countries, due to the two fold correlation between disability and poverty, up to 20% of the population has a disability. Due to structural, environmental and attitudinal barriers they continue to face, persons with disabilities are often prevented from fully participating in the economic and social life, leading to their further impoverishment. Amidst a wide array of tools used to enable the full participation in the society of persons with disabilities, accessibility and universal design are of significant importance when it comes to urban planning. This presentation focuses on transport and infrastructure within the urban setting, and aims to further the understanding of the mobility and access issues experienced by persons with disabilities in developing countries, and to identify specific steps that can be taken to start addressing problems.
About the speaker
Maša Anišić is a doctoral candidate at the Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna in Italy. Her doctoral thesis examines the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and the impact of its innovative architecture on the stronger social, economic and cultural rights fulfillment for persons with disabilities.

Climate Change, Cape Town and King Canute: the risk of sea-level rise to the City of Cape Town
2014-04-22 17:30 | 2nd Floor, City Hall, Western Cape, South Africa
As part of the Future Forshore Project, Anton Cartwright (ACC – UCT) and Darryl Colenbrander (CoCT) will be discussing the issue of sea level rise in Cape Town.

African Centre for Cities at the World Urban Forum 2014
2014-04-07 08:00 - 2014-04-12 17:00 | Unnamed Venue, Medellín, Colombia
ACC will have a strong presence at the World Urban Forum, and will be participating in a number of events.

Date

Time and venue

Event title

Organisers

ACC participants

8 April

14:00 – 16:00(Yellow Pavilion – Room 4)

Networking event (NE 4): A debate on new formal housing policies: building a just City?

Global Urban Research Centre (GURC), School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester

Edgar Pieterse (speaker)

8 April

16:00 –18:15 (UN-HABITAT Pavilion – City Changer Room A)

The urban legal guide: growing a dialogue between Latin American and African countries.

African Centre for Cities, UCT

Stephen Berrisford (Convenor and speaker)

8 April

16:30 – 18:30(Red Pavilion – Room 19)

Networking event (NE 42): Harnessing economic potential: street vending, enterprise growth, and urban equity.

Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)

Caroline Skinner (convenor)

9 April

10:00 – 11:00 (Palacio de Exposiciones- Salón Medellín)

Slum urbanism: notes towards a framework for transformation.

Grupo Argos

Edgar Pieterse (speaker)

9 April

12:00-13:00 (Yellow Pavilion – Room number 8)

Side Event (SE 8) Urban Equity: Looking back/Moving forward

N-Aerus (Network-Association for European Researchers on Urbanization in the South)

Edgar Pieterse (speaker)

9 April

14:00 – 16:00(Yellow Pavilion –Room 12)

Networking event (NE 58): Planning differently: community-based slum upgrading studios.

Association of African Planning Schools (AAPS)

Nancy Odendaal (convenor)

9 April

14:45 –15:45 (Urban Library)

Book launch: A tale of 10 cities: findings from the Informal Economy Monitoring Study.

Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO)

Caroline Skinner (convenor)

10 April

16:00 – 18:00(UN-HABITAT Pavilion – City Changer Room)

LSE Cities World Urban Forum Session:Cities and the new climate economy: infrastructure, innovation and the spatial fix.

LSE Cities

Edgar Pieterse (chair)

Policy & Governance Contexts for Scalable Community-Led Slum Upgrading
2014-04-02 13:00 - 14:00 | Davies Reading Room, Room 2.27, Environmental and Geographical Science, UCT, Cape Town, Western Cape, 8000, South Africa
The presentation first addresses the policy and governance contexts for the scalability of community-led slum upgrading based on the Shack/Slum Dweller International methodology. The methodology is based on that of the Indian Alliance (NSDF, Mahila Milan, SPARC), which comprises community-based organizations and NGOs, in partnership with government, delivering municipal services, securing tenure and promoting slum upgrading. The presentation continues with the role of the Pune and Mumbai community-led toilet block precedents in South-South knowledge exchange.
About the speaker
Richard Tomlinson is Chair in Urban Planning in the Faculty of Architecture Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. Before going to Australia he served as an urban policy consultant in Southern Africa and as an academic in South Africa and the USA. His clients included the post-apartheid South African government, and provincial and local governments, The World Bank, USAID, UN Habitat international and local NGOs, and also the private sector. As an academic he has served as a Visiting Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand and Columbia University, as a Visiting Scholar and SPURS Fellow at MIT, and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution. His most recent publications, research and teaching concern the effects of Google and social media on urban policy knowledge products; urban policy processes and ‘international best practice’; slum upgrading; the BRICS and the urban legacy of sports mega events; and housing and the Australian city. His most recent book is an edited publication on Australia’s Unintended Cities: The Impact of Housing on Urban Development.

SA Cities Conference
2014-03-27 08:00 - 2014-03-29 17:00 | Wits University, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa
The third SA Cities conference takes place at Wits University in Johannesburg. This conference brings together emerging and established South African urban scholars. It is a joint project of CUBES & ACC. Details to follow.

GPIA Presents Edgar Pieterse on Africa's Urban Revolution
2014-03-25 08:00 - 17:00 | The Auditorium; Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall, 66 West 12th Street (formerly known as Tishman), New York, NY, United States
at , Alvin Johnson/J.M. Kaplan Hall

IIHS/ACC Seminar
2014-03-24 08:00 - 2014-03-26 17:00 | UCT, Seminar Room 1 Chemical Engineering, UCT Upper Campus, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS SEMINAR HAS BEEN POSTPONED. FURTHER DETAILS TO BE SUPPLIED WHEN AVAILABLE
