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Public Art and the Power of Place

Cape Town Library Cnr Parade and Darling Streets, Cape Town

start again the new road at dawn. yesterday’s road has led to yesterday’s destination. today is a new chaos. a new journey. a new city. needing new paths. and new standards. Ben Okri - The Ruin and The Forest Cape Town remains stubbornly segregated, with a large portion of the population living in undesirable conditions. Access to resources is still skewed towards the formal art market based in the City Bowl. Despite this, there are numerous people engaging in critical and creative ways of re-articulating the potential of the city through art. Increasingly, public-facing art is playing a central role in imagining a free, inspired and inclusive reality. Public Art and the Power of Place, initiated by the African Centre for Cities at UCT, with support from the National Lotteries Commission, emerged as an experiment in finding new ways of representing and interconnecting with socio-political urban issues in Cape Town. It involved supporting seven public art projects in Cape Town’s townships in 2015. From Khayelitsha to Bonteheuwel, optimistic and determined individuals explored the significance and impossibilities of place outside the City Bowl. The ACC is excited to invite you to the closing event of the project at the Cape Town Library (Corner Darling and Parade Streets), where the stories and reflections of these projects will be used to ignite an open and constructive conversation about the present and the future of public art within the context of Cape Town. Through dialogue, workshops and an archival exhibition the two-day intervention builds a platform for a collective exploration of publicness. An African Centre for Cities project with guest curators Valeria Geselev and Naz Saldulker. See the attached programme, check out the Facebook event or contact powerofplace@uct.ac.za for more details. PoP_Programme_18July   FUNDED BY: The NLC relies on funds from the proceeds of the National Lottery. The Lotteries Act guides the way in which NLC funding may be allocated. The intention of NLC funding is to make a difference to the lives of all South Africans, especially those more vulnerable and to improve the sustainability of the beneficiary organisations. Available funds are distributed to registered and qualifying non-profit organisations in the fields of charities; arts, culture and national heritage; and sport and recreation. By placing its emphasis on areas of greatest need and potential, the NLC contributes to South Africa’s development.

Kigali and Rwanda: reflections on a capital city and its territory

African Centre for Cities UCT Upper Campus, Cape Town, South Africa

The ACC is honoured to welcome Professor Tomà Berlanda, an architect with extensive international academic and professional experience, to the Brown Bag Series. Unlike other African capitals, Kigali has not been established as a city by a colonial power. Even though it was founded under German rule, it became capital only after Rwanda’s independence from Belgium in 1962, and until 1994 remained relatively small. The Belgian occupiers always remained hostile to the development of urban centres, because they attributed to Rwanda the main function of providing work force, to be employed in their other neighbouring colony to the west. During the first and second Rwandese republic, the growing concentration of bureaucratic and administrative functions did increase the number of inhabitants, without though giving rise to an uncontrolled expansion. During that time the government further attempted to consolidate the secondary urban centres, and moreover maintain an economic and social structure based on agriculture. From the end of the 80’s onwards, though, following the introduction of the structural adjustment plans and the dismantling or privatisation of state owned industrial plants, that approach has been left. Today, urbanisation has become an intentional strategic goal of government policies, and, together with land tenure regularisation and the growth of private led industrialisation, this has a huge impact in the re-design of the entire territory. In official documents this transformation is considered a goal to be pursued and encouraged through the reorganization of agricultural activities, the concentration of investments in urban centres, the adoption of measures aimed at moving and grouping population. This direction is apparent in policies and programmatic indications at national level and is further confirmed in documents at the local level, from district plans to master plans. The territorial imbalance in growth between the capital city and the rest of the country is a reason for concern, and is at the same time the result, and an indication, of global phenomena and local circumstances. Furthermore, it highlights the need to consider Kigali's evolution in close connection to all that of the Rwandese countryside. Not only because of the migration of population, but also because the establishment of a "competitive city in the global market" such as is conceived and pursued today requires massive investments and a gigantic drainage of resources. At the risk of resulting in a macro-cephalous capital detached from the rest of the country.   About the speaker: Born in Venice, Tomà Berlanda is an architect with extensive international academic and professional experience. As of April 2015 he serves as Director and Professor at the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics at the University of Cape Town, where he pursues his research interests focusing on the implications that can be drawn from a non stereotypical reading of the African city and the practice of architecture in non- Western urban settings and landscapes. This follows upon his position as co-founder of asa studio in Kigali (2012-14), where he led an extensive design and build campaign to provide community based early childhood and health facilities across Rwanda. The award winning work has been published widely, and included in the Afritecture: Building Social Change (2013) and the Africa: Architecture, Culture and identity (2015) exhibitions. He has held teaching positions at various institutions, and has been Assistant Professor at Syracuse University (2009-10), Visiting Critic at Cornell University (2012) and Senior Lecturer at the Kigali Institute of Science and Technology (2011-3). He has been member of the editorial board of rivista tecnica, Lugano, and a regular contributor for de Architect, den Haag. He holds a Diploma in architecture from the Accademia di architettura in Mendrisio, Swtizerland (2002) and a Ph.D in Architecture and Building design from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy (2009). He is the author of "Architectural Topograhies" (Routledge, 2014), as well as number of articles and chapters in international publications.

Workshop: Thinking infrastructure with the South

HICCUP — Heterogeneous Infrastructure Configuration of Cities in Uganda Project: Thinking Infrastructure with the South Introduction The scale, magnitude and intensity of urbanisation in Africa has attracted increasing attention given the nature of environmental, social, economic and more importantly, political challenges it presents. The diverse ecology of Africa’s urban landscape raises serious questions that have provoked debate not only within academia, but among public administrators, civil society and the private sector as well. The HICCUP research initiative was conceived to provide a platform where critical questions especially about waste resource flows and the emerging multi-actor hegemonies, the resulting networks, how these multi-actor interactions are mediated within formal and informal institutional structures and processes. In addition, the initiative will also explore other equally critical questions relating to sustainability and equality. Two subprojects will be undertaken to generate the kind of information that will shape our learning about the dynamics of urbanisation in Africa. The project will work in Kampala and Mbale, two cities in Uganda where the focus will be on waste and sanitation.   Research Team The workshop will be conducted by Drs. Henrik Ernstson, Shauib Lwasa, and Jonathan Silver, who are part of a highly experienced team from various international institutions involved in the initiative. The workshop is intend to engage four students (3 MSc and 1 PhD), who have been selected to be part of the initiative to promote critical and radical thinking about Global-South Urbanism. The event will also be attended by several civil society organisations that could potentially be partners under the HICCUP initiative. Aims of Workshop a.    To finalise planning on practicalities of the research program (i.e. roles/responsibilities, research timelines, key outputs etc.) b.    To undertake some teaching and shared learning with the four the students c.    To visit some potential fieldwork sites d.    To meet some potential partners (ACTogether/NSDFU, KALOCODE, SSA/UHSNET, LOGEL etc…)

CityLab Symposium

Studio 3 ENGEO Building, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town,, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

The African Centre for Cities’ CityLab programme facilitates the co-production of policy-relevant knowledge to reduce urban poverty through the engagement of researchers, government officials and civil society. Started in 2008, the CityLab programme created a platform for interaction between practitioners and researchers and has generated a wide range of different kinds of knowledge on Cape Town. The CityLab programme also became a core component of Mistra Urban Futures, a network of institutions involved in the co-production of urban knowledge in five cities around the world. Please join us in reflecting on the Sustainable Human Settlements CityLab, the Urban Violence, Safety and Inclusion CityLab, the Healthy Cities CityLab and the Public Culture CityLab. The co-ordinators of the CityLabs, Dr Warren Smit, Dr Mercy Brown-Luthango, Dr Rike Sitas and Liza Cirolia, will present key findings from the CityLab process, followed by a discussion and a light lunch. The symposium will be hosted on 18 August in Studio 3 in the Environmental and Geographical Sciences building on Upper Campus at UCT, from 10h00 to 13h00, followed by lunch. Please RSVP to Rike Sitas on rike.sitas@uct.ac.za by 12 August 2016 CityLab_Symposium_Invite

The Informal Economy’s Role in Feeding Cities – a Missing Link in Policy Debates?

Studio 3 ENGEO Building, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town,, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

Food is fundamental not only to well-being, but to our social and economic lives. Despite this, one of the biggest challenges facing many people in cities all over the world today is hunger. As cities rapidly urbanise, different pressures are placed on the food system which has resulted in the least nutritious food being the most affordable. This seminar series will explore the informal economy, food systems, food security and urbanisation. The first seminar is entitled 'The Informal Economy’s Role in Feeding Cities - A Missing Link in Policy Debates?' and will be presented by Caroline Skinner and Gareth Haysom. Abstract The paper starts by considering the genealogy of the term ‘informal sector’ and then reviews the international context – urbanisation trends and the latest estimates on the size and contribution of the informal economy. The former confirm Crush and Frayne’s contention of the likelihood of an urban future for the majority of Africans and latter suggest that informal work is a predominant source of non-agricultural employment on the most regions of the Global South. Attention is then turned to the South African informal economy, which although smaller than our developing country counterparts, is still a significant source of employment. The informal economy is thus playing a key role in household income – a key aspect of accessibility, particularly in urban areas. The paper then outlines the evidence on the informal economies role in food sourcing of poorer households. The paper critically assesses the current food security policy position in South Africa and the post-Apartheid policy response to the informal economy in general both nationally and in key urban centres. We trace a productionist and rural bias in the food security agenda and argue that the policy environment for informal operators is at best benign neglect and at worse actively destructive. Speaker bios Caroline Skinner is a Senior Researcher at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and Urban Policies Research Director for the global action-research-policy network Women in Informal Employment: Globalizing and Organizing (WIEGO). For over 15 years, Skinner’s work has interrogated the nature of the informal economy with a focus on informing advocacy processes and livelihood-centred policy and planning responses. She has published widely on the topic. Dr Gareth Haysom holds a Ph.D in Environmental and Geographic Sciences from UCT. The focus of his Ph.D was on urban food system governance. Gareth is the southern cities project coordinator for the Hungry Cities Partnership project at the ACC. He also works on the Consuming Urban Poverty research project. Venue: Studio 3, EGS Building, Upper Campus, UCT

A systematic review of the literature that focuses on both the ‘informal economy’ and ‘food security’ in South Africa

Studio 3 ENGEO Building, Upper Campus. University of Cape Town,, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa

Food is fundamental not only to well-being, but to our social and economic lives. Despite this, one of the biggest challenges facing many people in cities all over the world today is hunger. As cities rapidly urbanise, different pressures are placed on the food system which has resulted in the least nutritious food being the most affordable. This seminar series will explore the informal economy, food systems, food security and urbanisation. The second seminar is entitled 'A systematic review of the literature that focuses on both the ‘informal economy’ and ‘food security’ in South Africa' presented by Candice Kelly and Etai Even-Zahav (Research Fellows at the Sustainability Institute). Abstract Despite the importance of the informal food economy in fulfilling the daily and weekly food needs of a large proportion of South Africa’s low-income population, it appears little research exists on the exact nature of the relationship between the informal food economy and food security. This paper performed the first qualitative systematic review of research from South Africa that addresses both these aspects. The methods used in the review are described in detail, to increase the readers’ ability to assess the reliability of subsequent findings and analysis. Findings confirmed the low level of research focus on the informal food economy (and food security), in particular the stages of the value chain beyond the farm gate and before the consumer. Food safety research is common, although applied narrowly and with mixed findings. The conceptualisation of nutrition research is encouragingly wide, encompassing both over- and under-nutrition, but does not seem to consider the broader urban informal context in which consumers are embedded. Lastly, the research approaches used are predominately quantitative, and the voices of those who survive within the informal food economy are largely absent. Bios Candice Kelly's doctoral research focuses on people leading food system transitions in South Africa. She teaches into the MPhil at the Sustainability Institute, focusing on sustainable food systems. Etai Even-Zahav is also part of the Food Systems team at the Sustainability Institute. He is particularly interested in the informal food economy.

Spatial Transformation CityLab Seminar

The River Club Cnr Liesbeck Parkway & Observatory Road, Cape Town , South Africa

South African cities today continue to be marked by spatial fragmentation, low density sprawl and highly unequal land distribution patterns.  Cape Town as a city is plagued by the same inefficient, fragmented and exclusionary spatial patterns inherited from Apartheid. In light of this, the ACC has embarked on a new research project which focuses on the potential of the Voortrekker Road Corridor (VRC) and specifically the Western Area (including Maitland, Kensington and Facreton) to bring about spatial transformation.  This work is supported by the French Development Agency (AFD). One of the components of this research project is a bi-monthly seminar series which will draw academics, officials and other practitioners into conversation about a number of pertinent topics. These include for example: unpacking what spatial transformation means in Cape Town, the role of corridor projects in facilitating this transformation, the potential and challenges of transit-oriented development and the role of government policy  instruments and programmes like the Urban Development Zone (UDZ) tax incentive to support social and spatial integration. To kick off the seminar series, Francesco Orsini, a visiting researcher from Colombia will present a case study of Medellin’s Social Urbanism” programme. This will provide key insights and a useful basis for future deliberations about the nature and dynamics of interventions to transform Cape Town’s spatial form.

Brown Bag Event: From Naartjies to Nando’s

African Centre for Cities UCT Upper Campus, Cape Town, South Africa

The ACC is excited to introduce Sarah Duff to the Brown Bag series. She will be discussing a history of Johannesburg's foodways as they relate to migration. Presentation: ‘From Naartjies to Nando’s: The Making of Johannesburg’s Foodways’ The history of Johannesburg’s foodways is, as in the case of most cities, entangled with histories of migration. As historians of both food and of migration have demonstrated, not only does migration shape the ways in which groups of people think about their identities in relation to food (and often how nations define themselves through food), but immigrants are often disproportionately involved in food industries. While historians of Africa have begun to turn their attention to histories of food, this remains a relatively new area of study for the region, and, more specifically, for South Africa. This essay begins to address this lacuna by considering how migration shaped how Johannesburg’s diverse population ate, bought, and thought about food. About Sarah Duff: Sarah Emily Duff is Researcher at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research at the University of the Witwatersrand. Primarily an historian of childhood and sexuality, she is the author of Changing Childhoods in the Cape Colony: Dutch Reformed Church Evangelicalism and Colonial Childhood, 1860-1895 (Palgrave, 2015). She is funded by a five-year Research Career Advancement Fellowship from the National Research Foundation and is currently at work on a project which traces the history of sex education in twentieth-century South Africa.  

Brown Bag Event: Lagos a Plotted City Revisited

African Centre for Cities UCT Upper Campus, Cape Town, South Africa

ACC Brown Bag  – ‘mock PhD defence’   Thesis title: PLOTTING the prevalent but undertheorised residential areas of Lagos. Conceptualising a process of urbanisation through grounded theory and comparison   The ACC is pleased to welcome Lindsay Sawyer who has been hosted here as a visiting scholar for the past year in order to write up her thesis on Lagos. Now completed, Lindsay will present her work in a short 30min presentation that mimics her upcoming thesis defence at her university ETH Zurich. Edgar Pieterse and Sue Parnell will act as the jury.   This thesis attempts to contribute to an understanding of the urbanisation of Lagos and to arrive at a more satisfying representation of its complexities and specificities through the consideration of the prevalent residential areas of Lagos as a coherent spatial configuration, proposing Plotting as a heuristic theoretical category to account for them. Lagos still represents a significant challenge to current urban theory and methods. The gaps in knowledge about Lagos speak to the inadequate conceptual and methodological tools there have so far been to approach and analyse it as a ‘city of the global South’. This thesis forms part of the recent impetus in urban studies for new ways of producing knowledge about the urban with a revalorised focus on Southern urbanism and comparison. As such, this thesis works to formulate Plotting as a new conceptual tool to account for the production of the extensive residential areas where the majority of people in Lagos live, mostly in the ubiquitous form of rental housing called Face-Me-I-Face You by taking a grounded theory approach within a wider comparative framework. The prevalent spatial configuration of Lagos has not been adequately analysed and Plotting is an attempt to account for the piecemeal development and intensification of these areas through the contradictions, contestations and multiple systems of territorial authority of the dual land regime in Lagos. As such, Plotting is offered as a conceptual tool to account for aspects of Lagos that normative approaches have struggled to recognise and analyse such as the dual land regime, the role of customary authorities, moving beyond the formal-informal dichotomy, the growth of Lagos despite sustained political, economic and social instability, and the apparent lack of political organisation and demands from the people in the face of deep inequalities and an elitist and incapacitated state who does little to address their needs.   This research is part of the Planetary Urbanisation in Comparative Perspective project that undertook a theoretically and methodologically rigorous comparison of eight urban regions based the grounded empirical work of eight colleagues and myself. Plotting emerged as a new theoretical category through a comparison of Lagos, Istanbul, Kolkata and Shenzhen. This thesis adopts a grounded theory methodology, collecting and analysing qualitative data in order to build new theoretical categories through iterative rounds of data collection and analysis including comparative analysis. Data was primarily collected through intensive periods of fieldwork between 2012-2014. Desk-based methods were also used but there was an emphasis on fieldwork to address the lack of available data in certain areas and to allow concepts to emerge from the ground. The thesis undertakes a pattern and pathway analysis of Lagos, constructing a visual and spatial analysis of its current processes of urbanisation and a historical analysis of how these processes emerged. The thesis identifies the significant gaps in research on Lagos, linking to broader gaps in knowledge about informal rental housing and land delivery in unplanned areas of certain areas of urban Africa, showing there to be a blindspot in literature and policy towards prevalent but tolerated majority conditions. The main work of the thesis is conceptualising Plotting as a process of urbanisation through its regulatory, material and everyday dimensions with a particular focus on the dual land regime, contestations over land, and the emergence of the logic of ‘private/ network gain over public good’. Further, it is shown that through the conversation between this research and the comparison, Plotting is already proving applicable beyond the context of Lagos. Images and empirical accounts from the field and other sources are used throughout the thesis and form part of the analysis.