ACC produces rigorous applied urban research typified by a grounded criticality and a commitment to propositional thinking and experimentation.
ACC is a knowledge partner to public sector actors to help ensure formulation and
implementation of policies that will produce contextual, inclusive and sustainable forms of urbanism in the global South, and especially in Africa.
The African Centre for Cities will host Catalina Ortiz and Chandrima Mukhopadhyay for the launch of their forthcoming edited book, The Routledge Handbook of Southern Urbanism(s), which includes contributions from ACC’s Nancy Odendaal and Nobukhosi Ngwenya. This Handbook traces key debates shaping contemporary urbanisation through Southern urbanism(s) as an epistemic orientation, engaging critically with how urban theory and practice are being reworked in contexts where crises are most intensely lived and negotiated. Rather than offering models or solutions, the volume examines how urban knowledge is produced through situated practices, struggles, and experiments. The book is organised into six interconnected sections that address the ethics and politics of urban inquiry; the entanglements of theory and practice; the governance of contested cities; the Southern infrastructural turn; struggles over situated urban justice; and pluriversal urban future imaginaries. The Handbook argues that centring situated reflections from and about Southern urbanism(s) enables scholars and practitioners to learn from the front lines where urban challenges are confronted, contested, and re-imagined. The “South” is treated not as a fixed geography but as a relational and epistemic position shaped by power, positionality, and lived urban conditions. Engaging questions that scholars and practitioners grapple with in their everyday work, the volume explores how theory emerges through practice, how global agendas are negotiated or resisted, and how alternative imaginaries of justice and urban futures are mobilised for the global majority. The Handbook is an essential guide and reference not only for researchers engaged with southern (urban) theory and southern urbanism(s), but also for undergraduate and graduate teaching and for urban practitioners, policymakers and activists. WHEN: Wednesday, 24 June 2026 TIME: 17h30 for 18h00 WHERE: Bertha House (Activist Cafe, 67 Main Road, Mowbray, Cape Town) Click to RSVP or email africancentreforcities@uct.ac.za
A Special Issue of the Third World Quarterly, guest edited by Laura Nkula-Wenz (ACC Lecturer and Researcher) and Tania Messell is now LIVE. Please join us for a virtual launch of this edition, which investigates the growing trend since the 1960s of using ‘design’ and ‘design thinking’ to solve urgent global problems. The articles look at historical and current examples of this phenomenon, such as: - The design of refugee shelters. - Biometric technologies used to register refugees. - New sanitation systems in South Africa, like waterless toilets. - Storytelling products used to combat disease in Kenya. - State-led programmes to ‘improve’ traditional crafts in Chile The Special Issue argues that while design promises to help, its role is complicated and needs to be criticised. Ultimately, the Special Issue concludes that design is never neutral. It argues that for design to be truly helpful, it must become more self-aware, context-sensitive, and decolonial. The webinar will feature a moderated conversation with some of the contributing authors about the "promising directions for future research on the entanglements of design, humanitarian aid, and development in times of overlapping emergencies”. 🗓 Monday, 22 June 2026 ⏰ 15h00 - 16h00 📌 Register on Zoom: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/jC_mk3-lQA2C4dDKLnkpxg
Survey designers play a key role in producing social realities by defining categories and shaping how people are classified through the process of “making up people” and assigning them to specif-ic categories. In urban contexts, surveys are especially important tools for generating knowledge about diverse populations to help inform urban policy, planning, and service delivery. In this sense, sex, gender, and sexuality are not simply variables to be measured, but social constructs that are actively produced through how survey questions are designed, asked, and interpreted, which in turn may inform urban governance. Sthembiso Pollen Mkhize, a visiting scholar at the African Centre for Cities, will present a brown bag seminar on his ongoing PhD research, sharing emerging insights from the first phase of his data collection. This phase involved interviewing survey designers, including principal investigators and fieldworkers, to understand their roles in specific surveys. His talk explores how decisions are made about asking questions on sex, gender, and sexuality, and the challenges of implementing these questions across diverse urban and rural contexts. Sthembiso Pollen Mkhize is a PhD Student in Human Geography in the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. He is also a Research Associate (formerly a Junior Researcher) at the Gauteng City-Region Observatory, where he leads the ‘Queering Social Survey Research’ project. His recent work includes a forthcoming Occasional Paper titled ‘Balancing inclusivity and practicality: Should South African censuses and social surveys include measures beyond the gender binary?’ He has also published in journals including Progress in Human Geography and Social Science & Medicine.
