Book launch: Knowing the City
The Book Lounge 71 Roeland Street, Cape TownThe African Centre for Cities invites you to the Cape Town launch of Knowing the City: South African Urban Scholarship from Apartheid to Democracy – a landmark volume that traces the rich and evolving terrain of urban scholarship in South Africa across generations, geographies and practices. Editors Prof Sophie Oldfield and Dr Anna Selmeczi will be in conversation with ACC Adjunct Professor and urbanist Nisa Mammon. Date: Wednesday, 12 June 2025 Time: 17:30 for 18:00 Venue: The Book Lounge, 71 Roeland Street, Cape Town RSVP: booklounge@gmail.com Published by UKZN Press and co-edited by Sophie Oldfield, Anna Selmeczi, and the late Clive Barnett, Knowing the City draws together 76 essays by 65 urban scholars. It reflects on how South African urban thinkers have engaged with cities intellectually, politically and personally – from apartheid into democracy. The book grew from a multi-year research collaboration supported by the British Academy Newton Advanced Fellowship and driven by a deeply dialogical, generative process of workshops, interviews and collective writing. The volume features a strong contingent of ACC-affiliated contributors, including: Edgar Pieterse, Anna Selmeczi, Alicia Fortuin, Zarina Patel, Gareth Haysom, Caroline Skinner, Laura Nkula-Wenz, Mercy Brown-Luthango, Andrew Tucker, and Rike Sitas. Together, the contributors explore how urban scholarship is rooted not only in theory but in lived experience, activism, consultancy, and relationships—with knowledge about South African cities continuing to shape and be shaped by wider global conversations. The book is available from UKZN Press and The Book Lounge.