There is a new bullishness to the global narrative around cities and climate change. Buoyed by the explicit recognition given to cities in the Sustainable Development Goals and recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, urbanists have had a busy few years generating material for international think tanks, governments, corporations and donors illustrating how cities can drive decarbonisation, climate resilience and economic growth.
The African Centre for Cities, shares the general optimism and has been part of this rising urban theme through our collaboration with the New Climate Economy and its spin-off the Coalition for Urban Transitions. However, much of our work involves the translation of global tropes around cities and climate change to the everyday reality of African cities, and equally the feeding-in of our site-specific research on multi-level governance, infrastructure, informality and housing to global reports.
The Seizing the Urban Opportunity report, set to be launched on 17 March, outlines how national governments in six emerging economies can use urban policies to tackle development, climate and Covid-recovery challenges simultaneously. Anton Cartwright and Andrew Tucker performed a reviewer role to the broader report and provided some specific content for the chapter on South Africa. The chapter itself builds on South Africa’s Integrated Urban Development Framework compiled by ACC’s Director Edgar Pieterse.
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