ABSTRACT Informalization and casualization have been twin meta-trends in African development over the last several decades. However these processes are also now being articulated with, and altered by, processes of virtual accumulation and informationalization, giving rise to what some have called Uberization. (more…)
“…from a political, economic, military, and cultural point of view, […] Africa has to become its own center. It has to become its own force. Not as a way of separating itself from the rest of the world, but as a precondition for it to exercise its weight among other forces in the world.” It […]
During National Water Week this week, the University of Cape Town’s (UCT) African Centre for Cities (ACC) released a new paper which warns that the Cape Town drought has powerful climate-change adaptation lessons for other South African municipalities. (more…)
African Centre for Cities (ACC) has released a new paper Unpacking the Cape Town Drought Lessons Learnt by Associate Professor Gina Ziervogel. The report was commissioned by the Cities Support Programme, within National Treasury in the South Africa National Government, to ensure that lessons learned from Cape Town drought experience would serve to inform other municipalities when […]
![Festivals as Integrative Sites Valuing Tangible and Intangible Heritage for Sustainable Development 2 3 - Scientific Figure on ResearchGate. Available from: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/fig2_324208477 [accessed 13 Feb, 2019]](https://www.africancentreforcities.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/figure-fig2-290x180.jpg)
ACC researcher Rike Sitas co-authored Cultural heritage entanglements: festivals as integrative sites for sustainable urban development in the International Journal of Heritage Studies with Beth Perry and Laura Ager as part of her on-going work into cultural heritage. (more…)
ACC’s Liza Rose Cirolia co-authored Property Tax in African Secondary Cities: Insights from the Cases of Kisumu (Kenya) and M’Bour (Senegal) with James Christopher Mizes, a working paper for the International Centre for Tax and Development. (more…)
ACC’s researcher Liza Cirolia co-authored Urban infrastructure and development with Philipp Rode, Executive Director of LSE Cities and Associate Professorial Research Fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science as part of LSE Cities Working Paper series on Urban Governance and Institutional Frameworks. (more…)
In this paper entitled Urban Governance and Spatial Transformation Ambitions in Johannesburg, for the Journal of Urban Affairs, Vol 41 – 2019, Issue 1: New Urban Governance, Edgar Pieterse explores the history of democratic decentralization reforms in South Africa and Johannesburg with an eye on analyzing the significance of the Corridors of Freedom flagship initiative […]
This working paper was prepared by the African Centre for Cities. It was developed in partnership with the Coalition for Urban Transitions, which is a major global initiative to support national governments to accelerate economic development and tackle dangerous climate change by transforming towns and cities. (more…)
ABSTRACT Decentralization reforms and rapid urbanization place increasing pressure on African urban authorities. In response, land-based finance has been gaining popularity within development discourses as a method of increasing local autonomy and financing local government infrastructure provision. This paper discusses the conceptual basis for land-based finance, the instruments that form part of this approach, and […]
The challenges of transdisciplinary knowledge production: from unilocal to comparative research by David Simon, Henrietta Palmer, Jan Riise, Warren Smit, Sandra Valencia, reflects on the work done through the Mistra Urban Futures (MUF) research centre and its local interaction platforms in Sweden, the UK, South Africa and Kenya. The paper surveys the lessons learnt and […]
ABSTRACT Considering the ongoing global proliferation of the urban ‘creativity fix’ and its inclination to further push local governments towards entrepreneurial governance logics and market-led development imperatives, there is a sustained need to understand how the creative city paradigm is being grounded, renegotiated and put into practice in so-called ‘Southern’ cities. To analyse Cape Town’s […]
ABSTRACT This paper examines African urban infrastructure and service delivery as an entry point for connecting African aspirations with the harsh developmental imperatives of urban management, creating a dialogue between scholarly knowledge and sustainable development policy aspirations. (more…)
ABSTRACT A burgeoning literature looks into the processes and actors involved in the adoption and emulation of best practices and models of urban policy and development across the globe, often with the aim of attracting investment and making cities more competitive. (more…)
ABSTRACT The understanding of food security has seen major shifts since the original conceptualisations of the challenge. These changes in understanding have been accompanied by different food security measurement approaches. (more…)
In sub-Saharan Africa, the food system impacts on a number of urban development issues such as poverty, unemployment and poor health. Informal traders meet the food needs of many poor urban households. However, supermarket chains are changing this, demanding particular policy and planning responses, writes Jane Battersby and Vanessa Watson in their latest paper for Nature, […]
Tanzania’s urban population is projected to grow from less than 15 million people in 2012 to more than 60 million people by mid-century. This rapid urban population growth offers the potential for structural transformation, as well as scale and agglomeration economies that can accelerate human and economic development. Planning and investment decisions made today will […]
The South African, and wider African, food system is undergoing a rapid transformation, with an associated transformation in nutrition. (more…)
A new report The 2030 Agenda: Issues for the G20, authored by Edgar Pieterse, Susan Parnell and Sylvia Croese of the African Centre for Cities has just been released.
Caroline Skinner was the lead editor for the October 2016 Environment and Urbanization Special Issue on Urban Livelihoods. The launch of the issue coincided with the recent Habitat III in Quito, Ecuador.
A United Nations conference seeks urban sustainability. But the agenda will fail without input from researchers, warn Timon McPherson Sue Parnell, Aromar Revi and colleagues.
