A JOINT AFRICAN CENTRE FOR CITIES (ACC) AND UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY- WORLD INSTITUTE FOR DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS RESEARCH (UNU-WIDER) SEMINAR

Speakers: Prof Edgar Pieterse (ACC), Prof Ivan Turok (Human Sciences Research Council), Dr Winnie Mitullah (Institute for Development Studies, Kenya), Prof Robert Cameron (Political Studies, UCT), Prof Gina Lambright (George Washington University, USA), Dr Danielle Resnick (UNU-WIDER)

Africa is one of the fastest urbanizing regions of the world. On the one hand, this demographic transformation offers important opportunities for growth, economic development, and innovation. On the other hand, rapid urbanization generates high demand and formidable challenges for delivering basic services, including housing, water, sanitation, and electricity.

In preparation for the 2012 World Urban Forum VI, this half-day seminar emphasizes the role of governance structures and institutions for addressing these opportunities and constraints, paying particular attention to the interaction between local actors and national political contexts. The presenters will offer both an understanding of urban governance and service delivery across Africa while also elaborating on specific case studies of cities in Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, and Uganda (please see attached agenda for more details). 

A light lunch will be served at the conclusion of the seminar. Since space is limited, we would be grateful if you could confirm your participation before 1 June 2012 by registering at:  http://website1.wider.unu.edu/urban-governance/

If you have any queries, please contact Warren Smit at warren.smit@uct.ac.za

The second issue of Cityscapes, our biannual magazine/jounal hybrid on urbanism in the global south was launched at a well attended event hosted by the African Centre for Cities and the Book Lounge. more on the issue here. This issue will be available in selected bookstores worldwide as well as for subscription soon and launch dates for Johannesburg and New Dehli will be announced soon.

J-PAL Africa is a new research programme within the UCT School of Economics that specializes in identifying the impact of social programmes. In this presentation we will discuss the motivation for rigorous scientific studies of programme impact and how they can be carried out in practice.

J-PAL Africa is linked to the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) network of 64 affiliated professors around the world who united by their use of randomized evaluations to answer critical questions about poverty alleviation. At a basic level, randomized evaluations can answer questions about social programme's effectiveness, but if thoughtfully designed and implemented, they can also answer other important questions: who benefitted the most?,  where there unintended effects?, what lessons can be applied to other contexts? How cost-effective is it?  J-PAL has conducted more than 300 impact evaluations in 52 different countries in a wide range of areas: from health and education to labour markets and micro finance. Our presentation  will draw on examples from studies around the world, including evaluations of community participatory approaches and sanitation services.

About the Speaker: Kamilla Gumede is the Executive Director for J-PAL Africa at SALDRU. Prior to that she headed up J-PAL's policy outreach work in sub-Saharan Africa from the J-PAL global office at MIT. Her work involves working with governments and NGOs in Africa to decipher policy lessons about what works, help make policies more evidence based and more effective, and collaborate with researchers and policy makers to identify and run randomized evaluations that answer pertinent policy questions facing African decision makers. She has an M.A. in Economics from the University of Copenhagen, and an M.A. in Public Policy from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. She has previously worked for the South African National Treasury to promote policy and capacity building in Africa and globally. This included work with the African Union, NEPAD, the African Development Bank and the Commission for Africa. She has also worked for a number of international aid agencies in Europe and Africa, and brings to J-PAL a solid understanding of the policy environment in Africa.

The DBUAAward 2012 was a collaboration between the Alfred Herhaussen Society, African Centre for Cities and LSE Cities and marked the 5th time the US$100,000 prize has been awarded since 2007 when the award was given to a project in Mumbai. Since then projects in Sao Paolo; Istanbul and Mexico City have won the award. 

Mothers Unite was selected out of 254 projects from across the Cape Town city region by an international jury and has been recognised for it's effectiveness in ensuring the security and care of children through offering various activities ranging from storytelling; computer literacy and a feeding programme to about 120 children on a daily basis, creating a safe haven in the midst of Lavender Hill, a tough Cape Town neighbourhood. The next Deutsche Bank urban Age Award will be presented to a project in Brazil in 2013. 

The World Urban Forum's 'City Changer Dialogues' commence on 7 May as a prelude to the World Urban Forum meeting in Naples in September.

The four Dialogue themes are: Productive Cities, Urban Planning, Sustainable Cities, and Urban Equity.

The ACC has partnered with Deutsche Bank's Alfred Herrhausen Society and LSE Cities to present the Deutsche Bank Urban Age Award 2012 (and R750 000 in prize money) to a project in Cape Town. The annual award will be presented on April 19^th to a project that has "contributed towards improving the quality of life in cities." Cape Town is the 5th city from which the winner of the award will be selected after previous winners of the award were chosen in Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Mumbai and Istanbul since 2007. Chaired by ACC Director Edgar Pieterse, an international jury recently completed the finalist selection process with 8 projects out of a record 254 entries in Cape Town. Other members of the jury include LSE Cities and Urban Age Director, Ricky Burdett; Tony Williams, the former Mayor of Washington DC; Cape Town poet and playwright Malika Ndlovu; TEN Arquitectos founder and architect Enrique Norten; Desmond Tutu Peace Centre CEO Nomfundo Walaza and Andrew Boraine, CEO of the Cape Town Partnership. 

The eight finalists are Mothers Unite in Lavender Hill; Bicycle Empowerment Network, which operates throughout Cape Town; Masiphumelele Public Library; Regeneration of City and Soul in Retreat; Rocklands Urban Abundance Centre in Mitchell's Plain; The Social Justice Coalition in Khayelitsha; Thrive Recycling in Hout Bay and Violence prevention through Urban Upgrading (VPUU) in Khayelitsha. The winner will be announced at a special presentation ceremony on April 19^th.

Pic: VPUU, one of the 8 finalists for the DBUAAward 2012

On February 16^th, the World Bank Institute held a Global Video Conference Dialogue on "How Cities Learn (and What They Do with What They Know): Lessons for South Africa" connecting audiences in three South African cities (Johannesburg, Cape Town, and Durban) to experts in New York and Sao Paulo. This event was designed for practitioners and government officials in South Africa and aimed to respond to the enormous appetite for practical knowledge about managing cities. Keynote speakers Dr. Jerone Klink and Dr. Janice Perlman shared their expereinces on how knowledge can be harnessed to improve service delivery and the economic and social environments at city level in general and tailored to the needs of  South Africa cities. Dr Laurine Platzky moderated the Cape Town session.

On February 3-4 2012, the Department of Urban Planning and Design of the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University held its Urban Design Conference "Conditions and Projections".  ACC Director Edgar Pieterse presented with José Luis Vallejo a session dedicated to "Authorship and Collaboration". Among the key issues relevant to contemporary discourse in urban design, this session moderated by Felipe Correa addressed the exploration of current thinking about the role of collective authorship and collaboration within the design process in response to diverse working scales, emerging technologies and degrees of complexity. Other sessions focused on "land/form", "micro-urbanisms", "applied research", regulatory practices", and "strategic upgrading" in order to respond to the need for a critical evaluation of the methods, tools, and the broader design culture that surrounds the practice of Urban Design.

For the second year, ACC contributed on 23-25 January 2012 to the UCT Summer School, with a three-lecture course coordinated by ACC Deputy Director Gordon Pirie. The course focused on urban sustainability, urban regeneration and food security. ACC's participation in the annual Summer School program is becoming a fixture, with the last two outings focusing on topics that reflect ongoing research findings and debates within the ACC and it's partners.

The premise of this work in progress is that all major architectural monuments, especially those inspired by state agendas (as in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya) should be discussed within the social contexts in which they were conceived, planned, designed and constructed. Post-World War II nationalist independent agendas that swept across the African continent during the 1960s were memorialized and celebrated by grandiose monuments that were often ambiguous despite the fact that they were supposed to represent social spaces of liberty and symbolize individual and collective nationalist aspirations. With that that in mind, how might we read the landscape of Tahrir Square which was developed in the later part of the nineteenth century by King Khedive Ismail under the direction of the Prefect of Paris, Baron Haussmann, the architect of modern Paris? How might we interpret Kwame Nkrumah's Independent Monument in Ghana which was erected in 1958? How might we interpret the Algerian National Freedom Monument, or the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria that was inaugurated in 1991? What about the Hassan II Mosque that was completed in Casablanca in 1995, and its counter Christian monument, Our Lady of Peace Basilica, in Yamoussoukro, Cote d'Ivoire? 

About the Speaker: Professor Nnamdi Elleh is Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of Cincinnati's School of Design, Art, Architecture and Planning (DAAP). He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University and his B.A. and Master's degree in Architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He was also a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art (Washington, D.C.).  His areas of research and creative work are Contemporary African architecture and urbanism, Western architectural theory, and Post-colonial economics and cultural studies. His book 1996 book African Architecture: Evolution and Transformation is the standard reference work on African architecture and the cultural, religious, climatic, and social perspectives in which it has been rooted. In 2002, he published Architecture and Power in Africa (2002) where he delves into the relationships and implications of national memory, power and politics, hubris, religion and nationalism. He has published numerous articles, including "Architecture of the Africa's Underprivileged Classes" (2011). In 2012 Nnamdi is a visiting Teaching/Research Fulbright Scholar at the University of Cape Town.   

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Urbanization is a global multidimensional process paired with increasing uncertainty due to climate change, migration of people, and changes in the capacity to sustain ecosystem services. This article lays a foundation for discussing transitions in urban governance, which enable cities to navigate change, build capacity to withstand shocks, and use experimentation and innovation in face of uncertainty. Using the three concrete case cities—New Orleans, Cape Town, and Phoenix—the article analyzes thresholds and cross-scale interactions, and expands the scale at which urban resilience has been discussed by integrating the idea from geography that cities form part of "system of cities" (i.e., they cannot be seen as single entities). Based on this, the article argues that urban governance need to harness social networks of urban innovation to sustain ecosystem services, while nurturing discourses that situate the city as part of regional ecosystems. The article broadens the discussion on urban resilience while challenging resilience theory when addressing human-dominated ecosystems. Practical examples of harnessing urban innovation are presented, paired with an agenda for research and policy. download here

Aims: To highlight the potential value of network analysis for conservation biogeography and to focus attention on some of the challenges that lie ahead in applying it to conservation problems.

Location: Global.

Methods: We briefly review existing literature and then focus on five important challenges for the further development of network-based approaches in the field.

Results: Our five challenges include (i) understanding cross-scale and cross-level linkages in ecological systems (top–down and bottom–up effects, such as trophic cascades, have been demonstrated in food webs but are poorly understood in nested hierarchies such as reserve networks and stream catchments), (ii) capturing dynamic aspects of ecological systems and networks (with a few exceptions we have little grasp of how important whole-network attributes change as the composition of nodes and links changes), (iii) integrating ecological aspects of network theory with metacommunity frameworks and multiple node functions and roles (can we link the spatial patterns of habitat patches in fragmented landscapes, the parallel networks of interacting species using those patches and community-level interactions as defined by metacommunity theory in a single framework?), (iv) integrating the analysis of social and ecological networks (particularly, can they be analysed as a single interacting system?) and (v) laying an empirical foundation for network analysis in conservation biogeography (this will require a larger data bank of well-studied networks from diverse habitats and systems).

Main conclusions: Recent research has identified a variety of approaches that we expect to contribute to progress in each of our five challenge areas. We anticipate that some of the most exciting outcomes of attempts to meet these challenges will be frameworks that unite areas of research, such as food web analysis and metacommunity theory, that have developed independently.

With rapid worldwide urbanization it is urgent that we understand processes leading to the protection of urban green areas and ecosystems. Although natural reserves are often seen as preserving 'higher valued' rather than 'lower valued' nature, it is more adequate to describe them as outcomes of selective social articulation processes. This is illustrated in the Stockholm National Urban Park. Despite strong exploitation pressure, a diverse urban movement of civil society organizations has managed to provide narratives able to explain and legitimize the need for protection—a 'protective story'. On the basis of qualitative data and building on theories of value articulation, social movements, and actor-networks, we show how activists, by interlacing artefacts and discourses from cultural history and conservation biology, managed to simultaneously link spatially separated green areas previously seen as disconnected, while also articulating the interrelatedness between the cultural and the natural history of the area. This connective practice constructed holistic values articulating a unified park, which heavily influenced the official framing of the park's values and which now help to explain the success of the movement. In contrast to historically top-down-led designation of natural reserves, we argue that the involvement of civil society in protecting nature (and culture) is on the rise. This nonetheless begs the question of who can participate in these value-creating processes, and we also strive to uncover constraining and facilitating factors for popular participation. Four such factors are suggested: (i) the number and type of artefacts linked to an area; (ii) the capabilities and numbers of activists involved; (iii) the access to social arenas; and (iv) the social network position of actors.

Exploitation and degradation of urban green areas reduce their capacity to sustain ecosystem services. In protecting and managing these areas, research has increasingly focused on actors in civil society. Here, we analyzed an urban movement of 62 civil-society organizations—from user groups, such as boating clubs and allotment gardens, to culture and nature conservation groups—that have protected the Stockholm National Urban Park. We particularly focused on the social network structure of the movement, i.e., the patterns of interaction between movement organizations. The results reveal a core-periphery structure where core and semi-core organizations have deliberately built political connections to authorities, whereas the periphery gathers all user groups involved in day-to-day activities in the park. We show how the core-periphery structure has facilitated collective action to protect the park, but we also suggest that the same social network structure might simultaneously have constrained collaborative ecosystem management. In particular, user groups with valuable local ecological knowledge have not been included in collaborative arenas. Our case points out the inherent double-nature of all social networks as they facilitate some collective actions, yet constrain others. The paper argues for incorporating social network structure in theories and applications of adaptive governance and co-management.

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Cities have long been connected with processes of bureaucratisation and state-building, as indeed they have long been linked to conflict and war. In bringing these two associations together we engaged with the historical sociology of Charles Tilly and research in the CAFS programme confirmed that the intersection of cities, states and violent conflict remains significant, although it is far more complex in today's world. Cities have changed, states have changed, and armed conflict itself has changed. In this respect, cities are increasingly critical locations of conflict, both directly and indirectly. In the video below, Professor Jo Beall discusses some of the finding from the "Conflict and State Fragility" project that she has directed over the last 10 years.

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Making the most of Cape Town's limited urban space is the goal of densification.  With increased density will come opportunities and challenges to create distinctive urban spaces that provide the locus for the symbolic framing of Cape Town's many cultures.  This presentation by Bradley Rink looks at Cape Town's De Waterkant neighbourhood to discuss the challenges and opportunities in creating a densified, unique and inclusive Central City.

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