The primary focus of the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town is applied research to address complex and intractable urban problems and challenges.  This is undertaken in a manner that advances novel ways of thinking about and understanding urbanism across the global South, yet rooted in the realities of African urban spaces.  This series of five lectures, drawing on the work of the ACC, aims to interrogate urban conditions and challenges on the continent but also grapple with different ways of seeing and understanding African cities.

There are five lectures in this course as follows:

African Urban Trends and Dynamics - Professor Edgar Pieterse

The Role of Planning in Shaping African Cities - Nancy Odendaal

Informality in African Cities - Caroline Skinner

Is Cape Town an African City?  - Mokena Makeka

Prospects for the African City (Panel discussion – all presenters listed above) The first lecture, by the director of the ACC, Professor Edgar Pieterse, will explore the scale and rate of urbanisation in Africa and contextualise this against some recent macro-economic trends in order to establish trend patterns and their implications. The lecture will emphasize the broader demographic trends by locating Africa within an international context before exploring sub-regional differences. Once the aggregate urbanisation parameters are established the lecture will explore the nature of urban life in particular as it manifests for the 60%+ African urbanites who live in slums of one form or another. The second lecture will be delivered by Nancy Odendaal, a planner by training, who is coordinating a project that aims to revitalising planning education in African planning schools.  In a context where in African cities, unlike cities in the North, urban growth has not been accompanied by rapid industrialisation, the lecture examines the extent to which urban planning has largely been unprepared for the pressures experienced in African urban spaces and the reasons for that. It considers some of the substantive issues that need to be addressed in order for urban planning to be relevant on the continent. It is estimated that in African cities up to 75% of basics needs are provided informally.  In lecture 3, Caroline Skinner, who is running an international project on urban informality, will concentrate on this phenomenon. This lecture outlines trends in informal employment and urban policy responses in Africa in general and in South African in particular. The lecture will then explore the case of what was for over a decade seen as an international best practice of including the informal economy into urban plans – the Warwick Junction Project in inner-city Durban. This case is used to highlight debates about policy responses to informality. In comparison to other African cities some have argued that Cape Town is an anomaly and yet the city is confronted with similar challenges to cities elsewhere on the continent.  Mokena Makeka, a well respected Cape Town based architect, through his work in, and knowledge of Cape Town will explore the question – Is Cape Town an African City?  Mokena, among other projects, is working on the upgrade of the Cape Town station.    The course ends with a panel discussion where the four presenters consider the future prospects for African cities in general and South African cities in particular.  This is in the context of among other issues the global financial crisis, governance and environmental sustainability challenges.