Please join us for the launch of three new books grappling with urban realities and challenges.  Cities and Development by Jo Beall and Sean Fox; City Life from Jakarta to Dakar by AbdouMaliq Simone and Working in Warwick: Including Street Traders in Urban Plans by Richard Dobson and Caroline Skinner. 

At the launch there will be a brief conversation between the authors facilitated by Professor Mark Swilling The book launch also coincides with the launch of an exhibition of photographs of Warwick Junction in Durban, by the award winning architectural photographer Dennis Gilbert. 

ABOUT THE BOOKS

Cities and Development brings into conversation debates from urban and development studies and highlights the strengths and weaknesses of current policy and planning responses to the contemporary urban challenge.  The book surveys pertinent topics including the historical relationship between urbanisation and development; the role cities play in fostering economic growth in a globalizing world; issues of urban crime, war and terrorism in contemporary cities; and the importance of urban planning, governance and politics in shaping city futures. 

City Life from Jakarta to      

Dakar focuses on the politics incumbent to this process – an anticipatory politics – that encompasses a wide range of practices, calculations and economies.  As such the book is not a collection of case studies on a specific theme, not a review of developmental problems, nor does it marshal the focal cities as evidence of particular urban trends.  Rather it examines how possibilities, perhaps inherent in these cities all along, are materialised through everyday projects of residents situated in the city and the larger world in different ways.

Working in Warwick offers a fresh look at street traders' lives, the role they play in city life and their contribution to its economy.  Warwick, a vibrant street trading area situated in the primary transport hub in inner city Durban, is the context for the book.  It is where a small dedicated team of local authority officials, street traders and their leaders worked for more than a decade tackling what seemed insurmountable urban management and design challenges. This very visual book aims to 're-imagine' the informal economy.  It shows that it is possible to include street trading in urban plans in a way that adds to the vibrancy and attraction of cities.

About the authors who will be present at the launch:

Jo Beall is a Deputy Vice Chancellor at University of Cape Town. She also remains linked to the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), which she directed.  A political sociologist, she specialises in urban development issues.

Sean Fox is a researcher and Teaching Fellow in the Development Studies Institute at the London School of Economics

Abdoumaliq Simone is an urbanist and Professor of Sociology at Goldsmiths College, University of London. Since 1977 he has had many jobs in different cities across Africa and Southeast Asia, in the fields of education, housing, social welfare, urban development, and local government.

Richard Dobson, an architect by training, directs ASIYA ETAFULENI (Zulu for 'let us negotiate') a non governmental organisation (NGO) offering

design and facilitation services to the informal economy. His work, which over the last 15 years has particularly focused on the informal economy, has been acknowledged through many awards and citations.

Caroline Skinner is a senior researcher at the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and Urban Policies Programme Director for the global research-policy network Women in Informal Employment: Globalising and Organising or WIEGO.