After apartheid was dismantled, South Africa's townships anticipated a peace and development dividend. But as the ANC begins its second term in office (1999-2004), the cities have degenerated further into impoverished, polluted, under-serviced, zones of blight and despair. Indeed, in many respects, the townships were worse off than when the ANC took power. In this collection of essays, the author argues that the ANC's adoption of free-market economic and social policies is at the root of these problems and can be blamed for S Africa's uneven urban development.

A quarter of a century has now passed since the historic popular uprising that led to the overthrow of the Ferdinand Marcos dictatorship in the Philippines. The mass movement known as the "People Power Revolution" was not only pivotal to the democratic transition within the Philippines, but it also became an inspiration for subsequent mass movements leading to further democratic transitions throughout the Third World and in the former Communist bloc in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. However, the neoliberal economic policies subsequently pursued by newly democratic governments throughout the Third World led all but the most celebratory observers to note the constrained and limited nature of these formal political transitions. This volume poses the question of the extent to which ‘people power’ has been able to play an active role resisting neoliberalism and deepen substantive democracy and social justice. Through a series of case studies of the regions and individual countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe, the contributions in the volume provide a new set of original and in-depth critical assessments of the nature of the longer-term impact of the democratic transitions commencing in the 1980s and continuing until the present, and questioning their impact and potential influence on human dignity, freedom, justice, and self-determination, and thus opening new avenues of enquiry into the future of democracy. This book was originally published as a special issue of Third World Quarterly.

The Cities of the Global South Reader adopts a fresh and critical approach to the fi eld of urbanization in the developing world. The Reader incorporates both early and emerging debates about the diverse trajectories of urbanization processes in the context of the restructured global alignments in the last three decades. Emphasizing the historical legacies of colonialism, the Reader recognizes the entanglement of conditions and concepts often understood in binary relations: first/third worlds, wealth/poverty, development/underdevelopment, and inclusion/exclusion. By asking: “whose city? whose development?” the Reader rigorously highlights the fractures along lines of class, race, gender, and other socially and spatially constructed hierarchies in global South cities. The Reader’s thematic structure, where editorial introductions accompany selected texts, examines the issues and concerns that urban dwellers, planners, and policy makers face in the contemporary world. These include the urban economy, housing, basic services, infrastructure, the role of non-state civil society-based actors, planned interventions and contestations, the role of diaspora capital, the looming problem of adapting to climate change, and the increasing spectre of violence in a post 9/11 transnational world. The Cities of the Global South Reader pulls together a diverse set of readings from scholars across the world, some of which have been written specially for the volume, to provide an essential resource for a broad interdisciplinary readership at undergraduate and postgraduate levels in urban geography, urban sociology, and urban planning as well as disciplines related to international and development studies. Editorial commentaries that introduce the central issues for each theme summarize the state of the field and outline an associated bibliography. They will be of particular value for lecturers, students, and researchers, making the Cities of the Global South Reader a key text for those interested in understanding contemporary urbanization processes.

How do people live together in cities shaped by inequality? This comparative ethnography of two African cities, Maputo and Johannesburg, presents a new narrative about social life in cities often described as sharply divided. Based on the ethnography of entangled lives unfolding in a township and in a suburb in Johannesburg, in a bairro and in an elite neighborhood in Maputo, the book includes case studies of relations between domestic workers and their employers, failed attempts by urban elites to close off their neighborhoods, and entanglements emerging in religious spaces and in shopping malls. Systematizing comparison as an experience-based method, the book makes an important contribution to urban anthropology, comparative urbanism and urban studies.

For the first time in human history more people now live and towns and cities than in rural areas. In the wealthier countries of the world, the transition from predominantly rural to urban habitation is more or less complete. But in many parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America, urban populations are expanding rapidly. Current UN projections indicate that virtually all population growth in the world over the next 30 years will be absorbed by towns and cities in developing countries. These simple demographic facts have profound implications for those concerned with understanding and addressing the pressing global development challenges of reducing poverty, promoting economic growth, improving human security and confronting environmental change. This revised and expanded second edition of Cities and Development explores the dynamic relationship between urbanism and development from a global perspective. The book surveys a wide range of topics, including: the historical origins of world urbanization; the role cities play in the process of economic development; the nature of urban poverty and the challenge of promoting sustainable livelihoods; the complexities of managing urban land, housing, infrastructure and urban services; and the spectres of endemic crime, conflict and violence in urban areas. This updated volume also contains two entirely new chapters: one that examines the links between urbanisation and environmental change, and a second that focuses on urban governance and politics. Adopting a multidisciplinary perspective, the book critically engages with debates in urban studies, geography and international development studies. Each chapter includes supplements in the form of case studies, chapter summaries, questions for discussion and suggested further readings. The book is targeted at upper-level undergraduate and graduate students interested in geography, urban studies and international development studies, as well as policy makers, urban planners and development practitioners.

The first edition of Life and Death Matters was a breakthrough text, centralizing the experiences of those on the front lines of environmental crises and forging new paradigms for understanding how crises emerge and how different groups of actors respond to them. This second edition, fully updated with both expanded and new chapters, once again provides a benchmark for the field and opens important pathways for further research. Authors reassess the state of scholarship and grassroots activism in a new century when social and environmental systems are being reconceptualised within post-9/11 security and biosecurity frameworks, when global warming and resource scarcity are not fears but realities, when global power and politics are being realigned, and when ecocide, ethnocide, and genocide are daily tragedies. This bold new edition of Life and Death Matters will be a widely used textbook and essential reading for students, scholars, and policy makers.

Provides comprehensive coverage of major topics in urban and regional studies Under the guidance of Editor-in-Chief Anthony Orum, this definitive reference work covers central and emergent topics in the field, through an examination of urban and regional conditions and variation across the world. It also provides authoritative entries on the main conceptual tools used by anthropologists, sociologists, geographers, and political scientists in the study of cities and regions. Among such concepts are those of place and space; geographical regions; the nature of power and politics in cities; urban culture; and many others. The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies captures the character of complex urban and regional dynamics across the globe, including timely entries on Latin America, Africa, India and China. At the same time, it contains illuminating entries on some of the current concepts that seek to grasp the essence of the global world today, such as those of Friedmann and Sassen on ‘global cities’. It also includes discussions of recent economic writings on cities and regions such as those of Richard Florida. Comprised of over 450 entries on the most important topics and from a range of theoretical perspectives Features authoritative entries on topics ranging from gender and the city to biographical profiles of figures like Frank Lloyd Wright Takes a global perspective with entries providing coverage of Latin America and Africa, India and China, and, the US and Europe Includes biographies of central figures in urban and regional studies, such as Doreen Massey, Peter Hall, Neil Smith, and Henri Lefebvre The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies is an indispensable reference for students and researchers in urban and regional studies, urban sociology, urban geography, and urban anthropology.

The literature on ‘world cities’ has had an enormous influence on urban theory and planning alike. From Manila to London, academics and policy makers have attempted to understand, and to some extent strive for, world city status. This book is a study of Cape Town’s standing in this network of urban centres, and an investigation of the conceptual appropriateness of this world city hypothesis. Drawing on more than a dozen years of fieldwork in Cape Town, McDonald provides an historical overview of institutional and structural reforms, examining fiscal imbalances, political marginalization, (de)racialization, privatization and other neoliberal changes. By examining and analyzes these reforms and changes, McDonald contributes the first radical critique of the world city literature from a developing country perspective.

This book examines the significance of Cape Town's claim to being a "world city." McDonald argues that Cape Town must be seen as a neoliberal city, situating it against the broader political and economic reforms of South Africa's re-entry into a global market economy.