With the spread of capitalism - a socio-economic system that produces both wealth and poverty simultaneously - the spatial dynamics of the "global(izing)" city are creating more division between social classes, not less. This means that in the 21st-century, large cities around the world exhibit intensifying spatial inequality taking the form of a wealthy, privileged urban core ringed by a periphery of lower-income denizens far removed from the city’s resources and amenities. This trend toward swelling socio-spatial division is especially pronounced in cities purporting to be "global", or in the case of Johannesburg, South Africa’s financial capital, a "world-class African city." Ironically, Johannesburg’s historical legacy of immense spatial inequality thanks to apartheid is the direction in which most "global(izing)" cities such as New York, Cairo, London, Shanghai, New Delhi, Jakarta, Lagos, Berlin, and São Paulo are headed. The globalization of neoliberal urban policy has made the city less welcoming, liveable, accessible and friendly for lower-income city residents. This book asks if Johannesburg can unstitch its complex urban fabric to create a city with more democratic public transport, affordable housing in desirable locations and safe, socially and racially integrated public spaces. These pithy, solidly researched, accessibly written essays are instructive for all those who are interested in questions of spatial justice, urban development, history and planning and the general goal of making cities more livable and accessible for urban dwellers of all income levels.

This volume addresses questions at the intersections of cinematic form and the African city. It examines the contribution of cinema and audiovisual media to our understanding and experience of contemporary cities from an African perspective. “Reading” the African city as form, this volume problematizes the circulation of terms such as “Afropolitanism,” “Afro-polis”, “Afro-modernity” and “Afro-urbanity”, which often define the kinds of sentiments invested in or associated with the African city. Situated within an interdisciplinary matrix that reads the urban African cinematic form through affect theory and the city as a matrix of feeling, critical black geography and the racialized construction of city spaces, the urban as a temporal consciousness, and representations of social inequalities and urban geographies of exclusion, this edited volume frames the city and screenscapes as co-constitutive, foregrounding the diegetic and extra-diegetic elements that inform the “African urban”. Chapters engage thematic areas such as aesthetics and African cinematic urban form; visuality and the infrastructures of the African city; audiovisual narratives, social inequality, and urban geographies of exclusion. Cinematic Imaginaries of the African City is a significant new contribution to African Studies and will be a great resource for academics, researchers, and advanced students of African Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Visual Studies, and Sociology. The chapters included in this book were originally published as a special issue of Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies.

An interdisciplinary account of the life of Johannesburg, South Africa's "global south city" Anxious Joburg focuses on Johannesburg, the largest and wealthiest city in South Africa, as a case study for the contemporary global South city. Global South cities are often characterised as sites of contradiction and difference that produce a range of feelings around anxiety. This is often imagined in terms of the global North’s anxieties about the South: migration, crime, terrorism, disease and environmental crisis. Anxious Joburg invites readers to consider an intimate perspective of living inside such a city. How does it feel to live in the metropolis of Johannesburg: what are the conditions, intersections, affects and experiences that mark the contemporary urban? Scholars, visual artists and storytellers, all look at unexamined aspects of Johannesburg life. From peripheral settlements to the inner city to the affluent northern suburbs, from precarious migrants and domestic workers to upwardly mobile young women and fearful elites, Anxious Joburg presents an absorbing engagement with this frustrating, dangerous, seductive city. It offers a rigorous, critical approach to Johannesburg revealing the way in which anxiety is a vital structuring principle of contemporary life. The approach is strongly interdisciplinary, with contributions from media studies, anthropology, religious studies, urban geography, migration studies and psychology. It will appeal to students and teachers, as well as to academic researchers concerned with Johannesburg, South Africa, cities and the global South. The mix of approaches will also draw a non-academic audience.

This book provides an analysis of South African urban change over the past three decades. It draws on a seminal text, Homes Apart, and revisits conclusions drawn in that collection that marked the final phases of urban apartheid. It highlights changes in demography, social as well as economic structure and their differential spatial expression across a range of urban sites in South Africa. The evidence presented in this book points to a very complex set of narratives in urban South Africa and one that cannot be reduced to a singular statement so the conclusions of the various investigations are in many ways open. As urban apartheid represented one clear outcome, its post-apartheid urban legacies varies greatly from city to city. As such this book is a great resource to students and academics focused on urban change in South African cities since the demise of apartheid, and scholars of urban policy-making in South Africa and Southern urbanists generally.

Providing an in-depth exploration of the complexities of densification policy and processes, this book brings the important experiences of densification in Johannesburg into conversation with a range of cities in Africa, the BRICS countries and the Global North. It moves beyond the divisive debate over whether densification is good or bad, adding nuance and complexity to the calls from multilateral organisations for densification as a key urban strategy.

Why are even progressive local authorities with the ‘will to improve’ seldom able to change cities? Why does it seem almost impossible to redress spatial inequalities, deliver and maintain basic services, elevate impoverished areas and protect the marginalised communities? Why do municipalities in the Global South refuse to work with prevailing social informalities, and resort instead to interventions that are known to displace and aggravate the very issues they aim to address? Local Officials and the Struggle to Transform Cities analyses these challenges in South African cities, where the brief post-apartheid moment opened a window for progressive city government and made research into state practices both possible and necessary. In debate with other ‘progressive moments’ in large cities in Brazil, the USA and India, the book interrogates City officials’ practices. It considers the instruments they invent and negotiate to implement urban policies, the agency they develop and the constraints they navigate in governing unequal cities. This focus on actual officials’ practices is captured through first-hand experience, state ethnographies and engaged research. These reveal day-to-day practice that question generalised explanations of state failure in complex urban societies as essential malevolence, contextual weakness, corruption and inefficiency. It is hoped that opening the black box of the workings of state opens paths for the construction of progressive policies in contemporary cities.

This book explores theatre and performance as participatory research practices for exploring the everyday of the city. Taking an inner-city suburb of Johannesburg, South Africa as its central case study, the book considers how theatre and performance might be both useful practical tools in considering the everyday city, as well as conceptual lenses for understanding it. The author establishes an understanding of space as ever evolving and formed through the ongoing relationship between things, human and non-human, and considers how theatre and performance offer useful paradigms for learning about and working with city spaces. As ephemeral, embodied, material artistic practices, theatre and performance mirror the nature of everyday life. The book discusses theatre and performance games and placemaking processes as offering valuable ways of discovering daily acts of place-making and providing insights that more conventional research methods may not allow. Yet the book also considers how seeing daily city life as a kind of performance, a kind of theatre in its own right, helps to further understandings of city spaces as ever evolving through complex webs of relationships. This book will be of interest to academics, academic practitioners and post-graduate students in the fields of theatre and performance studies, urban studies and cultural geography.

Engaged Urban Pedagogy presents a participatory approach to teaching built environment subjects by exploring 12 examples of real-world engagement in urban planning involving people within, and beyond, the university. Starting with curriculum review, course content is analysed in light of urban pasts, race, queer identity, lived experiences and concerns of urban professionals. Case studies then shift to focus on techniques for participatory critical pedagogy, including expanding the ‘classroom’ with links to live place-making processes, connections made through digital co-design exercises, and student-led podcasting assignments. Finally, the book turns to activities beyond formal university teaching, such as where school-age children learn about their own participation in urban processes together alongside university students and researchers. The last cases show how academics have enabled co-production in local urban developments, trained community co-researchers and acted as part of a city-to-city learning network. Throughout the book, editorial commentary highlights how these activities are a critical source of support for higher education. Together, the 12 examples demonstrate the power and range of an engaged urban pedagogy. They are written by academics, university students and those working in urban planning and place-making. Drawing on foundational works of critical pedagogy, they present a distinctly urban praxis that will help those in universities respond to the built environment challenges of today.

A multi-disciplinary examination of urban planning in Africa, exploring its history, and advocating for new approaches.

This edited collection from across the African continent offers a diverse set of analytical accounts that engage with the urban governance dynamics, drivers and impacts of a wide variety of housing initiatives. These include insights into the relationships between parties and actors undertaking developments, or whose housing activities impact on the city. The book illustrates issues of power distribution, the visions or agendas motivating these actions, and the instruments used to advance them. It considers the rise of mega housing projects; private sector driven residential developments; unobtrusive transformations of existing building stock, establishment and upgrading of informal settlements; and state driven low cost housing schemes. It surfaces the contestation, collaborations and conflicts as well as the power relations that operate within cities and which are made visible on cityscapes. Housing and human settlement scholars as well as those interested in urban politics and governance dynamics in the global south and across the African continent will find much to appreciate in this volume.