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Book Details
Abstract
Cities are the future. In the past two decades, a global urban revolution has taken place, mainly in the South. The 'mega-cities' of the developing world are home to over 10 million people each and even smaller cities are experiencing unprecedented population surges. The problems surrounding this influx of people - slums, poverty, unemployment and lack of governance - have been well-documented.
This book is a powerful indictment of the current consensus on how to deal with these challenges. Pieterse argues that the current 'shelter for all' and 'urban good governance' policies treat only the symptoms, not the causes of the problem. Instead, he claims, there is an urgent need to reinvigorate civil society in these cities, to encourage radical democracy, economic resilience, social resistance and environmental sustainability folded into the everyday concerns of marginalised people. Providing a dynamic picture of a cosmopolitan urban citizenship, this book is an essential guide to one of the new century's greatest challenges.
Edgar Pieterse is Director of the African Centre for Cities and Professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Geomatics, both at the University of Cape Town. He is also a founding director of Isandla Institute; an urban policy think-tank where he continues advocacy oriented research work. His publications include: Voices of the Transition: The Politics, Poetics and Practices of Social Change in South Africa (2004), Democratising Local Government: The South African Experiment (2002) and Consolidating Developmental Local Government: Lessons from the South Africa Experience (2007).
'This is an important and hopeful work that does not shy away from the inequalities and power asymmetries that confront cities of the South, but still manages to show that the politics of the ‘wretched’, if sustained and integrated into a wider institutional arena, can bring about change for the good of the many. It rejects the depressing readings of such urbanism that have come to dominate without resorting to a naïve or false utopianism. Edgar Pieterse has written a book that is a must for urban thinkers and practitioners interested in the virtues of the everyday'
Ash Amin, Durham University
'Pieterse is adept at steering us through disparate ways of being in the city - multiple times, different speeds and relays, inclusions and exclusions. Much is said about the need to make cities more effective and more just but there is seldom a language for doing this. Pieterse has made an enormous contribution to elaborating such a needed language, and for this has done a great service to advance a creative process of urban change.'
AbdouMaliq Simone, Goldsmiths, University of London
'A trenchant deconstruction of the main thinking underlying urban development in the Global South. Pieterse illuminates an alternative urban political agenda and provides a roadmap on how to get there. This should be required reading for urbanists and activists alike.'
Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
Table of Contents
Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
---|---|---|---|
Contents | v | ||
Boxes, figures and tables | vi | ||
Table 1.1 Dimensions of governance | 13 | ||
Table 2.1 The declining time needed for 1 billion additional urban dwellers | 19 | ||
Table 2.2 Urban population by region, 1950–2000 | 19 | ||
Table 2.3 Geodemographic segmentation of Cape Town | 28 | ||
Table 2.4 Regional distribution of the world’s urban slum dwellers | 31 | ||
Table 2.5 Cost of water in Accra, Ghana | 34 | ||
Figure 2.1 Scale of informal economic activity in developing countries | 30 | ||
Figure 2.2 Slum population projections, 1990–2020 | 32 | ||
Box 3.1 Tenure systems and their characteristics | 46 | ||
Figure 4.1 Municipal priorities and trade-offs | 82 | ||
Figure 5.1 Domains of political engagement in the relational city | 89 | ||
Box 6.1 Urban Think Tank: Caracas Case | 119 | ||
Figure 7.1 Institutional dimensions of sustainable urban development | 133 | ||
Figure 7.2 Overlapping dimensions of urban planning | 152 | ||
Box 8.1 Typology of poverty reduction domains | 165 | ||
Figure 8.1 Developmental linkages at the micro scale | 171 | ||
Acknowledgements | vii | ||
1 Introduction: deciphering city futures | 1 | ||
Power and complexity | 4 | ||
Radical incrementalism | 6 | ||
Recursive political empowerment | 7 | ||
Framing propositions | 8 | ||
Outline of the book | 13 | ||
2 Urbanization trends and implications | 16 | ||
Dimensions of the second wave of urbanization | 18 | ||
Splintered network infrastructures | 24 | ||
The rise and rise of slums | 30 | ||
What is to be done about urbanization? | 35 | ||
Conclusion | 37 | ||
3 Mainstream agenda 1: shelter for all | 39 | ||
Context of the shelter for all campaign | 41 | ||
Tenets of the global campaign for secure tenure | 43 | ||
Secure tenure, slum upgrading and participation | 54 | ||
Infrastructure and environmental dimensions | 58 | ||
4 Mainstream agenda II: good governance | 62 | ||
Origins and context | 63 | ||
Global Campaign on Urban Governance | 65 | ||
City Development Strategy | 70 | ||
5 Reconceptualizing the political in cities | 84 | ||
Conceptual premisses | 85 | ||
Sketches of a conceptual model of urban politics | 89 | ||
Domain one: representative politics | 90 | ||
Domain two: neo-corporatist stakeholder forums | 92 | ||
Domain three: direct action | 95 | ||
Domain four: grassroots development practice | 97 | ||
Domain five: symbolic politics | 100 | ||
Interfaces | 103 | ||
Public sphere + political sphere = vibrant democracy? | 105 | ||
Conclusion | 106 | ||
6 Informal everyday urbanism | 108 | ||
Conceptual inversion | 109 | ||
Insurgent urbanism: encroachment of the ordinary | 112 | ||
Tenacious insurgent activism: Shack/Slum Dwellers International | 115 | ||
Popular culture and the negotiation of everyday violence | 120 | ||
Public culture and the word: Sarai and Chimurenga | 125 | ||
Conclusion | 128 | ||
7 Counterpoint: alternative urban development | 130 | ||
Alternative urban development perspective | 132 | ||
Political economy of urban transformation | 143 | ||
Unravelling political opportunity | 146 | ||
Driving urban transformation: epistemic communities/strategic networks | 148 | ||
Strategic entry points | 151 | ||
Conclusion | 160 | ||
8 Making a start towards alternative city futures | 161 | ||
Redux: the core argument | 162 | ||
Multidimensional urban poverty reduction agenda | 163 | ||
Micro anti-poverty actions | 169 | ||
Tipping points of urban transformation | 171 | ||
Notes | 177 | ||
Chapter 1 | 177 | ||
Chapter 2 | 178 | ||
Chapter 3 | 180 | ||
Chapter 4 | 181 | ||
Chapter 5 | 182 | ||
Chapter 6 | 184 | ||
Chapter 7 | 186 | ||
Chapter 8 | 187 | ||
References | 189 | ||
Index | 200 |