Suchergebnisse

Rising rates of urbanization accompanied by increasing consumption puts the spotlight on how cities can mitigate and adapt to climate change (Wilbankset al. 2007; Sattherthwaiteet al. 2007). Globally, cities are starting to develop policies and plans to adapt to the impacts of climate change (Birkmann et al, 2010; Corburn, 2009; Horton et al. 2010). This is in part driven by the international scientific community that is encouraging adaptation as an important and urgent way to complement on-going mitigation efforts, that have formerly tended to dominate policies and finance (Romero-Lankao 2008). However, in some cases these emerging responses reflect a bottom-up awareness of the need to better plan for climate variability in order to increase the resilience of cities and protect its inhabitants. Many cities in the global South have been slower to develop adaptation responses than some cities in the global North. However, two cities in South Africa, eThekwini and the City of Cape Town, have been leaders in establishing adaptation policies and plans (Roberts 2008, Cartwright et al. 2008, Sattherthwaite 2007, Mukheibir and Ziervogel 2007). Exploring how these have been successful and what the challenges have been is important in developing lessons for other global South cities, where there are large numbers of people exposed to climate hazards. Because climate impacts are one of numerous other challenges, it is necessary to carefully position adaptation within a complex political and institutional landscape. This paper focuses on the five major coastal cities in South Africa, namely the City of Cape Town, Nelson Mandela Bay, Buffalo City, eThekwini and Richards Bay. The analysis is based on interviews in each of these metros undertaken in early 2010 with 17 government actors all involved in adaptation in their different capacities.

AbstractUnder conditions of globalization large cities present unique challenges for poverty reduction and the realization of rights. The urbanization of poverty also underscores the imperative of downscaling the emerging debate about the developmental state to the city scale. The arguments in this article start from the proposition that a universal rights agenda can and should be fulfilled as an alternative to neoliberal aspirations, and that to achieve this development action will be needed on a series of different scales. The article is structured in three main parts. The first section explores the implications for the state of adopting a rights‐based agenda in the urban context, giving particular emphasis to defining those rights whose meaning arises from settlement planning or management‐based policies and interventions on the individual, household, neighbourhood and more macro‐environmental scale (what we call 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation rights or the 'right to the city'). The second part of the article is dedicated to illustrating the particular nature of how rights to the city are blocked or achieved, using the experiences of the Greater Cape Town area. The final section of the article makes a more general case for a more radical rights‐based agenda for cities.RésuméDans un environnement mondialisé, les grandes villes présentent des problèmes particuliers de réduction de la pauvreté et de concrétisation des droits. De plus, l'urbanisation de la pauvreté met en avant la nécessité impérative de ramener au niveau de la ville l'échelle du débat naissant sur 'l'État en développement'. Les arguments partent ici de la proposition selon laquelle un programme de droits universels peut et devrait être réalisé en tant qu'alternative aux aspirations néolibérales et que, pour ce faire, il faudra des actions de développement sur une série d'échelles différentes. La première partie de l'article explore les implications, pour l'État, d'adopter un projet basé sur des droits dans le contexte urbain; ce faisant, elle souligne l'importance de définir ces droits dont la signification naît de politiques ou d'interventions sur l'aménagement de l'habitat ou basées sur la gestion, à la fois à l'échelon de l'individu, du foyer, du quartier et d'un environnement plus vaste (ce que nous appelons respectivement les droits de 2ème, 3èmeet 4èmegénération ou 'droit à la ville'). La deuxième partie illustre la manière particulière dont les droits à la ville sont soit bloqués soit atteints, à partir des expériences de Greater Cape Town. La dernière partie défend plus généralement un programme pour les villes qui soit basé sur des droits et plus radical.

The city of Johannesburg lies at the heart of a sprawling metropolis. This metropolis, which we shall call the Johannesburg region, roughly corresponds with the boundaries of Gauteng Province.1 It stretches from Soshanguve in the north to Vanderbijlpark in the south and from Carletonville in the west to Springs in the east (Fig.1). While Johannesburg is an obvious example of a large city in a poor country that is riddled by social and economic inequality, there is a certain irony in its portrayal as a world city. After all, only five years ago, Johannesburg was the hub of a pariah nation that was the object of one of the most successful international sanctions campaigns. Notwithstanding the impact of the boycott against apartheid, Johannesburg has long served as the major urban centre of southern Africa. It is an unusually cosmopolitan city, with extensive demographic, political, and economic connections with Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, that date back to colonial times (Parnell and Pirie, 1991). Increasingly strong links are now also being forged with Australasia through immigration and sport.

The city of Johannesburg lies at the heart of a sprawling metropolis. This metropolis, which we shall call the Johannesburg region, roughly corresponds with the boundaries of Gauteng Province.1 It stretches from Soshanguve in the north to Vanderbijlpark in the south and from Carletonville in the west to Springs in the east (Fig.1). While Johannesburg is an obvious example of a large city in a poor country that is riddled by social and economic inequality, there is a certain irony in its portrayal as a world city. After all, only five years ago, Johannesburg was the hub of a pariah nation that was the object of one of the most successful international sanctions campaigns. Notwithstanding the impact of the boycott against apartheid, Johannesburg has long served as the major urban centre of southern Africa. It is an unusually cosmopolitan city, with extensive demographic, political, and economic connections with Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America, that date back to colonial times (Parnell and Pirie, 1991). Increasingly strong links are now also being forged with Australasia through immigration and sport.

The paper traces the evolution and periodization of shifting ideas about the critical issues shaping city planning in South Africa, looking both at the relative and variable importance ascribed to health and other factors such as labour, economic reconstruction and housing. While the evolution of the South African city cannot be read without an understanding of the role of public health, changing ideas about cities and public health necessitate careful historical unravelling before any causal relationships can be identified. Any urban reconstruction, including post-COVID-19 reform, will demand deep knowledge of how the health/planning nexus has evolved, alongside expert advice on how to maximize urban health.

For many Johannesburg resembles the imagined spectre of the urban future. Global anxieties about catastrophic urban explosion social fracture environmental degradation escalating crime and violence and rampant consumerism alongside grinding poverty are projected onto this city as a microcosm of things to come. Decision-makers in cities worldwide have attempted to balance harsh fiscal and administrative realities with growing demands for political economic and social justice. This book investigates pragmatic approaches to urban economic development service delivery spatial restructuring environ

AbstractThrough reflection on the practical post‐apartheid (re)alignment of competing rationalities across the Greater Durban urban region, this essay teases out the interface between traditional and modern settlement management systems, and explores how governance cleavages are being renegotiated and mediated. It is suggested that, in building an integrated method of operating across the fragmented city‐regional scale and navigating the competing interests involved, the practice of African urbanism is being defined. Without making any claims for what may or may not be uniquely African city‐regional dynamics at the boundaries of tradition and modernity, what is clear from the Durban case is that both conventional city‐regional literature and new city‐regional ideas have glossed over the complexity of finding solutions to tensions between poor communities, urban managers, elected local authorities and the traditional rural elites of the functional city‐regions of Africa.