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Informal settlements are a shameful feature of poverty and inherited inequalities in South Africa. Defined in this book as 'settlements of the urban poor developed through the unauthorised occupation of land', they are regarded by many as unhealthy and overcrowded blights on the urban landscape 'squatter camps' in common parlance. Yet census data tell us that 16.4% of households across the country live in informal settlements, mostly in urban areas where an insecure foothold on the land enables these households to access the economic opportunities, social and economic networks and basic amenities that are essential to their survival.
Civil society, NGOs, governments, and multilateral institutions all repeatedly call for improved or ‘good’ governance – yet they seem to speak past one another. Governance is in danger of losing all meaning precisely because it means many things to different people in varied locations This is especially true in sub-Saharan Africa. Here, the postcolony takes many forms, reflecting the imperial project with painful accuracy. Offering a set of multidisciplinary analyses of governance in different sectors (crisis management, water, food security, universities), in different locales across sub-Saharan Africa, and from different theoretical approaches (network to adversarial network governan...
Africa's urban populations are growing rapidly, raising numerous environmental concerns as the pace of change stretches local resources and generates hazardous and unhealthy living conditions. Because these urban areas are also linked to the extremes of both poverty and wealth, they offer a unique opportunity for analyzing the many aspects of environmental politics. Drawing on fieldwork data, map analysis, place-name study, interviews, and fiction studies, Garth Myers explores African environmentalism from a variety of perspectives. By acknowledging the clash between Western planning mindsets that focus on sustainable development and the lived realities of residents in often poor, informal settlements, this important book marks a critical advance in the study of Africa's urban environments. It will have a profound impact across disciplines, from geography to urban, development, environmental, and African studies.
Knowledge production is a highly political and politicized practice. This book questions the way in which knowledge of and about Africa is produced and how this influences development policy and practice. Rebutting both Euro- and Afrocentric production of knowledge, this collection proposes a multiple, global and dynamic Africa-centredness in which scholars use whatever concepts and research tools are most appropriate to the different African contexts in which they work. In the first part of the book key conceptual themes are raised and the epistemological foundations are laid through questions of gender, literature and popular music. Contributors in the second part apply and test these tool...
The main goal of this book is to put urbanization and its challenges squarely on Africa’s development agenda. Planned urbanization can improve living conditions for the majority, help in the expansion of the middle class, and create conditions for economic transformation. However, many African cities have developed haphazardly, resulting in the decline of public services, in slum proliferation, and increases in poverty. African cities thrive on activities characterized by easy entry and low productivity, generally referred to as the "informal sector". Indeed, today some urban dwellers are poorer than their cousins in the countryside. In spite of reform attempts, many governments have not b...
Over the past two decades it has become widely recognized that housing issues have to be placed in a broader framework acknowledging that civil society in the form of Community Based Organizations (CBOs) and their allies are increasingly networking and emerging as strong players that cannot easily be overlooked. Some of these networks have crossed local and national boundaries and have jumped political scales. This implies that housing issues have to be looked at from new angles: they can no longer simply be addressed through localized projects, but rather at multiple scales. The current debate is largely limited to statements about the relevance of individual organizations for local housing...
At the current time, many issues and problems within sustainable urban development are managed within traditional disciplinary and organizational structures. However, problems such as, climate change, resource constraints, poverty and social tensions all exceed current compartmentalization of policy-making, administration and knowledge production. This book provides a better understanding of how researchers and practitioners together can co-produce knowledge to better contribute to solving the complex challenges of reaching sustainable urban futures. It is written for academic and professional audiences working with urban planning and sustainable cities around the world. Co-producing Knowled...
"Beyond Mobility" also seeks to rethink how projects are planned and designed in cities and suburbs at multiple geographic scales, from micro-designs such as parklets to corridors and city-regions. The book closes with a reflection on the opportunities and challenges in moving beyond mobility, with attention to emerging technologies such as self-driving cars and ride-hailing services and social equity topics such as accessibility, livability, and affordability.
Delving into the phenomenology of corruption and its impacts on the governance of societies, this cutting edge Encyclopedia considers what makes corruption such a resilient, complex, and global priority for study. This title contains one or more Open Access entries.