LSE-UCT July School 2018 LCS-GY202 | Urban Development and Planning in Africa

Course Outline

Instructors

Professor Gareth Jones

Professor of Urban Geography, Department of Geography & Environment, London School of Economics

Gareth is an urban geographer at the LSE, where he teaches urban theory and ethnography on the MSc Urbanisation & Development. He is a founding member of the recently established International Institute on Inequalities at the LSE. He is also the first director of the LSE’s new Latin American & Caribbean Centre. Gareth’s research has focused on the politics and representations of the urban poor, youth and violence, elite identities and gated communities, and comparative urban theory. He has mostly conducted research in Mexico, Brazil and South Africa, and is presently involved with an ESRC-NWO-DFG grant with colleagues at the Universities of Amsterdam and Munich on the commodification of poverty and violence in Brazil, Jamaica, Mexico, and the United States.

Dr Ryan Centner

Assistant Professor of Urban Geography, Department of Geography & Environment, London School of Economics

Ryan is an urban geographer and sociologist at the LSE. He contributes to the Regional & Urban Planning as well as the Urbanisation & Development programs at the LSE. Ryan’s research and writing focus on city transformations in connection to large-scale shifts in economic structure, development models, and political orientations. He concentrates on the local, everyday forms of these changes in neighbourhoods, symbolic landscapes,

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and uses of urban space. Ryan’s work has mostly delved into urban change in middle-income countries (especially Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, and Turkey). An avid fieldworker, he has collected much of the lecture material from his own time spent in cities across Africa.

Course overview

This course explores the challenges and opportunities of African urban development, taking a close look at planning cities on the continent through intensive field engagement with sites in Cape Town while drawing critically on lessons from elsewhere in Africa. In order to understand contemporary African cities, we examine histories of development and inequality, and contemporary dynamics in making, transforming, and managing cities. Through the work of major urban scholars – many from Africa themselves – and 5 field trips around Cape Town, we explore some of the ideologies, economic activities, and social relations through which cities are developed and planned today. Overall, the course aims to develop critical comparative thinking about urban processes in different parts of the African continent today.

The course begins with a broad introduction to regional patterns of key urban trends across Africa. We then narrow our focus to the historical legacies of colonialism, and then apartheid in the South African city. We explore how segregation continues to be built into the city through enclave and fortress spaces. We look at how division and difference in the city can be contested – and emancipatory spaces opened – as well as how the South African city is governed, secured, branded, and projected for future development. We take an especially close look at how Cape Town has attempted to represent itself as a world-class, high-design, liveable city, and participated in the pursuit of megaevents and other ways of placing itself “on the map” as an African metropolis of a very particular kind.

In the second half of the course turns to examples of African urban development from across the continent in order to deepen understanding of diverse local experiences and experiments. We first survey a range of African development “alternatives,” then closely examine a series of regional cases outside of southern Africa: (1) West African cities, (2) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and (3) an emerging ensemble of development sites known as “the East African corridor.” Although we cultivate detailed case-based knowledge, we always focus on comparisons and potential applicability of lessons across other African cities.

In total, this course assembles a range of disciplinary perspectives – from geography, history, sociology, and urban studies – in order to delve into contemporary African urban development and planning. We take full advantage of our location in South Africa to provide field-based lessons, but we also aim to draw connections and comparisons by using wider theoretical frames as well. This enables us to analyse sites that may be geographically distant yet worth thinking about together -- to reconsider linkages between them, and bring them into larger discussions about transforming space,

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economy, and society in urban Africa today. In total there will be four days that include local site visits around Cape Town, and three guest speakers.

By the end of this course, students will: • Understand the most significant trends in urban change in Africa today,

and how these are affected by regional differences. • Obtain a detailed knowledge of the highly diversified Cape Town urban

experience. • Be able to analyse how historical patterns of territorial development

shape current urban dilemmas and opportunities. • Know how to compare contents of urban plans for their differential

impacts on a variety of places and populations. • Gain the tools for a critical analysis of current and future urban

development endeavours. • Grasp how African cities share many common traits, yet experience

locally specific challenges – and how those can be addressed in context-specific ways.

• Comprehend important urban development alternatives, and their various consequences, for future African cities.

Recommended Preparatory Reading List • TBC

Prerequisites This course would appeal to students at a range of levels, but especially to mid/advanced undergraduates, and to postgraduates or professionals who are looking to deepen their urban-specific Africa knowledge, or their Africa-specific urban knowledge.

Level: 200

Extra Activities These are noted below in the details of session titles and the breakdown of topics/activities for each day. In total there would be 4 days that include local site visits around Cape Town, and 3 guest speakers.

Assessment

We will have an in-class (or “sighted”) final exam worth 50% of the grade, and a series of analytical write-ups from the field visits, which would combine to the other 50% of the grade (that is, each of 4 write-ups would be worth 12.5%).

Session Overview

Session 1: Situating African Urban Development & Planning

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a. Africa’s Urban Revolution, seen from Cape Town b. Modernity, Planning and Modes of Development c. Comparative Urbanization and Racialization (across Africa and

beyond)

Session 2: Urban Legacies of Apartheid: Scars? Opportunities?

a. Understanding Different Legacies & Trajectories in Space & Society b. Site visits: Langa & Pinelands c. Site visits: District 6 Museum & Oranjezicht City Farm

Session 3: Securing the Future City a. Envisioning & Implementing Urban Advancement

• Guest speaker: Rashiq Fataar (Future Cape Town) b. Order & Security in the City

Site Visit: Century City

Session 4: Divisions & Revisions a. Quartering the City: Redevelopment, Tourism, and “Heritage” b. Site visit: Woodstock (DAG organization) c. Site visits: CBD & De Waterkant

• Guest speaker: Dr Andrew Tucker (ANOVA Health Institute)

Session 5: Walling, Bordering & Mixing a. Enclaves, Gated Communities & Managed Interaction b. Site visit: Westlake I

Session 6: Developmental Alternatives: Bold Designs, Boundless Possibilities?

a. Forging New Ways Forward in Urban Africa b. Debate on African Urban Conditions, Paths & Possibilities

Session 7: Case – The West African Urban Axis a. The Lagos School of Urbanism b. Dakar to Lagos: Legacies & Trajectories in a Region of Cities

• Guest Speaker: Dr Mpho Matsipa (City Institute, University of the Witwatersrand)

Session 8: Case – Addis Ababa & Global City Development in Africa a. Forging an African Hub for the World b. Global Investment, Middle Classes & Urban Development

Session 9: Case – The East African Corridor a. Making New Links, Making New Inequalities b. Infrastructure, Development & the Urban Frontier

Session 10: Revision and examination

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