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Building with Ruins and Dreams: Some Thoughts on Realising Integrated Urban Development in South Africa through Crisis

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  • Edgar Pieterse

    (Isandla Institute, Mandela-Rhodes Building, 150 St George's Mall, Cape Town 8001, South Africa. edgar97@icon.co.za)

Abstract

It is often lamented that South African cities are beset by interminable crises: segregation, inequality, fragmentation, violence, the Aids epidemic and so on. This lament is premised on the assumption that somehow urban challenges must be stabilised, brought under control through analytical or policy tools and then the ideals of urban integration and holism can come to pass. This paper challenges this conception of urban development policy and politics by recasting crisis as an opportunity (temporarily) to align and co-ordinate energies in order to undo the deeply engraved legacies of urban segregation and fragmentation. Concretely, the argument unfolds along three guideposts. In the first section, it is proposed that there are essentially three key conditions for addressing the structural crises of urban fragmentation: vibrant city politics in a radical democratic mode; a substantial 'epistemic community' in cities that generate imaginative ideas about alternative futures premised on a set of meta-objectives and concrete intervention strategies for the city; and, sufficient investment capital (private and public) to give economic support and expression to the implementation of concrete programmes and projects in line with the ideas generated by the epistemic community for alternatives. The second section of the paper elaborates prospective meta-objectives that epistemic communities can work with in order to advance more integrative urban development based on the framework of Ayyun Malik. The third section proposes some tangible interventions to construct socially and politically projects to build alternative futures in the context of Cape Town.

Suggested Citation

  • Edgar Pieterse, 2006. "Building with Ruins and Dreams: Some Thoughts on Realising Integrated Urban Development in South Africa through Crisis," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 43(2), pages 285-304, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:43:y:2006:i:2:p:285-304
    DOI: 10.1080/00420980500404020
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Scott, Allen J. (ed.), 2001. "Global City-Regions: Trends, Theory, Policy," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780198297994.
    2. Ash Amin, 2002. "Ethnicity and the Multicultural City: Living with Diversity," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 34(6), pages 959-980, June.
    3. Moulaert, Frank, 2000. "Globalization and Integrated Area Development in European Cities," OUP Catalogue, Oxford University Press, number 9780199241132.
    4. Tony Binns & Etienne Nel, 2002. "Devolving Development: Integrated Development Planning and Developmental Local Government in Post-apartheid South Africa," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(8), pages 921-932.
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    Cited by:

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    2. John Friedmann, 2007. "Forum 2007," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 38(6), pages 987-998, November.

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