... sub-stitution of natural vegetation by impervious surfaces, which destroys carbon sinks, and ... more ... sub-stitution of natural vegetation by impervious surfaces, which destroys carbon sinks, and intensifies flooding and heat island effects, among ... Buenos Aires metropolitan region in Argentina, MumbaiPune mega-region in India, the Suez-- CairoAlexandria urban region, and ...
The twenty-first century is the first truly urban epoch. However, the well-circulated graphs that... more The twenty-first century is the first truly urban epoch. However, the well-circulated graphs that reveal the inexorable urban transition of past and future decades are only part of the story. Accompanying the headline demographic message, that this is an era where urbanisation is the dominant motif, is the reminder that the locus of the twenty- first century has shifted away from Europe and North America. We not only now live in an urban world but also a Southern world, in which Asia and Africa are numerically dominant. As the absolute epicentres of population, cities and towns are the places and spaces that provide the foundations on which contemporary and emerging global systems and values will be built (Miraftab and Kudva, 2014; Roy and Ong, 2011). There are other substantive ways in which, over the next few decades, what happens in and is exported from ‘cities of the South’ will come to dominate our collective lives: cities will have massive impact on natural systems changes; the production, distribution and circulation of goods and services; and the experiences of everyday life, health, culture and politics (McGranahan and Martine, 2014; Parnell and Oldfield, 2014; Revi and Rosenwieg, 2013; Elmquist et al., 2013). For the global majority, life will be shaped by urban conditions and expectations. But for all of its centrality, we do not really understand what constitutes the city or how urban form, urban management, urban life and identity interface with the experiences of, or responses to, poverty.
... sub-stitution of natural vegetation by impervious surfaces, which destroys carbon sinks, and ... more ... sub-stitution of natural vegetation by impervious surfaces, which destroys carbon sinks, and intensifies flooding and heat island effects, among ... Buenos Aires metropolitan region in Argentina, MumbaiPune mega-region in India, the Suez-- CairoAlexandria urban region, and ...
The twenty-first century is the first truly urban epoch. However, the well-circulated graphs that... more The twenty-first century is the first truly urban epoch. However, the well-circulated graphs that reveal the inexorable urban transition of past and future decades are only part of the story. Accompanying the headline demographic message, that this is an era where urbanisation is the dominant motif, is the reminder that the locus of the twenty- first century has shifted away from Europe and North America. We not only now live in an urban world but also a Southern world, in which Asia and Africa are numerically dominant. As the absolute epicentres of population, cities and towns are the places and spaces that provide the foundations on which contemporary and emerging global systems and values will be built (Miraftab and Kudva, 2014; Roy and Ong, 2011). There are other substantive ways in which, over the next few decades, what happens in and is exported from ‘cities of the South’ will come to dominate our collective lives: cities will have massive impact on natural systems changes; the production, distribution and circulation of goods and services; and the experiences of everyday life, health, culture and politics (McGranahan and Martine, 2014; Parnell and Oldfield, 2014; Revi and Rosenwieg, 2013; Elmquist et al., 2013). For the global majority, life will be shaped by urban conditions and expectations. But for all of its centrality, we do not really understand what constitutes the city or how urban form, urban management, urban life and identity interface with the experiences of, or responses to, poverty.
Anchored at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore, Urbanisation will be published... more Anchored at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements, Bangalore, Urbanisation will be published on a bi-annual basis from May, 2016 by Sage Publications India. It shall be available worldwide online through international journal indices such as SAGE Premiere and HighWire, and in print through Sage’s extensive distribution channels.
Urbanisation aims to publish comparative as well as collaborative interdisciplinary scholarship that will illuminate the global urban condition beginning with a firm footprint in the Global South. A platform that brings together inter-disciplinary scholarship on the urban, it is equally interested in critical and reflexive discussions on diverse forms and sectors of urban practice. It seeks to do so not only to inform urban theory, policy and practice but also to enable the construction of diverse forms of knowledge and knowledge production needed to enable us to understand contemporary urban life.
Urbanisation is a response to a particular moment of 21st century global urbanisation within an increasingly re-arranged world. The drivers and locations of contemporary urbanisation are after a long historical gap, in the ‘Global South’ i.e. the countries of Asia, Africa and South America. This moment poses challenges for which we possess neither effective knowledge nor adequate practice. Urbanisation emerges out of three interconnected responses to this moment.
The first is to provide a platform to understand contemporary global urbanisation with a firm footprint in the South. In doing so, we see the ‘Global South’ not as a physical location but as a representative of a particular set of challenges and opportunities that determine the central questions of our age and demand critical analysis and effective intervention.
The second is to build on this new knowledge to re-think the epistemological canon of urbanisation and its associated systems and processes. This ‘canon’ built on a 19th and 20th century imagination and practice has proved to be particular rather than universal. The journal stands firmly with the ‘southern turn’ in urban theory, building new knowledge from the experiences of cities and regions of the Global South to speak with all cities and settlements and re-think the foundations of current urban theory.
The third is to reflexively engage with and theorise practice. Urban questions refuse simple boundaries of sector or domain in addition to discipline or the assumed ‘theory-practice’ divide. The ‘wicked problems’ of cities, city-regions and hybrid rural-urban settlements are sites that defy most canonical knowledge, techniques, methods, categories and terms. Yet there remain few platforms within which to document, reflect upon, critique and analyse practice, let alone imagine new forms and techniques of practice. Some of this is because of the continuing persistence of hierarchies between forms of knowledge and its production – an artificial separation that this journal explicitly seeks to address.
The aim of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) is to redress the inequalities crea... more The aim of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) is to redress the inequalities created by apartheid. Unwittingly, however, the RDP may perpetuate many of the social divisions which were created by the policies of the National Party. This is because the RDP emphasises the racial inequality caused by apartheid, and forgets that a central goal of apartheid policy was to drive a wedge between rural and urban Africans. It did this by curbing African urbanisation and enforcing the migrant labour system. As a consequence, the new government has inherited a large population who live in rural slums, remote resettlement camps, displaced urban settlements and hostels. The RDP's response to the needs of these disadvantaged groups is to compensate them through the provision of rural housing and upgrading hostels in urban areas. However, is it enough for the new government simply to improve the housing conditions of these disadvantaged groups when their poverty is caused by their lack of access to urban jobs? Surely the RDP should aim to transform these apartheid patterns of settlement instead of casting them, quite literall~ in stone? POLICY AND PRACTICE The new government seeks to address the inequalities created by apartheid through subsidising housing and service provision for the very poor. Towards this end, more than two-thirds of the state housing subsidy now goes to households earning less than R1 500 per month (Financial Mail, 16 Dec. 1994). However, housing and service expenditure is also targeted quite specifically at the rural poor and at migrants. The Provincial funding formula, from which housing and service expenditure is drawn, is weighted in favour of rural populations by a factor of 1,25. In other words, for every R1,00 that a Province receives for an urban person, it receives R1,25 for a rural person in its population (statistics supplied to the authors by the Fiscal and Finance Commission). The government is also explicitly committed to improving the
Over the past decade, African governments have
joined other countries across the world, first in
... more Over the past decade, African governments have joined other countries across the world, first in lobbying for and then in adopting a number of global development policy commitments. These include the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the Paris Agreement on climate change, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda (AAAA) on financing for development, the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction, and the New Urban Agenda. This global policy realignment by Africa is rooted in a continent-wide policy shift towards sustainable development, as formulated in the Africa Union Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. This shift reflects a growing recognition of the role of cities and territories as key sites and actors of development, and the African region as a major hub of the global transition to a predominantly urban world. Thus, it will not be possible to achieve sustainable development at a global level without sustainable urbanization in Africa. Urbanization is key to economic development and growth in Africa, with cities combining labour, skills, knowledge and capital. However, fulfilling the potential of sustainable urbanization in Africa will depend on overcoming significant challenges, ones that are at the heart of the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
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Urbanisation aims to publish comparative as well as collaborative interdisciplinary scholarship that will illuminate the global urban condition beginning with a firm footprint in the Global South. A platform that brings together inter-disciplinary scholarship on the urban, it is equally interested in critical and reflexive discussions on diverse forms and sectors of urban practice. It seeks to do so not only to inform urban theory, policy and practice but also to enable the construction of diverse forms of knowledge and knowledge production needed to enable us to understand contemporary urban life.
Urbanisation is a response to a particular moment of 21st century global urbanisation within an increasingly re-arranged world. The drivers and locations of contemporary urbanisation are after a long historical gap, in the ‘Global South’ i.e. the countries of Asia, Africa and South America. This moment poses challenges for which we possess neither effective knowledge nor adequate practice. Urbanisation emerges out of three interconnected responses to this moment.
The first is to provide a platform to understand contemporary global urbanisation with a firm footprint in the South. In doing so, we see the ‘Global South’ not as a physical location but as a representative of a particular set of challenges and opportunities that determine the central questions of our age and demand critical analysis and effective intervention.
The second is to build on this new knowledge to re-think the epistemological canon of urbanisation and its associated systems and processes. This ‘canon’ built on a 19th and 20th century imagination and practice has proved to be particular rather than universal. The journal stands firmly with the ‘southern turn’ in urban theory, building new knowledge from the experiences of cities and regions of the Global South to speak with all cities and settlements and re-think the foundations of current urban theory.
The third is to reflexively engage with and theorise practice. Urban questions refuse simple boundaries of sector or domain in addition to discipline or the assumed ‘theory-practice’ divide. The ‘wicked problems’ of cities, city-regions and hybrid rural-urban settlements are sites that defy most canonical knowledge, techniques, methods, categories and terms. Yet there remain few platforms within which to document, reflect upon, critique and analyse practice, let alone imagine new forms and techniques of practice. Some of this is because of the continuing persistence of hierarchies between forms of knowledge and its production – an artificial separation that this journal explicitly seeks to address.
joined other countries across the world, first in
lobbying for and then in adopting a number
of global development policy commitments.
These include the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable
Development, the Paris Agreement on climate
change, the Addis Ababa Action Agenda
(AAAA) on financing for development, the
Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction,
and the New Urban Agenda. This global
policy realignment by Africa is rooted in a
continent-wide policy shift towards sustainable
development, as formulated in the Africa Union
Agenda 2063: The Africa We Want. This shift
reflects a growing recognition of the role of
cities and territories as key sites and actors of
development, and the African region as a major
hub of the global transition to a predominantly
urban world. Thus, it will not be possible to
achieve sustainable development at a global
level without sustainable urbanization in Africa.
Urbanization is key to economic development
and growth in Africa, with cities combining
labour, skills, knowledge and capital. However,
fulfilling the potential of sustainable urbanization
in Africa will depend on overcoming significant
challenges, ones that are at the heart of the
2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development
Goals (SDGs).