scholarly journals Fragment urbanism: Politics at the margins of the city

2018 ◽  
Vol 36 (6) ◽  
pp. 1007-1025 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin McFarlane
Keyword(s):  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Global South ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
Urban Sanitation ◽  
Poverty And Inequality ◽  
History Of ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The City

Fragmentation is a keyword in the history of critical urban thought. Yet the products of fragmentation – the fragments themselves – tend to receive less attention. In this paper, I develop a politics of urban fragments as a contribution to debates both in urban theory and in urban poverty and inequality. I examine inadequate and broken material fragments on the economic margins of the urban global South, and ask how they become differently politicized in cities. I develop a three-fold framework for understanding the politics of fragments: attending to, generative translation and surveying wholes. I build these arguments through a focus on a fundamental provision – urban sanitation – drawing on research in Mumbai in particular, as well as Cape Town, and connecting those instances to research on urban poverty, politics and fragmentation.

scholarly journals Sounding the Cape: Music, Identity and Politics in South Africa

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Denis-Constant Martin
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Rhythmic Pattern ◽  
Racial Identities ◽  
History Of ◽  
Musical Genres ◽  
Analytical Tools ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The City ◽  
Musical Styles

For several centuries Cape Town has accommodated a great variety of musical genres which have usually been associated with specific population groups living in and around the city. Musical styles and genres produced in Cape Town have therefore been assigned an ìidentityî which is first and foremost social. This volume tries to question the relationship established between musical styles and genres, and social --in this case pseudo-racial --identities. In Sounding the Cape, Denis-Constant Martin recomposes and examines through the theoretical prism of creolisation the history of music in Cape Town, deploying analytical tools borrowed from the most recent studies of identity configurations. He demonstrates that musical creation in the Mother City, and in South Africa, has always been nurtured by contacts, exchanges and innovations whatever the efforts made by racist powers to separate and divide people according to their origin. Musicians interviewed at the dawn of the 21st century confirm that mixture and blending characterise all Cape Town's musics. They also emphasise the importance of a rhythmic pattern particular to Cape Town, the ghoema beat, whose origins are obviously mixed. The study of music demonstrates that the history of Cape Town, and of South Africa as a whole, undeniably fostered creole societies. Yet, twenty years after the collapse of apartheid, these societies are still divided along lines that combine economic factors and 'racial'categorisations. Martin concludes that, were music given a greater importance in educational and cultural policies, it could contribute to fighting these divisions and promote the notion of a nation that, in spite of the violence of racism and apartheid, has managed to invent a unique common culture.

Notes in the History of Sir Jerome Alexander Second Justice of the Court of Common Pleas, and Founder of the Alexander Library, Trinity College, Dublin

1872 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 220-240
Author(s):  
Charles Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Church Of England ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Trinity College Dublin ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Will ◽  
To Receive ◽  
The City ◽  
The Church

The Will of Sir Jerome Alexander, a parchment transcript of which is preserved in the Chief Probate Office, Dublin, is a document of more than ordinary interest; even with its cumbrous repetitions we owe no apology for producing it in full:–“In the name of God Amen. I, Sr Jerome Alexander of the City of Dublin, one of the unprofitable servants of Almighty God, being of a perfect sound disposing memory, praised bee God, this three and twentieth day of March in the yeare of the Raigne of our Soveraigne Lord Charles the Second of that name by the grace of God of England, Scotland, Fraunce and Ireland King Defender of the Faith &c. the two and twentieth, and hereby renounceing and admitting and declareing all former Wills and Testaments by mee at any time heretofore made to bee utterly void & of none effect, doe declare this to bee my last true Will and Testament in manner & form following and doe now soe declare it to bee. And first of all I resigne my soul into the hands of Jesus Christ my blessed Saviour and Redeemer, confidently trusting and assureing myselffe in by and through his onely merritts and mediation to receive life everlasting; and I doe hereby profess myselfe to dye as I have allways lived, a sonne of the Church of England, which is the most absolute and best forme of government in all the world,’ twere to bee heartily wished that it were practised in all the Churches of Christendome, and my body I commend unto the earth from whence it came to receive decent and comely buryall, without any greate pompe or ceremonies whatso-ever, not doubting but at the last day it shall bee raised againe and united unto my soule with it for to partake of immortall and everlasting happiness.

Dinosaurs Become Birds: Changing Cultural Values in Cape Town Theatre

2017 ◽  
Vol 42 (2) ◽  
pp. 146-162
Author(s):  
GAY MORRIS
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Values ◽  
Cultural Production ◽  
Educational Experiences ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Urban Centre ◽  
Marketing Environment ◽  
History Of ◽  
Significant Change ◽  
The City

This article examines a significant change in the hierarchies of value in cultural production in urban Cape Town, where there has been a bifurcation of theatre in the urban centre and on the township periphery. Theatre at these two sites differs in aesthetic character, themes and infrastructural resources, which derive from a history of legislated racial separatism that is still evident today socially, culturally, educationally and in the development of the city itself. Here, I identify changes that have come about in recent years not so much because of the government's policy of redress, but because leading artists are using their pre-eminence and institutions to catalyse educational experiences, performance platforms and a positive marketing environment for theatre and artists from the townships. The Baxter Theatre and its Zabalaza Festival serve as a case study.

Urban theory with an outside

2017 ◽  
Vol 36 (3) ◽  
pp. 405-419 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tariq Jazeel
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Urban Studies ◽  
Spatial Process ◽  
Colonial History ◽  
Urban Theory ◽  
City Formation ◽  
History Of ◽  
Political Value ◽  
The City ◽  
Forms Of Knowledge

This paper critically engages planetary urbanization’s claim that it generates ‘Urban Theory Without an Outside’. It argues planetary urbanization is part of the broader ideological terrain of urban studies whose textual field reifies the city, the urban and urbanization as objects and processes of analyses through a kind of ‘methodological urbanization’. The paper argues the conceptual and political value of delineating views from outside urban studies and planetary urbanization – in particular from domains like area studies – that unmoor the primacy of the city, the urban and particularly urbanization in understandings of socio-spatial processes across planetary space. It suggests how these perspectives can usefully act as ‘supplements’ indifferent to urban studies, reminding urban studies of the limits of its own forms of knowledge production in relation to socio-spatial process and city formation. To do this, the paper sketches an anti-colonial history of Colombo, Sri Lanka.

scholarly journals The urban water metabolism of Cape Town: Towards becoming a water sensitive city

2021 ◽  
Vol 117 (5/6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ffion Atkins ◽  
Tyrel Flügel ◽  
Rui Hugman
Keyword(s):  
Urban Landscape ◽  
Water Cycle ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Global South ◽  
Spatially Explicit ◽  
Urban Water ◽  
Water Metabolism ◽  
Groundwater Storage ◽  
Quality Of Water ◽  
The City

To improve its resilience to increasing climatic uncertainty, the City of Cape Town (the City) aims to become a water sensitive city by 2040. To undertake this challenge, a means to measure progress is needed that quantifies the urban water systems at a scale that enables a whole-of-system approach to water management. Using an urban water metabolism framework, we (1) provide a first city-scale quantification of the urban water cycle integrating its natural and anthropogenic flows, and (2) assess alternative water sources (indicated in the New Water Programme) and whether they support the City towards becoming water sensitive. We employ a spatially explicit method with particular consideration to apply this analysis to other African or Global South cities. At the time of study, centralised potable water demand by the City amounted to 325 gigalitres per annum, 99% of which was supplied externally from surface storage, and the remaining ~1% internally from groundwater storage (Atlantis aquifer). Within the City’s boundary, runoff, wastewater effluent and groundwater represent significant internal resources which could, in theory, improve supply efficiency and internalisation as well as hydrological performance. For the practical use of alternative resources throughout the urban landscape, spatially explicit insight is required regarding the seasonality of runoff, local groundwater storage capacity and the quality of water as it is conveyed through the complex urban landscape. We suggest further research to develop metrics of urban water resilience and equity, both of which are important in a Global South context.

scholarly journals An Ecological View of the History of the City of Cape Town

2012 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pippin M. L. Anderson ◽  
Patrick J. O'Farrell
Keyword(s):  
Cape Town ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ecological View ◽  
The City

Working in the Cape Archives; A letter from the field

Itinerario ◽  
1984 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-35
Author(s):  
Pieter van Duin
Keyword(s):  
Race Relations ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Western Cape ◽  
Trade Union Movement ◽  
Union Movement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

After spending two and a half months in the city-jungle of Johannesburg, I was finally able to go to Cape Town. The Cape Archives was one of the most important places for my research into the urban labour and race relations and the history of the Trade Union Movement in the Western Cape.

Cape Town

Urban Studies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Warren Smit
Keyword(s):  
Local Government ◽  
Natural Environment ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Transition To Democracy ◽  
Regional Government ◽  
Place And Space ◽  
History Of ◽  
Government Body ◽  
Racial Lines ◽  
The City

Cape Town is the second-largest city in South Africa, with a population of over four million people. Established by Dutch colonists in 1652, it is a diverse and complex city, with a long history of segregation and inequity. The city continues to be characterized by high levels of inequity, most tangibly manifested in the presence of informal settlements. Much of this inequity is along racial lines as a result of enforced spatial segregation during colonial and apartheid times. Since South Africa’s transition to democracy in the 1990s, the city has continued to evolve, with significant urban regeneration initiatives (such as the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront) and with major governance reforms (with the fifty-seven local government bodies and regional government body that existed in the early 1990s being merged into one local government body in 2000). Cape Town has been the site of much research, from a range of perspectives. During the apartheid era, this research largely focused on the implementation of apartheid segregation and the resistance to apartheid, whereas since the 1990s, the focus has been on the implementation of developmental local government, continued inequities, and the roll-out of neoliberalism. Research from a “developmental local government” perspective has focused on government reform and the large amount of service delivery (for example, housing delivery) that has occurred since the 1990s. Another major focus of research has been on the implementation of neoliberal urban strategies and the resistance of civil society to this (although some scholars of “southern urbanism” would argue that the importance of Neoliberalism in Cape Town and other cities in the Global South has been overemphasized by scholars from the Global North). Given its location in a magnificent setting with unique levels of biodiversity, tourism and the urban interface with the natural environment have also become major topics of research. Probably the most effective reflections of life in Cape Town have been in fiction and popular nonfiction works, so it is important to also consider these as well. The bibliography is structured in the following sections: History of Cape Town (to 1990); Overviews of Post-Apartheid Cape Town (after 1990); Poverty, Inequality, and Exclusion in Cape Town; Place and Space in Cape Town; Governance of Cape Town; Neoliberalism in Cape Town; Crime and Violence in Cape Town; Tourism in Cape Town; Cape Town and the Natural Environment; and Fiction and Popular Works about Cape Town.

scholarly journals Democracy, discourse, and design: Cape Town’s (re)turn to public space

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-290
Author(s):  
Sharóne L. Tomer
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Public Space ◽  
Urban Design ◽  
Cape Town ◽  
Public Spaces ◽  
Space Program ◽  
Spatial Order ◽  
Policy Documents ◽  
History Of ◽  
The City

Public spaces had been central to Cape Town’s colonial planning and spatial order, but became marginalised in the twentieth century under modernist planning and apartheid policy. As apartheid came towards its close, architects and planners began to champion public space as a way of addressing the city’s deficiencies. Books, articles, and policy documents were written celebrating public space as a humanist device and vehicle for democracy. The City of Cape Town’s emerging Urban Design Branch instituted a major public space program: the Dignified Places Programme. This paper traces the history of public space as a terrain through which political aspirations, whether of domination or contestation, have been asserted in Cape Town. The paper will argue that at the end of apartheid, a public space turn occurred which reflected the specificities of post-apartheid democracy, in both its aspirations and limitations.

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