The Case for a Southern Perspective in Planning Theory

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-37 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vanessa Watson
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
Global South ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Recent Interest ◽  
Global North ◽  
Material Conditions

In a number of disciplines scholars are questioning the relevance of theoretical positions which claim general and global applicability, yet are grounded in assumptions about social and material conditions which are more specific to a global North context. This paper focuses on the recent interest in urban planning theory to develop explanatory and normative theory that directly addresses the problems and issues of cities in the global South. It suggests a number of starting assumptions, very different from those that inform much current planning theory, which need to inspire the development of planning thought with a global South orientation. These are illustrated through an example of state-society conflict in an informal settlement. While there is certainly a case for developing a global south perspective in planning theory, it is also important to specify the limitations on such an exercise to avoid the trap of creating new theoretical binaries.

scholarly journals Not So Much about Informality: Emergent Challenges for Urban Planning and Design Education

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (20) ◽  
pp. 8450
Author(s):  
Paulo Silva
Keyword(s):  
Design Education ◽  
Global South ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
Global Changes ◽  
Planning And Design ◽  
Urban Planning And Design ◽  
Global North ◽  
Perspective Planning ◽  
The Relationship

This paper addresses the challenges faced by planning and design education programmes when focusing on more sustainable ways of dealing with global changes. While the dominant discourse addresses the fact that planning programmes discuss the Global South through the lens of planning theory and practice from the Global North, the proposal is to shift the debate and recognise that, from a complexity perspective, planning problems are not so different from region to region. The argument is that, although the theory has moved on, when discussing conceptual aspects of planning, spatial planning practice is still focused on objects rather than the relationship between them (be they buildings, streets, neighbourhoods or even cities). Assuming that urban territories are not objects and do not develop in a linear way, but rather evolve, the proposal is to reflect on how planning and design education addresses urban evolution. This paper suggests a revision of planning and design approaches to informality, given the participation in recent years of a joint studio in Bandung, Indonesia. The alternative perspective offered here involves a re-examination of concepts and deconstruction of dichotomies. The main findings rely on the interpretation of formalisation processes (in the Global North) through the lens of complexity theory, which has facilitated understanding of today’s informal settlements (in the Global South). It suggests the deconstruction of dichotomies, such as informal versus formal, thus, positing the need for a major shift on planning and design rules that focus less on objects and more on the relationship between them.

Youth of the Global South and Why They Are Worth Studying

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Cooper ◽  
Sharlene Swartz ◽  
Molemo Ramphalile
Keyword(s):  
Global South ◽  
Real Place ◽  
Life Phase ◽  
Normal Transition ◽  
Historical Processes ◽  
Industrialized Nations ◽  
Sociopolitical Consciousness ◽  
Transition Into Adulthood ◽  
Global North ◽  
Material Conditions

While real place-based differences exist between groups of youth, the simple global North-South binary is problematic. This essay explores this paradox arguing that differences and the binary itself are the result of historical processes that are continually in flux. These histories-in-the-present are illuminated with descriptive statistics (wealth, violence, human development, inequality) that illustrate empirical differences between Southern and Northern youth. Unpacking the concept of Southern youth using Southern theory shows that material conditions in the Global South mean that many more Southern youth diverge from what is considered a normal transition into adulthood in industrialized nations in late modernity, with implications for the category or life-phase of ‘youth.’ The concepts of ‘precarity’ and the practice of ‘the hustle’ are then used to suggest how a Global South youth studies agenda might simultaneously center issues like livelihoods, struggle, and the formation of sociopolitical consciousness. Southern youth as maestros of the hustle simultaneously assert a form of being young that is not based on deficit or romanticism, is thoroughly modern, and which foreground material realities.

Messy Maps: Qualitative GIS for Urban Flood Resilience

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Faith Taylor ◽  
James Millington ◽  
Ezekiel Jacob ◽  
Bruce Malamud ◽  
Mark Pelling
Keyword(s):  
Urban Planning ◽  
Spatial Data ◽  
Informal Settlement ◽  
Global South ◽  
Spatial Knowledge ◽  
Urban Flood ◽  
Qualitative Gis ◽  
Local Experience ◽  
Data Infrastructures ◽  
Spatial Locations

<p>We present a methodology to include qualitative aspects of flood resilience such as emotion, social connections and experience into urban planning using qualitative GIS. The geographic information system (GIS) has become ubiquitous in urban planning and disaster risk reduction, but often results in resilience being conceptualised and deployed in highly technocratic and quantitative ways. Yet in the urban Global South, where the rate of informal growth often outstrips our ability to collect spatial data, the knowledge infrastructures used for resilience planning leave little room for participation and consideration of local experience. This presentation outlines two interlinked projects (‘Why we Disagree about Resilience’ and the follow-on ‘Expressive Mapping of Resilient Futures’) experimenting with qualitative GIS methodologies to map resilience as defined by informal settlement residents. We show examples from two case study cities, Nairobi (Kenya) and Cape Town (South Africa), with applicability across the urban Global South. Four map layers were generated: (i) flood footprints showing the detailed spatial knowledge of floods generated by locals; (ii) georeferenced, narrated 360° StorySpheres capturing differing perspectives about a space; (iii) spatial social network maps showing residents connections to formal and informal actors before and during floods; (iv) multimedia pop-ups communicating contextual details missing from traditional GIS maps. We show that for informal settlements, many locations and aspects of resilience have vague or imprecise spatial locations, and that placing markers on a map makes them visible in ways that planners can begin to engage with. We discuss challenges such as privacy, legacy and participation. Although challenges remain, we found openness by city-level actors to use qualitative forms of evidence, and that the contextual detail aided their retention and understanding of resilience. The ‘messy’ maps we present here illustrate that in the era of big data and metrics, there is a space for qualitative understanding of resilience, and that existing knowledge and spatial data infrastructures have potential to be more inclusive and holistic.</p>

Oceans and Landless Farms: Linking Southern and Northern Shadow Places of Industrial Livestock (1954–1975)

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Floor Haalboom
Keyword(s):  
Animal Feed ◽  
Marine Ecosystem ◽  
Global South ◽  
Humboldt Current ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Production And Consumption ◽  
Boom And Bust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North

This article argues for more extensive attention by environmental historians to the role of agriculture and animals in twentieth-century industrialisation and globalisation. To contribute to this aim, this article focuses on the animal feed that enabled the rise of ‘factory farming’ and its ‘shadow places’, by analysing the history of fishmeal. The article links the story of feeding fish to pigs and chickens in one country in the global north (the Netherlands), to that of fishmeal producing countries in the global south (Peru, Chile and Angola in particular) from 1954 to 1975. Analysis of new source material about fishmeal consumption from this period shows that it saw a shift to fishmeal production in the global south rather than the global north, and a boom and bust in the global supply of fishmeal in general and its use in Dutch pigs and poultry farms in particular. Moreover, in different ways, the ocean, and production and consumption places of fishmeal functioned as shadow places of this commodity. The public health, ecological and social impacts of fishmeal – which were a consequence of its cheapness as a feed ingredient – were largely invisible on the other side of the world, until changes in the marine ecosystem of the Pacific Humboldt Current and the large fishmeal crisis of 1972–1973 suddenly changed this.

Job Referrals in the Global South

Contexts ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-41
Author(s):  
Lindsey Ibañez
Keyword(s):  
Job Search ◽  
Global South ◽  
Labor Market Institutions ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Employment Relation ◽  
Global North ◽  
Social Safety Nets ◽  
Sociological Studies ◽  
And Control ◽  
Lower Income Countries

Most sociological studies of job searching are from higher-income, industrialized countries, often referred to as the Global North. Much less is understood about job search behavior in the lower-income countries of the Global South, where there are fewer labor market institutions, weaker social safety nets, higher underemployment, more informality, and more precarity. In this environment of deprivation and insecurity, low-wage workers in the Global South turn to their personal networks for the resources that markets and states cannot provide. While job referrals allow workers to earn a living, however, they also extend employer surveillance and control beyond the bounds of the employment relation.

scholarly journals Dimensions of Urban Blight in Emerging Southern Cities: A Case Study of Accra-Ghana

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (15) ◽  
pp. 8399
Author(s):  
Sally Adofowaa Mireku ◽  
Zaid Abubakari ◽  
Javier Martinez
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Practices ◽  
Global South ◽  
Economic Decline ◽  
City Development ◽  
Study Approach ◽  
Population Loss ◽  
Land Transfer ◽  
Urban Blight ◽  
Global North

Urban blight functions inversely to city development and often leads to cities’ deterioration in terms of physical beauty and functionality. While the underlying causes of urban blight in the context of the global north are mainly known in the literature to be population loss, economic decline, deindustrialisation and suburbanisation, there is a research gap regarding the root causes of urban blight in the global south, specifically in prime areas. Given the differences in the property rights regimes and economic growth trajectories between the global north and south, the underlying reasons for urban blight cannot be assumed to be the same. This study, thus, employed a qualitative method and case study approach to ascertain in-depth contextual reasons and effects for urban blight in a prime area, East Legon, Accra-Ghana. Beyond economic reasons, the study found that socio-cultural practices of landholding and land transfer in Ghana play an essential role in how blighted properties emerge. In the quest to preserve cultural heritage/identity, successors of old family houses (the ancestral roots) do their best to stay in them without selling or redeveloping them. The findings highlight the less obvious but relevant functions that blighted properties play in the city core at the micro level of individual families in fostering social cohesion and alleviating the need to pay higher rents. Thus, in the global south, we conclude that there is a need to pay attention to the less obvious roles that so-called blighted properties perform and to move beyond the default negative perception that blighted properties are entirely problematic.

scholarly journals Indicators, security and sovereignty during COVID-19 in the Global South

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-260
Author(s):  
John Harrington
Keyword(s):  
Global Governance ◽  
Third World ◽  
Global South ◽  
Governance Mechanisms ◽  
Health Governance ◽  
The Face ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Government

AbstractThe spread of COVID-19 has seen a contest over health governance and sovereignty in Global South states, with a focus on two radically distinct modes: (1) indicators and metrics and (2) securitisation. Indicators have been a vehicle for the government of states through the external imposition and internal self-application of standards and benchmarks. Securitisation refers to the calling-into-being of emergencies in the face of existential threats to the nation. This paper contextualises both historically with reference to the trajectory of Global South states in the decades after decolonisation, which saw the rise and decline of Third-World solidarity and its replacement by neoliberalism and global governance mechanisms in health, as in other sectors. The interaction between these modes and their relative prominence during COVID-19 is studied through a brief case-study of developments in Kenya during the early months of the pandemic. The paper closes with suggestions for further research and a reflection on parallel trends within Global North states.

scholarly journals Reframing refugee crisis: A “European crisis of migration” or a “crisis of protection”?

2021 ◽  
pp. 239965442198970
Author(s):  
Maissaa Almustafa
Keyword(s):  
Large Scale ◽  
Global South ◽  
Global Media ◽  
Developing Regions ◽  
International Protection ◽  
High Commissioner ◽  
The Face ◽  
Global North ◽  
Displaced People ◽  
Resettlement Programs

The end of 2015 witnessed a global record in the number of forcibly displaced people fleeing because of wars and persecution. The unprecedented total of 65.3 million displaced individuals, out of which 21.3 million were refugees, was the highest number that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has recorded since its establishment in 1950. During the same year and in the face of this large-scale crisis, only 107,100 refugees were admitted for resettlement through official resettlement programs, whereas 3.2 million people applied for asylum globally. And in spite of the fact that the majority of the world refugees are hosted in ten developing regions, the dominant narrative in the global media was about the “unauthorized” arrival of more than one million asylum seekers in Europe by sea during 2015. This paper argues that the unexpected nature of refugees’ arrivals has proven that refugees were supposed to be contained in their camps in the Global South, deterred from reaching the territories of the Global North, represented here by Europe. Thus, the paper proposes that these arrivals are rather reflections of a crisis of protection that developed in the Global South where containment and deterrence strategies against refugees from the Global South exacerbate their inhumane displacement conditions in home regions. In the same context, the paper discusses how international protection structures have been reconstructed to serve the same goals of containment and deterrence, with the ultimate aim of putting people ‘back in place’ with minimal access to protection and rights.

scholarly journals Decolonizing regional planning from the Global South: Active geographies and social struggles in Northeastern Brazil

2021 ◽  
pp. 026377582110246
Author(s):  
Federico Ferretti
Keyword(s):  
Regional Planning ◽  
Global South ◽  
Northeastern Brazil ◽  
Planning Theory ◽  
The Political ◽  
International Literature ◽  
The South ◽  
Political Conservatism ◽  
Colonial Histories ◽  
Resisting Oppression

This paper addresses the engagement of critical geographers from Northeastern Brazil with regional planning, aiming at transforming society by acting on their region’s spaces. Extending and putting in relation literature on planning theory in the Global South and geographical scholarship on decoloniality, I explore new archives showing how the planning work that these geographers performed from 1957 to 1964 was an example of the ‘South’ re-elaborating and putting into practice notions arising from ‘international’ literature, such as that of ‘active geography’, and pioneering critical uses of instruments, such as mappings and statistics, that have often been associated with technocracy and political conservatism. Connected with peasants’ struggles and with a theoretical framework that is cognisant of the colonial histories and insurgent Black and indigenous traditions in the Northeast, these geographers’ works show that there is no ‘Southern Theory’ without a concrete engagement of scholars with social and political problems, one which is not limited to ‘participation’, but aims at challenging the political powers in place. Although not devoid of contradictions that are analysed here, the experiences of these Southern geographers acting in and for the South can provide precious insights into current (Northern or Southern) scholarly programmes aimed at resisting oppression.

If things go South: The renewed policy of sport mega events allocation and its implications for future research

2021 ◽  
pp. 101269022098134
Author(s):  
Billy Graeff ◽  
Jorge Knijnik
Keyword(s):  
21St Century ◽  
Public Expenditure ◽  
Global South ◽  
International Olympic Committee ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Construction Costs ◽  
Mega Events ◽  
The Past ◽  
Global North ◽  
Analytical Tools

The past few decades have seen an increase of sport mega events (SMEs) held outside the Global North. This tendency has been accompanied by a growing public expenditure in these events. This paper employs selected Global South SMEs to discuss this trend. By critically analysing public documents, biddings and reports, the study traces comparisons between 21st-century Global South and Global North SMEs expenditures, in the revenue of franchise owners (FIFA and the International Olympic Committee), in construction costs within the budgets and in the costs related to security. This comprehensive and intertwined investigation shows the need for new analytical tools – such as the Renewed Policy of Sport Mega Events Allocation, a concept developed here - to better capture the central questions posed by the challenges of ‘SMEs going South’.

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