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Mass urbanisation in cities of the global South, is causing cities to evolve, with informal settlements being central to this evolution. While local government is the official point of interaction for urban informal settlement dwellers, those interactions are often characterised by a lack of meaningful participation. Engaging with the co-production literature and two case studies of informal settlements in Cape Town, South Africa, this paper examines how they shed light on the shifting and constantly evolving roles and practices of local government and community actors within a co-production engagement. Based on the findings from these cases, the paper argues that co-production as a practice of collaboration between the local state and citizens can allow for the forging of new relationships, built on trust, sharing of resources and a more equal distribution of power where communities can shape the outcomes of service delivery projects to respond to their needs and demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When South Africa hosted the 2010 FIFA World Cup, the move to stage this mega-event at the southern tip of the African continent was lauded as a timely acknowledgement of the growing importance of the ‘global south’. Most of the fears that had been raised before the kick-off proved immaterial once the event was under way. Nine host cities enjoyed the international spotlight; the new and revamped stadiums were the focus of the media. Behind the scenes, however, more infrastructure had to be created, locational decisions taken and structures of governance honed. That this process was thoroughly influenced by FIFA's wishes can be demonstrated by focusing on a few strategic elements, such as the site selection for stadiums and fan parks. The findings in this article sustain the dominant argument in mega-event research: urban development and governance in the host cities are severely affected by these events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay considers the awkward 'life of the corpse' outside of the official spaces of the designated cemetery or burial ground in post-apartheid South Africa. We reflect on a new memorial building in Cape Town, an Ossuary named the New Prestwich Memorial. The memorial was built following a city-wide dispute over the 'accidental discovery' of the bones of thousands of people who were buried in Prestwich Street, close to Cape Town's harbour, but whose presence had been forgotten and concealed by colonial urban development. This essay considers the New Prestwich Memorial Building as an object of public culture. It emerges out of our own deliberate attempt to engage with the Ossuary as an object in history - incomplete, troubling and under construction. Mindful of the debates and texts written about the dispute circulating in Cape Town, we visited both the site of the 'discovery' of the bones in Prestwich Street and the Ossuary. We noted the elements in the visual landscape that alerted us to the work being done by this combination of material substances and design. Our essay is organised around six key terms or phrases that occur in the exhibition text, which guide the visitor's interpretation of the space. These words and phrases appeared to us to mark moments of intense symbolisation, signifiers in which the ideological work of the architect and the authors of the exhibition became most visible. The terms are: Gateway; Engraved Palimpsest; Mirrors; Visitors' Book; Concrete, Brick, Stone; and Closed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an introduction to a series of articles on urban renewal. They include an overview of urbanization and urban policy in South Africa since the ending of apartheid. The impact of the power of formal capitalist processes on the lives of some of the poorest urban residents in Lagos and Cape Town are examined. The emergence of newness in the city as a result of intersections among differences is explored. The difficulty to sustain an effective public domain due to economic and political crises is proposed.

This paper focuses on the Windermere squatter settlement during the 1940s and 1950s, and seeks to contribute to the meagre literature on Africans in Cape Town and challenge the uncritical separation of ‘urbanites’ from the amakhaya (migrant contract workers) so common to the historiography of Cape Town. This division was far more blurred and complex than is usually recognised. Very few Africans in Cape Town had a purely urban or purely rural identity by the 1950s (see Mayer 1971, and revisionist historians such as Beinart 1982; Delius 1989; Bonner 1990). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies the history of urbanization and racial segregation in Cape Town, South Africa. Race relations; State of segregation in the city.