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It is well established that urban community gardens (UCGs) can either challenge or reinforce neoliberal urbanism. This duality is especially evident among UCGs that sell garden harvests for income generation. In this article I therefore examine UCGs in low‐income areas of Cape Town, South Africa, to understand how they might sell their harvests while countering the neoliberal food system in cities of the global South. I draw on qualitative fieldwork, including observations and semi‐structured interviews with UCG representatives and civil society actors. Most harvests are currently sold to high‐end venues through intermediary actors in civil society organizations (CSOs) and non‐governmental organizations (NGOs). However, this approach disregards the local community's socioeconomic conditions and undermines community gardens' nutritional objectives. Yet, under specific scenarios, the sale of garden harvests could mitigate the persistent food injustice in Cape Town's low‐income areas. In this article I introduce a model for harvest sales that advances sustainable urban agriculture and fosters food justice in neoliberal cities in the global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban areas provide breeding habitats for many species. However, animals raised in urban environments face challenges such as altered food availability and quality, pollution and pathogen assemblages. These challenges can affect physiological processes such as immune function and antioxidant defences which are important for fitness.Here, we explore how levels of urbanisation influence innate immune function, immune response to a mimicked bacterial infection and antioxidant capacity of nestling Black Sparrowhawks Accipiter melanoleucus in South Africa. We also explore the effect of timing of breeding and rainfall on physiology since both can influence the environmental condition under which nestlings are raised. Finally, because urbanisation can influence immune function indirectly, we use path analyses to explore direct and indirect associations between urbanisation, immune function and oxidative stress.We obtained measures of innate immunity (haptoglobin, lysis, agglutination, bactericidal capacity), indices of antioxidant capacity (total non‐enzymatic antioxidant capacity (tAOX) and total glutathione from nestlings from 2015 to 2019. In addition, in 2018 and 2019, we mimicked a bacterial infection by injecting nestlings with lipopolysaccharide and quantified their immune response.Increased urban cover was associated with an increase in lysis and a decrease in tAOX, but not with any of the other physiological parameters. Furthermore, except for agglutination, no physiological parameters were associated with the timing of breeding. Lysis and bactericidal capacity, however, varied consistently with the annual rainfall pattern. Immune response to a mimicked a bacterial infection decreased with urban cover but not with the timing of breeding nor rainfall. Our path analyses suggested indirect associations between urban cover and some immune indices via tAOX but not via the timing of breeding.Our results show that early‐life development in an urban environment is associated with variation in immune and antioxidant functions. The direct association between urbanisation and antioxidant capacity and their impact on immune function is likely an important factor mediating the impact of urbanisation on urban‐dwelling animals. Future studies should explore how these results are linked to fitness and whether the responses are adaptive for urban‐dwelling species. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article interrogates the term "periphery" by examining the forms of urbanisation unfolding in the Gauteng City‐Region (GCR) of South Africa. Among the urbanisation processes identified, it focuses on two, situating them among debates on informality and defining new vocabularies of urbanisation. Aligned with discussions of peripherality as a social phenomenon, the article first depicts how some marginalised groups of people using transversal means carve out "toeholds" near urban centralities and opportunities. Second, it conveys how peripherality is also a geographical phenomenon, describing "aspirational" mass housing for the lower‐middle class on urban peripheries that can generate unexpected forms of precarity. The article concludes that toehold urbanisation and aspirational urbanisation drive peripheralisation in the GCR, and considers the implications of these concepts for critical geography and urban studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use intensification and climate change are two prominent drivers of variation in biological communities. However, we know very little about how these two potential environmental stressors interact. Here we use a stable isotope approach to quantify how animal communities respond to urban and agriculture land use, and to latitudinal variation in climate (rainfall and temperature), in 29 streams across South Africa.Community structure was shaped by both land use and climatic factors. The taxonomic diversity of invertebrates was best explained by an independent negative effect of urbanization, while abundance declined in summer. However, we could not use our variables to predict fish diversity (suggesting that other factors may be more important).Both trophic functional diversity (quantifed using isotopic richness) and food chain length declined with increasing temperature. Functional redundancy (quantifed using isotopic uniqueness) in the invertebrate community was high in wet areas, and a synergistic interaction with urbanization caused the lowest values in dry urban regions. There was an additive effect of agriculture and rainfall on abundance‐weighted vertebrate functional diversity (quantified using isotopic dispersion), with the former causing a decline in dispersion, with this partially compensated for by high rainfall.In most cases, we found that a single dominant driver (either climate or land use) explained variation between streams. We only found two incidences of combined effects improving the model, one of which was amplified (i.e. the drivers combined to cause an effect larger than the sum of their independent effects), indicating that management should first focus on mitigating the dominant stressor in stream ecosystems for successful restoration efforts.Overall, our study indicates subtle food web responses to multiple drivers of change, only identified by using functional isotope metrics—these are a useful tool for a whole‐systems biology understanding of global change. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Luxury Effect hypothesizes a positive relationship between wealth and biodiversity within urban areas. Understanding how urban development, both in terms of socio‐economic status and the built environment, affects biodiversity can contribute to the sustainable development of cities, and may be especially important in the developing world where current growth in urban populations is most rapid. We tested the Luxury Effect by analysing bird species richness in relation to income levels, as well as human population density and urban cover, in landscapes along an urbanization gradient in South Africa. The Luxury Effect was supported in landscapes with lower urbanization levels in that species richness was positively correlated with income level where urban cover was relatively low. However, the effect was reversed in highly urbanized landscapes, where species richness was negatively associated with income level. Tree cover was also positively correlated with species richness, although it could not explain the Luxury Effect. Species richness was negatively related to urban cover, but there was no association with human population density. Our model suggests that maintaining green space in at least an equal proportion to the built environment is likely to provide a development strategy that will enhance urban biodiversity, and with it, the positive benefits that are manifest for urban dwellers. Our findings can form a key contribution to a wider strategy to expand urban settlements in a sustainable way to provide for the growing urban population in South Africa, including addressing imbalances in environmental justice across income levels and racial groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates current socioeconomic disparities within rural and urban areas. The empirical analysis is grounded in an examination of urban and rural bias theories, which have often underpinned poverty analysis. This article suggests that poverty analysis can be improved by moving beyond the rural-urban binary and investigating differences across all geographical types (when data are available). Using 2012 household survey data on South Africa, the article sheds lights on substantial differences-in household composition and access to services and assets-that are likely to make households located in particular geotypes far more vulnerable to poverty. Finally, the article discusses how development policy can better address the specific income-generating constraints that disadvantaged areas face. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The electricity demand in South Africa has experienced vast changes both from a policy point of view and due to the country's great industrialisation and urbanisation. The literature dealing with the South African electricity case, to date, has not taken into account these changes and their effect to the symmetric behaviour of the residential and industrial electricity consumers. Hence, this paper aims at examining the asymmetric behaviour of the annual South African electricity demand (total, residential and non-residential) for the period 1960-2012. To do so, three different tests were used: the entropy test proposed by Racine and Maasoumi (2007. Journal of Econometrics 138, 2, 547; 2008. Econometric Reviews 28, 246), the conditional symmetry test proposed by Bai and Ng (2001. Journal of Econometrics 103, 225) and the Triples test proposed by Randles et al. (1980. Journal of the American Statistical Association 75, 168). The findings showed that there is weak evidence of asymmetry, given that the null hypothesis of symmetry can only be rejected at 10 per cent level of significance. Hence, econometric models examining the South African electricity demand during the same period are credible in their assumption of a linear data generating process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an urbanizing world, the inequalities of infrastructure are increasingly politicized in ways that reconstitute the urban political. A key site here is the politicization of human waste. The centrality of sanitation to urban life means that its politicization is always more than just service delivery. It is vital to the production of the urban political itself. The ways in which sanitation is seen by different actors is a basis for understanding its relation to the political. We chart Cape Town's contemporary sanitation syndrome, its condition of crisis, and the remarkable politicization of toilets and human waste in the city's townships and informal settlements in recent years. We identify four tactics-poolitical tactics-that politicize not just sanitation but Cape Town itself: poo protests, auditing, sabotage, and blockages. We evaluate these tactics, consider what is at stake, and chart possibilities for a more just urban future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pigeons have been a part of our lives for as long as we can remember. Some people view them with joy, others disdain. Regardless of the perception, control measures are often implemented against the birds in a bid to reduce their presence in urban environments without considering the views of members of the public in the process. Complaints about pigeon activity are, typically, given more attention than praise for these birds. However, people who are pro-pigeons are often not provided with the forum to express their views of the birds. This study explored the perceptions of staff with regard to the pigeons inhabiting the University of South Africa's Muckleneuk campus. Two hundred and forty-six participants provided their opinions on the pigeons, their related activities and the perceived impact on staff on the campus. Recognising that both people and urban wildlife play a role of cause-and-effect in human-wildlife conflicts can contribute to understanding peoples' relationships and perceptions of animals which transgress the boundaries between urbanisation and nature. By considering peoples' perceptions, attitudes and behaviours towards urban wildlife, management strategies can be significantly informed in the process of mitigating conflict. The study has shown that the negative perception of pigeons, which was assumed to be the position of all the people affected by the pigeons at the University of South Arica's Muckleneuk campus, is in fact incorrect. Participants would rather encourage the nesting and breeding activities of the pigeons on campus, as they felt that the human-pigeon interactions and the viewing of squabs in nests contributed positively to their work environment. Pigeon control strategies should therefore not solely be on the biological aspect of a perceived pigeon problem, but should also include the human association. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In January 2012 the residents of an inner-city tenement building in Doornfontein, Johannesburg, were evicted on a court order. The building was situated in a post-industrial neighbourhood in which thousands of South Africans and foreign nationals, many blind or disabled, live in unlawfully occupied buildings without access to water, basic sanitation, electricity and waste management services. Such buildings are known in policy discourse as 'bad buildings', and informally as 'dark buildings', invoking both a sense of developmental failure and spiritual insecurity. In this paper I analyse how urban renewal policies created social divisions and alliances not only among the residents of Chambers, which were channelled along nationalist lines, but also between the able-bodied and disabled, and produced new social alliances. In particular, I document how a group of blind Zimbabweans experienced threats of violence and accusations of betrayal, as they were offered alternate accommodation by the evicting company because of their disability. I argue here that the pressures of private-sector housing developments intersected with the insecurities and divisions of inner-city social spaces and also fostered new alliances. Following the work of Deleuze and Guattari, I invoke the concept of 'decoding dispossession', proposing that ongoing evictions and dispossessions are characterized by simultaneous movements of 'decoding and deterritorialization' and 'overcoding-reterritorialization'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focusing on the case of South Africa, this study examines how decentralisation policies and inter-party politics have affected urban service-delivery responsibilities and resources. Service delivery does not appear to be worse off in Cape Town than in Johannesburg, even though the former is controlled by the opposition Democratic Alliance. While there have been political attempts to undermine the authority of its officials, the fiscal elements are protected by a relatively strong and well-managed department of finance. Consequently, both donors and the national government steer money towards Cape Town because they know it can deliver on its obligations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the end of apartheid, Johannesburg and other South African cities are now part of a new global race to become 'world-class' tourist and business centers. At the center of this development is the importation of Vegas-style spectacle by local entrepreneurs, firms and other city boosters who create fantasyscapes such as the Emperor's Palace and Grand West. Financed and run by South African impresarios - whose luxurious empires transcend the continent - these resorts represent not only the globalization of gaming but the way in which South African cities see themselves within the worldwide urban hierarchy. As such, this article seeks to untangle the global and local aspects of importing fantasy into the 'new South Africa'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban geographers increasingly incorporate the potential of so-called informal livelihood activities to provide resources that can be creatively managed in the transformation of urban space, particularly to the benefit of less well off and marginalized residents. This paper reports a case study in Rustenburg, North West Province, South Africa, where city managers began to promote inclusive development in the early 1990s, just prior to the formal dismantling of the apartheid system. The findings reveal that Rustenburg's urban transformation process, over a decade later, continued to reproduce repressive practices that limit the informal livelihood activities of the urban majority. Apparently efforts of well-meaning city managers to implement a sustainable and inclusive development process are often rendered futile at the point of actually defining the constituents of urban socioeconomic transformation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under conditions of globalization large cities present unique challenges for poverty reduction and the realization of rights. The urbanization of poverty also underscores the imperative of downscaling the emerging debate about the developmental state to the city scale. The arguments in this article start from the proposition that a universal rights agenda can and should be fulfilled as an alternative to neoliberal aspirations, and that to achieve this development action will be needed on a series of different scales. The article is structured in three main parts. The first section explores the implications for the state of adopting a rights-based agenda in the urban context, giving particular emphasis to defining those rights whose meaning arises from settlement planning or management-based policies and interventions on the individual, household, neighbourhood and more macro-environmental scale (what we call 2nd, 3rd and 4th generation rights or the ‘right to the city’). The second part of the article is dedicated to illustrating the particular nature of how rights to the city are blocked or achieved, using the experiences of the Greater Cape Town area. The final section of the article makes a more general case for a more radical rights-based agenda for cities. Résumé Dans un environnement mondialisé, les grandes villes présentent des problèmes particuliers de réduction de la pauvreté et de concrétisation des droits. De plus, l’urbanisation de la pauvreté met en avant la nécessité impérative de ramener au niveau de la ville l’échelle du débat naissant sur ‘l’État en développement’. Les arguments partent ici de la proposition selon laquelle un programme de droits universels peut et devrait être réalisé en tant qu’alternative aux aspirations néolibérales et que, pour ce faire, il faudra des actions de développement sur une série d’échelles différentes. La première partie de l’article explore les implications, pour l’État, d’adopter un projet basé sur des droits dans le contexte urbain; ce faisant, elle souligne l’importance de définir ces droits dont la signification naît de politiques ou d’interventions sur l’aménagement de l’habitat ou basées sur la gestion, à la fois à l’échelon de l’individu, du foyer, du quartier et d’un environnement plus vaste (ce que nous appelons respectivement les droits de 2ème, 3ème et 4ème génération ou ‘droit à la ville’). La deuxième partie illustre la manière particulière dont les droits à la ville sont soit bloqués soit atteints, à partir des expériences de Greater Cape Town. La dernière partie défend plus généralement un programme pour les villes qui soit basé sur des droits et plus radical. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The virtuosity of Karen Bakker's book, Privatizing Water, lies in its depth of understanding and methodical assessment of water provision, its refusal to lapse into the easy embrace of entrenched dichotomies, and its relentless commitment to asking how we can find solutions to urban water crises that are workable and just. Bakker strives to extend this notion of justice to both the human and non-human realms. Whether she succeeds is moot, because 'ecological rights', as Bakker terms them, ultimately remain firmly bound to the anthropocentric: the future possibility of 'human' and 'community' rights. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Land use change studies permeate the geographic literature. While these studies have helped researchers understand the dynamics and importance of such changes, they have less often taken a deeper historical approach in combination with their traditional strengths of geographic information analysis. In this study, we explore historical land use changes in one of South Africa's former bantustans, Lebowa, from 1963 to 2001. We argue that changes in land use arise from both current socioeconomic dynamics but also from historical precedent established by the apartheid regime. Our methods couple historical aerial photography to recent household surveys to elucidate the national, regional and local influences over land use change. We conducted extensive field research in the study site between 2003 and 2006. Our findings show a high degree of urbanization, a loss of grassland and agricultural land and a dramatic pattern of increasing spatial concentration near growth points. We outline three recommendations for policymakers planning post-apartheid rural spaces and conclude with future research needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the debate over whether the World Social Forum (WSF) should be embraced or rejected, if in 2007 South Africa is the host country. Peter Marcuse is optimistic that the Social Forum phenomenon can "bring together elements of many social movements, afford an opportunity for coalition-building among them, frequently around urban issues, and thus make a significant contributions to make such a change". To explore and understand the South African activists' ambiguous sentiments about the WSF requires a scale jump, from the global to the recent Africa Social Forum continental meetings, before returning to uneven prospects for building from the bottom up, instead, via municipal-scale Social Forums or via sectorally-based forums, such as land and food, water, energy, etc, in areas that link urban/rural, red/green, North/South and gender concerns. On the one hand, Marcuse is absolutely correct that "while limited direct action at the international level, example Seattle, Genoa, Cancun, are important, ultimately the decisive actions will be those of national governments, both internally and acting with other national governments. To the extent the focus is on action, national targets remain critical". Agreeing, Johannesburg Anti-Privatisation Forum secretary Trevor Ngwane explains the limits of 'autonomist' strategies.

Control over the urbanization process in South Africa was redefined after the mid-1980s, when the policy of ‘orderly urbanization’ replaced that of racially based ‘influx control’. In the early 1990s, under the inspiration of the private sector-funded policy think tank, the Urban Foundation, a standardized capital subsidy was introduced as a means of financing the orderly settlement of poor households on peri-urban land. Currently, the capital subsidy may be considered the cornerstone of the South African national housing policy. This article examines how the capital subsidy framework has perpetuated the practice of control by submitting urban expansion in the lowest income sector to rigid regulation. It discusses recent responses from various sectors of the South African society, while also examining how continuity in the intervention approach was maintained from previous decades. The article points to a need to depart from the capital subsidy framework as a basis for informal settlement intervention in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work in the field of differential urbanisation in South Africa was first done in the late 1980s. The South African studies prompted further research in this field which subsequently led to the development of the differential urbanisation model. The model explains how groups of small towns, medium–sized cities and large metropolitan areas go through successive periods of fast and slow growth in a continuum of development that spans the evolution of urban systems in developed and developing countries. In this study an attempt was made to further test the relevancy of some elements of the model within the South African context. Looking at population redistribution trends from different angles, the study results show that the conclusion drawn during the first two studies, namely that the South African urban system seems to have approached the polarisation reversal phase of development during the 1980s was in fact correct. The study also shows that caution should be exercised when applying the model to actual case studies. The temporal model (graph) refers to an ideal situation where urban areas are evenly distributed in an area with relatively evenly distributed natural endowments. In real life it is important that local circumstances and the history of urban growth and decline in the growth patterns of groups of cities be carefully taken into account when the phase of development of an urban system is considered. In the South African situation, for instance, it appears that the country entered the polarisation reversal phase twice, once during the 1950s and again during the 1980s. It was found, however, that what appeared to be polarisation reversal in the 1950s can be interpreted as a particular form of urbanisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on the Urban Futures events held in Johannesburg, South Africa in July 2000 which demonstrated that contest rages over different visions and means of moving into those futures. Urban Futures was initiated by the University of the Witwatersrand, an institution with roots in the early and conflictual history of the gold-mining town which spawned the metropolitan area of Johannesburg. Financial support came from the Ford Foundation, the European Union, USAID, the French government and others while practical support came from many different organizations. The academic conference started on the 10th of July with three successive plenaries on African perspectives, global perspectives and urban governance. In the evening, performance of music, dance and video took place that demonstrated the continued potential of the inner city of Johannesburg. Then the next day, events continued in Newtown mostly in the Electric Workshop. Random discussions were held with participants in the academic events that showed a range of responses to the intrusion of conflict over Johannesburg's Igoli 2002 municipal restructuring plan. Wednesday allowed several hundred people to take conference tour. Lastly, Thursday and Friday mornings were filled with simultaneous events located at the university to symbolize these two days as the most academic in the week. There were scholarly sessions with issues such as gender, race and environmental security and discussions between decision-makers and scholars on policy themes like bringing universities and their cities into better working relationships, and on urban safety and security.