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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]

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]

South Africa is the third most biologically diverse country in the world. Urban living places pressure on this biodiversity and the ecosystem services that flow from it. Local governments are now internationally recognized as the level of government that is key to securing long-term global sustainability. The cities of Cape Town and Durban in South Africa have each developed their own biodiversity and open space conservation strategies to protect the remaining biodiversity within their municipal boundaries. Our aim was to explore the local biodiversity and open space conservation strategies in these two cities, with a view to understanding the informants and emerging forms of urban conservation in these cities in light of their variable biophysical templates and settlement histories. The results reveal that both cities are facing biodiversity loss and that multiple interlinked factors play a role in the development and relative success of conservation plans. These factors include the local context, biophysical templates, city histories, social aspects that determine how these plans emerge and evolve, contemporary governance structures, and locally relevant pressures. Biodiversity conservation in South African cities will continue to face many challenges, and our study suggests that solutions will need to be city specific. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In South Africa, the informal sector, including food vending, is either criminalized or ignored. This is despite the fact that it plays an important role in the economy in terms of employment, income generation, food distribution and livelihoods for the urban poor. This paper assesses the nature, operations, strategies and challenges of the informal food sector in Cape Town. Data was collected through a survey of over 1000 informal food vendors in the city. Most of the enterprises were single-owner businesses, financed from personal savings and started by owners seeking employment, independence and improved financial security for their families. Most businesses had little or no access to finance from government agencies, banks and micro-finance lenders. Entrepreneurs faced various challenges ranging from insufficient sales, competition, changing consumer food needs and rising stock prices. To survive in a challenging economic environment, they adopt various innovative strategies including changing the types of foods they sell, increasing food stock variety, monitoring formal food retailing prices and negotiating with suppliers for favourable stock prices. Despite the various challenges being experienced, the informal food sector has become an integral and indispensable component of the food system of the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In urban informal areas of South Africa, obesity and hunger represent two sides of food insecurity. Despite this, public health and clinical obesity interventions focus on nutrition education, implying dietary choice and thereby overlooking food insecurity. The objective of this paper is to explore peri-urban residents' perspectives of changing food environments, framed by the Food Aid Organization (FAO) definition of food security and demonstrating the interconnectedness of dimensions of food security. We conducted three-part in-depth interviews with 21 participants and nine focus group discussions with a total of 57 participants, consisting primarily of women aged 20-84, in a peri-urban township and informal settlement outside of Cape Town, South Africa. Participants' encounters in clinical settings framed choice as a driver of diet-related non-communicable disease (NCD). Yet participants lacked economic access to food, particularly at the end of the month. Diets consisted of fewer green leafy vegetables relative to their diets in rural areas, despite affirming a preference for these foods. They described consuming more meat, which was also perceived as unhealthy. Based on self-report, residents within this peri-urban area of South Africa were food insecure: they lacked access to food at specific times of the month, they were unable to consume foods they preferred, and they felt that their diets were neither nutritious nor enabled an active and healthy life. When viewed in terms of multiple facets of food security, participants' concurrent experiences of hunger and obesity were unsurprising. Health interventions related to diet should incorporate an understanding of food security as shaped by the interactions of access, availability, utilization and stability. [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]

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]

Rapid global urbanization and the knowledge that ecological systems underpin the future sustainability and resilience of our cities, make an understanding of urban ecology critical. The way humans engage with ecological processes within cities is highly complex, and both from a social and ecological perspective these engagements cannot be interpreted meaningfully on the basis of a single timeframe. Historical analyses offer useful insights into the nature of social-ecological interactions under diverse conditions, enabling improved decision-making into the future. We present an historical review of the evolving relationship between the urban settlement of Cape Town and the ecological processes inherent to its natural surroundings. Since its establishment, the people of Cape Town have been acutely aware of, and exploited, the natural resources presented by Table Mountain and its surrounding wilderness area. An examination of this pattern of engagement, explored through an ecological process lens, in particular drawing on the terminology provided by the ecosystem services framework, reflects a journey of the changing needs and demands of a growing urban settlement. Ecological processes, and their ensuing flow of ecosystem services, have been exploited, overexploited, interrupted, reestablished, conserved, and variably valued through time. Processes of significance, for example water provision, soil erosion, the provision of wood and natural materials, and the role of fire, are presented. This historical analysis documents the progression from a wilderness to a tamed and largely benign urban environment. Evident is the variable valuing of ecosystem service attributes through time and by different people, at the same time, dependent on their immediate needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urbanization is a widespread and rapidly growing threat to biodiversity, therefore we need a predictive understanding of its effects on species and ecosystem processes. In this paper we study the impact of urbanization on a guild of nectar-feeding birds in a biodiversity hotspot at the Cape of Africa. The guild of four bird species provides important ecosystem services by pollinating 320 plant species in the Cape Floral Region. Functional diversity within the guild is related to differences in bill length. The long-billed Malachite Sunbird (Nectarinia famosa) plays an irreplaceable role as the exclusive pollinator of plant species with long nectar tubes. We analyzed the composition of the guild in suburban gardens of Cape Town along a gradient of increasing distance from the nearest natural habitat. Urbanization reduces the functional diversity of the nectarivore guild. Malachite Sunbirds did not penetrate more than 1 km into the city, whereas only the short-billed Southern Double-collared Sunbirds (Cinnyris chalybea) occurred throughout the urbanization gradient. The lack of data precludes conclusions regarding the detailed responses of Orange-breasted Sunbirds (Anthobaphes violacea) and Sugarbirds (Promerops cafer), however their absence across the entire gradient is suggestive of high sensitivity. The functional diversity of this guild of pollinators can potentially be restored, but the pros and cons of this conservation action need to be considered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Wild harvesting has taken place over millennia in Africa. However urbanization and cash economies have effectively altered harvesting from being cultural, traditional, and subsistence activities that are part of a rural norm, to being a subculture of commonly illicit activities located primarily within the urban, cash-based, informal economy. This paper focuses on Cape Town, South Africa where high levels of poverty and extensive population growth have led to a rapidly growing informal industry based on the cultural, subsistence, and entrepreneurial harvesting and consumption of products obtained from the local natural environment. Through a process of literature reviews, database analysis, and key informant interviews, a compendium of harvested species was developed, illustrating the breadth of illicit harvesting of products from nature reserves, public open space, and other commonage within the City. The compendium records 448 locally occurring species (198 animals and 250 plants) that are extracted for medicinal, energy, ornamental, sustenance, nursery, and other uses. The sustainability of harvesting is questionable; nearly 70% of all harvested flora and 100% of all collected fauna are either killed or reproductively harmed through the harvesting processes. Furthermore, for the 183 indigenous flora species currently recorded on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, 28% (51) hold assessments ranging from Declining through to Critically Endangered. With respect to the more poorly assessed fauna (46 spp.), approximately 24% (11) have Declining or Threatened status. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Public authorities in many countries around the world are seeking to raise urban densities. Residential densification is particularly important in South Africa because of the colonial and apartheid legacy of sprawling, fragmented, racially divided cities. This paper examines the case for densifying central Cape Town and provides a framework to help deconstruct the concept and explore some of the policy challenges faced. It focuses on the bold aim to treble the area’s population within 10years, and identifies issues where further consideration and public debate are required for how this can be achieved in a way that is desirable, affordable and fair. A key message is the need to understand both the composition of demand for central city living and the challenges involved in supplying suitable housing and amenities at higher densities. The level of social inequality in the city poses greater complications than elsewhere. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

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]

This article examines urban telecommunications access and use by poor households in the township of Khayelitsha, Cape Town, South Africa. Analysis draws upon a broad range of quantitative and qualitative data and in doing so seeks to reveal the complexities of how this access and use underpins a wide range of social and economic processes critical to processes of social development. By way of example, the issue of informal urbanisation and housing tenure is addressed, as is the critical role that telecommunications play in facilitating and maintaining important social networks, both across Cape Town and beyond. Further, this article gives consideration to how telecommunication support and enhance livelihood opportunities, and the fact that they are embedded in existing modes of social communication and manifestations of social, cultural and symbolic capital. [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.

Rural-urban migration is a major phenomenon in the developing world. This article is concerned with understanding the ways in which rural-urban migrants have their social protection needs met following their move to the city. We report results from a survey of rural-urban migrants in four low-income areas in Cape Town, South Africa. We look at the experiences of migrants in terms of finding employment in the urban environment, and the impact of language background and proficiency on migrants' ability to integrate in the labour market, and their access to formal and informal protection and government support. Language proficiency and social networks emerge as important variables in the analysis and will need to be considered in the design of social policies. Specifically, inadequate knowledge of dominant urban languages (English and Afrikaans) limits opportunities for employment and access to public services. Furthermore, reliance on informal, strong-tie social networks facilitates initial migration and settlement, but can delay long-term integration into the urban economy and labour market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Deals with an example of commodification of urban space and services in Cape Town, South Africa. Transformation of South African cities into archetypal postmodern cities; Exploration of theoretical and practical questions that Century City raises; Reinvigoration of public realm; Expansion of globalized capital.

Identifies the priority issues facing both scientists and water resource managers in metropolitan Cape Town, South Africa. Inland and coastal waters; Urbanization; Future urban growth and its implications; Constraints to integrated water resource management; Efforts toward sustainable management of water resources.

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