Anxious Joburg

Anxious Joburg PDF Author: Nicky Falkof
Publisher: Wits University Press
ISBN: 1776146328
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

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Book Description
An interdisciplinary account of the life of Johannesburg, South Africa's "global south city" Anxious Joburg focuses on Johannesburg, the largest and wealthiest city in South Africa, as a case study for the contemporary global South city. Global South cities are often characterised as sites of contradiction and difference that produce a range of feelings around anxiety. This is often imagined in terms of the global North’s anxieties about the South: migration, crime, terrorism, disease and environmental crisis. Anxious Joburg invites readers to consider an intimate perspective of living inside such a city. How does it feel to live in the metropolis of Johannesburg: what are the conditions, intersections, affects and experiences that mark the contemporary urban? Scholars, visual artists and storytellers, all look at unexamined aspects of Johannesburg life. From peripheral settlements to the inner city to the affluent northern suburbs, from precarious migrants and domestic workers to upwardly mobile young women and fearful elites, Anxious Joburg presents an absorbing engagement with this frustrating, dangerous, seductive city. It offers a rigorous, critical approach to Johannesburg revealing the way in which anxiety is a vital structuring principle of contemporary life. The approach is strongly interdisciplinary, with contributions from media studies, anthropology, religious studies, urban geography, migration studies and psychology. It will appeal to students and teachers, as well as to academic researchers concerned with Johannesburg, South Africa, cities and the global South. The mix of approaches will also draw a non-academic audience.

Anxious Joburg

Anxious Joburg PDF Author: Nicky Falkof
Publisher: Wits University Press
ISBN: 1776146328
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 312

Get Book Here

Book Description
An interdisciplinary account of the life of Johannesburg, South Africa's "global south city" Anxious Joburg focuses on Johannesburg, the largest and wealthiest city in South Africa, as a case study for the contemporary global South city. Global South cities are often characterised as sites of contradiction and difference that produce a range of feelings around anxiety. This is often imagined in terms of the global North’s anxieties about the South: migration, crime, terrorism, disease and environmental crisis. Anxious Joburg invites readers to consider an intimate perspective of living inside such a city. How does it feel to live in the metropolis of Johannesburg: what are the conditions, intersections, affects and experiences that mark the contemporary urban? Scholars, visual artists and storytellers, all look at unexamined aspects of Johannesburg life. From peripheral settlements to the inner city to the affluent northern suburbs, from precarious migrants and domestic workers to upwardly mobile young women and fearful elites, Anxious Joburg presents an absorbing engagement with this frustrating, dangerous, seductive city. It offers a rigorous, critical approach to Johannesburg revealing the way in which anxiety is a vital structuring principle of contemporary life. The approach is strongly interdisciplinary, with contributions from media studies, anthropology, religious studies, urban geography, migration studies and psychology. It will appeal to students and teachers, as well as to academic researchers concerned with Johannesburg, South Africa, cities and the global South. The mix of approaches will also draw a non-academic audience.

Johannesburg

Johannesburg PDF Author: Keith Beavon
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004491805
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 393

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Book Description
Until now there has been no single text that brings together the material that reveals the unfolding geography of Johannesburg, South Africa. This books describes the history of the city from its days as a mining camp to its position of premier metropolis in Africa. The present geography of Johannesburg, and the problems and dysfunctions that is hat exhibited at various stages in its history since 1886, cannot be understood without a firm grasp of what has evolved of the past 120 years.

A Place That Matters Yet

A Place That Matters Yet PDF Author: Sara Byala
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022603027X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 343

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Book Description
A Place That Matters Yet unearths the little-known story of Johannesburg’s MuseumAfrica, a South African history museum that embodies one of the most dynamic and fraught stories of colonialism and postcolonialism, its life spanning the eras before, during, and after apartheid. Sara Byala, in examining this story, sheds new light not only on racism and its institutionalization in South Africa but also on the problems facing any museum that is charged with navigating colonial history from a postcolonial perspective. Drawing on thirty years of personal letters and public writings by museum founder John Gubbins, Byala paints a picture of a uniquely progressive colonist, focusing on his philosophical notion of “three-dimensional thinking,” which aimed to transcend binaries and thus—quite explicitly—racism. Unfortunately, Gubbins died within weeks of the museum’s opening, and his hopes would go unrealized as the museum fell in line with emergent apartheid politics. Following the museum through this transformation and on to its 1994 reconfiguration as a post-apartheid institution, Byala showcases it as a rich—and problematic—archive of both material culture and the ideas that surround that culture, arguing for its continued importance in the establishment of a unified South Africa.

Emerging Johannesburg

Emerging Johannesburg PDF Author: Richard Tomlinson
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317794249
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
Johannesburg is most often compared with Sao Paulo and Los Angeles and sometimes even with Budapest, Calcutta and Jerusalem. Johannesburg reflects and informs conditions in cities around the world. As might be expected from such comparisons, South Africa's political transformation has not led to redistribution and inclusive social change in Johannesburg. In Emerging Johannesburg the contributors describe the city's transition from a post apartheid city to one with all too familiar issues such as urban/suburban divide in the city and its relationship to poverty and socio-political power, local politics and governance, crime and violence, and, especially for a city located in Southern Africa, the devastating impact of AIDS.

Conceiving, producing and managing neighbourhoods: Comparing urban upgrading initiatives in Johannesburg

Conceiving, producing and managing neighbourhoods: Comparing urban upgrading initiatives in Johannesburg PDF Author: Thembani Mkhize
Publisher: Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO)
ISBN: 0639987311
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 78

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Book Description
At present there are a great number of urban interventions taking place within the Gauteng City-Region, including transport and area-based upgrading projects (Corridors of Freedom/Transit Oriented Development), mega-human settlements, inner-city renewal schemes, and the establishment of City Improvement Districts (CIDs) in various locations. As they are envisioned, planned and implemented, all of these projects will make significant alterations to the urban fabric. It is therefore crucial that research engages with these processes and captures their dynamics, contradictions, contestations and outcomes. This Occasional Paper contributes to this endeavour by examining how two very different area-based management and urban upgrading projects have been imagined and executed. The report comprises a case-study of the expanding Ekhaya precinct in Hillbrow, a densely populated, economically stressed inner-city neighbourhood, and the development of a precinct plan in Norwood, a middle-class suburb situated to the north of the inner-city. Ekhaya is a Residential City Improvement District (RCID) and was an intervention led primarily by private, commercial developers. The Grant Avenue Precinct Plan (GAPP), in contrast, was initiated by local government as part of broader efforts to manage change and facilitate residential intensification and improved inclusion in the suburb. Comparing and contrasting approaches in two vastly different sub-local areas gives an opportunity to explore the varying actors; governance arrangements; urban upgrading ambitions and ideals; resources, practices, mechanisms and infrastructures; alliances and partnerships; and compromises and experiments that are assembled at the neighbourhood scale to bring urban upgrading interventions to fruition. The paper also draws particular attention to the fault lines, points of divergence, and conflicts in the two settings, and how these frequently hinder or frustrate efforts at urban improvement. The Occasional Paper is divided into three main sections. The first section, ‘Conceiving neighbourhoods’, outlines the visions and ideals that have shaped neighbourhood formation, planning processes and urban upgrading initiatives in the two case-study sites. It shows that Johannesburg’s vastly unequal landscape hinders the articulation of a single, unified vision for the city. Improvement in Hillbrow has entailed dealing with day-to-day deprivations, service delivery failings and deficits in basic urban management. The visions that informed urban regeneration in the Ekhaya RCID are therefore relatively mundane, but are capable of bringing about significant improvements to the area, as well as to the lives of its residents. In contrast, the visions behind the precinct strategy for Norwood were far more ambitious as they aimed at generating drastic change in the suburb’s built environment and social landscape. However, various socio-economic challenges – financial constraints, organised opposition from affluent residents and lack of support from the private sector – have rendered these broad ambitions unattainable. The second section, ‘Producing neighbourhoods’, examines the various tactics, strategies, planning mechanisms and material objects that were used to bring visions to life and give form to the two neighbourhood improvement schemes. For example, it explores how different security infrastructures mobilised in the Ekhaya RCID have defined the neighbourhood and separated it from the general disorder and decay that characterise the wider Hillbrow area. While these infrastructures have had significant effects on the neighbourhood, and contributed to improved feelings of safety, they have also introduced inequality – as the area has come to enjoy improved levels of policing and safety, crime has been displaced to surrounding neighbourhoods yet to attract private investment. The section further shows that while physical infrastructure is important, it is not sufficient to generate neighbourhoods and associational life. Rather, the realisation of visions for improved forms of belonging and social cohesion rely on the creation of social networks, and opportunities for socialisation and shared recreation. Highlighting experiences of upgrading two parks, Ekhaya Park in Hillbrow and Norwood Park, this section emphasises the importance of public space, and the shared ideals and commitments to social inclusion that should inform planning processes and urban interventions at the local level. However, the section also documents the prejudices and exclusionary attitudes that frequently emerge during such processes. The third section, ‘Managing neighbourhoods’, describes the institutional arrangements, day-to-day activities, forms of partnership and adaptive strategies being used to sustain urban interventions and regulate neighbourhoods. It investigates contrasting viewpoints and approaches to dealing with various urban challenges, particularly the role and place of informal activities in the two neighbourhoods. In Hillbrow, the official position is that informal trading is not permitted. However, in reality, actors with degrees of authority and power in the area have recognised the need to be tolerant towards people engaged in such practices, and frequently cooperate with some informal traders. The section therefore shows that urban governance requires the formation of arrangements and partnerships of convenience at the sub-local level, and that adaptive, flexible urban management practices are required, particularly in stressed neighbourhoods characterised by high levels of poverty. In contrast, although the official plans formulated for the GAPP stipulated that vulnerable groups such as homeless people, car guards and informal traders were to be protected, in reality, intolerant attitudes were evident and powerful residents and businesses used a variety of tactics to marginalise these groups and attempt to remove them from the area. The section therefore shows how everyday power and resource differentials can often supersede or subvert good intentions towards inclusivity – the realisation of visions for urban improvement unavoidably seems to generate new forms of exclusion that planners, officials and civil society need to be aware of.

The Making of Global City Regions

The Making of Global City Regions PDF Author: Klaus Segbers
Publisher: JHU Press
ISBN: 0801885159
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
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Rights-based Litigation, Urban Governance and Social Justice in South Africa

Rights-based Litigation, Urban Governance and Social Justice in South Africa PDF Author: Marius Pieterse
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351671979
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
Rights-based Litigation, Urban Governance and Social Justice in South Africa considers the overlap between legal and everyday struggles for social and spatial justice in the particular context of Johannesburg, South Africa. Drawing from literature across disciplines of law, urban geography and urban planning, as well as from reported case-law concerning the invocation of constitutional rights in Johannesburg and other South African cities, the book critically examines whether, and to what extent, the invocation of legal rights before South African courts have contributed to the advancement of social justice in the city. It considers the impact of the legal assertion of different constituent aspects of the so-called "right to the city" on the many people simultaneously performing the right, the governance structures responsible for enabling and facilitating its enjoyment and, thirdly, the physical place in which it is performed. Drawing broad conclusions on the utility of rights-based litigation for the achievement of social change and spatial justice, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of South Africa, constitutional law, human rights law, regulatory law, sociology of rights, studies of law and society, urban studies, urban geography, governance studies, and development studies.

Performance and the Global City

Performance and the Global City PDF Author: D. Hopkins
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 1137367857
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 287

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Book Description
Winner of the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Excellence in Editing Award 2016 Following the ground-breaking Performance and the City, this new volume explores what it means to create and experience urban performance – as both an aesthetic and a political practice – in the burgeoning world where cities are built by globalization and neoliberal capital.

Advancing Refugee Protection in South Africa

Advancing Refugee Protection in South Africa PDF Author: Jeff Handmaker
Publisher: Berghahn Books
ISBN: 0857450271
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 344

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Book Description
Divided into three thematic parts to guide the reader, this important volume documents the development and implementation of refugee policy in South Africa over a 10-year period from 1996 until 2006. In doing so, it addresses issues of detention, gender, children and health as well as welfare policies for refugees. The contributions, all written by academics and practitioners of refugee protection, vividly illustrate the tangible shifts and concerns of a process that is not only aimed at establishing policies and legislation but also practices concerning refugees.

World City Syndrome

World City Syndrome PDF Author: David Alexander McDonald
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0415958571
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
This book examines the significance of Cape Town's claim to being a "world city." McDonald argues that Cape Town must be seen as a neoliberal city, situating it against the broader political and economic reforms of South Africa's re-entry into a global market economy.