Nancy Odendaal

The New Urban Agenda: key opportunities and challenges for policy and practice

The UN-HABITAT III conference held in Quito in late 2016 enshrined the first Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) with an exclusively urban focus. SDG 11, as it became known, aims to make cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable through a range of metrics, indicators, and evaluation systems. It also became part of a post-Quito ‘New Urban Agenda’ that is still taking shape. This paper raises questions around the potential for reductionism in this new agenda, and argues for the reflexive need to be aware of the types of urban space that are potentially sidelined by the new trends in global urban policy.

Changing Planning Education in Africa The Role of the Association of African Planning Schools

Planning laws, planning governance systems, and even planning curricula in Anglophone Sub-Saharan Africa were strongly shaped by the colonial history of the subcontinent, and much of this imprint remains today. Yet demands on planners and planning systems have changed dramatically as African cities battle to cope with rapid growth, inequality, informality and environmental degradation. This article considers the issue of changing planning education in this region. It documents the efforts of the Association of African Planning Schools to forge a program of action on necessary new directions and themes for planning education in a context where adherence to older approaches remains strong.

Splintering Urbanism or Split Agendas? Examining the Spatial Distribution of Technology Access in Relation to ICT Policy in Durban, South Africa

Changes in the composition, distribution and availability of information and communication technology (ICT) have taken place in the past two decades. Digital technology is now a ubiquitous business requirement, whilst the availability of mobile/cellular telephones has ensured on-going connectivity. Little has been published on the distribution of ICT and other networked infrastructure in developing countries. This paper seeks to address that by examining Durban, South Africa. The spatial distribution of new technology access is examined in relation to urban change and the city’s ICT policy. It becomes evident that current spatial patterns mirror overall investment patterns. Whilst the city’s policy claims to address distribution and access, its innovations are focused on the business sector, rather than last-mile access, essentially reflecting spatial inequalities.

Partnerships in Planning Education: The Association of African Planning Schools (AAPS)

The training of city and regional planners in Africa has historically been influenced by the varied colonial constructs of what planning is, and what it should do. A control-oriented conception of planning together with ill-founded assumptions of the institutional capacity of the state has had profound influences on what happens in the lecture hall and beyond. In this chapter we reflect on the evolution of the Association of African Planning Schools (AAPS), a network of over 50 planning schools on the Continent, and its efforts to revitalize planning education. Following a discussion of the three dimensions of its work (communication, working on shared projects and events), we focus how AAPS work engaged in partnerships with organizations external to the network. The notion of ‘knowledge networks’ is central to understanding this phase of AAPS’s work. Connections with like-minded organizations, which operate at regional and global scales, have assisted with learning and exchange of ideas. The most important of these has been the global exposure through memberships of GPEAN (Global Planning Education Association Network), joint curricular initiatives, and Memoranda of Understanding (MoUs) with SDI (Slum Dwellers International) and WIEGO (Women in Informal Employment Globalizing and Organizing) and more recently, partnership with the GLTN (The Global Land Tools Network) of UN-Habitat. Expanding AAPS’s work beyond the confines of its membership has enabled access to further funding, new projects, and extending its sphere of influence beyond the educational realm. This is critical in ensuring that curricula reform is accompanied by policy shifts and innovative practice.

Smart City: Neoliberal Discourse or Urban Development Tool?

The relationship between technology and development is addressed in many development discourses. Framed as an impetus to modernisation, progress and economic development, it has generally been seen from a determinist perspective that overstates the progressive qualities of technological innovation. Technologically determinist notions tend towards a top-down approach that favours the ‘if you build it, they will come’ notion of technology-led policy. The ‘smart city’ discourse has not really been considered in the development studies literature, but provides interesting insights into the relationship between cities, technology and social development. Often these initiatives are associated with other objectives, such as improved and more democratic governance as represented by e-governance initiatives. This chapter considers the trajectory of smart city debates and considers whether its social development promises are merely that, marketing language for city ‘potentials’, or does provide a meaningful frame for empowerment and progress.

From the Fringes: South Africa’s Smart Township Citizens

This chapter explores the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) practices of the Social Justice Coalition (SJC), a community based organisation working with informal settlement communities in Khayelitsha, on the south-eastern fringes of Cape Town, South Africa. Many communities within Khayelitsha rely on communal toilets for sanitation, and the maintenance thereof has been highly uneven in quality. The chapter focuses on the use of ICTs in the SJC’s advocacy work on the delivery of sanitation to informal settlement residents. Within the larger theme of citizen action, three main research areas were identified and explored: the appropriation of ICTs by the SJC’s field staff, the use of their Web 2.0-based social networking sites (SNS) in their advocacy work and digital mapping of portable communal toilets. The research interrogates the use of ICT as a strategic tool for knowledge-based community empowerment, with the aim of understanding how these emerging uses of technology could assist developmental work within this sprawling area. The research emphasises the roles of various actors, the roles played by different technologies and the relations between technology and people. The emphasis on agency reveals that technology is not enough to augment empowerment processes. Technology–organisational relations are enmeshed within an institutional frame, where the meaningful use of technology requires a repositioning of network relations, in order for it to fulfil its potential as an empowerment tool.