Urban Challenges in the Global South: Experiences and Lessons from South Africa

There has been a major surge in the theorization of the urban Global South over the last decade. The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the South (Parnell & Oldfield, eds. 2014) provides urban scholars ample readings to think about the debates embedded in the notion of Cities of the South. In the chapter of Mabin (2014) he voices his sceptisim of 'urban theory from the south', because, he argues, what we need, or lack, is not addressed by imposition of a theory from and of the south. Must we be didactic about where our ideas travel, rejecting the notion, for instance, that northern theories aren't useful in the south carte blanche? He suggests instead that theories travel, and in doing so, are richly populated in place, region, networks, and in conversation. He suggests thinking in relation, in pathways across conventional terrain of north and south - in his case, between Paris, Cape Town and São Paulo (Oldfield, 2014). In view of the above it is the intention of this summer seminar series to present the Brazilian audience with evidence of how South African cities have been shaped, transformed and responded to developing cities' challenges since democracy in the 1990s. The aim is to get an understanding of the South African context so that in the students' own time they will be able to interpret the relations between our challenges and outcomes with those in Brazil.