The Case for City-level Innovation Ecosystems in Africa

Amidst dramatic urban expansion, sustainable urbanism imperatives in Africa and the global South cannot be addressed through conventional urban development policy frameworks. However, it is difficult to fathom what constitutes an appropriate sustainable urbanisation policy canvass amidst persistent systemic inequalities and moribund institutional architectures and hollow political discourse.

In this lecture, Professor Pieterse will explore the dimensions of a working canvas that can accommodate emergent urban experiments in Africa and resonate with global discourses aimed at deciphering urban transitions that are just, culturally-attuned and resonant.

Professor Edgar Pieterse is the founding director of the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town. His research and teaching explore urban imaginaries, alternative futures, sustainable urban infrastructure, place-making, public cultures, responsive design and adaptive governance systems. He publishes different kinds of text, curate exhibitions, as well as difficult conversations about pressing urban problems. Since the founding of ACC, he has published two books, City Futures (Zed, 2008) and New Urban Worlds (Polity, 2017, with AbdouMaliq Simone), as well as nine co-edited books, dealing with a wide-ranging set of topics related to contemporary urbanism and place-making.

Professor Pieterse’s scholarship is animated by a need to make sense of the ways in which climate change, multi-dimensional inequality, informality, governance and technology intersect in urban spaces, especially in Africa and cities of the global South. Of course, this sensemaking is somewhat futile due to the implied complexities, but also essential to figure out what a grounded, yet radical imagination of alternative urban futures might entail. More pointedly, he is curious what multiple solutions and pathways for advancing sustainable and vibrant cities might involve as acts of exploration and doing. Thus, his research is informed by emergent experiments with alternative forms of doing, organising, regulating and social narration. Conceptually, he locates his research, teaching, and curatorial work at the intersection of critical urban theory, open systems approaches, design-based methods, technological intermediation and aesthetics.

Host or Publisher Melbourne School of Design