ON HANDLING URBAN INFORMALITY IN SOUTHERN AFRICA

In this article I reconsider the handling of urban informality by urban planning and management systems in southern Africa. I argue that authorities have a fetish about formality and that this is fuelled by an obsession with urban modernity. I stress that the desired city, largely inspired by Western notions of modernity, has not been and cannot be realized. Using illustrative cases of top–down interventions, I highlight and interrogate three strategies that authorities have deployed to handle informality in an effort to create or defend the modern city. I suggest that the fetish is built upon a desire for an urban modernity based on a concept of formal order that the authorities believe cannot coexist with the “disorder” and spatial “unruliness” of informality. I question the authorities' conviction that informality is an abomination that needs to be “converted”, dislocated or annihilated. I conclude that the very configuration of urban governance and socio‐economic systems in the region, like the rest of sub‐Saharan Africa, renders informality inevitable and its eradication impossible.     

Urban Land Restitution and the Struggle for Social Citizenship in South Africa

Reintegrating the city is a priority of social justice and development in many urban centres of the ‘South’ that bear the legacy of forced displacement. In South Africa, much of the land restitution programme has thus far focused on urban areas. In certain large cluster claims involving the transfer and development of significant tracts of well‐placed land, restitution has presented the prospect of altering landed property regimes in the heart of the city. The predominantly rural and economic emphasis in scholarship and policy debate on land reform in South Africa — which reflects historical trends in development studies — has led to a narrowed vision of what is at stake in urban land restitution. Complex interventions aimed at redressing urban spatial segregation can potentially alter the relationship between citizens, institutions and urban space in ways that expand the possibilities for social and political agency in sites that are strategically important for influencing the direction of change more broadly. A key, as yet unrealized, challenge is how to articulate such struggles for a ‘right to the city’ with efforts at redressing the spatialization of poverty on the urban periphery.     

Understanding the Southern African ‘Anomaly’: Poverty,Endemic Disease and HIV

The epicentre of the global HIV epidemic is southern Africa. Previous explanations point to migration patterns and highly skewed income distribution, both thought to promote risky sexual behaviour. This study emphasizes the importance of common infectious and parasitic diseases that increase the likelihood of HIV transmission by increasing contagiousness and vulnerability to infection. Using multiple regression analysis on country‐level data, the authors find that socio‐economic variables explain statistically only one‐tenth of the difference in HIV prevalence between southern Africa and other low‐ and middle‐income countries. Measures of five cofactor infections together with the socio‐economic variables, however, explain statistically about two‐thirds of the southern Africa difference in HIV prevalence. They conclude that the relative affluence of countries in southern Africa and historical migration patterns have tended to mask the vulnerability of the majority of their populations who are poor and who have very high prevalence of infectious and parasitic diseases. Those diseases replicate a cycle of poverty that produces biological vulnerability through coinfections. An important implication of this research is that integrating treatment of endemic diseases with other HIV‐prevention policies may be necessary to slow the spread of HIV.     

非洲港口城市分布特征及其港城规模关系比较

非洲港口城市是联结中非贸易网络的重要节点,承担了资源配置的重要功能。以城市地理学的角度,着眼于非洲港口城市发展现状。选取2015年集装箱吞吐量在5万TEU以上的34个非洲沿海港口城市为研究对象,对非洲主要港口城市的分布格局进行探讨。借助位序规模法则和相对集中指数（RCI）,对34个港口城市的体系分布特征,以及在不同尺度下的港城规模关系现状进行比较。研究认为：①非洲主要港口和城市体系满足位序规模特征,大洲尺度下主要港口体系较为合理,城市体系规模较为集中;②非洲大陆港口城市整体布局不完善,国家内部存在港口城市首位度过高的现象普遍;③部分港口城市港城规模脱节现象较为严重;④不同区域港口城市发展差异较大,表现为北非、南非港口体系较为发达,西非、中非港口规模落后于城市规模,东非港城规模较为均衡但缺少大区级港口。结合非洲港口城市发展特点,提出了中国企业开展对非港口投资的建议。     

Urban Unemployment and Migrants in Africa: Evidence from Harare 1985–1994

Unemployment is a major problem in urban centres in sub‐Saharan Africa. The impact of policies associated with structural adjustment programmes has frequently meant major formal job losses in both the public and private sectors. Although it is widely recognized that there has been a major (further) shift into the informal sector, it is also often claimed that ‘unemployment’ rates have greatly increased. When it is also assumed that net rural–urban migration has continued at a rapid pace, this is believed to be a significant contributor to the rise in unemployment. However, because ‘unemployment’ and ‘underemployment’ are hard to measure and to keep discrete when studying urban Africa, it is apparent that there is much confusion over current levels and trends in unemployment. This article discusses the problems of analysing African urban unemployment, drawing in particular on a recent ILO report, and presents evidence from long‐term research on migrants in Harare which casts doubt on the extent to which net in‐migration is a major factor contributing to unemployment in contemporary, economically adjusting sub‐Saharan Africa.     

Active Learning for Understanding Land Degradation: African Catchment Game and Riskmap

Land degradation is the result of the intersection of a complex set of biophysical and socio‐economic factors. The capacity of an individual or community to address land degradation is likewise constrained. While it is quite possible for professionals and learners to grasp the main issues around land degradation from a theoretical perspective, internalising the reality of what it means to be the resource degrader is more difficult. We have developed two active learning methods that aim to address this problem. The first is the African Catchment Game, a role‐playing game based on Graham Chapman's Green Revolution Game, adapted for the southern Africa context and incorporating a land degradation component. In this game participants play out the complex dynamics of rural‐urban‐global linkages against a background of environmental hazards. The second is based on Save the Children Fund's RiskMap computer simulation that models risk in terms of rural livelihoods for different income groups. Ethiopia is used as the example. This paper evaluates the two active learning techniques as tools for exploring the relationships between land degradation and poverty through an evaluation of participants’ experiences. The analysis shows clear potential for developing alternative teaching curricula that are aligned to our theoretical understanding.     

QUANTIFICATION AND DISCRIMINATION OF LITHIC USE‐WEAR: SURFACE PROFILE MEASUREMENTS AND LENGTH‐SCALE FRACTAL ANALYSIS*

This experimental programme employs length‐scale analysis of measured profiles to quantitatively discriminate the surface textures of stone flakes manufactured from East Anglian chalk flint used on four contact materials (shell, wood, dry hide and soaked antler). It presents a method for evaluating texture characterization parameters based on their ability to discriminate wear types, and to determine a level of confidence to the discrimination, using the F‐test. The results of this experimental work demonstrate that relative lengths, over certain scale ranges, can discriminate the stone tool surface wear profiles produced by the different contact materials.     

Regional and transnational spatial planning1: problems today,perspectives for the future

This introductory contribution presents some results of the EURBANET project, dealing with European urban networks in the framework of the INTERREG IIC programme of the North‐western Metropolitan Area (NWMA). This project was conducted between 2000 and 2001 by researchers of Delft University of Technology, the University of Glasgow, the University of Dortmund, the Catholic University of Leuven and the University of Nijmegen. The central objective of the EURBANET project was to explore the role of polynucleated urban regions in the reinforcement of the competitive strength and quality of life in the NWMA, as a contribution to transnational spatial planning in the NWMA. Four polynuclear urban regions are involved: Randstad Holland, the Flemish Diamond, the RheinRuhr Area and Central Scotland (Glasgow‐Edinburgh region). One of the conclusions is that it is necessary to move between scales: from the European Union to national spatial policies (and vice versa), between national policies and regional spatial policies and between regional and urban spatial policies. At each scale, specific demands for spatial planning policies in polynuclear urban regions are becoming increasingly relevant. This is a challenge for spatial policies and policy domains like infrastructure policy, transport policy, housing policy, economic and environmental policy. We present an analysis of how polycentricity has become central to recent discussions on European and north‐west European spatial and economic planning. We launch a spatial network approach to integrate spatial policies. These wide perspectives contrast heavily with the current less satisfactory practice of spatial planning on the level of urban networks and transnational governance.     

地域人文环境下苏南小城镇发展演化研究

在当前全新的社会发展时期,小城镇进入一个快速发展阶段。然而,我国现在很多地方的小城镇建设过分强调硬环境的建设,而忽视了软环境即人文环境的改善。本文通过对苏南模式下小城镇发展演化过程进行回顾,分析苏南人文环境的转化。从本土文化、经济发展、政府管理、政策等三个方面揭示了其地域内本土文化伴随着社会经济的发展持续作用于小城镇本身,形成特定的动态开放型小城镇社会人文环境,保证了该地区小城镇的健康发展演化,指出人文环境是提升综合社会环境质量,带动经济发展和城市化进程加快的一个重要因素。     

Lead isotope and metal source of Shang bronzes: a response to Sun et al.’s comments

In this brief response to Sun et al.’s ( 2018 ) comments on our paper, we re‐emphasize that archaeological, chemical and isotopic evidence are all relevant to the discussion about the metal source of the Shang period with highly radiogenic lead isotope ratios. The southern African bronzes have much lower lead contents and quite different lead isotopic signatures than the Shang bronzes. More importantly, there was no metallurgy of any kind in southern Africa before c.200 ce , so southern Africa cannot possibly be the source of Shang bronze, which date to about 1500 to 1000 bce .     

The programme local d'habitat: preparing a housing strategy for Lille

By the end of the 1970s, the French government had begun to realize that the large‐scale provision of social housing had created as many problems as it had solved. Social exclusion, unemployment and racial tension appeared to be particularly concentrated in the peripheral housing estates that had been the result of the housing policy of the 1960s. In the 1990s, the government developed the programme local d'habitat (PLH; local housing programme) as a means of creating an integrated housing policy across the whole of a given urban area. This article looks at the origins and evolution of the PLH, and presents the programme in the context of local administration and the structures in place for the provision and improvement of housing. It then turns to the application of the PLH to the communauté urbaine of Lille. It boks at the problems to be addressed within the Lille conurbation and the way the PLH responded to them. The article concludes with a reflection on why the PLH has not proceeded and what may be learnt from this apparent failure.     

Frontiers of Urban Control: Lawlessness on the City Edge and Forms of Clientalist Statecraft in Zimbabwe

This article develops the concept of “urban frontier” to explore conflicts over state regularisation of city edge informal settlements in Zimbabwe’s capital Harare. It conceptualises the presence of “lawless” urban frontiers and “illegal” territorial authorities in capital cities as expressions of a permissive form of central statecraft. In so doing, the article takes forward debates over the politics shaping the margins of Africa’s rapidly expanding cities, redressing scholars’ tendency to neglect central party‐state strategic calculations and party politics in their analyses of unregulated settlements. Dominant interpretations generally hinge on state absence or weakness and emphasise localised influences. The case of Harare’s highly politicised city‐edge informal settlements reveals the inadequacy of apolitical approaches particularly clearly, as all were controlled by the ruling ZANUPF party. The conflicts provoked by regularisation provide a lens on disputes within the ruling party, which we interpret as disputes over different forms of clientalist statecraft. Analyses of urban frontiers can thus help move away from generic one‐size‐fits‐all explanations of informality and patronage politics in Africa’s expanding cities.     

INTRODUCTION: PROCESSES OF CHANGE IN URBAN SYSTEMS*

ABSTRACT The twenty‐first century will be one of intensified urbanization, on a scale never before experienced. How do urban systems and individual cities change and develop? The social sciences have many different approaches to analyzing the economic, social, and spatial dimensions of urban change. We inventory some of these approaches and their implications for public policy toward cities, urban change, and economic development.     

BEYOND THE FOOD DESERT: FINDING WAYS TO SPEAK ABOUT URBAN FOOD SECURITY IN SOUTH AFRICA

Urban food security is a significant development challenge in sub‐Saharan Africa. However, the field is currently under ‐researched and under‐theorized. Urban food insecurity, where it is considered, has been viewed through a development studies lens that views food insecurity as a household‐scale problem. There has been significant focus on food deserts in developed countries as one way of engaging with such insecurity. The food deserts research views food insecurity through a social exclusion and food justice lens. This article introduces the food desert concept to provide a conceptual tool to begin to understand the spatial determinants of urban food insecurity, which are not well captured by the existing framings of food security in the region. Using data from a 2008 household food security survey conducted in Cape Town, the paper highlights gaps in the food deserts approach, most significantly its neglect of non‐market sources of food and of household decision‐making processes. The paper therefore concludes by suggesting a new approach which takes the household's assets, abilities and decision‐making as the starting point and overlays this with the market and non‐market foodscapes accessed by these households.     

Substituting for Families? Schools and Social Reproduction in AIDS‐affected Lesotho

Abstract: Families, the state and employers all have a broad if differentiated interest in securing the daily and generational reproduction of society. Whereas in Western countries, the past two decades have witnessed a progressive displacement of responsibility for social reproduction from the state to families, in southern Africa, day‐to‐day social reproduction has always remained overwhelmingly the preserve of families. Today, however, the AIDS pandemic is radically transforming family life for many children, and prompting concerns (arguably a moral panic) about the potential breakdown of social reproduction. Even in Africa, schools have long supplemented families in delivering generational reproduction, albeit geared around the transfer of “factual” knowledge and with a narrow focus on preparing new generations of workers. In light of the AIDS pandemic, a number of commentators have suggested ways in which schools could further substitute for the diminishing capacities of families. Based on interviews with decision‐makers and analysis of policy documents, I explore a number of interventions being enacted in Lesotho's schools. I argue that such initiatives remain small in scale and often justified in relation to retaining children in school. In practice both government and employers remain more interested in the generational reproduction of workers than in daily reproduction. If the welfare needs of AIDS‐affected children are to be met through schooling, there is a need for the education sector's role to be understood in relation to an ethics of care, rather than the functionalist production of a future workforce.     

Neocolonial Urbanism? La Rénovation Urbaine in Paris

This paper analyses the programme of redeveloping housing estates in France overseen by the Agence Nationale de la Rénovation Urbaine (ANRU). Under this programme social housing reconstruction is undertaken in a nationally coordinated fashion in order to “valorize”, “secure” and socially “mix” estates. The paper highlights the political and neo‐colonial aspects of this programme and the wider state spatial strategies it is part of. Redevelopment projects not only further gentrifying land‐rent valorization, state rescaling and territorially stigmatizing symbolic violence; they also reorganize territorial relations of domination in multiple, also racialized, neo‐colonial and partly hegemonic ways. In a longer view, they respond to the “urban revolution” of 1968 (Garnier) and to the “anti‐colonial revolution” of independence and anti‐racist movements (Khiari). The paper builds on a framework that articulates marxist (Lefebvrean) and anti‐colonial (Fanonian) lineages while drawing on research on the neo‐colonial aspects of the French state.     

吉林省城市体系等级规模结构研究

等级规模结构是城市体系的三大结构之一,其特征可以反映出城市在不同规模层次中的分布状况及城市人口集中或分散的程度,有助于认识城市体系发展所处的阶段。通过统计数据计算分析,运用分形理论,发现吉林省城市体系等级规模结构满足位序-规模分布规律,城市规模分布的均衡程度较高,中小城市比较发育,首位城市垄断作用不突出,缺乏大城市。在吉林省城市体系动态变化过程中,等级规模结构相对稳定且不断趋于集中。在此基础上提出重点培育通化、延吉等大城市;继续扩大长春规模,发挥整体效益;加强交通网络建设;加快矿业城市可持续发展等建议。     

Do Urban Agglomeration Effects and Household Amenities have a Skill Bias?*

There are several hypotheses why urban scale affects wages. Most focus on agglomeration economies that increase labor demand, especially for high‐skilled workers (e.g., dynamic externalities stress knowledge transfers, and imply the urban wage gap favors skilled workers). Others stress urban amenities that increase labor supply and decrease wages. Amenities should have a stronger influence on affluent households if they are normal goods. By examining whether urban‐scale affects net returns to education, it can be determined whether skilled workers are influenced more by urban productivity or amenities. Empirical results suggest net returns to education decline with urban scale, implying a key role for urban amenities in affecting skilled workers.     

Beware the Springbok in Sheep’s Clothing: How Secure Are the Faunal Identifications upon Which We Build Our Models?

Lively debate surrounds the introduction of non-indigenous domestic livestock to southern Africa. Despite disagreements regarding process, the archaeological community agrees, with unusual unanimity, on the broad chronology. Indeed, the certainty with which the timing is known (admittedly within the limits of radiocarbon dating) has been celebrated, because with these underpinning data in hand, issues of process can be explored in a serious and empirically grounded manner. Recently published ancient DNA (aDNA) research in southern Africa now calls into question the reliability of many faunal identifications upon which this debate rests. These data build on earlier ecological data, suggesting that some faunal identifications at sites crucial to the debate may be unreliable. A number of morphologically identified domesticate bones were chosen for aDNA sequencing to explore the relationships among southern Africa’s early domestic stock. Unfortunately, a large proportion yielded DNA sequences indicating a wild origin. This led us to consider the potential scale of the problem and the implications for existing models regarding the introduction of herding to the subcontinent. The issue may originate largely from the optimistic identification of specimens retaining too few key morphological markers. We acknowledge that reconstructions of the past are likely to be biased by discarding potential zooarchaeological data through overly conservative identification. We argue, however, that the potential ramifications of building models on unreliable data are far greater than those of being forced to acknowledge gaps in our data and are calling for further research.     

基于Kernel密度解释的江苏省城市规模结构演化研究

城市规模结构研究可以反映城市在不同规模等级中的分布状况及城市人口集聚或分散程度,有助于认识城市体系发展所处的阶段以及该区域城市化进程的特征。研究运用Kernel城市空间密度分析方法,直观的反映了江苏省城市规模分布格局的连续变化。分别从城市体系的空间格局、城镇密集带的结构变化和长三角城市群城镇网络构建等视角对城市规模结构进行探讨,指出全省城市规模空间分布的Kernel密度在整体上具有西高东低、南密北疏的态势;城市体系的空间模式由最初的核心-边缘结构,逐渐向点-轴-面结构演化;南京都市圈的进一步延伸,将促进长三角多核心巨型城市网络向更大地域范围拓展。由此提出全省在不断优化城市体系的同时,需要更加注重大中城市及小城镇协调发展机制的建设,加强对苏中、苏北地区城市人口规模的扩张和城市规模布局的均衡,建立具备完整城市功能的网络城市发展模式,以更好的促进区域一体化发展。