Urban Governance

The morning conference session started with a deep plunge into the world of gangs. Simon Howell, from the University of Cape Town, presented a detailed historic and ethnographic overview of gangs in Cape Town. He explained how gang violence is a means by which gang members express a need for identity and a need to be heard. Howell also mentioned social and economic exclusion as well as powerlessness as the main factors contributing to persistence of gangs. In this context, he argued, a police response based on violence is likely to make things worse and even help legitimate gang violence against the state. Instead, he suggested that interventions aimed at addressing social and economic exclusion, powerlessness, and identity creation would be more effective.

The second presentation was delivered by Mercy Brown Luthango from the African Center for Cities and focused on empirical results of three different urban upgrading interventions in Cape Town, with a particular focus on the effects on perception of safety and inclusion. The interventions included informal housing provision, reblocking, and the upgrading of public space and the provision of public service.[1] All interventions had a mix of positive and negative effects, some of which were unintended. In Freedom Park, for instance, the upgrading intervention, residents reported diminished social cohesion in their community. Children, however, reported an increased sense of safety from natural events like rain, cold, or fire. The two other interventions had more consistently positive effects, with 72% of residents declaring "Now it is better" after the public space & social service intervention. To conclud her presentation, Dr. Luthango stressed the need to think more about unintended consequences, employment, and social networks when considering urban upgrading intervention.

Jacqueline Friedenthal from the Embassy of Switzerland in South Africa, began the third session with a short overview of the historical evolution of development and cooperation and their relation to risk mitigation.

The next speaker was David Savage, the Programme Lead for the Cities Support Program of the National Treasury of South Africa. After showing the importance of South Africa’s cities to future economic growth, he presented the overall results-based management strategy the Cities Support Program is putting forward to help cities in the different deal with the multitude of planning challenges they face. He provided an insightful account of the complexities cities must deal with when they would like to borrow from international capital markets. He finished by emphasizing how important it is that the demand and needs are expressed first by the cities themselves and not the national or international governments.

[1] VPUU was one of the main partners for the third intervention