African Dreams
Event details
| Date | 14.09.2015 |
| Hour | 17:30 › 19:00 |
| Speaker | Prof. Susan Parnell - University of Cape Town |
| Location | |
| Category | Inaugural lectures - Honorary Lecture |
Locating urban life and infrastructure in the post 2015 development agenda
The recent growth of rich empirical work based on diverse conceptual, disciplinary and ideological entry points into the study of African infrastructure and services has been hugely significant in stimulating a reimagining of the continent that is focused on its urban spaces, experiences and connections. However, with the United Nations (UN) finalising the post 2015 agenda (including a new urban Sustainable Development Goal, the High Level Panel on Finance for Development and the forthcoming Habitat 111 (the global process to agree a new human settlement agenda) in 2016, it is the policy deliberations not conventional scholarship that that are likely to be immediately formative of Africa’s new urban imaginary. Rather than academics bemoaning their lack of policy impact, we suggest that it is important for scholars to engage global urban policy making, probing where and how to augment and refine what is clearly a path-breaking moment in how development on the continent is understood and how the life in the African metropolis is perceived. To interrogate these urban spaces of engagement we begin by briefly setting out interdisciplinary advances that have already been put forward by infrastructure and service studies in Africa and which align with the overarching SDG logic. This is followed by an examination of the rapidly shifting global policy environment, first with respect for the African Union’s overarching ambitions for the continent and then, drilling down, to a consideration of Africa’s positioning on infrastructure viz. Habitat 111. This approach, of fusing the findings and modes of investigation born of the academic and policy literatures, is what we have argued elsewhere will enrich not only an Afro-centric understanding of the urban transition, but will bring the urban realities of Africa closer to the forefront of global urban theorising.
The recent growth of rich empirical work based on diverse conceptual, disciplinary and ideological entry points into the study of African infrastructure and services has been hugely significant in stimulating a reimagining of the continent that is focused on its urban spaces, experiences and connections. However, with the United Nations (UN) finalising the post 2015 agenda (including a new urban Sustainable Development Goal, the High Level Panel on Finance for Development and the forthcoming Habitat 111 (the global process to agree a new human settlement agenda) in 2016, it is the policy deliberations not conventional scholarship that that are likely to be immediately formative of Africa’s new urban imaginary. Rather than academics bemoaning their lack of policy impact, we suggest that it is important for scholars to engage global urban policy making, probing where and how to augment and refine what is clearly a path-breaking moment in how development on the continent is understood and how the life in the African metropolis is perceived. To interrogate these urban spaces of engagement we begin by briefly setting out interdisciplinary advances that have already been put forward by infrastructure and service studies in Africa and which align with the overarching SDG logic. This is followed by an examination of the rapidly shifting global policy environment, first with respect for the African Union’s overarching ambitions for the continent and then, drilling down, to a consideration of Africa’s positioning on infrastructure viz. Habitat 111. This approach, of fusing the findings and modes of investigation born of the academic and policy literatures, is what we have argued elsewhere will enrich not only an Afro-centric understanding of the urban transition, but will bring the urban realities of Africa closer to the forefront of global urban theorising.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
- This event is internal
Organizer
- Programme doctoral EDAR
Contact
- Sandra Botta