Elite Compacts in Africa: The Role of Area‐based Management in the New Governmentality of the Durban City‐region |
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| Authors: | Jo Beall Susan Parnell Chris Albertyn |
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| Affiliation: | 1. British Council Customer Service UK, Manchester, M1 6BB;2. Department of Geography, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, Western Cape 7701, South Africa;3. Chris Albertyn and Associates CC, Kloof, Durban 3640, South Africa |
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| Abstract: | Through reflection on the practical post‐apartheid (re)alignment of competing rationalities across the Greater Durban urban region, this essay teases out the interface between traditional and modern settlement management systems, and explores how governance cleavages are being renegotiated and mediated. It is suggested that, in building an integrated method of operating across the fragmented city‐regional scale and navigating the competing interests involved, the practice of African urbanism is being defined. Without making any claims for what may or may not be uniquely African city‐regional dynamics at the boundaries of tradition and modernity, what is clear from the Durban case is that both conventional city‐regional literature and new city‐regional ideas have glossed over the complexity of finding solutions to tensions between poor communities, urban managers, elected local authorities and the traditional rural elites of the functional city‐regions of Africa. |
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| Keywords: | City‐region traditional authorities elite compacts area‐based management post‐apartheid city regional service delivery urban‐rural linkages African urbanism multi‐scale governance |
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