How to Mend a Fragmented City: a Critique of ‘Infrastructural Solidarity'

Cities in Latin America in particular have been investing in new transportation networks such as bicycle systems, metros and bus rapid transit (BRT) technologies in recent years. These infrastructures are promoted as cures for trenchant social and spatial divisions as much as for traffic gridlock and vehicular pollution. This article unpacks the theory that infrastructures might mend cities that have been fragmented into disparate parts by uneven capitalist development. I argue that this ‘infrastructural solidarity' thesis relies on a troubled imagination—shared across urban design and strands of urban theory—that infrastructures are static, formal arrangements that concretize relations and enforce social cohesion or fragmentation. This article draws on qualitative research on the TransMilenio BRT system in Bogotá, Colombia, as well as on the work of Bruno Latour, suggesting that the political life of infrastructure is better revealed when such systems are understood as dense knots of shifting relations with complex temporalities. Arguments for the value of this type of actor‐network theory (ANT) reading often skew towards the esoteric, but the TransMilenio case shows how sorting through infrastructural ontologies actually matters in terms of how urbanists—academic and practicing—conceive of and work towards just and functional cities.     

Urban Segregation and Metropolitics in Latin America: The Case of Bogotá, Colombia

The patterns of spatial socioeconomic segregation in Latin American cities are changing rapidly as a result of suburbanization and metropolization. However, the political consequences of these urban spatial processes are not well understood. This article uses Orfield's framework of analysis to test the hypothesis that spatial segregation at the metropolitan level is driving political polarization between Latin American cities and their suburbs. With Bogotá as a testing ground, we look for evidence that the mechanisms described by Orfield are at play. We conclude that metropolitan spatial segregation does not drive metropolitan politics in Bogotá and explore some of the theoretical implications thereof.     

Global Urban Policymaking in Africa: A View from Angola Through the Redevelopment of the Bay of Luanda

A burgeoning literature looks into the processes and actors involved in the adoption and emulation of best practices and models of urban policy and development across the globe, often with the aim of attracting investment and making cities more competitive. With its focus on leisure, tourism and global capital, the redevelopment of the Bay of Luanda, in the capital of Angola, echoes the rhetoric, policies and projects underpinning such practices. Yet, a deeper interrogation reveals that the redevelopment forms part of a predominantly inward‐looking project driven by the highest echelons of the national government and its ruling party. While these actors mimic and appropriate the language and tools of entrepreneurial cities, their aim is not necessarily to make the city more internationally competitive but to achieve domestic political legitimacy and stability. The argument presented in this article builds on McCann's ( 2013 ) call for scholars to also consider the ‘introspective’ politics of urban policy boosterism from the perspective of a context in which power is highly centralized. The article thus contributes to a growing literature that advances more adequate and provincialized theorizations of urban policy and city governance in the global South, with a particular focus on the African context.     

Bogotá's Left Turn: Counter-Neoliberalization in Colombia

For the political left, decentralization has increased both the appeal and the importance of governing the city, and yet sharp constraints limit the left's transformative potential when it controls that level of government alone. Bogotá is an important case in point under the recent mayoral administration of Gustavo Petro (2012–15), a demobilized guerrilla leader who sought to implement a series of urban policy reforms that together represent one of the most substantively radical and intellectually coherent attempts to challenge neoliberalism in all of Latin America. Focusing on the four policy arenas through which Petro hoped to transform the city (environment, housing, transport, and trash collection), the article documents the veto power of the firms whose privileges he threatened, as well as the tools through which they derailed reform. In contrast to the failure of his political economy agenda, Petro was indeed able to enact a number of progressive social policy reforms precisely because they did not threaten the profitability of the city's entrenched growth machine.     

San Francisco Through Bogotá’s Eyes: Leveraging Urban Policy Change through the Circulation of Media Objects

This article connects two emerging debates in urban studies—the need to pay more attention to the role of nonhuman actors in urban planning and the ways in which media objects affect urban politics and planning—by examining how a video on Bogotá’s car‐free Ciclovía program facilitated the adoption and implementation of a similar program in San Francisco. The analysis shows that media objects have the capacity to act as fulcrums in processes of leveraging urban policy change owing to their potential to alter urban governance structures. The article analyzes the digital storytelling and ‘eye‐opening’ practices through which the video enabled policy changes to be implemented in San Francisco, while also tracing the local and transnational actors, networks and agendas that were involved in the production and circulation of the video through digital archival research and multi‐sited fieldwork. In doing so, it shows the active role that media objects play in shaping urban policymaking processes and provides an example of a relational methodology for studying the digital materialities through which urban policy ideas increasingly circulate.     

Urban Responses to Climate Change: Theories and Governance Practice in Cities of the Global South

Cities around the world have recently started to become ‘proactive’ initiators of climate strategies containing both mitigation and adaptation elements. The experience of these first movers has been studied and documented both empirically and, to a lesser extent, theoretically, primarily for cities in the global North. This symposium addresses related knowledge gaps by exploring case studies of urban regions in the global South confronting their projected climate change challenges, showcasing the experiences of Delhi, Santiago de Chile and Bogotá. Its specific aim is to explore the urban social response to nature change, the adaptation challenges faced by cities across the world and current practices of urban adaptation. Further, the symposium seeks to understand to what extent and in what respect current conceptual frameworks — which highlight urban ecological security and vulnerability — provide a useful context/framing to assist cities in confronting their challenges and to explain their actions. This introductory article examines current knowledge of the theory and practice of urban climate response. It introduces the concepts of ecological security and vulnerability and discusses the adaptive capacity of cities and how they are starting to respond to the emerging challenges of climate change. It concludes with a synthesis of the case articles and highlights some of the findings.     

STRUCTURAL INTERDEPENDENCE AMONG COLOMBIAN DEPARTMENTS

This paper analyzes structural interdependence among Colombian departments. The results show that Bogotá has a large influence on the other regional economies through the power of its purchases. Additionally, a center–periphery pattern emerges in the spatial concentration of the effects of the hypothetical extraction of any territory. From a policy point of view, the main findings reaffirm the role played by Bogotá in the recent polarization process observed in the regional economies in Colombia. Any policy action oriented to reduce these regional disparities should take into account that, given the structural interdependence among Colombian departments, the effects of new investment in the lagged regions would flow through Bogotá and the major regional economies.     

Day Zero and The Infrastructures of Climate Change: Water Governance,Inequality, and Infrastructural Politics in Cape Town's Water Crisis

From 2015 to 2018, Cape Town, South Africa, was marked by fears of a water crisis in which the city's taps threatened to run dry. We argue in this article that Cape Town's crisis of water scarcity was a product of the convergence of ongoing contradictions in South African water governance as they came into contact with shifting infrastructural priorities associated with climate change. In its response to the possibility of a financial crisis brought on by reduced water consumption, the city withdrew the universal provision of free basic water (FBW) and reconfigured existing tariff structures. Both changes meant that the city moved further into commercialization and valuation practices in the context of restricted monetary flows. Based on an understanding of contemporary governance in South Africa as reflective of an often contradictory need to balance municipal budgets while also correcting for apartheid inequities, we argue that ongoing experiences of climate change are stretching existing municipal budgets in ways that threaten to deepen existing inequalities. Ultimately, we suggest that Cape Town's crisis is critical for understanding how climate change is reconfiguring existing governance dynamics at a planetary scale, thus offering insights into what form urban climate change adaptation may take in the future.     

Glorified Fantasies and Masterpieces of Deception on Importing Las Vegas into the ‘New South Africa’

With the end of apartheid, Johannesburg and other South African cities are now part of a new global race to become ‘world‐class’ tourist and business centers. At the center of this development is the importation of Vegas‐style spectacle by local entrepreneurs, firms and other city boosters who create fantasyscapes such as the Emperor's Palace and GrandWest. Financed and run by South African impresarios — whose luxurious empires transcend the continent — these resorts represent not only the globalization of gaming but the way in which South African cities see themselves within the worldwide urban hierarchy. As such, this article seeks to untangle the global and local aspects of importing fantasy into the ‘new South Africa’.     

Are South Africa's cities changing? Indications from the mid‐1990s

Books reviewed in this article: Scott A. Bollens, Urban peace‐building in divided societies: Belfast and Johannesburg Alan Morris, Bleakness and light: inner‐city transition in Hillbrow, Johannesburg Robert Cameron, Democratisation of South African local government: a tale of three cities Susan Parnell, Edgar Pieterse, Mark Swilling and Dominique Wooldridge (eds.), Democratising local government: the South African experiment Grant R. Saff, Changing Cape Town: urban dynamics, policy and planning during the political transition in South Africa     

The Creative Night-Time Leisure Economy of Informal Drinking Venues

In response to debates on emergent and rogue forms of urbanism that are reshaping the African city, this article examines the night-time leisure economy as one particular social context in which the tensions and opposition between regulation/deregulation and informality play out. This article shows how ideas that centre on Northern entertainment spaces and drinking venues (bound with policy initiatives to reposition the city) have come to inform policy initiatives to regulate working-class public spaces in South African cities with the objective of controlling unruliness. Through a case study of informal and illegal drinking venues in Sweet Home Farm, a slum settlement in Cape Town, we provide an insight into the ways in which people seek to reclaim social space and impose their own vision of the creative city. The article demonstrates that while illegal drinking venues can be imagined as ‘unruly, unpredictable, surprising [and] confounding’, they are characterized by a responsive agility to the social, cultural and physical environment. We argue that the capacity and tenacity of informal drinking venues to adapt to regulatory pressures present a range of possibilities for reimaging the night-time leisure economy in ways that are inclusive of the poor and conducive to negotiation.     

Integrated reporting and capital markets in an international setting: The role of financial analysts

This study investigates the interplay between integrated reporting (IR) and capital markets. In particular, building on voluntary disclosure and information processing theories, we hypothesize and empirically find that IR adoption improves analysts' ability to make accurate earnings forecasts. Whereas previous studies focus on the South African context, we rely on an international sample that also allows us to study the moderating effect of the corporate governance regime (shareholder or stakeholder oriented). The results suggest that IR improves analysts' ability to make accurate predictions to a larger extent in North America than in Europe, and we derive interesting insights on the much‐debated nature of IR. This study offers valuable insights to policy makers interested in improving disclosure practices in the financial market.     

Infrastructure Disruption in ‘Silicon Savannah’: Exploring the Idea of the Creative Class and their Relation to Quality of Place in Nairobi,Kenya

Debates around urbanization, infrastructure disruption and the creative class rarely appear alongside each other in research on African cities. This article connects these different narratives, which are currently exerting their influence on the future direction of these cities. The economic value of the creative class is that their work centres on innovation—a quality seen as essential to ‘new-economy’ urban growth. Quality of place (that which makes ‘New York New York’) is said to attract the creative class to certain cities, as lifestyle amenities are valued as much as employment opportunities. Nairobi is an example of an African city currently attracting both Kenyan and expatriate creative class workers, particularly in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. In this article we take Richard Florida's creative class theory as a departure point to offer insights into why this group chooses to live in Nairobi and to describe Nairobi's quality of place, with a particular focus on infrastructure disruption. The case study reveals that Nairobi's quality of place differs fundamentally from the normative attributes prescribed by creative class theory and, in some instances, it is considered to be highly frustrating and unattractive.     

Florida in the Global South: How Eurocentrism Obscures Global Urban Challenges—and What We Can Do about It

According to Richard Florida, the world is in the grip of a ‘New Urban Crisis’. In his most recent book Florida recounts a visit to Medellín that provoked an epiphany in which he realized that the New Urban Crisis is global in scope. Unfortunately, Florida's discovery of the global South is informed by a deeply Eurocentric understanding of urbanization. This leads him to conclude that Southern cities should ‘unleash’ creativity, and he proposes that the United States should develop a global urban policy that would export a version of American urbanism. In this essay we deconstruct Florida's notion of the New Urban Crisis and show that its Eurocentric assumptions obscure the very real environmental, economic and political challenges facing cities in the global South and their residents.     

Mega‐events,Urban Boosterism and Growth Strategies: An Analysis of the Objectives and Legitimations of the Cape Town 2004 Olympic Bid

Mega‐events are short‐term high‐profile events like Olympics and World Fairs that always have a significant urban impact. They re‐prioritize urban agendas, create post‐event usage debates, often stimulate urban redevelopment, and are instruments of boosterist ideologies promoting economic growth. While mega‐events have normally been the preserve of industrial/postindustrial cities, the bid for the 2004 Olympics by Cape Town, South Africa represented the first bid from Africa, and the most successful bid to date from a developing country. The unique theme of the Cape Town bid was human/urban development — a contradiction given the elitist and commercial nature of mega‐events — and yet a direct response to problems created by the apartheid city. The developmental aspects of the Cape Town bid are assessed in their South African context in order to ascertain whether development was only a legitimation for business interests (or growth machines) or whether and how the mega‐event would contribute to urban restructuring. It is concluded that the bid represented a form of urban/national boosterism that repositioned Cape Town and South African interests in the global economy — particularly relevant given its previous apartheid pariah status. As a pro‐growth strategy advocated by political and economic elites, the Olympic bid was less important as a sporting event at the grassroots than as a symbol of expectations of economic betterment. Whether mega‐events like the Olympics can carry such far‐reaching objectives within their more specific mandates is a matter for further reflection. Les méga‐événements sont des événements à court terme très en vue comme les jeux Olympiques et les foires mondiales qui ont toujours un impact urbain considérable. Ils changent les priorités des programmes urbains, ils créent des débats d'usage après l'événement, encouragent souvent le redéveloppement urbain, et sont les instruments des idéologies de relance qui supportent la croissance économique. Les méga‐événements prennent place habituellement dans les villes industrialisées/post‐industrialisées, mais la tentative du Cap en Afrique du Sud pour obtenir les jeux Olympiques de 2004 représente la première offre de l'Afrique. C'est la tentative venant d'un pays en voie de développement qui à ce jour a été la plus couronnée de succès. Le thème unique de la tentative du Cap était le développement humain/urbain — une contradiction, en vue de la nature commerciale et élitiste des méga‐événements — et cependant une réponse directe aux problèmes créés par la ville apartheid. Les aspects du développement de l'enchère du Cap sont évalués dans leur contexte sud‐africain afin d'établir si le développement était simplement une justification des intérÁts commerciaux (ou machines de croissance) ou si le méga‐événement pouvait contribuer à la restructuration urbaine, et comment. Je conclus que l'enchère représentait une forme de relance urbaine/nationale qui a replacé le Cap et l'Afrique du Sud dans l'économie globale — particulièrement pertinente en vue de son statut précédent d'apartheid paria. En tant que stratégie préconisée par les élites politiques et économiques pour stimuler la croissance, la tentative des jeux Olympiques était moins importante comme événement sportif populaire que comme le symbole d'une attente d'amélioration économique. Il reste à savoir si les méga‐événements comme les jeux Olympiques peuvent atteindre de tels objectifs de grande envergure dans leurs mandats spécifiques.     

Creative Cities,Graffiti and Culture-Led Development in South Africa: Dlala Indima (‘Play Your Part’)

Creative cities and culture-led development discourses have come under increasing scrutiny as elite-centric economic development agendas tend to trump ‘civic creativity’ ideals as imagined by Charles Landry. In South Africa, culture-led development and cultural policy tends to primarily mimic that of the global North, largely focusing on culture as a catalyst for economic and property development. Public art commissioning processes tend to focus on decorative projects as part of urban upgrading, which are often associated with ensuing gentrification and displacement of the urban poor. In contrast to focusing on these kinds of regeneration strategies, this article investigates Dlala Indima, a hip-hop-led graffiti project in a rural township in the Eastern Cape of South Africa. This article situates graffiti as a critical social and spatial practice to argue that this case challenges normative cultural planning paradigms. Dlala Indima's work is an alternative approach to cultural development by and for young people who are usually marginalized by the mainstream practice of culture-led economic development. The project challenges dominant creative cities and culture-led development discourses in three ways: first, it challenges the normative processes of regeneration; secondly, it grounds participatory practice; and finally, it shifts participation from ‘tyranny to transformation’ through the ubuntu of hip-hop, the notion of ubuntu being based on the communitarian notion of ‘ubuntu, ngubuntu ngabantu’—‘I am because you are’.     

Sisyphean Dilemmas of Development: Contrasting Urban Infrastructure and Fiscal Policy Trends in Maputo,Mozambique

In sub‐Saharan African (SSA) cities like Maputo, land commodification is predictably fueled by plans for aspirational infrastructure serving elites. What is rather more peculiar, however, is the way in which the promotion of some fiscal policy reforms can also inadvertently support land commodification and the uneven development it (re)produces. This article describes how efforts to host both democratic fiscal reforms (via localized exercises like participatory budgeting) and to tap into international capital circuits to stir economic development (via aspirational infrastructure and urban redevelopment plans) can produce a Sisyphean dilemma. While gains in ordinary infrastructure investments (e.g. wells, water pumps) were achieved democratically in Maputo's KaTembe district with the participatory budget, these material (and political) improvements have been rendered irrelevant by better funded aspirational infrastructure projects for KaTembe (e.g. bridges, high‐rise residential buildings, tourist facilities) supported by more opaque decisions made by the national government without residential input. Given the wide embrace of participatory budgeting in contexts of weak democracy across SSA cities and elsewhere, Maputo's experience serves as a timely alert of the risks run when this popular exercise is prematurely promoted, especially when wider‐scaled property tax reforms could better redress uneven and undemocratic urban development.     

Dynamic and non-neutral productivity effects of foreign ownership: A nonparametric approach

This paper studies two novel productivity characteristics of foreign acquisition on high-tech manufacturing firms: the dynamic and the non-Hicks-neutral effects. A dynamic productivity effect of foreign ownership arises when adoption of foreign technology and management practices takes time to fully realize. Furthermore, these dynamic adjustments may be capital or labor augmenting as adoption of advanced production technologies tends to have non-neutral productivity implications in developed countries. We propose and implement an econometric framework to estimate both effects using firm-level data from China's manufacturing sector. Our framework extends a nonparametric productivity framework, in which identification is achieved using a firm's first-order conditions and timing assumptions. We find strong evidence of dynamic and non-neutral effects from foreign ownership, with significant differences across investment sources. Investment from OECD sources is found to provide a long-term productivity boost for all but the largest recipients, while that from Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan does not raise performance. These findings have implications for China's declining labor share and for the rising domestic value-added content of its high-tech exports.     

Macro-logistics and externality cost trends in South Africa – underscoring the sustainability imperative

The challenges facing the logistics industry in a fossil fuel-challenged global economy are highlighted by transportation's rising contribution to logistics costs, as evidenced in the USA's and South Africa's logistics costs time series, the two longest-running such series available globally. The anticipated persistence of rising, volatile oil prices and mounting pressure to account for externalities will exacerbate the increase in transport costs (TCs). The results of South Africa's externality cost model show that transport externalities add an additional 18% to already high TCs. In the South African context, the equally largest contributors to freight transport externalities are accidents involving road freight vehicles and road freight emissions. The visibility of these costs is the first step towards internalisation and illustrates the desirability of a fundamental shift in the structure of the South African freight transport industry through the introduction of long-distance intermodal solutions.