Housing in African Cities (eBook)

This edited collection from across the African continent offers a diverse set of analytical accounts that engage with the urban governance dynamics, drivers and impacts of a wide variety of housing initiatives. These include insights into the relationships between parties and actors undertaking developments, or whose housing activities impact on the city. The book illustrates issues of power distribution, the visions or agendas motivating these actions, and the instruments used to advance them. It considers the rise of mega housing projects; private sector driven residential developments; unobtrusive transformations of existing building stock, establishment and upgrading of informal settlements; and state driven low cost housing schemes. It surfaces the contestation, collaborations and conflicts as well as the power relations that operate within cities and which are made visible on cityscapes.  Housing and human settlement scholars as well as those interested in urban politics and governance dynamics in the global south and across the African continent will find much to appreciate in this volume.

Margot Rubin is a Lecturer in Spatial Planning, School of Geography and Planning, University of Cardiff and is a visiting lecturer at the School of Architecture and Planning, Wits University, Johannesburg, where she was formerly an Associate Professor, South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning. Margot has been writing about inner-city regeneration and housing policy, regional urban governance in the BRICS and is currently engaged in work around mega housing projects and issues of gender and the city. Rubin has over 30 publications of book chapter and journal articles on issues ranging from backyard accommodation to bureaucratic activism. 

Sarah Charlton is Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at Wits University, South Africa, and past Director of its research centre CUBES.  She has worked extensively in the field of low-income housing in South Africa including in local government and the non-profit sector. Her research focuses on low-income housing policy and practice, state interventions in development, and people's lived experiences of cities. She is Research Associate of the Southern Centre for Inequality Studies at Wits University, and serves on the boards of several journals. 

Neil Klug is Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture and Planning at Wits University, South Africa, and past Coordinator of the Master's program in Urban Design. He has also practised as an Urban Planning and Housing Consultant for over 30 years, largely in the field of low-cost housing and slum upgrading. He has published book chapters and journal articles on spatial planning, access to land and inclusionary housing, and on South African policy implementation in the field of informal settlement upgrading.