Counter currents in Cape Town

I’m sorry I missed the launch on 06 April of a new book on Cape Town – called Counter Currents: Experiments in Sustainablity in the Cape Town Region. By all accounts, it was a good evening. The volume is edited by my colleague Edgar Pieterse, and is published by the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town and Jacana Media.

Front cover of Counter Currents

It wouldn’t be fair for me to review the book because I’ve contributed a chapter (on the Cape Town Central City Development Strategy) but here’s the blurb:

“Cape Town is undergoing a growth spurt driven along by both public and private sector investments. In the process a new city is being fashioned in front of our eyes but there are very few book length perspectives on the direction and meaning of this growth. This is particularly alarming given the many intractable problems that stare the city in the face and which require more considered and informed responses.

The starting point of this initiative is that the nature and direction of Cape Town’s physical metamorphosis is unsustainable and culturally questionable if not inappropriate. However, amidst the expansion of real estate, a number of very important counter currents are afoot (as plans or interventions or sometimes, only dreams) which represent both a critique of unimaginative urban growth and hold the seeds for putting Cape Town onto a unique and culturally resonant growth path; a precondition for creating a more inclusive, vibrant and sustainable city at ease in its own skin, perched at the southern tip of Africa.

The purpose of this book will be to showcase bold urban development initiatives by the both the state and the private sector with the aim of shifting public ideas and discourses about the kind of Cape Town we should be imagining and nurturing; a city that works explicitly with many unresolved contradictions and tensions but also strives to give expression to a number of core values such as sustainability, social justice, integration and creativity.”

Imagining change

Contributing authors to the volume include: Mokena Makeka, Gita Goven, Barbara Southworth, Andrew Boraine, Luyanda Mpahlwa, Nisa Mammon, Lucien Le Grange, Iain Low, Karen Press, Jane Alexander, Ashraf Jamal, AbdouMaliq Simone, David Dewar, Mark Swilling.

An exhibition to coincide with the book will be on until 11 May at the Cape Town Institute for Architecture in Hout Street. There will be two debates on aspects of the book, which will take place at the Institute. Theses are: Leadership and the City on 19 April and Designing Alternative Futures on 6 May. Both will be held at 17h30 for 18h00.

At the launch of Counter-Currents were (from left) Associate Prof Richard Calland (Faculty of Law and Mail & Guardian columnist), Tau Tavengwa (design and project co-ordination), Mokena Makeka, Vice Chancellor Dr Max Price and editor Prof Edgar Pieterse (photo and caption courtesy of the University of Cape Town website)