City Futures

1. Introduction2. Differential Urbanisation in the Global South3. The mainstream agenda I: Shelter for All4. The mainstream agenda II: Good Urban Governance5. Everyday practices as insurgent alternatives6. Alternative urban development policies for just city futures7. Making a start towards alternative urban futures

Edgar Pieterse is Special Advisor to the Premier of the Western Cape in South Africa. He is a visiting Associate Professor in the Department of Public Management and Planning at the University of Stellenbosch, an Associate of Isandla Institute and a founder member of an initiative to establish an Urban Research Centre focussed on the Global South at the University of Cape Town. His publications include: Voices of the Transition: The Politics, Poetics and Practices of Social Change in South Africa (2004), Democratising Local Government: The South African Experiment. (2002) and the forthcoming: Imaginaries and Realities of Developmental Local Government in South Africa (UCT Press).

'This is an important and hopeful work that does not shy away from the inequalities and power asymmetries that confront cities of the South, but still manages to show that the politics of the 'wretched', if sustained and integrated into a wider institutional arena, can bring about change for the good of the many. It rejects the depressing readings of such urbanism that have come to dominate without resorting to a naive or false utopianism. Edgar Pieterse has written a book that is a must for urban thinkers and practitioners interested in the virtues of the everyday' - Ash Amin, Director of Institute of Advanced Study, Durham University 'Pieterse is adept at steering us through disparate ways of being in the city - multiple times, different speeds and relays, inclusions and exclusions. Much is said about the need to make cities more effective and more just but there is seldom a language for doing this. Pieterse has made an enormous contribution to elaborating such a needed language, and for this has done a great service to advance a creative process of urban change.' - AbdouMaliq Simone, Goldsmiths, University of London 'A trenchant deconstruction of the main thinking underlying urban development in the Global South . Pieterse illuminates an alternative urban political agenda and provides a roadmap on how to get there. This should be required reading for urbanists and activists alike.' - Lamia Kamal-Chaoui, Head of the Urban Development Programme, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)