A three day Research Workshop on Sustainable Urban Development took place at the Sustainability Institute, 13-15 June 2012. It was jointly convened by the Sustainability Institute, African Centre for Cities (University of Cape Town) and the Gauteng City-Region Observatory (University of the Witwatersrand). The purpose was to bring together researchers from these three institutions who work on fascinating material but rarely get together to share information about what they are doing, nor do they read each other’s work. The research topics were wide ranging, including ……
eco-system services in Cape Town, rethinking the social dynamics of mobility, urban agriculture and food security, urban infrastructure transitions, incremental upgrading of informal settlements, insurgent urban citizenship, modelling the metabolic flows in Gauteng, community-based urban disaster management, alternative landscape architecture, green regional economies, material flow analysis of the SA economy, green infrastructure, urban governance, governance of urban health, markets and citizenship in informal settlements in African cities, etc.
This event provided an opportunity to draw together the information on the various research projects associated with the SI/TsamaHub. These include the following:
iShack project with a focus on Enkanini
- Andreas Keller (Mphil): energy solutions for incremental upgrading of informal settlements
- Vanessa van den Heyde (Mphil): community-base wast collection and recycling systems
- Berry Wessels (Mphil): institutional arrangements for community-based social enterprises
- Lauren Tavener-Smith (Phd): community-based water and sanitation systems for incremental upgrading
- Sicelo Zibagwe (Phd): building insurgent urban citizenship
Urbanism and Urban infrastructure transitions
- Blake Robinson (Heads up SI Projects): UNEP/UN Habitat work plus neighbourhood implementation projects
- Camaren Peter (post-Doc): urban infrastructure transitions and decarbonisation mainly for UNEP
- Lauren Rosenberg (Mphil): ICT entrepreneurs in African cities, with a Nairobi case study
Green economy & transition
- Christelle Beyers (Phd): Economy-Wide Material Flow Analysis
- Sumetee Pahwa (post-doc): low carbon economy
- Pieter van Heyningen (Phd): innovation systems for sustainability transitions
- Jeremy Wakeford (graduating with his Phd in December 2012): implications of oil peak for SA, water decoupling
- Brian Mahumani (Phd): urban water decoupling
- Prof. Martin de Wit: ecological economics of eco-system services and urban infrastructures
- Marc Goldstein (Phd): energy return on energy invested