Cities in Transformation? Urban sustainability ...

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Cities in Transformation? Urban sustainability disjunctures in Cape Town. Review by: John J Williams, School of Government, University of

the Western Cape, SOUTH AFRICA

This evaluation of the above-mentioned article [title shortened here] is divided into the following sections, viz: 1. General observations 2. Aims of the paper 3. Research methodology 4. Observed lacunae in the paper 4.1 Engagement with extant scholarship 4.2 Critical contributions to existing research on the topic 5. References/Literature/ Overall technical quality of the paper and 6. Recommendations to the publishers

1. General observations

This is a very interesting, captivating title, raising expectations about the contents of the paper. The keywords to the abstract are equally generating an interest in the reader to encounter an engaged and engaging text when the following terms appear: learning, knowledge coproduction, sustainability, policy-making, Cape Town, South Africa. The general layout of the paper conforms to conventional practices.

2. Aims of the paper

P 7 of the paper provides the aim of the paper as follows: [T]o analyse the extent to which knowledge co-production can generate new ways of

learning the City from within – and whether that,

in turn, enables more transformative policy. Part of this aim is a methodological departure; inverting the research gaze to understand the City by

embedding in City processes, we challenge the way

we learn about the City and focus our analysis on the role of learning, knowledge and experimentation. The importance of grappling with context and its influence on transformation is then at the root of shifts towards engaged scholarship as a means through which to learn the City.

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3. Research Methodology

The research methodology for this paper is provided on pp 7-8, as follows: The embedded researchers, in conjunction with City practitioners, responded to questions based on data gathered through interviews, workshops, and experiences in relation to the five significant strategy and policy documents they have been engaging on through the KTP6. The range of interventions studied across the City captures the essence of wicked problems, reflecting the splintering discourse of environmental concerns through broader local government strategies that speak to other issues besides those that are obviously ‘green’. By conducting an intra-City comparison of policy, we were able to ascertain how sustainable urban development is perceived and P 8: implemented in various departments across the City, thus aligning the approach with the City’s shift to a transversal management approach in which cross-cutting issues co-ordinated centrally through a

Strategic Policy

Unit

Here it has to be pointed out that the most glaring weakness of this paper is its uncritical reliance on secondary material/data without any rigorous examination of such information/data (cf eg p9, lines 30-33)! Here the argument is made that Because of the lack of sufficient

structured engagement with different knowledges in policy development, the

knowledge that is included can be uneven, favouring some interests above others (Fischer, 2006).In

like manner, the observation on p 12, lines 17-18 should enjoy greater emphasis throughout the paper, conceptually, theoretically and methodologically, i.e. “ how knowledge co-ordinated, and therefore which discourses are able to emerge”(

is

also cf p 13, lines, 28-45).

Furthermore, these observed methodological weaknesses are compounded by the lack of theoretical rigour in this paper as indicated here below.

4. Observed lacunae in the paper/ References/Literature

This section focuses on whether or not the authors have engaged sufficiently with extant scholarship vis-à-vis the topic and what contributions this paper is making in this regard.

Here it must be stressed at the outset that the paper is quite muddled and does not reflect a coherent exposition of the issues germane to the objectives of the paper. In brief as already mentioned above, the papers relies largely on secondary sources and the overall

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text is quite poorly presented, assessed and interpreted. The following examples illustrate this assessment: For example, reference could have been made to the works of scholars who have done work at the grassroots level, such as Paulo Freire, etc . Indeed, there is a richly-textured literature on education, learning and change in relation to human relations, yet they are either mostly absent from the literature review and how they relate to the objectives of the paper. Most importantly, perhaps, there is very little, if any indication of how the insights of the literature review dovetail with and are applied to research problematique vis-à-vis the LEARNING CITY in a contextually-socio-historic-driven manner. In this regard, see for example the classical texts in this regard: Learning the City: Knowledge and Translocal Assemblage by McFAarlane, Colin 2011, Wiley-Blackwell. Though the author(s) listed this text, a critical engagement with it in relation to Cape Town is largely absent. Succinctly stated, their work is descriptive rather than analytical, anecdotal rather than substantive and does not indicate and under what circumstances/conditions “the learning the City” has originated, evolved in the world at large and in South Africa, Cape Town, in particular. Here it should be pointed out, for example, that the Learning the City: Knowledge and Translocal Assemblage'(Blackwell), EXPLICITLY focusses on the intersections between urban inequality, materiality, resistance and learning. In this regard, McFAarlane’s related textsincluding: Infrastructural Lives: Urban Infrastructure in Context (Earthscan-Routledge, with Steve Graham), Urban Navigations: Politics, Space and the City in South Asia'(Routledge, with Jonathan Anjaria), and Urban Informalities: Reflections on the Formal and Informal (Ashgate, with Michael Waibel), should also, at least have enjoyed some attention in the article.

In the paper submitted for evaluation most of the aforementioned dimensions are either not mentioned or simply treated in a highly abstract manner – they are not grounded in the existential experiences of the City of Cape Town, a mosaic of contending claims to the city as ordinary people “learn the city” and contest the city, from within their specific lived experiences (cf eg the works of Henri Lefebvre, Pierre Bourdieu, etc). Consequently, the author(s) did not any rigorous fashion engage the the critical dimensions of social practices, learning, education and how they relate to The learning City”cf eg the works such as those of Paulo Freire( 1993), Pedagogy of the Oppressed (New York: Continuum, rev. ed)., Paulo Freire(1978), Pedagogy in Process: The Letters to GuineaBissau (New York: The Seabury Press(trans. Carman St. John Hunter),

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Paulo Freire (1985) The Politics of Education: Culture, Power, and Liberation (South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey, (1985) (trans. Donaldo Macedo); Paulo Freire and Donaldo Macedo (1990)Literacy: Reading the Word & the World (South Hadley, Paulo Freire Bruce Henricksen and Thais Morgan (1990) (eds.), Reorientations: Critical Theories and Pedagogies; Hooks, Bell (1994) , Teaching to Transgress: Education as the Practice of Freedom (New York: Routledge) ;Ira Shor (1992 ), Empowering Education: Critical Teaching for Social Change (Chicago: University of Chicago Press);Ira Shor (1980) , Critical Teaching and Everyday Life (Boston: South End Press

5. Overall technical quality of the paper

The paper is replete with key words and phrases which are not sufficiently clarified, defined, contextualized and empirically located, see for example: I.

Pp 2,6 knowledge types, p 3 engaged scholarship, p opaque political and power aspects, p 5 relational nature of learning, p 6, relational role of experiments p 7 the splintering discourse of environmental concerns, p 8 shadow spaces, p 9 tacit knowledge, p 10 social justice agenda, environmental agenda, p 11 the green economy, p 12 how knowledge is co-ordinated, p 13 fundamental service provision, p14compliance focused path, p 14 generating appropriate knowledge, p 15 numerous opportunities for interaction, p 16 explicit knowledge,

II.

P1 sustainable transition pathways

III.

access to environmental

IV.

role of knowledge and tools for decision-making

V.

situating sustainable development within a context of social justice, equity and

VI.

human rights must be closely knit

VII.

urban governments remain ill-equipped to

VIII.

close the gap between aspirations and outcomes; NB: it is generally known that in some cases, in South Africa, appointments are not necessarily based on the professional skills of such appointees but their political party affiliations

IX.

Concatenation of ‘catching’ abstractions such as “urban sustainability”, “disjunctures, “requires approaches that are more subtle than the content”, knowledge, skills and governance analytical lenses at our disposal”.

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Precisely because key concepts were not rigorously defined, clarified, contextualized in terms of the socio-economic-political and historical reality of Cape Town, the following paragraph is filled with highly abstract terms that do not clarify the stated objectives of this paper and /or clarify ensuing sections, viz: P 1 Our point of departure builds on two claims made by reflexive practitioners. The first was a position put forward at a conference, that “Local government in South Africa is a knowledge institution, but

not a

1 learning institution” . And the second made by Davison et al. (2015) who, writing from a perspective from within the CoCT, argue that institutional and strategic uncertainties hindering sustainable development transitions could be decreased through the creation of deliberative spaces (fostered through co-production of knowledge between practitioners and academics) to enable learning to occur. Building on these positions, we differentiate between knowledge and learning in fostering change in the process of policy development and implementation.

6. Conclusions

Based on the preceding evaluation of this paper submitted for publication, the following conclusions are considered appropriate: 1. The conclusions on p15 do not derive from the actual paper submitted for publication, viz In engaging with sustainability disjunctures in Cape Town, we have raised questions both about how

we learn about the City and how the City itself learns and transforms.

The potential for the City shift from a knowledge institution to a learning institution invokes a different view of learning, which unlocks the transformative potential of the City. In learning about policy processes in Cape

Town, the shift in focus from the role of explicit knowledges in

policy formation to tacit knowledge has been made possible through the urban experimentation in the KTP. While the KTP might be relatively small scale experiment, in creating a “potential space (Soal 2014, p. 20) and a working culture between the City and the University, it has allowed for new insights to be surfaced through a form of engaged scholarship, which in this case show where points of leverage for sustainabletransitions might be.

2. More importantly, perhaps, conventionally, references are usually not provided in the conclusions unless they are included to buttress the reaffirmation of key issues highlighted by previous scholars either locally or elsewhere. 3. Equally important, this paper is not sufficiently grounded in the experiences of people at the grassroots level. There seems, at the outset to be a clear bias

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towards officialese, i.e. an over- reliance on the opinions and policy documents of the City of Cape Town. The interplay with other contending/contestatory civil society groups, organizations (and there are many) does not feature sufficiently, if at all, in the paper. These noticeable lacunae detract substantially from the overall quality of this paper. It must be stressed here that the nature of how a city ‘develops’, adjusts, etc; its emerging and / or existing tensions, contradictions and struggles in society have been rigorously captured by scholars such as Manuel Castells, Charles Landry. Raymond Unwin, Jan Gehl, Kevin Lynch, Gordon Cullen, Christopher Alexander et al , William H. Whyte, Jane Jacobs, etc.

In conclusion, let it be stated that this paper lacks a coherent theoretical framework and rigorous research methodology that dovetail with the stated objectives of this paper, i.e. “analyse the extent to which knowledge co-production can generate new ways of learning the City from within – and whether that, in turn, enables more transformative policy.” (p 7).