“My method is eclectic and mixed, incorporating conceptual information from many people – including scholars and activists – field visits, contextual observations, reading and re-reading. I want to find new ways of thinking,” said Alan Mabin of the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand. “I’m trying to understand the layers – what’s there and what’s possible and how do we get there?”
“In ‘urban studies’, an area of research that crosses many disciplines, two contemporary areas of focus are ‘southern urbanism’; and comparison of cities,” explained Mabin. “The first suggests that cities in the ‘global south’ are distinctly different from those of the ‘global north’ and require new concepts and theories to describe and explain them, the second highlights renewed debate on methods and reasons for comparing cities.”
For his seminar, Mabin outlined some of the finding of extensive work over decades in four diverse cities on three continents (Dar-es-Salaam, Gauteng [including Johannesburg and Tshwane/Pretoria], Paris and São Paulo).
“I’ve been playing with multiple cities for a long time,” he added.
Introducing Mabin, Edgar Pieterse of the African Centre for Cities at the University of Cape Town said: “Alan is an institution in urban planning. His work is a reference point particularly in the history of planning studies. He embodies activist scholarship. More than just a scholar but also a brilliant scholar with an incredible appetite for life.”
Mabin began by tracing some of many experiences and people who have impacted his life and career. “As children we played made-up games – one of these was Flight around the World – that’s what I’m doing today.”
He described a bicycle trip from Johannesburg to Cape Town after completing matric – “I learnt cities from a bicycle, acquiring street-level knowledge”.
He also mentioned important family influences – describing his family as mostly “liberal – lowercase l – English-speaking South Africans who believed that economic growth would overcome apartheid – a notion that people in anti-apartheid communities helped me to understand wasn’t going to be enough”.
Other influences included his students – “remarkable people”, some of the leaders of urban planning he met during time spent in Paris, São Paulo and Dar-es-Salaam in the 1990s and in this century, and STIAS fellow Göran Therborn who launched his latest book Cities of Power at STIAS.
A tale of four cities
Focusing in detail on the cities, Mabin noted: “The chosen cities, or rather city-regions – for all stretch well beyond their original areas – by no means claim to exhaust the variety of cities on their own continents, let alone others. I aim to outline my selected themes on the social and geographical nature of the expansion of these cities. This includes the instabilities and contests over forms of city government; and, imaginaries of city futures carried and acted on by different groups of people.”
He emphasised the importance of understanding the cultural influences of the cities – starting by showing a painting by KwaZulu-Natal artist Mbhekeni Mbili – illustrating the complexities of urban life “Art is critical to the way we engage the city” – and introducing each city with a snippet of music “to indicate the daily cultural life of cities is not identical. It seeks to be a mirror of what is desirable. Unless we engage with different representations, portrayals and understandings (including music) we will fail to understand cities.”
For São Paolo this was Racionais MC’s Negro Drama Video.
São Paolo is a city of 12 million – about half the regional population. With photos Mabin showed the changing face of the city highlighting extremes from sophisticated business areas to less-formal, non-planned and mostly not-serviced Favelas.
He also focused on the role of race asking, “How does this operate in Brazil? It’s not easy to address but a question at the front of the agenda. There are huge contradictions with the difficulties of black life displayed prominently on the periphery of São Paolo in a country that claims to celebrate diversity.”
He also stressed the power of social memory in city formation with Brazil having been under brutal military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. “This, of course, still shapes the way people think about things. The memorial to resistance museum is in the former security police headquarters.”
“There are weird boundaries in Brazil with lots of separation and re-amalgamation over the history,” he continued. “Inverted things happen in cities especially with oscillations in leadership. This could happen in South Africa.”
For Paris, Mabin’s music choice was Planet Jarre (by Jean-Michel Jarre) composed for the rebuilding of the Notre Dame Cathedral during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Paris has a population of two million within the city but 12 to 13 million in the surrounding region.
“The literature stresses the exclusion of people – those in low-income areas – as well as the huge changes underway. The population on the periphery is growing rapidly with villages becoming part of the urban fabric. This transforms the nature and structure of life. The single-biggest project is the Grand Paris Express – an expansion of the Metro linking the new areas. There are also huge arguments about who determines the future of a city in a powerful nation state.”
The themes he examines here include asking who exercises power; what are the lines of friction and division; and, what about the role of social identity and memories. “The history of violence in Paris is both every day and in key historical moments.”
Introducing Gauteng with Kabza de Small and Mthundzi – Imithandazo, he described it as a city of 14 million people comprising nine municipalities. “There was massive restructuring of local government in the 1990s but this didn’t entirely overcome fragmentation.”
He highlighted issues of mobility and the conflicts this causes – a feature in all four cities. “The Gautrain cost over R30 billion and still doesn’t go to Soweto.”
Dar-es-Salaam, introduced with Jay Melody Nakunpenda, is predicted to be the largest city in Africa within 15 years with a current population of 7 million but a 7% per annum growth.
Mabin described it as a deeply African city but with clear lines of division and contradiction spanning from areas with glossy buildings and traffic jams to those without capacity to build concrete roads. “The pace of change is extraordinary,” he said. “There is a lot of literature about urban planning in Dar-es-Salaam but it’s still tiny in comparison to Paris and mostly written by foreigners.”
Mabin noted that the challenge is to pull this all together for a global audience “as well as to engage with big themes like cities of surveillance, planetary cities and the afterlives of violence and history”.
“Violence in cities will be upfront,” he added.
He also emphasised the need to focus on suburbia. “For example, there are new lower-middle class areas in South Africa which are seen as areas of reasonable possibility, where people have incomes and some stability. These are massively underestimated but critical to the future of cities in South Africa as well as in Dar-es-Salaam, Sãn Paolo and even Paris.”
Asked about the impact of his work, he replied: “I don’t expect people in power will necessarily read it, but I believe as educators we can change ways of thinking amongst our students who may end up in institutions of power.”
Michelle Galloway: Part-time media officer at STIAS
Photograph: Ignus Dreyer