How Cities Learn. Astrid Wood

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How Cities Learn - Astrid Wood


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from these study tours eager to introduce BRT locally.

      Since 2006, BRT has been adopted in six South African cities to improve transportation services, especially for the urban poor. Cape Town, eThekwini, Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela Bay, Rustenburg, and Tshwane are currently in various stages of planning and implementation: in August 2009, just three years after learning of the Bogotá model of BRT, Rea Vaya Phase 1A opened in Johannesburg as the first full-feature BRT system in an African context; in May 2011, Cape Town’s MyCiTi Phase 1A became operational; in May 2012, eThekwini Council approved plans to proceed with the first three lines of Go Durban!; and in July 2012, the cascade continued with Rustenburg and Tshwane beginning construction on Yarona and A Re Yeng. Not all cities have had a simple, straightforward experience, however: since 2008, Nelson Mandela Bay’s attempt to introduce BRT has been stalled by municipal politics and poor planning, and in spite of considerable efforts, the project remains in a state of postponement.

      While the South African systems are unmistakably modeled after the achievements of those in Bogotá, the process through which South African officials learned of, and implemented BRT, remains unexplored. In mapping the learning process, this book considers how and why city leaders adopt circulated best practice.

      Understanding the South African City

      Today, South African cities are characterized by contrasts and dualisms: high-rise residential towers turned slums; Victorian houses surrounded by privatized greenery; endless stretches of banal suburban development punctured by low-cost government-sponsored housing; European cafés and upmarket shops with hawkers selling homemade wares and promising to guard the luxury cars. The one commonality across the fragmented post-apartheid landscape is the proliferation of the automobile – its presence dominates the physical landscape of the city as well as the cultural milieu. Obviously, the South African city is not unique in this feature, but the degree to which apartheid’s forced segregation stretched the city amplifies this condition. Although this understanding of the spatial character of the South African city as uneven is generally applied ubiquitously, there are profound differences across South African cities reflecting their distinctive topography and resulting settlement patterns, as well as their sociocultural composition, economic vitality and historic planning and contemporary governance. My assessment of the spatial form and associated mobility dynamics sheds light on the complex and challenging advancement of inclusive South African cities.

      As a result of these features, transportation planning has been understood as central to the transformation of South African cities. Transportation has historically been used to divide the spatial layout of cities. Planned roads have been used to separate planning typologies in both planned and unplanned settlements, and transportation systems have been used to control who can access the city and how they move. In South Africa, planners have been especially focused on building modernist highways to accommodate the White elite who could afford to drive. The fact that transportation is experienced by a range of people across incomes and experiences, means that it also serves as an arena for social mixing and these interactions have unbridled opportunities for change. Policymakers in South Africa have been attuned to these openings, and efforts to remedy the inequality of transportation have been at the forefront of urban planning and policymaking since 1994. Transportation has also been, and continues to be, a site of resistance. The success of the 1957 Alexandra bus boycotts in Johannesburg was a pivotal moment in the anti-apartheid movement; and in the post-apartheid era, transportation continues to be a point of contention in service delivery protests.

      Transport Geography, Policy Mobilities and Learning in and from the South

      City learning is hardly a new practice. Herodotus described information exchanges as early as 500 BCE;


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