October 31, 2023 • 55 mins
This week, Cities Reimagined takes us to South Africa to speak to Paul Currie, Director of the urban systems unit at ICLEI Africa.
In October 2023, Johannes had the chance to swing by ICLEI Africa’s offices in Cape Town for this conversation on reimagining African urbanism which turned out extremely rich and exciting.
Africa is a continent of astounding diversity and rapid urbanization. With a population projected to double by 2050, Africa is at the forefront of the global urbanization trend. This remarkable growth, however, presents both tremendous opportunities and formidable challenges for the continent's cities. From the sprawling megacities like Lagos and Cairo to the picturesque coastal gem of Cape Town, African cities embody a kaleidoscope of cultures, traditions, and urban landscapes.
Tune in to find out….
🇪🇹…how a bus ride in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia built the basis for this conversation
🗽…how living in NYC as a teenager shaped Paul’s obsession with cities
🛵 …what the problems about formalising informal systems and infrastructures are and why a different vocabulary is needed
🔓…why the focus on challenges and problems prevents creativity and reimagining desirable future(s)
🌇…why the celebration of ‘resilience’ is problematic
If you like what you are hearing, subscribe to Cities Reimagined, leave a comment or a rating, follow us in Instagram for background stories or, even better, send an email to johannes@anthropocene.city .
Paul on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-currie-a198869b/
Rise Africa [ICLEI]: https://riseafrica.iclei.org
START Initiative: https://start.org
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
If you want to have any success in environmental programming or to achieve sustainability,
(00:19):
you have to engage people and you have to address their basic needs.
You have to engage people first, environment at the same time.
Hi, welcome back to the Cities Reimagine podcast.
I'm your voice of choice Johannes Riegler and today's episode brings us to Africa.
(00:41):
I'm having Paul Curie on the show.
He's the director of the Urban Systems Unit at EECLAIR Africa and I had a chance to swing
by ICLEI Africa's offices in Cape Town a couple of weeks ago to sit down with Paul
and have this conversation.
If you like what you're hearing on Cities Reimagine, I would be very happy if you would
(01:04):
subscribe and rate the show on your podcasting platform, follow the show on Instagram or
even better reach out to me on LinkedIn or via email and that is johannes at Anthropocene.city.
(01:26):
Africa as a continent is huge and it's also a continent of astonishing diversity and rapid
urbanization and the population is projected to double by 2050 and as such Africa is at
the forefront of the global urbanization trend.
And while this remarkable growth presents huge opportunities, it also presents the cities
(01:54):
and urban areas with huge challenges.
So from the sprawling mega cities like Lagos and Cairo to the picturesque coastal gem of
Cape Town, African cities embody a kaleidoscope of cultures, traditions and urban landscapes.
Yet they grapple with issues ranging from inequality, inadequate infrastructure, housing
(02:22):
and environmental degradation.
But I'm very happy that I had a chance to have this conversation with Paul because in
my opinion issues related to African urbanism are highly underrepresented in the discourse
on cities, at least in Europe.
I could not imagine anybody better to have a conversation on urbanization across Africa
(02:47):
than Paul as he's working for the African branch of Eclay.
Eclay is the leading global network of cities and local governments committed to sustainable
urban development with regional offices across the world.
And as I said already, Paul is working for the African one.
(03:08):
The story how Paul and I met or how we know each other actually starts on the bus in the
Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa in 2019.
I attended the African climate risk conference in Addis Ababa together with Jonas Bülund
who you might know from another episode from another previous episode.
(03:34):
And yeah, on a bus ride during the conference, I was sitting next to Mary Thompson-Hall who
is working for START, which is a US-based initiative running programs to strengthen
capacities for global environmental change science in Africa and Asia.
So yeah, we had a good conversation.
(03:55):
After the bus ride, we continued talking and exchanging and began thinking about actually
a workshop series to see how African urban realities match with European ambitions on
urban transition.
So that is in my capacity of working with the driving urban transition partnership.
And at some point, the colleagues from START suggested to bring in Paul and Eclay Africa
(04:21):
to organize these workshops together.
So via Tennessee, where Mary is based, I got connected to Paul in Cape Town.
And over the next months, we organized three workshops on different topics related to making
cities more livable and sustainable places in which I learned a lot about urbanism and
(04:45):
urban transformations in cities across Africa.
And in fact, I only met Paul in person once after the workshops as we both attended UN
Habitats World Urban Forum in Katowice, Poland in 2022.
So for me, it was not only a great personal pleasure to meet Paul again in Cape Town,
(05:09):
but also I think this episode is a very rich one.
There's a lot to unpack and a lot to learn about urbanism in African cities.
So that's it for the monologue this week.
Here we go with the interview with a talk ad with Paul Curie from Eclay Africa.
Paul, hi, welcome to Cities Reimagined.
(05:33):
Thanks for having me here in Cape Town, Eclay Africa's office.
It's amazing to be here.
How are you doing?
Yeah, fabulous.
Another day in 2023, I cannot believe how fast the time is flying this year, but really
exciting work underway.
So nice to see it progress and nice to see the seeds that you've planted in the work
(05:54):
kind of turn into outcomes and benefits for the cities we're working with.
Nice.
It's great to have you on the show because I found we worked together on a series on
webinars a couple of years ago almost now.
Two years?
Yeah.
Which I enjoyed a lot because it was about matching or discussing European priorities
(06:18):
on sustainable city making with African urban realities.
I learned so much from these conversations and it was really good to have them.
Do you have some?
Well, you know, for me, I think that's part of this really interesting work of trying
to see how do these very lofty and big theoretical concepts land in different contexts.
(06:38):
And if I can say anything about our work as African urbanists, we have this great ability
to contextualize and say, well, what is appropriate?
How do we take these ideas like circular economy, a 15-minute city, ask questions about what
is an inclusive city?
All of these big lines that we throw around so cavalierly, what does it actually mean
(07:02):
for a practitioner, for a resident on the ground?
How will they walk out of their house?
And this is a thievery from a city of Cape Town colleague.
How will they walk out of their home and say, ah, I am living in a resilient city.
I am living in an inclusive city.
And so the minute you take these theoretical concepts and actually ground them, I think
(07:23):
they become more rich.
I think there are many exciting provocations that come out of that.
Circular economy doesn't need to be this 12 principled thing.
It can simply be about diverting organic waste from landfill to make compost out of it and
use that for farming.
And then the way you do that, you've made sure that waste isn't landing in drainage
(07:45):
canals and causing flooding.
So that's directly from Accra.
That's what circular economy means there.
We need to end flooding by getting our waste out of our infrastructures.
And Paul, you grew, we are now right in the topic already.
You grew up in between New York City and Johannesburg, both very distinct and different cities.
(08:09):
How did this experience shape you?
And I saw on your LinkedIn profile that you said that you have an obsession with cities
or with urban areas.
How did these two places and this upbringing or this experience shape you to what you're
today?
What are you focusing on your work today?
Yeah, well, look, I mean, the communications team for New York City and around the world
(08:34):
should be very proud of their positioning as New York as the city, you know, with so
many reference points, thanks to pop culture and also I was very lucky as a 14 year old
to suddenly have this opportunity to move there.
My parents got work in the city.
(08:55):
And what it meant for me was that I got freedom at age 14 in terms of being able to take the
subway around, to walk around with a perception of safety, to access all of these amazing
public amenities, the parks, to walk along the the river boardwalks, the whole set of
(09:18):
free concerts and discounted opportunities for students.
The fact that there was a subsidized metro card for students to be able to use public
transport to get around.
It meant that I had freedom when my contemporaries in South Africa were waiting for maybe 16
(09:38):
or 18 before they would get a car to be able to drive around without depending so much
on parents.
You know, and so reflecting on it now, it is a core way of how I understand cities and
this tension between the availability of public networked, robust infrastructure that's available
to serve your needs and improve access to the city compared to many South African cities
(10:06):
in which access to the city is restricted for many.
And certainly not a space in which young people or parents of young people want their kids
to be moving through because of perceptions of unsafety and realities of unsafety.
So that was what made New York fabulous for me.
(10:30):
And the fascination with cities is definitely based on this observation that cities are
multilayered.
There are different types of infrastructure systems.
There are different cultures.
There's different languages.
They really are the concentrators of so many different systems, people, experiences, stories.
(10:52):
And so all of those come into a nice mishmash is where I like to think and daydream and
navigate.
I find it so interesting that you describe it as that your obsession with cities, let's
put it like this, came with this experience of being in New York City or just having this
different experience of what urban means.
(11:16):
We had that on the I discussed it with Jonas Bülund.
I think we organized the Webinar series as well.
And another colleague in a conversation.
It came down to he put it as anthology of where you see different, where you have different
moments in your personal life.
He pronounced it or mentioned a shock moment.
(11:37):
You come somewhere, you have a different perspective or a different experience of that case, urbanism,
you take it home and it all of a sudden, it becomes very interesting and it shapes your
perspective of what urbanism or what urban areas could be.
Certainly, you know, and not just New York.
(11:59):
I mean, of course, being in other cities, anytime you arrive, you instantly get a sense
or you interpret the character of that city based on how you interact with the space.
And for some, I think that can be very abrasive in your initial welcome into a city.
But every city has its own character, its own sounds, its own set of personalities.
(12:23):
And so I think for me, what New York did was change a set of laden assumptions about what
a city should or could be from, for example, the Johannesburg that I'd grown up in.
And there was a lot of soul searching on visits back to Johannesburg of, you know, well, why
are people living here?
(12:43):
What is it about this place that's attracting people?
And trying to think critically about is this a place that I want to be?
Which revealed a whole set of really interesting insights about, for example, it being the
largest artificial forest and a lot of investment in greenery, incredibly social set of people,
(13:04):
you know, and certainly very cosmopolitan in terms of a whole set of people from around
the continent arriving here to seek opportunity.
You know, and so in that way, you know, a parallel between Johannesburg as a financial
capital and New York as a financial capital are quite telling.
But yeah, so New York sort of laid a challenge, a whole set of assumptions about what a city
(13:27):
could be and watching it change while I was there was also a wonderful experience.
You now live in Cape Town in South Africa.
Why didn't you choose to stay in the US?
Why did you come back to South Africa and why Cape Town?
Well, much to the disbelief of many family friends, we weren't emigrating to the US.
(13:47):
We were going on an adventure with full intention to return.
And you know, for me, what was both wonderful and difficult about being in the US was that
there are a whole set of politics going on, which we didn't feel belonged to us.
And so you could see the emergence of the Iraq War and a whole set of movements.
(14:10):
You know, and certainly while I was in university, the increasing incidences of gun violence,
you know, and you are participating in the society, yet it's not necessarily your politics.
Whereas in South Africa, I could see from an outside perspective of how much potential
this country has and this yearning to participate in its politics and to help shape the future
(14:31):
of this country.
You know, and as a South African, there's a whole set of fraught identities and activities
that you have to take on as a resident or a citizen, which ask deep questions about
structural changes, about equity, about your contribution to a society, which can be very
(14:54):
deflating at the one time, but also very empowering.
So I think that's this curious character, which I think many South Africans in a way
are addicted to when choosing to live here, but also simply in the everyday being.
Can you briefly explain what ICLEI is and the work you're doing?
(15:17):
ICLEI is a membership organization of local governments committed to sustainability.
And our role is to represent the voices of subnational governments in regional global
arenas.
So when it comes to climate negotiations, how are we making sure that subnational voices
are part of that conversation?
(15:37):
When it comes to a global movement around improving food security, how are we making
sure that local government have a say in that?
Because often the understanding is that national governments are the negotiating power and
the policy setting entity, but local governments and subnational governments are then required
(16:00):
to do the implementation, often without resources.
And so really trying to engage national governments as partners and say, we need to take on multi-level
governance approaches so that local governments aren't just expected to implement policies,
but our partners in designing those policies and are resourced to implement these policies
(16:21):
and programs.
Right.
And you're in ICLEI Africa, I have to say, you're the director of urban systems, right?
Which sounds like you're dealing with a lot of complexity in your work.
Is that it?
And what gives you the drive and the ambition to challenge, let's say, the status quo of
(16:42):
urbanism within all its complexity and messiness and so on?
So as noted from this New York experience, the enjoyment of how all of these systems
layer and interact, you know, gives me personal interest, but it really is the crux of how
you think about and try to intervene in African urbanization, which is that we have multiple
(17:08):
systems in our cities operating in concert or against each other.
And there is certainly a set of assumptions about which systems are the correct form of
the city.
So to be simple about it, there's the planned city, which the politicians and technical
(17:30):
officials in local government think of, and that is designed, drawn, shown in all the
spatial frameworks and integrated development plans or equivalent.
And they say one thing about how the city operates or is expected to operate.
And then you have a whole set of other emergent activities, which are the real city, which
(17:51):
is designed and made by people.
And the way that cities emerge is absolutely through a whole set of different interests.
And so when you look at these two cities, they may say very different things in Dar es
Alam while we were running a training engagement with urban planners, one of them said, well,
(18:12):
in the plans, so well, in Dar es Alam, we know we've got 300,000 motorbike taxis.
We see them around there.
They're hooting, they're carrying people, they're parked on the sidewalks.
But if you look at the plans, there's no parking for them.
And so the plans suggest that these motorbike taxis don't exist.
And so which one are you going to believe and which one are you going to count on to
(18:36):
improve governance or function of the city, which is correct?
And I think people get caught in the sort of one way or the other kind of approach.
But what does it look like to hybridize our understanding of cities and to try work out
not to turn one system into the other?
There's this whole narrative around formalizing informal systems, which frankly, when a practitioner
(19:00):
comes and says, OK, well, how do we do that?
What are we doing?
Are we talking about taxation, planning, regulation, investment, registration?
You know, informal doesn't really have a clear policy response.
And so we don't need to turn one system into another.
(19:21):
We need to think about how we bring multiple urban systems into better alignment so that
they're supporting the final outcome, which is good quality of life for the current residents
and future generations.
You know, if you break sustainability down to those sort of premises, it becomes quite
a simple outcome with many, many intervening policies, practices, infrastructures, cultures
(19:47):
to then navigate.
So from an academic perspective, we can draw the system map.
And it's fascinating, and it really excites us to see how everything is interconnected
from the practitioner perspective.
What do we do with that?
So what?
How do you intervene?
How do you use resources efficiently to arrive at some form of change and improvement?
(20:11):
So that's what the role of this unit is, is to look at the system and go, these are the
interconnections we see.
What do we do with this?
How do we make improvements for the people in the cities?
Nice.
I would like to come back to the role of informality in African urbanism or in African urban areas
in a bit later, because I find that very, very interesting, especially because a lot
(20:34):
of it has a different, a very different angle compared to Europe and other parts of the
world, I think, and I would be very interested to hear that from you.
But before we go into that, so the African continent is huge, right?
It's spanning across climates.
It has so many different cultures, landscapes, populations, histories.
If you look at your work across Africa, and especially in this very, very different settings,
(21:03):
in this very different urban setting, spanning from Cairo to Lagos to many smaller cities,
capital cities, regional towns, and connected to the fact that African cities are very,
more and more vulnerable to climate change, to the effects of climate change, and probably
also the biodiversity crisis, and with the extreme weather events, the number of extreme
(21:28):
weather events rising.
Where do you see the biggest three challenges across African cities which require reimagining
cities?
Yeah.
So due to the histories of colonization, independence, post-independence realities, and the fact that
(21:54):
the continent is still often more integrated with global trade systems and global power
systems than it is with neighboring countries, it's a very fragmented country.
And so one of the things that many of us working on or trying to do is to build solidarity
(22:14):
within countries and between countries and between ourselves as African agents, and to
really try and shift the narrative of where knowledge comes from, who are the appropriate
drivers of development, so to speak, or change or improvement, how to invite partnership
(22:39):
and learning around the world, but also how to build more agency of Africans to drive
the change that they want to see.
And so that's a sort of a knowledge context to lay a foundation of why doing this work
can be so difficult is because of the fragmentation, the fact that it used to be cheaper to fly
(23:02):
to Europe than it would be to another country in this continent.
So the three challenges I would frame quickly and then going into more detail would be just
the vast scale of infrastructure investment needed.
There's a line and a quote or a stat that keeps going around of 60% or now it's 80%
(23:27):
of the built environment in African cities has yet to be laid.
Thinking about our population growth, thinking about all of these mega trends which are affecting
us.
So the basic one is just, we need a hell of a lot more infrastructure in order to service
our people and make sure that basic services, if not quality services and secondary services
(23:51):
are provided.
And this is all happening within a global reality of constraint.
SDGs reduce your climate, your carbon emissions, protect nature.
And so there are a whole set of growth needs happening within constraints.
But the vastness of that is just unimaginable for a single person or a single agent trying
(24:13):
to drive that change.
The second challenge then is the collision of all these crises, climate crisis, biodiversity
crisis, environmental degradation, infrastructure failure, inequity, lack of resources, et cetera.
And because of all of these pressures, we tend to have a rather pessimistic view and
(24:41):
we tend to frame all of our development aspirations based on an issue or a problem statement.
We've got this many malnourished people, therefore this is a route forward.
And while these are of course, really, really important pressures to be paying attention
to and climate crisis next to urbanization is the biggest mega trend that's going to
(25:06):
undermine our civilization and our society.
But not letting that paradigm determine how you engage with the world is really important
because if we keep talking about problems, that's all we're going to see.
And so the challenge of mindset towards solutions orientation towards a set of people who are
(25:31):
operating joyfully and trying to drive change, and there are many of them, there are tons
of people doing fabulous work in cities, in communities, at national political level around
the continent.
But we tend not to focus on those types of successes.
And particularly because everything is accelerating so fast in the world right now, we also need
(25:52):
to be fast, everything is urgent.
And so it means that we can't celebrate these sort of small wins, we don't celebrate the
small wins.
And then the third one is also a mindset issue, which is that we don't view creativity and
learning as central assets, we view them as nice to haves, you know, we view them as the
(26:19):
icing on top, we view creativity as a way to make whatever we've worked on look better,
feel better, sound better, where in fact, it's the vehicle towards a fundamental shift.
And we need to center creative, and again, another buzzword, innovative approaches, as
the way in which we'll reshape our cities.
(26:41):
If you come in with a I'm going to patch that problem, you're going to get some things stolen
from some of the context which may or may not work, which might feel okay.
Because if we look at what our cities are, what they represent for us, and we think joyfully
and creatively about what they what we want them to do for us, you've already created
(27:03):
a whole set of opportunities for localized context relevant ideas to come and are they
going to look like the other cities?
Not necessarily, but who needs them to as long as they serve the purpose that people
think the cities need to have here.
So those are my three challenges or provocations for for urban development.
(27:25):
So that links so well what you just said Paul to a conversation I listened to with your
colleague Ingrid Krötze in a podcast conversation on talking transformations and another podcast
recently and I'm paraphrasing and she said, in African city, there's not much money, but
there's a lot of action on transforming areas towards more livable, sustainable, more nature
(27:48):
positive.
Do you see that as well?
Can you elaborate a little bit about about this quote and what how you how you see that
and what futures in relation to climate and biodiversity and social justice do you see
or envision for African cities and can you actually say that for for all African cities
(28:11):
or how would you how would you differentiate?
So while at once I can demand there to be more creativity in the way that we think about
our cities, seeing these visions land is also quite difficult because we're so stuck in
what we're seeing around and so imagining something completely different can be quite
(28:35):
difficult for me.
The tension of what our cities should and could look like is drawn, you know, is totally
connected to the resources we have available to build them.
And there's this tension, you know, that we mentioned earlier between this public amenity
and public infrastructure that is built for everyone, you know, by a state or by someone
(29:00):
with resources to service everyone.
And because we don't have that many resources now that we're kind of leaving that paradigm
behind.
And so it means that you're now counting on private smaller private entities to invest
here and there, which creates a big question about public benefit and public amenity.
And are we not creating a whole set of splintered urban spaces?
(29:27):
So when asking these questions about livable cities, nature positive cities, that is absolutely
a vision that we need to promote and excite people about.
But more than that, it needs to also have a point about how do we get there?
Whose role is it to get us there?
And how do we mobilize resources to do so?
(29:50):
And I think there need to be stronger calls by governments and urban actors to drive resources
towards these types of programming, which have at their out as their outcome, public
good and public amenity, because all too often we see developments going and framing themselves
(30:11):
as the smart city, the inclusive city, but only for neighborhood scale or something like
that and only for a select set of people.
So that's the risk that we're seeing currently with the amount of resource available is that
there's some money to do something, but it's not for all it's not with that inclusive vision.
(30:33):
So that's my reflection on it.
Good.
And when we when we are zooming into into South Africa, from the outside, the stakes
to transform urban areas seem very high.
As the rising sea level rise due to climate climate emergency, a water crisis, energy
crisis.
And we already said, or you already mentioned that there's so much focus on crisis and problems,
(30:57):
which might not be helpful, but there's also a lot of these very basic infrastructures
and things to consider and to to improve.
How would you describe the everyday life and the challenges of people in Cape Town and
maybe also the positive angles to it, the creativity, what is there to where you where
(31:20):
you are hopeful to overcome all these challenges and so on?
So I mean, South Africa is quite different from the rest of the continent or the rest
of Sub-Saharan Africa because there was a whole slew of public infrastructures that
were developed.
And so our you know, what's sad about the current situation is we've seen a whole set
(31:41):
of infrastructure degradation due to limited investment in the infrastructure.
And this is slightly different from other contexts within South Africa or on the continent
where we need new infrastructure full stop.
So obviously to maintain what exists, but really need a lot more.
So the route for South Africa, in my mind, is quite simple.
(32:02):
We've got a whole set of distribution infrastructure networks already established, water, electricity,
roads.
And so here we get a little bit of insight into what could be possible in the rest of
the continent in terms of having some informal systems or smaller systems.
But really, you know, for us, it's investing in keeping this infrastructure functioning
(32:26):
because we've already got the distribution systems.
So let's let's keep that asset working well.
You know, the everyday life in Cape Town, you know, I mean, we're tangling with this
curious question.
Cape Town has been in crisis since 2015.
It's the water crisis coming out of that towards 2018.
(32:52):
Then heading into COVID lockdown, government enforced lockdowns, which completely drew
out how structural many of our problems are that we can't just bandaid them.
We can't just cover them up or address the symptoms.
And so really seeing different actors in the city deal with food crises, deal with the
(33:15):
question of jobs and livelihoods and a huge amount of despair emerging through this loss
of employment.
Then cost of living crises associated with the war in Ukraine and Russia.
And finally now a national electricity crisis.
So living in this space, we've felt a whole set of different crises.
(33:44):
And it draws out this really tough question.
Well, how do you get on with your life?
How do you plan for the future?
How do you think about the future of the city?
And I think if we look at the positives, we've got a set of people who are incredibly resilient
and creative and able to come up with ways of supporting their communities and neighbors.
(34:06):
And so really interesting social systems have emerged to cover for all of the failures in
the technical infrastructure systems.
So I would say that that's our asset.
However, there's a point where you can't get stuck with the label of resilient.
We may be a resilient people.
(34:28):
And I know that our president has commented on this and celebrated this.
But we shouldn't have to be.
We need to head back to towards a sense of there being abundant opportunity, abundant
resources, because only in a paradigm where you have food available, you've got energy
available, everyone is sheltered, everyone has access to work, can you start to get people
(34:51):
to exercise creativity and push boundaries?
A lot of people say scarcity is what leads to innovation and new ideas.
And to a degree, there's pressure put on by that.
But in a sense of abundance, you create an enabling environment for new types of business,
new roots, which can be resourced.
If you don't have the resources, any new idea can't take fruit, can't fly.
(35:17):
And so capitalizing on a set of exceedingly creative people in South Africa, I think,
is really valuable.
But they need to be resourced.
So many, many African cities are also seeing a lot of population growth and a lot of movement
(35:37):
towards the cities.
I think it's the highest on the planet at the moment, the speed and scale of how many
people move to the cities.
Given the challenges, would your efforts not be better spent to improve the living conditions
and on reducing the inequalities within and across African cities, then focusing on sustainability
(36:02):
and resilience and so on?
Yeah.
And so, I mean, this is what's wonderful about ICLEI is that every regional office has a
whole set of contexts that it has to engage with.
So we are local governments for sustainability, but it's up to each region to interpret what
that means.
And if you're going to do any form of environmental work or sustainability work in Africa, you
(36:26):
have to start with people.
You cannot, for example, in the Cape Town drought, put a broad messaging that people
need to reduce their water consumption to below 50 liters when there are neighborhoods
in which people only access 20 a day.
So if you want to have any success in environmental programming or to achieve sustainability,
(36:50):
you have to engage people and you have to address their basic needs.
So how I've operated within the urban systems team tends to be with a bit of a quirky mantra,
which is people first environment at the same time.
And what that suggests to me is that you're investing in people's agency and voice, you're
(37:13):
investing in the resources that they have access to, you're investing in giving them
more time.
What we forget so often is that if someone has to fetch food from the market every day
because they don't have refrigeration or reliable refrigeration at home, if their lights aren't
working at home, you've reduced the amount of time that they have available to be socially
(37:37):
productive, productive for work to actually have their own time because people get so
caught in looking after their own needs.
If someone is caught in traffic for four hours going to work and coming back from work eight
hours a day, when are they going to participate in recreation and connect with people?
So you have to address basic services, you have to address people's voice and participation
(38:02):
in making the city.
But if you do this thoughtfully and cleverly, the resources you invest in that are also
good for the environment.
So the services that you're laying, the energy that you're producing, how can you count on
environmentally regenerative types of technologies or processes for doing that?
And that provocation requires you to then be creative about how you take sustainability
(38:24):
messaging forward.
Are you engaging communities around a specific type of renewable energy technology?
Or are you engaging communities around getting energy and all the things that they can do
with that, you know, and focusing on the service point?
Obviously, if you are doing this cleverly, you are engaging with people and helping them
(38:45):
to be champions of these types of environmental programs.
But it's also not necessarily their role or responsibility to do so.
And I think we burden a lot of communities, particularly the urban poor, with experiments
and new types of practices, which we think work.
And there are a whole set of mythologies around what an African city is supposed to be, or
(39:11):
it's okay to be, which I think needs severe challenging.
Simply because we go in with a, oh, we don't have the resources, so this composting toilet
is good enough.
And so how are we making decisions about urban infrastructure with the communities who are
beneficiaries of it or demanding it?
(39:33):
Instead of going in right up front and saying, oh, we don't have the resources, here's something
which might work.
Yeah.
Wow.
Paul, coming back to a point from earlier, I would be very interested in hearing more
about the role of informality in African cities.
Well, informality is a misnomer, you know, because it's framed as being other than the
(39:59):
formal, other than the correct.
And who said so?
Right?
And so we've interpreted a whole set of languages which dismiss the majority system in most
of these spaces.
And informality, we tend to be talking, you know, either around settlements and people,
you know, building their own homes, investing their own sweat and resources into creating
(40:23):
shelter and to talk about informal vending and trade and retail and businesses.
So the informal economy and informal settlements, we tend to sort of lump into the sort of sense
of, oh, informal.
And because we've inherited this language, we tend not to be overly critical of it and
to think about, well, what are we actually trying to define?
(40:46):
And the problem is that when you look at informal systems, you're relying on intuition to define
it, which often leads to these really negative terms like disruptive, in the way, you know,
criminal, illegal, dirty, not, you know, disruptive or engaging, not engaging with our correct
(41:09):
systems in the right way.
And so you see this with a whole set of targeted accusations at informal motorbike taxis,
at food vendors who are on the street side and maybe encroaching into the road because
there's not enough space for everyone.
And in informal settlements, where there's demands for services, but not necessarily
(41:34):
space to get emergency services in or to get infrastructure in.
And so there's a sort of tension that emerges between the so-called formal system and the
informal system.
And our sense is that we need a whole set of new terminologies to make us engage with
these systems a bit more honestly and appropriately, you know, because with this lack of vocabulary
(42:05):
comes a lack of understanding, even though intuitively we can see that informal systems
are servicing the cities and many officials will be able to say, well, these are the things
that they're offering or not.
So how do you shift to a paradigm in which you are able to distinguish between people
and groups who are doing illegal things, you know, and causing harm versus people who are
(42:30):
putting themselves in danger, for example, by building their homes in floodplains versus
people who are offering valuable services and filling gaps in infrastructure.
And so informal vendors or people operating in informal economy are bridging a whole set
(42:50):
of systems that are not functioning in an inclusive manner.
So how do you shift that paradigm to say, well, let's invest in this as opposed to demonizing?
And part of them is, yeah, and that point, as I said already, is we've got to change
the way we speak about informal.
Across Africa, there are many highly inspiring and interesting ideas and visions and path-leaning
(43:13):
innovations being worked on and also implemented, which challenge the status quo and the
way we do or people do urbanism in this region.
What are two examples or two cases of recent years which you find particularly interesting?
(43:33):
So there's so many, you know, small experiments.
And I mean, the question is always, how do you get these sort of built and spread?
And, you know, if I'm thinking of things which have inspired me, one of the ideas around
keeping the social fabric of cities working is certainly through the Friendship Bench
(43:53):
Project, which is in Harare in Zimbabwe, where amazing individuals wanted to tackle the question
of mental health and provide space for people to talk about their challenges.
(44:15):
And because there's a taboo around being explicit or explicitly talking about mental health,
the idea was to train grandmothers who they suggest have a natural empathy in basic mental
health care and guidance and to then situate them on park benches and make them available
(44:39):
for people to come and sit and talk to in a way that doesn't feel as formalized as sitting
with a therapist, but creates a space for people to reflect and navigate a lot of mental
issues.
So if you're talking about urban spaces as often quite isolating and challenging for
(45:03):
people who come into their rhythms, I think that's a really interesting social innovation.
In Cape Town, a while back, there was an idea to do some informal settlement improvements,
and this was done through the violence prevention through urban upgrading program in Monwell
(45:25):
BC Park, and their entry point was in creating a set of ICTs, information communication technologies,
that would report on the state of water and sanitation infrastructure.
So sensors on the toilets to say if they were still functioning, sensors on the taps to
(45:46):
note if they were running.
And by setting up this mesh network, which was an affordable way to send information,
they also created a basis for information sharing within the community, and then expanded
this to then be an intranet with resources that people living in this space could access,
they could communicate.
(46:07):
And although there was a really interesting route to start with information technology
as a way of ensuring that basic service provision was being met, but also enabling people to
access job opportunities, skills development, communicate with their peers in an affordable
manner.
And I think that's really novel because we tend to start with basic infrastructure, you
(46:32):
know, all your basic needs, shelter, water, energy, okay, cool.
And so here, prioritizing access to information and the ability to put your own ideas onto
an intra web or an internet, I think is really interesting.
And then finally, you know, though it's a standard idea, I think it's important to note
(46:58):
that getting the basics right is also worth celebrating.
And so in Accra, there's a champion in the waste department who is adamant around improving
the waste management system in Accra in Ghana.
And his interpretation of a circular economy is effectively that we're going to do things
(47:18):
simply, we're going to separate the organic waste and all the other recyclable other things
that are able to be recycled.
And if we can, as the city, take charge of the organic waste, make sure that it's treated
turned into compost or biomethane for use in another function, then that's an element
of circular economy.
(47:39):
But by getting that separation right, we're making sure that the other recyclet is not
contaminated by organic waste, and that the informal sector can do something with it can
collect it, treat it, repurpose it.
And if they get that right, it has then the causal effects of stopping waste getting into
(48:00):
the drainage canals and stopping the inordinate amount of flooding that's currently going
on because the drainage system is under capacity.
And so I thought that was just a really interesting articulation of circular economy in terms
of that very specific context.
And so getting that right, feels very important to promote and support.
(48:21):
Right.
And Paul, where do you see urbanism in in South Africa or in in Africa, go from here?
What futures in relation to climate and biodiversity and social justice do you see or envision
for the continent?
(48:43):
I see a lot of really exciting things emerge, mainly because cities are slow, slow things,
they're slow geology.
And so it takes a lot of energy to make changes in any of them.
And while for us, sometimes this slowness feels frustrating and we want to see change,
(49:04):
there is a burgeoning of young urbanists of people who are pushing for new ways of engaging
in our cities.
And there is a much larger global appreciation of the importance of cities and local government.
But also this much larger global acknowledgement of the importance and power of cities to drive
(49:26):
change in countries.
So my sense is that we're going to see more and more experiments emerge as more resources
are put into, so to speak, future proofing cities.
In Africa, the main priority is not on a decarbonization route.
That's a future concern and something to be thinking about while we build the next cities.
(49:48):
But it really is about adaptation.
If we are not going to meet the 1.5 degree global increase in temperature, Africa needs
to prepare for much higher than average global temperature rises and what that means for
then our food systems, for our coastal settlements.
So it's a sort of rather meso vision, which is we know that there are going to be a vast
(50:17):
increase in severe storms, flooding events, droughts.
So how do we proactively take that knowledge and apply our creativity to it?
And I think there are a lot of people asking really, really fabulous questions around how
to do that and how to encourage resources to flow that way.
Paul, before we close, do you have two or three recommendations for someone who wants
(50:42):
to change anything in their city or in their urban area?
Well first, I can do a shameless punt to our platform called Rise Africa, which is about
inspiring action for sustainable cities.
And it has a whole set of fabulous sessions and resources that hopefully will inspire.
(51:05):
And so the aim of it is very much to be a joyful platform for inspiring people to take
action.
The second then I think is just in all the work you're doing, seek the collaborators.
So seek the people who are going to align with your energy and who can complement your
(51:26):
work because trying to drive any form of change in a community, in a city, globally can feel
very isolating.
And so given that we've got these multi pressures of the urgency of the need for change, the
desire to be creative and the desire to create space for the voices that are not mainstreamed
(51:48):
in these conversations, you need allies to do that well.
So that would be the one there.
And then something sort of pragmatic is any process that you start, think about how you're
going to resource it.
And so where are the resources available to drive that change?
(52:09):
Can you convince different actors to subsidize some of your work?
Can you convince people to match funds?
And how can you be creative around how you allocate or gain resources?
And the reason I say this, and it might be a rather boring third piece is if you start
any process without a sense of where resources are going to come from, you risk the validity
(52:32):
of that process falling flat.
And so we're in a space where we need to be very thoughtful about the promises we make
and the processes that we run so that they can actually see impact on the ground.
The idea space is full.
There are tons of fabulous ideas.
It can always use more.
But what people on the ground, what residents, what local government officials, what community
(52:54):
mobilizers and what private sector are all demanding now is yes, but what does it look
like on the ground?
Can we see a drive change?
So having that orientation of turning the idea into something on the ground is really
important.
Paul, thank you so much for having me here in Cape Town at EECLE Africa's office.
(53:15):
It's really a pleasure to talk to you again and to meet you again in person.
I always talk to you.
I always like talking to you too much because there's so much knowledge about African urbanism,
but also you have so much personally, so much knowledge on urban systems and urban complexities
and so on.
I learn a lot also from the time when we worked together on this webinar series.
(53:37):
I hope we have a chance to meet again soon, maybe at World Urban Forum next year since
it's in Africa.
Surely.
I really hope so.
Paul, thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you so much for the provocative questions and hope they stand as some inspiration for
others.
That's it for today's show.
If you want to find out more about Paul's work in EECLE Africa, you find the links in
(54:00):
the show notes.
I hope you liked the episode.
If you did, I would be very happy if you would rate the show and if you subscribe to the
channel and follow the show on Instagram or get connected to me via LinkedIn or email.
Thank you so much and I hope to catch you soon.
If you want to have any success in environmental programming or to achieve sustainability,
(00:19):
you have to engage people and you have to address their basic needs.
You have to engage people first, environment at the same time.
Hi, welcome back to the Cities Reimagine podcast.
I'm your voice of choice Johannes Riegler and today's episode brings us to Africa.
(00:41):
I'm having Paul Curie on the show.
He's the director of the Urban Systems Unit at EECLAIR Africa and I had a chance to swing
by ICLEI Africa's offices in Cape Town a couple of weeks ago to sit down with Paul
and have this conversation.
If you like what you're hearing on Cities Reimagine, I would be very happy if you would
(01:04):
subscribe and rate the show on your podcasting platform, follow the show on Instagram or
even better reach out to me on LinkedIn or via email and that is johannes at Anthropocene.city.
(01:26):
Africa as a continent is huge and it's also a continent of astonishing diversity and rapid
urbanization and the population is projected to double by 2050 and as such Africa is at
the forefront of the global urbanization trend.
And while this remarkable growth presents huge opportunities, it also presents the cities
(01:54):
and urban areas with huge challenges.
So from the sprawling mega cities like Lagos and Cairo to the picturesque coastal gem of
Cape Town, African cities embody a kaleidoscope of cultures, traditions and urban landscapes.
Yet they grapple with issues ranging from inequality, inadequate infrastructure, housing
(02:22):
and environmental degradation.
But I'm very happy that I had a chance to have this conversation with Paul because in
my opinion issues related to African urbanism are highly underrepresented in the discourse
on cities, at least in Europe.
I could not imagine anybody better to have a conversation on urbanization across Africa
(02:47):
than Paul as he's working for the African branch of Eclay.
Eclay is the leading global network of cities and local governments committed to sustainable
urban development with regional offices across the world.
And as I said already, Paul is working for the African one.
(03:08):
The story how Paul and I met or how we know each other actually starts on the bus in the
Ethiopian capital of Addis Ababa in 2019.
I attended the African climate risk conference in Addis Ababa together with Jonas Bülund
who you might know from another episode from another previous episode.
(03:34):
And yeah, on a bus ride during the conference, I was sitting next to Mary Thompson-Hall who
is working for START, which is a US-based initiative running programs to strengthen
capacities for global environmental change science in Africa and Asia.
So yeah, we had a good conversation.
(03:55):
After the bus ride, we continued talking and exchanging and began thinking about actually
a workshop series to see how African urban realities match with European ambitions on
urban transition.
So that is in my capacity of working with the driving urban transition partnership.
And at some point, the colleagues from START suggested to bring in Paul and Eclay Africa
(04:21):
to organize these workshops together.
So via Tennessee, where Mary is based, I got connected to Paul in Cape Town.
And over the next months, we organized three workshops on different topics related to making
cities more livable and sustainable places in which I learned a lot about urbanism and
(04:45):
urban transformations in cities across Africa.
And in fact, I only met Paul in person once after the workshops as we both attended UN
Habitats World Urban Forum in Katowice, Poland in 2022.
So for me, it was not only a great personal pleasure to meet Paul again in Cape Town,
(05:09):
but also I think this episode is a very rich one.
There's a lot to unpack and a lot to learn about urbanism in African cities.
So that's it for the monologue this week.
Here we go with the interview with a talk ad with Paul Curie from Eclay Africa.
Paul, hi, welcome to Cities Reimagined.
(05:33):
Thanks for having me here in Cape Town, Eclay Africa's office.
It's amazing to be here.
How are you doing?
Yeah, fabulous.
Another day in 2023, I cannot believe how fast the time is flying this year, but really
exciting work underway.
So nice to see it progress and nice to see the seeds that you've planted in the work
(05:54):
kind of turn into outcomes and benefits for the cities we're working with.
Nice.
It's great to have you on the show because I found we worked together on a series on
webinars a couple of years ago almost now.
Two years?
Yeah.
Which I enjoyed a lot because it was about matching or discussing European priorities
(06:18):
on sustainable city making with African urban realities.
I learned so much from these conversations and it was really good to have them.
Do you have some?
Well, you know, for me, I think that's part of this really interesting work of trying
to see how do these very lofty and big theoretical concepts land in different contexts.
(06:38):
And if I can say anything about our work as African urbanists, we have this great ability
to contextualize and say, well, what is appropriate?
How do we take these ideas like circular economy, a 15-minute city, ask questions about what
is an inclusive city?
All of these big lines that we throw around so cavalierly, what does it actually mean
(07:02):
for a practitioner, for a resident on the ground?
How will they walk out of their house?
And this is a thievery from a city of Cape Town colleague.
How will they walk out of their home and say, ah, I am living in a resilient city.
I am living in an inclusive city.
And so the minute you take these theoretical concepts and actually ground them, I think
(07:23):
they become more rich.
I think there are many exciting provocations that come out of that.
Circular economy doesn't need to be this 12 principled thing.
It can simply be about diverting organic waste from landfill to make compost out of it and
use that for farming.
And then the way you do that, you've made sure that waste isn't landing in drainage
(07:45):
canals and causing flooding.
So that's directly from Accra.
That's what circular economy means there.
We need to end flooding by getting our waste out of our infrastructures.
And Paul, you grew, we are now right in the topic already.
You grew up in between New York City and Johannesburg, both very distinct and different cities.
(08:09):
How did this experience shape you?
And I saw on your LinkedIn profile that you said that you have an obsession with cities
or with urban areas.
How did these two places and this upbringing or this experience shape you to what you're
today?
What are you focusing on your work today?
Yeah, well, look, I mean, the communications team for New York City and around the world
(08:34):
should be very proud of their positioning as New York as the city, you know, with so
many reference points, thanks to pop culture and also I was very lucky as a 14 year old
to suddenly have this opportunity to move there.
My parents got work in the city.
(08:55):
And what it meant for me was that I got freedom at age 14 in terms of being able to take the
subway around, to walk around with a perception of safety, to access all of these amazing
public amenities, the parks, to walk along the the river boardwalks, the whole set of
(09:18):
free concerts and discounted opportunities for students.
The fact that there was a subsidized metro card for students to be able to use public
transport to get around.
It meant that I had freedom when my contemporaries in South Africa were waiting for maybe 16
(09:38):
or 18 before they would get a car to be able to drive around without depending so much
on parents.
You know, and so reflecting on it now, it is a core way of how I understand cities and
this tension between the availability of public networked, robust infrastructure that's available
to serve your needs and improve access to the city compared to many South African cities
(10:06):
in which access to the city is restricted for many.
And certainly not a space in which young people or parents of young people want their kids
to be moving through because of perceptions of unsafety and realities of unsafety.
So that was what made New York fabulous for me.
(10:30):
And the fascination with cities is definitely based on this observation that cities are
multilayered.
There are different types of infrastructure systems.
There are different cultures.
There's different languages.
They really are the concentrators of so many different systems, people, experiences, stories.
(10:52):
And so all of those come into a nice mishmash is where I like to think and daydream and
navigate.
I find it so interesting that you describe it as that your obsession with cities, let's
put it like this, came with this experience of being in New York City or just having this
different experience of what urban means.
(11:16):
We had that on the I discussed it with Jonas Bülund.
I think we organized the Webinar series as well.
And another colleague in a conversation.
It came down to he put it as anthology of where you see different, where you have different
moments in your personal life.
He pronounced it or mentioned a shock moment.
(11:37):
You come somewhere, you have a different perspective or a different experience of that case, urbanism,
you take it home and it all of a sudden, it becomes very interesting and it shapes your
perspective of what urbanism or what urban areas could be.
Certainly, you know, and not just New York.
(11:59):
I mean, of course, being in other cities, anytime you arrive, you instantly get a sense
or you interpret the character of that city based on how you interact with the space.
And for some, I think that can be very abrasive in your initial welcome into a city.
But every city has its own character, its own sounds, its own set of personalities.
(12:23):
And so I think for me, what New York did was change a set of laden assumptions about what
a city should or could be from, for example, the Johannesburg that I'd grown up in.
And there was a lot of soul searching on visits back to Johannesburg of, you know, well, why
are people living here?
(12:43):
What is it about this place that's attracting people?
And trying to think critically about is this a place that I want to be?
Which revealed a whole set of really interesting insights about, for example, it being the
largest artificial forest and a lot of investment in greenery, incredibly social set of people,
(13:04):
you know, and certainly very cosmopolitan in terms of a whole set of people from around
the continent arriving here to seek opportunity.
You know, and so in that way, you know, a parallel between Johannesburg as a financial
capital and New York as a financial capital are quite telling.
But yeah, so New York sort of laid a challenge, a whole set of assumptions about what a city
(13:27):
could be and watching it change while I was there was also a wonderful experience.
You now live in Cape Town in South Africa.
Why didn't you choose to stay in the US?
Why did you come back to South Africa and why Cape Town?
Well, much to the disbelief of many family friends, we weren't emigrating to the US.
(13:47):
We were going on an adventure with full intention to return.
And you know, for me, what was both wonderful and difficult about being in the US was that
there are a whole set of politics going on, which we didn't feel belonged to us.
And so you could see the emergence of the Iraq War and a whole set of movements.
(14:10):
You know, and certainly while I was in university, the increasing incidences of gun violence,
you know, and you are participating in the society, yet it's not necessarily your politics.
Whereas in South Africa, I could see from an outside perspective of how much potential
this country has and this yearning to participate in its politics and to help shape the future
(14:31):
of this country.
You know, and as a South African, there's a whole set of fraught identities and activities
that you have to take on as a resident or a citizen, which ask deep questions about
structural changes, about equity, about your contribution to a society, which can be very
(14:54):
deflating at the one time, but also very empowering.
So I think that's this curious character, which I think many South Africans in a way
are addicted to when choosing to live here, but also simply in the everyday being.
Can you briefly explain what ICLEI is and the work you're doing?
(15:17):
ICLEI is a membership organization of local governments committed to sustainability.
And our role is to represent the voices of subnational governments in regional global
arenas.
So when it comes to climate negotiations, how are we making sure that subnational voices
are part of that conversation?
(15:37):
When it comes to a global movement around improving food security, how are we making
sure that local government have a say in that?
Because often the understanding is that national governments are the negotiating power and
the policy setting entity, but local governments and subnational governments are then required
(16:00):
to do the implementation, often without resources.
And so really trying to engage national governments as partners and say, we need to take on multi-level
governance approaches so that local governments aren't just expected to implement policies,
but our partners in designing those policies and are resourced to implement these policies
(16:21):
and programs.
Right.
And you're in ICLEI Africa, I have to say, you're the director of urban systems, right?
Which sounds like you're dealing with a lot of complexity in your work.
Is that it?
And what gives you the drive and the ambition to challenge, let's say, the status quo of
(16:42):
urbanism within all its complexity and messiness and so on?
So as noted from this New York experience, the enjoyment of how all of these systems
layer and interact, you know, gives me personal interest, but it really is the crux of how
you think about and try to intervene in African urbanization, which is that we have multiple
(17:08):
systems in our cities operating in concert or against each other.
And there is certainly a set of assumptions about which systems are the correct form of
the city.
So to be simple about it, there's the planned city, which the politicians and technical
(17:30):
officials in local government think of, and that is designed, drawn, shown in all the
spatial frameworks and integrated development plans or equivalent.
And they say one thing about how the city operates or is expected to operate.
And then you have a whole set of other emergent activities, which are the real city, which
(17:51):
is designed and made by people.
And the way that cities emerge is absolutely through a whole set of different interests.
And so when you look at these two cities, they may say very different things in Dar es
Alam while we were running a training engagement with urban planners, one of them said, well,
(18:12):
in the plans, so well, in Dar es Alam, we know we've got 300,000 motorbike taxis.
We see them around there.
They're hooting, they're carrying people, they're parked on the sidewalks.
But if you look at the plans, there's no parking for them.
And so the plans suggest that these motorbike taxis don't exist.
And so which one are you going to believe and which one are you going to count on to
(18:36):
improve governance or function of the city, which is correct?
And I think people get caught in the sort of one way or the other kind of approach.
But what does it look like to hybridize our understanding of cities and to try work out
not to turn one system into the other?
There's this whole narrative around formalizing informal systems, which frankly, when a practitioner
(19:00):
comes and says, OK, well, how do we do that?
What are we doing?
Are we talking about taxation, planning, regulation, investment, registration?
You know, informal doesn't really have a clear policy response.
And so we don't need to turn one system into another.
(19:21):
We need to think about how we bring multiple urban systems into better alignment so that
they're supporting the final outcome, which is good quality of life for the current residents
and future generations.
You know, if you break sustainability down to those sort of premises, it becomes quite
a simple outcome with many, many intervening policies, practices, infrastructures, cultures
(19:47):
to then navigate.
So from an academic perspective, we can draw the system map.
And it's fascinating, and it really excites us to see how everything is interconnected
from the practitioner perspective.
What do we do with that?
So what?
How do you intervene?
How do you use resources efficiently to arrive at some form of change and improvement?
(20:11):
So that's what the role of this unit is, is to look at the system and go, these are the
interconnections we see.
What do we do with this?
How do we make improvements for the people in the cities?
Nice.
I would like to come back to the role of informality in African urbanism or in African urban areas
in a bit later, because I find that very, very interesting, especially because a lot
(20:34):
of it has a different, a very different angle compared to Europe and other parts of the
world, I think, and I would be very interested to hear that from you.
But before we go into that, so the African continent is huge, right?
It's spanning across climates.
It has so many different cultures, landscapes, populations, histories.
If you look at your work across Africa, and especially in this very, very different settings,
(21:03):
in this very different urban setting, spanning from Cairo to Lagos to many smaller cities,
capital cities, regional towns, and connected to the fact that African cities are very,
more and more vulnerable to climate change, to the effects of climate change, and probably
also the biodiversity crisis, and with the extreme weather events, the number of extreme
(21:28):
weather events rising.
Where do you see the biggest three challenges across African cities which require reimagining
cities?
Yeah.
So due to the histories of colonization, independence, post-independence realities, and the fact that
(21:54):
the continent is still often more integrated with global trade systems and global power
systems than it is with neighboring countries, it's a very fragmented country.
And so one of the things that many of us working on or trying to do is to build solidarity
(22:14):
within countries and between countries and between ourselves as African agents, and to
really try and shift the narrative of where knowledge comes from, who are the appropriate
drivers of development, so to speak, or change or improvement, how to invite partnership
(22:39):
and learning around the world, but also how to build more agency of Africans to drive
the change that they want to see.
And so that's a sort of a knowledge context to lay a foundation of why doing this work
can be so difficult is because of the fragmentation, the fact that it used to be cheaper to fly
(23:02):
to Europe than it would be to another country in this continent.
So the three challenges I would frame quickly and then going into more detail would be just
the vast scale of infrastructure investment needed.
There's a line and a quote or a stat that keeps going around of 60% or now it's 80%
(23:27):
of the built environment in African cities has yet to be laid.
Thinking about our population growth, thinking about all of these mega trends which are affecting
us.
So the basic one is just, we need a hell of a lot more infrastructure in order to service
our people and make sure that basic services, if not quality services and secondary services
(23:51):
are provided.
And this is all happening within a global reality of constraint.
SDGs reduce your climate, your carbon emissions, protect nature.
And so there are a whole set of growth needs happening within constraints.
But the vastness of that is just unimaginable for a single person or a single agent trying
(24:13):
to drive that change.
The second challenge then is the collision of all these crises, climate crisis, biodiversity
crisis, environmental degradation, infrastructure failure, inequity, lack of resources, et cetera.
And because of all of these pressures, we tend to have a rather pessimistic view and
(24:41):
we tend to frame all of our development aspirations based on an issue or a problem statement.
We've got this many malnourished people, therefore this is a route forward.
And while these are of course, really, really important pressures to be paying attention
to and climate crisis next to urbanization is the biggest mega trend that's going to
(25:06):
undermine our civilization and our society.
But not letting that paradigm determine how you engage with the world is really important
because if we keep talking about problems, that's all we're going to see.
And so the challenge of mindset towards solutions orientation towards a set of people who are
(25:31):
operating joyfully and trying to drive change, and there are many of them, there are tons
of people doing fabulous work in cities, in communities, at national political level around
the continent.
But we tend not to focus on those types of successes.
And particularly because everything is accelerating so fast in the world right now, we also need
(25:52):
to be fast, everything is urgent.
And so it means that we can't celebrate these sort of small wins, we don't celebrate the
small wins.
And then the third one is also a mindset issue, which is that we don't view creativity and
learning as central assets, we view them as nice to haves, you know, we view them as the
(26:19):
icing on top, we view creativity as a way to make whatever we've worked on look better,
feel better, sound better, where in fact, it's the vehicle towards a fundamental shift.
And we need to center creative, and again, another buzzword, innovative approaches, as
the way in which we'll reshape our cities.
(26:41):
If you come in with a I'm going to patch that problem, you're going to get some things stolen
from some of the context which may or may not work, which might feel okay.
Because if we look at what our cities are, what they represent for us, and we think joyfully
and creatively about what they what we want them to do for us, you've already created
(27:03):
a whole set of opportunities for localized context relevant ideas to come and are they
going to look like the other cities?
Not necessarily, but who needs them to as long as they serve the purpose that people
think the cities need to have here.
So those are my three challenges or provocations for for urban development.
(27:25):
So that links so well what you just said Paul to a conversation I listened to with your
colleague Ingrid Krötze in a podcast conversation on talking transformations and another podcast
recently and I'm paraphrasing and she said, in African city, there's not much money, but
there's a lot of action on transforming areas towards more livable, sustainable, more nature
(27:48):
positive.
Do you see that as well?
Can you elaborate a little bit about about this quote and what how you how you see that
and what futures in relation to climate and biodiversity and social justice do you see
or envision for African cities and can you actually say that for for all African cities
(28:11):
or how would you how would you differentiate?
So while at once I can demand there to be more creativity in the way that we think about
our cities, seeing these visions land is also quite difficult because we're so stuck in
what we're seeing around and so imagining something completely different can be quite
(28:35):
difficult for me.
The tension of what our cities should and could look like is drawn, you know, is totally
connected to the resources we have available to build them.
And there's this tension, you know, that we mentioned earlier between this public amenity
and public infrastructure that is built for everyone, you know, by a state or by someone
(29:00):
with resources to service everyone.
And because we don't have that many resources now that we're kind of leaving that paradigm
behind.
And so it means that you're now counting on private smaller private entities to invest
here and there, which creates a big question about public benefit and public amenity.
And are we not creating a whole set of splintered urban spaces?
(29:27):
So when asking these questions about livable cities, nature positive cities, that is absolutely
a vision that we need to promote and excite people about.
But more than that, it needs to also have a point about how do we get there?
Whose role is it to get us there?
And how do we mobilize resources to do so?
(29:50):
And I think there need to be stronger calls by governments and urban actors to drive resources
towards these types of programming, which have at their out as their outcome, public
good and public amenity, because all too often we see developments going and framing themselves
(30:11):
as the smart city, the inclusive city, but only for neighborhood scale or something like
that and only for a select set of people.
So that's the risk that we're seeing currently with the amount of resource available is that
there's some money to do something, but it's not for all it's not with that inclusive vision.
(30:33):
So that's my reflection on it.
Good.
And when we when we are zooming into into South Africa, from the outside, the stakes
to transform urban areas seem very high.
As the rising sea level rise due to climate climate emergency, a water crisis, energy
crisis.
And we already said, or you already mentioned that there's so much focus on crisis and problems,
(30:57):
which might not be helpful, but there's also a lot of these very basic infrastructures
and things to consider and to to improve.
How would you describe the everyday life and the challenges of people in Cape Town and
maybe also the positive angles to it, the creativity, what is there to where you where
(31:20):
you are hopeful to overcome all these challenges and so on?
So I mean, South Africa is quite different from the rest of the continent or the rest
of Sub-Saharan Africa because there was a whole slew of public infrastructures that
were developed.
And so our you know, what's sad about the current situation is we've seen a whole set
(31:41):
of infrastructure degradation due to limited investment in the infrastructure.
And this is slightly different from other contexts within South Africa or on the continent
where we need new infrastructure full stop.
So obviously to maintain what exists, but really need a lot more.
So the route for South Africa, in my mind, is quite simple.
(32:02):
We've got a whole set of distribution infrastructure networks already established, water, electricity,
roads.
And so here we get a little bit of insight into what could be possible in the rest of
the continent in terms of having some informal systems or smaller systems.
But really, you know, for us, it's investing in keeping this infrastructure functioning
(32:26):
because we've already got the distribution systems.
So let's let's keep that asset working well.
You know, the everyday life in Cape Town, you know, I mean, we're tangling with this
curious question.
Cape Town has been in crisis since 2015.
It's the water crisis coming out of that towards 2018.
(32:52):
Then heading into COVID lockdown, government enforced lockdowns, which completely drew
out how structural many of our problems are that we can't just bandaid them.
We can't just cover them up or address the symptoms.
And so really seeing different actors in the city deal with food crises, deal with the
(33:15):
question of jobs and livelihoods and a huge amount of despair emerging through this loss
of employment.
Then cost of living crises associated with the war in Ukraine and Russia.
And finally now a national electricity crisis.
So living in this space, we've felt a whole set of different crises.
(33:44):
And it draws out this really tough question.
Well, how do you get on with your life?
How do you plan for the future?
How do you think about the future of the city?
And I think if we look at the positives, we've got a set of people who are incredibly resilient
and creative and able to come up with ways of supporting their communities and neighbors.
(34:06):
And so really interesting social systems have emerged to cover for all of the failures in
the technical infrastructure systems.
So I would say that that's our asset.
However, there's a point where you can't get stuck with the label of resilient.
We may be a resilient people.
(34:28):
And I know that our president has commented on this and celebrated this.
But we shouldn't have to be.
We need to head back to towards a sense of there being abundant opportunity, abundant
resources, because only in a paradigm where you have food available, you've got energy
available, everyone is sheltered, everyone has access to work, can you start to get people
(34:51):
to exercise creativity and push boundaries?
A lot of people say scarcity is what leads to innovation and new ideas.
And to a degree, there's pressure put on by that.
But in a sense of abundance, you create an enabling environment for new types of business,
new roots, which can be resourced.
If you don't have the resources, any new idea can't take fruit, can't fly.
(35:17):
And so capitalizing on a set of exceedingly creative people in South Africa, I think,
is really valuable.
But they need to be resourced.
So many, many African cities are also seeing a lot of population growth and a lot of movement
(35:37):
towards the cities.
I think it's the highest on the planet at the moment, the speed and scale of how many
people move to the cities.
Given the challenges, would your efforts not be better spent to improve the living conditions
and on reducing the inequalities within and across African cities, then focusing on sustainability
(36:02):
and resilience and so on?
Yeah.
And so, I mean, this is what's wonderful about ICLEI is that every regional office has a
whole set of contexts that it has to engage with.
So we are local governments for sustainability, but it's up to each region to interpret what
that means.
And if you're going to do any form of environmental work or sustainability work in Africa, you
(36:26):
have to start with people.
You cannot, for example, in the Cape Town drought, put a broad messaging that people
need to reduce their water consumption to below 50 liters when there are neighborhoods
in which people only access 20 a day.
So if you want to have any success in environmental programming or to achieve sustainability,
(36:50):
you have to engage people and you have to address their basic needs.
So how I've operated within the urban systems team tends to be with a bit of a quirky mantra,
which is people first environment at the same time.
And what that suggests to me is that you're investing in people's agency and voice, you're
(37:13):
investing in the resources that they have access to, you're investing in giving them
more time.
What we forget so often is that if someone has to fetch food from the market every day
because they don't have refrigeration or reliable refrigeration at home, if their lights aren't
working at home, you've reduced the amount of time that they have available to be socially
(37:37):
productive, productive for work to actually have their own time because people get so
caught in looking after their own needs.
If someone is caught in traffic for four hours going to work and coming back from work eight
hours a day, when are they going to participate in recreation and connect with people?
So you have to address basic services, you have to address people's voice and participation
(38:02):
in making the city.
But if you do this thoughtfully and cleverly, the resources you invest in that are also
good for the environment.
So the services that you're laying, the energy that you're producing, how can you count on
environmentally regenerative types of technologies or processes for doing that?
And that provocation requires you to then be creative about how you take sustainability
(38:24):
messaging forward.
Are you engaging communities around a specific type of renewable energy technology?
Or are you engaging communities around getting energy and all the things that they can do
with that, you know, and focusing on the service point?
Obviously, if you are doing this cleverly, you are engaging with people and helping them
(38:45):
to be champions of these types of environmental programs.
But it's also not necessarily their role or responsibility to do so.
And I think we burden a lot of communities, particularly the urban poor, with experiments
and new types of practices, which we think work.
And there are a whole set of mythologies around what an African city is supposed to be, or
(39:11):
it's okay to be, which I think needs severe challenging.
Simply because we go in with a, oh, we don't have the resources, so this composting toilet
is good enough.
And so how are we making decisions about urban infrastructure with the communities who are
beneficiaries of it or demanding it?
(39:33):
Instead of going in right up front and saying, oh, we don't have the resources, here's something
which might work.
Yeah.
Wow.
Paul, coming back to a point from earlier, I would be very interested in hearing more
about the role of informality in African cities.
Well, informality is a misnomer, you know, because it's framed as being other than the
(39:59):
formal, other than the correct.
And who said so?
Right?
And so we've interpreted a whole set of languages which dismiss the majority system in most
of these spaces.
And informality, we tend to be talking, you know, either around settlements and people,
you know, building their own homes, investing their own sweat and resources into creating
(40:23):
shelter and to talk about informal vending and trade and retail and businesses.
So the informal economy and informal settlements, we tend to sort of lump into the sort of sense
of, oh, informal.
And because we've inherited this language, we tend not to be overly critical of it and
to think about, well, what are we actually trying to define?
(40:46):
And the problem is that when you look at informal systems, you're relying on intuition to define
it, which often leads to these really negative terms like disruptive, in the way, you know,
criminal, illegal, dirty, not, you know, disruptive or engaging, not engaging with our correct
(41:09):
systems in the right way.
And so you see this with a whole set of targeted accusations at informal motorbike taxis,
at food vendors who are on the street side and maybe encroaching into the road because
there's not enough space for everyone.
And in informal settlements, where there's demands for services, but not necessarily
(41:34):
space to get emergency services in or to get infrastructure in.
And so there's a sort of tension that emerges between the so-called formal system and the
informal system.
And our sense is that we need a whole set of new terminologies to make us engage with
these systems a bit more honestly and appropriately, you know, because with this lack of vocabulary
(42:05):
comes a lack of understanding, even though intuitively we can see that informal systems
are servicing the cities and many officials will be able to say, well, these are the things
that they're offering or not.
So how do you shift to a paradigm in which you are able to distinguish between people
and groups who are doing illegal things, you know, and causing harm versus people who are
(42:30):
putting themselves in danger, for example, by building their homes in floodplains versus
people who are offering valuable services and filling gaps in infrastructure.
And so informal vendors or people operating in informal economy are bridging a whole set
(42:50):
of systems that are not functioning in an inclusive manner.
So how do you shift that paradigm to say, well, let's invest in this as opposed to demonizing?
And part of them is, yeah, and that point, as I said already, is we've got to change
the way we speak about informal.
Across Africa, there are many highly inspiring and interesting ideas and visions and path-leaning
(43:13):
innovations being worked on and also implemented, which challenge the status quo and the
way we do or people do urbanism in this region.
What are two examples or two cases of recent years which you find particularly interesting?
(43:33):
So there's so many, you know, small experiments.
And I mean, the question is always, how do you get these sort of built and spread?
And, you know, if I'm thinking of things which have inspired me, one of the ideas around
keeping the social fabric of cities working is certainly through the Friendship Bench
(43:53):
Project, which is in Harare in Zimbabwe, where amazing individuals wanted to tackle the question
of mental health and provide space for people to talk about their challenges.
(44:15):
And because there's a taboo around being explicit or explicitly talking about mental health,
the idea was to train grandmothers who they suggest have a natural empathy in basic mental
health care and guidance and to then situate them on park benches and make them available
(44:39):
for people to come and sit and talk to in a way that doesn't feel as formalized as sitting
with a therapist, but creates a space for people to reflect and navigate a lot of mental
issues.
So if you're talking about urban spaces as often quite isolating and challenging for
(45:03):
people who come into their rhythms, I think that's a really interesting social innovation.
In Cape Town, a while back, there was an idea to do some informal settlement improvements,
and this was done through the violence prevention through urban upgrading program in Monwell
(45:25):
BC Park, and their entry point was in creating a set of ICTs, information communication technologies,
that would report on the state of water and sanitation infrastructure.
So sensors on the toilets to say if they were still functioning, sensors on the taps to
(45:46):
note if they were running.
And by setting up this mesh network, which was an affordable way to send information,
they also created a basis for information sharing within the community, and then expanded
this to then be an intranet with resources that people living in this space could access,
they could communicate.
(46:07):
And although there was a really interesting route to start with information technology
as a way of ensuring that basic service provision was being met, but also enabling people to
access job opportunities, skills development, communicate with their peers in an affordable
manner.
And I think that's really novel because we tend to start with basic infrastructure, you
(46:32):
know, all your basic needs, shelter, water, energy, okay, cool.
And so here, prioritizing access to information and the ability to put your own ideas onto
an intra web or an internet, I think is really interesting.
And then finally, you know, though it's a standard idea, I think it's important to note
(46:58):
that getting the basics right is also worth celebrating.
And so in Accra, there's a champion in the waste department who is adamant around improving
the waste management system in Accra in Ghana.
And his interpretation of a circular economy is effectively that we're going to do things
(47:18):
simply, we're going to separate the organic waste and all the other recyclable other things
that are able to be recycled.
And if we can, as the city, take charge of the organic waste, make sure that it's treated
turned into compost or biomethane for use in another function, then that's an element
of circular economy.
(47:39):
But by getting that separation right, we're making sure that the other recyclet is not
contaminated by organic waste, and that the informal sector can do something with it can
collect it, treat it, repurpose it.
And if they get that right, it has then the causal effects of stopping waste getting into
(48:00):
the drainage canals and stopping the inordinate amount of flooding that's currently going
on because the drainage system is under capacity.
And so I thought that was just a really interesting articulation of circular economy in terms
of that very specific context.
And so getting that right, feels very important to promote and support.
(48:21):
Right.
And Paul, where do you see urbanism in in South Africa or in in Africa, go from here?
What futures in relation to climate and biodiversity and social justice do you see or envision
for the continent?
(48:43):
I see a lot of really exciting things emerge, mainly because cities are slow, slow things,
they're slow geology.
And so it takes a lot of energy to make changes in any of them.
And while for us, sometimes this slowness feels frustrating and we want to see change,
(49:04):
there is a burgeoning of young urbanists of people who are pushing for new ways of engaging
in our cities.
And there is a much larger global appreciation of the importance of cities and local government.
But also this much larger global acknowledgement of the importance and power of cities to drive
(49:26):
change in countries.
So my sense is that we're going to see more and more experiments emerge as more resources
are put into, so to speak, future proofing cities.
In Africa, the main priority is not on a decarbonization route.
That's a future concern and something to be thinking about while we build the next cities.
(49:48):
But it really is about adaptation.
If we are not going to meet the 1.5 degree global increase in temperature, Africa needs
to prepare for much higher than average global temperature rises and what that means for
then our food systems, for our coastal settlements.
So it's a sort of rather meso vision, which is we know that there are going to be a vast
(50:17):
increase in severe storms, flooding events, droughts.
So how do we proactively take that knowledge and apply our creativity to it?
And I think there are a lot of people asking really, really fabulous questions around how
to do that and how to encourage resources to flow that way.
Paul, before we close, do you have two or three recommendations for someone who wants
(50:42):
to change anything in their city or in their urban area?
Well first, I can do a shameless punt to our platform called Rise Africa, which is about
inspiring action for sustainable cities.
And it has a whole set of fabulous sessions and resources that hopefully will inspire.
(51:05):
And so the aim of it is very much to be a joyful platform for inspiring people to take
action.
The second then I think is just in all the work you're doing, seek the collaborators.
So seek the people who are going to align with your energy and who can complement your
(51:26):
work because trying to drive any form of change in a community, in a city, globally can feel
very isolating.
And so given that we've got these multi pressures of the urgency of the need for change, the
desire to be creative and the desire to create space for the voices that are not mainstreamed
(51:48):
in these conversations, you need allies to do that well.
So that would be the one there.
And then something sort of pragmatic is any process that you start, think about how you're
going to resource it.
And so where are the resources available to drive that change?
(52:09):
Can you convince different actors to subsidize some of your work?
Can you convince people to match funds?
And how can you be creative around how you allocate or gain resources?
And the reason I say this, and it might be a rather boring third piece is if you start
any process without a sense of where resources are going to come from, you risk the validity
(52:32):
of that process falling flat.
And so we're in a space where we need to be very thoughtful about the promises we make
and the processes that we run so that they can actually see impact on the ground.
The idea space is full.
There are tons of fabulous ideas.
It can always use more.
But what people on the ground, what residents, what local government officials, what community
(52:54):
mobilizers and what private sector are all demanding now is yes, but what does it look
like on the ground?
Can we see a drive change?
So having that orientation of turning the idea into something on the ground is really
important.
Paul, thank you so much for having me here in Cape Town at EECLE Africa's office.
(53:15):
It's really a pleasure to talk to you again and to meet you again in person.
I always talk to you.
I always like talking to you too much because there's so much knowledge about African urbanism,
but also you have so much personally, so much knowledge on urban systems and urban complexities
and so on.
I learn a lot also from the time when we worked together on this webinar series.
(53:37):
I hope we have a chance to meet again soon, maybe at World Urban Forum next year since
it's in Africa.
Surely.
I really hope so.
Paul, thank you so much for being on the show.
Thank you so much for the provocative questions and hope they stand as some inspiration for
others.
That's it for today's show.
If you want to find out more about Paul's work in EECLE Africa, you find the links in
(54:00):
the show notes.
I hope you liked the episode.
If you did, I would be very happy if you would rate the show and if you subscribe to the
channel and follow the show on Instagram or get connected to me via LinkedIn or email.
Thank you so much and I hope to catch you soon.
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