Brokering communities of knowledge and practice: Reflections on the African Centre for Cities’ CityLab programme

Conceptual Vectors of African Urbanism: ‘Engaged Theory-Making’ and ‘Platforms of Engagement’

“…WICKSON et al, 2006;MOBJORK, 2010;GOEBEL et al, 2010;ANDERSON et al, 2013). Theory is often what is described as taking place at universities, among academics and written about in books and journal articles.…”

“…The ACC CityLabs are dedicated to thematic research areas (such as climate change, urban ecology and healthy cities) in cooperation with the City of Cape Town, based on the interests and challenges faced by the city (PARNELL et al, 2009). Over the course of their operation (the first set of Labs ran for two years), multiple engagements between researchers, government and civil groups helped to develop relationships, social learning and shared expertise, often initiated by concerns within government (ANDERSON et al, 2013). Despite difficulties experiences by all the Labs, real effects were generated: the operations of the Climate Change CityLab, for example, helped to drive a 'shift in how city officials view climate change, taking it from what was previously perceived as exclusively an environmental issue to one of diverse relevance' (ANDERSON et al, 2013, p. 6).…”

Modelling the relationship between counter‐knowledge and open‐mindedness for policy development

“…As Anderson et al . () noted, it is not sufficient to simply generate knowledge; for knowledge to have any value, it needs to be actively communicated, or ‘brokered’, and city marketing plans achieved this.…”

“…Cities constitute a constructivist context to share and co-produce knowledge (Anderson et al, 2013). With respect to this issue, authors such as Yigitcanlar, O'Connor and Westerman (2008) have argued that the knowledge city concept is an umbrella metaphor for geographical entities, which focus on knowledge creation and covers other knowledge zones such as knowledge corridors.…”

Co-producing urban knowledge: experimenting with alternatives to ‘best practice’ for Cape Town, South Africa

“…The diverse and layered knowledge required to achieve urban sustainability presupposes contribu tions from different disciplines and different institutions. The relationship built on previous work of the ACC (Anderson et al, 2013), which entailed collaborative engagement in a series of CityLabs designed to foster locally legitimate solutions to specific urban problems. As a consequence, it becomes important to understand the cultures of knowl edge production in the participating institutions.…”