Marius Pieterse

With prof. Anél Du Plessis (SARChI chair in Cities, Law and Environmental Sustainability at NorthWest University, Potchefstroom), I organised an inter-disciplinary roundtable jointly hosted by the Wits School of Law and the University of North-West (Potchefstroom) Faculty of Law, on Friday 9 November 2018. The purpose of the event was to reflect on legal, policy and research developments in the South African local government sphere, in the twenty years since the release of the White Paper on Local Government (1998). Participants included academics (from disciplines of law, governance and spatial planning), local government officials and applied policy researchers. Around themes of participation, urban resilience and urban sustainability, the roundtable reflected critically on the achievement of the White Paper’s goals by South African urban local government. Participants also aimed to identify key areas for future research in South African local government law, in the context of urbanisation and the normative framework of UN SDG11 and the New Urban Agenda.