I have just returned from Potchefstroom, where I participated in an international conference on “Sustainable Development in the Urban Age”. The event, co-hosted by the Konrad Adenhauer Stifftung, NWU, the NRF chair on Cities, Law and Environmental Sustainability (CLES) and the Freie Universitat, Berlin, coincided with CLES’s official launch, which I attended as a fellow … More Conference: Sustainable Development in the Urban Age (Potchefstroom, South Africa, 7-8 March 2019)

I gave a talk entitled “Urban Autonomy in South African Intergovernmental Relations Jurisprudence: Are Cities Making the Most of their Legal powers?” at the faces of the City seminar series hosted by the Centre for Built Environment Studies (CUBES),the SARCHI chair on Spatial Analysis and City Planning and the Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO), at … More Faces of the City Seminar: Urban Autonomy in South African Intergovernmental Relations Jurisprudence

I participated today in this roundtable on energy security and resource governance, hosted by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung at their Johannesburg offices. Other participants included academics from Wits and NWU, researchers at the CSIR, KAS staff and policy researchers in local government. Topics included the convoluted accountability structures around energy provision in South Africa, the … More Roundtable: Perspectives on Energy Security and Resource Governance in South Africa (Johannesburg, South Africa, 18 February 2019)

From January 2019 I will be a fellow of the South African Research Chair in Cities, Law and Environmental Sustainability at NorthWest University (NWU) Potchefstroom. The chair is held by prof. Anél Du Plessis in the NWU Faculty of Law. As its name suggests, the Chair in Cities, Law and Environmental Sustainability (CLES) will be … More Fellow of the South African Research Chair in Cities, Law and Environmental Sustainability

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 … More Roundtable: Reflecting on 20 years of the White Paper on Local Government (Johannesburg, South Africa, 9 November 2018)

I attended and presented a paper at the ninth international conference on urban and extra-urban studies, organised by the Spaces & Flows interdisciplinary research network, at Heidelberg University in Heidelberg, Germany on 25-26 October 2018. More than 120 delegates from 28 countries attended the conference, which focused on urban mobilities in the global north and … More “Spaces and Flows: Ninth International Conference on Urban and ExtraUrban Studies” (Heidelberg, Germany, 25-26 October 2018)

My article “A Year of Living Dangerously: Urban Assertiveness, Cooperative Governance and the First Year of Three Coalition-Led Metropolitan Municipalities in South Africa” has just appeared online in Politikon, a highly-acclaimed South African journal of political studies. The article assesses instances of urban assertiveness in a political context of “vertically divided authority”, in three South African … More Publication: “A Year of Living Dangerously: Urban Assertiveness, Cooperative Governance and the First Year of Three Coalition-Led Metropolitan Municipalities in South Africa”

I have been selected as a member of a legislative review panel under the South African National Department of Human Settlements. The panel will assist the Department with reviewing its legislative and policy framework for compliance with, inter alia, the New Urban Agenda, SDG11, the South African Integrated Urban Development Framework and constitutional jurisprudence, on … More Legislative Review Panel: National Department of Human Settlements (South Africa)

This op-ed was published through The Conversation Africa today and can be read here.

I spent the day at the amazing Urban Futures Centre at the Durban University of Technology. In the morning, I was the guest at an informal workshop with various project staff, discussing legal dimensions of their work in housing, human settlements and urban futures. In the afternoon, I presented a talk entitled “An anatomy and … More Workshop and talk: Urban Futures Centre (Durban, South Africa, 15 August 2018)