Marius Pieterse

This article, co-written with Amanda Spies, has just appeared (open access) in Urban Studies. It considers the resilience of South African local government law through a case study of the formation of a seemingly progressive public/private emergency governance regime amidst a confluence of drought, Covid-19 and political chaos in Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa.

I am currently nearing the end of a research visit to the UK, during which I was privileged to share my work at three invited events. On 11 September 2024, I delivered a guest lecture pertaining to my current work on urban collectives as victims of international human rights violations, jointly organised by the Urban … More UK lectures/seminars: September 2024

I have just published this article on residential building governance in Johannesburg, in the latest issue of the South African Law Journal. It tries to link some blackletter sectional title (condominium) law analysis and critique with local government law, constitutional constructions of public service delivery and, via some interviews I conducted in 2023 with building … More Publication: “Propping Up the Crumbling City: Sectional Title Law, Residential Building Governance and Local Government”

I am currently in London, where the Fordham University Urban Law Center’s 10th International and Comparative Urban Law Conference is underway. This morning, I had the pleasure to present my paper entitled “Domesticated socio-economic rights as adaptive law for urban resilience” in a session on rights, urban law and sustainability.

I have just returned from a week in Stellenbosch, participating as faculty in the 2024 Global Scholars Academy of the Harvard Institute for global Law and Policy, co-hosted by the Faculty of Law at the University of Stellenbosch. It was an intense but immensely satisfying event. There were plenty of fruitful interactions with other Faculty … More Harvard Institute for Global Law and Policy + Stellenbosch University “Global Scholars Academy 2024”

I am currently in the Netherlands, disseminating my research and doing some teaching. On 6 June, I presented my work on socio-economic Rights as adaptive law at Leiden University’s Global Transformations and Governance Challenges (GTGC) conference on emerging trends in global governance, held in the Hague. Also in the Hague, I taught a guest lecture … More Conference participation and guest teaching in the Netherlands

In this article, which has just appeared open access in the Utrecht Law Review’s first edition of 2024, Angela van der Berg and I assess the resilience of the legal frameworks for urban governance during the Covid-19 pandemic, as experienced in cities in the Netherlands and South Africa, against the characteristics of “adaptive law”. Angela … More Publication: “Governing Urban Crisis through Adaptive Urban Law: Lessons from City Responses to COVID-19 in the Netherlands and South Africa”

Today, the University of Stellenbosch, the Konrad-Adenauer Stiftung and UN Habitat co-hosted an Urban Law Day in Stellenbosch, with a rich programme interrogating various aspects of the judicial function in the making, enforcement and oversight of urban law. I spoke in the session on judicial remedies, presenting my current work on socio-economic rights review standards and … More Urban Law Day: The Role of the Judiciary in Pushing the Legal Frontiers for City-level Transition and Sustainability

Today I participated in a virtual workshop exploring a research agenda on the right to the city, jointly hosted by the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights at the University of Oslo and the Centre for Human Rights Studies at Fudan University, Shanghai. I presented on how the right to the city is crystallising in the … More Virtual workshop: The right to the city

This op-ed, which summarises some of my research on private sector involvement in urban governance in South Africa, was published by Daily Maverick on 29 November 2023. You can read it here.