Marius Pieterse

This academic article has just appeared in the Vienna Journal on International Constitutional Law (2019 vol 13(2), pp. 119-146). It considers the judgments of the South African Constitutional Court that have dealt with instances where South African cities have asserted power against other levels of government, or where their autonomous exercise of power has been … More Publication: “Urban Autonomy in South African Intergovernmental Relations Jurisprudence”

I have just returned from Dublin, where I presented a paper comparing constitutional and legislative dimensions of urban autonomy across different major cities in the SADC, at the fourth City Futures conference, hosted jointly by the European Urban Research Association (EURA) and the Urban Affairs Association (UAA). The theme for the conference was “Creating Just … More Conference: City Futures IV (Dublin, Ireland, 20-22 June 2019)

I am in Helsinki, where I have just attended a two-day urban research conference, organised by the Finnish Urban Planning Society around the theme “The Everyday City”. Participants, ranging from philosophers to urban economists, contemplated the impact of different plans, laws, policies and technologies on the structure of everyday urban lives.

This op-ed was published through The Daily Maverick today and can be read here.

My “Faces of the City” seminar on urban autonomy in South African intergovernmental relations court jurisprudence, delivered at the Wits School of Architecture & Planning on 26 February 2019, has been made uploaded to Youtube.

On the joint behalf of the Urban Legislation Unit at UN Habitat, the School of Law at the University of the Witwatersrand and IRGLUS, I organised an “Urban Law Day” at Wits in Johannesburg, on 29 March 2019. Following UN Habitat’s 1-day conference format for its Urban Law Day series, and the first of the … More Urban Law Day (Johannesburg, South Africa, 29 March 2019)

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