•Interrogation of the use of spatial knowledge for resilience building in Cape Town and Nairobi.•Mapping practices are heterogeneous, producing diverse understandings of resilience.•Through maps ...diverse actors, scales and forms of knowledge can be connected.•Knowledge systems can both open-up and close down governance options.•There is value in using diverse methods to open up conversations on resilience to bring in more actors and perspectives.
There are growing calls, across a continuum from international agreements to social movements, for strengthening urban resilience alongside reductions in inequality and poverty. Although there is broad agreement on what the term resilience means in general, different perspectives exist on how the concept should be implemented locally and controversies around its transformative potential continue. While differing social and institutional factors are important, the ways in which knowledge practices produce these diverse perspectives have been overlooked. To address this gap, this paper focuses on the role of spatial knowledge and mapping practices for resilience and disaster risk reduction. Traditionally, much of the spatial data used for planning has been quantitative and at broad, city-level scales. However, although experiential understandings of resilience have been widely identified, there have been few attempts to integrate these perspectives, often relying on qualitative andexperiential knowledge, into city-level resilience planning.
Bringing together insights from Science and Technology Studies and Human Geography, this paper explores the opportunities that different mapping techniques provide for resilience thinking and planning. Our starting point is that science and technology are not neutral for governance and can both open up or close down governance options. Using case studies from Nairobi and Cape Town, our findings show that mapping practices are heterogeneous and produce diverse understandings of resilience. Although traditional methods dominate city mapping in these case studies, we find innovation at both the city and finer spatial scales. Maps and mapping offer opportunities for resilience via connecting diverse actors, scales and forms of knowledge. We suggest that more work is needed on how to include non-traditional methods, from those that value local experience and the voice of the marginalized to more quantitative mapping methods. While fully integrating diverse approaches may not be possible, nor desirable, bringing them into conversation helps open-up deliberative spaces for resilience.
Climate change has led to several extreme weather events across the world. One such weather extreme is drought. Drought phenomenon has been increasing in both frequency and intensity globally of ...late. To this end, there has been growing concern about the impact droughts have and will have on the tourist destinations in sub-Saharan Africa and beyond. In this study, which employs a mixed-methods approach utilising primary, archival and secondary data, we examine the impact of the 2015–2018 drought episodes on the tourism industry in the Western Cape as well as the industry's response. These drought episodes famously led to the Day Zero phenomenon, a situation that could have resulted in taps running dry at some point. The study found that the drought led to a severe decline in tourist arrivals at the major tourist attractions in the Western Cape province as well as a decline in tourist spending and hotel occupancy. This resulted in a loss of potential revenue and jobs. The province had been experiencing a decline in rainfall that drastically affected water supplies; a trend likely to recur in the future. During and after the drought, the tourism industry adopted several measures aimed at augmenting and saving water, thereby easing the sector's water demand. We recommend that the tourism sector and the Western Cape province build on the successes and lessons learnt during the Day Zero campaign to prepare for the future. This would allow the province to address Sustainable Development Goal 6, focusing on water and sanitation as a part of embracing responsible and sustainable tourism. Hence, continuous research, innovation and investment in the water-smart industry is a must for Cape Town and the Western Cape province.
•There is an increasing demand for the sector to improve water efficiency and security.•There is a need for the tourism industry to develop models for managing droughts.•Western Cape provides critical lessons on combating drought within the tourism sector.•Tourism needs to invest in water harvest technology to ensure water independency.•Tourism and recreation must adapt and mitigate climate change to ensure sector resilience.
•The Cape Town region is likely to face increasing water stress.•The city-level agent-based model highlights the competition among FEW sectors and assess FEW inequality.•Setting adaptive water-tariff ...programs could mitigate the impacts of climate change on the city and surrounding region.•We provide a testbed for policy testing and informing policy design that can be easily applied to other cities and regions.
The impact of human activities and climate change occurs across a range of spatial and temporal scales, and the city or regional scale is critical for managing food–energy–water (FEW) resources. We develop a coupled human-natural system model for Cape Town, South Africa, which consists of an agent-based model and a regional hydrologic model, to study the FEW nexus connecting the agricultural, urban, and hydroelectric generation sectors. We use the model to compare three policies—a simple adaptive approach, adaptation with free water to indigent households, and water supply augmentation—and assess their ability to provide reliable FEW services to the different stakeholders under four different climate scenarios, representing moderate to severe amounts of warming. Our results indicate that Cape Town is likely to face increasing water stress as temperatures rise, and that adaptation strategies could effectively mitigate the effects of water limitations and avoid severe failures in providing FEW services across sectors. One way to manage demand for FEW services is by adjusting water price tariffs, but high prices create inequality in access to water for households with different incomes. Our analysis suggests that the water supply system in Cape Town may already be at, if not over, its sustainable capacity within the FEW nexus. Our model serves as a test-bed for assessing policies to manage stresses on water resources for the benefit of stakeholders across FEW sectors. This model can be adapted to cities and regions around the globe.
•Different notions of water resilience have important social and environmental implications.•Engineering perspectives on water resilience tend to rely on past hydrological data in predicting future ...trends.•Eco-hydrology perspectives on water resilience are more likely to consider differentiated vulnerabilities to risks.
Facing acute water challenges, the City of Cape Town has to reconcile the goal of building resilience to increasingly pronounced climate change impacts, including drought, with the persistent need to deliver equitable services and to achieve socially and environmentally just outcomes. In so doing, Cape Town is actively leveraging ideas of resilience in dealing with acute water shortages and in planning for new approaches for water management in the future. In light of multiple and discordant approaches to building resilience to water risks, this paper traces the emergence of an unfolding water resilience agenda in Cape Town. Specifically, the paper investigates how different framings of resilience enable planners to consider and prioritize particular solutions, their implications for water planning, and how lessons from Cape Town’s experiences might apply to other contexts. The findings demonstrate the predominance of expert-driven and technocratic approaches in Cape Town’s resilience-building efforts in the water sector, as well as the presence of key tensions and potential synergies emerging from competing perspectives on water resilience.
The multiscalar challenges associated with urban energy policies are the cause of extensive interaction among multiple levels of government and social forces. However, these multilevel systems of ...action tend to reflect complex and unstable power and resistance patterns rather than stable co-operation processes. Thus, in this paper, a multilevel governance perspective is used as a starting point for understanding where and how multilevel interactions arise in an energy system as well as which issues are creating political conflict and the related consequences for the governance of urban energy policies. This approach is illustrated through a case study of Cape Town, which exemplifies a situation of conflicting policy and agendas at different levels of government, thus creating a great dispersion of initiatives across different scales. Integrating these initiatives within a broader coherent framework, however, is not only a technical matter. As urban energy policies deal with multilevel issues, they imply negotiating dynamic and complex compromises between different types of organisations and authorities while shaping their governance is also a matter of politics.
This study considered the key success factors (KSFs) for participants in sport tourism events, with a specific focus on the views of participants of the Cape Town Cycle Tour (CTCT). Adopting a ...quantitative approach and utilising systematic sampling, n=598 cyclists were sampled in both the mountain biking (n=218) and the road cycling (n=380) categories, through self-administered questionnaires at event registration venues between February and March 2019. The data were analysed using SPSS via a factor analysis. Of the 49 identified elements, eight corresponding KSFs emerged. Key findings highlighted the non-homogenous nature of the respective participant groups and noted differences in the rating of four of the eight KSFs. While road cyclists were noted to be seekers of fully rounded event experience, mountain bikers preferred to participate in activities promoting exploration and adventure. Importantly, the study highlights that understanding KSFs might assist concerned stakeholders with stimulating sport tourism participation through the hosting of tailor-made events for participants who might be more selective in their desires when travelling and participating in sport events. Insights from the study should prove crucial in attracting both new and previous participants, particularly considering the context of the COVID19 pandemic that significantly hampered participation at such events.
Tourism has been one of the sectors that has suffered the greatest impact by the Covid-19 virus, which has created an unprecedented context with thousands of tourism-related companies closing with an ...unclear future. International tourism was recovering from the previous financial crisis achieving historical milestones regarding international tourist arrivals. Simultaneously, tourism niches like active sport tourism have experienced significant growth which has been developed to achieve more sustainable tourism as is the case of surf tourism in Cape Town. This article aims to investigate the surf tourism socio-economic competitiveness of Cape Town beaches to provide solutions and alternatives for a return to the ‘new normality’ due to the Covid-19 crisis. Political economy and geography, as well as tourism systems’ approach, are employed for the theoretical background. A mixed-method approach was utilised in this study including a qualitative, narrative method for the literature review, and a quantitative weighted set of indicators. The results suggest that active sports and domestic tourism have potential to help short-term tourism recovery. Three beaches showed the best potential for socio-economic development, while two beaches in underprivileged neighbourhoods were found potentially interesting for boosting surf tourism development. This study could inform government policy to determine the main areas for surf tourism development.
How are young women’s access to and the use of mobile media technologies negotiated and distributed at the urban margins of the tech revolution? This article explores questions and contestations of ...the legitimate use of phones among women living in township areas on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. I introduce the concept of “intimate infopolitics” to highlight how mobile phones are given meaning and negotiated by and through intimate relations and gendered ideals of knowledge and spatial belonging, condensed in the idea of ordentlikheid (respectability). Paying attention to historical political processes and scale in the gendered access and use of digital media invites researchers to recognize questions of sovereignty and power beyond tech-optimistic discourses on gendered empowerment, and to follow the fraught, partial, and ambiguous processes of managing information and knowledge through media. Hoe word jong vroue se toegang tot en die gebruik van mobiele mediategnologieë onderhandel en versprei by die stedelike grense van die tegnologierevolusie? Hierdie artikel ondersoek vrae en betwistings oor die wettige gebruik van telefone onder vroue wat in township-gebiede aan die buitewyke van Kaapstad, Suid-Afrika woon. Ek stel die konsep van “intieme infopolitiek” bekend om uit te lig hoe selfone betekenis gegee word en onderhandel word deur en deur intieme verhoudings en geslagsideale van kennis en ruimtelike behoort, saamgevat in die idee van ordentlikheid. Aandag te gee aan historiese politieke prosesse en skaal in die geslagtelike toegang en gebruik van digitale media nooi navorsers uit om vrae oor soewereiniteit en mag buite tegnologie-optimistiese diskoerse oor geslagsbemagtiging te erken, en om die belaaide, gedeeltelike en dubbelsinnige prosesse van die bestuur van inligting en kennis deur middel van media.
Indiscriminate dumping may be considered a ‘wicked problem’, as it is regarded as a complex, intractable, open-ended problem and it includes rights-based and justice issues. An understanding of the ...dynamics of indiscriminate dumping may assist with improving the management of indiscriminate dumping. The results show that indiscriminate dumping in Fisantekraal is a serious threat. From the first round of data collection to the last, no dumpsite disappeared despite the efforts of the community to clean up each month. Rather, the formation of new dumpsites and the extension of a few existing ones were evident. The morphology composition of the waste suggests that the main dumpers are the households and spaza shop owners. Conversations and collaboration between the authorities and community are encouraged in order to explore solutions to indiscriminate dumping.
•In Fisantekraal, indiscriminate dumping is a function of social disorder.•Dumpsites grow in number and size over time due to population turnover.•Clean ups alone do not curb indiscriminate dumping.•Collaboration between authorities and community is essential in order to curb indiscriminate dumping.
PDF
