(D)Urban Vortex: South African City in Transition by Bill Freund & Vishnu Padayachee [New]

ISBN: 9781869140137 / 1869140133 - (D)Urban Vortex: South African City in Transition by Bill Freund and Vishnu Padayachee. Published by UKZN Press, 2002. Softcover. New. 345 pp.

Durban is a distinctive and remarkable place in which to test propositions about the significance of the city and change in the city. New urban literature tends to divide very sharply between the problems faced by cities with major resources at the global centre and the problems faced by cities at the periphery - poor cities thronged by poor people.

Many South African cities are simultaneously the site of both kinds of phenomena which allows us to observe the two at once. These cities have strong traditions of forceful planning from above with considerable capacity to finance change. They witness deindustrialization and decentring as do so many Western cities, but they are also the site of massive squatter settlements and populations that fall outside the functioning of the ‘formal’ economy. This book highlights the role of networks and the co-operation for survival by Durban’s newer citizens as they make space for themselves.

In an era of fundamental power shifts, the constant need for re-invention and adaptation to social and economic change, Durban is a genuine social vortex, Through the work of writers from a range of approaches and disciplines this book focuses on the transition since the 1970s - from the age of racial exclusion and confident apartheid planning to the present and explores contemporary problems and challenges facing Durban and processes shared by cities globally.

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