Sustaining Cape Town

It is now widely accepted that although cities constitute the key contributors to unsustainable development, especially due to their ecological and equity impacts, they are also viewed as the vehicle for the transition to a sustainable future for humanity, especially because they offer the most realistic platforms for a wide range of responsive interventions both in terms of technologies as well as policies and lifestyle changes. Anchored on this perspective, this book introduces the theoretical principles which underpin the required transition to sustainable cities in general and Cape Town in particular. The subsequent fourteen chapters tackle more specific areas of interventions on the basis of the status quo and the key

constraints towards realisation of related transition interventions in the city of Cape Town.

Dr Daniel K. Irurah, School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand

For the sheer volume of empirical evidence collated in the volume, I would expect that chapters in this book will be mined time and again by students and researchers. In no small way, it benchmarks knowledge about the city. But it also does more: it alerts, warns and scares. Crucially, it also introduces ideas for thinking about the urban future in novel ways. Priority is put not simply on solutions that are financially efficient in the short term, but on alternatives that are sustainable in the long term and on solutions that are socially fair. The key concepts of 'decoupling' and 'dematerialisation' introduced in Chapter 1 are especially notable in this regard. Evidently, all the contributors are 'on song' with current trends in the relevant urban literature pertaining to their sphere.

Prof Gordon Pirie, Geography Department, University of the Western Cape