GCRO hosts Ricky Burdett

  • GCRO
  • Date of publication: 19 September 2011

On 19 and 20 September 2011, GCRO hosted Ricky Burdett, Professor of Urban Studies at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), and director of LSE Cities and the Urban Age programme, for an engaging set of meetings, tours and presentations. His visit was organized at the request of the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at UCT, which had arranged for Prof. Burdett to launch his new book, Living in the Endless City, at the Cape Town Literary Festival later in the week.

On Monday 19 September, GCRO took Burdett on a tour of the Johannesburg inner city, which he had last seen during the Urban Age Conference on Johannesburg in July 2006. The tour included a guided walk around Newtown by the Johannesburg Development Agency, focusing on public space investments in the precinct as well as the station infrastructure for Johannesburg’s new BRT system.

On Tuesday 20 September, Burdett gave a presentation to the first workshop of the new Advisory Council of the Gauteng Planning Commission. His input – Long-range planning and development challenges and opportunities facing developing world mega-cities and city-regions – insights from Living in the Endless City – raised useful discussion in a group charged with steering the finalisation of Gauteng’s 2055 strategy.

Tuesday also saw Burdett, together with the ACC’s Prof Edgar Pieterse, ride the Gautrain to Pretoria to experience the city-region’s newest and largest transport infrastructure investment first hand.

The capstone of the the two day visit was Burdett’s presentation to the Faces of the City Seminar, jointly organised by the NRF-SARCHi Chair in Development Planning and Modelling, the GCRO, and CUBES at the Wits School of Architecture and Planning. (See http://www.gcro.ac.za/event/faces-city-series-prof-ricky-burdett-living-endless-city). His talk – an overview of images and insights from Living in the Endless City – raised debate on, inter alia, how to think about the psyche of the city, the unique challenges of South African cities such as the crisis of youth unemployment, and the impact of city-led investments in public environment and community space versus shelter and household services.

Burdett’s visit gave GCRO an opportunity to engage with work being done at the LSE Cities programme on topics closely related to GCRO’s own programme of research, including surveys on quality of life in cities around the world (seehttp://www2.lse.ac.uk/LSECities/research/Home.aspx) and a fascinating recent study comparing the city-regions of South East England and the Randstad (see http://www.urban-age.net/publications/reports/2011/the-tale-of-two-regions/).

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