South African cities are marked by the legacies of past practices, inscribed in fixed spatial patterns. They therefore play a pivotal role in shaping the possibilities and limits of changing imperatives of transition, transformation, development and sustainability. From the late 1970s, the ‘urban’ has been presented as both a key scene for visions of the reform of apartheid and as a site for the potentially revolutionary transformation of South African society. Knowing the City departs from this prominence of urban issues, which explains why South African urban scholarship has been a key reference point nationally and in urban studies elsewhere.
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