Laying the Foundation for Inclusive Cities—An Introduction

Abstract

This book entitled “Inclusive Cities in Southern Africa” is the platform and the foundation for a series of books and journal articles whose aim is provide insight into the inclusiveness of cities in Southern Africa. It forms part of the wider research on the “African City Research Center” whose mandate is to explore African cities. The initiative, which stems from a deep conviction that “the African city is a resourced city” is driven by the need to interrogate cities from an African perspective in order to show various social, economic and spatial dimensions that define them. This does not ignore or undermine the fact that there is a lot of literature about the African city but its area of intervention is to provide further ramifications of these experiences through empirical evidence. In a bid to build such an objective and true picture of the African city, South African cities emerge as the point of entry—hence “Inclusive Cities in Southern Africa”.