Browsing by Author "Cooke, Kayleen"

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    Questions of resilience in municipal finance response to a shock event: a case study of the Cape Town drought
    (2019) Cooke, Kayleen; Cirolia, Liza
    The gaining prominence of resilience in urban policy has meant that urban decision makers are increasingly being asked to exhibit foresight and preparedness in how the urban system is planned and managed. The City of Cape Town has accepted this principle of resilience as a key means of driving collective understanding and action within the urban system in a time of growing uncertainty. Cape Town recently experienced the worst natural disaster in the history of its city-dom, in the form of a three-year drought. The impact of this drought on the municipal budget has been formidable. In terms of expenditure, considerable adjustments to the planned expenditure had to be made in order to source the funds required for large-scale infrastructure projects designed to increase resilience within the municipal water supply. In terms of revenue, there is significant concern around the fiscal sustainability of the municipality as more and more households are developing their own water supply in the form of rainwater tanks and boreholes, which is anticipated to decrease the municipal revenue gained from water tariffs dramatically (CCT, 2018f). The story of how the municipal budget system was affected by and reacted to the drought provides an opportunity to observe the application of the City’s understanding of resilience to a complex system, where many actors undertake simultaneous and independent activities, and the impact of these activities is evident at multiple levels and across multiple systems and sub-systems.
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    Urban food access: a study of the lived experience of food access within a low-income community in Cape Town
    (2012) Cooke, Kayleen; Battersby-Lennard, Jane
    Within the pool of urban food access literatures a split has emerged. One body of literature has tended to look towards the structural elements of the food economy to indicate communities which have limited access to nutritious and affordable food. A second body of literature have focussed more on the household- level to investigate which household characteristics and entitlements act as constraints to food access. This thesis integrates both of these bodies of thought to explore the limitations to food access present in a low-income urban community in Cape Town. This is achieved through an investigation of both the local food retail environment and the household-specific characteristics which inform food access. The food purchasing patterns have been chosen as an important indicator of food access as they reveal how the household navigates its food environment.