Browsing by Author "Pirie, Gordon"

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    Aerotropoli agriculture: a study of the Dube AgriZone at the Dube TradePort, KwaZulu-Natal
    (2014) Cassim, Adila; Pirie, Gordon
    The Dube AgriZone has been described as an agricultural cluster development zone situated at an air logistics platform called the Dube TradePort in La Mercy, KwaZulu-Natal. The Dube AgriZone was launched in 2012 and aims to stimulate the growth of KwaZulu-Natal's perishable goods sector by producing high-value fresh produce all-year round in high quantities for both domestic and international markets. The main objective of this study was to investigate the current performance status of the Dube AgriZone's operation. This research made use of data collected from key informant interviews, document analysis and observational recordings during site visits. The information was used to compile a case study of the Dube AgriZone as an example of agriculture at an airport precinct (aerotropoli agriculture). Findings of this research have shown that the Dube AgriZone has operated with some success and failure during Phase 1. Infrastructural, logistics, financial, market, climate and administrative issues at the farming facility surfaced during this investigation. This study advocates that more research is needed on how to assist the Dube AgriZone project to operate optimally combating the current issues that it faces. It is hoped that this research can offer an interesting contribution to information on agricultural projects situated at airport precincts.
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    Food system governance for urban sustainability in the global South
    (2014) Haysom, Gareth; Battersby, Jane; Pirie, Gordon
    Food security remains a persistent global challenge. Food security is defined as a situation where all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. The Food and Agriculture Organisation 2013 State of Food and Agriculture review reports that in excess of 868 million people, 12 percent of the global population, are undernourished. Global inequalities mean that this challenge is disproportionately experienced. Food insecurity manifests most severely in specific geographies. Global demographic changes have resulted in shifts in the locus of these experiences. Food insecurity in urban areas, particularly in developing countries, is a persistent yet poorly understood phenomenon. Responses to food security have primarily focused on ensuring food availability, resulting in responses that are predominantly production-orientated. This approach presupposes a principally rural challenge and overlooks critical emerging urban food insecurity challenges. The production and rural dominance in efforts to ameliorate food insecurity have a number of consequences. The first consequence reflects a scientific and technology-driven focus on increasing or optimising net calories produced. Secondly, where access to produced food is constrained, welfare interventions are used to mitigate challenges. Such interventions are predominantly reactive and lack strategic focus. The third consequence, informed by the preceding two interventions, sees policies and legislation that reinforces the production/welfare paradigm. Such food security responses disregard the current transitions evident within society. This thesis identifies a number of global transitions. Within the context of wider global change processes, focus is given to four inter-connected transitions. These transitions include the second urban transition, the food system transition and the nutrition transition. Fourth, driven by the preceding transitions, is the emergence of alternative urban food governance interventions.
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    The socio-economic impact of government's urban renewal initiatives: The case of Alexandra Township
    (2018) Mbanjwa, Phindile; Pirie, Gordon
    The purpose of this research is to investigate the impact of the implementation of the Alexandra Renewal Programme (ARP) on the lives of residents in the Johannesburg township of Alexandra, in South Africa. The urban renewal project was a government initiative in collaboration with the private sector and community-based organisations. The project aimed to improve the physical, social and economic environments of Alexandra, a densely-populated township whose history includes political resistance, poverty, high levels of crime and unemployment, and yet is located adjacent to South Africa's successful commercial capital, Sandton. The impact of urban renewal programmes such as the ARP has not been evaluated along every dimension, nor recently with concerns raised about the pace of government efforts to drive the change required. Hence, the objective of this study was to assess the impact of the Alexandra urban renewal programme on its residents. Alexandra typifies the socio-economic marginalisation of black urban neighbourhoods during the apartheid era. Nearly 500 000 people live in approximately 100 000 households in formal and informal housing; unemployment is estimated at 60%, and most household incomes fall below the extreme poverty line of less than USD1 per person per day. Hence the ARP was designed to boost job creation, promote a healthier environment, through provision of affordable and sustainable services, such as decent housing, roads, water supply, sanitation and other infrastructure, and to reduce crime. The case study was conducted using qualitative research techniques. Focus groups were conducted with 32 residents from formal and informal settlements in the township. Research data was analysed using thematic content analysis. As a former resident of Alexandra with a long family history in the township, the researcher could provide a grounded and corroborative insight into the phenomenon under study. The research findings indicate that the implementation of the ARP programme has been generally consistent with the designed outcomes. The respondents indicated that the programme had some positive impact on improved access to government facilities and services, and on some housing and infrastructure projects. However, the participants also expressed frustration, and indicated that they had not gained significant benefits, especially on job creation and business opportunities. In addition, the residents believed that more could be done on the provision of basic services such as housing, water and sanitation. The effectiveness of government officials responsible for the ARP was also a concern. The study recommends that the three spheres of government (national, provincial and local) should collaborate more to develop relevant policies which drive urgency and effectiveness into the implementation of the urban renewal programme (URP) in Alexandra, and in the Gauteng province in general. The findings of this study contribute to the broader review of URPs in South Africa, and can assist government's developmental structures in evaluating the impact of these and future programmes.
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    Sustaining Cape Town
    (2012) Pirie, Gordon
    Lecture series coordinated by Professor Gordon Pirie, Deputy Director, African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town. This lecture will be of interest to town planners and those who would like to know more about urban sustainability and food security.
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    The mattering of African contemporary art: value and valuation from the studio to the collection
    (2019) Gurney, Kim Janette; Pirie, Gordon
    This interdisciplinary research bridging geography and fine art (‘geo-aesthetics’) follows contemporary artwork journeys from the studio into the public domain to discover how notions of value shift as the artwork travels. It seeks transfigurative nodes and their catalysts to explore how art matters: firstly how it becomes matter in the studio, and then how it comes to matter beyond the studio door. Two case studies at key moments of revaluation, a buy-out and a buy-in, both reveal responses to uncertainty that stress different kinds of collectivity. The first case study follows artistic practice and process in four studios in a Johannesburg atelier to investigate intrinsic value and finds ‘artistic thinking’. The second case study follows the assemblage of a private art collection managed from Cape Town, initially as an art fund, to investigate extrinsic valuation and finds ‘structural thinking’. These different modalities in the production and consumption circuitry of the artworld have unexpected correlations including shared artists and three linking concepts, namely, uncertainty, mobility, and the web. These in turn inform three observations: nested capacity, derivative value, and art as a public good. Two key findings emerge: contemporary art is itself a vector of value that performs meaning as it moves; and public interest is a central characteristic from which other valuations flow. The research uses repeat interviews, site visits and visual methods, which are triangulated with artwork trajectories to surface linkages between space and imagination. It offers a performative theory of value that speaks to an expanded new materialism. Applying an ecological framework allows a final transfiguration for an artworld ecosystem that (re)values contemporary art as part of an undercommons.
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    What does it take to feed a city? Understanding the urban food system
    (2014-08-22) Pirie, Gordon; Battersby, Jane; Haysom, Gareth
    Coordinated by Professor Gordon Pirie, Deputy Director, African Centre for Cities, UCT; lecturers associated with Food Security and Ways of Knowing projects hosted by the Africa Centre for Cities, this resource studies urban food systems. Food is one of the essentials of life and yet relatively little attention is paid to how it reaches us in our cities. Although there has always been enough food to feed everyone in Cape Town, up to eighty percent of residents in low income areas struggle to access adequately nutritious and affordable food. In urban centres worldwide, areas of food scarcity and oversupply exist in close proximity. The complexity of food production, distribution, access, control and consumption are critical development challenges for all cities – no less for Cape Town. This three-lecture course will investigate the workings of the Cape Town food system and will argue that food is an essential lens through which to view urban sustainability and issues of justice. LECTURE TITLES: 1. Philippi horticultural area: food flows and politics (Dr Jane Battersby) 2. Food and urban sustainability (Gareth Haysom) 3. The urban food policy gap (Dr Jane Battersby) This resource is useful for anyone interested in food security issues in an urban environment. Recommended reading: Joubert, L. 2012. The Hungry Season. South Africa: Pan MacMillan. Lemonick, M.D. Top 10 Myths about Sustainability in Scientific American. March 2009, 19, pps. 40–45.