Urban Planning in the Global South

This book addresses the on-going crisis of informality in rapidly growing cities of the global South. The authors offer a Southern perspective on planning theory, explaining how the concept of conflicting rationalities complements and expands upon a theoretical tradition which still primarily speaks to global Northern audiences. De Satg and Watson posit that a significant change is needed in the makeup of urban planning theory and practice requiring an understanding of the conflict of rationalities between state planning and those struggling to survive in urban informal settlements for social conditions to improve in the global South. Ethnography, as illustrated in the books case study Langa, a township in Cape Town, South Africa is used to arrive at this conclusion. The authors are thus able to demonstrate how power and conflict between the ambitions of state planners and shack-dwellers, attempting to survive in a resource-poor context, have permeated and shaped all statesociety engagement in this planning process.