Working Paper: Sustainable city initiatives in Africa and comparison with the OURSUS approach
OURSUS (Our Sustainable Cities) is a flagship IGU project. The OURSUS approach and findings will be discussed in two sessions during the 33rd International Geographical Congress in Beijing: one session about ‘Chinese and International Experiences’ and one about ‘The Way Forward’. This paper contributes to the first session: exploring international experiences. It examines the evidence in Africa regarding the intentions of municipalities and their leadership to develop more sustainable cities, and to mobilise business and popular support for more sustainable futures in a continent that is likely to have the fastest urbanization trends in the decades ahead. The paper also compares the approaches of various sustainable city networks in Africa with the OURSUS approach, and it looks at the input of geographers.
This paper has been published as Working Paper 135.
Read the report about the OURSUS activities and debates in Beijing, by Ton Dietz and Qiu Li.
About the author(s) / editor(s)
Ton Dietz has been Director of the African Studies Centre Leiden since May 2010 and is also Professor of the Study of African Development at Leiden University.
He was appointed Professor of Human Geography at the University of Amsterdam in 1995. From 2002 until 2007 he was a (part-time) Professor of Social Sciences at Utrecht University and the Scientific Director of CERES, the Research School for Resource Studies for Development. He was the Scientific Director of AMIDSt, Amsterdam Research Institute for Metropolitan and International Development Studies in 2008 and 2009.
Posted on 18 August 2016, last modified on 15 September 2016