Edgar Pieterse

Professor Edgar Pieterse is founding director of the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town. His research and teaching gravitate around urban development politics, everyday culture, publics, radical social economies, responsive design and adaptive governance systems. He publishes different kinds of text, curate exhibitions, as well as difficult conversations about pressing urban problems. He is consulting editor for Cityscapes—an international occasional magazine/platform on urbanism in the global South. He has published two books, City Futures (Zed, 2008) and New Urban Worlds (Polity, 2017, with AbdouMaliq Simone), as well as seven co-edited books, dealing with a wide-ranging set of topics related to contemporary urbanism and place-making. Edgar serves on various editorial boards of academic journals and research advisory boards of leading urban research centres: LSE Cities (London); Indian Institute for Human Settlements (Bangalore); Gauteng City-region Observatory (Johannesburg); The Global Cities Programme of CIDOB – Barcelona Centre for International Affairs; Pathways to Sustainability – Utrecht University; the World Economic Forum: Shaping the Future of Urban Development and Services Initiative; and the Coalition for Urban Transitions (London). Furthermore, he is co-lead author of the Urban Chapter of the report of the International Panel on Social Progress.