HIGH STAKES, HIGH HOPES, urban theorising in partnership

159pp., illus., paperback, University of Georgia Press, Athens, 2023

ISBN: 9780820365015

Sophie Oldfield discusses a decade-long urban research and teaching partnership between the Valhalla Park United Front Civic Organisation and the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science and the African Centre for  Cities at the University of Cape Town and the urban studies section in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Basel. The partnership and its projects also involved students from the University of Cape Town and Stanford University.

"Decolonizing urban studies demands radically different methods and modes of theory building. Oldfield and her interlocutors have gifted us a brilliant guide that shows this practice, forged through patience, reflexivity, partnership, care, and evocative writing. High Stakes High Hopes is vital reading and a generative pedagogic tool for those passionate about the just city under construction." Edgar Pieterse, founding director of the African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town

"The stakes of this powerfully argued and beautifully written book are indeed high. They are about what I call research justice: the making of deep-rooted partnerships as methodology and epistemology such that we can imagine and create spatial justice in highly unequal cities. Drawing on the long arc of such work, Sophie Oldfield shows us a different embodiment of urban theorizing and archiving, one that shifts the knowledge geographies of our disciplines and makes possible a transformative mode of knowledge relations." Ananya Roy, Director, UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy

Sophie Oldfield is Professor in City and Regional Planning at Cornell University and in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Science at the University of Cape Town. She has authored and co-edited over ten books, including What Is Critical Urbanism? Urban research as pedagogy and The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South