City-region governance in transitional contexts: the case of the BRICS

Abstract

The bulk of the scholarly literature on city-regions and their governance is drawn from contexts where economic and political systems have been stable over an extended period. However, many parts of the world, including all countries in the BRICS, have experienced far-reaching national transformations in the recent past in economic and/or political systems. The national transitions are complex, with a mix of continuity and rupture, while their translation into the scale of the city-region is often indirect. But, these transitions have been significant for the city-region, providing a period of opportunity and institutional fluidity. Studies of the BRICS show that outcomes of transitions are varied but that there are junctures of productive comparison including the ways in which the nature of the transitions create new path dependencies, and way in which interests across territorial scales soon consolidate, producing new rigidities in city-region governance.

The now-times of (post) apartheid

“…Moving through the city (for me this is usually Johannesburg), what I see are the new bridges and public architecture, extending roads and train lines, multiplied examples of gated privilege, new malls and office towers, but also modest houses stretching to the horizon. Overall, we can observe the emergence of a sprawling city-region that seems to never end, bringing the three major municipalities (and several smaller ones) of the region (Gauteng) into a single configuration (Gotz et al, 2014;Harrison, 2019). Or, stuck indoors, standing at a window, high in the city, I see the exhilarating but oppressive proximity of massed buildings from the 1930s and 1960s booms, providing the setting for the bustling, chaotic, and (dis)ordered hum of the people in a city trying to get by.…”