[notes C&T 05] digital cities in south africa/durban

Digital cities in South Africa

Objective: understand relationship bew. Real and digital city

Argument: if you don’t understand the dynamics of the real city, digital city won’t help you much.

Abdu malik: writes about what it means to be African, to live in an African city: networks, find work through them etc.

Can’t talk about cities without talking about informal processes

Castells: space for oppositional action is still there – grassroot in the space of flows – using ict for oppositional politics would be interesting

Understandning informal networks and processes

The relationship betw. The space of flows and space of places

Grassrooting the space of flows

Value added by ict – Castells 2000

Smart communities

Empowerment and access

Socio-cultural responses to digital technology

Spatial constraints to ict access, but bridged e.g. by cell phones

Splintering urbanism – graham and marvin 2001: relevant to Durban, potential inequalities that could emenate from ???

Universal access – ICT-Centers not well mentained in townships

Sustainability and backbone support

Themes that arise from the literature:

Ethekwini ict policy

Ict-cities governance administration governance

Spatial connectivity amongst municipial offices I infrastructure

Enterprise wide GIS included the excluded: SMME

Coop govt. internal coordination city-city networks, other govt.

Ict & NPM efficiency, communication holistic approach emphasis on LED, SMME develomanet

agencies?

Networks community connective. Web site

Access skills dev., intranet empowerment of small firms , smart xchange e-

community strategy

literacy

socio-cultural responses to digital technology

spatial constraints to ict access

education and skills development

conclusion:

the dominant thinking amongst progressives is how the include the excluded in the urban fabric, and a great deal of urban theory and analysis is about seeking out the invisible city, transforming and integrating it into the visible city.” Khan 2004:40

Can the digital city make the invisible visible?

[will edit this rather rough notes when I go through the article]