Overview
The Southern Urban Practice platform—hosted on the “Maintenance Corner” at southernurbanpractice.wordpress.com—is a dynamic digital hub that brings together scholars, practitioners, and enthusiasts of Southern Urbanism. Born from a 2022–23 Reading/Doing Group convened by UCL Urban Lab and partners, the platform is designed to bridge theory and practice. It offers a rich mix of resources—reading lists, action-research reflections, networking tools, and updates—with the purpose of nurturing critical, place-based, non-extractive urban knowledge rooted in Global South contexts .
At its core, the Maintenance Corner is a living platform: an ongoing repository where users can reflect on and retool their own practices, share insights, test methodologies, and connect with a wider network of Southern urbanist thinkers. It aims to inspire and resupply practitioners navigating the complex realities of Southern urban spaces, offering practical frameworks and conceptual provocation alike. Hosted on this platform are two complementary projects that support different stages of academic development:
- The IJURR funded“Co‑Writing Southern Architectural Repair & Maintenance” initiative, led by Dr. Jhono Bennett (UCT), Professor Guy Trangos (UJ) and Ass. Professor Philippa Tumubweinee (UCT), is tailored for predoctoral and doctoral researchers. Through in-person workshops in Johannesburg (April 2025) and Cape Town (June 2025)—followed by an online hybrid workshop (August 2025)—it equips participants with practice-based tools such as storytelling, mapping, co-design, grant writing, and publication support. This project foregrounds grassroots repair practices in Southern urban contexts and fosters co-authored outputs rooted in Southern epistemologies.
- The British Academy–funded “Writing Southern Urbanism(s)” project, led by Professor Catalina Ortiz (UCL Urban Lab) and co-applicants Professors Nancy Odendaal (UCT) and Renato Emerson (UFRJ), partners with team members Susan Parnell, Chandrima Mukhopadhyay, and Oren Yiftachel. It targets early-career researchers in Africa and Latin America, offering a rigorous program of theoretical framing, writing mentorship, journal navigation, and networking. Activities include two online sessions (July and September 2025), writing workshops in Rio de Janeiro (October 2025) and Cape Town (June 2026), and a concluding hybrid symposium in late 2026—aimed at strengthening contributions to Southern urban theory.
Although serving distinct career stages, both projects are unified on the Southern Urbanist Maintenance Corner, offering shared access to workshop materials, peer writing support, digital storytelling modules, and reflections. Together, they form a coherent pathway—from doctoral research to global scholarly publication—supported by a vibrant, non-extractive, Southern-led urban knowledge ecosystem.
Writing Southern Urbanism (BA Funded): Post Doctoral
Co_Writing Southern Urbanisms (IJURR Funded): Pre Doctoral
Cross Platform Resources