EBOOK
High Stakes, High Hopes
Urban Theorizing in Partnership
Sophie OldfieldSeries: Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation(0)
About
High Stakes, High Hopes tracks the building of urban theorizing in a decade-long urban research and teaching partnership in Cape Town, South Africa.An argument for collaborative urbanism, this book reflects on what was at stake in the partnership and its creative, and at times, conflictive, evolution. High Stakes, High Hopes explores what changed in learning when teaching and assessment occurred inuniversity classrooms, township streets, and ordinary people's households.Oldfield explores how research and assessment were reshaped when framed in neighbourhood questions and commitments, and what was reoriented in urban theorizing when community activism and township struggles were recognized as sites of valid knowledge-making.
Oldfield traces the multiple personal and political relationships at play, exploring the shifting patterns of power in this productive, yet always negotiated, collaboration. This innovative methodologyreveals the ways in which activists, residents, students, and the author experienced and reworked the differences between them. High Stakes, High Hopesshares forms of practice, grounded in teaching, to train a next generation of urbanists to engage the city embedded in multiple publics and politics across the city. The book builds upon an archive of alternative kinds of urban knowledges, experiments which work to inspire more varied forms of urban theorizing.
Oldfield traces the multiple personal and political relationships at play, exploring the shifting patterns of power in this productive, yet always negotiated, collaboration. This innovative methodologyreveals the ways in which activists, residents, students, and the author experienced and reworked the differences between them. High Stakes, High Hopesshares forms of practice, grounded in teaching, to train a next generation of urbanists to engage the city embedded in multiple publics and politics across the city. The book builds upon an archive of alternative kinds of urban knowledges, experiments which work to inspire more varied forms of urban theorizing.
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Reviews
"High Stakes, High Hopes is a powerful praxis, a painstaking archive, a profound pedagogy, and a committed celebration. Sophie Oldfield takes us on a journey with her urban co-theorists to offer a new aesthetic of creation, reflection, and narration in partnership. With Gertie, Mina, Dan, Zaida, Koekie, Suki, Rosemary, Naomi, and many more comrades, she not only shows us an alternative way of doin
Richa Nagar
"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, o
Ananya Roy, director, UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy
"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 Tow