Brett Petzer, PhD Candidate

Urban Mobility Researcher, Writer and Translator

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Article: Cape Town’s Anti-Apartheid Urban Plan – NextCity.org (June 2014)

10th July 2014 / 0 comments

The image above is a screenshot from a longer piece I co-wrote with the excellent Rashiq Fataar – read it here (free). The piece contains was built on a more than a dozen interviews with prominent decision-makers and thoughtleaders on the subject of Cape Town’s evolving urbanist vision for itself and its hinterland. The final piece…

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Quantifying racial segregation in Cape Town

13th February 2014 / 0 comments

A repost of a short article in FutureCapeTown.com (read here) Adrian Frith has produced a series of maps that give graphic form to what most South Africans already know intimately: that our cities are traversed by invisible frontiers that are tightly policed, that come into being as soon as you’re on the wrong side of them,…

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Book Review: Rogue Urbanism

5th February 2014 / 0 comments

A repost of my book review of Rogue Urbanism for FutureCapeTown.com (read full article) and for Aerodrome (read full article). Rogue Urbanism is the outcome of a research exploration by the African Centre for Cities (ACC) at the University of Cape Town  This year’s bedside book for those perplexed, fascinated, enthused and enraged by the African city…

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Losing Farmland is Forever

26th August 2013 / 0 comments

An excerpt from an article I wrote for FutureCapeTown.com. Read the full article here. In Cape Town, the Philippi Horticultural Area, a major source of employment and food security is under threat from encroaching development. Future Cape Town’s Brett Petzer analyses the city’s about-face on supporting development in the area. The fight for better cities…

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Disconnection and connection in Cape Town

19th June 2013 / 0 comments

Main image: Bruce Sutherland An excerpt from a longer thinkpiece written by myself and Rashiq Fataar of FutureCapeTown.com. Read the full article here. It also appeared at Urban Africa, who supported the work. Brett Petzer and Rashiq Fataar of Future Cape Town assess the influences and confluences of connection in Cape Town’s spatial, institutional and economic landscape….

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What does Dubai mean to the people that live there? Part 2

25th January 2013 / 0 comments

An excerpt from a four-part series on Middle Eastern urbanism I wrote for FutureCapeTown.com during a family holiday in Jordan and Israel. Read Part II of the full article here and Part I here.  The city of Dubai, then, continues to build up and out on a coastal desert, without assimilating any of the immigrant human…

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What does Dubai mean to the people that live there? Part 1

23rd January 2013 / 0 comments

An excerpt from a four-part series on Middle Eastern urbanism I wrote for FutureCapeTown.com during a family holiday in Jordan and Israel. Read the full article here. When we begin to think about cities, we are thinking of places that have made an impression on us. But, as impressions of places superimpose themselves one on…

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The Arab Street and the Arab Spring

22nd January 2013 / 0 comments

Tahrir Square, Cairo – Image: Shawn Baldwin ShawnBaldwin.com A repost of a report on Middle Eastern urbanism written for FutureCapeTown.com. Read the full article here.  Once I was in Paris, walking the city’s mesmerising boulevards as part of my own triumphal entry to the city, when I stopped and read in my guidebook that the majesty…

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This is the city that oil built: Learning from Dubai

21st January 2013 / 0 comments

Aerial shot of Dubai Marina courtesy of Stanford University An excerpt from a series of reports about Middle Eastern urbanism written during travel to Jordan and Israel and published at FutureCapeTown.com. Read the full article here.  In Learning from Las Vegas, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown set out to visit a mirage city in the…

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Artscape and the Future

27th November 2012 / 0 comments

An excerpt from an article I wrote with Robert Bowen (@ArchiRube) for FutureCapeTown.com. Read the full post here.  The question of what a performing arts complex can mean to its city is one of the most satisfying in urbanism, because, unlike for a central rail terminus or a regional hospital, there are many, many working…

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