Good Urban Governance and City Resilience: An Afrocentric Approach to Sustainable Development

Natanya Meyer and Christelle Auriacombe
Additional contact information
Natanya Meyer: WorkWell Research Unit, School of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences, North-West University, Vanderbijlpark 1900, South Africa
Christelle Auriacombe: School of Public Management, Governance and Public Policy, University of Johannesburg, Auckland Park 2006, South Africa

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 19, 1-18

Abstract: Good urban governance is a multidimensional concept that focuses on the improvement of the quality of living conditions of local citizens, especially those of marginalised and disadvantaged communities. Cities face various adversities and challenges, such as unsustainable use of natural resources, lack of housing and infrastructure, the prevalence of poverty, rapid urbanisation, crime, disasters and effects of climate change. City resilience is an inclusive process that refers to a city’s ability to sustainably manage unexpected and expected risk-related events. In addition, it includes a city’s capacity to adapt to future challenges from a strategic and spatial perspective. This paper aims to analyze the nature of sustainable development in general. More specifically, it sets out to analyze the importance of urban governance in Africa and the interrelationship of good urban governance and city resilience. The purpose is to provide a theoretical underpinning and a practical orientation for the role that urban governance could play in sustainable development. The methodology is based on a document analysis by way of an intensive literature study. The qualitative description of the findings focused on the themes that emerged from the research and the manner in which they were conceptualised. It was established that while African countries have experienced certain successes, there have been many challenges as far as ‘good’ and ‘sustainable’ urban governance is concerned. Results indicated that the notion of ‘good urban governance’ is a prerequisite for African countries to design and execute sustainable development initiatives successfully.

Keywords: Africa; city resilience; local governance; sustainability; sustainable development; urban governance; urban resilience (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/19/5514/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/19/5514/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:19:p:5514-:d:273787

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().