IN-PERSON Manchester Livable Cities

Abstract

The urban renaissance agenda that has governed policy discourse since the late 1990s continues to define the frameworks for conceptualizing urban livability. However, these frameworks struggle to accommodate the forms of city-making that are emerging in the increasingly urbanizing Global South, where land access and settlement consolidation typically take place outside of official planning processes. This research examines the conceptual limitations of livability discourse using empirical data from a peri-urban customary settlement in South Africa. It investigates how livability is defined in environments where governance is hybrid, tenure security is socially rather than legally recognized, and housing is produced incrementally through household investment rather than project-based delivery. Based on qualitative research, the study investigates how emergent middle-class households obtain property through customary allocation, raise private resources for incremental development, and establish residential permanency without the use of title deeds or mortgage financing. The study advances the concept of allocation-led urbanization, in which traditional authorities distribute land and shape formal planning, infrastructure provision lags behind housing investment, and municipal institutions act reactively in a governance landscape over which they have no control. In this view, livability is not absent; rather, it is the result of a distinct urban logic based on hybrid authority, socially embedded land rights, and class-differentiated self-provision. The study provides a Global South critique of urban renaissance discourse and asks for an extended theory of livable urbanism that accounts for customary governance and incremental housing as foundational forces in contemporary city-regions.