I’ve migrated to Substack, so more people can read more, for free. My first post there is about another way Chase’em, rob’em, fight’em in court? Is this the approach to homelessness? Or is there another way….

“We tend to think of government as doing things…but we should also think of government as a platform that lets things happen.” -Tim O’Reilly I remember the first time someone explained the concept of an open source platform to me — “imagine the green board of a Lego kit, underneath…

“Appointment of a panel of service providers” is the new norm in tender documents. …

Update: Vetus Schola have invited me to attend a hearing on this matter. We live in a traumatised country. Women live in fear of when the worst will happen (again), black men feel undermined and remember at a cellular level what white men did to them or their fathers; and…

As a city strategist an “urbanist” I shocked a few people when I made the move to Paarl — in many of my Capetonian friends’ minds — a small town that is not quite as interesting as Franschoek or Stellenbosch and not quite far enough away to make it a…

I was asked this question on response to my Amazonification piece, by a person concerned about the “flooding risk”. I’m not an expert on the flooding risk. What I do know is, most of Cape Town has been built, since the earliest colonisers, by managing water. This is not to…

“And that is Cape Town. It is the City of unresolved complexes. We do the right thing and then we undermine it. We are the Cape of Storms and the Cape of Good Hope at the same time. We are hostile to outsiders but we are also the most welcoming…

I recently wrote a piece about the 7 biggest threats to Cape Town and the region. Here’s a view on the 5+ biggest opportunities: Berry bonanza (an increasingly diverse and sophisticated agricultural economy) Community Action Networks Micro-developers (and the next frontier: mixed-use) Fundamentally, we’re still attractive Transition and crisis leaders …

One of my colleagues likes to talk about the classic categories of spend in local government as: Keep the lights on: maintain existing service levels, maintain water, sanitation and energy infrastructure, roads, street lights, etc. Keep up with growth: invest in new infrastructure and capacities to keep up with growth…