Corporations and cities under distress
Organised business and ‘emergency’ governance in Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 10863735 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Marius Pieterse (0000-0001-5163-8846, University of the Witwatersrand, corresponding author), Amanda Spies (0000-0001-6955-2768, Nelson Mandela University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 62 |
| Issue | 7 |
| Pages | 1316-1333 |
| Publication date | 2025-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Urban Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0042-0980 • E-ISSN: 1360-063X |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1177/00420980241276273 |
| OpenAlex | W4402940225 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 29 |
This article considers private sector embroilment in urban governance under disaster/crisis conditions in cities of the developing world, paying particular attention to the role of law in structuring urban governance regimes. Through a case study detailing the changing relationship dynamics between organised business and the South African metropolitan municipality of Nelson Mandela Bay during a confluence of the Covid-19 pandemic and a debilitating drought, the article shows that crisis conditions can induce moments of civic solidarity between urban local governments and their non-state stakeholders, which might be leveraged to produce progressive ‘everyday’ urban governance arrangements. However, the incomplete consolidation of such an arrangement in Nelson Mandela Bay leads the article to consider the adequacy of the South African legal framework for urban governance, thereby highlighting how urban law may enable, stabilise and ensure accountability for ‘emergency’ urban governance
Archaeology · Bay · Corporate governance · Distress · Economic geography · Economic growth · Economics · Economy · Geography · Management · Political science · Sociology · Legal Issues in South Africa · Psychology · South African History and Culture · Urban and Rural Development Challenges
Delivering an Elusive Dream of Democracy
Researching Urban Law
Polycritical city
Anatomy of a Crisis
Everyday states and water infrastructure
Rethinking urban environmental and infrastructural governance in the everyday
Urban Regimes and the Capacity to Govern
Corporate power, urban governance and urban law
Interrogating urban crisis
Urban crisis
The Multiple Sites of Urban Governance
Private ordering of public processes
Business, Government and the Business of Urban Governance
Critical Commentary
Practices of Exception in Urban Governance
Private urbanism and the spatial rationalities of urban governance
Reflections on Regime Politics
A Year of Living Dangerously? Urban Assertiveness, Cooperative Governance and the First Year of Three Coalition-Led Metropolitan Municipalities in South Africa
A critical analysis of the South African Disaster Management Act and Policy Framework
Towards a legal toolkit for disaster resilience and transformation
Outsourcing Governance
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |