Abstract | This introductory chapter outlines the current policy challenges for sustainable rural and urban revitalisation in South Africa, arguing that national policies and plans have failed to acknowledge the cultural dimension of cities and regions, and the challenges of dealing with their diversities. On the other hand, the emergence of rurality and the potential benefits of rural-urban linkages in the national policy discourse opens up a promising path towards a better understanding of local specificities, cultural regional differencies, and how to achieve spatial equity and sustainable development. This chapter therefore explains the purpose of the book, which is to investigate the nexus between culture and rural-urban revitalization in South Africa, including its methodolgical challenges. It provides a brief overview of each chapter, adopting, overall, a post-colonial perspective aiming to challenge Western-centric notions of cultural planning and urban-biased forms of development. It seeks ultimately to shed light into the experimentation of more inclusive culture-based approaches at the local level, based on the acknowlegment of the potential to reuse and innovate traditional indigenous knowledge systems into the development process. This should help to tackle the great challenges that the country is facing today: from uneven spatial development to poverty, from climate change to technological innovation. |
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