PERSPECTIVES

Alan Mabin

Alan Mabin PortraitAlan Mabin lives in Cape Town, South Africa. He is emeritus professor of urbanism in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits) in Johannesburg and was head of that School (2005-10). Alan holds a doctorate from Simon Fraser University, Canada, and a masters degree from Wits, and is a member of the South African Planning Institute. He has worked in a variety of development fields for over 40 years. He was involved in several aspects of the transformation of local government in South Africa, particularly in Johannesburg. Alan helped to establish Planact in 1985, an NGO working with communities to “make cities work for people”. He works closely with the Gauteng City Region Observatory, and with colleagues in Brazil, France and other countries.
RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Alan Mabin (accepted) Genders, sexualities and cities: a review of South Africa literatures, Social and Health Sciences theme issue co-edited by Tamara Shefer and Alan Mabin

Alan Mabin (under review) Post-industrial southern Johannesburg, to appear in Samkelisiwe Khanyile and Ngaka Mosiane (eds) Drosscapes of the Gauteng City Region (Johannesburg: Gauteng City Region Observatory)

Alan Mabin and Philip Harrison (2023) Contemporary planning and emergent futures: a comparative study of five capital city-regions on four continents, Progress in Planning 169 pp. 1-48 doi:10.1016/j.progress.2022.100664

M Rubin, A Mabin and A Todes (2023 October) What a difference a metro makes! Or did it? Suburbanisation and local government consolidation in Johannesburg, forthcoming in Pierre Hamel (ed.) Politics of the Periphery: Governing Global Suburbia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) chapter 8

R Bloch, A Mabin and A Todes (2022) Africa’s emerging suburban constellations, in R Keil and F Wu (eds.) After Suburbia: Suburbanization in the Twenty-First Century (Toronto: University of Toronto Press) pp. 303-318

Alan Mabin (2022) The past, present and future of African cities: commemorating the life and work of Bill Freund, in Planning Perspectives: an International Journal of History, Planning and the Environment 37 (1) 191-203 doi: 10.1080/02665433.2021.1959388

Alan Mabin (2021) Sprawl politics: comparing the city regions of Paris (France) and Gauteng (South Africa), disP – The Planning Journal (Zürich) 226 – 57 (3) special issue “Losing growth control” 121-139 doi: 10.1080/02513625.2021.2026680

Alan Mabin (2021) History and hope in Cradock, Eastern Cape, Transformation: Critical Perspectives on Southern Africa 106, 35-67 doi: 10.1353/trn.2021.0015

Göran Therborn and Alan Mabin (2021) African cities in the world of today and tomorrow, chapter 12 in Simon Bekker, Sylvia Croese and Edgar Pieterse (eds.) Refractions of the National, the Popular and the Global in African Cities (Cape Town: African Minds) pp. 173-180 (book open access https://www.africanminds.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Refractions-African-Cities-WEB-11-Jan-2021.pdf)

Alan Mabin (2021) Public social research agencies and housing policy in South Africa 1929-2019, in Crain Soudien, Sharlene Swartz and Gregory Houston (eds) Society, Research and Power: a History of the Human Sciences Research Council from 1929 to 2019 (Cape Town: HSRC Press) 210-230

Alan Mabin 2020 A century of South African housing acts 1920-2020, Urban Forum 31 (4) 453-472 DOI: 10.1007/s12132-020-09411-7

Alan Mabin 2020 The Great Paris Debate: Reflections for the Gauteng City-Region (Provocation #06, Gauteng City Region Observatory) 40 pp.
https://cdn.gcro.ac.za/media/documents/The_greater_Paris_debate_reflections_for_the_Gauteng_City-Region.pdf

Alan Mabin and Rashid Seedat 2020 Gauteng: an African city-region under pressure, Les Cahiers de l’Institut Paris Region 176: Cities Change the World pp. 64-67

Alan Mabin et Rashid Seedat 2019 De Joburg à Pretoria: urbanisme sous pression, Les Cahiers de l’Institut Paris Region 176: Les Villes Changent le Monde pp. 64-67

Alan Mabin 2019 Persistence of the past and the here-and-now of the Union Buildings, Image & Text 33, pp. 284-315 DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17159/2617-3255/2018/n33a13

Alan Mabin 2018 Challenges of university – city relationships: reflections from Wits University and Johannesburg, Chapter 5 in Leslie Bank, Nico Cloete and François van Schalkwyk (eds) Anchored in Place: Rethinking the University and Development in South Africa (Cape Town: African Minds) pp. 85-105 http://www.africanminds.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/AMT-Anchored-in-Place-WEB.pdf