ABSTRACT

This chapter shows how emerging 'Southern' cities like post-apartheid Cape Town have become embroiled in global processes of inter-urban circulations, i.e. how they have been cast out into the world, not least through their growing exposure to international urban accolades. It presents a better understanding of the increasingly inter-scalar nature of urban politics in African cities. In order to understand international urban accolades as distinctive worlding devices for inserting one's city in the international sphere, as well as locally asserting its ostensibly global status, it is important to grapple with the meaning of the emergent notion. The chapter argues that unpacking the diverse range of rationales that were driving Cape Town's ambitions towards becoming Africa's first World Design Capital enables us to add further nuance and critical perspective to how cities 'arrive at' certain political practices and governmental logics.