ABSTRACT
Cities rarely obliterate their past or have absolute control over their future development trajectories. Regardless of location, the task of managing the contemporary city is inevitably uncomfortably juxtaposed between the collective aspiration of what might be achieved under optimal conditions and accommodating the legacies (good and bad) of the urban management practices of previous generations. The fixity of the built form, the typically inert institutional structures of urban governance and the complexity of the levers and instruments through which urban space is fashioned, means that cities are not receptive to rapid or path-breaking change. Instead, the city of yesterday, today and tomorrow fuse together; they cannot be readily uncoupled. For students of the city and urban life, coming to terms with the forces shaping the city must be a central task. While the origins of southern cities are typically only twentieth, even twenty-first, century, the interplay of past, present and future processes have to be better understood.
