Unequal citizenship in unequal cities: participatory urban governance in contemporary South Africa

Participatory governance has become a mainstream feature of city management, endorsed by governments and aid agencies as a platform for state-civil society engagement. Despite this popularity, criticisms are rife, focusing on agency problems of implementation alongside fundamental concerns related to structural power asymmetries. However, remarkable in its absence from these debates is the active role played by the urban spatial and temporal structural context in shaping citizenship experiences of participatory processes. Based on fieldwork in an electoral ward of Cape Town, South Africa, a geopolitical space that hosts a wide socio-economic range of citizens, the article demonstrates how the spatial and temporal landscape of the city is not a neutral technical backdrop for participatory processes, but active in creating and perpetuating inequalities that are institutionalised through processes of participatory governance. This ultimately produces a two-tier form of unequal citizenship.Royal Geographical Societ

Pattern formation in mixtures of ultracold atoms in optical lattices

Regular pattern formation is ubiquitous in nature; it occurs in biological, physical, and materials science systems. Here we propose a set of experiments with ultracold atoms that show how to examine different types of pattern formation. In particular, we show how one can see the analog of labyrinthine patterns (so-called quantum emulsions) in mixtures of light and heavy atoms (that tend to phase separate) by tuning the trap potential and we show how complex geometrically ordered patterns emerge (when the mixtures do not phase separate), which could be employed for low-temperature thermometry. The complex physical mechanisms for the pattern formation at zero temperature are understood within a theoretical analysis called the local density approximation.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, typeset in ReVTe

Afterword: Citizenship and the politics of (im)material stigma and infrastructure

This afterword to the Urban Vulnerabilities: Infrastructure, Health and Stigma special issue highlights two cross-cutting themes that are addressed by all the articles in the issue, and that have the potential to make a significant contribution to debates within urban studies. First, I reflect on how the articles reveal the inseparable connections between infrastructure and stigma, demonstrating both as political and material processes that are inter-dependent and mutually constitutive. Consequently, it is urgent to bridge disciplinary siloes in bringing these scholarly debates into deeper conversation in ways that recognise the materiality of stigma and the politicisation of infrastructure (and vice versa). Second, to a greater and lesser extent, the articles all reveal the centrality of citizenship to the capacity of both urban dwellers and the state to negotiate and/or restrict access to infrastructure, and to perpetuate and/or challenge the impacts of stigma. While the connections between infrastructure and citizenship are explored in my recent work on infrastructural citizenship, the articles in this collection demonstrate the importance of temporality and scale in understanding how citizens negotiate their material and political rights. </jats:p

Citizens in the middle class: The interstitial policy spaces of South Africa's housing gap

British Academy (Grant ID: 51786

Micro Rna-499C Induces the Differentiation of Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells (mESCs) into Cardiomyocytes

Background: A microRNA, miR499c, has been discovered in human fetal heart which rescues mutant hearts in cardiac nonfunction mutant axolotl (salamander) embryos and also induces the differentiation of mouse embryonic stem cells (mESCs) to form into definitive cardiomyocytes. Results: Eight days after transfection with MiR499c, approximately 75-80% of the stem cells develop typical cardiomyocyte morphologies and express the cardiac specific marker, Troponin T, as well as the muscle proteins, tropomyosin and α-actinin, as shown by immunohistochemical staining. qRT-PCR confirms that transfection with MiR499c increases expression of troponin T and tropomyosin and further shows an increased expression of myosin as well as Wnt11 and Sox17. Untreated controls do not show significant expression of these proteins. Conclusion: It is evident that the miR499c induces the development of contractile myofibrils characteristic of striated cardiac muscle indicating that the miR499c microRNA plays an important role in the differentiation of cardiomyocytes

Digitalisation for smarter cities: Moving from a static to a dynamic view

This paper presents a critical review of the literature on smart cities informed by a sociotechnical perspective that views ‘smart city development’ as a dynamic change process that extends to both the technological apparatus of the city and the social environment that produces, maintains and uses it. The conclusions from the review are summarised in six propositions. The propositions contest the mainstream discourse that often culminates in a utopian vision where data collection, processing, analysis and sharing provide solutions to all urban problems and provide direction for the future advancement of smart city research and practice. Using the propositions as guidelines to underpin a multidisciplinary approach, the paper sets out a relational perspective based on notions of boundary spanning, coordination and management that can shed light on previously overlooked aspects of smart city transitions.This work was supported by the Ove Arup Foundation and the Cambridge Centre for Smart Infrastructure and Construction – CSIC [grant reference: RG89525], Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom