In this paper, we examine how economic, social and political forces impact on NCDs in Khayelitsha (a predominantly low income area in Cape Town, South Africa) through their shaping of the built environment. The paper draws on literature reviews and ethnographic fieldwork undertaken in Khayelitsha. The three main pathways through which the built environment of the area impacts on NCDs are through a complex food environment in which it is difficult to achieve food security, an environment that is not conducive to safe physical activity, and high levels of depression and stress (linked to, amongst other factors, poverty, crime and fear of crime). All of these factors are at least partially linked to the isolated, segregated and monofunctional nature of Khayelitsha. The paper highlights that in order to effectively address urban health challenges, we need to understand how economic, social and political forces impact on NCDs through the way they shape built environments.

When managing urban flood risk, traditional flood risk management which prioritizes infrastructural and technical solutions is important but is not sufficient to reduce the risk to acceptable levels, particularly in informal settlements. Understanding how flood risk is governed needs to complement flood risk interventions in order to be able to move towards a more collaborative response to managing flood risk. Drawing on the case of Cape Town, South Africa, where annual flood events impact on many informal settlements, we identify barriers to collaborative governance that could be addressed to help to build a more holistic flood management approach that proactively reduces flood risk. Our focus is on local government as a key arena of flood risk management. Using a nodal governance framework, we assess the mentalities, technologies, resources and institutional structures of four different local government departments in the City of Cape Town and the extent to which they collaborate on flood risk management. Four key constraints to collaborative urban flood risk management are identified: the domination of a technocratic approach, lack of particular capacities, the challenge of how to share risk, and political contestation and short-termism. Unpacking the nature of nodal governance is a key step in identifying possibilities for collaboration and thus strengthening processes of urban flood management. This is particularly important for urban environmental risk management in the global South, which needs to engage with a development agenda that includes the politics of informality and the complexities of social, as well as environmental, change.

This reflective paper surveys the lessons learnt and challenges faced by the Mistra Urban Futures (MUF) research centre and its research platforms in Sweden, the UK, South Africa and Kenya in developing and deploying different forms of transdisciplinary co-production of knowledge. Considerable experience with a distinctive portfolio of such methods has been gained and reflective evaluation is now under way. While it is important to understand the local context within which each method has evolved, we seek to explain the potential for adaptation in diverse contexts so that such knowledge co-production methods can be more widely utilized. Furthermore, the current phase of MUF’s work is undertaking innovative comparative transdisciplinary co-production research across its research platforms. Since the specific local projects differ, systematic thematic comparison requires great care and methodological rigour. Transdisciplinary co-production is inherently complex, time consuming and often unpredictable in terms of outcomes, and these challenges are intensified when it is undertaken comparatively.