Books We Love: Movement

PHOTO Elske Kritzinger for Earthworks Magazine WORDS Debbie Loots

Two books are looking at the various ways movement has shaped Cape Town and Johannesburg.

Special things make a city unique. The movement in each of them, for instance: what’s happened to it politically, economically, spatially, socially and culturally over the years.

Some cities show scars of political struggles and adversary, others carry signs of renewal and positive change, of a new cultural heritage. Such individual traces are visible everywhere: in the narrow cobblestoned lanes of Cape Town as much as in the informally occupied high-rise buildings of Jozi.

Speaking of these two cities – giving fresh perspectives on how movement makes a city unique are two exciting books, Movement Cape Town, edited by Zahira Asmal, managing director of The City and founder of DESIGNING_ SOUTHAFRICA, and Movement Johannesburg, co-edited by architect and urban researcher Guy Trangoš.

Text and pictures by various prominent thinkers, writers and photographers appear in the books, each with a particular take on their experience of movement in one of these cities.

Think Albie Sachs, Heinrich Wolff, Ilze Wolff (contributing editor on Movement Cape Town), Jay Pather, VISI’s own Malibongwe Tyilo, Rashiq Fataar and Trevyn McGowan on Cape Town; and Adam Habib, David Adjaye, Frances Goodman, Jay Naidoo, Pregs Govender, Mayor Parks Tau and Sean O’Toole on Jozi.  And that’s just to name a few.

The books retail at R350 each through thecityagency.co.za.