High Stakes, High Hopes: Urban Theorizing in Partnership (University of Georgia Press, 2023) by AAP’s Department of City and Regional Planning Chair and Professor Sophie Oldfield documents more than a decade of research and teaching done in collaborative partnership with the “Civic” (a local community organization) and its leader Gertrude Square in the Cape Town township of Valhalla Park. Rather than study community challenges at a remove, Oldfield built a partnership with Square and other activists in the neighborhood. Working together on research questions deepened the lessons and space they could share and document. Operating across the violence of durable South African apartheid divides and inequities, it opened up insight-filled paths for exploring complex urban issues. Presented in the text through reflective narrative and stories of collaboration, Oldfield captures the joyful, heartbreaking, and profound moments that came with the work and refigured the academic and on-the-ground impact of this approach to urban theorizing.

Read Sophie Oldfield in conversation with Molly Sheridan on the AAP website.