City of Broken Dreams

Leslie J Bank is a Deputy Executive Director at the Human Sciences Research Council in Cape Town and an Adjunct Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Fort Hare. His other books include Home Spaces, Street Styles: Contesting Power and Identity in a South African City, Inside African Anthropology: Monica Wilson and Her Interpreters (coeditor), Imonti Modern: Picturing the Life and Times of a South African Location (coauthor) and Anchored in Place: Rethinking the University and Development in South Africa (coeditor).

This truly remarkable book provides an outstanding and highly innovative call for how re-thinking the idea of the university can lead to a regeneration of East London, South Africa’s own “rust-belt city.” With the settler-nationalist dream of the “motor city” fading, the book reflects on the contradictory nature of post-apartheid urbanism, and how this relates to changing cultural configurations and the recent rise of an African middle class. Written by one of South Africa’s most engaged anthropologists, this book will attract widespread attention globally as well as locally. — Roger Southall, Professor Emeritus in Sociology, University of the Witwatersrand There is a thread of exceptionalism that runs through South African scholarship. In this book, author Leslie J Bank explores the value of the less common approach of comparison. He assesses the fortunes of two rust-belt cities, Detroit and East London, both historically dependent on the motor industry. He then juxtaposes higher education and manufacture as city development strategies, claiming that the charisma and agency of universities might hold the key to rust-belt revival. An unusual book, beautifully written and keenly observed, I recommend it to those who think about the possible even against a backdrop of broken dreams. — Robert Morrell, Research Professor in the Vice-Chancellor’s Office, University of Cape Town