Embracing Urban Elsewheres: The Story of BRT in Africa

In 2006, BRT fever swept through South Africa. Just three years after learning of the Bogota model of BRT, Johannesburg’s Rea Vaya opened as the first BRT system in Africa with more opening in following years.
While the South African BRT systems are unmistakably modelled after the achievements of those in Bogota, the process through which South African cities learned of and implemented BRT raises questions regarding the mobility of knowledge, specifically how and why cities embrace urban elsewheres. Embracing Urban Elsewheres traces this circulation of BRT, to understand how and why it was adopted in South Africa and, in doing so, reveals a new way of understanding the intersections between policy models, people and place. Utilizing a range of case studies the author describes the process through which political systems assemble, mobilize and adopt new policies and practices. Wood contributes to ongoing geographical discussions on policy mobilities, by making a case for urban analyses of policies-in-motion and concluding that local authorities are instrumental in pushing and pulling circulated forms of knowledge. This analysis extends South African urban studies and postcolonial urban transport literature by examining how policymakers address issues of transport justice, and how cities are constituted through their relations with elsewhere.