The City of Cape Town and the African Centre for Cities (ACC) are offering embedded research opportunities at the City of Cape Town Municipality for the 2016–2019 period, in support of the City’s development and implementation of a transit-oriented development (TOD) strategy.
The attached document offers a brief overview of what the City broadly understands TOD and its elements to be, and possible areas of research that could be explored. The three main areas relate to the three words of the term “TOD”: “transit” (the public transport system itself); “oriented” (managing the interface between public transport and development, including through the use of various financial and legal instruments); and “development” (urban planning and land use regulation to ensure urban form that supports effective public transport). Relevant fields of study include urban planning, transport studies and property economics and public finance.
The City and ACC would like to invite expressions of interest from potential or existing PhD candidates to participate in this funded programme. Two opportunities are available, each with bursaries of up to the value of R250,000 per year for up to three years. Each opportunity assumes an embedded period of a maximum of the equivalent of 6 months per year. Researchers would be embedded in the Spatial Planning & Urban Design Department, Transport for Cape Town or another department of the City of Cape Town, depending on the area of research interest mutually agreed between the researcher and the City. The two candidates would spend the rest of their time at the University of Cape Town working on their PhD theses, which would be based on the work they would be doing at the City (the intention is that the two theses would be submitted by the end of 2019).
Expressions of interest should include an up-to-date CV and a motivation letter, including a proposed area of research interest within the ambit of transit-oriented development. Interested parties will thereafter be invited to a discussion with the African Centre for Cities and City of Cape Town representatives. We reserve the right not to appoint.
Relevant documents can be downloaded from the ACC website. Questions of clarity, requests for supporting documentation and/or submissions should be made to Dr Rike Sitas of the African Centre for Cities by 18 July 2016.
