High Stakes, High Hopes tracks the building of urban theorizing in a decade-long
urban research and teaching partnership in Cape Town, South Africa. An
argument for collaborative urbanism, Oldfield reflects on what was at stake in the
partnership, its creative evolution, its methodologies and epistemologies. She traces
the ways community activists, residents, students, and the author worked together, reframing
research and teaching in neighborhood questions and commitments. In doing
so, the book demonstrates how urban theorizing can be reoriented in activism and
urban struggle as sites of valid knowledge making. It contributes to an archive of
alternative kinds of urban knowledges, experiments that work to inspire more
varied forms of urban theorizing and writing.