BRICS Cities: Facts and analysis 2016 was published in February 2017 by the South African Cities Network.
The publication has two parts. The first provides a comparative and analytical overview of urban development across the BRICS and in relation to cities in Africa. It introduces large cities in the BRICS and addresses three areas of thematic focus: transportation, green energy and innovation economies.
This section also compares and relates BRICS cities to Africa’s cities, which addresses one of the challenges of South Africa’s membership of the BRICS: South Africa is not comparable in size to other countries in the BRICS, especially China and India, with the real comparator in terms of economy and population being the entire continent of Africa.
The second part of the publication is a compendium of Factsheets on 31 BRICS cities. Each Factsheet provides general information on each city -- including on history, population, spatial form, economy, urban governance, and developmental challenges -- as well as the three themes listed above.
