Warren Smit
Research Manager
AMALI Urban Governance Research Lab
Warren Smit is the Principal Investigator for the Urban Governance Research Lab as part of the African Mayoral Leadership Initiative. He is also the Research Manager of the African Centre for Cities (ACC), which he joined in 2008. His research interests include urban governance, planning, housing, and health. He holds a Master’s in City and Regional Planning and a PhD in Urban Planning from the University of Cape Town.
He previously worked as a researcher at the Urban Problems Research Unit (UPRU) at the University of Cape Town, the Built Environment Support Group (BESG) at the University of Natal in Durban, and the Development Action Group (DAG) in Cape Town. From February 2010 he was the manager of the CityLab programme (ACC’s research programme on Cape Town), and also co-ordinated the Healthy Cities CityLab (established 2009), the Urban Flooding CityLab (established 2009, ended 2013), and was involved in the Mistra Urban Futures network from its inception in February 2010.
In January 2016, Warren took up the position of Director of the Mistra Urban Futures Cape Town Local Interaction Platform, hosted at ACC until March 2021. Smit was the lead writer of the Urban Planning/Design Working Group of the Global Research Network on Urban Health Equity, a member of the WHO Expert Group on Housing and Health, and contributed to the WHO/UN-Habitat 2016 Global Report on Urban Health.