Tanya Zack

Tanya Zack is a South African urban planner and writer whose work has focused on urban regeneration, contemporary migration, informal work, urban policy and affordable housing. Her writing in Wake Up This Is Joburg (Duke University Press, 2022) has been lauded for being amongst the freshest and most original material on an African city. It was included in the longlist of the 2024 Sunday Times/Exclusive Books Literary Awards. Her curiosity and compulsion to collect stories have broadened the scope of her intrigue to personalities who inhabit the spaces not often exposed in literature about Johannesburg. The products of her professional practice in Johannesburg's inner city, including an inner-city transformation policy, and a study of cross border shopping, are recognised as ground-breaking interventions. She grew up in a working-class suburb on the edge of the inner-city.