Foreword by President Nelson Mandela

The Urban Development Strategy - Remaking South Africa's Cities and Towns

Urban areas are the productive heart of the economy, but the majority of the urban population live in appalling conditions far from their places of work. Urban areas are extremely inequitable and inefficient due to decades of apartheid mismanagement. We need to massively improve the quality of life of our people, through creating jobs and deracialising the cities. By mobilising the resources of urban communities, government and the private sector we can make our cities centres of opportunity for all South Africans, and competitive within the world economy. The success of this will depend on the initiative taken by urban residents to build their local authorities and promote local economic development.

The urban development strategy of the Government of National Unity must be informed by the collective wisdom of our people and unite their efforts for development. This is therefore a discussion document which requires your comment. We call on individuals and organisations across the country to discuss, criticise, add to and improve this document.

The RDP office will collate these comments, which should be submitted before the end of January 1996. On the basis of these inputs government will publish a White Paper on urban development.

We hope that you will seize this opportunity and make your contribution to implementing the Reconstruction and Development Programme.

NELSON R. MANDELA
PRESIDENT

Comments on this Discussion Document

Comments should be submitted to:

The deadline for submission of comments is 31 January 1996

Executive Summary

"Remaking South Africa's Cities and Towns"

Urban Development In a National Context

Estimates of the present urban population vary between 19.6 million and 26 million: but there is a distinct growth pattern and by 2020, 75 per cent of the population will five and work in these cities and towns. Cities and towns generate 80 per cent of GDP Better performing urban areas are therefore vital for alleviating poverty and to create a more equitable society. They hold the key to speeding up economic growth and enhancing South Africa's global competitiveness.

The design and implementation of an Urban Strategy is vital to create better performing cities and towns. This strategy will be:

The Urban Vision and Strategic Goals

The government's vision is that, by 2020, the cities and towns will be:

This leaves the Urban Strategy with seven strategic goals:

Urban Realities

The urban sector is characterised by-.

Implementing the Urban Strategy

Drawing on the joint efforts of various government Departments, the different levels of government and through partnerships with the private sector and community interests, the strategy will be implemented with the following emphases:

There are five mutually-reinforcing priority action areas for the Urban Strategy.

1 Integrating the Cities and Managing Urban Growth

Goals are to integrate the cities and towns, including a special focus on rebuilding the townships; create more jobs, housing and urban amenities through integrated development planning; reduce commuting distances between the workplace and residential areas; facilitate better use of underutilised or vacant land; introduce environment-sensitive management of development; and to improve urban transport, especially public passenger transport.

Key elements of this strategy are:

2 Investing In Urban Development

Investment will aim at upgrading existing and constructing new housing; restoring and extending infrastructure services; alleviating environmental health hazards; encouraging investment; and through providing job opportunities and social and community facilities. The Municipal Infrastructure Investment Framework (MIIF) sets out the key policy framework in this regard.

The aim is thus a sustainable and goal-orientated strategy, But action has already started. The major initiatives in this regard are:

3 Building Habitable and Safe Communities

The strategy pursues human and social objectives as much as economic and physical development. For the purpose of its social objectives, it will concentrate on:

4 Promoting Urban Economic Development

In the fight of the economic potential of cities and towns, attention must be focused on enhancing the capacity of the urban areas to generate greater economic activity, to achieve growth and competitiveness, and to alleviate urban poverty, and to maximise direct employment opportunities and the multiplier effects from the implementation of urban development programmes.

Assertive Local Economic Development (LED) strategies to retain, expand or attract economic activity must be instituted. A policy framework to promote LED is being developed by a LED Workgroup housed within the Masakhane Campaign. The design of fiscal and regulatory mechanisms to support LED is receiving attention and pilot projects involving partnerships between stakeholders are being formulated. These efforts are being aligned with the implementation of the new small, medium and micro-enterprise policy and the Public Works Programme.

5 Creating Institutions for Delivery

The urban strategy - like the entire RDP - requires considerable change in the way South Africans have gone about their business. In the public sector it means more goal orientated and better monitored management and development-focused priority setting. Interdepartmental and intergovernmental coordination will have to be improved. It also requires a partnership approach between the public and private sectors and communities. In short, the institutional implications - and requirement, - of this strategy are far-reaching and challenging. Significant transformation, change and capacity budding are required.

The transformation of local government within a wider context of public sector transformation and refocused and reshaped fiscal and financial arrangements will be of major significance. The Local Government Transition Process is one core element of this strategy, while the Extension of Municipal Services Programme aims to back up local government transition by restoring, improving and extending municipal service provision, in concert with the Masakhane Campaign.

Finally the strategy outlines the roles of the key role players within and outside of government in the pursuit of this strategy. Throughout, the central government will seek to open the way for other levels and the private sector to perform their roles effectively. Arrangements to enhance coordination and cooperation within the public sector and between government and other role-players also receive some specific attention. The Urban Development Task Team will provide a key mechanism in this regard.

CITIES AND TOWNS AFTER 2000

The Urban Strategy must prepare the way for urban growth on a significant scale. This document is the first step in the formulation and implementation of the strategy. It is imperative now to move rapidly to the execution of urban development programmes and projects; to monitor and evaluate these against key performance indicators and to upgrade information systems, and to undertake the implementation of the Urban Strategy with widespread participation by all urban citizens.

Urban Development Strategy

1. Urban Development in a National Context

Following a global trend, South Africa is experiencing significant urban growth. Demographers use varying definitions of "urban" and "rural" but their figures indicate that between 19.6 million (48 per cent) and 26 million (65 per cent) of all South Africans already five in metropolitan areas, cities and towns. These urban areas account for some 80 per cent of South Africa's Gross Domestic Product. As economic activities and social and cultural opportunities expand in our cities and towns, urbanisation will persist. By 2000, the urban population will be above 70 per cent of the country's total. By 2020, this proportion will likely have risen to 75%.1

URBAN SECTOR

  • Generates 80% of the GDP
  • Over 60% of the population
Economic
Provides Infrastructure for a manufacturing base, and support to small and medium enterprises

Linkages with rural areas

Fiscal
Generates the majority of Government revenue

Social
An institutional and fiscal vehicle for equity and access to services

In the future, then, the urban centres, particularly the metropolitan areas, will function to an even greater degree than today as the social, economic and demographic heart of the country. The success of the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) will largely depend on the progress made in these areas. Better working cities and towns are thus crucial to government strategies for eradicating poverty and for creating a more equitable society. They are also vital to restoring and speeding up economic growth and widening its impact, and to enhancing the global competitiveness of the national economy.2

The Government of National Unity believes that the design and implementation of an Urban Strategy is a precondition for the creation of better performing cities and towns. This strategy must be motivated by an Urban Vision - a realisable vision of the cities and towns we wish to live and work in 25 years from now in the year 2020.

The GNU has already taken steps to address the immediate and future needs of the urban population. The aim is to diminish the social inequities and economic inefficiencies which impair the functioning of South Africa's cities and towns. These are first necessary steps towards realising this vision.

The Government of National Unity is wholly committed to projecting a positive vision and to promoting a development strategy for the urban sector. To this end, the interdepartmental Urban Development Task Team has drafted this Urban Strategy discussion document. Appropriately, this was done under the auspices of the Department of Housing and the Ministry in the Office of the President (the Reconstruction and Development Ministry) with technical support from the Development Bank of Southern Africa in particular. The drafting process entailed months of consultation with national, provincial and local government departments and officials, urban policy makers and experts and other urban stakeholders.

Remaking South Africa's Cities and Towns is now being put forward for discussion to take cognisance of the widest possible range of views. On the basis of the comments received, the Urban Strategy will be elaborated and published as formal government policy. In this manner, government intends to craft an Urban Strategy which fully addresses the practical concerns of all South Africans involved in the urban environment. The strategy is aimed at national and provincial government departments, local authorities and other role players in the private sector and urban communities. For this purpose, this strategy document:

2. The Urban Vision and Strategic Goals

Urban visions help to give direction, to identify and create opportunities, to create consensus, to mobilise resources, and, finally, to achieve results.3 The Government of National Unity has a dear and positive vision of a desired future for South Africa's cities and towns.

2.1 Towards 2020

The next 25 years will see significant urban growth. This growth, coupled with economic expansion, will provide real opportunities to eradicate urban poverty and eliminate housing and service backlogs. The benefits of this growth must be fairly distributed to all. In this way we can meet the goals of providing shelter and affordable services and generating employment for all urban dwellers.

The cities and towns of 2020 will be:

2.2 Strategic Goals

This Vision mandates seven main goals for the Urban Strategy:

3. Key Considerations

In proposing an urban agenda in fine with the Urban Vision and the strategic goals it motivates, Remaking South Africa's Cities and Towns couples priorities for action to core policies. These policies, which will lead to changes in legislation where required, steer an integrated set of programmes and projects. Altogether, this offers an Urban Strategy which is principled, practicable and progressive.

This means that:

Second, the strategy is progressive in the sense of forward moving. The legacy of urban apartheid must be overcome. At the same time, the strategy must look to the future. Cities are engines of change. Urbanisation should not be viewed as a threat: the opportunities it provides to remake our cities and towns as vehicles capable of moving many of our country's people out of poverty, squalor and environmental degradation must be seized.

4. Urban Realities

The Urban Strategy aims to address key realities and challenges. This section briefly explains the government's understanding of South Africa's urban realities. For this purpose, it is necessary to first place urban development in a national context and then to outline some of the main features of South Africa's metropolitan areas, cities and towns.

4.1 Urban Areas and National Development

To place urban development in perspective, it is necessary to discuss briefly South Africa's urban settlement pattern and urban population, the links between urban and non-urban areas, the roles played by the different levels of the urban hierarchy in the regional (or provincial) context, and the implications this has for urban development planning.

4.1.1 Urban Settlement and Population

Cities and towns worldwide are grouped into different size classes based on economic, demographic, functional, and jurisdictional considerations. Various definitions and classifications are being used in South Africa and government will clarify this issue further through the interdepartmental Urban Development Task Team (see footnote). At this point, however, the government works from the premise that South Africa contains four principal city size classes:5

Urban Growth

  • Total urban population up to 26 million

  • Urbanisation level presently 65% of population

  • Urbanisation level of 75% in 2020

  • Current urban population growth rate of 3.1% per annum

The Urban Population
199548-65% (Metro - 70%)
200070%
202075%

Note. (Urban Growth and Urban Population boxes): These indicators were derived from figures of Central Statistical Services, Development Bank of Southern Africa and The Centre for Development and Enterprise. (Note that figures often differ due to definitions of urban, rural and peri-urban areas).

While estimates of the current population vary according to different definitions of 'urban' and "rural" areas, demographers agree that the proportion of South Africans who are living in urban areas will continue to rise.

The greatest concentrations of urban populations are in the three main metropolitan areas of Witwatersrand/Pretoria, Durban and Cape Town which together account for some 70% of the total urban population. South Africa's urban hierarchy is nevertheless not an unbalanced one, with the relative sizes of urban settlements from largest to small corresponding with international norms. The country's largest cities are not excessively large by international standards, and the rates of growth of the various tiers also appear to be normal. Hence there appears to be little reason to favour policies which may artificially induce or restrain growth in a particular centre, region or tier.

Despite variances, estimates of projected population growth in the urban areas generally suggest that there is little reason to expect the rate of urban growth to reach unmanageable proportions. Of course, if some unforeseen and severe environmental crisis emerges in the rural areas this could disturb matters, and there are a few other unpredictable possibilities on the health (e.g. Aids) and international migration frontiers.

For the most part, however, the implications of current demographic trends for urban policy are that:

4.1.2 The Links Between Urban and Non-Urban Areas

Today's urban growth puts into question the traditional dichotomy between urban and rural - between town and countryside. Many denser settlements are simultaneously urban and rural. Commuter townships established by apartheid planning are often on the outer edges of traditional cities. Circulatory migration blurs the distinction between urban and rural dwellers.6

These realities underscore the necessity of putting the Urban Strategy within the broader national development context. It should thus focus on cities and towns of all sizes, be coupled with a Rural Strategy and be seen in relation to regional development policy. Urban initiatives are therefore inextricably linked to efforts aimed at minimising the country's interregional inequities.

4.1.3 Metropolitan Areas, Cities and Towns within their Regions

The realities facing metropolitan areas, cities and towns must thus be understood in a regional context:

There is a need to base investment and support on potential, rather than on artificial incentives with no prospects of sustainable success. It is also essential to build the type of institutions which will harness potential and positively steer cities and towns towards greater prosperity. The government will - with stakeholders in these areas - creatively seek solutions, but it does not believe that it should intervene extensively. For example, steps are needed to link smaller cities and towns afresh to their immediate hinterlands or to enhance their links to other urban centres, regions and wider markets in general. As explained later, the GNU believes that stakeholders in each city and town should identify opportunities and strengths themselves. They should also manage strategies in their areas, rather than relying on interventions from the centre. At the same time government will seek to align strategic public investment with emergent growth centres and development corridors.

4.2 The Urban Areas Today

We turn now to conditions within urban areas themselves. The focus is on urban dynamics and structure; the relative significance of the apartheid legacy, the demise of the monocentric city, the scale and spread of cities and towns, and the strengths of the urban areas.

4.2.1 Urban Dynamics and Structure

Our cities and towns of all sizes, but especially the bigger ones which contain some 80% of the urban population, are marked by stark contrasts.

On the one side are formerly, white suburban neighbourhoods, segmented, especially in the bigger urban centres, by income and class. These typically well-maintained and well serviced low-density residential neighbourhoods intersperse housing with public and private amenities like parks and shops. Homes and facilities are increasingly joined by places of employment, located in high-rise office buildings and low-rise office and industrial parks. Such work sites are often clustered into larger concentrations of economic activity.

The other side is that of lower-income neighbourhoods, notably the townships and informal settlements. These areas encompass government-built 'matchbox' formal houses, single-sex hostels now often inhabited by both families and single people, and shacks.9 In recent times, informal shack settlements have become a feature of virtually every city and town, even though the scale of this trend differs sharply.

URBAN CHALLENGES

  • Ongoing urban growth

  • Displaced urbanisation with racial/spacial divisions

  • Ten years of low economic growth

  • Constraints on resources available to households and government

  • Local authority transition and capacity constraints

While levels of distress are not uniform, lower-income neighbourhoods are often marked by poverty and squalor. They tend to be simultaneously over-crowded and under-serviced.

They lack both formal retail facilities and community and recreational services, particularly open space. Deficient in essential infrastructure like roads, electricity, street fighting and waste disposal facilities, these areas are often environmentally hazardous to their residents. Typically situated at long distances from many economic opportunities,10 lower-income neighbourhoods also lack viable tax bases. This makes them fiscally dependent on the broader cities or on inter-governmental transfers. Violence and crime are widespread and there have been many symptoms of social disintegration in recent years.

In the major metropolitan areas and cities, city centres straddle these distinct urban worlds. These centres are still the point of interchange for a traditional hub/spoke public passenger transportation system - even though this has been partially superceded in the last decade by a more flexible minibus taxi industry. Today, as with city centres worldwide, they are less the literal and symbolic centres of urban fife than in the past. Particularly in Greater Johannesburg, the core city is increasingly under strain. Neglected residential neighbourhoods buckle under the strain of an influx of new settlers and immigrants. Multi-story industrial space is under-utilised or stands empty. Many white-collar office and retail jobs - the economic locomotive that draws a core city with it - have migrated to suburban business centres. The area is increasingly viewed as a zone of decay, insecurity and danger.

The city centres, including Johannesburg's, nonetheless still attract significant investment. As new residents, service providers and other economic actors arrive, the centres change function. They have the potential to thrive as vibrant spheres of public and economic life, provided that appropriate supportive interventions by the public and private sectors are made.

The problems in smaller urban centres are somewhat different, but here too is a challenge to overcome the spatial dispersion imposed by Michael-based measures. The distance between "town' and 'township" is often considerable and links (eg. transport) are often ineffective. Moreover, the fact that these are often perceived as wholly separate areas, often inhibits initiatives to tackle the challenges of urban integration.

4.2.2 The Collapse of Urban Apartheid

Urban apartheid's inheritance confronts city dwellers in the form of the characteristic inequities and inefficiencies briefly detailed above. But the statutory basis of the apartheid city has disintegrated in the past decade. Influx control collapsed in the face of popular resistance to grand apartheid's territorial separation. The dream of 'orderly urbanisation' faded in a similar fashion, as the impossibility of repressing urbanisation dawned on policy makers. Within urban areas, people defied the enforced separation of home and work. The Group Areas Act was thus actually abolished some time after the actual demise of effective residential segregation.

Furthermore, built-in spatial and functional inefficiencies increased the costs of building, operating, and maintaining the apartheid city's infrastructural systems and providing services to its residents. These costs outwore the capacity of the national fiscus, creating an impetus for change. The inability to sustain urban apartheid financially was intensified by the refusal of people to pay rental and service charges in protest against inadequate and inferior facilities and services provided by illegitimate municipal governments.

Urban apartheid became, quite literally, unsustainable. It has left behind a costly legacy of fiscal crisis, public sector inefficiency and conflict. This significantly complicates the task of urban reconstruction and development.

Addressing this legacy is a driving imperative for a national Urban Strategy. But meeting the goals of the Urban Strategy, as outlined above, clearly demands an understanding of the full complexities of the urban landscape. In this regard, it is important to perceive the non-statutory broad societal forces which are currently shaping our cities and towns.

THE APARTHEID CITY & TOWN

IN ADDITION TO BACKLOGS, OUR CITIES AND TOWNS ARE:

  • Sprawling and generally have low density

  • Inequitable

  • Inefficient, which slows economic growth

  • Costly to maintain (for example, annual rail and bus commuter subsidies largely arising from the form of our cities and towns, are in excess of R2 billion)

4.2.3 The End of the Monocentric City

Concurrent with the demise of statutory apartheid, long-run and powerful economic, social, and demographic forces are throwing into question the very model of the centralised industrial city upon which apartheid planning was based.11

The notion of 'city' itself is being redefined. The monocentric (or centralised) city, with its wedges or rings of distinct and detached land uses radiating out from a dominant centre, is being displaced. It is being transcended in both developed and developing countries by several currents.

One of these is the sheer scale and demographic weight of urbanisation across the world. The nature of economic production and distribution has also changed. Examples of this are the shift from multi-story to single-story industrial space, the switch in goods transportation from train to truck, and the telecommunications and information revolutions. Changing trends such as the greater use of the motor car, the demand for more space-extensive living, and changes in the nature and scale of retailing have also been significant influences.12

These currents have led to the emergence of a widely dispersed polycentric (or multi-centred) city form. This means - in spatial terms - several employment cores and various peripheral settlements. The new form, in fact, exhibits a general blurring of the long-held distinction between urban core and urban periphery.

In South Africa, the forces causing the demise of the apartheid city have operated alongside - and strengthened - the movement away from the monocentric city. The result is a recast urban form and a new style of urban life, spread across the city and spanning its social and economic dimensions.

This is the reality which should be accommodated in the Urban Strategy and which sets the parameters for planning and delivery.13

4.2.4 Scale and Spread

Two aspects of this great shift in urban life are particularly relevant to South Africa's urban sector.

The first is the new scale of our cities. The metropolitan areas and large cities are rapidly growing much bigger.14 These larger urban areas are now made up of hundreds of neighbourhoods which contain many communities of interest.

While some of these communities can be defined spatially by neighbourhood boundaries, others cannot. Neighbourhood and community are therefore no longer necessarily the same thing.

The second aspect, accompanying scale, is the extended spread or reach of urban areas. The distances and separations marking the apartheid city are now blown-out to greater proportions. Cities are now on a scale that used to be considered that of a region.

This spread is witnessed principally in the changing locations of jobs and homes. Recent research on informal settlements in KwaZulu/Natal, for instance, points to a new fluidity in the household settlement pattern.15 A spatial development framework for the Cape Metropolitan Area must plan for housing, jobs, and transportation systems across a vast, 4,500 square kilometre territory." Development Bank of Southern Africa research, now in progress, is exposing a more widelydispersed pattern of employment location for Greater Johannesburg and other metropolitan areas than has been acknowledged to date.

Yet, spatial mismatch continues in many cities. Concentrations of population often far outnumber work opportunities. In Greater Johannesburg, industrial and service jobs migrate northwards, ever further away from the large low-income townships and informal settlements in the south. The Durban Functional Region's economic activity and jobs are primarily in the centre and to the south. This means that the inhabitants of the residential areas to the north have to travel long distances to where employment and business are concentrated. The Cape Metropolitan Area's heavily populated south-east sector is vastly under-supplied with work opportunities.

This spatial mismatch is deepened as long as townships, under-served with economic and fiscal bases, remain dormitories despite their obvious potential. It will also intensify as long as the industrial areas adjacent to the townships continue to attract less investment amidst sectoral industrial restructuring. This trend will prevail and even accelerate if crime and violence remain endemic in these zones.

Uncontrolled spread in the form of what planners often call "sprawl," also incurs other costs.17 Despite lower land costs as compared to central city areas, the overall costs of new urban development can rise as the capital and operating costs of infrastructure services and public transportation facilities increase. Energy use also tends to multiply. Formerly open land, often valuable agricultural land, also gets built over, with negative effects on the integrity of the regional natural environment.

The necessity, then, for spatially and socially integrating a polycentric city is already on the urban agenda in South Africa. Given apartheid's legacy, this is arguably more the case thin virtually anywhere else in the world. Planning for integration must incorporate city cores and peripheries as currently defined - and must have the longer-term aim of destroying the periphery as both reality and idea.

This necessity is largely encountered in the major population concentrations, the large metropolitan areas and the large cities. However, intermediate cities and small cities and towns should not be overlooked. They face similar pressures as populations grow naturally and through in-migration. While development is not polycentric, the legacy of decentralisation and deconcentration policies has left these cities and towns with industrial zones and townships far away from town centres. Urban policy must therefore address the integration of these smaller urban complexes against the backdrop of growing demands for space and the need to correct the artificial racial and functional divisions imposed by apartheid and decentralisation in the past.

In facing the new challenges incurred by urban scale and spread, South Africans are not alone. AU over the world, city dwellers are struggling to find new terminologies, planning techniques, and delivery mechanisms for the expanded new city. As compared to the confidence of only a few years ago, it is now acknowledged that successful urban management is not assured in the current global situation of rapid urbanisation and massive urban growth. Extra and renewed commitment and effort is required from both urban inhabitants and planners.18

4.2.5 The Strengths of the Urban Sector

Amidst such growth and change, the strengths of the urban sector should not be forgotten:

5. Implementing the Urban Strategy: Points of Departure

5.1 Policies, programmes and projects

The aim of this strategy is effective urban reconstruction and development within a consistent policy framework.

To ensure that these priorities are met:

5.2 Towards a strategy of reprioritisation and reorganisation

National, provincial and local governments, in partnership with other stakeholders, will therefore be able to design and implement appropriate programmes and projects within a broad framework. Three points should be emphasised here:

5.3 An incremental strategy

Based on the urban realities and trends depicted above, the Government of National Unity believes that urban development towards the urban vision should be structured around five interlinked themes. These themes are:

Before focusing on the respective priorities and programmes, the incremental nature of the strategy must be emphasised.

While it is not possible to separate the implementation process into neatly defined sequential phases, it is nonetheless necessary to highlight the emphases which will apply as implementation of the strategy unfolds. These emphases are:

Against this background, the policies and programmes making up the Urban Strategy will now be discussed in terms of the five interrelated themes.

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