Return to ContentsThe world is undergoing an era of unparalleled urban transition, as urban populations grow by 3.8 per cent a year. Cities and towns are expanding by a million people a week. This growth is particularly visible in developing countries. Urban areas will hold more than half the world's entire population within a decade. By 2020, 25 years ahead, approximately 3.6 billion people will live in urban areas compared to 3 billion in rural areas 26. By that time in South Africa, over 20 million additional people may have to be supported in our cities and towns.
The Urban Strategy set forward in this document will prepare South Africa for urban growth on this scale. This future begins now. The investment made in the cities and towns over the next five years will crucially affect their structure and functioning as well as their capacity to accommodate and manage what is inevitable future growth.
This document should be regarded as the first step in the formulation and implementation of South Africa's Urban Strategy. The strategy must be refined and further developed in a mutual learning process between government and citizens of the cities and towns. Monitoring and evaluating the efficacy of the strategy in the terms of its stated goals will therefore be crucial. Key performance indicators will be developed and utilised to this end. Information systems will be rapidly upgraded to permit truly integrated development planning and budgeting. In these ways, the ability to adjust both policies and programmes in the light of experience will be greatly enhanced.
Moreover, policy makers at all levels, drawing on the experience of implementation, have the responsibility of communicating both their intentions and the lessons of experience to the citizens of cities and towns. The urban challenge is simply too vast and too important to be left to the 'experts" alone. The changes wrenching the urban areas and the steps being taken by the Government of National Unity to remake cities and towns must be understood as widely as possible so as to facilitate true and widespread participation in the urban reconstruction and development process.
In this way, starting today, together we will create the just and productive cities of tomorrow.
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At present, several different classifications are used for South Africa's urban sector by analysts and planners, creating uncertainty and confusion. This is compounded by new demarcations for provincial and local or metropolitan area boundaries. To promote definitional consistency for information and planning systems, government is resolved to provide a uniform classification system for the country's Metropolitan areas, Cities, and towns. As a Matter of urgency, an intergovernmental task team will be appointed under the auspices of the Urban Development Task team to investigate urban classification systems in the light of South African realities and to make recommendations for South Africa's urban sector.
Recent research in Bekkersdal on the western fringes of the Witwatersrand, indicates that a high proportion of informal settlement and backyard shack dwellers (47 and 21 per cent respectively) continue to maintain rural households. See 'Some Social Dynamics Concerning Urbanisation ad Homelessness in Bokkendal (Westonaria) Owan Crankshaw submission by Human Sciences Research Council and Centre for Policy Studies to Habitat II Process, 1994.
Paradoxically, and most importantly in South Africa, the relative economic decline of many small towns has not been accompanied by a population decline. On the contrary, political uncertainties and, more particularly, a loss of jobs on the farms has led to a rapid growth of population in these towns, supplemented by people who cannot stay on the land, but who wish to or must remain in the local region Inevitably this growth has been accompanied by increasing levels by poverty, unemployment and inequality. The situation demands an active policy response.
"Reconstructing the South African countryside: The small towns, "Development Southern Africa, 11, 3, 1994, p.354.
Such problems cannot, of course, be seen in isolation. As a recent report puts it,
Poverty, land dispossession, overcrowded conditions on allocated land, low agricultural productivity and drought have all forced people from the rural areas to the cities, in hope of a better life.
Environment, Reconstruction and Development in the New South Africa, The International Development Research Centre, Johannesburg, 1994, p.58.
suburbanisation and spatial deconcentration have begun to create a more polycentric form of metropolitan development. This shift began a number of years ago, but is now occurring on much larger scale. Such deconcentrated patterns of industrial and residential development have emerged extensively around major cities such as Buenos Aires, Mexico City, Sao Paulo, Seoul and Kuala Lumpur (p. 721).
Unplanned, uncontrolled, and uncoordinated single-use development that does not provide for an attractive or functional mix of uses and/or is not functionally related to surrounding land uses, and which variously appears as low-density, ribbon or strip, scattered, leap-frog, or isolated development.
Arthur C. Nelson, letter to Planning, September 1994, p.33.
Sprawl in this definition does not equate necessarily to all low-density development and/or dispersal. As another planner argues,
in certain situations - and with true planning - dispersed settlement can actually have beneficial consequences. Sprawl is like cholesterol. There is bad sprawl and good sprawl. Its effects depend on the designers, planners, developers and public officials involved. As with cholesterol, moderation is the key.The issue is not whether should be dispersed or not - but whether it is ecologically sound. Both high and low-density settlements are possible, and probably desirable, if done with quality, equity, and environmental sensitivity.
"Sprawl Can Be Good," Frederick Steiner, Planning, July 1994, 14, p. 17.
Provincial tribunals will be responsible for government approvals for land development under the proposed Act, and will permit faster development decision-making, the resolving of conflicts between stakeholders, and greater community involvement in land development. The bodies will be staffed from the public service and outside land development experts. RDP funding for their operation, which should be used to leverage further funding, is envisaged for the 1095/96 financial year.
The global shift from government (as noun) to governance (as verb) is related to the universal recognition that formations within civil society need to be empowered to share responsibility for governance and to this end the institutions of government need 4 new citizen-orientated management approach.
"Local Transition and the Challenge of Sustainable Urban Development: The Greater Johannesburg Case," Mark Swilling and Laurence Boya, mimeo, 1994.
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