Current spatial development trends in Cape Town ... low income housing projects and public investment in basic services are ..... Broadly there is support in.
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{published in Urban Forum, 2001, Vol. 12, No. 2, pp.119-138}
Divergent Development in SA Cities: Strategic Challenges Facing Cape Town
Ivan Turok and Vanessa Watson
Introduction South Africa’s new Unicity authorities face a formidable list of competing priorities for attention. Accelerated economic development is vital to increase jobs and incomes in a more competitive international environment. Substantial investment in social infrastructure and services is needed to meet basic needs and to reduce historic inequalities. Improved housing is required on a large-scale to address dire living conditions and continuing urbanisation. Congestion and crises in the transport system demand urgent investment. Fragmented local administrations need rationalisation and more effective management systems. This crowded agenda and the pressure for short-term delivery threaten to overshadow the need to reshape and integrate cities. Spatial integration has proved more complex and controversial than anticipated in the mid-1990s. Despite widespread agreement on the need for change, consistent policies and programmes have not been developed or implemented. Meanwhile, a new spatial-economic dynamic is affecting cities following a steady relaxation of earlier physical controls. In the absence of a coherent urban policy, these forces seem to producing increasingly unequal and dysfunctional outcomes. This paper examines contemporary patterns of development in Greater Cape Town and considers the role of spatial planning and socio-economic development policies. It argues that urban integration should become a more prominent goal of city, provincial and national government, pursued through targeted economic and social development programmes within a strategic spatial framework. The costs of continuing urban fragmentation, sprawl and segregation for individuals, society, the economy and the environment cannot be neglected, especially as they seem to be escalating. The first section analyses current spatial development trends across the city. Section two explains why they are a cause for such concern. The third section assesses the strengths and limitations of contemporary city planning policies. The final section outlines some planning ideas which would appear to be more appropriate to the changed context of Cape Town. 1. Current spatial development trends in Cape Town Historically, Greater Cape Town has had a more centralised physical form than other cities in South Africa. Radial transport routes fed high volumes of people and goods into the dominant Central Business District (CBD) and adjacent areas, which still accommodate the largest concentration of economic activity and employment. Old, relatively wealthy suburbs extend along two rail and road corridors to the south and north-east of the CBD. In the postwar Apartheid era, population growth and the imposition of racially-based residential
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segregation led to the designation of separate townships in the south-east periphery. They were built as dormitory suburbs with inferior housing, infrastructure and facilities. The economic geography of the city is currently changing to a more dispersed and decentralised structure. A net shift in office and retail activities is occurring from the city core to suburban centres and to new office and retail parks along the major freeways. Multipurpose ‘mega-projects’ such as Century City 1 are also being developed on under-used land in selected decentralised locations. They threaten the CBD and older suburban centres because they combine office, retail, residential and leisure uses in a controlled, high amenity environment. Meanwhile, the functions of the city centre are shifting towards tourism and entertainment activities, with retailing geared more towards lower income consumers. The decentralisation of industrial and commercial activity complicates the city’s monocentric structure but does nothing to alter the stark contrasts between rich and poor areas. The vast majority of private sector investment and job growth is occurring in or close to prosperous suburbs in the north and west of the city. These expanding employment centres are also less well served by the commuter rail and bus network than the CBD. The outcome is a more fragmented pattern of low density, car-oriented development in and around the affluent areas. These are also the expanding locations for middle- and high-income housing, much of which is being built within exclusive gated communities surrounded by high walls. Meanwhile, low income housing projects and public investment in basic services are focused on the Cape Flats where the price of land is lowest. Consequently, the overall pattern of development across the city can be characterised as polarised or divergent. Figure 1 shows the geography of investment in major industrial, office, retail and leisure projects completed during the last two years or in the pipeline. It is drawn from a substantial database of private sector investment in property held by the development agency WESGRO (2000). It indicates the strength of selected economic centres, mainly Tyger Valley and Milnerton in the northern suburbs, the Waterfront and CBD in central Cape Town, and Claremont in the southern suburbs. There has also been some private investment in dispersed locations across the city, but little of this has occurred in the populous but poor south-east. This remains a dormitory area with few signs of major private development, even in the priority zone of the Wetton-Lansdowne-Philippi Corridor. The airport is anomalous; it shows potential to emerge as a growth node, but through the development of warehousing and distribution activities rather than higher value added, or employment generating, functions. Another feature is the leap-frogging of development over the south-east sector towards Somerset West. Overall, decentralisation appears to be accelerating, reflected in 1
Century City is a striking example of a new exclusive style of development emerging in South African cities (Marks and Bezzoli, 2000). It is on an unprecedented scale (a 250 hectare site and R3bn plus development cost), and should ultimately comprise nearly a million square metres of retail and office floorspace, 3,700 high income residential units, 2,500 hotel rooms, a conference centre, theatre, theme park, multiplex cinema and other leisure and entertainment facilities. At such a scale it represents a serious threat to central Cape Town as an office location, and to the shopping malls at the Waterfront, N1 City and Tyger Valley. It is being marketed as a ‘city in itself’ because of its diverse amenities and is surrounded by a high wall with four access-controlled entry points and high internal security. There will be no scope for low-income housing or for informal traders to sell their goods and services to high-income consumers and visitors. In fact, the site had been zoned for housing until 1996 and would have been well suited to low- and middle-income units given its good location close to expanding employment areas in the north-west sector of the city. However, Blaauwberg Municipality granted the re-zoning to more intense commercial development on the basis of its contribution to the local rates base and employment. Political rivalry with Cape Town and Tygerberg may have been another influential factor.
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disproportionate property investment in outlying centres. For example, over the last five years there has been nearly five times as much new office development in decentralised nodes as in the CBD (Rode 2000). Figure 1 also shows the size and location of all subsidised formal housing projects that are in the pipeline or have been completed since 1994. It is drawn from a detailed audit recently undertaken by the Cape Metropolitan Housing Task Team (1999). The vast majority have been built on low cost peripheral land in places such as Philippi and Delft. The bulk of informal housing (backyard and free-standing shacks) is also in the south-east. The housing market is extremely weak or non-existent in large parts of this area because of the low disposable incomes, uncertainty over property rights, social instability and lending restrictions by the financial institutions. An unusually steep house price gradient in Cape Town and a general shortage of rented accommodation make upward mobility difficult for people wanting to move to better located neighbourhoods as their incomes improve. Many of those who have invested in home ownership are locked into areas with sparse facilities and poor access to opportunities. The trends in major private property development reflect a combination of market forces and institutional practices. They create a cumulative process of investment and development in the well-off areas, as growth feeds upon itself. Investor and occupier perceptions remain positive, confidence is sustained, and a relaxed planning regime ensures that land is readily available. We can see this more clearly by considering forces affecting the demand for and supply of property. In terms of demand, there is a strong locational pull of high income households in the northern and southern suburbs. These areas have been growing as a result of Cape Town’s relative economic prosperity encouraging in-migration from other parts of the country, as well as new household formation. In addition, the incomes of the most qualified sections of the labour force have been rising as a result of skill shortages created by shifts in the economic structure towards financial services, ICT industries and professional and managerial occupations. Wealthy neighbourhoods attract retail development and consumer services because of the strength of effective demand and customers’ desire for convenience. In addition, many firms owned by, and employing, people living in these suburbs have located there in order to reduce the time and cost of commuting to the CBD. There are also environmental factors tending to push businesses out of older centres. They include perceptions of deteriorating security, difficulties with parking, traffic congestion and litter. These in turn have influenced the social and physical character of the older centres and high streets and there has been a marked shift downmarket in some of these areas. Finally, there are differences in the quality and vintage of the building stock and infrastructure across the city. Most high street and CBD buildings are older than those in the decentralised nodes, so less able to meet the requirements of modern ICT and work processes. It is also fashionable for businesses to seek to boost their corporate image by occupying their own premises, rather than leasing space in a large building downtown. City centre property owners seem to have been lax about refurbishing older buildings and the local authority has been criticised for neglecting local services, so the CBD has become a less attractive business location over the last decade. Decentralised centres have benefited from active management and modern design, infrastructure and access arrangements.
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This last point touches on the importance of property supply. Development cannot be understood as a passive reflection of business demand for accommodation - it has a dynamic of its own. Financial institutions and property companies shape the development process within a framework of land-use regulation. They are driven by motives and assumptions which go beyond occupier demands and straightforward commercial calculations. Developers make judgements about the feasibility and location of projects, involving subjective assessments of risk and reward. They are inevitably affected by embedded beliefs, perceptions and fashions. There are at least three relevant dimensions to this. First, financial institutions mediate the response of developers to demand by providing investment and development funds. During the 1980s and early 1990s growth in savings and state restrictions on investment abroad created a surplus of funds in the country. Property was popular because of the belief that bricks and mortar was a safe investment. Decentralised development became fashionable and some institutions accelerated the trend by moving their own headquarters. Yet, by pouring funds into property they contributed to an over-supply and undermined the position of the city centres, including the buildings they owned themselves. Poor performance in the last few years has caused many to reduce their exposure to property and to invest more abroad. They have become more cautious about funding new projects, especially in unproven locations such as the south-east of the city. Second, landowners and developers play a catalytic role. Land speculation and opportunistic development appear to have become more common in recent years. Some landowners have come under greater financial pressure to sell land surplus to their requirements. Uncertainty created by the hiatus in statutory plans for Cape Town has also given more scope for speculative land trading and re-zoning. Developers influence occupier behaviour through their design concepts and marketing activities. Decentralised business parks are the current fad and promotional materials play upon people’s fears about crime and personal safety in the CBD. Third, local authorities have gone along with and even encouraged recent trends. They perceive the need to expand their own tax base by supporting development of any kind. Political rivalry between and within tiers of government has limited the capacity to take a strategic view. Rising unemployment has meant that the promise of extra local jobs and taxes has weighed heavily in decisions to endorse major new commercial projects whatever their wider costs and consequences for the functioning of the city. In many cases substantial subsidies have been provided through additional infrastructure and services. There has been no city-wide plan or framework to promote or regulate development in the interests of all the city’s people (Cape Town City Council 1999). The result has been continuity with the broad direction of past patterns and an apparent acceleration of growth in the northern suburbs. In some ways the obstacles to development in the south-east are the mirror image of forces promoting growth elsewhere, although there are dangers in over-generalising. Considering factors influencing the demand for property first, average household incomes are low and have been declining recently as a result of falling manual employment linked with manufacturing’s exposure to increasing international competition. Low incomes are offset to some extent by the large population of the south-east, which means that total spending power in this area must be substantial. Apart from this, skills and qualifications are relatively low, unemployment is high and the hazardous conditions of everyday life undermine social
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stability and environmental quality. Firms are reluctant to move to, or open branches in, the south-east because of concerns about the safety of employees and the security of premises and vehicles in transit. Plenty of low cost vacant land with access to the main freeways cannot offset the area’s poor image and the extra costs of security measures, especially as the public police service is patently underfunded and inadequate. There are also crucial institutional issues affecting the supply of property. They make it more difficult to organise development and meet even the existing local demand, let alone to establish new sources. One set of obstacles is the legacy of inadequate roads, drainage and other infrastructure in several places. In addition, major financial institutions look unfavourably upon investment proposals in the south-east in the belief that they have poor commercial prospects. Some admit they avoid the area, but say this is because development there requires specialised skills and knowledge of the local market and community politics. Past experience has been mixed and all sorts of rumours circulate within the property industry about successful and failed ventures. They contribute to the climate of uncertainty and apprehension, and result in very little speculative development taking place. So firms that might have considered locating in the area have no premises readily available to make it easy to move. Meanwhile, there is a lot of quality property readily available in the north and west. 2. The costs of divergent development One response to the social and economic problems of Cape Town has been that they should be addressed sectorally, i.e. that separate policies are needed to address the economy, poverty, housing, transport, the environment and so on. The implication is that the spatial or locational dimension of such problems is relatively unimportant. However, such a ‘spaceblind’ perspective on development needs to be challenged. Fragmented, sprawling patterns of urban development and high levels of income segregation impose major costs or externalities on individuals and society more generally. They include capital and operating costs for public services, costs for consumers and workers, costs for the environment and economy, and social and political costs. First, dispersed urban growth makes the capital costs of providing public utilities more expensive. Frank’s (1989) review of studies which attempted to estimate these costs concluded that this form of development increased the cost of infrastructure by between 40 and 400%. Servicing low density higher income suburbs is costly because the greater distances between dwellings necessitates longer pipes and cables and more concrete. Higher income residents rarely pay the full cost so public authorities effectively subsidise them. In the case of large-scale, low-income developments, usually near or beyond the metropolitan edge, either separate, additional processing facilities are necessary (e.g. new sewage treatment works or electricity sub-stations) or very long pipes and cables are required to link them to existing facilities, both at considerable cost. Second, the excessive distances, low levels of threshold and expansive spaces of dispersed urban development generate unnecessarily high operating costs for road-based public services (e.g. solid waste collection) and maintaining public open spaces. Many neglected, overgrown public open spaces have become havens for criminal activity on the Cape Flats. It is also common to see schools abandoning large areas of sports grounds and playing fields, as they can no longer afford to maintain them.
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The low density, fragmented nature of housing development on much of the Cape Flats, and northward to Atlantis, makes the provision of efficient public transport difficult as consumer thresholds can be too low to provide a frequent and effective service. The recent Moving Ahead transport study of the Cape Metropolitan Council (CMC 1999) identified the pattern of metropolitan land-use as one of the obstacles to providing a good public transport service at all times of the day. The cost of subsidising public transport to move large numbers of poor people from peripheral residential areas to jobs in more central industrial and commercial areas is particularly important. The Cape Town CBD and northern and southern suburbs contain 80% of all formal jobs in the city, but only 37% of the population, so a huge daily movement of commuters is necessary. Between 1990/1 and 1998/9 the cost of passenger rail subsidies increased by 11,1% p.a. and bus subsidies by 17,7% p.a. (CMC 1999). Together this currently amounts to R470m p.a. The subsidy of R 4500 p.a. for each commuter from Khayelitsha would be much better used to subsidise housing in a more accessible location. Third, one of the most serious impacts of divergent urban growth is the amount of money individual consumers have to spend on travel. A burden of high transportation costs is placed on the poorest households, which erodes their already inadequate disposable incomes. At worst it traps them within their own residential areas, with little alternative other than the informal sector as a source of livelihood. International standards suggest that the cost of commuting to work should not consume more than 2,5% to 5% of an individual’s income (Clark and Naude 1986). Currently the cost of public transport for residents of the Cape Flats amounts to between 8% (third class rail) and 15% (subsidised bus) of the average annual income (Clark and Crous 2000). As new low-income housing continues to be situated in peripheral locations, and as formal jobs continue to concentrate in the wealthier northern metropolitan area, so commuting distances are increasing. One-way trip lengths have reached an average of 16 km, on a par with renowned car dependent First World cities such as Los Angeles (15,3 km) (CMC 1999). The time spent commuting also has a big impact on daily living by reducing the time available to participate in family life, supervise children or attend night school. These travel patterns and associated subsidies generate problems of their own. For example, there is intense competition for passengers between minibus taxis and the national bus operator on the few very busy transport axes across the city. For five months during 2000 this developed into sporadic gunshot attacks on buses, which caused seven people to lose their lives, over 60 serious injuries, and brought havoc to the lives of commuters. The wider economic costs for the city included lost production, lost tourism resources and lost investment in the climate of uncertainty and fear. The attention of national and local politicians, officials and police was also diverted into crisis management and away from longer-term policy solutions. Fourth, sprawling development generates major environmental externalities. It makes inefficient use of land, a non-renewable resource, through the consumption of excessive quantities that may have value for agriculture, minerals, aquifer recharge potential and biodiversity. Dispersed urban growth in Cape Town has consumed large amounts of valuable agricultural land: between 1998 and 1993, 2,4 hectares of agricultural land were lost per day to urban development (B Gasson, pers com). Dispersed patterns of urban growth generating large volumes of traffic also have a significant affect on pollution. Levels of photochemical smog have risen sharply in Cape Town in recent years. This primarily effects the respiratory system, causing emphysema, asthma, chronic bronchitis and cancer. Pollution
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and congestion also damage the image, amenities and natural qualities of the city, which are among its major assets in competing for inward investment and tourism. In addition, dispersed, divided cities are high energy-consumers and vulnerable to the supply of oil, which is both non-renewable and unpredictable in its cost. Fifth, fragmented urban development affects economic productivity. Road congestion at particular times of the day slows the movement of commercial traffic and increases distribution costs. Lengthy commutes for workers reduces their productivity and punctuality and increases absenteeism. High transport costs reduce consumer spending and hence the level of consumption demand and associated jobs. These costs make the city less competitive as a business location compared with better functioning cities elsewhere. Furthermore, fragmented, low density urban environments are not conducive to creating opportunities for informal sector income generation: there are relatively few good locations where street trading and related activities can take place because of the dispersed nature of consumer thresholds. Sixth, there is growing evidence in other parts of the world that the ongoing segregation and concentration of lower income people into particular parts of the city (i.e. social and spatial exclusion) exacerbates levels of crime in these areas (see Borja and Castells 1997:82). A recent study in American cities found that spatial segregation was the most significant factor of all the variables which accounted for the homicide rate in black urban areas (Borja and Castells 1997). High crime rates lock poorer areas into a downward spiral of insecurity, low private investment, low property values, greater poverty and deprivation. This dynamic was revealed in graphic detail in a recent commission of enquiry into conflict on the Cape Flats (Moosa 1998). It showed how high unemployment and poverty generate intense competition for limited resources such as land, shelter and fuel. The pressures are intensified by the inflow of new rural migrants with even fewer resources and formal skills. Local gatekeepers (or ‘warlords’) take advantage of peoples’ insecurity and the weak governance of the area. They allocate sites and other scarce resources in return for financial payments, loyalty and favours. Rivalry between them means an ongoing struggle for territory and power, which periodically breaks out into conflict and violence. This causes injury, trauma and social dislocation among innocent bystanders. The police are far too stretched to cope, leading to their demoralisation and implication in crime. The emergence of new democratic leaders and institutions committed to providing formal housing and public services represents a direct threat to the income and power of the traditional gatekeepers. So they exploit grievances and tensions within the community to undermine their authority and to sabotage public development projects. Power struggles delay progress and add to ordinary people’s frustration, creating a climate of confusion, mistrust and intolerance. Any inadequacies in consultation on the part of public bodies cause disproportionate suspicion and criticism. Criminal elements exploit the situation to commit acts of theft and violence against public officials and property, so municipal staff become apprehensive and demotivated, and delivery is delayed. The vicious circle of crime, insecurity, poor housing, ill-health and stress within the community hampers progress, undermines confidence and damages the prospects of attracting private investment and generating a development momentum.
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Seventh, while the new Unicity government opens up the opportunity to deal with the problems of the metropolitan area as a whole, it will inevitably face difficult political tensions arising from the divided and unequal geography of the city. These divisions are likely to arise between the demands of the main tax base and the formal economy on the one hand, and the demands of the poor majority on the other. This split will require astute political leadership able to promote an integrated city vision and common city-wide interests in order to rise above the competing and sometimes parochial claims of local groups and vested interests. This section has argued that the spatial form of urban development in Cape Town imposes a wide range of individual and social costs on the metropolitan area and that the lower income population bears the brunt of this burden. Consequently, attempts to address the issues of poverty, economic growth and environmental quality cannot ignore the basic and underlying role of space. 3. Current metropolitan spatial planning efforts In the light of these problems and imperatives for spatial planning, the question needs to be asked whether past and current efforts at spatial planning in the city have been adequate or appropriate. The current metropolitan spatial planning initiative, which culminated in the production of the Metropolitan Spatial Development Framework (MSDF) began in 1989 in response to the inadequacies of existing, nationally formulated, Guide Plans for Cape Town. The principles, goals and strategies of the MSDF were subject to public stakeholder debate as part of the Western Cape Economic Development Forum in 1993-5, and were then set out in the MSDF Technical Report (CMC 1996). The intention on the part of the CMC spatial planners (and their Council) was that this plan would be statutorised in terms of the Land Use Planning Ordinance of 1985, and to this end it was circulated (a number of times) for comment and was formulated into a draft Statutory Document in 1999. Statutorisation has not occurred, partly due to a lack of consensus on the plan between the six municipalities and the metropolitan authority, and partly due to legislative processes at the Provincial level which have placed in question the future of the 1985 Ordinance. The 1996 Technical Report is what Mandelbaum would refer to as a “classic statement in the urban design tradition” (1990:350). It is 107 pages long, carefully argued and illustrated, and culminates in a coloured map of Cape Town indicating the desired spatial vision of the city twenty years hence. It is a heroic, modernist plan, not uncommon in large cities, both in South Africa and elsewhere. The spatial concepts which underlie it (the ‘compact city’ idea) had become increasingly popular in other parts of the world in the late 1980s, and they found their political moment in South Africa in the early 1990s when more progressive planners were searching for an alternative to the spatial forms being promoted by apartheid ideologies of race and exclusion. The spatial problems identified in the Technical Report resonate closely with many of those discussed above: the plan recognises the problems caused by a spatially segregated, divided city, where urban opportunities are largely inaccessible to the majority of the population, and where patterns of fragmented and sprawling development give rise to a range of public and individual costs. The ‘development principles’ adopted by the plan (equality of opportunity, social justice, sustainable development, and openness and accountability) and the
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‘development goals’ 2 recognise the need to foster both redistribution and economic growth (although priorities are not debated) and the importance of both the plan product and the plan process. The ‘spatial guidelines’ state that the intention of the plan is to manage resources sustainably, to contain sprawl, to intensify development, to achieve urban integration, to redress spatial imbalances and to create quality urban environments. These guidelines, or goals, are in keeping with current national legislation (the Development Facilitation Act of 1995, section 3) which lays out desirable spatial planning principles, and they have been, and still are, widely supported by those concerned with spatial issues in Cape Town. The Technical Report (CMC 1996) sets out four main spatial strategies aimed at achieving its vision for Cape Town. Two of the strategies have been relatively uncontested; the proposal to create and hold an urban edge to protect agricultural land on the urban periphery and to thereby encourage intensification within the city, and the proposal to identify and protect a Metropolitan Open Space System (MOSS). However, the proposals to direct public and private investment into a metropolitan scale ‘node’ in the Philippi area, and into a system of ‘activity corridors’ linking the main metropolitan nodes and extending into some of the poorer townships, have proved to be highly contentious, particularly given the implication that the location of investment would be legally enforced through the statutorisation of the plan. Broadly there is support in principle for the goal of reorienting public and private investment towards the Cape Flats and the metropolitan south-east and the goal of establishing the preconditions for a more efficient metropolitan public transport system through a system of activity corridors. It is the form of representation of these nodes and corridors on the map and the proposed use of legislative control to achieve these strategies that has been contested. More specifically, the following problems have emerged in relation to the form of the spatial proposals and their proposed method of implementation. First, the map (Figure 2) presents itself as a conceptual framework (and therefore not precise in terms of location) intended to guide detailed municipal planning and development control, but aspects of the map itself cannot be considered conceptual. At a scale of 1:300 000 the urban edge can almost be related to locations on the ground, the activity spines are precisely defined as extending to 100m either side of the central route, and the corridor as extending to 1 km either side. The spines and corridors are intended to contain a mix of uses and higher density residential development. Certain municipalities have complained that this detail erodes their autonomy (local planning should be able to question this definition of activity spines and corridors) and that it will create confusion in the development control process. For example, developers could cite the spine or corridor measurements, or attempt to pinpoint edge locations, in support of their proposals (even though the MSDF, as a structure plan, would not confer development rights). The level of detail reflects the desire on the part of the metropolitan planners to ensure that corridors, nodes and edges are planned in a particular way, but in doing so they would inevitably encroach on municipal planning efforts, particularly if the plan were to be statutorised. A second criticism, closely related to the first, is that the plan has strong elements of the static, blueprint planning approach. It presents a spatial vision of a future Cape Town, but does not suggest how to achieve it. It does not indicate strategically where investment 2
Development goals: equity and access, vitality and choice, prosperity, social well being, uniqueness, adaptability, safety, openness and accountability, efficiency and sustainability.
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should be directed, or where the priority areas are. Rather, there has been a tendency to view plan statutorisation as implying implementation, with a heavy reliance on control mechanisms to achieve the spatial vision. 3 Further, the concepts of ‘map’ and ‘plan’ are collapsed into one. The graphic attached to the draft Statutory Document is a map of how a spatial vision will appear in the future. A ‘plan’ should suggest where intervention should occur, where priority areas lie, what kinds of action could occur there, and what processes and tools should be used to achieve desired outcomes. Third, the MSDF has been criticised for being based on an assumption that it is possible to legislate where private sector investment should locate (on the defined corridors and nodes), when in fact much of it is scattered or responding to a spatial logic of freeway access and amenity. Large-scale, private-sector office and shopping centre developments, in particular, are tending to occupy sites outside corridors and nodes. Spatial plans simply do not have the power to dictate to private investors. It is possible, for example, that some investors may decide not to locate in the city at all if they are forced into locations they consider inappropriate. The MSDF is also considered over-ambitious in its aim to direct economic activity into particular locations, especially areas of deep poverty, such as the Philippi node. A more sensitive, strategic approach might have disaggregated economic activity, established the types best suited to new nodal or corridor locations, and formulated concrete practical measures to ensure that this was realistic and feasible. A fourth criticism has been that the MSDF is based on an out-dated understanding of the operation of the space-economy of Cape Town. For instance, it does not take into account the new locational dynamics driving private investment or the growing north-south movement patterns which are responding to the spatial shift of economic activity to the northern suburbs. A linked concern is that spatial and economic planning in the city have been pursued in relative isolation from each other. The line-function organisation of the CMC has encouraged planning in various departments to take place without proper coordination. Previous attempts to construct an Integrated Development Plan (IDP) have not overcome this. Part of the problem arises because spatial planning has been viewed as a sectoral activity, or specialisation, which needs to be in a separate department from economic development, transport planning, housing and environmental management. As a result spatial planning has been pursued in some isolation from forward thinking in other departments, and the need to think in a co-ordinated, spatially-sensitive way about economic development, poverty alleviation or the environment has not occurred to the extent that it should. One needs to look beyond the MSDF if the public sector’s role in influencing the ongoing pattern of spatial division and exclusion is to be fully realised. Some departments of national government have produced policies which are inconsistent with the goal of spatial integration. For example, the main subsidy offered by the Department of Housing makes it extremely difficult to provide housing other than in the form of one-house one-plot, rather than the higher density, better located housing needed to integrate separate areas and to build up activity corridors based on public transport. The Department of Transport has only recently adopted policy guidelines (Moving South Africa) which are compatible with integrated urban development based on public transport. 3
This leaves aside, for the moment, very recent thinking amongst CMC spatial planners around the issue of implementation.
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Within the CMC the MSDF has still not reached the point of active implementation. Spatial planning at the municipal level, which is intended to guide the development of land locally, has been slow to take shape and has been fraught with conflict over whether the MSDF should be accepted. Finally, local government in Cape Town has undergone a difficult period of transition which has hampered its effectiveness and efficiency, including its ability to formulate and implement forward planning policies. In essence, therefore, there has been no serious attempt on the part of public authorities to date to address the ongoing urban spatial fragmentation and polarisation of development. Public sector investment in infrastructure and services has begun to address the historical imbalances across the city and to shift selected budgets towards the south-east. However, that investment has been geared overwhelmingly towards household consumption rather than encouraging productive activity that will boost jobs and incomes. New schools, clinics, libraries, community centres and recreation facilities also tend to have been planned and built independently of each other, resulting in a dispersed spatial pattern. They have not been used to reinforce specific nodes of activity and create places with a critical mass of related amenities. 4. A future strategic planning approach An important opportunity for a fresh start has been created with the rationalisation of local government and the formation of a single Unicity authority. The Cape Town Unicity has greater power, resources and scope than local government has ever had to address the inefficiencies and inequities caused by the present spatial structure of the city. It can transcend institutional fragmentation and territorial rivalry by establishing a more coherent, spatially-informed development strategy for the city. It is important that this is not a narrowly-defined, control-oriented spatial plan limited to land-use considerations, but rather a broader strategy aimed at promoting redistribution and poverty alleviation, facilitating economic growth and development, and improving environmental quality. The strategy should provide a framework within which these aims can be pursued together and any tensions and trade-offs between them can be reconciled. That will mean becoming more sensitive to the social and economic opportunities that are created or constrained by particular configurations of the built environment. The geography of neighbourhoods and cities and the access they afford to opportunities matter a great deal, especially to the poor. The strategy should also provide a mechanism for mobilising different sources of funding and integrating mainstream sectoral budgets so that resources are deployed to best effect. That implies a stronger commitment to positive planning and implementation than has been typical in the past. Some important new ideas which could take these themes forward are emerging in international planning thinking and practice. There is a recognition that cities are more open to external economic, social and political influences than they used to be, that national and international trade and investment flows have become more significant, and that some sections of the labour force are more mobile (Allen et al 1998; Graham and Healey 1999; Marcuse and Van Kempen 2000). Consequently, city planners have less control over local patterns of development. One of the implications is that city planning has to become more strategic, targeted and action-oriented, and less concerned with comprehensive control of the territory. Planning needs to help position the city into wider national and international economic relationships and balance this with meeting local needs for service delivery and creating liveable environments. This form of planning has fewer expectations about its ability to plan the city comprehensively, but is more ambitious about ensuring
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implementation of priority projects and programmes. The approach has been associated with the city of Barcelona, but is now being attempted in a range of cities, including some in developing countries. Borja and Castells (1997) capture many of these cases, from which several general characteristics can be discerned. There is a metropolitan development vision embodying a spatial dimension. Its principles are firm, whereas the precise spatial form which these principles take is flexible. Important spatial principles include achieving better access to employment opportunities and public facilities, overcoming spatial segregation and exclusion, and ensuring environmental sustainability. Some aspects of this vision require planning at the metropolitan scale, including environmental protection, metro-wide infrastructure and public transport, and thinking about the economy of the city as a whole. However, a central purpose of the vision is to identify a series of urban transformation projects. Such projects are intended to promote spatial integration, at the local and city-wide scales, and to allow planning and implementation to proceed in tandem. They are focused on particular localities although their large scale means they have an impact on the overall functioning of the city. Transformation projects are ideally located in the zones between better-off and poorer areas of the city in order to help knit them together, but are also linked into city-wide movement routes to maximise accessibility. They are initiated by the public sector but thereafter managed by a partnership including the private sector. The involvement of the latter is important in mobilising additional investment and helping to alter attitudes. Such projects have multiple functions, and the inclusion of employment creation, entertainment and leisure, shopping and housing creates possibilities for cross-subsidisation from profitable activities to address basic needs and poverty. High quality urban design and public spaces are necessary to create distinctive, attractive places which facilitate social integration and attract investment. Such urban transformation projects are not once-off actions. The object should be to plan for a series of them, which gradually alter the balance of activity across the city, improve the way in which it functions and extend investment progressively into the poorer districts. The approach recognises that equity does not mean making all parts of the city the same and the acknowledgement of cultural diversity and multicultural planning is an important value. Related to this, transformation projects require strong political backing. Some cities have set up large, metro-wide stakeholder councils to oversee and support them, and community participation has to be built in from the outset to ensure constructive dialogue around community needs and opportunities. In addition, close and independent monitoring is important to expose the tensions and power struggles that are bound to emerge when resources are concentrated in this way. One of the institutional preconditions for this approach is said to be the creation of dedicated multi-disciplinary, cross-departmental and perhaps even multi-agency professional teams within the implementing authority. This team is answerable to the chief executive officer and to the stakeholder council, but not to individual departmental heads. This helps to build organisation-wide support and to co-ordinate departmental actions. In many cities spatial planners are the overall team co-ordinators, although the projects specifically link staff with expertise in economic development, social policy and environmental management. It is important that the projects have their own dedicated budgets for capital expenditure to provide flexibility and rapid response.
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Cape Town has a little experience of a similar kind of initiative. The Wetton-Lansdowne Corridor Project attempted to integrate planning and implementation in this part of the city, albeit with a narrower range of stakeholders and over a larger area than most transformation projects. It benefited from official backing by the National Department of Transport as one of seven national Spatial Development Initiatives. However, it lacked wider support from central or provincial government and once the Transport Department’s funds tailed off, the local authority’s commitment also waned. It has come to be seen as the property of the planning department rather than a corporate effort (Tait et al 1999), progress has slowed, several staff have left and it currently lacks the resources and political support to achieve its intended effects. Transformation projects do not absorb all the public investment and staff resources in the metropolitan area, since direct poverty alleviation and capacity building measures are still needed in the poorest areas. There are also more immediate actions which need to be considered at a metro-wide scale. There is an important need to monitor the supply and takeup of land across the city in order to begin to exercise more influence over the location and character of new development. Public authorities could scrutinise major commercial proposals more closely in order to negotiate greater public benefits. These might include some obligation on developers to provide public amenities, social housing or community facilities, and cost recovery on public investment in infrastructure. Such negotiations would need to be based on explicit development principles and standards to ensure consistency and to avoid piecemeal decisions. Public consultation and debate around such issues would give people a greater understanding of the city’s inefficiencies and inequities and help to build a stronger consensus around the need for, and shape of, reconfiguration. Conclusion There is a gulf between Cape Town’s impoverished townships and its affluent areas, which appears to be widening in important respects. Development trends are tending to reinforce spatial divisions and fragmentation rather than assist urban integration. The consequences are costly to the poor majority through separation from economic and social opportunities. There are costs too for the wider urban economy and society arising from inefficient transport patterns, social disruption linked to concentrated poverty, and lost investment and jobs as a result of crime and insecurity. There is an urgent need for practical policies and concrete actions in pursuit of urban integration. The new Unicity authority offers considerable scope for an invigorated approach. There is useful experience to build upon within the city, including strategic planning frameworks and expertise in project implementation. This needs to be drawn together, reviewed in several important respects and given stronger political backing, financial muscle and technical support. The concept of a metropolitan development vision could be used to promote common city-wide interests and generate greater commitment to spatial, economic and social integration. The idea of urban transformation projects could provide the focus and stimulus to mobilise the efforts of diverse actors around practical schemes with long-term progressive potential.
Acknowledgements
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This paper draws on longer research papers prepared by Ivan Turok during 2000 (Turok 2000) and Vanessa Watson for the Cape Town Unicity Commission in August 2000 (Watson 2000). Considerable thanks are due to all those who gave generously of their time to be interviewed and to provide information, unfortunately too numerous to mention all by name. We are solely responsible for the analysis and interpretation expressed here.
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Figure 2: Metropolitan Spatial Development Framework
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