Urbanization, Agglomeration, and Economic Development in South Africa

This chapter reviews the arguments and evidence for the existence of a positive relationship between urbanization and economic development in South Africa. It identifies the main tenets of agglomeration theory, which stresses the importance of city size, density, and connectivity. These ideas are applied to fundamental features of urban development, namely the triangular relationship between the location of firms, households, and transport systems. The urban premium is strengthened by government investment in urban infrastructure and supportive institutions. Contemporary South African cities are scarred by the disjointed urban structure they inherited, which undermines productivity and inclusion. Government policies towards housing, land, and transport have done little to improve the morphology of cities and harness urbanization for widely shared prosperity.

A Community of Practice Approach to Planning Water Sensitive Cities in South Africa

As South African cities urbanise alongside climate change, resource constraints, and socio-economic challenges, water sensitive (urban) design (WSD) is slowly gaining traction as a framework to address water security goals and entrench resilience. This article reflects on the progression of WSD in South Africa and discusses the broadening of its initial association with stormwater and physical infrastructure to include critical governance and institutional arrangements and social engagements at the core of a water sensitive transition. The approach is being adapted for the socio-economic challenges particular to South Africa, including basic urban water and sanitation service provision, WSD related skills shortages, a lack of spatial planning support for WSD, and the need for enabling policy. Since 2014, a national WSD Community of Practice (CoP) has been a key driver in entrenching and advancing this approach and ensuring that the necessary stakeholders are involved and sufficiently skilled. The WSD CoP is aimed at promoting an integrative approach to planning water sensitive cities, bridging the gaps between theory and practice and blending the social and physical sciences and silo divisions within local municipalities. Three South African examples are presented to illustrate the role of a CoP approach with social learning aspects that support WSD : (1) the “Pathways to water resilient South African cities” interdisciplinary project which shows the institutional (policy) foundation for the integration of WSD into city water planning and management processes; (2) the Sustainable Drainage Systems training programme in the province of Gauteng which demonstrates a skills audit and training initiative as part of an intergovernmental skills development programme with academic partners; and (3) a working group that is being established between the Institute for Landscape Architecture in South Africa and the South African Institution of Civil Engineering which illustrates the challenges and efforts of key professions working together to build WSD capacity.

Problematising concepts of transit-oriented development in South African cities

Transit-oriented development (TOD) is generally defined as planned high-density development containing a mixture of residential, retail, commercial and community uses around a transit hub and surrounded by a high-quality urban realm that prioritises the pedestrian (and more recently the cyclist) over the automobile. This article analyses the steps taken in Cape Town and Johannesburg to develop TOD schemes. In so doing, it problematises both the concept of TOD as a universal mechanism in which all cities apply a similar set of guidelines as well as the specific planning practices in South African cities. Drawing on the policy mobilities literature and specifically the emerging discussions of policy mobilities failure, I note the challenges and delays in implementing TOD in South Africa. It is not so much that TOD has been applied incorrectly as that it has been unable to stick in the local context. Rather than furthering the debate on whether a city should or should not promote TOD, viewing their planning through a policy mobilities lens highlights the urban politics of policymaking. Accordingly, the article presents a fine-tuned analysis of TOD as both a conceptual framework as well as a process for actually doing transport planning. Such a critical reading of the intertwined and overlapping practices of policymaking provides insights into the process of urban development and spatial transformation in (South/ern) Africa as well as across cities of the global south.

The now-times of (post) apartheid

This commentary explores the multi-temporalities of the pasts which relate to South African cities ‘now’. Inspired by Myriam Houssay-Holzchuch’s article in this volume, and the wider engagements of French scholars in the South African context, this commentary takes as a starting point Walter Benjamin’s idea of history as thought through ‘now-time’. In doing so, I assess the declining relevance of the ‘post’ in thinking the futures of South African cities.

NOTES ON SPATIAL-STRUCTURAL CHANGE IN URBAN SOUTH AFRICA -THE 1990s

Informal businesses used to be something that was only tolerated in the former black townships during the years of apartheid. Since then the informal business sector has become an integral part of the central business setup of cities in South Africa. It not only serves to widen the security net of the urban poor in cities, it also represents the outcome of the democratization process in the country over the past fifteen years. Yet, there has been a tendency amongst local authorities to take steps to reduce the footprint of this sector in the urban environment in recent years. This trend ties in with the new approach of government to transform South African cities to become ’world class’ centres - a step that is aimed at making the cities more visually acceptable to visitors from abroad. In this paper an attempt is made to demonstrate the importance of the informal sector within the urban business makeup and to show what role it played in the spatial-structural evolution of the urban economies during the 1990s. The paper analyzes the structure of the urban business sector as a whole and structurally links the formal and informal sectors, demonstrating the importance of both sectors in the economic makeup of the cities. It analyses the structure of the informal sector and shows how different layers of the sector potentially relates to the formal urban sector.