Alison Todes

Regional planning and sustainability: limits and potentials of South Africa's integrated development plans

This paper considers whether South Africas Integrated Development Plans provide an adequate framework for achieving sustainable regional development, particularly for peripheral regions of developing countries. It examines the case of Integrated Development Planning in the Ugu District Municipality, which has been acclaimed for its emphasis on incorporating principles of sustainable development into its planning processes. While the emphasis on integration and the multi‐sectoral approach are strengths, greater attention needs to be given to environmental aspects, and the form of planning needs to be adapted to the context, and its social, economic and political dynamics.

Women and housing policy in South Africa: A discussion of Durban case studies

Alison Todes is a lecturer in the Department of Town and Regional Planning, and a member of the Built Environment Support Group at the University of Natal, Durban, South Africa. She has a Bachelor of Psychology and a Master ofUrban Planning from the University ofCape Town. She worked as a researcher at the Urban Problems Research Unit at the Universityof Cape Town and at the Built Environment Support Group. Her research work focuSBS on the urbanization and settlement policy In South Africa, the reorganization of local go119mment in South Africa, housing and upgrading, gender and development, and regional policy. She is the coauthor, with David Dewar and Vanessa Watson, of Regional Development and Settlement Polley, published byAllen and Unwin In 1986.

New African Suburbanisation? Exploring the Growth of the Northern Corridor of eThekwini/KwaDakuza

Suburbanisation, understood as ‘the combination of non-central population and economic growth with urban spatial expansion’ has been on the rise in African cities, as well as internationally, and has taken on diverse forms. This article contributes to an understanding of the dynamics of suburbanisation through exploring the growth since the 1990s of the northern corridor of eThekwini municipality and the adjacent KwaDakuza municipality. The article outlines the evolution of development in these areas, the role of various actors, agencies and institutions in shaping growth, and the influence of changing governance structures and rescaling. While the growth dynamics of the two municipalities are interrelated, the main agencies and actors, and thus the forms of growth, are rather different. Within eThekwinis north, a major landowner has been key in driving growth and in shaping development, in contrast to KwaDukuza where far more fragmented landownership patterns prevail. There are also contrasts in the way various parts of the state and forms of regulation, particularly urban planning, have influenced development in the area. The influence of private sector planning is also explored. The article shows the complexity of suburbanisation dynamics, and the way they vary even in two municipalities in the same region.

New Directions in Spatial Planning? Linking Strategic Spatial Planning and Infrastructure Development

There are growing arguments for linking strategic spatial planning to infrastructure development, particularly within developing countries. This article assesses potentials and challenges of these approaches, focusing particularly on an emerging approach in Johannesburg, South Africa. In Johannesburg, this approach provides more powerful sets of mechanisms than planning has had in the past but is demanding and confronts significant challenges. While linking strategic spatial planning and infrastructure has commonsense appeal, the potential for these approaches is likely to vary contextually, and their role and impact may be more partial than anticipated.

The Relationship between Planning and Environmental Management in South Africa: The Case of KwaZulu-Natal

Abstract In South Africa, environmental management is a separate legal and institutional system parallel to planning, and the two are poorly integrated. This paper uses an institutional analysis of the relationship between environmental management and planning in the KwaZulu-Natal province to understand the tensions that arise. The basis for tension is identified in the divided legal and institutional systems; duplication in the regulatory systems; their overlapping but also divergent purposes; inadequate strategic plans; institutional divides; lack of capacity; as well as in divides arising from less tangible elements, including different discourses, practices, policy communities and identities. Movements towards integration need to consider both the formal system and these intangible dimensions.

Megaprojects and urban visions: Johannesburg's Corridors of Freedom and Modderfontein

Abstract:The purpose of this article is to examine the urban visions articulated in two large projects in Johannesburg. Using the Corridors of Freedom project, led by the Johannesburg metropolitan municipality, and Modderfontein, initiated by a Shanghai-based developer, we show that the intention of large projects varies significantly despite often similar rhetoric. We show also that the actors and interests involved are more diverse than may initially appear, and that the outcomes are less certain than the confident public pronouncements suggest. Each project promises to make a distinct and positive impact on the morphology of the city, with the Corridors of Freedom project attempting to densify and diversify urban use along transit corridors through a long-term process of encouraging transformation within existing areas of the city. Modderfontein, by contrast, is intended as one of the largest privately-led residential, commercial and industrial developments in South Africa and would occur on previously undeveloped land. Both projects speak languages of sustainability and of inclusion, although neither is likely to address the housing needs of the poorest populations in Gauteng Province. The article underscores the sometimes arbitrary uptake of these projects into policy frameworks at different levels of government. With the Gauteng provincial government having defined megaprojects in terms of new cities, it enthusiastically endorsed Modderfontein, and left Corridors of Freedom somewhat outside of its initial frame of interest.

Satellite settlement on the spatial periphery: Lessons from international and Gauteng experience

Abstract:Gauteng Provinces proposal to create large new settlements mainly on the spatial periphery of the city-region is intended both to address the inefficiencies of scattered small-scale developments and to respond to economic decline outside the urban core. An ambition to create self-sufficient satellite towns or cities is, of course, not new. In this paper we assess experience internationally and in South Africa, exploring the extent to which sustainable economies have been created in satellite settlements. Internationally, there is a mixed story. There are instances of success but many more cases of failure, or of initial success with later decline. The frequent consequence of a well-intentioned satellite development internationally is extensive commuting. In Gauteng there is a long history of state- and private-sector led satellite town development. This has included the initial expansion of the mining sector; the later development of towns focused on heavy industry; and the displaced urban settlements around the apartheid-era industrial decentralisation points. While there was success in building economies for periods of time, the developments have proven vulnerable to changing global conditions, shifts in policy, and new local dynamics. In recent years, the Gauteng periphery has declined relative to the core, leaving large numbers of people in poverty traps or dependent on commuting. International and Gauteng experiences offer a sobering lesson for present day attempts to create large new settlements on the spatial periphery where economic prospects are, at best, highly uncertain.