A Model for South African Urban Development in the 21 Century?

INTRODUCTION ‘The victory over the apartheid state in 1994 set policy makers in all spheres of public life the mammoth task of overhauling the social, political, economic and cultural institutions of South Africa to bring them in line with the imperatives of a new democratic order’ (Asmal, 2001). Because South African cities and towns entered the 1990s with an apartheid urban planning and development legacy, urban planners and managers, and politicians responsible for urban development were faced with the task of reconstructing the impression of a spatially segregated, highly fragmented and dispersed urban society. Restructuring, transforming, reconstructing, and integrating separate and divided cities pose pertinent spatial planning challenges. Where apartheid policies had meshed perfectly with modernist urban planning philosophies of ‘the idea of progress and a belief in the power of rationality to overcome spatial chaos and disorder; the notion that, in order to bring into being a better world, control should be exercised by the state and its agents at virtually every level of society; the suppression of cultural and gender differences; and a belief in a homogenous public in whose interest the planner is empowered to act’ (Brooks & Harrison, 1998: 93), new policies had to be formulated to move explicitly away from general urban planning to development planning principles.This presentation will focus on three aspects. Firstly, what urban related policies after apartheid wanted to address. Secondly, what the observed urban outcomes were during transition. Thirdly, how the policies and expected urban outcomes would be implemented in terms of future urban structure.