Compact Cities and Land Reform; The Case of South African Cities

Abstract

South African cities would benefit from compaction of suburbia and development nodes close to inner city centres. While the inner cities are fairly dense and black townships and informal settlements are dense in pockets on the peripheries, some of the developed old white suburbs close to the inner cities are less compact. The paper explores urban land reform strategies close to inner South African cities as a way to address low density and diversity through a variety of models of land tenure and housing in order to address the complexities of development. Very high unemployment levels, dire social inequality as well as wealth and asset ownership by a few of the population, leads South African cities to the brink of social unsustainability, even pre-corona. Land reform is crucial to increasing people’s life chances. How land is made accessible to more people and where it is located and the model and nature of land near the centres is paramount. The study looks at Johannesburg, Cape Town and Durban as case studies to identify spaces of potential for densification and compaction.