Abstract
This chapter analyses urban planning in South Africa in the apartheid and post-apartheid eras. A key contention of this chapter is that notwithstanding progressive policy shifts since 1994, there are also some remarkable continuities between the apartheid and post-apartheid eras. Until 1990, urban and regional development policies in South Africa were intended to implement apartheid, and the planning discourse was organised along the lines of racial separation and operationalised through spatial partition. In the early 1990s, as democratic initiatives gained momentum, urban planners in South Africa attempted to reconstruct apartheid cities by offering alternative development discourses to reverse the effects of racial planning. The first wave post-apartheid urban planning and development strategies were driven by the Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) which was adopted in 1994. The government argued that the pressures of global economic restructuring forced a shift in the macro-economic framework with the adoption of the neoliberal Growth, Employment and Redistribution (GEAR) structural adjustment strategy in June 1996. However, a major issue was whether the poor would benefit from such partnerships. In 1998 the White Paper set the foundation for a new developmental local government system with an emphasis on integrated development strategies. The neoliberal bent continued with successive policies such as National Development Plan (NDP) introduced in 2012, and Integrated Urban Development Framework (IUDF) in 2016. An analysis of contemporary urban realities reveals that the desegregation of the apartheid city was generally taking place within the inner city and on the fringes of affluent suburbs. Decades of institutionalised segregation in South Africa will not be eliminated overnight. Segregation has been deeply entrenched in the social fabric, and is further reinforced by the socio-economic differences between blacks and whites. Also, the spatial inscription of class is becoming an increasingly conspicuous feature of South African urban space.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
ANC (1994) Reconstruction and development programme: a policy Framework. Umanyo, Johannesburg
Bakker K, Hemson D (2000) Privatising water: BoTT and hydropolitics in the new South Africa. S Afr Geogr J 82:3–12
Ballard R, Habib A, Valodia I (2006) Voices of protest: social movements in post-apartheid South Africa. University of KwaZulu-Natal Press, Pietermaritzburg
Bond P et al (1996) Response to government’s draft urban development strategy document. Urban Forum 7:101–120
Bond P (2000a) Elite transition: from apartheid to neoliberalism in South Africa. Pluto Press, London
Bond P (2000b) Cities of gold, townships of coal: essays on South Africa’s new urban crisis. Africa World Press, Trenton
Bremner LJ (2000) Post-apartheid urban geography: a case study of greater Johannesburg’s rapid land development programme. Dev S Afr 17:87–104
CDE (1996a) cities and the global economy: new challenges for South Africa, Johannesburg
CDE (1996b) response to the government’s draft urban development strategy. Urban Forum 7:90–100
Chapman TP (2015) Spatial justice and the western areas of Johannesburg. Afr Stud 74:76–97
Clarno A (2013) Rescaling white space in post-apartheid Johannesburg. Antipode 45:1190–1212
Crankshaw O (2008) Race, space and the post-fordist spatial order of Johannesburg. Urban Stud 45:1692–1711
Department of Finance (1996) Growth, employment and redistribution - a macro-economic strategy. Pretoria, Government Printer
De Klerk M (ed) (1991) A harvest of discontent: the land question in South Africa. IDASA, Cape Town
Desai A (2002) We are the poors: community struggles in post-apartheid South Africa. Monthly Review Press, New York
Desai A, Bohmke H (1997) The death of the intellectual, the birth of a salesman. Debate 3:10–34
Harrison P (2010) background paper: regional and spatial development (written for the National Planning Commission) www.dpme.gov.za/…/20YR%20Regional%20and%20spatial%20development.pdf 1 June 2017
Hindson D et al (1992) Restructuring the built environment. Report to working group 5, National Housing Forum
Hindson D, Byerley M, Morris M (1994) From violence to reconstruction: the making, disintegration and remaking of an apartheid city. Antipode 26:323–350
Mabin A (1992) Dispossession, exploitation and struggle: an historical overview of South African urbanization. In: Smith DM (ed) The apartheid city and beyond. Routledge, London, pp 13–24
Mabin A (1998) Reconstruction and twentieth century urban planning. Paper presented at the planning history conference, Sydney
Mabin A, Smit D (1997) Reconstructing South Africa’s cities? The making of urban planning 1900-2000. Plan Perspect 12:193–223
Maharaj B (1997) Apartheid, urban segregation and the local state: Durban and the group areas act in South Africa. Urban Geogr 18:135–154
Maharaj B (2011) 2010 FIFA world cup: (South)‘Africa’s time has come’? S Afr Geogr J 93:49–62
Maharaj B (2015) The turn of the south? social and economic impacts of mega events in India, Brazil and South Africa. Local Econ 39:983–999
Ministry of the Office of the President (1995) Urban development strategy of the government of national unity. Government Gazette number 16679, notice 1111
Mottiar S, Bond P (2012) The politics of discontent and social protest in Durban, Politikon, 39: 309–330
Munslow B, FitzGerald P (1997) Search for a development strategy: The RDP and beyond. In: Fitzgerald P et al (eds) Managing sustainable development in South Africa. Oxford University Press, Cape Town, pp 41–61
NPC (2012) National development plan: vision 2030. Pretoria, The Presidency
Nel E (2001) Local economic development: a review and assessment of its current status in South Africa. Urban Stud 38:1003–1024
Parnell S, Pieterse E (1999) developmental local government and post-apartheid poverty alleviation. Africanus 29:61–84
Presidency (2006) National spatial development perspective. Presidency, Pretoria
Presidency (2014) Twenty-year review, South Africa, 1994–2014. Department of Performance Monitoring and Evaluation, Pretoria
RDP (1994) White paper on reconstruction and development: a strategy on fundamental transformation. Government Printer, Pretoria
Rich PB (1978) Ministering to the white man’s needs: the development of urban segregation in South Africa. African Stud 37:177–191
Ruiters G (2002) Debt, disconnection and privatisation: the case of beaufort, queenstown and stutterheim. In: McDonald DA, Pape J (eds) Cost recovery and the crisis of service delivery in South Africa. HSRC/ZED, Cape Town and London, pp 41–57
Saff G (1994) The changing face of the South African city: from urban apartheid to the racialization of space. Int J Urban Reg Res 18:377–391
Saff G (1996) Claiming a space in a changing South Africa: the “squatters” of Marconi Beam, Cape Town. Ann Am Assoc Geogr 86:235–255
SAMWU (1997) Green paper on local government - an initial response from South Africa’s municipal workers’ union Unpublished Paper
Schensul D (2008) From resources to power: the state and spatial change in post-partheid Durban, South Africa. Stud Comp Int Dev 43:290–313
Simone A (1998) Discussion paper on the urban development framework, Unpublished paper
Swilling M et al (1991) Finance, electricity costs, and the rent boycott. In: Swilling M et al (eds) Apartheid city in transition. Oxford University Press, Cape Town, pp 174–196
Todes A, Turok I (2017) Spatial inequalities and policies in South Africa: place-based or people-centered. Progress in Planning, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.progress.2017.03.001
UDF (1997) The urban development framework. Department of Housing, Pretoria
Wilhelm-Solomon M (2016) Decoding dispossession: eviction and urban regeneration in Johannesburg’s dark buildings. Singap J Trop Geogr 37:378–395
Wilhelm-Solomon M (2017) The ruinous vitalism of the urban form: ontological orientations in inner-city Johannesburg. Crit Afr Stud 9:174–191
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2020 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Maharaj, B. (2020). South African Urban Planning in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries—Continuities between the Apartheid and Democratic eras?. In: Thakur, R., Dutt, A., Thakur, S., Pomeroy, G. (eds) Urban and Regional Planning and Development. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31776-8_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31776-8_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-31775-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-31776-8
eBook Packages: Earth and Environmental ScienceEarth and Environmental Science (R0)