Transformation of residential planning in Umtata during the post-apartheid transition era

The political changes in South Africa after 1994 necessitated that the Bantustans, the main servers of apartheid planning, be re-incorporated into the mainstream of South Africa, implying the transformation of apartheid residential planning. Since then there has been much speculation about the type of transformation that would be implemented in the Bantustans to effect change in a non-racial South Africa. The aim of this paper is to analyze the effects of post-apartheid territorial restructuring in the former South African Bantustans. Examining and elucidating the manner in which the diverse social, economic and political factors have manifested themselves in the process of transformation of spatial residential planning in Umtata (the former capital city of the Transkei Bantustan) since 1994 is the central theme of this paper. Using property registers together with changes in legislative policies and land ownership, the transformation pattern was analysed in the former Bantustan capital city (Umtata). The findings indicate that the new South African policies and development strategies have been partially successful in eliminating the incongruencies of the past with regard to access to housing in Umtata. More critical is that this paper suggests that there still remains a greater challenge lingering from the influence of the Bantustan government in the city.     

Urban agriculture in South Africa: Scope,issues and potential

This paper examines the present state of urban agriculture in South Africa and analyses its potential for poverty alleviation. Currently, the scale of cultivation taking place in South Africa is relatively small as compared to other developing countries. The key explanation for the undeveloped urban agricultural sector is the greater returns to land and labour which may be earned from backyard shacks and alternative informal income opportunities in the city. Informal cultivation is primarily a survival niche of the most marginalized and most vulnerable groups in urban areas, in particular for elderly women. Policy issues are raised concerning urban agriculture in post apartheid urban reconstruction.     

Kenya’s Secondary Cities Growth Strategy at a Crossroads: Which Way Forward?

Kenya has been promoting equitable urban and regional development since the 1970s despite the lack of a clearly formulated national urban policy or an urban and regional development policy. A key element of the country’s equitable urban and regional development effort is the promotion of secondary cities that would relieve population pressure in the countryside, help to better integrate the country’s rural and urban economies, help to reduce congestion and improve the quality of life in the metropolitan cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, and help increase the modernization spin-off which urban centers provide to the surrounding rural areas. Using recent census and economic survey data, this paper examines the current state of Kenya’s secondary cities in the context of its urban and regional development strategies. The paper finds that: (1) the country’s urban and regional development strategies have failed to work as planned largely because of insufficient devolution of power and fiscal responsibility to municipal and other local government units, (2) the country’s secondary cities are faced with immense challenges that undermine their ability to live up to expectations, (3) some of these cities have significantly grown economically over the last four decades despite immense challenges, and (4) Nairobi’s dominance of Kenya’s economy continues because of policies that unwittingly concentrate investments there. The paper concludes with strategies that could enhance the country’s urban and regional development programs and, in the process, aid the development of its secondary cities.     

Kenya’s Secondary Cities Growth Strategy at a Crossroads: Which Way Forward?

Kenya has been promoting equitable urban and regional development since the 1970s despite the lack of a clearly formulated national urban policy or an urban and regional development policy. A key element of the country’s equitable urban and regional development effort is the promotion of secondary cities that would relieve population pressure in the countryside, help to better integrate the country’s rural and urban economies, help to reduce congestion and improve the quality of life in the metropolitan cities of Nairobi and Mombasa, and help increase the modernization spin-off which urban centers provide to the surrounding rural areas. Using recent census and economic survey data, this paper examines the current state of Kenya’s secondary cities in the context of its urban and regional development strategies. The paper finds that: (1) the country’s urban and regional development strategies have failed to work as planned largely because of insufficient devolution of power and fiscal responsibility to municipal and other local government units, (2) the country’s secondary cities are faced with immense challenges that undermine their ability to live up to expectations, (3) some of these cities have significantly grown economically over the last four decades despite immense challenges, and (4) Nairobi’s dominance of Kenya’s economy continues because of policies that unwittingly concentrate investments there. The paper concludes with strategies that could enhance the country’s urban and regional development programs and, in the process, aid the development of its secondary cities.     

Linguistic segregation in urban South Africa, 1996

South Africa is a multi-lingual country with 11 official languages and a recent history where language was frequently used as a political instrument, notably in the urban areas. Although the cities were initially colonial foundations, as a consequence of rural-urban migration, the speakers of the various national languages have come into close contact with one another. However, as a result of the inheritance of apartheid town planning and its emphasis on racial zoning, residential segregation levels between some linguistic groups have been extremely high. An analysis of the 1996 census results reveals that the uniformly high segregation levels between the speakers of indigenous African languages and the speakers of Afrikaans and English are the direct outcome of apartheid era town planning. Nevertheless, segregation between the speakers of different African languages may also on occasion be relatively high where homeland political policies were pursued, although this was the exception rather than the rule. Similarly segregation between English and Afrikaans speakers was locally high where home language coincided with former racial classification. Few immediate significant changes are anticipated in the present patterns of linguistic segregation, as the inherited apartheid city structure is proving to be remarkably resistant to transformation.     

Towards sustainable agriculture in post-apartheid South Africa

This paper assesses the possibility of sustainable agriculture in South Africa in the context of recent policy initiatives. The new environmental strategy for agriculture represents a significant break with policy initiatives developed during apartheid. The likelihood of sustainable farming practices being adopted in South Africa will, however, face at least three obstacles. These are the integrated structure of industrial farming, the concern over yields, and current political and economic changes in South African agriculture. It is argued that sustainable techniques are unlikely to develop in the large scale farming sector in the near future. If the considerable research and extension resources of the state are reoriented quickly enough, sustainable farming methods can be embraced by an emerging class of black commercial farmers.     

Reconstructing South African cities: Contemporary strategies and processes in the urban core

In the 1990s, South Africa and its cities have entered an unprecedented era of change. This transition has been characterised by a burgeoning of civil society and negotiation processes around the key policy and development challenges facing the country. Within this context, the beginnings of a new post-apartheid urban reconstruction era has been marked by the dual challenges of neutralising the damaging anomalies created in cities by apartheid urban engineering, and of shaping efficient, functional and well-managed cities for the future. The core areas or central city zones of the major metropolitan complexes — comprising inner city residential components and central business district economic sectors — are now emerging as a priority area in urban reconstruction. This paper briefly outlines the evolution of the South African central city within the context of overall metropolitan morphology, before considering several of the key issues and processes currently shaping inner city and CBD zones.     

State rescaling and new metropolitan space in the age of austerity. Evidence from Italy

This article presents the changes that are emerging in the Italian national policies mainly through the discussion of the contents both of the recent metropolitan reform initiative, and the national programming documents for metropolitan cities related to European Programming period 2014–2020. In Italy, which faced severe political difficulty and economic stagnation after 2008 global crisis, the production of the new metropolitan scale became one of the tools for the implementation of austerity measures. The paper examines whether the understanding of the new metropolitan scale in the Italian geography of austerity can be strengthened through a careful engagement with the body of literature on state rescaling and on austerity policies. The paper illustrates how that the apparently neutral emphasis on metropolitan city scale, first can be understood as a crucial tool of an austerity measures; second, it implies a rescaling of public power and, third, it neglects the multifaceted notion of the urban and the trans-scalar territorial governance relationships.     

Farming the urban fringes of Barcelona: Competing visions of nature and the contestation of a partial sustainability fix

While the concept of urban agriculture investigates the way in which disused land within the consolidated city is returned to its citizens through a variety of farming practices, many pockets of rural land in peri-urban areas continue to be contested by institutions and communities – including informal farmers, formal farmers, municipal planners, metropolitan agencies, and investors – with contrasting interests. To date however, little scholarly attention has been paid to informal practices within the degraded areas of urban fringes and, more specifically, to the link between the expansion of peri-urban agriculture and the civic appropriation and negotiation of space in neglected peripheral areas. In this paper, we ask how a metropolitan sustainability fix is produced and contested both materially and discursively. We also explore how local residents involved in peri-urban agriculture claim the use of land for agricultural practices and in turn attempt to influence the urban agenda of the neoliberal city. Inquiring how competing visions of nature act as obstacles in this negotiation process, our analysis of the peri-urban Baix Llobregat Agricultural Park in Barcelona reveals that the imposition of official visions about how needs for food and agriculture should be fulfilled, which landscapes are esthetically acceptable, what nature is, and how land should be controlled and developed indicate why apparently “marginal” and informal urban agriculture in the periphery has come to be subordinated to the planning of the neoliberal city and of a metropolitan sustainability fix – a partial sustainability fix that is however progressively being questioned and renegotiated.     

Changing patterns of ‘Black’ bus subsidies in the apartheid city, 1944–19861)

Bus fare subsidy, the difference between an economic fare charged by a bus operator and the amount paid by Black passengers, has played a vital role in the formation of the apartheid city in South Africa. Until 1986 employers paid transport levies on a weekly or monthly basis whilst the Government budgeted the contribution through Department of Transport vote. Transport subsidies reveals that subsidies were used to foster and facilitate the spatial organisation of urban areas. Subsidies were strongly associated with the geographical dislocation of Black communities from the centre of urban areas to the urban periphery. Subsidies first affected Black male workers in Johannesburg and a few geographical areas but were later extended to include African women, Coloureds and Indians. The theme that emerges from this paper is that the state used subsidies as one of the myriad strategies excluding Blacks politically, controlling them socially and making them dependent economically.     

Explaining divided cities in China

Explanations of the existence of socio-spatial divisions in Western Europe and the United States revolve around the importance of economic, demographic, political, and socio-cultural macro developments and often also on the role of globalization. Much of the literature also emphasizes the role of institutions, especially the national and local state as well as individual and household constraints and opportunities. Many authors explain socio-spatial divisions by a mix of these factors and developments. This paper provides an account of the current state of affairs concerning the literature and theory on divided cities in China. Concentrating on a selection of 88 articles published in international journals during the last decade, we examine how authors explain urban socio-spatial divisions in Chinese cities. The paper indicates that a five-category framework of trends, policies, players, position, and preferences are useful in addressing the complexity of explanations attributed to current urban divisions and inequalities in Chinese cities. While the spatial patterns in the Western and Chinese contexts share rather similar characteristics, the interplay of mechanisms is significantly different. The influence of the state, its institutions, and the cultural background has a much stronger explanatory power in China than in the West.     

Metropolitan deconcentration, socio-political fragmentation and extended suburbanisation: Brazilian urbanisation in the 1980s and 1990s

The aim of this paper is to discuss the phenomena of socio-political fragmentation of urban space, extended suburbanisation and metropolitan deconcentration, which have been important features of Brazilian urbanisation since the 1980s (metropolitan deconcentration partly since the 1970s). At the beginning it profiles the recent evolution of the country's economy, in order to make sense of the worsening situation in terms of exclusion and violence in big Brazilian cities since the 1980s. Against this background, recent trends both in terms of socio-spatial segregation and social conflict within cities (formation of enclaves dominated by drug trafficking organisations and self-segregation of the élites as a response to this) and in terms of the growing attractiveness of areas outside the biggest metropolises (extended suburbanisation and metropolitan deconcentration) are analysed. The main focus is the socio-political dimension of Brazilian urbanisation in the 1980s and 1990s, which has been undervalued by analysts.     

International boundaries and territorial stability in the Middle East: an assessment

International boundaries in the Middle East are less likely to represent a major source of international stress than is generally perceived. Formal treaties exist for 80% of the regions' land boundaries and current political processes seem to be working in favour of the status quo and territorial stability. Regarding maritime boundaries, over 60 such issues have yet to be delimited throughout the region. Of these, the major maritime boundary disputes are concentrated in the Persian Gulf, while the boundary between Greece and Turkey remains a focus of regional conflict in the Mediterranean Basin. Although the function of international boundaries are changing, the delimitation process can be expected to continue in the Middle East. Given political will to resolve problems of delimitation, the ultimate demarcation of boundaries should progress without serious conflict between states in the region.     

Urban locations and Black Metropolis resilience in the Great Depression

Motivated by theoretical arguments about ethnicity and economics and by historical research on urban black communities in the United States, this paper investigates the resilience of the early twentieth-century Black Metropolis. The study tests hypotheses about changes during the Great Depression (1930–1940) in the advantages of various cities as locations of black communities’ ethnic economies, analyzing Census data on blacks’ representation in occupations reflecting the Black Metropolis’s professional, entrepreneurial, and cultural media pursuits. There is mixed support for the hypothesis that the nationally dominant urban centers of New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia had the most resilient Black Metropolises, a finding that casts doubt on claims that black communities in such key places enjoyed exceptionally favorable locational advantages. Yet, the results support the hypothesis that northern cities were, overall, more resilient locations than southern cities, particularly for black professionals and entrepreneurs, affirming the argument that the urban North’s Black Metropolises were vital economic opportunity centers for these black communities’ upper- and middle-classes.     

Milan: The city of constant renewal

Traditional models of urban development are no longer adequate to describe current metropolitan transformations. These are now at the centre of a debate concerning management and administration. In Italy, delays in resolving problems of urban and metropolitan government, despite the legal framework provided by Law 142/90, have weighed heavily on the larger urban areas of the country: Rome, Naples, Milan, which have not been able to tackle the issue of metropolitan government. Recent legislation, while not providing a pre-defined institutional solution, allows separate administrative districts to collectively establish metropolitan institutions of `variable geometry'. The Milan urban area is not one city, but a system of mutually-dependent cities, linked to each other and the rest of the world by a transport network still requiring much investment. The vitality of its economic structure (especially its small firms) is held back by seriously inadequate infrastructure and low external economic efficiency. The provincial capital may boast `historic centrality' but the most interesting potential for development is to be found on the periphery and in the administrative districts immediately surrounding it, in the recovery of derelict industrial areas and dormitory towns established in the 1950s and 1960s, especially to the north. Recovery of derelict areas, green areas, and better transport links within the urban area and with the outside world are the key elements in the reorganization of `Greater Milan'. In this situation of rapid transformation the most appropriate political strategies involve negotiated planning. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Making the countryside more like the countryside? Rural planning and metropolitan visions in post-quake Chengdu

In 2008, an 8.0-magnitude earthquake struck southwest China less than 100 km north of Chengdu, the booming capital of Sichuan Province. The city government undertook a massive reconstruction project in its rural hinterlands that was guided by existing policies to develop rural areas through coordinated urban and rural planning. Planners sought to avoid replicating urban settlements in rural areas by developing recognizably “pastoral” villages, an approach that is being widely echoed in the relatively new discipline of rural spatial planning in China. This paper argues that such design concessions evade the key feature of the new villages: the concentration of rural residents. The Chengdu government, though this symbolic and actual de-peopling of rural landscapes, has recast rural space as an environmental amenity and an abstract stock of arable land. Drawing on interviews, site visits, and policy and media documents, the paper analyzes the metropolitan plans that provided the framework for rural reconstruction in post-quake Chengdu, and connects these to a model village site in Chengdu’s rural periphery. The case illustrates the need to understand site-level village planning in the context of regional political economies of land, and highlights the new role that metropolitan governments are playing in rural development strategies.     

‘Bringing government to the people’: women, local governance and community participation in South Africa

This paper considers the ongoing political transformations in South Africa in the context of debates about good governance and participatory democracy. It first appraises the current transformations of local government in South Africa, focusing specifically on relationships between gender equality and citizenship on the one hand, and local government policy, legislation, and community participation on the other, and then explores meanings of participation and how they inform approaches towards local socio-economic development. The findings of primary research conducted with civil society organisations and black women in communities in the Cape Town metropolitan area are explored through three interrelated themes. First, the model of structured participation that is central to South Africa’s democratic transformation is assessed from the perspective of black women. Second, cultures of alienation, both within local governance structures and amongst black women and the extent to which recent restructuring is combating or contributing to these are explored. Third, how participation policies are dealing with conflict within and between target groups are analysed, whether stakeholder group politics obliterate important differences in interests and whether alternative structures might be more effective in terms of women’s participation and empowerment. Finally, the findings are interpreted in relation to theoretical concepts of good governance and participatory democracy, and the potential and problems of realising South Africa’s transformation process toward developmental local government are assessed.     

Local government reform,urban crisis and development in South Africa

The article aims to interpret the proposed reorganization of local government in South Africa and to examine its development implications in relation to the metropolitan area of Cape Town. The interpretation of reorganization draws particularly on DUNCAN and GOODWIN's suggestion (Int. J. Urb. Res.,6, 157–185, 1982) that reorganization represents an attempt to reimpose the state form. The article places the reorganization of local government in South Africa in the context of the current reform strategy, and argues that it is an element of a strategy which attempts to produce new forms of social relations, ordered to an increasing extent by the market mechanism. The local government strategy reflects this and also responds in particular to the crisis of legitimacy at local government level and in urban areas. This crisis has been precipitated not so much by forms of representation in local government, as by economic and political conditions in general. However, the reform of local government does not address these conditions, nor does it set up a system of local government in which they might be addressed. In fact, the attempt to reorder society on the basis of the determinants of the market and the resulting emphasis on wealth as a criteria of access to cities, services and power is likely to exacerbate the conditions of unemployment, poverty, spatial inequality and shortages of housing. In effect, therefore, local government reform concerns itself with little more than the management of urban areas in an attempt to contain manifest political problems.     

A controversial natural border: The making of the Spanish-Portuguese boundary along the Minho River (1855–1866)

The paper intends to consider how territorial, political and legal culture dominant within mid-19th century Iberian Peninsula influenced boundary-making state practices, and to what extent a complex understanding of natural border areas -and particularly of river boundaries- emerged during this demarcation process. We draw on recent insights about, on the one hand, the important link between territory, nature and law within territorialization processes and state-making and, on the other, intrinsic problems of modern legal categories and juridical practices concerning river boundaries which are argued to be part of territorial ideologies associated with modern states.Within this framework, the paper initially addresses main practices and discourses about territory in this particular Iberian context, regarding both the enduring relevance of theory of natural boundaries within European history of modern state-making and legal codification of river boundaries delimitation by Spanish and Portuguese law internationalists. The following part of the paper presents main historical problems and territorial border disputes along the Minho River which the 1864 Spanish-Portuguese Boundary Treaty attempted to settle. Discussions and negotiations taking place within the Joint Boundary Commissions in charge of examining, delimiting and demarcating this stretch of the border are analysed as to consider how diverging interest and competing discourses about this fluvial space were displayed and related eventually to the solutions adopted by the Boundary Treaty. In that sense, state-driven boundary-making proved to be an important tool for territorial management of this border space.     

Social change and segregation in Copenhagen

This article examines socio-spatial changes resulting from economic and social restructuring in Copenhagen in recent decades. The main features of these changes have involved a sharp decline in manufacturing employment, a rise in the participation of women in the labour market, increasing unemployment among unskilled workers, a growing number of immigrants in obsolete dwellings and social housing estates, a relative decline in the number of families, and a growth in the numbers of single parent households. Do these changes challenge the classic models of segregation, or can they still be considered valid? Empirical evidence is produced concerning the socio-spatial effect of these changes in Copenhagen. The conclusion is that the classical model of social segregation is still valid, although some additional dimensions must be included. Furthermore, the overall socio-spatial structure of Copenhagen remains relatively intact, largely because of the inertia of the urban landscape and its social relations. However, the radical nature of the restructuring processes can also be called into question.