Reinventing Planning: Critical Reflections

Abstract There is a growing acceptance in international development circles of the contribution a revitalised planning canmake to addressing key urban challenges. Current expectations that planning can play roles in managing the growth of cities in ways that promote their sustainability, inclusiveness and liveability, contrasts with past perceptions of planning as an irrelevant discipline obsessed with spatial ordering and control. This paper considers whether the new forms of planning can address the challenges facing cities, with particular reference to the South African context. It does so through providing an overview of the shift in thinking about planning, and reflecting on the new agendas for planning as well as on some of their silences. It argues that the new approaches need to be understood in terms of contemporary urban and planning theories which are rethinking the nature of planning and its relationship to power and institutions, andwhich viewcities as complex, dynamic places, embodying multiple interests and spatialities. These perspectives can help to enrich our understanding of the new approaches to planning, and to avoid ineffectiveness or a return to the negative elements of modernist planning of the past. The paper demonstrates the argument through focusing on some of the recent themes that have received attention in the contemporary international agendas for planning: the cross-cutting themes of sustainability and gender; the infrastructural turn in planning; and the ambiguities of the compact city. While these are quite particular concerns, they highlight the complexities of institutionalising the new approaches to planning, and ways of thinking about spatial planning

Decentralising voice: women’s participation in Integrated Development Planning processes in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa.

The appeal of decentralisation is based on the belief that it will foster participatory democracy, introduce more responsive service delivery and advance the rights of citizens. It is also assumed that decentralisation processes will promote gender equity and benefit women. International experience, however, has begun to show that social transformation does not necessarily follow decentralisation processes, and that the increased autonomy enjoyed by local government can roll back advances secured by national government as local elites entrench their power in ways that exclude and disempower marginalised and vulnerable groups. Against a backdrop of ambivalent evidence feminist scholars have cautioned against an uncritical acceptance of the supposed benefits of decentralisation for women

Integrated Area Development Projects: Working Towards Innovation

There is growing interest in integrated area development projects as a way of responding to special problem areas, including ameliorating the geographic concentration of social and economic disadvantage. This is expressed through the move towards ‘joined up’ government and development ‘in the round’ at the local level; and new forms of area-based initiatives aimed at neighbourhood renewal and urban economic development. The growing influence of sustainability concepts and developmental approaches to housing and urban development is also leading to multi-faceted projects that incorporate economic, social and environmental dimensions. In the South African context, the interest in integrated area development manifests in the major urban renewal projects that are presently being mounted, and reflects a search for ways of achieving integrated development that are more grounded than the grand scale planning associated with Integrated Development Plans and Spatial Development Frameworks

Urban Resilience Thinking for Municipalities

This document was prepared as a contribution to the Department of Science and Technology’s (DST’s) Grand Challenge on Global Change and as a complement to flagship initiatives such as the South African Risk and Vulnerability Atlas project (Archer, et al., 2010). The Global Change Grand Challenge is aimed at “supporting knowledge generation and technological innovation that will enable South Africa, Africa, and the world, to respond to global environmental change, including climate change” (Archer, et al., 2010, p. ii). While the Grand Challenge highlights the importance of science in supporting South Africa’s response to global change, it extends beyond a purely biophysical focus to acknowledge the importance of the social sciences. There is a clear understanding that the most compelling responses to global change will come through the combined efforts of the natural and social sciences. The DST therefore supports a number of research programmes across South Africa that draw on a wide range of scientific and academic fields in responding to specific challenges of global change across rural and urban –South Africa. One of the key thematic areas supported through the Grand Challenge is “urban resilience”. This is not at the expense of work on rural areas, as there are also a number of research programmes targeting rural South Africa, but it is recognition of both the threats posed by poorly managed urban areas and of the opportunities that towns and cities offer for greater resilience and sustainability.Global Change and Sustainability Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, the Department of Science and Technology, and the National Research Foundation, South Afric

Fracture of the hyoid

No Abstract

A Discussion of the Rogue Novel \u3cem\u3eLa Celestina\u3c/em\u3e with Special Reference to the Social Conditions of the Time

Because the picaresque novel is so intimately connected with the Spanish people, and so clearly expresses their spirit, I have always been extremely interested in this genre. Therefore, I have written on the Celestina because it is the forerunner of this genre and is one of the most worth while and important works in Spanish literature

The injunction menace

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Rethinking spatial planning

In South Africa, broad spatial frameworks have become a standard form of planning, but have been critiqued on various grounds. This paper focuses on three lines along which spatial planning may be reconsidered. First, it argues that it is important for planners to engage with the complexity of the socio-spatial dynamics of the city. Secondly, it suggests that planners need a deeper understanding of urban economic space and a more conscious consideration of the way in which planning relates to markets. Thirdly, spatial planning could be enhanced by a stronger link to infrastructure planning.&nbsp