By Brett Herron
The City of Cape Town has published proposed amendments to the Municipal Planning By-Law that will entrench spatial division and injustice and are fundamentally at odds with its own Municipal Spatial Development Framework approved 20 months ago.
Whereas the Spatial Development Framework spoke boldly of “promoting spatial transformation across Cape Town by addressing spatial inequality”, the proposed by-law deliberately entrenches apartheid Group Areas Act planning and thinking.
Thus, for example, whereas the Framework correctly identified Cape Town’s urban core as key to its integration, and the intensification and diversification of land uses, the by-law prioritises densifying historic townships.
Cities, by historical definition, are most densely populated at their core and less densely populated on their peripheries. Planners and urbanists recognise this as the most efficient urban form and the most sustainable use of land.
Cape Town has long grappled with challenges linked to inverted residential densities that (a) entrench exclusion and (b) exacerbate tidal wave-like movements of commuters in the mornings and evenings.
The authors of the development framework understood these priorities, but those who wrote the proposed by-laws must be on a different Whatsapp group.
The by-law amendments specifically envision the further densification of the most densely populated areas, furthest from the core, restricting the development of “affordable housing” to these areas, and maintaining the pattern of working-class people having to travel long distances to get to work.
The proposed amendments would create an Affordable Rental Flat overlay zone restricted to areas previously known as African and Coloured townships, and areas developed for RDP (later BNG) housing.
The map looks like it was produced by old Bantustan planners, including a 2024 version of what used to be referred to as “black spots”, which is what they used to call areas owned by black people surrounded by white-owned farmland.
On Cape Town’s map, there’s just one such spot in the Southern Suburbs, Westlake. Here, the City picks out an area of already high density, already occupied by black people, while leap-frogging several potential affordable housing zones, particularly along the Main Road.
Whoever drew up the map can’t have been aware of, or disagrees with, the Municipal Spatial Development Framework’s promise to “address spatial inequality”.
Although the proposed amendments to the Municipal Planning By-Law include multiple references to what is termed “affordable housing”, they don’t define what “affordable” means. It is assumed that affordable relates to the size of the dwelling.
The City’s actual intention is to retro-engineer permissions for the unauthorised building of small-scale rental developments which have proliferated without planning and land use authority, and to encourage the further densification of what are already the most densely populated areas of the city by small-scale developers and/or homeowners.
Labelling this regularisation and necessary support for small-scale township developers as an “affordable rental overlay zone” is political tomfoolery.
What is actually at play is that, in order to neutralise political criticism over its failure to deliver well-located affordable housing, the city’s leadership is abusing an important opportunity initiated by the small-scale developers and civil society.
Of course, a by-product of the City’s approach would be to ensure that areas previously reserved for whites are not contaminated by people of a lower social rank, the vast majority of whom are people of colour.
In 1992, just before the Group Areas Act was repealed, Professor David Smith of the University of London edited “The Apartheid City and Beyond, Urbanization and Social Change in South Africa”, which predicted that vested interests and ideologies would seek to maintain the shape of our cities.
The urban landscape of group areas was not only segregated by race but also sharply differentiated according to housing and neighbourhood quality, availability of services and access to work, Smith wrote.
“This urban structure is still very much intact, and will inevitably survive the transition to a ‘post-apartheid’ society for some time. Unless there is a substantial redistribution of wealth, employment opportunities and the housing stock itself, the population distribution of the apartheid city cannot be expected to change very much, even with the repeal of the Group Areas Act.
“Conservative cities and neighbourhoods will probably be able to perpetuate racial segregation informally, whatever the law may be. Strong local government autonomy may also assist white areas to preserve superior levels of services consistent with local revenue-generating capacity, even in the face of a central and perhaps regional government committed to more redistributive policies than in the past.”
Cape Town’s proposed by-laws closely accord with Smith’s learned prediction.
* Herron is the Good Party’s secretary general and also a member of the Western Cape Legislature.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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