Reconstruction and planning in the aftermath of the Anglo-Boer South African War: the experience of the Colony of Natal, 1900–1910

The idea of ‘reconstruction’ is now well established in the historiography of South African planning. Particular attention has been paid to ‘reconstructionist planning’: during and immediately after World War; in the apartheid era; and, in the recent context of post-apartheid development. The centenary celebrations of the Anglo-Boer South African War (1899–1902) are, however, directing attention to the programme for the reconstruction of the previous Boer republics that was initiated by the imperialist proconsul, Lord Milner, and is the subject of ongoing controversy. Natal was not a direct target of Milner's programme but the aftermath of conflict in this British colony was linked to important socio-economic and spatial transformations. The idea of ‘town planning’ was only in an embryonic form at the time but ‘post-war reconstruction’ in Natal included interventions in the shaping of urban and rural space that provided the basis for future programmes of reconstruction and planning, including that of racial ordering under apartheid. For example, the system that developed in Durban to finance the construction and administration of segregated municipal housing for Africans was later exported to the rest of South Africa and became a major feature of the National Party's programme of ‘township development’.     

The Perceived Authenticity of Iconic Heritage Sites in Urban Tourism: the Case of Constitutional Hill,Johannesburg, South Africa

Cultural heritage sites play multiple roles in the development of urban tourism. Amongst these roles, the authentic properties of cultural heritage generate a sense of place, are the main source of authentic tourist experience and assume an important role in reaffirming cultural and national identity. This paper provides a contribution to authenticity discourse both theoretically and empirically. The study examines and re-evaluates the main sources of authenticity of tourist experience generated from South African iconic places which serve a dual function, as ‘must-see’ tourist attractions and as places of new post-1994 national African identity building. The focus is the Constitution Hill heritage site in Johannesburg. The research explores how authentic is the individual tourist experience of the site and whether differences exist in the way domestic and international tourists perceive the authenticity of the iconic place as representative of new South African identity. The results show that the majority of tourists perceive the place as authentic and derive an authentic experience from the visit. No statistically significant differences are observed between the experience of domestic versus international tourists’ experience of the site which was measured by four variables of authentic experience, namely, attraction, attention, outcomes and feelings.     

The Economic Geography of South Africa’s Hotel Industry 1990–2010

Hotels are a neglected facet in economic and tourism geography as the majority of scholarship on hotels is produced from the perspective of hospitality management. This article examines the changing geography of hotels in South Africa during the period 1990–2010 as part of the country’s expanding tourism economy. The analysis confirms the importance of several locational influences, which have been isolated in existing literature, in particular the significance of spatial patterns of market demand related to international leisure travel, domestic business tourism, and of the hosting of mega-events. Since 1990, the South African hotel industry necessarily has adjusted to new market demands related to the vibrancy of international tourism growth as well as an expansion of domestic tourism including of a new black leisure and business tourism market. By 2010, the hotel industry and its spatial distribution reflects the enormous changes, which have take out place in the South African tourism sector since democratic change. The transformed geography of the hotel industry is a response to changing demands associated with South Africa’s rise as an emerging international leisure and business tourism destination, including for regional visitors from sub-Saharan Africa, the expansion of domestic business tourism, and the shifting domestic leisure tourism market, which incorporates an increasing share of black South African tourists     

Divergent and Similar Experiences of ‘Gating’ in South Africa: Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town

The last 20 years has witnessed an explosion not only in the growth of private residential territories throughout the world, but also in the literature addressing them. The majority of research is centred on experiences in the United States and Latin America (although studies elsewhere are increasing) and suffers from a tendency to homogenise the processes and consequences of gating as synonymous whether experienced in Los Angeles, New York, Mexico City or São Paulo. Whilst axiomatic to state the unlikelihood of identical trends in such differing contexts, the absence of such a statement in the literature is significant. This paper addresses the social and spatial phenomenon of residential gated communities in three of South Africa’s major cities: Johannesburg, Durban and Cape Town. Detailed background and discussion regarding the development and experience of ‘gating’ in each city is analysed, emphasising the uniqueness of each city’s gating experience. These indications, that gating is not a universal experience despite some common themes, serve to counter the homogenous discourse in both popular and academic parlance throughout the world and within South Africa. In addition, particular concerns related to the growth of residential forms based on exclusion and privatisation within the South African context, are considered. In essence, we conclude that while ‘gating’ may be an individually rational decision in the context of South Africa’s growing crime, its collective consequences produce a divided city, at odds with post-apartheid ideals of unity and equality.     

Putting Spatial Resilience into Practice

There is a growing awareness of the need to develop the resilience of settlements to potential risks and hazards. There are numerous definitions of resilience reflecting diverse applications of the concept in different disciplines. These conceptualisations include the ability to ‘spring back’ after being stressed and the ability of a social-ecological system to maintain its functions by absorbing or adapting to change despite stresses and pressures placed on it. Although initially research was focussed on ecosystems, the resilience of socio-ecological systems is now receiving attention. The South African Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act includes ‘spatial resilience’ among the five principles intended to promote more just, sustainable and efficient settlements. According to this Act, the principle of spatial resilience refers to ‘flexibility in spatial plans, policies and land use management systems are accommodated to ensure sustainable livelihoods in communities most likely to suffer the impacts of economic and environmental shocks?. While the concept of resilience is widely understood, does the same apply to that of spatial resilience as defined by SPLUMA? This paper describes a study conducted to determine how practicing and development professionals in the Western Cape Province (South Africa) interpret the concept of spatial resilience. The results indicate that while the concept of resilience was generally understood, there were diverse interpretations of the development principle contained in the Act. Among the implications hereof are contradictory or counterproductive policy or plans. Thus, a more uniform understanding of the concept is required.     

Urban Volunteer Tourism: Orphanages in Johannesburg

Volunteer tourism is one of the most vibrant forms of alternative tourism and a particular focus in Africa. Despite a growing stream of international volunteer tourists, African scholarship is undeveloped. South Africa offers the largest range of different volunteer tourism opportunities in Africa which includes work in community welfare projects such as orphanages. This research opens up debates around urban volunteer tourism in South Africa. The investigation is a case study of international volunteer tourists at orphanages in Johannesburg, South Africa’s largest city. The aim was to understand the volunteer tourism channel to Johannesburg and reflect upon the impacts of this controversial form of volunteer tourism. The findings point to the strongly positive benefits of these volunteers for the orphanages and the children in Johannesburg. Among possible explanations is that ‘place matters’ and that volunteers choosing to work in the orphanages of South Africa’s business capital, a city that has a fearful reputation in respect of crime and safety of visitors, are committed to ‘making a difference’ in their volunteer work.     

‘Day Labour’ and ‘Xenophobia’ in South Africa: the Need for Mixed Methods Approaches in Policy-Orientated Research

Much policy-orientated research in South Africa relies solely on large-scale surveys. Little or no case study research is undertaken as part of studies despite broad international acknowledgement of the benefits of mixing methods. In the South African poverty and demographic literature, strong arguments have been made for the incorporation of case study approaches to arrive at a deeper and more accurate understanding of social phenomena. This paper, which draws on an ethnographic study of ‘day labourers’ (both South African and foreign) in Cape Town, together with an extensive range of relevant literature, extends this line of argument to research on casual employment and relations between South Africans and foreign nationals. It highlights a number of questionable assumptions and superficial analyses present in previous survey-based research on these topics. It also discusses the potential contribution of more case study work and some of the practical issues associated with linking methodologies in development research.     

Drawing white elephants in Africa? Re-contextualizing Ernst May’s Kampala plans in relation to the fraught political realities of late-colonial rule

In 1945/1946, the Colonial Administration in Uganda commissioned Ernst May – planner of Das Neue Frankfurt (1926–1930) – to design the Kampala Extension Scheme and the smaller Wandegeya Development Scheme. The past decade has seen increasing scholarly interest in the neglected ‘African’ episode of Mays planning oeuvre, but this literature has not explicitly examined how May’s planning articulated with the fraught political realities of late-colonial rule. Utilizing previously undocumented archive material and a theoretical frame informed by governmentality studies, this paper examines these articulations, particularly those relating to tensions and contradictions in Colonial government arising from the would-be turning-point from indirect rule to a bio-political rationality of development and welfare. It is shown that while May’s submitted plans spoke directly to the tropes of urban improvement, African detribalization and labour stabilization, which informed the ‘turning point’ in colonial policy, May’s elaborate socio-spatial interventions and the style in which these enunciated racial difference proved unpalatable to a colonial administration stifled by the rationality of the economic domain of government, by constraints on how difference could be enunciated and by African urban politics.     

Housing Market Renewal: Evidence of Revanchism or a Response to ‘Passive Revanchism’ Supporting ‘Citizenship of Place’?

In England, housing market renewal (HMR) proved an urban policy cause célèbre held to be representative of state-sponsored gentrification. This paper considers some critiques and explores the relocation experience of a group of residents in South Yorkshire, England during the implementation of HMR policies during 2005–2007. This paper argues that: (i) from the mid-1970s, ‘place-based citizenship’ and participation standards had been eroded and the introduction of HMR was an antidote to state neglect; (ii) state failure in addressing ‘slow-burn’ shocks such as deindustrialisation and housing market restructuring can be viewed as a form of ‘passive revanchism’ and (iii) HMR can be viewed as a means of addressing deficits in participation standards that arise from differential experiences of place: the term ‘citizenship of place’ is therefore used to signal the call for a more nuanced account of policy interventions such as HMR in order to assess how complex processes of restructuring affect citizens across spatial and temporal scales.     

More than twenty years after the repeal of the Group Areas Act: housing, spatial planning and urban development in post-apartheid South Africa

More than twenty years after the repeal of the Group Areas Act, South Africa is facing a number of challenges with regards to housing, spatial planning and urban development. Government institutions, scholars, NGO’s and local communities have been looking for innovative ways to improve the housing conditions of all South Africans. With this special issue, we aim to demonstrate that international insights cannot only be relevant to understand and enrich South African cases, but that an in-depth analysis of the South African experiments can also be meaningful for academic analyses and political decisions in other parts of the world. In order to stimulate such a cross-fertilization, this article will briefly summarize the current situation in South Africa in the public housing sector, the private housing sector and the self-help approach. We will also introduce the eight papers of this special issue.     

ISO 9000 standards: perceptions and experiences in the UK construction industry

Recently the South African government introduced new legislation to regulate the construction industry and, in particular, redistribute the responsibility for construction worker safety and health to include all industry participants. Consequently, the need to maintain and promote construction workers' health and working capacity has been given an increased prominence. Considering that the highest rates of new infections are reportedly occurring on the African continent, the fight against HIV and AIDS in the workplace has become an African priority. A comparative assessment is carried out on the levels of knowledge, perceptions and beliefs, and behaviours of construction workers in South Africa relative to HIV infection and AIDS. The levels of knowledge and awareness of HIV and AIDS among construction workers younger than 40 years of age (‘younger workers’) are compared with those of workers older than 40 years (‘older workers’). A regional exploratory study commenced in August 2002. Both age cohorts of construction workers generally had acceptable levels of knowledge, perceptions and attitudes on most issues relative to the disease. However, several areas are highlighted where they had deficient knowledge and attitudes or demonstrated high levels of uncertainty. Overall, younger workers had lower levels of uncertainty and deficient knowledge. There were several areas where these were common irrespective of age. These are the areas that deserve urgent employer driven interventions.     

Planning under political transition—lessons from Cape Town's metropolitan planning forum

South Africa's recent process of transition, from an authoritarian to a liberal democratic political system, was accompanied by the use of innovative consensus‐seeking processes to develop new policy in a wide range of arenas. Given the spatial imprint of apartheid ideology on South African towns and cities, the development of new metropolitan plans was of central concern to those groupings with an interest in the future of the urban areas. A stakeholder forum process is evaluated which, between 1992 and 1994, produced a new spatial ‘vision’ for Cape Town, and both the factors which assisted consensus and those which appear to have limited the achievement of meaningful communication between forum participants are examined.     

Demographic and Economic Changes in Small Towns in South Africa’s Karoo: Looking from the Inside Out

This article seeks to situate the experience of demographic and economic change in South African small towns within a broader context. Drawing on international literature detailing demographic, economic and racial changes within small towns, the paper relates these trends to the Karoo region in South Africa. The research findings reveal that small towns in the Karoo are experiencing selective demographic and economic growth, which particularly favours the larger small towns. There is clear racial differentiation in the growth which is taking place and, contrary to predictions made in the 1970s, small towns in South Africa are not all experiencing absolute decline.     

Dakar

Dakar, bridgehead of the colonial penetration into West Africa and capital of the French Empire, is still today an example of ‘dominated’ town planning. According to the French Captain Mauléon it was founded to become ‘the big commercial town and the seat for the general government of all our settlements in the African West Coast… the centre of military and naval operations, in a word the capital of all our African settlements' (Report 1.1 1856 in Foundation de Dakar, Laroze, Paris, 1958, p 92). The supply of important infrastructures, such as the St Louis and Bamako railways, the deep-water port and the airport with its strategic position on the South American routes, are the base of its development. The military basis made it an outpost for the French military penetration. The rapidity of its growth is a characteristic common to all African towns whose economies can be defined as ‘dominated’ and extrovert. The growth rates of such towns range from 6% per year, ie a doubling of the population every 12 years, to 10%, and sometimes to 15% (doubling every five years). Both colonial domination and international trade have encouraged rural exodus and urbanization.     

The Colonel Light Gardens Garden Suburb Commission: building a planned community

Colonel Light Gardens, about 6 km south of Adelaide, South Australia, is recognized as a national and international exemplar in the field of garden suburb planning. The first objective of the suburb's Development Plan seeks the conservation and reinforcement of its ‘original three dimensional garden suburb design’ and statements supporting other objectives detail its ‘essential’ urban design and land use elements. However, town planning is more than the design of urban places and spaces. It is also concerned with how these may be achieved effectively and how the services and facilities required by citizens are properly supplied and located. This crucial other side of the ‘town planning coin’ has been demonstrated in the Colonel Light Gardens' development. The Garden Suburb Act of 1919 established a Garden Suburb Commission with powers similar to what, in later years, would be known as urban development corporations. Hence, it was first in a line of such organizations in South Australia and stands with international exemplars such as the British garden cities and new towns.     

Apartheid in South Africa and industrial deconcentration in the PWV area

The growth centre concept has formed the cornerstone of industrial development policy since Apartheid was introduced as a constitutional model in South Africa in 1948. A number of ‘growth points’ were identified in, or adjacent to Bantustans by the government over the years. The intention with these designated ‘growth points’ was two‐fold: to serve as counter‐magnets to encourage industrial decentralization from the major urban centres and to act as a political instrument to discourage blacks to leave Bantustans. Serious deficiences in the government's present industrial development policy are underlined — especially its underlying function to continue the segregation practices of the past — despite repeated indications by the government in recent years of its intention to move away from the concept of Apartheid. Obvious similarities between the so‐called ‘deconcentration points’ adjacent to the Pretoria‐Witwatersrand‐Vaal (PWV) Triangle megalopolis which were announced by the state in 1981 and the original concept of growth points are pointed out. Alternative metropolitan deconcentration options based on sound spatial economic principles rather than concealed political practices are suggested for the megalopolis.     

The city-territory: large-scale planning and development policies in the aftermath of the Belice valley earthquake (Sicily, 1968)

This article examines a particular case of post-disaster planning: the ‘city-territory’ of the Belice Valley. As a consequence of an earthquake which devastated a depressed rural area of western Sicily in 1968, town planners, supported by special post-disaster legislation, undertook a planning experiment aimed at redeveloping the disaster area and promoting its social and economic transformation. The Belice Valley plan became an experiment in socio-economic engineering, and the idea of combining reconstruction and development was associated with a particular spatial layout: the ‘city-territory’. Based on archival research, this work examines this planning idea, its roots and its outcome. I will argue that, despite its peculiarities, the ‘city-territory’ idea was deeply rooted in the Italian and international culture and practices of the day, which were particularly favourable for large-scale planning and development policies. I will also demonstrate that the attempt to realize this plan for a ‘city-territory’ was hindered by a radically transformed context and by a general crisis of industrial development policies. This case study, therefore, attempts to shed light on a key issue of 1960s and 1970s international planning culture and practice, and illustrates some of the reasons for its partial failure.     

Post-Event Cities

Planning ‘events’ such as the 19th-century foreign concessions in the sink ports and the late 20th-century Special Economic Zones (SEZs) have proved an important catalyst for development in China. Professor Zhi Wenjun , chief editor of Time + Architecture magazine, and architect Liu Yuyang look at how the 2008 Beijing Olympics and 2010 Shanghai World Expo are redefining urbanism in China and raising significant questions about the sustainability of the post-event city. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Collateral Damage? Transforming Subprime Slum Dwellers into Homeowners

Homeownership has been elevated to the position of a superior form of tenure, offering seemingly limitless benefits from capital gain to more abstract notions of security, empowerment and good citizenship. The international discourse on housing policy has mirrored this privilege, particularly evident with the celebration of Hernando de Soto and his promotion of formal property rights as the solution to global poverty. Formalisation schemes are said to provide a route to economic prosperity by transforming ‘slum dwellers’ into ‘homeowners’, offering a route to access formal credit and ending the undercapitalisation of the poor. Drawing on the example of de Soto-inspired MKURABITA titling scheme in Tanzania, this paper questions the favour of ownership policies in the Global South in the wake of the subprime crisis.     

Decent Work in the South African Tourism Industry: Evidence from Tourist Guides

Within tourism scholarship in general and in African tourism in particular, there is a paucity of research relating to employment conditions in the tourism industry. In South Africa, this knowledge gap is acute in light of the vital role of tourism in national government strategies for employment creation and of the emphasis given to promoting ‘decent work’. This article uses a mixed methods approach to examine work conditions of South African tourist guides. The findings reveal the majority of tourist guides are in precarious or vulnerable forms of temporary short-term work, much of which is outside of existing labour regulations. The largest share of tourist guides are white males with limited careers spent in tour guiding. Many guides are retired or semi-retired from other professions and often engaged in the activity for lifestyle rather than economic motivations. The findings of this study challenge South African policy makers about the nature of decent work in tourism.