Gauteng’s proposed Mega Project: New cities or new ghettoes?
Opinion piece by Prof Philip Harrison, Prof Alison Todes, Prof Marie Huchzermeyer and Dr Sarah Charlton.
Premier Makhura’s State of the Province Address in February contains “Ten Pillars of Radical Transformation, Modernisation and Re-industrialisation”, including the “Modernisation of Human Settlements and Urban Development”.
Two months later Gauteng Department of Human Settlements launched its “Mega-Cities Initiative” to ensure “unprecedented radical transformation of human settlements and spatial planning in Gauteng for the next 10 years”. It proposes to develop some 680 000 new affordable housing opportunities in new mass housing developments across the province. Each consists of more than 15 000 residential units.
As there is no land within existing cities that would accommodate development at this scale, the “new cities” are almost all beyond the margins of existing built-up areas. This provincial initiative follows the call by Minister Sisulu in July 2014 for bold mega-scale projects – a political vision born from frustration at the apparent slow pace and small scale of incremental human settlement developments subsidized by the state.
The focus on urban development is to be welcomed, and the slow pace of subsidized human settlement development is a concern. But are “new cities” as proposed by the Gauteng government the solution?
Internationally, there is a divergence of thinking and practice around urban development, and we are now seeing this reflected in our own province. At the one extreme there is a growing trend toward mega-scale developments beyond the existing urban edge. Tatu City in Nairobi did not see the light of day, but there is New Cairo in Egypt; New Moscow in Russia; King Abdullah Economic City in Saudi Arabia and Masdar City in Abu Dhabi. In Cairo and Moscow, the new cities represent a desire to begin all over again rather than address the tough challenges of what already exists.
A counter position attempts to transform existing cities into more livable and sustainable places, capable of absorbing increasing numbers of people. This involves initiatives that support urban densification through allowing more intensive land uses (such as granny flats, smaller plots, medium-rise housing); and enabling shorter distances between work and residence. Such an approach aims to construct integrated spaces with a variety of facilities and services, which are home to both rich and poor. It also supports public transport and promotes walking and cycling; and greening and inner city revitalization.
Over the past two decades, this second approach has informed the principles of the major national post-apartheid urban development policies such as the Development Facilitation Act and the more recent Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act, the National Urban Development Framework, and the National Development Plan. It has also informed the evolving spatial policies of the metropolitan cities in Gauteng, shaping initiatives such as Joburg’s Corridors of Freedom, Tshwane’s Inner City Regeneration, and Ekurhuleni’s Aerotropolis.
Now, unexpectedly, a provincial initiative invokes the inverse – mega cities located on the edges of cities. There are echoes in these proposed mega cities of the gated, luxury mega-estates of the likes of Steyn City, which South African developers have produced on strategic tracts of Gauteng land. The new drive to parallel these with state-led mega human settlements threatens to derail South Africa’s democratically derived vision of the urban future. It is time to debate.
There are three key objections to the mega city drive: the failure of the new initiative to recognize and build on the positive interventions and trends that are reshaping our cities; the dangers in ignoring the demographic and economic realities in the province; and, the financial and developmental risks of an initiative which does not appear to be grounded in careful assessment, and which largely by-passes the planning of municipalities in the province.
First, the provincial initiative threatens to overturn positive transformations in our cities post-apartheid. The legacies of apartheid, and of many of the subsequent RDP housing estates, have often left cities fragmented with at times, excessive distance between home and work, as well between income groups.
In response poor people as well as the better off have voted with their feet. They have found ways – formal and informal - to move closer to urban services and economic opportunity. Research by universities and the CSIR in preparation for the National Development Plan, the Presidential Twenty Year Review and the Integrated Urban Development Framework found that South Africa’s large cities are densifying and compacting, with positive outcomes for everyday lives. Indications are that resource efficiency of cities is improving, economic vibrancy increasing, and the per capita cost of infrastructure is reducing.
Despite a popular perception of exploding urban populations, Gauteng’s urban growth is modest in global terms. The rate of urban increase is levelling off as national fertility rates decline and overall rates of urbanization nears the 70 per cent mark. Demographically, our cities cannot support both increased compaction and “new cities” of the scale currently proposed.
Globally many of the “new cities” confront a demographic threat. China is currently faced with “ghost towns”, and concerns are voiced over the future of places like New Cairo and New Moscow. The reality is that many people aspire to be in the vibrant heart of the city, where the jobs and services are well established. Census 2011 for example, shows that Sebokeng in the Vaal experienced a slight decline in population in the period 2001 to 2011, suggesting that people are moving to more central locations. Yet the mega cities initiative proposes large scale new housing development in the area.
Our second concern with Gauteng’s mega city initiative is that the envisaged “cities” or “mega projects” are largely separated from existing areas of economic activity. This disjuncture is spectacularly evident in the Map of the Month produced by the Gauteng City Region Observatory (GCRO) on the “location of planned mega housing projects in context”.
The Province argues that these “new cities” will be planned for both residential purposes and economic activities, and that the very act of building a “new city” will create new economies of growth. International experience suggests a different reality. Most new towns of this sort have ended up as dormitory settlements, even in economically successful China. Despite being planned as self-contained satellites, most new settlements around Beijing are “sleeping cities”, providing accommodation to long-distance commuters.
There is a fallacy in building settlements in the hope of economic development, rather than in response to economic development, or incrementally as economies evolve. This questions the economic analysis that is claimed to underlie the mega city proposals, which is that housing development will drive economic growth. Through the mega projects initiative, provincial government may unintentionally end up re-creating ghettoes of poverty, not dissimilar from those South Africa inherited from the apartheid regime. The stated intention of provincial government is to create integrated urban environments. But, the reality is that these mainly peripheral estates are likely to accommodate the mainly black working class and, through subsidized housing, those on the margins of the economy, a configuration that would tend to reinforce existing patterns of exclusion.
This leads to the third concern which is one of risk. The documentation that the Province presented at the launch of the Mega Cities Initiative does not reveal any serious assessment, whether of economic prospects, financial viability, environmental implications, demographic realities or infrastructure costs. Thus it raises the question of whether the vision is based on proper modeling of the capital costs associated with large scale expansion of infrastructure networks such as electricity, water and sewerage.
And, how will the long-term maintenance be sustained? While metropolitan municipalities are already struggling with the recurring costs of infrastructure maintenance and refurbishment within their built up areas, most of these “new cities” are to be constructed beyond these existing urban agglomerations, in places where municipalities are much weaker. Global and local studies, including cost modeling by South Africa’s Financial and Fiscal Commission, have warned of the costs of sprawl. They have shown that in most instances it is far more efficient to rely on existing infrastructure through increasing the densities of existing urban areas than to massively extend infrastructure networks.
We appreciate the frustration at the declining rate of delivery of state-subsidized housing. We understand the attraction of the bold initiative. We know that there are multiple interests in an initiative or this sort that includes those related to land development and construction. Our concern is that poorly conceptualized initiatives of spatial development will leave long lasting legacies. Making cities more inclusive and functional through bold commitments such as Joburg’s Corridors of Freedom is in line with the National Development Plan which argued that the spatial inefficiencies of our cities are imposing high costs on households and the economy. There is an urgent need for open public debate and rigorous technical scrutiny of any scheme that commits Gauteng Province to forms of development that chart a course with impacts on generations to come.
- See more at: /sacp/our-opinions/#d.en.877449