Projects per year
Abstract
This paper discusses post-apartheid planning reform in South Africa and identifies the successes and failures thereof, as understood by South African planners. We noted a perception of success regarding the reform of planning legislation; however, the general feeling was that planning had failed to achieve spatial transformation in the post-apartheid era. A variety of reasons were given for this: the failure to achieve reservation of planning work for planners, political interference, weak planning tools, lack of capacity, and planners' lack of key skills. We argue that underlying these failures was a deeper issue, namely that many powerful stakeholders in the built environment seemingly did not ascribe value to the planning process. In other instances, they may accept the value of the process, but not the uniqueness of planners' skills. This divergence of opinion of and power struggle between the legitimacy of planning versus planners shapes both the form that planning reform takes, but also the perceptions of the successes or failures of planning reform. Consequentially, this means that to achieve ‘successful’ planning reform, it is necessary to account for how the interaction of micro (individual) and macro-meso (organisational, societal) agendas shape these processes.
Original language | English |
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Article number | 103867 |
Number of pages | 9 |
Journal | Cities |
Volume | 130 |
Early online date | 16 Jul 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Nov 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This work was supported by the South African National Research Fund under Grant 105399 ; United Kingdom Economic Social Research Council under Grant ES/P00198X/ 1.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022
Keywords
- planning practice
- South Africa
- spatial transformation
- post-Apartheid
- Spatial transformation
- Planning practice
- Post-apartheid
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Development
- Tourism, Leisure and Hospitality Management
- Sociology and Political Science
- Urban Studies
Fingerprint
Dive into the research topics of 'Unpacking planners' views of the success and failure of planning in post-apartheid South Africa'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.Projects
- 1 Finished
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The appropriateness, usefulness and impact of the current urban planning curriculum in South African Higher Education
Beazley, M., Andres, L. & Jones, P.
Economic & Social Research Council
1/02/17 → 30/07/20
Project: Research Councils
Datasets
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Planning education research in South Africa 2018
Jones, P. (Creator), UK Data Service, 10 Jul 2020
https://reshare.ukdataservice.ac.uk/854063/
Dataset