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Urban Forum

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01-03-2013

Towards Facilitative and Pro-poor Land-Use Management in South African Urban Areas: Learning from International Experience

Authors: Tristan Görgens, Stuart Denoon-Stevens

Published in: Urban Forum | Issue 1/2013

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Abstract

Few would argue with the proposition that land-use management is one of the most powerful tools in the context of planning, both in South Africa and internationally, with the potential to transform the urban landscape. Yet despite its potential, it has been neglected both in terms of academic enquiry and legislative reform. This has resulted in land-use management functioning as an undesirable and unwieldy tool that perpetuates the modernist ideals of land-use separation and sprawling suburbia, and most worryingly, the perpetuation of an urban form that is essentially anti-poor. This paper initiates a search for the appropriate criteria for a land-use management system in South Africa’s urban areas. We argue for a land-use management system that moves away from the traditional exclusive emphasis on zoning towards a more flexible system based on a tiered set of plans. This system must take into account and respond to the dynamics of the urban land market, both its formal and informal dimensions, and directly address the poor and their needs as the central focus of land-use management.

previous article Multiple Land Regimes: Rethinking Land Governance in Maputo’s Peri-urban Spaces

next article Urban Land Market in Ghana: A Study of the Wa Municipality

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Title: Towards Facilitative and Pro-poor Land-Use Management in South African Urban Areas: Learning from International Experience
Authors: Tristan Görgens
Stuart Denoon-Stevens
Publication date: 01-03-2013
Publisher: Springer Netherlands
Published in: Urban Forum / Issue 1/2013
Print ISSN: 1015-3802
Electronic ISSN: 1874-6330
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12132-012-9161-1

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