Introduction
How different does planning theory and practice need to be when it happens in different parts of the world? To what extent does planning require a deep understanding of the context in which it proposes to intervene and how should this understanding shape what planners do? These questions challenge some long-held assumptions in planning where both theory and practice have tended to smooth over this kind of sensitivity in favour of concepts and practices which are place-blind and held to be valid anywhere in the world. The purpose of this book is to foreground the importance of recognising place and location in planning if it is to achieve the kinds of ambitions (social justice and equity, and sustainability) which it usually sets itself and avoid the unintended consequences which so often ensue.
Southern Planning Theory
Posing these questions about the relevance of place is currently at the centre of some heated debates in planning as well as in a range of cognate disciplines. In planning, as well as in the fields of urban studies, sociology, anthropology, climate change and more, there has been a recent ‘southern turn’ in which scholars have challenged the validity of knowledge produced in global North regions (the advanced capitalist economies of the world) and assumed to hold true everywhere else. In planning there is a long tradition of theorising about the nature of cities and regions and the kinds of interventions which are appropriate and possible, based on assumed characteristics of global North regions: relatively strong civil societies, well-resourced and capacitated institutions of governance, developed formal economies and lower levels of poverty and unemployment. While it is true that these characteristics are changing and express diversity even within the global North, southern theorists argue that those parts of the world termed the global South are firstly, sufficiently different from global North regions as to require entirely new theoretical concepts and secondly, are still shaped by their histories of colonialism which set them apart from the global North and locate them in a particular and ongoing relationship to the global North (and its processes of knowledge production). Those who write about the global South recognise the possibility of different characteristics in the places they study: rapid urbanisation (although no longer in Latin America), weak and fractured civil society, poorly resourced and capacitated institutions of governance, largely informal urban economies and high levels of unemployment, poverty and inequality. They recognise the huge and ever-changing differences in these characteristics across the continents usually included in the global South. Southern theorists are at the same time keen to emphasise that their use of the term ‘southern’ does not necessarily refer to a geographical South, but more to a perspective or orientation from different parts of the world (see Bhan et al. 2018). The problem of setting up theoretical binaries between global North and global South knowledge is well recognised. Chapter 2 of the book sets out this debate in more detail.
This book aligns itself with the southern turn in planning scholarship. The authors have long worked in South Africa and on the African continent in the fields of planning and development. They have long been aware of how concepts, models and approaches come from elsewhere in the world, usually the global North, but more recently from those parts of the global South which are rapidly modernising and developing. These approaches (sometimes termed ‘best practices’) tend to ‘land’ in this part of the global South with little preliminary investigation of their potential ‘fit’, little consultation with those who feel their impact and frequently with highly negative outcomes. The African continent has a long history of such landings as part of processes of colonisation, and in planning, these laws, concepts, models and even university curricula have persisted to the present time. In South Africa , the apartheid government used planning ‘best practice’ models from the global North (Garden Cities , neighbourhood unit and Radburn layouts, satellite towns), to justify pernicious strategies of racial segregation in cities and the forced removal of families of colour from established and integrated neighbourhoods to barren and far-flung new suburbs. The devastating effects of this on families still linger. But while apartheid has now gone, state planning interventions continue to draw on inappropriate planning ideas and models which continue to exacerbate inequalities and marginalisation of the poorest, and usually black, households.
This book explores in depth one such example of recent planning in the township of Langa , the oldest African neighbourhood in Cape Town and designed in 1923, along British Garden City lines. This intervention sought to provide housing to ‘eradicate’ informality, but resulted in a host of unforeseen consequences. Planning and planners (and associated professionals) can be involved in a wide range of urban management and change actions, but housing-related interventions are often a key determinant of how cities and towns function overall. This is certainly true of South African cities and the Langa intervention is a potent example of what Robins (2002, 513) describes as the enduring fantasy of South African planners and policy makers to transform and standardise the everyday urban spaces of the poor.
Conflicting Rationalities
While the authors of this book have been well aware of the frequent clashes between state visions and plans and the everyday lives of urban residents in southern contexts such as this, theorising these processes is more difficult. Such theorising has to position itself in relation to other existing planning theories and must be prepared to both show the weaknesses of these theories and suggest alternative ways of thinking. In 2003, one of the authors gained access to a detailed report of a Commission of Enquiry set up by the Cape Town municipality to investigate a state informal upgrade plan which was rejected by the intended community and gave rise to extensive protests. The clash between the modernising ambitions of the state and the very different world views of the shack dwellers, which themselves were fragmented and conflictual, came through clearly in the verbatim record of evidence to the Commission. In a subsequent article, Watson (2003) coined the term ‘conflicting rationalities’ to capture this divergence between state and community positions. The article also suggested that the persistence of such deep and irreconcilable differences challenged planning theory of the time which, drawing on Habermassian communicative action theory , argued that the right approach to dialogue between planners and communities could achieve consensus and positive planning outcomes. The article proposed that instead, planners needed to understand how to accept and work with deep difference and ongoing conflict.
In the years since 2003 the concept of conflicting rationalities has gained some traction, and consensus-based planning theory anyway has been challenged by newer lines of thought. However, a concept such as conflicting rationalities , based on a single case study and informed by only secondary sources of information (the Commission of Enquiry Report), is difficult to defend and runs the risk of over-simplifying state-society interaction. This book takes the idea a step further and presents an in-depth case study which tests the concept of conflicting rationalities , conducted as doctoral research by the author, de Satgé. Drawing on a lifetime of work on rural and urban land, migration and livelihoods in southern Africa, including Joe Slovo informal settlement in Langa, he was able to deeply interrogate the nature of interaction between and within the various levels and elements of the state and the residents of the Langa site around a megaproject planning intervention. In this book we do not suggest that planners and associated professionals consciously adopted particular planning theories to inform how they engaged with communities. As interviews with officials working on this project show, they were certainly aware that such engagement should be taking place, but the prospect was simply too daunting and threatening to embark on. It was also overtly discouraged by officials at higher levels of government on the grounds that a democratic government ‘knows what the people want’.
Researching Conflicting Rationalities in Langa: The Method
The method used in this research was therefore based on a single case study classified as ‘paradigmatic’ given its potential to “highlight more general characteristics of the society in question…with metaphorical and prototypical value” (Flyvbjerg 2006, 397). The research can be regarded as ‘retroductive ’ in that it progresses from a theoretical framework or hypothesised concept (conflicting rationalities in this instance) to an empirical case and then speaks back to the original theoretical idea or concept (see Duminy et al. 2014). The case itself (Langa) comprises a small enclave within metropolitan Cape Town with a population of approximately 52,000 people compressed into an area of 3.09 km2 in a city of some 3.7 million people. It should not be understood in isolation from its broader context within the city, the country and the wider continent. Chapter 3 on planning in Sub-Saharan Africa and Chap. 4 on South Africa and Cape Town locate the case both historically and socio-economically.
Methodologically, the study drew on research methods which embrace the ‘visual turn’, utilising satellite images and photographic compilations as narrative triggers for storytelling by residents, officials and civil society actors. Harper traces the history of visual methods and the various ways in which photographs can be used in the research process asserting that “a photograph, a literal rendering of an element of the subject’s world, calls forth associations, definitions or ideas that would otherwise go unnoticed” (Harper 1988, 65). These stories attach themselves to the inherent ambiguity that is contained within a photograph and has the potential to provide “a unique means of expression” and which may “suggest another way of telling” (Berger and Mohr 1982, 92).
The research strategy involved two clusters of interviews, both utilising image...