Sustainable Urban Futures in Africa provides a variety of conventional and emerging theoretical frameworks to inform understandings and responses to critical urban development issues such as urbanisation, climate change, housing/slum, informality, urban sprawl, urban ecosystem services and urban poverty, among others, within the context of the sustainable development goals (SDGs) in Africa. This book addresses topics including challenges to spatial urban development, how spatial planning is delivered, how different urbanisation variables influence the development of different forms of urban systems and settlements in Africa, how city authorities could use old and new methods of land administration to produce sustainable urban spaces in Africa, and the role of local activism is causing important changes in the built environment. Chapters are written by a diverse range of African scholars and practitioners in urban planning and policy design, environmental science and policy, sociology, agriculture, natural resources management, environmental law, and politics. Urban Africa has huge resource potential – both human and natural resources – that can stimulate sustainable development when effectively harnessed. Sustainable Urban Futures in Africa provides support for the SDGs in urban Africa and will be of interest to students and researchers, professionals and policymakers, and readers of urban studies, spatial planning, geography, governance, and other social sciences.

Planning and Transformation provides a comprehensive view of planning under political transition in South Africa, offering an accessible resource for both students and researchers in an international and a local audience. In the years after the 1994 transition to democracy in South Africa, planners believed they would be able to successfully promote a vision of integrated, equitable and sustainable cities, and counter the spatial distortions created by apartheid. This book covers the experience of the planning community, the extent to which their aims were achieved, and the hindering factors. Although some of the factors affecting planning have been context-specific, the nature of South Africa’s transition and its relationship to global dynamics have meant that many of the issues confronting planners in other parts of the world are echoed here. Issues of governance, integration, market competitiveness, sustainability, democracy and values are significant, and the particular nature of the South African experience lends new insights to thinking on these questions, exploring the possibilities of achievement in the planning field.

This volume examines the ways in which changing political and economic processes impact upon patterns of population movement and settlement. It focuses on the southern African region as it has moved from the experiments of the early independence era, through civil war and refugee flight, into the current era characterised by globalization and the demise of apartheid. Focused case studies from across the region deal with specific aspects of these transformations and their policy implications.

This research is predicated upon a spatial policy concern regarding the current post-apartheid urban experiences in South Africa. Based on what has been analyzed and critiqued thus far in terms of this situation, the policy concern has to do with the need to drastically redirect South Africa’s patterns of urban development in ways that can foster integrated and sustainable socio-economic development. ☐ This is a qualitative research study. The central questions that have been posed in this regard are: What are the current patterns of urban development in South Africa? How did they come about and what sustains them? What are the impediments in the current policies and implementation plans, which make urban development patterns in South Africa unable to deliver equitable and inclusive socio-economic outcomes that are consistent with the creation of a just society? And what are the core principles and features of a new policy framework that can guide a more equitable, just and sustainable pattern of urban development in South Africa? How does the development of new cities in South Africa anchor such a new policy framework? ☐ This has paved the way for the crafting of a policy framework, anchored on the creation of new cities, which is aimed at redirecting patterns of urban development in South Africa. The New Cities – New Economies thesis is a proposition that is aimed at fueling the long overdue economic growth and transformation of the South African society. It is the gestation of an economic revolution. It is indeed a Grand Plan, which will not only serve South Africa but has potential to reverberate across the entire African continent. This Grand Plan is the promise of the South Africa we yearn for, the Africa we want. ☐ New cities herald new economies, new economies yield jobs and empowerment and therefore destroy both poverty and apartheid economic legacy. The new cities should have a symbiotic relationship with the economy. As new cities herald new economies; new economies will anchor and sustain new cities. These are egalitarian cities. Egalitarian cities are equitable cities that promote cohabitation, where people share in the wealth of their nations.

Over the last two decades the concept and practice of Local Economic Development (LED) has gained widespread acceptance around the world as a locally-based response to the challenges posed by globalization, devolution, local-level opportunities, and economic crises. Support for local economic development is now firmly on the agenda of many national governments and key international agencies. This volume examines the debates about Local Economic Development and examines some of the unfolding experiences of LED in the developing world. The focus is upon the region of southern Africa, and more especially upon post-apartheid South Africa. LED emerged in South Africa as one of the more significant post-apartheid development options being pursued by empowered localities with the overt encouragement of national government. Elsewhere in the developing world, much interest surrounds the experience of LED in post-apartheid South Africa, which is seen as a laboratory for experimentation, innovation, and learning. The seventeen chapters in this book examine the range of LED interventions that have been the basis for experimentation in the last decade, including both pro-market as well as pro-poor interventions. Key themes include debates about the most appropriate policy directions for LED, its contribution towards sustainable development, the role of social capital, cluster support, public procurement, eco-development, good governance and tourism-led LED. The book also contains a series of detailed case studies on the implementation of LED in South Africa and the wider region of southern Africa, including analyses of LED undertaken at a variety of scales from the provincial, metropolitan, and small-town level. Until now, most research on local economic development has focused on the developed world. This volume breaks new ground in applying LED policy and practices to problems specific to the developing world. It will be of interest to scholars of development studies, urban and regional planning, human geography, and urban studies.