The South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning
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The South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning is situated in the School of Architecture and Planning, at the University of the Witwatersrand and is headed by Prof Philip Harrison. This collection includes research outputs from the programme, including those under its previous name, the South African Research Chair in Development Planning and Modelling. For information on this collection content, please contact: Bongi Mphuti via email : Bongi.Mphuti@wits.ac.za or Tel (W) : 011 717 1978.
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Browsing The South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning by Type "Technical Report"
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Item Does density drive development?(South African Research Chair in Development Planning and Modelling, 2012) Msulwa, Rehema. Turok, Ivan.There is growing interest among governments and researchers around the world in the contribution of cities to economic development. Several influential international organisations have argued that the spatial concentration of economic activity is necessary for faster economic growth. This paper examines whether the density of population and economic activity influences the rate of local economic growth in South Africa. Municipalities are the basic units of analysis and the time frame is 1996-2010. Contrary to expectations, no statistically significant relationship is found between density and growth across the full range of 237 local municipalities. However, searching hard for a relationship among particular kinds of municipality, some evidence does emerge. The influence of human skills on local growth is also examined and is found to be more robust than density. Several reasons are given for why the relationship between density and growth is generally weak or non-existent.Item Practice note on including children in spatial planning and design development processes(South African Research Chair in Spatial Analysis and City Planning, 2022) Ahmad, Peter. Chetty, Stefanie Mills. de Villiers, Inneke. Halligey, Alex. Harrison, Philip. Hobbs, Stephen. Kruger, Jill. Mayatula, Lekgolo. Swift, Melinda.There is much work required in Africa to bring the child’s voice into civic processes, and many contextual considerations to take account of, especially in relation to the poverty, vulnerability, and environmental deprivation of many children on the continent. There are some indications, however, of a growing awareness in places of the value of engaging children. By 2022, Child Friendly Cities Initiative programmes have been launched in Mozambique, Senegal, and Guinea, with involvement of UNICEF, national municipal networks, local universities, and civil society, with programmes in the process of setting up in Nigeria and Malawi. The Nairobi headquartered UN-Habitat has also supported child-responsive planning on the continent including through the Future Cities Challenge which encourages children to creatively re-imagine the cities they live in. In Southern Africa, Save the Children has undertaken a broad assessment of children’s participation across the region. South Africa has a National Plan of Action for Children in South Africa which was coordinated by the Department of Women, Children and People with Disabilities, and approved by Cabinet in 2013. It is an important document indicating South Africa’s acceptance of international treaties including the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child but does not address in detail the question of children’s participation in public policy and planning. However, the National Planning Commission, which prepared a National Development Plan (or NDP) in 2012, has launched an initiative called the Children’s NDP. This is an innovative initiative aimed at affirming children’s citizenship and agency. With its play-based experiential and learning method it has taken children through an engaging process of needs analysis and plan making, addressing the lived realities of children in South Africa. The case for children’s participation relates to all forms of future-oriented policy making and planning. This Practice Note however deals specifically with the children’s participation in spatial planning and design development processes that help shape the future form of our towns and cities and is targeted at government officials and private sector professionals in the built environment sector. The Note provides a bit of theory, an introduction to some precedent on engaging children, and some guidance on the process and content of child-friendly planning and design.Item Resilient Densification: Four studies from Johannesburg(2015 University of the Witwatersrand, Gauteng City-Region Observatory, 2015) Todes, Alison. Harrison, Phillip. Weakley, Dylan.Unlike most cities in the world, over the last 20 years Johannesburg has become more dense and more compact. This reflects the increased rates of rural-urban migration from the late 1980s as urbanisation controls collapsed, but also the relative success of Johannesburg’s economy and democratic-era policies to contain urban sprawl (such as the urban development boundary). The ending of apartheid regulations allowed a release in a pent-up demand for access to large cities with much of the movement directed to the three large metropolitan cities in Gauteng. Densification in the city has occurred in both planned and unplanned ways. In line with directions in planning internationally, post-apartheid planning has placed strong emphasis on urban densification and compaction. At the same time, however, market forces (both formal and informal) have driven densification in the city, in ways that are often unforeseen and sometimes contrary to city policies. In order to plan for further development and to respond effectively to the densification that has happened, and is occurring, research into the processes and effects of densification is clearly needed. In this work we use an “urban resilience lens” to investigate four forms of residential densification in Johannesburg, using four illustrative case-studies. We explore the effects that densification is having in the city, showing how diverse, complex and contingent it often is.Item SPATIAL CONSIDERATIONS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF URBAN POLICY IN SOUTH AFRICA: A RESEARCH PAPER AS INPUT INTO THE PREPARATION OF THE INTEGRATED URBAN DEVELOPMENT FRAMEWORK (IUDF)(2016) Harrison, Philip. Todes, Alison.This research report is a contribution to the preparation of an Integrated Urban Development Framework (IUDF) for South Africa. It focusses explicitly on spatial processes in South Africa’s towns and cities, and should be read in the context of research papers dealing with other dimensions of urban development. The National Development Plan (NDP) is a key departure point in the preparation of the IUDF: As part of implementing the National Development Plan: Vision 2030, all three spheres of government in partnership with stakeholders need to manage the new wave of urbanisation in ways that also contribute to rural development2 . Chapter Eight of the NDP is the specific departure point for this research report as it deals with “transforming human settlement and the national space economy”. The Chapter gives strong emphasis to the importance of spatial transformation in addressing concerns with poverty and inequality. It argues that “where people live and work matters” and that “despite reforms to the planning system, colonial and apartheid legacies still structure space across different scales” (RSA, 2012, p.1). The NDP provides an analysis of spatial development in rural and urban areas, and offers a strategy to “respond systematically, and over time, to entrenched spatial patterns across all geographic scales that exacerbate social inequality and spatial inefficiency” (p.1). This report does not repeat the content of the NDP, and should be read together with Chapter Eight. The report does however seek to deepen and extend the analysis in Chapter Eight by drawing on data that became available subsequent to the writing of the Chapter; in particular, Census 2011Item Twenty year review: South Africa (1994-2024)(Presidency DPME, 2014) Harrison, Phillip