Integrating Poor Populations in South African Cities - Agence ...

1. An Urban History of South Africa: From 1652 to the Present
Zones à Urbaniser en Priorité (ZUP, zones to urbanize in priority) and industrializing the
production of social housing. In the mid-1960s, in response to this policy’s limits (only
functional and centred primarily on social rental housing), the government once again
became heavily involved. It implemented planning tools 22 and launched the development
of new cities that were supposed to be a coherent wide-scale response to urban growth.
Near the end of the 1970s, public assistance for single-family houses was set up in
response to the demands from households. Adding to this generalization of single-family
homes, the expansion of the road network and the massive appearance of hypermarkets
gave birth to a characteristic urban landscape called bypass urbanism, in this case the
result not of an urban policy but of a public housing policy. In 1982, a decentralization
process began and aimed to give most responsibilities in the field of urbanism to
municipalities. Simultaneously, and from the early 1980s, the city policy 23 was born.
Indeed, the difficulties facing the ZUPs were progressively acknowledged and the
government launched a reintegration policy in these areas. It first gave rise to the “Grand
Projets Urbains” (GPUs, large urban projects), and then, starting in 2004, to urban renovation
projects accelerated and financed in part by the Agence Nationale pour la Rénovation
Urbaine (ANRU, national urban renovation agency). On the legislative level, starting in the
2000s, certain laws (and notably the Solidarité et Renouvellement Urbain law – SRU)
fostered social diversity and consideration of the environment in town planning and urbanism
actions.
Similarities with South Africa
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Despite very different political pasts (apartheid having until recently determined all of
political life and passed down “indelible” urban landscapes) and differences in territorial scale,
certain similar stages in how urban development was tackled are to be emphasized. First,
the politique des grand ensembles in France and the RDP house policy in South Africa were
22. The 1967 Loi d’Orientation Foncière (land orientation law) introduced the Schémas Directeurs
d’Aménagement et d’Urbanisme (SDAU, development and urbanism blueprints), precursors of the Schémas
de Cohérence Territoriale (SCOT, territorial coherency blueprints), and the Plans d’Occupation des Sols (POS,
land occupation plans), precursors of the Plans Locaux d’Urbanisme (PLU, local urbanism plans).
23. The Commission pour le Développement Social de Quartiers (neighbourhood social development
commission) was created in 1981, and the Délégation Interministérielle à la Ville (inter-ministerial delegation for
cities) was created in 1984.
© AFD 2009 Integrating Poor Populations in South African Cities