VOLUME 1 HUMAN SETTLEMENT PLANNING AND ... - CSIR

GUIDELINES FOR HUMAN SETTLEMENT PLANNING AND DESIGNIn other respects, the comments of the previoussection under the same heading apply here as well.THE GUIDELINES - A CAUTIONARYREMARKMuch of the preceding, it has to be admitted, is tosome or other extent “unproven”. With fewexceptions, each provision of collective utility points inSouth Africa has tended to share one or more of thefollowing characteristics:• provision as an ad hoc reaction by the authoritiesto a land invasion, or gradual overcrowding of asettlement (and overloading of existing services) -as a stopgap which is not improved upon until thenext health scare, bout of political unrest, orpopulation influx;• as a single-utility provision (e.g. collective water inone place, collective sanitation elsewhere, andpostal delivery in a third place), with no attemptbeing made to co-ordinate provision for thegreater convenience of the users; and• a few years after construction, the utility is poorlymaintained, vandalised, and/or abused - and oftenas a consequence avoided by those who, it hadbeen planned, would use the utility.The last couple of years has seen a dramatic increase inthe number of attempts to provide collective utilities inthe manner described in this sub-chapter, and in theeffort and skill devoted to these attempts. This isespecially in respect of those places where largenumbers of people gather every day (the modalinterchange with informal market, for example). Everysituation is so very different from any other that designguidelines must necessarily be broad. These situationaldifferences arise in terms of size, in-town or suburbanor outlying area location, type and intensity of activity,history, socio-economic groups using the place,presence (or absence) and state of existing utilities, andjuxtaposition of magnets (the markets, public transportboarding points, office or shop destinations, etc).It should, however, be noted that, understandably inthe current situation of financially-strapped localauthorities (who are usually the developers of thesecollective utilities), the available resources have had tobe given to the worst situations, which usually hasmeant those affecting the largest numbers of users.Thus the projects available for study, whether projectsbeing planned or already built, are generally at placeswhere large numbers of people gather each day• to break their commuting journey (i.e. interchangebetween some combination of walk-taxi-bus-train(less frequently, car or truck; even less frequently,cycle));• to shop; or• (often) to do both.Even in respect of these public-gathering types of use,the available effort is thus going mostly into situationswith the largest concentrations of people, rather thaninto the planning and design of collective utility pointsto serve smaller-scale taxi stops or trading areas.Very little of the current effort is going into higherordercollective utility points designed for use byresidents of the immediate vicinity. Even theManenberg bath house, built to cater for adevelopment where the houses were initially notfitted with hot water cylinders, is one of the fewexceptions (and it is more than ten years old).Thus many of the collective utility points presentlybeing designed (certainly, almost all of those abovethe lowest order) are for the upgrading of alreadyplanned situations. Already planned in this contextincludes• existing situations where pressure of users, andoften the congested and polluted circumstancesthat have arisen, have to be addressed urgently;and• situations in townships already built and settled,which may not yet have become problems, but arein an early stage of growth and obviously need tohave collective utilities provided before unhygienicor otherwise undesirable circumstances arise.CONCLUSIONExtensive enquiries failed to find in a single example inSouth Africa the application of most, let alone all, ofthe principles set out in these guidelines - which is notin the least surprising. One of the purposes of thisdocument is to modify key aspects of the planningphilosophy that has governed the development of ourcities - especially to free them from rigid adherence toconcepts of the inward-looking neighbourhood unitand from a road hierarchy that is unfriendly to publictransport.Thus no suitable examples were found of planninglayouts that specifically allowed for collective utilitypoints, accommodating multiple utilities in a designedrelationship with public transport (especially taxis),informal marketing and the nearby residential area.Such forms of development have never before beenadvocated by the authorities - and, if they have been14Chapter 5.7Public utilities