cities

MILE’s strategic objectives are:
• To facilitate the enhancement of professional and technical capacity of local government
professionals on the African continent.
• To position the eThekwini Municipality as a platform for innovating, learning and sharing with
other municipalities, associations and networks, both locally and internationally.
• To leverage partnerships with tertiary institutions in order to promote collaborative research
programmes that will ultimately improve the effectiveness of local government.
• To provide a municipal technical support service to other municipalities in an empowering and
innovative manner.
• To coordinate the internal knowledge management agenda within the eThekwini Municipality.
The strength of this partnership is that it creates a forum where knowledge about good local
governance can be shared through seminars, classes and on-line databases. This initiative could also
be expanded to include the private sector and individual citizens in discussions around good city
governance, while the outcomes of MILE could be incorporated into the planning process of eThekwini
and other municipalities.
MILE is not the only research-driven initiative with a focus on cities. Another example is Urban LandMark,
which was set up in 2009 with funding from the UK’s Department for International Development (DIFD)
in order to perform a “short term catalytic role” over seven years. The purpose was to understand urban
land markets in South Africa with the intention of “making markets work better for the poor”. Urban
LandMark was organised around five broad activities: research, the dissemination of research findings,
providing support, professional development, networking and advocacy. 7
Early research exposed dynamic informal markets for the trading of land, shacks and houses that
relied on social networks. Over time, Urban Landmark developed an incremental tenure model,
whereby developmental interventions were linked to forms of tenure security that were appropriate
for conditions in each settlement along a continuum to the full upgrading and freehold title. The
approach focused on changing policies and procedures, not legislation. During the seven-year period,
Urban LandMark produced many critical research and/or support documents, including:
• Understanding Township Economies and Commercial Property Markets
• Improving Access to the City through Value Capture
• A Guide for Municipal Practitioners on Managing Urban Land.
Despite being a small organisation with a limited budget, Urban LandMark fundamentally changed the
discourse on tenure upgrade in South Africa, influencing policy and legislation. For example, the
Spatial Planning Land Use Management Act (SPLUMA) (No. 16 of 2013) refers to the incremental
upgrading of informal areas, or “the progressive introduction of administration, management,
7 http://www.urbanlandmark.org.za/aboutus/index.php
294 State of South African Cities Report 2016