South Africa is a dominantly city nation, with nearly 70% of the inhabitants dwelling in cities and cities. But city providers and infrastructures are coming underneath growing pressure from the collapse of infrastructure in lots of smaller and medium sized cities and deteriorating levels in the large cities.
A standard response to a gathering city disaster is to think about beginning afresh with new cities. The impulse crosses the political spectrum.
In his 2019 state of the nation tackle, President Cyril Ramaphosa envisioned the construction of a new smart city. He has since introduced new cities at Lanseria (north of Johannesburg), Mooikloof (east of Pretoria), and alongside the Wild Coast of the Eastern Cape.
In April 2022, former opposition chief Mmusi Maimane argued that South Africa should be building many new cities, doubling the variety of metros from eight to 16.
New cities are a catchy concept. But that doesn’t make them an excellent one.
What would it take to create a sustainable new metropolis with out bankrupting the nationwide fiscus? Are they a viable prospect or white elephants within the making?
There is, luckily, a historical past of new metropolis thought and follow that we are able to draw classes from.
New cities could also be interesting since newer, smarter, extra sustainable infrastructure will be put in place. But in South Africa, this expenditure competes with the need to enhance the deteriorating infrastructure of present cities, which do in reality have the capability to accommodate projected city progress for many years to come.
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While rigorously deliberate new metropolis improvement could play a task in South Africa’s city future, it can be a important error to divert consideration and sources from the nation’s major city challenges.
New cities
Most giant cities globally have advanced over lengthy durations of time, responding to progress within the native economic system. But there are cities which have been consciously designed from scratch for a lot of totally different causes – together with political egos, land hypothesis, colonial growth, post-colonial developmentalism, and makes an attempt to relieve present cities of over-population and congestion.
In trendy instances, there was a surge of new city (or, rather, new town) development in Europe after the second world war. This was achieved to decentralise improvement from closely bombed giant cities and to create higher dwelling environments for working class households as half of a bigger welfarist programme.
The British new town programme was essentially the most in depth and well-known, however new cities had been additionally in-built France, Italy, Sweden and elsewhere.
Western international locations turned away from new city improvement however, from across the Nineteen Nineties, new metropolis improvement gained momentum in different elements of the world, together with East Asia and the Middle East.
In China, for instance, new cities had been constructed to accommodate a number of the extra 590 million folks in cities from the Eighties. Saudi Arabia has an astonishing plan to construct a 100-mile-long megacity called Neom which might be solely 200 metres large.
In Africa, Egypt has an extended historical past of new metropolis improvement.
Elsewhere there have been three current waves of new metropolis improvement. Just prior to the 2008/09 financial bust, an bold first wave was launched (for instance, Konza Tech which is 64km south of Nairobi, Eco Atlantic on land reclaimed from the ocean outdoors Lagos, Cité du Fleuve on an island within the Congo River outdoors Kinshasa, and Kigamboni throughout a big estuary north of Dar es Salaam).
Most faltered. The late South African educational Vanessa Watson known as them “urban fantasies”.
The second wave was initiated by the Moscow-based property developer Rendeavour, which focused the rising black African center class (for instance, Tatu City outdoors Nairobi, King City close to Takoradi port in Ghana, and Appolonia City close to Accra). The developments had been extra modest in dimension and have had some market-based success.
The third, most up-to-date wave is various, starting from Lanseria Smart City in South Africa to Akon City in Senegal, an try by an African American rapper to recreate the fictional Wakanda. Most not too long ago, in May 2022, Elon Musk made an extraordinary announcement. He intends to construct a US$20 billion new metropolis, known as Neo Gardens, outdoors Gaborone in Botswana.
This worldwide story affords many classes, however so does an earlier South African historical past which incorporates the institution of almost 80 new cities underneath apartheid for ideological causes. These included Welkom, Vanderbijlpark, Sasolburg and Secunda, which had been created to help new single-industry economies.
These did nicely for a time. But they didn’t diversify considerably and their industries have suffered in recent times from worldwide competitors.
These patterns mirror these evident internationally, the place the image is extra typically financial vulnerability and instability over the long run.
Conditions for achievement
There are some locations the place new city economies have thrived – similar to Shenzhen in China, Abuja in Nigeria, and Milton Keynes within the UK. These are fairly particular circumstances: Shenzhen was one China’s first initiatives to open up to the personal sector within the Eighties and is shut to Hong Kong; Abuja is a nationwide capital; Milton Keynes homes a serious college and a cluster of dynamic industries.
New locations do typically develop round new or rising financial actions, though typically the attraction of present financial cores stays robust.
New cities have had a greater monitor file in locations of speedy financial and inhabitants progress similar to in east Asian international locations, the place large-scale sources have been obtainable for infrastructure improvement and progress is speedy sufficient to divert some financial exercise into new cities.
So the prospects for new cities rely considerably on the context through which they’re developed.
New cities are expensive as new infrastructure should be developed from scratch. And they’ve excessive dangers when it comes to consequence. At the identical time, they don’t substitute present cities, which proceed to develop.
In our view, South Africa needs to have interaction with the realities of present cities and cities and make them work higher for his or her residents and the nation.
Philip Harrison, Professor School of Architecture and Planning, University of the Witwatersrand and Alison Todes, Professor, University of the Witwatersrand
This article is republished from The Conversation underneath a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.