Municipal planning governance reform and spatial plan quality: Evidence from South African cities

Keywords: municipal governance; spatial planning; plan evaluation; plan quality;
Abstract Type: Virtual Paper Abstract

Abstract

South Africa’s municipal planning governance framework was comprehensively reformed after 1994. The most profound development from a spatial planning perspective has been the promulgation of the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (SPLUMA) in 2013. One of the central requirements of SPLUMA is that municipal Spatial Development Frameworks (SDFs) must include an implementation plan containing implementation targets and monitoring indicators. However, systematic evaluation dealing with all four key components of spatial plan evaluation (process quality, plan quality, plan performance, and plan conformance) remains a challenge for urban planners not only in South Africa but also globally. This paper considers the influence of the legislative reform on the spatial plan quality dimension of SDFs. It compares different versions of the SDFs over a period of approximately 15 years of ten metropolitan and local municipalities in South Africa both before and after the introduction of the SPLUMA spatial governance regime. The results indicate that the introduction of this new legislation contributed to meaningful improvements in some dimensions of plan quality such as institutional coordination and alignment, and responding to the challenges of urban sustainability and resilience. However, other dimensions such as dealing with urban informality in spatial planning showed little improvement in quality. The paper concludes with recommendations for further improving the spatial plan quality of municipal SDFs.