Ladies and gentlemen
Comrades and friends.
In President Jacob Zuma’s State of the Nation Address early this year, he highlighted the importance of collective action ‘to manage the new wave of urbanisation in ways that also contribute to rural development’.
The Integrated Urban Development Framework (IUDF) process thus began as a response to this call for action - that there is an urgent need to respond to the growing challenges of rapid urbanisation in South Africa.
This reality has been highlighted by analysis of urbanisation trends since 1994, which show a steady upwards cycle. Currently 60% of the population live in urban areas, a figure projected to reach nearly 72% by 2030. This reality has also been recognised in the National Development Plan (NDP), which calls for urban areas to be centres of both economic growth and social inclusion.
CoGTA, in partnership with key national sector departments (Human Settlements, Rural Development and Land Reform, Environment and Water Affairs, Finance, and Transport) is leading the process to develop this Urban Agenda.
Thus the IUDF process, which is being launched at the conference today, seeks to profile our regional and urban development patterns, policies and interventions to date, and through a series of collaborative stakeholder engagements, propose ‘a new deal for South Africa’s towns and cities’.
A well managed urban development policy can be a significant driver to achieve the country’s over-arching development goals, such as those set out in the NDP, the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF), which frames the national planning cycle of government, and the New Growth Path which seeks to expand economic growth and job creation.
We must therefore, leverage the potential of our cities and towns as the engines of growth and job creation; they have the advantages of economic concentration, connectivity to global markets, the availability of new technologies and the advantages presented by knowledge economies – but we cannot optimize these benefits and opportunities if we do not the means to address the persistent levels of poverty and inequality in the country.
Whilst recent trends suggest a greater level of integration between communities in our cities and towns since democracy, in many of the urban poverty traps in the country, there are still too many negative social manifestations of the impact of the living condition of the poor. We must therefore, accelerate progress towards the attainment of the spatially inclusive city, a city for whom the benefits are open to all. This is one of the central goals of our urban development policy framework.
Urbanisation does indeed pose complex institutional and fiscal challenges for urban areas across South Africa. We need to have the resources to respond to the complex demographic and economic trends which present a challenge for the management of urbanisation. Urban management takes place in municipalities and metros, so a corresponding emphasis on our institutional and fiscal arrangements, and review and revision of our existing legislation and policy impacting on local government, will further assist to identify the necessary levers that can support strengthened urban development.
For example, economic growth projections cannot be translated simply into requirements for infrastructure investment as they must take account of availability and condition of existing infrastructure assets at a local level. Urban policy must identify this connectivity, and institutionalise measures for improved coordinating and planning for such investments across all levels of government. An example of good progress being made in this regard is with the 18 Strategic Infrastructure Projects (CIPs) currently being rolled out across the country, and upon which South Africa must continue to build.
In this regard, at last month’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, president Jacob Zuma discussed the country’s R4 trillion (£279 billion) infrastructure programme, with the goal of boosting jobs. “Infrastructure development is our flagship project, given its capacity to create jobs while changing the landscape of our country,” he said. “Domestically, there are roads, dams, power stations, schools, hospitals and more that are being built or refurbished. All these provide enormous opportunities for the business sector.”
Such levers can therefore, reinforce our existing national priorities for targeted urban development improvement areas, such as informal settlement upgrading and improving ‘place’ connectivity and mobility for communities, through more integrated and expanded public transport systems.
Thus local governments must play a central role in managing public sector responses to urbanisation in South Africa. In order for them to effectively assume this role, their accountability for the management and financing of investment in the urban built environment, in particular, needs to be significantly strengthened.
Urbanization brings a range of advantages to a country – e.g. the concentration of labour and skills, and dense linkages between business enterprises that support job creation and economic growth. This trend is referred to as producing “agglomeration economies”, where there are lower costs for providing infrastructure and services to citizens, where more people are housed and located in close proximity to jobs, and more people are in closer proximity to a higher level of services and urban opportunities. This results in the city becoming ‘accessible’ to all citizens, and ranges from employment opportunities to access to equal and quality education, health care and related social services.
An ‘accessible city’ which also provides for citizen engagement and participation in growth and urban development priority areas, can also enable provision for a safer and ‘greener’ environment, where attractive public spaces, cultural activity, urban regeneration and related informal and small business activities may be better shaped and accommodated.
Rural-urban linkages can be defined as the structural social, economic, cultural, and political relationships maintained between individuals and groups in the urban environment and those in rural areas. The term rural-urban linkages can also be used to refer to either spatial or sectoral flows that occur between rural and urban areas.
In particular, spatial flows include flows of people, goods, money, technology, knowledge, information, and waste. By contrast, sectoral flows include flows of agricultural products going to urban areas, and goods from urban manufacturing areas going to more rural areas.
Typically, rural-urban linkages are often articulated in the following ways:
- Resource flows
- Migration
- Production
- Consumption
- Financial and some investment linkages that occur within the rural-urban symbiosis.
The resource linkages such as water, exchange of money, goods, visits including social activities, and communication with relatives and friends, can all be used as indicators of rural-urban linkages. Therefore, the analysis of rural-urban linkages highlights opportunities and possibilities that can be leveraged to stimulate local innovative productive systems that involve both rural and urban areas but in ways that are not harmful to each other.
Likewise, our IUDF the discussion emphasizes the impact of rural-urban linkages on livelihoods and rural transformation and we will be working closely with the department of Rural Development and Land Affairs to seek ways and means to optimize this close relationship.
The above mentioned areas are just some of the topics that the IUDF explores, as the work towards the completion of the Framework continues.
As has been emphasized in this conference today, the department’s primary objective for this development phase, is ensuring a broad platform for engagement with stakeholders, in addition to the intensive research period. To this end, the department has planned a comprehensive and inclusive stakeholder engagement strategy leading towards the finalisation of a truly evidence-based policy framework to bring energy and direction to our urban areas going forward.
This endeavour is a spatially inclusive exercise, and much work will be focused on the potential of a national spatial development framework that can assist South Africa to break down artificial barriers in planning, resource access, and in investment areas. This objective is to seek to promote more equitable and spatially integrated growth across the country.
I thank you.
