Spatial Planning as Basis for Guiding Sustainable Land Use Management

Abstract

In the past fi ve decades the focus of planning component for sustainable land use management is torn between form and process. With the inception of neoliberalism in global economics in the late 20 century, the focus on process in planning gained momentum in core capitalist countries where the production of planning knowledge is known to concentrate. As this trend spread into developing countries, the meaning of spatial planning exploded into a complex web of characteristics, attributes, classifi cations and conceptualizations that have continued to evolve in diverse directions with no clear direction towards a universally accepted consensus, notwithstanding the stake-holding intervention of UN-Habitat. In effect substantive issues in planning that measure urban fabric indicators fell into insignifi cance as generic issues that explain process rise to pave way for market forces to determine urban form. Spatial planning competes or at the best cooperates with infrastructure planning especially transportation planning to determine land use in managing urban regions. As it were the emerging spatial patterns of space economy in Africa, represented mainly by development corridors, confl ict with requisite theoretical foundation of form and function that delivers growth in tandem with the shaping of cities. The reversal of this trend in Africa is restrained under the weight of neo-liberal global economic system and its planning theory component. However, this reversal is in contention and this requires visionary review and integration of existing classic and neo-liberal theories of spatial planning. In the African region very limited effort in this direction is found outside South Africa where the amalgamation of planning concepts is underway. Already, an independent source postulates strategic spatial planning concept [1,2]. Mindful of the peculiar nature of South Africa’s experience compared with other political economies in Africa, a case study of this Act is undertaken to seek principles and guidelines for application in the integration of a continental model. www.witpress.com, ISSN 1755-8336 (on-line) WIT Transactions on State of the Art in Science and Engineering, Vol 86, © 2015 WIT Press doi:10.2495/978-1-84566-077-2/007 154 LAND USE MANAGEMENT AND TRANSPORTATION PLANNING