EDITORIAL

 

From the editors: Dr Abraham Matamanda & Dr Mariske van Aswegen 2023

 

 

Dancing to a new tune

Our settlements are under constant threat, struggling to keep up with a changing world, a world with everchanging demands, both from our citizens and from our ideals of what a successful settlement should be. Specifically, geopolitical forces and factors including migration, war and civil unrest, pandemics, and the throes of climate change have come to affect human settlements in multiple ways. Prof. Greg Clark (Future Cities and New Industries, HSBC), explains: "In the recent past, we thought a successful city was a city with a major cluster of office jobs in the centre, suburban housing on the fringes, and an attractive set of amenities, facilities, services and public space" (Goodman, 2023: online). However, the priorities of citizens and town and regional planners are changing; we are setting a new standard for our settlements, expecting more from it, for this living organism to deliver more, be more...

Settlements must be sustainable.

Settlements must be resilient.

Settlements must transform.

Settlements must be green.

Settlements must adapt.

And the list goes on.

Settlements are increasingly interdependent. This interdependence is prevalent in a world where digital tools and technologies are enhancing connectivity among people in space and time. Specifically, everyone and everything is constantly connected and constantly switched on, and distance and time have become irrelevant, as technology allows us to be anywhere at any given time virtually. Technology is developing in leaps and bounds, challenging settlements to accelerate their digitisation during the Fourth Industrial Revolution (4IR), accompanied by technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), big data, robotics, and automation. The digital divide across settlements of the world is becoming more evident as the developing world is struggling to participate in this age of digital connectivity. Many of the settlements in the Global South and elsewhere are still grappling with basic service provision, social inequality, housing affordability, urbanisation, poverty, and war, to name a few. Meanwhile, counterpart settlements in other parts of the world are focused on establishing greener cities, environmental considerations, digitisation, quality of life, and enriching the lives of their citizens. These vast differences between countries and settlements reiterate the need for constant renewal in our approaches, adapting to pandemics, economic volatility, environmental disasters, and extreme natural events.

Constant change necessitates constant adaptation, or as the African proverb reminds us, "[i]f the rhythm of the drum beat changes, the dance steps must adapt", and indeed this issue exemplifies our strive towards constant improvement, constant growth, and adaptation to a new rhythm - be it in Nigeria, Kenya, Johannesburg, or Cape Town. The following contributions provide insights into the rhythms and changes experienced in selected African cities and the planning approaches being adopted by planners at different scales and communities to adapt to changes.

Van der Walt and Pretorius focus on transit-oriented development in the context of South Africa. This article considers how the legacy of the apartheid planning system is still imprinted in South African cities and a critical spatial transformation issue that urban planners are grappling with in efforts to create liveable and habitable cities. The authors recognise the significance of transit-oriented development in spurring socio-economic development through mixed-use development, densification and walking neighbourhoods that align with the aspirations of sustainable development goal (SDG) #11. The study recognises the need for collaborative planning where different stakeholders come together and influence planning decisions and outcomes. Moreover, there is a need to undertake feasibility studies that help articulate the local context issues and avoid generalised approaches and strategies that often fail to align with local realities. Lastly, the municipalities must develop transit-oriented development design guidelines informed by available resources, expertise, and local conditions (economic, social and environmental).

Keeping with the theme of adaptation, K'oyoo and Breed explore how urban renewal can be used to capture landscape identity in Kisumu City, Kenya. In this article, the authors argue that urban renewal can be used to improve the physical deterioration of built form in cities. At the centre of the work is the critical role that landscape identity plays in cities, thus becoming critical to preserve these landscape identities. The study recognises that landscape identity is subjective and premised on several factors, including the perceptions of residents who relate with the specific features of cities. It emerges that identity in Kisumu City is largely defined by the natural environment, including Lake Victoria and some hills. These landscape features emerging from this article are how the natural environment becomes critical in shaping people's place attachment and memory with a place, fostering its identity and liveability. It becomes critical to integrate landscape identity in urban renewal which helps increase the sense of place among community members.

Mokhele and Fisher-Holloway

position their study in the ongoing scholarship on digital platforms and tools available in cities. In their study, they focus on how the processes of globalisation and e-commerce are increasingly contributing to warehousing facilities in cities and regions. Using the example of Cape Town, a traditional coastal and port city, Mokhele and Fisher-Holloway point out how the development of these warehousing facilities negatively contributes to noise and air pollution, as well as traffic congestion in certain areas. The study undertakes a socio-spatial mapping of the warehousing facilities, highlighting the spatial distribution of these facilities in the city and how urban planners should consider the locational patterns in ensuring the connectivity of cities. In creating functional settlements, the authors recommend that warehousing clusters be prioritised in land-use planning in Cape Town.

In Nigeria, the use of GIS as an urban land-use demarcation tool is explored by Enoguanbhor et al. In their exploration, the authors focus on how urban planning implementation can be improved to enhance the sustainability of urban settlements. While great plans and visions are prepared for advancing the sustainability of settlements, several factors are identified as stifling the success of plan implementation. This inconsistency compromises settlement transformation, as the envisaged urban futures are not always realised, leading to multiple other problems, including perpetuation and persistence of urban challenges. Using Abuja as a case study, the authors highlight that there is a mismatch in the planned and emergent land uses, mainly due to political interference in planning affairs, inadequate funding to execute certain activities and developments, as well as distortion of master plans by some corrupt officials. This study brings to attention the major urban challenge in the vast majority of African cities which stems from corruption and inconsistent practices among planning officials calling for ethical conduct and practices among professionals to enhance the viability of urban plans. The authors thus recommend strategic decision-making to be embraced in championing plan implementation.

 

REFERENCES

GOODMAN. 2023. How cities are changing. [Online]. Available at: <https://www.goodman.com/about-goodman/thought-starters/how-cities-are-changing> [Accessed: 4 December 2023].         [ Links ]

 

 

1 Dr Abraham Matamanda, Department of Geography, University of the Free State, South Africa. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5260-5560
2 Dr Mariske van Aswegen, Unit for Environmental Sciences and Management (UESM), North-West University, South Africa. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3817-2380