ABSTRACT
Vanessa Watson, a professor of city planning at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, and a founder of the Association of African Planning Schools (AAPS), views urban issues and planning from the perspective of the Global South.
Most of the world’s population growth and urbanization for the remainder of the twenty-first century will occur in developing countries in Africa and Asia. But most urban planning theory and urban planning practices in the Global South have been imported from Europe and North America.
In this article, from the journal Urban Studies (2009), Watson points out that many plans and policies in Africa and Asia are holdovers from techno-rational modernist models seeking order, harmony, formality, and symmetry that date back to the colonial period. Colonial planning laws, master plans, and land use controls addressed the needs of colonial elites rather than the indigenous poor. Post-colonial governments perpetuated these plans in order to create order for foreign investment and new indigenous elites. Many of the planning laws, zoning ordinances, and master plans in Africa and Asia – if they exist at all – are completely inappropriate. As a result people must violate the formal laws and rules and build informal slum settlements. The harsh reality in rapidly urbanizing poor countries with weak economies and governance is that most urban development is chaotic, informal, polarized, unplanned development.
Watson argues that a “view from the South” can help re-focus planners’ attention on the most pressing world urban planning issues and help develop context-appropriate planning theory and practice for cities in poor countries of the Global South.
