Planning under political transition—lessons from Cape Town's metropolitan planning forum

Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
South Africa's recent process of transition, from an authoritarian to a liberal democratic political system, was accompanied by the use of innovative consensus‐seeking processes to develop new policy in a wide range of arenas. Given the spatial imprint of apartheid ideology on South African towns and cities, the development of new metropolitan plans was of central concern to those groupings with an interest in the future of the urban areas. A stakeholder forum process is evaluated which, between 1992 and 1994, produced a new spatial ‘vision’ for Cape Town, and both the factors which assisted consensus and those which appear to have limited the achievement of meaningful communication between forum participants are examined.