A diagnostic approach to intra-metropolitan spatial targeting: Evidence from Cape Town, South Africa

Abstract

This article ascribes poor returns from place-based economic policy to prevailing spatial norms and causal assumptions which continue to influence its deployment across South African cities. By elevating the local over the systemic as the cause of and solution to urban problems, spatial targeting in the telescopic mould gives rise to three forms of spatial bias which lock in suboptimal local outcomes and gradually undermine the resilience of the urban system. Place-based policy should instead be guided by a systemic and relational evaluation of local economic potentiality supported by data-driven planning tools. The article introduces one such tool developed by the City of Cape Town, focusing on its theoretical basis, initial findings and implications for intervention. We find that the tool represents a robust platform for policy-makers to make targeting decisions that are more evidence led and hence less arbitrary.

Keywords:

• spatial targeting
• location theory
• place-based intervention
• evidence-based planning

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This work is supported by the City of Cape Town and Mistra Urban Futures, a global research and knowledge centre in sustainable urban development, funded by the Swedish International Development Agency and the Mistra Foundation for Strategic Development.

ORCID

Robert McGaffin http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0323-6898

Notes

⁴For example, the National Spatial Development Perspective, Urban Development Zones, the National Development Plan and the attendant Urban Network Strategy.

⁵Typified by Local Economic Development policy, the Urban Renewal Programme and Industrial Development Zones.

⁶See Rodríguez-Pose & Arbix (2001) for discussion on ‘fiscal wars’.

⁷ See Dreier for a discussion on ‘the limits of localism' (2001:171).

⁸See Molotch (1976) and Imbroscio (2006) for a discussion on the role of local property developers in perpetuating the ‘local growth machine’.

⁹Ten of the 71 business districts in Cape Town account for over one-half (51%) of estimated workplaces, of which only two were established in the last 30 years.

¹⁰Dispersed economic development tends to be associated with ‘greater capital costs related to school construction, the extension of road, water and sewer lines, and storm water drainage systems' (OECD, 2008).

¹¹Todes (2013) refers to a 2013 Demacon study which assesses the impact of the Urban Development Zone incentive. Private calculation shows that in Cape Town the Urban Development Zone has generated a leverage ratio of 1:18, which contrasts sharply with the dismal 1:0.13 ratio for the problem-oriented Khayelitsha Urban Regeneration Programme.