ABSTRACT
There is limited literature pertaining to planning in the Global South, in comparison to the literature base of planning in the global North, and some believe that much of the planning literature on the Global South comes from outside the continent, and does not reflect indigenous African-knowledge. The aim of this paper is to evaluate literature relating to South African planning approaches as point of departure to validate the claims pertaining to authorship of literature, and to further investigate the thematic content that is published. The empirical investigation considered 125 papers that were identified through a qualitative inquiry as part of theory-based sampling, where the respective titles of the papers were captured and 345 key words identified and information visualisation techniques employed to illustrate such. Conclusions were drawn with regard to (1) planning literature of South Africa (and references to Africa), (2) current research themes being investigated within the local South African context, and (3) future research opportunities which could advance the science of planning, teaching-learning approaches and contribute to broadening the local planning literature base within the Global South, whilst decolonising urban theory.
1. Reflecting on South African planning literature
Too much of what we know about Africa is coming from outside the continent. (De Waal, Citation2015)
Planning in South Africa has evolved into a complex web of political, social, economic and environmental realities. South Africa is faced with immense socio-economic issues (Du Plessis et al., Citation2003), many disregarded environmental issues (Le Maitre et al., Citation2007), and municipalities that struggle to cope with urbanisation rates which increase pressure on limited resources in strained social contexts (Carden & Armitage, Citation2013). The social and spatial dynamics of the local landscape can no longer be separated and local scholars are recognising the increasing importance of a ‘planning with’ approach (Cilliers & Victor, Citation2018), grounded in anthropological understandings of space and cities as ‘meshworks’ (Ingold, Citation2016:10). If claims about African planning literature being primarily authored by international scholars are true, it contrasts the argument for a ‘planning with’ approach and questions if such literature could be ‘policy relevant’ (Spiegel et al., Citation1999:182–6). Social scientific ‘facts’ about (South) Africa should be based on real data (De Waal, Citation2015), and real (South) Africa challenges and complexities that characterise our cities. It is acknowledged that generating accurate data about African economies, African conflicts, and African political systems is hard (De Waal, Citation2015), as is the opportunities to publish such findings in a north-dominating academic environment. A lack of data, but also positionality and lack of knowledge of those collecting and analysing data in relation to broader politics are contributing to the lack of scientific research depicting the South African planning reality. As point of departure this paper reflects on the local planning literature base of South Africa as reflected within 125 papers identified through online platforms, which provided insight into current authorship, research themes within the local context, and ultimately opportunities for future research to be explored.
2. Methodology employed to analyse South African planning literature
In an attempt to reflect on the local planning literature base of South Africa, a mixed methods research approach was employed where a sample of planning papers where quantitatively selected based on a number of purposefully selected key words, and accordingly qualitatively analysed to confirm the validity of inclusion to the research sample. In total 125 peer-reviewed journal papers were selected by using Google Scholar Advance Search and EBSCO’s OneSearch search platform of the North-West University library (http://www.nwu.ac.za/library/onesearch.html). OneSearch accessed 90 international databases and the EBSCO search engine was purposefully selected as it provides an easy, powerful search platform inclusive of almost all the resources the North-West University subscribes to. The search engine includes amongst others the following databases: Academic Search Premier, Access Engineering, Africa-Wide Information, Applied Science & Technology Source, American Chemical Society, ArchiveGrid, Art & Architecture Complete, Artstor, ATLA Religion Database with ATLASerials, Audiobook Collection (EBSCOhost), Britannica Online, Business Source Premier, CAB Abstracts, Cambridge Journals Online, CINAHL with Full Text, Cochrane Library, Communication & Mass Media Complete, Directory of Open Access Journals, eBook Collection (EBSCOhost), Emerald Online, Environment Complete, ERIC, GreenFILE, Health Source – Consumer Edition, HeinOnline, Hospitality & Tourism Index Complete, IEEE Xplore, INIS, IoP Science Xtra, JCR, J-STAGE, JSTOR, Library Catalogue, Library, Information Science & Technology, Literary Reference Center, MasterFILE Premier, MathSciNet, MEDLINE, MLA Directory of Periodicals, MLA International Bibliography, Newspaper Source, North-West Institutional Repository (Boloka), OAIster, OAPEN Library, Ovid Nursing Collection, Oxford English Dictionary, Oxford Reference Online, Philosopher's Index, ProQuest Theses & Dissertations Full Text, PsycARTICLES, PsycINFO, Regional Business News, RILM Abstracts of Music Literature, Royal Society of Chemistry, SAePublications, SAGE journals online, SCIELO, ScienceDirect, Scopus, SMART Imagebase, SocINDEX with Full Text, SPORTDiscus with Full Text, Springerlink journals, Taylor & Francis journals, Teacher Reference Center, Waters & Oceans Worldwide, Wiley online journals. To focus and narrow the search, the keywords ‘spatial, urban, town, planning’ were used in conjunction with ‘civic science, ecology, ecosystem services, environment, environmental justice, policies and legislation, sustainability, participation and management’. All papers identified from these searches were captured, along with the reference lists of the captured papers. The reference lists were considered to identify more papers, in line with the methodology employed by Du Toit (Citation2015) and Duminy (Citation2011) who conducted similar studies within the fields of urban ecology and informality and planning. Searches were limited to published peer-reviewed papers. Results were limited to those papers specifically focussing on South African planning approaches and local case studies of planning. Once downloaded, the abstracts of papers were read to confirm adherence to the limitation criteria, which then resulted in 125 papers that were identified and deemed relevant for purposes of this research ( lists all identified publications) and first attempt to quantifying planning literature in South Africa.
Table 1. Comprehensive overview of 125 selected papers included in this research.
To objectively determine the significance and relevance of the specific papers, Google Scholar citations (http://scholar.google.co.za/) were used to determine the relative international standing of each paper. The number of citations of each of the papers was captured, along with the year of publication. The impact of each paper were calculated by dividing the total number of citations by the years-since-publication. Dates used were those of the hard copy journals (not online first or similar publication dates). The Google Scholar citations as listed on the 11th of March 2016 were used. The papers were further qualitatively evaluated to identify specific planning focus and applicable case study research. In an attempt to identify broad research themes covered by the selected papers, categories were identified through a qualitative enquiry as part of theory-based sampling, where the respective titles of the papers were captured and key words identified which then was visually contextualised by means of word clouds, constructed by Wordle, which ‘builds a regular expression (regex) that recognizes what it considers to be words in a variety of scripts, and then iteratively applies that regex to the given text’ (Feinberg, Citation2010:46). The 345 key words contained in the titles of the 125 papers were captured and linked to weight (frequency of use), in order to determine the size of the word. Based on the world clouds, five broad research themes were identified, including ‘Land-use planning, Green-agenda, Sustainability, Management, Policy, Participation’. The 125 papers were then collectively considered to conclude on the planning literature, current trends and future research opportunities in terms of these five research themes.
It is acknowledged that the conclusions were purely based on the included papers, identified through the EBSCO search engine and platform. The selection of papers might in itself probe to be a limitation of this paper and it is acknowledged that other important papers might have been excluded through employing the chosen platform and methodology. However, this limited and first approach investigation did identify broader trends within the planning literature based and opportunities for future research, that is of importance for the planning profession and especially local planning environment. Accordingly, the findings of the evaluation of the 125 papers are captured.
3. Reflection on the local planning literature base
The 125 papers evaluated were published over a 33-year period, the earliest being the research of Steyn (Citation1983) entitled ‘Public recreational space in South Africa's urban areas: Suggestions for planning’ to the most recent work of Musvoto et al. (Citation2016) on the role of Spatial Development Frameworks and Nel (2015) ‘Spluma, Zoning and Effective Land Use Management in South Africa’.
In total 77% of the selected papers were written by local researchers (location provided by time of publication of paper), and 15% by (only) international authors, rejecting claims that most planning literature is authored by international researchers. A total of 8% of the papers were written in collaboration with local and international researchers. The international authors were located at various research institutions in, amongst others, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom and United States of America ().
Figure 1. Total citations and impact of the 125 selected papers.
The 125 papers were cited 3458 times in total during this timeframe. captures the total citations (as on 11th of March 2016) and impact per year, of the selected planning papers.
Figure 2. Total citations and impact of the 125 selected papers.
The 10 most influential papers published, top 10 based on the impact of the individual paper, are ranked in , with the paper of Watson (Citation2009) as leading publication.
Table 2. Selection of 10 most influential papers.
The papers of Watson (Citation2009) ‘“The planned city sweeps the poor away … ”: Urban planning and 21st century urbanisation’ and Roberts (Citation2008) ‘Thinking globally, acting locally – institutionalizing climate change at the local government level in Durban, South Africa’ were, amongst others, included in a similar study of Du Toit (Citation2015) based on urban ecology and planning literature. These two papers indicated a significant increase in terms of impact, since 2014 where the impact was calculated as 19 for both papers. The paper of Watson (Citation2009) was cited 99 times in 2014 and increased to 176 times in 2016. This is evidence of the relevance of these publications in modern planning context and recognition thereof on a global planning scale.
The 125 papers included in the research were published in 60 different journals. The top 10 journals in terms of the number of publications are captured accordingly. There were 16 papers published in the journal ‘Urban Forum’ and the impact of these publications totalled to 43.5. ‘Urban Studies’ published 7 of the selected papers but had the highest impact, totalling to 69.7. Apart from the top 10 journals in , other popular choices for dissemination of research findings included ‘Cities’, ‘Journal of Environmental Planning and Management’ and ‘Planning Practice and Research’.
Figure 3. Papers per journal and total impact of such.
Of the 125 included papers, 62 made reference to specific case studies (leading with 13 in Cape Town and 12 in Durban). It was furthermore evident that case study research become more popular in the last decade, as most papers referred to a specific case study or at least translated mainstream theory to test or evaluate local circumstances. The focus on case study research is evident of context-based planning becoming more prominent for evidence-led research ().
Figure 4. Number of papers referring to specific case studies.
4. Thematic findings based on empirical investigation
In an attempt to identify broad research themes covered by the 125 papers, categories were identified through a qualitative enquiry as part of theory-based sampling, where the respective titles of the papers were captured and 345 key words identified which then was visually contextualised in a word cloud as captured accordingly ().
Figure 5. Word cloud information visualisation of the 125 titles included in this research. Source: Davies (Citation2015).
Information visualisation and textual analysis (Feinberg, Citation2010:37) enabled the identification of 5 broad research themes covered by the 125 papers, namely ‘Land-use planning, Green-agenda, Sustainability, Governance, and Participation’. The included papers were collectively considered in terms of these five research themes to draw conclusions with regard to (1) the focus of the local planning literature base, (2) current trends and (3) future research opportunities within the broader South African planning context.
4.1. South African literature pertaining to land-use planning
From the papers considered it was evident that land use planning is considered a primary tool in South Africa in quest towards a sustainable future (Vejre, Citation2004). As one of the key components of urban planning, 55% of the identified papers included in this research focused on land-use planning (and related) issues, including keywords such as ‘zoning, land reform, land cover, residential, settlements, urban-rural, urban areas’. The most recent publication of Nel (2015) referred specifically to the new Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (SPLUMA) and zoning to guide effective land use management in South Africa. From this investigation it was concluded that planning literature concerning land-use, mainly focuses on urban land uses, especially linked to urbanisation (Dewar et al., Citation1985; Hindson, Citation1987; Watson, Citation2009), and urban growth (Britz & Meyer, Citation2006; Nel, Citation2011; Todes, Citation2012; Turok, Citation2016). Some researchers investigated the accessibility (Brown-Luthango et al., Citation2013; Vanderschuren & Galaria, Citation2003), integration (Lemanski, Citation2006; Wilhelm-Rechmann et al., Citation2014) and security (Harrison & Mabin, Citation2006) as important objectives of land-use planning. Of the 125 papers, 10.4% made reference to the Post-Apartheid context (Vanderschuren & Galaria, Citation2003; Turok, Citation1994; Minty, Citation2006; Siyongwana & Mayekiso, Citation2011; Murray, Citation2013; Du Plessis & Boonzaaier, Citation2015) and 3.2% to informal land-uses (Abbott & Douglas, Citation2003; Charlton, Citation2006; Weiss, Citation2014). An increasing focus in green land-uses was evident, in line with current international trends, with various studies making reference to urban greening (Donaldson-Selby et al., Citation2007; Shackleton et al., Citation2014) urban green spaces (McConnachie & Shackleton, Citation2010; Cilliers et al., Citation2013; Shackleton & Blair, Citation2013; Cilliers & Cilliers, Citation2015; Seeliger & Turok, Citation2015) and environmental issues linked to land-use (Patel, Citation2005; Todes et al., Citation2009). Debates on informality and sustainability were internationally recognised, evident by the citations of these papers. Africa is in a unique position to embrace informality as a contributing factor to the realisation of broader sustainable development objectives, as argued by Lategan (Citation2017). But, for Africa to lead this discourse on informality and sustainability, the African space economy should be reconsidered from a Spatial Planning perspective (Okeke et al., Citation2018), to facilitate ways to host growing populations, accommodate urbanisation and changing urban landscapes and social dynamics, while recognising land as a scarce resource, and as a force of global importance in the quest towards sustainable development (Sustainable Cities Institute, Citation2012; Cilliers & Cilliers, Citation2015). In this sense, future research opportunities pertain to rural realities, linkages between urban and rural settings and how context-based planning within the Global South could contribute to shifting the current discussions in planning theories.
4.2. South African literature pertaining to the Green-agenda
From the papers investigated it was evident that planning and environmental management originally emerged as two separate spheres in South Africa (Todes et al., Citation2009:417) as a result of the history of apartheid planning. In the early 1970s government started to recognised environmental concerns (Fuggle & Rabie, Citation1992) and the importance of environmental conservation. The earliest reference to environmental concerns was the publication of Poynton & Roberts (Citation1985) on urban open space planning (Du Toit, Citation2015:27). The impact of urban ecological literature began to increase from 2000 onwards (Du Toit, Citation2015:13), including publications of urban green space planning (Cilliers, Citation2009; Anderson et al., Citation2014; Shackleton et al., Citation2014), public green space (McConnachie & Shackleton, Citation2010; Shackleton & Blair, Citation2013), and planning of green infrastructure (Cilliers et al., Citation2013; Schäffler & Swilling, Citation2013), which now manifests as the core planning literature when considering the green agenda. Literature also captures some of the inequality regarding conservation and development goals (Wall, Citation1992; Le Maitre et al., Citation2007; Roberts, Citation2008), and to some extent the current trend relates to quantify the need for integration between planning and environmental management (Sowman & Brown, Citation2006; Todes et al., Citation2009; Todes, Citation2014:428) especially in terms of sustainability practices (Cilliers et al., Citation2014), where meanings and dimensions of sustainability might pose conflicts in practice, as seen in the case of eThekwini’s Cato Manor development and conflicts associated with well-located land for housing the poor, versus preservation of land for biodiversity purposes (Todes, Citation2014:428). The interrelated role of the environment as catalyst to realise the objectives of sustainability (Anderson & Elmqvist, Citation2012) is becoming more prominent, but despite the expanded scientific understanding that green spaces are substantially beneficial to urban communities and cities (Thomas & Littlewood, Citation2010; Wright, Citation2011; Llausàs and Roe, Citation2012), ecological principles are not yet considered a sine qua non for sustainable cities in the South African context. In this sense, the need for future research are probed, relating to adaptive planning approaches (Ahern et al., Citation2014; Hetz & Bruns, Citation2014) to guide future planning processes towards broader environmental thinking and sustainable practices.
4.3. South African literature pertaining to sustainability
Sustainability is a wide and flexible term used universally by many (Patel, Citation2005) and has been framed in multiple ways in the South African literature (Du Toit, Citation2015:29). In total 38% of papers included in this research made some reference to sustainability, sustainable planning approaches and the importance of such (Roberts & Diederichs, Citation2002; Todes, Citation2004; Swilling, Citation2006; Swilling & Annecke, Citation2006; Musakwa & Van Niekerk, Citation2013; Cilliers et al., Citation2014). The most significant contribution of the planning literature relating to the sustainability discourse is that of sustainable cities and ways to plan for such (Sowman & Brown, Citation2006; Du Toit, Citation2015; Seeliger & Turok, Citation2015). This is linked to land-use issues discussed earlier, such as mass low-cost housing provisioning (Goebel, Citation2007), and urban greening initiatives (Cilliers, Citation2009; Shackleton et al., Citation2014). The integration and implementation of sustainability into spatial planning have been positioned as a current planning trend within the sustainability discourse (Todes, Citation2004; Swilling, Citation2006; Cilliers, Citation2009; Watson, Citation2009), in particular the tools (Drewes & Cilliers, Citation2004; Scott, Citation2005; Donaldson-Selby et al., Citation2007) and technologies (Odindi & Mhangara, Citation2012; Musakwa & Van Niekerk, Citation2013) to support such. The need for transdisciplinary perspectives in answering complex sustainability challenges (Goebel et al., Citation2010a; Cilliers et al., Citation2014) have also recently emerged (Du Toit, Citation2015:29) and was identified as the opportunity for future research relating to sustainability. Transdisciplinary planning goes beyond the ‘‘primacy of science’’ (laypersons inputs in scientific research) as well as the ‘‘primacy of practice’’ (provision of classical decision support), establishing a third epistemic way (Bergmann et al., Citation2005; Wiek, Citation2007; Jahn, Citation2008) where experience-based guidelines find mutual grounds between all stakeholders (Cash et al., Citation2003). Transdisciplinary planning could strengthen the spatial meaning of resilience in the contemporary urban landscape, by capturing metabolic flows (production, supply and consumption chains), social dynamics (demographics, human capital and inequality), governance networks (institutional structures and organisation) and the built environment (ecosystem services in the urban landscape) (Harrison et al., Citation2014; Schoeman, Citation2018).
4.4. South African literature pertaining to governance
The broad umbrella of governance included the issues of ‘policies, frameworks, and management’ as captured in the 125 identified papers. In total 29% of the papers were aligned to management in this sense (Patel, Citation2005; Biermann, Citation2011; Nel, Citation2016), with the planning literature focusing on amongst others, the lack of capacity and skills in municipalities (Carden & Armitage, Citation2013; Wilhelm-Rechmann & Cowling, Citation2013), the roles of different authorities (Harrison & Williamson, Citation2001; Turok & Parnell, Citation2009; Holmes et al., Citation2012) and policies to protect and support the poor (Brown-Luthango et al., Citation2013; May & Rogerson, Citation1995). It appears that local government planning practices do not deal effectively with competing land-uses (Reuther & Dewar, Citation2006; Cilliers, Citation2009). The current trends relating to planning literature on governance relates to the lack of successful implementation, suggesting of development plans that are often inclusive of well-versed environmental and sustainable commitments, but that do not survive the implementation phases (McConnachie & Shackleton, Citation2010; Shackleton et al., Citation2014). There is scope for future research aiming to include resilience-thinking as an integral part of the governance and management of urban areas (Schäffler & Swilling, Citation2013). A shift towards resilience thinking in planning (Schoeman, Citation2018) calls on Spatial Planning to response to the increasing economic, social and spatial vulnerabilities in cities, and halt the rapid depletion of natural resources and environmental degradation (Harrison et al., Citation2014). It implies planning structures and systems that will allow communities to endure change (Spacey, Citation2016) and for methods to explore the dynamics of the city and spatial systems in different ways (Schoeman, Citation2018). It calls upon a systems approach to planning contemporary urban landscapes, inclusive of learning and innovation (Schoeman, Citation2018). It would also imply different forms of participatory planning, as explained in the next section.
4.5. South African literature pertaining to participation
The papers considered in this analysis confirmed the need for greater public involvement as highlighted in recent research, and emphasised by leaders at all levels of government (Beierle & Konisky, Citation1999). The focus of the planning literature in this sense, enhanced the importance of community-based planning in local context, emphasised through 29 papers (23% of papers included in this research) related to open space planning (Le Maitre et al., Citation2007; Odindi & Mhangara, Citation2012; Todes, Citation2012; Wilhelm-Rechmann & Cowling, Citation2013; Cash et al., Citation2003), and informal settlement planning (Odindi & Mhangara, Citation2012; Wilhelm-Rechmann & Cowling, Citation2013; Weiss, Citation2014). The need for better collaboration between various disciplines were stated (Cilliers, Citation2009; Schäffler & Swilling, Citation2013; Du Toit, Citation2015:37) and considered to be a current trend within planning approaches, however, lacking sufficient know-how of inclusive participation approaches. As a result, future research should at a minimum consider trans-disciplinary planning approaches (Nel, Citation2011; Siyongwana & Mayekiso, Citation2011) to enhance broader participatory planning approaches in local context. Spatial Planning should emancipate itself from these theoretical and methodological frames to further construct its own identity (Pinson, Citation2004) as a global scarce skill and national priority, to give spatial meaning to supplementary disciplines (Cilliers, Citation2019).
5. Augmenting the Global South planning literature base
The opening statement of De Waal (Citation2015) ‘Too much of what we know about Africa is coming from outside the continent’ is argued by the findings of the research presented in this paper, relating to (1) planning literature on South Africa and Africa, (2) current research trends within the local context, and (3) future research opportunities which could advance the science of planning, teaching-learning approaches and contribute to broadening the local planning literature base within the Global South, whilst decolonising urban theory, as captured in and discussed accordingly.
Table 3. Conclusion drawn from the empirical analysis.
5.1. Planning literature based on South Africa and Africa
The opening statement of De Waal (Citation2015) questions planning literature in South Africa and the broader African context in terms of the lack of data, but also in terms of lack of knowledge of those collecting and analysing data. When considering planning literature from or within the Global South, an explicit distinction should be made between these two issues.
Lack of data relates to the gathering of actual data based case study research. From the research of De Waal (Citation2015), it was evident that ‘capturing actual data is harder than pretending that the datasets that actually exist are good enough’. To address the lack of data, true South African stories and unique case studies should be documented and quantified, and researchers would thus need to ‘ … stop prescriptions, leave their offices, and go where development is taking place, in order to meet the real world, with real stakeholders and thus the real and not imagined interests’ (Nnkya, Citation2008:311).
However, the reference to lack of knowledge is possibly misplaced, considering knowledge from a pure academic perspective, that often do not include popular research or non-peer-review papers as valuable arguments within the planning discourse. The increase in case study research as captured in this paper, suggests that there are in fact an adequate level of knowledge and researchers pursuing to understand the South African and African planning context. From the analysis included in this paper, it was evident that most of the papers included in this research, focusing on South African planning approaches, were written by local authors.
However, in comparison to international publications within different countries, the planning literature base is still limited in terms of depth and quantity of case study research, and therefore local researchers should seek to increasingly include local information and case studies into future research efforts. It should also be considered to include popular papers and civic science within planning literature. By excluding peer-reviewed papers, one might exclude an important perspective of those engaging with social movements or planning organisations analysing current realities in planning and posing more practical solutions. As such, it would be valuable to conduct a similar study inclusive of popular papers and non-peer-reviewed literature, and compare the findings of such to the findings of this paper, to be able to understand the actual scope of the current planning literature base.
5.2. Current research trends within the local context
The current planning trends identified from the papers considered in this research suggested an increasing focus on environmental issues, the linkages between planning and environmental management, and the need for transdisciplinary planning approaches to support the changing planning paradigm. More focus is placed on tools and methods to realise such integrative and sustainable planning approach and to ensure successful implementation of theory into practice. The transdisciplinary nature might also provide many possibilities for publications in field-related journals, that would further enhance ‘mutual understanding and ‘conversations’ between disciplines’ (Todes, Citation2014:429; Du Toit, Citation2015:37). The planning literature base of the Global South is not yet as established as that of the Global North, but there is more emphasis on developing the context-based solution, strengthening the notion of evidence-led African Planning approaches.
5.3. Future research opportunities
Ultimately, the assessment conducted in this paper, probe the need to expand the local literature base concerning planning and local planning case studies, in order to enhance the local teaching-learning environment, and minimise ‘the gap between what planning students were taught and the urban realities’ (Watson & Agbola, Citation2013). In this sense, more local case study research is needed in order to inform on local planning current trends and the linkages of such with mainstream planning theories. Based on the thematic analysis the future research opportunities relate to contextualising rural landscapes, quantifying urban-rural linkages, exploring adaptive planning approaches, including transdisciplinary planning approaches, and evolving the notion of resilience thinking within planning approaches. Ultimately, future planning research should aim to distinguish between the ‘universal’ and the ‘specific’ (Watson, Citation2014:253), reflect on what is regarded as universal knowledge and planning values, and what is context specific. Future research should define the role and scope of planning (Zhang, Citation2006:25) based on the variation in social and cultural development in different contexts. It is these unique challenges, complexities and planning approaches that the Global South offers, which should be further explored and presented to the international arena in terms of innovative planning and creative thinking. Such an approach could rapidly increase the local planning literature base and progress in the local urban planning field. Local planning literature and case studies might then also contribute to theory generation and enhance the movement towards African Planning approaches. Such South African Planning literature base would benefit teaching-learning approaches, and address some of the current challenges associated with ‘preparing diverse students for practice in complex (local) environments’ (Watson, Citation2004:253) and ultimately might contribute to decolonising urban theory.
Academia stand central to developing the needed soft skills for contemporary and future planners, and authors of local planning literature. To equip local scholars to generate local planning literature, would imply a greater emphasis on experiential learning, a methodology within social constructivism, to learn through experience, and ‘learn through reflection on doing’ (Felicia, Citation2011) embracing also a ‘safe to fail’ approach in urban planning and design (Ahern et al., Citation2014). It is through such inquiry-based approaches that we can collectively become co-producers of knowledge (Tengo et al., Citation2014) and ultimately expand the (quantity and quality) planning literature base of the Global South.
Acknowledgements
This research (or parts thereof) was made possible by the financial contribution of the NRF (National Research Foundation) South Africa. Any opinion, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and therefore the NRF does not accept any liability in regard thereto.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Related Research Data
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