On sustainable urban development in sub-Saharan Africa

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Cities, Vol. 13, No. 4, pp. 265-271, 1996 Copyright© 1996 ElsevierScienceLtd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0264-2751/96 $15.00 + 0.00

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On sustainable urban development in sub-Saharan Africa Samba Mukoko United Nations Centre for Regional Development, 1~17-1 Nagono, Nakamura-ku, Nagoya 450, Japan

The fundamental feature common to colonial cities in sub-Saharan Africa was the separation of 'European neighborhoods' from 'African villages'. Residential separation has survived in post-colonial periods even though major changes have taken place in the racial composition of African urban populations. From the standpoint of sustainable urban development, this paper aims to point out the problems this continuing residential separation poses to planners and decision-makers. It is argued that urban economies and societies in sub-Saharan Africa cannot be strengthened unless the two segments of African cities are physically and socially unified. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd

The concept of sustainable urban development Sustainable development is without any doubt the most inclusive concept of all time. However, say Dragun and Jakobsson (1993, p 17) "almost everyone believes in it, hardly anyone criticizes it - but very few people seem to agree on what it is". In an extensive review, Pezzey (1989) lists no less than 27 definitions that have appeared in the literature. Largely seen as the latest-to-date slogan concocted by the environmentalist movement to capture public attention, the concept has been used to reconcile the concerns for development (ie the use of natural resources to generate short-term economic gains) and the imperatives of environmental conservation. To some, since development and sustainability are irreconciliable opposites, the ambiguous character o f the concept is an advantage because, in this way, much public support for the environmental agenda can be built with relative ease (Stren et al, 1992). N o t w i t h s t a n d i n g the c o n f u s i o n around the substance of the concept, it

was the central element of Agenda 21, the 40-chapter document adopted at the Rio Summit in 1992 and which sought, among other things, to decentralize environmental policy at lower levels of spatial organization. In the years after the Rio Summit and following the publication of action plans at several levels of government in several countries, ~ the concept of sustainable development has started to lose its character as an "unanalyzed abstraction". In the ensuing debate over what sustainable development stands for in the real world, the role to be played on the one hand by institutions and governance practices and, on the other hand, by spatial forms of human settlements for a sustainable use of resources, has come to light. The effect of these developments is the addition of a third layer to the two dimensions (economy and environ1For countrywide action plans see for instance HMSO (1994) Sustainable Development. The UK Strategy. London; Commonwealth of Australia (1991) Ecologically Sustainable Development Working Groups, Final Report.

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ment) of the sustainable development" equation. For the institutional economics school of thought, sustainable resource use requires sustainable governance structures (Nickum, 1994); for the spatial planning school of thought, sustainable resource use requires sustainable spatial forms of settlement (Breheny, 1992). Spatial planning and governance structures are brought into the concept of sustainable development through its third layer, equity, which encompasses social organization, institutions, and the drive for maximization of social welfare. Sustainable development has been largely popularized by the World Commission on Environment and Development Report wherein it is defined as development that meets the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs [Brundtland, 1987, p.43]. The Brundtland Report's definition contains the three layers: development, equity, environmental conservation. Development, as a spatial con-

Viewpoint cept refers to the changes in land use as new encroachments in undeveloped areas take place (eg conversion of agricultural land into residential land, building of transportation corridors on natural sites) and/or to development density increases (eg as a result of population density increases) in order to satisfy human needs. Development involves the use of environmental resources (air, water and land) and material natural resources (coal, oil, timber, etc) and leads to the generation of waste. Without proper utilization practices, the ability of the ecosystems to reproduce resources and absorb waste will be impaired (environmental conservation). Equity refers to the necessity of ensuring equitable resource use between the various groups at one point of time (intragenerational equity) and between generations (inter-generational equity). The ideal world the participants at the Rio Summit endeavoured to build was one in which the objectives of sustainable development ("fulfillment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems") would be fulfilled at all levels of spatial organization (local, regional, national, supranational). The urban level has attracted much attention because of the continuously growing concentration of people and economic activities in urban centers, especially in less developed countries. Transposed to an urban setting, what does sustainable development mean? First of all, it must be said that there cannot be any equivalence between the area size from which a city draws the resources needed to meet its residents' wants and disposes of the waste she generates and the territorial boundaries of the city itself. 2 Although, as an ecosystem the city is closed, as an economic system, the city is always open, buying from and selling to distant ter2Elkin et al make the same contention: "In an ecological urban model the open space beyond the built-up area is part of the city, used for hydro-economy, waste management and energy production, as well as food production" [Elkin, T, McLaren, D and Hillman (1991) Reviving the City. Towards Sustainable Urban Development, p 21, Friends of the Earth, London.

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ritories. In spite of this restriction, there seems to be enough maneuvering room at the city level to achieve sustainable urban development which, in Peter Hall's words, means a form of development today which guarantees the continuing development potential of cities and urban populations in future generations, and indeed the continuing potential of the planet in which they lie [Hall, 1993, p 22]. Urban development, ie changes in either land use or density levels, to satisfy city residents' needs in housing, mobility, leisure and food, should, over time, keep the city environmentally livable (clean air, clean water, non-contaminated soils and groundwater, etc); economically viable (the urban economy must be able to adjust to t e c h n o l o g i c a l a n d i n d u s t r i a l changes to protect its job base and provide affordable and livable housing at a fair per capita level of tax burden); and socially integrative (land use patterns shall enhance social cohesion and on the part of city residents the feeling of being part of the city heritage). A sustainable city is not only a clean city. It must also be a city where one can earn a fair income, afford livable shelter, feel comfortable, and devote effort and time to protect the city image. Building a strong urban economy and an environmentally livable city must go hand in hand with efforts aimed at preserving existing social bonds and initiating innovative forms of urban governance and management which can preserve social cohesion. The central assumption of this paper is that equity is the layer through which sustainable development can be rendered into practice at the lower levels of spatial organization. At the urban level, equity refers to the use of urban land and the allocation of public resources among spatial and social units. The paper deals with social integration (within the sustainable urban development framework) in subSaharan African cities where the spatial and social cleavages created by colonial settlement policies are yet to be repaired. Cities in sub-Saharan African countries (SSACs) have in common a dualistic nature, a heritage of the residential segregation that was

the rule during colonial years. Colonialism belongs to the past, but the cleavages have remained. Although fairly large c o m m u n i t i e s of nonAfricans still live in every important urban center in sub-Saharan Africa, they usually have only sparse contacts with "African" neighborhoods. Native "61ites" and skilled expatriates still live in neighborhoods that in their physical layouts and livability conditions have nothing in common with the crowded areas which house native low- and middle-income earners. The two groups of residents use distinct modes of transport, and at the extreme, relations between members of the two groups are only motivated by labor considerations. Repairing the fractured social fabric of African cities is an insurance against urban decay and for sustainable urban development. Although not confirmed in objective studies (Crankshaw and White, 1995), the decay of apartment buildings in Johannesburg's inner city has been associated with" the racial desegregation of the inner city. This paper aims at pointing out the problems residential separation poses to planners and decision-makers. It is argued that urban economies and societies in Africa cannot be strengthened unless the two communities that are their components are physically and socially unified.

Colonialism and urban development in sub-Saharan Africa The chaotic conditions of life in most sub-Saharan African cities are already well documented (Stren and White, 1989). Million-cities have emerged on the continent in short periods of time, but in most of them large areas could be denied the very name of "urban centers". Because of low levels of technology and the adverse economic trends under which urbanization is advancing, the growth of African cities takes place on the ground. City boundaries are continuously moved, in most cases by the creation of satellite " s p o n t a n e o u s settlements" in which even elementary public services are not provided. A careful analysis of these cities does, however, reveal the

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dynamics behind their growth. They have in common a dualistic nature; dualism is even reflected in the local languages. In Zaire people refer to the "modern" part of the city as "ville" while the originally "African" section is called "citr". Similar linguistic dualities are commonplace in many other sub-Saharan African cities. The contemporary cities of subSaharan Africa cannot be understood without looking at the economic forces that started, altered or accelerated the process of urbanization on the continent. Several observers have called attention to the minor role played by Africans south of the Sahara in initiating the cities where they live (Hance, 1970). Although important urban agglomerations existed in subSaharan Africa long before the Europeans settled on the continent (Kano, Katsina, Benin City in Nigeria; Gao, Timbuktu, Bamako in Mali; Ouagadougou in Burkina Faso; and Maradi in Niger), today's large cities in SSACs were created by expatriates as bases for colonial administration, nodal points on the railway networks, service centers for rural plantation economies, or mining towns. In their spatial forms, the new towns reflected the settlement policy of each colonial power, but in spite of some differences in architectural layouts, the fundamental feature common to all was a separation between the 'colonial quarters' and the 'indigenous villages'. The argument at the heart of the residential separation policy was the contention by colonial rulers that rural areas were Africans' natural living environment and that "native" unskilled workers were just temporary urban residents who went back to their "natural" rural communities once they had made enough cash income to pay their poll tax or buy a target commodity. Physical planning was the main instrument of the residential separation policy. As pointed out by Wekwete (1994, p 23), "physical planning was the hallmark of all colonial towns and it became an important vehicle for social control". It is now well documented that the "African villages" in colonial African cities were not allocated public capital in sufficient amounts to create built

environments of a quality comparable to that of the "European towns". On the other hand, colonial local governance practices were designed to offer a framework for urban value creation in the well serviced "European towns". Residential separation had an impact on the physical layouts of African cities. First, except for a few limited experiments, paved roads, sewers, and other public infrastructure stopped where the European quarters ended. It was believed then that Africans, struggling to adapt to urban life, should be allowed to live as in their "natural" rural environments. The physical constraints inherent to life in an urban environment were not recognized, and the infrastructure stock deficiency in African quarters was allowed to grow. Land-use regulations (eg minimum lot size regulations) were devised to guarantee low densities in the European quarters. For instance, in Belgian Congo (now Zaire), land use regulations in the city of Leopoidville (now Kinshasa) stipulated a minimum lot size of 2500 m 2 in the European residential areas and the building coverage ratio was limited to 25% (Pain, 1984). In Zimbabwe where residential separation practices lasted even longer, lots as large as 4074 m 2 are reported in white neighborhoods of Harare (Cumming, 1990). In orthodox urban planning and management the development (with public or private resources) of sites and services on any selected tract of land precedes the emergence of a built environment of a predetermined and specifically controlled quality whose accrued value will in time generate the public revenues needed to maintain present public overhead capital. In the presence of distinct groups of households stratified into homogeneous communities within which individuals feel identical needs and demand similar types of local public goods, there is no guarantee that decisions concerning the selection of new sites to be developed; the amount, quality and spatial allocation of public infrastructure; and property tax differential (if allowed) will be socially optimal over time. Discriminatory practices in the pro-

vision of basic public infrastructure in the earlier stages of urban settlement; outer location of African populations and physical closure of "modern areas"; and population density differentials between the two segments of the cities are the typical traits of urban agglomerations south of the Sahara. These traits have maintained the noticeable distinction within a city of a segment for which a stable framework for property value creation exists and another segment without such a framework. Nowhere was the divide between the two segments more enforced than in the mining towns and cities of central and southern Africa. There, the settlements created by the mining holding corporations will, in time, be granted a formal municipal corporation status. The adjacent indigenous settlements, which preceded the mining estates or spontaneously erupted in the neighborhood of the mining towns to supply African workers with the goods and services (including housing) their diets, tastes and preferences commanded, were run differently. In Zambia a Mine Township Ordinance was adopted in 1933, which gave the government power to declare a Mine Township at the request of a mining company. (...) The mining companies provided housing and services for their employees and acted fully as their own planning authorities [Kalapula 1994, p 65]. As further confirmed by Mitchell [1987, pp 54-55], the mining towns of Zambia were legally constituted as local authorities separate from the commercial towns already there, so that the control over affairs in both African and White residential areas rested with the company management (...). The role of the central government in the cities, apart from the general supervision of local government through the control of finance, was confined in the main to the maintenance of law and order and to the administration of justice. All in all, in SSACs, colonial local governance arrangements aimed at stabilizing the urban population to minimize labor turnover costs. In Belgian Congo where stabilization was the favored policy, its result was the development of the centre extra-coutumier, a self-contained residential and administrative unit under the close

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Viewpoint supervision of a European administrative officer, within which Africans could establish a stable family life in their own homes [Epstein 1969, p 251]. The twin cities merged when African countries acceded to political sovereignty, but where mining corporations remained strong stakeholders, they still ruled their "towns". Therefore the nationalization of mining corporations also meant the transfer of control over company towns from private firms to central or local governments. Unfortunately, it did not occur to many that such transfers had taken place. With the explosion of urban population that followed political independence, the extent of environmental stress which plagues every urban agglomeration in SSACs could no longer be overlooked. But the search for practical ways and means to ttirn African cities into more livable places has often been directed towards options that favor de-urbanization because of the "reverse rural bias" that has been the cornerstone of public policy in Africa in the last decades.

Urban planning and policy in sub-Saharan Africa: possibilities and constraints U r b a n policies in Africa are still tainted by the old premise that on this continent urbanization itself is an aberration, that city-bound migrants should not have been allowed to move into cities, that the rural order is the natural way of life of Africa and therefore the advances of urbanization should be opposed. Although dismissed by Sovani (1964), the theoretical charges of "overurbanization" have continuously been laid upon African countries. After a few attempts in providing decent low-cost housing to urban residents in the first postcolonial years, most economic programs in Africa have favored rural development. The sectoral approach that has guided economic policy in Africa drew its force from the assumptions that the allocation of financial resources was "urban biased" (Lipton, 1977), and that rural-urban migration was socially uneconomical as, it is still believed, it reduces agricultural output. Under these assumptions, en-

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forced "back to the land" programs were common, as urban unemployed residents were driven back to their rural communities where they were expected to be more contributive to their national economies. There is a need in Africa for policymakers and planners to hold a positive attitude towards urbanization for some very simple reasons. First, Africa is, along with Asia, one of the regions where the percentage of total population living in urban areas will increase at the highest rate in the world (an average annual growth rate of 1.5% for Africa against 1.59% for Asia). Second, rural-urban migration is in Africa less and less the main c o n t r i b u t o r to u r b a n p o p u l a t i o n growth. Its share is expected to decline to 36% by 2025 from 51% in 1950. Third, the "they belong to their villages" approach inevitably leads to denying the residential areas of those targeted the public infrastructure needed to create healthier environments. For planners, the challenge is to look at shantytowns as areas that need their expertise, to recognize that the substandard and often self-built housing stocks in slum areas do have an economic value that gradual improvement can even increase, and that urban renewal programs must not lead to "urban transmigration" schemes in which slums are cleared to make room for housing structures the former occupiers cannot afford. For sustainable urban development to become a reality in SSACs, the direction toward which the management of cities should be steered is twofold: spatial planning to regain lost and unmarketed urban values, and allocation policies to secure those values. But the two activities must be supported by urban economic growth. Cities throughout the world have proved to be powerful engines of development because of their capacity to offer conditions for the creation of new ideas and wealth. Negative attitudes held towards cities in Africa have led many people to look at the cities there as "parasites" which draw food from the rural world, financial resources and technical skills from overseas, and create little wealth. The smallness (both spatial and economic)

of business districts and industrial p a r k s of A f r i c a n cities is well documented. The need to turn African cities into "exploding cities in exploding economies" is also common sense. It must be said, however, that it is the urban economies that must explode in order to provide jobs to the masses of urban dwellers and serve as engines to the rural economies. But, as recognized by the World Bank, macroeconomic policies in developing countries, particularly in the 1980s, have patronized the rural sector with among other things, the following results: rural-urban terms of trade have shifted in favor of the rural sector; (...) relative prices of urban tradable goods (eg, manufacturing exports) and nontradables (eg, housing and infrastructure) have changed to the detriment of the latter (...); with the shift of urban investment toward tradable goods, the demand for labor has shifted within the urban labor market [World Bank 1991, pp 32-33]. Driven by the urgency t.o raise export earnings to pay off ever rising external debts, African economies have turned the tide against nontradable goods of which housing is a primal item at the city level. For most governments, housing is seen as a "social burden" despite growirig recognition that housing development (including all the goods and services connected with the housing stock itself) "has the potential to provide employment for large numbers of people both directly and indirectly" (Tipple, 1994, p 372). Policy-makers in SSACs should, along with efforts aimed at making cities more attractive for foreign direct investment in tradeable goods, create the necessary conditions for the non tradable sector to demand more labor and rural inputs. While looking into these two directions, reforms must be carried out in financial systems and urban land supply systems to allow for more financial resources to be invested in the housing industry both by public and private interests. Colonial town planning regulations and practices have persisted in most SSACs. The amendments enacted here and there did not change the essence of the regulations because the basic problem (the dualistic aspect of

Viewpoint the cities) was left untouched. This basic problem is well summarized by Mehretu (1977, p 262) who, about Kinshasa (Zaire) writes that the systems that operate within Kinshasa are two: those that govern the activities and life-styles of the indigenous elite and the European community, and those that are followed by the masses of urban dwellers in the pseudo-urban or traditional subsystem and that Kinshasa must "forge harmony [between the two systems] within the context of a modern town". Unless dualism is recognized by planners and policy-makers as the basic problem of African cities, there will be no way to close the gap in the perceptions of city life held by the residents of the two types of communities, and improve housing conditions and the overall quality of the environment. As noted above, density differentials are one of the elements through which dualism is visible in African cities. The differences in population and building densities between the two communities are obvious to any visitor. The "garden-town" atmosphere of the formerly European towns is often seen as an architectural legacy that must be protected. What is generally not discussed is that an increase in population density in the "modern" neighborhoods is a possible solution to housing and environmental problems. Even though in some cities the public infrastructure in the "modern" areas is declining because of insufficient public investment for upgrading and maintenance, they still remain the only areas provided with sewerage systems, storm drains, street lights, telecommunications cables, etc. They are the areas where minimal services being already provided, more people could be housed at lower costs if building densities were allowed to rise through infill development; relaxation of zoning regulations and floor area ratios limits; and land readjustment aimed at reducing lot sizes and mixing land use. What is proposed here is a process of densification of the former European towns, a policy which necessitates land readjustment and redevelopment programmes which should result in a more equitable distribution of land and public capital. These pro-

posals depart from the conventional thinking that housing for low-income people must be sited either at their present locations after the slums are cleared or at new locations far away from the city center, in which two cases basic public infrastructure has to be built from scratch. Land readjustment should not be simply the technical exercise it is elsewhere. It should be an operation with economic motives (to increase the supply of land at better locations and the total economic value of urban land) and social and political motives. The often quoted constraints to the supply of urban land in African cities refer, in most cases, to the limited capacity to open new areas to housing and/or commercial development. The rigidities inherent to the management of land in built-up environments are, therefore, overlooked. These rigidities stem in one way or another from land nationalization policies. As one African government after another nationalized land and mining and agricultural interests, valuable property was converted into public offices and sizable plots of land were left vacant. The effects of land nationalization were not restricted to the idling of land that otherwise could have been developed. As a consequence, the economic rent from land development was captured by governments whose officials were more eager to find residential and office space for themselves and their agencies. On the other hand, as land use controls in the formerly "European towns" were left untouched, substantial amounts of rateable land were also left either vacant or under the ownership of institutions (eg churches) less keen to seek economic gains and under types of use which no longer applied to the emerging needs in the cities (eg the greenbelts which served as "bumpers" between the European and African towns in colonial times). The final result of this combination of factors is not only the limited economic value created in the newly developed low-income settlements (because of insufficient public capital investment), but also a decrease in the economic value of the "modern" areas (because of declining public revenues

needed to maintain and upgrade public infrastructure). In a study on land ownership and value based on data for 1970 covering 79% of the total rateable value of land in Nairobi (Kenya), Kimani (1972) found that native Africans owned only 8.6% of the 13 463 plots compared with 41% owned by Asians; 14.4% by Europeans; and 36% by organizations (private and public enterprises, central and local government, the East African Community, and social and religious bodies). The distribution of the total area showed that organizations owned 52.6% of the total urban land stock against 3.9% for Africans (who made 70% of the total population); 21.7% for Asians; and 21.8% for Europeans. More importantly, the rateable value of the land owned by organizations represented 56.8% of the total rateable value against 2.7%, 33.3%, and 7.2% for that owned by Africans, Asians and Europeans, respectively. Resources which could have been used to maintain public infrastructure and develop new areas were lost through nationalization and the resulting atrophy of a land market which, in one way or another, was denied the right to existence. The land readjustment schemes we advocate should serve to encourage housing and business development in the relatively better equipped built-up-areas through: (1) reduction of minimum allowable lot sizes; (2) increase in building-toplot area ratios and neighborhood building density; and (3) changes in land use control to allow more mixed land use. The most urgent task in the spatial planning of SSAC's cities is to break the negative association imposed by zoning ordinances between income and density. This is expected to be a daunting task because the formulation of master plans based on such ordinances has become a 'stylized fact' of planning. Njoh (1995) documents the continuance in the Cameroonian city of Kumba of such land use controls in the late 1980s: strict separation of land use types; subdivision of residential districts into three areas based on income (low-income/ high-density housing; middle-income/ medium-density housing; highincome/low-density housing); negative

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Viewpoint association between income and minimum allowable plot area. It is not evident that the densification of "modern" communities we propose in this paper could be easily accepted by African elites for several reasons. Infill development and an increase in the extent of mixed land use will inevitably introduce within the "modern" built-up areas activities (street traders, bars, etc) which are generally considered as "traditional", or "peri-urban" and which policymakers have consciously or not tried to "clean up". Furthermore, land readjustment may be opposed by religious organizations and former colonial firms which own large tracts of land in the inner cities as well as by politicians motivated by their desire to keep popular masses at bay. One of the most difficult problems in a dualistic city is local governance. Institutional arrangements, especially in larger cities with heterogeneous communities, must address the question of whether each community should be allowed to rule itself or a central authority should be set up. The growth of such agglomerations as Lagos, Kinshasa, Abidjan and Nairobi into large cities which is taking place on the ground leads to the issue of devising new local governanaee rules to fit into the new economic and social realities. The temptation is great to advocate metropolitan decentralization in which case, the discriminatory practices which constitute the basic problem that must be dealt with could be maintained with, as a result, the persistence of unsanitary conditions in low-income settlements. It is believed, from the discussion in the previous pages that urban economies and societies in Africa cannot be strengthened unless the two segments of African cities are physically and socially unified through changes in physical planning, economic systems and social perceptions under the command of a metropolitan authority before allowing for the gradual establishment of autonomous municipalities. It is another main argument of this paper that new local governance practices more likely to guarantee sustainable urban development in SSACs cities should be based on allocation policies

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initiated and controlled by central governments. On the one hand efforts are to be made to foster equitable allocation policies; on the other hand, it is equally important to devote efforts to free the poorer sections whose rights are "kidnapped" by biased local councils. Such efforts are actually under way in post-apartheid South Africa (Turok, 1994) and should be encouraged elsewhere in Africa. Anglophone SSACs have had established local governments that date back to the colonial rule while such governments in Francophone SSACs are rather new. But the centralization of urban, public investment and fiscal policies by national governments is the most common institutional arrangement on the African continent. A centralized state is assumed to be less capable of delivering local public goods in a socially equitable and efficient way. Decentralization is therefore considered as a must. However, in a socially and physically "fractured" city, it is still doubtful that decentralized local bodies can achieve an optimal social state. Decentralization programs often consist of enacting laws creating local authorities and granting them the right to collect revenues and manage local public facilities. Their effectiveness is often judged in terms of central-local relations. The social and political relations inherent in the local bodies themselves are often overlooked. But, local councils should not necessarily be seen as class- and value-neutral. In Nairobi, for instance, Temple and Temple (1980) have pointed out a bias in public housing programs toward middle- and higher-income groups. Among the reasons for the bias, the authors risted the attitudes held by government officials and politicians whose "preference for high quality, and therefore costly, public housing construction" (Temple and Temple, 1980, p 235), elitist thinking and drive for "modernity" have not only affected the design of houses but also led to efforts to locate housing projects for low-income people far away from the city center and major roads. A second reason listed by Temple and Temple is the inability of the poorer

sections of Nairobi to organize themselves into political pressure groups powerful enough to influence allocation decisions. As a result, says Stren (1989, pp 34-35), the 'capturing' of local council functions by local upper-income groups (designated as petty-bourgeois or bourgeois depending on the scale of their involvement) typically focused on public housing allocations because of the potential profits involved in this area. But it has extended to market stall allocations, the allocation of public land, construction or redevelopment permits, the allocation of public tenders for construction of infrastructure, and the like. Some theoretical studies (Berglas, 1976; Mukoko, 1993) have shown that in cities stratified on the basis of income or taste/skill (or both), only a central government can carry out a socially equitable redistribution policy. This result should be interpreted as lending support to public intervention at the central government level in matters related, for example, to the allocation of public housing and public land and the formulation of the criteria for land readjustment. The spatial planning process can still be decentralized with local governments retaining their prerogatives to provide public infrastructure but having to abide by the guiding principles set by the national government. The intervention of the central government can take another form. It is possible to envisage that while local governments retain their autonomy, the central government subsidizes the allocation of public housing, land, and public infrastructure from revenues raised by a national tax. 3 In the first case, the central government determines the technical criteria for land readjustment programs and the allocation of urban land and urban land value while local authorities fund the programs with locally raised revenues. In the second case, the central 3It should be noted that the central government's subsidy will be distorting if it affects only certain types of cities or certain social groups. Crankshaw and White (1995) have found that the main reason behind Johannesburg's inner city decay lies with the suburbanization of young whites whose move was helped by a government financed 'First Time Homeowner Scheme' which applied only to young whites.

Viewpoint g o v e r n m e n t has a say not only in the formulation of allocation policies but also in their funding. Either case shall prevent local authorities standing as only nominal g o v e r n m e n t units without the financial and human resources needed to achieve the changes in urban spatial planning that sustainable urban d e v e l o p m e n t requires; and that local authorities do not fall into the hands of politicians whose perceptions favor policies which are biased against the weaker social groups. The public interventions considered here are only possible in a strong " c o m m a n d econ o m y " in which the central government can impose the guiding principles of the allocation policies. It still remains to be seen whether national governments in SSACs can formulate and implement these types of guiding principles.

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