directions in planning reform: international … _centre...south african research chair in spatial...
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DIRECTIONS IN PLANNING REFORM: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES
Philip Harrison, Margot Rubin and Alli Appelbaum
Planning Reform Seminar13 June 2018
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
SOUTH AFRICA’S INCREMENTALLY EVOLVING PLANNING SYSTEM
• The arrival of the IDP in the 1990s, formalised in the local government white paper and legislation
• The emergence of SDFs and incorporation in LDOs
• Metropolitan cities pioneering long-range strategic plans
• The constitutional challenge to the DFA and the passing of SLUMA in 2013
• The introduction of M&E in 2009
• The creation of the NPC in 2010, NDP in 2012, and proposed Integrated Planning Act, 2017
• Parallel planning systems emerging in provincial government
• The BEPPS introduced by National Treasury in 2014
• Parallel (but related) systems evolving in terms of inter-governmental grants (e.g. USDG), human settlement planning, space economy (e.g. IDZs, SEZs), urban policy (IUDF), environment etc.
• The system is emerging adaptively, which is a strength, but also somewhat chaotically (more coherence and linkage is possibly). Also with more critical understanding of limitations and pitfalls
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
INTRODUCTION TO PRESENTATION
• The persistent requirement for (adaptive) planning reform
• The purpose of planning in the current context (the SDGs, New Urban Agenda,
and the imperatives and stated goals of post-apartheid South Africa)
• Post-NUA: The shift from the debate on the ends of planning to urgent
construction of the means of implementation
• Global trends and counter-trends – the Global North and experiences beyond
(e.g. the rise of city planning in China)
• The importance of dealing with the technicalities but a cautionary against
technocratising planning
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
TRENDS
1. The rise of planning as an instrument of integrated governancean instrument of integrated governancean instrument of integrated governancean instrument of integrated governance
2. A shift to performanceperformanceperformanceperformance----basedbasedbasedbased (or outcomes-based) approaches
3. The trend from functional approaches to spatial targetingspatial targetingspatial targetingspatial targeting
4. Beyond the top-down, bottom-up dichotomy to multimultimultimulti----level governance level governance level governance level governance
(including the use of inter-governmental transfers)
5. The rise of evidenceevidenceevidenceevidence----based planning based planning based planning based planning approaches (with tensions with
participatory and deliberative forms)
6.6.6.6. CapabilityCapabilityCapabilityCapability----based approaches based approaches based approaches based approaches (from the outside?)
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
1. Planning as an instrument of integrated governance
• Since the 1990s, planning has been recast as an instrument for integration
(between actors; across scales, time and sectors; and linking policy and
implementation)
• The context is of a broader political and ideological shift towards
‘integrated governance’ (from the atomism of the 80s to the joined-up
thinking of the 90s)
• The rise of sustainability as an overarching
objective; the South African imperative of
responding to a legacy of fragmentation;
and post-Socialist transitions
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
1. Cautionary on integrated governance
• Joining-up is intuitively sensible (where possible we must close governance
gaps) but…
• Democratic governance “necessarily involves a degree of incoherence”
• Integration may be used to justify
centralising tendencies which may
make government less able to address
wicked problems
• The transactional costs and paralysing
effect of ‘everything connected with
everything’
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
1. A feasible offering?
• From “comprehensive integration” to “privileged integration”
(Rode, 2015 & 2018)
• For example, in spatial integration, the linking of land use
and transport, and spatial priorities and infrastructure
• Requirements for even limited success include attention to
system boundaries, networks of trust, strategic visions, use
of ICT and the collaborative cultures of leaders
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
2. Performance-based approaches• Focus on outcomes rather than rules of behaviour (for flexibility, creative
application, results)
• Partly derived from the shift to performance approaches in land-use
management to discretionary outcomes-based approaches (UK, some cities in
USA, New Zealand, Queensland)
• The broader shift towards performance-based approaches
happened with the modernizing agendas of Third Way
leadership in the 1990s (e.g. Clinton’s the Government
Performance and Results Act, 1993; Blair’s Performance
Agreements and Delivery Unit)
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
2. The diffusion of M&E
• Latin America’s adoption of M&E in the 1990s
• East Asia in the early 2000s – Singapore’s 6 strategic outcomes, Japan’s
international mission, Malaysia’s ‘Big Results Fast’ etc.
• China grafts M&E onto a Five Year Planning System with ‘performance’
becoming the basis of state legitimacy, while India makes erratic progress
• SA adopts M&E in 2009 with a number of other
African countries
• Rapid global diffusion but key differences
(centralised versus decentralised; technocratic
versus participatory)
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
2. Pitfalls and cautionary
• The unintended consequence of performance-based land management –
increased cost, time and complexity, and manipulation by developers
• Overly technocratic national N&E systems are reducing ability to respond
intelligently to the requirement for outcomes in complex, changing
world.
• The risks of political manipulation and the contradictions of patronage
politics
• Technical challenges such as the availability and quality of data, and skills
capability – “garbage in, garbage out”
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
2. SDG/ Agenda 2030 requirements
• The current reality of performance-based governance/planning and the need to
make it work as an instrument of accountability
• The SDGs as a global performance framework and the requirements for localisation
• Paragraph 74 states of the UN’s 2030
Agenda directs national government to
institute review processes at all levels
that “will be rigorous and based on
evidence, informed by country-led
evaluations and data which is high-
quality, accessible, timely, reliable, and
disaggregated…”
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
3. Spatial Targeting
• The gradual shift from functional governance to spatial targeting
• The rationale for crowding in, facilitating linkages, area-based coordination…
• The economic application of spatial targeting (forms including SEZs, technopoles,
industrial parks and economic corridors)
• Successful cases drawn from China, Malaysia, India, UAE and Central America but
also many poor performers
• Success factors such as market size, location, good quality physical infrastructure,
effective regulatory regimes, national soft infrastructure, social infrastructure
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
3. Can spatial targeting work for poverty alleviation and inequality?
• The ambiguous experience of attempts to achieve
balanced development through targeting lagging
regions and rising spatial inequality with economic
targeting
• Some success with nationally supported local targeting
such as the USA’s Empowerment Zones (but the
displacement effect)
• TOD as a possible form of inclusionary local targeting
(but the dangers of property-led exclusion)
• Mexico’s current ambitious attempts to establish SEZs in the poorest regions of the country – pioneering a new
approach or a certain failure?
• China’s new spatially targeted poverty reduction and the opportunities of new spatial mapping technologies
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
4. Multi-level planning
• Moving beyond the binary of top-down and bottom-up approaches by recognising the need for
coherence from above and engagements and energies from below
• The recognition also that complex problems cannot be solved at a single level
• The concept of “multi-level” governance emerging in the early 1990s from the complex
experience of governance in the European Union
• Multi-level governance as “a system of continuous
negotiation among nested governments at several
territorial tiers” (Marks, 1993).
• The concept reinforced by the experience of
governance for climate change, and the challenges
of complex governance frameworks
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
4. The use of inter-governmental transfers in a multi-level system
• The shift from micro-managed specific purpose transfers to output-based
transfer that balance ‘policy cohesion’ with ‘local autonomy’
• The examples of the EU’s Structural Funds, Indonesia’s Output-Based
Performance Grants, Rwanda’s District Incentive Funds, Bangladesh’
performance-based allocations, Brazil and Canada’s health transfers
• The link to municipal planning systems through, for example, South
Africa’s Built Environment Performance Plans (BEPPs)
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
4. Cautionary
• As with integrated planning, multi-level planning may
become hugely complicated and resource consuming, even
producing grid-lock
• Multi-level planning can obfuscate accountability and even
provide the space for corruption
• Capacities and systems need to be developed progressively
over time with the privileging of certain points of interaction
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
5. Evidence-Based Planning
• The assumption that public policy would be based on
“rigorously established objective evidence”
• Emerged in the 90s from the long experience of the
health sector and as the ‘antidote’ to sectional
interests, politicking and arbitrariness in
policy/planning
• Based on a set of assumptions about the
relationship between information and policy
outcomes
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
5. Some of the pitfalls and a possible hybrid
• The tensions between the technocratic focus of evidence-based planning and
communicative and deliberative approaches
• The assumption that ‘facts’ and ‘values’ can be separated
• The dangers of de-politicising (and de-democratising) planning
• The question of how ‘politically-directed processes may be informed as
objectively as possible by rigorously tested evidence?’
• Possible case experience from the Netherlands, France and Gauteng (GCRO) on
how to provide an evidence base for planning that remains politically
accountable
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
6. Capability-based planning as an emergent direction
• Capability as the ‘wire between strategy and operations’
• An approach which assesses capabilities to attain declared goals and then
proposes means to increase capability and/or adjustment to goals
• The origins in planning for the military but a transition into civilian context
(emergency planning, now territorial planning)
• Possible pitfalls including an emphasis on
capability at the expense of what is actually
required (current backlash in the military)
and so a concern with capability should be
grafted onto other approaches
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
CONCLUSION I
• The ends of planning must remain firmly in mind to avoid a narrow technocratic
orientation but the system to achieve the ends must be effective
• Intuitively, many of the directions in planning internationally are sensible but there
are pitfalls
• We need to address ‘governance gaps’ through integration but do so strategically
without overly-centralising and becoming paralysed with complexity
• In our approach to performance-based planning we need to maintain an intelligent
response to the requirement for achieving outcomes rather than being caught up
in the prescriptions and details of targets, indicators and measurements
SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING
CONCLUSION II
• We need to target spatially where appropriate but be aware of what it actually takes to
achieve success, and be mindful of distributional consequences (what it does to inequality)
• Wicked problems do need to be addressed across scales, requiring an evolving system of
multi-level planning (including strategic use of inter-governmental financial transfers) but
this needs to be done strategically to avoid overly complex arrangements
• Policy making should be based on good quality information but not at the expense of its
political dimension – fortunately, there are models which show how this may be done
• (Despite origins !) capability-based approaches may offer a useful basis for adaptive means-
end iteration, but should be grafted onto other approaches
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CONTACT
Prof. Philip HarrisonProf. Philip HarrisonProf. Philip HarrisonProf. Philip Harrison
www.wits.ac.za/sacp