development and urban policy: johannesburg's city development strategy

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2006 43: 337Urban StudSusan Parnell and Jenny Robinson

Development and Urban Policy: Johannesburg's City Development Strategy

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Development and Urban Policy: Johannesburg’sCity Development Strategy

Susan Parnell and Jenny Robinson

[Paper first received, February 2005; in final form, October 2005]

Summary. City development strategies (CDS) have emerged as an important new initiative ininternational policy and practice. This paper considers their significance by exploring recentinitiatives to formulate a city strategy for Johannesburg, South Africa. The Johannesburg CDSemerged out of the local demand for a post-apartheid vision for South African cities as well as arenewed enthusiasm for city-level economic planning within international development agenciesand consultancies. As with CDSs in other resource-stretched cities, in order to address thedistinctive challenges of their highly unequal city, Johannesburg’s policy-makers had to draw onideas which transcend conventional divisions between poverty relief and urban growthstrategies. The Joburg CDS process provides an important basis for overcoming longstandingdivisions between accounts of wealthier Western cities and poorer cities in developing countrycontexts. Johannesburg’s distinctive challenges, stretching from accommodating cutting-edgeglobal economic activities to supporting basic service delivery in informal settlements, highlightsthe paucity of existing urban policy discourses—which offer few ready-made solutions for anycity, but especially not to those faced with significant structural inequities. Attending to strategicchallenges in cities that have limited resources, it is suggested, could provoke new agendas andinsights for city managers and urban scholars everywhere. Here, we explore the tensionsbetween the policy agendas of economic growth and development, and the policy processes ofparticipation and formal institutional politics.

Cities in poorer and wealthier countries arelinked into different, if overlapping, circuitsof policy-making. The multiple influences onpolicy are most pronounced in cities of theSouth, where external input is sought tocounter limited local capacity and confidenceand so international development discoursesand national policy imperatives frame localstrategy formation. The urban strategies ofwealthier cities thus have a strong influencein the formulation of urban initiatives inpoorer country contexts, especially in so far

as they articulate the promotion of economicgrowth (Harris, 1996, 2002; Scott andStorper, 2003). Indeed it is cities beyond theWest that show some of the most successfulapplications of urban growth strategies,although the imposition of internationallyderived ideas is not always appropriate orsucessful (Gugler, 2004). Notwithstandingthe widespread overlay of internationalaspirations to global competitiveness, deve-lopmentalist agendas remain important inframing the challenges of poorer cities, with

Urban Studies, Vol. 43, No. 2, 337–355, February 2006

Susan Parnell is in the Department of Environmental and Geographical Sciences, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X, Ronde-bosch, Cape Town 7701, South Africa. Fax: 27 21 650 3791. E-mail: [email protected]. Jenny Robinson is in the Faculty ofSocial Sciences, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes, MK7 6AA, UK. Fax: 01908 654488. E-mail: [email protected]. The paper draws on some material gathered in interviews conducted by Alan Mabin, Sophie Oldfield and DominiqueWooldridge for a consultancy research project directed by Sue Parnell for GHK. It also draws on the report submitted for thiswork, commissioned by GHK Consultants, London. The authors wish to thank the many officials and elected leaders of theGreater Johannesburg Metropolitan Council who gave generously of their time for interviews and discussions.

0042-0980 Print=1360-063X Online=06=020337–19 # 2006 The Editors of Urban Studies

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an emphasis on basic housing needs andservice delivery. This developmental focuson infrastructure and basic needs is commonlycomplemented by a commitment to publicparticipation and improving the livelihoodsof the urban poor (Rakodi, 2002). Thus,many large cities in poorer country contextsbring together the challenges of promotingeconomic growth in the context of a globalis-ing economy with the demands of meetingbasic service delivery for the poor. Discoursesof development and economic strategy aretherefore being brought together as urbanpolicy-makers seek to frame strategic visionsfor the future of their cities. We suggest thaturban theory would benefit from attending tothe fusion of development policy andgrowth-based urban strategy as it manifestsin the large centres of the developing world,not just for its relevance to those contextsbut also more generally.

This paper explores the case of Johannesburg,South Africa which, in the post-apartheid era,has had to confront and plan for a diversity ofurban experiences for the first time, as localgovernment was amalgamated across pre-viously stark divisions of social, economicand spatial exclusion. We take the exerciseof formulating a City Development Strategyfor Johannesburg in the late 1990s and early2000s as an example of a wider internationalinitiative by development agencies topromote strategic city visioning exercises inlarge, significant cities located in poorercountries. In these exercises, the circuits of‘Southern’ urban development and ‘Northern’urban policy come together, with some provo-cative consequences for urban theory, specifi-cally in terms of thinking through andresponding to the diverse challenges presentedby cities which encompass both competitiveglobalisation and urgent needs for basic ser-vices. The Joburg example also raises someimportant questions about the politics of inter-national urban policy-making under con-ditions of neo-liberal globalisation. A centralproblem we address is whether the potentialfor a participatory, collective vision for thefuture of cities can be realised within the con-straints of the technical and financial power

relations of development policy circuits. Weargue that participation—a central tenet ofdevelopmentalist policies—needs to beplaced alongside the role of more formal pol-itical institutions in securing policy outcomesthat are appropriate to the needs of councils oflarge cities whose mandate is to deliver to thepoor. Here, we consider especially the relativeimportance of participatory processes andelectoral democratic institutions, as well asthe power relations embedded in the technicalsupport offered for strategic visioningexercises.

The first section of the paper introduces theinternational development policy initiativepromoting city development strategies andoffers a preliminary assessment of their poten-tial to overcome divisions in the field of urbantheory. The second section introduces theexample of Johannesburg and considers therelative importance of participation andelected institutions in the development of along-term strategic vision for the city, whilethe third section considers the interactionbetween the demands to promote economicgrowth and the more developmentalistagendas of service delivery. The conclusionreflects on the importance of generatingurban policies and urban theories that canmeet the range of challenges that are facedby cities like Johannesburg.

1. Learning from City DevelopmentStrategies

The literature on ‘Third World cities’, anddevelopmentalism more broadly, has tendedto highlight the differences between cities inpoor countries and cities in wealthiercountries. In the case of poorer cities, thefocus has been on the large and rapidlygrowing proportion of the population whichis unemployed or dependent on survivalistand informal activities and services. Theabsence of many of the infrastructural deve-lopments which characterise wealthier citiesand which make urban life even moreprecarious for the poor has been a majorfocus of both academic and policy work(Pugh, 1995; Devas, 2004). The declining

338 SUSAN PARNELL AND JENNY ROBINSON

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formal economy of many poor cities has beennoted (Gugler, 2004). The adverse impacts onsocial life and on economic growth of globalcircuits of capital, accompanied by conflictsand crises of political legitimacy, have allmarked cities in poor countries as different,and usually requiring different policy inputs,from those in the West and NICs (Burgesset al., 1997; Cohen, 1997).

By contrast, recent policy initiatives topromote competitiveness in the global eco-nomic arena as an ambition even for poorcities (Harris, 1996, 2002; UNCHS, 2001)have drawn many more cities into an urbanpolicy discourse primarily developed inrelation to cities in wealthy economies. In aca-demic scholarship, much of the literature onurban competition has developed in the UScontext, with sometimes-difficult applicationsto western Europe. This is largely because ofmore robust levels of municipal autonomyand devolution in the US, compared withmost European countries (Jonas and Ward,2002). Not surprisingly, then, as manypoorer countries are ‘encouraged’ by inter-national financial institutions and donorgovernments to promote decentralisation andpolitical devolution, the opportunity for localeconomic development initiatives hasemerged.

The World Bank sees newly autonomouscity governments as an important extensionof their traditional client base (World Bank,2000). And for local governments, the attrac-tions of global competitiveness are multiple.We explore this further below. But whereaspolitical conflict and social redistributionagendas are by no means absent from weal-thier cities following strongly competitiveagendas, in poor cities the severe inequalitiesmean that promoting globalising urban deve-lopment strategies can provoke majoritydiscontent and serious legitimation crises forlocal governments (see for example, Firman,1999). It is in this context that the policyinitiative to promote city development strat-egies (CDSs) has emerged. CDSs are ima-gined as collective, participatory visioningexercises to establish priorities and strategiesfor future development. With technical

support (from consultants, often internationaldevelopment experts or World Bank/CitiesAlliance personnel), local political leadershipand the ambition of widespread participation,these exercises offer the opportunity to reviewthe range of needs and possibilities for devel-opment across the city as a whole. They aim topromote a process whereby all the differentstakeholders in a city would participate indefining a strategy for city-wide development,including addressing infrastructure inadequa-cies, and promoting formal economic activi-ties in which the city has some notablecomparative advantage internationally. Here,then, the agendas of global competitivenessand providing for basic urban needs havebeen drawn into the same planning discourse.

This initiative represents a more hopefulattitude to urban development in poorercities than that of most academic commenta-tors on the South. In the 1990s, academic the-orists drew rather pessimistic conclusionsregarding the possibilities for generatingeconomic growth and sustainable develop-ment in poorer countries more generally(Crush, 1995; Escobar, 1995). And over thepast decade, key figures have argued thatwhat little scope might have existed in thedecentralisation of power to local governmentand/or the shift to greater state civil societycollaboration, failed to deliver meaningfulchanges in practical democracy on thestreets, largely because local realities wereignored (Crook and Manor, 1995; Mohanand Stokke, 2000). Instead, the overarchingstructural inequities of globally and nationallyconstituted inequality prevailed. From thisviewpoint, ‘state-led development’ was seenas a dead-end track, unlikely to generate amore equitable future for the urban residentsof Southern nations (Fine, 1999; Devas,2004). Also, weak capacities at local govern-ment level in many areas encouraged writersto support a wider range of local developmentagents (Rakodi, 1997, 2002). With notableexceptions (Cox, 1997; Evans, 1996a,1996b), the best the academy could suggestfor urban development was to build organisedcivil society which could promote democracyfrom the street level up (Harris et al., 2004;

DEVELOPMENT AND URBAN POLICY 339



Mitilin and Satterthwaite, 2004), or exploit thelocal fallout of national and internationalrestructuring (Bond, 2000).

In the absence of clearly articulated aca-demic positions on development at a cityscale in poorer contexts, a corps of influentialpractitioners has made significant impact overthe past decade, not least because theyappeared more hopeful about the politicalcapacity of sub-national government to driveor facilitate growth and development incities. Initially, this affirmation of the econ-omic and developmental role of city govern-ment was closely associated with the overtlyneo-liberal agenda of the World Bank (1991,2000) which promoted local institutionalstrategies to improve

the conditions for urban sustainability alongdimensions of liveability, competitiveness,good management and governance, andbank ability (World Bank, 2000, p. x).

The broad agenda of promoting globalcompetitiveness was also incorporated intoorganisations with more diverse ambitionsincluding UNCHS (2001) and the Cities Alli-ance. The Cities Alliance is an internationaldonor coalition, including the World Bankand UNCHS, but also linked to internationalorganisations of local authorities. It is com-mitted to action in relation to both slumupgrading (“Cities without Slums”) and citydevelopment strategies which “reflect ashared vision for the city’s future and localpriorities for action” (Cities Alliance, 2001,2002).

So, while the notion of progressive ordevelopmental local government has notreceived much academic support, it doeshold increasing sway in cities across theglobe among a broad grouping of practitionersincluding politicians, officials and consultants.The Cities Alliance in particular has beeninstrumental in the dissemination of the viewthat local government can, in partnershipwith other local stakeholders, make a differ-ence. While there are important differencesfrom city to city, in general terms the impactof the Cities Alliance has been to foster amanagerialist path of urban governance.

Central in this regard is the imperative ofpromoting growth and reaffirming the poten-tial of decentralisation as much as positioningthe city in a global or national economiccontext (GHK Consultants, 2002).

The assessment of CDSs is still in itsinfancy. Cities Alliance have themselves com-missioned an evaluation of the CDS experi-ence, but this has yet to report. A smallerevaluation of a few cases was commissionedby DfID and the Cities Alliance (GHK Con-sultants, 2002) which articulated some of thedifficulties of achieving a city-wide vision,including the role of external technical advi-sors and donors in shaping strategic choicesand the disruptions of the electoral cycle andpolitical conflict. The Johannesburg case,which we explore in detail in the next two sec-tions, experienced some of these difficulties.But this example also suggests that diversepolicy agendas and political interests can bebrought together in the process of visioninga development strategy for the city as awhole, although not necessarily in the partici-patory manner imagined by developmenttheorists or the policy-makers who seek toimplement their visions.

One aspect of the CDS process which willbe of concern to scholars and citizens, andwhich the Johannesburg case illuminates, isthe role of the World Bank’s neo-liberalapproach to economic policy and financialgovernance. This wider policy context sitsalongside discourses about participation anda commitment to improving the lives of theurban poor. The imperative of enhancing con-sultation and participation in CDS processesowes much to broader developmentalist dis-courses of participation which understand par-ticipation as a necessary and effective route tosecuring pro-poor outcomes. But it is also aresult of the intellectual influence of the con-sultative or democratic planning movementinfluential in urban policy circles (Healey,1995). Attending to the rights of the urbanpoor implicitly endorses the notion of univer-sal rights of urban citizenship (Parnell, 2004).And CDSs also express concern with thepromotion of an environmentally sustainablecity (Satterthwaite, 1999). Within the CDS




process, strategies to achieve urban rights forthe poor, participation and sustainability sitalongside those of cost recovery on services,efficiency and good governance. It would becrude to typecast the Cities Alliance andCDSs as agents of neo-liberalism. Whatemerges is a diverse, even internally contra-dictory, policy package for driving city strat-egy formation. Interesting for our purposes,it is a policy arena which is open to the dualagendas of economic growth and develop-ment. As a result, what is taken up in individ-ual cities varies enormously, depending on thenature of external influences and internalpolitical dynamics (see for example, GHKConsultants, 2002; Stren, 2001).

In our view, these are the reasons why theCDS initiative has wider consequences forurban studies and urban policy. First, one ofthe achievements of the CDS approach is todraw together the discourses and technologiesof developmentalist agendas traditionallyassociated with Third World urban manage-ment and the globalising competitive city strat-egies more usually linked to ambitious orrecently declining cities in wealthier countrycontexts. In this, it has the potential to stimulatethe transcendence of longstanding divisionsbetween accounts of ‘Western’ and ‘ThirdWorld’ cities, for which a number of writershave argued (see Southall, 1973; Lawson andKlak, 1993; Ward, 1993; King, 1995; Simon,1995). And secondly, city managers and citi-zens are encouraged to address the specificityof their cities and to engage with the diverseeconomic and social life of the city. This con-trasts strongly with the often-limited focus ofscholars and policy-makers on either the suc-cessful globalising sectors and the small areasof the city they occupy, or the infrastructurallypoorest areas of cities, both of which promotestereotyped ambitions dependent on the struc-tural positioning of a city, or which encouragethe simplistic application of imported, ready-made solutions (Amin and Graham, 1997;Robinson, 2006).

Both of these fields—the international dis-courses informing local policy developmentand the diversity of concerns and interestspresent in the city—are strongly conflicted

terrains. And the Johannesburg case exempli-fies this well. However, it is arguably throughthese conflicts that we see the possible emer-gence of a new generation of urban policiesresponsive to the specificity of individualcities.

We think that in the proliferation of thesenew city-wide development strategies thereexists an opportunity for reconfiguring somekey elements of development policy andurban theory. Focusing on the urban worldof poorer countries can open new windowson future challenges for cities everywhere,so that scholars and policy-makers of weal-thier cities can learn from the experiences ofurban development challenges in poorer con-texts (see also Cohen, 1997; Mabin, 1999b;Freund and Padayachee, 2002). This isimportant at the very least because in theoverall global urban experience six out ofevery seven people already live in low- ormiddle-income nations, the majority of themin cities, and over the next 30 years theurban populations of Africa, Latin Americaand Asia are projected to double (Montgom-ery et al., 2004).

But we suggest that bringing together urbanpolicy and the challenges of development inpoorer cities can also contribute to an emer-ging post-colonial critique of urban theory inwhich the experiences of both poor andwealthy cities inform a wider urban theory(see King, 2004; Robinson, 2006)—althoughit could be that the wider discourses of urbantheory in the 21st century are more likely tobe informed by development on the ground,and especially in poorer cities, than toinform them. If that is so, then now is mostcertainly the time for urban scholars to movefrom the ivory tower into city hall and com-munity meeting-places—and especially tothe urban realities of the global periphery.

2. Participation, Politics and CityVisioning in Post-apartheid Johannesburg

Although there had been initiatives toenvision the future of post-apartheid Johan-nesburg in the early 1990s as the negotiations




for a political settlement at national and locallevels proceeded, it was not until the late1990s that a comprehensive city visioningprocess was initiated (Bremner, 2000;Tomlinson, 1999). This took place in thecontext of preparing to amalgamate fourmunicipalities within a weak overarchingmetropolitan structure, a transitional arrange-ment which had been in place since 1995,into one. This larger ‘Unicity’, established in2000 (the Greater Johannesburg MetropolitanCouncil) inaugurated the first fully integratedmetropolitan government in the city afterdecades of racially divided and fragmentedgovernment under apartheid. But the newmunicipality, as well as the city visioningprocess, was born in conditions of crisis. By1997, the four transitional local authoritiesin the Johannesburg area had spent their wayinto a serious financial crisis, assisted by anhistorical weakness in collecting revenue, ahuge backlog in services in poor, Blackareas and a rates boycott from wealthy resi-dents opposed to increasing taxation levels(Tomlinson, 1999; Beall et al., 2002).

The process which this crisis set in trainalso established important elements of thepolitical landscape which determined thecourse of the wider city visioning, or CityDevelopment Strategy (CDS), process. Thefinancial crisis caused the cessation ofroutine administration in favour of an emer-gency committee directly overseeing budget-ing and decision-making. Over the course ofthe following three years, a range of insti-tutional changes were enacted, culminatingin an institutional and financial restructuringplan partly to facilitate the creation of theUnicity. This plan was named ‘iGoli2002’—iGoli the vernacular name for Johan-nesburg, meaning place of gold. It involveda small amount of privatisation as well asmanagement contracts for private companies(including international firms) to run someof the council’s enterprises, such as waterand electricity provision. It led to the acqui-sition of a restructuring grant from theNational Treasury that defined and regulatedCouncil performance on the basis of keyindicators—a plan which had been proposed

by local leaders (Savage et al., 2003,K. Gordhan, former Chief ExecutiveOfficer, Greater Johannesburg TransitionalMetropolitan Council, personal interview,2001).

Following on from these radical organi-sational changes, a long-term city visioningprocess was initiated in 1999. Called ‘iGoli2010’, this was driven by research and datacollection by external consultants, andmanaged by a project team advised by a steer-ing committee comprised of key stakeholdersfrom business, community, labour and gov-ernment. This process was interrupted by elec-tions at the end of 2000 and the commissionedresearch was drawn into a separate process ofinternal policy formulation which resulted inthe adoption of the document Joburg 2030as the council’s long-term strategy in late2002. A further iteration of the Joburg CDSwas planned and initiated through 2005, inte-grating the Joburg 2030 policy (which had astrong focus on the economy) with a newlyformulated Human Development Agenda(City of Johannesburg, 2004) and the existingcity Environmental Management Plan (Cityof Johannesburg, 2002a). The revised 2030CDS is a serious attempt to reconcile the com-peting interests which frame the challenges ofcity development in Johannesburg. Table 1outlines these different stages of the CDSprocess.

As Table 1 indicates, the different phases ofthe CDS process were characterised by differ-ent kinds of organisation. Initially, a stronglyparticipatory process was envisaged, butlater the process became internalised, invol-ving only senior councillors and officials. Atall stages, the role of consultants and technicalinput was strong. This feature of theJohannesburg experience with long-term cityvisioning brings into question the role of par-ticipation in formulating city strategies.

For South African urban managers, gather-ing major players for negotiation and consen-sus building as envisaged in the first phase ofthe CDS has been an important part of localpolitical culture for many years. Beginningwith attempts to break crippling economicboycotts of White business by Black




Table 1. Characteristics of the core phases of the Johannesburg CDS

IGoli 2002(October 1997–2000)

iGoli 2010(research and forum process

2000)2030 Vision

(launched February 2002)

2030 CDS(Planned for launch at

2005 elections andsubsequent

implementation)

Context Fiscal crisis and interimlocal governmentstructure

Consolidation ofmetropolitan structure infinal phase of interimlocal government

Post-apartheid metropolitangovernment in place

Internal and externalcritique of 2030

Strategy drivers Provincial and nationalgovernment, leaders whomake up the iGoli 2002Emergency Committee

Transitional MetropolitanCouncil, Stakeholdersand external consultants

City Managers Office,endorsed by MayoralCommittee

City Managers Officeand MayoralCommittee

Objectives Three-year revenue-ledbudget, credit controlInstitutionalrationalisation—creationof metropolitan structure‘Privatisation’ and otherrestructuring

Data gathering,Linked focus oneconomic growth,competitiveness and basicneeds

An African World class cityEconomic growth—increased GGP throughskills development andcrime reduction

Integrate social,economic andenvironmentalobjectivesIdentify institutionalbarriers todevelopmental localgovernment in Joburg,including assessmentof the operation ofutilities and otherfundamentalinstitutionalarrangements

Participatory process Elected councillorsRepresented not electedappointments onEmergency CommitteeCouncil negotiations withmunicipal unionsAppointment of 2010Steering Committee

Elected councillorsExtensive process ofconsultation through astakeholders’ forum,focus groups and citysummit

Elected councillorsTo be announced—proposed to includeforums of all stakeholdersand a ‘people’s assembly’

To be announced

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consumers in the 1980s and linked to earlyanti-apartheid attempts to create a platformfor ‘one city one tax-base’, this form of nego-tiating differences played a significant role ingenerating city-wide institutions of post-apartheid government through the 1990s(Swilling and Boya, 1997). The bringingtogether of statutory and non-statutory group-ings, including the range of apartheid localauthorities, as well as civics, trade unionsand opposition parties, was legislated for intransitional arrangements for local govern-ment (Cameron, 1999; Mabin, 1999a). Thistradition of participation has been cementedin national legislation, through the creationof ward committees and mandatory partici-pation in planning exercises. Included in theinstitutional formulation of democratic localgovernment in South Africa, then, is notonly a system of elected council represen-tatives, but also a structured system ofon-going public engagement, a form of parti-cipatory democracy that is now enshrined inlaw (Wooldridge, 2001).

This fusion of the discourse of popular par-ticipation and that of formal, electoral democ-racy shaped Johannesburg’s initial experienceof CDS. This conformed with the internationaldevelopmentalist discourse which links effec-tive participation in decision-making to theachievement of equitable outcomes for thepoor (Stren, 2001; Parnell, 2002). Partici-pation has also been taken up by the bilateraland multilateral aid agencies who wish toproject the CDS as a vehicle to address theagendas of promoting pro-poor developmentand meeting the Millennium DevelopmentGoals (DfID, 2001).

However, as the Johannesburg CDS pro-ceeded, participation became less importantto those in the council who were leading theprocess and even public consultation was per-functory. And yet, we argue below, the inter-ests of the poor and other constituencieswere able to be represented through theelected representatives and officials in thelocal government. In our view, the Johannes-burg case demonstrates that participation isan insufficient criterion for assessing citydevelopment planning, or even for

determining its implications for the poor andmarginalised. As we will see, city develop-ment strategies there were the result of awide range of discursive inputs, electoral con-siderations, power relations within bureauc-racies and wider political concerns. Incontrast then to a relatively technocraticview of participation as inevitably leading tocertain kinds of outcomes, the deeply politicalprocess of establishing strategic visions forurban development must be a crucial part ofany analysis of CDS and its likely impactsfor development and addressing poverty.

We point here to an important aspect of thedivision between developmentalist accountsof poor cities and a more Western-influencedanalysis of urban politics. The burden ofWestern accounts has been to address the con-stitution of ‘regimes’ of urban governance, inwhich powerful local interests elaborategrowth-oriented policies within particularstable formal electoral and institutional con-texts (Stoker and Mossberger, 1994). Thesecan last for shorter or longer periods of time,but certainly shift in response to new electoralbalances, or new ways of articulating the con-sequences of economic downturn, or newconfigurations of elite interests. Of course inmany poorer cities, these sites of contestationmay be poorly formed and more diffuse(Parnell, 2006) and, undoubtedly, whilethere are multiple sites or nodes of strugglefor power in the city, in poorer contextswhere development practices have promotedparticipation, the participatory process itselfhas emerged as a key lever of power. Nonethe-less, we suggest that a detailed analysis of themore formal political and institutionaldynamics of the CDS processes in poorcountries, as is common in wealthier city con-texts, might lead to quite different assessmentsof their role in the process of determiningdevelopment outcomes and even addressingpoverty and inequality. To what extent, then,was participation important for the generationof ‘pro-poor’ city-wide development strat-egies in Johannesburg? And what role didwider political and institutional processesplay in shaping redistributive urban develop-ment agendas there?




An important backdrop to addressing boththese questions in relation to Johannesburgwas the wider institutional restructuringwhich framed the CDS process for, inpopular memory, the initial phase of restruc-turing city government, ‘iGoli 2002’, isassociated less with the creation of a newmetropolitan structure, the Unicity, and morewith the ‘privatisation’ of services. It iswidely described as the neo-liberal edge oflocal government transformation in SouthAfrica and has attracted considerablepopular opposition. Organisation around‘iGoli 2002’ spawned new political structureson the left, notably the Anti PrivatisationForum, which linked municipal unions,leftist intellectuals and emerging popularmovements. This grouping developed astrong critique of the restructuring process,both in terms of the role of private companiesin managing council functions and theconsequences of amalgamation for employees(M. Brady, Secretary, Johannesburg BusinessForum, personal interview, 2002; T. Ngwane,Anti Privatisation Forum, personal interview,2002). Advocates of ‘iGoli 2002’ point tothe limited extent of actual privatisation—most restructuring involved the creation ofinternal agencies and utilities, target-settingand management contracts rather than whole-sale privatisation. However, continuedcouncil control of these entities requiredstrong systems of regulation and critics havehighlighted the inadequate systems whichhave been put in place (Beall et al. 2002).

The political fallout from ‘iGoli 2002’ ledto a breakdown of relations between thecouncil and SAMWU, and the emergence ofa conflict-ridden relationship between thecouncil and its left-wing critics (M.Sampson, Gender Officer, Municipal ServicesProject, personal interview, 2002; P. Bond,Anti Privatisation Forum, interview 2002;T. Ngwane, interview, 2002). As a result, thelong-term visioning process was substantiallyaltered and the opportunity to forge a vision ofthe city through negotiation and discussionacross different interest-groups in the citywas lost in the face of entrenched positionsand boycotts of council processes.

Having started as a participatory ‘partnership’(City of Johannesburg, 1999a) between thelocal authority, business, community andunions, the CDS ended up as more of a techni-cal exercise limited to consultants, councillorsand officials.

The elections in December 2000 whichinitiated the Unicity coincided with continu-ing conflict over ‘iGoli 2002’ and heightenedpolitical tensions. Public events linked to‘iGoli 2010’ were cancelled and the steeringcommittee stopped meeting. Members wereassured that the documentation and researchhad not been “shoved in a cupboard and for-gotten” (M. De Jager, business representative,personal interview, 2001); they had been with-drawn to the office of a new consultant, taskedwith generating a strategic vision for the cityin association with senior officials andcouncillors.

The international consultants, Monitor,originating in Harvard under Michael Porterbut now with offices around the world, hadbeen engaged to lead the key researchproject to inform ‘iGoli 2010’ for thecouncil. Unfortunately, their final report wasalso due just as the elections for the newUnicity were being held, which meant that anewly elected council, with different person-nel and priorities from the initial drivers ofthe process, received the report. Monitor hadasserted that defining a development visionfor the council amounted to a series ofchoices, primarily between economic growthand meeting basic services. The choice to bemade was the province of the council and, asthey saw it, their role as consultants was toestablish the basis for making that choice,for setting a strategic vision for the city, andnot to make the strategic choices. Thus,despite the vast costs incurred, the Monitor2010 document failed to provide a clear wayforward and the advice of the Monitor groupthat growth and poverty should be balancedagainst each other in a manner to be decidedby the City was dismissed as indecisive. Forthe new council elected in December 2000,the consultant’s failure to define directionwas framed as disappointing (City of Johan-nesburg, 2000b).




The new consultant hired by the Unicitywas a key player in provincial and ANCcircles and an economist. She prepared thereport Joburg 2030, a document based onthe research conducted by Monitor and otherconsultants to the 2010 process, as well asfurther analysis of research by the WorldBank (which they had volunteered to theprocess in 1999—see World Bank, 2000).All this was used to propose a clear strategyfor the council premised on the centrality ofpromoting economic growth, a position cham-pioned by influential members of the newexecutive Mayoral Committee.

The scope of ‘iGoli 2010’ was much widerthan in the Joburg 2030 report—in theMonitor study, all major aspects of Councilbusiness were reported on. Indeed, it is thevery breadth of ‘iGoli 2010’ that appears tohave led to its inauspicious reception (J.Murphy, Director of Strategy and Support;R. Hunter, Director of Finance; R. Seedat,Director Corporate Planing Unit: personalinterviews, 2001). By contrast, 2030 is afocused, strategic document that stresses thelong-term importance of economic growth tothe city, as the basis for increasing employ-ment and income for individuals and taxationrevenue for the council (K. Fihla, MayoralCommittee member, personal interview,2001). However, in the preparation of 2030the premise of participation in CDS was over-turned. There was no attempt made to consultinside or outside the City, at the precisemoment when profound political choiceswere being made about council priorities.The shift was justified as necessary ingaining focus and providing a less ambiguousway forward for the city. Instead, the policyprocess was shaped by power balanceswithin the council and by the ruling AfricanNational Congress (ANC) party.

The influence of the ANC on local govern-ment development strategy is both importantand hard to pin down. The ANC party mech-anisms influenced the elected personnel ofthe council and determined who took up therole of Mayor, for example. In policy terms,the general tone of the 2030 document andthe direction of its arguments were synergistic

with national ANC policies, in terms of thebroad environment of neo-liberalism and theattention to microeconomic concerns aroundinvestment and economic growth, after thesuccessful imposition of macro-structuraladjustment (S. Lowitt, Author of 2030;K. Fihla; R. Seedat: personal interviews,2001). The lines of influence within ANCstructures are often informal, although theANC’s economic policy committee did playa background role in supporting the pro-growth direction of the 2030 document andconsultation with ANC structures anddepartments did inform the JohannesburgCDS process (C. Mostert, ANC member,personal interview, 2002; K. Fihla, personalinterview, 2002). The ANC also intervenedto try and break the deadlock between thecity council and the unions and civics, butfailed to secure their involvement in theCDS process.

It was the formal democratic institutions oflocal government which played the mostimportant part in ensuring the incorporationinto the final Joburg 2030 document of anemphasis on delivering social services,addressing the HIV/AIDS crisis and ensuringa commitment to stretching the benefits ofeconomic growth to poorer parts of the city.These issues appear, though, very much asadd-ons to the pro-growth policy and werenegotiated only once the document had beenprepared in some detail (see Table 2). Themost sustained criticism of the documentcame from officials responsible for the admin-istration of sub-municipal areas, especiallythose in poor areas where service delivery isa primary concern. Previous rounds of internalconsultation had already ironed out othersources of discontent amongst senior man-agers and councillors (S. Lowitt, personalinterview, 2001), partly by agreeing thatbasic service delivery would continue, onlyprioritised in a way that supported economicgrowth (K. Fihla, personal interview, 2002).

The 2030 document therefore potentiallyset an orientation and a framework which itsadvocates hoped would guide line functionimplementation in support of economicgrowth across the council. However, it was




agreed that, while the document could beadopted as council policy, it could also berevised in the future (R. Seedat, personalinterview, 2002), allowing more councillorsand officials to agree to support the document.Formal democratic decision-making pro-cesses—for example, through the council’scommittee structure—would play a significantrole in prioritising spending on an annualbasis. Moreover, the powerful tactic of doingnothing has been evident since its adoption.The shifting politics of the Council chamberfaced with an election, the mayor’s insistenceon more popular agendas and the resignationof one of the key advocates of 2030 havealso been important. Most recent influenceson policy direction include the City’s adher-ence to global accords such as the MillenniumDevelopment Goals and the Joburg Plan of

Action which reinvigorated debates abouthuman development and environmental sus-tainability as opposed to economic growth.Anything that has to do with generating abalanced budget moves up the politicalagenda. Thus, a number of (contradictory)forces have influenced the implementation(or not) of Joburg 2030. The prospects of par-ticipatory processes shaping the developmen-tal direction of a city must therefore be locatedin this wider political context.

Participation, hard to effect and sustain at ametro-wide scale, is perhaps best understoodas a component of local political dynamicsand not as a stand-alone solution to negotiat-ing visions for city futures. If city develop-ment strategies which advantage the poorand marginalised are to be adopted by cities,strong support for formal democratic

Table 2. Selected content items in Joburg 2030 changed by the Mayoral Committee

The change that was incorporated

Aids A paragraph was added showing how the Mayoral Thrustscomplement the 10 focus areas of 2030 and hence Aids is apriority for the City

Environmental sustainability Paragraphs were included for the planning section and theutilities section, which argue that economic growth must bemanaged so as to ensure sustainability in terms of theenvironment. The open space argument was expanded, aswas the issue of alternative energy sources, water usage andwaste. A pollution argument was added to the publictransport issue. On the utilities side, it was added that theutilities need to co-ordinate sustainable provision with therelevant council functions as part of their strategic agenda

Densification The argument was added that densification must be appropriateand that the costs of upgrading infrastructure to support thesenew densities must be taken into account. The argument thatdifferent utilities have different operating parameters interms of spatial location and usage was also added

Township development Three key catalytic projects were expanded and redefinedspecifically to focus on getting economic activity into thetownships. The projects state that the Council will act as theflagship on these, but there are additions to how otherbusiness will be crowded in

SMME development Two additional projects in this area were added: the skillspartnership project with tertiary education facilities and arange of mentoring/incubator projects in the ICT field

Issue of balance re socialdevelopment

A section was added to indicate that there would be noimmediate budget reallocations necessitated by the 2030strategy and that there would be changes in efficiency andfocus rather than financial reallocations. A new section isbeing added to the paradigm to suggest a more balancedapproach while not deviating from the logic of the paradigm




institutions and processes which includeeffective opportunities for routine partici-pation (rather than one-off initiatives) aswell as electoral accountability, could be anappropriate policy intervention. As the Johan-nesburg case illustrates, powerful bureaucraticprocesses can shape and re-orient local gov-ernment policies. Also, popular participationin the form of a mobilised community sectorworked to delegitimate the process of policyformulation and, as a result of on-going politi-cal conflict with the council, the participatoryprocess was severely limited. Nonetheless, inthe Johannesburg case, both elected represen-tatives and officials represented the interestsof different groups in the city to secure redis-tributive outcomes alongside initiatives topromote economic growth.

3. Addressing Poverty and EconomicGrowth

The coincidence of globally competitivebusinesses and extreme poverty and inequalityin the city of Johannesburg—as in so manycities in poorer countries—places strongdemands on city government. Not only toaddress the huge backlogs of service provisionand infrastructure, or to alleviate and addresspoverty, but to elaborate and implement pol-icies for economic growth which do notsimply reinforce these inequalities and divi-sions. In many ways, the economic andsocial diversity of many poor cities challengesstandard economic growth theories and drawsthe analytics of urban economic growth—primarily developed in a wealthy-countrycontext—into a conversation with a range ofdevelopmentalist practices and concerns. Par-ticularly, these cities highlight in an acuteform what is a persistent problem for urbangovernment everywhere: negotiating urbangrowth and urban poverty (Cohen, 1997;Turok et al., 2004). In South Africa, addres-sing poverty and the backlog of urban serviceshas a heightened political significance for apost-apartheid government committed toredressing apartheid inequalities on behalfof their largely poor, black support-base. Butthis has to be achieved within a national and

international policy context which stronglyencourages local government to provide theconditions for economic growth.

We focus here on the two key documentswhich emerged from the CDS process inJohannesburg—the Monitor consultant’sreport which drew together the range ofresearch they co-ordinated, Towards a strat-egy for building Johannesburg into a worldclass city (Monitor Group, 2001) and theJoburg 2030 (City of Johannesburg, 2002b)strategy document. Both of these have circu-lated widely and have affected practices incouncil and policy circles in the city and inSouth Africa more generally. We also drawon the perspectives of some of the keyplayers within the city authorities, in termsof how the tensions between simultaneouslyaddressing economic growth and povertymight be reconciled.

In the Monitor document, a range ofanalytical resources used by the internationalconsultancy agency were deployed, resourceswhich have been routinely applied to citieselsewhere. A report brought out for Durban,for example, around the same time (MonitorGroup, 2002) employed very similar languageand graphics. They state that the CDS processwas built on the hypothesis that the strategywould be about “integrating the servicedelivery functions of the city with a newrole of consciously creating an environmentto enable economic growth” (MonitorGroup, 2001, p. 17). Warning that thecouncil did not have the “luxury of choosingto act on some of these agendas and notothers” (p. 16), they proposed a calculationin which “the basic foundations”—infrastruc-ture provision—are a necessary but insuffi-cient condition for becoming a “winningcity”. Drawing on council documents, thevisioning process and a customer needssurvey conducted through 2010, they articu-lated Johannesburg’s vision as: “becoming aworld-class city defined by increased prosper-ity and quality of life through sustained econ-omic growth for all of its citizens” (MonitorGroup, 2000, p. 13). However, slow growthin economic activity in the Johannesburgmetropolitan area through the early 1990s




indicated that the needs of the city could notbe met and that, with the highest growth cur-rently in high-skill areas, the pattern ofgrowth would also fail to deliver jobs for themajority (Monitor Group, 2000, p. 58).

The document drew on a raft of commis-sioned research to offer choices for councildelivery in areas ranging from water, sewer-age, HIV/Aids, security, housing and edu-cation. In each of these, questions ofminimum service levels were assessed onthe basis of current service levels andexpected population trends. Compared withmany cities, Johannesburg has relativelyhigh levels of basic services delivery, butchoices would have to be made over theminimum acceptable standards for thepoorest sectors of the population, which theysuggested would depend on the anticipatedrevenue stream and the anticipated populationgrowth.

In terms of integrating the economic growthand service delivery agendas, the suggestionthat current growth trends would not meetthe demands of the city and the likelihoodof there being a severe skills mismatch inthe direction of growth, proved powerful indi-cators of the strategic decisions to be taken.As the report notes

Kick starting the local economy cannot beabout relying on local demand to drivegrowth. Therefore, consistent with nationaland provincial economic policy, Johannes-burg’s economic development strategy isbased on positioning for competitivenessbeyond the borders of the city and theeconomy (Monitor Group, 2000, p. 58).

Providing general infrastructure andservices was part of providing a “strong plat-form” for globally competitive economicgrowth, but targeted action to “repositionindustries in higher growth areas” and invest-ment to provide the advanced infrastructureand services necessary for the knowledge-based economy (identified as the driver ofJohannesburg’s future growth) were centralto the strategic vision (Monitor Group, 2000,p. 69).

Using a simple analytical framework basedon assessing relative attractiveness (to thecity—i.e. jobs, growth) of sectors and firmsagainst their relative competitiveness (pro-ductivity and propensity to export), thereport then highlights which sectors of theeconomy best meet the need for high growthto meet the city’s needs around improvingstandards of living and quality of life. Thesesectors, it turned out, fell largely in thehigh-growth/high-export categories, with pri-marily highly skilled labour forces. They pro-posed that the council support the emergenceof the knowledge economy; support themove to high-value manufacturing (as heavymanufacturing employing unskilled labourhad largely moved out of the city); andsustain the growth in the services sector,especially in terms of links to SouthernAfrica. However, they also advocatedsupport for the fast-growing informal sectorand for declining industries, as both of theseoffered more scope for employment. Toextend the benefits of high-growth sectors topoorer communities, they recommendedaddressing the skills mismatch in the citythrough work experience programmes andeducational support.

While driven by the concern with globalcompetitiveness, and a range of criteria for‘attractiveness’ which privilege high-skill,low-employment activities, the Monitorreport integrated service delivery as part ofcreating a “basic platform” for a world classcity. They also saw council’s activities inservice delivery and basic infrastructuredevelopment as a non-negotiable componentof their long-term strategy, with economicinterventions to support competitive clustersbeing a “new function” of the council. Ser-vices delivery, the informal sector andinfrastructure development were all seen ascontributing to overall city competitiveness,as well as to the broader goal of “humandevelopment through empowerment”.However, there were some stark distinctionsin priority drawn between, say, providing ITinfrastructure to the highest level for globallycompetitive firms, while providing simpler,cheaper solutions for basic services, such as




public transport and sewerage (MonitorGroup, 2000, p. 16). Council never adoptedthis document, though. Instead, with thenewly elected council in place in early 2000,work began on preparing Joburg 2030.

Joburg 2030 (City of Johannesburg, 2002b)draws on much the same foundation ofresearch as the Monitor report, although italso includes results from a survey of firmsconducted voluntarily by the World Bank in1999. However, this later report reachessomewhat distinctive conclusions. The start-ing premise of this strategy document isunsurprisingly similar to that of the Monitorreport

The world is agreed on a common vision fora world-class city: all citizens should havean increased standard of living andimproved quality of life. An importantaddition to this normative statement is thatsuch a goal should be achieved via ‘sus-tained economic growth’. This clearly pro-motes economic growth to centre stage andestablished a crude but crucial causal link—economic growth is the only sustainableroad to increased quality of life (City ofJohannesburg, 2002b, p. 7).

For the authors of Joburg 2030 servicedelivery and infrastructure developmentremain closely tied in to economic growth,although, in slightly different ways. Thereport does suggest that some diversion ofresources from service delivery towards stra-tegic initiatives to promote economic growthwill be required. In the view of the author ofthe document, it marks a “shift from serviceprovider to economic development as thekey function of local government in Johannes-burg” (S. Lowitt, personal interview, 2002).The rationale for deciding on what servicesor infrastructure to invest in is located intheir value for supporting economic growth.Although the ambition is an improvement inhuman development, the strategy is based onthe premise that this can only be achievedvia economic growth. The customer surveysundertaken as part of the 2010 process indi-cated a strong interest in job creationamongst the poorest residents of the city

and, therefore, the report suggests, reinforcesthe argument to promote economic growth.Infrastructure and service delivery are inter-preted through the report in terms of theirimplications for the economy and ways inwhich they might be supportive of economicgrowth are explored.

Overall, the infrastructure of the city is seento contribute to ‘economies of urbanisation’—the generalised efficiencies of the city as a siteof agglomeration where the provision of basicservices and infrastructure can enhance theorganisation and mobility of firms. Thesecond layer of links between developmentalagendas and economic growth is through the‘economies of localisation’, in which cluster-ing processes and specialisation in certainsectors can be supported through selected,targeted interventions. This would includedata analysis and sectoral co-ordination andplanning alongside specific infrastructuraldevelopment. One prime example inJohannesburg is the concentration of financialand business services in the northern suburbsof the city: an area now hugely congestedand needing urgent infrastructural renewal. Itis also one of the wealthiest, former Whiteareas of the city. Controversially, a pro-growth budget, then, could prioritiseinfrastructural investment (roads, IT connec-tions, sewerage) to support this cluster in thewealthiest areas of town to the north, abovethe dense, overcrowded and poorly servicedareas of the south of the city, includingSoweto.

The politics of a strategy prioritising long-term economic development over currentservice delivery are clearly fraught. But thecreativity of finding ways in which the chal-lenges of addressing poverty and deliveringservices can be met, at the same time asencouraging the long-term economic growthseen as crucial to improving the council’sability to meet their developmental mandate,is evident in both the policy documents con-sidered here.

There is no readily available solution to thechallenges of development in Johannesburg—although both these approaches have drawn ona range of existing analyses, discourses and




management tools in order to constructa plausible vision and strategy for theJohannesburg local authority. Included herehave been academic inputs on the role ofglobal economic sectors in the growth of theworld’s most successful cities and the poten-tial of clusters of economic activity to gener-ate self-sustaining growth (see for example,Sassen, 2001; Scott and Storper, 2003). Ourassessment is that much more work andcreative thinking are needed to generateapproaches, tactics and strategies for citiesto draw on in reimagining the possibilitiesfor their futures. To be globally competitiveis both attractive to policy-makers andenormously volatile, even for lower middle-income economies like South Africa. It isalso politically difficult when high expec-tations of delivery inform electoral mandatesas in post-apartheid South Africa.

Both of the strategy documents producedduring Johannesburg’s CDS explore thescope for a positive relationship betweenservice and infrastructure delivery and econ-omic growth. For academic researchers,Johannesburg’s challenges might inspire usto return to some older analyses concerninghow basic urban agglomeration economiesand infrastructures matter for economicgrowth (Gordon and McCann, 2000). Thiscould suggest that both service delivery andeconomic growth might be facilitated by thesame investments. Similarly, to encourageinvestment across the city rather than inalready well-resourced successful businessareas it would be important to review recentarguments which suggest that it is the diver-sity of the economies of large cities whichfacilitates growth (Duranton and Puga,2000). This is potentially especially importantfor poorer cities with declining manufacturingsectors and large areas of informal activity—as in Johannesburg—both of which could beunderstood to contribute to the broader con-ditions for dynamic growth.

Although the Joburg 2030 documentresolved these issues strongly in favour of anemphasis on formal economic growth, in prac-tice the more strident ambitions of Joburg2030 have been muted, while the associations

it drew between broader economies ofurbanisation and redistributive city develop-ment continue to be explored in research,implementation and the mundane rounds ofbudgeting. And more recent initiatives aimto integrate economic growth and servicedelivery more evenly. We suggest that thecreative efforts of city managers, city-dwell-ers, consultants and researchers in poorercities like Johannesburg not only point to theneed for much more analysis of how addres-sing poverty and promoting economicgrowth might be seen as synergistic com-ponents of city strategies. They are also point-ing the way forward in terms of where wemight look for innovations and new ideas onthese issues.

4. Conclusion

The Johannesburg CDS experience suggeststhe need for considerably more academicwork on the challenges of addressing thegrowth/poverty-reduction dilemma in cities.How a diversity of economic activities andthe competing needs of rich and poor can beaccommodated at the city scale in thecontext of limited resources is an importantchallenge for urban scholars. We haveexplored how a recent international policyinitiative promoting CDSs has come to beseen as a way forward for poorer cities. Thisurban development approach empowersurban managers and urban elites, but the con-sultants and international agencies involved informulating strategies often promote a rela-tively restricted range of forms of economicand financial success or developmentalistinterventions. As a result, on the economicfront, competitive activities and globalisingactivities can dominate long-term planning,as they did in one phase of Johannesburg’scity development strategising. And eventhough they are recognised as important,alternative but relatively poorly articulatedviews of the community and a diversity ofeconomic actors are in danger of beingoverlooked.

Importantly, as we saw, the JohannesburgCDS is not a blind mimicking of a neo-liberal




agenda, despite the international and nationalpolicy contexts which promote suchapproaches. Alongside the emphasis ongrowth, there remains a commitment topoverty reduction and social transformation.Various political arenas influenced thesepolicy outcomes and an important observationhere has been that participation, while influen-tial, was by no means the only mechanismensuring that wider redistributive agendasremained prominent. Electoral mandates, theco-existence of different policy concernswithin local government and the represen-tation of local area interests in the councilstructures all ensured that pro-growth ambi-tions had to be intertwined with the demandsof service delivery and addressing the needsof the poor.

Nonetheless, at the broader policy scale,there are as yet no clear articulations of whata developmental agenda or vision whichaddresses the diversity and inequality ofcities like Johannesburg might look like. TheCDS initiative, as articulated thus far, is thinon specific detail of how to shift the relationsof power and distribution of resources inhighly unequal cities while engaging withattempts to promote economic growth. Buteven the initial deliberations of the Johannes-burg authorities explored here point to theimportance of achieving a conceptual inte-gration of poverty reduction, service deliveryand promoting a range of economic activities.Experiences there suggest that supportinggeneralised agglomeration economies, seeingthe city as a whole as a broad platform forgrowth and being attentive to the diversity ofeconomic activities which together facilitategrowth might indicate some appropriate strat-egies which could potentially address botheconomic growth and development agendas.

The city of Johannesburg and the innova-tive policy initiatives there highlight the chal-lenges that face urban managers in poorercontexts, but also suggest wider agendas forurban research which are relevant every-where. Johannesburg has certainly not got itright yet, but the CDS process there suggeststhat paying attention to practitioners’responses to the demands of their cities can

at the very least indicate some importantagendas for future urban research. More gen-erally for urban studies, facing up to the chal-lenges of poorer cities like Johannesburg canilluminate debates on issues like democracyand local economic development, or balan-cing growth and redistribution, which are per-tinent to scholars of cities in other contexts.

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