The Planning Challenges of Extended Metropolitan Areas: Issues From South Africa

Abstract

Territorial administrative restructuring and the redrawing of municipal boundaries was undertaken in South Africa to address the apartheid legacy of major social, economic and spatial inequalities. A significant consequence of territorial administrative restructuring was that the boundaries of certain South African metropolitan areas were expanded such that they incorporate vast rural geographies. These spaces pose particular challenges for metropolitan planning. The aim in this paper is to examine the resultant planning challenges which confront South Africa’s extended metropolitan spaces. Among several consequences was the imperative for metropolitan authorities to build new competences in order to plan and manage these added rural spaces as well as the peri-urban spaces. The analysis is contextualised within an international literature on planning in extended metropolitan spaces and of peri-urban spaces.