- Strategic Spatial Planning’s Role in Guiding Infrastructure Delivery in a Metropolitan Municipality Context: The Case of Johannesburg   411 kb by    Magni, Peter | maggers@iburst.co.za    Short Outline Strategic spatial plans have been used with limited success to guide infrastructure provision. The paper reviews the example of the City of Johannesburg where processes and mechanisms have been implemented to this effect highlighting tensions future visions and the reality of existing infrastructure networks. Abstract Within the practice of town planning, strategic spatial plans are recognised internationally as a tool to guide and locate development outcomes within a given jurisdiction, particularly within local government. A significant existing and future consideration of strategic spatial plans is public infrastructure (e.g. roads, water, electricity, waste removal, transport, open-space and community facilities). Consequently a recent academic debate has considered the role of spatial plans in driving infrastructure provision (Healey et al. 2003)(Morphet J. 2011). This paper seeks to understand how strategic spatial planning has been used to provide critical public infrastructure and the success of the endeavour. The global experience of using spatial planning to guide public infrastructure provision through the academic debate has been generally negative (Mattingley M, Winarso H.2000)(Baker M, Hincks S. 2009)(Dodson J. 2009). A common challenge being acknowledged is the lack of implementation of infrastructure projects defined by a spatial plan. Reasons for the failure of strategic spatial plans to guide infrastructure provision include lack of administrative coordination particularly between planners, budget officials and project implementers, political interference in infrastructure decision making, prioritisation of the cheapest and easiest projects and differing perspectives between professions and infrastructure sectors on how and why infrastructure should be provided. The paper reviews an example where strategic spatial plans have over the past ten years been successfully used at the City of Johannesburg to guide infrastructure development and refurbishment. Central to the success of this endeavour has been the acceptance by a range of service providers of the need to prioritise spending given limited finances and to commit to an extensive process of negotiation to finalise the City’s capital budget. The tool used to catalogue and prioritise projects based on the spatial planning priorities of the City is known as the Capital Investment Management System (CIMS). Through the CIMS system priority for expenditure has been directed primarily at marginalised areas that are/were poor black townships, areas where significant government investment has been made in public transport and those areas of the City where existing infrastructure networks have been identified as requiring urgent upgrading or refurbishment. The paper highlights the fragility of the approach undertaken by the City of Johannesburg which is at risk to changes in political priority but also to infrastructure and finance related policy shift. A key tension is between infrastructure asset management plans which assess capital need based on the condition of existing infrastructure and use this as the basis to prioritise projects, and strategic spatial plans that use a City wide future based template to define this need. The second tension is the difficulty experienced in monitoring expenditure and the material success in directing capital funding due to existing systems of financial management in the City. Strategic spatial plans are meant to be about creating visions of the future, but they cannot be divorced from the existing material and institutional realities in which the plans are located. This fact is particularly true in relation to using strategic spatial plans to guide infrastructure development, and has been the experience of the City of Johannesburg. References: Baker M, Hincks S. 2009. Infrastructure Delivery and Spatial Planning: The case of English Local Development Frameworks. Town Planning Review. 80(2) 2009 173-196 Healy P, Albrechts l, Kunsman K. 2003. Strategic Spatial Planning and Regional Governance in Europe. American Planning Association Journal. Spring 2003. Vol 62. 113-129 Dodson J. The ‘Infrastructure Turn’ in Austalian Metropolitan Spatial Planning. 2009. Research Paper 25. September 2009. Griffith University Mattingly M, Winarso H.2000. Urban Spatial Planning and Public Capital Investments the Experience of Indonesia’s Integrated Urban Infrastructure Investment Programme. Working Paper 113. Institute of Technology Bandung/University College London. Morphet J. 2011. Effective Practice in Spatial Planning. Routledge. London and New York Keywords Case Study presented on the ISOCARP Congress 2013: Frontiers of Planning - Evolving and declining models of city planning practice   Click to open the full paper as pdf document   Click to send an email to the author(s) of this paper