Change and continuity in spatial planning by Vanessa Watson

Abstract

This is part of a series of world case studies edited by Professor Mandelbaum of Penn University, which includes Warsaw, Israel and New York's Battery Park. It is the detailed story of metropolitan planning in Cape Town under political transition and how the vision of redistribution and compact city were influenced by political and economic factors. Vanessa Watson is well known for her excellent research at UCT, to which she returned from London in 1980, to be closer to the action. This mirrors my own experience when I returned from Canada and the US in 1975. The author guides us through the politics of resistance to the euphoria of transition and the letdown of the "new" planning (or is it development?), which she describes as a "learning experience" for all of us.