Metropolitan planning: The primate regional plan

Abstract

In view of the importance of this area as the main economic complex on the subcontinent, the plan for the Pretoria-Witwatersrand Vereeniging region (P.W. V.) is critically evaluated with regard to: the underlying assumptions, the technical forecasts and the development strategy. It is argued that:
• the physical shape areas should be clearly identified, which are inherently unfit for urban development and where urban development should be prohibited in order to prevent the inevitable growth process of a continuous agglomeration;
• the serious inaccuracies in the forecasts will, in all likelihood, have far-reaching social and economic consequences, because
• increasing urbanization is inevitable as well as desirable, and because
• a system of "incentives" preferably above and more effective than inflexible controls is to encourage economic deconcentration or decentralization; and
• this decentralization should in any case be attracted to the underdeveloped rural and impoverished urban areas.
The plan is reviewed in terms of: (1) the spatial strategy, (2) the technical predictions, (3) the obvious social and (4) economic assumptions and (5) the synthesis.