Astrid Wood - How Cities Learn

For the most part, the urban populace relies on a politically powerful and largely under-regulated fleet of overcrowded, poorly maintained minibus taxis that operate irregular services. The minibus taxi industry has captured the majority of market share against subsidized modes, carrying about 60 percent of trips, nationally. The industry emerged in the 1980s in reaction to the failures of government to supply adequate bus and train services to the townships (Khosa 1991, 1995; McCaul 1990). In the sprawling landscape of contemporary urban South Africa, the minibus taxi is generally preferred to government-sponsored bus and rail services because it is considered more convenient in terms of routing and frequency (Clark and Crous 2002). While there are certainly arguments in support of the minibus taxi industry with proponents describing it as a self-made, Black entrepreneurial venture, in general commuters are dissatisfied with the slow, capricious quality of the informal services (Salazar Ferro et al. 2013). The South African policymakers I interviewed described an almost doomsday scenario filled with uncertainty, labeling it a “commuter crisis” akin to the global financial crisis and calling for fundamental reform to the transportation network. 1

As a result of these features, transportation planning has been understood as central to the transformation of South African cities. Transportation has historically been used to divide the spatial layout of cities. Planned roads have been used to separate planning typologies in both planned and unplanned settlements, and transportation systems have been used to control who can access the city and how they move. In South Africa, planners have been especially focused on building modernist highways to accommodate the White elite who could afford to drive. The fact that transportation is experienced by a range of people across incomes and experiences, means that it also serves as an arena for social mixing and these interactions have unbridled opportunities for change. Policymakers in South Africa have been attuned to these openings, and efforts to remedy the inequality of transportation have been at the forefront of urban planning and policymaking since 1994. Transportation has also been, and continues to be, a site of resistance. The success of the 1957 Alexandra bus boycotts in Johannesburg was a pivotal moment in the anti-apartheid movement; and in the post-apartheid era, transportation continues to be a point of contention in service delivery protests.

This book aims to explain how South African policymakers are trying to improve urban transportation, specifically addressing the process by which best practice is drawn from elsewhere to inform local planning and policy change. In South Africa, BRT is seen as the solution that simultaneously provides transportation users with an affordable, reliable and safe transportation system, taxi operators with formalized and stable employment, and buses and rail operators with viable routes. Its larger purpose is to address the severe historical spatial divide along racial lines and post-apartheid splintered urbanism. The operational systems conjure up images of equality and dignity for all South Africans, moving freely and efficiently through urban space regardless of skin color or income, in a city free from the grip of informality, and instead managed by an efficient and capable municipal government. In this post-apartheid moment, transportation may be South Africa’s best tool through which to bridge the divided city.

City learning is hardly a new practice. Herodotus described information exchanges as early as 500 BCE; in the second century, Palmyra adapted Roman concepts of urbanity; and in the 1700s, Peter the Great employed Dutch architectural models in St. Petersburg (Healey 2013). In the early 20 thcentury, cities shared their experiments with electricity, gas, sewerage and water services (Dogliani 2002; Gaspari 2002; Kozinska-Witt 2002; Saunier 2002; Vion 2002). These exchanges became a “precious resource” to subvert or strengthen local policy decisions (Saunier 2002: 519). These “transboundary connections” (Saunier 2002: 510) were often a method of “intergovernmental diplomacy” (Saunier 2002: 509), with scholars suggesting that these collaborations advanced urban development (Healey and Upton 2010; Saunier 2002; Saunier and Ewen 2008; Sutcliffe, 1981).

In the contemporary era, learning has become a regular and routine aspect of policy creation. Policymakers seek innovative lessons and models from elsewhere, assuming that “viewing a familiar problem in an unfamiliar setting expands ideas of what is possible, and can inspire fresh thinking about what to do at home” (Rose 1993: 30). Rose (1993) suggests that positive lessons provide insight for local policymakers, and negative lessons help them avoid others’ mistakes. And Bennett (1991) confirms that when cities are confronted with local challenges, there is a natural tendency to look elsewhere for innovation. Learning, however, is deeply entangled with the politics of people and place, and it should be understood in terms of the cultural, economic, historical, and political connections and disconnections through which knowledge moves. Cities and their policymakers compete for prestige, and practices of exchange are rarely just about rationalist transfers of knowledge. Mobilized policy is often seen as “politically neutral truths”, but beneath “this superficial impartiality” these lessons can serve as “political weapons” (Robertson 1991). Indeed, acts of knowledge sharing initiate particular policies and certain cities into conversations, while pushing others apart.

The South African city’s propensity to apply foreign planning models is rooted in its history, where urban design and transportation innovations were imported from the colonial metropole. Colonialism created an atmosphere conducive to the temptation of imitation, in which the local environment lacked “genuine ties with the world surrounding them” (Mbembe 2004: 375), and instead linked itself to classical aspects of European cosmopolitanism. This is evident in architectural form: various technical and political interventions including “prefabricated iron-fronted shop buildings, barrel-vaulted arcades with prismatic glass skylights, cast-iron gas lamps, electric lighting, telephone wires…” (Chipkin 1993: 22), as well as horse-drawn trams and railroads. This “overseas cultural traffic” (Mbembe and Nuttall 2004: 362) flowed through colonial relationships with London, Paris and New York. During the emergence of professionalized planning, universities trained colonial planners in modernist techniques, later applied across the colonial world. In South Africa, town planners studied in London after the Second World War and, through these exchanges, developed what became classic apartheid planning mechanisms (Wood 2019a).

Today, the South African urban landscape is reflective of a global convergence of policy knowledge, and several ostensibly South African policies are also evidenced elsewhere: approaches to growth management, informal settlement upgrading, sustainability, and even securitization and gated communities (Bénit-Gbaffou et al. 2012; Morange et al. 2012) migrated from North America, Brazil and Europe, and were adopted in South African cities because of their success elsewhere; city improvement districts (elsewhere, business improvements districts) are located in precincts across Cape Town and Johannesburg, as well as in Amsterdam, London and New York (Didier et al. 2012; Morange et al. 2012; Peyroux et al. 2012) and city development strategies, in particular Johannesburg’s 2040 Growth and Development Strategy, are considered best practice and duplicated globally (Robinson 2011). While the regularity by which South African cities learn of and implement policies from elsewhere is evident, the process of, and rationale for, learning and adoption demands further theoretical unpacking.