Friday, 17 July 2009
When Density Gets Out of Hand
On a lighter note (and related to the three themes of the latest World Development Report) you can also have too much of a good thing . When densities get too high, it puts infrastructure under pressure and creates opportunities for unusual jobs such as the Oshiya (train pushers) in Tokyo.
Location, Location, Location
The focus of the World Banks' latest World Development Report is Reshaping Economic Geography and raises a number of interesting issues for the practice of LED, particularly in terms of where it takes place. Often LED strategies and initiatives do not deal sufficiently with spatial and locational considerations i.e. they focus on the process (if you are lucky), the what and the how but often overlook the where. The WDR 2009 identifies density, distance and division (between people on basis of religion, culture, economic class etc) as key locational determinants of economic growth. Put simply: “low density weakens agglomeration forces....long distances reduce mobility.......and deep divisions impede specialisation”.
The WDR highlights the need to focus economic development efforts in places where these locational determinants are the most advantageous. Instead of calling for economic growth to be more spatially balanced, the WDR 2009 recognises that “economic growth is seldom balanced. Efforts to spread it prematurely will jeopardise progress.”
The implication is that urban areas need to increasingly become the focus of economic development activities as they usually perform better that rural areas in terms of the three locational determinants of density, distance and division. What does this mean for rural areas in South Africa? In some cases it will means that certain areas where economic development activities have been unsuccessfully initiated in the last 15 years will no longer be the beneficiaries of these activities, as focus shifts to other rural areas (particularly those that were former homelands) where the density levels are approaching those required for sustainable growth and where distance can be reduced through improving transport links – not all rural areas will be left behind but some hard thinking needs to be done about how and where rural development funding is targetted.
More urgently however, a shift needs to be made to supporting urban development and management in South Africa’s metropolitan areas and secondary cities. These are the locations where population growth and economic growth will increasingly put pressure on already poorly maintained and limited infrastructure. Based on historical trends more than 50% of the South African’s now live in cities, yet the country has no urban policy. This is something that needs to change if the needs of the economy and the aspirations of a rapidly urbanising population are to be met in an inlcusive and sustainable manner.
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