Cities are the future for SA, but bad governance takes them to the past
About one in every three people who live in SA’s metros has a job. This is low in comparison with other developing countries. But compare this to our small towns, where one in six has a job, or SA’s rural areas, where the figure falls to an all-but-unbelievable one in 20, and SA’s cities reveal themselves for what they could become: places where the poor can find opportunity, and which hold out the prospect of relative prosperity for all.
Cities as arenas of economic opportunity derive from their nature as places where people live in proximity to each other. By shrinking the space between people, cities allow people to work together, and for each other much more efficiently than is possible in low-density environments. This encourages much deeper and more extensive specialisation in skills and economic activity, which in turn allows people and firms to get better and better at solving problems and delivering goods and services.
As labour markets, cities allow firms and workers to find each other more efficiently, boosting productivity. The proximity of firms also means that competitive pressures are maximised and that new ideas, new ways of doing things and new technologies can diffuse rapidly.
This is the promise of cities. While SA’s cities perform better than its rural areas, few would argue that they are performing anywhere close to their enormous economic and developmental potential. The reasons are many and also interrelated and mutually reinforcing with roots in our complex history.
The apartheid state resisted urbanisation and, through policies of segregation and exclusion — to say nothing of discriminatory educational practices and race-based exclusion from economic opportunity — ensured that the spatial structure of cities failed to capture most of the economic benefits that urbanisation can deliver. While progress has been made, it is fair to say that this legacy persists. This can be seen in racially and economically divided residential patterns, low densities and huge differentials in infrastructure provision between many townships and suburbs.