DIRECTIONS IN PLANNING REFORM: INTERNATIONAL … _Centre...SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL...

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DIRECTIONS IN PLANNING REFORM: INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVES

Philip Harrison, Margot Rubin and Alli Appelbaum

Planning Reform Seminar13 June 2018

SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL ANALYSIS AND CITY PLANNING

SOUTH AFRICA’S INCREMENTALLY EVOLVING PLANNING SYSTEM

• The arrival of the IDP in the 1990s, formalised in the local government white paper and legislation

• The emergence of SDFs and incorporation in LDOs

• Metropolitan cities pioneering long-range strategic plans

• The constitutional challenge to the DFA and the passing of SLUMA in 2013

• The introduction of M&E in 2009

• The creation of the NPC in 2010, NDP in 2012, and proposed Integrated Planning Act, 2017

• Parallel planning systems emerging in provincial government

• The BEPPS introduced by National Treasury in 2014

• Parallel (but related) systems evolving in terms of inter-governmental grants (e.g. USDG), human settlement planning, space economy (e.g. IDZs, SEZs), urban policy (IUDF), environment etc.

• The system is emerging adaptively, which is a strength, but also somewhat chaotically (more coherence and linkage is possibly). Also with more critical understanding of limitations and pitfalls


INTRODUCTION TO PRESENTATION

• The persistent requirement for (adaptive) planning reform

• The purpose of planning in the current context (the SDGs, New Urban Agenda,

and the imperatives and stated goals of post-apartheid South Africa)

• Post-NUA: The shift from the debate on the ends of planning to urgent

construction of the means of implementation

• Global trends and counter-trends – the Global North and experiences beyond

(e.g. the rise of city planning in China)

• The importance of dealing with the technicalities but a cautionary against

technocratising planning


TRENDS

1. The rise of planning as an instrument of integrated governancean instrument of integrated governancean instrument of integrated governancean instrument of integrated governance

2. A shift to performanceperformanceperformanceperformance----basedbasedbasedbased (or outcomes-based) approaches

3. The trend from functional approaches to spatial targetingspatial targetingspatial targetingspatial targeting

4. Beyond the top-down, bottom-up dichotomy to multimultimultimulti----level governance level governance level governance level governance

(including the use of inter-governmental transfers)

5. The rise of evidenceevidenceevidenceevidence----based planning based planning based planning based planning approaches (with tensions with

participatory and deliberative forms)

6.6.6.6. CapabilityCapabilityCapabilityCapability----based approaches based approaches based approaches based approaches (from the outside?)


1. Planning as an instrument of integrated governance

• Since the 1990s, planning has been recast as an instrument for integration

(between actors; across scales, time and sectors; and linking policy and

implementation)

• The context is of a broader political and ideological shift towards

‘integrated governance’ (from the atomism of the 80s to the joined-up

thinking of the 90s)

• The rise of sustainability as an overarching

objective; the South African imperative of

responding to a legacy of fragmentation;

and post-Socialist transitions


1. Cautionary on integrated governance

• Joining-up is intuitively sensible (where possible we must close governance

gaps) but…

• Democratic governance “necessarily involves a degree of incoherence”

• Integration may be used to justify

centralising tendencies which may

make government less able to address

wicked problems

• The transactional costs and paralysing

effect of ‘everything connected with

everything’


1. A feasible offering?

• From “comprehensive integration” to “privileged integration”

(Rode, 2015 & 2018)

• For example, in spatial integration, the linking of land use

and transport, and spatial priorities and infrastructure

• Requirements for even limited success include attention to

system boundaries, networks of trust, strategic visions, use

of ICT and the collaborative cultures of leaders


2. Performance-based approaches• Focus on outcomes rather than rules of behaviour (for flexibility, creative

application, results)

• Partly derived from the shift to performance approaches in land-use

management to discretionary outcomes-based approaches (UK, some cities in

USA, New Zealand, Queensland)

• The broader shift towards performance-based approaches

happened with the modernizing agendas of Third Way

leadership in the 1990s (e.g. Clinton’s the Government

Performance and Results Act, 1993; Blair’s Performance

Agreements and Delivery Unit)


2. The diffusion of M&E

• Latin America’s adoption of M&E in the 1990s

• East Asia in the early 2000s – Singapore’s 6 strategic outcomes, Japan’s

international mission, Malaysia’s ‘Big Results Fast’ etc.

• China grafts M&E onto a Five Year Planning System with ‘performance’

becoming the basis of state legitimacy, while India makes erratic progress

• SA adopts M&E in 2009 with a number of other

African countries

• Rapid global diffusion but key differences

(centralised versus decentralised; technocratic

versus participatory)


2. Pitfalls and cautionary

• The unintended consequence of performance-based land management –

increased cost, time and complexity, and manipulation by developers

• Overly technocratic national N&E systems are reducing ability to respond

intelligently to the requirement for outcomes in complex, changing

world.

• The risks of political manipulation and the contradictions of patronage

politics

• Technical challenges such as the availability and quality of data, and skills

capability – “garbage in, garbage out”


2. SDG/ Agenda 2030 requirements

• The current reality of performance-based governance/planning and the need to

make it work as an instrument of accountability

• The SDGs as a global performance framework and the requirements for localisation

• Paragraph 74 states of the UN’s 2030

Agenda directs national government to

institute review processes at all levels

that “will be rigorous and based on

evidence, informed by country-led

evaluations and data which is high-

quality, accessible, timely, reliable, and

disaggregated…”


3. Spatial Targeting

• The gradual shift from functional governance to spatial targeting

• The rationale for crowding in, facilitating linkages, area-based coordination…

• The economic application of spatial targeting (forms including SEZs, technopoles,

industrial parks and economic corridors)

• Successful cases drawn from China, Malaysia, India, UAE and Central America but

also many poor performers

• Success factors such as market size, location, good quality physical infrastructure,

effective regulatory regimes, national soft infrastructure, social infrastructure


3. Can spatial targeting work for poverty alleviation and inequality?

• The ambiguous experience of attempts to achieve

balanced development through targeting lagging

regions and rising spatial inequality with economic

targeting

• Some success with nationally supported local targeting

such as the USA’s Empowerment Zones (but the

displacement effect)

• TOD as a possible form of inclusionary local targeting

(but the dangers of property-led exclusion)

• Mexico’s current ambitious attempts to establish SEZs in the poorest regions of the country – pioneering a new

approach or a certain failure?

• China’s new spatially targeted poverty reduction and the opportunities of new spatial mapping technologies


4. Multi-level planning

• Moving beyond the binary of top-down and bottom-up approaches by recognising the need for

coherence from above and engagements and energies from below

• The recognition also that complex problems cannot be solved at a single level

• The concept of “multi-level” governance emerging in the early 1990s from the complex

experience of governance in the European Union

• Multi-level governance as “a system of continuous

negotiation among nested governments at several

territorial tiers” (Marks, 1993).

• The concept reinforced by the experience of

governance for climate change, and the challenges

of complex governance frameworks


4. The use of inter-governmental transfers in a multi-level system

• The shift from micro-managed specific purpose transfers to output-based

transfer that balance ‘policy cohesion’ with ‘local autonomy’

• The examples of the EU’s Structural Funds, Indonesia’s Output-Based

Performance Grants, Rwanda’s District Incentive Funds, Bangladesh’

performance-based allocations, Brazil and Canada’s health transfers

• The link to municipal planning systems through, for example, South

Africa’s Built Environment Performance Plans (BEPPs)


4. Cautionary

• As with integrated planning, multi-level planning may

become hugely complicated and resource consuming, even

producing grid-lock

• Multi-level planning can obfuscate accountability and even

provide the space for corruption

• Capacities and systems need to be developed progressively

over time with the privileging of certain points of interaction


5. Evidence-Based Planning

• The assumption that public policy would be based on

“rigorously established objective evidence”

• Emerged in the 90s from the long experience of the

health sector and as the ‘antidote’ to sectional

interests, politicking and arbitrariness in

policy/planning

• Based on a set of assumptions about the

relationship between information and policy

outcomes


5. Some of the pitfalls and a possible hybrid

• The tensions between the technocratic focus of evidence-based planning and

communicative and deliberative approaches

• The assumption that ‘facts’ and ‘values’ can be separated

• The dangers of de-politicising (and de-democratising) planning

• The question of how ‘politically-directed processes may be informed as

objectively as possible by rigorously tested evidence?’

• Possible case experience from the Netherlands, France and Gauteng (GCRO) on

how to provide an evidence base for planning that remains politically

accountable


6. Capability-based planning as an emergent direction

• Capability as the ‘wire between strategy and operations’

• An approach which assesses capabilities to attain declared goals and then

proposes means to increase capability and/or adjustment to goals

• The origins in planning for the military but a transition into civilian context

(emergency planning, now territorial planning)

• Possible pitfalls including an emphasis on

capability at the expense of what is actually

required (current backlash in the military)

and so a concern with capability should be

grafted onto other approaches


CONCLUSION I

• The ends of planning must remain firmly in mind to avoid a narrow technocratic

orientation but the system to achieve the ends must be effective

• Intuitively, many of the directions in planning internationally are sensible but there

are pitfalls

• We need to address ‘governance gaps’ through integration but do so strategically

without overly-centralising and becoming paralysed with complexity

• In our approach to performance-based planning we need to maintain an intelligent

response to the requirement for achieving outcomes rather than being caught up

in the prescriptions and details of targets, indicators and measurements


CONCLUSION II

• We need to target spatially where appropriate but be aware of what it actually takes to

achieve success, and be mindful of distributional consequences (what it does to inequality)

• Wicked problems do need to be addressed across scales, requiring an evolving system of

multi-level planning (including strategic use of inter-governmental financial transfers) but

this needs to be done strategically to avoid overly complex arrangements

• Policy making should be based on good quality information but not at the expense of its

political dimension – fortunately, there are models which show how this may be done

• (Despite origins !) capability-based approaches may offer a useful basis for adaptive means-

end iteration, but should be grafted onto other approaches

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CONTACT

Prof. Philip HarrisonProf. Philip HarrisonProf. Philip HarrisonProf. Philip Harrison

[email protected]

www.wits.ac.za/sacp

DIRECTIONS IN PLANNING REFORM: INTERNATIONAL … _Centre...SOUTH AFRICAN RESEARCH CHAIR IN SPATIAL...

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