CAPITAL: The Voice of Business Issue 1, 2015 | Page 50

URBAN RENEWAL Imagining our future T “Can we plot a more encouraging future for our city?” asks Professor Robert Fincham, Director of the Msunduzi Innovation and Development Institute (MIDI) here is considerable literature on the issue of urban renewal. What is envisaged, especially within the planning and policy dimensions, is not always reflected in the reality of how cities unfold. Humans have an insatiable ability to create landscapes reflective of political and social ideals. These landscapes are also a reflection of the much less recognised desecration and pollution of the natural resource base, which is our lifesupport system and one that underpins our future urban quality of life. Against that context, urban renewal suggests the making good of something that has failed or become less satisfactory than we would desire; something that has become derelict. One may also argue that in the case of young cities such as Pietermaritzburg, part of the challenge is that the pattern of urbanisation is still unfolding and what is emerging has an air of potential chaos about it. It may mean renewing what is materialising before us at the moment: unsustainable urban spread rather than containment; polluting rather than “green” non-polluting industries; poverty cheek by jowl with affluence and the inevitable crime that such inequalities breed. The spatial unfolding of Pietermaritzburg is a reflection of its apartheid history, exacerbated by continued urban sprawl and a less-than-innovative intent to spread the tentacles of the city, reinforcing patterns of the colonial and apartheid past