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