Sustainable urban development will require “a radically different approach” to planning law reform so as to make realistic progress, a new report on planning in Africa argues.
Africa Research Institute says promotion of “one-size-fits-all” and “model” planning laws borrowed from elsewhere has not served the African continent well. Instead, planning laws have acted as barriers and created opportunities only for the elite.
“Invariably it (the current approach) has created further legal uncertainty and a series of unanticipated, often pernicious consequences,” Stephen Berrisford says in the report.
The report says outdated, inappropriate and disintegrated laws are exacerbating urban dysfunction in most countries as competition for land intensifies in Africa’s rapidly growing towns and cities.
Planning laws regulate land use and development at national and local levels, determining what building types are legal and which are not, depending on location.
Africa Research Institute says that the reality is grim as far as planning law is concerned continent-wide, as it has “a poor record”. The report is titled ‘How to make planning law work for Africa’.
“Legislation designed to protect the public from the negative aspects of urban land
development has all too often been used by the state to enhance the value of land owned by the wealthy – and to penalise and intimidate the disadvantaged,” it states.
The report says indicators of failed planning law in urban areas include predominance of illegal structures, use of planning and building laws against vulnerable groups, and wealthy and powerful elites operate largely untroubled by planning laws.
“This culture of impunity has created the perception that there are two laws: one for the well-to-do and another for the rest,” it reads.
Africa Research Institute says that most cities in the continent lack land that can be developed within the formal legal framework, with the scarcity keeping prices high, accessible only to a small pool of elite landowners and wealthy individuals.
This then makes planning laws part of a regulatory barrier that limits opportunities in formal land markets and exacerbates inequality.
Calls to deregulate planning have also contributed to increasing the burden as governments and their external advisers turn to using new laws to respond to each of the multiple and complex challenges that cities face.