The state of land use management in South Africa

In contemporary South Africa, land use management may be considered to be a crucial, but weak link in the transformative project attempted by the overall land management system, and planning activity in general. Land use management is increasingly recognised to have been a neglected area of engagement, and this neglect has had significant consequences.

In this paper, the background section briefly locates land use management within broader land and planning activities. The paper then describes the rationality and nature of the current land use management approach in South Africa. The third section discusses a number of key issues raised when considering LUM from a second economy perspective, and elaborates on the consequences of these issues. These issues have a strong metropolitan bias due to the nature of the source information. The last part of the paper draws out the implications of the discussion when considering interventions in urban areas.