This is headline which describes the reality of many South Africans. A reality where as Cowan (2006: 11) reports, there are countless youths who roam the Cape Flats and other disadvantaged areas in South Africa, uneducated and unemployed and with few choices available to them outside of crime".
Cowan (2006: 11) then states that "society should fulfill (their) needs by providing education and skills for youth to earn money and gain self esteem; by providing social activities and entertainment within the community; opportunities for advancement within the community; adequate warmth, food, shelter; and parenting within a loving family. Lastly it should provide employment". Cowan (2006: 11) then asks, "how close does South African society come to providing (for) these basic needs of its youth?"
Although, as Cowan (2006: 11) acknowledges, the social fabric of "South Africa is still reeling under the destructive forces of apartheid, ... it is the governments obligation to create viable communities when they build new houses". Cowan (2006:11) observes that "matchbox houses stretched over miles and miles in growing numbers over the Cape Flats and all South Africa (where) little consideration is given to the lifestyle of the people who will live in them."
Consequently Cowan (2006: 11) asks, "are there enough community centres being built? Are sports fields being incorporated, or churches or village squares, with small shopping areas? Are trees being planted? Are communities being built that give the residents a sense of pride within themselves and their environment or is government creating tomorrow's slums and new breeding grounds for gangs?"
Similarly, Dewar and Kiepiel (2004: 45) discuss the rural and peri-urban areas where "rapid, and frequently accelerating, change (occurs) as they are increasingly drawn into the urban force field of the larger settlements." Consequently, Dewar and Kiepiel (2004: 45) argue that it has become necessary "to guide the processes of settlement formation so that relatively stable and efficient settlements result".
Dewar and Kiepiel (2004: 46) point out that this change can be private sector led or a process which is informal. Dewar and Kiepiel (2004: 46) then, after describing the problems which these processes create, argue for a coherent strategic plan to confront this situation. As Dewar and Kiepiel (2004: 47) argue, "the transitional region of today is the city of tomorrow (and) that a flexible plan for a rural region can also be the starting point for a coherent city plan".
Dewar and Kiepiel (2004: 46) point out that "in terms of larger scale planning, the most fundamental relationships are those between three basic landscapes of society (primeval or wilderness, productive rural and urban landscapes) as well as between the elements making up those landscapes. Access to all of these should be regarded as a basic right of all human beings. The challenge, therefore, is to create enduring relationships between all of these in such a way that each complements the others.
The key to this challenge, in turn, is to establish a powerful geometry of zonality, driven by the concept of access".
The Green System
Dewar and Kiepiel (2004: 48) argue for a hierarchical "system of green (primeval), outdoor 'rooms'.
A second central concept is that of wild corridors. In order to promote biodiversity, habitat selection and species migration, the system of primeval rooms should be linked, thus creating a web or network of rooms and corridors.
Finally, these primeval areas should be buffered. The appropriate form of buffering is agricultural land along a continuum ranging from more extensive to more intensive agriculture, with more extensive activity buffering the primeval land ... - a series of nested precincts".
The Built System
Importantly, Dewar and Kiepiel (2004: 48) argue that "from a built perspective, the central issue is equitable access to public facilities and services".
Dewar and Kiepiel (2004: 49 & 50) discuss the principle of clustering of facilities and argue that "the settlement concentrations provide a market for small traders and manufacturers as well as for small farmers; agricultural activity tends to intensify closer to the market, consistent with the operation of the land market.
Increasingly, therefore, local needs are met locally and increasing densities along the line make public transportation more efficient, frequent and viable. People's choices are improved".
Consequently, Dewar and Kiepiel (2004: 51) argue that "over time, with increasing intensification, parts of this regional system of settlement become more and more complex and urban; the structural system then breaks away from the regional route to establish its own more complex logic while building on and reinforcing the original pattern. Significantly, around this time it may be necessary to downgrade the original route to become an urban street - its urban structural function becomes more important than its movement function".
Dewar and Kiepiel (2004: 52) draw our attention to Braudel (1981; 1884) and note the observation that "the economy of capitalist countries involves three circuits of capital that interact in complex ways: the non-market or subsistence economy; the market economy (S.M.E.S.) ... ; and the capitalist sector, that includes large corporations, multi and transnational enterprises".
Based on the above, an argument can be made for settlements to be structured, in their location and infrastructure, so as to support a vibrant 'street economy'. This economy should be supported by the provision of basic infrastructure, such as hygienic and appropriate market areas. Further to this an institutional structure which supports the market economy (S.M.E.S.) and ways of encouraging large corporations to interact with the market economy, as BMW does by contracting out some of its technological research, should be supported.
I argue that the above supports an argument for open and accessible institutions which can act as a resource to supporting skills development and the market economy.
An institution of this nature was discussed by David Powell on the Tim Modiese radio talk show on 1 June 2006. This discussion centered around skills development and technology transfer occurring at institutions called technology stations.
Key points of this discussion were as follows:
• Technolgy transfer;
• Technology Station - modeled after German Technical centres. Contract research. BMW research takes place at technicons as model adopted for S.A.;
• Exchange of expertise;
• Agri-food processing - Product Standards:
• Patents and intellectual property - agreement with Technology Station and Inventors to profit sharing. Consequently, legislation to enable inventor to explore ideas without losing protection;
• Diffusion Conference;
• 13 Technology transfer centres across the country;
• Aim to be within arms reach of S.M.E.S. Also with academic institutions;
• S.A.B.S. Help registration for inventors of say washing detergent. (possibly bio-degradable in keeping with general sustainability bias of this settlement);
• For inventiveness and creativity we are paying big money overseas (need to develop here);
• Must patent and commercialize intellectual property;
• Must provide protection for intellectual property;
• Critical that we inovate.
Institutions
In discussing institutions Illich (1970: 75, 76) states his belief that "a desirable future depends on our deliberately choosing a life of action over a life of consumption, on our engendering a life style which will enable us to be spontaneous, independent, yet related to each other, rather than maintaining a life style which only allows us to make and unmake, produce and consume - a style of life which is merely a way station on the road to the depletion and pollution of the environment." Consequently Illich (1970: 76) goes on to argue that, "the future depends more on our choice of institutions which support a life of action than our developing new ideologies and technologies. We need a set of criteria which will permit us to recognize those institutions which support personal growth rather than addiction."
For example, Mumford's (1961: 642) invisible city conceptualized as a vast network could be seen as providing the basis for learning webs as descibed by Illich (1970: 103). This in turn could lead to a model which would make formal schooling unnecessary and consequently lead to a more equitable situation.
Thus Illich (1970: 80) argues for institutions which "tend to be networks which facilitate client-initiated communication or cooperation". Consequently, Illich (1970: 90) states that "man must choose whether to be rich in things or in the freedom to use them".
Importantly, Illich (1970: 81) argues that certain "institutions, as we can clearly see in the case of schools, both invite compulsively repetitive use and frustrate alternate ways of achieving similar results". Illich (1970: 87) argues that "schools themselves pervert the natural inclination to grow and learn into the demand for instruction".
Illich (1970: 92) argues for "an institutional framework which constantly educates to action, participation and self-help". Consequently Illich (1970: viii) argues for educational webs which heighten the opportunity for each one to transform each moment of his living into one of learning, sharing, and caring".
I would argue that similarities can be seen in the ideas of Perry's interest in the neighborhood principle where Mumford (1961: 569-570) explains, "the community centre was a place for discussion and debate and cooperative action, on all public issues: its purpose was to restore initiative, self-consciousness, and self-direction to the local group: a challenge to partisan loyalties, one-sided decisions, and remote control. Once established, the community centre might launch out in many directions, ... fostering participation in amateur theatricals, the practice of the arts and crafts, forming a centre for the spiritual and cultural life of the neighborhood".
Mumford (1961: 569-570) notes that, "the principle of neighbourhood organization was to bring within walking distance all the facilities needed daily by the home and school, and to keep outside this pedestrian area the heavy traffic arteries carrying people or goods that had no business in the neighbourhood. Once walking distance was established, as the very criterion of a face-to-face community, it followed that no playground for school children should be more than a quarter of a mile from the houses it served; and the same principle applied with variations to the distance of the primary school and the local market area. Both the population and the peripheral spread of such a community was (571) limited and might be physically defined by either a road system or a green belt, or both".
Mumford (1961: 571) points out that, "Clarence Perry had in effect restored, with modern ideas and modern facilities, above all with self-conscious art, one of the oldest components of the city, the quarter, which we found in early Mesoptamia. But he had transposed the temple or church, as the attractive nucleus, into the school and community centre, and he had incorporated the playground as an essential part of the whole design, thus bringing back into the city some of the rural elements it had too complaisantly forfeited. By restoring the pedestrian scale and lessning the amount of unneccessary transportation, the neighbourhood plan proposed to free the traffic arteries for more efficient penetration into larger areas, without endless cross-hauls and time-wasting that a random scattering of urban facilities entails".
Tying back to Illich's (1970: viii) argument for educational webs is Mumford's (1961: 642-643) observation that, "the old functions of the urban container been supplemented by new functions, exercised through what (he calls) the functional grid: the framework of the invisible city ...
Technologically, two of the most perfect examples of this new network are in our power and communication systems: particularly clear in the electric power grid".
Also, Crane (1964: 89) argues that, "because people and enterprises combine and recombine in relation to available and needed communications, a communication change can bring about entirely new inventions of space and cause substantial city-wide redistribution of activity. We can no longer rely on planning the whole
macrocosm of the city on the basis of discrete microcosms - for example, office building, theatre, or shopping centre. By the same token, the public authority might come closer to affecting the whole by encouraging the evolution of selected parts".
Furthermore, Mumford (1961: 648) argues that, "the wider the area of communication and the greater the number of participants, the more need there is for providing numerous accessible permanent centres for face-to-face intercourse and frequent meetings at every human level.
The recovery of the essential activities and values that first were incorporated in the ancient cities, above all those of Greece, is accordingly a primary condition for further
development of the city in our time".
Consequently, Crane (1964: 90) argues that, "the new dimensions of urban growth and deterioration surpass the limited building powers of government. Government must multiply its city building influence with strategic distributions of public acts calculated to induce a suitable match between facilities and human contents,
between blight and private energy".
In addition, Mumford (1961: 652-653) argues that, "we must now conceive the city, accordingly, not primarily as a place of business or government, but as an essential organ for (653) expressing the new human personality - that of 'One World man'".
As Crane (1964: 87) argues, "with this broadening of the Athenian ideal, we may then be on the road toward a building culture appropriate to the heterogeneous demands of our time".
Based on the above arguments the location of the settlement has been chosen. While this would serve as a model for the beginings of a sustainable broader regional development strategy, it would also aim to act as a model for interactive and open learning through its primary institutional network, the access research college and technology station. This institution would not only be linked to centres of academic research, but importantly also to the broader 'invisible city' as described by Mumford. |
