STEPHEN TOWNSEND: Examining the cost and value of built-form regulation

There have been a number of feature articles in SA national newspapers in recent times describing the “collapse” of local government in several of our cities and the consequences for the viability of their central business districts (CBD).

Cape Town Central City Improvement District (CTCCID) board member Tim Harris argued in Business Day that the partnership between the government and business “via the Cape Town Partnership and then the CTCCID” from the early 2000s produced a “crowded effort and funding [that] averted the urban decline that took hold in other cities in SA and on the continent” (“Cape Town CBD — a compelling blueprint for cities in decline”, February 13).

He said that the prospect of losing political power led to the improvement of accountability and performance, and how repositioning Cape Town relative to Johannesburg led to Cape Town and the region being seen as a centre for the green economy and the business services sector, instead of — or at least as well as — a tourist destination. The consequence, he said, is that “the inner city economy has delivered a strong recovery ... and today cranes abound”. 

After concluding that “a thriving CBD requires a mix of large corporates, smaller companies running offices or production, retailers and restaurants catering for locals and foreigners, and tourist attractions”, he said that our cities “will need strategies to entice large corporates back, urgent interventions to rehabilitate historical buildings and public spaces, and major efforts to rebuild tourist and high value footfall ... interventions such as security, cleaning and social work”, as well as, for example, improved air access. 

However, the passing references to cleaning, security and the need to “rehabilitate historical buildings and public spaces” apart, he does not discuss the actual built form or the spatial systems of our cities, or the protection, comfort and pleasure they afford (or are expected to afford). This is surprising for a number of reasons.

First, the regulatory framework devised to regulate built form is comprehensive and it is exhaustive in its application. Indeed, the framework of the building regulations (ensuring health and safety), the land-use planning bylaw (establishing both the policy framework and the provisions that every development proposal must satisfy) and heritage management (affecting, if erratically, large numbers of buildings) is administered by hundreds of officials in several departments of the city council and in the provincial heritage authority, Heritage Western Cape.

A large percentage of these officials have university degrees and many of them are properly described as expert in their field; and most of these officials earn more than R500,000 a year, some considerably more. In other words, there is an enormous and costly (to the taxpayer) apparatus for the scrutiny, assessment and approval of building proposals.

Second, many (even most) applications must be circulated publicly for comment, generating considerable attention and effort from interested parties and expert groups in the interest of the public realm (these costs are borne  by individuals without recognition or thanks), detailed responses and amendments to the proposals, detailed and lengthy official reports and, ultimately, exhausting decision-making and appeals processes involving committees of (ideally) experts. 

Third, the cost of the design and motivation (to the property owner/developer) of any proposal is also substantial, requiring millions of rand and usually taking more than two or even three years, from feasibility and impact studies, design, submission, scrutiny and assessment, to final approval or refusal (entered into usually without confidence in either the process ahead or the ultimate outcome).

These processes are ordinarily so labyrinthine, so littered with minefields and so uncertain in their outcomes, that it is surprising that anyone ever considers investing in development of the central city. It is even more surprising that development proposals are successful in any of the several senses by which they should be measured (Harris seems to regard investment committed as the main or even the only criterion). 

Harris (and the Cape Town city council, I am sure) is correct to regard business investment as a criterion in the evaluation of the effects of public policy. But it is a blunt and undifferentiating tool for the measurement of the range of factors that together encourage investment. It is surprising that none of the authorities or any of the pertinent arenas in academe have thought it necessary to properly evaluate the effectiveness of the regulatory regime in achieving its implied (and, I am afraid, apparently usually forgotten) objectives.

I did make a modest attempt more than 20 years ago (in my PhD) to measure the effectiveness of the heritage management regime to protect and enhance the central city as heritage and the Cape Town city council does routinely measure the efficiency of its officials in processing land use planning applications, but the considerable cost, in time and money, and the considerable uncertainty in processes and the outcomes of the land-use planning and heritage management regulatory regimes, must rationally demand that attention be given to this question. 

• Dr Townsend, formerly land use manager at the City of Cape Town and CEO of Heritage Western Cape, is an architect, statutory planner and heritage practitioner.