Due to apartheid restrictions the rate of urbanisation in South Africa was severely suppressed. With the demise of apartheid, South Africa experienced a surge of people moving from rural areas to urban ones. They were pushed out by rural poverty, unviable land parcels and lack of infrastructure and services, and drawn into towns and cities by the promises of jobs, services and a better life.
Due to apartheid restrictions the rate of urbanisation in South Africa was severely suppressed. With the demise of apartheid, South Africa experienced a surge of people moving from rural areas to urban ones. They were pushed out by rural poverty, unviable land parcels and lack of infrastructure and services, and drawn into towns and cities by the promises of jobs, services and a better life.
This influx escalated the already significant backlogs in services and housing in South African cities and towns. The ANC government rose to the challenge by building millions of homes, mostly under the Reconstruction and Development Programme. Millions more remain to be built and in many places the quality of the workmanship remains to be addressed, but nobody can deny the enormous efforts that have been made, captured in the joy of previously homeless people when they receive the keys to their own RDP house.
Understandably, with such massive housing backlogs, a significant aspect of the RDP programme is cost efficiency. The overarching requirement is to build as many units as possible, at as low a cost as possible. This means that many opportunities have been foregone because of the initially higher capital costs, even if some design features might have reduced household running costs in the long run, such a solar power, guttering and rain water tanks, waterless sanitation and the like.
These will have to be retrofitted, at greater expense, in the coming decades as the necessity of energy and water efficiency inexorably climb up the agenda of national priorities. In providing human shelter the RDP programme can claim many successes.
In providing liveable communities the jury would be less accommodating. What else does a housing development require over and above actual physical houses, to make them attractive areas in which to live, that engender social cohesion, pride in ones' neighbourhood, and promote human wellbeing and dignity, rather than just shelter?
Greening RDP suburbs
A major one, currently with little consideration in South Africa, is the presence of recreational spaces, parks and trees. Established research from Europe, North America and some countries in South-East Asia show the enormous, social, economic and ecological benefits of trees and green spaces in urban landscapes. This is not just a green environmental agenda. The social benefits include greater social cohesion, reduced stress and crime, better psychological restoration, improved health from pollution abatement and increased exercise as inhabitants get out more into their local environment.
There is some evidence that driver aggression and accidents are reduced on urban roads that are lined by trees than those without. The average academic scores of learners in schools with treed landscapes are higher than those in schools where the views are dominated by concrete and lawns, even after controlling for the effects of wealth and race. At the same time, the incidence of anti-social behaviour in such schools is lower.
Importance of parks
The importance of access to trees and natural or semi-natural areas in childhood development is increasingly acknowledged, with insufficient exposure to nature recently being labelled as ‘nature deficit disorder’ by compelling writer Richard Louv.
Economically, the reduced air pollution results in fewer ailments and work days missed. Consumers spend more in shopping areas with green environments than ones without, and are willing to pay more for parking in lots with trees than without. The trees may also provide tangible products such as fruits, firewood or bark for medicine.
The importance of this array of benefits is increasingly recognised in the developed world. For example, the European Environment Agency (EEA) recommends that people should have access to public green space within a 15 minute walking distance of their homes, and English Nature (EN), a UK government agency, recommends that urban inhabitants should have accessible public green spaces less than 300 metres from their home.
Despite the social, economic and environmental benefits of trees in urban areas, one is always struck by their absence from most South African RDP suburbs; within the homestead plots as well as down the streets and vacant land. The cost imperatives of the RDP housing model mean that the houses are squeezed together – leaving limited room for trees on the plots. Yet planners and municipalities could compensate through the provision of treed streets and accessible, maintained green spaces for relaxation and recreation.
But that is not happening.
Recent research in several towns of the Eastern Cape shows that the provision of street trees and public green space in the RDP suburbs is almost non-existent, and in the few places where some effort has been made, it is well below international norms, and in stark contrast to the leafy suburbs of the formerly 'white' suburbs.
For example, the average amount of public green space in the former white suburbs is approximately 200 square meters per household, compared with 77 in the townships and only 14 per household in the RDP areas.
These differences are also mirrored in the provision of street trees. The RDP suburbs typically have no street trees, or just a handful, per kilometre of street; townships have about 10 trees per kilometre and the former white suburbs have an average of sixty.
What do these differences mean for the future of the RDP suburbs? Are we creating liveable and sustainable settlements or temporary ghettos from which the next generation of South Africans will be desperate to leave? Building costs are justifiably a major consideration in planning of low cost housing, but they should not be everything. Quality of life should be factored in too.
Professor Charlie Shackleton lectures Environmental Science at Rhodes University
