Neo Urbanism Vs Neo Liberalism

2.4 Neo-liberalism
The ‘economic planning concept’ highlighted in the previous topic was influenced by Keynes ideologies that promoted the investment in infrastructure to stimulate the economy. This approach was mostly adopted and applied in Europe after the Second World War with the intention of stimulating the economy after war destruction. In the late 1970`s most western countries experienced stagflation and the new neo-liberal capitalist started to emerge. Neo-liberalism emphasized the importance of the free economy and the policies to stimulate market. The role of the state was to provide infrastructure and its intervention in the economy was to be kept minimum (Campbell and Marshall, 1999). This concept focused more on economic sectors

The migration exerted much pressure on towns and cities and adhoc developments with conflicting land uses started to emerge with no effort over required standard of buildings and public health. Living conditions, health and housing deteriorated and became unbearable. The political and socio-economic changes that were created by the Industrial Revolution brought about the ‘beginning of town planning’ with controlling procedures to improve living conditions such zoning and restrictive conditions. Between 1845 and 1875 the Public Health Acts were introduced to regulate health related issues and to implement building restrictions/bylaws. In 1909 the Town Planning received the legal recognition and it gave power to local authorities to control development. In 1909 it was amended, and in 1925 the Town Planning Act became fully fledged with statutory significance (Van Wyk, 2012:22). Van Wyk, 2012:23 believed that the 1925 Town Planning Act (London) was the “basis of the South African town planning guidelines” (Van Wyk, 2012:23). The evolution of South African planning will be discussed in details

Thus, the history of South African planning and management of land use was and still characterized by inequalities due to this system and which makes it differ from the British planning. According to Van Wyk, 2012), the South African planning was based on race, resulting in flaws in the entire planning system. Land use planning in South Africa was always fragmented because land itself was fragmented for racial purposes (Van Wyk, 2012). Several legislations were introduced to enforce land use system based on separation and on racial grounds which resulted in two separate planning systems (for white areas and for black townships). After 1994 the new Constitution came into effect with a different approach to apartheid planning. The Development Facilitation Act 67 of (1995) came with new principles for land development which has become a significant consideration in all current planning decisions. In 2001 a White Paper on spatial planning, land use management and land development was published and later followed by the Draft Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Bill (SPLUMB) in 2011 which became the Act in 2014. The SPLUMA provides for spatial planning, for land use management and for land development (Van Wyk: