1 SACPLAN Bulletin e-Newsletter for the South African Council for Planners Volume 3 Issue 5 December 2013 The South African Council for Planners extends its deepest sympathy to the family and friends of former president Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela. As we bid farewell to Mr Mandela we urge all to think about his life and how he changed the world. Let us then also live his legacy through our motto “Reinvent Planning, Changing Lives”.
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SACPLAN Bulletin e-Newsletter for the South African Council for Planners
Volume 3 Issue 5 December 2013
The South African Council for Planners extends its deepest sympathy to the family and friends of
former president Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela.
As we bid farewell to Mr Mandela we urge all to think about his life and how he changed the world. Let
us then also live his legacy through our motto
“Reinvent Planning, Changing Lives”.
2
We have come to the end of another year that were
full of new and exciting prospects within planning.
The Minister of Rural Development and Land
Reform, Mr GE Nkwinti, appointed a new SACPLAN
Council and the Appeal Board on 23 January 2013.
Draft Regulations were published in terms of the
Planning Profession Act, 2002 during November
2013. Draft Rules and a draft Code of Conduct were
also published for comments.
The SACPLAN Bulletin also reported on the Spatial
Planning and Land Use Management Act, 2013
(SLUMA). We will be following the implementation of
the act and will keep registered persons informed of
this.
We also celebrated World Town Planning Day in
November. November 8 is a special day to recognise
and promote the role of planning in creating liveable
communities.
The SACPLAN also participated in celebrating World
Town Planning Day (WTPD) through inter alia the
WTPD online Conference. The topic for the 2013
conference was “Water and Planning: the Fluid
Challenge”. This event is part of a collaboration by
planning organisations from around the world.
We have focussed on three of the 11 Universities
during the year being the Durban University of
Technology, the University of the Free State (UFS),
and the University of Venda (Univen). In this Bulletin
we are focussing on the University of Cape Town
(UCT).
One of SACPLANs mandates from the Planning
Profession Act, 2002 relates the accreditation visits.
The SACPLAN must conduct accreditation visits to
any educational institution which has a department,
school or faculty of planning, at least once in five
years. The SACPLAN may then grant, conditionally
grant, refuse or withdraw the accreditation of
educational programmes with regards to planning:
During this year three accreditation visits were
carried out. We have visited the University of
Stellenbosch, the University of the Witwatersrand,
and the University of Venda.
There has also been a growth in the number of
planners registering in all three the categories of
registration. There are currently 1 778 registered
Professional Planners, 197 registered Technical
Planners, and 875 registered Candidate Planners.
The LinkedIn group also grew and has now a
membership in excess of 840 people. Some of the
most active discussions on LinkedIn are “Do you
think the planning profession needs a “professional”
and a “technical” category”; “Why are IDPs not
included in the job reservation regulations for
planner”; and “With the current SAs housing backlog,
what innovative designs can we contribute in making
life in informal settlements particularly shacks more
dignified?”. If you would like to follow these
discussions or to contribute go to the SACPLAN
LinkedIn group.
The newly created Twitter account (@SACPLAN1)
has at the moment 40 followers.
As we go to the December holiday and the festive
season, lets enjoy ourselves, but remember to keep
our environment clean. I wish all a well deserved rest
to be able to approach the new year with renewed
energy.
SACPLAN Motto:
Reinvent Planning, Changing Lives
Message from the CEO
In this Issue
Message from the CEO
Focus on the University of Cape Town
Know your Council Member
Newly Registered Planners
Increase in Annual Fees
News from the Gazettes
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The University of Cape Town Masters programme in
City and Regional Planning is a two-year course-work
and dissertation programme with the first year at
honours level and the second year at masters level. It
is located in the Faculty of Engineering and the Built
Environment, and in the School of Architecture,
Planning and Geomatics. It has close relationships
with the African Centre for Cities, also located in the
School. The programme is currently accredited by the
SACPLAN and the RTPI.
The curriculum is structured to offer a graduated
learning experience over two years (four semesters)
of study to students drawn from a wide variety of
academic backgrounds. Each semester focuses on a
different scale of planning, moving from the local to
the regional. The progression in scale is a key
structuring device in terms of the theory and
techniques courses that run concurrently, and fits
well with spatial planning focus of the programme.
Each of the first three semesters is divided into
theory courses and a project-based course, with the
project used to demonstrate the integration and
application of theory. Projects involve ‘simulated’ or
real-life planning tasks: students work partly in
groups and partly individually, and move through
phases of analysis, diagnosis, engagement with
theory and precedent, proposals, and implemen-
tation. This enables them to develop the technical
and professional awareness and skills that will make
them more effective practitioners. Theory courses
deal with the substantive and conceptual knowledge
which we believe planners need. The fourth semester
is devoted to a dissertation, although work on framing
a topic starts in the first year.
In most of the semester 1 courses, MCRP students
are taught together with urban design and landscape
students to encourage mutual learning and
inter-disciplinarity. Most of the theory courses in
semester 1 are also electives available to post-
graduate architecture students. In the third semester
MCRP and Master of Landscape Architecture (MLA)
programmes combine for a 6 week project and theory
on regional environmental and resource planning.
The entire first year of the Master in City Planning
and Urban Design Programme (MCPUD) is shared
with MCRP students.
The distinctive contribution the MCRP Programme
seeks to make to planning education is informed by
our collectively held philosophies about planning and
its role in society. We aim to inspire graduates to
become reflective, ethical and creative practitioners
and scholars, as well as critical thinkers. The
uniqueness or identity of the programme is that,
relative to other planning programmes in South
Africa, it has a strong focus on spatial planning at the
local, city-wide and regional scales as well as a
strong focus on the natural environment. These areas
of focus respond to the issues of the South African
context, where cities still bear the strong spatial
imprint of apartheid and its implications for social and
economic inequalities, and where rapid urbanization
in a globally unique environmental region, demands
that planners are highly competent in both these
areas of concern.
Four full time staff members are responsible for the
MCRP, all being experience planning teachers and
researchers. There are also inputs from staff in urban
design, landscape, other departments in the faculty
and in other faculties, and from practitioners.
Last year we told the story of our collaborative—
informal settlement upgrading—project with commu-
nity leaders and residents of Langrug. Much progress
has taken place since then, as residents and the
Municipality of Stellenbosch are now awaiting
SACPLAN’s VISION
To pioneer the founding spirit of innovation in the facilitation of sustainable and inclusive development in the planning profession.
Focus on the University of
Cape Town
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approval from the Provincial Government for Phase 3
of the Upgrading of Informal Settlements Programme
(UISP).
Langrug Informal Settlement, Franschhoek Valley,
Western Cape
In addition to ongoing collaborations with community
leaders, residents, and the Municipality of Stellen-
bosch, Professor Vanessa Watson is facilitating a
faculty-wide and interdisciplinary project with the City
of Cape Town known as Future Foreshore. Fitting-
ly, the site for this project houses one of Cape Town’s
most idiosyncratic images: “The Incomplete Free-
way”. Students from the planning, urban design,
landscape architecture, and architecture pro-
grammes, in addition to property management
students, civil, chemical and electrical engineering
students are all working on this complex, but exciting,
project which will culminate in public exhibitions and
installations of UCT students’ work during the 2014
World Design Capital celebrations.
Cape Town is the Word Design Capital for 2014.
This accolade serves as an opportunity to showcase
Cape Town’s ‘creative talents', which include not only
conventional understandings of ‘creativity’ and
‘design’, but also include more creative understand-
ings of how we might integrate our divided and frag-
mented city through ‘design’ (in the broadest sense).
A re-imagined foreshore precinct might then become
a future urban node of integration. And, to be clear,
our faculty-wide project is certainly not entertaining
the idea of completing the freeways.
The North Foreshore Precinct is the site of UCT’s
faculty-wide project
Some analyses of the North Foreshore Precinct site