The Means and Strategies of the New Urban Management Approach

The new urban management approach seeks to achieve its aims and objec-tives by means of the ‘efficient management’ of inner urban space. In April 1999, the City of Cape Town established a new administrational branch called “Business Area Management” in the Directorate of Planning and

Eco-nomic Development as a co-ordinating body with the task of developing strategies for and monitoring efficient management of the central city and other business districts. The management strategy that was developed by the Business Area Management Branch for the central city, consists of the fol-lowing central elements: Firstly, the establishment of new interventionist bodies that enable the deregulation of municipal decision-making structures and the privatisation of municipal functions; secondly, the control and sur-veillance of inner urban space to ensure law enforcement and the prevention of crime, and thirdly, the introduction of new policies and laws regulating the activities of informal traders and parking attendants.

Deregulation of Municipal Decision Making and Functions

Modelling its new urban management approach on international success sto-ries of inner urban regeneration in cities such as Coventry (UK) and New York (USA), the City of Cape Town provided the legal and organisational framework for establishing public-private partnerships in the form of the Cape Town Partnership and the Central City Improvement District as the main mechanisms to enable inner urban revitalisation in Cape Town.

The Cape Town Partnership

In August 1999, the Cape Town Partnership was established as a public-pri-vate partnership between the City of Cape Town, the Cape Metropolitan Council and private businesses represented by the South African Property Owners Association and the Central City Improvement Districts Association in central Cape Town. It is a Section 21 company, which means that it is a non-profit organisation.

The Cape Town Partnership is a co-ordinating, lobbying and interventionist body that guides the decision-making of major stakeholders and policy-mak-ers within the City Council, and develops “partnpolicy-mak-ership based management solutions” to the problems in the central city⁴² (Cape Town Partnership

42 The geographical focus of the Cape Town Partnership is “Central Cape Town” as it is defined by the City Council, that is the area from the Foreshore to Orange/Mill/Buitens-ingel Street and from Tenant Street to Buitengracht Street (Cape Town Partnership 2000).

This includes a small area of mainly residential use in the south-east of the area, east of the Company’s (Botanical) Gardens, and south of Roeland Street, in which, however, an increasing number of businesses in the service sector (such as restaurants, coffee shops,

2000). The Cape Town Partnership has become an important vehicle for determining the future development of the central city. It is recognised by the City Council as its management agent and as the central mechanism to develop visions and strategies for the management of inner urban space, which will be translated and backed up by municipal urban policies for the central city (experts 13 and 19, personal communications).

In addition to the founding members of the Cape Town Partnership, the City of Cape Town identified the following institutions and individuals as key role players to ensure the development of a revitalisation strategy for the central city. They were appointed to the Board of Directors: the Cape Chamber of Commerce and Industry (CCCI), Cape Town Tourism (CTT), the Cape Community Patrol Board (CCPB), Business Against Crime (BAC) – Western Cape, the Cape Town Heritage Trust (CTHT) and the South African Black Technical and Allied Careers Organisation (SABTACO), which serve together with two co-opted individuals, a real estate agent for commercial property and a property manager. Neither the informal business sector, nor social welfare institutions nor local residents are members of the Board of Directors or directly represented on it, because, so the official argument, they are indirectly represented through the City Council, which also supposedly represents the interests of these constituencies. The City Council set up a mir-ror structure within Council, referred to as the above described Business Area Management Branch, which set up special task teams for the internal co-operation and co-ordination of different municipal functions concerning the management of the business districts. These task teams are, however, not decision-making bodies, but instead bodies for the communication of differ-ent levels of municipal functions (experts 6 and 13, personal communica-tion).

In its first year of operations the Cape Town Partnership carried out a com-munications programme to garner support for its revitalisation strategy, and thus gave presentations to a range of interested parties, including those involved in tourism, investment promotion, hospitality, property manage-ment, local and provincial governmanage-ment, local residents associations and social welfare. A forum for the direct involvement of the public in decision making was, however, only formed for the private business sector. Private business

backpackers’ hostels, bed & breakfast accommodations and businesses in the film and print industries) have started operating in recent years.

can become a voting member of the Business Forum by making a capital contribution of R 10 000–25 000 per year – depending on the size of the business and on condition that they fully subscribe to the Partnership’s mis-sion and aims (Cape Town Partnership 2000, p. 10; expert 18, personal communication). During the year 2000 22 corporate businesses signed up to the Cape Town Partnership, contributing a total of R 395 000, about 13 % of the Partnership’s total funding⁴³ (Cape Town Partnership 2000, p. 10). An equivalent forum for non-paying members was planned in the early begin-nings of the Cape Town Partnership (expert 18, personal communication), but this has only met once and again, is a communication body rather than a decision-making body with no possibility to exert any direct influence on the policies of the Partnership – in other words, you pay to have influence.

The City Improvement District

The establishment of the Central City Improvement District (CID) is consid-ered by the Cape Town Partnership as well as by the City Council to be the main interventionist and management tool to ensure the revitalisation of the central city, as it allows the stakeholders to emulate the controlled conditions and comprehensive management that exist in private shopping malls. The model is based on the strategy of Business Improvement Districts which proved so successful in fighting “crime and grime” in New York’s Times Square (experts 13 and 19, personal communications). The required legisla-tion in the form of a provincial by-law, enabling and regulating the estab-lishment of City Improvement Districts in Cape Town as Section 21 compa-nies, was passed in March 1999 (Provincial Gazette 5337, 26.3.99). In terms of this legislation, a City Improvement District (CID) can be established in any area on condition that it is supported by 50 % plus one of property own-ers (in terms of number of properties and rateable value) of a specific area.

The main aim of such a CID is to ensure services such as cleansing and policing over and above what the Municipality can provide. A CID contracts the Municipality to provide a guaranteed level of services and compiles a business plan for the additional services and activities they wish to be

43 For the financial year 2000/2001, the Cape Town Partnership had a projected budget of R 2 million, of which 25 % was funded by the Cape Metropolitan Council, 25 % by the City of Cape Town and 50 % was expected to be funded by the private sector; ultimately, however, only 13 % rather than 50 % of private sector funding materialised (Cape Town Partnership 2000, p.10).

mented in their area. If the business plan is approved by the City Council, the Council collects an extra levy from the property owners within the CID (in the case of the Central City Improvement District this amounts to 9,5 % of normal rates), and redirects it to the CID, which contracts private companies for the delivery of additional services.

Fig. 12: The Central City and the First Phase Implementation Area of the CID

The demarcation of the area of the central city’s CID has gone through sev-eral stages, during which the boundaries of the CID were defined and rede-fined. Initially, it was intended to establish 12 precinct-based City Improve-ment Districts within Central Cape Town, “to meet the specific needs of each different precinct and to allow greater diversity in the applied marketing strategies” (experts 13 and 18, personal communications). Several CIDs were close to becoming formal, viz. the East City, Central City, West City, Fore-shore and Thibault Square. However, at the beginning of 2000, the Cape Town Partnership decided to establish one single “Central City Improvement District”, which was to cover the whole central city in order to allow cross-subsidisation of different precincts, quicker implementation and greater effec-tiveness, thus preventing the shifting of ‘crime and grime’ from one street to another (expert 19, personal communication).

In November 2000, then, the Central City Improvement District was imple-mented. However, it lacked sufficient support in the southern part of the cen-tral city, where most of the corporate businesses are located. Nonetheless, its long-term plan is to expand it to the full area of the central city as soon as sufficient support is gained (Central City Improvement District Business Plan 2000; see Figure 12)⁴⁴. In its first operating year, 49% of the overall budget of the Central City Improvement District (R 14.6 m) was spent on security, which pays for an additional 183 full-time security personnel, 22,5 % was spent on cleansing in order to double the current cleansing services in the area, 10,3 % was spent on marketing, and the remaining 13,4 % covered the operational costs of the CID (Central City Improvement District Business Plan 2000, see Figure 13).

The general buy-in of local property owners was gained by emphasising that they would be directly involved in determining the level of service provided and that they would be part of a fully constituted, legal entity, establishing a contract-bound relationship with the City Council. The City Council, too, supports the instrument of the City Improvement District and its emphasis on financial involvement from the private sector, particularly in previously advantaged areas, given the general financial constraints of local government

44 The southern part of the central city has only a small proportion of corporate business and the area south of Roland Street between the Company (Botanical) Gardens and Buitenkant St is a predominantly residential area. The reason for insufficient support in this area can be seen in the additional high rates to be paid, however, and not in disagreement with the instrument as such (experts 13, 23 and 24, personal communications).

and the far more pressing demands of local government intervention and investment in previously disadvantaged areas (expert 13, personal communi-cation).

Fig. 13: The Cleansing and Security Team of the Central City Improvement District

Control and Surveillance to Restore Law and Order

In addition to the new management tools of the Cape Town Partnership and the City Improvement District, which deregulate governmental decision mak-ing and functions, the control and surveillance of inner urban space that is necessary for achieving the ‘clean and safe’ inner city, has become an important component of the new urban management system. In the discourse on the deteriorating environment in the central city, the perceived prevalence of “crime and grime” plays a central role describing an atmosphere of “gen-eral lawlessness”, even “anarchy”⁴⁵ after the abolition of Apartheid laws:

Parking attendants are breaking the traffic by-law; car washers are breaking

45 These words to circumscribe the condition of the central city have been used by all the experts – representing the City Council as well as private institutions, property owners and formal businesses – who were interviewed in the context of new urban management.

the health by-law; informal traders are breaking the informal trading by-law;

motorists parking on pavements or in restricted zones and exceeding parking hours are breaking the traffic by-law; gangs of drug dealers and street chil-dren are roaming the streets and thus displacing the “law-abiding citizen”.

This perceived atmosphere of ‘general lawlessness’ is reinforced by acts of violent crime in Cape Town as a whole, which (as I have shown in Chapter 4.4) are no doubt a crucial problem for Cape Town. Crime has had a strong impact on Cape Town’s local and international image, clearly clouding Cape Town’s image of being one of the most beautiful cities in the world and threatening the confidence of foreign and local investors as well as tourists in the city (expert 15, personal communication; City of Cape Town 1998c; Cape Times 7.5.1999; Frankfurter Rundschau, 14.7.1998; Le Monde Diplo-matique, 10.3.1999). As a result, a number of police initiatives were intro-duced by national and provincial government to fight violent and, in particu-lar, gang-related crime⁴⁶, and “Community Safety” became a strategic prior-ity of the Cprior-ity of Cape Town’s Integrated Development Plan (Cprior-ity of Cape Town 1998, p. 6f). In June 1998, the City implemented the Safer Cities Pro-gram (SCP) of the United Nations Centre for Human Settlement (City of Cape Town 1998c; Valley 1999). This is a multi-agency approach to crime prevention at a local government level, with the focus on social crime pre-vention aiming at the reduction of “socio-economic and environmental fac-tors conducive to criminality” (expert 15, personal communication).

The strategy is informed by the ‘zero tolerance strategy’ and the ‘broken windows philosophy’ developed by Kelling and Wilson in the 1980s in the context of processes in US American cities. Kelling and Wilson argued that a failure to maintain public urban space, which is visible in general disorder, vandalism, graffiti, aggressive begging, littering, urinating in public, loud music, prostitution, junkies etc., would create a breeding ground for criminal activities, thereby stimulating a vicious circle of inner urban decay (in Feltes 1997, p. 21, experts 13 and 15, personal communications). Rob Walsh, presi-dent of the Charlotte Centre City Partners and acclaimed driving force behind the revitalisation of New York’s Times Square, was invited to the City of

46 In general, because of the reduction of personnel, the extension of policing to formerly disadvantaged areas, inefficient management, corruption and an increasingly bad morale, the South African Police Services (SAPS) has become weakened and is now seen as being largely ineffective in fighting crime (experts 7, 8 and 15, personal communication; Bussiek 1999).

Cape Town in September 1998. He pointed at the so-called ‘broken win-dows’ in Cape Town’s central city, such as unpainted lampposts, wrecked street signs, garbage in the streets, homelessness, public defecation and bro-ken phone booths in St. Georges Mall, which he interpreted as clear signs of the city degenerating.

He advised City officials to show

‘zero tolerance’ towards these forms of public disorder (Cape Times, 14.9.1998). Subsequently, the enforcement of municipal by-laws has become a priority in the City’s approach to crime preven-tion, particularly in the central city. In August 1998 and in March 1999, the City Council launched ‘Clean and Safe’ and

‘Reclaim’ as two ad hoc ‘blitz’

law enforcement operations aim-ing at clearaim-ing inner urban streets of traffic violators, informal parking attendants and other petty criminals (Cape Argus, 27.8.1998; Dixon 2000, p. 42, see Figure 14). Although these operations, which lasted for one week and four months respec-tively, proved to be successful in

terms of cracking down on petty crimes, they were unsustainable over a longer period, given the lack of municipal financial and human resources (expert 15, personal communication).

Fig. 14: No more Garbage in St. Georges Mall?

Against this background, law enforcement has become a significant priority of the City of Cape Town since 1999 (expert 7, personal communication). In 1999, the Civic Patrol Branch⁴⁷ was established within the City’s Protection Services Directorate, amalgamating all law enforcement functions of the city.

47 The Civic Patrol Branch can be seen as the predecessor of a Municipal Policing system, which was promulgated by the unicity in October 2001.

Despite the City’s general financial shortages and retrenchment policies, the Civic Patrol Branch’s budget has been increased substantially since 1999, from R 35 million in the financial year 1999/2000 to R 47 million in the financial year 2000/2001, and the personnel has been extended by an addi-tional 80 members of staff (expert 7, personal communication). In the central city, the City of Cape Town introduced two long-term initiatives in 1999:

The patrolling of the City’s streets with Peace Officers and Community Patrol Officers to increase the level of visible policing, and the establishment of a Closed Circuit Surveillance System.

Bobbies on the Beat: Peace Officers and Community Police Officers

To increase visible policing on the street and to ensure the enforcement of municipal by-laws, the City of Cape Town formed a special CBD unit within the Civic Patrol Branch and introduced the City Community Patrol Board (CCPB).

While the area of jurisdiction of the Civic Patrol unit, which is also responsi-ble for the central city, comprises a large area (extending from Bakoven, Sea Point and Green Point in the west, Gardens and Tamboerskloof in the south, and Woodstock in the east of the central city), special attention is currently given to Cape Town’s central city, even though it is not categorised as a

“high” crime area but only a “medium” crime area by the SAPS (experts 7 and 8, personal communications). A special “CBD unit” has been formed in this area, allocating Peace Officers for patrols on a permanent basis. In the central city, this unit consists of 16 Peace Officers, which are complemented by 16 Community Patrol Officers who are part of the City’s Community Patrol Board (CCPB), a private-public partnership between the SAPS, vari-ous businesses and local government.⁴⁸ The main function of both Peace Officers and Community Patrol Officers is to permanently patrol the streets

48 It is the role of the CCPB to augment the manpower of the police service by involving local government and the community, in particular private businesses, who can rent Community Police Officers (CPO’s) to patrol an area of their choice. The Community Police Officers are unemployed policemen or police reservists; they are trained and equipped by SAPS, they have full arrest powers and they are employed under control of the local station com-missioner in the area where they are deployed. Community Patrol Officers receive a remu-neration of R 2,200, per month from local businesses and local authorities. Currently, 360 Community Police Officers are deployed to 36 police stations throughout the Cape Metro-politan area, of which 101 are paid for by local Councils and the balance by private busi-nesses. Another 180 were being trained in SAPS training colleges and it is planned to increase the total to 770 by the end of the year 2000 (expert 8, personal communication).

of the central city and to respond to complaints, and thus to make law en-forcement visible. The formation of the CBD unit can be seen as being largely due to the great pressure of private businesses in the central city who

‘bombard’ city managers on a daily basis with complaints, demanding the materialisation of the ANC’s election promise of ‘community safety’ (experts 7 and 8, personal communications).

Fig. 15: Mounted Patrol in St. Georges Mall

In addition to the security services provided by the City Council, the Central City Improvement District’s budget for safety and security pays for another 145 Community Patrol Officers, which are intended to replace the private security guards paid for by businesses individually, as well as for 8 mounted patrols, which patrol the central city’s pedestrian areas, specifically around St. Georges Mall and Greenmarket Square, and which are provided by the private security firm ‘Grey Security’ (Cape Town Partnership 2000a, p. 1, see Figure 15).

All Peace Officers, Community Patrol Officers and Mounted Patrols co-oper-ate with and are assisted by the Closed Camera Surveillance System.

The Closed Circuit Surveillance System

In December 1998, a Closed Circuit Surveillance System (CCTV) has been introduced in the central city of Cape Town. It is an initiative of Business Against Crime (BAC) Western Cape, a Section 21 Company established in 1997. Business Against Crime was founded nationwide in 1995 in response to the appeal of the then South African President Nelson Mandela to the business community to help combat crime in South Africa (Business Against Crime 1998, p. 1). BAC Western Cape is a key role player in the provincial government’s delivery mechanism for South Africa’s National Crime Pre-vention Strategy (NCPS), the provincial Multi-Agency Delivery And Mecha-nism (MADAM) and also serves on the Board of Directors of the Cape Town Partnership.

The CCTV system is meant to be the ‘Big Brother’ of law enforcement; it is a technology that assists law enforcement by providing sophisticated visual and auditory tools, which ensure the effective deployment of officers to inci-dents, but which can also be used as evidence in court (experts 7, 15 and 20, personal communications). The first footprint of the camera system was installed as a pilot project in Cape Town’s central city 1998, with 12 cameras being distributed around Long Street, Strand Street, Greenmarket Square and Thibault Square, funded solely by private businesses in Cape Town (expert 20, personal communication). After the first footprint was found to be suc-cessful in substantially reducing crime (by 80 %, according to expert 20), the City of Cape Town allocated R 10,3 million to the project, and by November 1999 another 60 cameras had been installed, covering the whole central city and thereby becoming the biggest external surveillance system in South Africa (expert 20, personal communication). The cameras relay pictures to a central control room in Thibault Square on the Foreshore, which is staffed by 3 officers of SAPS and private security and are linked per radio to all private and public law enforcement officers on duty in the central city. The staff reacts to any suspicious behaviour, any crime and any socially unacceptable behaviour, such as “urinating in public, harassing people, or threatening be-haviour“, and law enforcement officers can be sent to the scene immediately (expert 20, personal communication).

The success of the Closed Circuit Surveillance System in cracking down on crime has been repeatedly communicated to the public by regular reports in daily newspapers (e. g. Cape Times 24.3.1999; 8.4.1999; Saturday Argus 23./24.9.2000).

Although the current focus of this project is on the central city, both BAC and the City Council argue that the central city is only a pilot project and that the camera system will also be extended to other areas, since it has proved to contribute efficiently to the fight against “grime and crime”. The next foot-prints are currently planned for Heideveld/Manenberg and Athlone/Mitchells Plain (predominantly Coloured areas), and Khayelitsha (a Black area), with the long-term aim being to cover most of the metropolitan area eventually (experts 7, 13, 15 and 20, personal communications). After the city centre, however, the next footprint that was actually implemented, was around the Grand West Casino, which opened its doors in November 2000 (Cape Times, 6.12.2000).

The Regulation of Informal Activities

Central in the discourse on the deteriorating public environment of the central city is the increase in informal traders and informal parking attendants. In response to continuous lobbying from property owners and formal busi-nesses, the City Council has developed a new approach to dealing with informal activities, which is informed both by the political and socio-eco-nomic need to create employment opportunities for the urban poor and by the perceived need to re-establish order in the city. Following the development of approaches to dealing with informal activities, it can be described as a move from strict regulation and control under Apartheid, through increasing relaxation and deregulation in the late 1980s and early 1990s, towards a new wave of stricter regulation, albeit not with the intention to control, but rather to facilitate the growth and formalisation of the informal sector. The trans-formation and incorporation of the informal sector into the formal economy is understood by the City Council as being part of its strategic priority of socio-economic growth and development, and integration of the informal economy into the formal economy of the city (experts 3 and 13, personal communications).

Because of the centrality of informal activities in the discourse on inner urban decay and because of the City Council’s ambivalent position towards their regulation, I will discuss the development of the City’s approach to dealing with informal activities in some detail in the following two subchapters.

Informal Trading

During Apartheid, informal trading was regulated by way of the Cape Town Municipal Traffic By-Law, which was very prescriptive and prevented in-formal trading as far as possible by demarcating all central business districts of the City and suburbs as ‘hawker prohibited areas’ (City of Cape Town 1986). Informal trading was thus seen as a “nuisance” and was only allowed, when it contributed to the convenience of the (White) community (expert 14, personal communication). Only very few permits were given to hawkers to trade from a mobile stall, which had to be moved every hour (City of Cape Town 1986, p. 88). Traders were required to wear white coats to ensure an orderly appearance and were only permitted to trade fresh products, such as fruits and vegetables (ibid.). Due to an increasing influx of unskilled people to Cape Town, decreasing employment opportunities in the formal sector and growing unemployment rates, the City Council already from 1986 onwards pro-actively researched and promoted the contribution of the informal trading sector to job creation from an economic development perspective (expert 14, personal communication). During this time, the City Council tried to change the existing legislation to allow informal trading and to change the prevailing mindset (which involved dealing with informal trading from a law enforce-ment point of view only); it sought to understand it as a sector that can reduce unemployment and poverty by developing the business skills of the involved traders (ibid.). The City Council already at that time argued for a relaxation of restrictive laws and regulations in order to facilitate the growth of the informal sector (City of Cape Town 1986, p. 7).

In 1991, the National Government passed the Business Act to deregulate the business environment and to assist in addressing increasing unemployment rates in South Africa (Business Act No. 71 of 1991; Tisseker 1997, p. 1). The new legislation recognised informal trading as a vital part of any growing economy, in that it creates employment opportunities particularly among the urban poor (City of Cape Town 1999i, p. 1). Moreover, because of the new developmental role of local government, it is incumbent upon municipalities

“to create an enabling environment for the informal trading sector to operate, expand and graduate into the mainstream economy” (ibid.). The Business Act went from one extreme of being very prescriptive and regulatory to the other extreme “of almost having no controls in place” and providing only very few regulations, such as the prohibition of setting up stalls where they obstructed shop entrances, display windows, fire hydrants, etc. (Business Act No. 71 of

1991; expert 14, personal communication). As the new Business Act did not make provisions to limit the number of traders in a certain area, a dramatic increase in the proliferation of informal trading activities occurred throughout the city, but particularly in the previously prohibited trading areas, such as Cape Town’s central city (expert 14, personal communication).

Around 1999, trading in the central city occurred on six daily and weekly markets,on the edges of the central city.⁴⁹ The different informal markets with their offered goods attract different customers: Greenmarket Square, one of the main tourist attractions in the central city, sells mainly African curios, alternative clothes, jewellery and other items attractive to tourists; Trafalgar Square is Cape Town’s well-known flower market; Thibault Square is a rela-tively new and small market, where mainly bargain clothes, bags, sunglasses and jewellery are sold, as well as prepared food during lunchtime hours; in Church Street, there is an antique market in a small pedestrian area near Greenmarket Square; on the Grand Parade, which had been a market place since the beginning of the 20th century until the 1960s, and which is now used as a parking lot during the week, there is a market with prepared food, bargain clothes, household ware, fabrics etc. on Saturday mornings, attracting mainly lower class local customers; lastly, the markets on the Lower and Upper Station Deck at the Cape Town Railway Station, which are situated at the major public transport interchange and arrival point in the central city, trade mainly bargain clothes, bags, fruit and vegetables as well as prepared food on the Upper Station Deck, as the main customers are daily commuters using minibuses and trains. All these markets operate during normal office hours. Most of them are managed privately, either by private companies (Greenmarket Square, Church Street Market), or informal traders’ associa-tions that are subcontracted by the City (Education Resources Network 2000). The Cape Town Partnership, however, regards these different markets as generally mismanaged, although those markets that seem to be attractive to tourists, such as Greenmarket Square and the flower market, are perceived as potentially contributing to an attractive image of the central city (experts 13, 18 and 21, personal communications; see Figure 16).

49 On the edge of the central city, at the main traffic lights along Buitengracht Street leading out of the central city, as well on the corners of Hertzog and Oswald Pirow Boulevard and Adderley and Strand Streets, traders sell the major local newspapers, but also the homeless magazine (Big Issue) as well as refuse bags, hangers or sunshades. A few try to earn some change by cleaning motorcar windscreens while waiting at a red traffic light.

Im Dokument Emergency on planet Cape Town (Seite 159-184)