connecting citizens through investments in public transport and information and technology infrastructure; maintaining a high level of delivery for basic services as the city expands (including free allocations of water and electricity for those unable to pay); and ensuring sufficient and appropriate human-settlement solutions.18
Yet, like most African cities, Cape Town has very limited scope to act independently of central government in dealing with its specific challenges – or, more positively, to play to its strengths. The reasons for this, as in other areas, come down to money and autonomy.
Currently, the city, with its population of 3.7 million, has an annual budget of R36 billion ($2.6 billion), which includes R6 billion for capital expenditure – compared to the national budget of R1.25 trillion for a total population of 52 million. Eighty per cent of the city’s income comes from the premiums charged on utilities (especially electricity), property rates and other charges. The remainder comes from three sources: a tranche from the national government determined according to a countrywide formula; conditional grants from the Treasury (which remove the discretion for municipalities to spend as they may need to); and a portion of the fuel levy raised on sales within the municipal boundary. The vast proportion of these funds (like other municipal budgets) is spent on maintaining and expanding infrastructure, and delivering basic services, including water, electricity and refuse removal, on the back of that infrastructure. The shortage of funding is worsened by ‘unfunded mandates’, including library services and clinics, where the city is ‘left out of pocket by hundreds of millions of rands for services provided which are not matched by income or allocations from higher structures,’ says Harris.19
This fiscal and political environment severely limits the latitude of Cape Town, along with other South African cities, to act independently, for example, in designing strong investment incentives. It can offer ‘non-financial’ incentives: accelerated planning approvals, biodiversity offsets, an investment facilitation touch-point in the mayor’s office, and the overall ‘lifestyle’ advantages. On the financial side to support investments, the city has been able to offer discounted electricity tariffs and waive various application fees and development contributions that would normally be incurred by infrastructure projects. It can also offer discounted rates and land leases, though this is controversial within the administration, not least given the budgetary funding imperative.
From the city’s vantage, the most important reform allowing municipalities to shape their destiny would be the devolution from central government of the powers of taxation. Any intent in this regard on the part of the drafters of the constitution quickly ran afoul of the low capacity of many subnational governments and a move towards centralism by the national government. This has removed the potential for tax competition between subnational governments, a key tool in spurring development worldwide.
A common challenge for cities is to make full use of the potential for connectivity offered by high density of accommodation. But African cities generally expand by sprawling and not through increased density of the sort seen in Hillbrow, stretching out and not up.
But Africa can, again, learn from others. For example, the success of Curitiba, a city in southern Brazil, demonstrates how, with clever thinking, thorough planning, continuity in leadership and determined execution, a city can deal with apparently insurmountable problems. Curitiba is famous for how its invention and application of a novel transport system changed its transport environment and therefore the city’s connectedness. But a closer look reveals that it was just one element of a master plan that has delivered real improvement across the city and to the lives of its people.
Curitiba and bus rapid transport20
Curitiba, with a population of 2 million, is the capital of the Brazilian state of Paraná. In 2010 Curitiba was awarded the annual Global Sustainable City Award on account of its excellence in urban development. It deserved it, because it really did innovate and integrate.
‘We have many visitors from China, South Africa, Colombia and other countries,’ says Silvia Ramos of Urbanização de Curitiba, the transport regulator.
It’s little wonder. Curitiba originated a surface transport system, known as bus rapid transport (BRT), which has become an international role model that others have sought to replicate. There are now more than 250 cities worldwide with BRTs.
Getting this to work involves more than just mobility. Curitiba has successfully used a relatively cheap surface public-transport system to transform the city, not just in terms of the movement of people, but also in terms of how it uses land and public spaces. Integration has been achieved by connecting people, and this has been key to the city’s economic progress.
Back in 1966, when the city was drawing up a master plan, they looked at models from France and the UK, among others. But the cost of an underground was deemed prohibitive for the city, despite its agricultural-based wealth. So they opted for a surface transport system with dedicated bus lanes, which was about a 10th of the cost of an underground railway.
When the system was first implemented in 1974, it moved just 50 000 passengers annually. Today, the BRT carries 1.7 million people a day over a network of 85.6 kilometres, along six lines with an operating fleet of 1 368 buses, some capable of carrying 250 passengers, and pausing at 6 500 stops. The buses drive 328 kilometres each day and are supplied and run by private companies, which are paid by the kilometre. Passengers pay a standard fare of just under a dollar regardless of the length of the journey. This fee cross-subsidises those, mostly the poor, who live farther out from the city centre.
Jaime Lerner has been a pivotal figure in this system. He was part of the original team that decided on the winning bid for the city’s master plan and, in 1965, helped create the Instituto de Pesquisa e Planejamento Urbano de Curitiba (Curitiba Institute of Urban Planning and Research – IPPUC), a research, monitoring and implementation body funded by the municipality.
Lerner was elected mayor three times, the first in 1971. Although he implemented a number of important changes in the city, including establishing more parks, creating an apprenticeship system for deprived young people, and launching a successful recycling scheme, the BRT remains his greatest achievement, and Curitiba’s gift to the world.
‘You need to think of the BRT,’ he says, ‘not just as a transport system, but as a city design. It has been the engine of the city’s growth. We started small, but for each stage to solve each problem, we have used innovation.’
Not only have the number of lanes and buses increased exponentially, but the services have also radically improved. More than 90 per cent of the fleet is adapted for disabled users. Various feeder lines are fully integrated, with a range of bus types and sizes. Tubular stations improved the passenger experience. The three-lane systems of the BRT, the slow and fast car lanes, and staggered BRT alignment stations were introduced to reduce hold-ups. And now increasing numbers of buses use biofuel, while the electric and hybrid ‘Hibri-bus’ is imminent.
‘Everything in Brazil is dedicated to the car,’ says Lerner. ‘For example, there are at least 5 million cars in São Paulo alone, each car taking up 25 square metres of space on the road and in parking. This is the size of a small housing unit. Even if half of this was dedicated instead to housing, we could house another 2.5 million people closer to their place of work. But to do this, we have to provide public transport, to turn the space for cars from private to public.
‘Back in the 1970s, when we did it, it was said that every city which achieved a population of 1 million should have a subway. As we did not have the money, instead we asked: What is a subway? The answer was, it is a system that is fast and has good frequency, so you don’t have to wait. So, since we did not have the resources to go underground, we asked, “Why not the surface?” So we took the existing streets, and linked them to the structure of growth of the city – where we linked and integrated living, working,
