The Presidency produces the National Spatial Development Perspective (NSDP)

Issued by The Presidency, April 2004

The Policy Co-ordination and Advisory Services (PCAS) in the Presidency produced a National Spatial Development Perspective (NSDP) that was endorsed by Cabinet in March 2003. In terms of the Cabinet decision, the NSDP has been circulated to all national departments and provinces for comment. Departments and provinces are expected to indicate how their own spatial and development strategies are informed by the NSDP principles, and in cases where they may deviate, what is the reason for this deviation. Feedback from this process will assist the PCAS in revising the NSDP in the future. The four principles of the NSDP are as follows:

Economic growth is a prerequisite for the achievement of other policy objectives, key among which would be poverty alleviation.
Government spending on fixed investment, beyond the constitutional obligation to provide basic services to all citizens (such as water, electricity as well as health and educational facilities), should therefore be focused on localities of economic growth and/or economic potential in order to attract Private-sector investment, stimulate sustainable economic activities and/or create long-term employment opportunities.
Efforts to address past and current social inequalities should focus on people not places. In localities where there are both high levels of poverty and development potential, this could include fixed capital investment beyond basic services to exploit the potential of those localities. In localities with low development potential, government spending, beyond basic services, should focus on providing social transfers, human resource development and labour market intelligence. This will enable people to become more mobile and migrate, if they choose to, to localities that are more likely to provide sustainable employment or other economic opportunities.
In order to overcome the spatial distortions of apartheid, future settlement and economic development opportunities should be channelled into activity corridors and nodes that are adjacent to or link the main growth centres.

The NSDP uses the concept of ‘potential’ as one of two methodological tools for distinguishing between localities. The other is the poverty gap weighted by the population to provide a poverty volume per locality. In using these two tools, the NSDP recognizes that they can only provide coarse-grained analysis from a national perspective of a locality’s potential (and volume of poverty) and that this national perspective will be supplemented by a more finely grained analysis at Provincial and Local Government level.

In defining potential, the NSDP drew on the recent tradition of ‘institutional economics’ a field that has come to dominate both developmental economics and regional planning. The institutional approach to economics suggests that beyond the usual sources of comparative advantage (mainly human and natural resource endowment and strategic locality), the institutional adequacy of a locality will help determine whether development is sustainable or not. This approach goes further to argue that localities that have succeeded in developing are generally those with institutions that provide incentives for people, firms, industries and private and public authorities to learn so that they can adapt to the developmental challenges presented by a dynamic changing world. As the history of Africa and other developing countries has shown, the mere presence of natural resources is no guarantee of development, and more recently in Africa and elsewhere, the mere presence of educated human resources, in the absence of the institutional framework to enable these resources to be productive, also means that development potential is not fully realized.

The NSDP therefore uses concepts of potential that rely strongly on the presence of the institutional capacity to realize the developmental impact of other resources. One of the key studies conducted for the NSDP indicated that whilst there has been much intra-regional change, the inter-regional distribution of economic activity in South Africa has not changed significantly over the past 50 years despite massive Government interventions (decentralization, de-concentration, Apartheid) to change the spatial distribution of economic activity.

Another key methodological innovation in the NSDP was not to use empirical definitions of development potential as evident in other plans (areas of development, areas of decline), but to distinguish between six categories of potential which cover the spectrum of economic functions in a modern economy: innovation and experimentation, the production of high-value differentiated goods, labour intensive mass-production, pubic service and administration, tourism, and commercial services and retail. As will be evident from the maps presented with the main text, whilst some localities have greater number of these different categories of potential (notably the metros), these different categories are spread across a range of urban and rural localities.

One of the key insights of the NSDP is that the categories ‘urban’ and ‘rural’ as used in South Africa have little meaning. Not only are the so-called ‘rural’ areas dependent with up to 85% of their transfers of so-called ‘urban’ centres, a pattern reinforced by significant social interaction, but the statistical definition of urban is based on Apartheid definitions of proclaimed urban areas. There are many dense settlements that operate now as part of the ‘urban’ areas which fall outside of the statistical definition.

The use of the NSDP methodology focuses government attention on only about 20% of the magisterial districts. These localities however comprise 92% of the country’s GGP, 81% of the population and 75% of the poor.

The PCAS has also been in contact with a number of provinces working on Provincial Growth and Development Strategies (PGDSs) and has interacted with municipalities involved in developing Integrated Development Plans (IDPs). Along with DPLG, it participated in a workshop in Mpumalanga where the initial steps were taken towards defining the relationship between planning for socio-economic development and spatial planning being pursued in the three spheres.

The NSDP will have a role to play as an instrument that informs the respective development plans of the three spheres of government i.e. IDP, PGDS and the Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF). The importance of these development plans and their linkages in terms of intergovernmental planning was highlighted at the recent Development Planning Indaba held at Sun City on the 29th and 30th of March 2004, where issues surrounding intergovernmental planning were discussed. The Indaba concluded with an action plan that lays the basis for intergovernmental planning over the next ten years.

Enquiries:

Mr. Goolam Aboobaker
Policy Co-ordination and Advisory Services
The Presidency
Tel:+27 (0)12 3005 455
Fax:+27 (0)12 3005 773