Politics of urban spaces in Zimbabwe

LAST week, I touched on an important issue, being a description of the urban spaces in Zimbabwe. Since them, I received a lot of feedback on the article. A striking feedback was on the headline of the article, “The road to better urban spaces”, in which one reader said: “There is no road at all to talk about”.

The other was: “I read through your article, there was nothing really new except a rehash of the already known problems facing Zimbabwe and perhaps just a step-by-step approach of how they arise.”

I also received feedback from my fellow brothers and sisters in the urban and regional planning fraternity.

One which I need to point to is by Dr Kudzai Chatiza of Development Governance Institute (DeGI).

His remark was: “The professions must speak to each other, the politicians too and the citizens.” In his mind he already hinted the venue and the theme to do so.

To him it was an issue warranting urgent attention.

Of course, as the University of Zimbabwe, we have already rolled plans to host the Second Biennial Symposium on Sustainability, Planning, Development and Management of Human Settlements in Zimbabwe this year.

Indeed, the symposium can be one platform to have a dialogue with different professions, politicians and citizens.

Such a platform provides different perspectives on issues raised. For example, the forthcoming symposium has a theme of “Urbanity in Zimbabwe”.

We are asking: What is “urban” and not urban in Zimbabwe? When does a space or place become urban? Who says a place is now urban? How do different disciplines (fields of study) define urban?

We are also asking the basic elements that may or may not define urban including demographic, economic, political, sociological, environmental (ecological), business, informational, to name but a few.

For example, it is argued that the 1982 National Census in Zimbabwe prescribed that a place with a population of 2 500 could be defined as urban provided certain infrastructural conditions were met.

However, over the years, the country has had a number of business centres and growth points that have since surpassed this prescribed number and are yet to be conferred town status.

There are also towns (particularly mining towns) that have seen a fall in population yet still carry the tag “town”.

From this analysis, clearly there are a number of dynamics happening in space which need us to sit down and consider the situation in order to map the future.

Urban and regional planning, also referred to as town or city planning, is an aspect of spatial and physical planning.

Although, it was popularised in England during the Industrial Revolution (c1750-1900 AD), its origin was in the Hellenic civilisation which merited a certain Hippodamus to be called “The Father of Town Planning”.

The Greeks lived as huge populations concentrated in defined areas which were city or polis by structure and composition.

These cities provided the inhabitants with a number of facilities and housing in one place.

For example, the Agora was the city’s meeting place). There was the Acropolis whose religious significance was well known.

There was the market place where trade and commercial activities were carried out by the city’s population and members of outside communities.

Provision of water and sanitation facilities was well administered and regulated.

One might have to recall of Archimedes and his Law of Density.

He pronounced his “Eureka” idiom when he was bathing. The bath was a public bath, and probably, designed by Hippodamus.

Planning originated as an engineering and civic design activity. It is an art as much as it is also a science.

When it was revived to redress public health and safety issues ushered in by the Industrial Revolution, the idea was to bring comfort and habitability in the city.

The industrial city, without the intervention of planning, was a human death trap.

The earlier version, the medieval one, was worse because in this city buckets and carts were the tools for transportation of waste, including human waste to the dumping areas.

There were open cesspools everywhere. Planning then emerged to try and correct these ills towards creating better places for living, working and recreation.

It is unfortunate, that in the early days, this work became synonymous with one “person” in the medium of the planner.

The planner assumed a critical role that would define the lives of the community by predetermining, by urban and environmental design, where they had to work, live, shop and have leisure.

Such a titanic task, left to an individual believed to have demi-god powers through production of blueprints needing strict adherence and conformity, was as dangerous as not having the profession at all.

The mister-know-it-all planner became a dangerous monster to societal aspirations.

Indeed planning was, and remains, a sharp instrument by the state but society ought to be greater than the planners.

Some of the products by the planner became white elephants in themselves.

The planner doing the work alone and the creation of some dysfunctional spaces and places was justification enough for “public participation” as one ingredient for planning.

This is the reason why participation of the people to affect or to be affected by the development planned is a must.

In the Regional, Town and Country Planning Act (Chapter 29:12) of 1976 (revised 1996), public participation in the production of plans is a must.

The voice of the people is always important.

Next time you see a notice in your local newspaper and citing the planning statute, just have a look at what it is saying.

It is your right, as a citizen to add your voice to the plan, either in support or in objection (rejection) of the stated contents.

Many developments (I shall define what we call development in planning) happen in our local areas.

We gripe and curse because we never bothered to find out how they came about.

We might argue that most of these notices often come small or in discouraging to read prints.

But that small notice if for you to check and contribute.

Some little things really matter and some say dynamite comes in small packages.

The citizen, as the final recipient of the plan and development, must find a few words to put in that plan.

Before a plan is approved and adopted, it is a mere proposal.

Any proposal is subject to review, improvement and adjustment.

The politician, as a development catalyst, must seek maximum advice from the planner to have a successful plan.

Unfortunately, most of our politicians have assumed uncalled for demi-god powers, like the 19th century planner. Some so much hate planning. Most of the bad plans that we, as planners, are often blamed for, are product of the uninformed or recalcitrant politicians

I know colleagues who have sustained injuries, been dragged to courts and fired from work for trying to resist the unreasonable politician.

But the planner, as I have said, does not know it all.

He or she needs information from other colleagues in the built environment professions – the surveyor, the environmentalist and the engineer.

This is to avoid wasting time preparing a plan that ends up “falling on” an existing lake or dam, to just say.

There are professions outside the built environment, including the sociologist, the social worker, the demographer, the economist, the archaeologists, etcetera.

These people have important information for input into a sailing plan.

Indeed, Zimbabwean planning discussion needs everyone to come on board so that we develop concrete and implementable plans. Professor Innocent Chirisa is the chairperson of the Department of Rural and Urban Planning at the University of Zimbabwe. He wrote this article for