Valuing waste and wasting value: rethinking planning with informality by learning from skarrelers in Cape Town's Southern Suburbs

• Main Author: van Heerden, Adam David
• Other Authors: Winkler, Tanja
• Format: Dissertation
• Language: English
• Published: University of Cape Town 2016
• Subjects: City and Regional Planning
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/11427/18201

Includes bibliographical references === Since the collaborative turn, planning has been 'captive to an inclusionary view of society' and to the assumed value that public participation automatically confers on development outcomes. In the global South however, the extreme diversity of people and activities coupled with 'advanced marginality', perhaps inspires different interpretations of 'public' and 'private' space and the activities enacted within each, as well as of the universal acceptance and application of formal processes which aim 'to include'. In this dissertation I explore the implicit value of public participation when planning with informality, for 14 skarrelers in Cape Town's Southern Suburbs, as well as the potential for a 'deepening' of democracy through more genuine and flexible forms of engagement and learning. This involves research participants setting the terms and settings of engagement prior to the development of objectives. Joining research participants 'on the skarrel', I learn that ontologies are fluid rather than fixed, with skarrelers expressing different desires for inclusion than expected. I argue that, at the heart of such engagements with informally organised and/or marginalized groups, there should be an ethic of care and justice, with a morality that is based on responsibility and relationships rather than rights and rules. This suggests a relational approach to planning that embraces principles of democracy and pluralism, and of difference and multiculturalism - one that is thoroughly flexible in both form and ontology, and that is able to achieve far more nuanced conceptions of what it means to be included - with genuine intentions to plan with informality, rather than for it.