Economic & Industrial

Development
City of Cape Town
Discussion Papers Workshop
20 January 2009
 Key questions
• How should Cape Town respond to the ecological
limits to economic growth & development?
• Is there „elbow room‟ for a local economy that meets
basic needs through sustainable resource use?
• What economic development path must Cape Town
follow?
• How to integrate ecological limits to economic &
industrial development?
• Can we use sustainable economic development to
overcome apartheid spatial patterns?
 Cape Town recognises the challenges
• CoCT recognises need for paradigm shift
– “current rate of natural resource exploitation will retard future
economic growth”
– sustainability seen as “the primary vehicle through which to address
poverty and unemployment”
– “future economic growth in Cape Town is dependent on
environmental sustainability”
– “the economic opportunities inherent in the threats of climate change
should be immediately exploited, benefiting both the economy, the
local community and the environment”
– Key CoCT documents:
• Updated Growth Scenarios (2007)
• Economic and Human Development Strategy (EHDS)
• 2007-2012 Integrated Development Plan (IDP)
• Energy and Climate Change Strategy (for Cape Town) (2006)
• A draft report on Renewable Energy and the City of Cape Town:
an Economic Model of Environmental Costs (2007)
Other players reaching similar
conclusions
• NGOs & universities working with communities on
sustainable urban agriculture & house construction
methods
• Accelerate Cape Town formed by influential business
leaders
• Cambridge Programme for Industry & Cape Town
Partnership actively facilitating business to adopt
sustainability approaches
• Investments by Investec & Old Mutual in „sustainability
projects‟
• Challenge has been how to ensure that paradigm shift
shapes economic growth & development plans
 A Resource Consuming City
• Despite above, existing plans confirm a “consuming city”
– A mass market of consumers of urban goods - houses,
vehicles, energy, food, leisure, household appliances &
fittings
– Constituted by hundreds of “consuming neighbourhoods”
– That buy from outside (energy, water, waste removal
services, building materials, food, vehicles, etc.)
• Also shaped by apartheid logic (spatial form, function,
economy, tax base, etc.)
– urban land use mitigates against sustainable resource
use, equity & integration
• Economic growth takes place in “consuming enclaves”
– blind to ecological inefficiency of a “consuming city”
 Towards A Sustainable City
• Economic growth on the basis of equity, integration &
sustainability
• Integrating sustainable resource use into economic
growth
– Reducing rates of consumption of natural resources - by
reducing, reusing and recycling
– Reducing material inputs into production & consumption
processes
– New industries
– Current industries - regulations, conversions
• Can 2009, 2010 and 2011 reviews of the 2007-2012 IDP
& the 2012-2017 IDP incorporate this model?
Elements of the ‘sustainable city’ model
• A city industrial policy & strategy
• A localisation strategy to stimulate local economies
• Overcoming apartheid spatial relations
• Diversified, shared &equitably redistributed benefits of
economic growth & development
• New industries driving economic growth
• Reconceptualising the economy to integrate the poor as
productive players
• Consolidating food sovereignty
• Universal access to free basic services
• Basic building block is the “sustainable neighbourhood”
• Make sustainable city model more explicit & central in
CoCT policy debates & actions
A sustainable neighbourhood
• Generates more energy than it consumes
• Generates zero waste
• Meets most of its basic food requirements from
local sources
• Requires little or no fossil fuels to transport
people
• Releases minimal amounts of CO2
• In theory the „sustainable neighbourhood‟ makes
less demands on externally provided services
 Industrial policy
• A policy-led process of interventions to drive &
promote sectoral growth & development
– GDSs held in significant number of municipalities
• Key elements
– Harnessing investment & production decisions
– Identification & support to priority sectors
– Various incentives & penalties to mobilise capital
– Skills development & labour productivity
– Labour intensity or substantial employment multipliers
– Stimulation of local economies
– Major infrastructure development
– An equity & trade perspective – how to shape value chains to
advantage local economies
– A city that specialises in knowledge-based systems, technologies,
products, value chains & investments that promote sustainability
based industries
 Which industrial sectors?
• Relevant sectors/activities
– renewable energy
– conversion of existing systems
– carbon trading
– new inner city eco-designed office blocks
– sustainable construction
– sustainable marine culture businesses
– organic farming
– recycling
– public transport
– eco-tourism,
• Which sectors to prioritise?
 Energy security
• The formation of an “energy consortium”
– to mobilise research & investment
– in massive renewable energy & energy efficiency
schemes
• Resources to roll out solar water heaters
• Biogas digesters
– Need for a city-wide biogas feasibility study
– A target to promote biogas in all new buildings and
settlements (50%?)
 Localisation
• How to foster economic activity in townships?
• How to harness local savings, labour & physical
resources for local production & wider consumption?
• Cooperatives relevant here
– Needs & challenges of existing coops
– Municipal policy & strategy to support & promote coops
– Procurement spend on coops
– Providing incentives for coops
• Other possible interventions
– Urban agriculture on a massive scale
• A critical mass providing for local markets
• Provide infrastructure, extension, financial & market support
at required level, scale & regularity
• Adapt policies & by-laws to ensure success of urban
agriculture
• Massively improve the recycling of organic waste
– Recycling
Overcoming apartheid spatial relations
• New sustainable economy not in “consuming
enclaves”
• Compacting development
– to stem the sprawl
– to foster intensive & inward oriented spatial
development
• Mixed activity corridors
– high-density, mixed-land uses
• Densification
– maximise space use
– maximise necessary economic thresholds to
support local economic development