The Cape Town Planning Blog

A short while ago, The Cape Town Planning Blog was in its infancy. Today, it’s a teenager, with swagger and a touch of a rebellious attitude. At this rate, it will be fully-grown by the end of 2025, though not quite as old as the almost 40-year-old Town Planner writing this content 😊

The focus of the Blog (for the moment) is Cape Town Land Use Management. This will pivot to reflections on the Cape Town Spatial Planning and Property Market scenes, as the year progresses.

The most recent pieces are:

• Navigating Cape Town's Urban Landscape (02 June 2024).
• ‘Good’ Old-Fashioned Title Deed Restrictive Conditions (31 March 2024). Title Deed Restrictive Conditions very often form the core of the Town Planning Services offered.
• Administrative Penalty Town Planning Pains (first written in 2021, and updated on 31 March 2024).

There are two other good reads on here, namely:

• The Great (Se)migration: Cape Town Bound (written in 2022, but still very much relevant).
• The Slow, Painful Death of the Office. This piece was relevant at the time it was written (slowly inching out of the pandemic years), but with a growing economy, the trend is fortunately reversing. Still, it stands as a reminder of that cold, shadowy, and uncertain time.

The other links are ‘place holders’ that I’ll turn into complete articles in 2025. My aim is to post a dozen articles by the end of the year.

The next five articles will focus on:

• Sectional Title Schemes in Cape Town, and their development approval processes.
• Project Co-Ordination, and leading multidisciplinary professional teams.
•  Development Facilitation, and getting projects unstuck and moving. 
• A major rework of filler pieces from 2 years ago about Public Transportation Zones and Reduced Parking Requirements in Cape Town.
• Cape Town’s Municipal Spatial Development Framework and District Plans.