By Kirsten Wilkins, founder of ContestedSpaces.

I was taken aback by a comment made by a community member I worked with recently. She said “We don’t have a culture of objecting…” I like to think our work together has moved the needle on that by creating a sense of agency in parts of the city where communities have less resources to be litigious.

ContestedSpaces works with both communities and developers to streamline the making of positive urban environments. By understanding planning law, policy, and process within the value chain of landing capital in the ground, development can be both expedited and community/place appropriate.

As urban planning specialists, we call this portion of our work, Objection_Able. It was conceived about 18 months ago during a research study of Municipal Planning Tribunal Cases (approximately 135 cases) across the City of Cape Town to understand common challenges and contestations in the Land Use Management Application process. The learnings were numerous.

Communities are at a disadvantage in understanding planning processes and jargon. When a development looks to be impacting a community, we facilitate the understanding of this and help to create constructive inputs and able to submit objections. This is very different to being ‘Not in My Back Yard’ (NIMBY) and objecting just because one can. The Municipal Planning By Law is clear on the framework and nature of objections that can impact the decision process. Very few people outside of the planning fraternity are aware of these parameters that shape constructive dialogue and feasible objections. Additionally, the gravitas of the District and Municipal Plans are often not understood by communities as the context in which site-specific decisions are made.

It’s not the role of a community to know these planning law and process specificities, leaving people feeling utterly disempowered at worst, or sadly directing their inputs in an immediately dismissible manner. I am heartened by the City of Cape Town’s current invitation to community organisations to nominate planning representatives to be upskilled and engage more directly with the administration to bridge this gap.

ContestedSpaces also works actively with developers to avoid unnecessary and time consuming objections and appeals processes by bringing community-based concerns to the design before the application is even submitted. Typically a town planning firm will put together an application according to a brief for their developer/client. They will aim for the best basket of rights and required departures for the development proposal. We review that work and provide comment before the application is submitted so that designs can be reviewed to anticipate community objections. By analysing hundreds of applications that have been adjudicated at the Municipal Planning Tribunal, we understand the common pitfalls that can be avoided, in addition to being community and place sensitive. The time/cost savings on being considerate and policy responsive are eye watering. We appreciate that the contracting town planning firm on a project might not always have the scope or agency to identify these, and we partner to add this review step as a devil’s advocate of sorts, preferably prior to the application process to reduce later stumbling blocks.

Every site is unique and each community even more so. To be more Objection_Able, we want to share these key learnings for both communities and developers, to expedite a more considered and appropriate development environment:

Learnings for communities:

• There is a clear list of reasons that City officials will use to make a land use decision. These are listed in Section 99 of The Municipal Planning By-law. Responses/objections from a community must talk directly to these decision-making criteria in order to be considered. Urban Management issues like considerations like ‘increased crime’ or ‘increased noise at night’ are not admissible in an of themselves. Objections must be tied to the By-law criteria and within the scope of the application to address. By extension, a developer cannot state the installation of CCTV as a design component in leu of proactive urban design, as this too is management dependent and cannot be guaranteed, or tied to the rights of the property.
• A land use application is distributed for public comment because the developer/landowner is asking for a reduction in restrictions or additional rights or both. It will likely have a material impact on the surrounding properties, and the City needs to ensure that people are made aware of this change and can comment. Not every building plan goes through this process if rights are already in place. If its advertised, you need think about it because it is important.
• You don’t need to be a property owner or adjacent neighbour to comment. People’s lives can be impacted by developments that they walk past, they work at or they care about. This includes tenants. Official notifications where affected properties are shown dotted on a map surrounding the property are a minimum for the City to reach out to. If you care, you can comment. Applications for comment are listed on the City of Cape Town website. Your ward councillor should to be aware of properties that have applications requesting comment. Keep him/her accountable for communicating this so your community can comment on changes in your area.

Learnings for developers:

• Motivations need to be well-argued and well-motivated. This includes understanding and responding to current spatial planning policy. The Urban Design Policy in particular is often overlooked, but critical as it is triggered under certain circumstances.
• Comments from individual city departments do not hold the guarantee of a decision on way or the other. For example, in a recent project, Heritage officials objected in the ‘strongest terms’ to an application that went on to be approved. Cases are weighed up in their totality with all comments being considered as comments by both administration and communities alike.
• You can reach out and talk to communities before you put in your application. Understanding the context and how the community works is critical. It will save time (development costs) in avoiding objections altogether. Make space for robust dialogue with your town planner or architect to be able to raise concerns or possible challenges that will arise in a community participation processes.
• Please show more information on building plans and site development plans. It sounds so simple, but requests for more information are tedious and time wasting. Showing street sections, contours etc. ensure that negative assumptions are not made about your proposal. Ask more from your contracted architects and urban designers. The assumption that the people reviewing plans are all skilled in reading technical drawings is to the detriment of the application.

The degree of meaningful interaction and expediency of application approval is a skillset we need to work on collectively. Being Objection_Able is key for both communities and applicants hoping to stretch the envelopes of planning law and policy that apply to their project and their neighbourhood.

A city’s planning legislation, forward plans and projections on ‘how the city should be’ will not always be in lock-step what the property market is leaning toward or what a community values.

Contestation is inevitable. When that conversation happens, we hope these insights will add value in steering the application process in a way that shapes our cities in a positive way.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Property Wheel.