Governing urban density: how policy shapes uneven densification in Cape Town, South Africa

The coronavirus pandemic has put the benefits and challenges of urban density squarely into public debate. It has exposed stark intra-city inequalities in living conditions, prompting renewed calls from scholars for better urban policy to manage densification. This chapter examines how national and city-level urban policies have contributed to unequal densification in Cape Town, and the impact on sustainable development. While urban consolidation is a global, national, and local policy priority, recent research has demonstrated the profound inequalities and spatial mismatches within Cape Town’s densifying urban form. Luxury private, mixed-use developments in the city centre are juxtaposed with overcrowded, formal/informal settlements on the periphery, while attempts to bring medium-density social housing to ‘in-between’ spaces have achieved limited results. This chapter sheds new light on the objectives and impacts of urban policies on densification in the city, specifically interrogating the (mis)match between policy and practice for three contrasting spaces: elite, transitional, and informal. Despite longstanding policy commitments to social inclusion and spatial transformation, the actual governance of densification processes has largely failed to address exclusion, informality, and inequality. Rather than seeing policy failure as simply a lack of implementation, we argue that it reveals important insights into the urban politics and political-administrative complexities of Cape Town.