Paper short abstract:

Competition to attract industry to Pietermaritzburg from rival Durban resulted in high environmental and social damage. Worrisome continuities exist between growth-obsessed planning of the apartheid era and the municipality’s current developmental vision.

Paper long abstract:

Pietermaritzburg was the first capital of the colony of Natal, and its largest city until the late 19th century. A long period of economic and demographic stagnation set in in the early 20th century, however and, in the shadow of the burgeoning port of Durban eighty kilometres away, Maritzburg acquired the reputation of a "Sleepy Hollow." The Depression then induced an acute crisis most visible in the sprawling slums of the city's so-called black belt. An innovative experiment in local government and social medicine in the 1940s and early 50s centered upon peri-urban Edendale. However, frustration with this alternative model eventually led the city to embrace the industrialization policy favoured by the apartheid government. Desperate to attract industry away from the more attractive Durban, city council adopted policies that profoundly changed the built and natural environment of the city and environs, with long-term devastating costs to the majority population. This paper examines some specific instances where competition with its main civic rival resulted in high environmental and social damage. It concludes with an alert to worrisome continuities between growth-obsessed planning of the apartheid era and the developmental vision of the current, democratically-constituted municipality.