Essay on Urban Governance: Examining Diffuse Authority & Unspoken Conventions

Introduction

Governance is a container concept that carries different implications for different interest groups (Hendriks, 2013). It may be used to imply diffuse authority in various political and non-civil contexts. Furthermore, governance may exist in the absence of controlling influence. In settings where governance is not explicit and structured, the social setups may depend on unspoken conventions to guide practice and behavior.

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When embarking on an assessment of urban settings such as in the southern Cities, both implicit and explicit governance processes must be taken into considerations (Ballard, 2017). The centralism or decentralism of policy procedures, as well as the interactivity of kaleidoscopic governance forces, must be keenly interrogated while trying to understand the root causes of the persistent urban problems in the South. In this journey towards understanding urban governance, a clear distinction shall be made between good urban governance and simply urban governance.

The legal-political governance structures in major cities and countries are always charged with the legislative functions and policy directionality. This analysis shall try to understand the links between such lawmaking capabilities and the potential opportunities and problems in the City. Both the positive and negative potential impacts of policy directions shall be traced in understanding the City’s growth potentiality (Ballard, 2017; Hendriks, 2013).

Good Urban Governance

Governance refers to the collaborative processes that pools the roles of a host of actors in the managerial, policy, and budgetary decisions of a social system (Hendriks, 2013). Good governance in a cosmopolitan system thereby references the proper and proactive coordination of these policy and organizational factors to achieve mutual goals. The private and public institutions in a good governance structure concede power to the rule of law and the overall justice system. Theory suggests that the practical definition of urban governance tries to analyze the

‘the sum of the many ways individuals and institutions, public and private, plan and manage the common affairs of the city... [This] includes formal institutions as well as informal arrangements and the social capital of citizens’ (Haferburg & Huchzermeyer, 2015; p. 4).

The continued inter-factors collaboration and respect for established power settings characterize the smooth running of the various layers of societal collaborative factors. While attempting to approach governance on a holistic perspective, proponents advocate for respect for the modern global revolution(Ballard, 2017). Local governance principles must highlight the global unifying development goals established by international bodies. All the facets of society must appear to be pushing in the same direction in the metropole if they are to strive towards good governance. As opposed to government (in their strict definition), governance is not solely based on formal authority. It, however, entails the full range of factors that work together to hold the societal fabric together. Civil societies and other non-governance forces are thereby essential considerations in the governance conversation (Hendriks, 2013).

Urban governance and international collaboration

As recognized by the United Nations, governance is one of the crucial development goals under the Sustainable development goals banner. While recognizing governance and collaboration as essential goals in the SDGs, the global umbrella body recognized the need for a deep focus on the intent of local centers of authority for the success of empirical studies and economic and social interventions. An attempt to understand good urban governance and its impact on development must begin from the full comprehension of the heuristic interaction of various social forces that act as societal drivers. Such complex interactions in urban setups may characterize several spheres of authority as well as institutional accountability (Ballard, 2017).

Urban governance structures do not govern in isolation. Instead, their authority is intersected with superior forces existing both locally and across the borders. The openness and bureaucratic flexibility of local authority allow local economies, for instance, to engage and interact meaningfully in international trade and development. Staying party to trade policies and agreements depend on the value systems and mission of the urban government. Global cities, we should point out, are inherently challenging to govern due to their cosmopolitan outlook and the competing interests. The various towns are, thereby, dealing with development, planning, management, and governance.

In understanding the global cooperation in governance, we may consider the active environmental action movement that currently involves a variety of states working together to attain common goals. The reduction of greenhouse emissions now requires concerted efforts by various municipalities to develop uniting global policies and value systems. Such multinational relations thereby transcend the singular bureaucracies set by different urban governments and prioritize transnational social interactions.

Urban Governance in the South African context – challenges

South African cities have become significantly turbulent in recent times (Turok, 2016). The volatile democracy that characterizes the South African Cities continues to exist on a highly ´flammable´ social fabric. As such, the cities continue to be vulnerable to fresh waves of unrest and dissent. While democracy, in most cases, intends to create an obedient nationalistic citizenry, the South African scenario appears to be built on shaky foundations of deep-rooted unequal resource distribution. The continued unrests in the Cities are, as such, caused by housing injustices, eviction of squatters, and insufficient service delivery. An intersection of several factors has seen an escalation of public mistrust and largescale dissatisfaction with the governance system (Ballard, 2017; Turok, 2016).

It is quite unfortunate that the South African cities are still grappling with public unrest issues that existed in the height of the apartheid. Despite efforts to solve past injustices, recent evictions and inadequate services appear to return the healing nation to the inequities of the past. The informal urbanization in most cities has created a volatile situation that continues to generate policy headaches for the city-level governments (Turok, 2016). When attempts are made by the regional government to restore vandalized connections, for instance, the shack dwellers often run revenge attacks on the municipal representatives. These back and forth with the shack dwellers are despite the illegal electricity tappings creating a great danger to children in their societies. Governance is thereby faced by an ugly situation of a highly irritable and ignorant society that feels betrayed by its government´s early promises (State Of The Cities Report, 2016).

A further challenge that presents itself to the municipal governments is the lack of complete financial backing from the national governments (Ballard, 2017; Turok, 2016). The national government in South Africa, instead, focuses on rural developments and research. This economic restructuring of the national budget and the intentions of the ratepayers to go on a revolt against rate payment creates a further limitation to the spending power of the city governances (State Of The Cities Report, 2016).

Urban governance strategies in South African Metropolitan areas

Strategies to urban governance in South African cities borrow closely from the existing topics in international governance debates. The current two-tier metropolitan structure has been significantly inspired by the fight for autonomy, efficiency, and distributional factors. Collaboration among the critical stakeholders in urban governance is of great essence in case the wide-ranging impacts are to be achieved. New strategies must be adopted by the collaborative units to understand the processes in urban governance (State Of The Cities Report, 2016).

Some of these key stakeholders in urban governance in South Africa include government institutions, civic leadership, non-formal sector leaders, international agencies, and private-sector leadership. While these different components of management may exhibit conflicting interests, they also present diverse human assets that are essential in vision setting and strategic development in the urban economic and social directionality (Haferburg & Huchzermeyer, 2014).

While these components appear to work for the same governance goals, they have often seemed to focus their attention on the sectoral goals at the expense of spatial and cross-cutting strategies (Haferburg & Huchzermeyer, 2014). These societal movements, thereby, appear to stay in operational conflicts in the metropoles. The isolationistic approaches to strategy formulation limit the collaborative dispositions among the various sectoral drivers. Such isolated efforts often leave the citizenry exposed to similar shortcomings while the institutions remain cocooned in their deceptive high ranks. The citizens thereby fall back into fending for themselves and, as such, move back into overcrowded settlements and government spaces (State Of The Cities Report, 2016).

Structurally, though, the Cities in South Africa are appropriately governed. The formal bureaucratic systems are found to operate optimally. These optimal bureaucracies are, further, complemented by appropriate policy documentation and long-term development plans. The post-apartheid municipalities in South Africa are adequately structured and resourced relative to other cities in Africa and the world (Haferburg & Huchzermeyer, 2014). The growth of these cities is furthermore sustainable, productive, and democratic.

Despite the substantial structural and process governance, though, the leadership in these municipalities are still determined to be mostly inadequate. Complexity of bureaucratic structures in these cities appears to act as a mask to the lack of interpersonal presence of the leadership. This lack of strategic direction that focuses on the citizenry over structural perfection seems to be the reason for the poor evaluation of the spatial approach to urbanization. We again recognize the great difficulty that exists in handling the diversity in stakeholder and mass interests in a metropole. It is, however, interesting to note that in a country that the majority of citizens have lamented the systemic oppression during the apartheid, systemic rigidity still appears to take a central position in their urban governance structure (Haferburg & Huchzermeyer, 2014; State Of The Cities Report, 2016).

Efforts are thereby required to create cross-cutting leadership practices that merge the diverse interests of the represented groups in the urban governance structure. The non-formal leaders of the local communities are an essential component of the spatial leadership teams. These appointed community leaders will provide a context-specific approach that may disrupt the established bureaucratic structure. Metropolitan development and urban governance must, thereby, integrate the grounded viewpoint of the humanistic lenses.

Growth strategies in the South African and other global cities have primarily been determined to be unsustainable. These strategies have been identified to be largely resource-intensive and energy unsustainable. While the various facets of urban governance...