The role of planners in public open space production in contemporary African cities : a reinjection of the social agenda in planning practice

Abstract

African cities face challenges of delivering quality public open spaces within set time frames, under constrained budgets, varying levels of political will and professional capacity. These challenges in conjunction with the ‘emotional’ conundrum faced by planners, continue to define the roles of planners and prohibit them from confronting the status quo. This paper argues that the planning profession needs to acknowledge that; to respond to the challenges of contemporary African public open space, an intentional deliberate paradigm is required. This paradigm requires a spatial imagination to reconcile the disjuncture between the static place of planners and the active space of citizens.