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Paper
delivered at the AESOP '98 Conference, Aveiro, 23-24 July 1998
Ri?tte Oosthuizen and Elsona van Huyssteen
Department of Town and Regional Planning
University of Pretoria
Pretoria
SOUTH AFRICA
AAPS¨C Association of African Planning Schools
"The map precedes the territory" is an often quoted line of
Jean Baudrillard, a metaphor used to describe the transcendence of signs
from reflecting or mirroring the supposedly real, to signs that bears
no relation to reality whatsoever. They are simulacrums (Baudrillard,
1995: 81; Baudrillard, 1994: 6). The image for all purposes of reality
has become the truth: it is hyper-real (Baudrillard, 1995: 80).
In this paper, Baudrillard's metaphor of a map preceding a territory (in
fact several territories) is very descriptive of the newly established
practice of "integrated development planning" in South Africa.
It is our concern that planning on a strategic level in South Africa,
although seemingly progressive with regard to vast measures taken to ensure
a democratic process, orientated towards "inclusive" delivery,
has crossed a divide between real and unreal. In its seeming "realness",
its ready map, it looses its grip on reality and becomes an illusion.
By scanning the surface of this process, as well as some responses that
surfaced since its conception, this ironic turn with regard to planning
in South Africa will be explored today.
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