"THE MAP PRECEDES THE TERRITORY¡­"
The cartography1 of 'Integrated Development Planning' in South Africa

Paper delivered at the AESOP '98 Conference, Aveiro, 23-24 July 1998

Ritte 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.

Full Context