Building sustainable neighbourhoods in South Africa: learning from the Lynedoch case

Urban development strategies that aim to eradicate poverty will only be successful if these strategies include ecological sustainability criteria relating to sanitation, solid waste removal, energy, building materials and food security.((1)) This paper uses the Lynedoch EcoVillage development in Stellenbosch (near Cape Town) to demonstrate that this can result in a balance between growth, equity and sustainability without any one of these criteria being seen as less or more important. In practice, however, judgments need to be made, and original intentions are often thwarted by conditions as they emerge during the course of the development process. Lynedoch EcoVillage is a significant case because it is the first intentional, socially mixed ecologically designed urban development in the South African context. To this extent, the Lynedoch Development is a challenge to both the traditional unsustainable approaches to urban design and infrastructure that have dominated the democratic period in South Africa since 1994, and to the perpetuation of economic apartheid whereby the rich and poor have remained segregated.