Modernity, Urban Planning and Informality

It has been a few decades after both South Africa and Zimbabwe attained independence, but sadly, colonial approaches still determine urban planning policy. These have continued to view urban informality as a spatialised aberrant, which deserve annihilation. This chapter discusses the nature of urban planning in South African and Zimbabwean cities and how such a planning practice is in conflict with the context in which it is being applied. This critical disjuncture between urban informality and planning creates sites for criminalisation, which does not help the cause of the urban poor, thus bringing to the fore urban planning and urban informality crisis in South African and Zimbabwean cities.