'Creative Destruction': Early Modernist Planning in the South Durban Industrial Zone, South Africa*

This article presents a contribution to recent efforts in South African geographical research to examine historical landscapes as an integration of concerns with the broader discourses of modernism with more established concerns about the production of racial discourse. It aims to show how the construction of the South Durban industrial zone, in the city of Durban, South Africa, was historically planned within an emerging modernist planning discourse. In the early twentieth century, modernist planners sought to design cities to promote industrial efficiency. The first of my three objectives is to demonstrate how South Durban was conceived of as a modernist industrial landscape as a result of the juxtaposition of the interests of industry, and the local and national state. The second aim is to outline how these interests used the technical planning tools of modernism, particularly zoning, to implement the vision of a modern industrial zone and to stamp out community resistance to these plans. The third objective is to show the outcome of the modernist planning process in South Durban. The article demonstrates that the vision of a planned industrial zone was, by the early 1970s, successfully implemented and became the home to 70 per cent of Durban's industrial activity. The joint goals of early local and national state politicians, officials and industrialists were hereby fulfilled. The industrialisation process, however, had severe consequences for communities living in South Durban. There was, therefore, continued resistance from local communities to the land alienation and relocation programmes that were instituted to make way for industry. This evidence confirms that the modernist project, even in contexts of political inequality, was never complete. The article provides a historical context for the current controversial plans to 're-industrialise' South Durban and the similarity of these proposals to earlier top-down processes of industrial modernisation.