The alignment between spatial planning, transportation planning and environmental management within the new spatial systems in South Africa

The debate and discourse for the need to integrate spatial planning, transportation planning and environmental management strategically, functionally and operationally is ongoing since the early 1990s. This includes the articulation of the planning instruments used by the professionals within these functional fields and the way in which it is coordinated and applied as to enhance planning, development and delivery in an integrated fashion. With the approval of the Spatial Planning and Land Use Management Act (SPLUMA) (Act 16 of 2013) and the SPLUMA Regulations (23 March, 2015), the last bastion of spatial and statutory planning legislation reform from the previous political dispensation within municipalities was transformed (RSA, 2013, 2015). Although this process is still being concluded at provincial and municipal levels of government by formulating its own new transformation structures, guidelines, policies and regulations, the question remains as to whether the disjointedness in municipalities and lack of alignment between spheres of government of the past will be addressed efficiently and effectively on strategic, functional (planning) and operational levels within the new policy and legislative provisions and frameworks underpinning improved alignment processes within the new spatial systems in South Africa?