• "Greenfields" areas - large tracts in which no development or settlement had taken place;
• "Infill" areas - undeveloped areas within existing townships which had escaped development or settlement, usually through policing. These areas typically comprised "buffer strips" between the racial ghettoes of apartheid South Africa.
• Upgradeable Informal Settlements - the number of informal settlements in greater Cape Town had grown rapidly through the 1980's and into the 90's, and some were on land that would lend itself to upgrading.

The intended strategy was to synchronise the development of the greenfields sites and the upgrading of the informal settlements, so that most of the residents of informal settlements could relocate to the greenfields areas, releasing the informal settlements for development. At the same time the Infill areas would be developed, but primarily for the benefit of the burgeoning population living in shacks in the backyards of formal houses in the old townships.

A complicating factor, however, was that the greenfields areas were under the ownership of the provincial government, whereas the infill areas and informal settlements were owned by local government. It was essential, therefore, for the provincial and local government housing departments to work in tandem. Whilst there was agreement on this in principle, the ability of the two different parties to deliver has been very different - for reasons that relate directly to the immense restructuring that has taken place in government since late 1993 - precisely when the implementation of the iSLP was to commence.

One of the first products of the dismantling of apartheid structures was the abolition of the "Tricameral Parliament" infrastructure, which resulted in a large number of officials being redeployed in provincial government departments. The Western Cape provincial administration received a very significant addition of experienced personnel, not least within its Housing Department. As a result the Province was more than capable of developing its land within the iSLP.

Local government within the iSLP project area had a completely contrary experience. When the Implementation Phase began, all the informal settlements within the iSLP were within the ambit of small, under-resourced interim local authority structures. When, in 1996, the local authority structure in the whole metropole was restructured, these potential projects came under the ambit of one of the six metropolitan sub-structures, which happened to be poorly endowed with housing development expertise. As a result, very little upgrading of informal settlements has taken place. Some of the infill areas have become informal settlements, and the balance have still to be developed.

The consequence, therefore, has been that the greenfields sites have been rapidly developed, almost exclusively for the benefit of residents of the informal settlements. Tragically, however, as these households have relocated their places in the informal settlements have been taken by others, and the opportunity to reduce densities in the informal settlements and to initiate upgrading has been lost. This is the consequence of the weakness of the local authority combined with the economic and shelter pressures in a poor, urbanising society.

For more details of the residential development programme see Housing.

Running just behind the township development process was the programme for providing Education, particularly for children. The provision of schools is an indispensable component of any integrated human settlement project. In South Africa the provision of education is the responsibility of provincial government, within policy parameters set by national government.

The need for schools was estimated on the basis of 1 primary school per 1 000 residential sites, and 1 secondary school per 2 000 sites. The budget was drawn up on this basis, with 50% of finance to be made available by the iSLP fund, and the balance provided from the Education Department’s budget. However, as implementation started, the Department was facing a crisis within the iSLP project area - schools in the existing townships were completely overcrowded because of the impact of all the informal settlements. There was an urgent need to extend these schools at the same time as new schools would be built in the greenfields areas. A massive building programme was launched by the provincial departments of Education and Works, through which by mid-2000 11 schools had been extended and 16 new schools built: a total of 554 classrooms.

Almost all of the school building to date has been financed from the iSLP Fund. The balance must be financed from the provincial budget, which currently is almost all expended on operating costs. The Department has, however, undertaken to meet its commitments to the iSLP communities.

The Health needs of the communities are addressed by the Health Departments of the Province and of the local authorities, in terms of a joint strategy. The Province is responsible for the public hospitals, including day hospitals and large community health centres. The local authorities are responsible for clinics and small community health centres, the focus of which is children up to the age of 13.

Most of the iSLP Health budget has been applied to the upgrading of 8 existing facilities in the established townships - increasing their capacity to address primary health care needs. In the greenfields areas a large community health centre and maternity & obstetrics unit has been built in Delft, and a smaller community health centre in Weltevreden Valley. A 250-bed regional hospital is scheduled to be built in Philippi East, and although it is top priority for the health department the required funding, both operational and capital, will not be available to the Provincial Department for a few years.

The other capital investment component of the iSLP is the construction of Civic Facilities - halls, sports fields and libraries. These are the responsibility of the local authority, and the iSLP provides the local authority with 50% of the capital funding for approved projects.

The many changes within local authorities mentioned above have also made it difficult to create new strategies for the provision and operation of facilities. The current "metropolitan sub-structures" are an amalgam of previous structures which each had their own policies and strategies. As a result the new authorities inherited a very uneven geographical distribution of facilities, to which the operating budget is inescapably skewed. As a result some of the capital investment decisions within the iSLP have been made on a rather ad hoc basis by the authorities, and not everything that has been built has yet had access to the necessary operational funds.