CSIR Guidelines for the provision of social facilities in South African settlements

Facility location planning standards, access guidelines and threshold norms are an essential element of strategic forward planning and are used to allocate and reserve land for particular uses and facilities and develop capital budget plans within a planning area. This is particularly true of community-type facilities – including those provided by the public sector and those provided for by private developers.  site sizes are increasingly important in ensuring that sufficient land has been reserved for essential facilities in terms of future growth and development without being wasteful and/ or encouraging the illegal use of underdeveloped land. Besides aiding planners, standards – by providing predefined spatial norms – ideally facilitate a more equitable provision of services and facilities to diverse communities. However, standards and guidelines should always be adapted to the local contextual conditions of each city, district, suburb and neighbourhood.