PLANNING AND PARTICIPATION IN CITIES THAT MOVE: IDENTIFYING OBSTACLES TO MUNICIPAL MOBILITY MANAGEMENT † LOREN B. LANDAU * , AURELIA SEGATTI AND JEAN PIERRE MISAGO University of the Witwatersrand, South Africa SUMMARY The dual processes of rapidly transforming cities and administrative decentralisation demands that local government address human mobility as a means of countering urban poverty. Despite this imperative, local authorities are often poorly equipped to address the needs of poor and transient residents. Through an examination of four South African municipalities, this article helps to identify three critical factors working against effective responses: poor data and conceptual bias; institutional ambiguities and budgeting processes; and, ironically, participatory planning. Although any one of these could serve as a basis for an article, by taking them together, we better summarise the challenges’ scope and outline areas for further research and policy intervention. The article concludes by considering these findings’ practical and scholarly implications. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. key words—local government; migration; urbanisation; South Africa; budgeting; planning; popular participation INTRODUCTION The scale and pace of urbanisation and human mobility have forced these concerns onto the global governance agenda. From a 30 per cent urban population in the 1950s, the world is now crossing the tipping point where the majority of the world’s residents live in cities. Because of natural growth and various forms of human mobility, there are approximately five million new urban residents every month across the globe. But all cities are not equal: between 1975 and 2005, urbanisation in developing regions averaged 3.4 per cent per year compared with 0.8 per cent in more developed regions (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), Population Division, 2002). This rate will likely slow, but urban growth in the global south will continue to outpace the north: averaging 2.2 per cent versus 0.5 per cent per year between 2005 and 2030 (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), Population Division, 2010; United Nations HABITAT, 2010) with particularly remarkable transformations in what are often poorly resourced towns and peri-urban zones. Debates over migration’s specific drivers, dynamics and developmental consequences continue (see Bocquier, 2005; White and Lindstrom, 2005; Potts, 2011; Dyner et al., 1991), but one message is clear: countering urban poverty demands that local governments address human mobility. However, outside of the industrialised north (Europe, Australia and North America), there is little scholarship on municipal authorities’ responses to migration and little evidence that those in developing countries have proactively and systematically engaged human mobility (United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 2009). Through an examination of four South African municipalities, this article helps to demonstrate how we may come to terms with local governments’ responses or lack thereof and *Correspondence to: L. B. Landau, African Centre for Migration & Society, University of the Witwatersrand, PO Box 76, Wits 2050, Johannesburg, South Africa. E-mail: loren@migration.org.za † Research for this article was sponsored by The Programme to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development (PSPPD), a programme of the Presidency, Republic of South Africa; the Delegation of the European Union; the South African Local Government Association (SALGA); The Institute of Research for Development (IRD), France; and The Atlantic Philanthropies. The contents of this brief are the sole responsibility of authors and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the Presidency (RSA), the European Union, SALGA or any of the others who invested in this research. public administration and development Public Admin. Dev. 33, 113–124 (2013) Published online 25 February 2013 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com) DOI: 10.1002/pad.1642 Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.