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Paul Davidoff charged planners in 1965, as a profession making urban life more beautiful, exciting, creative and more just, as having little to say. The task thereupon was to train a generation of planners to go well beyond the designers of the sixties in their ability to prescribe future urban life. Nijkamp, in 1980, affirms the utopians’ claim that the future is open and flexible, and that every development in the community, could imply a surprising step towards something better. A half century since Davidoff’s indications, planners encounter ever expanding planning approaches, “towards something better”, ranging from compact cities, transit oriented developments, new urbanism, new ruralism, shared cities, to smart growth and, of late, green urbanism and eco-cities; all in response to multifunctionality. Although the concept of multifunctionality has gained increasing attention the last decade, there is much frustration amongst planners regarding a proper set of broadly based definitions and clear statements concerning its scientific points of departure. This research argues that a combination of planning approaches are a more suitable response in attaining multifunctional land use; especially as megatrends underscore the need for moving away from seeking a predictable single future or outcome. The uniqueness of the Southern African landscape, inherently being rural, necessitated a rural accentuation on multifunctionality. Applying theory-based sampling as part of qualitative inquiry into the recently planned rural village of Verkykerskop, acclaimed by the Charter for New Urbanism in 2012, it is questioned whether the reciprocal employment of planning approaches induced multifunctional rural land use. Offering a design philosophy, whereby “farming, playing and living” is attained through the combined appliance of new urbanism, rural urbanism and green urbanism in planning the rural village, conclusions are drawn relating to the conduciveness of these approaches in achieving multifunctional rural land use

Africa is currently the fastest urbanising region in the world and has subsequently become the centre of continuously growing attention from planning practitioners and academics. Many of these scholars argue for a unique African planning approach in light of the failure of the African urban landscape to emulate Western models of urbanisation. However, whilst practitioners and academics are deliberating concepts like decolonisation and African urbanism, African urban residents have been labouring nonstop to create sustainable living environments and meaningful lives for themselves. This paper aims to showcase how these residents have proven themselves to be active agents in constructing sustainable human settlements rather than simply being passive victims of relentless structural processes beyond their control. It argues the failure of unique African planning approaches and decolonisation attempts to recognise and more importantly, incorporate the solutions provided by the said African residents, because of the inherent Western ideals and ways of thinking guiding global planning approaches. The paper employs theory-based sampling as part of a qualitative inquiry into African urbanism, decolonisation and sustainable human settlement development, before turning to case studies in South Africa and Zambia to consider the complexities within these concepts and support the line of argument. The subsequent discussion begs the question of the role and interference required from planning practitioners and academics within the rapidly changing African urban landscape. It also explores the causative position of African residents in creating sustainable human settlements, highlighting the instances where they have created unique solutions to planning problems and have shaped the urban landscape to suit their own needs and circumstances, challenging Western rationalities underpinning African planning approaches. The paper concludes that abstracting the role of African urban residents in creating a unique African planning approach, may hold potential to create more sustainable and just human settlements in Africa.