Cittaslow: Going Nowhere Slowly?

Abstract

The slow movement with all of its attributing factors has proven to be a significant tool for small town development if the conditions are right. The slow movement and more particularly, the slow city movement is built on various utopian ideologies of which the core is to ensure a sustainable future for all. They aim to achieve this by educating people in small towns on how to be self-sufficient and not needy of outside assistance. This chapter firstly reviews the literature on slow cities, and then describes how the slow movement has been implemented in Sedgefield, a small coastal town located in the Garden Route of the Western Cape Province. The accreditation of Sedgefield made it the slow town headquarters of Africa and potentially therefore serves as a powerful marketing tool. In addition, the new brand also created opportunities for entrepreneurial innovation in order to create LED, poverty reduction programmes and economic welfare. In terms of LED, a good leader is extremely important to the success of small towns and Sedgefield is a case in point where number of dedicated individuals work together to make a success of the movement. A general criticism of slow cities is that it can be seen as exclusionary as it only takes into account the interests of the small group of power elites in small towns. The empirical evidence however leaves us with the question as to whether these aims will remain part of an exclusive club or not?

Slow urbanisation mainly focuses on originality, diversity, heterogeneity, sense of belonging and appropriation instead of homogeneity, monotony and uniformity. In this way, it serves for the re-exploration of local values, which have been forgotten or disregarded for a long time, and uses these values as a tool in economic development (Dogrusoy & Dalgakiran, 2011: 141).