INTEGRATION AND FRAGMENTATION THE principle of the compact city is advocated in South Africa as the answer to these problems. The city, which has been segregated and fragmented to date, must be unified. An important role is played in this connection by Leon Krier's proposals to overcome the 'deficiencies' of the modern city - extreme functional division, excessive circulation of people and goods between the zones - by the 'good city' in which the urban functions are pleasantly and attractively situated at a walkable distance from one another. THE image of the compact city is attractive, and it is difficult to criticise it in a general way. However, the question is whether this vision of the South African city has any chance of success. This is because it starts to disintegrate as soon as it is applied in practice. After all, the power required for integration is not there, because the deregulation and the ground rent mechanisms also have the South African city firmly in their grip. THE civics argue for approaches in which the city divided by apartheid can be reunited and a renewed process of assimilation can take place. This entails combining home with possible work, abolishing spatial barriers, and doing away with racial and socio-spatial segregation. At the same time, new and powerful processes of fragmentation are at work in the city, which find expression in the further suburbanization of housing and industry. The future of the South African city lies in this balance of integration and fragmentation.