A second airport near Atlantis, public transport access within 500m of every home, and the densification of the West Coast and north-eastern suburbs are among the proposals for a new, long-term spatial development plan for Cape Town.

A draft plan that outlines the areas suitable for development, and those where the impact of development needs to be better managed, has reached its final stages. By 2010, it will replace outdated 20-year-old development plans.

The council says it needs to restrain Cape Town from expanding uncontrollably and absorbing surrounding towns like Malmesbury, Paarl and Stellenbosch. The present urban edge line allows for 10 to 20 years of urban growth.

On Tuesday the council's committee on planning and environment (Pepco) endorsed another draft of the Cape Town Spatial Development Framework, which in future will be used to assess applications from property developers and guide changes in land-use rights and public investment in infrastructure.

The draft policy will be open to another round of public scrutiny early in August, once the committee has considered all eight district spatial plans.

Brian Watkyns, Pepco chairperson, said the plan provided a useful and effective means of monitoring and managing land development in the city.

The city said it wanted to protect agricultural land in Constantia, Somerset West and Durbanville while the relationship between development and the coastline in Monwabisi, Mnandi and Silverstroomstrand had to be improved.

Better management of small rural settlements also had to be achieved. City director for spatial planning Catherine Stone said the council deliberately wanted to manage urban growth to compact and densify the city.

The spatial development framework would not give or take away existing zoning rights, and would be implemented through five key strategies, which included the move away from the present radial movement system, in which most roads led in and out of the central city, in favour of a grid-based movement system to better link the north and south, and east and west.

Stone said development had to be encouraged on key transport routes to make the Integrated Rapid Transport (IRT) system more viable, especially in the south-eastern parts of the city. The city wants to see a transport system within half a kilometre of every home, and a rail link between Khayelitsha and Kuils River, Atlantis and Cape Town, and Malmesbury and Cape Town. A site south of Atlantis would remain vacant for a possible additional airport, and a replacement for the Fisantekraal light aircraft airport.

The plan proposes that more jobs be created in the south-eastern areas of the city, while large-scale employment-generating activities be earmarked for Bellville surrounds, Airport Industria and Heartlands (Strand).