INFORMATION on exciting new housing developments in the Inner City, the Metro Trading Company’s new and formalised linear markets concepts, and the City’s capital allocation to Inner City Regeneration.

Housing in the Inner City
As per the Inner City Charter Commitments, Johannesburg, in close consultation with stakeholders has released the first phase of the Inner City Housing Action Plan in 2008.

Following from this, an assessment of current service infrastructure in the Inner City and engineering studies at a more local level will be undertaken. The City will work across the board to implement the Housing Action Plan. The City and its entities will work to ensure that all future infrastructure requirements are in place in advance of the anticipated roll-out.

So far, the City has provided 1 257 beds for emergency accommodation and transitional housing. It is expected that the City will have an additional further 500 beds for emergency housing, transitional accommodation and decent facilities in the Inner City by the end of 2009.

A beautiful new AFHCO apartment

On the private sector housing development side, Renney Plitt, managing director of AFHCO Developments was kind enough to offer us a tour of his latest Inner City developments. This included social amenities, such as an AFHCO-built and managed primary school, affordable bonded and rental housing for the R3 000 – R10 000 per month earners, communal style bachelor flatlets, as well as light industrial (clothing factory) and recreational facilities (End Street Park).

AFHCO’s new developments will total 3500 housing units to be delivered by mid 2011, totaling approximately a billion Rand worth of investment into the Inner City from AFHCO alone. These new developments will be concentrated in the Doornfontein and New Doornfontein areas.

For living in the Inner City at affordable rentals, AFHCO can be contacted on 011 224 2400.

Inner City linear markets
The City’s department of economic development and the Metro Trading Company are jointly involved in formalising several of the City’s currently informal markets.

So far, Hoek Street has been complete and Quartz Street is nearing completion. Johannesburg Inner City areas covered in the scope of upgrading the informal markets are the Johannesburg CBD, Newtown, Braamfontein, Hillbrow and Joubert Park; Jeppestown, Berea, Yeoville, Pageview, Vrededorp, Troyeville, New Doornfontein, and City and Suburban, to name a few.

An option for the linear markets

Linear markets stakeholder engagement processes
The stakeholders were arranged in various forums. The traders were initially addressed through their block and organizational leadership during a meeting held on 21 July 2008. About 27 block leaders and trader representatives attended this consultative session. During this meeting, the project was introduced to trader leaders and the following issues were mainly discussed:

• Allocation criteria of the linear markets to registered traders
• Relocation of traders during construction stages to be consultative
• Enforcement of by-laws to minimize abuse and illegal trading be improved
• Provision of sanitary and ablution facilities, especially for hairdressers and cooking traders be incorporated in the designs
• The size of the new linear markets to be increased to cater for the needs of the traders
• The new stalls to consider day-time storage requirements and weather-proofing

An option for the linear markets

With regard to the broader body of traders, a workshop for informal traders was held on 11 August 2008 at the Braamfontein Recreational Centre. About 700 traders from across the Inner City attended the workshop. Other stakeholder invited included the private sector, the police and even ward councilors.

Bi-lateral meetings were held with internal stakeholders during the course of development and planning of the project. Whilst the project was particularly concerned with planning and implementing the new linear markets, the outcomes of the meetings with stakeholders presented a lot of other relevant and critical information, importantly the need to develop a themed trading per area.

During the various stages of the project, the forums established by the Metro Trading Company and department of economic development were utilised to obtain inputs, exchange views and to communicate progress with internal stakeholders. These were the Project Technical Committee, The Project Management Committee and the Inner City Monitoring Forum. The internal stakeholders were further interviewed during one-on-one meetings and a standard questionnaire was answered by the various officials. Stakeholders were seeking to be assured that the new linear markets would alleviate the congestion and contribute positively towards by-law enforcement. The following designs show four different options for the markets, as well as the design of the potential ablution facilities.

The design of the stalls was adequately consulted and the persons for whom the designs are actually targeted have in principle accepted these. It becomes therefore necessary to ensure that the traders and the municipal authorities agree to accept the new linear markets designs. A consistent and perhaps monotonous approach would be defeating on the cultural diversification of the City. In this regard it was necessary that the stall design be both functionally distinct, thematically relevant and yet provide for both the function and the effect aimed at. As Michael Hart architects stated, the function of the linear markets should entail the management of informal traders, reduce congestion to pedestrians and perhaps increase the public open spaces. This is the exact ideology that is being realized via functional designs of the new formalized markets in the Inner City.

The top floors of 120 End Street

Inner City Capex over the past two financial years
The Inner City Fund began in July 2007, with a total of R204 709 717 of capital for Inner City regeneration: Joshco spent R36 670 802 on transitional housing units; JPC spent R5 594 465 on acquiring strategic properties in the inner city for key housing developments; the JDA spent R145 264 729 on the public environment upgrade of Hillbrow, Berea and Yeoville; and Pikitup spent R17 179 720 on underground street bins and mechanical sweepers.

Over and above the dedicated Inner City Fund, the 2007/08 approved Capex for the Inner City was /approximately R485 912 000. This entailed underground infrastructure such as water, sewage, and electrical sub stations and networks to beef up the ageing infrastructure of the Inner City. The total allocation to the Inner City for 2007/08 was thus R690 621 717.

The allocated 2008/09 Inner City Fund is R200m and thus far, the actual spend as per 12 May 2009 is at 70%. Expenditure for the 2008/09 financial year expected to be at 100% by June 2009. The projects allocated the Inner City Fund are Greater Doornfontein public environment upgrade, Upgrade of the sanitary lanes in Hillbrow, the Hillbrow Governor’s House, Hillbrow Quartz St upgrade, Pageview and Fordsburg public environment upgrade, and the Retail Improvement District lighting improvement. The 2009/10 financial year will see another R100m of dedicated Inner City Fund to the public environment upgrade, as a top up fund to the general infrastructure City fund.

In the next newsletter
Progress on the Inner City Charter and exciting outcomes of the June 2009 Charter Partnership Forum.

From Santhurie Naidoo
Inner City Progamme Manager