Urban development over the next five years will be concentrated along public transport corridors, with urban sprawl in outlying areas a thing of the past.
SUBURBS linked to Johannesburg's extended public transport network and marginalised townships will be the site of most urban development taking place over the next five years.
This was the message delivered by Phil Harrison, the executive director of development planning and urban management, during a media breakfast held at the Civic Theatre on Tuesday, 27 May.
Harrison spelled out the City's Growth Management Strategy for the next year and made special mention of issues such as the formalisation of informal settlements, city improvement districts (CIDs) for residential areas, and the Alexandra Renewal Project (ARP).
Living in Joburg
Johannesburg's current urban form is to be reshaped. Urban sprawl along peri-urban areas will be a thing of the past; instead, priority will be given to densification along Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) corridors and Gautrain precincts.
According to Harrison, one of Johannesburg's biggest deficiencies is the lack of a public transport system and concomitant urban development alongside this. "This [Growth Management Strategy] is an attempt to bring city infrastructure in line with the vision of the City."
Development in consolidated areas such as the western and northern parts of Johannesburg (falling mostly in regions B and C) would only be considered based on the type of development planned and available infrastructure, confirmed Herman Pienaar, the director of development planning and facilitation. "We cannot build ourselves out of a traffic jam anymore. The key is available [public] transport."
Richard Holden, a development management specialist, also spoke about energy efficiency and the built environment, warning that urban dwellers would have to make a paradigm shift in how they lived and worked in buildings in the near future, and the effect of this on urban management staff. "We are going to be profoundly affected in the next 20 years in terms of how buildings are designed and how they perform."
The City commissioned the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research to compile design guidelines for energy efficient buildings in Johannesburg, "intended to make designers and developers aware of a new paradigm in building design". This will be completed in June.
Formal settlements
The other major development focus for the City will be on marginalised areas. According to Harrison, one third of the City's residents lay outside the urban regulatory framework. This housing sector also grew at seven percent a year, while certain areas such as Ivory Park had grown by a thousand percent from 2000 to 2006.
Professor Phil Harrison, executive director of planning and urban management says the city's current urban form is to be reshaped
(Photo: Enoch Lehung, City of Johannesburg)
Joburg has about 182 such settlements and hopes to accelerate their formalisation with an innovative new approach. "New township development tends to be slow and resource intensive," said Yondela Selemela, the director of strategic support services. Instead, the City hoped to hasten the formalisation process by introducing a new land use category called "special for transitional residential settlements" with specific regulatory clauses tied to it.
This formalisation approach had been successfully used in Brazil and meant an informal settlement could be formalised in about nine months, as opposed to the three-plus years that was currently the norm, Harrison said.
The advantages of formalisation speak for themselves, and include bringing these areas into the urban environment of the city, providing regulatory control, removing the link between informal and illegal, and unlocking the latent investment potential of the land. Formal areas also receive the benefit of basic municipal services such as water, sanitation and roads over time.
Johannesburg's department of housing is undertaking a feasibility study on all informal settlements to identify those ideal for formalisation.
Residential CIDs
CIDs for residential areas may also be a reality in the near future. The public participation process on residential CIDs closes on 1 June and so far many concerns have been raised.
The City was originally approached by residents in the suburbs of Glenhazel and Savoy, among others, wishing to be considered in this legislative framework. Usually CIDs are formed in business and industrial precincts to improve safety and security in these areas and to complement existing municipal services.
Concerns raised by people so far include the additional levies they will have to pay, how this will change the social structure of the suburb, and legal issues around arms and weapons. The issue was complex and held a number of challenges, Selemela said. "Residential CIDs will change the nature of governance over large parts of the city."
An external advisory committee will assess the public's response to the proposal and the way forward for the City.
Alex and Fourways
One urban development programme regularly in the news is the Alexandra Renewal Project. Contrary to the negative coverage so often received in the media, the ARP was "probably one of the most successful projects in the country in terms of its delivery and pace of development", Harrison said.
The ARP is one of the City's key development objectives; it aims to create a sustainable and integrated community in Alexandra. "It is often as development happens that tensions emerge because expectations are raised." The City plans to continue and extend support for the ARP and Cosmo City over the next few years.
Harrison also highlighted the Fourways area, much in the news in recent months. Residents in this suburb are particularly upset about the high rates growth of their properties relative to the available infrastructure.
Harrison admitted that the City had been playing catch-up since 2001 and that the property boom of the last five years had added to the pressure. The boom in the north was now over, he believed, and would allow breathing space to bring infrastructure up to standard.
Fourways had been allocated R180-million in the 2008-09 financial year for several projects.
The City's future lay in consolidating the urban framework of greater Johannesburg, Harrison concluded. "The message [to you] is really that we are using the tools at our disposal to shift patterns of development."
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