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One person has the power to make great change, as some
Joburgers have shown in various inner city refurbishment projects.
MANY years ago, in the late 1970s, I visited Toronto, Canada,
for the first time. One of the impressions that has been with me ever since,
was formed when I was taken around a striking refurbishment by a local
developer of almost an entire street length of previously run-down residential
two-storey buildings.
He had basically "bought the street" and restored the
buildings, but as specialist retail and, in so doing, had revitalised the
entire street. My reaction was "wow!" - this is the way to go - imagine having
the power to influence a whole street through single ownership!
Nearly 30 years later, in 2004, on a visit to Mexico City, I experienced
the same feeling. In fact, I wrote in Citichat in October
of that year: "The city's downtown is called El Centro ... In the early 20th century it
suffered all the negative effects of decentralisation when the wealthy
residential inner-city communities moved to newer areas that allowed for easier
security provision. In addition, in the 1950s, El Centro suffered a major blow when the
university moved out of the area to a decentralised campus.
"Its buildings were generally abandoned and the area became
infested with squatters and informal traders, crime sharply increased and the
downtown went into what was prophesied as ‘terminal decline'.
"More recently, Mexico's richest businessman,
Carlos Slim, established a private initiative known as the Fundacion del Centro
Historico into which he initially invested $300-million and developed a long
term regeneration plan for the city centre. The Fundacion initially bought 70
historic buildings and set about a major refurbishment programme to turn them
generally into middle to high income residential.
"Then he brought the city government into the act in
upgrading the infrastructure - pavements, beautiful period lampposts, et cetera,
as well as providing a new Centro police force complete with CCTV system and
relocating all the informal traders - they are now banned from El Centro!
"The result is a highly walkable public environment among some
truly beautifully restored historic buildings. The refurbed residential has in
turn attracted new restaurants and high quality retail."
This visit to Mexico
City reminded me again of the extent that one person's
influence on a city can exert through ownership of a substantial area when
combined with energy and vision.
Gerald Olitzki
On Thursday, 27 August I had the privilege of walking a quadrant of the city
with lawyer/property developer Gerald Olitzki. Gerald has maintained a geographic
focus on a large area centred on Gandhi
Square but now stretching well beyond it. When I
first met him in the mid-1990s it was to discuss his proposal for rejuvenating
the then named Van der Byl Square.
Over the last decade, he has made a remarkable impact on this area of the city,
slowly working towards his ultimate dream and quietly demonstrating the power
of a focused and visionary approach.
There are a number of major developers in Jozi's inner city
that are, of course, not just a single person but have invested widely and
wisely with resultant positive effects on the urban environment. I'm thinking
of Afhco's and City Props extensive property holdings in the inner city
(between them owning probably 200 buildings).
With some of their developments, such as Afhco's 120 End Street - I
think it is now known as Ubuntu Mall - it has been able to go beyond the scope
of refurbishing an office building into retail and residential but also
upgrading and even managing the adjacent park and urban environment.
The Johannesburg Land Company is another that has had a
massive impact on Main Street
and areas around its property holdings in the southwestern quadrant of the
inner city. The list goes on! Essentially, the inner city is like a well-used
patchwork quilt with sometimes individual, sometimes multi-patches being
steadily replaced or repaired so that an overview shows a growing amount of "new"
or "refurbed" patches overlaying the old.
BG Alexander Estate
One of the refurbed patches I also visited last week was the BG Alexander
Estate on the corner of Smit and Claim streets with my old colleague, Chris
Lund, of Madulamoho. After reading my last Citichat, he decided that I needed
cheering up and invited me to see some of the great work that is being done in
the inner city in relation to the provision of low income housing.
The complex was the former BG Alexander College of Nursing
which was opened in 1947 and was vacated in 2001 -part of the crazy decision to
close teachers and nurses training colleges. Thereafter the buildings had
become a massive slum and "sinkhole" with slumlords exploiting the illegal
residents and the buildings rapidly decaying as services were cut off - it became
a rat-infested hell-hole.
It again raises the question of accountability for public
sector assets but we've been there before!
The BG Alexander complex was eventually handed over to the
City by the province and Joshco, the City's social housing wing, together with
the Johannesburg Development Agency, converted the building into "semi social
housing" in partnership with Madulamoho Housing Association, which manages the
complex.
Madulamoho is a Christian-based social housing company that
has built itself an admirable track record in managing low income housing in
the inner city. The complex boasts 400 units housing about 1 000 people with
monthly rentals from R500 to R1 200, dependant on the accommodation provided.
It has a magnificent and well-used playground and crèche, a "creativity centre"
and offers, through Metropolitan Evangelical Services (Mesaksie), individual
assessment and all types of training courses, including literacy.
Across Claim
Street, to its west, is the Europa and the eKhaya
neighbourhood - both the results of different but highly successful urban
regeneration projects - while to the north of BG Alexander is a hijacked
residential building. Extraordinary!
A great deal of the capital funding for these particular
social housing projects has come from the City. It is, of course, not a
developer in the accepted meaning of the term, but its initial capital
investment in the late 1990s, together with that from Blue IQ, at a time when
many were happy to give away their buildings in the inner city, was critical in
order to re-establish confidence in the inner city by private investors.
The public sector initial investment took form through the
development of, among others, Mary
Fitzgerald Square, Nelson
Mandela Bridge,
Metro Mall, Faraday Market and Taxi Rank and No 1 Central Place in Newtown. The latter was a
good example of a public sector development undertaken specifically to
demonstrate to the private sector the opportunities offered by the area.
At the end of the day, it is private sector investment that
provides the majority of investment with various levels of government, in
particular local, providing the support and environment to make that investment
welcome and comfortable.
Fashion district
One potential failure with this approach appears to be the fashion district , on which I have been writing for some years. In fact,
I first covered the background to the establishment of the district in 2000 and
have written about it at least once a year every year since!
Here was an innovative approach to again use public money to
attract private sector investment. On one level it worked - the City sank about
R36-million into building what would be the world's first outdoor fashion ramp,
the Fashion Kapitol, complete with ancillary designer boutiques, shops, et cetera
et cetera and, in turn, the project attracted probably R750-million-plus in
private sector investment in its immediate area - a 20 to 1 leverage factor,
which is brilliant.
But then the wheels came off - because of construction
delays the opening date moved from 2007 to 2008 to 2009 and currently is
unknown, something that hardly provides confidence to would be tenants. The
whole philosophy of using the Fashion Kapitol as the magnet was originally
agreed to by the council to the extent that the initial operating costs that
were to be provided by the council, were actually included in the Inner City
Charter, a schedule of commitments that the mayor signed off in 2007.
To date that commitment has not just been ignored but
actively reneged on to the extent that the original investment is now at
considerable risk. It joins the New York Garment District, once providing
substance to the claim that New York was a
fashion capital rivalling Paris and Milan, in battling for its
existence, according to a recent New York Times report.
Barbican
On a brighter note, it would appear as if Old Mutual has taken the deserved
criticism of its extreme reluctance and tardiness regarding the Barbican
refurbishment to heart. Budget approval has evidently been given for the work
to commence before the end of 2009 and while there are some saying, "Yet
another promise!" I feel that progress has actually been made and that we can
look forward to something positively happening in the not too distant future.
On the Cape Town
front, I attended the Cape Town Partnership 10th anniversary conference last
week which focused on "public-private partnerships for urban regeneration".
Andrew Boraine, the partnership chief executive presented
"Lessons from the first 10 years of the Cape Town Partnership" which quoted
Hamman et al's observation that the central theme within most partnerships "is
the need to build and maintain trust between participants in a partnership also
because partners will need to take risks when relying on other partners
fulfilling their part of explicit agreements or implicit expectations".
More about the conference in the future but it is the
failure of the council to meet its obligations in relation to the fashion district
that regrettably now places a question mark over its commitment to real
partnership.
2010 plans
One of the other issues that struck me forcibly while in Cape Town was the preparations for 2010 and
the fact that what these entail is known to all and sundry. Part of the plan is
to make a celebratory walking route through the city from the station to the
stadium - excellent planning - shouldn't we be looking at something similar
relative to Ellis Park or are we?
I have a nagging concern that we in Jozi have little idea of
what arrangements have been made; it appears that the council 2010 office is
playing its cards very close to the chest.
I also attended a meeting called by the Western Cape MEC for
public works. He wants to set about developing each of the hundreds of
properties owned by the province in order to boost economic development and
social transformation. Again this comes back to my "power of one" comments
earlier. By tackling these issues through a new approach of en masse property
development, the eventual impact can be huge and really meaningful.
An interesting argument is brewing internationally about
whether iconic design and public space together can create more diverse
destinations than iconic design alone. The situation evidently emerged at the
Aspen Ideas Festival last month when Fred Kent, the president of Project for
Public Spaces (PPS), posed that question to the international "starchitect"
Frank Gehry, who promptly dismissed Kent and refused to answer the
question.
Check out what has transpired here .
It makes for interesting and thought-provoking reading.
Oil shortage
Talking about thought-provoking reading, if you get an opportunity try to get a
copy of Beyond peak oil: Will our cities collapse? by Peter Newman. He has
written extensively on city sustainability and this paper appeared in the
Journal of Urban Technology, Volume 14, Number 2, published by Routledge.
Newman points out that "nearly all cities have participated
in a global economy which has been built around the availability of cheap oil"
and poses the question as to how cities will manage in the age of reduced oil
availability. He provides various scenarios including collapse, "some cities
might easily collapse, most would be able to adapt"; the ruralised city, urban
population disperses and creates a more sustainable semi-rural lifestyle, "not
a likely scenario"; the divided city, wealthy move back to city centres which
offer electric transit and short walkable destinations, suburbs increasingly
house the poor; and the resilient sustainable solar city, quality electric
transport links city to suburbs and everywhere has genuine walkability.
What should cities be doing to ensure that they fall into
the last category? Among a number of lessons he suggests that the threat of
massive oil reduction in the not that distant future should be taken far more
seriously than is currently the case and that, as a result, we should be
planning and building cities with reduced car dependence.
"This requires ensuring social housing initiatives in any
transit oriented developments (TODs) and a crash programme in public transport
infrastructure for the middle and outer suburbs. Extensions of electric rail
lines are the obvious way to go along with integrated local buses that can
provide a service at least as quick as that provided by cars." So, it looks as
if Gautrain and BRT are right on the button! Or ...?
Clean fuel
In discussions with the City's transport department some years ago I asked if it
would be looking at alternative fuels as is now widespread in the US and
elsewhere. To provide a cleaner environment, transit systems are implementing
emerging technologies such as compressed natural gas (CNG), clean diesel, and
others. The answer was yes, it was investigating.
But, I seem to remember hearing now that the main BRT buses
that have been purchased are at Category III level on the European Toxic
Emission Schedules. In 1999, the European Commission agreed emission levels to
come into effect in 2000 - those were the Category III level. So, all new heavy
duty diesel powered vehicles coming on to the roads by 2000 had to comply with
level III.
However, there have been two distinct improvements required since
then, in 2005 and then again in 2008, while another is planned for 2013. So for
instance, carbon monoxide emissions standards developed in 1999 (10 years ago)
for new vehicles coming on to the roads in 2000 were permitted at 2,1 but had
to be dropped to 1,5 by 2008, then could remain at 1,5 for 2013.
Hydrocarbons, however, were pegged in 2000 at 0,66 then to 0,46
by 2008 and to 0,13 by 2013; nitrogen oxide 5 to 2 and then to 0,4; particulate
matter from 0,10 to 0,02 and then 0,01 and smoke from 0,8 to 0,5 and then to 0.
In December 2007, the commission published a proposal for
Euro VI emission standards. The new emission limits, comparable in stringency
to the US
2010 standards, would become effective from 2013/2014.
I tried to get confirmation of the fuel being used in the
new buses but have had no reply from the City's BRT query line so the above is
my own conjecture at this stage. Surely while setting up the BRT as a model for
the country, we should be taking the highly important issue of emissions into account
and complying with the highest possible standards - or have we?
Best, Neil
Walking tour: Saturday, 5 September
The Light Horse Regimental Museum
Johannesburg's
oldest regiment, the Imperial Light Horse now the Light Horse Regiment - it
wisely dropped the Imperial branding - celebrates its 110th anniversary on 21 September.
The two firebrands who started the regiment, Wools Sampson and Karri Davies,
decided there were three criteria to join - they must be able handle a rifle
well, they must be able to ride and they must be men.
Within the month they found themselves in battle against
fellow Joburgers.
Meet Dennis Adams and Heinrich Jansen at 1.30pm (please note
the early start time) and park at Mount
Collins, 9 Southway,
Kelvin. A cash bar will be provided so you are welcome to stay and have a
couple of drinks afterwards. The cost is R55 for members and R75 for
non-members. Booking is at Computicket.
For more information and more specific directions, telephone
Eira Bond on weekdays from 9am to 1pm on 011 482 3349.
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