A call to Citizens to shape the Future of Johannesburg Executive Mayor Mpho Parks Tau at the launch of the Growth and Development Strategy for the City of Johannesburg on the 2nd August 2011 at the Turbine Hall, Newtown

Speaker of Council, Chief Whip and Deputy Chief Whip Fellow Councillors and MMCs My fellow residents Distinguished Guests

• How will Johannesburg look like in 2040
• What we do today will affect generations that will live in Johannesburg 20 years from now.
• The launch of the Growth and Development Strategy for the city or (GDS 2040) is an attempt to start answering that critical question.
  • It is a question that we cannot answer alone as the leadership of the city but with the people that we serve.
  • Today is therefore a call to action to play together as a team as we figure out the game plan for the development and growth of the city.
• It is our firm belief that simply continuing on the same path will not bring us different results; therefore, it's time to do things differently.
  • It should be clear that this administration intends to revisit things that are not working and to endeavour to come up with innovative initiatives.
  • We believe that city's operations should be run like a business, focussing on serving the customers and utilising resources to address the residents' priorities.
• Good government creates and an enabling environment to help regular people to do extraordinary things and inspires people to work together and take responsibility for their community.
  • We will be answering the question through the lens of the New Growth Path and how alignment of the city's vision to this new path will help us develop liveable communities and generate much needed jobs.
• Today marks the beginning of a nine week public outreach programme to the communities to engage them on critical issues.
  • After all, this is "Joburg our city, our future, we are all players, let's get involved".
• We will share with you highlights of what we would like the community to comment on by outlining our vision for the city guided by nine themes that will help us to shape the vision of the Johannesburg.
  • Liveable Cities
  • Resource Sustainability
  • Health and Poverty
  • Governance
  • Transport
  • Community Safety
  • Environment
  • Economic Growth
  • Smart City
• The City's first Growth and Development Strategy (GDS) was passed in 2006.
  • It was developed as a long term strategy that could tell a coherent story about Johannesburg's future development path and important for framing the City's five-year Integrated Development Planning (IDP) processes.
  • GDS is positioned to sit alongside the IDP.
  • The GDS charts the long-term strategic course, and makes some of the broader, overarching decisions about what to emphasise if the City is to accelerate economic growth and human development, and
  • The IDP defines where we want to be after five years, and how we intend to achieve long term goals.
• After 5 years the City must re-evaluate its Growth and Development Strategy to assess whether the document still provides a clear statement of the future development.
• The goals of our City require the concerted action of all Johannesburg residents and stakeholders, these goals define the bold and activist stance adopted by everyone.
• These goals are ambitious and are aimed at transforming the city within one generation. The City must improve its relationship with citizens and deepen participation to achieve these goals, it must also work to promote social cohesion amongst communities building a shared sense of purpose and intent towards realising these goals.
• We hope that this outreach programme we are about to embark on will go a long way to help us build a sense of common purpose.

After the outreach programme, we will be one step closer to completing our first phase of the decade of Consolidation which is characterised by:

• Building on a solid foundation (getting basics right)
• Building a smart city: overcoming supply side constraints
• Restructuring the Apartheid City: There are certain defects that were a result of Apartheid era planning as well as inherited reputation of certain parts of our city.
• Financial Sustainability: No city can survive the current economic climate without stabilising its finances

The next phase is to Act: wherein we will endeavour to build:

• Next generation of energy infrastructure: This is crucial to attract investment to the city.
• Financial Innovation: It is crucial that we are able to work with citizens to change the fortunes of the city.
• Scaling up mobility & integration

'Apex' priorities for the city:

• There are pressing day to day challenges that citizens are worried about.
  • These will not stop because of the focus on the bigger vision. It is however important that the conversation with city's stakeholders is linked to the issues that people are facing now without pressing the system to produce only short term results.
• We developed output indicators to ensure that we meet our goals in 2040.
  • As such we need to track progress every five years as part of the GDS review process and develop a complete picture of change across the three decades.
  • We need to report more stringently and openly about progress against key milestones and link more effective programme design to the 2040 Strategy.
  • The Joburg GDS stopped short of giving significant detail on these medium-term programmes and short-term operational activities.
  • A conscious decision was made to position the GDS side-by-side with the Integrated Development Plan (IDP) which the Municipal Systems Act states that all South African municipalities must produce.
• Today we are placing these things on the table and we call on all communities to interrogate them and make them their own.
• There will be town hall meetings every week in community halls where communities will be given an opportunity to engage with the contents of the GDS.
• We call on Civil Society to partake in the special roundtables where we will be ready to listen to the residents of Johannesburg input to shape the future together.
• Everyone must play their part as team mates in the final goal of making our city a global icon for development.
• The internal staff of the city is no small players – they must become true day to day ambassadors of the embodiment of this vision so that we can now collectively be able to answer the question of how our city will look like in twenty years.
• GDS 2040 is out there for you to critique and add value to it.
• Embrace it as your own, shape it in the image of your aspirations so that it becomes our common destiny.

This is "Joburg our city, our future, we are all players, so let's get involved".

Thank you