18 April 2008

By Lesego Madumo

JOHANNESBURG plans a new approach to urban development, international delegates at the Planning Africa Conference have heard.

Speaking at the meeting, the City's Graeme Gotz said that Johannesburg wanted to cut the high demand for infrastructure and put in place an efficient public transport system, so lowering travelling costs. It also aimed to stop the gap between the rich and the poor expanding.

International delegates recently gathered at the Sandton Convention Centre, to discuss urban development planning; it is the seventh annual Planning Africa Conference.

Current planning policies, and innovative and appropriate methods, tools and techniques of planning, which can enhance the social landscape of Africa cities, are being debated. Another aspect is to promote the best use of a community's land and resources for residential, commercial, institutional and recreational purposes.

"We are looking into increasing our capacity to cater for the future," said Phillip Harrison, the executive director of development planning and urban management in the City of Johannesburg. "We want to increase the influence we have to shape the future."

Joburg needed to understand futuristic planning trends and how to use them.

In a joint presentation with Gotz, a specialist in policy and strategy in Joburg's central strategy unit, Harrison said that the City needed to consider its plans beforehand, and review the possibilities that would follow should its plans succeed or fail.

"We need to evaluate what kind of a city we are going to be if we fail or succeed to implement those trendy plans." If the City wanted to influence the future, it needed to have an ideological planning base, and have instruments and resources to fulfil the mandate.

Johannesburg is one of the world's rapidly growing metropolitan areas - expanding 3,1 percent annually - with an official population of about 3,8 million people. It has been, and remains, spatially, socially and economically divided, and its trends and topography increases and alters with its dense population, almost every year. Gotz explained that the City planned a new approach to urban development. "We want to reduce the high demand for infrastructure and lower travelling costs by putting in place an efficient public transport system."

If all plans fell into place, Johannesburg's infrastructure would be properly structured to avoid enlarging the gap between the poor majority and the rich minority. "We want to integrate settlements," he said, adding that this would be done through partnerships between the City and the private sector.

"If our overall plans fail, the city will gridlock. We want to structure a strategic golden window to force critical changes to happen, in order to absorb the city into critical growth."

Johannesburg had a vision of becoming a world-class African city, defined by increased prosperity and quality of life through sustained economic growth for all of its citizens, he explained. It also wanted to accelerate its spatial restructuring. "We need to change the city form to bring jobs closer to people and people closer to jobs," Gotz said.

"Cities are built by many players but we must regain control over future spatial structure. This requires boldness and creativity."

"[We] have now also identified a set of flagship initiatives, extracted from the programmes in our sector plans, that are likely to make the biggest difference in ensuring that our development paradigm is adhered to," Harrison added.

The City also envisaged a balanced and shared economic growth. "We need to grow the economy, but we don't want just any growth. We want growth that is on the basis of a diversifying range of sectors; an economy that is being driven both by international demand and strong domestic demand translating into domestic investment; an economy that is growing because more people are participating in it; and the benefits of economic growth are shared through more employment, fair remuneration and opportunities for new market entrants," he concluded.

Delegates from around the world, particularly from Africa, attended the Planning Africa Conference 2008. They included development planners, economists, sociologists, urban practitioners, geographers, property developers, researchers and academics.

Speakers are high-profile international experts in their respective fields. They include Soloman Lechesa Tsenoli, a member of parliament and the chairperson of the portfolio committee on provincial and local government in South Africa; and Christine Platt, the president of the Commonwealth Association of Planners in South Africa.

The seventh in the annual gathering, this year's conference had the theme, Shaping the future. Its main focus is placing issues surrounding the socio-spatial landscape and urban development planning under the spotlight, while devising mechanisms for plans to be implemented that will contribute to a better continent by 2014.

Planning Africa Conference 2008 - Shaping the Future is on at the Sandton Convention Centre; it ran from Sunday, 13 April and ended on Wednesday, 16 April.

One of the aims this year is to strengthen dialogue on basic planning and governance issues that have a bearing on the future of urban development on the continent. According to organisers, it seeks to revisit the role and contribution of planning and governance in the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals.

Exhibitions from all spheres of planning were part of the conference; companies, municipal and national government departments, as well as municipal-owned entities exhibiting include the Alexander Renewal Project, Region F, the University of Johannesburg, the Johannesburg Property Company and the South African Local Government Association.

The intention of the conference is to formulate a sufficiently shared perspective on planning innovation, in order to feed into and enrich the international planning discourse, explains the South African Planning Institute, a non-profit organisation that aims to promote the discipline of urban planning and the interests of the planning profession.

Source: Joburg.org.za