City of Joburg to ditch old spatial development plans

04 August 2017

 

The City of Johannesburg wants to rectify the mistakes of the past by avoiding to house people far away from places of economic activity, Development Planning Department officials said during the review of the Spatial Development Framework (SDF) 2040 at the Lenasia South municipal offices in Region G on Tuesday August 1.

 

The meeting was the last in a series of regional nodal review sessions held throughout the city over the past few weeks. All new inputs will be incorporated into the new SDF.

The department’s Dylan Weakley said new data would be added to reflect statistics and analysis of the proposed developments. He said the SDF also defined policies of what could or could not be built in certain areas.

Water, sewage, electricity, roads and public transport infrastructure will form the backbone of the spatial development and service delivery projects. High-density housing will also be a major priority in future spatial development plans.

“What we want to do with the project is to try to re-rationalise the density in the city. The problem is that we don’t have high-density housing near job opportunities in Johannesburg.

“The City wants to rectify mistakes from the past by avoiding to house people far away from economic activities because this will continue to be problematic for Johannesburg to function effectively as a metropolis,” Weakely said.

He said old plans that were not in line with the City’s 2040 vision would be dropped as the municipality sought to enhance its urban potential and create effective central business districts in several parts of Johannesburg.

“The number of people on a piece of land must be based on accessibility to jobs, public open spaces, healthcare facilities, schools and public transport,” Weakely said.

Phetogo Gopane, a resident of Thembelihle informal settlement, said his community needed to be featured in the SDF and called on the City not to focus only on formal areas.

“According to the presentation here today, nothing has been considered for our informal settlement. We understand that it is located on a very sensitive ground and that having developments there is risky,” Gopane said.

He said the community was relying on the City to relocate it to a suitable area so it could be part of developments outlined in the SDF 2040.

“We understand that this may be a long process, but we’d also like to benefit from this development,” Gopane said.