Stephen Heyns
As Cape Town’s natural environment – considered the city’s most important economic asset – rapidly becomes degraded, a radical transformation of the city’s structure has been proposed.
For the poor, life is inconvenient, expensive, unsafe and environmentally hostile, and there is a need to make the city’s structure more equitable, integrated, efficient and sustainable.
In releasing the draft municipal spatial development framework (Muni-SDF), executive planning director Dave Daniels has shown his resolve to tackle these and other problems. The plan is consistent with broader government initiatives and lends itself to being integrated into planning for a megacity local government structure. It also seeks to promote workable partnerships with the private sector.
According to the University of Cape Town’s Professor Dave Dewar, consultant to the project, the Muni-SDF represents a new form of proactive planning that is budget- led, not control-based.
He believes that, by establishing a clear logic about how public investment will take place in an integrated way around green space, movement (particularly public transport), urban public space, social facilities, utility services and social housing, the private sector will be encouraged to invest in a way which supports the overall objectives of the plan.
He says if the framework’s argument is consistently applied in all decision- making, people will have significantly improved access to the city’s natural and urban opportunities within a decade.
The plan is based on a strong green, as well as an urban, concept. It proposes a system of multi-purpose parks and collective sports facilities of various sizes. These are interlinked through a system of green corridors to promote biodiversity and species migration.
The urban concept is based on the assumption that environments need to be created which work well for pedestrians and those using public transport. The core idea is to create a logical, hierarchical system of public transport interchange points which allow people to change direction and mode of movement easily.
These interchange points generate flows of people and represent a focus for public spending.
All interchanges will have well-designed and landscaped public spaces which also operate as markets. Because interchanges are highly accessible interfaces between service providers and clients, schools, fields, community halls, libraries, clinics and other facilities are clustered around them.
This promotes “one-stop shopping” convenience, as well as enabling sharing and better management of facilities. Because all these activities generate large flows of people, they also become good places for commercial and manufacturing investment.
Over time these places will play an increasingly social role, creating a system of special places which impact positively on the lives of large numbers of people.
The reason people have a poor quality of life is because they do not have equitable access to opportunities presented by the city, both natural and urban.
Many live far from work and educational opportunities, access to facilities and shopping, opportunities for self- employment, and access to natural resources and nature places.
Most centres of opportunity are clustered around the edges of one side of the city – the central business district, the southern edge along Main Road, and the northern edge along Voortrekker Road.
The central challenges are to give people in disadvantaged areas better access to the existing special places and opportunities of the city, and to create a new set of special places and opportunities where there are currently too few.
“Equity of access” is qualified – it does not mean that every part of the city should be the same. Rather, it means everybody will have convenient access to a centre that offers a similar range of urban opportunities, social facilities and access to nature.
These proposed interchange centres, some which already exist, will be evenly distributed across the city and linked with each other by transport routes.
The centres will not all be the same – it is not possible to have a major hospital in every neighbourhood, but there should at least be a functioning day hospital or clinic. Instead, a hierarchy of centres is proposed, also evenly distributed: a few large centres (first level), some medium- sized (second level) and several smaller ones (third level).
At the third level, people could expect to find facilities like a crche, a primary school, a clinic and a park.
A second-level centre would have all of these things as well as emergency services, a library and sporting facilities.
A first-level centre would have all of the features of the smaller centres, as well as secondary and tertiary education, a large multifunctional park, a court of law, a large library and central emergency services.
Because most people travel on foot or by public transport, people will be within walking distance of a centre and public transport interchange. The furthest point from any centre will be 2,5km – about 30 minutes’ walk for most people.
The framework proposes a drastic shift in public spending from accommodating private vehicles to prioritising public transport.
City spatial planning manager Stephen Boshoff says the plan translates concepts such as equity and integration into meaningful action. It seeks to move planning beyond individual opinion into positions that can be defended in terms of a logical rationale for the public good.
A shorter version of the plan is being prepared to enable people to actively participate in the way the plan unfolds.
Boshoff would like to see citizens becoming assertive about the development of their city.
If followed through, the Muni-SDF could provide a model for other cities to generate the possibility of a steadily improving quality of life for more than just the privileged few.
ENDS
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