By Ndaba Dlamini
THE lack of an integrated and consistent approach to urban management has led to escalating crime and decay in the inner city over the past years. In an attempt to reverse these negative facets, the City has committed to developing a comprehensive plan to respond to a cross-section of urban management challenges facing the area.
Speaking to delegates at the Inner City Summit held in Braamfontein on Saturday, 5 May, Executive Mayor Amos Masondo said the City was not yet on top of crime and grime in the inner city, but this should change.
"We have run clean-up campaigns and by-law enforcement blitzes. But these have not [had] a lasting effect. We still see dirty streets, unmanaged street trading, pavements in disrepair, people urinating in public, litter and illegally dumped waste on the side of the road. We still see many players failing to comply with the City’s by-laws."
A draft Inner City Regeneration Charter, presented at the summit, looks at various issues that the City will tackle individually, namely urban management, by-law enforcement and education, waste management, visible policing, surveillance technology and bad buildings.
The charter recognises that there has been concerted effort by the private sector to restore the inner city to its former glory through establishing city improvement districts (CIDs) and implementing a range of initiatives that have sought to protect and enhance property investment. To complement this, the City plans to establish a regional urban management plan by September.
Masondo said the City had realised that its utilities and departments, such as Pikitup, Joburg Water, the Johannesburg Metropolitan Police Department (JMPD) and environmental health officers, could not come up with a comprehensive mechanism for a clean and orderly city on their own. Over the next year the City would set up a structure and a relevant mechanism in Region F to improve the inner city’s environment.
The inner city falls in Region F.
The funds would be used to upgrade all pavements, install "decent" streetlights and waste bins, plant trees, build decent street furniture and upgrade available plots into mini-parks and public spaces.
A key concern among a range of stakeholders in the inner city is the lack of effective management of waste. Exacerbating this is littering of streets, illegal dumping of waste, poor management of activities such as street trading and on-street taxi-ranking, and an increasing number of buildings with collapsing management structures.
To remedy this the City committed to establishing waste management and cleansing services operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week. An additional R99-million operating budget will be allocated to Pikitup in the 2007-08 financial year to build a new system of waste management and street cleaning with a specific focus on the inner city.
On top of this, by July 2008 the City will launch an inner city recycling programme that will support small- and medium-sized enterprises to grow sustainable waste recycling businesses; and by 2011 a pilot underground bin system for commercial and residential buildings will be rolled out across the inner city.
Through a zero-tolerance approach to effective law enforcement, as well as education and creative mechanisms that will make it easier for building owners and residents to comply, the City commits to achieving a culture of compliance in the inner city where infractions are an exception rather than the rule.
Most abandoned buildings in the inner city come to pass as bad buildings. These are a major challenge to the City since in most cases they harbour criminals, pose a health hazard and are generally unsightly. To date the City’s response to bad buildings has often been reactive, resulting in evictions seemingly the only feasible way forward.
However, the City plans to devise a new system to detect bad buildings as soon as they start to decline and to deal proactively with conditions in these buildings in an integrated, multi-disciplinary way that solves problems. In the case of existing bad buildings the City plans to eradicate these by 2015.
The solution it proposes is to increase the number JMPD officers dedicated to the inner city and the number of patrolling vehicles. The JMPD, together with the SAPS, will institutionalise a system of visible on-the-street patrols. In a groundbreaking move, a new CCTV control room will give an effective platform for communication between the SAPS, the JMPD, the central improvement district guards and private security operations. The new CCTV control room is expected to be operational by 2008.
To add to the increased number of policemen, the inner city would be fully covered with CCTV cameras within the next five years, Masondo said.
There will be more metro police officers patrolling the inner city
"As a first step in this direction we commit to doubling the number of CCTV cameras in the inner city by the end of this year. This will bring the number of cameras to 216. We are also working to link up this system with private sector systems."
Adding on to the draft charter, stakeholder discussions where held at the summit and contributions included the need to link commitments to budgets, resources and project plans; the need to communicate the charter to residents to ensure buy-in; and the need for ongoing feedback to the constituency on progress.
The City will continue to hold meetings with inner city stakeholders until the final charter is passed later this year.
