JICBC Review Citichat Feb 17 1999

CITICHAT No 4/2000 - 17 February 2000


JICBC Review

The end and/or beginnings of a year provides an opportunity to review one’s progress in relation to one’s goals for the previous year and set new targets for the year ahead. The Johannesburg Inner City Business Coalition (JICBC) did just that in December of 1999.

The JICBC had its origins in the City Visioning exercise that was started in 1996 and which resulted in then Deputy President Thabo Mbeki enunciating the Vision in mid-1997. It was important that all sectors in the city and all stakeholders were given the opportunity to make inputs into the Visioning process but there wasn’t a relevant representative body for business at that time. The Central Johannesburg Partnership (CJP) had moved from its initial 1992 structure of a trilateral body encompassing Council, Community and Business to representing the Business sector only following the first democratic local authority elections in 1995 but was not adequately representative. It was therefore decided to throw the net wider and bring together companies, businesses and business organisations in a loose coalition to address the issue of formulating the Vision for the city. Following the completion of that process, when the critical phase of ‘vision implementation’ was to begin, an implementing body in the form of the Inner City Section 59 Committee was established as a structural part of the Metro Council but providing for external input. The Inner City Committee, as it is now known, was to comprise four sectoral partners, the Metro Council and its sub-structures, Community, Labour and Business. It was felt that the JICBC should continue to represent Business on that body and it was therefore formalised into a Section 21 Company (not for gain) for that purpose. The CJP shed its business members and became independent of corporate support. It earns a living from research, acting as a consultant on urban issues and providing private urban management services via the city’s City Improvement Districts (CIDs). It was also tasked with managing the JICBC for an initial two year period, 98/99.At the end of last year, the JICBC Executive Committee reviewed the body’s ongoing existence and extended its mandate for a further two years. This was particularly in view of the progress that had been made through the Inner City Committee and the critical stage it had reached.

The implementation of the agreed Vision for the city has been undertaken in a series of progressive and logical steps. Firstly, the Vision, a jumble of words and phrases encapsulating just where city stakeholders want the city to be some time in the future, was turned into a Strategic Plan or Framework. From this, each year, the Inner City Committee establishes about half a dozen priorities and tracks their progress throughout that year. Some priorities cannot be neatly completed within a calendar year and are carried over into the next year but the Inner City Committee maintains a close watch on progress in each case. The various projects I have reported on in the first three issues of Citichat this year all flow from these priorities and are thus linked back to the Vision. When the JICBC Executive sat down in December 1999 it was to workshop what they, as Business, felt the priority issues should be for 2000. These have been forwarded via the Inner City Office to the Inner City Committee who will need to agree the joint priorities for the year ahead. The JICBC proposals are:

1. Planning: to develop a detailed development plan for the core area of the inner city. One of the priorities for 1999 was to develop an Economic and Spatial Framework for the city and the latter aspect, the Spatial Framework, was undertaken by GAPP Architects and Urban Planners and funded by the JICBC. Our feeling is that this was a necessary first step but which now must be firmed up into a detailed development plan. There is a concern that unless this is done, development in the city will be haphazard and not sufficiently focused. More about this particular aspect next week.

2. Financial: to reopen discussions which had been started last year through Prof Richard Tomlinson with Provincial Government for the establishment of a “City Fund” which would leverage development funding from a variety of sectors, both private and public.

3. Incentives: to investigate possible incentives for development across the city. Again, some work had been done last year by Richard Tomlinson but the JICBC want to have this aspect explored further.

4. Housing: to develop a housing strategy for the city. This relates back to the development plan for the city but specifically will look at strong guidelines and possible incentives for residential development.

5. Informal trading: to review the policy and programme for informal trading.

6. Safety and security: to investigate with the City how CID security can be utilised to a greater extent as an added resource to that of the City.

7. Marketing: firstly, to compile credible information on all aspects of the city including an accurate retail database. Secondly, to develop a communication process that can effectively and constantly disperse such information in order to start addressing the vexing issue of changing perceptions about the city.

It’s going to be a busy year! Again!