CITICHAT 21/2002 - 31 MAY 2002
Places and spaces 1 – Johannesburg to Bilbao.
“Buildings can have meanings – important buildings are symbols – buildings can reflect values – there is something incredibly important about public spaces – whatever the future for downtown in the 21st century, if it is to be an important place it must remain a valuable place….. And on some level a valuable place must reflect values. We have un-valued our built environment and by doing so we have devalued our buildings,,,,,,, All too often we have lost the intellectual and emotional connection between the buildings and the activities within.”
Just some of the messages going through my mind from a paper by Donovan Rypkema of Place Economics, Washington DC whilst attending a critical meeting held last week between the South African Heritage Resources Agency (SAHRA), various local heritage organisations and the Executive Mayor, senior councillors and officials.
We were trying to find a joint solution to the dichotomy we face in the city. Heritage and other buildings abandoned by the private sector and now illegally occupied as residential accommodation but constituting a danger to the occupants or a serious blot on the urban fabric. Heritage buildings owned by the public sector and falling into “demolition by neglect”. A lack of funding, a lack of suitable housing and, in the opinion of some around the table, a lack of interest in preserving a heritage that may be repugnant to many. In the end, a three-pronged strategy was agreed. To jointly decide on the fate of those buildings already identified by the council for possible demolition; an analysis of what constitutes the heritage buildings within the inner city that must be preserved and the development of a long term heritage strategy for the city. We are making progress!
A university post-graduate class reunion in Europe provided an opportunity for me to visit Bilbao and Barcelona two cities that offer practical reinforcement for the sentiments expressed by Donovan Rypkema. Both are cities, on different scales, that abound with wonderful spaces and places, and with buildings that reflect the cultures and values of the regions in which they are located. Spain’s Basque Country and the province of Catalonia.
Bilbao is increasingly known as ‘Europe’s Renaissance City’. An old city founded in the 1300’s, it was initially Spain’s major northern port for agricultural exports but much later became an industrial and mining centre. Its coal mining and steel manufacturing led in turn to shipbuilding although it also started to develop as an important banking centre for the region. By the 1960s its heavy steel industries and its shipbuilding, as in so many cities, had come to an end and its riverfront became nothing more than a rust belt. Between 1950 and 1975, many of the city’s wealthy abandoned their homes and left the decay as well as fleeing from the revolutionary underground Basque movement, ETA. For the next fifteen years the city stagnated and, by the 1990’s, the city, with its rusting shipyards and steelworks, was considered one of the least attractive in the Basque country.
The story then goes that the Guggenheim director, Thomas Krens, was looking for the perfect siting for a new major European museum. Having not found anything suitable in Europe’s major cities, he half-heartedly accepted an invitation to visit Bilbao. On an early morning jog he found himself running through the abandoned riverside site of the city’s now extinct major steel mill. He recognised the potential and that “the site, at the heart of Bilbao’s traditional steel and shipping port, was a perfect place for Bilbao’s macro re-conversion from steel to titanium, from heavy industry to art, as well as a nexus between the early 14th century “old city” and the 19th century “new city” and between the wealthy Right Bank and the working class Left Bank”. The Basque provincial government and the Bilbao local government seized the opportunity to inject new confidence and hope into the deteriorating city. American architect Frank Gehry was engaged and as the saying goes, ‘the rest is history!’
My guide book enthuses; “Time in Bilbao may soon need to be identified as BG or AG (Before Guggenheim, After Guggenheim). Never has a single monument of art and architecture so radically changed a city…….Never in the annals of urban renewal has a city, in one masterstroke, so comprehensively reinvented itself.”
Guidebooks aside, what is the reality? In its first year the Guggenheim attracted 1,4 million visitors, three times the number expected and more than both New York Guggenheims together over the same period. The building has eclipsed Madrid’s Prado Museum as the most visited in Spain. The building, described as “Frank Gehry’s gleaming titanium whale hovering alongside the estuary of the Nervion river” is quite remarkable and does all that it set out to do in regard to connecting Right Bank/Left Bank, old city/new city. I thought that this ‘connectivity’ and the way the building relates to the river and the city to be quite extraordinary given the difficulties that the site offered. Its construction has also stimulated a massive cleaning up of the smokestack river frontage, New riverside parks and public spaces are under construction and, in comparison with ‘before’ photographs, the riverside has been transformed. The influx of tourists has resulted in the whole city being spruced up, new industries, particularly tourist related, being created and old businesses revived.
But, at the end of the day, one must also understand that the underlying values, the symbols of the city in terms of spaces and places were already there, just waiting for an excuse to be re-discovered. The 700 year old ‘old city’, Casco Viejo, is a jumble of narrow alleys edged with memorable buildings, squares, courtyards and churches that reflect its heritage and history. The ‘new city’, the 19th century “Ensanche” has wide tree lined boulevards, much retail with apartments over, and, again, many squares and parks. The Nervion river which separates the two is rapidly emerging from its grimy industrial past as a major attraction and venue for new structures such as the glass Santiago Clatrava ‘Puente de Zubi-Zuri’ footbridge. The city has a large investment in its retained classical buildings from the Belle Epoque style City Hall and Arriago Theatre to its more modern music and convention centre and the huge triple storey market building with its stained glass windows and the abundance of basilicas, library buildings, theatres, churches, etc.
The Guggenheim was the key, the catalyst, to the city rediscovering itself. We, in Johannesburg, lack such a rich urban infrastructure and we must not allow more of our built history and heritage to be destroyed.
My one niggle about the Guggenheim, however, is not related to its catalystic ability, that is already more than evident, but relates to the issue of the building versus the art it houses. Whilst one is earnestly told that Frank Gehry’s creation is ultimately only a showcase for the modern art that it contains, what everyone comes to see and what everyone seems to remember most is the building. The generally excellent art that it contains would seem to be overshadowed by the building that houses it. Unlike the Prado and the Louvre and even the new Tate Modern, the building seems to be perceived as the more memorable art form. Maybe that is all that this Postmodern society wants to see!
Regards, neil.
Friday, May 31, 2002
Friday, May 24, 2002
Broken Windows Citichat 24 May 2002
CITICHAT 20 /2002 - 24 May 2002
Rudy, George and Broken Windows
Many people incorrectly attribute the ‘broken windows’ theory to the ex-police chief of New York City, William Bratton and/or that city’s ex-mayor Rudolph Giuliani. As I have written previously, Giuliani whilst claiming all the credit for New York’s turn around, happened to be in the right place at the right time and capitalised on it. In other words Rudy was a consummate politician. I am not denying his general contribution to New York’s reversal of fortune, nor his leadership at the end of his term through the Sept 11 crisis. But the facts are that the foundations for the city’s revitalisation started way back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when specific areas decided to take control of their deteriorating situations and established Business Improvement Districts. Union Square, Times Square, the Grand Central District extending into 34th Street and Bryant Park and a host of others started cleaning up their immediate areas. Their ‘Clean and Safe’ approach resulted in sidewalks being maintained, ‘City Ambassadors’ provided on the streets as a highly visible evidence of public space management, environmental and streetscape upgrading and engagement with social issues. All of these were well advanced before Giuliani even arrived on the scene! He obviously was quite threatened by the activities of New York’s BIDs which he saw as a threat to his being seen as the ‘saviour’ of the city. After having one BID Chief Executive whom he considered to be far too high profile removed from office, he ‘froze’ the contributions or levy income that constitutes the major proportion of BID incomes for a number of years, thereby preventing them from extending their work, neutralising any increase in their contribution to the city’s revitalisation and actually placing most of them under severe financial strain..
I was reminded of this on two occasions this last fortnight. The first was through a recent article in the New York Times that recorded that Giuliani’s successor, Michael R Bloomberg, has come out enthusiastically supporting the city’s 44 BIDs. The article talks about “the mayor’s warm embrace of ….the public-private partnerships known as BIDs”.
Bloomberg wants to see the BIDs play a bigger role in the city’s economic growth and has ended the budget freeze; unveiled policy changes that will speed up the BID formation process; provided seed money to finance the BID planning process for poor and middle-income neighbourhoods; will provide technical assistance and training for BID staff; enabled BIDs to issue long-term debt for capital improvement projects and will even help in showcasing BIDs most creative and successful efforts. Quite a turn-around and one richly deserved when one becomes aware of the major contribution that BIDs have made to the city. Whilst the article makes no mention of him, clearly the newly appointed Commissioner for New York City’s Business Services, my friend Rob Walsh, has had no little part in the new administration’s approach. Some Citichat readers will remember Rob, then CE of the Charlotte Downtown Partnership, who visited South Africa a few years ago to help us promote BIDs as a revitalisation tool.
The other occasion was through one of the speakers at the London conference covered in last week’s Citichat, George Kelling. I had the privilege of first hearing George Kelling in the States some years ago and it was exciting to be reminded of his work again last Thursday at the Warden’s Conference and subsequently at a working lunch with a number of senior civil servants and London businessmen and women.
George co-authored the seminal work “Fixing Broken Windows” with his wife, Catherine M.Coles and their work inspired the change in attitude in New York and by American city authorities to a wide variety of issues from drug legalisation and crime control strategies to the extent to which public spaces should be protected. Kelling and Coles show how order in public places can be maintained at minimal cost to civil liberty.
Drawing on the original philosophies that inspired Robert Peel to establish the first successful police force in the world – “the police are the people and the people are the police", George spelt out the background to the changes happening in American policing. From reactive to preventative through presence, persuasion of people to behave and by reducing opportunities for crime to happen. Up to the late ‘80s, streets in many American cities were controlled by gangs and drug dealers. Although police were responding to crime and the courts were working apparently effectively, on the streets it was disaster. He suggested that there are five basic ideas that have developed over twenty years that have resulted in a major change leading to the effective re-policing of American cities.
1. Police were incident oriented. When an incident was reported you called the police, the police came, recorded the incident and got back in their cars. All incidents were handled in the same way, from wife beating to theft! Social scientists started to understand that incidents are merely symptoms of problem; why wait for a man who has beaten up his wife three times to do it a fourth? The police needed to understand that they didn’t own the problem and that problems were usually more complex than the incident itself.
2. In March 1982, James Q Wilson and George Kelling published an article in The Atlantic Monthly entitled “Breaking Windows” They used the image of broken windows to explain how neighbourhoods might decay into disorder and even crime if no one attends faithfully to their maintenance. “If a factory or office window is broken, passers by observing it will conclude that no one cares or no one is in charge. In time a few will begin throwing rocks to break more windows. Soon all the windows will be broken, and now passers by will think that, not only is no one in charge of the building, no one is in charge of the street on which it faces. Only the young, the criminal or the foolhardy have any business on an unprotected avenue, and so more and more citizens will abandon the street to those they assume prowl it. Small disorders lead to larger and larger ones, and perhaps even to crime.” The paradigm at the time was to concentrate on serious crime and ignore smaller crimes or disorder - the new paradigm the article suggested was that fear of crime is more related to minor than major offences and concentration needed to be shifted to dealing with issues of disorder. Subsequent studies have shown that the linkages between disorder and serious crime are real, yet police concentration remained on serious crime.
3. A realisation that the maxim that in a democracy you have to have the consent of the people to police does not go far enough – you have to go beyond consent to collaboration and this is where Kelling sees a major strength in BIDs.
4. The intelligent use of data – here is where Bratton first came into the picture. Bratton introduced the use of data to deal with problems and accountability for the statistics. Crime stats had to be available publicly for every precinct on a daily basis and precinct commanders were accountable to the communities. “There were 3 rapes in the area yesterday, why? what are you doing to stop rapes in our area? what progress are you making at apprehending the perpetrators? etc.etc
5. “Pulling leverage” – the term emerged out of a totally lawless situation that had developed in Boston. It was found that 5% of offenders committed 50% of all crime, everyone knew who they were but no one was doing anything about it. The problem wasn’t that there were insufficient laws or organisations, but that no one was talking to each other about resolving the problem. There were constant ‘walls of blame’. Police said they did their work, the courts tossed out prosecutions on technicalities, but there was no communication. Only when everyone started ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ did they start making a difference.
We’ve heard this all before, and everyone nods sagely, but we continue to travel down the failed routes of the past. We know better! First World policies can’t be applied to developing countries! We just don’t care! I think it is the last which, sadly, holds true. Apart from the disregard for basic disorder on our streets, for probably three years now we have been trying to get the Council to abide by written agreements in regard to the usage of Gandhi Square. The perpetrators are council employees who consider themselves above the law, we’ve even had a metro police official refusing to act against them because ‘we all belong to the same trade union’! It is rather like the police officer who shouted at Kelling, “Where in the hell did you ever get the crazy idea that disorder was police business? Our job is fighting crime.”
Regards, neil
Rudy, George and Broken Windows
Many people incorrectly attribute the ‘broken windows’ theory to the ex-police chief of New York City, William Bratton and/or that city’s ex-mayor Rudolph Giuliani. As I have written previously, Giuliani whilst claiming all the credit for New York’s turn around, happened to be in the right place at the right time and capitalised on it. In other words Rudy was a consummate politician. I am not denying his general contribution to New York’s reversal of fortune, nor his leadership at the end of his term through the Sept 11 crisis. But the facts are that the foundations for the city’s revitalisation started way back in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s when specific areas decided to take control of their deteriorating situations and established Business Improvement Districts. Union Square, Times Square, the Grand Central District extending into 34th Street and Bryant Park and a host of others started cleaning up their immediate areas. Their ‘Clean and Safe’ approach resulted in sidewalks being maintained, ‘City Ambassadors’ provided on the streets as a highly visible evidence of public space management, environmental and streetscape upgrading and engagement with social issues. All of these were well advanced before Giuliani even arrived on the scene! He obviously was quite threatened by the activities of New York’s BIDs which he saw as a threat to his being seen as the ‘saviour’ of the city. After having one BID Chief Executive whom he considered to be far too high profile removed from office, he ‘froze’ the contributions or levy income that constitutes the major proportion of BID incomes for a number of years, thereby preventing them from extending their work, neutralising any increase in their contribution to the city’s revitalisation and actually placing most of them under severe financial strain..
I was reminded of this on two occasions this last fortnight. The first was through a recent article in the New York Times that recorded that Giuliani’s successor, Michael R Bloomberg, has come out enthusiastically supporting the city’s 44 BIDs. The article talks about “the mayor’s warm embrace of ….the public-private partnerships known as BIDs”.
Bloomberg wants to see the BIDs play a bigger role in the city’s economic growth and has ended the budget freeze; unveiled policy changes that will speed up the BID formation process; provided seed money to finance the BID planning process for poor and middle-income neighbourhoods; will provide technical assistance and training for BID staff; enabled BIDs to issue long-term debt for capital improvement projects and will even help in showcasing BIDs most creative and successful efforts. Quite a turn-around and one richly deserved when one becomes aware of the major contribution that BIDs have made to the city. Whilst the article makes no mention of him, clearly the newly appointed Commissioner for New York City’s Business Services, my friend Rob Walsh, has had no little part in the new administration’s approach. Some Citichat readers will remember Rob, then CE of the Charlotte Downtown Partnership, who visited South Africa a few years ago to help us promote BIDs as a revitalisation tool.
The other occasion was through one of the speakers at the London conference covered in last week’s Citichat, George Kelling. I had the privilege of first hearing George Kelling in the States some years ago and it was exciting to be reminded of his work again last Thursday at the Warden’s Conference and subsequently at a working lunch with a number of senior civil servants and London businessmen and women.
George co-authored the seminal work “Fixing Broken Windows” with his wife, Catherine M.Coles and their work inspired the change in attitude in New York and by American city authorities to a wide variety of issues from drug legalisation and crime control strategies to the extent to which public spaces should be protected. Kelling and Coles show how order in public places can be maintained at minimal cost to civil liberty.
Drawing on the original philosophies that inspired Robert Peel to establish the first successful police force in the world – “the police are the people and the people are the police", George spelt out the background to the changes happening in American policing. From reactive to preventative through presence, persuasion of people to behave and by reducing opportunities for crime to happen. Up to the late ‘80s, streets in many American cities were controlled by gangs and drug dealers. Although police were responding to crime and the courts were working apparently effectively, on the streets it was disaster. He suggested that there are five basic ideas that have developed over twenty years that have resulted in a major change leading to the effective re-policing of American cities.
1. Police were incident oriented. When an incident was reported you called the police, the police came, recorded the incident and got back in their cars. All incidents were handled in the same way, from wife beating to theft! Social scientists started to understand that incidents are merely symptoms of problem; why wait for a man who has beaten up his wife three times to do it a fourth? The police needed to understand that they didn’t own the problem and that problems were usually more complex than the incident itself.
2. In March 1982, James Q Wilson and George Kelling published an article in The Atlantic Monthly entitled “Breaking Windows” They used the image of broken windows to explain how neighbourhoods might decay into disorder and even crime if no one attends faithfully to their maintenance. “If a factory or office window is broken, passers by observing it will conclude that no one cares or no one is in charge. In time a few will begin throwing rocks to break more windows. Soon all the windows will be broken, and now passers by will think that, not only is no one in charge of the building, no one is in charge of the street on which it faces. Only the young, the criminal or the foolhardy have any business on an unprotected avenue, and so more and more citizens will abandon the street to those they assume prowl it. Small disorders lead to larger and larger ones, and perhaps even to crime.” The paradigm at the time was to concentrate on serious crime and ignore smaller crimes or disorder - the new paradigm the article suggested was that fear of crime is more related to minor than major offences and concentration needed to be shifted to dealing with issues of disorder. Subsequent studies have shown that the linkages between disorder and serious crime are real, yet police concentration remained on serious crime.
3. A realisation that the maxim that in a democracy you have to have the consent of the people to police does not go far enough – you have to go beyond consent to collaboration and this is where Kelling sees a major strength in BIDs.
4. The intelligent use of data – here is where Bratton first came into the picture. Bratton introduced the use of data to deal with problems and accountability for the statistics. Crime stats had to be available publicly for every precinct on a daily basis and precinct commanders were accountable to the communities. “There were 3 rapes in the area yesterday, why? what are you doing to stop rapes in our area? what progress are you making at apprehending the perpetrators? etc.etc
5. “Pulling leverage” – the term emerged out of a totally lawless situation that had developed in Boston. It was found that 5% of offenders committed 50% of all crime, everyone knew who they were but no one was doing anything about it. The problem wasn’t that there were insufficient laws or organisations, but that no one was talking to each other about resolving the problem. There were constant ‘walls of blame’. Police said they did their work, the courts tossed out prosecutions on technicalities, but there was no communication. Only when everyone started ‘singing from the same hymn sheet’ did they start making a difference.
We’ve heard this all before, and everyone nods sagely, but we continue to travel down the failed routes of the past. We know better! First World policies can’t be applied to developing countries! We just don’t care! I think it is the last which, sadly, holds true. Apart from the disregard for basic disorder on our streets, for probably three years now we have been trying to get the Council to abide by written agreements in regard to the usage of Gandhi Square. The perpetrators are council employees who consider themselves above the law, we’ve even had a metro police official refusing to act against them because ‘we all belong to the same trade union’! It is rather like the police officer who shouted at Kelling, “Where in the hell did you ever get the crazy idea that disorder was police business? Our job is fighting crime.”
Regards, neil
Friday, May 17, 2002
Wardens;Edinburgh;London Citichat 17 May 2002
CITICHAT 19/2002 - 17th May 2002
Edinburgh and London
My good friend Alan Tallentire, the Chief Executive of the Association of Town Centre Management (ATCM) which operates out of London, invited me to chair the ATCM Scotland Conference “Investing in our Town and City Centres” which was held in the historic Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh on Wednesday this week. Then on Thursday to speak at a ‘Neighbourhood Renewal Unit’ Conference entitled “Wardens and Liveability – the International Experience.” So a busy week it has been with no chance to enjoy Britain’s really glorious spring weather
Both conferences focused largely on the establishment of Improvement Districts. England has evidently taken the decision to promulgate national enabling legislation and Scotland, now with its own Parliament, appears to be following close behind. Because of their historic approach to urban management, the likelihood is that their CIDs will be jointly financed by public and private sectors and probably managed by the local authority in partnership with business.
The London conference proved to be extremely interesting. Its background stems from the establishment of the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) by the Government in December 1997. The Unit is located in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and reports to Tony Blair through his Deputy. – thus emphasising the importance with which the initiative is viewed. ‘Social exclusion’is a British shorthand term for what can happen when people or an area suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown. In the past, UK governments have developed policies that have tried to deal with each of the problems of social exclusion individually, but there has been little success in tackling the complicated linkages between them, or preventing them from arising in the first place. The SEU seeks to do so by producing “joined-up solutions to joined-up problems”. Subsequently the ‘Neighbourhood Renewal Unit’ (NRU) was established as an outcome of “The National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal” In a foreword to the National Strategy, Tony Blair says “When we came into office, we inherited a country where hundreds of neighbourhoods were scarred by unemployment, educational failure and crime. They had become progressively more cut off from the prosperity and opportunities that most of us take for granted. Communities were breaking down. Public services were failing. People had started to lose hope. That is why I asked the Social Exclusion Unit to work on developing a new and integrated approach to reversing this decline……….My vision is of a nation where no-one is seriously disadvantaged by where they live, where power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of many not the few. This Action Plan is a crucial step in creating one nation, not separated by class, race or where people live.”
The NRU oversees the implementation of the National Strategy and is the umbrella body for a number of regeneration initiatives including one known as “the Neighbourhood and Street Warden’s Programme and it is this programme that invited a number of CID practitioners to provide input on our local experience plus a number of persons involved in various aspects of policing.
The welcome was provided by Barbara Roche, the Minister of State for Social Exclusion whilst the keynote was provided by another Cabinet Minister, Sally Keeble the Under Secretary of State for Regeneration – the two Cabinet Ministers again stressing the high priority the government is placing on this initiative. Apart from American, Australian and South African input, Professor George Kelling ( co-author of “Broken Windows”) gave an excellent overview of the failure and subsequent resurgence in American policing and the Deputy Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police Force, Ian Blair, spoke about the role of Wardens relative the Metropolitan Police.
So what’s it all about? Well, listening to the Minister for State, Social Exclusion, one would have thought from her description of local problems that one was in South Africa and certainly not in England. She described the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme as a ‘massive sustained initiative’ over the next 20 years in order to ‘narrow the gap between the most deprived neighbourhoods and the best’. She described areas where there was widespread unemployment, sub-standard education, poor housing and significant health problems. She confessed that the poorest communities receive the lowest services and that decent minimum standards, ‘floor targets’ have had to have been set for service delivery and these are being measured and monitored. She equated ‘floor targets’ with minimum wage levels – ‘the creation of a benchmark below which level service provision would be unacceptable’. The programme is designed to be driven by the communities themselves. Building on this introduction, Sally Keeble said that there would be 200 registered warden schemes in place by the end of this year employing 1100 wardens and costing central government forty three and-a-half million pounds a year. The programme would focus on ‘taking back public space’ so that communities can experience a sense of ownership of public spaces – ‘regeneration isn’t done to local people, it is done with local people; it will show that the public authorities do care and that they are prepared to tackle social and economic issues that create deprivation.
The Deputy Police Commissioner spelt out how crime is skyrocketing in London, 911 calls have increased from one to two-and-a-half million in the London area! There has been a ‘massive rise’ in street robbery and ‘car-jacking’. There are clear links he asserted between these crimes and gangs, drugs and murder. He and Kelling agreed and emphasised that there is a proven linkage between quality of life issues, disorder and serious crime. If you do not deal with the minor quality of life issues, the probability is that the perpetrator will end up carrying out violent crimes! “The jerk who mugs someone today will move into serious crime tomorrow”. The dichotomisation (his word not mine!) of police attention which concentrates the best police on serious crime and leaves minor misdemeanours to less experienced police is short sighted and entirely wrong.
So, what are wardens? There are evidently two types, Neighbourhood and Street. The former is a uniformed, semi-official presence in a residential area whose aim is to improve the quality of life; promote community safety, assist with environmental improvements and housing management and contribute to community development. They have the support of local residents and key agencies such as the police. Street Wardens on the other hand, are highly visible uniformed patrols in town and village centres, public areas and neighbourhoods who focus more on caring for the physical appearance of an area. They tackle environmental problems such as litter, graffiti and dog fouling as well as promoting community safety. They also help to deter anti-social behaviour; reduce the fear of crime and foster social inclusion. In many ways they are very similar to our CID security officers/City Ambassadors. Do they have any specific powers? The jury is still out on that one – some of the police feel that they should have limited powers to optimise effectiveness, many others, including most wardens themselves, do not want to have any police powers. They feel that they will be perceived as police which will not be helpful in dealing with their particular social issues, they want to be seen far more as an extension of the community. Do they provide a lead for us? I think it is a model well worth examining in detail because our problems are identical but far more widespread. Whether our communities would accept this approach is questionable and the bottom line of course is sustainable funding. The Australian report at the conference was on community ‘night patrols’, an approach evidently fairly widespread in Aboriginal communities and that may have lessons for us.
This morning, Friday, we meet to discuss the possibility of establishing an international ‘Warden network’, I’ll keep you posted, regards,
Neil
Edinburgh and London
My good friend Alan Tallentire, the Chief Executive of the Association of Town Centre Management (ATCM) which operates out of London, invited me to chair the ATCM Scotland Conference “Investing in our Town and City Centres” which was held in the historic Balmoral Hotel in Edinburgh on Wednesday this week. Then on Thursday to speak at a ‘Neighbourhood Renewal Unit’ Conference entitled “Wardens and Liveability – the International Experience.” So a busy week it has been with no chance to enjoy Britain’s really glorious spring weather
Both conferences focused largely on the establishment of Improvement Districts. England has evidently taken the decision to promulgate national enabling legislation and Scotland, now with its own Parliament, appears to be following close behind. Because of their historic approach to urban management, the likelihood is that their CIDs will be jointly financed by public and private sectors and probably managed by the local authority in partnership with business.
The London conference proved to be extremely interesting. Its background stems from the establishment of the Social Exclusion Unit (SEU) by the Government in December 1997. The Unit is located in the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and reports to Tony Blair through his Deputy. – thus emphasising the importance with which the initiative is viewed. ‘Social exclusion’is a British shorthand term for what can happen when people or an area suffer from a combination of linked problems such as unemployment, poor skills, low incomes, poor housing, high crime environments, bad health and family breakdown. In the past, UK governments have developed policies that have tried to deal with each of the problems of social exclusion individually, but there has been little success in tackling the complicated linkages between them, or preventing them from arising in the first place. The SEU seeks to do so by producing “joined-up solutions to joined-up problems”. Subsequently the ‘Neighbourhood Renewal Unit’ (NRU) was established as an outcome of “The National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal” In a foreword to the National Strategy, Tony Blair says “When we came into office, we inherited a country where hundreds of neighbourhoods were scarred by unemployment, educational failure and crime. They had become progressively more cut off from the prosperity and opportunities that most of us take for granted. Communities were breaking down. Public services were failing. People had started to lose hope. That is why I asked the Social Exclusion Unit to work on developing a new and integrated approach to reversing this decline……….My vision is of a nation where no-one is seriously disadvantaged by where they live, where power, wealth and opportunity are in the hands of many not the few. This Action Plan is a crucial step in creating one nation, not separated by class, race or where people live.”
The NRU oversees the implementation of the National Strategy and is the umbrella body for a number of regeneration initiatives including one known as “the Neighbourhood and Street Warden’s Programme and it is this programme that invited a number of CID practitioners to provide input on our local experience plus a number of persons involved in various aspects of policing.
The welcome was provided by Barbara Roche, the Minister of State for Social Exclusion whilst the keynote was provided by another Cabinet Minister, Sally Keeble the Under Secretary of State for Regeneration – the two Cabinet Ministers again stressing the high priority the government is placing on this initiative. Apart from American, Australian and South African input, Professor George Kelling ( co-author of “Broken Windows”) gave an excellent overview of the failure and subsequent resurgence in American policing and the Deputy Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police Force, Ian Blair, spoke about the role of Wardens relative the Metropolitan Police.
So what’s it all about? Well, listening to the Minister for State, Social Exclusion, one would have thought from her description of local problems that one was in South Africa and certainly not in England. She described the Neighbourhood Renewal Programme as a ‘massive sustained initiative’ over the next 20 years in order to ‘narrow the gap between the most deprived neighbourhoods and the best’. She described areas where there was widespread unemployment, sub-standard education, poor housing and significant health problems. She confessed that the poorest communities receive the lowest services and that decent minimum standards, ‘floor targets’ have had to have been set for service delivery and these are being measured and monitored. She equated ‘floor targets’ with minimum wage levels – ‘the creation of a benchmark below which level service provision would be unacceptable’. The programme is designed to be driven by the communities themselves. Building on this introduction, Sally Keeble said that there would be 200 registered warden schemes in place by the end of this year employing 1100 wardens and costing central government forty three and-a-half million pounds a year. The programme would focus on ‘taking back public space’ so that communities can experience a sense of ownership of public spaces – ‘regeneration isn’t done to local people, it is done with local people; it will show that the public authorities do care and that they are prepared to tackle social and economic issues that create deprivation.
The Deputy Police Commissioner spelt out how crime is skyrocketing in London, 911 calls have increased from one to two-and-a-half million in the London area! There has been a ‘massive rise’ in street robbery and ‘car-jacking’. There are clear links he asserted between these crimes and gangs, drugs and murder. He and Kelling agreed and emphasised that there is a proven linkage between quality of life issues, disorder and serious crime. If you do not deal with the minor quality of life issues, the probability is that the perpetrator will end up carrying out violent crimes! “The jerk who mugs someone today will move into serious crime tomorrow”. The dichotomisation (his word not mine!) of police attention which concentrates the best police on serious crime and leaves minor misdemeanours to less experienced police is short sighted and entirely wrong.
So, what are wardens? There are evidently two types, Neighbourhood and Street. The former is a uniformed, semi-official presence in a residential area whose aim is to improve the quality of life; promote community safety, assist with environmental improvements and housing management and contribute to community development. They have the support of local residents and key agencies such as the police. Street Wardens on the other hand, are highly visible uniformed patrols in town and village centres, public areas and neighbourhoods who focus more on caring for the physical appearance of an area. They tackle environmental problems such as litter, graffiti and dog fouling as well as promoting community safety. They also help to deter anti-social behaviour; reduce the fear of crime and foster social inclusion. In many ways they are very similar to our CID security officers/City Ambassadors. Do they have any specific powers? The jury is still out on that one – some of the police feel that they should have limited powers to optimise effectiveness, many others, including most wardens themselves, do not want to have any police powers. They feel that they will be perceived as police which will not be helpful in dealing with their particular social issues, they want to be seen far more as an extension of the community. Do they provide a lead for us? I think it is a model well worth examining in detail because our problems are identical but far more widespread. Whether our communities would accept this approach is questionable and the bottom line of course is sustainable funding. The Australian report at the conference was on community ‘night patrols’, an approach evidently fairly widespread in Aboriginal communities and that may have lessons for us.
This morning, Friday, we meet to discuss the possibility of establishing an international ‘Warden network’, I’ll keep you posted, regards,
Neil
Friday, May 10, 2002
Housing;Slumlords:Heritage Citichat 10 May 2002
CITICHAT 18/2002 - 10 May 2002
Housing, Slumlords and Heritage
Was asked a question by a well known property journalist preparing an article for this week’s Financial Mail. The question, “What constitutes a slumlord?” comes hard on the heels of legal action taken by the Council in respect of two residential projects in the inner city. The two are only the tip of the iceberg as there are numerous scenarios of great concern in our housing situation.
In the first case, 16 Frederick Street, a Cape Town developer purchased an office block for conversion to residential accommodation although he had evidently told the seller that the building was going to be used for ‘educational’ purposes. Plans were submitted and I understand that they generally complied with the city’s various by-laws and zoning regulations. The conversion was not of offices into apartments or flats but into what has become known as ‘shared accommodation’, ie the 30 rooms per floor each house up to three persons. Ablution facilities, which include showers, are communal and located at one end of each floor and within the norms of model regulation ratios relative to numbers of occupants. The rental of a ‘bed’ averages R650.00 per month and the developer says that he cannot satisfy the demand. The one hundred and sixty room project provides an initial yield of 87% a year based on the R600 000 purchase price and R1,3 million paid for the refurbishment.
The problem is that the building is cheek by jowl with some major corporate head offices who are not that excited at what they consider to be a potential slum developing on their doorstep. The developer says that he provides excellent management and will not allow the building to turn into a slum, all tenants are carefully vetted and have to have been in employment for over two years. The developer argues that he is providing a much needed asset to the city (at an 87% yield mark you!), catering for an economic level that cannot find decent accommodation in the city at affordable rentals. The corporations point to papers stuck to window panes and sneakers on window cills and say that they would not have themselves chosen to develop corporate head offices in ‘low cost residential areas’. My friend Rich Bradley always stresses that capital goes where it is welcome and where there is certainty, when Montreal was dithering about secession, capital upped and reinvested in Toronto. Well, certainty is hard to come by when our zoning laws are so poorly framed that this particular area allows commercial, industrial or residential development. The developer was successful in its appeal.
Scenario two is Burlington House which stands on Gandhi Square. An investor bought the office building which, unlike most other buildings on the Square, stayed empty even after the upgrading of the Square. Immediately following its sale, dozens of persons were seen to be moving into the building. As with Frederick Street it was the adjacent property owners who alerted the Council. It took a couple of months for the Council to get their act together, but this time they were successful – quite simply the zoning clearly didn’t allow for residential use.
Whilst the results of a Council investigation state that ‘there are already in existence adequate regulations and by-laws to ensure that the conversion of buildings into shared accommodation are executed in an appropriate and habitable manner’ the fact of the matter is that the existing regulations and by-laws are not sufficient to deter people from violating them and there is absolutely no check to see if there is compliance. Fortunately the report acknowledges this aspect.
However, as one developer points out, plans for new residential accommodation are scrutinised meticulously and even the smallest deviation has to be addressed or plans are rejected. Yet people are allowed to live in the city in conditions that threaten their lives. A recent survey of residential buildings in a part of the city found that whilst the buildings were in ‘reasonable’ condition and overcrowding wasn’t too extensive, all the external fire escapes were so badly rusted as to be unsafe and there were no fire extinguishers in any of the buildings!
Scenario three relates to this unhealthy and dangerous conditions that hundreds of inner city residents are currently living under. There is an alarming amount of illegal occupation of buildings in various parts of the city. In many instances this takes place in buildings that have been deserted by their owners for a number of reasons, in quite a few instances the owner is in fact government at one or another level. The late, lamented Drill Hall was one such building. As with the Drill Hall, there have been numerous incidents related to the buildings, we have had nine fires in such buildings over probably as many months. Worse still, a number of lives have been lost! To its credit, the City identified a number of buildings that are in such a bad a state of repair that they have been slated for demolition, and, demolition of some has already taken place. But now comes the rub! Some of those slated for demolition, in fact some already demolished, are classified as being of historic or heritage value. In terms of national legislation these may not be demolished. But some are so bad that they appear to be beyond saving. We are told that there is simply no money available to refurbish them or even to maintain them. But why were they allowed to get into such a state in the first place? Why do we perpetuate this state of affairs? Just look at the accelerating deterioration of the Rissik Street Post Office and one must come to the conclusion that no one actually cares. ‘Let it rot until it becomes a danger to the public and then we can justifiably demolish it’ appears to be the attitude of the authorities. I have to ask myself if this is any better an attitude than that of slumlords who, in my opinion exploit people and economic situations to their own inflated benefit.
In a paper by Donovan D.Rypkema entitled “Globalisation, Heritage Buildings and the 21st Century Economy”, the author concludes as follows: “Historic preservation as an economic development strategy is consistent with all five principles of 21st Century economic development: globalisation, localisation, diversity, sustainability and responsibility.
Heritage conservation reinforces the five senses of quality communities: sense of place, sense of identity, sense of evolution, sense of ownership and sense of community.
Historic preservation can meet the test of both “quality” and “authenticity” that will be crucial elements in economic development in the next century
The cultural assets of a city – dance, theatre, music, visual arts, crafts, and others – are inherently influenced and enhanced by the physical context within which they were created and evolved over the centuries. If cultural resources are to become and remain an economic asset for a city, then the physical context that has always influenced their creation needs to be maintained. Otherwise more than just the physical buildings are at risk; the quality, character, differentiation and sustainability of the other assets are in jeopardy as well.
Historic preservation allows a city to participate in the positive benefits of a globalised economy while resisting the adverse impacts of a globalised culture.
Historic preservation allows a city the opportunity to modernise without having to Westernise. More than that – historic preservation is the irreplaceable variable to achieve modernisation without Westernisation.
For the 21st Century only the foolish city will make the choice between historic preservation and economic development. The wise city will effectively utilise its historic built environment to meet the economic, social and cultural needs of its citizens well into the future. Early in the 20th Century Oswald Spengler wrote; “We cannot comprehend political and economic history at all unless we realise that the city…..is the determinative form to which the course and sense of higher history generally conforms. World history is city history” And the political and economic history of the 21st century will surely be written in cities as well.”
I hate to think what they will write of ours!
Regards, neil fraser
Housing, Slumlords and Heritage
Was asked a question by a well known property journalist preparing an article for this week’s Financial Mail. The question, “What constitutes a slumlord?” comes hard on the heels of legal action taken by the Council in respect of two residential projects in the inner city. The two are only the tip of the iceberg as there are numerous scenarios of great concern in our housing situation.
In the first case, 16 Frederick Street, a Cape Town developer purchased an office block for conversion to residential accommodation although he had evidently told the seller that the building was going to be used for ‘educational’ purposes. Plans were submitted and I understand that they generally complied with the city’s various by-laws and zoning regulations. The conversion was not of offices into apartments or flats but into what has become known as ‘shared accommodation’, ie the 30 rooms per floor each house up to three persons. Ablution facilities, which include showers, are communal and located at one end of each floor and within the norms of model regulation ratios relative to numbers of occupants. The rental of a ‘bed’ averages R650.00 per month and the developer says that he cannot satisfy the demand. The one hundred and sixty room project provides an initial yield of 87% a year based on the R600 000 purchase price and R1,3 million paid for the refurbishment.
The problem is that the building is cheek by jowl with some major corporate head offices who are not that excited at what they consider to be a potential slum developing on their doorstep. The developer says that he provides excellent management and will not allow the building to turn into a slum, all tenants are carefully vetted and have to have been in employment for over two years. The developer argues that he is providing a much needed asset to the city (at an 87% yield mark you!), catering for an economic level that cannot find decent accommodation in the city at affordable rentals. The corporations point to papers stuck to window panes and sneakers on window cills and say that they would not have themselves chosen to develop corporate head offices in ‘low cost residential areas’. My friend Rich Bradley always stresses that capital goes where it is welcome and where there is certainty, when Montreal was dithering about secession, capital upped and reinvested in Toronto. Well, certainty is hard to come by when our zoning laws are so poorly framed that this particular area allows commercial, industrial or residential development. The developer was successful in its appeal.
Scenario two is Burlington House which stands on Gandhi Square. An investor bought the office building which, unlike most other buildings on the Square, stayed empty even after the upgrading of the Square. Immediately following its sale, dozens of persons were seen to be moving into the building. As with Frederick Street it was the adjacent property owners who alerted the Council. It took a couple of months for the Council to get their act together, but this time they were successful – quite simply the zoning clearly didn’t allow for residential use.
Whilst the results of a Council investigation state that ‘there are already in existence adequate regulations and by-laws to ensure that the conversion of buildings into shared accommodation are executed in an appropriate and habitable manner’ the fact of the matter is that the existing regulations and by-laws are not sufficient to deter people from violating them and there is absolutely no check to see if there is compliance. Fortunately the report acknowledges this aspect.
However, as one developer points out, plans for new residential accommodation are scrutinised meticulously and even the smallest deviation has to be addressed or plans are rejected. Yet people are allowed to live in the city in conditions that threaten their lives. A recent survey of residential buildings in a part of the city found that whilst the buildings were in ‘reasonable’ condition and overcrowding wasn’t too extensive, all the external fire escapes were so badly rusted as to be unsafe and there were no fire extinguishers in any of the buildings!
Scenario three relates to this unhealthy and dangerous conditions that hundreds of inner city residents are currently living under. There is an alarming amount of illegal occupation of buildings in various parts of the city. In many instances this takes place in buildings that have been deserted by their owners for a number of reasons, in quite a few instances the owner is in fact government at one or another level. The late, lamented Drill Hall was one such building. As with the Drill Hall, there have been numerous incidents related to the buildings, we have had nine fires in such buildings over probably as many months. Worse still, a number of lives have been lost! To its credit, the City identified a number of buildings that are in such a bad a state of repair that they have been slated for demolition, and, demolition of some has already taken place. But now comes the rub! Some of those slated for demolition, in fact some already demolished, are classified as being of historic or heritage value. In terms of national legislation these may not be demolished. But some are so bad that they appear to be beyond saving. We are told that there is simply no money available to refurbish them or even to maintain them. But why were they allowed to get into such a state in the first place? Why do we perpetuate this state of affairs? Just look at the accelerating deterioration of the Rissik Street Post Office and one must come to the conclusion that no one actually cares. ‘Let it rot until it becomes a danger to the public and then we can justifiably demolish it’ appears to be the attitude of the authorities. I have to ask myself if this is any better an attitude than that of slumlords who, in my opinion exploit people and economic situations to their own inflated benefit.
In a paper by Donovan D.Rypkema entitled “Globalisation, Heritage Buildings and the 21st Century Economy”, the author concludes as follows: “Historic preservation as an economic development strategy is consistent with all five principles of 21st Century economic development: globalisation, localisation, diversity, sustainability and responsibility.
Heritage conservation reinforces the five senses of quality communities: sense of place, sense of identity, sense of evolution, sense of ownership and sense of community.
Historic preservation can meet the test of both “quality” and “authenticity” that will be crucial elements in economic development in the next century
The cultural assets of a city – dance, theatre, music, visual arts, crafts, and others – are inherently influenced and enhanced by the physical context within which they were created and evolved over the centuries. If cultural resources are to become and remain an economic asset for a city, then the physical context that has always influenced their creation needs to be maintained. Otherwise more than just the physical buildings are at risk; the quality, character, differentiation and sustainability of the other assets are in jeopardy as well.
Historic preservation allows a city to participate in the positive benefits of a globalised economy while resisting the adverse impacts of a globalised culture.
Historic preservation allows a city the opportunity to modernise without having to Westernise. More than that – historic preservation is the irreplaceable variable to achieve modernisation without Westernisation.
For the 21st Century only the foolish city will make the choice between historic preservation and economic development. The wise city will effectively utilise its historic built environment to meet the economic, social and cultural needs of its citizens well into the future. Early in the 20th Century Oswald Spengler wrote; “We cannot comprehend political and economic history at all unless we realise that the city…..is the determinative form to which the course and sense of higher history generally conforms. World history is city history” And the political and economic history of the 21st century will surely be written in cities as well.”
I hate to think what they will write of ours!
Regards, neil fraser
Friday, May 3, 2002
Art; Bus Factory Citichat 3 May 2002
CITICHAT 17/2002 - 3 May 2002
Art and the City – 2
I think I received more comment on the subject matter of last week’s Citichat than any previous issue! Art is clearly central in getting the city’s cultural juices flowing and, whilst JHB ART CITY is a project that is going to fire the imagination, there is much, much more happening on the local art scene!
Firstly, there is going to be a serious amount of visual art-related exhibitions mounted for the World Summit and also for the Arts Alive International Festival that follows it. Planned for instance are:
• an exhibition of works by Gladys Mgudlana and Historical and Contemporary South African Art at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (and yes, the Council will be pressing ahead with clearing the area around our city’s magnificent art gallery so that you’ll be able to visit it without fear for your safety – I must say I have never experienced any problems in this regard myself although it may be harrowing for some to weave through the phalanx of combi-taxis that surround the gallery area, but they are not there for much longer!);
• a refuse art and pottery exhibition at Museum Africa which will also host
• a photographic exhibition by Ronald Ngilma. Then there is
• a craft fair at the Bus Factory. The Bus Factory? Will provide some info on the recycling of this historic Newtown building at the end of this Citichat, so read on!.
Secondly, potential international coverage of South African art is enormous via
• A unique website that will be focusing on JHB ART CITY - I’ll provide more details as soon as it’s ready for viewing but it will really be great fun offering a lot of interactive features and
• The ‘Business of the Arts’ SUMMIT TV programme which can be viewed on DSTV, channel 55 – the first programme can be seen on Wednesday 8th May at 20h50 and on Thursday 9th at 19h45. The series which will run for 6 months, consists of 5 minute programmes aired a minimum of three times a week in varying time slots. Nicola Danby, CEO of Business and Arts South Africa – BASA – points out that supporting the arts and culture is all about smart business decisions and this series will focus on the world of arts, culture and business. It will introduce viewers to and profile the South African personalities and artists who are making their mark both locally and abroad; showcase and assess various initiatives that have been launched by the private sector and examine the central issues and points of debate that exist around business and its support of the arts and culture.
Thirdly, there are a number of inner city buildings under construction that are incorporating artsworks in the developments. Ludwig Hansen of Urban Solutions, the architects for the Metro Mall development, tells me that intensive discussions regarding the integration of artwork into important public buildings within the inner city have been under discussion since the start of this development and have resulted in a not unsubstantial allocation of funds towards artsworks within this particular project. “We have gone through an extensive programme whereby 20 artists have been selected, all of whom have never had the pleasure or opportunity to execute large scale public art. The artists in short were screened and selected out of Soweto, Alexandra and the inner city. The response to our initial proposal call has been tremendous, with over 90 applicants. The artsworks programme for Mertro Mall is nearing completion. The first mosaic mural has already been installed at the corner of Pim and Simmonds Streets as one crosses the Queen Elizabeth Bridge. The rest of the 25 pieces of art will be installed over the next 2 months as building work is concluded.”
Another well known city architect, Heather Dodd is looking for financial support for a mural to be incorporated in the Johannesburg Housing Company’s Elangeni project on the south-east of the inner city, now also nearing completion. The Massive Constitution Hill development – where the Constitutional Court is rapidly taking shape as construction emerges from underground - will showcase a unique art collection which I believe is being assembled under the eagle eye of Constitutional Court Judge Albie Sachs.
Such new artworks will complement substantial existing collections housed in various financial institutions’ headquarter buildings in the city - ABSA’s new building boasts a wonderful collection - Billiton’s head office complex, the Standard Bank Gallery and, of course, the wonderful collection in the Johannesburg Art Gallery. The Gauteng Legislature has quite an amazing collection of South African art.
We’re sitting on gold, hey guys, let’s have a city-wide Arts Route expanded from the one we are planning for JHB ART CITY so that the public can view these treasures and we can dazzle the 65 000 World Summit delegates with quality art every bit as good as if not better than can be found internationally!
But that’s not all! There also is the “Creative Inner City Initiative” (CICI) which is a poverty alleviation project focused on the upliftment of the Hillbrow, Berea and Joubert Park areas and communities through art and arts related enterprises. Funded by DACST (The Department of Arts, Culture, Sport and Tourism) this is a really innovative project being driven by Lapeng Child and Family Resource Service; The Greenhouse Project and the Joubert Park Public Art Project. CICI’s goals are
• Urban renewal through arts and cultural development by improving arts ,crafts and performance skills as well as related business skills and income generating opportunities particularly for youth and women.
• Engaging people in expressing their creative potential by providing ways and means for them to invest their own cultural meanings in the existing urban fabric, and thus to take pride in the neighbourhood and thereby invest in a sense of pride in themselves and their neighbourhood.
• Build on and enhance existing cultural initiatives.
• Revalue the cultural heritage and establish a renewed identity for this area (neighbourhood branding).
There is so much that this particular project embraces that I want to return to it in more detail in a future edition of Citichat.
Now back to the Bus Factory. . The building dates back to 1913 and was built to service and repair the city’s trams, the tram tracks can still be seen leading into the workshop bays. It was subsequently used to maintain the bus fleet that replaced the trams. It had however been derelict for many years, the corrugated iron roofing substantially rusted away or stolen, and the building invaded by illegal squatters. It has now been beautifully refurbished to accommodate a ‘creative product design, related skills development and manufacturing project’. Leslie Musikavanhu, whose name is increasingly popping up relative to inner city projects, is the Architect. The refurbishment was funded by the Gauteng Department of Arts, Culture, Sports and Recreation. What the Bus Factory seeks to achieve is to nurture and develop creative project design and manufacturing talent to a greater production scale than individual artists can achieve and market the products locally and internationally. The Bus Factory will also provide craft skills training in pottery, paper-making, spinning, weaving, caneware, candle-making, fabric printing and millinery, metal work, welding, blacksmith and carpentry trades and furniture making. The President Street fence and gateway is striking and worth a visit on its own. It was hand-crafted from scrap metal salvaged from a nearby demolition and is repeated as balustrading to the interior staircases. A detailed report on the building is contained in the March/April edition of that excellent publication “Urban Green File”.
Trust you have a ‘cultural weekend’, regards, neil.
Art and the City – 2
I think I received more comment on the subject matter of last week’s Citichat than any previous issue! Art is clearly central in getting the city’s cultural juices flowing and, whilst JHB ART CITY is a project that is going to fire the imagination, there is much, much more happening on the local art scene!
Firstly, there is going to be a serious amount of visual art-related exhibitions mounted for the World Summit and also for the Arts Alive International Festival that follows it. Planned for instance are:
• an exhibition of works by Gladys Mgudlana and Historical and Contemporary South African Art at the Johannesburg Art Gallery (and yes, the Council will be pressing ahead with clearing the area around our city’s magnificent art gallery so that you’ll be able to visit it without fear for your safety – I must say I have never experienced any problems in this regard myself although it may be harrowing for some to weave through the phalanx of combi-taxis that surround the gallery area, but they are not there for much longer!);
• a refuse art and pottery exhibition at Museum Africa which will also host
• a photographic exhibition by Ronald Ngilma. Then there is
• a craft fair at the Bus Factory. The Bus Factory? Will provide some info on the recycling of this historic Newtown building at the end of this Citichat, so read on!.
Secondly, potential international coverage of South African art is enormous via
• A unique website that will be focusing on JHB ART CITY - I’ll provide more details as soon as it’s ready for viewing but it will really be great fun offering a lot of interactive features and
• The ‘Business of the Arts’ SUMMIT TV programme which can be viewed on DSTV, channel 55 – the first programme can be seen on Wednesday 8th May at 20h50 and on Thursday 9th at 19h45. The series which will run for 6 months, consists of 5 minute programmes aired a minimum of three times a week in varying time slots. Nicola Danby, CEO of Business and Arts South Africa – BASA – points out that supporting the arts and culture is all about smart business decisions and this series will focus on the world of arts, culture and business. It will introduce viewers to and profile the South African personalities and artists who are making their mark both locally and abroad; showcase and assess various initiatives that have been launched by the private sector and examine the central issues and points of debate that exist around business and its support of the arts and culture.
Thirdly, there are a number of inner city buildings under construction that are incorporating artsworks in the developments. Ludwig Hansen of Urban Solutions, the architects for the Metro Mall development, tells me that intensive discussions regarding the integration of artwork into important public buildings within the inner city have been under discussion since the start of this development and have resulted in a not unsubstantial allocation of funds towards artsworks within this particular project. “We have gone through an extensive programme whereby 20 artists have been selected, all of whom have never had the pleasure or opportunity to execute large scale public art. The artists in short were screened and selected out of Soweto, Alexandra and the inner city. The response to our initial proposal call has been tremendous, with over 90 applicants. The artsworks programme for Mertro Mall is nearing completion. The first mosaic mural has already been installed at the corner of Pim and Simmonds Streets as one crosses the Queen Elizabeth Bridge. The rest of the 25 pieces of art will be installed over the next 2 months as building work is concluded.”
Another well known city architect, Heather Dodd is looking for financial support for a mural to be incorporated in the Johannesburg Housing Company’s Elangeni project on the south-east of the inner city, now also nearing completion. The Massive Constitution Hill development – where the Constitutional Court is rapidly taking shape as construction emerges from underground - will showcase a unique art collection which I believe is being assembled under the eagle eye of Constitutional Court Judge Albie Sachs.
Such new artworks will complement substantial existing collections housed in various financial institutions’ headquarter buildings in the city - ABSA’s new building boasts a wonderful collection - Billiton’s head office complex, the Standard Bank Gallery and, of course, the wonderful collection in the Johannesburg Art Gallery. The Gauteng Legislature has quite an amazing collection of South African art.
We’re sitting on gold, hey guys, let’s have a city-wide Arts Route expanded from the one we are planning for JHB ART CITY so that the public can view these treasures and we can dazzle the 65 000 World Summit delegates with quality art every bit as good as if not better than can be found internationally!
But that’s not all! There also is the “Creative Inner City Initiative” (CICI) which is a poverty alleviation project focused on the upliftment of the Hillbrow, Berea and Joubert Park areas and communities through art and arts related enterprises. Funded by DACST (The Department of Arts, Culture, Sport and Tourism) this is a really innovative project being driven by Lapeng Child and Family Resource Service; The Greenhouse Project and the Joubert Park Public Art Project. CICI’s goals are
• Urban renewal through arts and cultural development by improving arts ,crafts and performance skills as well as related business skills and income generating opportunities particularly for youth and women.
• Engaging people in expressing their creative potential by providing ways and means for them to invest their own cultural meanings in the existing urban fabric, and thus to take pride in the neighbourhood and thereby invest in a sense of pride in themselves and their neighbourhood.
• Build on and enhance existing cultural initiatives.
• Revalue the cultural heritage and establish a renewed identity for this area (neighbourhood branding).
There is so much that this particular project embraces that I want to return to it in more detail in a future edition of Citichat.
Now back to the Bus Factory. . The building dates back to 1913 and was built to service and repair the city’s trams, the tram tracks can still be seen leading into the workshop bays. It was subsequently used to maintain the bus fleet that replaced the trams. It had however been derelict for many years, the corrugated iron roofing substantially rusted away or stolen, and the building invaded by illegal squatters. It has now been beautifully refurbished to accommodate a ‘creative product design, related skills development and manufacturing project’. Leslie Musikavanhu, whose name is increasingly popping up relative to inner city projects, is the Architect. The refurbishment was funded by the Gauteng Department of Arts, Culture, Sports and Recreation. What the Bus Factory seeks to achieve is to nurture and develop creative project design and manufacturing talent to a greater production scale than individual artists can achieve and market the products locally and internationally. The Bus Factory will also provide craft skills training in pottery, paper-making, spinning, weaving, caneware, candle-making, fabric printing and millinery, metal work, welding, blacksmith and carpentry trades and furniture making. The President Street fence and gateway is striking and worth a visit on its own. It was hand-crafted from scrap metal salvaged from a nearby demolition and is repeated as balustrading to the interior staircases. A detailed report on the building is contained in the March/April edition of that excellent publication “Urban Green File”.
Trust you have a ‘cultural weekend’, regards, neil.
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