GPGP Citichat 14 September 2007

CITICHAT 36/2007 - 14 September 2007




Other views…….(2)



In Citichat 32 “State, Statues and Smart Transportation”. I had written:

"In the meantime, the buildings bought by the provincial government five years ago have been empty and left to disintegrate, thus creating an added eyesore in the city center. Surely it is incumbent on the provincial government, particularly given the premier's and the MEC's comments way back at the start of the project, to advise the citizens of the city just what it is now planning.

Surely it is incumbent on the provincial government as one of our custodians of the built heritage and as the owner of these crumbling structures to tell us what it is planning to do with the heritage (and other) buildings that daily degenerate?"

Here is a reply received:

“One assumes also that "surely it is incumbent on the Provincial Goverment (GPG) to repay the taxpayer the lost interest/opportunity costs on the money wasted here to date and to reimburse the City of Joburg (CoJ) for lost rates on these properties". Perhaps CoJ should sue GPG for damages and reduced amenity on behalf of it's citizens. Perhaps it should come from the GPG salary packages.

Surely there is some legal route to force a property owner to take appropriate measures (maintenance, for instance) to prevent this ... even if it is as lowly as a simple clause in the bylaws - oops, sorry, I temporarily forgot that provinces and politicians and such don't pay much attention to the rules and regs that we all have to live by, that were mostly made by politicians using our money, to ensure rational development of our cities.



I have great concerns about this problem, but like most others who also do, don't have the time and resources to do anything about it - I'm too busy trying to stay alive under the load of paying my share of these buildings and the politicians and lawmaking expenses.



I used to be a very charitable person, giving others the benefit of the doubt when listening to their ideas. Forty years of practice, marvelling at the schemes that come and go (starting with, in my 60's Pretoria architecture student days, the 'Ring Road' elevated highway proposal to put a noose on the city) and I am perhaps more idealistic than I was then about where the future should be, and somewhat less idealistic (leaning dangerously to cynical) about the performance of the team partners needed to get there. Planning needs to be done by people with design/planning expertise coupled with sufficient experience to remain objective about their proposals. The rest of the team need to learn how to resist the urge to be 'wannabedesigners-cos-it's-so-seductive-and-I-have-the-money'.



What we are missing most in this country is mass awareness education (remind the politicians they also are members of the masses) on the need to socially coexist in self-and-mutual-respect and concern for each other's well being and tax-dollars. Cities are not bunches of building grouped around some hole in the street-grid for some politically correct concept devised by a few politicians as a personally legacy project, where they secretly hope that some future generation will place a bronze edifice of the conceptualizer.



Concepts without vision and resources should remain concepts, that vanish like mist when the sun of reason comes out from behind the dark clouds of some hazy, likely-alcohol-facilitated adrenaline-rush

delusion that real power is at hand and it's destiny is a project in the city.



A plantation is not a forest. We need some serious vision with serious clout behind it, like Hausmann (1) (who made Paris the undisputed 'most beautiful city'), with Napoleon for power, for Joburg to even have a slice of a chance to be a 'World Class African City.' We need a Juiliani of New York, or a Jaime Lerner of Curitiba, Brazil. Someone (anyone - even) with enough depth to know how shallow the current thinking is in these grandiose schemes. Haven't found any candidates yet, have we?



Lerner solved the Curitiba transport needs (2) with a few hundred million $US - a city not much smaller today than Joburg. He did it with buses and IQ. R3bn each for Jozy and Tshwane ought to do it with another R2bn for intercity buses and there'll be plenty change left over. Any consultant in private enterprise that crafts a budget for a project that balloons from R2Bn (the original Gautrain estimates, as I remember them) by even so little as 100% (!) should lose his job and client. Any client that allows the budget to balloon the way it has (rivalling Zimbabwean inflation rates) should lose his job too. And after the Gautrain, the plan still needs the buses.



The GPGP buildings are rotting away, probably until the contract for refurbishing them mushrooms into something one can really sink one's teeth into - something that can take a lot of gravy.



Remember Hassan Fathy's (3) experience in Egypt pre WW2? - politicians don't want to know that you can build a school for one third of the current cost, and thus have enough to build three schools. A tight budget has no room for fiddling 'adjustments'. And if at the end of the term of office, there are not enough schools, that's the incoming's problem, who can call it an inherited problem, justifying a bigger budget call.



Fortunately for us, our politicians can see beyond all that - they have the greater vision, don't they?



But who can blame me for thinking that the GPGP and the Gautrain are just 'me-too' projects that arose from the inner-room after-dinner cognac-and-cigar-smoke haze of discussions on the political survivability of the Arms Contracts of the late 90's. Great redistribution mechanisms.



And having twice been the focus of attention of armed robbery in the CoJ, lost a little blood and plenty of money and income in the process, (the most recent by Zimabweans with guns poked in my face and spine - the ones we should embrace with compassion but without recognizing the consequences), I have rapidly waning attention for these inventors of cart-before-the-horse schemes.



Democracy is missing a 'money-back guarantee' plan”.



(1) for a good read about cities, and an excellent account of Hausman's Paris see James Kuntzler's 'The City in Mind'.

(2) see entry in 'Massive Change' by Bruce Mau and 'The Institute Without Boundaries' (Exclusive books)

(3) See 'Architecture for the Poor' by Hassan Fathy



A later addition:



“As if to underline what I had written about the value of design-experienced-and-minded persons in positions of power, after posting the email to you, I read in the current issue of Wallpaper magazine about another architect rising to the challenge after being appointed to deputy mayor of Qinpu in China - he made the city a landmark in the new China development surge (which makes our boom look like a ripple on a pond - I saw a statistic some few years ago that put over half the world population of high-rise construction cranes in Shanghai alone!) and an architectural talking point. Then they made him mayor of Jiading, another large developing region of Shanghai.



I skimmed through your Oct 24 2005 "Farewell to Old Buildings" - the Rand Water Board Building is something I should go and have a look at. I have recently been photographing some downtown structures - not necessarily with a specific purpose, but just to see what comes up, perhaps just for my archives, perhaps because I have a growing obsession of a personal vision of 'The City". I had occasion late last year to go to the current RWB offices in Impala Drive on the edge of the Klipriviersberg Nature Reserve. At the time I wondered at the wisdom of locating an office building in that environment - even though the area south of Impala is not technically Reserve, it probably should be. Again - parastatal privilege to ignore and override as they see fit. I wonder if Rand Water Board had a good look at the possibility of refurbishment of the CBD building before deciding to move. The most energy conservative option in the process of new building, is not to build at all. It's a question that requires a lot of courage to ask at a boardroom table - "do we really need a new building?". This goes for the GPGP, too.



I am currently reading a 1999 article on Tokyo, some quotes -

"in Japan, buildings are designed in the expectation not that they will stand the test of time but that they will be torn down sooner rather that later and replaced by something more appropriate to the economic and technological demands of the future." John Thackara.



"the city changes at dizzying pace defying every attempt at control and planning. This internal seemingly willful force of change defines Tokyo." Judith Connor Greer.



"In Tokyo they demolish 12,339 m2 of buildings, and newly construct 62,861 m2 daily, while 455 units of new housing start every day." Tokyo Metropolis: facts and figures (1993).



"the idea of a city that becomes like a museum, where you cannot pull down buildings simply because they are old is questionable ... In that sense Tokyo is more liberated (than Western Cities)." Sir Norman Foster.

Land in Tokyo commercial areas is usually ten times more valuable than the building on it. That I agree with these thoughts may appear to be in conflict with my email, but in fact is not - I don't side either way with the the demolition gang or the heritage hugger. Everything on it's merits. It's the ill-conceived and wasteful stop-start that is the problem. In the case in point now of Joburg - it ends in limbo and strangulation of resources. In these heritage buildings as well as the "more modern, meaningless buildings", is it the facade or the interior or the utility of the building that either needs protection or is expendable? Is it possible to separate these? Do the planning first, take options if you need to, get the decision, then spend the money. That looks like a logical plan order to me.



At least an office building can be given new services to bring it up to current functionality. Last year I sat in on the DPW internal workshop on heritage buildings preservation, which case studied the Palace of Justice, the Old Synagogue in Paul Kruger Street, Pretoria (location of the Mandela/Treason Trial) and the Capitol Theater. The former restored and functional, the latter two rapidly decaying. The biggest question without an answer - to what function can these be restored and adapted, that will be viable, self-supporting and justifiable today? So far no answers. The Capitol Theater - once the largest, most magnificent cinema in the southern hemisphere, the suit-and-tie dress-up Saturday night Movietone news and movie magic of my childhood - is in the age of TV a parking garage for less than 50 cars by day, useless by night.”



Hmmmmm, lot’s to ponder, thank you for the input, cheers, neil