CITICHAT 7/2007 - 23 February 2007
Economic Development and the Inner City Summit
The Economic Development Stakeholder’s Working Group (SWG) was held last week and completes the first round of SWG sessions leading to the Summit.
I don’t intend to provide details of every single session – each of the 6 sectoral SWGs meets four times, 24 in all – but I did think I should cover the first session of each SWG which is what I call the ‘dumping’ session. Thereafter we prioritise issues and move into finding solutions. The dumping session is where everyone gets the opportunity to get what’s on their mind onto the table. So this will be the last report of a first session having covered Safety, Security & Urban Management (Citichat 45/206); Arts, Culture, Heritage & Public Spaces (Citichat 46/2006);Transportation (Citichat 1/2007); Social Development (Citichat 5/2007) and Residential (Citichat 6/2007).
Prof Francois Viruly of Wits University helped to set the economic scene starting with an economic vision for the city: “A city economy that plays a role as the key economic hub on the continent , and a national economic growth-leader, by ensuring sustainable shared growth that benefits all.” Neat!
He then went on to paint the following picture:
Currently the costs of doing business in the Inner City are high:
o Transportation costs (Bold steps are required – free public transportation?)
o Location costs are high
o Regulatory burdens and lengthy processes hinder investment.
In terms of land economics, the highest office vacancies are usually found where there is no retail / lifestyle within urban areas.
We must understand that there is such as thing as a commercial ladder as well as a residential ladder
The built environment can play a critical role in Economic Development – (example of providing smaller retail space for smaller shops, smaller offices, clusters to create economies of scale.)
There will be a negative impact on Inner City retail due to the construction of new retail malls in the former Township areas.
With regard to office to residential conversions, the Inner City is structured as an office node, with no amenity for high density residential use. How do we create this?
Who is going to live in the Inner City? The income level of the market we attract has very different implications in terms of economic development
The property market delivers – it can either be done in a planned organized manner or …not. Either way it still delivers
Gautrain has implications – it could be a positive intervention for the Inner City. It could also move people out of and away from the Inner City as it gives fast easy access to other nodes.
Institutional investment in the Inner City has been reduced from 10% to 1%. At this level, what sort of commitment can we expect from institutions in the future?
We need to explore the use of space in terms of economics. Can we use vacant space to start businesses? Can we use space as a commodity, as venture capital? Current Inner City vacancy rate is 20-25% and is stable. Decentralised nodes are sitting at 2% vacancy rates. Lower rentals in the Inner City are still an opportunity.
The City is shifting from a place of ABC&D grade office space towards not offering BC&D grade.
Concepts of sustainable development offer the Inner City an opportunity – EIAs make Greenfield development very expensive and problematic. Developers may turn towards Brownfield development opportunities.
The following are some of the comments received from Stakeholders:
Parking There is currently a lack of affordable parking in the Inner City. We need to look carefully at where the parking should be located. How can we employ more people and attract people to the Inner City if we cannot accommodate more employees with private vehicles?
Gautrain The area around Hoek Street and Park Station is a huge problem in terms of movement and grime. Gautrain will also have an impact on this area and one wonders if the Gautrain designers are aare of current problems.
Connectivity What is also important to remember is the interconnectedness between different economic sectors. How can we integrate these sectors in a positive way, rather than looking at sectors in Silos? This is especially important in terms of Policy.
Culture We are still living in a country where the makers of the laws in the City have not come to terms with the users of these laws. We must encourage those involved in Planning to become more familiar with the lifestyles, economics and cultural ways of the people who live in the City. These ways are often only visible in the rural areas but are invisible in an urban context. We seem to continually be trying to bring back people from the North and from the suburbs whilst those already living in the Inner City seemingly don’t exist. We need to be more open-hearted and open minded about whom we are making the City for. If we’re serious about creating an African Environment, let’s not fuzz it by using words like ‘Global’ and ‘International’. Stop glamorizing the City around Western Values. What is it that attracts the majority of the city users to come to the City. We must be more ready to consume indigenous African culture. We are still not bringing together the diversity of the users of our City
Diversity Re diversity – we must avoid ‘one size fits all’ thinking. The richness of South Africa and of Johannesburg lies in diversity. Each sector has complexities and a range of issues. There also may be issues for each rung of complexity. Thus we need to understand the complexities before we can deal with the issues effectively. We must also respect that some people are happy sitting on the lower rungs of the economic ladder and some aren’t.
Policy differentiation We must be careful of separating out policies into those for the first economy and those for the second economy.
Bandwith The issue of Bandwidth is also critical. Business cannot deal with or afford Telkom lines to fail – has a significantly negative impact on business. If adequate Bandwidth is not available in the City, business will move to where it is.
A plea to “do the basics” ! There are many lessons to be learned from interventions which have already taken place in the Inner City. These lessons in a way contribute towards the ‘treasury of the Inner City’. One major corporation in the inner city reported that they had run into immense problems with certain UACs on a major construction project. The UACs did not perform when the company embarked on construction after very adequate notice and constant reminders (to which there were never acknowledgements). Here we have an example of the private sector having to step in and provide for and upgrade what they City has failed to do and yet still be hampered by the inefficiency and lack of competence in the City departments. These UACs caused 30 – 40 days delay during construction, costing the company more than R650 000.00 and recourse will be sought against them.
THE CITY JUST NEEDS TO DO THE BASIC JOB FOR WHICH IT IS BEING PAID!
Planning The Planning Process is currently a disaster. This chases potential developers away. People stop development because of the costs and inefficiencies of infrastructure such as power and roads. There are also problems around building management and inspection. Developers who could be building in the Inner City are building in Midrand because of the easier conditions. An interesting study to undertake would be: “what does the inefficiency of the CofJ cost the City every month?”
Conference facilities Another international corporation stated that they were excited about the potential. They required global conferences and meetings. But these all usually take place outside the Inner City as there are no adequate facilities available.
The devil is in the detail! Work which has already been done in the Inner City is fantastic. The Big Picture is in place and is good. But the detail is failing. It’s not working. The Transportation or lack thereof is totally unacceptable. Bad attitudes need to be resolved. Problems with Metro Police are increasingly becoming an issue. We need to be able to distribute people effectively and efficiently as well as paying attention to sustainability issues and climate change.
Mechanisms and Institutions Do we have the correct mechanisms and institutions in place? Or do we have an institution delivering the wrong mechanisms? The macro vision of the City is OK but we seem to be getting stuck on what we’re doing with respect to this. Also – we must be careful of favouring tax incentives over other issues. Tax incentives are the cherry on the top, a ‘nice to have’. We need to ensure that we get all the other things (basics) right and in place so that people in the Inner City can live / work effectively. Then use the tax system as an added bonus. We must not use tax to compensate for inefficiency which is already being paid for.
Provincial capital The institutions already exist. Perhaps they need to be improvedor should improvise. Their operations seem to be missing the target. The rigidity of the mindset of those who work in the institutions around what their goals and objectives are, is not acceptable. E.g. the JDA materialized ‘their’ visions but were these the right visions? Were they open enough? JRA seems to not be able to break out of the pattern which it has operated in for a number of years.
Johannesburg is now a Provincial Capital and yet spatially does not look like one. We need Boulevards and Public Open Spaces. But no capital is being spent to give the City status. Street Traders should be viewed as creating the City, not destroying it. Don’t clog them up in markets
There is nothing ‘normative’ about the way in which we make our Cities. Rather than chasing away the users of the City, change the public realm to accommodate their activities.
Shift the focus away from trying to attract Sandtonites back into the City. Recognise that those in the City actually do have money.
The following issues were distilled and clustered from the input received:
1. The CoJ must deliver on what it’s being paid to do.
Refers to various City departments and UACs being inefficient, not delivering, not communicating, very slow turnaround times, complex expensive processes for investors and developers.
Notion that the City is actually hindering the location and expansion of business and investment in the Inner City rather than helping and facilitating.
2. Movement and congestion of people, goods and services in the Inner City inhibits Economic growth
Cluster refers to the shortage of Parking in the Inner City which only the private sector seems to be currently addressing
A lack of accessibility within the Inner City – access between places and key land uses
Congestion of certain nodes, particularly the Park Station / Hoek Street / Noord Street node as well as congestion of pavements by Street Traders
Need for efficient and effective public transportation in the Inner City
3. Need for more Bandwidth in the Inner City.
Currently this is a problem and business will move elsewhere if it cannot access this.
4. Review Institutional Arrangements
Are the current institutions and the mechanisms which they deliver correct or should the status quo be reviewed and changed so that it becomes more focused and efficient?
The Big Picture in terms of Inner City regeneration which has already been put in place is good and works. Attention needs to be paid to the detail in between which is not working.
5. Make available existing research and information
Currently information is not available to stakeholders – institutional barrier to investment
6. Embrace diversity and complexity
Diversity and complexity are a unique advantage for the Inner City and must be embraced and enhanced
7. Recognise that the built environment can facilitate Economic Development!
Start with a quality, enabling built environment.
So, another interesting session! The second round of SWG workshops (which have already begun) will start to focus on those five or six critical issues that will really make a difference and start to seek solutions. Cheers, neil
Friday, February 23, 2007
Friday, February 16, 2007
Inner City Summit Residential 16 February 2007
CITICHAT 6/2007 - 16 February 2007
Residential Development and The Inner City Summit
“We come together in cities for specific reasons. Some of these reasons are the same as they always were, some are different. We come to cities to work. Not, perhaps to assemble cars, or to sew dresses, or to build locomotives, but to do brain work. Cities continue to be the best places for financial work, communications work, and much research work. Creative and artistic work likewise flourishes in cities. So, we need cities with educated workforces that can support those industries. We also come to cities to play, to rub shoulders, to exchange ideas, simply to be part of a crowd (whether we are going to a museum a theatre or a casino) What we need are cities where we can do these things safely and pleasurably. Urban activities require an urban infrastructure. We need cities that work in terms of education, policing, transportation, sanitation. We also need cities with districts that are vital. We are learning that much of urban vitality comes from the physical proximity of commercial, retail and especially residential uses. These types of districts – some have called them 24-hour downtowns – are another characteristic of the type of city we need.”
So wrote urbanist Witold Rybczynski some years back. Those words have been tumbling around in my mind for the past few weeks as I have listened to a wide variety of Joburgers from all walks of life talking about their needs and fears, their frustrations and their aspirations in relation to the Inner City. We have now completed a third of the planned twenty-four stakeholder work groups leading up the Mayor’s Summit and Charter on the 5th May. This week three sessions were held - the first session for both Residential Development (Tuesday) and Economic Development (Wednesday) and the second session for Public and Leisure Spaces, Arts Culture and Heritage (today, Friday). Almost all of the aspects that Rybczynski refers to in answering the question “What kind of Cities do we need?” were inherent in this week’s sessions. And, although one could feel quite depressed at some of the comments and stories that we have been hearing, on a macro level I feel that we are inexorably moving towards the kind of city that Rybczynski sketches. You’ll note for instance that he talks of much of urban vitality stemming from ‘the physical proximity of commercial, retail and especially residential uses.’
If the Inner City is changing at all, and it is, rapidly, it is in this aspect of residential use. I remember writing way back in the mid-‘90s that, over a few decades there was absolutely no increase in the stock of Inner City residential units. On the other hand, there was an increase in numbers of people living in the Inner City but that was due to a massive increase in the numbers of people living in the units.
That has changed and changed dramatically. Scores of commercial buildings have been refurbished into residential accommodation and scores more of existing residential units have been upgraded. For the most part they are being well managed and are an asset to the city. The effect has been to ‘shrink’ the city
Not in terms of geographic spread, but in terms of the numbers of commercial buildings. The rash of empty commercial buildings that once existed through the Inner City has given way to good quality, well managed accommodation and the demand, according to a number of developers, is insatiable. It is quite likely that the numbers of people living in the inner city area has almost doubled in the past five/six years – we are doing some exercises at the moment that will give us a better idea of the actual growth – but it is clear that demand will continue to see an expansion of accommodation.
Of course demand isn’t only related to middle-income housing that the market is quite willing and able to supply. We also have many thousands of urban poor for whom the housing solution is a far greater problem. One of the major difficulties, we discovered, was in relation to the City’s rates and service charges, not just the quantum but also the inappropriateness of the charges relative to the lower end of the market. Here it is generally the public sector that is going to have to come up with solutions although the answer appears to have been found in ‘Europa style’ accommodation. (I described the Europa in a previous Citichat). Certainly the general opinion was that communal accommodation with shared facilities was the answer but still rates and service charges would be problematic. Evidently administered costs amount to about 60% of developers’ operational costs and are a minimum of R550.00 per month based on current City charges. That means that operational costs would be about R900.00 per month. If the rental to income ratio should be not more than 30%, that would mean a monthly income of about R3 000.00. A number of developers expressed an interest at this level suggesting that communal facilities would be a solution, provided that there could be more certainty in regards to rates and service charges. But for earners below that level, or non-earners, the market cannot respond and we have to rely on the public sector to address that need.
On Thursday we met with representatives of the city’s service providers, electricity, water, sewage, refuse collection, etc in order to determine if there was a danger that services won’t be able to keep up with demand. Whilst the jury is still out on that, there is an equal concern that public open space and social services won’t keep up. These are good, positive concerns – not that long ago we were agonizing over the empty buildings!
One of the aspects that we tested at the Residential SWG session was whether developers of middle income accommodation would consider making between 10% and 20% of their developments available for low income families. There was a clear reaction that this would be impractical, on three counts. Firstly, it was claimed, similar units for differing rentals would inevitably lead to disputes. Secondly, if only 10 to 20% of the total units in a development were targeted at low income earners, the time taken to meet the demand would be greatly extended and it would be better to have larger dedicated projects targeting this level. Thirdly, and this did not surface at the session but in private discussions I had with some developers, the class difference between middle and low-income earners is such that the management of the project would be very complex if not impossible.
There are of course many examples of mixed income housing or mixed income districts that do work. Glasgow, Dublin, London come to mind as also Nairobi if we want an example nearer home. But there are some interesting models in the USA that should be looked at not just in relation to the mixed income housing but in relation to innovative funding. Reading up on a couple of examples in Atlanta I was interested to find that the barriers are similar to here. Firstly, finding sufficient sites. Secondly, finding management teams to run such projects, thirdly –as here – the issue of appropriate operating costs. One of the ways that this is tackled is through rental subsidies. The final barrier is evidently the large capital cost of new or substantially refurbished housing relative to the incomes of occupants. In one of the examples the mix is 40% market related, 40% who get rental subsidies (described as the ‘working poor’) and 20% who are classified as public housing. The ethnic mix was 70% African American, 20% Caucasian and 10% Hispanic and Asian. Reasons for success were given as (1) being located in attractive, highly accessible neighbourhoods (2) well designed and visually appealing buildings that do not look like ‘public housing projects’ and (3) projects are well managed particularly with respect to resident screening and ensuring that only applicants with ‘middle-class behaviour patterns’ are accepted irrespective of their income levels. The report that I read concluded as follows: “(the projects) have performed a truly remarkable service in dispelling the entrenched belief that it is not possible to design financially successful projects in which there is income-mixing at the block level. If the families in these projects have similar values, even though their incomes are quite different, then income integration seems possible, at least in the rental sector.”
Finally, these are some of the issues discussed at the session:
1. Access to City’s social package
• A creative plan is required to ensure that non-account holders get access to full social packages.
2. Emergency housing and other measures to enable relocation of people where refurbishment of unsafe buildings is critical
• Proactive interim measures are required to improve health and safety in critical buildings as well as the provision of sufficient emergency/short term accommodation to temporarily house people who have to be removed from unsafe buildings.
3. Inner city housing (for both rental and ownership) that caters to all income brackets
• A comprehensive large scale plan for roll-out of X number of units of new accommodation.(X could be anything from 50 000t0 150 000!)
• A package of incentives to encourage and enable development of accommodation for all income brackets (including for example reconstruction zone subsidies).
• Public Sector must accept the responsibility for providing housing at below the R800.00 per month level and help to make the model viable for R800 to R1000.00 per month communal housing for if the private sector is to react to this sector.
• Consideration must be given to extending the UDZ time period beyond 2009.
• Rates rebates should be considered under certain circumstances – possibly on a stepped basis during the first two to three years of a project coming on stream, whether new or refurbished, and also to incentivise demolitions.
• From a viability point of view, low cost housing will be located in existing buildings, middle and upper end could be in refurbished or new buildings.
• It is impractical to consider mixed incomes (ie low and middle) in the same building.
• The 10%/20% option is unrealistic because it will slow down delivery of lower income – lower income must be a specific focus.
• The CoJ Department of Housing must negotiate the opening of the flow of subsidies with Provincial Government.
4. Better Buildings Programme
• A complete reconfiguration of the Better Buildings Programme is required.
5. Various system blockages preventing development of residential accommodation at scale
• Regardless of package of incentives, removal of key system constraints (clearance certificates, incorrect rating of developments, etc.)
• Clearances take too long and delays promote corruption
• Plan approval to be speeded up
• Billing remains a problem
• Corruption is widespread
6. Targeted measures to prevent hijacking, slumlording, fraud and non-payment crises
• All buildings must be brought into good standing with both regular payments of rates and services and consistent re-investment in building.
• The PIE Act is a major problem that is prejudicial to good management – a system must be found to deal with non-payers that can be implemented rapidly.
• An investigation should be launched into the possibility of establishing a property court – possibly incorporated into the Municipal Court.
• By-laws should be up-dated and into a practical form for easy enforcement.
• The lack of consistency at the Landlord/Tenant tribunal must be investigated
• Managing agents need a charter and business standards
7. Sectional title
• A proactive programme to deal with collapsed sectional title arrangements and poor management by body-corporates is desperately needed.
8. Infrastructure to support massive increase in residential accommodation
• Strategic investment in required infrastructure (water, sanitation, power, waste, roads and stormwater)
• It may be necessary to extend the physical area under consideration to include areas to the South and East of the Inner City.
• Infrastructure must include social infrastructure, clinics, crèches, scools, parks, sports facilities, etc
9. Public environment and security to support increase in residential densities
• A coherent programme of Residential Improvement Districts to be developed.
• CIDs are costly to establish and will need Council support initially
10. Hostels
• An accelerated programme of upgrading is required .
11. Non-performance of Council Departments and Utilities
• There is a major lack of law enforcement
• We need to change the model from ‘blitz’ enforcement to enforcement everyday
• A system of integrated score cards should be investigated to promote measurement and accountability
12. Tariffs
• Tariff system is antiquated and unrealistic providing inappropriate tariffs
• Certain tariffs are counter development, eg don’t facilitate communal living
• Investigate property owners buying services in bulk and on-selling to tenants
• Investigate a fixed rates and services charge for the lower end of the market especially for communal living
• Administered costs are 60% of the problem, everything must be done to reduce this figure
13 Communications
• Investors don’t know who to talk to
14 New Vision & Framework
• We need a framework for management that aligns private and public sectors and that everyone understands; a strategy that aligns with the vision.
15 City Fund
• Investigate the establishment of an Inner City Fund which could assist with issues such as the conversion to pre-paid meters
• Developers want accountability and transparency for issues such as large plan approval payment, advertising income, etc
16. Parking
• Investigate implementing the Cape Town model
17. BEE
• Any residential strategy MUST include BEE as a major component to change ownership patterns in the inner city.
Interesting and very important issues regarding a critical part of the city’s future, regards, neil
Residential Development and The Inner City Summit
“We come together in cities for specific reasons. Some of these reasons are the same as they always were, some are different. We come to cities to work. Not, perhaps to assemble cars, or to sew dresses, or to build locomotives, but to do brain work. Cities continue to be the best places for financial work, communications work, and much research work. Creative and artistic work likewise flourishes in cities. So, we need cities with educated workforces that can support those industries. We also come to cities to play, to rub shoulders, to exchange ideas, simply to be part of a crowd (whether we are going to a museum a theatre or a casino) What we need are cities where we can do these things safely and pleasurably. Urban activities require an urban infrastructure. We need cities that work in terms of education, policing, transportation, sanitation. We also need cities with districts that are vital. We are learning that much of urban vitality comes from the physical proximity of commercial, retail and especially residential uses. These types of districts – some have called them 24-hour downtowns – are another characteristic of the type of city we need.”
So wrote urbanist Witold Rybczynski some years back. Those words have been tumbling around in my mind for the past few weeks as I have listened to a wide variety of Joburgers from all walks of life talking about their needs and fears, their frustrations and their aspirations in relation to the Inner City. We have now completed a third of the planned twenty-four stakeholder work groups leading up the Mayor’s Summit and Charter on the 5th May. This week three sessions were held - the first session for both Residential Development (Tuesday) and Economic Development (Wednesday) and the second session for Public and Leisure Spaces, Arts Culture and Heritage (today, Friday). Almost all of the aspects that Rybczynski refers to in answering the question “What kind of Cities do we need?” were inherent in this week’s sessions. And, although one could feel quite depressed at some of the comments and stories that we have been hearing, on a macro level I feel that we are inexorably moving towards the kind of city that Rybczynski sketches. You’ll note for instance that he talks of much of urban vitality stemming from ‘the physical proximity of commercial, retail and especially residential uses.’
If the Inner City is changing at all, and it is, rapidly, it is in this aspect of residential use. I remember writing way back in the mid-‘90s that, over a few decades there was absolutely no increase in the stock of Inner City residential units. On the other hand, there was an increase in numbers of people living in the Inner City but that was due to a massive increase in the numbers of people living in the units.
That has changed and changed dramatically. Scores of commercial buildings have been refurbished into residential accommodation and scores more of existing residential units have been upgraded. For the most part they are being well managed and are an asset to the city. The effect has been to ‘shrink’ the city
Not in terms of geographic spread, but in terms of the numbers of commercial buildings. The rash of empty commercial buildings that once existed through the Inner City has given way to good quality, well managed accommodation and the demand, according to a number of developers, is insatiable. It is quite likely that the numbers of people living in the inner city area has almost doubled in the past five/six years – we are doing some exercises at the moment that will give us a better idea of the actual growth – but it is clear that demand will continue to see an expansion of accommodation.
Of course demand isn’t only related to middle-income housing that the market is quite willing and able to supply. We also have many thousands of urban poor for whom the housing solution is a far greater problem. One of the major difficulties, we discovered, was in relation to the City’s rates and service charges, not just the quantum but also the inappropriateness of the charges relative to the lower end of the market. Here it is generally the public sector that is going to have to come up with solutions although the answer appears to have been found in ‘Europa style’ accommodation. (I described the Europa in a previous Citichat). Certainly the general opinion was that communal accommodation with shared facilities was the answer but still rates and service charges would be problematic. Evidently administered costs amount to about 60% of developers’ operational costs and are a minimum of R550.00 per month based on current City charges. That means that operational costs would be about R900.00 per month. If the rental to income ratio should be not more than 30%, that would mean a monthly income of about R3 000.00. A number of developers expressed an interest at this level suggesting that communal facilities would be a solution, provided that there could be more certainty in regards to rates and service charges. But for earners below that level, or non-earners, the market cannot respond and we have to rely on the public sector to address that need.
On Thursday we met with representatives of the city’s service providers, electricity, water, sewage, refuse collection, etc in order to determine if there was a danger that services won’t be able to keep up with demand. Whilst the jury is still out on that, there is an equal concern that public open space and social services won’t keep up. These are good, positive concerns – not that long ago we were agonizing over the empty buildings!
One of the aspects that we tested at the Residential SWG session was whether developers of middle income accommodation would consider making between 10% and 20% of their developments available for low income families. There was a clear reaction that this would be impractical, on three counts. Firstly, it was claimed, similar units for differing rentals would inevitably lead to disputes. Secondly, if only 10 to 20% of the total units in a development were targeted at low income earners, the time taken to meet the demand would be greatly extended and it would be better to have larger dedicated projects targeting this level. Thirdly, and this did not surface at the session but in private discussions I had with some developers, the class difference between middle and low-income earners is such that the management of the project would be very complex if not impossible.
There are of course many examples of mixed income housing or mixed income districts that do work. Glasgow, Dublin, London come to mind as also Nairobi if we want an example nearer home. But there are some interesting models in the USA that should be looked at not just in relation to the mixed income housing but in relation to innovative funding. Reading up on a couple of examples in Atlanta I was interested to find that the barriers are similar to here. Firstly, finding sufficient sites. Secondly, finding management teams to run such projects, thirdly –as here – the issue of appropriate operating costs. One of the ways that this is tackled is through rental subsidies. The final barrier is evidently the large capital cost of new or substantially refurbished housing relative to the incomes of occupants. In one of the examples the mix is 40% market related, 40% who get rental subsidies (described as the ‘working poor’) and 20% who are classified as public housing. The ethnic mix was 70% African American, 20% Caucasian and 10% Hispanic and Asian. Reasons for success were given as (1) being located in attractive, highly accessible neighbourhoods (2) well designed and visually appealing buildings that do not look like ‘public housing projects’ and (3) projects are well managed particularly with respect to resident screening and ensuring that only applicants with ‘middle-class behaviour patterns’ are accepted irrespective of their income levels. The report that I read concluded as follows: “(the projects) have performed a truly remarkable service in dispelling the entrenched belief that it is not possible to design financially successful projects in which there is income-mixing at the block level. If the families in these projects have similar values, even though their incomes are quite different, then income integration seems possible, at least in the rental sector.”
Finally, these are some of the issues discussed at the session:
1. Access to City’s social package
• A creative plan is required to ensure that non-account holders get access to full social packages.
2. Emergency housing and other measures to enable relocation of people where refurbishment of unsafe buildings is critical
• Proactive interim measures are required to improve health and safety in critical buildings as well as the provision of sufficient emergency/short term accommodation to temporarily house people who have to be removed from unsafe buildings.
3. Inner city housing (for both rental and ownership) that caters to all income brackets
• A comprehensive large scale plan for roll-out of X number of units of new accommodation.(X could be anything from 50 000t0 150 000!)
• A package of incentives to encourage and enable development of accommodation for all income brackets (including for example reconstruction zone subsidies).
• Public Sector must accept the responsibility for providing housing at below the R800.00 per month level and help to make the model viable for R800 to R1000.00 per month communal housing for if the private sector is to react to this sector.
• Consideration must be given to extending the UDZ time period beyond 2009.
• Rates rebates should be considered under certain circumstances – possibly on a stepped basis during the first two to three years of a project coming on stream, whether new or refurbished, and also to incentivise demolitions.
• From a viability point of view, low cost housing will be located in existing buildings, middle and upper end could be in refurbished or new buildings.
• It is impractical to consider mixed incomes (ie low and middle) in the same building.
• The 10%/20% option is unrealistic because it will slow down delivery of lower income – lower income must be a specific focus.
• The CoJ Department of Housing must negotiate the opening of the flow of subsidies with Provincial Government.
4. Better Buildings Programme
• A complete reconfiguration of the Better Buildings Programme is required.
5. Various system blockages preventing development of residential accommodation at scale
• Regardless of package of incentives, removal of key system constraints (clearance certificates, incorrect rating of developments, etc.)
• Clearances take too long and delays promote corruption
• Plan approval to be speeded up
• Billing remains a problem
• Corruption is widespread
6. Targeted measures to prevent hijacking, slumlording, fraud and non-payment crises
• All buildings must be brought into good standing with both regular payments of rates and services and consistent re-investment in building.
• The PIE Act is a major problem that is prejudicial to good management – a system must be found to deal with non-payers that can be implemented rapidly.
• An investigation should be launched into the possibility of establishing a property court – possibly incorporated into the Municipal Court.
• By-laws should be up-dated and into a practical form for easy enforcement.
• The lack of consistency at the Landlord/Tenant tribunal must be investigated
• Managing agents need a charter and business standards
7. Sectional title
• A proactive programme to deal with collapsed sectional title arrangements and poor management by body-corporates is desperately needed.
8. Infrastructure to support massive increase in residential accommodation
• Strategic investment in required infrastructure (water, sanitation, power, waste, roads and stormwater)
• It may be necessary to extend the physical area under consideration to include areas to the South and East of the Inner City.
• Infrastructure must include social infrastructure, clinics, crèches, scools, parks, sports facilities, etc
9. Public environment and security to support increase in residential densities
• A coherent programme of Residential Improvement Districts to be developed.
• CIDs are costly to establish and will need Council support initially
10. Hostels
• An accelerated programme of upgrading is required .
11. Non-performance of Council Departments and Utilities
• There is a major lack of law enforcement
• We need to change the model from ‘blitz’ enforcement to enforcement everyday
• A system of integrated score cards should be investigated to promote measurement and accountability
12. Tariffs
• Tariff system is antiquated and unrealistic providing inappropriate tariffs
• Certain tariffs are counter development, eg don’t facilitate communal living
• Investigate property owners buying services in bulk and on-selling to tenants
• Investigate a fixed rates and services charge for the lower end of the market especially for communal living
• Administered costs are 60% of the problem, everything must be done to reduce this figure
13 Communications
• Investors don’t know who to talk to
14 New Vision & Framework
• We need a framework for management that aligns private and public sectors and that everyone understands; a strategy that aligns with the vision.
15 City Fund
• Investigate the establishment of an Inner City Fund which could assist with issues such as the conversion to pre-paid meters
• Developers want accountability and transparency for issues such as large plan approval payment, advertising income, etc
16. Parking
• Investigate implementing the Cape Town model
17. BEE
• Any residential strategy MUST include BEE as a major component to change ownership patterns in the inner city.
Interesting and very important issues regarding a critical part of the city’s future, regards, neil
Friday, February 9, 2007
Inner City Summit Social Development Citichat 9 February 2007
CITICHAT 5/2007- 9 February 2007
The Inner City Summit - Social (Community) Development Stakeholder’s Working Group and Lessons from South America.
The first of the Social or Community Development Stakeholders’ Working Group (SWG) met at the beginning of this week in preparation for the Executive Mayor’s Inner City Summit and Charter to be held on the 5th May.
Just as a reminder – there are six SWGs - Transportation; Residential; Economic; Public Space, Arts Culture & Heritage; Urban Management & Safety & Security and Social Development. Each SWG will meet four times between when the process started in December last year and the Summit in May this year. Each SWG session has a different objective. The first is to give everyone the opportunity of getting issues off their chest, collating them and clustering like issues. The second SWG session will identify the most critical of the issues raised and investigate possible solutions; the third will be to firm up the solutions and the final session will be to agree the wording of the Charter relative to that SWG.
The Social Development SWG was well attended by a very divergent group of people representing organizations ranging from social housing, shelter and community health to refugee and migrant/immigrant groups. The following are the issues that emerged clustered into like groups.
1. Communications
1.1 Social package –many people live in rented premises and are unaware that certain subsidies are available to them. In some instances subsidies are given but landlords are not passing these on to their tenants. We need a creative plan to ensure that all grants are known and claimed.
1.2 Difficulty for NGOs and Service Providers to know where to direct their queries – there should be a single point of contact for social related issues and/or updated contact information. Clarity is needed regarding the most practical point of contact.
1.3 There appears to be poor or no communication between certain Council Departments but also between Council, Province and Central Government in relation to social issues. The fact that they don’t talk to each other has negative impacts on a whole range of issues.
1.4 When decisions are taken about initiatives, the department to be responsible must be identified and then its resources checked to ensure that it has the ability to implement or be supplemented to enable them to implement.
2. NGOs, CBOs and FBOs
2.1 Identification of NGOs – there is a need for a comprehensive data base of these organizations, publicly available, for contact and referral purposes but also to ensure that the City knows who is operating and what they are doing.
2.2 A specific data base is also required listing all NGOs, clubs etc for Sports and Recreation including Provincial and City departments.
2.3 Support - it appears that many of these organisations do not get any support from the City.
2.4 Accommodation for NGOs and Service Providers - a major problem for the administration of many of these organizations is lack of appropriate accommodation. Can the City help by identifying and possibly providing suitable buildings through the Better Buildings programme?
2.5 There is a concern that the numbers of organizations dealing with two of the major inner city social problems, alcohol and drug abuse, are inadequate given the size of the problem.
3. Groups that need recognition and research to provide an understanding of size and needs
3.1 Street children – there doesn’t appear to be a coherent strategy for dealing with street children. There is also a growing problem of homeless children who are HIV/Aids orphans - including foreign HIV/Aids orphans – where to access funding and how to ‘legalise’ the foreign children?
3.2 The Aged – not being considered and often expoited by family and community.
3.3 South African urban poor already in the city and new arrivals to it.
3.4 Single mothers - the Inner City appears to house a lot of unmarried mothers with very little in the way of early childhood development facilities. Some crèches aren’t registered with Province and therefore can’t access the subsidy.
4. Foreigners, migrants, refugees
4.1 Xenophobia is a major issue that requires a change of mindset – instead of labeling local attitudes under the term’xenophobia’ we should be seeking to stabilize the whole inner city population and make everyone feel part of the city and the country. This requires recognition of refugees and acceptance that they and migrants/immigrants are part and parcel of the life of the city and the Joburg Community. A fear of arrest and xenophobic reaction keeps many foreigners away from good programmes that would benefit them but, more important, denies health groups and NGOs from checking for HIV/Aids, bird flu and tuberculosis and thus from controlling their spread.
5.2 ‘Unconstituted marriages’ are evidently a growing problem. Evidently some refugees marry local South African girls. However, when they receive their work or other enabling permits, they bring their ’real’ wives from their home countries and desert their local ‘wives’ leaving them penniless and homeless.
5.3 Much comment was made about the lack of service from the Department of Home Affairs and how this negatively impacted on many peoples’ lives.
6. Sports and Recreation
6.1 Facilities and programmes – many City facilities appear to be badly run down, closed or just opened intermittently.
Apart from the above there were also issues raised that would be referred to the other SWGs such as safety and security issues; the Judicial system; waste removal; the Better Buildings Programme and problems related to Council service charges.
Whilst the first meeting of the SWGs usually results in what I call ‘dumping’, there was a positive suggestion made in this session that could impact on many social related issues in one fell swoop. That is adopting a city-wide policy that would ensure that within, say 1 square kilometer of each person’s living place, we create a sports and social facility. The idea is to attract kids and adults off the streets and away from drugs and criminal activities into healthy active and interactive lives. Basket- and volley- ball courts, music, dance, ballet. The things that Community Centres should provide but our Community Centres tend to be large add-ons that are fairly inaccessible. These would be very localised and compact.
Impractical? Not at all. In fact a number of Mayors of South American developing cities have been responsible for similar interventions. Jaime Lerner, when he was Mayor of Curitiba in Brazil, introduced a range of major interventions that dramatically changed the city and the lives of its communities. One such initiative was the establishment of the "Faróis de Saber" (Lighthouses of Knowledge). These ‘Lighthouses’ are free educational centers that include libraries, Internet access and other cultural resources. “Lighthouses” were built in every community. They were in fact designed to look like lighthouses so that they were very visible, standing out in the communities as beacons of learning. I went to a number of such ‘Lighthouses’ some years back and they were always busy with activities for every age group and just exciting places to be.
Another ex-Mayor who had a profound impact on his city and its inhabitants was Enrique Peñalosa, the previous Mayor of Bogota, who looked to real democritisation of the city and its peoples. He promoted a city model giving priority to children and public spaces and restricting private car use, building hundreds of kilometers of pavements or footways, bicycle paths, pedestrian streets, greenways, and parks. He led efforts to improve Bogotá's marginal neighborhoods through citizen involvement; planted more than 100,000 trees; created a new, highly successful bus-based transit system; and turned a deteriorated downtown avenue into a dynamic pedestrian public space. He helped transform the city's attitude from one of negative hopelessness to one of pride and hope, developing a model for urban improvement based on the equal rights of all people to transportation, education, and public spaces.
While I’m ‘going on’ about South America, let’s turn to Chile, a country with many similarities historically to our own. Michelle Bachelet was at the forefront in the battle to restore democracy to that country in the late 1980s. She was imprisoned by the previous regime followed by years time in exile. . A medical doctor, she was subsequently Minister of Health and later Minister of Defence and now the country’s President. Described as a ‘moderate socialist’ this is her vision for her country as reported in The McKinsey Quarterly: “I would love Chile to be regarded as a modern society with a modern system of social protection and an open economy, both regionally and internationally, and also to be seen as a player on the world stage. Not, of course, in the sense of throwing its weight around, but rather as a contributor to the task of global development. We want Chile to be a country where you can find all the conditions needed to create wealth and innovate, but at the same time one that protects the vulnerable and looks after those with liabilities or those who started too far behind to benefit from the opportunities and possibilities we have here…..In addition to social justice, everything we do is intended to promote a better quality of life and greater dignity for our people. You cannot have winners and losers – everyone has to win……In our opinion there is no incompatibility between growth and a more equal distribution of wealth. Indeed, we are convinced there is a virtuous relationship between the two. International experience shows that extreme inequality is not just unfair and a source of social tension, but also reduces the dynamism of the economy.”
Nothing wrong with those sentiments for a city! Ciao,neil.
The Inner City Summit - Social (Community) Development Stakeholder’s Working Group and Lessons from South America.
The first of the Social or Community Development Stakeholders’ Working Group (SWG) met at the beginning of this week in preparation for the Executive Mayor’s Inner City Summit and Charter to be held on the 5th May.
Just as a reminder – there are six SWGs - Transportation; Residential; Economic; Public Space, Arts Culture & Heritage; Urban Management & Safety & Security and Social Development. Each SWG will meet four times between when the process started in December last year and the Summit in May this year. Each SWG session has a different objective. The first is to give everyone the opportunity of getting issues off their chest, collating them and clustering like issues. The second SWG session will identify the most critical of the issues raised and investigate possible solutions; the third will be to firm up the solutions and the final session will be to agree the wording of the Charter relative to that SWG.
The Social Development SWG was well attended by a very divergent group of people representing organizations ranging from social housing, shelter and community health to refugee and migrant/immigrant groups. The following are the issues that emerged clustered into like groups.
1. Communications
1.1 Social package –many people live in rented premises and are unaware that certain subsidies are available to them. In some instances subsidies are given but landlords are not passing these on to their tenants. We need a creative plan to ensure that all grants are known and claimed.
1.2 Difficulty for NGOs and Service Providers to know where to direct their queries – there should be a single point of contact for social related issues and/or updated contact information. Clarity is needed regarding the most practical point of contact.
1.3 There appears to be poor or no communication between certain Council Departments but also between Council, Province and Central Government in relation to social issues. The fact that they don’t talk to each other has negative impacts on a whole range of issues.
1.4 When decisions are taken about initiatives, the department to be responsible must be identified and then its resources checked to ensure that it has the ability to implement or be supplemented to enable them to implement.
2. NGOs, CBOs and FBOs
2.1 Identification of NGOs – there is a need for a comprehensive data base of these organizations, publicly available, for contact and referral purposes but also to ensure that the City knows who is operating and what they are doing.
2.2 A specific data base is also required listing all NGOs, clubs etc for Sports and Recreation including Provincial and City departments.
2.3 Support - it appears that many of these organisations do not get any support from the City.
2.4 Accommodation for NGOs and Service Providers - a major problem for the administration of many of these organizations is lack of appropriate accommodation. Can the City help by identifying and possibly providing suitable buildings through the Better Buildings programme?
2.5 There is a concern that the numbers of organizations dealing with two of the major inner city social problems, alcohol and drug abuse, are inadequate given the size of the problem.
3. Groups that need recognition and research to provide an understanding of size and needs
3.1 Street children – there doesn’t appear to be a coherent strategy for dealing with street children. There is also a growing problem of homeless children who are HIV/Aids orphans - including foreign HIV/Aids orphans – where to access funding and how to ‘legalise’ the foreign children?
3.2 The Aged – not being considered and often expoited by family and community.
3.3 South African urban poor already in the city and new arrivals to it.
3.4 Single mothers - the Inner City appears to house a lot of unmarried mothers with very little in the way of early childhood development facilities. Some crèches aren’t registered with Province and therefore can’t access the subsidy.
4. Foreigners, migrants, refugees
4.1 Xenophobia is a major issue that requires a change of mindset – instead of labeling local attitudes under the term’xenophobia’ we should be seeking to stabilize the whole inner city population and make everyone feel part of the city and the country. This requires recognition of refugees and acceptance that they and migrants/immigrants are part and parcel of the life of the city and the Joburg Community. A fear of arrest and xenophobic reaction keeps many foreigners away from good programmes that would benefit them but, more important, denies health groups and NGOs from checking for HIV/Aids, bird flu and tuberculosis and thus from controlling their spread.
5.2 ‘Unconstituted marriages’ are evidently a growing problem. Evidently some refugees marry local South African girls. However, when they receive their work or other enabling permits, they bring their ’real’ wives from their home countries and desert their local ‘wives’ leaving them penniless and homeless.
5.3 Much comment was made about the lack of service from the Department of Home Affairs and how this negatively impacted on many peoples’ lives.
6. Sports and Recreation
6.1 Facilities and programmes – many City facilities appear to be badly run down, closed or just opened intermittently.
Apart from the above there were also issues raised that would be referred to the other SWGs such as safety and security issues; the Judicial system; waste removal; the Better Buildings Programme and problems related to Council service charges.
Whilst the first meeting of the SWGs usually results in what I call ‘dumping’, there was a positive suggestion made in this session that could impact on many social related issues in one fell swoop. That is adopting a city-wide policy that would ensure that within, say 1 square kilometer of each person’s living place, we create a sports and social facility. The idea is to attract kids and adults off the streets and away from drugs and criminal activities into healthy active and interactive lives. Basket- and volley- ball courts, music, dance, ballet. The things that Community Centres should provide but our Community Centres tend to be large add-ons that are fairly inaccessible. These would be very localised and compact.
Impractical? Not at all. In fact a number of Mayors of South American developing cities have been responsible for similar interventions. Jaime Lerner, when he was Mayor of Curitiba in Brazil, introduced a range of major interventions that dramatically changed the city and the lives of its communities. One such initiative was the establishment of the "Faróis de Saber" (Lighthouses of Knowledge). These ‘Lighthouses’ are free educational centers that include libraries, Internet access and other cultural resources. “Lighthouses” were built in every community. They were in fact designed to look like lighthouses so that they were very visible, standing out in the communities as beacons of learning. I went to a number of such ‘Lighthouses’ some years back and they were always busy with activities for every age group and just exciting places to be.
Another ex-Mayor who had a profound impact on his city and its inhabitants was Enrique Peñalosa, the previous Mayor of Bogota, who looked to real democritisation of the city and its peoples. He promoted a city model giving priority to children and public spaces and restricting private car use, building hundreds of kilometers of pavements or footways, bicycle paths, pedestrian streets, greenways, and parks. He led efforts to improve Bogotá's marginal neighborhoods through citizen involvement; planted more than 100,000 trees; created a new, highly successful bus-based transit system; and turned a deteriorated downtown avenue into a dynamic pedestrian public space. He helped transform the city's attitude from one of negative hopelessness to one of pride and hope, developing a model for urban improvement based on the equal rights of all people to transportation, education, and public spaces.
While I’m ‘going on’ about South America, let’s turn to Chile, a country with many similarities historically to our own. Michelle Bachelet was at the forefront in the battle to restore democracy to that country in the late 1980s. She was imprisoned by the previous regime followed by years time in exile. . A medical doctor, she was subsequently Minister of Health and later Minister of Defence and now the country’s President. Described as a ‘moderate socialist’ this is her vision for her country as reported in The McKinsey Quarterly: “I would love Chile to be regarded as a modern society with a modern system of social protection and an open economy, both regionally and internationally, and also to be seen as a player on the world stage. Not, of course, in the sense of throwing its weight around, but rather as a contributor to the task of global development. We want Chile to be a country where you can find all the conditions needed to create wealth and innovate, but at the same time one that protects the vulnerable and looks after those with liabilities or those who started too far behind to benefit from the opportunities and possibilities we have here…..In addition to social justice, everything we do is intended to promote a better quality of life and greater dignity for our people. You cannot have winners and losers – everyone has to win……In our opinion there is no incompatibility between growth and a more equal distribution of wealth. Indeed, we are convinced there is a virtuous relationship between the two. International experience shows that extreme inequality is not just unfair and a source of social tension, but also reduces the dynamism of the economy.”
Nothing wrong with those sentiments for a city! Ciao,neil.
Friday, February 2, 2007
Billboards Citichat 2 February 2007
CITICHAT 4/2007- 2 February 2007
Gautrain ‘Big Bang’
Sunday will see a physical start made on the Gautrain Inner City station when four buildings in the block bounded by Smit, Wolmarans, Eloff and Joubert are imploded at 09h00. Should be ‘quite a blast’!
Billboards – who benefits!
Three positive personal experiences related to billboards.
1. On a visit to Rome some years back, I noticed a number of historic buildings being restored/renovated. Each was totally enclosed by builder’s hoardings in the form of what we today call ‘wraps’ on which were imprinted an image of what the building would like when completed – no advertising, not even of the builder’s name! Great benefit to the city – not having an untidy building site; great benefit to citizens and tourists – being advised of what could be expected as an outcome of what was happening behind the wrap.
2. Traveling on a train between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, I passed a very large modern glass skyscraper, probably 40 to 50 storeys in height, which had been completely wrapped. The giant image it carried was of a member of the Dutch soccer team ‘smashing through the wrapping’ as he appeared to come towards the viewer dribbling a football. Later, when I went to have a look at the building in more detail, I found that the back of the building contained the rear view of the same figure, going away from the viewer. It was really exciting because it was huge and incredibly vibrant and just pulsating with energy and it related to a current major event. It was almost insignificantly branded by Nike and was a short term wrap related to Euro 2000.
3. Not a once off experience, but one I continually enjoy every time I’m in New York, is a visit to Times Square. This space, not that large horizontally by ‘Square’ standards – it stretches from West 42nd to West 47th Streets at the junction of Broadway and 7th Avenue – has achieved international iconic world landmark status principally because of its gigantic and often animated billboard advertisements. In fact the first billboard advertisement appeared there way back in 1904. At that time, Times Square was growing into something of a cultural hub for the city and, by the ‘30s, was full of theatres, music halls and upmarket hotels.
When I first visited Time Square in 1982 it had declined dramatically into a seedy and quite dangerous area. Although there were still some theatres, the area was better known for its sleazy adult shops, ’peep shows’ and strip bars. Its iconic image was decidedly negative - a symbol of what was worst in New York. But, later in the ‘80s, that started to change again under a development plan conceived under Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins and led largely by the newly established Business Improvement District or BID (what we would call a CID). Sex and porn shops were closed whilst increased security drove out the “squeegee men”, hucksters and pimps and more tourist friendly establishments started to open. In 1990, renovations to six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street were started.
A zoning ordinance was passed that required every building in Times Square to have illuminated billboards above 1st floor level and the Square regained its iconic landmark status. The NASDAQ sign at 4 Times Square cost $37 million to build in 2000 and the 40 metre high sign brings in over $2 million per annum in space rental income. The giant 16-storey by 20 metre wide Hershey Bar ad (they call them ‘spectaculars”) has 34 props, 4 steam engines, 4000 fixed and 30 programmable lights and 56 giant neon letters.
Today Times Square often acts as the backdrop or location for films (Vanilla Sky, Spider-Man, King Kong etc.) It also is the shooting location for various TV shows and the background to numerous video games.
Lately, advertisers have discovered that technology has provided a new ‘cutting edge’ to spread their messages via the internet. Events held in Times Square are videoed by thousands of people and then put on web pages, blogs, etc and are seen by millions. General Electric rented nine digital billboards in Times Square on which they displayed pictures of the people passing the site. Those people in turn took photos and videos of their images and soon these were circulating the world on line. The very latest technology, heaven forbid, allows advertisers to beam messages and adverts to the cell-phones of people passing by. In a two week trial recently in London, the billboard detected 87 000passers by over a two week period of which 17% were prepared to download song clips from a new music album that was being promoted in this way!
Beneficiaries are clearly the advertising companies and the property owners but also the millions of tourists who see Times Square as synonymous with America. Yes, it is blatantly commercial – no one apologises for that fact – and it is one of the few places in the world that has laws requiring billboards to be erected - but it is confined to that area.
Let’s come home. In Rosebank, recently on a prominent site, the builder’s hoarding reflected not what was going to be built, but a dozen nubile young ladies clad in their underwear, the focus of the ad, each with a sexy caption. The same style of ad appears currently on a building site in Sandton. Sandton Drive features a variety of ads promoting competing strip clubs. I’m not a Mother Grundy and I realise that our Constitution doesn’t allow any discrimination, but what about just plain old good civic taste and values!
Now drive south down Bertha Street, the continuation of Jan Smuts, through Braamfontein, and what do you see? On the left a huge, 6/7 storeys, oil company ad displaying engine valves, not the most uplifting of signs (which some may at least attribute to the bra ads in Rosebank!) - on the right, an empty, vacant shell of a building, completely wrapped. Bear left and go over Queen Elizabeth Bridge and you are immediately accosted visually by dozens of billboards, some on roofs, some on the sides of buildings, some on either side of the bridge. Your senses are assaulted – there is clearly no standard set for type of message, number and size of signs. There are old signs that are in a disgusting state and there are some billboard structures that are empty as marketing companies look for new advertisers. We have indiscriminately cluttered our city environment and we assault the sensibility of our citizens. Am I advocating a ban on billboards? No, not at all – I am however suggesting that an intelligent approach would lead to more judicious use of our public space which, after all, belongs to citizens and not to the local authority. The Council, in my view, have an obligation to ensure that the message and numbers of adverting boards is within reason. In 2000, the rooftops in Athens had been allowed to grow so thick with billboards that one couldn’t even view the architecture for which the city is famous. Their Council embarked on a four year project to demolish the majority of the rooftop billboards to beautify the city for the hordes of visitors expected for the Olympics. Surely their first responsibility was to their citizens who had to endure the visual pollution of their beautiful city for years. Turns out that most of adverts were in fact illegal, a fact ignored by the city authorities for years.
So, who really benefits from our billboards? Firstly, the property owners. As is the case with the building to the west of the Braamfontein entrance to the Nelson Mandela Bridge, income from advertising clearly outweighs the cost of restoring the building and letting it! So, why bother? I understand that some of these building wraps bring in excess of R100 000 -00 per month for the property owner. If the building was let it would bring people and economy to the area not just to a single pocket! Then, the advertiser clearly benefits or why advertise? Fair enough, they are paying for that right but let’s at least be a little bit discerning about what and how much should be allowed. And of course the marketing company makes big bucks and the city also has an income. I don’t believe the public benefits except when the billboards are used non-commercially as we did some years go in the Joburg Art City project. That great billboard “Joburg Man” in Main Street is still admired by many.
Where does the charge made by the city go to? Some years ago the city approved that a percentage (I think it was 15%) of all outdoor advertising income generated within the inner city would go into an inner city fund. It never happened so where does the money go? It appears to be absorbed into general income which means that no one has any idea what it is used for. Not transparent, not accountable for and not acceptable! If we are to have our senses assailed in this manner, then at least let us see that the money is put to good effect.
One approach that comes immediately to mind is improving the public environment through two ways. Firstly, by providing additional funding for public art. I say ‘additional’ because I know that the city has recently approved a proposal that funds from all capital expenditure on major projects will be made available for this. But additional funding from outdoor advertising would really enable us to catch up our generally barren past and empower some great and significant public art-works as one experiences in so many world-class cities.
Secondly, please could we fund a small group of workers to clear our pavements and road gutters of weeds –no department or utility appears to have this responsibility. Driven up Rissik Street lately? If you have you cannot help but to have seen the disgusting state of the stretch parallel to Park Station. I’d always understood that Rissik Street was supposed to be the ceremonial street of the city – in my wildest imagining I couldn’t perceive what kind of ceremonies someone has in mind. The flower boxes, if they are not being used for refuse, display dead plants, and their sides are covered in graffiti. Weeds sprout from the pavements and the road gutters. This stretch is a disgrace and whoever is responsible for keeping this area up to scratch should be severely penalized. That’s why a dedicated team paid for out of a special budget would be a godsend. And it would provide employment for a group – maybe the homeless who sleep outside the Kazerne parking garages on the pavement could thus be funded sufficiently to find a roof over their heads.
In some interviewing of developers that I am doing at the moment I ask what incentives they would like to see introduced. The 100% response to date has been, forget incentives, just get the city to do what it is supposed to do and you’ll create an environment that will promote investment. Refuse removal and public environment maintenance are high on their list of what the city is not doing.
Enough! Have, a great weekend, regards, neil.
Gautrain ‘Big Bang’
Sunday will see a physical start made on the Gautrain Inner City station when four buildings in the block bounded by Smit, Wolmarans, Eloff and Joubert are imploded at 09h00. Should be ‘quite a blast’!
Billboards – who benefits!
Three positive personal experiences related to billboards.
1. On a visit to Rome some years back, I noticed a number of historic buildings being restored/renovated. Each was totally enclosed by builder’s hoardings in the form of what we today call ‘wraps’ on which were imprinted an image of what the building would like when completed – no advertising, not even of the builder’s name! Great benefit to the city – not having an untidy building site; great benefit to citizens and tourists – being advised of what could be expected as an outcome of what was happening behind the wrap.
2. Traveling on a train between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, I passed a very large modern glass skyscraper, probably 40 to 50 storeys in height, which had been completely wrapped. The giant image it carried was of a member of the Dutch soccer team ‘smashing through the wrapping’ as he appeared to come towards the viewer dribbling a football. Later, when I went to have a look at the building in more detail, I found that the back of the building contained the rear view of the same figure, going away from the viewer. It was really exciting because it was huge and incredibly vibrant and just pulsating with energy and it related to a current major event. It was almost insignificantly branded by Nike and was a short term wrap related to Euro 2000.
3. Not a once off experience, but one I continually enjoy every time I’m in New York, is a visit to Times Square. This space, not that large horizontally by ‘Square’ standards – it stretches from West 42nd to West 47th Streets at the junction of Broadway and 7th Avenue – has achieved international iconic world landmark status principally because of its gigantic and often animated billboard advertisements. In fact the first billboard advertisement appeared there way back in 1904. At that time, Times Square was growing into something of a cultural hub for the city and, by the ‘30s, was full of theatres, music halls and upmarket hotels.
When I first visited Time Square in 1982 it had declined dramatically into a seedy and quite dangerous area. Although there were still some theatres, the area was better known for its sleazy adult shops, ’peep shows’ and strip bars. Its iconic image was decidedly negative - a symbol of what was worst in New York. But, later in the ‘80s, that started to change again under a development plan conceived under Mayors Ed Koch and David Dinkins and led largely by the newly established Business Improvement District or BID (what we would call a CID). Sex and porn shops were closed whilst increased security drove out the “squeegee men”, hucksters and pimps and more tourist friendly establishments started to open. In 1990, renovations to six of the nine historic theatres on 42nd Street were started.
A zoning ordinance was passed that required every building in Times Square to have illuminated billboards above 1st floor level and the Square regained its iconic landmark status. The NASDAQ sign at 4 Times Square cost $37 million to build in 2000 and the 40 metre high sign brings in over $2 million per annum in space rental income. The giant 16-storey by 20 metre wide Hershey Bar ad (they call them ‘spectaculars”) has 34 props, 4 steam engines, 4000 fixed and 30 programmable lights and 56 giant neon letters.
Today Times Square often acts as the backdrop or location for films (Vanilla Sky, Spider-Man, King Kong etc.) It also is the shooting location for various TV shows and the background to numerous video games.
Lately, advertisers have discovered that technology has provided a new ‘cutting edge’ to spread their messages via the internet. Events held in Times Square are videoed by thousands of people and then put on web pages, blogs, etc and are seen by millions. General Electric rented nine digital billboards in Times Square on which they displayed pictures of the people passing the site. Those people in turn took photos and videos of their images and soon these were circulating the world on line. The very latest technology, heaven forbid, allows advertisers to beam messages and adverts to the cell-phones of people passing by. In a two week trial recently in London, the billboard detected 87 000passers by over a two week period of which 17% were prepared to download song clips from a new music album that was being promoted in this way!
Beneficiaries are clearly the advertising companies and the property owners but also the millions of tourists who see Times Square as synonymous with America. Yes, it is blatantly commercial – no one apologises for that fact – and it is one of the few places in the world that has laws requiring billboards to be erected - but it is confined to that area.
Let’s come home. In Rosebank, recently on a prominent site, the builder’s hoarding reflected not what was going to be built, but a dozen nubile young ladies clad in their underwear, the focus of the ad, each with a sexy caption. The same style of ad appears currently on a building site in Sandton. Sandton Drive features a variety of ads promoting competing strip clubs. I’m not a Mother Grundy and I realise that our Constitution doesn’t allow any discrimination, but what about just plain old good civic taste and values!
Now drive south down Bertha Street, the continuation of Jan Smuts, through Braamfontein, and what do you see? On the left a huge, 6/7 storeys, oil company ad displaying engine valves, not the most uplifting of signs (which some may at least attribute to the bra ads in Rosebank!) - on the right, an empty, vacant shell of a building, completely wrapped. Bear left and go over Queen Elizabeth Bridge and you are immediately accosted visually by dozens of billboards, some on roofs, some on the sides of buildings, some on either side of the bridge. Your senses are assaulted – there is clearly no standard set for type of message, number and size of signs. There are old signs that are in a disgusting state and there are some billboard structures that are empty as marketing companies look for new advertisers. We have indiscriminately cluttered our city environment and we assault the sensibility of our citizens. Am I advocating a ban on billboards? No, not at all – I am however suggesting that an intelligent approach would lead to more judicious use of our public space which, after all, belongs to citizens and not to the local authority. The Council, in my view, have an obligation to ensure that the message and numbers of adverting boards is within reason. In 2000, the rooftops in Athens had been allowed to grow so thick with billboards that one couldn’t even view the architecture for which the city is famous. Their Council embarked on a four year project to demolish the majority of the rooftop billboards to beautify the city for the hordes of visitors expected for the Olympics. Surely their first responsibility was to their citizens who had to endure the visual pollution of their beautiful city for years. Turns out that most of adverts were in fact illegal, a fact ignored by the city authorities for years.
So, who really benefits from our billboards? Firstly, the property owners. As is the case with the building to the west of the Braamfontein entrance to the Nelson Mandela Bridge, income from advertising clearly outweighs the cost of restoring the building and letting it! So, why bother? I understand that some of these building wraps bring in excess of R100 000 -00 per month for the property owner. If the building was let it would bring people and economy to the area not just to a single pocket! Then, the advertiser clearly benefits or why advertise? Fair enough, they are paying for that right but let’s at least be a little bit discerning about what and how much should be allowed. And of course the marketing company makes big bucks and the city also has an income. I don’t believe the public benefits except when the billboards are used non-commercially as we did some years go in the Joburg Art City project. That great billboard “Joburg Man” in Main Street is still admired by many.
Where does the charge made by the city go to? Some years ago the city approved that a percentage (I think it was 15%) of all outdoor advertising income generated within the inner city would go into an inner city fund. It never happened so where does the money go? It appears to be absorbed into general income which means that no one has any idea what it is used for. Not transparent, not accountable for and not acceptable! If we are to have our senses assailed in this manner, then at least let us see that the money is put to good effect.
One approach that comes immediately to mind is improving the public environment through two ways. Firstly, by providing additional funding for public art. I say ‘additional’ because I know that the city has recently approved a proposal that funds from all capital expenditure on major projects will be made available for this. But additional funding from outdoor advertising would really enable us to catch up our generally barren past and empower some great and significant public art-works as one experiences in so many world-class cities.
Secondly, please could we fund a small group of workers to clear our pavements and road gutters of weeds –no department or utility appears to have this responsibility. Driven up Rissik Street lately? If you have you cannot help but to have seen the disgusting state of the stretch parallel to Park Station. I’d always understood that Rissik Street was supposed to be the ceremonial street of the city – in my wildest imagining I couldn’t perceive what kind of ceremonies someone has in mind. The flower boxes, if they are not being used for refuse, display dead plants, and their sides are covered in graffiti. Weeds sprout from the pavements and the road gutters. This stretch is a disgrace and whoever is responsible for keeping this area up to scratch should be severely penalized. That’s why a dedicated team paid for out of a special budget would be a godsend. And it would provide employment for a group – maybe the homeless who sleep outside the Kazerne parking garages on the pavement could thus be funded sufficiently to find a roof over their heads.
In some interviewing of developers that I am doing at the moment I ask what incentives they would like to see introduced. The 100% response to date has been, forget incentives, just get the city to do what it is supposed to do and you’ll create an environment that will promote investment. Refuse removal and public environment maintenance are high on their list of what the city is not doing.
Enough! Have, a great weekend, regards, neil.
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