Charter; Midtown Progress Review Citichat 6 June 2008

CITICHAT 22/2008 - 6 June 2008


Charter Update & Midtown Meander

The third Inner City Partnership Forum meeting was held on Tuesday. The Forum is a product of the Inner City Charter Process, an opportunity for civil society to come together quarterly with the Council, led by the Mayor, and to receive progress reports on the extensive commitments contained in the Charter and generally to raise issues of concern or delight. I say ‘delight’ because it is important that one gets beyond the constant whinging and shows appreciation for what is actually being achieved, which appears considerable. The brief report back from the Inner City Programme Manager, Yael Horowitz, showed encouraging progress – 86% of commitments to the end of March had been achieved. It was a brief report because she had just returned from overseas leave two days prior to the meeting – how is it that the female sex can look so good after interminable intercontinental flights and six hours of time change whilst men look chagrined and crumpled?

It was a good meeting with a distinctly positive feel. The Mayor made some critical comments regarding the recent xenophobia reminding the gathering that as a city we have a strong history and a practice of living with and assimilating migrants – in-migration will not stop, he said, and we need to ensure that we lead from best practice and integrate all into our communities. He expressed his and the Council’s appreciation for those individuals and organisations that have tried to make those displaced as comfortable as possible and said that the full Council had distanced itself from any form of violence.

From the time that the Inner City Charter Partnership Forum was envisaged, and, more particularly at the previous meeting held on the 4th March 2008, the intent of the Forum’s Terms of Reference have been under scrutiny and debate. In particular, issues such as the Forum’s decision-making ability; how its working groups will function; what the meaning of a ‘real partnership’ is and how to monitor and, if necessary, have recourse against non-delivery have been the subject of much discussion. Agreement was reached at this session that the Inner City Charter Partnership Forum is not a decision making structure of any organisation or partners represented on the Forum but, notwithstanding this, the “the Forum may make decisions, reached through discussion, debate and agreement which decisions will have a strong mandatory effect on all partners.”

Working Groups and Special Working Groups to focus on specific issues will be established and will be required to “report back to the Charter Partnership Forum on the substance and conclusions of any discussions” and, where decisions on specific issues are required, Special Working Groups will report decisions back to the Forum.

A two stage independent assessment process will be adopted with a ”neutral and independent specialist” who will review evidence of progress and make a conclusive determination on whether progress has in fact been made against Charter commitments. All these various proposals were approved at Tuesday’s meeting and will now be built into the Terms of Reference. If you’d like a copy of the TOR drop me a line and I’ll let you have. Also, if you’d like to take part in a “Satisfaction Survey” which is to test the level of satisfaction with the role and functioning of the Forum, let me know as well.

The meeting positively received a fine preliminary presentation by Kagiso Urban Management on the proposed major revamp to the urban environment of the Retail Improvement District area which will have a strong impact on what I call Midtown and will commence from July onwards as a partnership between business and Council. There will also be further consultation with various stakeholders before the final plan is approved.

However, two inputs from the floor, reminded everyone of the magnitude of the challenges still facing inner city revitalisation. The first came from one of the longest serving ‘urban activists’ in the city, architect Robin Fee, whose involvement goes back to the 1960s. Robin pointed out “four disgraceful” issues, actually six in all:

1. The Main entrance to the City via the Nelson Mandela Bridge has one leaving the constantly improving Braamfontein end and landing in a complete mess on the other side in Newtown. I know that the Chairman of the JDA suggested some years ago that this become a notable ‘gateway’ to the city and Rob’s reminder is a timeous one.

2. The disgusting state of Ntemi Piliso Street (previously West Street). Particularly important because of the new presence of a number of corporates clustering in this area which will increase pedestrian and vehicle flows. Possibly this will be taken into account in the planned revamp of the Diagonal Street precinct..

3. The non-defined relationship between the Gauteng Provincial Government and the Council which has resulted in the appalling state of

3.1 Beyers Naude Square and the

3.2 Rissik Street Post Office

Whilst I have ‘unofficially’ been told that plans are well advanced for these areas, they are of such central and historic importance to the city that it would be good for their future development to be placed on the public table for scrutiny. In a separate discussion to that of the Forum meeting, the issue of how the Province has such a large influence on Beyers Naude Square was raised. It is acknowledged that the Harry Hofmeyr parking garage (which is in quite an awful state at present) was evidently purchased by Province, the question remains as how the Square itself, the City’s public open space can be controlled by the Province?

4. The issue of sky-signage and building wraps. I’ve also raised this issue before and it certainly is something that we need more clarity on.

“If we do everything else we are talking about and don’t attend to these”, Rob said, “we will be like the ugly sisters in Cinderella leaving the mess to be cleaned up to someone else whilst they rush off to the ball!” Nice one, Rob, and very true. There are still a large number of Cinderella situations in the city that need tlc.

The second major issue raised was regarding the continuing non-performance of the JMPD as regards the inner city. Their lack of a presence in relation to by-law enforcement and particularly their disinterest in managing the growing traffic congestion in the city was again highlighted. One of many examples that I can also attest to, is the intersection of Rissik and De Villiers where combi taxis in both directions in De Villiers constantly jump the traffic lights and block the northern flow of traffic up Rissik Street.

As part of the protocol of the Forum, these issues will be dealt with at its next meeting.

Robin could have added another issue to his list, one close to his heart through his original involvement in its design and construction - The Carlton Centre. I received this e-mail from a Citichat reader last week: “I took advantage of a day off work recently to spend some time in the city centre and was tremendously impressed by the progress being made.

My one disappointment was the Carlton Centre. While the shopping centre is clean (and throngs with shoppers), and the parkade and office tower are well used, I do not believe the Carlton is being used to anywhere near its true potential. I understand that Transnet wishes to dispose of the Carlton – a good idea, I think, since a seasoned property company would better utilise and develop the asset. I was under the impression that this would happen soon, but have heard nothing since the initial announcement. Has Transnet changed its mind?” Good question - what a tragedy if what was once hailed as the beacon of hope in the inner city turns into the opposite with the rest of the inner resuscitated around it!

Midtown Meander

Continued my driving tour of parts of the city this week – this time “Midtown” from Ntemi Piliso Street in the west to End Street in the east and President to Wolmarans Streets south to north.

Not going to give street by street comments but rather some overall impressions. Firstly this area is the ‘gritty” centre of the city particularly as one moves east. It pumps people in endless flows – ever tried driving across the pedestrian crossing in Pritchard between the Smal Street Mall and the Methodist Church even when the light is in your favour? People just spill across the street. We really are a city of incredibly undisciplined pedestrians, and I include myself as one of those. Since the upgrading of Pritchard in front of the High Court there seems to be an increase of illegal parking particularly in Pritchard at the east end of the Court which causes added chaos to that area. In fact traffic in the midtown area has become positively diabolical. And much of this is for the very reason raised at the Charter Forum meeting – lack of JMPD officers. In President, Pritchard, Jeppe Bree and Plein, loading bays are generally used exclusively by illegally parked cars which results in an enormous amount of double-parking for vehicles that are trying to offload (and shoppers dodging into retailers to get something). In President Street a huge pantechnicon was double parked on the left of the street in order to unload its cargo whilst thirty metres further on the right the same situation was repeated which resulted in the street effectively closing down to a single lane. Not a cop in sight. Kerk Street linear market has strings of cars illegally parked down its length. Add to the resultant chaos combi taxis, and it becomes diabolical. So many of the combi taxi drivers have no consideration for other traffic nor for pedestrians. Many sections of pavements in ‘east midtown’ are cluttered beyond belief with informal traders and stacks of refuse. That the city is alive and pumping there is no doubt but it could do with some authority to bring order to the confusion. We seem to have generally lost respect for each other and behave just as we want to and to hell with the consequences.

Again, I found a significant absence of street signage – there are more “no-name” intersections than those that are signed! It suddenly struck me that we once had street names on both poles and curbs – with all the road widening and curb replacement, I don’t see new curb signage. Surely a good time to introduce some new form of street identification – I’ve seen concrete curbs overseas with street names recessed into the face, sometimes the letters are left bare, others are painted or the recesses filled with brass (not that I’m suggesting that here!) but I did see brass inlaid names on the top ‘surface’ of pavement corners in Seattle which is useful for pedestrians! What about every corner section throughout the city being designated a corner through the use of granite curbs with the street names carved into the stone? Cost? Negligible in relation to what we are spending on widening streets for the BRT and the new pavement programmes! No maintenance and lots of job creation that could be stretched over a number of years! And, we’d have permanent street names!

As compared to such a drive ten years ago where almost every building in midtown looked unloved and uncared for, now, in every street there are a growing number of buildings that have either had their external façades cleaned or repainted. Unfortunately that often shows up the decay of their neighbours even more than normal but I think we need a by-law that requires everyone to clean up their facades before 2010! I’m not looking to ‘sanitise’ the city but, man, we have some incredibly beautiful buildings in this city but you only really appreciate them, like Cher, when they are face-lifted or made over! Otherwise they merge into the general drabness of the cityscape. I commented a couple of weeks back on the ubiquitous City Props signs but between them and AFHCO it’s more like a rash across the city – a good rash showing the pulse of change and all their buildings are being beautifully restored. City Props have also introduced some real quality retail back into their buildings which is so encouraging at street level. Other buildings, now getting fewer in number, are positively disgusting. I think I’m going to do a meander to ‘name and shame’ the culprits one of these days.

The area around Joubert Park/Union Gardens is indescribable – the sheer volume of people, combi taxis, hawkers (and dirt) is staggering. Talk about energy pumping! Added to all this, however, is the fact that almost all the roads in this area are being widened and it is utter chaos.

Just back to the issue of the visibility of the JMPD. In two-and-a-half hours of driving the streets of midtown I saw the following. After an hour and a quarter I saw a JMPD van driving through the Fashion District. Later as I was turning driving north up Rissik, a bakkie had broken down in the middle lane – a JMPD vehicle drove past leaving the bakkie and the ensnarled traffic to sort itself out. Traffic lights weren’t working at four major intersections in the city but I saw no officers. And then, voila, a large detachment of JMPD officers on motorbikes, about twelve in all screeching down Pritchard, sirens blaring, providing escort to a SAPS van clearly conveying prisoners from the High Court. However dangerous the criminals being transported might be – twelve escorts when the city is gridlocked because of double parking and combi-taxis jumping traffic lights, blocking the normal flow of traffic and four sets of traffic lights completely dead.- seems weird!

In my last meander I mentioned the pole in Harrison Street that had been knocked over and had been lying flat on the pavement for a number of weeks/months. It’s gone! Hallelujah! I’m not naïve enough to think it was the power of the pen but what I found interesting is that 5 metres away from where it was flattened on the pavement is a parking meter on a pole that stands at 45 degrees to the pavement. It probably was bent like that in the same incident that flattened the no parking pole for it has been like that for the same length of time. That still stands! Different departments? Strange!.

ciao, neil